‘Which I was born to introduce, Refin’d it first, and shew’d its use,’ can be allowed to be true only in part. The controversy between them being undecided, the Apothecary, to clench his pretensions ‘as a liar of the first magnitude,’ by a _coup-de-grace_, says to the Pedlar, ‘You are an honest man,’ but this home-thrust is somehow ingeniously parried. The Apothecary and Pardoner fall to their narrative vein again; and the latter tells a story of fetching a young woman from the lower world, from which I shall only give one specimen more as an instance of ludicrous and fantastic exaggeration. By the help of a passport from Lucifer, ‘given in the furnace of our palace,’ he obtains a safe conduct from one of the subordinate imps to his master’s presence. ‘This devil and I walked arm in arm So far, ‘till he had brought me thither, Where all the devils of hell together Stood in array in such apparel, As for that day there meetly fell. Their horns well gilt, their claws full clean, Their tails well kempt, and as I ween, With sothery butter their bodies anointed; I never saw devils so well appointed. The master-devil sat in his jacket, And all the souls were playing at racket. None other rackets they had in hand, Save every soul a good fire-brand; Wherewith they play’d so prettily, That Lucifer laugh’d merrily. And all the residue of the fiends Did laugh thereat full well like friends. But of my friend I saw no whit, Nor durst not ask for her as yet. Anon all this rout was brought in silence, And I by an usher brought to presence Of Lucifer; then low, as well I could, I kneeled, which he so well allow’d That thus he beck’d, and by St. Antony He smiled on me well-favour’dly, Bending his brows as broad as barn-doors; Shaking his ears as rugged as burrs; Rolling his eyes as round as two bushels; Flashing the fire out of his nostrils; Gnashing his teeth so vain-gloriously, That methought time to fall to flattery, Wherewith I told, as I shall tell; Oh pleasant picture! O prince of hell!’ &c. The piece concludes with some good wholesome advice from the Pedlar, who here, as well as in the poem of the Excursion, performs the part of Old Morality; but he does not seem, as in the latter case, to be acquainted with the ‘mighty stream of Tendency.’ He is more ‘full of wise saws than modern instances;’ as prosing, but less paradoxical!