initial commit of ebook 10130HEADmain

1 files changed, 22008 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/10130-0.txt b/10130-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b2c579
--- /dev/null
+++ b/10130-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,22008 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10130 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
+
+BY
+
+CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
+
+
+EDITED BY
+
+E.V. LUCAS
+
+
+WITH A FRONTISPIECE
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The present volume contains all the stories and verses for children
+which we know Charles and Mary Lamb to have written. The text is that
+of the first or second editions, as explained in the Notes. _The
+Poetry for Children_ and _Prince Dorus_ have been set up from the late
+Andrew W. Tuer's facsimiles. The large edition of this volume contains
+all the original pictures, together with the apochryphal _Beauty and
+the Beast_.
+
+In Mr. Bedford's design for the cover of this edition certain Elian
+symbolism will be found. The upper coat of arms is that of Christ's
+Hospital, where Lamb was at school; the lower is that of the Inner
+Temple, where he was born and spent many years. The figures at the
+bells are those which once stood out from the façade of St. Dunstan's
+Church in Fleet Street, and are now in Lord Londesborough's garden in
+Regent's Park. Lamb shed tears when they were removed. The tricksy
+sprite and the candles (brought by Betty) need no explanatory words of
+mine.
+
+E.V.L.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR
+
+                                                              PAGE
+Preface                                                          1
+The Tempest                                                      3
+A Midsummer Night's Dream                                       13
+The Winter's Tale                                               23
+Much Ado About Nothing                                          33
+As You Like It                                                  44
+The Two Gentlemen of Verona                                     58
+The Merchant of Venice                                          69
+Cymbeline                                                       81
+King Lear                                                       92
+Macbeth                                                        106
+All's Well that Ends Well                                      115
+The Taming of the Shrew                                        126
+The Comedy of Errors                                           136
+Measure for Measure                                            148
+Twelfth Night; or, What You Will                               161
+Timon of Athens                                                173
+Romeo and Juliet                                               184
+Hamlet, Prince of Denmark                                      199
+Othello                                                        213
+Pericles, Prince of Tyre                                       225
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES
+
+Preface                                                        240
+CHAPTER I. The Cicons--The fruit of the lotos tree--Polyphemus
+  and the Cyclops--The kingdom of the winds, and god
+  Æolus's fatal present--The Læstrygonian man-eaters           241
+CHAPTER II. The House of Circe--Men changed into beasts--The
+  voyage to hell--The banquet of the dead                      250
+CHAPTER III. The song of the Sirens--Scylla and Charybdis--The
+  oxen of the Sun--The judgment--The crew killed by lightning  262
+CHAPTER IV. The Island of Calypso--Immortality refused         269
+CHAPTER V. The tempest--The sea-bird's gift--The escape by
+  swimming--The sleep in the woods                             273
+CHAPTER VI. The Princess Nausicaa--The washing--The game
+  with the ball--The Court of Phæacia and king Alcinous.       277
+CHAPTER VII. The songs of Demodocus--The convoy home--The
+  mariners transformed to stone--The young shepherd.           283
+CHAPTER VIII. The change from a king to a beggar--Eumæus
+  and the herdsmen--Telemachus                                 290
+CHAPTER IX. The queen's suitors--The battle of the beggars--The
+  armour taken down--The meeting with Penelope                 301
+CHAPTER X. The madness from above--The bow of Ulysses--The
+  slaughter--The conclusion                                    308
+
+
+MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL
+
+Dedication                                                     316
+Elizabeth Villiers: The Sailor Uncle                           319
+Louisa Manners: The Farm House                                 328
+Ann Withers: The Changeling                                    334
+Elinor Forester: The Father's Wedding Day                      350
+Margaret Green: The Young Mahometan                            354
+Emily Barton: Visit to the Cousins                             360
+Maria Howe: The Witch Aunt                                     368
+Charlotte Wilmot: The Merchant's Daughter                      375
+Susan Yates: First Going to Church                             378
+Arabella Hardy: The Sea Voyage                                 384
+
+
+THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS                                   389
+
+
+POETRY FOR CHILDREN
+
+Envy                                                           404
+The Reaper's Child                                             404
+The Ride                                                       405
+The Butterfly                                                  406
+The Peach                                                      407
+Chusing a Name                                                 408
+Crumbs to the Birds                                            408
+The Rook and the Sparrows                                      409
+Discontent and Quarrelling                                     410
+Repentance and Reconciliation                                  411
+Neatness in Apparel                                            412
+The New-born Infant                                            412
+Motes in the Sun-beams                                         413
+The Boy and the Snake                                          413
+The First Tooth                                                415
+To a River in which a Child was Drowned                        416
+The First of April                                             416
+Cleanliness                                                    417
+The Lame Brother                                               418
+Going into Breeches                                            419
+Nursing                                                        420
+The Text                                                       421
+The End of May                                                 422
+Feigned Courage                                                424
+The Broken Doll                                                425
+The Duty of a Brother                                          426
+Wasps in a Garden                                              427
+What is Fancy?                                                 428
+Anger                                                          429
+Blindness                                                      429
+The Mimic Harlequin                                            430
+Written in the First Leaf of a Child's Memorandum Book         430
+Memory                                                         431
+The Reproof                                                    432
+The Two Bees                                                   432
+The Journey from School and to School                          434
+The Orange                                                     435
+The Young Letter-Writer                                        436
+The Three Friends                                              437
+On the Lord's Prayer                                           442
+"Suffer little Children, and Forbid them not, to come unto Me" 443
+The Magpye's Nest; or, A Lesson of Docility                    445
+The Boy and the Sky-lark                                       447
+The Men and Women, and the Monkeys                             449
+Love, Death, and Reputation                                    449
+The Sparrow and the Hen                                        450
+Which is the Favourite?                                        451
+The Beggar-Man                                                 451
+Choosing a Profession                                          452
+Breakfast                                                      453
+Weeding                                                        454
+Parental Recollections                                         455
+The Two Boys                                                   455
+The Offer                                                      456
+The Sister's Expostulation on the Brother's learning Latin     456
+The Brother's Reply                                            457
+Nurse Green                                                    459
+Good Temper                                                    460
+Moderation in Diet                                             460
+Incorrect Speaking                                             462
+Charity                                                        462
+My Birthday                                                    463
+The Beasts in the Tower                                        464
+The Confidant                                                  466
+Thoughtless Cruelty                                            466
+Eyes                                                           467
+Penny Pieces                                                   468
+The Rainbow                                                    469
+The Force of Habit                                             470
+Clock Striking                                                 470
+Why not do it, Sir, To-day?                                    471
+Home Delights                                                  471
+The Coffee Slips                                               472
+The Dessert                                                    473
+To a Young Lady, on being too Fond of Music                    474
+Time Spent in Dress                                            475
+The Fairy                                                      476
+Conquest of Prejudice                                          476
+The Great-Grandfather                                          478
+The Spartan Boy                                                479
+Queen Oriana's Dream                                           480
+On a Picture of the Finding of Moses by Pharaoh's Daughter     481
+David                                                          483
+David in the Cave of Adullam                                   486
+
+
+THREE POEMS NOT IN "POETRY FOR CHILDREN"
+
+Summer Friends                                                 488
+A Birthday Thought                                             488
+The Boy, the Mother, and the Butterfly                         489
+
+
+PRINCE DORUS                                                   490
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+NOTES                                                          499
+INDEX                                                          523
+INDEX OF FIRST LINES                                           529
+
+
+
+
+FRONTISPIECE
+
+CHARLES AND MARY LAMB
+
+From the Painting by F.S. Cary, in 1834, now in the National Portrait
+Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR
+
+(_Written 1805-1806. First Edition 1807. Text of Second Edition 1809_)
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as
+an introduction to the study of Shakespear, for which purpose, his
+words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in
+whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected
+story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might
+least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which
+he wrote: therefore words introduced into our language since his time
+have been as far as possible avoided.
+
+In those Tales which have been taken from the Tragedies, as my young
+readers will perceive when they come to see the source from which
+these stories are derived, Shakespear's own words, with little
+alteration, recur very frequently in the narrative as well as in the
+dialogue; but in those made from the Comedies I found myself scarcely
+ever able to turn his words into the narrative form; therefore I fear
+in them I have made use of dialogue too frequently for young people
+not used to the dramatic form of writing. But this fault, if it be as
+I fear a fault, has been caused by my earnest wish to give as much of
+Shakespear's own words as possible: and if the "_He said_" and "_She
+said_" the question and the reply, should sometimes seem tedious to
+their young ears, they must pardon it, because it was the only way I
+knew of, in which I could give them a few hints and little foretastes
+of the great pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when
+they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless
+coins are extracted; pretending to no other merit than as faint and
+imperfect stamps of Shakespear's matchless image. Faint and imperfect
+images they must be called, because the beauty of his language is
+too frequently destroyed by the necessity of changing many of his
+excellent words into words far less expressive of his true sense,
+to make it read something like prose; and even in some few places,
+where his blank verse is given unaltered, as hoping from its simple
+plainness to cheat the young readers into the belief that they are
+reading prose, yet still his language being transplanted from its own
+natural soil and wild poetic garden, it must want much of its native
+beauty.
+
+I have wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young
+children. To the utmost of my ability I have constantly kept this in
+my mind; but the subjects of most of them made this a very difficult
+task. It was no easy matter to give the histories of men and women in
+terms familiar to the apprehension of a very young mind. For young
+ladies too it has been my intention chiefly to write, because boys
+are generally permitted the use of their fathers' libraries at a much
+earlier age than girls are, they frequently having the best scenes of
+Shakespear by heart, before their sisters are permitted to look into
+this manly book; and therefore, instead of recommending these Tales to
+the perusal of young gentlemen who can read them so much better in the
+originals, I must rather beg their kind assistance in explaining to
+their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand; and
+when they have helped them to get over the difficulties, then perhaps
+they will read to them (carefully selecting what is proper for a young
+sister's ear) some passage which has pleased them in one of these
+stories, in the very words of the scene from which it is taken; and I
+trust they will find that the beautiful extracts, the select passages,
+they may chuse to give their sisters in this way, will be much better
+relished and understood from their having some notion of the general
+story from one of these imperfect abridgments:--which if they be
+fortunately so done as to prove delightful to any of you, my young
+readers, I hope will have no worse effect upon you, than to make
+you wish yourselves a little older, that you may be allowed to read
+the Plays at full length (such a wish will be neither peevish nor
+irrational). When time and leave of judicious friends shall put
+them into your hands, you will discover in such of them as are here
+abridged (not to mention almost as many more which are left untouched)
+many surprising events and turns of fortune, which for their infinite
+variety could not be contained in this little book, besides a world of
+sprightly and cheerful characters, both men and women, the humour of
+which I was fearful of losing if I attempted to reduce the length of
+them.
+
+What these Tales have been to you in childhood, that and much more it
+is my wish that the true Plays of Shakespear may prove to you in older
+years--enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing
+from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and
+honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy, benignity,
+generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his
+pages are full.
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPEST
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+There was a certain island in the sea, the only inhabitants of which
+were an old man, whose name was Prospero, and his daughter Miranda, a
+very beautiful young lady. She came to this island so young, that she
+had no memory of having seen any other human face than her father's.
+
+They lived in a cave or cell, made out of a rock: it was divided into
+several apartments, one of which Prospero called his study; there he
+kept his books, which chiefly treated of magic, a study at that time
+much affected by all learned men: and the knowledge of this art he
+found very useful to him; for being thrown by a strange chance upon
+this island, which had been inchanted by a witch called Sycorax, who
+died there a short time before his arrival, Prospero, by virtue of his
+art, released many good spirits that Sycorax had imprisoned in the
+bodies of large trees, because they had refused to execute her wicked
+commands. These gentle spirits were ever after obedient to the will of
+Prospero. Of these Ariel was the chief.
+
+The lively little sprite Ariel had nothing mischievous in his nature,
+except that he took rather too much pleasure in tormenting an ugly
+monster called Caliban, for he owed him a grudge because he was the
+son of his old enemy Sycorax. This Caliban Prospero found in the
+woods, a strange misshapen thing, far less human in form than an ape:
+he took him home to his cell, and taught him to speak; and Prospero
+would have been very kind to him, but the bad nature, which Caliban
+inherited from his mother Sycorax, would not let him learn any thing
+good or useful: therefore he was employed like a slave, to fetch
+wood, and do the most laborious offices; and Ariel had the charge of
+compelling him to these services.
+
+When Caliban was lazy and neglected his work, Ariel (who was invisible
+to all eyes but Prospero's) would come slyly and pinch him, and
+sometimes tumble him down in the mire; and then Ariel, in the likeness
+of an ape, would make mouths at him. Then swiftly changing his shape,
+in the likeness of a hedgehog he would lie tumbling in Caliban's way,
+who feared the hedgehog's sharp quills would prick his bare feet. With
+a variety of such-like vexatious tricks Ariel would often torment him,
+whenever Caliban neglected the work which Prospero commanded him to
+do.
+
+Having these powerful spirits obedient to his will, Prospero could by
+their means command the winds, and the waves of the sea. By his orders
+they raised a violent storm, in the midst of which, and struggling
+with the wild sea-waves that every moment threatened to swallow it up,
+he shewed his daughter a fine large ship, which he told her was full
+of living beings like themselves. "O my dear father," said she, "if by
+your art you have raised this dreadful storm, have pity on their sad
+distress. See! the vessel will be dashed to pieces. Poor souls! they
+will all perish. If I had power, I would sink the sea beneath the
+earth, rather than the good ship should be destroyed, with all the
+precious souls within her."
+
+"Be not so amazed, daughter Miranda," said Prospero; "there is no harm
+done. I have so ordered it, that no person in the ship shall receive
+any hurt. What I have done has been in care of you, my dear child. You
+are ignorant who you are, or where you came from, and you know no more
+of me, but that I am your father, and live in this poor cave. Can you
+remember a time before you came to this cell? I think you cannot, for
+you were not then three years of age."
+
+"Certainly I can, sir," replied Miranda.
+
+"By what?" asked Prospero; "by any other house or person? Tell me what
+you can remember, my child."
+
+Miranda said, "It seems to me like the recollection of a dream. But
+had I not once four or five women who attended upon me?"
+
+Prospero answered, "You had, and more. How is it that this still lives
+in your mind? Do you remember how you came here?"
+
+"No, sir," said Miranda, "I remember nothing more."
+
+"Twelve years ago, Miranda," continued Prospero, "I was duke of Milan,
+and you were a princess and my only heir. I had a younger brother,
+whose name was Antonio, to whom I trusted every thing; and as I was
+fond of retirement and deep study, I commonly left the management of
+my state affairs to your uncle, my false brother (for so indeed he
+proved). I, neglecting all worldly ends, buried among my books, did
+dedicate my whole time to the bettering of my mind. My brother Antonio
+being thus in possession of my power, began to think himself the duke
+indeed. The opportunity I gave him of making himself popular among my
+subjects, awakened in his bad nature a proud ambition to deprive me of
+my dukedom; this he soon effected with the aid of the king of Naples,
+a powerful prince, who was my enemy."
+
+"Wherefore," said Miranda, "did they not that hour destroy us?"
+
+"My child," answered her father, "they durst not, so dear was the love
+that my people bore me. Antonio carried us on board a ship, and when
+we were some leagues out at sea, he forced us into a small boat,
+without either tackle, sail, or mast: there he left us as he thought
+to perish. But a kind lord of my court, one Gonzalo, who loved me, had
+privately placed in the boat, water, provisions, apparel, and some
+books which I prize above my dukedom."
+
+"O my father," said Miranda, "what a trouble must I have been to you
+then!"
+
+"No, my love," said Prospero, "you were a little cherub that did
+preserve me. Your innocent smiles made me to bear up against my
+misfortunes. Our food lasted till we landed on this desert island,
+since when my chief delight has been in teaching you, Miranda, and
+well have you profited by my instructions."
+
+"Heaven thank you, my dear father," said Miranda. "Now pray tell me,
+sir, your reason for raising this sea-storm." "Know then," said her
+father, "that by means of this storm my enemies, the king of Naples,
+and my cruel brother, are cast ashore upon this island."
+
+Having so said, Prospero gently touched his daughter with his magic
+wand, and she fell fast asleep; for the spirit Ariel just then
+presented himself before his master, to give an account of the
+tempest, and how he had disposed of the ship's company; and, though
+the spirits were always invisible to Miranda, Prospero did not choose
+she should hear him holding converse (as would seem to her) with the
+empty air.
+
+"Well, my brave spirit," said Prospero to Ariel, "how have you
+performed your task?"
+
+Ariel gave a lively description of the storm, and of the terrors of
+the mariners; and how the king's son, Ferdinand, was the first who
+leaped into the sea; and his father thought he saw this dear son
+swallowed up by the waves, and lost. "But he is safe," said Ariel, "in
+a corner of the isle, sitting with his arms folded sadly, lamenting
+the loss of the king his father, whom he concludes drowned. Not a hair
+of his head is injured, and his princely garments, though drenched in
+the sea-waves, look fresher than before."
+
+"That's my delicate Ariel," said Prospero. "Bring him hither: my
+daughter must see this young prince. Where is the king, and my
+brother?"
+
+"I left them," answered Ariel, "searching for Ferdinand, whom they
+have little hopes of finding, thinking they saw him perish. Of the
+ship's crew not one is missing; though each one thinks himself the
+only one saved: and the ship, though invisible to them, is safe in the
+harbour."
+
+"Ariel," said Prospero, "thy charge is faithfully performed: bur there
+is more work yet."
+
+"Is there more work?" said Ariel. "Let me remind you, master, you
+have promised me my liberty. I pray, remember, I have done you worthy
+service, told you no lies, made no mistakes, served you without grudge
+or grumbling." "How now!" said Prospero. "You do not recollect what a
+torment I freed you from. Have you forgot the wicked witch Sycorax,
+who with age and envy was almost bent double? Where was she born?
+Speak; tell me."
+
+"Sir, in Algiers," said Ariel.
+
+"O was she so?" said Prospero. "I must recount what you have been,
+which I find you do not remember. This bad witch Sycorax, for her
+witchcrafts, too terrible to enter human hearing, was banished from
+Algiers, and here left by the sailors; and because you were a spirit
+too delicate to execute her wicked commands, she shut you up in a
+tree, where I found you howling. This torment, remember, I did free
+you from."
+
+"Pardon me, dear master," said Ariel, ashamed to seem ungrateful; "I
+will obey your commands."
+
+"Do so," said Prospero, "and I will set you free." He then gave orders
+what farther he would have him do, and away went Ariel, first to where
+he had left Ferdinand, and found him still sitting on the grass in the
+same melancholy posture.
+
+"O my young gentleman," said Ariel, when he saw him, "I will soon move
+you. You must be brought, I find, for the lady Miranda to have a sight
+of your pretty person. Come, sir, follow me." He then began singing,
+
+  "Full fathom five thy father lies:
+    Of his bones are coral made;
+  Those are pearls that were his eyes:
+    Nothing of him that doth fade,
+  But doth suffer a sea-change
+  Into something rich and strange.
+  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
+  Hark, now I hear them, ding-dong--bell."
+
+This strange news of his lost father soon roused the prince from the
+stupid fit into which he had fallen. He followed in amazement the
+sound of Ariel's voice, till it led him to Prospero and Miranda, who
+were sitting under the shade of a large tree. Now Miranda had never
+seen a man before, except her own father.
+
+"Miranda," said Prospero, "tell me what you are looking at yonder."
+
+"O father," said Miranda, in a strange surprise, "surely that is a
+spirit. Lord! how it looks about! Believe me, sir, it is a beautiful
+creature. It is not a spirit?"
+
+"No, girl," answered her father; "it eats, and sleeps, and has senses
+such as we have. This young man you see was in the ship. He is
+somewhat altered by grief, or you might call him a handsome person. He
+has lost his companions, and is wandering about to find them."
+
+Miranda, who thought all men had grave faces and grey beards like her
+father, was delighted with the appearance of this beautiful young
+prince; and Ferdinand, seeing such a lovely lady in this desert
+place, and from the strange sounds he had heard expecting nothing but
+wonders, thought he was upon an inchanted island, and that Miranda was
+the goddess of the place, and as such he began to address her.
+
+She timidly answered, she was no goddess, but a simple maid, and was
+going to give him an account of herself, when Prospero interrupted
+her. He was well pleased to find they admired each other, for he
+plainly perceived they had (as we say) fallen in love at first
+sight: but to try Ferdinand's constancy, he resolved to throw some
+difficulties in their way: therefore advancing forward, he addressed
+the prince with a stern air, telling him, he came to the island as a
+spy, to take it from him who was the lord of it. "Follow me," said he,
+"I will tie you, neck and feet together. You shall drink sea-water;
+shell-fish, withered roots, and husks of acorns, shall be your food."
+"No," said Ferdinand, "I will resist such entertainment, till I see
+a more powerful enemy," and drew his sword; but Prospero, waving his
+magic wand, fixed him to the spot where he stood, so that he had no
+power to move.
+
+Miranda hung upon her father, saying, "Why are you so ungentle? Have
+pity, sir; I will be his surety. This is the second man I ever saw,
+and to me he seems a true one."
+
+"Silence," said her father, "one word more will make me chide you,
+girl! What! an advocate for an impostor! You think there are no more
+such fine men, having seen only him and Caliban. I tell you, foolish
+girl, most men as far excel this, as he does Caliban." This he said to
+prove his daughter's constancy; and she replied, "My affections are
+most humble. I have no wish to see a goodlier man."
+
+"Come on, young man," said Prospero to the prince, "you have no power
+to disobey me."
+
+"I have not indeed," answered Ferdinand; and not knowing that it was
+by magic he was deprived of all power of resistance, he was astonished
+to find himself so strangely compelled to follow Prospero; looking
+back on Miranda as long as he could see her, he said, as he went after
+Prospero into the cave, "My spirits are all bound up, as if I were in
+a dream; but this man's threats, and the weakness which I feel, would
+seem light to me, if from my prison I might once a day behold this
+fair maid."
+
+Prospero kept Ferdinand not long confined within the cell: he soon
+brought out his prisoner, and set him a severe task to perform, taking
+care to let his daughter know the hard labour he had imposed on him,
+and then pretending to go into his study he secretly watched them
+both.
+
+Prospero had commanded Ferdinand to pile up some heavy logs of wood.
+Kings' sons not being much used to laborious work, Miranda soon after
+found her lover almost dying with fatigue. "Alas!" said she, "do not
+work so hard; my father is at his studies, he is safe for these three
+hours: pray, rest yourself."
+
+"O my dear lady," said Ferdinand, "I dare not. I must finish my task
+before I take my rest."
+
+"If you will sit down," said Miranda, "I will carry your logs the
+while." But this Ferdinand would by no means agree to. Instead of a
+help, Miranda became a hindrance, for they began a long conversation,
+so that the business of log-carrying went on very slowly.
+
+Prospero, who had enjoined Ferdinand this task merely as a trial of
+his love, was not at his books, as his daughter supposed, but was
+standing by them invisible, to overhear what they said.
+
+Ferdinand inquired her name, which she told, saying it was against her
+father's express command she did so.
+
+Prospero only smiled at this first instance of his daughter's
+disobedience, for having by his magic art caused his daughter to fall
+in love so suddenly, he was not angry that she shewed her love by
+forgetting to obey his commands. And he listened well pleased to a
+long speech of Ferdinand's, in which he professed to love her above
+all the ladies he ever saw.
+
+In answer to his praises of her beauty, which he said exceeded all
+the women in the world, she replied, "I do not remember the face of
+any woman, nor have I seen any more men than you, my good friend, and
+my dear father. How features are abroad, I know not; but believe me,
+sir, I would not wish any companion in the world but you, nor can my
+imagination form any shape but yours that I could like. But, sir, I
+fear I talk to you too freely, and my father's precepts I forget."
+
+At this Prospero smiled, and nodded his head as much as to say, "This
+goes on exactly as I could wish; my girl will be queen of Naples."
+
+And then Ferdinand, in another fine long speech (for young princes
+speak in courtly phrases), told the innocent Miranda he was heir to
+the crown of Naples, and that she should be his queen.
+
+"Ah! sir," said she, "I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of. I will
+answer you in plain and holy innocence. I am your wife, if you will
+marry me."
+
+Prospero prevented Ferdinand's thanks by appearing visible before
+them.
+
+"Fear nothing, my child," said he; "I have overheard, and approve
+of all you have said. And, Ferdinand, if I have too severely used
+you, I will make you rich amends by giving you my daughter. All
+your vexations were but my trials of your love, and you have nobly
+stood the test. Then as my gift, which your true love has worthily
+purchased, take my daughter, and do not smile that I boast she is
+above all praise." He then, telling them that he had business which
+required his presence, desired they would sit down and talk together,
+till he returned; and this command Miranda seemed not at all disposed
+to disobey.
+
+When Prospero left them, he called his spirit Ariel, who quickly
+appeared before him, eager to relate what he had done with Prospero's
+brother and the king of Naples. Ariel said, he had left them almost
+out of their senses with fear, at the strange things he had caused
+them to see and hear. When fatigued with wandering about, and famished
+for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet,
+and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before
+them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the
+feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming
+harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving
+Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter
+to perish in the sea; saying, that for this cause these terrors were
+suffered to afflict them.
+
+The king of Naples, and Antonio the false brother, repented the
+injustice they had done to Prospero: and Ariel told his master he was
+certain their penitence was sincere, and that he, though a spirit,
+could not but pity them.
+
+"Then bring them hither, Ariel," said Prospero: "if you, who are but
+a spirit, feel for their distress, shall not I, who am a human being
+like themselves, have compassion on them? Bring them, quickly, my
+dainty Ariel."
+
+Ariel soon returned with the king, Antonio, and old Gonzalo in their
+train, who had followed him, wondering at the wild music he played in
+the air to draw them on to his master's presence. This Gonzalo was
+the same who had so kindly provided Prospero formerly with books and
+provisions, when his wicked brother left him, as he thought, to perish
+in an open boat in the sea.
+
+Grief and terror had so stupified their senses, that they did not know
+Prospero. He first discovered himself to the good old Gonzalo, calling
+him the preserver of his life; and then his brother and the king knew
+that he was the injured Prospero. Antonio with tears, and sad words of
+sorrow and true repentance, implored his brother's forgiveness, and
+the king expressed his sincere remorse for having assisted Antonio
+to depose his brother: and Prospero forgave them; and, upon their
+engaging to restore his dukedom, he said to the king of Naples, "I
+have a gift in store for you too;" and opening a door, shewed him his
+son Ferdinand, playing at chess with Miranda.
+
+Nothing could exceed the joy of the father and the son at this
+unexpected meeting, for they each thought the other drowned in the
+storm.
+
+"O wonder!" said Miranda, "what noble creatures these are! It must
+surely be a brave world that has such people in it."
+
+The king of Naples was almost as much astonished at the beauty and
+excellent graces of the young Miranda as his son had been. "Who is
+this maid?" said he; "she seems the goddess that has parted us, and
+brought us thus together." "No, sir," answered Ferdinand, smiling to
+find his father had fallen into the same mistake that he had done when
+he first saw Miranda, "she is a mortal, but by immortal Providence she
+is mine; I chose her when I could not ask you, my father, for your
+consent, not thinking you were alive. She is the daughter to this
+Prospero, who is the famous duke of Milan, of whose renown I have
+heard so much, but never saw him till now: of him I have received a
+new life: he has made himself to me a second father, giving me this
+dear lady."
+
+"Then I must be her father," said the king; "but oh! how oddly will it
+sound, that I must ask my child forgiveness."
+
+"No more of that," said Prospero: "let us not remember our troubles
+past, since they so happily have ended." And then Prospero embraced
+his brother, and again assured him of his forgiveness; and said that
+a wise, over-ruling Providence had permitted that he should be driven
+from his poor dukedom of Milan, that his daughter might inherit the
+crown of Naples, for that by their meeting in this desert island it
+had happened, that the king's son had loved Miranda.
+
+These kind words which Prospero spoke, meaning to comfort his brother,
+so filled Antonio with shame and remorse, that he wept and was
+unable to speak; and the kind old Gonzalo wept to see this joyful
+reconciliation, and prayed for blessings on the young couple.
+
+Prospero now told them that their ship was safe in the harbour, and
+the sailors all on board her, and that he and his daughter would
+accompany them home the next morning. "In the meantime," says he,
+"partake of such refreshments as my poor cave affords; and for your
+evening's entertainment I will relate the history of my life from my
+first landing in this desert island." He then called for Caliban to
+prepare some food, and set the cave in order; and the company were
+astonished at the uncouth form and savage appearance of this ugly
+monster, who (Prospero said) was the only attendant he had to wait
+upon him.
+
+Before Prospero left the island, he dismissed Ariel from his service,
+to the great joy of that lively little spirit; who, though he had been
+a faithful servant to his master, was always longing to enjoy his free
+liberty, to wander uncontrolled in the air, like a wild bird, under
+green trees, among pleasant fruits, and sweet-smelling flowers. "My
+quaint Ariel," said Prospero to the little sprite when he made him
+free, "I shall miss you; yet you shall have your freedom." "Thank you,
+my dear master," said Ariel; "but give me leave to attend your ship
+home with prosperous gales, before you bid farewel to the assistance
+of your faithful spirit; and then, master, when I am free, how merrily
+I shall live!" Here Ariel sung this pretty song:
+
+  "Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
+  In a cowslip's bell I lie:
+  There I couch when owls do cry.
+  On the bat's back I do fly
+  After summer merrily.
+  Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
+  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."
+
+Prospero then buried deep in the earth his magical books, and
+wand, for he was resolved never more to make use of the magic art.
+And having thus overcome his enemies, and being reconciled to his
+brother and the king of Naples, nothing now remained to complete his
+happiness, but to revisit his native land, to take possession of his
+dukedom, and to witness the happy nuptials of his daughter Miranda and
+prince Ferdinand, which the king said should be instantly celebrated
+with great splendour on their return to Naples. At which place, under
+the safe convoy of the spirit Ariel, they after a pleasant voyage
+soon arrived.
+
+
+
+
+A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+There was a law in the city of Athens, which gave to its citizens the
+power of compelling their daughters to marry whomsoever they pleased:
+for upon a daughter's refusing to marry the man her father had chosen
+to be her husband, the father was empowered by this law to cause her
+to be put to death; but as fathers do not often desire the death of
+their own daughters, even though they do happen to prove a little
+refractory, this law was seldom or never put in execution, though
+perhaps the young ladies of that city were not unfrequently threatened
+by their parents with the terrors of it.
+
+There was one instance, however, of an old man, whose name was Egeus,
+who actually did come before Theseus (at that time the reigning
+duke of Athens), to complain that his daughter Hermia, whom he had
+commanded to marry Demetrius, a young man of a noble Athenian family,
+refused to obey him, because she loved another young Athenian, named
+Lysander. Egeus demanded justice of Theseus, and desired that this
+cruel law might be put in force against his daughter.
+
+Hermia pleaded in excuse for her disobedience, that Demetrius had
+formerly professed love for her dear friend Helena, and that Helena
+loved Demetrius to distraction; but this honourable reason which
+Hermia gave for not obeying her father's command moved not the
+stern Egeus.
+
+Theseus, though a great and merciful prince, had no power to alter the
+laws of his country; therefore he could only give Hermia four days to
+consider of it: and at the end of that time, if she still refused to
+marry Demetrius, she was to be put to death.
+
+When Hermia was dismissed from the presence of the duke, she went to
+her lover Lysander, and told him the peril she was in, and that she
+must either give him up and marry Demetrius, or lose her life in four
+days.
+
+Lysander was in great affliction at hearing these evil tidings; but
+recollecting that he had an aunt who lived at some distance from
+Athens, and that at the place where she lived the cruel law could not
+be put in force against Hermia (this law not extending beyond the
+boundaries of the city), he proposed to Hermia, that she should steal
+out of her father's house that night, and go with him to his aunt's
+house, where he would marry her. "I will meet you," said Lysander, "in
+the wood a few miles without the city; in that delightful wood, where
+we have so often walked with Helena in the pleasant month of May."
+
+To this proposal Hermia joyfully agreed; and she told no one of her
+intended flight but her friend Helena. Helena (as maidens will do
+foolish things for love) very ungenerously resolved to go and tell
+this to Demetrius, though she could hope no benefit from betraying
+her friend's secret, but the poor pleasure of following her faithless
+lover to the wood; for she well knew that Demetrius would go thither
+in pursuit of Hermia.
+
+The wood, in which Lysander and Hermia proposed to meet, was the
+favourite haunt of those little beings known by the name of _Fairies_.
+
+Oberon the king, and Titania the queen, of the Fairies, with all their
+tiny train of followers, in this wood held their midnight revels.
+
+Between this little king and queen of sprites there happened, at this
+time, a sad disagreement: they never met by moonlight in the shady
+walks of this pleasant wood, but they were quarrelling, till all their
+fairy elves would creep into acorn-cups and hide themselves for fear.
+
+The cause of this unhappy disagreement was Titania's refusing to
+give Oberon a little changeling boy, whose mother had been Titania's
+friend: and upon her death the fairy queen stole the child from its
+nurse, and brought him up in the woods.
+
+The night on which the lovers were to meet in this wood, as Titania
+was walking with some of her maids of honour, she met Oberon attended
+by his train of fairy courtiers.
+
+"Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania," said the fairy king. The queen
+replied, "What, jealous Oberon, is it you? Fairies, skip hence; I
+have forsworn his company." "Tarry, rash fairy," said Oberon; "am not
+I thy lord? Why does Titania cross her Oberon? Give me your little
+changeling boy to be my page."
+
+"Set your heart at rest," answered the queen; "your whole fairy
+kingdom buys not the boy of me." She then left her lord in great
+anger. "Well, go your way," said Oberon: "before the morning dawns I
+will torment you for this injury."
+
+Oberon then sent for Puck, his chief favourite and privy counsellor.
+
+Puck (or, as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a
+shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in
+the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and
+skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into
+the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the
+vessel, in vain the dairy-maid would labour to change her cream into
+butter: nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck
+chose to play his freaks in the brewing-copper, the ale was sure to be
+spoiled. When a few good neighbours were met to drink some comfortable
+ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of
+a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink, he would
+bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and
+presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself
+to tell her neighbours a sad and melancholy story, Puck would slip
+her three-legged stool from under her, and down toppled the poor old
+woman, and then the old gossips would hold their sides and laugh at
+her, and swear they never wasted a merrier hour.
+
+"Come hither, Puck," said Oberon to this little merry wanderer of the
+night; "fetch me the flower which maids call _Love in Idleness_; the
+juice of that little purple flower laid on the eyelids of those who
+sleep, will make them, when they awake, doat on the first thing they
+see. Some of the juice of that flower I will drop on the eyelids of my
+Titania, when she is asleep; and the first thing she looks upon when
+she opens her eyes she will fall in love with, even though it be a
+lion, or a bear, a meddling monkey, or a busy ape: and before I will
+take this charm from off her sight, which I can do with another charm
+I know of, I will make her give me that boy to be my page."
+
+Puck, who loved mischief to his heart, was highly diverted with this
+intended frolic of his master, and ran to seek the flower; and while
+Oberon was waiting the return of Puck, he observed Demetrius and
+Helena enter the woods: he overheard Demetrius reproaching Helena for
+following him, and after many unkind words on his part, and gentle
+expostulations from Helena, reminding him of his former love and
+professions of true faith to her, he left her (as he said) to the
+mercy of the wild beasts, and she ran after him as swiftly as she
+could.
+
+The fairy king, who was always friendly to true lovers, felt great
+compassion for Helena; and perhaps, as Lysander said they used to walk
+by moonlight in this pleasant wood, Oberon might have seen Helena in
+those happy times when she was beloved by Demetrius. However that
+might be, when Puck returned with the little purple flower, Oberon
+said to his favourite, "Take a part of this flower: there has been a
+sweet Athenian lady here, who is in love with a disdainful youth; if
+you find him sleeping, drop some of the love-juice in his eyes, but
+contrive to do it when she is near him, that the first thing he sees
+when he awakes may be this despised lady. You will know the man by the
+Athenian garments which he wears." Puck promised to manage this matter
+very dextrously; and then Oberon went, unperceived by Titania, to her
+bower, where she was preparing to go to rest. Her fairy bower was a
+bank, where grew wild thyme, cowslips, and sweet violets, under a
+canopy of woodbine, musk-roses, and eglantine. There Titania always
+slept some part of the night; her coverlet the enamelled skin of a
+snake, which, though a small mantle, was wide enough to wrap a fairy
+in.
+
+He found Titania giving orders to her fairies, how they were to employ
+themselves while she slept. "Some of you," said her majesty, "must
+kill cankers in the musk-rose-buds, and some wage war with the bats
+for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats; and some of
+you keep watch that the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, come not
+near me: but first sing me to sleep." Then they began to sing this
+song:--
+
+  You spotted snakes with double tongue,
+  Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
+  Newts and blind-worms do no wrong,
+  Come not near our Fairy Queen.
+  Philomel, with melody,
+  Sing in our sweet lullaby,
+  Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby:
+  Never harm, nor spell, nor charm,
+  Come our lovely lady nigh;
+  So good night with lullaby.
+
+When the fairies had sung their queen asleep with this pretty lullaby,
+they left her, to perform the important services she had enjoined
+them. Oberon then softly drew near his Titania, and dropt some of the
+love-juice on her eye-lids, saying,
+
+  What thou seest when thou dost wake,
+  Do it for thy true-love take.
+
+But to return to Hermia, who made her escape out of her father's house
+that night, to avoid the death she was doomed to for refusing to marry
+Demetrius. When she entered the wood, she found her dear Lysander
+waiting for her, to conduct her to his aunt's house; but before they
+had passed half through the wood, Hermia was so much fatigued, that
+Lysander, who was very careful of this dear lady, that had proved her
+affection for him even by hazarding her life for his sake, persuaded
+her to rest till morning on a bank of soft moss, and lying down
+himself on the ground at some little distance, they soon fell fast
+asleep. Here they were found by Puck, who seeing a handsome young man
+asleep, and perceiving that his clothes were made in the Athenian
+fashion, and that a pretty lady was sleeping near him, concluded that
+this must be the Athenian maid and her disdainful lover whom Oberon
+had sent him to seek; and he naturally enough conjectured that, as
+they were alone together, she must be the first thing he would see
+when he awoke: so without more ado, he proceeded to pour some of the
+juice of the little purple flower into his eyes. But it so fell out,
+that Helena came that way, and, instead of Hermia, was the first
+object Lysander beheld when he opened his eyes: and strange to relate,
+so powerful was the love-charm, all his love for Hermia vanished away,
+and Lysander fell in love with Helena.
+
+Had he first seen Hermia when he awoke, the blunder Puck committed
+would have been of no consequence, for he could not love that
+faithful lady too well; but for poor Lysander to be forced by a fairy
+love-charm to forget his own true Hermia, and to run after another
+lady, and leave Hermia asleep quite alone in a wood at midnight, was a
+sad chance indeed.
+
+Thus this misfortune happened. Helena, as has been before related,
+endeavoured to keep pace with Demetrius when he ran away so rudely
+from her; but she could not continue this unequal race long, men
+being always better runners in a long race than ladies. Helena soon
+lost sight of Demetrius; and as she was wandering about dejected
+and forlorn, she arrived at the place where Lysander was sleeping.
+"Ah!" said she, "this is Lysander lying on the ground: is he dead or
+asleep?" Then gently touching him, she said, "Good sir, if you are
+alive, awake." Upon this Lysander opened his eyes, and (the love-charm
+beginning to work) immediately addressed her in terms of extravagant
+love and admiration; telling her, she as much excelled Hermia in
+beauty as a dove does a raven, and that he would run through fire
+for her sweet sake; and many more such lover-like speeches. Helena,
+knowing Lysander was her friend Hermia's lover, and that he was
+solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard
+herself addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might)
+that Lysander was making a jest of her. "Oh!" said she, "why was I
+born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it not enough, is it
+not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind
+word from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend in this disdainful
+manner to court me? I thought, Lysander, you were a lord of more true
+gentleness." Saying these words in great anger, she ran away; and
+Lysander followed her, quite forgetful of his own Hermia, who was
+still asleep.
+
+When Hermia awoke, she was in a sad fright at finding herself alone.
+She wandered about the wood, not knowing what was become of Lysander,
+or which way to go to seek for him. In the mean time Demetrius not
+being able to find Hermia and his rival Lysander, and fatigued with
+his fruitless search, was observed by Oberon fast asleep. Oberon had
+learnt by some questions he had asked of Puck, that he had applied
+the love-charm to the wrong person's eyes; and now, having found
+the person first intended, he touched the eyelids of the sleeping
+Demetrius with the love-juice, and he instantly awoke; and the first
+thing he saw being Helena, he, as Lysander had done before, began
+to address love-speeches to her: and just at that moment Lysander,
+followed by Hermia (for through Puck's unlucky mistake it was now
+become Hermia's turn to run after her lover), made his appearance;
+and then Lysander and Demetrius, both speaking together, made love to
+Helena, they being each one under the influence of the same potent
+charm.
+
+The astonished Helena thought that Demetrius, Lysander, and her once
+dear friend Hermia, were all in a plot together to make a jest of her.
+
+Hermia was as much surprised as Helena: she knew not why Lysander and
+Demetrius, who both before loved her, were now become the lovers of
+Helena; and to Hermia the matter seemed to be no jest.
+
+The ladies, who before had always been the dearest of friends, now
+fell to high words together.
+
+"Unkind Hermia," said Helena, "it is you have set Lysander on, to vex
+me with mock praises; and your other lover Demetrius, who used almost
+to spurn me with his foot, have you not bid him call me Goddess,
+Nymph, rare, precious, and celestial? He would not speak thus to me
+whom he hates, if you did not set him on to make a jest of me. Unkind
+Hermia, to join with men in scorning your poor friend. Have you forgot
+our school-day friendship? How often, Hermia, have we two, sitting
+on one cushion, both singing one song, with our needles working the
+same flower, both on the same sampler wrought; growing up together in
+fashion of a double cherry, scarcely seeming parted? Hermia, it is not
+friendly in you, it is not maidenly, to join with men in scorning your
+poor friend."
+
+"I am amazed at your passionate words," said Hermia: "I scorn you
+not; it seems you scorn me." "Aye, do," returned Helena, "persevere;
+counterfeit serious looks, and make mouths at me when I turn my back;
+then wink at each other, and hold the sweet jest up. If you had any
+pity, grace, or manners, you would not use me thus."
+
+While Helena and Hermia were speaking these angry words to each other,
+Demetrius and Lysander left them, to fight together in the wood for
+the love of Helena.
+
+When they found the gentlemen had left them, they departed, and once
+more wandered weary in the wood in search of their lovers.
+
+As soon as they were gone, the fairy king, who with little Puck
+had been listening to their quarrels, said to him, "This is your
+negligence, Puck; or did you do this wilfully?" "Believe me, king of
+shadows," answered Puck, "it was a mistake: did not you tell me I
+should know the man by his Athenian garments? However, I am not sorry
+this has happened, for I think their jangling makes excellent sport."
+"You heard," said Oberon, "that Demetrius and Lysander are gone to
+seek a convenient place to fight in. I command you to overhang the
+night with a thick fog, and lead these quarrelsome lovers so astray in
+the dark, that they shall not be able to find each other. Counterfeit
+each of their voices to the other, and with bitter taunts provoke them
+to follow you, while they think it is their rival's tongue they hear.
+See you do this, till they are so weary they can go no farther; and
+when you find they are asleep, drop the juice of this other flower
+into Lysander's eyes, and when he awakes he will forget his new love
+for Helena, and return to his old passion for Hermia; and then the two
+fair ladies may each one be happy with the man she loves, and they
+will think all that has passed a vexatious dream. About this quickly,
+Puck; and I will go and see what sweet love my Titania has found."
+
+Titania was still sleeping, and Oberon seeing a clown near her, who
+had lost his way in the wood, and was likewise asleep: "This fellow,"
+said he, "shall be my Titania's truelove;" and clapping an ass's head
+over the clown's, it seemed to fit him as well as if it had grown upon
+his own shoulders. Though Oberon fixed the ass's head on very gently,
+it awakened him, and rising up, unconscious of what Oberon had done to
+him, he went towards the bower where the fairy queen slept.
+
+"Ah! what angel is that I see?" said Titania, opening her eyes, and
+the juice of the little purple flower beginning to take effect; "Are
+you as wise as you are beautiful?"
+
+"Why, mistress," said the foolish clown, "if I have wit enough to find
+the way out of this wood, I have enough to serve my turn."
+
+"Out of the wood do not desire to go," said the enamoured queen. "I am
+a spirit of no common rate. I love you. Go with me, and I will give
+you fairies to attend upon you."
+
+She then called four of her fairies; their names were, Pease-blossom,
+Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed.
+
+"Attend," said the queen, "upon this sweet gentleman; hop in his
+walks, and gambol in his sight; feed him with grapes and apricots, and
+steal for him the honey-bags from the bees. Come, sit with me," said
+she to the clown, "and let me play with your amiable hairy cheeks, my
+beautiful ass! and kiss your fair large ears, my gentle joy!"
+
+"Where is Pease-blossom?" said the ass-headed clown; not much
+regarding the fairy queen's courtship, but very proud of his new
+attendants.
+
+"Here, sir," said little Pease-blossom.
+
+"Scratch my head," said the clown. "Where is Cobweb?"
+
+"Here, sir," said Cobweb.
+
+"Good Mr. Cobweb," said the foolish clown, "kill me the red humble-bee
+on the top of that thistle yonder; and, good Mr. Cobweb, bring me the
+honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, Mr. Cobweb,
+and take care the honey-bag break not; I should be sorry to have you
+overflown with a honey-bag. Where is Mustard-seed?"
+
+"Here, sir," said Mustard-seed; "what is your will?"
+
+"Nothing," said the clown, "good Mr. Mustard-seed, but to help Mr.
+Pease-blossom to scratch: I must go to a barber's, Mr. Mustard-seed,
+for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face."
+
+"My sweet love," said the queen, "what will you have to eat? I have a
+venturous fairy shall seek the squirrel's hoard, and fetch you some
+new nuts."
+
+"I had rather have a handful of dried pease," said the clown, who with
+his ass's head had got an ass's appetite. "But, I pray, let none of
+your people disturb me, for I have a mind to sleep."
+
+"Sleep, then," said the queen, "and I will wind you in my arms. O how
+I love you! how I doat upon you!"
+
+When the fairy king saw the clown sleeping in the arms of his queen,
+he advanced within her sight, and reproached her with having lavished
+her favours upon an ass.
+
+This she could not deny, as the clown was then sleeping within her
+arms, with his ass's head crowned by her with flowers.
+
+When Oberon had teased her for some time, he again demanded the
+changeling-boy; which she, ashamed of being discovered by her lord
+with her new favourite, did not dare to refuse him.
+
+Oberon, having thus obtained the little boy he had so long wished for
+to be his page, took pity on the disgraceful situation into which,
+by his merry contrivance, he had brought his Titania, and threw some
+of the juice of the other flower into her eyes; and the fairy queen
+immediately recovered her senses, and wondered at her late dotage,
+saying how she now loathed the sight of the strange monster.
+
+Oberon likewise took the ass's head from off the clown, and left him
+to finish his nap with his own fool's head upon his shoulders.
+
+Oberon and his Titania being now perfectly reconciled, he related to
+her the history of the lovers, and their midnight quarrels; and she
+agreed to go with him, and see the end of their adventures.
+
+The fairy king and queen found the lovers and their fair ladies, at no
+great distance from each other, sleeping on a grass-plot; for Puck,
+to make amends for his former mistake, had contrived with the utmost
+diligence to bring them all to the same spot, unknown to each other;
+and he had carefully removed the charm from off the eyes of Lysander
+with the antidote the fairy king gave to him.
+
+Hermia first awoke, and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her,
+was looking at him, and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander
+presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his
+reason which the fairy-charm had before clouded, and with his reason
+his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the
+night, doubting if these things had really happened, or if they had
+both been dreaming the same bewildering dream.
+
+Helena and Demetrius were by this time awake; and a sweet sleep having
+quieted Helena's disturbed and angry spirits, she listened with
+delight to the professions of love which Demetrius still made to her,
+and which, to her surprise as well as pleasure she began to perceive
+were sincere.
+
+These fair night-wandering ladies, now no longer rivals, became
+once more true friends; all the unkind words which had passed were
+forgiven, and they calmly consulted together what was best to be done
+in their present situation. It was soon agreed that, as Demetrius had
+given up his pretensions to Hermia, he should endeavour to prevail
+upon her father to revoke the cruel sentence of death which had been
+passed against her. Demetrius was preparing to return to Athens for
+this friendly purpose, when they were surprised with the sight of
+Egeus, Hermia's father, who came to the wood in pursuit of his runaway
+daughter.
+
+When Egeus understood that Demetrius would not now marry his daughter,
+he no longer opposed her marriage with Lysander, but gave his consent
+that they should be wedded on the fourth day from that time, being the
+same day on which Hermia had been condemned to lose her life; and on
+that same day Helena joyfully agreed to marry her beloved and now
+faithful Demetrius.
+
+The fairy king and queen, who were invisible spectators of this
+reconciliation, and now saw the happy ending of the lovers' history
+brought about through the good offices of Oberon, received so
+much pleasure, that these kind spirits resolved to celebrate the
+approaching nuptials with sports and revels throughout their fairy
+kingdom.
+
+And now, if any are offended with this story of fairies and their
+pranks, as judging it incredible and strange, they have only to think
+that they have been asleep and dreaming, and that all these adventures
+were visions which they saw in their sleep: and I hope none of my
+readers will be so unreasonable as to be offended with a pretty
+harmless Midsummer Night's Dream.
+
+
+
+
+THE WINTER'S TALE
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Leontes, king of Sicily, and his queen, the beautiful and virtuous
+Hermione, once lived in the greatest harmony together. So happy was
+Leontes in the love of this excellent lady, that he had no wish
+ungratified, except that he sometimes desired to see again, and to
+present to his queen, his old companion and school-fellow, Polixenes,
+king of Bohemia. Leontes and Polixenes were brought up together from
+their infancy, but being by the death of their fathers called to
+reign over their respective kingdoms, they had not met for many
+years, though they frequently interchanged gifts, letters, and
+loving embassies.
+
+At length, after repeated invitations, Polixenes came from Bohemia to
+the Sicilian court, to make his friend Leontes a visit.
+
+At first this visit gave nothing but pleasure to Leontes. He
+recommended the friend of his youth to the queen's particular
+attention, and seemed in the presence of his dear friend and old
+companion to have his felicity quite completed. They talked over old
+times; their school-days and their youthful pranks were remembered,
+and recounted to Hermione, who always took a cheerful part in these
+conversations.
+
+When after a long stay Polixenes was preparing to depart, Hermione, at
+the desire of her husband, joined her intreaties to his that Polixenes
+would prolong his visit.
+
+And now began this good queen's sorrow; for Polixenes refusing to
+stay at the request of Leontes, was won over by Hermione's gentle and
+persuasive words to put off his departure for some weeks longer. Upon
+this, although Leontes had so long known the integrity and honourable
+principles of his friend Polixenes, as well as the excellent
+disposition of his virtuous queen, he was seized with an ungovernable
+jealousy. Every attention Hermione showed to Polixenes, though by her
+husband's particular desire, and merely to please him, increased the
+unfortunate king's malady; and from being a loving and a true friend,
+and the best and fondest of husbands, Leontes became suddenly a savage
+and inhuman monster. Sending for Camillo, one of the lords of his
+court, and telling him of the suspicion he entertained, he commanded
+him to poison Polixenes.
+
+Camillo was a good man; and he, well knowing that the jealousy
+of Leontes had not the slightest foundation in truth, instead of
+poisoning Polixenes, acquainted him with the king his master's orders,
+and agreed to escape with him out of the Sicilian dominions; and
+Polixenes, with the assistance of Camillo, arrived safe in his own
+kingdom of Bohemia, where Camillo lived from that time in the king's
+court, and became the chief friend and favourite of Polixenes.
+
+The flight of Polixenes enraged the jealous Leontes still more; he
+went to the queen's apartment, where the good lady was sitting with
+her little son Mamillus, who was just beginning to tell one of his
+best stories to amuse his mother, when the king entered, and taking
+the child away, sent Hermione to prison.
+
+Mamillus, though but a very young child, loved his mother tenderly;
+and when he saw her so dishonoured, and found she was taken from him
+to be put into a prison, he took it deeply to heart, and drooped and
+pined away by slow degrees, losing his appetite and his sleep, till it
+was thought his grief would kill him.
+
+The king, when he had sent his queen to prison, commanded Cleomenes
+and Dion, two Sicilian lords, to go to Delphos, there to inquire of
+the oracle at the temple of Apollo, if his queen had been unfaithful
+to him.
+
+When Hermione had been a short time in prison, she was brought to bed
+of a daughter; and the poor lady received much comfort from the sight
+of her pretty baby, and she said to it, "My poor little prisoner, I am
+as innocent as you are."
+
+Hermione had a kind friend in the noble-spirited Paulina, who was the
+wife of Antigonus, a Sicilian lord; and when the Lady Paulina heard
+her royal mistress was brought to bed, she went to the prison where
+Hermione was confined; and she said to Emilia, a lady who attended
+upon Hermione, "I pray you, Emilia, tell the good queen, if her
+majesty dare trust me with her little babe, I will carry it to the
+king its father; we do not know how he may soften at the sight of his
+innocent child." "Most worthy madam," replied Emilia, "I will acquaint
+the queen with your noble offer; she was wishing to-day that she had
+any friend who would venture to present the child to the king." "And
+tell her," said Paulina, "that I will speak boldly to Leontes in
+her defence." "May you be for ever blessed," said Emilia, "for your
+kindness to our gracious queen!" Emilia then went to Hermione, who
+joyfully gave up her baby to the care of Paulina, for she had feared
+that no one would dare venture to present the child to its father.
+
+Paulina took the new-born infant, and forcing herself into the king's
+presence, notwithstanding her husband, fearing the king's anger,
+endeavoured to prevent her, she laid the babe at its father's feet,
+and Paulina made a noble speech to the king in defence of Hermione,
+and she reproached him severely for his inhumanity, and implored him
+to have mercy on his innocent wife and child. But Paulina's spirited
+remonstrances only aggravated Leontes's displeasure, and he ordered
+her husband Antigonus to take her from his presence.
+
+When Paulina went away, she left the little baby at its father's feet,
+thinking, when he was alone with it, he would look upon it, and have
+pity on its helpless innocence.
+
+The good Paulina was mistaken; for no sooner was she gone than the
+merciless father ordered Antigonus, Paulina's husband, to take the
+child, and carry it out to sea, and leave it upon some desert shore to
+perish.
+
+Antigonus, unlike the good Camillo, too well obeyed the orders of
+Leontes; for he immediately carried the child on ship-board, and put
+out to sea, intending to leave it on the first desert coast he could
+find.
+
+So firmly was the king persuaded of the guilt of Hermione, that he
+would not wait for the return of Cleomenes and Dion, whom he had sent
+to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphos; but before the queen was
+recovered from her lying-in, and from her grief for the loss of her
+precious baby, he had her brought to a public trial before all the
+lords and nobles of his court. And when all the great lords, the
+judges, and all the nobility of the land were assembled together to
+try Hermione, and that unhappy queen was standing as a prisoner before
+her subjects to receive their judgment, Cleomenes and Dion entered the
+assembly, and presented to the king the answer of the oracle sealed
+up; and Leontes commanded the seal to be broken, and the words of
+the oracle to be read aloud, and these were the words:--"_Hermione
+is innocent, Polixenes blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a
+jealous tyrant, and the king shall live without an heir if that which
+is lost be not found_." The king would give no credit to the words
+of the oracle: he said it was a falsehood invented by the queen's
+friends, and he desired the judge to proceed in the trial of the
+queen; but while Leontes was speaking, a man entered and told him that
+the prince Mamillus, hearing his mother was to be tried for her life,
+struck with grief and shame, had suddenly died.
+
+Hermione, upon hearing of the death of this dear affectionate child,
+who had lost his life in sorrowing for her misfortune, fainted; and
+Leontes, pierced to the heart by the news, began to feel pity for his
+unhappy queen, and he ordered Paulina, and the ladies who were her
+attendants, to take her away, and use means for her recovery. Paulina
+soon returned, and told the king that Hermione was dead.
+
+When Leontes heard that the queen was dead, he repented of his cruelty
+to her; and now that he thought his ill usage had broken Hermione's
+heart, he believed her innocent; and he now thought the words of the
+oracle were true, as he knew "if that which was lost was not found,"
+which he concluded was his young daughter, he should be without an
+heir, the young prince Mamillus being dead; and he would give his
+kingdom now to recover his lost daughter: and Leontes gave himself up
+to remorse, and passed many years in mournful thoughts and repentant
+grief.
+
+The ship in which Antigonus carried the infant princess out to sea
+was driven by a storm upon the coast of Bohemia, the very kingdom of
+the good king Polixenes. Here Antigonus landed, and here he left the
+little baby.
+
+Antigonus never returned to Sicily to tell Leontes where he had left
+his daughter, for as he was going back to the ship, a bear came out
+of the woods, and tore him to pieces; a just punishment on him for
+obeying the wicked order of Leontes.
+
+The child was dressed in rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had
+made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had
+pinned a paper to its mantle, with the name of _Perdita_ written
+thereon, and words obscurely intimating its high birth and untoward
+fate.
+
+This poor deserted baby was found by a shepherd. He was a humane man,
+and so he carried the little Perdita home to his wife, who nursed it
+tenderly: but poverty tempted the shepherd to conceal the rich prize
+he had found; therefore he left that part of the country, that no one
+might know where he got his riches, and with part of Perdita's jewels
+he bought herds of sheep, and became a wealthy shepherd. He brought up
+Perdita as his own child, and she knew not she was any other than a
+shepherd's daughter.
+
+The little Perdita grew up a lovely maiden; and though she had no
+better education than that of a shepherd's daughter, yet so did the
+natural graces she inherited from her royal mother shine forth in her
+untutored mind, that no one from her behaviour would have known she
+had not been brought up in her father's court.
+
+Polixenes, the king of Bohemia, had an only son, whose name was
+Florizel. As this young prince was hunting near the shepherd's
+dwelling, he saw the old man's supposed daughter; and the beauty,
+modesty, and queen-like deportment of Perdita caused him instantly to
+fall in love with her. He soon, under the name of Doricles, and in the
+disguise of a private gentleman, became a constant visitor at the old
+shepherd's house.
+
+Florizel's frequent absences from court alarmed Polixenes; and setting
+people to watch his son, he discovered his love for the shepherd's
+fair daughter.
+
+Polixenes then called for Camillo, the faithful Camillo, who had
+preserved his life from the fury of Leontes; and desired that he would
+accompany him to the house of the shepherd, the supposed father of
+Perdita.
+
+Polixenes and Camillo, both in disguise, arrived at the old shepherd's
+dwelling while they were celebrating the feast of sheep-shearing; and
+though they were strangers, yet at the sheep-shearing every guest
+being made welcome, they were invited to walk in, and join in the
+general festivity.
+
+Nothing but mirth and jolity was going forward. Tables were spread,
+and great preparations were making for the rustic feast. Some lads and
+lasses were dancing on the green before the house, while others of the
+young men were buying ribbands, gloves, and such toys, of a pedlar at
+the door.
+
+While this busy scene was going forward, Florizel and Perdita
+sat quietly in a retired corner, seemingly more pleased with the
+conversation of each other, than desirous of engaging in the sports
+and silly amusements of those around them.
+
+The king was so disguised that it was impossible his son could know
+him; he therefore advanced near enough to hear the conversation. The
+simple yet elegant manner in which Perdita conversed with his son did
+not a little surprise Polixenes: he said to Camillo, "This is the
+prettiest low-born lass I ever saw; nothing she does or says but looks
+like something greater than herself, too noble for this place."
+
+Camillo replied, "Indeed she is the very queen of curds and cream."
+
+"Pray, my good friend," said the king to the old shepherd, "what fair
+swain is that talking with your daughter?" "They call him Doricles,"
+replied the shepherd. "He says he loves my daughter; and to speak
+truth, there is not a kiss to choose which loves the other best. If
+young Doricles can get her, she shall bring him that he little dreams
+of:" meaning the remainder of Perdita's jewels; which, after he had
+bought herds of sheep with part of them, he had carefully hoarded up
+for her marriage-portion.
+
+Polixenes then addressed his son. "How now, young man!" said he: "your
+heart seems full of something that takes off your mind from feasting.
+When I was young, I used to load my love with presents; but you have
+let the pedlar go, and have bought your lass no toy."
+
+The young prince, who little thought he was talking to the king his
+father, replied, "Old sir, she prizes not such trifles; the gifts
+which Perdita expects from me are locked up in my heart." Then turning
+to Perdita, he said to her, "O hear me, Perdita, before this ancient
+gentleman, who it seems was once himself a lover; he shall hear what I
+profess." Florizel then called upon the old stranger to be a witness
+to a solemn promise of marriage which he made to Perdita, saying to
+Polixenes, "I pray you, mark our contract."
+
+"Mark your divorce, young sir," said the king, discovering himself.
+Polixenes then reproached his son for daring to contract himself to
+this low-born maiden, calling Perdita "shepherd's-brat, sheep-hook,"
+and other disrespectful names; and threatening, if ever she suffered
+his son to see her again, he would put her, and the old shepherd her
+father, to a cruel death.
+
+The king then left them in great wrath, and ordered Camillo to follow
+him with prince Florizel.
+
+When the king had departed, Perdita, whose royal nature was roused by
+Polixenes's reproaches, said, "Though we are all undone, I was not
+much afraid; and once or twice I was about to speak, and tell him
+plainly that the self-same sun which shines upon his palace, hides not
+his face from our cottage, but looks on both alike." Then sorrowfully
+she said, "But now I am awakened from this dream, I will queen it no
+farther. Leave me, sir; I will go milk my ewes, and weep."
+
+The kind-hearted Camillo was charmed with the spirit and propriety
+of Perdita's behaviour; and perceiving that the young prince was too
+deeply in love to give up his mistress at the command of his royal
+father, he thought of a way to befriend the lovers, and at the same
+time to execute a favourite scheme he had in his mind.
+
+Camillo had long known that Leontes, the king of Sicily, was become
+a true penitent; and though Camillo was now the favoured friend of
+king Polixenes, he could not help wishing once more to see his late
+royal master and his native home. He therefore proposed to Florizel
+and Perdita, that they should accompany him to the Sicilian court,
+where he would engage Leontes should protect them, till through his
+mediation they could obtain pardon from Polixenes, and his consent to
+their marriage.
+
+To this proposal they joyfully agreed; and Camillo, who conducted
+every thing relative to their flight, allowed the old shepherd to go
+along with them.
+
+The shepherd took with him the remainder of Perdita's jewels, her baby
+clothes, and the paper which he had found pinned to her mantle.
+
+After a prosperous voyage, Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the old
+shepherd, arrived in safety at the court of Leontes. Leontes, who
+still mourned his dead Hermione and his lost child, received Camillo
+with great kindness, and gave a cordial welcome to prince Florizel.
+But Perdita, whom Florizel introduced as his princess, seemed to
+engross all Leontes' attention: perceiving a resemblance between her
+and his dead queen Hermione, his grief broke out afresh, and he said,
+such a lovely creature might his own daughter have been, if he had not
+so cruelly destroyed her. "And then too," said he to Florizel, "I lost
+the society and friendship of your brave father, whom I now desire
+more than my life once again to look upon."
+
+When the old shepherd heard how much notice the king had taken of
+Perdita, and that he had lost a daughter, who was exposed in infancy,
+he fell to comparing the time when he found the little Perdita with
+the manner of its exposure, the jewels and other tokens of its high
+birth; from all which it was impossible for him not to conclude, that
+Perdita and the king's lost daughter were the same.
+
+Florizel and Perdita, Camillo and the faithful Paulina, were present
+when the old shepherd related to the king the manner in which he had
+found the child, and also the circumstance of Antigonus's death,
+he having seen the bear seize upon him. He shewed the rich mantle
+in which Paulina remembered Hermione had wrapped the child; and
+he produced a jewel which she remembered Hermione had tied about
+Perdita's neck, and he gave up the paper which Paulina knew to be
+the writing of her husband; it could not be doubted that Perdita was
+Leontes' own daughter: but oh! the noble struggles of Paulina, between
+sorrow for her husband's death, and joy that the oracle was fulfilled,
+in the king's heir, his long-lost daughter, being found. When Leontes
+heard that Perdita was his daughter, the great sorrow that he felt
+that Hermione was not living to behold her child, made him that he
+could say nothing for a long time, but "O thy mother, thy mother!"
+
+Paulina interrupted this joyful yet distressful scene, with saying to
+Leontes, that she had a statue, newly finished by that rare Italian
+master, Julio Romano, which was such a perfect resemblance of the
+queen, that would his majesty be pleased to go to her house and look
+upon it, he would be almost ready to think it was Hermione herself.
+Thither then they all went; the king anxious to see the semblance of
+his Hermione, and Perdita longing to behold what the mother she never
+saw did look like.
+
+When Paulina drew back the curtain which concealed this famous statue,
+so perfectly did it resemble Hermione, that all the king's sorrow was
+renewed at the sight: for a long time he had no power to speak or
+move.
+
+"I like your silence, my liege," said Paulina; "it the more shews your
+wonder. Is not this statue very like your queen?" At length the king
+said, "O, thus she stood, even with such majesty, when I first wooed
+her. But yet, Paulina, Hermione was not so aged as this statue looks."
+Paulina replied, "So much the more the carver's excellence, who has
+made the statue as Hermione would have looked had she been living now.
+But let me draw the curtain, sire, lest presently you think it moves."
+
+The king then said, "Do not draw the curtain! Would I were dead! See,
+Camillo, would you not think it breathed? Her eye seems to have motion
+in it." "I must draw the curtain, my liege," said Paulina. "You are so
+transported, you will persuade yourself the statue lives." "O, sweet
+Paulina," said Leontes, "make me think so twenty years together! Still
+methinks there is an air comes from her. What fine chisel could ever
+yet cut breath? Let no man mock me, for I will kiss her." "Good, my
+lord, forbear!" said Paulina. "The ruddiness upon her lip is wet; you
+will stain your own with oily painting. Shall I draw the curtain?"
+"No, not these twenty years," said Leontes.
+
+Perdita, who all this time had been kneeling, and beholding in silent
+admiration the statue of her matchless mother, said now, "And so long
+could I stay here, looking upon my dear mother."
+
+"Either forbear this transport," said Paulina to Leontes, "and let me
+draw the curtain; or prepare yourself for more amazement. I can make
+the statue move indeed; aye, and descend from off the pedestal, and
+take you by the hand. But then you will think, which I protest I am
+not, that I am assisted by some wicked powers." "What you can make her
+do," said the astonished king, "I am content to look upon. What you
+can make her speak, I am content to hear; for it is as easy to make
+her speak as move."
+
+Paulina then ordered some slow and solemn music, which she had
+prepared for the purpose, to strike up; and to the amazement of all
+the beholders, the statue came down from off the pedestal, and threw
+its arms around Leontes' neck. The statue then began to speak, praying
+for blessings on her husband, and on her child, the newly found
+Perdita.
+
+No wonder that the statue hung upon Leontes' neck, and blessed her
+husband and her child. No wonder; for the statue was indeed Hermione
+herself, the real, the living queen.
+
+Paulina had falsely reported to the king the death of Hermione,
+thinking that the only means to preserve her royal mistress's life;
+and with the good Paulina Hermione had lived ever since, never
+choosing Leontes should know she was living, till she heard Perdita
+was found; for though she had long forgiven the injuries which Leontes
+had done to herself, she could not pardon his cruelty to his infant
+daughter.
+
+His dead queen thus restored to life, his lost daughter found, the
+long-sorrowing Leontes could scarcely support the excess of his own
+happiness.
+
+Nothing but congratulations and affectionate speeches were heard on
+all sides. Now the delighted parents thanked prince Florizel for
+loving their lowly-seeming daughter; and now they blessed the good old
+shepherd for preserving their child. Greatly did Camillo and Paulina
+rejoice, that they had lived to see so good an end of all their
+faithful services.
+
+And as if nothing should be wanting to complete this strange and
+unlooked-for joy, king Polixenes himself now entered the palace.
+
+When Polixenes first missed his son and Camillo, knowing that Camillo
+had long wished to return to Sicily, he conjectured he should find
+the fugitives here; and, following them with all speed, he happened
+to arrive just at this, the happiest moment of Leontes' life.
+
+Polixenes took a part in the general joy; he forgave his friend
+Leontes the unjust jealousy he had conceived against him, and they
+once more loved each other with all the warmth of their first boyish
+friendship. And there was no fear that Polixenes would now oppose
+his son's marriage with Perdita. She was no "sheep-hook" now, but
+the heiress of the crown of Sicily.
+
+Thus have we seen the patient virtues of the long-suffering Hermione
+rewarded. That excellent lady lived many years with her Leontes and
+her Perdita, the happiest of mothers and of queens.
+
+
+
+
+MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+There lived in the palace at Messina two ladies, whose names were
+Hero and Beatrice. Hero was the daughter, and Beatrice the niece, of
+Leonato, the governor of Messina.
+
+Beatrice was of a lively temper, and loved to divert her cousin Hero,
+who was of a more serious disposition, with her sprightly sallies.
+Whatever was going forward was sure to make matter of mirth for the
+light-hearted Beatrice.
+
+At the time the history of these ladies commences, some young men of
+high rank in the army, as they were passing through Messina on their
+return from a war that was just ended, in which they had distinguished
+themselves by their great bravery, came to visit Leonato. Among these
+were Don Pedro, the prince of Arragon; and his friend Claudio, who was
+a lord of Florence; and with them came the wild and witty Benedick,
+and he was a lord of Padua.
+
+These strangers had been at Messina before, and the hospitable
+governor introduced them to his daughter and his niece as their old
+friends and acquaintance.
+
+Benedick, the moment he entered the room, began a lively conversation
+with Leonato and the prince. Beatrice, who liked not to be left out of
+any discourse, interrupted Benedick with saying, "I wonder that you
+will still be talking, signior Benedick; nobody marks you." Benedick
+was just such another rattle-brain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased
+at this free salutation: he thought it did not become a well-bred lady
+to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last
+at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests
+upon. And as there is no one who so little likes to be made a jest of
+as those who are apt to take the same liberty themselves, so it was
+with Benedick and Beatrice; these two sharp wits never met in former
+times but a perfect war of raillery was kept up between them, and they
+always parted mutually displeased with each other. Therefore when
+Beatrice stopped him in the middle of his discourse with telling him
+nobody marked what he was saying, Benedick, affecting not to have
+observed before that she was present, said, "What, my dear lady
+Disdain, are you yet living?" And now war broke out afresh between
+them, and a long jangling argument ensued, during which Beatrice,
+although she knew he had so well approved his valour in the late war,
+said that she would eat all he had killed there: and observing the
+prince take delight in Benedick's conversation, she called him "the
+prince's jester." This sarcasm sunk deeper into the mind of Benedick
+than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a
+coward, by saying she would eat all he had killed, he did not regard,
+knowing himself to be a brave man: but there is nothing that great
+wits so much dread as the imputation of buffoonery, because the charge
+comes sometimes a little too near the truth; therefore Benedick
+perfectly hated Beatrice, when she called him "the prince's jester."
+
+The modest lady Hero was silent before the noble guests; and while
+Claudio was attentively observing the improvement which time had made
+in her beauty, and was contemplating the exquisite graces of her fine
+figure (for she was an admirable young lady), the prince was highly
+amused with listening to the humorous dialogue between Benedick
+and Beatrice; and he said in a whisper to Leonato, "This is a
+pleasant-spirited young lady. She were an excellent wife for
+Benedick." Leonato replied to this suggestion, "O my lord, my lord,
+if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad." But
+though Leonato thought they would make a discordant pair, the prince
+did not give up the idea of matching these two keen wits together.
+
+When the prince returned with Claudio from the palace, he found that
+the marriage he had devised between Benedick and Beatrice was not the
+only one projected in that good company, for Claudio spoke in such
+terms of Hero, as made the prince guess at what was passing in his
+heart; and he liked it well, and he said to Claudio, "Do you affect
+Hero?" To this question Claudio replied, "O my lord, when I was last
+at Messina, I looked upon her with a soldier's eye, that liked, but
+had no leisure for loving; but now, in this happy time of peace,
+thoughts of war have left their places vacant in my mind, and in their
+room come thronging soft and delicate thoughts, all prompting me how
+fair young Hero is, reminding me that I liked her before I went to the
+wars." Claudio's confession of his love for Hero so wrought upon the
+prince, that he lost no time in soliciting the consent of Leonato to
+accept of Claudio for a son-in-law. Leonato agreed to this proposal,
+and the prince found no great difficulty in persuading the gentle Hero
+herself to listen to the suit of the noble Claudio, who was a lord of
+rare endowments, and highly accomplished; and Claudio, assisted by his
+kind prince, soon prevailed upon Leonato to fix an early day for the
+celebration of his marriage with Hero.
+
+Claudio was to wait but a few days before he was to be married to
+his fair lady; yet he complained of the interval being tedious, as
+indeed most young men are impatient, when they are waiting for the
+accomplishment of any event they have set their hearts upon: the
+prince therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a
+kind of merry pastime, that they should invent some artful scheme
+to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio
+entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and
+Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do
+any modest office to help her cousin to a good husband.
+
+The device the prince invented was, that the gentlemen should make
+Benedick believe that Beatrice was in love with him, and that Hero
+should make Beatrice believe that Benedick was in love with her.
+
+The prince, Leonato, and Claudio, began their operations first, and
+watching an opportunity when Benedick was quietly seated reading in
+an arbour, the prince and his assistants took their station among the
+trees behind the arbour, so near that Benedick could not choose but
+hear all they said; and after some careless talk the prince said,
+"Come hither, Leonato. What was it you told me the other day,--that
+your niece Beatrice was in love with signior Benedick? I did never
+think that lady would have loved any man." "No, nor I neither, my
+lord," answered Leonato. "It is most wonderful that she should so
+doat on Benedick, whom she in all outward behaviour seemed ever to
+dislike." Claudio confirmed all this, with saying that Hero had told
+him Beatrice was so in love with Benedick that she would certainly die
+of grief, if he could not be brought to love her; which Leonato and
+Claudio seemed to agree was impossible, he having always been such a
+railer against all fair ladies, and in particular against Beatrice.
+
+The prince affected to hearken to all this with great compassion for
+Beatrice, and he said, "It were good that Benedick were told of this."
+"To what end?" said Claudio; "he would but make sport of it, and
+torment the poor lady worse." "And if he should," said the prince, "it
+were a good deed to hang him; for Beatrice is an excellent sweet lady,
+and exceeding wise in every thing but in loving Benedick." Then the
+prince motioned to his companions that they should walk on, and leave
+Benedick to meditate upon what he had overheard.
+
+Benedick had been listening with great eagerness to this conversation;
+and he said to himself when he heard Beatrice loved him, "Is it
+possible? Sits the wind in that corner?" And when they were gone, he
+began to reason in this manner with himself. "This can be no trick!
+they were very serious, and they have the truth from Hero, and seem to
+pity the lady. Love me! Why, it must be requited! I did never think
+to marry. But when I said I should die a bachelor, I did not think I
+should live to be married. They say the lady is virtuous and fair. She
+is so. And wise in every thing but in loving me. Why that is no great
+argument of her folly. But here comes Beatrice. By this day, she
+is a fair lady. I do spy some marks of love in her." Beatrice now
+approached him, and said with her usual tartness, "Against my will
+I am sent to bid you come in to dinner." Benedick, who never felt
+himself disposed to speak so politely to her before, replied, "Fair
+Beatrice, I thank you for your pains:" and when Beatrice after two
+or three more rude speeches left him, Benedick thought he observed a
+concealed meaning of kindness under the uncivil words she uttered, and
+he said aloud, "If I do not take pity on her, I am a villain. If I do
+not love her, I am a Jew. I will go get her picture."
+
+The gentleman being thus caught in the net they had spread for him,
+it was now Hero's turn to play her part with Beatrice; and for
+this purpose she sent for Ursula and Margaret, two gentlewomen who
+attended upon her, and she said to Margaret, "Good Margaret, run to
+the parlour; there you will find my cousin Beatrice talking with the
+prince and Claudio. Whisper in her ear, that I and Ursula are walking
+in the orchard, and that our discourse is all of her. Bid her steal
+into that pleasant arbour, where honey-suckles, ripened by the sun,
+like ungrateful minions, forbid the sun to enter." This arbour,
+into which Hero desired Margaret to entice Beatrice, was the very
+same pleasant arbour where Benedick had so lately been an attentive
+listener. "I will make her come, I warrant, presently," said Margaret.
+
+Hero, then taking Ursula with her into the orchard, said to her, "Now,
+Ursula, when Beatrice comes, we will walk up and down this alley, and
+our talk must be only of Benedick, and when I name him, let it be
+your part to praise him more than ever man did merit. My talk to you
+must be how Benedick is in love with Beatrice. Now begin; for look
+where Beatrice like a lapwing runs close by the ground, to hear
+our conference." They then began; Hero saying, as if in answer to
+something which Ursula had said, "No truly, Ursula. She is too
+disdainful; her spirits are as coy as wild birds of the rock."
+"But are you sure," said Ursula, "that Benedick loves Beatrice so
+entirely?" Hero replied, "So says the prince, and my lord Claudio, and
+they intreated me to acquaint her with it; but I persuaded them, if
+they loved Benedick, never to let Beatrice know of it." "Certainly,"
+replied Ursula, "it were not good she knew his love, lest she made
+sport of it." "Why to say truth," said Hero, "I never yet saw a man,
+how wise soever, or noble, young or rarely featured, but she would
+dispraise him." "Sure, sure, such carping is not commendable," said
+Ursula. "No," replied Hero, "but who dare tell her so? if I should
+speak, she would mock me into air." "O you wrong your cousin," said
+Ursula: "she cannot be so much without true judgment, as to refuse
+so rare a gentleman as signior Benedick." "He hath an excellent
+good name," said Hero: "indeed he is the first man in Italy, always
+excepting my dear Claudio." And now, Hero giving her attendant a hint
+that it was time to change the discourse, Ursula said, "And when are
+you to be married, madam?" Hero then told her, that she was to be
+married to Claudio the next day, and desired she would go in with her,
+and look at some new attire, as she wished to consult with her on what
+she should wear on the morrow. Beatrice, who had been listening with
+breathless eagerness to this dialogue, when they went away, exclaimed,
+"What fire is in my ears? Can this be true? Farewel, contempt, and
+scorn and maiden pride, adieu! Benedick, love on! I will requite you,
+taming my wild heart to your loving hand."
+
+It must have been a pleasant sight to see these old enemies converted
+into new and loving friends; and to behold their first meeting
+after being cheated into mutual liking by the merry artifice of the
+good-humoured prince. But a sad reverse in the fortunes of Hero must
+now be thought of. The morrow, which was to have been her wedding day,
+brought sorrow on the heart of Hero and her good father Leonato.
+
+The prince had a half-brother, who came from the wars along with him
+to Messina. This brother (his name was Don John) was a melancholy,
+discontented man, whose spirits seemed to labour in the contriving
+of villanies. He hated the prince his brother, and he hated Claudio,
+because he was the prince's friend, and determined to prevent
+Claudio's marriage with Hero, only for the malicious pleasure of
+making Claudio and the prince unhappy: for he knew the prince had set
+his heart upon this marriage, almost as much as Claudio himself: and
+to effect this wicked purpose, he employed one Borachio, a man as bad
+as himself, whom he encouraged with the offer of a great reward. This
+Borachio paid his court to Margaret, Hero's attendant; and Don John,
+knowing this, prevailed upon him to make Margaret promise to talk with
+him from her lady's chamber-window that night, after Hero was asleep,
+and also to dress herself in Hero's clothes, the better to deceive
+Claudio into the belief that it was Hero; for that was the end he
+meant to compass by this wicked plot.
+
+Don John then went to the prince and Claudio, and told them that
+Hero was an imprudent lady, and that she talked with men from her
+chamber-window at midnight. Now this was the evening before the
+wedding, and he offered to take them that night, where they should
+themselves hear Hero discoursing with a man from her window; and they
+consented to go along with him, and Claudio said, "If I see any thing
+to-night why I should not marry her, to-morrow in the congregation,
+where I intended to wed her, there will I shame her." The prince also
+said, "And as I assisted you to obtain her, I will join with you to
+disgrace her."
+
+When Don John brought them near Hero's chamber that night, they saw
+Borachio standing under the window, and they saw Margaret looking out
+of Hero's window, and heard her talking with Borachio; and Margaret
+being dressed in the same clothes they had seen Hero wear, the prince
+and Claudio believed it was the lady Hero herself.
+
+Nothing could equal the anger of Claudio, when he had made (as he
+thought) this discovery. All his love for the innocent Hero was at
+once converted into hatred, and he resolved to expose her in the
+church, as he had said he would, the next day; and the prince agreed
+to this, thinking no punishment could be too severe for the naughty
+lady, who talked with a man from her window the very night before she
+was going to be married to the noble Claudio.
+
+The next day, when they were all met to celebrate the marriage,
+and Claudio and Hero were standing before the priest, and the
+priest, or friar as he was called, was proceeding to pronounce
+the marriage-ceremony, Claudio, in the most passionate language,
+proclaimed the guilt of the blameless Hero, who, amazed at the strange
+words he uttered, said meekly, "Is my lord well, that he does speak
+so wide?"
+
+Leonato, in the utmost horror, said to the prince, "My lord, why
+speak not you?" "What should I speak?" said the prince; "I stand
+dishonoured, that have gone about to link my dear friend to an
+unworthy woman. Leonato, upon my honour, myself, my brother, and this
+grieved Claudio, did see and hear her last night at midnight talk with
+a man at her chamber-window."
+
+Benedick, in astonishment at what he heard, said, "This looks not like
+a nuptial."
+
+"True, O God!" replied the heart-struck Hero; and then this hapless
+lady sunk down in a fainting fit, to all appearance dead. The prince
+and Claudio left the church, without staying to see if Hero would
+recover, or at all regarding the distress into which they had thrown
+Leonato. So hard-hearted had their anger made them.
+
+Benedick remained, and assisted Beatrice to recover Hero from her
+swoon, saying, "How does the lady?" "Dead, I think," replied Beatrice
+in great agony, for she loved her cousin; and knowing her virtuous
+principles, she believed nothing of what she had heard spoken against
+her. Not so the poor old father; he believed the story of his child's
+shame, and it was piteous to hear him lamenting over her, as she lay
+like one dead before him, wishing she might never more open her eyes.
+
+But the ancient friar was a wise man, and full of observation on human
+nature, and he had attentively marked the lady's countenance when she
+heard herself accused, and noted a thousand blushing shames to start
+into her face, and then he saw an angel-like whiteness bear away
+those blushes, and in her eye he saw a fire that did belie the error
+that the prince did speak against her maiden truth, and he said to
+the sorrowing father, "Call me a fool; trust not my reading, nor my
+observation; trust not my age, my reverence, nor my calling; if this
+sweet lady lie not guiltless here under some biting error."
+
+When Hero had recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen, the
+friar said to her, "Lady, what man is he you are accused of?" Hero
+replied, "They know that do accuse me; I know of none:" then turning
+to Leonato, she said, "O my father, if you can prove that any man has
+ever conversed with me at hours unmeet, or that I yesternight changed
+words with any creature, refuse me, hate me, torture me to death."
+
+"There is," said the friar, "some strange misunderstanding in the
+prince and Claudio;" and then he counselled Leonato, that he should
+report that Hero was dead; and he said, that the death-like swoon in
+which they had left Hero, would make this easy of belief; and he also
+advised him, that he should put on mourning, and erect a monument for
+her, and do all rites that appertain to a burial. "What shall become
+of this?" said Leonato; "What will this do?" The friar replied, "This
+report of her death shall change slander into pity; that is some good,
+but that is not all the good I hope for. When Claudio shall hear she
+died upon hearing his words, the idea of her life shall sweetly creep
+into his imagination. Then shall he mourn, if ever love had interest
+in his heart, and wish he had not so accused her: yea, though he
+thought his accusation true."
+
+Benedick now said, "Leonato, let the friar advise you; and though you
+know how well I love the prince and Claudio, yet on my honour I will
+not reveal this secret to them."
+
+Leonato, thus persuaded, yielded; and he said sorrowfully, "I am so
+grieved, that the smallest twine may lead me." The kind friar then led
+Leonato and Hero away to comfort and console them, and Beatrice and
+Benedick remained alone; and this was the meeting from which their
+friends, who contrived the merry plot against them, expected so much
+diversion; those friends who were now overwhelmed with affliction, and
+from whose minds all thoughts of merriment seemed for ever banished.
+
+Benedick was the first who spoke, and he said, "Lady Beatrice, have
+you wept all this while?" "Yea, and I will weep a while longer," said
+Beatrice. "Surely," said Benedick, "I do believe your fair cousin is
+wronged." "Ah!" said Beatrice, "how much might that man deserve of me
+who would right her!" Benedick then said, "Is there any way to show
+such friendship? I do love nothing in the world so well as you; is not
+that strange?" "It were as possible," said Beatrice, "for me to say I
+loved nothing in the world so well as you; but believe me not, and yet
+I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my
+cousin." "By my sword," said Benedick, "you love me, and I protest I
+love you. Come, bid me do any thing for you." "Kill Claudio," said
+Beatrice. "Ha! not for the wide world," said Benedick: for he loved
+his friend Claudio, and he believed he had been imposed upon. "Is not
+Claudio a villain that has slandered, scorned, and dishonoured my
+cousin?" said Beatrice: "O that I were a man!" "Hear me, Beatrice!"
+said Benedick. But Beatrice would hear nothing in Claudio's defence;
+and she continued to urge on Benedick to revenge her cousin's wrongs:
+and she said, "Talk with a man out of the window; a proper saying!
+Sweet Hero! she is wronged; she is slandered; she is undone. O that
+I were a man for Claudio's sake! or that I had any friend, who would
+be a man for my sake! but valour is melted into courtesies and
+compliments. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a
+woman with grieving." "Tarry, good Beatrice," said Benedick: "by this
+hand, I love you." "Use it for my love some other way than swearing by
+it," said Beatrice. "Think you on your soul, that Claudio has wronged
+Hero?" asked Benedick. "Yea," answered Beatrice; "as sure as I have a
+thought, or a soul." "Enough," said Benedick; "I am engaged; I will
+challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so leave you. By this hand,
+Claudio shall render me a dear account! As you hear from me, so think
+of me. Go, comfort your cousin."
+
+While Beatrice was thus powerfully pleading with Benedick, and working
+his gallant temper by the spirit of her angry words, to engage in the
+cause of Hero, and fight even with his dear friend Claudio, Leonato
+was challenging the prince and Claudio to answer with their swords the
+injury they had done his child, who, he affirmed, had died for grief.
+But they respected his age and his sorrow, and they said, "Nay, do not
+quarrel with us, good old man." And now came Benedick, and he also
+challenged Claudio to answer with his sword the injury he had done to
+Hero: and Claudio and the prince said to each other, "Beatrice has
+set him on to do this." Claudio nevertheless must have accepted this
+challenge of Benedick, had not the justice of Heaven at the moment
+brought to pass a better proof of the innocence of Hero than the
+uncertain fortune of a duel.
+
+While the prince and Claudio were yet talking of the challenge of
+Benedick, a magistrate brought Borachio as a prisoner before the
+prince. Borachio had been overheard talking with one of his companions
+of the mischief he had been employed by Don John to do.
+
+Borachio made a full confession to the prince in Claudio's hearing,
+that it was Margaret dressed in her lady's clothes that he had talked
+with from the window, whom they had mistaken for the lady Hero
+herself; and no doubt continued on the minds of Claudio and the prince
+of the innocence of Hero. If a suspicion had remained, it must have
+been removed by the flight of Don John, who, finding his villanies
+were detected, fled from Messina to avoid the just anger of his
+brother.
+
+The heart of Claudio was sorely grieved, when he found he had falsely
+accused Hero, who, he thought, died upon hearing his cruel words; and
+the memory of his beloved Hero's image came over him, in the rare
+semblance that he loved it first: and the prince asking him if what
+he heard did not run like iron through his soul, he answered, that he
+felt as if he had taken poison while Borachio was speaking.
+
+And the repentant Claudio implored forgiveness of the old man Leonato
+for the injury he had done his child; and promised, that whatever
+penance Leonato would lay upon him for his fault in believing the
+false accusation against his betrothed wife, for her dear sake he
+would endure it.
+
+The penance Leonato enjoined him was, to marry the next morning a
+cousin of Hero's who, he said, was now his heir, and in person very
+like Hero. Claudio, regarding the solemn promise he had made to
+Leonato, said, he would marry this unknown lady, even though she were
+an Ethiop: but his heart was very sorrowful, and he passed that night
+in tears, and in remorseful grief, at the tomb which Leonato had
+erected for Hero.
+
+When the morning came, the prince accompanied Claudio to the church,
+where the good friar, and Leonato and his niece, were already
+assembled, to celebrate a second nuptial: and Leonato presented to
+Claudio his promised bride; and she wore a mask, that Claudio might
+not discover her face. And Claudio said to the lady in the mask,
+"Give me your hand, before this holy friar; I am your husband, if you
+will marry me." "And when I lived, I was your other wife," said this
+unknown lady; and, taking off her mask, she proved to be no niece (as
+was pretended), but Leonato's very daughter, the lady Hero herself. We
+may be sure that this proved a most agreeable surprise to Claudio, who
+thought her dead, so that he could scarcely for joy believe his eyes:
+and the prince, who was equally amazed at what he saw, exclaimed
+"Is not this Hero, Hero that was dead?" Leonato replied, "She died,
+my lord, but while her slander lived." The friar promised them an
+explanation of this seeming miracle, after the ceremony was ended; and
+was proceeding to marry them, when he was interrupted by Benedick, who
+desired to be married at the same time to Beatrice. Beatrice making
+some demur to this match, and Benedick challenging her with her love
+for him, which he had learned from Hero, a pleasant explanation took
+place; and they found they had both been tricked into a belief of
+love, which had never existed, and had become lovers in truth by the
+power of a false jest: but the affection, which a merry invention had
+cheated them into, was grown too powerful to be shaken by a serious
+explanation; and since Benedick proposed to marry, he was resolved to
+think nothing to the purpose that the world could say against it; and
+he merrily kept up the jest, and swore to Beatrice, that he took her
+but for pity, and because he heard she was dying of love for him; and
+Beatrice protested, that she yielded but upon great persuasion, and
+partly to save his life, for she heard he was in a consumption. So
+these two mad wits were reconciled, and made a match of it, after
+Claudio and Hero were married; and to complete the history, Don John,
+the contriver of the villany, was taken in his flight, and brought
+back to Messina; and a brave punishment it was to this gloomy,
+discontented man, to see the joy and feastings which, by the
+disappointment of his plots, took place at the palace in Messina.
+
+
+
+
+AS YOU LIKE IT
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+During the time that France was divided into provinces (or dukedoms as
+they were called), there reigned in one of these provinces an usurper,
+who, had deposed and banished his elder brother, the lawful duke.
+
+The duke, who was thus driven from his dominions, retired with a few
+faithful followers to the forest of Arden; and here the good duke
+lived with his loving friends, who had put themselves into a voluntary
+exile for his sake, while their lands and revenues enriched the false
+usurper; and custom soon made the life of careless ease they led here
+more sweet to them than the pomp and uneasy splendour of a courtier's
+life. Here they lived like the old Robin Hood of England, and to this
+forest many noble youths daily resorted from the court, and did fleet
+the time carelessly, as they did who lived in the golden age. In the
+summer they lay along under the fine shade of the large forest trees,
+marking the playful sports of the wild deer; and so fond were they of
+these poor dappled fools, who seemed to be the native inhabitants of
+the forest, that it grieved them to be forced to kill them to supply
+themselves with venison for their food. When the cold winds of winter
+made the duke feel the change of his adverse fortune, he would endure
+it patiently, and say, "These chilling winds which blow upon my body,
+are true counsellors, they do not flatter, but represent truly to me
+my condition; and though they bite sharply, their tooth is nothing
+like so keen as that of unkindness and ingratitude. I find that,
+howsoever men speak against adversity, yet some sweet uses are to be
+extracted from it; like the jewel, precious for medicine, which is
+taken from the head of the venomous and despised toad." In this manner
+did the patient duke draw an useful moral from everything that he saw;
+and by the help of this moralising turn, in that life of his, remote
+from public haunts, he could find tongues in trees, books in the
+running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
+
+The banished duke had an only daughter, named Rosalind, whom the
+usurper, duke Frederick, when he banished her father, still retained
+in his court as a companion for his own daughter Celia. A strict
+friendship subsisted between these ladies, which the disagreement
+between their fathers did not in the least interrupt, Celia striving
+by every kindness in her power to make amends to Rosalind for the
+injustice of her own father in deposing the father of Rosalind;
+and whenever the thoughts of her father's banishment, and her own
+dependance on the false usurper, made Rosalind melancholy, Celia's
+whole care was to comfort and console her.
+
+One day, when Celia was talking in her usual kind manner to Rosalind,
+saying, "I pray you, Rosalind, my sweet cousin, be merry," a messenger
+entered from the duke, to tell them that if they wished to see a
+wrestling match, which was just going to begin, they must come
+instantly to the court before the palace; and Celia, thinking it would
+amuse Rosalind, agreed to go and see it.
+
+In those times wrestling, which is only practised now by country
+clowns, was a favourite sport even in the courts of princes, and
+before fair ladies and princesses. To this wrestling-match therefore
+Celia and Rosalind went. They found that it was likely to prove a
+very tragical sight; for a large and powerful man, who had long been
+practised in the art of wrestling, and had slain many men in contests
+of this kind, was just going to wrestle with a very young man, who,
+from his extreme youth and inexperience in the art, the beholders all
+thought would certainly be killed.
+
+When the duke saw Celia and Rosalind, he said, "How now, daughter and
+niece, are you crept hither to see the wrestling? You will take little
+delight in it, there is such odds in the men: in pity to this young
+roan, I would wish to persuade him from wrestling. Speak to him,
+ladies, and see if you can move him."
+
+The ladies were well pleased to perform this humane office, and first
+Celia entreated the young stranger that he would desist from the
+attempt; and then Rosalind spoke so kindly to him, and with such
+feeling consideration for the danger he was about to undergo, that
+instead of being persuaded by her gentle words to forego his purpose,
+all his thoughts were bent to distinguish himself by his courage in
+this lovely lady's eyes. He refused the request of Celia and Rosalind
+in such graceful and modest words, that they felt still more concern
+for him; he concluded his refusal with saying, "I am sorry to deny
+such fair and excellent ladies any thing. But let your fair eyes and
+gentle wishes go with me to my trial, wherein if I be conquered, there
+is one shamed that was never gracious; if I am killed, there is one
+dead that is willing to die: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I
+have none to lament me; the world no injury, for in it I have nothing;
+for I only fill up a place in the world which may be better supplied
+when I have made it empty."
+
+And now the wrestling-match began. Celia wished the young stranger
+might not be hurt; but Rosalind felt most for him. The friendless
+state which he said he was in, and that he wished to die, made
+Rosalind think that he was like herself unfortunate; and she pitied
+him so much, and so deep an interest she took in his danger while he
+was wrestling, that she might almost be said at that moment to have
+fallen in love with him.
+
+The kindness shewn this unknown youth by these fair and noble ladies
+gave him courage and strength, so that he performed wonders; and in
+the end completely conquered his antagonist, who was so much hurt,
+that for a while he was unable to speak or move.
+
+The duke Frederick was much pleased with the courage and skill shewn
+by this young stranger; and desired to know his name and parentage,
+meaning to take him under his protection.
+
+The stranger said his name was Orlando, and that he was the youngest
+son of sir Rowland de Boys.
+
+Sir Rowland de Boys, the father of Orlando, had been dead some years;
+but when he was living, he had been a true subject and dear friend of
+the banished duke: therefore when Frederick heard Orlando was the son
+of his banished brother's friend, all his liking for this brave young
+man was changed into displeasure, and he left the place in very ill
+humour. Hating to hear the very name of any of his brother's friends,
+and yet still admiring the valour of the youth, he said, as he went
+out, that he wished Orlando had been the son of any other man.
+
+Rosalind was delighted to hear that her new favourite was the son
+of her father's old friend; and she said to Celia, "My father loved
+sir Rowland de Boys, and if I had known this young man was his son,
+I would have added tears to my entreaties before he should have
+ventured."
+
+The ladies then went up to him; and seeing him abashed by the sudden
+displeasure shewn by the duke, they spoke kind and encouraging words
+to him; and Rosalind, when they were going away, turned back to speak
+some more civil things to the brave young son of her father's old
+friend; and taking a chain from off her neck, she said, "Gentleman,
+wear this for me. I am out of suits with fortune, or I would give you
+a more valuable present."
+
+When the ladies were alone, Rosalind's talk being still of Orlando,
+Celia began to perceive her cousin had fallen in love with the
+handsome young wrestler, and she said to Rosalind, "Is it possible
+you should fall in love so suddenly?" Rosalind replied, "The duke,
+my father, loved his father dearly." "But," said Celia, "does it
+therefore follow that you should love his son dearly? for then I
+ought to hate him, for my father hated his father; yet I do not hate
+Orlando."
+
+Frederick being enraged at the sight of sir Rowland de Boys' son,
+which reminded him of the many friends the banished duke had among the
+nobility, and having been for some time displeased with his niece,
+because the people praised her for her virtues, and pitied her for her
+good father's sake, his malice suddenly broke out against her; and
+while Celia and Rosalind were talking of Orlando, Frederick entered
+the room, and with looks full of anger ordered Rosalind instantly
+to leave the palace, and follow her father into banishment; telling
+Celia, who in vain pleaded for her, that he had only suffered Rosalind
+to stay upon her account. "I did not then," said Celia, "entreat you
+to let her stay; for I was too young at that time to value her; but
+now that I know her worth, and that we so long have slept together,
+rose at the same instant, learned, played and eat together, I cannot
+live out of her company." Frederick replied, "She is too subtle for
+you; her smoothness, her very silence, and her patience, speak to the
+people, and they pity her. You are a fool to plead for her, for you
+will seem more bright and virtuous when she is gone; therefore open
+not your lips in her favour, for the doom which I have passed upon her
+is irrevocable."
+
+When Celia found she could not prevail upon her father to let Rosalind
+remain with her, she generously resolved to accompany her; and,
+leaving her father's palace that night, she went along with her friend
+to seek Rosalind's father, the banished duke, in the forest of Arden.
+
+Before they set out, Celia considered that it would be unsafe for
+two young ladies to travel in the rich clothes they then wore; she
+therefore proposed that they should disguise their rank by dressing
+themselves like country maids. Rosalind said it would be a still
+greater protection if one of them was to be dressed like a man; and
+so it was quickly agreed on between them, that as Rosalind was the
+tallest, she should wear the dress of a young countryman, and Celia
+should be habited like a country lass, and that they should say
+they were brother and sister, and Rosalind said she would be called
+Ganimed, and Celia chose the name of Aliena.
+
+In this disguise, and taking their money and jewels to defray their
+expences, these fair princesses set out on their long travel; for
+the forest of Arden was a long way off, beyond the boundaries of the
+duke's dominions.
+
+The lady Rosalind (or Ganimed as she must now be called) with her
+manly garb seemed to have put on a manly courage. The faithful
+friendship Celia had shewn in accompanying Rosalind so many weary
+miles, made the new brother, in recompence for this true love, exert
+a cheerful spirit, as if he were indeed Ganimed, the rustic and
+stout-hearted brother of the gentle village maiden, Aliena.
+
+When at last they came to the forest of Arden, they no longer found
+the convenient inns and good accommodations they had met with on the
+road; and being in want of food and rest, Ganimed, who had so merrily
+cheered his sister with pleasant speeches, and happy remarks, all the
+way, now owned to Aliena that he was so weary, he could find in his
+heart to disgrace his man's apparel, and cry like a woman; and Aliena
+declared she could go no farther; and then again Ganimed tried to
+recollect that it was a man's duty to comfort and console a woman, as
+the weaker vessel: and to seem courageous to his new sister, he said,
+"Come, have a good heart, my sister Aliena; we are now at the end of
+our travel, in the forest of Arden." But feigned manliness and forced
+courage would no longer support them; for though they were in the
+forest of Arden, they knew not where to find the duke: and here the
+travel of these weary ladies might have come to a sad conclusion, for
+they might have lost themselves, and have perished for want of food;
+but providentially, as they were sitting on the grass almost dying
+with fatigue and hopeless of any relief, a countryman chanced to pass
+that way, and Ganimed once more tried to speak with a manly boldness,
+saying, "Shepherd, if love or gold can in this desert place procure
+us entertainment, I pray you bring us where we may rest ourselves;
+for this young maid, my sister, is much fatigued with travelling,
+and faints for want of food."
