Clo. Truly, fortune's displeasure is but sluttish, if it smell so strong as thou speakest of: I will henceforth eat no fish of fortune's buttering. Pr'ythee, allow the wind. Par. Nay, you need not stop your nose, sir: I spake but by a metaphor.

Clo. Indeed, sir, if your metaphor stink, I will stop my nose; or against any man's metaphor. Pr'ythee, get thee further.

deliver me this paper.

Par. Pray you, sir, Clo. Foh, pr'ythee, stand away; A paper from fortune's close-stool, to give to a nobleman! Look, here he comes himself.

Enter LAFEU.

Here is a pur of fortune's, sir, or of fortune's cat, (but not a musk-cat,) that has fallen into the unclean fishpond of her displeasure, and, as he says, is muddied withal: Pray you, sir, use the carp as you may; for he looks like a poor, decayed, ingenious, foolish, rascally knave. I do pity his distress in my smiles of comfort, and leave him to your lordship. [Exit Clown Par. My lord, I am a man whom fortune hath cruelly scratched.

Laf. And what would you have me to do? 'tis too late to pare her nails now. Wherein have you played the knave with fortune, that she should scratch you, who of herself is a good lady, and would not have knaves thrive tong under her? There's a quart d'ecu for you: Let the justices make you and fortune friends; I am for other business. Par. I beseech your honour, to hear me one single word. Laf. You beg a single penny more: come, you shall ha't; save your word.

Par. My name, my good lord, is Parolles.

Laf. You beg more than one word then.-Cox' my passion! give me your hand :-How does your drum ? Par. O my good lord, you were the first that found me. Laf. Was I, in sooth? and I was the first that lost thee. Par. It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for you did bring me out.

Laf. Out upon thee, knave! dost thou put upon me at once both the office of God and the devil? one brings thee in grace, and the other brings thee out. [Trumpets sound.] The king's coming, I know by his trumpets. Sirrah, inquire further after me; I had talk

of you last night: though you are a fool and a knave, you shall eat ;' go to, follow.

Par. I praise God for you.

SCENE III.

[Exeunt

The same. A Room in the Countess's Palace. Flourish. Enter King, Countess, LAFEU, Lords, Gentlemen, Guards, &c. King. We lost a jewel of her; and our esteem

Was made much poorer by it: but your son,

As mad in folly, lack'd the sense to know
Her estimation home.*

Count. 'Tis past, my liege :

And I beseech your majesty to make it
Natural rebellion, done i' th' blaze of youth;
When oil and fire, too strong for reason's force,
O'erbears it, and burns on.

King. My honour'd lady,

I have forgiven and forgotten all;

Though my revenges were high bent upon him,
And watch'd the time to shoot.

Laf. This I must say,

But first I beg my pardon,-The young lord
Did to his majesty, his mother, and his lady,
Offence of mighty note; but to himself
The greatest wrong of all: he lost a wife,
Whose beauty did astonish the survey

Of richest eyes; whose words all ears took captive;
Whose dear perfection, hearts that scorn'd to serve,
Humbly call'd mistress.

King. Praising what is lost,

Makes the remembrance dear.-Well, call him hither; -We are reconcil'd, and the first view shall kill

All repetition :-Let him not ask our pardon;

[3] Parolles has many of the lineaments of Falstaff, and seems to be the character which Shakespeare delighted to draw, a fellow that had more wit than virtue. Though justice required that he should be detected and exposed, yet his vices sit so fit in him that he is not at last suffered to starve. JOHNSON.

[4] That is, completely, in its full extent. JOHNSON.

[5] The first interview shall put an end to all recollection of the past. Shake speare is now hastening to the end of the play, finds his matter sufficient to fill up his remaining scenes, and therefore, as on such other occasions, contracts his dialogue and precipitates his action. Decency required that Bertram's double crime of cruelty and disobedience, joined likewise with some hypocrisy, should raise more resentment; and that though his mother might easily forgive him, his king should more pertinaciously vindicate his own authority and Helen's merit of all this Shakespeare could not be ignorant, but Shakespeare wanted to conclude his play. JOHNSON.

The nature of his great offence is dead,
And deeper than oblivion we do bury

The incensing relics of it: let him approach,
A stranger, no offender; and inform him,
So 'tis our will he should.

Gent. I shall, my liege.

[Exit Gentleman. King. What says he to your daughter? have you spoke? Laf. All that he is hath reference to your highness. King. Then shall we have a match. I have letters sent me,

That set him high in fame.

Enter BERTRAM.

Laf. He looks well on't.

King. I am not a day of season,

6

For thou may'st see a sunshine and a hail
In me at once: But to the brightest beams
Distracted clouds give way; so stand thou forth,
The time is fair again.

Ber. My high-repented blames,
Dear sovereign, pardon to me.

