THE WORMING of a mad Dog:  
OR, A SOP FOR CERBERUS THE jailor of Hell.  
NO CONFUTATION BUT A sharp Redargution of the bayter of Women.  
By CONSTANTIA MUNDA— dux faemina facti.  Virg: Aen: 1. 
Sigenus humanum & mortalia temnitis arma,  
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.  
LONDON Printed for LAURENCE HAYES, and are to be sold at his shop near Fleet-bridge, over against St. Brides Lane. 1617.   

TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL LADY her most dear Mother, the Lady PRUDENTIA MUNDA, the true pattern of Piety and Virtue, C. M. wisheth increase of happiness.  

AS first your pains in bearing me was such  
A benefit beyond requital, that 'ttwere much  
To think what pangs of sorrow you sustained  
In childbirth, when mine infancy obtained  
The vital drawing in of air, so your love  
Mingled with care hath shown itself, above  
The ordinary course of Nature: seeing you still  
Are in perpetual Labour with me, even until  
The second birth of education perfect me,  
You travail still though Churched oft you be.   

In recompense thereof what can I give,  
But what I take, even that I live,  
Next to the heavens 'tis yours. Thus I pay  
My debt by taking up at interest, and lay  
To pawn that which I borrow of you: so  
The more I give I take, I pay, I owe.  
Yet lest you think I forfeit shall my bond  
I here present you with my writing hand.  
Some trifling minutes I vainly did bestow  
In penning of these lines that all might know  
The scandals of our adversary, and  
I had gone forward had not Hester hanged  
Haman before: yet what here I wrote  
Might serve to stop the curs wide throat,  
Until the halter came, since which I ceased  
To prosecute what I intended, lest  
I should be censured that I undertook  
A work that's done already: so his book  
Hath scaped my fingers, but in like case  
As a malefactor changeth place  
From Newgate unto Tyburn, whose good hope  
Is but to change his shackles for a rope.   

Although this be a toy scarce worth your view,  
Yet deign to read it, and accept in am  
Of greater duty, for your gracious look  
Is a sufficient Patron to my book.   

This is the worst disgrace that can be had.  
A Lady's daughter wormed a dog that's mad.   
Your loving Daughter CONSTANTIA MUNDA.   

To Joseph Swetnam.  

WHat? is thy shameless muse so fleged in sin  
So cockered up in mischief? or hast been  
Trained up by Furies in the school of vice,  
Where the licentious Devils hoist the price  
Of uncought mischief, & make a set reward,  
For hellhound slanderers that nought regard  
Their reputation, or the wholesome Laws  
Of virtues Commonwealth, but seek applause  
By railing and reviling to deprave  
The mirror of Creation, to outbrave  
Even heaven itself with folly: could the strain  
Of that your barren-idle-donghill brain,  
As from a Chemic Limbeck so distill  
Your poisoned drops of hemlock, and so fill  
The itching ears of silly swains, and rude  
Truth-not-discerning rustic multitude  
With sottish lies, with bald and ribald lines,  
Patched out of English writers that combines  
Their highest reach of emulation but to please  
The giddy-headed vulgar: whose disease  
Like to a swelling dropsy, thirsts to drink  
And swill the puddles of this nasty sink:  
Whence through the channels of your muddy wit,  
Your hotch-potcht work is drawn and the slimy pit  
Of your invective pamphlet filled to th'brim  
With all defiled streams, yet many swim  
And bathe themselves (oh madness) in that flood  
Of mischief, with delight, and deem that good  
Which spoils their reason, being not understood.  
When people view not well your devilish book,  
Like nibbling fish they swallow bait and hook  
To their destruction, when they not descry  
Your base and most unreverent blasphemy.  
How in the ruff of fury you disgrace  
(As much as in you lies) and do deface  
Nature's best ornament, and thinkest thoust done  
An act deserving commendation;  
Whereas thy merits being brought in sight,  
Exclaim thus on thee, Gallows claim thy right.   

Woman the crown, perfection, & the means  
Of all men's being, and their well-being, whence  
Is the propagation of all human kind,  
Wherein the bodies frame, th'intellect and mind  
With all their operations do first find  
Their Essence and beginning, where doth lie  
The mortal means of our eternity,  
Whose virtues, worthiness, resplendent rays  
Of perfect beauty have always had the praise  
And admiration of such glorious wits,  
Which Fame the world's great Herald sits,  
Crowning with Laurel wreaths & Mittle bows,  
The tribute and reward of learned brows,  
And that this goodly piece of nature be  
Thus shamefully detested, and thus wronged by thee.  
How could your vild vntutoured muse enfold  
And wrap itself in envious, cruel, bold,  
Nay impudent detraction, and then throw  
And hurl without regard your venomed darts  
Of scandalous reviling, at the hearts  
Of all our female sex promiscuously,  
Of commons, gentry, and nobility?  
Without exceptions hath your spongy pate  
(Void in itself of all things but of hate)  
Sucked up the dregs of folly, and the lees  
Of mercenary Pasquil's, which do squeeze  
The glanders of abuses in the face  
Of them that are the cause that human race  
Keeps his continuance: could you be so mad  
As to deprave, nay to call that bad  
Which God calls good? can your filthy claws  
Scratch out the image that th'Almighty draws  
In us his pictures? no! things simply good,  
Keep still their essence, though they be withstood  
By all the complices of hell: you cannot daunt  
Not yet diminish, (how ere you basely vaunt,  
With bitter terms) the glory of our Sex,  
Nor, as you michingly surmise, you vex  
Us with your dogged railing, why! we know;  
Virtue opposed is stronger, and the foe  
That's quelled and foiled, addeth but more  
Triumph to th' conquest then there was before.   

Wherefore be advised, cease to rail  
On them that with advantage can you quail.    

THE WORMING OF a mad Dog.  
