I've gone all night faith, I'll lie down and fieep.
But loft! no tedfellow ! -Oh, gods and goddetles !

[Seeing the body.
These flow'rs are like the pleasures of the world;
This bloody man the care on't. I hope, I dreain;
For, sure, I thought I was a cave-keeper :
And cook to honeit creatures. But 'tis not fo;
'Twas but a tolt of nothing, shot at nothing,
Which the brain makes of fumes. Our very eyes,
Are fometimes like our judgments, blind. Good faith,
I tremble still with fear; but if there be
Yet left in heaven, as small (22) a drop of pity
Ås a wren's eye: oh, gods! a part of it!
The dream's here ftill; even when I wake, it is
Without me, as within me; not imagin'd, felt.

ACT V. SCENE II.

Routed Army (23) No blame be to you, Sir, for all was lost, But that the heavens fought : the king himself,

Of

(22) A drop of pity:] So Othello says,

I thou'd have found in some place of my soul

A drop of patience. Mr. Theobald observes, “tho' this expression is very pathetic in both places of our author, it brings to my mind a very humorous pafíage in the Arcarnenses of Ariftophanes. An Athenian rustic, in time of war, is robbed of a yoke of oxen by the Baotians: he has almost cry'd his eyes out for the loss of his cattle, and comes to beg for a drop of peace in a quill, to anoint his eyes withe

Mob,

&c.
One drop of peace at least, I pray you, pour

Into this quill, to bathe mine eyes. (23) No blan:e.] This description is truly claffical, and deserves to be placed in competition with the finest in Homer and Virgil,

both

Of his wings deftitute, the army broken,
And but the backs of Britons seen ; all flying
Thro' a strait lane, the enemy

full-hearted,
Lolling the tongue with flaught'ring, having work
More plentiful, than tools to do't, îtruck down
Some mortally, fome slightly touch’d, fome falling
Merely through fear, that the strait pass was daının'd
With dead inen, hurt behind, and cowards living
To die with lengthen'd shame.

Death.

(24) I, in mine own woe charm’d, Could not find death, where I did hear him groan ;

Nor

both of whom abound with numberless passages of the like nature : the learned reader will want no direction to find them out; however such as are not so well acquainted with the ancients, may be agreeably amused by turning to the 12th Iliad, and 1220 line, and the latter end of the IIth book of the Æneid. In Lucan too, he will meet with some fine descriptions of routs and Naughters: in the 7th book of his Pharsalia, he has something very like Shakespear's

-Having work
More plentiful than tools to do't.
The poet says ;

The victors murder, and the vanquish'd bleed ;
Their weary hands the tir'd destroyers ply,

Scarce can these kill, so fast as those can die. Rowe. But perhaps, no poet, ancient or modern, can equal our blind bard on this subject ; his battle of the angers, their rout and headlong expulsion from heaven are too well known and admired to need particular remarking here.

(24) charm’d, &c.] Alluding to the common superstition of charms being powerful enough to keep men unhurt in battle. It was derived from our Saxon ancestors, and so is common to us with the Germans, who are above all other people given to this fuperftition, which made Erasmus, where, in his Morice Encomium, he gives to each nation his proper characteristic, say, 'the Germais please themselves with the strength of their bodies, and their knowledge of magic.' And Prior, in his Alma;

North

K 5

Nor feel him where he struck. This ugly monster,
'Tis strange he hides him in fresh eups, soft beds,
Sweet words; or hath more ministers then we,
That draw his knives i'th' war,

North-Britons hence have second fight,
And Germans free from gun fhot fight.

Warb. Aubrey, in the ist Scene, and 5th Act of the Bloody Brother,speaks ing of death, says;

Am I afraid of death, of dying nobly?
Of dying in mine innocence uprightly?
Have I met death in all his forms and fears,
Now on the points of swords, now pitch'd on lances.
In fires, in storms of arrows, battles, breaches,
And shall I now shrink from him, when he courts mo
Smiling and full of sanctity.

General Observation.

Mr. Pope (says Steevens) supposed the story of this play to have been borrow'd from a novel of Boccace ; but he was mistaken, as an imitation of it is found in an old story-book entitled, Woftward for Smelts. This imitation differs in as many particulars from the Italian novelist, as from Shakespear, though they concur in the more considerable parts of the fable. It was published in a quarto pamphlet 1603. This is the only copy of it which I have hitherto seen.

There is a late entry of it in the books of the Stationers' Com. pany, Jan. 1619, where it is said to have been written by Kitt of Kingston .

Hamleer

Prodigies.
N the most high and (1) palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead
Did squeek and gibber in the Roman Streets,

Stars (1) Palmy] i e. Victorious to gibber, is to chatter or make a gnashing with the teeth Disaster, (says Skinner, and as its derivation plainly speaks) fignifies malignum fidus, an evil ftar; and by the astrologists it was used for an evil or unlucky conjunction of ftars; the great repute of that art, and the influence the stars were supposed to have on man's life, gave it the signification we now use it in. Shakespear uses it in its primary sense. The learned reader will easily recollect the accounts given by the hiftorians, of the prodigies preceding the death of Julius Cæfa!: our author seems neither to have been unacquainted with that fine digreflion in Virgil's first Georgic concerning them, nor the account of them in Ovid, which 'tis probable he might have imitated from Virgil; I shall beg leave to fubjoin them both.

: * He first the fate of Cæfar did foretel,

And pitied Rome, when Rome in Cæfar fell.
In Iron clouds conceal'd the public light,
And impious mortals fear'd eternal night.
Nor was the fact foretold by him alone;
Nature herself Atood forth, and seconded the sun :

Earth,
The Sun.

Stars shone with trains of firé, dews of blood fell,
Disasters veil'd the sun, and the moist star,

Upore

}

Earth, air and seas with prodigies were fign'd,
And birds obscene and howling dogs divin’d.
What rocks did Æta's bellowing mouth expire
From her torn entrails; and what foods of fire !
What clanks were heard in Gerinan skies afar,
Of arms and armies rushing to the war!
Dire earthquakes rent the folid Aips below
And from their summits Thook th'eternal snow:
Pale fpe&res in the close of night were seen,
And voices heard of more than mortal men,
In filent groves dumb sheep and oxen spoke,
And streams ran backward, and their beds forfook:
The yawning earth disclos'd th' abyss of hell,
The weeping statues did the war foretel,
And holy sweat from brazen idols fell.
Then rising in his might the king of floods,
Rush'd thro' the forests, tore the lofty woods,
And rolling onward, with a sweepy (way,
Bore houses, herds, and lab'ring hinds away :
Blood sprang from wells,wolves howl'd in towns by night,
And boding victims did the priests affright;
Such peals of thunder never pour'd from high,
Nor forky lightnings flash'd from fnch a sullen sky.
Red meteors ran across th' ethereal space,
Stars disappear'd, and comets took their place.

Dryden. Garth's Ovid, B. 15. p. 354.

Among the clouds, were heard the dire alarms
Of echoing trumpets, and of clanging arms:
The sun's pale image gave so faint a light,
That the sad earth was almost veil'd in night ;
The æther's face with fiery meteors glow'd,
With storms of hail were mingled drops of blood :
A dusky hue the morning star o'erspread,
And the moon's orb was stain'd with spots of red:
In every place portentous shrieks were heard,
The fatal warnings of th' infernal bird :
In every place the marble melts to' tears,
While in the groves, rever'd thro' length of years,
Boding and awful sounds the ear invade,
And folemn music warbles thro' the shade :

No