And on her wither'd dew-lap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and loffe;
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.

LUNACY, LOVE, and Poetry.

Hippolyta. 'Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of.

Theseus. More strange than true.

may believe

I never

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact :

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ;
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth

to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

ADAGES AND APOTHEGMS.

Sickness is catching.

How happy some, o'er other some can be!
The will of man is by his reason sway'd.

Things growing are not ripe until their season. Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.

Never anything can be amiss, when simpleness and duty tender it.

What poor duty cannot do, noble respect takes it in might, not merit.

Love and tongue-tied simplicity, in least, speak

most.

It is not enough to speak, but to speak true. In the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear!

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

THE END OF STUDY.

Biron. What is the end of study? let me know.

King. Why, that to know, which else we should not know.

Biron. Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?

King. Ay, that is study's god-like recompense.

A MERRY MAN DESCRIBED.

A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,

That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

OVER-STUDY.

Study evermore is overshot; While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should: And when it hath the thing it hunteth most, 'Tis won, as towns with fire; so won, so lost.

FRENCH COURTSHIP.

Moth. Master, will you win your love with a French brawl?

Armado. How mean'st thou ? brawling in French?

Moth. No, my complete master; but to jig off a tune at the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids; sigh a note, and sing a note; sometime through the throat, as if you swallowed love with singing love; sometime through the nose, as if you snuffed up love by smelling love;

with your hat penthouse-like, o'er the shop of your eyes; with your arms crossed on your thin belly-doublet, like a rabbit on a spit; or your hands in your pocket, like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away. These are complements, these are humours; these betray nice wenches-that would be betrayed without these; and make them men of note (do you note, men?) that most are affected to these.

WOMAN'S EYES.

Love, first learn'd in a lady's eyes,

Lives not alone immured in the brain;
But with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power;
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopp'd:
Love's feeling is more soft and sensible,

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails;