Can curb his heat, or rein his rash desire, And then with lank and lean discolour'd cheek, With heavy eye, knit brow, and strengthless pace, The flesh being proud, desire doth fight with grace, So fares it with this faultful lord of Rome, To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, She says, her subjects with foul insurrection To living death, and pain perpetual: Which in her prescience she controlled still, Even in this thought through the dark night he stealeth, A captive victor that hath lost in gain; Bearing away the wound that nothing healeth, He like a thievish dog creeps sadly thence; She stays exclaiming on the direful night; He runs, and chides his vanish'd, loath'd delight. He thence departs a heavy convertite; He in his speed looks for the morning light; "For day," quoth she, "night's scapes doth open lay; And my true eyes have never practis'd how To cloak offences with a cunning brow. They think not but that every eye can see The same disgrace which they themselves behold; Here she exclaims against repose and rest, And bids it leap from thence, where it may find Frantic with grief thus breathes she forth her spite "O comfort-killing night, image of hell! "O hateful, vaporous, and foggy night, His wonted height, yet ere he go to bed, Knit poisonous clouds about his golden head. "With rotten damps ravish the morning air; Ere he arrive his weary noontide prick;" "Were Tarquin night, (as he is but night's child,) And fellowship in woe doth woe assuage, "Where b now I have no one to blush with me, But I alone alone must sit and pine, Seasoning the earth with showers of silver brine, Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans, "O night, thou furnace of foul-reeking smoke, That all the faults which in thy reign are made • Noontide prick-the point of noon. b Where-whereas. Sepulchred, Milton uses the word with the same accent, in his lines on Shak spere : "And so sepulchred in such pomp does lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." "Make me not object to the tell-tale day! The impious breach of holy wedlock vow: To 'cipher what is writ in learned books, Will quote my loathsome trespass in my looks. b "The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story, Will couple my reproach to Tarquin's shame: "Let my good name, that senseless reputation, "O unseen shame! invisible disgrace! 66 Alas, how many bear such shameful blows, If, Collatine, thine honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. ■ Character'd. Here again is an accentuation different from the present, but which is common to all Shakspere's contemporaries. Malone has observed that this is still the pronunciation of the Irish people; and he adds with great truth, that much of the pronunciation of Queen Elizabeth's age is yet retained in Ireland. b Quote-observe. c Mot-motto. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, "Yet am I guilty of thy honour's wrack,a— "Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? C Or kings be breakers of their own behests? "The aged man that coffers up his gold Is plagued with cramps, and gouts, and painful fits, And scarce hath eyes his treasure to behold, * Wrack. Mr. Hunter, in his Disquisition on the Tempest,' pointed out the necessity of restoring to Shakspere's text the old word wrack, instead of the modern wreck. He asks, “What could editors, who proceed upon principles which lead to such a substitution, do with this couplet of the Lucrece :— 'O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack!" In this particular instance they have preserved the original word; but in that before us, where wrack is equally required to rhyme with back, they have substituted wreck. Even Mr. Dyce herein copies Malone without alteration. This is probably mere carelessness; but it shows the danger of tampering with an original reading. This is again an instance of the dramatic crowding of thought upon thought, and making one thought answer and repel the other, which render Shakspere's soliloquies such matchless revelations of the heart. Malone, not perceiving this dramatic power, changes guilty to guiltless; because the idea of the first line does not correspond with that of the second. C Folly is here used in the sense of wickedness; and gentle in that of well-born. VOL. XII. G |