Nay, quickly. [Retires to his couch.]-That my fit were past! I fear A second hell too, that my lothing this Re-enter NANO with Lady POLITICK WOULD-BE. Lady P. I thank you, good sir. 'Pray you Unto your patron, I am here.-This band Enter 1. Waiting-woman. How they have done this! Look, see, these petulant things, Volp. I do feel the fever Entering in at mine ears; O, for a charm, To fright it hence! Lady P. Come nearer: is this curl [Aside. In his right place, or this? Why is this higher Than all the rest? You have not wash'd eyes, yet! your Or do they not stand even in your head? Where is your fellow? call her. [Exit 1. Woman. Nan. Now, St. Mark Deliver us! anon, she'll beat her women, Because her nose is red. Re-enter 1. with 2. Woman. Lady P. I pray you, view This tire, forsooth: are all things apt, or no? 1 Wom. One hair a little, here, sticks out, forsooth. Lady P. Does 't so, forsooth! and where was your dear sight, When it did so, forsooth! What now! bird-eyed? And you, too? 'Pray you, both approach and mend it. Now, by that light, I muse you are not ashamed! honour. [Aside. Lady P. Made you acquainted, what an ample dowry The knowledge of these things would be unto you, Able, alone, to get you noble husbands At your return and you thus to neglect it! Besides, you seeing what a curious nation The Italians are, what will they say of me? The English lady cannot dress herself. What now! bird-eyed?] What particular defect is here meant I know not; unless it be near-sightedness. We had the expression in Cynthia's Revels, (Vol. II. p. 342.) "Tis the horse-start out of a brown study. Amor. Rather, the bird-eyed stroke." It is also in Bulleyn's Dialogue, republished by Mr. Waldron; where the citizen says to his wife, whose horse had just started," He is a bird-eyed jade, I warrant you." Perhaps the allusion is to the askaunt or side view, which birds appear to take of every object. Upton has noticed various imitations of Juvenal's sixth Satire, in lady Would-be's colloquy with her maids: they are all, Here's a fine imputation to our country! Well, go your ways, and stay in the next room. This fucus was too coarse too; it's no matter.Good sir, you'll give them entertainment? [Exeunt Nano and Waiting-women. Volp. The storm comes toward me. Lady P. [goes to the couch.] How does my Volpone? Volp. Troubled with noise, I cannot sleep; I dreamt That a strange fury enter'd, now, my house, And, with the dreadful tempest of her breath, Did cleave my roof asunder. Lady P. Believe me, and I Had the most fearful dream, could I remember'tVolp. Out on my fate! I have given her the occasion How to torment me: she will tell me her's. [Aside. Lady P. Me thought, the golden mediocrity, Polite, and delicate- Volp. O, if you do love me, No more I sweat, and suffer, at the mention Of any dream; feel how I tremble yet. Lady P. Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart. Seed-pearl were good now, boil'd with syrup of apples, Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills, Volp. Ah me, I have ta'en a grass-hopper by the wing!* [Aside. however, so obvious as scarcely to require pointing out, though Whalley copied most of them. Ah me, I have ta’'en a grass-hopper by the wing !] "This," says Upton, who merely copies Erasmus (in Adag.) "was a proverb of the poet Archilochus, as Lucian tells us in the beginning of his Pseudologista: Το δε το Αρχιλοχο εκείνο ήδη σοι λεγω, ὅτι τεσλιγα τε στερες συνειληφας. For the faster you hold them by the wings the Lady P. Burnt silk, and amber: You have muscadel Good in the house Volp. You will not drink, and part? Lady P. No, fear not that. I doubt, we shall not get Some English saffron, half a dram would serve; Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints, Bugloss, and barley-meal Volp. She's in again! Before I feign'd diseases, now I have one. [Aside. Lady P. And these applied with a right scarlet cloth." Volp. Another flood of words! a very torrent! [Aside. Lady P. Shall I, sir, make you a poultice? Volp. No, no, no, I'm very well, you need prescribe no more. Lady P. I have a little studied physic; but now, I'm all for music, save, in the forenoons, An hour or two for painting. I would have A lady, indeed, to have all, letters and arts, louder they scream.-But is this true of grass-hoppers? Cicada and Tel is not a grass-hopper, for the poets describe it as sitting and singing on trees: however, the common translations must excuse our poet." This is certainly not our grass-hopper, which is the locust. It is to be wished that we could adopt some other name for the foreign insect, to prevent confusion: cigale or chicale would serve; though, indeed, tettix is as good as either. Both Ray and Chandler witnessed the singing of the cicada, the one in Italy, and the other in Greece: they do not speak of it with much rapture; and, to say the truth, a more tiresome annoying sound cannot well be heard. See the Poetaster, Vol. II. p. 543. 5 And these applied with a right scarlet cloth.] The virtues of a right scarlet cloth were once held so extraordinary, that Dr. John Gaddesden, by wrapping a patient in scarlet, cured him of the small-pox, without leaving so much as one mark in his face : and he commends it for an excellent method of cure: Capiatur. scarletum, et involvatur variolosus totaliter, sicut ego feci, et est bona cura. WHAL. Be able to discourse, to write, to paint, Volp. The poet As old in time as Plato, and as knowing, Guarini? Ariosto? Aretine? Cieco di Hadria? I have read them all. [Aside. Lady P. I think I have two or three of them about me. Volp. The sun, the sea, will sooner both stand still Than her eternal tongue! nothing can 'scape it. [Aside. When there is concent.] i. e. agreement or harmony, a Platonic expression. 7 The poet As old in time as Plato, and as knowing, Says that your highest female grace is silence.] The poet perhaps is Sophocles, Γυναιξί κόσμον ή σιγή φερει. Or Euripides, whom the Oracle pronounced the wiser, Γυναικι γαρ σιγη τε, και το σωφρονειν Καλλισον. This is Upton's note, though fathered, as usual, by Whalley. Jonson, however, whose reading was far more extensive than Upton suspected, alludes to a passage in Libanius. (Declam. vi.) Συ δε, ει μη έμε, αλλα κ αν τον σοφωτατον ποιητην αισχυνθητές λέγοντα, T. a. Γυναι, γυναιξί κοσμον ἡ σιγη φερει. κ. τ. ε. As what follows in the rhetorician, sufficiently demonstrates. 3. |