MEMORY, an old decrepit man, in a black velvet cassock,[225] a taffeta gown furred with white grogram, a white beard, velvet slippers, a watch, staff, &c. ANAMNESTES, his page, in a grave satin suit, purple buskins, a garland of bays and rosemary, a gimmal ring[226] with one link hanging, ribbons and threads tied to some of his fingers; in his hand a pair of table-books, &c.

MEMORY, ANAMNESTES, PHANTASTES, COMMUNIS SENSUS.

MEM. How soon a wise man shall have his wish!

COM. SEN. Memory, the season of your coming is very ripe.

PHA. Had you stayed a little longer, 'twould have been stark rotten.

MEM. I am glad I saved it from the swine. 'Sprecious, I have forgot something. O, my purse, my purse! Why, Anamnestes, Remembrance? that wild boy is always gadding. I remember he was at my heels even now, and now the vile rascal is vanished.

PHA. Is he not here? Why, then in my imagination he's left behind.
Hollo! Anamnestes, Remembrance!

ANA. [Running in haste.] Anon, anon, sir; anon, anon, sir; anon, anon, sir; anon, anon, sir.

MEM. Ha, sirrah, what a brawling's here?

ANA. I do but give you an answer with, anon, sir.

MEM. You answer sweetly; I have called you three or four times one after another.

ANA. Sir, I hope I answered you three or four times, one in the neck of another. But if your good worship have lent me any more calls, tell me, and I'll repay them, as I'm a gentleman.

MEM. Leave your tattle. Had you come at first, I had not spent so much breath in vain.

ANA. The truth is, sir, the first time you called I heard you not: the second, I understood you not: the third, I knew not whether it were you or no: the fourth, I could not tell where you were, and that's the reason I answered so suddenly.

MEM. Go, sirrah: run: seek everywhere. I have lost my purse somewhere.

ANA. I go, sir. Go, sirrah, seek, run; I have lost; bring! here's a dog's life, with a pox! Shall I be always used like a water-spaniel? [Exit ANAMNESTES.

COM. SEN. Come, good Master Register, I wonder you be so late now-a-days.

MEM. My good lord, I remember that I knew your grandfather in this your place, and I remember your grandfather's great grandfather's grandfather's father's father; yet in those days I never remember that any of them could say that Register Memory ever broke one minute of his appointment.

COM. SEN. Why, good father, why are you so late now-a-days?

MEM. Thus 'tis; the most customers I remember myself to have, are, as your lordship knows, scholars; and now-a-days the most of them are become critics, bringing me home such paltry things to lay up for them, that I can hardly find them again.

PHA. Jupiter, Jupiter, I had thought these flies had bit none but myself: do critics tickle you, i'faith?

MEM. Very familiarly: for they must know of me, forsooth, how every idle word is written in all the musty moth-eaten manuscripts, kept in all the old libraries in every city betwixt England and Peru.

COM. SEN. Indeed, I have noted these times to affect antiquities more than is requisite.

MEM. I remember, in the age of Assaracus and Ninus, and about the wars of Thebes and the siege of Troy, there were few things committed to my charge, but those that were well worthy the preserving; but now every trifle must be wrapped up in the volume of eternity. A rich pudding-wife or a cobbler cannot die but I must immortalise his name with an epitaph; a dog cannot piss in a nobleman's shoe, but it must be sprinkled into the chronicles; so that I never could remember my treasure more full, and never emptier of honourable and true heroical actions.

PHA. By your leave, Memory, you are not alone troubled; chronologers many of them are so fantastic, as when they bring a captain to the combat, lifting up his revengeful arm to dispart the head of his enemy, they'll hold up his arms so long, till they have bestowed three or four pages in describing the gold hilts of his threatening falchion: so that in my fancy the reader may well wonder his adversary stabs him not, before he strikes. Moreover, they are become most palpable flatterers, always begging at my gates for invention.

COM. SEN. This is a great fault in a chronologer to turn parasite: an absolute historian should be in fear of none;[227] neither should he write anything more than truth for friendship, or less for hate; but keep himself equal and constant in all his discourses. But, for us, we must be contented; for, as our honours increase, so must the burthen of the cares of our offices urge us to wax heavy.

