"First, he did present himself with a crown on his head, a scepter in his hand, being clothed in a purple robe furred with ermyne; after that, with a miter on his head, a crosier in his hand, and accoutred with a paire of lawn-sleeves; and thereafter, with a helmet on his head, the visiere up, a commanding stick in his hand, and arayed in a buff-suit, with a scarf about his middle. Then, in a rich apparel, after the newest fashion, did he shew himself, (like another Sejanus), with a periwig daubed with Cypres powder; in sequel of that, he came out with a three-corner'd cap on his head, some parchments in his hand, and writings hanging at his girdle like Chancery bills; and next to that, with a furred gown about him, an ingot of gold in his hand, and a bag full of money by his side; after all this, he appeares againe clad in a country-jacket, with a prong in his hand, and a Monmouth-like-cap on his head; then very shortly after, with a palmer's coat upon him, a bourdon in his hand,[264] and some few cockle-shels stuck to his hat, he look'd as if he had come in pilgrimage from St Michael; immediately after that, he domineers it in a bare unlined gown, with a pair of whips in the one hand, and Corderius in the other; and in suite thereof, he honderspondered[265] it with a pair of pannier-like breeches, a mountera-cap on his head, and a knife in a wooden sheath dagger-ways by his side; about the latter end, he comes forth again with a square in one hand, a rule in the other, and a leather apron before him; then very quickly after, with a scrip by his side, a sheep-hook in his hand, and a basket full of flowers to make nosegayes for his mistris; now drawing to a closure, he rants it first in cuerpo, and vapouring it with gingling spurs, and his armes a kenbol like a Don Diego he strouts it, and by the loftiness of his gate, plaies the Capitan Spavento; then in the very twinkling of an eye, you would have seen him againe issue forth with a cloak upon his arm, in a livery garment, thereby representing the serving-man; and lastly, at one time amongst those other, he came out with a long gray beard, and bucked ruff, crouching on a staff tip't, with the head of a barber's cithern,[266] and his gloves hanging by a button at his girdle.
"Those fifteen several personages did he represent with such excellency of garb, and exquisiteness of language, that condignely to perpend the subtlety of the invention, the method of the disposition, the neatness of the elocution, the gracefulness of the action, and wonderful variety in the so dextrous performance of all, you would have taken it for a comedy of five acts, consisting of three scenes, each composed by the best poet in the world, and acted by fifteen of the best players that ever lived, as was most evidently made apparent to all the spectators in the fifth and last hour of his action, (which, according to our western account, was about six a clock at night, and by the calculation of that country, half an hour past three and twenty, at that time of the yeer), for, purposing to leave off with the setting of the sun, with an endeavour nevertheless to make his conclusion the master-piece of the work, he, to that effect, summoning all his spirits together, which never failed to be ready at the call of so worthy a commander, did by their assistance, so conglomerate, shuffle, mix, and interlace the gestures, inclinations, actions, and very tones of the speech of those fifteen several sorts of men, whose carriages he did personate into an inestimable ollapodrida of immaterial morsels of divers kinds, suitable to the very ambrosian relish of the Heliconian nymphs, that, in the peripetia of this drammatical exercitation, by the inchanted transportation of the eyes and eares of its spectabundal auditorie, one would have sworne that they all had looked with multiplying glasses, and that, (like that angel in the Scripture whose voice was said to be like the voice of a multitude), they heard in him alone the promiscuous speech of fifteen several actors; by the various ravishments of the excellencies whereof, in the frolickness of a jocund straine beyond expectation, the logofascinated spirits of the beholding hearers and auricularie spectators, were so on a sudden seazed upon in their risible faculties of the soul, and all their vital motions so universally affected in this extremitie of agitation, that, to avoid the inevitable charmes of his intoxicating ejaculations, and the accumulative influences of so powerfull a transportation, one of my lady Dutchess' chief maids of honour, by the vehemencie of the shock of those incomprehensible raptures, burst forth into a laughter to the rupture of a veine in her body; and another young lady, by the irresistible violence of the pleasure unawares infused, where the tender receptibilitie of her too tickled fancie was least able to hold out, so unprovidedly was surprised, that, with no less impetuositie of ridibundal passion then [than], (as hath been told), occasioned a fracture in the other young ladie's modestie, she, not being able longer to support the well beloved burthen of so excessive delight, and intransing joys of such mercurial exhilations through the ineffable extasie of an overmastered apprehension, fell back in a swown, without the appearance of any other life into her then [than] what, by the most refined wits of theological speculators, is conceived to be exerced by the purest parts of the separated entelechises of blessed saints in their sublimest conversations with the celestial hierarchies; this accident procured the incoming of an apothecary with restoratives, as the other did that of a surgeon with consolidative medicaments.