WINTER

My Lord, he does abuse you: brook it not. No dunghill hath so vild and excrement, But with his beams he will forth with exhale: The fens and quag-myres tithe to him their filth: Forth purest mines he sucks a gainful dross: Green Iuy-bushes at the Vintners doors He withers, and devoureth all their sap. Let him not talk; for he hath words at will, And wit to make the badst matter good. Mock not, & mow not too long you were best, For fear we whet not your sith upon your pate. I, that he shall. Fie, drunken sot, forgettest thou where thou art? My Lord asks thee, what vintage thou hast made? Gramercy, Bacchus, as much as though I did. For this time thou must pardon me perforce. Grieve not for that which cannot be recalled: Is it your servants carelessness you plain? Tully by one of his own slaves was slain. The husbandman close in his bosom nursed A subtle snake, that after wrought his bane. Then (duty laid aside) you do me wrong: I am more worthy of it far then he. He hath no skill nor courage for to rule, A weatherbeaten banckrout ass it is, That scatters and consumeth all he hath: Eke one do pluck from him without control. He is nor hight nor cold, a silly soul, That feign would please eke party, if so he might: He and the spring are scholars favourites. What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men, Your self be judge, and judge of him by them. When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell, He voided a black poison from his mouth, Called Aconitum, whereof ink was made: That ink with reeds first laid on dried barks, Served men a while to make rude works withal, Till Hermes, secretary to the Gods, Or Hermes Trismegistus as some will, Weary with graving in blind characters, And figures of familiar beasts and plants, Invented letters to write lies withal. In them he pend the fables of the Gods, The giants war, and thousand tales beside. After eke nation God these toyesin use, There grew up certain drunken parasites, Termed Poets, which for a meals meat or two, Would promise monarchs immortality: They vomited in verse all that they knew, Found causes and beginnings of the world, Fetched pedigrees of mountains and of floods, From men and women whom the Gods transformed: If any town or city, they passed by, Had in compassion (thinking them mad men) Forborn to whip them, or imprison them, That city was not built by humane hands, Was raised by music, Like Megara walls, Apollo, poets patron founded it, Because they found one fitting favour there: Musaeus, Lynus, Homer, Orpheus, Were of this trade, and thereby won their fame. Next them, a company of ragged knaves, Sun-bathing beggars, lazy hedge-creepers, Sleeping face upwards in the fields all night, Dreamed strange devices of the Sun and Moon, And they Like Gipsies wandering up and down, Told Fortune's, juggled, nicknamed all the stars, And were of idiots termed Philosophers: Such was Pithagoras the silencer, Prometheus, Thales, Milesius, Who would all things of water should be made: Anaximander, Anaximenes, That positively said the air was God; Zenocrates, that said there were eight Gods: And Cratoniates, Alcmeon too, Who thought the Sun and Moon, & stars were gods: The poorer sort of them that could get nought, Professed, Like beggarly Franciscan Friars, And the strict order of the Caponchins, A voluntary wretched poverty, Contempt of gold, thin fare, and lying hard: Yet he that was most vehement in these, Diogenes the Cinicke and the Dog, Was taken coining money in his Cell. It were a whole Olympiads work to tell, How many diuillish, ergo armed arts, Sprung all as vices, of this Idleness: For even as soldiers not imployde in wars, But living loosely in a quiet state, Not having wherewithal to maintain pride, Nay scarce to find their bellies any food, Nought but walk melancholy, and devise How they may cousin Marchats, fleece young heirs, Creep into favour by betraying men, Rob churches, beg waste toys, court city dams, Who shall undo their husbands for their sakes: The baser rabble how to cheat and steal, And yet be free from penalty of death. So those word-warriors, lazy stargazers, Used to no labour, but to lowze themselves, Had their heads filled with cozening fantasies, They plotted how to make their poverty, Better esteemed of, then high Sovereignty: They thought how they might plant a heave ̄ on earth, Whereof they would be principal low gods, That heaven they called Contemplation, As much to say, as a most pleasant sloth, Which better I cannot compare then this, That if a fellow licensed to beg, Should all his life time go from fair to fair, And buy gape-seed, having no business else. That contemplation Like and aged weed, Engendered thousand sects, and all those sects Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues, Grammarians some: and wherein differ they From beggars, that profess the Pedlars French? The Poets next, slouinly tattered slaves, That wander, and fell Ballets in the streets. Historiographers others there be, And the Like lazers by the high way side, That for a penny, or a halfpenny, Will call each knave a good faced Gentleman, Give honour unto Tinkers, for good Ale, Prefer a Cobbler before the Black prince far, If he bestow but blacking of their shoes: And as it is the Spittle-houses guise, Over the gate to write their founders names, Or on the outside of their walls at least, In hope by their examples