My thoughts are fixt in contemplation
Why this huge earth, this monstrous animal

That eats her children, should not have eyes and ears.
Philosophy maintains that Nature's wise,

And forms no useless nor unperfect thing.

Did Nature make the earth, or the earth Nature?
For earthly dirt makes all things, makes the man,
Moulds me up honour, and, like a cunning Dutchman,
Paints me a puppet even with seeming breath,
And gives a sot appearance of a soul.

Go to, go to; thou ly'st, Philosophy.

Nature forms things unperfect, useless, vain.
Why made she not the earth with eyes and ears?
That she might see desert and hear men's plaints;
That when a soul is splitted, 'sunk with grief,
He might fall thus upon the breast of Earth,
And in her ear halloo his misery,1

Exclaiming thus: O thou all bearing Earth,

Which men do gape for till thou cramm'st their mouths And choak'st their throats with dust; open thy breast, And let me sink into thee: look who knocks;

Andrugio calls. But O she's deaf and blind.

A wretch but lean relief on earth can find.

Luc. Sweet Lord, abandon passion; and disarm. Since by the fortune of the tumbling sea

We are roll'd up upon the Venice marsh,

Let's clip all fortune, lest more lowering fate

Andr. More low'ring fate! O Lucio, choak that breath.

Now I defy chance. Fortune's brow hath frown'd,

Even to the utmost wrinkle it can bend :

Her venom's spit. Alas! what country rests,
What son, what comfort, that she can deprive?
Triumphs not Venice in my overthrow?
Gapes not my native country for my blood?
Lies not my son tomb'd in the swelling main ?
And in more low'ring fate? There's nothing left
Unto Andrugio but Andrugio:

And that

Nor mischief, force, distress, nor hell can take :

Fortune my fortunes, not my mind, shall shake.

Luc. Speak like yourself: but give me leave, my lord,

To wish your safety. If you are but seen,

Your arms display you; therefore put them off,

And take

Andr. Would'st have me go unarm'd among my foes?

[This line is not given by Bullen.]

Being besieg'd by Passion, entering lists
To combat with Despair and mighty Grief:
My soul beleaguer'd with the crushing strength
Of sharp Impatience. Ha, Lucio; go unarm'd?
Come, soul, resume the valour of thy birth;
Myself, myself will dare all opposites :
I'll muster forces, an unvanquish'd power:
Cornets of horse shall press th' ungrateful earth :
This hollow-wombed mass shall inly groan
And murmur to sustain the weight of arms:
Ghastly Amazement, with upstarted hair,
Shall hurry on before, and usher us,

Whilst trumpets clamour with a sound of death.

Luc. Peace, good my lord, your speech is all too light. Alas! survey your fortunes, look what's left

Of all your forces and your utmost hopes;

A weak old man, a page, and your poor self.

Andr. Andrugio lives; and a Fair Cause of Arms.
Why, that's an army all invincible.

He who hath that, hath a battalion royal,
Armour of proof, huge troops of barbed steeds,
Main squares of pikes, millions of harquebush.
O, a Fair Cause stands firm, and will abide ;
Legions of Angels fight upon her side.

[Act iii., Sc. 1.1]

The situation of Andrugio and Lucio resembles that of Lear and Kent, in that King's distresses. Andrugio, like Lear, manifests a kind of royal impatience, a turbulent greatness, an affected resignation. The Enemies which he enters lists to combat, "Despair, and mighty Grief, and sharp Impatience," and the forces ("Cornets of Horse," etc.) which he brings to vanquish them, are in the boldest style of Allegory. They are such a "race of mourners" as "the infection of sorrows loud" in the intellect might beget on "some pregnant cloud" in the imagination.

ANTONIO'S REVENGE. THE SECOND PART OF THE
HISTORY OF
OF ANTONIO AND MELLIDA [PUB-
LISHED 1602]. BY JOHN MARSTON

The Prologue.2

The rawish dank of clumsy winter ramps
The fluent summer's vein: and drizzling sleet

[Marston's Works, edited Bullen, 1887, vol. i.]

2 This prologue, for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic note of prepara tion which it sounds, might have preceded one of those old tales of Thebes, or Pelops' line, which Milton has so highly commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his days, "of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity,

Chilleth the wan bleak cheek of the numb'd earth,
Whilst snarling gusts nibble the juiceless leaves
From the naked shuddering branch, and pills1 the skin
From off the soft and delicate aspects.

