hat would
they have done if they had seen these? Verily they would have had more
reason to wish themselves an hundred throats than they then had to
pronounce them.

There are some that drive a trade in writing in praise of other writers
(like rooks, that bet on gamesters' hands), not at all to celebrate the
learned author's merits, as they would show but their own wits, of which
he is but the subject. The lechery of this vanity has spawned more
writers than the civil law. For those whose modesty must not endure to
hear their own praises spoken may yet publish of themselves the most
notorious vapours imaginable. For if the privilege of love be
allowed--_Dicere quiz puduit, scribere jussit amor_--why should it not
be so in self-love too? For if it be wisdom to conceal our
imperfections, what is it to discover our virtues? It is not likely that
Nature gave men great parts upon such terms as the fairies used to give
money, to pinch and leave them if they speak of it. They say--Praise is
but the shadow of virtue, and sure that virtue is very foolish that is
afraid of its own shadow.

When he writes anagrams he uses to lay the outsides of his verses even
(like a bricklayer) by a line of rhyme and acrostic, and fill the middle
with rubbish. In this he imitates Ben Jonson, but in nothing else.

There was one that lined a hatcase with a paper of Benlowes' poetry;
Prynne bought it by chance and put a new demi-castor into it. The first
time he wore it he felt only a singing in his head, which within two
days turned to a vertigo. He was let blood in the ear by one of the
State physicians, and recovered; but before he went abroad he wrote a
poem of rocks and seas, in a style so proper and natural that it was
hard to determine which was ruggeder.

There is no feat of activity nor gambol of wit that ever was performed
by man, from him that vaults on Pegasus to him that tumbles through the
hoop of an anagram, but Benlowes has got the mastery in it, whether it
be high-rope wit or low-rope wit. He has all sorts of echoes, rebuses,
chronograms, &c., besides carwitchets, clenches, and quibbles. As for
altars and pyramids in poetry, he has outdone all men that way; for he
has made a gridiron and a frying-pan in verse, that, beside the likeness
in shape, the very tone and sound of the words did perfectly represent
the noise that is made by those utensils, such as the old poet called
_sartago loquendi_. When he was a captain he made all t