lden, you run it fine. Take my advice
And don't be too ironical, my boy,
Or even the King will see it."
He chuckled again.
"But tell them of your tractate!"
"Here it is,"
Quoth Selden, twisting a lighted paper spill,
Then, with his round cherubic face aglow
Lit his long silver pipe,
"Why, first," he said,
"Camden being Clarencieux King-at-arms,
He read the King this little tract I wrote
Against tobacco." And the Mermaid roared
With laughter. "Well, you went the way to hang
All three of them," cried Lyly, "and, as for Ben,
His Trinidado goes to bed with him."
"Green gosling, quack no more," Selden replied,
Smiling that rosy silken smile anew.
"The King's a _critic_! When have critics known
The poet from his creatures, God from me?
How many cite Polonius to their sons
And call it Shakespeare? Well, I took my text
From sundry creatures of our great big Ben,
And called it 'Jonson.'
Camden read it out
Without the flicker of an eye. His beard
Saved us, I think. The King admired his text.
'_There is a man_,' he read, '_lies at death's door
Thro' taking of tobacco. Yesterday
He voided a bushel of soot_.'
'God bless my soul,
A bushel of soot! Think of it!' said the King.
'The man who wrote those great and splendid words,'
Camden replied,--I had prepared his case
Carefully--'lies in Newgate prison, sire.
His nose and ears await the hangman's knife.'

'Ah,' said the shrewd King, goggling his great eyes
Cannily. 'Did he not defame the Scots?'
'That's true,' said Camden, like a man that hears
Truth for the first time. 'O ay, he defamed 'em,'
The King said, very wisely, once again.
'Ah, but,' says Camden, like a man that strives
With more than mortal wit, 'only such Scots
As flout your majesty, and take tobacco.
He is a Scot, himself, and hath the gift
Of preaching.' Then we gave him Jonson's lines
Against Virginia. '_Neither do thou lust
After that tawny weed; for who can tell,
Before the gathering and the making up,
What alligarta may have spawned thereon_,'
Or words to that effect.
'Magneeficent!'
Spluttered the King--'who knows? Who knows, i