Jul. Yon light is not day-light, I know it well;
It is some meteor which the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua ;

T T
Came dancing forth thaking his dewy hair

And hurles his gliftering beams thro gloomy air.
Milton in his Paradise Loft.

Now morn her rosy steps in the eafern olime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with ortent pearl,

The morn,
Wak'd by the circling hours, with rofy hand
Unbarr'd the gates of light.

And now went forth the morn,
Such as in highest heaven, array'd in gold
Empyreal, from before her vanilh'd night

Shot thro' with orient beams. There is fomething rather too puerile (I think) in this conceit of Milcon's: Many more might be produced from each of these poets : I have only selected those where particular notice is taken of the morning as a person ; there are numberless admirable descriptions of the several circumstances that attend the rifing of the Day, which occafion many beautiful images, proper to the season; these would be too long to insert here ; I shall only add a few more lines from Beaumont and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdefs; they likewise have many fine expressions of the morn, to fet in competition with their brother poets ; and which indeed of our English bards have not ? Taylor the Water-poet boasts, that he has expreft the rifong of the sun, the morning, (I think) a thousand different ways. The following is from the latter end of the 4th Act of the Faitbo ful Shepberdes.

See the day begins to break
And the light shoots like a streak
Of subtle fire, the wind blows cold,
While the morning doth unfold:
Now the birds begin to rouse,
And the squirrel from the boughs,
Leaps to get in nuts and fruit;
The early lark 'that erst was mute;
Carols to the rifing day,

Many a note and many a lay, Hence Milton took the hint of the following lines in his inimitable L'Allegro:

To hear the lark begin his fight
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tow'r in the skies
Till the dappled dawn doth rise.

Then

Then stay a while, thou shalt not go so foon.

Rom. Let me then stay, let me be ta’en and dye;
If thou wilt have it so, I am content.
I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
I'll say it is the nightingale that beats
The vaulty heav'ns so high above our heads,
And not the lark, the messenger of morn.
Come death, and welcome ; Juliet wills it so.
How is't my soul ? let's talk, it is not day.

ACT IV.

SCENE III..

Juliet’s Soliloquy, on drinking the Potion. Farewel-God knows when we shall meet again! I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, That almost freezes up the heat of life. I'll call them back again to comfort me. Nurfe what should she do here? My dismal scene I needs must act alone : Come vial-what if this mixture do not work at all ? Shall I of force be marry'd to the count? No, no, this fall forbid it ; lye thou there

Pointing to a dagger. What if it be a poison, which the friar Subtly hath ministred, to have me dead, Left in this marriage he should be dishonour'd, Because he married me before to Romeo ? I fear, it is; and yet, me thinks; it should not, For he hath still been tried a holy man, How, if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Comes to redeem me? there's a fearful point ! Shall I not then be ftified in the vault, To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And

And there be ftrangled ere my Romeo comes ?
Or, if I live, is it not

very

like, The horrible conceit of death and night, Together with the terror of the place, (As in a vault, an ancient receptacle, Where, for these

many hundred years, the bones Of all

my

buried ancestors are packt;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night, spirits resort)
Alas, alas! is it not like, that I
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks, like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
(Invironed with all these hideous fears,)
And madly play with my fore-father's joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud ?
And in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desp'rate brains ?
O look, methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Sceking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point.--Stay, Tybalt, ftay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the bed.

ACT V. SCENE I.

Romeo's Defeription of, and Discourse with, the

Apothecary..
Well, Juliet, I will lye with thee to night ;
Let's see for means o mischief! thou art swi't
To enter in the thought of desperate men!

"I do

(9) I do remember an apothecary,
And hereabouts he dwells, whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples.; meager were his looks:
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones:
And in his n edy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator ftuft, and other skins
Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes;
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show.
Noting this penury ; to myself, I said,
An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose fale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
Oh, this same thought did but fore-run my need,
And this same needy man muft fell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house.
Being holy day, the beggar's shop is fhut:
What, ho! apothecary !

(9) I do, &c.] Garth, in his dispensary, hath endeavoured to imitate this excellent description of Shakespear's: the lines thema Selves will be the best proof of his success :

His shop the gazing vulgars eyes employs,
With foreign trinkets and domestic toys,
Here mummies lay; most reverently stale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail :
Not far from fome huge shark's devouring head,
The flying fish their finny pinions spread :
Aloft, in rows large poppy-heads were strung,
And near, a scaly alligator hung:
In this place drugs, in musty heaps decay'd :

In that, dry'd bladders, and drawn teeth are laid. Longinus recommends a judicious choice of the most suitable cir. cumstances, as elegantly productive of the sublime; Aion whether Dr. Garth's description will stand the test, thus conlider'd, particularly in the last circumstance,

:

Enter

I much ques

Enter Apothecary. Ap. Who calls so loud ?

Rom. Come hither, man ; I see, that thou art poor; Hold, there is forty ducats ; let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding geer, As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead; And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath, As violently as hasty powder fir'd Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Ap. Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them.

Rom. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks ;
Need and oppression stare within thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back :
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich,
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

Ap. My povertys but not my will, consents.
Rom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
Ap. Pat this in any liquid thing you will,
And drink it off, and if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.

Rom. There is thy gold ; worse poison to mens souls, Doing more murthers in this loathsom world, Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell: I fell thee poison, thou haft fold me none. Farewel, buy food, and get thee into fesh.

SCENE