ment, not my father's purse or peevishness. Nature hath made me his child, not his slave. I hate Memphio and his son deadly, if I wist he would place his affection by his father's appoint

ment.

Pris. Wittily, but uncivilly.

Cand. Be of that mind still, my fair Livia; let our fathers lay their purses together, we our hearts; I will never woo where I cannot love; let Stellio enjoy his daughter. But what have you wrought here?

Liv. Flowers, fowls, beasts, fishes, trees, plants, stones, and what not. Among flowers, cowslips and lilies, for our names Candius and Livia; among fowls, turtles and sparrows, for our truth and desires; among beasts, the fox and the ermine, for beauty and policy; and among fishes, the cockle and the tortoise, because of Venus; among trees, the vine wreathing about the elm, for our embracing; among stones, asbestos, which being hot will never be cold, for our constancies; among plants, time and heartsease, to note, that if we take time we shall ease our hearts.

Pris. There's a girl that knows her lerripoop*. Sper. Listen and you shall hear my son's learning.

Liv. What book is that?

* cc Lerripoop." Mr. Weber understands this word as alluding to the loquacity with which women are charged; I think the meaning here is, "who hath perfectly learned her lesson, and can repeat it by heart." It is again used by Lyly in “ Sapho and Phao."

"Thou maist be skilled in thy logick, but not in thy lérypoop."

Cand. A fine pleasant poet, who entreateth of the Art of Love, and of the remedy.

Liv. Is there art in love?

Cand. A short art and a certain, three rules in three lines.

Liv. I pray thee repeat them.

Cand. Principio, quod amare velis, reperire labora, Proximus huic labor est, placitam exorare puellam. Tertius, ut longo tempore duret amor.

Liv. I am no latinist, Candius, you must construe it

Cand. So I will, and parse it too: thou shalt be acquainted with case, gender, and number. First, one must find out a mistress, whom before all others he voweth to serve. Secondly, that he use all the means he may to obtain her: and the last, with deserts, faith, and secresy, to study to keep her.

Liv. What's the remedy?

Cand. Death.

Liv. What of all the book is the conclusion? Cand. This is one verse: Non caret effectu quod voluere duo.

Liv. What's that?.

Cand. Where two are agreed it is impossible but they must speed.

Liv. Then cannot we miss; therefore give me thy hand, Candius.

Pris. Soft Livia, take me with you, it is not good in law without witness.

Sper. And, as I remember, there must be two witnesses: God give you joy, Candius; I was worth the bidding to dinner, though not worthy to be of the council.

Pris. I think this hot love hath provided but cold cheer.

Sper. Tush; in love is no lack; but blush not, Candius, you need not be ashamed of your cunning, and have made love a bookcase and spent your time well at school, learning to love by art, and hate against nature; but I perceive the worser child the better lover.

Pris. And my minion hath wrought well; where every stitch in her sampler is a pricking stitch at my heart; you take your pleasure at parents; they are peevish, fools, and churls, overgrown with ignorance, because overworn with age: little shalt thou know the case of a father before thyself be a mother, when thou shalt breed thy child with continual pains and with deadly pangs, nurse it with thine own paps, and nourish it with motherly tenderness, and then find them to curse thee with their hearts, when they should ask blessing on their knees, and the collops* of thine own bowels, to be the torture of thine own soul; with tears trickling down thy cheeks, and drops of blood falling from thy heart, thou wilt, in uttering of thy mind, wish them rather unborn, than unnatural, and to have had their cradles their graves, rather than thy death their bridals. But I will not dispute what thou shouldst have done, but correct what thou hast done: I perceive sewing is an idle exercise, and that every day there comes more thoughts into thine head than stitches into thy work; I'll

Collop:" it is used here, as in Henry VI. for the offspring:

"Thou art a collop of my flesh."

see whether you can spin a better mind than you have stitched, and if I coop you not up, then let me be the capon.

Sper. As for you, sir boy, instead of poring on a book you shall hold the plough; I'll make repentance reap what wantonness hath sown; but we are both well served, the sons must be masters, the fathers gaffers; what we get together with a rake, they cast abroad with a fork; and we must weary our legs, to purchase our children arms*. Well, seeing that booking is but idleness, I'll see whether threshing be any occupation; thy mind shall stoop to my fortune, or mine shall break the laws of nature. How like a micher † he stands, as though he had truanted from honesty: get thee in, and for the rest let me alone. In, villain!

Pris. And you, pretty minx, that must be fed with love upon sops, I'll take an order to cram you with sorrows; get you in without look or reply. [Exeunt Cand. and Liv. Sper. Let us follow, and deal as rigorously with yours, as I will with mine, and you shall see that hot love will wax soon cold: I'll tame the proud boy, and send him as far from his love as he is from his duty.

Pris. Let us about it, and also go on with matching them to our minds; it was happy we prevented that by chance, which we could never yet suspect by circumstance. [Exeunt.

* "To purchase our children arms." Heraldic arms are here alluded to, and the meaning of the passage, "to make gentry of our children.”

"Micher," a truant, an indolent fellow.

ACT II. SCENE I.

DROMIO and RISIO *.

Drom. Now if I could meet with Risio it were a world of waggery.

Ris. O that it were by chance, obvium dare Dromio, to stumble upon Dromio, of whom I do nothing but dream.

Drom. His knavery and my wit, should make our masters, that are wise, fools; their children, that are fools, beggars; and us two, that are bond, free.

Ris. He to cozen, and I to conjure, would make such alterations, that our masters should serve themselves, the idiots, their children, serve us, and we to wake our wits among them all.

Drom. Hem quam opportune, look if he drop not full in my dish.

Ris. Lupus in fabula, Dromio, embrace me, hug me, I must make thee fortunate.

Drom. Risio, honour me, kneel down to me, kiss my feet, I must make thee blessed.

Ris. My master, old Stellio; hath a fool to his daughter.

* Lyly evidently formed his play on the model of Terence and Plautus, in whom scenes like this are common, without remembering that the Roman stage was, beyond comparison, larger than ours; and that the first four speeches, spoken before they see each other, would have been much more natural on a Roman than on an English stage.