THE itching desire of oppressing the press with many sottish and illiterate Libels, stuffed with all manner of ribaldry, and sordid inventions, when every foul-mouthed malcontent may disgorge his Licambaean poison in the face of all the world, 
Tincta licambaeo sanguine t●la dabit, Ovid in Ibin.  hath broken out into such a dismal contagion in these our days, that every scandalous tongue and opprobrious wit, like the Italian Mountebanks will advance their peddling wares of detracting virulence in the public Piatza of every Stationer's shop. And Printing that was invented to be the storehouse of famous wits, the treasure of Divine literature, the pandect and maintainer of all Sciences, become the receptacle of every dissolute Pamphlet. The nursery and hospital of every spurious and penurious brat, which proceeds from base phrenetical brainsick babblers. When scribimus indocti must be the motto of every one that fools himself in Print: 'tis ridiculous! but when scribimus insani should be the signiture of every page, 'tis lamentable our times so stupidly possessed and benumbed with folly, that we shall verify the Proverb, L'vsanza common non è peccato, sins customhouse hath non sine privilegio, writ upon his doors, as though community in offence could make an immunity: No! use of sin is the soul's extortion, a biting faenorie that eats out the principle. Yet woeful experience makes it too true, consuetudo peccandi tollit sensum peccatt, as may be seen by the works of divers men that make their pens their pencils to limb out vice that it may seem delicious and amiable; so to detract from virtue and honesty, as though their essence were only in outward appearance of goodness, as if mortality were only circumscribed within the conditions, of our sex, caelum ipsum petimus stultitia, foolish man will reprehend his Creator in the admirable work of his generation and conservation: Woman the second edition of the Epitome of the whole world, the second Tome of that goodly volume compiled by the great God of heaven and earth is most shamefully blurred, and derogatively razed by scribbling pens of savage & uncought monsters. To what an irregular strain is the daring impudence of b●●d-fold bayards aspired unto? that they will presume to call in question even the most absolute work composed by the world's great Architect? A strange blasphemy to find fault with that which the Privy Council of the high and mighty Parliament of the inscrutable Triunitie in Heaven determined to be very good. 
Gen. 1.  To call that imperfect, froward, crooked and perverse to make an arraignment and Bearbaiting of that which the Pantocrator would in his omniscient wisdom have to be the consummation of his blessed weeks work, the end, crown, and perfection of the never-sufficiently glorified creation. What is it but an exorbitant frenzy, and woeful taxation of the supreme deity. Yet woman the greatest part of the lesser world is generally become the subject of every pedantical goose-quill. 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  Every fantastic Poetaster which thinks he hath licked the vomit of his Coriphaeus and can but patch a hobbling verse together, will strive to represent unseemly figments imputed to our sex, (as a pleasing theme to the vulgar) on the public Theatre: teaching the worse sort that are more prone to luxury, a compendious way to learn to be sinful. These foul mouthed railers, qui non evident ut corrigant, sed quaerunt quid reprehendant, that reprove not that they might reform, but pry into actions that they might carp and cavil: so that in this infamous profession they far exceed the vildest kind of Pharisaical ostentation, and so surmounting beyond all comparison railing Anaxarchus, 
Aut ut Ana archus pila ●●nuaris in alta. Ovid in I●in. Benuenuto, 〈◊〉.  who for his detracting and biting tongue was pestled to death in a brazen mortar. Who as a learned Tuscan speaketh, gli miseri vanno a tentone altrevolte a carpone per facer mercatantia dell' altrui da lor inventata è seminata vergogna, impudicament cereano l'altrui deshonor erger la meretricia front & malzar la impudiche corna: these wretched miscreants go groping, and sometimes on all four, to traffic with other folks credits by their own divulged and dispersed ignominy. That impudently seek by others dishonour to set a shameless face on the matter, and thus to put out their immodest horns to butt at, and gore the name and reputation of the innocent, being so besotted with a base and miserable condition, and blind in themselves, they blush not in their tongues to carry the gall of Rabilius, and in their chaps the poison of Colimachus in their mouths, the flame of mount Aetna in their eyes, jupiters' lightning which he darted at the Centaurs, in their thoughts Bellona's arrows, in their serpentine words the bitterness of Sulmo against Orbecca, blending and commixing all their discourse with epaticke aloes and unsavoury simples, 
Plus aloes quam mellis habent.  deriving all their ingredients of their venomed Recipes from the Apothecary's shop of the Devil. Notwithstanding, as the same learned man metaphorically speaks, Cotesti usei scangerati, cittá senza muro, navi senza governo, vasi senza coperto caualli indomiti senza freno non considerano. These wide open-dores, these unwalled towns, these rudderlesse ships, these uncoverd vessels, these unbridled horses do not consider that the tongue being a very little member should never go out of that same ivory gate, in which, (not without a great mystery) divine wisdom and nature together hath enclosed, it signifying that a man should give himself either to virtuous speech, or prudent silence, and not let tongue and pen run up and down like a weaponed madman, to strike and wound any without partiality, very one without exception, to make such an universal massacre (for so I may term it, 
un coup de langue est p us dangereux qu' un coup de lance. 〈◊〉.  seeing words make worse wounds than swords) yet lest villainy domineer and triumph in fury, we will manicle your dissolute fist, that you deal not your blows so unadvisedly. Though feminine modesty hath confined our rarest and ripest wits to silence, we acknowledge it our greatest ornament, but when necessity compels us, 
Sop●o 〈◊〉 A● 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  'tis as great a fault and folly loquenda tacere, ut contra gravis est culpa tacenda loqui, being too much provoked by arrainments, baitings, and rancarous impeachments of the reputation of our whole sex, stulta est clementia— periturae parcere cartae, opportunity of speaking slipped by silence, is as bad as importunity upheld by babbling 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. 
Loqui quae de●●● est meli●s quam tacere.  Know therefore that we will cancel your accusations, travers your bills, and come upon you for a false indictment, and think not 'tis our waspishness that shall sting you; no sir, until we see your malapert sauciness reform, which will not be till you do make a long letter to us, 
Literam ●●ngam tra●●●●.  we will continue Iuno'es,  
Non sic abibunt odia vivaces aget violentus iras animus  
Saewsque dolor aeterna bella pace sublat â geret.  
Notwithstanding for all your injuries as Gelo Siracusanus answered Syagrius the Spartan, You shall not induce me though stirred with anger, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  to demean myself unreverently in the retribution of your injuries. You idol muse, and musing being idle (as your learned Epistle beginneth) shall be no plea to make your viperous scandals seem pleasing, ipsa excusatio culpa est. Where by the way I note your untoward nature contrary to all men, for whereas in all others of your sex by your confession, idleness engendereth love, in you hate: you say in the dedication of your book to your mistresses the common sort of women, that you had little ease to pass the time withal, but now seeing you have basely wron'gd our wearied and worried Patience with your insolent invective madness, you shall make a simple conversion of your proposition, and take your pastime in little ease: why? if you delight to sow thorns, is it not fit you should go on them barefoot and barelegged. Your idle muse shall be frankt up, for while it is at liberty, most impiously it throws dirt in the face of half human kind. 
