The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (47 page)

Every man can say Bee to a Battledore,
⁴⁹
and write in praise of virtue and the seven liberal sciences, thresh corn out of the full sheaves and fetch water out of the Thames; but out of dry stubble to make an after-harvest and a plentiful crop without sowing, and wring juice out of a flint, that's Pierce a-God's name,
⁵⁰
and the right trick of a workman.

Let me speak to you about my huge words which I use in this book, and then you are your own men to do what you list. Know it is my true vein to be
tragicus Orator
, and of all styles I most affect and strive to imitate Aretine's,
⁵¹
not
caring for this demure, soft
mediocre genus
, that is like water and wine mixed together. But give me pure wine of itself, and that begets good blood and heats the brain thoroughly. I had as lieve have no sun as have it shine faintly, no fire as a smothering fire of small coals, no clothes rather than wear linsey wolsey.
⁵²

Apply it for me, for I am called away to correct the faults
of the press, that escaped in my
absence from the Prin
ting-house.

THE PRAISE OF THE RED HERRING

The strange turning of
The Isle of Dogs
¹
from a comedy to a tragedy two summers past, with the troublesome stir which happened about it, is a general rumour that hath filled all England, and such a heavy cross laid upon me as had well near confounded me. I mean, not so much in that it sequestered me from the wonted means of my maintenance, which is as great a maim to any man's happiness as can be feared from the hands of misery, or the deep pit of despair whereinto I was fallen, beyond my greatest friends' reach to recover me; but that in my exile and irksome discontented abandonment, the silliest miller's thumb or contemptible stickle-bank
²
of my enemies is as busy nibbling about my fame as if I were a dead man thrown amongst them to feed upon.

So I am, I confess, in the world's outward appearance, though perhaps I may prove a cunninger diver than they are aware; which if it so happen, as I am partly assured, and that I plunge above water once again, let them look to it, for I will put them in brine, or a piteous pickle, every one. But let that pass (though they shall find I will not let
it pass when time serves, I having a pamphlet hot a-brooding that shall be called
The Barber's Warming Pan
), and to the occasion afresh of my falling in alliance with this lenten argument. That infortunate imperfect embrion of my idle hours,
The Isle of Dogs
before mentioned, breeding unto me such bitter throws in the teeming
³
as it did, and the tempests that arose at his birth so astonishing outrageous and violent as if my brain had been conceived of another Hercules, I was so terrified with my own increase, like a woman long travailing to be delivered of a monster, that it was no sooner born but I was glad to run from it.
⁴
Too inconsiderate headlong rashness this may be censured in me, in being thus prodigal in advantaging my adversaries but my Case is no smothered secret, and with light cost of rough-cast rhetoric it may be tolerably plastered over, if under the pardon and privilege of incensed higher powers it were lawfully indulgenced me freely to advocate my own astrology.

Sufficeth what they in their grave wisdoms shall proscribe I in no sort will seek to acquit, nor presumptuously attempt to dispute against the equity of their judgments, but, humble and prostrate, appeal to their mercies. Avoid or give ground I did.
Scriptum est
:
⁵
I will not go from it; and
post varios casus
,
⁶
variant knight-errant adventures and outroads and inroads, at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk I arrived in the latter end of autumn. Where having scarce looked about me, my presaging mind said to itself:
‘Hic Favonius serenus est, hic Auster imbricus
;
⁷
this is a predestinate fit place for Pierce Penniless to set up his staff in.' Therein not much diameter to my divining hopes did the event sort itself, for six weeks first and last, under that predominant constellation of Aquarius or Jove's Nectar-filler,
⁸
took I up my
repose, and there met with such kind entertainment and benign hospitality when I was
Una litera plusquam medicus
,
⁹
as Plautus saith, and not able to live to myself with my own juice, as some of the crumbs of it (like the crumbs in a bushy beard after a great banquet) will remain in my papers to be seen when I am dead and under ground; from the bare perusing of which, infinite posterities of hungry poets shall receive good refreshing, even as Homer by Galataeon was pictured vomiting in a basin in the temple that Ptolomy Philopater erected to him, and the rest of the succeeding poets after him greedily lapping up what he disgorged.

