“Well,” said I, “but what’s their punishment?” (for I began now to make the poets’ case my own). “Their punishments,” quoth the devil, “are many, and suited to the trade they drive. Some are condemned to hear other men’s works: (and this is the plague of the fiddlers too) we have others that are in for a thousand year, and yet still poring upon some old stanzas they have made of jealousy. Some again are beating their foreheads with the palms of their hands, and even boring their very noses with hot irons, in rage that they cannot come to a resolution, whether they shall say face or visage; whether they shall write jail or gaol; whether cony or cunny, because it comes from _cuniculus_, a rabbit. Others are biting their nails to the quick, and at their wits’ end for a rime to chimney; and dozing up and down in a brown study, till they drop into some hole at last, and give us trouble enough to get them out again. But they that suffer the most, and fare the worst, are your comic poets, for whoring so many queens and princesses upon the stage, and coupling ladies of honour with lackeys, and noblemen with common strumpets, in the winding up of their plays; and for giving the bastinado to Alexander and Julius Cæsar in their interludes and farces. Now be it known to you, that we do not lodge these with other poets, but with pettifoggers and attorneys, as common dealers in the mystery of shifting, shuffling, forging, and cheating: and now for the discipline of hell, you are to understand we have incomparable harbingers and quartermasters; insomuch that let them come in whole caravans, as it happened t’other day, every man is in his quarter before you can say what’s this.
“There came to us several tradesmen; the first of them a poor rogue that made profession of drawing the long bow; and him we were about to put among the armourers, but one of the company moved and carried it, that since he was so good at draughts, he might be sent to the clerks and scriveners; a sort of people that will fit you with draughts, good and bad, of all sorts and sizes, and to all purposes. Another called himself a cutter, we asked him whether in wood or stone? ‘Neither,’ said he, ‘but in cloth and stuff’ (_Anglicè_ a tailor); and him we turned over to those that were in for detraction and calumny, and for cutting large thongs out of other men’s leather. There was a blind fellow would fain have been among the poets, but (for likeness’ sake) we quartered him among the lovers. After him, came a sexton, or (as he styled himself) a burier of the dead; and then a cook that was troubled in conscience for putting off cats for hares: These were dispatched away to the pastry-men. A matter of half a dozen crack-brained fools we disposed of among the astrologers and alchymists. In the number, there was one notorious murderer, and him we packed away to the gentlemen of the faculty, the physicians. The broken merchants we kennelled with Judas for making ill bargains. Corrupt ministers and magistrates, with the thief on the left hand. The embroilers of affairs, and the water-bearers take up with the vintners; and the brokers with the Jews. Upon the whole matter, the policy of hell is admirable, where every man has his place according to his condition.”