Aut.
The fates have not spun him the
coarsest thread,
That (free from knots of perturbation)
Doth yet so live, although but to
himself,
As he can safely scorn the tongues
of slaves,
And neglect fortune, more than she
can him.
It is the happiest thing this, not
to be
Within the reach of malice; it provides
A man so well, to laugh off injuries;
And never sends him farther for
his vengeance,
Than the vex’d bosom of his
enemy.
I, now, but think how poor their
spite sets off,
Who, after all their waste of sulphurous
terms,
And burst-out thunder of their charged
mouths,
Have nothing left but the unsavoury
smoke
Of their black vomit, to upbraid
themselves:
Whilst I, at whom they shot, sit
here shot-free,
And as unhurt of envy, as unhit.
[Pol.
and Nas. discover themselves.
Pol.
Ay, but the multitude they think
not so, sir,
They think you hit, and hurt:
and dare give out,
Your silence argues it in not rejoining
To this or that late libel.
Aut.
’Las, good rout!
I can afford them leave to err so
still;
And like the barking students of
Bears-college,
To swallow up the garbage of the
time
With greedy gullets, whilst myself
sit by,
Pleased, and yet tortured, with
their beastly feeding.
’Tis a sweet madness runs
along with them,
To think, all that are aim’d
at still are struck:
Then, where the shaft still lights,
make that the mark:
And so each fear or fever-shaken
fool
May challenge Teucer’s hand
in archery.
Good troth, if I knew any man so
vile,
To act the crimes these Whippers
reprehend,
Or what their servile apes gesticulate,
I should not then much muse their
shreds were liked;
Since ill men have a lust t’
hear others’ sins,
All good men have a zeal to hear
sin shamed.
But when it is all excrement they
vent,
Base filth and offal; or thefts,
notable
As ocean-piracies, or highway-stands;
And not a crime there tax’d,
but is their own,
Or what their own foul thoughts
suggested to them;
And that, in all their heat of taxing
others,
Not one of them but lives himself,
if known,
Improbior satiram scribente cinaedo
What should I say more, than turn
stone with wonder!
Nas.
I never saw this play bred all this
tumult:
What was there in it could so deeply
offend
And stir so many hornets?
Aut. Shall I tell you ?
Nas. Yea, and ingeniouosly.
Aut.
Then, by the hope
Which I prefer unto all other objects,
I can profess, I never writ that
piece
More innocent or empty of offence.
Some salt it had, but neither tooth
nor gall,
Nor was there in it any circumstance
Which. in the setting down, I could
suspect
Might be perverted by an enemy’s
tongue;
Only it had the fault to be call’d
mine;
That was the crime.