others moved. Will be more bountiful and liberal, So in the forefront of their Chronicles, Or Peroration operis, They learning's benefactors reckon up, Who built this college, who gave that Free-school, What King or Queen advanced Scholars most, And in their times what writers flourished; Rich men and magistrates whilst yet they live, They flatter palpably, in hope of gain. Smooth-tongued Orators, the fourth in place, Lawyers, our commonwealth entitles them, Meereswash-bucklers, and ruffianly mates, That will for twelve pence make a doughty fray, Set men for straws together by the ears. Sky measuring Mathematicians; Gold-breathing Alchemists also we have, Both which are subtle witted humorists, That get their meals by telling miracles, Which they have seen in travailing the skies, Vain boaster's, liars, make-shifts, they are all, Men that removed from their inkehorne terms, Bring forth no Actium worthy of their bred. What should I speak of pale physicians? Who as Fismenus non nasatus was, (Upon a wager that his friends had laid) Hir'de to live in a privy a whole year: So are they hir'de for lucre and for gain, All their whole life to smell on excrements. Innumerable monstrous practises, Hath loitering contemplation brought forth more, Which t'were too long particular to recite: Suffice they all conduce unto this end, To banish labour, nourish slothfulness, Pamper up lust, devise newfangled sins. Nay I will justify there is no vice, Which learning and vild knowledge brought not in, Or in whose praise some learned have not wrote. The art of murder Machiavel hath pend: Whoredom hath Ovid to uphold her throne: And Aretine of late in Italy, Whose Cortigiana touches bawds their trade. Gluttony Epicurus does defend, And books of th'arte of cookery confirm: Of which Platina hath not writ the least. Drunkenness of his good behaviour Hath testimonial from where he was born: That pleasant work de art bibendi, A drunken Dutchman spewed outfew years since: Nor wants sloth (although sloths plague be want). His paper pillars for to lean upon, The praise of nothing pleads his worthiness. Folly Erasmus sets a flourish on. For baldness, a bald ass, I have forgotten, Patched up a pamphletarie periwig. Slovenry Grobianus magnifieth: Sodomitry a Cardinal commends, And Aristotle necessary deems. In brief all books, divinity except, Are nought but tales of the devils laws, Poison wrapped up in sugared words, Men pride, damnations props, the world's abuse: Then censure (good my Lord) what bookmen are If they be pestilent members in a state; He is unfit to fit at stern of state, That favours such as will overthrow his state: Blessed is that government where no art thrives, Vox populi, vex Dei: The vulgars voice, it is the voice of God. Yet Tully says, Non est consilium in vulgo, non ratio, non discrimen, non differentiam: The vulgar have no learning, wit, nor sense. The mistocles having spent all his time In study of Philosophy and arts, And noting well the vanity of them, Wished with repentance, for his folly passed, Some would teach him th'arte of oblivion, How to forget the arts that he had learned. And Cicero, whom we alleged before, (As says Valerius) stepping into old age, Despised learning, loathed eloquence. Naso, that could speak nothing but pure verse, And had more wit then words to utter it, And words as choice as ever Poet had, Cried and exclaimde in bitter agony, When knowledge had corrupted his chaste mind, Discite qui sapitis non haec quam scimus inertes, Said trepidas acies, & feram bellam sequi. You that be wise, and ever mean to thrive, Oh study not these toys we sluggards use, But follow arms, and wait on barbarous wars. Young men, young boys, beware of Schoolmasters, They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes: They seek to lay the curse of God on you, Namely confusion of languages, Wherewith those that the tower of Babel built, Accursed were in the world's infancy. Latin, it was the speech of Infidels. Logic hath nought to say in a true cause. Philosophy is curiosity: And Socrates was therefore put to death, Only for he was a Philosopher: Abhor, contemn, despise, these damned snares. Thanks, gracious Lord. so I'll dispose of him, As it shall not repent you of your gift. Pleases your honour, all he says, is false. For my own partly I love good husbandry, But hate dishonourable covetise. Youth never aspires to virtues perfect growth, Till his wild oatesbe sown: and so the earth, Until his weeds be rotted, with my frosts, Is not for any seed, or tillage fit. He must be purged that hath surfeited: The fields have surfeited with Summer fruits, They must be purged, made poor, oppressed with snow, Ere they recover their decayed pride, For ouerbarring of the streams with Ice. Who locks not poison from his children's taste? When Winter reigns, the water is so cold, That it is poison, present death to those That wash, or bath their limbs, in his cold streams. The slipprier that ways are under us, The better it makes us to heed our steps, And look ever we presume too rashly on: If that my sons have misbehaved themselves, A Gods name let them answer't before my Lord. I am his father, therefore may not speak, But otherwise I could excuse his fault. That's for he barks at such a knave as thou. I see my downfall written in his brows: Convey him hence, to his assigned hell. Father's are given to love their sons too well.