Ben: Ionson's Execra-
tion against Vulcan.
Nd why to me this; (thou lame god of fire)
What have I done that mght cal on thine ire?
Or urge thy greedy flames, thus to devoure
So many my yeares labours in one houre!
I ne're attempted ought against thy life,
Nor made lesse line of Love to thy loose wife:
Or in remembrance of thy affront and scorne,
With clowns & tradesmen kept thee close in horn:
'Twas Iupiter that hurld thee head-long downe,
And Mars that gave thee a Lanthorne for a Crowne.
Was it because thou wert of old deny'd,
By Iove, to have Minerva for thy Bride.
That since thou tak'st all envious care and paine,
To ruine every issue of her Braine?
Had I wrot Treason there, or Heresie,
Impostures, Witchcraft, Charmes, or Blasphemy,
I had deserv'd then thy consuming lookes,
Perhaps to have beene burned with my books:
But on thy Malice tell mee, didst thou spye
Any least loose, or scurrill paper lye
Conceal'd, or kept there; that was fit to be,
By thy owne vote, a Sacrifice to thee?
Did I there wound the honour of the Crowne?
Or taxe the glory of the Church, or Gowne?
Itch to defame the state, or brand the Times,
And my selfe most in leaud selfe-boasting Rimes?
If none of these, why then this fire? or find
A cause before, or leave me one behind.
Had I compil'd from Amadis de Gaule
Th'Esplandians, Arthurs, Palmerins, and all
The learned Library of Don Quixot,
And so some goodlier Monster had begot:
Or spunne out Riddles, or weav'd fifty Tomes
Of Logogriphes, or curious Pallindromes;
Or pump'd for those hard trifles, Anagrams,
Or Ecrosticks, or your finer flames
Of Egges, and Halberds, Cradles and a Herse,
A paire of sizers and a Combe in verse
Acrosticks, and Tellesticks, or iumpe names,
Thou then hadst had some colour for thy stames,
On such my serious follies: But thou'lt say,
There were some pieces of as base a Lay,
And as false stampe there: parcells of a play
Fitter to see the fire-light, than the day:
Adulterate Monyes, such as would not goe,
Thou shouldst have staid, till publick fame said so.
She is the Iudge, thou Executioner:
Or if thou needs will trench upon her power,
Thou mightst have yet enioy'd thy cruelty,
With some more thirst and more variety!
Thou mightst have had me perish piece by piece,
To light Tobacco, or save roasted Geese,
Singe Capon, or crispe Pigge, dropping their eyes;
Condemn'd them to the Ovens with the Pies;
And so have kept me dying a whole age,
Not ravish'd all hence in a minuits rage:
But thats the mark whereof thy right doth boast,
To sow Consumption every where thou go'st.
Had I fore-knowne of this thy least desire,
T'have held a triumph, or a feast of fire;
Especially in paper, that that steame
Had tickled thy large Nostrills, many a Reame,
To redeeme mine I had sent in; enough
Thou shouldst have cried, & all bin proper stuffe.
The Talmond and the Alcaron had come
With pieces of the Legend: the whole summe
Of Errant Knight-hood, with their Dames & Dwarffs,
The charmed Boats, and their inchanted Wharfes:
The Tristeams, Lancelots, Turpins, and the Peeres,
All the mad Rowlands, and sweet Olivers,
With Merlins Marvailes, and his Caballs Losse,
With the Chimera of the Rosie Crosse,
Their Charmes, their Characters, Hermetticke Rings,
Their Iems of Riches, and bright stone that brings
Invisibility, and Strength, and Tongues,
The art of kindling the true Cole by Lungs.
With Nicholas Pasquills, meddle with your match,
And the strong Lines that doe the times so catch:
On Captaine Pamphlets Horse and Foot that salley,
Vpon the Exchange still out of Popes head Alley,
The weekly Currants, with Pauls Seale, and all
The admir'd Discourses of the Prophet Baal,
These (hadst thou pleas'd either to dine or sup)
Had made a meate for Vulcan to lick up.
But in my Deske, what was there to excite
So ravenous and vast an appetite?
I dare not say a Body, but some parts
There were of search and mistery in the Arts:
And the old Venusine in Poetry,
And lighted by the Staggerite could spy,
Was there made English, with a Grammer too,
To teach some that, their Nurses could not doe;
The purity of Language; and (among
The rest) my iourney into Scotland Sung,
With all the adventures: three Books not afraid
To speake the Fate of the Sycilian Maid
For our owne Ladies: And in story there
Of our fift Henry, eight of his nine yeare.
In which was Oyle, besides the succours spent,
Which Noble Cotton, Carew, Selden sent.
And twice twelve years Stor'd-up-Humanity,
And humble gleanings in Divinity,
After the Fathers; and those wiser guides,
Whom Factiou had not drawne to study sides.
How in these ruines Vulcan dost thou lurke:
All Soot and Embers, odious, as thy worke?
