Chapter 34

_Thumb_. Where is my princess? where's my Huncamunca? Where are those eyes, those cardmatches of Jove, That[1] light up all with love my waxen soul? Where is that face which artful nature made [2] In the same moulds where Venus' self was cast?

[Footnote 1: This image, too, very often occurs:

--Bright as when thy eye First lighted up our loves.--_Aurengzebe_.

'Tis not a crown alone lights up my name.--_Busiris_. ]

[Footnote 2: There is great dissension among the poets concerning the method of making man. One tells his mistress that the mould she was made in being lost, Heaven cannot form such another. Lucifer, in Dryden, gives a merry description of his own formation:

Whom heaven, neglecting, made and scarce design'd, But threw me in for number to the rest .--_State of Innocence_.

In one place the same poet supposes man to be made of metal:

I was form'd Of that coarse metal which, when she was made The gods threw by for rubbish.--_All for Love_.

In another of dough:

When the gods moulded up the paste of man, Some of their clay was left upon their hands, And so they made Egyptians.--_Cleomenes_.

In another of clay:

--Rubbish of remaining clay.--_Sebastian_.

One makes the soul of wax:

Her waxen soul begins to melt apace.--_Anna Bullen_.

Another of flint:

Sure our two souls have somewhere been acquainted In former beings, or, struck out together, One spark to Africk flew, and one to Portugal.--_Sebastian_.

To omit the great quantities of iron, brazen, and leaden souls, which are so plenty in modern authors--I cannot omit the dress of a soul as we find it in Dryden:

Souls shirted but with air.--_King Arthur_.

Nor can I pass by a particular sort of soul in a particular sort of description in the New Sophonisba:

Ye mysterious powers, --Whether thro' your gloomy depths I wander, Or on the mountains walk, give me the calm, The steady smiling soul, where wisdom sheds Eternal sunshine, and eternal joy. ]

_Hunc_. [1]Oh! what is music to the ear that's deaf, Or a goose-pie to him that has no taste? What are these praises now to me, since I Am promised to another?

[Footnote 1: This line Mr Banks has plunder'd entire in his Anna Bullen.]

_Thumb_. Ha! promised?

_Hunc_. Too sure; 'tis written in the book of fate.

_Thumb_. [1]Then I will tear away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot it out at least.

[Footnote 1: Good Heaven! the book of fate before me lay, But to tear out the journal of that day. Or, if the order of the world below Will not the gap of one whole day allow, Give me that minute when she made her vow. --_Conquest of Granada_. ]