, and that
he is not now turned away for any misdemeanour, but does voluntarily
dismiss his master from any future authority over him -
VAL. No, sirrah; you shall live with me still.
JERE. Sir, it's impossible. I may die with you, starve with you,
or be damned with your works. But to live, even three days, the
life of a play, I no more expect it than to be canonised for a muse
after my decease.
VAL. You are witty, you rogue. I shall want your help. I'll have
you learn to make couplets to tag the ends of acts. D'ye hear? Get
the maids to Crambo in an evening, and learn the knack of rhyming:
you may arrive at the height of a song sent by an unknown hand, or a
chocolate-house lampoon.
JERE. But, sir, is this the way to recover your father's favour?
Why, Sir Sampson will be irreconcilable. If your younger brother
should come from sea, he'd never look upon you again. You're
undone, sir; you're ruined; you won't have a friend left in the
world if you turn poet. Ah, pox confound that Will's coffee-house:
it has ruined more young men than the Royal Oak lottery. Nothing
thrives that belongs to't. The man of the house would have been an
alderman by this time, with half the trade, if he had set up in the
city. For my part, I never sit at the door that I don't get double
the stomach that I do at a horse race. The air upon Banstead-Downs
is nothing to it for a whetter; yet I never see it, but the spirit
of famine appears to me, sometimes like a decayed porter, worn out
with pimping, and carrying billet doux and songs: not like other
porters, for hire, but for the jests' sake.
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