Did

you

PIGNA

inform his Grace that Signor Pigna

Waits with state papers for his signature?

MALPIGLIO

The Lady Leonora cannot know

That I have written a sonnet to her fame,

In which I

Venus and Adonis.

You should not take my gold and serve me

not.

ALBANO

In truth I told her, and she smiled and said, "If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,

Art the Adonis whom I love, and he

The Erymanthian boar that wounded him."

O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,

Those nods and smiles were favours worth the

zechin.

MALPIGLIO

The words are twisted in some double sense That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.

PIGNA

How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?

ALBANO

Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was

leaning,

His finger

on his brow, his lips unclosed.

The Princess sate within the window-seat,

And so her face was hid; but on her knee
Her hands were clasped, veinèd, and pale as

snow,

And quivering-young Tasso, too, was there.

MADDALO

Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven

Thou drawest down smiles they did not rain

on thee.

MALPIGLIO

Would they were parching lightnings for his

sake

On whom they fell!

And for your own take the inclement air;
Who build warm houses.

And are like gods who give them all they have,
And nurse them from the cradle to the

Fragment: "What Men Gain Fairly”

HAT men gain fairly- that they

should possess,

And children may inherit idleness,

From him who earns it - This is

understood;

Private injustice may be general good.

But he who gains by base and armèd wrong,
Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,
May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress

Is stript from a convicted thief, and he
Left in the nakedness of infamy.

'Perhaps connected with that immediately preceding. — ED.

O