as have ever been familiarly used amongst us; so that of all these eight several kinds of new promised numbers, you see what we have; only what was our own before, and the same but apparelled in foreign titles, which had they come in their kind and natural attire of rhyme, we should never have suspected that they had affected to be other, or sought to degenerate into strange manners, which now we see was the cause why they were turned out of their proper habit, and brought in as aliens, only to induce men to admire them as far comers: but see the power of nature; it is not all the artificial coverings of wit, that can hide their native and original condition, which breaks out thorough the strongest bands of affectation, and will be itself, do singularity what it can. And as for those imagined quantities of syllables, which have been ever held free and indifferent in our language, who can enforce us to take knowledge of them, being in nullius verba jurati, and owing fealty to no foreign invention; especially in such a case, where there is no necessity in nature, or that it imports either the matter or form, whether it be so or otherwise. But every versifier that well observes his work, finds in our language, without all these unnecessary precepts, what number best fit the nature of her idiom, and the proper places destined to such accents, as she will not let into any other rooms, than in those for which they were born. As for example, you cannot make this fall into the right sound of a verse, vain; for if they become versifiers, we are like to have lean numbers instead of fat rhyme. And if Tully would have his orator skilled in all the knowledges appertaining to god and man, what should they have who would be a degree above orators? why then it was to show his own skill, and what himself had observed; so he might well bave done, without doing wrong to the honour of the dead, wrong to the fame of the living, and wrong to England, in seeking to lay reproach upon her native ornaments, and to turn the fair stream and full⚫ course of her accents, into the shallow current of a loose uncertainty, clean out of the way of her known delight. And I thought it could never have proceeded from the pen of a scholar (who sees no profession free from the impure mouth of the scorner) to say the reproach of others' idle tongues is the curse of nature upon us, when it is rather her curse upon him that knows not how to use his tongue. What, doth he think himself is now gotten so far out of the way of contempt, that his numbers are gone beyond the reach of obloquy; and that how frivolous or idle soever they shall run, they shall be protected from disgrace, as though that light rhymes and right numbers did not weigh all alike in the grave opinion of the wise? and that it is not rhyme, but our idle arguments that hath brought down to so base a reckoning, the price and estimation of writing in this kind: when the few good things of this age, by coming together in one throng, and press with the many bad, are not discerned from them, but overlooked with them, and None thinks reward rendred worthy his worth, all taken to be alike; but when after-times shall make a quest of inquiry, to examine the best of unless you thus misplace the accent upon rendred this age, peradventure there will be found, in the and worthy, contrary to the nature of these words, now contending records of rhyme, matter not unfitwhich showeth that two feminine numbers, (or tro-ting the gravest divine, and severest lawyer in this chees, if so you will call them) will not succeed in the third and fourth place of the verse. And so likewise in this case, Though death doth consume, yet virtue preserves, it will not be a verse, though it hath the just syllables, without the same number in the second, and the altering of the fourth place, in this sort, Though death doth ruine, virtue yet preserves. Again, who knows not that we cannot kindly answer a feminine number with a masculine rhyme, or (if you will so term it) a trochei with a sponde, as weakness with confess, nature and endure, only for that thereby we shall wrong the accent, the chief lord and grave governor of numbers; also you cannot, in a verse of four feet, place a trochei in the first, without the like offence, as, Yearly out of his watry cell. for so you shall sound it, yearlie, which is unnatural and other such like observations occur, which nature and a judicial ear of themselves teach us readily to avoid. But now for whom hath our adversary taken all this pain, for the learned, or for the ignorant, or for himself to show his own skill? if for the learned, it is to no purpose, for every grammarian in this land hath learned his Prosodia, and already knows this art of numbers: if for the ignorant, it was kingdom: but these things must have the date of antiquity to make them reverend and authentical, for ever in the collation of writers, men rather weigh their age than their merit', et legunt priscos cum reverentia, quando coætaneos non possunt sine invidia. And let no writer in rhyme be any way discouraged in his endeavour by this brave alarum, but rather animated to bring up all the best of their powers, and charge withal the strength of nature and industry upon contempt, that the show of their real forces may turn back insolency into her own hold; for, be sure that innovation never works any overthrow, but upon the advantage of a careless idleness, and let this make us look the better to our feet, the better to our matter, better to our manners. Let the adversary that thought to hurt us, bring more profit and honour, by being against us, than if he had stood still on our side; for that (next to the awe of Heaven) the best rein, the strongest