Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

Jul. Yon light is not day-light, I know it well
It is some meteor which the fun exhales,

То

Came dancing forth shaking his dewy hair,

And hurles his glistering beams thro' gloomy air.
Milton in his Paradise Loft.

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

The morn,
Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy 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 vanilh'd night

Shot thro' with orient beams. There is something rather too puerile (I think) in this conseit 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 rising of the day, which occasion many beautiful images proper to the season; these would be too long to insert here; I shall only add a few more lines from Beaumont and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess; they likewise have many fine expressions of the morn, to set in competition with their brother poets : and which indeed of our English bards have not ? Taylor the Water-poct boasts, that he has exprest the rising of the sun, 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 rising day,
Many a note and many a lay.

Henco

To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua ;
Then itay a while, thou shalt not go so soon.

Rom. Let me then stay, let me be ta'en and die :
If thou wilt have it so, I am content.
l'll say yon grey 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 fo high above our heads,
And not the lark, the messenger of morn.
Come death, and welcome : Juliet wills it fo.
How is’t my soul? let's talk, it is not day.

ACT IV.

SCENE III,

Juliet's Resolution.

O bid me leap, rather than marry Paris, From off the battlements of yonder tower; Or chain me to some steepy mountain's top, Where roaring bears, and savage lion's roam; Or shut me nightly in a charnel house; Or, cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless lkulls, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud ; (Things that, to hear them ñam'd, have made me

tremble) And I will do it without fear or doubt, To live an unstain's wife to my sweet love.

Juliet's

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

To hear the lark begin his flight,
And fir ging startle the dull night,
From lis watch-tow'r in the ski
Till the dappled dawn doth rise,

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 married to the count? No, no, this shall forbid it; lie thou there

[Pointing to a dagger. What if it be a poifon, which the friar Subtly hath minift'red, to have me dead, Lest 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 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 feft'ring in his shroud : where, as they say,
At some hours in the night, fpirits resort-)
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,
VOL. III.

N

(Invirond

(Inviron’d with all these hideous fears,)
And inadly play with my forefather'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 desp’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 berself on the bed.

Scene XIII. Joy and Mirth turn'd to their

Contraries.

All things that we ordained festival,
Turn from their office to black funeral;
Our instruments to melancholy bells;
Our wedding cheer to a sad funeral feast;
Our solemn hymns to fullen dirges change;
Our bridal flowers serve for a buried coarse,
And all things change into their contraries.

Romeo's Defcription of, and Discourse with, the

Apothecary.
Well, Julict, I will lye with thee to-night;
Let's see for meanso mischief! thou art swift
To enter in the thought of desperate men!
(12) I do remember an apothecary,

And

(12) I do, &c.] Garth, in his dispensary, hath endeavoured to imitate this excellent description of Shakespear's: tlie lines themselves will be the best proof of his success :

His shop the gazing vulgar's eyes employs,
With foreign trinkets, and domestic toys,

Here

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

Enter Apothecary.
Ap. Who calls so loud?

Rom. Come hither, man ; I see that thou art poor; Hold, there is forty ducats : let me have A dram of poison, such foon-speeding gecr, As will disperse itself through all the veins,

That

Here mummies lay, most reverently ftale,
And there the tortoise hung her coat of mail:
Not far from some huge shark's devouring hend,
The flying filh, 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 mucho question whether Dr. Garth's description will stand the tott, thus considered, particularly in the last circumstance,