One thought more steady than an ebbing sea. I that have now been chamber'd here alone, To you and me; resolve yourself it is, Gio. Well then, The schoolmen teach that all this globe of earth Shall be consum'd to ashes in a minute. Anna. So I have read too. Gio. But 'twere somewhat strange To see the waters burn. Could I believe Anna. That's most certain.—But, Good brother, for the present, what d' you mean How to escape. Gio. Look up, look here; what see you in my face? Anna. Distraction and a troubled conscience. Gio. Death and a swift repining wrath ? What see you in mine eyes! Anna. Methinks you weep. -yet look, Gio. I do indeed; these are the funeral tears Shed on your grave: these furrowed up my cheeks, When first I lov'd and knew not how to woo. Fair Annabella, should I here repeat The story of my life, we might lose time. Be record all the spirits of the air, And all things else that are, that day and night, Hath paid to Annabella's sacred love, Hath been these tears which are her mourners now. Never till now did nature do her best To show a matchless beauty to the world, Pray, Annabella, pray; since we must part, Anna. Then I see your drift. Ye blessed angels, guard me! Gio. Give me your hand: how sweetly life doth run In these well-coloured veins! how constantly These palms do promise health! But I could chide With nature for this cunning flattery! Forgive me. Anna. With my heart. Gio. Farewell. Anna. Will you be gone?- Gio. Be dark, bright sun, And make this mid-day night, that thy gilt rays May not behold a deed, will turn their splendour More sooty than the poets feign their Styx. Anna. What means this? Gio. To save thy fame.—— [Stabs her. Thus die, and die by me, and by my hand; Revenge is mine, honour doth love command. Anna. Forgive him, Heaven, and me my sins. Fare well, Brother, unkind, unkind [Dies. [Sir Thomas Browne, in the last chapter of his Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, rebukes such authors as have chosen to relate prodigious and nameless sins. The chapter is entitled, Of some Relations whose Truth we fear. His reasoning is solemn and fine. "Lastly, as there are many relations whereto we cannot assent, and make some doubt thereof, so there are divers others whose verities we fear, and heartily wish there were no truth therein. Many other accounts like these we meet sometimes in history, scandalous unto Christianity, and even unto humanity; whose not only verities but relations honest minds do deprecate. For of sins heteroclital, and such as want either name or precedent, there is oft-times a sin even in their histories. We desire no records of such enormities; sins should be accounted new, that so they may be esteemed monstrous. They omit of monstrosity, as they fall from their rarity; for men count it venial to err with their forefathers, and foolishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate without these singularities of villainy; for, as they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. And this is one thing that may make latter ages worse than were the former: for the vicious examples of ages past poison the curiosity of these present, affording a hint of sin unto seduceable spirits, and soliciting those unto the imitation of them, whose heads were never so perversely principled as to invent them. things of this nature silence commendeth history; 'tis the veniable part of things lost, wherein there must never rise a Pancirollus 1 nor remain any register but that of hell."] In THE BROKEN HEART, A TRAGEDY: BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ITHOCLES loves CALANTHA, Princess of Sparta; and would have his sister PENTHEA plead for him with the princess. She objects to him her own wretched condition, made miserable by a match, into which he forcea her with BASSANES, when she was precontracted by her dead father's will, and by inclination, to ORGILUS; but at last she consents. ITHOCLES. PENTHEA. Ith. Sit nearer, sister, to me, nearer yet: 1 Who wrote De Antiquis Deperditis, or of the Lost Inventions of Antiquity. Had prov❜d to me a grave. Pen. You had been happy : Then had you never known that sin of life From whom you had your being. Ith. Sad Penthea, Thou canst not be too cruel; my rash spleen Hath with a violent hand pluck'd from thy bosom Pen. Not yet, heaven, I do beseech thee! first let some wild fires Ith. Wrong'd soul, thy prayers are heard. Pen. Here, lo, I breathe, A miserable creature, led to ruin By an unnatural brother! Ith. I consume In languishing affections for that trespass; Pen. The handmaid to the wages, The untroubled 1 1[ ] of country toil, drinks streams With leaping kids, and with the bleating lambs, And so allays her thirst secure; whilst I Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears. Ith. The labourer doth eat his coarsest bread, Earn'd with his sweat, and lies him down to sleep; While every bit I touch turns in digestion To gall, as bitter as Penthea's curse. Put me to any penance for my tyranny, Pen. Pray kill me, Rid me from living with a jealous husband; 1 A word seems defective here. Then we will join in friendship, be again Ith. After my victories abroad, at home A deity, my sister, and be worship'd For thy resolved martyrdom; wrong'd maids Pure turtles, crown'd with myrtle; if thy pity Pen. O, no more! Ith. Death waits to waft me to the Stygian banks, And free me from this chaos of my bondage; And till thou wilt forgive, I must endure. Pen. Who is the saint you serve? Ith. Friendship, or [nearness] Of birth to any but my sister, durst not Pen. Let me, By your new protestations I conjure ye, Ith. Her name 'tis -'tis-I dare not- Ith. They are not-Peace! Calantha is the princess-the king's daughter- Do-Calantha Knows it not yet, nor Prophilus, my nearest. Pen. Suppose you were contracted to her, would it not Split even your very soul to see her father Snatch her out of your arms against her will, X. 193 N |