Courses as swift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind :
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails :
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste:
For valour, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtle as sphynx; as sweet, and musical,

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmonya.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write,

Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs.
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent:
Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you
will prove
fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love;
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men;
Let us once lose our oaths, to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths:
It is religion to be thus forsworn:

For charity itself fulfils the law;

And who can sever love from charity?

KING. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field!
BIRON. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;
Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis'd,
In conflict that you get the sun of them.

LONG. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by;
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

• This fine passage has been mightily obscured by the commentators. The meaning appears to us so clear amidst the blaze of poetical beauty, that an explanation is scarcely wanted:-When love speaks, the responsive harmony of the voice of all the gods makes heaven drowsy.

KING. And win them too: therefore let us devise

Some entertainment for them in their tents.

BIRON. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;
Then, homeward, every man attach the hand

Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon

We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
Forerun fair Love, strewing her way with flowers.
KING. Away, away! no time shall be omitted,

That will be time, and may by us be fitted.
BIRON. Allons! Allons!-Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn;
And justice always whirls in equal measure:
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

[Exeunt.

HOL. Satis quod sufficit.

NATH. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

HOL. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general

Filed-polished. Old Skelton gives us the word in the precise meaning in which Shakspere

behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it. NATH. A most singular and choice epithet. [Takes out his table-book. HOL. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasms, such insociable and pointdevise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce debt;—d, e, b, t; not d, e, the clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable, (which he would call abominable,) it insinuateth me of insanied; Ne intelligis, domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

NATH. Laus Deo, bone intelligo.

HOL. Bone?- -bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 't will serve.

MOTH. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. [To COSTARD aside.

COST. O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words! I marvel, thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus 24: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon. MоTH. Peace! the peal begins.

ARM. Monsieur [to HoL.], are you not letter'd?

MOTн. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book;

What is a, b, spelt backward, with a horn on his head?

HOL. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

here uses it:

"But they their tongues file,

And make a pleasaunte style."

Thrasonical-from Thraso, the boasting soldier of Terence. Fuller, in his 'Worthies,' speaks of one as "a thrasonical puff, and emblem of mock valour." Farmer asserts that the word was introduced in our language before Shakspere's time, but he furnishes no proof of this.

Picked-trimmed. Falconbridge describes "My picked man of countries." See note on 'King John,' Act I.

• Point-devise-nice to excess, and sometimes, adverbially, for exactly, with the utmost nicety. Gifford thinks this must have been a mathematical phrase. Other examples of its use are found in Shakspere—and in Holinshed, Drayton, and Ben Jonson. The phrase, Douce says, "has been supplied from the labours of the needle. Poinct in the French language denotes a stitch; devisé, anything invented, disposed, or arranged. Point-devisé was therefore a particular sort of patterned lace worked with the needle; and the term point-lace is still familiar to every female." It is incorrect to write point-de-vice, as is usually done.

d The early copies have infamie; for which Theobald gave us insanie.

MOTH. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn.-You hear his learning.

HOL. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

MOTH. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I25. HOL. I will repeat them, a, e, i.—

MOTH. The sheep: the other two concludes it; o, u.

ARM. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venew of wit 26: snip, snap, quick, and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.

MOTH. Offer'd by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.

HOL. What is the figure? what is the figure?

MOTH. Horns.

HOL. Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig.

MоTн. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circùm circà: A gig of a cuckold's horn!

COST. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou halfpenny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased that thou wert but my bastard! what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.

HOL. O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.

ARM. Arts-man, præambula; we will be singled from the barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the charge-house on the top of the mountain?

HOL. Or, mons, the hill.

ARM. At your sweet pleasure, for the mountain.

HOL. I do, sans question.

ARM. Sir, it is the king's most sweet pleasure and affection, to congratulate the princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of this day; which the rude multitude call the afternoon.

HOL. The posterior of the day, most generous sir, is liable, congruent, and measurable for the afternoon: the word is well cull'd, chose; sweet and apt, I do assure you, sir, I do assure.

ARM. Sir, the king is a noble gentleman; and my familiar, I do assure you, very good friend :-For what is inward between us, let it pass :-I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesya:-I beseech thee, apparel thy head: -And among other importunate and most serious designs,-and of great import indeed, too;- but let that pass :-for I must tell thee, it will please his grace (by the world) sometime to lean upon my poor shoulder; and with his royal finger, thus, dally with my excrement, with my mustachio: but,

It

• Remember thy courtesy. Theobald is of opinion that the passage should read-remember not thy courtesy, that is, do not take thy hat off. Jackson thinks it should be, remember my courtesy. appears to us that the text is right; and that its construction is-for what is confidential between us, let it pass-notice it not-I do beseech thee, remember thy courtesy-remember thy obligation to silence as a gentleman. Holofernes then bows: upon which Armado says, I beseech thee, apparel thy head; and then goes on with his confidential communications, which he finishes by saying-Sweet heart, I do implore secrecy.