Part 1

The Augustan Reprint Society

JOHN PHILLIPS _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_ (1655)

With an Introduction by Leon Howard

Publication Number 38

Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1953

GENERAL EDITORS

H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_

RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_

RALPH COHEN, _University of California, Los Angeles_

VINTON A. DEARING, _University of California, Los Angeles_

ASSISTANT EDITOR

W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_

ADVISORY EDITORS

EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_

BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_

LOUIS BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_

JOHN BUTT, _King’s College, University of Durham_

JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_

ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_

EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_

LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_

SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_

EARNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_

JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_

H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

EDNA C. DAVIS, _Clark Memorial Library_

INTRODUCTION

John Phillips’ anonymous poem, _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on March 14, 1654-55 as the work of his brother Edward and the property of his publisher Nathaniel Brook, and it was probably published on August 17 (David Masson, _The Life of John Milton_ [London, 1877], V, 228n., cites the “Thomason copy” as indicating the date of publication). Actually, two issues appeared in 1655. One gave no indication of the publisher and is reproduced here, as perhaps the rarest, from the copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. The other was “Printed for N.B. at the Angel in Corn-hill.” The 1655 text was reprinted in 1661 as _The Religion of the Hypocritical Presbyterians in Meeter_, and a revised and enlarged edition appeared in 1671 under the original title. It was this rather than the original version which is known through the summary given by William Godwin (_Lives of Edward and John Phillips_ [London, 1815], pp. 49-51) and quoted by Masson as the most “exact description” possible of the 1655 “performance” (_ibid._, V, 228). Other editions have been recorded for 1674, 1677, 1680, 1689, and 1710, the last being attributed to the author’s uncle, John Milton. Of these, the editions which I have seen show only minor revisions of the 1671 text. A holograph manuscript, preserved in the Bodleian Library, includes a two-page dedication to the successful barrister John Churchill, but the dedication was apparently never printed.

Neither the unpublished dedication nor the poem itself contains a clear indication of the purpose or the direction of the satire. In pleading her case for John Phillips’ authorship of the anonymous life of Milton, Miss Helen Derbyshire (_The Early Lives of Milton_ [London, 1932], pp. xxii-xxv) has taken issue with the common statement that it marked Phillips’ departure from his uncle’s teachings and has described it as a satire against the Presbyterians from an Independent position with which Milton might well have sympathized. Yet the text hardly supports these contentions. The Sunday service which Phillips burlesques shows no signs of Presbyterian discipline. In fact, sectarianism is almost at its worst in his picture of a congregation crying destruction against Covenant-breakers, making grinning appeals for free grace, and screaming for the Fifth Monarchy in a state of revelation-madness. Furthermore, the Brother Elnathan who makes his appearance at the dinner following the Wednesday service received his name in a Baptist “Ducking-pond” rather than from the customary Presbyterian sprinkling. There may be some significance, too, in the fact that the particularly satiric reference to “the man midwife,” Dr. Peter Chamberlain, was to a noted Independent.

On the other hand, the church specifically identified as the scene of the weekday service was St. Mary’s Aldermanbury, and its minister was the Reverend Edmund Calamy, whose inclinations were Presbyterian and whose personally conducted fastday services were notoriously popular. Although Calamy’s custom of preaching from the desk rather than from the pulpit makes it unlikely that he was the minister satirized in the early part of the poem, he would normally have been identified as the object of Phillips’ most severe and scandalous attack; and the device of having him refer to “the Laud” instead of the Lord may have had reference to the rumors of early conformity which still haunted Calamy despite his service to the Puritan cause as one of the Smectymnuans and a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. There is no evidence, however, that Presbyterianism as a particular nonconformist sect stirred Phillips to any special antagonism.

In any case, it seems impossible to represent _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_ seriously as a document of which John Milton would have approved. If he could have tolerated the violation of the Scriptures and the punning obscenity of his nephew’s introduction of the Prophet Habakkuk into the poem, he might have felt a personal offense in the use of such material for an attack upon the church in which he was to register his espousal of the pure-minded Katharine Woodcock. At best, Milton could have considered this first rhymed flowering of his nephew’s satiric humor a pointless piece of scurrility which lacked real wit, coherence, or character. If Phillips did not publish it in open recalcitrance, he published it with less confidence in his uncle’s sympathy than in his blindness and in the decent reluctance of friends to disclose the extent of a young man’s departure from the paths of good instruction.

The republication of _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_ as _The Religion of the Hypocritical Presbyterians_, in 1661, was no more than an attempt to attract new interest with a title which would appeal to the post-Restoration tendency to condemn the strongest of the Puritan sects. The incongruity between the new title and the old poem, though, seems to have been more evident to the author than to later readers; for in the 1671 edition he introduced a satire on the ceremony of infant baptism which nullified the allusion to the “Ducking-pond” by making the Sunday congregation, at least, clearly Presbyterian. The other major revisions and additions were in the direction of greater licentiousness and more frequent references to “the Laud.” The editions of 1680 and 1689 (which are the only two later versions I have seen) are based upon that of 1671 and contain only such minor changes as might have been made by a printer alert to the possibility of introducing new bawdy implications by the change of an occasional word or letter.

