Volume Xiv Part 65 (1/2)

TIM. The devil he has! What furious Mercury might this be?

MES. Nay, sir, I know not what he may be; but, sure, if he be what he seems to be, he can be no less than one of our city Hectors; but I hope your spirit will conjure him, and make him a Clinias. He speaks nothing less than braving, buff-leather language, and has made all our boys so feverish, as if a quotidian ague had seized on them.

TIM. Sure, it is one of our trepanning decoys, sent forth for a champion to defend those ladies' engaged honour, whom our stage is this day to present! This shall not serve their turn. Call him in; we will collar him.

TRIL. Ha-ha-ha! This will prove rare sport, to see how the poet's genius will grapple with this bawdry!

SCENE III.

_Enter_ HAXTER.

HAX. Sir!

TIM. Surly sir, your design?

HAX. To ruin your design, illicentiate playwright. Down with your bills, sir.

TIM. Your bill cannot do it, sir.

HAX. But my commission shall, sir. Can you read, sir?

TIM. Yes, sir, and write too, else were I not fit for this employment.

[_He reads the paper._

TRIL. With what a scurvy, screwed look the myrmidon eyes him! He will surely bastinado our comedian out of his laureate periwig.

Hold him tug, poet, or thou runs thy poetical pinnace on a desperate shelf!

TIM. What bugbear has your terrible blades.h.i.+p brought us here? A mandate from one of our own society to blanch the credit of our comedy! You're in a wrong box, sir; this will not do't.

HAX. You dare not disobey it!

TIM. Dare not! A word of high affront to a professed Parna.s.sian!

I dare exchange in pen with you and your penurious poetaster's pike; and if your valour or his swell to that height or heat as it will admit no other cooler but a downright scuffle, let wit perish and fall a-wool-gathering, if with a cheerful brow I leave not the precious rills of Hippocrene, and wing my course for Campus Martius.

HAX. 'Slid, this Musaeus is a Martialist; and if I had not held him a feverish white-livered staniel,[108] that would never have encountered any but the Seven Sisters, that knight of the sun[109] who employed me should have done his errand himself.

Well, I would I were out of his clutches! The only way, then, is to put on a clear face, lest I bring a storm upon myself.

[_Aside._] Virtuous sir, what answer will your ingenuity be pleased to return by your most humble and obsequious va.s.sal?

TIM. Ho! sir, are you there with you[r] bears? How this Gargantua's spirit begins to thaw! Sirrah, you punto[110] of valour!

HAX. I have, indeed, puissant sir, been in my time rallied amongst those blades; but it has been my scorn of late to engage my tuck upon unjust grounds.

TIM. Tucca, thy valour is infinitely beholden to thy discretion.

But, pray thee, resolve me: art thou made known to the purport of thine errand?

HAX. In part I am.