The Poetical Works of the Ingenious and Learned William Meston ::

There liv'd, quoth Grim, a King and Queen,
As many in the world have been;
And this good King was call'd Saturnus,
'Tis true, or you have leave to burn us,
Or rather drown me in a ditch;
For tho' I'm old, I am no witch.
In his reign was the age of gold,
As by the poets we are told;

Who, tho' they be romancing fellows,
Yet of this age all that they tell us
Is true in every jot and tittle;
Instead of much, they say too little.
Then justice, peace, and truth, and plenty,
And good things, more than ten times twenty,
Prevailed among our towns and tribes;
No pensions then, nor posts, nor bribes,
Confer'd on members, to support
A corrupt ministry and court;
The subjects paid no pounds nor pence.
To pamper a luxurious prince.

Good men, by nat'ral procreation,
Have had bad sons in every nation,
For grace goes not by generation.
The first sons of a human creature,
When two, were of a different nature;
The one was godly, good and civil,
The other an incarnate devil,
Who griev'd his father and his mother,
By murdering his godly brother.

So Saturn had a graceless son,
Who long'd to mount his father's throne.
This youth (who was bred up in Crete,
And taught full well to lie and cheat,
A viperish imp, or hellish rather
To persecute so good a father),
Rigg'd out a very potent fleet,
In his own native country Crete,
Well mann'd with godless lying Cretians,
And dregs of all the other nations,
With pagan priests and Ganymedes,
Who had practis'd their hellish trades,
And fled to Crete themselves to shelter
From what they well deserv'd, a halter.

With this rare menzie coming o'er,
He reached peaceful Saturn's shore,
And, like a godless graceless son,
Expell'd his father from his throne,
Seiz'd all his goods and his palatium,
And drove him thence to lurk in Latium.

To tell you the sad desolation,
The doleful dumps and devastation,
The barr'ness of th'accursed soil,
Which mock'd the painful tiller's toil,
And painted famine in each face,
Religion treated with disgrace,
Decrease of trade, increase of taxes,
And honest men debar'd all access
To posts of honour, power, or trust,
Decay of wealth, and growth of lust,
Intestine frauds, and feuds, and jars,
And useless bloody foreign wars,
And all the ills that did ensue
The coming of this crafty crew,
The burdens under which men groan'd,
By few regarded, none bemoan'd,
And all the other desolations,
Wrought by that cursed crew of Cretians,
Would be a melancholy tale;
The thought e'en makes my spirits fail.

With grief old Grim was so opprest,
She fainted, thratch'd, and groan'd the rest
Of this sad dismal, doleful tale,
And made a sign to fetch her ale.
The poets strangely do amuse us
With invocations of the Muses;
And make us think, which very odd is,
Each of the Nine a powerful Goddess,

Who, by their skill, can soon inspire us
And with proetick fury fire us;
So have thy cramm'd our heads with stories,
And mask'd plain truth with allegories.
These Nine, in truth, were merry lasses,
Who sold good liquors in Parnassus,
Which oftimes set mens heads on rhyming,
On fiddling, whistling, piping, chiming,
And made their tongues glib in romancing,
Or set their agile feet a-dancing;
For all the poets inspiration
Proceeded from a good collation,
As by the sequel will appear,
When Goody Grim, instead of beer,
Had got a glass of forty-nine,
It made her wit and stile to shine
Beyond the power of muddy ale,
Which you'll see by the following tale.

University of Virginia Library

TALE I.

A GRECIAN TALE.