And therewithal to win me, if you please,
(Without the which I am not to be won ;)
You fhall this twelve-month-term from day to day
Vifit the speechlefs Sick, and ftill converfe
With groaning wretches; and your task fhall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,
T'enforce the pained Impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?

It cannot be, it is impoffible:

Mirth cannot move a foul in

agony.

Rof. Why, that's the way to choak a gibing spirit,
Whofe influence is begot of that loose grace,
Which fhallow laughing hearers give to fools:
A jeft's profperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it: then, if fickly ears,
Deaft with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle fcorns; continue then,
And I will have you, and that fault withal:
But if they will not, throw away that spirit;
And I fhall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your Reformation.

Biron. A twelve-month? well; befall, what will befall,

I'll jeft a twelve-month in an Hospital.

Prin. Ay, fweet my lord, and fo I take my leave. [To the King. King. No, Madam; we will bring you on your

way.

Biron. Our wooing doth not end like an old Play; Jack hath not Fill; thefe ladies' courtefie

Might well have made our sport a Comedy.

King, Come, Sir, it wants a twelve-month and a day,

And then 'twill end.

Biron. That's too long for a Play.

Enter

Enter Armado.

Arm. Sweet Majefty, vouchfafe me
Prin. Was not that Hector?

Dum. That worthy Knight of Troy.

Arm. I will kifs thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a Votary; I have vow'd to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three years. But, moftefteem'd Greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled, in praise of the owl and the cuckow? it fhould have follow'd in the end of our Show.

King. Call them forth quickly, we will do fo.
Arm. Holla! approach.

Enter all, for the Song.

This fide is Hiems, Winter.

This Ver, the fpring: the one maintain'd by the owl, The other by the cuckow.

Ver, begin.

The SONG.

SPRIN G.

When daizies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-fmocks all filver white,
And cuckow-buds of yellow bue,

9 Do paint the meadows much-bedight;
The cuckow then on every Tree
Mocks married men; for thus fings he,
Cuckow!

Cuckow! cuckow! O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!

9 Do paint the meadows with delight;] This is a pretty rural fong, in which the images are drawn with great force from na ture. But this fenfeless expletive of painting with delight, I

would read thus,

i.

Do paint the meadows MUCH-BEDIGHT,

e. much bedecked or adorned, as they are in fpring-time. The epithet is proper, and the compound not inelegant.

When

When Shepherds pipe on oaten straws,

And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks:
When turtles tread, and rooks and daws;
And maidens bleach their fummer fmocks;
The cuckow then on every tree

Mocks married men; for thus fings he,
Cuckow!

Cuckow! cuckow! O word of fear,
Unpleafing to a married ear!

WINTER.

When ificles bang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail;
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen bome in pail;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly fings the staring owl
Tu-whit! to-whoo!

A merry note,

While greafie Jone doth keel the pot.
When all aloud the wind doth blow,
And coughing drowns the Parfon's faw;
And birds fit brooding in the fnow,

And Marian's nofe looks red and raw;
When roafted crabs hifs in the bowl,
Then nightly fings the staring owl
Tu-whit! to-whoo!

A merry note,

While greafie Jone doth keel the pot.

Arm. The words of Mercury

Are harsh after the Songs of Apollo:
You, that way; we, this way.

[Exeunt omnes.

A S

ACT I.

SCENE I. page 195.

This child of fancy, that Armado hight, &c.] This, as I have fhewn, in the note in its place, relates to the ftories in the books of Chivalry. A few words therefore concerning their Origin and Nature may not be unacceptable to the reader. As I don't know of any writer who has given any tolerable account of this matter and especially as Monfieur Huet, the Bishop of Avranches, who wrote a formal treatife of the Origin of Romances, has faid little or nothing of these in that fuperficial work. For having brought down the account of romances to the later Greeks, and entered upon those compofed by the barbarous western writers, which have now the name of Romances almoft appropriated to them, he puts the change upon his reader, and, instead of giving us an account of these books of Chivalry, one of the moft curious and interesting parts of the fubject he promised to treat of, he contents himself with a long account of the poems of the Pro vincial Writers, called likewife Romances: and fo, under the equivoque of a common term, drops his proper fubject, and entertains us with another that had no relation to it more than in the name.

The Spaniards were of all others the fondeft of thefe fables, as fuiting beft their extravagant turn to galantry and bravery; which in time grew fo exceffive, as to need all the efficacy of Cervantes's incomparable fatire to bring them back to their fenfes. The French fuffered an eafier cure from their Doctor Rabelais, who enough difcredited the books of Chivalry, by only ufing the extravagant ftories of its Giants, &c. as a cover for another kind of fatire against the refined Politics of his countrymen; of which they were as much poffeffed as the Spaniards of their Romantic

Bravery

[Place this at the end of Love's Labour loft, Vol. 2. page 288.]

"