Pleas. [Aside.] I’ll take care of false worship, I’ll warrant him.  He shall have no more to do with Bel and the Dragon.

Brain. Come hither, wedlock, and let me seal my lasting love upon thy lips.  Saintly has been seduced, and so has Tricksy; but thou alone art kind and constant.  Hitherto I have not valued modesty, according to its merit; but hereafter, Memphis shall not boast a monument more firm than my affection.

Wood. A most excellent reformation, and at a most seasonable time!  The moral of it is pleasant, if well considered.  Now, let us to dinner.—­Mrs Saintly, lead the way, as becomes you, in your own house.
                                                [The rest going off.

Pleas. Your hand, sweet moiety.

Wood. And heart too, my comfortable importance. 
  Mistress and wife, by turns, I have possessed: 
  He, who enjoys them both in one, is blessed.

Footnotes: 
1.  The Mahommedan doctrine of predestination is well known.  They
   reconcile themselves to all dispensations, by saying, “They are
   written on the forehead” of him, to whose lot they have fallen.

2.  The custom of drinking supernaculum, consisted in turning down
   the cup upon the thumb-nail of the drinker after his pledge, when,
   if duly quaffed off, no drop of liquor ought to appear upon his
   nail.

     With that she set it to her nose,
     And off at once the rumkin goes;
     No drops beside her muzzle falling,
     Until that she had supped it all in: 
     Then turning’t topsey on her thumb,
     Says—­look, here’s supernaculum.
                                   Cotton’s Virgil travestie.

This custom seems to have been derived from the Germans, who held,
that if a drop appeared on the thumb, it presaged grief and
misfortune to the person whose health was drunk.

3.  This piece of dirty gallantry seems to have been fashionable: 

Come, Phyllis, thy finger, to begin the go round;
How the glass in thy hand with charms does abound! 
You and the wine to each other lend arms,
And I find that my love
Does for either improve,
For that does redouble, as you double your charms.

4.  Dapper, a silly character in Jonson’s Alchemist, tricked by an
   astrologer, who persuades him the queen of fairies is his aunt.

5.  The mask, introduced in the first act of the Maid’s Tragedy, ends
   with the following dialogue betwixt Cinthia and Night: 

Cinthia Whip up thy team,
The day breaks here, and yon sun-flaring beam
Shot from the south.  Say, which way wilt thou go?

     Night. I’ll vanish into mists.

     Cinthia. I into day.

6.  In spring 1677, whilst the treaty of Nimeguen was under discussion,
   the French took the three important frontier towns, Valenciennes,
   St Omer, and Cambray.  The Spaniards seemed, with the most passive
   infatuation, to have left the defence of Flanders to the Prince of
   Orange and the Dutch.