The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
your own proceedings; so shall my words be needless, and you best
instructed. See with yourself how fit it will be for you in this your
tender youth, born so great a prince, and of so rare not only
expectation, but proof, desired of your old father, and wanted of your
native country, now so near your home, to divert your thoughts from
the way of goodness, to lose, nay, to abuse your time. Lastly, to
overthrow all the excellent things you have done, which have filled
the world with your fame; as if you should drown your ship in the long
desired haven; or, like an ill player, should mar the last act of his
tragedy. Remember, for I know you know it, that if we will be men the
reasonable part of our soul is to have absolute commandment, against
which, if any sensual weakness arise, we are to yield all our sound
forces to the overthrowing of so unnatural a rebellion, wherein how
can we want courage, since we are to deal against so weak an adversary
that in itself is nothing but weakness? nay, we are to resolve that if
reason direct it we must do it; and if we must do it, we will do it:
for, to say ‘I cannot,’ is childish; and ‘I will not,’ womanish. And
see how extremely every way you can endanger your mind; for, to take
this womanish habit, without you frame your behavior accordingly, is
wholly vain: your behaviour can never come kindly from you, but as the
mind is proportioned unto it. So that you must resolve if you will
play your part to any purpose, whatsoever peevish imperfections are in
that sex to soften your heart to receive them, the very first
down-step to all wickedness: for do not deceive yourself, my dear
cousin, there is no man suddenly either excellently good or extremely
evil, but grows either as he holds himself up in virtue, or lets
himself slide to viciousness. And let us see what power is the author
of all these troubles; forsooth love, love, a passion, and the basest
and fruitlessest of all passions: fear breedeth wit; anger is the
cradle of courage; joy openeth and enableth the heart; sorrow, as it
closeth, so it draweth it inward to look to the correcting of itself;
and so all of them generally have power towards some good by the
direction of reason. But this bastard Love (for indeed the name of
love is most unworthily applied to so hateful a humour) as it is
engendered betwixt lust and idleness, as the matter it works upon is
nothing but a certain base weakness which some gentle fools call a
gentle heart; as his adjoined companions be unquietness, longings,
fond comforts, faint discomforts, hopes, jealousies, ungrounded rages,
causeless yielding, so is the highest end it aspires unto, a little
pleasure with much pain before and great repentance after. But that
end, how endless it runs into infinite evils, were fit enough for the
matter we speak of, but not for your ears, in whom, indeed, there is
so much true {60} disposition to virtue; yet this much of his worthy
effects in yourself is to be seen, that (besides your breaking laws of
hospitality with Kalander, and of friendship with me) it utterly
subverts the course of nature in making reason give place to sense,
and man to woman. And truly I think hereupon it first got the name of
love: for indeed the true love hath that excellent nature in it, that
it doth transform the very essence of the lover into the thing loved,
uniting, and as it were, incorporating it with a secret and inward
working. And herein do these kinds of loves imitate the excellent:
for, as the love of heaven makes one heavenly, the love of virtue,
virtuous, so doth the love of the world make one become worldly: and
this effeminate love of a woman doth so womanize a man, that, if he
yield to it, it will not only make him an Amazon, but a launder, a
distaff, a spinner, or whatsoever other vile occupation their idle
heads can imagine and their weak hands perform. Therefore to trouble
you no longer with my tedious, but loving words, if either you
remember what you are, what you have been, or what you must be, if you
consider what it is that moved you, or by what kind of creature you
are moved, you shall find the cause so small, the effect so dangerous,
yourself so unworthy to run into the one, or to be driven by the
other, that I doubt not I shall quickly have occasion rather to praise
you for having conquered it, than to give you further counsel how to
do it.”
But in Pyrocles this speech wrought no more but that he, who before he
was espied was afraid, after being perceived, was ashamed, now being
hardly rubbed upon, left both fear and shame, and was moved to anger.
But the exceeding goodwill he bore to Musidorus striving with it, he
thus partly to satisfy him, but principally to loose the reins to his
own motions, made him answer: “Cousin! whatsoever good disposition
nature hath bestowed upon me, or however that disposition hath been by
bringing up confirmed, this I must confess, that I am not yet come to
that degree of wisdom to think light of the sex of whom I have my
life, since if I be anything, which your friendship rather finds than
I acknowledge, I was, to come to it, born of a woman, and nursed of a
woman. And certainly, for this point of your speech doth nearest touch
me, it is strange to see the unmanlike cruelty of mankind, who, not
content with their tyrannous ambition to have brought the other’s
virtuous patience under them, like childish masters, think their
masterhood nothing without doing injury to them, who, if we will argue
by reason, are framed of nature with the same parts of the mind for
the exercise of virtue as we are. And for example, even this estate of
Amazons, which I now for my greatest honour do seek to counterfeit,
doth well witness that if generally the sweetness of their disposition
did not make them see the vainness {61} of these things which we
account glorious, they neither want valour of mind, nor yet doth their
fairness take away their force. And truly we men, and praisers of men,
should remember that if we have such excellencies, it is reason to
think them excellent creatures, of whom we are: since a kite never
brought forth a good flying hawk. But to tell you true, as I think it
superfluous to use any words of such a subject which is so praised in
itself as it needs no praises; so withal, I fear, lest my conceit, not
able to reach unto them, bring forth words which for their
unworthiness may be a disgrace to them I so inwardly honour. Let this
suffice that they are capable of virtue, and virtue, you yourselves
say, is to be loved, and I too, truly: but this I willingly confess,
that it likes me much better when I find virtue in a fair lodging than
when I am bound to seek it in an ill-favoured creature, like a pearl
in a dunghill. As for my fault of being an uncivil guest to Kalander,
if you could feel what an inward guest myself am host unto, ye would
think it were excusable, in that I rather perform the duties of an
host than the ceremonies of a guest. And for my breaking the laws of
friendship with you, which I would rather die than effectually do,
truly I could find it in my heart to ask you pardon for it, but that
your now handling of me gives me reason to confirm my former dealing.”