Li●● lib. ●.  Coriolanus when he saw his mother and his wife weeping, natural love compelled him to leave sacking the City for their sakes, ab hoc exemplum cape, but your barbarous hand will not cease to ruin the fences, and beleaguer the forces of Gynaecia, not sparing the mother that brought forth such an untoward whelp into the world as thyself, playing at blindman-buffe with all, scattering thy dissolute language at whomsoever comes next: you never heard of a boy, an unlucky gallows that threw stones in the marketplace he knew not whither: the wisely-cynicke Philosopher bade him take heed lest he hit his father. Nomine mutato narretur fabula de te. You might easily, if you had had the grace, perceive what use to make of it. But you go forward, pretending you were in great choler against some women, and in the ruff of your fury. Grant one absurdity, a thousand follow: Alas (good Sir) we may easily gather you were mightily transported with passion. Anger and madness differ but in time. 'tTwere a pleasant sight to see you in your great standing choler and furious ruff together. Your choler (no doubt) was too great for a Spanish peccadillo, 
A little sin,  and your shag ruff seemed so grisly to set forth your ill-looking visage, that none of your shee-aduersaries durst attempt to confront your folly. But now let us talk with you in your cold blood. Now the lees of your fury are settled to the bottom, and your turbulent mind is defaecated and clearer, let's have a parley with you. What if you had cause to be offended with some (as I cannot excuse all) must you needs shoot your paper-pellets out of your potgun-pate at all women? Remember (sweet Sir) the counsel of Nestor to Achilles:  
— 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  

Anim●● in pectore sortem ●●●ineas, si●i qui bene temperat optimus esto.  It had been the part of humanity to have smothered your anger, hoping amends and reconcilement, and not presently to wreck your spleen. Architas in Tully would have taught you another lesson: 
Tuscul● 4.  Quo te inquit modo accepissem nisi iratus essem? But you (like a harebrained scold) set your claws in the face of the whole world. But this argues your levity joined with degenerate cowardice: for had you but considered with mature deliberation that (as Virgil speaks)  

〈◊〉. 2. — nullum memorabile nomen  
Fa minea in poena est, nec habet victoria laudem.  
'tis a poor achievement to overcome a woman, you would never have been so grievously troubled with the overflowing of the gall, neither would the relish of your furred palate have been so bitter, as what delicates soever you tasted should become unpleasing. I read of a mad fellow, which had lost his goods by sea, that whatsoever ships had come into the port at Athens, he would take a catalogue of them, and very busy would he be in making an inventory of the goods they brought in and received, thinking all to be his. So you having peradventure had some cursed wife that hath given you as good as you brought, whatsoever faults you espy in others, you take that to heart: you run a-madding up and down to make a scroll of female frailties, and an inventory of meretriciall behaviours, ascribing them to those that are joined in the sacred bands of matrimony. Because you have been gulled with brass money, will you think no coin currant? Because you have suffered shipwreck, will you dissuade any from venturing to traffic beyond Seas? Besides, you show yourself unjust in not observing a symmetry and proportion of revenge and the offence: for a pelting injury should not provoke an opprobrious calumny; a private abuse of your own familiar doxies should not break out into open slanders of the religious matron together with the prostitute strumpet; of the nobly-descended Ladies, as the obscure base vermin that have bitten you▪ of the chaste and modest virgins, as well as the dissolute and impudent harlot. Because women are women, you will do that in an hour, which you will repent you of all your life time after. Nay rather, if the ruff of your fury would have let you looked over it, you would have diverted the flood-gates of your poisoned streams that way where you perceived the common shore to run, and not have polluted and stained the clear and crystalline waters. Because women are not women, rather might be a fit subject of an ingenious Satirist. 
Iwen. Sat.  Cùm alterius sexus imitata figuram est: the reason is,  
Quàm praestare potest mulier galeata pudorem,  
Quae fugit à sexu?  
But when women are women, when we sail by the true compass of honest and religious conversation, why should you be so doggedly incensed to bark in general? why should you employ your invention to lay open new fashions of lewdness, which the worst of women scarce ever were acquainted with? imitating the vice of that Pagan Poet, whose indignation made verses, whose filthy reprehension opened the doors of unbridled luxury, and gave a precedent of all admired wickedness, and brutish sensuality, to succeeding ages; 
Scal. 3. lib. P●et. cap. 9▪  whom great Scaliger indeed censureth not worthy to be read of a pious and ingenuous man. That satire brands all his Countrywomen with the same mark:  
jamque eadem summis pariter minimisque libido est,  
Nec melior pedibus silicem quae conterit atrum,  
Quàm quae longorum vehitur ceruice Syrorum.  
