LD. EUST. Your conscience may, probably, have as much need of palliatives as mine, Mr. Frampton; as I am pretty well convinced, that your course of life has not been more regular than my own.

FRAM. With true contrition, my lord, I confess part of your sarcasm to be just. Pleasure was the object of my pursuit, and pleasure I obtained, at the expense both of health and fortune; but yet my lord, I broke not in upon the peace of others; the laws of hospitality I never violated; nor did I ever seek to injure or seduce the wife or daughter of my friend.

LD. EUST. I care not what you did; give me the letters.

FRAM. I have no right to keep, and therefore shail surrender them, though with the utmost reluctance; but, by our former friendship, I entreat you not to open them.

LD. EUST. That you have forfeited.

FRAM. Since it is not in my power to prevent your committing an error, which you ought for ever to repent of, I will not be a witness of it. There are the letters.

LD. EUST. You may, perhaps, have cause to repent your present conduct, Mr. Frampton, as much as I do our past attachment.

FRAM. Rather than hold your friendship upon such terms I resign it for ever. Farewell, my lord.

Re-enter Frampton.

FRAM. Il treated as I have been, my lord, 1 find it impossible to leave you surrounded by diffi culties.

LD. EUST. That sentiment should have operated sooner, Mr. Frampton. Recollection is seldom of use to our friends, though it may sometimes be serviceable to ourselves.

FRAM. Take advantage of your own expressions, my lord, and recollect yourself. Born and educated as I have been, a gentleman, how have you injured both yourself and me, by admitting and uniting in the same confidence, your rascally servant!

LD. EUST.

LD. FUST. The exiger cy of my situation is a ufficient excuse to myself, and ought to have been so to the man who called himself my friend.

FRAM. Have a care, my lord, of uttering the least doubt upon that subject; for could I think you once mean enough to suspect the sincerity of my attachment to you, it must vanish at that instant. LD FUST The proofs of your regard have been rather painful of late, Mr. Frampton.

FRAM. When I see my friend on the verge of a precipice, is that a time for compliment? Shall I not rudely rush forward, and drag him from it? Jus in that state you are at present, and I will strive to save you. Virtue may languish in a nob'e heart, and suffer her rival, vice, to usurp her power; but baseness must not enter, or she flies for ever. The man who has forfeited his own esteem, thinks all the world has the same consciousness, and therefore is what he deserves to be, a wretch.

LD. EUST Oh, Frampton yon have lodged a dagger in my heart.

you

FRAM No, my dear Eustace, I have sav from one from your own reproaches, by preventing your being, guilty of a meanness, which you could never have forgiven yourself

LD. EUST. Can you forgive me, and be still my friend?

FRAM. As firmly as I have ever been my lord.Bule. us, at present, haste to get rid of the mean business we are engaged in and forward the letters we have no right to detain.

SCHOOL FOR RAKES.

CHAP IX.

DUKE AND LORD.

DUKE NOW, my co mates, and brothers, in

exile,

Hath not oid custom made this me more sweet

Than

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril, than the envious court?
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,
The season's diff'rence; as the icy fang,
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind;
Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,
Ev'n till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,
This is no flattery; these are counsellors,
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head:
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues
in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in ev'ry thing.
-Come, shall we go, and kill us venison ?
And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads
Have their round haunches gor'd.

LORD. Indeed, my Lord,

The melancholy Jaques grieves much at that;
And in that kind swears you do more usurp,
Than doth your brother that hath banished you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens, and myself,
Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood :
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my Lord
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE. But what said Jaques ?

Did he not moralize the spectacle?

T

LORD.

LORD. O yes, into a thousand similies. First, for his weeping in the needless stream; Poor deer, quoth he, thou makʼst a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much. Then being alone, Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends ; 'Tis right, quoth he, thus misery doth part The flux of company. Anon a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him, And never stays to greet him: Aye, quoth Jaques, Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens, 'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there? Thus most invectively he pierceth through The body of the country, city, court, Yea, and of this our life; swearing, that we Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse, To fright the animals, and to kill them up In their assign'd and native dwelling place.

DUKE. And did you leave him in this contem. plation?

LORD. We did, my Lord, weeping and commenting

Upon the sobbing deer.

DUKE. Show me the place :

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he's full of matter.

LORD. I'll bring you to him straight.

SHAKSPEARE.

-00000

CHAP. X.

DUKE AND JAQUES.

DUAL. WHY, how now, Monsieur, what a life

is this,

That your poor friend must woo your company ? What! You look merrily.

-I met a fool i' th' forest,

JAQ A fool, a fool;-
A motley fool; a miserable varlet !

As

As I do live by food, I met a fool,

Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms, and yet a motley fool.
Good morrow, fool, quoth I; No, Sir, quoth he
Call me not fool, till Heaven hath sent me fortune;
And then he drew a dial from his poke,

And looking on it with lack lustre eye,

Says very wisely, It is ten o'clock:

Thus, may we see, quoth he, how the world wags: "Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,

And after one hour more 'twill be eleven ;.
And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
And thereby hangs a tale. When I did hear
The motley fool thus moral on the time,
My lungs began to crow like chanticleer,
That fools should be so deep contemplative;
And I did laugh, sans intermission,
An hour by his dial.. O noble fool,
A worthy fool motley's the only wear,
DUKE. What fool is this?

JAQ, O worthy fool! one that had been a courtier,
And says, if ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it; and in his brain
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
After a voy'ge, he hath strange places cramm'd
With observations, the which he vents
In mangled forms. O that I were a fool !
I am ambitious for a motley coat.

DUKE. Thou shalt have one.

JAQ. It is my only suit;

Provided that you weed your better judgments
Of all opinion, that grows rank in them,
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,

To blow on whom I please; for so fools have :
And they that are most galea with my folly,
They most mast laugh. And why, Sir, must they

?

The why is plain, as way to parish church;