_Mam._ No. I’ll have no bawds. But fathers and mothers. They will do it best, Best of all others. And my flatterers Shall be the pure and gravest of divines That I can get for money. We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the medicine. My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells, Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies. The tongues of carps, dormice, and camel’s heels Boil’d in the spirit of Sol, and dissolv’d pearl, Apicius’ diet, ’gainst the epilepsy; And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, Headed with diamond and carbuncle. My footboys shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons, Knots, godwits, lampreys; I myself will have The beards of barbels serv’d instead of salads; Oil’d mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce; For which I’ll say unto my cook, _There’s gold, Go forth, and be a knight_. _Face._ Sir, I’ll go look A little, how it heightens. _Mam._ Do. My shirts I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light, As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment, It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, Were he to teach the world riot anew. My gloves of fishes and birds’ skins, perfum’d With gums of Paradise and eastern air. _Surly._ And do you think to have the stone with this? _Mam._ No, I do think t’ have all this with the stone. _Surly._ Why, I have heard, he must be _homo frugi_, A pious, holy, and religious man, One free from mortal sin, a very virgin. _Mam._ That makes it, Sir, he is so; but I buy it. My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch, A notable, superstitious, good soul, Has worn his knees bare, and his slippers bald, With prayer and fasting for it, and, Sir, let him Do it alone, for me, still; here he comes; Not a profane word afore him: ’tis poison.’ _Act II. scene I._ I have only to add a few words on Beaumont and Fletcher. Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, the Chances, and the Wild Goose Chase, the original of the Inconstant, are superior in style and execution to any thing of Ben Jonson’s. They are, indeed, some of the best comedies on the stage; and one proof that they are so, is, that they still hold possession of it. They shew the utmost alacrity of invention in contriving ludicrous distresses, and the utmost spirit in bearing up against, or impatience and irritation under them. Don John, in the Chances, is the heroic in comedy. Leon, in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, is a fine exhibition of the born gentleman and natural fool: the Copper Captain is sterling to this hour: his mistress, Estifania, only died the other day with Mrs. Jordan: and the two grotesque females, in the same play, act better than the Witches in Macbeth. LECTURE III ON COWLEY, BUTLER, SUCKLING, ETHEREGE, &C.