I know not." Indeed, Dr.
Johnson's celebrated condensation of the scholar's life would stand for
a biography of Dekkar:--

"Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail."

This forced familiarity with poverty and distress does not seem to have
imbittered his feelings or weakened the force and elasticity of his
mind. He turned his calamities into commodities. If indigence threw him
into the society of the ignorant, the wretched, and the depraved, he
made the knowledge of low life lie thus obtained serve his purpose as
dramatist or pamphleteer. Whatever may have been the effect of his
vagabond habits on his principles, they did not stain the sweetness and
purity of his sentiments. There is an innocency in his very coarseness,
and a brisk, bright good-nature chirps in his very scurrility. In the
midst of distresses of all kinds, he still seems, like his own
Fortunatus, "all felicity up to the brims"; but that his content with
Fortune is not owing to an unthinking ignorance of her caprice and
injustice is proved by the words he puts into her mouth:--

"This world is Fortune's ball wherewith she sports.
Sometimes I strike it up into the air,
And then create I emperors and kings;
Sometimes I spurn it, at which spurn crawls out
The wild beast multitude: curse on, you fools,
'Tis I that tumble princes from their thrones,
And gild false brows with glittering diadems;
'T is I that tread on necks of conquerors,
And when like semi-gods they have been drawn
In ivory chariots to the Capitol,
Circled about with wonder of all eyes,
The shouts of every tongue, love of all hearts,
Being swoln with their own greatness, I have pricked
The bladder of their pride, and made them die
As water-bubbles (without memory):
Whilst the true-spirited soldier stands by
Bareheaded, and all bare, whilst at his scars
They scoff, that ne'er durst view the face of wars.
I set an idiot's cap on virtue's head,
Turn learning out of doors, clothe wit in rags,
And paint ten thousand images of loam
In gaudy silken colors: on the backs
Of mules and asses I make asses ride.
Only for sport to see the apish world
Worship such beasts with sound idolatry.
She sits and smiles to hear some curse her name,
And some with adoration crown her fame."

The boundless beneficence of Dekkar's heart is specially embodied in
the character of the opulent lord, J