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"Can I heard, Sir, you were refug'd in this court,

And come to beg a favour.

Cleom. Good! a favour!

Sure, thou mistak'st me for a king of Egypt;

And think'st I govern here?

Con. Y'are Cleomenes.

Cleom. No thanks to Heaven for that; I should have dy'd, And then I had not been this Cleomenes.

Panth. You promis'd patience, Sir.

Cleom. Thou art a scurvy monitor, I am patient.

Do I foam at lips;

Or stare at eyes? Methinks I am wond'rous patient.
Now, thou shalt see how I can swallow gall.

I prithee, gentle Conus, tell the story-
Of ruin'd Sparta; leave no circumstance
Untold of all their woes; and I will hear thee,
As unconcern'd, as if thou told'st a tale
Of ruin'd Troy. I prithee tell us how

The victors robb'd the shrines, polluted temples,
Ransack'd each wealthy house; No, spare me that,
Poor honest Sparta had no wealth to lose.
But when thou com'st to tell of matrons ravish'd,
And virgins forc'd; then raise thy voice,
And let me hear their howlings,

And dreadful shrieks, as in the act of rape.
Panth. Again you are distemper'd.
Cleom. Peace, I am not.

I was but teaching him to grace his tale
With decent horror.

Con. Your sick imagination feigns all this;
Now hear a truth, and wonder!

Cleom. Has not the conqueror been at Sparta ?
Can. Yes.

Cleom. Nay; then I know what follows victory.
Panth. You interrupt, as if you would not know.
Can. Then if you will imagine, think some king,
Who lov'd his people, took a peaceful progress
To some far distant place of his dominions;
Smil'd on his subjects as he rode in triumph,
And strew'd his plenty, wheresoe'er he pass'd.

Nay, raise your thoughts yet higher, think some deity,
Some better Ceres drawn along the sky

By gentle dragons, scatter'd as she flew

Her fruitful grains upon the teeming ground,
And bad new harvests rise.

Cleom. Do we dream, Pantheus ?

Panth. No sure! we are awake-but 'tis he dreams.
Can. The soldiers march'd, as in procession, slow;

And enter'd Sparta like a choir of priests,

As if they fear'd to tread on holy ground.

No noise was heard; no voice, but of the cryer
Proclaiming peace, and liberty to Sparta.
At that a peal of loud applause rang out,
And thinn'd the air, till even the birds fell down
Upon the shouters' heads; the shops flew open,
And all the busy trades renew'd their tasks;
No law was chang'd, no custom was controul'd;
That had Lycurgus liv'd, or you return'd,
So Sparta would have shown."

Act I. Sc. I.

Dryden is peculiarly fond of infusing a sort of magnanimous self-complaisance into his hero, in which he is sometimes very happy, as in the following speech of Cleomenes of

his son.

"I love to see him sparkle out betime, For 'twas my flame that lighted up his soul:

I'm pleas'd with my own work; Jove was not more

With infant nature, when his spacious hand

Had rounded this huge ball of earth, and seas,

To give it the first push, and see it roll

Along the vast abyss."

We will place together, as they occur, the other passages in this play which are worthy of especial notice. Cassandra says of men, that

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There is put into the mouth of the Egyptian Sosibius, a very appropriate and well-expressed comparison.

"For, as our Apis, tho' in temples fed,

And under golden roofs, yet loaths his food,
Because restrain'd; and longs to roam in meads,
Among the milky mothers of the herd:
So, Cleomenes, kept by force in Egypt,
Is sullen at our feasts; abhors our dainties;
And longs to change 'em for his Spartan broth."

Act III. Sc. I.

This same Sosibius has a singular theory concerning the mutability of human notions.

"Man is but man; unconstant still, and various;

There's no to-morrow in him, like to day.
Perhaps the atoms rolling in his brain,
Make him think honestly this present hour;
The next a swarm of base, ungrateful thoughts
May mount aloft: and where's our Egypt then?
Who would trust chance? since all men have the seeds
Of good and ill, which should work upward first."

Cleomenes, in a reflecting mood, says,

"Just such is death,

With a black veil, covering a beauteous face!
Fear'd afar off

By erring nature: a mistaken phantom;

A harmless, lambent fire. She kisses cold,
But kind, and soft, and sweet, as my Cleora.
Oh could we know,

What joys she brings; at least, what rest from grief!
How should we press into her friendly arms,

And be pleas'd not to be, or to be happy?"