I now beginne to doubt, if ever grace,
Or goddesse could be patient at thy face.
Thou woe Minerva, or to wit aspire,
'Cause thou canst halt with us in Art and Fire.
Sonne of the Winde; for so thy Mother gone
With Lust conceiv'd thee, Father thou hadst none:
When thou wert born, & that thou lookst at best:
She durst not kisse, but flung thee from her breast.
And so did Iove, when neare meant thee his cup:
No mar'le the Clowns of Lemnos took thee up.
For none but Smiths would have made thee a god,
Some Alchimist there may be yet, or odde:
Squire of the Squibs against the Pageant day,
May to thy Name a Vulcanale say,
And for it lose his eyes by Gun-powder,
As the other may his braines by Quick-silver:
Well fare the wise men yet on the Banks-side,
(Our friends the Watermen) they could provide
Against thy fury, when to serve their needs,
They made a Vulcan on a sheafe of Reeds.
Whom they durst handle in their holy day coats,
And safely trust to dresse, not burn their boats:
But oh these Reeds, thy meere disdaine of them,
Made thee beget that cruell stratagem:
(Which some are pleas'd to stile but thy mad prank)
Against the Globe, the glory of the banke,
Which though it were the Fort of the whol parish,
Fenc'd with a Ditch and forkt out of a Marish:
I saw with two poore Chambers taken in,
And rais'd ere thought could urge:this might have bin.
See the worlds ruines, nothing but the piles.
Left, and wit since to covet it with tiles
The Brethren they straight nois'd it out for newes,
'Twas verily some Relique of the Stewes:
And this a sparkle of that fire let loose,
That was rak'd up: the Winchestrian Goose
Bred on the Banke in time of Popery,
When Venus there maintain'd the mistery:
But others fell with that conceite by th' eares,
Twas verily a threatning to the Beares;
And that accurfed ground, the Paris Garden:
Nay, (sigh'd a sister) 'twas the Nun Kate Arden
Kindled the fire: but then did one returne;
No foole would his owne Harvest spoile, or burn;
If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance
The place that was thy wives inheritance.
O no, cryed all, Fortune for being a whore,
Scapt not his Iustice any iot the more.
He burnt that Idoll of the Revells too:
Nay let White-hall with Revells have to doe,
Though but in Dances) it shall know thy power,
There was a iudgement too shew'd in an houre;
He was right Vulcan still, hee did not spare
Troy, though it were so much thy Venus care:
Foole wilt thou let that in example come?
Did she not save from thence to build a Rome?
And what hast thou done in these petty spights,
More then advanc'd the horses and their Rites,
I will not argue thee from them of guilt,
For they were burnt but to be better built:
'T'is true, that in thy wish they were destroy'd,
Which thou hast onely vented, not enioy'd.
So wouldst th' have run upon the Roles by stealth,
And didst invade part of the Common-wealth:
In those Records (which were our Chroniclers gone)
Would be remembred by sixe Clerkes to one.
But say all sixe good men, what answer yee,
Lies there no Writ out of the Chancerie
Against this Vulcan? no Iniunction?
No Orders? no Decree? though we be gone
At Common Law, me thinkes in his dispight,
A Court of Equity should doe us right.
But to confine him to the Brew-houses,
The Glasse-house, Die-fates, and their Furnaces:
To live in Sea-coale, and goe out in Smoake,
Or least that vapour might the City choake,
Consine him to some Brickhills, or some Hill-
Foote out in Sussex to an Iron-Mill:
Or in small Faggots have him blaze about,
Vile Tavernes, and the Drunkards pisse him out:
Or in the Bell-mans Lanthorne, like a spye,
Waste to a snuffe, and then stinke out and dye.
I could invent a sentence yet more worse,
But i'le conclude all in a civill curse:
Poxe on your flame-ship (Vulcan) if it be
To all as fatall as t'hath beene to me;
And to Pauls Steeple, which had beene to us
'Bove all your fire-workes: had not Ephesus,
Or Alexandria, which though a Divine
Losse yet remaines as unrepaird as mine:
Would you had kept your forge at Ætna still,
And there made swords, bills, glaves, & arms your fill;
Maintain'd a trade at Bilbo, or elsewhere,
Struck in at Millane with the Cutlers there:
Or stai'd where the Fryer and you first met,
That from the Devills Ars did Gunnes beget:
Or fixt in the Low Countries, where you might
On both sides doe your mischiefs with delight:
Blow up and ruine, Mine, and Counter-mine,
Vse your Petarres, and Granats, all your fine
Engines of Murther, and inioy the praife
Of massacring Man-kind so many wayes:
We aske your absence here, we all love peace,
And pray the fruits thereof and the increase,
So doth the King, and most of the Kings men,
That have good places: therefore once agen
Poxe on thee Vulcan; thy Pandora's Pox,
And all the ills that flew out of her Box
Light on thee: or if those plagues will not doe,
Thy wives pox take thee, and Bess Braughtons too.