SCENE V.

HEARSAY, SLICER, MEANWELL, SHAPE.

HEAR. Our life, methinks, is but the same with others: To cosen and be cosen'd makes the age. The prey and feeder are that civil thing That sager heads call body politic. Here is the only difference: others cheat By statute, but we do't upon no grounds. The fraud's the same in both; there only wants Allowance to our way. The commonwealth Hath not declar'd herself as yet for us; Wherefore our policy must be our charter.

MEAN. Well-manag'd knav'ry is but one degree Below plain honesty.

SLICER. Give me villany, That's circumspect and well-advis'd, that doth Colour at least for goodness. If the cloak And mantle were pull'd off from things, 'twould be As hard to meet an honest action as A liberal alderman or a court-nun.

HEAR. Knowing, then, how we must direct our steps, Let us chalk out our paths: you, Shape, know yours.

SHAPE. Where'er I light on fortune, my commission Will hold to take her up: I'll ease my silken Friends of that idle luggage we call money.

HEAR. For my good toothless countess, let us try To win that old eremite thing that, like An image in a German clock,[136] doth move, Not walk--I mean, that rotten antiquary.

MEAN. He'll surely love her, 'cause she looks like some Old ruin'd piece, that was five ages backward.

HEAR. To the great vestry-wit, the livery-brain, My common-council pate, that doth determine A city-business with his gloves on's head, We must apply good hope of wealth and means.

SLICER. That griping knight Sir Thomas must be call'd With the same lure: he knows t' a crumb how much Loss is in twenty dozen of bread, between That which is broke by th' hand and that is cut. Which way best keep his candles, bran or straw: What tallow's lost in putting of 'em out By spittle, what by foot, what by the puff, What by the holding downwards, and what by The extinguisher; which wick will longest be In lighting, which spend fastest. He must hear Nothing but moieties, and lives, and farms, Copies, and tenures; he is deaf to th' rest.

MEAN. I'll speak the language of the wealthy to him; My mouth shall swill with bags, revenues, fees, Estates, reversions, incomes, and assurance[s]. He's in the gin already; for his daughter, She'll be an easy purchase.[137]

HEAR. I do hope We shall grow famous; have all sorts repair As duly to us, as the barren wives Of aged citizens do to St Antholin's. Come, let us take our quarters; we may come To be some great officers in time, And with a reverend magisterial frown Pass sentence on those faults that are our own. [_Exeunt omnes._

FOOTNOTES:

[116] The Declaration concerning "The Book of Sports," set forth some time before. This was a matter very disgusting to the Puritans, who had an equal dislike to the Book of Common Prayer.

[117] This phrase signifies _take courage_, or _summon up resolution_. It is at present always written in this manner; formerly it used, [very erroneously,] to be, _take heart at grass_; as in "Euphues," p. 18: "Rise, therefore, Euphues, and _take heart at grasse_, younger thou shalt never bee: plucke up thy stomacke, if love have stong thee, it shall not stifle thee."

Again, in Tarlton's "Newes out of Purgatory," p. 4: "Therefore _taking heart at grasse_, drawing more neere him," &c.

And _Ibid._, p. 24: "Seeing she would take no warning: on a day _tooke heart at grasse_, and belabour'd her well with a cudgel."

[118] _Well-appointed_ is _completely accoutred_. So in "The Miseries of Queen Margaret," by Drayton--

"Ten thousand valiant _well-appointed_ men;"

and in the "Second Part of Henry IV." act iv. sc. 1--

"What _well-appointed_ leader fronts us here?"

--Mr Steevens's note on the last passage.

[119] [Old copy, _not born_.]

[120] See Wolfii "Opera," 1672, ii. 592.

Johannes Trithemius, abbè of the order of St Benedict, and one of the most learned men of the fifteenth century, was born at Tritenheim, in the diocese of Treves, the 1st of February 1462. After having studied for some time, he became a Benedictine friar, and abbot of Spanheim, in the diocese of Mayence, in 1483. He governed the abbey until the year 1506, when he joined the abbey of St James, at Wurtzburgh. He was learned in all sciences, divine and human, and died the 13th of December 1516.

