Who can our honour and his own defend; Wise, hardy, secret, liberal of his purse; A fool is nauseous, but a coward worse: No bragging coxcomb, yet no baffled knight, How dar'st thou talk of love, and dar'st not fight? How dar'st thou tell thy dame thou art affeared? Hast thou no manly heart, and hast a beard? If aught from fearful dreams may be divined, They signify a cock of dunghill kind. All dreams, as in old Galen I have read, Are from repletion and complexion bred; From rising fumes of indigested food, And noxious humours that infect the blood: And sure, my lord, if I can read aright, These foolish fancies, you have had to-night, Are certain symptoms (in the canting style) Of boiling choler, and abounding bile; This yellow gall, that in your stomach floats, Engenders all these visionary thoughts. When choler overflows, then dreams are bred Of flames, and all the family of red; Red dragons, and red beasts, in sleep we view, For humours are distinguished by their hue. From hence we dream of wars and warlike things, And wasps and hornets with their double wings. Choler adust congeals our blood with fear, Then black bulls toss us, and black devils tear. In sanguine airy dreams aloft we bound; With rheums oppressed, we sink in rivers drowned. More I could say, but thus conclude my theme, The dominating humour makes the dream. Cato was in his time accounted wise, And he condemns them all for empty lies.[177] Take my advice, and when we fly to ground, } With laxatives preserve your body sound, } And purge the peccant humours that abound. } I should be loth to lay you on a bier; And though there lives no 'pothecary near, I dare for once prescribe for your disease, And save long bills, and a damned doctor's fees. Two sovereign herbs, which I by practice know, And both at hand, (for in our yard they grow,) On peril of my soul shall rid you wholly Of yellow choler, and of melancholy: You must both purge and vomit; but obey, And for the love of heaven make no delay. Since hot and dry in your complexion join, Beware the sun when in a vernal sign; For when he mounts exalted in the Ram, If then he finds your body in a flame, Replete with choler, I dare lay a groat, A tertian ague is at least your lot. Perhaps a fever (which the Gods forefend) May bring your youth to some untimely end: And therefore, sir, as you desire to live, A day or two before your laxative, Take just three worms, nor under nor above, Because the Gods unequal numbers love. These digestives prepare you for your purge; Of fumetery, centaury, and spurge, And of ground-ivy add a leaf, or two, All which within our yard or garden grow. Eat these, and be, my lord, of better cheer; Your father's son was never born to fear.-- Madam, quoth he, gramercy for your care, But Cato, whom you quoted, you may spare.