No More Learning

But drink deep draughts of love, and lose them all.
[_Exeunt_ TOR. _with the Queen. _

_Raym. _ No matter yet, he has my hook within him.
Now let him frisk and flounce, and run and roll,
And think to break his hold; he toils in vain.
This love, the bait he gorged so greedily,
Will make him sick, and then I have him sure.

_Enter_ ALPHONSO _and_ PEDRO.

_Alph. _ Brother, there's news from Bertran; he desires
Admittance to the king, and cries aloud,--
This day shall end our fears of civil war! --
For his safe conduct he entreats your presence,
And begs you would be speedy.

_Raym. _ Though I loath
The traitor's sight, I'll go. Attend us here. [_Exit. _

_Enter_ GOMEZ, ELVIRA, DOMINICK, _with Officers, to make the Stage
as full as possible. _

_Ped. _ Why, how now, Gomez? what mak'st thou here, with a whole
brotherhood of city-bailiffs? Why, thou look'st like Adam in Paradise,
with his guard of beasts about him.

_Gom. _ Ay, and a man had need of them, Don Pedro; for here are the two
old seducers, a wife and priest,--that's Eve and the serpent,--at my
elbow.

_Dom. _ Take notice how uncharitably he talks of churchmen.

_Gom. _ Indeed, you are a charitable belswagger! My wife cried out,--
"Fire, fire! " and you brought out your church-buckets, and called for
engines to play against it.

_Alph. _ I am sorry you are come hither to accuse your wife; her
education has been virtuous, her nature mild and easy.

_Gom. _ Yes! she's easy, with a vengeance; there's a certain colonel
has found her so.

_Alph. _ She came a spotless virgin to your bed.

_Gom. _ And she's a spotless virgin still for me--she's never the worse
for my wearing, I'll take my oath on't. I have lived with her with all
the innocence of a man of threescore, like a peaceable bed-fellow as I
am.

_Elv. _ Indeed, sir, I have no reason to complain of him for disturbing
of my sleep.

_Dom. _ A fine commendation you have given yourself; the church did not
marry you for that.

_Ped. _ Come, come, your grievances, your grievances.

_Dom. _ Why, noble sir, I'll tell you.

_Gom. _ Peace, friar! and let me speak first. I am the plaintiff. Sure
you think you are in the pulpit, where you preach by hours.

_Dom. _ And you edify by minutes.

_Gom. _ Where you make doctrines for the people, and uses and
applications for yourselves.

_Ped. _ Gomez, give way to the old gentleman in black.

_Gom. _ No! the t'other old gentleman in black shall take me if I do; I
will speak first! --Nay, I will, friar, for all your _verbum
sacerdotis_. I'll speak truth in few words, and then you may come
afterwards and lie by the clock as you use to do. --For, let me tell
you, gentlemen, he shall lie and forswear himself with any friar in
all Spain; that's a bold word now. --

_Dom. _ Let him alone; let him alone; I shall fetch him back with a
_circum-bendibus_, I warrant him.

_Alph. _ Well, what have you to say against your wife, Gomez?

_Gom. _ Why, I say, in the first place, that I and all men are married
for our sins, and that our wives are a judgment; that a
batchelor-cobler is a happier man than a prince in wedlock; that we
are all visited with a household plague, and, _Lord have mercy upon
us_ should be written on all our doors[2].

_Dom. _ Now he reviles marriage, which is one of the seven blessed
sacraments.

_Gom. _ 'Tis liker one of the seven deadly sins: but make your best
on't, I care not; 'tis but binding a man neck and heels, for all that.
But, as for my wife, that crocodile of Nilus, she has wickedly and
traitorously conspired the cuckoldom of me, her anointed sovereign
lord; and, with the help of the aforesaid friar, whom heaven confound,
and with the limbs of one colonel Hernando, cuckold-maker of this
city, devilishly contrived to steal herself away, and under her arm
feloniously to bear one casket of diamonds, pearls, and other jewels,
to the value of 30,000 pistoles. --Guilty, or not guilty? how sayest
thou, culprit?

_Dom. _ False and scandalous! Give me the book. I'll take my corporal
oath point-blank against every particular of this charge.

_Elv. _ And so will I.

_Dom. _ As I was walking in the streets, telling my beads, and praying
to myself, according to my usual custom, I heard a foul out-cry before
Gomez' portal; and his wife, my penitent, making doleful lamentations:
thereupon, making what haste my limbs would suffer me, that are
crippled with often kneeling, I saw him spurning and listing her most
unmercifully; whereupon, using Christian arguments with him to desist,
he fell violently upon me, without respect to my sacerdotal orders,
pushed me from him, and turned me about with a finger and a thumb,
just as a man would set up a top. Mercy! quoth I. --Damme! quoth
he;--and still continued labouring me, until a good-minded colonel
came by, whom, as heaven shall save me, I had never seen before.

