The water which they beat, to follow fatter,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description; The did lie
In her pavilion, cloth of gold, of tiffue,
(22) O'er-picturing that Venus, where we fee
The fancy out-work nature. On each fide her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like siniling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

Agr. O rare for Antony.

Eno. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
So many mermaids, tended her i'th' eyes,
And made their bends adorings (23). At the heim,
A seeming mermaid steers ; the filken tackles
Swell with the touches of those flow'r-loft hands,
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthron'd i'th' market place, did fit alone,
Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.

Cleopatra's (22)O'erapicturing, &c.]“ The poet,” says Mr.Theobald, “ seems here to be alluding to that fine picture of Venus, done by Apelles ; the beauty and limbs of which, it is said, he copied from Campape, his beloved mistress, whom he received at the hands of Alexander the Great. This celebrated piece of his was called Appedita avaduouern Venus rising out of the fea: to which, Ovid has paid so fine a compliment in his 3d book on the Art of Love.

Si Venerem Cous nunquam posisjet Apells,
Merfa fub æquoreis illa laterei aquis.
If fam'd Apelles had not painted thee,

Venus, thou ne'er hadit risen from the sea.
The reader, for a larger account of this matter, may conful
Pliny's Natural history, L. 35. C. 10.

(23) Adorings. Warb. vulg. Adornings.
Vol. II.

H

Cleopatra's infinite power in pleasing.
(24) Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety : other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry,
Where most she fatisfies, For vileft things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Blefs her when the is riggish.

SCENE V. The unsettled Humour of Lovers. Enter Cleopatra, Charmian, Iras, and Alexas.

Cleo. (25) Give me some music: music, moody food Of us that trade in love.

Omnese

At-3.

(24) Age, &c.] So, in Dryden's play, Antony speaks to Ckopatra of her uncloying charms;

How I lov'd,
Witnefs.ye days and nights, and all ye hours,
That danc'd away with down upon your feet,
As all your business were to count my passion :
One day pass’d by, and nothing saw but love ;
Another came, and still 'twas only love :
The suns wêre weary'd out with looking on,
And I untir'd with loving.
I saw you ev'ry day, and all the day;
And ev'ry day was still but as the first;

So eager was I fill to see you more. (25) Give me, &c.] Nothing can be more natural than this wneafý Auctuation of mind fo peculiar to people deprived of the object which alone can please them, and without whom nothing can please. I know not of a more beautiful instance than in the first act of that fine play of Euripides; Hippolitus, towards the latter end of the act, which Mr. Smith has well copied (I might rather have said, translated) in his Phedra and Hippolitus, an excellent play, tho' greatly inferior in many material circumItances, and particularly the character of Phedra, to-the Greek, In our English play, Phædra, on her entrance, begins ;

Stay, virgins, stay, I'll rest my weary steps:
My strength forsakes me, &c.

Why

Omnes. The music, hoa!

Enter Mardian the Eunuch.
Cleo. Let it alone, let's to billiards : come Charmian,
Char. My arm is fore, best play with Mardian.

Cleo. As well a woman with an eunuch play'd,
As with a woman. Come, you'll play with me, sir?

Mar. As well as I can, madam.
Cleo. And when good will'is thew'd, tho't come to

short,
The actor may plead pardon. I'll none now.
Give me mine angle, we'll to the river, there
My music playing, far off I will betray
Tawny-finn’d fifhes, my bended hook shall pierce
Their slimy jaws; and, as I draw them up,
I'll think them every one an Antony,
And say, ah, ha! you're caught.

Char,

Why blaze these jewels round my wretched head:
Why all this labour'd elegance of dress?
Why flow these wanton curls in artful rings ?
Take, snatch them hence, &c.
Oh, my Lycon,
Oh, how I long to lay my weary head
On tender flow'ry beds and springing grass !
To stretch my limbs beneath the spreading thades
Of venerable oaks! to flake

my

thunt
With the cool nectar of refreshing iprings !
Lycon. I'll footh her phrenzy; come, Phædra, let's away,

Let's to the woods and lawns, and limpid Itreams.
Phed, Come, let's away, and thou most bright Diana,

Goddess of woods, immortal, chaste Diana,
Goddess presiding o’er the rapid race,
Place me, oh, place me in the dusty rins,
Where youthful charioteers contend for glory:
See how they mount and shake the flowing reins !
See, from the goal the fiery coursers bound!
Now they strain panting up the steepy hill,
Now sweep along its top, now neigh along its vale;
How the car raitles ! how its kindling wheels
Smoke in the whirl! The circling sand ascends,
And in the noble dust the chariot's loft.

H?

Char. 'Twas merry; when
You wager'd on your angling, when your Diver
Did hang a falt-fish on his hook, which he
With fervency drew up.

Cleo. That time !- -Oh, times !
I laught him out of patience, and that night
I laught him into patience; and next morn,
E’er the ninth hour, I drank him to his bed :
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword (26) Philippan.

ACT III. SCENE I.

Ambition, jealous of a too successful Friend. (27) Oh Silius, Silius, I have done enough. A lower place, note well, May make too great an act. For learn this, Silius, Better to leave undone, than by our deed Acquire too high a fame, when he we serve's away. SCENE V. Octavia's Entrance, what it should

have been. Why has thou stol’n upon us thus? You came not Like Cafar's fifter; the wife of Antony

Should

(26) Philippan.] This word, we are to suppose, was so called from the great actions it atchieved in the hands of its heroic mafter at Philippi; the fairest field of his fame, and of which he seems to have been raost proud. Antony too plumed himself on his descent from Hercules; so that this imitation of his ancestor was the more agreeable to him, who submitted to the like treatment from Omphale, whose tires and mantles the great Alcides put on, and plied her diftaff, while the wielded his club, and decked her. felf in his trophies.

(27) Oh, &c.] This is spoken by Ventidius, who bears a very considerable Thare in Mr. Dryden's tragedy: but it seems to me, that great man has misrepresented him, and instead of giving us the brave, old, honest, veteran Roman, hath given us a surly, rigid buffoon: unlike that Ventidius we so greatly admire in

his

Should have an army for an usher, and
The neighs of horse to tell of her approach,
Long ere she did appear. The trees by th’ way,
Should have borne men, and expectation fainted,
Longing for what it had not. Ñay, the dust
Should have ascended to the roof of heav'n,
Rais’d by your populous troops : but you are come
A market-maid to Rome, and have prevented
The ostent of our love; which left unshewn,
Is often left unlov'd; we should have met you
By sea and land, supplying every itage
With an augmented greeting.

Women.

Women are not
In their best fortunes strong; but want will perjure
The ne'er touch'd vestal.
Scene IX. Fortune forms our Judgment.

I see, mens' judgments are
A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike.

Loyalty. (28) Mine honesty, and I, begin to square ;

The his true character. Plutarch, as Mr. Theobald has observed, particularly takes notice, that Ventidius was careful to act only on lieutenancy, and cautious of aiming at any glory in his own name and person.

(28) Mine, &c.] After Enobarbus has said, that his honesty and he begin to quarrel, li. e. that his reason shews him to be mis. taken in his firm adherence to Antony) he immediately falls into this generous reflection: “ tho' loyalty stubbornly preserved to a master in his declined fortunes, seems folly in the eyes of fools ; fi. e. men who have not honour enough to think more wisely ;) yet he, who can be so obstinately loyal, will make as great a figure on record, as the conqueror."

Tlacobaldo