M. Beshrew me, but thy song hath moved me.

WILL SUM. "Lord, have mercy on us," how lamentable 'tis!

_Enter_ VERTUMNUS, _with_ CHRISTMAS _and_ BACKWINTER.

VER. I have despatched, my lord; I have brought you them you sent me for.

WILL SUM. What say'st thou? hast thou made a good batch? I pray thee,
give me a new loaf![128]

SUM. Christmas, how chance thou com'st not as the rest,
Accompanied with some music or some song?
A merry carol would have grac'd thee well:
Thy ancestors have us'd it heretofore.

CHRIST. Ay, antiquity was the mother of ignorance: this latter world,
that sees but with her spectacles, hath spied a pad in those sports
more than they could.

SUM. What, is't against thy conscience for to sing?

CHRIST. No, not to say, by my troth, if I may get a good bargain.

SUM. Why, thou should'st spend, thou should'st not care to get:
Christmas is god of hospitality.

CHRIST. So will he never be of good husbandry. I may say to you, there
is many an old god that is now grown out of fashion; so is the god of
hospitality.

SUM. What reason canst thou give he should be left?

CHRIST. No other reason, but that gluttony is a sin, and too many
dunghills are infectious. A man's belly was not made for a powdering
beef-tub; to feed the poor twelve days, and let them starve all the year
after, would but stretch out the guts wider than they should be, and so
make famine a bigger den in their bellies than he had before. I should
kill an ox, and have some such fellow as Milo to come and eat it up at a
mouthful; or, like the Sybarites,[129] do nothing all one year but bid
guests against the next year. The scraping of trenchers you think would
put a man to no charges: it is not a hundred pound a year would serve
the scullion in dishclouts. My house stands upon vaults; it will fall,
if it be overladen with a multitude. Besides, have you never read of a
city that was undermined and destroyed by moles? So, say I, keep
hospitality and a whole fair of beggars bid me to dinner every day. What
with making legs[130], when they thank me at their going away, and
settling their wallets handsomely on their backs, they would shake as
many lice on the ground as were able to undermine my house, and undo me
utterly. Is it their prayers would build it again, if it were overthrown
by this vermin, would it? I pray, who began feasting and gormandis[ing]
first, but Sardanapalus, Nero, Heliogabalus, Commodus? tyrants,
whoremasters,