But through a deluge of thy blood.

Oro. There needs not, then, this storm to break down
The bayes that verge the crimson sea: this stroke
Shall open all the sluces of my blood.

King. Hold-or else thou rob'st me of my fixt resolves.
-There is a cause,

Commands me die in the attempt, or kill thee.

Oro. Dear sir, reveal it;

That, ere I fall, my penitential tears

May from that leprous crime expunge my soul.

King. Alas, brave youth! thy innocence needs not

The laver of a tear; thy candid thoughts
White as the robes of angels are, but mine
The dress of devills: I that should protect,
Am come to rob my best of subjects-to rob
Thee of thy dearest treasure: I know thy love
To fair Eurione, inseparable,

As goodnesse from a deity; yet must
Deprive thee of this darling of thy soul.

Oro. With pardon, royall sir, I cannot think
The Cyprian princesse is so soon forgot;
With whom compar'd, my poor Eurione
Though bright to me, to more-discerning eyes
Shines dim as the pale moon, when she lets fall
Through a dark grove her melancholy beams.

King. Dost thou affect her, yet dispraise a beauty

That in its orb, contracts divinity?

This profanation, what had else been sin,
Will render meritorious-guard thyself."

[They fight, and the King falls. Act IV. Scene II.

There is great dignity in the preceding scene; the following passage and soliloquy, also, possess considerable merit-there are some beautiful touches of natural emotion in the bitter agonies of self-reproach of Oroandes-in the gushing out of an anguished heart;-such appeals are never made in vainthey strike upon the golden chain which links us with our common nature, and awaken the deepest sympathies of the

heart.

Enter Oroandes and a Surgeon.

Oro. Not find the body, say'st?

Sur. No, sir; yet, by the large effusion of his blood,
Had a too sad assurance of the place :

Some mountaineers have certainly conveyed

His body thence to burial; those bloody characters
Are arguments of no lesse ill than death.

Oro. Then I am lost eternally-lost to all
That bears a show of goodnesse; heaven and earth
Will both strive to forget they ever knew
A soul deform'd with wickednesse like mine.
-My feverish sins dry up the dews of mercy
In their descent, and blast all vertue that
Approaches near me; I shall never find

A saint in heaven, or friend on earth, but will,
As a dire prodigy, created to

Scatter infection through the world, forsake
My hated company, as fit to mix

With none but the society of devils.

Sur. Sir, I wish, I in ought else could serve you.

Oro. I thank thee, friend

Heavens

What an unwieldy monster am I grown,
Since, by this act, swel'd to a regicide-

gangrene

-Oh! my accursed stars, that only lent
Your influence to light me to damnation;
Not all my penitential tears shall e'er
Wash off the spots from my stain'd soul; this
Is cur'd by no lixivium, but of blood.
My heart is lodg'd within a bed of snakes,
Such as old fancies arm'd the furies with.
Conscience waits on me like the frighting shades
Of ghosts, when gastly messengers of death.
My thoughts are but the inforc't retreats
Of tortur'd reason to a troubled fancy.

Enter Oroandes, alone, in the habit of a Forrester.

Oro. Not yet not yet at quiet-no disguise

Is dark enough to curtain o'er my guilt;
Pale as the ghastly looks of men condemn'd,
It sits upon my conscience. I see there is
No place affords that soul a safe retreat,
That is pursued by a sharp-scented sin.
The prosperous murtherer, that hath cloth'd his guilt
In royall ermins, all those furs of state

Cannot preserve from trembling; he looks on

Dejected wretches as assassinates,

[Exit Sur.

Act V.

And each petition for a ponyard fears.
-Yet these are more secure than I, they may
Pretend to merit in their wickednesse,

And call their crimes the cure of sickly states;
But I am left no refuge, 'lesse to know
The depth of horror can no further go.
-Alas! poor virtue, all thy white-wing'd zeal
Is wrought into a bed of sables, since,
Leaving thy heavenly dictates, I betray'd
Myself unto these sooty guards of hell,
Whose black inhabitants already call
Me one of their society;-my eyes

Are grown more killing than the basilisk's,

And each vein fill'd with poison, since these hands,
These cursed hands, were stain'd with royall blood.
-Hah!-all this is true-

But do I want more desperation yet?

Are there not fiends enough, now waiting on me,

To guide my trembling hand untill it reach

The center of my life?

This fatall weapon slew my prince;

-This was his blood that stains it,

[Draws his sword.

