Cor. No, truly. Touch. Then thou art damn'd. Cor. Nay, I hope, Touch. Truly, thou art damn'd; like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. Cor. For not being at court? Your reason. Touch. Why, if thou never wast at court, thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked: and wickedness is sin and sin is damnation: Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. Cor. Not a whit, Touchstone: those, that are good manners at the court, are as ridiculous in the country, as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me, you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be uncleanly, if courtiers were shepherds. Touch. Instance, briefly; come, -instance. Cor. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells you know, are greasy. Touch. Why, do not your courtiers' hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow: A better instance, I say; come. Cor. Besides, our hands are hard. Touch. Your lips will feel them the sooner. again: A more sounder instance, come. Shallow, Cor. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our sheep; And would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet. Touch. Most shallow man! Thou worms-meat, in re Shakespeare is responsible for the quibble only, let the commentator answer for the refinement. STEEVENS. The Clown calls Corin a natural philosopher, because he reasons from his observations on nature. M. MASON. [4] There is a proverb, that a fool is the best roaster of an egg, because he is always turning it. This will explain how an egg may be damn'd all on one side; but will not sufficiently show how Touchstone applies his simile with propriety. STEEVENS. I believe there was nothing intended in the corresponding part of the simile, to answer to the words, "all on one side." Shakespeare's similes (as has been already observed) hardly ever run on four feet. Touchstone, I apprehend, only meant to say, that Corin is completely damned; as irretrievably destroyed as an egg that is utterly spoiled in the roasting, by being done all on one side only. So, in a subsequent scene," and both in a tune like two gypsies on.a horse." Here the poet certainly meant that the speaker and his companion should sing in unison, and thus resemble each other as perfectly as two gypsies on a horse; not that two gypsies on a horse sing both in a tune. MALONE. spect of a good piece of flesh: Indeed!-Learn of the wise and perpend: Civet is of a baser birth than tar; the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. Cor. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest. Touch. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw." Cor. Sir, I am a true labourer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm: and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs suck. Touch. That is another simple sin in you; to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle: to be bawd to a bell-wether;" and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth, to a crookedpated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou should'st 'scape. Cor. Here comes young master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother. Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper. Ros. From the east to western Ind, Her worth, being mounted on the wind, All the pictures, fairest lin❜d," Are but black to Rosalind. Let no face be kept in mind, But the face of Rosalind. Touch. I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted: it is the right butter-woman's rank to market." Ros. Out, fool! Touch. For a taste: [6] Wether and ram had anciently the same meaning. [7] i. e. most fairly delineated. STEEVENS. JOHNSON. [8]"The right butter-woman's rank to market" means the jug-trot trade (as it is vulgarly called) with which butter-women uniformly travel one after another in their road to market: in its application to Orlando's poetry, it means a set or string of verses in the same coarse cadence and vulgar uniformity of rhyme. WHITER. If the cat will after kind, So must slender Rosalind. They that reap, must sheaf and bind ; Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, He that sweetest rose will find, Must find love's prick, and Rosalind. This is the very false gallop of verses; Why do you infect yourself with them? Ros. Peace, you dull fool; I found them on a tree. Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit in the country: for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. Touch. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. Enter CELIA, reading a paper. Ros. Peace! Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside. 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend: But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence' end, Will I Rosalinda write; Teaching all that read, to know The quintessence of every sprite Heaven would in little show." [9] The allusion is to a miniature-portrait. The current phrase in our author's time was "Painted in little." MALONE. Therefore heaven nature charg'd, Sad Lucretia's modesty. By heavenly synod was devis'd; To have the touches dearest priz'd.3 Heaven would that she these gifts should have, Ros. O most gentle Jupiter!-what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cry'd, Have patience, good people! Cel. How now! back friends;-Shepherd, go off a little :-Go with him, sirrah. Touch. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage. [Exe. CORIN and TOUCHSTONE. Cel. Didst thou hear these verses? Ros. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. Cel. That's no matter; the feet might bear the verses. Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse. Cel. But didst thou hear, without wondering how thy name should be hang'd and carved upon these trees? Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm [1] I know not well what could be the better part of Atalanta here ascribed to Rosalind. Of the Atalanta most celebrated, and who therefore must be intended here where she has no epithet of discrimination, the better part seems to have been her heels, and the worse part so bad that Rosalind would not thank her lover for the comparison. There is a more obscure Atalanta, a huntress and a heroine, but of her nothing bad is recorded, and therefore I know not which was her better part. JOHNSON. I think this stanza was formed on an old tetrastrick epitaph, which I have read in a country church-yard: She who is dead, and sleepeth in this tomb, "Had Rachel's comely face, and Leah's fruitful womb: WHALLEY. [2] Sad,-grave, sober, not light. [3] Touches-features; les traits JOHNS. tree: I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.* Cel. Trow you, who hath done this? Ros. Is it a man? Cel. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck : Change you colour? Ros. I pr'ythee, who? Cel. O lord, lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter. Ros. Nay, but who is it? Cel. Is it possible? Ros. Nay, I pray thee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is. Cel. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all whooping !5 Ros. Good my complexion ! dost thou think, though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-seaoff discovery. I pr'ythee, tell me, who is it? quickly, and speak apace: I would thou couldst stammer, that thou might'st pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow-mouth'd bottle; either too much at once, or none at all. I pr'ythee, take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings. Cel. So you may put a man in your belly, Ros. Is he of God's making? What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat, or his chin worth a beard? [4] Rosalind is a very learned lady. She alludes to the Pythagorean_doctrine, which teaches that souls transmigrate from one animal to another, and relates that in his time she was an Irish rat, and by some metrical charm was rhymed to death. The power of killing rats with rhymes Donne mentions in his Satires, and Temple in his Treatises. Dr. Gray has produced a similar passage from Randolph : "Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar, JOHNSON. [5] This appears to have been a phrase of the same import as another formerly in use, "out of all cry." The latter seems to allude to the custom of giving notice by a crier of things to be sold. MAL.- An outcry is still a provincial term for an auction. STEEVENS. [6] Good my complexion! My native character, my female inquisitive disposition, canst thou endure this!-For thus characterizing the most beautiful part of the creation, let our poet answer. MALONE. [7] Every delay, however short, is to me tedious and irksome as the longest voyage, as a voyage of discovery on the South-sea. How much voyages to the South-sea, on which the English had then first ventured, engaged the conversation of that time, may be easily imagined. JOHNSON. |