what thus distemper'd I indite:
For it is hard a SATYRE not to write.
Yet, as a virgin that heats all her blood
At the first motion of bad<90.27> understood,
Then, at meer thought of fair chastity,
Straight cools again the tempests of her sea:
So when to you I my devotions raise,
All wrath and storms do end in calm and praise.

<90.1> Louis XI. of France was the prince here intended. See
MERY TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, No. 23 (ed. Hazlitt). I fear
that if Lovelace had derived his knowledge of this incident
<f>rom the little work mentioned, he would have been still more
sarcastic; for Louis, in the TALES AND QUICKE ANSWERS, is made
to give, not 500 crowns for a turnip, but 1000 crowns for a radish.

<90.2> Perhaps Lovelace is rather too severe on Sannazaro. That
writer is said to have occupied twenty years in the composition
of his poem on the Birth of the Saviour, for which he probably
did not receive a sixth part of the sum paid to him for his
hexastic on Venice; and so he deserved this little windfal, which
came out of the pocket of a Government rich enough to pay it ten
times over. See Corniano's VITA DI JACOPO SANNAZARO, prefixed to
the edition of his ARCADIA, published at Milan in 1806. Amongst
the translations printed at the end of LUCASTA, and which it seems
very likely were among the earliest poetical essays of Lovelace,
is this very epigram of Sannazaro. As in the case of THE ANT,
I have little doubt that the satire was suggested by the
translation.

<90.3> The battle of Lepanto, in which Don John of Austria and
the Venetians defeated the Turks, 1571.

<90.4> The Turkish crescent.

<90.5> Close, or shut up.

<90.6> i.e. write as a means of subsistence.

<90.7> Unrefined.

<90.8> Flay, excoriate.

<90.9> Original reads ALL MARKS.

<90.10> A hard toasted crust.

<90.11> A fee or gratuity given to a poet on a mournful occasion,
and made more liberal by the circumstances of affliction in which
the donors are placed.

<90.12> Generally, a mere coxcomb or dandy; but here the poet
implies a man about town who is rich enough to indulge
in fashionable luxuries.

<90.13> The ribbon by which the star of an order of knighthood
was attached to the breast of the fortunate recipient. It
sometimes also stood for the armlet worn by gentlemen in our
poet's day, as a mark of some lady's esteem. See Shirley's
POEMS (Works, vi. 440).

<90.14> A crude anagram.

<90.15> An imperfect acrostic. Few