Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin;
  His linen collar labyrinthian set,
  Whose thousand double turnings never met: 
  His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
  As if he meant to fly with linen wings. 
  But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
  What monster meets mine eyes in human show? 
  So slender waist with such an abbot’s loin,
  Did never sober nature sure conjoin. 
  Lik’st a strawn scarecrow in a new-sown field,
  Reared on some stick, the tender corn to shield,
  Or, if that semblance suit not every deal,
  Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel. 
  Despised nature suit them once aright,
  Their body to their coat both now disdight. 
  Their body to their clothes might shapen be,
  That will their clothes shape to their bodie. 
  Meanwhile I wonder at so proud a back,
  Whiles the empty guts loud rumblen for long lack.

[Footnote 163:  long.]

[Footnote 164:  the love-locks which were so condemned by the Puritan Prynne.  Cf.  Lyly’s Midas and Sir John Davies’ Epigram 22, In Ciprum.]

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

(1559-1634.)

X. AN INVECTIVE WRITTEN BY MR. GEORGE CHAPMAN AGAINST MR. BEN JONSON.

    This satire was discovered in a “Common-place Book” belonging to
    Chapman, preserved among the Ashmole MSS. in the Bodleian Library,
    Oxford.

Great, learned, witty Ben, be pleased to light
The world with that three-forked fire; nor fright
All us, thy sublearned, with luciferous boast
That thou art most great, most learn’d, witty most
Of all the kingdom, nay of all the earth;
As being a thing betwixt a human birth
And an infernal; no humanity
Of the divine soul shewing man in thee.

* * * * *

Though thy play genius hang his broken wings
Full of sick feathers, and with forced things,
Imp thy scenes, labour’d and unnatural,
And nothing good comes with thy thrice-vex’d call,
Comest thou not yet, nor yet?  O no, nor yet;
Yet are thy learn’d admirers so deep set
In thy preferment above all that cite
The sun in challenge for the heat and light
Of heaven’s influences which of you two knew
And have most power in them; Great Ben, ’tis you. 
Examine him, some truly-judging spirit,
That pride nor fortune hath to blind his merit,
He match’d with all book-fires, he ever read
His dusk poor candle-rents; his own fat head
With all the learn’d world’s, Alexander’s flame
That Caesar’s conquest cow’d, and stript his fame,
He shames not to give reckoning in with his;
As if the king pardoning his petulancies
Should pay his huge loss too in such a score
As all earth’s learned fires he gather’d for.