all our neighbors have been chosen for the absolute Lady of this merry month. With me have been (alas I am ashamed to tell it) two young men, the one a forester named Therion, the other Espilus a shepherd, very long even in love forsooth. I like them both, and love neither: Espilus is the richer, but Therion the livelier. Therion doth me many pleaures, as stealing me venison out of these forests, and many other such like pretty and prettier services, but withal he grows to such rages, that sometimes he strikes me, sometimes he rails at me. This shepherd Espilus of a milde disposition, as his fortune hath not been to me great service, so hath he never done me any wrong, but feeding his sheep, sitting under some sweet bush, sometimes they say he records my name in doleful verses. Now the question I am to ask you, fair Lady, is, whether the many deserts and many faults of Therion, or the very small deserts and no faults of Espilus, be to be preferred. But before you give your judgement (most excellent Lady) you shall hear what each of them can say for themselves in their rural songs.

Thereupon Therion challenged Espilus to sing with him, speaking these six

verses:

THERION. Com, Espilus, come now declare thy skill,

Shew how thou canst deserve so brave desire,
Warm well thy wits, if thou wilt win her will,
For water cold did never promiss fire.

Great sure is she, on whom our hopes do live,
Greater is shee who must the judgment give.

But Espilus, as if he had been inspired with the Muses, began forthwith to sing, whereto his fellow shepherds set in with their Recorders, which they bear in their bags like pipes; and so of Therion's side did the forresters, with the Cornetts they wore about their necks like hunting horns in baudrikes.

ESPILUS. Tune up my voice, a higher note I yield,

To high conceits the song must needs be high:
More high than stars, more firm than flintie field,
Are all my thoughts, in which I live and die.
Sweet soul, to whom I vowed am a slave,
Let not wilde woods so great a treasure have.

THERION. The highest note comes oft from basest minde,
As shallow brooks do yield the greatest sound:

Seek other thoughts thy life or death to finde,
Thy stars bee fall'n, plowed is thy flintie ground.
Sweet soul, let not a wretch thath serveth sheep
Among his flock so sweet a treasure keep.

ESPILUS. Two thousand sheep I have as white as milk,
Though not so white as is thy lovely face;
The pasture rich, the wool as soft as silk:
All this I give, let mee possess thy grace.

But still take heed lest thou thyself submit,

To one that hath no wealth, and wants his wit.

THERION. Two thousand deer in wildest woods I have,
Them can I take, but you I cannot hold :
Hee is not poor, who can his freedom save,
Bound but to you, no wealth but you I would.
But take this beast, if beasts you fear to miss,
For of his beasts the greatest beast hee is.

(Both kneeling to the Queen.) · ESPILUS. Judg you to whom all beautie's force is lent. THERION. Judg you of Love, to whom all love is bent.

But as they waited for the judgment her Majestie should give of their deserts, the shepherds and forresters grew to a great contention, whether of their fellows had sung better, and whether the estate of shepherds or forresters were the more worshipful. The speakers were Dorcas an old shepherd, and Rixus a young forester, between whom the Schoolmaster Rombus came in as a moderator.

DORCAS the Shepherd.

Now all the blessing of my old grandam (silly Espilus) light upon thy shoulders for this honie-comb singing of thine; now of my honestie, all the bells in the town could not have sung better. If the proud heart of the harlotrie lie not down to thee now, the sheep's rot catch her, to teach her, that a fair woman hath not her fairness to let it grow rustish.

RIXUS the Forester.

O Midas! why art not thou alive now to lend thine ears to this drivel. By the precious bone of a huntsman, he knows not the bleaying of a calf from the song of a nightingale; but if yonder great Gentlewoman be as wise as she is fair, Therion, thou shalt have the prize, and thou old Dorcas, with young Master Espilus, shall remain tame fools, as you be.

Dorcas. And with cap and knee be it spoken, it is your pleasure, neighbor Rixus, to be a wilde fool?

Rixus. Rather than a sheepish dolt.

Dorcas. It is much refreshing to my bowels you have made your choise; for my share, I will bestow your leavings upon one of your fellows.

Rixus. And art not thou ashamed (old fool) to liken Espilus, a shepherd, to Therion, of the noble vocation of huntsmen, in the presence of such an one as even with her eye only can give the cruel punishment?

Dorcas. Hold thy peace, I will neither meddle with her nor her eyes; they fain in our town they are dangerous both: neither will I liken Therion to my boy Espilus, since one is a thievish proller, and the other is as quiet as lamb that new came from sucking.

ROMBUS the School-master.

