brawl?
How meanest thou? brawling in French?
No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at
the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour
it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and
sing a note, sometime through the throat, as if you
swallowed love with singing love, sometime through
the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling
love; with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of
your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin-belly
doublet like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in
your pocket like a man after the old painting; and
keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away.
These are complements, these are humours; these
betray nice wenches, that would be betrayed without
these; and make them men of note--do you note
me?--that most are affected to these.
How hast thou purchased this experience?
By my penny of observation.
But O,--but O,--
'The hobby-horse is forgot.'
Callest thou my love 'hobby-horse'?
No, master; the hobby-horse is but a colt, and your
love perhaps a hackney. But have you forgot your love?
Almost I had.
Negligent student! learn her by heart.
By heart and in heart, boy.
And out of heart, master: all those three I will prove.
What wilt thou prove?
A man, if I live; and this, by, in, and without, upon
the instant: by heart you love her, because your
heart cannot come by her; in heart you love her,
because your heart is in love with her; and out of
heart you love her, being out of heart that you
cannot enjoy her.
I am all these three.
And three times as much more, and yet nothing at
all.
Fetch hither the swain: he must carry me a letter.
A message well sympathized; a horse to be ambassador
for an ass.
Ha, ha! what sayest thou?
Marry, sir, you must send the ass upon the horse,
for he is very slow-gaited. But I go.
The way is but short: away!
As swift as lead, sir.
The meaning, pretty ingenious?
Is not lead a metal heavy, dull, and slow?
Minime, honest master; or rather, master, no.
I say lead is slow.
You are too swift, sir, to say so:
Is that lead slow which is fired from a gun?
Sweet smoke of rhetoric!
He reputes me a cannon; and the bullet, that's he:
I shoot thee at the swain.
Thump then and I flee.
A most acute juvenal;