That good old blind bibber of Helicon, I wot well, came a-begging to one of the chief cities of Greece,
¹⁰
and promised them vast corpulent volumes of immortality if they would bestow upon him but a tender out-brother's annuity of mutton and broth, and a pallet to sleep on; and with derision they rejected him. Whereupon he went to their enemies with the like proffer, who used him honourably, and whom he used so honourably that to this day, though it be three thousand year since, their name and glory flourish green in men's memory through his industry. I trust you make no question but those dull-pated penny-fathers,
¹¹
that in such dudgeon-scorn rejected him, drank deep of the sour cup of repentance for it, when the high flight of his lines in common bruit
¹²
was ooyessed.
¹³
Yea, in the word of one no more wealthy than he was (wealthy, said I? nay, I'll be sworn he was a grand juryman in respect of me), those greybeard huddle-duddles
¹⁴
and crusty cumtwangs
¹⁵
were struck with such stinging remorse of their
miserable euclionism
¹⁶
and snudgery,
¹⁷
that he was not yet cold in his grave but they challenged him to be born amongst them, and they and six cities more entered a sharp war about it, everyone of them laying claim to him as their own. And to this effect hath Buchanan
¹⁸
an epigram:

Urbes certarunt septem de patria Homeri,
Nulla domus vivo patria nulla fuit
.

Seven cities strove whence Homer first should come;
When living, he no country had nor home.

I allege this tale to show how much better my luck was than Homer's, though all the King of Spain's Indies will not create me such a niggling hexameter-founder as he was, in the first proclaiming of my bankrout indigence and beggary to bend my course to such a courteous-compassionate clime as Yarmouth, and to warn others that advance their heads above all others, and have not respected, but rather flatly opposed themselves against the friar mendicants of our profession, what their amercements
¹⁹
and unreprievable penance will be, except they tear ope their oyster-mouthed pouches quickly, and make double amends for their parsimony. I am no Tiresias or Calchas to prophesy, but yet I cannot tell: there may be more resounding bell-metal in my pen than I am aware, and if there be, the first peal of it is Yarmouth's. For a pattern or tiny sample what my elaborate performance would be in this case, had I a full-sailed gale of prosperity to encourage me (whereas at the dishumoured composing hereof I may justly complain with Ovid,
Anchora iam nostram non tenet ulla ratem
,
²⁰
my state is so tossed and weather-beaten that it hath now no anchor-hold left to cleave unto), I care not if, in a
dim far-off launce-skip,
²¹
I take the pains to describe this superiminent
²²
principal metropolis of the red fish.

A town it is that in rich situation exceedeth many cities, and without the which,
caput gentis
,
²³
the swelling battlements of Gurguntus,
²⁴
a head city of Norfolk and Suffolk, would scarce retain the name of a city, but become as ruinous and desolate as Thetford
²⁵
or Ely; out of an hill or heap of sand reared and enforced from the sea most miraculously, and by the singular policy and uncessant inestimable expense of the inhabitants, so firmly piled and rampiered against the fumish
²⁶
waves' battery, or suing the least action of recovery, that it is more conjectural of the twain, the land with a writ of an
Eiectione firma
²⁷
will get the upper hand of the ocean than the ocean one crow's skip prevail against the continent. Forth of the sands thus strugglingly as it exalteth and lifts up his glittering head, so of the neighbouring sands no less semblably, whether in recordation of their worn-out affinity or no, I know not, it is so inamorately protected and patronized, that they stand as a trench or guard about it in the night, to keep off their enemies. Now, in that drowsy empire of the pale-faced Queen of Shades, malgre
²⁸
letting drive upon their barricadoes, or impetuously contending to break through their chain or bar, but they entomb and ballast with sudden destruction.

