If ever he go alone again, I'll never wrestle for
prize more: And fo, God keep your worship!
[Exit.

OLI. Farewell good Charles.-Now will I ftir this gamester I hope, I fhall fee an end of him; for my foul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never fchool'd, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all forts * enchantingly beloved; and, indeed, fo much in the heart of the world, and efpecially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether mifprised: but it shall not be fo long; this wreftler fhall clear all: nothing remains, but that I kindle the boy thither,' which now I'll go about.

SCENE II.

A Lawn before the Duke's Palace.

Enter ROSALIND and CELIA

[Exit.

CEL. I pray thee, Rofalind, fweet my coz, be merry.

Ros. Dear Celia, I fhow more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier?"

3 this gamefter:] Gamefter, in the prefent inftance, and fome others, does not fignify a man viciously addicted to games of chance, but a frolick fome perfon. Thus, in King Henry VIII:

"You are a merry gamefter, my lord Sands." STEEVENS.
of all forts-] Sorts in this place means ranks and
RITSON.

degrees of men.

5 -kindle the boy thither,] A fimilar phrafe occurs in Macbeth, A& I. fc. iii:

6

66

enkindle you unto the crown." STEEVENS.

I were merrier?] I which was inadvertently omitted in the old copy, was inferted by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

1

Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure.

CEL. Herein, I fee, thou loveft me not with the full weight that I love thee: if my uncle, thy banished father, had banished thy uncle, the duke my father, fo thou hadst been still with me, I could have taught my love to take thy father for mine; fo would'ft thou, if the truth of thy love to me were fo righteously temper'd as mine is to thee.

Ros. Well, I will forget the condition of my eftate, to rejoice in yours.

CEL. You know, my father hath no child but I, nor none is like to have; and, truly, when he dies, thou fhalt be his heir: for what he hath taken away from thy father perforce, I will render thee again in affection; by mine honour, I will; and when I break that oath, let me turn monster: therefore, my fweet Rofe, my dear Rofe, be

merry.

Ros. From henceforth I will, coz, and devife fports: let me fee; What think you of falling in love?

CEL. Marry, I pry'thee, do, to make sport withal: but love no man in good earneft; nor no further in fport neither, than with safety of a pure blush thou may'st in honour come off again.

Ros. What shall be our sport then?

CEL. Let us fit and mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel,' that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.

7

mock the good housewife, Fortune, from her wheel,] The wheel of Fortune is not the wheel of a housewife. Shakspeare has confounded Fortune, whofe wheel only figures uncertainty and

Ros. I would, we could do fo; for her benefits are mightily misplaced: and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.

CEL. 'Tis true: for those, that she makes fair, she scarce makes honeft; and those, that she makes honest, she makes very ill-favour'dly.

Ros. Nay, now thou goest from fortune's office to nature's fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of nature.

Enter TOUCHSTONE.

CEL. No? When nature hath made a fair crcature, may fhe not by fortune fall into the fire?— Though nature hath given us wit to flout at fortune, hath not fortune fent in this fool to cut off the argument?

Ros. Indeed, there is fortune too hard for nature; when fortune makes nature's natural the cutter off of nature's wit.

CEL. Peradventure, this is not fortune's work neither, but nature's; who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of fuch goddeffes, hath sent this natural for our whetstone : for always the dulnefs of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.-How now, wit? whither wander you?

viciffitude, with the deftiny that fpins the thread of life, though not indeed with a wheel. JOHNSON.

Shakspeare is very fond of this idea. He has the fame in Antony and Cleopatra:

66

and rail fo high,

"That the faife housewife, Fortune, break her wheel."

STEEVENS.

8 who perceiving our natural wits too dull to reason of such goddes, bath fent, &c.] The old copy reads " perceivethMr. Malone retains the old reading, but adds—" and hath fent," &c.

STEEVENS.

TOUCH. Mistress, you must come away to your father.

CEL. Were you made the messenger?

TOUCH. No, by mine honour; but I was bid to come for you.

Ros. Where learned you that oath, fool?

TOUCH. Of a certain knight, that fwore by his honour they were good pancakes, and fwore by his honou. the mustard was naught: now, I'll stand to it, the pancakes were naught, and the mustard was good; and yet was not the knight forfworn.

CEL. How prove you that, in the great heap of your knowledge?

Ros. Ay, marry; now unmuzzle your wisdom. TOUCH. Stand you both forth now: ftroke your chins, and fwear by your beards that I am a knave.

CEL. By our beards, if we had them, thou art. TOUCH. By my knavery, if I had it, then I were: but if you swear by that that is not, you are not forfworn: no more was this knight, fwearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had fworn it away, before ever he faw thofe pancakes or that mustard.

CEL. Pr'ythee, who is't that thou mean'st?

TOUCH. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.
CEL. My father's love is enough to honour him."

9 Touch. One that old Frederick, your father, loves.

Rof. My father's love is enough to honour him.] This reply to the Clown is in all the books placed to Rofalind; but Frederick was not her father, but Celia's: I have therefore ventured to prefix the name of Celia. There is no countenance from any paffage in the play, or from the Dramatis Perfonæ, to imagine, that both the Brother-Dukes were namefakes; and one called the Old, and the other the Younger-Frederick; and without fome fuch authority, it would make confufion to fuppofe it. THEOBALD.

Enough! speak no more of him; you'll be whip'd for taxation, one of these days.

TOUCH. The more pity, that fools may not speak wifely, what wife men do foolishly.

CEL. By my troth, thou fay'ft true: for fince the little wit, that fools have, was filenced,' the

Mr. Theobald feems not to know that the Dramatis Perfona were first enumerated by Rowe. JOHNSON.

Frederick is here clearly a mistake, as appears by the answer of Rofalind, to whom Touchftone addreffes himself, though the queftion was put to him by Celia. I fuppofe fome abbreviation was ufed in the MS. for the name of the rightful, or old duke, as he is called, [perhaps Fer. for Ferdinand,] which the tranfcriber or printer converted into Frederick. Fernardyne is one of the perfons introduced in the novel on which this comedy is founded. Mr. Theobald folves the difficulty by giving the next fpeech to Celia, instead of Rosalind; but there is too much of filial warmth in it for Celia:-befides, why fhould her father be called old Frederick? It appears from the last scene of this play that this was the name of the younger brother. MALONE.

Mr. Malone's remark may be juft; and yet I think the speech which is ftill left in the mouth of Celia, exhibits as much tendernefs for the fool, as refpect for her own father. She stops Touchftone, who might otherwife have proceeded to fay what the could not hear without inflicting punishment on the fpeaker.-Old is an unmeaning term of familiarity. It is still in ufe, and has no reference to age. The Duke in Measure for Measure is called by Lucio "the old fantaftical Duke," &c. STEEVENS.

2

you'll be whip'd for taxation,] This was the difcipline ufually inflicted upon fools. Brantome informs us that Legat, fool to Elizabeth of France, having offended her with fome indelicate fpeech," fut bien fouetté à la cuifine pour ces paroles." A reprefentation of this ceremony may be feen in a cut prefixed to B. II. ch. c. of the German Petrarch already mentioned in Vol. V. P. 44. DOUCE. Taxation is cenfure, or fatire. So, in Much ado about Nothing: "Niece, you tax Signior Benedick too much; but he'll be meet with you." Again, in the play before us:

my taxing like a wildgoofe flies." MALONE.

-fince the little wit, that fools have, was filenced,] Shak-. fpeare probably alludes to the ufe of fools or jefters, who for fome ages had been allowed in all courts an unbridled liberty of cenfure and mockery, and about this time began to be less tolerated.

JOHNSON.