sequel of the epistle, the relenting poet (a freeman at heart, a slave by court habit) condescends to make an offer of certain honorary services which he could render to the cardinal at home (not having "felt himself so stout and nimble as to leap from the hanks of the Po to those of the Danube"), but before he has well concluded his humiliating overture, the exasperation, of which neither scorn, philosophy, nor poetic pride could rid his wounded spirit, returns like an access of disease upon him, and he breaks out into a rhodomontade of defiance. In this passage it is hard to know whether the unhappy writer be most entitled to pity, censure, or admiration: pity for unmerited harshness from his patron; censure for a manifest hankering towards sycophancy; and admiration for his magnanimous resolve, at any rate, to choose freedom and penury rather than abundance and bondage. "If," he says, "for a benefice bestowed on me of five and twenty crowns every four months (yet not so well secured but that they are often litigated), his highness has a right to make me wear a chain, hold me as a bondman, and oblige me to sweat and tremble before him, without any regard, till I break down and die,--let him not imagine such a thing, but tell him plainly that, rather than be a slave, I will bear poverty in patience." He goes on:-- "An ass, all bones and gristle with hard fare, Entering a granary through a broken wall, Made such enormous havoc with the corn, That his thin flanks were rounded like a tun, And he had had enough,--which was not soon. Then, fearing lest his hide must pay the cost, He struggled to get back the way he came, But found the chink too narrow now to let him. Thus, while he fretted, pushed, and squeez'd in vain, A rat addressed him: 'Sir, if you would pass, You must make friends with that great paunch of yours; Behoves you to disgorge what you have swallow'd, And e'en grow lean again, or never hope To thread the needle's eye of that small hole.' --So, in conclusion, if his Eminence Imagines he has bought me with his gifts, 'T will be no hard or bitter thing to me Straight to return them, and reclaim my freedom." To aggravate the poet's misfortune, about this time, or, in the words of his first English translator, sir John Harrington, "to mend the matter, one taking occasion of this eclipse of the cardinal's favour put him in suit for a piece of land of his ancient inheritance, which was not only a great vexation to his mind, but a charge to his purse and travail to his body; for undoubtedly the clattering of armour, the noise of great ordnance, the sound of the trumpet and drum, and the neighing of horses, do not so much trouble the sweet Muses, as the brabbling of lawyers, the pattering of attorneys, and the civil war, or rather most uncivil disagreeing, of foresworn jurors."