t but two bared boughs,
Scorn'd by the basest bird that chirps in grove.
Nor Rome, nor Rhemes, that wonted are to give
A cardinal cap to discontented clerks,
That have forsook the home-bred, thatched[64] roofs,
Yielded us any equal maintenance:
And it's as good to starve 'mongst English swine,
As in a foreign land to beg and pine.

PHILOMUSUS.
I'll scorn the world, that scorneth me again.

STUDIOSO.
I'll vex the world, that works me so much pain.

PHILOMUSUS.
Thy[65] lame revenging power the world well weens.

STUDIOSO.
Flies have their spleen, each silly ant his teens.

PHILOMUSUS.
We have the words, they the possession have.

STUDIOSO.
We all are equal in our latest grave.

PHILOMUSUS.
Soon then, O, soon may we both graved be.

STUDIOSO.
Who wishes death doth wrong wise destiny.

PHILOMUSUS.
It's wrong to force life-loathing men to breathe.

STUDIOSO.
It's sin 'fore doomed day to wish thy death.

PHILOMUSUS.
Too late our souls flit to their resting-place.

STUDIOSO.
Why, man's whole life is but a breathing space.

PHILOMUSUS.
A painful minute seems a tedious year.

STUDIOSO.
A constant mind eternal woes will bear.

PHILOMUSUS.
When shall our souls their wearied lodge forego?

STUDIOSO.
When we have tired misery and woe.

PHILOMUSUS.
Soon may then fates this gaol[66]-deliver send us: Small woes vex long,
[but] great woes quickly end us. But let's leave this capping of rhymes,
Studioso, and follow our late device, that we may maintain our heads in
caps, our bellies in provender, and our backs in saddle and bridle.
Hitherto we have sought all the honest means we could to live, and now
let us dare _aliqua brevibus gyris[67] et carcere dignum_; let us run
through all the lewd forms of lime-twig, purloining villanies; let us
prove coneycatchers, bawds, or anything, so we may rub out. And first my
plot for playing the French doctor--that shall hold; our lodging stands
here fitly[68] in Shoe Lane: for, if our comings-in be not the better,
London may shortly throw an old shoe after us; and with those shreds of
French that we gathered up in our host's house in Paris, we'll gull the
world, that hath in estimation foreign physicians: and if any of the
hidebound brethren of Cambridge and Oxford, or any of those stigmatic
masters of art that abused us in times pass'd, leave their own
physicians, and become our patients, we'll alter quite the style of
them; for they shall never hereafter write, Y