But he lived in a nation earthly, devilish, sensual, given over to a reprobate sense, that wrought all filthiness with greediness. But you, sir, were whelped in a better age, at least in a better climate, where the Gospel is preached, and the voice of the Turtle is heard in our land; where you might see (if you could perfectly distinguish) if you were not in the gall of bitterness. Matchless beauties and glorious virtues shining together, you might behold (if outrageous rage had not drawn a film over your eyesight) the goodly habiliments of the mind combined with the perfection of outward comeliness and ornaments of the body. Is there not as many monuments erected to the famous eternising of charitable deeds of women renowned in their generations, as trophies to the most courageous Potentates? In the commemorations of founders and benefactors, how many women have emulated your sex in bountiful exhibitions to religious uses and furtherance of piety? I might produce infinite examples, if need were: but bray a fool in a mortar (said the wise man) yet he will not leave his foolery: Neither if whole volumes were compiled against your manifest calumnies, would you ever be brought to a palinody and recantation. We have your confession under your own hand, where you say you might have employed yourself to better use than in such an idle business. True:  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 
A fool speaks sometimes to the purpose. If you must needs be digiting your pen, the time had been far better spent if you had related to the world some stories of your travels, with a Gentleman learneder and wiser than yourself: so you might have beguiled the time, and exposed your ridiculous wit to laughter: 
Mr. Th● Co●●● Quid enim maiore ca●●●●●● accipitur v●●g●.  you might have told how hardly such an unconstant bella curtizana de Venetijs entertained you, how your teeth watered, and after your affections were poisoned with their heinous evils; how in the beginning of your thirty years travel and odd, 
In his first Epistle.  your constitution inclined and you were addicted to pry into the various actions of lose, strange, lewd, idle, froward and inconstant women; how you happened (in some Stews or Brothel houses) to be acquainted with their cheats and evasions; how you came to be so expert in their subtle qualities; how politicly you caught the daughter in the oven, yet never was there yourself; how in your voyages your stomach was cloyed with these surfeits, and therefore being a traveler, you had reason to censure hardly of women. Have you traveled half as long again as that famous Pilgrim, which knew the fashions of many men, 
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉.  and saw their Cities? Have you outstripped him in time, and come so short of him in knowledge? Is this all the manners you have learned abroad, these thirty and odd years? Is this the benefit of your observations? Is this all the profit your Country shall reap by your foreign endeavours? to bring home a company of idle humours of light housewives which you have noted, and divulge them in print to your own disgrace and perpetual obloquy? Have you traveled three times as long as an Elephant, and is this the first fruit, nay all the fruit of your idle addle coxcomb? Certainly you misspent your time in your travels: for it had been more profitable for you, if you had brought dogs from Iceland; better for your Country, if you had kept a dog there still. But 'tis easy to give a reason of your exasperated virulence, from your being a traveler: for it is very likely when you first went abroad to see fashions, 'twas your fortune to light amongst ill company, who trying what metal you were made of, quickly matriculated you in the school of vice, where you proved a most apt Nou-proficient, and being gulled of your patrimony, your purse was turned into a pass, and that by women. Like a dog that bites the stone which had almost beat out his brains, you come home swaggering:  
Prodiga non sentit pereuntem foemina censum,  
At velut exhausta redivivus pullulet arca  
Nummus, & è pleno semper tollatur aceruo,  
Non unquam reputant quantum sibi gaudia constant.  
Which if you cannot understand, is to this sense:  
A lavish woman thinks there is no stint  
Unto her purse: as though thou hadst a mint,  
She casts no count what money she'll beslow,  
As if her coin as fast as t'ebd, did slow.  
Such it may be (I speak but on suspicion) were the conditions of those minions your minority had experience of in your voyages. Wherefore none either good or bad, fair or foul, of what estate soever, of what parentage or royal descent and lineage soever, how well soever nurtured and qualified, shall scape the convicious violence of your preposterous procacitie. Why did you not snarl at them directly that wronged you? Why did not you collimate your infectious javelins at the right mark? If a thief take your purse from you, will you malign and swagger with every one you meet? If you be beaten in an Alehouse, will you set the whole Town afire? If some courtesans that you have met with in your travels (or rather that have met with you) have ill entreated you, must honest and religious people be the scope of your malicious speeches and reproachful terms? Yet it may be you have a further drift, to make the world believe you have an extraordinary gift of continency; soothing yourself with this supposition, that this open reviling is some token and evidence you never were affected with delicate and effeminate sensuality, thinking this pamphlet should assoil thee from all manner of levy and taxation of a lascivious life; as if, because you cynically rail at all both good and bad, you had been hatched up without concupiscence; as if nature had bestowed on you all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. 
〈◊〉 Concupisce●●●.  'twas spoken of Euripides, that he hated women in choro, but not in thoro, in calamo, but not in thalamo: and why cannot you be liable to the same objection? I would make this excuse for you, but that the crabbedness of your style, the unsavoury periods of your broken-winded sentences persuade your body to be of the same temper as your mind. Your ill-favoured countenance, your wayward conditions, your peevish and pettish nature is such, that none of our sex with whom you have obtained some partial conference, could ever brook your dogged frompard frowardness: upon which malcontented desperation, you hanged out your flag of defiance against the whole world, as a prodigious monstrous rebel against nature. Besides, if your currish disposition had dealt with men, you were afraid that Lex talionis would meet with you; 
Like for like.  wherefore you surmised, that inveighing against poor illiterate women, we might fret and bite the lip at you, we might repine to see ourselves baited and tossed in a blanket, but never durst in open view of the vulgar either disclose your blasphemous and derogative slanders, or maintain the untainted purity of our glorious sex: nay, you'll put gagges in our mouths, and conjure us all to silence: you will first abuse us, then bind us to the peace; we must be tonguetied, lest in starting up to find fault, we prove ourselves guilty of those horrible accusations. The sincerity of our lives, and quietness of conscience, is a wall of brass to beat back the bullets of your vituperious scandals in your own face. 'tis the resolved Aphorism of a religious soul to answer, ego sic vivam ut nemo tibi fidem adhibeat: by our welldoing to put to silence the reports of foolish men, as the Poet speaks;  
Vivendum recte tum propter plurima, tum de his  
Praecipue causis ut linguas mancipiorum contemnas.  
Live well for many causes, chief this,  
To scorn the tongue of slaves that speak amiss.  
Indeed I writ not in hope of reclaiming thee from thy profligate absurdities, for I see what a pitch of disgrace and shame thy self-pining envy hath carried thee to, 
unde altior esset casus & impulsae praeceps immane ruin.  for thy greater vexation and more perplexed ruin. You see your black grinning mouth hath been muzzled by a modest and powerful hand, who hath judiciously bewrayed, and wisely laid open your singular ignorance, couched under incredible impudence, who hath most gravely (to speak in your own language) unfolded every pleat, and showed every rinckle of a profane and brutish disposition, so that 'tis a doubt whether she hath showed more modesty or gravity, more learning or prudence in the religious confutation of your undecent railings. But as she hath been the first Champion of our sex that would encounter with the barbarous bloodhound, and wisely dammed up your mouth, and sealed up your jaws lest your venomed teeth like mad dogs should damage the credit of many, nay all innocent damosels; so no doubt, if your scurrilous and depraving tongue break prison, and falls to licking up your vomited poison, to the end you may squirt out the same with more pernicious hurt, assure yourself there shall not be wanting store of hellebore to scour the sink of your tumultuous gorge, at least we will cram you with Antidotes and Catapotions, that if you swell not till you burst, yet your digested poison shall not be contagious. I hear you foam at mouth and groule against the Author with another head like the triple dog of hell, wherefore I have provided this sop for Cerberus, indifferent well steeped in vinegar. I know not how your palate will be pleased with it to make you secure hereafter. I'll take the pains to worm the tongue of your madness, and dash your rankling teeth down your throat: 'tis not holding up a wisp, nor threatening a cucking-stool shall charm us out of the compass of your chain, our pens shall throttle you, or like Archilochus with our tart jambikes make you Lopez his godson: we will thrust thee like Phalaris into thine own brazen bull, and bait thee at thy own stake, and beat thee at thine own weapon, Quip minuti semper & infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas ultio: continuo sic collige quod vindicta nemo magis gaudet quam faemina. 'tis your Poets own assertion, that ultion being the delight of a weak and feeble mind belongs to us. 