[267] The Admirable Crichtoun now perceiving that it was drawing somewhat late, and that our occidental rays of Phœbus were upon their turning oriental to the other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe; being withall jealous that the uninterrupted operation of the exuberant diversitie of his jovialissime entertainment, by a continuate winding up of the humours there present to a higher, yet higher, and still higher pitch, above the supremest Lydian note of the harmonie of voluptuousness, should, in such a case, through the too intensive stretching of the already super-elated strings of their imagination, with a transcendencie over-reaching Ela, and beyond the well concerted gain of rational equanimitie, involve the remainder of that illustrious companie into the sweet labyrinth and mellifluent anfractuosities of a lacinious delectation, productive of the same inconveniences which befel the two afore-named ladies; whose delicacie of constitution, though sooner overcome, did not argue, but that the same extranean causes from him proceeding of their pathetick alteration, might by a longer insisting in an efficacious agencie, and unremitted working of all the consecutively imprinted degrees that the capacity of the patient is able to containe, prevaile at last, and have the same predominancie over the dispositions of the strongest complexioned males of that splendid society, did, in his own ordinary wearing apparel, with the countenance of a Prince, and garb befitting the person of a so well bred gentleman and cavalier, κατ εξοχην full of majestie, and repleat with all excogitable civilitie, (to the amazement of all that beheld his heroick gesture), present himself to epilogate this his almost extemporanean comedie, though of five hours continuance without intermission; and that with a peroration so neatly uttered, so distinctly pronounced, and in such elegancie of selected tearmes, expressed by a diction so periodically contexed with isocoly of members, that the matter thereof tending in all humility to beseech the highnesses of the Duke, Prince, and Dutchess, together with the remanent lords, ladies, knights, gentlemen, and others of both sexes of that honourable convention, to vouchsafe him the favour to excuse his that afternoon's escaped extravagancies, and to lay the blame of the indigested irregularity of his wits' excursions, and the abortive issues of his disordered brain, upon the customarily dispensed with priviledges in those Cisalpinal regions, to authorize such like impertinencies at Carnavalian festivals; and that, although, according to the meet commonly received opinion in that country, after the nature of Load-him, (a game at cards), where he that wins loseth, he who, at that season of the year, playeth the fool most egregiously, is reputed the wisest man; he, nevertheless, not being ambitious of the fame of enjoying good qualities, by vertue of the antiphrasis of the fruition of bad ones, did meerly undergo that emancipatorie task of a so profuse liberty, and to no other end embraced the practising of such roaming and exorbitant diversions but to give an evident, or rather infallible, demonstration of his eternally bound duty to the House of Mantua, and all inviolable testimony of his never to be altered designe, in prosecuting all the occasions possible to be laid hold on that can in any manner of way prove conducible to the advancement of, and contributing to, the readiest means for improving those advantages that may best promove the faculties of making all his choice endeavours, and utmost abilities at all times, effectual to the long-wished-for furtherance of his most cordial and endeared service to the serenissime highnesses of My Lord Duke, Prince, and Dutchess, and of consecrating with all addicted obsequiousness, and submissive devotion, his everlasting obedience to the illustrious shrine of their joynt commands. Then incontinently addressing himself to the Lords, ladies and others of that rotonda, (which, for his daigning to be its inmate, though but for that day, might be accounted in nothing inferior to the great Colisee of Rome, or Amphitheater of Neems), with a stately carriage, and port suitable to so prime a gallant, he did cast a look on all the corners thereof, so bewitchingly amiable and magically efficacious as if in his eys had bin a muster of ten thousand cupids eagerly striving who should most deeply pierce the hearts of the spectators with their golden darts. And truly so it fell out, (that there not being so much as one arrow shot in vain), all of them did love him, though not after the same manner, nor for the same end; for, as the manna of the Arabian desarts is said to have had in the mouths of the Egyptian Israelites, the very same tast of the meat they loved best, so the Princes that were there did mainly cherish him for his magnanimity and knowledge; his courtliness and sweet behaviour being that for which chiefly the noblemen did most respect him; for his pregnancie of wit, and chivalric in