To know what part of my land’s good for th’ plough,
And what for pasture; how to buy and sell
To the best advantage; how to cure my Oxen
When they’re oregrown with labour. Cha. I may do this
From what I’ve read Sir; for what concerns tillage?
Who better can deliver it than Virgil
In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds,
His Bucolicks is a masterpeece; but when
He does discribe the Commonwealth of Bees,
Their industry and knowledge of the herbs,
From which they gather honey, with their care
To place it with decorum in the Hive,
Their gover[n]ment among themselves, their order
In going forth and comming loaden home,
Their obedience to their King, and his rewards
To such as labour, with his punishments
Onely inflicted on the slothful Drone,
I’m ravished with it, and there reap my harvest,
And there receive the gaine my Cattle bring me,
And there find wax and honey. Bri. And grow rich
In your imagination; heyday heyday,
Georgicks, Bucolicks, and Bees! Art mad?
Cha. No Sir, the knowledge of these guards me from it.
Bri. But can you find among your bundle of
bookes
(And put in all your Dictionaries that speak all tongu’s)
What pleasure they enjoy, that do embrace
A well shap’d wealthy Bride? Answer me
that.
Cha. Tis frequent Sir in story, there I read
of
All kinde of vertuous and vitious women;
The ancient Spartan Dames, and Roman Ladyes,
Their beauties and deformities, and when
I light upon a Portia or Cornelia,
Crown’d with still-flourishing leaves of truth
and goodness,
With such a feeling I peruse their fortunes,
As if I then had liv’d, and freely tasted
Their ravishing sweetness; at the present loving
The whole sexe for their goodness and example.
But on the contrary when I looke on
A Clytemnestra, or a Tullia;
The first bath’d in her husbands blood; The
latter,
Without a touch of piety, driving on
Her Chariot ore her fathers breathless trunk,
Horrour invades my faculties; and comparing
The multitudes o’ th’ guilty, with the
few
That did dye Innocents, I detest, and loathe ’m
As ignorance or Atheisme. Bri. You resolve
then
Nere to make payment of the debt you owe me.
Cha. What debt, good Sir? Bri.
A debt I payd my father
When I begat thee, and made him a Grandsir,
Which I expect from you. Cha. The children
Sir,
Which I will leave to all posterity,
Begot and brought up by my painefull studies,
Shall be my living issue. Bri. Very well.
And I shall have a general collection
Of all the quiddits from Adam to this time
To be my Grandchild. Ch. And such a one
I hope Sir
As shall not shame the family. Bri. Nor