Biron. Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain, Which, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain : As, painfully to pore upon a book,

To seek the light of truth; while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eye-sight of his look:

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile :
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed,
By fixing it upon a fairer eye;

Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,
And give him light that was it blinded by.
Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from other's books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights,

Than those that walk, and wot not what they are.
Too much to know, is, to know nought but fame;
And every godfather can give a name.3

King. How well he's read, to reason against reading! Dum. Proceeded woll, to stop all good proceeding! Long. He weeds the corn, and still lets grow the weeding Biron. The spring is near, when green geese are a breeding.

Dum. How follows that?

Biron. Fit in his place and time.
Dum. In reason nothing.

Biron. Something then in rhyme.

Long. Biron is like an envious sneaping frost,*

That bites the first-born infants of the spring. Biron. Well, say I am; why should proud summer boast, Before the birds have any cause to sing?

Why should I joy in an abortive birth?

At Christmas I no more desire a rose,

[2] Falsely is here, and in many other places, the same as dishonestly or treache rously. The whole sense of this jingling declamation is only this, that a man by too close study may read himself blind. JOHNSON.

[3] The consequence, says Biron, of too much knowledge, is not any real solution of doubts, but mere empty reputation. That is, too much knowledge gives only fame, a name which every godfather can give likewise. JOHNSON.

[4] So sneaping winds in The Winter's Tale. To sneap is to check, to rebuke. Thus also, Falstaff, "I will not undergo this sneap, without reply." STEEVENS.

11

VOL. III.

t

Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows ;'
But like of each thing, that in season grows.
So you, to study now it is too late,

Climb o'er the house t'unlock the little gate.

King. Well, sit you out: go home, Biron; adieu!
Biron. No, my good lord; I've sworn to stay with you.
And, though I have for barbarism spoke more,
Than for that angel knowledge you can say,
Yet confident I'll keep what I have swore,

And 'bide the penance of each three year's day.
Give me the paper, let me read the same;
And to the strict'st decrees I'll write my name.

King. How well this yielding rescues thee from shame ? Biron. [Reads.] Item, that no woman shall come within a mile of my court.-And hath this been proclaim'd?

Long. Four days ago.

Biron. Let's see the penalty.-[Reads.] On pain of losing her tongue.-Who devis'd this?

Long. Marry, that did I.

Biron. Sweet lord, and why?

Long. To fright them hence with that dread penalty. Biron. A dangerous law against gentility.

[Reads.] Item. If any man be seen to talk with a woman within the term of three years, he shall endure such public shame as the rest of the court can possibly devise.

-This article, my liege, yourself must break;
For, well you know, here comes in embassy
The French king's daughter, with yourself to speak,—
A maid of grace, and complete majesty,-

About surrender-up of Aquitain

To her decrepit, sick, and bed-rid father:
Therefore this article is made in vain,

Or vainly comes the admired princess hither.
King. What say you, lords? why, this was quite forgot
Biron. So study evermore is overshot;

While it doth study to have what it would,
It doth forget to do the thing it should :
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
'Tis won, as towns with fire; so won, so lost.

King. We must, of force, dispense with this decree;

She must lie here on mere necessity.

[5] By shows the poet means Maygames, at which a snow would be very unwelcome and unexpected; it is only a periphrasis for May. T. WARTON.

[6] Lie here, means reside here, in the same sense as an ambassador is said to lie lieger. REED.

Biron. Necessity will make us all forsworn

Three thousand times within this three years' space : For every man with his affects is born;

Not by might master'd, but by special grace:

If I break faith, this word shall speak for me,
I am forsworn on mere necessity.-

So to the laws at large I write my name :

[Subscribes,

And he that breaks them in the least degree,

Stands in attainder of eternal shame :

Suggestions are to others, as to me;
But, I believe, although I seem so loth,
I am the last that will last keep his oath.
But is there no quick recreation granted ?9

King. Ay, that there is our court, you know, is haunted
With a refined traveller of Spain;

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain:
One, whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish, like enchanting harmony;
A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
Have chose as umpire of their mutiny :'
This child of fancy, that Armado hight,

For interim to our studies, shall relate,
In high-born words, the worth of many a knight
From tawny Spain, lost in the world's debate.
How you delight, my lords, I know not, I;
But I protest, I love to hear him lie,
And I will use him for my minstrelsy.2

Biron. Armado is a most illustrious wight,

A man of fire-new words,3 fashion's own knight.

