pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven years.

Orl. Who ambles time withal.

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study; and the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain: the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning; the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury: These time ambles withal.

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal?

Ros. With a thief to the gallows: for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there.

Orl. Who stays it withal?

Ros. With lawyers in the vacation: for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves.

Orl. Where dwell you, pretty youth?

Ros. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. Orl. Are you native of this place?

Ros. As the coney that you see dwell where she is kindled.

Orl. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed 30 a dwelling.

Ros. I have been told so of many: but, indeed, an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an in-land 31 man; one that knew courtship 32 too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God, I am not a woman, to be touch'd with 30 i. e. sequestered.

31 i. e. civilized. See note on Act ii. Sc. 7.

32 Courtship is here used for courtly behaviour, courtiership. See Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 3. The context shows that this is the sense :-' for there he fell in love;' i. e. at court.

so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole sex withal.

Orl. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women?

Ros. There were none principal; they were all like one another, as half-pence are; every one fault seeming monstrous, till his fellow fault came to match it.

Orl. I pr'ythee, recount some of them.

Ros. No; I will not cast away my physick, but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancymonger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him.

Orl. I am he that is so love-shaked; I pray you, tell me your remedy.

Ros. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner. Orl. What were his marks?

you

Ros. A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye 33, and sunken; which you have not: an unquestionable spirit 34; which have not a beard neglected; which you have not;-but I pardon you for that; for, simply, your having 35 in beard is a younger brother's revenue:-Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you

33 i. e. a blueness about the eyes, an evidence of anxiety and dejection.

34 i. e. a spirit averse to conversation. Shakspeare often uses question for discourse, conversation, as in the next scene: 'I met the duke yesterday, and had much question with him.'

35 Having is possession, estate. As in Macbeth

'Of noble having and of royal hope.'

demonstrating a careless desolation 36. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device 37 in your accoutrements; as loving yourself, than seeming the lover of any other.

Orl. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love.

Ros. Me believe it! you may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do, than to confess she does: that is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?

Orl. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?

Orl. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.

Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too: Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

Orl. Did you ever cure any so?

Ros. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him

36 These seem to have been the established and characteristical marks of a lover in Shakspeare's time. So in A Pleasant Comedy how to choose a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602:

'I was once like thee

A sigher, melancholy humorist,

Crosser of arms, a goer without garters,

A hat-band hater, and a busk point wearer.'

The same marks of careless desolation' are specified in The Fair Maid of the Exchange, by Heywood.

37 i. e. precise, exact; drest with finical nicety.

every day to woo me: At which time would I, being but a moonish 38 youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour: would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; then I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love, to a living humour of madness 39; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely monastick: And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in't.

Orl. I would not be cured, youth.

Ros. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote, and woo

me.

Orl. Now, by the faith of my love, I will: tell me where it is.

Ros. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you: and, by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you

live: Will you go?

Orl. With all my heart, good youth.

Ros. Nay, you must call me Rosalind :-Come,

sister, will you go?

38 Moonish, that is, as changeable as the moon.

[Exeunt.

39 If,' says Johnson,' this be the true reading, we must by living understand lasting or permanent.' But he suspected that this passage was corrupt; that originally some antithesis was intended, which is now lost; and that it might have stood thus:— 'I drove my suitor from a dying humour of love to a living humour of madness.' Or rather thus :-from a mad humour of love, to a loving humour of madness. Malone thought A living humour of madness might mean a humour of living madness, or a mad humour of life: to forswear the world and live in a nook,' &c.

SCENE III.

Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY1; JAQUES at a distance, observing them.

Touch. Come apace, good Audrey; I will fetch up your goats, Audrey: And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? Doth my simple feature content you? Aud. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features 2?

Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious3 poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.

Jaq. O knowledge ill-inhabited! worse than Jove in a thatch'd house!

[Aside.

Touch. When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room 5. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

1 Audrey is a corruption of Etheldreda. The saint of that name is so styled in ancient calendars.

2 What features!' Mr. Nares's explanation of this passage appears to be the true one, it is that the word feature is too learned for the comprehension of Audrey,' and she reiterates it with simple wonder. Feature and features were then used indiscriminately for the proportion and figure of the whole body. Vide Two Gentlemen of Verona, p. 124.

3 Shakspeare remembered that caper was Latin for a goat, and thence chose this epithet. There is also a poor quibble between goats and goths. 4 Ill-lodged. 5 A great reckoning in a little room.' Warburton, with his usual ingenuity, has found out a reference to the saying of Rabelais, that there was only one quarter of an hour in human life passed ill, and that was between the calling for a reckoning and the paying it.' Tavern jollity is interrupted by the coming in of a great reckoning, and there seems a sly insinuation that it could not be escaped from in a little room. There is much humour in comparing the blank countenance of a disappointed poet or wit, whose effusions have not been comprehended, to that of the reveller who has to pay largely for his carousing.