16 The Student of Padua. 



Fred. Ay, with his paints, his hopes of fame or gain. 

 The latter, if he take a friend's advice. 



Ant. Nay, with the fame, an' he would be a man. 



Fred. Back feather'd fame to heavy gold ? you're drunk I 

 Angelo, heed not what the fellow says. 

 He's drunk, mad drunk ! paint, Sir, for gold, gold, gold ! 

 Paint portraits ; flattering, false, fair faces paint ! 

 Make ugliness angelic ; tip the lie 

 To nature ; you will starve upon the truth ! 



Ant. Then what will Julian do with poetry? 



tYed. Write his own epitaph, and die a beggar ! 



Ang. He speaks of writing plays. 



Fred. He'll play the fool, then ! 



Sdeath ! worse and worse ! who listens to the play 

 In Venice now ? Our senses, drunk with folly, 

 Reel through the streets to gape at monstrous things, 

 Spurned by our father's sober faculties ! 



Any. A sermon from a sinner how appropriate ! 



Fred. Who oft'nest fall, best know the tripping place. 

 I own I'm drunk, but I can waken sober, 

 And with the morrow be a man again. 

 Whereas this huge intoxicated city 

 Besotted with some stupid mummery, 

 Until its wise men and its counsellors 

 Distort their gravity with vile grimaces, 

 And all our grey beards wag in approbation 

 At th' antics of some foreign mountebank 

 Will wallow in its ignominy, till 

 Some prophet voice rolls o'er its slumbering senses, 

 And stirs them to their former majesty. 



Ang. I wonder how your fellow-citizens 

 Would hear this sweeping judgment of their virtues. 



Fred. Like men who honour truth wherever spoken ! 

 Let Julian make a drama of his life, 

 It may want kings and queens, daggers and swords, 

 Battles and bugles, and machinery ; 

 Ay, that's the word machinery, for show : 

 But, if calamity in her rough garb 

 Grief as she is, naked, and every day 

 Walking our mighty city suffering 

 If truth, if nature, if unpainted scenes 

 Of human life, in human words, have power 

 To wet the eye or warm the soul of man, 

 By heaven ! then let him write but what he's seen, 

 Heard, played a part in, on this busy world, 

 And, if it fail, I have not rightly read 

 The human heart ; and that's my only book ! 



