[From Sir John Suckling, 'Fragmenta Aurea'.]
Part of the poem A Sessions of the Poets. Also referred to in the period by its alternative title, 'The Wits', Suckling's poem describes a contest for the bays which Apollo awards in the end to an alderman, on the grounds that 'the best signe / Of good store of wit's to have good store of coyn' (lines 108-9). It may well have been the 'Ballad made of the Wits' sung to the king while on a hunting expedition in the New Forest in the late summer of 1637, and sent to the Earl of Strafford on 9 October that year ( Suckling, Non-Dramatic Works, ed. Clayton, xliv ). As Clayton points out ( p. 268), many of the 'Wits' mentioned in the poem, including Jonson, Sandys, and Waller, are known to have belonged to the circle of Lord Falkland (himself named in the poem).
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A Session was held the other day,
And Apollo himself was at it (they say)
The Laurel that had been so long reserv'd,
Was now to be given to him best deserv'd.
And
Therefore the wits of the Town came thither,
T was strange to see how they flocked together,
Each strongly confident of his own way,
Thought to gain the Laurel away that day.
There Selden, and he sate hard by the chair;
Weniman not far off, which was very fair;
Sands with Townsend, for they kept no order;
Digby and Shillingsworth a little further;
And
There was Lucans translator too, and he
That makes God speak so bigge in's Poetry;
Selwyn and Walter, and Bartlets both the brothers;
Jack Vaughan and Porter, and divers others.
The first that broke silence was good old Ben,
Prepar'd before with Canary wine,
And he told them plainly he deserv'd the Bayes,
For his were calld Works, where others were but Plaies.
And
Bid them remember how he had purg'd the Stage
Of errors, that had lasted many an Age,
And he hopes they did not think the
silent Woman,
The Fox
, and the Alchymist
out done by no man.
Apollo stopt him there, and bade him not go on,
'Twas merit, he said and not presumption
Must carry't; at which Ben turned about,
And in great choler offer'd to go out:
But
Those that were there thought it not fit
To discontent so ancient a wit;
And therefore Apollo call'd him back agen,
And made him mine host of his own new Inne.
(7-8)