Be teachers of my story ; do my face
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If thou hadst ever feeling of a sorrow) Thus, thus^ Antiphila \ strive to make me look L.ike Sorrow's monument ; and the trees about me Let them be dry and leafless \ let the rocks Groan with continual surges, and behind me Make all a desolation ; see, tee, wenches, A miserable life of this poor picture." Vol. i. act ii. Whoever has seen either the original or print of Guidons Bacchus andAriadne wi^\ have the best comment on these lines. In both are the armsextended^ the hair blown by the wind, the barren roughness of the rocks,the broken trunks of leafless trees^ and in both she looks like Sorrow'smonument. So that exactly ut pictura poesis ; and hard it is to say, whe-ther our authors or Guido painted best. I shall refer to the note belowfor a farther comment, and proceed to another instance of superior excel-lence in our authors, and where they have more evidently buim)n Shakes- I observed to Mr. Theobald, that here was a glaring poetical contradiction. She says,yott*U find all true except the wild island, and instantly she is upon the bland. " I stand upon the sea-leach now,** &c. The wild island therefore in her ima^nation is as true as the rest. The enthusiasm itnoble, but wants a proper introduction, which the change only of a 6 for a p will tolerablygi^-c. ** And you shall Jind all irue.^-Put the wild island i * J stand,** &c. But as there are numberless instances of many words, and particularly monosyllables, beingdropt from the text (of which there is one in the same page with these lines, and another inthe same play,, vol. i. p. Sg, very remarkable) I suppose this to have happened here; for byreading Put me on the wild island; — I stand upon, &c. how nobly does she start as it werefrom jancy to reality, from the picture into the l{fe f Me* on th* by elisions common to allour old poets, «aay become one syllable in the pronunciation ; but if we speak them fall, andmake a twelve syllable verse, it will have a hundred fellows in our authors, and should havehad one but three lines below the passage here quoted, ^ ** Make a dull silence, till you feel a sudden sadnessGive us new souls** \ As Aspatia's ^ef had been of long continuance, sudden was evidently corrupt, and I there-fore proposed to Mr. Theobald to read sullen, which b an epithet perfectly proper and ex-tremely nervous ; but as he could by no means be persuaded to mention the former conjecture,and the only objection he urged was, that it mane a twelve- syllable verse, he would not letone of twelve syllables remain so near it ; and therefore without authority of any prior edition,discarded the epithet intirely from the text, and adopted the reading of the first quarto in theformer passage. ** Suppose / stand upon the sethhcach now,** &c. As this b much the most unpoetical of all the readings, and the first introducers of the textin the intermediate editions claim their corrections from the original manuscript, I can by nomeans approve the choice he has made. \_fVe cannot perceive any necessity for these variations; the oldest quarto is thertforcfoUlowed in this edition. — But u certainly preferable to put, with Seward^ s elisions ; and suppose,at the beginning qf the line, seems much better than and think at the end, as it continues thedialogue more easily. As to sudden, Theobald* s silent omission is very faulty ; the expressionii dark, Irtst we cannot find that snllen at all assists it."} peare's xxxii MR. SEWARD'S PREFACE. peare's foundation. At the latter-end of King John the King has receiveda burning poison ; and being asked, *' How fares your majesty ?K, John, Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off;And none of you will bid the winter come.To trust his icy fingers in my maw ;Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their courseThro* my Durnt bosom ; nor estreat the NorthTo make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips.And comfort me with cold. — I do not ask you much,I beg cold comfort." The first and last lines are to be ranged among the faults that so muchdisgrace Shakespeare, which he committed' to please tne corrupt taste oTthe age he lived in, but to which Beaumont and Fletcher*s learning andfortune made them superior. The intermediate lines are extremely beau-tiful, and marked as such by the late great editor, but yet are much im-proved in two plays of our authors, tne first in Valentinian, where the• Emperor, poisoned in the same manner, dies with more violence, fury, andhorror, than King John ; but the passage I shall quote is from A Wife fora Month, a play which does not upon the whole equal the poetic subli-mity of Valentinian, though it rather excels it in the poisoning scene. ThePrince Alphonso, who had been long in a phrenzy of melancholy, ispoisoned with a hot fiery potion; under the agonies of which he thusraves: •* Give me more air, more air, air ; blow, blow, blow,Ouen thou Eastern gate, and blow upon me }Distil thy cold dews, oh, thou icy moon.And rivers run thro* my afRicted spirit.I am all fire, fire, fire ; the ra^ng dog-starReigns in my blood ; oh, which way shall I turn me ?JEina. and all her flames burn in my' head.Fling me into the ocean or I perish.Dig, d\f^, dig, dig, until the springs fly up.The coQ, cold sprinzs, thatl may leap into them.And bathe my scorchM limbs in their purling pleasures iOr shoot me iqto the higher region.Where treasures of delicious snow are nourish'd.And banquets of sweet hail. Rug. Hold him fast, friar,Oh, hew he burns! Alph. What, will ye sacrifice me?Upon the altar lay my willing body.And pile your wclod up, fling your holy incense;And, as I turn me, you shall see all flame.Consuming flame. Stand off me, or you're ashes. • • • *,• • • • Mart. To bed, good Sir. Alph. My bed will burn about me;Like Phaeton, in all-consuming flashesAm 1 enclosed ; let me fly, let me fly, give room 3'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion.Lies my safe way; oh, for a cake of ice nowTo clap unto nfty heart to comfort me.Decrepit Winter hang upon iny shoulders.And let me wear thy frozen iacles^
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