+
+The man replied, that he was only a servant to a shepherd, and that
+his master's house was just going to be sold, and therefore they would
+find but poor entertainment; but that if they would go with him, they
+should be welcome to what there was. They followed the man, the near
+prospect of relief giving them fresh strength; and bought the house
+and sheep of the shepherd, and took the man who conducted them to
+the shepherd's house, to wait on them; and being by this means so
+fortunately provided with a neat cottage, and well supplied with
+provisions, they agreed to stay here till they could learn in what
+part of the forest the duke dwelt.
+
+When they were rested after the fatigue of their journey, they began
+to like their new way of life, and almost fancied themselves the
+shepherd and shepherdess they feigned to be; yet sometimes Ganimed
+remembered he had once been the same lady Rosalind who had so dearly
+loved the brave Orlando, because he was the son of old sir Rowland,
+her father's friend; and though Ganimed thought that Orlando was many
+miles distant, even so many weary miles as they had travelled, yet it
+soon appeared that Orlando was also in the forest of Arden: and in
+this manner this strange event came to pass.
+
+Orlando was the youngest son of sir Rowland de Boys, who when he died
+left him (Orlando being then very young) to the care of his eldest
+brother Oliver, charging Oliver on his blessing to give his brother
+a good education, and provide for him as became the dignity of their
+ancient house. Oliver proved an unworthy brother; and disregarding the
+commands of his dying father, he never put his brother to school, but
+kept him at home untaught and entirely neglected. But in his nature
+and in the noble qualities of his mind Orlando so much resembled his
+excellent father, that without any advantages of education he seemed
+like a youth who had been bred with the utmost care; and Oliver so
+envied the fine person and dignified manners of his untutored brother,
+that at last he wished to destroy him; and to effect this he set on
+people to persuade him to wrestle with the famous wrestler, who, as
+has been before related, had killed so many men. Now it was this cruel
+brother's neglect of him which made Orlando say he wished to die,
+being so friendless.
+
+When, contrary to the wicked hopes he had formed, his brother proved
+victorious, his envy and malice knew no bounds, and he swore he would
+burn the chamber where Orlando slept. He was overheard making this vow
+by one that had been an old and faithful servant to their father, and
+that loved Orlando because he resembled sir Rowland. This old man went
+out to meet him when he returned from the duke's palace, and when he
+saw Orlando, the peril his dear young master was in made him break
+out into these passionate exclamations: "O my gentle master, my sweet
+master, O you memory of old sir Rowland! why are you virtuous? why
+are you gentle, strong and valiant? and why would you be so fond to
+overcome the famous wrestler? Your praise is come too swiftly home
+before you." Orlando, wondering what all this meant, asked him what
+was the matter? and then the old man told him how his wicked brother,
+envying the love all people bore him, and now hearing the fame he had
+gained by his victory in the duke's palace, intended to destroy him,
+by setting fire to his chamber that night; and in conclusion, advised
+him to escape the danger he was in by instant flight: and knowing
+Orlando had no money, Adam (for that was the good old man's name) had
+brought out with him his own little hoard, and he said, "I have five
+hundred crowns, the thrifty hire I saved under your father, and laid
+by to be provision for me when my old limbs should become unfit for
+service; take that, and he that doth the ravens feed be comfort to my
+age! Here is the gold; all this I give to you: let me be your servant;
+though I look old, I will do the service of a younger man in all your
+business and necessities." "O good old man!" said Orlando, "how well
+appears in you the constant service of the old world? You are not for
+the fashion of these times. We will go along together, and before your
+youthful wages are spent I shall light upon some means for both our
+maintenance."
+
+Together then this faithful servant and his loved master set out; and
+Orlando and Adam travelled on, uncertain what course to pursue, till
+they came to the forest of Arden, and there they found themselves in
+the same distress for want of food, that Ganimed and Aliena had been.
+They wandered on, seeking some human habitation, till they were almost
+spent with hunger and fatigue. Adam at last said, "O my dear master,
+I die for want of food, I can go no farther!" He then laid himself
+down, thinking to make that place his grave, and bade his dear master
+farewel. Orlando, seeing him in this weak state, took his old servant
+up in his arms, and carried him under the shelter of some pleasant
+trees, and he said to him, "Cheerly, old Adam, rest your weary limbs
+here a while, and do not talk of dying!"
+
+Orlando then searched about to find some food, and he happened to
+arrive at that part of the forest where the duke was; and he and his
+friends were just going to eat their dinner, this royal duke being
+seated on the grass, under no other canopy than the shady covert of
+some large trees.
+
+Orlando, whom hunger had made desperate, drew his sword, intending to
+take their meat by force, and said, "Forbear, and eat no more; I must
+have your food!" The duke asked him, if distress had made him so bold,
+or if he were a rude despiser of good manners? On this Orlando said,
+he was dying with hunger; and then the duke told him he was welcome to
+sit down and eat with them. Orlando, hearing him speak so gently, put
+up his sword, and blushed with shame at the rude manner in which he
+had demanded their food. "Pardon me, I pray you," said he: "I thought
+that all things had been savage here, and therefore I put on the
+countenance of stern command; but whatever men you are, that in this
+desert, under the shade of melancholy boughs, lose and neglect the
+creeping hours of time; if ever you have looked on better days; if
+ever you have been where bells have knolled to church; if you have
+ever sate at any good man's feast; if ever from your eyelids you have
+wiped a tear, and know what it is to pity or be pitied, may gentle
+speeches now move you to do me human courtesy!" The duke replied,
+"True it is that we are men (as you say) who have seen better days,
+and though we have now our habitation in this wild forest, we have
+lived in towns and cities, and have with holy bell been knolled to
+church, have sate at good men's feasts, and from our eyes have wiped
+the drops which sacred pity has engendered: therefore sit you down,
+and take of our refreshment as much as will minister to your wants."
+"There is an old poor man," answered Orlando, "who has limped after
+me many a weary step in pure love, oppressed at once with two sad
+infirmities, age and hunger; till he be satisfied, I must not touch
+a bit." "Go, find him out, and bring him hither," said the duke; "we
+will forbear to eat till you return." Then Orlando went like a doe to
+find its fawn and give it food; and presently returned, bringing Adam
+in his arms; and the duke said, "Set down your venerable burthen; you
+are both welcome:" and they fed the old man, and cheered his heart,
+and he revived, and recovered his health and strength again.
+
+The duke enquired who Orlando was, and when he found that he was the
+son of his old friend, sir Rowland de Boys, he took him under his
+protection, and Orlando and his old servant lived with the duke in the
+forest.
+
+Orlando had not been in the forest many days before Ganimed and Aliena
+arrived there, and (as has been before related) bought the shepherd's
+cottage.
+
+Ganimed and Aliena were strangely surprised to find the name of
+Rosalind carved on the trees, and love-sonnets fastened to them, all
+addressed to Rosalind; and while they were wondering how this could
+be, they met Orlando, and they perceived the chain which Rosalind had
+given him about his neck.
+
+Orlando little thought that Ganimed was the fair princess Rosalind,
+who by her noble condescension and favour had so won his heart, that
+he passed his whole time in carving her name upon the trees, and
+writing sonnets in praise of her beauty: but being much pleased with
+the graceful air of this pretty shepherd-youth, he entered into
+conversation with him, and he thought he saw a likeness in Ganimed to
+his beloved Rosalind, but that he had none of the dignified deportment
+of that noble lady; for Ganimed assumed the forward manners often seen
+in youths when they are between boys and men, and with much archness
+and humour talked to Orlando of a certain lover, "who," said he,
+"haunts our forest, and spoils our young trees with carving Rosalind
+upon their barks; and he hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on
+brambles, all praising this same Rosalind. If I could find this lover,
+I would give him some good counsel that would soon cure him of his
+love."
+
+Orlando confessed that he was the fond lover of whom he spoke, and
+asked Ganimed to give him the good counsel he talked of. The remedy
+Ganimed proposed, and the counsel he gave him, was that Orlando should
+come every day to the cottage where he and his sister Aliena dwelt:
+"And then," said Ganimed, "I will feign myself to be Rosalind, and
+you shall feign to court me in the same manner as you would do if I
+was Rosalind, and then I will imitate the fantastic ways of whimsical
+ladies to their lovers, till I make you ashamed of your love; and
+this is the way I propose to cure you." Orlando had no great faith in
+the remedy, yet he agreed to come every day to Ganimed's cottage, and
+feign a playful courtship; and every day Orlando visited Ganimed and
+Aliena, and Orlando called the shepherd Ganimed his Rosalind, and
+every day talked over all the fine words and flattering compliments,
+which young men delight to use when they court their mistresses. It
+does not appear however that Ganimed made any progress in curing
+Orlando of his love for Rosalind.
+
+Though Orlando thought all this was but a sportive play (not dreaming
+that Ganimed was his very Rosalind), yet the opportunity it gave him
+of saying all the fond things he had in his heart, pleased his fancy
+almost as well as it did Ganimed's, who enjoyed the secret jest in
+knowing these fine love-speeches were all addressed to the right
+person.
+
+In this manner many days passed pleasantly on with these young people;
+and the good-natured Aliena, seeing it made Ganimed happy, let him
+have his own way, and was diverted at the mock courtship, and did not
+care to remind Ganimed that the lady Rosalind had not yet made herself
+known to the duke her father, whose place of resort in the forest they
+had learnt from Orlando. Ganimed met the duke one day, and had some
+talk with him, and the duke asked of what parentage he came: Ganimed
+answered, that he came of as good parentage as he did; which made the
+duke smile, for he did not suspect the pretty shepherd-boy came of
+royal lineage. Then seeing the duke look well and happy, Ganimed was
+content to put off all further explanation for a few days longer.
+
+One morning, as Orlando was going to visit Ganimed, he saw a man lying
+asleep on the ground, and a large green snake had twisted itself about
+his neck. The snake, seeing Orlando approach, glided away among the
+bushes. Orlando went nearer, and then he discovered a lioness lie
+couching, with her head on the ground, with a cat-like watch, waiting
+till the sleeping man awaked (for it is said that lions will prey on
+nothing that is dead or sleeping). It seemed as if Orlando was sent
+by Providence to free the man from the danger of the snake and the
+lioness: but when Orlando looked in the man's face, he perceived that
+the sleeper, who was exposed to this double peril, was his own brother
+Oliver, who had so cruelly used him, and had threatened to destroy him
+by fire; and he was almost tempted to leave him a prey to the hungry
+lioness: but brotherly affection and the gentleness of his nature soon
+overcame his first anger against his brother; and he drew his sword,
+and attacked the lioness, and slew her, and thus preserved his
+brother's life both from the venomous snake and from the furious
+lioness: but before Orlando could conquer the lioness, she had torn
+one of his arms with her sharp claws.
+
+While Orlando was engaged with the lioness, Oliver awaked, and
+perceiving that his brother Orlando, whom he had so cruelly treated,
+was saving him from the fury of a wild beast at the risk of his own
+life, shame and remorse at once seized him, and he repented of his
+unworthy conduct, and besought with many tears his brother's pardon
+for the injuries he had done him. Orlando rejoiced to see him so
+penitent, and readily forgave him: they embraced each other, and from
+that hour Oliver loved Orlando with a true brotherly affection, though
+he had come to the forest bent on his destruction.
+
+The wound in Orlando's arm having bled very much, he found himself too
+weak to go to visit Ganimed, and therefore he desired his brother to
+go, and tell Ganimed, "whom," said Orlando, "I in sport do call my
+Rosalind," the accident which had befallen him.
+
+Thither then Oliver went, and told to Ganimed and Aliena how Orlando
+had saved his life: and when he had finished the story of Orlando's
+bravery, and his own providential escape, he owned to them that he was
+Orlando's brother, who had so cruelly used him; and then he told them
+of their reconciliation.
+
+The sincere sorrow that Oliver expressed for his offences made such a
+lively impression on the kind heart of Aliena, that she instantly
+fell in love with him; and Oliver observing how much she pitied the
+distress he told her he felt for his fault, he as suddenly fell in
+love with her. But while love was thus stealing into the hearts of
+Aliena and Oliver, he was no less busy with Ganimed, who hearing
+of the danger Orlando had been in, and that he was wounded by the
+lioness, fainted; and when he recovered, he pretended that he had
+counterfeited the swoon in the imaginary character of Rosalind,
+and Ganimed said to Oliver, "Tell your brother Orlando how well
+I counterfeited a swoon." But Oliver saw by the paleness of his
+complexion that he did really faint, and much wondering at the
+weakness of the young man, he said, "Well, if you did counterfeit,
+take a good heart, and counterfeit to be a man." "So I do," replied
+Ganimed (truly), "but I should have been a woman by right."
+
+Oliver made this visit a very long one, and when at last he returned
+back to his brother, he had much news to tell him; for besides the
+account of Ganimed's fainting at the hearing that Orlando was wounded,
+Oliver told him how he had fallen in love with the fair shepherdess
+Aliena, and that she had lent a favourable ear to his suit, even in
+this their first interview; and he talked to his brother, as of a
+thing almost settled, that he should marry Aliena, saying, that he so
+well loved her, that he would live here as a shepherd, and settle his
+estate and house at home upon Orlando.
+
+"You have my consent," said Orlando. "Let your wedding be to-morrow,
+and I will invite the duke and his friends. Go and persuade your
+shepherdess to agree to this: she is now alone; for look, here comes
+her brother." Oliver went to Aliena; and Ganimed, whom Orlando had
+perceived approaching, came to enquire after the health of his wounded
+friend.
+
+When Orlando and Ganimed began to talk over the sudden love which had
+taken place between Oliver and Aliena, Orlando said he had advised his
+brother to persuade his fair shepherdess to be married on the morrow,
+and then he added how much he could wish to be married on the same day
+to his Rosalind.
+
+Ganimed, who well approved of this arrangement, said, that if Orlando
+really loved Rosalind as well as he professed to do, he should have
+his wish; for on the morrow he would engage to make Rosalind appear
+in her own person, and also that Rosalind should be willing to marry
+Orlando.
+
+This seemingly wonderful event, which, as Ganimed was the lady
+Rosalind, he could so easily perform, he pretended he would bring to
+pass by the aid of magic, which he said he had learnt of an uncle who
+was a famous magician.
+
+The fond lover Orlando, half believing and half doubting what he
+heard, asked Ganimed if he spoke in sober meaning. "By my life I do,"
+said Ganimed; "therefore put on your best clothes, and bid the duke
+and your friends to your wedding; for if you desire to be married
+to-morrow to Rosalind, she shall be here."
+
+The next morning, Oliver having obtained the consent of Aliena, they
+came into the presence of the duke, and with them also came Orlando.
+
+They being all assembled to celebrate this double marriage, and as
+yet only one of the brides appearing, there was much of wondering and
+conjecture, but they mostly thought that Ganimed was making a jest of
+Orlando.
+
+The duke, hearing that it was his own daughter that was to be brought
+in this strange way, asked Orlando if he believed the shepherd-boy
+could really do what he had promised; and while Orlando was answering
+that he knew not what to think, Ganimed entered, and asked the duke,
+if he brought his daughter, whether he would consent to her marriage
+with Orlando. "That I would," said the duke, "if I had kingdoms to
+give with her." Ganimed then said to Orlando, "And you say you will
+marry her if I bring her here." "That I would," said Orlando, "if I
+were king of many kingdoms."
+
+Ganimed and Aliena then went out together, and Ganimed throwing off
+his male attire, and being once more dressed in woman's apparel,
+quickly became Rosalind without the power of magic; and Aliena,
+changing her country garb for her own rich clothes, was with as little
+trouble transformed into the lady Celia.
+
+While they were gone, the duke said to Orlando, that he thought the
+shepherd Ganimed very like his daughter Rosalind; and Orlando said, he
+also had observed the resemblance.
+
+They had no time to wonder how all this would end, for Rosalind and
+Celia in their own clothes entered; and no longer pretending that it
+was by the power of magic that she came there, Rosalind threw herself
+on her knees before her father, and begged his blessing. It seemed so
+wonderful to all present that she should so suddenly appear, that it
+might well have passed for magic; but Rosalind would no longer trifle
+with her father, and told him the story of her banishment, and of her
+dwelling in the forest as a shepherd-boy, her cousin Celia passing as
+her sister.
+
+The duke ratified the consent he had already given to the marriage;
+and Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, were married at the same
+time. And though their wedding could not be celebrated in this wild
+forest with any of the parade or splendour usual on such occasions,
+yet a happier wedding-day was never passed: and while they were eating
+their venison under the cool shade of the pleasant trees, as if
+nothing should be wanting to complete the felicity of this good duke
+and the true lovers, an unexpected messenger arrived to tell the duke
+the joyful news, that his dukedom was restored to him.
+
+The usurper, enraged at the flight of his daughter Celia, and hearing
+that every day men of great worth resorted to the forest of Arden
+to join the lawful duke in his exile, much envying that his brother
+should be so highly respected in his adversity, put himself at the
+head of a large force, and advanced towards the forest, intending to
+seize his brother, and put him, with all his faithful followers, to
+the sword; but, by a wonderful interposition of Providence, this bad
+brother was converted from his evil intention: for just as he entered
+the skirts of the wild forest he was met by an old religious man, a
+hermit, with whom he had much talk, and who in the end completely
+turned his heart from his wicked design. Thenceforward he became a
+true penitent, and resolved, relinquishing his unjust dominion, to
+spend the remainder of his days in a religious house. The first act of
+his newly-conceived penitence was to send a messenger to his brother
+(as has been related), to offer to restore to him his dukedom, which
+he had usurped so long, and with it the lands and revenues of his
+friends, the faithful followers of his adversity.
+
+This joyful news, as unexpected as it was welcome, came opportunely
+to heighten the festivity and rejoicings at the wedding of the
+princesses. Celia complimented her cousin on this good fortune which
+had happened to the duke, Rosalind's father, and wished her joy very
+sincerely, though she herself was no longer heir to the dukedom, but
+by this restoration which her father had made, Rosalind was now the
+heir: so completely was the love of these two cousins unmixed with any
+thing of jealousy or envy.
+
+The duke had now an opportunity of rewarding those true friends who
+had staid with him in his banishment; and these worthy followers,
+though they had patiently shared his adverse fortune, were very well
+pleased to return in peace and prosperity to the palace of their
+lawful duke.
+
+
+
+
+THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+There lived in the city of Verona two young gentlemen, whose names
+were Valentine and Protheus, between whom a firm and uninterrupted
+friendship had long subsisted. They pursued their studies together,
+and their hours of leisure were always passed in each other's company,
+except when Protheus visited a lady he was in love with; and these
+visits to his mistress, and this passion of Protheus for the fair
+Julia, were the only topics on which these two friends disagreed: for
+Valentine, not being himself a lover, was sometimes a little weary of
+hearing his friend for ever talking of his Julia, and then he would
+laugh at Protheus, and in pleasant terms ridicule the passion of love,
+and declare that no such idle fancies should ever enter his head,
+greatly preferring (as he said) the free and happy life he led, to the
+anxious hopes and fears of the lover Protheus.
+
+One morning Valentine came to Protheus to tell him that they must
+for a time be separated, for that he was going to Milan. Protheus,
+unwilling to part with his friend, used many arguments to prevail upon
+Valentine not to leave him; but Valentine said, "Cease to persuade me,
+my loving Protheus. I will not, like a sluggard, wear out my youth in
+idleness at home. Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits. If your
+affection were not chained to the sweet glances of your honoured
+Julia, I would entreat you to accompany me, to see the wonders of the
+world abroad: but since you are a lover, love on still, and may your
+love be prosperous!"
+
+They parted with mutual expressions of unalterable friendship. "Sweet
+Valentine, adieu!" said Protheus; "think on me, when you see some rare
+object worthy of notice in your travels, and wish me partaker of your
+happiness."
+
+Valentine began his journey that same day towards Milan; and when his
+friend had left him, Protheus sat down to write a letter to Julia,
+which he gave to her maid Lucetta to deliver to her mistress.
+
+Julia loved Protheus as well as he did her, but she was a lady of a
+noble spirit, and she thought it did not become her maiden dignity
+too easily to be won; therefore she affected to be insensible of his
+passion, and gave him much uneasiness in the prosecution of his suit.
+
+And when Lucetta offered the letter to Julia, she would not receive
+it, and chid her maid for taking letters from Protheus, and ordered
+her to leave the room. But she so much wished to see what was written
+in the letter, that she soon called in her maid again, and when
+Lucetta returned, she said, "What o'clock is it?" Lucetta, who knew
+her mistress more desired to see the letter than to know the time
+of day, without answering her question, again offered the rejected
+letter. Julia, angry that her maid should thus take the liberty of
+seeming to know what she really wanted, tore the letter in pieces, and
+threw it on the floor, ordering her maid once more out of the room.
+As Lucetta was retiring, she stooped to pick up the fragments of the
+torn letter; but Julia, who meant not so to part with them, said, in
+pretended anger, "Go, get you gone, and let the papers lie; you would
+be fingering them to anger me."
+
+Julia then began to piece together as well as she could the torn
+fragments. She first made out these words, "Love-wounded Protheus;"
+and lamenting over these and such-like loving words, which she made
+out though they were all torn asunder, or, she said, _wounded_ (the
+expression "Love-wounded Protheus," giving her that idea), she talked
+to these kind words, telling them she would lodge them in her bosom as
+in a bed, till their wounds were healed, and that she would kiss each
+several piece, to make amends.
+
+In this manner she went on talking with a pretty lady-like
+childishness, till finding herself unable to make out the whole, and
+vext at her own ingratitude in destroying such sweet and loving words,
+as she called them, she wrote a much kinder letter to Protheus than
+she had ever done before.
+
+Protheus was greatly delighted at receiving this favourable answer
+to his letter; and while he was reading it, he exclaimed, "Sweet
+love, sweet lines, sweet life!" In the midst of his raptures he was
+interrupted by his father. "How now!" said the old gentleman; "what
+letter are you reading there?"
+
+"My lord," replied Protheus, "it is a letter from my friend Valentine,
+at Milan."
+
+"Lend me the letter," said his father: "let me see what news."
+
+"There are no news, my lord," said Protheus, greatly alarmed, "but
+that he writes how well beloved he is of the duke of Milan, who daily
+graces him with favours; and how he wishes me with him, the partner of
+his fortune."
+
+"And how stand you affected to his wish?" asked the father.
+
+"As one relying on your lordship's will, and not depending on his
+friendly wish," said Protheus.
+
+Now it had happened that Protheus' father had just been talking with
+a friend on this very subject: his friend had said, he wondered his
+lordship suffered his son to spend his youth at home, while most
+men were sending their sons to seek preferment abroad; "some," said
+he, "to the wars, to try their fortunes there, and some to discover
+islands far away, and some to study in foreign universities; and there
+is his companion Valentine, he is gone to the duke of Milan's court.
+Your son is fit for any of these things, and it will be a great
+disadvantage to him in his riper age, not to have travelled in his
+youth."
+
+Protheus' father thought the advice of his friend was very good,
+and upon Protheus telling him that Valentine "wished him with him,
+the partner of his fortune," he at once determined to send his son
+to Milan; and without giving Protheus any reason for this sudden
+resolution, it being the usual habit of this positive old gentleman to
+command his son, not reason with him, he said, "My will is the same
+as Valentine's wish:" and seeing his son looked astonished, he added,
+"Look not amazed, that I so suddenly resolve you shall spend some time
+in the duke of Milan's court; for what I will I will, and there is
+an end. To-morrow be in readiness to go. Make no excuses; for I am
+peremptory."
+
+Protheus knew it was of no use to make objections to his father, who
+never suffered him to dispute his will; and he blamed himself for
+telling his father an untruth about Julia's letter, which had brought
+upon him the sad necessity of leaving her.
+
+Now that Julia found she was going to lose Protheus for so long a
+time, she no longer pretended indifference; and they bade each other
+a mournful farewell with many vows of love and constancy. Protheus
+and Julia exchanged rings, which they both promised to keep for ever
+in remembrance of each other; and thus, taking a sorrowful leave,
+Protheus set out on his journey to Milan, the abode of his friend
+Valentine.
+
+Valentine was in reality what Protheus had feigned to his father, in
+high favour with the duke of Milan; and another event had happened to
+him, of which Protheus did not even dream, for Valentine had given
+up the freedom of which he used so much to boast, and was become as
+passionate a lover as Protheus.
+
+She who had wrought this wondrous change in Valentine, was the lady
+Silvia, daughter of the duke of Milan, and she also loved him; but
+they concealed their love from the duke, because although he shewed
+much kindness for Valentine, and invited him every day to his palace,
+yet he designed to marry his daughter to a young courtier whose name
+was Thurio. Silvia despised this Thurio, for he had none of the fine
+sense and excellent qualities of Valentine.
+
+These two rivals, Thurio and Valentine, were one day on a visit to
+Silvia, and Valentine was entertaining Silvia with turning every thing
+Thurio said into ridicule, when the duke himself entered the room,
+and told Valentine the welcome news of his friend Protheus' arrival.
+Valentine said, "If I had wished a thing, it would have been to have
+seen him here!" and then he highly praised Protheus to the duke,
+saying, "My lord, though I have been a truant of my time, yet hath my
+friend made use and fair advantage of his days, and is complete in
+person and in mind, in all good grace to grace a gentleman."
+
+"Welcome him then according to his worth," said the duke: "Silvia, I
+speak to you, and you, sir Thurio; for Valentine, I need not bid him
+do so." They were here interrupted by the entrance of Protheus, and
+Valentine introduced him to Silvia, saying, "Sweet lady, entertain him
+to be my fellow-servant to your ladyship."
+
+When Valentine and Protheus had ended their visit, and were alone
+together, Valentine said, "Now tell me how all does from whence
+you came? How does your lady, and how thrives your love?" Protheus
+replied, "My tales of love used to weary you. I know you joy not in a
+love-discourse."
+
+"Aye, Protheus," returned Valentine, "but that life is altered now. I
+have done penance for condemning love. For in revenge of my contempt
+of Love, Love has chased sleep from my enthralled eyes. O gentle
+Protheus, Love is a mighty lord, and hath so humbled me, that I
+confess there is no woe like his correction, nor no such joy on earth
+as in his service. I now like no discourse except it be of love. Now I
+can break my fast, dine, sup, and sleep, upon the very name of love."
+
+This acknowledgment of the change which love had made in the
+disposition of Valentine was a great triumph to his friend Protheus.
+But _friend_ Protheus must be called no longer, for the same
+all-powerful deity Love, of whom they were speaking (yea even while
+they were talking of the change he had made in Valentine) was working
+in the heart of Protheus; and he, who had till this time been a
+pattern of true love and perfect friendship, was now, in one short
+interview with Silvia, become a false friend and a faithless lover;
+for at the first sight of Silvia, all his love for Julia vanished away
+like a dream, nor did his long friendship for Valentine deter him
+from endeavouring to supplant him in her affections; and although, as
+it will always be, when people of dispositions naturally good become
+unjust, he had many scruples, before he determined to forsake Julia,
+and become the rival of Valentine, yet he at length overcame his sense
+of duty, and yielded himself up, almost without remorse, to his new
+unhappy passion.
+
+Valentine imparted to him in confidence the whole history of his love,
+and how carefully they had concealed it from the duke her father, and
+told him, that despairing of ever being able to obtain his consent,
+he had prevailed upon Silvia to leave her father's palace that night,
+and go with him to Mantua; then he shewed Protheus a ladder of ropes,
+by help of which he meant to assist Silvia to get out of one of the
+windows of the palace, after it was dark.
+
+Upon hearing this faithful recital of his friend's dearest secrets,
+it is hardly possible to be believed, but so it was, that Protheus
+resolved to go to the duke, and disclose the whole to him.
+
+This false friend began his tale with many artful speeches to the
+duke, such as that by the laws of friendship he ought to conceal what
+he was going to reveal, but that the gracious favour the duke had
+shewn him, and the duty he owed his grace, urged him to tell that,
+which else no worldly good should draw from him: he then told all he
+had heard from Valentine, not omitting the ladder of ropes, and the
+manner in which Valentine meant to conceal them under a long cloak.
+
+The duke thought Protheus quite a miracle of integrity, in that he
+preferred telling his friend's intention rather than he would conceal
+an unjust action; highly commended him, and promised him not to let
+Valentine know from whom he had learnt this intelligence, but by some
+artifice to make Valentine betray the secret himself. For this purpose
+the duke awaited the coming of Valentine in the evening, whom he soon
+saw hurrying towards the palace, and he perceived somewhat was wrapped
+within his cloak, which he concluded was the rope-ladder.
+
+The duke upon this stopped him, saying, "Whither away so fast,
+Valentine?" "May it please your grace," said Valentine, "there is a
+messenger, that stays to bear my letters to my friends, and I am going
+to deliver them." Now this falsehood of Valentine's had no better
+success in the event than the untruth Protheus told his father.
+
+"Be they of much import?" said the duke.
+
+"No more, my lord," said Valentine, "than to tell my father I am well
+and happy at your grace's court."
+
+"Nay, then," said the duke, "no matter: stay with me a while. I wish
+your counsel about some affairs that concern me nearly." He then told
+Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him,
+saying, that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with
+Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to his commands,
+"neither regarding," said he, "that she is my child, nor fearing me
+as if I were her father. And I may say to thee, this pride of hers
+has drawn my love from her. I had thought my age should have been
+cherished by her childlike duty. I now am resolved to take a wife,
+and turn her out to whosoever will take her in. Let her beauty be her
+wedding-dower, for me and my possessions she esteems not."
+
+Valentine, wondering where all this would end, made answer, "And what
+would your grace have me to do in all this?"
+
+"Why," said the duke, "the lady I would wish to marry is nice and coy,
+and does not much esteem my aged eloquence. Besides, the fashion of
+courtship is much changed since I was young: now I would willingly
+have you to be my tutor to instruct me how I am to woo."
+
+Valentine gave him a general idea of the modes of courtship then
+practised by young men, when they wished to win a fair lady's love,
+such as presents, frequent visits, and the like.
+
+The duke replied to this, that the lady did refuse a present which he
+sent her, and that she was so strictly kept by her father, that no man
+might have access to her by day.
+
+"Why then," said Valentine, "you must visit her by night."
+
+"But at night," said the artful duke, who was now coming to the drift
+of his discourse, "her doors are fast locked."
+
+Valentine then unfortunately proposed, that the duke should get into
+the lady's chamber at night by means of a ladder of ropes, saying,
+he would procure him one fitting for that purpose; and in conclusion
+advised him to conceal this ladder of ropes under such a cloak as
+that which he now wore. "Lend me your cloak," said the duke, who had
+feigned this long story on purpose to have a pretence to get off the
+cloak: so, upon saying these words, he caught hold of Valentine's
+cloak, and throwing it back, he discovered not only the ladder of
+ropes, but also a letter of Silvia's, which he instantly opened, and
+read; and this letter contained a full account of their intended
+elopement. The duke, after upbraiding Valentine for his ingratitude in
+thus returning the favour he had shewn him, by endeavouring to steal
+away his daughter, banished him from the court and city of Milan for
+ever; and Valentine was forced to depart that night, without even
+seeing Silvia.
+
+While Protheus at Milan was thus injuring Valentine, Julia at Verona
+was regretting the absence of Protheus; and her regard for him at last
+so far overcame her sense of propriety, that she resolved to leave
+Verona, and seek her lover at Milan; and to secure herself from
+danger on the road, she dressed her maid Lucetta and herself in men's
+clothes, and they set out in this disguise, and arrived at Milan, soon
+after Valentine was banished from that city through the treachery of
+Protheus.
+
+Julia entered Milan about noon, and she took up her abode at an inn;
+and her thoughts being all on her dear Protheus, she entered into
+conversation with the innkeeper, or host, as he was called, thinking
+by that means to learn some news of Protheus.
+
+The host was greatly pleased that this handsome young gentleman (as
+he took her to be), who from his appearance he concluded was of high
+rank, spoke so familiarly to him; and being a good-natured man, he was
+sorry to see him look so melancholy; and to amuse his young guest he
+offered to take him to hear some fine music, with which, he said, a
+gentleman that evening was going to serenade his mistress.
+
+The reason Julia looked so very melancholy was, that she did not well
+know what Protheus would think of the imprudent step she had taken;
+for she knew he had loved her for her noble maiden-pride and dignity
+of character, and she feared she should lower herself in his esteem:
+and this it was that made her wear a sad and thoughtful countenance.
+
+She gladly accepted the offer of the host to go with him, and hear the
+music; for she secretly hoped she might meet Protheus by the way.
+
+But when she came to the palace whither the host conducted her, a very
+different effect was produced to what the kind host intended; for
+there, to her heart's sorrow, she beheld her lover, the inconstant
+Protheus, serenading the lady Silvia with music, and addressing
+discourse of love and admiration to her. And Julia overheard Silvia
+from a window talk with Protheus, and reproach him for forsaking his
+own true lady, and for his ingratitude to his friend Valentine: and
+then Silvia left the window, not choosing to listen to his music
+and his fine speeches; for she was a faithful lady to her banished
+Valentine, and abhorred the ungenerous conduct of his false friend
+Protheus.
+
+Though Julia was in despair at what she had just witnessed, yet did
+she still love the truant Protheus; and hearing that he had lately
+parted with a servant, she contrived with the assistance of her host,
+the friendly innkeeper, to hire herself to Protheus as a page; and
+Protheus knew not she was Julia, and he sent her with letters and
+presents to her rival Silvia, and he even sent by her the very ring
+she gave him as a parting gift at Verona.
+
+When she went to that lady with the ring, she was most glad to find
+that Silvia utterly rejected the suit of Protheus; and Julia, or the
+page Sebastian, as she was called, entered into conversation with
+Silvia about Protheus' first love, the forsaken lady Julia. She
+putting in (as one may say) a good word for herself, said she knew
+Julia; as well she might, being herself the Julia of whom she spoke:
+telling how fondly Julia loved her master Protheus, and how his unkind
+neglect would grieve her: and then she with a pretty equivocation went
+on: "Julia is about my height, and of my complexion, the colour of
+her eyes and hair the same as mine;" and indeed Julia looked a most
+beautiful youth in her boy's attire. Silvia was moved to pity this
+lovely lady, who was so sadly forsaken by the man she loved; and
+when Julia offered her the ring which Protheus had sent, refused it,
+saying, "The more shame for him that he sends me that ring; I will not
+take it, for I have often heard him say his Julia gave it to him. I
+love thee, gentle youth, for pitying her, poor lady! Here is a purse;
+I give it you for Julia's sake." These comfortable words coming from
+her kind rival's tongue cheered the drooping heart of the disguised
+lady.
+
+But to return to the banished Valentine; who scarce knew which way
+to bend his course, being unwilling to return home to his father a
+disgraced and banished man: as he was wandering over a lonely forest,
+not far distant from Milan, where he had left his heart's dear
+treasure, the lady Silvia, he was set upon by robbers, who demanded
+his money.
+
+Valentine told them, that he was a man crossed by adversity, that he
+was going into banishment, and that he had no money, the clothes he
+had on being all his riches.
+
+The robbers, hearing that he was a distressed man, and being struck
+with his noble air and manly behaviour, told him, if he would live
+with them, and be their chief, or captain, they would put themselves
+under his command: but that if he refused to accept their offer, they
+would kill him.
+
+Valentine, who cared little what became of himself, said, he would
+consent to live with them and be their captain, provided they did no
+outrage on women or poor passengers.
+
+Thus the noble Valentine became, like Robin Hood, of whom we read
+in ballads, a captain of robbers and outlawed banditti: and in this
+situation he was found by Silvia, and in this manner it came to pass.
+
+Silvia, to avoid a marriage with Thurio, whom her father insisted upon
+her no longer refusing, came at last to the resolution of following
+Valentine to Mantua, at which place she had heard her lover had taken
+refuge; but in this account she was misinformed, for he still lived in
+the forest among the robbers, bearing the name of their captain, but
+taking no part in their depredations, and using the authority which
+they had imposed upon him in no other way, than to compel them to shew
+compassion to the travellers they robbed.
+
+Silvia contrived to effect her escape from her father's palace in
+company with a worthy old gentleman, whose name was Eglamour, whom
+she took along with her for protection on the road. She had to pass
+through the forest where Valentine and the banditti dwelt; and one of
+these robbers seized on Silvia, and would also have taken Eglamour,
+but he escaped.
+
+The robber who had taken Silvia, seeing the terror she was in, bid
+her not be alarmed, for that he was only going to carry her to a cave
+where his captain lived, and that she need not be afraid, for their
+captain had an honourable mind, and always shewed humanity to women.
+Silvia found little comfort in hearing she was going to be carried as
+a prisoner before the captain of a lawless banditti. "O Valentine,"
+she cried, "this I endure for thee!"
+
+But as the robber was conveying her to the cave of his captain, he was
+stopped by Protheus, who, still attended by Julia in the disguise of
+a page, having heard of the flight of Silvia, had traced her steps to
+this forest. Protheus now rescued her from the hands of the robber;
+but scarce had she time to thank him for the service he had done her,
+before he began to distress her afresh with his love-suit: and while
+he was rudely pressing her to consent to marry him, and his page (the
+forlorn Julia) was standing beside him in great anxiety of mind,
+fearing lest the great service which Protheus had just done to Silvia
+should win her to shew him some favour, they were all strangely
+surprised with the sudden appearance of Valentine, who having heard
+his robbers had taken a lady prisoner, came to console and relieve
+her.
+
+Protheus was courting Silvia, and he was so much ashamed of being
+caught by his friend, that he was all at once seized with penitence
+and remorse; and he expressed such a lively sorrow for the injuries
+he had done to Valentine, that Valentine, whose nature was noble and
+generous, even to a romantic degree, not only forgave and restored
+him to his former place in his friendship, but in a sudden flight of
+heroism he said, "I freely do forgive you; and all the interest I have
+in Silvia, I give it up to you." Julia, who was standing beside her
+master as a page, hearing this strange offer, and fearing Protheus
+would not be able with this new-found virtue to refuse Silvia,
+fainted, and they were all employed in recovering her: else would
+Silvia have been offended at being thus made over to Protheus, though
+she could scarcely think that Valentine would long persevere in this
+overstrained and too generous act of friendship. When Julia recovered
+from the fainting fit, she said, "I had forgot, my master ordered me
+to deliver this ring to Silvia." Protheus, looking upon the ring,
+saw that it was the one he gave to Julia, in return for that which
+he received from her, and which he had sent by the supposed page to
+Silvia. "How is this?" said he, "this is Julia's ring: how came you
+by it, boy?" Julia answered, "Julia herself did give it me, and Julia
+herself hath brought it hither."
+
+Protheus, now looking earnestly upon her, plainly perceived that the
+page Sebastian was no other than the lady Julia herself: and the proof
+she had given of her constancy and true love so wrought in him, that
+his love for her returned into his heart, and he took again his own
+dear lady, and joyfully resigned all pretensions to the lady Silvia to
+Valentine, who had so well deserved her.
+
+Protheus and Valentine were expressing their happiness in their
+reconciliation, and in the love of their faithful ladies, when they
+were surprised with the sight of the duke of Milan and Thurio, who
+came there in pursuit of Silvia.
+
+Thurio first approached, and attempted to seize Silvia, saying,
+"Silvia is mine." Upon this Valentine said to him in a very spirited
+manner, "Thurio, keep back: if once again you say that Silvia is
+yours, you shall embrace your death. Here she stands, take but
+possession of her with a touch! I dare you but to breathe upon my
+love." Hearing this threat, Thurio, who was a great coward, drew back,
+and said he cared not for her, and that none but a fool would fight
+for a girl who loved him not.
+
+The duke, who was a very brave man himself, said now in great anger,
+"The more base and degenerate in you to take such means for her as you
+have done, and leave her on such slight conditions." Then turning to
+Valentine, he said, "I do applaud your spirit, Valentine, and think
+you worthy of an empress's love. You shall have Silvia, for you have
+well deserved her." Valentine then with great humility kissed the
+duke's hand, and accepted the noble present which he had made him
+of his daughter with becoming thankfulness: taking occasion of this
+joyful minute to entreat the good-humoured duke to pardon the thieves
+with whom he had associated in the forest, assuring him, that when
+reformed and restored to society, there would be found among them
+many good, and fit for great employment; for the most of them had
+been banished, like Valentine, for state offences, rather than for
+any black crimes they had been guilty of. To this the duke readily
+consented: and now nothing remained but that Protheus, the false
+friend, was ordained, by way of penance for his love-prompted faults,
+to be present at the recital of the whole story of his loves and
+falsehoods before the duke; and the shame of the recital to his
+awakened conscience was judged sufficient punishment: which being
+done, the lovers, all four, returned back to Milan, and their nuptials
+were solemnised in presence of the duke, with high triumphs and
+feasting.
+
+
+
+
+THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Shylock, the Jew, lived at Venice: he was an usurer, who had amassed
+an immense fortune by lending money at great interest to Christian
+merchants. Shylock being a hard-hearted man, exacted the payment of
+the money he lent with such severity, that he was much disliked by all
+good men, and particularly by Anthonio, a young merchant of Venice;
+and Shylock as much hated Anthonio, because he used to lend money to
+people in distress, and would never take any interest for the money he
+lent; therefore there was great enmity between this covetous Jew and
+the generous merchant Anthonio. Whenever Anthonio met Shylock on the
+Rialto (or Exchange), he used to reproach him with his usuries and
+hard dealings; which the Jew would bear with seeming patience, while
+he secretly meditated revenge.
+
+Anthonio was the kindest man that lived, the best conditioned, and had
+the most unwearied spirit in doing courtesies; indeed he was one in
+whom the ancient Roman honour more appeared than in any that drew
+breath in Italy. He was greatly beloved by all his fellow-citizens;
+but the friend who was nearest and dearest to his heart was Bassanio,
+a noble Venetian, who, having but a small patrimony, had nearly
+exhausted his little fortune by living in too expensive a manner for
+his slender means, as young men of high rank with small fortunes are
+too apt to do. Whenever Bassanio wanted money, Anthonio assisted him;
+and it seemed as if they had but one heart and one purse between them.
+
+One day Bassanio came to Anthonio, and told him that he wished to
+repair his fortune by a wealthy marriage with a lady whom he dearly
+loved, whose father, that was lately dead, had left her sole heiress
+to a large estate; and that in her father's lifetime he used to visit
+at her house, when he thought he had observed this lady had sometimes
+from her eyes sent speechless messages, that seemed to say he would
+be no unwelcome suitor; but not having money to furnish himself with
+an appearance befitting the lover of so rich an heiress, he besought
+Anthonio to add to the many favours he had shewn him, by lending him
+three thousand ducats.
+
+Anthonio had no money by him at that time to lend his friend; but
+expecting soon to have some ships come home laden with merchandise,
+he said he would go to Shylock, the rich money-lender, and borrow the
+money upon the credit of those ships.
+
+Anthonio and Bassanio went together to Shylock, and Anthonio asked
+the Jew to lend him three thousand ducats upon any interest he should
+require, to be paid out of the merchandise contained in his ships at
+sea. On this, Shylock thought within himself: "If I can once catch him
+on the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him: he hates
+our Jewish nation; he lends out money gratis, and among the merchants
+he rails at me and my well-earned bargains, which he calls interest.
+Cursed be my tribe if I forgive him!" Anthonio finding he was musing
+within himself and did not answer, and being impatient for the money,
+said, "Shylock, do you hear? will you lend the money?" To this
+question the Jew replied, "Signior Anthonio, on the Rialto many a time
+and often you have railed at me about my monies, and my usuries, and I
+have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all
+our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cut-throat dog, and
+spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned at me with your foot, as if
+I was a cur. Well then, it now appears you need my help; and you come
+to me, and say, _Shylock, lend me monies_. Has a dog money? Is it
+possible a cur should lend three thousand ducats? Shall I bend low
+and say, Fair sir, you spit upon me on Wednesday last, another time
+you called me dog, and for these courtesies I am to lend you monies."
+Anthonio replied, "I am as like to call you so again, to spit on you
+again, and spurn you too. If you will lend me this money, lend it not
+to me as to a friend, but rather lend it to me as to an enemy, that,
+if I break, you may with better face exact the penalty."--"Why, look
+you," said Shylock, "how you storm! I would be friends with you, and
+have your love. I will forget the shames you have put upon me. I will
+supply your wants, and take no interest for my money." This seemingly
+kind offer greatly surprised Anthonio; and then Shylock still
+pretending kindness, and that all he did was to gain Anthonio's love,
+again said he would lend him the three thousand ducats, and take no
+interest for his money; only Anthonio should go with him to a lawyer,
+and there sign in merry sport a bond, that if he did not repay the
+money by a certain day, he would forfeit a pound of flesh, to be cut
+off from any part of his body that Shylock pleased.
+
+"Content," said Anthonio: "I will sign to this bond, and say there is
+much kindness in the Jew."
+
+Bassanio said Anthonio should not sign to such a bond for him; but
+still Anthonio insisted that he would sign it, for that before the
+day of payment came, his ships would return laden with many times the
+value of the money.
+
+Shylock, hearing this debate, exclaimed, "O father Abraham, what
+suspicious people these Christians are! Their own hard dealings teach
+them to suspect the thoughts of others. I pray you tell me this,
+Bassanio: if he should break this day, what should I gain by the
+exaction of the forfeiture? A pound of man's flesh, taken from a man,
+is not so estimable, nor profitable neither, as the flesh of mutton or
+of beef. I say, to buy his favour I offer this friendship: if he will
+take it, so; if not, adieu."
+
+At last, against the advice of Bassanio, who, notwithstanding all the
+Jew had said of his kind intentions, did not like his friend should
+run the hazard of this shocking penalty for his sake, Anthonio signed
+the bond, thinking it really was (as the Jew said) merely in sport.
+
+The rich heiress that Bassanio wished to marry lived near Venice, at
+a place called Belmont: her name was Portia, and in the graces of her
+person and her mind she was nothing inferior to that Portia, of whom
+we read, who was Cato's daughter, and the wife of Brutus.
+
+Bassanio, being so kindly supplied with money by his friend Anthonio
+at the hazard of his life, set out for Belmont with a splendid train,
+and attended by a gentleman of the name of Gratiano.
+
+Bassanio proving successful in his suit, Portia in a short time
+consented to accept of him for a husband.
+
+Bassanio confessed to Portia that he had no fortune, and that his
+high birth and noble ancestry was all that he could boast of; she,
+who loved him for his worthy qualities, and had riches enough not to
+regard wealth in a husband, answered with a graceful modesty, that she
+would wish herself a thousand times more fair, and ten thousand times
+more rich, to be more worthy of him; and then the accomplished Portia
+prettily dispraised herself, and said she was an unlessoned girl,
+unschooled, unpractised, yet not so old but that she could learn, and
+that she would commit her gentle spirit to be directed and governed
+by him in all things; and she said, "Myself, and what is mine, to you
+and yours is now converted. But yesterday, Bassanio, I was the lady of
+this fair mansion, queen of myself, and mistress over these servants;
+and now this house, these servants, and myself, are yours, my lord; I
+give them with this ring:" presenting a ring to Bassanio.
+
+Bassanio was so overpowered with gratitude and wonder at the gracious
+manner in which the rich and noble Portia accepted of a man of his
+humble fortunes, that he could not express his joy and reverence to
+the dear lady who so honoured him by any thing but broken words of
+love and thankfulness: and taking the ring, he vowed never to part
+with it.
+
+Gratiano, and Nerissa, Portia's waiting-maid, were in attendance upon
+their lord and lady, when Portia so gracefully promised to become the
+obedient wife of Bassanio; and Gratiano, wishing Bassanio and the
+generous lady joy, desired permission to be married at the same time.
+
+"With all my heart, Gratiano," said Bassanio, "if you can get a wife."
+
+Gratiano then said that he loved the lady Portia's fair waiting
+gentlewoman, Nerissa, and that she had promised to be his wife, if her
+lady married Bassanio. Portia asked Nerissa if this was true. Nerissa
+replied, "Madam, it is so, if you approve of it." Portia willingly
+consenting, Bassanio pleasantly said, "Then our wedding-feast shall be
+much honoured by your marriage, Gratiano."
+
+The happiness of these lovers was sadly crossed at this moment by the
+entrance of a messenger, who brought a letter from Anthonio containing
+fearful tidings. When Bassanio read Anthonio's letter, Portia feared
+it was to tell him of the death of some dear friend, he looked so
+pale; and enquiring what was the news which had so distressed him, he
+said, "O sweet Portia, here are a few of the unpleasantest words that
+ever blotted paper: gentle lady, when I first imparted my love to you,
+I freely told you all the wealth I had ran in my veins; but I should
+have told you that I had less than nothing, being in debt." Bassanio
+then told Portia what has been here related, of his borrowing the
+money of Anthonio, and of Anthonio's procuring it of Shylock the Jew,
+and of the bond by which Anthonio had engaged to forfeit a pound of
+flesh, if it was not repaid by a certain day; and then Bassanio read
+Anthonio's letter, the words of which were, "_Sweet Bassanio, my ships
+are all lost, my bond to the Jew is forfeited, and since in paying it,
+it is impossible I should live, I could wish to see you at my death;
+notwithstanding use your pleasure; if your love for me do not persuade
+you to come, let not my letter._" "O my dear love," said Portia,
+"dispatch all business and be gone; you shall have gold to pay the
+money twenty times over, before this kind friend shall lose a hair by
+my Bassanio's fault; and as you are so dearly bought, I will dearly
+love you." Portia then said she would be married to Bassanio before
+he set out, to give him a legal right to her money; and that same
+day they were married, and Gratiano was also married to Nerissa; and
+Bassanio and Gratiano, the instant they were married, set out in great
+haste for Venice, where Bassanio found Anthonio in prison.
+
+The day of payment being past, the cruel Jew would not accept of the
+money which Bassanio offered him, but insisted upon having a pound
+of Anthonio's flesh. A day was appointed to try this shocking cause
+before the Duke of Venice, and Bassanio awaited in dreadful suspence
+the event of the trial.
+
+When Portia parted with her husband, she spoke cheeringly to him,
+and bade him bring his dear friend along with him when he returned;
+yet she feared it would go hard with Anthonio, and when she was left
+alone, she began to think and consider within herself, if she could by
+any means be instrumental in saving the life of her dear Bassanio's
+friend; and notwithstanding, when she wished to honour her Bassanio,
+she had said to him with such a meek and wife-like grace, that she
+would submit in all things to be governed by his superior wisdom,
+yet being now called forth into action by the peril of her honoured
+husband's friend, she did nothing doubt her own powers, and by the
+sole guidance of her own true and perfect judgment, at once resolved
+to go herself to Venice, and speak in Anthonio's defence.
+
+Portia had a relation who was a counsellor in the law; to this
+gentleman, whose name was Bellario, she wrote, and stating the case to
+him desired his opinion, and that with his advice he would also send
+her the dress worn by a counsellor. When the messenger returned, he
+brought letters from Bellario of advice how to proceed, and also every
+thing necessary for her equipment.
+
+Portia dressed herself and her maid Nerissa in men's apparel, and
+putting on the robes of a counsellor, she took Nerissa along with her
+as her clerk; and setting out immediately, they arrived at Venice on
+the very day of the trial. The cause was just going to be heard before
+the duke and senators of Venice in the senate-house, when Portia
+entered this high court of justice, and presented a letter from
+Bellario, in which that learned counsellor wrote to the duke, saying,
+he would have come himself to plead for Anthonio, but that he was
+prevented by sickness, and he requested that the learned young doctor
+Balthasar (so he called Portia) might be permitted to plead in
+his stead. This the duke granted, much wondering at the youthful
+appearance of the stranger, who was prettily disguised by her
+counsellor's robes and her large wig.
+
+And now began this important trial. Portia looked around her, and she
+saw the merciless Jew; and she saw Bassanio, but he knew her not in
+her disguise. He was standing beside Anthonio, in an agony of distress
+and fear for his friend.
+
+The importance of the arduous task Portia had engaged in gave this
+tender lady courage, and she boldly proceeded in the duty she had
+undertaken to perform; and first of all she addressed herself to
+Shylock; and allowing that he had a right by the Venetian law to have
+the forfeit expressed in the bond, she spoke so sweetly of the noble
+quality of _mercy_, as would have softened any heart but the unfeeling
+Shylock's; saying, that it dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon
+the place beneath; and how mercy was a double blessing, it blessed him
+that gave, and him that received it; and how it became monarchs better
+than their crowns, being an attribute of God himself; and that earthly
+power came nearest to God's, in proportion as mercy tempered justice:
+and she bid Shylock remember that as we all pray for mercy, that
+same prayer should teach us to show mercy. Shylock only answered
+her by desiring to have the penalty forfeited in the bond. "Is he
+not able to pay the money?" asked Portia. Bassanio then offered the
+Jew the payment of the three thousand ducats, as many times over as
+he should desire; which Shylock refusing, and still insisting upon
+having a pound of Anthonio's flesh, Bassanio begged the learned
+young counsellor would endeavour to wrest the law a little, to
+save Anthonio's life. But Portia gravely answered, that laws once
+established must never be altered. Shylock hearing Portia say that the
+law might not be altered, it seemed to him that she was pleading in
+his favour, and he said, "A Daniel has come to judgment! O wise young
+judge, how I do honour you! How much elder are you than your looks!"
+
+Portia now desired Shylock to let her look at the bond; and when she
+had read it, she said, "This bond is forfeited, and by this the Jew
+may lawfully claim a pound of flesh, to be by him cut off nearest
+Anthonio's heart." Then she said to Shylock, "Be merciful; take the
+money, and bid me tear the bond." But no mercy would the cruel Shylock
+shew; and he said, "By my soul I swear, there is no power in the
+tongue of man to alter me."--"Why then, Anthonio," said Portia,
+"you must prepare your bosom for the knife:" and while Shylock was
+sharpening a long knife with great eagerness to cut off the pound of
+flesh, Portia said to Anthonio, "Have you any thing to say?" Anthonio
+with a calm resignation replied, that he had but little to say, for
+that he had prepared his mind for death. Then he said to Bassanio,
+"Give me your hand, Bassanio! Fare you well! Grieve not that I am
+fallen into this misfortune for you. Commend me to your honourable
+wife, and tell her how I have loved you!" Bassanio in the deepest
+affliction replied, "Anthonio, I am married to a wife, who is as dear
+to me as life itself; but life itself, my wife, and all the world,
+are not esteemed with me above your life: I would lose all, I would
+sacrifice all to this devil here, to deliver you."
+
+Portia hearing this, though the kind-hearted lady was not at all
+offended with her husband for expressing the love he owed to so
+true a friend as Anthonio in these strong terms, yet could not help
+answering, "Your wife would give you little thanks, if she were
+present, to hear you make this offer." And then Gratiano, who loved to
+copy what his lord did, thought he must make a speech like Bassanio's,
+and he said, in Nerissa's hearing, who was writing in her clerk's
+dress by the side of Portia, "I have a wife, whom I protest I love;
+I wish she were in heaven, if she could but entreat some power there
+to change the cruel temper of this currish Jew." "It is well you wish
+this behind her back, else you would have but an unquiet house," said
+Nerissa.
+
+Shylock now cried out impatiently, "We trifle time; I pray pronounce
+the sentence." And now all was awful expectation in the court, and
+every heart was full of grief for Anthonio.
+
+Portia asked if the scales were ready to weigh the flesh; and she said
+to the Jew, "Shylock, you must have some surgeon by, lest he bleed to
+death." Shylock, whose whole intent was that Anthonio should bleed to
+death, said, "It is not so named in the bond." Portia replied, "It is
+not so named in the bond, but what of that? It were good you did so
+much for charity." To this all the answer Shylock would make was, "I
+cannot find it; it is not in the bond." "Then," said Portia, "a pound
+of Anthonio's flesh is thine. The law allows it, and the court awards
+it. And you may cut this flesh from off his breast. The law allows it,
+and the court awards it." Again Shylock exclaimed, "O wise and upright
+judge! A Daniel has come to judgment!" And then he sharpened his
+long knife again, and looking eagerly on Anthonio, he said, "Come,
+prepare!"
+
+"Tarry a little, Jew," said Portia; "there is something else. This
+bond here gives you no drop of blood; the words expressly are, a
+pound of flesh. If in the cutting off the pound of flesh you shed one
+drop of Christian blood, your land and goods are by the law to be
+confiscated to the state of Venice." Now as it was utterly impossible
+for Shylock to cut off the pound of flesh without shedding some of
+Anthonio's blood, this wise discovery of Portia's, that it was flesh
+and not blood that was named in the bond, saved the life of Anthonio;
+and all admiring the wonderful sagacity of the young counsellor, who
+had so happily thought of this expedient, plaudits resounded from
+every part of the senate-house; and Gratiano exclaimed, in the words
+which Shylock had used, "O wise and upright judge! mark, Jew, a Daniel
+is come to judgment!"
+
+Shylock finding himself defeated in his cruel intent, said with
+a disappointed look, that he would take the money; and Bassanio,
+rejoiced beyond measure at Anthonio's unexpected deliverance, cried
+out, "Here is the money!" But Portia stopped him, saying, "Softly;
+there is no haste; the Jew shall have nothing but the penalty:
+therefore prepare, Shylock, to cut off the flesh; but mind you shed no
+blood; nor do not cut off more nor less than just a pound; be it more
+or less by one poor scruple, nay if the scale turn but by the weight
+of a single hair, you are condemned by the laws of Venice to die, and
+all your wealth is forfeited to the senate." "Give me my money, and
+let me go," said Shylock. "I have it ready," said Bassanio: "Here it
+is."
+
+Shylock was going to take the money, when Portia again stopped him,
+saying, "Tarry, Jew; I have yet another hold upon you. By the laws of
+Venice your wealth is forfeited to the state, for having conspired
+against the life of one of its citizens, and your life lies at the
+mercy of the duke; therefore down on your knees, and ask him to pardon
+you."
+
+The duke then said to Shylock, "That you may see the difference of our
+Christian spirit, I pardon you your life before you ask it; half your
+wealth belongs to Anthonio, the other half comes to the state."
+
+The generous Anthonio then said, that he would give up his share of
+Shylock's wealth, if Shylock would sign a deed to make it over at his
+death to his daughter and her husband; for Anthonio knew that the Jew
+had an only daughter, who had lately married against his consent to a
+young Christian, named Lorenzo, a friend of Anthonio's, which had so
+offended Shylock, that he had disinherited her.
+
+The Jew agreed to this; and being thus disappointed in his revenge,
+and despoiled of his riches, he said, "I am ill. Let me go home;
+send the deed after me, and I will sign over half my riches to my
+daughter." "Get thee gone, then," said the duke, "and sign it; and if
+you repent your cruelty and turn Christian, the state will forgive you
+the fine of the other half of your riches."
+
+The duke now released Anthonio, and dismissed the court. He then
+highly praised the wisdom and ingenuity of the young counsellor, and
+invited him home to dinner. Portia, who meant to return to Belmont
+before her husband, replied, "I humbly thank your grace, but I must
+away directly." The duke said he was sorry he had not leisure to stay
+and dine with him; and turning to Anthonio, he added, "Reward this
+gentleman; for in my mind you are much indebted to him."
+
+The duke and his senators left the court; and then Bassanio said to
+Portia, "Most worthy gentleman, I and my friend Anthonio have by your
+wisdom been this day acquitted of grievous penalties, and I beg you
+will accept of the three thousand ducats due unto the Jew." "And we
+shall stand indebted to you over and above," said Anthonio, "in love
+and service evermore."
+
+Portia could not be prevailed upon to accept the money; but upon
+Bassanio still pressing her to accept of some reward, she said, "Give
+me your gloves; I will wear them for your sake:" and then Bassanio
+taking off his gloves, she espied the ring which she had given him
+upon his finger: now it was the ring the wily lady wanted to get from
+him to make a merry jest when she saw her Bassanio again, that made
+her ask him for his gloves; and she said, when she saw the ring, "And
+for your love I will take this ring from you." Bassanio was sadly
+distressed, that the counsellor should ask him for the only thing he
+could not part with, and he replied in great confusion, that he could
+not give him that ring, because it was his wife's gift, and he had
+vowed never to part with it: but that he would give him the most
+valuable ring in Venice, and find it out by proclamation. On this
+Portia affected to be affronted, and left the court, saying, "You
+teach me, sir, how a beggar should be answered."
+
+"Dear Bassanio," said Anthonio, "let him have the ring; let my love
+and the great service he has done for me be valued against your wife's
+displeasure." Bassanio, ashamed to appear so ungrateful, yielded,
+and sent Gratiano after Portia with the ring; and then the _clerk_
+Nerissa, who had also given Gratiano a ring, she begged his ring, and
+Gratiano (not choosing to be outdone in generosity by his lord) gave
+it to her. And there was laughing among these ladies to think, when
+they got home, how they would tax their husbands with giving away
+their rings, and swear that they had given them as a present to some
+woman.
+
+Portia, when she returned, was in that happy temper of mind which
+never fails to attend the consciousness of having performed a good
+action; her cheerful spirits enjoyed every thing she saw: the moon
+never seemed to shine so bright before; and when that pleasant moon
+was hid behind a cloud, then a light which she saw from her house at
+Belmont as well pleased her charmed fancy, and she said to Nerissa,
+"That light we see is burning in my hall; how far that little candle
+throws its beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world:" and
+hearing the sound of music from her house, she said, "Methinks that
+music sounds much sweeter than by day."
+
+And now Portia and Nerissa entered the house, and dressing themselves
+in their own apparel, they awaited the arrival of their husbands, who
+soon followed them with Anthonio; and Bassanio presenting his dear
+friend to the lady Portia, the congratulations and welcomings of that
+lady were hardly over, when they perceived Nerissa and her husband
+quarrelling in a corner of the room. "A quarrel already?" said Portia.
+"What is the matter?" Gratiano replied, "Lady, it is about a paltry
+gilt ring that Nerissa gave me, with words upon it like the poetry on
+a cutler's knife; _Love me, and leave me not_."
+
+"What does the poetry or the value of the ring signify?" said Nerissa.
+"You swore to me, when I gave it to you, that you would keep it till
+the hour of death; and now you say you gave it to the lawyer's clerk.
+I know you gave it to a woman." "By this hand," replied Gratiano, "I
+gave it to a youth, a kind of boy, a little scrubbed boy no higher
+than yourself; he was clerk to the young counsellor that by his wise
+pleading saved Anthonio's life: this prating boy begged it for a fee,
+and I could not for my life deny him." Portia said, "You were to
+blame, Gratiano, to part with your wife's first gift. I gave my lord
+Bassanio a ring, and I am sure he would not part with it for all the
+world." Gratiano in excuse for his fault now said, "My lord Bassanio
+gave his ring away to the counsellor, and then the boy, his clerk,
+that took some pains in writing, he begged my ring."
+
+Portia, hearing this, seemed very angry, and reproached Bassanio for
+giving away her ring; and she said, Nerissa had taught her what to
+believe, and that she knew some woman had the ring. Bassanio was very
+unhappy to have so offended his dear lady, and he said with great
+earnestness, "No, by my honour, no woman had it, but a civil doctor,
+who refused three thousand ducats of me, and begged the ring, which
+when I denied him, he went displeased away. What could I do, sweet
+Portia? I was so beset with shame for my seeming ingratitude, that I
+was forced to send the ring after him. Pardon me, good lady; had you
+been there, I think you would have begged the ring of me to give the
+worthy doctor."
+
+"Ah!" said Anthonio, "I am the unhappy cause of these quarrels."
+
+Portia bid Anthonio not to grieve at that, for that he was welcome
+notwithstanding; and then Anthonio said, "I once did lend my body for
+Bassanio's sake; and but for him to whom your husband gave the ring
+I should have now been dead. I dare be bound again, my soul upon the
+forfeit, your lord will never more break his faith with you." "Then
+you shall be his surety," said Portia; "give him this ring, and bid
+him keep it better than the other."
+
+When Bassanio looked at this ring, he was strangely surprised to find
+it was the same he gave away; and then Portia told him, how she was
+the young counsellor, and Nerissa was her clerk; and Bassanio found to
+his unspeakable wonder and delight, that it was by the noble courage
+and wisdom of his wife that Anthonio's life was saved.
+
+And Portia again welcomed Anthonio, and gave him letters which by
+some chance had fallen into her hands, which contained an account of
+Anthonio's ships, that were supposed lost, being safely arrived in the
+harbour. So these tragical beginnings of this rich merchant's story
+were all forgotten in the unexpected good fortune which ensued; and
+there was leisure to laugh at the comical adventure of the rings,
+and the husbands that did not know their own wives: Gratiano merrily
+swearing, in a sort of rhyming speech, that
+
+  --while he liv'd, he'd fear no other thing
+  So sore, as keeping safe Nerissa's ring.
+
+
+
+
+CYMBELINE
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+During the time of Augustus Cæsar, emperor of Rome, there reigned
+in England (which was then called Britain) a king whose name was
+Cymbeline.
+
+Cymbeline's first wife died when his three children (two sons and a
+daughter) were very young. Imogen, the eldest of these children, was
+brought up in her father's court; but by a strange chance the two sons
+of Cymbeline were stolen out of their nursery, when the eldest was but
+three years of age, and the youngest quite an infant: and Cymbeline
+could never discover what was become of them, or by whom they were
+conveyed away.
+
+Cymbeline was twice married: his second wife was a wicked, plotting
+woman, and a cruel stepmother to Imogen, Cymbeline's daughter by his
+first wife.
+
+The queen, though she hated Imogen, yet wished her to marry a son of
+her own by a former husband (she also having been twice married): for
+by this means she hoped upon the death of Cymbeline to place the crown
+of Britain upon the head of her son Cloten; for she knew that, if the
+king's sons were not found, the princess Imogen must be the king's
+heir. But this design was prevented by Imogen herself, who married
+without the consent or even knowledge of her father or the queen.
+
+Posthumus (for that was the name of Imogen's husband) was the best
+scholar and most accomplished gentleman of that age. His father died
+fighting in the wars for Cymbeline, and soon after his birth his
+mother died also for grief at the loss of her husband.
+
+Cymbeline, pitying the helpless state of this orphan, took Posthumus
+(Cymbeline having given him that name because he was born after his
+father's death), and educated him in his own court.
+
+Imogen and Posthumus were both taught by the same masters, and were
+play-fellows from their infancy: they loved each other tenderly when
+they were children, and their affection continuing to increase with
+their years, when they grew up they privately married.
+
+The disappointed queen soon learnt this secret, for she kept spies
+constantly in watch upon the actions of her daughter-in-law, and she
+immediately told the king of the marriage of Imogen with Posthumus.
+
+Nothing could exceed the wrath of Cymbeline, when he heard that his
+daughter had been so forgetful of her high dignity as to marry a
+subject. He commanded Posthumus to leave Britain, and banished him
+from his native country for ever.
+
+The queen, who pretended to pity Imogen for the grief she suffered at
+losing her husband, offered to procure them a private meeting, before
+Posthumus set out on his journey to Rome, which place he had chosen
+for his residence in his banishment: this seeming kindness she shewed,
+the better to succeed in her future designs in regard to her son
+Cloten; for she meant to persuade Imogen, when her husband was gone,
+that her marriage was not lawful, being contracted without the consent
+of the king.
+
+Imogen and Posthumus took a most affectionate leave of each other.
+Imogen gave her husband a diamond ring which had been her mother's,
+and Posthumus promised never to part with the ring; and he fastened a
+bracelet on the arm of his wife, which he begged she would preserve
+with great care, as a token of his love: they then bid each other
+farewel with many vows of everlasting love and fidelity.
+
+Imogen remained a solitary and dejected lady in her father's court,
+and Posthumus arrived at Rome, the place of his banishment.
+
+Posthumus fell into company at Rome with some gay young men of
+different nations, who were talking freely of ladies: each one
+praising the ladies of his own country, and his own mistress.
+Posthumus, who had ever his own dear lady in his mind, affirmed that
+his wife, the fair Imogen, was the most virtuous, wise, and constant
+lady in the world.
+
+One of these gentlemen, whose name was Iachimo, being offended that
+a lady of Britain should be so praised above the Roman ladies, his
+countrywomen, provoked Posthumus by seeming to doubt the constancy of
+his so highly-praised wife; and at length, after much altercation,
+Posthumus consented to a proposal of Iachimo's, that he (Iachimo)
+should go to Britain, and endeavour to gain the love of the married
+Imogen. They then laid a wager, that if Iachimo did not succeed in
+this wicked design, he was to forfeit a large sum of money; but if
+he could win Imogen's favour, and prevail upon her to give him the
+bracelet which Posthumus had so earnestly desired she would keep as
+a token of his love, then the wager was to terminate with Posthumus
+giving to Iachimo the ring, which was Imogen's love-present when she
+parted with her husband. Such firm faith had Posthumus in the fidelity
+of Imogen, that he thought he ran no hazard in this trial of her
+honour.
+
+Iachimo, on his arrival in Britain, gained admittance and a courteous
+welcome from Imogen, as a friend of her husband; but when he began to
+make professions of love to her, she repulsed him with disdain, and
+he soon found that he could have no hope of succeeding in his
+dishonourable design.
+
+The desire Iachimo had to win the wager made him now have recourse to
+a stratagem to impose upon Posthumus, and for this purpose he bribed
+some of Imogen's attendants, and was by them conveyed into her
+bedchamber, concealed in a large trunk, where he remained shut up till
+Imogen was retired to rest, and had fallen asleep; and then getting
+out of the trunk, he examined the chamber with great attention, and
+wrote down every thing he saw there, and particularly noticed a mole
+which he observed upon Imogen's neck, and then softly unloosing the
+bracelet from her arm, which Posthumus had given to her, he retired
+into the chest again; and the next day he set off for Rome with great
+expedition, and boasted to Posthumus that Imogen had given him the
+bracelet, and likewise permitted him to pass a night in her chamber:
+and in this manner Iachimo told his false tale; "Her bed-chamber,"
+said he, "was hung with tapestry of silk and silver, the story was
+_the proud Cleopatra when she met her Anthony_, a piece of work most
+bravely wrought."
+
+"This is true," said Posthumus; "but this you might have heard spoken
+of without seeing."
+
+"Then the chimney," said Iachimo, "is south of the chamber, and
+the chimney-piece is _Diana bathing_; never saw I figures livelier
+expressed."
+
+"This is a thing you might have likewise heard," said Posthumus; "for
+it is much talked of."
+
+Iachimo as accurately described the roof of the chamber, and added, "I
+had almost forgot her andirons, they were _two winking Cupids_ made of
+silver, each on one foot standing." He then took out the bracelet, and
+said, "Know you this jewel, sir? She gave me this. She took it from
+her arm. I see her yet; her pretty action did out-sell her gift, and
+yet enriched it too. She gave it me, and said, _she prized it once_."
+He last of all described the mole he had observed upon her neck.
+
+Posthumus, who had heard the whole of this artful recital in an agony
+of doubt, now broke out into the most passionate exclamations against
+Imogen. He delivered up the diamond ring to Iachimo, which he had
+agreed to forfeit to him, if he obtained the bracelet from Imogen.
+
+Posthumus then in a jealous rage wrote to Pisanio, a gentleman of
+Britain, who was one of Imogen's attendants, and had long been a
+faithful friend to Posthumus; and after telling him what proof he had
+of his wife's disloyalty, he desired Pisanio would take Imogen to
+Milford-Haven, a seaport of Wales, and there kill her. And at the same
+time he wrote a deceitful letter to Imogen, desiring her to go with
+Pisanio, for that finding he could live no longer without seeing her,
+though he was forbidden upon pain of death to return to Britain,
+he would come to Milford-Haven, at which place he begged she would
+meet him. She, good unsuspecting lady, who loved her husband above
+all things, and desired more than her life to see him, hastened her
+departure with Pisanio, and the same night she received the letter she
+set out.
+
+When their journey was nearly at an end, Pisanio, who, though faithful
+to Posthumus, was not faithful to serve him in an evil deed, disclosed
+to Imogen the cruel order he had received.
+
+Imogen, who, instead of meeting a loving and beloved husband, found
+herself doomed by that husband to suffer death, was afflicted beyond
+measure.
+
+Pisanio persuaded her to take comfort, and wait with patient fortitude
+for the time when Posthumus should see and repent his injustice:
+in the mean time, as she refused in her distress to return to her
+father's court, he advised her to dress herself in boy's clothes for
+more security in travelling; to which advice she agreed, and thought
+in that disguise she would go over to Rome, and see her husband, whom,
+though he had used her so barbarously, she could not forget to love.
+When Pisanio had provided her with her new apparel, he left her to her
+uncertain fortune, being obliged to return to court; but before he
+departed he gave her a phial of cordial, which he said the queen had
+given him as a sovereign remedy in all disorders.
+
+The queen, who hated Pisanio because he was a friend to Imogen and
+Posthumus, gave him this phial which she supposed contained poison,
+she having ordered her physician to give her some poison, to try its
+effects (as she said) upon animals: but the physician, knowing her
+malicious disposition, would not trust her with real poison, but gave
+her a drug which would do no other mischief than causing a person to
+sleep with every appearance of death for a few hours. This mixture,
+which Pisanio thought a choice cordial, he gave to Imogen, desiring
+her, if she found herself ill upon the road, to take it; and so with
+blessings and prayers for her safety and happy deliverance from her
+undeserved troubles he left her.
+
+Providence strangely directed Imogen's steps to the dwelling of her
+two brothers, who had been stolen away in their infancy. Bellarius,
+who stole them away, was a lord in the court of Cymbeline, and having
+been falsely accused to the king of treason, and banished from the
+court, in revenge he stole away the two sons of Cymbeline, and brought
+them up in a forest, where he lived concealed in a cave. He stole them
+through revenge, but he soon loved them as tenderly as if they had
+been his own children, educated them carefully, and they grew up
+fine youths, their princely spirits leading them to bold and daring
+actions; and as they subsisted by hunting, they were active and hardy,
+and were always pressing their supposed father to let them seek their
+fortune in the wars.
+
+At the cave where these youths dwelt it was Imogen's fortune to
+arrive. She had lost her way in a large forest, through which her road
+lay to Milford-Haven (from whence she meant to embark for Rome); and
+being unable to find any place where she could purchase food, she was
+with weariness and hunger almost dying; for it is not merely putting
+on a man's apparel that will enable a young lady, tenderly brought
+up, to bear the fatigue of wandering about lonely forests like a man.
+Seeing this cave she entered, hoping to find some one within of whom
+she could procure food. She found the cave empty, but looking about
+she discovered some cold meat, and her hunger was so pressing, that
+she could not wait for an invitation, but sat down, and began to eat.
+"Ah!" said she, talking to herself; "I see a man's life is a tedious
+one: how tired am I! for two nights together I have made the ground my
+bed: my resolution helps me, or I should be sick. When Pisanio shewed
+me Milford-Haven from the mountain-top, how near it seemed!" Then the
+thoughts of her husband and his cruel mandate came across her, and she
+said, "My dear Posthumus, thou art a false one!"
+
+The two brothers of Imogen, who had been hunting with their reputed
+father Bellarius, were by this time returned home. Bellarius had given
+them the names of Polidore and Cadwal, and they knew no better, but
+supposed that Bellarius was their father: but the real names of these
+princes were Guiderius and Arviragus.
+
+Bellarius entered the cave first, and seeing Imogen, stopped them,
+saying, "Come not in yet; it eats our victuals, or I should think it
+was a fairy."
+
+"What is the matter, sir?" said the young men. "By Jupiter," said
+Bellarius again, "there is an angel in the cave, or if not, an earthly
+paragon." So beautiful did Imogen look in her boy's apparel.
+
+She, hearing the sound of voices, came forth from the cave, and
+addressed them in these words: "Good masters, do not harm me; before
+I entered your cave, I had thought to have begged or bought what I
+have eaten. Indeed I have stolen nothing, nor would I, though I had
+found gold strewn on the floor. Here is money for my meat, which I
+would have left on the board when I had made my meal, and parted
+with prayers for the provider." They refused her money with great
+earnestness. "I see you are angry with me," said the timid Imogen:
+"but, sirs, if you kill me for my fault, know that I should have died
+if I had not made it."
+
+"Whither are you bound?" asked Bellarius, "and what is your name?"
+
+"Fidele is my name," answered Imogen. "I have a kinsman, who is bound
+for Italy; he embarked at Milford-Haven, to whom being going, almost
+spent with hunger, I am fallen into this offence."
+
+"Prithee, fair youth," said old Bellarius, "do not think us churls,
+nor measure our good minds by this rude place we live in. You are well
+encountered; it is almost night. You shall have better cheer before
+you depart, and thanks to stay and eat it. Boys, bid him welcome."
+
+The gentle youths, her brothers, then welcomed Imogen to their cave
+with many kind expressions, saying they would love her (or, as they
+said, _him_) as a brother; and they entered the cave, where (they
+having killed venison when they were hunting) Imogen delighted them
+with her neat housewifery, assisting them in preparing their supper;
+for though it is not the custom now for young women of high birth to
+understand cookery, it was then, and Imogen excelled in this useful
+art; and, as her brothers prettily expressed it, Fidele cut their
+roots in characters, and sauced their broth, as if Juno had been sick,
+and Fidele were her dieter. "And then," said Polidore to his brother,
+"how angel-like he sings!"
+
+They also remarked to each other, that though Fidele smiled so
+sweetly, yet so sad a melancholy did overcloud his lovely face, as if
+grief and patience had together taken possession of him.
+
+For these her gentle qualities (or perhaps it was their near
+relationship, though they knew it not) Imogen (or, as the boys called
+her, _Fidele_) became the doating-piece of her brothers, and she
+scarcely less loved them, thinking that but for the memory of her
+dear Posthumus, she could live and die in the cave with these wild
+forest-youths; and she gladly consented to stay with them, till she
+was enough rested from the fatigue of travelling to pursue her way
+to Milford-Haven. When the venison they had taken was all eaten, and
+they were going out to hunt for more, Fidele could not accompany them
+because she was unwell. Sorrow, no doubt, for her husband's cruel
+usage, as well as the fatigue of wandering in the forest, was the
+cause of her illness.
+
+They then bid her farewel, and went to their hunt, praising all the
+way the noble parts and graceful demeanour of the youth Fidele.
+
+Imogen was no sooner left alone than she recollected the cordial
+Pisanio had given her, and drank it off, and presently fell into a
+sound and death-like sleep.
+
+When Bellarius and her brothers returned from hunting, Polidore went
+first into the cave, and supposing her asleep, pulled off his heavy
+shoes, that he might tread softly and not awake her; so did true
+gentleness spring up in the minds of these princely foresters: but
+he soon discovered that she could not be awakened by any noise, and
+concluded her to be dead, and Polidore lamented over her with dear and
+brotherly regret, as if they had never from their infancy been parted.
+
+Bellarius also proposed to carry her out into the forest, and there
+celebrate her funeral with songs and solemn dirges, as was then the
+custom.
+
+Imogen's two brothers then carried her to a shady covert, and there
+laying her gently on the grass, they sang repose to her departed
+spirit, and covering her over with leaves and flowers, Polidore said,
+"While summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, I will daily strew thy
+sad grave. The pale primrose, that flower most like thy face; the
+blue-bell, like thy clear veins; and the leaf of eglantine, which is
+not sweeter than was thy breath; all these I will strew over thee.
+Yea, and the furred moss in winter, when there are no flowers to cover
+thy sweet corse."
+
+When they had finished her funeral obsequies, they departed very
+sorrowful.
+
+Imogen had not been long left alone, when, the effect of the sleepy
+drug going off, she awaked, and easily shaking off the slight
+covering of leaves and flowers they had thrown over her, she arose,
+and imagining she had been dreaming, she said, "I thought I was a
+cave-keeper, and cook to honest creatures; how came I here, covered
+with flowers?" Not being able to find her way back to the cave, and
+seeing nothing of her new companions, she concluded it was certainly
+all a dream; and once more Imogen set out on her weary pilgrimage,
+hoping at last she should find her way to Milford-Haven, and thence
+get a passage in some ship bound for Italy; for all her thoughts were
+still with her husband Posthumus, whom she intended to seek in the
+disguise of a page.
+
+But great events were happening at this time, of which Imogen knew
+nothing; for a war had suddenly broken out between the Roman emperor
+Augustus Cæsar, and Cymbeline the king of Britain: and a Roman army
+had landed to invade Britain, and was advanced into the very forest
+over which Imogen was journeying. With this army came Posthumus.
+
+Though Posthumus came over to Britain with the Roman army, he did not
+mean to fight on their side against his own countrymen, but intended
+to join the army of Britain, and fight in the cause of his king who
+had banished him. He still believed Imogen false to him; yet the death
+of her he had so fondly loved, and by his own orders too (Pisanio
+having written him a letter to say he had obeyed his command, and that
+Imogen was dead) sat heavy on his heart, and therefore he returned to
+Britain, desiring either to be slain in battle, or to be put to death
+by Cymbeline for returning home from banishment.
+
+Imogen, before she reached Milford-Haven, fell into the hands of the
+Roman army; and her presence and deportment recommending her, she was
+made a page to Lucius, the Roman general.
+
+Cymbeline's army now advanced to meet the enemy, and when they entered
+this forest, Polidore and Cadwal joined the king's army. The young men
+were eager to engage in acts of valour, though they little thought
+they were going to fight for their own royal father; and old Bellarius
+went with them to the battle. He had long since repented of the injury
+he had done to Cymbeline in carrying away his sons; and having been a
+warrior in his youth, he gladly joined the army to fight for the king
+he had so injured.
+
+And now a great battle commenced between the two armies, and the
+Britons would have been defeated, and Cymbeline himself killed, but
+for the extraordinary valour of Posthumus, and Bellarius, and the two
+sons of Cymbeline. They rescued the king, and saved his life, and so
+entirely turned the fortune of the day, that the Britons gained the
+victory.
+
+When the battle was over, Posthumus, who had not found the death
+he sought for, surrendered himself up to one of the officers of
+Cymbeline, willing to suffer the death which was to be his punishment
+if he returned from banishment.
+
+Imogen and the master she served were taken prisoners, and brought
+before Cymbeline, as was also her old enemy Iachimo, who was an
+officer in the Roman army; and when these prisoners were before the
+king, Posthumus was brought in to receive his sentence of death; and
+at this strange juncture of time, Bellarius with Polidore and Cadwal
+were also brought before Cymbeline, to receive the rewards due to the
+great services they had by their valour done for the king. Pisanio,
+being one of the king's attendants, was likewise present.
+
+Therefore there were now standing in the king's presence (but with
+very different hopes and fears) Posthumus, and Imogen, with her new
+master the Roman general; the faithful servant Pisanio, and the false
+friend Iachimo; and likewise the two lost sons of Cymbeline, with
+Bellarius who had stolen them away.
+
+The Roman general was the first who spoke; the rest stood silent
+before the king, though there was many a beating heart amongst them.
+
+Imogen saw Posthumus and knew him, though he was in the disguise of
+a peasant; but he did not know her in her male attire: and she knew
+Iachimo, and she saw a ring on his finger which she perceived to be
+her own, but she did not know him as yet to have been the author of
+all her troubles: and she stood before her own father a prisoner of
+war.
+
+Pisanio knew Imogen, for it was he who had dressed her in the garb of
+a boy. "It is my mistress," thought he; "since she is living, let the
+time run on to good or bad." Bellarius knew her too, and softly said
+to Cadwal, "Is not this boy revived from death?" "One sand," replied
+Cadwal, "does not more resemble another than that sweet rosy lad is
+like the dead Fidele." "The same dead thing alive," said Polidore.
+"Peace, peace," said Bellarius; "if it were he, I am sure he would
+have spoken to us." "But we saw him dead," again whispered Polidore.
+"Be silent," replied Bellarius.
+
+Posthumus waited in silence to hear the welcome sentence of his own
+death; and he resolved not to disclose to the king that he had saved
+his life in the battle, lest that should move Cymbeline to pardon him.
+
+Lucius, the Roman general, who had taken Imogen under his protection
+as his page, was the first (as has been before said) who spoke to the
+king. He was a man of high courage and noble dignity, and this was his
+speech to the king:
+
+"I hear you take no ransom for your prisoners, but doom them all to
+death; I am a Roman, and with a Roman heart will suffer death. But
+there is one thing for which I would intreat." Then bringing Imogen
+before the king, he said, "This boy is a Briton born. Let him be
+ransomed. He is my page. Never master had a page so kind, so duteous,
+so diligent on all occasions, so true, so nurse-like. He hath done no
+Briton wrong, though he hath served a Roman. Save him, if you spare no
+one beside."
+
+Cymbeline looked earnestly on his daughter Imogen. He knew her not in
+that disguise; but it seemed that all-powerful Nature spake in his
+heart, for he said, "I have surely seen him, his face appears familiar
+to me. I know not why or wherefore I say, Live, boy: but I give you
+your life, and ask of me what boon you will, and I will grant it you.
+Yea, even though it be the life of the noblest prisoner I have."
+
+"I humbly thank your highness," said Imogen.
+
+What was then called granting a boon was the same as a promise to give
+any one thing, whatever it might be, that the person on whom that
+favour was conferred chose to ask for. They all were attentive to hear
+what thing the page would ask for, and Lucius her master said to her,
+"I do not beg my life, good lad, but I know that is what you will ask
+for." "No, no, alas!" said Imogen, "I have other work in hand, good
+master; your life I cannot ask for."
+
+This seeming want of gratitude in the boy astonished the Roman
+general.
+
+Imogen then fixing her eye on Iachimo, demanded no other boon than
+this, that Iachimo should be made to confess whence he had the ring he
+wore on his finger.
+
+Cymbeline granted her this boon, and threatened Iachimo with the
+torture if he did not confess how he came by the diamond ring on his
+finger.
+
+Iachimo then made a full acknowledgment of all his villainy, telling,
+as has been before related, the whole story of his wager with
+Posthumus, and how he had succeeded in imposing upon his credulity.
+
+What Posthumus felt at hearing this proof of the innocence of his
+lady cannot be expressed. He instantly came forward, and confessed to
+Cymbeline the cruel sentence which he had enjoined Pisanio to execute
+upon the princess: exclaiming wildly, "O Imogen, my queen, my life, my
+wife! O Imogen, Imogen, Imogen!"
+
+Imogen could not see her beloved husband in this distress without
+discovering herself, to the unutterable joy of Posthumus, who was thus
+relieved from a weight of guilt and woe, and restored to the good
+graces of the dear lady he had so cruelly treated.
+
+Cymbeline, almost as much overwhelmed as he with joy, at finding his
+lost daughter so strangely recovered, received her to her former place
+in his fatherly affection, and not only gave her husband Posthumus his
+life, but consented to acknowledge him for his son-in-law.
+
+Bellarius chose this time of joy and reconciliation to make his
+confession. He presented Polidore and Cadwal to the king, telling him
+they were his two lost sons, Guiderius and Arviragus.
+
+Cymbeline forgave old Bellarius; for who could think of punishments at
+a season of such universal happiness: to find his daughter living, and
+his lost sons in the persons of his young deliverers, that he had seen
+so bravely fight in his defence, was unlooked-for joy indeed!
+
+Imogen was now at leisure to perform good services for her late
+master, the Roman general Lucius, whose life the king her father
+readily granted at her request; and by the mediation of the same
+Lucius a peace was concluded between the Romans and the Britons, which
+was kept inviolate many years.
+
+How Cymbeline's wicked queen, through despair of bringing her projects
+to pass, and touched with remorse of conscience, sickened and died,
+having first lived to see her foolish son Cloten slain in a quarrel
+which he had provoked, are events too tragical to interrupt this happy
+conclusion by more than merely touching upon. It is sufficient that
+all were made happy, who were deserving; and even the treacherous
+Iachimo, in consideration of his villainy having missed its final aim,
+was dismissed without punishment.
+
+
+
+
+KING LEAR
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+Lear, king of Britain, had three daughters; Gonerill, wife to the duke
+of Albany; Regan, wife to the duke of Cornwall; and Cordelia, a young
+maid, for whose love the king of France and duke of Burgundy were
+joint suitors, and were at this time making stay for that purpose in
+the court of Lear.
+
+The old king, worn out with age and the fatigues of government, he
+being more than fourscore years old, determined to take no further
+part in state affairs, but to leave the management to younger
+strengths, that he might have time to prepare for death, which must at
+no long period ensue. With this intent he called his three daughters
+to him, to know from their own lips which of them loved him best, that
+he might part his kingdom among them in such proportions as their
+affection for him should seem to deserve.
+
+Gonerill, the eldest, declared that she loved her father more than
+words could give out, that he was dearer to her than the light of her
+own eyes, dearer than life and liberty, with a deal of such professing
+stuff, which is easy to counterfeit where there is no real love, only
+a few fine words delivered with confidence being wanted in that case.
+The king, delighted to hear from her own mouth this assurance of her
+love, and thinking truly that her heart went with it, in a fit of
+fatherly fondness bestowed upon her and her husband one third of his
+ample kingdom.
+
+Then calling to him his second daughter, he demanded what she had to
+say. Regan, who was made of the same hollow metal as her sister, was
+not a whit behind in her professions, but rather declared that what
+her sister had spoken came short of the love which she professed to
+bear for his highness: insomuch that she found all other joys dead, in
+comparison with the pleasure which she took in the love of her dear
+king and father.
+
+Lear blest himself in having such loving children, as he thought; and
+could do no less, after the handsome assurances which Regan had made,
+than bestow a third of his kingdom upon her and her husband, equal in
+size to that which he had already given away to Gonerill.
+
+Then turning to his youngest daughter Cordelia, whom he called his
+joy, he asked what she had to say; thinking no doubt that she would
+glad his ears with the same loving speeches which her sisters had
+uttered, or rather that her expressions would be so much stronger than
+theirs, as she had always been his darling, and favoured by him above
+either of them. But Cordelia, disgusted with the flattery of her
+sisters, whose hearts she knew were far from their lips, and seeing
+that all their coaxing speeches were only intended to wheedle the old
+king out of his dominions, that they and their husbands might reign
+in his life-time, made no other reply but this, that she loved his
+majesty according to her duty, neither more nor less.
+
+The king, shocked with this appearance of ingratitude in his favourite
+child, desired her to consider her words, and to mend her speech, lest
+it should mar her fortunes.
+
+Cordelia then told her father, that he was her father, that he had
+given her breeding, and loved her, that she returned those duties back
+as was most fit, and did obey him, love him, and most honour him.
+But that she could not frame her mouth to such large speeches as her
+sisters had done, or promise to love nothing else in the world. Why
+had her sisters husbands, if (as they said) they had no love for any
+thing but their father? If she should ever wed, she was sure the lord
+to whom she gave her hand would want half her love, half of her care
+and duty; she should never marry like her sisters, to love her father
+all.
+
+Cordelia, who in earnest loved her old father, even almost as
+extravagantly as her sisters pretended to do, would have plainly told
+him so at any other time, in more daughter-like and loving terms,
+and without these qualifications which did indeed sound a little
+ungracious: but after the crafty flattering speeches of her sisters,
+which she had seen draw such extravagant rewards, she thought the
+handsomest thing she could do was to love and be silent. This put her
+affection out of suspicion of mercenary ends, and shewed that
+she loved, but not for gain; and that her professions, the less
+ostentatious they were, had so much the more of truth and sincerity
+than her sisters.
+
+This plainness of speech, which Lear called pride, so enraged the old
+monarch--who in his best of times always shewed much of spleen and
+rashness, and in whom the dotage incident to old age had so clouded
+over his reason, that he could not discern truth from flattery, nor
+a gay painted speech from words that came from the heart--that in a
+fury of resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom which
+yet remained, and which he had reserved for Cordelia, and gave it
+away from her, sharing it equally between her two sisters and their
+husbands, the dukes of Albany and Cornwall: whom he now called to him,
+and in presence of all his courtiers, bestowing a coronet between
+them, invested them jointly with all the power, revenue, and execution
+of government, only retaining to himself the name of king; all the
+rest of royalty he resigned: with this reservation, that himself, with
+a hundred knights for his attendants, was to be maintained by monthly
+course in each of his daughter's palaces in turn.
+
+So preposterous a disposal of his kingdom, so little guided by reason,
+and so much by passion, filled all his courtiers with astonishment
+and sorrow; but none of them had the courage to interpose between
+this incensed king and his wrath, except the earl of Kent, who was
+beginning to speak a good word for Cordelia, when the passionate Lear
+on pain of death commanded him to desist: but the good Kent was not so
+to be repelled. He had been ever loyal to Lear, whom he had honoured
+as a king, loved as a father, followed as a master: and had never
+esteemed his life further than as a pawn to wage against his royal
+master's enemies, nor feared to lose it when Lear's safety was the
+motive: nor now that Lear was most his own enemy did this faithful
+servant of the king forget his old principles, but manfully opposed
+Lear, to do Lear good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad.
+He had been a most faithful counsellor in times past to the king, and
+he besought him now, that he would see with his eyes (as he had done
+in many weighty matters), and go by his advice still; and in his best
+consideration recall this hideous rashness: for he would answer with
+his life his judgment, that Lear's youngest daughter did not love him
+least, nor were those empty-hearted whose low sound gave no token
+of hollowness. When power bowed to flattery, honour was bound to
+plainness. For Lear's threats, what could he do to him, whose life was
+already at his service? that should not hinder duty from speaking.
+
+The honest freedom of this good earl of Kent only stirred up the
+king's wrath the more, and like a frantic patient who kills his
+physician, and loves his mortal disease, he banished this true
+servant, and allotted him but five days to make his preparations for
+departure; but if on the sixth his hated person was found within the
+realm of Britain, that moment was to be his death. And Kent bade
+farewel to the king, and said, that since he chose to shew himself in
+such fashion, it was but banishment to stay there: and before he went,
+he recommended Cordelia to the protection of the gods, the maid who
+had so rightly thought, and so discreetly spoken; and only wished that
+her sisters' large speeches might be answered with deeds of love: and
+then he went, as he said, to shape his old course to a new country.
+
+The king of France and duke of Burgundy were now called in to hear the
+determination of Lear about his youngest daughter, and to know whether
+they would persist in their courtship to Cordelia, now that she was
+under her father's displeasure, and had no fortune but her own person
+to recommend her: and the duke of Burgundy declined the match, and
+would not take her to wife upon such conditions; but the king of
+France, understanding what the nature of the fault had been which
+had lost her the love of her father, that it was only a tardiness of
+speech, and the not being able to frame her tongue to flattery like
+her sisters, took this young maid by the hand, and saying that her
+virtues were a dowry above a kingdom, bade Cordelia to take farewel
+of her sisters, and of her father, though he had been unkind, and she
+should go with him, and be queen of him and of fair France, and reign
+over fairer possessions than her sisters: and he called the duke of
+Burgundy in contempt a waterish duke, because his love for this young
+maid had in a moment run all away like water.
+
+Then Cordelia with weeping eyes took leave of her sisters, and
+besought them to love their father well, and make good their
+professions: and they sullenly told her not to prescribe to them, for
+they knew their duty; but to strive to content her husband, who had
+taken her (as they tauntingly expressed it) as Fortune's alms. And
+Cordelia with a heavy heart departed, for she knew the cunning of her
+sisters, and she wished her father in better hands than she was about
+to leave him in.
+
+Cordelia was no sooner gone, than the devilish dispositions of her
+sister began to shew themselves in their true colours. Even before the
+expiration of the first month which Lear was to spend by agreement
+with his eldest daughter Gonerill, the old king began to find out the
+difference between promises and performances. This wretch having got
+from her father all that he had to bestow, even to the giving away of
+the crown from off his head, began to grudge even those small remnants
+of royalty which the old man had reserved to himself, to please his
+fancy with the idea of being still a king. She could not bear to see
+him and his hundred knights. Every time she met her father, she put on
+a frowning countenance; and when the old man wanted to speak with her,
+she would feign sickness or any thing to be rid of the sight of him;
+for it was plain that she esteemed his old age a useless burden, and
+his attendants an unnecessary expence: not only she herself slackened
+in her expressions of duty to the king, but by her example, and (it is
+to be feared) not without her private instructions, her very servants
+affected to treat him with neglect, and would either refuse to obey
+his orders, or still more contemptuously pretend not to hear them.
+Lear could not but perceive this alteration in the behaviour of his
+daughter, but he shut his eyes against it as long as he could, as
+people commonly are unwilling to believe the unpleasant consequences
+which their own mistakes and obstinacy have brought upon them.
+
+True love and fidelity are no more to be estranged by _ill_, than
+falsehood and hollow-heartedness can be conciliated by _good usage_.
+This eminently appears in the instance of the good earl of Kent, who,
+though banished by Lear, and his life made forfeit if he were found in
+Britain, chose to stay and abide all consequences, as long as there
+was a chance of his being useful to the king his master. See to what
+mean shifts and disguises poor loyalty is forced to submit sometimes;
+yet it counts nothing base or unworthy so as it can but do service
+where it owes an obligation! In the disguise of a serving-man, all his
+greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services
+to the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but
+pleased with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers
+which the earl put on (so different from that smooth oily flattery
+which he had so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects
+not answerable in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, and
+Lear took Kent into his service by the name of Caius, as he called
+himself, never suspecting him to be his once great favourite, the high
+and mighty earl of Kent.
+
+This Caius quickly found means to shew his fidelity and love to his
+royal master: for Gonerill's steward that same day behaving in a
+disrespectful manner to Lear, and giving him saucy looks and language,
+as no doubt he was secretly encouraged to do by his mistress, Caius
+not enduring to hear so open an affront put upon majesty, made no more
+ado but presently tript up his heels, and laid the unmannerly slave
+in the kennel: for which friendly service Lear became more and more
+attached to him.
+
+Nor was Kent the only friend Lear had. In his degree, and as far as
+so insignificant a personage could shew his love, the poor fool, or
+jester, that had been of his palace while Lear had a palace, as it was
+the custom of kings and great personages at that time to keep a fool
+(as he was called) to make them sport after serious business:--this
+poor fool clung to Lear after he had given away his crown, and by
+his witty sayings would keep up his good humour; though he could not
+refrain sometimes from jeering at his master for his imprudence, in
+uncrowning himself, and giving all away to his daughters: at which
+time, as he rhymingly expressed it, these daughters
+
+  For sudden joy did weep,
+    And he for sorrow sung,
+  That such a king should play bo-peep,
+    And go the fools among.
+
+And in such wild sayings, and scraps of songs, of which he had plenty,
+this pleasant honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence
+of Gonerill herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the
+quick; such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds the
+young of the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its head
+bit off for its pains: and saying, that an ass may know when the cart
+draws the horse (meaning that Lear's daughters, that ought to go
+behind, now ranked before their father); and that Lear was no longer
+Lear, but the shadow of Lear: for which free speeches he was once or
+twice threatened to be whipt.
+
+The coolness and falling off of respect which Lear had begun to
+perceive, were not all which this foolish-fond father was to suffer
+from his unworthy daughter: she now plainly told him that his staying
+in her palace was inconvenient so long as he insisted upon keeping up
+an establishment of a hundred knights; that this establishment was
+useless and expensive, and only served to fill her court with riot and
+feasting; and she prayed him that he would lessen their number, and
+keep none but old men about him, such as himself, and fitting his age.
+
+Lear at first could not believe his eyes or ears, nor that it was his
+daughter who spoke so unkindly. He could not believe that she who
+had received a crown from him could seek to cut off his train, and
+grudge him the respect due to his old age. But she persisting in her
+undutiful demand, the old man's rage was so excited, that he called
+her a detested kite, and said that she spoke an untruth: and so indeed
+she did, for the hundred knights were all men of choice behaviour
+and sobriety of manners, skilled in all particulars of duty, and not
+given to rioting or feasting as she said. And he bid his horses to
+be prepared, for he would go to his other daughter, Regan, he and
+his hundred knights: and he spoke of ingratitude, and said it was a
+marble-hearted devil, and shewed more hideous in a child than the
+sea-monster. And he cursed his eldest daughter Gonerill so as was
+terrible to hear: praying that she might never have a child, or if she
+had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon her,
+which she had shewn to him: that she might feel how sharper than a
+serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Gonerill's
+husband, the duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share
+which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear
+him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be saddled, and set out
+with his followers for the abode of Regan, his other daughter. And
+Lear thought to himself, how small the fault of Cordelia (if it was a
+fault) now appeared, in comparison with her sister's, and he wept; and
+then he was ashamed that such a creature as Gonerill should have so
+much power over his manhood as to make him weep.
