uncle's wit better than mine, you shall marry me; if you like mine better than his, I will marry you, in spite of your teeth. So commending my best parts to you, I rest

Yours,

upwards and downwards, or you may choose.

Ber. Ah, ha! here's stuff, uncle!

BERGETTO.

Don. Here's stuff indeed-to shame us all. Pray whose advice did you take in this learned letter? Pog. None, upon my word, but mine own.

Ber. And mine, uncle, believe it, nobody's else; 'twas mine own brain, I thank a good wit for't. Don. Get you home, sir, and look you keep within doors till I return.

Ber. How? that were a jest indeed! I scorn it, i'faith.

Don. What! you do not?

Ber. Judge me, but I do now.

Pog. Indeed, sir, 'tis very unhealthy.

Don. Well, sir, if I hear any of your apish running to motions and fopperies, till I come back, you were as good not; look to't.

[Exit.

Ber. Poggio, shall's steal to see this horse with the head in's tail?

Pog. Ay, but you must take heed of whipping. Ber. Dost take me for a child, Poggio? Come, honest Poggio.

[Exeunt.

words in the text are borrowed from Nic. Bottom, confessedly a very facetious personage.

9 If I hear of your running to motions.] i. e. to puppet-shews; see Jonson, vol. ii. p. 7.

SCENE V.

FRIAR BONAVENTURA'S Cell.

Enter FRIAR and GIOVANNI.

Friar. Peace! thou hast told a tale, whose every word

Threatens eternal slaughter to the soul;

I'm sorry I have heard it: would mine ears.
Had been one minute deaf, before the hour

That thou cam'st to me! O young man, cast

away,

By the religious number of mine order,'
I day and night have wak'd my aged eyes
Above my strength, to weep on thy behalf:
But Heaven is angry, and be thou resolv'd,
Thou art a man remark'd to taste a mischief."
Look for't; though it come late, it will come sure.
Gio. Father, in this you are uncharitable;
What I have done, I'll prove both fit and good.
It is a principle which you have taught,
When I was yet your scholar, that the frame
And composition of the mind doth follow
The frame and composition of [the] body:
So, where the body's furniture is beauty,

The mind's must needs be virtue; which allow'd,

By the religious number of mine order.] A misprint, probably, for founder; but I have changed nothing.

2 Thou art a man remark'd to taste a mischief.] i. e. marked out to experience some fearful evil: in this sense the word mischief is sometimes used by our old writers.

Virtue itself is reason but refined,

And love the quintessence of that: this proves
My sister's beauty, being rarely fair,

Is rarely virtuous; chiefly in her love,
And chiefly, in that love, her love to me:
If her's to me, then so is mine to her;
Since in like causes are effects alike.

Friar. O ignorance in knowledge! long ago,
How often have I warn'd thee this before?
Indeed, if we were sure there were no Deity,
Nor heaven nor hell; then to be led alone
By nature's light (as were philosophers
Of elder times) might instance some defence.
But 'tis not so: then, madman, thou wilt find,
That nature is in Heaven's positions blind.

Gio. Your age o'errules you; had you youth
like mine,

You'd make her love your heaven, and her divine. Friar. Nay, then I see thou'rt too far sold to hell:

It lies not in the compass of my prayers

To call thee back, yet let me counsel thee;
Persuade thy sister to some marriage.

Gio. Marriage? why that's to damn her; that's
to prove

Her greedy of variety of lust.

Friar. O fearful! if thou wilt not, give me

leave

To shrive her, lest she should die unabsolv'd. Gio. At your best leisure, father: then she'll tell you,

How dearly she doth prize my matchless love;
Then you will know what pity 'twere we two
Should have been sunder'd from each other's arms.
View well her face, and in that little round
You may observe a world's variety;

For colour,' lips: for sweet perfumes, her breath;
For jewels, eyes; for threads of purest gold,
Hair; for delicious choice of flowers, cheeks;
Wonder in every portion of that throne.-
Hear her but speak, and you will swear the
spheres

Make music to the citizens in heaven.-
But, father, what is else for pleasure fram'd,
Lest I offend your ears, shall go unnam'd.

Friar. The more I hear, I pity thee the more;
That one so excellent should give those parts
All to a second death. What I can do,

Is but to pray; and yet-I could advise thee,
Wouldst thou be ruled.

Gio. In what?

3 For colour, lips.] Dodsley reads for coral, lips; but the old copy is right; colour is placed in apposition to perfume. Just below he has form for throne. In the extravagance of Giovanni's praise, it is scarcely possible to know what terms he would adopt; but form appears too tame to be genuine, and frame occurs in the next verse but one. It is not quite clear to me, that a line has not been dropped after throne.

For world's variety, the old copy reads "world of variety," which spoils the metre. I suppose, the printer mistook the 's for o', the old abridgement of of. It would be unjust to say that the Friar has any thing in him of" the old squire of Troy;" yet he certainly betrays his duty both to God and man in the feeble resistance which he offers to the commencement and continuance of this fatal intercourse.

Friar. Why leave her yet:

The throne of mercy is above your trespass;
Yet time is left you both-

Gio. To embrace each other,

Else let all time be struck quite out of number; She is like me, and I like her, resolv'd.

Friar. No more! I'll visit her;-this grieves

me most,

Things being thus, a pair of souls are lost.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI.

A Room in FLORIO's House.

Enter FLORIO, DONADO, ANNABELLA, and PUTANA.

Flo. Where is Giovanni?

Ann. Newly walk'd abroad,

And, as I heard him say, gone to the friar,
His reverend tutor.

Flo. That's a blessed man,

A man made up of holiness; I hope
He'll teach him how to gain another world.
Don. Fair gentlewoman, here's a letter, sent
To you from my young cousin ; I dare swear
He loves you in his soul: would you could hear
Sometimes, what I see daily, sighs and tears,
As if his breast were prison to his heart.

4 From my young cousin.] Our author, like all the writers of his day, commonly uses cousin for nephew and niece.