No Knights o' the Sun, nor Amadis de Gauls,
Primalions, Pantagruels, public nothings;
Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister,
Sent out to poison courts and infest manners:
But great Achilles, Agamemnon's acts,
Sage Nestor's counsels, and Ulysses' slights,
Tydides' fortitude, as Homer wrought them
In his immortal phant'sy, for examples
Of the heroic virtue. Or, as Virgil,
That master of the epic poem, limn'd
Pious Æneas, his religious prince,

Bearing his aged parent on his shoulders,

Rapt from the flames of Troy, with his young

son:

And these he brought to practise, and to use.

He gave me first my breeding, I acknowledge, Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours,

That open-handed sit upon the clouds,

And press the liberality of Heaven

Down to the laps of thankful men! But then

The trust committed to me at his death,

Was above all, and left so strong a tie

On all my powers, as time shall not dissolve,
Till it dissolve itself, and bury all!

The care of his brave heir, and only son:

Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, hopeful lord,
Hath cast his first affections on this lady.
And though I know, and may presume her such,
As, out of humour, will return no love;
And therefore might indifferently be made
The courting-stock, for all to practise on,
As she doth practise on us all, to scorn :
Yet, out of a religion to my charge,

And debt profess'd, I have made a self-decree,
Ne'er to express my person, though my passion
Burn me to cinders.

LOVEL, in the presence of the LADY FRANCES, the young LORD BEAUFORT, and other Guests of the New Inn, defines what love is.

Lov. What else

Is love, but the most noble, pure affection
Of what is truly beautiful and fair,

Desire of union with the thing beloved?
Beau. I have read somewhere, that man and woman
Were, in the first creation, both one piece,
And being cleft asunder, ever since
Love was an appetite to be rejoin'd.
Lov. It is a fable of Plato's, in his Banquet,
And utter'd there by Aristophanes.

Host. 'Tis well remembered here, and to good use.
But on with your description, what love is:
Desire of union with the thing beloved.
Lov. I meant a definition. For I make
The efficient cause, what 's beautiful and fair ;
The formal cause, the appetite of union:
The final cause, the union itself.

But larger, if you'll have it; by description,
It is a flame and ardour of the mind,

Dead, in the proper corps, quick in another's;
Transfers the lover into the beloved,

That he or she, that loves, engraves or stamps
The idea of what they love, first in themselves :
Or like to glasses, so their minds take in

The forms of their beloved, and then reflect.
It is the likeness of affections,

Is both the parent and the nurse of love.
Love is a spiritual coupling of two souls,
So much more excellent, as it least relates
Unto the body; circular, eternal,

Not feign'd, or made, but born; and then so precious,
As naught can value it but itself; so free,

As nothing can command it but itself;

And in itself so round and liberal,

JFORT.

oman

use.

;

es:

cious,

As where it favours it bestows itself.
But we must take and understand this love,
Along still, as a name of dignity;
Not pleasure.

True love hath no unworthy thought, no light
Loose, unbecoming appetite, or strain,
But fixed, constant, pure, immutable.
Beau. I relish not these philosophical feasts
Give me a banquet of sense, like that of Ovid:
A form to take the eye; a voice mine ear;
Pure aromatics to my scent; a soft,

Smooth, dainty hand to touch; and for my taste,
Ambrosiac kisses to melt down the palate.
Lov. They are the earthly, lower form of lovers,
Are only taken with what strikes the senses;
And love by that loose scale. Although I grant,
We like what's fair and graceful in an object,
And, true, would use it, in the all we tend to,
Both of our civil and domestic deeds;
In ordering of an army, in our style,
Apparel, gesture, building, or what not :
All arts and actions do affect their beauty.
But put the case, in travel I may meet
Some gorgeous structure, a brave frontispiece,
Shall I stay captive in the outer court,
Surprised with that, and not advance to know
Who dwells there, and inhabiteth the house?
There is my friendship to be made, within,
With what can love me again: not with the walls,
Doors, windows, architraves, the frieze, and cornice.
My end is lost in loving of a face,

An eye, lip, nose, hand, foot, or other part,
Whose all is but a statue, if the mind
Move not, which only can make the return.
The end of love, is to have two made one
In will, and in affection, that the minds
Be first inoculated, not the bodies.

The body's love is frail, subject to change,
And alter still with it; the mind's is firm,
One and the same, proceedeth first from weighing,
And well examining what is fair and good;
Then what is like in reason, fit in manners;
That breeds good will: good will desire of union.
So knowledge first begets benevolence,
Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love :
And where it starts or steps aside from this,
It is a mere degenerous appetite,

A lost, oblique, depraved affection,

And bears no mark or character of love.
Nor do they trespass within bounds of pardon,
That giving way, and licence to their love,
Divest him of his noblest ornaments,
Which are his modesty and shamefacedness:
And so they do, that have unfit designs
Upon the parties they pretend to love.
For what's more monstrous, more a prodigy,
Than to hear me protest truth of affection
Unto a person that I would dishonour?
And what's a more dishonour, than defacing
Another's good with forfeiting mine own;
And drawing on a fellowship of sin ?

From note of which, though for a while, we may
Be both kept safe by caution, yet the conscience
Cannot be cleans'd! for what was hitherto
Call'd by the name of love, becomes destroy'd
Then, with the fact; the innocency lost,
The bating of affection soon will follow ;
And love is never true that is not lasting :
No more than any can be pure or perfect,
That entertains more than one object.

[These and the preceding extracts may serve to show the poetical fancy and elegance of mind of the supposed rugged old bard. A thousand beautiful passages might be adduced from those numerous court masques and entertainments which he was in the

daily habit of furnishing, to prove the same thing. But they do not come within my plan. That which follows is a specimen of that talent for comic humour, and the assemblage of ludicrous images, on which his reputation chiefly rests. It may serve for a variety after so many serious extracts.]

N.B.-The "Alchemist " here follows in the original edition of Lamb's "Specimens."-Ed.

THE SAD SHEPHERD: OR, A TALE OF ROBIN HOOD.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ALKEN, an old Shepherd, instructs ROBIN HOOD's men how to find a Witch, and how she is to be hunted.

ROBIN HOOD. TUCK. LITTLE JOHN. SCARLET. SCATHLOCK. GEORGE. CLARION.

Tuck. Hear you how

ALKEN.

Poor Tom the cook is taken! all his joints Do crack, as if his limbs were tied with points: His whole frame slackens; and a kind of rack Runs down along the spondils of his back: A gout or cramp now seizeth on his head, Then falls into his feet; his knees are lead; And he can stir his either hand no more Than a dead stump, to his office, as before. Alk. He is bewitch'd.

Cla. This is an argument

Both of her malice and her power, we see. Alk. She must by some device restrained be, Or she 'll go far in mischief.

Rob. Advise how,

Sage shepherd; we shall put it straight in practice. Alk. Send forth your woodmen then into the walks, Or let them prick her footing hence; a witch Is sure a creature of melancholy,