8

I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death;

decisive than that of the persecuted second folio of Shakspeare, for representing Death as a Woman. The writer of the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, was sufficiently intimate with Lucretius, Horace, Ovid, Phædrus, Statius, Petronius, Seneca the dramatist, &c. to know that they all concurred in exhibiting Mors as a Goddess. Thus Lucan, lib. vi. 600:

Elysias resera sedes, ipsamque vocatam,

Quos petat è nobis, Mortem tibi coge fateri.

Mr. Spence, in his Polymetis, p. 261, (I refer to a book of easy access,) has produced abundant examples in proof of my assertion, and others may be readily supplied. One comprehensive instance, indeed, will answer my present purpose. Statius, in his eighth Thebaid, describing a troop of ghastly females who surrounded the throne of Pluto, has the following lines:

Stant Furiæ circum, variæque ex ordine Mortes,
Sævaque multisonas exercet Pœna catenas.

From this group of personification, &c. it is evident, that not merely Death, as the source or principle of mortality, but each particular kind of death, was represented under a feminine shape. For want, therefore, of a corresponding masculine term, Dobson, in his Latin version of the second Paradise Lost, was obliged to render the terrific offspring of Satan, by the name of Hades; a luckless necessity, because Hades, in the 964th line of the same book, exhibits a character completely discriminated from that of Death.

For the satisfaction of English antiquaries, let me add, that in an ancient poem (which in point of versification resembles the pieces of Longland) there is a contest for superiority between our Lady Dame Life, and the ugly fiend Dame Death.

Milton himself, however, in his second Elegy, has exhibited Death not only as a female, but as a queen :

Magna sepulchrorum regina, satelles Averni,

Sæva nimis Musis, Palladi sæva nimis.

See Mr. Warton's note on this passage.

third Elegy, v. 16:

Consult also Milton's

Mors fera, Tartareo diva secunda Jovi.

Again, In Obitum Præsulis Eliensis :

Mors atra noctis filia.

Dryden, likewise, in his Indian Queen, Act II. Sc. I. has attributed the same sex to Death:

The gods can but destroy;

"The noblest way to fly, is that Death shows;
"I'll court her now, since victory's grown coy."

Were I inclined to be sportive, (a disposition which commenta

And, from the organ-pipe of frailty, sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.

SAL. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are born

To set a form upon that indigest

Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.

tors should studiously repress,) might I not maintain, on the strength of the foregoing circumstances, that the editor of the folio 1632, (far from being an ignorant blunderer,) was well instructed in the niceties of Roman mythology; and might not my ingenious fellow-labourer, on the score of his meditated triumph over Mr. Gray, be saluted with such a remark as reached the ear of Cadmus ?

Quid, Agenore nate, peremptum

Serpentem spectas? et tu spectabere serpens.

Fashionable as it is to cavil at the productions of our Cambridge poet, it has not yet been discovered that throughout the fields of classick literature, even in a single instance, he had mistook his way. STEEVENS.

With many legions of strange FANTASIES ;

Which, in their THRONG and PRESS to that last hold,

CONFOUND THEMSELVES.] So, in our author's Rape of Lu

crece :

"Much like a press of people at a door,

66

Throng his inventions, which shall go before."

Again, in King Henry VIII.:

66

which forc'd such way,

"That many maz'd considerings did throng,

"And press in, with this caution." MALONE.

in their throng and press to that last hold." In their tumult and hurry of resorting to the last tenable part. JOHNSON. 8 I am the CYGNET] Old copy-Symet. Corrected by Mr. Pope. MALONE.

9 YOU ARE BORN

To set a form upon that indigest

Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.] A description of the Chaos almost in the very words of Ovid:

Quem dixere Chaos, rudis indigestaque moles. Met. i.
WHALLEY.

"Which Chaos hight, a huge rude heap :-
"No sunne as yet with lightsome beames the shapeless world
did view." Golding's Translation, 1587. MALOone.

Re-enter BIGOT and Attendants, who bring in King JOHN in a Chair.

K. JOHN. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow

room;

It would not out at windows, nor at doors.
There is so hot a summer in my bosom,
That all my bowels crumble up to dust:
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment; and against this fire
Do I shrink up.

