Sure it
was his sword for which the weapon-salve was invented; that so wounding
and healing (like loving correlates) might both work at the same
removes. But the squib is run to the end of the rope: room for the
prodigy of valour. Madam Atropos in breeches, Waller's knight-errantry;
and because every mountebank must have his zany, throw him in Hazelrig
to set off his story. These two, like Bel and the Dragon, are always
worshipped in the same chapter; they hunt in couples, what one doth at
the head, the other scores up at the heels.
Thus they kill a man over and over, as Hopkins and Sternhold murder the
psalms with another of the same; one chimes all in, and then the other
strikes up as the saints-bell.
I wonder for how many lives my Lord Hopton took the lease of his body.
First Stamford slew him, then Waller outkilled that half a bar; and yet
it is thought the sullen corpse would scarce bleed were both these
manslayers never so near it.
The same goes of a Dutch headsman, that he would do his office with so
much ease and dexterity, that the head after execution should stand upon
the shoulders. Pray God Sir William be not probationer for the place;
for as if he had the like knack too, most of those whom the diurnal hath
slain for him, to us poor mortals seem untouched.
Thus these artificers of death can kill the man without wounding the
body, like lightning, that melts the sword and never singes
the scabbard.
This is the William whose lady is the conqueror; this is the city's
champion and the diurnal's delight; he that cuckolds the general in his
commission; for he stalks with Essex, and shoots under his belly,
because his Excellency himself is not charged there: yet in all this
triumph there is a whip and bell; translate but the scene to Roundway
Down, there Hazelrig's lobsters turned crabs and crawled backwards,
there poor Sir William ran to his lady for an use of consolation.
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