In this transcursive reportory,
²⁹
without some observant glance I may not dully overpass the gallant beauty of their haven, which, having but as it were a welt of land, or, as Master Camden
³⁰
calls it,
lingulam terrae
, a little tongue of
the earth betwixt it and the wide main, sticks not
³¹
to manage arms and hold his own undefeasibly
³²
against that universal unbounded empery of surges, and so hath done for this hundred year. Two mile in length it stretcheth his winding currents, and then meets with a spacious river or backwater that feeds it. A narrow channel or isthmus in rash view
³³
you would opinionate it. When this I can devoutly aver, I beholding it with both my eyes this last fishing, six hundred reasonable barks and vessels of good burden,
³⁴
with a vantage, it hath given shelter to at once in her harbour, and most of them riding abreast before the quay betwixt the bridge and the south gate. Many bows' length beyond the mark my pen roves not, I am certain. If I do, they stand at my elbow that can correct me. The delectable lusty sight and movingest object methought it was, that our Isle sets forth, and nothing behind in number with the invincible Spanish Armada, though they were not such Gargantuan boisterous gullyguts
³⁵
as they, though ships and galliasses
³⁶
they would have been reckoned in the navy of King Edgar, who is chronicled and registered with three thousand ships of war to have scoured the narrow seas and sailed round about England every summer. That which especiallest nourished the most prime pleasure in me was after a storm when they were driven in swarms, and lay close pestered
³⁷
together as thick as they could pack. The next day following, if it were fair, they would cloud the whole sky with canvas, by spreading their drabbled sails in the full clew
³⁸
abroad a-drying, and make a braver show with them than so many banners and streamers displayed against the sun on a mountain top.

But how Yarmouth, of itself so innumerable populous and
replenished, and in so barren a plot seated, should not only supply her inhabitants with plentiful purveyance of sustenance, but provant and victual
³⁹
moreover this monstrous army of strangers, was a matter that egregiously bepuzzled and entranced my apprehension. Hollanders, Zelanders, Scots, French, Western men, Northern men, besides all the hundreds and wapentakes
⁴⁰
nine miles compass, fetch the best of her viands and mangery from her market For ten weeks together this rabble rout of outlandishers are billeted with her; yet in all that while the rate of no kind of food is raised, nor the plenty of their markets one pint of butter rebated, and at the ten weeks' end, when the camp is broken up, no impression of any dearth left, but rather more store than before. Some of the town dwellers have so large an opinion of their settled provision that, if all Her Majesty's fleet at once should put into their bay, within twelve days' warning with so much double beer, beef, fish and biscuit, they would bulk them as they could wallow away with.

Here I could break out into a boundless race of oratory, in shrill trumpeting and concelebrating the royal magnificence of her government, that for state and strict civil ordering scant admitteth any rivals; but I fear it would be a theme displeasant to the grave modesty of the discreet present magistrates, and therefore consultively
⁴¹
I overslip
⁴²
it. Howsoever, I purpose not in the like respect to leap over the laudable pedigree of Yarmouth, but will fetch her from her swaddling clouts or infancy, and reveal to you when and by whom she was first wrought out of the ocean's arms, and start up and aspired to such starry sublimity; as also acquaint you with the notable immunities, franchises, privileges she is endowed with beyond all her confiners, by the descentine
⁴³
line of kings from the Conquest.

There be of you, it may be, that will account me a palterer, for hanging out the sign of the red herring in my title page, and no such feast towards for ought you can see. Soft and
fair, my masters, you must walk and talk before dinner an hour or two, the better to whet your appetites to taste of such a dainty dish as the red herring. And that you may not think the time tedious, I care not if I bear you company and lead you a sound walk round about Yarmouth and show you the length and breadth of it.

The masters' and bachelors' commencement dinners at Cambridge and Oxford are betwixt three and four in the afternoon, and the rest of the antecedence of the day worn out in disputations. Imagine this the act or commencement of the red herring, that proceedeth bachelor, master and doctor all at once, and therefore his disputations must be longer. But to the point, may it please the whole generation of my auditors to be advertised how that noble earth where the town of Great Yarmouth is now mounted, and where so much fish is sold, in the days of yore hath been the place where you might have catched fish and as plain a sea within this six hundred year as any boat could tumble in, and so was the whole level of the marshes betwixt it and Norwich.
An. Do
.
1000
or thereabouts (as I have scraped out of worm-eaten parchment) and in the reign of Canutus (he that died drunk at Lambeth
⁴⁴
or Lome-hith), somewhat before or somewhat after, not a prenticeship of years varying,
Caput extulit undis
,
⁴⁵
the sands set up shop for themselves; and from that moment to this sextine century (or let me be not taken with a lie, five hundred ninety-eight, that wants but a pair of years to make me a true man) they would no more live under the yoke of the sea, or have their heads washed with his bubbly spume or barber's balderdash,
⁴⁶
but clearly quitted, disterminated,
⁴⁷
and relegated themselves from his inflated capriciousness of playing the dictator over them.