On the 17th of August, 1655, or just nine days after the publication of Milton's _Pro Se Defensio_, there appeared anonymously in London, in the form of a small quarto pamphlet of twenty-two pages, a poem in rhyming heroics, entitled _A Satyr against Hypocrites_. In evidence that it was the work of a scholar, there were two mottoes from Juvenal on the title-page, one of them the well known "Si natura negat, facit indignatio versum." Of the performance itself there can be no more exact description than that of Godwin. "It is certainly written," he says, "with considerable talent; and the scenes which the author brings before us are painted in a very lively manner. He describes successively a Sunday, as it appeared in the time of Cromwell, a christening, a Wednesday, which agreeably to the custom of that period was a weekly fast, and the profuse and extravagant supper with which, according to him, the fast-day concluded. The christening, the bringing home the child to its mother, who is still in confinement, and the talk of the gossips, have a considerable resemblance to the broadest manner of Chaucer." This last remark Godwin at once qualifies. Whereas in Chaucer, he says, we have sheer natural humour, with no ulterior end, the _The Satyr against Hypocrites_ "is an undisguised attack upon the National Religion, upon everything that was then visible in this country and metropolis under the name of Religion." In other words, it is in a vein of anti-Puritanism, or even anti-Cromwellianism, quite as bitter as that of any of the contemporary Royalist writers, or as that of Butler and the post-Restoration wits, with a decided tendency also to indecency in ideas and expression, Of the more serious parts this is a specimen:-- "Oh, what will men not dare, if thus they dare Be impudent to Heaven, and play with prayer, Play with that fear, with that religious awe, Which keeps men free, and yet is man's great law! What can they but the worst of Atheists be Who, while they word it 'gainst impiety, Affront the throne of God with their false deeds? Alas! this wonder in the Atheist breeds. Are these the men that would the age reform, That _Down with Superstition_ cry, and swarm This painted glass, that sculpture, to deface, But worship pride and avarice in their place? _Religion_ they bawl out, yet know not what Religion is, unless it be to prate!"