[From John Weever, The Whipping of the Satyre, 1601.]
The pamphlet attacks a 'Satyrist', an 'Epigrammatist', and a 'Humorist' for their arrogant and intolerant assaults on contemporary society. The 'Satyrist' must be Marston, the 'Epigrammatist' is most likely William Guilpin, and the 'Humorist' is Jonson: see A. Davenport (ed.), The Whipper Pamphlets (Liverpool 1951), Part i, pp. v-xi.
The persona of the poem dreams that he is wandering as a pilgrim in the Holy Land, and comes across the figure of Commonwealth lamenting to her companion Church that she has brought up three 'That viperlike would eate my bowels out' (sig. B4v); they are 'Sat. rough, severe: Ep. skip-Jackejester like: / Hu. with newfangled neuterisme enflam'd, / Al naught' (sig. B5r) ('neuterisme' refers presumably to the fashionable term 'humours' itself.) Elsewhere this last figure is addressed as 'captious Humourist' ( (sig. E2v) ). The pilgrim offers to 'correct' the satirist and to show the other two 'how lewdly they their time mispent' ( (sig. B5-7r) ), and the rest of the poem deals with his attempt to do so.
*****************************************Now by your leave, Monsieur Humorist, you that talke of mens humours and dispositions, as though you had bene a Constellation-setter seven yeres in the firmament, or had cast account of every mans nativitie with the starres: but if I were as the Astronomers, I would call you into question for it, seeing you have so abused their Art. But, had you bene but so meane a Philosopher, as have knowne, that mores sequuntur humores you would questionles have made better humours, if it had bene but to better our maners, and not instead of a morall medicine, to have given them a mortall poyson: but I consider of you, as of a yonger brother: you wanted this fame multis nimium; and nulli satis coyne (a goodyere of it) and therefore opus & usus put you to such a pinch, that you made sale of your Humours to the Theater and there plaid Pee boh with the people in your humour, then out of your humour. I doe not blame you for this: for though you were guilty of many other things, yet I dare say, you were altogether without guilt at that time, notwithstanding I suppose you would have written for love, and not for money: but I see you are one of those that if a man can finde in his purse to give them presently, they can finde in their hearts to love him everlastingly: for now adaies Aes in præsenti perfectum format amorem But it makes the lesse matter, because I know but few but are corrivals with you in the love of silver: so that if the question were asked, Quis amat pecuniam? Experience would answere the voice with a double Eccho Quisquis And indeed I see no reason, why everie true subject should not love the Q. coyne.
(sigs. A3v-A4r)
It seemes your brother Satyre and ye twayne,
Plotted three wayes to put the Divell downe;
One should outrayle him by invective vaine,
One all to flout him like a countrey clowne;
And one in action, on a stage out-face,
And play upon him to his great disgrace.
You Humorist, if it be true I heare,
(d) An action thus against the Divell brought,
Sending your humours to each Theater,
To serve the writ that ye had gotten out.
(e) That Mad-cap yet superiour praise doth win,
Who out of hope even casts his cap at sin.
(d) Against the booke of Humours.
(e) Pasquils Mad-cap.
Why did ye such unchristian courses take,
As lothes the eares of the offended wise?
Can ye make sinne against itselfe to make,
Or wring the Divell out by his owne vice?
It's past your power, to bring your will to passe,
Your vaine attempting, but a tempting was.
Manners follow humours,
Too much to many . . . enough to none,
Need and want
'Money in the present forms love in the perfect' (a parody of the line giving the rule for the present tense of the first conjugation: As in praesenti perfectum format in avi : cited in Davenport, Part i, p. 55). .
'Who loves money? . . . Anyone.'