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midst of this his fondness for Mariamne he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Antony, who immediately summoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was there laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Antony's desire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death, if any such violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured, with all his art and rhetoric, to set out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconsiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly showed, according to Joseph's interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous instance of a wild unreasonable passion quite put out, for a time, those little remains of affection she still had for her lord. Her thoughts were so wholly taken up with the cruelty of his orders, that she could not consider the kindness that produced them, and therefore represented him in her imagination, rather under the frightful idea of a murderer than a lover.

Herod was at length acquitted and dismissed by Mark Antony, when his soul was all in flames for his Mariamne; but before their meeting, he

was not a little alarmed at the report he had heard of his uncle's conversation and familiarity with her in his absence. This, therefore, was the first discourse he entertained her with, in which she found it no easy matter to quiet his suspicions. But at last he appeared so well satisfied of her innocence, that from reproaches and wranglings he fell to tears and embraces. Both of them wept very tenderly at their reconciliation, and Herod poured out his whole soul to her in the warmest protestations of love and constancy; when amidst all his sighs and languishings she asked him, Whether the private orders he left with his uncle Joseph were an instance of such an inflamed affection? The jealous king was immediately roused at so unexpected a question, and concluded his uncle must have been too familiar with her, before he would have discovered such a secret. In short, he put his uncle to death, and very difficultly prevailed upon himself to spare Mariamne.

After this he was forced on a second journey into Egypt, when he committed his lady to the care of Sohemus, with the same private orders he had before given his uncle, if any mischief befel himself. In the meanwhile Mariamne so won upon Sohemus by her presents and obliging conversation, that she drew all the secret from him, with which Herod had intrusted him; so that after his return, when he flew to her with all the transports of joy and love, she received him

coldly with sighs and tears, and all the marks of indifference and aversion. This reception so stirred up his indignation, that he had certainly slain her with his own hands, had not he feared he himself should have become the greatest sufferer by it. It was not long after this, when he had another violent return of love upon him: Mariamne was therefore sent for to him, whom he endeavoured to soften and reconcile with all possible conjugal caresses and endearments; but she declined his embraces, and answered all his fondness with bitter invectives for the death of her father and her brother. This behaviour so incensed Herod, that he very hardly refrained from striking her; when in the heat of their quarrel there came in a witness suborned by some of Mariamne's enemies, who accused her to the king of a design to poison him. Herod was now prepared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack; who in the extremity of his torture confessed that his mistress's aversion to the king arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it. This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence that Joseph had before him, on the like occasion. Nor would Herod rest here; but accused her with great vehemence of a design upon his life, and, by his authority with the judges, had her

publicly condemned and executed. Herod soon after her death grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs into a solitary forest, and there abandoning himself to all the black considerations which naturally arise from a passion made up of love, remorse, pity, and despair. He used to rave for his Mariamne, and to call upon her in his distracted fits; and in all probability would soon have followed her, had not his thoughts been seasonably called off from so sad an object by public storms, which at that time very nearly threatened him.

XII.

THEODOSIUS AND CONSTANTIA.

Illa, Quis et me, inquit, miseram, et te perdidit, Orpheu?
Jamque vale: feror ingenti circumdata nocte,
Invalidasque tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas.

Virg. Georg. iv. 494.

Then thus the bride: What fury seized on thee,
Unhappy man! to lose thyself and me?
And now farewell! involv'd in shades of night,
For ever I am ravish'd from thy sight:

In vain I reach my feeble hands to join
In sweet embraces, ah! no longer thine.

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Dryden.

CONSTANTIA was a woman of extraordinary wit and beauty, but very unhappy in a father, who, having arrived at great riches by his own industry, took delight in nothing but his money; Theodosius was the younger son of a decayed family, of great parts and learning, improved by a genteel and virtuous education. When he was in the twentieth year of his age he became acquainted with Constantia, who had not then

* Dr. Langhorn's Theodosius and Constantia is founded upon this

paper.

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