+
+Regan and her husband were keeping their court in great pomp and state
+at their palace: and Lear dispatched his servant Caius with letters
+to his daughter, that she might be prepared for his reception, while
+he and his train followed after. But it seems that Gonerill had been
+beforehand with him, sending letters also to Regan, accusing her
+father of waywardness and ill humours, and advising her not to receive
+so great a train as he was bringing with him. This messenger arrived
+at the same time with Caius, and Caius and he met: and who should it
+be but Caius' old enemy the steward, whom he had formerly tript up
+by the heels for his saucy behaviour to Lear. Caius not liking the
+fellow's look, and suspecting what he came for, began to revile him,
+and challenged him to fight, which the fellow refusing, Caius, in a
+fit of honest passion, beat him soundly, as such a mischief-maker and
+carrier of wicked messages deserved: which coming to the ears of Regan
+and her husband, they ordered Caius to be put in the stocks, though
+he was a messenger from the king her father, and in that character
+demanded the highest respect: so that the first thing the king saw
+when he entered the castle, was his faithful servant Caius sitting in
+that disgraceful situation.
+
+This was but a bad omen of the reception which he was to expect; but
+a worse followed, when upon enquiry for his daughter and her husband,
+he was told they were weary with travelling all night, and could not
+see him: and when lastly, upon his insisting in a positive and angry
+manner to see them, they came to greet him, whom should he see in
+their company but the hated Gonerill, who had come to tell her own
+story, and set her sister against the king her father!
+
+This sight much moved the old man, and still more to see Regan take
+her by the hand: and he asked Gonerill if she was not ashamed to look
+upon his old white beard? And Regan advised him to go home again
+with Gonerill, and live with her peaceably, dismissing half of his
+attendants, and to ask her forgiveness; for he was old and wanted
+discretion, and must be ruled and led by persons that had more
+discretion than himself. And Lear shewed how preposterous that would
+sound, if he were to down on his knees, and beg of his own daughter
+for food and raiment, and he argued against such an unnatural
+dependence; declaring his resolution never to return with her, but to
+stay where he was with Regan, he and his hundred knights: for he said
+that she had not forgot the half of the kingdom which he had endowed
+her with, and that her eyes were not fierce like Gonerill's, but mild
+and kind. And he said that rather than return to Gonerill, with half
+his train cut off, he would go over to France, and beg a wretched
+pension of the king there, who had married his youngest daughter
+without a portion.
+
+But he was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he
+had experienced from her sister Gonerill. As if willing to outdo her
+sister in unfilial behaviour, she declared that she thought fifty
+knights too many to wait upon him: that five-and-twenty were enough.
+Then Lear, nigh heart-broken, turned to Gonerill, and said that he
+would go back with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so
+her love was twice as much as Regan's. But Gonerill excused herself,
+and said, what need of so many as five-and-twenty? or even ten? or
+five? when he might be waited upon by her servants, or her sister's
+servants? So these two wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed
+each other in cruelty to their old father who had been so good to
+them, by little and little would have abated him of all his train, all
+respect (little enough for him that once commanded a kingdom) which
+was left him to shew that he had once been a king! Not that a splendid
+train is essential to happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard
+change, from commanding millions to be without one attendant; and
+it was the ingratitude in his daughters' denying it, more than what
+he would suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to
+the heart: insomuch that with this double ill usage, and vexation
+for having so foolishly given away a kingdom, his wits began to be
+unsettled, and while he said he knew not what, he vowed revenge
+against those unnatural hags, and to make examples of them that should
+be a terror to the earth!
+
+While he was thus idly threatening what his weak arm could never
+execute, night came on, and a loud storm of thunder and lightning
+with rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not
+to admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather
+to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than stay under
+the same roof with these ungrateful daughters: and they saying that
+the injuries which wilful men procure to themselves are their just
+punishment, suffered him to go in that condition, and shut their doors
+upon him.
+
+The winds were high, and the rain and storm increased, when the old
+man sallied forth to combat with the elements, less sharp than his
+daughters' unkindness. For many miles about there was scarce a bush;
+and there upon a heath, exposed to the fury of the storm in a dark
+night, did king Lear wander out, and defy the winds and the thunder:
+and he bid the winds to blow the earth into the sea, or swell the
+waves of the sea till they drowned the earth, that no token might
+remain of any such ungrateful animal as man. The old king was now left
+with no other companion than the poor fool, who still abided with him,
+with his merry conceits striving to out-jest misfortune, saying, it
+was but a naughty night to swim in, and truly the king had better go
+in and ask his daughter's blessing:
+
+  But he that has a little tiny wit,
+  With heigh ho, the wind and the rain!
+  Must make content with his fortunes fit,
+  Though the rain it raineth every day:
+
+and swearing it was a brave night to cool a lady's pride.
+
+Thus poorly accompanied this once great monarch was found by his ever
+faithful servant the good earl of Kent, now transformed to Caius, who
+ever followed close at his side, though the king did not know him to
+be the earl; and he said, "Alas! sir, are you here? creatures that
+love night, love not such nights as these. This dreadful storm has
+driven the beasts to their hiding places. Man's nature cannot endure
+the affliction or the fear." And Lear rebuked him and said, these
+lesser evils were not felt, where a greater malady was fixed. When the
+mind is at ease, the body has leisure to be delicate; but the tempest
+in his mind did take all feeling else from his senses, but of that
+which beat at his heart. And he spoke of filial ingratitude, and said
+it was all one as if the mouth should tear the hand for lifting food
+to it; for parents were hands and food and everything to children.
+
+But the good Caius still persisting in his intreaties that the king
+would not stay out in the open air, at last persuaded him to enter
+a little wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool
+first entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying that he had seen
+a spirit. But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more
+than a poor Bedlam-beggar, who had crept into this deserted hovel for
+shelter, and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of
+those poor lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better
+to extort charity from the compassionate country-people; who go about
+the country, calling themselves poor Tom and poor Turlygood, saying,
+"Who gives any thing to poor Tom?" sticking pins and nails and sprigs
+of rosemary into their arms to make them bleed; and with such horrible
+actions, partly by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move
+or terrify the ignorant country-folks into giving them alms. This
+poor fellow was such a one; and the king seeing him in so wretched
+a plight, with nothing but a blanket about his loins to cover his
+nakedness, could not be persuaded but that the fellow was some father
+who had given all away to his daughters, and brought himself to that
+pass: for nothing he thought could bring a man to such wretchedness
+but the having unkind daughters.
+
+And from this and many such wild speeches which he uttered, the good
+Caius plainly perceived that he was not in his perfect mind, but that
+his daughters' ill usage had really made him go mad. And now the
+loyalty of this worthy earl of Kent shewed itself in more essential
+services than he had hitherto found opportunity to perform. For with
+the assistance of some of the king's attendants who remained loyal, he
+had the person of his royal master removed at day-break to the castle
+of Dover, where his own friends and influence, as earl of Kent,
+chiefly lay: and himself embarking for France, hastened to the court
+of Cordelia, and did there in such moving terms represent the pitiful
+condition of her royal father, and set out in such lively colours the
+inhumanity of her sisters, that this good and loving child with many
+tears besought the king her husband, that he would give her leave
+to embark for England with a sufficient power to subdue these cruel
+daughters and their husbands, and restore the old king her father to
+his throne; which being granted, she set forth, and with a royal army
+landed at Dover.
+
+Lear having by some chance escaped from the guardians which the good
+earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy,
+was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields
+near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad and singing aloud
+to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw,
+and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the
+corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though
+earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed upon to put off
+the meeting, till, by sleep and the operation of herbs which they gave
+him, he should be restored to greater composure. By the aid of these
+skilful physicians, to whom Cordelia promised all her gold and jewels
+for the recovery of the old king, Lear was soon in a condition to see
+his daughter.
+
+A tender sight it was to see the meeting between this father and
+daughter: to see the struggles between the joy of this poor old king
+at beholding again his once darling child, and the shame at receiving
+such filial kindness from her whom he had cast off for so small a
+fault in his displeasure; both these passions struggling with the
+remains of his malady, which in his half-crazed brain sometimes
+made him that he scarce remembered where he was, or who it was that
+so kindly kissed him and spoke to him: and then he would beg the
+standers-by not to laugh at him, if he were mistaken in thinking this
+lady to be his daughter Cordelia! And then to see him fall on his
+knees to beg pardon of his child; and she, good lady, kneeling all the
+while to ask a blessing of him, and telling him that it did not become
+him to kneel, but it was her duty, for she was his child, his true and
+very child Cordelia! And she kissed him (as she said) to kiss away
+all her sisters' unkindness, and said that they might be ashamed of
+themselves, to turn their old kind father with his white beard out
+into the cold air, when her enemy's dog, though it had bit her (as she
+prettily expressed it), should have staid by her fire such a night as
+that, and warmed himself. And she told her father how she had come
+from France with purpose to bring him assistance; and he said, that
+she must forget and forgive, for he was old and foolish, and did not
+know what he did; but that to be sure she had great cause not to love
+him, but her sisters had none. And Cordelia said, that she had no
+cause, no more than they had.
+
+So we will leave this old king in the protection of this dutiful and
+loving child, where, by the help of sleep and medicine, she and her
+physicians at length succeeded in winding up the untuned and jarring
+senses which the cruelty of his other daughters had so violently
+shaken. Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel
+daughters.
+
+These monsters of ingratitude, who had been so false to their old
+father, could not be expected to prove more faithful to their own
+husbands. They soon grew tired of paying even the appearance of duty
+and affection, and in an open way shewed they had fixed their loves
+upon another. It happened that the object of their guilty loves was
+the same. It was Edmund, a natural son of the late earl of Gloucester,
+who by his treacheries had succeeded in disinheriting his brother
+Edgar the lawful heir from his earldom, and by his wicked practices
+was now earl himself: a wicked man, and a fit object for the love of
+such wicked creatures as Gonerill and Regan. It falling out about
+this time that the duke of Cornwall, Regan's husband, died, Regan
+immediately declared her intention of wedding this earl of Gloucester,
+which rousing the jealousy of her sister, to whom as well as to Regan
+this wicked earl had at sundry times professed love, Gonerill found
+means to make away with her sister by poison: but being detected in
+her practices, and imprisoned by her husband the duke of Albany, for
+this deed, and for her guilty passion for the earl which had come to
+his ears, she in a fit of disappointed love and rage shortly put an
+end to her own life. Thus the justice of Heaven at last overtook these
+wicked daughters.
+
+While the eyes of all men were upon this event, admiring the justice
+displayed in their deserved deaths, the same eyes were suddenly taken
+off from this sight to admire at the mysterious ways of the same power
+in the melancholy fate of the young and virtuous daughter, the lady
+Cordelia, whose good deeds did seem to deserve a more fortunate
+conclusion: but it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not
+always successful in this world. The forces which Gonerill and Regan
+had sent out under the command of the bad earl of Gloucester were
+victorious, and Cordelia by the practices of this wicked earl, who did
+not like that any should stand between him and the throne, ended her
+life in prison. Thus, Heaven took this innocent lady to itself in her
+young years, after shewing her to the world an illustrious example of
+filial duty. Lear did not long survive this kind child.
+
+Before he died, the good earl of Kent, who had still attended his old
+master's steps from the first of his daughters' ill usage to this sad
+period of his decay, tried to make him understand that it was he who
+had followed him under the name of Caius; but Lear's care-crazed brain
+at that time could not comprehend how that could be, or how Kent and
+Caius could be the same person: so Kent thought it needless to trouble
+him with explanations at such a time; and Lear soon after expiring,
+this faithful servant to the king, between age and grief for his old
+master's vexations, soon followed him to the grave.
+
+How the judgment of Heaven overtook the bad earl of Gloucester, whose
+treasons were discovered, and himself slain in single combat with
+his brother, the lawful earl; and how Gonerill's husband, the duke
+of Albany, who was innocent of the death of Cordelia, and had never
+encouraged his lady in her wicked proceedings against her father,
+ascended the throne of Britain after the death of Lear, is needless
+here to narrate; Lear and his Three Daughters being dead, whose
+adventures alone concern our story.
+
+
+
+
+MACBETH
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+When Duncan the Meek reigned king of Scotland, there lived a great
+thane, or lord, called Macbeth. This Macbeth was a near kinsman to the
+king, and in great esteem at court for his valour and conduct in the
+wars; an example of which he had lately given, in defeating a rebel
+army assisted by the troops of Norway in terrible numbers.
+
+The two Scottish generals, Macbeth and Banquo, returning victorious
+from this great battle, their way lay over a blasted heath, where they
+were stopped by the strange appearance of three figures, like women,
+except that they had beards, and their withered skins and wild attire
+made them look not like any earthly creatures. Macbeth first addressed
+them, when they, seemingly offended, laid each one her choppy finger
+upon her skinny lips, in token of silence: and the first of them
+saluted Macbeth with the title of thane of Glamis. The general was
+not a little startled to find himself known by such creatures; but
+how much more, when the second of them followed up that salute by
+giving him the title of thane of Cawdor, to which honour he had no
+pretensions! and again the third bid him "All hail! king that shall be
+hereafter!" Such a prophetic greeting might well amaze him, who knew
+that while the king's sons lived he could not hope to succeed to the
+throne. Then turning to Banquo, they pronounced him, in a sort of
+riddling terms, to be _lesser than Macbeth and greater! not so happy,
+but much happier!_ and prophesied that though he should never reign,
+yet his sons after him should be kings in Scotland. They then turned
+into air, and vanished: by which the generals knew them to be the
+weird sisters, or witches.
+
+While they stood pondering on the strangeness of this adventure,
+there arrived certain messengers from the king, who were empowered by
+him to confer upon Macbeth the dignity of thane of Cawdor. An event
+so miraculously corresponding with the prediction of the witches
+astonished Macbeth, and he stood wrapt in amazement, unable to make
+reply to the messengers: and in that point of time swelling hopes
+arose in his mind, that the prediction of the third witch might in
+like manner have its accomplishment, and that he should one day reign
+king in Scotland.
+
+Turning to Banquo, he said, "Do you not hope that your children shall
+be kings, when what the witches promised to me has so wonderfully come
+to pass?" "That hope," answered the general, "might enkindle you to
+aim at the throne; but oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell
+us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest
+consequence."
+
+But the wicked suggestions of the witches had sunk too deep into the
+mind of Macbeth, to allow him to attend to the warnings of the good
+Banquo. From that time he bent all his thoughts how to compass the
+crown of Scotland.
+
+Macbeth had a wife, to whom he communicated the strange prediction
+of the weird sisters, and its partial accomplishment. She was a bad
+ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at
+greatness, she cared not much by what means. She spurred on the
+reluctant purpose of Macbeth, who felt compunction at the thoughts of
+blood, and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step
+absolutely necessary to the fulfilment of the flattering prophecy.
+
+It happened at this time that the king, who out of his royal
+condescension would oftentimes visit his principal nobility upon
+gracious terms, came to Macbeth's house, attended by his two sons,
+Malcolm and Donalbain, and a numerous train of thanes and attendants,
+the more to honour Macbeth for the triumphal success of his wars.
+
+The castle of Macbeth was pleasantly situated, and the air about
+it was sweet and wholesome, which appeared by the nests which the
+martlet, or swallow, had built under all the jutting friezes and
+buttresses of the building, wherever it found a place of advantage:
+for where those birds most breed and haunt, the air is observed to
+be delicate. The king entered, well pleased with the place, and not
+less so with the attentions and respect of his honoured hostess, lady
+Macbeth, who had the art of covering treacherous purposes with smiles;
+and could look like the innocent flower, while she was indeed the
+serpent under it.
+
+The king, being tired with his journey, went early to bed, and in his
+state-room two grooms of his chamber (as was the custom) slept beside
+him. He had been unusually pleased with his reception, and had made
+presents, before he retired, to his principal officers; and among the
+rest, had sent a rich diamond to lady Macbeth, greeting her by the
+name of his most kind hostess.
+
+Now was the middle of the night, when over half the world nature seems
+dead, and wicked dreams abuse men's minds asleep, and none but the
+wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when lady Macbeth
+waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken
+a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband's
+nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do
+a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be
+scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which
+commonly in the end accompanies inordinate ambition. She had won him
+to consent to the murder, but she doubted his resolution: and she
+feared that the natural tenderness of his disposition (more humane
+than her own) would come between, and defeat the purpose. So with her
+own hands armed with a dagger, she approached the king's bed; having
+taken care to ply the grooms of his chamber so with wine, that they
+slept intoxicated, and careless of their charge. There lay Duncan, in
+a sound sleep after the fatigues of his journey, and as she viewed
+him earnestly, there was something in his face, as he slept, which
+resembled her own father; and she had not the courage to proceed.
+
+She returned to confer with her husband. His resolution had begun
+to stagger. He considered that there were strong reasons against
+the deed. In the first place, he was not only a subject, but a near
+kinsman to the king; and he had been his host and entertainer that
+day, whose duty by the laws of hospitality it was to shut the door
+against his murderers, not bear the knife himself. Then he considered
+how just and merciful a king this Duncan had been, how clear of
+offence to his subjects, how loving to his nobility, and in particular
+to him; that such kings are the peculiar care of Heaven, and their
+subjects doubly bound to revenge their deaths. Besides, by the favours
+of the king, Macbeth stood high in the opinion of all sorts of men,
+and how would those honours be stained by the reputation of so foul a
+murder!
+
+In these conflicts of the mind lady Macbeth found her husband,
+inclining to the better part, and resolving to proceed no further. But
+she being a woman not easily shaken from her evil purpose, began to
+pour in at his ears words which infused a portion of her own spirit
+into his mind, assigning reason upon reason why he should not shrink
+from what he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would
+be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their
+nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw
+contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and
+cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender
+it was to love the babe that milked her, but she would, while it was
+smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its
+brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform
+that murder. Then she added, how practicable it was to lay the guilt
+of the deed upon the drunken sleepy grooms. And with the valour of her
+tongue she so chastised his sluggish resolutions, that he once more
+summoned up courage to the bloody business.
+
+So, taking the dagger in his hand, he softly stole in the dark to
+the room where Duncan lay; and as he went, he thought he saw another
+dagger in the air, with the handle towards him, and on the blade and
+at the point of it drops of blood: but when he tried to grasp at it,
+it was nothing but air, a mere phantasm proceeding from his own hot
+and oppressed brain and the business he had in hand.
+
+Getting rid of this fear, he entered the king's room, whom he
+dispatched with one stroke of his dagger. Just as he had done the
+murder, one of the grooms, who slept in the chamber, laughed in his
+sleep, and the other cried "Murder," which woke them both: but they
+said a short prayer; one of them said, "God bless us!" and the other
+answered "Amen;" and addressed themselves to sleep again. Macbeth, who
+stood listening to them, tried to say "Amen," when the fellow said
+"God bless us!" but, though he had most need of a blessing, the word
+stuck in his throat, and he could not pronounce it.
+
+Again he thought he heard a voice which cried, "Sleep no more: Macbeth
+doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep, that nourishes life." Still it
+cried, "Sleep no more," to all the house. "Glamis hath murdered sleep,
+and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no
+more."
+
+With such horrible imaginations, Macbeth returned to his listening
+wife, who began to think he had failed of his purpose, and that the
+deed was somehow frustrated. He came in so distracted a state, that
+she reproached him with his want of firmness, and sent him to wash his
+hands of the blood which stained them, while she took his dagger, with
+purpose to stain the cheeks of the grooms with blood, to make it seem
+their guilt.
+
+Morning came, and with it the discovery of the murder, which could
+not be concealed; and though Macbeth and his lady made great show of
+grief, and the proofs against the grooms (the dagger being produced
+against them and their faces smeared with blood) were sufficiently
+strong, yet the entire suspicion fell upon Macbeth, whose inducements
+to such a deed were so much more forcible than such poor silly grooms
+could be supposed to have; and Duncan's two sons fled. Malcolm, the
+eldest, sought for refuge in the English court; and the youngest,
+Donalbain, made his escape to Ireland.
+
+The king's sons, who should have succeeded him, having thus vacated
+the throne, Macbeth as next heir was crowned king, and thus the
+prediction of the weird sisters was literally accomplished.
+
+Though placed so high, Macbeth and his queen could not forget the
+prophecy of the weird sisters, that, though Macbeth should be king,
+yet not his children, but the children of Banquo, should be kings
+after him. The thought of this, and that they had defiled their hands
+with blood, and done so great crimes, only to place the posterity of
+Banquo upon the throne, so rankled within them, that they determined
+to put to death both Banquo and his son, to make void the predictions
+of the weird sisters, which in their own case had been so remarkably
+brought to pass.
+
+For this purpose they made a great supper, to which they invited
+all the chief thanes; and, among the rest, with marks of particular
+respect, Banquo and his son Fleance were invited. The way by which
+Banquo was to pass to the palace at night, was beset by murderers
+appointed by Macbeth, who stabbed Banquo; but in the scuffle Fleance
+escaped. From that Fleance descended a race of monarchs who afterwards
+filled the Scottish throne, ending with James the sixth of Scotland
+and the first of England, under whom the two crowns of England and
+Scotland were united.
+
+At supper the queen, whose manners were in the highest degree affable
+and royal, played the hostess with a gracefulness and attention which
+conciliated every one present, and Macbeth discoursed freely with his
+thanes and nobles, saying, that all that was honourable in the country
+was under his roof, if he had but his good friend Banquo present,
+whom yet he hoped he should rather have to chide for neglect, than to
+lament for any mischance. Just at these words the ghost of Banquo,
+whom he had caused to be murdered, entered the room, and placed
+himself on the chair which Macbeth was about to occupy. Though Macbeth
+was a bold man, and one that could have faced the devil without
+trembling, at this horrible sight his cheeks turned white with fear,
+and he stood quite unmanned with his eyes fixed upon the ghost.
+His queen and all the nobles, who saw nothing, but perceived him
+gazing (as they thought) upon an empty chair, took it for a fit of
+distraction; and she reproached him, whispering that it was but the
+same fancy which had made him see the dagger in the air, when he was
+about to kill Duncan. But Macbeth continued to see the ghost, and gave
+no heed to all they could say, while he addressed it with distracted
+words, yet so significant, that his queen, fearing the dreadful secret
+would be disclosed, in great haste dismissed the guests, excusing the
+infirmity of Macbeth as a disorder he was often troubled with.
+
+To such dreadful fancies Macbeth was subject. His queen and he had
+their sleeps afflicted with terrible dreams, and the blood of Banquo
+troubled them not more than the escape of Fleance, whom now they
+looked upon as father to a line of kings, who should keep their
+posterity out of the throne. With these miserable thoughts they found
+no peace, and Macbeth determined once more to seek out the weird
+sisters, and know from them the worst.
+
+He sought them in a cave upon the heath, where they, who knew by
+foresight of his coming, were engaged in preparing their dreadful
+charms, by which they conjured up infernal spirits to reveal to them
+futurity. Their horrid ingredients were toads, bats, and serpents, the
+eye of a newt, and the tongue of a dog, the leg of a lizard, and the
+wing of the night-owl, the scale of a dragon, the tooth of a wolf, the
+maw of the ravenous salt-sea shark, the mummy of a witch, the root
+of the poisonous hemlock (this to have effect must be digged in the
+dark), the gall of a goat, and the liver of a Jew, with slips of the
+yew tree that roots itself in graves, and the finger of a dead child:
+all these were set on to boil in a great kettle, or cauldron, which,
+as fast as it grew too hot, was cooled with a baboon's blood: to these
+they poured in the blood of a sow that had eaten her young, and they
+threw into the flame the grease that had sweaten from a murderer's
+gibbet. By these charms they bound the infernal spirits to answer
+their questions.
+
+It was demanded of Macbeth, whether he would have his doubts resolved
+by them, or by their masters, the spirits. He, nothing daunted by the
+dreadful ceremonies which he saw, boldly answered, "Where are they?
+let me see them." And they called the spirits, which were three.
+And the first arose in the likeness of an armed head, and he called
+Macbeth by name, and bid him beware of the thane of Fife; for which
+caution Macbeth thanked him: for Macbeth had entertained a jealousy of
+Macduff, the thane of Fife.
+
+And the second spirit arose in the likeness of a bloody child, and he
+called Macbeth by name, and bid him have no fear, but laugh to scorn
+the power of man, for none of woman born should have power to hurt
+him: and he advised him to be bloody, bold, and resolute. "Then live,
+Macduff!" cried the king; "what need I fear of thee? but yet I will
+make assurance doubly sure. Thou shall not live; that I may tell
+pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder."
+
+That spirit being dismissed, a third arose in the form of a child
+crowned, with a tree in his hand. He called Macbeth by name, and
+comforted him against conspiracies, saying, that he should never be
+vanquished, until the wood of Birnam to Dunsinane-Hill should come
+against him. "Sweet bodements! good!" cried Macbeth; "who can unfix
+the forest, and move it from its earth-bound roots? I see I shall live
+the usual period of man's life, and not be cut off by a violent death.
+But my heart throbs to know one thing. Tell me, if your art can tell
+so much, if Banquo's issue shall ever reign in this kingdom?" Here
+the cauldron sank into the ground, and a noise of music was heard,
+and eight shadows, like kings, passed by Macbeth, and Banquo last,
+who bore a glass which shewed the figures of many more, and Banquo
+all bloody smiled upon Macbeth, and pointed to them; by which Macbeth
+knew, that these were the posterity of Banquo, who should reign after
+him in Scotland; and the witches, with a sound of soft music, and with
+dancing, making a shew of duty and welcome to Macbeth, vanished. And
+from this time the thoughts of Macbeth were all bloody and dreadful.
+
+The first thing he heard when he got out of the witches' cave, was,
+that Macduff, thane of Fife, had fled to England, to join the army
+which was forming against him under Malcolm, the eldest son of the
+late king, with intent to displace Macbeth, and set Malcolm, the right
+heir, upon the throne. Macbeth, stung with rage, set upon the castle
+of Macduff, and put his wife and children, whom the thane had left
+behind, to the sword, and extended the slaughter to all who claimed
+the least relationship to Macduff.
+
+These and such-like deeds alienated the minds of all his chief
+nobility from him. Such as could, fled to join with Malcolm and
+Macduff, who were now approaching with a powerful army which they
+had raised in England; and the rest secretly wished success to their
+arms, though for fear of Macbeth they could take no active part. His
+recruits went on slowly. Every body hated the tyrant, nobody loved
+or honoured him, but all suspected him, and he began to envy the
+condition of Duncan whom he had murdered, who slept soundly in his
+grave, against whom treason had done its worst: steel nor poison,
+domestic malice nor foreign levies, could hurt him any longer.
+
+While these things were acting, the queen, who had been the sole
+partner in his wickedness, in whose bosom he could sometimes seek a
+momentary repose from those terrible dreams which afflicted them both
+nightly, died, it is supposed by her own hands, unable to bear the
+remorse of guilt, and public hate; by which event he was left alone,
+without a soul to love or care for him, or a friend to whom he could
+confide his wicked purposes.
+
+He grew careless of life, and wished for death; but the near approach
+of Malcolm's army roused in him what remained of his ancient courage,
+and he determined to die (as he expressed it) "with armour on his
+back." Besides this, the hollow promises of the witches had filled him
+with false confidence, and he remembered the sayings of the spirits,
+that none of woman born was to hurt him, and that he was never to be
+vanquished till Birnam wood should come to Dunsinane, which he thought
+could never be. So he shut himself up in his castle, whose impregnable
+strength was such as defied a siege: here he sullenly waited the
+approach of Malcolm. When, upon a day, there came a messenger to him,
+pale and shaking with fear, almost unable to report that which he had
+seen: for he averred, that as he stood upon his watch on the hill, he
+looked towards Birnam, and to his thinking the wood began to move!
+"Liar and slave," cried Macbeth; "if thou speakest false, thou shalt
+hang alive upon the next tree, till famine end thee. If thy tale
+be true, I care not if thou dost as much by me:" for Macbeth now
+began to faint in resolution, and to doubt the equivocal speeches
+of the spirits. He was not to fear, till Birnam wood should come to
+Dunsinane: and now a wood did move! "However," said he, "if this which
+he avouches be true, let us arm and out. There is no flying hence,
+nor staying here. I begin to be weary of the sun, and wish my life
+at an end." With these desperate speeches he sallied forth upon the
+besiegers, who had now come up to the castle.
+
+The strange appearance, which had given the messenger an idea of a
+wood moving, is easily solved. When the besieging army marched through
+the wood of Birnam, Malcolm, like a skilful general, instructed his
+soldiers to hew down every one a bough and bear it before him, by
+way of concealing the true numbers of his host. This marching of
+the soldiers with boughs had at a distance the appearance which had
+frightened the messenger. Thus were the words of the spirit brought to
+pass, in a sense different from that in which Macbeth had understood
+them, and one great hold of his confidence was gone.
+
+And now a severe skirmishing took place, in which Macbeth, though
+feebly supported by those who called themselves his friends, but in
+reality hated the tyrant and inclined to the party of Malcolm and
+Macduff, yet fought with the extreme of rage and valour, cutting to
+pieces all who were opposed to him, till he came to where Macduff was
+fighting. Seeing Macduff, and remembering the caution of the spirit
+who had counselled him to avoid Macduff above all men, he would have
+turned, but Macduff, who had been seeking him through the whole fight,
+opposed his turning, and a fierce contest ensued; Macduff giving him
+many foul reproaches for the murder of his wife and children. Macbeth,
+whose soul was charged enough with blood of that family already, would
+still have declined the combat; but Macduff still urged him to it,
+calling him tyrant, murderer, hell-hound, and villain.
+
+Then Macbeth remembered the words of the spirit, how none of woman
+born should hurt him; and smiling confidently he said to Macduff,
+"Thou losest thy labour, Macduff. As easily thou mayest impress the
+air with thy sword, as make me vulnerable. I bear a charmed life,
+which must not yield to one of woman born."
+
+"Despair thy charm," said Macduff, "and let that lying spirit whom
+thou hast served, tell thee, that Macduff was never born of woman,
+never as the ordinary manner of men is to be born, but was untimely
+taken from his mother."
+
+"Accursed be the tongue which tells me so," said the trembling
+Macbeth, who felt his last hold of confidence give way; "and let never
+man in future believe the lying equivocations of witches and juggling
+spirits, who deceive us in words which have double senses, and while
+they keep their promise literally, disappoint our hopes with a
+different meaning. I will not fight with thee."
+
+"Then, live!" said the scornful Macduff; "we will have a show of thee,
+as men shew monsters, and a painted board, on which shall be written,
+Here men may see the tyrant!"
+
+"Never," said Macbeth, whose courage returned with despair; "I will
+not live to kiss the ground before young Malcolm's feet, and to be
+baited with the curses of the rabble. Though Birnam wood be come to
+Dunsinane, and thou opposed to me who wast never born of woman, yet
+will I try the last." With these frantic words he threw himself upon
+Macduff, who, after a severe struggle in the end overcame him, and
+cutting off his head, made a present of it to the young and lawful
+king, Malcolm; who took upon him the government which by the
+machinations of the usurper he had so long been deprived of, and
+ascended the throne of Duncan the Meek amid the acclamations of the
+nobles and the people.
+
+
+
+
+ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Bertram, count of Rossilion, had newly come to his title and estate,
+by the death of his father. The king of France loved the father of
+Bertram, and when he heard of his death, he sent for his son to come
+immediately to his royal court in Paris; intending, for the friendship
+he bore the late count, to grace young Bertram with his especial
+favour and protection.
+
+Bertram was living with his mother, the widowed countess, when Lafeu,
+an old lord of the French court, came to conduct Bertram to the king.
+The king of France was an absolute monarch, and the invitation to
+court was in the form of a royal mandate, or positive command, which
+no subject of what high dignity soever might disobey; therefore though
+the countess, in parting with this dear son, seemed a second time
+to bury her husband, whose loss she had so lately mourned, yet she
+dared not to keep him a single day, but gave instant orders for his
+departure. Lafeu, who came to fetch him, tried to comfort the countess
+for the loss of her late lord, and her son's sudden absence; and he
+said, in a courtier's flattering manner, that the king was so kind a
+prince, she would find in his majesty a husband, and that he would be
+a father to her son: meaning only that the good king would befriend
+the fortunes of Bertram. Lafeu told the countess that the king had
+fallen into a sad malady, which was pronounced by his physicians to be
+incurable. The lady expressed great sorrow on hearing this account of
+the king's ill health, and said, she wished the father of Helena (a
+young gentlewoman who was present in attendance upon her) were living,
+for that she doubted not he could have cured his majesty of his
+disease. And she told Lafeu something of the history of Helena, saying
+she was the only daughter of the famous physician Gerard de Narbon,
+and that he had recommended his daughter to her care when he was
+dying, so that since his death she had taken Helena under her
+protection; then the countess praised the virtuous disposition and
+excellent qualities of Helena, saying she inherited these virtues from
+her worthy father. While she was speaking, Helena wept in sad and
+mournful silence, which made the countess gently reprove her for too
+much grieving for her father's death.
+
+Bertram now bade his mother farewel. The countess parted with this
+dear son with tears and many blessings, and commended him to the care
+of Lafeu, saying, "Good my lord, advise him, for he is an unseasoned
+courtier."
+
+Bertram's last words were spoken to Helena, but they were words of
+mere civility, wishing her happiness; and he concluded his short
+farewel to her with saying, "Be comfortable to my mother your
+mistress, and make much of her."
+
+Helena had long loved Bertram, and when she wept in sad and mournful
+silence, the tears she shed were not for Gerard de Narbon. Helena
+loved her father, but in the present feeling of a deeper love, the
+object of which she was about to lose, she had forgotten the very form
+and features of her dead father, her imagination presenting no image
+to her mind but Bertram's.
+
+Helena had long loved Bertram, yet she always remembered that he
+was the count of Rossilion, descended from the most ancient family
+in France. She of humble birth. Her parents of no note at all. His
+ancestors all noble. And therefore she looked up to the high-born
+Bertram, as to her master and to her dear lord, and dared not form
+any wish but to live his servant, and so living to die his vassal. So
+great the distance seemed to her between his height of dignity and her
+lowly fortunes, that she would say, "It were all one that I should
+love a bright peculiar star and think to wed it, Bertram is so far
+above me."
+
+Bertram's absence filled her eyes with tears, and her heart with
+sorrow; for though she loved without hope, yet it was a pretty comfort
+to her to see him every hour, and Helena would sit and look upon his
+dark eye, his arched brow, and the curls of his fine hair, till she
+seemed to draw his portrait on the tablet of her heart, that heart too
+capable of retaining the memory of every line in the features of that
+loved face.
+
+Gerard de Narbon, when he died, left her no other portion than some
+prescriptions of rare and well proved virtue, which by deep study and
+long experience in medicine, he had collected as sovereign and almost
+infallible remedies. Among the rest there was one set down as an
+approved medicine for the disease under which Lafeu said the king at
+that time languished; and when Helena heard of the king's complaint,
+she, who till now had been so humble and so hopeless, formed an
+ambitious project in her mind to go herself to Paris, and undertake
+the cure of the king. But though Helena was the possessor of this
+choice prescription, it was unlikely, as the king as well as his
+physicians were of opinion that his disease was incurable, that they
+would give credit to a poor unlearned virgin, if she should offer
+to perform a cure. The firm hopes that Helena had of succeeding, if
+she might be permitted to make the trial, seemed more than even her
+father's skill warranted, though he was the most famous physician of
+his time; for she felt a strong faith that this good medicine was
+sanctified by all the luckiest stars in heaven, to be the legacy that
+should advance her fortune, even to the high dignity of being count
+Rossilion's wife.
+
+Bertram had not been long gone, when the countess was informed by her
+steward, that he had overheard Helena talking to herself, and that he
+understood from some words she uttered, she was in love with Bertram,
+and had thought of following him to Paris. The countess dismissed
+the steward with thanks, and desired him to tell Helena she wished
+to speak with her. What she had just heard of Helena brought the
+remembrance of days long past into the mind of the countess, those
+days probably when her love for Bertram's father first began; and she
+said to herself, "Even so it was with me when I was young. Love is a
+thorn that belongs to the rose of youth; for in the season of youth,
+if ever we are nature's children, these faults are ours, though then
+we think not they are faults." While the countess was thus meditating
+on the loving errors of her own youth, Helena entered, and she said
+to her, "Helena, you know I am a mother to you." Helena replied, "You
+are my honourable mistress." "You are my daughter," said the countess
+again: "I say I am your mother. Why do you start and look pale at
+my words?" With looks of alarm and confused thoughts, fearing the
+countess suspected her love, Helena still replied, "Pardon me, madam,
+you are not my mother; the count Rossilion cannot be my brother, nor
+I your daughter." "Yet, Helena," said the countess, "you might be my
+daughter-in-law; and I am afraid that is what you mean to be, the
+words _mother_ and _daughter_ so disturb you. Helena, do you love my
+son?" "Good madam, pardon me," said the affrighted Helena. Again the
+countess repeated her question, "Do you love my son?" "Do not you
+love him, madam?" said Helena. The countess replied, "Give me not
+this evasive answer, Helena. Come, come, disclose the state of your
+affections, for your love has to the full appeared." Helena on her
+knees now owned her love, and with shame and terror implored the
+pardon of her noble mistress; and with words expressive of the sense
+she had of the inequality between their fortunes, she protested
+Bertram did not know she loved him, comparing her humble unaspiring
+love to a poor Indian, who adores the sun, that looks upon his
+worshipper but knows of him no more. The countess asked Helena if
+she had not lately an intent to go to Paris? Helena owned the design
+she had formed in her mind, when she heard Lafeu speak of the king's
+illness. "This was your motive for wishing to go to Paris," said the
+countess, "was it? Speak truly." Helena honestly answered, "My lord
+your son made me to think of this; else Paris, and the medicine, and
+the king, had from the conversation of my thoughts been absent then."
+The countess heard the whole of this confession without saying a word
+either of approval or of blame, but she strictly questioned Helena as
+to the probability of the medicine being useful to the king. She found
+that it was the most prized by Gerard de Narbon of all he possessed,
+and that he had given it to his daughter on his death-bed; and
+remembering the solemn promise she had made at that awful hour in
+regard to this young maid, whose destiny, and the life of the king
+himself, seemed to depend on the execution of a project (which though
+conceived by the fond suggestions of a loving maiden's thoughts, the
+countess knew not but it might be the unseen workings of Providence to
+bring to pass the recovery of the king, and to lay the foundation of
+the future fortunes of Gerard de Narbon's daughter), free leave she
+gave to Helena to pursue her own way, and generously furnished her
+with ample means and suitable attendants, and Helena set out for
+Paris with the blessings of the countess, and her kindest wishes for
+her success.
+
+Helena arrived at Paris, and by the assistance of her friend the old
+lord Lafeu, she obtained an audience of the king. She had still many
+difficulties to encounter, for the king was not easily prevailed on to
+try the medicine offered him by this fair young doctor. But she told
+him she was Gerard de Narbon's daughter (with whose fame the king
+was well acquainted), and she offered the precious medicine as the
+darling treasure which contained the essence of all her father's long
+experience and skill, and she boldly engaged to forfeit her life, if
+it failed to restore his majesty to perfect health in the space of two
+days. The king at length consented to try it, and in two days time
+Helena was to lose her life if the king did not recover; but if she
+succeeded, he promised to give her the choice of any man throughout
+all France (the princes only excepted) whom she could like for an
+husband; the choice of an husband being the fee Helena demanded, if
+she cured the king of his disease.
+
+Helena did not deceive herself in the hope she conceived of the
+efficacy of her father's medicine. Before two days were at an end, the
+king was restored to perfect health, and he assembled all the young
+noblemen of his court together, in order to confer the promised reward
+of an husband upon his fair physician; and he desired Helena to look
+round on this youthful parcel of noble bachelors, and choose her
+husband. Helena was not slow to make her choice, for among these young
+lords she saw the count Rossilion, and turning to Bertram, she said,
+"This is the man. I dare not say, my lord, I take you, but I give
+me and my service ever whilst I live into your guiding power." "Why
+then," said the king, "young Bertram, take her; she is your wife."
+Bertram did not hesitate to declare his dislike to this present of
+the king's of the self-offered Helena, who, he said, was a poor
+physician's daughter, bred at his father's charge, and now living a
+dependent on his mother's bounty. Helena heard him speak these words
+of rejection and of scorn, and she said to the king, "That you are
+well, my lord, I am glad. Let the rest go." But the king would not
+suffer his royal command to be so slighted; for the power of bestowing
+their nobles in marriage was one of the many privileges of the kings
+of France; and that same day Bertram was married to Helena, a forced
+and uneasy marriage to Bertram, and of no promising hope to the poor
+lady, who, though she gained the noble husband she had hazarded her
+life to obtain, seemed to have won but a splendid blank, her husband's
+love not being a gift in the power of the king of France to bestow.
+
+Helena was no sooner married, than she was desired by Bertram to apply
+to the king for him for leave of absence from court; and when she
+brought him the king's permission for his departure, Bertram told her
+that as he was not prepared for this sudden marriage, it had much
+unsettled him, and therefore she must not wonder at the course he
+should pursue. If Helena wondered not, she grieved, when she found
+it was his intention to leave her. He ordered her to go home to his
+mother. When Helena heard this unkind command, she replied, "Sir, I
+can nothing say to this, but that I am your most obedient servant, and
+shall ever with true observance seek to eke out that desert, wherein
+my homely stars have failed to equal my great fortunes." But this
+humble speech of Helena's did not at all move the haughty Bertram to
+pity his gentle wife, and he parted from her without even the common
+civility of a kind farewel.
+
+Back to the countess then Helena returned. She had accomplished the
+purport of her journey, she had preserved the life of the king, and
+she had wedded her heart's dear lord, the count Rossilion; but she
+returned back a dejected lady to her noble mother-in-law, and as soon
+as she entered the house, she received a letter from Bertram which
+almost broke her heart.
+
+The good countess received her with a cordial welcome, as if she
+had been her son's own choice, and a lady of a high degree, and she
+spoke kind words, to comfort her for the unkind neglect of Bertram
+in sending his wife home on her bridal day alone. But this gracious
+reception failed to cheer the sad mind of Helena, and she said,
+"Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone." She then read these words out
+of Bertram's letter: _When you can get the ring from my finger which
+never shall come off, then call me husband, but in such a Then I write
+a Never_. "This is a dreadful sentence!" said Helena. The countess
+begged her to have patience, and said, now Bertram was gone, she
+should be her child, and that she deserved a lord, that twenty such
+rude boys as Bertram might tend upon, and hourly call her mistress.
+But in vain by respectful condescension and kind flattery this
+matchless mother tried to soothe the sorrows of her daughter-in-law.
+Helena still kept her eyes fixt upon the letter, and cried out in an
+agony of grief, _Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France_. The
+countess asked her if she found those words in the letter? "Yes,
+madam," was all poor Helena could answer.
+
+The next morning Helena was missing. She left a letter to be delivered
+to the countess after she was gone, to acquaint her with the reason of
+her sudden absence: in this letter she informed her, that she was so
+much grieved at having driven Bertram from his native country and his
+home, that to atone for her offence she had undertaken a pilgrimage to
+the shrine of St. Jaques le Grand, and concluded with requesting the
+countess to inform her son that the wife he so hated had left his
+house for ever.
+
+Bertram, when he left Paris, went to Florence, and there became an
+officer in the duke of Florence's army, and after a successful war, in
+which he distinguished himself by many brave actions, Bertram received
+letters from his mother, containing the acceptable tidings that Helena
+would no more disturb him; and he was preparing to return home, when
+Helena herself, clad in her pilgrim's weeds, arrived at the city of
+Florence.
+
+Florence was a city through which the pilgrims used to pass on their
+way to St. Jaques le Grand; and when Helena arrived at this city, she
+heard that a hospitable widow dwelt there, who used to receive into
+her house the female pilgrims that were going to visit the shrine
+of that saint, giving them lodging and kind entertainment. To this
+good lady therefore Helena went, and the widow gave her a courteous
+welcome, and invited her to see whatever was curious in that famous
+city, and told her that if she would like to see the duke's army,
+she would take her where she might have a full view of it. "And you
+will see a countryman of yours," said the widow; "his name is count
+Rossilion, who has done worthy service in the duke's wars." Helena
+wanted no second invitation, when she found Bertram was to make part
+of the show. She accompanied her hostess; and a sad and mournful
+pleasure it was to her to look once more upon her dear husband's face.
+"Is he not a handsome man?" said the widow. "I like him well," replied
+Helena, with great truth. All the way they walked, the talkative
+widow's discourse was all of Bertram: she told Helena the story of
+Bertram's marriage, and how he had deserted the poor lady his wife,
+and entered into the duke's army to avoid living with her. To this
+account of her own misfortunes Helena patiently listened, and when it
+was ended, the history of Bertram was not yet done, for then the widow
+began another tale, every word of which sunk deep into the mind of
+Helena; for the story she now told was of Bertram's love for her
+daughter.
+
+Though Bertram did not like the marriage forced on him by the king, it
+seems he was not insensible to love, for since he had been stationed
+with the army at Florence, he had fallen in love with Diana, a fair
+young gentlewoman, the daughter of this widow who was Helena's
+hostess; and every night, with music of all sorts, and songs composed
+in praise of Diana's beauty, he would come under her window, and
+solicit her love: and all his suit to her was that she would permit
+him to visit her by stealth after the family were retired to rest; but
+Diana would by no means be persuaded to grant this improper request,
+nor give any encouragement to his suit, knowing him to be a married
+man; for Diana had been brought up under the counsels of a prudent
+mother, who, though she was now in reduced circumstances, was
+well-born, and descended from the noble family of the Capulets.
+
+All this the good lady related to Helena, highly praising the virtuous
+principles of her discreet daughter, which she said were entirely
+owing to the excellent education and good advice she had given her;
+and she farther said, that Bertram had been particularly importunate
+with Diana to admit him to the visit he so much desired that night,
+because he was going to leave Florence early the next morning.
+
+Though it grieved Helena to hear of Bertram's love for the widow's
+daughter, yet from this story the ardent mind of Helena conceived a
+project (nothing discouraged at the ill success of her former one)
+to recover her truant lord. She disclosed to the widow, that she was
+Helena, the deserted wife of Bertram, and requested that her kind
+hostess and her daughter would suffer this visit from Bertram to take
+place, and allow her to pass herself upon Bertram for Diana; telling
+them, her chief motive for desiring to have this secret meeting with
+her husband, was to get a ring from him, which he had said if ever she
+was in possession of, he would acknowledge her as his wife.
+
+The widow and her daughter promised to assist her in this affair,
+partly moved by pity for this unhappy forsaken wife, and partly won
+over to her interest by the promises of reward which Helena made them,
+giving them a purse of money in earnest of her future favour. In the
+course of that day Helena caused information to be sent to Bertram,
+that she was dead, hoping that when he thought himself free to make a
+second choice by the news of her death, he would offer marriage to her
+in her feigned character of Diana. And if she could obtain the ring
+and this promise too, she doubted not she should make some future good
+come of it.
+
+In the evening, after it was dark, Bertram was admitted into Diana's
+chamber, and Helena was there ready to receive him. The flattering
+compliments and love-discourse he addressed to Helena were precious
+sounds to her, though she knew they were meant for Diana; and Bertram
+was so well pleased with her, that he made her a solemn promise to
+be her husband, and to love her for ever; which she hoped would be
+prophetic of a real affection, when he should know it was his own
+wife, the despised Helena, whose conversation had so delighted him.
+
+Bertram never knew how sensible a lady Helena was, else perhaps he
+would not have been so regardless of her; and seeing her every day, he
+had entirely overlooked her beauty, a face we are accustomed to see
+constantly losing the effect which is caused by the first sight either
+of beauty or of plainness; and of her understanding it was impossible
+he should judge, because she felt such reverence, mixed with her love
+for him, that she was always silent in his presence; but now that her
+future fate, and the happy ending of all her love-projects, seemed to
+depend on her leaving a favourable impression on the mind of Bertram
+from this night's interview, she exerted all her wit to please him;
+and the simple graces of her lively conversation and the endearing
+sweetness of her manners so charmed Bertram, that he vowed she should
+be his wife. Helena begged the ring from off his finger as a token of
+his regard, and he gave it to her; and in return for this ring, which
+it was of such importance to her to possess, she gave him another
+ring, which was one the king had made her a present of. Before it was
+light in the morning, she sent Bertram away; and he immediately set
+out on his journey towards his mother's house.
+
+Helena prevailed on the widow and Diana to accompany her to Paris,
+their farther assistance being necessary to the full accomplishment
+of the plan she had formed. When they arrived there, they found the
+king was gone upon a visit to the countess of Rossilion, and Helena
+followed the king with all the speed she could make.
+
+The king was still in perfect health, and his gratitude to her who had
+been the means of his recovery was so lively in his mind, that the
+moment he saw the countess of Rossilion, he began to talk of Helena,
+calling her a precious jewel that was lost by the folly of her son;
+but seeing the subject distressed the countess, who sincerely lamented
+the death of Helena, he said, "My good lady, I have forgiven and
+forgotten all." But the good-natured old Lafeu, who was present, and
+could not bear that the memory of his favourite Helena should be so
+lightly passed over, said, "This I must say, the young lord did great
+offence to his majesty, his mother, and his lady; but to himself he
+did the greatest wrong of all, for he has lost a wife whose beauty
+astonished all eyes, whose words took all ears captive, whose deep
+perfection made all hearts wish to serve her." The king said,
+"Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. Well--call him
+hither;" meaning Bertram, who now presented himself before the king:
+and, on his expressing deep sorrow for the injuries he had done to
+Helena, the king, for his dead father's and his admirable mother's
+sake, pardoned him, and restored him once more to his favour. But the
+gracious countenance of the king was soon changed towards him, for he
+perceived that Bertram wore the very ring upon his finger which he had
+given to Helena; and he well remembered that Helena had called all
+the saints in heaven to witness she would never part with that ring,
+unless she sent it to the king himself upon some great disaster
+befalling her; and Bertram, on the king's questioning him how he came
+by the ring, told an improbable story of a lady throwing it to him out
+of a window, and denied ever having seen Helena since the day of their
+marriage. The king, knowing Bertram's dislike to his wife, feared he
+had destroyed her; and he ordered his guards to seize Bertram, saying,
+"I am wrapt in dismal thinking, for I fear the life of Helena was
+foully snatched." At this moment Diana and her mother entered, and
+presented a petition to the king, wherein they begged his majesty to
+exert his royal power to compel Bertram to marry Diana, he having made
+her a solemn promise of marriage. Bertram, fearing the king's anger,
+denied he had made any such promise, and then Diana produced the ring
+(which Helena had put into her hands) to confirm the truth of her
+words; and she said that she had given Bertram the ring he then wore,
+in exchange for that, at the time he vowed to marry her. On hearing
+this, the king ordered the guards to seize her also; and her account
+of the ring differing from Bertram's, the king's suspicions were
+confirmed; and he said, if they did not confess how they came by this
+ring of Helena's, they should be both put to death. Diana requested
+her mother might be permitted to fetch the jeweller of whom she bought
+the ring, which being granted, the widow went out, and presently
+returned leading in Helena herself.
+
+The good countess, who in silent grief had beheld her son's danger,
+and had even dreaded that the suspicion of his having destroyed his
+wife might possibly be true, finding her dear Helena, whom she loved
+with even a maternal affection, was still living, felt a delight she
+was hardly able to support; and the king, scarce believing for joy
+that it was Helena, said, "Is this indeed the wife of Bertram that I
+see?" Helena, feeling herself yet an unacknowledged wife, replied,
+"No, my good lord, it is but the shadow of a wife you see, the name
+and not the thing." Bertram cried out, "Both, both! O pardon!" "O my
+lord," said Helena, "when I personated this fair maid, I found you
+wondrous kind; and look, here is your letter!" reading to him in a
+joyful tone those words, which she had once repeated so sorrowfully,
+_When from my finger you can get this ring_--"This is done, it was
+to me you gave the ring. Will you be mine, now you are doubly won?"
+Bertram replied, "If you can make it plain that you were the lady I
+talked with that night, I will love you dearly, ever, ever dearly."
+This was no difficult task, for the widow and Diana came with Helena
+purposely to prove this fact; and the king was so well pleased with
+Diana, for the friendly assistance she had rendered the dear lady he
+so truly valued for the service she had done him, that he promised her
+also a noble husband: Helena's history giving him a hint that it was a
+suitable reward for kings to bestow upon fair ladies when they perform
+notable services.
+
+Thus Helena at last found that her father's legacy was indeed
+sanctified by the luckiest stars in heaven; for she was now the
+beloved wife of her dear Bertram, the daughter-in-law of her noble
+mistress, and herself the countess of Rossilion.
+
+
+
+
+THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Katherine, the shrew, was the eldest daughter of Baptista, a rich
+gentleman of Padua. She was a lady of such an ungovernable spirit and
+fiery temper, such a loud-tongued scold, that she was known in Padua
+by no other name than Katherine the Shrew. It seemed very unlikely,
+indeed impossible, that any gentleman would ever be found who would
+venture to marry this lady, and therefore Baptista was much blamed
+for deferring his consent to many excellent offers that were made to
+her gentle sister Bianca, putting off all Bianca's suitors with this
+excuse, that when the eldest sister was fairly off his hands, they
+should have free leave to address young Bianca.
+
+It happened however that a gentleman, named Petruchio, came to Padua,
+purposely to look out for a wife, who, nothing discouraged by these
+reports of Katherine's temper, and hearing she was rich and handsome,
+resolved upon marrying this famous termagant, and taming her into
+a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about
+this herculean labour as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as
+Katherine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humourist, and
+withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well knew how
+to feign a passionate and furious deportment, when his spirits were
+so calm that he himself could have laughed merrily at his own angry
+feigning, for his natural temper was careless and easy; the boisterous
+airs he assumed when he became the husband of Katherine being but
+in sport, or, more properly speaking, affected by his excellent
+discernment, as the only means to overcome in her own way the
+passionate ways of the furious Katherine.
+
+A courting then Petruchio went to Katherine the shrew, and first of
+all he applied to Baptista, her father, for leave to woo his _gentle
+daughter_ Katherine, as Petruchio called her, saying archly, that
+having heard of her bashful modesty and mild behaviour, he had
+come from Verona to solicit her love. Her father, though he wished
+her married, was forced to confess Katherine would ill answer this
+character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she
+was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain
+that the gentle Katherine, his pupil, had broken his head with her
+lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when
+Petruchio heard, he said, "It is a brave wench; I love her more than
+ever, and long to have some chat with her;" and hurrying the old
+gentleman for a positive answer, he said, "My business is in haste,
+signior Baptista, I cannot come every day to woo. You knew my father.
+He is dead, and has left me heir to all his lands and goods. Then tell
+me, if I get your daughter's love, what dowry you will give with her."
+Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being
+glad to get Katherine married, he answered that he would give her
+twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his
+death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and Baptista went to
+apprise his shrewish daughter of her lover's addresses, and sent her
+in to Petruchio to listen to his suit.
+
+In the mean time Petruchio was settling with himself the mode of
+courtship he should pursue: and he said, "I will woo her with some
+spirit when she comes. If she rails at me, why then I will tell her
+she sings as sweetly as a nightingale; and if she frowns, I will say
+she looks as clear as roses newly washed with dew. If she will not
+speak a word, I will praise the eloquence of her language; and if she
+bids me leave her, I will give her thanks as if she bid me stay with
+her a week." Now the stately Katherine entered, and Petruchio first
+addressed her with "Good morrow, Kate, for that is your name, I hear."
+Katherine, not liking this plain salutation, said disdainfully, "They
+call me Katherine who do speak to me." "You lie," replied the lover;
+"for you are called plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate
+the Shrew; but, Kate, you are the prettiest Kate in Christendom, and
+therefore, Kate, hearing your mildness praised in every town, I am
+come to woo you for my wife."
+
+A strange courtship they made of it. She in loud and angry terms
+shewing him how justly she had gained the name of Shrew, while he
+still praised her sweet and courteous words, till at length, hearing
+her father coming, he said, (intending to make as quick a wooing as
+possible) "Sweet Katherine, let us set this idle chat aside, for your
+father has consented that you shall be my wife, your dowry is agreed
+on, and whether you will or no, I will marry you."
+
+And now Baptista entering, Petruchio told him his daughter had
+received him kindly, and that she had promised to be married the next
+Sunday. This Katherine denied, saying she would rather see him hanged
+on Sunday, and reproached her father for wishing to wed her to such
+a mad-cap ruffian as Petruchio. Petruchio desired her father not to
+regard her angry words, for they had agreed she should seem reluctant
+before him, but that when they were alone he had found her very fond
+and loving; and he said, "Give me your hand, Kate; I will go to Venice
+to buy you fine apparel against our wedding-day. Provide the feast,
+father, and bid the wedding guests. I will be sure to bring rings,
+fine array, and rich clothes, that my Katherine may be fine; and kiss
+me, Kate, for we will be married on Sunday."
+
+On the Sunday all the wedding guests were assembled, but they waited
+long before Petruchio came, and Katherine wept for vexation to think
+that Petruchio had only been making a jest of her. At last however he
+appeared, but he brought none of the bridal finery he had promised
+Katherine, nor was he dressed himself like a bridegroom, but in
+strange disordered attire, as if he meant to make a sport of the
+serious business he came about; and his servant and the very horses
+on which they rode were in like manner in mean and fantastic fashion
+habited.
+
+Petruchio could not be persuaded to change his dress; he said
+Katherine was to be married to him, and not to his clothes; and
+finding it was in vain to argue with him, to the church they went,
+he still behaving in the same mad way, for when the priest asked
+Petruchio if Katherine should be his wife, he swore so loud that
+she should, that all amazed the priest let fall his book, and as he
+stooped to take it up, this mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a
+cuff, that down fell the priest and his book again. And all the while
+they were being married he stampt and swore so, that the high-spirited
+Katherine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over,
+while they were yet in the church he called for wine, and drank a loud
+health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of
+the glass full in the sexton's face, giving no other reason for this
+strange act, than that the sexton's beard grew thin and hungerly, and
+seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking. Never sure was there such a
+mad marriage; but Petruchio did but put this wildness on, the better
+to succeed in the plot he had formed to tame his shrewish wife.
+
+Baptista had provided a sumptuous marriage-feast, but when they
+returned from church, Petruchio, taking hold of Katherine, declared
+his intention of carrying his wife home instantly; and no remonstrance
+of his father-in-law, or angry words of the enraged Katherine, could
+make him change his purpose; he claimed a husband's right to dispose
+of his wife as he pleased, and away he hurried Katherine off: he
+seeming so daring and resolute that no one dared attempt to stop him.
+
+Petruchio mounted his wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank,
+which he had picked out for the purpose, and himself and his servant
+no better mounted, they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and
+ever when this horse of Katherine's stumbled, he would storm and swear
+at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as
+if he had been the most passionate man alive.
+
+At length, after a weary journey, during which Katherine had heard
+nothing but the wild ravings of Petruchio at the servant and the
+horses, they arrived at his house. Petruchio welcomed her kindly to
+her home, but he resolved she should have neither rest nor food that
+night. The tables were spread, and supper soon served; but Petruchio,
+pretending to find fault with every dish, threw the meat about the
+floor, and ordered the servants to remove it away, and all this
+he did, as he said, in love for his Katherine, that she might not
+eat meat that was not well dressed. And when Katherine weary and
+supperless retired to rest, he found the same fault with the bed,
+throwing the pillows and bed-clothes about the room, so that she was
+forced to sit down in a chair, where if she chanced to drop asleep,
+she was presently awakened by the loud voice of her husband, storming
+at the servants for the ill-making of his wife's bridal-bed.
+
+The next day Petruchio pursued the same course, still speaking kind
+words to Katherine, but when she attempted to eat, finding fault with
+every thing that was set before her, throwing the breakfast on the
+floor as he had done the supper; and Katherine, the haughty Katherine,
+was fain to beg the servants would bring her secretly a morsel of
+food, but they being instructed by Petruchio replied, they dared not
+give her any thing unknown to their master. "Ah," said she, "did he
+marry me to famish me? Beggars that come to my father's door have
+food given them. But I, who never knew what it was to intreat for any
+thing, am starved for want of food, giddy for want of sleep, with
+oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed, and that which vexes me more
+than all, he does it under the name of perfect love, pretending that
+if I sleep or eat it were present death to me." Here her soliloquy was
+interrupted by the entrance of Petruchio: he, not meaning she should
+be quite starved, had brought her a small portion of meat, and he said
+to her, "How fares my sweet Kate? Here, love, you see how diligent I
+am, I have dressed your meat myself. I am sure this kindness merits
+thanks. What not a word? Nay then you love not the meat, and all the
+pains I have taken is to no purpose." He then ordered the servant to
+take the dish away. Extreme hunger, which had abated the pride of
+Katherine, made her say, though angered to the heart, "I pray you, let
+it stand." But this was not all Petruchio intended to bring her to,
+and he replied, "The poorest service is repaid with thanks, and so
+shall mine before you touch the meat." On this Katherine brought out
+a reluctant "I thank you, sir." And now he suffered her to make a
+slender meal, saying, "Much good may it do your gentle heart, Kate;
+eat apace! And now, my honey love, we will return to your father's
+house, and revel it as bravely as the best, with silken coats and caps
+and golden rings, with ruffs and scarfs and fans and double change of
+finery;" and to make her believe he really intended to give her these
+gay things, he called in a taylor and a haberdasher, who brought some
+new clothes he had ordered for her, and then giving her plate to the
+servant to take away, before she had half satisfied her hunger, he
+said, "What? have you dined?" The haberdasher presented a cap, saying,
+"Here is the cap your worship bespoke;" on which Petruchio began to
+storm afresh, saying, the cap was moulded in a porringer, and that
+it was no bigger than a cockle or a walnut shell, desiring the
+haberdasher to take it away and make a bigger. Katherine said, "I will
+have this; all gentlewomen wear such caps as these." "When you are
+gentle," replied Petruchio, "you shall have one too, and not till
+then." The meat Katherine had eaten had a little revived her fallen
+spirits, and she said, "Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak,
+and speak I will. I am no child, no babe; your betters have endured
+to hear me say my mind; and if you cannot, you had better stop you
+ears." Petruchio would not hear these angry words, for he had happily
+discovered a better way of managing his wife than keeping up a
+jangling argument with her; therefore his answer was, "Why, you say
+true, it is a paltry cap, and I love you for not liking it." "Love me,
+or love me not," said Katherine, "I like the cap, and I will have this
+cap or none." "You say you wish to see the gown," said Petruchio,
+still affecting to misunderstand her. The taylor then came forward,
+and shewed her a fine gown he had made for her. Petruchio, whose
+intent was that she should have neither cap nor gown, found as much
+fault with that. "O mercy, Heaven!" said he, "what stuff is here!
+What, do you call this a sleeve? it is like a demy-cannon, carved up
+and down like an apple-tart." The taylor said, "You bid me make it
+according to the fashion of the times;" and Katherine said she never
+saw a better fashioned gown. This was enough for Petruchio, and
+privately desiring these people might be paid for their goods, and
+excuses made to them for the seemingly strange treatment he bestowed
+upon them, he with fierce words and furious gestures drove the taylor
+and the haberdasher out of the room: and then, turning to Katherine,
+he said, "Well, come, my Kate, we will go to your father's even in
+these mean garments we now wear." And then he ordered his horses,
+affirming they should reach Baptista's house by dinner-time, for that
+it was but seven o'clock. Now it was not early morning, but the very
+middle of the day, when he spoke this; therefore Katherine ventured
+to say, though modestly, being almost overcome by the vehemence of
+his manner, "I dare assure you, sir, it is two o'clock, and will be
+supper-time before we get there." But Petruchio meant that she should
+be so completely subdued, that she should assent to every thing he
+said, before he carried her to her father; and therefore, as if he
+were lord even of the sun, and could command the hours, he said it
+should be what time he pleased to have it, before he set forward;
+"For," said he, "whatever I say or do, you still are crossing it. I
+will not go to-day, and when I go, it shall be what o'clock I say it
+is." Another day Katherine was forced to practise her newly-found
+obedience, and not till he had brought her proud spirit to such a
+perfect subjection, that she dared not remember there was such a word
+as contradiction, would Petruchio allow her to go to her father's
+house; and even while they were upon their journey thither, she was in
+danger of being turned back again, only because she happened to hint
+it was the sun, when he affirmed the moon shone brightly at noonday.
+"Now, by my mother's son," said he, "and that is myself, it shall be
+the moon, or stars, or what I list, before I journey to your father's
+house." He then made as if he were going back again; but Katherine, no
+longer Katherine the Shrew, but the obedient wife, said, "Let us go
+forward, I pray, now we have come so far, and it shall be the sun, or
+moon, or what you please, and if you please to call it a rush candle
+henceforth, I vow it shall be so for me." This he was resolved to
+prove, therefore he said again, "I say, it is the moon." "I know it is
+the moon," replied Katherine. "You lie, it is the blessed sun," said
+Petruchio. "Then it is the blessed sun," replied Katherine; "but sun
+it is not, when you say it is not. What you will have it named even so
+it is, and so it ever shall be for Katherine." Now then he suffered
+her to proceed on her journey; but further to try if this yielding
+humour would last, he addressed an old gentleman they met on the road
+as if he had been a young woman, saying to him, "Good morrow, gentle
+mistress;" and asked Katherine if she had ever beheld a fairer
+gentlewoman, praising the red and white of the old man's cheeks, and
+comparing his eyes to two bright stars; and again he addressed him,
+saying, "Fair lovely maid, once more good day to you!" and said to
+his wife, "Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake." The now
+completely vanquished Katherine quickly adopted her husband's opinion,
+and made her speech in like sort to the old gentleman, saying to him,
+"Young budding virgin, you are fair, and fresh, and sweet: whither are
+you going, and where is your dwelling? Happy are the parents of so
+fair a child." "Why, how now, Kate," said Petruchio; "I hope you are
+not mad. This is a man, old and wrinkled, faded and withered, and not
+a maiden, as you say he is." On this Katherine said, "Pardon me, old
+gentleman; the sun has so dazzled my eyes, that every thing I look on
+seemeth green. Now I perceive you are a reverend father: I hope you
+will pardon me for my sad mistake."--"Do, good old grandsire," said
+Petruchio, "and tell us which way you are travelling. We shall be glad
+of your good company, if you are going our way." The old gentleman
+replied, "Fair sir, and you my merry mistress, your strange encounter
+has much amazed me. My name is Vincentio, and I am going to visit a
+son of mine who lives at Padua." Then Petruchio knew the old gentleman
+to be the father of Lucentio, a young gentleman who was to be married
+to Baptista's younger daughter, Bianca, and he made Vincentio very
+happy by telling him the rich marriage his son was about to make; and
+they all journeyed on pleasantly together till they came to Baptista's
+house, where there was a large company assembled to celebrate the
+wedding of Bianca and Lucentio, Baptista having willingly consented to
+the marriage of Bianca when he had got Katherine off his hands.
+
+When they entered, Baptista welcomed them to the wedding feast, and
+there was present also another newly-married pair.
+
+Lucentio, Bianca's husband, and Hortensio, the other new-married man,
+could not forbear sly jests, which seemed to hint at the shrewish
+disposition of Petruchio's wife, and these fond bridegrooms seemed
+highly pleased with the mild tempers of the ladies they had chosen,
+laughing at Petruchio for his less fortunate choice. Petruchio took
+little notice of their jokes till the ladies were retired after
+dinner, and then he perceived Baptista himself joined in the laugh
+against him; for when Petruchio affirmed that his wife would prove
+more obedient than theirs, the father of Katherine said, "Now, in good
+sadness, son Petruchio, I fear you have got the veriest shrew of all."
+"Well," said Petruchio, "I say no, and therefore for assurance that I
+speak the truth, let us each one send for his wife, and he whose wife
+is most obedient to come at first when she is sent for, shall win a
+wager which we will propose." To this the other two husbands willingly
+consented, for they were quite confident that their gentle wives would
+prove more obedient than the headstrong Katherine; and they proposed
+a wager of twenty crowns, but Petruchio merrily said he would lay as
+much as that upon his hawk or hound, but twenty times as much upon his
+wife. Lucentio and Hortensio raised the wager to an hundred crowns,
+and Lucentio first sent his servant to desire Bianca would come to
+him. But the servant returned, and said, "Sir, my mistress sends you
+word she is busy and cannot come." "How," said Petruchio, "does she
+say she is busy and cannot come? Is that an answer for a wife?" Then
+they laughed at him, and said, it would be well if Katherine did not
+send him a worse answer. And now it was Hortensio's turn to send for
+his wife; and he said to his servant, "Go, and intreat my wife to come
+to me." "Oh ho! intreat her!" said Petruchio. "Nay, then, she needs
+must come." "I am afraid, sir," said Hortensio, "your wife will not be
+intreated." But presently this civil husband looked a little blank,
+when the servant returned without his mistress; and he said to him,
+"How now! Where is my wife?" "Sir," said the servant, "my mistress
+says you have some goodly jest in hand, and therefore she will not
+come. She bids you come to her." "Worse and worse!" said Petruchio;
+and then he sent his servant, saying, "Sirrah, go to your mistress,
+and tell her I command her to come to me." The company had scarcely
+time to think she would not obey this summons, when Baptista, all in
+amaze, exclaimed, "Now, by my hollidam, here comes Katherine!" and she
+entered, saying meekly to Petruchio, "What is your will, sir, that you
+send for me?"--"Where is your sister and Hortensio's wife?" said he.
+Katherine replied, "They sit conferring by the parlour-fire." "Go,
+fetch them hither!" said Petruchio. Away went Katherine without reply
+to perform her husband's command. "Here is a wonder," said Lucentio,
+"if you talk of a wonder." "And so it is," said Hortensio; "I marvel
+what it bodes." "Marry, peace it bodes," said Petruchio, "and love,
+and quiet life, and right supremacy; and to be short, every thing
+that is sweet and happy." Katherine's father, overjoyed to see this
+reformation in his daughter, said, "Now, fair befall thee, son
+Petruchio! you have won the wager, and I will add another twenty
+thousand crowns to her dowry, as if she were another daughter, for
+she is changed as if she had never been." "Nay," said Petruchio, "I
+will win the wager better yet, and shew more signs of her new-built
+virtue and obedience." Katherine now entering with the two ladies,
+he continued, "See where she comes, and brings your froward wives as
+prisoners to her womanly persuasion. Katherine, that cap of yours
+does not become you; off with that bauble, and throw it under foot."
+Katherine instantly took off her cap, and threw it down. "Lord!" said
+Hortensio's wife, "may I never have a cause to sigh till I am brought
+to such a silly pass!" And Bianca, she too said, "Fie, what foolish
+duty call you this!" On this Bianca's husband said to her, "I wish
+your duty were as foolish too! The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,
+has cost me an hundred crowns since dinner-time." "The more fool you,"
+said Bianca, "for laying on my duty." "Katherine," said Petruchio,
+"I charge you tell these headstrong women what duty they owe their
+lords and husbands." And to the wonder of all present, the reformed
+shrewish lady spoke as eloquently in praise of the wife-like duty of
+obedience, as she had practised it implicitly in a ready submission
+to Petruchio's will. And Katherine once more became famous in Padua,
+not as heretofore, as Katherine the Shrew, but as Katherine the most
+obedient and duteous wife in Padua.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+The states of Syracuse and Ephesus being at variance, there was a
+cruel law made at Ephesus, ordaining that if any merchant of Syracuse
+was seen in the city of Ephesus, he was to be put to death, unless he
+could pay a thousand marks for the ransom of his life.
+
+Ægeon, an old merchant of Syracuse, was discovered in the streets of
+Ephesus, and brought before the duke, either to pay this heavy fine,
+or to receive sentence of death.
+
+Ægeon had no money to pay the fine, and the duke, before he pronounced
+the sentence of death upon him, desired him to relate the history of
+his life, and to tell for what cause he had ventured to come to the
+city of Ephesus, which it was death for any Syracusan merchant to
+enter.
+
+Ægeon said, that he did not fear to die, for sorrow had made him weary
+of his life, but that a heavier task could not have been imposed upon
+him than to relate the events of his unfortunate life. He then began
+his own history, in the following words:--
+
+"I was born at Syracuse, and brought up to the profession of a
+merchant. I married a lady with whom I lived very happily, but being
+obliged to go to Epidamnium, I was detained there by my business
+six months, and then, finding I should be obliged to stay some time
+longer, I sent for my wife, who, as soon as she arrived, was brought
+to bed of two sons, and what was very strange, they were both so
+exactly alike, that it was impossible to distinguish the one from
+the other. At the same time that my wife was brought to bed of these
+twin-boys, a poor woman in the inn where my wife lodged was brought to
+bed of two sons, and these twins were as much like each other as my
+two sons were. The parents of these children being exceedingly poor, I
+bought the two boys, and brought them up to attend upon my sons.
+
+"My sons were very fine children, and my wife was not a little proud
+of two such boys: and she daily wishing to return home, I unwillingly
+agreed, and in an evil hour we got on shipboard; for we had not sailed
+above a league from Epidamnium before a dreadful storm arose, which
+continued with such violence, that the sailors, seeing no chance
+of saving the ship, crowded into the boat to save their own lives,
+leaving us alone in the ship, which we every moment expected would be
+destroyed by the fury of the storm.
+
+"The incessant weeping of my wife, and the piteous complaints of the
+pretty babes, who not knowing what to fear, wept for fashion, because
+they saw their mother weep, filled me with terror for them, though
+I did not for myself fear death; and all my thoughts were bent to
+contrive means for their safety. I tied my youngest son to the end
+of a small spare mast, such as seafaring men provide against storms;
+at the other end I bound the youngest of the twin-slaves, and at the
+same time I directed my wife how to fasten the other children in like
+manner to another mast. She thus having the care of the two eldest
+children, and I of the two younger, we bound ourselves separately to
+these masts with the children; and but for this contrivance we had
+all been lost, for the ship split on a mighty rock and was dashed in
+pieces, and we clinging to these slender masts were supported above
+the water, where I, having the care of two children, was unable to
+assist my wife, who with the other children were soon separated from
+me; but while they were yet in my sight, they were taken up by a boat
+of fishermen, from Corinth (as I supposed), and seeing them in safety,
+I had no care but to struggle with the wild sea waves, to preserve my
+dear son and the youngest slave. At length we in our turn were taken
+up by a ship, and the sailors, knowing me, gave us kind welcome and
+assistance, and landed us in safety at Syracuse; but from that sad
+hour I have never known what became of my wife and eldest child.
+
+"My youngest son, and now my only care, when he was eighteen years of
+age, began to be inquisitive after his mother and his brother, and
+often importuned me that he might take his attendant, the young slave,
+who had also lost his brother, and go in search of them: at length
+I unwillingly gave consent, for though I anxiously desired to hear
+tidings of my wife and eldest son, yet in sending my younger one to
+find them I hazarded the loss of him also. It is now seven years since
+my son left me; five years have I past in travelling through the world
+in search of him: I have been in farthest Greece, and through the
+bounds of Asia, and coasting homewards I landed here in Ephesus, being
+unwilling to leave any place unsought that harbours men; but this day
+must end the story of my life, and happy should I think myself in my
+death, if I were assured my wife and sons were living."
+
+Here the hapless Ægeon ended the account of his misfortunes; and the
+duke, pitying this unfortunate father, who had brought upon himself
+this great peril by his love for his lost son, said, if it were not
+against the laws, which his oath and dignity did not permit him to
+alter, he would freely pardon him; yet, instead of dooming him to
+instant death, as the strict letter of the law required, he would give
+him that day, to try if he could beg or borrow the money to pay the
+fine.
+
+This day of grace did seem no great favour to Ægeon, for not knowing
+any man in Ephesus, there seemed to him but little chance that any
+stranger would lend or give him a thousand marks to pay the fine; and
+helpless and hopeless of any relief, he retired from the presence of
+the duke in the custody of a jailor.
+
+Ægeon supposed he knew no person in Ephesus; but at the very time he
+was in danger of losing his life through the careful search he was
+making after his youngest son, that son and his eldest son also were
+both in the city of Ephesus.
+
+Ægeon's sons, besides being exactly alike in face and person, were
+both named alike, being both called Antipholis, and the two twin
+slaves were also both named Dromio. Ægeon's youngest son, Antipholis
+of Syracuse, he whom the old man had come to Ephesus to seek, happened
+to arrive at Ephesus with his slave Dromio that very same day that
+Ægeon did; and he being also a merchant of Syracuse, he would have
+been in the same danger that his father was, but by good fortune
+he met a friend who told him the peril an old merchant of Syracuse
+was in, and advised him to pass for a merchant of Epidamnium; this
+Antipholis agreed to do, and he was sorry to hear one of his own
+countrymen was in this danger, but he little thought this old merchant
+was his own father.
+
+The eldest son of Ægeon (who must be called Antipholis of Ephesus, to
+distinguish him from his brother Antipholis of Syracuse) had lived at
+Ephesus twenty years, and, being a rich man, was well able to have
+paid the money for the ransom of his father's life; but Antipholis
+knew nothing of his father, being so young when he was taken out of
+the sea with his mother by the fishermen, that he only remembered he
+had been so preserved, but he had no recollection of either his father
+or his mother; the fishermen who took up this Antipholis and his
+mother and the young slave Dromio having carried the two children away
+from her (to the great grief of that unhappy lady), intending to sell
+them.
+
+Antipholis and Dromio were sold by them to duke Menaphon, a famous
+warrior, who was uncle to the duke of Ephesus, and he carried the boys
+to Ephesus, when he went to visit the duke his nephew.
+
+The duke of Ephesus taking a liking to young Antipholis, when he grew
+up, made him an officer in his army, in which he distinguished himself
+by his great bravery in the wars, where he saved the life of his
+patron the duke, who rewarded his merit by marrying him to Adriana, a
+rich lady of Ephesus; with whom he was living (his slave Dromio still
+attending him) at the time his father came there.
+
+Antipholis of Syracuse, when he parted with his friend, who advised
+him to say he came from Epidamnium, gave his slave Dromio some money
+to carry to the inn where he intended to dine, and in the mean time he
+said he would walk about and view the city, and observe the manners of
+the people.
+
+Dromio was a pleasant fellow, and when Antipholis was dull and
+melancholy, he used to divert himself with the odd humours and merry
+jests of his slave, so that the freedoms of speech he allowed in
+Dromio were greater than is usual between masters and their servants.
+
+When Antipholis of Syracuse had sent Dromio away, he stood a while
+thinking over his solitary wanderings in search of his mother and his
+brother, of whom in no place where he landed could he hear the least
+tidings; and he said sorrowfully to himself, "I am like a drop of
+water in the ocean, which seeking to find its fellow-drop, loses
+itself in the wide sea. So I unhappily, to find a mother and a
+brother, do lose myself."
+
+While he was thus meditating on his weary travels, which had hitherto
+been so useless, Dromio (as he thought) returned. Antipholis,
+wondering that he came back so soon, asked him where he had left the
+money. Now it was not his own Dromio, but the twin-brother that lived
+with Antipholis of Ephesus, that he spoke to. The two Dromios and the
+two Antipholises were still as much alike as Ægeon had said they were
+in their infancy; therefore no wonder Antipholis thought it was his
+own slave returned, and asked him why he came back so soon. Dromio
+replied, "My mistress sent me to bid you come to dinner. The capon
+burns, and the pig falls from the spit, and the meat will be all
+cold if you do not come home." "These jests are out of season," said
+Antipholis: "where did you leave the money?" Dromio still answering,
+that his mistress had sent him to fetch Antipholis to dinner: "What
+mistress?" said Antipholis. "Why, your worship's wife, sir," replied
+Dromio. Antipholis having no wife, he was very angry with Dromio, and
+said, "Because I familiarly sometimes chat with you, you presume to
+jest with me in this free manner. I am not in a sportive humour now:
+where is the money? we being strangers here, how dare you trust so
+great a charge from your own custody?" Dromio hearing his master, as
+he thought him, talk of their being strangers, supposing Antipholis
+was jesting, replied merrily, "I pray you, sir, jest as you sit
+at dinner: I had no charge but to fetch you home, to dine with my
+mistress and her sister." Now Antipholis lost all patience, and beat
+Dromio, who ran home, and told his mistress that his master had
+refused to come to dinner, and said that he had no wife.
+
+Adriana, the wife of Antipholis of Ephesus, was very angry, when she
+heard that her husband said he had no wife; for she was of a jealous
+temper, and she said her husband meant that he loved another lady
+better than herself; and she began to fret, and say unkind words of
+jealousy and reproach of her husband; and her sister Luciana, who
+lived with her, tried in vain to persuade her out of her groundless
+suspicions.
+
+Antipholis of Syracuse went to the inn, and found Dromio with the
+money in safety there, and seeing his own Dromio, he was going again
+to chide him for his free jests, when Adriana came up to him, and not
+doubting but it was her husband she saw, she began to reproach him for
+looking strange upon her (as well he might, never having seen this
+angry lady before); and then she told him how well he loved her before
+they were married, and that now he loved some other lady instead
+of her. "How comes it now, my husband," said she, "O how comes it
+that I have lost your love?" "Plead you to me, fair dame?" said the
+astonished Antipholis. It was in vain he told her he was not her
+husband, and that he had been in Ephesus but two hours; she insisted
+on his going home with her, and Antipholis at last, being unable to
+get away, went with her to his brother's house, and dined with Adriana
+and her sister, the one calling him husband and the other brother, he,
+all amazed, thinking he must have been married to her in his sleep, or
+that he was sleeping now. And Dromio, who followed them, was no less
+surprised, for the cook-maid, who was his brother's wife, also claimed
+him for her husband.
+
+While Antipholis of Syracuse was dining with his brother's wife, his
+brother, the real husband, returned home to dinner with his slave
+Dromio; but the servants would not open the door, because their
+mistress had ordered them not to admit any company; and when they
+repeatedly knocked, and said they were Antipholis and Dromio, the
+maids laughed at them, and said that Antipholis was at dinner with
+their mistress, and Dromio was in the kitchen; and though they almost
+knocked the door down, they could not gain admittance, and at last
+Antipholis went away very angry, and strangely surprised at hearing a
+gentleman was dining with his wife.
+
+When Antipholis of Syracuse had finished his dinner, he was so
+perplexed at the lady's still persisting in calling him husband, and
+at hearing that Dromio had also been claimed by the cook-maid, that
+he left the house, as soon as he could find any pretence to get away;
+for though he was very much pleased with Luciana, the sister, yet the
+jealous-tempered Adriana he disliked very much, nor was Dromio at all
+better satisfied with his fair wife in the kitchen; therefore both
+master and man were glad to get away from their new wives as fast as
+they could.
+
+The moment Antipholis of Syracuse had left the house, he was met by
+a goldsmith, who mistaking him, as Adriana had done, for Antipholis
+of Ephesus, gave him a gold chain, calling him by his name; and when
+Antipholis would have refused the chain, saying it did not belong to
+him, the goldsmith replied he made it by his own orders; and went
+away, leaving the chain in the hands of Antipholis, who ordered his
+man Dromio to get his things on board a ship, not choosing to stay in
+a place any longer, where he met with such strange adventures that he
+surely thought himself bewitched.
+
+The goldsmith who had given the chain to the wrong Antipholis, was
+arrested immediately after for a sum of money he owed; and Antipholis,
+the married brother, to whom the goldsmith thought he had given the
+chain, happened to come to the place where the officer was arresting
+the goldsmith, who, when he saw Antipholis, asked him to pay for
+the gold chain he had just delivered to him, the price amounting to
+nearly the same sum as that for which he had been arrested. Antipholis
+denying the having received the chain, and the goldsmith persisting
+to declare that he had but a few minutes before given it to him, they
+disputed this matter a long time, both thinking they were right, for
+Antipholis knew the goldsmith never gave him the chain, and, so like
+were the two brothers, the goldsmith was as certain he had delivered
+the chain into his hands, till at last the officer took the goldsmith
+away to prison for the debt he owed, and at the same time the
+goldsmith made the officer arrest Antipholis for the price of the
+chain; so that at the conclusion of their dispute, Antipholis and the
+merchant were both taken away to prison together.
+
+As Antipholis was going to prison, he met Dromio of Syracuse, his
+brother's slave, and mistaking him for his own, he ordered him to go
+to Adriana his wife, and tell her to send the money for which he was
+arrested. Dromio wondering that his master should send him back to the
+strange house where he dined, and from which he had just before been
+in such haste to depart, did not dare to reply, though he came to tell
+his master the ship was ready to sail; for he saw Antipholis was in
+no humour to be jested with. Therefore he went away, grumbling within
+himself that he must return to Adriana's house, "Where," said he,
+"Dowsabel claims me for a husband: but I must go, for servants must
+obey their masters' commands."
+
+Adriana gave him the money, and as Dromio was returning, he met
+Antipholis of Syracuse, who was still in amaze at the surprising
+adventures he met with; for his brother being well known in Ephesus,
+there was hardly a man he met in the streets but saluted him as an
+old acquaintance: some offered him money which they said was owing to
+him, some invited him to come and see them, and some gave him thanks
+for kindnesses they said he had done them, all mistaking him for his
+brother. A taylor shewed him some silks he had bought for him, and
+insisted upon taking measure of him for some clothes.
+
+Antipholis began to think he was among a nation of sorcerers and
+witches, and Dromio did not at all relieve his master from his
+bewildered thoughts, by asking him how he got free from the officer
+who was carrying him to prison, and giving him the purse of gold which
+Adriana had sent to pay the debt with. This talk of Dromio's of the
+arrest and of a prison, and of the money he had brought from Adriana,
+perfectly confounded Antipholis, and he said, "This fellow Dromio is
+certainly distracted, and we wander here in illusions;" and quite
+terrified at his own confused thoughts, he cried out, "Some blessed
+power deliver us from this strange place!"
+
+And now another stranger came up to him, and she was a lady, and she
+too called him Antipholis, and told him he had dined with her that
+day, and asked him for a gold chain which she said he had promised
+to give her. Antipholis now lost all patience, and calling her a
+sorceress, he denied that he had ever promised her a chain, or dined
+with her, or had even seen her face before that moment. The lady
+persisted in affirming he had dined with her, and had promised her
+a chain, which Antipholis still denying, she farther said, that she
+had given him a valuable ring, and if he would not give her the gold
+chain, she insisted upon having her own ring again. On this Antipholis
+became quite frantic, and again calling her sorceress and witch, and
+denying all knowledge of her or her ring, ran away from her, leaving
+her astonished at his words and his wild looks, for nothing to her
+appeared more certain than that he had dined with her, and that she
+had given him a ring, in consequence of his promising to make her
+a present of a gold chain. But this lady had fallen into the same
+mistake the others had done, for she had taken him for his brother;
+the married Antipholis had done all the things she taxed this
+Antipholis with.
+
+When the married Antipholis was denied entrance into his own house
+(those within supposing him to be already there), he had gone away
+very angry, believing it to be one of his wife's jealous freaks, to
+which she was very subject, and remembering that she had often falsely
+accused him of visiting other ladies, he to be revenged on her for
+shutting him out of his own house, determined to go and dine with this
+lady, and she receiving him with great civility, and his wife having
+so highly offended him, Antipholis promised to give her a gold chain,
+which he had intended as a present for his wife; it was the same chain
+which the goldsmith by mistake had given to his brother. The lady
+liked so well the thoughts of having a fine gold chain, that she gave
+the married Antipholis a ring; which when, as she supposed (taking his
+brother for him), he denied, and said he did not know her, and left
+her in such a wild passion, she began to think he was certainly out
+of his senses; and presently she resolved to go and tell Adriana that
+her husband was mad. And while she was telling it to Adriana, he came,
+attended by the jailor (who allowed him to come home to get the money
+to pay the debt), for the purse of money, which Adriana had sent by
+Dromio, and he had delivered to the other Antipholis.
+
+Adriana believed the story the lady told her of her husband's madness
+must be true, when he reproached her for shutting him out of his own
+house; and remembering how he had protested all dinner-time that he
+was not her husband, and had never been in Ephesus till that day,
+she had no doubt that he was mad; she therefore paid the jailor the
+money, and having discharged him, she ordered her servants to bind her
+husband with ropes, and had him conveyed into a dark room, and sent
+for a doctor to come and cure him of his madness: Antipholis all the
+while hotly exclaiming against this false accusation, which the exact
+likeness he bore to his brother had brought upon him. But his rage
+only the more confirmed them in the belief that he was mad; and Dromio
+persisting in the same story, they bound him also, and took him away
+along with his master.
+
+Soon after Adriana had put her husband into confinement, a servant
+came to tell her that Antipholis and Dromio must have broken loose
+from their keepers, for that they were both walking at liberty in
+the next street. On hearing this, Adriana ran out to fetch him home,
+taking some people with her to secure her husband again; and her
+sister went along with her. When they came to the gates of a convent
+in their neighbourhood, there they saw Antipholis and Dromio, as they
+thought, being again deceived by the likeness of the twin-brothers.
+
+Antipholis of Syracuse was still beset with the perplexities this
+likeness had brought upon him. The chain which the goldsmith had given
+him was about his neck, and the goldsmith was reproaching him for
+denying that he had it, and refusing to pay for it, and Antipholis
+was protesting that the goldsmith freely gave him the chain in the
+morning, and that from that hour he had never seen the goldsmith
+again.
+
+And now Adriana came up to him, and claimed him as her lunatic
+husband, who had escaped from his keepers; and the men she brought
+with her were going to lay violent hands on Antipholis and Dromio; but
+they ran into the convent, and Antipholis begged the abbess to give
+him shelter in her house.
+
+And now came out the lady abbess herself to enquire into the cause
+of this disturbance. She was a grave and venerable lady, and wise to
+judge of what she saw, and she would not too hastily give up the man
+who had sought protection in her house; so she strictly questioned the
+wife about the story she told of her husband's madness, and she said,
+"What is the cause of this sudden distemper of your husband's? Has he
+lost his wealth at sea? Or is it the death of some dear friend that
+has disturbed his mind?" Adriana replied, that no such things as these
+had been the cause. "Perhaps," said the abbess, "he has fixed his
+affections on some other lady than you his wife; and that has driven
+him to this state." Adriana said she had long thought the love of some
+other lady was the cause of his frequent absences from home. Now it
+was not his love for another, but the teazing jealousy of his wife's
+temper, that often obliged Antipholis to leave his home; and (the
+abbess suspecting this from the vehemence of Adriana's manner) to
+learn the truth, she said, "You should have reprehended him for this."
+"Why, so I did," replied Adriana. "Aye," said the abbess, "but perhaps
+not enough." Adriana, willing to convince the abbess that she had said
+enough to Antipholis on this subject, replied, "It was the constant
+subject of our conversation: in bed I would not let him sleep for
+speaking of it. At table I would not let him eat for speaking of it.
+When I was alone with him, I talked of nothing else; and in company I
+gave him frequent hints of it. Still all my talk was how vile and bad
+it was in him to love any lady better than me."
+
+The lady abbess, having drawn this full confession from the jealous
+Adriana, now said, "And therefore comes it that your husband is mad.
+The venomous clamour of a jealous woman is a more deadly poison than
+a mad dog's tooth. It seems his sleep was hindered by your railing;
+no wonder that his head is light; and his meat was sauced with your
+upbraidings; unquiet meals make ill digestions, and that has thrown
+him into this fever. You say his sports were disturbed by your
+brawls; being debarred from the enjoyment of society and recreation,
+what could ensue but dull melancholy and comfortless despair? The
+consequence is then, that your jealous fits have made your husband
+mad."
+
+Luciana would have excused her sister, saying, she always reprehended
+her husband mildly; and she said to her sister, "Why do you hear
+these rebukes without answering them?" But the abbess had made her
+so plainly perceive her fault, that she could only answer, "She has
+betrayed me to my own reproof."
+
+Adriana, though ashamed of her own conduct, still insisted on having
+her husband delivered up to her; but the abbess would suffer no person
+to enter her house, nor would she deliver up this unhappy man to the
+care of the jealous wife, determining herself to use gentle means for
+his recovery, and she retired into her house again, and ordered her
+gates to be shut against them.
+
+During the course of this eventful day, in which so many errors had
+happened from the likeness the twin brothers bore to each other, old
+Ægeon's day of grace was passing away, it being now near sunset: and
+at sunset he was doomed to die, if he could not pay the money.
+
+The place of his execution was near this convent, and here he arrived
+just as the abbess retired into the convent; the duke attending in
+person, that if any offered to pay the money, he might be present to
+pardon him.
+
+Adriana stopped this melancholy procession, and cried out to the duke
+for justice, telling him that the abbess had refused to deliver up her
+lunatic husband to her care. While she was speaking, her real husband
+and his servant Dromio, who had got loose, came before the duke to
+demand justice, complaining that his wife had confined him on a
+false charge of lunacy; and telling in what manner he had broken his
+bands, and eluded the vigilance of his keepers. Adriana was strangely
+surprised to see her husband, when she thought he had been within the
+convent.
+
+Ægeon seeing his son, concluded this was the son who had left him to
+go in search of his mother and his brother; and he felt secure that
+this dear son would readily pay the money demanded for his ransom.
+He therefore spoke to Antipholis in words of fatherly affection,
+with joyful hope that he should now be released. But to the utter
+astonishment of Ægeon, his son denied all knowledge of him, as well he
+might, for this Antipholis had never seen his father since they were
+separated in the storm in his infancy; but while the poor old Ægeon
+was in vain endeavouring to make his son acknowledge him, thinking
+surely that either his griefs and the anxieties he had suffered had so
+strangely altered him that his son did not know him, or else that he
+was ashamed to acknowledge his father in his misery; in the midst of
+this perplexity, the lady abbess and the other Antipholis and Dromio
+came out, and the wondering Adriana saw two husbands and two Dromios
+standing before her.
+
+And now these riddling errors, which had so perplexed them all, were
+clearly made out. When the duke saw the two Antipholises and the two
+Dromios both so exactly alike, he at once conjectured aright of these
+seeming mysteries, for he remembered the story Ægeon had told him in
+the morning; and he said, these men must be the two sons of Ægeon and
+their twin slaves.
+
+But now an unlooked-for joy indeed completed the history of Ægeon;
+and the tale he had in the morning told in sorrow, and under sentence
+of death, before the setting sun went down was brought to a happy
+conclusion, for the venerable lady abbess made herself known to be the
+long-lost wife of Ægeon, and the fond mother of the two Antipholises.
+
+When the fishermen took the eldest Antipholis and Dromio away from
+her, she entered a nunnery, and by her wise and virtuous conduct she
+was at length made lady abbess of this convent, and in discharging
+the rites of hospitality to an unhappy stranger she had unknowingly
+protected her own son.
+
+Joyful congratulations and affectionate greetings between these long
+separated parents and their children, made them for a while forget
+that Ægeon was yet under sentence of death; but when they were become
+a little calm, Antipholis of Ephesus offered the duke the ransom-money
+for his father's life; but the duke freely pardoned Ægeon, and would
+not take the money. And the duke went with the abbess and her newly
+found husband and children into the convent, to hear this happy family
+discourse at leisure of the blessed ending of their adverse fortunes.
+And the two Dromios' humble joy must not be forgotten; they had
+their congratulations and greetings too, and each Dromio pleasantly
+complimented his brother on his good looks, being well pleased to see
+his own person (as in a glass) shew so handsome in his brother.
+
+Adriana had so well profited by the good counsel of her mother-in-law,
+that she never after cherished unjust suspicions, or was jealous of
+her husband.
+
+Antipholis of Syracuse married the fair Luciana, the sister of his
+brother's wife; and the good old Ægeon, with his wife and sons, lived
+at Ephesus many years. Nor did the unravelling of these perplexities
+so entirely remove every ground of mistake for the future, but that
+sometimes, to remind them of adventures past, comical blunders would
+happen, and the one Antipholis, and the one Dromio, be mistaken for
+the other, making altogether a pleasant and diverting Comedy of
+Errors.
+
+
+
+
+MEASURE FOR MEASURE
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+In the city of Vienna there once reigned a duke of such a mild and
+gentle temper, that he suffered his subjects to neglect the laws with
+impunity; and there was in particular one law, the existence of which
+was almost forgotten, the duke never having put it in force during
+his whole reign. This was a law dooming any man to the punishment of
+death, who should live with a woman that was not his wife; and this
+law through the lenity of the duke being utterly disregarded, the holy
+institution of marriage became neglected, and complaints were every
+day made to the duke by the parents of the young ladies in Vienna,
+that their daughters had been seduced from their protection, and were
+living as the companions of single men.
+
+The good duke perceived with sorrow this growing evil among his
+subjects; but he thought that a sudden change in himself from the
+indulgence he had hitherto shewn, to the strict severity requisite to
+check this abuse, would make his people (who had hitherto loved him)
+consider him as a tyrant: therefore he determined to absent himself a
+while from his dukedom, and depute another to the full exercise of his
+power, that the law against these dishonourable lovers might be put
+in effect, without giving offence by an unusual severity in his own
+person.
+
+Angelo, a man who bore the reputation of a saint in Vienna for his
+strict and rigid life, was chosen by the duke as a fit person to
+undertake this important charge; and when the duke imparted his design
+to lord Escalus, his chief counsellor, Escalus said, "If any man in
+Vienna be of worth to undergo such ample grace and honour, it is lord
+Angelo." And now the duke departed from Vienna under pretence of
+making a journey into Poland, leaving Angelo to act as the lord deputy
+in his absence; but the duke's absence was only a feigned one, for he
+privately returned to Vienna, habited like a friar, with the intent to
+watch unseen the conduct of the saintly-seeming Angelo.
+
+It happened just about the time that Angelo was invested with his new
+dignity, that a gentleman, whose name was Claudio, had seduced a young
+lady from her parents; and for this offence, by command of the new
+lord deputy, Claudio was taken up and committed to prison, and by
+virtue of the old law which had been so long neglected, Angelo
+sentenced Claudio to be beheaded. Great interest was made for the
+pardon of young Claudio, and the good old lord Escalus himself
+interceded for him. "Alas," said he, "this gentleman whom I would
+save had an honourable father, for whose sake I pray you pardon the
+young man's transgression." But Angelo replied, "We must not make a
+scare-crow of the law, setting it up to frighten birds of prey, till
+custom, finding it harmless, makes it their perch, and not their
+terror. Sir, he must die."
+
+Lucio, the friend of Claudio, visited him in the prison, and Claudio
+said to him, "I pray you, Lucio, do me this kind service. Go to my
+sister Isabel, who this day proposes to enter the convent of Saint
+Clare; acquaint her with the danger of my state; implore her that she
+make friends with the strict deputy; bid her go herself to Angelo. I
+have great hopes in that; for she can discourse with prosperous art,
+and well she can persuade; besides, there is a speechless dialect in
+youthful sorrow, such as moves men."
+
+Isabel, the sister of Claudio, had, as he said, that day entered upon
+her noviciate in the convent, and it was her intent after passing
+through her probation as a novice, to take the veil, and she was
+enquiring of a nun concerning the rules of the convent, when they
+heard the voice of Lucio, who, as he entered that religious house,
+said, "Peace be in this place!" "Who is it that speaks?" said Isabel.
+"It is a man's voice," replied the nun: "Gentle Isabel, go to him, and
+learn his business; you may, I may not. When you have taken the veil,
+you must not speak with men but in the presence of the prioress; then
+if you speak, you must not shew your face, or if you shew your face,
+you must not speak." "And have you nuns no farther privileges?" said
+Isabel. "Are not these large enough?" replied the nun. "Yes, truly,"
+said Isabel: "I speak not as desiring more, but rather wishing a more
+strict restraint upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare."
+Again they heard the voice of Lucio, and the nun said, "He calls
+again. I pray you answer him." Isabel then went out to Lucio, and
+in answer to his salutation, said, "Peace and prosperity! Who is it
+that calls?" Then Lucio, approaching her with reverence, said, "Hail,
+virgin, if such you be, as the roses in your cheeks proclaim you are
+no less! can you bring me to the sight of Isabel, a novice of this
+place, and the fair sister to her unhappy brother Claudio?" "Why her
+unhappy brother?" said Isabel, "let me ask: for I am that Isabel, and
+his sister." "Fair and gentle lady," he replied, "your brother kindly
+greets you by me; he is in prison." "Woe is me! for what?" said
+Isabel. Lucio then told her, Claudio was imprisoned for seducing a
+young maiden. "Ah," said she, "I fear it is my cousin Juliet." Juliet
+and Isabel were not related, but they called each other cousin in
+remembrance of their school-days friendship; and as Isabel knew that
+Juliet loved Claudio, she feared she had been led by her affection for
+him into this transgression. "She it is," replied Lucio. "Why then let
+my brother marry Juliet," said Isabel. Lucio replied, that Claudio
+would gladly marry Juliet, but that the lord deputy had sentenced him
+to die for his offence; "Unless," said he, "you have the grace by your
+fair prayer to soften Angelo, and that is my business between you and
+your poor brother." "Alas," said Isabel, "what poor ability is there
+in me to do him good? I doubt I have no power to move Angelo." "Our
+doubts are traitors," said Lucio, "and make us lose the good we might
+often win, by fearing to attempt it. Go to lord Angelo! When maidens
+sue, and kneel, and weep, men give like gods." "I will see what I can
+do," said Isabel: "I will but stay to give the prioress notice of the
+affair, and then I will go to Angelo. Commend me to my brother: soon
+at night I will send him word of my success."
