That ever yet they heard.

MACD. Hum! I guess at it.

Rosse. Your caftle is furpriz'd, your wife and babes

Savagely flaughter'd; to relate the manner,

Were, on the quarry of thefe murther'd deer,

To add the death of you.

MAL. Merciful heaven!

What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows
Give forrow words; the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

MACD. My children too!

ROSSE. Wife, children, fervants, all that could be found..
MACD. And I must be from thence !-My wife kill'd too!

ROSSE. I have faid.

MAL. Be comforted.

Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge

To cure this deadly grief.

MACD. He has no children ?-All my pretty ones?

Did you fay, all? What all? Oh hell-kite !-All?

What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam,
At one fell fwoop ?-

MAL. Dispute it like a man,

MAC. I fhall do fo,

But I must also feel it as a man.

I cannot but remember fuch things were,

That were moft pretious to me :-Did heav'n look on,,

And would not take their part ?-Sinful Macduff!
They were all ftruck for thee !-Naught that I am,

Not for their own demerits, but for mine,

Fell flaughtered on their fouls!-Heay'n reft them now!

VERSE XIV.

WITH KINGS AND COUNSELLORS OF THE EARTH, WHICH BUILT DESOLATE PLACES FOR THEMSELVES.

THE meaning of this laft expreffion is very dubious.-Some imagine, that Job means forests and parks, places, which kings and great men frequently keep up in good order for their exercife and amufement.-Others think, that by defolate places is meant, houses erected in folitary groves: for princes and great men are often captivated with such private receffes, where they may pass their time at eafe, without being disturbed by a numerous train of formal vifitors.-Others again take the meaning to

be,

be, that kings and great men erect flately fabricks at an immenfe expence upon fuch places as are decayed and run to ruin, in order to perpetuate and immortalize their names and lastly, by these defolate places, we may understand fuch fepulchral monuments as kings and great men generally erect for the pompous interment of themfelves and their families and then the obvious sense of the text will be this. If I had died, I fhould then have laid in the grave, in as much peace and tranquility as those monarchs and rich nobles of the earth, who build themselves coftly tombs whilst they live, for their filent repofitories after their decease.-And this expofition is, in our opinion, the most natural.-This affectation was carried to fuch a pitch of extravagance amongst the Romans, that they were forced to make a law to reftrain it.-As for the Egyptians, they bestowed more care and coft in erecting their fepulchral monuments than in their palaces, and other places of their most frequent refidence.— Even the patriarch Abraham purchased a burying place before he built himself a house. The pious Jofeph of Arimathea had a fepulchre hewed out of a roek; and Abfalom, in his life time, took and reared up a pillar in the king's dale, as he had no fon to keep up his name in remembrance.-It was customary likewife in former ages to fill those coftly houses, or graves, with immense treasures.-Jofephus tells us, that Hyrcanus opened David's fepulchre, and took from thence three thousand talents an immense fum indeed! In procefs of time Herod opened it again, with the fame avaricious.view as Hyrcanus had done before, but found his expectations forely balked. Herodotus, moreover, tells us, that the famous Semiramis, having erected a very pompous monument, ordered the following infcription upon it. "Whatever king "fshall fucceed here, and wants money, let him open this tomb, and he fhall find fuf"ficient to answer all his occafions." Darius accordingly, fome ages afterwards, being reduced to difficulties, and feeing fuch a temptation before his eyes, made an attempt to rifle it, but instead of the treafure he expected, found nothing but the following fevere reprehenfion: Unless thou hadst been exceffively covetous, thou wouldst never have opened the graves of the dead to fupply thy exorbitant defires.-If then Job alluded to this custom, as very probably he did, his meaning amounts to this juft reflection; that neither power, nor wisdom, nor riches, are the leaft defence against the ftroke of death. Death will not obey the authority of kings, nor doth the grifly monarch regard their frowns: the moft fubtle counsellors are not able to evade his power. There is no eloquence, no rhetorick can perfuade death to be partial. All the gold and riches in the world cannot bribe him to with-hold his dart. "I, faith "Job, fhould have found kings, counsellors, and rich men all lying promiscuously in the grave; and we should all without diftinction have refted together."

Pallida Mors, æquo

Pede, pulfat pauperum Tabernas,

Regumque turres.

HOR.

Which

1i2

Which paffage the late Mr. Southern has thus paraphraftically tranflated.

Sooner or later all things pafs away,

And are no more.-The beggar and the king
With equal fteps tread forward to their end;
Though they appear of different natures now,
Not of the fame days make of Providence,
They meet at laft; the reconciling grave
Swallows diftinction first, that made them foes,
Then both alike lie down in peace together.

It is obfervable, that Job, throughout this whole execration, or foliloquy, only curfes his own birth-day, and wishes that he had never been born, but carries it no farther there is not that malignity vifible in it, as is too confpicuous in that of Achilles in Homer; or that of Northumberland in Shakespeare.