_Gom. _ O Lord! O Lord!

_Dom. _ Ay, and O lady! O lady too! --I redouble my oath, I had never
seen him. Well, this noble colonel, like a true gentleman, was for
taking the weaker part, you may be sure; whereupon this Gomez flew
upon him like a dragon, got him down, the devil being strong in him,
and gave him bastinado upon bastinado, and buffet upon buffet, which
the poor meek colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian
patience.

_Gom. _ Who? he meek? I'm sure I quake at the very thought of him; why,
he's as fierce as Rhodomont; he made assault and battery upon my
person, beat me into all the colours of the rainbow; and every word
this abominable priest has uttered is as false as the Alcoran. But if
you want a thorough-paced liar, that will swear through thick and
thin, commend me to a friar.

_Enter_ LORENZO, _who comes behind the Company, and stands at his
Fathers back unseen, over-against_ GOMEZ.

_Lor. _ How now! What's here to do? my cause a trying, as I live, and
that before my own father. --Now fourscore take him for an old bawdy
magistrate, that stands like the picture of madam Justice, with a pair
of scales in his hand, to weigh lechery by ounces! [_Aside. _

_Alph. _ Well--but all this while, who is this colonel Hernando?

_Gom. _ He's the first begotten of Beelzebub, with a face as terrible
as Demogorgon. [LORENZO _peeps over_ ALPHONSO'S _Head,
and stares at_ GOMEZ.
No! I lie, I lie. He's a very proper handsome fellow! well
proportioned, and clean shaped, with a face like a cherubin.

_Ped. _ What, backward and forward, Gomez! dost thou hunt counter?

_Alph. _ Had this colonel any former design upon your wife? for, if
that be proved, you shall have justice.

_Gom. _ [_Aside. _] Now I dare speak,--let him look as dreadfully as he
will. --I say, sir, and I will prove it, that he had a lewd design upon
her body, and attempted to corrupt her honesty.
[LORENZO _lifts up his fist clenched at him. _
I confess my wife was as willing--as himself; and, I believe, 'twas
she corrupted him; for I have known him formerly a very civil and
modest person.

_Elv. _ You see, sir, he contradicts himself at every word; he's
plainly mad.

_Alph. _ Speak boldly, man! and say what thou wilt stand by: did he
strike thee?

_Gom. _ I will speak boldly; he struck me on the face before my own
threshold, that the very walls cried shame to him.
[LORENZO _holds up again. _
'Tis true, I gave him provocation, for the man's as peaceable a
gentleman as any is in all Spain.

_Dom. _ Now the truth comes out, in spite of him.

_Ped. _ I believe the friar has bewitched him.

_Alph. _ For my part, I see no wrong that has been offered him.

_Gom. _ How? no wrong? why, he ravished me, with the help of two
soldiers, carried me away _vi et armis,_ and would put me into a
plot against government. [LORENZO _holds up again. _
I confess, I never could endure the government, because it was
tyrannical; but my sides and shoulders are black and blue, as I can
strip and show the marks of them. [LORENZO _again. _
But that might happen, too, by a fall that I got yesterday upon the
pebbles. [_All laugh. _

_Dom. _ Fresh straw, and a dark chamber; a most manifest judgment!
there never comes better of railing against the church.

_Gom. _ Why, what will you have me say? I think you'll make me mad:
truth has been at my tongue's end this half hour, and I have not power
to bring it out, for fear of this bloody-minded colonel.

_Alph. _ What colonel?

_Gom. _ Why, my colonel--I mean my wife's colonel, that appears there
to me like my _malus genius_, terrifies me.

_Alph. _ [_Turning. _] Now you are mad indeed, Gomez; this is my son
Lorenzo.

_Gom. _ How? your son Lorenzo! it is impossible.

_Alph. _ As true as your wife Elvira is my daughter.

_Lor. _ What, have I taken all this pains about a sister?

_Gom. _ No, you have taken some about me; I am sure, if you are her
brother, my sides can show the tokens of our alliance.

_Alph. _ to _Lor. _ You know I put your sister into a nunnery, with a
strict command not to see you, for fear you should have wrought upon
her to have taken the habit, which was never my intention; and
consequently, I married her without your knowledge, that it might not
be in your power to prevent it.

_Elv. _ You see, brother, I had a natural affection to you.

_Lor. _ What a delicious harlot have I lost! Now, pox upon me, for
being so near a-kin to thee!

_Elv. _ However, we are both beholden to friar Dominick; the church is
an indulgent mother, she never fails to do her part.

_Dom. _ Heavens! what will become of me?

