Desire of union with the thing beloved.

Lov. I meant a definition. For I make The efficient cause, what's beautiful and fair ; The formal cause, the appetite of union ; The final cause, the union itself. But larger, if you 'll have it, by description : It is a flame and ardour of the mind, Dead in the proper corpse, quick in another's : Transfers the lover into the beloved, That he, or she, that loves, engraves or stamps 10 The idea of what they love, first in themselves : Or, like to glasses, so their minds take in The forms of their belov'd, and them reflect. It is the likeness of affections, Is both the parent and the nurse of love. Love is a spiritual coupling of two souls, So much more excellent as it least relates Unto the body ; circular, eternal ; Not feign'd, or made, but born: and then, so

precious, As nought can value it, but itself. So free, 20 As nothing can command it but itself. And in itself so round and liberal, As, where it favours, it bestows itself. But we must take and understand this love Along still as a name of dignity, Not pleasure. True love hath no unworthy thought, no light Loose unbecoming appetite, or strain ; But fixed, constant, pure, immutable.

Beau. Í relish not these philosophical feasts ; 30 Give me a banquet o'sense, like that of Ovid ; A form, to take the eye; a voice, mine ear ; Pure aromatics to my scent; a soft Smooth dainty hand to touch; and, for my taste, Ambrosiac kisses to melt down the palate.

Lov. They are the earthly, lower form of lovers, Are only taken with what strikes the senses, And love by that loose scale. Altho' I grant, We like what's fair and graceful in an object, And (true) would use it, in the all we tend to, 40 Both of our civil and domestic deeds, In ordering of an army, in our style,

Apparel, gesture, building, or what not?
All arts and actions do affect their beauty.
But put the case, in travel I may meet
Some gorgeous structure, a brave frontispiece,
Shall I stay captive in the outer court,
Surpris'd with that, and not advance to know
Who dwells there, and inhabiteth the house ?
There is my friendship to be made, within,
With what can love me again ; not with the walls,
Doors, windows, architraves, the frieze, and cornice.
My end is lost in loving of a face,

11
An eye, lip, nose, hand, foot, or other part,
Whose all is but a statue, if the mind
Move not, which only can make the return.
The end of love is to have two made one
In will, and in affection, that the minds
Be first inoculated, not the bodies.
The body's love is frail, subject to change,
And alters still with it: the mind's is firm,
One and the same, proceedeth first from weighing,
And well examining what is fair and good ; 21
Then what is like in reason, fit in manners ;
That breeds good will : good will desire of union.
So knowledge first begets benevolence,
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love :
And where it starts or steps aside from this,
It is a mere degenerous appetite,
A lost, oblique, deprav'd affection,
And bears no mark or character of love.
Nor do they trespass within bounds of pardon, 30
That giving way and license to their love,
Divest him of his noblest ornaments,
Which are his modesty and shamefac'dness :
And so they do, that have unfit designs
Upon the parties they pretend to love.
For what's more monstrous, more a prodigy,
Than to hear me protest truth of affection
Unto a person that I would dishonour ?
And what's a more dishonour, than defacing
Another's good with forfeiting mine own,

40 And drawing on a fellowship of sin ? From note of which, though for a while we may Be both kept safe by caution, yet the conscience

Cannot be cleans'd. For what was hitherto
Call’d by the name of love, becomes destroy'd
Then, with the fact ; the innocency lost,
The bating of affection soon will follow ;
And love is never true that is not lasting :
No more than any can be pure or perfect,
That entertains more than one object.

(These and the preceding extracts may serve to shew the poetical fancy and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged old Bard. A thousand beautiful passages might be adduced from those numerous court masques and entertainments which he was in the daily habit of furnishing, to prove the same thing. But they do not come within my plan. That which follows is a specimen of that talent for comic humour, and the assemblage of ludicrous images, on which his reputation chiefly rests. It may serve for a variety after so many serious extracts. ]

XL.