Qu●m diri cons; ●●● facti● m●ns ●abet a to●itū & surdo verbe●● caedit. Occultum quatieute ●nimo tortore ●●agellum.  Thou that in thyself feelest the lash of folly, thou that confessest thyself to be in a fault, nay that thou hast offended beyond satisfaction, for 'tis hard to give a recompense for a slander: thou that acknowledgest thyself to be mad, in a rough fury, your wits gone a woolgathering that you had forgot yourself (as I think) Nero-like in ripping up the bowels of thine own Mother: for I have learned so much Logic to know quicquid dicitur de specie, dicitur de unoquoque individuo eiusdem speciei: whatsoever is spoken or praedicate of the kind is spoken of every one in the same kind: first therefore to bring you to an impious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or inconvenience. Is it not a comely thing to hear a Son speak thus of his mother: My mother in her fury was worse than a Lion being bitten with hunger, than a bear being rob of her young ones, the viper being trod on. No spur would make my mother go, nor no bridle would hold her back: tell her of her fault, she will not believe she is in any fault: give her good counsel, but she will not take it: if my Father did but look after another woman, than she would be jealous: the more he loved her, the more she would disdain him: if he threatened her, she would be angry: when he flattered her, than she would be proud: if he forbore her, it made her bold: if he chastened her, she would turn to a serpent: at a word, my mother would never forget an injury, nor give thanks for a good turn: what an ass than was my Father to exchange gold for dross, pleasure for pain: 'tis a wonderful thing to see the mad feats of my mother, for she would pick thy pocket, empty thy purse, laugh in thy face & cut thy throat, she is ungrateful, perjured, full of fraud, flouting, and deceit, unconstant washpish, toyish, light, sullen, proud, discourteous and cruel: the breast of my mother was the harbourer of an envious heart, her heart the storehouse of poisoned hatred, her head devised villainy, and her hands were ready to put in practice what her heart desired, than who can but say but my mother a woman sprung from the Devil? 
Pag. 15.  you from your mother, and so Swetnam is the devils Grandchild. Do you not blush to see what a halter you have purchased for your own neck? You thought in your ruff of fury like Augustus Caesar, to make an edict that all the world should be taxed, when yourself is tributary to the greatest infirmities: you blowed the fire of sedition with the bellows of your anger, and the coals are burning in your own bosom, Periculoso plenum opus alea, tractas & incedis per ignes suppositos cineri doloso. 
Hor● O●●●. 2.  Is there no reverence to be given to your mother because you are weaned from her teat, and never more shall be fed with her pap? You are like the rogue in the Fable which was going to the gallows for burglary, that bitten off his mother's nose, because she chastised him not in his infancy for his pettie-Larcenies: is this the requital of all her cost, charge, care, and unspeakable pains she suffered in the producing of such a monster into the light? If she had crammed gravel down thy throat when she gave thee suck, or exposed thee to the mercy of the wild beasts in the wilderness when she fed thee with the pap, thou couldst not have shown thyself more ungrateful than thou hast in belching out thy nefarious contempt of thy mother's sex. 
Ingratum si di●eero ●mnia di●●ro.  Wherefore me thinks it is a pleasing revenge that thy soul arraines thee at the bar of conscience, and thy distracted mind cannot choose but haunt thee like a bumbaylie to serve a sub paena on thee, the style and penning of your pamphlet hath brought you within the compass of a Praemunire, and every sentence being stolen out of other books, accuseth you of robbery. So that thou carriest in thyself a walking Newgate up & down with thee, thy own perplexed suspicions like Promotheus vulture is always gnawing on thy liver. Besides, these books which are of late come out (the latter whereof hath prevented me in the designs I purposed in running over your wicked handiwork) are like so many red-hot irons to stigmatize thy name with the brand of a hideous blasphemer and incarnate Devil. Although thou art not apprehended and attached for thy villainy I might say felony, before a corporal judge, yet thine own conscience if it be not seared up, tortures thee, and wracks thy tempestuous mind with a dissolution and whurring too and fro of thy scandalous name, which without blemish my pen can scarce deign to write, you find it true which the Poet speaks;  
Exemplo quodeunque malo committitur, ipsi  
Displicet authori, prima est haec ultio quod se  
judice nemo nocens absoluitur, improba quamuis  
Gratia fallacis praetoris vicerit urnam. 
Iwen: Sat: 13.   
What sin is wrought by ill example, soon  
The displeased Author wisheth it undone.  
And 'tis revenge when if the nocent wight,  
umpires his cause himself: in his own sight,  
He finds no absolution, though the eyes  
Of judgement wink, his soul still guilty cries.  
