LAUN. Stop there; I'll have her: she was mine, and not mine, twice or thrice in that last article rehearse that once more.

SPEED. Item, She hath more hair than wit,LAUN. More hair than wit,-it may be; I'll prove it the cover of the salt hides the salt, and therefore it is more than the salt; the hair that covers the wit is more than the wit; for the greater hides the less. What 's next?

SPEED. And more faults than hairs,— LAUN. That's monstrous: O, that that were out!

SPEED. And more wealth than faults.

LAUN. Why, that word makes the faults gracious: well, I'll have her and if it be a match, as nothing is impossible,

SPEED. What then?

PRO. Gone, my good lord.
DUKE. My daughter takes his going grievously.
PRO. A little time, my lord, will kill that grief.
DUKE. So I believe; but Thurio thinks not

80.

Proteus, the good conceit I hold of thee, (For thou hast shown some sign of good desert,) Makes me the better to confer with thee.

PRO. Longer than I prove loyal to your grace, Let me not live to look upon your grace.

DUKE. Thou know'st how willingly I would effect

The match between sir Thurio and my daughter. PRO. I do, my lord.

DUKE. And also, I think, thou art not ignorant How she opposes her against my will.

PRO. She did, my lord, when Valentine was here.

DUKE. Aу, and perversely she persévers so. What might we do, to make the girl forget The love of Valentine, and love sir Thurio?

PRO. The best way is, to slander Valentine With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent; Three things that women highly hold in hate. DUKE. Ay, but she 'll think that it is spoke in hate.

PRO. Ay, if his enemy deliver it: Therefore it must, with circumstance, be spoken By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.

DUKE. Then you must undertake to slander him. PRO. And that, my lord, I shall be loth to do: "T is an ill office for a gentleman ; Especially, against his very friend."

DUKE. Where your good word cannot advantage him,

Your slander never can endamage him;
Therefore the office is indifferent,
Being entreated to it by your friend.

PRO. You have prevail'd, my lord: if I can do it,

By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,
She shall not long continue love to him.
But, say this weed her love from Valentine,
It follows not that she will love sir Thurio.
THU. Therefore, as you unwind her love from
him.

Lest it should ravel, and be good to none,
You must provide to bottom it on me ;
Which must be done by praising me as much
As you in worth dispraise sir Valentine.

DUKE. And, Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind;

Because we know, on Valentine's report,

familiar with:

"A bottome for your silke it seems My letters are become,

Which oft with winding off and on
Are wasted whole and some."

GRANGE'S Garden, 1557.

You are already love's firm votary,
And cannot soon revolt and change your mind.
Upon this warrant shall you have access
Where you with Silvia may confer at large;
For she is lumpish, heavy, melancholy,
And, for your friend's sake, will be glad of you;
Where you may temper her, by your persuasion,
To hate young Valentine, and love my friend.

PRO. As much as I can do, I will effect:-
But you, sir Thurio, are not sharp enough;
You must lay lime, to tangle her desires,
By wailful sonnets, whose composed rhymes.
Should be full fraught with serviceable vows.
DUKE. Ay, much is the force of heaven-bred
poesy.

PRO. Say that upon the altar of her beauty You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart. Write till your ink be dry; and with your tears Moist it again; and frame some feeling line, That may discover such integrity a

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews; Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones, Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

a Discover such integrity:] Malone supposed that a line following this had been lost. I rather suspect some corruption in the words such integrity.

b With some sweet consort:] Consort is the reading of the old copy, and is certainly correct. The modern editors, for the most

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
After your dire lamenting elegies,

Visit by night your lady's chamber-window,
With some sweet consort: to their instruments
Tune a deploring dump: the night's dead silence
Will well become such sweet complaining
grievance:

This, or else nothing, will inherit her.

DUKE. This discipline shows thou hast been in love.

THU. And thy advice this night I'll put in
practice.

Therefore, sweet Proteus, my direction-giver,
Let us into the city presently

To sort some gentlemen well skill'd in music:
I have a sonnet that will serve the turn,
To give the onset to thy good advice.
DUKE. About it, gentlemen.

PRO. We'll wait upon your grace till after

a A proper man!] Well-proportioned, comely man.

VAL. From Milan.

3 OUT. Have you long sojourn'd there? VAL. Some sixteen months; and longer might have stay'd,

If crooked fortune had not thwarted me.

1 OUT. What, were you banish'd thence? VAL. I was.

2 OUT. For what offence?

VAL. For that which now torments me to rehearse:

I kill'd a man, whose death I much repent;
But yet I slew him manfully in fight,
Without false vantage, or base treachery.

