Enter DUMAIN, with a paper.

LONG. By whom shall I send this?- Company! stay.

[Stepping aside.

BIRON. [Aside.] All hid, all hid, an old infant play:
Like a demi-god here sit I in the sky,

And wretched fools' secrets heedfully o'er-eye.

More sacks to the mill! O heavens, I have my wish;

Dumain transformed: four woodcocks in a dish!

DUM. O most divine Kate!

O most profane coxcomb!

BIRON.
DUM. By heaven, the wonder of a mortal eye!

BIRON. By earth, she is not; corporala, there you lie.

DUM. Her amber hairs for foul have amber coted ".
BIRON. An amber-colour'd raven was well noted.
DUM. As upright as the cedar.
BIRON.

Her shoulder is with child.

[Aside.

[Aside.

Aside.

Stoop, I say;

[Aside.

BIRON. Ay, as some days; but then no sun must shine.

[Aside.

BIRON. Amen, so I had mine! Is not that a good word?

[Aside.

DUM. I would forget her; but a fever she

Reigns in my blood, and will remember'd be.

BIRON. A fever in your blood! why, then incision

Would let her out in saucers: Sweet misprision! DUм. Once more I'll read the ode that I have writ. BIRON. Once more I'll mark how love can vary wit. DUM.

[Aside.

[Aside.

On a day, (alack the day!)

Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom, passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,

Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!

* She is not; corporal. The received reading is “She is but corporal." reading; and Douce repudiates the modern change. Biron calls Dumain formerly named himself (Act III.) "corporal of his field,"-of Cupid's field. Coted-quoted.

b

Ours is the ancient corporal, as he had

But alack, my hand is sworn,

Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me,

That I am forsworn for thee:
Thou for whom Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiope were;
And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love".

This will I send; and something else more plain,
That shall express my true love's fasting pain.
O, would the King, Biron, and Longaville,
Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,

Would from my forehead wipe a perjur'd note;
For none offend, where all alike do dote.

LONG. Dumain [advancing], thy love is far from charity,
That in love's grief desir'st society:

You may look pale, but I should blush, I know,

To be o'erheard, and taken napping so.

KING. Come, sir [advancing], you blush; as his your case is such;

You chide at him, offending twice as much:

You do not love Maria; Longaville

Did never sonnet for her sake compile ;
Nor never lay his wreathed arms athwart
His loving bosom, to keep down his heart.
I have been closely shrouded in this bush,
And mark'd you both, and for you both did blush.
I heard your guilty rhymes, observ'd your fashion;
Saw sighs reek from you, noted well your passion:
Ah me! says one; O Jove! the other cries;
One, her hairs were gold, crystal the other's eyes:
You would for paradise break faith and troth;
And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath.
What will Biron say, when that he shall hear
Faith infringed, which such zeal did swear?
How will be scorn! how will he spend his wit!
How will he triumph, leap, and laugh at it!
For all the wealth that ever I did see,

I would not have him know so much by me.

[TO LONG. [To DUMAIN.

• Pope introduced ev'n-other editors even-neither of which is the reading of the originals, or required by the rhythm. Malone, in a note on the same line in 'The Passionate Pilgrim,' says, swear is here used as a dissyllable!" This exquisite canzonet is also given, with variations, in 'The Passionate Pilgrim.'

BIRON. Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.-
Ah, good my liege, I pray thee, pardon me:
Good heart, what grace hast thou, thus to reprove
These worms for loving, that art most in love?
Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears
There is no certain princess that appears:
You'll not be perjur'd, 't is a hateful thing;
Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting.
But are you not asham'd? nay, are you not,
All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot?
You found his mote; the king your motea did see;
But I a beam do find in each of three.

O, what a scene of foolery have I seen,

Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow, and of teen!

O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
And profound Solomon tuning a jig,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critic Timon laugh at idle toys!
Where lies thy grief, O tell me, good Dumain?
And, gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege's? all about the breast:-
A caudle, ho!

KING.

