COR. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells, you know, are greasy. TOUCH. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? and is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow: A better instance, I say; come. COR. Besides, our hands are hard. TOUCH. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow, again: A more sounder instance, come. COR. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our sheep; And would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfum'd with civet. TOUCH. Most shallow man! Thou worms-meat, in respect of a good piece of flesh: Indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: Civet is of a baser birth than tar; the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. COR. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest. TOUCH. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw,(10) COR. Sir, I am a true labourer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate," envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm: and the greatest of my pride is, to see my ewes graze, and my lambs suck. TOUCH. That is another simple sin in you; to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle: to be bawd to a bell-wether; and to betray a she a the very uncleanly flux of a cat] "A muscat, that beareth muske. Muschus." Wythal's little Dict. &c. 4to. 1568, p. 15. and Biblioth. Eliota. fo. 1559. b owe &c.]" owe no man anything, but to love one another." Romans xiii. 8. e bell-wether] Wether and ram had anciently the same meaning. JOHNSON. lamb of a twelvemonth, to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou be'st not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst 'scape. COR. Here comes young master Ganymede, my new mistress' brother. Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper. Ros. From the east to western Ind, Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Are but black to Rosalind. But the fair of Rosalind.(11) TOUCH. I'll rhyme you so, eight years together; dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours excepted: it is the right butter-woman's rank to market.(12) Ros. Out, fool! TOUCH. For a taste: If a hart do lack a hind, They that reap, must sheaf and bind; Sweetest nut hath sowrest rind, Such a nut is Rosalind. He that sweetest rose will find, Must find love's prick and Rosalind. All the pictures, fairest lin'd] i. e. delineated with the most elegant touches of art. b must find love's prick &c.] See Warton's Hist. of Poetry, I. 117. This is the very false gallop of verses: (13) Why do you infect yourself with them? Ros. Peace, you dull fool; I found them on a tree. TOUCH. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. Ros. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar: then it will be the earliest fruit in the country: for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe,(14) and that's the right virtue of the medlar. TOUCH. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. Enter CELIA, reading a paper. Ros. Peace! Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside. CEL. Why should this [a] desert be?a a 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend: But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence' end, Will I Rosalinda write; Teaching all that read, to know Why should this [a] desert be? For &c.] i. e. "shall this forest be pronounced a desert, because" &c. Pope inserted the article. berring pilgrimage] i. e. wandering. e in little] i. e. small compass, miniature. Haml., and Tw. N. III. 4. Sir Tob. See Haml. II. 3. Therefore heaven nature charg'd Sad Lucretia's modesty.(18) By heavenly synod was devis'd; To have the touches dearest priz'd. Heaven would that she these gifts should have, And I to live and die her slave. Ros. O most gentle Jupiter! what tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cry'd, Have patience, good people. CEL. How now! back friends;-Shepherd, go off a little: Go with him, sirrah. TOUCH. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage. [Exeunt CORIN and TOUCHSTONE. CEL. Didst thou hear these verses? Ros. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear." CEL. That's no matter; the feet might bear the verses. Ros. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse. CEL. But didst thou hear, without wondering a touches] i. e. points, traits. b the verses would bear] i. e. their metre would allow. how thy name should be hang'd and carved upon these trees? Ros. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder, before you came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree: I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,(19) which I can hardly remember. CEL. Trow you, who hath done this? Ros. Is it a man? CEL. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck: Change you colour? Ros. I pr'ythee, who? CEL. O lord, lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; (20) but mountains may be removed with earthquakes, and so encounter. (21) Ros. Nay, but who is it? CEL. Is it possible? Ros. Nay, I pray thee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is. CEL. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that out of all whooping!(22) Ros. Good my complexion ?(23) dost thou think, though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South-sea of discovery.(24) I pr'ythee, tell me, who is it? quickly, and speak apace: I would thou couldst stammer, that thou might'st pour this concealed man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of a narrow-mouth'd bottle; either too much at once, or none at all. I pr'ythee take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings. CEL. So you may put a man in your belly. Ros. Is he of God's making? What manner of |