Grace and remembrance (17) be unto you both,
And welcome to our shearing.

Pol. Shepherdess,

(A fair one are you) well you fit our ages With flowers of winter.

Nature and Art.

Per. Sir, the year growing ancient,

Not yet on fummer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter; the fairest flowers o' th' season
Are our carnations, and streak'd gilly-flowers,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our ruftic garden's barren, and I care not
To get flips of them.

Pol. Wherefore, gentle maiden,

Do you neglect them ?

Per. For I have heard it faid,

There is an art, which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

Pol. Say there be :

Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean: so, over that art,
Which you say adds to nature, is an art:

That nature makes; you fee, sweet maid, we marry

A gentle scyon to the wildest stock;

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race.

This is an art

Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.

Per. So it is.

Pol. Then make your garden rich in gilly-flowers, And do not call them bastards.

(17) Grace and remembrance.] Rue was called Herb of Grace; Rosemary was the emblem of remembrance: it was ufually carried at funerals: and anciently supposed to strengthen the memory; for which purpose it is prescribed in fome old books of physic. J. and St.

A Garland for middle-aged Men.

Per. I'll not put

The dibble in earth, to set one flip of them;
No more than, were I painted, I wou'd wish

This youth should say, 'twere well ; and only there

fore

Defire to breed by me

There's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mint, favoury, marjoram,

The marygold, that goes to bed with th' sun, And with him rises, weeping; these are flowers Of middle fummer, and, I think, they are given To men of middle age.

A Garland for young Men.

Cam. I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,

And only live by gazing.

Per. Out, alas!

You'd be so lean, that blasts of January

Wou'd blow you through and through; now my fair

est friend,

I wou'd I had fome flowers o' the spring, that might
Become your time of day; and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin-branches yet
Your maidenheads growing: O, Proserpina, (18)

For

(18) O, Proferpina, &c.] Milton strews the hearfe of his Lycidas with beautiful vernal flowers, not unlike those the pretty Perdita wishes for the garland of her lover.

-Purple all the ground with vernal flower:
Bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansie streakt with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rofe, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowflips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flow'r that fad embroid'ry wears;

Bid

For the flow'rs now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! (19) early daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, (20)
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, e'er they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength; (a malady
Most incident to maids ;) gold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-lis being one. O, these I lack
To make you garlands of, and, my sweet friend,
To ftrow him o'er and o'er.

Flo. What like a corse ?

Per. No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on; Not like a corse: or if; not to be bury'd, But quick, and in mine arms.

Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.

A Lover's

The reader will find a passage, worth comparing with this of S. in As you like it, p. 27, the note.

See alfo Ophelia's distribution of flowers in Hamlet.
(19) From Dis's waggon.] So Ovid,

-Ut fumma vestem laxavit ab orâ,
Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis.

St.

(20) Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes.] I suspect that our author mistakes Juno for Pallas, who was the goddess of blue eyes. Sweeter than an eye lid, is an odd image: but perhaps he uses sweet in the general fenfe, for delightful. J.

It was formerly the fashion to kiss the eyes, as a mark of extraordinary tenderness. I have somewhere met with an account of the first reception one of our kings gave to his new queen, where he is faid to have kissed her fayre eyes. The eyes of Juno were as remarkable as those of Pallas. Βοωπις ποτνια Ηgn. Homer. St.

4

A Lover's Commendation.

What (21) you do,

Still betters what is done; when you speak, (sweet)
I'd have you do it ever; when you fing,
I'd have you buy and sell fo; so, give alms;
Pray, fo; and for the ord'ring your affairs,
To fing them too. When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the fea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so,
And own no other function: each your doing, (22)
So fingular in each particular,
Crowns what you 're doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.

Honeft

(21) What, &c.] So, a little further, one of the company says,

This is the prettiest low-born lass, that ever
Ran on the green sod: nothing she does or feeins,
But fmacks of fomething greater than herself,
Too noble for this place.

And when it is said afterwards, She dances featly-the old shepherd adds, So she does any thing.

Ovid, that great master of love, well assured of the truth of this, that every thing done by the perfon we love is agreeable, thus makes his Sappho complain, in her epistle to Phaon.

My music then you could for ever hear,
And all my words were music to your ear:
You ftopp'd with kisses my enchanting tongue,
And found my kisses sweeter than my fong:
In all I pleas'd, but most in what was best,
And the last joy was dearer than the rest:
Then with each glance, each word, each motion fir'd,
You still enjoy'd, and yet you still defir'd.

Pope.

(22) Each your doing, &c.] That is, your manner in cach act crowns the act. J..

Per. O Doricles,

Honest Wooing.

Your praises are too large; but that your youth, And the true blood which peeps fo fairly through 't, Do plainly give you out an unstain'd shepherd; With wisdom I might fear, my Doricles,

You woo'd me the false way.

Flo. I think you have

1

As little skill to fear, (23) as I have purpose

To put you to 't. But come; our dance, I pray:

Your hands, my Perdita: so turtles pair,

That never mean to part.

True Love.

They call him, Doricles: he boafts himself
To have a worthy feeding: (24) but I have it
Upon his own report, and I believe it;

He looks like footh. He says, he loves my daughter;
I think so too: for never gaz'd the moon
Upon the water, as he'll stand and read,
As 'twere, my daughter's eyes: and to be plain,
I think there is not half a kiss to chuse,
Who loves another best.

Clown's

(23) As little skill to fear.] To have skill to do a thing, was a phrafe then in use equivalent quivalent to have reason to do a thing. W. These passages are in the true character of youth in the different fexes: fincerity on one fide and confidence on the other. Deceit and diffidence are the fruits of riper or more rotten years. Mrs. G.

(24) Worthy feeding.] W. proposes breeding. But J. conceives feeding to be a pafture, and a worthy feeding to be " a tract of pasturage, not inconfiderable, not unworthy my daughter's fortune."