hand to make men keep their way, is, that which their enemy bears upon them: and let this be the benefit we make by being oppugned, and the means to redeem back the good opinion, vanity and idleness have suffered to be won from us, which nothing but substance and matter can effect: for, Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons. When we hear music, we must be in our ear, in the utter-room of sense; but when we entertain judgment, we retire into the cabinet and innermost withdrawing chamber of the soul: and it is but as music for the ear, Verba sequi fidibus modulanda Latinis: but it is a work of power for the soul. Númerosque modosque ediscere vitæ. The most judicial and worthy spirits of this land are not so delicate, or will owe so much to their ear, as to rest upon the outside of words, and be entertained with sound; seeing that both number, measure, and rhyme, is but as the ground or seat, whereupon is raised the work that commends it, and which may be easily at the first found out by any shallow conceit; as we see some fantastic to begin a fashion, which afterward gravity itself is fain to put on, because it will not be out of the wear of other men, and recti apud nos locum tenet error ubi publicus factus est. And power and strength that can plant itself any where, having built within this compass, and reared it of so high a respect, we now embrace it as the fittest dwelling for our invention, and have thereon bestowed all the substance of our understanding to furnish it as it is; and therefore here I stand forth, only to make good the place we have thus taken up, and to defend the sacred monuments erected therein, which contain the honour of the dead, the fame of the living, the glory of peace, and the best power of our speech, and wherein so many honourable spirits have sacrificed to memory their dearest passions, showing by what divine influence they have been moved, and under what stars they lived. But yet notwithstanding all this which I have here delivered in the defence of rhyme, I am not so far in love with mine own mystery, or will seem so froward, as to be against the reformation, and the better settling these measures of ours; wherein there be many things, I could wish were more certain and better ordered, though myself dare not take upon me to be a teacher therein, having so much need to learn of others. And I must confess, that to mine own ear, those continual cadences of couplets used in long and continued poems, are very tiresome and unpleasing, by reason that still methinks they ran on with a sound of one nature, and a kind of certainty which stuffs the delight rather than entertains it. But yet notwithstanding, I must not out of my own daintiness condemn this kind of writing, which peradventure to another may seem most delightful; and many worthy compositions we see to have passed with commendation in that kind. Besides, methinks sometimes to beguile the ear with a running out and passing over the rhyme, as no bound to stay us in the line where the violence of the matter will break through, is rather graceful than otherwise. Wherein I find my Homer-Lucan, as if he gloried to seem to have no bounds; albeit, he were confined within his measures, to be in my conceit most happy; for so thereby, they who care not for verse or rhyme, may pass it over without taking any notice thereof, and please themselves with a well-measured prose. And I must confess my adversary hath wrought this much upon me, that I think a tragedy would indeed best comport with a blank verse, and dispeuse with rhyme, saving in the chorus, or where a sentence shall require a couplet: and to avoid this overglutting the ear with that always certain and full encounter of rhyme, I essayed in some of my epistles to alter the usual place of meeting, and to set it further off by one verse to try how I could disuse my own ear, and to ease it of this continual burthen, which indeed seems to surcharge it a little too much, but as yet I cannot come to please myself therein; this alternate or cross rhyme holding still the best place in my affection. Besides in me this change of number in a poem of one nature fits not so well, as to mix uncertainly feminine rhymes with masculine, which, ever since I was warned of that deformity by my kind friend and countryman, Mr. Hugh Samford, I have always so avoided it, as there are not above two couplets in that kind in all my poem of the Civil Wars; and I would willingly if I could, have altered it in the rest, holding feminine rhymes to be fittest for ditties, and either to be set certain, or else by themselves: but in these things, I say, I dare not take upon me to teach that they ought to be so, in respect myself holds them to be so, or that I think it right; for indeed there is no right in these things that are continually in a wandering motion, carried with the violence of our uncertain likings, being but only the time that gives them their power. For if this right, or truth, should be no other thing than what we make it, we shall shape it in a thousand figures, seeing this excellent painter-man can so well lay the colours which himself grinds in his own affections, as that he will make them serve for any shadow, and any counterfeit. But the greatest hinderer of our proceedings, and the reformation of our errours, is this self-love, whereunto we versifiers are ever noted to be especially subject; a disease of all other the most dangerous and incurable, being once seated in the spirits, for which there is no cure, but only by a spiritual remedy; multos puto, ad sapientiam potuisse pervenire, nisi putassent se pervenisse: and this opinion of our sufficiency makes so great a crack in our judgment, as it will