Sos. Have you not seen a six-pence split into two halves, by some ingenious school-boy, which bore on either side the impression of the monarch's face? Now, as those moieties were two three-pences, and yet in effect but one six-pence——
Amph. No more of your villainous tropes and figures.
Sos. Nay, if an orator must be disarmed of his similitudes——
Amph. A man had need of patience, to endure this gibberish! be brief, and come to a conclusion.
Sos. What would you have, sir? I came thither, but the t'other I was before me; for that there was two I's, is as certain, as that I have two eyes in this head of mine. This I, that am here, was weary: the t'other I was fresh; this I was peaceable, and t'other I was a hectoring bully I.
Amph. And thou expect'st I should believe thee?
Sos. No; I am not so unreasonable; for I could never have believed it myself, if I had not been well beaten into it: but a cudgel, you know, is a convincing argument in a brawny fist. What shall I say, but that I was compelled, at last, to acknowledge myself! I found that he was very I, without fraud, cozen, or deceit. Besides, I viewed myself, as in a mirror, from head to foot; he was handsome of a noble presence, a charming air, loose and free in all his motions; and saw he was so much I, that I should have reason to be better satisfied with my own person, if his hands had not been a little of the heaviest.
Amph. Once again, to a conclusion: Say you passed by him, and entered into the house.
Sos. I am a friend to truth, and say no such thing; he defended the door, and I could not enter.
Amph. How, not enter?