Of better fate guide me to Bellamie,
Be thou eternal.
(Within.) Follow, follow, follow.
BELLAMIE, alone, in Marybone Park.
Bell. The day begins to break; and trembling light,
As if affrighted with this night's disaster,
Steals through the farthest air, and by degrees
Salutes my weary longings.-Oh, my Worthgood,
Thy presence would have check'd these passions,
And shot delight through all the mists of sadness,
To guide my fear safe through the paths of danger :
Now fears assault me.-'Tis a woman's voice-
She sings; and in her music's cheerfulness
Seems to express the freedom of a heart,
Not chain'd to any passions.
She sleeps in the night, though she toils in the day;
And merrily passeth her time away.
Bell. Oh, might I change my misery
For such a shape of quiet!
THE BRIDE, A COMEDY:
BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 1640.
HORTEN, a collector. His friend.
Friend. You are learned in antiquities?
I should affect them more, were not tradition
One of the best assurances to show
They are the things we think them. What more proofs,
Unless perhaps a little circumstance,
Have we for this or that to be a piece
Of Delphos' ruins? or the marble statues,
Made Athens glorious, when she was suppos'd
To have more images of men than men ?
A weather-beaten stone, with an inscription
That is not legible but through an optic,
Tells us its age; that in some Sibyl's cave,
Three thousand years ago, it was an altar;
"Tis satisfaction to our curiosity,
But ought not to necessitate belief.—
For antiquity,
I do not store up any under Grecian;
Your Roman antiques are but modern toys
Compar'd to them; besides, they are so counterfeit
With mouldings, 'tis scarce possible to find
Any but copies.
Friend. Yet you are confident
Of yours, that are of more doubt.
Hort. Others from their easiness
May credit what they please. My trial's such
Of any thing I doubt, all the impostors
That ever made antiquity ridiculous,
Cannot deceive me. If I light upon
Aught that 's above my skill, I have recourse
To those, whose judgment at the second view
(If not the first) will tell me what philosopher's
That eye-less, nose-less, mouth-less statue is,
And who the workman was; though since his death
Thousands of years have been revolv❜d.
Accidents to frustrate purpose.
How various are th' events that may depend
Upon one action, yet the end propos'd
Not follow the intention! accidents
Will interpose themselves; like those rash men,
That thrust into a throng, occasion'd
By some tumultuous difference, where perhaps
Their busy curiosity begets
New quarrels with new issues.
WIT IN A CONSTABLE, A COMEDY: BY HENRY GLAPTHORNE.
Collegian. Did you, ere we departed from the college, O'erlook my library?
Servant. Yes, sir; and I find,
Although you tell me Learning is immortal,
The paper and the parchment 'tis contain'd in
Savours of much mortality.
The moths have eaten more
Authentic learning, than would richly furnish
A hundred country pedants; yet the worms
Are not one letter wiser.
COMMENDATORY VERSES BEFORE "THE REBELLION," A TRAGEDY:
To see a springot of thy tender age,
With such a lofty strain to word a stage;
To see a tragedy from thee in print,
With such a world of fine meanders in 't,
Puzzles my wondering soul: for there appears
Such disproportion 'twixt thy lines and years,
That when I read thy lines, methinks I see
The sweet-tongu'd Ovid fall upon his knee,
With Parce precor. Every line and word
Runs in sweet numbers of its own accord :
But I am thunderstruck, that all this while
Thy unfeather'd quill should write a tragic style.
This, above all, my admiration draws,
That one so young should know dramatic laws :
'Tis rare, and therefore is not for the span
greasy thumbs of every common man.
The damask rose that sprouts before the spring,
Is fit for none to smell at but a king.
Go on, sweet friend: I hope in time to see
Thy temples rounded with the Daphnean tree;
And if men ask, "Who nurs'd thee?" I'll say
"It was the ambrosian spring of Pegasus."
SICILY AND NAPLES; OR, THE FATAL UNION: A TRAGEDY.
NOBLEST bodies are but gilded clay;
But the precious shining rind,
The inmost rottenness remains behind.
Kings, on earth though gods they be,
Yet in death are vile as we;
He, a thousand kings before,
Now is vassal unto more.
Vermin now insulting lie,
And dig for diamonds in each eye;
Whilst the sceptre-bearing hand
Cannot their inroads withstand.
Here doth one in odours wade
By the regal unction made;
While another dares to gnaw
On that tongue, his people's law.
Fools! ah, fools are we, that so contrive,
And do strive,
In each gaudy ornament,
Who shall his corpse in the best dish present.
THE PARLIAMENT OF BEES, A MASQUE :1 BY JOHN DAY.
ULANIA, a female Bee, confesses her passion for Meletus, who loves ARETHUSA.
not a village fly, nor meadow bee,
That traffics daily on the neighbouring plain,
But will report how all the winged train
Have sued to me for love, when we have flown
In swarms out to discover fields new-blown.
Happy was he could find the forward'st tree,
And cull the choicest blossoms out for me;
Of all their labours they allow'd me some
And, like my champions, mann'd me out, and home,
Yet loved I none of them. Philon, a bee
Well-skill'd in verse and amorous poesie,
1 Whether this singular production, in which the characters are all bees, was ever acted, I have no information to determine. is at least as capable of representation as we can conceive the "Birds" of Aristophanes to have been.
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