I will, on my privilege I have with the parents of the foresaid child or pupil, undertake your ben venuto; where I will prove those verses to be very unlearned, neither savouring of poetry, wit, nor invention: I beseech your society.

NATH. I thank you too: for society (saith the text) is the happiness of life.

HOL. And, certes, the text most infallibly concludes it.-Sir, [to DULL] I do invite you too; you shall not say me nay: pauca verba. Away; the gentles are at their game, and we will to our recreation. [Exeunt.

SCENE III.-Another part of the same.

Enter BIRON with a paper.

BIRON. The king he is hunting the deer; I am coursing myself: they have pitched a toil; I am toiling in a pitch; pitch, that defiles; defile! a foul word. Well, Set thee down, sorrow! for so they say the fool said, and so say I, and I the fool. Well proved, wit! By the Lord, this love is as mad as Ajax: it kills sheep; it kills me, I a sheep: well proved again o'my side! I will not love: if I do, hang me; i' faith, I will not. O, but her eye, by this light, but for her eye, I would not love her; yes, for her two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie in my throat. By heaven, I do love; and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy; and here is part of my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one o' my sonnets already: the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it: sweet clown, sweeter fool, sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin if the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper; God give him grace to groan. [Gets up into a tree.a

Enter the KING, with a paper. KING. Ay me!

BIRON. [Aside.] Shot by heaven !-Proceed, sweet Cupid; thou hast thump'd him with thy bird-bolt under the left pap.-I' faith, secrets.KING. [Reads.]

So sweet a kiss the golden sun gives not

To those fresh morning drops upon the rose, As thy eye-beams, when their fresh rays have smot The dew of night* that on my cheeks down flows:

(*) Old copies, night of dew.

a Gets up into a tree.] A modern stage direction. The old one is," He stands aside."

b He comes in like a perjure, wearing papers.] For perjure, some modern editors, Mr. Collier among them, read perjurer; but in the old play of "King John," Act II., Constance says,— "But now black-spotted perjure as he is, He takes a truce with Elnor's damned brat." Wearing papers is an allusion to the custom of making persons convicted of perjury wear papers, while undergoing punishment, descriptive of their offence. Thus Hollinshed, p. 383, says of

Nor shines the silver moon one-half so bright
Through the transparent bosom of the deep,
As doth thy face through tears of mine give light:
Thou shin'st in every tear that I do weep;
No drop but as a coach doth carry thee,

So ridest thou triumphing in my woe:
Do but behold the tears that swell in me,

And they thy glory through my grief will show: But do not love thyself; then thou wilt keep My tears for glasses, and still make me weep. 0 queen of queens, how far dost thou excel! No thought can think, nor tongue of mortal tell.How shall she know my griefs? I'll drop the paper;

Sweet leaves, shade folly. Who is he comes here? [Steps aside.

A woman I forswore; but, I will prove,

Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee: My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;

Thy grace being gain'd, cures all disgrace in me. Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:

Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,

Exhal'st this vapour vow; in thee it is:

If broken then, it is no fault of mine, If by me broke, what fool is not so wise, To lose an oath to win a paradise?

BIRON. [Aside.] This is the liver vein, which makes flesh a deity;

On a day, (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever † May
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan ‡ passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But alack, my hand is sworn,
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn!
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee:

[Aside.

(*) First folio and quarto omit I. (+) First folio, every. (1) First folio and quarto, can.

a By earth, she is not; corporal, there you lie.] This is usually read

"By earth she is but corporal," &c.

but the old lection is to me more intelligible than the new. Biron has previously called himself a corporal of Cupid's field; he now terms Dumain corporal in the same sense, but uses the word for

Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.

This will I send; and something else more plain,
That shall express my true love's fasting pain.
O, would the King, Biron, and Longaville,
Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,
Would from my forehead wipe a perjur'd note;
For none offend, where all alike do dote.

LONG. Dumain [advancing], thy love is far from charity,

That in love's grief desir'st society:
You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,
To be o'erheard, and taken napping so.

KING. Come, sir [advancing], you blush; as
his, your case is such;

You chide at him, offending twice as much:
You do not love Maria; Longaville
Did never sonnet for her sake compile;
Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart
His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.
I have been closely shrouded in this bush,
And mark'd you both, and for you both did blush.
I heard your guilty rhymes, observ'd your fashion;
Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion :
Ay me! says one; O Jove! the other cries;
One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's

eyes

You would for paradise break faith and troth;

[To LONG.
And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath.
[TO DUMAIN
What will Biron say, when that he shall hear
Faith infringed, which such zeal did swear?
How will he scorn! how will he spend his wit!
How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it!
For all the wealth that ever I did see,

I would not have him know so much by me.
BIRON. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.-
Ah, good my liege, I pray thee, pardon me:
[Descends from the trec.
Good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to reprove
These worms for loving, that art most in love?
Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears
There is no certain princess that appears:
You'll not be perjur'd, 'tis a hateful thing;
Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting.
But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not,
All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot?

