wofull Hæbe and onely accursed Hæbe. Farewell the sweete delights of life, and welcome now the bitter pangs of death. Farewell you chast virgins, whose thoughts are divine, whose faces faire, whose fortunes are agreeable to your affections; enjoy and long enjoy the pleasure of your curled locks, the amiablenes of your wished looks, the sweetnesse of your tuned voices, the content of your inward thoughts, the pompe of your outward showes, onely Hæbe biddeth farwell to all the joyes that she conceived and you hope for-that shee possessed, and you shall; farewell the pompe of princes' courts, whose roofes are imbosst with golde, and whose pavements are decked with faire ladies, where the dayes are spent in sweet delights, the nights in pleasant dreames, where chastitie honoreth affections and commandeth-yieldeth to desire and conquereth.

Farewell the soveraigne of all virtue, and goddesse of all virgins, Diana, whose perfections are impossible to be numbred, and therefore infinite; never to be matched, and therefore immortall. Farewell sweet parents, yet to be mine, unfortunate parents. How blessed had you beene in barrennes! how happy had I beene if I had not beene! Farewell life, vaine life, wretched life, whose sorrowes are long, whose end, doubtfull, whose miseries, certaine, whose hopes innumerable, whose feares intolerable. Come death! and welcome death! whom nature cannot resist, because necessitie ruleth, nor defer because destiny hasteth. Come Agar, thou unsatiable monster of maidens' blood, and devourer of beauties' bowels, glut thyselfe till thou surfet, and let my life end thine. Teare these tender joynts with thy greedy jawes, these yellow locks with thy blacke feete, this faire face with thy foule teeth. Why abatest thou thy wonted swiftnesse? I am faire, I am a virgine, I am readie. Come Agar, thou horrible monster! and farewell world, thou viler monster."

The following scene, from the same play, between an Astrologer and a Serving-Man out of place, is a pleasant piece of extravagance.

"Rafe. But what have we yonder? What devout man? he will never speake till hee be urged, I will salute him. Sir, there lieth a purse under your feet, if I thought it was not yours, I would take it up.

Astrol. Doest thou not know that I was calculating the nativitie of Alexander's great horse?

Rafe. Why, what are you!

Astrol. An astronomer.

Rafe. What one of those that makes almanackes?

Astrol. Ipsissimus. I can tell the minute of thy birth, the moment of thy death, and the manner. I can tell thee what weather shall bee betweene this and Octogessimus octavus mirabilis annus. When I list I can set a trap for the sun, catch the moone with lymetwigs, and goe a bat-fowling for stars. I can tell thee things past, and things to come, and with my cunning, measure how many yards of cloudes are beneath the skie. Nothing can happen which I foresee not, nothing shall.

Rafe. I hope you, sir, you are no more than a god.

Astrol. I can bring the twelve signes out of their zodiacks, and hang them up at tavernes.

Rafe. I pray you, sir, tell mee what you cannot doe, for I perceive there is nothing so easie for you to compasse as impossibilities. But what be those signes?

Astrol. As a man should say, signes which governe the bodie. The ram governeth the head.

Rafe. That is the worst signe for the head.
Astrol. Why?

Rafe. Because it is a signe of an ill ewe.

Astrol. Tush, that signe must bee here. Then the bull for the throate, Capricornus for the knees.

Rafe. I will heare no more signes, if they be all such desperate signes: but seeing you are, (I know not who to terme you) shall I serve you? I would faine serve.

Astrol. I accept thee.

Rafe. Happy am I, for now shall I teach thoughts, and tell how many drops of water goes to the greatest showre of raine. You shall see me catch the moone in the chips like a cony in a pursnet.

Astrol. I will teach thee the golden number, the epact and the prime.

Rafe. I will meddle no more with numbring of gold, for multiplication is a miserable action; I pray, sir, what weather shall we have this houre threescore yeere?

Astrol. That I must cast by our judicials astronomicall, therefore come in with me, and thou shalt see every wrinkle of my astrologicall wisdome, and I will make the Heavens as plaine to thee as the highway; thy cunning shall sit cheeke by jole with the sunne's chariot: then shalt thou see what a base thing it is, to have others' thoughts creepe on the grounde, when as thine shall bee stitched to the starres.

Rafe. Then I shall be translated from this mortality.

Astrol. Thy thoughts shall be metamorphosed, and made hailefellows with the gods.

Rafe. O fortune! I feele my very braine morallized, and as it were a certaine contempt of earthly actions is crept into my minde, by an ætheriall contemplation. Come, let us in."

The songs form so beautiful a variation in Lilly's plays, that we are tempted to add one from this play also, which is sung by the Nymphs of Diana, to whom Cupid had done a shrewd turn.

"O yes! O yes! if any maid,
Whom leering Cupid has betraid
To frownes of spite, to eyes of scorne,
And would in madnes now see torne
The boy in pieces, let her come
Hither, and lay on him her doome.

The essence of Lilly's elaborate wit is not, in general, extracted from an acute discrimination of the nice, yet striking, difference or resemblance of things, or from the real similarity of words, but from the determined misconception and wilful distortion of both. His wit is too far-fetched and too violently contrasted. He is, in consequence, learnedly humourous and not naturally witty-gravely jocose and not riantly playful. We will make two more extracts to shew the nature of Lilly's humourous and punning qualifications.

The following is from Midas.

"Licio. Thou servest Mellacrites, and I his daughter; which is the better man?

