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;
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,
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 ;*
For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,
In leaden 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,

[1] In the old system of physic they gave the same office to the arteries as is now given to the nerves. WARBURTON.

i. e a lady's eyes give a fuller notion of beauty than any author. JOHN. i. e. our true books from which we derive most information; the eyes of women. MALONE.

[4] Numbers are, in this passage, nothing more than poetical measures. Could you,' says Biron, by solitary contemplation, have attained such poetical fire, such spritely numbers, as have been prompted by the eyes of beauty JOHNSON [5] As we say. keep the house, or keep their bed. M. MASON.

When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd ;"
Love's feeling is more soft, and sensible,
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 ?
Subtle as sphinx; as sweet, and musical,
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair ;7
And, when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony."
Never durst poet touch a pen to write,
Until his ink were tempered 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 ;
Or for men's sake, the authors of these women;
Or women's sake, by whom we men are men;
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'a,

[6] i. e. A lover in pursuit of his mistress has his sense of hearing quicker than a thief (who suspects every sound he hears) in pursuit of his prey. WARB. [7] This expression, like that other in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, of

Orpheus' harp was strung with poets' sinews,

is extremely beautiful, and highly figurative. Apollo, as the sun, is represented with golden hair; so that a lute strung with his hair, means no more than strung with gilded wire. WARBURTON.

[8] The meaning is, whenever love speaks all the gods join their voices with his in harmonious concert. HEATH. For makes, read make. See the sacred writings: The number of the names together were about an hundred and twenty.” Acts i. 15. MALONE.

In conflict that you get the sun of them.9

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, strewing her way with flowers.
King. Away, away! no time shall be omitted,
That will be time, and may by us be fitted.

Bir. Allons! Allons !-Sow'd cockle reap'd no corn;
And justice always whirls in equal measure :
Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn ;
If so, our copper buys no better treasure. [Exeunt

ACT V.

SCENE I.—Another part of the same. Enter HOLOFERNES, Sir NATHANIEL, and DULL.

SATIS quod sufficit.

Holofernes.

Nath. I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious;' pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without

[9] 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 the Fifth at the battle of Agincourt.-Our poet, however, I believe, had also an equivoque in his thoughts. MALONE.

[1] This proverbial expression intimates, that beginning with perjury, they can expect to reap nothing but falsehood. WARBURTON.

[2] I know not well what degree of respect Shakespeare 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 schoolmaster'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. -It may be proper just to note, that reason here, and in many other places, signifies discourse; and that audacious is used in a good sense for spirited, animated, confident. Opinion is the same with obstinacy or opiniatrele. JOHNSON

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, his eye ambitious, his gait majestical, and his general behaviour vain, ridiculous, and thrasonical. He is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too perigrinate, as I may call it.

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 fanatical phantasms, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography, as to speak, dout, fine, when he should say, doubt; det, when he should pronounce, debt; d, e, b, t: not, d, e, t: he clepeth a calf, cauf; half, hauf; neighbour, vocatur, nebour; neigh, abbreviated, ne: This is abhominables (which he would call abominable,) it insinuateth me of insanie; Ne intelligis domine? to make frantic, lunatic.

Nath. Laus deo, bone intelligo

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

Enter ARMADO, MOTH, and CoSTARD.

Nath. Videsne quis venit?

.

Hol. Video, & gaudeo.

Arm. Chirra!

Hol. Quare Chirra, not sirrah?

Arm. Men of peace, well encounter'd.

Hol. Most military sir, salutation.

[TO MOTH.

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

[4] To have the beard piqued or shorn so as to end in a point, was, in our author's time, a mark of a traveller affecting foreign fashions. JOHNSON.

Piqued may allude to the length of the shoes then worn. Bulwer says,-" We weare our forked shoes almost as long again as our feete, not a little to the hindrance of the action of the foote; and not only so, but they prove an impediment to reverentiall devotion, for our bootes and shooes are so long snouted, that we can hardly STEEVENS.

kneele in God's house."

I believe picked (for so it should be written) signifies nicely drest in general, without reference to any particular fashion of dress It is a metaphor taken from birds, who dress themselves by picking out or pruning their broken or superfluous feathers.

TYRWHITT.

[5] Abhominable,-Thus the word is constantly spelt in the old moralities and other antiquated books. STEEVENS.

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 head as honorificabilitudinitatibus:7 thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon.'

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.9 Arm. Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterraneum, a sweet touch, a quick venew 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 cuck

old'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 discretion. O, an the heavens were so pleased, that thou wert but my bastard! what a joyful father wouldst thou make me! Go to; thou hast it ad dunghill, at the fingers' ends, as they say.

Hol. O, I smell false Latin; dunghill for unguem.
Arm. Arts-man, præambula; we will be singled from

[6] The refuse meat of families was put into a basket in our author's time, and given to the poor. MALONE.

[7] This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known. JOHNSON.

[8] A flap-dragon is a small inflammable substance, which topers swallow in a glass of wine. STEEVENS.

[9] By O, U, Moth would mean -Oh, you-i. e. You are the sheep still, either way; no matter which of us repeats them. THEOBALD.