Scene 8.
Certainly Madam, you will starve your self with eating so little.
Why a little serves Nature.
Yes; but there are great differences betwixt Natures: for mankind requires more food than some kind of beasts or birds; for a man would be starv'd, if he should eat no more than a Dormouse, or a Camelion, or a Sparrow.
But a Sparrow cannot eat so much as an Eagle, nor an Eagle so much as an Estrich: Likewise, as it is with Bird-kind, so it is with Man∣kind, some would starve with that proportion another would surfet on.
But surely there are none that could surfet with your diet, as with Water and Air, nay (most commonly) nothing but Air, Camelion-like: for you oft times for a week together neither eat bit, nor drink a drop; and that which makes me wonder more, is, that you naturally have a very good sto∣mach, and can eat, when you please, very heartily, and it thrives well with you; but my greater wonder is, that when you do fast, eating now and then a bit, week after week, nay moneth after moneth, yet you are not so lean, as to appear a Skeleton, nor so weak, but you can walk two hours without re∣sting, or being very weary.
Oh Custome is a second Nature, Ioan.
I would have your Ladyship accustome your self to live without eating, and then you will be set in a Chronicle.
Who would strive for that, since most think Chronologers are Artificers, and that their Chronicles are false.
Why some will believe it; and it were better to live in the memo∣ry of a few, than to die to all memory, and to live by nothing.
I would have my Fame live only by singular and transcending Merits, not by singular and melancholy Follies. I know my Errors, though I cannot mend my Faults.