Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/125

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LIFE IN THE CAPITAL
87

them dull gardners and hay-makers in a man's belly, compares them to dogs, who, when they are sick eat grasse, and sais they are no better than pack or malt horses, who if a man should knock out their brains will not go out of the beaten highway; whereas his horsleach will leap over the hedge & ditch of a thousand Dioscorides and Hippocrates, and give a man twenty poisons in one, but he would restore him to perfect health. With this strange tale the Noble-man inflamed, desires to bee acquainted with him; what does he but goes immediately and breaks with this mountebanke, telling him if he will divide his gains with him, he will bring him in custome with such and such States, and he shall be countenanst in the Court as he wold desire. The hungrie druggier ambitious after preferment, agrees to anything, and to Court he goes; where being come to enterview, he speaks nothing but broken English like a French Doctor, pretending to have forgotten his natural tong by travell, when he hath never been further than either the Lowe Countries or Ireland, inforced thether to fly either for getting a maid with child, or marrying two wives. Suffiseth he set[s] a good face on it, & will swear he can extract a better Balsamum out of a chip than the Balm of Iudaea; yea, all receipts and authors you can name he syllogizeth of, & makes a pish