Ziphares assures him there is no danger, and intreats to be left to himself, The faithful old soldier then deals more plainly with him :

"Arch. Ah, prince, you cannot hide

Your purpose from your narrow-searching friend:
I find it by the sinking of your spirits,

Your hollow speech, deep musings, eager looks,
Whose fatal longings quite devour their objects,
You have decreed, by all the gods you have,
This night to end your noble life.

Ziph. Away,

I never thought thee troublesome till now.

Arch. I care not; spite of all that you can do,

I'll stay and weep you into gentleness:
Your faithful soldier, this old doting fool,

Shall be more troublesome than one that's wiser.

By heaven you shall not hurt your precious life.
I'll stay and wait you, wake here till I die;
Follow you as a fond and fearful father
Would watch a desperate child."

In justice to Monima, the tender and gentle Monima, we cannot quit this play without giving her reply to Mithridates, who still affected to regard their nuptials as only suspended, when, to pursue his designs on Semandra, he requests her absence under pretence of public business.

"Affairs of state

Now take me from you.

Mon. Say, the affairs of love.

I would, my royal lord, but cannot blame you;

I feel a spirit within me which calls up

All that is woman wrong'd, and bids me chide;
But you are Mithridates, that dear man

Whom my soul loves; else, were you all the kings,
All worlds, all gods, I could let loose upon you,
For those deep injuries which I must suffer;
Could, like the fighting winds, disturb all nature,
With venting of my wrongs; but I am hush'd
As a spent wave, and all my fiery powers
Are quench'd, when I but look upon your eyes,
Where, like a star in water, I appear

A pretty sight, but of no influence,
And am at best but now a shining sorrow."

Little can be said for Casar Borgia. Villanies and murders are most wantonly and revoltingly accumulated in it. There is no relief. We seem to be invited to a Pandemonian revel, where the dagger is your only carving knife, and goblets of poison are the only drink that circulates. A withering curse is a common salutation. Machiavel is the master plotter, and he is represented as particularly addicted to such figures of speech.

"Now by your wrongs, that turn my heart to steel,
Well could I curse away a winter's night,
Though standing naked on a mountain's top,
And think it but a minute spent in sport."

In a calmer mood, he philosophizes thus :

"The dead are only happy, and the dying:
The dead are still, and lasting slumbers hold 'em;
He who is near his death but turns about,
Shuffles awhile to make his pillow easy,

Then slips into his shroud, and rests for ever."

The speech which follows this, even though it has the disadvantage of reminding us of Hermia and Helena, is, notwithstanding, beautiful:

"In their non-age

A sympathy unusual join'd their loves;
They pair'd like turtles, still together drank,
Together eat, nor quarrell'd for the choice:
Like twining streams both from one fountain fell,
And as they ran still mingled smiles and tears:
But oh, when time had swell'd their currents high,
This boundless world, this ocean, did divide 'em,
And now for ever they have lost each other.".

Borgia, when about to fight his junior brother, Palante, thus laments their disparity:

"O that I had

Some one renown'd and winter'd as myself
T'encounter like an oak the rooting storm.
But thou art weak, and to the earth wilt bend,
With

my least blast, thy head of blossoms down."

Their combat was for Bellamira; who, though devotedly attached to the younger, is compelled to marry the elder brother. Her effort to allay his jealousy, and his delight at the

prospect of possessing her heart as well as her person, shall finish our quotations from this play.

"Bella. Noble Borgia, hear me !

Hear me, my lord, my husband, hear me kneeling;
Thou whom the heavens have destin'd to my arms,
The constant partner of my nicest thoughts,
Doom'd to my bed, whom I must learn to love,
And will, unless you turn my heart to stone.
Borg. Ha!

O such sweet words ne'er fell from that fair mouth
Before, nor can I trust 'em now.

Bella. If you call back

The vengeance which your impious vows let slip,
I swear, thus sinking on your feet, I swear
Never from this sad hour, never to see,

Nor speak, no, nor (if possible) to think
Of poor Palante more.

Borg. Go on, go on; I swear the wind is turn'd,
And all those furious and outrageous passions
Now bend another way.

Bella. I will hereafter

With strictest duty serve you as my lord,
And give you signs of such most faithful love
That it shall seem as if we languish'd long,
As if we had been us'd to mingle sighs,
And from our cradles interchang'd our souls;
As if no breach had ever pass'd betwixt us;
As if no cruel father forc'd the marriage:
I so resigning as if always yours,

And you so mild as if no other proof
But my dishonour e'er could make you angry.