Heu, Ehem, Hei, Insipidum, Incitium vulgorum & populorum. Why, you brute Nebulons, have you had my Corpusculum so long among you, and cannot yet tell how to edifie an argument? Attend and throw your ears to me, for I am gravidated with childe, till I have endoctrinated your plumbeous cerebrosities. First, you must divisionate your point, quasi you should cut a chees into two particles; for thus must I uniform my speech to your obtruse conceptions: for prius dividendum oratio antequam definiendum; exemplum gratia; either Therion must conquer this Dame Mydas Nymph, or Espilus must overthrow her, and that secundum their dignitie, which must also bee subdivisionated into three equal species, either according to the penetrancie of their singing, or the melioritie of their functions, or, lastly, the superancie of their merits. De singing satis. Nunc are you to argumentate of the qualifying of their estate first, and then whether hath more infernally I mean deeply deserved.

Dorcas. O poor Dorcas, poor Dorcas! that I was not set in my young dayes to school, that I might have purchased the understanding of master Rombus mys

terious speeches. But yet thus much I concern of them, that I must even give what my up conscience doth finde in the behalf of shepherds. O sweet honie milken loms; and is there any so flintie a heart, that can find about him to speak against them, that have the charge of such good souls as you be, among whom there is no envie, and all obedience, where it is lawful for a man to be good if he list, and hath no outward caus to withdraw him from it, where the eye may be busied in considering the works of nature, and the heart quietly rejoyced in the honest using them? If temptation, as Clerks say, be the most excellent, which is so fit a life for Templars as this is, neither subject to violent oppression, nor servile flattery? How many courtiers think you have I heard under our field in bushes make their woful complaints, som of the greatness of their Mistress estate, which dazled their eyes, and yet burned their hearts; som of the extremity of her beautie, mixed with extreme cruelty; som of her too much wit; which made all their loving labors folly. O how often have I heard one name sound in many mouths, making our vales witnesses of our doleful agonies! So that with long lost labor, finding their thoughts bare no other wool but despair, of young courtiers, they grew old shepherds. Well, sweet lams, I will end with you as I began: he that can open his mouth against such innocent souls, let him be hated as much as a filthy fox, let the taste of him be wors than mustie chees, the sound of him be more dreadful then the howling of a wolf, his sight more odible than a toad in ones porrage.

Rixus. Your life indeed hath some goodness.

ROMBUS the School-master.

O tace, tace, or all the fat will be ignified: first, let me dilucidate the very intrinsecal maribone of the matter. He doth use a certain rhetorical invasion into the point, as if indeed he had conference with his lambs; but the truth is, he doth equitate you in the mean time, Master Rixus: for thus he saith, that the sheep are good, ergo the shepherd is good, an Enthymene a loco contingentibus, as my finger and my thumb are Contingentes. Again he saith, Who liveth well is likewise good; but shepherds live well, ergo they are good: Syllogism in Darius King of Persia a Conjugatis; as you would say, a man coupled to his wife-two bodies, but one soul: but do you but acquiescate to my exhortation, and you shall extinguish him. Tell him his major is a knave, his minor is a fool, and his conclusion both-Et ecce homo blancatus quasi lilium.

Rixus. I was saying the shepherd's life had some goodness in it, because it Borrowed of the country quietness somthing like ours; but that is not all: for ours, besides that quiet part, doth both strengthen the bodie, and raise up the minde with this gallant sort of activity. O sweet contentation! to see the long life of the hurtless trees, to see how in streight growing up, though never so high, they hinder not their fellows; they only enviously trouble, which are crookedly bent. What life is to be compared to ours, where the very growing things are ensamples of goodness? We have no hopes, but we may quickly go about them, and going about them, we soon obtain them; not like those that have long followed one (in troth) most excellent chace, do now at length perceive she could never be taken; but that if she stayed at any time near the pursuers, it was never meant to tarry with them, but only to take breath to flie further from them. He therefore that doubts that our life doth not so far excel all others, let him also doubt, that the well-deserving and painful Therion is not to be preferred before the idle Espilus, which is even as much as to say, as that the roes are not swifter than sheep, nor the stags more goodly than goats.

Rombus. Bene, bene, nunc de questione prepositus, that is as much as to say, as well, well, now of the proposed question-that was, whether the many great services and many great faults of Therion, or the few small services, and no faults of Espilus, be to be preferred, incepted or accepted the foriner.

The MAY-LADY.

No, no, your ordinary brains shall not deal in that matter, I have already submitted it to one, whose sweet spirit hath passed through greater difficulties, neither will I that your blockheads lie in her way.

Therefore, O Lady! worthy to see the accomplishment of your desires, since all your desires be most worthy of you, vouchsafe our ears such happiness, and me that particular favour, as that you will judg whether of these two be more worthy of me, or whether I be worthy of them: and this I will say, that in judging me, you judg more than me in it.

This being said, it pleased her Majesty to judg that Espilus did the better deserv her; but what words, what reasons she used for it, this paper, which carrieth so base names, is not worthy to contain. Sufficeth it, that upon the judgment given, the shepherds and forresters made a full consort of their cornets and recorders, and then did Espilus sing this song, tending to the greatness of his