Come, let us join our streams; we must run far,
And have but little time. The Duke of Savoy
Is shortly to be gone, and I must needs
Make you well known to him.

Laf. But hath your highness
Some enterprise of value join'd with him?
Byr. With him, and greater persons.
Laf. I will creep

Upon my bosom in your princely service.
Vouchsafe to make me known."

The mind of Byron being filled with doubt and anxiety, by reflecting on the temerity of the projects he entertained, and the dangerous tendency of the suggestions, to which he had listened, seeks to soothe his care and allay his apprehensions by consulting an astrologer on his future fortunes. He enters dressed in disguise.

"Byr. This hour, by all rules of astrology,
Is dangerous to my person, if not deadly.
How hapless is our knowledge to foretell,
And not be able to prevent a mischief.

O! the strange difference 'twixt us and the stars!
They work with inclinations strong and fatal
And nothing know: and we know all their working,
And nought can do or nothing can prevent.

Rude ignorance is beastly; knowledge wretched.
The heavenly powers envy what they enjoin:
We are commanded to imitate their natures,
In making all our ends eternity,

And in that imitation we are plagued.

Tells us prosperity's, at the highest degree,
The fount and handle of calamity.

Like dust before a whirlwind, those men fly,
That prostrate on the grounds of fortune lie:
And being great, like trees that broadest sprout
Their own top-heavy state, grubs up the root.
These apprehensions startle all my powers,
And arm them with suspicion 'gainst themselves,—
In my late projects I have cast myself
Into the arms of others, and will see
If they will let me fall, or toss me up
Into th' affected compass of a throne.

God save you, Sir.

Labross. You're welcome friend: what would you?
Byr. I would entreat you for some crowns I bring,
To give your judgment of this figure cast.
To know by his nativity there seen,

What sort of end the person shall endure,
Who sent me to you, and whose birth it is.
Lab. I'll herein do my best, in your desire.
The man is rais'd out of a good descent,
And nothing older than yourself I think:
Is it not you?

Byr. I will not tell you that:

But tell me on what end he shall arrive.

Lab. My son, I see that he whose end is cast

In this set figure, is of noble parts,

And by his military valour rais'd

To princely honours; and may be a king

But that I see a Caput Algol here,

That hinders it I fear.

Byr. A Caput Algol!

What's that, I pray?

Lab. Forbear to ask me, son.

You bid me speak what fear bids me conceal.

Byr. You have no cause to fear, and therefore speak. Lab. You'll rather wish you had been ignorant,

Than be instructed in a thing so ill.

Byr. Ignorance is an idle salve for ill;

And therefore do not urge me to enforce
What I would freely know: for, by the skill
Shown in thy aged hairs, I'll lay thy brain
Here scatter'd at my feet, and seek in that
What safely thou may'st utter with thy tongue,
If thou deny it.

Lab. Will you not allow me

To hold my peace! What less can I desire,

If not be pleas'd with my constrained speech?

Byr. Was ever man yet punish'd for expressing What he was charg'd! Be free and speak the worst. Lab. Then briefly this; the man hath lately done

An action that will make him lose his head.

Byr. Curs'd be thy throat and soul! Raven, screetch owl, hag!

Lab. O hold! for heaven's sake hold!

Byr. Hold on I will.

Vault and contractor of all horrid sounds,
Trumpet of all the miseries in hell,
Of my confusions, of the shameful end
Of all
my services; witch, end, a accurst
For ever be the poison of thy tongue,
And let the black fume of thy venom❜d breath
Infect the air, shrink heaven, put out the stars,
And spread so fell, and blue a plague on earth,
That all the world may falter with my fall.
Lab. Pity my age, my Lord.

Byr. Out, prodigy.

Remedy of pity, mine of flint.

Whence, with my nails and feet, I'll dig enough

Horror and savage cruelty to build

Temples to massacre. Dam of devils take thee!

Hadst thou no better end to crown my parts.

The bulls of Colchos, nor his triple neck

That howls out earthquakes; the most mortal vapours

That ever stifled and struck dead the fowls

That flew at never such a sightly pitch,

Could not have burn'd my blood so..

Lab. I told truth,

And could have flatter'd you.

