Note 1. From Epicæne, or the Silent Woman, 1609, act i. sc. 1. Clerimont: “A pox of her autumnal face, her pie’d beauty: there’s no man can be admitted till she be ready, now-a-days, till she has painted, and perfum’d, and washt, and scour’d, but the boy here; and him she wipes her oil’d lips upon, like a sponge, I have made a song I pr’ythee hear it, o’ the subject. ‘Still to be neat,’” etc. This elegant little madrigal is a happy imitation from the following Latin poem:
Semper munditias, semper, Basilissa, decores,
Semper compositas arte recente comas,
Et comptos semper cultus, unguentaque semper,
Omnia sollicita compta videre manu,
Non amo. Neglectim mihi se quæ comit amica
Se det; et ornatus simplicitate valet.
Vincula ne cures capitis discussa soluti,
Nec ceram in faciem: mel habet illa suum.
Fingere se semper, non est confidere amori;
Quid quod sæpe decor, cum prohibetur, adest?
The learned may find these verses amongst those which are printed at the end of the variorum edition of Petronius. Mr. Upton imagines there are some passages faulty in this poem. I have given it as I find it in the notes of Colomesius on some passages of Quintilian, printed in his Opuscula; he tells us, Hi versus sic legendi sunt, licet aliò abeat ingeniossimus Nicolaus Heinsius ad Ovidium. Tom. 1., p. 394. (Whalley, The Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson, 1811, vol. i., p. 285.) [back]