Borg. O my heart's joy! Rise, Bellamira, rise.
There's nothing left, nothing of rage to fright thee;
Thou hast new tun'd me, and the trembling strings
Of my touch'd heart dance to the inspiration,
As if no harshness, nor no jars, had been:

Had these sweet sounds but met my entrance here,
My ghastly fears and cloven jealousies,
With all the monsters that made sick my brain,

Had fled, so soft and artful are thy strains,
Like sullen fiends before the prophet's charms.

*

O happy night!

Not to the weary pilgrim half so welcome,

When after many a weary bleeding step
With joyful looks he spies his long'd-for home.
See, see, my lord, the effects of our vexation.
Thus comes to the despairing wretch the glad
Reprieve: 'tis mercy, mercy at the block:
Thus the toss'd seaman, after boisterous storms,
Lands on his country's breast; thus stands and gazes,
And runs it o'er with many a greedy look;

Then shouts for joy, as I should do, and makes

The echoing hills, and all the shores, resound.

Be constant, Bellamira, to thy vows;

So shall we shine, as in the inmost heaven,
The fix'd and brightest stars with silent glory,
Where never storm, nor lightning's flash, nor stroke

Of thunder, comes."

He was

Lucius Junius Brutus was a favourite of the author's, and what does not always happen, it deserved to be so. better mounted than usual, and Pegasus did not run away with him. The play was not successful, and he consoled himself with the reflection that Jonson's Catiline met no better fate; "nay, Shakespear's Brutus with much ado beat himself into the heads of a blockish age:" so, though he "was troubled for his dumb play like a father for his dead child," he also felt the paternal pride of the mourner, who would not have exchanged his dead son for any living son in Christendom. Though triumphal honours were denied him, he was conscious of having achieved a conquest, and one of no ordinary difficulty. "There are some subjects (he says, in the dedication,) that require but half the strength of a great poet; but when Greece or Old Rome come in play, the nature, wit, and vigour of foremost Shakespear, the judgement and force of Jonson, with all his borrowed mastery from the ancients, will scarce suffice for so terrible a grapple. The poet must elevate his fancy with the mightiest imagination, he must run back so many hundred years, take a just prospect of the spirit of those times without the least thought of ours; for, if his eye should swerve so low, his muse will grow giddy with the vastness of the distance, fall at once, and for ever lose the majesty of the first design.-There must be no dross through the whole mass, the furnace must be justly heated, and the bullion stamped with an unerring hand. In such a writing there must be greatness of thought without bombast, remoteness without monstrousness, virtue armed with severity, not in iron bodies-solid wit without modern affectation, speaking out without straining the voice or cracking the

lungs." Such was the bow of Ulysses, with which he aspired to shoot; and it must be allowed to have bent in his hands. He has produced no play in which there is less to offend, or more to praise. The awful conflicts in the soul of the paternal judge ; the earthquakes of his heart, but which affect his patriotic determination no more than the convulsions of the world do the steady motion of the celestial bodies, or the decrees of fate, are painted with a noble and generally a successful daring. The contrasted characters of his sons are in fine relief to each other; and the fond, foreboding, generous, and devoted Teraminta, the illegitimate daughter of Tarquin, and the bride of Titus, beams upon the scene "like the midnight moon upon a murder." The play opens on her bridal morning, the morning after the fatal night at Collatia. Titus remonstrates with her:

"O Teraminta, why this face of tears?
Since first I saw thee, till this happy day,
Thus hast thou past thy melancholy hours-
Even in the court retir'd; stretch'd on a bed
In some dark room, with all the curtains drawn;
Or in some garden o'er a flowery bank
Melting thy sorrows in the murmuring stream;
Or in some pathless wilderness a musing,
Plucking the mossy bark of some old tree,
Or poring, like a Sybil, on the leaves."

Returning from the marriage, Titus encounters Brutus, whose assumed idiocy has been exhibited in a scene or two, but who is resolved to throw it off, and take advantage of the last atrocity of Sextus Tarquin to effect the liberation of Rome.

"As from night's womb the glorious day breaks forth
And seems to kindle from the setting stars,

So from the blackness of young Tarquin's crime
And furnace of his lust, the virtuous soul
Of Junius Brutus catches bright occasion.
I see the pillars of his kingdom totter:
The rape of Lucrece is the midnight lantern,
That lights my genius down to the foundation.
Leave me to work, my Titus, O my son;
For from this spark a lightning shall arise
That must ere night purge all the Roman air,

And then the thunder of his ruin follows."

The tale of Lucrece, the vow on her bloody poniard to expel the family of Tarquin which Brutus imposes himself, and his ap-,