1 OUT. Why, ne'er repent it, if it were done so: But were you banish'd for so small a fault? VAL. I was, and held me glad of such a doom. 1 OUT. Have you the tongues?

VAL. My youthful travel therein made me happy;

Or else I often had been miserable.

3 OUT. By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,a

This fellow were a king for our wild faction!.

a Of Robin Hood's fat friar,-] Friar Tuck, the well-known associate and quasi confessor of Robin Hood, whom Scott has immortalized in his "Ivanhoe," and of whom Drayton sings in his "Polyolbion,"

"Of Tuck the merry friar, which many a sermon made In praise of Robin Hoode, his outlawes and his trade."

men,

b

Such as the fury of ungovern'd youth
Thrust from the company of awful men: "
Myself was from Verona banished,
For practising to steal away a lady,

An heir, and near allied unto the duke.

2 OUT. And I from Mantua, for a gentleman, Whom, in my mood, I stabb'd unto the heart. 1 OUT. And I, for such like petty crimes as these.

But to the purpose, for we cite our faults,
That they may hold excus'd our lawless lives,
And, partly, seeing you are beautified
With goodly shape; and by your own report
A linguist; and a man of such perfection,

b Of awful men:] Men of worth and station. "An awful man is to this day used in the North to denote a man of dignity." -THOMAS WHITE, 1793.

c An heir, and near allied unto the duke.] The folio, 1623, reads, "And heire and Neece, alide vnto the Duke."

The folio, 1664, corrected the first word; Theobald substituted near for neece.

As we do in our quality much want;

2 OUT. Indeed, because you are a banish'd man, Therefore, above the rest, we parley to you: Are you content to be our general?

To make a virtue of necessity,

And live, as we do, in this wilderness?

3 OUT. What say'st thou? wilt thou be of our consort ?b

Say, ay, and be the captain of us all:
We'll do thee homage, and be rul'd by thee,
Love thee as our commander, and our king.

1 OUT. But if thou scorn our courtesy, thou diest.

2 OUT. Thou shalt not live to brag what we have offer'd.

VAL. I take your offer, and will live with you; Provided that you do no outrages On silly women, or poor passengers.

3 OUT. No, we detest such vile base practices. Come, go with us, we 'll bring thee to our crews, And show thee all the treasure we have got; Which, with ourselves, all rest at thy dispose.

PRO. Already have I been false to Valentine, And now I must be as unjust to Thurio. Under the colour of commending him, I have access my own love to prefer ; But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy, To be corrupted with my worthless gifts. When I protest true loyalty to her, She twits me with my falsehood to my friend: When to her beauty I commend my vows, She bids me think how I have been forsworn In breaking faith with Julia whom I lov'd: And, notwithstanding all her sudden quips, The least whereof would quell a lover's hope, Yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love, The more it grows, and fawneth on her still.

d

But here comes Thurio: now must we to her window,

And give some evening music to her ear.

a In our quality-] Our profession or calling. Thus in "Hamlet," Act II. Sc. 2:

"Will they pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?" and subsequently :

"Come, give us a taste of your quality."

b Of our consort?] Of our fellowship, confederacy, fraternity. e We'll bring thee to our crews,-] Mr. Collier's corrector reads, cave; Mr. Singer, cares I have not ventured to alter the original text; but can hardly believe crews to be what the poet

wrote.

d Her sudden quips,-] Her angry gibes, scoffs, taunts. e Who?] "Our author, throughout his plays, has confounded

Enter THURIO and Musicians.

THU. How now, sir Proteus; are you crept before us?

PRO. Ay, gentle Thurio; for you know that love

Will creep in service where it cannot go.

THU. Ay, but I hope, sir, that you love not here. PRO. Sir, but I do; or else I would be hence. THU. Who?e Silvia?

PRO. Ay, Silvia,-for your sake. THU. I thank you for your own. tlemen,

Let's tune, and to it lustily awhile.

Now, gen

Who is Silvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she,

The heaven such grace did lend her,

That she might admired be.

Is she kind as she is fair?

For beauty lives with kindness:
Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness;
And, being help'd, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,

That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing,
Upon the dull earth dwelling:
To her let us garlands bring.

the personal pronouns, &c. and uses one for the other (who for whom, she for her, him for he); nor was this inaccuracy peculiar to him, being very common when he wrote, even among persons of good education."-MALONE.

f Holy, fair, and wise is she,-] Mr. Collier's corrector reads, wise as free; free is certainly a most inappropriate epithet applied to Silvia. Proteus had just before described her as

"too fair, too true, too holy;"

and true, no doubt, was the becoming term; but as the object of the serenade was to make her break faith, it would have been somewhat out of place in the song; and hence wise was substituted in its stead.