INGENIOSO.  Ay, here is a fellow, Judicio, that carried the deadly stock[58] in his pen, whose muse was armed with a gag-tooth,[59] and his pen possessed with Hercules’ furies.

JUDICIO. 
Let all his faults sleep with his mournful chest,
And then for ever with his ashes rest: 
His style was witty, though he had some gall,
Something he might have mended; so may all: 
Yet this I say that, for a mother-wit,
Few men have ever seen the like of it.

          INGENIOSO reads the rest of the names.

JUDICIO.  As for these, they have some of them been the old hedge-stakes of the press; and some of them are, at this instant, the bots and glanders of the printing-house:  fellows that stand only upon terms to serve the term,[60] with their blotted papers, write, as men go to stool, for needs; and when they write, they write as a bear pisses, now and then drop a pamphlet.

INGENIOSO. Durum telum necessitas.  Good faith, they do, as I do—­exchange words for money.  I have some traffic this day with Danter[61] about a little book which I have made; the name of it is, A Catalogue of Cambridge Cuckolds.  But this Belvidere, this methodical ass, hath made me almost forget my time; I’ll now to Paul’s Churchyard; meet me an hour hence at the sign of the Pegasus in Cheapside, and I’ll moist thy temples with a cup of claret, as hard as the world goes.

[Exit JUDICIO.

ACTUS I., SCAENA 3.

Enter DANTER the Printer.

INGENIOSO.  Danter, thou art deceived, wit is dearer than thou takest it to be:  I tell thee, this libel of Cambridge has much fat and pepper in the nose; it will sell sheerly underhand, when all these books of exhortations and catechisms lie moulding on thy shopboard.

DANTER.  It’s true:  but, good faith, Master Ingenioso, I lost by your last book; and, you know, there is many a one that pays me largely for the printing of their inventions:  but, for all this, you shall have forty shillings and an odd bottle of wine.

INGENIOSO.  Forty shillings! a fit reward for one of your rheumatic poets, that beslavers all the paper he comes by, and furnishes all the chandlers with waste-papers to wrap candles in; but as for me, I’ll be paid dear even for the dregs of my wit:  little knows the world what belongs to the keeping of a good wit in waters, diets, drinks, tobacco, &c.  It is a dainty and a costly creature; and therefore I must be paid sweetly.  Furnish me with money, that I may put myself in a new suit of clothes, and I’ll suit thy shop with a new suit of terms.  It’s the gallantest child my invention was ever delivered of:  the title is, A Chronicle of Cambridge Cuckolds.  Here a man may see what day of the month such a man’s commons were enclosed, and when thrown open; and when any entailed some odd crowns upon the heirs of their bodies unlawfully begotten.  Speak quickly:  else I am gone.