 Touchstone compares himself to Ovid and Jaques likens him to Jove in Ovid's "Metamorphoses".The word "touchstone" appears in Book II of the second 1575 edition of Arthur Golding's translation of this work.in which Mercury tricks Battus into revealing the whereabouts of the cattle of Apollo which Mercury himself has stolen and punishes Battus by turning him into a touchstone.