Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/234

214 coat with foure elbowes (for any one that will weare it) is put to making, in defiance of the seuen wise maisters: for I haue smelt out of the musty sheetes of an olde Almanacke, that (at one time or other) euen he that iets vpon the neatest and sprucest leather, euen he that talkes all Adage and Apothegme, euen he that will not haue a wrinckle in his new Sattein suit, though his mind be vglier then his face, and his face so illfauouredly made, that he lookes at all times as if a tooth-drawer were fumbling about his gommes with a / thousand lame Heteroclites more, that cozen the world with a guilt spur and a ruffled boote; will be all glad to fit themselues in Will Sommer his wardrob, and be driuen (like a Flemish Hoy in foule weather) to slip into our Schoole, and take out a lesson. Tush, Cœlum petimus stultitiâ, all that are chosen Constables for their wit go not to heauen.

A fig therefore for the new-found Colledge of Criticks. You Courtiers, that do nothing but sing the gamuth-a-re of complemental courtesie, and at the rusticall behauiour of our Countrie Muse, will screw forth worse faces then those which God and the Painter has bestowed vpon you, I defie your perfumd scorne: and vow to poyson your Muske cats, if their ciuet excrement doe but once play with my nose. You ordinary Gulles, that through a poore and silly ambition to be thought you inherit the