To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.
Ros. Why, whither shall we go?

Cel. To seek my uncle in the forest of Arden.
Ros. Alas, what danger will it be to us,
Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Cel. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
The like do you so shall we pass along,
And never stir assailants.

Ros.

Were it not better,

Because that I am more than common tall,
That I did suit me all points like a man?
A gallant curtle-axe7 upon my thigh,

A boar-spear in my hand; and, in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside;
As many other mannish cowards have,

8

That do out-face it with their semblances.

Cel. What shall I call thee, when thou art a man? Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own

page;

And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be call'd?

Cel Something that hath a reference to my state: N longer Celia, but Aliena.

Umber was a dusky, yellow-coloured earth, brought from Umoria in Italy.

7 This was one of the old words for a cutlass, or short, crooked sword. It was variously spelled, courtlas, conrtlax, curtlax.

8 Swashing is dashing, swaggering. Thus, in Fuller's Wor thies of England: "A ruffian is the same with a swaggerer, so called, because endeavouring to make that side swag or weigh down, whereon he engageth. The same also with swash-buckle from swashing or making a noise on bucklers."

H.

Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal The clownish fool out of your father's court? Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me Leave me alone to woo him: Let's away, And get our jewels and our wealth together; Devise the fittest time, and safest way To hide us from pursuit that will be made After my flight: Now go we in content, To liberty, and not to banishment.

[Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I. The Forest of Arden.

Enter DUKE, AMIENS, and other Lords, in the dress of Foresters.

Duke. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court? Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.'

So in the original. Theobald proposed to change not into but, and the change has been generally received. Boswell and Caldecott argue, 14 Surely the old reading is right. Here we feel not, do not suffer from, the penalty of Adam, the seasons' difference; for when the winter's wind blows upon my body, I smile and say,'" &c. To which it may be replied, if he did not feel the things in question, why should he say,-" These are counsellors that feelingly persuade me what I am?" So that with not we cannot make the sentence harmonize, as it is usually pointed: if seasons' difference be read as in apposition with penalty of Adam, wee no way but to change not into but. On the other

The seasons' difference, as the icy fang,
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,
This is no flattery, - these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;2
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

Ami. I would not change it: Happy is your

grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

Duke. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?

nand, but makes the passage equally incongruous, not indeed with itself, but with the matter referred to. The Poet had no authority for regarding the seasons' difference as the penalty of Adam: that was ordained in the constitution of nature, not superinduced after the fall. The penalty which the Duke and his co-mates were exempt from, is-"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou cat bread." And this exactly agrees with what is said of them in the first scene of the play, that they "fleet the time carelessly as they did in the golden world." On the whole, therefore, we have little hesitation in following the pointing proposed by Mr. Whiter and adopted by Knight.

H.

The "precious jewel" in the toad's head was not his bright eye, as is sometimes supposed, but one of the "secret wonders of nature," which exist no longer "in the faith of reason." Accord ing to Edward Fenton, it was found in the heads of old, and large, and especially he toads, and was of great value for its moral and medicinal virtues. Of course so precious a thing, being rather hard to find, was often counterfeited, and there was an infallible test for distinguishing the counterfeit from the true: "You shall know whether the toad-stone be the right and perfect stone or not. Hold the stone before a toad, so that he may see it; and if it be a right and true stone the toad will leap towards it, and make as though he would snatch it. He envieth so much that man should have that stone."

H.

And yet it irks 3 me, the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should, in their own confines, with forked heads'
Have their round haunches gor'd.

1 Lord.

4

Indeed, my lord
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself
Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood;
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish: and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coal
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase; and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

Duke.

But what said Jaques !

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

That is, it gives me pain. The verb irk has gone out of use but its sense survives in the adjective irksome.

4 Barbed arrows.

H.

H.

It was an ancient notion that a deer, being closely pursued fleeth to a ryver or ponde, and roreth, cryeth, and wepeth, when te is take." Drayton in the thirteenth song of his Poly-Olbion has a fine description of a deer-hunt, which he winds up with an allusion to the same matter:

"He who the mourner is to his own dying corse, Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets fall." And in a note upon the passage he adds. - The hart weepeth at his dying his tears are held precious in medicine"

H.

6

1 Lord. O! yes, into a thousand similes. First, for his weeping into the needless stream; "Poor deer," quoth he, "thou mak'st a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which hath too much." Then, being there alone,

Left and abandon'd of his velvet friend;

"Tis right," quoth he; "this misery doth part The flux of company." Anon, a careless herd, Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

And never stays to greet him: “ Ay," quoth Jaques,

Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;

'Tis just the fashion: Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?"
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, court,
Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up,
In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.

Duke. And did you leave him in this contempla. tion ?

2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and comment

ing

Upon the sobbing deer.

Duke.

Show me the place :

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he's full of matter.

2 Lord. I'll bring you to him straight. [Exeunt.

That is, the stream that needed not such a supply.

So in 3 Henry VI., Act v. sc. 4:

"With tearful eyes add water to the sea,

And give more strength to that which hath too much"