Sweet wench, I love thee: yet I will not sue, Or show my love as musky courtiers do; I'll not carouse a health to honour thee, In this same bezzling[572] drunken courtesy, And, when all's quaff'd, eat up my bousing-glass[573] In glory that I am thy servile ass; Nor will I wear a rotten Bourbon lock,[574] As some sworn peasant to a female smock. Well-featur'd lass, thou know'st I love thee dear: Yet for thy sake I will not bore mine ear, To hang thy dirty silken shoe-tires there; Nor for thy love will I once gnash a brick, Or some pied colours in my bonnet stick:[575] But, by the chaps of hell, to do thee good, I'll freely spend my thrice-decocted blood.
[570] This sonnet and the two following pieces are only found in Isham copy and ed. A.
[573] "Bouse" was a cant term for "drink."
[575] It was a common practice for gallants to wear their mistresses' garters in their hats.
_Lucans First Booke Translated Line for Line, By Chr. Marlow. At London, Printed by P. Short, and are to be sold by Walter Burre at the Signe of the Flower de Luce in Paules Churchyard_, 1600, 4_to._
This is the only early edition. The title-page of the 1600 4to. of _Hero and Leander_ has the words, "Whereunto is added the first booke of Lucan;" but the two pieces are not found in conjunction.
TO HIS KIND AND TRUE FRIEND, EDWARD BLUNT.[576]
Blunt,[577] I propose to be blunt with you, and, out of my dulness, to encounter you with a Dedication in memory of that pure elemental wit, Chr. Marlowe, whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the Churchyard,[578] in, at the least, three or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, and grow humorously frantic upon the taste of it. Well, lest you should, let me tell you, this spirit was sometime a familiar of your own, _Lucan's First Book translated_; which, in regard of your old right in it, I have raised in the circle of your patronage. But stay now, Edward: if I mistake not, you are to accommodate yourself with some few instructions, touching the property of a patron, that you are not yet possessed of; and to study them for your better grace, as our gallants do fashions. First, you must be proud, and think you have merit enough in you, though you are ne'er so empty; then, when I bring you the book, take physic, and keep state; assign me a time by your man to come again; and, afore the day, be sure to have changed your lodging; in the meantime sleep little, and sweat with the invention of some pitiful dry jest or two, which you may happen to utter with some little, or not at all, marking of your friends, when you have found a place for them to come in at; or, if by chance something has dropped from you worth the taking up, weary all that come to you with the often repetition of it; censure, scornfully enough, and somewhat like a traveller; commend nothing, lest you discredit your (that which you would seem to have) judgment. These things, if you can mould yourself to them, Ned, I make no question that they will not become you. One special virtue in our patrons of these days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is, to give nothing; yes, thy love I will challenge as my peculiar object, both in this, and, I hope, many more succeeding offices. Farewell: I affect not the world should measure my thoughts to thee by a scale of this nature: leave to think good of me when I fall from thee.