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The flight of the witches by moonlight is described with a wild gusto and delight: if the scene was written before' Macbeth,' Middleton deserves the credit of true poetical imagination:

Enter HECATE, STADLIN, HOPPO, and other Witches.

HEC. The moon's a gallant; see how brisk she rides!
STADLIN. Here's a rich evening, Hecate.
HEC. Ay, is 't not. wenches,

To take a journey of five thousand miles?
HOPPO. Ours will be more to-night.
HEC. Oh, it will be precious.
STAD. Briefly in the copse,

As we came through now.

Heard you the owl yet?

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FIRESTONE. They are all going a-birding to-night. They talk of fowls i' th' air that fly by day; I'm sure they'll be a company of foul sluts there to-night. If we have not mortality afeared, I'll be hanged, for they are able to putrefy it to infect a whole region. She spies me now.

HEC. What! Firestone, our sweet son?

FIRE. A little sweeter than some of you; or a dunghill were too good for one. HEC. How much hast there?

FIRE. Nineteen, and all brave plump ones; besides six lizards and three serpentine eggs.

HEC. Dear and sweet boy! What herbs hast thou?

FIRE. I have some mar-martin and mandragon.

HEC. Mar-maritin and mandragora thou wouldst say..

FIRE. Here's pannax too. I thank thee; my pan aches, I am sure, with kneeling down to cut 'em.

HEC. And Selago.

Hedge hyssop too! How near he goes my cuttings!

Were they all cropt by moonlight ?

FIRE. Every blade of 'em, or I'm a mooncalf, mother.

HEC. Hie thee home with 'em.

Look well to th' house to-night; I am for aloft.

FIRE. Aloft, quoth you? I would you would break your neck once, that I might have all quickly. [Aside.]-Hark, hark, mother! they are above the steeple already, flying over your head with a noise of musicians.

HEC. They are, indeed. Help me! help me! I'm too late else.

Song.

In the air above.

Come away, come away,
Hecate, Hecate, come away.

HEC. I come, I come, I come, I come;

With all the speed I may;

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[A Spirit descends in the shape of a cat.

[Above.] There's one come down to fetch his dues;
A kiss, a coll, a sip of blood;

And why thou stay'st so long, I muse, I muse,
Since th' air 's so sweet and good.

HEC. Oh, art thou come.

What news, what news?

SPIRIT. All goes still to our delight.

Either come, or else

Refuse, refuse.

HEC. Now, I am furnished for the flight.

FIRE. Hark, hark! The cat sings a brave treble in her own language.
HEC. [Ascending with the Spirit.] Now I go, now I fly,

Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I.

Oh, what dainty pleasure 'tis

To ride in the air,

When the moon shines fair,

And sing and dance, and toy and kiss!
Over woods, high rocks, and mountains,
Over seas, our mistress' fountains,
Over steep towers and turrets,

We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits.
No ring of bells to our ears sounds;
No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds;
No, not the noise of waters' breach,
Or cannon's roar our height can reach.
[Above.] No ring of bells, &c.

JOHN MARSTON.

JOHN MARSTON, a rough and vigorous satirist and dramatic writer, of whom little is known, produced his Malcontent,' a comedy, prior to 1600; his Antonio and Mellida,' a tragedy, in 1602; the Insatiate Countess,' ' What You Will,' and other plays, written between the latter date and 1634, when he died. He was also connected with Jonson and Chapman in the composition of the unfortunate comedy, Eastward Hoe.' In his subsequent quarrel with Jonson, Marston was satirised by Ben in his Poetaster,' under the name of Demetrius. Marston was author of two volumes of miscellaneous poetry, translations, and satires, one of which (Pigmalion's Image') was ordered to be burned for its licentiousness. Mr. Collier, who states that Marston seems to have attracted a good deal of attention in his own day, quotes from a contemporary diary the following anecdote: Nov. 21, 1602.-Jo. Marston, the last Christmas, when he danced with Alderman More's wife's daughter, a Spaniard born, fell into a strange commendation of her wit and beauty. When he had done, she thought to pay him home, and told him she thought he

was a poet. ""Tis true," said he, " for poets feign and lie; and so did I when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foul." This coarseness seems to have been characteristic of Marston: his comedies contain strong, biting satires; but he is far from being a moral writer. Hazlitt says his forte was not sympathy either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. The following humorous sketch of a scholar and his dog is worthy of Shakspeare:

I was a scholar: seven useful springs
Did I deflower in quotations

Of crossed opinions 'bout the soul of man;
The more I learnt, the more I learnt to doubt.
Delight, my spaniel, slept whilst I baused leaves,
Tossed o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words: and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins: and still my spaniel slept
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of Antick Donate: still my spaniel slept.
Still on went I; first, an sit anima;

Then, an it were mortal. O hold, hold; at that
They're at brain buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together: still my spaniel slept.
Then, whether 'twere corporeal, local, fixt,
Ex traduce, but whether 't had free-will
Or no, hot philosophers

Stood banding factions, all so strongly propt;
I staggered, knew not which was firmer part,
But thought, quoted, read, observed, and pried,
Stufft noting-books: and still my spaniel slept.
At length he waked, and yawned; and, by yon sky,
For aught I know, he knew as much as I.

From 'Antonio and Mellida.'-The Prologue.
The rawish dank of clumsy winter ramps
The fluent summer's vein; and drizzling sleet
Chilleth the wan, bleak cheek of the numbed earth,
While snarling gusts nibble the juiceless leaves

*

From the naked shudd'ring branch, and peels the skir
From off the soft and delicate aspects.

