Falstaff. I would you had but the wit; ’twere better than your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh; but that’s no marvel, he drinks no wine. There’s never any of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a twofold operation in it; it ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which deliver’d o’er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris, is, the warming of the blood; which before cold and settled left the liver white and pale; which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice: but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards, to the parts extreme; it illuminateth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great, and puff’d up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage: and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it, that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, steril, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and till’d, with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertil sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be to forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack.
Second part of Henry IV. act. 4. sc. 7.
The trenchant blade, toledo trusty,
For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack
Of some body to hew and hack.
The peaceful scabbard where it dwelt,
The rancor of its edge had felt:
For of the lower end two handful,
It had devoured, ’twas so manful;
And so much scorn’d to lurk in case,
As if it durst not shew its face.
Hudibras, canto 1.
Speaking of physicians,
Le bon de cette profession est, qu’il y a parmi les morts une honnêteté, une discretion la plus grande du monde; jamais on n’en voit se plaindre du médicin qui l’a tué.
Le medicin malgré lui.
Admirez les bontez, admirez les tendresses,
De ces vieux esclaves du sort.
Ils ne sont jamais las d’aquérir des richesses,
Pour ceux qui souhaitent leur mort.
Belinda. Lard, he has so pester’d me with flames and stuff—I think I shan’t endure the sight of a fire this twelvemonth.
Old Bachelor, act 2. sc. 8.
To account for effects by such fantastical causes, being highly ludicrous, is quite improper in any serious composition. Therefore the following passage from Cowley, in his poem on the death of Sir Henry Wooton, is in a bad taste.