Byr. Do it, and, if at one blow thou art short,

Give one and thirty; I'll endure them all.
Hold! stay a little! Comes there yet no mercy?
High heaven curse these exemplary proceedings;
When justice fails, they sacrifice our example.

Hang. Let me beseech you, I may cut your hair.

Byr. Out, ugly image of my cruel justice,
Yet wilt thou be beforehand?, Stay my will,
Or by the will of heaven, I'll strangle thee.

Vit. My lord, you make too much of this your body,

Which is no more your own.

Byr. Nor is it yours.

I'll take my death with all the horrid rites
And representments of the dread it merits.
Let tame nobility and nummed fools,
That apprehend not what they undergo,
Be such exemplary and formal sheep.
I will not have him touch me till I will.

You wish my quiet, yet give cause of fury:
Think you to set rude winds upon the sea,
Yet keep it calm; or cast me in a sleep
With shaking of my chains about mine ears.
O honest soldiers, you have seen me free
From any care of many thousand deaths,
Yet of this one, the manner doth amaze me.
View, view this wounded bosom; how much bound
Should that man make me that would shoot it through !
Is it not pity, I should lose my life

By such a bloody and infamous stroke."

With the following illustration of the nature of man to

pine after what he has not, and neglect that which he has.

"Men ne'er are satisfied with what they have;
But as a man, match'd with a lovely wife,
When his most heavenly theory of her beauties
Is dull'd and quite exhausted with his practice,
He brings her forth to feasts, where he, alas !
Falls to his viands with no thoughts like others
That think him blest in her, and they, poor men,
Court and make faces, offer service, sweat
With their desire's contention, break their brains
For jests and tales; sit mute and loose their looks

Far out of wit and out of countenance:
So all men else do, what they have, transplant,
And place their wealth in thirst of what they want."

And Byron's comparison of beasts with men.

"Noble happy beasts,

That die not having to their wills to live :
They use no deprecations, nor complaints,
Nor suit for mercy: amongst them the lion
Serves not the lion, nor the horse the horse,
As man serves man. When men most shew their spirits
In valour, and their utmost dare to do,

They are compar'd to lions, wolves, and boars;
But, by conversion, none will say a lion
Fights as he had the spirit of a man."

We conclude our enormous extracts from the tragedies of Chapman, which we fear exceed the space which their intrinsic worth has a right to claim. Should the impatience of our readers be such as to demand a farther excuse, we can allege the extreme scarcity of these works, which renders it a very trying task to leave buried in oblivion any parts of these writings which betray the genius of our author, however they may be disfigured by his absurdities. We will moreover observe this, that these absurdities lie on the surface, but that the excellent sense of much of Chapman's writings is only to be discovered after attentive consideration and repeated perusal. His expressions are frequently quaint, his language often forced, much of it borrowed from the Latin, and all of it employed rather for its force, than either its elegance or beauty. Another serious grievance to those who peruse only the flowing productions of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease, will be found in the crabbedness of the versification and the general absence of rhythm in these works. But he who will not dig for precious ore is unworthy of it. And we may safely promise our readers, that a laborious investigation of Chapman's meaning, even when it sometimes appears most obscure, will be attended with a copious reward of gratification.

Of the remaining tragedies, we have not much to say-the truth is, the works of this author are most unequal. In different parts of the same play, we find fustian and excellent sense, rhodomontade and beautiful observations, mixed together in strange confusion. But in different plays, it has sometimes happened, that he has never once hit on the happy vein, but raved on from prologue to epilogue without one single moment of true inspiration. We may safely assert this of the Casar and Pompey. The Revenge for Honour is considerably better, but, superior as it is to the other, it does not afford us a single good extract. From the Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, however, something good might be gleaned, had we room for it; as, for instance, the feigned madness of the emperor, and the struggle between Edward and his aunt, Isabella, which should be first put to death, " a strained courtesy at a bitter feast," as the villanous Alphonsus calls it. But, on the whole, the play is a bloody and clumsy production, and, as we before observed of it and the Revenge for Honour, entirely divested of the descriptive and didactic poetry which so often graces the plays from which we have SO largely extracted. The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois we regret to say we have never seen. rarity of the old plays is such, that they are only to be found in some publie libraries, and in the extensive hoards of private collectors; and in such applications as we have reluctantly caused to be made, we confess, we have rather found the exclusive spirit of the monopolist, than the liberality of the enlightened lover of literature.

The

Maurice, Printer, Fenchurch-street.

END OF VOL. IV.

Alphath, Ben Mohammed Abu Nassar, 29. Castro, Joseph Rodriguez de, 21.