I hate such measured, give me mettled, fire, That trembles in the blaze, but then mounts higher!

game will prove, but the ground is well clothed with trees. The most of these deer will come to hand-if they take cover, sir, down with the woods, for the hunting is meant to be so royal as trees, dogs, deer, all mean to be a part of the quarry.

In the Passage.

Duges, wet nurse; KECKS, dry nurse; and HOLDBACK, midwife.

Duggs. Are they coming? where? which are the gossips?

Kecks. Peace, here they come all.

Duggs. I'll up and get me a standing behind the arras. Hold. You'll be thrust there, i'faith, nurse.

Kecks.

Hold. No; he with the blue riband, peace!

Kecks. O, sweet gentleman! he a gossip! he were fitter to be a father, i'faith.

Hold. So they were both, an 'twere fortune's good pleasure to send it.

At the Banquet.

HOLDBACK enters with the child, DUGGS and KECKS.

Hold. Now heaven multiply your highness and my ho

sweetmeats. We cannot easily conceive the enormous sums expended in constructing those banquets. Every object of art or nature was represented in them; and castles and towers and towns were reared of march-pane of a size that would confound the faculties of the confectioners of these degenerate days. The courtier, like the citizen, was a most fierce devourer of plums, and the ships, bulwarks, forests, &c. that were not eaten on the spot, were conveyed into the pockets of the guests, and carried off, without stint and without shame.

A short question was probably overlooked by the scribe.

A quick and dazzling motion; when a pair
Of bodies meet like rarified air!

nourable lord too, and my good lady the countess. I have one word for you all, Welcome! which is enough to the wise, and as good as a hundred, you know. This is my day. My lords and my ladies, how like you my boy? is't not a goodly boy? I said his name would be Charles when I look'd upon Charles' wain t'other night. He was born under that star-I have given measure, i'faith, he'll prove a pricker by one privy mark that I found about him. Would you had such another, my lord gossips, every one of you, and as like the father. O what a glad woman and a proud should I be to be seen at home with you upon the same occasion!

Duggs. Come, come, never push for it, woman; I know my place. It is before, and I would not have you mistake it. Kecks. Then belike my place is behind.

Duggs. Be it where it will, I'll appear. Hold. How now, what's the matter with you two? Duggs. Why, mistress Kecks, the dry nurse, strives to have place.

Kecks. Yes, mistress Duggs, I do indeed.

Hold. What! afore the Prince! are you so unrude and uncivil ?

Kecks. Why not afore the Prince? (worshipp'd might he be) I desire no better a judge.

Hold. No! and my lord Chancery here? Do you know what you say? Go to, nurse, have done, let the music have their part. You have made a joyful house here, i'faith; the glad lady within in the straw, I hope, has thanked you for her little carl, the little christian-such a comfortable day as this will ever make the father ready to adventure for another, in my conscience. Sing sweetly, I pray you, an you have a good breast, out with it for my lord's credit.

SONG.

If now as merry you could be
As you are welcome here,

Who wait would have no time to see
The meanness of the cheer.

Their weapons darted with that flame and force,
As they out-did the lightning in the course;

But you that deign the place and lord
So much o' bounty and grace,
Read not the banquet on his board,
But that within his face.

Where if, by 'engaging of his heart,
He yet could set forth more,
The world would scarce afford a part
Of such imagined store.

All had been had that could be wish'd

Upon so rich a pawn,

Were it ambrosia to be dish'd,

Or nectar to be drawn.

Duggs. How, dame ! a'dry nurse better than a wet nurse? Kecks. Ay. Is not summer better than winter?

Duggs. O, you dream of a dry summer.

Kecks. And you are so wet, you are the worse again. Do you remember my lady Kickup's child, that you gave such a bleaching to 'twas never clear since?

Duggs. That was my lady Kickup's own doing, and not mine.

Kecks. 'Twas yours-and you shrunk in the wetting for't, if you be remembered; for she turned you away, I am sure. Wet moons, you know, were ever good weed springers. Duggs. My moon's no wetter than thine, goody Caudlemaker.

