ASP. You trouble me -- and with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow, When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries: No broker's usurer's, or lawyer's gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams. Tut, these are so innate and popular, That drunken custom would not shame to laugh, In scorn, at him, that should but dare to tax 'em: And yet, not one of these, but knows his works, Knows what damnation is, the devil, and hell; Yet hourly they persist, grow rank in sin, Puffing their souls away in perjurous air, To cherish their extortion, pride, or lusts. MIT. Forbear, good Asper; be not like your name. ASP. O, but to such whose faces are all zeal, And, with the words of Hercules, invade Such crimes as these! that will not smell of sin, But seem as they were made of sanctity! Religion in their garments, and their hair Cut shorter than their eye-brows! when the conscience Is vaster than the ocean, and devours More wretches than the counters. MIT. Gentle Asper, Contain our spirits in more stricter bounds, And be not thus transported with the violence Of your strong thoughts. COX. Unless your breath had power, To melt the world, and mould it new again, It is in vain to spend it in these moods. ASP. [TURNING TO THE STAGE.] I not observed this thronged round till now! Gracious and kind spectators, you are welcome; Apollo and Muses feast your eyes With graceful objects, and may our Minerva Answer your hopes, unto their largest strain! Yet here mistake me not, judicious friends; I do not this, to beg your patience, Or servilely to fawn on your applause, Like some dry brain, despairing in his merit. Let me be censured by the austerest brow, Where I want art or judgment, tax me freely. Let envious censors, with their broadest eyes, Look through and through me, I pursue no favour; Only vouchsafe me your attentions, And I will give you music worth your ears. O, how I hate the monstrousness of time, Where every servile imitating spirit, Plagued with an itching leprosy of wit, In a mere halting fury, strives to fling His ulcerous body in the Thespian spring, And straight leaps forth a poet! but as lame As Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate. MIT. In faith this humour will come ill to some, You will be thought to be too peremptory. ASP. This humour? good! and why this humour, Mitis? Nay, do not turn, but answer. MIT. Answer, what? ASP. I will not stir your patience, pardon me, I urged it for some reasons, and the rather To give these ignorant well-spoken days Some taste of their abuse of this word humour.