And proves new ways to come to learned ears:
Pied ignorance she neither loves nor fears.
Nor hunts she after popular applause,

Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws :
The garland that she wears, their hands must twine,
Who can both censure, understand, define
What merit is: then cast those piercing rays,
Round as a crown, instead of honour'd bays,
About his poesy; which, he knows, affords
Words, above action; matter, above words.

ACT I. SCENE I.

A Grove and Fountain.

Enter CUPID, and MERCURY with his caduceus, on different sides.

Cup. Who goes there?

Mer. 'Tis I, blind archer.

Cup. Who, Mercury?
Mer. Ay.

Cup. Farewell.

Mer. Stay, Cupid.

Cup. Not in your company, Hermes, except your hands were rivetted at your back.

Mer. Why so, my little rover?

Cup. Because I know you have not a finger, but is as long as my quiver, cousin Mercury, when you please to extend it.

Mer. Whence derive you this speech, boy? Cup. O! 'tis your best polity to be ignorant. You did never steal Mars his sword out of the sheath, you! nor Neptune's trident! nor Apollo's

bow! no, not you! Alas, your palms, Jupiter knows, they are as tender as the foot of a foundered nag, or a lady's face new mercuried, they'll touch nothing.

Mer. Go to, infant, you'll be daring still.

Cup. Daring! O Janus! what a word is there? why, my light feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some round volubility? wait mannerly at a table with a trencher, warble upon a crowd a little,' and fill out nectar when Ganymede's away? one that sweeps the gods' drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another's head over night; can brush the carpets, call the stools again to their places, play the crier of the court with an audible voice, and take state of a president upon you at wrestlings, pleadings, negociations, &c. Here's the catalogue of your employments, now! O no, I err; you have the marshalling of all the ghosts too that pass the Stygian ferry, and I suspect you for a share with the old sculler there, if the truth were known; but let that scape. One other peculiar virtue you possess, in lifting,' or

7

warble upon a crowd a little,] This seems but a scurvy compliment to the curve lyre parentem; but Cupid is pleased to be satirical. To warble on a crowd, is a Latinism, canere tibia, &c. Crowd is the old word for a fiddle; indeed, it is still in use in every part of the kingdom. I need not inform the learned reader, that Jonson is here trying his strength with Lucian, from whom many of the circumstances are taken; and surely prejudice itself must admit that, in elegance and sprightliness of style, this dialogue is not a whit inferior to any in that lively and Attic writer. The allusions to him are too crowded and too obvious, to be pointed out.

In lifting,] i. e. stealing; hence the modern word shoplifter. WHAL.

leiger-du-main, which few of the house of heaven have else besides, I must confess. But, methinks, that should not make you put that extreme distance 'twixt yourself and others, that we should be said to 'over dare' in speaking to your nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both, because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join'd stools at the arm's end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have made the whole body of divinity tremble at the twang of our bow, and enforced Saturnius himself to lay by his curled front, thunder, and three-fork'd fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a reveller of eighteen to be seen

in

Mer. How now! my dancing braggart in de cimo sexto! charm your skipping tongue, or I'll

Cup. What? use the virtue of your snaky tipstaff there upon us?

Mer. No, boy, but the smart vigour of my palm about your ears. You have forgot since I took your heels up into air, on the very hour I was born, in sight of all the bench of deities, when the silver roof of the Olympian palace rung again with applause of the fact.

Cup. O no, I remember it freshly, and by a particular instance; for my mother Venus, at

9 My dancing braggart in decimo sexto!] This expression for a youth, a stripling, occurs in many of our old writers. See Massinger, Vol. III. p. 32. Charm your tongue, is silence it, put a spell on its motion.

Thus Shakspeare,

66 Peace, wilful boy, or I shall charm your tongue." Hen. VI. And again,

"Alistress, go to charm your tongue." Othello.

the same time, but stoop'd to embrace you, and, to speak by metaphor, you borrowed a girdle of her's, as you did Jove's sceptre while he was laughing; and would have done his thunder too, but that 'twas too hot for your itching fin

gers.

Mer. "Tis well, sir.

Cup. I heard, you but look'd in at Vulcan's forge the other day, and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company: 'tis joy on you, i' faith, that you will keep your hook'd talons in practice with any thing. Slight, now you are on earth, we shall have you filch spoons and candlesticks rather than fail: pray Jove the perfumed courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths, and shittle-cocks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their tobacco-boxes; for I am strangely jealous of your nails.

- Mer. Never trust me, Cupid, but you are turn'd a most acute gallant of late! the edge of my wit is clean taken off with the fine and subtile stroke of your thin-ground tongue; you fight with too poignant a phrase, for me to deal with.

Cup. O Hermes, your craft cannot make me confident. I know my own steel to be almost spent, and therefore entreat my peace with you, in time you are too cunning for me to encounter at length, and I think it my safest ward to close.

Mer. Well, for once, I'll suffer you to win upon me, wag; but use not these strains too often, they'll stretch my patience. Whither might you march, now?

Cup. Faith, to recover thy good thoughts, I'll discover my whole project. The huntress and queen of these groves, Diana, in regard of some black and envious slanders hourly breathed against

her, for her divine justice on Acteon, as she pretends, hath here in the vale of Gargaphie,* proclaim'd a solemn revels, which (her godhead put off) she will descend to grace, with the full and royal expense of one of her clearest moons: in which time it shall be lawful for all sorts of ingenious persons to visit her palace, to court her nymphs, to exercise all variety of generous and noble pastimes; as well to intimate how far she treads such malicious imputations beneath her, as also to shew how clear her beauties are from the least wrinkle of austerity they may be charged with.

Mer. But, what is all this to Cupid?

Cup. Here do I mean to put off the title of a god, and take the habit of a page, in which disguise, during the interim of these revels, I will get to follow some one of Diana's maids, where, if my bow hold, and my shafts fly but with half the willingness and aim they are directed, I doubt not but I shall really redeem the minutes I have lost, by their so long and over nice proscription of my deity from their court.

Mer. Pursue it, divine Cupid, it will be rare.
Cup. But will Hermes second me?

Mer. I am now to put in act an especial designment from my father Jove; but, that perform'd, I am for any fresh action that offers itself.

Cup. Well, then we part.

Mer. Farewell, good wag.

[Exit.

Now to my charge.-Echo, fair Echo, speak,

Here in the vale of Gargaphic.] The vale where Acteon

was torn to pieces by his own hounds:

Vallis erat piceis, et acuta densa cupresso,

Nomine Gargaphie, &c. Ovid Metam. 1. 3. WHAL.