_Volpone._ Lady, I kiss your bounty, and for this timely grace you have done your poor Scoto, of Mantua, I will return you, over and above my oil, a secret of that high and inestimable nature which shall make you for ever enamoured on that minute, wherein your eye first descended on so mean, yet not altogether to be despised, an object. Here is a powder concealed in this paper, of which, if I should speak to the worth, nine thousand volumes were but as one page, that page as a line, that line as a word; so short is this pilgrimage of man, which some call life, to the expression of it. Would I reflect on the price? Why, the whole world is but as an empire, that empire as a province, that province as a bank, that bank as a private purse to the purchase of it. I will only tell you it is the powder that made Venus a goddess, given her by Apollo, that kept her perpetually young, cleared her wrinkles, firmed her gums, filled her skin, coloured her hair, from her derived to Helen, and at the sack of Troy unfortunately lost: till now, in this our age, it was as happily recovered, by a studious antiquary, out of some ruins of Asia, who sent a moiety of it to the Court of France, but much sophisticated, wherewith the ladies there now colour their hair. The rest, at this present, remains with me, extracted to a quintessence; so that, wherever it but touches in youth it perpetually preserves, in age restores the complexion; seats your teeth, did they dance like virginal jacks, firm as a wall; makes them white as ivory, that were black as coal. _A VINTNER_, To whom Jonson was in debt, told him that he would excuse the payment, if he could give an immediate answer to the following questions: What God is best pleased with; what the devil is best pleased with: what the world is best pleased with; and what he was best pleased with. Jonson, without hesitation, replied thus: God is best pleas’d, when men forsake their sin; The devil’s best pleas’d, when they persist therein: The world’s best pleas’d, when thou dost sell good wine; And you’re best pleas’d, when I do pay for mine. It was the fashion to flatter in those days, and King James had abundance of such incense offered to him, though according to Ben Jonson it was impossible to _flatter_ so perfect a monarch. The dramatist addressed the following epigram _To the Ghost of Martial_ (Ep. 36): Martial, thou gav’st far nobler epigrams To thy Domitian, than I can my James: But in my royal subject I pass thee, Thou flattered’st thine, mine cannot flatter’d be. A thought which has been humorously expanded by Ben Jonson (Ep. 42):