_Herod._ Cease, I beseech thee! _Herc._ Pish! ne'er blush, man; 'tis an uncourtly quality! As for thy lying, as long as there's policy in't, it is very passable! Wherefore has Heaven given man tongue but to speak to a man's own glory? He that cannot swell bigger than his natural skin, nor seem to be in more grace than he is, has not learn'd the very rudiments or A B C of courtship. _Herod._ Upon my heart, Fawn, thou pleasest me to the soul; why, look you, for mine own part, I must confess---- _Enter_ DONDOLO. See, here's the duke's fool! _Don._ Aboard! aboard! aboard! all manner of fools, of court, city, or country, of what degree, sex, or nature! _Herod._ Fool! _Don._ Herod! _Herc._ What, are ye full freighted? Is your ship well fool'd? _Don._ O, 'twas excellently thronged full: a justice of peace, tho' he had been one of the most illiterate asses in a country, could hardly ha' got a hanging cabin. O, we had first some long fortunate great politicians, that were so sottishly paradised as to think, when popular hate seconded princes' displeasure to them, any unmerited violence could seem to the world injustice; some purple fellows, whom chance reared, and their own deficiencies of spirit hurled down. We had some courtiers that o'er-bought their offices, and yet durst fall in love; priests that forsook their functions to avoid a thwart stroke with a wet finger.[238] But now, alas, Fawn! there's space[239] and place. _Herc._ Why, how gat all these forth? Was not the warrant strong? _Don._ Yes, yes; but they got a supersedeas: all of them proved themselves either knaves or madmen, and so were all let go; there's none left now in our ship, but a few citizens, that let their wives keep their shop-books, some philosophers, and a few critics; one of which critics has lost his flesh with fishing at the measure of Plautus' verses; another has vow'd to get the consumption of the lungs, or to leave to posterity the true orthography and pronunciation of laughing;[240] a third hath melted a great deal o' suet, worn out his thumbs with turning, read out his eyes, and studied his face out of a sanguine into a meagre, spawling, fleamy loathsomeness,--and all to find but why _mentula_ should be the feminine gender, since the rule is _Propria quæ maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas_. These philosophers, critics, and all the maids we could find at sixteen, are all our fraught now. 230 _Herc._ O, then, your ship of fools is full. _Nym._ True, the maids at seventeen fill it. _Don._ Fill it, quoth you; alas! we have very few, and these we were fain to take up in the country too. _Herc._ But what philosophers ha' ye? _Don._ O, very strange fellows: one knows nothing; dares not aver he lives, goes, sees, feels. _Nym._ A most insensible philosopher.