before a twinkling atom!—­Oswald,
              I could fetch lessons out of wiser schools
              Than you have entered, were it worth the pains. 
              Young as I am, I might go forth a teacher,
              And you should see how deeply I could reason
              Of love in all its shapes, beginnings, ends;
              Of moral qualities in their diverse aspects;
              Of actions, and their laws and tendencies.

OSWALD You take it as it merits—­

MARMADUKE One a King,
              General or Cham, Sultan or Emperor,
              Strews twenty acres of good meadow-ground
              With carcases, in lineament and shape
              And substance, nothing differing from his own,
              But that they cannot stand up of themselves;
              Another sits i’ th’ sun, and by the hour
              Floats kingcups in the brook—­a Hero one
              We call, and scorn the other as Time’s spendthrift;
              But have they not a world of common ground
              To occupy—­both fools, or wise alike,
              Each in his way?

OSWALD Troth, I begin to think so.

MARMADUKE Now for the corner-stone of my philosophy: 
              I would not give a denier for the man
              Who, on such provocation as this earth
              Yields, could not chuck his babe beneath the chin,
              And send it with a fillip to its grave.

OSWALD Nay, you leave me behind.

MARMADUKE That such a One,
              So pious in demeanour! in his look
              So saintly and so pure!—­Hark’ee, my Friend,
              I’ll plant myself before Lord Clifford’s Castle,
              A surly mastiff kennels at the gate,
              And he shall howl and I will laugh, a medley
              Most tunable.

OSWALD In faith, a pleasant scheme;
              But take your sword along with you, for that
              Might in such neighbourhood find seemly use.—­
              But first, how wash our hands of this old Man?

MARMADUKE Oh yes, that mole, that viper in the path;
              Plague on my memory, him I had forgotten.

OSWALD You know we left him sitting—­see him yonder.

MARMADUKE Ha! ha!—­

OSWALD As ’twill be but a moment’s work,
              I will stroll on; you follow when ’tis done.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE changes to another part of the Moor at a short distance—­HERBERT is discovered seated on a stone