The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (22 page)

SUMMER
: It is wine's custom to be full of words: I prithee, Bacchus, give us
vicissitudinem loquendi
.
¹⁰⁹

BACCHUS
: A fiddlestick! Ne'er tell me I am full of wouds.
Faecundi calices, quem non fecere disertum?
¹¹⁰
Aut epi, aut abi
: ‘either take your drink, or you are an infidel.'

SUMMER
: I would about thy vintage question thee. How thrive thy vines? Hadst thou good store of grapes?

BACCHUS
:
Vinum quasi venenum
. Wine is poison to a sick body; a sick body is no sound body;
ergo
, wine is a pure thing and is poison to all corruption. Trilill, the hunters'
hoop
¹¹¹
to you. I'll stand to it, Alexander was a brave man and yet an arrant drunkard.

WINTER
: Fie, drunken sot, forget'st thou where thou art?
My Lord asks thee what vintage thou hast made.

BACCHUS
: Our vintage was a vintage, for it did not work upon the advantage.
¹¹²
It came in the vanguard of summer,

And winds and storms met it by the way,
And made it cry ‘Alas and welladay'.

SUMMER
: That was not well, but all miscarried not?

BACCHUS
: Faith, shall I tell you no lie? Because you are my countryman and so forth, and a good fellow is a good fellow, though he have never a penny in his purse. We had but even pot-luck, a little to moisten our lips, and no more. That same Sol is a pagan and a proselyte.
¹¹³
He shined so bright all summer that he burned more grapes than his beams were worth, were every beam as big as a weaver's beam.
A fabis abstinendum
:
¹¹⁴
faith, he should have abstained. For what is flesh and blood without his liquor?

AUTUMN
: Thou want'st no liquor, nor no flesh and blood.
I pray thee, may I ask without offence?
How many tuns of wine hast in thy paunch?
Methinks that belly, built like a round church,
Should yet have some of Julius Caesar's wine.
I warrant, ‘twas not broach'd this hundred year.

BACCHUS
: Hearest thou, dough-belly? Because thou talk'st, and talk'st, and dar'st not drink to me a black jack, wilt thou give me leave to broach this little kilderkin
¹¹⁵
of my corpse against thy back? I know thou art but a micher,
¹¹⁶
and dar'st not stand me.
A vous, Monsieur Winter
, a frolic upsey-freeze. Cross, ho!
Super nagulum
!
¹¹⁷

[
Knocks the jack upon his thumb
.]

WINTER
: Grammercy, Bacchus, as much as though I did. For this time thou must pardon me perforce.

BACCHUS
: What, give me the disgrace? Go to, I am no pope to pardon any man.
Ran, ran, tarra
: cold beer makes good blood. Saint George for England: somewhat is better than nothing! Let me see: hast thou done me justice? Why so, thou art a king, though there were no more kings in the cards but the knave. Summer, wilt thou have a demi-culverin,
¹¹⁸
that shall cry ‘Hufty Tufty' and make thy cup fly fine meal in the element?
¹¹⁹

SUMMER
: No, keep thy drink, I pray thee, to thyself.

BACCHUS
: This Pupillonian in the fool's coat shall have a cast of martins and a whiff.
¹²⁰
To the health of Captain Rinocerotry!
¹²¹
Look to it, let him have weight and measure.

WILL SUMMERS
: What an ass is this! I cannot drink so much, though I should burst.

BACCHUS
: Fool, do not refuse your moist sustenance. Come, come, dog's head in the pot,
¹²²
do what you are born to!

WILL SUMMERS
: If you will needs make me a drunkard against my will, so it is. I'll try what burthen my belly is of.

BACCHUS
: Crouch, crouch on your knees, fool, when you pledge god Bacchus.

[
Here Will Summers drinks, and they sing about him. Bacchus begins
]

ALL
: Monsieur Mingo for quaffing did surpass,
In cup, in can, or glass.

BACCHUS
: Ho, well shot! A toucher,
¹²³
a toucher! For quaffing Toy doth pass, in cup, in can, or glass.

ALL
:       God Bacchus do him right,
        And dub him knight

[
Here he dubs Will Summers with the black jack
.]

BACCHUS
: Rise up, Sir Robert Tosspot.

SUMMER
: No more of this, I hate it to the death.
No such deformer of the soul and sense
As is this swinish damn'd-born drunkenness.
Bacchus, for thou abusest so earth's fruits,
Imprisoned live in cellars and in vaults.
Let none commit their counsels unto thee;
Thy wrath be fatal to thy dearest friends;
Unarmed run upon thy foeman's swords;
Never fear any plague before it fall;
Dropsies and watery tympanies
¹²⁴
haunt thee,
Thy lungs with surfeiting be putrefied,
To cause thee have an odious stinking breath.
Slaver and drivel like a child at mouth;
Be poor and beggarly in thy old age;
Let thy own kinsmen laugh when thou complain'st,
And many tears gain nothing but blind scoffs.
This is the guerdon
¹²⁵
due to drunkenness;
Shame, sickness, misery, follow excess.

