LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 
GREENE'S ARCADIA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 CAMILLA'S ALARUM TO SLUMBER EUPHUES 
 
 IN HIS MELANCHOLY CELL AT SILEXEDRA. 
 
 ROBERT GREENE, A.M. 
 
 OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE EDITION OF 1616. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 Jprom t&c Prt&ate 
 
 OF 
 
 LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN. 
 
 PRINTED BY T. DAVISON, WHITEFRIAES. 
 
 1814. 
 
TO 
 
 R. P. GILLIES, ESQ. 
 
 OF BALMAKEWAN, IN THE COUNTY OF KINCARDINE, 
 
 AS A MARK OF RESPECT 
 FOR HIS NUMEROUS ATTAINMENTS, 
 
 OF ESTEEM 
 
 FOR THE VIRTUES OF HIS HEART, 
 
 ,. f 
 AND ADMIRATION 
 
 OF HIS SIMPLE, ELOQUENT, AND COPIOUS GENIUS, 
 THIS REPRINT 
 
 OF 
 
 GREENE'S ARCADIA 
 
 IS DEDICATED, 
 
 BY 
 
 HIS SINCERE FRIEND, 
 
 THE EDITOR. 
 
 JULY 25, 1814. 
 

 
PREFACE 
 
 GREENE'S Arcadia was first published in 1587, and again 158.9, 
 1599, 1605, 1610, 1616, 1634. The name, scene, and something 
 in the style and construction of the fable, were perhaps suggested 
 by Sir PHILIP SYDNEY'S celebrated romance, though that work 
 did not appear in print till 1590. Each commences with consulting 
 the oracle at Delphos ; whose dark responses are in both fulfilled 
 in an equally improbable manner 1 . 
 
 To make SEPIIESTIA, under the disguised name and character 
 of SAMELA, at once the object of the amorous attachment of her 
 father, her husband, and her son, each unable to discover the iden- 
 tity of a person so nearly connected with them, is a revolting im- 
 probability ; which shews the gross and unsettled taste both of the 
 writer and of the age, that could endure, and still more, could 
 even admire, such a fable. 
 
 This is far different from the skill and moral feeling displayed 
 in the conduct of the incidents of Philomela, where the angelic vir- 
 tues of a patient, faithful, and beautiful wife, are drawn in conflict 
 with the blood-thirsty cruelties of a husband inflamed by idle jea- 
 lousies to madness. 
 
 1 See a good analysis of the story of SYDNEY'S Arcadia, in DUN LOP'S History of 
 Fiction, 3 vols. 8vo. lately published, vol. iii. p. 164. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 The style also of this production is, as it seems to me, more 
 liable to that imputation of " a vast excess of allusion/' in which 
 GREENE is accused to have followed the fashion set by JOHN 
 LiLLY 1 , than the work already given. 
 
 HENRY UPCHER, in his commendatory verses, seems to think 
 this ; though he mentions it to the author's praise. 
 
 " Of all the flowers a Lilly once I lov'd, 
 
 Whose labouring beauty branch'd itself abroad j 
 But now old age his glory hath remov'd, 
 
 And greener objects are mine eyes abroad. 
 
 The poetry interspersed in this romance is pastoral and pleas- 
 ing, and far exceeds, both in the character, of its ingredients and 
 in the spirit with which they are combined, much of that which 
 obtained the applause and led the fashion of the subsequent reign 
 of king James. GREENE'S pieces, however, still continued popular 
 throughout that reign, yet not without having made somewhat of a 
 descent from the court to the country, and from the drawing-room 
 to the servants'-hall ; for metaphysical conceits became now the 
 ambition of the palace, and learning was encouraged to exercise 
 her usurped triumph over genius 2 . 
 
 It may not be unacceptable to the reader to insert here an 
 abstract of the story of GREENE'S Arcadia. 
 
 DEMOCLES, king of Arcadia, sent two of his chief lords to 
 Delphos, to consult the oracle regarding the future fate of his king- 
 
 1 See Cens. Lit. vii. 151, 265. 
 
 ' s The reader may find a short but well digested Memoir of GREENE in the new 
 edition of the Biographical Dictionary by CHALMERS, vol. xvi. p. '241*. 
 
PREFACE. j x 
 
 dom. The answer was, " more full of doubts to amaze, than fraught 
 with hope to comfort." But the king endeavoured to appease the 
 anxieties of his people, who framed their thoughts by his example. 
 
 Meanwhile, MEKTAPHON, the king's shepherd, walking to the 
 Sea-shore to look after his flock, beheld fragments of a ship floating 
 on the waves. Wondering at this sight, he sate still to observe 
 the event, when he perceived a woman holding a child in her arms, 
 and an old man assisting her to climb the mountain, both in an 
 agony of sorrow. Yet as the baby laughed, the mother at moments 
 smiled through her grief; and sung over him the beautiful ditty- 
 beginning, 
 
 " Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee." 
 
 With this lullaby the baby fell asleep, and SEPHESTIA, the mo- 
 ther, covering it with a mantle, gave full vent to her own com- 
 plaints; while LAMEDOX, the old man, endeavoured to comfort 
 her;, though " the daughter of a king, exiled by him from the hope 
 of a crown; banished from court, and parted from her lover, 
 MAXIMUS." 
 
 MENAPHOX, hitherto " an atheist in love/' was so struck with 
 her beauty, that he now swore, there was " no god but Cupid/' 
 A conversation ensued, by LAMEDON'S inquiry about the course of 
 the country. SEPHESTIA now represented herself as SAMELA, a 
 native of Cyprus, of mean birth, and widow of a poor gentleman, 
 thrown on the present shore by shipwreck. 
 
 MENAPHON received them in his cottage, where they grate- 
 fully accepted his hospitality, which was under the conduct of his 
 
 b 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 sister CARMELA. They retired to rest; but MENAPHON'S slum- 
 bers were disturbed by the deep wound which his heart had re^ 
 ceived. 
 
 The next morning MENAPHON led them abroad to see his 
 flocks; when he endeavoured to interest SAMELA by a display of 
 his pastoral wealth, and by speeches of admiration and love; which 
 she parried with great skill, so as to discourage, without offending, 
 him. 
 
 SAMELA now reconciled herself to a rural life, and would 
 often herself lead the flocks to the field ; when she attracted the 
 notice of DORON, a neighbour of MENAPHON, who described her 
 to his friend MELICERTUS in the poem beginning 
 
 " Like to Diana in her summer weed V 
 
 Soon afterwards MENAPHON persuaded SAMELA to accom- 
 pany him and his sister to a shepherd's meeting. She consented, 
 and went under the disguise of a russet dress of CARMELA. There 
 she met PESANA, a herdsman's daughter, who had been an unsuc- 
 cessful candidate for MENAPHON'S love, and MELICERTUS, who no 
 sooner saw her than he was struck with melancholy at the likeness 
 she bore to a beloved mistress of whom death had deprived him. 
 All the company were delighted with her beauty, and insisted on 
 making her the mistress of their feast. 
 
 When at length SAMELA'S eyes glanced on the looks of MELI- 
 CERTUS, she also perceived such a likeness to her dead lord, that for 
 
 P. 22. 
 
PREFACE. x i 
 
 > 
 
 some time she could not refrain from gazing upon him. These 
 glances did not escape the notice of MENAPHON, whom they filled 
 with furious jealousy ; while MELICERTUS, filled with another sort 
 of curiosity, was resolved to question the fair shepherdess, in whom 
 he felt a mutual interest. A long dialogue follows, in which she 
 displays both her wit and her sense. When they broke up, all 
 departed full of the exquisite perfections of SAMELA. MELICER- 
 TUS returned to his cottage and his couch, to ruminate on her 
 charms. " Did ever/' said he, " any one so resemble SEPHESTIA?" 
 
 SAMELA, meanwhile, employed her fancy in musing on the 
 looks and manner of MELICERTUS. " Can he/' said she, " be a 
 shepherd ? His brows contain the characters of nobility, and his 
 wit is full of gentry! SAMELA, is it not thy MAXIMUS? Fond 
 fool; away with these suppositions!" 
 
 MELICERTUS now contrived to feed his flocks near those of 
 MENAPHON ; and thus one day brought about a long interview 
 and conversation with SAMELA, to whose care the latter had been 
 left on that occasion. This was interrupted by LAMEDON and 
 MENAPHON, when the lovers stole back to their separate occu- 
 pations. 
 
 While these things were passing, SAMELA'S child, PLEUSIDIP- 
 PUS, " beautiful by nature as noble by birth," expressed presages of 
 his future fortunes. Five years had scarcely passed over his head,' 
 when he began to shew himself among the shepherds' children as 
 " lord of the May-game." His mother gloried in these presages. 
 
 Thus did PLEUSIDIPPUS continue to pass his infancy, when 
 walking on the shore to gather cockle and pebble stones, a Thessa* 
 
Xll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 lian pirate, EURILOCHUS, who came thither to forage for a large 
 booty of beasts, which he was driving before him, saw the boy, and. 
 struck with his appearance, thirsted to make him his prey. But 
 determining first to use persuasion, he entered into a conversation 
 with him. The boy replied with such spirit, that the pirate re-* 
 solved to use force ; by which he succeeded. 
 
 The boy was " arrayed in choice silks and Tyrian purple," and 
 carried as a present by EURILOCHUS to his king, AGE NOR, as a 
 peace-offering for his breaches of law. The king was astonished at 
 the perfections of the young captive. " Beauty/' said he, " have 
 J beheld in its brightest orb, but never set eye on immortality before 
 this hour!" ERIPHILA, his queen, was in equal extacy. An order 
 was then given that he should be treated in every respect as the 
 child of a prince. 
 
 SAMEL A, on learning that her boy was lost, broke forth into 
 the most extravagant grief. MEN A PH ON endeavoured to appease 
 her ; and took the opportunity to insinuate his own attachment as 
 a source of comfort. This she resented as an insult, till the con- 
 test drew from him a coarse expression of anger, which necessitated 
 her to disclaim his interested hospitality. MENAPHON, when he 
 saw she could exist without him, " became sick for anger, and spent 
 whole eclogues in anguish." Among these complaints is that which 
 begins 
 
 C .. -' " 
 
 " Fair fields, proud Flora's vaunt, why is't you smile ' ?" 
 
 1 P. 50. 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 SAMEL A'S stripling, now grown to the age of sixteen, flourished 
 in honour and arms above all the knights of the court : OLYMPIA, 
 the king's daughter, most exulted in his fame; and to her he 
 dedicated all his adventures. 
 
 Fame, meanwhile, having in the hearing of PLEUSIDIPPUS, 
 while at supper with his mistress, vaunted of Arcadia as the country 
 which bred the most beautiful dames, and the picture being ex* 
 hibited of a most beautiful woman (which in truth was the por- 
 trait of SAMELA), PLEUSIDIPPUS exclaimed, " O Arcadia, Arcadia, 
 storehouse of nymphs, and nursery of beauty \" OLYMPIA started 
 up, and stung by jealousy, vented her scorn on her lover. The 
 youth at first doubted whether to answer mildly, or with indigna,- 
 tion, but at length his resentment prevailed. " Since you despise 
 jny birth," said he, " take back your favours, and I will to Arcadia, 
 to seek out mischance, or a new mistress/' 
 
 The king blamed his daughter's hastiness, and endeavoured to 
 appease the youth's resentment. An outward reconciliation was 
 effected ; but still PLEUSIDIPPUS resolved to visit Arcadia, where 
 he soon arrived on the shore joining the promontory where he, his 
 mother, and LAMEDON, had been wrecked. 
 
 DEMOCLES, with whom our history begun, had at that time 
 committed his daughter, with her infant, her husband MAXIMUS, 
 and his uncle LAM ED ON, without oar or mariner, to the fury of the 
 merciless waves, leaving the succession of his kingdom to doubtful 
 chance his daughter's supposed death having soon after brought 
 his queen to the grave. The king then gave himself up to the for- 
 getfulness of a dissolute and sensual life. 
 
x i v PREFACE: 
 
 After many years of these vain enjoyments, he heard of the 
 beauty of SAMELA, and not yet abandoning his youthful desires* 
 stole from the court secretly, in the disguise of a shepherd, to seek 
 her out. During this time she lived more contented with her new 
 flock than if she had been queen of Arcadia, while MELICERTUS, 
 pleased with her separation from MENAPHON, visited her every 
 day without dread, and courted her in shepherd's terms. She in 
 return promised marriage to her lover, in the presence of all the 
 shepherds, to be solemnized when the prophecy should be fulfilled. 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS, in a shepherd's habit, was now tracing the 
 plains of Arcadia, when he met DEMOCLES, whom he mistook for 
 an old shepherd. Of him he enquired for SAMELA ; and was 
 growing angry at his unsatisfactory answers, when SAMELA passed 
 by, to fill her bottle at the spring. Her beauty exceeded his hopes ; 
 and he thought that fame had been faint in her praise. She was 
 equally struck with his looks, but rejected his amorous advances. 
 DEMOCLES, overhearing this discouragement, could entertain no 
 hope that age would succeed where youth failed. But he suggested 
 to PLEUSIDIPPUS the scheme of carrying her off by force to a 
 neighbouring castle which he owned. 
 
 This scheme being adopted, and carried into effect, the strip- 
 ling again pleaded his love in vain. But DEMOCLES, trusting in 
 the power of gold and empire, was prodigal in offers, which he 
 hoped might prevail when personal charms were rejected. SAMELA, 
 hearing the name of a king, was shocked at finding a lover in a 
 father. She in vain pleaded her fidelity to MELICERTUS, and 
 ashamed to hold a parley with her parent, flung away to her 
 
PREFACE. xv 
 
 Chamber in a dissembled rage, and there bewailed her misfor- 
 tunes. 
 
 DEMOCLES finding his efforts vain, resolved in revenge, either 
 to obtain his love, or satisfy his hate; and stealing down in a 
 shepherd's apparel, among the swains, found them all in an uproar 
 at the loss of their mistress. A contest now ensued between 
 MENAPHON and MELICERTUS as to their respective claims. These 
 were agreed to be determined by two eclogues descriptive of their 
 loves, of which DEMOCLES, as a stranger, was to sit censor. The 
 prize was awarded to MELICERTUS, who, gathering together 200 
 clowns, marched forward with old DEMOCLES to attack the castle, 
 where PLEUSIDIPPUS had immured SAMELA. The contest con- 
 tinuing some time doubtful, DEMOCLES began to fear that his 
 nymph might be carried off to Thessaly, and therefore sent secret 
 orders to the court, to send 10,000 men to lie in ambush near the 
 castle. The order was obeyed, and DEMOCLES seizing the oppor- 
 tunity when the two combatants were weary with the conflict, gave 
 the watchword, and the men sallying forth, sacked the castle, and 
 carried them and SAMELA to the court, where the lady was allowed 
 her liberty; but MELICERTUS and PLEUSIDIPPUS were cast into 
 a deep dungeon. 
 
 DORON in the mean time employed himself in making love to 
 CARMELA. 
 
 DEMOCLES, having SAMELA in his power, did not cease still 
 to persecute her with his love, which she not only withstood in 
 fidelity to MELICERTUS, but rejected with horror, as knowing him 
 to be her father. The wretched monarch now turned love into 
 
xv i PREFACE; 
 
 hate, and laid a plot for accusing her of adultery, of which the 
 complaint was no sooner made than he condemned her and her 
 lover to death. PLEUSIDIPPUS was set free, for fear of revenge 
 from the king of Thessaly. 
 
 This devoted pair were content to die together ; and that they 
 might not be separated they both concealed the discovery of them- 
 selves from each other. 
 
 They were brought to the place of execution, when PLEU- 
 SIDIPPUS, sitting on a scaffold with DEMOCLES, Nature began 
 strongly to work in his bosom at the sight of SAMEL A brought 
 forth to death : " not love, but reverence ; not fear, but fancy, 
 began to assail him/' He appealed to DEMOCLES, who replied, 
 that " the anger of a king must be satisfied/' The youth wrapped 
 his face in his cloak, and wept; and all the assistants discovered 
 their grief at the sight. Bat DEMOCLES ordered the deathsman to 
 do his duty. MELICERTUS was exposed to the fatal stroke, when 
 an old woman, attired like a prophetess, exclaimed, " Villain, hold ; 
 thou wrongest the daughter of a king ! " An outcry, murmur, and 
 muttering was heard. " Now/' said the woman, " the Delphian 
 oracle is performed. PLEUSIDIPPUS is thy grandson, and son to 
 fair SEPHESTIA, who stands here under the narae of SAMELA ; 
 MELICERTUS. is MAXIMUS, twice betrothed to SEPHESTIA, and 
 father to PLEUSIDIPPUS. The oracle is fulfilled, and Arcadia shall 
 rest in peace!" The people gave a shout; the woman vanished; 
 DEMOCLES stared on the face of SEPHESTIA; PLEUSIDIPPUS leaped 
 from his seat, and first covered himself with his mother's robe, and 
 then fell at his father's feet. MAXIMUS looking in his wife's face, 
 
PREFACE. X vii 
 
 beheld the lineaments of SEPHESTIA ; and both of them, hiding 
 their faces on their son's bosom, burst into tears of joy. 
 
 DEMOCLES remaining this time in a trance, at last collected 
 his senses, and embracing all of them with tears, craved pardon of 
 MAXIMUS and SEPHESTIA ; and to shew his sincerity, invested 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS with the crown of Arcadia; while to LAMEDON, for 
 fidelity to his daughter, he gave a dukedom of that kingdom. 
 MENAPHON was now content to marry PESANA, and DORON took 
 his favourite C ARM EL A. 
 
 Such is the story, in which among many gross improbabilities, 
 and a profusion of those pedantic similes of which JOHN LILLY 
 had set GREENE the example, there are many beautiful passages, 
 an exuberance of pointed and just reflections, an occasional inter- 
 spersion of pathetic sentiment, and no infrequent instances of skill 
 in the conduct of the fable. The pastoral character of the piece is 
 well preserved ; and the poetry often anticipates the rhythm and 
 construction of a later age. 
 
GREENE'S ARCADIA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 CAMILLA'S ALARUM TO SLUMBER EUPHUES 
 
 IN HIS MELANCHOLY CELL AT SILEXEDRA. 
 
 WHEREIN ARE DECIPHERED 
 
 THE VARIABLE EFFECTS OF FORTUNE, 
 THE WONDERS OF LOVE, THE TRIUMPHS OF INCONSTANT TIME. 
 
 A WORK WORTHY THE YOUNGEST EARS FOR PLEASURE, 
 
 OR, 
 THE GRAVEST CENSURES FOR PRINCIPLES. 
 
 BY ROBERTUS GREENE, 
 
 IN ARTIBUS MAGISTER. 
 
 OMNE TULIT PUNCTUM. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY W. STANSBY, FOR I. SMETHWICKE; 
 
 .AND ARE TO BE SOLD AT HIS SHOP IN ST. DUNSTAN'S CHURCH-YARD, 
 UNDER THE DIAL IN FLEET-STREET. 
 
 1616. 
 
TO 
 
 BOTH UNIVERSITIES'. 
 
 COURTEOUS and wise, whose judgments (not entangled with envy) 
 enlarge the deserts of the learned by your liberal censures, vouch- 
 safe to welcome your scholar-like shepherd with such university 
 entertainment, as either the nature of your bounty or the custom 
 of your common civility may afford. To you he appeals, that knew 
 him ab extrema pueritia, whose placet he accounts the plaudit e of his 
 pains: thinking his day-labour was not altogether lavished sine tinea, 
 if there be any thing at all in it that doth olere Atticum in your 
 estimate. I am not ignorant how eloquent our gowned age is 
 grown of late, so that every mechanical mate abhorreth the English 
 he was born to, and plucks, with a solemn periphrasis, his ut vales 
 from the inkhorn ; which I impute, not so much to the perfection of 
 arts, as to the servile imitation of vain-glorious tragedians, who 
 contend not so seriously to excel in action, as to embowel the clouds 
 in a speech of comparison ; thinking themselves more than initiated 
 in poets' immortality, if they but once get Boreas by the beard, and 
 the heavenly Bull by the dew-lap. But herein I cannot so fully 
 
 1 This Address, written by the celebrated TOM NASH, is singularly curious, as 
 embracing a great deal of the literary gossip and literary prejudices of the day. It abounds 
 with quaintness and pedantry, and is far inferior in style to the compositions of his friend 
 
 G REESE. 
 
 B 
 
X 
 
 bequeath them to folly as their idiot art-masters, that intrude them- 
 selves to our ears as the alchymists of eloquence, who (mounted on 
 the stage of Arrogance) think to out-brave better pens with the 
 swelling bombast of bragging blank verse. Indeed it may be the 
 ingrafted overflow of some kill-cow conceit, that overcloyeth their 
 imagination with a more than drunken resolution, being not ex- 
 temporal in the invention of any other means to vent their manhood, 
 commits the digestion of their choleric incumbrances to the spacious 
 volubility of a drumming decasillabon. Amongst this kind of men, 
 that repose eternity in the mouth of a player, I can but engross 
 some deep-read schoolmen or grammarians, who having no more 
 learning in their skull than will serve to take up a commodity, nor 
 art in their brain than was nourished in a serving-man's idleness, 
 will take upon them to be the ironical censors of all, when God and 
 Poetry doth know they are the simplest of all. To leave all these 
 to the mercy of their mother tongue, that feed on nought but the 
 crumbs that fall from the translator's trencher, I come, sweet friend, 
 to thy Arcadian Menaphon, whose attire (though not so stately, 
 yet comely) doth entitle thee, above all other, to that temperatum 
 dicendi genus, which Tully in his Orator termeth true eloquence. 
 Let other men (as they please) praise the mountain that in seven 
 years bringeth forth a mouse, or the Italian pen that of a packet of 
 pilfries affords the press a pamphlet or two in an age, and then in 
 disguised array vaunts Ovid's and Plutarch's plumes as their own : 
 but give me the man whose extemporal vein in any humour will 
 excel our greatest art-master's deliberate thoughts, whose inventions, 
 quicker than his eye, will challenge the proudest rhetorician to the 
 contention of like perfection with like expedition. 
 
 What is he among students so simple, that cannot bring forth 
 (tanquam aliquando) some or other thing singular, sleeping betwixt 
 
XI 
 
 every sentence? What is not Maro's twelve years' toil, that so 
 famed his twelve -ZEneidos ? Or Peter Ramus' sixteen years' pains, 
 that so praised his petty Logic ? How is it then our drooping wits 
 should so wonder at an exquisite line that was his master's day 
 labour? Indeed, I must needs say, the descending years from the 
 philosophers of Athens have not been supplied with such present 
 orators as were able in any English vein to be eloquent of their 
 own, but either they must borrow invention of Ariosto and his 
 countrymen ; take up choice of words by exchange in Tully's Tus- 
 culans, and the Latin historiographers' storehouses; similitudes, nay 
 whole sheets and tractates, verbatim, from the plenty of Plutarch 
 and Pliny; and, to conclude, their whole method of writing, from the 
 liberty of comical fictions that have succeeded to our rhetoricians, 
 by a second imitation : so that well may the adage, Nil dictum quod 
 non dictum prius, be the most judicial estimate of our latter writers. 
 
 But the hunger of our unsatiate humorists being such as it is, 
 ready to swallow all draff without difference that insinuates itself to 
 their senses under the name of delights, employs oft-times many 
 threadbare wits to empty their invention of their apish devices, and 
 talk most superficially of policy, as those that never were gowned in 
 the university, wherein they revive the old said adage, Sus Minervam, 
 and cause the wiser to quip them with A sinus ad tyram. 
 