King. All is whole;

Not one word more of the consumed time.
Let's take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of time
Steals ere we can effect them: You remember
The daughter of this lord?

Ber. Admiringly, my liege: at first

I stuck my choice upon her, ere my heart
Durst make too bold a herald of my tongue :
Where the impression of mine eye enfixing,
Contempt his scornful perspective did lend me,
Which warp'd the line of every other favour;
Scorn'd a fair colour, or express'd it stol'n;
Extended or contracted all proportions,

To a most hideous object: Thence it came,
That she, whom all men prais'd, and whom myself,
Since I have lost, have lov'd, was in mine eye
The dust that did offend it.

King. Well excus'd:

[6] That is, of uninterrupted rain: one of those wet days that usually happen about the vernal equinox. The word is still used in the same sense in Virginia, in which government, and especially on the eastern shore of it, where the descendants of the first settlers have been less mixed with later emigrants, many expressions of Shakespeare's time are still current. HENLEY

That thou didst love her, strikes some scores away
From the great compt: But love, that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,

To the great sender turns a sour offence,
Crying, That's good that's gone our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious things we have,
Not knowing them, until we know their grave:
Oft our displeasures, to ourselves unjust,
Destroy our friends, and after weep their dust:
Our own love waking cries to see what's done,
While shameful hate sleeps out the afternoon.
Be this sweet Helen's knell, and now forget her.
Send forth your amorous token for fair Maudlin:
The main consents are had; and here we'll stay
To see our widower's second marriage-day.

Count. Which better than the first, O dear heaven, bless! Or, ere they meet, in me, O nature, cease!

Laf. Come on, my son, in whom my house's name
Must be digested, give a favour from you,

To sparkle in the spirits of my daughter,
That she may quickly come.-By my old beard,
And every hair that's on't, Helen, that's dead,
Was a sweet creature; such a ring as this,
The last that e'er I took her leave at court,
I saw upon her finger.

Ber. Hers it was not.

King. Now, pray you, let me see it; for mine eye,
While I was speaking, oft was fasten'd to't.-

This ring was mine; and, when I gave it Helen,
I bade her, if her fortunes ever stood

Necessitied to help, that by this token

I would relieve her: Had you that craft, to reave her Of what should stead her most?

Ber. My gracious sovereign, Howe'er it pleases you to take it so,

The ring was never her's.

Count. Son, on my life,

I have seen her wear it; and she reckon'd it

At her life's rate.

Laf. I am sure, I saw her wear it.

Ber. You are deceiv'd, my lord, she never saw it:

In Florence was it from a casement thrown me,

[7] Bertram still continues to have too little virtue to deserve Helen. He did not know indeed that it was Helen's ring, but he knew that he had it not from a window. JOHNSON.

Wrapp'd in a paper, which contain❜d the name
Of her that threw it: noble she was, and thought
I stood ingag'd: but when I had subscrib'd
To mine own fortune, and inform'd her fully
I could not answer in that course of honour
As she had made the overture, she ceas'd,
In heavy satisfaction, and would never
Receive the ring again.

King. Plutus himself,

That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine,
Hath not in nature's mystery more science,

Than I have in this ring: 'Twas mine, 'twas Helen's,
Whoever gave it you: Then, if you know
That you are well acquainted with yourself,
Confess 'twas hers, and by what rough enforcement
You got it from her: she call'd the saints to surety,
That she would never put it from her finger,
Unless she gave it to yourself in bed,

(Where you have never come,) or sent it us
Upon her great disaster.

Ber. She never saw it.

King. Thou speak'st it falsely, as I love mine honour;
And mak'st conjectural fears to come into me,
Which I would fain shut out: If it should prove
That thou art so inhuman,—'twill not prove so ;-
And yet I know not:-thou didst hate her deadly,
And she is dead; which nothing, but to close
Her eyes myself, could win me to believe,
More than to see this ring.-Take him away.-
[Guards seize Bertram.

My fore-past proofs, howe'er the matter fall,
Shall tax my fears of little vanity,

Having vainly fear'd too little.'-Away with him ;—
We'll sift this matter further.

[8] Ingaged, in the sense of unengaged, is a word of exactly the same formation as inhabitable, which is used by Shakespeare and the contemporary writers for uninhabitable. MALONE.

[9] Plutus, the grand alchymist, who knows the tincture which confers the properties of gold upon base metals, and the matter by which gold is multiplied, by which a small quantity of gold is made to communicate its qualities to a large mass of base metal.-In the reign of Henry the Fourth, a law was made to forbid "all men thenceforth to multiply gold, or use any craft of multiplication." Of which Jaw Mr. Boyle, when he was warm with the hope of transmutation, procured a repeal. JOHNSON.

[1] The proofs which I have already had are sufficient to show that my fears were not vain and irrational. I have rather been hitherto more easy than I ought, and have unreasonably had too little fear. JOHNSON.