_Gom. _ Why, you are not like to trouble heaven; those fat guts were
never made for mounting.

_Lor. _ I shall make bold to disburden him of my hundred pistoles, to
make him the lighter for his journey: indeed, 'tis partly out of
conscience, that I may not be accessory to his breaking his vow of
poverty.

_Alph. _ I have no secular power to reward the pains you have taken
with my daughter; but I shall do it by proxy, friar: your bishop's my
friend, and is too honest to let such as you infect a cloister.

_Gom. _ Ay, do, father-in-law, let him be stript of his habit, and
disordered. --I would fain see him walk in querpo, like a cased rabbit,
without his holy fur upon his back, that the world may once behold the
inside of a friar.

_Dom. _ Farewell, kind gentlemen; I give you all my blessing before I
go.
--May your sisters, wives, and daughters, be so naturally lewd,
that they may have no occasion for a devil to tempt, or a friar to
pimp for them. [_Exeunt, with a rabble pushing him. _

_Enter_ TORRISMOND, LEONORA, BERTRAN, RAYMOND, TERESA, &c.

_Tor. _ He lives! he lives! my royal father lives!
Let every one partake the general joy.
Some angel with a golden trumpet sound,
King Sancho lives! and let the echoing skies
From pole to pole resound, king Sancho lives! --
Bertran, oh! no more my foe, but brother;
One act like this blots out a thousand crimes.

_Bert. _ Bad men, when 'tis their interest, may do good.
I must confess, I counselled Sancho's murder;
And urged the queen by specious arguments:
But, still suspecting that her love was changed,
I spread abroad the rumour of his death,
To sound the very soul of her designs.
The event, you know, was answering to my fears;
She threw the odium of the fact on me,
And publicly avowed her love to you.

_Raym. _ Heaven guided all, to save the innocent.

_Bert. _ I plead no merit, but a bare forgiveness.

_Tor. _ Not only that, but favour. Sancho's life,
Whether by virtue or design preserved,
Claims all within my power.

_Leo. _ My prayers are heard;
And I have nothing farther to desire,
But Sancho's leave to authorise our marriage.

_Tor. _ Oh! fear not him! pity and he are one;
So merciful a king did never live;
Loth to revenge, and easy to forgive.
But let the bold conspirator beware,
For heaven makes princes its peculiar care. [_Exeunt. _


Footnotes:
1. Alluding to the common superstition, that the continuance of the
favours of fairies depends upon the receiver's secrecy:--"This is
fairy gold, boy, and 'twill prove so: up with it, keep it close;
home, home, the nearest way. We are lucky, boy, and, to be so
still, requires nothing but secrecy;" _Winter's Tale. _

2. A red cross, with the words, "Lord have mercy upon us," was placed,
during the great plague, upon the houses visited by the disease.




EPILOGUE.

BY A FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR'S.


There's none, I'm sure, who is a friend to love,
But will our Friar's character approve:
The ablest spark among you sometimes needs
Such pious help, for charitable deeds.
Our church, alas! (as Rome objects) does want
These ghostly comforts for the falling saint:
This gains them their whore-converts, and may be
One reason of the growth of popery.
So Mahomet's religion came in fashion,
By the large leave it gave to fornication.
Fear not the guilt, if you can pay for't well;
There is no Dives in the Roman Hell:
Gold opens the strait gate, and lets him in;
But want of money is a mortal sin.
For all besides you may discount to heaven,
And drop a bead to keep the tallies even.
How are men cozened still with shows of good!
The bawd's best mask is the grave friar's hood;
Though vice no more a clergyman displeases,
Than doctors can be thought to hate diseases.
'Tis by your living ill, that they live well,
By your debauches, their fat paunches swell.
'Tis a mock-war between the priest and devil;
When they think fit, they can be very civil.
As some, who did French counsels most advance,
To blind the world, have railed in print at France,
Thus do the clergy at your vices bawl,
That with more ease they may engross them all.
By damning yours, they do their own maintain;
A churchman's godliness is always gain:
Hence to their prince they will superior be;
And civil treason grows church loyalty.
They boast the gift of heaven is in their power;
Well may they give the god, they can devour!
Still to the sick and dead their claims they lay;
For 'tis on carrion that the vermin prey.
Nor have they less dominion on our life,
They trot the husband, and they pace the wife.
Rouse up, you cuckolds of the northern climes,
And learn from Sweden to prevent such crimes.
Unman the Friar, and leave the holy drone
To hum in his forsaken hive alone;
He'll work no honey, when his sting is gone.
Your wives and daughters soon will leave the cells,
When they have lost the sound of Aaron's bells.


* * * * *


END OF THE SIXTH VOLUME.


Edinburgh,

Printed by J. Ballantyne & Co.





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