 Would gentlemen and riper judgments admit my motion of mo- 
 deration in a matter of folly, I would persuade them to physic their 
 faculties of seeing and hearing, as the Sabaeans do their dulled senses 
 with smelling; who (as Strabo reporteth) overcloyed with such 
 odoriferous savours as the natural increase of their country (balsa- 
 mum, amomum, with myrrh and frankincense) sends forth, refresh 
 their nostrils with the unsavoury scent of the pitchy slime that 
 Euphrates cast up, and the contagious fumes of goats' beards 
 
Xll 
 
 burned ; so would I have them, being surfeited unawares with the 
 sweet satiety of eloquence, which the lavish of our copious language 
 may procure, to use the remedy of contraries, and recreate their 
 rebated wits, not as they did, with the scenting of slime or goats' 
 beards burned, but with the overseeing of that sublime dicendi 
 genus, which walks abroad for waste paper in each serving-man's 
 pocket, and the otherwhile perusing of our Gothamist's barbarism ; 
 so should the opposite comparison of purity expel the infection of 
 absurdity, and their over-racked rhetoric be the ironical recreation 
 of the reader. 
 
 But so far discrepant is the idle usage of our unexperienced and 
 illiterated punies from this prescription, that a tale of Joan of 
 Brainford's will, and the unlucky frumenty, will be as soon enter- 
 tained into their libraries as the best poem that ever Tasso eternized ; 
 which being the effect of an undiscerning judgment, makes dross as 
 valuable as gold, and loss as welcome as gain : the glow-worm men- 
 tioned in jEsop's Fables, namely, the ape's folly, to be mistaken 
 for fire, when, as God wot, poor souls, they have nought but their 
 toil for their heat, their pains for their sweat, and (to bring it to our 
 English proverb) their labour for their travel. Wherein I can but 
 resemble them to the panther, who is so greedy of men's excre- 
 ments, that if they be hanged up in a vessel higher than his reach, 
 he sooner kills himself with the overstretching of his windless body, 
 than he will cease from his intended enterprize. 
 
 Oft have I observed what I now set down: a secular wit that 
 hath lived all days of his life by, what do you lack ! to be more 
 judicial in matters of conceit, than our quadrant crepundious, that 
 spit ergo in the mouth of every one they meet ; yet those and these 
 are affectionate to dogged detracting, as the most poisonous Pas- 
 quils, any dirty-mouthed Martin or Momus ever composed, is 
 
. '* 
 Xlll 
 
 gathered up with greediness before it fall to the ground, and bought 
 at the dearest, though they smell of the fripler's lavender half a year 
 after ; for I know not how the mind of the meanest is fed with this 
 folly, that they impute singularity to him that slanders privily, and 
 count it a great piece of art in an inkhorn man, in any tapsterly 
 terms whatsoever, to expose his superiors to envy. I will not deny, 
 but in scholar-like matters of controversy, a quicker style may pass 
 as commendable, and that a quip to an ass is as good as a goad to 
 an ox; but when the irregular idiot, that was up to the ears in 
 divinity before ever he met with probabile in the university, shall 
 leave pro et contra before he can scarcely pronounce it, and come 
 to correct commonweals that never heard of the name of magistrate 
 
 o 
 
 before he came to Cambridge, it is no marvel if every alehouse vaunt 
 the table of the world turned upside down, since the child beateth 
 his father, and the ass whippeth his master. 
 
 But lest I might seem with these night-crows, Nimis curiosus in 
 aliena republica, I will turn back to my first text of studies of 
 delight, and talk a little in friendship with a few of our trivial trans- 
 lators. It is a common practice now-a-days, amongst a sort of 
 shifting companions, that run through every art and thrive by none, 
 to leave the trade of noverint, whereto they were born, and busy 
 themselves with the endeavours of art, that could scarcely latinise 
 their neck-verse if they should have need : yet English Seneca read 
 by candlelight yields many good sentences, as " Blood is a beggar/' 
 and so forth ; and if you intreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will 
 afford you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls of tragical speeches. 
 
 But, grief! Tempus edax rerum, what's that will last always? 
 The sea exhaled by drops will in continuance be dry ; and Seneca, 
 let blood line by line, and page by page, at length must needs die 
 to our stage, which makes his famished followers to imitate the kid 
 in .ZEsop, who, enamoured with the fox's new-fangles, forsook all 
 
XIV 
 
 hopes of life to leap into a new occupation ; and these men, re- 
 nouncing all possibilities of credit or estimation, to intermeddle with 
 Italian translations, wherein, how poorly they have plodded (as those 
 that are neither pouerzal-men, nor are able to distinguish of articles), 
 let all indifferent gentlemen that have travelled in that tongue dis- 
 cern by their two-penny pamphlets. And no marvel though their 
 home-born mediocrity be such in this matter ; for what can be 
 hoped of those that thrust Elysium into Hell, and have not learned, 
 so long as they have lived in the spheres, the just measure of the 
 horizon without an hexameter ? Sufficeth them to botch up a blank 
 verse with ifs and ands, and otherwhile for recreation after their 
 candle-stuff, having starched their beards most curiously, to make a 
 peripatetical path into the inner parts of the city, and spend two or 
 three hours in turning over French Dowdie, where they attract more 
 infection in one minute, than they can do eloquence all days of 
 their life, by conversing with any authors of like argument. 
 
 But lest in this declamatory vein I should condemn all and 
 commend none, I will propound to your learned imitation those 
 men of import that have laboured with credit in this laudable kind 
 of translation. In the forefront of whom I cannot but place that 
 aged father ERASMUS, that invested most of our Greek writers in 
 the robes of the ancient Romans ; in whose traces Philip Melancthon, 
 Sadolet, Plantine, and many other reverend Germans insisting, have 
 re-edified the ruins of our decayed libraries, and marvellously en- 
 riched the Latin tongue with the expense of their toil. Not long 
 after, their emulation being transported into England, every private 
 scholar, WILLIAM TURNER, and who not, began to vaunt their 
 smattering of Latin in English impressions. 
 
 But amongst others in that age, Sir THOMAS ELIOT'S elegance 
 did sever itself from all equals, although Sir THOMAS MORE, with 
 his comical wit, at that instant was not altogether idle : yet was not 
 
XV 
 
 knowledge fully confirmed in her monarchy amongst us, till that 
 most famous and fortunate nurse of all learning, Saint John's, in 
 Cambridge, that at that time was as an university within itself, 
 shining so far above all other houses, halls, and hospitals whatsoever, 
 that no college in the town was able to compare with the tithe of her 
 students, having (as I have heard grave men of credit report) more 
 candles lighted in it every winter morning before four of the clock, 
 than the four of the clock bell gave strokes; till she (I say), as a 
 pitying mother, put to her helping hand, and sent from her fruitful 
 womb sufficient scholars both to support her own weal, as also to 
 supply all other inferior foundations' defects, and, namely, that 
 royal erection of Trinity College, which the university orator, in an 
 epistle to the Duke of Somerset, aptly termed Colonia deducta, from 
 the suburbs of Saint John's. In which extraordinary conception, 
 Uno partu in rempublicam prodiere, the exchequer of eloquence, Sir 
 JOHN CHEEKE, a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues, 
 Sir JOHN MASON, Doctor WATSON, REDMAN, ASCIIAM, GRINDAL, 
 LEVER, PILKINGTON : all which have either by their private read- 
 ings or public works, repurged the errors of art expelled from their 
 purity, and set before our eyes a more perfect method of study. 
 
 But how ill their precepts have prospered with our idle age, 
 that leave the fountains of sciences to follow the rivers of knowledge, 
 their over-fraught studies with trifling compendiaries may testify ; 
 for I know not how it cometh to pass, by the doting practice of our 
 divinity dunces, that strive to make their pupils pulpit-men before 
 they are reconciled to Priscian : but those years which should be 
 employed in Aristotle are expired in epitomes, and well too they 
 may have so much catechism vacation to take up a little refuse 
 philosophy. 
 
 And here I could enter into a large field of invective against 
 our abject abbreviations of arts, were it not grown to a new fashion 
 
XVI 
 
 among our nation, to vaunt the pride of contraction in every manu* 
 arie action ; insomuch that the Pater-noster, which was wont to fill 
 a sheet of paper, is written in the compass of a penny : whereupon 
 one merrily assumed that proverb to be derived, " No penny, no 
 pater-noster/* Which their nice curtailing putteth me in mind of 
 the custom of the Scythians, who, if they had been at any time 
 distressed with famine, took in their girdles shorter, and swaddled 
 themselves straiter, to the intent, no vacuum being left in their 
 entrails, hunger should not so much tyrannise over their stomachs ; 
 even so these men, oppressed with a greater penury of art, do pound 
 their capacity in barren compendiums, and bound their base hu- 
 mours in the beggarly straits of a hungry analysis, lest longing 
 after that infinitum which the poverty of their conceit cannot com- 
 pass, they sooner yield up their youth to destiny, than their heart 
 to understanding. 
 
 How is it then such bungling practitioners in principles should 
 ever profit the commonwealth by their negligent pains, who have 
 no more cunning in logic or dialogue Latin than appertains to the 
 literal construction of either ; nevertheless, it is daily apparent to 
 our domestical eyes, that there is none so forward to publish their 
 imperfections, either in their trade of glose or translations, as those 
 that are more unlearned than ignorant, and less conceiving than 
 infants : yet dare I not impute absurdity to all of that society, 
 although some of them have set their names to their simplicity. 
 
 Whoever my private opinion condemneth as faulty, MASTER 
 GASCOIGNE is not to be abridged of his deserved esteem, who first 
 beat the path to that perfection which our best poets have aspired to 
 since his departure, whereto he did ascend by comparing the Italian 
 with the English, as Tully did GrcEca cum Latinis. Neither was M . 
 TURBERVILE the worst of his time; though in translating he attri- 
 buted too much to the necessity of the time. And in this page of 
 
XV11 
 
 praise I cannot omit aged ARTHUR GOLDING, for his industrious toil 
 in englishing Ovid's Metamorphoses, besides many other exquisite 
 editions of divinity, turned by him out of the French tongue into 
 our own. M. PHAER likewise is not to be forgot, in regard of his 
 famous Virgil, whose heavenly verse, had it not been blemished by 
 his haughty thoughts, England might have long insulted his wit, and 
 corrigat qui potest have been subscribed to his works. But Fortune, 
 the mistress of change, with a pitying compassion respecting 
 MASTER STANIHURST'S praise, would that PHAER should fall that 
 he might rise, whose heroical poetry infired, I should say inspired, 
 with an hexameter fury, recalled to life whatever hissed barbarism 
 hath been buried this hundred year ; and revived by his ragged quill 
 such carterly variety, as no Hodge Ploughman in a country but 
 would have held as the extremity of clownery ; a pattern whereof 
 I will propound to your judgments as near as I can, being part of 
 one of his descriptions of a tempest, which is thus : 
 
 Then did he make heaven's vault to rebound, 
 
 with rounce robble bobble, 
 Of ruffe raife roaring, 
 
 with thwick thwack thurlerie bouncing. 
 
 ' 
 
 Which strange language of the firmament, never subject before to 
 our common phrase, make us, that are not used to terminate heavens 
 moving in the accents of any voice, esteem of their triobulare inter- 
 preter as of some Thrasonical huff-snuff; for so terrible was his style to 
 all mild ears, as would have affrighted our peaceable poets from inter- 
 meddling hereafter with that quarrelling kind of verse, had not sweet 
 MASTER FRANCE, by his excellent translation of MASTER THOMAS 
 WATSON'S sugared Amintas, animated their dulled spirits to such 
 high-witted endeavours. But I know not how, their over-timorous 
 
 c 
 
XV111 
 
 cowardice hath stood in awe of envy, that no man since him durst 
 imitate any of the worst of those Roman wonders in English, which 
 makes me think, that either the lovers of mediocrity are very many, 
 or that the number of good poets are very small; and in truth, 
 (MASTER WATSON except, whom I mentioned before) I know not 
 almost any of late days that hath shewed himself singular in any 
 special Latin poem, whose Amintas, and translated Antigone, may 
 march in equipage of honour with any of your ancient poets. 
 
 I will not say but we had a H ADDON, whose pen would have 
 challenged the laurel from Homer, together with CAR, that came as 
 near him as Virgil to Theocritus. But THOMAS NEWTON with his 
 Leiland, and GABRIEL HARVEY, with two or three other, is almost 
 all the store that is left us at this hour. Epitaphers, and position 
 poets, we have more than a good many, that swarm like crows to a 
 dead carcass, but fly, like swallows in the winter, from any con- 
 tinuate subject of wit. 
 
 The efficient whereof I imagine to issue from the upstart dis- 
 cipline of our reformatory churchmen, who account wit vanity, and 
 poetry impiety ; whose error, although the necessity of philosophy 
 might confute, which lies couched most closely under dark fable's 
 profundity, yet I had rather refer it as a disputative plea by divines, 
 than set it down as a determinate position in my unexperienced 
 opinion. But however their dissensions judgments should decree in 
 their afternoon sessions of an sit, the private truth of my discovered 
 creed in this controversy is this, that as that beast was thought 
 scarce worthy to be sacrificed to the Egyptian Epaphus, who had 
 not some or other black spot on his skin ; so I deem him far un- 
 worthy the name of a scholar, and so consequently to sacrifice his 
 endeavours to art, that is not a poet, either in whole or in part. 
 
 And here, peradventure, some desperate quipper will canvass 
 
XIX 
 
 my purposed comparison plus ultra, reconciling the allusion of the 
 black spot to the black pot, which maketh our poets' undermeal. 
 Muses too mutinous, as every stanza they pen after dinner is full 
 pointed with a stab. Which their dagger drunkenness, although it 
 might be excused with tarn Marti, quam Mercurio, yet will I cover 
 it as well as I may with that proverbial fxcundi calices, that might 
 well have been doorkeeper to the kan of Silenus, when nodding on 
 his ass trapped with ivy, he made his moist nose-cloth the pausing 
 intermedium 'twixt every nap. Let frugal scholars, and fine-fingered 
 novices, take their drink by the ounce, and their wine by the half- 
 penny worths ; but it is for a poet to examine the pottle pots, and 
 gage the bottom of whole gallons, qui bene vult poiein, debet ante 
 pinein. A pot of blue burning ale, with a fiery flaming toast, is as 
 good as Pallas with the nine Muses on Parnassus top ; without the 
 which, in vain they may cry, " O thou, my Muse, inspire me with 
 some pen !" when they want certain liquid sacrifice to rouse her 
 forth her den. 
 
 Pardon me, Gentlemen, though somewhat merrily I glance at 
 their immoderate folly, who affirm, that no man writes with conceit 
 except he take counsel of the cup ; nor would I have you think, 
 that Theonino dente, I arm my style against all, since I do know the 
 moderation of .many gentlemen of that study to be so far from in? 
 famy as their verse from equality ; whose sufficiency, were it as well 
 seen into by those of higher place as it wanders abroad unrewarded 
 in the mouths of ungrateful monsters, no doubt but the remembrance 
 of Maecenas' liberality extended to Maro, and men of like quality, 
 would have left no memory to that proverb of poverty, Si nihil attu- 
 leris, ibis Homere foras. Tush, say our English-Italians, the finest 
 wits our climate sends forth are but dry-brained dolts in comparison 
 of other countries ; whom if you interrupt with redde rationem, they 
 
XX 
 
 will tell you of Petrarch, Tasso, Celiano, with an infinite number of 
 others, to whom if I should oppose CHAUCER, LYDGATE, GOWER, 
 with such like, that lived under the tyranny of ignorance, I do think 
 their best lovers would be much discontented with the collation of 
 contraries, if I should write over all their heads, " Hail fellow, well 
 met'/' One thing I am sure of, that each of these three have vented 
 their metres with as much admiration in English, as ever the proudest 
 Ariosto did his verse in Italian. 
 
 What, should I come to our court, where the otherwhile vaca- 
 tions of our graver nobility are prodigal of more pompous wit, and 
 choice of words, than ever tragic Tasso could attain to ? But as for 
 pastoral poems, I Avill not make the comparison, lest our country^ 
 men's credit should be discountenanced by the contention ; who, 
 although they cannot fare with such inferior facility, yet I know, 
 would carry the bucklers full easily from all foreign bravers, if their 
 subjectum circa quod should savour of any thing haughty. And 
 should the challenge of deep conceit be intruded by any foreigner, 
 to bring our English wits to the touchstone of art, I would prefer 
 divine MASTER SPENSER, the miracle of wit, to bandy line by line for 
 my life, in the honour of England, against Spain, France, Italy, and 
 all the world. Neither is he the only swallow of our summer, 
 (although Apollo, if his tripos were up again, would pronounce him 
 his Socrates) ; but he being forborne, there are extant about London 
 many most able men to revive poetry, though it were executed ten 
 thousand times, as in Plato's, so in Puritans' commonwealth; as, 
 namely, for example, MATTHEW ROYDON, THOMAS ACHLOW, and 
 GEORGE PEELE, the first of whom, as he hath shewed himself singu- 
 lar in the immortal epitaph of his beloved Astrophell, besides many, 
 other most absolute comic inventions (made more public by every 
 man's praise than they can be by my speech) ; so the second hath 
 
XXL 
 
 more than once or twice manifested his deep-witted scholarship in 
 places of credit; and for the last, though not the least of them all, 
 I dare commend him unto all that know him, as the chief supporter 
 of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum 
 Artifex; whose first increase, the arraignment of Paris, might plead 
 to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit, and manifold variety 
 of invention, wherein (mejudice) he goeth a step beyond all that 
 write. Sundry other sweet gentlemen I do know, that we have 
 vaunted their pens in private devices, and tricked up a company of 
 tafFaty fools with their feathers, whose beauty, if our poets had not 
 pecked with the supply of their periwigs, they might have anticked 
 it until this time, up and down the country with the King of Fairies, 
 and dined every day at the pease-porridge ordinary with Delfrigus. 
 
 But Tolasso hath forgotten that it was sometime sacked, and 
 beggars that ever they carried their fardels on footback ; and, in 
 truth, no marvel, when as the deserved reputation of one Roscius is 
 of force to enrich a rabble of counterfeits. Yet let subjects, for all 
 their insolence, dedicate a De propundis every morning to the pre- 
 servation of their Caesar, lest their increasing indignities return them 
 ere long their juggling to mediocrity, and they bewail in weeping 
 blanks the wane of their monarchy. 
 
 As poetry hath been honoured in those her forenamed professors, 
 so it hath not been any whit disparaged by WILLIAM WARNER'S 
 absolute Albions. And here authority hath made a full point ; in 
 whose reverence insisting, I cease to expose to your sport the pic- 
 ture of those pamphleteers and poets, that make a patrimony of 
 inspeech, and more than a younger brother's inheritance of their 
 abcie. Read favourably, to encourage me in the firstlings of my 
 folly, and persuade yourselves I will persecute those idiots and their 
 heirs unto the third generation, that have made Art bankrupt of her 
 
XXII 
 
 ornaments, and sent Poetry a begging up and down the country. 
 It may be, my Anatomy of Absurdities may acquaint you ere long 
 with my skill in surgery, wherein the diseases of art, more merrily 
 discovered, may make our maimed poets put together their blanks 
 unto the building of an hospital. 
 
 If you chance to meet it in Paul's, shaped in a new suit of 
 similitudes, as if, like the eloquent apprentice of Plutarch, it were 
 propped at seven years end in double apparel, think his master hath 
 fulfilled covenants, and only cancelled the indentures of duty. If 
 I please, I will think my ignorance indebted unto you that applaud 
 it ; if not, what rests but that I be excluded from your courtesy, 
 like Apocrypha from your Bibles l ? 
 
 However, yours ever, 
 
 THOMAS NASH, 
 
 1 This Address has been extracted into the Censura Literaria, where a few notes, con- 
 taining dates, &c. are added to the names of the authors mentioned. 
 
 It may be useful to bring into one point of view these names thus recorded. 
 
 X 
 
 1. Erasmus. 16. Abraham France. 
 
 2. William Turner. 17. Thomas Watson. 
 
 3. Sir Thomas Eliot. 18. Dr. Haddon. 
 
 4. Sir Thomas More. 19. Nich. Car. 
 
 5. Sir John Cheeke. 20. Tho. Newton. 
 
 6. Sir John Mason. 21. Gabriel Harvey. 
 
 7. Dr. Watson. 22. Chaucer. 
 
 8. Dr. Redman. 23. Lydgate. 
 
 9. R. Ascham. 24. Gower. 
 
 10. Lever. 25. Edm. Spenser. 
 
 11. Pilkington. 26. Matthew Roydon. 
 
 12. Geo. Gascoigne. 27. Tho. Achlow. 
 
 13. Arthur Golding. 28. George Peele. 
 
 14. Dr. Phaer. 29. Wm. Warner. 
 
 15. Rd. Stanihurst. > 
 
XX111 
 
 DELICIOUS words, the life of wanton wit, 
 
 That doth inspire our souls with sweet content, 
 Why hath your father Hermes thought it fit, 
 
 Mine eyes should surfeit by my heart's consent ? 
 Full twenty summers have I fading seen, 
 
 And twenty Floras in their golden guise : 
 Yet never view'd I such a pleasant Greene, 
 
 As this whose garnish'd gleads compared, devise. 
 Of all the flowers a Lilly * once I lov'd, 
 
 Whose labouring beauty branch'd itself abroad j 
 But now old age his glory hath remov'd, 
 
 And greener objects are mine eyes abroad. 
 No country to the downs of Arcadie, 
 
 Where Aganippe's ever springing wells 
 Do moist the meads with bubbling melody, 
 
 And makes me muse what more in Delos dwells. 
 There feeds our Menaphon's celestial Muse, 
 
 There makes his pipe his pastoral report : 
 Which strained now a note above his use, 
 
 Foretels he'll ne'er come chaunt of Thoae's sport. 
 Read, all that list, and read till you mislike, 
 
 To condemn who can, so Envy be not judge: 
 No, read who can, swell more higher, lest it shriek ; 
 
 Robin* thou hast done well, care not who grudge ! 
 
 HENRY UPCHER 2 . 
 
 1 JOHN LILLY, a popular, but pedantic writer of that day. 
 
 2 I believe there are no other relics of this writer known. 
 
THE 
 
 REPORTS OF THE SHEPHERDS. 
 
 AFTER that the wrath of mighty Jove had wrapped Arcadia with 
 noisome pestilence, insomuch that the air yielding prejudicial sa- 
 vour seemed to be peremptory in some fatal resolution, DEMOCLES, 
 Sovereign and King of that famous Continent, pitying the sinister 
 accidents of his people, being a man as just in his censures as royal 
 in his possessions, as careful for the weal of his country as the 
 countenance of his diadem ; thinking that unpeopled cities were, 
 corrosives in princes' consciences, that the strength of his subjects 
 was .the sinews of his dominions, and that every crown must con- 
 tain a care, not only to win honour by foreign conquests, but in 
 maintaining dignity with civil and domestical insights. DEMOCLES 
 grounding his argument upon these premises, coveting to be counted 
 Pater patrice, calling a parliament together, whither all his nobility, 
 incited by summons, made their repair, elected two of his chief 
 lords to pass unto Delphos, at Apollo's oracle to hear the fatal sen- 
 tence, either of their future misery or present remedy. They having 
 their charge, posting from Arcadia to the Tripos, where Pithia sate, 
 the sacred Nymph that delivered out Apollo's dylo?iimas 9 offering 
 (as their manner is) their orisons and presents, as well to entreat by 
 devotion as to persuade by bounty, they had returned from Apollo 
 this doom. 
 
When Neptune, riding on the southern seas, 
 
 Shall from the bosom of his leman yield 
 The Arcadian wonder, men and Gods to please, 
 Plenty in pride shall march amidst the field. 
 
