RECORDER. You do well, Sir Raderic, to bestow your living upon such an one as will be content to share, and on Sunday to say nothing; whereas your proud university princox thinks he is a man of such merit the world cannot sufficiently endow him with preferment. An unthankful viper, an unthankful viper, that will sting the man that revived him. Why, is't not strange to see a ragged clerk Some stamel weaver or some butcher's son, That scrubb'd a-late within a sleeveless gown, When the commencement, like a morris-dance, Hath put a bell or two about his legs, Created him a sweet clean gentleman; How then he 'gins to follow fashions: He, whose thin sire dwells in a smoky roof, Must take tobacco, and must wear a lock; His thirsty dad drinks in a wooden bowl, But his sweet self is serv'd in silver plate. His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legs For one good Christmas meal on New-Year's day, But his maw must be capon-cramm'd each day; He must ere long be triple-beneficed, Else with his tongue he'll thunderbolt the world, And shake each peasant by his deaf man's ear. But, had the world no wiser men than I, We'd pen the prating parrots in a cage. A chair, a candle, and a tinder-box, A thacked[96] chamber and a ragged gown, Should be their lands and whole possessions; Knights, lords, and lawyers should be lodg'd and dwell Within those over-stately heaps of stone, Which doating sires in old age did erect. Well, it were to be wished, that never a scholar in England might have above forty pound a year. SIR RADERIC. Faith, Master Recorder, if it went by wishing, there should never an one of them all have above twenty a year--a good stipend, a good stipend, Master Recorder. I in the meantime, howsoever I hate them all deadly, yet I am fain to give them good words. O, they are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins, and piss vinegar. Well, do what I can in outward kindness to them, yet they do nothing but bewray my house: as there was one that made a couple of knavish verses on my country chimney, now in the time of my sojourning here at London; and it was thus-- Sir Raderic keeps no chimney cavalier, That takes tobacco above once a year. And another made a couple of verses on my daughter, that learns to play on the _viol-de-gambo_-- Her _viol-de-gambo_ is her best content; For 'twixt her legs she holds her instrument. Very knavish, very knavish, if you look into it, Master Recorder. Nay, they have played many a knavish trick beside with me. Well, 'tis a shame, indeed, there should be any such privilege for proud beggars as Cambridge and Oxford are. But let them go; and if ever they light in my hands, if I do not plague them, let me never return home again to see my wife's waiting-maid!