by Thomas Nashe
Sickness, be thou my soul’s physician:
Bring the apothecary Death with thee.
In earth is hell, true hell felicity,
Compared with this world, the den of wolves.
AUTUMN: My lord, you are too passionate without cause.
WINTER: Grieve not for that which cannot be recall’d.
Is it your servants’ carelessness you plain?143
Tully, by one of his own slaves was slain.
The husbandman close in his bosom nurs’d
A subtle snake, that after wraught his bane.144
AUTUMN: Servos fideles liberalitas facit;145
Where on the contrary, servitutem:146
Those that attend upon illiberal lords,
Whose covetise yields nought else but fair looks,
Even of those fair looks make their gainful use.
For, as in Ireland147 and in Denmark both,
Witches for gold will sell a man a wind,
Which, in the corner of a napkin wrapp’d,
Shall blow him safe unto what coast he will,
So make ill servants sale of their lord’s wind,148
Which, wrapp’d up in a piece of parchment,
Blows many a knave forth danger of the law.
SUMMER: Enough of this: let me go make my will.
Ah, it is made; although I hold my peace,
These two will share betwixt them what I have.
The surest way to get my will perform’d,
Is to make my executor my heir;
And he, if all be given him, and none else,
Unfallibly will see it well perform’d.
Lions will feed, though none bid them go to.
Ill grows the tree affordeth ne’er a graft.
Had I some issue to sit in my throne,
My grief would the, death should not hear me groan.
But when perforce these must enjoy my wealth,
Which thank me not, but enter’t as a prey,
Bequeath’d it is not, but clean cast away.
Autumn, be thou successor of my seat:
Hold, take my crown – look how he grasps for it!
Thou shalt not have it yet – but hold it too.
Why should I keep that needs I must forgo?
WINTER: Then (duty laid aside) you do me wrong.
I am more worthy of it far than he.
He hath no skill nor courage for to rule;
A weather-beaten bankrout149 ass it is,
That scatters and consumeth all he hath;
Each one do pluck from him without control.
He is nor hot nor cold, a silly soul,
That fain would please each party, if so he might.
He and the Spring are scholars’ favourites.
What scholars are, what thriftless kind of men,
Yourself be judge, and judge of him by them.
When Cerberus was headlong drawn from hell,
He voided a back poison from his mouth,
Called aconitum, whereof ink was made;
That ink, with reeds first laid on dried barks,
Serv’d men a while to make rude works withal,
Till Hermes, secretary to the gods,
Or Hermes Trismegistus, as some will,
Weary with graving in blind characters,
And figures of familiar beasts and plants,
Invented letters to write withal.
In them he penn’d the fables of the gods,
The giants’ war, and thousand tales besides.
After each nation got these toys in use,
There grew up certain drunken parasites,
Term’d poets, which, for a meal’s meat or two,
Would promise monarchs immortality.
They vomited in verse all that they knew,
Found causes and beginnings of the world,
Fetch’d pedigrees of mountains and of floods
From men and women whom the gods transform’d
If any town or city they pass’d by
Had in compassion (thinking them mad men)
Forborne to whip them, or imprison them,
That city was not built by human hands,
’Twas raised by music, like Megara walls.150
Apollo, poets’ patron, founded it,
Because they found one fitting favour there;
Musaeus, Linus, Homer, Orpheus,
Were of this trade, and thereby won their fame.
WILL SUMMERS: Fama malum, quo non velocius ullum.151
WINTER: Next them, a company of ragged knaves,
Sun-bathing beggars, lazy hedge-creepers,
Sleeping face-upwards in the fields all night,
Dream’d strange devices of the sun and moon;
And they, like gypsies, wandering up and down,
Told fortunes, juggled, nicknamed all the stars,
And were of idiots term’d philosophers.
Such was Pythagoras the silencer,152
Prometheus, Thales Milesius,
Who would all things of water should be made,153
Anaximander, Anaximenes,
That positively said the air was god,
Zenocrates, that said there were eight gods,
And Cratoniates Alcmeon too,
Who thought the sun and moon and stars were gods;
The poorer sort of them, that could get nought,
Profess’d, like beggarly Franciscan friars,
And the strict order of the Capuchins,
A voluntary wretched poverty,
Contempt of gold, thin fare, and lying hard;
Yet he that was most vehement in these,
Diogenes the cynic and the dog,
Was taken coining money in his cell.
WILL SUMMERS: What an old ass was that! Methinks, he
should have coined carrot roots rather; for, as for money,
he had no use for’t, except it were to melt, and solder up
holes in his tub withal.
