Puslapio vaizdai
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Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly: and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a foldier.

DANGER.

I'll read your matter, deep and dangerous:

As full of peril and advent'rous spirit,

As to o'er-walk a current, roaring loud,

On the unsteadfast footing of a spear.

HONOUR.

(4) By heav'ns! methinks, it were an easy leap,
To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon:
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks :
So he, that doth redeem her thence, might wear
Without corrival all her dignities.
But out upon this half-fac'd fellowship!

(4) By heav'ns! &c.] I will not take upon me to defend this paffage from the charge laid against it of bombaft and fuftian, but will only observe, if we read it in that light it is perhaps one of the finest rants to be found in any author, Mr. Warburton attempts to clear it from the charge, and observes, "tho' the expression be fublime and daring, yet the thought is the natural movement of an heroic mind. Euripides, at least, (as he adds) thought so, when he put the very same sentiment, in the fame words, into the mouth of Eteocles."

Εγω γαρ, &c.

I will not cloak my foul: methinks with ease
I cou'd scale heaven, and reach the farthest star;
Or to the deepest entrails of the earth

Descending, pierce, so be I cou'd obtain

A kingdom, at the price, and god-like rule.

ACT ACTII. SCENE VI.

Lady Piercy's pathetick Speech to her Husband.

(5) O my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offence have I this fort-night been
A banish'd woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden fleep ?
Why dost thou bend thy eyes upon the earth,
And start so often, when thou sitt'st alone?
Why haft thou loft the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures, and my rights of thee,
To thick-ey'd musing, and curs'd melancholy ?
In thy faint flumbers I by thee have watcht,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars :
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry, courage! to the field! and thou hast talk'd

Of fallies, and retires; of trenches, tents,

Of palisadoes, fortins, parapets ;
Of bafilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoner's ransom, and of foldiers slain,
And all the current of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow,
• Like bubbles in a late disturbed stream :

:

And in thy face strange motions have appear'd,
Such as we fee, when men restrain their breath
On some great fudden hafte. O, what portents are

these !

Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.

(5) See Portia's speech to Brutus in Julius Cæfar, Aft II.

Scene III.

B 3

ACT :

ACT III. SCENE I.
Prodigies ridicul'd.

(6) I blame him not: at my nativity,
The front of heav'n was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning creffets; know, that, at my birth,
The frame and the foundation of the earth
Shook like a coward.

Hot. So it would have done

At the same season, if your mother's cat

Had kitten'd, though yourself had ne'er been born.

*

*

*

*

*

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions; and the teeming earth
Is with a kind of cholick pinch'd and vext,
By the imprisoning of unruly wind
Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down
High tow'rs and mols-grown steeples.

On miferable Rhymers.

(7) I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew! Than one of these same meeter-ballad-mongers:

I'd

(6) I blame, &c.] Glendower was mightily fuperftitious, he

adds afterwards

Give me leave

To tell you once again, that at my birth

The front of heav'n was full of fiery shapes,

The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds

Were strangely clam'rous in the frighted fields:

These signs have marked me extraordinary,

And all the courses of my life do shew,

I am not in the roll of common men.

(7) 1 bad, &c.] Horace in his art of poetry, speaking of poetafters, fays;

!

I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle tree,
And that would nothing fet my teeth on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry;
'Tis like the forc'd gait of a shuffling nag.

Punctuality in Bargain.

I'll give thrice so much land

To any well-deserving friend;

But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,
I'll cavil on the ninth Part of a hair.

A Husband fung to fleep by a fair Wife.

(8)

She bids you
All on the wanton rushes lay you down,
And rest your gentle head upon her lap,

Ut mala, &c.

A mad dog's foam, th' infection of the plague,
And all the judgments of the angry gods
Are not avoided more by men of sense,
Than poetasters in their raging fits.

And again;

'Tis hard to say, whether for facrilege,
Or incest, or fome more unheard of crime,
The rhyming fiend is sent into these men:
But they are all most visibly possest,
And like a bated bear, when he breaks loofe,
Without distinction seize on all they meet :
Learn'd, or unlearn'd, none scape within their reach;
(Sticking like leeches, till they burst with blood,)
Without remorse infatiably they read,

And never leave 'till they have read men dead.

And

ROSCOMΜΟΝ.

(8) She bids, &c.] There is something extremely tender and pleafing in these lines, as well as in the following, from Philafter, which justly deferve to be compared with them:

B4

- Whe

And she will fing the song that pleaseth you,
And on your eye-lids crown the God of fleep,
Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness;
Making such diff'rence betwixt wake and fleep,
(9) As is the diff'rence betwixt day and night,
The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Pegins his golden progress in the east.

3

- Who shall now tell you

How much I lov'd you? who shall swear it to you,
And weep the tears I send? who shall now bring you
Letters, rings, bracelets, lose his health in service?
Wake tedious nights in stories of your praise ?
Who now shall fing your crying elegies,
And ftrike a sad foul into fenfeless pictures,
And make them mourn? who shall take up his lute
And touch it, till he crown a filent Sleep
Upon my eye-lid, making me dream and cry,
Oh my dear, dear Philafter.-

Act. 3. latter end.

(9) As is, &c.] It is remarkable of Milton, that whenever he can have an opportunity, he takes particular notice of the evening twilight, but I don't at present recollect any passage where he defcribes this morning-twilight, which Shakespear so beautifully hints at: nothing can exceed this lovely description in the 4th book of his Paradise Loft.

Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her fober livery all things clad :
Silence accompanied: for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were flunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant fung:
Silence was pleas'd; now glow'd the firmament
With living saphirs: Hesperus, that led
The starry hoft, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rifing in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her filver mantle threw.

V. 598.

The reader will be agreeably entertain'd, if he refers to the paffage in Dr. Newton's Edition of Milton.

SCENE

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