Free The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works by Thomas Nashe Page A

till his hair was somewhat grown, and then willed him to go to Aristagoras into the country and bid him shave him, as he had done, and he should have perfect remedy. He did so. Aristagoras shaved him with his own hands, read his friend’s letter, and when he had done, washed it out, that no man should perceive it else, and sent him home to buy him a night-cap. If I wist there were any such knavery, or Peter Bales’
Brachy-graphy
, 70 under Sol’s bushy hair, I would have a barber, my host of The Murrion’s Head’, 71 to be his interpreter, who would whet his razor on his Richmond cap, 72 and give him the terrible cut, 73 like himself, but he would come as near as a quart pot to the construction of it. To be sententious, not superfluous, Sol should have been beholding to the barber, and not the beard-master. Is it pride that is shadowed under this two-legged sun, that never came nearer heaven than Dubber’s Hill? 74 That pride is not my sin, Sloven’s Hall where I was born be my record. As for covetousness, intemperance and exaction, I meet with nothing in a whole year but a cup of wine, for such vices to be conversant in.
Pergite porro
, 75 my good children, and multiply the sins of yourabsurdities, till you come to the full measure of the grand hiss, and you shall hear how we will purge rheum with censuring your imperfections.
    SUMMER : Vertumnus, call Orion.
    VERTUMNUS : Orion, Urion, Arion!
My lord thou must look upon.
Orion, gentleman dog-keeper, huntsman, come into the court! Look you bring all hounds, and no bandogs. 76 Peace there, that we may hear their horns blow!
    [
Enter Orion like a hunter, with a horn about his neck, alt his men after the same sort hallooing and blowing then horns
.]
    ORION : Sirrah, was’t thou that call’d us from our game?
How durst thou (being but a petty god)
Disturb me in the entrance of my sports?
    SUMMER : ‘Twas I, Orion, caus’d thee to be call’d.
    ORION : ‘Tis I, dread Lord, that humbly will obey.
    SUMMER : How haps’t thou leftst the heavens, to hunt below?
As I remember, thou wert Hireus’ 77 son,
Whom of a huntsman Jove chose for a star,
And thou art call’d the dog-star, art thou not?
    AUTUMN : Pleaseth your honour, heaven’s circumference
Is not enough for him to hunt and range,
But with those venom-breathed curs he leads,
He comes to chase health from our earthly bounds.
Each one of those foul-mouthed mangy dogs
Governs a day (no dog but hath his day),
And all the days by them so governed,
The dog-days hight 78 Infectious fosterers
Of meteors 79 from carrion that arise,
And putrefied bodies of dead men,
Are they engender’d to that ugly shape,
Being nought else but preserv’d corruption.
‘Tis these that, in the entrance of their reign,
The plague and dangerous agues have brought in.
They arre 80 and bark at night against the moon,
For fetching in fresh rides to cleanse the streets.
They vomit flames, and blast the ripen’d fruits:
They are Death’s messengers unto all those
That sicken while their malice beareth sway.
    ORION : A tedious discourse, built on no ground;
A silly fancy, Autumn, hast thou told,
Which no philosophy doth warrantize,
No old received poetry confirms.
I will not grace thee by confuting thee;
Yet in a jest (since thou railest so gainst dogs)
I’ll speak a word or two in their defence. 81
That creature’s best that comes most near to men:
That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove.
First, they excel us in all outward sense,
Which no one of experience will deny;
They hear, they smell, they see better than we.
To come to speech, they have it questionless,
Although we understand them not so well.
They bark as good old Saxon as may be,
And that in more variety than we;
For they have one voice when they are in chase,
Another, when they wrangle for their meat,
Another, when we beat them out of doors.
That they have reason, this I will allege:
They choose those things