Love for Love: Scene VII.
Scene VII.
FORESIGHT, SIR SAMPSON, VALENTINE, JEREMY.
JEREMY
He is here, sir.
VALENTINE
Your blessing, sir.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
You've had it already, sir; I think I sent it you to-day
in a bill of four thousand pound: a great deal of money, brother
Foresight.
FORESIGHT
Ay, indeed, Sir Sampson, a great deal of money for a young
man; I wonder what he can do with it!
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Body o' me, so do I. Hark ye, Valentine, if there be too
much, refund the superfluity; dost hear, boy?
VALENTINE
Superfluity, sir? It will scarce pay my debts. I hope you
will have more indulgence than to oblige me to those hard conditions
which my necessity signed to.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Sir, how, I beseech you, what were you pleased to
intimate, concerning indulgence?
VALENTINE
Why, sir, that you would not go to the extremity of the
conditions, but release me at least from some part.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Oh, sir, I understand you--that's all, ha?
VALENTINE
Yes, sir, all that I presume to ask. But what you, out of
fatherly fondness, will be pleased to add, shall be doubly welcome.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
No doubt of it, sweet sir; but your filial piety, and my
fatherly fondness would fit like two tallies. Here's a rogue,
brother Foresight, makes a bargain under hand and seal in the
morning, and would be released from it in the afternoon; here's a
rogue, dog, here's conscience and honesty; this is your wit now,
this is the morality of your wits! You are a wit, and have been a
beau, and may be a--why sirrah, is it not here under hand and seal--
can you deny it?
VALENTINE
Sir, I don't deny it.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Sirrah, you'll be hanged; I shall live to see you go up
Holborn Hill. Has he not a rogue's face? Speak brother, you
understand physiognomy, a hanging look to me--of all my boys the
most unlike me; he has a damned Tyburn face, without the benefit o'
the clergy.
FORESIGHT
Hum--truly I don't care to discourage a young man,--he has a
violent death in his face; but I hope no danger of hanging.
VALENTINE
Sir, is this usage for your son?--For that old weather-headed
fool, I know how to laugh at him; but you, sir -
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
You, sir; and you, sir: why, who are you, sir?
VALENTINE
Your son, sir.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
That's more than I know, sir, and I believe not.
VALENTINE
Faith, I hope not.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
What, would you have your mother a whore? Did you ever
hear the like? Did you ever hear the like? Body o' me -
VALENTINE
I would have an excuse for your barbarity and unnatural usage.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Excuse! Impudence! Why, sirrah, mayn't I do what I
please? Are not you my slave? Did not I beget you? And might not
I have chosen whether I would have begot you or no? 'Oons, who are
you? Whence came you? What brought you into the world? How came
you here, sir? Here, to stand here, upon those two legs, and look
erect with that audacious face, ha? Answer me that! Did you come a
volunteer into the world? Or did I, with the lawful authority of a
parent, press you to the service?
VALENTINE
I know no more why I came than you do why you called me. But
here I am, and if you don't mean to provide for me, I desire you
would leave me as you found me.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
With all my heart: come, uncase, strip, and go naked out
of the world as you came into 't.
VALENTINE
My clothes are soon put off. But you must also divest me of
reason, thought, passions, inclinations, affections, appetites,
senses, and the huge train of attendants that you begot along with
me.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Body o' me, what a manyheaded monster have I propagated!
VALENTINE
I am of myself, a plain, easy, simple creature, and to be kept
at small expense; but the retinue that you gave me are craving and
invincible; they are so many devils that you have raised, and will
have employment.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
'Oons, what had I to do to get children,--can't a private
man be born without all these followers? Why, nothing under an
emperor should be born with appetites. Why, at this rate, a fellow
that has but a groat in his pocket may have a stomach capable of a
ten shilling ordinary.
JEREMY
Nay, that's as clear as the sun; I'll make oath of it before
any justice in Middlesex.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Here's a cormorant too. 'S'heart this fellow was not
born with you? I did not beget him, did I?
JEREMY
By the provision that's made for me, you might have begot me
too. Nay, and to tell your worship another truth, I believe you
did, for I find I was born with those same whoreson appetites too,
that my master speaks of.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Why, look you there, now. I'll maintain it, that by the
rule of right reason, this fellow ought to have been born without a
palate. 'S'heart, what should he do with a distinguishing taste? I
warrant now he'd rather eat a pheasant, than a piece of poor John;
and smell, now, why I warrant he can smell, and loves perfumes above
a stink. Why there's it; and music, don't you love music,
scoundrel?
JEREMY
Yes; I have a reasonable good ear, sir, as to jigs and
country dances, and the like; I don't much matter your solos or
sonatas, they give me the spleen.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
The spleen, ha, ha, ha; a pox confound you--solos or
sonatas? 'Oons, whose son are you? How were you engendered,
muckworm?
JEREMY
I am by my father, the son of a chair-man; my mother sold
oysters in winter, and cucumbers in summer; and I came upstairs into
the world; for I was born in a cellar.
FORESIGHT
By your looks, you should go upstairs out of the world too,
friend.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
And if this rogue were anatomized now, and dissected, he
has his vessels of digestion and concoction, and so forth, large
enough for the inside of a cardinal, this son of a cucumber.--These
things are unaccountable and unreasonable. Body o' me, why was not
I a bear, that my cubs might have lived upon sucking their paws?
Nature has been provident only to bears and spiders; the one has its
nutriment in his own hands; and t'other spins his habitation out of
his own entrails.
VALENTINE
Fortune was provident enough to supply all the necessities of
my nature, if I had my right of inheritance.
SIR SAMPSON LEGEND
Again! 'Oons, han't you four thousand pounds? If I had
it again, I would not give thee a groat.--What, would'st thou have
me turn pelican, and feed thee out of my own vitals? S'heart, live
by your wits: you were always fond of the wits, now let's see, if
you have wit enough to keep yourself. Your brother will be in town
to-night or to-morrow morning, and then look you perform covenants,
and so your friend and servant: --come, brother Foresight.