Breton's _Pasquil's Madcappe_ proved too long for quotation in its
entirety,[11] but the man who could pen such lines as these was, of a
truth, a satirist of a high order:--

But what availes unto the world to talke?
Wealth is a witch that hath a wicked charme,
That in the minds of wicked men doth walke,
Unto the heart and Soule's eternal harme,
Which is not kept by the Almighty arme:
O,'tis the strongest instrument of ill
That ere was known to work the devill's will.

An honest man is held a good poore soule,
And kindnesse counted but a weake conceite,
And love writte up but in the woodcocke's soule,
While thriving _Wat_ doth but on Wealth await:
He is a fore horse that goes ever streight:
And he but held a foole for all his Wit,
That guides his braines but with a golden bit.

A virgin is a vertuous kind of creature,
But doth not coin command Virginitie?
And beautie hath a strange bewitching feature,
But gold reads so much world's divinitie,
As with the Heavens hath no affinitie:
So that where Beauty doth with vertue dwell,
If it want money, yet it will not sell.

Of the satiric forms peculiar to the Elizabethan epoch there is no
great variety. The _Characters_ of Theophrastus supplied a model to