+
+Isabel hastened to the palace, and threw herself on her knees before
+Angelo, saying, "I am a woeful suitor to your honour, if it will
+please your honour to hear me." "Well, what is your suit?" said
+Angelo. She then made her petition in the most moving terms for her
+brother's life. But Angelo said, "Maiden, there is no remedy: your
+brother is sentenced, and he must die." "O just, but severe law," said
+Isabel: "I had a brother then--Heaven keep your honour!" and she was
+about to depart. But Lucio, who had accompanied her, said, "Give it
+not over so; return to him again, intreat him, kneel down before him,
+hang upon his gown. You are too cold; if you should need a pin, you
+could not with a more tame tongue desire it." Then again Isabel on
+her knees implored for mercy. "He is sentenced," said Angelo: "it is
+too late." "Too late!" said Isabel: "Why, no; I that do speak a word
+may call it back again. Believe this, my lord, no ceremony that to
+great ones belongs, not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, the
+marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, becomes them with one half
+so good a grace as mercy does." "Pray you begone," said Angelo. But
+still Isabel intreated; and she said, "If my brother had been as you,
+and you as he, you might have slipt like him, but he like you would
+not have been so stern. I would to Heaven I had your power, and you
+were Isabel. Should it then be thus? No, I would tell you what it
+were to be a judge, and what a prisoner." "Be content, fair maid!"
+said Angelo: "it is the law, not I, condemns your brother. Were he my
+kinsman, my brother, or my son, it should be thus with him. He must
+die to-morrow." "To-morrow?" said Isabel; "Oh that is sudden: spare
+him, spare him; he is not prepared for death. Even for our kitchens we
+kill the fowl in season; shall we serve Heaven with less respect than
+we minister to our gross selves? Good, good my lord, bethink you, none
+have died for my brother's offence, though many have committed it. So
+you would be the first that gives this sentence, and he the first that
+suffers it. Go to your own bosom, my lord; knock there, and ask your
+heart what it does know that is like my brother's fault; if it confess
+a natural guiltiness, as such as his is, let it not sound a thought
+against my brother's life!" Her last words more moved Angelo than all
+she had before said, for the beauty of Isabel had raised a guilty
+passion in his heart, and he began to form thoughts of dishonourable
+love, such as Claudio's crime had been; and the conflict in his mind
+made him to turn away from Isabel: but she called him back, saying,
+"Gentle my lord, turn back; hark, how I will bribe you. Good my lord,
+turn back!" "How, bribe me!" said Angelo, astonished that she should
+think of offering him a bribe. "Aye," said Isabel, "with such gifts
+that Heaven itself shall share with you; not with golden treasures, or
+those glittering stones, whose price is either rich or poor as fancy
+values them, but with true prayers that shall be up to Heaven before
+sunrise--prayers from preserved souls, from fasting maids whose minds
+are dedicated to nothing temporal." "Well, come to me to-morrow," said
+Angelo. And for this short respite of her brother's life, and for this
+permission that she might be heard again, she left him with the joyful
+hope that she should at last prevail over his stern nature: and as she
+went away, she said, "Heaven keep your honour safe! Heaven save your
+honour!" Which when Angelo heard, he said within his heart, "Amen, I
+would be saved from thee and from thy virtues:" and then, affrighted
+at his own evil thoughts, he said, "What is this! What is this? Do I
+love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her
+eyes? What is it I dream on? The cunning enemy of mankind, to catch a
+saint, with saints does bait the hook. Never could an immodest woman
+once stir my temper, but this virtuous woman subdues me quite. Even
+till now, when men were fond, I smiled, and wondered at them."
+
+In the guilty conflict in his mind Angelo suffered more that night,
+than the prisoner he had so severely sentenced; for in the prison
+Claudio was visited by the good duke, who in his friar's habit
+taught the young man the way to Heaven, preaching to him the words
+of penitence and peace. But Angelo felt all the pangs of irresolute
+guilt: now wishing to seduce Isabel from the paths of innocence and
+honour, and now suffering remorse and horror for a crime as yet but
+intentional. But in the end his evil thoughts prevailed; and he who
+had so lately started at the offer of a bribe resolved to tempt this
+maiden with so high a bribe, as she might not be able to resist, even
+with the precious gift of her dear brother's life.
+
+When Isabel came in the morning, Angelo desired she might be admitted
+alone to his presence; and being there, he said to her, if she would
+yield to him her virgin honour, and transgress even as Juliet had done
+with Claudio, he would give her her brother's life: "for," said he,
+"I love you, Isabel." "My brother," said Isabel, "did so love Juliet,
+and yet you tell me he shall die for it." "But," said Angelo, "Claudio
+shall not die, if you will consent to visit me by stealth at night,
+even as Juliet left her father's house at night to come to Claudio."
+Isabel in amazement at his words, that he should tempt her to the same
+fault for which he passed sentence of death upon her brother, said,
+"I would do as much for my poor brother as for myself; that is, were
+I under sentence of death, the impression of keen whips I would wear
+as rubies, and go to my death as to a bed that longing I had been sick
+for, ere I would yield myself up to this shame." And then she told
+him, she hoped he only spoke these words to try her virtue. But he
+said, "Believe me on my honour, my words express my purpose." Isabel,
+angered to the heart to hear him use the word Honour to express such
+dishonourable purposes, said, "Ha! little honour, to be much believed;
+and most pernicious purpose. I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for
+it! Sign me a present pardon for my brother, or I will tell the world
+aloud what man thou art!" "Who will believe you, Isabel?" said Angelo:
+"my unsoiled name, the austereness of my life, my word vouched against
+yours, will outweigh your accusation. Redeem your brother by yielding
+to my will, or he shall die to-morrow. As for you, say what you can,
+my false will overweigh your true story. Answer me to-morrow."
+
+"To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, who would believe me?"
+said Isabel, as she went towards the dreary prison where her brother
+was confined. When she arrived there, her brother was in pious
+conversation with the duke, who in his friar's habit had also visited
+Juliet, and brought both these guilty lovers to a proper sense
+of their fault; and unhappy Juliet with tears and a true remorse
+confessed, that she was more to blame than Claudio, in that she
+willingly consented to his dishonourable solicitations.
+
+As Isabel entered the room where Claudio was confined, she said,
+"Peace be here, Grace, and good company!" "Who is there?" said the
+disguised duke: "come in; the wish deserves a welcome." "My business
+is a word or two with Claudio," said Isabel. Then the duke left
+them together, and desired the provost, who had the charge of the
+prisoners, to place him where he might overhear their conversation.
+
+"Now, sister, what is the comfort?" said Claudio. Isabel told him
+he must prepare for death on the morrow. "Is there no remedy?" said
+Claudio. "Yes, brother," replied Isabel, "there is; but such a one,
+as if you consented to it would strip your honour from you, and leave
+you naked." "Let me know the point," said Claudio. "O, I do fear you,
+Claudio!" replied his sister; "and I quake, lest you should wish to
+live, and more respect the trifling term of six or seven winters added
+to your life, than your perpetual honour! Do you dare to die? The
+sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle that we
+tread upon, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies." "Why do you
+give me this shame?" said Claudio. "Think you I can fetch a resolution
+from flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a
+bride, and hug it in my arms." "There spoke my brother," said Isabel;
+"there my father's grave did utter forth a voice. Yes, you must die;
+yet, would you think it, Claudio! this outward-sainted deputy, if I
+would yield to him my virgin honour, would grant your life. O, were
+it but my life, I would lay it down for your deliverance as frankly
+as a pin!" "Thanks, dear Isabel!" said Claudio. "Be ready to die
+to-morrow," said Isabel. "Death is a fearful thing," said Claudio.
+"And shamed life a hateful," replied his sister. But the thoughts of
+death now overcame the constancy of Claudio's temper, and terrors,
+such as the guilty only at their deaths do know, assailing him, he
+cried out, "Sweet sister, let me live! The sin you do to save a
+brother's life, nature dispenses with the deed so far, that it becomes
+a virtue." "O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!" said Isabel:
+"would you preserve your life by your sister's shame? O fie, fie, fie!
+I thought, my brother, you had in you such a mind of honour, that had
+you twenty heads to render up on twenty blocks, you would have yielded
+them up all, before your sister should stoop to such dishonour." "Nay,
+hear me, Isabel!" said Claudio. But what he would have said in defence
+of his weakness, in desiring to live by the dishonour of his virtuous
+sister, was interrupted by the entrance of the duke; who said,
+"Claudio, I have overheard what has past between you and your sister.
+Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; what he said, has only
+been to make trial of her virtue. She having the truth of honour in
+her, has given him that gracious denial which he is most glad to
+receive. There is no hope that he will pardon you; therefore pass your
+hours in prayer, and make ready for death." Then Claudio repented of
+his weakness, and said, "Let me ask my sister's pardon! I am so out of
+love with life, that I will sue to be rid of it." And Claudio retired,
+overwhelmed with shame and sorrow for his fault.
+
+The duke being now alone with Isabel, commended her virtuous
+resolution, saying, "The hand that made you fair, has made you good."
+"O," said Isabel, "how much is the good duke deceived in Angelo!
+if ever he return, and I can speak to him, I will discover his
+government." Isabel knew not that she was even now making the
+discovery she threatened. The duke replied, "That shall not be
+much amiss; yet as the matter now stands, Angelo will repel your
+accusation; therefore lend an attentive ear to my advisings. I believe
+that you may most righteously do a poor wronged lady a merited
+benefit, redeem your brother from the angry law, do no stain to
+your own most gracious person, and much please the absent duke, if
+peradventure he shall ever return to have notice of this business."
+Isabel said, She had a spirit to do anything he desired, provided it
+was nothing wrong. "Virtue is bold, and never fearful," said the duke:
+and then he asked her, if she had ever heard of Mariana, the sister
+of Frederick, the great soldier who was drowned at sea. "I have heard
+of the lady," said Isabel, "and good words went with her name." "This
+lady," said the duke, "is the wife of Angelo; but her marriage dowry
+was on board the vessel in which her brother perished, and mark how
+heavily this befell to the poor gentlewoman! for, beside the loss of
+a most noble and renowned brother, who in his love towards her was
+ever most kind and natural, in the wreck of her fortune she lost the
+affections of her husband, the well-seeming Angelo; who pretending to
+discover some dishonour in this honourable lady (though the true cause
+was the loss of her dowry) left her in her tears, and dried not one
+of them with his comfort. His unjust unkindness, that in all reason
+should have quenched her love, has, like an impediment in the current,
+made it more unruly, and Mariana loves her cruel husband with the
+full continuance of her first affection." The duke then more plainly
+unfolded his plan. It was, that Isabel should go to lord Angelo, and
+seemingly consent to come to him as he desired, at midnight; that by
+this means she would obtain the promised pardon; and that Mariana
+should go in her stead to the appointment, and pass herself upon
+Angelo in the dark for Isabel. "Nor, gentle daughter," said the
+feigned friar, "fear you to do this thing; Angelo is her husband,
+and to bring them thus together is no sin." Isabel being pleased
+with this project, departed to do as he directed her; and he went to
+apprize Mariana of their intention. He had before this time visited
+this unhappy lady in his assumed character, giving her religious
+instruction and friendly consolation, at which times he had learned
+her sad story from her own lips; and now she, looking upon him as a
+holy man, readily consented to be directed by him in this undertaking.
+
+When Isabel returned from her interview with Angelo, to the house of
+Mariana, where the duke had appointed her to meet him, he said, "Well
+met, and in good time; what is the news from this good deputy?" Isabel
+related the manner in which she had settled the affair. "Angelo," said
+she, "has a garden surrounded with a brick wall, on the western side
+of which is a vineyard, and to that vineyard is a gate." And then she
+shewed to the duke and Mariana two keys that Angelo had given her;
+and she said, "This bigger key opens the vineyard gate; this other a
+little door which leads from the vineyard to the garden. There I have
+made my promise at the dead of the night to call upon him, and have
+got from him his word of assurance for my brother's life. I have taken
+a due and wary note of the place; and with whispering and most guilty
+diligence he shewed me the way twice over." "Are there no other tokens
+agreed upon between you, that Mariana must observe?" said the duke.
+"No, none," said Isabel, "only to go when it is dark. I have told him
+my time can be but short; for I have made him think a servant comes
+along with me, and that this servant is persuaded I come about my
+brother." The duke commended her discreet management, and she turning
+to Mariana, said, "Little have you to say to Angelo, when you depart
+from him, but soft and low _Remember now my brother!_"
+
+Mariana was that night conducted to the appointed place by Isabel, who
+rejoiced that she had, as she supposed, by this device preserved both
+her brother's life and her own honour. But that her brother's life was
+safe the duke was not so well satisfied, and therefore at midnight he
+again repaired to the prison, and it was well for Claudio that he did
+so, else would Claudio have that night been beheaded; for soon after
+the duke entered the prison, an order came from the cruel deputy
+commanding that Claudio should be beheaded, and his head sent to him
+by five o'clock in the morning. But the duke persuaded the provost to
+put off the execution of Claudio, and to deceive Angelo by sending him
+the head of a man who died that morning in the prison. And to prevail
+upon the provost to agree to this, the duke, whom still the provost
+suspected not to be any thing more or greater than he seemed, shewed
+the provost a letter written with the duke's hand, and sealed with his
+seal, which when the provost saw, he concluded this friar must have
+some secret order from the absent duke, and therefore he consented to
+spare Claudio; and he cut off the dead man's head, and carried it to
+Angelo.
+
+Then the duke, in his own name, wrote to Angelo a letter, saying that
+certain accidents had put a stop to his journey, and that he should be
+in Vienna by the following morning, requiring Angelo to meet him at
+the entrance of the city, there to deliver up his authority; and the
+duke also commanded it to be proclaimed, that if any of his subjects
+craved redress for injustice, they should exhibit their petitions in
+the street on his first entrance into the city.
+
+Early in the morning Isabel came to the prison, and the duke, who
+there awaited her coming, for secret reasons thought it good to tell
+her that Claudio was beheaded; therefore when Isabel enquired if
+Angelo had sent the pardon for her brother, he said, "Angelo has
+released Claudio from this world. His head is off, and sent to the
+deputy." The much-grieved sister cried out, "O unhappy Claudio,
+wretched Isabel, injurious world, most wicked Angelo!" The seeming
+friar bid her take comfort, and when she was become a little calm, he
+acquainted her with the near prospect of the duke's return, and told
+her in what manner she should proceed in preferring her complaint
+against Angelo; and he bade her not to fear if the cause should seem
+to go against her for a while. Leaving Isabel sufficiently instructed,
+he next went to Mariana, and gave her counsel in what manner she also
+should act.
+
+Then the duke laid aside his friar's habit, and in his own royal
+robes, amidst a joyful crowd of his faithful subjects assembled to
+greet his arrival, entered the city of Vienna, where he was met by
+Angelo, who delivered up his authority in the proper form. And there
+came Isabel, in the manner of a petitioner for redress, and said,
+"Justice, most royal duke! I am the sister of one Claudio, who for the
+seducing a young maid was condemned to lose his head. I made my suit
+to lord Angelo for my brother's pardon. It were needless to tell your
+grace how I prayed and kneeled, how he repelled me, and how I replied;
+for this was of much length. The vile conclusion I now begin with
+grief and shame to utter. Angelo would not but by my yielding to his
+dishonourable love release my brother; and after much debate within
+myself, my sisterly remorse overcame my virtue, and I did yield to
+him. But the next morning betimes Angelo, forfeiting his promise, sent
+a warrant for my poor brother's head!" The duke affected to disbelieve
+her story; and Angelo said that grief for her brother's death, who had
+suffered by the due course of the law, had disordered her senses. And
+now another suitor approached, which was Mariana; and Mariana said,
+"Noble prince, as there comes light from heaven, and truth from
+breath, as there is sense in truth, and truth in virtue, I am this
+man's wife, and, my good lord, the words of Isabel are false, for the
+night she says she was with Angelo, I passed that night with him in
+the garden-house. As this is true, let me in safety rise, or else for
+ever be fixed here a marble monument." Then did Isabel appeal for the
+truth of what she had said to friar Lodowick, that being the name the
+duke had assumed in his disguise. Isabel and Mariana had both obeyed
+his instructions in what they said, the duke intending that the
+innocence of Isabel should be plainly proved in that public manner
+before the whole city of Vienna; but Angelo little thought that it was
+from such a cause that they thus differed in their story, and he hoped
+from their contradictory evidence to be able to clear himself from
+the accusation of Isabel; and he said, assuming a look of offended
+innocence, "I did but smile till now; but, good my lord, my patience
+here is touched, and I perceive these poor distracted women are but
+the instruments of some greater one, who sets them on. Let me have
+way, my lord, to find this practice out." "Aye, with all my heart,"
+said the duke, "and punish them to the height of your pleasure. You,
+lord Escalus, sit with lord Angelo, lend him your pains to discover
+this abuse; the friar is sent for that set them on, and when he comes,
+do with your injuries as may seem best in any chastisement. I for a
+while will leave you, but stir not you, lord Angelo, till you have
+well determined upon this slander." The duke then went away, leaving
+Angelo well pleased to be deputed judge and umpire in his own cause.
+But the duke was absent only while he threw off his royal robes and
+put on his friar's habit; and in that disguise again he presented
+himself before Angelo and Escalus: and the good old Escalus, who
+thought Angelo had been falsely accused, said to the supposed friar,
+"Come, sir, did you set these women on to slander lord Angelo?" He
+replied, "Where is the duke? It is he should hear me speak." Escalus
+said, "The duke is in us, and we will hear you. Speak justly." "Boldly
+at least," retorted the friar; and then he blamed the duke for leaving
+the cause of Isabel in the hands of him she had accused, and spoke so
+freely of many corrupt practices he had observed, while, as he said,
+he had been a looker-on in Vienna, that Escalus threatened him with
+the torture for speaking words against the state, and for censuring
+the conduct of the duke, and ordered him to be taken away to prison.
+Then, to the amazement of all present, and to the utter confusion of
+Angelo, the supposed friar threw off his disguise, and they saw it was
+the duke himself.
+
+The duke first addressed Isabel. He said to her, "Come hither, Isabel.
+Your friar is now your prince, but with my habit I have not changed my
+heart. I am still devoted to your service." "O give me pardon," said
+Isabel, "that I, your vassal, have employed and troubled your unknown
+sovereignty." He answered that he had most need of forgiveness from
+her, for not having prevented the death of her brother--for not yet
+would he tell her that Claudio was living; meaning first to make
+a farther trial of her goodness. Angelo now knew the duke had
+been a secret witness of his bad deeds, and he said, "O my dread
+lord, I should be guiltier than my guiltiness, to think I can be
+undiscernible, when I perceive your grace, like power divine, has
+looked upon my actions. Then, good prince, no longer prolong my shame,
+but let my trial be my own confession. Immediate sentence and death
+is all the grace I beg." The duke replied, "Angelo, thy faults are
+manifest. We do condemn thee to the very block where Claudio stooped
+to death; and with like haste away with him; and for his possessions,
+Mariana, we do enstate and widow you withal, to buy you a better
+husband." "O my dear lord," said Mariana, "I crave no other, nor no
+better man;" and then on her knees, even as Isabel had begged the
+life of Claudio, did this kind wife of an ungrateful husband beg the
+life of Angelo; and she said, "Gentle my liege, O good my lord! Sweet
+Isabel, take my part! Lend me your knees, and all my life to come
+I will lend you, all my life, to do you service!" The duke said,
+"Against all sense you importune her. Should Isabel kneel down to beg
+for mercy, her brother's ghost would break his paved bed, and take her
+hence in horror." Still Mariana said, "Isabel, sweet Isabel, do but
+kneel by me, hold up your hand, say nothing! I will speak all. They
+say, best men are moulded out of faults, and for the most part become
+much the better for being a little bad. So may my husband. Oh, Isabel,
+will you not lend a knee?" The duke then said, "He dies for Claudio."
+But much pleased was the good duke, when his own Isabel, from whom he
+expected all gracious and honourable acts, kneeled down before him,
+and said, "Most bounteous sir, look, if it please you, on this man
+condemned, as if my brother lived. I partly think a due sincerity
+governed his deeds, till he did look on me. Since it is so, let him
+not die! My brother had but justice, in that he did the thing for
+which he died."
+
+The duke, as the best reply he could make to this noble petitioner for
+her enemy's life, sending for Claudio from his prison-house, where he
+lay doubtful of his destiny, presented to her this lamented brother
+living; and he said to Isabel, "Give me your hand, Isabel; for your
+lovely sake I pardon Claudio. Say you will be mine, and he shall be my
+brother too." By this time lord Angelo perceived he was safe; and the
+duke observing his eye to brighten up a little, said, "Well, Angelo,
+look that you love your wife; her worth has obtained your pardon: joy
+to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo! I have confessed her, and know her
+virtue." Angelo remembered, when drest in a little brief authority,
+how hard his heart had been, and felt how sweet is mercy.
+
+The duke commanded Claudio to marry Juliet, and offered himself again
+to the acceptance of Isabel, whose virtuous and noble conduct had won
+her prince's heart. Isabel, not having taken the veil, was free to
+marry; and the friendly offices, while hid under the disguise of a
+humble friar, which the noble duke had done for her, made her with
+grateful joy accept the honour he offered her; and when she became
+duchess of Vienna, the excellent example of the virtuous Isabel worked
+such a complete reformation among the young ladies of that city, that
+from that time none ever fell into the transgression of Juliet, the
+repentant wife of the reformed Claudio. And the mercy-loving duke
+long reigned with his beloved Isabel, the happiest of husbands and of
+princes.
+
+
+
+
+TWELFTH NIGHT; OR, WHAT YOU WILL
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Sebastian and his sister Viola, a young gentleman and lady of
+Messaline, were twins, and (which was accounted a great wonder) from
+their birth they so much resembled each other, that, but for the
+difference in their dress, they could not be known apart. They were
+both born in one hour, and in one hour they were both in danger of
+perishing, for they were shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria as they
+were making a sea-voyage together. The ship, on board of which they
+were, split on a rock in a violent storm, and a very small number
+of the ship's company escaped with their lives. The captain of the
+vessel, with a few of the sailors that were saved, got to land in a
+small boat, and with them they brought Viola safe on shore, where
+she, poor lady, instead of rejoicing at her own deliverance, began
+to lament her brother's loss; but the captain comforted her with the
+assurance, that he had seen her brother, when the ship split, fasten
+himself to a strong mast, on which, as long as he could see any thing
+of him for the distance, he perceived him borne up above the waves.
+Viola was much consoled by the hope this account gave her, and now
+considered how she was to dispose of herself in a strange country,
+so far from home; and she asked the captain if he knew any thing of
+Illyria. "Aye, very well, madam," replied the captain, "for I was born
+not three hours' travel from this place." "Who governs here?" said
+Viola. The captain told her, Illyria was governed by Orsino, a duke
+noble in nature as well as dignity. Viola said, she had heard her
+father speak of Orsino, and that he was unmarried then. "And he is so
+now," said the captain; "or was so very lately, for but a month ago
+I went from here, and then it was the general talk (as you know what
+great ones do the people will prattle of) that Orsino sought the love
+of fair Olivia, a virtuous maid, the daughter of a count who died
+twelve months ago, leaving Olivia to the protection of her brother,
+who shortly after died also; and for the love of this dear brother,
+they say, she has abjured the sight and company of men." Viola, who
+was herself in such a sad affliction for her brother's loss, wished
+she could live with this lady, who so tenderly mourned a brother's
+death. She asked the captain if he could introduce her to Olivia,
+saying she would willingly serve this lady. But he replied, this would
+be a hard thing to accomplish, because the lady Olivia would admit no
+person into her house since her brother's death, not even the duke
+himself. Then Viola formed another project in her mind, which was, in
+a man's habit to serve the duke Orsino as a page. It was a strange
+fancy in a young lady to put on male attire, and pass for a boy;
+but the forlorn and unprotected state of Viola, who was young and of
+uncommon beauty, alone, and in a foreign land, must plead her excuse.
+
+She having observed a fair behaviour in the captain, and that he
+shewed a friendly concern for her welfare, intrusted him with her
+design, and he readily engaged to assist her. Viola gave him money,
+and directed him to furnish her with suitable apparel, ordering her
+clothes to be made of the same colour and in the same fashion her
+brother Sebastian used to wear, and when she was dressed in her manly
+garb, she looked so exactly like her brother, that some strange errors
+happened by means of their being mistaken for each other; for, as will
+afterwards appear, Sebastian was also saved.
+
+Viola's good friend, the captain, when he had transformed this
+pretty lady into a gentleman, having some interest at court, got her
+presented to Orsino under the feigned name of Cesario. The duke was
+wonderfully pleased with the address and graceful deportment of this
+handsome youth, and made Cesario one of his pages, that being the
+office Viola wished to obtain: and she so well fulfilled the duties
+of her new station, and shewed such a ready observance and faithful
+attachment to her lord, that she soon became his most favoured
+attendant. To Cesario Orsino confided the whole history of his love
+for the lady Olivia. To Cesario he told the long and unsuccessful suit
+he had made to one, who, rejecting his long services, and despising
+his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love
+of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino,
+forsaking the sports of the field, and all manly exercises in which
+he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to
+the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate
+love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords
+with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing
+with young Cesario. Unmeet companion no doubt his grave courtiers
+thought Cesario was for their once noble master, the great duke
+Orsino.
+
+It is a dangerous matter for young maidens to be the confidants of
+handsome young dukes; which Viola too soon found to her sorrow,
+for all that Orsino told her he endured for Olivia, she presently
+perceived she suffered for the love of him: and much it moved her
+wonder, that Olivia could be so regardless of this her peerless lord
+and master, whom she thought no one should behold without the deepest
+admiration, and she ventured gently to hint to Orsino that it was pity
+he should affect a lady who was so blind to his worthy qualities; and
+she said, "If a lady were to love you, my lord, as you love Olivia
+(and perhaps there may be one who does), if you could not love her in
+return, would you not tell her that you could not love, and must not
+she be content with this answer?" But Orsino would not admit of this
+reasoning, for he denied that it was possible for any woman to love as
+he did. He said, no woman's heart was big enough to hold so much love,
+and therefore it was unfair to compare the love of any lady for him,
+to his love for Olivia. Now though Viola had the utmost deference for
+the duke's opinions, she could not help thinking this was not quite
+true, for she thought her heart had full as much love in it as
+Orsino's had; and she said, "Ah, but I know, my lord."--"What do you
+know, Cesario?" said Orsino. "Too well I know," replied Viola, "what
+love women may owe to men. They are as true of heart as we are. My
+father had a daughter loved a man, as I perhaps, were I a woman,
+should love your lordship." "And what is her history?" said Orsino.
+"A blank, my lord," replied Viola: "she never told her love, but let
+concealment, like a worm in the bud, prey on her damask cheek. She
+pined in thought, and with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat
+like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief." The duke enquired if
+this lady died of her love, but to this question Viola returned an
+evasive answer; as probably she had feigned the story, to speak words
+expressive of the secret love and silent grief she suffered for
+Orsino.
+
+While they were talking, a gentleman entered whom the duke had sent to
+Olivia, and he said, "So please you, my lord, I might not be admitted
+to the lady, but by her handmaid she returned you this answer: Until
+seven years hence, the element itself shall not behold her face; but
+like a cloistress she will walk veiled, watering her chamber with her
+tears for the sad remembrance of her dead brother." On hearing this,
+the duke exclaimed, "O she that has a heart of this fine frame, to pay
+this debt of love to a dead brother, how will she love, when the rich
+golden shaft has touched her heart!" And then he said to Viola, "You
+know, Cesario, I have told you all the secrets of my heart; therefore,
+good youth, go to Olivia's house. Be not denied access; stand at her
+doors, and tell her, there your fixed foot shall grow till you have
+audience." "And if I do speak to her, my lord, what then?" said Viola.
+"O then," replied Orsino, "unfold to her the passion of my love. Make
+a long discourse to her of my dear faith. It will well become you to
+act my woes, for she will attend more to you than to one of graver
+aspect."
+
+Away then went Viola; but not willingly did she undertake this
+courtship, for she was to woo a lady to become a wife to him she
+wished to marry: but having undertaken the affair, she performed it
+with fidelity; and Olivia soon heard that a youth was at her door who
+insisted upon being admitted to her presence. "I told him," said the
+servant, "that you were sick: he said he knew you were, and therefore
+he came to speak with you. I told him that you were asleep; he seemed
+to have a foreknowledge of that too, and said, that therefore he
+must speak with you. What is to be said to him, lady? for he seems
+fortified against all denial, and will speak with you, whether you
+will or no." Olivia, curious to see who this peremptory messenger
+might be, desired he might be admitted; and throwing her veil over her
+face, she said she would once more hear Orsino's embassy, not doubting
+but that he came from the duke, by his importunity. Viola entering,
+put on the most manly air she could assume, and affecting the fine
+courtier's language of great men's pages, she said to the veiled lady,
+"Most radiant, exquisite, and matchless beauty, I pray you tell me if
+you are the lady of the house; for I should be sorry to cast away my
+speech upon another; for besides that it is excellently well penned,
+I have taken great pains to learn it." "Whence come you, sir?" said
+Olivia. "I can say little more than I have studied," replied Viola;
+"and that question is out of my part." "Are you a comedian?" said
+Olivia. "No," replied Viola; "and yet I am not that which I play;"
+meaning, that she being a woman, feigned herself to be a man. And
+again she asked Olivia if she were the lady of the house. Olivia said
+she was; and then Viola, having more curiosity to see her rival's
+features than haste to deliver her master's message, said, "Good
+madam, let me see your face." With this bold request Olivia was not
+averse to comply; for this haughty beauty, whom the Duke Orsino had
+loved so long in vain, at first sight conceived a passion for the
+supposed page, the humble Cesario.
+
+When Viola asked to see her face, Olivia said, "Have you any
+commission from your lord and master to negotiate with my face?" And
+then, forgetting her determination to go veiled for seven long years,
+she drew aside her veil, saying, "But I will draw the curtain and shew
+the picture. Is it not well done?" Viola replied, "It is beauty truly
+mixed; the red and white upon your cheeks is by Nature's own cunning
+hand laid on. You are the most cruel lady living, if you will lead
+these graces to the grave, and leave the world no copy." "O sir,"
+replied Olivia, "I will not be so cruel. The world may have an
+inventory of my beauty. As, _item_, two lips, indifferent red; _item_,
+two grey eyes, with lids to them; one neck; one chin, and so forth.
+Were you sent here to praise me?" Viola replied, "I see you what you
+are: you are too proud, but you are fair. My lord and master loves
+you. O such a love could but be recompensed, though you were crowned
+the queen of beauty: for Orsino loves you with adoration and with
+tears, with groans that thunder love, and sighs of fire." "Your lord,"
+said Olivia, "knows well my mind. I cannot love him; yet I doubt not
+he is virtuous; I know him to be noble and of high estate, of fresh
+and spotless youth. All voices proclaim him learned, courteous, and
+valiant; yet I cannot love him, he might have taken his answer long
+ago." "If I did love you as my master does," said Viola, "I would make
+me a willow cabin at your gates, and call upon your name. I would
+write complaining sonnets on Olivia, and sing them in the dead of the
+night; your name should sound among the hills, and I would make Echo,
+the babbling gossip of the air, cry out _Olivia_. O you should not
+rest between the elements of earth and air, but you should pity me."
+"You might do much," said Olivia: "what is your parentage?" Viola
+replied, "Above my fortunes, yet my state is well. I am a gentleman."
+Olivia now reluctantly dismissed Viola, saying, "Go to your master,
+and tell him, I cannot love him. Let him send no more, unless
+perchance you come again to tell me how he takes it." And Viola
+departed, bidding the lady farewel by the name of Fair Cruelty. When
+she was gone, Olivia repeated the words, _Above my fortunes, yet my
+state is well. I am a gentleman_. And she said aloud, "I will be sworn
+he is; his tongue, his face, his limbs, action, and spirit, plainly
+shew he is a gentleman." And then she wished Cesario was the duke; and
+perceiving the fast hold he had taken on her affections, she blamed
+herself for her sudden love: but the gentle blame which people lay
+upon their own faults has no deep root: and presently the noble lady
+Olivia so far forgot the inequality between her fortunes and those of
+this seeming page, as well as the maidenly reserve which is the chief
+ornament of a lady's character, that she resolved to court the love of
+young Cesario, and sent a servant after him with a diamond ring, under
+the pretence that he had left it with her as a present from Orsino.
+She hoped, by thus artfully making Cesario a present of the ring, she
+should give him some intimation of her design; and truly it did make
+Viola suspect; for knowing that Orsino had sent no ring by her, she
+began to recollect that Olivia's looks and manner were expressive of
+admiration, and she presently guessed her master's mistress had fallen
+in love with her. "Alas," said she, "the poor lady might as well love
+a dream. Disguise I see is wicked, for it has caused Olivia to breathe
+as fruitless sighs for me, as I do for Orsino."
+
+Viola returned to Orsino's palace, and related to her lord the ill
+success of the negociation, repeating the command of Olivia, that
+the duke should trouble her no more. Yet still the duke persisted in
+hoping that the gentle Cesario would in time be able to persuade her
+to shew some pity, and therefore he bade him he should go to her again
+the next day. In the mean time, to pass away the tedious interval,
+he commanded a song which he loved to be sung; and he said, "My good
+Cesario, when I heard that song last night, methought it did relieve
+my passion much. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The spinsters
+and the knitters when they sit in the sun, and the young maids that
+weave their thread with bone, chaunt this song. It is silly, yet I
+love it, for it tells of the innocence of love in the old times."
+
+SONG
+
+  Come away, come away, Death,
+    And in sad cypress let me be laid;
+  Fly away, fly away, breath,
+    I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
+  My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O prepare it,
+  My part of death no one so true did share it.
+
+  Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
+    On my black coffin let there be strown:
+  Not a friend, not a friend greet
+    My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
+  A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O where
+  Sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there.
+
+Viola did not fail to mark the words of the old song, which in such
+true simplicity described the pangs of unrequited love, and she bore
+testimony in her countenance of feeling what the song expressed. Her
+sad looks were observed by Orsino, who said to her, "My life upon it,
+Cesario, though you are so young, your eye has looked upon some face
+that it loves; has it not, boy?" "A little, with your leave," replied
+Viola. "And what kind of woman, and of what age is she?" said Orsino.
+"Of your age, and of your complexion, my lord," said Viola; which made
+the duke smile to hear this fair young boy loved a woman so much older
+than himself, and of a man's dark complexion; but Viola secretly meant
+Orsino, and not a woman like him.
+
+When Viola made her second visit to Olivia, she found no difficulty
+in gaining access to her. Servants soon discover when their ladies
+delight to converse with handsome young messengers; and the instant
+Viola arrived, the gates were thrown wide open, and the duke's page
+was shewn into Olivia's apartment with great respect; and when Viola
+told Olivia that she was come once more to plead in her lord's behalf,
+this lady said, "I desired you never to speak of him again; but if
+you would undertake another suit, I had rather hear you solicit, than
+music from the spheres." This was pretty plain speaking, but Olivia
+soon explained herself still more plainly, and openly confessed her
+love; and when she saw displeasure with perplexity expressed in
+Viola's face, she said, "O what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the
+contempt and anger of his lip! Cesario, by the roses of the spring, by
+maidhood, honour, and by truth, I love you so, that, in spite of your
+pride, I have neither wit nor reason to conceal my passion." But in
+vain the lady wooed; Viola hastened from her presence, threatening
+never more to come to plead Orsino's love; and all the reply she made
+to Olivia's fond solicitation was, a declaration of a resolution
+_Never to love any woman_.
+
+No sooner had Viola left the lady than a claim was made upon her
+valour. A gentleman, a rejected suitor of Olivia, who had learned how
+that lady had favoured the duke's messenger, challenged him to fight
+a duel. What should poor Viola do, who, though she carried a manlike
+outside, had a true woman's heart, and feared to look on her own
+sword!
+
+When she saw her formidable rival advancing towards her with his sword
+drawn, she began to think of confessing that she was a woman; but
+she was relieved at once from her terror, and the shame of such a
+discovery, by a stranger that was passing by, who made up to them, and
+as if he had been long known to her, and were her dearest friend, said
+to her opponent, "If this young gentleman has done offence, I will
+take the fault on me; and if you offend him, I will for his sake defy
+you." Before Viola had time to thank him for his protection, or to
+enquire the reason of his kind interference, her new friend met with
+an enemy where his bravery was of no use to him; for the officers of
+justice coming up in that instant, apprehended the stranger in the
+duke's name to answer for an offence he had committed some years
+before; and he said to Viola, "This comes with seeking you:" and then
+he asked her for a purse, saying, "Now my necessity makes me ask for
+my purse, and it grieves me much more for what I cannot do for you,
+than for what befalls myself. You stand amazed, but be of comfort."
+His words did indeed amaze Viola, and she protested she knew him not,
+nor had ever received a purse from him; but for the kindness he had
+just shewn her, she offered him a small sum of money, being nearly
+the whole she possessed. And now the stranger spoke severe things,
+charging her with ingratitude and unkindness. He said, "This youth,
+whom you see here, I snatched from the jaws of death, and for his
+sake alone I came to Illyria, and have fallen into this danger." But
+the officers cared little for hearkening to the complaints of their
+prisoner, and they hurried him off, saying, "What is that to us?" And
+as he was carried away, he called Viola by the name of Sebastian,
+reproaching the supposed Sebastian for disowning his friend, as long
+as he was within hearing. When Viola heard herself called Sebastian,
+though the stranger was taken away too hastily for her to ask an
+explanation, she conjectured that this seeming mystery might arise
+from her being mistaken for her brother; and she began to cherish
+hopes that it was her brother whose life this man said he had
+preserved. And so indeed it was. The stranger, whose name was
+Anthonio, was a sea-captain. He had taken Sebastian up into his ship,
+when, almost exhausted with fatigue, he was floating on the mast
+to which he had fastened himself in the storm. Anthonio conceived
+such a friendship for Sebastian, that he resolved to accompany him
+whithersoever he went; and when the youth expressed a curiosity to
+visit Orsino's court, Anthonio, rather than part from him, came to
+Illyria, though he knew, if his person should be known there, his life
+would be in danger, because in a sea-fight he had once dangerously
+wounded the duke Orsino's nephew. This was the offence for which he
+was now made a prisoner.
+
+Anthonio and Sebastian had landed together but a few hours before
+Anthonio met Viola. He had given his purse to Sebastian, desiring him
+to use it freely if he saw any thing he wished to purchase, telling
+him he would wait at the inn, while Sebastian went to view the town:
+but Sebastian not returning at the time appointed, Anthonio had
+ventured out to look for him, and Viola being dressed the same, and in
+face so exactly resembling her brother, Anthonio drew his sword (as he
+thought) in defence of the youth he had saved, and when Sebastian (as
+he supposed) disowned him, and denied him his own purse, no wonder he
+accused him of ingratitude.
+
+Viola, when Anthonio was gone, fearing a second invitation to fight,
+slunk home as fast as she could. She had not been long gone, when her
+adversary thought he saw her return; but it was her brother Sebastian
+who happened to arrive at this place, and he said, "Now, sir, have I
+met with you again? There's for you;" and struck him a blow. Sebastian
+was no coward; he returned the blow with interest, and drew his sword.
+
+A lady now put a stop to this duel, for Olivia came out of the house,
+and she too mistaking Sebastian for Cesario, invited him to come into
+her house, expressing much sorrow at the rude attack he had met with.
+Though Sebastian was as much surprised at the courtesy of this lady as
+at the rudeness of his unknown foe, yet he went very willingly into
+the house, and Olivia was delighted to find Cesario (as she thought
+him) become more sensible of her attentions; for though their features
+were exactly the same, there was none of the contempt and anger to be
+seen in his face, which she had complained of when she told her love
+to Cesario.
+
+Sebastian did not at all object to the fondness the lady lavished on
+him. He seemed to take it in very good part, yet he wondered how it
+had come to pass, and he was rather inclined to think Olivia was not
+in her right senses; but perceiving that she was mistress of a fine
+house, and that she ordered her affairs and seemed to govern her
+family discreetly, and that in all but her sudden love for him she
+appeared in the full possession of her reason, he well approved of the
+courtship; and Olivia finding Cesario in this good humour, and fearing
+he might change his mind, proposed that, as she had a priest in the
+house, they should be instantly married. Sebastian assented to this
+proposal; and when the marriage-ceremony was over, he left his lady
+for a short time, intending to go and tell his friend Anthonio the
+good fortune that he had met with. In the mean time Orsino came to
+visit Olivia; and at the moment he arrived before Olivia's house, the
+officers of justice brought their prisoner, Anthonio, before the duke.
+Viola was with Orsino, her master; and when Anthonio saw Viola, whom
+he still imagined to be Sebastian, he told the duke in what manner he
+had rescued this youth from the perils of the sea; and after fully
+relating all the kindness he had really shewn to Sebastian, he ended
+his complaint by saying, that for three months, both day and night,
+this ungrateful youth had been with him. But now the lady Olivia
+coming forth from her house, the duke could no longer attend to
+Anthonio's story; and he said, "Here comes the countess: now Heaven
+walks on earth! but for thee, fellow, thy words are madness. Three
+months has this youth attended on me:" and then he ordered Anthonio
+to be taken aside. But Orsino's heavenly countess soon gave the duke
+cause to accuse Cesario as much of ingratitude as Anthonio had done,
+for all the words he could hear Olivia speak were words of kindness
+to Cesario: and when he found his page had obtained this high place
+in Olivia's favour, he threatened him with all the terrors of his just
+revenge; and as he was going to depart, he called Viola to follow
+him, saying, "Come, boy, with me. My thoughts are ripe for mischief."
+Though it seemed in his jealous rage he was going to doom Viola to
+instant death, yet her love made her no longer a coward, and she said
+she would most joyfully suffer death to give her master ease. But
+Olivia would not so lose her husband, and she cried, "Where goes my
+Cesario?" Viola replied, "After him I love more than my life." Olivia
+however prevented their departure by loudly proclaiming that Cesario
+was her husband, and sent for the priest, who declared that not two
+hours had passed since he had married the lady Olivia to this young
+man. In vain Viola protested she was not married to Olivia; the
+evidence of that lady and the priest made Orsino believe that his page
+had robbed him of the treasure he prized above his life. But thinking
+that it was past recall, he was bidding farewel to his faithless
+mistress, and the _young dissembler_, her husband, as he called Viola,
+warning her never to come in his sight again, when (as it seemed to
+them) a miracle appeared! for another Cesario entered, and addressed
+Olivia as his wife. This new Cesario was Sebastian, the real husband
+of Olivia; and when their wonder had a little ceased at seeing two
+persons with the same face, the same voice, and the same habit, the
+brother and sister began to question each other; for Viola could
+scarce be persuaded that her brother was living, and Sebastian knew
+not how to account for the sister he supposed drowned being found in
+the habit of a young man. But Viola presently acknowledged that she
+was indeed Viola and his sister, under that disguise.
+
+When all the errors were cleared up which the extreme likeness between
+this twin brother and sister had occasioned, they laughed at the lady
+Olivia for the pleasant mistake she had made in falling in love with
+a woman; and Olivia shewed no dislike to her exchange, when she found
+she had wedded the brother instead of the sister.
+
+The hopes of Orsino were for ever at an end by this marriage of
+Olivia, and with his hopes, all his fruitless love seemed to vanish
+away, and all his thoughts were fixed on the event of his favourite,
+young Cesario, being changed into a fair lady. He viewed Viola with
+great attention, and he remembered how very handsome he had always
+thought Cesario was, and he concluded she would look very beautiful in
+a woman's attire; and then he remembered how often she had said _she
+loved him_, which at the time seemed only the dutiful expression of a
+faithful page, but now he guessed that something more was meant, for
+many of her pretty sayings, which were like riddles to him, came now
+into his mind, and he no sooner remembered all these things than he
+resolved to make Viola his wife; and he said to her (he still could
+not help calling her _Cesario_ and _boy_), "Boy, you have said to me a
+thousand times that you should never love a woman like to me, and for
+the faithful service you have done for me so much beneath your soft
+and tender breeding, and since you have called me master so long, you
+shall now be your master's mistress, and Orsino's true duchess."
+
+Olivia, perceiving Orsino was making over that heart, which she had
+so ungraciously rejected, to Viola, invited them to enter her house,
+and offered the assistance of the good priest, who had married her
+to Sebastian in the morning, to perform the same ceremony in the
+remaining part of the day for Orsino and Viola. Thus the twin brother
+and sister were both wedded on the same day: the storm and shipwreck,
+which had separated them, being the means of bringing to pass their
+high and mighty fortunes. Viola was the wife of Orsino, the duke of
+Illyria, and Sebastian the husband of the rich and noble countess, the
+lady Olivia.
+
+
+
+
+TIMON OF ATHENS
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+Timon, a lord of Athens, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune,
+affected a humour of liberality which knew no limits. His almost
+infinite wealth could not flow in so fast, but he poured it out faster
+upon all sorts and degrees of people. Not the poor only tasted of his
+bounty, but great lords did not disdain to rank themselves among
+his dependants and followers. His table was resorted to by all the
+luxurious feasters, and his house was open to all comers and goers at
+Athens. His large wealth combined with his free and prodigal nature
+to subdue all hearts to his love; men of all minds and dispositions
+tendered their services to lord Timon, from the glass-faced flatterer,
+whose face reflects as in a mirror the present humour of his patron,
+to the rough and unbending cynic, who affecting a contempt of men's
+persons, and an indifference to worldly things, yet could not
+stand out against the gracious manners and munificent soul of lord
+Timon, but would come (against his nature) to partake of his royal
+entertainments, and return most rich in his own estimation if he had
+received a nod or a salutation from Timon.
+
+If a poet had composed a work which wanted a recommendatory
+introduction to the world, he had no more to do but to dedicate it to
+lord Timon, and the poem was sure of sale, besides a present purse
+from the patron, and daily access to his house and table. If a painter
+had a picture to dispose of, he had only to take it to lord Timon, and
+pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was
+wanting to persuade the liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller
+had a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs, which for their
+costliness lay upon his hands, lord Timon's house was a ready mart
+always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewellery
+at any price, and the good natured lord would thank them into the
+bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy in letting him
+have the refusal of such precious commodities. So that by this means
+his house was thronged with superfluous purchases, of no use but to
+swell uneasy and ostentatious pomp; and his person was still more
+inconveniently beset with a crowd of these idle visitors, lying poets,
+painters, sharking tradesmen, lords, ladies, needy courtiers, and
+expectants, who continually filled his lobbies, raining their fulsome
+flatteries in whispers in his ears, sacrificing to him with adulation
+as to a God, making sacred the very stirrup by which he mounted his
+horse, and seeming as though they drank the free air but through his
+permission and bounty.
+
+Some of these daily dependents were young men of birth, who (their
+means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by
+creditors, and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young prodigals
+thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he
+were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers,
+who not being able to follow him in his wealth, found it easier to
+copy him in prodigality and copious spending of what was not their
+own. One of these flesh-flies was Ventidius, for whose debts unjustly
+contracted Timon but lately had paid down the sum of five talents.
+
+But among this confluence, this great flood of visitors, none were
+more conspicuous than the makers of presents and givers of gifts. It
+was fortunate for these men, if Timon took a fancy to a dog, or a
+horse, or any piece of cheap furniture which was theirs. The thing
+so praised, whatever it was, was sure to be sent the next morning
+with the compliments of the giver for lord Timon's acceptance, and
+apologies for the unworthiness of the gift; and this dog or horse, or
+whatever it might be, did not fail to produce, from Timon's bounty,
+who would not be outdone in gifts, perhaps twenty dogs or horses,
+certainly presents of far richer worth, as these pretended donors knew
+well enough, and that their false presents were but the putting out of
+so much money at large and speedy interest. In this way lord Lucius
+had lately sent to Timon a present of four milk-white horses trapped
+in silver, which this cunning lord had observed Timon upon some
+occasion to commend; and another lord, Lucullus, had bestowed upon him
+in the same pretended way of free gift a brace of greyhounds, whose
+make and fleetness Timon had been heard to admire; these presents the
+easy-hearted lord accepted without suspicion of the dishonest views of
+the presenters: and the givers of course were rewarded with some rich
+return, a diamond or some jewel of twenty times the value of their
+false and mercenary donation.
+
+Sometimes these creatures would go to work in a more direct way, and
+with gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was
+too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that
+Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase,
+which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift
+of the thing commended, for no service in the world done for it but
+the easy expence of a little cheap and obvious flattery. In this way
+Timon but the other day had given to one of these mean lords the bay
+courser which he himself rode upon, because his lordship had been
+pleased to say that it was a handsome beast and went well; and Timon
+knew that no man ever justly praised what he did not wish to possess.
+For lord Timon weighed his friends' affection with his own, and so
+fond was he of bestowing, that he could have dealt kingdoms to these
+supposed friends, and never have been weary.
+
+Not that Timon's wealth all went to enrich these wicked flatterers;
+he could do noble and praise-worthy actions; and when a servant of
+his once loved the daughter of a rich Athenian, but could not hope
+to obtain her by reason that in wealth and rank the maid was so far
+above him, lord Timon freely bestowed upon his servant three Athenian
+talents, to make his fortune equal with the dowry which the father of
+the young maid demanded of him who should be her husband. But for the
+most part, knaves and parasites had the command of his fortune, false
+friends whom he did not know to be such, but, because they flocked
+around his person, he thought they must needs love him; and because
+they smiled, and flattered him, he thought surely that his conduct was
+approved by all the wise and good. And when he was feasting in the
+midst of all these flatterers and mock friends, when they were eating
+him up, and draining his fortunes dry with large draughts of richest
+wines drunk to his health and prosperity, he could not perceive the
+difference of a friend from a flatterer, but to his deluded eyes (made
+proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort to have so many,
+like brothers commanding one another's fortunes (though it was his own
+fortune which paid all the cost), and with joy they would run over
+at the spectacle of such, as it appeared to him, truly festive and
+fraternal meeting.
+
+But while he thus outwent the very heart of kindness, and poured out
+his bounty, as if Plutus, the god of gold, had been but his steward;
+while thus he proceeded without care or stop, so senseless of expence
+that he would neither enquire how he could maintain it, nor cease his
+wild flow of riot; his riches, which were not infinite, must needs
+melt away before a prodigality which knew no limits. But who should
+tell him so? his flatterers? they had an interest in shutting his
+eyes. In vain did his honest steward Flavius try to represent to him
+his condition, laying his accounts before him, begging of him, praying
+of him, with an importunity that on any other occasion would have been
+unmannerly in a servant, beseeching him with tears, to look into the
+state of his affairs. Timon would still put him off, and turn the
+discourse to something else; for nothing is so deaf to remonstrance
+as riches turned to poverty, nothing is so unwilling to believe its
+situation, nothing so incredulous to its own true state, and hard to
+give credit to a reverse. Often had this good steward, this honest
+creature, when all the rooms of Timon's great house have been choked
+up with riotous feeders at his master's cost, when the floors have
+wept with drunken spilling of wine, and every apartment has blazed
+with lights and resounded with music and feasting, often had he
+retired by himself to some solitary spot, and wept faster than the
+wine ran from the wasteful casks within, to see the mad bounty of his
+lord, and to think, when the means were gone which bought him praises
+from all sorts of people, how quickly the breath would be gone of
+which the praise was made; praises won in feasting would be lost
+in fasting, and at one cloud of winter-showers these flies would
+disappear.
+
+But now the time was come that Timon could shut his ears no longer to
+the representations of this faithful steward. Money must be had; and
+when he ordered Flavius to sell some of his land for that purpose,
+Flavius informed him, what he had in vain endeavoured at several times
+before to make him listen to, that most of his land was already sold
+or forfeited, and that all he possessed at present was not enough
+to pay the one half of what he owed. Struck with wonder at this
+presentation, Timon hastily replied, "My lands extended from Athens to
+Lacedemon." "O my good lord," said Flavius, "the world is but a world,
+and has bounds; were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly
+were it gone!" Timon consoled himself that no villainous bounty had
+yet come from him, that if he had given his wealth away unwisely it
+had not been bestowed to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends;
+and he bade the kind-hearted steward (who was weeping) to take comfort
+in the assurance that his master could never lack means, while he had
+so many noble friends; and this infatuated lord persuaded himself
+that he had nothing to do but to send and borrow, to use every man's
+fortune (that had ever tasted his bounty) in this extremity, as freely
+as his own. Then with a cheerful look, as if confident of the trial,
+he severally dispatched messengers to lord Lucius, to lords Lucullus
+and Sempronius, men upon whom he had lavished his gifts in past times
+without measure or moderation; and to Ventidius, whom he had lately
+released out of prison by paying his debts, and who by the death of
+his father was now come into the possession of an ample fortune, and
+well enabled to requite Timon's courtesy; to request of Ventidius the
+return of those five talents which he had paid for him, and of each
+of those noble lords the loan of fifty talents: nothing doubting that
+their gratitude would supply his wants (if he needed it) to the amount
+of five hundred times fifty talents.
+
+Lucullus was the first applied to. This mean lord had been dreaming
+over-night of a silver bason and cup, and when Timon's servant was
+announced, his sordid mind suggested to him that this was surely a
+making out of his dream, and that Timon had sent him such a present:
+but when he understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon wanted
+money, the quality of his faint and watery friendship shewed itself,
+for with many protestations he vowed to the servant that he had long
+foreseen the ruin of his master's affairs, and many a time had he come
+to dinner, to tell him of it, and had come again to supper, to try to
+persuade him to spend less, but he would take no counsel nor warning
+by his coming: and true it was that he had been a constant attender
+(as he said) at Timon's feasts, as he had in greater things tasted his
+bounty, but that he ever came with that intent, or gave good counsel
+or reproof to Timon, was a base unworthy lie, which he suitably
+followed up with meanly offering the servant a bribe, to go home to
+his master and tell him that he had not found Lucullus at home.
+
+As little success had the messenger who was sent to lord Lucius. This
+lying lord, who was full of Timon's meat, and enriched almost to
+bursting with Timon's costly presents, when he found the wind changed,
+and the fountain of so much bounty suddenly stopt, at first could
+hardly believe it; but on its being confirmed, he affected great
+regret that he should not have it in his power to serve lord Timon,
+for unfortunately (which was a base falsehood) he had made a great
+purchase the day before, which had quite disfurnished him of the means
+at present; the more beast he, he called himself, to put it out of his
+power to serve so good a friend; and he counted it one of his greatest
+afflictions that his ability should fail him to pleasure such an
+honourable gentleman.
+
+Who can call any man friend that dips in the same dish with him? just
+of this metal is every flatterer. In the recollection of every body
+Timon had been a father to this Lucius, had kept up his credit with
+his purse; Timon's money had gone to pay the wages of his servants, to
+pay the hire of the labourers who had sweat to build the fine houses
+which Lucius's pride had made necessary to him: yet, oh! the monster
+which man makes himself when he proves ungrateful! this Lucius now
+denied to Timon a sum, which, in respect of what Timon had bestowed on
+him, was less than charitable men afford to beggars.
+
+Sempronius and every one of these mercenary lords to whom Timon
+applied in their turn, returned the same evasive answer or direct
+denial; even Ventidius, the redeemed and now rich Ventidius, refused
+to assist him with those five talents which Timon had not lent but
+generously given him in his distress.
+
+Now was Timon as much avoided in his poverty, as he had been courted
+and resorted to in his riches. Now the same tongues which had been
+loudest in his praises, extolling him as bountiful, liberal, and
+open-handed, were not ashamed to censure that very bounty as folly,
+that liberality as profuseness, though it had shewn itself folly in
+nothing so truly as in the selection of such unworthy creatures as
+themselves for its objects. Now was Timon's princely mansion forsaken,
+and become a shunned and hated place, a place for men to pass by,
+not a place as formerly where every passenger must stop and taste of
+his wine and good cheer; now instead of being thronged with feasting
+and tumultuous guests, it was beset with impatient and clamorous
+creditors, usurers, extortioners, fierce and intolerable in their
+demands, pleading bonds, interest, mortgages, iron-hearted men that
+would take no denial nor putting off, that Timon's house was now
+his jail, where he could not pass, nor go in nor out for them; one
+demanding his due of fifty talents, another bringing in a bill of five
+thousand crowns, which if he would tell out his blood by drops, and
+pay them so, he had not enough in his body to discharge, drop by drop.
+
+In this desperate and irremediable state (as it seemed) of his
+affairs, the eyes of all men were suddenly surprised at a new and
+incredible lustre which this setting sun put forth. Once more lord
+Timon proclaimed a feast, to which he invited his accustomed guests,
+lords, ladies, all that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lords
+Lucius and Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who
+more sorry now than these fawning wretches, when they found (as they
+thought) that lord Timon's poverty was all pretence, and had been
+only put on to make trial of their loves, to think that they should
+not have seen through the artifice at the time, and have had the
+cheap credit of obliging his lordship? yet who more glad to find the
+fountain of that noble bounty, which they had thought dried up, still
+fresh and running? They came dissembling, protesting, expressing
+deepest sorrow and shame, that when his lordship sent to them, they
+should have been so unfortunate as to want the present means to oblige
+so honourable a friend. But Timon begged them not to give such trifles
+a thought, for he had altogether forgotten it. And these base fawning
+lords, though they had denied him money in his adversity, yet
+could not refuse their presence at this new blaze of his returning
+prosperity. For the swallow follows not summer more willingly than men
+of these dispositions follow the good fortunes of the great, nor more
+willingly leaves winter than these shrink from the first appearance
+of a reverse; such summer-birds are men. But now with music and state
+the banquet of smoking dishes was served up; and when the guests had
+a little done admiring whence the bankrupt Timon could find means to
+furnish so costly a feast, some doubting whether the scene which they
+saw was real, as scarce trusting their own eyes; at a signal given,
+the dishes were uncovered, and Timon's drift appeared: instead of
+those varieties and far-fetched dainties which they expected, that
+Timon's epicurean table in past times had so liberally presented, now
+appeared under the covers of these dishes a preparation more suitable
+to Timon's poverty, nothing but a little smoke and luke-warm water,
+fit feast for this knot of mouth-friends, whose professions were
+indeed smoke, and their hearts luke-warm and slippery as the water,
+with which Timon welcomed his astonished guests, bidding them,
+"Uncover, dogs, and lap;" and before they could recover their
+surprise, sprinkling it in their faces, that they might have enough,
+and throwing dishes and all after them, who now ran huddling out,
+lords, ladies, with their caps snatched up in haste, a splendid
+confusion, Timon pursuing them, still calling them what they were,
+"Smooth, smiling parasites, destroyers under the mask of courtesy,
+affable wolves, meek bears, fools of fortune, feast-friends,
+time-flies." They, crowding out to avoid him, left the house more
+willingly than they had entered it; some losing their gowns and caps,
+and some their jewels in the hurry, all glad to escape out of the
+presence of such a mad lord, and the ridicule of his mock banquet.
+
+This was the last feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took
+farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook
+himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon
+all mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and
+the houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest
+humanity, war, outrage, poverty, diseases, might fasten upon its
+inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound all Athenians, both
+young and old, high and low; so wishing, he went to the woods, where
+he said he should find the unkindest beast much kinder than those of
+his own species. He stripped himself naked, that he might retain no
+fashion of a man, and dug a cave to live in, and lived solitary in the
+manner of a beast, eating the wild roots, and drinking water, flying
+from the face of his kind, and choosing rather to herd with wild
+beasts, as more harmless and friendly than man.
+
+What a change from lord Timon the rich, lord Timon the delight of
+mankind, to Timon the naked, Timon the manhater! Where were his
+flatterers now? Where were his attendants and retinue? Would the bleak
+air, that boisterous servitor, be his chamberlain, to put his shirt on
+warm? Would those stiff trees, that had outlived the eagle, turn young
+and airy pages to him, to skip on his errands when he bade them? Would
+the cool brook, when it was iced with winter, administer to him his
+warm broths and caudles when sick of an over-night's surfeit? Or would
+the creatures that lived in those wild woods, come and lick his hand,
+and flatter him?
+
+Here on a day, when he was digging for roots, his poor sustenance, his
+spade struck against something heavy, which proved to be gold, a great
+heap which some miser had probably buried in a time of alarm, thinking
+to have come again and taken it from its prison, but died before
+the opportunity had arrived, without making any man privy to the
+concealment; so it lay, doing neither good nor harm, in the bowels of
+the earth, its mother, as if it had never come from thence, till the
+accidental striking of Timon's spade against it once more brought it
+to light.
+
+Here was a mass of treasure which if Timon had retained his old mind,
+was enough to have purchased him friends and flatterers again; but
+Timon was sick of the false world, and the sight of gold was poisonous
+to his eyes; and he would have restored it to the earth, but that,
+thinking of the infinite calamities which by means of gold happen to
+mankind, how the lucre of it causes robberies, oppression, injustice,
+briberies, violence and murder, among men, he had a pleasure in
+imagining (such a rooted hatred did he bear to his species) that out
+of this heap which in digging he had discovered, might arise some
+mischief to plague mankind. And some soldiers passing through the
+woods near to his cave at that instant, which proved to be a part of
+the troops of the Athenian captain Alcibiades, who upon some disgust
+taken against the senators of Athens (the Athenians were ever noted to
+be a thankless and ungrateful people, giving disgust to their generals
+and best friends), was marching at the head of the same triumphant
+army which he had formerly headed in their defence, to war against
+them; Timon, who liked their business well, bestowed upon their
+captain the gold to pay his soldiers, requiring no other service from
+him, than that he should with his conquering army lay Athens level
+with the ground, and burn, slay, kill all her inhabitants; not sparing
+the old men for their white beards, for (he said) they were usurers,
+nor the young children for their seeming innocent smiles, for those
+(he said) would live, if they grew up, to be traitors; but to steel
+his eyes and ears against any sights or sounds that might awaken
+compassion; and not to let the cries of virgins, babes, or mothers,
+hinder him from making one universal massacre of the city, but to
+confound them all in his conquest; and when he had conquered, he
+prayed that the gods would confound him also, the conqueror: so
+thoroughly did Timon hate Athens, Athenians, and all mankind.
+
+While he lived in this forlorn state, leading a life more brutal than
+human, he was suddenly surprised one day with the appearance of a
+man standing in an admiring posture at the door of his cave. It was
+Flavius, the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his
+master had led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling, and to offer
+his services! and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon,
+in that abject condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner
+of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument
+of decay, so affected this good servant, that he stood speechless,
+wrapt up in horror, and confounded. And when he found utterance at
+last to his words, they were so choaked with tears, that Timon had
+much ado to know him again, or to make out who it was that had come
+(so contrary to the experience he had had of mankind) to offer him
+service in extremity. And being in the form and shape of a man, he
+suspected him for a traitor, and his tears for false; but the good
+servant by so many tokens confirmed the truth of his fidelity, and
+made it clear that nothing but love and zealous duty to his once dear
+master had brought him there, that Timon was forced to confess that
+the world contained one honest man; yet, being in the shape and form
+of a man, he could not look upon his man's face without abhorrence,
+or hear words uttered from his man's lips without loathing; and this
+singly honest man was forced to depart, because he was a man, and
+because, with a heart more gentle and compassionate than is usual to
+man, he bore man's detested form and outward feature.
+
+But greater visitants than a poor steward were about to interrupt the
+savage quiet of Timon's solitude. For now the day was come when the
+ungrateful lords of Athens sorely repented the injustice which they
+had done to the noble Timon. For Alcibiades, like an incensed wild
+boar, was raging at the walls of their city, and with his hot siege
+threatened to lay fair Athens in the dust. And now the memory of lord
+Timon's former prowess and military conduct came fresh into their
+forgetful minds, for Timon had been their general in past times, and
+was a valiant and expert soldier, who alone of all the Athenians was
+deemed able to cope with a besieging army, such as then threatened
+them, or to drive back the furious approaches of Alcibiades.
+
+A deputation of the senators was chosen in this emergency to wait upon
+Timon. To him they come in their extremity, to whom, when he was in
+extremity, they had shewn but small regard; as if they presumed upon
+his gratitude whom they had disobliged, and had derived a claim to his
+courtesy from their own most discourteous and unpiteous treatment.
+
+Now they earnestly beseech him, implore him with tears, to return and
+save that city, from which their ingratitude had so lately driven
+him; now they offer him riches, power, dignities, satisfaction for
+past injuries, and public honours and the public love; their persons,
+lives, and fortunes, to be at his disposal, if he will but come back
+and save them. But Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater, was no longer
+lord Timon, the lord of bounty, the flower of valour, their defence
+in war, their ornament in peace. If Alcibiades killed his countrymen,
+Timon cared not. If he sacked fair Athens, and slew her old men and
+her infants, Timon would rejoice. So he told them; and that there
+was not a knife in the unruly camp which he did not prize above the
+reverendest throat in Athens.
+
+This was all the answer he vouchsafed to the weeping disappointed
+senators; only at parting, he bade them commend him to his countrymen,
+and tell them, that to ease them of their griefs and anxieties, and to
+prevent the consequences of fierce Alcibiades' wrath, there was yet a
+way left, which he would teach them, for he had yet so much affection
+left for his dear countrymen as to be willing to do them a kindness
+before his death. These words a little revived the senators, who hoped
+that his kindness for their city was returning. Then Timon told them
+that he had a tree, which grew near his cave, which he should shortly
+have occasion to cut down, and he invited all his friends in Athens,
+high or low, of what degree soever, who wished to shun affliction, to
+come and take a taste of his tree before he cut it down; meaning, that
+they might come and hang themselves on it, and escape affliction that
+way.
+
+And this was the last courtesy, of all his noble bounties, which Timon
+shewed to mankind, and this the last sight of him which his countrymen
+had: for not many days after, a poor soldier, passing by the
+sea-beach, which was at a little distance from the woods which Timon
+frequented, found a tomb on the verge of the sea, with an inscription
+upon it, purporting that it was the grave of Timon the man-hater, who
+"While he lived, did hate all living men, and dying, wished a plague
+might consume all caitiffs left!"
+
+Whether he finished his life by violence, or whether mere distaste
+of life and the loathing he had for mankind brought Timon to his
+conclusion, was not clear, yet all men admired the fitness of his
+epitaph, and the consistency of his end; dying, as he had lived, a
+hater of mankind: and some there were who fancied a conceit in the
+very choice which he had made of the sea-beach for his place of
+burial, where the vast sea might weep for ever upon his grave, as
+in contempt of the transient and shallow tears of hypocritical and
+deceitful mankind.
+
+
+
+
+ROMEO AND JULIET
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+The two chief families in Verona were the rich Capulets and the
+Mountagues. There had been an old quarrel between these families,
+which was grown to such a height, and so deadly was the enmity between
+them, that it extended to the remotest kindred, to the followers and
+retainers of both sides, insomuch that a servant of the house of
+Mountague could not meet a servant of the house of Capulet, nor a
+Capulet encounter with a Mountague by chance, but fierce words and
+sometimes bloodshed ensued; and frequent were the brawls from such
+accidental meetings, which disturbed the happy quiet of Verona's
+streets.
+
+Old lord Capulet made a great supper, to which many fair ladies and
+many noble guests were invited. All the admired beauties of Verona
+were present, and all comers were made welcome if they were not of the
+house of Mountague. At this feast of Capulets, Rosaline, beloved of
+Romeo, son to the old lord Mountague, was present; and though it was
+dangerous for a Mountague to be seen in this assembly, yet Benvolio,
+a friend of Romeo, persuaded the young lord to go to this assembly in
+the disguise of a mask, that he might see his Rosaline, and seeing her
+compare her with some choice beauties of Verona, who (he said) would
+make him think his swan a crow. Romeo had small faith in Benvolio's
+words; nevertheless, for the love of Rosaline, he was persuaded to go.
+For Romeo was a sincere and passionate lover, and one that lost his
+sleep for love, and fled society to be alone, thinking on Rosaline,
+who disdained him, and never requited his love with the least show of
+courtesy or affection; and Benvolio wished to cure his friend of this
+love by shewing him diversity of ladies and company. To this feast of
+Capulets then young Romeo with Benvolio and their friend Mercutio went
+masked. Old Capulet bid them welcome, and told them that ladies who
+had their toes unplagued with corns would dance with them. And the old
+man was light-hearted and merry, and said that he had worn a mask when
+he was young, and could have told a whispering tale in a fair lady's
+ear. And they fell to dancing, and Romeo was suddenly struck with the
+exceeding beauty of a lady who danced there, who seemed to him to
+teach the torches to burn bright, and her beauty to shew by night like
+a rich jewel worn by a blackamoor: beauty too rich for use, too dear
+for earth! like a snowy dove trooping with crows (he said), so richly
+did her beauty and perfections shine above the ladies her companions.
+While he uttered these praises, he was overheard by Tybalt, a nephew
+of lord Capulet, who knew him by his voice to be Romeo. And this
+Tybalt, being of a fiery and passionate temper, could not endure that
+a Mountague should come under cover of a mask, to fleer and scorn (as
+he said) at their solemnities. And he stormed and raged exceedingly,
+and would have struck young Romeo dead. But his uncle, the old lord
+Capulet, would not suffer him to do any injury at that time, both out
+of respect to his guests, and because Romeo had borne himself like a
+gentleman, and all tongues in Verona bragged of him to be a virtuous
+and well-governed youth. Tybalt, forced to be patient against his
+will, restrained himself, but swore that this vile Mountague should at
+another time dearly pay for his intrusion.
+
+The dancing being done, Romeo watched the place where the lady stood;
+and under favour of his masking habit, which might seem to excuse in
+part the liberty, he presumed in the gentlest manner to take her by
+the hand, calling it a shrine, which if he prophaned by touching it,
+he was a blushing pilgrim, and would kiss it for atonement. "Good
+pilgrim," answered the lady, "your devotion shews by far too mannerly
+and too courtly: saints have hands, which pilgrims may touch, but kiss
+not." "Have not saints lips, and pilgrims too?" said Romeo. "Aye,"
+said the lady, "lips which they must use in prayer." "O then, my dear
+saint," said Romeo, "hear my prayer and grant it, lest I despair." In
+such like allusions and loving conceits they were engaged, when the
+lady was called away to her mother. And Romeo enquiring who her mother
+was, discovered that the lady whose peerless beauty he was so much
+struck with, was young Juliet, daughter and heir to the lord Capulet,
+the great enemy of the Mountagues; and that he had unknowingly engaged
+his heart to his foe. This troubled him, but it could not dissuade
+him from loving. As little rest had Juliet, when she found that the
+gentleman that she had been talking with was Romeo and a Mountague,
+for she had been suddenly smit with the same hasty and inconsiderate
+passion for Romeo, which he had conceived for her; and a prodigious
+birth of love it seemed to her, that she must love her enemy, and that
+her affections should settle there, where family considerations should
+induce her chiefly to hate.
+
+It being midnight, Romeo with his companions departed; but they soon
+missed him, for unable to stay away from the house where he had left
+his heart, he leaped the wall of an orchard which was at the back of
+Juliet's house. Here he had not been long, ruminating on his new love,
+when Juliet appeared above at a window, through which her exceeding
+beauty seemed to break like the light of the sun in the east; and the
+moon, which shone in the orchard with a faint light, appeared to Romeo
+as if sick and pale with grief at the superior lustre of this new
+sun. And she leaning her hand upon her cheek, he passionately wished
+himself a glove upon that hand, that he might touch her cheek. She all
+this while thinking herself alone, fetched a deep sigh, and exclaimed,
+"Ah me!" Romeo, enraptured to hear her speak, said softly, and unheard
+by her, "O speak again, bright angel, for such you appear, being over
+my head, like a winged messenger from heaven whom mortals fall back to
+gaze upon." She, unconscious of being overheard, and full of the new
+passion which that night's adventure had given birth to, called upon
+her lover by name (whom she supposed absent): "O Romeo, Romeo!" said
+she, "wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father, and refuse thy name,
+for my sake; or if thou wilt not, be but my sworn love, and I no
+longer will be a Capulet." Romeo, having this encouragement, would
+fain have spoken, but he was desirous of hearing more; and the lady
+continued her passionate discourse with herself (as she thought),
+still chiding Romeo for being Romeo and a Mountague, and wishing him
+some other name, or that he would put away that hated name, and for
+that name, which was no part of himself, he should take all herself.
+At this loving word Romeo could no longer refrain, but taking up the
+dialogue as if her words had been addressed to him personally, and not
+merely in fancy, he bade her call him Love, or by whatever other name
+she pleased, for he was no longer Romeo, if that name was displeasing
+to her. Juliet, alarmed to hear a man's voice in the garden, did not
+at first know who it was, that by favour of the night and darkness
+had thus stumbled upon the discovery of her secret; but when he
+spoke again, though her ears had not yet drunk a hundred words of
+that tongue's uttering, yet so nice is a lover's hearing, that she
+immediately knew him to be young Romeo, and she expostulated with him
+on the danger to which he had exposed himself by climbing the orchard
+walls, for if any of her kinsmen should find him there, it would be
+death to him, being a Mountague. "Alack," said Romeo, "there is more
+peril in your eye, than in twenty of their swords. Do you but look
+kind upon me, lady, and I am proof against their enmity. Better my
+life should be ended by their hate, than that hated life should be
+prolonged, to live without your love." "How came you into this place,"
+said Juliet, "and by whose direction?" "Love directed me," answered
+Romeo: "I am no pilot, yet wert thou as far apart from me, as that
+vast shore which is washed with the farthest sea, I should adventure
+for such merchandize." A crimson blush came over Juliet's face, yet
+unseen by Romeo by reason of the night, when she reflected upon the
+discovery which she had made, yet not meaning to make it, of her
+love to Romeo. She would fain have recalled her words, but that was
+impossible: fain would she have stood upon form, and have kept her
+lover at a distance, as the custom of discreet ladies is, to frown and
+be perverse, and give their suitors harsh denials at first; to stand
+off, and affect a coyness or indifference, where they most love, that
+their lovers may not think them too lightly or too easily won: for the
+difficulty of attainment increases the value of the object. But there
+was no room in her case for denials, or puttings off, or any of the
+customary arts of delay and protracted courtship. Romeo had heard
+from her own tongue, when she did not dream that he was near her, a
+confession of her love. So with an honest frankness, which the novelty
+of her situation excused, she confirmed the truth of what he had
+before heard, and addressing him by the name of _fair Mountague_
+(love can sweeten a sour name), she begged him not to impute her easy
+yielding to levity or an unworthy mind, but that he must lay the fault
+of it (if it were a fault) upon the accident of the night which had
+so strangely discovered her thoughts. And she added, that though her
+behaviour to him might not be sufficiently prudent, measured by the
+custom of her sex, yet that she would prove more true than many whose
+prudence was dissembling, and their modesty artificial cunning.
+
+Romeo was beginning to call the heavens to witness, that nothing was
+farther from his thoughts than to impute a shadow of dishonour to such
+an honoured lady, when she stopped him, begging him not to swear;
+for although she joyed in him, yet she had no joy of that night's
+contract; it was too rash, too unadvised, too sudden. But he being
+urgent with her to exchange a vow of love with him that night, she
+said that she already had given him hers before he requested it;
+meaning, when he overheard her confession; but she would retract what
+she then bestowed, for the pleasure of giving it again, for her bounty
+was as infinite as the sea, and her love as deep. From this loving
+conference she was called away by her nurse, who slept with her, and
+thought it time for her to be in bed, for it was near to day-break;
+but hastily returning, she said three or four words more to Romeo,
+the purport of which was, that if his love was indeed honourable, and
+his purpose marriage, she would send a messenger to him to-morrow, to
+appoint a time for their marriage, when she would lay all her fortunes
+at his feet, and follow him as her lord through the world. While they
+were settling this point, Juliet was repeatedly called for by her
+nurse, and went in and returned, and went and returned again, for she
+seemed as jealous of Romeo going from her, as a young girl of her
+bird, which she will let hop a little from her hand, and pluck it
+back with a silken thread; and Romeo was as loth to part as she: for
+the sweetest music to lovers is the sound of each other's tongues at
+night. But at last they parted, wishing mutually sweet sleep and rest
+for that night. The day was breaking when they parted, and Romeo, who
+was too full of thoughts of his mistress and that blessed meeting
+to allow him to sleep, instead of going home, bent his course to a
+monastery hard by, to find friar Lawrence. The good friar was already
+up at his devotions, but seeing young Romeo abroad so early, he
+conjectured rightly that he had not been a-bed that night, but that
+some distemper of youthful affection had kept him waking. He was right
+in imputing the cause of Romeo's wakefulness to love, but he made a
+wrong guess at the object, for he thought that his love for Rosaline
+had kept him waking. But when Romeo revealed his new passion for
+Juliet, and requested the assistance of the friar to marry them that
+day, the holy man lifted up his eyes and hands in a sort of wonder at
+the sudden change in Romeo's affections, for he had been privy to all
+Romeo's love for Rosaline, and his many complaints of her disdain; and
+he said, that young men's love lay not truly in their hearts, but in
+their eyes. But Romeo replying that he himself had often chidden him
+for doting on Rosaline, who could not love him again, whereas Juliet
+both loved and was beloved by him, the friar assented in some measure
+to his reasons; and thinking that a matrimonial alliance between young
+Juliet and Romeo might happily be a means of making up the long breach
+between the Capulets and the Mountagues; which no one more lamented
+than this good friar, who was a friend to both the families, and had
+often interposed his mediation to make up the quarrel without effect;
+partly moved by policy, and partly by his fondness for young Romeo, to
+whom he could deny nothing, the old man consented to join their hands
+in marriage.
+
+Now was Romeo blest indeed, and Juliet, who knew his intent from a
+messenger which she had dispatched according to promise, did not fail
+to be early at the cell of friar Lawrence, where their hands were
+joined in holy marriage; the good friar praying the heavens to smile
+upon that act, and in the union of this young Mountague and young
+Capulet to bury the old strife and long dissensions of their families.
+
+The ceremony being over, Juliet hastened home, where she staid
+impatient for the coming of night, at which time Romeo promised to
+come and meet her in the orchard, where they had met the night before;
+and the time between seemed as tedious to her, as the night before
+some great festival seems to an impatient child, that has got new
+finery which it may not put on till the morning.
+
+That same day about noon, Romeo's friends, Benvolio and Mercutio,
+walking through the streets of Verona, were met by a party of the
+Capulets with the impetuous Tybalt at their head. This was the same
+angry Tybalt who would have fought with Romeo at old lord Capulet's
+feast. He seeing Mercutio, accused him bluntly of associating with
+Romeo, a Mountague. Mercutio, who had as much fire and youthful blood
+in him as Tybalt, replied to this accusation with some sharpness; and
+in spite of all Benvolio could say to moderate their wrath, a quarrel
+was beginning, when Romeo himself passing that way, the fierce
+Tybalt turned from Mercutio to Romeo, and gave him the disgraceful
+appellation of villain. Romeo wished to avoid a quarrel with Tybalt
+above all men, because he was the kinsman of Juliet, and much beloved
+by her; besides, this young Mountague had never thoroughly entered
+into the family quarrel, being by nature wise and gentle, and the name
+of a Capulet, which was his dear lady's name, was now rather a charm
+to allay resentment, than a watch-word to excite fury. So he tried
+to reason with Tybalt, whom he saluted mildly by the name of _good
+Capulet_, as if he, though a Mountague, had some secret pleasure in
+uttering that name: but Tybalt, who hated all Mountagues as he hated
+hell, would hear no reason, but drew his weapon; and Mercutio, who
+knew not of Romeo's secret motive for desiring peace with Tybalt, but
+looked upon his present forbearance as a sort of calm dishonourable
+submission, with many disdainful words provoked Tybalt to the
+prosecution of his first quarrel with him; and Tybalt and Mercutio
+fought, till Mercutio fell, receiving his death's wound while Romeo
+and Benvolio were vainly endeavouring to part the combatants. Mercutio
+being dead, Romeo kept his temper no longer, but returned the scornful
+appellation of villain which Tybalt had given him; and they fought
+till Tybalt was slain by Romeo. This deadly broil falling out in the
+midst of Verona at noonday, the news of it quickly brought a crowd
+of citizens to the spot, and among them the old lords Capulet and
+Mountague, with their wives; and soon after arrived the prince
+himself, who being related to Mercutio, whom Tybalt had slain, and
+having had the peace of his government often disturbed by these
+brawls of Mountagues and Capulets, came determined to put the law in
+strictest force against those who should be found to be offenders.
+Benvolio, who had been eye-witness to the fray, was commanded by the
+prince to relate the origin of it, which he did, keeping as near the
+truth as he could without injury to Romeo, softening and excusing the
+part which his friends took in it. Lady Capulet, whose extreme grief
+for the loss of her kinsman Tybalt made her keep no bounds in her
+revenge, exhorted the prince to do strict justice upon his murderer,
+and to pay no attention to Benvolio's representation, who being
+Romeo's friend, and a Mountague, spoke partially. Thus she pleaded
+against her new son-in-law, but she knew not yet that he was her
+son-in-law and Juliet's husband. On the other hand was to be seen Lady
+Mountague pleading for her child's life, and arguing with some justice
+that Romeo had done nothing worthy of punishment in taking the life
+of Tybalt, which was already forfeited to the law by his having slain
+Mercutio. The prince, unmoved by the passionate exclamations of these
+women, on a careful examination of the facts, pronounced his sentence,
+and by that sentence Romeo was banished from Verona.
+
+Heavy news to young Juliet, who had been but a few hours a bride,
+and now by this decree seemed everlastingly divorced! When the
+tidings reached her, she at first gave way to rage against Romeo,
+who had slain her dear cousin: she called him a beautiful tyrant,
+a fiend angelical, a ravenous dove, a lamb with a wolf's nature, a
+serpent-heart hid with a flowering face, and other like contradictory
+names, which denoted the struggles in her mind between her love and
+her resentment: but in the end love got the mastery, and the tears
+which she shed for grief that Romeo had slain her cousin, turned to
+drops of joy that her husband lived whom Tybalt would have slain.
+Then came fresh tears, and they were altogether of grief for Romeo's
+banishment. That word was more terrible to her than the death of many
+Tybalts.
+
+Romeo, after the fray, had taken refuge in friar Lawrence's cell,
+where he was first made acquainted with the prince's sentence, which
+seemed to him far more terrible than death. To him it appeared there
+was no world out of Verona's walls, no living out of the sight of
+Juliet. Heaven was there where Juliet lived, and all beyond was
+purgatory, torture, hell. The good friar would have applied the
+consolation of philosophy to his griefs; but this frantic young man
+would hear of none, but like a madman he tore his hair, and threw
+himself all along upon the ground, as he said, to take the measure of
+his grave. From this unseemly state he was roused by a message from
+his dear lady, which a little revived him, and then the friar took the
+advantage to expostulate with him on the unmanly weakness which he had
+shown. He had slain Tybalt, but would he also slay himself, slay his
+dear lady who lived but in his life? The noble form of man, he said,
+was but a shape of wax, when it wanted the courage which should keep
+it firm. The law had been lenient to him, that instead of death which
+he had incurred, had pronounced by the prince's mouth only banishment.
+He had slain Tybalt, but Tybalt would have slain him: there was a sort
+of happiness in that. Juliet was alive, and (beyond all hope) had
+become his dear wife, therein he was most happy. All these blessings,
+as the friar made them out to be, did Romeo put from him like a sullen
+misbehaved wench. And the friar bade him beware, for such as despaired
+(he said) died miserable. Then when Romeo was a little calmed, he
+counselled him that he should go that night and secretly take his
+leave of Juliet, and thence proceed straitways to Mantua, at which
+place he should sojourn, till the friar found a fit occasion to
+publish his marriage, which might be a joyful means of reconciling
+their families; and then he did not doubt but the prince would be
+moved to pardon him, and he would return with twenty times more joy
+than he went forth with grief. Romeo was convinced by these wise
+counsels of the friar, and took his leave to go and seek his lady,
+proposing to stay with her that night, and by day-break pursue his
+journey alone to Mantua; to which place the good friar promised to
+send him letters from time to time, acquainting him with the state of
+affairs at home.
+
+That night Romeo passed with his dear wife, gaining secret admission
+to her chamber, from the orchard in which he had heard her confession
+of love the night before. That had been a night of unmixed joy and
+rapture; but the pleasures of this night, and the delight which these
+lovers took in each other's society, were sadly allayed with the
+prospect of parting, and the fatal adventures of the past day. The
+unwelcome day-break seemed to come too soon, and when Juliet heard the
+morning-song of the lark, she would have persuaded herself that it was
+the nightingale, which sings by night; but it was too truly the lark
+which sung, and a discordant and unpleasing note it seemed to her; and
+the streaks of day in the east too certainly pointed out that it was
+time for these lovers to part. Romeo took his leave of his dear wife
+with a heavy heart, promising to write to her from Mantua every hour
+in the day, and when he had descended from her chamber-window, as he
+stood below her on the ground, in that sad foreboding state of mind in
+which she was he appeared to her eyes as one dead in the bottom of a
+tomb. Romeo's mind misgave him in like manner; but now he was forced
+hastily to depart, for it was death for him to be found within the
+walls of Verona after day-break.
+
+This was but the beginning of the tragedy of this pair of star-crossed
+lovers. Romeo had not been gone many days, before the old lord Capulet
+proposed a match for Juliet. The husband he had chosen for her, not
+dreaming that she was married already, was count Paris, a gallant,
+young, and noble gentleman, no unworthy suitor to the young Juliet,
+if she had never seen Romeo.
+
+The terrified Juliet was in a sad perplexity at her father's offer.
+She pleaded her youth unsuitable to marriage, the recent death of
+Tybalt which had left her spirits too weak to meet a husband with
+any face of joy, and how indecorous it would shew for the family of
+the Capulets to be celebrating a nuptial-feast, when his funeral
+solemnities were hardly over: she pleaded every reason against the
+match, but the true one, namely, that she was married already. But
+lord Capulet was deaf to all her excuses, and in a peremptory manner
+ordered her to get ready, for by the following Thursday she should
+be married to Paris: and having found her a husband rich, young, and
+noble, such as the proudest maid in Verona might joyfully accept, he
+could not bear that out of an affected coyness, as he construed her
+denial, she should oppose obstacles to her own good fortune.
+
+In this extremity Juliet applied to the friendly friar, always her
+counsellor in distress, and he asking her if she had resolution to
+undertake a desperate remedy, and she answering that she would go into
+the grave alive, rather than marry Paris, her own dear husband living,
+he directed her to go home, and appear merry, and give her consent to
+marry Paris, according to her father's desire, and on the next night,
+which was the night before the marriage, to drink of the contents of
+a phial which he then gave her, the effect of which would be, that
+for two-and-forty hours after drinking it she should appear cold and
+lifeless; that when the bridegroom came to fetch her in the morning,
+he would find her to appearance dead; that then she would be borne, as
+the manner in that country was, uncovered, on a bier, to be buried in
+the family vault; that if she could put off womanish fear, and consent
+to this terrible trial, in forty-two hours after swallowing the liquid
+(such was its certain operation) she would be sure to awake, as from
+a dream; and before she should awake, he would let her husband know
+their drift, and he should come in the night, and bear her thence
+to Mantua. Love, and the dread of marrying Paris, gave young Juliet
+strength to undertake this horrible adventure; and she took the phial
+of the friar, promising to observe his directions.
+
+Going from the monastery, she met the young count Paris, and, modestly
+dissembling, promised to become his bride. This was joyful news to the
+lord Capulet and his wife. It seemed to put youth into the old man:
+and Juliet, who had displeased him exceedingly by her refusal of the
+count, was his darling again, now she promised to be obedient. All
+things in the house were in a bustle against the approaching nuptials.
+No cost was spared to prepare such festival rejoicings, as Verona had
+never before witnessed.
+
+On the Wednesday night Juliet drank off the potion. She had many
+misgivings, lest the friar, to avoid the blame which might be imputed
+to him for marrying her to Romeo, had given her poison; but then he
+was always known for a holy man: then lest she should awake before the
+time that Romeo was to come for her; whether the terror of the place,
+a vault full of dead Capulets' bones, and where Tybalt, all bloody,
+lay festering in his shroud, would not be enough to drive her
+distracted: again she thought of all the stories she had heard of
+spirits haunting the places where their bodies are bestowed. But then
+her love for Romeo, and her aversion for Paris, returned, and she
+desperately swallowed the draught, and became insensible.
+
+When young Paris came early in the morning with music, to awaken his
+bride, instead of a living Juliet, her chamber presented the dreary
+spectacle of a lifeless corse. What death to his hopes! What confusion
+then reigned through the whole house! Poor Paris lamenting his bride,
+whom most detestable death had beguiled him of, had divorced from him
+even before their hands were joined. But still more piteous it was to
+hear the mournings of the old lord and lady Capulet, who having but
+this one, one poor loving child to rejoice and solace in, cruel death
+had snatched her from their sight, just as these careful parents were
+on the point of seeing her advanced (as they thought) by a promising
+and advantageous match. Now all things that were ordained for the
+festival, were turned from their properties to do the office of a
+black funeral. The wedding cheer served for a sad burial feast, the
+bridal hymns were changed to sullen dirges, the sprightly instruments
+to melancholy bells, and the flowers that should have been strewed in
+the bride's path, now served but to strew her corse. Now instead of
+a priest to marry her, a priest was needed to bury her; and she was
+borne to church indeed, not to augment the cheerful hopes of the
+living, but to swell the dreary numbers of the dead.
+
+Bad news, which always travels faster than good, now brought the
+dismal story of his Juliet's death to Romeo at Mantua, before the
+messenger could arrive, who was sent from friar Lawrence to apprize
+him that these were mock funerals only and but the shadow and
+representation of death, and that his dear lady lay in the tomb but
+for a short while, expecting when Romeo would come to release her from
+that dreary mansion. Just before, Romeo had been unusually joyful and
+light-hearted. He had dreamed in the night that he was dead (a strange
+dream, that gave a dead man leave to think), and that his lady came
+and found him dead, and breathed such life with kisses in his lips,
+that he revived, and was an emperor! And now that a messenger came
+from Verona, he thought surely it was to confirm some good news which
+his dreams had presaged. But when the contrary to this flattering
+vision appeared, and that it was his lady who was dead in truth, whom
+he could not revive by any kisses, he ordered horses to be got ready,
+for he determined that night to visit Verona, and to see his lady
+in her tomb. And as mischief is swift to enter into the thoughts of
+desperate men, he called to mind a poor apothecary, whose shop in
+Mantua he had lately passed, and from the beggarly appearance of
+the man, who seemed famished, and the wretched show in his shop of
+empty boxes ranged on dirty shelves, and other tokens of extreme
+wretchedness, he had said at the time (perhaps having some misgivings
+that his own disastrous life might haply meet with a conclusion so
+desperate), "If a man were to need poison, which by the law of Mantua
+it is death to sell, here lives a poor wretch who would sell it him."
+These words of his now came into his mind, and he sought out the
+apothecary, who, after some pretended scruples, Romeo offering him
+gold which his poverty could not resist, sold him a poison, which, if
+he swallowed, he told him, if he had the strength of twenty men, would
+quickly dispatch him.
+
+With this poison he set out for Verona, to have a sight of his dear
+lady in her tomb, meaning, when he had satisfied his sight, to swallow
+the poison, and be buried by her side. He reached Verona at midnight,
+and found the church-yard, in the midst of which was situated the
+ancient tomb of the Capulets. He had provided a light, and a spade,
+and wrenching iron, and was proceeding to break open the monument,
+when he was interrupted by a voice, which by the name of _vile
+Mountague_ bade him desist from his unlawful business. It was the
+young count Paris, who had come to the tomb of Juliet at that
+unseasonable time of night, to strew flowers and to weep over the
+grave of her that should have been his bride. He knew not what an
+interest Romeo had in the dead, but knowing him to be a Mountague,
+and (as he supposed) a sworn foe to all the Capulets, he judged that
+he was come by night to do some villanous shame to the dead bodies;
+therefore in an angry tone he bade him desist; and as a criminal,
+condemned by the laws of Verona to die if he were found within the
+walls of the city, he would have apprehended him. Romeo urged Paris to
+leave him, and warned him by the fate of Tybalt who lay buried there,
+not to provoke his anger, or draw down another sin upon his head, by
+forcing him to kill him. But the count in scorn refused his warning,
+and laid hands on him as a felon, which Romeo resisting, they fought,
+and Paris fell. When Romeo, by the help of a light, came to see who it
+was that he had slain, that it was Paris, who (he learned in his way
+from Mantua) should have married Juliet, he took the dead youth by the
+hand, as one whom misfortune had made a companion, and said that he
+would bury him in a triumphal grave, meaning in Juliet's grave, which
+he now opened: and there lay his lady, as one whom death had no power
+upon to change a feature or complexion in her matchless beauty, or as
+if Death were amorous, and the lean abhorred monster kept her there
+for his delight; for she lay yet fresh and blooming, as she had fallen
+to sleep when she swallowed that benumbing potion: and near her lay
+Tybalt in his bloody shroud, whom Romeo seeing, begged pardon of his
+lifeless corse, and for Juliet's sake called him _cousin_, and said
+that he was about to do him a favour by putting his enemy to death.
+Here Romeo took his last leave of his lady's lips, kissing them; and
+here he shook the burden of his cross stars from his weary body,
+swallowing that poison which the apothecary had sold him, whose
+operation was fatal and real, not like that dissembling potion which
+Juliet had swallowed, the effect of which was now nearly expiring, and
+she about to awake to complain that Romeo had not kept his time, or
+that he had come too soon.
+
+For now the hour was arrived at which the friar had promised that she
+should awake; and he, having learned that his letters which he had
+sent to Mantua, by some unlucky detention of the messenger, had never
+reached Romeo, came himself, provided with a pick-axe and lantern, to
+deliver the lady from her confinement; but he was surprised to find a
+light already burning in the Capulets' monument, and to see swords and
+blood near it, and Romeo and Paris lying breathless by the monument.
+
+Before he could entertain a conjecture, to imagine how these fatal
+accidents had fallen out, Juliet awoke out of her trance, and seeing
+the friar near her, she remembered the place where she was, and the
+occasion of her being there, and asked for Romeo: but the friar,
+hearing a noise, bade her come out of that place of death, and of
+unnatural sleep, for a greater power than they could contradict had
+thwarted their intents; and being frighted by the noise of people
+coming, he fled; but when Juliet saw the cup closed in her true love's
+hands, she guessed that poison had been the cause of his end, and she
+would have swallowed the dregs if any had been left, and she kissed
+his still warm lips to try if any poison yet did hang upon them: then
+hearing a nearer noise of people coming, she quickly unsheathed a
+dagger which she wore, and stabbing herself, died by her true Romeo's
+side.
+
+The watch by this time had come up to the place. A page belonging to
+count Paris, who had witnessed the fight between his master and Romeo,
+had given the alarm, which had spread among the citizens, who went
+up and down the streets of Verona confusedly, exclaiming, A Paris, a
+Romeo, a Juliet, as the rumour had imperfectly reached them, till the
+uproar brought lord Mountague and lord Capulet out of their beds,
+with the prince, to enquire into the causes of the disturbance. The
+friar had been apprehended by some of the watch, coming from the
+church-yard, trembling, sighing, and weeping, in a suspicious manner.
+A great multitude being assembled at the Capulets' monument, the friar
+was commanded by the prince to deliver what he knew of these strange
+and disastrous accidents.
+
+And there, in the presence of the old lords Mountague and Capulet, he
+faithfully related the story of their children's fatal love, the part
+he took in promoting their marriage, in the hope in that union to end
+the long quarrels between their families; how Romeo, there dead, was
+husband to Juliet, and Juliet, there dead, was Romeo's faithful wife:
+how before he could find a fit opportunity to divulge their marriage,
+another match was projected for Juliet, who to avoid the crime of a
+second marriage swallowed the sleeping draught (as he advised), and
+all thought her dead: how meantime he wrote to Romeo, to come and take
+her thence when the force of the potion should cease, and by what
+unfortunate miscarriage of the messenger the letters never reached
+Romeo: further than this the friar could not follow the story, nor
+knew more than that coming himself to deliver Juliet from that place
+of death, he found the count Paris and Romeo slain. The remainder of
+the transactions was supplied by the narration of the page who had
+seen Paris and Romeo fight, and by the servant who came with Romeo
+from Verona, to whom this faithful lover had given letters to be
+delivered to his father in the event of his death which made good the
+friar's words, confessing his marriage with Juliet, imploring the
+forgiveness of his parents, acknowledging the buying of the poison of
+the poor apothecary, and his intent in coming to the monument, to die,
+and lie with Juliet. All these circumstances agreed together to clear
+the friar from any hand he could be supposed to have had in these
+complicated slaughters, further than as the unintended consequences of
+his own well meant, yet too artificial and subtle contrivances.
+
+And the prince, turning to these old lords, Mountague and Capulet,
+rebuked them for their brutal and irrational enmities, and shewed
+them what a scourge heaven had laid upon such offences, that it had
+found means even through the love of their children to punish their
+unnatural hate. And these old rivals, no longer enemies, agreed to
+bury their long strife in their children's graves; and lord Capulet
+requested lord Mountague to give him his hand, calling him by the name
+of brother, as if in acknowledgment of the union of their families by
+the marriage of the young Capulet and Mountague; and saying that lord
+Mountague's hand (in token of reconcilement) was all he demanded for
+his daughter's jointure: but lord Mountague said he would give him
+more, for he would raise her statue of pure gold, that while Verona
+kept its name, no figure should be so esteemed for its richness and
+workmanship as that of the true and faithful Juliet. And lord Capulet
+in return said that he would raise another statue to Romeo. So did
+these poor old lords, when it was too late, strive to outgo each other
+in mutual courtesies: while so deadly had been their rage and enmity
+in past times, that nothing but the fearful overthrow of their
+children (poor sacrifices to their quarrels and dissensions) could
+remove the rooted hates and jealousies of the noble families.
+
+
+
+
+HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+Gertrude, queen of Denmark, becoming a widow by the sudden death of
+King Hamlet, in less than two months after his death married his
+brother Claudius, which was noted by all people at the time for a
+strange act of indiscretion, or unfeelingness, or worse: for this
+Claudius did no ways resemble her late husband in the qualities of his
+person or his mind, but was as contemptible in outward appearance, as
+he was base and unworthy in disposition; and suspicions did not fail
+to arise in the minds of some, that he had privately made away with
+his brother, the late king, with the view of marrying his widow, and
+ascending the throne of Denmark, to the exclusion of young Hamlet, the
+son of the buried king, and lawful successor to the throne.
+
+But upon no one did this unadvised action of the queen make such
+impression as upon this young prince, who loved and venerated the
+memory of his dead father almost to idolatry, and being of a nice
+sense of honour, and a most exquisite practiser of propriety himself,
+did sorely take to heart this unworthy conduct of his mother Gertrude:
+insomuch that, between grief for his father's death and shame for
+his mother's marriage, this young prince was overclouded with a deep
+melancholy, and lost all his mirth and all his good looks; all his
+customary pleasure in books forsook him, his princely exercises and
+sports, proper to his youth, were no longer acceptable; he grew weary
+of the world, which seemed to him an unweeded garden, where all
+the wholesome flowers were choaked up, and nothing but weeds could
+thrive. Not that the prospect of exclusion from the throne, his lawful
+inheritance, weighed so much upon his spirits, though that to a young
+and high-minded prince was a bitter wound and a sore indignity; but
+what so galled him, and took away all his cheerful spirits, was, that
+his mother had shewn herself so forgetful to his father's memory: and
+such a father! who had been to her so loving and so gentle a husband!
+and then she always appeared as loving and obedient a wife to him, and
+would hang upon him as if her affection grew to him: and now within
+two months, or as it seemed to young Hamlet, less than two months, she
+had married again, married his uncle, her dead husband's brother, in
+itself a highly improper and unlawful marriage, from the nearness of
+relationship, but made much more so by the indecent haste with which
+it was concluded, and the unkingly character of the man whom she had
+chosen to be the partner of her throne and bed. This it was which,
+more than the loss of ten kingdoms, dashed the spirits, and brought a
+cloud over the mind of this honourable young prince.
