Long. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long.
Mar. The liker you; few taller are fo young.
Biron. Studies my lady? miftrefs look on me,
Behold the window of my heart, mine eye,
What humble Suit attends thy answer there;
Impose some service on me for thy love.

Rof. Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I faw you; and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all eftates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit:
To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And therewithal to win me, if you please,
Without the which I am not to be won;
You shall this twelve-month term from day to day
Vifit the speechlefs Sick, and ftill converfe
With groaning wretches; and your task fhall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
T'enforce the pained Impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of
death?

It cannot be, it is impoffible:

Mirth cannot move a foul in agony.

Rof. Why, that's the way to choak a gibing fpirit, Whofe influence is begot of that loofe grace, Which fhallow-laughing hearers give to fools : A jeft's profperity lies in the ear

* dear groans,

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if fickly ears
Deaft with the clamours of their own
Will hear your idle fcorns; continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal:
But if they will not, throw away that fpirit;
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your Reformation.

Biron. A twelve-month? well; befal, what will
befal,

I'll jeft a twelve-month in an Hofpital.

*

dear should here, as in many other places, be dere, fad,

edious.

Prin.

Prin. Ay, fweet my lord, and so I take my leave: [To the King. King. No, Madam; we will bring you on your way. Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old Play; Jack hath not Jill; these ladies' courtesy

Might well have made our sport a Comedy.

King. Come, Sir, it wants a twelve-month and a And then 'twill end.

Biron. That's too long for a Play.

Enter Armado.

Arm. Sweet Majefty, vouchsafe me-
Pria. Was not that Hector ?·

Dum. That worthy Knight of Troy.

[day,

Arm. I will kifs thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a Votary; I have vow'd to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her fweet love three years. But, most efteemed Greatnefs, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praife of the owl and the cuckow? it fhould have follow'd in the end of our Show.

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do fo.
Arm. Holla! approach..

Enter all, for the Song.

This fide is Hiems, winter.

This Ver, the fpring; the one maintained by the owl,, The other by the cuckow.

Ver, begin.

The SONG.

SPRING.

When daizies pied, and violets blue (8),
And lady-fmocks all filver-white,

And cuckow-buds of yellow bue,

Do paint the meadows with delight (9) ;

The

(8) The first lines of this fong that were tran pofed, have been replaced by Mr. Theobald.

(9) Do paint the meaderus with delight ;] This is a pretty rur 1

fong,

The cuckow then on every Tree
Mocks married men; for thus fings he
Cuckow !

Cuckow ! cuckow! O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!
When bepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmens' clocks:
When turtles tread; and rooks and daws;
And maidens bleach their fummer fmocks ;
The cuckow then on every tree

Mocks married men ; for thus fings he,
Cuckor!

Cuckow! cuckow! O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear !

WINTER.

When ificles bang by the wall,

And Dick the Shepherd blows his nail ;
And Tom bears logs into the ball,

And milk comes frozen home in pail ;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly fings the staring owl
Tu whit! to-whoo!.

-A merry note,

While greafy Jone doth keel the pot *.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the Parfon's faw;
And birds fit brooding in the fnow,
And Marian's nofe looks red and raw ;
When roafted crabs hifs in the bowl,
Then nightly fings the flaring owl
Tu whit! to-whoo!

A merry note,

While greafy Jone doth keel the pot.

feng, in which the images are drawn with great force from nature. But this fenfelefs expletive of painting with delight, I would read thus,

Do paint the meadows MUCH BEDIGHT,

WARBURTON.

e. much bedecked or adorned, as they are in fpring-time. The epithet is proper, and the compound not inelegant. Much less elegant than the prefent reading. *Keel the po! This word is yet a ufe in Ireland, and fignifies to fcum the pot.

Mr. COLDSMITH.

Arm.

Arm. The words of Mercury

Are harth after the fongs of Apollo :
You, that way; we, this way.

[Excunt omnes*.

* In this play, which all the editors have concurred to cenfure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our Poet, it must be confeffed that there are many paffages mean, childish, and vulgar; and fome which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered, through the whole, many fparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakespeare

ACT I. SCENE I. Page 332..

This child of fancy, that Armado bight, &c.] This, as I have fhewn, in the note in its place, relates to the ftories in the books of Chivalry. A few words therefore concerning their Origin and Nature may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer who has given any tolerable account of this matter and especially as Monfieur Huet, the Bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatise of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of these in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon those compofed by the barbarous western writers, which have now the name of Romances almost appropriated to them, he puts the change upon his reader, and, inftead of giving us an account of these books of Chivalry, one of the most curious and interefting parts of the fubject he promised to treat of, he contents himfelf with a long account of the Poems of the Provincial Writers, called likewife Romances: and fo, under the equivoque of a common term, drops his proper fubject, and entertains us with another that had no relation to it more than in the name.

The Spaniards were of all others the fondeft of these fables, as fuiting beft their extravagant turn to gallantry and bravery; which in time grew fo exceffive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable fatire. to bring them back to their fenfes. The French fuffer

ed

ed an easier cure from their Doctor Rabelais, who enough difcredited the books of Chivalry, by only using the extravagant ftories of its Giants, &c. as a cover for another kind of fatire against the refined Politicks of his countrymen; of which they were as much poffeffed as the Spaniards of their Romantic Bravery." A bravery our Shakespeare makes their characteristic, in this description of a Spanifb Gentleman:

A man of compliments, whom right and wrong
Have chofe as Umpire of their mutiny :
This Child of fancy, that Armado hight,
For interim to our studies, sball relate

In high-born words, the worth of many a Knight,
From tawny Spain, loft in the world's debate.

The fense of which is to this effect: This Gentleman, fays the fpeaker, shall relate to us the celebrated Stories recorded in the old Romances, and in their very file. Why he fays, from tawny Spain, is because, thefe Romances being of Spanish Original, the Heroes and the Scene were generally of that country. He fays, loft in the world's debate, because the subject of those Romances were the Crusades of the European Christians against the Saracens of Afia and Africa.

Indeed, the wars of the Chriftians against the Pagans were the general fubject of the Romances of Chivalry. They all feem to have had their ground-work in two fabulous Monkish hiftorians: The one, who, under the name of Turpin Archbishop of Rheims, wrote the History and Atchievements of Charlemagne and his twelve Peers; to whom, inftead of his father, they affigned the task of driving the Saracens out of France and the South parts of Spain: the other, our Geoffry of Monmouth.

Two of those Peers, whom the old Romances have rendered most famous, were Oliver and Rowland. Hence Shakespeare makes Alanfon, in the first part of Henry VI. fay, Froylard, a countryman of ours, re"cords, England all Olivers and Rowlands bred, during "the time Edward the Third did reign." In the Spanifh Romance of Bernardo del Carpio, and in that of

Ron