in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

Count. This young gentlewoman had a father (O, that "had!" how sad a passage 'tis !) whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. 'Would, for the King's sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of the King's disease.

Laf. How called you the man you speak of, madam?

Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so :-Gerard de Narbon.

Laf. He was excellent, indeed, madam: the King very lately spoke of him, admiringly and mourningly. He was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the King languishes of?

Laf. A fistula, my lord.

Ber. I heard not of it before.

Laf. I would it were not notorious.—Was this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

Count. His sole child, my lord; and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that her education promises: her dispositions she inherits, which make fair gifts fairer ; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity; they are virtues and traitors too: in her they are the better for their simpleness: she derives her honesty, and achieves her goodness.

Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from

her tears.

Count. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart, but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek.-No more of this, Helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than to have.

Hel. I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too.

Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy to the living.

Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that?

Count. Be thou blest, Bertram; and succeed

thy father

In manners as in shape! thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness

Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in it but Bertram's.
I am undone there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it; he is so above me!
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arch d brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relics.-Who comes here?

Enter PAROLLES.

One that goes with him. I love him for his sake:
And yet I know him a notorious liar,
Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
Yet these fixed evils sit so fit in him,
That they take place when virtue's steely bones
Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft

we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.
Par. Save you, fair queen.
Hel. And you, monarch.
Par. No.

Hel. And no.

Par. Are you meditating on virginity? Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you; let me ask you a question :-Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him?

Par. Keep him out.

Hel. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant in the defence, yet is weak:-unfold to us some warlike resistance.

Par. There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.

Hel. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers-up! Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?

Par. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature, to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase; and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of, is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with it.

Hel. I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

Par. There's little can be said in 't; 'tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by 't: out with 't: within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse: away with 't. Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

Par. Let me see:-marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. "T is a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with 't, while 't is vendible: answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge, than in your cheek. And your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears:

it looks ill, it eats drily; marry, 't is a withered pear: it was formerly better; marry, yet 't is a withered pear. Will you anything with it? Hel. Not my virginity yet.—

There shall your master have a thousand loves:
A mother, and a mistress, and a friend;
A phoenix, captain, and an enemy;
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign;
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility;
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet ;
His faith; his sweet disaster: with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-
I know not what he shall. God send him well!
The court's a learning-place; and he is one-
Par. What one, i' faith?

Hel. That I wish well. "T is pity—

Par. What's pity?

Hel. That wishing well had not a body in 't, Which might be felt: that we, the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And shew what we alone must think; which never Returns us thanks.

Enter a Page.

Page. Monsieur Parolles, my lord calls for you. [Exit Page. Par. Little Helen, farewell: if I can remember thee, I will think of thee at court.

Hel. Monsieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable star.

Par. Under Mars, I.

Hel. I especially think, under Mars.

Par. Why under Mars?

Hel. The wars have so kept you under, that you must needs be born under Mars.

Par. When he was predominant.
Hel. When he was retrograde, I think, rather.
Par. Why think you so?

Hel. You go so much backward when you fight.

Par. That's for advantage.

Hel. So is running away, when fear proposes the safety. But the composition that your valour and fear makes in you, is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the wear well.

Par. I am so full of businesses, I cannot answer thee acutely. I will return perfect courtier; in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalise thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counsel, and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee: else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away. Farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember

thy friends: get thee a good husband, and use
him as he uses thee: so farewell.
[Exit.
Hel. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high;
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings
To join like likes, and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts, to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath been cannot be. Who ever strove
To shew her merit, that did miss her love?
The King's disease-my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fixed, and will not leave me.

King. I would I had that corporal soundness now,

As when thy father and myself, in friendship,
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time, and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on,
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me
To talk of your good father. In his youth
He had the wit which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted,
Ere they can hide their levity in honour.
So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride or sharpness: if they were,
His equal had awaked them; and his honour,
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when
Exception bid him speak, and at this time
His tongue obeyed his hand. Who were below him,
He used as creatures of another place;
And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility:

In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times;
Which, followed well, would démonstrate them

now

But goers backward.

Ber. His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb. So in approof lives not his epitaph, As in your royal speech.

King. 'Would I were with him! He would

always say

(Methinks I hear him now: his plausive words
He scattered not in ears, but grafted them
To grow there and to bear), "Let me not live,"-
Thus his good melancholy oft began,

On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out,-"Let me not live," quoth he,
"After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses
All but new things disdain; whose judgments are
Mere fathers of their garments; whose constancies
Expire before their fashions."-This he wished:
I, after him, do after him wish too,

Since I nor wax nor honey can bring home,
I quickly were dissolvéd from my hive,
To give some labourers room.