'tis often observed, that the affections of auditors (and readers too) are more offended with the soul mouthed reproof of the brawling accuser, than with the fault of the delinquent. If you had kept yourself within your pretended limits, and not meddled with the blameless and innocent, yet your prejudicate railing would rather argue an unreverent and lascivious inclination of a depraved nature, than any love or zeal to virtue and honesty: you ought to have considered that in the vituperation of the misdemeanours and disorders in others lines; this cautelous Proviso should direct you that in seeking to reform others, you deform not yourself; especially by moving a suspicion that your mind is troubled and festered with the impostume of inbred malice, and corrupt hatred: for 'tis always the badge and cognisance of a degenerous and illiberali disposition to be ambitious of that base and ignoble applause, proceeding from the giddy-headed Plebeians, that is acquired by the miserable oppressing and pilling of virtue. But every wrongful contumely & reproach hath such a sharp sting in it, that if it fasten once on the mind of a good and ingenuous nature, 'tis never drawn forth without anxiety & perpetual recordation of dolour, which if you had known, your hornet-braines would not have buzzed abroad with a resolution to sting some though you lost your sting and died for it: you would not like the cuttle fish spewed out your inky gall with hope to turn the purest waters to your own sable hue; ut non odio inimicitiarum ad vituperandum sed studio calumniandi ad inimicitias descenderes, that you would arm yourself, not with the hate of enmity to dispraise vice, but with the study of calumny to make enmity with virtue: yet 'tis remarkable that ignorance & impudence were partners in your work, for as you have of all things under the sun, selected the baiting, or as you make a silly solecism the bearebayting of Women, to be the tenterhooks whereon to stretch your shallow inventions on the trivial subject of every shackragge that can but set pen to paper: so in the handling of your base discourse, you lay open your imperfections, arripiendo maledicta ex trivio, by heaping together the scraps, fragments, and reversions of divers english phrases, by scraping together the glanders and offals of abusive terms, and the refuse of idle headed Authors, and making a minglemangle gallimauphrie of them. Lord! how you have cudgeled your brains in gleaning multitudes of similes as 'ttwere in the field of many writers, and thrashed them together in the flower of your own devizor; and all to make a poor confused misceline, whereas thine own barren soiled soil is not able to yield the least congruity of speech. 'tis worthy laughter what pains you have taken in turning over Parismus, what use you make of the Knight of the Sun, what collections out of Euphues, Amadis a Gaul, and the rest of Don Quixotes Library, sometimes exact tracing of aesopical Fables, and Valerius Maximus, with the like schooleboyes books, so that if these Pamphleteers would severally pluck a crow with you. Furtivis nudata coloribus moucat cornicula risum, let every bird take his own feather, and you would be as naked as Aesop's jay. Indeed you have shown as much foolery as robbery in feathering your nest, which is a cage of unclean birds, and a storehouse for the off-scowrings of other writers. Your indiscretion is as great in the laying together, & compiling of your stolen ware, as your blockishness in stealing, for your sentences hang together like sand without lime: you bring a great heap of stony rubbish comparisons one upon the neck of another, but they concur no more to sense, than a company of stones to a building without mortar, and 'tis a familiar Italian Proverb, duro è duro non famuro, hard and hard makes no wall, so your hard dull pate hath collected nothing that can stand together with common sense, or be pleasing to any refined disposition, rough and unhewen morsels digged out of others quarries, potsherds picked out of sundry dunghills: your mouth indeed is full of stones, lapides loqueris, but not so wisely nor so warily crammed in as the geese that fly over the mountains in Silicia, which carry stones in their beaks lest their cackling should make them a pray to the Eagles, where you might learn wit of a goose.  〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. 
Either speak peace, or hold your peace. Is it not irksome to a wise and discreet judgement, to hear a book stuffed with such like sense as this, The world is not made of oatmeal? I have heard of some that have thought the world to have been composed of atoms, never any that thought it made of oatmeal: Nor all is not gold that glisters, nor the way to heaven is strewed with rushes, for a dram of pleasure an ounce of pain, for a pint of honey a gallon of gall, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan, etc. None above the scum of the world could endure with patience to read such a medley composed of discords. Sometimes your dogrill rhymes make me smile, as when you come,  
Man must be at all the cost,  
And yet live by the loss:  
A man must take all the pains,  
And women spend all the gains:  
Their catching in jest,  
And keeping in earnest.  
And yet she thinks she keeps herself blameless,  
And in all ill vices she would go nameless.  
But if she carry it never so clean,  
Yet in the end she will be counted for a coney-catching quean.  
And yet she will swear that she will thrive,  
As long as she can find one man alive.  
I stand not to descant on your plain song; but surely if you can make ballads no better, you must be feign to give over that profession: for your Muse is wonderfully defective in the bandileeres, and you may safely swear with the Poet,  
Nec font labra prolui caballino,  
Nec in bicipiti somniasse Parnassus  
Memini.—  
Sometimes you make me burst out with laughter, when I see your contradictions of yourself; I will not speak of those which others have espied, although I had a fling at them, lest I should actum agere. Me thinks, when you wrote your second Epistle, neither to the wisest Clerk, nor yet to the starkest fool, the giddiness of your head bewrays you to be both a silly Clerk, and a stark fool: or else the young men you writ to must be much troubled with the megrim and the dizziness of the brain: for you begin as if you were wont to run up and down the Country with Bears at your tail. If you mean to see the Bearbaiting of women, then trudge to this Bear-garden apace, and get in betimes, and view every room where thou mayst best sit, etc.  
Now you suppose to yourself the giddy-headed young men are flocked together, and placed to their own pleasure, profit, and hearts ease. Let but your second cogitations observe the method you take in your supposed sport: In stead of bringing your Bears to the stake, you say, I think it were not amiss to drive all women out of my hearing, for doubt lest this little spark kindle into such a flame, and raise so many stinging hornets humming about mine ears, that all the wit I have (which is but little) will not quench the one, nor quiet the other. Do ye not see your apparent contradiction? Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici? You promise your spectators the Bearbaiting of women, and yet you think it not amiss to drive all women out of your hearing; so that none but yourself the ill-favoured Hunckes is left in the Bear-garden to make your invited guests merry: whereupon it may very likely be, the eager young men being not willing to be gulled and cheated of their money they paid for their room, set their dogs at you, amongst whom Cerberus that hellhound appeared, and you bitten off one of his heads; for presently after you call him the two-headed dog, whom all the Poets would feign to have three heads: You therefore having snapped off that same head, were by the secret operation of that infernal substance, converted into the same essence: and that may serve as one reason that I term you Cerberus the jailor of hell; for certainly quicksands quid dicitur de toto, dicitur de singulis partibus: That which is spoke of the whole, is spoken of every part; and every limb of the devil is an homogeneal part. Do ye not see (goodman woodcock) what a springe you make for your own self? Whereas you say 'tis a great discredit for a man to be accounted a scold, and that you deal after the manner of a shrew, which cannot ease her cursed heart but by her unhappy tongue; observe but what conclusion demonstratively follows these premises:  
A man that is accounted a scold, hath great discredit:  
joseph Swetnam is accounted a scold▪  
Ergo, joseph hath great discredit.  
