_D’Ol._ Good in sooth! but indeed to say truth, time was when the sons of the Muses had the privilege to live only by their wits, but times are altered, Monopolies are now called in, and wit’s become a free trade for all sorts to live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully: soldiers live by wit, and they live honourably: panders live by wit, and they live honestly: in a word, there are but few trades but live by wit, only bawds and midwives live by women’s labours, as fools and fiddlers do by making mirth, pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players by making mouths and faces: ha, does’t well, wits? _Rhod._ Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests, as country gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn threadbare. _D’Ol._ Well, well, let’s leave these wit skirmishes, and say when shall we meet? _Mug._ How think you, are we not met now? _D’Ol._ Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we may take free use of ourselves; that is, drink sack, and talk satire, and let our wits run the wild-goose chase over court and country. I will have my chamber the rendezvous of all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good jests, an ordinary of fine discourse; critics, essayists, linguists, poets, and other professors of that faculty of wit, shall, at certain hours i’ th’ day, resort thither; it shall be a second Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honour, duellism, criticism, and poetry, shall be disputed: and how, wits, do ye follow the court still? _Rhod._ Close at heels, sir; and I can tell you, you have much to answer to your stars, that you do not so too. _D’Ol._ As why, wits? as why? _Rhod._ Why, sir, the court’s as ’twere the stage: and they that have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to press thither to grace them, and receive their due merit. _D’Ol._ Tush, let the court follow me: he that soars too near the sun, melts his wings many times; as I am, I possess myself, I enjoy my liberty, my learning, my wit: as for wealth and honour, let ’em go; I’ll not lose my learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman. _Mug._ Admirable D’Olive! _D’Ol._ And what! you stand gazing at this comet here, and admire it, I dare say. _Rhod._ And do not you? _D’Ol._ Not I, I admire nothing but wit. _Rhod._ But I wonder how she entertains time in that solitary cell: does she not take tobacco, think you? _D’Ol._ She does, she does: others make it their physic, she makes it her food: her sister and she take it by turn, first one, then the other, and Vandome ministers to them both. _Mug._ How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece the Countess’s sister? there were a paragon, Monsieur D’Olive, to admire and marry too. _D’Ol._ Not for me. _Rhod._ No? what exceptions lie against the choice?