Hold. Why, can I carry no sway nor stroke among you! Will you open yourselves thus, and let every one enter into your secrets?—I am nobody I, I know nothing! I am a midwife of this month! I never held a lady's back till now, you

think.

Duggs. We never thought so, mistress Holdback.

Hold. Go to, you do think so, upon the point, and say as much in your behaviour. Who, I pray you, provided your places for you? was't not I?-I told her ladyship at first she was sped, and then upon her pain after drinking the mead

This were a spectacle, a sight to draw
Wonder to valour! No, it is the law

and the hydromel, I assured her it was so without all peradventure-I know nothing! After this, when my lord was deportunate with me to know my opinion whether it was a boy or a girl that her ladyship went withal, I had not my signs and my prognostics about me-as the goodness of her ladyship's complexion, the coppedness of her belly, on the right side, the lying of it so high, to pronounce it a boy! Nor I could not say upon the difference of the paps, when the right breast grew harder, the nipple red, rising like a strawberry, the milk white, and standing like pearls upon my nail, a boy still for my money!-No, upon the very day of my lady's labour, when the wives came in, I offered not wagers, not the odds three to one, having observed the moon the night before, and that her ladyship set her right foot foremost, the right pulse beat quicker and stronger, and her right eye grown and sparkling! I assure your lordship I offered to hold master doctor a Discretion it was a boy; and if his doctorship had laid with me and ventured, he had lost his discretion.

Kecks. Why, here's nobody calls your skill in question; we know that you can tell when a woman goes with a tympany or a mole.

Hold. Ay, and whether it be a wind or a water mole, I thank God, and our mistress Nature: she is God's chambermaid, and the midwife is her's. We can examine the sufficiency and capability of persons by our places: we try all conclusions. Many a good thing passes through the midwife's hand, many a merry tale by her mouth, many a glad cup through her lips: she is the leader of wives, and the queen of the gossips.

Kecks. But what is this to us, mistress Holdback—as to which is the better nurse, the wet or the dry?

Hold. Nay, make an end of that between yourselves. I am sure I am dry with talking to you. Give me a cup of hippocras.

Duggs. Why, see there now whether dryness be not a defect out of her own mouth, that she is fain to call for moisture to wet her! Does not the infant do so when it would suck? What stills the child when it is dry but the teat?

Of daring not to do a wrong; 'tis true
Valour to slight it, being done to you.

Kecks. But when it is wet, in the blankets, with your superfluities, what quiets it then? It is not the two bottles at the breasts, that when you have emptied you do nothing but drink to fill again, will do it. It is the opening of him, and the washing and the cleansing, and especially the drying that nourishes the child-clearing his eyes and nostrils, wiping his ears, fashioning his head with stroking it between the hands, forming his mouth for kissing again he come to age, laying his legs and arms straight, and swathing them so justly as his mother's maids may leap at him when he bounces out on his blankets. These are the offices of a nurse!What beauty would ever behold him hereafter if I now by negligence of binding should either make him cramp-shouldered, crooked-legg'd, splay-footed, or by careless placing the candle in a wrong light should send him forth into the world with a pair of false eyes! No 'tis the nurse, and by excellence, the dry nurse, that gives him fashionable feet, legs, hands, mouth, eyes, nose, or whatever, in member else, is acceptable to ladies.

Duggs. Nay, there you wrong mistress Holdback, for it is she that gives him measure, I'm sure.

Hold. Ay, and I'll justify his measure.

Duggs. But what increases that measure, but his milk and his battening?

Kecks. Yes, and your eating and drinking to get more; your decoctions and caudles-thou mis-proud creature, I am ashamed of thee!

Duggs. How enviously she talks! as if any nearer or nobler office could be done the child than to feed him, or any more necessary than to encrease that which is its nutriment, from both which I am truly and principally named his

nurse.

Kecks. Principally! O the pride of thy paps! -as if there were no nutriment but milk, or nothing could nurse a child but sucking! Why, if there were no milk in nature, is there no other food?-How were my lady provided else against your going to man, if the toy should take you, and corrupting your milk that way?