this kingdom, and beshrew my knave’s heart if I bid any man half so welcome

from another kingdom!  Nay, my royal lady, you have a share too, and  each of

these a child’s part, so far as God’s blessing and a good heart’s wish meets in 5

 ‘Amen’. [To the King] Your Majesty will pardon me? I think you scarce know

where you are now, nor by my troth can I tell you, more than that you may

seem to be upon some land discovery of a new region here, to which I am your

compass. And for that purpose have I  walked the round this fortnight in my

present place and office,  which office — well, it makes my beard a hair greyer 10

to mention it — had I known it to have had half the trouble and vexation that

I have felt in’t, East and West should have looked to it for me, I would never

have breathed toward it. Why, believe it, my good Majesty,  no ague is like

it! The  quotidian torture that I have endured here from my great cousin, the

multitude, is beyond the tongue of man. ’Tis well known, sir, I have been 15

a man of some reckoning — I have kept both an inn and a tavern, and could

entertain my guests in my velvet cap and my red  taffeta doublet, and I could

answer their questions and expound their riddles. But here, why, I have had

more interrogatories given me in one hour than all your law courts ever knew

in a  Michaelmas Term! And such things as  an age of the  wisest constables 20

that ever were could not invent: about the house, the rooms, the floor, the

roof, the  lights, the shops, the very bars and padlocks. Not a grain in the

wainscot, but they have had my  affidavit for. I have been fain to swear myself

out of breath, and yet not them into silence. And before the shops were up,

the perplexities that they were in for what it should be would have  drawn a 25

mourner’s  laughter upon them. One sort would have it a  public  bank, where

money should be lent at  five i’the hundred upon the most easy security,

but a scrivener swore he would lose his ears then. Another would have it

a  lombard to deal with all manner of pawns, but the  broker would except

stolen goods or he would be hanged for it. A third would have it a store-house 30

for Westminster, of corn here above and wood and sea-coal below, to

 pre-occupy the next great  frost or a dear year in  despite o’the almanac, but

the   victuallers would none of that; they would knock their heads together

o’the pillory first. A fourth would have it an  arsenal for decayed citizens, but

what should the City do with  Ludgate then, quoth I? A fifth would have it 35

a library, but it should  be very private, the books locked up in chests all the

year, save on  Shrove Tuesday, when the bears are baited and the prentices let

loose. A sixth sort would have it in studies for young returned travellers, and

the walk below for them to discourse in, but they studied little and  travailed

less for that. A seventh would needs have it  Tipper’s office, and many, a  fair 40

front built only to grace the street and for no use; where I wonder how such

men could keep their brains from being guilty of imagining it rather a place

to twist silk in, or  make ropes, or play  shuttlecock, better than nothing. Well,

if their ignorance help ’em not to mercy, I know not what can. I may fear

mine own  proper too, justly, for having been thus impertinent about ’em, 45

but gladness is a talking thing, and I hope Your Majesty will drown all offence

in your welcome. Some of our shopkeepers are come here; and one or two of

’em are furnished, especial our China man.

kinds and  qualities? China chains, China bracelets, China scarves, China fans,

China girdles, China knives, China boxes, China cabinets, caskets, umbrellas,

sundials, hourglasses, looking-glasses,  burning-glasses, concave glasses,

triangular glasses, convex glasses, crystal globes, waxen pictures,  ostrich

eggs, birds of paradise,   musk-cats,  Indian mice, Indian rats, China dogs, and 55

China cats?  Flowers of silk,  mosaic fishes? Waxen fruit and porcelain dishes?

Very fine cages for birds, billiard balls, purses, pipes, rattles, basins, ewers,

cups, cans,  voiders, toothpicks, targets,  falchions, beards of all ages, vizards,

spectacles? Sir, what you lack?

Please you to take a nearer view of these excellencies, examine but some

  parcel of the particulars, and run over the rest upon the full speed of your

eye. A few shelves, somewhat thin, and rarely furnished, I confess! But if all

the  magazines of Europe afford the like, I will shrink this poor head into my 65

shop and never more be seen above board. You have  divers other China houses

about the town, I know, and that have been honoured with the visitation of

great persons no less than this but, alas, what ha’ they, what rarity can they

produce? Feathers?  Cockleshells? Wooden daggers? Trash?  Dutch trenchers?