vindicating the honour of ladies, he was honoured by the knights, and the esquires and other gentlemen courted him for his affability and good fellowship; the rich did favour him for his judgment and ingeniosity; and for his liberality and munificence he was blessed by the poor; the old men affected him for his constancie and wisdome, and the young for his mirth and gallantry; the scholars were enamoured of him for his learning and eloquence, and the souldiers for his integrity and valour; the merchants, for his upright dealing and honesty, praised and extolled him, and the artificers for his goodness and benignity; the chastest lady of that place would have hugged and imbraced him for his discretion and ingenuity; whilst for his beauty and comeliness of person he was, at least in the fervency of their desires, the paramour of the less continent; he was dearly beloved of the fair women, because he was handsome, and of the fairest more dearly, because he was handsomer: in a word, the affections of the beholders, (like so many several diameters drawn from the circumference of their various intents), did all concenter in the point of his perfection. After a so considerable insinuation, and gaining of so much ground upon the hearts of the auditory, (though in a shorter space then [than] the time of a flash of lightning), he went on, (as before), in the same thred of the conclusive part of his discourse, with a resolution not to cut it, till the overabounding passions of the company, their exorbitant motions and discomposed gestures, through excess of joy and mirth, should be all of them quieted, calmed, and pacified, and every man, woman, and maid there, (according to their humour), resented in the same integrity they were at first; which when by the articulatest elocution of the most significant words, expressive of the choisest things that fancie could suggest, and, conforme to the matter's variety, elevating or depressing, flat or sharply accinating it, with that proportion of tone that was most consonant with the purpose, he had attained unto, and by his verbal harmony and melodious utterance, setled all their distempered pleasures, and brought their disorderly raised spirits into their former capsuls, he with a tongue tip't with silver, after the various diapasons of all his other expressions, and making of a leg for the spruceness of its courtsie, of greater decorement to him then [than] cloth of gold and purple, farewel'd the companie with a complement of one period so exquisitely delivered, and so well attended by the gracefulness of his hand and foot, with the quaint miniardise of the rest of his body, in the performance of such ceremonies as are usual at a court-like departing, that from the theater he had gone into a lobie, from thence along three spacious chambers, whence descending a back staire, he past through a low gallerie which led him to that outer gate, where a coach with six horses did attend him, before that magnificent convention of both sexes, (to whom that room, wherein they all were, seemed in his absence to be as a body without a soul), had the full leisure to recollect their spirits, (which, by the neatness of his so curious a close, were quoquoversedly scattered with admiration), to advise on the best expediency how to dispose of themselves for the future of that [delightful] night."
[261] The College of Navarre was founded by Jeanne of Navarre, consort of Philippe the Fair, in 1305. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was the foremost foundation of the University of Paris (F. W. S.).
[262] John Hill Burton points out the somewhat curious fact that, among the hero's linguistic accomplishments, Gaelic, which must have been talked at his own door, does not appear.
[263] In the matter of length this is surely a record sentence.
[264] "A bourdon in his hand"—"A musical instrument resembling a bassoon, in use with pilgrims who visit the body of St James at Compostella" (Sir John Hawkins).
[265] "Honderspondered"—i.e. floundered. Fr. hondrespondres (Rab. iii. 42)—"hundred-pounders," heavy, burly fellows.
[266] "Barber's cithern"—"The instrument now ignorantly called a guitar. It was formerly part of the furniture of a barber's shop, and was the amusement of waiting customers" (Sir John Hawkins).
[267] This incident reminds one of the effect produced upon the lawyers in court when "Pantagruel gave judgment upon the difference of the two lords." Our readers will remember that it is the author of the above description who is the translator of the narrative which tells of that wonderfully satisfactory decision. "As for the counsellors, and other doctors in the law that were there present, they were all so ravished with admiration at the more than humane wisdom of Pantagruel, which they did most clearly perceive to be in him, by his so accurate decision of this so difficult and thornie cause, that their spirits, with the extremity of the rapture, being elevated above the pitch of actuating the organs of the body, they fell into a trance and sudden extasie, wherein they stayed for the space of three long houres; and had been so as yet, in that condition, had not some good people fetched store of vinegar and rose water to bring them again into their former sense and understanding, for the which God be praised everywhere. And so be it." (Rabelais, ii. 13.)