/lit/ - Literature

>>5242218
>Though they were both in their linens, to wit, shirts and drawers, without any other apparel, and in all out ward conveniences equally adjusted, the Italian, with redoubling hisstroaks, foamed at the mouth with a cholerick heart, and fetched a pantling breath ; the Scot, in sustaining his charge, kept himself in a pleasant temper, without passion, and made void his designes ; he alters his wards from tierce to quart ; he primes and seconds it, now high, now lowe, and casts his body, like another Prothee, into all the shapes he can, to spie an open on his adversary, and lay hold of an advantage, but all in vain ; for the invincible Crichtoun, whom no cunning was able to surprise, contrepostures his respective wards, and, with an incredible nimbleness of both hand and foot, evades the intent and frustrates the invasion...Matchless Crichtoun, seeing it now high time to put a gallant catastrophe to that so long dubious combat, animated with a divinely inspired servencie to fulfil the expectation of the ladies, and crown the Duke's illustrious hopes, changeth his garb, falls to act another part, and, from defender, turn assailant ; never did art so grace nature, nor nature second the precepts of art with so much liveliness, and such observancie of time, as when, after he had struck fire out of the steel of his enemie's sword, and gained the feeble thereof with the fort of his own, by angles of the strongest position, he did, by geometrical flourishes of straight and oblique lines, so practically execute the speculative part, that, as if there had been Remoras and secret charms in the variety of his motion, the fierceness of his foe was in a trice transqualified into the numbness of a pageant.