All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath, and clearest eye,
Like perfumes, go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings,
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,

And weave but nets to catch the wind.

FURTHER EXTRACTS FROM THE SAME.

Clergy-comfort.

I MUST talk to you, like a divine, of patience.—
I have heard

Some talk of it very much, and many times
To their auditors' impatience; but, I pray,
What practice do they make of 't in their lives?
They are too full of choler with living honest,
And some of them not only impatient

Of their own slightest injuries, but stark mad
At one another's preferment.

Sepulture.

Two Bellmen, a Capuchin; ROMELIO, and others. Cap. For pity's sake, you that have tears to shed, Sigh a soft requiem, and let fall a bead

For two unfortunate nobles,1 whose sad fate Leaves them both dead and excommunicate: No churchman's prayer to comfort their last groans, No sacred seed of earth to hide their bones; But as their fury wrought them out of breath, The canon speaks them guilty of their own death. Rom. Denied christian burial! I pray, what does that,

Í

1 Slain in a duel.

Or the dead lazy march in the funeral,
Or the flattery in the epitaph, which shows
More sluttish far than all the spiders' webs
Shall ever grow upon it; what do these
Add to our well-being after death?
Cap. Not a scruple.

Rom. Very well, then :

I have a certain meditation,

If I can think of ['t], somewhat to this purpose:
I'll say it to you, while my mother there
Numbers her beads.-

"You that dwell near these graves and vaults,
Which oft do hide physicians' faults,
Note what a small room does suffice
Το express men's goods: their vanities
Would fill more volume in small hand
Than all the evidence of church land.
Funerals hide men in civil wearing,
And are to the drapers a good hearing,
Make the heralds laugh in their black raiment,
And all die worthies die worth payment
To the altar offerings, though their fame,
And all the charity of their name,
"Tween heaven and this yield no more light
Than rotten trees which shine i' the night.
O, look the last act be best i' the play,
And then rest, gentle bones: yet pray,
That when by the precise you are view'd,
A supersedeas be not su'd,

To remove you to a place more airy,
That, in your stead, they may keep chary
Stockfish or seacoal; for the abuses
Of sacrilege have turn'd graves to viler uses.
How, then, can any monument say,
Here rest these bones to the last day,

When Time, swift both of foot and feather,
May bear them the sexton knows not whither ?

What care I, then, though my last sleep
Be in the desert or in the deep,
No lamp nor taper, day and night,
To give my charnel chargeable light?
I have there like quantity of ground,
And at the last day I shall be found."1
Immature death.

Contarino's dead.

O, that he should die so soon!

Why, I pray, tell me,

Is not the shortest fever best? and are not bad plays The worse for their length?

Guilty preferment.

I have a plot, shall breed,

Out of the death of these two noblemen,

The advancement of our house.

are like the visits of Franciscan friars, They never come to prey upon us single.

Last love strongest.

as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistible,

Since 'tis indeed our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment 'fore winter; and we widows,
As men report of our best picture-makers,

1 Webster was parish clerk at St. Andrew's Holborn. The anxious recurrence to church matters, sacrilege, tombstones, with the frequent introduction of dirges, in this, and his other tragedies, may be traced to his professional sympathies.

We love the piece we are in hand with better Than all the excellent work we have done before.

Mother's anger.

Leonora. (sola.) Ha, my son!

I'll be a Fury to him: like an Amazon lady,
I'd cut off this right pap that gave him suck,
To shoot him dead: I'll no more tender him
Than had a wolf stol'n to my teat i' the night,
And robb'd me of my milk.

Distraction from guilt.

Leonora. (sola.) Ha, ha! What say you?
I do talk to somewhat, methinks; it may be,
My evil Genius.-Do not the bells ring?

I have a strange noise in my head: O, fly in pieces !
Come, age, and wither me into the malice
Of those that have been happy! let me have
One property more than the devil of hell,
Let me envy the pleasure of youth heartily:
Let me in this life fear no kind of ill,
That have no good to hope for let me die,
Where neither man nor memory may e'er find me.
[Falls to the grouna.

Confessor (entering). You are well employ'd, I hope : the best pillow i' the world

For this your contemplation is the earth,

And the best object heaven.

Leonora. I am whispering to a dead friend.

Obstacles.

Let those that would oppose this union
Grow ne'er so subtle, and entangle themselves
In their own work like spiders; while we two
Haste to our noble wishes, and presume,
The hindrance of it will breed more delight,
As black copartiments show gold more bright.

Falling out.

To draw the picture of unkindness truly,
Is to express two that have dearly lov'd,

And fall'n at variance.

THE ATHEIST'S TRAGEDY; OR, THE HONEST MAN'S REVENGE:

BY CYRIL Tourneur.

D'AMVILLE (the Atheist), with the aid of his wicked instrument, BORACHIO, murders his brother, MONTFERRERS, for his estate.

After the

deed is done, BORACHIO and he talk together of the circumstances which attend the murder.

D'Am. Here's a sweet comedy. 'T begins with O dolentis, and concludes with ha, ha, he.

Bor. Ha, ha, he.

D'Am. O my echo! I could stand reverberating this sweet musical air of joy, till I had perish'd my sound lungs with violent laughter. Lovely night-raven! th' hast seized a carcase.

Bor. Put him out on 's pain. I lay so fitly underneath the bank from whence he fell, that ere his faltering tongue could utter double O, I knock'd out his brains with this fair ruby, and had another stone just of this form and bigness ready, that I laid i' the broken skull upon the ground for 's pillow, against the which they thought he fell and perish'd.

D'Am. Upon this ground I'll build my manor house; And this shall be chiefest corner-stone.

Bor. 'T has crown'd the most judicious murder, that
The brain of man was e'er deliver'd of.

D'Am. Ay, mark the plot. Not any circumstance
That stood within the reach of the design,
Of persons, dispositions, matter, time, or place,