The Execration of the former runs thus:

Oh! would to all th' immortal powers above,

Apollo, Pallas, and almighty Jove!

That not one Trojan might be left alive,
And not a Greek of all the race furvive;
Might only we the vast destruction shun,
And only we destroy th' accurfed town!

POPE's Iliad, Book xvs.

The tranflator observes upon this paffage, that Achilles from his over flowing gall vents this execration: the Trojans he hates as profeffed enemies, and he detefts the Grecians as people, who had with calmness overlooked his wrongs. Some of the ancient criticks, not entring into the manners of Achilles, would have expunged this imprecation, as uttering an univerfal malevolence to mankind. This violence, however, agrees perfectly well with his implacable character.-Monf. de la Motte has a lively remark upon the abfurdity of this wish. Upon the fuppofition that Jupiter had granted it, if all the Trojans and Greeks were deftroyed, and only Achilles and Patroclus left to conquer Troy, he asks, what would be the victory without any enemies, and the triumph without any fpectators? But the answer is very obvious.Homer intends to paint man in paffion: the wishes and fchemes of fuch are feldom conformable to reafon; and the manners are preferved the better, the lefs they are reprefented to be fo.-This obfervation of the French critick brings into the mind of the tranflator that curfe in Shakefpear, where that admirable mafter of nature makes Northumberland, in the rage of his paffion, wish for an univerfal deftruction."

Now let not nature's hand

Keep the wild flood confin'd! Let order die,

And

And let the world no longer be a stage
To feed contention in a lingring act:
But let one spirit of the firft-born Cain
Reign in all bofoms, that each heart being fet
On bloody courfes, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!

We shall mention but one execration more that comes nearer to our mark, as it is grounded on the afflictions of a tender, indulgent mother, for the lofs of her husband, and the fudden downfal of her unhappy fon. As it is undoubtedly an aggravation to any one's misfortunes, to fink in a moment, as it were, from the highest flow of profperity to the lowest adverfity; so her lamentation and execration of her natal day is judiciously introduced by Homer, in his 22d Iliad, in order to excite his reader's pity. Since therefore there is no small affinity between her diftrefs and that of our illuftrious Patriarch; fince both are the juft objects of the most tender emotion; and fince the paffions are therein most beautifully touched, we imagine, that the quotation will not only be pertinent, but entertaining.

ANDROMACHE's lamentation for the lofs of her husband Hector, and her fears for her young orphan Aftyanax.

O wretched hufband of a wretched wife!
Born with one fate to one unhappy life!
Why was my birth to great Aëtion ow'd,
And why was all that tender care bestow'd!
Would I had never been !-O thou, the ghoft
Of my dead husband miserably lost !
Thou to the difmal realms forever gone!
And I abandon'd, defolate alone!

An only child, once comfort of my pains,
Sad product now of hapless love remains!
No more to smile upon his fire! No friend
To help him now! No father to defend !

For fhould he 'fcape the fword, the common doom,
What wrongs attend him, and what griefs to come?
Ev'n from his own paternal roof expell'd,
Some ftranger plows his patrimonial field.
The day, that to the fhades the father fends,
Robs the fad orphan of his father's friends.
He, wretched outcaft of mankind! appears
Forever fad, forever bath'd in tears;

Amongst

Amongst the happy, unregarded he,

Hangs on the robe, or trembles at the knee,
While those his father's former bounty fed,
Nor reach the goblet, nor divide the bread:
The kindeft but his prefent wants allay,
To leave him wretched the fucceeding day.
Frugal compaffion! heedlefs, they who boast
Both parents ftill, nor feel what he has loft,
Shall cry-"Be gone, thy father feasts not here;
The wretch obeys, retiring with a tear.
Thus wretched, thus retiring all in tears,
Το my fad foul Aftyanax appears!
Forc'd by repeated infults to return,
And to his widow'd mother vainly mourn.
He, who with tender delicacy bred,

With princes fported, and on dainties fed,
And when still evening gave him up to rest,
Sunk foft in down upon the nurse's breaft,
Muft-ah! what muft he not ?-Whom Ilion calls
Aftyanax, from her well guarded walls,

Is now that name no more, unhappy boy!
Since now no more the father guards his Troy.
But thou, my Hector, ly'ft expos'd in air,
Far from thy parents, and thy confort's care.
Whose hand in vain directed by her love,
The martial scarf, and robe of triumph wove.
Now to devouring flames be these a prey,
Ufeless to thee, from this accurfed day!
Yet let the facrifice at least be paid,

An honour to the living, not the dead!

VERSE XVIII.

THERE THE PRISONERS REST TOGETHER, THEY HEAR NOT THE VOICE OF THE OPPRESSOR.

"THE account given us of the treatment of the chriftian flaves in Mequinez, is a lively comment on this paffage :-their respective guardians, or task masters, "deliver them over night, as fo many sheep, to another; who is appointed to take charge of all who fecure them in one house till next morning, and then they hear the doleful echo of COME OUT TO WORK."

SCOTT.

VERSE