SECUNDUS MUNDANUS.
Perit Omne,
TERTIUS MUNDANUS.
Venit Mors,
PRIMUS MUNDANUS.
Quidnam prodesset fati meminisse futuri?
SECUNDUS MUNDANUS.
Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam?
TERTIUS MUNDANUS.
Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis?
Upon which an unpleasant personage who has just appeared to interrupt their trialogue observes,
| Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit, Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit omne, venit Mors, Quidnam lethiferæ Mortis meminisse nocebit? |
It is Mors herself who asks the question. The three Worldlings however behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell Death that they are young and rich and active and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. Death or rather Mrs. Death, (for Mors being feminine is called læna, and meretrix, and virago,) takes all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery? Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not? and Death answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is credible that any should be obliged to go there? and Death to convince her calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own sufferings. A dreadful account this Damnatus gives; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, enquires if he is the only one who is tormented in Orcus, Damnatus assures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to Heaven, but that his fellow-sufferers are in number numberless; and he specifies among them Kings and Popes, and Senators and severe Schoolmasters,—a class of men whom Textor seems to have held in great and proper abhorrence—as if like poor Thomas Tusser he had suffered under their inhuman discipline.
Horrified at this, Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors advises her to send a Son of Thunder round the world, who should reprove the nations for their sins, and sow the seeds of virtue by his preaching. Peregrinus goes upon this mission and returns to give an account of it. Nothing can be worse than the report. As for the Kings of the Earth, it would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing. The Popes suffered the ship of Peter to go wherever the winds carried it. Senators were won by intercession or corrupted by gold. Doctors spread their nets in the temples for prey, and Lawyers were dumb unless their tongues were loosened by money.—Had he seen the Italians?—Italy was full of dissentions, ripe for war, and defiled by its own infamous vice. The Spaniards?—They were suckled by Pride. The English?—
| Gens tacitis prægnans arcanis, ardua tentans, Edita tartareis mihi creditur esse tenebris. |