 Dead men shall war, and unborn babes shall frown, 
 And with their falchions hew their footmen down. 
 
 When lambs have lions for their surest guide, 
 
 And planets rest upon th* Arcadian hills; 
 When swelling seas have neither ebb nor tide ; 
 When equal banks the ocean margin fills : 
 Then look, Arcadians, for a happy time, 
 And sweet content within your troubled clime. 
 
 ' 
 
 No sooner had Pithia delivered this scroll to the lords of Arca- 
 dia, but they departed and brought it to DEMOCLES ; who causing 
 the oracle to be read amongst the distressed commons, found the 
 Delphian censure more full of doubts to amaze than fraught with 
 hope to comfort ; thinking rather that the anger of God sent a 
 peremptory presage of ruin, than a probable ambiguity to applaud 
 any hope of remedy. Yet loth to have his careful subjects fall into 
 the baleful labyrinth of despair, DEMOCLES began to discourse unto 
 them, that the interpreters of Apollo's secrets were not the conceits 
 of human reason, but the success of long-expected events ; that 
 comets did portend at the first blaze, but took effect in the dated 
 bosom of the destinies ; that oracles were foretold at the Delphian 
 cave, but were shaped out and finished in the counsel-house. With 
 such persuasive arguments DEMOCLES appeased the distressed 
 thoughts of his doubtful countrymen ; and commanded, by pro- 
 clamation, that no man should pry into the quiddities of Apollo's 
 answer, lest sundry censures of his divine secrecy should trouble 
 Arcadia with some sudden mutiny. The king thus smoothing the 
 heat of his cares, rested a melancholy man in his court, hiding un* 
 
der his head the double-faced figure of Janus, as well to clear the 
 skies of other men's conceits with smiles, as to furnish out his own 
 dumps with thoughts. But as other beasts level their looks at the 
 countenance of the lion, and birds make wings as the eagles fly, so 
 Regis ad arbitrium totus componitur orbis, the people were measured 
 by the mind of their sovereign ; and what storms soever they 
 smothered in private conceit, yet they made hay and cried holiday 
 in outward appearance, insomuch that every man repaired to his 
 own home, and fell either unto pleasures or labours, as their living 
 or content allowed them. 
 
 Whiles thus Arcadia rested in a silent quiet, MENAPHON, the 
 King's Shepherd, a man of high account among the swains of Ar- 
 cadia, loved of the nymphs as the paragon of all their country 
 youngsters, walking solitary down to the shore, to see if any of his 
 ewes and lambs were straggled down to the strond to browze on 
 the sea ivy, whereof they take special delight to feed, he found his 
 flocks grazing upon the promontory mountains hardly ; whereon 
 resting himself on a hill that overpeered the great Mediterranean, 
 noting how Phoebus fetched his lavaltos on the purple plains of 
 Neptunus, as if he had meant to have courted Thetis in the royalty 
 of his robes ; the dolphins (the sweet conceiters of music) fetched 
 their careers on the calmed waves, as if Arion had touched the 
 strings of his silver-sounding instrument ; the mermaids thrusting 
 their heads from the bosom of Amphitrite, sate on the mounting 
 banks of Neptune, drying their watery tresses in the sunbeams. 
 jEolus forbare to throw abroad his gusts on the slumbering brows of 
 the sea-god, as giving Triton leave to pleasure his queen with de- 
 sired melody, and Proteus liberty to follow his flocks without 
 disquiet. 
 
 MENAPHON looking over the champain of Arcadia, to see if 
 the continent was as full of smiles as the seas were of favours, saw 
 the shrubs, as in a dream, with delightful harmony, and the birds 
 
that chanted on their branches, not disturbed with the least breath 
 of a favourable Zephyrus. Seeing thus the accord of the land and 
 sea, casting a fresh gaze on the water nymphs, he began to consider 
 how Venus was feigned by the poets to spring of the froth of the 
 seas, which drave him straight into a deep conjecture of the incon- 
 stancy of love, that, as if Luna were his loadstar, had every minute 
 ebbs and tides, sometime overflowing the banks of Fortune with a 
 gracious look, lightened from the eyes of a favourable lover, other- 
 whiles ebbing to the dangerous shelf of Despair, with the piercing 
 frown of a froward mistress. MENAPHON, in this brown study, 
 calling to mind certain aphorisms that Avarreon had penned down 
 as principles of Love's follies, being as deep an enemy to fancy as 
 Narcissus was to affection, began thus to scoff at Venus' deity. 
 
 " MENAPHON, thy mind's favours are greater than thy wealth's 
 fortunes, thy thoughts higher than thy birth, and thy private con- 
 ceit better than thy public esteem. Thou art a shepherd, MENA- 
 PHO:N T , who in feeding of thy flock findest out nature's secrecy, and 
 in preventing thy lambs' prejudice, conceitest the astronomical 
 motions of the heavens ; holding thy sheep-walks to yield as great 
 philosophy as the ancients discourse in their learned academies. 
 Thou countest labour as the Indians do their chrysocolla, where- 
 with they try every metal, and thou examine, every action. Content 
 sitteth in thy mind as Neptune in his sea-throne, who with his tri- 
 dent mace appeaseth every storm. When thou seest the heavens 
 frown, thou thinkest on thy faults ; and a clear sky putteth thee in 
 mind of grace : the summer's glory tells thee of youth's vanity ; the 
 winter's parched leaves of age's declining weakness. Thus in a 
 mirror thou measurest thy deeds with equal and considerate mo- 
 tions, and by being a shepherd findest that which kings want in 
 their royalties. Envy overlooketh thee, renting with the winds the 
 pine-trees of Ida, when the Afric shrubs wave not a leaf with the 
 tempest. Thine eyes are veiled with content, that thou canst not 
 
gaze so high as ambition, and for love;" and with that, in naming of 
 love, the shepherd fell into a great laughter. " Love, MENAPHON : 
 why of all follies that ever poets feigned, or men faulted with, this 
 foolish imagination of love is the greatest. Venus, forsooth, for her 
 wanton escapes must be a goddess, and her bastard a deity. Cupid 
 must be young and ever a boy, to prove that love is fond and witless; 
 wings to make him inconstant, and arrows whereby to shew him 
 fearful ; blind (or all were not worth a pin), to prove that Cupid's 
 level is both without aim and reason : thus is the god, and such 
 are his votaries. As soon as our shepherds of Arcadia settle them- 
 selves to fancy, and wear the characters of Venus stamped in their 
 foreheads, straight their attire must be quaint, their looks full of 
 amours, as their god's quiver is full of arrows ; their eyes holding 
 smiles and tears, to leap out at their mistress' favours or her frowns ; 
 sighs must fly as figures of their thoughts, and every wrinkle must 
 be tempered with a passion : thus suited in outward proportion, 
 and made excellent in inward constitution, they straight repair to 
 take view of their mistress's beauty. She, as one observant unto 
 Venus' principles, first tyeth love in her tresses, and wraps affec- 
 tion in the trammels of her hair ; snaring our swains in her locks, as 
 Mars in the net; holding in her forehead fortune's calendar, either to 
 assign dismal influence, or some favourable aspect. If a wrinkle 
 appear in her brow, then our shepherd must put on his working-day 
 face, and frame nought but doleful madrigals of sorrow ; if a dimple 
 grace her cheek, the heavens cannot prove fatal to our kind-hearted 
 lovers ; if she seem coy, then poems of death mounted upon deep- 
 drawn sighs, fly from their master to sue for some favour, alleging 
 how death at the least may date his misery : to be brief, as upon 
 the shores of Lapanthe the winds continue never one day in one 
 quarter, so the thoughts of a lover never continue scarce a minute 
 in one passion ; but as fortune's globe so is fancy's case, variable 
 and inconstant. 
 
6 
 
 " If lovers' sorrows then be like Sisiphus* turmoils, and their 
 favours like honey bought with gall, let poor MENAPHON then live 
 at labour, and make esteem of Venus as of Mars his concubine ; and 
 as the Cimbrians hold their idols in account but in every tempest, 
 so make Cupid a god but when thou art overpained with passions, 
 and then MENAPHON will never love ; for as long as thou temperest 
 /) thy hands with labours, thou canst not fetter thy thoughts with 
 loves. And in this satirical humour, smiling at his own conceits, 
 he took his pipe in his hand, and between every report of his 
 instrument sung a stanza to this effect. 
 
 MENAPHON'S SONG. 
 
 " Some say love, 
 Foolish love, 
 
 Doth rue and govern all the gods : 
 I say love, 
 Inconstant love, 
 
 Sets men's senses far at odds. 
 Some swear love, 
 Smoothed face love, 
 
 Is sweetest sweet that men can have : 
 I say love, 
 Sour love, 
 
 Makes virtues yield as beauty's slave. 
 A bitter sweet, a folly worst of all, 
 That forceth wisdom to be folly's thrall. 
 Love is sweet : 
 Wherein sweet ? 
 
 In fading pleasures that do feign. 
 Beauty sweet : 
 Is that sweet, 
 
 That yields sorrow for a gain ? 
 
If love's sweet, 
 Herein sweet, 
 
 That minute's joys are monthly woes ; 
 'Tis not sweet, 
 That is sweet, 
 
 No where, but where repentance grows. 
 Then love who list ; if beauty be so sour, 
 Labour for me, love rest in Prince's bower." 
 
 MENAPHON, having ended his roundelay, rose up, thinking to 
 pass from the mountain down to the valley, casting his eye to the 
 seaside, espied certain fragments of a broken ship floating upon 
 the waves, and sundry persons driven upon the shore like a calm, 
 walking all wet and weary upon the sands : wondering at this 
 strange sight, he stood amazed; yet desirous to see the event of this 
 accident, he shrouded himself, to rest unespied till he might per- 
 ceive what would happen : at last he might descry it was a woman 
 holding a child in her arms, and an old man directing her, as it were 
 her guide. These three (as distressed wrecks) preserved by some 
 further fore-pointing fate, coveted to climb the mountains, the 
 better to use the favour of the sun to dry their drenched apparel, at 
 last crawled up where poor MENAPHON lay close, and resting them 
 under a bush, the old man did nothing but send out sighs, and the 
 woman ceased not from streaming forth rivulets of tears, that hung 
 on her cheeks like the drops of pearled dew upon the riches of 
 Flora. The poor babe was the touchstone of his mother's passions ; 
 for when he smiled and lay laughing in her lap, were her heart 
 never so deeply overcharged with her present sorrows, yet, kissing 
 the pretty infant, she lightened out smiles from those cheeks that 
 were furrowed with continual sources of tears ; but if he cried, then 
 sighs as smokes, and sobs as thunder-cracks, foreran those showers 
 that which redoubled distress distilled from her eyes : thus with 
 
8 
 
 pretty inconstant passions trimming up her baby, and at last to 
 lull him asleep, she warbled out of her woeful breast this ditty. 
 
 SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD. 
 
 Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee : 
 When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee. 
 
 Mother's wag, pretty boy, 
 
 Father's sorrow, father's joy ! 
 
 When thy father first did see 
 
 Such a boy by him and me, 
 
 He was glad, I was woe, 
 
 Fortune changed made him so : 
 
 When he had left his pretty boy, 
 
 Last his sorrow, first his joy. 
 Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee : 
 When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee. 
 
 Streaming tears that never stint, 
 
 Like pearl drops from a flint, 
 
 Fell by course from his eyes, 
 
 That one another's place supplies : 
 
 Thus he griev'd in every part, 
 
 Tears of blood fell from his heart, 
 
 When he left his pretty boy, 
 
 Father's sorrow, father's joy. 
 Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee : 
 When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee. 
 
 The wanton smiled, father wept, 
 
 Mother cried, baby leapt : 
 
 More he crowed, more he cried, 
 
 Nature could not sorrow hide. 
 
 He must go, he must kiss 
 
 Child and mother, baby bliss : 
 
':'. : ; : 9 - . "' 
 
 For he left his pretty boy, 
 
 Father's sorrow, father's joy. 
 Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee : 
 When thou art old, there's grief enough for thee. 
 
 With this lullaby the baby fell asleep, and SEPHESTIA laying 
 it upon the green grass, covered it with a mantle, and then leaning 
 her head on her hand, and her elbow on her lap, she fell afresh to 
 pour forth abundance of plaints, which LAMEDON, the old man, 
 espying, although in his face appeared the map of discontent, and 
 in every wrinkle was a catalogue of woes, yet to cheer up SEPHES- 
 TIA, shrouding his inward sorrow with an outward smile, he began 
 to comfort her in this manner. 
 
 " SEPHESTIA, thou seest no physic prevails against the gaze of 
 the basilisk, no charm against the sting of the tarantula, no pre- 
 vention to divert the decree of the Fates, nor no means to recal 
 back the baleful hurt of Fortune. Incurable sores are without 
 Avicen's aphorisms, and therefore no salve for them but patience. 
 Then, my SEPHESTIA, sith thy fall is high and fortune low, thy 
 sorrows great and thy hope little, seeing me partaker of thy 
 miseries, set all upon this, Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. 
 Chance is like Janus, double-faced, as well full of smiles to comfort 
 as of frowns to dismay ; the ocean at the deadest ebb returns to a 
 full tide; when the eagle means to soar highest, he raiseth his flight 
 in the lowest dales : so fareth it with Fortune, who in her highest 
 extremes is most unconstant ; when the tempest of her wrath is 
 most fearful, then look for a calm; when she beats thee with 
 nettles, then think she will strew thee with roses ; when she is most 
 familiar with furies, her intent is to be most prodigal, SEPHESTIA. 
 Thus are the arrows of fortune feathered with the plumes of the 
 bird halcyon, that changeth colour with the moon, which, how- 
 soever she shoots them, pierce not so deep but they may be cured. 
 
10 
 
 But, SEPHESTIA, thou art daughter to a king, exiled by him from 
 the hope of a crown; banished from the pleasures of the courtHo 
 the painful fortunes of the country ; parted for love from him thou 
 canst not but love, from MAXIMUS, SEPHESTIA, who for thee hath 
 suffered so many disfavours as either discontent or death can afford. 
 What of all this ; is not Hope the daughter of Time ? Have not stars 
 their favourable aspects, as they have froward opposition ? Is there 
 not a Jupiter as there is a Saturn ? Cannot the influence of smiling 
 Venus stretch as far as the frowning constitution of Mars ? I tell 
 thee, SEPHESTIA, Juno foldeth in her brows the volumes of the 
 destinies; whom melancholy Saturn deposeth from a crown, she 
 mildly advanceth to a diadem ; then fear not, for if the mother live 
 in misery, yet hath she a sceptre for the son : let the unkindness of 
 thy father be buried in the cinders of obedience, and the want of 
 MAXIMUS be supplied with the presence of his pretty babe, who, 
 being too young for fortune, lies smiling on thy knee and laughs at 
 Fortune. Learn by him, SEPHESTIA, to use patience, which is like 
 the balm in the vale of Jehosaphat, that findeth no wound so deep 
 but it cureth : thou seest already Fortune begins to change her view, 
 for after the great storm that pent our ship, we found a calm that 
 brought us safe to shore ; the mercy of Neptune was more than the 
 envy of Jfiolus, and the discourtesy of thy father is proportioned 
 with the favour of the gods. Thus, SEPHESTIA, being copartner 
 of thy misery, yet do I seek to allay thy martyrdom ; being sick to 
 myself, yet do I play the physician to thee, wishing thou mayest 
 bear thy sorrows with as much content as I brook my misfortunes 
 with patience." As he was ready to go forward with his persuasive 
 argument, SEPHESTIA, fetching a deep sigh, filling her tender eyes 
 with tears, made this reply. 
 
 " Sweet LAMEDON, once partner of my royalties, now partaker 
 of my wants, as constant in his extreme distress, as faithful in higher 
 fortunes ; the turtle percheth not on barren trees, doves delight not 
 
in foul cottages, the lion frequents no putrified haunts, friends 
 follow not after poverty, nor hath sinister chance any drugs from 
 the physicians. Nullus ad amissas ibit amicus opes : and yet, LAME- 
 DON, the misfortune of SEPHESTI A abridgeth not our old contracted 
 amity; thou temperest her exile with thy banishment; and she sail- 
 ing to Styx, thou ferry est over to Phlegethon. Then, LAMEDON, 
 saying as Andromache said to Hector, Tu Dominus, tu vir, tu mihi 
 f rater eris : Thy aged years shall be the calendar of my fortunes, 
 and thy grey hairs the parallels of mine actions. If LAMEDON 
 persuade SEPHESTIA to content, PORTIA shall not exceed SEPHEO- 
 TIA in patience ; if he will her to keep a low sail, she will vail all 
 her sheet ; if to forget her loves, she will quench them with labours ; 
 if to accuse Venus as a foe, I will hate Cupid as an enemy ; and 
 seeing the destinies have driven thee from a crown, I will rest 
 satisfied with the country, placing all my delights in honouring 
 thee, and nursing up my pretty wanton. I will imagine a small 
 cottage to be a spacious palace, and think as great quiet in a russet 
 coat, as in royal habiliments. SEPHESTIA, LAMEDON, will not 
 scorn with Juno to turn herself into the shape of Semela's nurse, 
 but unknown, rest careless of my fortunes: the hope of time's 
 return shall be the end of my thoughts, the smiles of my son shall 
 be the nourishment of my heart, and the course of his youth shall 
 be the comfort of my years ; every laughter that leaps from his 
 looks shall be the holiday of my conceits, and every tear shall fur- 
 nish out my griefs, and his father's funerals. I have heard them 
 say, LAMEDON, that the lowest shrubs feel the least tempests, and 
 in the vallies of Africa is heard no thunder ; that in country rooms is 
 greatest rest, and in little wealth the least disquiet ; dignity treadeth 
 upon glass, and honour is like unto the herb sinara, that when it 
 bloometh most gorgeous then it blasteth; Aulica vita splendida 
 miseria ; courts have golden dreams, but cottages sweet slumbers : 
 then, LAMEDON, will I disguise myself, with my clothes will I change 
 
my thoughts ; for being poorly attired, I will be meanly minded, 
 and measure my actions by my present estate, not by former for- 
 tunes/' In saying this, the babe awaked and cried, and she fell to 
 tears mixed with a lullaby. 
 
 All this while MENAPHON sat amongst the shrubs, fixing his 
 eyes on the glorious object of her face : he noted her tresses, which 
 he compared to the coloured hyacinth of Arcadia, her brows to the 
 mountain snows that lie on the hills, her eyes to the grey glister of 
 Titan's gorgeous mantle, her alabaster neck to the whiteness of his 
 flocks, her tears to pearl, her face to borders of lilies interseamed 
 with roses: to be brief, our shepherd MENAPHON, that heretofore 
 was an atheist to love, and as the Thessalian of Bacchus, so he a 
 contemner of Venus, was now, by the wily shaft of Cupid, so en- 
 tangled in the perfection and beauteous excellency of SEPHESTIA, 
 as now he swore no benign planet but Venus, no god but Cupid, no 
 exquisite deity but Love. Being thus fettered with the pliant per- 
 suasions of fancy, impatient in his new affections, as the horse that 
 never before felt the spur, he could not bridle his new conceived 
 amours, but watching when they should depart, perceiving by the 
 gestures of the old man, and the tears of the gentlewoman, that 
 they were distressed, thought to offer any help that lay within the 
 compass of his ability. As thus he mused in his new passions, 
 LAME DON and SEPHESTIA rose up, and resolved to take course 
 which way the wind blew : passing so down the mountain to go 
 seek out some town, at last, they passing softly on, LAMEDON 
 espied MENAPHON : desirous, therefore, to know the course of the 
 country, he saluted him thus. 
 
 " Shepherd, for so far thy attire warrants me; courteous, for 
 so much thy countenance imports ; if distressed persons, whom 
 fortune hath wronged, and the seas have favoured (if we may count 
 it favour to live and want), may without offence crave so far aid as 
 to know some place where to rest our weary and weather-beaten 
 
13 
 
 bones, our charges shall be paid, and you have for recompense 
 such thanks as fortune's outlaws may yield to their favourers// 
 MENAPHON hearing him speak so gravely, but not fitting his ear 
 to his eye, stood staring still on SEPHESTIA'S face, which she per r 
 ceiving, flashed out such a blush from her alabaster cheeks, that 
 they looked like the ruddy gates of the morning. This sweet bashful- 
 ness amazing MENAPHON, at last he began thus to answer. 
 
 " Strangers, your degree I know not, therefore pardon if I give 
 less title than your estates merit: fortune's frowns are prince's 
 fortunes, and kings are subject to chance and destiny. Mishap is 
 to be salved with pity, not scorn ; and we that are fortune's dar- 
 lings, are bound to relieve them that are distressed; therefore 
 follow me, and you shall have such succour as a shepherd may 
 afford." LAMEDON and SEPHESTIA were passing glad, and MENA- 
 PHON led the way, not content only to feed his sight with the 
 beauty of his new mistress, but thought also to infer some occasion 
 of parley, to hear whether her voice were as melodious as her face 
 beautiful: he therefore prosecuted his prattle thus: "Gentlewoman, 
 when first I saw you sitting upon the Arcadian promontory with 
 your baby on your lap, and this old father by, I thought I had 
 seen Venus with Cupid on her knee, courted by Anchises of Troy ; 
 the excellence of your looks could discover no less than Mars his 
 paramour, and the beauty of the child as much as the dignity of 
 her wanton : at last perceiving by your tears and your child's 
 shrieks, that ye were passengers distressed, I lent you sighs to par- 
 take your sorrows, and lukewarm drops to signify how I pity over- 
 charged persons : in lieu whereof let me crave your name, country, 
 and parentage." SEPHESTIA seeing by the shepherd's passionate 
 looks, that the swain was half in love, replied thus : " Courteous 
 shepherd, if my blubbering cheeks did look like Venus at a blush, it 
 was when -the woeful goddess wept for her fair Adonis : my boy is 
 no Cupid, but the son of Care, Fortune's fondling in his youth, to be 
 
14 
 
 (I hope) her darling in his age : in that your looks saw our grief, 
 and your thoughts pitied our woes, our tongues shall give thanks 
 (the bounty of sorrow's tenants), and our hearts pray that the gods 
 may be as friendly to your flocks, as you favourable unto us. My 
 name is SAMEL A, my country Cyprus, my parentage mean, the 
 wife of a poor gentleman now deceased : how we arrived here by 
 shipwreck, gentle shepherd, inquire not, lest it be tedious for thee 
 to hear it, and a double grief for me to rehearse it." 
 
 The shepherd not daring displease his mistress, as having love's 
 threats hanging on her lips, he conveyed them home to his house ; as 
 soon as they were arrived there, he began at the door to entertain 
 them thus : " Fair mistress, the flower of all our nymphs that live 
 here in Arcadia, this is my cottage, wherein I live content, and your 
 lodging, where (please it you) ye may rest quiet. I have no rich 
 clothes of Egypt to cover the walls, nor store of plate to discover 
 any wealth, for shepherds use neither to be proud nor covetous : you 
 shall find here cheese and milk for dainties, and wool for clothing ; 
 in every corner of the house Content sitting smiling and tempering 
 every homely thing with a welcome : this if ye can brook and 
 accept of (as gods allow the meanest hospitality), ye shall have 
 such welcome and fare as Philemon and Baucis gave to Jupiter/' 
 
 SEPHESTIA thanked him heartily, and going into his house 
 found what he promised ; after that they had sat a little by the fire 
 and were well warmed, they went to supper, where SEPHESTIA fed 
 well, as one whom the sea had made hungry, and LAMEDON so plied 
 his teeth, that at supper he spake not one word. After they had 
 taken their repast, MENAPHON, seeing they were weary, and that 
 sleep chimed on to the rest, let them see their lodging, and so 
 gave them the good night. LAMEDON on his flock bed, and 
 SEPHESTIA on her country couch, were so weary, that they slept 
 well; but MENAPHON, poor MENAPHON, neither asked his swains 
 for his sheep, nor took his mole-spade on his neck to see his 
 
15 
 
 tures ; but as a man pained with a thousand passions, drenched in 
 distress, and overwhelmed with a multitude of uncouth cares, he 
 sat like the pictures that Perseus turned with his Gorgon's head into 
 stones. His sister CARMELA kept his house, (for so was the country 
 wench called) and she seeing her brother sit so malcontented, stept 
 to her cupboard, and fetched a little beaten spice in an old bladder; 
 she spared no evening milk, but went amongst the cream bowls, 
 and made him a posset. But, alas ! love had so locked up the shep- 
 herd's stomach, that none would down with MENAPHON. 
 
