The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
me; and therefore the height of my thoughts would not descend so much
as to make him answer, but continued on my inward discourses; which he
(perchance witness of his own unworthiness, and therefore the apter to
think himself contemned) took in so heinous a manner, that standing
upon his tiptoes, and staring as if he would have had a mote pulled
out of his eye. ‘Why,’ said he, ‘thou woman or boy, or both,
whatsoever thou be, I tell thee here is no place for thee, here is no
place for thee, get thee gone, I tell thee it is the prince’s
pleasure, it is Dametas’s pleasure.’ I could not choose but smile at
him, seeing him look so like an ape that had newly taken a purgation;
yet taking myself with the manner, spake these words to myself: ‘O
spirit,’ said I, ‘of mine, how canst thou receive any mirth in the
midst of thine agonies? and thou mirth, how darest thou enter into a
mind so grown of late thy professed enemy?’ ‘Thy spirit,’ said
Dametas, ‘dost thou think me a spirit? I tell thee I am Basilius’s
officer, and have charge of him and his daughters.’ ‘O only pearl,’
said I sobbing, ‘that so vile an oyster should keep thee?’ ‘By the
comb case of Diana,’ sware Dametas, ‘this woman is mad: oysters and
pearls? dost thou think I will buy oysters? I tell thee once again,
get thee packing,’ and with that lifted up his bill to hit me with the
blunt end of it; but indeed that put me quite out of my lesson; so
that I forgot all Zelmaneship, and drawing out my sword, the baseness
of the villain yet made me stay my hand, and he (who as Kalander told
me, from his childhood ever feared the blade of a sword) ran back,
backward, with his hands above his head at least twenty paces, gaping
and staring with the very grace, I think, of the clowns that by
Latona’s prayers were turned into frogs.
“At length staying, finding himself without the compass of blows, he
fell to a fresh scolding, in such mannerly manner, as might well show
he had passed thro’ the discipline of a tavern; but seeing me walk up
and down without marking what he said, he went his way, as I perceived
after, to Basilius: for within a while he came unto me, bearing indeed
shows in his countenance of an honest and well-minded gentleman, and
with as much courtesy as Dametas with rudeness saluting me: ‘Fair
lady,’ said he, ‘it is {68} nothing strange that such a solitary place
as this should receive solitary persons, but much do I marvel how such
a beauty as yours is should be suffered to be thus alone.’ I, that now
knew it was my part to play, looking with a grave majesty upon him, as
if I found in myself cause to be reverenced. ‘They are never alone,’
said I, ‘that are accompanied with noble thoughts.’ ‘But those
thoughts,’ replied Basilius, ‘cannot in this your loneliness neither
warrant you from suspicion in others, nor defend you from melancholy
in yourself:’ I then showing a mislike that he pressed me so far; ‘I
seek no better warrant,’ said I, ‘than my own conscience, nor no
greater pleasure than my own contentation.’ ‘Yet virtue seeks to
satisfy others,’ said Basilius. ‘Those that be good,’ said I, ‘and
they will be satisfied as long as they see no evil.’ ‘Yet will the
best in this country,’ said Basilius, ‘suspect so excellent beauty
being so weakly guarded.’ ‘Then are the best but stark naught,’
answered I, ‘for open suspecting others, comes of secret condemning
themselves: but in my country, whose manners I am in all places to
maintain and reverence, the general goodness which is nourished in our
hearts makes every one think the strength of virtue in another,
whereof they find the assured foundation in themselves.’ ‘Excellent
lady,’ said he, ‘you praise so greatly, and yet so wisely, your
country that I must needs desire to know what the nest is out of which
such birds do fly.’ ‘You must first deserve it,’ said I, ‘before you
may obtain it.’ ‘And by what means,’ said Basilius, ‘shall I deserve
to know your estate?’ ‘By letting me first know yours,’ answered I.
‘To obey you,’ said he, ‘I will do it, although it were so much more
reason yours should be known first, as you do deserve in all points to
be preferred. Know you, fair lady, that my name is Basilius,
unworthily lord of this country: the rest, either fame hath already
brought to your ears, or (if it please you to make this place happy by
your presence) at more leisure you shall understand of me.’ I that
from the beginning assured myself it was he, but would not seem I did
so, to keep my gravity the better, making a piece of reverence unto
him; ‘Mighty prince,’ said I, ‘let my not knowing you serve for the
excuse of my boldness, and the little reverence I do you impute to the
manner of my country, which is the invincible land of the Amazons:
myself niece to Senicia, queen thereof, lineally descended of the
famous Penthesilea, slain by the bloody hand of Pyrrhus: I having, in
this my youth determined to make the world see the Amazons’
excellencies, as well in private as in public virtue, have passed some
dangerous adventures in divers countries, till the unmerciful sea
deprived me of my company; so that shipwreck casting me not far hence,
uncertain wandering brought me to this place.’ But Basilius (who now
{69} began to taste of that, which since he had swallowed up, as I
will tell you) fell to more cunning intreating my abode, than any
greedy host should use to well-paying passengers. I thought nothing
could shoot righter at the mark of my desires; yet had I learned
already so much, that it was against my womanhood to be forward in my
own wishes. And therefore he (to prove whether intercessions in fitter
mouths might better prevail) commanded Dametas to bring forthwith his
wife and daughters thither; three ladies, although of diverse, yet of
excellent beauty.