Byr. O that thou hadst;

Would I had given thee twenty thousand crowns

That thou hadst flatter'd me. There's no joy on earth,

Never so rational, so pure, and holy,

But is a jester, parasite, a whore

In the most worthy parts, with which they please,

A drunkenness of soul and a disease.

Lab. I knew you not.

Byr. Peace, dog of Pluto, peace!

Thou knew'st my end to come, not me here present!

Pox of your halting human knowledges."

Soon after this, the king has an interview with Byron, and succeeds in persuading him to leave his traitorous practices, and disappoint the enemies of the state. We extract the following exhortation.

"So of all judgements, if within themselves
They suffer spleen and are tumultuous,
They cannot equal differences without them;
And this wind that doth sing so in your ears,
I know is no disease bred in yourself,

But whisper'd in by others; who in swelling
Your veins with empty hopes of much, yet able
To perform nothing, are like shallow streams
That make themselves so many heavens to sight,
Since you may see in them the moon and stars,
The blue space of the air, as far from us,
To our weak senses, in those shallow streams,
As if they were as deep as heaven is high ;
Yet with your middle finger only sound them,
And you shall pierce them to the very earth:
And therefore leave them and be true to me."

We must now proceed to the Tragedy, only stopping by the way to collect some short passages, chiefly similes which have struck us in our perusal of the Conspiracy. Our author thus compares the state of a man whose fortunes have shot beyond

the foundation of his merits.

son.

"As you may see a mighty promontory,

More digg'd and under-eaten than may warrant
A safe supportance to his hanging brows,
All passengers avoid him; shun all ground
That lies within his shadow, and bear still
A flying eye upon him; so great men
Corrupted in their grounds, and building out
Too swelling fronts for their foundations,
When most they should be prop'd are most forsaken,
And men will rather thrust into the storms

Of better-grounded states, than take a shelter
Beneath their ruinous and fearful weight;
Yet they so oversee their faulty bases,
That they remain securer in conceit;
And that security doth worse presage

Their near destructions, than their eaten grounds."

Byron describes his own manner in this spirited compari

"To whom I came, methought, with such a spirit
As you have seen a lusty courser shew,

That hath been long time at his manger tied,

High fed, alone, and when, his head-stall broken,

He runs his prison, like a trumpet neighs,

Cuts air in high curvets, and shakes his head;
With wanton stoopings 'twixt his forelegs, mocking
The heavy centre; spreads his flying crest,

Like to an ensign; hedge and ditches leaping,
Till in the fresh meat, at his natural food

He sees free fellows, and hath met them free."

Henry addressing Byron, thus speaks of Queen Elizabeth, a topic upon which our poet is always eloquent.

"And now for England you shall go, my lord,
Our lord ambassador to that matchless Queen.
You never had a voyage of such pleasure,
Honour and worthy objects. There's a Queen
Where nature keeps her state, and state her court,
Wisdom her study, continence her fort;
Where magnanimity, humanity,
Firmness in counsel, and integrity,
Grace to her poorest subjects, majesty
To awe the greatest, have respects divine,

And in her each part, all the virtues shine."

Chapman in this manner alludes to the common practice of the old writers, who always ushered their works into the world, with a "battalous array" of eulogistical poems.

"And as a glorious poem, fronted well
With many a goodly herald of his praise,
So far from hate of praises to his face,

That he prays men to praise him, and they ride
Before, with trumpets in their mouths, proclaiming
Life to the holy fury of his lines;

All drawn as if with one eye he had leer'd
On his lov'd hand, and led it by a rule;
That his plumes only imp the muse's wings;
He sleeps with them, his head is rapt with bays,
His lips break out with nectar, his tun'd feet
Are of the great last, the perpetual motion,
And he, puff'd with their empty breath, believes
Full merit, eas'd those passions of wind,

Which yet serve but to praise, and cannot merit,
And so his fury in their air expires."

The character of Henry through both these plays is represented as wise and humane, easy to forgive, and unwilling to judge harshly. In the beginning of the Tragedy of Byron, this fine blessing upon his infant son is put into his mouth.

"Hen. Have thy old father's angel for thy guide; Redoubled be his spirit in thy breast;

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