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your hands: come then, the appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony. Let me comply with you. in this garb, left my extent to the players (which I tell you must fhew fairly outward) fhould more appear like entertainment than yours. You arė: welcome; but my uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived.

Guil. In what, my dear Lord?

Ham I am but mad north, north-west; when : the wind is foutherly. I know a hawk from a handfaw.

Enter POLONIUS.

Pol. Well be with you, gentlemen.

Ham. Hark you, Guildenftern, and you too, at each ear an hearer; that great baby, you fee there, is not yet out of his fwathling-clouts.

Rof. Haply he's the fecond time come to them; for they fay, an old man is twice a child.

Ham. I will prophefy, he comes to tell me of the players. Mark.it;you fay right, Sir; for on Monday morning 'twas fo, indeed.

Pol. My Lord, I have news to tell you.
Ham. My Lord, I have news to tell you.
When Rofcius was an actor in Rome.

Pal. The actors are come hither, my Lord.
Ham. Buzze, buzze,→→

Pol. Upon mine honour.

Ham. Then came each actor on his afs------

Pol. The beft actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, hiftory, paftoral, paftoral-comical, hiftorical-paftoral, fcene undividable, or poem unJimited: Seneca cannot be two heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of wit, and the liberty, these are the only men..

Ham."Oh Jephtha, judge of Ifrael,” what a treasure hadft thou!

Pol. What a treasure had he, my Lord? Ham. " Why, one fair daughter, and no more, "The which he loved paffing well."

Pol. Still on my daughter.

Ham. Am I not i' th' right, old Jephtha? Pol. If you call me Jephtha, my Lord; I have a daughter that I love paffing well.

Ham. Nay, that follows not.

Pol. What follows then, my Lord?

Ham. Why, as "by lot, God wot”----and then you know, "it came to pafs, as moft like it was;" the first row of the rubric will fhew you more.. For look where my abridgements come..

Enter four or five Players.

Y'are welcome, mafters, welcome all.. I am glad to see thee well; welcome, good friends. Oh! old friend! thy face is valanced fince I faw thee last: comeft thou to beard me in Denmark? What! my young lady and miftrefs? b'erlady, your ladyfhip is nearer heaven than when I faw you laft, by the altitude of a chioppine. Pray God, your voice, like a piece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the ring.-------Masters, you are all welcome: we'll e'en to't like friendly faulconers, fly at any thing we fee; we'll have a fpeech straight. Come, give us a taste of your quality; come, a paffionate speech. 1 Play. What fpeech, my good Lord?

Ham. I heard thee fpeak me a fpeech once; but it was never acted: or if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleafed not the million, 'twas Caviar to the general; but it was (as I received it, and others, whofe judgment in fuch matters cried in the top of mine) an excellent play; well digefted in the fcenes, fet down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember, (31) one faid,

(31) I remember, one faid, there was no falt in the lines to make

there was no falt in the lines, to make the matter favoury; nor no matter in the phrase, that might

the matter favoury;] i. e. That there was no poignancy of wit, or virulence of fatire in them, as I had formerly explained this paffage. Mr Pope has fallen upon me with a fncer, and triumphs that I fhould be fo ridiculous to think that fatire can have any place in tragedy. I did not mean that fatire was to make its fubject, or that the passions were to be purged by it; may not a harp and farcaftical fentiment, for all that, occafionally arife from the matter? What does this gentleman think of irony? Is it not one fpecies of fatire? And yet Monfieur Hedelin (almost as good a judge as Mr Pope in thefe ma ters) tells us, it is a figure entirely theatrical. Or what does Mr Pope think of fuch fen

tences as these?

Frailty thy name is woman!

In fecond husband let me be accurft!
None wed the fecond, but who killed the firft.
At a few drops of women's rheum, which are
As cheap as lies, he fold the blood and labour
Of our great action.

O woman! woman! woman! All the gods
Have not fuch power of oing good to men,
As you of doing harm.