 CARMELA seeing her brother refuse his spiced drink, thought 
 all was not well, and therefore sat down and wept : to be short, she 
 blubbered and he sighed ; and his men, that came in and saw their 
 master with a kercher on his head, mourned ; so that amongst these 
 swains there was such melody, that MENAPHON took his bow and 
 arrows and went to bed, where casting himself, he thought to have 
 beguiled his passions with some sweet slumbers ; but Love, that 
 smiled at his new entertained champion, sitting on his bed's head, 
 pricked him forward with new desires, charging Morpheus, Phobe- 
 tur, and Icolon, the gods of sleep, to present unto his closed eyes 
 the singular beauty and rare perfections of SAMEL A ; (for so will we 
 now call her) in that the idea of her excellence forced him to breathe 
 out scalding sighs, smothered within the furnace of his thoughts, 
 which grew into this or the like passion. 
 
 " I had thought, MENAPHON, that he which weareth the bay 
 leaf had been free from lightning, and the eagle's pen a preservative 
 against thunder ; that labour had been enemy to love, and the es- 
 chewing of idleness an antidote against fancy ; but I see by proof, 
 there is no adamant so hard, but the blood of a goat will make soft; 
 no fort so well defenced, but strong battery will entry; nor any heart 
 so pliant to restless labours, but enchantments of love will overcome. 
 Unfortunate MENAPHON, that of late thoughtest Venus a strumpet, 
 and her son a bastard, now must thou offer incense at her shrine, 
 
16 
 
 and swear Cupid no less than a god : thou hast reason, MENAPHON; 
 for he that lives without love lives without life, presuming, as Nar- 
 cissus, to hate all, and being, like him, at length despised of all. 
 Can there be a sweeter bliss than beauty, a greater heaven than her 
 heavenly perfections that is mistress of thy thoughts ? If the sparkle 
 of her eyes appear in the night, the stars blush at her brightness ; 
 if her hair glister in the day, Phoebus puts off his wreath of dia- 
 monds, as overcome with the shine of her tresses ; if she walk in the 
 fields, Flora, seeing her face, bids all her glorious flowers close 
 themselves, as being by her beauty disgraced ; if her alabaster neck 
 appear, then Hyems covereth his snow, as surpassed in whiteness : 
 to be short, MENAPHON, if SAMELA had appeared in Ida, Juno for 
 majesty, Pallas for wisdom, and Venus for beauty, had let my SA- 
 MELA have the supremacy; why shouldest thou not then love, and 
 think there is no life to love, seeing the end of love is the posses- 
 sion of such a heavenly paragon? But what of this, MENAPHON; 
 hast thou any hope to enjoy her person ? She is a widow : true ; 
 but too high for thy fortunes : she is in distress. Ah, MENAPHON ! 
 if thou hast any spark of comfort, this must set thy hope on fire : 
 want is the loadstone of affection, distress forceth deeper than for- 
 tune's frowns, and such as are poor will rather love than want 
 relief; fortune's frowns are whetstones to fancy, and as the horse 
 starteth at the spur, so love is pricked forward with distress. 
 SAMELA is shipwrecked, MENAPHON relieves her; she wants, he 
 supplies with wealth ; he sues for love, either must she grant, or 
 buy denial with perpetual repentance/' In this hope rested the 
 poor shepherd; and with that, MENAPHON laid his head down on 
 the pillow and took a sound nap, sleeping out fancy with a good 
 slumber. 
 
 As soon as the sun appeared, the shepherd got him up, and fed 
 fat with this hope, went merrily with his men to the folds, and there 
 letting forth his sheep, after that he had appointed where they 
 
17 
 
 should graze, returned home, and looking when his guests should 
 rise, having slept ill the last night, went roundly to his breakfast. 
 By that time he had ended his desiune, LAMEDON was gotten up, 
 and so was SAMELA. Against their rising CARMELA had shewn 
 her cookery ; and MENAPHON, "tired in his russet jacket, his red 
 sleeves of camlet, his blue bonnet, and his round slops of country 
 cloth, bestirred him as every joint had been set to a sundry office. 
 
 SAMELA no sooner came out of her chamber, but MENAPHON, 
 as one that claimed pity for his passions, bade her good morrow with 
 a firm lover's look. SAMELA knowing the fowl by the feather, was 
 able to cast his disease without his water, perceived that Cupid had 
 caught the poor shepherd in his net, and unless he fought quickly 
 to break out of the snare, would make him a tame fool : fair looks 
 she gave him, and with a smiling sorrow discovered how she grieved 
 at his misfortune, and yet favoured him. 
 
 Well, to breakfast they went; LAMEDON and SAMELA fed 
 hard, but MENAPHON, like the Argive in the date gardens of Ara- 
 bia, lived with the contemplation of his mistress's beauty. The 
 salamander lives not without fire, the herring from the water, the 
 mole from the earth, nor the cameleon from the air ; nor could 
 MENAPHON live but in sight of his SAMELA : whose breath was 
 perfumed air, whose eyes were fire wherein he delighted to dally, 
 whose heart the earthly paradise wherein he desired to ingraft the 
 essence of his love and affection. Thus did the poor shepherd 
 bathe in a kind of bliss, while his eye, feeding on his mistress's face, 
 surfeited with the excellency of her perfection. So long he gazed, 
 that at length breakfast was ended ; and he, desirous to do her any 
 service, first put her child to nurse, and then led her forth to see 
 his folds, thinking with the sight of his flocks to inveigle her, whose 
 mind had rather have chosen any misfortune than have deigned her 
 eyes on the face and feature of so low a peasant. 
 
 Well, abroad they went ; MENAPHON with his sheephook 
 
 F 
 
18 
 
 fringed with crewel, to signify he was chief of the swains; LAMEDok 
 and SAMEL A after. Plodding thus over the green fields, at last they 
 came to the mountains where MENAPHON'S flocks grazed, and there 
 he discoursed to SAMELA thus. " I tell thee, fair Nymph, these 
 plains that thou seest stretching southward are pastures belonging 
 to MENAPHON ; there grows the cinquefoil, and the hyacinth, the 
 cowslip, the primrose, and the violet, which my flocks shall spare, 
 for flowers to make thee garlands ; the milk of my ewes shall be 
 meat for my pretty wanton ; the wool of the fat wethers, that seem 
 as fine as the fleece that Jason fetched from Colchos, shall serve to 
 make SAMELA webs withal; the mountain tops shall be thy morn^ 
 ing walk, and the shady valleys thy evening's arbour ; as much as 
 MENAPHON owes shall be at SAMELA' s command, if she like to live 
 with MENAPHON." 
 
 This was spoken with such deep affects, that SAMELA could 
 scarce keep her from smiling ; yet she covered her conceit with a 
 sorrowful countenance, which MENAPHON espying, to make her 
 merry, and rather for his own advantage, seeing LAMEDON was 
 asleep, took her by the hand and sate down, and pulling forth his 
 pipe, began after some melody to carol out this roundelay. 
 
 MENAPHON'S ROUNDELAY. 
 
 When tender ewes, brought home with evening sun, 
 
 Wend to their folds j 
 
 And to their holds, 
 The shepherds trudge when light of day is done, 
 
 Upon a tree 
 The eagle, Jove's fair bird, did perch : 
 
 There resteth he : 
 
 A little fly harbour then did search, 
 And did presume (though others laugh'd thereat) 
 To perch whereas the princely eagle sat. 
 
The eagle frown'd and shook his royal wings, 
 
 And charg'd the fly 
 
 From thence to hie. 
 Afraid, in haste the little creature flings; 
 
 Yet seeks again, 
 Fearful, to perk him by the eagle's side; 
 
 With moody vein 
 
 The speedy post of Ganymede replied : 
 Vassal, avaunt ! or with my wings you die; 
 Is 't fit an eagle seat him with a fly ? 
 
 The fly crav'd pity; still the eagle frown'd. 
 
 The silly fly, 
 
 Ready to die, 
 Disgrac'd, displac'd, fell groveling to the ground. 
 
 The eagle saw, 
 And with a royal mind said to the fly, 
 
 " Be not in awe, 
 
 I scorn by me the meanest creature die; 
 Then seat thee here !" The joyful fly up flings, 
 And sate safe shadow'd with the eagle's wings. 
 
 As soon as MENAPHON had ended this roundelay, turning to 
 SAMEL A, after a country blush, he began to court her in this homely 
 fashion. " What think you, SAME LA, of the eagle for this royal 
 deed ?" " That he falsified the old proverb, Aquila non capit muscas" 
 " But I mean, SAM EL A, are you not in opinion that the eagle gives 
 instance of a princely resolution, in preferring the safety of a fly 
 before the credit of her royal majesty?" " I think, MENAPHON, 
 that high minds are the shelters of poverty, and kings' seats are 
 coverts for distressed persons ; that the eagle in shrouding the fly 
 did well, but a little forgot her honour. But how think you," said 
 SAMELA, " is this proportion to be observed in love? I guess no; 
 
20 
 
 for the fly did it not for love, but for succour. Hath love then respect 
 of circumstance ? else it is not love, but lust ? for where the parties 
 have no sympathy of estates, there can no firm love be fixed : dis- 
 cord is reputed the mother of division, as in nature this is an unre- 
 futed principle, that it faulteth which faileth in uniformity. He 
 that grafts gilliflowers upon the nettle marreth the smell; w T ho 
 covets to tie the lamb and the lion in one tether, makes a brawl ; 
 equal fortunes are love's favourites, and therefore should fancy be 
 always limited by geometrical proportion, lest if young matching 
 with old, fire and frost fall at a combat, and if rich with poor, there 
 hap many dangerous and braving objections." 
 
 MENAPHO^, half nipped in the pate with this reply, yet like 
 a tall soldier stood to his tackling, and made this answer, " Sup- 
 pose, gentle SAM EL A, that a man of mean estate, whom disdainful 
 fortune had abased in tending to make her power prodigal in his 
 misfortunes, being feathered with Cupid's bolt, were snared in the 
 beauty of a queen, should he rather die than discover his amours ?" 
 " If queens," quoth she, " were of my mind, I had rather die than 
 perish in baser fortunes." " Venus loved Vulcan," replied MENA- 
 PHON. " Truth," quoth SAMELA, " but though he was polt-footed, 
 yet he was a god." " Phao enjoyed Sappho ; he a ferryman that 
 lived by his hands' thrift, she a princess that sate invested with a 
 diadem." " The more fortunate," quoth SAMELA, " was he in his 
 honours, and she the less famous in her honesty." 
 
 " To leave these instances," replied MENAPHON, (for love had 
 made him hardy) " I, sweet SAMELA, infer these presupposed pre- 
 mises to discover the baseness of my mean birth; and yet the 
 deepness of my affection, who ever since I saw the brightness of 
 your perfection shining upon the mountains of Arcadia, like the 
 glister of the sun upon the topless promontory of Sicilia, was so 
 snared with your beauty, and so inveigled with the excellence of 
 that perfection that exceeds all excellency, that love entering my 
 
21 
 
 desire, hath maintained himself by force ; that unless sweet SAMEL A 
 grant me favour of her love, and play the princely eagle, I shall 
 with the poor fly perish in my fortunes/' He concluded this period 
 with a deep sigh; and SAMELA, grieving at this folly of the shep- 
 herd, gave him mildly this answer. 
 
 " MENAPHON, my distressed haps are the resolution of the 
 destinies, and the wrongs of my youth are the forerunners of my 
 woes in age ; my native home is my worst nursery, and my friends 
 deny that which strangers prejudicially grant. I arrived in Arcadia 
 shipwrecked, and MENAPHON , favouring my sorrows, hath afforded 
 me succours, for which SAMELA rests bound, and will prove thankful. 
 As for love, know that Venus standeth on the tortoise, as shewing that 
 Love creepeth on by degrees, that Affection is like the snail, that 
 steals to the top of the lance by minutes ; the grass hath his increase, 
 yet never any sees it augment ; the sun shadoweth, but the motion 
 is not seen : Love, like those, should enter into the eye, and by long 
 gradations pass into the heart. Cupid hath wings to fly, not that 
 Love should be swift, but that he may soar high, to avoid base 
 thoughts. The topaz being thrown into the fire burns straight, but 
 no sooner out of the flame but it freezeth ; straw is soon kindled, 
 but it is but a blaze ; and love that is caught in a moment, is lost 
 in a minute. Give me leave, MENAPIION, first to sorrow for my 
 fortunes, then to call to mind my husband's late funerals; then, if 
 the fates have assigned I shall fancy, I will account of thee before 
 any shepherd in Arcadia/' 
 
 This conclusion of SAMELA drew MENAPHON into such an 
 ecstasy for joy, that he stood as a man metamorphosed ; at last, 
 calling his senses together, he told her he rested satisfied with her 
 answer, and thereupon lent her a kiss, such as blushing Thetis 
 receives from her choicest leman. At this LAMEDON awaked; 
 otherwise, no doubt, MENAPHON had replied; but breaking off their 
 talk, they went to view their pastures ; and so passing down to the 
 
place where the sheep grazed, they searched the shepherds' bags, 
 and so emptied their bottles, as SAMEL A marvelled at such 
 an uncouth banquet. At last they returned home, MENAPHON 
 glorying in the hope of his success, entertaining SAMEL A still with 
 such courtesy, that she, finding such content in the cottage, began 
 to despise the honours of the court. 
 
 Resting thus in house with the shepherd, to avoid tedious con- 
 ceits she framed herself so to country labours, that she oft-times 
 would lead the flocks to the fields herself; and being dressed in 
 homely attire, she seemed like CEnone, that was amorous of Paris. 
 As she thus often traced along the plains, she was noted amongst the 
 shepherds of one DORON, next neighbour to MENAPHON, who en- 
 tered into the consideration of her beauty, and made report of it to 
 all his fellow swains, so that they chatted nought in the fields but of 
 the new shepherdess. One day, amongst the rest, it chanced that 
 DORON, sitting in parley with another country companion of his, 
 amidst other tattle they prattled of the beauty of SAMEL A. " Hast 
 thou seen her?" quoth MELICERTUS (for so was his friend called). 
 " Ay/' quoth DOROX, " and sighed to see her; not that I was in love, 
 but that I grieved she should be in love with such a one as MENA- 
 PHON." " What manner of woman is she?" quoth MELICERTUS. 
 " As well as I can," answered DORON, " I will make description of 
 her." 
 
 DORON'S DESCRIPTION OF SAMELA. 
 
 Like to Diana in her summer weed, 
 
 Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye, 
 
 Goes fair SAMELA. 
 
 Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, 
 When wash'd by Arethusa faint they lie, 
 Is fair SAMELA. 
 
23 
 
 As fair Aurora in her morning grey, 
 
 Deck'd with the ruddy glister of her love, 
 
 Is fair SAMELA. 
 Like lovely Thetis on a calmed day, 
 
 When as her brightness Neptune's fancy move, 
 Shines fair SAMELA. 
 
 Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy, streams, 
 Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory 
 
 Of fair SAMELA. 
 
 Her cheeks, like rose and lily, yield forth gleams, 
 Her brows' bright arches fram'd of ebony: 
 Thus fair SAMELA. 
 
 Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue, 
 And Juno in the shew of majesty, 
 
 For she's SAMELA. 
 
 Pallas in wit : all three if you will view, 
 For beauty, wit, and matchless dignity, 
 Yield to SAMELA. 
 
 " Thou hast/' quoth MELICERTUS, " made such a description, 
 as if Priamus' young boy should paint out the perfection of his 
 Greekish paramour. Methinks the idea of her person represents 
 itself an object to my fancy ; and that I see in the discovery of her 
 
 excellence the rare beauties of ." And with that he broke off 
 
 abruptly with such a deep sigh, as it seemed his heart should have 
 broken, sitting as the Lapithes, when they gazed on Medusa. 
 DORON, marvelling at this sudden event, was half afraid, as if some 
 apoplexy had astonied his senses; so that cheering up his friend, he 
 demanded what the cause was of this sudden conceit. MELICER- 
 TUS, no niggard in discovery of his fortunes, began thus. " I tell 
 thee, Do RON, before I kept sheep in Arcadia, I was a shepherd 
 elsewhere, so famous for rny flocks as MENAPHON for his folds; 
 
beloved of the nymphs, as he liked of the country damsels ; coveting 
 in my loves to use Cupid's wings, to soar high in my desires, though 
 myself were born to base fortunes. The hobby catcheth no prey, 
 unless she mount beyond her mark; the palm-tree beareth most 
 boughs where it groweth highest ; and love is most fortunate where 
 his courage is resolute, and though beyond his compass. Grounding 
 therefore on these principles, I fixed mine eyes on a nymph, whose 
 parentage was great, but her beauty far more excellent ; her birth 
 was by many degrees greater than mine, and my worth by many 
 descents less than hers; yet knowing Venus loved Adonis, and Luna 
 Endymion, that Cupid had bolts feathered with the plumes of a 
 crow, as well as with the pens of an eagle, I attempted, and courted 
 her. I found her looks lightning disdain, and her forehead to con- 
 tain favours for others, and frowns for me : when I alledged faith, she 
 crossed me with ^Eneas ; when loyalty, she told me of Jason ; when 
 I swore constancy, she questioned me of Demophoon ; when I craved 
 a final resolution to my fatal passions, she filled her brows full of 
 wrinkles, and her eyes full of fury, turned her back, and shook me 
 off with a Non placet. 
 
 Thus in loves I lost loves, and for her love had lost all, had 
 I not, when I near despaired the clemency of some courteous star, 
 or rather the very excellence of some mistress's favours, salved my 
 half-despairing malady ; for she seeing that I held a superstitious 
 opinion of love, in honouring him for a deity, not in counting him 
 a vain conceit of poetry, that I thought it sacrilege to wrong my 
 desires, and the basest fortune to enhance my fortune by falsifying 
 my loves to a woman, she left from being so rammage, and gently 
 came to the first, and granted me those favours she might afford, 
 or my thoughts desire/' 
 
 With this he ceased, and fell again to his sighs, which DORON 
 noting, answered thus. " If, my good MELICERTUS, thou didst 
 enjoy thy loves, what is the occasion thou beginnest with sighs, and 
 
25 
 
 endest with passions ?" " Ah, DORON ! there ends my joys ; for no 
 sooner had I triumphed in my favours, but the trophies of my for- 
 tunes fell like the herbs in Syria, that flourish in the morn and fade 
 before night; or like unto the fly tyryma, that taketh life and 
 leaveth it all in one day. So, my DORON, did it fare with me; 
 for I had no sooner enjoyed my love, but the heavens (envious a 
 shepherd should have the fruition of such a heavenly paragon) sent 
 unrevocable fates to deprive me of her life, and she is dead. Dead, 
 DORON ! to her, to myself, to all ; but not to my memory, for so 
 deep were the characters stamped in my inward senses, that obli- 
 vion can never rase out the form of her excellence." And with that 
 he started up, seeking to fall out of those dumps with music, (for he 
 played on his pipe certain sonnets he had contrived in praise of the 
 country wenches) ; but plain DORON, as plain as a packstaff, desired 
 him to sound a roundelay, and he would sing a song, which he 
 caroled to this effect. 
 
 DORON'S JIG. 
 
 Through the shrubs as I can crack, 
 For my lambs pretty ones, 
 'Mongst many little ones; 
 Nymphs I mean, whose hair was black 
 
 As the crow, 
 Like the snow, 
 
 Her face and brows shine I ween ; 
 I saw a little one, 
 A bonny pretty one, 
 As bright, buxom, and as sheen, 
 
 As was she 
 On her knee 
 G 
 
26 
 
 That lull'd the god, whose arrows warms 
 Such merry little ones, 
 Such fair faced pretty ones, 
 As dally in love's chiefest harms : 
 
 Such was mine, 
 Whose grey eyne 
 Made me love. I 'gan to woo 
 This sweet little one ; 
 This bonny pretty one, 
 I woo'd hard a day or two, 
 
 Till she bade, 
 Be not sad, 
 
 Woo no more, I am thine own, 
 Thy dearest little one, 
 Thy truest pretty one. 
 Thus was faith and firm love shewn, 
 
 As behoves 
 Shepherds' loves. 
 
 " How like you this ditty of mine own devising?" quoth 
 DORON. " As well as my music/' replied MELICERTUS; " for if 
 Pan and I strive, Midas being judge, and should hap to give me 
 the garland, I doubt not but his ass's ears should be doubled. But 
 DORON, so long we dispute of love, and forget our labours, that 
 both our flocks shall be unfolded, and to-morrow our merry meet- 
 ing hindered." " That is true," quoth DORON, " for there will be 
 all the shepherds' daughters and country damsels, and amongst them 
 fear not but MENAPHON will bring his fair shepherdess. There, 
 MELICERTUS, shalt thou see her that will amate all our moods, and 
 amaze thee; and therefore, good MELICERTUS, let us be going." 
 
 With this prattle, away they went to their folds, where we leave 
 them, and return to MENAPHON, who triumphing in the hope of 
 
27 
 
 his new loves, caused SAMELA to trick her up in her country attire, 
 and make herself brave against the meeting. She then thought, to 
 be coy were to discover her thoughts, dressed herself up in CAR- 
 MELA'S russet cassock, and that so quaintly, as if Venus, in a 
 country petticoat, had thought to wanton it with her lovely Adonis. 
 The morrow came, and away they t went, but LAMEDON was left 
 behind to keep the house. At the hour appointed, MENAPHON, 
 CARMELA, and SAMELA came, when all the rest were ready to 
 make merry. As soon as word was brought that MENAPHON came 
 with his new mistress, all the company began to murmur, and every 
 man to prepare his eye for so miraculous an object, but PESANA, 
 a herdsman's daughter of the same parish, that long had loved 
 MENAPHON, and he had filled her brows with frowns, her eyes with 
 fury, and her heart with grief; yet coveting in so open an assembly, 
 as well as she could, to hide a pad in the straw, she expected (as 
 others did) the arrival of her new corrival, who at that instant came 
 with MENAPIION into the house. 
 
 No sooner was she entered into the parlour, but her eyes gave 
 such a shine, and her face such a brightness, that they stood gazing 
 on this goddess ; and she, unacquainted, seeing herself among so 
 many unknown swains, dyed her cheeks with such a vermilion blush, 
 that the country maids themselves fell in love with this fair nymph, 
 and could not blame MENAPHON for being over the shoes with 
 such a beautiful creature. Do RON jogged MELICERTUS on the 
 elbow, and so awaked him out of a dream, for he was deeply 
 drowned in the contemplation of her excellency; sending out vollies 
 of sighs in remembrance of his old love, as thus he sat meditating 
 on her favour, how much she resembled her that death had deprived 
 him of. Well, her welcome was great of all the company ; and for 
 that she was a stranger, they graced her to make her the mistress 
 of the feast. 
 
