A RECOMMENDATION TO Mercurius Morbicus. TOGETHER WITH A fair Character upon his worth.  

To the Reader.  
Unto the arrantest Knave that lives by bread,  
I send this greeting; (you may please to read)  
His name is Mordicus (a nonsense Talker)  
Which being interpreted, is Harry Walker;  
Th'old Liar General, and who but he  
Walks now in Print, lies by Authority:  
For 'nother cause, but lest the Rogue should vapour,  
I spend upon him thus much ink and paper;  
He stinks already both in verse and prose,  
And therefore when you name him, stop your nose.  
I may to many now seem to deface him,  
But when I physic take, O then, I'll grace him.   
Printed in the Year 1647.   

To Mercurius Morbicus.  
BOe to a Goose, Morbicus, Melancholicus is yet alive to give your lies the lie an Italian mile down your throat. What sirrah, do you think to lie by Sun-light, and yet pass like an Owl in darkness, not so much as to be seen, or notice taken of you? had you reduced your snakes unto one meal, or confined your malice within the rare discoveries of your hebdomedall journeywork, your weekly impudent Intelligence, it had been taken as an infirmity, a crime more tolerable; but to spit venom in volume, to belch poisonous airs in continued gusts, and that under the scrubbed, scabbed name of a gouty-headed Morbicus; so to bestink the City and Kingdom, that none can think upon you without a vomit; or name you without a stool or two: I am resolved in the behalf of my Friend Melancholicus, whom thou hast abused, and whose worth thou hast violated beyond the Laws of truth, modesty, or humanity (whose pen is too worthy to pitch upon such an uncivilised subject, an ulcerous. rotten-named Rascal as you are) to kick you either into more honesty or civility.  
And first of all I must tell the world, that this malicious Zoylus, but to leave his nature and to give him his own self godfathers worshipful firname, Morbicus, or Knight Hospitaller, in his smallbeer jests gins with a Proclamation (whereof this City-news-Cryers head hath been stuffed as full as a fardel, ever since he was pen-feathered in the Pillory, and had his fortune read in his forehead in Cheapside) and wherein he is pleased to give Melancholicus the title of a frenzy Priest (that was when the diseased Doctor Iremonger cast his water last) and that he hath a distempered brain, got nonsense by rote, etc. All which is as apparent truth, as that H. Walker is an honest man. But stay, Morbicus? sirrah, who gave you that Utopian name? I am sure, neither Calepine, Cooper, Thomas, Rider, nor any of our Anglo-Latines was ever guilty of any such false coin; but it appears to be your own, the pure stamp of your own witty Genius, (except you'd picked some Mountebanks pocket of it) and now the Evangelicall Iremonger and illuminated Pillorian, may plead antiquity with the primitive Fathers; the Albigenses, and Waldenses, were but younger brethren to him being of Apostolical descent, either from S. Thomas, or St. Bartholomew, grand Patriarches to the Lazaries of old Troynovant.  
Then the Fool comes in with a Character in yellow laced blue coat verse; but so sweetly composed, as harp and harrow in a Consort: able to make the Reader be-cack himself in prose. Then he mounts the stage, (enter Jeronimo) and faces his speech with a bald patch of beastly Greek as false as himself, and none knows the meaning of (except Morbicus;) and so proceeds into abominable raptures of knavery, lies, and nonsense, truly I abhor to name 'em, though his brazen face never blushed to print 'em. And for an Epilogue, he presents you with a piece of curtailed Intelligence licked over again, as his fashion is, to re-publish his well belshing lies with new titles.  
In his next, (which is his Go triumph) he father's strange names upon Melancholicus, miscalling him in his zealous knavery, by the name of Hacket, and Hacklet, and then tells him, he is a knave, for having two names; what then is H. Walker, and Luke Harruney? and yet the Rogue puts them upon him; for Melancholicus is no kin to 'em I wonder that he put not one of his own borrowed names upon him, that would have made him a knave indeed: but who can expect better stuff (be it spoke with reverence to his plush cloak) from such a nasty compound of incorrupted villainy? who hath no less than two and fifty lies in his last piece, dated Sept. 20. to Sept. 27. as if he would have no body lie but himself, and had engrosst knavery by Letters Patents. I had thought to have cast his water at this time, and given the Reader a perfect Relation of the constitution of this Hospital of Diseases; and from the effects, (out of charity) discourse the Cause and Cure of him, but of that another time; In the mean space I pray peruse his Character.  