Hamlet.

Ibid.

Coriolanus.

Dryden's All for Love. And to borrow one inftance from an ancient, who has outgone all the others quoted, in the ftrength of his farcafm: - χρῆν γὰρ ἀλλοθέν ποθεν βροτώς

Παίδες ποιείσθαι, θήλυ δ ̓ ἐκ εἶναι γένος,

*Ουτω δ ̓ ἂν ἐκ ἦν ἐδὶν ἀνθρώποις κακόν. Eurip. in Medea. I chofe this paffage, because I think our Milton has left a fine paraphrafe upon it; and, I doubt not, had the Greek poet in his eye:

-Oh, why did God,

Creator wife, that peopled highest heaven
With fpirits mafculine, create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of Nature, and not fill the world at once
With men, as angels, and not feminine;

Or find Jome other way to generate mankind.

If Mr Pope does not think thefe paffages to be fatire, and yet they are all in tragedies, I muft beg leave to diffent from him in opinion: or, to conclude, has Mr Pope never heard that Euripides obtained the name of Mirozúrns, wo

indite the author of affection; but called it an honeft method. One fpeech in it I chiefly loved; 'twas Æneas's tale to Dido; and thereabout of it efpecially, where he fpeaks of Pram's flaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line; let me fee, let me fee--The rugged Pyrrhus, like th' Hyrcanian beast------- It is not fo;------it begins with Pyrrhus.

The rugged Pyrrhus, he, whole fable arms,
Black as his purpofe, did the night refemble,
When he lay couched in the ominous horfe;
Hath now his dread and black complexion fmear'¿
With heraldry more difmal; head to foot,
Now is he total gules; horribly trick'd
With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, fons,
Bak'd and impafted with the parching fires,
That lend a tyrannous and damned light
To murders vile. Roafted in wrath and fire,
And thus o'er-fized with coagulate gore,
With eyes like carbuncles, the hellith Pyrrhus
Old grandfire Priam feeks.

Pol. 'Fore God, my Lord, well spoken, with good accent, and good difcretion.

1 Play. Anon he finds him,

Striking, too fhort, at Greeks. His antique fword,
Rebellious to his arm, lyes where it falls,
Repugnant to command; unequal matched,
Pyrrhus at Priam drives, in rage ftrikes wide;
But with the whif and wind of his fell fword
Th' unnerved father falls. Then fenfelefs Ilium,
Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top
Stoops to his bafe; and with a hideous crash
Takes prifoner Pyrrhus' ear. For lo, his fword,
Which was declining on the milky head

man-bater, because he fo virulently fatisifed the fex in his tragedies?

Of reverend Priam, feemed i̇' th' air to stick:
So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus ftood;
And, like a neutral to his will and matter,
Did nothing.

But as we often see, against some storm,
A filence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds fpeechlefs, and the orb below
As hush as death; anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region: So after Pyrrhus' paufe,
A roufed vengeance fets him new a-work:
And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall
On Mars his armour, forged for proof eterne,
With lefs remorfe than Pyrrhus' bleeding iword
Now falls on Priam.-----

Out, out, thou ftrumpet Fortune! all you Gods,
In general fynod take away her power:

Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, And bowl the round nave down the hill of heav'n, As low as to the fiends.

Pol. This is too long.

Ham. It fhall to th' barber's with your beard. Pr'ythee, fay on; he's for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or he fleeps. Say on, come to Hecuba.

1 Play. But who, oh! who, had feen the mobled Ham. The mobled Queen?

[Queen,--Pol. That's good; mobled Queen, is good. 1 Play. Run barefoot up and down, threatning

the flames

With biffon-rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem ftood; and for a robe
About her lank and all-o'er-teemed loins,
A blanket in th' alarm of fear caught up:
Who this had feen, with tongue in venom steeped,
'Gainst fortune's state would treason have pronoun-
But if the gods themselves did fee her then, [ced:
When the faw Pyrrhus make malicious sport

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