The appropriate explanations mentioned in the title are given in various songs which the various characters sing after describing themselves, or after dialogues with each other. The announcement that the whole exposition, etc., will be after the rule of the four elements, is rather startling; the dialogue, however, between Captain Riches and Captain Poverty shows that Tom was equal to his subject, and promised nothing that he could not perform. _Enter_ CAPTAIN POVERTY. O Riches, thy figure is charming and bright, And to speak in thy praise all the world doth delight, But I’m a poor fellow all tatter’d and torn, Whom all the world treateth with insult and scorn. RICHES. However mistaken the judgment may be Of the world which is never from ignorance free, The parts we must play, which to us are assign’d, According as God has enlighten’d our mind. Of elements four did our Master create, The earth and all in it with skill the most great; Need I the world’s four materials declare— Are they not water, fire, earth, and air? Too wise was the mighty Creator to frame A world from one element, water or flame; The one is full moist and the other full hot, And a world made of either were useless, I wot. And if it had all of mere earth been compos’d, And no water nor fire been within it enclos’d, It could ne’er have produc’d for a huge multitude Of all kinds of living things suitable food. And if God what was wanted had not fully known, But created the world of these three things alone, How would any creature the heaven beneath, Without the blest air have been able to breathe? Thus all things created, the God of all grace, Of four prime materials, each good in its place. The work of His hands, when completed, He view’d, And saw and pronounc’d that ’twas seemly and good. POVERTY. In the marvellous things, which to me thou hast told The wisdom of God I most clearly behold, And did He not also make man of the same Materials He us’d when the world He did frame? RICHES. Creation is all, as the sages agree, Of the elements four in man’s body that be; Water’s the blood, and fire is the nature Which prompts generation in every creature. The earth is the flesh which with beauty is rife, The air is the breath, without which is no life; So man must be always accounted the same As the substances four which exist in his frame. And as in their creation distinction there’s none ’Twixt man and the world, so the Infinite One Unto man a clear wisdom did bounteously give The nature of everything to perceive. POVERTY.