“This day it happened that divers famous knights came thither from the court of Helen Queen of Corinth; a lady whom fame at that time was so desirous to honour that she borrowed all men’s mouths to join with the sound of her trumpet. For as her beauty hath won the prize from all women that stand in degree of comparison, for as for the two sisters of Arcadia, they are far beyond all conceit of comparison, so hath her government been such as hath been no less beautiful to men’s judgments than her beauty to the eyesight. For being brought by right of birth, a woman, a young woman, a fair woman, to govern a people in nature mutinously proud, and always before so used to hard governors, that they knew not how to obey without the sword were drawn, could she for some years so carry herself among them, that they found cause in the delicacy of her sex, of admiration, not of contempt: and which was not able, even in the time that many countries about her were full of wars, which for old grudges to Corinth were thought still would conclude there, yet so handled she the matter, that the threatened ever smarted in the threateners; she using so strange, and yet so well succeeding a temper that she made her people by peace warlike; her courtiers by sports, learned; her ladies by love, chaste. For by continual martial exercises without blood, she made them perfect in that bloody art. Her sports were such as carried riches of knowledge upon the stream of delight: and such the behaviour both of herself and her ladies, as builded their chastity not upon waywardness, but choice of worthiness: so as it seemed that court to have been the marriage-place of love and virtue, and that herself was a Diana apparelled in the garments of Venus. And this which fame only delivered unto me, for yet I have never seen her, I am the willinger to speak of to you, who, I know, know her better, being your near neighbour, because you may see by her example, in herself wise, and of others beloved, that neither folly is the cause of vehement love, nor reproach the effect. For never, I think, was there any woman that with more unremovable determination gave herself to the counsel of love, after she had once set before her mind the worthiness of your cousin Amphialus, and yet is neither her wisdom doubted of, nor honour blemished. For, O God, what doth better become wisdom, than to discern what is worthy the loving? what more agreeable to goodness, than to love it so {233} discerned? and what to greatness of heart, than to be constant in it once loved? but at that time that love of hers was not so publicly known as the death of Philoxenus, and her search of Amphialus hath made it: but then seemed to have such leisure to send thither divers choice knights of her court, because they might bring her, at least the knowledge, perchance the honour of that triumph. Wherein so they behaved themselves, that for three days they carried