Ay, I know you have arsenic,
 Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly,
 Cinoper: I know all. - This fellow, Captain,
 Will come in time to be a great distiller,
 And give a say (I will not say directly,
 But very near) at the philosopher's stone.
                                                                  The Alchemist.
 
Tressilian and his attendants pressed their route with all despatch. He had
asked the smith, indeed, when their departure was resolved on, whether he would
not rather choose to avoid Berkshire, in which he had played a part so
conspicuous? But Wayland returned a confident answer. He had employed the short
interval they passed at Lidcote Hall in transforming himself in a wonderful
manner. His wild and overgrown thicket of beard was now restrained to two small
mustaches on the upper lip, turned up in a military fashion. A tailor from the
village of Lidcote (well paid) had exerted his skill, under his customer's
directions, so as completely to alter Wayland's outward man, and take off from
his appearance almost twenty years of age. Formerly, besmeared with soot and
charcoal - overgrown with hair, and bent double with the nature of his labour -
disfigured too by his odd and fantastic dress, he seemed a man of fifty years
old. But now, in a handsome suit of Tressilian's livery, with a sword by his
side, and a buckler on his shoulder, he looked like a gay ruffling serving-man,
whose age might be betwixt thirty and thirty-five, the very prime of human life.
His loutish savage-looking demeanour seemed equally changed into a forward,
sharp, and impudent alertness of look and action.
    When challenged by Tressilian, who desired to know the cause of a
metamorphosis so singular and so absolute, Wayland only answered by singing a
stave from a comedy, which was then new, and was supposed, among the more
favourable judges, to augur some genius on the part of the author. We are happy
to preserve the couplet, which ran exactly thus -
 
»Ban, ban, ca Caliban -
Get a new master - Be a new man.«
 
Although Tressilian did not recollect the verses, yet they reminded him that
Wayland had once been a stage-player, a circumstance which, of itself, accounted
indifferently well for the readiness with which he could assume so total a
change of personal appearance. The artist himself was so confident of his
disguise being completely changed, or of his having completely changed his
disguise, which may be the more correct mode of speaking, that he regretted they