VAL. My clothes are soon put off. But you must also divest me of reason, thought, passions, inclinations, affections, appetites, senses, and the huge train of attendants that you begot along with me.
SIR SAMP. Body o' me, what a manyheaded monster have I propagated!
VAL. I am of myself, a plain, easy, ****** creature, and to be kept at small expense; but the retinue that you gave me are craving and invincible; they are so many devils that you have raised, and will have employment.
SIR SAMP. 'Oons, what had I to do to get children,--can't a private man be born without all these followers? Why, nothing under an emperor should be born with appetites. Why, at this rate, a fellow that has but a groat in his pocket may have a stomach capable of a ten shilling ordinary.
JERE. Nay, that's as clear as the sun; I'll make oath of it before any justice in Middlesex.
SIR SAMP. Here's a cormorant too. 'S'heart this fellow was not born with you? I did not beget him, did I?
JERE. By the provision that's made for me, you might have begot me too. Nay, and to tell your worship another truth, I believe you did, for I find I was born with those same whoreson appetites too, that my master speaks of.
SIR SAMP. Why, look you there, now. I'll maintain it, that by the rule of right reason, this fellow ought to have been born without a palate. 'S'heart, what should he do with a distinguishing taste? I warrant now he'd rather eat a pheasant, than a piece of poor John; and smell, now, why I warrant he can smell, and loves perfumes above a stink. Why there's it; and music, don't you love music, scoundrel?
JERE. Yes; I have a reasonable good ear, sir, as to jigs and country dances, and the like; I don't much matter your solos or sonatas, they give me the spleen.
SIR SAMP. The spleen, ha, ha, ha; a pox confound you--solos or sonatas? 'Oons, whose son are you? How were you engendered, muckworm?
JERE. I am by my father, the son of a chair-man; my mother sold oysters in winter, and cucumbers in summer; and I came upstairs into the world; for I was born in a cellar.
FORE. By your looks, you should go upstairs out of the world too, friend.
SIR SAMP. And if this rogue were anatomized now, and dissected, he has his vessels of digestion and concoction, and so forth, large enough for the inside of a cardinal, this son of a cucumber.--These things are unaccountable and unreasonable. Body o' me, why was not I a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking their paws?
Nature has been provident only to bears and spiders; the one has its nutriment in his own hands; and t'other spins his habitation out of his own entrails.
VAL. Fortune was provident enough to supply all the necessities of my nature, if I had my right of inheritance.
SIR SAMP. Again! 'Oons, han't you four thousand pounds? If I had it again, I would not give thee a groat.--What, would'st thou have me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own vitals? S'heart, live by your wits: you were always fond of the wits, now let's see, if you have wit enough to keep yourself. Your brother will be in town to-night or to-morrow morning, and then look you perform covenants, and so your friend and servant: --come, brother Foresight.
