ustus: Decker, with great unhappiness, places it in that of William
Rufus. The interest of the piece arises from the dexterity with which
Decker has accommodated those very characters which Jonson has
satirised in his "Poetaster." This gratified those who came every day
to the theatre, delighted to take this mimetic revenge on the arch
bard.

In Decker's prefatory address "To the World," he observes, "Horace
haled his Poetasters to the bar;[392] the Poetasters untrussed Horace:
Horace made himself believe that his Burgonian wit[393] might
desperately challenge all comers, and that none durst take up the
foils against him." But Decker is the Earl Rivers! He had been blamed
for the personal attacks on Jonson; for "whipping his fortunes and
condition of life; where the more noble reprehension had been of his
mind's deformity:" but for this he retorts on Ben. Some censured
Decker for barrenness of invention, in bringing on those characters in
his own play whom Jonson had stigmatised; but "it was not improper,"
he says, "to set the same dog upon Horace, whom Horace had set to
worry others." Decker warmly concludes with defying the Jonsonians.

"Let that mad dog Detraction bite till his teeth be worn to the
stumps; Envy, feed thy snakes so fat with poison till they burst;
World, let all thy adders shoot out their Hydra-headed forked stings!
I thank thee, thou true Venusian Horace, for these good words thou
givest me. _Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo._"

The whole address is spirited. Decker was a very popular writer,
whose numerous tracts exhibit to posterity a more detailed narrative
of the manners of the town in the Elizabethan age than is elsewhere to
be found.

In Decker's Satiromastix, Horace junior is first exhibited in his
study, rehearsing to himself an ode: suddenly the Pindaric rapture is
interrupted by the want of a rhyme; this is satirically applied to an
unlucky line of Ben's own. One of his "sons," Asinius Bubo, who is
blindly worshipping his great idol, or "his Ningle," as he calls him,
amid his admiration of Horace, perpetually breaks out into digressive
accounts of what sort of a man his friends take him to be. For one,
Horace in wrath prepares an epigram: and for _Crispinus_ and
_Fannius_, brother bards, who threaten "they'll bring your life and
death on the stage, as a bricklayer in a play," he says, "I can bring
a prepared troop of gallants, who, for my sake, shall distaste every
unsalted line in t