 MENAPHON, seeing SAMELA thus honoured, conceived no small 
 
28 
 
 content in the advancing of his mistress, being passing jocund and 
 pleasant with the rest of the company, insomuch that every one 
 perceived how the poor swain fed upon the dignities of his mistress's 
 graces. PESANA noting this, began to lower; and CARMELA, wink- 
 ing upon her fellows, answered her frowns with a smile, which 
 doubled her grief; for women's pains are more pinching if they be 
 girded with a frump, than if they be galled with a mischief. 
 
 Whiles thus there was bandying of such looks, as every one 
 imported as much as an impreso, SAMEL A, willing to see the fashion 
 of these country young frows, cast her eyes abroad, and in viewing 
 every face, at last her eyes glanced on the looks of MELICERTUS, 
 whose countenance resembled so unto her dead lord, that as a woman 
 astonied, she stood staring on his face; but ashamed to gaze upon a 
 stranger, she made restraint of her looks, and so taking her eye from 
 her particular object, she sent it abroad to make general survey of 
 their country demeanours. 
 
 But amidst all this gazing, he that had seen poor MENAPHON ; 
 how, infected with a jealous fury, he stared each man in the face, fear- 
 ing their eyes should feed or surfeit on his mistress's beauty : if they 
 glanced, he thought straight they would be rivals in his loves; if they 
 flatly looked, then they were deeply snared in affection ; if they once 
 smiled on her, they had received some glance from SAM EL A that 
 had made them so malapert; if she laughed, she liked, and at that 
 he began to frown. Thus sat poor MENAPHON all dinner while, 
 pained with a thousand jealous passions, keeping his teeth guarders 
 of his stomach, and his eyes watchmen of his loves. But MELI- 
 CERTUS, half impatient of his new conceived thoughts, determined 
 to try how the damsel was brought up, and whether she was as wise 
 as beautiful : he therefore began to break silence thus. 
 
 " The orgies which the Bacchanals kept in Thessalia, the feasts 
 which the melancholy Saturnists founded in Danuby, were never so 
 quailed with silence, but on their festival days they did frolic 
 
29 
 
 amongst themselves with many pleasant parleys : were it not a 
 shame, then, that we of Arcadia, famous for the beauty of our 
 nymphs, and the amorous roundelays of our shepherds, should 
 disgrace Pan's holiday with such melancholy dumps ? Courteous 
 country swains, shake off this sobriety ; and seeing we have in our 
 company damsels both beautiful and wise, let us entertain them 
 with prattle to try our wits, and tire our time." To this they all 
 agreed with a plaudit. " Then," quoth MELICERTUS, " by your 
 leave, since I was first in motion, I will be first in question, and 
 therefore new-come shepherdess, first to you :" at this SAMELA 
 blushed, and he began thus. 
 
 " Fair damsel ! when Nereus chatted with Juno he had pardon, 
 in that his prattle came more to pleasure the goddess, than to ratify 
 his own presumption : if 1, mistress, be over bold, forgive me ; I 
 request not to offend, but to set time free from tediousness. Then, 
 gentle shepherdess, tell me, if you should be transformed, through 
 the anger of the gods, into some shape, what creature would you 
 wish to be in form?" SAMELA, blushing that she was the first 
 that was boarded, yet gathered up her crumbs, and desirous to 
 shew her pregnant wit (as the wisest women be ever tickled with 
 self-love), made him this answer. 
 
 " Gentle shepherd, it fits not strangers to be nice, nor maidens 
 too coy, lest the one feel the weight of a scoff, the other the fall of 
 a frump : pithy questions are minds' whetstones, and by discoursing 
 in jest, many doubts are decyphered in earnest ; therefore you have 
 forestalled rne in craving pardon, when you have no need to feel 
 any grant of pardon. Therefore thus to your question : Daphne, 
 I remember, was turned to a bay tree, Niobe to a flint, Lampetia 
 and her sisters to flowers, and sundry virgins to sundry shapes, 
 according to their merits; but if my wish might serve for a meta- 
 morphosis, I would be turned into a sheep." "A sheep; and why 
 so, mistress?" " I reason thus," quoth SAMELA; " my supposition 
 should be simple, my life quiet, my foot the pleasant plains of 
 
30 
 
 Arcadia, and the wealthy riches of Flora; my drink the cool streams 
 that flow from the concave promontory of this continent ; my air 
 should be clear, my walks spacious, my thoughts at ease : and can 
 there be (shepherd) any better premises to conclude my reply than 
 these?" " But have you no other allegations to confirm your reso- 
 lution ?" " Yes, sir/' quoth she, " and far greater." " Then the law 
 of our first motion," quoth he, " commands you to repeat them." 
 
 " Far be it," answered SAMELA, " that I should not do of 
 free-will any thing that this pleasant company commands ; there- 
 fore thus : were I a sheep, I should be guarded from the folds with 
 jolly swains, such as was Luna's love on the hills of Latmos, their 
 pipes sounding like the melody of Mercury, when he lulled asleep 
 Argus ; but more, when the damsels, tracing along the plains, 
 should, with their eyes like sun-bright beams, draw on^ looks to 
 gaze on such sparkling planets : then, weary with food, should I lie 
 and look on their beauties as on the spotted wealth of the richest 
 firmament ; I should listen to their sweet lays, more sweet than the 
 sea-born Syrens : thus feeding on the delicacy of their features, I 
 should, like the Tyrian heifer, fall in love with Agenor's darling." 
 
 " Ay, but," quoth MELICERTUS, " those fair-faced damsels oft 
 draw forth the kindest sheep to the shambles." " And what of that, 
 Sir," answered SAMEJLA, " would not a sheep so long fed with 
 beauty, die for love ?" " If she die," quoth PES AN A, " there is more 
 kindness in beasts than constancy in men, for they die for love 
 when larks die with leeks." " If they be so wise," quoth MENA- 
 PHON, " they shew but their mothers' wits ; for what sparks they 
 have of inconstancy they draw from their female fosterers, as the 
 sea doth ebbs and tides from the moon." " So be it, Sir," answered 
 PES AN A : " then no doubt your mother was made of a weather- 
 cock, that brought forth such a wavering companion ; for you, 
 M. MENAPHON, measure your looks by minutes, and your loves 
 are like lightning, which no sooner flash on the eye but they vanish." 
 " It is, then," quoth MENAPHON, " because mine eye is a foolish 
 
31 
 
 judge, and choose th too basely, which when my heart censures of, 
 it casts away as refuse/' u It were best, then," said PESANA, " to 
 discharge such unjust judges of their seats, and to set your ears 
 hearers of your love pleas." " If they fault," quoth MELICERTUS, 
 " every market town hath a remedy, or else there is never a baker 
 near by seven miles." " Stay, courteous shepherds," quoth SAM EL A, 
 " these jests are too broad before, they are cynical, like Diogenes' 
 quips, that had large feathers and sharp heads : it little fits in this 
 company to bandy taunts of love, seeing you are unwedded, and 
 these all maidens addicted to chastity." " You speak well as a 
 patroness of our credit," quoth PESANA, " for indeed we be virgins, 
 and addicted to virginity." 
 
 " Now," quoth MENAPIION, " that you have got a virgin in 
 your mouth, you will never leave chaunting the word till you prove 
 yourself either a Vestal or a Sybil." " Suppose she were a Vestal," 
 quoth MELICERTUS, "I had almost said a virgin (but God forbid I 
 had made such a doubtful supposition), she might carry water with 
 Amulia in a sieve ; for, amongst all the rest of virgins, we read of 
 none but her that wrought such a miracle." 
 
 PESANA hearing how pleasantly MELICERTUS played with her 
 nose, thought to give him a great bone to gnaw upon, which she cast 
 in his teeth thus briefly. " I remember, Sir, that Epicurus measured 
 every man's diet by his own principles : Apradas, the great Mace- 
 donian pirate, thought every one had a letter of mart that sails in 
 the ocean : none came to knock at Diogenes' tub, but was supposed 
 a Cynic ; and fancy of late hath so tied you to his vanities, that 
 you will think Vesta a flat figured conceit of poetry." 
 
 SAMELA, perceiving these blows would grow to deep wounds, 
 broke off their talk with this pretty digression : " Gentlemen, to end 
 this strife, I pray you let us hear the opinion of DORON; for all this 
 while neither he nor CARMELA have uttered one word, but sat as 
 censors at our pleas : 'twere necessary he told us how his heart came 
 
thus on his halfpenny." DORON, hearing SAMELA thus pleasant, 
 made presently this blunt reply : " I Avas, fair mistress, in solemn 
 doubt with myself, whether in being a sheep you would be a ram or 
 an ewe ?" " An ewe, no doubt/' quoth SAMELA, " for horns are the 
 heaviest burthen that the head can bear/' As DORON was ready to 
 reply, came in suddenly to this parley four or five old shepherds, who 
 broke off their prattle, that from chat they fell to drinking; and so, 
 after some parley of their flocks, every one departed to their own 
 home, where they talked of the exquisite perfection of SAMELA, 
 especially MELICERTUS, who, gotten to his own cottage, and lain 
 down in his couch by himself, began to ruminate on SAMELA'S shape. 
 
 " Ah, MELICERTUS, what an object fortune this day brought 
 to thy eyes ! presenting a strange idea to thy sight, as appeared to 
 Achilles of his dead friend Patroclus ; tresses of gold like the tram- 
 mels of SEPHESTIA'S locks, a face fairer than Venus, such was 
 SEPHESTIA : her eye paints her out SEPHESTIA, her voice sounds 
 her out SEPHESTIA, she seemeth none but SEPHESTIA : but seeing 
 she is dead, and there lives not such another SEPHESTIA, sue to her 
 and love her, for that it is either a self-same or another SEPHESTIA/' 
 
 In this hope MELICERTUS fell to his slumber, but SAMELA was 
 not content, for she began thus to muse with herself: " May this 
 MELICERTUS be a shepherd? or can a country cottage afford such 
 perfection? Doth this coast bring forth such excellency? then happy 
 are the virgins that shall have such suitors, and the wives such 
 pleasing husbands : but his face is not inchaced with any rustic 
 proportion, his brows contain the characters of nobility, and his 
 looks in shepherd's weed are lordly > his voice pleasing, his wit full 
 of gentry : weigh all these equally, and consider, SAMELA, is it not 
 thy MAXIM us ? Fond fool ! away with these suppositions : Could the 
 dreaming of Andromache call Hector from his grave ? or can the 
 vision of my husband raise him from the seas? Tush, stoop not to 
 such vanities ; he is dead, and therefore grieve not thy memory with 
 
33 
 
 the imagination of his new revive, for there hath been but one Hip- 
 politus found to be Virbius, twice a man. To salve SAMELA, then, 
 this suppose : if they court thee with hyacinth, entertain them with 
 roses ; if he send thee a lamb, present him an ewe ; if he woo, be 
 wooed, and for no other reason but he is like MAXIMUS." 
 
 Thus he rested, and thus she slept, all parties being equally 
 content and satisfied with hope except PESANA, who, fettered with 
 the feature of her , best beloved MENAPHON, sat cursing Cupid as 
 a partial deity, that would make more day-light in the firmament 
 than one sun, more rainbows in the heaven than one Iris, and more 
 loves in one heart than one settled passion : many prayers she 
 made to Venus for revenge, many vows to Cupid, many orisons to 
 Hymeneus, if she might possess the type of her desires. 
 
 Well, poor soul, howsoever she was pained, she smothered all 
 with patience, and thought to brave love with seeming not to love; 
 and thus she daily drove out the time with labour and looking to her 
 herd, hearing every day by DORON, who was her kinsman, what suc- 
 cess MENAPHON had in his loves. 
 
 Thus fates and fortunes dallying a doleful catastrophe, to make 
 a more pleasing epitasis, it fell out amongst them thus : MELICER- 
 TUS going to the fields, as he was wont to do, with his flocks, drove 
 to graze as near the swains of MENAPHON as he might, to have view 
 of his new entertained mistress, who, according to his expectation, 
 came thither every day. MELICERTUS, esteeming her to be some 
 farmer's daughter at the most, could not tell how to court her ; yet, 
 at length calling to remembrance her rare wit discovered in their 
 last discourses, finding opportunity to give her both ball and racket, 
 seeing the coast was clear, and that none but SAMELA and he were 
 in the field, he left his flock in the valley, and stept unto her, and 
 saluted her thus. 
 
 " Mistress of all eyes that glance but at the excellence of your 
 perfection, Sovereign of all such as Venus hath allowed for lovers, 
 (Enone's over-match, Arcadia's comet, Beauty's second comfort, 
 
 H 
 
34 ' ' . 
 
 all hail ! Seeing you sit like Juno when she first watched her white 
 heifer on the Lincen downs, as bright as silver Phoebe mounted on 
 the high top of the ruddy element, I was, by a strange attractive 
 force, drawn, as the adamant draws the iron, or the jet the straw, 
 to visit your sweet self in the shade, and afford you such company 
 as a poor swain may yield without offence ; which if you shall vouch 
 to deign of, I shall be as glad of such accepted service, as Paris was 
 first of his best beloved paramour." 
 
 SAM EL A, looking upon the shepherd's face, and seeing his utter- 
 ance full of broken sighs, thought to be pleasant with her shepherd 
 thus : " Arcadia's Apollo, whose brightness draws every eye to turn 
 as the Heliotropion doth after her load ; fairest of shepherds ; the 
 nymph's sweetest object; women's wrong, in wronging many with 
 one's due, welcome ; and so welcome, as we vouchsafe of your ser- 
 vice, admit of your company, as of him that is the grace of all com- 
 panies; and, if we durst upon any light pardon, would venture to 
 request you to shew us a cast of your cunning." SAMEL A made 
 this reply, because she heard him so superfine, as if Ephebus had 
 learned him to refine his mother's tongue ; wherefore though he had 
 done it of an inkhorn desire to be eloquent, and MELICERTUS 
 thinking SAMELA had learned with Lucilla in Athens to anatomize 
 wit, and speak none but similes, imagined she smoothed her talk to 
 be thought like Sappho, Phaon's paramour. 
 
 Thus deceived either in other's suppositions, SAMELA followed 
 her suit thus : " I know, Priamus' wanton could not be without 
 flocks of nymphs to follow him in the vale of Ida : Beauty hath 
 legions to attend her excellency : if the shepherd be true ; if, like 
 Narcissus, you wrap not your face in the cloud of disdain, you 
 cannot but have some rare paragon to your mistress, whom I would 
 have you in some sonnet describe as Jove's last love, if Jove could 
 get from Juno." 
 
 " My pipe shall presume, and I adventure with my voice to set 
 out my mistress's favour, for your excellence to censure of, and 
 
35 
 
 therefore thus:" yet MELICERTUS, for that he had a further reach, 
 would not make any clownish description, chanted it thus cunningly. 
 
 MELICERTUS'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS MISTRESS. 
 
 Tune on, my pipe, the praises of my Love, 
 
 And midst thy oaten harmony recount, 
 
 How fair she is that makes thy music mount, 
 And every string of thy heart's harp to move. 
 
 Shall I compare her form unto the sphere, 
 
 Whence sun-bright Venus vaunts her silver shine ? 
 Ah, more than that by just compare is thine, 
 
 Whose crystal looks the cloudy heavens do clear. 
 
 How oft have I descending Titan seen 
 His burning locks couch in the sea-queen's lap, 
 And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap 
 
 In watry robes, as he her lord had been ! 
 
 When as my Nymph, impatient of the night, 
 
 Bade brig h Atreus with his train give place ; 
 
 Whiles she led forth the day with her fair face, 
 And lent each star a more than Delian light. 
 
 Not Jove or Nature (should they both agree 
 
 To make a woman of the firmament, 
 
 Of his mix'd purity) could not invent 
 A sky-born form so beautiful as she ! 
 
 When MELICERTUS had ended this roundelay in praise of his 
 mistress, SAMELA perceived by his description, that either some 
 better poet than himself had made it, or else that his former phrase 
 was dissembled ; wherefore, to try him thoroughly, and to see what 
 snake lay hid under the grass, she followed the chase in this manner. 
 
*' MELTCERTUS, might not a stranger crave your mistress's name ?" 
 At this the shepherd blushed, and made no reply. " How now ?" 
 quoth SAMELA; " What is she so mean that you shame, or so high 
 that you fear to bewray the sovereign of your thoughts ? stand not 
 in doubt, man ; for be she base, I read that mighty Tamberlaine, 
 after his wife Xenocrate (the world's fair eye) passed out of the 
 theatre of this mortal life, he chose stigmatical trulls to please his 
 humorous fancy. Be she a princess, honour hangs in high desires, 
 and it is the token of a high mind to venture for a queen : then, 
 gentle shepherd, tell me thy mistress's name/' 
 
 MELICERTUS, hearing his goddess speak so favourably, breath- 
 ed out this sudden reply: " Too high SAMELA, and therefore I fear 
 with the Syrian wolves to bark against the moon ; or with them of 
 Scyrum, to shoot against the stars, in the height of my thoughts soar- 
 ing too high, to fall with woeful repenting Icarus. No sooner did 
 mine eye glance upon her beauty, but as if Love and Fate had sat 
 to forge my fatal disquiet, they trapt me within her looks, and hail- 
 ing her idea through the passage of my sight, placed it so deeply in 
 the centre of my heart, as maugre all my studious endeavour, it still 
 and ever will keep restless possession. Noting her virtues, her 
 beauties, her perfections, her excellence, and fear of her too high- 
 born parentage, though painfully fettered, yet have I still feared to 
 dare so haughty an attempt to so brave a personage : lest she 
 offensive at my presumption, I perish in the height of my thoughts/' 
 
 This conclusion, broken with an abrupt passion, could not so 
 satisfy SAMELA, but she would be further inquisitive. At last, after 
 many questions, he answered thus : " Seeing, SAMELA, I consume 
 myself and displease you, to hazard for the salve that may cure 
 my malady, and satisfy your question, know it is the beauteous 
 SAMELA/' " Be there more of that name in Arcadia beside my- 
 self?" quoth she. " I know not/' said MELICERTUS ; " but were 
 there a million, only you are MELICERTUS'S SAMELA " " But of a 
 
million," quoth she, ^ I cannot be MELICERTUS'S SAMELA; for love 
 hath put one arrow of desire in his quiver, but one string to his bow, 
 and in choice but one aim of affection/' " Have ye already," said 
 MELICERTUS, " set your rest upon some higher personage?" " No," 
 said SAMELA, " I mean by yourself; for I have heard that your 
 fancy is linked already to a beautiful shepherdess in Arcadia." 
 
 At this the poor swain tainted his cheeks with a vermilion die; 
 yet thinking to carry out the matter with a jest, he stood to his 
 tackling thus: "Whosoever, SAMELA, descanted of that love, told 
 you a Canterbury tale; some prophetical full mouth, that, as he were 
 a cooler's eldest son, would by the last tell where another's shoe 
 wrings; but his sowterly aim was just level, in thinking every look 
 was love, or every fair word a pawn on loyalty/' 
 
 " Then," said SAMELA, taking him at a rebound, " neither 
 may I think your glances to be fancies, nor your greatest protesta- 
 tion any assurance of deep affection : therefore, ceasing off to court 
 any further at this time, think you have proved yourself too tall a 
 soldier to continue so long at battery, and that I am a favourable 
 foe that have continued so long at parley : but I charge you, by the 
 love you owe your dearest mistress, not to say any more as touch- 
 ing love at this time." "If, SAMELA," said he, " thou hadst enjoined 
 me, as Juno did to Hercules, most dangerous labours, 1 would have 
 discovered my love by obedience, and my affection by death : yet 
 let me crave this, that as I began with a sonnet, so I may end with 
 a madrigal." " Content, MELICERTUS," quoth she, " for none more 
 than I love music." Upon this reply, the shepherd, proud, followed 
 with this ditty. 
 
 MELICERTUS'S MADRIGAL. 
 
 What are my sheep without their wonted food ? 
 
 What is my life except I gain my love ? 
 My sheep consume and faint for want of blood, 
 
 My life is lost unless I grace approve. 
 
38 
 
 No flower that sapless thrives ; 
 
 No turtle without pheer. 
 The day without the sun doth lour for woe : 
 
 Then woe mine eyes, unless thy beauty see 
 My sun, SAMELA'S eyes, by whom I know 
 Wherein delight consists, where pleasures be. 
 Nought more the heart revives 
 
 Than to embrace his dear. 
 The stars from earthly humours gain their light ; 
 
 Our humours by their light possess their power : 
 SAMELA'S eyes, fed by my weeping sight, 
 Infudes my pains or joys, by smile or lour. 
 So wends the source of love ; 
 
 It feeds, it fails, it ends. 
 
 Kind looks, clear to your joy, behold her eyes, 
 Admire her heart, desire to taste her kisses : 
 In them the heaven of joy and solace lies ; 
 Without them every hope his succour misses. 
 Oh, how I love to prove, 
 Whereto this solace tends. 
 
 Scarce had the shepherd ended this madrigal, but SAMELA 
 began to frown, saying he had broken promise. MELICERTUS 
 alledged, if he had uttered any passion, 'twas sung, not said. Thus 
 these lovers, in a humorous descant of their prattle, espied, afar ofT, 
 old LAMEDON and MENAPHON coming towards them : whereupon, 
 kissing in conceit, and prattling with interchanged glances, MELI- 
 CERTUS stole to his sheep, and SAMELA sat her down, making of 
 
 nets to catch birds. 
 
 
 At last LAMEDON and her love came, and after many gracious 
 looks and much good parley, helped her home with her sheep, and 
 put them in the folds : but leaving these amorous shepherds busy 
 in their loves, let us return at length to the pretty baby, SAMELA'S 
 child, whom MENAPHON had put to nurse in the country. This 
 infant being by nature beautiful, and by birth noble, even in his 
 
39 
 
 cradle expressed to the eyes of the gazers such glorious presages of 
 his approaching fortunes, as if another Alcides (the arm-strong 
 darling of the doubled night), by wrestling with snakes in his 
 swaddling clouts, should prophesy to the world the approaching 
 wonders of his prowess. So did his fiery looks reflect terror to the 
 weak beholders of his ingrafted nobility, as if some god twice-born, 
 like to the Thracian Bacchus, forsaking his heaven-born deity, 
 should delude our eyes with the alternate form of his infancy. 
 
 Five years had full run their monthly revolution, when as this 
 beauteous boy began to shew himself among the shepherd's children, 
 with whom he had no sooner contracted familiar acquaintance but 
 straight he was chosen lord of the May-game, king of their sports, 
 and ringleader to their revels, insomuch that his tender mother 
 beholding him by chance, mounted in his kingly majesty, and 
 imitating honourable justice in his gamesome exercise of disci- 
 pline, with tears of joy took up these prophetical terms ; " Well 
 do I see, where God and Fate hath vowed felicity, no adverse 
 fortune may expel prosperity. PLEUSIDIPPUS, thou art young, 
 thy looks high, and thy thoughts haughty ; sovereignty is seated 
 in thine eyes, and honour in thy heart : I fear this fire will have 
 his flame, and then am I undone in thee, my son. My country 
 life (sweet country life), in thy proud soaring hopes, despoiled and 
 disrobed of the disguised array of his rest, must return russet weeds 
 to the folds where I left my fears, and haste to the court of my hell, 
 there to invest me with my wonted cares ! How now, SAM EL A, wilt 
 thou be a Sybil of mishaps to thyself? The angry heavens that 
 have eternized thy exile, have established thy content in Arcadia, 
 my content in Arcadia, that we may be no longer then, my PLEU- 
 SIDIPPUS, days in Arcadia, which I have cause to fear; for the 
 whelps of the lion are no longer harmless than when they are 
 whelps, nd babes are no longer to be awed than while they are 
 babes: Ay, but nature :" and therewith she paused, being inter- 
 rupted by a tumult of boys, that by young PLEUSIDIPPUS'S com- 
 
40 
 
 mand fell upon one of their fellows and beat him most cruelly, for 
 playing false play at nine-holes ; which she espying through the 
 lattice window, could not choose but smile above measure: but 
 when she saw him, in his childish terms, condemn one to death, 
 for despising the authority bequeathed him by the rest of the boys, 
 then she bethought her of the Persian Cyrus that deposed his grand- 
 father Astyages, whose use it was, at like age, to imitate majesty in 
 like manner. 
 
