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

Biron.

True, true; we are four:

Hence, sirs; away.

Will these turtles be gone?

King.

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 show his face; Young blood will not obey an old decree: We cannot cross the cause why we were born; Therefore, of all hands 17 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,

At the first opening of the gorgeous east 18, 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 Birón 19:
O, but for my love, day would turn to night!

17 i. e. at any rate, at all events.

18 Milton has transplanted this into the third line of the second book of Paradise Lost:

'Or where the gorgeous east.'

19 Here, and indeed throughout the play, the name of Birón is accented on the second syllable. In the first folio and quarto

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,—

Fye, painted rhetorick! 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, 'tis the sun, that maketh all things shine!
King. By heaven, thy love is black as ebony.
Biron. Is ebony like her? O wood 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. King. O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons, and the scowl of night; And beauty's crest becomes the heavens well 20 copies it is spelled Berowne. From the line before us it appears that it was pronounced Biroon. Mr. Boswell has remarked that this was the mode in which all French words of this termination were pronounced in English. Mr. Fox always said Touloon when speaking of Toulon in the House of Commons.

20 Crest is here properly opposed to badge. Black, says the King, is the badge of hell, but that which graces heaven is the crest of beauty. Black darkens hell, and is therefore hateful: white adorns heaven, and is therefore lovely. Crest, is the very top, the height of beauty or utmost degree of fairness. So in K. John:

this is the very top

The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest
Of murder's arms.'

Biron. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of

light.

O, if in black my lady's brows be deckt,

It mourns, that painting, and usurping hair 21,
Should ravish doters with a false aspéct:

And therefore is she born to make black fair.
Her favour turns the fashion of the days;
For native blood is counted painting now;
And therefore red, that would avoid dispraise,
Paints itself black, to imitate her brow.

Dum. To look like her, are chimney-sweepers black.

Long. And since her time, are colliers counted bright.

King. And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack.

Dum. Dark needs no candles now, for dark is light. Biron. Your mistresses dare never come in rain,

For fear their colours should be wash'd away. King. Twere good, yours did; for, sir, to tell you plain,

I'll find a fairer face not wash'd to-day.

Biron. I'll prove her fair, or talk till doomsday here.

King. No devil will fright thee then so much as she.
Dum. I never knew man hold vile stuff so dear.
Long. Look, here's thy love: my foot and her
face see.
[Shewing his Shoe.
Biron. O, if the streets were paved with thine eyes,
Her feet were much too dainty for such tread!
Dum. O vile! then as she goes, what upward lies

The street should see as she walk'd over head.

21 This alludes to the fashion prevalent among ladies in Shakspeare's time, of wearing false hair, or periwigs as they were then called, before that covering for the head had been adopted by

men.

King. But what of this? Are we not all in love? Biron. O, nothing so sure; and thereby all for

sworn.

King. Then leave this chat; and, good Birón, now prove

Our loving lawful, and our faith not torn.

Dum. Ay, marry, there;-some flattery for this evil.

Long. O, some authority how to proceed;

Some tricks, some quillets 22, how to cheat the devil. Dum. Some salve for perjury.

Biron. O, 'tis more than need!Have at you then, affection's men at arms: Consider what you first did swear unto;To fast, to study, and to see no woman;Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth. Say, can you fast? your stomachs are too young;

And abstinence engenders maladies.

And where that you have vow'd to study, lords,
In that each of you hath forsworn his book:
Can you still dream, and pore, and thereon look?
For when would you, my lord, or you, or you,
Have found the ground of study's excellence,
Without the beauty of a woman's face?
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive?
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
Why, universal plodding prisons up

The nimble spirits in the arteries;

As motion, and long during action, tires
The sinewy vigour of the traveller.
Now, for not looking on a woman's face,
You have in that forsworn the use of eyes;

N.

22 A quillet is a sly trick or turn in argument, or excuse. Bailey derives it, with much probability, from quibblet, as a diminutive of quibble.

And study too, the causer of your vow:
For where is any author in the world,
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself,
And where we are, our learning likewise is.
Then, when ourselves we see in ladies' eyes,
With ourselves 23,

Do we not likewise see our learning there?
O, we have made a vow to study, lords:
And in that vow we have forsworn our books 24;
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden 25 contemplation, have found out
Such fiery numbers, as the prompting eyes
Of beauteous tutors have enrich'd you with?
Other slow arts entirely keep the brain;
And therefore finding barren practisers,
Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil:
But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But, with the motion of all elements,
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,

23 This hemistich is omitted in all the modern editions except that by Mr. Boswell. It is found in the first quarto and first folio.

24 i. e. our true books, from which we derive most information; the eyes of women.

25 So in Milton's Il Penseroso :

'With a sad leaden, downward cast.'

And in Gray's Hymn to Adversity:

With leaden eye that loves the ground.'