If you deny the Minor, 'tis proved out of your own assertion, because you deal after the manner of a shrew, etc. where we may note first a corrupt fountain, whence the polluted puddles of your accustomed actions are derived, A cursed heart; then the cursedness of your book (which if you might be your own judge, deserves no more the name of a book, than a Collier's jade to be a King's Steed) to be the fruit of an unhappy tongue: thirdly, your commodity you reap by it, discredit. Nay if you were but a masculine scold, 'ttwere tolerable; but to be a profane railing Rahshekeh, 'tis odious. Neither is this all your contrariety you have included: for presently after you profess you wrote this book with your hand, but not with your heart; whereas but just now you confessed yourself to deal after the manner of a shrew, which cannot otherwise ease your cursed heart, but by your unhappy tongue: so your hand hath proved your unhappy tongue a liar. This unsavoury nonsense argueth you to be at that time possessed with the fault you say commonly is in men, to wit, drunkenness, when you wrote these jarring and incongruous speeches, whose absurdities accrue to such a tedious and infinite sum, that if any would exactly trace them out, they should find them like a Mathematical line, Divisibilis in semper divisibilia. 'twould put down the most absolute Arithmetician to make a catalogue of them: wherefore I could wish thee to make a petition, that you might have your books called in and burnt; for were it not better that the fire should befriend thee in purifying the trash, and eating put the canker of thy defamation, than thy execrable designs and inexcusable impudence should blazon abroad thy drunken temerity and temulent foolhardiness to future ages, than thy book should peremptorily witness thy open and Atheistical blasphemy against thy Creator even in the very threshold and entrance? but above all, where thou dost put a lie on God himself, with this supposition, 
Page 31.  If God had not made them only to be a plague to man, he would never have called them necessary evils: Which I thus anticipate; But God never called them necessary evils, Therefore God made them not to be a plague to man. Or else turning the conclusion to the mean thus: But God did not make them to be a plague, but a helper and procurer of all felicity; therefore God never called them necessary evils. Were it not (I say) far better for you that your laborious idle work should be abolished in the flames, than it should publicly set forth the apert violation of holy writ in sundry places? one in the beginning (as I remember) where you falsely aver, that the blessed Patriarch David exclaimed bitterly against women, and like the tempting devil you allege half Scripture, whereas the whole makes against yourself: for thus you affirm he saith; It is better to be a doorkeeper, than to be in the house with a froward woman. In the whole volume of the book of God, much less in the Psalms, is there any such bitter exclamation? But this is the ditty of the sweet singer of Israel, whereby he did intimate his love unto the house of God, and his detestation of the pavilions of the unrighteous by this Antithesis: It is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, than to dwell in the Tabernacles of the ungodly. Now if you have a private spirit that may interpret by enthusiasms, you may confine the Tabernacles of the ungodly only to froward women; which how absurd and gross it is, let the reader judge. Dost thou not blush (graceless) to pervert (with Elemas) the straight ways of God, by profaning the Scriptures, and wreathing their proper and genuine interpretations to by-senses, for the boulstering and upholding of your damnable opinion? beside thy pitifully wronging of the Philosophers, as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, etc. whom your illiterate and clownish Muse never was so happy to know whether they wrote any thing or no. Your ethnic histories, although they rather make against men than women, yet in your relation you most palpably mistake, and tell one thing for another, as of Holophernes, Antiochus, Hannibal, Socrates, and the rest which the poor deluded Corydons and silly swains account for oracles, and maintain as axioms. The quirks and crotchets of your own pragmatical pate, you father on those ancient Philosophers that most extremely oppose your conceit of marriage: for Plato made this one of his laws, that whosoever was not married at thirty five years of age, should be punished with a fine. Further he implies a necessity of marriage, even in regard of the adoration of God himself: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉: 'tis necessary that there should be a lawful generation and education of children, that life as a lamp may continue to posterity, that so there might always be some to worship God. What more divinely or religiously could be spoken by a Paynim? How then durst you say that the Philosophers that lived in the old time had so hard an opinion of marriage, that they took no delight therein, seeing the chief of them were married themselves? I could be infinite to produce examples and symbols to make you a liar in print: 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. 
Theognis.  Nothing is more sweet than a good wife. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, 
Protagoras.  He that hath a good wife, hath a merry life. Most famous is that retortion of Pittachus, one of the seven wise men of Greece, when he demanded a fellow wherefore he would not take to him a wife, and the fellow answered, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. If I take a fair wife, I shall have her common; if a foul, a torment. The wise man replied, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, If thou getst a foul wife, thou shalt not have her common; if a fair, no torments. There is as much reason for the one as the other: but 'tis but wasting paper to reckon up these obvious sayings. Let that same acclamation of Horace stand for a thousand others:  
Foelices ter & ampliùs,  
Quos irrupta tenet copula, nec malis  
Divulsus querimonijs,  
Suprema citiùs soluet amor die.  
Thrice and more times are they blest,  
That in wedlocks bands do rest,  
Whose faithful loves are knit so sure,  
That blameless endless they endure.  
