0IassER22&3 Bonk M*7 #> f*x 4 >i JOSEPH HALL,D.DJ Late LordBisboft ofJVbnuJicb. .iiiiniiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiTi'iiiiTfnriTiriTfiiiiiiiViHiiiiiiiiiri'imffliY^^ ^S/^/Z/C. ^rr»~m'- /£*-tZ-^ Or-£*~*s^f~ ^Pj&^z^t^-^ **»0 ^yr- s^s tz^&« m^-^Ls &-**/ <£? <LAA^^y S&^v >^w^lo ^ Kz^^^st ^^^ <£- £<?>-* ^^t^ •tfi^V^^r ^ w C HALL'S SATIRES. JOSEPH HALL, 1/ .: § EIPTo 8 , 16 5 «S J5& TATI S § ILdE „ §J : SATIRES. BY JOSEPH HALL, AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF EXETER AND NORWICH. WITH THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE LATE REV. THOMAS WARTON. AND ADDITIONAL NOTES BY SAMUEL WELLER SINGER. " CHISWICK ^rtnuti fm ©. aityittingljam, FOR R. TR1PHOOK, OLD BOND STREET, LONDON. Bf DCCC XXIV. THE EDITOR'S PREFACE. When these Satires were shown to Pope at a late period of his poetical career, he was so sensible of their merit as to wish he had seen 1 them sooner . I doubt not that every reader who takes them up for the first time will be surprised that so much sterling good sense, such nervous language, and such masterly ver- sification should not have commanded more popularity. Yet nothing can be less true than Warton's remark, that Hall is better known as a poet than as a prelate or polemic. The Ser- mons and Meditations of the divine retained 1 Warburton told Warton, that in a copy of Hall's Satires in Pope's library, the whole first satire of the sixth book was corrected in the margin, or interlined in Pope's own hand ; and that Pope had written at the head of that satire optima satira. Vi THE EDITOR S PREFACE. their popularity, while the youthful effusions of the poet possessed but limited fame, and were indeed almost unknown to any but anti- quarian poetical readers. This may in some measure be accounted for from the circum- stance of the obscurity which naturally attends upon satire ; as the follies which are castigated, and the fashionable vices which are held up to ridicule fade away, the allusions are not so easily understood by a later age, as by that which it was intended to correct. Hall has heightened this obscurity by imitating the ellip- tical manner of Persius and Juvenal ; but per- haps still more by throwing over his composi- tions the veil of antiquated words and phraseo- logy, which, like his friend Spenser, he seems to have studiously affected. Indeed, following an erroneous opinion, he imagined, that a satire must necessarily be e hard of conceit, and harsh of style,' he therefore thought proper to apo- logize for ' too much stooping to the low reach of the vulgar :' and in the Prologue to Book III. he finds it necessary to answer such cavil- lers as had blamed his plain speaking. Satire, as Warton observes, specifically so called, had not its rise among us until the latter end of Elizabeth's reign. For though the long — 1 THE EDITORS PREFACE. VI allegorical Vision of-Pier's Ploughman is inter- spersed with satirical delineations of vice and folly, satire was not its primary object. Other poems had been made the vehicle of satirical allusion, and Skelton's ribaldry long since had dealt out abuse and scurrility in profusion, but satire i in its dignified and moral sense,' and on the model of the ancients, had its rise, if not with the publication of Hall, at least in his time. He boldly claims the precedence I first adventure, follow me who list, And be the second English satirist. But he was certainly anticipated by Thomas Lodge, whose Fig for Momus, published in 1593, contained four Satires, as a specimen of ' a whole centon already in his hands/ and several Epistles, in the manner of Horace. Donne, and Marston too, appear to have writ- ten about the same time, though posterior in the order of publication. What is more im- portant, however, if not the first, Hall may justly lay claim to be considered the best sa- tirist of his age, and when we remember that the writer was only twenty-three years old at the time of publication, we cannot but regret — ; Vlll THE EDITOR S PREFACE. that graver studies should have so absorbed his life, as to give him neither leisure nor inclina- tion to renew his acquaintance with the Muse. That he was not unconscious of his power for higher flights appears in several passages of the following volume ; but especially in part of the Defiance to Envy, quoted by Warton where, apostrophizing his muse, he says Would she but shade her tender brows with bay, That now lie bare in careless wilful rage; And trance herself in that sweet ecstasy, That rouseth drooping thoughts of bashful age; Though now those bays, and that