The Bodleian manuscript is an approximate but not a true copy of the version which was first printed. A few lines appear in the published poem which are not to be found in the manuscript, the printed marginal annotations are fewer in number and considerably changed, and there are some differences in the musical notation. Except for an indication that the old Robin mentioned at the beginning of the poem was a particular “fool well known in the city,” however, the manuscript annotations are similar in character to those printed and add little to the comprehensibility of the text. The author’s signed dedication to Churchill shows an inclination (like that revealed in the concluding lines of the published text) to justify his poem as a defense of true religion against the sectaries whose words and actions brought it into contempt; but _A Satyr Against Hypocrites_ appears to have been, in reality, little more than the irresponsible outburst of a young man of twenty-three who was tired of discipline, disappointed in his expectations of political preferment, and angry at the sort of people who had taken over the country but who seemed incapable of appreciating his peculiar merits.

Leon Howard University of California, Los Angeles

_A_ SATYR Against HYPOCRITES

Juvenal. Sat. 1.

_Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum._

Juvenal. Sat. 14.

----_Velocius & citius nos_---- _Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla domestica, magnis_ _Cum subeant animos autoribus._

Printed in the Year, 1655.

_A Satyr against Hypocrites._

Tedious have been our Fasts, and long our Prayers; To keep the Sabbath such have been our cares, That _Cisly_ durst not milk the gentle Malls, To the great dammage of my Lord Mayors Fooles, Which made the greazie Catchpoles sweare and curse The Holy-day for want o’th’ second course; And men have lost their Body’s new adorning Because their cloathes could not come home that morning. The sins of Parlament have long been bawl’d at, The vices of the City have been yawl’d at, Yet no amendment; Certainly, thought I, This is a Paradox beyond all cry. Why if you ask the people, very proudly They answer straight, That they are very godly. Nor could we lawfully suspect the Priest, Alas, for he cry’d out, _I bring you Christ_: And trul’ he spoke with so much confidence, That at that time it seem’d a good pretence: Then where’s the fault? thought I: Well, I must know; So putting on cleane cuffes, to Church I goe. Now ’gan the Bells to jangle in the Steeple, And in a row to Church went all the people. First came poore Matrons stuck with Lice like Cloves, Devoutly come to worship their white loaves, And may be smelt above a German mile. Well, let them goe to fume the Middle-Ile. But here’s the sight that doth men good to see’t, Grave Burghers, with their Posies, Sweet, sweet, sweet, With their fat Wives. Then comes old _Robin_ too, Who although write or reade he neither doe, Yet hath his Testament chain’d to his waste, And his blind zeale feels out the proofs as fast, And makes as greasie Dogs-ears as the best. A new shav’d Cobler follows him, as it hapt, With his young _Cake bread_ in his cloak close wrapt; Then panting comes his Wife from t’other end O’th’ Town to hear Our Father and see a friend; Then came the shops young Fore-man, ’tis presum’d, With hair rose water’d, and his gloves perfum’d, With his blew shoo-strings too, and besides that, A riband with a sentence in his hat. The Virgins too, the fair one, and the Gypsie, _Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ_. And now the silk’n Dames throng in, good store, And casting up their noses, to th’ pew dore They come, croud in, for though the pew be full They must and will have room, I, that they wull; Streight that she sits not uppermost distast One takes; ’Tis fine that I must be displac’d By you, she cries then, Good Mistris Gill Flurt; Gill Flurt, enrag’d cries t’other, Why ya dirt- -ie piece of Impudence, ye ill-bred Thief. I scorn your terms, good Mistris Thimble-mans wife. Marry come up, cries t’other, pray forbear, Surely your husband’s but a Scavenger, Cries t’other then, and what are you I pray? No Aldermans wife for all you are so gay. Is it not you that to all Christenings frisk it? And to save bread, most shamefully steal the bisket, At which the other mad beyond all law, Unsheaths her talons, and prepares to claw. And sure some gorgets had been torn that day, But that the Readers voice did part the fray.

