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 nobly, 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,