d--

PHA. How now, Visus, is your heaven at a stay,
Or is it his _motus trepidationis_ that makes him stammer?
I pray you, Memory, set him a-gate[259] again.

MEM. I remember, when Jupiter made Amphitryo cuckold, and lay with his
wife Alcmena, Coelum was in this taking for three days space, and stood
still just like him at a nonplus.

COM. SEN. Leave jesting; you'll put the fresh actor out of countenance.

COEL. Eccentrics, epicyctes, and aspects
In sextile, trine and quadrate, which effects
Wonders on earth: also the oblique part
Of signs, that make the day both long and short,
The constellations, rising cosmical,
Setting of stars, chronic, and heliacal,
In the horizon or meridional,
And all the skill in deep astronomy,
Is to the soul derived by the eye.

PHA. Visus, you have made Coelum a heavenly speech, past earthly
capacity; it had been as good for him he had thundered. But I pray
you, who taught him to speak and use no action? methinks it had been
excellent to have turned round about in his speech.

VIS. He hath so many motions, he knows not which to begin withal.

PHA. Nay, rather it seems he's of Copernicus' opinion, and that makes
him stand still.

[TERRA _comes to the midst of the stage, stands still
a while, saith nothing, and steps back_.

COM. SEN. Let's hear what Terra can say--just nothing?

VIS. And't like your lordship, 'twere an indecorum Terra should speak.

MEM. You are deceived; for I remember, when Phaeton ruled the sun (I
shall never forget him, he was a very pretty youth), the Earth opened
her mouth wide, and spoke a very good speech to Jupiter.

ANA. By the same token Nilus hid his head then, he could never find it
since.

PHA. You know, Memory, that was an extreme hot day, and 'tis likely
Terra sweat much, and so took cold presently after, that ever since she
hath lost her voice.

HER. A canton ermine added to the field
Is a sure sign the man that bore these arms
Was to his prince as a defensive shield,
Saving him from the force of present harms[260].

PHA. I know this fellow of old, 'tis a herald: many a centaur,
chimaera[261], barnacle[262], crocodile, hippopotame, and such like
toys hath he stolen out of the shop of my Invention, to shape new coats
for his upstart gentlemen. Either Africa must breed more monsters,[263]
or you make fewer gentlemen, Master Herald, for you have spent all my
devices already. But since you are here, let me ask you a question in
you