 In this distraction of thoughts she had not long time stayed, 
 but LA ME DON and MENAPHO^ called her away to accompany 
 them to the folds, whiles PLEUSIDIPPUS, hasting to the execution 
 of justice, dismissed off his boyish session till their next meet- 
 ing : where, how imperiously he behaved himself in. punishing 
 misorders amongst his equals, in using more than jesting justice 
 towards his untamed copesmates, I refer it to the annals of the 
 Arcadians, that dilate not a little of this ingenious argument. 
 
 In this sort did PLEUSIDIPPUS draw forth his infancy, till, on a 
 time, walking to the shore, where he with his mother were wrecked, to 
 gather cockle and pebble stones, as children are wont, there arrived 
 on the strand a Thessalian pirate named Eu HI LOCH us, who, after 
 he had foraged in the Arcadian confines, driving before him a large 
 booty of beasts to his ships, espied this pretty infant; when, gazing 
 on his face as wanton Jove gazed on Phrygian Ganymede in the fields 
 of Ida, he exhaled into his eyes such deep impression of his perfection, 
 as that his thought never thirsted so much after any prey as this 
 pretty PLEUSIDIPPUS'S possession. 
 
 But determining first to assay him by courtesy, before he 
 assailed him with rigour, he began to try his wit after this manner: 
 " My little child, whence art thou, where wert thou born, what is 
 thy name, and wherefore wanderest thou thus all alone on the shore?" 
 " I pray ye, what are ye, Sir," quoth PLEUSIDIPPUS, " that deal thus 
 with me by interrogatories, as if I were some runaway?" " Wilt 
 thou not tell me, then, who was thy father?" said he. " Good Sir, 
 
, 4.1 
 
 if ye will needs know, go ask that of my mother." " He hath said 
 well, my Lord," quoth ROMANIC, who was one of his special asso- 
 ciates ; " for wise are the children in these days that know their 
 own fathers, especially if they be begotten in dog-days, when their 
 mothers are frantic with love, and young men furious for lust. 
 Besides, who knows not that these Arcadians are given to take the 
 benefit of every Hodge, when they will sacrifice their virginity to 
 Venus, though they have but a bush of nettles for their bed ? and 
 sure this boy is but some shepherd's bastard at the most, howsoever 
 this wanton face importeth more than appearance." 
 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS'S eyes at this speech resolved into fire, and his 
 face in purple, with a more than common courage in children of his 
 years and stature, gave him the lie roundly in this reply : " Peasant, 
 the bastard in thy face, for I am a gentleman, wert thou a man in 
 courage, as thou art a cow in proportion, thou wouldest never have 
 so much impaired thy honesty, as to derogate from my honour. 
 Look not in my face, but level at my heart by this that thou 
 seest :" and therewith he let drive at him with such pebble-stones 
 as he had in his hat> insomuch that ROMANIC was driven to his 
 heels, to shun this sudden hailshot, and EURILOCHUS resolved into 
 laughter, and in terms of admiration most highly extolled so ex- 
 ceeding magnanimity in so little a body ; which how available it 
 proved to the confirmation of his fancy, that was before inflamed 
 with his features, let them imagine that ha.ve noted the imbecility 
 of that age, and the unresisted fury of men at arms. 
 
 Sufficeth at this instant to unfold (all other circumstances of 
 praise laid apart) that EURILOCHUS being far in love with his extra- 
 ordinary lineaments, awaited no farther parley, but willed his men 
 perforce to hoist him a shipboard ; intending as soon as ever he ar- 
 rived in Thessaly, by sending him to the court as a present, to make 
 peace with his lord and master AGE NOR, who not long before Jiad 
 proclaimed him as a notorious pirate throughout all his dominions. 
 
 Neither swerved he one whit from his purpose ; for no sooner 
 
 i 
 
42 
 
 had he cast anchor in the port of Adrianopolis, but he arrayed him in 
 choice silks and Tyrian purple, and so sent him as a prize to the king 
 of that country ; who walking as then in his summer-garden with his 
 queen, the beauteous ERIPHILA, fell to discourse (as one well seen 
 in philosophy) of herbs and flowers, as the savour or colour did oc- 
 casion ; and having spent some time in disputing their medicinable 
 properties, his lady reaching him a marigold, he began to moralize 
 of it thus merrily. " I marvel the poets, that were so prodigal in 
 painting the amorous affection of the sun to his hyacinth, did never 
 observe the relation of love 'twixt him and the marigold ; it should 
 seem, either they were loth to incur the displeasure of women by 
 propounding, in the way of comparison, any servile imitation for 
 headstrong wives, that love no precepts less than those pertaining 
 unto duty ; or that the flower, not so usual in their gardens as ours, 
 in her unacquainted name, did obscure the honour of her amours to 
 Apollo, to whose motions reducing the method of her springing, she 
 waketh and sleepeth, openeth and shutteth her golden leaves as he 
 riseth and setteth." 
 
 " Well did you forestal my exception/' quoth ERIPHILA, " in 
 terming it a servile imitation ; for were the condition of a wife so 
 slavish as your similitude would infer, I had as lief be your page 
 as your spouse, your dog as your darling/' " Not so, sweet wife/' 
 answered AGENOR ; " but the comparison holdeth in this, that as 
 the marigold resembleth the sun both in colour and form, so each 
 man's wife ought every way to be the image of her husband, framing 
 her countenance to smile, when she sees him disposed to mirth, and 
 contrariwise her eyes to tears, he being surcharged with melancholy. 
 As the marigold display eth the orient ornaments of her beauty, and 
 to the resplendent view of none but her lover Hyperion, so ought 
 not a woman of modesty lay open the allurements of her face to 
 any but her espoused pheer, in whose absence, like the marigold iri 
 the absence of the sun, she ought to shut up her doors, and so- 
 lemnize continual night, till her husband, her sun, making a happy 
 
43 
 
 return, unsealeth her silence with the joy of his sight/' " Believe 
 me, but if all flowers/' quoth ERIPHILA, " afford such influence of 
 eloquence to our adverse orators, I'll exempt them all from my 
 smell, for fear they be all planted to poison/' 
 
 " Oft have I heard," replied AGENOR, " our cunning physicians 
 conclude, that one poison is harmless to another, which if they be so, 
 there is no cause why a thistle should fear to be stung of a nettle/' 
 " I can tell you, Sir, you were best beware, lest in wading too far 
 in comparisons of thistles and nettles, you exchange not your rose 
 for a nettle." " If I do," quoth AGENOR, " it is no more, but my 
 gardener shall pluck it up by the roots, and throw it over the wall 
 as a weed." " To end this jest, which else would issue to a jar, 
 what purple flower is this, in form like a hyacinth," quoth ERI- 
 PHILA, " so cunningly dropped with blood, as if nature had inter- 
 meddled with the herald's art to emblazon a bleeding heart?" " It 
 is the flower into which, poets feign, Venus caused dying Adonis to 
 be turned a fair boy, but passing infortunate." " Was it possible," 
 quoth ERIPHILA, " that ever nature should be so bounteous to a 
 boy, to give him a face in despite of women so fair ? Feign would I 
 see such an object, and then would I defy beauty for imparting our 
 excellency to any inferior object." 
 
 In saying these words (as if Fortune meant to present her fancy 
 with her desired felicity), ROMANIC, conducted by one of the lords, 
 came with young PLEUSIDIPPUS in his hand into the privy garden, 
 where discoursing unto the king the intent of EUR i LOCH us in pre- 
 senting him with such an inestimable jewel, the manner of his 
 taking, of the strand of Arcadia, with other circumstances of vowed 
 allegiance; all which being gratefully accepted of AGENOR, he sealed 
 their several pardons, and gave them leave to depart. But when he 
 had thoroughly observed every perfection of young PLEUSIDIPPUS, 
 he burst into these terms of passion : " Had sea-born Pontia then 
 an appliable ear in our idleness, that to testify her eternal deity she 
 should send us a second Adonis to delude our senses? whatever 
 
44 
 
 may deserve the name, fair have I seen before, beauty have I be- 
 held in his brightest orb, but never set eye on immortality before 
 this hour." ERIPHILA, likewise, in no less extasy, seeing her eyes 
 to dazzle with the reflex of his beauty, and her cheeks tainted with 
 a blush of disgrace by too much gazing on his face, said, " That 
 either the sun had left his bower to beguile their eyes with a bor- 
 rowed shape, (which could not keep in his brightness,) or Cupid, 
 dismounted from his mother's lap, left his bow and quiver at 
 random, to outbrave the Thessalonian dames in their beauty/' 
 
 In this contrariety of thoughts, being all plunged well nigh in 
 a speechless astonishment, the fair child PLEUSIDIPPUS, not used to 
 such hyperbolical spectators, broke off the silence by calling for his 
 victuals, as one whose empty stomach, since his coming from sea, 
 was not over-cloyed with delicates. Whereat AGENOR, revived from 
 his trance, wherein the present wonder had inwrapped him, de- 
 manded such questions of his name and parentage as the pirate's 
 ignorance could not unfold ; but he being able to tell no more than 
 this, that his mother was a shepherdess, and his own name PLEU- 
 SIDIPPUS, cut off all other interrogatories, by calling, after his 
 childish manner, again for his dinner. Whereupon AGE NOR, com- 
 manding him to be had in, and used in every respect as the child 
 of a prince, began, in his solitary walk, by his countenance to 
 calculate his nativity, and measure his birth by his beauty ; con- 
 tracting him in thought heir to the kingdom of Thessaly, and hus- 
 band to his daughter, before he knew whence the child descended, 
 or who was his father. 
 
 But leaving young PLEUSIDIPPUS, thus spending his youth in 
 the Thessalian court, protected with the tender affection of such a 
 courteous foster-father as AGENOR, return we where we left, back 
 into Arcadia, and meet his mother, the fair SAM EL A, returning from 
 the folds. Who having discoursed by the way as she came home to 
 LAMEDON and MENAPHON, what she late saw and observed in 
 her son, they both conjoined their judgments to their conclusion, 
 
45 
 
 that he was doubtless born to some greater fortunes than sheep- 
 cotes could contain ; and therefore it behoved her to further his 
 destinies with some good and liberal education, and not to detain 
 him any longer in that trade of life which his fortune withstood ; 
 but by the way, to rebuke him for tyrannizing so lordly over the 
 boys, lest the neighbour shepherds might haply intrude the name of 
 injury on them, being strangers, for his insulting over their children. 
 
 With this determination came she home; and calling for 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS, according to their former counsel, he would in no 
 wise be found. Thereupon inquiry was made among all the shep- 
 herds, diligent search in every village, but still the most carefullest 
 post returned with Non est inventus. Which SAME LA hearing, 
 thinking she had utterly lost him whom fortune had saved, began 
 in this manner to act her unrest. " Dissembling heavens, where is 
 your happiness ? Unconstant times, what are your triumphs ? Have 
 you, therefore, hitherto fed me with honey, that ye might at last 
 poison me with gall ? Have you fatted me so long with Sardinian 
 smiles, that like the wreck of the Sirens, I might perish in your 
 wiles ? Curst that I was to afFy in your courtesy ! Curst that I am 
 to taste of your cruelty! O, PLEUSIDIPPUS! livest thou, or art 
 thou dead? No; thou art dead : dead to the world, dead to thy 
 kinsfolks, dead to Cyprus, dead to Arcadia, dead to thy mother 
 SAMELA; and with thee dies the world's wonder, thy kinsfolks' com- 
 fort, Cyprus' soul, Arcadia's hopes, thy mother's honours ! Was this 
 the prophecy of thy sovereignty, to yield up thy life to death so 
 untimely ? Wretched was I, of all women, to bring thee forth to 
 this infancy ! 
 
 " O, cruel Themis ! that didst revolve such unevitable fate : 
 Hard-hearted death ! to prosecute me with such hate ! Have we 
 therefore escaped the fury of the seas, to perish on the land ? Was it 
 not enough that we were exiled from higher prosperity, but we must 
 all of us suddenly be overwhelmed with the overflow of a second ad- 
 versity ? My husband and my father to be swallowed in the fury of 
 
the surge, and now thou to be " (and therewith her eyes distilled 
 
 such abundance of tears as stopped the passage of her plaints, and 
 made her seem a more than second Niobe, bewailing her sevenfold 
 sorrow under the form of weeping flint). 
 
 MENAPHON, who had overheard her all this while, as one that 
 sought opportunity to plead his unrest, perceiving her in that ex- 
 tremity of agony for her son's supposed loss, stepped to her pre- 
 sently, and cheered her up in these terms. " Fair Shepherdess ! 
 might the tears of contrition raise the dead from destruction, then 
 were it wisdom to bewail what weeping might recal ; but since such 
 anguish is fruitless, and these plainings bootless, comfort yourself 
 with the hope of the living, and omit the tears for the dead/' 
 
 " Why," quoth SAMELA, " how is it possible a woman should 
 lose him without grief, whom she hath conceived with sorrow ? He 
 was, sweet MENAPHON, the divided half of my essence ; soul to my 
 joys, and life to my delights ; as beauteous in his birth as is our 
 bright bow-bearing god, that played the shepherd awhile for love 
 amidst our pleasant Arcadian downs." 
 
 " Whatever he was in beauty," quoth MENAPHON, " proceeded 
 from your bounty, who may by marriage make his like when you 
 please ; therefore there is no cause why you should so much grieve 
 to see your first work defaced, that of a new mould can form a far 
 better than ever he was." 
 
 " Ah, MENAPHON! never more may his like proceed from my 
 loins. I tell thee, he made the chamber bright with his beauty 
 when he was born, and checked the night with the golden rays 
 that gleamed from his looks : never more may I be the mother of 
 such a son ! " 
 
 " Yes, SAMELA," quoth the frolic shepherd, " think not but, if 
 thou wilt list to my loves, I will enrich thee with as fair increase as 
 ever he was." " Alas, poor swain !" said she, " thou hopest in vain, 
 since another must reap what thou hast sown, and gather into his 
 barns what thou hast scattered in the furrow." 
 
" Another reap what I have sown ?" Therewith he scratched 
 his head where it itched not ; and setting his cap he could not tell 
 which way, in a hot fustian fume he uttered these words of fury : 
 r " Strumpet of Greece, repayest thou my love with this lavish in- 
 gratitude ? Have I, therefore, with my plenty supplied thy wants, 
 that thou with thy pride shouldest procure my woe ? Did I relieve 
 thee in distress, to wound me in thy welfare with disdain ? Deceitful 
 woman (and therewith he swore a holiday oath, by Pan the god 
 of the shepherds) either return love for love, or I will turn thee 
 forth of doors to scrape up thy crumbs where thou canst; and make 
 thee pitied for thy poverty, that erst while wert honoured in every 
 man's eye through the supportance of thy beauty." 
 
 " Belike, then," quoth SAMELA, " when you entertained me 
 into your house, you did it not in regard of the laws of hospitality, 
 but only with this policy to quench the flames of your fancy : 
 then, Sir, I have mistook your honesty ; and am less indebted to 
 your courtesy." 
 
 " Nay, I thought no less," said MENAPHON, " when your 
 straggling eye, at our last meeting, would be gadding throughout 
 every corner of our company, that you would prove such a kind 
 kestrel. But if you will needs be starting, I'll serve you thereafter, 
 I warrant you : then see which of our beardless youngsters will 
 take you in, when I have cast you forth." 
 
 " Those," said she, " that outcountenance MENAPHON and his 
 pelf, and are better able than yourself ! But howsoever I find their 
 favour, I henceforth defy you and your fellowship." And there- 
 with in great rage she flung away into the next chamber, where her 
 uncle LAMEDON lay sleeping; who complaining of MENAPHON'S 
 discourtesies, he straight invented this remedy : There was a shep- 
 herd called MORON, brother to DORON, that not long before died of 
 a surfeit, whose house and flock being set to sale after his decease, 
 he bought them both forthwith for SAMELA, with certain remainder 
 of money he had, and therein enfeoffed her, maugre the fury of 
 
MENAPHON; who when he saw she was able to support her state 
 without his purse, became sick for anger, and spent whole eclogues 
 in anguish. 
 
 Sometime lying comfortless in his bed, he would complain him 
 to the winds of his woes, in these or such like words : " Forlorn and 
 forsook, since physic doth loth thee, despair be thy death ; Love is 
 a god, and despiseth thee a man ; Fortune blind, and cannot be- 
 hold thy deserts : die, die, fond MENAPHON ! that ungratefully hast 
 abandoned thy mistress I" And therewith stretched himself upon 
 his bed, as thinking to have slept, he was restrained by cares that 
 exiled all rest from his eyes ; whereupon taking his pipe in his hand, 
 'twixt playing and singing he plained him thus. 
 
 MENAPHON'S SONG IN HIS BED. 
 
 You restless Cares, companions of the night, 
 
 That wrapp'd my joys in folds of endless woes, 
 Tire on my heart, and wound it with your spight, 
 Since love and fortune prove my equal foes ! 
 
 Farewel, my hopes ; farewel, my happy days ; 
 Welcome, sweet grief, the subject of my lays ! 
 
 Mourn heavens, mourn earth; your Shepherd is forlorn; 
 Mourn times and hours, since bale invades by bower: 
 Curse every tongue, the place where I was born ; 
 Curse every thought, the life which makes me lour. 
 Farewel, my hopes; farewel, my happy daysj 
 Welcome, sweet grief, the subject of my lays ! 
 
 Was I not free ? was I not Fancy's aim ? 
 
 Fram'd not Desire my face to front Disdain ? 
 I was " 2 she did : but now one silly maim 
 
 Makes me to droop, as he whom love hath slain. 
 Farewel, my hopes; farewel, my happy days; 
 Welcome, sweet grief, the subject of my lays ! 
 
49 
 
 Yet drooping, and yet living to this death, 
 
 I sigh, I sue for pity at her shrine; 
 Whose fiery eyes exhale my vital breath, 
 
 And make my flocks with parching heat to pine. 
 Farewel, my hopes; farewel, my happy days; 
 Welcome, sweet grief, the subject of my lays! 
 
 Fade they, die I : long may she live to bliss, 
 
 That feeds a wanton fire with fuel of her form, 
 And makes perpetual summer where she is, 
 Whiles I do cry, overtook with Envy's storm. 
 
 Farewel, my hopes; farewel, my happy days; 
 Welcome, sweet grief, the subject of my lays ! 
 
 No sooner had MENAPHON ended this ditty, but PESANA, 
 hearing that he was lately fallen sick, and that SAMEL A and he 
 were at mortal jars, thinking to make hay while the sun shined, and 
 take opportunity by her forelocks, coming into his chamber, under 
 pretence to visit him, fell into these terms : " Why, how now, ME- 
 NAPHON; hath your new change driven you to a night-cap ? Believe 
 me, this is the strangest effect of love that ever I saw ; to freeze so 
 quickly the heart that is set on fire so lately." " Why, may it not 
 be a burning fever as well?" quoth MENAPHON, blushing. " Nay, 
 that cannot be," said PESANA; " since you shake for cold, not "sweat 
 for heat." " Why, if it be so, it is long of cold entertainment." 
 " Why," said PESANA, " hath your hot entertainment cooled your 
 courage?" " No ; but her undeserved hate quite hindered my con- 
 quest." " You know," said PESANA, " where you might have been 
 let in long ere this, without either assault or any such battery." 
 
 With this the shepherd was mute, and PESANA ashamed; but 
 at length regathering his spirits, to bewray his martyrdom, and 
 make his old mistress some new music, he strained forth this ditty. 
 
 K 
 
50 
 
 Fair fields, proud Flora's vaunt, why is't you smile, 
 
 When as I languish? 
 You golden meads, why strive you to beguile 
 
 My weeping anguish? 
 I live to sorrow; you to pleasure spring: 
 
 Why do you spring thus? 
 What, will not Boreas' tempests, wrathful king, 
 
 Take some pity on us? 
 And send forth winter in a rusty weed, 
 
 To wail my bemoanings ; 
 Whiles I, distressed, do tune my country reed 
 
 Unto my groanings. 
 But heaven and earth, time, place, and every power, 
 
 Have with her conspired 
 To turn my blissful sweet to baleful sour, 
 
 Since I, fond, desired 
 The heaven, whereto my thoughts may not aspire, 
 
 Ay me unhappy ! 
 It was my fault t'embrace my bane, the fire 
 
 That forceth me to die. 
 Mine be my pain, but hers the cruel cause 
 
 Of this strange torment: 
 
 Wherefore no time my banning prayers shall pause, 
 
 Till proud she repent. 
 
 " Well I perceive," said PESANA, " for all she hatli let you fly 
 like a, hawk that hath lost her tyre, yet you mean to follow suit and 
 service, though you get but a handful of smoke to the bargain/' 
 " Not so;" said MENAPHON, " but perhaps I seek to return an ill 
 bargain as dear as I bought it." " If you do so, you are wiser than 
 this kercher sheweth you," said PESANA. 
 
 Much idle prattle to this end had MENAPHON with PESANA 
 in his sickness ; and long it was not, but that with good diet and 
 warm broths, (and especially by her careful attendance) he began 
 
51 
 
 to gather up his crums, and listen by little and little to the love he 
 late scorned. 
 
 Leave we them to their equal desires, and surfeiting either of 
 other's society, and let us look back to Thessaly, where SAMELA'S 
 stripling (now grown up to the age of sixteen years) flourished in 
 honour and feats of arms above all the knights of the court, inso- 
 much, that the echo of his fame was the only news talked on 
 throughout every town in Greece. 
 
