For he was of that noble trade
That demi-gods and heroes made,[1]
Slaughter, and knocking on the head.
The trade to which they all were bred;
And is, like others, glorious when 325
'Tis great and large, but base, if mean:[2]
The former rides in triumph for it,
The latter in a two-wheel'd chariot,
For daring to profane a thing
So sacred, with vile bungle-ing.[3] 330
Next these the brave Magnano came,
Magnano, great in martial fame;
Yet, when with Orsin he waged fight,
'Tis sung he got but little by't:
Yet he was fierce as forest boar, 335
Whose spoils upon his back he wore,[4]
As thick as Ajax' seven-fold shield,
"Which o'er his brazen arms he held;
But brass was feeble to resist
The fury of his armed fist; 340
Nor could the hardest iron hold out
Against his blows, but they would through't.
In magic he was deeply read.
As he that made the brazen head;[5]
- ↑ Satirizing those that pride themselves on their military achievements. The general who massacres thousands is called great and glorious; the assassin who kills a single man is hanged at Tyburn.
- ↑ Julius Cæsar is said to have fought fifty battles, and to have killed of the Gauls alone eleven hundred ninety-two thousand men, and as many more in his civil wars. In the inscription which Pompey placed in the temple of Minerva, he professed that he had slain, or vanquished and taken, two millions one hundred and eighty-three thousand men.
- ↑ Simon Wait, a tinker, as famous an Independent preacher as Burroughs, who with equal blasphemy would style Oliver Cromwell the archangel giving battle to the devil.
- ↑ Meaning his budget made of pig's skin.
- ↑ The device of the brazen head, which was to speak a prophecy at a certain time, had by some been imputed to Grosse-tête, Bishop of Lincoln, as appears from the poet Gower; by others to Albertus Magnus. But the generality of writers, and our poet among the rest, have ascribed it to Roger Bacon, whose great knowledge caused him to be reputed a magician. Some, however, believe the story of the head to be nothing more than a moral fable.