Mercurius Morbicus his Character: What he was, what he is, and what he shall be.  
He was 
 Begot in obscenity, and brought forth in iniquity, a monstrous birth ominous to others, fatal to himself, sproughting into years, was settled in an occupation, an Iremonger by his trade; wanting nothing but the fear of God to make him an honest man; so that when old Time began to show new tricks, this pragmatist, being thrust forward, by selfe-ends, Envy, and Ostentation, began to claw the old men by the shoulders, crept into his books, (as fast his customers crept out of his) and would venture, (being naturally impudent) to show some tumbling tricks unto the world, to play Presto begun, with the Laws, to juggle with Religion, which he made a cover-knave for his Ambition, which plumped him to that growth, that no place but Moses Chair must serve him to play his feats in; where the inspired Rabbi began by his invisible revelations, to unmystery the Scriptures, and according to the illumination, to make Truth falsehood, and falsehood Truth, until Law and Truth sat Judges upon him, and forced him to recant his divinity in a pillory; who there improved so much his former impudence, that ever since he was able to manage his actions with incomparable, audacity, and outface the world with his forgeries for authentic verities; so that now  
He is 
 Doubly broke, both in hi● custom, and his conscience: but to hold up his head from sinking, he hath one bladder full blown with the breath of seeming sanctimony, and another with sycophantick insinuation; hanging by one hand on the countenance of the Parliament, by the other on the shoulders of the Faction; these keep him above ground, and have made him so notorious, that now he dares to write bad English (abhorring all other languages as Heretical) and is become the only Homer in prose, weekly to historize great Britan's Iliads: his ambition being in the Intellective part, he vents all his wit in print, and hath emptied his head, (that Magazine of infernal rogurie, and dissimulation) into the presses, not only of what he had, but what upon his cracked credit he could borrow without leave, his estate is too narrow for his mind, and therefore he hath wrought himself room in others affairs, and now struts as stiff as an Elephant in his new Office; hoping thereby to purge his nonsense, by the perusing and authorising others labours; courageous Pens must veil Bonnet to this Don Quixot; not a Muse must gad abroad except by Petition to this brazen calf for liberty; nor a truth peep out with his head, for fear of being bitten off by this Cannibal; whilst the varnished Loggerhead blesseth himself in his politic plot, and Garragantua conquest over the poor pamphlets, walks like a knave in print, speaks himself by authority, & charms down learning with blushless lies: no News stirring, but what passes by his door; and be it true or false, good or bad, all's one to him, he puts it off, though at the second, or third hand, for pure Orthodox; from home he now gins to tell of foreign discoveries, by the next we expect wonders from Terra incognita in a nutshell. In a word he shows well to all, but seldom says well of any, but himself, and yet himself is still himself, and that's the worst thing that he hath, his works and he comes all out of one shop, gins like a candle with a blaze, and goes out with a stink, he is any thing of what is nought, nothing of what he should be, if any thing is good, worse when an Angel, then when a devil, a right Spanish soldier, or an Italian theatre; a bladder filled with several winds, the best infectious, a fool's wonder, and the wise man's fool, and  
Shall be 
 Enough miserable by being himself; as he hath been uncharitable in his censures, impudent in his forgeries; so he shall be unquiet in his fears, his own terror, and his souls rack and tormentor; as soon as the wind comes about, and the wheel turns, he shall account it happiness to enjoy one hours' liberty to bewail his own baseness and villainy, and then— 
moveat Cornicula risum,  
Furtivis nudata coloribus.  And then shall all his cunning tricks result upon his loath some stomach, his hypocritical delusions buffet him on the cheeks, his unlimited lies fly by flocks in his face, and all his knavery return into its first principle, himself; and every fool will point the finger at him, and say, There goes Id. Walker the dissembling knave; and when he dies, every witty Pen will rejoice at the fall of such an Enemy, and ring out his passing knell in scoffing rhymes: if he make (as it is very like) his end at the Gallows, then says one: 
Here hangs Walker in a string  
That Judas-like did hate his King:  
Faithless, fruitless he was ever,  
Except in lies, but loyal never.  
From hence h'as taken wing to be  
Old Belzebubs chief Mercury.   
If he dies in his bed, then says another: 
Walker the Iremonger, a goodly rich prize,  
Death sent to the Devil for telling of lies:  
Where now without check, he may let his pen run,  
In legends of wonders, and what here was done  
In Parliament, Army, and our times here so sad,  
I'assure you better Scribe, the Devil ne'er had.   
Then says another: 
Here lies the Iremonger, who'll deny it?  
Whose busy brains did make him live unquiet:  
'Tis but his body rests; his soul not so,  
That's gone to preach unto the Saints below.     
FINIS.