Study Edition · Essay 10
A Pot-Poet
Source: Microcosmographie (1628), in Henry Morley (ed.), Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (1891). Text from Project Gutenberg #10699. Words in [square brackets] were added after the first edition. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
A “pot-poet” is a tavern hack who writes for beer money: cheap ballads about disasters, executions and monsters, sold on single printed sheets. Earle's sketch is a chain of drinking puns. It is also a vivid snapshot of the popular print trade of the 1620s, the tabloid press of its day.
13 sentences: 1 simple, 8 moderate, 4 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- dregsthe sediment at the bottom of a drink; the worst part
- witintelligence; cleverness
- relishpleasant flavour
- feignto pretend; to make up
- inventioncreative imagination
- spigotthe tap or plug in a barrel
- sacka strong white wine, similar to sherry
- musethe goddess or spirit who inspires a poet
- allureto tempt or attract
- fortnighttwo weeks
- centoa patchwork poem stitched together from other works
- almanaca yearly calendar booklet of predictions, often with doggerel verse
- argumentsubject or theme of a poem
- Melpomenethe Muse of tragedy
- briefan official appeal for charitable donations
- inveighersomeone who rants or attacks bitterly
- TyburnLondon's main place of public execution
- bawdy-housea brothel
- scorea running tab at a tavern
The Essay
Is the dregs of wit, yet mingled with good drink may have some relish.1 His inspirations are more real than others, for they only feign a God, but he has his by him.2 His verse runs like the tap, and his invention as the barrel, ebbs and flows at the mercy of the spigot.3 In thin drink he does not aspire above a ballad, but a cup of sack inflames him, and sets his muse and nose a-fire together.4 The press is his mint, and stamps him now and then a sixpence or two in reward of the baser coin his pamphlet.5 His works would scarce sell for three half-pence, though they are given oft for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country gentleman; for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight.6 His verses are like his clothes miserable centoes and patches, yet their pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanack's.7 The death of a great man or the burning of a house furnish him with an argument, and the nine Muses are out strait in mourning gowns, and Melpomene cries fire! fire!8 [His other poems are but briefs in rhyme, and like the poor Greeks' collections to redeem from captivity.]9 He is a man now much employed in commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard.10 His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from market to market to a vile tune and a worse throat; whilst the poor country wench melts like her butter to hear them: and these are the stories of some men of Tyburn, or a strange monster out of Germany; or, sitting in a bawdy-house, he writes God's judgments.11 He drops away at last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses, and his life, like a can too full, spills upon the bench.12 He leaves twenty shillings on the score, which my hostess loses.13
Sentence Notes
In plain English: A pot-poet is the bottom-of-the-barrel of literary talent, though mixed with good drink he may have some flavour.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The opening sets the joke running through the whole piece: the poet is described as if he were a drink.
In plain English: His inspiration is more genuine than other poets', because they just pretend to be inspired by a god, while he keeps his god right beside him: the drink.
Reference & context: Classical poets invoked Apollo or the Muses for inspiration. The pot-poet's god is Bacchus, god of wine, in a cup at his elbow.
Modernized: do but feign → only feign
In plain English: His poetry pours out like beer from a tap, and his imagination, like the barrel, runs high or low depending on the tap.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: An extended pun that makes creativity entirely a matter of supply.
In plain English: On weak beer he aims no higher than a ballad, but a cup of strong wine fires him up and makes both his inspiration and his nose glow red.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A comic double meaning: poetic fire and a drinker's red nose, lit by the same cup.
Reference & context: Literary: Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (IV.3) gives a famous speech praising sack for making the brain “apprehensive, quick, forgetive.”
Modernized: aspires not → does not aspire
In plain English: The printing press is where he makes his money: now and then it pays him sixpence or so in exchange for the cheaper coin of his pamphlets.
Reference & context: Pun: a mint “stamps” coins and a press “stamps” pages. His pamphlets are “base coin,” like a coin made of cheap metal.
In plain English: His writings are worth hardly a penny and a half, yet people often pay three shillings for them, all because of a catchy title that attracts country gentlemen; and for that title the printer keeps him supplied with ale for two weeks.
Reference & context: Money: there were 12 pence in a shilling, so three shillings is 24 times three half-pence. The title, not the poem, is what sells: an early version of clickbait.
In plain English: His poems, like his clothes, are wretched patchwork stitched together from scraps; still, their rhythm doesn't limp quite as badly as the verses in an almanac.
Reference & context: Almanacs, cheap yearly calendars full of astrology and weather forecasts, were famous for terrible verse.
In plain English: A famous man's death or a house fire gives him something to write about, and at once the nine Muses are dressed in mourning, and the Muse of tragedy is shouting “Fire! Fire!”
Reference & context: Classical: the nine Muses were goddesses of the arts. Melpomene presided over tragedy. Earle mocks the hack who dresses up every disaster in grand classical language.
In plain English: His other poems are just begging letters in rhyme, like the collections made for poor Greeks to buy their freedom from captivity.
Reference & context: Historical: “briefs” were royal licences to collect money in churches for a cause. Greek Christians captured by the Ottoman Turks often travelled through England collecting ransom money. (This sentence was added in a later edition.)
In plain English: These days he's kept busy writing poems praising the English navy and attacking the Spanish.
Reference & context: Historical: England was at war with Spain from 1625 to 1630, and patriotic anti-Spanish ballads sold well.
In plain English: Most of his work is printed on single sheets and sung from market to market to an awful tune by an even worse voice, while the poor country girl melts like her butter to hear them. They tell of criminals hanged at Tyburn, or a monstrous birth in Germany; or he writes about God's punishment of sinners while sitting in a brothel.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Two jabs: the butter-seller melting like her own butter, and the hypocrite preaching God's judgement from a brothel.
Reference & context: Historical: “broadside ballads” were printed on one side of a sheet and sold by singing pedlars. Tyburn was London's execution site. Reports of “monstrous births” abroad were a popular genre.
In plain English: In the end he fades away, remembered only on some obscure painted wall-hanging for which he wrote the verses. His life runs out like an overfull tankard spilling onto the tavern bench.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A last drinking image that makes his death as messy and unremarkable as a spilled drink.
Reference & context: Social history: “painted cloths” were cheap decorative hangings in taverns and modest homes, often painted with a picture and a moralising rhyme.
In plain English: He dies owing twenty shillings on his tavern tab, which the landlady will never get back.
Fun Fact
Shakespeare put a seller of exactly these ballads on stage. In The Winter's Tale (c.1611), the rogue Autolycus peddles printed ballads about a usurer's wife who gave birth to twenty money-bags and a fish that sang against hard-hearted maids. A shepherdess named Mopsa declares, “I love a ballad in print … for then we are sure they are true.” Earle's “poor country wench” who melts at the pot-poet's songs is the same customer.