Princess. Else your memory is bad going o'er it erewhile._
Jaquenetta. Good Master Parson, be so good as to read me this letter—it was sent me from Don Armatho: I beseech you to read it.
Holofernes. [Speaking here, however, not in character but for 'the Academe.'] Fauste precor gelida quando pecus omne sub umbra Ruminat, and so forth. Ah, good old Mantuan! I may speak of thee as the traveller doth of Venice
—Vinegia, Vinegia,
Chi non te vede, ei non te pregia.
Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.—Ut re sol la mi fa.—Under pardon, Sir, what are THE CONTENTS? or, rather, as Horace says in his—What, my soul, verses?
Nath. Ay, Sir, and very learned [one would say so upon examination].
Hol. Let me have a staff, a stanza, a verse; Lege Domine.
Nath. [Reads the 'verses.']—'If love make me forsworn,' etc.
Hol. You find not the apostrophe, and so—miss the accent—[criticising the reading. It is necessary to find the apostrophe in the verses of this Academy, before you can give the accent correctly; there are other points which require to be noted also, in this refined courtier's writings, as this criticism will inform us]. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadency of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man. And why, indeed, Naso; but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention. Imitari is nothing; so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. [It was no such reading and writing as that which this Academy was going to countenance, or teach.] But, Damosella, was this directed to you?
Jaq. Ay, Sir, from one Monsieur Biron, one of the strange queen's lords.