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THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY, by                    
First Line: Some rigid stoic will (I doubt not) shoot
Last Line: And though you chide the author, spare the muse.


SOME rigid stoic will (I doubt not) shoot
A quipping censure at this wanton fruit,
And say I better might have us'd my talents
Than t' humour ladies and perfumed gallants.
Know such that pamphlets, writ in metre, measure
As much invention, judgement, wit, as pleasure.
All learning's not lock'd up in si's and tum's.
Roses, pinks, violets, as well as gums,
Some native fragour have to equal civet.
Minerva does not all her treasures rivet
Into the screws of obs and sols: but we
Are sea-born birds, and as our pedigree
Came sailing o'er from Normandy and Troy,
So we must have our pretty ermine joy.
One part Italian and of French the other;
Stout Belgia be her sire, and Spain her mother.
So our apparel is so strange and antic
That our great grandsires sure would call us frantic.
And, should they see us on our knees for blessing,
They'd skew aside as frighted at our dressing.
We pack so many nations up that we
Wear Spain in waist, and France below the knee.
Thus are our backs affected and indeed
Our brains do travail with the selfsame meed.
We're Chaldees, Hebrews, Latins, Greeks, and yet
But few pure Englishmen are lapped in jet.
We scorn our mother language and had rather
Say Pater noster twice than once Our Father.
This makes our pulpits linsey-woolsey stut
When buskined stages in stiff satin strut.
Nay clowns can say, 'This parson knows enough',
But that his language does his knowledge blough.
Is it not time to polish then our Welsh
When hinds and peasants such invectives belch?
Then English bravely study: 'tis no shame
For grave divines to win an English fame.
I've heard a worthy man, approv'd for learning,
Say that in plays and rhymes we may be earning
Both wit and knowledge: and that Sidney-prose
Outmusics Tully, if it 'scape the nose.
Then purg'd from gall (ingenuous friends) peruse,
And though you chide the author, spare the muse.





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