A few of these dishes counterfeit? You’ll fairly give me credit now – not a piece 70

of  porcelain about this town but is most false and adulterate, except what

you see on this shelf. These are  right such as the  Grand Signor  eats in, I assure

you; on my sincerity, you can put no poison in these, but they  presently break

or discolour, out of a natural disloyalty to man.  These are made of the true

earth, first  contused in a mortar and then ground in a mill, after put into your 75

 lake or cistern, and then macerated till the hardness be conquered. Then take

they the cream o’the top ( as your housewife makes butter) and form it into

what fashion they list and, while it is  melling in the furnace, paint it with

those figures and give it perpetuity of what colour they please. Some hold

the matter is working fourscore or a hundred years ere it come to maturity 80

in a confused mass, and is left by the grandsire or the great grandsire to the

nephews at three descents as an immediate portion to make ’em rich. Here

is a piece of it now,  tralucent as amber and subtler than crystal. He had need

ha’ no gout chilblains in his fingers that drinks out of this; ’tis for the hand

of a king’s daughter or a  queen of  Egypt. Your  great-fisted groom should 85

sup out of a  pipkin! Here’s a second rarity, a  conceited saltcellar, an  elephant

with a castle on his back, where beside the art of the artificer in the whole

dimensions, the spreading of the ear, winding the proboscis, mounting of

the tusks, and architecture of the castle, do but observe his  engine! Why an

elephant more than any other creature? He might have made it a mule, a 90

camel, or a dromedary, but the  elephant, being the wisest beast, it was fit he

should carry the salt from ’em all, for by salt is understood wisdom:  sal sapit

omnia. Then here’s a dog, a fine gentle delicate thing for the  chamber, and

no less  close than  cleanly. He will neither bark at you, bite you, nor  bewray

you, but with silence defend you and is an excellent  emblem of friendship, 95

according to the poet, ‘As faithful, wise, and valiant as a dog.’ Nor have you

a less elegant moral in  this cat. For,

 Look as your cat playeth with the mouse,

The play of your cat is the death of your mouse.

of all manner of arts and letters many  thousand years before any of

these parts could speak.  Sir John Mandeville was the first that brought

science from thence into our  climate, and so dispensed it into Europe and in

such  hieroglyphics as these. Here be other mysteries, too. The  statue of the

Spring, as she was in paradise, innocent and lovely; a fan of the feathers of 105

 Juno’s bird, that were once the eyes of jealousy and now the servants and safeguards

of beauty. I assure you, he that would study but the allegory of a China

shop might stand worthily to be the  rector of an academy. Old  Bartholomew

of the Propriety of Things and  Pliny in English are nothing to it, nor  the story of

birds and beasts with the wooden pictures, nor the  Peg, Meg, or Margaret of 110

the  philosophers. Here is  a book now – it is but a little one you see, but there

is in this book to tickle the best head of England and yet to keep his hair from

turning grey, by a certain virtue in the  scolopendra’s bone to expel sadness

whereof this   comb is made! I have other delicacies too, as  cabinets that you

can scarcely fathom yet weigh  but eighteen ounces   avoirdupois; voiders for 115

your table that have the true recipe of the  Turkey varnish; carpets wrought

of  paraquitos’  feathers; umbrellas made of the wing of the Indian butterfly;

 ventolas of  flying fishes’ fins; hangings of the island of   Cochin, which, being

but a natural cobweb of that country, last longer than your gilded leather;

paper made of the barks of trees and ink to carry dry in your pocket; and 120

thousand such subtleties which you will think to have cheap now at the next

return of the  Hollanders’ fleet from the Indies. But, I assure you, my  factors

from  Leghorn have advertised that  Ward, the man of war (for that is now the

honourable name for a pirate)  hath taken their greatest hulk, and in their

second, with a  cross-bar shot, hath made such a spoil in the porcelain as it is 125

thought they will come home very much dissolved. Therefore, as ye please,

my commodities shall not beg to be sold.   Higher be  glasses too, that I had

almost forgot but that my boy  suppeditate.  First, a triangular, which, laid

thus, shows ye all manner of colours by refraction and instructs ye in the true

natural cause of your rainbow. A convex that diminisheth forms and   makes 130

your lady look like the queen of  fairies and your knight like your grand duke

of pygmies. A concave that augments them. This glass would have made  the

great Dutchman look more like a  Saracen than he did and was invented to

help a lean face cut out of a   cherrystone, or the despair of a beard on a barren

chin. Then here’s a spectacle, an excellent pair of multiplying eyes, and were 135

made at request of an old  patriarch of usurers in town here, to see his money

come home in and sit brooding over the heap.  Your epicure buys yonder,

 too! But here’s my jewel: my  perspective. I will read you with this glass the

distinction of any man’s clothes ten, nay twenty mile off, the colour of his

horse,  cut or long tail, the form of his beard, the lines of his face. 140

he speaks and in what language. If the sun shine anything strong, I will stand

you in  Covent Garden familiarly and decipher at  Highgate the  subtlest   caracts

you can make as easily as  here. But I am promised a glass shortly from a great 145

master in the  catoptrics, that I shall stand with o’th’ top of  Paul’s, when the

new spire is built, and set fire on a ship twenty leagues at sea in what line I will

by  parabolical fiction. You may smile at this now and think it nothing, but

I assure you there’s not that trifle in this whole shop that is not mysterious.

This  file of  vizards and beards by some would be carelessly regarded as being150

the common and vulgar remnants of every milliner’s shop, but I must clear

it to you. There is no face here that hath not his morality nor form of beard

but I can derive from the time and place of their first  original amongst us.