+
+In vain was all that his mother Gertrude or the king could do to
+contrive to divert him; he still appeared in court in a suit of deep
+black, as mourning for the king his father's death, which mode of
+dress he had never laid aside, not even in compliment to his mother
+upon the day she was married, nor could he be brought to join in
+any of the festivities or rejoicings of that (as appeared to him)
+disgraceful day.
+
+What mostly troubled him was an uncertainty about the manner of his
+father's death. It was given out by Claudius, that a serpent had stung
+him: but young Hamlet had shrewd suspicions that Claudius himself was
+the serpent; in plain English, that he had murdered him for his crown,
+and that the serpent who stung his father did now sit on the throne.
+
+How far he was right in this conjecture, and what he ought to think of
+his mother, how far she was privy to this murder, and whether by her
+consent or knowledge, or without, it came to pass, were the doubts
+which continually harassed and distracted him.
+
+A rumour had reached the ear of young Hamlet, that an apparition,
+exactly resembling the dead king his father, had been seen by the
+soldiers upon watch, on the platform before the palace at midnight,
+for two or three nights successively. The figure came constantly clad
+in the same suit of armour, from head to foot, which the dead king was
+known to have worn: and they who saw it (Hamlet's bosom-friend Horatio
+was one) agreed in their testimony as to the time and manner of its
+appearance: that it came just as the clock struck twelve; that it
+looked pale, with a face more of sorrow than of anger; that its beard
+was grisly, and the colour a _sable silvered_, as they had seen it in
+his life-time: that it made no answer when they spoke to it, yet once
+they thought it lifted up its head, and addressed itself to motion, as
+if it were about to speak; but in that moment the morning cock crew,
+and it shrunk in haste away, and vanished out of their sight.
+
+The young prince, strangely amazed at their relation, which was too
+consistent and agreeing with itself to disbelieve, concluded that it
+was his father's ghost which they had seen, and determined to take his
+watch with the soldiers that night, that he might have a chance of
+seeing it: for he reasoned with himself, that such an appearance did
+not come for nothing, but that the ghost had something to impart, and
+though it had been silent hitherto, yet it would speak to him. And he
+waited with impatience for the coming of night.
+
+When night came he took his stand with Horatio, and Marcellus one of
+the guard, upon the platform, where this apparition was accustomed
+to walk: and it being a cold night, and the air unusually raw and
+nipping, Hamlet and Horatio and their companion fell into some talk
+about the coldness of the night, which was suddenly broken off by
+Horatio announcing that the ghost was coming.
+
+At the sight of his father's spirit, Hamlet was struck with a sudden
+surprize and fear. He at first called upon the angels and heavenly
+ministers to defend them, for he knew not whether it were a good
+spirit or bad; whether it came for good or for evil: but he gradually
+assumed more courage; and his father (as it seemed to him) looked upon
+him so piteously, and, as it were desiring to have conversation with
+him, and did in all respects appear so like himself as he was when he
+lived, that Hamlet could not help addressing him: he called him by
+his name, Hamlet, King, Father! and conjured him that he would tell
+the reason why he had left his grave, where they had seen him quietly
+bestowed, to come again and visit the earth and the moonlight: and
+besought him that he would let them know if there was any thing which
+they could do to give peace to his spirit. And the ghost beckoned to
+Hamlet, that he should go with him to some more removed place, where
+they might be alone: and Horatio and Marcellus would have dissuaded
+the young prince from following it, for they feared lest it should be
+some evil spirit, who would tempt him to the neighbouring sea, or to
+the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on some horrible shape
+which might deprive the prince of his reason. But their counsels and
+intreaties could not alter Hamlet's determination, who cared too
+little about life to fear the losing of it; and as to his soul, he
+said, what could the spirit do to that, being a thing immortal as
+itself? and he felt as hardy as a lion, and bursting from them who did
+all they could to hold him, he followed whithersoever the spirit led
+him.
+
+And when they were alone together, the spirit broke silence, and told
+him that he was the ghost of Hamlet, his father, who had been cruelly
+murdered, and he told the manner of it; that it was done by his own
+brother Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, as Hamlet had already but too much
+suspected, for the hope of succeeding to his bed and crown. That as he
+was sleeping in his garden, his custom always in the afternoon, his
+treasonous brother stole upon him in his sleep, and poured the juice
+of poisonous henbane into his ears, which has such an antipathy to
+the life of man, that swift as quicksilver it courses through all the
+veins of the body, baking up the blood, and spreading a crust-like
+leprosy all over the skin: thus sleeping, by a brother's hand he
+was cut off at once from his crown, his queen, and his life: and he
+adjured Hamlet, if he did ever his dear father love, that he would
+revenge his foul murder. And the ghost lamented to his son, that his
+mother should so fall off from virtue, as to prove false to the wedded
+love of her first husband, and to marry his murderer: but he cautioned
+Hamlet, howsoever he proceeded in his revenge against his wicked
+uncle, by no means to act any violence against the person of his
+mother, but to leave her to heaven, and to the stings and thorns of
+conscience. And Hamlet promised to observe the ghost's direction in
+all things, and the ghost vanished.
+
+And when Hamlet was left alone, he took up a solemn resolution, that
+all he had in his memory, all that he had ever learned by books or
+observation, should be instantly forgotten by him, and nothing live in
+his brain but the memory of what the ghost had told him, and enjoined
+him to do. And Hamlet related the particulars of the conversation
+which had passed to none but his dear friend Horatio; and he enjoined
+both to him and Marcellus the strictest secrecy as to what they had
+seen that night.
+
+The terror which the sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of
+Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his
+mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would
+continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation,
+and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was
+meditating any thing against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of
+his father's death than he professed, took up a strange resolution
+from that time to counterfeit as if he were really and truly mad;
+thinking that he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle
+should believe him incapable of any serious project, and that his real
+perturbation of mind would be best covered and pass concealed under a
+disguise of pretended lunacy.
+
+From this time Hamlet affected a certain wildness and strangeness
+in his apparel, his speech, and behaviour, and did so excellently
+counterfeit the madman, that the king and queen were both deceived,
+and not thinking his grief for his father's death a sufficient cause
+to produce such a distemper, for they knew not of the appearance of
+the ghost, they concluded that his malady was love, and they thought
+they had found out the object.
+
+Before Hamlet fell into the melancholy way which has been related, he
+had dearly loved a fair maid called Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius,
+the king's chief counsellor in affairs of state. He had sent her
+letters and rings, and made many tenders of his affection to her, and
+importuned her with love in honourable fashion: and she had given
+belief to his vows and importunities. But the melancholy which he fell
+into latterly had made him neglect her, and from the time he conceived
+the project of counterfeiting madness, he affected to treat her with
+unkindness, and a sort of rudeness; but she, good lady, rather than
+reproach him with being false to her, persuaded herself that it was
+nothing but the disease in his mind, and no settled unkindness, which
+had made him less observant of her than formerly; and she compared the
+faculties of his once noble mind and excellent understanding, impaired
+as they were with the deep melancholy that oppressed him, to sweet
+bells which in themselves are capable of most exquisite music, but
+when jangled out of tune, or rudely handled, produce only a harsh and
+unpleasing sound.
+
+Though the rough business which Hamlet had in hand, the revenging of
+his father's death upon his murderer, did not suit with the playful
+state of courtship, or admit of the society of so idle a passion as
+love now seemed to him, yet it could not hinder but that soft thoughts
+of his Ophelia would come between, and in one of these moments,
+when he thought that his treatment of this gentle lady had been
+unreasonably harsh, he wrote her a letter full of wild starts of
+passion, and in extravagant terms, such as agreed with his supposed
+madness, but mixed with some gentle touches of affection, which could
+not but shew to this honoured lady that a deep love for her yet lay at
+the bottom of his heart. He bade her to doubt the stars were fire, and
+to doubt that the sun did move, to doubt truth to be a liar, but never
+to doubt that he loved; with more of such extravagant phrases. This
+letter Ophelia dutifully shewed to her father, and the old man thought
+himself bound to communicate it to the king and queen, who from that
+time supposed that the true cause of Hamlet's madness was love. And
+the queen wished that the good beauties of Ophelia might be the happy
+cause of his wildness, for so she hoped that her virtues might happily
+restore him to his accustomed way again, to both their honours.
+
+But Hamlet's malady lay deeper than she supposed, or than could be
+so cured. His father's ghost, which he had seen, still haunted his
+imagination, and the sacred injunction to revenge his murder gave him
+no rest till it was accomplished. Every hour of delay seemed to him a
+sin, and a violation of his father's commands. Yet how to compass the
+death of the king, surrounded as he constantly was with his guards,
+was no easy matter. Or if it had been, the presence of the queen,
+Hamlet's mother, who was generally with the king, was a restraint
+upon his purpose, which he could not break through. Besides, the very
+circumstance that the usurper was his mother's husband filled him with
+some remorse, and still blunted the edge of his purpose. The mere
+act of putting a fellow-creature to death was in itself odious and
+terrible to a disposition naturally so gentle as Hamlet's was. His
+very melancholy, and the dejection of spirits he had so long been in,
+produced an irresoluteness and wavering of purpose, which kept him
+from proceeding to extremities. Moreover, he could not help having
+some scruples upon his mind, whether the spirit which he had seen
+was indeed his father, or whether it might not be the devil, who he
+had heard has power to take any form he pleases, and who might have
+assumed his father's shape only to take advantage of his weakness and
+his melancholy, to drive him to the doing of so desperate an act as
+murder. And he determined that he would have more certain grounds to
+go upon than a vision, or apparition, which might be a delusion.
+
+While he was in this irresolute mind, there came to the court
+certain players, in whom Hamlet formerly used to take delight, and
+particularly to hear one of them speak a tragical speech, describing
+the death of old Priam, king of Troy, with the grief of Hecuba, his
+queen. Hamlet welcomed his old friends, the players, and remembering
+how that speech had formerly given him pleasure, requested the player
+to repeat it; which he did in so lively a manner, setting forth the
+cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his
+people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running
+barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head
+where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins,
+snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe: that not only
+it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real
+scene, so livelily was it represented, but even the player himself
+delivered it with a broken voice and real tears. This put Hamlet upon
+thinking, if that player could so work himself up to passion by a mere
+fictitious speech, to weep for one that he had never seen, for Hecuba,
+that had been dead so many hundred years, how dull was he, who having
+a real motive and cue for passion, a real king and a dear father
+murdered, was yet so little moved, that his revenge all this while had
+seemed to have slept in dull and muddy forgetfulness! And while he
+meditated on actors and acting, and the powerful effects which a good
+play, represented to the life, has upon the spectator, he remembered
+the instance of some murderer, who seeing a murder on the stage,
+was by the mere force of the scene and resemblance of circumstances
+so affected, that on the spot he confessed the crime which he had
+committed. And he determined that these players should play something
+like the murder of his father before his uncle, and he would watch
+narrowly what effect it might have upon him, and from his looks he
+would be able to gather with more certainty if he were the murderer
+or not. To this effect he ordered a play to be prepared, to the
+representation of which he invited the king and queen.
+
+The story of the play was of a murder done in Vienna upon a duke. The
+duke's name was Gonzago, his wife Baptista. The play shewed how one
+Lucianus, a near relation to the duke, poisoned him in his garden for
+his estate, and how the murderer in a short time after got the love of
+Gonzago's wife.
+
+At the representation of this play the king, who did not know the trap
+which was laid for him, was present, with his queen and the whole
+court: Hamlet sitting attentively near him to observe his looks. The
+play began with a conversation between Gonzago and his wife, in which
+the lady made many protestations of love, and of never marrying a
+second husband, if she should outlive Gonzago; wishing she might be
+accursed if she ever took a second husband, and adding that no woman
+ever did so but those wicked women who kill their first husbands.
+Hamlet observed the king, his uncle, change colour at this expression,
+and that it was as bad as wormwood both to him and to the queen. But
+when Lucianus, according to the story, came to poison Gonzago sleeping
+in the garden, the strong resemblance which it bore to his own wicked
+act upon the late king, his brother, whom he had poisoned in his
+garden, so struck upon the conscience of this usurper, that he was
+unable to sit out the rest of the play, but on a sudden calling for
+lights to his chamber, and affecting or partly feeling a sudden
+sickness, he abruptly left the theatre. The king being departed the
+play was given over. Now Hamlet had seen enough to be satisfied that
+the words of the ghost were true, and no illusion; and in a fit of
+gaiety, like that which comes over a man who suddenly has some great
+doubt or scruple resolved, he swore to Horatio that he would take the
+ghost's word for a thousand pounds. But before he could make up his
+resolution as to what measures of revenge he should take, now he was
+certainly informed that his uncle was his father's murderer, he was
+sent for by the queen, his mother, to a private conference in her
+closet.
+
+It was by desire of the king that the queen sent for Hamlet, that she
+might signify to her son how much his late behaviour had displeased
+them both; and the king, wishing to know all that passed at that
+conference, and thinking that the too partial report of a mother might
+let slip some part of Hamlet's words, which it might much import the
+king to know, Polonius, the old counsellor of state, was ordered to
+plant himself behind the hangings in the queen's closet, where he
+might unseen hear all that passed. This artifice was particularly
+adapted to the disposition of Polonius, who was a man grown old in
+crooked maxims and policies of state, and delighted to get at the
+knowledge of matters in an indirect and cunning way.
+
+Hamlet being come to his mother, she began to tax him in the roundest
+way with his actions and behaviour, and she told him that he had given
+great offence to _his father_, meaning the king, his uncle, whom,
+because he had married her, she called Hamlet's father. Hamlet, sorely
+indignant that she should give so dear and honoured a name as father
+seemed to him, to a wretch who was indeed no better than the murderer
+of his true father, with some sharpness replied, "Mother, _you_ have
+much offended _my father_." The queen said that was but an idle
+answer. "As good as the question deserved," said Hamlet. The queen
+asked him if he had forgotten who it was he was speaking to? "Alas!"
+replied Hamlet, "I wish I could forget. You are the queen, your
+husband's brother's wife; and you are my mother: I wish you were not
+what you are." "Nay, then," said the queen, "if you shew me so little
+respect, I will set those to you that can speak," and was going to
+send the king or Polonius to him. But Hamlet would not let her go, now
+he had her alone, till he had tried if his words could not bring her
+to some sense of her wicked life; and, taking her by the wrist, he
+held her fast, and made her sit down. She, affrighted at his earnest
+manner, and fearful lest in his lunacy he should do her a mischief,
+cried out: and a voice was heard from behind the hangings, "Help, help
+the queen;" which Hamlet hearing, and verily thinking that it was the
+king himself there concealed, he drew his sword, and stabbed at the
+place where the voice came from, as he would have stabbed a rat that
+ran there, till the voice ceasing, he concluded the person to be dead.
+But when he dragged forth the body, it was not the king, but Polonius,
+the old officious counsellor, that had planted himself as a spy behind
+the hangings. "Oh me!" exclaimed the queen, "what a rash and bloody
+deed have you done!" "A bloody deed, mother," replied Hamlet, "but not
+so bad as yours, who killed a king, and married his brother." Hamlet
+had gone too far to leave off here. He was now in the humour to speak
+plainly to his mother, and he pursued it. And though the faults of
+parents are to be tenderly treated by their children, yet in the case
+of great crimes the son may have leave to speak even to his own mother
+with some harshness, so as that harshness is meant for her good, and
+to turn her from her wicked ways, and not done for the purpose of
+upbraiding. And now this virtuous prince did in moving terms represent
+to the queen the heinousness of her offence, in being so forgetful of
+the dead king, his father, as in so short a space of time to marry
+with his brother and reputed murderer: such an act as, after the vows
+which she had sworn to her first husband, was enough to make all vows
+of women suspected, and all virtue to be accounted hypocrisy, wedding
+contracts to be less than gamesters' oaths, and religion to be a
+mockery and a mere form of words. He said she had done such a deed,
+that the heavens blushed at it, and the earth was sick of her because
+of it. And he shewed her two pictures, the one of the late king, her
+first husband, and the other of the present king, her second husband,
+and he bade her mark the difference: what a grace was on the brow
+of his father, how like a god he looked! the curls of Apollo, the
+forehead of Jupiter, the eye of Mars, and a posture like to Mercury
+newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he said, _had
+been_ her husband. And then he shewed her whom she had got in his
+stead: how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted
+his wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should
+so turn her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw so black and
+deformed. And he asked her how she could continue to live with this
+man, and be a wife to him, who had murdered her first husband, and
+got the crown by as false means as a thief--And just as he spoke, the
+ghost of his father, such as he was in his lifetime, and such as he
+had lately seen it, entered the room, and Hamlet, in great terror,
+asked what it would have; and the ghost said that it came to remind
+him of the revenge he had promised, which Hamlet seemed to have
+forgot: and the ghost bade him speak to his mother, for the grief and
+terror she was in would else kill her. It then vanished, and was seen
+by none but Hamlet, neither could he by pointing to where it stood,
+or by any description, make his mother perceive it; who was terribly
+frighted all this while to hear him conversing, as it seemed to her,
+with nothing: and she imputed it to the disorder of his mind. But
+Hamlet begged her not to flatter her wicked soul in such a manner as
+to think that it was his madness, and not her own offences, which had
+brought his father's spirit again on the earth. And he bade her feel
+his pulse, how temperately it beat, not like a madman's. And he begged
+of her with tears, to confess herself to heaven for what was past,
+and for the future to avoid the company of the king, and be no more
+as a wife to him: and when she should shew herself a mother to him,
+by respecting his father's memory, he would ask a blessing of her as
+a son. And she promising to observe his directions, the conference
+ended.
+
+And now Hamlet was at leisure to consider who it was that in his
+unfortunate rashness he had killed: and when he came to see that it
+was Polonius, the father of the lady Ophelia, whom he so dearly loved,
+he drew apart the dead body, and, his spirits being now a little
+quieter, he wept for what he had done.
+
+The unfortunate death of Polonius gave the king a pretence for sending
+Hamlet out of the kingdom. He would willingly have put him to death,
+fearing him as dangerous; but he dreaded the people, who loved Hamlet;
+and the queen, who, with all her faults, doted upon the prince, her
+son. So this subtle king, under pretence of providing for Hamlet's
+safety, that he might not be called to account for Polonius' death,
+caused him to be conveyed on board a ship bound for England, under the
+care of two courtiers, by whom he dispatched letters to the English
+court, which at that time was in subjection and paid tribute to
+Denmark, requiring for special reasons there pretended, that Hamlet
+should be put to death as soon as he landed on English ground. Hamlet,
+suspecting some treachery, in the night-time secretly got at the
+letters, and skilfully erasing his own name, he in the stead of it
+put in the names of those two courtiers, who had the charge of him,
+to be put to death: then sealing up the letters, he put them into
+their place again. Soon after the ship was attacked by pirates, and a
+sea-fight commenced; in the course of which Hamlet, desirous to shew
+his valour, with sword in hand singly boarded the enemy's vessel;
+while his own ship, in a cowardly manner, bore away, and leaving him
+to his fate, the two courtiers made the best of their way to England,
+charged with those letters the sense of which Hamlet had altered to
+their own deserved destruction.
+
+The pirates, who had the prince in their power, shewed themselves
+gentle enemies; and knowing whom they had got prisoner, in the hope
+that the prince might do them a good turn at court in recompence
+for any favour they might shew him, they set Hamlet on shore at the
+nearest port in Denmark. From that place Hamlet wrote to the king,
+acquainting him with the strange chance which had brought him back to
+his own country, and saying that on the next day he should present
+himself before his majesty. When he got home, a sad spectacle offered
+itself the first thing to his eyes.
+
+This was the funeral of the young and beautiful Ophelia, his once dear
+mistress. The wits of this young lady had begun to turn ever since
+her poor father's death. That he should die a violent death, and by
+the hands of the prince whom she loved, so affected this tender young
+maid, that in a little time she grew perfectly distracted, and would
+go about giving flowers away to the ladies of the court, and saying
+that they were for her father's burial, singing songs about love and
+about death, and sometimes such as had no meaning at all, as if she
+had no memory of what had happened to her. There was a willow which
+grew slanting over a brook, and reflected its leaves in the stream. To
+this brook she came one day when she was unwatched, with garlands she
+had been making, mixed up of daisies and nettles, flowers and weeds
+together, and clambering up to hang her garland upon the boughs of the
+willow, a bow broke and precipitated this fair young maid, garland,
+and all that she had gathered, into the water, where her clothes bore
+her up for a while, during which she chaunted scraps of old tunes,
+like one insensible to her own distress, or as if she were a creature
+natural to that element: but long it was not before her garments,
+heavy with the wet, pulled her in from her melodious singing to a
+muddy and miserable death. It was the funeral of this fair maid which
+her brother Laertes was celebrating, the king and queen and whole
+court being present, when Hamlet arrived. He knew not what all this
+shew imported, but stood on one side, not inclining to interrupt the
+ceremony. He saw the flowers strewed upon her grave, as the custom was
+in maiden burials, which the queen herself threw in; and as she threw
+them, she said, "Sweets to the sweet! I thought to have decked thy
+bride-bed, sweet maid, not to have strewed thy grave. Thou shouldst
+have been my Hamlet's wife." And he heard her brother wish that
+violets might spring from her grave: and he saw him leap into the
+grave all frantic with grief, and bid the attendants pile mountains
+of earth upon him, that he might be buried with her. And Hamlet's love
+for this fair maid came back to him, and he could not bear that a
+brother should shew so much transport of grief, for he thought that he
+loved Ophelia better than forty thousand brothers. Then discovering
+himself, he leaped into the grave where Laertes was, all as frantic or
+more frantic than he, and Laertes knowing him to be Hamlet, who had
+been the cause of his father's and his sister's death, grappled him by
+the throat as an enemy, till the attendants parted them: and Hamlet,
+after the funeral, excused his hasty act in throwing himself into
+the grave as if to brave Laertes; but he said he could not bear that
+any one should seem to outgo him in grief for the death of the fair
+Ophelia. And for the time these two noble youths seemed reconciled.
+
+But out of the grief and anger of Laertes for the death of his
+father and Ophelia, the king, Hamlet's wicked uncle, contrived
+destruction for Hamlet. He set on Laertes, under cover of peace and
+reconciliation, to challenge Hamlet to a friendly trial of skill at
+fencing, which Hamlet accepting, a day was appointed to try the match.
+At this match all the court was present, and Laertes, by direction of
+the king, prepared a poisoned weapon. Upon this match great wagers
+were laid by the courtiers, as both Hamlet and Laertes were known to
+excel at this sword-play; and Hamlet taking up the foils chose one,
+not at all suspecting the treachery of Laertes, or being careful to
+examine Laertes' weapon, who, instead of a foil or blunted sword,
+which the laws of fencing require, made use of one with a point, and
+poisoned. At first Laertes did but play with Hamlet, and suffered him
+to gain some advantages, which the dissembling king magnified and
+extolled beyond measure, drinking to Hamlet's success, and wagering
+rich bets upon the issue: but after a few passes, Laertes growing
+warm made a deadly thrust at Hamlet with his poisoned weapon, and
+gave him a mortal blow. Hamlet incensed, but not knowing the whole of
+the treachery, in the scuffle exchanged his own innocent weapon for
+Laertes' deadly one, and with a thrust of Laertes' own sword repaid
+Laertes home, who was thus justly caught in his own treachery. In
+this instant the queen shrieked out that she was poisoned. She had
+inadvertently drunk out of a bowl which the king had prepared for
+Hamlet, in case that being warm in fencing he should call for drink:
+into this the treacherous king had infused a deadly poison, to make
+sure of Hamlet, if Laertes had failed. He had forgotten to warn
+the queen of the bowl, which she drank of, and immediately died,
+exclaiming with her last breath that she was poisoned. Hamlet,
+suspecting some treachery, ordered the doors to be shut, while he
+sought it out. Laertes told him to seek no further, for he was the
+traitor; and feeling his life go away with the wound which Hamlet had
+given him, he made confession of the treachery he had used, and how he
+had fallen a victim to it: and he told Hamlet of the envenomed point,
+and said that Hamlet had not half an hour to live, for no medicine
+could cure him; and begging forgiveness of Hamlet he died, with his
+last words accusing the king of being the contriver of the mischief.
+When Hamlet saw his end draw near, there being yet some venom left
+upon the sword, he suddenly turned upon his false uncle, and thrust
+the point of it to his heart, fulfilling the promise which he had made
+to his father's spirit, whose injunction was now accomplished, and
+his foul murder revenged upon the murderer. Then Hamlet, feeling his
+breath fail and life departing, turned to his dear friend Horatio, who
+had been spectator of this fatal tragedy; and with his dying breath
+requested him that he would live to tell his story to the world (for
+Horatio had made a motion as if he would slay himself to accompany
+the prince in death), and Horatio promised that he would make a true
+report, as one that was privy to all the circumstances. And, thus
+satisfied, the noble heart of Hamlet cracked: and Horatio and the
+bystanders with many tears commended the spirit of their sweet prince
+to the guardianship of angels. For Hamlet was a loving and a gentle
+prince, and greatly beloved for his many noble and prince-like
+qualities; and if he had lived, would no doubt have proved a most
+royal and complete king to Denmark.
+
+
+
+
+OTHELLO
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+Brabantio, the rich senator of Venice, had a fair daughter, the gentle
+Desdemona. She was sought to by divers suitors, both on account of
+her many virtuous qualities and for her rich expectations. But among
+the suitors of her own clime and complexion she saw none whom she
+could affect: for this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than
+the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than
+imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black,
+whom her father loved, and often invited to his house.
+
+Neither is Desdemona to be altogether condemned for the unsuitableness
+of the person whom she selected for her lover. Bating that Othello was
+black, the noble Moor wanted nothing which might recommend him to the
+affections of the greatest lady. He was a soldier, and a brave one;
+and by his conduct in bloody wars against the Turks, had risen to the
+rank of general in the Venetian service, and was esteemed and trusted
+by the state.
+
+He had been a traveller, and Desdemona (as is the manner of ladies)
+loved to hear him tell the story of his adventures, which he would
+run through from his earliest recollection; the battles, sieges, and
+encounters, which he had past through; the perils he had been exposed
+to by land and by water; his hair-breadth escapes, when he has entered
+a breach, or marched up to the mouth of a cannon; and how he had
+been taken prisoner by the insolent enemy, and sold to slavery: how
+he demeaned himself in that state, and how he escaped: all these
+accounts, added to the narration of the strange things he had seen in
+foreign countries, the vast wildernesses and romantic caverns, the
+quarries, the rocks and mountains, whose heads are in the clouds; of
+the savage nations, the cannibals who are man-eaters, and a race of
+people in Africa whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders: these
+travellers' stories would so enchain the attention of Desdemona, that
+if she were called off at any time by household affairs, she would
+dispatch with all haste that business, and return, and with a greedy
+ear devour Othello's discourse. And once he took advantage of a pliant
+hour, and drew from her a prayer, that he would tell her the whole
+story of his life at large, of which she had heard so much, but only
+by parts: to which he consented, and beguiled her of many a tear, when
+he spoke of some distressful stroke which his youth suffered.
+
+His story being done, she gave him for his pains a world of sighs: she
+swore a pretty oath, that it was all passing strange, and pitiful,
+wondrous pitiful: she wished (she said) she had not heard it, yet she
+wished that heaven had made her such a man: and then she thanked him,
+and told him, if he had a friend who loved her, he had only to teach
+him how to tell his story, and that would woo her. Upon this hint,
+delivered not with more frankness than modesty, accompanied with a
+certain bewitching prettiness, and blushes, which Othello could not
+but understand, he spoke more openly of his love, and in this golden
+opportunity gained the consent of the generous lady Desdemona
+privately to marry him.
+
+Neither Othello's colour nor his fortune were such, that it could be
+hoped Brabantio would accept him for a son-in-law. He had left his
+daughter free; but he did expect that, as the manner of noble Venetian
+ladies was, she would choose ere long a husband of senatorial rank or
+expectations: but in this he was deceived; Desdemona loved the Moor,
+though he was black, and devoted her heart and fortunes to his valiant
+parts and qualities: so was her heart subdued to an implicit devotion
+to the man she had selected for a husband, that his very colour, which
+to all but this discerning lady would have proved an insurmountable
+objection, was by her esteemed above all the white skins and clear
+complexions of the young Venetian nobility, her suitors.
+
+Their marriage, which, though privately carried, could not long
+be kept a secret, came to the ears of the old man, Brabantio, who
+appeared in a solemn council of the senate, as an accuser of the Moor
+Othello, who by spells and witchcraft (he maintained) had seduced the
+affections of the fair Desdemona to marry him, without the consent of
+her father, and against the obligations of hospitality.
+
+At this juncture of time it happened that the state of Venice had
+immediate need of the services of Othello, news having arrived that
+the Turks with mighty preparation had fitted out a fleet, which was
+bending its course to the island of Cyprus, with intent to regain that
+strong post from the Venetians, who then held it: in this emergency
+the state turned its eyes upon Othello, who alone was deemed adequate
+to conduct the defence of Cyprus against the Turks. So that Othello,
+now summoned before the senate, stood in their presence at once as a
+candidate for a great state-employment, and as a culprit, charged with
+offences which by the laws of Venice were made capital.
+
+The age and senatorial character of old Brabantio commanded a most
+patient hearing from that grave assembly; but the incensed father
+conducted his accusation with so much intemperance, producing
+likelihoods and allegations for proofs, that, when Othello was called
+upon for his defence, he had only to relate a plain tale of the course
+of his love; which he did with such an artless eloquence, recounting
+the whole story of his wooing, as we have related it above, and
+delivered his speech with so noble a plainness (the evidence of
+truth), that the duke, who sat as chief judge, could not help
+confessing, that a tale so told would have won his daughter too: and
+the spells and conjurations, which Othello had used in his courtship,
+plainly appeared to have been no more than the honest arts of men in
+love; and the only witchcraft which he had used the faculty of telling
+a soft tale to win a lady's ear.
+
+This statement of Othello was confirmed by the testimony of the lady
+Desdemona herself, who appeared in court, and professing a duty to her
+father for life and education, challenged leave of him to profess a
+yet higher duty to her lord and husband, even so much as her mother
+had shewn in preferring him (Brabantio) above _her_ father.
+
+The old senator, unable to maintain his plea, called the Moor to him
+with many expressions of sorrow, and, as an act of necessity, bestowed
+upon him his daughter, whom, if he had been free to withhold her, (he
+told him) he would with all his heart have kept from him; adding, that
+he was glad at soul that he had no other child, for this behaviour of
+Desdemona would have taught him to be a tyrant, and hang clogs on them
+for her desertion.
+
+This difficulty being got over, Othello, to whom custom had rendered
+the hardships of a military life as natural as food and rest are to
+other men, readily undertook the management of the wars in Cyprus:
+and Desdemona, preferring the honour of her lord (though with danger)
+before the indulgence of those idle delights in which new-married
+people usually waste their time, cheerfully consented to his going.
+
+No sooner were Othello and his lady landed in Cyprus, than news
+arrived, that a desperate tempest had dispersed the Turkish fleet,
+and thus the island was secure from any immediate apprehension of an
+attack. But the war, which Othello was to suffer, was now beginning;
+and the enemies, which malice stirred up against his innocent lady,
+proved in their nature more deadly than strangers or infidels.
+
+Among all the general's friends no one possessed the confidence of
+Othello more entirely than Cassio. Michael Cassio was a young soldier,
+a Florentine, gay, amorous, and of pleasing address, favourite
+qualities with women; he was handsome, and eloquent, and exactly such
+a person as might alarm the jealousy of a man advanced in years (as
+Othello in some measure was), who had married a young and beautiful
+wife; but Othello was as free from jealousy as he was noble, and as
+incapable of suspecting, as of doing, a base action. He had employed
+this Cassio in his love-affair with Desdemona, and Cassio had been a
+sort of go-between in his suit: for Othello, fearing that himself had
+not those soft parts of conversation which please ladies, and finding
+these qualities in his friend, would often depute Cassio to go (as he
+phrased it) a courting for him: such innocent simplicity being rather
+an honour than a blemish to the character of the valiant Moor. So that
+no wonder, if next to Othello himself (but at far distance, as beseems
+a virtuous wife) the gentle Desdemona loved and trusted Cassio. Nor
+had the marriage of this couple made any difference in their behaviour
+to Michael Cassio. He frequented their house, and his free and
+rattling talk was no unpleasing variety to Othello, who was himself of
+a more serious temper: for such tempers are observed often to delight
+in their contraries, as a relief from the oppressive excess of their
+own: and Desdemona and Cassio would talk and laugh together, as in the
+days when he went a courting for his friend.
+
+Othello had lately promoted Cassio to be the lieutenant, a place of
+trust, and nearest to the general's person. This promotion gave great
+offence to Iago, an older officer, who thought he had a better claim
+than Cassio, and would often ridicule Cassio, as a fellow fit only for
+the company of ladies, and one that knew no more of the art of war,
+or how to set an army in array for battle, than a girl. Iago hated
+Cassio, and he hated Othello, as well for favouring Cassio, as for an
+unjust suspicion, which he had lightly taken up against Othello, that
+the Moor was too fond of Iago's wife Emilia. From these imaginary
+provocations, the plotting mind of Iago conceived a horrid scheme of
+revenge, which should involve both Cassio, the Moor, and Desdemona in
+one common ruin.
+
+Iago was artful, and had studied human nature deeply, and he knew that
+of all the torments which afflict the mind of man (and far beyond
+bodily torture), the pains of jealousy were the most intolerable, and
+had the sorest sting. If he could succeed in making Othello jealous of
+Cassio, he thought it would be an exquisite plot of revenge, and might
+end in the death of Cassio or Othello, or both; he cared not.
+
+The arrival of the general and his lady in Cyprus, meeting with the
+news of the dispersion of the enemy's fleet, made a sort of holiday
+in the island. Every body gave themselves up to feasting and making
+merry. Wine flowed in abundance, and cups went round to the health of
+the black Othello, and his lady the fair Desdemona.
+
+Cassio had the direction of the guard that night, with a charge from
+Othello to keep the soldiers from excess in drinking, that no brawl
+might arise, to fright the inhabitants, or disgust them with the
+new-landed forces. That night Iago began his deep-laid plans of
+mischief; under cover of loyalty and love to the general, he enticed
+Cassio to make rather too free with the bottle (a great fault in an
+officer upon guard). Cassio for a time resisted, but he could not long
+hold out against the honest freedom which Iago knew how to put on, but
+kept swallowing glass after glass (as Iago still plied him with drink
+and encouraging songs), and Cassio's tongue ran over in praise of the
+lady Desdemona, whom he again and again toasted, affirming that she
+was a most exquisite lady: until at last the enemy which he put into
+his mouth, stole away his brains; and upon some provocation given him
+by a fellow whom Iago had set on, swords were drawn, and Montano, a
+worthy officer, who interfered to appease the dispute, was wounded in
+the scuffle. The riot now began to be general, and Iago, who had set
+on foot the mischief, was foremost in spreading the alarm, causing
+the castle-bell to be rung (as if some dangerous mutiny instead of a
+slight drunken quarrel had arisen): the alarm-bell ringing awakened
+Othello, who, dressing in a hurry, and coming to the scene of action,
+questioned Cassio of the cause. Cassio was now come to himself, the
+effect of the wine having a little gone off, but was too much ashamed
+to reply; and Iago, pretending a great reluctance to accuse Cassio,
+but as it were forced into it by Othello, who insisted to know the
+truth, gave an account of the whole matter (leaving out his own share
+in it, which Cassio was too far gone to remember) in such a manner,
+as while he seemed to make Cassio's offence less, did indeed make it
+appear greater than it was. The result was, that Othello, who was a
+strict observer of discipline, was compelled to take away Cassio's
+place of lieutenant from him.
+
+Thus did Iago's first artifice succeed completely; he had now
+undermined his hated rival, and thrust him out of his place: but
+a further use was hereafter to be made of the adventure of this
+disastrous night.
+
+Cassio, whom this misfortune had entirely sobered, now lamented to
+his seeming friend Iago that he should have been such a fool as to
+transform himself into a beast. He was undone, for how could he ask
+the general for his place again! he would tell him he was a drunkard.
+He despised himself. Iago, affecting to make light of it, said, that
+he, or any man living, might be drunk upon occasion; it remained now
+to make the best of a bad bargain; the general's wife was now the
+general, and could do any thing with Othello; that he were best to
+apply to the lady Desdemona to mediate for him with her lord; that she
+was of a frank, obliging disposition, and would readily undertake a
+good office of this sort, and set Cassio right again in the general's
+favour; and then this crack in their love would be made stronger than
+ever. A good advice of Iago, if it had not been given for wicked
+purposes, which will after appear.
+
+Cassio did as Iago advised him, and made application to the lady
+Desdemona, who was easy to be won over in any honest suit; and she
+promised Cassio that she would be his solicitor with her lord, and
+rather die than give up his cause. This she immediately set about
+in so earnest and pretty a manner, that Othello, who was mortally
+offended with Cassio, could not put her off. When he pleaded delay,
+and that it was too soon to pardon such an offender, she would not
+be beat back, but insisted that it should be the next night, or the
+morning after, or the next morning to that at farthest. Then she
+shewed how penitent and humbled poor Cassio was, and that his offence
+did not deserve so sharp a check. And when Othello still hung back,
+"What! my lord," said she, "that I should have so much to do to
+plead for Cassio, Michael Cassio, that came a courting for you, and
+oftentimes, when I have spoken in dispraise of you, has taken your
+part! I count this but a little thing to ask of you. When I mean to
+try your love indeed, I shall ask a weighty matter." Othello could
+deny nothing to such a pleader, and only requesting that Desdemona
+would leave the time to him, promised to receive Michael Cassio again
+into favour.
+
+It happened that Othello and Iago had entered into the room
+where Desdemona was, just as Cassio, who had been imploring her
+intercession, was departing at the opposite door; and Iago, who was
+full of art, said in a low voice, as if to himself, "I like not that."
+Othello took no great notice of what he said; indeed the conference
+which immediately took place with his lady put it out of his head; but
+he remembered it afterwards. For when Desdemona was gone, Iago, as
+if for mere satisfaction of his thought, questioned Othello whether
+Michael Cassio, when Othello was courting his lady, knew of his love.
+To this the general answering in the affirmative, and adding, that he
+had gone between them very often during the courtship, Iago knitted
+his brow, as if he had got fresh light of some terrible matter, and
+cried, "Indeed!" This brought into Othello's mind the words which Iago
+had let fall upon entering the room and seeing Cassio with Desdemona;
+and he began to think there was some meaning in all this: for he
+deemed Iago to be a just man, and full of love and honesty, and what
+in a false knave would be tricks, in him seemed to be the natural
+workings of an honest mind, big with something too great for
+utterance: and Othello prayed Iago to speak what he knew, and to give
+his worst thoughts words. "And what," said Iago, "if some thoughts
+very vile should have intruded into my breast, as where is the palace
+into which foul things do not enter?" Then Iago went on to say, what
+a pity it were, if any trouble should arise to Othello out of his
+imperfect observations; that it would not be for Othello's peace to
+know his thoughts; that people's good names were not to be taken away
+for slight suspicions; and when Othello's curiosity was raised almost
+to distraction with these hints and scattered words, Iago, as if in
+earnest care for Othello's peace of mind, besought him to beware of
+jealousy: with such art did this villain raise suspicions in the
+unguarded Othello, by the very caution which he pretended to give
+him against suspicion. "I know," said Othello, "that my wife is fair,
+loves company and feasting, is free of speech, sings, plays, and
+dances well: but where virtue is, these qualities are virtuous. I must
+have proof before I think her dishonest." Then Iago, as if glad that
+Othello was slow to believe ill of his lady, frankly declared that he
+had no proof, but begged Othello to observe her behaviour well, when
+Cassio was by; not to be jealous, nor too secure neither, for that he
+(Iago) knew the dispositions of the Italian ladies, his country-women,
+better than Othello could do; and that in Venice the wives let heaven
+see many pranks they dared not shew their husbands. Then he artfully
+insinuated, that Desdemona deceived her father in marrying with
+Othello, and carried it so closely, that the poor old man thought that
+witchcraft had been used. Othello was much moved with this argument,
+which brought the matter home to him, for if she had deceived her
+father, why might she not deceive her husband?
+
+Iago begged pardon for having moved him; but Othello, assuming an
+indifference, while he was really shaken with inward grief at Iago's
+words, begged him to go on, which Iago did with many apologies, as
+if unwilling to produce any thing against Cassio, whom he called his
+friend: he then came strongly to the point, and reminded Othello how
+Desdemona had refused many suitable matches of her own clime and
+complexion, and had married him, a Moor, which shewed unnatural in
+her, and proved her to have a headstrong will: and when her better
+judgment returned, how probable it was she should fall upon comparing
+Othello with the fine forms and clear white complexions of the young
+Italians her countrymen. He concluded with advising Othello to put
+off his reconcilement with Cassio a little longer, and in the mean
+while to note with what earnestness Desdemona should intercede in his
+behalf; for that much would be seen in that. So mischievously did this
+artful villain lay his plots to turn the gentle qualities of this
+innocent lady into her destruction, and make a net for her out of her
+own goodness to entrap her: first setting Cassio on to intreat her
+mediation, and then out of that very mediation contriving stratagems
+for her ruin.
+
+The conference ended with Iago's begging Othello to account his wife
+innocent, until he had more decisive proof; and Othello promised to
+be patient: but from that moment the deceived Othello never tasted
+content of mind. Poppy, nor the juice of mandragora, nor all the
+sleeping potions in the world, could ever again restore to him that
+sweet rest, which he had enjoyed but yesterday. His occupation
+sickened upon him. He no longer took delight in arms. His heart,
+that used to be roused at the sight of troops, and banners, and
+battle-array, and would stir and leap at the sound of a drum, or a
+trumpet, or a neighing war-horse, seemed to have lost all that pride
+and ambition, which are a soldier's virtue; and his military ardour
+and all his old joys forsook him. Sometimes he thought his wife
+honest, and at times he thought her not so; sometimes he thought Iago
+just, and at times he thought him not so; then he would wish that he
+had never known of it; he was not the worse for her loving Cassio,
+so long as he knew it not: torn in pieces with these distracting
+thoughts, he once laid hold on Iago's throat, and demanded proof of
+Desdemona's guilt, or threatened instant death for his having belied
+her. Iago, feigning indignation that his honesty should be taken for
+a vice, asked Othello, if he had not sometimes seen a handkerchief
+spotted with strawberries in his wife's hand. Othello answered, that
+he had given her such a one, and that it was his first gift. "That
+same handkerchief," said Iago, "did I see Michael Cassio this day wipe
+his face with." "If it be as you say," said Othello, "I will not rest
+till a wide revenge swallow them up: and first, for a token of your
+fidelity, I expect that Cassio shall be put to death within three
+days; and for that fair devil [meaning his lady], I will withdraw and
+devise some swift means of death for her."
+
+Trifles, light as air, are to the jealous proofs as strong as holy
+writ. A handkerchief of his wife's seen in Cassio's hand, was motive
+enough to the deluded Othello to pass sentence of death upon them
+both, without once enquiring how Cassio came by it. Desdemona had
+never given such a present to Cassio, nor would this constant lady
+have wronged her lord with doing so naughty a thing, as giving his
+presents to another man; both Cassio and Desdemona were innocent of
+any offence against Othello: but the wicked Iago, whose spirits never
+slept in contrivance of villainy, had made his wife (a good, but a
+weak woman) steal this handkerchief from Desdemona, under pretence of
+getting the work copied, but in reality to drop it in Cassio's way,
+where he might find it, and give a handle to Iago's suggestion that it
+was Desdemona's present.
+
+Othello, soon after meeting his wife, pretended that he had a head-ach
+(as he might indeed with truth), and desired her to lend him her
+handkerchief to hold to his temples. She did so. "Not this," said
+Othello, "but that handkerchief I gave you." Desdemona had it not
+about her (for indeed it was stolen as we have related). "How!" said
+Othello, "this is a fault indeed. That handkerchief an Egyptian woman
+gave to my mother; the woman was a witch, and could read people's
+thoughts; she told my mother, while she kept it, it would make her
+amiable, and my father would love her; but, if she lost it, or gave
+it away, my father's fancy would turn, and he would lothe her as much
+as he had loved her. She dying gave it me, and bade me, if I ever
+married, to give it to my wife. I did so; take heed of it. Make it a
+darling as precious as your eye." "Is it possible?" said the frighted
+lady. "'Tis true:" continued Othello; "it is a magical handkerchief;
+a sibyl that had lived in the world two hundred years, in a fit of
+prophetic fury worked it; the silk-worms that furnished the silk were
+hallowed, and it was dyed in mummy of maidens' hearts conserved."
+Desdemona, hearing the wondrous virtues of the handkerchief, was ready
+to die with fear, for she plainly perceived she had lost it, and with
+it, she feared, the affections of her husband. Then Othello started,
+and looked as if he were going to do some rash thing, and still he
+demanded the handkerchief, which when she could not produce, she tried
+to divert her husband from too serious thoughts, and cheerfully told
+him, she saw all his talk about the handkerchief was only to put her
+off from her suit about Michael Cassio, whom she went on to praise (as
+Iago had foretold), till Othello in perfect distraction burst out of
+the room, and then Desdemona, though unwillingly, began to suspect her
+lord was jealous.
+
+What cause she could have ministered to him she knew not, and then
+she accused herself for accusing the noble Othello, and thought to be
+sure that some untoward news from Venice, or some state troubles, had
+puddled his spirits, and made his temper not so sweet as formerly. And
+she said, "Men are not gods, and we must not look for that observance
+from them when they are married, which they shew us on the bridal
+day." And she beshrewed herself for so unkindly judging of his
+unkindness.
+
+Again Othello and Desdemona met, and he accused her more plainly of
+being unfaithful, and of loving another man, but he did not name whom:
+and Othello wept, and Desdemona said, "Alas! the heavy day! why do you
+weep?" And Othello told her, he could have borne all sorts of evils
+with fortitude--poverty, and disease, and disgrace; but her infidelity
+had broken his heart: and he called her a weed, that looked so fair,
+and smelled so sweet, that the sense ached at it; and wished she had
+never been born. And when he had left her, this innocent lady was so
+stupefied with wonder at her lord's untrue suspicion of her, that a
+weight-like sleep came over her, and she only desired her attendant to
+make her bed, and to lay her wedding-sheets upon it, saying, that when
+people teach their babes, they do it by gentle means and easy tasks,
+and Othello might have chid her so; for in good faith she was but a
+child when she was chidden. And this was all the complaint which this
+gentle lady made.
+
+Desdemona being retired to bed expecting her lord would follow her,
+soon fell into a slumber the effect of her troubled spirits, when
+Othello entered the chamber, full of the black purpose which he had
+meditated of putting his lady to death. But when he saw her asleep, he
+thought he would not shed her blood, nor scar that white skin of hers,
+more white than alabaster. But he was resolved she should die; else
+(as he said) she would live to betray more men, as she had done him.
+Then he kissed her for the last time (as he said), and that kiss was
+so sweet, he must needs kiss her again: and he wept, but he said they
+were cruel tears.
+
+Desdemona was awakened with his kisses, and she looked upon Othello,
+and she saw him gnaw his under-lip, and roll his eyes, and she knew he
+was always fatal when he looked so: and he bade her prepare for death,
+and to say her prayers, for he would not kill her soul. And this
+innocent wife, as she lay at his mercy, begged for compassion, and to
+know her fault, and then he named Cassio, and the handkerchief which
+(he said) she had given him; and as the guiltless lady was proceeding
+to clear herself, he suddenly would hear no more, but covering her up
+in the bed-clothes, stifled her till she died.
+
+In this instant of time was brought into the house Cassio, wounded and
+bleeding, whom Iago had set one of his creatures on to assassinate;
+but the fellow not succeeding in his attempt to kill Cassio (whom
+he wounded, but not mortally), and being himself killed by Iago to
+prevent discovery, in his pockets were found certain letters, which
+made the guilt of Iago, and the innocence of Cassio, clear beyond
+all doubt; and Cassio now came to beg pardon of Othello, and to ask
+wherein he had offended him, that he had employed Iago to murder him.
+
+This discovery was as a thunderstroke to Othello, who now plainly
+saw that he was no better than a murderer, and that his wife (poor
+innocent lady) had been ever faithful to him; the extreme anguish of
+which discovery making life insupportable, he fell upon his sword, and
+throwing himself upon the body of his dear injured lady, expired.
+
+These rash acts raised much passion of horror and amazement in the
+by-standers, for Othello had borne a fair reputation, and till he was
+wrought upon by the arts of a villain, which his own noble nature
+never gave him leave to suspect, he was a loving and a doting husband.
+He had loved, not wisely, but too well; and his manly eyes (when he
+learned his mistake), though not used to weep on every small occasion,
+dropt tears as fast as the Arabian trees their gum. And when he was
+dead all his former merits and his valiant acts were remembered.
+Nothing now remained for his successor, but to put the utmost censure
+of the law in force against Iago, who was executed with strict
+tortures; and to send word to the state of Venice of the lamentable
+death of their renowned general.
+
+
+
+
+PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Pericles, prince of Tyre, became a voluntary exile from his dominions,
+to avert the dreadful calamities which Antiochus, the wicked emperor
+of Greece, threatened to bring upon his subjects and city of Tyre, in
+revenge for a discovery which the prince had made of a shocking deed
+which the emperor had done in secret; as commonly it proves dangerous
+to pry into the hidden crimes of great ones. Leaving the government of
+his people in the hands of his able and honest minister, Hellicanus,
+Pericles set sail from Tyre, thinking to absent himself till the wrath
+of Antiochus, who was mighty, should be appeased.
+
+The first place which the prince directed his course to was Tharsus,
+and hearing that the city of Tharsus was at that time suffering under
+a severe famine, he took with him store of provisions for its relief.
+On his arrival he found the city reduced to the utmost distress; and,
+he coming like a messenger from heaven with his unhoped-for succour,
+Cleon, the governor of Tharsus, welcomed him with boundless thanks.
+Pericles had not been here many days, before letters came from his
+faithful minister, warning him that it was not safe for him to stay
+at Tharsus, for Antiochus knew of his abode, and by secret emissaries
+dispatched for that purpose sought his life. Upon receipt of these
+letters Pericles put out to sea again, amidst the blessings and
+prayers of a whole people who had been fed by his bounty.
+
+He had not sailed far, when his ship was overtaken by a dreadful
+storm, and every man on board perished except Pericles, who was cast
+by the sea-waves naked on an unknown shore, where he had not wandered
+long before he met with some poor fishermen, who invited him to their
+homes, giving him clothes and provisions. The fishermen told Pericles
+the name of their country was Pentapolis, and that their king was
+Symonides, commonly called the good Symonides, because of his
+peaceable reign and good government. From them he also learned that
+king Symonides had a fair young daughter, and that the following day
+was her birth-day, when a grand tournament was to be held at court,
+many princes and knights being come from all parts to try their skill
+in arms for the love of Thaisa, this fair princess. While the prince
+was listening to this account, and secretly lamenting the loss of his
+good armour, which disabled him from making one among these valiant
+knights, another fisherman brought in a complete suit of armour that
+he had taken out of the sea with his fishing-net, which proved to be
+the very armour he had lost. When Pericles beheld his own armour, he
+said, "Thanks, Fortune; after all my crosses you give me somewhat to
+repair myself. This armour was bequeathed to me by my dead father, for
+whose dear sake I have so loved it, that whithersoever I went I still
+have kept it by me, and the rough sea that parted it from me, having
+now become calm, hath given it back again, for which I thank it,
+for, since I have my father's gift again, I think my shipwreck no
+misfortune."
+
+The next day Pericles, clad in his brave father's armour, repaired
+to the royal court of Symonides, where he performed wonders at the
+tournament, vanquishing with ease all the brave knights and valiant
+princes who contended with him in arms for the honour of Thaisa's
+love. When brave warriors contended at court-tournaments for the love
+of kings' daughters, if one proved sole victor over all the rest, it
+was usual for the great lady for whose sake these deeds of valour were
+undertaken to bestow all her respect upon the conqueror, and Thaisa
+did not depart from this custom, for she presently dismissed all the
+princes and knights whom Pericles had vanquished, and distinguished
+him by her especial favour and regard, crowning him with the wreath of
+victory, as king of that day's happiness; and Pericles became a most
+passionate lover of this beauteous princess from the first moment he
+beheld her.
+
+The good Symonides so well approved of the valour and noble qualities
+of Pericles, who was indeed a most accomplished gentleman, and well
+learned in all excellent arts, that though he knew not the rank of
+this royal stranger (for Pericles for fear of Antiochus gave out that
+he was a private gentleman of Tyre), yet did not Symonides disdain to
+accept of the valiant unknown for a son-in-law, when he perceived his
+daughter's affections were firmly fixed upon him.
+
+Pericles had not been many months married to Thaisa, before he
+received intelligence that his enemy Antiochus was dead; and that his
+subjects of Tyre, impatient of his long absence, threatened to revolt,
+and talked of placing Hellicanus upon his vacant throne. This news
+came from Hellicanus himself, who being a loyal subject to his royal
+master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent
+to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and
+resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to
+Symonides, to find that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the
+renowned prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the
+private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part
+both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he
+feared to trust to the perils of the sea, because Thaisa was with
+child; and Pericles himself wished her to remain with her father till
+after her confinement, but the poor lady so earnestly desired to go
+with her husband, that at last they consented, hoping she would reach
+Tyre before she was brought to-bed.
+
+The sea was no friendly element to unhappy Pericles, for long before
+they reached Tyre another dreadful tempest arose, which so terrified
+Thaisa that she was taken ill, and in a short space of time her nurse
+Lychorida came to Pericles with a little child in her arms, to tell
+the prince the sad tidings that his wife died the moment her little
+babe was born. She held the babe towards its father, saying, "Here is
+a thing too young for such a place. This is the child of your dead
+queen." No tongue can tell the dreadful sufferings of Pericles when
+he heard his wife was dead. As soon as he could speak, he said, "O
+you gods, why do you make us love your goodly gifts, and then snatch
+those gifts away?" "Patience, good sir," said Lychorida, "here is all
+that is left alive of our dead queen, a little daughter, and for your
+child's sake be more manly. Patience, good sir, even for the sake of
+this precious charge." Pericles took the new-born infant in his arms,
+and he said to the little babe, "Now may your life be mild, for a
+more blusterous birth had never babe! May your condition be mild and
+gentle, for you have had the rudest welcome that ever prince's child
+did meet with! May that which follows be happy, for you have had as
+chiding a nativity as fire, air, water, earth, and heaven, could make,
+to herald you from the womb! Even at the first, your loss," meaning in
+the death of her mother, "is more than all the joys which you shall
+find upon this earth, to which you are come a new visitor, shall be
+able to recompence."
+
+The storm still continuing to rage furiously, and the sailors having
+a superstition that while a dead body remained in the ship the storm
+would never cease, they came to Pericles to demand that his queen
+should be thrown overboard; and they said, "What courage, sir? God
+save you!" "Courage enough," said the sorrowing prince: "I do not fear
+the storm; it has done to me its worst; yet for the love of this poor
+infant, this fresh new sea-farer, I wish the storm was over." "Sir,"
+said the sailors, "your queen must overboard. The sea works high, the
+wind is loud, and the storm will not abate till the ship be cleared
+of the dead." Though Pericles knew how weak and unfounded this
+superstition was, yet he patiently submitted, saying, "As you think
+meet. Then she must overboard, most wretched queen!" And now this
+unhappy prince went to take a last view of his dear wife, and as he
+looked on his Thaisa, he said, "A terrible child-bed hast thou had, my
+dear; no light, no fire; the unfriendly elements forgot thee utterly,
+nor have I time to bring thee hallowed to thy grave, but must cast
+thee scarcely coffined into the sea, where for a monument upon thy
+bones the humming waters must overwhelm thy corpse, lying with simple
+shells. O Lychorida, bid Nestor bring me spices, ink, and paper, my
+casket and my jewels, and bid Nicandor bring me the satin coffin. Lay
+the babe upon the pillow, and go about this suddenly, Lychorida, while
+I say a priestly farewel to my Thaisa."
+
+They brought Pericles a large chest, in which (wrapt in a satin
+shroud) he placed his queen, and sweet-smelling spices he strewed
+over her, and beside her he placed rich jewels, and a written paper,
+telling who she was, and praying, if haply any one should find the
+chest which contained the body of his wife, they would give her
+burial: and then with his own hands he cast the chest into the sea.
+When the storm was over, Pericles ordered the sailors to make for
+Tharsus. "For," said Pericles, "the babe cannot hold out till we come
+to Tyre. At Tharsus I will leave it at careful nursing."
+
+After that tempestuous night when Thaisa was thrown into the sea, and
+while it was yet early morning, as Cerimon, a worthy gentleman of
+Ephesus, and a most skilful physician, was standing by the sea-side,
+his servants brought to him a chest, which they said the sea-waves had
+thrown on the land. "I never saw," said one of them, "so huge a billow
+as cast it on our shore." Cerimon ordered the chest to be conveyed to
+his own house, and when it was opened he beheld with wonder the body
+of a young and lovely lady; and the sweet-smelling spices, and rich
+casket of jewels, made him conclude it was some great person who was
+thus strangely entombed: searching further, he discovered a paper from
+which he learned that the corpse which lay as dead before him had been
+a queen, and wife to Pericles, prince of Tyre; and much admiring at
+the strangeness of that accident, and more pitying the husband who
+had lost this sweet lady, he said, "If you are living, Pericles, you
+have a heart that even cracks with woe." Then observing attentively
+Thaisa's face, he saw how fresh and unlike death her looks were; and
+he said, "They were too hasty that threw you into the sea:" for he did
+not believe her to be dead. He ordered a fire to be made, and proper
+cordials to be brought, and soft music to be played, which might
+help to calm her amazed spirits if she should revive; and he said
+to those who crowded round her, wondering at what they saw, "I pray
+you, gentlemen, give her air; this queen will live; she has not been
+entranced above five hours; and see, she begins to blow into life
+again; she is alive; behold, her eyelids move; this fair creature will
+live to make us weep to hear her fate." Thaisa had never died, but
+after the birth of her little baby had fallen into a deep swoon, which
+made all that saw her conclude her to be dead; and now by the care
+of this kind gentleman she once more revived to light and life; and
+opening her eyes, she said, "Where am I? Where is my lord? What world
+is this?" By gentle degrees Cerimon let her understand what had
+befallen her; and when he thought she was enough recovered to bear the
+sight, he shewed her the paper written by her husband, and the jewels;
+and she looked on the paper, and said, "It is my lord's writing. That
+I was shipped at sea, I well remember, but whether there delivered of
+my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded
+lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery, and never
+more have joy." "Madam," said Cerimon, "if you purpose as you speak,
+the temple of Diana is not far distant from hence, there you may abide
+as a vestal. Moreover, if you please, a niece of mine shall there
+attend you." This proposal was accepted with thanks by Thaisa; and
+when she was perfectly recovered, Cerimon placed her in the temple of
+Diana, where she became a vestal or priestess of that goddess, and
+passed her days in sorrowing for her husband's supposed loss, and in
+the most devout exercises of those times.
+
+Pericles carried his young daughter (whom he named Marina, because she
+was born at sea) to Tharsus, intending to leave her with Cleon, the
+governor of that city, and his wife Dionysia, thinking, for the good
+he had done to them at the time of their famine, they would be kind to
+his little motherless daughter. When Cleon saw prince Pericles, and
+heard of the great loss which had befallen him, he said, "O your sweet
+queen, that it had pleased heaven you could have brought her hither
+to have blessed my eyes with the sight of her!" Pericles replied, "We
+must obey the powers above us. Should I rage and roar as the sea does
+in which my Thaisa lies, yet the end must be as it is. My gentle babe,
+Marina here, I must charge your charity with her. I leave her the
+infant of your care, beseeching you to give her princely training."
+And then turning to Cleon's wife, Dionysia, he said, "Good madam, make
+me blessed in your care in bringing up my child:" and she answered,
+"I have a child myself who shall not be more dear to my respect than
+yours, my lord;" and Cleon made the like promise, saying, "Your noble
+services, prince Pericles, in feeding my whole people with your corn
+(for which in their prayers they daily remember you) must in your
+child be thought on. If I should neglect your child, my whole people
+that were by you relieved would force me to my duty; but if to that
+I need a spur, the gods revenge it on me and mine to the end of
+generation." Pericles being thus assured that his child would be
+carefully attended to, left her to the protection of Cleon and his
+wife Dionysia, and with her he left the nurse Lychorida. When he went
+away, the little Marina knew not her loss, but Lychorida wept sadly
+at parting with her royal master. "O, no tears, Lychorida," said
+Pericles; "no tears; look to your little mistress, on whose grace you
+may depend hereafter."
+
+Pericles arrived in safety at Tyre, and was once more settled in
+the quiet possession of his throne, while his woeful queen, whom he
+thought dead, remained at Ephesus. Her little babe Marina, whom this
+hapless mother had never seen, was brought up by Cleon in a manner
+suitable to her high birth. He gave her the most careful education, so
+that by the time Marina attained the age of fourteen years, the most
+deeply-learned men were not more studied in the learning of those
+times than was Marina. She sung like one immortal, and danced as
+goddess-like, and with her needle she was so skilful that she seemed
+to compose nature's own shapes, in birds, fruits, or flowers, the
+natural roses being scarcely more like to each other than they were to
+Marina's silken flowers. But when she had gained from education all
+these graces, which made her the general wonder, Dionysia, the wife of
+Cleon, became her mortal enemy from jealousy, by reason that her own
+daughter, from the slowness of her mind, was not able to attain to
+that perfection wherein Marina excelled: and finding that all praise
+was bestowed on Marina, whilst her daughter, who was of the same age
+and had been educated with the same care as Marina, though not with
+the same success, was in comparison disregarded, she formed a project
+to remove Marina out of the way, vainly imagining that her untoward
+daughter would be more respected when Marina was no more seen. To
+encompass this she employed a man to murder Marina, and she well timed
+her wicked design, when Lychorida, the faithful nurse, had just died.
+Dionysia was discoursing with the man she had commanded to commit this
+murder, when the young Marina was weeping over the dead Lychorida.
+Leoline, the man she employed to do this bad deed, though he was
+a very wicked man, could hardly be persuaded to undertake it, so
+had Marina won all hearts to love her. He said, "She is a goodly
+creature!" "The fitter then the gods should have her," replied her
+merciless enemy: "here she comes weeping for the death of her nurse
+Lychorida: are you resolved to obey me?" Leoline, fearing to disobey
+her, replied, "I am resolved." And so, in that one short sentence, was
+the matchless Marina doomed to an untimely death. She now approached,
+with a basket of flowers in her hand, which she said she would daily
+strew over the grave of good Lychorida. The purple violet and the
+marigold should as a carpet hang upon her grave, while summer days did
+last. "Alas, for me!" she said, "poor unhappy maid, born in a tempest,
+when my mother died. This world to me is like a lasting storm,
+hurrying me from my friends." "How now, Marina," said the dissembling
+Dionysia, "do you weep alone? How does it chance my daughter is not
+with you? Do not sorrow for Lychorida, you have a nurse in me. Your
+beauty is quite changed with this unprofitable woe. Come, give me your
+flowers, the sea-air will spoil them; and walk with Leoline: the air
+is fine, and will enliven you. Come, Leoline, take her by the arm,
+and walk with her." "No, madam," said Marina, "I pray you let me
+not deprive you of your servant:" for Leoline was one of Dionysia's
+attendants. "Come, come," said this artful woman, who wished for a
+pretence to leave her alone with Leoline, "I love the prince, your
+father, and I love you. We every day expect your father here; and when
+he comes, and finds you so changed by grief from the paragon of beauty
+we reported you, he will think we have taken no care of you. Go,
+I pray you, walk, and be cheerful once again. Be careful of that
+excellent complexion, which stole the hearts of old and young."
+Marina, being thus importuned, said, "Well, I will go, but yet I
+have no desire to it." As Dionysia walked away, she said to Leoline,
+"_Remember what I have said!_"--shocking words, for their meaning was
+that he should remember to kill Marina.
+
+Marina looked towards the sea, her birthplace, and said, "Is the wind
+westerly that blows?" "South-west," replied Leoline. "When I was born
+the wind was north," said she: and then the storm and tempest, and all
+her father's sorrows, and her mother's death, came full into her mind;
+and she said, "My father, as Lychorida told me, did never fear, but
+cried, _Courage, good seamen_, to the sailors, galling his princely
+hands with the ropes, and, clasping to the mast, he endured a sea
+that almost split the deck." "When was this?" said Leoline. "When I
+was born," replied Marina: "never were waves nor wind more violent."
+And then she described the storm, the action of the sailors, the
+boatswain's whistle, and the loud call of the master, "Which," said
+she, "trebled the confusion of the ship." Lychorida had so often
+recounted to Marina the story of her hapless birth, that these things
+seemed ever present to her imagination. But here Leoline interrupted
+her with desiring her to say her prayers. "What mean you?" said
+Marina, who began to fear, she knew not why. "If you require a little
+space for prayer, I grant it," said Leoline; "but be not tedious, the
+gods are quick of ear, and I am sworn to do my work in haste." "Will
+you kill me?" said Marina: "alas! why?" "To satisfy my lady," replied
+Leoline. "Why would she have me killed?" said Marina: "now, as I can
+remember, I never hurt her in all my life. I never spake bad word,
+nor did any ill turn to any living creature. Believe me now, I never
+killed a mouse, nor hurt a fly. I trod upon a worm once against my
+will, but I wept for it. How have I offended?" The murderer replied,
+"My commission is not to reason on the deed, but do it." And he was
+just going to kill her, when certain pirates happened to land at that
+very moment, who seeing Marina, bore her off as a prize to their ship.
+
+The pirate who had made Marina his prize carried her to Metaline, and
+sold her for a slave, where, though in that humble condition, Marina
+soon became known throughout the whole city of Metaline for her beauty
+and her virtues; and the person to whom she was sold became rich by
+the money she earned for him. She taught music, dancing, and fine
+needle works, and the money she got by her scholars she gave to her
+master and mistress; and the fame of her learning and her great
+industry came to the knowledge of Lysimachus, a young nobleman who was
+the governor of Metaline, and Lysimachus went himself to the house
+where Marina dwelt, to see this paragon of excellence, whom all the
+city praised so highly. Her conversation delighted Lysimachus beyond
+measure, for though he had heard much of this admired maiden, he did
+not expect to find her so sensible a lady, so virtuous, and so good,
+as he perceived Marina to be; and he left her, saying, he hoped she
+would persevere in her industrious and virtuous course, and that if
+ever she heard from him again, it should be for her good. Lysimachus
+thought Marina such a miracle for sense, fine breeding, and excellent
+qualities, as well as for beauty and all outward graces, that he
+wished to marry her, and notwithstanding her humble situation, he
+hoped to find that her birth was noble; but ever when they asked her
+parentage, she would sit still and weep.
+
+Meantime, at Tharsus, Leoline, fearing the anger of Dionysia, told
+her he had killed Marina; and that wicked woman gave out that she was
+dead, and made a pretended funeral for her, and erected a stately
+monument; and shortly after Pericles, accompanied by his loyal
+minister Hellicanus, made a voyage from Tyre to Tharsus, on purpose to
+see his daughter, intending to take her home with him; and, he never
+having beheld her since he left her an infant in the care of Cleon and
+his wife, how did this good prince rejoice at the thoughts of seeing
+this dear child of his buried queen! but when they told him Marina was
+dead, and showed the monument they had erected for her, great was the
+misery this most wretched father endured, and not being able to bear
+the sight of that country where his last hope and only memory of his
+dear Thaisa was entombed, he took ship, and hastily departed from
+Tharsus. From the day he entered the ship, a dull and heavy melancholy
+seized him. He never spoke, and seemed totally insensible to every
+thing around him.
+
+Sailing from Tharsus to Tyre, the ship in its course passed by
+Metaline, where Marina dwelt; the governor of which place, Lysimachus,
+observing this royal vessel from the shore, and desirous of knowing
+who was on board, went in a barge to the side of the ship, to satisfy
+his curiosity. Hellicanus received him very courteously, and told him
+that the ship came from Tyre, and that they were conducting thither
+Pericles, their prince; "A man, sir," said Hellicanus, "who has not
+spoken to any one these three months, nor taken any sustenance, but
+just to prolong his grief; it would be tedious to repeat the whole
+ground of his distemper, but the main springs from the loss of a
+beloved daughter and a wife." Lysimachus begged to see this afflicted
+prince, and when he beheld Pericles, he saw he had been once a goodly
+person, and he said to him, "Sir king, all hail, the gods preserve
+you, hail, royal sir!" But in vain Lysimachus spoke to him; Pericles
+made no answer, nor did he appear to perceive any stranger approached.
+And then Lysimachus bethought him of the peerless maid Marina, that
+haply with her sweet tongue she might win some answer from the silent
+prince: and with the consent of Hellicanus he sent for Marina, and
+when she entered the ship in which her own father sat motionless with
+grief, they welcomed her on board as if they had known she was their
+princess; and they cried, "She is a gallant lady." Lysimachus was
+well pleased to hear their commendations, and he said, "She is such
+an one that were I well assured she came of noble birth, I would wish
+no better choice, and think me rarely blest in a wife." And then he
+addressed her in courtly terms, as if the lowly-seeming maid had
+been the high-born lady he wished to find her, calling _her Fair and
+beautiful Marina_, telling her a great prince on board that ship had
+fallen into a sad and mournful silence; and, as if Marina had the
+power of conferring health and felicity, he begged she would undertake
+to cure the royal stranger of his melancholy. "Sir," said Marina, "I
+will use my utmost skill in his recovery, provided none but I and my
+maid be suffered to come near him."
+
+She, who at Metaline had so carefully concealed her birth, ashamed to
+tell that one of royal ancestry was now a slave, first began to speak
+to Pericles of the wayward changes in her own fate, telling him from
+what a high estate herself had fallen. As if she had known it was her
+royal father she stood before, all the words she spoke were of her own
+sorrows; but her reason for so doing was, that she knew nothing more
+wins the attention of the unfortunate than the recital of some sad
+calamity to match their own. The sound of her sweet voice aroused the
+drooping prince; he lifted up his eyes, which had been so long fixed
+and motionless; and Marina, who was the perfect image of her mother,
+presented to his amazed sight the features of his dead queen. The
+long-silent prince was once more heard to speak. "My dearest wife,"
+said the awakened Pericles, "was like this maid, and such a one might
+my daughter have been. My queen's square brows, her stature to an
+inch, as wand-like straight, as silver-voiced, her eyes as jewel-like.
+Where do you live, young maid? Report your parentage. I think you said
+you had been tossed from wrong to injury, and that you thought your
+griefs would equal mine, if both were opened." "Some such thing I
+said," replied Marina, "and said no more than what my thoughts did
+warrant me as likely." "Tell me your story," answered Pericles; "if
+I find you have known the thousandth part of my endurance, you have
+borne your sorrows like a man, and I have suffered like a girl;
+yet you do look like Patience gazing on kings' graves, and smiling
+Extremity out of act. Tell me your name, my most kind virgin? Recount
+your story, I beseech you. Come, sit by me." How was Pericles
+surprised when she said her name was _Marina_, for he knew it was
+no usual name, but had been invented by himself for his own child
+to signify _sea-born_: "O, I am mocked," said he, "and you are sent
+hither by some incensed god to make the world laugh at me." "Patience,
+good sir," said Marina, "or I must cease here." "Nay," said Pericles,
+"I will be patient; you little know how you do startle me, to call
+yourself Marina." "The name," she replied, "was given me by one that
+had some power, my father, and a king." "How, a king's daughter!" said
+Pericles, "and called Marina! But are you flesh and blood? Are you no
+fairy? Speak on; where were you born? and wherefore called Marina?"
+She replied, "I was called Marina, because I was born at sea. My
+mother was the daughter of a king; she died the minute I was born, as
+my good nurse Lychorida has often told me weeping. The king my father
+left me at Tharsus, till the cruel wife of Cleon sought to murder
+me. A crew of pirates came and rescued me, and brought me here to
+Metaline. But, good sir, why do you weep? It may be, you think me an
+impostor. But indeed, sir, I am the daughter to king Pericles, if good
+king Pericles be living." Then Pericles, terrified as it seemed at
+his own sudden joy, and doubtful if this could be real, loudly called
+for his attendants, who rejoiced at the sound of their beloved king's
+voice; and he said to Hellicanus, "O Hellicanus, strike me, give me a
+gash, put me to present pain, lest this great sea of joys rushing upon
+me overbear the shores of my mortality. O, come hither, thou that wast
+born at sea, buried at Tharsus, and found at sea again. O Hellicanus,
+down on your knees, thank the holy gods! This is Marina. Now blessings
+on thee, my child! Give me fresh garments, mine own Hellicanus! She is
+not dead at Tharsus, as she should have been by the savage Dionysia.
+She shall tell you all, when you shall kneel to her, and call her
+your very princess. Who is this?" (observing Lysimachus for the first
+time). "Sir," said Hellicanus, "it is the governor of Metaline, who,
+hearing of your melancholy, came to see you." "I embrace you, sir,"
+said Pericles. "Give me my robes! I am well with beholding--O heaven
+bless my girl! But hark! what music is that?"--for now, either sent by
+some kind god, or by his own delighted fancy deceived, he seemed to
+hear soft music. "My lord, I hear none," replied Hellicanus. "None,"
+said Pericles; "why it is the music of the spheres." As there was
+no music to be heard, Lysimachus concluded that the sudden joy had
+unsettled the prince's understanding; and he said, "It is not good to
+cross him; let him have his way:" and then they told him they heard
+the music; and he now complaining of a drowsy slumber coming over him,
+Lysimachus persuaded him to rest on a couch, and placing a pillow
+under his head, he, quite overpowered with excess of joy, sunk into
+a sound sleep, and Marina watched in silence by the couch of her
+sleeping parent.
+
+While he slept, Pericles dreamed a dream which made him resolve to go
+to Ephesus. His dream was, that Diana, the Goddess of the Ephesians,
+appeared to him, and commanded him to go to her temple at Ephesus,
+and there before her altar to declare the story of his life and
+misfortune; and by her silver bow she swore, that if he performed her
+injunction, he should meet with some rare felicity. When he awoke,
+being miraculously refreshed, he told his dream, and that his
+resolution was to obey the bidding of the Goddess.
+
+Then Lysimachus invited Pericles to come on shore, and refresh himself
+with such entertainment as he should find at Metaline, which courteous
+offer Pericles accepting, agreed to tarry with him for the space of a
+day or two. During which time we may well suppose what feastings, what
+rejoicings, what costly shews and entertainments the governor made in
+Metaline, to greet the royal father of his dear Marina, whom in her
+obscure fortunes he had so respected. Nor did Pericles frown upon
+Lysimachus's suit, when he understood how he had honoured his child in
+the days of her low estate, and that Marina shewed herself not averse
+to his proposals; only he made it a condition, before he gave his
+consent, that they should visit with him the shrine of the Ephesian
+Diana: to whose temple they, shortly after, all three undertook a
+voyage; and, the goddess herself filling their sails with prosperous
+winds, after a few weeks they arrived in safety at Ephesus.
+
+There was standing near the altar of the goddess, when Pericles with
+his train entered the temple, the good Cerimon (now grown very aged)
+who had restored Thaisa, the wife of Pericles, to life; and Thaisa,
+now a priestess of the temple, was standing before the altar; and
+though the many years he had passed in sorrow for her loss had much
+altered Pericles, Thaisa thought she knew her husband's features, and
+when he approached the altar and began to speak, she remembered his
+voice, and listened to his words with wonder and a joyful amazement.
+And these were the words that Pericles spoke before the altar: "Hail,
+Diana! to perform thy just commands, I here confess myself the prince
+of Tyre, who, frighted from my country, at Pentapolis wedded the fair
+Thaisa: she died at sea in childbed, but brought forth a maid-child
+called Marina. The maid at Tharsus was nursed with Dionysia, who at
+fourteen years thought to kill her; but her better stars brought her
+to Metaline, by whose shores as I sailed, her good fortunes brought
+this child on board, where by her most clear remembrance she made
+herself known to be my daughter."
+
+Thaisa, unable to bear the transports which his words had raised in
+her, cried out, "You are, you are, O royal Pericles"--and fainted.
+"What means this woman?" said Pericles: "she dies; help, gentlemen!"
+"Sir," said Cerimon, "if you have told Diana's altar true, this is
+your wife." "Reverend gentleman, no;" said Pericles: "I threw her
+overboard with these very arms." Cerimon then recounted how, early one
+tempestuous morning, this lady was thrown upon the Ephesian shore;
+how, opening the coffin, he found therein rich jewels, and a paper;
+how, happily, he recovered her, and placed her here in Diana's temple.
+And now, Thaisa being restored from her swoon, said, "O my lord, are
+you not Pericles? Like him you speak, like him you are. Did you not
+name a tempest, a birth and death?" He, astonished, said, "The voice
+of dead Thaisa!" "That Thaisa am I," she replied, "supposed dead and
+drowned." "O true Diana!" exclaimed Pericles, in a passion of devout
+astonishment. "And now," said Thaisa, "I know you better. Such a ring
+as I see on your finger did the king my father give you, when we
+with tears parted from him at Pentapolis." "Enough, you gods!" cried
+Pericles, "your present kindness makes my past miseries sport. O come,
+Thaisa, be buried a second time within these arms."
+
+And Marina said, "My heart leaps to be gone into my mother's bosom."
+Then did Pericles shew his daughter to her mother, saying, "Look
+who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, thy burthen at sea, and called
+Marina, because she was yielded there." "Blest and my own!" said
+Thaisa: and while she hung in rapturous joy over her child, Pericles
+knelt before the altar, saying, "Pure Diana, bless thee for thy
+vision. For this, I will offer oblations nightly to thee." And then
+and there did Pericles, with the consent of Thaisa, solemnly affiance
+their daughter, the virtuous Marina, to the well-deserving Lysimachus
+in marriage.
+
+Thus have we seen in Pericles, his queen, and daughter, a famous
+example of virtue assailed by calamity (through the sufferance of
+Heaven, to teach patience and constancy to men), under the same
+guidance becoming finally successful, and triumphing over chance and
+change. In Hellicanus we have beheld a notable pattern of truth, of
+faith, and loyalty, who, when he might have succeeded to a throne,
+chose rather to recall the rightful owner to his possession, than to
+become great by another's wrong. In the worthy Cerimon, who restored
+Thaisa to life, we are instructed how goodness directed by knowledge,
+in bestowing benefits upon mankind, approaches to the nature of the
+gods. It only remains to be told, that Dionysia, the wicked wife of
+Cleon, met with an end proportionable to her deserts; the inhabitants
+of Tharsus, when her cruel attempt upon Marina was known, rising
+in a body to revenge the daughter of their benefactor, and setting
+fire to the palace of Cleon, burnt both him and her, and their whole
+household: the gods seeming well pleased, that so foul a murder,
+though but intentional, and never carried into act, should be punished
+in a way befitting its enormity.
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES
+
+(_By Charles Lamb. Written 1807-8. 1st Edition, 1808. Text of 2nd
+Edition, 1819_)
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This work is designed as a supplement to the Adventures of Telemachus.
+It treats of the conduct and sufferings of Ulysses, the father of
+Telemachus. The picture which it exhibits is that of a brave man
+struggling with adversity; by a wise use of events, and with an
+inimitable presence of mind under difficulties, forcing out a way
+for himself through the severest trials to which human life can be
+exposed; with enemies natural and preternatural surrounding him on all
+sides. The agents in this tale, besides men and women, are giants,
+enchanters, sirens: things which denote external force or internal
+temptations, the twofold danger which a wise fortitude must expect to
+encounter in its course through this world. The fictions contained in
+it will be found to comprehend some of the most admired inventions of
+Grecian mythology.
+
+The ground-work of the story is as old as the Odyssey, but the moral
+and the colouring are comparatively modern. By avoiding the prolixity
+which marks the speeches and the descriptions in Homer, I have gained
+a rapidity to the narration, which I hope will make it more attractive
+and give it more the air of a romance to young readers, though I am
+sensible that by the curtailment I have sacrificed in many places
+the manners to the passion, the subordinate characteristics to the
+essential interest of the story. The attempt is not to be considered
+as seeking a comparison with any of the direct translations of the
+Odyssey, either in prose or verse, though if I were to state the
+obligations which I have had to one obsolete version,[1] I should
+run the hazard of depriving myself of the very slender degree of
+reputation which I could hope to acquire from a trifle like the
+present undertaking.
+
+[Footnote 1: The translation of Homer by Chapman in the reign of James
+I. III.--16]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+_The Cicons.--The fruit of the lotos tree.--Polyphemus and
+the Cyclops.--The kingdom of the winds, and god Æolus's fatal
+present.--The Læstrygonian man-eaters._
+
+
+This history tells of the wanderings of Ulysses and his followers in
+their return from Troy, after the destruction of that famous city of
+Asia by the Grecians. He was inflamed with a desire of seeing again
+after a ten years absence, his wife and native country Ithaca. He
+was king of a barren spot, and a poor country, in comparison of the
+fruitful plains of Asia which he was leaving, or the wealthy kingdoms
+which he touched upon in his return; yet wherever he came, he could
+never see a soil which appeared in his eyes half so sweet or desirable
+as his country earth. This made him refuse the offers of the goddess
+Calypso to stay with her, and partake of her immortality, in the
+delightful island; and this gave him strength to break from the
+enchantments of Circe, the daughter of the Sun.
+
+From Troy ill winds cast Ulysses and his fleet upon the coast of the
+Cicons, a people hostile to the Grecians. Landing his forces, he laid
+siege to their chief city Ismarus, which he took, and with it much
+spoil, and slew many people. But success proved fatal to him; for his
+soldiers elated with the spoil, and the good store of provisions which
+they found in that place, fell to eating and drinking, forgetful of
+their safety, till the Cicons, who inhabited the coast, had time to
+assemble their friends and allies from the interior, who mustering
+in prodigious force, set upon the Grecians, while they negligently
+revelled and feasted, and slew many of them, and recovered the spoil.
+They, dispirited and thinned in their numbers, with difficulty made
+their retreat good to the ships. Thence they set sail, sad at heart,
+yet something cheered that with such fearful odds against them they
+had not all been utterly destroyed. A dreadful tempest ensued, which
+for two nights and two days tossed them about, but the third day the
+weather cleared, and they had hopes of a favourable gale to carry them
+to Ithaca; but as they doubled the Cape of Malea, suddenly a north
+wind arising, drove them back as far as Cythera. After that, for the
+space of nine days, contrary winds continued to drive them in an
+opposite direction to the point to which they were bound, and the
+tenth day they put in at a shore where a race of men dwell that are
+sustained by the fruit of the lotos tree. Here Ulysses sent some
+of his men to land for fresh water, who were met by certain of the
+inhabitants, that gave them some of their country food to eat; not
+with any ill intention towards them, though in the event it proved
+pernicious; for, having eaten of this fruit, so pleasant it proved to
+their appetite, that they in a minute quite forgot all thoughts of
+home, or of their countrymen, or of ever returning back to the ships
+to give an account of what sort of inhabitants dwelt there, but they
+would needs stay and live there among them, and eat of that precious
+food for ever; and when Ulysses sent other of his men to look for
+them, and to bring them back by force, they strove, and wept, and
+would not leave their food for heaven itself, so much the pleasure of
+that enchanting fruit had bewitched them. But Ulysses caused them to
+be bound hand and foot, and cast under the hatches; and set sail with
+all possible speed from that baneful coast, lest others after them
+might taste the lotos, which had such strange qualities to make men
+forget their native country, and the thoughts of home.
+
+Coasting on all that night by unknown and out of the way shores, they
+came by day-break to the land where the Cyclops dwell, a sort of giant
+shepherds that neither sow nor plough, but the earth unfilled produces
+for them rich wheat and barley and grapes, yet they have neither bread
+nor wine, nor know the arts of cultivation, nor care to know them:
+for they live each man to himself, without laws or government, or any
+thing like a state or kingdom, but their dwellings are in caves, on
+the steep heads of mountains, every man's household governed by his
+own caprice, or not governed at all, their wives and children as
+lawless as themselves, none caring for others, but each doing as he or
+she thinks good. Ships or boats they have none, nor artificers to make
+them, no trade or commerce, or wish to visit other shores; yet they
+have convenient places for harbours and for shipping. Here Ulysses
+with a chosen party of twelve followers landed, to explore what sort
+of men dwelt there, whether hospitable and friendly to strangers, or
+altogether wild and savage, for as yet no dwellers appeared in sight.
+
+The first sign of habitation which they came to was a giant's cave
+rudely fashioned, but of a size which betokened the vast proportions
+of its owner, the pillars which supported it being the bodies of huge
+oaks or pines, in the natural state of the tree, and all about showed
+more marks of strength than skill in whoever built it. Ulysses,
+entering in, admired the savage contrivances and artless structure of
+the place, and longed to see the tenant of so outlandish a mansion;
+but well conjecturing that gifts would have more avail in extracting
+courtesy, than strength could succeed in forcing it, from such a one
+as he expected to find the inhabitant, he resolved to flatter his
+hospitality with a present of Greek wine, of which he had store in
+twelve great vessels; so strong that no one ever drank it without an
+infusion of twenty parts of water to one of wine, yet the fragrance of
+it even then so delicious, that it would have vexed a man who smelled
+it to abstain from tasting it; but whoever tasted it, it was able to
+raise his courage to the height of heroic deeds. Taking with them a
+goat-skin flaggon full of this precious liquor, they ventured into the
+recesses of the cave. Here they pleased themselves a whole day with
+beholding the giant's kitchen, where the flesh of sheep and goats lay
+strewed, his dairy where goat-milk stood ranged in troughs and pails,
+his pens where he kept his live animals; but those he had driven forth
+to pasture with him when he went out in the morning. While they were
+feasting their eyes with a sight of these curiosities, their ears were
+suddenly deafened with a noise like the falling of a house. It was
+the owner of the cave who had been abroad all day feeding his flock,
+as his custom was, in the mountains, and now drove them home in the
+evening from pasture. He threw down a pile of firewood, which he had
+been gathering against supper-time, before the mouth of the cave,
+which occasioned the crash they heard. The Grecians hid themselves
+in the remote parts of the cave, at sight of the uncouth monster. It
+was Polyphemus, the largest and savagest of the Cyclops, who boasted
+himself to be the son of Neptune. He looked more like a mountain crag
+than a man, and to his brutal body he had a brutish mind answerable.
+He drove his flock, all that gave milk, to the interior of the cave,
+but left the rams and the he-goats without Then taking up a stone so
+massy that twenty oxen could not have drawn it, he placed it at the
+mouth of the cave, to defend the entrance, and sat him down to milk
+his ewes and his goats; which done, he lastly kindled a fire, and
+throwing his great eye round the cave (for the Cyclops have no more
+than one eye, and that placed in the midst of their forehead), by the
+glimmering light he discerned some of Ulysses's men.
+
+"Ho! guests, what are you? merchants or wandering thieves?" he
+bellowed out in a voice which took from them all power of reply, it
+was so astounding.
+
+Only Ulysses summoned resolution to answer, that they came neither
+for plunder nor traffick, but were Grecians who had lost their
+way, returning from Troy; which famous city, under the conduct of
+Agamemnon, the renowned son of Atreus, they had sacked, and laid level
+with the ground. Yet now they prostrated themselves humbly before his
+feet, whom they acknowledged to be mightier than they, and besought
+him that he would bestow the rites of hospitality upon them, for that
+Jove was the avenger of wrongs done to strangers, and would fiercely
+resent any injury which they might suffer.
+
+"Fool," said the Cyclop, "to come so far to preach to me the fear of
+the gods. We Cyclops care not for your Jove, whom you fable to be
+nursed by a goat, nor any of your blessed ones. We are stronger than
+they, and dare bid open battle to Jove himself, though you and all
+your fellows of the earth join with him." And he bade them tell him
+where their ship was, in which they came, and whether they had any
+companions. But Ulysses, with a wise caution made answer, that they
+had no ship or companions, but were unfortunate men whom the sea,
+splitting their ship in pieces, had dashed upon his coast, and
+they alone had escaped. He replied nothing, but griping two of the
+nearest of them, as if they had been no more than children, he dashed
+their brains out against the earth, and (shocking to relate) tore
+in pieces their limbs, and devoured them, yet warm and trembling,
+making a lion's meal of them, lapping the blood: for the Cyclops are
+_man-eaters_, and esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far above goat's
+or kid's; though by reason of their abhorred customs few men approach
+their coast, except some stragglers, or now and then a ship-wrecked
+mariner. At a sight so horrid Ulysses and his men were like distracted
+people. He, when he had made an end of his wicked supper, drained a
+draught of goat's milk down his prodigious throat, and lay down and
+slept among his goats. Then Ulysses drew his sword, and half resolved
+to thrust it with all his might in at the bosom of the sleeping
+monster; but wiser thoughts restrained him, else they had there
+without help all perished, for none but Polyphemus himself could have
+removed that mass of stone which he had placed to guard the entrance.
+So they were constrained to abide all that night in fear.
+
+When day came the Cyclop awoke, and kindling a fire, made his
+breakfast of two other of his unfortunate prisoners, then milked his
+goats as he was accustomed, and pushing aside the vast stone, and
+shutting it again when he had done, upon the prisoners, with as much
+ease as a man opens and shuts a quiver's lid, he let out his flock,
+and drove them before him with whistlings (as sharp as winds in
+storms) to the mountains. Then Ulysses, of whose strength or cunning
+the Cyclop seems to have had as little heed as of an infant's, being
+left alone, with the remnant of his men which the Cyclop had not
+devoured, gave manifest proof how far manly wisdom excels brutish
+force. He chose a stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled
+up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which he sharpened
+and hardened in the fire, and selected four men, and instructed them
+what they should do with this stake, and made them perfect in their
+parts.
+
+When the evening was come, the Cyclop drove home his sheep; and
+as fortune directed it, either of purpose, or that his memory was
+overruled by the gods to his hurt (as in the issue it proved), he
+drove the males of his flock, contrary to his custom, along with the
+dams into the pens. Then shutting-to the stone of the cave, he fell to
+his horrible supper. When he had dispatched two more of the Grecians,
+Ulysses waxed bold with the contemplation of his project, and took a
+bowl of Greek wine and merrily dared the Cyclop to drink.
+
+"Cyclop," he said, "take a bowl of wine from the hand of your guest:
+it may serve to digest the man's flesh that you have eaten, and shew
+what drink our ship held before it went down. All I ask in recompence,
+if you find it good, is to be dismissed in a whole skin. Truly you
+must look to have few visitors, if you observe this new custom of
+eating your guests."
+
+The brute took and drank, and vehemently enjoyed the taste of wine,
+which was new to him, and swilled again at the flaggon, and entreated
+for more, and prayed Ulysses to tell him his name, that he might
+bestow a gift upon the man who had given him such brave liquor. The
+Cyclops (he said) had grapes, but this rich juice (he swore) was
+simply divine. Again Ulysses plied him with the wine, and the fool
+drank it as fast as he poured out, and again he asked the name of
+his benefactor, which Ulysses cunningly dissembling, said, "My name
+is Noman: my kindred and friends in my own country call me Noman."
+"Then," said the Cyclop, "this is the kindness I will show thee,
+Noman: I will eat thee last of all thy friends." He had scarce
+expressed his savage kindness, when the fumes of the strong wine
+overcame him, and he reeled down upon the floor and sank into a dead
+sleep.
+
+Ulysses watched his time, while the monster lay insensible, and
+heartening up his men, they placed the sharp end of the stake in the
+fire till it was heated red-hot, and some god gave them a courage
+beyond that which they were used to have, and the four men with
+difficulty bored the sharp end of the huge stake, which they had
+heated red-hot, right into the eye of the drunken cannibal, and
+Ulysses helped to thrust it in with all his might, still further and
+further, with effort, as men bore with an auger, till the scalded
+blood gushed out, and the eye-ball smoked, and the strings of the eye
+cracked, as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye hissed, as hot
+iron hisses when it is plunged into water.
+
+He waking, roared with the pain so loud that all the cavern broke into
+claps like thunder. They fled, and dispersed into corners. He plucked
+the burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the
+cave. Then he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren the
+Cyclops, that dwelt hard by in caverns upon hills; they hearing the
+terrible shout came flocking from all parts to inquire what ailed
+Polyphemus? and what cause he had for making such horrid clamours in
+the night-time to break their sleeps? if his fright proceeded from any
+mortal? if strength or craft had given him his death's blow? He made
+answer from within that Noman had hurt him, Noman had killed him,
+Noman was with him in the cave. They replied, "If no man has hurt
+thee, and no man is with thee, then thou art alone, and the evil that
+afflicts thee is from the hand of heaven, which none can resist or
+help." So they left him and went their way, thinking that some disease
+troubled him. He, blind and ready to split with the anguish of the
+pain, went groaning up and down in the dark, to find the door-way,
+which when he found, he removed the stone, and sat in the threshold,
+feeling if he could lay hold on any man going out with the sheep,
+which (the day now breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their
+accustomed pastures. But Ulysses, whose first artifice in giving
+himself that ambiguous name, had succeeded so well with the Cyclop,
+was not of a wit so gross to be caught by that palpable device. But
+casting about in his mind all the ways which he could contrive for
+escape (no less than all their lives depending on the success), at
+last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the osier twigs
+upon which the Cyclop commonly slept, with which he tied the fattest
+and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the
+belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping
+himself fast with both his hands in the rich wool of one, the fairest
+of the flock.
+
+And now the sheep began to issue forth very fast, the males went
+first, the females unmilked stood by, bleating and requiring the hand
+of their shepherd in vain to milk them, their full bags sore with
+being unemptied, but he much sorer with the loss of sight. Still as
+the males passed, he felt the backs of those fleecy fools, never
+dreaming, that they carried his enemies under their bellies: so they
+passed on till the last ram came loaded with his wool and Ulysses
+together. He stopped that ram and felt him, and had his hand once in
+the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not, and he chid the ram for being
+last, and spoke to it as if it understood him, and asked it whether it
+did not wish that its master had his eye again, which that abominable
+Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they had got him down
+with wine; and he willed the ram to tell him whereabouts in the cave
+his enemy lurked, that he might dash his brains and strew them about,
+to ease his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it.
+After a deal of such foolish talk to the beast he let it go. When
+Ulysses found himself free, he let go his hold, and assisted in
+disengaging his friends. The rams which had befriended them they
+carried off with them to the ships, where their companions with tears
+in their eyes received them, as men escaped from death. They plied
+their oars, and set their sails, and when they were got as far off
+from shore as a voice would reach, Ulysses cried out to the Cyclop:
+"Cyclop, thou should'st not have so much abused thy monstrous
+strength, as to devour thy guests. Jove by my hand sends thee requital
+to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, and came forth
+enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a rock, and threw
+it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the
+bark in which Ulysses sat, but with the fall it raised so fierce an
+ebb, as bore back the ship till it almost touched the shore. "Cyclop,"
+said Ulysses, "if any ask thee who imposed on thee that unsightly
+blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the king of
+Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities." Then they crowded sail, and
+beat the old sea, and forth they went with a forward gale; sad for
+fore-past losses, yet glad to have escaped at any rate; till they came
+to the isle where Æolus reigned, who is god of the winds.
+
+Here Ulysses and his men were courteously received by the monarch, who
+shewed him his twelve children which have rule over the twelve winds.
+A month they staid and feasted with him, and at the end of the month
+he dismissed them with many presents, and gave to Ulysses at parting
+an ox's hide, in which were inclosed _all the winds_: only he left
+abroad the western wind, to play upon their sails and waft them
+gently home to Ithaca. This bag bound in a glittering silver band, so
+close that no breath could escape, Ulysses hung up at the mast. His
+companions did not know its contents, but guessed that the monarch had
+given to him some treasures of gold or silver.
+
+Nine days they sailed smoothly, favoured by the western wind, and by
+the tenth they approached so nigh as to discern lights kindled on the
+shores of their country earth: when by ill fortune, Ulysses, overcome
+with fatigue of watching the helm, fell asleep. The mariners seized
+the opportunity, and one of them said to the rest: "A fine time has
+this leader of ours: wherever he goes he is sure of presents, when we
+come away empty-handed; and see, what king Æolus has given him, store
+no doubt of gold and silver." A word was enough to those covetous
+wretches, who quick as thought untied the bag, and instead of gold,
+out rushed with mighty noise _all the winds_. Ulysses with the noise
+awoke and saw their mistake, but too late, for the ship was driving
+with all the winds back far from Ithaca, far as to the island of Æolus
+from which they had parted, in one hour measuring back what in nine
+days they had scarcely tracked, and in sight of home too! up he flew
+amazed, and raving doubted whether he should not fling himself into
+the sea for grief of his bitter disappointment. At last he hid himself
+under the hatches for shame. And scarce could he be prevailed upon,
+when he was told he was arrived again in the harbour of king Æolus, to
+go himself or send to that monarch for a second succour; so much the
+disgrace of having misused his royal bounty (though it was the crime
+of his followers and not his own) weighed upon him: and when at last
+he went, and took a herald with him, and came where the god sat on
+his throne, feasting with his children, he would not thrust in among
+them at their meat, but set himself down like one unworthy in the
+threshold.
+
+Indignation seized Æolus to behold him in that manner returned; and
+he said, "Ulysses, what has brought you back? are you so soon tired
+of your country? or did not our present please you? we thought we had
+given you a kingly passport." Ulysses made answer; "My men have done
+this ill mischief to me: they did it while I slept." "Wretch," said
+Æolus, "avaunt, and quit our shores: it fits not us to convoy men whom
+the gods hate, and will have perish."
+
+Forth they sailed, but with far different hopes than when they left
+the same harbour the first time with all the winds confined, only the
+west-wind suffered to play upon their sails to waft them in gentle
+murmurs to Ithaca. They were now the sport of every gale that blew,
+and despaired of ever seeing home more. Now those covetous mariners
+were cured of their surfeit for gold, and would not have touched it if
+it had lain in untold heaps before them.
+
+Six days and nights they drove along, and on the seventh day they put
+in to Lamos, a port of the Læstrygonians. So spacious this harbour
+was, that it held with ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor,
+safe from any storms, all but the ship in which Ulysses was embarked.
+He, as if prophetic of the mischance which followed, kept still
+without the harbour, making fast his bark to a rock at the land's
+point, which he climbed with purpose to survey the country. He saw a
+city with smoke ascending from the roofs, but neither ploughs going,
+nor oxen yoked, nor any sign of agricultural works. Making choice of
+two men, he sent them to the city to explore what sort of inhabitants
+dwelt there. His messengers had not gone far before they met a damsel,
+of stature surpassing human, who was coming to draw water from a
+spring. They asked her who dwelt in that land. She made no reply, but
+led them in silence to her father's palace. He was a monarch and named
+Antiphas. He and all his people were giants. When they entered the
+palace, a woman, the mother of the damsel, but far taller than she,
+rushed abroad and called for Antiphas. He came, and snatching up
+one of the two men, made as if he would devour him. The other fled.
+Antiphas raised a mighty shout, and instantly, this way and that,
+multitudes of gigantic people issued out at the gates, and making for
+the harbour, tore up huge pieces of the rocks, and flung them at the
+ships which lay there, all which they utterly overwhelmed and sank;
+and the unfortunate bodies of men which floated, and which the sea did
+not devour, these cannibals thrust through with harpoons, like fishes,
+and bore them off to their dire feast. Ulysses with his single bark
+that had never entered the harbour escaped; that bark which was now
+the only vessel left of all the gallant navy that had set sail with
+him from Troy. He pushed off from the shore, cheering the sad remnant
+of his men, whom horror at the sight of their countrymen's fate had
+almost turned to marble.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+_The house of Circe.--Men changed into beasts.--The voyage to
+hell.--The banquet of the dead._
+
+
+On went the single ship till it came to the island of Ææa, where Circe
+the dreadful daughter of the Sun dwelt. She was deeply skilled in
+magic, a haughty beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her
+parent, and begot her and her brother Æastes (such another as herself)
+upon Perse, daughter to Oceanus.
+
+Here a dispute arose among Ulysses's men, which of them should go
+ashore and explore the country; for there was a necessity that some
+should go to procure water and provisions, their stock of both being
+nigh spent: but their hearts failed them when they called to mind the
+shocking fate of their fellows whom the Læstrygonians had eaten, and
+those which the foul Cyclop Polyphemus had crushed between his jaws;
+which moved them so tenderly in the recollection that they wept. But
+tears never yet supplied any man's wants; this Ulysses knew full well,
+and dividing his men (all that were left) into two companies, at
+the head of one of which was himself, and at the head of the other
+Eurylochus, a man of tried courage, he cast lots which of them should
+go up into the country; and the lot fell upon Eurylochus and his
+company, two and twenty in number; who took their leave, with tears,
+of Ulysses and his men that staid, whose eyes wore the same wet badges
+of weak humanity, for they surely thought never to see these their
+companions again, but that on every coast where they should come, they
+should find nothing but savages and cannibals.
