Mr. P. (airily). Oh, I had been for—say, the xth time—to see "Our Mary" in The Winter's Tale, and being more inclined for profitable talk than for sleep, I just took you on my way home.
Bacon (smiling). Marry, Mr. Punch, were the statement of sequence equivalent to the explanation of causation, yours would be a most satisfactory answer.
Shaks. (mildly). Be not too scientifically scrutinising, Brother Bacon. Mr. Punch, Puck and Ariel in one, is free of all places, lord of all latitudes, penetrator of all spheres, permeator of all elements.
Mr. P. True, sweet Will! How much more catholic, in comprehension, as in charity, is the creative mind than the merely critical one!
Bacon. Humph! That sounds Sphinxian. Heraclitus the Obscure was pellucid in comparison.
Mr. P. And yet, I warrant you, Master Shakspeare here could play the "Diver of Delos" where your pundit's plummet should not find bottom. However, "broad-browed Verulam," let not that brow's breadth cloud or corrugate in vexation at my persiflage. What do you read, Sir?
Shaks. "Words, words, words!"
Mr. P. "I mean the matter that you read."
Shaks. "Slanders, Sir." For the coney-catching rogue—one Donelly—says here——but of course you know what he says.
[The trio laugh Homerically, until the asphodels wag their white heads and convulse their starry corollas in sheer sympathy.