If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself:
Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not.
Ros. Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor:
Tell me, whereon the likelihood depends.

DUKE F. Thou art thy father's daughter, there's enough.
Ros. So was I when your highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your highness banish'd him :
Treason is not inherited, my lord;

Or, if we did derive it from our friends,

What's that to me? my father was no traitor:
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.

CEL. Dear sovereign, hear me speak.

DUKE F. Ay, Celia; we stay'd her for your sake,
Else had she with her father rang'd along.
CEL. I did not then entreat to have her stay,
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her if she be a traitor,
Why so am I; we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,

Still we went coupled, and inseparable.

DUKE F. She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,

Her very silence, and her patience,

Speak to the people, and they pity her.

Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name;

And thou wilt show more bright, and seem more virtuous,

When she is gone: then open not thy lips;

Firm and irrevocable is my doom

Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd.

CEL. Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege;

I cannot live out of her company.

a Remorse-compassion.

COMEDIES.-VOL. II.

DUKE F. You are a fool :-You, niece, provide yourself;
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,
And in the greatness of my word, you die.

[Exeunt Duke FREDERICK and Lords.

CEL. O my poor Rosalind! whither wilt thou go?
Wilt thou change fathers? I will give thee mine.
I charge thee, be not thou more griev'd than I am.
Ros. I have more cause.

CEL.

Thou hast not, cousin ;
Prithee, be cheerful; know'st thou not the duke
Hath banish'd me, his daughter?

Ros.
That he hath not.
CEL. No? hath not? Rosalind lacks then the love
Which teacheth theea that thou and I am one:
Shall we be sunder'd? shall we part, sweet girl?
No; let my father seek another heir.
Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us:
And do not seek to take your change upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself, and leave me out;
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.
Ros. Why, whither shall we go?

CEL. To seek my uncle in the forest of Arden.
Ros. Alas, what danger will it be to us,

Maids as we are, to travel forth so far!
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
CEL. I'll put myself in poor and mean attire,
And with a kind of umber smirch my face,
The like do you; so shall we pass along,
And never stir assailants.

a Warburton would read, and we think he has reason, "which teacheth me." Johnson defends the original reading of thee. He says, "Where would be the absurdity of saying, You know not the law which teaches you to do right?"

All the ordinary reprints of the text are here mutilated by one of Steevens's hateful corrections. In them we read,-because "we have been already informed by Charles the wrestler that the banished Duke's residence was in the forest of Arden,"—

And so the two poor ladies are to go forth to seek the banished Duke through the wide world, and to meet with him at last by chance, because Steevens holds that this indication of their knowledge of the place of his retreat is "injurious to the measure!"

That do outface it with their semblances.

CEL. What shall I call thee, when thou art a man?
Ros. I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page,
And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

But what will you be call'd?

CEL. Something that hath a reference to my state;
No longer Celia, but Aliena.

Ros. But, cousin, what if we essay'd to steal

The clownish fool out of your father's court?
Would he not be a comfort to our travel?
CEL. He'll go along o'er the wide world with me;
Leave me alone to woo him: Let's away,
And get our jewels and our wealth together;
Devise the fittest time, and safest way
To hide us from pursuit that will be made
After my flight: Now go in we content,
To liberty, and not to banishment.

[Exeunt.

a Swashing. To swash is to make a noise of swords against targets. In 'Romeo and Juliet' we have "the swashing blow."

b

In we content. This is the reading of the first folio; that of the second, we in content. Malone holds content to be a substantive, in the reading of the second folio. Adopting the original reading, we must receive it as an adjective.

Enter DUKE senior, AMIENS, and other Lords, in the dress of Foresters.

DUKE S. Now, my co-mates, and brothers in exile,

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?
Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.
The seasons' difference,-as, the icy fang,
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind,
Which when it bites and blows upon my body,
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say
This is no flattery,-these are counsellors

That feelingly persuade me what I ama.
Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head";
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks",
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

AMI. I would not change it: Happy is your grace,
That can translate the stubbornness of fortune
Into so quiet and so sweet a style.

DUKE S. Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,-
Being native burghers of this desert city,-
Should, in their own confines, with forked heads a
Have their round haunches gor'd.

1 LORD.

Indeed, my lord,
The melancholy Jaques grieves at that;
And, in that kind, swears you do more usurp
Than doth your brother that hath banish'd you.
To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself

Did steal behind him, as he lay along

Under an oak, whose antique root peeps out
Upon the brook that brawls along this wood:
To the which place a poor sequester'd stag,
That from the hunters' aim had ta'en a hurt,
Did come to languish; and, indeed, my lord,
The wretched animal heav'd forth such groans,
That their discharge did stretch his leathern coat
Almost to bursting; and the big round tears
Cours'd one another down his innocent nose
In piteous chase: and thus the hairy fool,
Much marked of the melancholy Jaques,
Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook,
Augmenting it with tears.

DUKE S.

But what said Jaques?

Did he not moralise this spectacle?

a In this celebrated passage we have restored the old reading

"Here feel we not the penalty of Adam."

In every modern edition, except that of Mr. Caldecott, the reading is

(See Illustration 4.)

"Here feel we but the penalty of Adam.”

▷ This is an amplification of a thought in Sydney's 'Arcadia:' “Thus both trees and each thing else be the books to a fancy."

• Irks me.

This active use of the verb irk has become obsolete, although it is used by as recent an author as Hoole. The meaning is obvious from the adjective, which we still retain, irksome.

Forked heads-the heads of barbed arrows.