Cat. And was familiar With entrails, as our augurs. - Cat. And had price and praise: All hate had licence giv'n it; all rage reins. Cet. Slaughter bestrid the streets, and stretch'd himself To seem more huge: whilst to his stained thighs The gore he drew flow'd up, and carried down Whole heaps of limbs and bodies through his arch. No age was spared, no sex. Cat. Nay, no degree. Cet. Not infants in the porch of life were free. Cat. 'Twas crime enough that they had lives. 10 Was dull and poor. Some fell, to make the number : As some, the prey. Cet. The rugged Charon fainted, And ask'd a navy rather than a boat, To ferry over the sad world that came: The maws and dens of beasts could not receive The bodies that those souls were frighted from; 20 And even the graves were fill'd with men yet living, Whose flight and fear had mix'd them with the dead. Cat. And this shall be again, and more, and more, Now Lentulus, the third Cornelius, Is to stand up in Rome. Lent. Nay, urge not that Is so uncertain. Cat. How! Lent. I mean, not clear'd; And therefore not to be reflected on. 30 Cat. The Sybil's leaves uncertain! or the comments Of our grave, deep, divining men, not clear! 40 Lent. All prophecies, you know, suffer the torture. Cat. But this already hath confess'd, without; And so been weigh'd, examin'd, and compar'd, As 'twere malicious ignorance in him Would faint in the belief. Lent. Do you believe it? Cat. Do I love Lentulus, or pray to see it? Lent. They count from Cinna Cat. And Sylla next-and so make you the third: All that can say the sun is ris'n, must think it. Lent. Men mark me more of late as I come forth! Cat. Why, what can they do less? Cinna and Sylla Are set and gone; and we must turn our eyes Cet. But he, and we, and all, are idle still. 10 19 Lent. I am your creature, Sergius; and whate'er The great Cornelian name shall win to be, It is not augury, nor the Sybil's books, But Catiline, that makes it. Cat. I am a shadow To honour'd Lentulus, and Cethegus here; XXXVIII. THE ALCHEMIST: A COMEDY. BY THE SAME. EPICURE MAMMON, a Knight, deceived by the pretensions of SUBTLE (the Alchemist), glories in the prospect of obtaining the Philosopher's Stone; and promises what rare things he will do with it. MAMMON. SURLY, his Friend. The Scene, SUBTLE'S House. Mam. Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore And there within, sir, are the golden mines, I will pronounce the happy word, Be rich. You shall no more deal with the hollow dye, Or the frail card. No more be at charge of keeping If he deny, ha' him beaten to 't, as he is The golden calf, and on their knees whole nights Or go a feasting after drum and ensign. 10 19 No more of this. You shall start up young Viceroys, FACE answers from within. Sir, He'll come to you by and by. Mam. That's his fire-drake, His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals You are not faithful, sir. This night I'll change And early in the morning will I send To all the plumbers and the pewterers, And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury, Sur. What, and turn that too? 30 Mam. Yes, and I'll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies! You admire now? Sur. No, faith. Mam. But when you see the effects of the great medicine, Of which one part projected on a hundred Sur. Yes, when I see 't, I will. Mam. Ha! why! Do you think I fable with you? I assure you, To whom he will. In eight and twenty days I'll make an old man of fourscore a child. Mam. Nay, I mean, Restore his years, renew him like an eagle, To the fifth age; make him get sons and daughters, Young giants, as our philosophers have done (The ancient patriarchs afore the flood,) But taking, once a week, on a knife's point The quantity of a grain of mustard of it, Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids. 10 20 Sur. The decay'd vestals of Pickt-hatch would thank you, That keep the fire alive there. Mam. 'Tis the secret Of Nature naturized 'gainst all infections, Cures all diseases, coming of all causes; A month's grief in a day; a year's in twelve ; 30 And of what age soever, in a month: Past all the doses of your drugging doctors. I'll undertake withal to fright the plague Out o' the kingdom in three months. Sur. And I'll Be bound, the players shall sing your praises, then, Without their poets. Mam. Sir, I'll do 't. Meantime, I'll give away so much unto my man, Shall serve th' whole city with preservative Weekly; each house his dose, and at the rate 40 Sur. As he that built the water-work, does with water? Mam. You are incredulous. Sur. Faith, I have a humour, I would not willingly be gull'd. Your stone Mam. Pertinax, my Surly, Will you believe antiquity? Records? I'll show you a book, where Moses, and his sister, And Solomon, have written of the Art? Ay, and a treatise penn'd by Adam. Sur. How? 10 Mam. Of the Philosopher's Stone, and in High Dutch. Sur. Did Adam write, Sir, in High Dutch? Mam. He did, Which proves it was the primitive tongue. Sur. What paper? Mam. On cedar-board. Sur. O that, indeed, they say, Will last 'gainst worms. Mam. Tis like your Irish wood 20 'Gainst cobwebs. I have a piece of Jason's Fleece too Which was no other than a book of Alchemy, Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum. The manner of our work: the bulls, our furnace, 30 That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting: How now? FACE enters. Do we succeed? is our day come? and holds it? |