THE SAD SHEPHERD: OR, A TALE OF

ROBIN HOOD.

BY THE SAME.

ALKEN, an old Shepherd, instructs Robin Hood's Men

how to find a Witch, and how she is to be hunted. ROBIN Hood. TUCK, LITTLE JOHN. SCARLET.

SCATHLOCK. GEORGE, ALKEN. CLARION.
Tuck. Hear you how
Poor Tom, the cook, is taken ! all his joints
Do crack, as if his limbs were tied with points : 10
His whole frame slackens, and a kind of rack
Runs down along the spondils of his back;
A gout, or cramp, now seizeth on his head,
Then falls into his feet; his knees are lead ;
And he can stir his either hand no more
Than a dead stump to his office, as before.
Alk. He is bewitch'd.

Cla. This is an argument
Both of her malice, and her power, we see.

Alk. She must by some device restrained be, Or she'll go far in mischief.

Rob. Advise how,
Sage shepherd ; we shall put it straight in practice.
Alk. Send forth your woodmen then into the

walks,
Or let them prick her footing hence ; a witch
Is sure a creature of melancholy,
And will be found, or sitting in her fourm,
Or else at relief, like a hare.
Cla. You speak,

10 Alken, as if you knew the sport of witch-hunting, Or starting of a hag.

Rob. Go, Sirs, about it, Take George here with you, he can help to find her. John. Rare sport, I swear, this hunting of the

witch Will make us.

Scar. Let's advise upon 't, like huntsmen.
Geo. An we can spy her once, she is our own.
Scath. First think which way she fourmeth, on

what wind : Or north, or south.

20 Geo. For, as the shepherd said, A witch is a kind of hare.

Scath. And marks the weather,
As the hare does.

John. Where shall we hope to find her ?
Alk. Know you the witch's dell ?
Scar. No more than I do know the walks of holl.

Alk. Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell,
Down in a pit o'ergrown with brakes and briars,
Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey,

30 Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 'Mongst graves, and grots, near an old charnel house, Where you shall find her sitting in her fourm, As fearful, and melancholic, as that She is about ; with caterpillars' kells, And knotty cobwebs, rounded in with spells. Thence she steals forth to relief, in the fogs, And rotten mists, upon the fens and bogs, Down to the drowned lands of Lincolnshire ; To make ewes cast their lambs, swine eat their

The house-wife's tun not work, nor the milk churn !
Writhe children's wrists, and suck their breath in

sleep!
Get vials of their blood ! and where the sea
Casts up his slimy ooze, search for a weed
To open locks with, and to rivet charms,
Planted about her, in the wicked seat
Of all her mischiefs, which are manifold.

John. I wonder such a story could be told
Of her dire deeds.
Geo. I thought, a witch's banks

10 Had inclosed nothing but the merry pranks Of some old woman.

Scar. Yes, her malice more.
Soath. As it would quickly appear, had we the

store
Of his collects.

Geo. Aye, this good learned man Can speak her right.

Scar. He knows her shifts and haunts. Alk. And all her wiles and turns. The venom'd plants

19 Wherewith she kills ! where the sad mandrake grows, Whose groans are deathful ! the dead - numbing

night-shade! The stupifying hemlock ! adder's tongue, And martagan! the shrieks of luckless owls, We hear ! and croaking night-crows in the air ! Green-bellied snakes ! blue fire-drakes in the sky! And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings ! The scaly beetles, with their habergeons That make a humming murmur as they fly! There, in the stocks of trees, white fays do dwell, And span-long elves that dance about a pool, 30 With each a little changeling in their arms ! The airy spirits play with falling stars, And mount the sphere of fire, to kiss the moon ! While she sits reading by the glow-worm's light, Or rotten wood, o'er which the worm hath crept, The baneful schedule of her nocent charms, And binding characters, through which she wounds Her puppets, the Sigilla of her witchcraft. All this I know, and I will find her for you ;