Corydon, inwardly out of countenance to hear his own words bite so sore upon him, would have shrunk away, but hoping he had found a judge whom the cause concerned stood a while to attend what Basilius would have said. But the King put it over to Musidorus, who (glad to find an occasion to pleasure Menalcas, his first master in the practice of a shepherd’s life) thus ended it.
“Corydon,” said he, “could I as well lop away some of your over-grown years, to make your match with Kalodulus’s daughter equal, as I can add to Menalcas’s state, I would, for a time, suspend my judgment: for readily I know not whether of you two deserves best: but in the one, my power seconds my will; as in the other, my will over-goes my power. Kalodulus’s daughter I therefore adjudge to Menalcas, and I will make him worthy of her, the rather, that I know his rash youth would impatiently bear a repulse, where your experience (when it reflects upon itself), with more discretion may consider she was but a woman.” Glad was Menalcas to speed so well: nor was Corydon displeased, because the Prince, as he conceived, had entertained a good opinion of his wisdom. Thus, when they ended, Pyrocles, who marked Agelastus’s silent pensiveness, desired to hear him disburden his mind of the thoughts that brought him to so deep a study: thinking that Agelastus stood fixed, with the eye of his mind cast upon the beauty of some fair mistress: but he, who thought of nothing less, thus answered his expectation.
AGELASTUS
Nor fate, nor fortune, whose enforcing power,
Man still complains upon his state to lower,
Do work these changes: man himself’s the cause;
They be but wheels that keep their mover’s laws:
Yet alway, when he sees his fault too late,
He turns it over upon chance, or fate.
Each man is born a king, his passions be
The practice of his sovereignty:
Who, though they still their sovereign’s good pretend,
Conspire his ruin for their private end.
The love of skin-thick beauty draws his eye
To yield to love, his reason’s majesty.
His fear throws bugbears in his way; his state
Is still infested by revengeful hate.
His idle grief, for what he might prevent,
Or might not, doth usurp his government.
Thus he, whom God ordain’d a king to be,
Obeys his subjects, and is never free.
Besides, whose state’s so firm, into whose way
The world flings not his joy’s injurious stay?
The surges of the deep, whose joys devour
The merchant’s far-fetch’d hopes, the skies that pour
A second deluge on the ploughman’s corn,
When now his fields are ready to be shorn:
The soldiers long remote, the doubtful chance
Of bloody war, the new-found ordinance;
The city-horns, the court’s brave flattery,
Do force content to dwell with poverty.
Then looking round upon the princes, as if by their survey he were again enabled to speak, he thus said:
Honour, thou spongy idol of man’s mind,
That soak’st content away, thou hast confin’d.
Ambitious man, and not his destiny,
Within the bounds of form and ceremony.
Oh! happy life of shepherds, whose content
Rests in a soul that’s free and innocent;
They stay their lodging, and remove their roof,
Not for their own, but for their flock’s behoof.
While some (to fill the blanks of their mean story)
Do travel in their cares, to gain vain-glory,
They never leave the plains, unless, sometime,
To look about them, they the mountains climb:
But dwell not there; for ev’n this change doth show
What choicer sweets they do enjoy below:
Here the rough winds do buzz about their ears,
The rocky steepness adds unto their fears:
Here they are ready to be torn asunder,
By malice’s hateful blasts, and envy’s thunder:
From hence they may descend; but, greatness, stay,
If you come down, it must be th’ other way:
For ’tis a bliss, on which your honour shares,
That though you would, you cannot leave your cares.
When Agelastus ended, the company might see a man who seemed to be misfortune’s herald, with a rope about his neck, make towards the Queen of Corinth, and cast himself at her feet. They, thinking it had been some shepherdish invention, expected awhile the conceit of it: but approaching, after a time, nearer to him, they might discern it was Tenarus the usurper of Corinth, who, hearing of the Queen’s welfare, and her happy marriage to Amphialus (finding in his own practice for the crown the Corinthians aptness to embrace change, and considering the powerfulness of his enemies) had come thither, in the basest form of humbleness to set a belief upon his submission. Him the Queen (because he was a suitor on her marriage-day) pardoned, and restored to his possessions, forfeited by his treason to the crown; only she caused his liberty to be restrained until her going to Corinth, whither, after she had taken leave of Basilius, and the rest of the royal company, she took her journey; making Amphialus, within a year after her departure, a happy father of a much-promising son, whom they named Heleamphialus. Euarchus also, soon after, with his son Pyrocles and Philoclea, and his nephew Musidorus, together with Pamela (who was desirous both to accompany her sister, and to see her mother of Thessaly) parted from Mantinea; leaving Basilius and Gynecia, when they had accompanied them to the frontiers of Arcadia, to the happy quiet of their after-life.
Tu longe sequere & vestigia semper adoro,
Sidnei——
Statius.
FINIS.