JERE. You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper diet. [Aside, and
taking away the books.]
VAL. And d'ye hear, go you to breakfast. There's a page doubled
down in Epictetus, that is a feast for an emperor.
JERE. Was Epictetus a real cook, or did he only write receipts?
VAL. Read, read, sirrah, and refine your appetite; learn to live
upon instruction; feast your mind and mortify your flesh; read, and
take your nourishment in at your eyes; shut up your mouth, and chew
the cud of understanding. So Epictetus advises.
JERE. O Lord! I have heard much of him, when I waited upon a
gentleman at Cambridge. Pray what was that Epictetus?
VAL. A very rich man.--Not worth a groat.
JERE. Humph, and so he has made a very fine feast, where there is
nothing to be eaten?
VAL. Yes.
JERE. Sir, you're a gentleman, and probably understand this fine
feeding: but if you please, I had rather be at board wages. Does
your Epictetus, or your Seneca here, or any of these poor rich
rogues, teach you how to pay your debts without money? Will they
shut up the mouths of your creditors? Will Plato be bail for you?
Or Diogenes, because he understands confinement, and lived in a tub,
go to prison for you? 'Slife, sir, what do you mean, to mew
yourself up here with three or four musty books, in commendation of
starving and poverty?
VAL. Why, sirrah, I have no money, you know it; and therefore
resolve to rail at all that have. And in that I but follow the
examples of the wisest and wittiest men in all ages, these poets and
philosophers whom you naturally hate, for just such another reason;
because they abound in sense, and you are a fool.
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