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220 WILLIAM CONGREVE [ACT II
writings of settlement and jointure:—all shall be done tonight.
No matter for the time: prithee, Brother Foresight,
leave superstition. Pox D' th' time! there's no time but the
time present, there's no more to be said of what's past, and
all that is to come will happen. If the sun shine by day, and
the stars by night, why, we shall know one another's faces
without the help of a candle, and that's all the stars are
good for.
Fore. How, how, Sir Sampson? that all? Give me leave to
contradict you, and tell you, you are ignorant.
Sir Samp. I tell you I am wise; and sapiens dominabitur
astris; there's Latin for you to prove it, and an argument to
confound your ephemeris.—Ignorant!—I tell you, I have
travelled, old Fircu, and know the globe. I have seen the
antipodes, where the sun rises at midnight, and sets at
noonday.
Fore. But I tell you, I have travelled, and travelled in
the celestial spheres, know the signs and the planets, and
their houses. Can judge of motions direct and retrograde,
of sextiles, quadrates, trines and oppositions, fiery trigons
and aquatical trigons. Know whether life shall be long or
short, happy or unhappy, whether diseases are curable or
incurable. If journeys shall be prosperous, undertakings successful;
or goods stolen recovered, I know—
Sir Samp. I know the length of the Emperor of China's
foot; have kissed the Great Mogul's slipper, and rid a
hunting upon an elephant with the Cham of Tartary.—
Body o' me, I have made a cuckold of a king, and the
present majesty of Bantam is the issue of these loins.
Fore. I know when travellers lie or speak truth, when
they don't know it themselves.
Sir Samp. I have known an astrologer made a cuckold
in the twinkling of a star; and seen a conjurer that could
not keep the devil out of his wife's circle.
Fore. [Aside.] What, does he twit me with my wife too?
I must be better informed of this.—[Aloud.] Do you mean
my wife, Sir Sampson? Though you made a cuckold of the
King of Bantam, yet by the body of the sun—
Sir Samp. By the horns of the moon, you would say,
brother Capricorn.
Fore. Capricorn in your teeth, thou modern Mandeville!
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thec, thou liar of
the first magnitude! Take back your paper of inheritance;