VER.  This world is transitory; it was made of nothing, and it must to nothing:  wherefore, if we will do the will of our high Creator, whose will it is that it pass to nothing, we must help to consume it to nothing.  Gold is more vile than men:  men die in thousands and ten thousands, yea, many times in hundred thousands, in one battle.  If then the best husband has been so liberal of his best handiwork, to what end should we make much of a glittering excrement, or doubt to spend at a banquet as many pounds as he spends men at a battle?  Methinks I honour Geta, the Roman emperor, for a brave-minded fellow; for he commanded a banquet to be made him of all meats under the sun, which were served in after the order of the alphabet, and the clerk of the kitchen, following the last dish, which was two miles off from the foremost, brought him an index of their several names.  Neither did he pingle, when it was set on the board, but for the space of three days and three nights never rose from the table.

WILL SUM.  O intolerable lying villain, that was never begotten without the consent of a whetstone![32]

SUM.  Ungracious man, how fondly he argueth!

VER.  Tell me, I pray, wherefore was gold laid under our feet in the veins of the earth, but that we should contemn it, and tread upon it, and so consequently tread thrift under our feet?  It was not known till the iron age, donec facinus invasit mortales, as the poet says; and the Scythians always detested it.  I will prove it that an unthrift, of any, comes nearest a happy man, in so much as he comes nearest to beggary.  Cicero saith, summum bonum consists in omnium rerum vacatione, that is, the chiefest felicity that may be to rest from all labours.  Now who doth so much vacare a rebus, who rests so much, who hath so little to do as the beggar? who can sing so merry a note, as he that cannot change a groat?[33] Cui nil est, nil deest:  he that hath nothing wants nothing.  On the other side, it is said of the carl, Omnia habeo, nec quicquam habeo:  I have all things, yet want everything. Multi mihi vitio vertunt quia egeo, saith Marcus Cato in Aulus Gellius; at ego illis quia nequeunt egere:  many upbraid me, saith he, because I am poor; but I upbraid them, because they cannot live if they be poor.[34] It is a common proverb, Divesque miserque, a rich man and a miserable:  nam natura paucis contenta, none so contented as the poor man.  Admit that the chiefest happiness were not rest or ease, but knowledge, as Herillus, Alcidamus, and many of Socrates’ followers affirm; why paupertas omnes perdocet artes, poverty instructs a man in all arts; it makes a man hardy and venturous, and therefore is it called of the poets paupertas audax, valiant poverty.  It is not so much subject to inordinate desires as wealth or prosperity. Non habet, unde suum paupertas pascat amorem;[35] poverty hath