their minds were wholly bent upon the world, the
selfsame way they seem to turn their faces.

Duch. Let me know fully therefore the effect
Of this thy dismal preparation,

This talk, fit for a charnel.

Bos. Now I shall.

[A coffin, cords, and a bell, produced.

Here is a present from your princely brothers;
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings
Last benefit, last sorrow.

Duch. Let me see it.

I have so much obedience in my blood,
I wish it in their veins to do them good.
Bos. This is your last presence-chamber.
Car. O my sweet lady!

Duch. Peace, it affrights not me.
Bos. I am the common bellman,

That usually is sent to condemn'd persons
The night before they suffer.

Duch. Even now thou saidst,

Thou wast a tomb-maker.

Bos. 'Twas to bring you

By degrees to mortification. Listen.

Dirge.

Hark, now everything is still;

This screech-owl, and the whistler shrill,

Call upon our dame aloud,

Ard bid her quickly d'on her shroud.

Much you had of land and rent;

Your length in clay 's now competent.

A long war disturb'd your mind;

Here your perfect peace is sign'd.

Of what is 't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin, their conception; their birth, weeping:
Their life, a general mist of error;
Their death, a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
D'on clean linen, bathe your feet:
And (the foul fiend more to check)
A crucifix let bless your neck.
'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day:
End your groan, and come away,

Car. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers: alas!
What will you do with my lady? Call for help.
Duck. To whom; to our next neighbours? They are mad
Farewell, Cariola.

I pray thee look thou givest my little boy
Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl

[folks.

Say her prayers ere she sleep.-Now what you please;
What death?

Bos. Strangling. Here are your executioners.
Duch. I forgive them.

The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough of the lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

Bos. Doth not death fright you?
Duch. Who would be afraid on 't,

Knowing to meet such excellent company
In the other world?

Bos. Yet methinks,

The manner of your death should much afflict
This cord should terrify you.

Duch. Not a whit.

you;

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smother'd

With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls ?
I know, death hath ten thousand several doors

For men to take their exits: and 'tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,

You may open them both ways; any way: (for heaven's
sake)

So I were out of your whispering: tell my brothers,
That I perceive, death (now I'm well awake)
Best gift is, they can give or I can take.

I would fain put off my last woman's fault;
I'd not be tedious to you.

Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength
Must pull down heaven upon me.

Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd
As princes' palaces; they that enter there

Must go upon their knees. Come, violent death,
Serve for Mandragora to make me sleep.

Go tell my brothers; when I am laid out,

They then may feed in quiet.

[They strangle her, kneeling,

FERDINAND enters.

Ferd. Is she dead?

Bos. She is what you would have her.

Fix your eye

Ferd. Constantly.

here.

Bos. Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
The element of water moistens the earth,

But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.
Ferd. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle: she died
Bos. I think not so: her infelicity

Seem'd to have years too many.

Ferd. She and I were twins:

And should I die this instant, I had lived
Her time to a minute'.

*

*

*

Single Life.

O fie upon this single life! forego it.
We read how Daphne, for her peevish flight,
Became a fruitless bay-tree: Syrinx turn'd
To the pale empty reed: Anaxarate

young.

Was frozen into marble: whereas those
Which married, or proved kind unto their friends,
Were, by a gracious influence, trans-shaped
Into the olive, pomegranate, mulberry;

Became flowers, precious stones, or eminent stars.

1 All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the Duchess's death is ushered in, are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance, than the strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their victims is beyond the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become "native and endowed unto that element." She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a snatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale.-What are "Luke's iron crown," the brazen bull of Perillus, Procrustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bellman, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeitthis only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may "upon horror's head horrors accumulate," but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they "terrify babes with painted devils," but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum,

Fable.

Upon a time, Reputation, Love, and Death,

Would travel o'er the world: and 'twas concluded
That they should part, and take three several ways.
Death told them, they should find him in great battles,
Or cities plagued with plagues: Love gives them counsel
To inquire for him 'mongst unambitious shepherds,
Where dowries were not talk'd of; and sometimes,
'Mongst quiet kindred that had nothing left
By their dead parents: Stay, quoth Reputation;
Do not forsake me, for it is my nature,
If once I part from any man I meet,
I am never found again.

Another.

A Salmon, as she swam unto the sea,
Met with a Dog-fish; who encounters her
With his rough language: Why art thou so bold
To mix thyself with our high state of floods?
Being no eminent courtier, but one

That for the calmest and fresh time of the year
Dost live in shallow rivers, rank'st thyself
With silly Smelts and Shrimps :-and darest thou
Pass by our Dog-ship without reverence?
O (quoth the Salmon) sister, be at peace ;
Thank Jupiter we both have past the net.
Our value never can be truly known,
Till in the fisher's basket we be shown:
In the market then my price may be the higher;
Even when I am nearest to the cook and fire.
So to great men the moral may be stretched :
Men oft are valued high when they are most wretched.

THE WHITE DEVIL: OR, VITTORIA COROMBONA, A LADY OF VENICE: A TRAGEDY, BY JOHN WEBSTER'. The arraignment of VITTORIA.-PAULO GIORDANO URSINI, Duke of Brachiano, for the love of VITTORIA COROMBONA, a Venetian lady, and at her suggestion, causes her husband CAMILLO to be murdered. Suspicion falls upon VITTORIA, who is tried at Rome, on a double

1 The author's Dedication to this Play is so modest, yet so conscious of self-merit withal, he speaks so frankly of the deservings of others, and by implication insinuates his own deserts so ingenuously, that I cannot for

charge of murder and incontinence, in the presence of CARDINAL MON. TICELSO, cousin to the deceased CAMILLO; FRANCISCO DE MEDICIS, brother-in-law to BRACHIANO; the Ambassadors of France, Spain, England, &c. As the arraignment is beginning, the Duke confidently

enters the court.

Mon. Forbear, my lord, here is no place assign'd you:
This business, by his holiness, is left

To our examination.

bear inserting it, as a specimen how a man may praise himself gracefully and commend others without suspicion of envy.

"To the Reader.

"In publishing this Tragedy, I do but challenge to myself that liberty which other men have taken before me; not that I affect praise by it, for nos hæc novimus esse nihil; only since it was acted in so open and black a theatre, that it wanted (that which is the only grace and setting-out of a tragedy) a full and understanding auditory; and that, since that time, I have noted, most of the people that come to that play-house resemble those ignorant asses (who visiting stationers' shops, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new books), I present it to the general view with this confidence,

Nec rhonchos metues malignorum

Nec scombris tunicas dabis molestas.

If it be objected this is no true dramatic poem, I shall easily confess it, non potes in nugas dicere plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi; willingly, and not ignorantly, have I faulted. For should a man present, to such an auditory, the most sententious tragedy that ever was written, observing all the critical laws, as height of style, and gravity of person, enrich it with the sententious chorus, and, as it were, enliven death, in the passionate and weighty Nuntius; yet after all this divine rapture, O dura messorum ilia! the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able to poison it; and ere it be acted, let the author resolve to fix to every scene this of Horace :

Hæc hodie porcis comedenda relinques.

"To those who report I was a long time in finishing this Tragedy, I confess, I do not write with a goose-quill winged with two feathers; and if they will needs make it my fault, must answer them with that of Euripides to Alcestides, a tragic writer: Alcestides objecting that Euripides had only, in three days, composed three verses, whereas himself had written three hundred: Thou tellest truth (quoth he); but here's the difference: thine shall only be read for three days, whereas mine shall continue three ages.

"Detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance: for mine own part, I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men's worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Master Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong last to be named), the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakspeare, Master Decker, and Master