Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman Part 7

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?