LAF. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, exceffive grief the enemy to the living.

COUNT. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it foon mortal.

BER. Madam, I defire your holy wishes.

LAF. How understand we that?

COUNT. Be thou bleft, Bertram! and fucceed thy father In manners, as in fhape! thy blood, and virtue, Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birth-right! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for filence, But never tax'd for fpeech. What heaven more will, That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down, Fall on thy head! Farewell.-My lord,

'Tis an unfeafon'd courtier; good my lord, Advise him.

LAF. He cannot want the best

That shall attend his love.

COUNT. Heaven bless him!-Farewell, Bertram.

[Exit COUNTESS. BER. The beft wishes, that can be forged in your thoughts, [To HELENA.] be fervants to you! Be comfortable to my mother, your mistress, and make much of her.

LAF. Farewell, pretty lady: You must hold the credit of your father. [Exeunt BERTRAM and LAFEU. HEL. O, were that all!-I think not on my father; And these great tears grace his remembrance more, Than those I fhed for him. What was he like?

I have forgot him: my imagination

Carries no favour in it, but Bertram's.

I am undone; there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. It were all one,
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is fo above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind, that would be mated by the lion,
Muft die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To fee him every hour; to fit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table; heart, too capable

Of every line and trick of his fweet favour:
But now he's gone,
idolatrous fancy
Muft fanctify his relicks. Who comes here?

and my

Enter PAROLLES.

One that goes with him: I love him for his fake;
And
yet I know him a notorious liar,

Think him a great way fool, folely a coward;

Yet these fix'd evils fit fo fit in him,

That they take place, when virtue's steely bones
Look bleak in the cold wind: withal, full oft we fee
Cold wisdom waiting on fuperfluous folly.

PAR. Are you meditating on virginity

HEL. Ay. You have fome ftain of foldier in you; let me ask you a queftion: Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him ?

PAR. Keep him out.

HEL. But he affails; and our virginity, though valiant

in the defence, yet is weak: unfold to us fome warlike

refistance.

PAR. There is none; man, fitting down before you, will undermine you, and blow you up.

HEL. Bless our poor virginity from underminers, and blowers up! Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men?

PAR. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature, to preserve virginity. Lofs of virginity is rational increase; and there was never virgin got, till virginity was first lost. That, you were first made of, is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once loft, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever loft: 'tis too cold a companion; away with it.

HEL. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

PAR. There's little can be faid in't; 'tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the To speak on the part of virginity, is to accufe your mothers; which is most infallible difobedience. He, that hangs himself, is a virgn: virginity murders itself; and should be buried in highways, out of all fanctified limit, as a defperate offendrefs againft nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; confumes itself to the very paring, and fo dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of felf love, which is the most inhibited fin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't: Out with't: within ten years it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: Away with't.

HEL. How might one do, fir, to lose it to her own liking? PAR. Let me fee: Marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'Tis a commodity will lofe the glofs with lying; the longer kept, the lefs worth: off with't, while 'tis vendible: answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion; richly fuited, but unfuitable: just like the brooch and toothpick, which wear not now: Your date is better in your pye and your porridge, than in your cheek: And your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French wither'd pears; pears; it looks ill, it eats dryly; marry, 'tis a wither'd pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet, wither'd pear; Will you any thing with it? HEL. Not my virginity yet.

There fhall your mafter have a thousand loves,

A mother, and a mistress, and a friend,
A phoenix, captain, and an enemy,
A guide, a goddefs, and a fovereign,
A counsellor, a traitrefs, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his difcord dulcet,
His faith, his fweet difafter; with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
That blinking Cupid goffips. Now fhall he
I know not what he fhall:-God fend him well!—
The court's a learning-place ;-and he is one
PAR. What one, i'faith?

HEL. That I wish well.-Tis pity

PAR. What's pity?

HEL. That wishing well had not a body in't,
Which might be felt that we, the poorer born,
Whose baser stars do fhut us up in wishes,
Might with effects of them follow our friends,

'tis a

And fhow what we alone must think; which never
Returns us thanks.

Enter a PAGE.

PAGE. Monfieur Parolles, my lord calls for you?

[Exit PAGE. PAR. Little Helen, farewell: if I can remember thee,

I will think of thee at court.

HEL. Monfieur Parolles, you were born under a charitable ftar.

PAR. Under Mars, I.

HEL. I especially think, under Mars.

PAR. Why under Mars?

HEL. The wars have fo kept you under, that you muft .needs be born under Mars.

PAR. When he was predominant.

HEL. When he was retrograde, I think, rather.

HEL. You go fo much backward, when you fight.
PAR. That's for advantage.

HEL. So is running away, when fear propofes the fafety: But the compofition, that your valour and fear you, is a virtue of a good wing, and I like the

makes in

wear well.

PAR. I am fo full of bufineffes, I cannot answer thee acutely I will return perfect courtier; in the which, my inftruction fhall ferve to naturalize thee, fo thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counfel, and understand what advice fhall thruft upon thee; elfe thou dieft in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When thou haft leifure, fay thy prayers; when thou haft none, remember thy friends: get thee a good husband, and ufe him as he uses thee: fo farewell.

[Exit.