STAGEKEEPER.
A pox on't, this book hath it not in it: you would be whipped, thou
rascal; thou must be sitting up all night at cards, when thou should be
conning thy part.

BOY.
It's all along on you; I could not get my part a night or two before,
that I might sleep on it.

[STAGEKEEPER _carrieth the_ BOY _away under his arm_.

MOMUS.
It's even well done; here is such a stir about a scurvy English show!

DEFENSOR.
Scurvy in thy face, thou scurvy Jack: if this company were not,--you
paltry critic gentleman, you that know what it is to play at primero or
passage--you that have been student at post and pair, saint and loadam
--you that have spent all your quarter's revenues in riding post one
night in Christmas, bear with the weak memory of a gamester.

MOMUS.
Gentlemen, you that can play at noddy, or rather play upon noddies--you
that can set up a jest at primero instead of a rest, laugh at the
prologue, that was taken away in a voider.

DEFENSOR.
What we present, I must needs confess, is but slubber'd invention: if
your wisdom obscure the circumstance, your kindness will pardon the
substance.

MOMUS.
What is presented here is an old musty show, that hath lain this
twelvemonth in the bottom of a coal-house amongst brooms and old shoes;
an invention that we are ashamed of, and therefore we have promised the
copies to the chandler to wrap his candles in.

DEFENSOR.
It's but a Christmas toy; and may it please your courtesies to let it pass.

MOMUS.
It's a Christmas toy, indeed! as good a conceit as sloughing[26]
hotcockles or blindman-buff.

DEFENSOR.
Some humours you shall see aimed at, if not well-resembled.

MOMUS.
Humours, indeed! Is it not a pretty humour to stand hammering upon two
_individuum vagum_, two scholars, some whole year? These same Philomusus
and Studioso have been followed with a whip and a verse, like a couple
of vagabonds, through England and Italy. The Pilgrimage to Parnassus and
the Return from Parnassus have stood the honest stagekeepers in many a
crown's expense for links and vizards; purchased a sophister a knock
with[27] a club; hindered the butler's box,[28] and emptied the college
barrels: and now, unless you know the subject well, you may return home
as wise as you came, for this last is the least part of the return from
Parnassus: that is both the first and last time that the author's wit
will turn upon the toe in this vein, and at this time the scene is not
a