Blazing Star

by Larman, Alexander;

  In nonsense and impossibilities,

  This made a whimsical philosopher

  Before the spacious world, his tub prefer,

  And we have modern cloistered coxcombs who

  Retire to think ‘cause they have nought to do.

  But thoughts are given for action’s government;

  Where action ceases, thought’s impertinent:

  Our sphere of action is life’s happiness,

  And he that thinks beyond, thinks like an ass.

  Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh,

  I own right reason, which I would obey:

  That reason which distinguishes by sense

  And gives us rules of good and ill from thence,

  That bounds desires, with a reforming will

  To keep ‘em more in vigour, not to kill.

  Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,

  Renewing appetites yours would destroy.

  My reason is my friend, yours is a cheat;

  Hunger calls out, my reason bids me eat;

  Perversely, yours your appetite does mock:

  This asks for food, that answers, “What’s o’clock?”

  This plain distinction, sir, your doubt secures:

  ’Tis not true reason I despise, but yours.

  Thus I think reason righted, but for man,

  I’ll ne’er recant; defend him if you can.

  For all his pride and his philosophy,

  ’Tis evident beasts are, in their own degree,

  As wise at least, and better far than he.

  Those creatures are the wisest who attain,

  By surest means, the ends at which they aim.

  If therefore Jowler finds and kills the hares

  Better than Meres supplies committee chairs,

  Though one’s a statesman, th’ other but a hound,

  Jowler, in justice, would be wiser found.

  You see how far man’s wisdom here extends;

  Look next if human nature makes amends:

  Whose principles most generous are, and just,

  And to whose morals you would sooner trust.

  Be judge yourself, I’ll bring it to the test:

  Which is the basest creature, man or beast?

  Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,

  But savage man alone does man betray.

  Pressed by necessity, they kill for food;

  Man undoes man to do himself no good.

  With teeth and claws by nature armed, they hunt

  Nature’s allowance, to supply their want.

  But man, with smiles, embraces, friendship, praise,

  Inhumanly his fellow’s life betrays;

  With voluntary pains works his distress,

  Not through necessity, but wantonness.

  For hunger or for love they fight and tear,

  Whilst wretched man is still in arms for fear.

  For fear he arms, and is of arms afraid,

  From fear, to fear successively betrayed;

  Base fear, the source whence his best passions came:

  His boasted honour, and his dear-bought fame;

  The lust of power, to which he’s such a slave,

  And for the which alone he dares be brave;

  To which his various projects are designed;

  Which makes him generous, affable, and kind;

  For which he takes such pains to be thought wise,

  And screws his actions in a forced disguise,

  Leading a tedious life in misery

  Under laborious, mean hypocrisy.

  Look to the bottom of his vast design,

  Wherein man’s wisdom, power, and glory join:

  The good he acts, the ill he does endure,

  ’Tis all from fear, to make himself secure.

  Merely for safety, after fame we thirst,

  For all men would be cowards if they durst.

  And honesty’s against all common sense:

  Men must be knaves, ’tis in their own defence.

  Mankind’s dishonest; if you think it fair

  Among known cheats to play upon the square,

  You’ll be undone.

  Nor can weak truth your reputation save:

  The knaves will all agree to call you knave.

  Wronged shall he live, insulted o’er, oppressed,

  Who dares be less a villain than the rest.

  Thus sir, you see what human nature craves:

  Most men are cowards, all men should be knaves.

  The difference lies, as far as I can see,

  Not in the thing itself, but the degree,

  And all the subject matter of debate

  Is only: Who’s a knave of the first rate?

  All this with indignation have I hurled

  At the pretending part of the proud world,

  Who, swollen with selfish vanity, devise

  False freedoms, holy cheats, and formal lies

  Over their fellow slaves to tyrannize.

  But if in Court so just a man there be

  (In Court, a just man, yet unknown to me)

  Who does his needful flattery direct,

  Not to oppress and ruin, but protect

  (Since flattery, which way soever laid,

  Is still a tax on that unhappy trade);

  If so upright a statesman you can find,

  Whose passions bend to his unbiased mind,

  Who does his arts and policies apply

  To raise his country, not his family,

  Nor, whilst his pride owned avarice withstands,

  Receives close bribes through friends’ corrupted hands—

  Is there a churchman who on God relies;

  Whose life, his faith and doctrine justifies?

