Page:Elizabethan & Jacobean Pamphlets.djvu/248

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Elizabethan and Jacobean Pamphlets

that euen their sicke grunting patients stand in more danger of M. Doctor and his drugs, then of all the Cannon shots which the desperate disease it selfe can discharge against them. Send them packing therefore, to walke like Italian Mountebankes, beate not your braines to vnderstand their parcell-greeke, parcell-latine gibrish: let not all their sophisticall buzzing into your eares, nor their Satyricall canuassing of feather-beds and tossing men out of their warme blanckets, awake you till the houre that heere is prescribed.

For doe but consider what an excellent thing sleepe is: It is so inestimable a Jewel, that, if a Tyrant would giue his crowne for an houres slumber, it cannot be bought: of so beautifull a shape is it, that though a man lye with an Empresse, his heart cannot be at quiet, till he leaues her embracements to be at rest with the other: yea, so greatly indebted are we to this kinseman of death, that we owe the better tributary, halfe of our life to him: and thers good cause why we should do so: for sleepe is that golden chaine that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of woundes? of cares? of great mens oppressions, of captiuity? whilest he sleepeth? Beggers in their beds take as much pleasure as Kings: can we therefore surfet on this delicate Ambrosia? can we drink too much of that whereof to tast too little tumbles vs into a church-yard, and to