LER: What do you think of the poets, sir John?

DAW: Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious,
prolix ass, talks of curriers, and chines of beef. Virgil of
dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of I know not what.

CLER: I think so.

DAW: And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the
tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal,
Ausonius, Statius, Politian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest--

CLER: What a sack full of their names he has got!

DAUP: And how he pours them out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus!

CLER: Was not the character right of him?

DAUP: As could be made, i'faith.

DAW: And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured.

DAUP: Why, whom do you account for authors, sir John Daw?

DAW: Syntagma juris civilis; Corpus juris civilis; Corpus juris
canonici; the king of Spain's bible--

DAUP: Is the king of Spain's bible an author?

CLER: Yes, and Syntagma.

DAUP: What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW: A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAUP: Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLER: Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew 'em: they were very corpulent
authors.

DAW: And, then there's Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha: the other
are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar.

DAUP: 'Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady,--
in titles. [ASIDE.]

CLER: I wonder that he is not called to the helm, and made a
counsellor!

DAUP: He is one extraordinary.

CLER: Nay, but in ordinary: to say truth, the state wants such.

DAUP: Why that will follow.

CLER: I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a
servant.

DAW: 'Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her silence
too.

DAUP: In verse, sir John?

CLER: What else?

DAUP: Why? how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so
slight all the old poets?

DAW: Why? every man that writes in verse is not a poet; you have of
the wits that write verses, and yet are no poets: they are poets
that live by it, the poor fellows that live by it.

DAUP: Why, would not you live by your verses, sir John?

CLER: No, 'twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses? he
did not make them to that end, I hope.

DAUP: And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble family
not ashamed.

CLER: Ay, he profest himself; but sir John Daw has more caut