y day.

CLER: O, by no means, she may not refuse--to stay at home, if you
love your reputation: 'Slight, you are invited thither o' purpose
to be seen, and laughed at by the lady of the college, and her
shadows. This trumpeter hath proclaim'd you.
[ASIDE TO EPICOENE.]

DAUP: You shall not go; let him be laugh'd at in your stead, for
not bringing you: and put him to his extemporal faculty of fooling
and talking loud, to satisfy the company.
[ASIDE TO EPICOENE.]

CLER: He will suspect us, talk aloud.--'Pray, mistress Epicoene,
let us see your verses; we have sir John Daw's leave: do not
conceal your servant's merit, and your own glories.

EPI: They'll prove my servant's glories, if you have his leave so
soon.

DAUP: His vain-glories, lady!

DAW: Shew them, shew them, mistress, I dare own them.

EPI: Judge you, what glories.

DAW: Nay, I'll read them myself too: an author must recite his
own works. It is a madrigal of Modesty.
Modest, and fair, for fair and good are near
Neighbours, howe'er.--

DAUP: Very good.

CLER: Ay, is't not?

DAW: No noble virtue ever was alone,
But two in one.

DAUP: Excellent!

CLER: That again, I pray, sir John.

DAUP: It has something in't like rare wit and sense.

CLER: Peace.

DAW: No noble virtue ever was alone,
But two in one.
Then, when I praise sweet modesty, I praise
Bright beauty's rays:
And having praised both beauty and modesty,
I have praised thee.

DAUP: Admirable!

CLER: How it chimes, and cries tink in the close, divinely!

DAUP: Ay, 'tis Seneca.

CLER: No, I think 'tis Plutarch.

DAW: The dor on Plutarch, and Seneca! I hate it: they are mine own
imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such
credit with gentlemen.

CLER: They are very grave authors.

DAW: Grave asses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that's
all. A man would talk so, his whole age: I do utter as good things
every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of
them.

DAUP: Indeed, sir John!

CLER: He must needs; living among the wits and braveries too.

DAUP: Ay, and being president of them, as he is.

DAW: There's Aristotle, a mere common-place fellow; Plato, a
discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an
entire knot: sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.

C