Jaq. What stature is she of?

Orl. Just as high as my heart. Jaq. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conn'd them out of rings? 37

Orl. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth,38 from whence you have studied your questions.

Jaq. You have a nimble wit: I think 'twas made of Atalanta's heels.39 Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world and all our misery.

Orl. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.

Jaq. The worst fault you have is to be in love.

Orl. 'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am weary of you.

Jaq. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found

you.

Orl. He is drown'd in the brook: look but in, and you shall see him.

Jaq. There I shall see mine own figure.

Orl. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher.

Jaq. I'll tarry no longer with you: farewell, good Signior Love.

Orl. I am glad of your departure: adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy. [Exit JAQUES. CELIA and ROSALIND come forward.

37 The meaning is, that goldsmiths' wives have given him the freedom of their husbands' shops, where he has committed to memory the mottoes inscribed on their rings and other jewels.

88 To answer right painted cloth is to answer sententiously. Painted cloth was a species of hangings for the walls of rooms, which was cloth painted with various devices and mottoes. The verses, mottoes, and proverbial sentences on such cloths are often made the subject of allusion in old writers. See vol. ii., page 99, note 60.

39 The nimble-footedness of Atalanta has been referred to before, note 23.

Ros. [Aside to CELIA.] I will speak to him like a saucy lacquey, and under that habit play the knave with him.— Do you hear, forester?

Orl. Very well: what would you?

Ros. I pray you, what is't o'clock?

Orl. You should ask me what time o' day: there's no clock in the forest.

Ros. Then there is no true lover in the forest; else sighing every minute, and groaning every hour, would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.

Orl. And why not the swift foot of Time? had not that been as proper?

Ros. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons: I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.

Orl. I pr'ythee, who doth he trot withal?

40 if

Ros. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemnized: the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year.

Orl. Who ambles Time withal?

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

Orl. Who doth he gallop withal?

40 Hardly any thing is so apt to make a short journey seem long, as riding on a hard-trotting horse, however fast the horse may go. On the other hand, to ride an ambling horse makes a long journey seem short, because the horse rides so easy. It were hardly needful to say this, but that some have lately proposed to invert the order of the nags in this case.

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

Orl. Who stays it still withal?

Ros. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time

moves.

Orl. Where dwell you, pretty youth?

Ros. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat.

Orl. Are you native of this place?

Ros. As the cony, that you see dwell where she is kindled.41

Orl. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed 42 a dwelling.

Ros. I have been told so of many: but indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courtship 43 too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole sex withal.

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

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

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

Ros. No, I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our

41 Kindled, here, is altogether another word than our present verb to kindle. It is from kind, which, again, is from a word meaning to bring forth. The word has long been obsolete.

42 Removed is sequestered, solitary, or lonely; without neighbours. 48 Courtship is the practice of Courts; courtliness.

young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind: if I could meet that fancymonger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian 44 of love upon him.

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

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

Orl. What were his marks?
Ros. A lean cheek,

46

which you have not; a blue

47

and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit,4 which you have not; a beard neglected, — which you have not; but I pardon you for that; for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue : - then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbotton'd, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man you are rather point-devise 48 in your accoutrements; as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other.

Orl. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. Ros. Me believe it! you may as soon make her that you

44 Quotidian was the name of an intermittent fever, so called because the fits came on every day. In like manner, tertian and quartan were applied to those that came on once in three and once in four days.

45 Not blue in our sense of the phrase; but with blueness about the eyes, such as to indicate hunger or dejection. Blue eyes were called gray in the Poet's time.

46 A reserved, unsociable spirit, the reverse of that in Hamlet: "Thou comest in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee."

47 Under the law of primogeniture, a younger brother's revenue was apt to be small. Orlando is too young for his having in beard to amount to much.

48 That is, precise, exact; dressed with finical nicety.

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

Orl. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he.

Ros. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? Orl. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. Ros. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: 49 and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

Orl. Did you ever cure any so?

Ros. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me at which time would I, being but a moonish 50 youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking; proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour: would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a loving humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world, and to live in a nook merely 51 monastic. And thus I cured him; and this way will I take upon

49 This shows how lunatics were apt to be treated in the Poet's time. But then lunacy was often counterfeited, as it still is, either as a cover to crime or as an occasion for charity.

50 As changeable as the Moon.

51 Merely, here, is entirely or absolutely. The Poet often has it thus. And so mere, in a former scene: "Second childishness and mere oblivion."