Maitland Club > Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart

EK2KTBAAATP0N. 233
honoured by the knights, and the esquires and other gentlemen courted him for his
affability and good fellowship ; the rich did favour him for his judgment and ingeni-
osity, and for his liberality and munificence, he was blessed by the poor ; the old men
affected him for his constancie and wisdome, and the young for his mirth and gallan-
try ; the scholars were enamoured of him for his learning and eloquence, and the soul-
diers for his integrity and valour ; the merchants, for his upright dealing and honesty,
praised and extolled him, and the artificers for his goodness and benignity ; the chastest
lady of that place would have hugged and imbraced him for his discretion and ingenuity ;
whilst for his beauty and comeliness of person he was, at least in the fervency of their
desires, the paramour of the less continent ; he was dearly beloved of the fair women,
because he was handsome, and of the fairest more dearly, because he was handsomer :
in a word, the affections of the beholders, like so many several diameters drawn from
the circumference of their various intents, did all concenter in the point of his perfec-
tion. After a so considerable insinuation, and gaining of so much ground upon the
hearts of the auditory, though in shorter space then the time of a flash of lightning,
he went on, as before, in the same thred of the conclusive part of his discourse, with a
resolution not to cut it, till the over abounding passions of the company, their exorbi-
tant motions and discomposed gestures, through excess of joy and mirth, should be all
of them quieted, calmed, and pacified, and every man, woman, and maid there, accord-
ing to their humour, reseated in the same integrity they were at first ; which when,
by the articulatest elocution of the most significant words, expressive of the choisest
things that fancie could suggest, and, conforme to the matter's variety, elevating or
depressing, flat or sharply accinating it, with that proportion of tone that was most con-
sonant with the purpose, he had attained unto, and by his verbal harmony and melo-
dious utterance, setled all their distempered pleasures, and brought their disorderly
raised spirits into their former capsuls, he with a tongue tip't with silver, after the
various diapasons of all his other expressions, and making of a leg for the spruceness
of its courtsie, of greater decorement to him then cloth of gold and purple, farewel'd
the companie with a complement of one period so exquisitely delivered, and so well
attended by the gracefulness of his hand and foot, with the quaint miniardise of the
rest of his body, in the performance of such ceremonies as are usual at a court-like
departing, that from the theater he had gone into a lobie, from thence along three
spacious chambers, whence descending a back staire, he past through a low gallerie
which led him to that outer gate, where a coach with six horses did attend him, before
that magnificent convention of both sexes, to whom that room, wherein they all were,
seemed in his absence to be as a body without a soul, had the full leisure to recollect their
spirits, which, by the neatness of his so curious a close, were quoquoversedly scattered
with admiration, to advise on the best expediency how to dispose of themselves for the
future of that licentious night. During which time of their being thus in a maze, a
proper young lady, if ever there was any in the world, whose dispersed spirits, by her
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