hope; and finds no other advantage 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

2 In the Heautontimorumenos of Terence, which had been translated in Shakspeare's time, is the following passage:

Filium unicum adolescentulum
Habeo. Ah quid dixi Habere me? imo

habui, Chreme,

Nunc habeam incertum est.'

In Wily Beguiled, a comedy, 1606:

She is not mine, I have no daughter now.

That I should say I had thence comes the grief.'

The countess remembers her own loss, and hence her sympathy. Passage is occurrence, circumstance.

unclean mind carries virtuous qualities 3, 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.

4

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 5 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 too7.

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 8.

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

3 We feel regret even in commending such qualities, joined with an evil disposition; they are traitors, because they give the possessors power over others; who, admiring such estimable qualities, are often betrayed by the malevolence of the possesHelena's virtues are the better because they are artless

sors.

and open.

4 So in Chapman's version of the third Iliad:

'Season'd her tears her joys to see,' &c.

5 All appearance of life.

6 This kind of phraseology was not peculiar to Shakspeare, though it appears uncouth to us: it is plain that he meant lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than have it.'

7 Helena's affected sorrow was for the death of her father; her real grief related to Bertram and his departure.

8 That is, if the living do not indulge grief, grief destroys itself by its own excess.' So in the Winter's Tale:

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
Share with thy birth-right! 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 furnish9, and my prayers pluck down,
Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,
'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord,
Advise him.

Laf.

He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

Count. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram. [Exit Countess.

Ber. The best wishes, that can be forged in your thoughts [To HELENA], be servants to you 10! 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 11 grace his remembrance more Than those I shed for him.

What was he like?

I have forgot him: my imagination

Carries no favour in it, but Bertram's.

9 i. e. that may help thee with more and better qualifications. 10 i. e. may you be mistress of your wishes, and have power to bring them to effect.

11 That is, Helen's own tears, which were caused in reality by the departure of Bertram, though attributed by Lafeu and the Countess to the loss of her father, and which, from this misapprehension of theirs, graced his memory more than those she actually shed for him.

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 arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table 12; heart, too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour 13
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his relicks. 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 14 a coward;
Yet these fix'd 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 15.

Par. Save you, fair queen.
Hel. And you, monárch 16.

12 Helena considers her heart as the tablet on which his resemblance was portrayed.

13 i. e. every line and trace of his sweet countenance.

14 i. e. altogether, without any admixture of the opposite quality. A similar phrase occurs in Cupid's Revenge, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

'She being only wicked.'

15 Cold for naked, as superfluous for overclothed. This makes the propriety of the antithesis.

16 Perhaps there is an allusion here to the fantastic Monarcho mentioned in a note on Love's Labour's Lost, Act i. Sc. 1.

Par. No.

Hel. And no.

Par. Are you meditating on virginity?

Hel. Ay. You have some stain 17 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 politick 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 18; and should be

17 That is, some tincture, some little of the hue or colour of a soldier; as much as to say, 'you that are a bit of a soldier.' 18 He that hangs himself, and a virgin, are in this circumstance alike, they are both self-destroyers.