stop the hearing; 20
The wasting hectic, and the quartan fever,
Which doth of physic make a mockery,
The gout it cures, and helps ill breaths for ever,
Whether the cause in teeth or stomach be;
And though ill breaths were by it but confounded,
Yet that vild[529] medicine it doth far excel,
Which by Sir Thomas More[530] hath been propounded,
For this is thought a gentleman-like smell.
O, that I were one of these mountebanks
Which praise their oils and powders which they sell! 30
My customers would give me coin with thanks;
I for this ware, forsooth,[531] a tale would tell:
Yet would I use none of these terms before;
I would but say, that it the pox will cure;
This were enough, without discoursing more,
All our brave gallants in the town t'allure.

FOOTNOTES:

[526] Isham copy, "Heuens;" and eds. B, C "Heauens."--MS.
"helevs."--Davies alludes to _Odyssey_ iv., 219, &c.

[527] So MS.--Old eds. "substantiall."

[528] We are reminded of Bobadil's encomium of tobacco:--"I could say
what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw
humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind; but I
profess myself no quacksalver. Only this much: by Hercules I do hold it
and will affirm it before any prince in Europe to be the most sovereign
and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man."

[529] So MS.--Not in old eds.

[530] Dyce quotes from More's _Lucubrationes_ (ed. 1563, p. 261), an
epigram headed "Medicinae ad tollendos foetores anhelitus, provenientes
a cibis quibusdam."

[531] So eds. A, B, C.--Isham copy "so smooth."--MS. "so faire."

IN CRASSUM. XXXVII.

Crassus his lies are no[532] pernicious lies,
But pleasant fictions, hurtful unto none
But to himself; for no man counts him wise
To tell for truth that which for false is known.
He swears that Gaunt[533] is three-score miles about,
And that the bridge at Paris[534] on the Seine
Is of such thickness, length, and breadth throughout,
That six-score arches can it scarce sustain;
He swears he saw so great a dead man's skull
At Canterbury digg'd out of the ground, 10
As[535] would contain of wheat three bushels full;
And that in Kent are twenty yeomen found,
Of which the poorest every year[536] dispends
Five thousand pound: these and five th