  Not one blown up with vain prelatic pride,

  Who, for reproof of sins, does man deride;

  Whose envious heart makes preaching a pretense,

  With his obstreperous, saucy eloquence,

  To chide at kings, and rail at men of sense;

  None of that sensual tribe whose talents lie

  In avarice, pride, sloth, and gluttony;

  Who hunt good livings, but abhor good lives;

  Whose lust exalted to that height arrives

  They act adultery with their own wives,

  And ere a score of years completed be,

  Can from the lofty pulpit proudly see

  Half a large parish their own progeny;

  Nor doting bishop, who would be adored

  For domineering at the council board,

  A greater fop in business at fourscore,

  Fonder of serious toys, affected more,

  Than the gay, glittering fool at twenty proves

  With all his noise, his tawdry clothes, and loves;

  But a meek, humble man, of honest sense,

  Who preaching peace, does practice continence;

  Whose pious life’s a proof he does believe

  Mysterious truths, which no man can conceive.

  If upon earth there dwell such God-like men,

  I’ll here recant my paradox to them,

  Adore those shrines of virtue, homage pay,

  And, with the rabble world, their laws obey.

  If such there be, yet grant me this at least:

  Man differs more from man, than man from beast.

  A Letter from Artemisia in Town to Chloe in the Country

  Chloe,

  In verse by your command I write.

  Shortly you’ll bid me ride astride, and fight:

  These talents better with our sex agree

  Than lofty flights of dangerous poetry.

  Amongst the men, I mean the men of wit

  (At least they passed for such before they writ),

  How many bold adventurers for the bays,

  Proudly designing large returns of praise,

  Who durst that stormy, pathless world explore,

  Were soon dashed back, and wrecked on the dull sho
re,

  Broke of that little stock they had before!

  How would a woman’s tottering bark be tossed

  Where stoutest ships, the men of wit, are lost?

  When I reflect on this, I straight grow wise,

  And my own self thus gravely I advise:

  Dear Artemisia, poetry’s a snare;

  Bedlam has many mansions; have a care.

  Your muse diverts you, makes the reader sad:

  Consider, too, ’twill be discreetly done

  To make yourself the fiddle of the town,

  To find th’ ill-humored pleasure at their need,

  Cursed if you fail, and scorned though you succeed!

  Thus, like an errant woman as I am,

  No sooner well convinced writing’s a shame,

  That whore is scarce a more reproachful name

  Than poetess-

  Like men that marry, or like maids that woo,

  ’Cause ’tis the very worst thing they can do,

  Pleased with the contradiction and the sin,

  Methinks I stand n thorns till I begin.

  You expect at least to hear what loves have passed

  In this lewd town, since you and I met last;

  What change has happened of intrigues, and whether

  The old ones last, and who and who’s together.

  But how, my dearest Chloe, shall I set

  My pet to write what I would fain forget?

  Or name that lost thing, love, without a tear,

  Since so debauched by ill-bred customs here?

  Love, the most generous passion of the mind,

  The softest refuge innocence can find,

  The safe director of unguided youth,

  Fraught with kind wishes, and secured by truth;

  That cordial drop heaven in our cup has thrown

  To make the nauseous draught of life go down;

  On which one only blessing; God might raise

  In lands of atheists, subsidies of praise,

  For none did e’er so dull and stupid prove

  But felt a god, and blessed his power in love -

  This only joy for which poor we were made

  Is grown, like play, to be an arrant trade.

  The rooks creep in, and it has got of late

  As many little cheats and tricks as that.

  But what yet more a woman’s heart would vex,

  ’Tis chiefly carrried on by our own sex;

  Our silly sex! who, born like monarchs free,

  turn gypsies for a meaner liberty,

  And hate restraint, though but from infamy.

  They call whatever is not common, nice,

  And deaf to nature’s rule, or love’s advice,

  Forsake the pleasure to pursue the vice.

  To an exact perfection they have wrought

  The action, love; the passion is forgot.

  ’Tis below wit, they tell you, to admire,

  And ev’n without approving, they desire.

  Their private wish obeys the public vice;

  ’Twixt good and bad, whimsy decides, not choice.

  Fashions grow up for taste; at forms they strike;

  They know what they would have, not what they like.

  Bovey’s a beauty, of some few agree

  To call him so; the rest to that degree

  Affected are, that with their ears they see.

  Where I was visiting the other night

  Comes a fine lady, with her humble knight,

  Who had prevailed on her, through her own skill,

  At his request, thought much against his will,

  To come to London.

  As the coach stopped, we heard her voice, more loud

  Than a great-bellied woman’s in a crowd,

  Telling the knight that her affairs require

  He, for some hours, obsequiously retire.

  I think she was ashamed to have him seen:

  Hard fate of husbands! The gallant had been,

  Though a diseased, ill-favored fool, brought in.

  “Dispatch,” says she, “that business you pretend,

  Your beastly visit to your drunken friend!

  A bottle ever makes you look so fine;

  Methinks I long to smell you stink of wine!

  Your country drinking breath’s enough to kill:

  Sour ale corrected with a lemon peel.

  Prithee, farewell! We’ll meet again anon.”

  The necessary thing bows, and is gone.

