Seneca, Suetonius, Horace, Cicero, Varro, Lucan, Catullus, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Appian Alexander," Dictys Cretensium," Laertius, Lampridius, Gregory, Augustine, Bede, Avicenna, Pico Mirandola. The Latin satirists, however, are but sparingly used, their method being quite remote from Brathwaite's; yet in one place we have a note " Vid. Persi. in Satyr," and in another “Vid. Juvenal Saty." In S. 4 (Argument) the author says:

"With Juvenall I may well conclude:

Spite of our teeth when vice appeares in sight,
We must the Satyres play, and tartly write."

(Note the characteristically unclassical rendering.) There is also a quotation from Horace's Epistles (I. I. 53): "Virtus post nummos."

Brathwaite used the classics, then, as the medieval writers did, only as a storehouse of allegorical and ethical material. For him the Renaissance had never come. His general idea of satire as a rebuke of the vices of a degenerate age he of course derived from the imitators of classical satire, as he did the name Satyre; but his method was not consistent with the traditional satire. He shows a curious lack of logic and order; all sorts of material are put together, the moral is frequently much strained or hard to find, and the style shows a similar use of strained figures. The very title of the book is an instance in point: the idea which it expresses (and which is illustrated on the title-page by a vivid group of naked satyrs) is recurred to but once throughout the work, when it is said:

66

Longer I will not dilate on this subject, but recollect my spirits, to adde more spirit to my over-tyred Satyre, who hath bene so long employed in the Embassie of Nature, and wearied in dancing the Wilde mans measure, that after Perillus censure she must repose ere she proceede any further; and take some breath ere I dance any longer.” (Arg. S. S. on Revenge,)

Brathwaite had slight conception of the satire as a distinct literary form, as is shown by the introduction of elegies, etc.

In one case (S. S. 12) he introduces the pastoral element conspicuously. There are some traces of the familiar typenames (as Naso the lawyer in S. S. 14); but generally the names used as will already have become evident are those of traditional heroes, viewed as real examples of the sins they represent. Local color of any distinct sort is generally lacking, though occasionally there is an English localization. a marginal note to S. S. 9 is an allusion to Elderton the drunken balladist. In S. S. 11" Britannie" is compared to the blessed isles described by Hesiod, "the two universities" to the streams of Helicon, and the Thames to the Euphrates.

II

In

It is quite impossible to group the objects of Brathwaite's satire in the usual way. They are generally the vague sorts of unrighteousness indicated by the titles, of the poems. Particular objects are the vanity of women, epicures, beggars, lust, and the vanities of pastoral and amorous verse.

In Natures Embassic, then, we have a late use of the traditional form "satire," preserving the mythological connection of the form with the "satyrs" of pastoral myth, and its ethical connection with the aim of rebuking vice. The method, however, is irregular and inconsistent; the artificial character of the moral purpose is evident from the way in which it is carried out; and the form has become so merely traditional that the author uses it as a name for anything he wishes to include.

In 1615, as already noted, Brathwaite had begun his satirical writing, and his Strappado for the Divell: Epigrams and Satyres alluding to the time, etc., seems to have been a closer imitation of the popular satire of the time than the Natures Embassie. Collier describes it, however, as “a strange, undigested, and illarranged collection of poems of various kinds.1 The Epistle Dedicatorie opens:2 "To all Usurers, Broakers, and Promoters, Sergeants, Catchpoles, and Regraters, Ushers, Panders, Suburbes Traders, Cockneies that have manie fathers. Ladies, Monkies, Parachitoes, Marmosites, and Catamitoes, Falls, high tires, and rebatoes,

1 Rarest Books, vol. i. p. 94.

2 I have not seen the book, but quote from the bibliography in Haslewood's ed. Barnabee's Journal, already cited.

false-haires, periwigges, monchatoes: grave Gregorians, and Shee painters. Send I my greeting at adventures, and to all such as be evill, my strappado for the Divell." Mr. Gosse refers to the book as "a volume founded directly on The Abuses Stript and Whipt of George Wither." 1

In 1617 Brathwaite published a satirical work called The Smoaking Age, or the man in the mist: with the life and death of Tobacco.