This was the  beard of Prince  Arthur in the citizens’ show at Mile End, anno

24 of our late Queen, and came in with  Monsieur the same year ’81, and was 155

worn with the  German sleeves and  devil’s breeches. Had it not been pity

that King  Ryence of North Galys should have  furred his mantle with this

princely beard, as it had like to befallen on a Pentecost day. This   mustachio a

la Turquisia came in a year or two before with  Casimir, but was borrowed by

the  Duke of Shoreditch in the same show and, indeed, fell off after the first 160

hot service in the  Low Countries, what time the  kettledrum-breeches were

disbombasted in the streets by public commandment. This shaven cheek and

 pickardevant came over with an Italian  marquis and was worn (as I remember)

with the short round hose and the long  canion by the worthy  Earl of   Pancras,

 Alderman Offley, when I was a boy and long after. And had it been in request, 165

especially with revellers, but that the martial aspect of this   Calais  beard,

together with the  cloak-bag slops,   was confined to the chins of attorneys and

brewers’ clerks, where it remains at this day to be seen. I could make you more

upward allusions as to the four monarchies which were a  Maccabean, with

an Alexandrian and with a Caesarean beard, but I will content myself with a170

modern  animadversion,  only deciphering the seal or degree of a  parish. First,

here’s your stubbed brown beard for your  scavenger’s beard; then your close

and worn upper-lip for your  aleconner’s beard, somewhat cropped in the

fold like the apron of a gutter; the third is your  colemeter’s beard, somewhat

black and dusty; the fourth, your  headborough’s, that an imperfect beard175

but looking for more authority; the fifth, a ripe and mature beard, and being

the  collector for the poor will not spare a hair; this sixth, a commanding

beard, and only proper for the  constable; this seventh, the  sideman’s, being

long and of two colours; the eighth, inclining to white, the churchwarden’s,

he being religious while he is in his office; the ninth, a careless beard fit for 180

the  deputy or a burgess; and the tenth is Death, the barber of the parish, a

 mad  shaver who makes ’em all like himself! So much for that shelf. Then

for  chemical plate, it is not possible to equal, for setting the rest and the

goldsmith’s mark aside, I’ll uphold it better than the authentical. There’s

the true colour without contradiction, the radiant lustre that dazzleth the 185

eyes of the beholder, then it exceeds it in lightness and a mechanical neatness

of the workmanship, but the humbleness of the price disgraceth the  valour

of the thing. I  uttered some nine pounds’ worth of it to a poor innkeeper

that before, God knows, had no plate in his house but a  casting bottle and

two  ’postle spoons that were given his wife by the  gossips of her first child, 190

and now he serves in the right  livery to all his guests, even from the peddler

upwards. Had he furnished himself thus of a goldsmith, it would have cost

him more than he is worth and been in perpetual danger of thieves. But now

I come to that will speak for itself. Here is an  instrument that hath in it the

figures of the sun and moon, a clock, and other excellent properties. Ye will 195

say I am a  Daedalus ere I have done, too. Nay, I assure ye it plays alone without

the help of a second. This is the  motion of  Joseph and the ass and the  three

Kings of  Cologne; ye shall see it come again straight. They tell bold tales of

the  statue of Memnon and the bell in  Dodona,  I have a statue too of Apollo

here will do something. Now, if thou be’st the god of music, let’s hear thee! 200

To hear Apollo’s statue sing

’Gainst Nature’s law, 205

Ask this great King

And his fair Queen, who are the proper cause.

It is not wisdom’s power alone,

Or beauties that can  move a stone,

But both so high, 210

In this great King

And his fair Queen, do strike the harmony.

Which harmony hath power to touch

The dullest earth, and  make it such

As I am now, 215

To this great King

And his fair Queen, whom none to praise knows how,

Except with silence, which indeed,

Doth truest admiration breed.

And that can I, 220

To this best King

And his best Queen, in my last note and die. [Exit.]

say! This is past the heat of hands or the beams of the sun. [To the King] Well, sir,

ye look like a man that would give good  handsel. If ye like this instrument, 225

I am going shortly for Virginia to discover the  insecta of that country, the

kind of  fly they have there, and so overland for China to compare  ’em for

commodity, and but see where paradise stood and bring of the birds alive

home. Perhaps I will call upon  Prester John by the way! If ye will give me

  twenty for one at my return, ’tis yours; I’ll make no piece with ye, any man 230

shall value it, I’ll send it ye home. [To the Queen] And, madam, let me have

a  mart with ye too. Here’s a picture that I do value at something, both for

the matter and that which exceeds it, the workmanship. It is the  salutation

of the Blessed Virgin by the Angel  Gabriel, with the choir of other angels

applauding it. This, if ye please, I venture with ye upon the same terms. [To 235

the Prince] Ye look like a good customer too, and a good paymaster to boot!

I must fit ye with somewhat. Oh, an there were a  Bucephalus now, what

would not an Alexander give for this? It is the whole  furniture for a horse,

and for a proud horse, indeed. ’Tis yours upon the same mart, sir. If there

be any honours or beauties else here that will like and take of me, I will ask 240

no other security but their good words and fair handsels. And God make me

rich, which is the seller’s prayer, ever was, and will be.