Cor. No, truly.

Clo. Then thou art damn'd.

-

Cor. Nay, I hope

Clo. Truly, thou art damn'd, like an ill-roasted egg,

all on one fide.

1

Cor. For not being at Court? your reason.. Clo. Why, if thou never wast at Court, thou never faw'st good manners; if thou never faw'st good man ners, then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is fin, and fin is damnation: thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.

Cor. Not a whit, Touchstone: those, that are good manners at the Court, are as ridiculous in the Country, as the behaviour of the Country is most mockable at the Court. You told me, you falute not at the Court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be uncleanly, if Courtiers were shepherds.

Clo. Instance, briefly; come, instance.

Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fels, you know, are greasy.

Clo. Why, do not your Courtiers' hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholsome as the sweat of man? shallow, shallow! - a better instance, I fay: come.

Cor. Besides, our hands are hard.

sand instances, that our poet was well acquainted with the Physics of his time: and his great penetration enabled him to see this remediless defect of it.

15

:

1

Clo. Your lips will feel them the fooner. Shallow again:-a more founder instance, come.

Cor. And they are often tarr'd over with the furgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tarr? the Courtier's hands are perfumed with civet.

Clo. Most shallow man!-thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! - learn of the wife, and perpend. Civet is of a baser birth than tarr; the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd.

Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest. Clo. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man; God make incision in thee, thou art raw.

Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer, I earn that I eat; get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs fuck.

Clo. That is another simple fin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together; and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be a bawd to a bell-weather'; and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated old cuckoldry ram, out of all reafonable match. If thou be'st not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot fee else how thou shouldst 'scape.

Cor. Here comes young Mr. Ganimed, my new mistress's brother.

2 Make incision in thee.] To make incision was a proverbial expression then in vogue, for to make to understand. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Humourous Lieute

nant.

Angel-ey'd King, vouchsafe at length thy favour;

And fo proceeds to incifion.

i. e. to make him understand what he would be at.

WARBURTON.

O excellent King, 3 Barwd to a Belwether.] WeThus he begins, thou life and ther and Ram had anciently the light of creatures.

fame meaning.

1

SCENE IV.

Enter Rosalind, with a paper.

r"

Rof. From the east to western Inde,
No jewel is like Rosalind,
Her worth, being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.
All the pictures, fairest limn'd,
Are but black to Rofalind.

Let no face be kept in mind,
But the face of Rofalind.

1

1

Clo. I'll rhime you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and fleeping hours excepted: it is the right butter-woman's rate to market*.

Rof. Out, fool!

Clo. For a tafste

If a hart doth lack a bind,
Let him feek out Rosalind.
If the cat will after kind,
So, be fure, will Rosalind.
Winter-garments must be lin'd,
So must flender Rofalind.
They, that reap, must sheaf and bind;
Then to Cart with Rosalind.

Sweetest nut bath fowrest rind,
Such a nut is Rosalind,
He that sweetest rofe will find,
Must find love's prick, and Rofalind.

This is the very false gallop of verfes; why do you infect yourself with them?

* Rate to market. So Sir T. Hanmer. In the former Editions

rank to market,

Rof.

Rof. Peace, you dull fool, I found them on a tree.
Clo. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.

Rof. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medler; then it will be the earliest fruit i'th' country; for you will be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medler.

Clo. You have faid; but whether wisely or no, let the Foreft judge.

SCENE V,

Enter Celia, with a writing,

Rof. Peace, here comes my Sister reading; stand

afide.

Cel. Why should this a Desert be,
For it is unpeopled? No;
Tongues I'll hang on every tree,
That shall civil fayings show :
Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage;
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in bis fum of age;
Some of violated vows,

'Twixt the fouls of friend and friend;

But upon the fairest boughs,
Or at every fentence' end,

Will I Rofalinda write;
Teaching all, that read, to know,
This Quinteffence of every Sprite
*Heaven would in little show.

That shall civil fayings show.] Civil is here ufed in the fame sense as when we say civil wif dom or civil life, in opposition to a folitary state, or to the state

E 3

of nature. This desart shall not appear unpeopled, for every tree shall teach the maxims or incidents of social life.

Therefore

1

Therefore heaven nature charg'd,
That one body should be fill'd
With all graces wide enlarg'd;
Nature presently distill'd
Helen's cheeks, but not her heart,
Cleopatra's majesty;
Atalanta's better part

* Sad Lucretia's modesty.
Thus Rofalind of many parts
By heav'nly fynod was devis'd';
Of many faces, eyes, and hearts,
To have the Touches dearest priz'de d
Heav'n would that she these gifts should have,
And I should live and die her slave.

Rof. O most gentle Jupiter*!-what tedious homily of love have you wearied your Parishioners withall, and never cry'd, Have patience, good people?

6

Therefore heaven nature charg'd.] From the picture of Apelles, or the accomplishments

of Pandora.

Πανδώρην, ὅτι πάνιες ὀλύμπια δώ

4

better part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part was fo bad that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparifon. There is a more obfcure Atalanta, a Huntress and a Heroine; but of her nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know 3 not which was the better part. So perfect, and so peerless art Shakespeare was no despicableMy

ματ ̓ ἔχοντες

Δῶρον ἐδώρησαν.
So before,

But thou

counted Of ev'ry creature's best.

Tempest. Perhaps from this passage Swift had his hint of Biddy Floyd.

thologift, yet he seems here to
have mistaken fome other cha
racter for that of Atalanta.
8 Sad, is grave, fober, not light.
9 The Touches.] The features;
les traits.

O most gentle JUPITER!]
We should read JUNIPER, as the
following words shew, alluding
to the proverbial term of a Juni-
per lecture: A sharp or unplea-
sing one! Juniper being a rough
prickly plant. WARBURTON.
Surely Jupiter may ftand.