But though Textor was continually working in classical literature with a patience and perseverance which nothing but the delight he experienced in such occupations could have sustained, he was without a particle of classical taste. His taste was that of the age wherein he flourished, and these his Dialogues are Moralities in Latin verse. The designs and thoughts which would have accorded with their language had they been written either in old French or old English, appear when presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, and largely interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as strange as Harlequin and Pantaloon would do in heroic costume. Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a bitter complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to witness. Age (_Ætas_) overhears the lamentation and enquires the cause; and after a dialogue in which the author makes the most liberal use of his own common-places, it appears that the perishable nature of all sublunary things is the cause of this mourning. _Ætas_ endeavours to persuade _Terra_ that her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and cogent observations as _Fata jubent_, _Fata volunt_, _Ita Diis placitum_. Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon discovering it, calls her _falsa virago_, and _meretrix_, and abuses her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her. However _Ætas_ succeeds in talking _Terra_ into better humour, advises her to exhort man that he should not set his heart upon perishable things, and takes her leave as _Homo_ enters. After a recognition between mother and son, _Terra_ proceeds to warn _Homo_ against all the ordinary pursuits of this world. To convince him of the vanity of glory she calls up in succession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, Alexander and Samson, who tell their tales and admonish him that valor and renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify the vanity of beauty Helen, Lais, Thisbe and Lucretia are summoned, relate in like manner their respective fortunes, and remind him that _pulvis et umbra sumus_. Virgil preaches to him upon the emptiness of literary fame. Xerxes tells him that there is no avail in power, Nero that there is none in tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in voluptuousness. But the application which _Homo_ makes of all this, is the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel and enjoy himself: and _Terra_ concludes with the mournful observation that men will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end. Another of these Moralities begins with three Worldlings (_Tres Mundani_) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profligacy, in Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succession saying something to the same purport in different words. As thus