Sim. Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!
Storm. Thieves! Thieves! Why, you senseless dog, do you think there's thieves in Newgate? Away with him to the tap-house. [Pushes him off.] We'll drink his coat off. Come, my little chemist, thou shalt transmute this jacket into liquor; liquor that will make us forget the evil day. And while day is ours, let us be merry.
For little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state.
[Exeunt.
ACT THE FIFTH.
SCENE I.—Newgate.
Young Bookwit discovered on a couch asleep, Latine looking on him.
Lat. How quietly he rests! Oh that I could,
By watching him, hanging thus over him,
And, feeling all his care, protract his sleep!
Oh, sleep! thou sweetest gift of Heaven to man,
Still in thy downy arms embrace my friend,
Nor loose him from his inexistent trance
To sense of yesterday and pain of being;
In thee oppressors soothe their angry brow,
In thee the oppressed forget tyrannic power,
In thee——
The wretch condemned is equal to his judge,
And the sad lover to his cruel fair;
Nay, all the shining glories men pursue,
When thou art wanted, are but empty noise.
Who then would court the pomp of guilty power,
When the mind sickens at the weary show,
And dies to temporary death for ease;
When half our life's cessation of our being——
He wakes——
How do I pity that returning life,
Which I could hazard thousand lives to save!
Y. Book. How heavily do I awake this morning! Oh, this senseless drinking! To suffer a whole week's pain for an hour's jollity! Methinks my senses are burning round me. I have but interrupted hints of the last night——Ha! in a gaol! Oh, I remember, I remember. Oh, Lovemore! Lovemore! I remember——