PHA. But not till our backs break; 'slud, there was never any so haunted as I am: this day there comes a sophister to my house, knocks at my door; his errand being asked, forsooth his answer was to borrow a fair suit of conceits out of my wardrobe, to apparel a show he had in hand: and what think you is the plot?

COM. SEN. Nay, I know not, for I am little acquainted with such toys.

PHA. Meanwhile, he's somewhat acquainted with you, for he's bold to bring your person upon the stage.

COM. SEN. What, me? I can't remember that I was ever brought upon the stage before.

PHA. Yes, you, and you, and myself with all my fantastical tricks and humours: but I trow I have fitted him with fooleries: I trust he'll never trouble me again.

COM. SEN. O times! O manners! when boys dare to traduce men in authority; was ever such an attempt heard?

MEM. I remember there was: for, to say the truth, at my last being at Athens—it is now, let me see, about one thousand eight hundred years ago—I was at a comedy of Aristophanes' making.[228] I shall never forget it; the arch-governor of Athens took me by the hand, and placed me; and there, I say, I saw Socrates abused most grossly, himself being then a present spectator: I remember he sat full against me, and did not so much as show the least countenance of discontent.

COM. SEN. In those days it was lawful; but now the abuse of such liberty is insufferable.

PHA. Think what you will of it, I think 'tis done, and I think it is acting by this time: hark, hark; what drumming's yonder! I'll lay my life they are come to present the show I spake of.

COM. SEN. It may be so; stay, we'll see what 'tis.

SCAENA QUINTA.

LINGUA, MENDACIO, COMMUNIS SENSUS, and the rest.

LIN. Feign thyself in great haste.

MEN. I warrant you, madam: I doubt 'tis in vain to run, by this they are all past overtaking.

COM. SEN. Is not this Lingua, that is in such haste?

PHA. Yes, yes, stand still.

MEN. I must speak with him.

COM. SEN. With whom?

MEN. Assure yourself they are all at court ere this.

LIN. Run after them, for, unless he know it—

COM. SEN. Lingua!

LIN. O, is't your lordship? I beseech you, pardon me. Haste and fear, I protest, put out mine eyes: I looked so long for you, that I knew not, when I had found you.

PHA. In my conceit that's like the man that inquired who saw his ass, when himself rid on him.

LIN. O, my heart beats so! fie, fie, fie, fie!

MEN. I am so weary; so, so, so, so.

COM. SEN. I prythee, Lingua, make an end.

LIN. Let me begin first, I beseech you; but if you will needs have the end first—thus 'tis: the commonwealth of Microcosm at this instant suffers the pangs of death, 'tis gasping for breath. Will you have all? 'tis poisoned.

PHA. What apothecary durst be so bold as make such a confection? ha, what poison is't?

LIN. A golden crown.

MEN. I mistake; or else Galen, in his book "De Sanitate Tuenda," commends gold as restorative.

COM. SEN. Lingua, express yourself.

MEN. Madam, if you want breath, let me help you out.

LIN. I prythee do, do.

MEN. My lord, the report is that Mercury, coming late into this country, in this very place left a coronet with this inscription, that the best of the five should have it, which the Senses thinking to belong unto them—

LIN. Challenge each other, and are now in arms, and't like your lordship.

COM. SEN. I protest it likes not me.

LIN. Their battles are not far hence; ready ranged.

COM. SEN. O monstrous presumption! what shall we do?

MEM. My lord, in your great grandfather's time there was, I remember, such a breach amongst them; therefore my counsel is that, after his example, by the strength of your authority you convene them before you.

COM. SEN. Lingua, go presently; command the Senses, upon their allegiance to our dread sovereign Queen Psyche, to dismiss their companies, and personally to appear before me without any pretence of excuse.

LIN. I go, my lord.

PHA. But hear you, madam? I pray you, let your Tongue's page[229] walk with us a little, till you return again.

LIN. With all my heart. [Exit LINGUA.

