The dor on Plutarch and Seneca, I hate it: they are mine own imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gentlemen!

CLE. They are very grave authors.

DAW. Grave asses! Mere essayists! A few loose sentences, and that's all. A man would talk so, his whole age, I do utter as good things every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of 'em.

DAU. Indeed! Sir John?

CLE. He must needs, living among the Wits and Braveries too.

DAU. Aye, and being president of 'em, as he is.

DAW. There's Aristotle, a mere commonplace fellow; Plato, a discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot: sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.

CLE. What do you think of the poets, Sir John?

DAW. Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious prolix ass, talks of curriers and chines of beef. Virgil, of dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of I know not what.

CLE. I think so.

DAW. And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Politian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest ––

CLE. What a sack full of their names he has got!

DAU. And how he pours 'em out! Politian, with Valerius Flaccus!

CLE. Was not the character right, of him?

DAU. As could be made, i' faith.

DAW. And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured.

DAU. Why? Whom do you account for authors, Sir John Daw?

DAW. Syntagma Juris civilis, Corpus Juris civilis, Corpus Juris canonici, the King of Spain's Bible.

DAU. Is the King of Spain's Bible an author?

CLE. Yes, and Syntagma.

DAU. What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW. A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAU. Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLE. Aye, both the Corpusses, I knew 'em: they were very corpulent authors.

DAW. And then there's Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha, the other are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar.

DAU.