ourselves have baited, but you are cloyed with the preparative, and what
you mean for a whet, turns the edge of your puny stomachs. Your love is
like your courage, which you show for the first year or two upon all
occasions; till in a little time, being disabled or disarmed, you abate
of your vigour; and that daring blade which was so often drawn, is bound
to the peace for ever after.

BELL. Thou art an old fornicator of a singular good principle indeed,
and art for encouraging youth, that they may be as wicked as thou art at
thy years.

HEART. I am for having everybody be what they pretend to be: a
whoremaster be a whoremaster, and not like Vainlove, kiss a lap-dog with
passion, when it would disgust him from the lady's own lips.

BELL. That only happens sometimes, where the dog has the sweeter breath,
for the more cleanly conveyance. But, George, you must not quarrel with
little gallantries of this nature: women are often won by 'em. Who would
refuse to kiss a lap-dog, if it were preliminary to the lips of his lady?

SHARP. Or omit playing with her fan, and cooling her if she were hot,
when it might entitle him to the office of warming her when she should be
cold?

BELL. What is it to read a play in a rainy day? Though you should be
now and then interrupted in a witty scene, and she perhaps preserve her
laughter, till the jest were over; even that may be borne with,
considering the reward in prospect.

HEART. I confess you that are women's asses bear greater burdens: are
forced to undergo dressing, dancing, singing, sighing, whining, rhyming,
flattering, lying, grinning, cringing, and the drudgery of loving to
boot.

BELL. O brute, the drudgery of loving!

HEART. Ay! Why, to come to love through all these incumbrances is like
coming to an estate overcharged with debts, which, by the time you have
paid, yields no further profit than what the bare tillage and manuring of
the land will produce at the expense of your own sweat.

BELL. Prithee, how dost thou love?

SHARP. He! He hates the sex.

HEART. So I hate physic too--yet I may love to take it for my health.

BELL. Well come off, George, if at any time you should be taken
straying.

SHARP. He has need of such an excuse, considering the present state of
his body.

HEART. How d'ye mean?

SHARP. Why, if whoring be purging, as you call it, then, I may say,
marriage is entering into a course of physic.

BELL. How, George! Does th