+
+Eurylochus and his party proceeded up the country, till in a dale they
+descried the house of Circe, built of bright stone, by the road's
+side. Before her gate lay many beasts, as wolves, lions, leopards,
+which, by her art, of wild, she had rendered tame. These arose when
+they saw strangers, and ramped upon their hinder paws, and fawned upon
+Eurylochus and his men, who dreaded the effects of such monstrous
+kindness; and staying at the gate they heard the enchantress within,
+sitting at her loom, singing such strains as suspended all mortal
+faculties, while she wove a web, subtle and glorious, and of texture
+inimitable on earth, as all the housewiferies of the deities are.
+Strains so ravishingly sweet, provoked even the sagest and prudentest
+heads among the party to knock and call at the gate. The shining gate
+the enchantress opened, and bad them come in and feast. They unwise
+followed, all but Eurylochus, who staid without the gate, suspicious
+that some train was laid for them. Being entered, she placed them
+in chairs of state, and set before them meal and honey, and Smyrna
+wine; but mixed with baneful drugs of powerful enchantment. When they
+had eaten of these, and drunk of her cup, she touched them with her
+charming-rod, and straight they were transformed into swine, having
+the bodies of swine, the bristles, and snout, and grunting noise of
+that animal; only they still retained the minds of men, which made
+them the more to lament their brutish transformation. Having changed
+them, she shut them up in her sty with many more whom her wicked
+sorceries had formerly changed, and gave them swine's food, mast, and
+acorns, and chestnuts, to eat.
+
+Eurylochus, who beheld nothing of these sad changes from where he
+was stationed without the gate, only instead of his companions that
+entered (who he thought had all vanished by witchcraft) beheld a herd
+of swine, hurried back to the ship, to give an account of what he had
+seen: but so frightened and perplexed, that he could give no distinct
+report of any thing, only he remembered a palace, and a woman singing
+at her work, and gates guarded by lions. But his companions, he said,
+were all vanished.
+
+Then Ulysses suspecting some foul witchcraft, snatched his sword, and
+his bow, and commanded Eurylochus instantly to lead him to the place.
+But Eurylochus fell down, and embracing his knees, besought him by the
+name of a man whom the gods had in their protection, not to expose his
+safety, and the safety of them all, to certain destruction.
+
+"Do thou then stay, Eurylochus?" answered Ulysses: "eat thou and
+drink in the ship in safety; while I go alone upon this adventure:
+necessity, from whose law is no appeal, compels me."
+
+So saying he quitted the ship and went on shore, accompanied by none;
+none had the hardihood to offer to partake that perilous adventure
+with him, so much they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly
+he pursued his journey till he came to the shining gates which stood
+before her mansion: but when he essayed to put his foot over her
+threshold, he was suddenly stopt by the apparition of a young man,
+bearing a golden rod in his hand, who was the god Mercury. He held
+Ulysses by the wrist, to stay his entrance; and "Whither wouldest thou
+go?" he said, "O thou most erring of the sons of men! knowest thou
+not that this is the house of great Circe, where she keeps thy friends
+in a loathsome sty, changed from the fair forms of men into the
+detestable and ugly shapes of swine? art thou prepared to share their
+fate, from which nothing can ransom thee?" But neither his words, nor
+his coming from heaven, could stop the daring foot of Ulysses, whom
+compassion for the misfortune of his friends had rendered careless
+of danger: which when the god perceived, he had pity to see valour
+so misplaced, and gave him the flower of the herb _moly_, which is
+sovereign against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly root,
+its virtues but little known, and in low estimation; the dull shepherd
+treads on it every day with his clouted shoes: but it bears a small
+white flower, which is medicinal against charms, blights, mildews, and
+damps.--"Take this in thy hand," said Mercury, "and with it boldly
+enter her gates: when she shall strike thee with her rod, thinking to
+change thee, as she has changed thy friends, boldly rush in upon her
+with thy sword, and extort from her the dreadful oath of the gods,
+that she will use no enchantments against thee: then force her to
+restore thy abused companions." He gave Ulysses the little white
+flower, and instructing him how to use it, vanished.
+
+When the god was departed, Ulysses with loud knockings beat at the
+gate of the palace. The shining gates were opened, as before, and
+great Circe with hospitable cheer invited in her guest. She placed him
+on a throne with more distinction than she had used to his fellows,
+she mingled wine in a costly bowl, and he drank of it, mixed with
+those poisonous drugs. When he had drunk, she struck him with her
+charming-rod, and "To your sty," she cried, "out, swine; mingle with
+your companions." But those powerful words were not proof against
+the preservative which Mercury had given to Ulysses; he remained
+unchanged, and as the god had directed him, boldly charged the witch
+with his sword, as if he meant to take her life: which when she saw,
+and perceived that her charms were weak against the antidote which
+Ulysses bore about him, she cried out and bent her knees beneath his
+sword, embracing his, and said, "Who or what manner of man art thou?
+Never drank any man before thee of this cup, but he repented it in
+some brute's form. Thy shape remains unaltered as thy mind. Thou canst
+be none other than Ulysses, renowned above all the world for wisdom,
+whom the fates have long since decreed that I must love. This haughty
+bosom bends to thee. O Ithacan, a goddess woos thee to her bed."
+
+"O Circe," he replied, "how canst thou treat of love or marriage with
+one whose friends thou hast turned into beasts? and now offerest him
+thy hand in wedlock, only that thou mightest have him in thy power, to
+live the life of a beast with thee, naked, effeminate, subject to thy
+will, perhaps to be advanced in time to the honour of a place in thy
+sty. What pleasure canst thou promise, which may tempt the soul of a
+reasonable man? thy meats, spiced with poison; or thy wines, drugged
+with death? Thou must swear to me, that thou wilt never attempt
+against me the treasons which thou hast practised upon my friends."
+The enchantress, won by the terror of his threats, or by the violence
+of that new love which she felt kindling in her veins for him, swore
+by Styx, the great oath of the gods, that she meditated no injury
+to him. Then Ulysses made shew of gentler treatment, which gave her
+hopes of inspiring him with a passion equal to that which she felt.
+She called her handmaids, four that served her in chief, who were
+daughters to her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers, and to her
+consecrated woods, to deck her apartments, to spread rich carpets, and
+set out her silver tables with dishes of the purest gold, and meat
+as precious as that which the gods eat, to entertain her guest. One
+brought water to wash his feet, and one brought wine to chase away,
+with a refreshing sweetness, the sorrows that had come of late so
+thick upon him, and hurt his noble mind. They strewed perfumes on his
+head, and after he had bathed in a bath of the choicest aromatics,
+they brought him rich and costly apparel to put on. Then he was
+conducted to a throne of massy silver, and a regale, fit for Jove
+when he banquets, was placed before him. But the feast which Ulysses
+desired was to see his friends (the partners of his voyage) once more
+in the shapes of men; and the food which could give him nourishment
+must be taken in at his eyes. Because he missed this sight, he sat
+melancholy and thoughtful, and would taste of none of the rich
+delicacies placed before him. Which when Circe noted, she easily
+divined the cause of his sadness, and leaving the seat in which she
+sat throned, went to her sty, and let abroad his men, who came in like
+swine, and filled the ample hall, where Ulysses sat, with gruntings.
+Hardly had he time to let his sad eye run over their altered forms and
+brutal metamorphosis, when with an ointment which she smeared over
+them, suddenly their bristles fell off, and they started up in their
+own shapes men as before. They knew their leader again, and clung
+about him with joy of their late restoration, and some shame for their
+late change; and wept so loud, blubbering out their joy in broken
+accents, that the palace was filled with a sound of pleasing mourning,
+and the witch herself, great Circe, was not unmoved at the sight. To
+make her atonement complete, she sent for the remnant of Ulysses's
+men who staid behind at the ship, giving up their great commander for
+lost; who when they came, and saw him again alive, circled with their
+fellows, no expression can tell what joy they felt; they even cried
+out with rapture, and to have seen their frantic expressions of mirth,
+a man might have supposed that they were just in sight of their
+country earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only Eurylochus would
+hardly be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders, for he remembered
+with a kind of horror how his companions had vanished from his sight.
+
+Then great Circe spake, and gave order, that there should be no more
+sadness among them, nor remembering of past sufferings. For as yet
+they fared like men that are exiles from their country, and if a gleam
+of mirth shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with the thought of
+their helpless and homeless condition. Her kind persuasions wrought
+upon Ulysses and the rest, that they spent twelve months in all manner
+of delight with her in her palace. For Circe was a powerful magician,
+and could command the moon from her sphere, or unroot the solid oak
+from its place to make it dance for their diversion, and by the help
+of her illusions she could vary the taste of pleasures, and contrive
+delights, recreations, and jolly pastimes, to "fetch the day about
+from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream."
+
+At length Ulysses awoke from the trance of the faculties into which
+her charms had thrown him, and the thought of home returned with
+tenfold vigour to goad and sting him; that home where he had left his
+virtuous wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus. One day when
+Circe had been lavish of her caresses, and was in her kindest humour,
+he moved to her subtilly, and as it were afar off, the question of his
+home-return; to which she answered firmly, "O Ulysses, it is not in my
+power to detain one whom the gods have destined to further trials. But
+leaving me, before you pursue your journey home, you must visit the
+house of Ades, or Death, to consult the shade of Tiresias the Theban
+prophet; to whom alone, of all the dead, Proserpine, queen of hell,
+has committed the secret of future events: it is he that must inform
+you whether you shall ever see again your wife and country." "O
+Circe," he cried; "that is impossible: who shall steer my course to
+Pluto's kingdom? Never ship had strength to make that voyage." "Seek
+no guide," she replied; "but raise you your mast, and hoist your white
+sails, and sit in your ship in peace: the north wind shall waft you
+through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the ocean, and
+come to where grow the poplar groves, and willows pale, of Proserpine:
+where Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves.
+Cocytus is an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, and
+make it a cubit broad and a cubit long, and pour in milk, and honey,
+and wine, and the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, and
+turn away thy face while thou pourest in, and the dead shall come
+flocking to taste the milk and the blood: but suffer none to approach
+thy offering till thou hast enquired of Tiresias all which thou
+wishest to know."
+
+He did as great Circe had appointed. He raised his mast, and hoisted
+his white sails, and sat in his ship in peace. The north wind wafted
+him through the seas, till he crossed the ocean, and came to the
+sacred woods of Proserpine. He stood at the confluence of the three
+floods, and digged a pit, as she had given directions, and poured in
+his offering; the blood of a ram, and the blood of a black ewe, milk,
+and honey, and wine; and the dead came to his banquet: aged men, and
+women, and youths, and children who died in infancy. But none of them
+would he suffer to approach, and dip their thin lips in the offering,
+till Tiresias was served, not though his own mother was among the
+number, whom now for the first time he knew to be dead, for he had
+left her living when he went to Troy, and she had died since his
+departure, and the tidings never reached him: though it irked his soul
+to use constraint upon her, yet in compliance with the injunction of
+great Circe, he forced her to retire along with the other ghosts. Then
+Tiresias, who bore a golden sceptre, came and lapped of the offering,
+and immediately he knew Ulysses, and began to prophesy: _he denounced
+woe to Ulysses, woe, woe, and many sufferings, through the anger of
+Neptune for the putting out of the eye of the sea-god's son. Yet there
+was safety after suffering, if they could abstain from slaughtering
+the oxen of the Sun after they landed in the Triangular island. For
+Ulysses, the gods had destined him from a king to become a beggar, and
+to perish by his own guests, unless he slew those who knew him not._
+
+This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that Tiresias was
+empowered to unfold, or else there was no longer place for him;
+for now the souls of the other dead came flocking in such numbers,
+tumultuously demanding the blood, that freezing horror seized the
+limbs of the living Ulysses, to see so many, and all dead, and he the
+only one alive in that region. Now his mother came and lapped the
+blood, without restraint from her son, and now she knew him to be her
+son, and enquired of him why he had come alive to their comfortless
+habitations. And she said, that affliction for Ulysses's long absence
+had preyed upon her spirits, and brought her to the grave.
+
+Ulysses's soul melted at her moving narration, and forgetting the
+state of the dead, and that the airy texture of disembodied spirits
+does not admit of the embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms
+about her to clasp her: the poor ghost melted from his embrace, and
+looking mournfully upon him vanished away.
+
+Then saw he other females.--Tyro, who when she lived was the paramour
+of Neptune, and by him had Pelias, and Neleus. Antiope, who bore
+two like sons to Jove, Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes.
+Alcmena, the mother of Hercules, with her fair daughter, afterwards
+her daughter-in-law, Megara. There also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the
+unfortunate mother and wife of Oedipus; who ignorant of kin wedded
+with her son, and when she had discovered the unnatural alliance, for
+shame and grief hanged herself. He continued to drag a wretched life
+above the earth, haunted by the dreadful Furies.--There was Leda,
+the wife of Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful Helen, and of the
+two brave brothers, Castor and Pollux, who obtained this grace from
+Jove, that being dead, they should enjoy life alternately, living
+in pleasant places under the earth. For Pollux had prayed that his
+brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son of Tyndarus,
+should partake of his own immortality, which he derived from an
+immortal sire: this the Fates denied; therefore Pollux was permitted
+to divide his immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living
+alternately.--There was Iphimedeia, who bore two sons to Neptune
+that were giants, Otus and Ephialtes: Earth in her prodigality
+never nourished bodies to such portentous size and beauty as these
+two children were of, except Orion. At nine years old they had
+imaginations of climbing to Heaven to see what the gods were doing;
+they thought to make stairs of mountains, and were for piling Ossa
+upon Olympus, and setting Pelion upon that, and had perhaps performed
+it, if they had lived till they were striplings; but they were cut off
+by death in the infancy of their ambitious project.--Phædra was there,
+and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and Mæra,
+and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.
+
+But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
+the mighty leader of all the host of Greece and their confederate
+kings that warred against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little
+of the blood at that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was moved with
+compassion to see him among them, and asked him what untimely fate had
+brought him there, if storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or
+if he had perished in some mutiny by his own soldiers at a division of
+the prey.
+
+"By none of these," he replied, "did I come to my death; but slain at
+a banquet to which I was invited by Ægisthus after my return home.
+He conspiring with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my
+destruction, training me forth to a banquet as an ox goes to the
+slaughter, and there surrounding me they slew me with all my friends
+about me.
+
+"Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows which she swore to
+me in wedlock, would not lend a hand to close my eyes in death. But
+nothing is so heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill
+her spouse that married her a maid. When I brought her home to my
+house a bride, I hoped in my heart that she would be loving to me and
+to my children. Now, her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion
+on her whole sex. Blest husbands will have their loving wives in
+suspicion for her bad deeds."
+
+"Alas!" said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality in your royal
+house of Atreus, and that they are hated of Jove for their wives. For
+Helen's sake, your brother Menelaus's wife, what multitudes fell in
+the wars of Troy!"
+
+Agamemnon replied, "For this cause be not thou more kind than wise to
+any woman. Let not thy words express to her at any time all that is in
+thy mind, keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any bloody
+contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall. Exceeding wise
+she is, and to her wisdom she has a goodness as eminent; Icarius's
+daughter, Penelope the chaste: we left her a young bride when we
+parted from our wives to go to the wars, her first child suckling
+at her breast, the young Telemachus, whom you shall see grown up to
+manhood on your return, and he shall greet his father with befitting
+welcomes. My Orestes, my dear son, I shall never see again. His mother
+has deprived his father of the sight of him, and perhaps will slay him
+as she slew his sire. It is now no world to trust a woman in.--But
+what says fame? is my son yet alive? lives he in Orchomen, or in
+Pylus, or is he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court? as yet, I
+see, divine Orestes is not here with me."
+
+To this Ulysses replied that he had received no certain tidings where
+Orestes abode, only some uncertain rumours which he could not report
+for truth.
+
+While they held this sad conference, with kind tears striving to
+render unkind fortunes more palatable, the soul of great Achilles
+joined them. "What desperate adventure has brought Ulysses to these
+regions," said Achilles, "to see the end of dead men, and their
+foolish shades?"
+
+Ulysses answered him that he had come to consult Tiresias respecting
+his voyage home. "But thou, O son of Thetis," said he, "why dost thou
+disparage the state of the dead? seeing that as alive thou didst
+surpass all men in glory, thou must needs retain thy pre-eminence here
+below: so great Achilles triumphs over death."
+
+But Achilles made reply, that he had much rather be a peasant-slave
+upon the earth, than reign over all the dead. So much did the
+inactivity and slothful condition of that state displease his
+unquenchable and restless spirit. Only he enquired of Ulysses if his
+father Peleus were living, and how his son Neoptolemus conducted
+himself.
+
+Of Peleus Ulysses could tell him nothing; but of Neoptolemus he thus
+bore witness: "From Scyros I convoyed your son by sea to the Greeks:
+where I can speak of him, for I knew him. He was chief in council, and
+in the field. When any question was proposed, so quick was his conceit
+in the forward apprehension of any case, that he ever spoke first,
+and was heard with more attention than the older heads. Only myself
+and aged Nestor could compare with him in giving advice. In battle I
+cannot speak his praise, unless I could count all that fell by his
+sword. I will only mention one instance of his manhood. When we sat
+hid in the belly of the wooden horse, in the ambush which deceived
+the Trojans to their destruction, I, who had the management of that
+stratagem, still shifted my place from side to side to note the
+behaviour of our men. In some I marked their hearts trembling, through
+all the pains which they took to appear valiant, and in others tears,
+that in spite of manly courage would gush forth. And to say truth, it
+was an adventure of high enterprise, and as perilous a stake as was
+ever played in war's game. But in him I could not observe the least
+sign of weakness, no tears nor tremblings, but his hand still on his
+good sword, and ever urging me to set open the machine and let us out
+before the time was come for doing it; and when we sallied out he was
+still first in that fierce destruction and bloody midnight desolation
+of king Priam's city."
+
+This made the soul of Achilles to tread a swifter pace, with
+high-raised feet, as he vanished away, for the joy which he took in
+his son being applauded by Ulysses.
+
+A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses knew to be the ghost of Ajax,
+his opponent, when living, in that famous dispute about the right of
+succeeding to the arms of the deceased Achilles. They being adjudged
+by the Greeks to Ulysses, as the prize of wisdom above bodily
+strength, the noble Ajax in despite went mad, and slew himself. The
+sight of his rival turned to a shade by his dispute, so subdued the
+passion of emulation in Ulysses, that for his sake he wished that
+judgment in that controversy had been given against himself, rather
+than so illustrious a chief should have perished for the desire of
+those arms, which his prowess (second only to Achilles in fight) so
+eminently had deserved. "Ajax," he cried, "all the Greeks mourn for
+thee as much as they lamented for Achilles. Let not thy wrath burn for
+ever, great son of Telamon. Ulysses seeks peace with thee, and will
+make any atonement to thee that can appease thy hurt spirit." But the
+shade stalked on, and would not exchange a word with Ulysses, though
+he prayed it with many tears and many earnest entreaties. "He might
+have spoke to me," said Ulysses, "since I spoke to him; but I see the
+resentments of the dead are eternal."
+
+Then Ulysses saw a throne on which was placed a judge distributing
+sentence. He that sat on the throne was Minos, and he was dealing out
+just judgments to the dead. He it is that assigns them their place in
+bliss or woe.
+
+Then came by a thundering ghost, the large-limbed Orion, the mighty
+hunter, who was hunting there the ghosts of the beasts which he had
+slaughtered in desart hills upon the earth. For the dead delight in
+the occupations which pleased them in the time of their living upon
+the earth.
+
+There was Tityus suffering eternal pains because he had sought to
+violate the honour of Latona as she passed from Pytho into Panopeus.
+Two vultures sat perpetually preying upon his liver with their crooked
+beaks; which as fast as they devoured, is for ever renewed; nor can he
+fray them away with his great hands.
+
+There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, standing up to the
+chin in water, which he can never taste, but still as he bows his
+head, thinking to quench his burning thirst, instead of water he licks
+up unsavoury dust. All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of delicious
+flavour, hang in ripe clusters about his head, seeming as though they
+offered themselves to be plucked by him; but when he reaches out his
+hand, some wind carries them far out of his sight into the clouds: so
+he is starved in the midst of plenty by the righteous doom of Jove, in
+memory of that inhuman banquet at which the sun turned pale, when the
+unnatural father served up the limbs of his little son in a dish, as
+meat for his divine guests.
+
+There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labours. His punishment
+is, to be for ever rolling up a vast stone to the top of a mountain,
+which when it gets to the top, falls down with a crushing weight, and
+all his work is to be begun again. He was bathed all over in sweat,
+that reeked out a smoke which covered his head like a mist. His crime
+had been the revealing of state secrets.
+
+There Ulysses saw Hercules: not that Hercules who enjoys immortal life
+in heaven among the gods, and is married to Hebe or Youth; but his
+shadow which remains below. About him the dead flocked as thick as
+bats, hovering around, and cuffing at his head: he stands with his
+dreadful bow, ever in the act to shoot.
+
+There also might Ulysses have seen and spoken with the shades of
+Theseus, and Pirithous, and the old heroes; but he had conversed
+enough with horrors: therefore covering his face with his hands, that
+he might see no more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and
+pushed off. The bark moved of itself without the help of any oar,
+and soon brought him out of the regions of death into the cheerful
+quarters of the living, and to the island of Ææa, whence he had set
+forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+_The song of the Sirens.--Scylla and Charybdis.--The oxen of the
+Sun.--The judgment.--The crew killed by lightning._
+
+
+"Unhappy man, who at thy birth wast appointed twice to die! others
+shall die once; but thou, besides that death that remains for thee,
+common to all men, hast in thy life-time visited the shades of death.
+Thee Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect. Thee the deathful Sirens lie in
+wait for, that taint the minds of whoever listen to them with their
+sweet singing. Whosoever shall but hear the call of any Siren, he will
+so despise both wife and children through their sorceries, that the
+stream of his affection never again shall set homewards, nor shall he
+take joy in wife or children thereafter, or they in him."
+
+With these prophetic greetings great Circe met Ulysses on his return.
+He besought her to instruct him in the nature of the Sirens, and by
+what method their baneful allurements were to be resisted.
+
+"They are sisters three," she replied, "that sit in a mead (by which
+your ship must needs pass) circled with dead men's bones. These are
+the bones of men whom they have slain, after with fawning invitements
+they have enticed them into their fen. Yet such is the celestial
+harmony of their voice accompanying the persuasive magic of their
+words, that knowing this, you shall not be able to withstand their
+enticements. Therefore when you are to sail by them, you shall stop
+the ears of your companions with wax, that they may hear no note of
+that dangerous music; but for yourself, that you may hear, and yet
+live, give them strict command to bind you hand and foot to the mast,
+and in no case to set you free, till you are out of the danger of the
+temptation, though you should entreat it, and implore it ever so much,
+but to bind you rather the more for your requesting to be loosed. So
+shall you escape that snare."
+
+Ulysses then prayed her that she would inform him what Scylla and
+Charybdis were, which she had taught him by name to fear. She replied:
+"Sailing from Ææa to Trinacria, you must pass at an equal distance
+between two fatal rocks. Incline never so little either to the one
+side or the other, and your ship must meet with certain destruction.
+No vessel ever yet tried that pass without being lost, but the Argo,
+which owed her safety to the sacred freight she bore, the fleece of
+the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The biggest of these
+rocks which you shall come to, Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep
+whirlpool at the foot of the rock the abhorred monster shrouds her
+face; who if she were to shew her full form, no eye of man or god
+could endure the sight: thence she stretches out all her six long
+necks peering and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and
+whales, whole ships, and their men, whatever comes within her raging
+gulf. The other rock is lesser, and of less ominous aspect; but there
+dreadful Charybdis sits, supping the black deeps. Thrice a day she
+drinks her pits dry, and thrice a day again she belches them all up:
+but when she is drinking, come not nigh, for being once caught, the
+force of Neptune cannot redeem you from her swallow. Better trust to
+Scylla, for she will but have for her six necks six men: Charybdis in
+her insatiate draught will ask all."
+
+Then Ulysses enquired, in case he should escape Charybdis, whether
+he might not assail that other monster with his sword: to which she
+replied that he must not think that he had an enemy subject to death,
+or wounds, to contend with: for Scylla could never die. Therefore,
+his best safety was in flight, and to invoke none of the gods but
+Cratis, who is Scylla's mother, and might perhaps forbid her daughter
+to devour them. For his conduct after he arrived at Trinacria she
+referred him to the admonitions which had been given him by Tiresias.
+
+Ulysses having communicated her instructions, as far as related to the
+Sirens, to his companions, who had not been present at that interview;
+but concealing from them the rest, as he had done the terrible
+predictions of Tiresias, that they might not be deterred by fear from
+pursuing their voyage: the time for departure being come, they set
+their sails, and took a final leave of great Circe; who by her art
+calmed the heavens, and gave them smooth seas, and a right fore wind
+(the seaman's friend) to bear them on their way to Ithaca.
+
+They had not sailed past a hundred leagues before the breeze which
+Circe had lent them suddenly stopped. It was stricken dead. All the
+sea lay in prostrate slumber. Not a gasp of air could be felt. The
+ship stood still. Ulysses guessed that the island of the Sirens was
+not far off, and that they had charmed the air so with their devilish
+singing. Therefore he made him cakes of wax, as Circe had instructed
+him, and stopped the ears of his men with them: then causing himself
+to be bound hand and foot, he commanded the rowers to ply their oars
+and row as fast as speed could carry them past that fatal shore. They
+soon came within sight of the Sirens, who sang in Ulysses' hearing:
+
+  Come here, thou, worthy of a world of praise,
+  That dost so high the Grecian glory raise;
+  Ulysses! stay thy ship; and that song hear
+  That none past ever, but it bent his ear,
+  But left him ravish'd, and instructed more
+  By us, than any, ever heard before.
+  For we know all things, whatsoever were
+  In wide Troy labour'd; whatsoever there
+  The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain'd:
+  By those high issues that the gods ordain'd:
+  And whatsoever all the earth can show
+  To inform a knowledge of desert, we know.
+
+These were the words, but the celestial harmony of the voices which
+sang them no tongue can describe: it took the ear of Ulysses with
+ravishment. He would have broke his bonds to rush after them; and
+threatened, wept, sued, entreated, commanded, crying out with tears
+and passionate imprecations, conjuring his men by all the ties of
+perils past which they had endured in common, by fellowship and love,
+and the authority which he retained among them, to let him loose; but
+at no rate would they obey him. And still the Sirens sang. Ulysses
+made signs, motions, gestures, promising mountains of gold if they
+would set him free; but their oars only moved faster. And still the
+Sirens sung. And still the more he adjured them to set him free, the
+faster with cords and ropes they bound him; till they were quite out
+of hearing of the Sirens' notes, whose effect great Circe had so truly
+predicted. And well she might speak of them, for often she had joined
+her own enchanting voice to theirs, while she has sat in the flowery
+meads, mingled with the Sirens and the Water Nymphs, gathering their
+potent herbs and drugs of magic quality: their singing altogether has
+made the gods stoop, and "heaven drowsy with the harmony."
+
+Escaped that peril, they had not sailed yet an hundred leagues
+further, when they heard a roar afar off, which Ulysses knew to be
+the barking of Scylla's dogs, which surround her waist, and bark
+incessantly. Coming nearer they beheld a smoke ascend, with a horrid
+murmur, which arose from that other whirlpool, to which they made
+nigher approaches than to Scylla. Through the furious eddy, which is
+in that place, the ship stood still as a stone, for there was no man
+to lend his hand to an oar, the dismal roar of Scylla's dogs at a
+distance, and the nearer clamours of Charybdis, where everything made
+an echo, quite taking from them the power of exertion. Ulysses went
+up and down encouraging his men, one by one, giving them good words,
+telling them that they were in greater perils when they were blocked
+up in the Cyclop's cave, yet, heaven assisting his counsels, he had
+delivered them out of that extremity. That he could not believe but
+they remembered it; and wished them to give the same trust to the same
+care which he had now for their welfare. That they must exert all
+the strength and wit which they had, and try if Jove would not grant
+them an escape even out of this peril. In particular he cheered up
+the pilot who sat at the helm, and told him that he must shew more
+firmness than other men, as he had more trust committed to him, and
+had the sole management by his skill of the vessel in which all their
+safeties were embarked. That a rock lay hid within those boiling
+whirlpools which he saw, on the outside of which he must steer, if he
+would avoid his own destruction, and the destruction of them all.
+
+They heard him, and like men took to the oars; but little knew what
+opposite danger, in shunning that rock, they must be thrown upon. For
+Ulysses had concealed from them the wounds, never to be healed, which
+Scylla was to open: their terror would else have robbed them all of
+all care to steer, or move an oar, and have made them hide under the
+hatches, for fear of seeing her, where he and they must have died an
+idle death. But even then he forgot the precautions which Circe had
+given him to prevent harm to his person; who had willed him not to
+arm, or shew himself once to Scylla: but disdaining not to venture
+life for his brave companions, he could not contain, but armed in all
+points, and taking a lance in either hand, he went up to the fore
+deck, and looked when Scylla would appear.
+
+She did not shew herself as yet, and still the vessel steered closer
+by her rock, as it sought to shun that other more dreaded: for they
+saw how horribly Charybdis's black throat drew into her all the
+whirling deep, which she disgorged again, that all about her boiled
+like a kettle, and the rock roared with troubled waters; which when
+she supped in again, all the bottom turned up, and disclosed far
+under shore the swart sands naked, whose whole stern sight frayed the
+startled blood from their faces, and made Ulysses turn his to view
+the wonder of whirlpools. Which when Scylla saw, from out her black
+den, she darted out her six long necks, and swoopt up as many of his
+friends: whose cries Ulysses heard, and saw them too late, with their
+heels turned up, and their hands thrown to him for succour, who had
+been their help in all extremities, but could not deliver them now;
+and he heard them shriek out, as she tore them, and to the last they
+continued to throw their hands out to him for sweet life. In all his
+sufferings he never had beheld a sight so full of miseries.
+
+Escaped from Scylla and Charybdis, but with a diminished crew, Ulysses
+and the sad remains of his followers reached the Trinacrian shore.
+Here landing, he beheld oxen grazing of such surpassing size and
+beauty, that both from them, and from the shape of the island (having
+three promontories jutting into the sea) he judged rightly that he
+was come to the Triangular island, and the oxen of the Sun, of which
+Tiresias had forewarned him.
+
+So great was his terror lest through his own fault, or that of his
+men, any violence or profanation should be offered to the holy oxen,
+that even then, tired as they were with the perils and fatigues of
+the day past, and unable to stir an oar, or use any exertion, and
+though night was fast coming on, he would have had them re-embark
+immediately, and make the best of their way from that dangerous
+station; but his men with one voice resolutely opposed it, and even
+the too cautious Eurylochus himself withstood the proposal; so much
+did the temptation of a little ease and refreshment (ease tenfold
+sweet after such labours) prevail over the sagest counsels, and the
+apprehension of certain evil outweigh the prospect of contingent
+danger. They expostulated, that the nerves of Ulysses seemed to be
+made of steel, and his limbs not liable to lassitude like other men's;
+that waking or sleeping seemed indifferent to him; but that they were
+men, not gods, and felt the common appetites for food and sleep.
+That in the nighttime all the winds most destructive to ships are
+generated. That black night still required to be served with meat,
+and sleep, and quiet havens, and ease. That the best sacrifice
+to the sea was in the morning. With such sailor-like sayings and
+mutinous arguments, which the majority have always ready to justify
+disobedience to their betters, they forced Ulysses to comply with
+their requisition, and against his will to take up his night-quarters
+on shore. But he first exacted from them an oath that they would
+neither maim nor kill any of the cattle which they saw grazing, but
+content themselves with such food as Circe had stowed their vessel
+with when they parted from Ææa. This they man by man severally
+promised, imprecating the heaviest curses on whoever should break it;
+and mooring their bark within a creek, they went to supper, contenting
+themselves that night with such food as Circe had given them, not
+without many sad thoughts of their friends whom Scylla had devoured,
+the grief of which kept them great part of the night waking.
+
+In the morning Ulysses urged them again to a religious observance of
+the oath that they had sworn, not in any case to attempt the blood of
+those fair herds which they saw grazing, but to content themselves
+with the ship's food; for the god who owned those cattle sees and
+hears all.
+
+They faithfully obeyed, and remained in that good mind for a month,
+during which they were confined to that station by contrary winds,
+till all the wine and the bread was gone, which they had brought with
+them. When their victuals were gone, necessity compelled them to stray
+in quest of whatever fish or fowl they could snare, which that coast
+did not yield in any great abundance. Then Ulysses prayed to all the
+gods that dwelt in bountiful heaven, that they would be pleased to
+yield them some means to stay their hunger without having recourse to
+profane and forbidden violations: but the ears of heaven seemed to be
+shut, or some god incensed plotted his ruin; for at mid-day, when he
+should chiefly have been vigilant and watchful to prevent mischief, a
+deep sleep fell upon the eyes of Ulysses, during which he lay totally
+insensible of all that passed in the world, and what his friends
+or what his enemies might do for his welfare or destruction. Then
+Eurylochus took his advantage. He was the man of most authority with
+them after Ulysses. He represented to them all the misery of their
+condition; how that every death is hateful and grievous to mortality,
+but that of all deaths famine is attended with the most painful,
+loathsome, and humiliating circumstances; that the subsistence which
+they could hope to draw from fowling or fishing was too precarious
+to be depended upon; that there did not seem to be any chance of the
+winds changing to favour their escape, but that they must inevitably
+stay there and perish, if they let an irrational superstition deter
+them from the means which nature offered to their hands; that Ulysses
+might be deceived in his belief that these oxen had any sacred
+qualities above other oxen; and even admitting that they were the
+property of the god of the Sun, as he said they were, the Sun did
+neither eat nor drink, and the gods were best served not by a
+scrupulous conscience, but by a thankful heart, which took freely
+what they as freely offered: with these and such like persuasions he
+prevailed on his half-famished and half-mutinous companions, to begin
+the impious violation of their oath by the slaughter of seven of
+the fairest of these oxen which were grazing. Part they roasted and
+eat, and part they offered in sacrifice to the gods, particularly
+to Apollo, god of the Sun, vowing to build a temple to his godhead,
+when they should arrive in Ithaca, and deck it with magnificent and
+numerous gifts: Vain men! and superstition worse than that which they
+so lately derided! to imagine that prospective penitence can excuse a
+present violation of duty, and that the pure natures of the heavenly
+powers will admit of compromise or dispensation for sin.
+
+But to their feast they fell, dividing the roasted portions of the
+flesh, savoury and pleasant meat to them, but a sad sight to the eyes,
+and a savour of death in the nostrils, of the waking Ulysses; who
+just woke in time to witness, but not soon enough to prevent, their
+rash and sacrilegious banquet. He had scarce time to ask what great
+mischief was this which they had done unto him, when behold, a
+prodigy! the ox-hides which they had stripped, began to creep, as if
+they had life; and the roasted flesh bellowed as the ox used to do
+when he was living. The hair of Ulysses stood up on end with affright
+at these omens; but his companions, like men whom the gods had
+infatuated to their destruction, persisted in their horrible banquet.
+
+The Sun from his burning chariot saw how Ulysses's men had slain his
+oxen, and he cried to his father Jove, "Revenge me upon these impious
+men who have slain my oxen, which it did me good to look upon when
+I walked my heavenly round. In all my daily course I never saw such
+bright and beautiful creatures as those my oxen were." The father
+promised that ample retribution should be taken of those accursed men:
+which was fulfilled shortly after, when they took their leaves of the
+fatal island.
+
+Six days they feasted in spite of the signs of heaven, and on the
+seventh, the wind changing, they set their sails, and left the island;
+and their hearts were cheerful with the banquets they had held; all
+but the heart of Ulysses, which sank within him, as with wet eyes he
+beheld his friends, and gave them for lost, as men devoted to divine
+vengeance. Which soon overtook them: for they had not gone many
+leagues before a dreadful tempest arose, which burst their cables;
+down came their mast, crushing the scull of the pilot in its fall;
+off he fell from the stern into the water, and the bark wanting his
+management drove along at the wind's mercy: thunders roared, and
+terrible lightnings of Jove came down; first a bolt struck Eurylochus,
+then another, and then another, till all the crew were killed, and
+their bodies swam about like sea-mews; and the ship was split in
+pieces: only Ulysses survived; and he had no hope of safety but in
+tying himself to the mast, where he sat riding upon the waves, like
+one that in no extremity would yield to fortune. Nine days was he
+floating about with all the motions of the sea, with no other support
+than the slender mast under him, till the tenth night cast him, all
+spent and weary with toil, upon the friendly shores of the island
+Ogygia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+_The Island of Calypso.--Immortality refused._
+
+
+Henceforth the adventures of the single Ulysses must be pursued. Of
+all those faithful partakers of his toil, who with him left Asia,
+laden with the spoils of Troy, now not one remains, but all a prey to
+the remorseless waves, and food for some great fish: their gallant
+navy reduced to one ship, and that finally swallowed up and lost.
+Where now are all their anxious thoughts of home? that perseverance
+with which they went through the severest sufferings and the hardest
+labours to which poor sea-farers were ever exposed, that their toils
+at last might be crowned with the sight of their native shores and
+wives at Ithaca!--Ulysses is now in the isle Ogygia; called the
+Delightful Island. The poor ship-wrecked chief, the slave of all
+the elements, is once again raised by the caprice of fortune into a
+shadow of prosperity. He that was cast naked upon the shore, bereft
+of all his companions, has now a goddess to attend upon him, and
+his companions are the nymphs which never die.--Who has not heard
+of Calypso? her grove crowned with alders and poplars? her grotto,
+against which the luxuriant vine laid forth his purple grapes?
+her ever new delights, crystal fountains, running brooks, meadows
+flowering with sweet balm-gentle and with violet: blue violets which
+like veins enameled the smooth breasts of each fragrant mead! It were
+useless to describe over again what has been so well told already:
+or to relate those soft arts of courtship which the goddess used to
+detain Ulysses; the same in kind which she afterwards practised upon
+his less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, hardly
+preserved from her snares, when they came to the Delightful Island
+together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses.
+
+A memorable example of married love, and a worthy instance how dear
+to every good man his country is, was exhibited by Ulysses. If Circe
+loved him sincerely, Calypso loves him with tenfold more warmth and
+passion: she can deny him nothing, but his departure; she offers him
+every thing, even to a participation of her immortality: if he will
+stay and share in her pleasures, he shall never die. But death with
+glory has greater charms for a mind heroic, than a life that shall
+never die, with shame; and when he pledged his vows to his Penelope,
+he reserved no stipulation that he would forsake her whenever a
+goddess should think him worthy of her bed, but they had sworn to live
+and grow old together: and he would not survive her if he could, nor
+meanly share in immortality itself, from which she was excluded.
+
+These thoughts kept him pensive and melancholy in the midst of
+pleasure. His heart was on the seas, making voyages to Ithaca. Twelve
+months had worn away, when Minerva from heaven saw her favourite, how
+he sat still pining on the sea shores (his daily custom), wishing for
+a ship to carry him home. She (who is wisdom herself) was indignant
+that so wise and brave a man as Ulysses should be held in effeminate
+bondage by an unworthy goddess: and at her request, her father Jove
+ordered Mercury to go down to the earth to command Calypso to dismiss
+her guest. The divine messenger tied fast to his feet his winged
+shoes, which bear him over land and seas, and took in his hand his
+golden rod, the ensign of his authority. Then wheeling in many an airy
+round, he stayed not till he alighted on the firm top of the mountain
+Pieria: thence he fetched a second circuit over the seas, kissing the
+waves in his flight with his feet, as light as any sea-mew fishing
+dips her wings, till he touched the isle Ogygia, and soared up from
+the blue sea to the grotto of the goddess, to whom his errand was
+ordained.
+
+His message struck a horror, checked by love, through all the
+faculties of Calypso. She replied to it incensed: "You gods are
+insatiate past all that live, in all things which you affect; which
+makes you so envious and grudging. It afflicts you to the heart, when
+any goddess seeks the love of a mortal man in marriage, though you
+yourselves without scruple link yourselves to women of the earth. So
+it fared with you, when the delicious-fingered Morning shared Orion's
+bed; you could never satisfy your hate and your jealousy, till you
+had incensed the chastity-loving dame, Diana, _who leads the precise
+life_, to come upon him by stealth in Ortygia, and pierce him through
+with her arrows. And when rich-haired Ceres gave the reins to her
+affections, and took Iasion (well worthy) to her arms, the secret
+was not so cunningly kept but Jove had soon notice of it, and the
+poor mortal paid for his felicity with death, struck through with
+lightnings. And now you envy me the possession of a wretched man, whom
+tempests have cast upon my shores, making him lawfully mine; whose
+ship Jove rent in pieces with his hot thunderbolts, killing all his
+friends. Him I have preserved, loved, nourished, made him mine by
+protection, my creature, by every tie of gratitude, mine; have vowed
+to make him deathless like myself; him you will take from me. But I
+know your power, and that it is vain for me to resist. Tell your king
+that I obey his mandates."
+
+With an ill grace Calypso promised to fulfil the commands of Jove;
+and, Mercury departing, she went to find Ulysses, where he sat
+outside the grotto, not knowing of the heavenly message, drowned in
+discontent, not seeing any human probability of his ever returning
+home.
+
+She said to him: "Unhappy man, no longer afflict yourself with pining
+after your country, but build you a ship, with which you may return
+home; since it is the will of the gods: who doubtless as they are
+greater in power than I, are greater in skill, and best can tell what
+is fittest for man. But I call the gods, and my inward conscience, to
+witness, that I had no thought but what stood with thy safety, nor
+would have done or counselled any thing against thy good. I persuaded
+thee to nothing which I should not have followed myself in thy
+extremity: for my mind is innocent and simple. O, if thou knewest what
+dreadful sufferings thou must yet endure, before ever thou reachest
+thy native land, thou wouldest not esteem so hardly of a goddess's
+offer to share her immortality with thee; nor, for a few years
+enjoyment of a perishing Penelope, refuse an imperishable and
+never-dying life with Calypso."
+
+He replied: "Ever-honoured, great Calypso, let it not displease thee,
+that I a mortal man desire to see and converse again with a wife that
+is mortal: human objects are best fitted to human infirmities. I well
+know how far in wisdom, in feature, in stature, proportion, beauty, in
+all the gifts of the mind, thou exceedest my Penelope: she a mortal,
+and subject to decay; thou immortal, ever growing, yet never old: yet
+in her sight all my desires terminate, all my wishes; in the sight of
+her, and of my country earth. If any god, envious of my return, shall
+lay his dreadful hand upon me as I pass the seas, I submit: for the
+same powers have given me a mind not to sink under oppression. In wars
+and waves my sufferings have not been small."
+
+She heard his pleaded reasons, and of force she must assent; so to her
+nymphs she gave in charge from her sacred woods to cut down timber,
+to make Ulysses a ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to
+their soft fingers, yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard: and Ulysses
+busily bestirred himself, labouring far more hard than they, as was
+fitting, till twenty tall trees, driest and fittest for timber, were
+felled. Then like a skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks,
+using the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition, that in
+four days' time a ship was made, complete with all her decks, hatches,
+side-boards, yards. Calypso added linen for the sails, and tackling;
+and when she was finished, she was a goodly vessel for a man to sail
+in alone, or in company, over the wide seas. By the fifth morning she
+was launched; and Ulysses, furnished with store of provisions, rich
+garments, and gold and silver, given him by Calypso, took a last
+leave of her, and of her nymphs, and of the isle Ogygia which had so
+befriended him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+_The tempest.--The sea-bird's gift.--The escape by swimming.--The
+sleep in the woods._
+
+
+At the stern of his solitary ship Ulysses sat, and steered right
+artfully. No sleep could seize his eye-lids. He beheld the Pleiads,
+the Bear which is by some called the Wain, that moves round about
+Orion, and keeps still above the ocean, and the slow-setting sign
+Bootes, which some name the Waggoner. Seventeen days he held his
+course, and on the eighteenth the coast of Phæacia was in sight. The
+figure of the land, as seen from the sea, was pretty and circular, and
+looked something like a shield.
+
+Neptune returning from visiting his favourite Æthiopians, from the
+mountains of the Solymi, descried Ulysses ploughing the waves, his
+domain. The sight of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus's sake,
+his son, whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart on fire;
+and snatching into his hand his horrid sea-sceptre, the trident of his
+power, he smote the air and the sea, and conjured up all his black
+storms, calling down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the
+earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through the darkness
+and indistinctness which prevailed, the billows rolling up before the
+fury of all the winds, that contended together in their mighty sport.
+
+Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then all his spirit
+was spent, and he wished that he had been among the number of his
+countrymen who fell before Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by
+all the Greeks, rather than to perish thus, where no man could mourn
+him or know him.
+
+As he thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and
+washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he
+struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet
+held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed
+winds that struck it, sails and sail-yards fell into the deep, and he
+himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above,
+wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress him
+most, and the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso clung about him,
+and hindered his swimming; yet neither for this, nor for the overthrow
+of his ship, nor his own perilous condition, would he give up his
+drenched vessel, but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length hold of
+her again, and then sat in her bulk, insulting over death, which he
+had escaped, and the salt waves which he gave the sea again to give to
+other men: his ship, striving to live, floated at random, cuffed from
+wave to wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds, now Boreas tossed it
+to Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus, and Eurus to the west wind, who
+kept up the horrid tennis.
+
+Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld; Ino Leucothea, now a
+sea-goddess, but once a mortal and the daughter of Cadmus; she with
+pity beheld Ulysses the mark of their fierce contention, and rising
+from the waves alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird
+which is called a cormorant, and in her beak she held a wonderful
+girdle made of sea-weeds which grow at the bottom of the ocean, which
+she dropt at his feet, and the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled
+him not to trust any more to that fatal vessel against which god
+Neptune had levelled his furious wrath, nor to those ill-befriending
+garments which Calypso had given him, but to quit both it and them and
+trust for his safety to swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird,
+"take this girdle and tie about your middle, which has virtue to
+protect the wearer at sea, and you shall safely reach the shore; but
+when you have landed, cast it far from you back into the sea." He
+did as the sea-bird instructed him, he stripped himself naked, and
+fastening the wondrous girdle about his middle, cast himself into the
+seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight into the fathomless abyss
+of the ocean.
+
+Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with the waves, though
+sore buffeted, and almost spent, never giving up himself for lost,
+such confidence he had in that charm which he wore about his middle,
+and in the words of that divine bird. But the third morning the winds
+grew calm and all the heavens were clear. Then he saw himself nigh
+land, which he knew to be the coast of the Phæacians, a people good to
+strangers, and abounding in ships, by whose favour he doubted not that
+he should soon obtain a passage to his own country. And such joy he
+conceived in his heart, as good sons have, that esteem their father's
+life dear, when long sickness has held him down to his bed, and wasted
+his body, and they see at length health return to the old man, with
+restored strength and spirits, in reward of their many prayers to
+the gods for his safety: so precious was the prospect of home-return
+to Ulysses, that he might restore health to his country (his better
+parent), that had long languished as full of distempers in his
+absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had joy to see the
+shores, the woods, so nigh and within his grasp as they seemed, and he
+laboured with all the might of hands and feet to reach with swimming
+that nigh-seeming land.
+
+But when he approached near, a horrid sound of a huge sea beating
+against rocks informed him that here was no place for landing, nor any
+harbour for man's resort, but through the weeds and the foam which the
+sea belched up against the land he could dimly discover the rugged
+shore all bristled with flints, and all that part of the coast one
+impending rock that seemed impossible to climb, and the water all
+about so deep, that not a sand was there for any tired foot to rest
+upon, and every moment he feared lest some wave more cruel than the
+rest should crush him against a cliff, rendering worse than vain
+all his landing: and should he swim to seek a more commodious haven
+further on, he was fearful lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds
+would force him back a long way off into the main, where the terrible
+god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped his power, having
+gotten him again into his domain, would send out some great whale (of
+which those seas breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive; with
+such malignity he still pursued him.
+
+While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of dangers, one
+bigger wave drove against a sharp rock his naked body, which it gashed
+and tore, and wanted little of breaking all his bones, so rude was
+the shock. But in this extremity she prompted him that never failed
+him at need. Minerva (who is wisdom itself) put it into his thoughts
+no longer to keep swimming off and on, as one dallying with danger,
+but boldly to force the shore that threatened him, and to hug the
+rock that had torn him so rudely; which with both hands he clasped,
+wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow which had
+driven him upon it was past; but then again the rock drove back that
+wave so furiously, that it reft him of his hold, sucking him with
+it in its return, and the sharp rock (his cruel friend) to which he
+clinged for succour, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in parting,
+that he fell off, and could sustain no longer: quite under water he
+fell, and past the help of fate, there had the hapless Ulysses lost
+all portion that he had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his
+wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to explore some
+other shelter, ceasing to attempt that landing-place.
+
+She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to the mouth of the
+fair river Callicoe, which not far from thence disbursed its watery
+tribute to the ocean. Here the shores were easy and accessible, and
+the rocks, which rather adorned than defended its banks, so smooth,
+that they seemed polished of purpose to invite the landing of our
+sea-wanderer, and to atone for the uncourteous treatment which those
+less hospitable cliffs had afforded him. And the god of the river, as
+if in pity, stayed his current and smoothed his waters, to make his
+landing more easy: for sacred to the ever-living deities of the fresh
+waters, be they mountain-stream, river, or lake, is the cry of erring
+mortals that seek their aid, by reason that being inland-bred they
+partake more of the gentle humanities of our nature than those marine
+deities, whom Neptune trains up in tempests in the unpitying recesses
+of his salt abyss.
+
+So by the favour of the river's god Ulysses crept to land
+half-drowned; both his knees faltering, his strong hands falling down
+through weakness from the excessive toils he had endured, his cheek
+and nostrils flowing with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had
+swallowed in that conflict, voice and breath spent, down he sank as in
+death. Dead weary he was. It seemed that the sea had soaked through
+his heart, and the pains he felt in all his veins were little less
+than those which one feels that has endured the torture of the rack.
+But when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his recollection
+by degrees began to return, he rose up, and unloosing from his
+waist the girdle or charm which that divine bird had given him, and
+remembering the charge which he had received with it, he flung it far
+from him into the river. Back it swam with the course of the ebbing
+stream till it reached the sea, where the fair hands of Ino Leucothea
+received it to keep it as a pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked
+mariner, that like Ulysses should wander in those perilous waves.
+
+Then he kissed the humble earth in token of safety, and on he went by
+the side of that pleasant river, till he came where a thicker shade of
+rushes that grew on its banks seemed to point out the place where he
+might rest his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity divided
+his mind, whether he should pass the night, which was coming on, in
+that place, where, though he feared no other enemies, the damps and
+frosts of the chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death
+to him in his weak state; or whether he had better climb the next
+hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood, in which he might find
+a warm and sheltered though insecure repose, subject to the approach
+of any wild beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course
+appear to him, though with some danger, as that which was more
+honourable and savoured more of strife and self-exertion, than to
+perish without a struggle the passive victim of cold and the elements.
+
+So he bent his course to the nearest woods, where, entering in, he
+found a thicket, mostly of wild olives and such low trees, yet growing
+so intertwined and knit together, that the moist wind had not leave to
+play through their branches, nor the sun's scorching beams to pierce
+their recesses, nor any shower to beat through, they grew so thick
+and as it were folded each in the other: here creeping in, he made
+his bed of the leaves which were beginning to fall, of which was
+such abundance that two or three men might have spread them ample
+coverings, such as might shield them from the winter's rage, though
+the air breathed steel and blew as it would burst. Here creeping in,
+he heaped up store of leaves all about him, as a man would billets
+upon a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. Rich seed of virtue
+lying hid in poor leaves! Here Minerva soon gave him sound sleep; and
+here all his long toils past seemed to be concluded and shut up within
+the little sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+_The princess Nausicaa,--The washing.--The game with the ball.--The
+Court of Phæacia and king Alcinous._
+
+
+Meantime Minerva designing an interview between the king's daughter of
+that country and Ulysses when he should awake, went by night to the
+palace of king Alcinous, and stood at the bedside of the princess
+Nausicaa in the shape of one of her favourite attendants, and thus
+addressed the sleeping princess:
+
+"Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping here, and never bestow a thought
+upon your bridal ornaments, of which you have many and beautiful, laid
+up in your wardrobe against the day of your marriage, which cannot be
+far distant; when you shall have need of all, not only to deck your
+own person, but to give away in presents to the virgins that honouring
+you shall attend you to the temple? Your reputation stands much upon
+the timely care of these things; these things are they which fill
+father and reverend mother with delight. Let us arise betimes to wash
+your fair vestments of linen and silks in the river; and request your
+sire to lend you mules and a coach, for your wardrobe is heavy, and
+the place where we must wash is distant, and besides it fits not a
+great princess like you to go so far on foot."
+
+So saying she went away, and Nausicaa awoke, full of pleasing thoughts
+of her marriage, which the dream had told her was not far distant; and
+as soon as it was dawn, she arose and dressed herself, and went to
+find her parents.
+
+The queen her mother was already up, and seated among her maids,
+spinning at her wheel, as the fashion was in those primitive times,
+when great ladies did not disdain housewifery: and the king her father
+was preparing to go abroad at that early hour to council with his
+grave senate.
+
+"My father," she said, "will you not order mules and a coach to be got
+ready, that I may go and wash, I and my maids, at the cisterns that
+stand without the city?"
+
+"What washing does my daughter speak of?" said Alcinous.
+
+"Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, "that have contracted
+soil by this time with lying by so long in the wardrobe. Five sons
+have you, that are my brothers; two of them are married, and three
+are bachelors; these last it concerns to have their garments neat and
+unsoiled; it may advance their fortunes in marriage: and who but I
+their sister should have a care of these things? You yourself, my
+father, have need of the whitest apparel, when you go, as now, to the
+council."
+
+She used this plea, modestly dissembling her care of her own nuptials
+to her father; who was not displeased at this instance of his
+daughter's discretion: for a seasonable care about marriage may be
+permitted to a young maiden, provided it be accompanied with modesty
+and dutiful submission to her parents in the choice of her future
+husband: and there was no fear of Nausicaa chusing wrongly or
+improperly, for she was as wise as she was beautiful, and the best in
+all Phæacia were suitors to her for her love. So Alcinous readily gave
+consent that she should go, ordering mules and a coach to be prepared.
+And Nausicaa brought from her chamber all her vestments, and laid them
+up in the coach, and her mother placed bread and wine in the coach,
+and oil in a golden cruse, to soften the bright skins of Nausicaa and
+her maids when they came out of the river.
+
+Nausicaa making her maids get up into the coach with her, lashed the
+mules, till they brought her to the cisterns which stood a little on
+the outside of the town, and were supplied with water from the river
+Callicoe.
+
+There her attendants unyoked the mules, took out the clothes, and
+steeped them in the cisterns, washing them in several waters, and
+afterwards treading them clean with their feet, venturing wagers who
+should have done soonest and cleanest, and using many pretty pastimes
+to beguile their labour as young maids use, while the princess looked
+on. When they had laid their clothes to dry, they fell to playing
+again, and Nausicaa joined them in a game with the ball, which is used
+in that country, which is performed by tossing the ball from hand
+to hand with great expedition, she who begins the pastime singing a
+song. It chanced that the princess whose turn it became to toss the
+ball, sent it so far from its mark, that it fell beyond into one of
+the cisterns of the river: at which the whole company, in merry
+consternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked the sleeping Ulysses,
+who was taking his rest after his long toils, in the woods not far
+distant from the place where these young maids had come to wash.
+
+At the sound of female voices Ulysses crept forth from his retirement,
+making himself a covering with boughs and leaves as well as he could
+to shroud his nakedness. The sudden appearance of his weather-beaten
+and almost naked form, so frighted the maidens that they scudded away
+into the woods and all about to hide themselves, only Minerva (who
+had brought about this interview to admirable purposes, by seemingly
+accidental means) put courage into the breast of Nausicaa, and she
+stayed where she was, and resolved to know what manner of man he was,
+and what was the occasion of his strange coming to them.
+
+He not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and clasp her knees, as
+suppliants should, but standing far off, addressed this speech to the
+young princess:
+
+"Before I presume rudely to press my petitions, I should first ask
+whether I am addressing a mortal woman, or one of the goddesses. If a
+goddess, you seem to me to be likest to Diana, the chaste huntress,
+the daughter of Jove. Like hers are your lineaments, your stature,
+your features, and air divine."
+
+She making answer that she was no goddess, but a mortal maid, he
+continued:
+
+"If a woman, thrice blessed are both the authors of your birth, thrice
+blessed are your brothers, who even to rapture must have joy in your
+perfections, to see you grown so like a young tree, and so graceful.
+But most blessed of all that breathe is he that has the gift to engage
+your young neck in the yoke of marriage. I never saw that man that was
+worthy of you. I never saw man or woman that at all parts equalled
+you. Lately at Delos (where I touched) I saw a young palm which grew
+beside Apollo's temple; it exceeded all the trees which ever I beheld
+for straitness and beauty: I can compare you only to that. A stupor
+past admiration strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from
+approaching you, to embrace your knees. Nor is it strange; for one
+of freshest and firmest spirit would falter, approaching near to so
+bright an object: but I am one whom a cruel habit of calamity has
+prepared to receive strong impressions. Twenty days the unrelenting
+seas have tossed me up and down coming from Ogygia, and at length cast
+me ship-wrecked last night upon your coast. I have seen no man or
+woman since I landed but yourself. All that I crave is clothes, which
+you may spare me, and to be shown the way to some neighbouring town.
+The gods, who have care of strangers, will requite you for these
+courtesies."
+
+She admiring to hear such complimentary words proceed out of the mouth
+of one whose outside looked so rough and unpromising, made answer:
+"Stranger, I discern neither sloth nor folly in you, and yet I see
+that you are poor and wretched: from which I gather that neither
+wisdom nor industry can secure felicity; only Jove bestows it upon
+whomsoever he pleases. He perhaps has reduced you to this plight.
+However, since your wanderings have brought you so near to our city,
+it lies in our duty to supply your wants. Clothes and what else
+a human hand should give to one so suppliant, and so tamed with
+calamity, you shall not want. We will shew you our city and tell you
+the name of our people. This is the land of the Phæacians, of which my
+father Alcinous is king."
+
+Then calling her attendants who had dispersed on the first sight of
+Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear, and said: "This man is no
+Cyclop, nor monster of sea or land, that you should fear him; but he
+seems manly, staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward
+appearance, yet he has the mind's riches, wit and fortitude, in
+abundance. Show him the cisterns where he may wash him from the
+sea-weeds and foam that hang about him, and let him have garments that
+fit him out of those which we have brought with us to the cisterns."
+
+Ulysses retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in the cisterns
+from the soil and impurities with which the rocks and waves had
+covered all his body, and clothing himself with befitting raiment,
+which the princess's attendants had given him, he presented himself
+in more worthy shape to Nausicaa. She admired to see what a comely
+personage he was, now he was dressed in all parts; she thought him
+some king or hero: and secretly wished that the gods would be pleased
+to give her such a husband.
+
+Then causing her attendants to yoke her mules, and lay up the
+vestments, which the sun's heat had sufficiently dried, in the coach,
+she ascended with her maids, and drove off to the palace; bidding
+Ulysses, as she departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it
+on foot at some distance: which she did, because if she had suffered
+him to have rode in the coach with her, it might have subjected her to
+some misconstructions of the common people, who are always ready to
+vilify and censure their betters, and to suspect that charity is not
+always pure charity, but that love or some sinister intention lies hid
+under its disguise. So discreet and attentive to appearance in all her
+actions was this admirable princess.
+
+Ulysses as he entered the city wondered to see its magnificence, its
+markets, buildings, temples; its walls and rampires; its trade, and
+resort of men; its harbours for shipping, which is the strength of
+the Phæacian state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld its
+riches, the proportion of its architecture, its avenues, gardens,
+statues, fountains, he stood rapt in admiration, and almost forgot
+his own condition in surveying the flourishing estate of others: but
+recollecting himself he passed on boldly into the inner apartment,
+where the king and queen were sitting at dinner with their peers;
+Nausicaa having prepared them for his approach.
+
+To them humbly kneeling he made it his request, that since fortune
+had cast him naked upon their shores, they would take him into their
+protection, and grant him a conveyance by one of the ships, of which
+their great Phæacian state had such good store, to carry him to his
+own country. Having delivered his request, to grace it with more
+humility he went and sat himself down upon the hearth among the ashes,
+as the custom was in those days when any would make a petition to the
+throne.
+
+He seemed a petitioner of so great state and of so superior a
+deportment, that Alcinous himself arose to do him honour, and causing
+him to leave that abject station which he had assumed, placed him next
+to his throne, upon a chair of state, and thus he spake to his peers:
+
+"Lords and counsellors of Phæacia, ye see this man, who he is we know
+not, that is come to us in the guise of a petitioner: he seems no mean
+one; but whoever he is, it is fit, since the gods have cast him upon
+our protection, that we grant him the rites of hospitality, while he
+stays with us, and at his departure, a ship well manned to convey so
+worthy a personage as he seems to be, in a manner suitable to his
+rank, to his own country."
+
+This counsel the peers with one consent approved; and wine and meat
+being set before Ulysses, he ate and drank, and gave the gods thanks
+who had stirred up the royal bounty of Alcinous to aid him in that
+extremity. But not as yet did he reveal to the king and queen who he
+was, or whence he had come; only in brief terms he related his being
+cast upon their shores, his sleep in the woods, and his meeting with
+the princess Nausicaa: whose generosity, mingled with discretion
+filled her parents with delight, as Ulysses in eloquent phrases
+adorned and commended her virtues. But Alcinous, humanely considering
+that the troubles which his guest had undergone required rest, as well
+as refreshment by food, dismissed him early in the evening to his
+chamber; where in a magnificent apartment Ulysses found a smoother
+bed, but not a sounder repose, than he had enjoyed the night before,
+sleeping upon leaves which he had scraped together in his necessity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+_The songs of Demodocus.--The convoy home.--The mariners transformed
+to stone.--The young shepherd._
+
+
+When it was day-light, Alcinous caused it to be proclaimed by the
+heralds about the town, that there was come to the palace a stranger,
+shipwrecked on their coast, that in mien and person resembled a god:
+and inviting all the chief people of the city to come and do honour to
+the stranger.
+
+The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and young, for whose
+cheer, and to grace Ulysses more, Alcinous made a kingly feast with
+banquetings and music. Then Ulysses being seated at a table next the
+king and queen, in all men's view; after they had feasted, Alcinous
+ordered Demodocus, the court-singer, to be called to sing some song
+of the deeds of heroes, to charm the ear of his guest. Demodocus came
+and reached his harp, where it hung between two pillars of silver: and
+then the blind singer, to whom, in recompense of his lost sight, the
+muses had given an inward discernment, a soul and a voice to excite
+the hearts of men and gods to delight, began in grave and solemn
+strains to sing the glories of men highliest famed. He chose a poem,
+whose subject was, The stern Strife stirred up between Ulysses and
+great Achilles, as at a banquet sacred to the gods in dreadful
+language they expressed their difference; while Agamemnon sat rejoiced
+in soul to hear those Grecians jar: for the oracle in Pytho had told
+him, that the period of their wars in Troy should then be, when the
+kings of Greece, anxious to arrive at the wished conclusion, should
+fall to strife, and contend which must end the war, force or
+stratagem.
+
+This brave contention he expressed so to the life, in the very words
+which they both used in the quarrel, as brought tears into the eyes of
+Ulysses at the remembrance of past passages of his life, and he held
+his large purple weed before his face to conceal it. Then craving a
+cup of wine, he poured it out in secret libation to the gods, who had
+put into the mind of Demodocus unknowingly to do him so much honour.
+But when the moving poet began to tell of other occurrences where
+Ulysses had been present, the memory of his brave followers who had
+been with him in all difficulties, now swallowed up and lost in the
+ocean, and of those kings that had fought with him at Troy, some of
+whom were dead, some exiles like himself, forced itself so strongly
+upon his mind, that forgetful where he was, he sobbed outright with
+passion; which yet he restrained, but not so cunningly but Alcinous
+perceived it, and without taking notice of it to Ulysses, privately
+gave signs that Demodocus should cease from his singing.
+
+Next followed dancing in the Phæacian fashion, when they would shew
+respect to their guests; which was succeeded by trials of skill, games
+of strength, running, racing, hurling of the quoit, mock fights,
+hurling of the javelin, shooting with the bow: in some of which
+Ulysses modestly challenging his entertainers, performed such feats of
+strength and prowess as gave the admiring Phæacians fresh reason to
+imagine that he was either some god, or hero of the race of the gods.
+
+These solemn shows and pageants in honour of his guest, king Alcinous
+continued for the space of many days, as if he could never be weary of
+shewing courtesies to so worthy a stranger. In all this time he never
+asked him his name, nor sought to know more of him than he of his own
+accord disclosed: till on a day as they were seated feasting, after
+the feast was ended, Demodocus being called, as was the custom, to
+sing some grave matter, sang how Ulysses, on that night when Troy
+was fired, made dreadful proof of his valour, maintaining singly a
+combat against the whole household of Deiphobus, to which the divine
+expresser gave both act and passion, and breathed such a fire into
+Ulysses's deeds, that it inspired old death with life in the lively
+expressing of slaughters, and rendered life so sweet and passionate
+in the hearers, that all who heard felt it fleet from them in the
+narration: which made Ulysses even pity his own slaughterous deeds,
+and feel touches of remorse, to see how song can revive a dead man
+from the grave, yet no way can it defend a living man from death: and
+in imagination he underwent some part of death's horrors, and felt in
+his living body a taste of those dying pangs which he had dealt to
+others; that with the strong conceit, tears (the true interpreters of
+unutterable emotion) stood in his eyes.
+
+Which king Alcinous noting, and that this was now the second time that
+he had perceived him to be moved at the mention of events touching the
+Trojan wars, he took occasion to ask whether his guest had lost any
+friend or kinsman at Troy, that Demodocus's singing had brought into
+his mind. Then Ulysses, drying the tears with his cloak, and observing
+that the eyes of all the company were upon him, desirous to give them
+satisfaction in what he could, and thinking this a fit time to reveal
+his true name and destination, spake as follows:
+
+"The courtesies which ye all have shewn me, and in particular yourself
+and princely daughter, O king Alcinous, demand from me that I should
+no longer keep you in ignorance of what or who I am; for to reserve
+any secret from you, who have with such openness of friendship
+embraced my love, would argue either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful
+mind in me. Know then that I am that _Ulysses_, of whom I perceive ye
+have heard something; who heretofore have filled the world with the
+renown of my policies. I am he by whose counsels, if Fame is to be
+believed at all, more than by the united valour of all the Grecians,
+Troy fell. I am that unhappy man whom the heavens and angry gods have
+conspired to keep an exile on the seas, wandering to seek my home
+which still flies from me. The land which I am in quest of is Ithaca;
+in whose ports some ship belonging to your navigation-famed Phæacian
+state may haply at some time have found a refuge from tempests. If
+ever you have experienced such kindness, requite it now; by granting
+to me, who am the king of that land, a passport to that land."
+
+Admiration seized all the court of Alcinous, to behold in their
+presence one of the number of those heroes who fought at Troy, whose
+divine story had been made known to them by songs and poems, but of
+the truth they had little known, or rather they had hitherto accounted
+those heroic exploits as fictions and exaggerations of poets; but
+having seen and made proof of the real Ulysses, they began to take
+those supposed inventions to be real verities, and the tale of Troy to
+be as true as it was delightful.
+
+Then king Alcinous made answer: "Thrice fortunate ought we to esteem
+our lot, in having seen and conversed with a man of whom report hath
+spoken so loudly, but, as it seems, nothing beyond the truth. Though
+we could desire no felicity greater than to have you always among
+us, renowned Ulysses, yet your desire having been expressed so often
+and so deeply to return home, we can deny you nothing, though to our
+own loss. Our kingdom of Phæacia, as you know, is chiefly rich in
+shipping. In all parts of the world, where there are navigable seas,
+or ships can pass, our vessels will be found. You cannot name a coast
+to which they do not resort. Every rock and every quick-sand is known
+to them that lurks in the vast deep. They pass a bird in flight; and
+with such unerring certainty they make to their destination, that
+some have said that they have no need of pilot or rudder, but that
+they move instinctively, self-directed, and know the minds of their
+voyagers. Thus much, that you may not fear to trust yourself in one of
+our Phæacian ships. To-morrow if you please you shall launch forth.
+To-day spend with us in feasting; who never can do enough when the
+gods send such visitors."
+
+Ulysses acknowledged king Alcinous's bounty; and while these two royal
+personages stood interchanging courteous expressions, the heart of the
+princess Nausicaa was overcome: she had been gazing attentively upon
+her father's guest, as he delivered his speech; but when he came
+to that part where he declared himself to be Ulysses, she blessed
+herself, and her fortune, that in relieving a poor ship-wrecked
+mariner, as he seemed no better, she had conferred a kindness on so
+divine a hero as he proved: and scarce waiting till her father had
+done speaking, with a cheerful countenance she addressed Ulysses,
+bidding him be cheerful, and when he returned home, as by her father's
+means she trusted he would shortly, sometimes to remember to whom he
+owed his life, and who met him in the woods by the river Callicoe.
+
+"Fair flower of Phæacia," he replied, "so may all the gods bless me
+with the strife of joys in that desired day, whenever I shall see it,
+as I shall always acknowledge to be indebted to your fair hand for the
+gift of life which I enjoy, and all the blessings which shall follow
+upon my home-return. The gods give thee, Nausicaa, a princely husband;
+and from you two spring blessings to this state." So prayed Ulysses,
+his heart overflowing with admiration and grateful recollections of
+king Alcinous's daughter.
+
+Then at the king's request he gave them a brief relation of all the
+adventures that had befallen him, since he launched forth from Troy:
+during which the princess Nausicaa took great delight (as ladies are
+commonly taken with these kind of travellers' stories) to hear of the
+monster Polyphemus, of the men that devour each other in Læstrygonia,
+of the enchantress Circe, of Scylla, and the rest; to which she
+listened with a breathless attention, letting fall a shower of tears
+from her fair eyes every now and then, when Ulysses told of some more
+than usual distressful passage in his travels: and all the rest of
+his auditors, if they had before entertained a high respect for their
+guest, now felt their veneration increased ten-fold, when they learned
+from his own mouth what perils, what sufferance, what endurance, of
+evils beyond man's strength to support, this much-sustaining, almost
+heavenly man, by the greatness of his mind, and by his invincible
+courage, had struggled through.
+
+The night was far spent before Ulysses had ended his narrative, and
+with wishful glances he cast his eyes towards the eastern parts, which
+the sun had begun to flecker with his first red: for on the morrow
+Alcinous had promised that a bark should be in readiness to convoy him
+to Ithaca.
+
+In the morning a vessel well manned and appointed was waiting for him;
+into which the king and queen heaped presents of gold and silver,
+massy plate, apparel, armour, and whatsoever things of cost or rarity
+they judged would be most acceptable to their guest: and the sails
+being set, Ulysses embarking with expressions of regret took his leave
+of his royal entertainers, of the fair princess (who had been his
+first friend,) and of the peers of Phæacia; who crowding down to the
+beach to have the last sight of their illustrious visitant, beheld the
+gallant ship with all her canvas spread, bounding and curvetting over
+the waves, like a horse proud of his rider; or as if she knew that in
+her capacious womb's rich freightage she bore Ulysses.
+
+He whose life past had been a series of disquiets, in seas among rude
+waves, in battles amongst ruder foes, now slept securely, forgetting
+all; his eye-lids bound in such deep sleep, as only yielded to death:
+and when they reached the nearest Ithacan port by the next morning, he
+was still asleep. The mariners not willing to awake him, landed him
+softly, and laid him in a cave at the foot of an olive tree, which
+made a shady recess in that narrow harbour, the haunt of almost
+none but the sea-nymphs, which are called Naiads; few ships before
+this Phæacian vessel having put into that haven, by reason of the
+difficulty and narrowness of the entrance. Here leaving him asleep,
+and disposing in safe places near him the presents with which king
+Alcinous had dismissed him, they departed for Phæacia; where these
+wretched mariners never again set foot; but just as they arrived,
+and thought to salute their country earth; in sight of their city's
+turrets, and in open view of their friends who from the harbour with
+shouts greeted their return; their vessel and all the mariners which
+were in her were turned to stone, and stood transformed and fixed in
+sight of the whole Phæacian city, where it yet stands, by Neptune's
+vindictive wrath; who resented thus highly the contempt which those
+Phæacians had shown in convoying home a man whom the god had destined
+to destruction. Whence it comes to pass that the Phæacians at this day
+will at no price be induced to lend their ships to strangers, or to
+become the carriers for other nations, so highly do they still dread
+the displeasure of the sea-god, while they see that terrible monument
+ever in sight.
+
+When Ulysses awoke, which was not till some time after the mariners
+had departed, he did not at first know his country again, either that
+long absence had made it strange, or that Minerva (which was more
+likely) had cast a cloud about his eyes, that he should have greater
+pleasure hereafter in discovering his mistake: but like a man suddenly
+awaking in some desart isle, to which his sea-mates have transported
+him in his sleep, he looked around, and discerning no known objects,
+he cast his hands to heaven for pity, and complained on those ruthless
+men who had beguiled him with a promise of conveying him home to his
+country, and perfidiously left him to perish in an unknown land. But
+then the rich presents of gold and silver given him by Alcinous, which
+he saw carefully laid up in secure places near him, staggered him:
+which seemed not like the act of wrongful or unjust men, such as turn
+pirates for gain, or land helpless passengers in remote coasts to
+possess themselves of their goods.
+
+While he remained in this suspence, there came up to him a young
+shepherd, clad in the finer sort of apparel, such as kings' sons
+wore in those days when princes did not disdain to tend sheep, who
+accosting him, was saluted again by Ulysses, who asked him what
+country that was, on which he had been just landed, and whether it
+were part of a continent, or an island. The young shepherd made show
+of wonder, to hear any one ask the name of that land; as country
+people are apt to esteem those for mainly ignorant and barbarous who
+do not know the names of places which are familiar to _them_, though
+perhaps they who ask have had no opportunities of knowing, and may
+have come from far countries.
+
+"I had thought," said he, "that all people knew our land. It is rocky
+and barren, to be sure; but well enough: it feeds a goat or an ox
+well; it is not wanting neither in wine or in wheat; it has good
+springs of water, some fair rivers; and wood enough, as you may see:
+it is called Ithaca."
+
+Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself in his own country; but so
+prudently he carried his joy, that dissembling his true name and
+quality, he pretended to the shepherd that he was only some foreigner
+who by stress of weather had put into that port; and framed on the
+sudden a story to make it plausible, how he had come from Crete in
+a ship of Phæacia; when the young shepherd laughing, and taking
+Ulysses's hand in both his, said to him: "He must be cunning, I find,
+who thinks to over-reach you. What, cannot you quit your wiles and
+your subtleties, now that you are in a state of security? must the
+first word with which you salute your native earth be an untruth? and
+think you that you are unknown?"
+
+Ulysses looked again; and he saw, not a shepherd, but a beautiful
+woman, whom he immediately knew to be the goddess Minerva, that in the
+wars of Troy had frequently vouchsafed her sight to him; and had been
+with him since in perils, saving him unseen.
+
+"Let not my ignorance offend thee, great Minerva," he cried, "or move
+thy displeasure, that in that shape I knew thee not; since the skill
+of discerning of deities is not attainable by wit or study, but hard
+to be hit by the wisest of mortals. To know thee truly through all thy
+changes is only given to those whom thou art pleased to grace. To all
+men thou takest all likenesses. All men in their wits think that they
+know thee, and that they have thee. Thou art wisdom itself. But a
+semblance of thee, which is false wisdom, often is taken for thee: so
+thy counterfeit view appears to many, but thy true presence to few:
+those are they which, loving thee above all, are inspired with light
+from thee to know thee. But this I surely know, that all the time the
+sons of Greece waged war against Troy, I was sundry times graced with
+thy appearance; but since, I have never been able to set eyes upon
+thee till now: but have wandered at my own discretion, to myself a
+blind guide, erring up and down the world, wanting thee."
+
+Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he knew the ground on which he
+stood to be Ithaca, and that cave to be the same which the people of
+Ithaca had in former times made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where he
+himself had done sacrifices to them a thousand times; and full in his
+view stood Mount Nerytus with all his woods: so that now he knew for a
+certainty that he was arrived in his own country, and with the delight
+which he felt he could not forbear stooping down and kissing the soil.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+_The change from a king to a beggar.--Eumæus and the
+herdsmen.--Telemachus._
+
+
+Not long did Minerva suffer him to indulge vain transports, but
+briefly recounting to him the events which had taken place in Ithaca
+during his absence, she shewed him that his way to his wife and throne
+did not lie so open, but that before he were reinstated in the secure
+possession of them, he must encounter many difficulties. His palace,
+wanting its king, was become the resort of insolent and imperious men,
+the chief nobility of Ithaca and of the neighbouring isles, who, in
+the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to Penelope.
+The queen (it was true) continued single, but was little better than
+a state-prisoner in the power of these men, who under a pretence of
+waiting her decision, occupied the king's house, rather as owners
+than guests, lording and domineering at their pleasure, profaning the
+palace, and wasting the royal substance, with their feasts and mad
+riots. Moreover the goddess told him how fearing the attempts of these
+lawless men upon the person of his young son Telemachus, she herself
+had put it into the heart of the prince, to go and seek his father in
+far countries; how in the shape of Mentor she had borne him company in
+his long search; which, though failing, as she meant it should fail,
+in its first object, had yet had this effect, that through hardships
+he had learned endurance, through experience he had gathered wisdom,
+and wherever his footsteps had been, he had left such memorials, of
+his worth, as the fame of Ulysses's son was already blown throughout
+the world. That it was now not many days since Telemachus had arrived
+in the island, to the great joy of the queen his mother, who had
+thought him dead, by reason of his long absence, and had begun to
+mourn for him with a grief equal to that which she endured for
+Ulysses: the goddess herself having so ordered the course of his
+adventures, that the time of his return should correspond with the
+return of Ulysses, that they might together concert measures how to
+repress the power and insolence of those wicked suitors. This the
+goddess told him; but of the particulars of his son's adventures, of
+his having been detained in the Delightful Island, which his father
+had so lately left, of Calypso, and her nymphs, and the many strange
+occurrences which may be read with profit and delight in the history
+of the prince's adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging
+that he would hear them with greater pleasure from the lips of his
+son, when he should have him in an hour of stillness and safety, when
+their work should be done, and none of their enemies left alive to
+trouble them.
+
+Then they sat down, the goddess and Ulysses, at the foot of a wild
+olive-tree, consulting how they might with safety bring about his
+restoration. And when Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his
+enemies were a multitude, and he single, he began to despond, and he
+said: "I shall die an ill death like Agamemnon; in the threshold of my
+own house I shall perish, like that unfortunate monarch, slain by some
+one of my wife's suitors." But then again calling to mind his ancient
+courage, he secretly wished that Minerva would but breathe such a
+spirit into his bosom as she enflamed him with in the hour of Troy's
+destruction, that he might encounter with three hundred of those
+impudent suitors at once, and strew the pavements of his beautiful
+palace with their bloods and brains.
+
+And Minerva knew his thoughts, and she said, "I will be strongly with
+thee, if thou fail not to do thy part. And for a sign between us that
+I will perform my promise, and for a token on thy part of obedience, I
+must change thee, that thy person may not be known of men."
+
+Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine impression, and
+Minerva by her great power changed his person so that it might not be
+known. She changed him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a
+one as by his limbs and gait seemed to have been some considerable
+person in his time, and to retain yet some remains of his once
+prodigious strength. Also, instead of those rich robes in which king
+Alcinous had clothed him, she threw over his limbs such old and
+tattered rags as wandering beggars usually wear. A staff supported his
+steps, and a scrip hung to his back, such as travelling mendicants
+use, to hold the scraps which are given to them at rich men's doors.
+So from a king he became a beggar, as wise Tiresias had predicted to
+him in the shades.
+
+To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedience by suffering,
+she next directed him in this beggarly attire to go and present
+himself to his old herdsman Eumæus, who had the care of his swine and
+his cattle, and had been a faithful steward to him all the time of his
+absence. Then strictly charging Ulysses that he should reveal himself
+to no man, but to his own son, whom she would send to him when she saw
+occasion, the goddess went her way.
+
+The transformed Ulysses bent his course to the cottage of the
+herdsman, and entering in at the front court, the dogs, of which
+Eumæus kept many fierce ones for the protection of the cattle, flew
+with open mouths upon him, as those ignoble animals have oftentimes an
+antipathy to the sight of any thing like a beggar, and would have rent
+him in pieces with their teeth, if Ulysses had not had the prudence
+to let fall his staff, which had chiefly provoked their fury, and sat
+himself down in a careless fashion upon the ground: but for all that
+some serious hurt had certainly been done to him, so raging the dogs
+were, had not the herdsman, whom the barking of the dogs had fetched
+out of the house, with shouting and with throwing of stones repressed
+them.
+
+He said, when he saw Ulysses, "Old father, how near you were to being
+torn in pieces by these rude dogs! I should never have forgiven
+myself, if through neglect of mine any hurt had happened to you. But
+heaven has given me so many cares to my portion, that I might well be
+excused for not attending to every thing: while here I lie grieving
+and mourning for the absence of that majesty which once ruled here,
+and am forced to fatten his swine and his cattle for food to evil men,
+who hate him, and who wish his death; when he perhaps strays up and
+down the world, and has not wherewith to appease hunger, if indeed he
+yet lives (which is a question) and enjoys the cheerful light of the
+sun." This he said, little thinking that he of whom he spoke now stood
+before him, and that in that uncouth disguise and beggarly obscurity
+was present the hidden majesty of Ulysses.
+
+Then he had his guest into the house, and set meat and drink before
+him; and Ulysses said, "May Jove and all the other gods requite you
+for the kind speeches and hospitable usage which you have shewn me!"
+
+Eumæus made answer, "My poor guest, if one in much worse plight than
+yourself had arrived here, it were a shame to such scanty means as I
+have, if I had let him depart without entertaining him to the best of
+my ability. Poor men, and such as have no houses of their own, are by
+Jove himself recommended to our care. But the cheer which we that are
+servants to other men have to bestow, is but sorry at most, yet freely
+and lovingly I give it you. Indeed there once ruled here a man, whose
+return the gods have set their faces against, who, if he had been
+suffered to reign in peace and grow old among us, would have been kind
+to me and mine. But he is gone; and for his sake would to God that the
+whole posterity of Helen might perish with her, since in her quarrel
+so many worthies have perished. But such as your fare is, eat it,
+and be welcome; such lean beasts as are food for poor herdsmen. The
+fattest go to feed the voracious stomachs of the queen's suitors.
+Shame on their unworthiness, there is no day in which two or three
+of the noblest of the herd are not slain to support their feasts and
+their surfeits."
+
+Ulysses gave good ear to his words, and as he ate his meat, he even
+tore it and rent it with his teeth, for mere vexation that his fat
+cattle should be slain to glut the appetites of those godless suitors.
+And he said, "What chief or what ruler is this, that thou commendest
+so highly, and sayest that he perished at Troy? I am but a stranger in
+these parts. It may be I have heard of some such in my long travels."
+
+Eumæus answered, "Old father, never any one of all the strangers
+that have come to our coast with news of Ulysses being alive, could
+gain credit with the queen or her son yet. These travellers, to get
+raiment or a meal, will not stick to invent any lie. Truth is not the
+commodity they deal in. Never did the queen get any thing of them but
+lies. She receives all that come graciously, hears their stories,
+enquires all she can, but all ends in tears and dissatisfaction. But
+in God's name, old father, if you have got a tale, make the most on't,
+it may gain you a cloak or a coat from somebody to keep you warm: but
+for him who is the subject of it, dogs and vultures long since have
+torn him limb from limb, or some great fish at sea has devoured him,
+or he lieth with no better monument upon his bones than the sea-sand.
+But for me past all the race of men were tears created: for I never
+shall find so kind a royal master more; not if my father or my mother
+could come again and visit me from the tomb, would my eyes be so
+blessed, as they should be with the sight of him again, coming as from
+the dead. In his last rest my soul shall love him. He is not here, nor
+do I name him as a flatterer, but because I am thankful for his love
+and care which he had to me a poor man; and if I knew surely that he
+were past all shores that the sun shines upon, I would invoke him as a
+deified thing."
+
+For this saying of Eumæus the waters stood in Ulysses's eyes, and he
+said, "My friend, to say and to affirm positively that he cannot be
+alive, is to give too much licence to incredulity. For, not to speak
+at random, but with as much solemnity as an oath comes to, I say to
+you that Ulysses shall return, and whenever that day shall be, then
+shall you give to me a cloak and a coat; but till then, I will not
+receive so much as a thread of a garment, but rather go naked; for
+no less than the gates of hell do I hate that man, whom poverty can
+force to tell an untruth. Be Jove then witness to my words, that this
+very year, nay ere this month be fully ended, your eyes shall behold
+Ulysses, dealing vengeance in his own palace upon the wrongers of his
+wife and his son."
+
+To give the better credence to his words, he amused Eumæus with a
+forged story of his life, feigning of himself that he was a Cretan
+born, and one that went with Idomeneus to the wars of Troy. Also he
+said that he knew Ulysses, and related various passages which he
+alleged to have happened betwixt Ulysses and himself, which were
+either true in the main, as having really happened between Ulysses and
+some other person, or were so like to truth, as corresponding with the
+known character and actions of Ulysses, that Eumæus's incredulity was
+not a little shaken. Among other things he asserted that he had lately
+been entertained in the court of Thesprotia, where the king's son of
+the country had told him, that Ulysses had been there but just before
+him, and was gone upon a voyage to the oracle of Jove in Dodona,
+whence he should shortly return, and a ship would be ready by the
+bounty of the Thesprotians to convoy him straight to Ithaca. "And in
+token that what I tell you is true," said Ulysses, "if your king come
+not within the period which I have named, you shall have leave to
+give your servants commandment to take my old carcase, and throw it
+headlong from some steep rock into the sea, that poor men, taking
+example by me, may fear to lie." But Eumæus made answer that that
+should be small satisfaction or pleasure to him.
+
+So while they sat discoursing in this manner, supper was served in,
+and the servants of the herdsman, who had been out all day in the
+fields, came in to supper, and took their seats at the fire, for the
+night was bitter and frosty. After supper, Ulysses, who had well
+eaten and drunken, and was refreshed with the herdsman's good cheer,
+was resolved to try whether his host's hospitality would extend
+to the lending him a good warm mantle or rug to cover him in the
+night-season; and framing an artful tale for the purpose, in a merry
+mood, filling a cup of Greek wine, he thus began:
+
+"I will tell you a story of your king Ulysses and myself. If there is
+ever a time when a man may have leave to tell his own stories, it is
+when he has drunken a little too much. Strong liquor driveth the fool,
+and moves even the heart of the wise, moves and impels him to sing
+and to dance, and break forth in pleasant laughters, and perchance to
+prefer a speech too which were better kept in. When the heart is open,
+the tongue will be stirring. But you shall hear. We led our powers to
+ambush once under the walls of Troy."
+
+The herdsmen crowded about him eager to hear any thing which related
+to their king Ulysses and the wars of Troy, and thus he went on:
+
+"I remember, Ulysses and Menelaus had the direction of that
+enterprise, and they were pleased to join me with them in the command.
+I was at that time in some repute among men, though fortune has played
+me a trick since, as you may perceive. But I was somebody in those
+times, and could do something. Be that as it may, a bitter freezing
+night it was, such a night as this, the air cut like steel, and the
+sleet gathered on our shields like crystal. There was some twenty
+of us, that lay close couched down among the reeds and bull-rushes
+that grew in the moat that goes round the city. The rest of us made
+tolerable shift, for every man had been careful to bring with him a
+good cloak or mantle to wrap over his armour and keep himself warm;
+but I, as it chanced, had left my cloak behind me, as not expecting
+that the night would prove so cool, or rather I believe because I had
+at that time a brave suit of new armour on, which, being a soldier,
+and having some of the soldier's vice about me, _vanity_, I was not
+willing should be hidden under a cloak; but I paid for my indiscretion
+with my sufferings, for with the inclement night, and the wet of the
+ditch in which we lay, I was well nigh frozen to death; and when I
+could endure no longer, I jogged Ulysses who was next to me, and had
+a nimble ear, and made known my case to him, assuring him that I must
+inevitably perish. He answered in a low whisper, 'Hush, lest any Greek
+should hear you, and take notice of your softness.' Not a word more
+he said, but shewed as if he had no pity for the plight I was in. But
+he was as considerate as he was brave, and even then, as he lay with
+his head reposing upon his hand, he was meditating how to relieve me,
+without exposing my weakness to the soldiers. At last raising up his
+head, he made as if he had been asleep, and said, 'Friends, I have
+been warned in a dream to send to the fleet to king Agamemnon for a
+supply, to recruit our numbers, for we are not sufficient for this
+enterprize;' and they believing him, one Thoas was dispatched on
+that errand, who departing, for more speed, as Ulysses had foreseen,
+left his upper garment behind him, a good warm mantle, to which I
+succeeded, and by the help of it got through the night with credit.
+This shift Ulysses made for one in need, and would to heaven that I
+had now that strength in my limbs, which made me in those days to be
+accounted fit to be a leader under Ulysses! I should not then want the
+loan of a cloak or a mantle, to wrap about me and shield my old limbs
+from the night-air."
+
+The tale pleased the herdsmen; and Eumæus, who more than all the rest
+was gratified to hear tales of Ulysses, true or false, said, that for
+his story he deserved a mantle, and a night's lodging, which he should
+have; and he spread for him a bed of goat and sheep skins by the fire;
+and the seeming beggar, who was indeed the true Ulysses, lay down and
+slept under that poor roof, in that abject disguise to which the will
+of Minerva had subjected him.
+
+When morning was come, Ulysses made offer to depart, as if he were not
+willing to burthen his host's hospitality any longer, but said, that
+he would go and try the humanity of the town's folk, if any there
+would bestow upon him a bit of bread or a cup of drink. Perhaps the
+queen's suitors (he said) out of their full feasts would bestow a
+scrap on him: for he could wait at table, if need were, and play the
+nimble serving-man, he could fetch wood (he said) or build a fire,
+prepare roast meat or boiled, mix the wine with water, or do any of
+those offices which recommended poor men like him to services in great
+men's houses.
+
+"Alas! poor guest," said Eumæus, "you know not what you speak. What
+should so poor and old a man as you do at the suitors' tables? Their
+light minds are not given to such grave servitors. They must have
+youths, richly tricked out in flowing vests, with curled hair, like so
+many of Jove's cup-bearers, to fill out the wine to them as they sit
+at table, and to shift their trenchers. Their gorged insolence would
+but despise and make a mock at thy age. Stay here. Perhaps the queen,
+or Telemachus, hearing of thy arrival, may send to thee of their
+bounty."
+
+As he spake these words, the steps of one crossing the front court
+were heard, and a noise of the dogs fawning and leaping about as for
+joy; by which token Eumæus guessed that it was the prince, who hearing
+of a traveller being arrived at Eumæus's cottage that brought tidings
+of his father, was come to search the truth, and Eumæus said: "It is
+the tread of Telemachus, the son of king Ulysses." Before he could
+well speak the words, the prince was at the door, whom Ulysses rising
+to receive, Telemachus would not suffer that so aged a man, as he
+appeared, should rise to do respect to him, but he courteously and
+reverently took him by the hand, and inclined his head to him, as if
+he had surely known that it was his father indeed: but Ulysses covered
+his eyes with his hands, that he might not shew the waters which stood
+in them. And Telemachus said, "Is this the man who can tell us tidings
+of the king my father?"
+
+"He brags himself to be a Cretan born," said Eumæus, "and that he has
+been a soldier and a traveller, but whether he speak the truth or
+not, he alone can tell. But whatsoever he has been, what he is now
+is apparent. Such as he appears, I give him to you; do what you will
+with him; his boast at present is that he is at the very best a
+supplicant."
+
+"Be he what he may," said Telemachus, "I accept him at your hands. But
+where I should bestow him I know not, seeing that in the palace his
+age would not exempt him from the scorn and contempt which my mother's
+suitors in their light minds would be sure to fling upon him. A mercy
+if he escaped without blows: for they are a company of evil men, whose
+profession is wrongs and violence."
+
+Ulysses answered: "Since it is free for any man to speak in presence
+of your greatness, I must say that my heart puts on a wolfish
+inclination to tear and to devour, hearing your speech, that these
+suitors should with such injustice rage, where you should have the
+rule solely. What should the cause be? do you wilfully give way to
+their ill manners? or has your government been such as has procured
+ill will towards you from your people? or do you mistrust your
+kinsfolk and friends in such sort, as without trial to decline their
+aid? a man's kindred are they that he might trust to when extremities
+ran high."
+
+Telemachus replied: "The kindred of Ulysses are few. I have no
+brothers to assist me in the strife. But the suitors are powerful in
+kindred and friends. The house of old Arcesius has had this fate from
+the heavens, that from old it still has been supplied with single
+heirs. To Arcesius Laertes only was born, from Laertes descended only
+Ulysses, from Ulysses I alone have sprung, whom he left so young, that
+from me never comfort arose to him. But the end of all rests in the
+hands of the gods."
+
+Then Eumæus departing to see to some necessary business of his herds,
+Minerva took a woman's shape, and stood in the entry of the door,
+and was seen to Ulysses, but by his son she was not seen, for the
+presences of the gods are invisible save to those to whom they will to
+reveal themselves. Nevertheless the dogs which were about the door saw
+the goddess, and durst not bark, but went crouching and licking of the
+dust for fear. And giving signs to Ulysses that the time was now come
+in which he should make himself known to his son, by her great power
+she changed back his shape into the same which it was before she
+transformed him; and Telemachus, who saw the change, but nothing of
+the manner by which it was effected, only he saw the appearance of a
+king in the vigour of his age where but just now he had seen a worn
+and decrepit beggar, was struck with fear, and said, "Some god has
+done this house this honour," and he turned away his eyes, and would
+have worshipped. But his father permitted not, but said, "Look better
+at me; I am no deity, why put you upon me the reputation of godhead? I
+am no more but thy father: I am even he; I am that Ulysses, by reason
+of whose absence thy youth has been exposed to such wrongs from
+injurious men." Then kissed he his son, nor could any longer refrain
+those tears which he had held under such mighty restraint before,
+though they would ever be forcing themselves out in spite of him;
+but now, as if their sluices had burst, they came out like rivers,
+pouring upon the warm cheeks of his son. Nor yet by all these violent
+arguments could Telemachus be persuaded to believe that it was his
+father, but he said, some deity had taken that shape to mock him; for
+he affirmed, that it was not in the power of any man, who is sustained
+by mortal food, to change his shape so in a moment from age to youth:
+for "but now," said he, "you were all wrinkles, and were old, and now
+you look as the gods are pictured."
+
+His father replied: "Admire, but fear not, and know me to be at all
+parts substantially thy father, who in the inner powers of his mind,
+and the unseen workings of a father's love to thee, answers to his
+outward shape and pretence! There shall no more Ulysseses come here. I
+am he that after twenty years absence, and suffering a world of ill,
+have recovered at last the sight of my country earth. It was the will
+of Minerva that I should be changed as you saw me. She put me thus
+together; she puts together or takes to pieces whom she pleases.
+It is in the law of her free power to do it: sometimes to shew her
+favourites under a cloud, and poor, and again to restore to them their
+ornaments. The gods raise and throw down men with ease."
+
+Then Telemachus could hold out no longer, but he gave way now to a
+full belief and persuasion, of that which for joy at first he could
+not credit, that it was indeed his true and very father, that stood
+before him; and they embraced, and mingled their tears.
+
+Then said Ulysses, "Tell me who these suitors are, what are their
+numbers, and how stands the queen thy mother affected to them?"
+
+"She bears them still in expectation," said Telemachus, "which she
+never means to fulfil, that she will accept the hand of some one
+of them in second nuptials. For she fears to displease them by an
+absolute refusal. So from day to day she lingers them on with hope,
+which they are content to bear the deferring of, while they have
+entertainment at free cost in our palace."
+
+Then said Ulysses, "Reckon up their numbers that we may know their
+strength and ours, if we having none but ourselves may hope to prevail
+against them."
+
+"O father," he replied, "I have oft-times heard of your fame for
+wisdom, and of the great strength of your arm, but the venturous mind
+which your speeches now indicate moves me even to amazement: for in no
+wise can it consist with wisdom or a sound mind, that two should try
+their strengths against a host. Nor five, or ten, or twice ten strong
+are these suitors, but many more by much: from Dulichium came there
+fifty and two, they and their servants, twice twelve, crossed the seas
+hither from Samos, from Zacynthus twice ten, of our native Ithacans,
+men of chief note, are twelve who aspire to the bed and crown of
+Penelope, and all these under one strong roof, a fearful odds against
+two! My father, there is need of caution, lest the cup which your
+great mind so thirsts to taste of vengeance, prove bitter to yourself
+in the drinking. And therefore it were well that we should bethink us
+of some one who might assist us in this undertaking."
+
+"Thinkest thou," said his father, "if we had Minerva and the king of
+skies to be our friends, would their sufficiencies make strong our
+part; or must we look out for some further aid yet?"
+
+"They you speak of are above the clouds," said Telemachus, "and are
+sound aids indeed; as powers that not only exceed human, but bear the
+chiefest sway among the gods themselves."
+
+Then Ulysses gave directions to his son, to go and mingle with the
+suitors, and in no wise to impart his secret to any, not even to the
+queen his mother, but to hold himself in readiness, and to have his
+weapons and his good armour in preparation. And he charged him, that
+when he himself should come to the palace, as he meant to follow
+shortly after, and present himself in his beggar's likeness to the
+suitors, that whatever he should see which might grieve his heart,
+with what foul usage and contumelious language soever the suitors
+should receive his father, coming in that shape, though they should
+strike and drag him by the heels along the floors, that he should not
+stir nor make offer to oppose them, further than by mild words to
+expostulate with them, until Minerva from heaven should give the sign
+which should be the prelude to their destruction. And Telemachus
+promising to obey his instructions departed; and the shape of Ulysses
+fell to what it had been before, and he became to all outward
+appearance a beggar, in base and beggarly attire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+_The queen's suitors.--The battle of the beggars.--The armour taken
+down.--The meeting with Penelope._
+
+
+From the house of Eumæus the seeming beggar took his way, leaning on
+his staff, till he reached the palace, entering in at the hall where
+the suitors sat at meat. They in the pride of their feasting began to
+break their jests in mirthful manner, when they saw one looking so
+poor and so aged approach. He who expected no better entertainment was
+nothing moved at their behaviour, but, as became the character which
+he had assumed, in a suppliant posture crept by turns to every suitor,
+and held out his hands for some charity, with such a natural and
+beggar-resembling grace, that he might seem to have practised begging
+all his life; yet there was a sort of dignity in his most abject
+stoopings, that whoever had seen him, would have said, If it had
+pleased heaven that this poor man had been born a king, he would
+gracefully have filled a throne. And some pitied him, and some gave
+him alms, as their present humours inclined them, but the greater part
+reviled him, and bid him begone, as one that spoiled their feast; for
+the presence of misery has this power with it, that while it stays, it
+can dash and overturn the mirth even of those who feel no pity or wish
+to relieve it; nature bearing this witness of herself in the hearts of
+the most obdurate.
+
+Now Telemachus sat at meat with the suitors, and knew that it was the
+king his father, who in that shape begged an alms; and when his father
+came and presented himself before him in turn, as he had done to the
+suitors one by one, he gave him of his own meat which he had in his
+dish, and of his own cup to drink. And the suitors were past measure
+offended to see a pitiful beggar, as they esteemed him, to be so
+choicely regarded by the prince.
+
+Then Antinous, who was a great lord, and of chief note among the
+suitors, said, "Prince Telemachus does ill to encourage these
+wandering beggars, who go from place to place, affirming that they
+have been some considerable persons in their time, filling the ears of
+such as hearken to them with lies, and pressing with their bold feet
+into kings' palaces. This is some saucy vagabond, some travelling
+Egyptian."
+
+"I see," said Ulysses, "that a poor man should get but little at your
+board, scarce should he get salt from your hands, if he brought his
+own meat."
