(The New Inn, épilogue.)
Thy Pegasus....
He had bequeathed his belly unto thee
To hold that little learning which is fled,
Into thy guts from out thy emptye head.
Disease the enemy, and his engineers,
Want, with the rest of his conceal'd compeers
Have cast a trench about me, now five years....
The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days;
But lies block'd up, and straiten'd, narrow'd in,
Fix'd to bed and boards, unlike to win
Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been.
(An Epistle mendicant, 1631.)
[118]: The Devil is an ass.
[119]: Séjan, Catilina, passim.
[120]: Alfred de Musset, préface de La Coupe et les Lèvres. Platon, Ion.
[121]: Comparez sir Épicure Mammon au baron Hulot (Balzac, Parents pauvres). Balzac, qui est savant comme Jonson, fait des êtres réels comme Shakspeare.