O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
Ay me! for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. But, either it was different in blood,- Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,- Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it.
But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness.
As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page, gives intelligence of Ford's approach, and in her invention, and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.