Petulus. The masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine. Therefore Licio, backare.

Li. That is when those two genders are at jarre, but when they belong both to one thing, then.

Pet. What then?

Li. They then agree like the fiddle and the sticke.

Pet. Pulchrè sanè. God's blessing on thy blue nose, but Licio, my mistresse is a proper woman.

titie.

Li. Ay, but thou knowest not her properties.

Pet. I care not for her qualities, so I may embrace her quan

Li. Are you so peart?

Pet. Ay and so expert, that I can as well tell the thoughts of a woman's heart by her eyes, as the change of the weather by an almanacke.

Li. Sir boy, you must not be saucie.

Pet. No, but faithfull and serviceable.

Li. Locke up your lips, or I will lop them off. But sirra, for thy better instructions I will unfold every wrinkle of my mistresse' disposition.

Pet. I pray thee doe.

Li. But for this time I will only handle the head and purtenance.
Pet. Nothing else?

Li. Why, will not that bee a long houre's worke to describe, that is almost a whole daye's worke to dresse.

Pet. Proceed.

Li. First, she hath a head as round as a tennis ball.

Pet. I would my bed were a hazard.

Li. Why?

Pet. Nothing, but that I would have her head there among other balls.

Li. Video, pro intelligo. Then hath she an hawke's eye.
Pet. O that I were a partridge head.

Li. To what end?

Pet. That shee might tire with her eyes on my countenance.
Li. Wouldst thou be hanged?

Li. Well, shee hath the tongue of a parrot.

Pet. That's a leaden dagger in a velvet sheath, to have a blacke tongue in a faire mouth.

Li. Tush, it is not for the blacknesse, but for the babling, for every houre she will cry, walke, knave, walke.

Pet. Then will I mutter, a rope for parrot, a rope.

Li. So maist thou be hanged, not by thy lippes, but by thy neck. Then sir, hath she a calve's tooth.

Pet. O monstrous mouth! I would then it had beene a sheepe's eye and a neate's tongue.

Li. It is not for the bignes, but the sweetnesse: all her teeth are as sweet as the sweet tooth of a calfe.

Pet. Sweetly meant.

Li. She hath the eares of a want.

Pet. Doth she want eares?

Li. I say the eares of a want, a mole; thou dost want wit to understand mee. Shee will heare though shee bee never so low on the ground.

Pet. Why then if one aske her a question, it is likely that she will hearken to it.

Li.

Pet.

Hearken thou after that, she hath the nose of a sow.
Then belike there she weares her wedding ring.

Li. No, shee can smel a knave a mile off.

Pet.

Let us go farther, Licio, she hath both us in the wind.
Li. She hath a beetle brow.

Pet. What, is she beetle browed?

Li. Thou hast a beetle head. I say, the brow of a beetle, a little flie, whose brow is as blacke as velvet.

Pet. What lips hath she?

Li. Tush, the lips are no part of the head, only made for a double leafe-dore for the mouth.

Pet. What is then the chin?

Li. That is onely the threshold to the dore.

Pet. I perceive you are driven to the wall that stands behind the

dore, for this is ridiculous; but now you can say no more of the head, begin with the purtenances, for that was your promise.

Li. The purtenances, it is impossible to reckon them up, much lesse to tell the nature of them. Hoods, frontlets, wires, caules, curling-irons, perriwigs, bodkins, fillets, hairlaces, ribbons, roles, knotstrings, glasses, combs, caps, hats, coifes, kerchers, clothes, earerings, borders, crippins, shadowes, spots, and so many other trifles, as both I want the words of arte to name them, time to utter them, and wit to remember them: these be but a few notes.

Pet. Notes quoth you, I note one thing.

Li. What is that?

Pet. That if every part require so much as the head, it will make the richest husband in the world ake at the heart."

The next is from Mother Bombie, and is in a pleasant vein enough.

Sergeant. I arrest you.

Dromio. Mee, sir; why then didst not bring a stoole with thee, that I might sit downe?

Hackneyman. Hee arrests you at my suite for a horse.

Risio. The more asse hee, if he had arrested a mare instead of an horse, it had beene a slight over-sight, but to arrest a man that hath no likenesse of a horse, is flat lunasie or alecie.

Hack. Tush, I hired him a horse.

Dromio. I sweare then he was well ridden.

Hack. I thinke in two days hee was never baited.
Halfpenny. Why was it a beare thou ridest on?
Hack. I meane hee never gave him baite.

Licio. Why he tooke him for no fish.

Hack. I mistake none of you when I take you for fooles; I say thou never gavest my horse meate.

Dro. Yes, in foure and fortie houres I am sure hee had a bottle of hay as big as his belly.

Serg. Nothing else; thou shouldst have given him provender.
Ris. Why he never askt any.

Hack. Why, doest thou thinke an horse can speake?

Dro. No, for I spurr'd him till my heeles ak't and he said never a word.

Hack. Well, thou shalt pay sweetly for spoyling him, it was as lustie a nag as any in Rochester, and one that would stand upon no ground.

Dro. Then hee is as good as ever he was, I'le warrant hee❜le doe nothing but lie downe,

Hack. I lent him thee gently.

Dro. And I restored him so gently, that he neither would cry wyhie, nor wag the taile.

Hack. But why didst thou boare him through the eares?

Lic. It may be he was set on the pillorie, because he had not a true pace.

Half. No, it was for tiring.