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AMI. My voice is ragged; I know, I cannot please you.

JAR. I do not defire you to please me, I do defire you to fing: Come, more; another stanza; Call you them stanzas?

AMI. What you will, monfieur Jaques. JAR. Nay, I care not for their names; they owe me nothing: Will you fing?

AMI. More at your request, than to please myfelf.

JAR. Well then, if ever I thank any man, I'll thank you: but that they call compliment, is like *the encounter of two dog-apes; and when a man thanks me heartily, methinks, I have given him a penny, and he renders me the beggarly thanks. Come, fing; and you that will not, hold your tongues.

AMI. Well, I'll end the fong.--Sirs, cover the while; the duke will drink under this tree :-he hath been all this day to look you.

JAR. And I have been all this day to avoid him. He is too dispútable for my company: I think of as many matters as he; but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast of them. Come, warble, come.

5

ragged;] Our modern editors (Mr. Malone excepted) read rugged; but ragged had anciently the fame meaning. So, in Nash's Apologie of Pierce Pennileffe, 4to. 1593: "I would not trot a false gallop through the rest of his ragged verses," &c.

6 -difputable for disputatious. MALONE.

STEEVENS. SONG.

Who doth ambition shun, [All together here]

And loves to live i' the fun,

Seeking the food he eats,

And pleas'd with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither;

Here shall be fee

No enemy,

But winter and rough weather.

JAR. I'll give you a verse to this note, that I

made yesterday in despite of my invention.

7

AMI. And I'll fing it.

JAR. Thus it goes:

If it do come to pass,
That any man turn afs,
Leaving his wealth and ease,

A ftubborn will to please,

Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame;
Here shall be fee,
Grofs fools as be,

An if he will come to Ami.

to live i'the fun,] Modern editions, to lie. JOHNSON. To live i' the fun, is to labour and " sweat in the eye of Phœbus," or, vitam agere fub dio; for by lying in the fun, how could they get the food they eat? TOLLET.

8 - ducdame;] For ducdame, Sir Thomas Hanmer, very acutely and judicioufly, reads duc ad me, that is, bring him to me.

JOHNSON.

If duc ad me were right, Amiens would not have asked its meaning, and been put off with "a Greek invocation." It is evidently a word coined for the nonce. We have here, as Butler says, "One for fenfe, and one for rhyme." - Indeed we must have a double rhyme ; or this stanza cannot well be fung to the fame tune with the former. I read thus:

AMI. What's that ducdame?

FAQ. 'Tis a Greek invocation, to call fools into a circle. I'll go fleep if I can; if I cannot, I'll rail against all the firft-born of Egypt.

"Ducdame, Ducdame, Ducdame,

"Here shall he fee

"Gross fools as he,

"An' if he will come to Ami."

That is, to Amiens. Jaques did not mean to ridicule himself.

FARMER.

Duc ad me has hitherto been received as an allusion to the burthen of Amiens's fong,

Come hither, come hither, come hither.

That Amiens, who is a courtier, should not understand Latin, or be perfuaded it was Greek, is no great matter for wonder. An anonymous correfpondent proposes to read-Huc ad me.

In confirmation of the old reading, however, Dr. Farmer observes to me, that, being at a house not far from Cambridge, when news was brought that the hen-rooft was robbed, a facetious old squire who was present, immediately fung the following stanza, which has an odd coincidence with the ditty of Jaques :

" Damè, what makes your ducks to die?

"duck, duck, duck.

" Dame, what makes your chicks to cry?

"chuck, chuck, chuck.”

I have placed Dr. Farmer's emendation in the text. Ducdame is a

trissyllable. STEEVENS.

If it do come to pass,

That any man turn afs,

Leaving his wealth and ease,

A ftubborn will to please,

Duc ad me, duc ad me, duc ad me;

Here frall he fee

Grofs fools as he, &c.] See Hor. Serm. L. II. fat. iii : "Audire atque togam jubeo componere, quisquis " Ambitione mala aut argenti pallet amore; "Quisquis luxuria tristive fuperftitione, "Aut alio mentis morbo calet: Huc proprius me, "Dum doceo infanire omnes, vos ordine adite." MALONE.

9

the first-born of Egypt.] A proverbial expression for highborn perfons. JOHNSON.

The phrafe is fcriptural, as well as proverbial. So, in Exodus, xii. 29: "And the Lord fmote all the first-born in Egypt." STEEVENS.

AMI. And I'll go feek the duke; his banquet is

prepar'd.

[Exeunt feverally.

SCENE VI.

The fame.

Enter ORLANDO and ADAM.

ADAM. Dear master, I can go no further: 0, I die for food! Here lie I down, and measure out my grave. Farewell, kind master.

ORL. Why, how now, Adam! no greater heart in thee? Live a little; comfort a little; cheer thyself a little: If this uncouth foreft yield any thing favage, I will either be food for it, or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy powers For my fake, be comfortable; hold death awhile at the arm's end: I will here be with thee presently; and if I bring thee not fomething to eat, I'll give thee leave to die: but if thou diest before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well faid! thou look'ft cheerly: and I'll be with thee quickly. - Yet thou lieft in the bleak air: Come, I will bear thee to some shelter; and thou shalt not die for lack of a dinner, if there live any thing in this defert. Cheerly, good Adam!

[Exeunt.

2 Here lie I down, and measure out my grave.] So, in Romeo and

Juliet:

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fall upon the ground, as I do now,
"Taking the measure of an unmade grave."

STEEVENS.

:

SCENE VII.

The fame.

A table set out. Enter Duke Senior, AMIENS, Lords,
and Others.

DUKE S. I think he be transform'd into a beast;
For I can no where find him like a man.

I LORD. My lord, he is but even now gone
hence;

Here was he merry, hearing of a fong.

DUKE S. If he, compact of jars, grow musical,
We shall have shortly difcord in the spheres :-
Go, seek him; tell him, I would speak with him.

Enter JAQUES.

I LORD. He saves my labour by his own ap-
proach.

DUKE S. Why, how now, monfieur! what a life

is this,

That your poor friends must woo your company ?
What! you look merrily.

JAR. A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the foreft,
A motley fool;-a miferable world! -

2

compact of jars,] i. e. made up of difcords. In The Comedy of Errors we have " compact of credit," for made up of credulity. Again, in Woman is a Weathercock, 1612:

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like gilded tombs

Compacted of jet pillars."

The same expreffion occurs also in Tamburlane, 1590:

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Compact of rapine, piracy, and spoil."

STEEVENS.

3 A motley fool;-a miferable world!] What! because he met a

:

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