Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/90

76 led him, whether at the "Mermaid" or in his own house, to warm his naturally sluggish and saturnine temperament with wine.

He soon suffered from a severe attack of palsy, which shook his constitution to its centre. Disease was aggravated by the want which soon followed with swift retribution on his former profuseness. He now was again compelled by his necessities to betake himself to the stage. He produced "The New Inn," a play which, albeit some passages of great merit, scarcely deserved a better fate than it met with. There is little doubt that it was "completely damned." "The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure of his play, by some malicious spectators, begat the following ode to himself." This is Jonson's heading to it. We quote it almost entire.

"Come, leave the loathed stage, And the more loathsome age, Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, Usurp the chair of wit, Indicting and arraigning every day Something they call a play. Let their fastidious, vain Commission of the brain Run on, and rage, sweat, censure and condemn, They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

"Say that thou pour'st them wheat, And they will acorns eat; 'Twere simple fury still thyself to waste On such as have no taste! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread Whose appetites are dead! No, give them grains their fill, Husks, draff to drink and swill: If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not; their palate's with the swine.

"Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcaic lute, Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre,