Thorough the trunk, like one of your familiars. But I have spied Sir Epicure Mammon- Dol. Coming along, at far end of the lane, Slow of his feet, but earnest of his tongue To one that's with him. Sub. Face, go you and shift. [Exit Face. Dol, you must presently make ready too. Dol. Why, what's the matter? Sub. O, I did look for him With the sun's rising: marvel he could sleep. This is the day I am to perfect for him The magisterium, our great work, the 1 You shall no more deal with the hollow dye,] This alludes to the way of cheating among gamesters, to make their dice hollow, and then by loading them to make them run high or low. The high were so loaden as to run 4, 5, or 6; the low to run 1, 2, or 3.WHAL. Cartwright dilates on this very pleasantly: "Your high And low men are but trifles; your poised dye, That's ballasted with quicksilver or gold, Is gross to this. For the bristle dye, it is As his preservative, made of the elixir; Searching the spittle, to make old bawds young; And the highways, for beggars, to make rich: I see no end of his labours. He will make Nature ashamed of her long sleep: when art, Who's but a step-dame, shall do more than she, In her best love to mankind, ever could: If his dream last, he'll turn the age to gold. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I.-An outer Room in Lovewit's House. Enter Sir Epicure Mammon and Surly. Mam. Come on, sir. Now you set your foot on shore In Novo Orbe; here's the rich Peru: And there within, sir, are the golden mines, Great Solomon's Ophir! he was sailing to't, Three years, but we have reached it in ten months. This is the day wherein, to all my friends, THIS DAY YOU SHALL BE SPECTATISSIMI. You shall no more deal with the hollow dye,1 Or the frail card. No more be at charge of keeping The livery-punk for the young heir, that must Seal, at all hours, in his shirt: no more, To be displayed at Madam Augusta's, make The sons of Sword and Hazard fall before The golden calf, and on their knees, whole nights, Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets: Or go a feasting after drum and ensign. No more of this. You shall start up young viceroys, And have your punks and punketees, my Surly. And unto thee I speak it first, BE RICH. Where is my Subtle, there? Within, ho! Face. [within.] Sir, he'll come to you by and by. Mam. That is his fire-drake, His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals, Till he firk nature up, in her own centre. You are not faithful, sir.3 This night I'll change All that is metal in my house to gold: For all the copper. Sur. What, and turn that too? Mam. Yes, and I'll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies !5 you admire now? Sur. No, faith. Mam. But when you see th' effects of the Great Medicine, Of which one part projected on a hundred 1 To be displayed at Madam Augusta's,] The mistress of a brothel; and probably the same whom he elsewhere calls Madam Cæsarean. -WHAL. From what follows I should rather suppose her to be the mistress of an ordinary or gambling-house. Surly was a gambler. "One thing (says Purchas) I cannot forget, that in prodigall excesse, the insides of our clokes are richer than the outsides."-Microcosmus, p. 268. This explains the preceding line. 2 His Lungs, Lungs was a term of art for the under operators in chemistry, whose business principally was to take care of the fire. So Cowley, in his sketch of a philosophic college, in the number of its members reckons two Lungs, or chemical servants; and afterwards, assigning their salaries, "to each of the Lungs twelve pound."-WHAL. Nay, to a thousand, so ad infinitum: You will believe me. Sur. Yes, when I see't, I will. But if my eyes do cozen me so, and I Giving them no occasion, sure I'll have A whore shall piss them out next day. Mam. Ha! why? Do you think I fable with you? I assure you, He that has once the flower of the sun, I'll make an old man of fourscore, a child.) 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. Sur. The decayed vestals of Pict-hatch would thank you, That keep the fire alive there. Mam. 'Tis the secret Of nature naturized? 'gainst all infections, p. 7a. Of nature naturized] Our poet seems here to allude to the theological distinction of natura naturans and natura naturata. The former appellation is given to the Creator, who hath imparted existence and nature to all beings; and by the latter term the creatures are distinguished as having received their nature and For all the copper.] Lothbury (Stow says) properties from the power of another.-WHAL, 3 You are not faithful, sir.] Not easy of faith, not believing. 4 And to Lothbury, Sur. As he that built the Water-work does with water ?3 Mam. You are incredulous. Sur. Faith, I have a humour, I would not willingly be gulled. stone Cannot transmute me. Your Mam. Pertinax [my] Surly, And Solomon have written of the art; tub, And all that fable of Medea's charms, Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the The dragon's teeth, mercury sublimate, That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting; And they are gathered into Jason's helm, Mam. Of the philosopher's stone, and in The alembic, and then sowed in Mars his High Dutch. field, I'll undertake, withal, to fright the plague of ancient books, has given a collection of the Out of the kingdom in three months. The writers on chemistry. In this collection Moses, defence which Dr. Anthony published of himself Miriam (his sister), and Solomon are cited. So at Cambridge in 1610 is called Medicina chymica likewise is Adam." Zozimus Panoplita cites the et veri potabilis auri assertio, ex lucubrationi-prophet Moses EV XYμEVTIKY OVVTA§EL.” bus Fra. Anthonii Londinensis in medicina doctoris. It is divided into seven chapters: the last enumerates the several distempers which his aurum potabile cures: among which is the plague itself; as he asserts to have been demonstrated by experience in the plague which depopulated London in 1602.-WHAL. The players shall sing your praises then,] The theatres were always shut up during the plague. To this Surly alludes. As he that built the Water-work, does with water.] He, viz., Sir Hugh Middleton, as Mr. Upton too remarks: the New River was brought to London much about this time.-WHAL. Both Upton and Whalley are mistaken here. The New River was not admitted into the receptacle prepared for it till Michaelmas day, 1613, three years at least after this passage was written. Jonson speaks of a waterwork already built, and most probably of that constructed in 1595 by Bevis Bulmer, for conveying Thames water to the middle and west parts of the city. This engine is noticed by Stow in his Survey of Queen Hith ward. I'll shew you a book, where Moses, and his sister, 5 Did Adam write, sir, in High Dutch? &c.! "Joannes Goropius Becanus, a man very learned fell thereby into such a conceit, that he letted not to maintain the Teutonic tongue to be the first and most ancient language of the world; yea, the same that Adam spake in Paradise. -Verstegan, p. 207. "If," as good Master Eliot observes, in his Orthoepia Gallica, 1593, "the commicall Aristophanes were alive, he should here have a good argument to write a commedie." To this also Butler alludes: 6 "Whether the devil tempted her By a High Dutch interpreter," &c. I have a piece of Jason's fleece too Which was no other than a book of alchemy, Writ in large sheepskin, a good fat ramvellum.] From Suidas, as Upton observes: To μυθολογουμενον χρυσειον δερος βιβλιον ην εν δερμασι γεγραμμένον περιεχον όπως δει δια χημειας χρυσον εργασεσθαι· in voc. δέρας. 7 Jason's helm, the alembic,] It may be just necessary to observe here, that alembic in Jonson's time did not, as now, denote the whole of a certain apparatus for distilling; but only the head of it, or that part in which the distilled matter was collected.-WHAL. Hence the allu And Solomon have written of the art; Ay, and a treatise penned by Adam.] "Fabricius," Upton tells us, "in his valuable accountsion to helmet. my sister? "Olinda. Do you affront Florimel. Ay: but thou art so tall, I think I shall never affront thee."-Wild Gallant. 3 Blushes the bolt's-head?] A long, straitnecked glass vessel or receiver, gradually rising to a conical figure.-WHAL. I will restore thee thy complexion, Puffe, Lost in the embers;] Thus Chaucer: "For rednesse have I non right well I knowe In my visage, for fumes dyverse Of metals which ye have herde ine reherce, Consumed and wasted hath my rednesse.' Chanon Yeoman's Tale. "When that our potte is broke, as I have said, In Lilly's Gallathea there is much of this jargon. There too, the alchemist professes that he can do nothing without beechen coaies." This impostor, and his man Peter, are the pleasantest characters to be found in Lilly. 