Alb.  What, you are not gone, master Crispinus?

Cris.  Yes, faith, I have a design draws me hence:  pray, sir, fashion me an excuse to the ladies.

Alb.  Will you not stay and see the jewels, sir?  I pray you stay.

Cris.  Not for a million, sir, now.  Let it suffice, I must relinquish; and so, in a word, please you to expiate this compliment.

Alb.  Mum.
                                                [Exit. 
Cris.  I’ll presently go and enghle some broker for a poet’s gown,
and bespeak a garland:  and then, jeweller, look to your best jewel,
i’faith.
          
                                      [Exit.

Actiii

Scene I.-The Via Sacra (or Holy Street).

Enter Horace, Crispinus following.

Hor.  Umph! yes, I will begin an ode so; and it shall be to Mecaenas.

Oris.’Slid, yonder’s Horace! they say he’s an excellent poet:  Mecaenas loves him.  I’ll fall into his acquaintance, if I can; I think he be composing as he goes in the street! ha! ’tis a good humour, if he be:  I’ll compose too.

Hor. 
   Swell me a bowl with lus’y wine,
   Till I may see the plump Lyoeus swim
                    Above the brim: 
   I drink as I would write,
   In flowing measure fill’d with flame and sprite.

Cris.  Sweet Horace, Minerva and the Muses stand auspicious to thy designs!  How farest thou, sweet man? frolic? rich? gallant? ha!

Hor.  Not greatly gallant, Sir; like my fortunes, well:  I am bold to take my leave, Sir; you’ll nought else, Sir, would you?

Cris.  Troth, no, but I could wish thou didst know us, Horace; we are a scholar, I assure thee.

Hor.  A scholar, Sir!  I shall be covetous of your fair knowledge.

Cris.  Gramercy, good Horace.  Nay, we are new turn’d poet too, which is more; and a satirist too, which is more than that:  I write just in thy vein, I. I am for your odes, or your sermons, or any thing indeed; we are a gentleman besides; our name is Rufus Laberius Crispinus; we are a pretty Stoic too.

Hor.  To the proportion of your beard, I think it, sir.

Cris.  By Phoebus, here’s a most neat, fine street, is’t not?  I protest to thee, I am enamoured of this street now, more than of half the streets of Rome again; ’tis so polite and terse! there’s the front of a building now!  I study architecture too:  if ever I should build, I’d have a house just of that prospective.

Hor.  Doubtless, this gallant’s tongue has a good turn, when he sleeps. [Aside.

Cris.  I do make verses, when I come in such a street as this:  O, your city ladies, you shall have them sit in every shop like the Muses—­offering you the Castalian dews, and the Thespian liquors, to as many as have but the sweet grace and audacity to sip of their lips.  Did you never hear any of my verses?