That do outface it with their semblances.

Cel. What shall I call thee when thou art a man?

Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page; And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be call'd?

Cel. Something that hath a reference to my state;

No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Ros. But, cousin, what if we assay'd to steal

The clownish Fool out of your father's Court?

Would he not be a comfort to our travel?

Cel. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me;

Leave me alone to woo him. Let's away,

And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time and safest way

To hide us from pursuit that will be made

After my flight.

Now go we in content,

To liberty, and not to banishment.

[Exeunt.

ACT II.

SCENE I.-The Forest of Arden.

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

Duke S. Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious Court?

Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.1

1 The curse, or penalty, denounced upon Adam was, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." This is what the Duke and his co-mates do not

The seasons' difference, and the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the Winter's wind,
Which when it 2 bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say,
This is no flattery, these are counsellors
That feelingly persuade me what I am.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head : 3

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing:

I would not change it.

Ami.

Happy is your Grace,

That can translate the stubbornness of fortune

Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

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

feel: "they fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world." The Duke then goes on, consistently, to say what they do feel.

2 The using of both the relative and the personal pronouns, in relative clauses, as which and it in this passage, was not uncommon with the best writers. See vol. iii., page 133, note 25.

8 The real toadstone, as known to the ancients, was apparently so called from its resemblance to the toad or frog in colour. Pliny says, (trans. Holland,) "The same Coptos sendeth other stones unto us besides, to wit, those which be called Batrachitæ; the one like in colour to a frog, a second unto ivory, the third is of a blackish red." Besides this slight reference to the Batrachites, says Mr. King in his Natural History of Gems and Decorative Stones, "No further notice of this stone can be traced in the other writers of antiquity. But this singular epithet, primarily intended only to denote the peculiar colour of the stone, furnished later times with the foundation for a most marvellous fable, which long obtained, as the number of examples still preserved attest, universal credit throughout Europe. Understanding the ancient term as implying the natural production of the animal according to the analogy of other similar names, as the Saurites, Echites, &c., doctors taught that the 'toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.'" — WILLIAM ALDIS WRIGHT,

And yet it irks me,4 the poor dappled fools,
Being native burghers of this desert city,

Should, in their own confínes, with forkèd heads,5
Have their round haunches gored.

I Lord.

Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day my Lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him, as he lay along

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

Stood on th' extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.6

4 The verb to irk is now seldom used, but its sense in the adjective irksome is common. To irk is to grieve, vex, or annoy.

5 Some question has been made as to what these were. Roger Ascham, in his Toxophilus, appears to settle the matter; describing two kinds of arrow-heads as follows: "The one having two points or barbs, looking backward to the steel and feathers, which surely we call in English a broad arrow-head or a swallow-tail; the other having two points stretching forward, and this Englishmen do call a forkhead." And again : "Commodus the Emperor used forked heads, whose fashion Herodian doth lively and naturally describe, saying that they were like the shape of a new moon, wherewith he would smite off the head of a bird, and never miss."

6 Drayton in the thirteenth song of his Poly-Olbion has a fine description of a deer-hunt, which he winds up thus:

Duke S.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralize this spectacle?

I Lord. O, yes, into a thousand similes.
First, for his weeping into th' needless 7 stream;
Poor deer, quoth he, thou makest a testament
As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more

To that which hath too much then, being alone,

Left and abandon'd of his velvet friends;

'Tis right, quoth he; thus misery doth part
The flux of company: anon, a careless herd,
Full of the pasture, jumps along by him,

And never stays to greet him: Ay, quoth Jaques,
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?
Thus most invectively he pierceth through
The body of the country, city, Court,

8

Yea, and of this our life; swearing that we
Are mere usurpers, tyrants, and what's worse,
To fright the animals, and to kill them up,9

In their assign'd and native dwelling-place.

Duke S. And did you leave him in this contemplation? 2 Lord. We did, my lord, weeping and commenting Upon the sobbing deer.

Duke S.

Show me the place :

I love to cope him in these sullen fits,

For then he's full of matter.

1 Lord.

I'll bring you to him straight.

He who the mourner is to his own dying corse,

Upon the ruthless earth his precious tears lets fall.

[Exeunt.

And in a note upon the passage he adds, "The hart weepeth at his dying: his tears are held precious in medicine."

Needless for not needing. Shakespeare abounds in similar language. 8 What for the indefinite pronoun whatever. A frequent usage.

9 " 'Kill them up" is old language for "kill them off," or kill them.

Enter Duke FREDERICK, Lords, and Attendants.

Duke F. Can it be possible that no man saw them? It cannot be some villains of my Court

Are of consent and sufferance in this.

I Lord. I cannot hear of any that did see her.
The ladies, her attendants of her chamber,
Saw her a-bed; and, in the morning early,

They found the bed untreasured of their mistress.

2 Lord. My lord, the roynish' clown, at whom so oft Your Grace was wont to laugh, is also missing. Hesperia, the Princess' gentlewoman,

Confesses that she secretly o'erheard

Your daughter and her cousin much commend
The parts and graces of the wrestler
That did but lately foil the sinewy Charles;

And she believes, wherever they are gone,

That youth is surely in their company.

Duke F. Send to his brother's; fetch that gallant hither:

If he be absent, bring his brother to me;

I'll make him find him: do this suddenly;

And let not search and inquisition quail 2

To bring again these foolish runaways.

[Exeunt.

1 Roynish properly means mangy or scurvy. From the French ronger, to

knaw, eat, or corrode. Used here as a general term of reproach.

2 To quail is to grow faint, to slacken, give over. — Inquisition is inquiry, investigation.