baffle them; or squirt their eyes
With ink or urine: or I could do worse,
Arm'd with Archilochus' fury, write iambicks,
Would make the desperate lashers hang themselves.--

His Friend tells him that he is accused that "all his writing is mere
railing;" which Jonson nobly compares to "the salt in the old comedy;"
that they say, that he is slow, and "scarce brings forth a play a
year."

_Author._ ------------'Tis true,
I would they could not say that I did that.

He is angry that their

------------Base and beggarly conceits
Should carry it, by the multitude of voices,
Against the most abstracted work, opposed
To the stufft nostrils of the drunken rout.--

And then exclaims with admirable enthusiasm--

O this would make a learn'd and liberal soul
To rive his stained quill up to the back,
And damn his long-watch'd labours to the fire;
Things, that were born, when none but the still night,
And the dumb candle, saw his pinching throes.

And again, alluding to these mimics--

This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips,
And apts me rather to sleep out my time,
Than I would waste it in contemned strifes
With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds,
That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge
From their hot entrails.[395] But I leave the monsters
To their own fate. And since the Comic Muse
Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try
If Tragedy have a more kind aspect.
Leave me! There's something come into my thought
That must and shall be sung, high and aloof,
Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof.

_Friend._ I reverence these raptures, and obey them.

Such was the noble strain in which Jonson replied to his detractors in
the town and to his rivals about him. Yet this poem, composed with all
the dignity and force of the bard, was not suffered to be repeated. It
was stopped by authority. But Jonson, in preserving it in his works,
sends it "TO POSTERITY, that it may make a difference between their
manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever."

FOOTNOTES:

[396] This work was not given to the public till 1724, a small
quarto, with a fine portrait of Brooke. More than a century
had elapsed since its forcible suppression. Anstis printed it
from the fair MS. which Brooke had left behind him. The
author's paternal affection seemed fondly to imagine its
child might be