FERDINAND enters.

Ferd. Is she dead?

Bos. She is what you would have her.
Fix your eye here.

Ferd. Constantly.

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 young. 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

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 forfeit this 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

I
any man 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

year

That for the calmest and fresh time of the
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 MONTICELSO, 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, I 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

Bra. May it thrive with you!

Fra. A chair there for his lordship.

[Lays a rich gown under him.

Bra. Forbear your kindness; an unbidden guest
Should travel as Dutch women go to church,

Bear their stool with them.

Mon. At your pleasure, sir.

Stand to the table, gentlewoman.-Now, Signior,
Fall to your plea.

Lawyer. Domine judex, converte oculos in hanc pestem mulicrum corruptissimam.

Vit. What's he?

Fra. A lawyer, that pleads against you.

Vit. Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue;

I'll make no answer else.

Fra. Why, you understand Latin.

Vit. I do, sir, but amongst this auditory

Which come to hear my cause, the half or more
May be ignorant in 't.

Mon. Go on,

sir.

Vit. By your favour,

I will not have my accusation clouded
In a strange tongue: all this assembly
Shall hear what you can charge me with.

Fra. Signior,

[guage.

You need not stand on 't much; pray, change your lanMon. O, for God's sake! gentlewoman, your credit

Shall be more famous by it.

Law. Well then, have at you.

Vit. I am the mark, sir, I'll give aim to you,

And tell you how near you shoot.

Law. Most literated judges, please your lordships
So to connive your judgements to the view
Of this debauch'd and diversivolent woman;
Who such a concatenation

Of mischief hath effected, that to extirp
The memory of it, must be the consummation
Of her, and her projections.

Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light; protesting that, in the strength of mine own judgement, I know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my own work, yet to most of theirs, I dare (without flattery) fix that of Martial: non norunt hæc monumenta mori."

Vit. What's all this?

Law. Hold your peace!

Exorbitant sins must have exulceration.
Vit. Surely, my lords, this lawyer hath swallow'd
Some apothecaries' bills, or proclamations;
And now the hard and undigestible words
Come up like stones we use give hawks for physic.
Why, this is Welsh to Latin.

Law. My lords, the woman

Knows not her tropes, nor is perfect

In the academic derivation

Of grammatical elocution.

Fra. Sir, your pains

Shall be well spared, and your deep eloquence
Be worthily applauded among those
Which understand you.

Law. My good lord.

Fra. Sir,

Put up your papers in your fustian bag;

[FRANCISCO speaks this as in scorn.

Cry mercy, sir, 'tis buckram, and accept
My notion of your learn'd verbosity.

Law. I most graduatically thank your lordship;

I shall have use for them elsewhere.

[out

Mon. (to VITTORIA.) I shall be plainer with you, and paint

Your follies in more natural red and white,

Than that upon your cheek.

Vit. O, you mistake,

You raise a blood as noble in this cheek

As ever was your mother's.

Mon. I must spare you, till proof cry whore to that.
Observe this creature here, my honour'd lords,
A woman of a most prodigious spirit.

Vit. My honourable lord,

It doth not suit a reverend cardinal
To play the lawyer thus.

Mon. O, your trade instructs your language.

You see, my lords, what goodly fruit she seems,
Yet like those apples travellers report

To grow where Sodom and Gomorrah stood,
I will but touch her, and you straight shall see
She'll fall to soot and ashes.