BACCHUS
: Now on my honour, Sim Summer, thou art a bad member, a dunce, a mongrel, to discredit so worshipful an art after this order. Thou hast cursed me, and I will bless thee. Never cup of nippitaty
¹²⁶
in London come near thy niggardly habitation. I beseech the gods of good fellowship, thou may'st fall into a consumption with drinking small beer. Every day may'st thou eat fish, and let it stick in the midst of thy maw for want of a cup of wine to swim away in. Venison bevenenum
¹²⁷
to thee, and may that vintner have the plague in his house that sells thee a drop
of claret to kill the poison of it. As many wounds may'st thou have as Caesar had in the Senate House, and get no white wine to wash them with. And to conclude, pine away in melancholy and sorrow, before thou hast the fourth part of a dram of my juice to cheer up thy spirits.

SUMMER
: Hale him away! He barketh like a wolf. It is his drink, not he, that rails on us.

BACCHUS
: Nay, soft, brother Summer. Back with that foot. Here is a snuff
¹²⁸
in the bottom of the jack, enough to light a man to bed withal. We'll leave no flocks behind us, whatsoever we do.

SUMMER
: Go drag him hence, I say, when I command.

BACCHUS
: Since we must needs go, let's go merrily. Farewell, Sir Robert Tosspot Sing amain ‘Monsieur Mingo' whilst I mount up my ass.

[
Here they go out singing ‘Monsieur Mingo' as they came in
.]

WILL SUMMERS
: Of all gods, this Bacchus is the ill-favourd'st, misshapen god that ever I saw. A pox on him, he hath christened me with a new nickname of Sir Robert Tosspot that will not part from me this twelvemonth. Ned Fool's clothes are so perfumed with the beer he poured on me that there shall not be a Dutchman
¹²⁹
within twenty mile, but he'll smell out and claim kindred of him. What a beastly thing is it to bottle up ale in a man's belly, when a man must set his guts on a gallon pot last, only to purchase the alehouse title of a boon companion? ‘Carouse, pledge me and you dare!' ‘Swounds, I'll drink with thee for all thou art worth!' It is even as two men should strive who should run furthest into the sea for a wager. Methinks these are good household terms: ‘Will it please you to be here, sir? I commend me to you. Shall I be so bold as trouble you? Saving your tale, I drink to you.' And if these were put in practice but a year or two in taverns, wine would soon fall from six and twenty pound a tun, and be beggar's money, a penny a quart, and
take up his inn with waste beer in the alms tub. I am a sinner as others: I must not say much of this argument. Everyone, when he is whole, can give advice to them that are sick. My masters, you that be good fellows, get you into corners and sup off your provender closely. Report hath a blister on her tongue; open taverns are tell-tales.
Non peccat quicunque potest peccasse negare
.
¹³⁰

SUMMER
: I'll call my servants to account, said I?
A bad account: worse servants no man hath.
Quos credis fidos effuge, tutus eris
:
¹³¹
The proverb I have prov'd to be too true.
Totidem domi hostes habemus, quot servos
.
¹³²
And that wise caution of Democritus:
Servus necessaria possessio, non autem dulcis
:
¹³³
Now here fidelity and labour dwells.
Hope-young
¹³⁴
heads count to build on had-I-wist.
Conscience but few respect; all hunt for gain.
Except the camel have his provender
Hung at his mouth, he will not travel on.
Tyresias to Narcissus promised
Much prosperous hap and many golden days,
If of his beauty he no knowledge took.
Knowledge breeds pride, pride breedeth discontent.
Black discontent, thou urgest to revenge.
Revenge opes not her ears to poor men's prayers.
That dolt destruction is she without doubt,
That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought
Simplicity and plainness, you I love:
Hence, double diligence, thou mean'st deceit
Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground,
And seem to eat the dust they crouch so low,
If they be disappointed of their prey,
Most traitorously will, trace
¹³⁵
their tails and sting.
Yea, such as, like the lapwing, build their nests
In a man's dung, come up by drudgery,
Will be the first that, like that foolish bird,
Will follow him with yelling and false cries.
Well sung a shepherd, that now sleeps in skies,
‘Dumb swans do love, and not vain chattering pies.'
¹³⁶
In mountains, poets
¹³⁷
say, Echo is hid,
For her deformity and monstrous shape.
Those mountains are the houses of great lords,
Where Stentor
¹³⁸
with his hundred voices sounds
A hundred trumps at once with rumour filled.
A woman they imagine her to be,
Because that sex keeps nothing close they hear;
And that's the reason magic writers
¹³⁹
frame
There are more witches women than of men,
For women generally, for the most part,
Of secrets more desirous are than men,
Which having got, they have no power to hold.
In these times had Echo's first fathers lived,
No woman, but a man, she had been feign'd
(Though women yet will want
¹⁴⁰
no news to prate).
For men, mean men, the scum and dross of all,
Will talk and babble of they know not what,
Upbraid, deprave, and taunt they care not whom.
Surmises pass for sound approved truths;
Familiarity and conference,
That were the sinews of societies,
Are now for underminings only us'd,
And novel wits, that love none but themselves,
Think wisdom's height as falsehood slyly couch'd,
Seeking each other to o'erthrow his mate.
Oh friendship, thy old temple is defac'd.
Embracing every guileful courtesy
¹⁴¹
Hath overgrown fraud-wanting honesty.
Examples live but in the idle schools:
Sinon
¹⁴²
bears all the sway in princes' courts.
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 Ireland
¹⁴⁷
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 bankrout
¹⁴⁹
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.