OLI. What, you wrestle to-morrow before the new duke?

CHA. Marry, do I, sir; and I came to acquaint you with a matter. I am given, sir, secretly to understand, that your younger brother, Orlando, hath a disposition to come in disguis'd against me to try a fall: To-morrow, sir, I wrestle for my credit; and he that escapes me without some broken limb, shall acquit him well. Your brother is but young, and tender; and, for your love, I would be loath to foil him, as I must, for my own honour, if he come in: therefore, out of my love to you, I came hither to acquaint you withal; that either you might stay him from his intendment, or brook such disgrace well as he shall run into; in that it is a thing of his own search, and altogether against my will.

OLI. Charles, I thank thee for thy love to me, which thou shalt find I will most kindly requite. I had myself notice of my brother's purpose herein, and have by underhand means laboured to dissuade him from it; but he is resolute. I'll tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother; therefore use thy discretion; I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger: And thou wert best look to't; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath ta'en thy life by some indirect means or other: for, I assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one so young and so villainous this day living. I speak but brotherly of him; but should I anatomize him to thee as he is, I must blush and weep, and thou must look pale and wonder.

CHA. I am heartily glad I came hither to you: If he come to-morrow, I'll give him his payment:

If ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for prize more: And so, God keep your worship!

[Exit.

OLI. Farewell good Charles.-Now will I stir this gamester: I hope, I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly" beloved; and, indeed, so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised: but it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither, which now I'll go about.

[Exit.

SCENE II.

A Lawn before the Duke's Palace.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA.

CEL. I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.

Ros. Dear Celia, I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet [I] were merrier?a Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

• stir this gamester] i. e. stimulate, urge to the encounter this adventurer; person disposed to try his fortune at this game. benchantingly] i. e. to a degree that could only be supposed to be the effect of spell or incantation. Cotgrave interprets the word charmingly." Todd's Dict.

e kindle] i. e. instigate to the undertaking. See "enkindle you unto the crown." Macb. I. 3. Banq.

d I were merrier] I was added by Pope.

CEL. Herein, I see, thou lovest me not with the full weight that I love thee: if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, so thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; so would'st thou, if the truth of thy love to me were so righteously temper'd as mine is to thee.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours.

CEL. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou shalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports: let me see; What think you of falling in love?

CEL. Marry, I pr'ythee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earnest; nor no further in sport neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again.

Ros. What shall be our sport then?

CEL. Let us sit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.(8)

Ros. I would, we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CEL. 'Tis true: for those, that she makes fair, she scarce makes honest; and those, that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favour'dly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

CEL. No? When nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by fortune fall into the fire? Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?

Ros. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter off of nature's wit.

CEL. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's? who perceiveth our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddesses, hath sent this natural for our whetstone: for always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits."-How now, wit? whither wander you?

TOUCH. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CEL. Were you made the messenger ?

TOUCH. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCH. Of a certain knight, that swore by his honour they were good pancakes, and swore by his honour the mustard was naught now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forsworn. (9)

a

who perceiveth-hath sent] i. e. " who, [inasmuch as she] perceiveth." The fo. of 1632 reads perceiving: Malone reads, " and sent."

b always the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits] i. e. as, in another view, Falstaff says, he" is the cause of wit in others," so here, as is common or proverbial, the fool is said to be the cause or exciter of the wit of the wits, i. e. of wit in the wits. For the wits the modern editors, without any notice or explanation, read "his wits."

CEL. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Ros. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom.

TOUCH. Stand you both forth now: stroke your chins, and swear by your beards that I am a knave. CEL. By our beards, if we had them, thou art.

TOUCH. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn no more was this knight, swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away, before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.

CEL. Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st?

TOUCH. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

Ros. (10) My father's love is enough to honour him enough: speak no more of him; you'll be whip'd for taxation," one of these days.

TOUCH. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely, what wise men do foolishly.

CEL. By my troth, thou say'st true: for since the little wit, that fools have, was silenced, the little foolery, that wise men have, makes a great show. Here comes Monsieur Le Beau.

Enter LE Beau.

Ros. With his mouth full of news.

CEL. Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young.

Ros. Then shall we be news-cramm'd.

whip'd for taxation] Whipped, the usual punishment of fools for scandal. See "taxing," II. 7. Jaques.

b was silenced] Their former unbridled liberty of censure and mockery began now probably to be put at least under some restraint, as Dr. Johnson intimates.