  She flies upstairs, and all the haste does show

  That fifty antic postures will allow,

  And then bursts out: “Dear madam, am not I

  The altered’st creature breathing? Let me die,

  I find myself ridiculously grown,

  Embarassee with being out of town,

  Rude and untaught like any Indian queen:

  My country nakedness is strangely seen.

  “How is love governed, love that rules the state,

  And pray, who are the men most worn of late?

  When I was married, fools were a la mode.

  The men of wit were then held incommode,

  Slow of belief, and fickle in desire,

  Who, ere they’ll be persuaded, must inquire

  As if they came to spy, not to admire.

  With searching wisdom, fatal to their ease,

  They still find out why what may, should not please;

  Nay, take themselves for injured when we dare

  Make ’em think better of us than we are,

  And if we hide our frailties from their sights,

  Call us deceitful jilts and hypocrites.

  They little guess, who at our arts are grieved,

  The perfect joy of being well deceived;

  Inquisitive as jealous cuckolds grow:

  Rather than not be knowing, they will know

  What, being known, creates their certain woe.

  Women should these, of all mankind avoid,

  For wonder by clear knowledge is destroyed.

  Woman, who is an arrant bird of knight,

  Bold in the dusk before a fool’s dull sight,

  Should fly when reason brings the glaring light.

  “But the kind, easy fool, apt to admire

  Himself, trusts us; his follies all conspire

  To flatter his, and favor our desire.

  Vain of his proper merit, he with ease

  Believes we love him best who best can please.

  On him our gross, dull, common flatteries pass,

  Ever most joyful when most made an ass.

  Heavy to apprehend, though all mankind

  Perceive us false, the fop concerned is blind,

  Who, doting on himself,

  Thinks everyone that sees him of his mind.

  These are true women’s men.”

  Here forced to cease

  Through want of breath, not will to hold her peace,

  She to the window runs, where she had spied

  Her much esteemed dear friend, the monkey, tied.

  With forty smiles, as many antic bows,

  As if ’t had been the lady of the house,

  The dirty, chattering monster she embraced,

  And made it this fine, tender speech at last:

  “Kiss me, thou curious miniature of man!

  How odd thou art! how pretty! how japan!

  Oh, I could live and die with thee!” Then on

  For half an hour in compliment she run.

  I took this time to think what nature meant

  When this mixed thing into the world she sent,

  So very wise, yet so impertinent:

  One who knew everything; who, God thought fit,

  Should be an ass through choice, not want of wit;

  Whose foppery, without the help of sense,

  Could ne’er have rose to such an excellence.

  Nature’s as lame in making a true fop

  As a philosopher; the ve
ry top

  And dignity of folly we attain

  By studious search, and labor of the brain,

  By observation, counsel, and deep thought:

  God never made a coxcomb worth a groat.

  We owe that name to industry and arts:

  An eminent fool must be a fool of parts.

  And such a one was she, who had turned o’er

  As many books as men; loved much, read more;

  Had a discerning wit; to her was known

  Everyone’s fault and merit, but her own.

  All the good qualities that ever blessed

  A woman so distinguished from the rest,

  Except discretion only, she possessed.

  But now, “Mon cher dear Pug,” she cries, “adieu!”

  And the discourse broke off does thus renew:

  “You smile to see me, whom the world perchance

  Mistakes to have some wit, so far advance

  The interest of fools, that I approve

  Their merit, more than men’s of wit, in love.

  But, in our sex, too many proofs there are

  Of such whom wits undo, and fools repair.

  This, in my time, was so observed a rule

  Hardly a wench in town but had her fool.

  The meanest common slut, who long was grown

  The jest and scorn of every pit buffoon,

  Had yet left charms enough to have subdued

  Some fop or other, fond to be thought lewd.

  Foster could make an Irish lord a Nokes,

  And Betty Morris had her City cokes.

  A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can

  Be still revenged on her undoer, man;

  How lost soe’er, she’ll find some lover, more

  A lewd, abandoned fool than she a whore.

  “That wretched thing Corinna, who had run

  Through all the several ways of being undone,

  Cozened at first by love, and living then

  By turning the too dear-bought trick on men -

  Gay were the hours, and winged with joys they flew,

  When first the town her early beauties knew;

  Courted, admired, and loved, with presents fed;

  Youth in her looks, and pleasure in her bed;

  Till fate, or her ill angel, thought it fit

  To make her dote upon a man of wit,

  Who found ’twas dull to love above a day;

  Made his ill-natured jest, and went away.

  Now scorned by all, forsaken, and oppressed,

  She’s a memento mori to the rest;

  Diseased, decayed, to take up half a crown

  Must mortgage her long scarf and manteau gown.

  Poor creature! who, unheard of as a fly,

  In some dark hole must all the winter lie,

  And want and dirt endure a while half year

  That for one month she tawdry may appear.

  “In Easter Term she gets her a new gown,