But you that will traduce the holy Scriptures, what hope is there but you will deprave human authors. You tax Plato and Aristotle of a lascivious life that by the light of natural reason were chiefest establishers of Matrimony, both in regard of oeconomic, 
Plato ●●● de leg: Ar● 1. O●●on. cap. 7.  and politic affairs. do these things deserve commendations of any, but rather the scorn and reproof of all: what a silly thing it is, let Monsieur Swetnam judge, when Valerius Maximus relates in his 4. book, 
Page 49.  a history of one Tiberius Gracchus, that found two serpents in his bedchamber and killed the male, which by the prediction of South sayers designed himself to death, because he dearly loved his wife Cornelia, and you like an Ass tell this tale of Valerius Maximus, as if because joseph tells a tale of one Bias that bought the best and worst meat which was tongues, in the market: he that reads it should say that one lying Ass Swetnam bought the best and worst tongues; but certainly if that Bias had met with your tongue in the Market, he would have taken it for the worst and most unprofitable meat, because from nothing can come worse venom then from it: What should I speak of the figments of your dull pate, how absurdly you tell of one Theodora a Strumpet in Socrates' time, that could entice away all the Philosopher's Scholars from him: is not the vain and inconstant nature of men more culpable by this ensample than of women, when they should be so luxuriously bend that one silly light woman should draw a multitude of learned Scholars from the right way: yet neither Laertius, nor any that writ the lives of Philosophers make mention of this Theodora, but I have read of a glorious Martyr of this name, a Virgin of Antiochia, in the time of Dioclesian the Emperor, who being in prison, a certain barbarous Soldier moved with lust in himself, and the lustre of her beauty, would have ravished her by violence, whom she not only deterred from this cursed act by her persuasive oratory, but by her powerful entreaties by changing vestments wrought her delivery by him. I would run through all your silly discourse, and anatomize your basery, but as some have partly been bolted out already, and are promised to be prosecuted, so I leave them as not worthy rehearsal or refutation. I would give a supersede as to my quill: but there is a most pregnant place in your book which is worthy laughter that comes to my mind where you most graphically describe the difference and antipathy of man and woman, which being considered, you think it strange there should be any reciprocation of love, for a man say you delights in arms, and hearing the rattling drum, but a woman loves to hear sweet music on the Lute, Cittern, or Bandora: I prithee who but the long-eard animal had rather hear the Cuckoo than the Nightingale? Whose ears are not more delighted with the melodious tunes of sweet music, then with the harsh sounding drum? Did not Achilles delight himself with his harp as well as with the trumpet? Nay, is there not more men that rather affect the laudable use of the Cittern, and Bandore, and Lute for the recreation of their minds, than the clamorous noise of drums? Whether is it more agreeable to human nature to march amongst murdered carcases, which you say man rejoiceth in, than to enjoy the fruition of peace and plenty, even to dance on silken Carpets, as you say, is our pleasure? What man soever maketh wars, is it not to this end, that he might enjoy peace? Who marcheth among murdered carcases, but to this end, that his enemies being subdued and slain, he may securely enjoy peace? Man loves to hear the threatening of his Prince's enemies, but woman weeps when she hears of wars, What man that is a true and loyal subject loves to hear his Prince's enemies threaten: is not this a sweet commendation think you? is it not more human to bewail the wars and loss of our countrymen, then to rejoice in the threats of an adversary? but you go forward in your paralleling a man's love to lie on the cold grass, but a woman must be wrapped in warm mantles. I never heard of any that had rather lie in the could grass then in a featherbed, if he might have his choice; yet you make it a proper attribute to all your sex. Thus you see your chiefest elegancy to be but miserable patches and botches: this Antithesis you have found in some Author betwixt a warrior and a lover, and you stretch it to show the difference betwixt a man and a woman; sed nos hac a scabie teneamus ungues: I love not to scratch a mangy rascal, there is neither credit nor pleasure in it. You threaten your second volley of powder and shot, wherein you will make us snakes, venomous adders, and scorpions, & I know not what; 
Second Epistle.  are these terms beseeming the mouth of a Christian or a man, which is ovo prognatus eodem, did not your mother hatch the same Cockatrice egg to make you in the number of the generation of Vipers? and I take you to be of that brood which Homer calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, always lolling out the tongue, and all the Historiographers term Scopes that give a most unpleasing and harsh note, quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, cavilling and taunting, and as Caelius wittily notes them to be so called, quasi Sciopas, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 having their face obscured in darkness, so this your book being but the howling of a night-bird shall circumscribe thy name in the dungeon of perpetual infamy. Thou that art extolled amongst clowns and fools, shalt be a hissing, and a byword to the learned and judicious: in so much as thine unlucky shrieking shall affect thee with ghastly terrors and amazements: never think to set forth more alarms of your brutishness, but as Labienus, who was surnamed Rabbis madness, because he used such liberty of his detracting tongue, that he would without regard or discretion, rail upon all men in his exasperated mood; When all his books and writings were made a bonfire of (which in those days was a newfound way of punishing untoward wits) Eam contumeliam (saith mine Author) Labienus non tulit neque superstes ingenio suo esse voluit. Labienus took snuff at this contumelious destruction of his despised labours, he was unwilling to be the surviving executor of his own wit, whereupon in a melancholy and desperate mood he caused himself to be coffined up, and carried into the vault where his ancestors were entombed (thinking (it may be) that the fire which had burned his fame should be denied him) he died and buried himself together. I do not wish you the same death, though you have the same conditions and surname as he had, but live still to bark at Virtue, yet these our writings shall be worse than fires to torture both thy book and thee: Wherefore transcribing some verses that a Gentleman wrote to such an one as yourself. in this manner I conclude.  

Thy death I wish not, but would have thee live,  
To rail at virtues acts, and so to give  
Good virtues lustre. Seeing envy still  
Waits on the best deserts to her own ill.  
But for yourself learn this, let not your hand  
Strike at the flint again which can withstand  
Your malice without harm, and to your face  
Return contempt, the brand of your disgrace;  
Whilst women sit unmoved, whose constant minds  
(Armed against obloquy) with those weate winds  
Cannot be shaken: for who doth not mark  
That Dogs for custom, not for fierceness bark.  
These any footboy kicks, and therefore we  
Passing them by, with scorn do pity thee.  
For being of their nature mute at noon,  
Thou darest at midnight bark against the moon;  
Where mayest thou ever bark that none shall hear,  
But to return the like: and mayst thou bear  
With grief more slanders than thou canst invent,  
Or ere did practise yet, or canst prevent,  
Mayst thou be matched with envy, and defend  
Scorn toward that which all beside commend.  
And may that scorn so work upon thy sense,  
That neither suffering nor impudence  
May teach thee cure: or being overworn  
With hope of cure may merit greater scorn.  
If not too late, let all thy labours be  
Contemned by upright judgements, and thy fee  
So hardly earned, not paid: may thy rude quill  
Be always mercenary, and write still,  
That which no man will read, unless to see  
Thine ignorance, and then to laugh at thee;  
And mayst thou live to feel this, and then groan,  
Because 'tis so, yet cannot help, and none  
May rescue thee, till your checked conscience cry,  
This this I have deserved, then pine and die.   

Et cum fateri furia iusserit verum,  
Prodente clames conscientia; scripsi.   
FINIS.