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among the rest a goodly cypress, who bowing her fair head over the water, it seemed she looked into it, and dressed her green locks by that running river.

There the princesses determining to bathe themselves, though it was so privileged a place, upon pain of death, as nobody durst presume to come hither; yet for the more surety, they looked round about, and could see nothing but a water-spaniel, who came down the river, showing that he hunted for a duck, and with a snuffling grace, disdaining that his smelling force could not as well prevail through the water as through the air; and therefore waiting with his eye to see whether he could espy the ducks getting up again, but then a little below them failing of his purpose, he got out of the river, and shaking off the water (as great men do their friends) now he had no farther cause to use it, inweeded himself so that the ladies lost the farther marking of his sportfulness and inviting Zelmane also to wash herself with them, and she excusing herself with having taken a late cold, they began by piece-meal to take away the eclipsing of their apparel.

Zelmane would have put to her helping hand, but she was taken with such a quivering, that she thought it more wisdom. to lean herself to a tree, and look on, while Miso and Mopsa, like a couple of foreswat melters, were getting the pure silver of their bodies out of the ure of their garments. But as the raiments went off to receive the kisses of the ground, Zelmane envied the happiness of all, but of the smock was even jealous, and when that was taken away too, and that Philoclea remained, for her Zelmane only marked, like a diamond taken from out of the rock, or rather like the sun getting from under a cloud, and showing his naked beams to the full view, then was the beauty too much for a patient sight, the delight too strong for a stayed conceit, so that Zelmane could not choose but run, to touch, embrace and kiss her. But conscience made her come to herself, and leave Philoclea, who blushing, and withal smiling, making shamefacedness pleasant, and pleasure shamefaced, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked ground, till the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of shrugging come over her body, like the twinkling of the fairest among the fixed

stars. But the river itself gave way unto her, so that she was straight breast high, which was the deepest that thereabout she could be and when cold Ladon had once fully embraced them, himself was no more so cold to those ladies, but as if his cold complexion had been heated with love, so seemed he to play about every part he could touch.

"Ah sweet, now sweetest Ladon," said Zelmane, "why dost thou not stay thy course to have more full taste of thy happiness? but the reason is manifest, the upper streams make such haste to have their part of embracing, that the nether, though lothly, must needs give place unto them. O happy Ladon within whom she is, upon whom her beauty falls, through whom her eye pierceth. O happy Ladon, which art now an unperfect mirror of all perfection, can'st thou ever forget the blessedness of this impression? if thou do, then let thy bed be turned from fine gravel to weeds and mud; if thou do, let some unjust niggards make wares to spoil thy beauty; if thou do, let some greater river fall into thee, to take away the name of Ladon, O! Ladon, happy Ladon, rather slide than run by her, lest thou should'st make her legs slip from her, and then, O happy Ladon, who would then call thee, but the most cursed Ladon?" But as the ladies played then in the water, sometimes striking it with their hands, the water, making lines in his face, seemed to smile at such beating, and with twenty bubbles not to be content to have the picture of their face in large upon him, but he would in each of these bubbles set forth the miniature of them.

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER

OR, JACK WILTON

THOMAS NASHE

ABOUT that time that the terror of the world and fever quartan of the French, Henry the Eight (the only true subject of chronicles), advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Tournay and Terouenne, and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland, and Brabant as mercenary attendants on his full-sailed fortune, I, Jack Wilton, (a gentleman at least,) was a certain kind of an appendix or page, belonging or appertaining in or unto the confines of the English court; where what my credit was, a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify: Cœlum petimus stultitia, which of us all is not a sinner? Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peruse my story, that I followed the court or the camp, or the camp and the court. There did I (Soft, let me drink before I go any further!) reign sole king of the cans and black jacks, prince of the pygmies, county palatine of clean straw and provant, and, to conclude, lord high regent of rashers of the coals and red herring cobs. Paulo majora canamus. Well, to the purpose. What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an ingenious infant of my years might enact? You will say, it were sufficient if he slur a die, pawn his master to the utmost penny, and minister the oath of the pantofle artificially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of In grace and virtue to proceed. Oh, but Aliquid latet quod non patet, there's a further path I must trace: examples confirm; list, lordings, to my proceedings. Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp understands that in it be many quarters, and yet not so many as on London bridge. In those quarters are many companies: Much company, much knavery, as true as that old adage, "Much courtesy, much subtilty." Those

companies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff; the corn are cormorants, the chaff are good fellows, which are quickly blown to nothing with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily, and by my troth so I did: the prince could but command men spend their blood in his service, I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends; though I was prince of their purses, and exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance as any kaiser in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had the king must lose his right want cannot be withstood, men can do no more than they can do: what remained then, but the fox's case must help, when the lion's skin is out at the elbows?

There was a lord in the camp, let him be a Lord of Misrule if you will, for he kept a plain alehouse without welt or guard of any ivy bush, and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came, (at the very name of cider I can but sigh, there is so much of it in Rhenish wine nowadays). Well, Tendit ad sidera virtus, there's great virtue belongs (I can tell you) to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea it is Aqua cælestis; but that's neither here nor there, if it had no other patron but this peer of quart pots to authorise it, it were sufficient. This great lord, this worthy lord, this noble lord, thought no scorn (Lord, have mercy upon us!) to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor, and yet he was an old servitor, a cavalier of an ancient house, as might appear by the arms of his ancestors, drawn very amiably in chalk on the inside of his tent door.

He and no other was the man I chose out to damn with a lewd moneyless device; for coming to him on a day, as he was counting his barrels and setting the price in chalk on the head of them, I did my duty very devoutly, and told his ale-y honour I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him, if it pleased him to grant me private audience. "With me, young Wilton ?" quod he; "marry, and shalt ! Bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into the Three Cups here; wash the pot." So into a back room he led me, where after he had spit on his finger, and picked off two or three moats of his old moth-eaten velvet cap, and

sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his ill-favoured goat's beard, he bade me declare my mind, and thereupon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance, alias, a cunning shift of the seventeens, and discoursed unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out of mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and provident respect he had of poor soldiers, that, whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply of drink or of victuals) might humble them to some extremity, and so weaken their hands, he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp (a rare example of magnificence and honourable courtesy), and diligently provided that without far travel every man might for his money have cider and cheese his belly full; nor did he sell his cheese by the wey only, or his cider by the great, but abased himself with his own hands to take a shoemaker's knife (a homely instrument for such a high personage to touch) and cut it out equally, like a true justiciary, in little pennyworths that it would do a man good for to look upon. So likewise of his cider, the poor man might have his moderate draught of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit or his dandiprat as the rich man for his half sous or his denier. "Not so much," quoth I, "but this tapster's linen apron which you wear to protect your apparel from the imperfections of the spigot, most amply bewrays your lowly mind. I speak it with tears, too few such noble men have we, that will draw drink in linen aprons. Why, you are every child's fellow; any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good fellow, you will sit and bear company to the last pot, yea, and you take in as good part the homely phrase of 'Mine host, here's to you,' as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of forgetfulness, have moved me, in ardent zeal of your welfare, to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels." At the name of dangers he start up, and bounced with his fist on the board so hard that his tapster overhearing him, cried, "Anon, anon, sir! by and by !" and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have striken his tapster for interrupting him in

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