To knit in her their best perfections.

Music. Enter the Daughter of ANTIOCHUS.

Per. See where she comes, apparell'd like the Spring, Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king

Of every virtue gives renown to men !3

Her face the book of praises, where is read
Nothing but curious pleasures, as from thence
Sorrow were ever razed, and testy wrath
Could never be in her mild company.
You gods that made me man, and sway in love,
That have inflamed desire in my breast
To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree,
Or die in the adventure, be my helps,
As I am son and servant to your will,
To compass such a boundless happiness!
Ant. Prince Pericles,

Per. That would be son to great Antiochus.
Ant. Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,4
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touch'd;
For death, like dragons, here affrights thee hard:
Her face, like heaven, enticeth thee to view
Her countless glory, which desert must gain;
And which, without desert, because thine eye
Presumes to reach, all thy whole heap5 must die.

dowry gave, that the senate-house of planets all should sit," &c. The leading thought may have been taken from Sidney's Arcadia: "The senatehouse of the planets was at no time to set, for the decreeing of perfection in man"; that is, because of decreeing.

8" The Graces are her subjects, and her thoughts the sovereign of every virtue that gives renown to men."

4 Hesperides is here put for the garden in which the golden apples were kept. See vol. ii. page 69, note 32.

5 Heap for bulk, body, or person. An antithesis was probably intended: "Thy whole body must suffer for the offence of a part, the eye.

Yon sometime-famous princes, like thyself,
Drawn by report, adventurous by desire,

Tell thee, with speechless tongues and semblance pale,
That, without covering, save yon field of stars,
Here they stand martyrs, slain in Cupid's wars;
And with dead cheeks advise thee to desist
For going on death's met, whom none resist.
Per. Antiochus, I thank thee, who hast taught
My frail mortality to know itself,

And by those fearful objects to prepare
This body, like to them, to what I must ;7
For death remember'd should be like a mirror,
Who tells us life's but breath; to trust it, error.
I'll make my will, then; and, as sick men do,
Who know the world, see Heaven, but, feeling woe,
Gripe not at earthly joys, as erst they did;

So I bequeath a happy peace to you

And all good men, as every prince should do;

My riches to the earth from whence they came ;

[To the Princess.] But my unspotted fire of love to you. Thus, ready for the way of life or death,

I wait the sharpest blow.

Ant. Scorning advice, read the conclusion, then ; Which read and not expounded, 'tis decreed,

As these before thee, thou thyself shalt bleed.

Daugh. Of all 'say'd yet,8 mayst thou prove prosperous !

6 For going means for fear of going, or lest you should go. Met, from the Latin meta, is boundary or limit. So in the Mirror for Magistrates, quoted by Nares:

་་

Untimely never comes the lives last met,
In cradle death may rightly claime his det.

7" To prepare this body for that state to which I must come."

8 That is, of all who have yet assayed, or made the trial. She means that of all her suitors thus far, he is the only one to whom she has wished suc

cess.

Of all 'say'd yet, I wish thee happiness!

Per. Like a bold champion, I assume the lists, Nor ask advice of any other thought

But faithfulness and courage.9

I am no viper, yet I feed

[Reads the riddle.

On mother's flesh which did me breed.
I sought a husband, in which labour
I found that kindness in a father:
He's father, son, and husband mild;
I mother, wife, and yet his child.
How this may be, and yet in two,
As you will live, resolve it you.

Sharp physic is the last : 10 but, O you powers
That give heaven countless eyes to view men's acts,
Why cloud they not their sights perpetually,
If this be true, which makes me pale to read it?
Fair glass of light, I loved you, and could still,

[Takes hold of the hands of the Princess.

Were not this glorious casket stored with ill:
But I must tell you, now my thoughts revolt;
For he's no man on whom perfections wait 11
That, knowing sin within, will touch the gate.
You're a fair viol, and your sense' the strings;
Who, finger'd to make man his lawful music,
Would draw heaven down, and all the gods, to hearken;
But, being play'd upon before your time,
Hell only danceth at so harsh a chime.
Good sooth, I care not for you.

9 So in Sidney's Arcadia: "Asking advice of no other thought but faithfuinesse and courage, he presently lighted from his own horse."

10 The intimation in the last line of the riddle, that his life depends on resolving it.

11 He is no perfect or honest man, that knowing, &c.

Ant. Prince Pericles, touch not, 12 upon thy life, For that's an article within our law,

As dangerous as the rest. Your time's expired:

Either expound now, or receive your sentence.
Per. Great King,

Few love to hear the sins they love to act;
'Twould braid 13 yourself too near for me to tell it.
Who has a book of all that monarchs do,
He's more secure to keep it shut than shown:
For vice repeated is like the wandering wind,
Blows dust in others' eyes, to spread itself;
And yet the end of all is bought thus dear,

The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear

To stop the air would hurt them.14 The blind mole casts
Copp'd hills towards heaven, to tell the Earth is throng'd
By man's oppression; and the poor worm doth die for't.15
Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will;
And, if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?
It is enough you know; and it is fit,

12 This is a stroke of nature. The incestuous king cannot bear to see a rival touch the hand of the woman he loves.

13 To braid was sometimes used with the sense of to upbraid. So in Sir Thomas More's Works: He bringeth to the mater neither any substaunciall learning, nor yet anye proofe of reason or natural wytte, but onely a rashe, maliciouse, franticke braide."

14 "The man who knows the ill practices of princes is unwise if he reveals what he knows; for the publisher of vicious actions resembles the wind, which, while it passes along, blows dust into men's eyes. When the blast is over, the eyes that have been affected by the dust, though sore, see clear enough to stop for the future the air that would annoy them."

15" Copp'd hills" are hills rising in a conical form, something of the shape of a sugar-loaf. Thus in Horman's Vulgaria, 1519: "Sometime men wear copped caps like a sugar loaf." So Baret: "To make copped, or sharpe at top; cacumino." - The mole is called poor worm as a term of commiseration. In The Tempest, Prospero, speaking to Miranda, says, Poor worm, thou art infected." The mole remains secure till it has thrown up those hillocks which betray his course to the mole-catcher.

What being more known grows worse, to smother it.
All love the womb that their first being bred,

Then give my tongue like leave to love head.

my

Ant. [Aside.] Heaven, that I had thy head! he has found the meaning:

But I will gloze 16 with him. Young Prince of Tyre,

Though by the tenour of our strict edíct,
Your exposition misinterpreting,

We might proceed to cancel of your days;
Yet hope, succeeding from so fair a tree
As your fair self, doth tune us otherwise.
Forty days longer we do respite you ;
If by which time our secret be undone,
This mercy shows we'll joy in such a son;
And until then your entertain shall be
As doth befit our honour and

your

worth.
[Exeunt all but PERICLES.

Per. How courtesy would seem to cover sin,
When what is done is like an hypocrite,
The which is good in nothing but in sight!

If it be true that I interpret false,

Then were it certain you were not so bad
As with foul incest to abuse your soul;
Where 17 now you're both a father and a son
By your untimely claspings with your child,
Which pleasure fits a husband, not a father;
And she an eater of her mother's flesh
By the defiling of her parent's bed;

And both like serpents are, who though they feed
On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed.

Antioch, farewell! for wisdom sees, those men

16 To cajole, to wheedle, to flatter are among the old meanings of to gloze. See vol. x. page 161, note 2.

17 Where for whereas. The two were often used indiscriminately.