6 To read your several colours, sir, Of the pale citron, the green lion, the crow, The peacock's tail, the plumed swan.] These are terms made use of by adepts in the hermetic science, to express the several effects arising from the different degrees of fermentation. Thus we are told by one of them, from the putrefaction of the dead carcasses a crow will be generated, which putting forth its head, and the bath being somewhat increased, it will stretch forth its wings and begin to fly at length being made white by a gentle and long rain, and with the dew of heaven, it will be changed into a white swan; but a new-born crow is a sign of the departed dragon.-WHAL. "These phylosophers speken so mistily In this crafte, that men cannot come thereby, For any witte that they have now adayes." So said Chaucer: and the case is not much Mam. And lastly, Filled with such pictures as Tiberius took Thou hast descried the flower, the sanguis From Elephantis, and dull Aretine agni? Face. Yes, sir. Mam. Where's master? Face. At his prayers, sir, he; Good man, he's doing his devotions Mam. Lungs, I will set a period To all thy labours; thou shalt be the master Of my seraglio. Face. Good, sir. Mam. But do you hear? I'll geld you, Lungs. Face. Yes, sir. Mam. For I do mean To have a list of wives and concubines Face. Both blood and spirit, sir. not stuft: Down is too hard: and then, mine oval room mended since his time: all these uncouth terms allude to the various colours which the materials assume in their progress towards perfection. The crow and the green lion seem to be of singular value, as the adept is frequently congratulated on their appearance. The white, or the plumed swan, is also of choice estimation, and ranks in degree only below the yellow, and the red, the sanguis agni, which, as I have already observed, is the last stage of the process. The exultation of Mammon therefore is highly natural. 1 Then, my glasses But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses room, To lose our selves in; and my baths, like pits To fall into; from whence we will come forth, And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.-- Mam. No. I'll have no bawds Best of all others. And my flatterers Shall be the pure, &c.] i.e., says Upton, "the Puritans." I think not: the positive is used here, by a construction familiar to our old writers, for the superlative-"the pure and gravest," are the purest and gravest. 4 And then my poets The same that writ so subtly of the fart.] Who the author alluded to should be, I cannot say in the collection of poems called Musarum Delicia, or the Muses' Recreation, by Sir John Mennis and Dr. Ia. Smith, there is a poem called the Fart Censured in the Parliament House; it was occasioned by an escape of that Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse And multiply the figures.] This species of lust, which the iniquitous Mamnion is contriving, was really practised by one Hostius in the time of Nero; an account of whose impurities we have in the first book of Seneca's Natural Questions: Hoc loco volo tibi narrare fabellam, ut intelligas quam nullum instrumentum irritanda voluptatis libido contemnat, et ingeniosa sit ad incitandum furorem suum. And after-kind in the House of Commons. I have seen wards he says, Non quantum peccabat videre contentus, specula sibi, per quæ flagitia sua divideret, disponeretque circumdedit.-WHAL. part of this poem ascribed to an author in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and possibly it may be the thing referred to by Jonson.-WHAL. In the preceding lines there is an allusion to This escape," as Whalley calls it, took place Suetonius: "Cubicula plurifariam disposita in 1607, long after the time of Elizabeth. The tabellis ac sigillis lascivissimarum picturarum ballad is among the Harleian MSS., and is also et figurarum adornavit; librisque Elephantidis printed in the State Poems. It contains about instruxit." Tib. c. 43. It is not necessary to forty stanzas of the most wretched doggrel, conenter into further explanations of the impure veying the opinion of as many members of parimages of this profligate voluptuary, who is por- liament on the subject; and as each of them is trayed with inimitable skill; but the reader who accompanied by a brief trait or description of wishes for more on the subject, may turn to the the respective speakers, it might, notwithstandnotes of Faber on the EKKλnoiagovσal of Aristo-ing its meanness, have interested or amused the |