[7] Biron, amidst his extravagancies, speaks with great justness against the folly of vows. They are made without sufficient regard to the variations of life, and are therefore broken by some unforeseen necessity. They proceed commonly from a presumptuous confidence, and a false estimate of human power. JOHNSON. [8] Suggestions--Temptations. JOHNSON.

[9] Quick recreation-Lively sport, spritely diversion. JOHNSON.

1 This passage, I believe, means no more than that Don Armado was a man nicely versed in ceremonial distinctions, one who could distinguish in the most de licate questions of honour the exact boundaries of right and wrong. Compliment, in Shakespeare's time, did not signify, at least, did not only signify verbal civility, or phrases of courtesy, but, according to its original meaning, the trappings, or ornamental appendages of a character, in the same manner and on the same principles of speech with accomplishment. Compliment is, as Armado well expresses it, the varnish of a complete man. JOHNSON.

[2] i. e. I will make a minstrel of him, whose occupation was to relate fabulous stories. DOUCE.

[3] i. e. (says an intelligent writer in the Edinburgh Magazine,) words newly coined, new from the forge. Fire new, new off the irons, and the Scottish expres sion bren-new have all the same origin. STEEVENS.

Long. Costard the swain, and he, shall be our sport; And, so to study, three years is but short.

Enter DULL, with a letter, and COSTARD.

Dull. Which is the Duke's own person?
Biron. This, fellow; What would'st?

Dull. I myself reprehend his own person, for I am his grace's tharborough: but I would see his own person in flesh and blood.

Biron. This is he.

Dull. Signior Arme-Arme-commends you. There's villany abroad; this letter will tell you more.

Cost. Sir, the contempts thereof are as touching me. King. A letter from the magnificent Armado.

Biron. How low soever the matter, I hope in God for high words.

Long. A high hope for a low having: God grant us patience!

Biron. To hear? or forbear hearing?

Long. To hear meekly, sir, and to laugh moderately or to forbear both.

Biron. Well, sir, be it as the style shall give us cause to climb in the merriness.

ta.

Cost. The matter is to me, sir, as concerning JaquenetThe manner of it is, I was taken with the manner." Biron. In what manner?

Cost. In manner and form following, sir; all those three I was seen with her in the manor house, sitting with her upon the form, and taken following her into the park; which, put together, is, in manner and form following. Now, sir, for the manner,—it is the manner of a man to speak to a woman: for the form,-in some form.

Biron. For the following, sir?

Cost. As it shall follow in my correction; And God defend the right!

King. Will you hear this letter with attention ?

Biron. As we would hear an oracle.

[4] i. e. Thirdborough, a peace officer, alike in authority with a headborough or a constable. SIR J. HAWKINS.

[5] i. e. in the fact. STEEVENS.

A forensic term. A thief is said to be taken with the manner, i. e. mainour or manour, (for so it is written in our old law books,) when he is apprehended with the thing stolen in his possession. The thing that he has taken was called mainour, from the Fr. manier, manu tractare. MALONE.

Cost. Such is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.

King. [Reads.] Great deputy, the welkin's vicegerent, and sole dominator of Navarre, my soul's earth's God, and body's fostering patron,

Cost. Not a word of Costard yet.

King. So it is,

Cost. It may be so: but if he say it is so, he is, in telling true, but so, so.

King. Peace.

Cost.-be to me, and every man that dares not fight! King. No words.

Cost. of other men's secrets, I beseech you.

King. So it is, besieged with sable-coloured melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humour to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving air; and, as I am a gentleman, betook myself to walk. The time when? About the sixth hour; when beasts most graze, birds best peck, and men set down to that nourishment which is called supper. So much for the time when: Now for the ground which; which, I mean, I walked upon it is ycleped, thy park. Then for the place where; where, I mean, I did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or seest: But to the place, where,-It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted garden: There did I see that low-spirited swain, that base minnow of thy mirth. [Cost. Me.] that unletter'd small-knowing soul, [Cost. Me.] that shallow vassal, [Cost. Still me. which, as 1 remember, hight Costard, [Cost. O me !] sorted and consorted, contrary to thy established proclaimed edict and continent canon, with-with,-O with-but with this I passion to say wherewith,-

Cost. With a wench.

King. with a child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.

[6] Ancient gardens abounded with figures of which the lines intersected each other in many directions. STEEVENS.

[7] The base minnow of thy mirth, is the contemptible little object that contributes to thy entertainment. Shakespeare makes Coriolanus characterize the tribunitian insolence of Sicinius, under the same figure:

-hear you not
"This Triton of the minnows?"

STEEVENS.