+
+Lord Antinous, indignant to be answered with such sharpness by a
+supposed beggar, snatched up a stool, with which he smote Ulysses
+where the neck and shoulders join. This usage moved not Ulysses; but
+in his great heart he meditated deep evils to come upon them all,
+which for a time must be kept close, and he went and sat himself down
+in the door-way to eat of that which was given him, and he said, "For
+life or possessions a man will fight, but for his belly this man
+smites. If a poor man has any god to take his part, my lord Antinous
+shall not live to be the queen's husband."
+
+Then Antinous raged highly, and threatened to drag him by the heels,
+and to rend his rags about his ears, if he spoke another word.
+
+But the other suitors did in no wise approve of the harsh language,
+nor of the blow which Antinous had dealt; and some of them said, "Who
+knows but one of the deities goes about, hid under that poor disguise?
+for in the likeness of poor pilgrims the gods have many times
+descended to try the dispositions of men, whether they be humane or
+impious." While these things passed, Telemachus sat and observed all,
+but held his peace, remembering the instructions of his father. But
+secretly he waited for the sign which Minerva was to send from heaven.
+
+That day there followed Ulysses to the court one of the common sort of
+beggars, Irus by name, one that had received alms beforetime of the
+suitors, and was their ordinary sport, when they were inclined (as
+that day) to give way to mirth, to see him eat and drink; for he had
+the appetite of six men; and was of huge stature and proportions of
+body; yet had in him no spirit nor courage of a man. This man thinking
+to curry favor with the suitors, and recommend himself especially to
+such a great lord as Antinous was, began to revile and scorn Ulysses,
+putting foul language upon him, and fairly challenging him to fight
+with the fist. But Ulysses, deeming his railings to be nothing more
+than jealousy and that envious disposition which beggars commonly
+manifest to brothers in their trade, mildly besought him not to
+trouble him, but to enjoy that portion which the liberality of their
+entertainers gave him, as he did quietly; seeing that, of their
+bounty, there was sufficient for all.
+
+But Irus thinking that this forbearance in Ulysses was nothing more
+than a sign of fear, so much the more highly stormed, and bellowed,
+and provoked him to fight; and by this time the quarrel had attracted
+the notice of the suitors, who with loud laughters and shouting egged
+on the dispute, and lord Antinous swore by all the gods it should be a
+battle, and that in that hall the strife should be determined. To this
+the rest of the suitors with violent clamours acceded, and a circle
+was made for the combatants, and a fat goat was proposed as the
+victor's prize, as at the Olympic or the Pythian games. Then Ulysses
+seeing no remedy, or being not unwilling that the suitors should
+behold some proof of that strength which ere long in their own persons
+they were to taste of, stripped himself, and prepared for the combat.
+But first he demanded that he should have fair play shewn him, that
+none in that assembly should aid his opponent, or take part against
+him, for being an old man they might easily crush him with their
+strengths. And Telemachus passed his word that no foul play should be
+shewn him, but that each party should be left to their own unassisted
+strengths, and to this he made Antinous and the rest of the suitors
+swear.
+
+But when Ulysses had laid aside his garments, and was bare to the
+waist, all the beholders admired at the goodly sight of his large
+shoulders being of such exquisite shape and whiteness, and at his
+great and brawny bosom, and the youthful strength which seemed to
+remain in a man thought so old; and they said, What limbs and what
+sinews he has! and coward fear seized on the mind of that great vast
+beggar, and he dropped his threats, and his big words, and would
+have fled, but lord Antinous staid him, and threatened him that if
+he declined the combat, he would put him in a ship, and land him on
+the shores where king Echetus reigned, the roughest tyrant which at
+that time the world contained, and who had that antipathy to rascal
+beggars, such as he, that when any landed on his coast, he would crop
+their ears and noses and give them to the dogs to tear. So Irus,
+in whom fear of king Echetus prevailed above the fear of Ulysses,
+addressed himself to fight. But Ulysses, provoked to be engaged in so
+odious a strife with a fellow of his base conditions, and loathing
+longer to be made a spectacle to entertain the eyes of his foes, with
+one blow, which he struck him beneath the ear, so shattered the teeth
+and jaw bone of this soon baffled coward, that he laid him sprawling
+in the dust, with small stomach or ability to renew the contest. Then
+raising him on his feet, he led him bleeding and sputtering to the
+door, and put his staff into his hand, and bid him go use his command
+upon dogs and swine, but not presume himself to be lord of the guests
+another time, nor of the beggary!
+
+The suitors applauded in their vain minds the issue of the contest,
+and rioted in mirth at the expense of poor Irus, who they vowed should
+be forthwith embarked, and sent to king Echetus; and they bestowed
+thanks on Ulysses for ridding the court of that unsavory morsel, as
+they called him; but in their inward souls they would not have cared
+if Irus had been victor, and Ulysses had taken the foil, but it was
+mirth to them to see the beggars fight. In such pastimes and light
+entertainments the day wore away.
+
+When evening was come the suitors betook themselves to music and
+dancing. And Ulysses leaned his back against a pillar from which
+certain lamps hung which gave light to the dancers, and he made show
+of watching the dancers, but very different thoughts were in his head.
+And as he stood near the lamps, the light fell upon his head, which
+was thin of hair and bald, as an old man's. And Eurymachus, a suitor,
+taking occasion from some words which were spoken before, scoffed and
+said, "Now I know for a certainty that some god lurks under the poor
+and beggarly appearance of this man, for as he stands by the lamps,
+his sleek head throws beams around it, like as it were a glory." And
+another said, "He passes his time too not much unlike the gods, lazily
+living exempt from labour, taking offerings of men." "I warrant," said
+Eurymachus again, "he could not raise a fence or dig a ditch for his
+livelihood, if a man would hire him to work in a garden."
+
+"I wish," said Ulysses, "that you who speak this, and myself, were to
+be tried at any task-work, that I had a good crooked scythe put in
+my hand, that was sharp and strong, and you such another, where the
+grass grew longest, to be up by day-break, mowing the meadows till
+the sun went down, not tasting of food till we had finished, or that
+we were set to plough four acres in one day of good glebe land, to
+see whose furrows were evenest and cleanest, or that we might have
+one wrestling-bout together, or that in our right hands a good
+steel-headed lance were placed, to try whose blows fell heaviest and
+thickest upon the adversary's head-piece. I would cause you such work,
+as you should have small reason to reproach me with being slack at
+work. But you would do well to spare me this reproach, and to save
+your strength, till the owner of this house shall return, till the
+day when Ulysses shall return, when returning he shall enter upon his
+birth-right."
+
+This was a galling speech to those suitors, to whom Ulysses's return
+was indeed the thing which they most dreaded; and a sudden fear fell
+upon their souls, as if they were sensible of the real presence of
+that man who did indeed stand amongst them, but not in that form as
+they might know him; and Eurymachus, incensed, snatched a massy cup
+which stood on a table near, and hurled it at the head of the supposed
+beggar, and but narrowly missed the hitting of him; and all the
+suitors rose, as at once, to thrust him out of the hall, which they
+said his beggarly presence and his rude speeches had profaned. But
+Telemachus cried to them to forbear, and not to presume to lay hands
+upon a wretched man to whom he had promised protection. He asked if
+they were mad, to mix such abhorred uproar with his feasts. He bade
+them take their food and their wine, to sit up or to go to bed at
+their free pleasures, so long as he should give licence to that
+freedom; but why should they abuse his banquet, or let the words which
+a poor beggar spake have power to move their spleens so fiercely?
+
+They bit their lips and frowned for anger, to be checked so by a
+youth; nevertheless for that time they had the grace to abstain,
+either for shame, or that Minerva had infused into them a terror of
+Ulysses's son.
+
+So that day's feast was concluded without bloodshed, and the suitors,
+tired with their sports, departed severally each man to his apartment.
+Only Ulysses and Telemachus remained. And now Telemachus, by his
+father's direction went and brought down into the hall armour and
+lances from the armoury: for Ulysses said, "On the morrow we shall
+have need of them." And moreover he said, "If any one shall ask why
+you have taken them down, say, it is to clean them and scour them from
+the rust which they have gathered since the owner of this house went
+for Troy." And as Telemachus stood by the armour, the lights were all
+gone out, and it was pitch-dark, and the armour gave out glistening
+beams as of fire, and he said to his father, "The pillars of the house
+are on fire." And his father said, "It is the gods who sit above the
+stars, and have power to make the night as light as the day." And
+he took it for a good omen. And Telemachus fell to cleaning and
+sharpening of the lances.
+
+Now Ulysses had not seen his wife Penelope in all the time since his
+return; for the queen did not care to mingle with the suitors at their
+banquets, but, as became one that had been Ulysses's wife, kept much
+in private, spinning and doing her excellent housewiveries among her
+maids in the remote apartments of the palace. Only upon solemn days
+she would come down and shew herself to the suitors. And Ulysses was
+filled with a longing desire to see his wife again, whom for twenty
+years he had not beheld, and he softly stole through the known
+passages of his beautiful house, till he came where the maids were
+lighting the queen through a stately gallery, that led to the chamber
+where she slept. And when the maids saw Ulysses, they said, "It is
+the beggar who came to the court to-day, about whom all that uproar
+was stirred up in the hall: what does he here?" But Penelope gave
+commandment that he should be brought before her, for she said, "It
+may be that he has travelled, and has heard something concerning
+Ulysses."
+
+Then was Ulysses right glad to hear himself named by his queen, to
+find himself in no wise forgotten, nor her great love towards him
+decayed in all that time that he had been away. And he stood before
+his queen, and she knew him not to be Ulysses, but supposed that he
+had been some poor traveller. And she asked him of what country he
+was.
+
+He told her (as he had before told to Eumæus) that he was a Cretan
+born, and however poor and cast down he now seemed, no less a man than
+brother to Idomeneus, who was grandson to king Minos, and though he
+now wanted bread, he had once had it in his power to feast Ulysses.
+Then he feigned how Ulysses, sailing for Troy, was forced by stress
+of weather to put his fleet in at a port of Crete, where for twelve
+days he was his guest, and entertained by him with all befitting
+guest-rites. And he described the very garments which Ulysses had on,
+by which Penelope knew that he had seen her lord.
+
+In this manner Ulysses told his wife many tales of himself, at most
+but painting, but painting so near to the life, that the feeling of
+that which she took at her ears became so strong, that the kindly
+tears ran down her fair cheeks, while she thought upon her lord, dead
+as she thought him, and heavily mourned the loss of him whom she
+missed, whom she could not find, though in very deed he stood so near
+her.
+
+Ulysses was moved to see her weep, but he kept his own eyes as dry as
+iron or horn in their lids, putting a bridle upon his strong passion,
+that it should not issue to sight.
+
+Then told he how he had lately been at the court of Thesprotia, and
+what he had learned concerning Ulysses there, in order as he had
+delivered to Eumæus: and Penelope was won to believe that there might
+be a possibility of Ulysses being alive, and she said, "I dreamed a
+dream this morning. Methought I had twenty household fowl which did
+eat wheat steeped in water from my hand, and there came suddenly from
+the clouds a crook-beaked hawk who soused on them and killed them all,
+trussing their necks, then took his flight back up to the clouds. And
+in my dream methought that I wept and made great moan for my fowls,
+and for the destruction which the hawk had made; and my maids came
+about me to comfort me. And in the height of my griefs the hawk came
+back, and lighting upon the beam of my chamber, he said to me in a
+man's voice, which sounded strangely even in my dream, to hear a hawk
+to speak: Be of good cheer, he said, O daughter of Icarius! for this
+is no dream which thou hast seen, but that which shall happen to thee
+indeed. Those household fowl which thou lamentest so without reason,
+are the suitors who devour thy substance, even as thou sawest the fowl
+eat from thy hand, and the hawk is thy husband, who is coming to give
+death to the suitors.--And I awoke, and went to see to my fowls if
+they were alive, whom I found eating wheat from their troughs, all
+well and safe as before my dream."
+
+Then said Ulysses, "This dream can endure no other interpretation than
+that which the hawk gave to it, who is your lord, and who is coming
+quickly to effect all that his words told you."
+
+"Your words," she said, "my old guest, are so sweet, that would you
+sit and please me with your speech, my ears would never let my eyes
+close their spheres for very joy of your discourse; but none that is
+merely mortal can live without the death of sleep, so the gods who are
+without death themselves have ordained it, to keep the memory of our
+mortality in our minds, while we experience that as much as we live
+we die every day: in which consideration I will ascend my bed, which
+I have nightly watered with my tears since he that was the joy of it
+departed for that bad city:" she so speaking, because she could not
+bring her lips to name the name of Troy so much hated. So for that
+night they parted, Penelope to her bed, and Ulysses to his son, and
+to the armour and the lances in the hall, where they sat up all night
+cleaning and watching by the armour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+_The madness from above.--The bow of Ulysses.--The slaughter.--The
+conclusion._
+
+
+When daylight appeared, a tumultuous concourse of the suitors again
+filled the hall; and some wondered, and some inquired what meant that
+glittering store of armour and lances which lay on heaps by the entry
+of the door; and [to] all that asked Telemachus made reply, that he
+had caused them to be taken down to cleanse them of the rust and of
+the stain which they had contracted by lying so long unused, even ever
+since his father went for Troy; and with that answer their minds were
+easily satisfied. So to their feasting and vain rioting again they
+fell. Ulysses by Telemachus's order had a seat and a mess assigned him
+in the door-way, and he had his eye ever on the lances. And it moved
+gall in some of the great ones there present, to have their feast
+still dulled with the society of that wretched beggar as they deemed
+him, and they reviled and spurned at him with their feet. Only there
+was one Philætius, who had something a better nature than the rest,
+that spake kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He coming up
+to Ulysses, took him by the hand with a kind of fear, as if touched
+exceedingly with imagination of his great worth, and said thus to him,
+"Hail! father stranger! my brows have sweat to see the injuries which
+you have received, and my eyes have broke forth in tears, when I have
+only thought that such being oftentimes the lot of worthiest men, to
+this plight Ulysses may be reduced, and that he now may wander from
+place to place as you do; for such who are compelled by need to range
+here and there, and have no firm home to fix their feet upon, God
+keeps them in this earth, as under water; so are they kept down and
+depressed. And a dark thread is sometimes spun in the fates of kings."
+
+At this bare likening of the beggar to Ulysses, Minerva from heaven
+made the suitors for foolish joy to go mad, and roused them to such a
+laughter as would never stop, they laughed without power of ceasing,
+their eyes stood full of tears for violent joys; but fears and
+horrible misgivings succeeded: and one among them stood up and
+prophesied: "Ah, wretches!" he said, "what madness from heaven has
+seized you, that you can laugh? see you not that your meat drops
+blood? a night, like the night of death, wraps you about, you shriek
+without knowing it; your eyes thrust forth tears; the fixed walls, and
+the beam that bears the whole house up, fall blood; ghosts choak up
+the entry; full is the hall with apparitions, of murdered men; under
+your feet is hell; the sun falls from heaven and it is midnight at
+noon." But like men whom the gods had infatuated to their destruction,
+they mocked at his fears, and Eurymachus said, "This man is surely
+mad, conduct him forth into the market-place, set him in the light,
+for he dreams that 'tis night within the house."
+
+But Theoclymenus (for that was the prophet's name) whom Minerva had
+graced with a prophetic spirit, that he foreseeing might avoid the
+destruction which awaited them, answered and said: "Eurymachus, I will
+not require a guide of thee for I have eyes and ears, the use of both
+my feet, and a sane mind within me, and with these I will go forth of
+the doors because I know the imminent evils which await all you that
+stay, by reason of this poor guest who is a favourite with all the
+gods." So saying he turned his back upon those inhospitable men, and
+went away home, and never returned to the palace.
+
+These words which he spoke were not unheard by Telemachus, who kept
+still his eye upon his father, expecting fervently when he would give
+the sign, which was to precede the slaughter of the suitors.
+
+They dreaming of no such thing, fell sweetly to their dinner, as
+joying in the great store of banquet which was heaped in full tables
+about them; but there reigned not a bitterer banquet planet in all
+heaven, than that which hung over them this day by secret destination
+of Minerva.
+
+There was a bow which Ulysses left when he went for Troy. It had lain
+by since that time, out of use and unstrung, for no man had strength
+to draw that bow, save Ulysses. So it had remained, as a monument of
+the great strength of its master. This bow, with the quiver of arrows
+belonging thereto, Telemachus had brought down from the armoury on the
+last night along with the lances; and now Minerva, intending to do
+Ulysses an honour, put it into the mind of Telemachus, to propose to
+the suitors to try who was strongest to draw that bow; and he promised
+that to the man who should be able to draw that bow, his mother should
+be given in marriage; Ulysses's wife the prize to him who should bend
+the bow of Ulysses.
+
+There was great strife and emulation stirred up among the suitors at
+those words of the prince Telemachus. And to grace her son's words,
+and to confirm the promise which he had made, Penelope came and
+shewed herself that day to the suitors; and Minerva made her that she
+appeared never so comely in their sight as that day, and they were
+inflamed with the beholding of so much beauty, proposed as the price
+of so great manhood; and they cried out, that if all those heroes who
+sailed to Colchos for the rich purchase of the golden-fleeced ram, had
+seen earth's richer prize, Penelope, they would not have made their
+voyage, but would have vowed their valours and their lives to her, for
+she was at all parts faultless.
+
+And she said, "The gods have taken my beauty from me, since my lord
+went for Troy." But Telemachus willed his mother to depart and not be
+present at that contest, for he said, "It may be, some rougher strife
+shall chance of this, than may be expedient for a woman to witness."
+And she retired, she and her maids, and left the hall.
+
+Then the bow was brought into the midst, and a mark was set up by
+prince Telemachus: and lord Antinous as the chief among the suitors
+had the first offer, and he took the bow and fitting an arrow to the
+string, he strove to bend it, but not with all his might and main
+could he once draw together the ends of that tough bow; and when he
+found how vain a thing it was to endeavour to draw Ulysses's bow,
+he desisted, blushing for shame and for mere anger. Then Eurymachus
+adventured, but with no better success; but as it had torn the hands
+of Antinous, so did the bow tear and strain his hands, and marred his
+delicate fingers, yet could he not once stir the string. Then called
+he to the attendants to bring fat and unctuous matter, which melting
+at the fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it and make
+it more pliable, but not with all the helps of art could he succeed in
+making it to move. After him Liodes, and Amphinomus, and Polybus, and
+Eurynomus, and Polyctorides, assayed their strength, but not any one
+of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, had any better
+luck: yet not the meanest of them there but thought himself well
+worthy of Ulysses's wife, though to shoot with Ulysses's bow the
+completest champion among them was by proof found too feeble.
+
+Then Ulysses prayed them that he might have leave to try; and
+immediately a clamour was raised among the suitors, because of his
+petition, and they scorned and swelled with rage at his presumption,
+and that a beggar should seek to contend in a game of such noble
+mastery. But Telemachus ordered that the bow should be given him, and
+that he should have leave to try, since they had failed; "for," he
+said, "the bow is mine, to give or to withhold:" and none durst
+gainsay the prince.
+
+Then Ulysses gave a sign to his son, and he commanded the doors of the
+hall to be made fast, and all wondered at his words, but none could
+divine the cause. And Ulysses took the bow into his hands, and before
+he essayed to bend it, he surveyed it at all parts, to see whether,
+by long lying by, it had contracted any stiffness which hindered the
+drawing; and as he was busied in the curious surveying of his bow,
+some of the suitors mocked him and said, "Past doubt this man is a
+right cunning archer, and knows his craft well. See how he turns it
+over and over, and looks into it, as if he could see through the
+wood." And others said, "We wish some one would tell out gold into our
+laps but for so long a time as he shall be in drawing of that string."
+But when he had spent some little time in making proof of the bow, and
+had found it to be in good plight, like as a harper in tuning of his
+harp draws out a string, with such ease or much more did Ulysses draw
+to the head the string of his own tough bow, and in letting of it go,
+it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes when it sings
+through the air: which so much amazed the suitors, that their colours
+came and went, and the skies gave out a noise of thunder, which at
+heart cheered Ulysses, for he knew that now his long labours by the
+disposal of the fates drew to an end. Then fitted he an arrow to the
+bow, and drawing it to the head, he sent it right to the mark which
+the prince had set up. Which done, he said to Telemachus, "You have
+got no disgrace yet by your guest, for I have struck the mark I shot
+at, and gave myself no such trouble in teazing the bow with fat and
+fire, as these men did, but have made proof that my strength is not
+impaired, nor my age so weak and contemptible as these were pleased to
+think it. But come, the day going down calls us to supper, after which
+succeed poem and harp, and all delights which use to crown princely
+banquetings."
+
+So saying, he beckoned to his son, who straight girt his sword to his
+side, and took one of the lances (of which there lay great store from
+the armoury) in his hand, and armed at all points, advanced towards
+his father.
+
+The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell from his shoulder, and his own
+kingly likeness returned, when he rushed to the great hall door with
+bow and quiver full of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, and
+in bitter words presignified his deadly intent to the suitors. "Thus
+far," he said, "this contest has been decided harmless: now for us
+there rests another mark, harder to hit, but which my hands shall
+essay notwithstanding, if Phoebus god of archers be pleased to give
+me the mastery." With that he let fly a deadly arrow at Antinous,
+which pierced him in the throat as he was in the act of lifting a cup
+of wine to his mouth. Amazement seized the suitors, as their great
+champion fell dead, and they raged highly against Ulysses, and said
+that it should prove the dearest shaft which he ever let fly, for he
+had slain a man, whose like breathed not in any part of the kingdom:
+and they flew to their arms, and would have seized the lances, but
+Minerva struck them with dimness of sight that they went erring up and
+down the hall, not knowing where to find them. Yet so infatuated were
+they by the displeasure of heaven, that they did not see the imminent
+peril which impended over them, but every man believed that this
+accident had happened beside the intention of the doer. Fools! to
+think by shutting their eyes to evade destiny, or that any other cup
+remained for them, but that which their great Antinous had tasted!
+
+Then Ulysses revealed himself to all in that presence, and that he
+was the man whom they held to be dead at Troy, whose palace they
+had usurped, whose wife in his life-time they had sought in impious
+marriage, and that for this reason destruction was come upon them.
+And he dealt his deadly arrows among them, and there was no avoiding
+him, nor escaping from his horrid person, and Telemachus by his side
+plied them thick with those murderous lances from which there was no
+retreat, till fear itself made them valiant, and danger gave them eyes
+to understand the peril; then they which had swords drew them, and
+some with shields, that could find them, and some with tables and
+benches snatched up in haste, rose in a mass to overwhelm and crush
+those two; yet they singly bestirred themselves like men, and defended
+themselves against that great host, and through tables, shields and
+all, right through the arrows of Ulysses clove, and the irresistible
+lances of Telemachus; and many lay dead, and all had wounds, and
+Minerva in the likeness of a bird sate upon the beam which went across
+the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful noise, and sometimes the
+great bird would fly among them, cuffing at the swords and at the
+lances, and up and down the hall would go, beating her wings, and
+troubling every thing, that it was frightful to behold, and it frayed
+the blood from the cheeks of those heaven-hated suitors: but to
+Ulysses and his son she appeared in her own divine similitude, with
+her snake-fringed shield, a goddess armed, fighting their battles. Nor
+did that dreadful pair desist, till they had laid all their foes at
+their feet. At their feet they lay in shoals; like fishes, when the
+fishermen break up their nets, so they lay gasping and sprawling at
+the feet of Ulysses and his son. And Ulysses remembered the prediction
+of Tiresias, which said that he was to perish by his own guests,
+unless he slew those who knew him not.
+
+Then certain of the queen's household went up and told Penelope what
+had happened, and how her lord Ulysses was come home, and had slain
+the suitors. But she gave no heed to their words, but thought that
+some frenzy possessed them, or that they mocked her: for it is the
+property of such extremes of sorrow as she had felt, not to believe
+when any great joy cometh. And she rated and chid them exceedingly for
+troubling her. But they the more persisted in their asseverations of
+the truth of what they had affirmed; and some of them had seen the
+slaughtered bodies of the suitors dragged forth of the hall. And they
+said, "That poor guest whom you talked with last night was Ulysses."
+Then she was yet more fully persuaded that they mocked her, and she
+wept. But they said, "This thing is true which we have told. We sat
+within, in an inner room in the palace, and the doors of the hall
+were shut on us, but we heard the cries and the groans of the men
+that were killed, but saw nothing, till at length your son called to
+us to come in, and entering we saw Ulysses standing in the midst of
+the slaughtered." But she persisting in her unbelief, said, that it
+was some god which had deceived them to think it was the person of
+Ulysses.
+
+By this time Telemachus and his father had cleansed their hands from
+the slaughter, and were come to where the queen was talking with those
+of her household; and when she saw Ulysses, she stood motionless,
+and had no power to speak, sudden surprise and joy and fear and many
+passions strove within her. Sometimes she was clear that it was her
+husband that she saw, and sometimes the alteration which twenty years
+had made in his person (yet that was not much) perplexed her that she
+knew not what to think, and for joy she could not believe, and yet for
+joy she would not but believe, and, above all, that sudden change from
+a beggar to a king troubled her, and wrought uneasy scruples in her
+mind. But Telemachus, seeing her strangeness, blamed her, and called
+her an ungentle and tyrannous mother! and said that she shewed a too
+great curiousness of modesty, to abstain from embracing his father,
+and to have doubts of his person, when to all present it was evident
+that he was the very real and true Ulysses.
+
+Then she mistrusted no longer, but ran and fell upon Ulysses's neck,
+and said, "Let not my husband be angry, that I held off so long with
+strange delays; it is the gods, who severing us for so long time, have
+caused this unseemly distance in me. If Menelaus's wife had used half
+my caution, she would never have taken so freely to a stranger's bed;
+and she might have spared us all these plagues which have come upon us
+through her shameless deed."
+
+These words with which Penelope excused herself, wrought more
+affection in Ulysses than if upon a first sight she had given up
+herself implicitly to his embraces; and he wept for joy to possess a
+wife so discreet, so answering to his own staid mind, that had a depth
+of wit proportioned to his own, and one that held chaste virtue at
+so high a price; and he thought the possession of such a one cheaply
+purchased with the loss of all Circe's delights, and Calypso's
+immortality of joys; and his long labours and his severe sufferings
+past seemed as nothing, now they were crowned with the enjoyment of
+his virtuous and true wife Penelope. And as sad men at sea whose ship
+has gone to pieces nigh shore, swimming for their lives, all drenched
+in foam and brine, crawl up to some poor patch of land, which they
+take possession of with as great a joy as if they had the world given
+them in fee, with such delight did this chaste wife cling to her lord
+restored, till the dark night fast coming on reminded her of that more
+intimate and happy union when in her long-widowed bed she should once
+again clasp a living Ulysses.
+
+So from that time the land had rest from the suitors. And the happy
+Ithacans with songs and solemn sacrifices of praise to the gods
+celebrated the return of Ulysses: for he that had been so long absent
+was returned to wreak the evil upon the heads of the doers; in the
+place where they had done the evil, there wreaked he his vengeance
+upon them.
+
+
+
+
+MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL:
+
+OR,
+
+THE HISTORY OF SEVERAL YOUNG LADIES,
+
+RELATED BY THEMSELVES
+
+(_Written 1808. 1st Edition 1809. Text of 2nd Edition 1809_)
+
+DEDICATION.
+
+TO
+
+THE YOUNG LADIES AT AMWELL SCHOOL
+
+
+    My dear young friends,
+
+    Though released from the business of the school, the absence of
+    your governess confines me to Amwell during the vacation. I
+    cannot better employ my leisure hours than in contributing to the
+    amusement of you my kind pupils, who, by your affectionate
+    attentions to my instructions, have rendered a life of labour
+    pleasant to me.
+
+    On your return to school I hope to have a fair copy ready to
+    present to each of you of your own biographical conversations last
+    winter.
+
+    Accept my thanks for the approbation you were pleased to express
+    when I offered to become your _amanuensis_. I hope you will find
+    I have executed the office with a tolerably faithful pen, as
+    you know I took notes each day during those conversations, and
+    arranged my materials after you were retired to rest.
+
+    I begin from the day our school commenced. It was opened by your
+    governess for the first time, on the ---- day of February. I
+    pass over your several arrivals on the morning of that day. Your
+    governess received you from your friends in her own parlour.
+
+    Every carriage that drove from the door I knew had left a sad
+    heart behind.--Your eyes were red with weeping, when your
+    governess introduced me to you as the teacher she had engaged to
+    instruct you. She next desired me to show you into the room which
+    we now call the play-room. "The ladies" said she, "may play, and
+    amuse themselves, and be as happy as they please this evening,
+    that they may be well acquainted with each other before they enter
+    the school-room to-morrow morning."
+
+    The traces of tears were on every cheek, and I also was sad; for
+    I, like you, had parted from my friends, and the duties of my
+    profession were new to me, yet I felt that it was improper to give
+    way to my own melancholy thoughts. I knew that it was my first
+    duty to divert the solitary young strangers: for I considered that
+    this was very unlike the entrance to an old established school,
+    where there is always some good-natured girl who will shew
+    attentions to a new scholar, and take pleasure in initiating her
+    into the customs and amusements of the place. These, thought
+    I, have their own amusements to invent; their own customs
+    to establish. How unlike too is this forlorn meeting to old
+    school-fellows returning after the holidays, when mutual greetings
+    soon lighten the memory of parting sorrow!
+
+    I invited you to draw near a bright fire which blazed in the
+    chimney, and looked the only cheerful thing in the room.
+
+    During our first solemn silence, which, you may remember, was only
+    broken by my repeated requests that you would make a smaller, and
+    still smaller circle, till I saw the fire-place fairly inclosed
+    round, the idea came into my mind, which has since been a source
+    of amusement to you in the recollection, and to myself in
+    particular has been of essential benefit, as it enabled me to form
+    a just estimate of the dispositions of you my young pupils, and
+    assisted me to adapt my plan of future instructions to each
+    individual temper.
+
+    An introduction to a point we wish to carry, we always feel to be
+    an aukward affair, and generally execute it in an aukward manner;
+    so I believe I did then: for when I imparted this idea to you, I
+    think I prefaced it rather too formally for such young auditors,
+    for I began with telling you, that I had read in old authors,
+    that it was not unfrequent in former times, when strangers were
+    assembled together, as we might be, for them to amuse themselves
+    with telling stories, either of their own lives, or the adventures
+    of others. "Will you allow me, ladies," I continued, "to persuade
+    you to amuse yourselves in this way? you will not then look so
+    unsociably upon each other: for we find that these strangers of
+    whom we read, were as well acquainted before the conclusion of
+    the first story, as if they had known each other many years. Let
+    me prevail upon you to relate some little anecdotes of your own
+    lives. Fictitious tales we can read in books, and [they] were
+    therefore better adapted to conversation in those times when books
+    of amusement were more scarce than they are at present."
+
+    After many objections of not knowing what to say, or how to begin,
+    which I overcame by assuring you how easy it would be, for that
+    every person is naturally eloquent when they are the hero or
+    heroine of their own tale, the _Who should begin_ was next in
+    question.
+
+    I proposed to draw lots, which formed a little amusement of
+    itself. Miss Manners, who till then had been the saddest of the
+    sad, began to brighten up, and said it was just like drawing king
+    and queen, and began to tell us where she passed last twelfth day;
+    but as her narration must have interfered with the more important
+    business of the lottery, I advised her to postpone it, till it
+    came to her turn to favour us with the history of her life, when
+    it would appear in its proper order. The first number fell to the
+    share of miss Villiers, whose joy at drawing what we called the_
+    first prize, _was tempered with shame at appearing as the first
+    historian in the company. She wished she had not been the very
+    first:--she had passed all her life in a retired village, and
+    had nothing to relate of herself that could give the least
+    entertainment:--she had not the least idea in the world where
+    to begin.
+
+    "Begin," said I, "with your name, for that at present is unknown
+    to us. Tell us the first thing you can remember; relate whatever
+    happened to make a great impression on you when you were very
+    young, and if you find you can connect your story till your
+    arrival here to-day, I am sure we shall listen to you with
+    pleasure; and if you like to break off, and only treat us with a
+    part of your history, we will excuse you, with many thanks for the
+    amusement which you have afforded us; and the lady who has drawn
+    the second number will, I hope, take her turn with the same
+    indulgence, to relate either all, or any part of the events of
+    her life, as best pleases her own fancy, or as she finds she can
+    manage it with the most ease to herself."--Encouraged by this
+    offer of indulgence, miss Villiers began.
+
+    If in my report of her story, or in any which follow, I shall
+    appear to make her or you speak an older language than it seems
+    probable that you should use, speaking in your own words, it must
+    be remembered, that what is very proper and becoming when spoken,
+    requires to be arranged with some little difference before it can
+    be set down in writing. Little inaccuracies must be pared away,
+    and the whole must assume a more formal and correct appearance. My
+    own way of thinking, I am sensible, will too often intrude itself,
+    but I have endeavoured to preserve, as exactly as I could, your
+    own words, and your own peculiarities of style and manner, and to
+    approve myself
+
+    Your faithful historiographer,
+    as well as true friend,
+
+    M.B.
+
+
+
+I
+
+ELIZABETH VILLIERS
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+My father is the curate of a village church, about five miles
+from Amwell. I was born in the parsonage-house, which joins the
+church-yard. The first thing I can remember was my father teaching me
+the alphabet from the letters on a tombstone that stood at the head of
+my mother's grave. I used to tap at my father's study-door; I think I
+now hear him say, "Who is there?--What do you want, little girl?" "Go
+and see mamma. Go and learn pretty letters." Many times in the day
+would my father lay aside his books and his papers to lead me to this
+spot, and make me point to the letters, and then set me to spell
+syllables and words: in this manner, the epitaph on my mother's tomb
+being my primmer and my spelling-book, I learned to read.
+
+I was one day sitting on a step placed across the church-yard stile,
+when a gentleman passing by, heard me distinctly repeat the letters
+which formed my mother's name, and then say, _Elizabeth Villiers_,
+with a firm tone, as if I had performed some great matter. This
+gentleman was my uncle James, my mother's brother: he was a lieutenant
+in the navy, and had left England a few weeks after the marriage of
+my father and mother, and now, returned home from a long sea-voyage,
+he was coming to visit my mother; no tidings of her decease having
+reached him, though she had been dead more than a twelvemonth.
+
+When my uncle saw me sitting on the stile, and heard me pronounce my
+mother's name, he looked earnestly in my face, and began to fancy a
+resemblance to his sister, and to think I might be her child. I was
+too intent on my employment to observe him, and went spelling on. "Who
+has taught you to spell so prettily, my little maid?" said my uncle.
+"Mamma," I replied; for I had an idea that the words on the tombstone
+were somehow a part of mamma, and that she had taught me. "And who is
+mamma?" asked my uncle. "Elizabeth Villiers," I replied; and then my
+uncle called me his dear little niece, and said he would go with me to
+mamma: he took hold of my hand, intending to lead me home, delighted
+that he had found out who I was, because he imagined it would be such
+a pleasant surprise to his sister to see her little daughter bringing
+home her long lost sailor uncle.
+
+I agreed to take him to mamma, but we had a dispute about the way
+thither. My uncle was for going along the road which led directly up
+to our house; I pointed to the church-yard, and said, that was the way
+to mamma. Though impatient of any delay, he was not willing to contest
+the point with his new relation, therefore he lifted me over the
+stile, and was then going to take me along the path to a gate he knew
+was at the end of our garden; but no, I would not go that way neither:
+letting go his hand, I said, "You do not know the way--I will shew
+you:" and making what haste I could among the long grass and thistles,
+and jumping over the low graves, he said, as he followed what he
+called my _wayward steps_, "What a positive soul this little niece of
+mine is! I knew the way to your mother's house before you were born,
+child." At last I stopped at my mother's grave, and, pointing to the
+tombstone, said, "Here is mamma," in a voice of exultation, as if I
+had now convinced him that I knew the way best: I looked up in his
+face to see him acknowledge his mistake; but Oh, what a face of
+sorrow did I see! I was so frightened, that I have but an imperfect
+recollection of what followed. I remember I pulled his coat, and cried
+"Sir, sir," and tried to move him. I knew not what to do; my mind
+was in a strange confusion; I thought I had done something wrong in
+bringing the gentleman to mamma to make him cry so sadly; but what it
+was I could not tell. This grave had always been a scene of delight
+to me. In the house my father would often be weary of my prattle, and
+send me from him; but here he was all my own. I might say anything
+and be as frolicsome as I pleased here; all was chearfulness and good
+humour in our visits to mamma, as we called it. My father would tell
+me how quietly mamma slept there, and that he and his little Betsy
+would one day sleep beside mamma in that grave; and when I went to
+bed, as I laid my little head on the pillow, I used to wish I was
+sleeping in the grave with my papa and mamma; and in my childish
+dreams I used to fancy myself there, and it was a place within the
+ground, all smooth, and soft, and green. I never made out any figure
+of mamma, but still it was the tombstone, and papa, and the smooth
+green grass, and my head resting upon the elbow of my father.
+
+How long my uncle remained in this agony of grief I know not; to me
+it seemed a very long time: at last he took me in his arms, and held
+me so tight, that I began to cry, and ran home to my father, and told
+him, that a gentleman was crying about mamma's pretty letters.
+
+No doubt it was a very affecting meeting between my father and my
+uncle. I remember that it was the first day I ever saw my father weep:
+that I was in sad trouble, and went into the kitchen and told Susan,
+our servant, that papa was crying; and she wanted to keep me with her
+that I might not disturb the conversation; but I would go back to the
+parlour to _poor papa_, and I went in softly, and crept between my
+father's knees. My uncle offered to take me in his arms, but I turned
+sullenly from him, and clung closer to my father, having conceived a
+dislike to my uncle because he had made my father cry.
+
+Now I first learned that my mother's death was a heavy affliction; for
+I heard my father tell a melancholy story of her long illness, her
+death, and what he had suffered from her loss. My uncle said, what a
+sad thing it was for my father to be left with such a young child; but
+my father replied, his little Betsy was all his comfort, and that, but
+for me, he should have died with grief. How I could be any comfort to
+my father, struck me with wonder. I knew I was pleased when he played
+and talked with me; but I thought that was all goodness and favour
+done to me, and I had no notion how I could make any part of his
+happiness. The sorrow I now heard he had suffered, was as new and
+strange to me. I had no idea that he had ever been unhappy; his voice
+was always kind and cheerful; I had never before seen him weep, or
+shew any such signs of grief as those in which I used to express my
+little troubles. My thoughts on these subjects were confused and
+childish; but from that time I never ceased pondering on the sad story
+of my dead mamma.
+
+The next day I went by mere habit to the study door, to call papa to
+the beloved grave; my mind misgave me, and I could not tap at the
+door. I went backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the study,
+and what to do with myself I did not know. My uncle met me in the
+passage, and said, "Betsy, will you come and walk with me in the
+garden?" This I refused, for this was not what I wanted, but the old
+amusement of sitting on the grave, and talking to papa. My uncle tried
+to persuade me, but still I said, "No, no," and ran crying into the
+kitchen. As he followed me in there, Susan said, "This child is so
+fretful to-day, I do not know what to do with her." "Aye," said my
+uncle, "I suppose my poor brother spoils her, having but one." This
+reflection on my papa made me quite in a little passion of anger, for
+I had not forgot that with this new uncle sorrow had first come into
+our dwelling: I screamed loudly, till my father came out to know what
+it was all about. He sent my uncle into the parlour, and said, he
+would manage the little wrangler by himself. When my uncle was gone I
+ceased crying; my father forgot to lecture me for my ill humour, or
+to enquire into the cause, and we were soon seated by the side of the
+tombstone. No lesson went on that day; no talking of pretty mamma
+sleeping in the green grave; no jumping from the tombstone to the
+ground; no merry jokes or pleasant stories. I sate upon my father's
+knee, looking up in his face, and thinking, "_How sorry papa looks_,"
+till, having been fatigued with crying, and now oppressed with
+thought, I fell fast asleep.
+
+My uncle soon learned from Susan that this place was our constant
+haunt; she told him she did verily believe her master would never get
+the better of the death of her mistress, while he continued to teach
+the child to read at the tombstone; for, though it might sooth his
+grief, it kept it for ever fresh in his memory. The sight of his
+sister's grave had been such a shock to my uncle, that he readily
+entered into Susan's apprehensions; and concluding, that if I were set
+to study by some other means there would no longer be a pretence for
+these visits to the grave, away my kind uncle hastened to the nearest
+market-town to buy me some books.
+
+I heard the conference between my uncle and Susan, and I did not
+approve of his interfering in our pleasures. I saw him take his hat
+and walk out, and I secretly hoped he was gone _beyond seas_ again,
+from whence Susan had told me he had come. Where _beyond seas_ was I
+could not tell; but I concluded it was somewhere a great way off. I
+took my seat on the church-yard stile, and kept looking down the road,
+and saying, "I hope I shall not see my uncle again. I hope my uncle
+will not come from _beyond seas_ any more;" but I said this very
+softly, and had a kind of notion that I was in a perverse ill-humoured
+fit. Here I sate till my uncle returned from the market-town with his
+new purchases. I saw him come walking very fast with a parcel under
+his arm. I was very sorry to see him, and I frowned, and tried to look
+very cross. He untied his parcel, and said, "Betsy, I have brought
+you a pretty book." I turned my head away, and said, "I don't want a
+book;" but I could not help peeping again to look at it. In the hurry
+of opening the parcel he had scattered all the books upon the ground,
+and there I saw fine gilt covers and gay pictures all fluttering
+about. What a fine sight!--All my resentment vanished, and I held up
+my face to kiss him, that being my way of thanking my father for any
+extraordinary favour.
+
+My uncle had brought himself into rather a troublesome office; he had
+heard me spell so well, that he thought there was nothing to do but
+to put books into my hand, and I should read; yet, notwithstanding
+I spelt tolerably well, the letters in my new library were so much
+smaller than I had been accustomed to, they were like Greek characters
+to me; I could make nothing at all of them. The honest sailor was
+not to be discouraged by this difficulty; though unused to play the
+schoolmaster, he taught me to read the small print, with unwearied
+diligence and patience; and whenever he saw my father and me look as
+if we wanted to resume our visits to the grave, he would propose some
+pleasant walk; and if my father said it was too far for the child to
+walk, he would set me on his shoulder, and say, "Then Betsy shall
+ride;" and in this manner has he carried me many many miles.
+
+In these pleasant excursions my uncle seldom forgot to make Susan
+furnish him with a luncheon which, though it generally happened every
+day, made a constant surprise to my papa and me, when, seated under
+some shady tree, he pulled it out of his pocket, and began to
+distribute his little store; and then I used to peep into the other
+pocket to see if there were not some currant wine there and the little
+bottle of water for me; if, perchance, the water was forgot, then it
+made another joke,--that poor Betsy must be forced to drink a little
+drop of wine. These are childish things to tell of, and instead of my
+own silly history, I wish I could remember the entertaining stories my
+uncle used to relate of his voyages and travels, while we sate under
+the shady trees, eating our noon-tide meal.
+
+The long visit my uncle made us was such an important event in my
+life, that I fear I shall tire your patience with talking of him; but
+when he is gone, the remainder of my story will be but short.
+
+The summer months passed away, but not swiftly;--the pleasant walks,
+and the charming stories of my uncle's adventures, made them seem like
+years to me; I remember the approach of winter by the warm great coat
+he bought for me, and how proud I was when I first put it on, and that
+he called me Little Red Riding Hood, and bade me beware of wolves, and
+that I laughed and said there were no such things now; then he told me
+how many wolves, and bears, and tygers, and lions he had met with in
+uninhabited lands, that were like Robinson Crusoe's Island. O these
+were happy days!
+
+In the winter our walks were shorter and less frequent. My books were
+now my chief amusement, though my studies were often interrupted by
+a game of romps with my uncle, which too often ended in a quarrel
+because he played so roughly; yet long before this I dearly loved
+my uncle, and the improvement I made while he was with us was very
+great indeed. I could now read very well, and the continual habit of
+listening to the conversation of my father and my uncle made me a
+little woman in understanding; so that my father said to him, "James,
+you have made my child quite a companionable little being."
+
+My father often left me alone with my uncle; sometimes to write his
+sermons; sometimes to visit the sick, or give counsel to his poor
+neighbours: then my uncle used to hold long conversations with me,
+telling me how I should strive to make my father happy, and endeavour
+to improve myself when he was gone:--now I began justly to understand
+why he had taken such pains to keep my father from visiting my
+mother's grave, that grave which I often stole privately to look at;
+but now never without awe and reverence, for my uncle used to tell
+me what an excellent lady my mother was, and I now thought of her as
+having been a real mamma, which before seemed an ideal something,
+no way connected with life. And he told me that the ladies from the
+Manor-House, who sate in the best pew in the church, were not so
+graceful, and the best women in the village were not so good, as was
+my sweet mamma; and that if she had lived, I should not have been
+forced to pick up a little knowledge from him, a rough sailor, or to
+learn to knit and sew of Susan, but that she would have taught me all
+lady-like fine works and delicate behaviour and perfect manners, and
+would have selected for me proper books, such as were most fit to
+instruct my mind, and of which he nothing knew. If ever in my life I
+shall have any proper sense of what is excellent or becoming in the
+womanly character, I owe it to these lessons of my rough unpolished
+uncle; for, in telling me what my mother would have made me, he taught
+me what to wish to be; and when, soon after my uncle left us, I was
+introduced to the ladies at the Manor-House, instead of hanging down
+my head with shame, as I should have done before my uncle came, like a
+little village rustic, I tried to speak distinctly, with ease, and a
+modest gentleness, as my uncle had said my mother used to do; instead
+of hanging down my head abashed, I looked upon them, and thought what
+a pretty sight a fine lady was, and thought how well my mother must
+have appeared, since she was so much more graceful than these ladies
+were; and when I heard them compliment my father on the admirable
+behaviour of his child, and say how well he had brought me up, I
+thought to myself, "Papa does not much mind my manners, if I am
+but a good girl; but it was my uncle that taught me to behave like
+mamma."--I cannot now think my uncle was so rough and unpolished as
+he said he was, for his lessons were so good and so impressive that I
+shall never forget them, and I hope they will be of use to me as long
+as I live: he would explain to me the meaning of all the words he
+used, such as grace and elegance, modest diffidence and affectation,
+pointing out instances of what he meant by those words, in the manners
+of the ladies and their young daughters who came to our church; for,
+besides the ladies of the Manor-House, many of the neighbouring
+families came to our church because my father preached so well.
+
+It must have been early in the spring when my uncle went away, for the
+crocuses were just blown in the garden, and the primroses had begun to
+peep from under the young budding hedge-rows.--I cried as if my heart
+would break, when I had the last sight of him through a little opening
+among the trees, as he went down the road. My father accompanied him
+to the market-town, from whence he was to proceed in the stage-coach
+to London. How tedious I thought all Susan's endeavours to comfort me
+were. The stile where I first saw my uncle, came into my mind, and I
+thought I would go and sit there, and think about that day; but I was
+no sooner seated there, than I remembered how I had frightened him
+by taking him so foolishly to my mother's grave, and then again how
+naughty I had been when I sate muttering to myself at this same stile,
+wishing that he, who had gone so far to buy me books, might never come
+back any more: all my little quarrels with my uncle came into my mind,
+now that I could never play with him again, and it almost broke
+my heart. I was forced to run into the house to Susan for that
+consolation I had just before despised.
+
+Some days after this, as I was sitting by the fire with my father,
+after it was dark, and before the candles were lighted, I gave him
+an account of my troubled conscience at the church-stile, when I
+remembered how unkind I had been to my uncle when he first came, and
+how sorry I still was whenever I thought of the many quarrels I had
+had with him.
+
+My father smiled, and took hold of my hand, saying, "I will tell you
+all about this, my little penitent. This is the sort of way in which
+we all feel, when those we love are taken from us.--When our dear
+friends are with us, we go on enjoying their society, without much
+thought or consideration of the blessing we are possessed of, nor do
+we too nicely weigh the measure of our daily actions;--we let them
+freely share our kind or our discontented moods; and, if any little
+bickerings disturb our friendship, it does but the more endear us to
+each other when we are in a happier temper. But these things come over
+us like grievous faults when the object of our affection is gone for
+ever. Your dear mamma and I had no quarrels; yet in the first days of
+my lonely sorrow, how many things came into my mind that I might have
+done to have made her happier. It is so with you, my child. You did
+all a child could do to please your uncle, and dearly did he love
+you; and these little things which now disturb your tender mind, were
+remembered with delight by your uncle; he was telling me in our last
+walk, just perhaps as you were thinking about it with sorrow, of the
+difficulty he had in getting into your good graces when he first came;
+he will think of these things with pleasure when he is far away. Put
+away from you this unfounded grief; only let it be a lesson to you to
+be as kind as possible to those you love; and remember, when they are
+gone from you, you will never think you had been kind enough. Such
+feelings as you have now described are the lot of humanity. So you
+will feel when I am no more, and so will your children feel when you
+are dead. But your uncle will come back again, Betsy, and we will now
+think of where we are to get the cage to keep the talking parrot in,
+he is to bring home; and go and tell Susan to bring the candles, and
+ask her if the nice cake is almost baked, that she promised to give us
+for our tea."
+
+    At this point, my dear miss Villiers, you thought fit to break off
+    your story, and the wet eyes of your young auditors, seemed to
+    confess that you had succeeded in moving their feelings with your
+    pretty narrative. It now fell by lot to the turn of miss Manners
+    to relate her story, and we were all sufficiently curious to know
+    what so very young an historian had to tell of herself.--I shall
+    continue the narratives for the future in the order in which
+    they followed, without mentioning any of the interruptions which
+    occurred from the asking of questions, or from any other cause,
+    unless materially connected with the stories. I shall also leave
+    out the apologies with which you severally thought fit to preface
+    your stories of yourselves, though they were very seasonable in
+    their place, and proceeded from a proper diffidence, because I
+    must not swell my work to too large a size.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+LOUISA MANNERS
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+My name is Louisa Manners; I was seven years of age last birthday,
+which was on the first of May. I remember only four birthdays. The day
+I was four years old is the first that I recollect. On the morning
+of that day, as soon as I awoke, I crept into mamma's bed, and said,
+"Open your eyes, mamma, for it is my birthday. Open your eyes, and
+look at me!" Then mamma told me I should ride in a post chaise,
+and see my grandmamma and my sister Sarah. Grandmamma lived at a
+farm-house in the country, and I had never in all my life been out of
+London; no, nor had I ever seen a bit of green grass, except in the
+Drapers' garden, which is near my papa's house in Broad-street; nor
+had I ever rode in a carriage before that happy birthday.
+
+I ran about the house talking of where I was going, and rejoicing so
+that it was my birthday, that when I got into the chaise I was tired
+and fell asleep.
+
+When I awoke, I saw the green fields on both sides of the chaise, and
+the fields were full, quite full, of bright shining yellow flowers,
+and sheep and young lambs were feeding in them. I jumped, and clapped
+my hands together for joy, and I cried out This is
+
+  "Abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs,"
+
+for I knew many of Watts's hymns by heart.
+
+The trees and hedges seemed to fly swiftly by us, and one field, and
+the sheep, and the young lambs, passed away; and then another field
+came, and that was full of cows; and then another field, and all the
+pretty sheep returned, and there was no end of these charming sights
+till we came quite to grandmamma's house, which stood all alone by
+itself, no house to be seen at all near it.
+
+Grandmamma was very glad to see me, and she was very sorry that I did
+not remember her, though I had been so fond of her when she was in
+town but a few months before. I was quite ashamed of my bad memory.
+My sister Sarah shewed me all the beautiful places about grandmamma's
+house. She first took me into the farm-yard, and I peeped into the
+barn; there I saw a man thrashing, and as he beat the corn with his
+flail, he made such a dreadful noise that I was frightened and ran
+away: my sister persuaded me to return; she said Will Tasker was very
+good-natured: then I went back, and peeped at him again; but as I
+could not reconcile myself to the sound of his flail, or the sight of
+his black beard, we proceeded to see the rest of the farm-yard.
+
+There was no end to the curiosities that Sarah had to shew me. There
+was the pond where the ducks were swimming, and the little wooden
+houses where the hens slept at night. The hens were feeding all over
+the yard, and the prettiest little chickens, they were feeding too,
+and little yellow ducklings that had a hen for their mamma. She was so
+frightened if they went near the water. Grandmamma says a hen is not
+esteemed a very wise bird.
+
+We went out of the farm-yard into the orchard. O what a sweet place
+grandmamma's orchard is! There were pear-trees, and apple-trees,
+and cherry-trees, all in blossom. These blossoms were the prettiest
+flowers that ever were seen, and among the grass under the trees there
+grew butter-cups, and cowslips, and daffodils, and blue-bells. Sarah
+told me all their names, and she said I might pick as many of them as
+ever I pleased.
+
+I filled my lap with flowers, I filled my bosom with flowers, and I
+carried as many flowers as I could in both my hands; but as I was
+going into the parlour to shew them to my mamma, I stumbled over a
+threshold which was placed across the parlour, and down I fell with
+all my treasure.
+
+Nothing could have so well pacified me for the misfortune of my fallen
+flowers, as the sight of a delicious syllabub which happened at that
+moment to be brought in. Grandmamma said it was a present from the
+red cow to me because it was my birthday; and then because it was the
+first of May, she ordered the syllabub to be placed under the May-bush
+that grew before the parlour door, and when we were seated on the
+grass round it, she helped me the very first to a large glass full of
+the syllabub, and wished me many happy returns of that day, and then
+she said I was myself the sweetest little May-blossom in the orchard.
+
+After the syllabub there was the garden to see, and a most beautiful
+garden it was;--long and narrow, a straight gravel walk down the
+middle of it, at the end of the gravel walk there was a green arbour
+with a bench under it.
+
+There were rows of cabbages and radishes, and peas and beans. I was
+delighted to see them, for I never saw so much as a cabbage growing
+out of the ground before.
+
+On one side of this charming garden there were a great many bee-hives,
+and the bees sung so prettily.
+
+Mamma said, "Have you nothing to say to these pretty bees, Louisa?"
+Then I said to them,
+
+  "How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour,
+  And gather honey all the day from every opening flower."
+
+They had a most beautiful flower-bed to gather it from, quite close
+under the hives.
+
+I was going to catch one bee, till Sarah told me about their stings,
+which made me afraid for a long time to go too near their hives; but
+I went a little nearer, and a little nearer, every day, and, before I
+came away from grandmamma's, I grew so bold, I let Will Tasker hold me
+over the glass windows at the top of the hives, to see them make honey
+in their own homes.
+
+After seeing the garden, I saw the cows milked, and that was the last
+sight I saw that day; for while I was telling mamma about the cows, I
+fell fast asleep, and I suppose I was then put to bed.
+
+The next morning my papa and mamma were gone. I cried sadly, but was a
+little comforted at hearing they would return in a month or two, and
+fetch me home. I was a foolish little thing then, and did not know
+how long a month was. Grandmamma gave me a little basket to gather my
+flowers in. I went into the orchard, and before I had half filled my
+basket, I forgot all my troubles.
+
+The time I passed at my grandmamma's is always in my mind. Sometimes
+I think of the good-natured pied cow, that would let me stroke her,
+while the dairy-maid was milking her. Then I fancy myself running
+after the dairy-maid into the nice clean dairy, and see the pans full
+of milk and cream. Then I remember the wood-house; it had once been a
+large barn, but being grown old, the wood was kept there. My sister
+and I used to peep about among the faggots to find the eggs the hens
+sometimes left there. Birds' nests we might not look for. Grandmamma
+was very angry once, when Will Tasker brought home a bird's nest, full
+of pretty speckled eggs, for me. She sent him back to the hedge with
+it again. She said, the little birds would not sing any more, if their
+eggs were taken away from them.
+
+A hen, she said, was a hospitable bird, and always laid more eggs
+than she wanted, on purpose to give her mistress to make puddings and
+custards with.
+
+I do not know which pleased grandmamma best, when we carried her home
+a lap-full of eggs, or a few violets; for she was particularly fond of
+violets.
+
+Violets were very scarce; we used to search very carefully for them
+every morning, round by the orchard hedge, and Sarah used to carry a
+stick in her hand to beat away the nettles; for very frequently the
+hens left their eggs among the nettles. If we could find eggs and
+violets too, what happy children we were!
+
+Every day I used to fill my basket with flowers, and for a long time
+I liked one pretty flower as well as another pretty flower, but Sarah
+was much wiser than me, and she taught me which to prefer.
+
+Grandmamma's violets were certainly best of all, but they never went
+in the basket, being carried home, almost flower by flower, as soon as
+they were found; therefore blue-bells might be said to be the best,
+for the cowslips were all withered and gone, before I learned the true
+value of flowers. The best blue-bells were those tinged with red; some
+were so very red, that we called them red blue-bells, and these Sarah
+prized very highly indeed. Daffodils were so very plentiful, they
+were not thought worth gathering, unless they were double ones, and
+butter-cups I found were very poor flowers indeed, yet I would pick
+one now and then, because I knew they were the very same flowers that
+had delighted me so in the journey; for my papa had told me they were.
+
+I was very careful to love best the flowers which Sarah praised most,
+yet sometimes, I confess, I have even picked a daisy, though I knew it
+was the very worst flower of all, because it reminded me of London,
+and the Drapers' garden; for, happy as I was at grandmamma's, I could
+not help sometimes thinking of my papa and mamma, and then I used to
+tell my sister all about London; how the houses stood all close to
+each other; what a pretty noise the coaches made; and what a many
+people there were in the streets. After we had been talking on these
+subjects, we generally used to go into the old wood-house, and play at
+being in London. We used to set up bits of wood for houses; our two
+dolls we called papa and mamma; in one corner we made a little garden
+with grass and daisies, and that was to be the Drapers' garden. I
+would not have any other flowers here than daisies, because no other
+grew among the grass in the real Drapers' garden. Before the time of
+hay-making came, it was very much talked of. Sarah told me what a
+merry time it would be, for she remembered every thing which had
+happened for a year or more. She told me how nicely we should throw
+the hay about. I was very desirous indeed to see the hay made.
+
+To be sure nothing could be more pleasant than the day the orchard was
+mowed: the hay smelled so sweet, and we might toss it about as much as
+ever we pleased; but, dear me, we often wish for things that do not
+prove so happy as we expected; the hay, which was at first so green,
+and smelled so sweet, became yellow and dry, and was carried away in a
+cart to feed the horses; and then, when it was all gone, and there was
+no more to play with, I looked upon the naked ground, and perceived
+what we had lost in these few merry days. Ladies, would you believe
+it, every flower, blue-bells, daffodils, butter-cups, daisies, all
+were cut off by the cruel scythe of the mower. No flower was to be
+seen at all, except here and there a short solitary daisy, that a week
+before one would not have looked at.
+
+It was a grief, indeed, to me, to lose all my pretty flowers; yet,
+when we are in great distress, there is always, I think, something
+which happens to comfort us, and so it happened now, that gooseberries
+and currants were almost ripe, which was certainly a very pleasant
+prospect. Some of them began to turn red, and, as we never disobeyed
+grandmamma, we used often to consult together, if it was likely she
+would permit us to eat them yet, then we would pick a few that looked
+the ripest, and run to ask her if she thought they were ripe enough to
+eat, and the uncertainty what her opinion would be, made them doubly
+sweet if she gave us leave to eat them.
+
+When the currants and gooseberries were quite ripe, grandmamma had a
+sheep-shearing.
+
+All the sheep stood under the trees to be sheared. They were
+brought out of the field by old Spot, the shepherd. I stood at the
+orchard-gate, and saw him drive them all in. When they had cropped off
+all their wool, they looked very clean, and white, and pretty; but,
+poor things, they ran shivering about with cold, so that it was a
+pity to see them. Great preparations were making all day for the
+sheep-shearing supper. Sarah said, a sheep-shearing was not to be
+compared to a harvest-home, _that_ was so much better, for that then
+the oven was quite full of plum-pudding, and the kitchen was very hot
+indeed with roasting beef; yet I can assure you there was no want at
+all of either roast beef or plum-pudding at the sheep-shearing.
+
+My sister and I were permitted to sit up till it was almost dark, to
+see the company at supper. They sate at a long oak table, which was
+finely carved, and as bright as a looking-glass.
+
+I obtained a great deal of praise that day, because I replied so
+prettily when I was spoken to. My sister was more shy than me; never
+having lived in London was the reason of that. After the happiest day
+bedtime will come! We sate up late; but at last grandmamma sent us to
+bed: yet though we went to bed we heard many charming songs sung: to
+be sure we could not distinguish the words, which was a pity, but the
+sound of their voices was very loud and very fine indeed.
+
+The common supper that we had every night was very cheerful. Just
+before the men came out of the field, a large faggot was flung on the
+fire; the wood used to crackle and blaze, and smell delightfully: and
+then the crickets, for they loved the fire, they used to sing, and old
+Spot, the shepherd, who loved the fire as well as the crickets did,
+he used to take his place in the chimney corner; after the hottest
+day in summer, there old Spot used to sit. It was a seat within the
+fire-place, quite under the chimney, and over his head the bacon hung.
+
+When old Spot was seated, the milk was hung in a skillet over the
+fire, and then the men used to come and sit down at the long white
+table.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_Pardon me, my dear Louisa, that I interrupted you here. You are a
+little woman now to what you were then; and I may say to you, that
+though I loved to hear you prattle of your early recollections, I
+thought I perceived some ladies present were rather weary of hearing
+so much of the visit to grandmamma. You may remember I asked you some
+questions concerning your papa and your mamma, which led you to speak
+of your journey home: but your little town-bred head was so full of
+the pleasures of a country life, that you first made many apologies
+that you were unable to tell what happened during the harvest, as
+unfortunately you were fetched home the very day before it began._
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ANN WITHERS
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+My name you know is Withers, but as I once thought I was the daughter
+of sir Edward and lady Harriot Lesley, I shall speak of myself as
+miss Lesley, and call sir Edward and lady Harriot my father and
+mother during the period I supposed them entitled to those beloved
+names. When I was a little girl, it was the perpetual subject of my
+contemplation, that I was an heiress, and the daughter of a baronet;
+that my mother was the honourable lady Harriot; that we had a nobler
+mansion, infinitely finer pleasure-grounds, and equipages more
+splendid than any of the neighbouring families. Indeed, my good
+friends, having observed nothing of this error of mine in either of
+the lives which have hitherto been related, I am ashamed to confess
+what a proud child I once was. How it happened I cannot tell, for
+my father was esteemed the best bred man in the county, and the
+condescension and affability of my mother were universally spoken of.
+
+"Oh my dear friend," said miss ----, "it was very natural indeed, if
+you supposed you possessed these advantages. We make no comparative
+figure in the county, and my father was originally a man of no
+consideration at all; and yet I can assure you, both he and mamma had
+a prodigious deal of trouble to break me of this infirmity, when I was
+very young." "And do reflect for a moment," said miss Villiers, "from
+whence could proceed any pride in me--a poor curate's daughter;--at
+least any pride worth speaking of; for the difficulty my father had to
+make me feel myself on an equality with a miller's little daughter who
+visited me, did not seem an anecdote worth relating. My father, from
+his profession, is accustomed to look into these things, and whenever
+he has observed any tendency to this fault in me, and has made me
+sensible of my error, I, who am rather a weak-spirited girl, have been
+so much distressed at his reproofs, that to restore me to my own good
+opinion, he would make me sensible that pride is a defect inseparable
+from human nature; shewing me, in our visits to the poorest labourers,
+how pride would, as he expressed it, "prettily peep out from under
+their ragged garbs."--My father dearly loved the poor. In persons of
+a rank superior to our own humble one, I wanted not much assistance
+from my father's nice discernment to know that it existed there; and
+for these latter he would always claim that toleration from me, which
+he said he observed I was less willing to allow than to the former
+instances. "We are told in holy writ," he would say, "that it is
+easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a
+rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." Surely this is not
+meant alone to warn the affluent: it must also be understood as an
+expressive illustration, to instruct the lowly-fortuned man that he
+should bear with those imperfections, inseparable from that dangerous
+prosperity from which he is happily exempt."--But we sadly interrupt
+your story.--
+
+"You are very kind, ladies, to speak with so much indulgence of my
+foible," said miss Withers, and was going to proceed, when little
+Louisa Manners asked, "Pray, are not equipages carriages?" "Yes, miss
+Manners, an equipage is a carriage." "Then I am sure if my papa had
+but one equipage I should be very proud; for once when my papa talked
+of keeping a one-horse chaise, I never was so proud of any thing
+in my life: I used to dream of riding in it, and imagine I saw my
+playfellows walking past me in the streets."
+
+"Oh, my dear miss Manners," replied miss Withers, "your young head
+might well run on a thing so new to you; but you have preached an
+useful lesson to me in your own pretty rambling story, which I shall
+not easily forget. When you were speaking with such delight of the
+pleasure the sight of a farm-yard, an orchard, and a narrow slip of
+kitchen-garden, gave you, and could for years preserve so lively
+the memory of one short ride, and that probably through a flat
+uninteresting country, I remembered how early I learned to disregard
+the face of Nature, unless she were decked in picturesque scenery; how
+wearisome our parks and grounds became to me, unless some improvements
+were going forward which I thought would attract notice: but those
+days are gone.--I will now proceed in my story, and bring you
+acquainted with my real parents.
+
+Alas! I am a changeling, substituted by my mother for the heiress of
+the Lesley family: it was for my sake she did this naughty deed; yet,
+since the truth has been known, it seems to me as if I had been the
+only sufferer by it; remembering no time when I was not Harriot
+Lesley, it seems as if the change had taken from me my birthright.
+
+Lady Harriot had intended to nurse her child herself; but being seized
+with a violent fever soon after its birth, she was not only unable to
+nurse it, but even to see it, for several weeks. At this time I was
+not quite a month old, when my mother was hired to be miss Lesley's
+nurse--she had once been a servant in the family--her husband was then
+at sea.
+
+She had been nursing miss Lesley a few days, when a girl who had the
+care of me brought me into the nursery to see my mother. It happened
+that she wanted something from her own home, which she dispatched the
+girl to fetch, and desired her to leave me till her return. In her
+absence she changed our clothes: then keeping me to personate the
+child she was nursing, she sent away the daughter of sir Edward to be
+brought up in her own poor cottage.
+
+When my mother sent away the girl, she affirmed she had not the least
+intention of committing this bad action; but after she was left alone
+with us, she looked on me, and then on the little lady-babe, and she
+wept over me to think she was obliged to leave me to the charge of
+a careless girl, debarred from my own natural food, while she was
+nursing another person's child.
+
+The laced cap and the fine cambric robe of the little Harriot were
+lying on the table ready to be put on: in these she dressed me, only
+just to see how pretty her own dear baby would look in missy's fine
+clothes. When she saw me thus adorned, she said to me, "O, my dear
+Ann, you look as like missy as any thing can be. I am sure my lady
+herself, if she were well enough to see you, would not know the
+difference." She said these words aloud, and while she was speaking,
+a wicked thought came into her head--How easy it would be to change
+these children! On which she hastily dressed Harriot in my coarse
+raiment. She had no sooner finished the transformation of miss Lesley
+into the poor Ann Withers, than the girl returned, and carried her
+away, without the least suspicion that it was not the same infant that
+she had brought thither.
+
+It was wonderful that no one discovered that I was not the same child.
+Every fresh face that came into the room, filled the nurse with
+terror. The servants still continued to pay their compliments to the
+baby in the same form as usual, saying, How like it is to its papa!
+Nor did sir Edward himself perceive the difference, his lady's illness
+probably engrossing all his attention at the time; though indeed
+gentlemen seldom take much notice of very young children.
+
+When lady Harriot began to recover, and the nurse saw me in her arms
+caressed as her own child, all fears of detection were over; but the
+pangs of remorse then seized her: as the dear sick lady hung with
+tears of fondness over me, she thought she should have died with
+sorrow for having so cruelly deceived her.
+
+When I was a year old Mrs. Withers was discharged; and because she had
+been observed to nurse me with uncommon care and affection, and was
+seen to shed many tears at parting from me; to reward her fidelity sir
+Edward settled a small pension on her, and she was allowed to come
+every Sunday to dine in the housekeeper's room, and see her little
+lady.
+
+When she went home it might have been expected she would have
+neglected the child she had so wickedly stolen; instead of which she
+nursed it with the greatest tenderness, being very sorry for what
+she had done: all the ease she could ever find for her troubled
+conscience, was in her extreme care of this injured child; and in the
+weekly visits to its father's house she constantly brought it with
+her. At the time I have the earliest recollection of her, she was
+become a widow, and with the pension sir Edward allowed her, and some
+plain work she did for our family, she maintained herself and her
+supposed daughter. The doting fondness she shewed for her child was
+much talked of; it was said, she waited upon it more like a servant
+than a mother, and it was observed, its clothes were always made, as
+far as her slender means would permit, in the same fashion, and her
+hair cut and curled in the same form as mine. To this person, as
+having been my faithful nurse, and to her child, I was always taught
+to shew particular civility, and the little girl was always brought
+into the nursery to play with me. Ann was a little delicate thing, and
+remarkably well-behaved; for though so much indulged in every other
+respect, my mother was very attentive to her manners.
+
+As the child grew older, my mother became very uneasy about her
+education. She was so very desirous of having her well-behaved, that
+she feared to send her to school, lest she should learn ill manners
+among the village children, with whom she never suffered her to play;
+and she was such a poor scholar herself, that she could teach her
+little or nothing. I heard her relate this her distress to my own
+maid, with tears in her eyes, and I formed a resolution to beg of my
+parents that I might have Ann for a companion, and that she might be
+allowed to take lessons with me of my governess.
+
+My birth-day was then approaching, and on that day I was always
+indulged in the privilege of asking some peculiar favour.
+
+"And what boon has my annual petitioner to beg to-day?" said my
+father, as he entered the breakfast-room on the morning of my
+birth-day. Then I told him of the great anxiety expressed by nurse
+Withers concerning her daughter; how much she wished it was in her
+power to give her an education, that would enable her to get her
+living without hard labour. I set the good qualities of Ann Withers
+in the best light I could, and in conclusion I begged she might be
+permitted to partake with me in education, and become my companion.
+"This is a very serious request indeed, Harriot," said sir Edward;
+"your mother and I must consult together on the subject." The result
+of this consultation was favourable to my wishes: in a few weeks my
+foster-sister was taken into the house, and placed under the tuition
+of my governess.
+
+To me, who had hitherto lived without any companions of my own age
+except occasional visitors, the idea of a playfellow constantly to
+associate with, was very pleasant; and, after the first shyness of
+feeling her altered situation was over, Ann seemed as much at her ease
+as if she had always been brought up in our house. I became very fond
+of her, and took pleasure in shewing her all manner of attentions;
+which so far won on her affections, that she told me she had a secret
+intrusted to her by her mother, which she had promised never to reveal
+as long as her mother lived, but that she almost wished to confide it
+to me, because I was such a kind friend to her; yet, having promised
+never to tell it till the death of her mother, she was afraid to tell
+it to me. At first I assured her that I would never press her to the
+disclosure, for that promises of secrecy were to be held sacred; but
+whenever we fell into any confidential kind of conversation, this
+secret seemed always ready to come out. Whether she or I were most to
+blame I know not, though I own I could not help giving frequent hints
+how well I could keep a secret. At length she told me what I have
+before related, namely, that she was in truth the daughter of sir
+Edward and lady Lesley, and I the child of her supposed mother.
+
+When I was first in possession of this wonderful secret, my heart
+burned to reveal it. I thought how praiseworthy it would be in me to
+restore to my friend the rights of her birth; yet I thought only of
+becoming her patroness, and raising her to her proper rank; it never
+occurred to me that my own degradation must necessarily follow. I
+endeavoured to persuade her to let me tell this important affair to
+my parents: this she positively refused. I expressed wonder that she
+should so faithfully keep this secret for an unworthy woman, who
+in her infancy had done her such an injury. "Oh," said she, "you
+do not know how much she loves me, or you would not wonder that I
+never resent that. I have seen her grieve and be so very sorry on my
+account, that I would not bring her into more trouble for any good
+that could happen to myself. She has often told me, that since the day
+she changed us, she has never known what it is to have a happy moment;
+and when she returned home from nursing you, finding me very thin and
+sickly, how her heart smote her for what she had done; and then she
+nursed and fed me with such anxious care, that she grew much fonder
+of me than if I had been her own; and that on the Sundays, when she
+used to bring me here, it was more pleasure to her to see me in my
+own father's house, than it was to her to see you her real child.
+The shyness you shewed towards her while you were very young, and
+the forced civility you seemed to affect as you grew older, always
+appeared like ingratitude towards her who had done so much for you. My
+mother has desired me to disclose this after her death, but I do not
+believe I shall ever mention it then, for I should be sorry to bring
+any reproach even on her memory."
+
+In a few days after this important discovery, Ann was sent home to
+pass a few weeks with her mother, on the occasion of the expected
+arrival of some visitors to our house; they were to bring children
+with them, and these I was to consider as my own guests.
+
+In the expected arrival of my young visitants, and in making
+preparations to entertain them, I had little leisure to deliberate
+on what conduct I should pursue with regard to my friend's secret.
+Something must be done I thought to make her amends for the injury
+she had sustained, and I resolved to consider the matter attentively
+on her return. Still my mind ran on conferring favours. I never
+considered myself as transformed into the dependant person. Indeed sir
+Edward at this time set me about a task which occupied the whole of my
+attention; he proposed that I should write a little interlude after
+the manner of the French Petites Pieces; and to try my ingenuity, no
+one was to see it before the representation except the performers,
+myself and my little friends, who as they were all younger than me,
+could not be expected to lend me much assistance. I have already
+told you what a proud girl I was. During the writing of this piece,
+the receiving of my young friends, and the instructing them in their
+several parts, I never felt myself of more importance. With Ann my
+pride had somewhat slumbered; the difference of our rank left no room
+for competition; all was complacency and good humour on my part, and
+affectionate gratitude, tempered with respect, on hers. But here I had
+full room to shew courtesy, to affect those graces--to imitate that
+elegance of manners practised by lady Harriot to their mothers. I was
+to be their instructress in action and in attitudes, and to receive
+their praises and their admiration of my theatrical genius. It was a
+new scene of triumph for me, and I might then be said to be in the
+very height of my glory.
+
+If the plot of my piece, for the invention of which they so highly
+praised me, had been indeed my own, all would have been well; but
+unhappily I borrowed from a source which made my drama end far
+differently from what I intended it should. In the catastrophe I lost
+not only the name I personated in the piece, but with it my own name
+also; and all my rank and consequence in the world fled from me for
+ever.--My father presented me with a beautiful writing-desk for the
+use of my new authorship. My silver standish was placed upon it; a
+quire of gilt paper was before me. I took out a parcel of my best crow
+quills, and down I sate in the greatest form imaginable.
+
+I conjecture I have no talent for invention; certain it is that when I
+sate down to compose my piece, no story would come into my head, but
+the story which Ann had so lately related to me. Many sheets were
+scrawled over in vain, I could think of nothing else; still the babies
+and the nurse were before me in all the minutiæ of description Ann
+had given them. The costly attire of the lady-babe,--the homely garb
+of the cottage-infant,--the affecting address of the fond mother to
+her own offspring;--then the charming équivoque in the change of
+the children: it all looked so dramatic:--it was a play ready made
+to my hands. The invalid mother would form the pathetic, the silly
+exclamations of the servants the ludicrous, and the nurse was nature
+itself. It is true I had a few scruples, that it might, should it
+come to the knowledge of Ann, be construed into something very like
+a breach of confidence. But she was at home, and might never happen
+to hear of the subject of my piece, and if she did, why it was only
+making some handsome apology.--To a dependant companion, to whom I
+had been so very great a friend, it was not necessary to be so very
+particular about such a trifle.
+
+Thus I reasoned as I wrote my drama, beginning with the title, which
+I called "The Changeling," and ending with these words, _The curtain
+drops, while the lady clasps the baby in her arms, and the nurse sighs
+audibly_. I invented no new incident, I simply wrote the story as Ann
+had told it to me, in the best blank verse I was able to compose.
+
+By the time it was finished the company had arrived. The casting the
+different parts was my next care. The honourable Augustus M----, a
+young gentleman of five years of age, undertook to play the father. He
+was only to come in and say, _How does my little darling do to-day?_
+The three miss ----'s were to be the servants, they too had only
+single lines to speak.
+
+As these four were all very young performers, we made them rehearse
+many times over, that they might walk in and out with proper decorum;
+but the performance was stopped before their entrances and their exits
+arrived. I complimented lady Elizabeth, the sister of Augustus, who
+was the eldest of the young ladies, with the choice of the Lady Mother
+or the nurse. She fixed on the former; she was to recline on a sofa,
+and, affecting ill health, speak some eight or ten lines which began
+with, _O that I could my precious baby see!_ To her cousin miss Emily
+---- was given the girl who had the care of the nurse's child; two
+dolls were to personate the two children, and the principal character
+of the nurse, I had the pleasure to perform myself. It consisted of
+several speeches, and a very long soliloquy during the changing of the
+children's clothes.
+
+The elder brother of Augustus, a gentleman of fifteen years of age,
+who refused to mix in our childish drama, yet condescended to paint
+the scenes, and our dresses were got up by my own maid.
+
+When we thought ourselves quite perfect in our several parts, we
+announced it for representation. Sir Edward and lady Harriot, with
+their visitors, the parents of my young troop of comedians, honoured
+us with their presence. The servants were also permitted to go into a
+music gallery, which was at the end of a ball-room we had chosen for
+our theatre.
+
+As author, and principal performer, standing before a noble audience,
+my mind was too much engaged with the arduous task I had undertaken,
+to glance my eyes towards the music gallery, or I might have seen two
+more spectators there than I expected. Nurse Withers and her daughter
+Ann were there; they had been invited by the housekeeper to be present
+at the representation of miss Lesley's first piece.
+
+In the midst of the performance, as I, in the character of the nurse,
+was delivering the wrong child to the girl, there was an exclamation
+from the music gallery, of "Oh, it's all true! it's all true!" This
+was followed by a bustle among the servants, and screams as of a
+person in a hysteric fit. Sir Edward came forward to enquire what was
+the matter. He saw it was Mrs. Withers who had fallen into a fit. Ann
+was weeping over her, and crying out, "O miss Lesley, you have told
+all in the play!"
+
+Mrs. Withers was brought out into the ball-room; there, with tears and
+in broken accents, with every sign of terror and remorse, she soon
+made a full confession of her so long concealed guilt.
+
+The strangers assembled to see our childish mimicry of passion,
+were witness to a highly wrought dramatic scene in real life. I had
+intended they should see the curtain drop without any discovery of
+the deceit; unable to invent any new incident, I left the conclusion
+imperfect as I found it: but they saw a more strict poetical justice
+done; they saw the rightful child restored to its parents, and the
+nurse overwhelmed with shame, and threatened with the severest
+punishment.
+
+"Take this woman," said sir Edward, "and lock her up, till she be
+delivered into the hands of justice."
+
+Ann, on her knees, implored mercy for her mother.--Addressing the
+children who were gathered round her, "Dear ladies," said she, "help
+me, on your knees help me to beg forgiveness for my mother." Down
+the young ones all dropped--even lady Elizabeth bent her knee. "Sir
+Edward, pity her distress. Sir Edward, pardon her!" All joined in the
+petition, except one whose voice ought to have been loudest in the
+appeal. No word, no accent came from me. I hung over lady Harriot's
+chair, weeping as if my heart would break; but I wept for my own
+fallen fortunes, not for my mother's sorrow.
+
+I thought within myself, if in the integrity of my heart, refusing to
+participate in this unjust secret, I had boldly ventured to publish
+the truth, I might have had some consolation in the praises which so
+generous an action would have merited: but it is through the vanity
+of being supposed to have written a pretty story, that I have meanly
+broken my faith with my friend, and unintentionally proclaimed the
+disgrace of my mother and myself. While thoughts like these were
+passing through my mind, Ann had obtained my mother's pardon. Instead
+of being sent away to confinement and the horrors of a prison, she was
+given by sir Edward into the care of the housekeeper, who had orders
+from lady Harriot to see her put to bed and properly attended to, for
+again this wretched woman had fallen into a fit.
+
+Ann would have followed my mother, but sir Edward brought her back,
+telling her that she should see her when she was better. He then led
+Ann towards lady Harriot, desiring her to embrace her child; she did
+so, and I saw her, as I had phrased it in the play, _clasped in her
+mother's arms_.
+
+This scene had greatly affected the spirits of lady Harriot; through
+the whole of it it was with difficulty she had been kept from
+fainting, and she was now led into the drawing-room by the ladies.
+The gentlemen followed, talking with sir Edward of the astonishing
+instance of filial affection they had just seen in the earnest
+pleadings of the child for her supposed mother.
+
+Ann too went with them, and was conducted by her whom I had always
+considered as my own particular friend. Lady Elizabeth took hold of
+her hand, and said, "Miss Lesley, will you permit me to conduct you to
+the drawing-room?"
+
+I was left weeping behind the chair where lady Harriot had sate, and,
+as I thought, quite alone. A something had before twitched my frock
+two or three times, so slightly I had scarcely noticed it; a little
+head now peeped round, and looking up in my face said, "She is not
+miss Lesley:" it was the young Augustus; he had been sitting at my
+feet, but I had not observed him. He then started up, and taking hold
+of my hand with one of his, with the other holding fast by my clothes,
+he led, or rather dragged me, into the midst of the company assembled
+in the drawing-room. The vehemence of his manner, his little face as
+red as fire, caught every eye. The ladies smiled, and one gentleman
+laughed in a most unfeeling manner. His elder brother patted him on
+the head, and said, "You are a humane little fellow. Elizabeth, we
+might have thought of this."
+
+Very kind words were now spoken to me by sir Edward, and he called me
+Harriot, precious name now grown to me. Lady Harriot kissed me, and
+said she would never forget how long she had loved me as her child.
+These were comfortable words; but I heard echoed round the room, "Poor
+thing, she cannot help it.--I am sure she is to be pitied.--Dear lady
+Harriot, how kind, how considerate you are!" Ah! what a deep sense of
+my altered condition did I then feel!
+
+"Let the young ladies divert themselves in another room," said sir
+Edward; "and, Harriot, take your new sister with you, and help her
+to entertain your friends." Yes, he called me Harriot again, and
+afterwards invented new names for his daughter and me, and always
+called us by them, apparently in jest; yet I knew it was only because
+he would not hurt me with hearing our names reversed. When sir Edward
+desired us to shew the children into another room, Ann and I walked
+towards the door. A new sense of humiliation arose--how could I go
+out at the door before miss Lesley?--I stood irresolute; she drew
+back. The elder brother of my friend Augustus assisted me in this
+perplexity; pushing us all forward, as if in a playful mood, he drove
+us indiscriminately before him, saying, "I will make one among you
+to-day." He had never joined in our sports before.
+
+My luckless Play, that sad instance of my duplicity, was never once
+mentioned to me afterwards, not even by any one of the children who
+had acted in it, and I must also tell you how considerate an old lady
+was at the time about our dresses. As soon as she perceived things
+growing very serious, she hastily stripped off the upper garments we
+wore to represent our different characters. I think I should have
+died with shame, if the child had led me into the drawing-room in the
+mummery I had worn to represent a nurse. This good lady was of another
+essential service to me; for perceiving an irresolution in every one
+how they should behave to us, which distressed me very much, she
+contrived to place miss Lesley above me at table, and called her miss
+Lesley, and me miss Withers; saying at the same time in a low voice,
+but as if she meant I should hear her, "It is better these things
+should be done at once, then they are over." My heart thanked her, for
+I felt the truth of what she said.
+
+My poor mother continued very ill for many weeks: no medicine would
+remove the extreme dejection of spirits she laboured under. Sir
+Edward sent for the clergyman of the parish to give her religious
+consolation. Every day he came to visit her, and he would always take
+miss Lesley and me into the room with him. I think, miss Villiers,
+your father must be just such another man as Dr. Wheelding, our worthy
+rector; just so I think he would have soothed the troubled conscience
+of my repentant mother. How feelingly, how kindly he used to talk of
+mercy and forgiveness!
+
+My heart was softened by my own misfortunes, and the sight of my
+penitent suffering mother. I felt that she was now my only parent; I
+strove, earnestly strove, to love her; yet ever when I looked in her
+face, she would seem to me to be the very identical person whom I
+should have once thought sufficiently honoured by a slight inclination
+of the head, and a civil How do you do, Mrs. Withers? One day, as
+miss Lesley was hanging over her, with her accustomed fondness, Dr.
+Wheelding reading in a prayer-book, and, as I thought, not at that
+moment regarding us, I threw myself on my knees and silently prayed
+that I too might be able to love my mother.
+
+Dr. Wheelding had been observing me: he took me into the garden, and
+drew from me the subject of my petition. "Your prayers, my good young
+lady," said he, "I hope are heard; sure I am they have caused me to
+adopt a resolution, which, as it will enable you to see your mother
+frequently, will, I hope, greatly assist your pious wishes.
+
+"I will take your mother home with me to superintend my family. Under
+my roof doubtless sir Edward will often permit you to see her. Perform
+your duty towards her as well as you possibly can.--Affection is the
+growth of time. With such good wishes in your young heart, do not
+despair that in due time it will assuredly spring up."
+
+With the approbation of sir Edward and lady Harriot, my mother was
+removed in a few days to Dr. Wheelding's house: there she soon
+recovered--there she at present resides. She tells me she loves me
+almost as well as she did when I was a baby, and we both wept at
+parting when I came to school.
+
+Here perhaps I ought to conclude my story, which I fear has been a
+tedious one: permit me however to say a few words concerning the time
+which elapsed since the discovery of my birth until my arrival here.
+
+It was on the fifth day of ---- that I was known to be Ann Withers,
+and the daughter of my supposed nurse. The company who were witness to
+my disgrace departed in a few days, and I felt relieved from some part
+of the mortification I hourly experienced. For every fresh instance
+even of kindness or attention I experienced went to my heart, that I
+should be forced to feel thankful for it.
+
+Circumstanced as I was, surely I had nothing justly to complain of.
+The conduct of sir Edward and lady Harriot was kind in the extreme;
+still preserving every appearance of a parental tenderness for me,
+but ah! I might no longer call them by the dear names of father and
+mother.--Formerly when speaking of them, I used, proud of their
+titles, to delight to say, "Sir Edward or lady Harriot did this, or
+this;" now I would give worlds to say, "My father or my mother."
+
+I should be perfectly unkind if I were to complain of miss
+Lesley--indeed, I have not the least cause of complaint against her.
+As my companion, her affection and her gratitude had been unbounded;
+and now that it was my turn to be the humble friend, she tried
+by every means in her power, to make me think she felt the same
+respectful gratitude, which in her dependant station she had so
+naturally displayed.
+
+Only in a few rarely constituted minds, does that true attentive
+kindness spring up, that delicacy of feeling, which enters into every
+trivial thing, is ever awake and keeping watch lest it should offend.
+Myself, though educated with the extremest care, possessed but little
+of this virtue. Virtue I call it, though among men it is termed
+politeness, for since the days of my humiliating reverse of fortune I
+have learned its value.
+
+I feel quite ashamed to give instances of any deficiency I observed,
+or thought I have observed, in miss Lesley. Now I am away from her,
+and dispassionately speaking of it, it seems as if my own soreness
+of temper had made me fancy things. I really believe now that I was
+mistaken; but miss Lesley had been so highly praised for her filial
+tenderness, I thought at last she seemed to make a parade about it,
+and used to run up to my mother, and affect to be more glad to see her
+than she really was after a time; and I think Dr. Wheelding thought
+so, by a little hint he once dropped. But he too might be mistaken,
+for he was very partial to me.
+
+I am under the greatest obligation in the world to this good Dr.
+Wheelding. He has made my mother quite a respectable woman, and I am
+sure it is owing a great deal to him that she loves me as well as she
+does.
+
+And here, though it may seem a little out of place, let me stop to
+assure you, that if I ever could have had any doubt of the sincerity
+of miss Lesley's affection towards me, her behaviour on the occasion
+of my coming here ought completely to efface it. She entreated with
+many tears, and almost the same energy with which she pleaded for
+forgiveness for my mother, that I might not be sent away.--But she was
+not alike successful in her supplications.
+
+Miss Lesley had made some progress in reading and writing during the
+time she was my companion only, it was highly necessary that every
+exertion should be now made--the whole house was, as I may say, in
+requisition for her instruction. Sir Edward and lady Harriot devoted
+great part of the day to this purpose. A well educated young person
+was taken under our governess, to assist her in her labours, and to
+teach miss Lesley music. A drawing-master was engaged to reside in the
+house.
+
+At this time I was not remarkably forward in my education. My
+governess being a native of France, I spoke French very correctly, and
+I had made some progress in Italian. I had only had the instruction of
+masters during the few months in the year we usually passed in London.
+
+Music I never had the least ear for, I could scarcely be taught my
+notes. This defect in me was always particularly regretted by my
+mother, she being an excellent performer herself both on the piano and
+on the harp.
+
+I think I have some taste for drawing; but as lady Harriot did not
+particularly excel in this, I lost so much time in the summer months,
+practising only under my governess, that I made no great proficiency
+even in this my favourite art. But miss Lesley with all these
+advantages which I have named, every body so eager to instruct her,
+she so willing to learn--every thing so new and delightful to her,
+how could it happen otherwise? she in a short time became a little
+prodigy. What best pleased lady Harriot was, after she had conquered
+the first difficulties, she discovered a wonderful talent for
+music. Here she was her mother's own girl indeed--she had the same
+sweet-toned voice--the same delicate finger.--Her musical governess
+had little now to do; for as soon as lady Harriot perceived this
+excellence in her, she gave up all company, and devoted her whole time
+to instructing her daughter in this science.
+
+Nothing makes the heart ache with such a hopeless, heavy pain, as
+envy.
+
+I had felt deeply before, but till now I could not be said to envy
+miss Lesley.--All day long the notes of the harp or the piano spoke
+sad sounds to me, of the loss of a loved mother's heart.
+
+To have, in a manner, two mothers, and miss Lesley to engross them
+both, was too much indeed.
+
+It was at this time that one day I had been wearied with hearing
+lady Harriot play one long piece of Haydn's music after another, to
+her enraptured daughter. We were to walk with our governess to Dr.
+Wheelding's that morning; and after lady Harriot had left the room,
+and we were quite ready for our walk, miss Lesley would not leave the
+instrument for I know not how long.
+
+It was on that day that I thought she was not quite honest in her
+expressions of joy at the sight of my poor mother, who had been
+waiting at the garden-gate near two hours to see her arrive; yet she
+might be, for the music had put her in remarkably good spirits that
+morning.
+
+O the music quite, quite won lady Harriot's heart! Till miss Lesley
+began to play so well, she often lamented the time it would take,
+before her daughter would have the air of a person of fashion's child.
+It was my part of the general instruction to give her lessons on this
+head. We used to make a kind of play of it, which we called lectures
+on fashionable manners: it was a pleasant amusement to me, a sort of
+keeping up the memory of past times. But now the music was always
+in the way. The last time it was talked of, lady Harriot said her
+daughter's time was too precious to be taken up with such trifling.
+
+I must own that the music had that effect on miss Lesley as to render
+these lectures less necessary, which I will explain to you; but,
+first, let me assure you that lady Harriot was by no means in the
+habit of saying these kind of things. It was almost a solitary
+instance. I could give you a thousand instances the very reverse of
+this, in her as well as in sir Edward. How kindly, how frequently,
+would they remind me, that to me alone it was owing that they ever
+knew their child! calling the day on which I was a petitioner for
+the admittance of Ann into the house, the blessed birthday of their
+generous girl.
+
+Neither dancing, nor any foolish lectures could do much for miss
+Lesley, she remained wanting in gracefulness of carriage; but all that
+is usually attributed to dancing, music effected. When she was sitting
+before the instrument, a resemblance to her mother became apparent to
+every eye. Her attitudes and the expression of her countenance were
+the very same. This soon followed her into every thing; all was
+ease and natural grace; for the music, and with it the idea of lady
+Harriot, was always in her thoughts. It was a pretty sight to see the
+daily improvement in her person, even to me, poor envious girl that I
+was.
+
+Soon after lady Harriot had hurt me by calling my little efforts to
+improve her daughter trifling, she made me large amends in a very kind
+and most unreserved conversation that she held with me.
+
+She told me all the struggles she had had at first to feel a maternal
+tenderness for her daughter; and she frankly confessed that she had
+now gained so much on her affections, that she feared she had too much
+neglected the solemn promise she had made me, _Never to forget how
+long she had loved me as her child._
+
+Encouraged by her returning kindness, I owned how much I had suffered,
+and ventured to express my fears, that I had hardly courage enough to
+bear the sight of my former friends, under a new designation, as I
+must now appear to them, on our removal to London, which was expected
+to take place in a short time.
+
+A few days after this she told me in the gentlest manner possible,
+that sir Edward and herself were of opinion it would conduce to my
+happiness to pass a year or two at school.
+
+I knew that this proposal was kindly intended to spare me the
+mortifications I so much dreaded; therefore I endeavoured to submit
+to my hard fate with cheerfulness, and prepared myself, not without
+reluctance, to quit a mansion which had been the scene of so many
+enjoyments, and latterly of such very different feelings.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+ELINOR FORESTER
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+When I was very young, I had the misfortune to lose my mother. My
+father very soon married again. In the morning of the day in which
+that event took place, my father set me on his knee, and, as he often
+used to do after the death of my mother, he called me his dear little
+orphaned Elinor, and then he asked me if I loved miss Saville. I
+replied "Yes." Then he said this dear lady was going to be so kind
+as to be married to him, and that she was to live with us, and be my
+mamma. My father told me this with such pleasure in his looks, that I
+thought it must be a very fine thing indeed to have a new mamma; and
+on his saying it was time for me to be dressed against his return from
+church, I ran in great spirits to tell the good news in the nursery.
+I found my maid and the house-maid looking out of the window to see
+my father get into his carriage, which was new painted; the servants
+had new liveries, and fine white ribbands in their hats; and then I
+perceived my father had left off his mourning. The maids were dressed
+in new coloured gowns and white ribbands. On the table I saw a new
+muslin frock, trimmed with fine lace ready for me to put on. I skipped
+about the room quite in an ecstasy.
+
+When the carriage drove from the door, the housekeeper came in to
+bring the maids new white gloves. I repeated to her the words I had
+just heard, that that dear lady miss Saville was going to be married
+to papa, and that she was to live with us, and be my mamma.
+
+The housekeeper shook her head, and said, "Poor thing! how soon
+children forget every thing!"
+
+I could not imagine what she meant by my forgetting every thing, for
+I instantly recollected poor mamma used to say I had an excellent
+memory.
+
+The women began to draw on their white gloves, and the seams rending
+in several places, Anne said, "This is just the way our gloves served
+us at my mistress's funeral." The other checked her, and said "Hush!"
+I was then thinking of some instances in which my mamma had praised my
+memory, and this reference to her funeral fixed her idea in my mind.
+
+From the time of her death no one had ever spoken to me of my mamma,
+and I had apparently forgotten her; yet I had a habit which perhaps
+had not been observed, of taking my little stool, which had been my
+mamma's footstool, and a doll, which my mamma had drest for me, while
+she was sitting in her elbow-chair, her head supported with pillows.
+With these in my hands, I used to go to the door of the room in which
+I had seen her in her last illness; and after trying to open it, and
+peeping through the keyhole, from whence I could just see a glimpse of
+the crimson curtains, I used to sit down on the stool before the door,
+and play with my doll, and sometimes sing to it mamma's pretty song,
+of "Balow my babe;" imitating as well as I could, the weak voice in
+which she used to sing it to me. My mamma had a very sweet voice. I
+remember now the gentle tone in which she used to say my prattle did
+not disturb her.
+
+When I was drest in my new frock, I wished poor mamma was alive to
+see how fine I was on papa's wedding-day, and I ran to my favourite
+station at her bed-room door. There I sat thinking of my mamma, and
+trying to remember exactly how she used to look; because I foolishly
+imagined that miss Saville was to be changed into something like my
+own mother, whose pale and delicate appearance in her last illness was
+all that I retained of her remembrance.
+
+When my father returned home with his bride, he walked up stairs
+to look for me, and my new mamma followed him. They found me at my
+mother's door, earnestly looking through the keyhole; I was thinking
+so intently on my mother, that when my father said, "Here is your new
+mamma, my Elinor," I turned round, and began to cry, for no other
+reason than because she had a very high colour, and I remembered my
+mamma was very pale; she had bright black eyes, my mother's were
+mild blue eyes; and that instead of the wrapping gown and close cap
+in which I remembered my mamma, she was drest in all her bridal
+decorations.
+
+I said, "Miss Saville shall not be my mamma," and I cried till I was
+sent away in disgrace.
+
+Every time I saw her for several days, the same notion came into my
+head, that she was not a bit more like mamma than when she was miss
+Saville. My father was very angry when he saw how shy I continued to
+look at her; but she always said, "Never mind. Elinor and I shall soon
+be better friends."
+
+One day, when I was very naughty indeed, for I would not speak one
+word to either of them, my papa took his hat, and walked out quite in
+a passion. When he was gone, I looked up at my new mamma, expecting
+to see her very angry too; but she was smiling and looking very
+good-naturedly upon me; and she said, "Now we are alone together, my
+pretty little daughter, let us forget papa is angry with us; and tell
+me why you were peeping through that door the day your papa brought
+me home, and you cried so at the sight of me." "Because mamma used to
+be there," I replied. When she heard me say this, she fell a-crying
+very sadly indeed; and I was so very sorry to hear her cry so, that I
+forgot I did not love her, and I went up to her, and said, "Don't cry,
+I won't be naughty any more, I won't peep through the door any more."
+
+Then she said I had a little kind heart, and I should not have any
+occasion, for she would take me into the room herself; and she rung
+the bell, and ordered the key of that room to be brought to her; and
+the housekeeper brought it, and tried to persuade her not to go. But
+she said, "I must have my own way in this;" and she carried me in her
+arms into my mother's room.
+
+O I was so pleased to be taken into mamma's room! I pointed out to her
+all the things that I remembered to have belonged to mamma and she
+encouraged me to tell her all the little incidents which had dwelt on
+my memory concerning her. She told me, that she went to school with
+mamma when she was a little girl, and that I should come into this
+room with her every day when papa was gone out, and she would tell me
+stories of mamma when she was a little girl no bigger than me.
+
+When my father came home, we were walking in a garden at the back of
+our house, and I was shewing her mamma's geraniums, and telling her
+what pretty flowers they had when mamma was alive.
+
+My father was astonished; and he said, "Is this the sullen Elinor?
+what has worked this miracle?" "Ask no questions," she replied, "or
+you will disturb our new-born friendship. Elinor has promised to love
+me, and she says too that she will call me 'mamma.'" "Yes, I will,
+mamma, mamma, mamma," I replied, and hung about her with the greatest
+fondness.
+
+After this she used to pass great part of the mornings with me in my
+mother's room, which was now made the repository of all my playthings,
+and also my school-room. Here my new mamma taught me to read. I was a
+sad little dunce, and scarcely knew my letters; my own mamma had often
+said, when she got better she would hear me read every day, but as she
+never got better it was not her fault. I now began to learn very fast,
+for when I said my lesson well, I was always rewarded with some pretty
+story of my mother's childhood; and these stories generally contained
+some little hints that were instructive to me, and which I greatly
+stood in want of; for, between improper indulgence and neglect, I had
+many faulty ways.
+
+In this kind manner my mother-in-law has instructed and improved me,
+and I love her because she was my mother's friend when they were
+young. She has been my only instructress, for I never went to school
+till I came here. She would have continued to teach me, but she has
+not time, for she has a little baby of her own now, and that is the
+reason I came to school.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MARGARET GREEN
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+My father has been dead near three years. Soon after his death, my
+mother being left in reduced circumstances, she was induced to accept
+the offer of Mrs. Beresford, an elderly lady of large fortune, to live
+in her house as her companion, and the superintendent of her family.
+This lady was my godmother, and as I was my mother's only child, she
+very kindly permitted her to have me with her.
+
+Mrs. Beresford lived in a large old family mansion; she kept no
+company, and never moved except from the breakfast-parlour to the
+eating-room, and from thence to the drawing-room to tea.
+
+Every morning when she first saw me, she used to nod her head very
+kindly, and say, "How do you do, little Margaret?" But I do not
+recollect she ever spoke to me during the remainder of the day; except
+indeed after I had read the psalms and the chapters, which was my
+daily task; then she used constantly to observe, that I improved in
+my reading, and frequently added, "I never heard a child read so
+distinctly." She had been remarkably fond of needle-work, and her
+conversation with my mother was generally the history of some pieces
+of work she had formerly done; the dates when they were begun, and
+when finished; what had retarded their progress, and what had hastened
+their completion. If occasionally any other events were spoken of, she
+had no other chronology to reckon by, than in the recollection of what
+carpet, what sofa-cover, what set of chairs, were in the frame at that
+time.
