1.3

Jul. Yon light is not day-light, I know it well;
It is some meteor which the fun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua ;

Came dancing forth shaking his dewy hair
And hurles his glistering beams thro gloomy air.

Milton in his Paradise Lost.

Now morn her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl,

The morn,

Wak'd by the circling hours, with rofy hand
Unbarr'd the gates of light.

And now went forth the morn,
Such as in highest heaven, array'd in gold
Empyreal, from before her vanish'd night
Shot thro' with orient beams.

T

There is fomething rather too puerile (I think) in this conceit of Milton's:

Many more might be produced from each of these poets: I have only selected those where particular notice is taken of the morning as a person; there are numberless admirable descriptions of the several circumstances that attend the rifing of the Day, which occafion many beautiful images, proper to the season; these would be too long to infert here; I shall only add a few more lines from Beaumont and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess; they likewife have many fine expreffions of the morn, to fet in competition with their brother poets; and which indeed of our English bards have not? Taylor the Water-poet boafts, that he has expreft the rifing of the fun, the morning, (I think) a thousand different ways. The following is from the latter end of the 4th Act of the Faithful Shepherdess.

See the day begins to break
And the light shoots like a streak
Of subtle fire, the wind blows cold,
While the morning doth unfold:

Now the birds begin to rouse,
And the squirrel from the boughs,
Leaps to get in nuts and fruit;
The early lark that erst was mute,

Carols to the rifing day,

Many a note and many a lay.

10

14

Hence Milton took the hint of the following lines in his inimitable L'Allegro:

To hear the lark begin his flight

And finging startle the dull night,
From his watch-tow'r in the skies
Till the dappled dawn doth rife.

Then

Then stay a while, thou shalt not go so foon.
Rom. Let me then stay, let me be ta'en and dye;

If thou wilt have it so, I am content.
I'll say yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow;
I'll say it is the nightingale that beats
The vaulty heav'ns so high above our heads,
And not the lark, the messenger of morn.
Come death, and welcome; Juliet wills it fo.
How is't my foul? let's talk, it is not day.

ACT IV.

SCENE III.

Juliet's Soliloquy, on drinking the Potion.
Farewel-God knows when we shall meet again!
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
I'll call them back again to comfort me.
Nurse what should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone :
Come vial-what if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I of force be marry'd to the count?
No, no, this shall forbid it; lye thou there

१

Pointing to a dagger.

What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath ministred, to have me dead,
Left in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo ?
I fear, it is; and yet, methinks, it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man.
How, if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Comes to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stified in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And

And there be strangled ere my Romeo comes ?
Or, if I live, is it not very like,

The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,
(As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packt;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festring in his shroud; where, as they say,
At fome hours in the night, spirits refort-)
Alas, alas! is it not like, that I

So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks, like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad.-
Or, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
(Invironed with all these hideous fears,)
And madly play with my fore-father's joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my defp'rate brains ?
O look, methinks, I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point. - Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

[She throws herself on the bed.

ACT V. SCENE I.

Romeo's Description of, and Discourse with, the Apothecary.

Well, Juliet, I will lye with thee to night; Let's fee for means- O mischief! thou art fwi't To enter in the thought of defperate men!

I do

(9) I do remember an apothecary,
And hereabouts he dwells, whom late I noted
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of fimples.; meager were his looks;
Sharp mifery had worn him to the bones:
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuft, and other skins
Of ill-shap'd p'd fishes ; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes;
Green earthen pots, bladders, and mufty secds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of rofes
Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show.
Noting this penury; to myself, I faid,
An if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is prefent death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would fell it him.
Oh, this same thought did but fore-run my need,
And this fame needy man must fell it me.
As I remember, this should be the house.
Being holy day, the beggar's shop is shut:
What, ho! apothecary!

(9) I do, &c.] Garth, in his dispensary, hath endeavoured to imitate this excellent description of Shakespear's: the lines them Helves will be the best proof of his fuccess:

His shop the gazing vulgars eyes employs,
With foreign trinkets and domestic toys,
Here mummies lay, most reverently stale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail :
Not far from fome huge shark's devouring head,
The flying fish their finny pinions spread:
Aloft, in rows large poppy-heads were strung,
And near, a scaly alligator hung:

In this place drugs, in musty heaps decay'd :

In that, dry'd bladders, and drawn teeth are laid.

Longinus recommends a judicious choice of the most suitable circumstances, as elegantly productive of the fublime; I much queRion whether Dr. Garth's description will stand the test, thus confider'd, particularly in the last circumftance,

Rom. Come hither, man; I see, that thou art poor;

Hold, there is forty ducats; let me have
A dram of poison, such soon-speeding geer,
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath,
As violently as hafty powder fir'd
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.

Ap. Such mortal drugs I have, but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them.

Rom. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,
And fear'st to die? famine is in thy cheeks;
Need and oppression stare within thine eyes,
Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back:
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich,
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
Ap. My poverty, but not my will, consents.
Rom. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
Ap. Put this in any liquid thing you will,
And drink it off, and if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would dispatch you ftraight.

Rom. There is thy gold; worse poison to mens fouls,
Doing more murthers in this loathsom world,
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not fell:
I fell thee poifon, thou hast fold me none.
Farewel, buy food, and get thee into flesh.

SCENE