PHA.[230] Hot youths, I protest: saw you those warlike preparations?

MEN, Lately, my lords, I sped into the army;
But O, 'tis far beyond my reach of wit
Or strength of utterance to describe their forces.

COM. SEN. Go to; speak what thou canst.

MEN. Upon the right hand of a spacious hill
Proud Visus marshalleth a puissant army,
Three thousand eagles strong, whose valiant captain
Is Jove's swift thunder-bearer, that same bird,
That hoist up Ganymede from the Trojan plains.
The vanguard strengthened with a wondrous flight
Of falcons, haggards, hobbies, terselets,[231]
Lanards and goshawks, sparhawks, and ravenous birds.
The rearward granted to Auditus' charge,
Is stoutly follow'd with an impetuous herd
Of stiff-neck'd bulls and many horn-mad stags,
Of the best head the forest can afford.

PHA. I promise you, a fearful troop of soldiers.

MEN. Right opposite stands Tactus, strongly mann'd
With three thousand bristled urchens[232] for his pikemen,
Four hundred tortoises for elephants;
Besides a monstrous troop of ugly spiders,
Within an ambushment he hath commanded
Of their own guts to spin a cordage fine,
Whereof t'have fram'd a net (O wondrous work!)
That, fastened by the concave of the moon,
Spreads down itself to th'earth's circumference.

MEM. 'Tis very strange; I cannot remember the like engine at any time.

MEN. Nay more, my lord, the masks[233] are made so strong,
That I myself upon them scal'd the heavens,
And boldly walk'd about the middle region,
Where, in the province of the meteors,
I saw the cloudy shops of hail and rain,
Garners of snow, and crystals full of dew;
Rivers of burning arrows, dens of dragons,
Huge beams of flames, and spears like firebrands.
Where I beheld hot Mars and Mercury,
With rackets made of spheres and balls of stars,
Playing at tennis for a tun of Nectar.
And that vast gaping of the firmament
Under the southern pole is nothing else
But the great hazard[234] of their tennis-court;
The Zodiac is the line; the shooting stars,
Which in an eye-bright evening seem to fall,
Are nothing but the balls they lose at bandy.
Thus, having took my pleasure with those sights,
By the same net I went up I descended.

COM. SEN. Well, sirrah, to what purpose tends this stratagem?

MEN. None know directly; but I think it is
T'entrap the eagles, when the battles join.

PHA. Who takes Tactus his part?

MEN. Under the standard of thrice-hardy Tactus,
Thrice-valiant Gustus leads his warlike forces;
An endless multitude of desperate apes;
Five hundred marmosets and long-tail'd monkeys,
All trained to the field, and nimble gunners.

PHA. I imagine there's old moving[235] amongst them: methinks a handful of nuts would turn them all out of their soldiers' coats.

MEN. Ramparts of pasty-crust and forts of pies,
Entrench'd with dishes full of custard stuff,
Hath Gustus made, and planted ordinance—
Strange ordinance, cannons of hollow canes,
Whose powder's rape-seed, charg'd with turnip-shot.

MEM. I remember, in the country of Utopia[236] they use no other kind of artillery.

COM. SEN. But what's become of Olfactus?

MEN. He politicly leans to neither part,
But stands betwixt the camps as at receipt,
Having great swine[237] his pioneers to entrench them.

PHA. In my foolish imagination Olfactus is very like the Goddess of
Victory, that never takes any part but the conqueror's.

MEN. And in the woods be[238] placed secretly
Two hundred couple of hounds and hungry mastiffs;
And o'er his head hover at his command
A cloud of vultures, which o'erspread the light,
Making a night before the day be done:
But to what end not known, but fear'd of all.

PHA. I conjecture he intends to see them fight, and after the battle to feed his dogs, hogs, and vultures upon the murdered carcases.

MEN. My lord, I think the fury of their anger will not be obedient to the message of Lingua; for otherwise, in my conceit, they should have been here ere this. With your lordship's good liking, we'll attend upon you to see the field for more certainty.

COM. SEN. It shall be so; come, Master Register, let's walk.

[Exeunt omnes.