Cleander gives up the Egyptians.

Ibid.

Act IV. Scene I.

" 'Tis all in vain; we have no further work;
The people will not be dragg'd out to freedom;
They bar their doors against it; nay, the prisoners
Even guard their chains, as their inheritance;
And man their very dungeons, for their masters;
Lest god-like liberty, the common foe,
Should enter in; and they be judg'd hereafter
Accomplices of freedom."

Act IV.

Of the interesting character of " The Maiden Queen" we shall say nothing more, except that the winding up of the plot is very unsatisfactory and inartificial, but proceed to our business of pointing out the poetical beauties.

Philocles, when speaking of the unknown lover who has neglected the Queen's advances, says

"He's blind indeed!

So the dull beasts in the first paradise

With levell'd eyes gaz'd each upon their kind;

There fix'd their love: and ne'er look'd up to view
That glorious creature Man, their Sovereign Lord."

Act III. Scene I.

A lover thus speaks of the happiness he should enjoy with the object of his affections:

"All my ambition will in you be crown'd;`
And those white arms shall all my wishes bound.
Our life shall be but one long nuptial day,
And like chaf'd odours melt in sweets away;
Soft as the night our minutes shall be worn,
And cheerful as the birds that wake the morn."

Ibid.

We glean the following passages, the first of which is very lovely:

"Then, setting free a sigh, from her fair eyes
She wip'd two pearls, the remnant of wild show'rs,
Which hung like drops upon the bells of flow'rs:
And thank'd the heav'ns,

Which better did, what she design'd, pursue,

Without her crime, to give her pow'r to you.

Act IV. Sc. II.

Philocles enters, and thus addresses the loved Candiope :

"Phil. How now, in tears, my fair Candiope?

So through a watʼry cloud

The sun at once seems both to weep and shine.

For what forefather's sin do you afflict

Those precious eyes! For sure you have

None of your own to weep.

Cand. My crimes both great and many needs must shew,

Since heav'n will punish them with losing you.

Phil. Afflictions sent from heav'n without a cause,

Make bold mankind enquire into its laws.

But heav'n, which, moulding beauty takes such care,
Makes gentle fates on purpose for the fair:

And destiny, that sees them so divine,
Spins all their fortune in a silken twine :

No mortal hand so ignorant is found

To weave coarse work upon a precious ground."

Act III.

Of the "Duke of Guise" only the first scene, the fourth act, and better part of the tifth, are by Dryden. The rest is the production of Nat. Lee.

The following speech of Guise, is marked by the powerful pen of Dryden.

"Poison on her name!

Take my hand on't, that cormorant dowager
Will never rest, till she has all our heads

In her lap. I was at Bayon with her,

When she, the king, and grisly d'Alva met;
Methinks I see her listening now before me,
Marking the very motion of his beard,

His op'ning nostrils, and his dropping lids→→→→
I hear him croak too, to the gaping council;
Fish for the great fish, take no care for frogs,
Cut off the poppy-heads, Sir; Madam, charın
The winds but fast, the billows will be still.”

Almost the only beautiful lines besides these in this play, are Lee's; a poet who has not had justice done him. We select the few passages that follow, which will perhaps dispose the reader to think more favorably of one, whose name is only associated with an idea of rant and fustian.

Malicorne is taunting Grillon with a false accusation of his daughter.

"Yet I have brain, and there is my revenge;
Therefore I say again, these eyes have seen
Thy blood at court, bright as a summer's morn,
When all the heaven is streak'd with dappled fires,
And fleck'd with blushes, like a rifled maid;
Nay, by the gleamy fires that melted from her,

Fast sighs and smiles, swol'n lips and heaving breasts,

My soul presages."

And in the speech of Marmoutiere, that shortly follows, there
is an affecting simplicity which was out of Dryden's vein.
"O Heav'ns! Did ever virgin yet attempt

An enterprize like mine? I that resolv'd
Never to leave those dear delightful shades,
But act the little part that nature gave me,
On the green carpets of some guiltless grove,
And having finish'd it, forsake the world!
Unless sometimes my heart might entertain
Some small remembrance of the taking Guise :
But that far, far from any dark'ning thought,
To cloud my honour, or eclipse my virtue."

The king says,

"O Marmoutiere! now will I haste to meet thee
The face of beauty, on this rising horror,

Looks like the midnight-moon upon a murther."

The following is a beautiful, though fanciful reason, for attributing an awful importance to the last words of a dying

man:

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