Now what a wardrobe could I put to view, The cloak-bag-breeches, and the sleek-stone shoe, The Gallimafry cloak that looks like nonsense, Now wide, now narrow, like his Master’s conscience: The grogram gown of such antiquity, That _Speed_ could never finde its pedigree; Fit to be doted on by Antiquary’s, Who hence may descant in their old Glossary’s, What kinde of fardingale fair _Helen_ wore, How wings in fashion came, because wings bore The Swan-transformed _Leda_ to _Jove_’s lap, Our Matrons hoping thence the same good hap; The pent-house bever, and calves-chaudron ruff, But of these frantick fashions now enough, For now there shall no more of them be said, Lest this my ware-house spoil the French-men’s trade. And now as if I were that wollen-spinster, That doth so gravely show you _Sarum_ Minster, He lead ye round the Church from pew to pew, And shew you what doth most deserve your view, There stood the Font, in times of Christianity, But now ’tis tak’n down, men call it Vanity; [Sidenote: Ingredients that compound a Congregation.] There the Church-Wardens sit, hard by the dore, But know ye why they sit among the Poor? Because they love um well for love o’th’ box, Their money buys good beef, good wine, good smocks. There sits the Clerk, and there the reverend Reader, And there’s the Pulpit for the good flock-Feeder, Who in three lamentable dolefull ditty’s Unto their marriage-fees sing _Nunc dimittis_. Here sits a learned Justice, truly so Some people say, and some again say no, And yet methinks in this he seemeth wise To make _Stypone_ yeild him an excise, And though on Sundaies, Ale-houses must down, Yet wisely all the week lets them alone, For well his Worship knows that Ale-house sins Maintain himself in gloves, his wife in pins. There sits the Major, as fat as any bacon With eating custard, beef, and rumps of capon; And there his corpulent Brethren sit by, With faces representing gravity, Who having money, though they have no wit, They weare gold-chains, and here in green pews sit. There sit True-blew the honest Parish-masters, With Sattin Caps, and Ruffs, and Demi-casters, And faith that’s all; for they have no rich fansies, No Poets are, nor Authors of Romances. There sits a Lady fine, painted by Art, And there sits curious Mistris Fiddle-cum-fart: There sits a Chamber-maid upon a Hassock, Whom th’ Chaplain oft instructs without his Cassock: One more accustom’d unto Curtain-sins, Than to her thimble, or to handle pins. O what a glosse her forehead smooth adorns! Excelling _Phœbe_ with her silver horns. It tempts a man at first, yet strange to utter, When one comes neere, fogh gudds, it stinks of butter. Another tripping comes to her Mistris’s Pew, Where being arriv’d, she tryes if she can view Her young mans face, and straight heaves up her coats, That her sweet-heart may see her true-love knots. But having sate up late the night before To let the young-man in at the back-doore, She feeleth drowzinesse upon her creeping, Turnes downe one proofe, and then she falls a sleeping. Then fell her head one way, her book another, And surely she did dream by what we gather; [Sidenote: Maids beware of sleeping at Church.] For long she had not slept, when a rude flea Upon her groyn sharply began to prey; Straight she (twixt sleep and waking) in great ire, As if sh’ad sitting been by th’ Kitchin fire, Pulls up her coats with both hands, smock and all, And with both hands to scratch and scrub doth fall. Truly the Priest, though some did, saw her not, For he was praying and his eyes were shut. Alas had he seen as much as a by-stander, Much more from’s Text it would have made him wander.

That’s call’d the Gallery, which (as you may see) Was trimm’d and gilt in the yeare Fifty three. Twas a zealous work, and done by two Church-wardens, Who for mis-reckoning hope to have their Pardons. There _Will_ writes Short-hand with a pen of brasse, [Sidenote: Hang it.] Oh how he’s wonder’d at by many an asse That see him shake so fast his wartie fist, As if he’d write the Sermon ’fore the Priest Has spoke it; Then, O that I could (sayes one) Doe but as this man does, I’de give a crowne. Up goes another hand, up goe his eyes, And he, Gifts, Industrie, and Talents cryes.

Thus are they plac’d at length: a tedious work. And now a bellowing noise went round the Kirk, From the low Font, up to the Golden Creed. (O happy they who now no eares doe need!) While these cough up their morning flegme, and those Doe trumpet forth the snivel of their nose; Straight then the Clerk began with potsheard voice To grope a tune, singing with wofull noise, Like a crackt Sans-bell jarring in the Steeple, _Tom Sternholds_ wretched Prick-song to the people: Who soon as he hath pac’d the first line through, Up steps _Chuck-farthing_ then, and he reads too: This is the womans boy that sits i’th’ Porch Till th’ Sexton comes, and brings her stoole to Church. Then out the people yaule an hundred parts, Some roare, some whine, some creak like wheels of Carts, Such Notes that _Gamut_ never yet did know, Nor numerous keys of Harpsicalls in a row Their Heights and Depths could ever comprehend, Now below double _Ae_ some descend. ’Bove _Ela_ squealing now ten notes some flie; Straight then as if they knew they were too high, With head-long haste downe staires againe they tumble; Discords and Concords O how thick they jumble! Like untam’d horses tearing with their throats One wretched stave into an hundred notes. Some lazie-throated fellowes thus did baule, [Sidenote: _Robert Wisdome_’s delight.] [Illustration: They a i hin a moy a meat uh ga have a ha me uh a ha a gall a. And some out-run their words and thus they say, Too cruell for to think a hum a haw.]