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Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 't were in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
And often did I strive

To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

-My dream was lengthened after life;
O, then began the tempest to my soul!
I passed, methought, the melancholy flood
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger soul
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick;
Who cried aloud,-" What scourge for perjury
"Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"
And so he vanished: Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud,-
"Clarence is come,—false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,—
"That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury;-
"Seize on him, furies, take him to your torment !”—
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.
O, Brackenbury, I have done these things,-
That now give evidence against my soul,-

For Edward's sake; and see how he requites me!-
O Heaven! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee,
But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds,

Yet execute thy wrath on me alone:

O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children!—
I pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me;

My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep.

SHAKSPEARE.

20.-HAMLET'S ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS.

SPEAK the speech, I

pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trip pingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus: but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. Pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of Nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end is to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the Time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve: the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

SHAKSPEARE.

SOLILOQUIES.

1.-HENRY THE FOURTH'S SOLILOQUY ON SLEEP.

How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O Sleep! O gentle Sleep,
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness!

Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great
Under the canopies of costly state,

And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody?

O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile

In loathsome beds; and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?

Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge;
And, in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
With deafening clamours in the slippery clouds
That with the hurly death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude;
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low-lie-down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

SHAKSPEARE.

2.-LADY RANDOLPH'S SOLILOQUY.

YE woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom
Accords with my soul's sadness, and draws forth
The voice of sorrow from my bursting heart,

R

Farewell a while: I will not leave you long;
For in your shades I deem some spirit dwells,
Who, from the chiding stream or groaning oak,
Still hears and answers to Matilda's moan.
Oh Douglas! Douglas! if departed ghosts
Are e'er permitted to review this world,
Within the circle of that wood thou art,
And, with the passion of immortals, hear'st
My lamentation; hear'st thy wretched wife
Weep for her husband slain, her infant lost.
My brother's timeless death I seem to mourn,
Who perished with thee on this fatal day:
To thee I lift my voice; to thee address
The plaint which mortal ear has never heard.
O disregard me not; though I am called
Another's now, my heart is wholly thine.
Incapable of change, affection lies

Buried, my Douglas, in thy bloody grave.

HOME.

3. CATO'S SOLILOQUY ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

It must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!

Else, whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?—
'Tis the Divinity that stirs within us:

"Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates Eternity to man.

Eternity!-thou pleasing-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it.-
Here will I hold. If there's a Power above,
(And that there is, all Nature cries aloud

Through all her works), He must delight in virtue:
And that which He delights in must be happy.

But when? or where? This world was made for Cæsar?

I'm weary of conjectures-this must end them.

[Laying his hand on his sword.

Thus I am doubly armed. My death and life,

My bane and antidote, are both before me.
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.-
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

ADDISON.

4.-HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them?—To die—to sleep-
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die—to sleep-

To sleep!-perchance to dream-ay, there's the rub.—
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.-There's the respect,

That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To groan and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
(That undiscovered country, from whose bourn

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