DAW: Shew them, shew them, mistress, I dare own them.
EPI: Judge you, what glories.
DAW: Nay, I"ll read them myself too: an author must recite his own works. It is a madrigal of Modesty.
Modest, and fair, for fair and good are near Neighbours, howe"er.--
DAUP: Very good.
CLER: Ay, is"t not?
DAW: No n.o.ble virtue ever was alone, But two in one.
DAUP: Excellent!
CLER: That again, I pray, sir John.
DAUP: It has something in"t like rare wit and sense.
CLER: Peace.
DAW: No n.o.ble virtue ever was alone, But two in one.
Then, when I praise sweet modesty, I praise Bright beauty"s rays: And having praised both beauty and modesty, I have praised thee.
DAUP: Admirable!
CLER: How it chimes, and cries tink in the close, divinely!
DAUP: Ay, "tis Seneca.
CLER: No, I think "tis Plutarch.
DAW: The dor on Plutarch, and Seneca! I hate it: they are mine own imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gentlemen.
CLER: They are very grave authors.
DAW: Grave a.s.ses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that"s all. A man would talk so, his whole age: I do utter as good things every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of them.
DAUP: Indeed, sir John!
CLER: He must needs; living among the wits and braveries too.
DAUP: Ay, and being president of them, as he is.
DAW: There"s Aristotle, a mere common-place fellow; Plato, a discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot: sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.
CLER: What do you think of the poets, sir John?
DAW: Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious, prolix a.s.s, talks of curriers, and chines of beef. Virgil of dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of I know not what.
CLER: I think so.
DAW: And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Politian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest--
CLER: What a sack full of their names he has got!
DAUP: And how he pours them out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus!
CLER: Was not the character right of him?
DAUP: As could be made, i"faith.
DAW: And Persius, a crabbed c.o.xcomb, not to be endured.
DAUP: Why, whom do you account for authors, sir John Daw?
DAW: Syntagma juris civilis; Corpus juris civilis; Corpus juris canonici; the king of Spain"s bible--
DAUP: Is the king of Spain"s bible an author?
CLER: Yes, and Syntagma.
DAUP: What was that Syntagma, sir?
DAW: A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.
DAUP: Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.
CLER: Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew "em: they were very corpulent authors.
DAW: And, then there"s Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha: the other are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar.
DAUP: "Fore G.o.d, you have a simple learned servant, lady,-- in t.i.tles. [ASIDE.]
CLER: I wonder that he is not called to the helm, and made a counsellor!
DAUP: He is one extraordinary.
CLER: Nay, but in ordinary: to say truth, the state wants such.
DAUP: Why that will follow.
CLER: I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a servant.
DAW: "Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her silence too.
DAUP: In verse, sir John?
CLER: What else?