And here Pyrocles stayed, as to breathe himself, having been
transported with a little vehemency, because it seemed him Musidorus
had over-bitterly glanced against the reputation of womankind: but
then quieting his countenance, as well as out of an unquiet mind it
might be, he thus proceeded on: “And poor love,” said he, “dear
cousin, is little beholding unto you, since you are not content to
spoil it of the honour of the highest power of the mind which notable
men have attributed unto it; but you deject it below all other
passions, in truth somewhat strangely, since, if love receive any
disgrace, it is by the company of these passions you prefer before it.
For those kinds of bitter objections as that lust, idleness, and a
weak heart should be, as it were, the matter and form of love, rather
touch me, dear Musidorus, than love; but I am good witness of my own
imperfections, and therefore will not defend myself: but herein I must
say you deal contrary to yourself: for if I be so weak, then can you
not with reason stir me up as you did by remembrance of my own virtue;
or if indeed I be virtuous, then must ye confess that love hath his
working in a virtuous heart; and so no doubt hath it, whatsoever I be:
for, if we love virtue, in whom shall we love it but in a virtuous
creature? without your meaning be, I should love this word Virtue,
where I see it written in a book. Those troublesome effects you say it
breeds be not the faults of love, but of him that {62} loves, as an
unable vessel to bear such a liquor, like evil eyes not able to look
on the sun; or like a weak brain, soonest overthrown with the best
wine. Even that heavenly love you speak of is accompanied in some
hearts with hopes, griefs, longings, and despairs. And in that
heavenly love, since there are two parts, the one the love itself, the
other the excellency of the thing loved: I, not able at the first leap
to frame both in me, do now, like a diligent workman, make ready the
chief instrument and first part of that great work, which is love
itself; which when I have a while practised in this sort, then you
shall see me turn it to greater matters. And thus gently you may, if
it please you, think of me. Neither doubt ye, because I wear a woman’s
apparel, I will be the more womanish, since I assure you, for all my
apparel, there is nothing I desire more than fully to prove myself a
man in this enterprise. Much might be said in my defence, much more
for love, and most of all for that divine creature which hath joined
me and love together. But these disputations are fitter for quiet
schools than my troubled brains, which are bent rather in deeds to
perform than in words to defend the noble desire that possesseth me.”
“O lord,” said Musidorus, “how sharp-witted you are to hurt yourself.”
“No,” answered he, “but it is the hurt you speak of which makes me so
sharp-witted.” “Even so,” said Musidorus, “as every base occupation
makes one sharp in that practice and foolish in all the rest.” “Nay
rather,” answered Pyrocles, “as each excellent thing once well-learned
serves for a measure of all other knowledges.” “And is that become,”
said Musidorus, “a measure for other things which never received
measure in itself?” “It is counted without measure,” answered
Pyrocles, “because the workings of it are without measure, but
otherwise, in nature it hath measure, since it hath an end allotted
unto it.” The beginning, being so excellent, I would gladly know the
end. “Enjoying,” answered Pyrocles, with a sigh, “I speak of the end
to which it is directed which end ends not, no sooner than the life.”
“Alas! let your own brain disenchant you,” said Musidorus. “My heart
is too far possessed,” said Pyrocles. “But the head gives you
direction, and the heart gives me life,” answered Musidorus.
But Musidorus was so grieved to see his well-beloved friend obstinate,
as he thought, to his own destruction, that it forced him with more
than accustomed vehemency to speak these words. “Well, well,” said he,
“you list to abuse yourself; it was a very white and red virtue, which
you could pick out of a painterly glose of a visage. Confess the
truth, and you shall find the utmost was but beauty, a thing, which
though it be in as great excellency in yourself as may be in any, yet
I am sure you make no further reckoning of it than of an outward
fading benefit nature {63} bestowed upon you. And yet such is your
want of a true grounded virtue, which must be like itself in all
points, that what you wisely account a trifle in yourself, you fondly
become a slave unto in another. For my part I now protest I have left