Puslapio vaizdai
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Titus

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SCENE V. Wrong and Infolence.

Now breathless wrong

Shal. fit and pant in your great chairs of ease;
And pursy insolence shall break his wind
With fear and horrid flight.

:

Titus Andronicus.

ACT L

SCENE II.

W

MERCY.

ILT thou draw near the nature of the

Gods?

Draw near them then in being merciful;

Sweet Mercy is nobility's true badge.

SCENE III. THANKS.

Thanks, to men

Of noble minds, is honourable meed.

SCENE IV. An Invitation to Love.

(2) The birds chaunt melody on every bush, The snake lies rolled in the chearful fun,

(1) Wilt, &c.] See vol. I. p. 69. n. 11. This, as Mr. Whalley has observed, is directly the sense and words of a passage in one of Cicero's finest orations: Homines ad Deos nulla re propius accedunt, quam falutem Hominibus dando. Orat. pro legar. fub. fin. See Enquiry into the learning of Shakespear, p. 64.

(2) The Birds, &c.]

Nobilis æstivas platanus, &c.

A plain diffus'd its bow'ring verdure wide
With trembling pines, which to the Zephyrs figh'd:
Laurels with berries crown'd, the boughs inwove,
And the soft cypress ever whisp'ring love:

Midst these a brook in winding murmurs stray'd,

Chiding the pebbles over which it play'd,

'Twas love's Elyfium, Petron Arb. by Addison junior:

The

The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind,

And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground:
Under their sweet shade, Aaron, let us fit,
And whilst the babling echo mocks the hounds,

Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns,
As if a double hunt were heard at once,

Let us fit down and mark their yelling noise :

And after conflict, such as was suppos'd
The wand'ring prince and Dido once enjoy'd,
When with a happy storm they were surpriz'd,
And curtain'd with a counsel-keeping cave;
We may each wreathed in the others arms,
(Our pastime done) possess a golden slumber,
Whilft hounds and horns, and sweet melodious birds
Be unto us, as is a nurse's fong

Of lullaby, to bring her babe asleep.

SCENE V. Vale, a dark and melancholy one described

(3) A barren and detested vale, you fee, it is. The trees, tho' summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss, and baleful misselto.

Here never shines the sun: Here nothing breeds

(3) Barren, &c.]

Non bac autumno tellus viret, aut alit berbas,
Cefpite lætus ager: non verno perfona cantu
Mollia difcordi ftrepitu virgulta loquuntur:
Sed chaos & nigro squallentia pumice Saxa
Gaudent ferali circum tumulata cupreffu.

No autumn here, e'er cloaths herself with green,
Nor joyful spring the languid herbage cheers;
Nor feather'd warblers chant their pleasing strains,
In vernal concert to the ruftling boughs:
But chaos reigns, and ragged rocks around,

With nought but baleful cypress are adorn'd.

Petron. Arbit, translated by Baker.

Unless

Unless the nightly owl, or fatal raven,
And when they shew'd me this abhorred pit,
They told me, here at dead time of the night,
A thousand fiends, a thousand hissing snakes,
Ten thousand swelling toads, as many urchins,
Would make such fearful and confufed cries,
As any mortal body, hearing it,
Should strait fall mad, or else die suddenly.

SCENE VII. A Ring, in a dark Pit.

(4) Upon his bloody finger he doth wear
A precious ring, that lightens all the hole:
Which, like a taper in fome monument,
Doth shine upon the dead man's earthy cheeks,
And shews the ragged entrails of this pit.

Young Lady playing on the Lute, and finging.

Fair Philomela, she but loft her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler few'd her mind.
But, lovely neice, that mean is cut from thee;
A craftier Tereus haft thou met withal,
And he hath cut those pretty fingers off,
That could have better few'd than Philomel.
Oh, had the monster seen those lilly hands
Tremble, like Aspen leaves, upon a lute

A

(4) Upon, &c.] We may suppose the light thrown into the pit by this ring; something of that kind Milton speaks of, in the

first book of Paradise Loft. Paradise Loft.

A dungeon horrible on all fides round,

As one great furnace flam'd: yet from these flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Serv'd only to discover fights of woe, &c. P. 61.

Again,

The feat of defolation void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames,

Casts pale and dreadful.

P. 181.

And

And make the filken strings delight to kiss them;
He would not then have touch'd them for his life.
(5) Or had he heard the heavenly harmony,
Which that sweet tongue hath made :
He would have dropt his knife, and fell asleep,
As Cerberus at the Thracian poets feet.

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A Lady's Tongue cut out.

O, that delightful engine of her thoughts, That blab'd them with such pleasing eloquence, Is torn from forth that pretty hollow cage, Where, like a sweet melodious bird, it fung Sweet various notes, inchanting every ear !

(5) Or, &c.] This puts me in mind of that most excellent paffage in Milton's Comus, where upon the lady's finging, Comus obferves,

Can any mortal mixture of earths mould
Breathe such divine inchanting ravishment ?
Sure something holy lodges in that breaft,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden refidence :
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of filence, thro' the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness, till it fmil'd! I have oft heard
My mother Circe, with the Sirens three
Amidst the flow'ry-kirtled Naiades
Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs,
Who as they fung, wou'd take the prison'd foul
And lap it in Elyfium: Sylla wept
And chid her barking waves into attention,
And fell Charibdis murmur'd soft applause:
Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense
And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself.
But fuch a facred and home-felt Delight,
Such fober certainty of waking blifs,
I never heard till now

A Per

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