 But OLYMPIA, the mistress of his prowess (for so was the 
 king's daughter named) was she that most of all exulted in the far 
 renowned reports of his martial perfections, to whose praise he did 
 consecrate all his endeavours, to whose exquisite form he did dedi- 
 cate all his adventures. But hell-born Fame, the eldest daughter 
 of Erynnis, envying the felicity of these two famous lovers, dis- 
 mounted eftsoons from her brass-sounding buildings, and unbur- 
 dened herself of her secrets in the presence of young PLEUSIDIPPUS, 
 among whose catalogue she had not forgot to discover the incom- 
 parable beauty of the Arcadian shepherdess ; whereof the young 
 prince no sooner had received an inkling, but he stood upon thorns 
 till he had satisfied his desire with her sight. Therefore, on a time 
 sitting with his mistress at supper, when for table-talk it was de- 
 bated amongst them, what country bred the most accomplished 
 dames for all things, after strangers and others had delivered up 
 their opinions without partiality, one among them all, who had been 
 in Arcadia, gave up his verdict thus freely : 
 
 " Gentlewoman/' quoth he, " be it no disgrace for the moon 
 to stoop to the sun ; for the stars to give place when Titan appears ; 
 then I hope neither the Thessalians will be moved, nor the Grecians 
 aggrieved, if I make Apollo's Arcadia beauty's meridian. Neither 
 will I proceed herein as our philosophical poets are wont, that 
 muster every mover in the zodiac, every fixed star in the firmament, 
 every elemental word of art in an almanack, to prove that country 
 
52 
 
 for beauty most canonical where their mistress abideth ; when as 
 (God wot) had they but learned of Apelles, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, 
 they would not have aspired above their birth, or talked beyond 
 their sowterly bringing up. Our Arcadian nymphs are fair and 
 beautiful, though not begotten of the sun's bright rays ; whose eyes 
 vaunt Love's armoury to the view, whose angelical faces are to the 
 obscure earth instead of firmament. View but this counterfeit 
 (and therewithal he shewed the picture of SAMELA) and see if it 
 be not of force to draw the sun from his sphere, or the moon from 
 her circle, to gaze as the one did on the beauty of Daphne, or all 
 night contemplate, as the other, on the form of Endymion." 
 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS, who all this while heard his tale with attentive 
 patience, no sooner beheld the radiant glory of this resplendent 
 face, but as a man already installed in eternity, he exclaimed thus 
 abruptly : " 0, Arcadia ! Arcadia ! storehouses of nymphs, and 
 nursery of beauty I" At which words OLYMPIA, starting up sud- 
 denly, as if she, a second Juno, had taken her Jove in bed with 
 Alcmena, and overcasting the chamber with a frown, that was able 
 to mantle the world with an eternal night, she made passage to her 
 choler in these terms of contempt : " Beardless upstart, of I know 
 not whence, have the favours of my bounty (not thy desert) entered 
 thee so deeply in overweening presumption, that thou shouldest be 
 the foremost in derogation of our dignity, and blaspheming of my 
 beauty ? I tell thee, miscreant, I scorn thy clownish Arcadia, with 
 his inferior comparisons, as one that prizeth her perfection above 
 any created constitution." 
 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS, upon this speech, stood plunged in a great per- 
 plexity, whether he should excuse himself mildly, or take her up 
 roundly ; but the latter being more level to his humour than the 
 former, he began thus to rouse up his fury : " Disdainful dame ! that 
 upbraidest me with my birth as it were base, and my youth as it 
 were boyish, know that though my parents and progeny are envied 
 
53 
 
 by obscurity, yet the sparks of renown that make my eagle-minded 
 thoughts to mount the heavenly fire imprisoned in the pannicles of 
 my crest, inciting me to more deeds of honour than stout Perseus 
 effected with his falchion in the fields of Hesperia, ascertains my soul 
 I was the son of no coward, but a gentleman : but sith my inequality 
 of parentage is such an eyesore to thy envy, hold, take thy favours 
 (and therewith he threw her glove) and immortalize whom thou 
 wilt with thy toys, for I will to Arcadia in spite of thee and thy 
 affinity, there either to seek out mischance, or a new mistress/' 
 
 With this, in a great rage he rose from the board, and would 
 have mounted himself to depart in that mood, had not the lords and 
 gentlemen there present dissuaded him from such an unadvised 
 enterprize. Neither was this unkindness kept so secret, but it came 
 to the king's ear as he was new risen from dinner, who, for the love 
 he bare to PLEUSIDIPPUS, whom he bad honoured with knight- 
 hood not long before, and for the toward hopes he saw in him, took 
 pains to go to the chamber where they were, and finding his 
 daughter in strange manner perplexed with the thoughts of PLEU- 
 si DIFFUSES departure, her eyes red, and her cheeks all to be blub- 
 bered with her jealous tears, he took her up in this manner. 
 " Daughter, I thought I had chose such a one to be the object of 
 your eye, as ye might have every way loved and honoured as the 
 lord of your life, and not have controlled as the slave of your lust. 
 Did I therefore grace him with my countenance, that you should 
 distam him with your taunts ? Peevish girl ! I advise thee, on my i 
 displeasure, either reconcile thyself betimes, and reform thy un- 
 reverent terms, or I will disclaim the love of a father, and deal by 
 thee no more as a daughter/' 
 
 OLYMPIA, who already had sufficiently bitten on the bridle, 
 took these words more unkindly than all her former bitterness, 
 which she digested but sourly ; nevertheless, making necessity the 
 present time's best policy, she humbled herself as she might with 
 
54 
 
 modesty, and desired the best interpretation of what was past. 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS, whose courteous inclination could not withstand 
 this submission, in sign of reconcilement, gave her a stoccado des 
 labies; yet was he not so reconciled, but he kept on his purpose of 
 going to Arcadia, whereat OLYMPIA (though she grudged inwardly, 
 yet being loath to offend) held her peace, and determined to bestow 
 upon him a remembrance, whereby he might be brought to think 
 on her in his absence ; which was, the device of a bleeding heart 
 floating in the sea waves, curiously stamped in gold, with this motto 
 about it : portum out mortem, alluding, as it seemed, to the device 
 in his shield, wherein (because it was taken up by EURILOCHUS on 
 the shore) was cunningly drawn in a field argent, the sea waves with 
 Venus sitting on the top, in token that his affection was already 
 fettered. 
 
 " Here, hold this," said she, " my sweet PLEUSIDIPPUS, and 
 hang it about thy neck, that when thou art in Arcadia, it may be 
 ever in thy eye ; so shall these drops of ruth, that paint out a pain- 
 ful truth, withdraw thy fancy from attracting strange beauty:" 
 which said, the tears gushed from her eyes, and AGENOR/S likewise, 
 who gave him nothing so much in charge as to make haste of his 
 return. PLEUSIDIPPUS, though he could have been content to have 
 done the like for company, yet he had such a mind on his journey, 
 that he brake off* such ceremonies, and hasted a shipboard ; and in 
 a bark bound for Arcadia, having the wind favourable, made a short 
 cut, so as in a day and night's sailing he arrived on the shore join- 
 ing on the promontory, where he, his mother, and LAMEDON, were 
 first wrecked. 
 
 Leave we him wandering, with some few of his train that came 
 with him, along the sea-side, to seek out some town or village where 
 to refresh themselves, and let us a while to the court of DEMOCLES, 
 where our history began : who, having committed his daughter, 
 with her tender babe, her husband MAXIMUS, and LAMEDON his 
 
55 
 
 uncle, without oar or mariner, to the fury of the merciless waves, 
 determined to leave the succession of his kingdom to uncertain 
 chance; for his queen, with SEPHESTIA'S loss (whom she deemed 
 to be dead), took such thought, that within short time after she 
 died. DEMOCLES, as careless of all weathers, spent his time, epi- 
 cure like, in all kind of pleasures that either art or expence might 
 afford, so as for his dissolute life he seemed another Heliogabalus, 
 deriving his security from that grounded tranquillity which made it 
 proverbial to the world, No heaven but Arcadia. 
 
 Having spent many years in this variety of vanity, Fame, deter- 
 mining to apply herself to his fancy, sounded in his ear the singular 
 beauty of his daughter SAMEL A : he, although he were an old colt, 
 yet had not cast all his wanton teeth, which made him, under the 
 bruit of being sick of a grievous apoplexy, steal from his court se- 
 cretly, in the disguise of a shepherd, to come and seek out SAMEL A, 
 who, not a little proud of her new flock, lived more contented than 
 if she had been queen of ARCADIA; and MELICERTUS, joying not a 
 little that she was parted from MENAPHON, used every day to visit 
 her without dread, and court her in such shepherd's terms as he had, 
 which how they pleased her, I leave to you to imagine, when, as 
 not long after, she vowed marriage to him solemnly, in presence of 
 all the shepherds, but not to be solemnized till the prophecy was 
 fulfilled, mentioned in the beginning of this history. 
 
 Although this penance exceeded the limits of his patience, yet, 
 hoping that the oracle was not uttered in vain, and might as well 
 (albeit he knew not which way) be accomplished in him as in any 
 other, was contented to make a virtue of necessity, and await the 
 utmost of his destiny. But PLEUSIDIPPUS, who by this time had 
 perfected his policies, exchanging his garments with one of the herd- 
 grooms of MENAPIION, tracing over the plains in the habit of a 
 shepherd, chanced to meet with DEMOCLES as he was new come 
 into those quarters, whom mistaking for an old shepherd, he began 
 
56 
 
 many impertinent questions belonging to the sheep-cotes ; at last he 
 asked him if he knew SAMELA'S sheepfold : who, answering doubt- 
 fully to all alike, made him half angry : and had not SAMELA 
 passed by at that instant, to fill her bottle at a spring near the foot 
 of the promontory, he should like enough have had first handsel of 
 our new shepherd's sheep-hook. But the wonder of her beauty so 
 wrought with his wounded fancy y that he thought report a partial 
 spreader of her praises, and fame too base to talk of such forms. 
 
 SAMELA, espying this fair shepherd so far overgone in his gaz- 
 ing, stepped to him, and asked him if he knew her, that he so over- 
 looked her. " Pardon me, fair shepherdess/' said PLEUSIDIPPUSJ 
 " if it be a fault ; for I cannot choose, being eagle-sighted, but gaze 
 on the sun the first time I see it/' " And truly I cannot choose but 
 compare you to one of .ZEsop's apes, that finding a glow-worm in 
 the night, took it for a fire ; and you, seeing a face full of deformi- 
 ties, mistake it for the sun/' " Indeed, it may be, mine eyes made 
 opposite to such an object may fail in their office, having their 
 lights rebated by such brightness." " Nay, not unlike," quoth 
 SAMELA; "for else, out of doubt, you would see your way better/* 
 " Why," quoth PLEUSIDIPPUS, " I cannot go out of the way when 
 I meet such glistering goddesses in my way." " How now, Sir 
 Paris, are you out of your arithmetic ? I think you have lost your 
 wits with your eyes, that mistake Arcadia for Ida, and a shep- 
 herdess for a goddess." " However it please you," quoth PLEUSIDIP- 
 PUS, " to derogate from my prowess by the title of Paris, know 
 that I am not so far out of my arithmetic, but that by multiplica- 
 tion I can make two of one in an hour's warning ; or be as good as 
 a cypher to fill up a place at the worst hand ; for my wit sufriceth, 
 be it never so simple, to prove both re and voce, that there can be 
 no vacuum in rerum natura : and mine eyes, or else they deceive 
 me, will enter so far in art, as, niger est contrarius albo, and teach 
 me how to discern twixt black and white." 
 
57 
 
 Much other circumstance of prattle passed between them, 
 which the Arcadian records do not show, nor I remember. Sufficeth, 
 he pleaded love, and was repulsed ; which drove him into such a 
 choler, that meeting his supposed shepherd, who, lying under a 
 bush, had all this while overheard them, he entered into such terms 
 of indignation as Jove, shaking his earth-quaking hair, when he 
 sat in consultation of Licaon. Wherefore, DEMOCLES, perceiving 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS repulsed, who was every way graced with the orna- 
 ments of nature, began to cast over his bad pennyworths, in whose 
 face age had furrowed her wrinkles, except he should lay his crown 
 down at her feet, and tell her he was king of Arcadia ; which in 
 commonwealth's respects, seeming not commodious, he thought to 
 turn a new leaf, and make this young shepherd the means to per- 
 fect his purpose. He had, not far from that place, a strong castle, 
 which was inhabited as then by none but tilsmen and herd-grooms ; 
 thither did he persuade PLEUSIDIPPUS to carry her perforce, and 
 effect that by constraint, that he could not achieve by entreaty ; 
 who, listening not a little to this counsel, that was never plotted for 
 his advantage, presently put in practice what he of late gave in 
 precepts, and waiting till the evening that SAMEL A should fold her 
 sheep, having given his men the watch- word, maugre all the shep- 
 herds adjoining, he mounted her behind him ; and being by 
 DEMOCLES directed to the castle, he made such havock among the 
 stubborn herdsmen, that will they, nill they, he was lord of the 
 castle. Yet might not this prevail with SAME LA, who, constant to 
 her old shepherd, would not entertain any new love, which made 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS think all his harvest lost in the reaping, and blemish 
 all his delights with a mournful drooping. 
 
 But DEMOCLES, that looked for a mountain of gold in a mole- 
 hill, finding her alone, began to discourse his love in more ample 
 manner than ever PLEUSIDIPPUS ; telling her how he was a king, 
 what his revenues were, what power he had to advance her, with 
 
58 
 
 many other proud vaunts of his wealth, and prodigal terms of his 
 treasure. SAME LA hearing the name of a king, and perceiving him 
 to be her father, stood amazed, like Medusa's metamorphosis, and 
 blushing oft with intermingled sighs, began to think how injurious 
 Fortune was to her, shewn in such an incestuous father : but he, 
 hot-spurred in his purpose, gave her no time to deliberate or con- 
 sider of the matter, but required either a quick consent, or a present 
 denial. She told him that the shepherd MELICERTUS was already 
 entitled in the interest of her beauty, wherefore it was in vain what 
 he or any other could plead in the way of persuasion. 
 
 He thereupon entered into a large field of the baseness of 
 shepherds, and royalties of kings, with many other assembled argu- 
 ments of delight that would have fetched Venus from her sphere 
 to disport : but SAME LA, whose mouth could digest no other meat 
 save only her sweet MELICEHTUS, ashamed so long to hold parley 
 with her father about such a matter, flung away to her withdrawing 
 chamber in a dissembled rage, and there, after her wonted manner, 
 bewailed her misfortunes. 
 
 DEMOCLES, plunged thus in a labyrinth of restless passions, 
 seeing MELICERTUS'S figure was so deeply printed in the centre of 
 her thoughts, as neither the resolution of his fancy, his metamor- 
 phosis from a king to a traveller, crowns, kingdoms, preferments, 
 (batteries that soon overthrow the fortress of women's fantasies) ; 
 when DEMOCLES, I say, saw that none of these could remove SA- 
 ME LA, hearing that the Arcadian shepherds were in an uproar for 
 the loss of their beautiful shepherdess, his hot love changing to a 
 bird of coy disdain, he intended by some revenge either to obtain 
 his love, or satisfy his hate : whereupon thoroughly resolved, he 
 stole away secretly in his shepherd's apparel, and got him down to 
 the plains, where he found all the swains in a mutiny about the 
 recovery of their beautiful paragon. DEMOCLES stepping amongst 
 the rout, demanded the cause of their controversy. " Marry, Sir," 
 
59 
 
 quoth DORON, bluntly, " the flower of all our garland is gone/' 
 " How mean you that, Sir?" quoth he. " We had," answered 
 DORON, " an ewe amongst our rams, whose fleece was as white as 
 the hairs that grow on father Boreas' chin, or as the dangling 
 dewlap of the silver bull ; her front curled like to the Erimanthian 
 boar, and spangled like to the worsted stockings of Saturn ; her face 
 like Mars treading upon the milk-white clouds : believe me, shep- 
 herd, her eyes like the fiery torches tilting against the moon. This 
 paragon, this nonesuch, this ewe, this mistress of our flocks, was by 
 a wily fox stolen from our folds, for which these shepherds assemble 
 themselves to recover so wealthy a prize." " What is he," quoth 
 MENAPHON, " that DORON is in such debate with? Fellow, canst 
 thou tell us any news of the fair shepherdess that the knight of 
 Thessaly hath carried away from her fellow nymphs?" 
 
 DEMOCLES thinking to take opportunity by the forehead, and 
 seeing time had feathered his bolt, willing to assay as he might to hit 
 the mark, began thus : " Shepherds, you see my profession is your 
 trade, and although my wandering fortunes be not like your home- 
 born favours, yet were I in the groves of Thessalian Tempe, as I am 
 in the plains of Arcadia,, the swains would give me as many due 
 honours, as they present you here with submiss reverence. Beauty 
 that drew Apollo from heaven to play the shepherd, that fetched 
 Jove from heaven to bear the shape of a bull for Agenor's daugh- 
 ter, the excellence of such a metaphysical virtue, I mean, shepherds, 
 the fame of your fair SAMEL A, hovering in the ears of every man 
 as a miracle of nature, brought me from Thessaly to feed mine eyes 
 with Arcadia's wonder : stepping along the shore to come to some 
 sheepcote, where my weary limbs might have rest, Love, that for my 
 labours thought to lead me to Fancy's pavilion, was my conduct to 
 a castle, where a Thessalian knight lies in hold ; the portcullis was 
 let down, the bridge drawn, the court of guard kept : thither I went, 
 and for my tongue I was known to be a Thessalian ; I was enter- 
 
60 
 
 tained and lodged. The knight, whose years are young, and valour 
 matchless, holding in his arms a lady more beautiful than Love's 
 queen, all blubbered with tears, asked me many questions, which 
 as I might I replied unto ; but Avhile he talked, mine eye surfeiting 
 with such excellence, was detained upon the glorious shew of such 
 a wonderful object. I demanded what she was of the standers by, 
 and they said she was the fair shepherdess, whom the knight had 
 taken from the swains of Arcadia, and would carry with the first 
 wind that served into Thessaly. This, shepherds, I know, and 
 grieve that thus your loves should be overmatched with Fortune, 
 and your affections pulled back by contrariety of destiny/' 
 
 MELICERTUS hearing this, the fire sparkling out of his eyes, 
 began thus : " I tell thee, shepherd, if Fates with their forepointing 
 pencils did pen down, or Fortune with the deep variety resolve, or 
 Love with his greatest power determine to deprive Arcadia of the 
 beautiful SAMEL A, we would with our blood sign down such spells 
 on the plains, that either our gods should summon her to Elysium, 
 or she rest with us quiet and fortunate ; thou seest the shepherds 
 are up in arms to revenge, only it rests who shall have the honour 
 and principality of the field/' " What needs that question," quoth 
 MENAPHON ; " am not I the king's shepherd, and chief of all the 
 bordering swains of Arcadia?" "I grant," quoth MELICERTUS; 
 " but am not I a gentleman, though tired in a shepherd's skin-coat, 
 superior to thee in birth, though equal now in profession?" 
 
 Well, from words they had fallen to blows, had not the shepherds 
 parted them ; and, for the avoiding of further troubles, it was agreed 
 that they should in two eclogues make description of their loves, and 
 DEMOCLES, for he was a stranger, to sit censor ; and who best could 
 decypher his mistress's perfection, should be made general of the rest. 
 
 MENAPHON and MELICERTUS condescended to this motion; 
 and DEMOCLES sitting as a judge, the rest of the shepherds stand- 
 ing as witnesses of this combat, MENAPHON began thus. 
 
61 
 
 MENAPHON'S ECLOGUE. 
 
 Too weak the wit, too slende,r is the brain, 
 That means to mark the power and worth of love 
 Not one that lives (except he hap to prove) 
 
 Can tell the sweet, or tell the secret pain. 
 
 Yet I that have been 'prentice to the grief, 
 Like to the cunning seaman, from afar, 
 By guess will take the beauty of that star, 
 
 Whose influence must yield me chief relief. 
 
 You censors of the glory of my dear, 
 With reverence, and lowly bend of knee, 
 Attend and mark what her perfections be; 
 
 For in my words my fancies shall appear. 
 
 Her locks are plighted like the fleece of wool, 
 That Jason with his Grecian mates achieved : 
 As pu're as gold, yet not from gold derived ; 
 
 As full of sweets, as sweet of sweets is full. 
 
 Her brows are pretty tables of conceit, 
 
 Where love his records of delight doth quote : 
 On them her dallying locks do daily float, 
 
 As love, full oft, doth feed upon the bait. 
 
 Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights, 
 That animate the sun, or clear the day; 
 In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play, 
 
 Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights. 
 
 Her cheeks like ripened lilies steep'd in wine, 
 Or fair pomegranate kernels wash'd in milk ; 
 Or snow-white threads, in nets of crimson silk ; 
 
 Or gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline. 
 
Her lips like roses overwash'd with dew, 
 Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower : 
 No frost their fair, no wind doth waste their power, 
 
 But by her breath her beauties do renew. 
 
 Her chrystal chin like to the purest mold, 
 
 Enchac'd with daintiest daisies, soft and white, 
 Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight, 
 
 Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold. 
 
 Her neck like to an ivory shining tower, 
 
 Where-through with azure veins sweet nectar runs j 
 Or like the down of swans where Senesse wonnes, 
 
 Or like delight, that doth itself devour. 
 
 Her paps are like fair apples in the prime ; 
 As round as orient pearls, as soft as down : 
 They never veil their fair through winter's frown, 
 
 But from their sweets Love suck'd his summer time. 
 
 Her body's Beauty's best esteemed bower, 
 
 Delicious, comely, dainty, without stain ; 
 
 The thought whereof (not touch'd) hath wrought my pain, 
 Whose fair, all fair and beauties doth devour. 
 
 Her maiden wont, the dwelling-house of pleasure, 
 Not like, for why no like surpasseth wonder : 
 O blest is he may bring such beauties under, 
 
 Or search by suit the secrets of that treasure. 
 
 Devour'd in thought, how wanders my device ? 
 
 What rests behind 1 must divine upon. 
 
 Who talks the best, can say but fairer none : 
 Few words, well couch'd, do most content the wise. 
 
 All you that hear, let not my silly style 
 
 Condemn my zeal ; for what my tongue should say, 
 Serves to enforce my thoughts to seek the way, 
 
 Whereby my woes and cares I do beguile. 
 
Seld speaketh Love, but sighs his secret pains ; 
 Tears are his trucemen, words do make him tremble : 
 How sweet is love to them that can dissemble, 
 
 In thoughts and looks, till they have reap'd the gains ! 
 
 A lonely I am plain, and what I say 
 
 I think, yet what I think tongue cannot tell : 
 
 Sweet censors, take my silly worst for well : 
 My faith is firm, though homely be my lay. 
 
 After the hapless MENAPHOK had in this homely discourse 
 shadowed his heavenly delight, the shepherd MELICERTUS, after 
 some pause, began in this sort. 
 
 MELICERTUS'S ECLOGUE. 
 
 What need compare, where sweet exceeds compare ? 
 
 Who draws his thoughts of love from senseless things, 
 Their pomp and greatest glory doth impair, 
 
 And mount love's heaven with over-leaden wings. 
 
 Stones, herbs, and flowers, the foolish spoils of earth ; 
 
 Floods, metals, colours, dalliance of the eye; 
 These shew conceit is stain'd with too much dearth : 
 
 Such abstract fond compares make cunning die. 
 
 But he that hath the feeling taste of love, 
 Derives his essence from no earthly joy ; 
 
 A weak conceit his power cannot approve, 
 For earthly thoughts are subject to annoy. 
 
 Be whist, be still, be silent, censors, now ; 
 
 My fellow-swain has told a pretty tale, 
 Which modern poets may perhaps allow ; 
 
 Yet I condemn the terms, for they are stale. 
 
64 
 
 Apollo, when my mistress first was born, 
 Cut off his locks, and left them on her head. 
 
 And said, I plant these wires in Nature's scorn, 
 Whose beauty shall appear when Time is dead. 
 
 From forth the crystal heaven, when she was made, 
 
 The purity thereof did taint her brow ; 
 On which the glistering sun, that sought the shade, 
 
 'Gan set, and there his glories doth avow. 
 
 Those eyes, fair eyes, too fair to be described, 
 Were those that erst the chaos did reform ; 
 
 To whom the heavens their beauties have ascrib'd, 
 That fashion life in man, in beast, in worm. 
 
 When first her fair delicious cheeks were wrought, 
 Aurora brought her blush, the Moon her white ; 
 
 Both so combined as passed nature's thought, 
 Compil'd those pretty orbs of sweet delight. 
 
 When Love and Nature once were proud with play, 
 From both their lips her lips the coral drew ; 
 
 On them doth fancy sleep, and every day 
 
 Doth swallow joy, such sweet delights to view. 
 
 W^hilome, while Venus' son did seek a bower, 
 
 To sport with Psyche, his desired dear, 
 He chose her chin, and from that happy stowr 
 
 He never stints in glory to appear. 
 
 Desires and joys that long had served Love, 
 
 Behold a hold whence pretty eyes might woo them ; 
 
 Love made her neck, and for their best behove 
 
 Hath shut them there, whence no man can undo them. 
 