WINTER: It were a whole Olympiad’s work to tell
How many devilish (ergo armed) arts,
Sprung all, as vices, of this idleness;
For even as soldiers not employed in wars,
But living loosely in a quiet state,
Not having wherewithal to maintain pride,
Nay, scarce to find their bellies any food,
Nought but walk melancholy, and devise
How they may cozen merchants, fleece young heirs,
Creep into favour by betraying men,
Rob churches, beg waste toys, court city dames,
(Who shall undo their husbands for their sakes),
The baser rabble how to cheat and steal,
And yet be free from penalty of death,
So those word-warriors, lazy star-gazers,
Us’d to no labour but to louse154 themselves,
Had their heads fill’d with cozening fantasies,
They plotted how to make their poverty
Better esteem’d of than high sovereignty.
They thought how they might plant a heaven on earth,
Whereof they would be principal low gods,
That heaven they called Contemplation,
As much to say as a most pleasant sloth;
Which better I cannot compare than this,
That if a fellow licensed to beg
Should all his lifetime go from fair to fair,
And buy gape-seed,155 having no business else.
That contemplation, like an aged weed,
Engender’d thousand sects, and all those sects
Were but as these times, cunning shrouded rogues:
Grammarians some; and wherein differ they
From beggars, that profess the pedlars’ French?
The poets next, slovenly tatter’d slaves,
That wander, and sell ballets in the streets.
Historiographers others there be,
And they, like lazars by the highway-side,
That for a p
enny, or a half-penny,
Will call each knave a good-fac’d gentleman,
Give honour unto tinkers for good ale,
Prefer a cobbler fore the Black Prince far,
If he bestow but blacking of their shoes;
And, as it is the spital-houses’ guise
Over the gate to write their founders’ names,
Or on the outside of their walls at least,
In hope by their examples others mov’d
Will be more bountiful and liberal;
So in the forefront of their chronicles,
Or peroratione operis,156
They learning’s benefactors reckon up:
Who built this college, who gave that free-school,
What king or queen advanced scholars most,
And in their times what writers flourished;
Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live,
They flatter palpably, in hope of gain.
Smooth-tongued orators, the fourth in place,
Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them,
Mere swashbucklers and ruffianly mates,
That will for twelve pence make a doughty fray,
Set men for straws together by the ears.
Sky-measuring mathematicians,
Gold-breathing alchemists also we have,
Both which are subtle witty humorists,
That get their meals by telling miracles,
Which they have seen in travelling the skies;
Vain boasters, liars, make-shifts, they are all,
Men that, removed from their inkhorn terms,
Bring forth no action worthy of their bread.
What should I speak of pale physicians?
Who as Fismenus non Nasutus157 was
(Upon a wager that his friends had laid)
Hir’d to live in a privy a whole year;
So are they hir’d for lucre and for gain,
All their whole life to smell on excrements.
WILL SUMMERS: Very true, for I have heard it for a proverb many a time and oft: Hunc os foetidum,158 fah, he stinks like a physician!
WINTER: Innumerable monstrous practices
Hath loitering contemplation brought forth more,
Which ‘twere too long particular to recite.
Suffice, they all conduce unto this end:
To banish labour, nourish slothfulness,
Pamper up lust, devise newfangled sins.
Nay, I will justify there is no vice,
Which learning and vild knowledge brought not in,
Or in whose praise some learned have not wrote.
The art of murther Machiavel hath penn’d;
Whoredom hath Ovid to uphold her throne,
And Aretine of late in Italy,
Whose Cortigiana159 toucheth bawds their trade.
Gluttony Epicurus doth defend,
And books of th’art of cookery confirm,
Of which Platina160 hath not writ the least.
Drunkenness of his good behaviour
Hath testimonial from where he was born:
That pleasant work De Arte Bibendi161
A drunken Dutchman spew’d out few years since.
Nor wanteth Sloth, although sloth’s plague be want,
His paper pillars for to lean upon:
The Praise of Nothing pleads his worthiness:
Folly Erasmus sets a flourish on.
For baldness, a bald ass I have forgot
Patch’d up a pamphletary periwig.
Slovenry Grobianus magnifieth;
Sodomitry a cardinal commends,
And Aristotle necessary deems.
In brief, all books, divinity except,
Are nought but tables of the devil’s laws,
Poison wrapt up in sugared words,
Man’s pride, damnation’s props, the world’s abuse.
Then censure, good my lord, what bookmen are,
If they be pestilent members in a state.
He is unfit to sit at stern of state
That favours such as will o’erthrow his state.
Blest is that government where no art thrives.
Vox populi, vox Dei:
The vulgar’s voice, it is the voice of God.’
Yet Tully saith: Non est consilium in vulgo, non ratio,
Non discrimen, non differentia:162
‘The vulgar have no learning, wit, nor sense.’
Themistocles, having spent all his time
In study of philosophy and arts,
And noting well the vanity of them,
Wish’d, with repentance for his folly past,
Some would teach him th’art of oblivion,
How to forget the arts that he had learn’d.
And Cicero, whom we alleg’d before,
As saith Valerius, stepping into old age,
Despised learning, loathed eloquence. Naso,163 that could speak nothing but pure verse,
And had more wit than words to utter it,
And words as choice as ever poet had,
Cried and exclaim’d in bitter agony,
When knowledge had corrupted his chaste mind:
Discite, qui sapitis, non haec quae scimus inertes,
Sed trepidas acies, et fera bella sequi.164
‘You that be wise, and ever mean to thrive,
Oh, study not these toys we sluggards use,
But follow arms, and wait on barbarous wars.’
Young men, young boys, beware of schoolmasters,
They will infect you, mar you, blear your eyes;
They seek to lay the curse of God on you,
Namely, confusion of languages,
Wherewith those that the Tower of Babel built
Accursed were in the world’s infancy.
Latin, it was the speech of infidels.
Logic hath nought to say in a true cause.
Philosophy is curiosity;
And Socrates was therefore put to death,
Only for he was a philosopher.
Abhor, contemn, despise these damned snares.
WILL SUMMERS: Out upon it, who would be a scholar? Not I, I promise you. My mind always gave me this learning was such a filthy thing, which made me hate it so as I did. When I should have been at school, construing Batte, mi fili, mi fili, mi batte, I was close under a hedge, or under a barn wall, playing at span counter165 or jack in a box. My master beat me, my father beat me, my mother gave me bread and butter, yet all this would not make me a squitter-book.166 It was my destiny: I thank her as a most gorgeous goddess, that she hath not cast me away upon gibridge.167 Oh, in what a mighty vein am I now against horn-books!168 Here, before all this company, I profess myself an open enemy to ink and paper. I’ll make it good upon the accidence body, that in speech is the devil’s Pater noster. Nouns and pronouns, I pronounce you as traitors to boys’ buttocks. Syntaxis and prosodia, you are tormenters of wit, and good for nothing but to get a schoolmaster twopence a week. Hang copies; fly out, phrase books; let pens be turned to pick-tooths! Bowls, cards and dice, you are the true liberal sciences! I’ll ne’er be a goosequill, gentlemen, while I live.
SUMMER: Winter, with patience unto my grief
I have attended thy invective tale.
So much untruth wit never shadowed.
Gainst her own bowels thou art’s weapons turn’st
Let none believe thee that will ever thrive;
Words have their course, the wind blows where it lists;
He errs alone, in error that persists.
For thou gainst Autumn such exceptions tak’st,
I grant his over-seer thou shalt be,
His treasurer, protector, and his staff.
He shall do nothing without thy consent;
Provide thou for his weal and his content.
WINTER: Thanks, gracious lord; so I’ll dispose of him
As it shall not repent you of your gift.
AUTUMN: On such conditions no crown will I take.
I challenge W
inter for my enemy,
A most insatiate miserable carl,
That, to fill up his garners to the brim,
Cares not how he endangereth the earth;
What poverty he makes it to endure!
He over-bars the crystal streams with ice,
That none but he and his may drink of them.
All for a foul back-winter169 He lays up;
Hard craggy ways and uncouth slippery paths
He frames, that passengers may slide and fall
Who quaketh not that heareth but his name?
Oh, but two sons he hath, worse than himself:
Christmas the one, a pinch-back,170 cut-throat churl,
That keeps no open house, as he should do,
Delighteth in no game or fellowship,
Loves no good deeds, and hateth talk,
But sitteth in a corner turning crabs,
Or coughing o’er a warmed pot of ale;
Back-winter th’other, that’s his n’own sweet boy,
Who like his father taketh in all points.171
An elf172 it is, compact of envious pride,
A miscreant, born for a plague to men,
A monster, that devoureth all he meets.
Were but his father dead, so he would reign;
Yea, he would go good near173 to deal by him
As Nabuchodonozor’s ungracious son
Evilmerodach by his father dealt,
Who, when his sire was turned to an oxe,
Full greedily snatch’d up his sovereignty,
And thought himself a king without control.
So it fell out, seven years expir’d and gone,
Nabuchodonozor came to his shape again,
And dispossess’d him of his regiment;
Which my young prince no little grieving at,
When that his father shortly after died,
Fearing lest he should come from death again,
As he came from an oxe to be a man,
Will’d that his body, spoil’d of coverture,174
Should be cast forth into the open fields,
For birds and ravens to devour at will,
Thinking, if they bare every one of them
A bill full of his flesh into their nests,
He would not rise to trouble him in haste.
WILL SUMMERS: A virtuous son, and I’ll lay my life on’t,
he was a cavalier and a good fellow.175
WINTER: Pleaseth your honour, all he says is false.
For my own part, I love good husbandry,
But hate dishonourable covetise.
Youth ne’er aspires to virtue’s perfect growth,
Till his wild oats be sown; and so the earth,
Until his weeds be rotted with my frosts,
Is not for any seed or tillage fit.
He must be purged that hath surfeited:
The fields have surfeited with summer fruits;