MEM. Take heed you fall not in love with yourself. Phantastes, as I remember—Anamnestes, who was't that died of the looking disease?
ANA. Forsooth, Narcissus: by the same token he was turned to a daffodil, and as he died for love of himself, so, if you remember, there was an old ill-favoured, precious-nosed, babber-lipped, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, slouch-eared slave that, looking himself by chance in a glass, died for pure hate.
PHA. By the lip of my —— I could live and die with this face.
COM. SEN. Fie, fie, Phantastes, so effeminate! for shame, leave off. Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable. Let's hear therefore in brief your description.
VIS. Under the forehead of Mount Cephalou,[265]
That overpeers the coast of Microcosm,
All in the shadow of two pleasant groves,
Stand by two mansion-houses, both as round
As the clear heavens: both twins, as like each other
As star to star, which by the vulgar sort,
For their resplendent composition,
Are named the bright eyes of Mount Cephalon:
With four fair rooms those lodgings are contrived,
Four goodly rooms in form most spherical,
Closing each other like the heavenly orbs:
The first whereof, of nature's substance wrought,
As a strange moat the other to defend,
Is trained movable by art divine,
Stirring the whole compacture of the rest:
The second chamber is most curiously
Compos'd of burnish'd and transparent horn.
PHA. That's a matter of nothing. I have known many have such bed-chambers.
MEM. It may be so, for I remember, being once in the town's library, I read such a thing in their great book of monuments, called "Cornucopia," or rather their "Copiacornu."
VIS. The third's a lesser room of purest glass;
The fourth's smallest, but passeth all the former
In worth of matter: built most sumptuously,
With walls transparent of pure crystalline.
This the soul's mirror and the body's guide,
Love's cabinet, bright beacons of the realm,
Casements of light, quiver of Cupid's shafts,
Wherein I sit, and immediately receive
The species of things corporeal,
Keeping continual watch and sentinel;
Lest foreign hurt invade our Microcosm,
And warning give (if pleasant things approach),
To entertain them. From this costly room
Leadeth, my lord, an entry to your house,
Through which I hourly to yourself convey
Matters of wisdom by experience bred:
Art's first invention, pleasant vision,
Deep contemplation, that attires the soul
In gorgeous robes of flowing literature:
Then, if that Visus have deserved best,
Let his victorious brow with crown be blest.
COM. SEN. Anamnestes, see who's to come next.
ANA. Presently, my lord.