No grapes, my royal fox?

Yes, but you will,
My noble grapes, an if my royal fox

Could reach them. I have seen a medicine,
That's able to breathe life into a stone;

Quicken a rock, and make you dance canary,1
With spritely fire and motion; whose simple touch
Is powerful to araise king Pepin, nay,

To give great Charlemain a pen in his hand,
And write to her a love-line.

If

King.

What her is this?

Laf. Why, doctor she. My lord, there's one arrived, you will see her, now, by my faith and honor,

If seriously I may convey my thoughts

In this my light deliverance, I have spoke
With one, that, in her sex, her years, profession,
Wisdom, and constancy, hath amazed me more
Then I dare blame my weakness. Will you see her,
(For that is her demand,) and know her business?
That done, laugh well at me.

King.
Now, good Lafeu,
Bring in the admiration; that we with thee
May spend our wonder too, or take off thine,
By wondering how thou took'st it.

Laf

And not be all day neither.

Nay, I'll fit you,

[Exit LAFEU.

King. Thus he his special nothing ever prologues.

Re-enter LAFEU, with HELENA.

This haste hath wings indeed.

Laf. Nay, come your ways.

King.

Laf. Nay, come your ways.

This is his majesty; say your mind to him:
A traitor you do look like; but such traitors

His majesty seldom fears. I am Cressid's uncle,3
That dare leave two together; fare you well.

[Exit.

1 It has been before observed that the canary was a kind of lively dance.

2 By profession is meant her declaration of the object of her coming. 3 I am like Pandarus. See Troilus and Cressida.

King. Now, fair one, does your business follow

us?

Hel. Ay, my good lord. Gerard de Narbon was My father; in what he did profess, well found. King. I knew him.

Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards him;

Knowing him, is enough. On his bed of death
Many receipts he gave me; chiefly one,
Which, as the dearest issue of his practice,
And of his old experience the only darling,
He bade me store up, as a triple eye,1

Safer than mine own two, more dear. I have so:
And, hearing your high majesty is touched
With that malignant cause wherein the honor
Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power,
I come to tender it, and my appliance,
With all bound humbleness.

King.

We thank you, maiden ;

But may not be so credulous of cure,-
When our most learned doctors leave us; and
The congregated college have concluded
That laboring art can never ransom nature
From her inaidable estate,-I say we must not
So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,
To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empirics; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.
Hel. My duty then shall pay me for my pains.
I will no more enforce mine office on you;
Humbly entreating from your royal thoughts
A modest one to bear me back again

King. I cannot give thee less, to be called grateful
Thou thought'st to help me; and such thanks I give,
As one near death to those that wish him live;
But, what at full I know, thou know'st no part;
I knowing all my peril, thou no art.

1 A third eye.

Hel. What I can do, can do no hurt to try,
Since you set up your rest' 'gainst remedy.
He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister;
So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown,
When judges have been babes.
flown

Great floods have

From simple sources; and great seas have dried, When miracles have by the greatest been denied.Oft expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises, and oft it hits,

Where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.

King. I must not hear thee; fare thee well, kind maid;

Thy pains, not used, must by thyself be paid.
Proffers, not took, reap thanks for their reward.
Hel. Inspired merit so by breath is barred.
It is not so with him that all things knows,
As 'tis with us that square our guess by shows;
But most it is presumption in us, when
The help of Heaven we count the act of men.
Dear sir, to my endeavors give consent;
Of Heaven, not me, make an experiment.
I am not an impostor, that proclaim

Myself against the level of mine aim; 3

But know I think, and think I know most sure,
My art is not past power, nor you past cure.

King. Art thou so confident? Within what space Hop'st thou my cure?

Hel.

The greatest grace lending grace,*

Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring

Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring;

Ere twice in murk and occidental damp

Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp;

1 i. e." Since you have determined or made up your mind that there is no remedy."

2 An allusion to Daniel judging the two elders.

3 I am not an impostor, that proclaim one thing and design another,

that proclaim a cure and aim at a fraud. I think what I speak.

4 e. the divine grace, lending me grace or power to accomplish it.

Or four-and-twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass;
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly,
Health shall live free, and sickness freely die.
King. Upon thy certainty and confidence,
What dar'st thou venture?

Hel.

Tax of impudence,

A strumpet's boldness, a divulged shame,-
Traduced by odious ballads; my maiden's name
Seared otherwise; ne worse of worst extended,
With vilest torture let my life be ended.1

King. Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak;

His powerful sound within an organ weak;
And what impossibility would slay

In common sense, sense saves another way.
Thy life is dear; for all, that life can rate
Worth name of life, in thee bath estimate;
Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, virtue, all
That happiness and prime can happy call.
Thou this to hazard, needs must intimate
Skill infinite, or monstrous desperate.
Sweet practiser, thy physic I will try;
That ministers thine own death, if I die.

Hel. If I break time, or flinch in property 2

Of what I spoke, unpitied let me die;

And well deserved. Not helping, death's my fee;
But, if I help, what do you promise me?

King. Make thy demand.

Hel.

But will you make it even? King. Ay, by my sceptre, and my hopes of help.3 Hel. Then shalt thou give me, with thy kingly hand, What husband in thy power I will command.

1 Let me be stigmatized as a strumpet, and, in addition (although that could not be worse, or a more extended evil than what I have mentioned, the loss of my honor, which is the worst that could happen), let me die with torture. Ne is nor.

2 Property seems to be used here for performance or achievement, singular as it may seem.

3 Thirlby proposes to read hopes of heaven.

Exempted be from me the arrogance

To choose from forth the royal blood of France;
My low and humble name to propagate
With any branch or impage of thy state;1
But such a one, thy vassal, whom I know
Is free for me to ask, thee to bestow.

King. Here is my hand; the premises observed,
Thy will by my performance shall be served;
So make the choice of thy own time; for I,
Thy resolved patient, on thee still rely.
More should I question thee, and more I must;
Though more to know, could not be more to trust,
From whence thou cam'st, how tended on,-but rest
Unquestioned welcome, and undoubted blessed.-
Give me some help here, ho!-If thou proceed
As high as word, my deed shall match thy deed.

[Flourish. Exeunt.

SCENE II. Rousillon. A Room in the Countess's

Palace.

Enter Countess and Clown.

Count. Come on, sir; I shall now put you to the height of your breeding.

Clo. I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught. I know my business is but to the court.

Count. To the court! why, what place make you special, when you put off that with such contempt? But to the court!

Clo. Truly, madam, if God have lent a man any manners, he may easily put it off at court. He that cannot make a leg, put off's cap, kiss his hand, and say nothing, has neither leg, hands, lip, nor cap; and, indeed, such a fellow, to say precisely, were not for

1 The old copy reads "image of thy state." Warburton proposed impage, which Steevens rejects, saying, unadvisedly," there is no such word." It is evident that Shakspeare formed it from "an impe, a scion, or young slip of a tree."