SCENE I.—A GROVE AND FOUNTAIN.

ENTER CUPID, AND MERCURY WITH HIS CADUCEUS, ON DIFFERENT SIDES.

CUP. Who goes there?

MER. 'Tis I, blind archer.

CUP. Who, Mercury?

MER. Ay.

CUP. Farewell.

MER. Stay Cupid.

CUP. Not in your company, Hermes, except your hands were riveted at
your back.

MER. Why so, my little rover?

CUP. Because I know you have not a finger, but is as long as my
quiver, cousin Mercury, when you please to extend it.

MER. Whence derive you this speech, boy?

CUP. O! 'tis your best polity to be ignorant. You did never steal
Mars his sword out of the sheath, you! nor Neptune's trident! nor
Apollo's bow! no, not you! Alas, your palms, Jupiter knows, they
are as tender as the foot of a foundered nag, or a lady's face new
mercuried, they'll touch nothing.

MER. Go to, infant, you'll be daring still.

CUP. Daring! O Janus! what a word is there? why, my light
feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's
pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a
light message to a loose wench with some round volubility? wait
mannerly at a table with a trencher, warble upon a crowd a little,
and fill out nectar when Ganymede's away? one that sweeps the god's
drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again,
which they threw one at another's head over night; can brush the
carpets, call the stools again to their places, play the crier of
the court with an audible voice, and take state of a president upon
you at wrestlings, pleadings, negociations, etc. Here's the
catalogue of your employments, now! O, no, I err; you have the
marshalling of all the ghosts too that pass the Stygian ferry, and
I suspect you for a share with the old sculler there, if the truth
were known; but let that scape. One other peculiar virtue you
possess, in lifting, or leiger-du-main, which few of the house of
heaven have else besides, I must confess. But, methinks, that
should not make you put that extreme distance 'twixt yourself and
others, that we should be said to "over-dare" in speaking to your
nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both,
because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join'd stools at
the arm's end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have
made the whole body of divinity tremble at the twang of our bow,
and enforc'd Saturnius himself to lay by his curled front, thunder,
and three-fork'd fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a
reveller of eighteen to be seen in—

MER. How now! my dancing braggart in decimo sexto! charm your
skipping tongue, or I'll—

CUP. What! use the virtue of your snaky tip staff there upon us?

MER. No, boy, but the smart vigour of my palm about your ears.
You have forgot since I took your heels up into air, on the very
hour I was born, in sight of all the bench of deities, when the
silver roof of the Olympian palace rung again with applause of
the fact.

CUP. O no, I remember it freshly, and by a particular instance;
for my mother Venus, at the same time, but stoop'd to embrace you,
and, to speak by metaphor, you borrow'd a girdle of her's, as you
did Jove's sceptre while he was laughing; and would have done his
thunder too, but that 'twas too hot for your itching fingers.

MER. 'Tis well, sir.

CUP. I heard, you but look'd in at Vulcan's forge the other day,
and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company:
'tis joy on you, i' faith, that you will keep your hook'd talons in
practice with any thing. 'Slight, now you are on earth, we shall
have you filch spoons and candlesticks rather than fail: pray Jove
the perfum'd courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths, and
shittle-cocks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their
tobacco-boxes; for I am strangely jealous of your nails.

MER. Never trust me, Cupid, but you are turn'd a most acute
gallant of late! the edge of my wit is clean taken off with the
fine and subtile stroke of your thin-ground tongue; you fight with
too poignant a phrase, for me to deal with.

CUP. O Hermes, your craft cannot make me confident. I know my own
steel to be almost spent, and therefore entreat my peace with you,
in time: you are too cunning for me to encounter at length, and I
think it my safest ward to close.

MER. Well, for once, I'll suffer you to win upon me, wag; but use
not these strains too often, they'll stretch my patience. Whither
might you march, now?

CUP. Faith, to recover thy good thoughts, I'll discover my whole
project. The huntress and queen of these groves, Diana, in regard
of some black and envious slanders hourly breathed against her, for
her divine justice on Acteon, as she pretends, hath here in the
vale of Gargaphie, proclaim'd a solemn revels, which (her godhead
put off) she will descend to grace, with the full and royal expense
of one of her clearest moons: in which time it shall be lawful for
all sorts of ingenious persons to visit her palace, to court her
nymphs, to exercise all variety of generous and noble pastimes; as
well to intimate how far she treads such malicious imputations
beneath her, as also to shew how clear her beauties are from the
least wrinkle of austerity they may be charged with.

MER. But, what is all this to Cupid?

CUP. Here do I mean to put off the title of a god, and take the
habit of a page, in which disguise, during the interim of these
revels, I will get to follow some one of Diana's maids, where, if
my bow hold, and my shafts fly but with half the willingness and
aim they are directed, I doubt not but I shall really redeem the
minutes I have lost, by their so long and over nice proscription of
my deity from their court.

MER. Pursue it, divine Cupid, it will be rare.

CUP. But will Hermes second me?

MER. I am now to put in act an especial designment from my father
Jove; but, that perform'd, I am for any fresh action that offers
itself.

CUP. Well, then we part. [EXIT.]

MER. Farewell good wag.
Now to my charge.—Echo, fair Echo speak,
'Tis Mercury that calls thee; sorrowful nymph,
Salute me with thy repercussive voice,
That I may know what cavern of the earth,
Contains thy airy spirit, how, or where
I may direct my speech, that thou may'st hear.

ECHO. [BELOW] Here.

MER. So nigh!

ECHO. Ay.

MER. Know, gentle soul, then, I am sent from Jove,
Who, pitying the sad burthen of thy woes,
Still growing on thee, in thy want of words
To vent thy passion for Narcissus' death,
Commands, that now, after three thousand years,
Which have been exercised in Juno's spite,
Thou take a corporal figure and ascend,
Enrich'd with vocal and articulate power.
Make haste, sad nymph, thrice shall my winged rod
Strike the obsequious earth, to give thee way.
Arise, and speak thy sorrows, Echo, rise,
Here, by this fountain, where thy love did pine,
Whose memory lives fresh to vulgar fame,
Shrined in this yellow flower, that bears his name.

ECHO. [ASCENDS.] His name revives, and lifts me up from earth,
O, which way shall I first convert myself,
Or in what mood shall I essay to speak,
That, in a moment, I may be deliver'd
Of the prodigious grief I go withal?
See, see, the mourning fount, whose springs weep yet
Th' untimely fate of that too beauteous boy,
That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
Who, now transform'd into this drooping flower,
Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream,
As if it wish'd, "Would I had never look'd
In such a flattering mirror!" O Narcissus,
Thou that wast once, and yet art, my Narcissus,
Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts,
She would have dropt away herself in tears,
Till she had all turn'd water; that in her,
As in a truer glass, thou might'st have gazed
And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection,
But self-love never yet could look on truth
But with blear'd beams; slick flattery and she
Are twin-born sisters, and so mix their eyes,
As if you sever one, the other dies.
Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form,
And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it?
Why do I ask? 'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to bear too