aspired thought, In careless rage she sets at worse than nought. Or would we loose her plumy pinion, Manacled long with bonds of modest fear: Soon might she have those kestrels proud outgone, Whose flighty wings are dew'd with wetter air. ***** *** * Or scour the rusted swords of Elvish knights, Bathed in Pagan blood ; or sheath them new In misty moral types; or tell their fights, Who mighty giants, or who monsters slew. And by some strange enchanted spear and shield, Yanquish'd their foe, and won the doubtful field. THE EDITORS PREFACE. IX May be she might in stately stanzas frame Stories of ladies and adventurous knights, To raise her silent and inglorious name Unto a reachless pitch of praise's height. And somewhat say, as more unworthy done, Worthy of brass, and hoary marble stone. In the controversy about episcopacy and church discipline Hall took an active part, and replied to the celebrated book called Smectymnus, without considering consequences, when such courage was as hazardous as it was honourable. This called down upon him the anger and ani- madversion of Milton, who suffered his zeal to ' master his reason ; and who goes out of his svay to attack these satires, a juvenile produc- tion of his dignified adversary, and under every consideration alien to the dispute.' What his strictures want in critical acumen he makes up by sarcastic reflection, and ventures to misquote and misunderstand the passage above cited, which, under other circumstances, would un- doubtedly have excited in his mind more noble and kindred feelings. The sarcasm may now be safely quoted, as, like all perversions of truth for party purposes, it reflects more dis- credit upon the writer than upon the person attacked. u Lighting upon this title of ' Toothless Sa- a 3 X THE EDITORS PREFACE. tyrs/ I will not conceal ye what I thought, readers, that sure this must be some sucking satyr, who might have done better to have used his coral, and made an end of breeding, ere he took upon him to wield a satyr's whip. But when I heard him talk of scouring the shields of elvish knights, do not blame me if I changed my thought, and concluded him some despe- rate cutler. But why his scornful Muse could ne'er abide, zoith tragic shoes her ankles for to hidej the pace of the verse told me her maw- kin knuckles were never shapen to that royal business. And turning by chance to the sixth [seventh] satire of his second book, I was con- firmed: where having begun loftily in Heaven's universal alphabet, he falls down to that wretch- ed poorness and frigidity as to talk of Bridge Street in Heaven, and the ostler of Heaven. And there wanting other matter to catch him a heat (for certain he was on the frozen zone miserably benumbed), with thoughts lower than any beadle's, betakes him to whip the sign- posts of Cambridge alehouses, the ordinary subject of freshmen's tales, and in a strain as pitiful. Which for him, who would be counted the first English satyrist, to abase himself to, who might have learned better among the Latin and Italian satyrists, and, in our own tongue, THE EDITORS PREFACE. Xi from the Vision and Creede of Pierce Plow- man, besides others before him, manifested a presumptuous undertaking with weak and un- examined shoulders. For a satire is, as it were, born out of a tragedy, so ought to resemble his parentage, to strike high, and adventure dangerously at the most eminent vices among the greatest persons, and not creep into every blind taphouse that fears a constable more than a satire. But that such a poem should be toothless I still affirm it to be a bull, taking away the essence of what it calls itself. For if it bite neither the persons nor the vices, how is it a satyr I And if it bite either, how is it toothless i So that toothless satires are as if he had said toothless teeth V The Satires of Hall issued from the press in 1597, and it should appear that the first three books were published separately under the title 3 of " Virgidemiarum . Sixe Bookes. First three Bookes of Toothlesse Satyrs. 1. Poeti- call. 2. Academicall. 3. Morall. London, 1 Apology for Smectymnus, Milton's Prose Works, vol. i. p. 186, 1698, fol. 3 By Virgidemia, an uncouth and uncommon word, we are to understand a Gathering or Harvest of Rods, in reference to the nature of the subject. VV. ; Xll THE EDITOR S PREFACE. printed by Thomas Creed, for Robert Dexter, 1597. l6mo." This publication is not men- tioned in the Register of the Stationer's Com- pany. In the next year three more books ap- peared, entitled, " Virgidemiarum, The three last Bookes of Ryting Satyres.