LIN.  Nay, good Auditus, do but hear me speak.

AUD.  Lingua, thou strik’st too much upon one string,
Thy tedious plain-song[170] grates my tender ears.

LIN.  ’Tis plain indeed, for truth no descant needs;
Una’s her name, she cannot be divided.

AUD.  O, but the ground[171] itself is naught, from whence
Thou canst not relish out a good division: 
Therefore at length surcease, prove not stark-mad,
Hopeless to prosecute a hapless suit: 
For though (perchance) thy first strains pleasing are,
I dare engage mine ear the close[172] will jar.

LIN.  If then your confidence esteem my cause
To be so frivolous and weakly wrought,
Why do you daily subtle plots devise,
To stop me from the ears of common sense? 
Whom since our great queen Psyche hath ordain’d,
For his sound wisdom, our vice-governor,
To him and to his two so wise assistants,
Nimble Phantastes and firm Memory,
Myself and cause I humbly do commit. 
Let them but hear and judge; I wish no more.

AUD.  Should they but know thy rash presumption,
They would correct it in the sharpest sort: 
Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! 
Since from the first foundation of the world,
We never were accounted more than five. 
Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame,
Would fain increase the number, and upstart
To our high seats, decking your babbling self
With usurp’d titles of our dignity.

LIN.  An idle prating dame! know, fond Auditus,
Records affirm my title full as good,
As his amongst the five is counted best.

AUD.  Lingua, confess the truth:  thou’rt wont to lie.

LIN.  I say so too, therefore I do not lie. 
But now, spite of you all, I speak the truth. 
You five among us subjects tyrannise;
Making the sacred name of Common Sense
A cloak to cover your enormities: 
He bears the rule; he’s judge, but judgeth still,
As he’s inform’d by your false evidence: 
So that a plaintiff cannot have access,
But through your gates.  He hears, but what? nought else,
But what thy crafty ears to him conveys: 
And all he sees is by proud Visus show’d him: 
And what he touches is by Tactus’ hand;
And smells, I know, but through Olfactus’ nose;
Gustus begins to him whate’er he tastes: 
By these quaint tricks free passage hath been barr’d,
That I could never equally be heard. 
But well, ’tis well.

AUD.  Lingua, thy feeble sex
Hath hitherto withheld my ready hands,
That long’d to pluck that nimble instrument.

LIN.  O horrible ingratitude! that thou—­
That thou of all the rest should’st threaten me: 
Who by my means conceiv’st as many tongues,
As Neptune closeth lands betwixt his arms: 
The ancient Hebrew clad with mysteries: 
The learned Greek rich in fit epithets,
Bless’d in the lovely marriage of pure words: