SONG.

Bow both your heads at once, and hearts;
Obedience doth not well in parts.
It is but standing in his eye,

You'll feel yourselves chang'd by and by.
Few live, that know, how quick a spring
Works in the presence of a king:
'Tis done by this; your slough let fall,

And come forth new-born creatures all.

During this Song, the Masquers let fall their mantles, and discover their masquing apparel.

dance forth.

Then they

After the dance the Bard sings this

SONG.

So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,

Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fetter'd were with ice.
So naked trees get crisped heads,

And colour'd coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigour, youth, and spright,
That are but look'd on by his light.

THUS IT ENDED.

MERCURY VINDICATED FROM

THE ALCHEMISTS AT

COURT.

BY GENTLEMEN, THE KING'S SERVANTS.

MERCURY VINDICATED.] From the folio, 1616. This is a very ingenious and pleasant little piece, but the author gives neither the date nor the occasion on which it was written. If he paid any attention to time in the arrangement of his Masques, the present must have been produced subsequently to the comedy of the Alchemist.

MERCURY VINDICATED.

Loud music. After which the Scene is discovered; being a Laboratory or Alchemist's work-house: VULCAN looking to the registers, while a Cyclope, tending the fire, to the cornets began to sing.

Cyclope.

OFT, subtile fire, thou soul of art,
Now do thy part

On weaker nature, that through age is
lamed.

Take but thy time, now she is old,

And the sun her friend grown cold,

She will no more in strife with thee be named.

Look, but how few confess her now,
In cheek or brow!

From every head, almost, how she is frighted!
The very age abhors her so,

That it learns to speak and go,

As if by art alone it could be righted.

The Song ended, MERCURY appeared, thrusting out his head, and afterwards his body, at the tunnel of the middle furnace: which VULCAN espying, cried out to the Cyclops.

Vul. Stay, see! our Mercury is coming forth; art and all the elements assist!

sophers. He will be gone.

Call forth our philo-
He will evaporate.

He is scaped.

Dear Mercury! help. He flies.
Precious golden Mercury, be fixt; be not so volatile !
Will none of the sons of art appear?

In which time MERCURY having run once or twice about the room, takes breath, and speaks.

Mer. Now the place and goodness of it protect me. One tender-hearted creature or other, save Mercury, and free him. Ne'er an old gentlewoman in the house, that has a wrinkle about her to hide me in? I could run into a serving-woman's pocket now; her glove, any little hole. Some merciful verdingale among so many, be bounteous, and undertake me: I will stand close up, anywhere, to escape this poltfooted philosopher, old Smug here of Lemnos, and his smoaky family. Has he given me time to breathe! O the variety of torment that I have endured in the reign of the Cyclops, beyond the most exquisite wit of tyrants! The whole household of them are become Alchemists, since their trade of armour-making fail'd them, only to keep themselves in fire, for this winter; for the mischief a secret that they know, above the consuming of coals, and drawing of usquebagh! howsoever they may pretend, under the specious names of Geber, Arnold, Lully, Bombast of Hohenhein, to commit miracles in art, and treason against nature. And, as if the title of philosopher, that creature of glory, were to be fetched out of a furnace, abuse the curious and credulous nation of metal-men through the world, and make Mercury their instrument. I am their crude, and their sub

1 This polt-footed philosopher.] Splay, or rather club-footed. In the Poetaster, Jonson calls this poor "old Smug of Lemnos" a polt-footed stinkard: so that Howel had reason to put him in mind, in one of his letters, that the burning of his study was a mere act of retaliation on the part of Vulcan.

2 Bombast of Hohenhein,] i. e. Paracelsus.