O, now methinks a sullen tragic scene

Would suit the time with pleasing congruence!
May we be happy in our weak devoir,
And all part pleased in most wish'd content.
But sweat of Hercules can ne'er beget
So blest an issue. Therefore we proclaim,
If any spirit breathes within this round
Uncapable of weighty passion,

(As from his birth being hugged in the arms
And nuzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness) 2
Who winks and shuts his apprehension up

From common sense of what men were, and are ;
Who would not know what men must be: let such
Hurry amain from our black-visag'd shows;
We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
Nail'd to the earth with grief; if any heart,

Pierc'd through with anguish, pant within this ring;
If there be any blood, whose heat is choak'd
And stifled with true sense of misery:

If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
They arrive most welcome. O, that our power
Could lack[ely or keep wing with our desires ;
That with unused poise of style and sense
We might weigh massy in judicious scale!
Yet here's the prop that doth support our hopes:
When our scenes falter, or invention halts,

Your favour will give crutches to our faults.

Antonio, Son to Andrugio Duke of Genoa, whom Piero the Venetian Prince and father-in-law to Antonio has cruelly murdered, kills Piero's little son Julio, as a sacrifice to the ghost of Andrugio.-The scene, a churchyard: the time, midnight.

Jul. Brother Antonio, are you here i' faith?

Why do you frown? Indeed my sister said,

brought in without discretion corruptly to gratify the people."-It is as solemn a preparative as the "warning voice which he who saw the Apocalypse, heard cry"—.

1 Peels.

2" Sleek favourites of Fortune." Preface to Poems by S. T. Coleridge,

That I should call you brother, that she did,

When you were married to her. Buss me: good truth,
I love you better than my father, 'deed.

Ant. Thy father? gracious, O bounteous heaven,
I do adore thy justice. Venit in nostras manus
Tandem vindicta, venit et tota quidem.

Jul. Truth, since my mother died, I loved you best.
Something hath anger'd you: pray you, look merrily.
Ant. I will laugh, and dimple my thin cheek
With capering joy; chuck, my heart doth leap
To grasp thy bosom. Time, place, and blood,
How fit you close together! heaven's tones
Strike not such music to immortal souls,
As your accordance sweets my breast withal.
Methinks I pace upon the front of Jove,
And kick corruption with a scornful heel,
Griping this flesh, disdain mortality.

O, that I knew which joint, which side, which limb
Were father all and had no mother in it;

That I might rip it vein by vein, and carve revenge
In bleeding races! but since 'tis mix'd together,
Have at adventure, pell-mell, no reverse.

Come hither, boy; this is Andrugio's hearse.

Jul. O God, you'll hurt me. For my sister's sake,
Pray you don't hurt me. And you kill me, 'deed
I'll tell my father.

Ant. O for thy sister's sake I flag revenge.

Andrugio's ghost cries "Revenge."

Ant. Stay, stay, dear father, fright mine eyes no more. Revenge as swift as lightning bursteth forth

And clears his heart. Come, pretty tender child,

It is not thee I hate, or thee I kill.

Thy father's blood that flows within thy veins,

Is it I loathe; is that, revenge must suck.

I love thy soul and were thy heart lapt up

In any flesh but in Piero's blood,

I would thus kiss it: but, being his, thus, thus,
And thus I'll punch it. Abandon fears:

Whilst thy wounds bleed, my brows shall gush out tears.
Jul. So you will love me, do even what you will.
Ant. Now barks the wolf against the full-cheekt moon;

Now lions' half-clam'd entrails roar for food;
Now croaks the toad, and night-crows screech aloud

[Dies.

Fluttering 'bout casements of departing souls;

Now gape the graves, and through their yawns let loose.
Imprison'd spirits to revisit earth:

And now, swart Night, to swell thy hour out,

Behold I spurt warm blood in thy black eyes.

From under the earth a groan.

Howl not, thou putry mould; groan not, ye graves;
Be dumb, all breath. Here stands Andrugio's son,
Worthy his father. So; I feel no breath;
His jaws are fall'n, his dislodged soul is fled.
And now there's nothing but Piero left.
He is all Piero, father all. This blood,
This breast, this heart, Piero all:

Whom thus I mangle. Spright of Julio,
Forget this was thy trunk. I live thy friend.
Mayst thou be twined with the soft'st embrace
Of clear eternity: but thy father's blood
I thus make incense of to Vengeance.2

Beat

Day breaking.

see, the dapple grey coursers of the morn up the light with their bright silver hoofs And chase it through the sky.

One who died, slandered.

Look on those lips,

Those now lawn pillows, on whose tender softness

[Act iii., Sc. 1.]

Chaste modest Speech, stealing from out his breast,

Had wont to rest itself, as loth to post

From out so fair an Inn: look, look, they seem

To stir,

And breathe defiance to black obloquy.

[Act i., Sc. 1.]

[Act ii., Sc. 1.]

Wherein fools are happy.

Even in that, note a fool's beatitude:

He is not capable of passion;

1"To lie immortal in the arms of Fire." Browne's Religio Medici. Of the punishments in hell. [Wilkin's ed., Sect. 2, p. 73.]

[Nine lines to complete Scene.]

VOL. IV.-5