hardly ever hold any thing of worth, cocus amor sui, and though it would seent to see all without it, yet certainly it discerns but little within. For there is not the simplest writer that will ever tell himself he doth ill, but as if he were the parasite only to sooth his own doings, persuades him that his lines cannot but please others, which so much delight himself: Suffenus est quisque sibi-neque idem unquam. And the more to show that he is so, we shall see him evermore in all places, and to all persons, repeating his own compositions: and, Quem vero arripuit, tenet occiditque legendo. Next to this deformity stands our affectation, wherein we always bewray ourselves to be both unkind and unnatural to our own native language, in disguising or forging strange or unusual words, as if it were to make our verse seem another kind of speech out of the course of our usual practice, displacing our words, or investing new, openly upon a singularity; when our own accustomed phrase, set in the due place, would express us more ว familiarly and to better delight, than all this idle affectation of antiquity or novelty can ever do. And I cannot but wonder at the strange presumption of some men, that dare so audaciously to introduce any whatsoever foreign words, be they never so strange; and of themselves as it were, without a parliament, without any consent or allowance, stablish them as free-denizens in our language. But this is but a character of that perpetual revolution which we see to be in all things that never remain the same, and we must herein be content to submit ourselves to the law of time, which in a few years will make all that for which we now contend, nothing. THE COMPLAINT OF ROSAMOND. "OUT from the horrour of infernal deeps, "And which is worse, my soul is now denied "So shall I never pass; for how should I "No Muse suggests the pity of my case, Her well-told tale did such compassion find, "Which seen with grief, my miserable ghost, "Although I know thy just lamenting Muse, "Delia may hap to deign to read our story, "So I (through beauty) made the woful'st wight, Thus said, forthwith mov'd with a tender care X "Then write," quoth she, "the ruin of my youth, "The blood I stain'd was good, and of the best; And country home kept me from being ey'd, "From country then to court I was prefer'd "There, where as frail and tender beauty stands, 70 "For thither com'd, when years had arm'd my With rarest proof of beauty ever seen: [youth, When my reviving eye had learnt the truth, That it had power to make the winter green, 110 And flour affections, whereas none had been; Soon could I teach my brow to tyrannize, And make the world do homage to mine eyes. "For age I saw (though years with cold conceit 120" Look how a comet, at the first appearing, Draws all men's eyes with wonder to behold it ;- "Ah, Beauty! syren, fair enchanting good, Sweet silent rhetoric of persuading eyes; Dumbeloquence, whose power doth move the blood, 30More than the words or wisdom of the wise; Still harmony, whose diapason lies Within a brow; the key which passions move To ravish sense, and play a world in love. "What might I then not do, whose power is such? "Such one was I, my beauty was mine own; "Impiety of times, chastity's abator, Falsehood, wherein thyself thyself deniest; /50Treason to counterfeit the seal of Nature, The stamp of Heaven, impressed by the highest; "Far was that sin from us, whose age was pure, When simple beauty was accounted best; The time when women had no other lure But modesty, pure cheeks, a virtuous breast, This was the pomp wherewith my youth was bless'd: boThese were the weapons which mine honour won, In all the conflicts which mine eyes begun ; "Which were not small, I wrought on no mean object, A crown was at my feet, sceptres obey'd me; Found well (by proof) the privilege of beauty,-- "No armour might be found that could defend 180 [ever "Who would have thought a monarch would have "Ah, fortune! never absolutely good, 190 Of age and youth, was that whereon we stuck, "But mighty men in highest honour sitting, The state of flesh, and what our frailties are. "Which never by assault he could recover, 230 A document that well might teach the sage, "Daughter,' said she, 'behold thy happy chance, « ‹ Dost thou not see, how that thy king (thy Jove) 24Lightens forth glory on thy dark estate: And showers down gold and treasure from above, "Then use thy tallent, youth shall be thy warrant, "What, dost thou stand on this, that he is old? "Thou must not think thy flower can always flou- Small my defence to make my party good, rish, And that thy beauty will be still admir'd; - But that those rays which all these flames do nou- Cancell'd with time, will have their date expir'd, 250 And men will scorn what now is so desir'd. Our frailties' doom is written in the flowers, "Read in my face the ruins of my youth, "But thou hast years and privilege to use them, [us, "Then why should this respect of honour bound In th' imaginary lists of reputation? Titles which cold severity hath found us, 27 Breath of the vulgar, foe to recreation: Melancholy's opinion, custom's relation; Against such powers which were so surely laid, "Treason was in my bones, myself conspiring "Ah! Rosamond, what doth thy flesh prepare? ""Nay, first let the Earth gape wide to swallow thee, So to disgrace thyself and grieve thine heirs, Pleasure's plague, beauty's scourge, Hell to the fair, Thy face, that makes th' admir'd in every eye, To leave the sweet for castles in the air. XL "Pleasure is felt, opinion but conceiv'd, So breathes his blast this many-headed beast, 2 Whereof the wisest have esteemed least. "The subtle city-women, better learn'd, Where Nature's care such rarities enroll, 1 |