Too bitter is thy jest.
Are we betray'd thus to thy over-view?
BIRON. Not you by me, but I betray'd to you:
I, that am honest; I that hold it sin
To break the vow I am engaged in ;

I am betray'd, by keeping company

:

With men like men b, of strange inconstancy.
When shall you see me write a thing in rhyme?
Or groan for Joan? or spend a minute's time

[Descends from the tree.

Mote. The quarto and folio have each the synonymous word moth.

b Men like men. So the old copies. The modern reading is moon-like men;-Warburton would read vane-like men. Biron appears to us to say-I keep company with men alike in inconstancymen like men-men having the general inconstancy of humanity. The epithet strange was added in the second folio. The first folio has

"With men, like men of inconstancy."

Tieck suggests such instead of strange.

As if to prevent any doubt of this being the correct word, the folio has "Or grone for Ioane."

Not Ione, as in other passages. Biron has made the rhyme before-(end of Act III.). Mr. Collier gives the text, "groan for love." One quarto copy, he says, has Ione; another, (of the same date,) Love, and he adds "the correction must have been made while the sheet was passing through the press." But who can tell which reading was the "correction" and which the "misprint," asks Mr. Barron Field.

COST. Nay, it makes nothing, sir.
KING.

If it mar nothing neither,

The treason, and you, go in peace away together.
JAQ. I beseech your grace, let this letter be read;
Our parson misdoubts it; it was treason, he said.
KING. Biron, read it over.

JAQ. Of Costard.

Where hadst thou it?

[Giving him the letter.

KING. Where hadst thou it?

COST. Of Dun Adramadio, Dun Adramadio.

KING. How now! what is in you? why dost thou tear it?
BIRON. A toy, my liege, a toy; your grace needs not fear it.
LONG. It did move him to passion, and therefore let 's hear it.
DUM. It is Biron's writing, and here is his name.

[Picks up the pieces.

BIRON. Ah, you whoreson loggerhead [to CoSTARD], you were born to do me

shame.

Guilty, my lord, guilty; I confess, I confess.
KING. What?

BIRON. That you three fools lack'd me fool to make up
He, he, and you; and you, my liege, and I,
Are pick-purses in love, and we deserve to die.

O, dismiss this audience, and I shall tell you more.
DUM. Now the number is even.

BIRON.

Will these turtles be gone?

the mess;

True, true; we are four :

Pruning-preening;-trimming himself up as a bird trims his feathers.

The folio has the line as we print it. The variorum editors follow the quarto, not seeing the adroitness of the change in the folio. Biron, by this reading, couples two delinquents with the

king; and again couples the king with himself.

COST. Walk aside the true folk, and let the traitors stay. [Exeunt COST. and Jaq.

BIRON. Sweet lords, sweet lovers, O let us embrace!

As true we are, as flesh and blood can be:

The sea will ebb and flow, heaven a show his face;

Young blood doth not obey an old decree:

We cannot cross the cause why we are born;
Therefore, of all hands must we be forsworn.

KING. What, did these rent lines show some love of thine?
BIRON. Did they, quoth you? Who sees the heavenly Rosaline,
That, like a rude and savage man of Inde 22,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east,
Bows not his vassal head; and, strucken blind,
Kisses the base ground with obedient breast?
What peremptory eagle-sighted eye

Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty?

KING. What zeal, what fury hath inspir'd thee now?
My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon;

She, an attending star, scarce seen a light.
BIRON. My eyes are then no eyes, nor I Biron:
O, but for my love, day would turn to night!
Of all complexions, the cull'd sovereignty.
Do meet as at a fair, in her fair cheek;
Where several worthies make one dignity;
Where nothing wants, that want itself doth seek.
Lend me the flourish of all gentle tongues,-
Fie, painted rhetoric! O, she needs it not:
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs;
She passes praise: then praise too short doth blot.
A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born,

And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy.
O, 't is the sun, that maketh all things shine!
KING. By heaven thy love is black as ebony.
BIRON. Is ebony like her? O wood b divine!
A wife of such wood were felicity.
O, who can give an oath? where is a book?
That I may swear, beauty doth beauty lack,
If that she learn not of her eye to look:
No face is fair, that is not full so black.

The folio has "heaven will.”
The old copies, word.