SIR SAMP. Haste, ay, ay; haste enough. My son Ben will be in town
to-night. I have ordered my lawyer to draw up writings of settlement and
jointure—all shall be done to-night. No matter for the time; prithee,
brother Foresight, leave superstition. Pox o’ the time; there’s no time
but the time present, there’s no more to be said of what’s past, and all
that is to come will happen. If the sun shine by day, and the stars by
night, why, we shall know one another’s faces without the help of a
candle, and that’s all the stars are good for.
FORE. How, how? Sir Sampson, that all? Give me leave to contradict
you, and tell you you are ignorant.
SIR SAMP. I tell you I am wise; and _sapiens dominabitur astris_;
there’s Latin for you to prove it, and an argument to confound your
Ephemeris.—Ignorant! I tell you, I have travelled old Fircu, and know
the globe. I have seen the antipodes, where the sun rises at midnight,
and sets at noon-day.
FORE. But I tell you, I have travelled, and travelled in the celestial
spheres, know the signs and the planets, and their houses. Can judge of
motions direct and retrograde, of sextiles, quadrates, trines and
oppositions, fiery-trigons and aquatical-trigons. Know whether life
shall be long or short, happy or unhappy, whether diseases are curable or
incurable. If journeys shall be prosperous, undertakings successful, or
goods stolen recovered; I know—
SIR SAMP. I know the length of the Emperor of China’s foot; have kissed
the Great Mogul’s slippers, and rid a-hunting upon an elephant with a
Cham of Tartary. Body o’ me, I have made a cuckold of a king, and the
present majesty of Bantam is the issue of these loins.
FORE. I know when travellers lie or speak truth, when they don’t know it
themselves.
SIR SAMP. I have known an astrologer made a cuckold in the twinkling of
a star; and seen a conjurer that could not keep the devil out of his
wife’s circle.
FORE. What, does he twit me with my wife too? I must be better informed
of this. [_Aside_.] Do you mean my wife, Sir Sampson? Though you made
a cuckold of the king of Bantam, yet by the body of the sun—
SIR SAMP. By the horns of the moon, you would say, brother Capricorn.
FORE. Capricorn in your teeth, thou modern Mandeville; Ferdinand Mendez
Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude. Take
back your paper of inheritance; send your son to sea again. I’ll wed my
daughter to an Egyptian mummy, e’er she shall incorporate with a
contemner of sciences, and a defamer of virtue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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