Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/249

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Thomas Dekker
229

vse it but indifferently, throwes vs into Bedlam? No, no, looke vppon Endymion, the Moones Minion, who slept threescore and fifteene yeares, and was not a haire the worse for it. Can lying abedde till noone then (being not the threescore and fifteenth thousand part of his nap) be hurtfull?

Besides, by the opinion of all Phylosophers and Physitians, it is not good to trust the aire with our bodies / till the Sun with his flame-coloured wings, hath fand away the mistie smoake of the morning, and refind that thicke tobacco-breath which the rheumaticke night throwes abroad of purpose to put out the eye of the Element: which worke questionlesse cannot be perfectly finished, till the sunnes Car-horses stand prancing on the very top of highest noon: so that then (and not till then) is the most healthfull houre to be stirring. Do you require examples to perswade you? At what time do Lords and Ladies vse to rise, but then? your simpring Merchants wiues are the fairest lyers in the world: and is not eleuen a clocke their common houre? they finde (no doubt) vnspeakable sweetnesse in such lying, else they would not day by day put it so in practise. In a word, midday slumbers are golden; they make the body fat, the skin faire, the flesh plump, delicate and tender; they set a russet colour on the cheekes of young women, and make lusty courage to rise vp in men; they make vs thrifty, both