In 1621 (the same year as Natures Embassie) appeared Times Curtaine drawne or the Anatomie of Vanitie with other choice Poems entituled Health from Helicon; by Richard Brathwayte Oxonian. Here again the author indicates his familiarity with Wither, and refers to the imprisonment of the latter in the lines—

"Tutch not Abuses but with modest lipp

For some I know were whipt that thought to whip,”

adding in the margin : "One whom I admire, being no lesse happie for his native invention than excellent for his proper and elegant dimension." These satires are in the usual couplet form. The first is on Riches. In the second there is a passage on the poverty of poets, quite in the manner of Wither. I quote from Collier's transcription :

"Yet in the gifts of nature we shall finde

A ragged coate oft have a Royall minde :
For to descend to each distinct degree
By due experience we the same shall see.
If to Parnassus where the Muses are,
There shall we finde their Dyet very bare ;
Their houses ruined and their well-springs dry,
Admir'd for nought so much as Povertie.
Here shall we see poore Eschylus maintaine
His nighterne studies with his daily paine,
Pulling up Buckets but twas never knowne
That filling others he could fill his owne.
Here many more discerne we may of these,
As Lamachus, and poore Antisthenes,
Both which the sweetes of Poesie did sipp

Yet were rewarded with a staff and scripp;
For I nere knew nor (much I feare) shall know it,
Any die rich that liv'd to die a Poet.”

1 Article on Brathwaite, Dictionary of National Biography. 2 See Collier Poetical Decameron, vol. ii. pp. 54 ff.

In 1623 Natures Embassie was reissued under the title of Shepherd's Tales, etc., the pastoral elegies evidently being thought to be its most attractive contents.

In 1624 or 1625 appeared a second edition of the Scourge of Follie of Davies of Hereford, and to this was added A Continued Inquisition against Paper-Persecutors, by "A. H." The author has been generally thought to be Abraham Holland. The poem is in 156 lines, in the usual couplets, and continues the attack on contemporary poetry which had been begun in Davies's Paper's Complaint. The author was not enamored of the satire as used by his contemporaries :

"Others that ne'er searched new borne Vice at all,

But the seven deadly Sinnes in generall,
Drawne from the Tractate of some cloyster'd Frier,
Will needs write Satyrs, and in raging fire
Exasperate their sharpe Poeticke straine,

And thinke they have toucht it, if they raile at Spaine,
The Pope and Devill; and while thus they urge
Their stinglesse gall, there's none deserve the scourge
More than themselves, whose weaknesse might suffice
To furnish Satyrs and poore Elegies."

(11. 42-52.)

This passage is worth more than a passing notice. It indicates the growing belief on the part of clever men that a good satire must have distinct contemporary allusions, and deal with "new born vices ;" and on the other hand it rebukes the growing habit (justly, as we have seen) of writing vaguely on the 66 seven deadly sins," in the manner of medieval sermonizers.

Further on Holland declares that the scribblers may yet force him to turn satirist himself:

"Who if they doe not soone these matters mend,

I'le shortly into th' world a Satyre send,
Who shall them lash with fiery rods of Steele."

And in 1. 128 the author seems already to regard himself as a satirist:

"Touching the State, Ambassadors or Kings,
My Satyre shall not touch such sacred things."

(153 ff.)

The particular enumeration of the work of scribblers includes: the pamphleteers of Paul's Church; epigrams of "undigested mish-mash;" rhyming versions of the Bible; popular pamphlets and ballads (of Chevy Chase, etc.); elegies on nobility "in lamentable lachrymental rimes"; news pamphlets, etc. Dubartas and his translators are exempted from condemnation (35 ff.), and Jonson and Drayton are alluded to as unworthily neglected for cheap balladists, such as the "Wherrie Bookes" (perhaps of Taylor the "Water Poet"?).

Altogether this quasi-satire furnishes some very interesting comments on the literature popular in London at the end of the first quarter of the century. We

have now reached the time when the formal satire, instead of being a fresh criticism of contemporary publications, was decadent in vigor and was itself satirized among the other forms at which every cheap poet tried his hand.

V.

We have now only to summarize, as briefly as may be, the matters brought to light by the preceding study.

Early in the discussion it was remarked that in the classical imitations of the Elizabethans two streams of influence met: familiarity with the classical writers, such as had lately become a part of the education of all cultivated persons, and familiarity with Italian efforts to imitate the classics and adapt them to the expression of contemporary life. These influences have to do alike with many forms of literature; in the case of formal satire they are very clear. Wyatt, first of the formal satirists, derived his inspiration from Italy, though showing direct familiarity with classical satire. Others, while no doubt frequently finding in Italy the suggestion of satire as a literary form, did not-like Wyatt-follow the Italian · méthod of adaptation. In France the imitation of classical and Italian satire followed close upon that in England, though there does not appear to have been any considerable connection between the two countries in this respect, until well on in the seventeenth century. In 1605 Casaubon published his great work De Satyrica Græca Poesi et Romanorum Satira, as well as his edition of Persius; the former work became the centre of interest in the classical satirists for a long time to come.1

1 Mr. Gosse writes me: "I believe the personal work of Casaubon in his lecture-room to have started the whole thing, in France where it succeeded, as in England where it failed." However true this may be for France, I am not able to see what influence Casaubon could have had on the origin of the satirical imitations in England, fifteen years and more before the publication of his work on satire. When Donne and Lodge were making their experiments, Casaubon was still professor of Greek at Geneva, and he was not himself in England till 1610.