O now methinks a sullen tragic scene

Would suit the time with pleasing congruence.

May we be happy in our weak devoir,

And all part pleased in most wished content.

But sweat of Hercules can ne'er beget

So blest an issue. Therefore we proclaim,

If any spirit breathes within this round

Uncapable of weighty passion

As from his birth being hugged in the arms,
And nuzzled 'twixt the breasts of Happiness-

This prologue. for its passionate earnestness, and for the tragic note of preparation which it sounds, might have preceded one of those old tales of Thebes, or Pelops' line, which Milton has so highly commended, as free from the common error of the poets in his days.of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, brought in without discretion corruptly to gratify the people. "It is as solemn a preparative as the ing voice which he who saw th' Apocalypse heard cry."-CHARLES LAMB.

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Who winks and shuts his apprehension up
From common sense of what men were, and are;
Who would not know what men must be: let such
Hurry amain from our black-visaged shows;
We shall affright their eyes. But if a breast,
Nailed to the earth with grief; if any heart,
Pierced through with anguish, pant within this ring;
If there be any blood, whose heat is choked
And stifled with true sense of misery:

If aught of these strains fill this consort up,
They arrive most welcome. O that our power
Could lacquey or keep wing with our desires:
That with unused poize of stile and sense
We might weigh massy in judicious scale!

Yet here's the prop that doth support our hopes:
When our scenes faulter, or invention halts,
Your favour will give crutches to our faults.

ANTONIO, Son to ANDRUGIO, Duke of Genoa, whom PIERO, the Venetian prince, and father-in-law to ANTONIO, has cruelly murdered, kills PIERO's little son, JULIO, as a sacrifice to the ghost of ANDRUGIO.-The scene, a Church-yard: the time, Midnight.

JULIO. ANTONIO.

JULIO. Brother Antonio, are you here i' faith?

Why do you frown? Indeed my sister said,

That I should call you brother, that she did,

When you were married to her. Buss me: good truth,

I love you better than my father, 'deed.

ANTONIO. Thy father? gracious, O bounteous heaven,
I adore thy justice. Venit in nostras manus

Tandem vindicta, venit et tota quidem.

JUL. Truth, since my mother died, I loved you best.
Something hath angered you: pray you, look merrily.
ANT. I will laugh, and dimple my thin cheek
With capering joy; chuck, my heart doth leap
To grasp thy bosom. Time, place, and blood,
How fit you close together! heaven's tones
Strike not such music to immortal souls,
As your accordance sweets my breast withal.
Methinks I pace upon the front of Jove,
And kick corruption with a scornful heel,
Griping this flesh, disdain mortality.

O that I knew which joint, which side, which limb
Were father all, and had no mother in it;

That I might rip it vein by vein, and carve revenge
In bleeding traces: but since 'tis mixed together,
Have at adventure, pell-mell, no reverse.
Come hither, boy; this is Andrugio's hearse.

JUL. O God, you'll hurt me. For my sister's sake,
Pray, you don't hurt me. And you kill me, 'deed
I'll tell my father.

ANT. Oh, for thy sister's sake, I flag revenge.

[ANDRUGIO's ghost cries 'Revenge.' ANT. Stay, stay, dear father, fright mine eyes no more. Revenge as swift as lightning, bursteth forth

And clears his heart. Come, pretty, tender child,

It is not thee I hate, or thee I kill.

Thy father's blood that flows within thy veins,

Is it I loathe; is that, revenge must suck.

I love thy soul: and were thy heart lapt up

In any flesh but in Piero's blood,

I would thus kiss it: but, being his, thus, thus,
And thus I'll punch it. Abandon fears:

Whilst thy wounds bleed, my brows shall gush out tears.

JUL. So you will love me, do even what you will.

[Diss.

ANT. Now barks the wolf against the full-cheekt moon;

Now lions' half-clamed entrails roar for food;

Now croaks the toad, and night-crows screech aloud,
Fluttering 'bout casements of departing souls!

Now gape the graves, and through their yawns let loose
Imprisoned spirits to revisit earth:

And now, swart Night, to swell thy hour out,
Behold I spurt warm blood in thy black eyes.

[From under the earth a grow.

Howl not, thou putry mould; groan not, ye graves;
Be dumb, all breath. Here stands Andrugio's son,
Worthy his father. So I feel no breath;

His jaws are fallen, his dislodged soul is filed.
And now there's nothing but Piero left.
He is all Piero, father all. This blood,

This breast, this heart, Piero ali:

Whom thus I mangle, sprite of Julio,

Forget this was thy trunk. I live thy friend.

Mayst thou be twined with the soft'st embrace
Of clear eternity: but thy father's blood

I thus make incense of to Vengeance.

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To stir,

And breathe defiance to black obloquy.

Wherein Fools are Happy.

Even in that, note a fool's beatitude;
He is not capable of passion;

Wanting the power of distinction,

He bears an unturned sail with every wind:

Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike.

I never saw a fool lean: the chub-faced fop

Shines sleek with full-crammed fat of happiness:
Whilst studious contemplation sucks the juice
From wizard's cheeks, who making curious search
For nature's secrets, the First Innating Cause
Laughs them to scorn, as man doth busy apea
When they will zany men.

ROBERT TAYLOR-WILLIAM ROWLEY-CYRIL TOURNEUR.

Among the other dramatists at this time may be mentioned ROBERT TAYLOR, author of the Hog hath Lost his Pearl;' WILLIAM ROWLEY, an actor and joint-writer with Middleton and Dekker, who produced several plays; CYRIL TOURNEUR, author of two good

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