P. HEN.

How fares your majesty ? K. JOHN. Poison'd,-ill-fare';-dead, forsook,

cast off:

And none of you will bid the winter come 2,
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw3;

1 Poison'd,-ill-FARE ;] Mr. Malone supposes fare to be here used as a dissyllable, like fire, hour, &c. But as this word has not concurring vowels in it, like hour, or fair, nor was ever dissyllabically spelt (like fier) faer; I had rather suppose the present line imperfect, than complete it by such unprecedented means. STEEVENS.

2 This scene has been imitated by Beaumont and Fletcher, in The Wife for a Month, Act IV. STEEVENS.

3 To thrust his ICY fingers in my maw ;] Decker, in The Gul's Hornbook, 1609, has the same thought: "the morning waxing cold, thrust his frosty fingers into thy bosome."

Again, in a pamphlet entitled The Great Frost, Cold Doings, &c. in London, 1608: "The cold hand of winter is thrust into our bosoms." STEEVENS.

The corresponding passage in the old play runs thus:
Philip, some drink. O, for the frozen Alps

"To tumble on, and cool this inward heat,
"That rageth as a furnace seven-fold hot."

There is so strong a resemblance, not only in the thought, but in the expression, between the passage before us and the following lines in two of Marlowe's plays, that we may fairly suppose them to have been in our author's thoughts:

"O, I am dull, and the cold hand of sleep
"Hath thrust his icy fingers in my breast

"And made a frost within me." Lust's Dominion.

Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course
Through my burn'd bosom; nor entreat the north
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips,
And comfort me with cold:-I do not ask you
much 1,

I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait3,
And so ingrateful, you deny me that.

P. HEN. O, that there were some virtue in my

tears,

That might relieve you!

K. JOHN.

The salt in them is hot.

Within me is a hell; and there the poison
Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize
On unreprievable condemned blood.

Enter the Bastard.

BAST. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, And spleen of speed to see your majesty.

K. JOHN. O cousin, thou art come to set mine

eye:

The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd;
And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail,
Are turned to one thread, one little hair:
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by,
Which holds but till thy news be uttered;

Again :

"O, poor Zabina, O my queen, my queen,
"Fetch me some water for my burning breast,
"To cool and comfort me with longer date."

Tamburlaine, 1591.

Lust's Dominion, like many of the plays of that time, remained unpublished for a great number of years, and was first printed in 1657, by Francis Kirkman, a bookseller. It must, however, have been written before 1593, in which year Marlowe died. MALONE. I do not ask you much,] We should read, for the sake of metre, with Sir T. Hanmer-" I ask not much." STEEVENS. SO STRAIT,] i. e. narrow, avaricious; an unusual sense of STEEVENS.

4

5

the word.

And then all this thou see'st is but a clod,
And module of confounded royalty".

BAST. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward; Where, heaven he knows, how we shall answer him: For, in a night, the best part of my power, As I upon advantage did remove,

Were in the washes, all unwarily,

Devoured by the unexpected flood.

[The King dies.

SAL. You breathe these dead news in as dead an

ear.-

My liege! my lord!-But now a king,-now thus. P. HEN. Even so must I run on, and even so stop. What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, When this was now a king, and now is clay!

BAST. Art thou gone so? I do but stay behind, To do the office for thee of revenge;

And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven,
As it on earth hath been thy servant still.-

Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres, Where be your powers? Show now your mended faiths;

And instantly return with me again,

To push destruction, and perpetual shame,
Out of the weak door of our fainting land:

7 And MODULE of confounded royalty.] Module and model, it has been already observed, were, in our author's time, only different modes of spelling the same word. Model signified not an archetype after which something was to be formed, but the thing formed after an archetype; and hence it is used by Shakspeare and his contemporaries for a representation. So, in The London Prodigal, 1605:

"Dear copy of my husband! O let me kiss thee!
[Kissing a picture.

"How like him is this model?" MALONE.

8 Were in the washes, all unwarily, &c.] This untoward accident really happened to King John himself. As he passed from Lynn to Lincolnshire, he lost by an inundation all his treasure, carriages, baggage, and regalia. MALONE.