[_Snap_.

[HEURESIS _and_ ANAMNESTES _about to fight,
but_ MENDACIO _parts them_.

MEN. You shall not fight; but if you will always disagree, let us have
words and no blows. Heuresis, what reason have you to fall out with him?

HEU. Because he is always abusing me, and takes the upper hand of me
everywhere.

ANA. And why not, sirrah? I am thy better in any place.

HEU. Have I been the author of the seven liberal sciences, and
consequently of all learning, have I been the patron of all mechanical
devices, to be thy inferior? I tell thee, Anamnestes, thou hast not so
much as a point, but thou art beholding to me for it.

ANA. Good, good; but what had your invention been, but for my
remembrance? I can prove that thou, belly-sprung invention, art the most
improfitable member in the world; for ever since thou wert born, thou
hast been a bloody murderer; and thus I prove it: In the quiet years of
Saturn (I remember Jupiter was then but in his swathe-bands), thou
rentest the bowels of the earth, and broughtest gold to light, whose
beauty, like Helen, set all the world by the ears. Then, upon that, thou
foundest out iron, and puttest weapons in their hands, and now in the
last populous age thou taughtest a scabshin friar the hellish invention
of powder and guns.

HEU. Call'st it hellish? thou liest! It is the admirablest invention of
all others, for whereas others imitate nature, this excels nature
herself.

MEM. True; for a cannon will kill as many at one shot as thunder doth
commonly at twenty.

ANA. Therefore more murdering art thou than the light-bolt[278].

HEU. But to show the strength of my conceit, I have found out a means to
withstand the stroke of the most violent culverin. Mendacio, thou saw'st
it, when I demonstrated the invention.

ANA. What, some woolpacks or mud walls, or such like?

HEU. Mendacio, I prythee tell it him, for I love not to be a trumpeter
of mine own praises.

MEN. I must needs confess this device to pass all that ever I heard or
saw, and thus it was--first he takes a falcon, and charges it (without
all deceits) with dry powder well-camphired[279], then did he put in a
single bullet, and a great quantity of drop-shot both round and
lachrymal. This done, he sets me a boy sixty paces off, just point blank
over against the mouth of the piece. Now in the very midst of the direct
line he fastens a post, upon which he hangs me in a cord a siderite of
H