 Once Venus dreamt upon two pretty things ; 
 
 Her thoughts they were affection's chiefest nests : 
 She suck'd and sigh'd, and bath'd her in the springs, 
 
 And when she wak'd, they were my mistress' breasts. 
 
65 
 
 Once Cupid sought a hold to couch his kisses, 
 
 And found the body of my best belov'd, 
 Wherein he clos'd the beauty of his blisses, 
 
 And from that bower can never be remov'd. 
 
 The Graces erst, when Alcedelian springs 
 
 Were waxen dry, perhaps did find her fountain 
 
 Within the bale of bliss, where Cupid's wings 
 Do shield the nectar fleeting from the mountain. 
 
 No more, fond man ! Things infinite, I see, 
 Brook no dimension : Hell ! a foolish speech ; 
 
 For endless things may never talked be : 
 Then let me live to honour and beseech. 
 
 Sweet Nature's pomp, if my deficient phrase 
 Hath stain'd thy glories by too little skill, 
 Yield pardon, though mine eye, that long did gaze, 
 . Hath left no better pattern to my quill. 
 
 I will no more, no more will I detain 
 
 Your listening ears with dalliance of my tongue : 
 
 I speak m.y joys, but yet conceal my pain ; 
 My pain too old, although my years be young. 
 
 As soon asMELiCERTUs had ended this eclogue, they expected 
 the doom of DEMOCLES, who, hearing the sweet description wherein 
 MELICERTUS described his mistress, wondered that such rare con- 
 ceits could be harboured under a shepherd's grey clothing : at last 
 lie made this answer. " Arcadian swains, whose wealth is content, 
 whose labours are tempered with sweet loves, whose minds aspire 
 not, whose thoughts brook no envy, only as rivals in affection, you 
 are friendly emulators in honest fancy ; sith fortune (as enemy to 
 your quiet) hath reft you of your fair shepherdess (the world's 
 wonder, and Arcadia's miracle), and one of you as champion must 
 lead the rest to revenge, both desirous to shew your valour as your 
 
 M 
 
66 
 
 forwardness in affection, and yet (as I said) one to be whole chief- 
 tain of the train, I award to MELICERTUS that honour (as to him 
 that hath most curiously portrayed out his mistress's excellence) 
 to bear the sole rule and supremacy/* 
 
 At this MENAPHON grudged, and MELICERTUS was in an 
 ectasy of joy, so that gathering all his forces together of stout, head- 
 strong clowns, amounting to the number of some 200, he appareled 
 himself in armour, colour sables, as mourning for his mistress ; in 
 his shield he had figured the waves of the sea, Venus sitting on them 
 in the height of all her pride. Thus marched MELICERTUS forward 
 with old DEMOCLES, the supposed shepherd, till they came to the 
 castle where PLEUSIDIPPUS and his fair SAMELA were resident. As 
 soon as they came there, MELICERTUS begirt the castle with such 
 a siege as so many sheepish cavaliers could furnish ; which when he 
 had done, summoned them in the castle to parley. 
 
 The young knight stepped upon the Avails, and seeing such 
 a crew of base companions, with jackets and rusty bills on their 
 backs, fell into a great laughter, and began to taunt them thus : 
 " Why, what strange metamorphosis is this ? Are the plains of 
 Arcadia, whilome filled with labourers, now overlaid with lances? 
 Are sheep transformed into men, swains into soldiers, and a wander- 
 ing company of poor shepherds, into a worthy troop of resolute 
 champions ? No doubt, either Pan means to play the god of war, 
 or else these be but such men as rose of the teeth of Cadmus. Now 
 I see the beginning of your wars, and the pretended end of your 
 stratagems; the shepherds having a madding humour like the 
 Greeks, to seek for the recovery of Helena, so you for the regaining 
 of your fair SAMELA. Here she is a shepherdess, and I a Priam to 
 defend her with resistance of a ten years' siege : yet, for I were 
 loath to have any castle sacked like Troy, I pray you tell me, which 
 is Agamemnon ?" / 
 
 MELICERTUS hearing the youth speaking thus proudly, having 
 
67 
 
 the sparks of honour fresh under the cinders of poverty, incited with 
 love and valour (two things to animate the most dastard Thersites 
 to enter combat against Hercules), answered thus : " Unknown 
 youngster of Thessaly ! if the fear of thy hardy deeds were like the 
 diapason of thy threats, we would think the castle of longer siege 
 than either our ages would permit, or our valour adventure ; but 
 where the shelf is most shallow, there the water breaks most high : 
 empty vessels have the highest sounds, hollow rocks the loudest 
 echoes, and prattling gloriosers the smallest performance of courage; 
 for proof whereof, seeing thou hast made a rape of fair SAMEL A, 
 one of her vowed shepherds is come for the safety of her sweet self, 
 to challenge thee to single combat : if thou overcome me, thou shalt 
 freely pass with the shepherdess to Thessaly ; if I vanquish thee t 
 thou shalt feel the burden of thy rashness, and SAMELA the sweet- 
 ness of her liberty/' 
 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS marvelled at the resolution of the shepherd; 
 but when DEMOCLES heard how if he won she should be transported 
 into Thessaly, a world of sorrows tumbled in his discontented brain, 
 that he hammered in his head by many means to stay the fair 
 SAMELA ; for when PLEUSIDIPPUS, in a great choler, was ready to 
 throw down his gauntlet, and to accept of the combat, DEMOCLES 
 stepped up, and spake thus. " Worthy mirrors of resolved mag- 
 nanimity, whose thoughts are above your fortunes, and whose 
 .valour more than your revenues, know that bitches, that puppy in 
 haste, bring forth blind whelps ; that there is no herb sooner sprung 
 up than the spattarmia, nor sooner fadeth ; the fruits too soon ripe 
 are quickly rotten ; that deeds done in haste are repented at leisure. 
 Then, brave men, in so weighty a cause, and for the conquest of so 
 excellent a paragon, let not one minute begin and end the quarrel, 
 but, like Fabius of Rome, use delay in such dangerous exploits, 
 when honour sits on wreaths of laurel, to give the victor his garland ; 
 defer it some three days, and then in solemn manner end the com- 
 
68 
 
 bat/' To this good motion, not only PLEUSIDIPPUS and MELI- 
 CERTUS agreed, but all the company were consenting, and upon 
 pledges of truce given, they rested. But DEMOCLES seeing in 
 covert he could not conquer, and that in despairing lovers secrecy 
 was no salve, he dispatched letters to the nobility of his court, with 
 straight charge that they should be in that place within three days, 
 with 10,000 strong. 
 
 This news came no sooner to the general of his forces, but levy- 
 ing so many approved soldiers, he marched secretly by night to the 
 place DEMOCLES in his letters had prescribed, and there, joyfully 
 entertained by the king, they were placed in ambush, ready, when 
 the signal should be given, to issue out of the place and perform 
 their sovereign's command. Well, the third day being come, no 
 sooner did Titan arise from the watery couch of his leman, but 
 these two champions were ready in the lists, accompanied with the 
 rout of all the Arcadian shepherds, and old DEMOCLES, whom they 
 had appointed for one of the judges. 
 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS seeing MELICERTUS advance on his shield the 
 waves of the sea, with a Venus sitting upon them, marvelled what 
 the shepherd should be that gave this arms, and MELICERTUS was 
 as much amazed to see a strange Thessalian knight vaunt his arms 
 without difference ; yet being so fraught with direful revenge, as 
 they scorned to salute each other so much as with threats, they fell 
 toughly to blows. SAM EL A, standing on top of a turret and view- 
 ing the combat, the poor lady grieving that for her cause such a 
 stratagem should arise in Arcadia, her countenance full of sorrow, 
 and floods of tears falling from her eyes, she began to breathe out 
 her passion. " Unfortunate SAMELA, born to mishaps, and fore- 
 pointed to sinister fortunes, whose blooms were ripened to mis- 
 chance, and whose fruit is like to wither with despair, in thy youth 
 sat discontent pruning herself in thy forehead, now in thy age sor- 
 row hides herself amongst the wrinkles of thy face; thus art tliou 
 
69 
 
 infortunate in the prime, and crossed with contrary accidents in thy 
 autumn, as hapless as Helena, to have the burden of wars laid on the 
 wings of thy beauty. And who must be the champion ? Whose 
 sword must pierce the helmet of thine enemy? Whose blood must 
 purchase the freedom of SAMELA, but MELICERTUS? If he con- 
 quer, then SAMELA triumphs, as if she had been chief victor in 
 the Olympiads : if he lose, every drop falling from his wounds into 
 the centre of his thoughts, as his death to him, so shall it be to me, 
 the end of my loves, my life, and my liberty/' 
 
 As still she was about to go forward in her passion, the 
 trumpet sounded, and they fell to fight in such furious sort, as the 
 Arcadians and DEMOCLES himself wondered to see the courage of 
 
 o 
 
 the shepherd, that he tied the knight to such a sore task. PLEU^ 
 SIDIPPUS likewise feeling an extraordinary kind offeree, and seeing 
 with what courage the knight of the shepherds fought, began to 
 conjecture diversely of the war, and to fear the event of the combat. 
 On the contrary part, MELICERTUS, half wearied with the heavy 
 blows of PLEUSIDIPPUS, stood in amaze, how so young a wag should 
 be so expert in his weapon. 
 
 Thus debating diversely in their several thoughts, at lengthj 
 being both weary, they stepped back, and leaning on their swords, 
 took breath, gazing each on other. At last, PLEUSIDIPPUS burst 
 into these speeches. " Shepherd in life, though now a gentleman 
 in armour, if thy degree be better, I glory I am not disgraced with 
 the combat : tell me, how darest thou so far wrong me, as to bear 
 mine arms on thy shield?" " Princocks," quoth MELICERTUS, 
 " thou liest, they be mine own ; and thou, contrary to the law of 
 arms, bearest my crest without difference, in which quarrel, seeing 
 it concerneth my honour, I will revenge it as far as my loves ;" and 
 with that he gave such a charging blow at PLEUSIDIPPUS'S helm, 
 that he had almost overturned him. PLEUSIDIPPUS left not the 
 blow unrequited, but doubled his force ; insomuch that the hazard 
 
70 
 
 of the battle was doubtful, and both of them were fain to take 
 breath again. DEMOCLES seeing his time, that both of them were 
 so weakened, gave the watchword, and the ambush leaped out, 
 slaughtered many of the shepherds, put the rest to flight, took the 
 two champions prisoners, and sacking the castle, carried them and 
 the fair SAMELA to his court; letting the shepherdess have her 
 liberty, but putting MELICERTUS and PLEUSIDIPPUS into a deep 
 and dark dungeon. 
 
 Where leaving these passionate lovers in this catastrophe, again 
 to DORON, the homely blunt shepherd ; who having been long ena- 
 moured of CARMELA, much good wooing passed betwixt them, and 
 yet little speeding : at last, both of them met hard by the promon- 
 tory of Arcadia, she leading forth her sheep, and he going to see 
 his new yeaned lambs. As soon as they met, breaking a few 
 quarter blows with such country glances as they could, they jeered 
 one at another lovingly. At last, DORON manfully began thus. 
 
 " CARMELA, by my troth, good morrow ; it is as dainty to see 
 you abroad, as to eat a mess of sweet milk in July. You are proved 
 such a house-dove of late, or rather so good a housewife, that no 
 man may see you under a couple of capons : the churchyard may 
 stand long enough ere you will come to look on it ; and the piper 
 may beg for every penny he gets out of your purse : but it is no 
 matter, you are in love with some stout ruffler, and yet poor folks, 
 such as I am, must be content with pottage." And with that, 
 turning his back, he smiled in his sleeve, to see how kindly he had 
 given her the bob ; which CARMELA seeing, she thought to be even 
 with him thus. 
 
 " Indeed, DORON, you say well ; it is long since we met, and 
 our house is a grange house with you: but we have tied up the 
 great dog, and when you come you shall have green rushes, you 
 are such a stranger : but it is no matter, soon hot, soon cold ; he 
 that mingles himself with draff the hogs will eat him ; and she that 
 
71 
 
 lays her love on an unkind man, shall find sorrow enough to eat 
 her sops withal/' And with that, CARMELA was so full stomached 
 that she wept. 
 
 Do RON, to shew himself a natural young man, gave her a few 
 kind kisses to comfort her, and swore that she was the woman he 
 loved best in the world ; " and for proof/' quoth he, " thou shalt 
 hear what I will praise." " And you/' quoth she, " what I will per- 
 form." And so taking hand in hand, they kindly sate them down, 
 and began to discourse their loves in these eclogues. 
 
 Sit down, CARMELA; here are cubs for kings, 
 Sloes black as jet, or like my Christmas shoes : 
 
 Sweet cyder, which my leathern bottle brings : 
 Sit down, CARMELA, let me kiss thy toes. 
 
 CARMELA. 
 Ah, DORON ! ah, my heart ! thou art as white 
 
 As is my mother's calf, or brinded cow; 
 Thine eyes are like the slow- worms in the night; 
 
 Thine hairs resemble thickest of the snow. 
 
 The lines within thy face are deep and clear, 
 Like to the furrows of my father's wain ; 
 
 Thy sweat upon thy face doth oft appear, 
 Like to my mother's fat and kitchen gain. 
 
 Ah, leave my toe, and kiss my lips, my love ! 
 
 My lips are thine, for I have given them thee; 
 Within thy cap 'tis thou shalt wear my glove; 
 
 At foot-ball sport thou shalt my champion be. 
 
72 
 
 DORON. 
 
 CARMELA, dear, even as the golden ball 
 That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes, 
 
 When cherries' juice is jumbled therewithal; 
 Thy breath is like the steam of apple-pies. 
 
 Thy lips resemble two cucumbers fair; 
 
 Thy teeth like to the tusks of fattest swine ; 
 Thy speech is like the thunder in the air : 
 
 Would God thy toes, thy lips, and all were mine ! 
 
 
 
 CARMELA. 
 DORON, what thing doth move this wishing grief? 
 
 DORON. 
 
 This love, CAHMELA; ah, 'tis cruel love ! 
 That like a slave, and caitiff villain thief, 
 Hath cut my throat of joy for my behove. 
 
 CARMELA. 
 Where was he born ? 
 
 DORON. 
 
 In faith I know not where ; 
 But I have heard much talking of his dart : 
 Ay me, poor man! with many a trickling tear, 
 I feel him wound the forehearse of my heart. 
 
 What, do I love ? O no, I do but talk. 
 
 What, shall I die for love ? O no, not so. 
 What, am I dead? O no, my tongue doth walk. 
 
 Come kiss, CARMELA; and confound my woe. 
 
73 
 
 CARMELA. 
 
 Even with this kiss, as once my father did, 
 I seal the sweet indentures of delight; 
 
 Before I break my vow, the gods forbid, 
 No, not by day, nor yet by darksome night. 
 
 DORON. 
 
 Even with this garland, made of hollyhocks, 
 I cross thy brows, from every shepherd's kiss. 
 
 Heigh ho! how glad am I to touch thy locks j 
 My frolic heart even now a free man is. 
 
 CARMELA. 
 
 I thank you, DORON; and will think on you : 
 I love you, DORON ; and will wink on you : 
 I seal your chapter patent with my thumbs; 
 Come kiss and part, for fear my mother comes ! 
 
 Thus ended this merry eclogue betwixt DORON and CARMELA; 
 which, Gentlemen, if it be stuffed with pretty similes, and far- 
 fetched metaphors, think the poor country lovers knew no further 
 comparisons than came within compass of their country logic. 
 Well, 'twas a good world, when such simplicity was used, says the 
 old women of our time, when a ring of a rush would tie as much 
 love together as a gimmon of gold. But, Gentlemen, since we have 
 talked of love so long, you shall give me leave to shew my opinion 
 of that foolish fancy, thus : 
 
74 
 
 SONETTO. 
 
 What thing is love ? It is a power divine, 
 That reigns us; or else a wreakful law, 
 That dooms our minds to beauty to incline. 
 It is a star, whose influence doth draw 
 
 Our hearts to loud dissembling of his might, 
 Till he be master of our hearts and sight. 
 
 Love is a discord, and a strange divorce 
 
 Betwixt our sense and reason, by whose power 
 As mad with reason we admit that force, 
 Which wit or labour never may devour. 
 It is a will that brooketh no consent : 
 It would refuse, yet never may repent. 
 
 Love's a desire, which for to wait a time, 
 
 Doth lose an age of years, and so doth pass, 
 As doth the shadow, sever'd from his prime, 
 Seeming as though it were, yet never was : 
 
 Leaving behind nought but repentant thoughts 
 Of days ill spent, for that which profit noughts. 
 
 It's now a peace, and then a sudden w r ar, 
 
 A hope consum'd before it is conceiv'd; 
 At hand it fears, and menaceth afar, 
 
 And he that gains is most of all deceiv'd. 
 It is a secret, hidden and not known, 
 Which one may better feel than write upon. 
 
 Thus, Gentlemen, have you heard my verdict in this sonetto. 
 Now will I return to Do RON and C ARM EL A, who not seeing her 
 
75 
 
 mother come, fell again to a few homely kisses, and thus it 
 was. 
 
 After they had thus amorously ended their eclogues, they 
 plighted faith and troth, and C ARM EL A, very briskly wiping her 
 mouth with a white apron, sealed it with a kiss, which DORON 
 taketh marvellous kindly. After a little playing, loth to depart, 
 they both went about their business. 
 
 Leaving them therefore to their business, again to DEMOCLES* 
 who seeing no entreaties would serve to persuade SAME LA to love, 
 neither the hope of the Arcadian crown, nor the title of a queen, 
 lastly assayed with frowns and threats; but all in vain: for SAMELA, 
 first restrained by nature, in that he was her father, and secondly 
 by love, in that MELICERTUS lay imprisoned only for her sake, 
 stood still so stiff to her tackling, that DEMOCLES, changing love 
 into hate, resolved to revenge that with death which no means else 
 might satisfy; so that to colour his frauds withal, he gave SAMELA 
 free liberty to visit MELICERTUS; which she had not long done, 
 but that by the instigation of the old king, the jailor, confederate 
 to his treachery, accuseth her of adultery : whereupon, without 
 further witness, they both were condemned to die. 
 
 These two lovers, knowing themselves guiltless in this surmised 
 faction, were joyful to end their loves with their lives, and so to 
 conclude all in a fatal and final content of minds and fashions. But 
 DEMOCLES set free PLEUSIDIPPUS, as afraid lest the king of Thes- 
 saly would revenge the wrong of his knight, entertaining him with 
 such sumptuous banquets as befitted so brave and worthy a 
 gentleman. 
 
 The day prefixed come wherein these parties should die, 
 SAMELA was so desirous to end her life with her friend, that she 
 would not reveal either unto DEMOCLES or MELICERTUS what she 
 was ; and MELICERTUS rather chose to die with his SAMELA, than 
 once to name himself MA XIMUS. 
 
76 ".:..; 
 
 Both, thus resolved, were brought to the place of execution : 
 and PLEUSIDIPPUS, sitting on a scaffold with DEMOCLES, seeing 
 SAME LA come forth like the bush in the morning, felt an uncouth 
 passion in his mind, and nature began to enter combat with his 
 thoughts : not love, but reverence ; not fancy, but fear began to 
 assail him ; that he turned to the king, and said : " Is it not pity, 
 DEMOCLES, such divine beauty should be wrapped in cinders?" 
 " No/' quoth DEMOCLES, " where the anger of a king must be 
 satisfied/' At this answer PLEUSIDIPPUS wrapped his face in his 
 cloak and wept, and all the assistants grieved to see so fair a crea- 
 ture subject to the violent rage of Fortune. 
 
 Well, DEMOCLES commanded the deathsman to do his devoir, 
 who kneeling down and craving pardon, ready to give MELICERTUS 
 the fatal stroke, there stepped out an old woman attired like a pro- 
 phetess, who cried out, " Villain, hold thy hand ! thou wrongest the 
 daughter of a king!" DEMOCLES hearing the outcry, and seeing 
 that at that word the people began to mutiny and murmur, de- 
 manded of the old w r oman what she meant. " Now," quoth the old 
 woman 1 , " is the Delphian oracle performed, Neptune hath yielded 
 up the world's wonder, and that is young PLEUSIDIPPUS, nephew 
 to thee, and son to fair SEPHESTIA, who here standeth under the 
 name of SAMEL A, cast upon the promontory of Arcadia with her 
 young son, where she as a shepherdess hath lived in labours tem- 
 pered with loves. Her son, playing on the shore, was conveyed by 
 certain pirates into Thessaly, where (when as he was supposed every 
 way to be dead) doing deeds of chivalry, he fulfilled the prophecy. 
 Your highness giving the lion, was guide unto the lambs, in dis- 
 sembling yourself a shepherd ; planets resting upon the hills, was 
 that picture of Venus upon their crests ; and the seas that had nei- 
 ther ebb nor tide, was the combat 'twixt the father and the son, that 
 
 It is Democles in the original, which is an obvious misprint* 
 
77 
 
 gave the waves of the seas in their shields, not able to vanquish one 
 another, but parting with equal victory : for know, DEMOCLES, this 
 MELICERTUS is MAXTMUS, twice betrothed to SEPHESTIA, and fa- 
 ther to young PLEUSIDIPPUS. Now, therefore, the oracle fulfilled* 
 is the happy time wherein Arcadia shall rest in peace/' 
 
 At this the people gave a great shout, and the old woman 
 vanished. DEMOCLES, as a man ravished with an ectasy of sudden 
 joy, sate still, and stared on the face of SEPHESTIA. PLEUSIDIPPUS, 
 in all duty, leaped from his seat, and went and covered his mother 
 with his robe, craving pardon for the fondness of his incestuous 
 affection ; and kneeling at his father's feet submiss, in that he had 
 drawn his sword, and sought his life that first in the world gave him 
 life. MAXIMUS first looked on his wife, and seeing by the linea- 
 ments of her face that it was SEPHESTIA, fell about her neck, and 
 both of them weeping in the bosom of her son, shed tears for joy 
 to see him so brave a gentleman. 
 
 DEMOCLES, all this while sitting in a trance, at last calling 
 his senses together, seeing his daughter revived, whom so cruelly, 
 for the love of MAXIMUS, he had banished out of his confines, 
 MAXIMUS in safety, and the child a matchless paragon of approved 
 chivalry, he leaped from his seat, and embraced them all with tears, 
 craving pardon of MAXIMUS and SEPHESTIA: and to shew that the 
 outward object of his watery eyes had a sympathy with the inward 
 passion of his heart, he impaled the head of his young nephew 
 PLEUSIDIPPUS with the crown and diadem of Arcadia; for that his 
 brother LAMEDON had in all distress not left his daughter SEPHES- 
 TIA, he took the matter so kindly, that he reconciled himself unto 
 him, and made him duke in Arcadia. 
 
 The success of this fore-rehearsed catastrophe growing so co- 
 mical, they all concluded, after the festival solemnizing of the 
 coronation (which was made famous with the excellent deeds of 
 many worthy cavaliers) to pass into Thessaly, to contract the 
 
- .. 78 ' . ,-J ' 
 
 marriage betwixt PLEUSIDIPPUS and the daughter of the Thessa- 
 lian king. Which news spread through Arcadia as a wonder ; that 
 at last it came to MEN APHON'S ears, who hearing the high parentage 
 of his supposed SAME LA, seeing his passions were too aspiring * 
 and that with the Syrian wolves he barked against the moon, he 
 left such lettice as were too fine for his lips, and courted his old 
 love PESANA, to whom shortly after he was married. And lest 
 there should be left any thing unperfect in this pastoral accident, 
 BORON smudged himself up, and jumped a marriage with his old 
 friend C ARM EL A. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA