[From Nicholas Breton, No Whippinge, nor trippinge: but a kinde friendly Snippinge , 1601.]
Breton's Pasquil's Madcap (1600), a mild verse satire on perennial social corruption, is mentioned in The Whipping of the Satyre , sig. F3v (see Literary Record 3). Breton's reply in the present pamphlet laments the fashion for satire and poetical backbiting generally.
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Tis strange to see the humors of these daies:
How first the Satyre bites at imperfections:
The Epigrammist in his quips displaies
A wicked Course in shadowes of corrections:
The Humorist hee strictly makes collections
Of loth'd behaviours both in youthe and age:
And makes them plaie their parts upon a stage.
An other Madcappe in a merry fit.
For lacke of witte did cast his cappe at sinne:
And for his labour was well tould of it,
For too much playing on that merry pinne:
For that all fishes are not of one sinne:
And they that are of cholerick complections,
Love not too plain to reade their imperfection
Now comes another with a new founde vaine;
And onely falls to reprehensions;
Who in a kind of scoffing chiding straine,
Bringes out I knowe not what in his inventions:
But I will ghesse the best of his intencions;
Hee would that all were well, and so would I.
Fooles shuld not too much shew their foolery,
And would to God it had ben so indeed,
The Satyres teeth had never bitten so:
The Epigrammist had not had a feede
Of wicked weedes, among his herbes to sowe,
Nor one mans humor did not others showe,
Nor Madcap had not showen his madness such,
And that the whipper had not jerkt so much.
(sig. A4)