mple's Revels_; not to sit in a
gallery, when your comedies have entered their actions, and there make
vile and bad faces at every line, to make men have an eye to you, and
to make players afraid; not to venture on the stage, when your play is
ended, and exchange courtesies and compliments with gallants to make
all the house rise and cry--'That's Horace that's he that pens and
purges humours.' When you bid all your friends to the marriage of a
poor couple, that is to say, your Wits and Necessities--_alias_, a
poet's Whitsun-ale--you shall swear that, within three days after, you
shall not abroad, in bookbinders' shops, brag that your viceroys, or
tributary-kings, have done homage to you, or paid quarterage.
Moreover, when a knight gives you his passport to travel in and out to
his company, and gives you money for God's sake--you will swear not to
make scald and wry-mouthed jests upon his knighthood. When your plays
are misliked at court, you shall not cry Mew! like a puss-cat, and
say, you are glad you write out of the courtier's element; and in
brief, when you sup in taverns, amongst your betters, you shall swear
not to dip your manners in too much sauce; nor, at table, to fling
epigrams or play-speeches about you."

The king observes, that

--------------------He whose pen
Draws both corrupt and clear blood from all men
Careless what vein he pricks; let him not rave
When his own sides are struck; blows, blows do crave.

Such were the bitter apples which Jonson, still in his youth, plucked
from the tree of his broad satire, that branched over all ranks in
society. That even his intrepidity and hardiness felt the incessant
attacks he had raised about him, appears from the close of the
Apologetical Epilogueto "The Poetaster;" where, though he replies with
all the consciousness of genius, and all its haughtiness, he closes
with a determination to give over the composition of comedies! This,
however, like all the vows of a poet, was soon broken; and his
masterpieces were subsequently produced.

_Friend._ Will you not answer then the libels?

_Author._ No.

_Friend._ Nor the Untrussers.

_Author._ Neither.

_Friend._ You are undone, then.

_Author._ With whom?

_Friend._ The world.

_Author._ The bawd!

_Friend._ It will be taken to be stupidity or tameness in you.

_Author._ But they that have incensed me, can in soul
Acquit me of that guilt. They know I dare
To spurn or