XCI. TO SIR HORACE VERE.

58

a

Which of thy names I take, not only bears
A Roman sound, but Roman virtue wears,
Illustrious Vere, or Horace, fit to be
Sung by a Horace, or a muse as free;
Which thou art to thyself: whose faine was won
In th'eye of Europe, where thy deeds were done,
When on thy trumpet she did sound a blast,
Whose relish to eternity shall last.
I leave thy acts, which should I prosecute
Throughout, might flattery seem; and to be

mute
To any one, were envy: which would live
Against my grave, and time could not forgive.
I speak thy other graces, not less shown,
Xor less in practice, but less marked, less known;
Humanity and piety, which are
As noble in great chiefs as they are rare,

68 One of the two grandsons, by his son Geffrey Vere, of John Vere, fifteenth Earl of Oxford. Fuller draws a contrast between the two brothers Francis and Horace, showing that the former was of a fiery spirit, rigid and undaunted courage, and that the latter had as much valor and more meekness, with so great a sense of piety that he first inade his peace with God before he went out to war with man. “ lad one seen him returning from a victory,” says Fuller, “ he would, by his silence, have suspected that he lost the day; and had he beheld him in a retreat, he would have collected him a conqueror, by the cheerfulness of his spirit.” He was created Baron Vere of Tilbury, in 1625, the first baron of King Charles I.'s creation. The title became extinct at his death, — B.

And best become the valiant man to wear,
Who more should seek men's reverence,

than fear.

XCII.

THE NEW CRY. Ere cherries ripe! 59 and strawberries! be gone, Unto the cries of London I'll add one; Ripe statesmen, ripe! They grow in every street; At six-and-twenty, ripe. You shall 'em meet, And have 'em yield no savor but of state. Ripe are their ruffs, their cuffs, their beards,

their gait, And grave as ripe, like mellow as their faces. They know the states of Christendom, not the

places; Yet they have seen the maps, and bought’em too, And understand 'em, as most chapmen do. The councils, projects, practices they know, And what each prince doth for intelligence owe, And unto whom : they are the almanacs For twelve years yet to come, what each state

lacks. They carry in their pockets Tacitus, And the Gazetti, or Gallo-Belgieus; And talk reserved, looked up, and full of fear; Nav, ask you how the day goes, in your ear. Keep a Star-chamber sentence close twelve days, And whisper what a proclamation says.

They meet in sixes, and at every mart
Are sure to con the catalogue by heart;
Or, every day, some one at Rimee's looks,
Or Bill's, and there he buys the names of books.
They all get Porta, for the sundry ways
To write in cipher, and the several keys
To ope the character. They've found the sleight
With juice of lemons, onions, piss, to write;
To break up seals, and close 'em. And they know
If the States make [not] 1 peace, how it will go
With England. All forbidden books they get,
And of the Powder-plot they will talk yet.
At naming the French king, their heads they

shake,
And at the Pope and Spain slight faces make.
Or 'gainst the bishops, for the brethren rail
Much like those brethren ; thinking to prevail
With ignorance on us, as they have done
On them; and, therefore, do not only shun
Others more modest, but contemn us too,
That know not so much state, wrong, as they do.

XCIII.

TO SIR JOHN RATCLIFFE.6:

62

a

How like a column, Ratcliffe, left alone
For the great mark of virtue, those being gone
Who did, alike with thee, thy house upbear,

The first two were booksellers; the last was the famous Neapolitan Johannes Baptista Porta, who has a treatise extant in Latin, De furtivis literarum notis, vulgo de Ziferis, printed at Naples, 1563. He died in 1615. - W.

61 The word in brackets is inserted by Gifford. 62 See Epigram xl. p. 22.

63

Stand'st thou, to show the times what you all

were ! Two bravely in the battle fell, and died, Upbraiding rebels' arms, and barbarous pride;

, And two that would have fallen as great as they, The Belgic fever ravished away. Thou, that art all their valor, all their spirit, And thine own goodness to increase thy merit, Than whose I do not know a whiter soul, Nor could I, had I seen all nature's roll; Thou yet remain'st, unhurt in peace or war, Though not unproved; which shows thy for

tunes are Willing to expiate the fault in thee, Wherewith, against thy blood, they offenders be.

XCIV. TO LUCY, COUNTESS OF BEDFORD,64 WITH

MR. DONNE'S SATIRES. Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Life of the Muses' day, their morning star! If works (not th' authors) their own grace

should look, Whose poems would not wish to be your book ? But these, desired by you, the maker's ends Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare

friends. Yet, satires, since the most of mankind be Their unavoided subject, fewest see;

63 In Ireland. - Jonson.
64 See Epigram lxxvi. p. 39.

For none e'er took that pleasure in sin's sense,
But, when they heard it taxed, took more offence.
They, then, that living where the matter's bred,
Dare for these poems yet both ask and read,
And like them too, must needfully, though few,
Be of the best; and 'mongst those best are you:
Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are
The Muses' evening, as their morning star.

65

XCV. TO SIR HENRY SAVILE. If, my religion safe, I durst embrace That stranger doctrine of Pythagoras, I should believe the soul of Tacitus In thee, most weighty Savile, lived to us: So hast thou rendered him in all his bounds, And all his numbers, both of sense and sounds. But when I read that special piece, restored, Where Nero falls, and Galba is adored, To thine own proper I ascribe then more,

65 The founder of the Professorship which bears his name at Oxford, and one of the most learned men of his age. His most remarkable labor was an edition of the works of Chrysostom, in eight folio volumes. Fuller tells us that French emissaries surreptitiously procured the sheets as they passed through the press, and sent them to Paris, where they were reprinted, with a Latin translation and considerable alitions, immediately after the appearance of Sir Henry's + lition in Englanıl, which at first they consiilerably out. stripped in sale. Sir Henry was provost of Eton, where he died in 1621, with the reputation, says Aubrey, of having been so "severe a governor, that the scholars hated him for his austerity." — B.