Here have I learn'd to make my greatest wrongs For should I still lie here distress'd and poor, Where the small remnant of my days be spent. But for thy sake, my country's, and my friends', And I should also Virtue's wrongs conceal, When they shall see him plagu'd as an offender, Than prejudicial any way to me; For who will his endeavours ever bend To follow her, whom there is none will friend? Who will again, when they have smother'd me, Whereas he must be fain to undertake A combat with a second Lernean snake, More I could speak; but sure, if this do fail me, I never shall do aught that will avail me; Nor care to speak again, unless it be To him that knows how heart and tongue agree; No, nor to live, when none dares undertake SO now, if thou hast deign'd my lines to hear, Your Majesty's most loyal Subject, GEORGE WITHER. [SATIRE TO KING JAMES. The challenge which Bishop Hall put forth in his Virgidemiarum, Book I., "I first adventure with fool-hardy might may, with much truth and propriety, be said to have been accepted by Wither. The Bishop published his Satires in 1597 and 8-Wither, his Abuses Stript and Whipt, and Satire to the King, in 1613 and 14.-These Satires of Wither are not in general marked with the same classical precision, or abound with such imitations of Persius and Juvenal, as are to be found in the Satires of Bishop Hall. But in animation of stile and sentiment, in boldness of conception, and in delineation of character, Wither will not certainly suffer in comparison with the Bishop. As in the Satires of Hall, the thorns of severe invective are not unmixed with the flowers of pure poetry. Wither seldom fails to exemplify his meaning by just imagery, and natural and pointed allusion. From this Satire to the King many examples might be cited: "Know, I am he that enter'd once the list,. And again: "What I have done was not for thirst of gain, And when they wanting be, she wants her might : Wither does not indeed like Hall descend to criticise the minute follies and fashionable foibles of the day. The abuses of poetical composition which prevailed in the time of Hall; the dissolute sallies of such poets as Greene and Nash; the extravagant enchantments of Ariosto; the licentious fictions of Merlin, and the whining Ghosts of the Mirrour of Magistrates, works then in vogue, were pleasantly yet severely satirized by the humourous genius of Hall. But Wither confined himself to Vice in high places; to the fleering parasite; he saw, "good Virtue poor; Desert, among the most, thrust out of door; Rich men excessive, poor men famished, Coldness in zeal, in laws partiality, Friendship but compliment and vain formality." It was in bold attacks upon his superiors, in caustic remarks upon the lives and actions of the ruling powers of the times, that Wither delighted to point his satiric pen. I know not a finer specimen of bold satire and independency of spirit than is contained in the following lines, indited also at the moment that he was petitioning his Sovereign to be released from an imprisonment for the former licentiousness of his Satires: "Do not I know, a great man's power and might, Colour his villainies to get esteem, And make the honest man the villain seem? I know it, and the world doth know 'tis true; Yet I protest, if such a man I knew, That might my country prejudice, or thee, That breathes this day (if so it might be found, I unappalled dare in such a case Rip up his foulest crimes before his face, If, as Mr. Dalrymple asserts in his Extracts from Wither's Juvenilia, "this spirited defence had so good an effect as to obtain his release," I know not which to admire most, the mag. nanimity of the King, or the lofty mind of the youthful poet. The 'versification also of this Satire is more than usually energetic and correct. EDITOR.] |