You found his mote*; the king your mote* did

see;

But I a beam do find in each of three.
O, what a scene of foolery have I seen,
Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen!
O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat ! a
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
And profound Solomon tuning a jig,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!
Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumain?
And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege's? all about the breast:-
A caudle,† ho!

KING. Too bitter is thy jest.
Are we betray'd thus to thy over-view?

BIRON. Not you by me, but I betray'd to you: I, that am honest; I that hold it sin To break the vow I am engaged in ; I am betray'd, by keeping company With men-like men, of strange inconstancy." When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme? Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute's time In pruning me? When shall you hear that I Will praise a hand, a foot, a face, an eye, A gait, a state, a brow, a breast, a waist, A leg, a limb ?—

KING.

Soft; whither away so fast? A true man, or a thief, that gallops so? BIRON. I post from love; good lover, let me

a A king transformed to a gnat!] Instead of gnat, which seems to be without meaning in this place, it has been proposed to read knot or sot; but both are rhythmically inadmissible. I have some notion that the true word is quat, which appears to have been a cant term applied to a simpleton, or green-horn. Thus Iago, "Othello," Act V. Sc. 1, speaking of his silly tool Roderigo, says "I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense," &c. So also, in Decker's "Gul's Hornbook," 1609: "whether he be a yong quat of the first yeere's revennew, or some austere and sullen-fac'd steward." It is worth remarking, too, that in the passage from "Othello," quoted above, the early quarto prints gnat for quat.

KING. Where hadst thou it? COST. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio. [Biron tears the paper.

KING. How now! what is in you? why dost thou tear it?

BIRON. A toy, my liege, a toy; your grace needs not fear it.

LONG. It did move him to passion, and therefore let's hear it.

name.

DUM. It is Biron's writing, and here is his [Picks up the pieces. BIRON. Ah, you whoreson loggerhead [to CosTARD], you were born to do me shame.— Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess. KING. What?

BIRON. That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up the mess;

He, he, and you; and you, my liege, and I,
Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.
O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you

As true we are, as flesh and blood can be: The sea will ebb and flow, heaven show his face; Young blood doth not obey an old decree : We cannot cross the cause why we were: * born; Therefore, of all hands must we be forsworn. KING. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?

BIRON. Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,

That, like a rude and savage man of Inde,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east, Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind, Kisses the base ground with obedient breast? What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow, That is not blinded by her majesty?

KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now?

My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon ;

*First folio, are.

b With men-like men, of strange inconstancy.] So the old copies. except that they omit strange, which was added by the editor of the folio, 1632. As the expression men-like men is obscure. Hanmer reads "rane-like men;" Mason proposes "moon-like men; and Mr. Collier suggests that we should read—

"With men-like women of inconstancy."

Which, but that men-like might have been a term of reproach as man-kind was, I should have preferred to either of the other emendations.

Or groan for Joan?] The quarto in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire reads, "Or grone for Lore.'

She, an attending star, scarce seen a light. BIRON. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron: O, but for my love, day would turn to night! Of all complexions, the cull'd sovereignty

Do meet, as at a fair, in her fair cheek, Where several worthies make one dignity; Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seck.

Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,

Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not :
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;
She passes praise: then praise too short doth
blot.

A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,

a She, an attending star,-] It was a prevailing notion formerly that the moon had an attending star. Lilly calls it Lunisequa, and Sir Richard Hawkins, in his "Observations on a Voyage to the South Seas, in 1593," published in 1622, remarks:-"Some I have heard say, and others write, that there is a starre which

And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy. O, 't is the sun that maketh all things shine! KING. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. BIRON. Is ebony like her? O wood* divine A wife of such wood were felicity. O, who can give an oath? where is a book? That I may swear, beauty doth beauty lack, If that she learn not of her eye to look:

No face is fair, that is not full so black.
KING. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
The hue of dungeons, and the stole of night;
And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well.
BIRON. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits
of light.

O, if in black my lady's brows be deck'd,
It mourns, that painting, and usurping hair,

(*) Old editions, word. (†) Old editions, school. never separateth itself from the moon, but a small distance." &c. b And usurping hair,-] And is not in the early editions. The folio of 1632, an.