Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/247

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Thomas Dekker
227

country of Naples, and who knowes not that the Neapolitan, will (like Derick the hangman) embrace you with one arme, and rip your guts with the other? theres not a haire in his mustachoo, but if he kisse you, will stabbe you through the cheekes like a ponyard: the slaue, to be auenged on his enemy, will drink off a pint of poison himselfe so that he may be sure to haue the other pledge him but halfe so much. And it may be, that vpon some secret grudge to worke the generall destruction of all mankinde, those verses were composed. Phisisians, I know (and none else) tooke vp the bucklers in their defence, railing bitterly vpon that venerable and princely custom of long-lying-abed: Yet, now I remember me, I cannot blame them; for / they which want sleepe (which is mans naturall rest) become either mere Naturals, or else fall into the Doctors hands, and so consequently into the Lords: whereas he that snorts profoundly scornes to let Hippocrates himselfe stand tooting on his Urinall, and thereby saues that charges of a groates worth of Physicke: And happy is that man that saues it; for phisick is Non minus venefica, quam benefica, it hath an ounce of gall in it, for euery dram of hony. Ten Tyburnes cannot turne men ouer ye perch so fast as one of these brewers of purgations: the very nerues of their practise being nothing but Ars Homicidiorum, an Art to make poore soules kicke vp their heeles. In so much,