Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;
Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste :
For valour, is not love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides 26 ?
Subtle as sphinx; as sweet, and musical,
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Make heaven drowsy with the harmony 27.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs;
O, then his lines would ravish savage ears,
And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world;
Else, none at all in aught proves excellent:
Then fools you were these women to forswear;
Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.
For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love;
Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men 28;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men;

26 Shakspeare had read of 'the gardens of the Hesperides,' and thought the latter word was the name of the garden. Some of his contemporaries have made the same mistake. So Robert Green in his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1598:

'Shew the tree, leav'd with refined gold,
Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat
That watch'd the garden call'd Hesperides.'

27 Few passages have been more discussed than this. The most plausible interpretation of it is, Whenever love speaks, all the gods join their voices in harmonious concert.' The power of harmonious sounds to make the hearers drowsy has been alluded to by poets in all ages. The old copies read make. Shakspeare often falls into a similar error.

28 i. e. that is pleasing to all men. So in the language of the time-it likes me well, for it pleases me. Shakspeare uses the word licentiously for the sake of the antithesis.

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths:
It is religion to be thus forsworn:

For charity itself fulfils the law ;

And who can sever love from charity?

King. Saint Cupid, then! and, soldiers, to the field! Biron. Advance your standards, and upon them, lords;

Pell-mell, down with them! but be first advis'd, In conflict that you get the sun of them 29.

Long. Now to plain-dealing; lay these glozes by; Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

King. And win them too: therefore let us devise Some entertainment for them in their tents.

Biron. First, from the park let us conduct them thither;

Then, homeward, every man attach the hand
Of his fair mistress: in the afternoon

We will with some strange pastime solace them,
Such as the shortness of the time can shape;
For revels, dances, masks, and merry hours,
Fore-run fair Love 30, strewing her way with flowers.
King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted,
That will be time, and may by us be fitted.
Biron. Allons! Allons!-Sow'd cockle reap'd no

corn;

And justice always whirls in equal measure: Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworu; If so, our copper buys no better treasure.

[Exeunt.

29 In the days of archery, it was of consequence to have the sun at the back of the bowmen, and in the face of the enemy. This circumstance was of great advantage to our Henry V. at the Battle of Agincourt. Shakspeare had, perhaps, an equivoque in his thoughts.

30 Fair love is Venus. So in Antony and Cleopatra:

'Now for the love of love, and her soft hours.'

ACT V.

SCENE I. Another part of the same.

Enter HOLOFERNES, SIR NATHANIEL, and DULL.

Hol. Satis quod sufficit1.

Nath. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy. I did converse this quondam day with a companion of the king's, who is intituled, nominated, or called, Don Adriano de Armado.

Hol. Novi hominem tanquam te: His humour is lofty, his discourse peremptory, his tongue filed 3, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical *. He is too picked 5, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it.

1 i. e. enough's as good as a feast.

2 I know not (says Johnson) what degree of respect Shakpeare intends to obtain for his vicar, but he has here put into his mouth a finished representation of colloquial excellence. It is very difficult to add any thing to his character of the school. master's table-talk, and perhaps all the precepts of Castiglione will scarcely be found to comprehend a rule for conversation so justly delineated, so widely dilated, and so nicely limited.'

Reason, here signifies discourse: audacious is used in a good sense for spirited, animated, confident; affection is affectation; opinion is obstinacy, opiniâtreté.

3 Filed is polished.

4 Thrasonical is vainglorious, boastful.

5 Picked, piked, or picket, neat, spruce, over nice; that is, too nice in his dress. The substantive is used by Ben Jonson in his Discoveries: Pickedness for nicety in dress.

Nath. A most singular and choice epithet. [Takes out his Table-book. Hol. He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fantastical phantasms, such insociable and pointdevise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, doubt, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt: d, e, b, t; not d, e, the clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour, neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominable (which he would call abominable), it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis, domine? to make frantick, lunatick.

Nath. Laus deo, bone intelligo.

Hol. Bone?- -bone, for benè: Priscian a little scratch'd; 'twill serve.

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and COSTARD.

Nath, Videsne quis venit?

Hol. Video, et gaudeo.

Arm. Chirra!

Hol. Quare Chirra, not sirrah?

[TO MOTH.

Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd.

Hol. Most military sir, salutation.

Moth. They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. [To COSTARD aside.

Cost. O, they have lived long in the alms-basket of words! I marvel, thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the

6 A common expression for exact, precise, or finical. So in Twelfth Night, Malvolio says

'I will be point-device the very man.'

7 i. e. the refuse of words. The refuse meat of families was put into a basket, and given to the poor, in Shakspeare's time. VOL. II.

K K

head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon9.

Moth. Peace; the peal begins.

Arm. Monsieur, [To HoL.] are you not letter'd? Moth. Yes, yes; he teaches boys the horn-book: What is a, b, spelt backward with a horn on his head?

Hol. Ba, pueritia, with a horn added.

Moth. Ba, most silly sheep, with a horn:-You hear his learning.

Hol. Quis, quis, thou consonant?

Moth. The third of the five vowels, if you repeat them; or the fifth, if I.

Hol. I will repeat them, a, e, i.

Moth. The sheep: the other two concludes it; o, u. Arm. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venew 10 of wit: snip, snap, quick and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.

Moth. Offered by a child to an old man; which is wit-old.

Hol. What is the figure; what is the figure?
Moth. Horns.

Hol. Thou disputest like an infant: go, whip thy gig. Moth. Lend me your horn to make one, and I will whip about your infamy circùm circà; A gig of a cuckold's horn!

Cost. An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread: hold, there is the very remuneration I had of thy master, thou half-penny purse of wit, thou pigeon-egg of discre

8 This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known.

9 A flap-dragon was some small combustible body set on fire and put afloat in a glass of liquor. It was an act of dexterity in the toper to swallow it without burning his mouth.

10 A hit. See Vol. i. p. 195.