Their outside look'd something like yours indeed; The same with nectar Joc To anything I have. Pray do not you spare Your Grace is welcome Nay, gentlemen (to the others), Tititàti. Joc. What say these mighty peers, great Oberon? They do request you now To grant them leave to dance a fairy ring About your servant, and for his offence Pinch him. Do you, the while, command the traitor Joc. Traitor, for so Prince Oberon deign to call thee (Fairies dance about BROMIUS, and pinch and scratch him in chorus) Quoniam per te violamur, Ungues hic experiamur: Statim dices tibi datam Cutem valde variatam. [Since by thee comes profanation Thou hast got a pretty crinkling.] Joc. Tititàti to your lordship for this excellent music. Brom. (aside) This 'tis to have a coxcomb for one's master. [Exit BROMIUS (DORYLAS descends from the tree; JOCASTUS falls on his knees.) Dor. Arise up, Sir Jocastus, our dear knight. Now hang the hallow'd bell about his neck; We call it a mellisonant tingle-tangle, (Aside) (A sheep-bell stolen from his own fat wether) The ensign of his knighthood. Sir Jocastus, We call to mind we promis'd you long since The President of our Dances' place; we are now Pleas'd to confirm it on you. Give him there Now be gone. Dor. Dor. Tititatèe,-my noble fool; farewell. So we are clean got off. Come, noble Peers CHORUS OF FAIRIES. I domum, Oberon, ad illas [Now for all this store of apples, Home, then, home; let's recreate us [Exit ! i 1" Nos beata Fauni proles," &c.-There is something very charming in these Latin rhymes. They make one wish (in spite of the danger of being charged with a Gothic taste) that Horace and Catullus, say rather Ovid,—had written in rhyme as well as blank verse, and so given us a fairy music with some of his words, beyond the power of his lutes and lyres to hand down. 2" Immortal thief, come down," &c.-It must be confessed that Bromius talks too well for a servant. So, for that matter, does his master, for so foolish a country-gentleman. But we are to recollect that the play is a pastoral with an Arcadian licence. 3" Tititatèe, my noble lords," &c.-Molière himself would have enjoyed this extravagance. It is indeed quite in his manner. “Inter poma, lac, et vinum.”—A line that shuts up the scene in "measureless content." Thanks be to the witty scholar, Thomas Randolph, for an addition to the stock of one's pleasant fancies. SUCKLING. BORN, 1609-DIED, 1641. SIR JOHN SUCKLING, son of the Comptroller of the Household to Charles the First, was so true a wit, and hit so delightful a point between the sentiment of the age of Elizabeth and the gallantry of the Stuarts, that it is provoking to be unable to give some of his best pieces at all in a publication like the present, and only one or two short ones without mutilation. He comes among a herd of scented fops with careless natural grace, and an odor of morning flowers upon him. You know not which would have been most delighted with his compliments, the dairy-maid or the duchess. He was thrown too early upon a town life; otherwise a serious passion for some estimable woman, which (to judge from his graver poetry) he was very capable of entertaining, might have been the salvation of him. As it was, he died early, and, it is said, not happily; but this may have been the report of envy or party-spirit; for he was a great loyalist. It is probable, however, that he excelled less as a partizan than as a poet and a man of fashion. He is said to have given a supper to the ladies of his acquaintance, the last course of which consisted of milli. nery and trinkets. The great Nelson's mother was a Suckling of the same stock, in Norfolk. Steele, in the Tatler (No. 40), not undeservedly quotes a passage from Suckling, side by side with one about Eve from Milton. It is in his tragedy of Brennoralt, where a lover is looking on his sleeping mistress : Feelings like these enabled his fair friends to put up with such pleasant contradictions to sentiment as the following : THE CONSTANT LOVER. Out upon it, I have lov'd Three whole days together; Time shall moult away his wings, In the whole wide world again But the spite on't is, no praise Love with me had made no stays, Had it any been but she. Had it any been but she, And that very face, There had been at least ere this A dozen in her place.1 A aozen in her place."-This song is the perfection of easy, witty, light yet substantial writing. There is no straining after thoughts or images, and not a word out of its place, or more words than there ought to be, unless we except the concluding verse of the third stanza; and this seems to overrun its bounds with a special propriety,-besides the grace of its repetition in the stanza following. Here follows another short piece, which can also be given entire. The last line has a vivacity and novelty delightfully unexpected; but I am afraid it was suggested by a similar turn in one of our old dramatists, though I cannot recol. lect which. THE REMONSTRANCE. Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Prythee, why so pale? |