The which, in every language I pronounce;
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
I speak of peace while covert enmity,
Under the smile of safety, wounds the world;
And who but rumour, who but only I,
Make fearful musters, and prepar'd defence,

* Whilft the big year, swol'n with some other griefs,
Is thought with child by the stern tyrant war,
And no such matter? Rumour is a pipe
Blown by furmises, jealousies, conjectures;
And, of so easy and so plain a stop,
That the blunt monster, with uncounted heads,
The still difcordant wavering multitude,

Can play upon it.

ACT I. SCENΕΙ.
CONTENTION.

-- Contention, like a horfe
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,
And bears down all before him..

ACTI. SCENE II.

Post-Meffenger.

After him came fpurring hard A gentleman, almost fore-spent with speed, That stopp'd by me to breathe his bloodied horse: He afk'd the way to Chester; and of him I did demand the news from Shrewsbury. He told me that rebellion had ill luck;

And that young Harry Piercy's spur was cold.

New-rais'd sedition, secret whispers blown
By nameless authors and of things unknown,
Fame all that's done in heav'n, earth, ocean views,
And o'er the world still hunts around for news.

With that he gave his able horfe the head,
And, bending forward, struck his agile heels
Against the panting fides of his poor jade
Up to the rowel-head; and, starting so,
He seem'd in running to devour the way,
Staying no longer question.

SCENE III. Messenger with ill news.

Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf,
Foretels the nature of a tragic volume:
So looks the strond, whereon th' imperious flood
Hath left a witness'd ufurpation.

Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek Is apter than thy tongue to tell thy errand.. Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-be-gone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night, And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd. I fee a strange confession in thine eye; Thou shak'st thy head, and hold it it fear or fin To speak a truth: If he be flain, fay so; The tongue offends not that reports his death: And he doth fin, that doth belie the dead, Not he, which says, the dead is not alive. (2) Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a lofing office; and his tongue Sounds ever after as a fullen bell,

Remember'd tolling a departing friend.

(2) Yet &c.] Mr. Theobald remarks "this observation is cer. tainly true in nature, and has the fanction of no less authorities than those of Æschylus and Sophocles, who say almost the fame thing with our author here."

Greater griefs destroy the less.

As the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire Out of his keeper's arms; ev'n so my limbs, Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief, Are thrice themselves. Hence therefore, thou nice

crutch;

A fcaly gauntlet now with joints of steel
Muft glove this hand: And hence, thou fickly quoif,
Thou art a guard too wanton for the head,
Which princes, flesh'd with conquest, aim to hit.
Now bind my brows with iron, and approach
The rugged'st hour that time and spight dare bring
To frown upon th' enrag'd Northumberland!

(3) Let heav'n kiss earth! now let not nature's hand

(3) Let] Longinus in his 15th section speaking of noble and terrible images, commends Æfchylus for his success in them Æschylus, says he, has made bold attempts in noble and truly heroic images: as, in one of his tragedies, the seven commanders against Thebes, without betraying the least sign of pity or regret, bind themselves by oath not to furvive Eteocles:

The seven, awarlike leader, each in chief,
Stood round, and o'er the black bronze shield they flew
A fullen bull then plunging deep their hands
Into the foaming gore, with oaths invok'd
Mars and Enyo, and blood-thirsty terror."

Upon which the translator, judiciously quoting a fine image of this fort from Milton, afterwards observes how vehemently does the fury of Northumberland exert itself in Shakespear, when he hears of the death of his fon Hotspur. The rage and distraction of the furviving father shews how important the fon was in his opinion. Nothing must be, now he is not: Nature itself must fall with Percy. His grief renders him frantic; his anger desperate.' And I think we may justly add, that no writer excells so much in these great and terrible images as Shakespear, the Æschylus of the British ftage. See Timon of Athens, A. 4. S. 1.

Keep

Keep the wild flood confin'd! Let order die,
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a ling'ring act:
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that each heart being fet
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
(4) And darkness be the burier of the dead!

SCENE VI. The fickleness of the vulgar.

* An habitation giddy and unfure
Hath he, that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many! with what loud applause
Did'ft thou beat heav'n with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was, what thou would'st have him be?
And now, being trim'd up in thine own defires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up.

ACT III. SCENEI.

On SLEEP.
(5) O gentle fleер,

Nature's foft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

(4) And &c.] Εμε θανοντος γαια μιχθητω πορι.
With me, departing hence, all earth consum'd
Perish in general conflagration.

And Medea tells us, she shall then only rest

When with herself all nature is involv'd
In universal ruin.

* See Coriolanus, Α. 1. S. 3.

That

Sen. Med. Act 3.

(5) O gentle, &c.] Horace, in his 3d book and first ode, tells us, Sleep disdains not to dwell with the poor; take it in Mr. Cowley's paraphrafe :

Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces:

And yet so humble too as not to scorn

The meanest country cottages :

His poppey grows amongst the corn.

The

1

That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ?
Why rather, sleep, ly'st thou in smoaky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber;
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull'd with founds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why ly'st thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leav'st the kingly couch
A watch-cafe to a common larum-bell?
Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy maft,
Seal up the ship-boys eyes, and rock his brains,
In cradle of the rude, imperious surge;
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deaf'ning clamours in the flipp'ry shrouds,

The halcyon fleep will never build his nest,
In any stormy breast;

'Tis not enough that he does find
Clouds and darkness in their mind,
Darkness but half his work will do;

'Tis not enough, he must find quiet too. But whatever passages we may find like the former part of this speech, there is nothing I ever met with equal to the bold and fublime flight in the latter part of it: Lee, indeed, has taken a hint from it, the thought is so great and uncommon, it must be only Shakespear that could have foar'd so high.

So fleeps the fea-boy on the cloudy maft,
Safe as a drowsy Tryton, rock'd with storms,
While tossing princes wake on beds of down.

Mithridates,

Sir Thomas Hanmer thus explains the line Aqwatch-cafe, &c. "This alludes to the watchmen set in garison-towns, upon fome eminence attending upon an alarum-bell, which he was to ring out in cafe of fire, or any approaching danger. He had a cafe or box to shelter him from the weather, but at his utmost peril he was not to fleep whilst he was upon duty. These alarum-bells are mentioned in several other places of Shakespear." The word Pallet at the beginning fignifies a little low bed.

That,