Devil threatened to tear me in pieces if I named God; to fetch both body and soul if I once gave ear to divinity: and now 'tis too late. Gentlemen, away! lest you perish

with me.

2nd Schol. Oh, what shall we do to save Faustus? Faust. Talk not of me, but save yourselves, and depart. 3rd Schol. God will strengthen me. I will stay with

Faustus.

1st Schol. Tempt not God, sweet friend; but let us into the next room, and there pray for him.

Faust. Ay, pray for me, pray for me! and what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can

rescue me.

2nd Schol. Pray thou, and we will pray that God may have mercy upon thee.

Faust. Gentlemen, farewell: if I live till morning I'll visit you if not- -Faustus is gone to hell.

All. Faustus, farewell.

[Exeunt Scholars. The clock strikes eleven.

Faust. Ah, Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damned perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!
O lente, lente, currite noctis equi ! 1

1

1

"At si, quem malis, Cephalum complexa teneres,
Clamares lente currite noctis equi.'

OVID's Amores, i. 13, ll. 39-40.

"By an exquisite touch of nature-the brain involuntarily summoning words employed for other purposes in happier hours-Faust cries aloud the line which Ovid whispered in Corinna's arms: "J. A. Symonds.

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul-half a drop: ah, my Christ!
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: O spare me, Lucifer !—
Where is it now? 'tis gone; and see where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountain and hills come, come and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!
No! no!

Then will I headlong run into the earth;
Earth gape! O no, it will not harbour me!
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.

[The clock strikes the half hour.

Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon!
O God!

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,

Yet for Christ's sake whose blood hath ransomed me, Impose some end to my incessant pain;

Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years

A hundred thousand, and-at last---be saved!

O, no end is limited to damnèd souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast ?

Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis! were that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be changed

Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are happy,
For, when they die,

Their souls are soon dissolved in elements;

But mine must live, still to be plagued in hell.
Curst be the parents that engendered me !
No, Faustus: curse thyself: curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of Heaven.

[The clock strikes twelve.

O, it strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.

[Thunder and lightning.

O soul, be changed into little water-drops,

And fall into the ocean-ne'er be found. [Enter Devils.
My God! my God! look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!

I'll burn my books!-Ah Mephistophilis !

[Exeunt Devils with FAUSTUS.

Enter CHORUS.

HO. Cut is the branch that might have
grown full straight,

And burnèd is Apollo's laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learnèd

man.

Faustus is gone; regard his hellish fall, Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise Only to wonder at unlawful things, Whose deepness doth entice such forward wits To practise more than heavenly power permits.

E it.

LTHOUGH The Jew of Malta was written between 1588 and 1592, there is no earlier edition of the play than the quarto of 1633. This was furnished with a brace of Prologues and Epilogues by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, who tells the

'by the best of poets in that age"

"writ many years agone,

And in that age thought second unto none."

The source of the story is unknown; Mr. Symonds, arguing chiefly from its unrelieved cruelty, thinks it may be taken from some Spanish novel.