The blood that warm'd those browes, a crown imbrac'd,

-Let forth by me t' embalm the earth, and in

Warm vapors spend the pretious breath of life,

Which, mounting upwards, sent perfumes to heaven;

No, I will live-live, till divellop'd guilt

Makes me a publick spectacle of hate-and then
Fall with my sins about me, when each tongue

Adds to their ponderous weight a full-mouth'd curse."

Act V.

A gentle and tender melancholy is diffused over the affecting reflections, in the soliloquies of Vanlore, a noble gentleman, but of low fortune, to whom his rival, a rich simpleton, is preferred by the father of Theocrine.

"Van. How purblind is the world, that such a monster,

In a few dirty acres swadled, must

Be mounted, in opinion's empty scale,

Above the noblest virtues that adorn

Souls that make worth their center, and to that
Draw all the lines of action! Worn with age,

The noble soldier sits, whilst, in his cell

The scholar stews his catholique brains for food.
The traveller, return'd and poor, may go

A second pilgrimage to farmer's doors, or end
His journey in a hospital; few being

So generous to relieve, where vertue doth
Necessitate to crave. Harsh poverty,

That moth, which frets the sacred robe of wit,
Thousands of noble spirits blunts, that else
Had spun rich threads of fancy from their brain :
But they are souls too much sublim'd to thrive."

Act I. Scene I.

The following lines, addressed by Oroandes to Eurione, are exquisitely beautiful.

"The morning pearls,

Dropt in the lillie's spotlesse bosome, are

Lesse chastly cool, ere the meridian sun

Hath kist them into heat."

Oroandes says to Zannazarro, when in rebellion :

"Nobility, like heaven's bright plannets, waits

Upon the sun of majesty, whilst none

But comets drop from their usurped spheres."

ART. VII. The Felicitie of Man, or, his Summum Bonum. Written by ST R. Barckley, K

In cœli summum permanet arce bonum.

Boeth. de Cons. Philos. lib. 3. London: Printed by R. Y. and are sold by Rich. Roystone, at his shop in Ivie Lane. 1631. Small 4to, pp. 717.

Of this author, or his book, we have not been able to find any notice or account whatever. It is a quarto, of a pretty good thickness,-is rare, and purports to be an ethical treatise on human happiness, consisting of six books. In the first, the author offers to prove, and by example to shew, that felicity consists not in pleasure,-In the second, not in riches,-In the third, not in honour and glory,-In the fourth, not in moral virtue, or in the action of virtue, after the academicks and peripateticks, nor in philosophical contemplation,—In the

fifth, he declares his own opinion of the happiness of this life -and in the sixth, he shews, wherein consists the true felicity and SUMMUM BONUM of man, and the way to attain it. To establish these several propositions by examples, Sir Richard Barckley has wandered over all the fields of ancient and modern history, and culled every story, every anecdote, every narrative, and almost every maxim, that could by any means be made applicable to his purpose, and some that could not ;—he has visited every spring that would yield a flower or an extraordinary weed on its green margin, and has ransacked every sequestered nook and secret place, to collect materials: for this one special purpose" he has, he says, "walked into the muses' garden, and perusing divers sorts of things, applied by the authors to divers uses, has gathered together some of those, which he thought most fit to serve his purpose; and although they were good as they lay scattered, yet being gathered together and applied to some special use, they are made more profitable than as they lay dispersed."

66

It is in fact a garner filled with the most amusing and best histories, and little narrations, told in the author's own words, and occasionally enlarged, but in perfect keeping and consistency. Many of them are related from memory, and thereby have attained something of the freedom and spirit of originals. We have often thought, that a collection of all the old stories of antiquity, as they are scattered about Herodotus, Diogenes Laertius, Ælian, and other writers of that description, if re-told in the spirit of modern times, and with a genuine feeling of their truth and beauty, might make a very pleasing little volume.* The book before us has not the elastic vivacity, nor the pensive sweetness, which should both be main features in such a work. There is, indeed, a heaviness and clumsiness about the unknown knight's production, which would prevent its ever being a prime favourite with us; yet we cannot help frequently admiring the lumbering sort of dexterity with which he brings his artillery of tales and anecdotes to bear upon the true" Summum Bonum." Though we are inclined to attach very little importance to Sir Richard as an ethical writer, we lament the scarcity of this most amusing storehouse of fact and fiction. Sir Richard is not a man troubled with scepticism

* Since writing the above, we have seen some numbers of a small weekly publication, entitled "The Indicator," by Leigh Hunt, the author of Rimini; which in a great measure comes up to the idea here expressed, and which, if continued with the same luxuriance of fancy and the same hearty feeling for the humane and the beautiful, will form, when finished, an exquisite addition to our periodical library.