Cynthia's Revels Part 5

AMOR. I am a rhinoceros, if I had thought a creature of her symmetry would have dared so improportionable and abrupt a digression.--Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of thy bounties. [TAKES UP SOME OF THE WATER.] By the purity of my taste, here is most ambrosiac water; I will sup of it again.

By thy favour, sweet fount. See, the water, a more running, subtile, and humorous nymph than she permits me to touch, and handle her. What should I infer? if my behaviours had been of a cheap or customary garb; my accent or phrase vulgar; my garments trite; my countenance illiterate, or unpractised in the encounter of a beautiful and brave attired piece; then I might, with some change of colour, have suspected my faculties: But, knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel; of so studied and well exercised a gesture; so alone in fashion, able to render the face of any statesman living; and to speak the mere extraction of language, one that hath now made the sixth return upon venture; and was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of the duello; whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince's courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred and forty and five ladies, all n.o.bly, if not princely descended; whose names I have in catalogue: To conclude, in all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten her kisses upon me:--certes, I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason, that should invite this foolish, fastidious nymph, so peevishly to abandon me. Well, let the memory of her fleet into air; my thoughts and I am for this other element, water.

ENTER CRITES AND ASOTUS.

CRI. What, the well dieted Amorphus become a water-drinker! I see he means not to write verses then.

ASO. No, Crites! why?

CRI. Because-- Nulla placere diu, nec vivere carmina possunt, Quae scribuntur aquae potoribus.

AMO. What say you to your Helicon?

CRI. O, the Muses' well! that's ever excepted.

AMO. Sir, your Muses have no such water, I a.s.sure you; your nectar, or the juice of your nepenthe, is nothing to it; 'tis above your metheglin, believe it.

ASO. Metheglin; what's that, sir? may I be so audacious to demand?

AMO. A kind of Greek wine I have met with, sir, in my travels; it is the same that Demosthenes usually drunk, in the composure of all his exquisite and mellifluous orations.

CRI. That's to be argued, Amorphus, if we may credit Lucian, who, in his "Encomio Demosthenis," affirms, he never drunk but water in any of his compositions.

AMO. Lucian is absurd, he knew nothing: I will believe mine own travels before all the Lucians of Europe. He doth feed you with fittons, figments, and leasings.

CRI. Indeed, I think, next a traveller, he does prettily well.

AMO. I a.s.sure you it was wine, I have tasted it, and from the hand of an Italian antiquary, who derives it authentically from the duke of Ferrara's bottles. How name you the gentleman you are in rank there with, sir?

CRI. 'Tis Asotus, son to the late deceased Philargyrus, the citizen.

AMO. Was his father of any eminent place or means?

CRI. He was to have been praetor next year.

AMO. Ha! a pretty formal young gallant, in good sooth; pity he is not more genteelly propagated. Hark you, Crites, you may say to him what I am, if you please; though I affect not popularity, yet I would loth to stand out to any, whom you shall vouchsafe to call friend.

CRI. Sir, I fear I may do wrong to your sufficiencies in the reporting them, by forgetting or misplacing some one: yourself can best inform him of yourself sir; except you had some catalogue or list of your faculties ready drawn, which you would request me to show him for you, and him to take notice of.

AMO. This Crites is sour: [ASIDE.]--I will think, sir.

CRI. Do so, sir.--O heaven! that anything in the likeness of man should suffer these rack'd extremities, for the uttering of his sophisticate good parts. [ASIDE.]

ASO. Crites, I have a suit to you; but you must not deny me; pray you make this gentleman and I friends.

CRI. Friends! why, is there any difference between you?

ASO. No; I mean acquaintance, to know one another.

CRI. O, now I apprehend you; your phrase was without me before.

ASO. In good faith, he's a most excellent rare man, I warrant him.

CRI. 'Slight, they are mutually enamour'd by this time. [ASIDE.]

ASO. Will you, sweet Crites?

CRI. Yes, yes.

ASO. Nay, but when? you'll defer it now, and forget it.

CRI. Why, is it a thing of such present necessity, that it requires so violent a dispatch!

ASO. No, but would I might never stir, he's a most ravishing man!

Good Crites, you shall endear me to you, in good faith; la!

CRI. Well, your longing shall be satisfied, sir.

ASO. And withal, you may tell him what my father was, and how well he left me, and that I am his heir.

CRI. Leave it to me, I'll forget none of your dear graces, I warrant you.

ASO. Nay, I know you can better marshal these affairs than I can --O G.o.ds! I'd give all the world, if I had it, for abundance of such acquaintance.

CRI. What ridiculous circ.u.mstance might I devise now, to bestow this reciprocal brace of b.u.t.terflies one upon another? [ASIDE.]

AMO. Since I trod on this side the Alps, I was not so frozen in my invention. Let me see: to accost him with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian! that would indifferently express my languages now: marry, then, if he shall fall out to be ignorant, it were both hard, and harsh. How else? step into some ragioni del stato, and so make my induction! that were above him too; and out of his element I fear. Feign to have seen him in Venice or Padua! or some face near his in similitude! 'tis too pointed and open. No, it must be a more quaint and collateral device, as--stay: to frame some encomiastic speech upon this our metropolis, or the wise magistrates thereof, in which politic number, 'tis odds but his father fill'd up a room? descend into a particular admiration of their justice, for the due measuring of coals, burning of cans, and such like? as also their religion, in pulling down a superst.i.tious cross, and advancing a Venus; or Priapus, in place of it? ha!

'twill do well. Or to talk of some hospital, whose walls record his father a benefactor? or of so many buckets bestow'd on his parish church in his lifetime, with his name at length, for want of arms, trickt upon them? any of these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been praetor? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accountrements? I have it: thanks, gracious Minerva!

ASO. Would I had but once spoke to him, and then--He comes to me!

AMO. 'Tis a most curious and neatly wrought band this same, as I have seen, sir.

ASO. O lord, sir.

AMO. You forgive the humour of mine eye, in observing it.

CRI. His eye waters after it, it seems. [ASIDE.]

ASO. O lord, sir! there needs no such apology I a.s.sure you.

CRI. I am antic.i.p.ated; they'll make a solemn deed of gift of themselves, you shall see. [ASIDE.]

AMO. Your riband too does most gracefully in troth.

ASO. 'Tis the most genteel and received wear now, sir.

AMO. Believe me, sir, I speak it not to humour you--I have not seen a young gentleman, generally, put on his clothes with more judgment.

ASO. O, 'tis your pleasure to say so, sir.