[004] Aud. Your features! Lord warrant us! what features?
005 Touch. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.
Jaq. [Aside] O knowledge ill-inhabited, worse than Jove in a thatched house!
Touch. When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor 010 a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, [011] it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.
Aud. I do not know what ‘poetical’ is: is it honest in 015 deed and word? is it a true thing?
Touch. No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most [017] feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, and what they [018] swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign.
Aud. Do you wish then that the gods had made me 020 poetical?
Touch. I do, truly; for thou swearest to me thou art honest: now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign.
Aud. Would you not have me honest?
025 Touch. No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.