_Of what I did at Madrid, and what Happened to me on my way to Cerecedilla, where I passed the Night._
The poet withdrew awhile to study profaneness and nonsense for the blind ballad-singers till it was dinner-time, which being over, they desired to have the proclamation read, and having nothing else to do at that time, I drew it out and complied with their desires. I have inserted it here, because I reckon it ingenious, and pat to the purposes mentioned in it. It ran as follows:
_Against Addle-headed, Numskull, and Dry-brained Poets._
The old poetaster laughed out very heartily when he heard this title, and said, "I might have had business cut out till to-morrow; I thought this had concerned me, and it is only against numskull poets." I was mightily pleased with his conceit, as if he had been a Horace or a Virgil. I skipped over the preamble, and began with the first article, which was as follows:
In regard that this sort of vermin, called poets, are our neighbours and Christians, though wicked ones, and considering they spend all their days in worshipping of eyes, mouths, noses, and old ribbons and slippers, besides many other abominable sins they are guilty of, we think fit to direct and ordain, that all common halfpenny poets be confined together against Easter, as lewd women are wont to be, and that care be taken to convince them of their evil practices, and to convert them; and to this purpose we do appoint monasteries of penitent poets.
_Item._ Observing the excessive heats and droughts in the dog-days, caused by the abundance of suns, and other brighter stars, created and produced by those high-flying poets, we enjoin perpetual silence as to all heavenly beings, and appoint two months' vacation for the Muses, as well as for the law, that they may have some time to recruit and recover the continual charge they are at.
_Item._ Forasmuch as this infernal sect of men, condemned to eternal flights, as murderers of good words and ravishers of sentences, have infected the women with the plague of poetry, we declare that we look upon this mischief done them as a sufficient revenge for the damage we received from their sex at the beginning of the world; and to supply the present wants and necessities the world now labours under, we do farther ordain, that all the songs and other verses, made by poets in praise of women, be burned like old lace, to take out the gold and silver they put into their lady's hair and skins, and that all the oriental pearls, rubies, and precious stones be picked out of them, since they are so full of those rich metals and jewels.