Thevet calls him a _subtle philosopher, an ingenious mathematician, a famous poet, an accomplished historian, a very eloquent orator, and eminent divine_. Naudius says that those who would make him a magician ground their right on a little book of three or four sheets, printed in 1612, entitled, "Veterum Sophorum sigilla et imagines magicæ, sive sculptura lapidum aut gemmarum ex nomine Tetragrammaton cum signatura planetarum authoribus Zoroastre, Salomone Raphaele, Chaele Hermete Thelete, ex Joan Kithemii manuscripto erutæ." Secondly, his speaking so pertinently of magic, and giving himself the title of magician in some of his epistles. Thirdly, his writing the book of Steganography, a treatise stuffed with the names of devils, and full of invocations, and as very pernicious condemned by Boville as worse than Agrippa. To these Naudius answers that the pamphlet of making images and characters upon stones, under certain constellations, is a pure imposture and cheat of booksellers, it being printed above 120 years before by Camillus Lienard, as the third book of his "Mirror of Precious Stones, De Unguento Armario." From a letter then to a Carmelite of Gaunt, Arnoldus Bostius, the suspicion of his being a magician must be collected, wherein he specified many miraculous and extraordinary effects performed in his treatise of Steganography. This, however, is defended by several writers only as the means to decipher.--Naudius's "History of Magick," translated by Davies, p. 237, &c.

[121] See note on the "Spanish Tragedy," [v. 115]

[122] "Join with _me_," would suit the sense better, as she is asking Shape to unite his solicitations with hers. The old copy reads as it is reprinted.--_Collier._

[123] [Old copy, _a_.]

[124] [A lecture, probably, was delivered on the phenomenon.]

[125] [The "Book of the Acts and Monuments," &c., 1563, &c. The woodcuts have the dying words of the martyrs printed on labels out of their mouths, in the way mentioned in the text.]

[126] Strabo, a philosopher of Crete and a geographer in the time of Augustus.

[127] Born at Pelusium, flourished about the year 140, and died 162, aged 78.

[128] Robert Stafford, born at Dublin, was of Exeter College, Oxford, and published "A Geographical and Anthological description of all the Empires and Kingdoms, both of Continent and Islands, in this terrestial Globe," &c., 1607. Wood says it was reported that John Prideaux, who was Stafford's tutor, had the chief hand in this work.

[129] [_Naked_, _i.e._, unarmed.] William Lithgow, a Scotsman, whose sufferings by imprisonment and torture at Malaga, and whose travels on foot over Europe, Asia, and Africa, seem to raise him almost to the rank of a martyr and a hero, published an account of his peregrinations and adventures, 1614; reprinted in 1616, &c., with additions. At the conclusion of this work he says, "Here is the just relation of nineteene yeares travells, perfited in three deare bought voyages: the generall computation of which dimmensions spaces in my goings, traversings, and returnings through kingdomes, continents, and ilands, which my payneful feet traced over (besides my passages of seas and rivers) amounteth to _thirty-six thousand and odde miles; which draweth neare to twice the circumference of the whole earth_." [A list of his other works may be found in Hazlitt's "Handbook," 1867, in _v._]

[130] The celebrated Thomas Coriat who, except Lithgow, is supposed to have travelled more miles on foot than any person of his times, or indeed in any period since. From his writings, and many parts of his conduct, he cannot be supposed to have been in his perfect senses. He was, notwithstanding, a man of considerable learning, and rendered himself ridiculous, chiefly by dwelling with too much attention on the trifling accidents which happened to him during his journey. In the year 1608 he left England and went to Venice and back again; a journey performed on foot in five months. On his return, he published an account of it in a large quarto volume, 1611, containing 655 pages, besides more than 100 filled with commendatory verses by Ben Jonson and other wits of the age, who both laughed at and flattered him at the same time. He afterwards travelled into Persia, and from thence into the East Indies (still on foot), and died at Surat in the year 1617.

[131] Sir John Mandevile, Knight, born at St Albans. He was a traveller for the space of thirty-four years, visiting in that time Scythia, Armenia the Greater and Less, Egypt, both Libyas, Arabia, Syria, Media, Mesopotamia, Persia, Chaldæa, Greece, Illyrium, Tartary, and divers other kingdoms. He died at Liege, November 17, 1371. An edition of his travels was printed in 8o, 1725, from a MS. in the Cotton Library.

[132] ["The leavings of what has been drawn for others"--_Gifford_ (edit. of Ben Jonson, vii. 433).] So in Jonson's "Masque of Augurs:" "The poor cattle yonder are passing away the time with a cheat loaf and a bumbard of _broken beer_."

Again, in the "Masque of Gypsies:" "He were very carefully carried at his mother's back, rocked in a cradle of Welsh cheese, like a maggot, and there fed with _broken beer_ and blown wine of the best daily."

And in Scot's "Belgicke Pismire," 1622, p. 76: "Having before fed themselves full with the sweat of other mens browes, even to gluttonie, drunkenesse, and surfetting, may releeve with their scraps, crummes, bones and _broken beere_, the necessities of such as they or their predecessors have before undone and made beggers."

[133] [Old copy, _paguim_.]

[134] Qy. breadth, _i.e._, stopped a breach by his person.--_Collier._

[135] [Reasons or policies of state.]

[136] _German clocks_ were about this time much in use. They are frequently mentioned by Ben Jonson and other writers.--See "Epicæne,"