“His wife in grave matron-like attire, with countenance and gesture
suitable, and of such fairness, being in the strength of her age, as,
if her daughters had not been by, might with just price have purchased
admiration: but they being there, it was enough that the most dainty
eye would think her a worthy mother of such children. The fair Pamela,
whose noble heart I find doth greatly disdain that the trust of her
virtue is reposed in such a lout’s hands as Dametas, had yet, to show
an obedience, taken on shepherdish apparel, which was but of
russet-cloth cut after their fashion, with a straight body, open
breasted, the nether part full of plaits, with long and wide sleeves:
but believe me she did apparel her apparel, and with the preciousness
of her body made it most sumptuous. Her hair at the full length, wound
about with gold lace, only by the comparison to show how far her hair
doth excel in colour: betwixt her breasts (which sweetly rose like two
fair mountainets in the pleasant vale of Tempe) there hung a very rich
diamond set but in a black horn; the word I have since read is this,
‘Yet still myself.’ And thus particularly have I described them
because you may know that mine eyes are not so partial but that I
marked them too. But when the ornament of the earth, the model of
heaven, the triumph of nature, the life of beauty, the queen of love,
young Philoclea appeared in her nymph-like apparel, so near nakedness
as one might well discern part of her perfections, and yet so
apparelled as did show she kept best store of her beauty to herself:
her hair (alas too poor a word, why should I not rather call them her
beams) drawn up into a net, able to have caught Jupiter when he was in
the form of an eagle; her body (O sweet body!) covered with a light
taffeta garment, so cut as the wrought smock came through it in many
places, enough to have made your restrained imagination have thought
what was under it: with the cast of her black eyes, black indeed,
whether nature so made them, that we might be the more able to behold
and bear their wonderful shining, or that she, goddess-like, would
work this miracle with herself in giving blackness the price above all
beauty. Then, I say, indeed methought the lilies grew pale for envy;
the roses methought blushed to see sweeter roses in her cheeks; and
{70} the apples methought fell down from the trees to do homage to the
apples of her breast; then the clouds gave place, that the heavens
might more freely smile upon her, at the least the clouds of my
thought quite vanished, and my sight, then more clear and forcible
than ever, was so fixed there, that, I imagine, I stood like a
well-wrought image with some life in show but none in practice. And so
had I been like enough to have stayed long time but that Gynecia
stepping between my sight and the only Philoclea, the change of object
made me recover my senses, so that I could with reasonable good manner
receive the salutation of her, and of the Princess Pamela, doing them
yet no further reverence than one princess useth to another. But when
I came to the never enough praised Philoclea, I could not but fall
down on my knees, and taking by force her hand, and kissing it, I must
confess with more than womanly ardency, ‘Divine lady,’ said I, ‘let
not the world, nor those great princesses, marvel to see me, contrary
to my manner, do this special honour unto you, since all both men and
women, do owe this to the perfection of your beauty.’ But, she
blushing like a fair morning in May at this my singularity, and
causing me to rise, ‘Noble lady,’ said she, ‘it is no marvel to see
your judgment much mistaken in my beauty since you begin with so great
an error as to do more honour unto me than to them, to whom I myself
owe all service.’ ‘Rather,’ answered I, with a bowed down countenance,
‘that shows the power of your beauty which forced me to do such an
error, if it were an error.’ ‘You are so well acquainted,’ said she
sweetly, most sweetly smiling, ‘with your own beauty, that it makes
you easily fall into the discourse of beauty.’ ‘Beauty in me?’ (said
I, truly sighing) ‘alas! if there be any it is in my eyes, which your
blessed presence hath imparted unto them.’
“But then, as I think Basilius willing her so to do, ‘Well,’ said she,
‘I must needs confess I have heard that it is a great happiness to be
praised of them that are most praiseworthy: and well I find that you
are an invincible Amazon since you will overcome, though in a wrong
matter. But if my beauty be anything, then let it obtain thus much of
you, that you will remain some while in this company to ease your own
travel and our solitariness.’ ‘First let me die,’ said I, ‘before any
word spoken by such a mouth should come in vain.’ And thus with some
other words of entertaining was my staying concluded, and I led among
them to the lodge; truly a place for pleasantness, not unfit to
flatter solitariness, for, it being set upon such an unsensible rising
of the ground as you are come to a pretty height before almost you
perceive that you ascend, it gives the eye lordship over a good large
circuit, which according to the nature of the country, being
diversified between {71} hills and dales, woods and plains, one place
more clear, another more darksome, it seems a pleasant picture of
nature, with lovely lightsomeness and artificial shadows. The lodge is
of a yellow stone, built in the form of a star, having round about a
garden framed into like points; and beyond the garden ridings cut out,
each answering the angles of the lodge: at the end of one of them is
the other smaller lodge, but of like fashion, where the gracious
Pamela liveth; so that the lodge seemeth not unlike a fair comet,
whose tail stretcheth itself to a star of less greatness.
“So Gynecia herself bringing me to my lodging, anon after I was
invited and brought down to sup with them in the garden, a place not
fairer in natural ornaments than artificial inventions, where, in a