SCENE I.-Rousillon. A Room in the Countess's Palace.

Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, HELENA, and LAFEU, in mourning.

COUNT. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband. BER. And I, in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death anew: but I must attend his majesty's command, to whom I am now in ward', evermore in subjection.

LAF. You shall find of the king a husband, madam;-you, sir, a father: He that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted, rather than lack it a where there is such abundance.

COUNT. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

LAF. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

Lack it. This is the reading of the old copies; but Theobald, Hanmer, and others, have slack it. What lack applies to is the kindness of the king.

COUNT. This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! how sad a passage 't is!) whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it streched 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 2.

LAF. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

COUNT. "T is the best brine a maiden can season her praise in3. 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.

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

Passage. This use of the word is now little known; but it is highly expressive. Modern writers have substituted event and circumstance-words that do not convey the meaning of passage -what passes.

b Would-it would.

• Malone here points out an inaccuracy of construction, and says the meaning is-lest you be rather thought to affect a sorrow than to have. This construction can scarcely be called inaccurate. It belongs not only to Shakspere's phraseology, but to the freer system upon which the English language was written by the most correct writers in his time. We have lost something in the attainment of our present precision.

Tieck assigns this speech, and we think correctly, to Helena, in the belief that she means it as a half-obscure expression, which has reference to her love for Bertram. Such are her first words "I do affect a sorrow, indeed, but I have it too." In the original copies, and in all the modern editions, the passage before us is given to the Countess. In her mouth it is not very intelligible; in Helena's, though purposely obscure, it is easily comprehensible. The living enemy to grief for the dead is Bertram; and the grief of her unrequited love for him destroys the other grief-makes it mortal. To this mysterious expression of Helena, Lafeu addresses himself when he says, “How understand we that?"

BER. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.

LAF. How understand we that?

COUNT. Be thou bless'd, Bertram! and succeed thy father
In manners, as in shape! thy blood, and virtue,
Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech. What Heaven more will,
That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,

LAF.

"T is an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, Advise him.

He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

COUNT. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram.

[Exit.

BER. The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts [to HELENA] be servants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.

LAF. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the credit of your father.

[Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU.

HEL. O, were that all!-I think not on my father;
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him. What was he like?
I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favour in 't 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. "T was pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart's table; heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favourd:

• The "great tears" which the departure of Bertram causes her to shed, being imputed to her grief for her father, grace his remembrance more than those which she really shed for him.

* Table—the tabular surface, tablet, upon which a picture is painted, and thence used for the picture itself.

Trick-peculiarity. See Note on 'King John,' Act I., Scene 1.

d Favour-countenance.

But now he's gone, and my idolatrous tancy

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 fix'd evils sit so fit in him,

That they take place, when virtue's steely bones

Look bleak i' the cold wind: withal, full oft we see

Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly

PAR. Save you, fair queen.

HEL. And you, monarch a

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: 't is too cold a companion; away with 't.

HEL. I will stand for 't a little, though therefore I die a virgin. PAR. There's little can be said in 't; 't is against the rule of nature. Το 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

• Monarch. When Parolles calls Helena "queen," she answers by a sarcastic allusion to the Monarcho-an Italian who figured in London about 1580, possessed with the notion that he was sovereign of the world. (See 'Love's Labour's Lost,' Act IV., Scene 1.)

Stain-tincture;-you have some slight mark of the soldier about you.

is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by 't: Out with 't: within ten year it will make itself two, 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 show what we alone must think; which never
Returns us thanks.

Enter a Page.

PAGE. Monsieur Parolles, my

lord calls for you.

[Exit.

• We print the text as in the folio. It is not worth discussing whether the word two of the original should not be ten, as it is commonly read.

Hanmer makes Helena say, "You're for the court," before she goes on, "There, shall your master," &c. It is scarcely necessary that her slight answer to the random talk of Parolles should have any connection with her subsequent speech. She has been abstracted during this dialogue, and now her thoughts are clothed in words.