+
+I believe my mother is not particularly fond of needle-work; for in
+my father's lifetime I never saw her amuse herself in this way; yet,
+to oblige her kind patroness, she undertook to finish a large carpet,
+which the old lady had just begun when her eye-sight failed her. All
+day long my mother used to sit at the frame, talking of the shades of
+the worsted, and the beauty of the colours;--Mrs. Beresford seated in
+a chair near her, and, though her eyes were so dim she could hardly
+distinguish one colour from another, watching through her spectacles
+the progress of the work.
+
+When my daily portion of reading was over, I had a task of
+needle-work, which generally lasted half an hour. I was not allowed to
+pass more time in reading or work, because my eyes were very weak, for
+which reason I was always set to read in the large-print Family Bible.
+I was very fond of reading; and when I could unobserved steal a few
+minutes as they were intent on their work, I used to delight to read
+in the historical part of the Bible; but this, because of my eyes, was
+a forbidden pleasure; and the Bible never being removed out of the
+room, it was only for a short time together that I dared softly to
+lift up the leaves and peep into it.
+
+As I was permitted to walk in the garden or wander about the house
+whenever I pleased, I used to leave the parlour for hours together,
+and make out my own solitary amusement as well as I could. My first
+visit was always to a very large hall, which, from being paved
+with marble, was called the marble hall. In this hall, while Mrs.
+Beresford's husband was living, the tenants used to be feasted at
+Christmas.
+
+The heads of the twelve Cæsars were hung round the hall. Every day I
+mounted on the chairs to look at them, and to read the inscriptions
+underneath, till I became perfectly familiar with their names and
+features.
+
+Hogarth's prints were below the Cæsars: I was very fond of looking at
+them, and endeavouring to make out their meaning.
+
+An old broken battledore, and some shuttlecocks with most of the
+feathers missing, were on a marble slab in one corner of the hall,
+which constantly reminded me that there had once been younger
+inhabitants here than the old lady and her gray-headed servants. In
+another corner stood a marble figure of a satyr: every day I laid my
+hand on his shoulder to feel how cold he was.
+
+This hall opened into a room full of family portraits. They were all
+in the dresses of former times: some were old men and women, and some
+were children. I used to long to have a fairy's power to call the
+children down from their frames to play with me. One little girl in
+particular, who hung by the side of a glass door which opened into the
+garden, I often invited to walk there with me, but she still kept her
+station--one arm round a little lamb's neck, and in her hand a large
+bunch of roses.
+
+From this room I usually proceeded to the garden.
+
+When I was weary of the garden I wandered over the rest of the house.
+The best suite of rooms I never saw by any other light than what
+glimmered through the tops of the window-shutters, which however
+served to shew the carved chimney-pieces, and the curious old
+ornaments about the rooms; but the worked furniture and carpets, of
+which I heard such constant praises, I could have but an imperfect
+sight of, peeping under the covers which were kept over them, by the
+dim light; for I constantly lifted up a corner of the envious cloth,
+that hid these highly-praised rarities from my view.
+
+The bed-rooms were also regularly explored by me, as well to admire
+the antique furniture, as for the sake of contemplating the tapestry
+hangings, which were full of Bible history. The subject of the one
+which chiefly attracted my attention, was Hagar and her son Ishmael.
+Every day I admired the beauty of the youth, and pitied the forlorn
+state of him and his mother in the wilderness. At the end of the
+gallery into which these tapestry rooms opened, was one door, which
+having often in vain attempted to open, I concluded to be locked;
+and finding myself shut out, I was very desirous of seeing what
+it contained; and though still foiled in the attempt, I every day
+endeavoured to turn the lock, which whether by constantly trying I
+loosened, being probably a very old one, or that the door was not
+locked but fastened tight by time, I know not,--to my great joy, as I
+was one day trying the lock as usual, it gave way, and I found myself
+in this so long desired room.
+
+It proved to be a very large library. This was indeed a precious
+discovery. I looked round on the books with the greatest delight. I
+thought I would read them every one. I now forsook all my favourite
+haunts, and passed all my time here. I took down first one book, then
+another.
+
+If you never spent whole mornings alone in a large library, you cannot
+conceive the pleasure of taking down books in the constant hope
+of finding an entertaining book among them; yet, after many days,
+meeting with nothing but disappointment, it becomes less pleasant. All
+the books within my reach were folios of the gravest cast. I could
+understand very little that I read in them, and the old dark print and
+the length of the lines made my eyes ache.
+
+When I had almost resolved to give up the search as fruitless, I
+perceived a volume lying in an obscure corner of the room. I opened
+it. It was a charming print; the letters were almost as large as the
+type of the Family Bible. In the first page I looked into I saw the
+name of my favourite Ishmael, whose face I knew so well from the
+tapestry, and whose history I had often read in the Bible.
+
+I sate myself down to read this book with the greatest eagerness. The
+title of it was "Mahometism Explained." It was a very improper book,
+for it contained a false history of Abraham and his descendants.
+
+I shall be quite ashamed to tell you the strange effect it had on me.
+I know it was very wrong to read any book without permission to do so.
+If my time were to come over again, I would go and tell my mamma that
+there was a library in the house, and ask her to permit me to read a
+little while every day in some book that she might think proper to
+select for me. But unfortunately I did not then recollect that I ought
+to do this: the reason of my strange forgetfulness might be that my
+mother, following the example of her patroness, had almost wholly
+discontinued talking to me. I scarcely ever heard a word addressed to
+me from morning to night. If it were not for the old servants saying
+"Good morning to you, miss Margaret," as they passed me in the long
+passages, I should have been the greatest part of the day in as
+perfect a solitude as Robinson Crusoe. It must have been because I
+was never spoken to at all, that I forgot what was right and what was
+wrong, for I do not believe that I ever remembered I was doing wrong
+all the time I was reading in the library. A great many of the leaves
+in "Mahometism Explained" were torn out, but enough remained to make
+me imagine that Ishmael was the true son of Abraham: I read here that
+the true descendants of Abraham were known by a light which streamed
+from the middle of their foreheads. It said, that Ishmael's father and
+mother first saw this light streaming from his forehead, as he was
+lying asleep in the cradle. I was very sorry so many of the leaves
+were torn out, for it was as entertaining as a fairy tale. I used
+to read the history of Ishmael, and then go and look at him in the
+tapestry, and then read his history again. When I had almost learned
+the history of Ishmael by heart, I read the rest of the book, and then
+I came to the history of Mahomet, who was there said to be the last
+descendant of Abraham.
+
+If Ishmael had engaged so much of my thoughts, how much more so
+must Mahomet? His history was full of nothing but wonders from the
+beginning to the end. The book said, that those who believed all
+the wonderful stories which were related of Mahomet were called
+Mahometans, and true believers:--I concluded that I must be a
+Mahometan, for I believed every word I read.
+
+At length I met with something which I also believed, though I
+trembled as I read it:--this was, that after we are dead, we are to
+pass over a narrow bridge, which crosses a bottomless gulf. The bridge
+was described to be no wider than a silken thread; and it said, that
+all who were not Mahometans would slip on one side of this bridge, and
+drop into the tremendous gulf that had no bottom. I considered myself
+as a Mahometan, yet I was perfectly giddy whenever I thought of
+passing over this bridge.
+
+One day, seeing the old lady totter across the room, a sudden terror
+seized me, for I thought, how would she ever be able to get over the
+bridge. Then too it was, that I first recollected that my mother would
+also be in imminent danger; for I imagined she had never heard the
+name of Mahomet, because I foolishly conjectured this book had been
+locked up for ages in the library, and was utterly unknown to the rest
+of the world.
+
+All my desire was now to tell them the discovery I had made; for I
+thought, when they knew of the existence of "Mahometism Explained,"
+they would read it, and become Mahometans, to ensure themselves a
+safe passage over the silken bridge. But it wanted more courage than
+I possessed, to break the matter to my intended converts; I must
+acknowledge that I had been reading without leave; and the habit
+of never speaking, or being spoken to, considerably increased the
+difficulty.
+
+My anxiety on this subject threw me into a fever. I was so ill, that
+my mother thought it necessary to sleep in the same room with me. In
+the middle of the night I could not resist the strong desire I felt to
+tell her what preyed so much on my mind.
+
+I awoke her out of a sound sleep, and begged she would be so kind as
+to be a Mahometan. She was very much alarmed, for she thought I was
+delirious, which I believe I was; for I tried to explain the reason of
+my request, but it was in such an incoherent manner that she could not
+at all comprehend what I was talking about.
+
+The next day a physician was sent for, and he discovered, by several
+questions that he put to me, that I had read myself into a fever. He
+gave me medicines, and ordered me to be kept very quiet, and said, he
+hoped in a few days I should be very well; but as it was a new case
+to him, he never having attended a little Mahometan before, if any
+lowness continued after he had removed the fever, he would, with my
+mother's permission, take me home with him to study this extraordinary
+case at his leisure; and added, that he could then hold a consultation
+with his wife, who was often very useful to him in prescribing
+remedies for the maladies of his younger patients.
+
+In a few days he fetched me away. His wife was in the carriage with
+him. Having heard what he said about her prescriptions, I expected,
+between the doctor and his lady, to undergo a severe course of
+medicine, especially as I heard him very formally ask her advice what
+was good for a Mahometan fever, the moment after he had handed me into
+the carriage. She studied a little while, and then she said, A ride
+to Harlow fair would not be amiss. He said he was entirely of her
+opinion, because it suited him to go there to buy a horse.
+
+During the ride they entered into conversation with me, and in answer
+to their questions, I was relating to them the solitary manner in
+which I had passed my time; how I found out the library, and what I
+had read in the fatal book which had so heated my imagination,--when
+we arrived at the fair; and Ishmael, Mahomet, and the narrow bridge,
+vanished out of my head in an instant.
+
+O what a cheerful sight it was to me, to see so many happy faces
+assembled together, walking up and down between the rows of booths
+that were full of showy things; ribbands, laces, toys, cakes, and
+sweetmeats! While the doctor was gone to buy his horse, his kind
+lady let me stand as long as I pleased at the booths, and gave me
+many things which she saw I particularly admired. My needle-case, my
+pin-cushion, indeed my work-basket, and all its contents, are presents
+which she purchased for me at this fair. After we returned home, she
+played with me all the evening at a geographical game, which she also
+bought for me at this cheerful fair.
+
+The next day she invited some young ladies of my own age, to spend the
+day with me. She had a swing put up in the garden for us, and a room
+cleared of the furniture that we might play at blindman's-buff. One of
+the liveliest of the girls, who had taken on herself the direction of
+our sports, she kept to be my companion all the time I staid with her,
+and every day contrived some new amusement for us.
+
+Yet this good lady did not suffer all my time to pass in mirth and
+gaiety. Before I went home, she explained to me very seriously the
+error into which I had fallen. I found that so far from "Mahometism
+Explained" being a book concealed only in this library, it was well
+known to every person of the least information.
+
+The Turks, she told me, were Mahometans, and that, if the leaves of
+my favourite book had not been torn out, I should have read that the
+author of it did not mean to give the fabulous stories here related as
+true, but only wrote it as giving a history of what the Turks, who are
+a very ignorant people, believe concerning the impostor Mahomet, who
+feigned himself to be a descendant of Ishmael. By the good offices of
+the physician and his lady, I was carried home at the end of a month,
+perfectly cured of the error into which I had fallen, and very much
+ashamed of having believed so many absurdities.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+EMILY BARTON
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+When I was a very young child, I remember residing with an uncle
+and aunt who lived in ----shire. I think I remained there near a
+twelvemonth. I am ignorant of the cause of my being so long left there
+by my parents, who, though they were remarkably fond of me, never came
+to see me during all that time. As I did not know I should ever have
+occasion to relate the occurrences of my life, I never thought of
+enquiring the reason.
+
+I am just able to recollect, that when I first went there, I thought
+it was a fine thing to live in the country, and play with my little
+cousins in the garden all day long; and I also recollect, that I soon
+found that it was a very dull thing, to live in the country with
+little cousins who have a papa and mamma in the house, while my own
+dear papa and mamma were in London many miles away.
+
+I have heard my papa observe, girls who are not well managed are
+a most quarrelsome race of little people. My cousins very often
+quarrelled with me, and then they always said, "I will go and tell my
+mamma, cousin Emily;" and then I used to be very disconsolate because
+I had no mamma to complain to of my grievances.
+
+My aunt always took Sophia's part because she was so young; and she
+never suffered me to oppose Mary, or Elizabeth, because they were
+older than me.
+
+The playthings were all the property of one or other of my cousins.
+The large dolls belonged to Mary and Elizabeth, and the pretty little
+wax dolls were dressed on purpose for Sophia, who always began to cry
+the instant I touched them. I had nothing that I could call my own but
+one pretty book of stories; and one day as Sophia was endeavouring
+to take it from me, and I was trying to keep it, it was all torn to
+pieces; and my aunt would not be angry with her. She only said, Sophia
+was a little baby and did not know any better. My uncle promised to
+buy me another book, but he never remembered it. Very often when he
+came home in the evening, he used to say, "I wonder what I have got in
+my pocket;" and then they all crowded round him, and I used to creep
+towards him, and think, May be it is my book that my uncle has got in
+his pocket. But, no; nothing ever came out for me. Yet the first sight
+of a plaything, even if it is not one's own, is always a cheerful
+thing, and a new toy would put them in a good humour for a while, and
+they would say, "Here, Emily, look what I have got. You may take it in
+your own hand and look at it." But the pleasure of examining it, was
+sure to be stopped in a short time by the old story of "Give that to
+me again; you know that is mine." Nobody could help, I think, being a
+little out of humour if they were always served so: but if I shewed
+any signs of discontent, my aunt always told my uncle I was a little
+peevish fretful thing, and gave her more trouble than all her own
+children put together. My aunt would often say, what a happy thing
+it was, to have such affectionate children as hers were. She was
+always praising my cousins because they were affectionate; that was
+sure to be her word. She said I had not one atom of affection in my
+disposition, for that no kindness ever made the least impression on
+me. And she would say all this with Sophia seated on her lap, and
+the two eldest perhaps hanging round their papa, while I was so dull
+to see them taken so much notice of, and so sorry that I was not
+affectionate, that I did not know what to do with myself.
+
+Then there was another complaint against me; that I was so shy before
+strangers. Whenever any strangers spoke to me, before I had time to
+think what answer I should give, Mary or Elizabeth would say, "Emily
+is so shy, she will never speak." Then I, thinking I was very shy,
+would creep into a corner of the room, and be ashamed to look up while
+the company staid.
+
+Though I often thought of my papa and mamma, by degrees the
+remembrance of their persons faded out of my mind. When I tried to
+think how they used to look, the faces of my cousins' papa and mamma
+only came into my mind.
+
+One morning, my uncle and aunt went abroad before breakfast, and
+took my cousins with them. They very often went out for whole days
+together, and left me at home. Sometimes they said it was because
+they could not take so many children; and sometimes they said it was
+because I was so shy, it was no amusement to me to go abroad.
+
+That morning I was very solitary indeed, for they had even taken the
+dog Sancho with them, and I was very fond of him. I went all about
+the house and garden to look for him. Nobody could tell me where
+Sancho was, and then I went into the front court and called, "Sancho,
+Sancho." An old man that worked in the garden was there, and he said
+Sancho was gone with his master. O how sorry I was! I began to cry,
+for Sancho and I used to amuse ourselves for hours together when every
+body was gone out. I cried till I heard the mail coachman's horn,
+and then I ran to the gate to see the mail-coach go past. It stopped
+before our gate, and a gentleman got out, and the moment he saw me
+he took me in his arms, and kissed me, and said I was Emily Barton,
+and asked me why the tears were on my little pale cheeks; and I told
+him the cause of my distress. The old man asked him to walk into the
+house, and was going to call one of the servants; but the gentleman
+would not let him, and he said, "Go on with your work, I want
+to talk to this little girl before I go into the house." Then he
+sate down on a bench which was in the court, and asked me many
+questions; and I told him all my little troubles, for he was such a
+good-natured-looking gentleman that I prattled very freely to him. I
+told him all I have told you, and more, for the unkind treatment I met
+with was more fresh in my mind than it is now. Then he called to the
+old man and desired him to fetch a post-chaise, and gave him money
+that he should make haste, and I never saw the old man walk so fast
+before. When he had been gone a little while, the gentleman said,
+"Will you walk with me down the road to meet the chaise, and you shall
+ride in it a little way along with me." I had nothing on, not even my
+old straw bonnet that I used to wear in the garden; but I did not mind
+that, and I ran by his side a good way, till we met the chaise, and
+the old man riding with the driver. The gentleman said, "Get down and
+open the door," and then he lifted me in. The old man looked in a sad
+fright, and said, "O sir, I hope you are not going to take the child
+away." The gentleman threw out a small card, and bid him give that to
+his master, and calling to the post-boy to drive on, we lost sight of
+the old man in a minute.
+
+The gentleman laughed very much, and said, "We have frightened the old
+man, he thinks I am going to run away with you;" and I laughed, and
+thought it a very good joke; and he said, "So you tell me you are very
+shy;" and I replied "Yes, sir, I am, before strangers:" he said, "So I
+perceive, you are," and then he laughed again, and I laughed, though
+I did not know why. We had such a merry ride, laughing all the way at
+one thing or another, till we came to a town where the chaise stopped,
+and he ordered some breakfast. When I got out I began to shiver a
+little; for it was the latter end of autumn, the leaves were falling
+off the trees, and the air blew very cold. Then he desired the waiter
+to go and order a straw-hat, and a little warm coat for me; and when
+the milliner came, he told her he had stolen a little heiress, and we
+were going to Gretna Green in such a hurry, that the young lady had no
+time to put on her bonnet before she came out. The milliner said I was
+a pretty little heiress, and she wished us a pleasant journey. When
+we had breakfasted, and I was equipped in my new coat and bonnet, I
+jumped into the chaise again, as warm and as lively as a little bird.
+
+When it grew dark, we entered a large city; the chaise began to roll
+over the stones, and I saw the lamps ranged along London streets.
+
+Though we had breakfasted and dined upon the road, and I had got out
+of one chaise into another many times, and was now riding on in the
+dark, I never once considered where I was, or where I was going to.
+I put my head out of the chaise window, and admired those beautiful
+lights. I was sorry when the chaise stopped, and I could no longer
+look at the brilliant rows of lighted lamps.
+
+Taken away by a stranger under a pretence of a short ride, and
+brought quite to London, do you not expect some perilous end of this
+adventure? Ah! it was my papa himself, though I did not know who he
+was, till after he had put me into my mamma's arms, and told her how
+he had run away with his own little daughter. "It is your papa, my
+dear, that has brought you to your own home." "This is your mamma, my
+love," they both exclaimed at once. Mamma cried for joy to see me, and
+she wept again, when she heard my papa tell what a neglected child
+I had been at my uncle's. This he had found out, he said, by my own
+innocent prattle, and that he was so offended with his brother, my
+uncle, that he would not enter his house; and then he said what a
+little happy good child I had been all the way, and that when he found
+I did not know him, he would not tell me who he was, for the sake
+of the pleasant surprise it would be to me. It was a surprise and a
+happiness indeed, after living with unkind relations, all at once to
+know I was at home with my own dear papa and mamma.
+
+My mamma ordered tea. Whenever I happen to like my tea very much,
+I always think of the delicious cup of tea mamma gave us after our
+journey. I think I see the urn smoking before me now, and papa
+wheeling the sopha round, that I might sit between them at the table.
+
+Mamma called me Little Run-away, and said it was very well it was
+only papa. I told her how we frightened the old gardener, and opened
+my eyes to shew her how he stared, and how my papa made the milliner
+believe we were going to Gretna Green. Mamma looked grave, and said
+she was almost frightened to find I had been so fearless; but I
+promised her another time I would not go into a post-chaise with a
+gentleman, without asking him who he was; and then she laughed, and
+seemed very well satisfied.
+
+Mamma, to my fancy, looked very handsome. She was very nicely dressed,
+quite like a fine lady. I held up my head, and felt very proud that I
+had such a papa and mamma. I thought to myself, "O dear, my cousins'
+papa and mamma are not to be compared to mine."
+
+Papa said, "What makes you bridle and simper so, Emily?" Then I told
+him all that was in my mind. Papa asked if I did not think him as
+pretty as I did mamma. I could not say much for his beauty, but I told
+him he was a much finer gentleman than my uncle, and that I liked him
+the first moment I saw him, because he looked so good-natured. He
+said, "Well then, he must be content with that half-praise; but he
+had always thought himself very handsome." "O dear!" said I, and fell
+a-laughing, till I spilt my tea, and mamma called me Little aukward
+girl.
+
+The next morning my papa was going to the Bank to receive some money,
+and he took mamma and me with him, that I might have a ride through
+London streets. Everyone that has been in London must have seen the
+Bank, and therefore you may imagine what an effect the fine large
+rooms, and the bustle and confusion of people had on me; who was grown
+such a little wondering rustic, that the crowded streets and the fine
+shops, alone kept me in continual admiration.
+
+As we were returning home down Cheapside, papa said, "Emily shall take
+home some little books.--Shall we order the coachman to the corner
+of St. Paul's church-yard, or shall we go to the Juvenile Library in
+Skinner-street?" Mamma said she would go to Skinner-street, for she
+wanted to look at the new buildings there. Papa bought me seven new
+books, and the lady in the shop persuaded him to take more, but mamma
+said that was quite enough at present.
+
+We went home by Ludgate-hill, because mamma wanted to buy something
+there; and while she went into a shop, papa heard me read in one of my
+new books, and he said he was glad to find I could read so well; for I
+had forgot to tell him my aunt used to hear me read every day.
+
+My papa stopped the coach opposite to St. Dunstan's church, that I
+might see the great iron figures strike upon the bell, to give notice
+that it was a quarter of an hour past two. We waited some time that
+I might see this sight, but just at the moment they were striking, I
+happened to be looking at a toy-shop that was on the other side of
+the way, and unluckily missed it. Papa said, "Never mind: we will go
+into the toyshop, and I dare say we shall find something that will
+console you for your disappointment." "Do," said mamma, "for I knew
+miss Pearson, that keeps this shop, at Weymouth, when I was a little
+girl, not much older than Emily. Take notice of her;--she is a very
+intelligent old lady." Mamma made herself known to miss Pearson, and
+shewed me to her, but I did not much mind what they said; no more did
+papa;--for we were busy among the toys.
+
+A large wax doll, a baby-house completely furnished, and several other
+beautiful toys, were bought for me. I sat and looked at them with an
+amazing deal of pleasure as we rode home--they quite filled up one
+side of the coach.
+
+The joy I discovered at possessing things I could call my own, and
+the frequent repetition of the words, _My own, my own_, gave my mamma
+some uneasiness. She justly feared that the cold treatment I had
+experienced at my uncle's had made me selfish, and therefore she
+invited a little girl to spend a few days with me, to see, as she has
+since told me, if I should not be liable to fall into the same error
+from which I had suffered so much at my uncle's.
+
+As my mamma had feared, so the event proved; for I quickly adopted
+my cousins' selfish ideas, and gave the young lady notice that they
+were my own plaything's, and she must not amuse herself with them any
+longer than I permitted her. Then presently I took occasion to begin
+a little quarrel with her, and said, "I have got a mamma now, miss
+Frederica, as well as you, and I will go and tell her, and she will
+not let you play with my doll any longer than I please, because it
+is my own doll." And I very well remember I imitated as nearly as I
+could, the haughty tone in which my cousins used to speak to me.
+
+"Oh, fie! Emily," said my mamma; "can you be the little girl, who used
+to be so distressed because your cousins would not let you play with
+their dolls? Do you not see you are doing the very same unkind thing
+to your play-fellow, that they did to you?" Then I saw as plain as
+could be what a naughty girl I was, and I promised not to do so any
+more.
+
+A lady was sitting with mamma, and mamma said, "I believe I must
+pardon you this once, but I hope never to see such a thing again. This
+lady is miss Frederica's mamma, and I am quite ashamed that she should
+be witness to your inhospitality to her daughter, particularly as she
+was so kind to come on purpose to invite you to a share in her _own_
+private box at the theatre this evening. Her carriage is waiting at
+the door to take us, but how can we accept of the invitation after
+what has happened?" The lady begged it might all be forgotten; and
+mamma consented that I should go, and she said, "But I hope, my dear
+Emily, when you are sitting in the play-house, you will remember that
+pleasures are far more delightful when they are shared among numbers.
+If the whole theatre were your own, and you were sitting by yourself
+to see the performance, how dull it would seem, to what you will find
+it, with so many happy faces around us, all amused with the same
+thing!" I hardly knew what my mamma meant, for I had never seen a
+play; but when I got there, after the curtain drew up, I looked up
+towards the galleries, and down into the pit, and into all the boxes,
+and then I knew what a pretty sight it was to see a number of happy
+faces. I was very well convinced, that it would not have been half so
+cheerful if the theatre had been my own, to have sat there by myself.
+From that time, whenever I felt inclined to be selfish, I used to
+remember the theatre, where the mamma of the young lady I had been so
+rude to, gave me a seat in her own box. There is nothing in the world
+so charming as going to a play. All the way there I was as dull and as
+silent as I used to be in ----shire, because I was so sorry mamma had
+been displeased with me. Just as the coach stopped, miss Frederica
+said, "Will you be friends with me, Emily?" and I replied, "Yes, if
+you please, Frederica;" and we went hand in hand together into the
+house. I did not speak any more till we entered the box, but after
+that I was as lively as if nothing at all had happened.
+
+I shall never forget how delighted I was at the first sight of the
+house. My little friend and I were placed together in the front, while
+our mammas retired to the back part of the box to chat by themselves,
+for they had been so kind as to come very early that I might look
+about me before the performance began.
+
+Frederica had been very often at a play. She was very useful in
+telling me what every thing was. She made me observe how the common
+people were coming bustling down the benches in the galleries, as if
+they were afraid they should lose their places. She told me what a
+crowd these poor people had to go through, before they got into the
+house. Then she shewed me how leisurely they all came into the pit,
+and looked about them, before they took their seats. She gave me a
+charming description of the king and queen at the play, and shewed me
+where they sate, and told me how the princesses were drest. It was a
+pretty sight to see the remainder of the candles lighted; and so it
+was to see the musicians come up from under the stage. I admired the
+music very much, and I asked if that was the play. Frederica laughed
+at my ignorance, and then she told me, when the play began, the green
+curtain would draw up to the sound of soft music, and I should hear a
+lady dressed in black say,
+
+  "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast:"
+
+and those were the very first words the actress, whose name was
+Almeria, spoke. When the curtain began to draw up, and I saw the
+bottom of her black petticoat, and heard the soft music, what an
+agitation I was in! But before that we had long to wait. Frederica
+told me we should wait till all the dress boxes were full, and then
+the lights would pop up under the orchestra; the second music would
+play, and then the play would begin.
+
+This play was the Mourning Bride. It was a very moving tragedy; and
+after that when the curtain dropt, and I thought it was all over, I
+saw the most diverting pantomime that ever was seen. I made a strange
+blunder the next day, for I told papa that Almeria was married to
+Harlequin at last; but I assure you I meant to say Columbine, for I
+knew very well that Almeria was married to Alphonso; for she said she
+was in the first scene. She thought he was dead, but she found him
+again, just as I did my papa and mamma, when she least expected it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+MARIA HOWE
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+I was brought up in the country. From my infancy I was always a
+weak and tender-spirited girl, subject to fears and depressions.
+My parents, and particularly my mother, were of a very different
+disposition. They were what is usually called gay: they loved
+pleasure, and parties, and visiting; but as they found the turn of my
+mind to be quite opposite, they gave themselves little trouble about
+me, but upon such occasions generally left me to my choice, which was
+much oftener to stay at home, and indulge myself in my solitude, than
+to join in their rambling visits. I was always fond of being alone,
+yet always in a manner afraid. There was a book-closet which led into
+my mother's dressing-room. Here I was eternally fond of being shut
+up by myself, to take down whatever volumes I pleased, and pore upon
+them, no matter whether they were fit for my years or no, or whether I
+understood them. Here, when the weather would not permit my going into
+the dark walk, _my walk_, as it was called, in the garden; here when
+my parents have been from home, I have stayed for hours together,
+till the loneliness which pleased me so at first, has at length
+become quite frightful, and I have rushed out of the closet into the
+inhabited parts of the house, and sought refuge in the lap of some one
+of the female servants, or of my aunt, who would say, seeing me look
+pale, that Hannah [Maria] had been frightening herself with some of
+those _nasty books_: so she used to call my favourite volumes, which I
+would not have parted with, no not with one of the least of them, if I
+had had the choice to be made a fine princess and to govern the world.
+But my aunt was no reader. She used to excuse herself, and say, that
+reading hurt her eyes. I have been naughty enough to think that this
+was only an excuse, for I found that my aunt's weak eyes did not
+prevent her from poring ten hours a day upon her prayer-book, or
+her favourite Thomas à Kempis. But this was always her excuse for
+not reading any of the books I recommended. My aunt was my father's
+sister. She had never been married. My father was a good deal older
+than my mother, and my aunt was ten years older than my father. As I
+was often left at home with her, and as my serious disposition so well
+agreed with hers, an intimacy grew up between the old lady and me, and
+she would often say, that she only loved one person in the world, and
+that was me. Not that she and my parents were on very bad terms; but
+the old lady did not feel herself respected enough. The attention and
+fondness which she shewed to me, conscious as I was that I was almost
+the only being she felt any thing like fondness to, made me love her,
+as it was natural; indeed I am ashamed to say that I fear I almost
+loved her better than both my parents put together. But there was an
+oddness, a silence about my aunt, which was never interrupted but by
+her occasional expressions of love to me, that made me stand in fear
+of her. An odd look from under her spectacles would sometimes scare me
+away, when I had been peering up in her face to make her kiss me. Then
+she had a way of muttering to herself, which, though it was good words
+and religious words that she was mumbling, somehow I did not like. My
+weak spirits, and the fears I was subject to, always made me afraid of
+any personal singularity or oddness in any one. I am ashamed, ladies,
+to lay open so many particulars of our family; but, indeed it is
+necessary to the understanding of what I am going to tell you, of a
+very great weakness, if not wickedness, which I was guilty of towards
+my aunt. But I must return to my studies, and tell you what books I
+found in the closet, and what reading I chiefly admired. There was a
+great Book of Martyrs in which I used to read, or rather I used to
+spell out meanings; for I was too ignorant to make out many words; but
+there it was written all about those good men who chose to be burnt
+alive, rather than forsake their religion, and become naughty papists.
+Some words I could make out, some I could not; but I made out enough
+to fill my little head with vanity, and I used to think I was so
+courageous I could be burnt too, and I would put my hands upon the
+flames which were pictured in the pretty pictures which the book had,
+and feel them; but, you know, ladies, there is a great difference
+between the flames in a picture, and real fire, and I am now ashamed
+of the conceit which I had of my own courage, and think how poor a
+martyr I should have made in those days. Then there was a book not
+so big, but it had pictures in, it was called Culpepper's Herbal; it
+was full of pictures of plants and herbs, but I did not much care for
+that. Then there was Salmon's Modern History, out of which I picked
+a good deal. It had pictures of Chinese gods, and the great hooded
+serpent which ran strangely in my fancy. There were some law books
+too, but the old English frighted me from reading them. But above all,
+what I relished was Stackhouse's History of the Bible, where there
+was the picture of the Ark and all the beasts getting into it. This
+delighted me, because it puzzled me, and many an aching head have I
+got with poring into it, and contriving how it might be built, with
+such and such rooms, to hold all the world if there should be another
+flood, and sometimes settling what pretty beasts should be saved,
+and what should not, for I would have no ugly or deformed beast in
+my pretty ark. But this was only a piece of folly and vanity, that
+a little reflection might cure me of. Foolish girl that I was! to
+suppose that any creature is really ugly, that has all its limbs
+contrived with heavenly wisdom, and was doubtless formed to some
+beautiful end, though a child cannot comprehend it.--Doubtless a frog
+or a toad is not uglier in itself than a squirrel or a pretty green
+lizard; but we want understanding to see it.
+
+[_Here I must remind you, my dear miss Howe, that one of the young
+ladies smiled, and two or three were seen to titter, at this part of
+your narration, and you seemed, I thought, a little too angry for
+a girl of your sense and reading; but you will remember, my dear,
+that young heads are not always able to bear strange and unusual
+assertions; and if some elder person possibly, or some book which
+you have found, had not put it into your head, you would hardly have
+discovered by your own reflection, that a frog or a toad was equal in
+real loveliness to a frisking squirrel, or a pretty green lizard, as
+you called it; not remembering that at this very time you gave the
+lizard the name of pretty, and left it out to the frog--so liable we
+all are to prejudices. But you went on with your story._]
+
+These fancies, ladies, were not so very foolish or naughty perhaps,
+but they may be forgiven in a child of six years old; but what I am
+going to tell I shall be ashamed of, and repent, I hope, as long as
+I live. It will teach me not to form rash judgements. Besides the
+picture of the Ark, and many others which I have forgot, Stackhouse
+contained one picture which made more impression upon my childish
+understanding than all the rest. It was the picture of the raising
+up of Samuel, which I used to call the Witch of Endor picture. I was
+always very fond of picking up stories about witches. There was a book
+called Glanvil on Witches, which used to lie about in this closet; it
+was thumbed about, and shewed it had been much read in former times.
+This was my treasure. Here I used to pick out the strangest stories.
+My not being able to read them very well probably made them appear
+more strange and out of the way to me. But I could collect enough to
+understand that witches were old women who gave themselves up to do
+mischief;--how, by the help of spirits as bad as themselves, they
+lamed cattle, and made the corn not grow; and how they made images of
+wax to stand for people that had done them any injury, or they thought
+had done them injury; and how they burnt the images before a slow
+fire, and stuck pins in them; and the persons which these waxen images
+represented, however far distant, felt all the pains and torments in
+good earnest, which were inflicted in show upon these images: and such
+a horror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am now better
+instructed, and look upon all these stories as mere idle tales, and
+invented to fill people's heads with nonsense, yet I cannot recall to
+mind the horrors which I then felt, without shuddering and feeling
+something of the old fit return.
+
+[_Here, my dear miss Howe, you may remember, that miss M----, the
+youngest of our party, shewing some more curiosity than usual, I
+winked upon you to hasten to your story, lest the terrors which you
+were describing should make too much impression upon a young head, and
+you kindly understood my sign, and said less upon the subject of your
+fears, than I fancy you first intended._]
+
+This foolish book of witch stories had no pictures in it, but I made
+up for them out of my own fancy, and out of the great picture of the
+raising up of Samuel in Stackhouse. I was not old enough to understand
+the difference there was between these silly improbable tales which
+imputed such powers to poor old women, who are the most helpless
+things in the creation, and the narrative in the Bible, which does not
+say, that the witch or pretended witch, raised up the dead body of
+Samuel by her own power, but as it clearly appears, he was permitted
+by the divine will to appear, to confound the presumption of Saul; and
+that the witch herself was really as much frightened and confounded
+at the miracle as Saul himself, not expecting a real appearance; but
+probably having prepared some juggling, slight-of-hand tricks and
+sham appearance, to deceive the eyes of Saul: whereas she, nor any
+one living, had ever the power to raise the dead to life, but only
+He who made them from the first. These reasons I might have read in
+Stackhouse itself, if I had been old enough, and have read them in
+that very book since I was older, but at that time I looked at little
+beyond the picture.
+
+These stories of witches so terrified me, that my sleeps were broken,
+and in my dreams I always had a fancy of a witch being in the room
+with me. I know now that it was only nervousness; but though I can
+laugh at it now as well as you, ladies, if you knew what I suffered,
+you would be thankful that you have had sensible people about you to
+instruct you and teach you better. I was let grow up wild like an ill
+weed, and thrived accordingly. One night that I had been terrified in
+my sleep with my imaginations, I got out of bed, and crept softly to
+the adjoining room. My room was next to where my aunt usually sat when
+she was alone. Into her room I crept for relief from my fears. The
+old lady was not yet retired to rest, but was sitting with her eyes
+half open, half closed; her spectacles tottering upon her nose; her
+head nodding over her prayer-book; her lips mumbling the words as she
+read them, or half read them, in her dozing posture; her grotesque
+appearance; her old-fashioned dress, resembling what I had seen in
+that fatal picture in Stackhouse; all this, with the dead time of
+night, as it seemed to me, (for I had gone through my first sleep,)
+all joined to produce a wicked fancy in me, that the form which I had
+beheld was not my aunt but some witch. Her mumbling of her prayers
+confirmed me in this shocking idea. I had read in Glanvil of those
+wicked creatures reading their prayers _backwards_, and I thought
+that this was the operation which her lips were at this time employed
+about. Instead of flying to her friendly lap for that protection which
+I had so often experienced when I have been weak and timid, I shrunk
+back terrified and bewildered to my bed, where I lay in broken sleeps
+and miserable fancies, till the morning, which I had so much reason to
+wish for, came. My fancies a little wore away with the light, but an
+impression was fixed, which could not for a long time be done away.
+In the day-time, when my father and mother were about the house, when
+I saw them familiarly speak to my aunt, my fears all vanished; and
+when the good creature has taken me upon her knees, and shewn me any
+kindness more than ordinary, at such times I have melted into tears,
+and longed to tell her what naughty foolish fancies I had had of her.
+But when night returned, that figure which I had seen recurred;--the
+posture, the half-closed eyes, the mumbling and muttering which I
+had heard, a confusion was in my head, _who_ it was I had seen that
+night:--it was my aunt, and it was not my aunt:--it was that good
+creature who loved me above all the world, engaged at her good task
+of devotions--perhaps praying for some good to me. Again, it was a
+witch,--a creature hateful to God and man, reading backwards the good
+prayers; who would perhaps destroy me. In these conflicts of mind I
+passed several weeks, till, by a revolution in my fate, I was removed
+to the house of a female relation of my mother's, in a distant part
+of the county, who had come on a visit to our house, and observing my
+lonely ways, and apprehensive of the ill effect of my mode of living
+upon my health, begged leave to take me home to her house to reside
+for a short time. I went, with some reluctance at leaving my closet,
+my dark walk, and even my aunt, who had been such a source of both
+love and terror to me. But I went, and soon found the good effects of
+a change of scene. Instead of melancholy closets, and lonely avenues
+of trees, I saw lightsome rooms and cheerful faces; I had companions
+of my own age; no books were allowed me but what were rational or
+sprightly; that gave me mirth, or gave me instruction. I soon learned
+to laugh at witch stories; and when I returned after three or four
+months absence to our own house, my good aunt appeared to me in the
+same light in which I had viewed her from my infancy, before that
+foolish fancy possessed me, or rather, I should say, more kind, more
+fond, more loving than before. It is impossible to say how much good
+that lady, the kind relation of my mother's that I spoke of, did to me
+by changing the scene. Quite a new turn of ideas was given to me. I
+became sociable and companionable: my parents soon discovered a change
+in me, and I have found a similar alteration in them. They have been
+plainly more fond of me since that change, as from that time I learned
+to conform myself more to their way of living. I have never since had
+that aversion to company, and going out with them, which used to make
+them regard me with less fondness than they would have wished to shew.
+I impute almost all that I had to complain of in their neglect, to my
+having been a little unsociable, uncompanionable mortal. I lived in
+this manner for a year or two, passing my time between our house, and
+the lady's who so kindly took me in hand, till by her advice, I was
+sent to this school; where I have told to you, ladies, what, for fear
+of ridicule, I never ventured to tell any person besides, the story of
+my foolish and naughty fancy.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+CHARLOTTE WILMOT
+
+(_By Mary Lamb_)
+
+
+Until I was eleven years of age, my life was one continued series of
+indulgence and delight. My father was a merchant, and supposed to be
+in very opulent circumstances, at least I thought so, for at a very
+early age I perceived that we lived in a more expensive way than any
+of my father's friends did. It was not the pride of birth, of which,
+miss Withers, you once imagined you might justly boast, but the mere
+display of wealth that I was early taught to set an undue value on.
+My parents spared no cost for masters to instruct me; I had a French
+governess, and also a woman servant whose sole business it was to
+attend on me. My play-room was crowded with toys, and my dress was
+the admiration of all my youthful visitors, to whom I gave balls and
+entertainments as often as I pleased. I looked down on all my young
+companions as my inferiors; but I chiefly assumed airs of superiority
+over Maria Hartley, whose father was a clerk in my father's
+counting-house, and therefore I concluded she would regard the
+fine show I made with more envy and admiration than any other of
+my companions. In the days of my humiliation, which I too soon
+experienced, I was thrown on the bounty of her father for support.
+To be a dependent on the charity of her family, seemed the heaviest
+evil that could have befallen me; for I remembered how often I had
+displayed my finery and my expensive ornaments, on purpose to enjoy
+the triumph of my superior advantages; and with shame I now speak it,
+I have often glanced at her plain linen frock, when I shewed her my
+beautiful ball-dresses. Nay, I once gave her a hint, which she so well
+understood that she burst into tears, that I could not invite her to
+some of my parties, because her mamma once sent her on my birthday in
+a coloured frock. I cannot now think of my want of feeling without
+excessive pain; but one day I saw her highly amused with some curious
+toys, and on her expressing the pleasure the sight of them gave her,
+I said "Yes, they are very well for those who are not accustomed to
+these things; but for my part, I have so many, I am tired of them, and
+I am quite delighted to pass an hour in the empty closet your mamma
+allows you to receive your visitors in, because there is nothing there
+to interrupt the conversation."
+
+Once, as I have said, Maria was betrayed into tears: now that I
+insulted her by calling her own small apartment an empty closet, she
+turned quick upon me, but not in anger, saying, "O, my dear miss
+Wilmot, how very sorry I am--" here she stopped; and though I knew
+not the meaning of her words, I felt it as a reproof. I hung down my
+head abashed; yet, perceiving that she was all that day more kind and
+obliging than ever, and being conscious of not having merited this
+kindness, I thought she was mean-spirited, and therefore I consoled
+myself with having discovered this fault in her, for I thought my
+arrogance was full as excusable as her meanness.
+
+In a few days I knew my error; I learned why Maria had been so kind,
+and why she had said she was sorry. It was for me, proud disdainful
+girl that I was, that she was sorry; she knew, though I did not, that
+my father was on the brink of ruin; and it came to pass, as she had
+feared it would, that in a few days my play-room was as empty as
+Maria's closet, and all my grandeur was at an end.
+
+My father had what is called an execution in the house; every thing
+was seized that we possessed. Our splendid furniture, and even our
+wearing apparel, all my beautiful ball-dresses, my trinkets, and, my
+toys, were taken away by my father's merciless creditors. The week in
+which this happened was such a scene of hurry, confusion and misery,
+that I will not attempt to describe it.
+
+At the end of a week I found that my father and mother had gone out
+very early in the morning. Mr. Hartley took me home to his own house,
+and I expected to find them there; but, oh, what anguish did I feel,
+when I heard him tell Mrs. Hartley they had quitted England, and that
+he had brought me home to live with them! In tears and sullen silence
+I passed the first day of my entrance into this despised house. Maria
+was from home. All the day I sate in a corner of the room, grieving
+for the departure of my parents; and if for a moment I forgot that
+sorrow, I tormented myself with imagining the many ways which Maria
+might invent, to make me feel in return the slights and airs of
+superiority which I had given myself over her. Her mother began
+the prelude to what I expected, for I heard her freely censure the
+imprudence of my parents. She spoke in whispers; yet, though I could
+not hear every word, I made out the tenor of her discourse. She was
+very anxious, lest her husband should be involved in the ruin of our
+house. He was the chief clerk in my father's counting-house; towards
+evening he came in and quieted her fears, by the welcome news that he
+had obtained a more lucrative situation than the one he had lost.
+
+At eight in the evening Mrs. Hartley said to me, "Miss Wilmot, it is
+time for you to be in bed, my dear;" and ordered the servant to shew
+me up stairs, adding, that she supposed she must assist me to undress,
+but that when Maria came home, she must teach me to wait on myself.
+The apartment in which I was to sleep was at the top of the house.
+The walls were white-washed, and the roof was sloping. There was only
+one window in the room, a small casement, through which the bright
+moon shone, and it seemed to me the most melancholy sight I had ever
+beheld. In broken and disturbed slumbers I passed the night. When
+I awoke in the morning, she whom I most dreaded to see, Maria, who
+I supposed had envied my former state, and who I now felt certain
+would exult over my present mortifying reverse of fortune, stood by
+my bedside. She awakened me from a dream, in which I thought she was
+ordering me to fetch her something; and on my refusal, she said I must
+obey her, for I was now her servant. Far differently from what my
+dreams had pictured, did Maria address me! She said, in the gentlest
+tone imaginable, "My dear miss Wilmot, my mother begs you will come
+down to breakfast. Will you give me leave to dress you?" My proud
+heart would not suffer me to speak, and I began to attempt to put on
+my clothes; but never having been used to do any thing for myself, I
+was unable to perform it, and was obliged to accept of the assistance
+of Maria. She dressed me, washed my face, and combed my hair; and as
+she did these services for me, she said in the most respectful manner,
+"Is this the way you like to wear this, miss Wilmot?" or, "Is this
+the way you like this done?" and curtsied, as she gave me every fresh
+article to put on. The slights I expected to receive from Maria, would
+not have distressed me more, than the delicacy of her behaviour did. I
+hung down my head with shame and anguish.
+
+In a few days Mrs. Hartley ordered her daughter to instruct me in such
+useful works and employments as Maria knew. Of every thing which she
+called useful I was most ignorant. My accomplishments I found were
+held in small estimation here, by all indeed except Maria. She taught
+me nothing without the kindest apologies for being obliged to teach
+me, who, she said, was so excellent in all elegant arts, and was for
+ever thanking me for the pleasure she had formerly received, from
+my skill in music and pretty fancy works. The distress I was in,
+made these complimentary speeches not flatteries, but sweet drops
+of comfort to my degraded heart, almost broken with misfortune and
+remorse.
+
+I remained at Mr. Hartley's but two months, for at the end of that
+time my father inherited a considerable property by the death of a
+distant relation, which has enabled him to settle his affairs. He
+established himself again as a merchant; but as he wished to retrench
+his expences, and begin the world again on a plan of strict economy,
+he sent me to this school to finish my education.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+SUSAN YATES
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+I was born and brought up, in a house in which my parents had all
+their lives resided, which stood in the midst of that lonely tract of
+land called the Lincolnshire fens. Few families besides our own lived
+near the spot, both because it was reckoned an unwholesome air, and
+because its distance from any town or market made it an inconvenient
+situation. My father was in no very affluent circumstances, and it
+was a sad necessity which he was put to, of having to go many miles
+to fetch any thing he wanted from the nearest village, which was full
+seven miles distant, through a sad miry way that at all times made it
+heavy walking, and after rain was almost impassable. But he had no
+horse or carriage of his own.
+
+The church which belonged to the parish in which our house was
+situated, stood in this village; and its distance being, as I said
+before, seven miles from our house, made it quite an impossible thing
+for my mother or me to think of going to it. Sometimes indeed, on a
+fine dry Sunday, my father would rise early, and take a walk to the
+village, just to see how _goodness thrived_, as he used to say, but
+he would generally return tired, and the worse for his walk. It is
+scarcely possible to explain to any one who has not lived in the fens,
+what difficult and dangerous walking it is. A mile is as good as four,
+I have heard my father say, in those parts. My mother, who in the
+early part of her life had lived in a more civilised spot, and had
+been used to constant churchgoing, would often lament her situation.
+It was from her I early imbibed a great curiosity and anxiety to see
+that thing, which I had heard her call a church, and so often lament
+that she could never go to. I had seen houses of various structures,
+and had seen in pictures the shapes of ships and boats, and palaces
+and temples, but never rightly any thing that could be called a
+church, or that could satisfy me about its form. Sometimes I thought
+it must be like our house, and sometimes I fancied it must be more
+like the house of our neighbour, Mr. Sutton, which was bigger and
+handsomer than ours. Sometimes I thought it was a great hollow cave,
+such as I have heard my father say the first inhabitants of the earth
+dwelt in. Then I thought it was like a waggon, or a cart, and that it
+must be something moveable. The shape of it ran in my mind strangely,
+and one day I ventured to ask my mother, what was that foolish thing
+that she was always longing to go to, and which she called a church.
+Was it any thing to eat or drink, or was it only like a great huge
+play-thing, to be seen and stared at?--I was not quite five years of
+age when I made this inquiry.
+
+This question, so oddly put, made my mother smile; but in a little
+time she put on a more grave look, and informed me, that a church
+was nothing that I had supposed it, but it was a great building, far
+greater than any house which I had seen, where men, and women, and
+children, came together, twice a day, on Sundays, to hear the Bible
+read, and make good resolutions for the week to come. She told me,
+that the fine music which we sometimes heard in the air, came from
+the bells of St. Mary's church, and that we never heard it but when
+the wind was in a particular point. This raised my wonder more than
+all the rest; for I had somehow conceived that the noise which I
+heard, was occasioned by birds up in the air, or that it was made
+by the angels, whom (so ignorant I was till that time) I had always
+considered to be a sort of birds: for before this time I was totally
+ignorant of any thing like religion, it being a principle of my
+father, that young heads should not be told too many things at once,
+for fear they should get confused ideas, and no clear notions of any
+thing. We had always indeed so far observed Sundays, that no work was
+done upon that day, and upon that day I wore my best muslin frock,
+and was not allowed to sing, or to be noisy; but I never understood
+why that day should differ from any other. We had no public
+meetings:--indeed the few straggling houses which were near us, would
+have furnished but a slender congregation; and the loneliness of the
+place we lived in, instead of making us more sociable, and drawing
+us closer together, as my mother used to say it ought to have done,
+seemed to have the effect of making us more distant and averse to
+society than other people. One or two good neighbours indeed we had,
+but not in numbers to give me an idea of church attendance.
+
+But now my mother thought it high time to give me some clearer
+instruction in the main points of religion, and my father came readily
+into her plan. I was now permitted to sit up half an hour later on a
+Sunday evening, that I might hear a portion of Scripture read, which
+had always been their custom, though by reason of my tender age, and
+my father's opinion on the impropriety of children being taught too
+young, I had never till now been an auditor. I was taught my prayers,
+and those things which you, ladies, I doubt not, had the benefit of
+being instructed in at a much earlier age.
+
+The clearer my notions on these points became, they only made me
+more passionately long for the privilege of joining in that social
+service, from which it seemed that we alone, of all the inhabitants
+of the land, were debarred; and when the wind was in that point which
+favoured the sound of the distant bells of St. Mary's to be heard
+over the great moor which skirted our house, I have stood out in the
+air to catch the sounds which I almost devoured; and the tears have
+come in my eyes, when sometimes they seemed to speak to me almost
+in articulate sounds, to _come to church_, and because of the great
+moor which was between me and them I could not come; and the too
+tender apprehensions of these things have filled me with a religious
+melancholy. With thoughts like these I entered into my seventh year.
+
+And now the time was come, when the great moor was no longer to
+separate me from the object of my wishes and of my curiosity. My
+father having some money left him by the will of a deceased relation,
+we ventured to set up a sort of a carriage--no very superb one, I
+assure you, ladies; but in that part of the world it was looked upon
+with some envy by our poorer neighbours. The first party of pleasure
+which my father proposed to take in it, was to the village where I had
+so often wished to go, and my mother and I were to accompany him; for
+it was very fit, my father observed, that little Susan should go to
+church, and learn how to behave herself, for we might some time or
+other have occasion to live in London, and not always be confined to
+that out of the way spot.
+
+It was on a Sunday morning that we set out, my little heart beating
+with almost breathless expectation. The day was fine, and the roads
+as good as they ever are in those parts. I was so happy and so proud.
+I was lost in dreams of what I was going to see. At length the tall
+steeple of St. Mary's church came in view. It was pointed out to me by
+my father, as the place from which that music had come which I have
+heard over the moor, and had fancied to be angels singing. I was wound
+up to the highest pitch of delight at having visibly presented to me
+the spot from which had proceeded that unknown friendly music; and
+when it began to peal, just as we approached the village, it seemed to
+speak. _Susan is come_, as plainly as it used to invite me _to come_,
+when I heard it over the moor. I pass over our alighting at the house
+of a relation, and all that passed till I went with my father and
+mother to church.
+
+St. Mary's church is a great church for such a small village as it
+stands in. My father said it was a cathedral, and that it had once
+belonged to a monastery, but the monks were all gone. Over the door
+there was stone work, representing saints and bishops, and here and
+there, along the sides of the church, there were figures of men's
+heads, made in a strange grotesque way: I have since seen the same
+sort of figures in the round tower of the Temple church in London. My
+father said they were very improper ornaments for such a place, and
+so I now think them; but it seems the people who built these great
+churches in old times, gave themselves more liberties than they do
+now; and I remember that when I first saw them, and before my father
+had made this observation, though they were so ugly and out of shape,
+and some of them seemed to be grinning and distorting their features
+with pain or with laughter, yet being placed upon a church, to which
+I had come with such serious thoughts, I could not help thinking
+they had some serious meaning; and I looked at them with wonder, but
+without any temptation to laugh. I somehow fancied they were the
+representation of wicked people set up as a warning.
+
+When we got into the church, the service was not begun, and my father
+kindly took me round, to shew me the monuments and every thing else
+remarkable. I remember seeing one of a venerable figure, which my
+father said had been a judge. The figure was kneeling, as if it was
+alive, before a sort of desk, with a book, I suppose the Bible, lying
+on it. I somehow fancied the figure had a sort of life in it, it
+seemed so natural, or that the dead judge that it was done for, said
+his prayers at it still. This was a silly notion, but I was very
+young, and had passed my little life in a remote place, where I had
+never seen any thing nor knew any thing; and the awe which I felt at
+first being in a church, took from me all power but that of wondering.
+I did not reason about any thing, I was too young. Now I understand
+why monuments are put up for the dead, and why the figures which
+are upon them, are described as doing the actions which they did in
+their life-times, and that they are a sort of pictures set up for our
+instruction. But all was new and surprising to me on that day; the
+long windows with little panes, the pillars, the pews made of oak, the
+little hassocks for the people to kneel on, the form of the pulpit
+with the sounding-board over it, gracefully carved in flower work. To
+you, who have lived all your lives in populous places, and have been
+taken to church from the earliest time you can remember, my admiration
+of these things must appear strangely ignorant. But I was a lonely
+young creature, that had been brought up in remote places, where there
+was neither church nor churchgoing inhabitants. I have since lived in
+great towns, and seen the ways of churches and of worship, and I am
+old enough now to distinguish between what is essential in religion,
+and what is merely formal or ornamental.
+
+When my father had done pointing out to me the things most worthy of
+notice about the church, the service was almost ready to begin; the
+parishioners had most of them entered, and taken their seats; and we
+were shewn into a pew where my mother was already seated. Soon after
+the clergyman entered, and the organ began to play what is called
+the voluntary. I had never seen so many people assembled before. At
+first I thought that all eyes were upon me, and that because I was
+a stranger. I was terribly ashamed and confused at first; but my
+mother helped me to find out the places in the Prayer-book, and
+being busy about that, took off some of my painful apprehensions. I
+was no stranger to the order of the service, having often read in a
+Prayer-book at home; but my thoughts being confused, it puzzled me a
+little to find out the responses and other things, which I thought I
+knew so well; but I went through it tolerably well. One thing which
+has often troubled me since, is, that I am afraid I was too full of
+myself, and of thinking how happy I was, and what a privilege it was
+for one that was so young, to join in the service with so many grown
+people, so that I did not attend enough to the instruction which I
+might have received. I remember, I foolishly applied every thing that
+was said to myself, so as it could mean nobody but myself, I was so
+full of my own thoughts. All that assembly of people, seemed to me as
+if they were come together only to shew me the way of a church. Not
+but I received some very affecting impressions from some things which
+I heard that day; but the standing up and the sitting down of the
+people; the organ; the singing;--the way of all these things took up
+more of my attention than was proper; or I thought it did. I believe
+I behaved better and was more serious when I went a second time, and
+a third time; for now we went as a regular thing every Sunday, and
+continued to do so, till, by a still further change for the better in
+my father's circumstances, we removed to London. Oh! it was a happy
+day for me my first going to St. Mary's church: before that day I used
+to feel like a little outcast in the wilderness, like one that did
+not belong to the world of Christian people. I have never felt like a
+little outcast since. But I never can hear the sweet noise of bells,
+that I don't think of the angels singing, and what poor but pretty
+thoughts I had of angels in my uninstructed solitude.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+ARABELLA HARDY
+
+(_By Charles Lamb_)
+
+
+I was born in the East Indies. I lost my father and mother young. At
+the age of five my relations thought it proper that I should be sent
+to England for my education. I was to be entrusted to the care of a
+young woman who had a character for great humanity and discretion; but
+just as I had taken leave of my friends, and we were about to take our
+passage, the young woman was taken suddenly ill, and could not go on
+board. In this unpleasant emergency, no one knew how to act. The ship
+was at the very point of sailing, and it was the last ship which was
+to sail that season. At last the captain, who was known to my friends,
+prevailed upon my relation who had come with us to see us embark,
+to leave the young woman on shore, and to let me embark separately.
+There was no possibility of getting any other female attendant for me,
+in the short time allotted for our preparation; and the opportunity
+of going by that ship was thought too valuable to be lost. No other
+ladies happened to be going; so I was consigned to the care of the
+captain and his crew,--rough and unaccustomed attendants for a young
+creature, delicately brought up as I had been; but indeed they did
+their best to make me not feel the difference. The unpolished sailors
+were my nursery-maids and my waiting-women. Every thing was done by
+the captain and the men, to accommodate me, and make me easy. I had
+a little room made out of the cabin, which was to be considered as
+my room, and nobody might enter into it. The first mate had a great
+character for bravery, and all sailor-like accomplishments; but with
+all this he had a gentleness of manners, and a pale feminine cast of
+face, from ill health and a weakly constitution, which subjected him
+to some little ridicule from the officers, and caused him to be named
+Betsy. He did not much like the appellation, but he submitted to it
+the better, as he knew that those who gave him a woman's name, well
+knew that he had a man's heart, and that in the face of danger he
+would go as far as any man. To this young man, whose real name was
+Charles Atkinson, by a lucky thought of the captain, the care of me
+was especially entrusted. Betsy was proud of his charge, and, to do
+him justice, acquitted himself with great diligence and adroitness
+through the whole of the voyage. From the beginning I had somehow
+looked upon Betsy as a woman, hearing him so spoken of, and this
+reconciled me in some measure to the want of a maid, which I had been
+used to. But I was a manageable girl at all times, and gave nobody
+much trouble.
+
+I have not knowledge enough to give an account of my voyage, or to
+remember the names of the seas we passed through, or the lands which
+we touched upon, in our course. The chief thing I can remember, for I
+do not remember the events of the voyage in any order, was Atkinson
+taking me up on deck, to see the great whales playing about in the
+sea. There was one great whale came bounding up out of the sea, and
+then he would dive into it again, and then would come up at a distance
+where nobody expected him, and another whale was following after him.
+Atkinson said they were at play, and that that lesser whale loved that
+bigger whale, and kept it company all through the wide seas: but I
+thought it strange play, and a frightful kind of love; for I every
+minute expected they would come up to our ship and toss it. But
+Atkinson said a whale was a gentle creature, and it was a sort of
+sea-elephant, and that the most powerful creatures in nature are
+always the least hurtful. And he told me how men went out to take
+these whales, and stuck long, pointed darts into them; and how the sea
+was discoloured with the blood of these poor whales for many miles
+distance: and I admired at the courage of the men, but I was sorry
+for the inoffensive whale. Many other pretty sights he used to shew
+me, when he was not on watch, or doing some duty for the ship. No one
+was more attentive to his duty than he; but at such times as he had
+leisure, he would shew me all pretty sea sights:--the dolphins and
+porpoises that came before a storm, and all the colours which the sea
+changed to; how sometimes it was a deep blue, and then a deep green,
+and sometimes it would seem all on fire: all these various appearances
+he would shew me, and attempt to explain the reason of them to me,
+as well as my young capacity would admit of. There was a lion and a
+tiger on board, going to England as a present to the king, and it
+was a great diversion to Atkinson and me, after I had got rid of my
+first terrors, to see the ways of these beasts in their dens, and how
+venturous the sailors were in putting their hands through the grates,
+and patting their rough coats. Some of the men had monkeys, which ran
+loose about, and the sport was for the men to lose them, and find them
+again. The monkeys would run up the shrouds, and pass from rope to
+rope, with ten times greater alacrity than the most experienced sailor
+could follow them; and sometimes they would hide themselves in the
+most unthought-of places, and when they were found, they would grin,
+and make mouths as if they had sense. Atkinson described to me the
+ways of these little animals in their native woods, for he had seen
+them. Oh, how many ways he thought of to amuse me in that long voyage!
+
+Sometimes he would describe to me the odd shapes and varieties of
+fishes that were in the sea, and tell me tales of the sea-monsters
+that lay hid at the bottom, and were seldom seen by men; and what a
+glorious sight it would be, if our eyes could be sharpened to behold
+all the inhabitants of the sea at once, swimming in the great deeps,
+as plain as we see the gold and silver fish in a bowl of glass. With
+such notions he enlarged my infant capacity to take in many things.
+
+When in foul weather I have been terrified at the motion of the
+vessel, as it rocked backwards and forwards, he would still my fears,
+and tell me that I used to be rocked so once in a cradle, and that
+the sea was God's bed, and the ship our cradle, and we were as safe
+in that greater motion, as when we felt that lesser one in our little
+wooden sleeping-places. When the wind was up, and sang through the
+sails, and disturbed me with its violent clamours, he would call it
+music, and bid me hark to the sea-organ, and with that name he quieted
+my tender apprehensions. When I have looked around with a mournful
+face at seeing all _men_ about me, he would enter into my thoughts,
+and tell me pretty stories of his mother and his sisters, and a female
+cousin that he loved better than his sisters, whom he called Jenny,
+and say that when we got to England I should go and see them, and how
+fond Jenny would be of his little daughter, as he called me; and with
+these images of women and females which he raised in my fancy, he
+quieted me for a time. One time, and never but once, he told me that
+Jenny had promised to be his wife if ever he came to England, but that
+he had his doubts whether he should live to get home, for he was very
+sickly. This made me cry bitterly.
+
+That I dwell so long upon the attentions of this Atkinson, is only
+because his death, which happened just before we got to England,
+affected me so much, that he alone of all the ship's crew has
+engrossed my mind ever since; though indeed the captain and all
+were singularly kind to me, and strove to make up for my uneasy and
+unnatural situation. The boatswain would pipe for my diversion, and
+the sailor-boy would climb the dangerous mast for my sport. The rough
+foremastman would never willingly appear before me, till he had combed
+his long black hair smooth and sleek, not to terrify me. The officers
+got up a sort of play for my amusement, and Atkinson, or, as they
+called him, Betsy, acted the heroine of the piece. All ways that could
+be contrived, were thought upon, to reconcile me to my lot. I was the
+universal favourite;--I do not know how deservedly; but I suppose it
+was because I was alone, and there was no female in the ship besides
+me. Had I come over with female relations or attendants, I should have
+excited no particular curiosity; I should have required no uncommon
+attentions. I was one little woman among a crew of men; and I believe
+the homage which I have read that men universally pay to women, was in
+this case directed to me, in the absence of all other woman-kind. I do
+not know how that might be, but I was a little princess among them,
+and I was not six years old.
+
+I remember the first draw-back which happened to my comfort, was
+Atkinson's not appearing during the whole of one day. The captain
+tried to reconcile me to it, by saying that Mr. Atkinson was confined
+to his cabin;--that he was not quite well, but a day or two would
+restore him. I begged to be taken in to see him, but this was not
+granted. A day, and then another came, and another, and no Atkinson
+was visible, and I saw apparent solicitude in the faces of all the
+officers, who nevertheless strove to put on their best countenances
+before me, and to be more than usually kind to me. At length, by the
+desire of Atkinson himself, as I have since learned, I was permitted
+to go into his cabin and see him. He was sitting up, apparently in a
+state of great exhaustion, but his face lighted up when he saw me, and
+he kissed me, and told me that he was going a great voyage, far longer
+than that which we had passed together, and he should never come back;
+and though I was so young, I understood well enough that he meant this
+of his death, and I cried sadly; but he comforted me and told me, that
+I must be his little executrix, and perform his last will, and bear
+his last words to his mother and his sister, and to his cousin Jenny,
+whom I should see in a short time; and he gave me his blessing, as
+a father would bless his child, and he sent a last kiss by me to all
+his female relations, and he made me promise that I would go and see
+them when I got to England, and soon after this he died; but I was
+in another part of the ship when he died, and I was not told it till
+we got to shore, which was a few days after; but they kept telling me
+that he was better and better, and that I should soon see him, but
+that it disturbed him to talk with any one. Oh, what a grief it was,
+when I learned that I had lost my old ship-mate, that had made an
+irksome situation so bearable by his kind assiduities; and to think
+that he was gone, and I could never repay him for his kindness!
+
+When I had been a year and a half in England, the captain, who
+had made another voyage to India and back, thinking that time had
+alleviated a little the sorrow of Atkinson's relations, prevailed upon
+my friends who had the care of me in England, to let him introduce me
+to Atkinson's mother and sister. Jenny was no more; she had died in
+the interval, and I never saw her. Grief for his death had brought on
+a consumption, of which she lingered about a twelvemonth, and then
+expired. But in the mother and the sisters of this excellent young
+man, I have found the most valuable friends which I possess on this
+side the great ocean. They received me from the captain as the little
+_protégée_ of Atkinson, and from them I have learned passages of his
+former life, and this in particular, that the illness of which he died
+was brought on by a wound of which he never quite recovered, which he
+got in the desperate attempt, when he was quite a boy, to defend his
+captain against a superior force of the enemy which had boarded him,
+and which, by his premature valour inspiriting the men, they finally
+succeeded in repulsing. This was that Atkinson, who, from his
+pale and feminine appearance, was called Betsy. This was he whose
+womanly care of me got him the name of a woman, who, with more than
+female attention, condescended to play the hand-maid to a little
+unaccompanied orphan, that fortune had cast upon the care of a rough
+sea captain, and his rougher crew.
+
+
+
+
+THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Showing how notably
+  the Queen made her tarts,
+  and how scurvily
+  the Knave stole them away,
+  with other particulars belonging thereunto
+
+Printed for Thomas Hodgkins Hanway Street November 18 1805.
+
+[Illustration: _The Queen of Hearts_]
+
+  High on a Throne of state is seen
+  She whom all Hearts own for their Queen.
+  Three Pages are in waiting by;
+  He with the umbrella is her Spy,
+  To spy out rogueries in the dark,
+  And smell a rat as you shall mark.
+
+[Illustration: _She made some Tarts_]
+
+  The Queen here by the King's commands,
+  Who does not like Cook's dirty hands,
+  Makes the court-pastry all herself.
+  Pambo the knave, that roguish elf,
+  Watches each sugary sweet ingredient,
+  And slily thinks of an expedient.
+
+[Illustration: _All on a Summer's day_]
+
+  Now first of May does summer bring,
+  How bright and fine is every thing!
+  After their dam the chickens run,
+  The green leaves glitter in the sun,
+  While youths and maids in merry dance
+  Round rustic maypoles do advance.
+
+[Illustration: _The Knave of Hearts_]
+
+  When Kings and Queens ariding go,
+  Great Lords ride with them for a show
+  With grooms & courtiers, a great store;
+  Some ride behind, & some before.
+  Pambo the first of these does pass,
+  And for more state rides on an Ass.
+
+[Illustration: _He stole those Tarts_]
+
+  Thieves! Thieves! holla, you knavish Jack,
+  Cannot the good Queen turn her back,
+  But you must be so nimble hasty
+  To come and steal away her pastry
+  You think you're safe, there's one fees all,
+  And understands, though he's but small
+
+[Illustration: _And took them quite away_]
+
+  How like a thievish Jack he looks!
+  I wish for my part all the cooks
+  Would come and baste him with a ladle
+  As long as ever they were able,
+  To keep his fingers ends from itching
+  After sweet things in the Queen's kitchen.
+
+[Illustration: _The King of Hearts_]
+
+  Behold the King of Hearts how gruff
+  The monarch stands, how square, how bluff!
+  When our eighth Harry rul'd this land,
+  Just like this King did Harry stand;
+  And just so amorous, sweet, and willing,
+  As this Queen stands, stood Anna Bullen.
+
+[Illustration: _Call'd for those Tarts_]
+
+  The meat removed and dinner done,
+  The knives are wip'd and cheese put on.
+  The King aloud for Tarts does bawl,
+  Tarts, tarts, resound through all the Hall.
+  Pambo with tears denies the Fact,
+  But Mungo saw him in the act.
+
+[Illustration: _And beat the Knave full sore_]
+
+  Behold the due reward of sin,
+  See what a plight rogue Pambo's in.
+  The King lays on his blows so stout,
+  The Tarts for fear come tumbling out
+  O King! be merciful as just,
+  You'll beat poor Pambo into dust
+
+[Illustration: _The Knave of Hearts_]
+
+  How like he looks to a dog that begs
+  In abject sort upon two legs!
+  Good Mr. Knave, give me my due,
+  I like a tart as well as you,
+  But I would starve on good roast Beef,
+  Ere I would look so like a thief.
+
+[Illustration: _Brought back those Tarts_]
+
+  The Knave brings back the tarts he stole.
+  The Queen swears, that is not the whole.
+  What should poor Pambo do? hard prest
+  Owns he has eaten up the rest.
+  The King takes back, as lawful debt,
+  Not all, but all that he can get.
+
+[Illustration: _And vow'd he'd steal no more_]
+
+  Lo! Pambo prostrate on the floor
+  Vows he will be a thief no more.
+  O King your heart no longer harden,
+  You've got the tarts, give him his pardon.
+  The best time to forgive a sinner
+  Is always after a good dinner.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  "How say you Sir? tis all a joke--
+  Great Kings love tarts like other folk!"
+  If for a truth you'll not receive it,
+  Pray, view the picture, and believe it.
+  Sly Pambo too has got a share,
+  And eats it snug behind the chair.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+  Their Majesties so well have fed,
+  The tarts have got up in their head.
+  "Or may be 'twas the wine!"--hush, gipsey!
+  Great Kings & Queens indeed get tipsey!
+  Now, Pambo, is the time for you:
+  Beat little Tell-Tale black & blue.
+
+
+
+
+POETRY FOR CHILDREN
+
+(_1808-1809. Text of 1809_)
+
+
+ENVY
+
+  This rose-tree is not made to bear
+  The violet blue, nor lily fair,
+    Nor the sweet mignionet:
+  And if this tree were discontent,
+  Or wish'd to change its natural bent,
+    It all in vain would fret.
+
+  And should it fret, you would suppose
+  It ne'er had seen its own red rose,
+    Nor after gentle shower
+  Had ever smell'd it rose's scent,
+  Or it could ne'er be discontent
+    With its own pretty flower.
+
+  Like such a blind and senseless tree
+  As I've imagin'd this to be,
+    All envious persons are:
+  With care and culture all may find
+  Some pretty flower in their own mind,
+    Some talent that is rare.
+
+
+
+THE REAPER'S CHILD
+
+  If you go to the field where the Reapers now bind
+    The sheaves of ripe corn, there a fine little lass,
+  Only three months of age, by the hedge-row you'll find,
+    Left alone by its mother upon the low grass.
+
+  While the mother is reaping, the infant is sleeping;
+    Not the basket that holds the provision is less
+  By the hard-working Reaper, than this little sleeper,
+    Regarded, till hunger does on the babe press.
+
+  Then it opens its eyes, and it utters loud cries,
+    Which its hard-working mother afar off will hear;
+  She comes at its calling, she quiets its squalling,
+    And feeds it, and leaves it again without fear.
+
+  When you were as young as this field-nursed daughter,
+    You were fed in the house, and brought up on the knee;
+  So tenderly watched, thy fond mother thought her
+    Whole time well bestow'd in nursing of thee.
+
+
+THE RIDE
+
+  Lately an Equipage I overtook,
+  And help'd to lift it o'er a narrow brook.
+  No horse it had except one boy, who drew
+  His sister out in it the fields to view.
+  O happy town-bred girl, in fine chaise going
+  For the first time to see the green grass growing.
+  This was the end and purport of the ride
+  I learn'd, as walking slowly by their side
+  I heard their conversation. Often she--
+  "Brother, is this the country that I see?"
+  The bricks were smoking, and the ground was broke,
+  There were no signs of verdure when she spoke.
+  He, as the well-inform'd delight in chiding
+  The ignorant, these questions still deriding,
+  To his good judgment modestly she yields;
+  Till, brick-kilns past, they reach'd the open fields.
+  Then as with rapt'rous wonder round she gazes
+  On the green grass, the butter-cups, and daisies,
+  "This is the country sure enough," she cries;
+  "Is't not a charming place?" The boy replies,
+  "We'll go no further." "No," says she, "no need;
+  No finer place than this can be indeed."
+  I left them gathering flow'rs, the happiest pair
+  That ever London sent to breathe the fine fresh air,
+
+
+
+
+THE BUTTERFLY
+
+SISTER
+
+Do, my dearest brother John,
+Let that Butterfly alone.
+
+BROTHER
+
+       What harm now do I do?
+You're always making such a noise--
+
+SISTER
+
+O fie, John; none but naughty boys
+       Say such rude words as you.
+
+BROTHER
+
+Because you're always speaking sharp:
+On the same thing you always harp.
+       A bird one may not catch,
+Nor find a nest, nor angle neither,
+Nor from the peacock pluck a feather,
+       But you are on the watch
+To moralise and lecture still.
+
+SISTER
+
+And ever lecture, John, I will,
+       When such sad things I hear.
+But talk not now of what is past;
+The moments fly away too fast,
+Though endlessly they seem to last
+       To that poor soul in fear.
+
+BROTHER
+
+Well, soon (I say) I'll let it loose;
+But, sister, you talk like a goose,
+       There's no soul in a fly.
+
+SISTER
+
+It has a form and fibres fine,
+Were temper'd by the hand divine
+       Who dwells beyond the sky.
+Look, brother, you have hurt its wing--
+And plainly by its fluttering
+       You see it's in distress,
+Gay painted Coxcomb, spangled Beau,
+A Butterfly is call'd you know,
+       That's always in full dress:
+The finest gentleman of all
+Insects he is--he gave a Ball,
+       You know the Poet wrote.
+Let's fancy this the very same,
+And then you'll own you've been to blame
+       To spoil his silken coat.
+
+BROTHER
+
+Your dancing, spangled, powder'd Beau,
+Look, through the air I've let him go:
+       And now we're friends again.
+As sure as he is in the air,
+From this time, Ann, I will take care,
+       And try to be humane.
+
+
+THE PEACH
+
+  Mamma gave us a single Peach,
+    She shar'd it among seven;
+  Now you may think that unto each
+    But a small piece was given.
+
+  Yet though each share was very small,
+    We own'd when it was eaten,
+  Being so little for us all
+    Did its fine flavour heighten.
+
+  The tear was in our parent's eye,
+    It seem'd quite out of season;
+  When we ask'd wherefore she did cry,
+    She thus explain'd the reason.
+
+  "The cause, my children, I may say,
+    Was joy, and not dejection;
+  The Peach, which made you all so gay,
+    Gave rise to this reflection:
+
+  "It's many a mother's lot to share,
+    Seven hungry children viewing,
+  A morsel of the coarsest fare,
+    As I this Peach was doing."
+
+
+CHUSING A NAME
+
+  I have got a new-born sister;
+  I was nigh the first that kiss'd her.
+  When the nursing woman brought her
+  To Papa, his infant daughter,
+  How Papa's dear eyes did glisten!--
+  She will shortly be to christen:
+  And Papa has made the offer,
+  I shall have the naming of her.
+
+  Now I wonder what would please her,
+  Charlotte, Julia, or Louisa.
+  Ann and Mary, they're too common;
+  Joan's too formal for a woman;
+  Jane's a prettier name beside;
+  But we had a Jane that died.
+  They would say, if 'twas Rebecca,
+  That she was a little Quaker,
+  Edith's pretty, but that looks
+  Better in old English books;
+  Ellen's left off long ago;
+  Blanche is out of fashion now.
+  None that I have nam'd as yet
+  Are so good as Margaret.
+  Emily is neat and fine.
+  What do you think of Caroline?
+  How I'm puzzled and perplext
+  What to chuse or think of next!
+  I am in a little fever.
+  Lest the name that I shall give her
+  Should disgrace her or defame her
+  I will leave Papa to name her.
+
+
+CRUMBS TO THE BIRDS
+
+  A bird appears a thoughtless thing,
+  He's ever living on the wing,
+  And keeps up such a carolling,
+  That little else to do but sing
+                    A man would guess had he.
+
+  No doubt he has his little cares,
+  And very hard he often fares,
+  The which so patiently he bears,
+  That, list'ning to those cheerful airs,
+                      Who knows but he may be
+
+  In want of his next meal of seeds?
+  I think for _that_ his sweet song pleads.
+  If so, his pretty art succeeds.
+  I'll scatter there among the weeds
+                    All the small crumbs I see.
+
+
+THE ROOK AND THE SPARROWS
+
+  A little boy with crumbs of bread
+  Many a hungry sparrow fed.
+  It was a child of little sense,
+  Who this kind bounty did dispense;
+  For suddenly it was withdrawn,
+  And all the birds were left forlorn,
+  In a hard time of frost and snow,
+  Not knowing where for food to go.
+  He would no longer give them bread,
+  Because he had observ'd (he said)
+  That sometimes to the window came
+  A great blackbird, a rook by name,
+  And took away a small bird's share.
+  So foolish Henry did not care
+  What became of the great rook,
+  That from the little sparrows took,
+  Now and then, as 'twere by stealth,
+  A part of their abundant wealth;
+  Nor ever more would feed his sparrows.
+  _Thus ignorance a kind heart narrows._
+  I wish I had been there; I would
+  Have told the child, rooks live by food
+  In the same way that sparrows do.
+  I also would have told him too,
+  Birds act by instinct, and ne'er can
+  Attain the rectitude of man.
+  Nay that even, when distress
+  Does on poor human nature press,
+  We need not be too strict in seeing
+  The failings of a fellow being.
+
+
+DISCONTENT AND QUARRELLING
+
+JANE
+
+Miss Lydia every day is drest
+Better than I am in my best
+       White cambric-muslin frock.
+I wish I had one made of clear
+Work'd lawn, or leno very dear.--
+       And then my heart is broke
+
+Almost to think how cheap my doll
+Was bought, when hers cost--yes, cost full
+       A pound, it did, my brother;
+Nor has she had it weeks quite five,
+Yet, 'tis as true as I'm alive,
+       She's soon to have another.
+
+ROBERT
+
+O mother, hear my sister Jane,
+How foolishly she does complain,
+       And teaze herself for nought.
+But 'tis the way of all her sex,
+Thus foolishly themselves to vex.
+       Envy's a female fault.
+
+JANE
+
+O brother Robert, say not so;
+It is not very long ago,
+       Ah! brother, you've forgot,
+When speaking of a boy you knew,
+Remember how you said that you
+       Envied his happy lot.
+
+ROBERT
+
+Let's see, what were the words I spoke?
+Why, may be I was half in joke--
+        May be I just might say--
+Besides that was not half so bad;
+For Jane, I only said he had
+       More time than I to play.
+
+JANE
+
+O _may be, may be_, very well:
+And may be, brother, I don't tell
+       Tales to mamma like you.
+
+MOTHER
+
+O cease your wrangling, cease, my dears;
+You would not wake a mother's fears
+       Thus, if you better knew.
+
+
+REPENTANCE AND RECONCILIATION
+
+JANE
+
+Mamma is displeased and looks very grave,
+  And I own, brother, I was to blame
+Just now when I told her I wanted to have,
+  Like Miss Lydia, a very fine _name_.
+'Twas foolish, for, Robert, Jane sounds very well,
+  When mamma says, "I love my good Jane."
+I've been lately so naughty, I hardly can tell
+  If she ever will say so again.
+
+ROBERT
+
+We are each of us foolish, and each of us young,
+  And often in fault and to blame.
+Jane, yesterday I was too free with my tongue,
+  I acknowledge it now to my shame.
+For a speech in my good mother's hearing I made,
+  Which reflected upon her whole sex;
+And now like you, Jenny, I am much afraid
+  That this might my dear mother vex.
+
+JANE
+
+But yet, brother Robert, 'twas not quite so bad
+  As that naughty reflection of mine,
+When I grumbled because Liddy Bellenger had
+  Dolls and dresses expensive and fine.
+For then 'twas of her, her own self, I complain'd;
+  Since mamma does provide all I have.
+
+MOTHER
+
+Your repentance, my children, I see is unfeign'd,
+  You are now my good Robert, and now my good Jane;
+And if you never will be naughty again,
+  Your fond mother will never look grave.
+
+
+NEATNESS IN APPAREL
+
+  In your garb and outward clothing
+    A reserved plainness use;
+  By their neatness more distinguish'd
+    Than the brightness of their hues.
+
+  All the colours in the rainbow
+    Serve to spread the peacock's train;
+  Half the lustre of his feathers
+    Would turn twenty coxcombs vain.
+
+  Yet the swan that swims in rivers,
+    Pleases the judicious sight;
+  Who, of brighter colours heedless,
+    Trusts alone to simple white.
+
+  Yet all other hues, compared
+    With his whiteness, show amiss;
+  And the peacock's coat of colours
+    Like a fool's coat looks by his.
+
+
+THE NEW-BORN INFANT
+
+  Whether beneath sweet beds of roses,
+  As foolish little Ann supposes,
+  The spirit of a babe reposes
+      Before it to the body come;
+  Or, as philosophy more wise
+  Thinks, it descendeth from the skies,--
+      We know the babe's now in the room.
+
+  And that is all which is quite clear,
+  Ev'n to philosophy, my dear.
+      The God that made us can alone
+  Reveal from whence a spirit's brought
+  Into young life, to light, and thought;
+      And this the wisest man must own.
+
+  We'll now talk of the babe's surprise,
+  When first he opens his new eyes,
+      And first receives delicious food.
+  Before the age of six or seven,
+  To mortal children is not given
+      Much reason; or I think he would
+
+  (And very naturally) wonder
+  What happy star he was born under,
+      That he should be the only care
+  Of the dear sweet-food-giving lady,
+  Who fondly calls him her own baby,
+      Her darling hope, her infant heir.
+
+
+MOTES IN THE SUN-BEAMS
+
+  The motes up and down in the sun
+    Ever restlessly moving we see;
+  Whereas the great mountains stand still,
+    Unless terrible earthquakes there be.
+
+  If these atoms that move up and down
+    Were as useful as restless they are,
+  Than a mountain I rather would be
+    A mote in the sun-beam so fair.
+
+
+THE BOY AND SNAKE
+
+  Henry was every morning fed
+  With a full mess of milk and bread.
+  One day the boy his breakfast took,
+  And eat it by a purling brook
+  Which through his mother's orchard ran.
+  From that time ever when he can
+  Escape his mother's eye, he there
+  Takes his food in th' open air.
+  Finding the child delight to eat
+  Abroad, and make the grass his seat,
+  His mother lets him have his way.
+  With free leave Henry every day
+  Thither repairs, until she heard
+  Him talking of a fine _grey bird_.
+  This pretty bird, he said, indeed,
+  Came every day with him to feed,
+  And it lov'd him, and lov'd his milk,
+  And it was smooth and soft like silk.
+  His mother thought she'd go and see
+  What sort of bird this same might be.
+  So the next morn she follows Harry,
+  And carefully she sees him carry
+  Through the long grass his heap'd-up mess.
+  What was her terror and distress,
+  When she saw the infant take
+  His bread and milk close to a snake!
+  Upon the grass he spreads his feast,
+  And sits down by his frightful guest,
+  Who had waited for the treat;
+  And now they both begin to eat.
+  Fond mother! shriek not, O beware
+  The least small noise, O have a care--
+  The least small noise that may be made,
+  The wily snake will be afraid--
+  If he hear the lightest sound,
+  He will inflict th' envenom'd wound.
+  She speaks not, moves not, scarce does breathe,
+  As she stands the trees beneath;
+  No sound she utters; and she soon
+  Sees the child lift up its spoon,
+  And tap the snake upon the head,
+  Fearless of harm; and then he said,
+  As speaking to familiar mate,
+  "Keep on your own side, do, Grey Pate:"
+  The snake then to the other side,
+  As one rebuked, seems to glide;
+  And now again advancing nigh,
+  Again she hears the infant cry,
+  Tapping the snake, "Keep further, do;
+  Mind, Grey Pate, what I say to you."
+  The danger's o'er--she sees the boy
+  (O what a change from fear to joy!)
+  Rise and bid the snake "good-bye;"
+  Says he, "Our breakfast's done, and I
+  Will come again to-morrow day:"
+  Then, lightly tripping, ran away.
+
+
+THE FIRST TOOTH
+
+SISTER
+
+  Through the house what busy joy,
+  Just because the infant boy
+  Has a tiny tooth to show.
+  I have got a double row,
+  All as white, and all as small;
+  Yet no one cares for mine at all.
+  He can say but half a word,
+  Yet that single sound's preferr'd
+  To all the words that I can say
+  In the longest summer day.
+  He cannot walk, yet if he put
+  With mimic motion out his foot,
+  As if he thought, he were advancing,
+  It's prized more than my best dancing.
+
+BROTHER
+
+  Sister, I know, you jesting are,
+  Yet O! of jealousy beware.
+  If the smallest seed should be
+  In your mind of jealousy,
+  It will spring, and it will shoot,
+  Till it bear the baneful fruit.
+  I remember you, my dear,
+  Young as is this infant here.
+  There was not a tooth of those
+  Your pretty even ivory rows,
+  But as anxiously was watched,
+  Till it burst its shell new hatched,
+  As if it a Phoenix were,
+  Or some other wonder rare.
+  So when you began to walk--
+  So when you began to talk--
+  As now, the same encomiums past.
+  'Tis not fitting this should last
+  Longer than our infant days;
+  A child is fed with milk and praise.
+
+
+TO A RIVER IN WHICH A CHILD WAS DROWNED
+
+(_Text of 1818_)
+
+  Smiling river, smiling river,
+    On thy bosom sun-beams play;
+  Though they're fleeting and retreating,
+    Thou hast more deceit than they.
+
+  In thy channel, in thy channel,
+    Choak'd with ooze and grav'lly stones,
+  Deep immersed and unhearsed,
+    Lies young Edward's corse: his bones
+
+  Ever whitening, ever whitening,
+    As thy waves against them dash;
+  What thy torrent, in the current,
+    Swallow'd, now it helps to wash.
+
+  As if senseless, as if senseless
+    Things had feeling in this case;
+  What so blindly, and unkindly,
+    It destroy'd, it now does grace.
+
+
+THE FIRST OF APRIL
+
+  "Tell me what is the reason you hang down your head;
+    From your blushes I plainly discern,
+  You have done something wrong. Ere you go up to bed,
+    I desire that the truth I may learn."
+
+  "O mamma, I have long'd to confess all the day
+    What an ill-natured thing I have done;
+  I persuaded myself it was only in play,
+    But such play I in future will shun.
+
+  "The least of the ladies that live at the school,
+    Her whose eyes are so pretty and blue,
+  Ah! would you believe it? an April fool
+    I have made her, and call'd her so too.
+
+  "Yet the words almost choak'd me; and, as I spoke low,
+    I have hopes that she might them not hear.
+  I had wrapt up some rubbish in paper, and so,
+    The instant the school-girls drew near,
+
+  "I presented it with a fine bow to the child,
+    And much her acceptance I press'd;
+  When she took it, and thank'd me, and gratefully smil'd,
+    I never felt half so distress'd.
+
+  "No doubt she concluded some sweetmeats were there,
+    For the paper was white and quite clean,
+  And folded up neatly, as if with great care.
+    O what a rude boy I have been!
+
+  "Ever since I've been thinking how vex'd she will be,
+    Ever since I've done nothing but grieve.
+  If a thousand young ladies a walking I see,
+    I will never another deceive."
+
+
+CLEANLINESS
+
+  Come my little Robert near--
+  Fie! what filthy hands are here--
+  Who that e'er could understand
+  The rare structure of a hand,
+  With its branching fingers fine,
+  Work itself of hands divine,
+  Strong, yet delicately knit,
+  For ten thousand uses fit,
+  Overlaid with so clear skin
+  You may see the blood within,
+  And the curious palm, disposed
+  In such lines, some have supposed
+  You may read the fortunes there
+  By the figures that appear--
+  Who this hand would chuse to cover
+  With a crust of dirt all over,
+  Till it look'd in hue and shape
+  Like the fore-foot of an Ape?
+  Man or boy that works or plays
+  In the fields or the highways
+  May, without offence or hurt,
+  From the soil contract a dirt,
+  Which the next clear spring or river
+  Washes out and out for ever--
+  But to cherish stains impure,
+  Soil deliberate to endure,
+  On the skin to fix a stain
+  Till it works into the grain,
+  Argues a degenerate mind,
+  Sordid, slothful, ill inclin'd,
+  Wanting in that self-respect
+  Which does virtue best protect.
+
+    All-endearing Cleanliness,
+  Virtue next to Godliness,
+  Easiest, cheapest, needful'st duty,
+  To the body health and beauty,
+  Who that's human would refuse it,
+  When a little water does it?
+
+
+THE LAME BROTHER
+
+  My parents sleep both in one grave;
+    My only friend's a brother.
+  The dearest things upon the earth
+    We are to one another.
+
+  A fine stout boy I knew him once,
+    With active form and limb;
+  Whene'er he leap'd, or jump'd, or ran,
+    O I was proud of him!
+
+  He leap'd too far, he got a hurt,
+    He now does limping go.--
+  When I think on his active days,
+    My heart is full of woe.
+
+  He leans on me, when we to school
+    Do every morning walk;
+  I cheer him on his weary way,
+    He loves to hear my talk:
+
+  The theme of which is mostly this,
+    What things he once could do.
+  He listens pleas'd--then sadly says,
+    "Sister, I lean on you."
+
+  Then I reply, "Indeed you're not
+    Scarce any weight at all.--
+  And let us now still younger years
+    To memory recall.
+
+  "Led by your little elder hand,
+    I learn'd to walk alone;
+  Careful you us'd to be of me,
+    My little brother John.
+
+  "How often, when my young feet tir'd,
+    You've carried me a mile!--
+  And still together we can sit,
+    And rest a little while.
+
+  "For our kind master never minds,
+    If we're the very last;
+  He bids us never tire ourselves
+    With walking on too fast."
+
+
+GOING INTO BREECHES
+
+  Joy to Philip, he this day
+  Has his long coats cast away,
+  And (the childish season gone)
+  Puts the manly breeches on.
+  Officer on gay parade,
+  Red-coat in his first cockade,
+  Bridegroom in his wedding trim,
+  Birthday beau surpassing him,
+  Never did with conscious gait
+  Strut about in half the state,
+  Or the pride (yet free from sin)
+  Of my little MANIKIN:
+  Never was there pride, or bliss,
+  Half so rational as his.
+  Sashes, frocks, to those that need 'em--
+  Philip's limbs have got their freedom--
+  He can run, or he can ride,
+  And do twenty things beside,
+  Which his petticoats forbad:
+  Is he not a happy lad?
+  Now he's under other banners,
+  He must leave his former manners;
+  Bid adieu to female games,
+  And forget their very names,
+  Puss in Corners, Hide and Seek,
+  Sports for girls and punies weak!
+  Baste the Bear he now may play at,
+  Leap-frog, Foot-ball, sport away at,
+  Show his skill and strength at Cricket,
+  Mark his distance, pitch his wicket,
+  Run about in winter's snow
+  Till his cheeks and fingers glow,
+  Climb a tree, or scale a wall,
+  Without any fear to fall.
+  If he get a hurt or bruise,
+  To complain he must refuse,
+  Though the anguish and the smart
+  Go unto his little heart,
+  He must have his courage ready,
+  Keep his voice and visage steady,
+  Brace his eye-balls stiff as drum,
+  That a tear may never come,
+  And his grief must only speak
+  From the colour in his cheek.
+  This and more he must endure,
+  Hero he in miniature!
+  This and more must now be done
+  Now the breeches are put on.
+
+
+NURSING
+
+  O hush, my little baby brother;
+    Sleep, my love, upon my knee.
+  What though, dear child, we've lost our mother;
+    That can never trouble thee.
+
+  You are but ten weeks old to-morrow;
+    What can you know of our loss?
+  The house is full enough of sorrow.
+    Little baby, don't be cross.
+
+  Peace, cry not so, my dearest love;
+    Hush, my baby-bird, lie still.--
+  He's quiet now, he does not move,
+    Fast asleep is little Will.
+
+  My only solace, only joy,
+    Since the sad day I lost my mother,
+  Is nursing her own Willy boy,
+    My little orphan brother.
+
+
+THE TEXT
+
+  One Sunday eve a grave old man,
+    Who had not been at church, did say,
+  "Eliza, tell me, if you can,
+    What text our Doctor took to-day?"
+
+  She hung her head, she blush'd for shame,
+    One single word she did not know,
+  Nor verse nor chapter she could name,
+    Her silent blushes told him so.
+
+  Again said he, "My little maid,
+    What in the sermon did you hear;
+  Come tell me that, for that may aid
+    Me to find out the text, my dear."
+
+  A tear stole down each blushing cheek,
+    She wish'd she better had attended;
+  She sobbing said, when she could speak,
+    She heard not till 'twas almost ended.
+
+  "Ah! little heedless one, why what
+    Could you be thinking on? 'tis clear
+  Some foolish fancies must have got
+    Possession of your head, my dear.
+
+  "What thoughts were they, Eliza, tell,
+    Nor seek from me the truth to smother."--
+  "O I remember very well,
+    I whisper'd something to my brother.
+
+  "I said, 'Be friends with me, dear Will;'
+    We quarrell'd, Sir, at the church door,--
+  Though he cried, 'Hush, don't speak, be still,'
+    Yet I repeated these words o'er
+
+  "Sev'n or eight times, I have no doubt.
+    But here comes William, and if he
+  The good things he has heard about
+    Forgets too, Sir, the fault's in me."
+
+  "No, Sir," said William, "though perplext
+    And much disturbed by my sister,
+  I in this matter of the text,
+    I thank my memory, can assist her.
+
+  "I have, and pride myself on having,
+    A more retentive head than she."--
+  Then gracefully his right hand waving,
+    He with no little vanity
+
+  Recited gospel, chapter, verse--
+    I should be loth to spoil in metre
+  All the good words he did rehearse,
+    As spoken by our Lord to Peter.
+
+  But surely never words from heaven
+    Of peace and love more full descended;
+  That we should seventy times seven
+    Forgive our brother that offended.
+
+  In every point of view he plac'd it,
+    As he the Doctor's self had been,
+  With emphasis and action grac'd it:
+    But from his self-conceit 'twas seen
+
+  Who had brought home the words, and who had
+    A little on the meaning thought;
+  Eliza now the old man knew had
+    Learn'd that which William never caught.
+
+  Without impeaching William's merit,
+    His head but served him for the letter,
+  Hers miss'd the words, but kept the spirit;
+    Her memory to her heart was debtor.
+
+
+THE END OF MAY
+
+  "Our Governess is not in school,
+    So we may talk a bit;
+  Sit down upon this little stool,
+    Come, little Mary, sit:
+
+  "And, my dear play-mate, tell me why
+    In dismal black you're drest?
+  Why does the tear stand in your eye?
+    With sobs why heaves your breast?
+
+  "When we're in grief, it gives relief
+    Our sorrows to impart;
+  When you've told why, my dear, you cry,
+    'Twill ease your little heart."
+
+  "O, it is trouble very bad
+    Which causes me to weep;
+  All last night long we were so sad,
+    Not one of us could sleep.
+
+  "Beyond the seas my father went,
+    'Twas very long ago;
+  And he last week a letter sent
+    (I told you so, you know)
+
+  "That he was safe in Portsmouth bay,
+    And we should see him soon,
+  Either the latter end of May,
+    Or by the first of June.
+
+  "The end of May was yesterday,
+    We all expected him;
+  And in our best clothes we were drest,
+    Susan, and I, and Jim.
+
+  "O how my poor dear mother smil'd,
+    And clapt her hands for joy;
+  She said to me, 'Come here, my child,
+    And Susan, and my boy.
+
+  "'Come all, and let us think,' said she,
+    'What we can do to please
+  Your father, for to-day will he
+    Come home from off the seas.
+
+  "'That you have won, my dear young son,
+    A prize at school, we'll tell,
+  Because you can, my little man,
+    In writing all excel;
+
+  "'And you have made a poem, nearly
+    All of your own invention:
+  Will not your father love you dearly,
+    When this to him I mention?
+
+  "'Your sister Mary, she can say
+    Your poetry by heart;
+  And to repeat your verses may
+    Be little Mary's part,
+
+  "'Susan, for you, I'll say you do
+    Your needlework with care,
+  And stitch so true the wristbands new,
+    Dear father's soon to wear!'
+
+  "'O hark!' said James; 'I hear one speak;
+    'Tis like a seaman's voice.'--
+  Our mother gave a joyful shriek;
+    How did we all rejoice!
+
+  "'My husband's come!' 'My father's here!
+    But O, alas, it was not so;
+      It was not as we said:
+  A stranger seaman did appear,
+  On his rough cheek there stood a tear,
+    For he brought to us a tale of woe,
+      Our father dear was dead."
+
+
+FEIGNED COURAGE
+
+  Horatio, of ideal courage vain,
+  Was flourishing in air his father's cane,
+  And, as the fumes of valour swell'd his pate,
+  Now thought himself _this_ Hero, and now _that_:
+  "And now," he cried, "I will Achilles be;
+  My sword I brandish; see, the Trojans flee.
+  Now I'll be Hector, when his angry blade
+  A lane through heaps of slaughter'd Grecians made!
+  And now by deeds still braver I'll evince,
+  I am no less than Edward the Black Prince.--
+  Give way, ye coward French:--" as thus he spoke,
+  And aim'd in fancy a sufficient stroke
+  To fix the fate of Cressy or Poictiers;
+  (The Muse relates the Hero's fate with tears)
+  He struck his milk-white hand against a nail,
+  Sees his own blood, and feels his courage fail.
+  Ah! where is now that boasted valour flown,
+  That in the tented field so late was shown!
+  Achilles weeps, Great Hector hangs the head,
+  And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed.
+
+
+THE BROKEN DOLL
+
+  An infant is a selfish sprite;
+  But what of that? the sweet delight
+  Which from participation springs,
+  Is quite unknown to these young things.
+  We elder children then will smile
+  At our dear little John awhile,
+  And bear with him, until he see
+  There is a sweet felicity
+  In pleasing more than only one
+  Dear little craving selfish John.
+
+    He laughs, and thinks it a fine joke,
+  That he our new wax doll has broke.
+  Anger will never teach him better;
+  We will the spirit and the letter
+  Of courtesy to him display,
+  By taking in a friendly way
+  These baby frolics, till he learn
+  True sport from mischief to discern.
+
+    Reproof a parent's province is;
+  A sister's discipline is this,
+  By studied kindness to effect
+  A little brother's young respect.
+  What is a doll? a fragile toy.
+  What is its loss? if the dear boy,
+  Who half perceives he's done amiss,
+  Retain impression of the kiss
+  That follow'd instant on his cheek;
+  If the kind loving words we speak
+  Of "Never mind it," "We forgive,"
+  If these in his short memory live
+  Only perchance for half a day--
+  Who minds a doll--if that should lay
+  The first impression in his mind
+  That sisters are to brothers kind?
+  For thus the broken doll may prove
+  Foundation to fraternal love.
+
+
+THE DUTY OF A BROTHER
+
+  Why on your sister do you look,
+    Octavius, with an eye of scorn,
+  As scarce her presence you could brook?--
+    Under one roof you both were born.
+
+  Why, when she gently proffers speech,
+    Do you ungently turn your head?
+  Since the same sire gave life to each;
+    With the same milk ye both were fed.
+
+  Such treatment to a female, though
+    A perfect stranger she might be,
+  From you would most unmanly show;
+    In you to her 'tis worse to see.
+
+  When any ill-bred boys offend her,
+    Showing their manhood by their sneers,
+  It is your business to defend her
+    'Gainst their united taunts and jeers.
+
+  And not to join the illiberal crew
+    In their contempt of female merit;
+  What's bad enough in them, from you
+    Is want of goodness, want of spirit.
+
+  What if your rougher out-door sports
+    Her less robustious spirits daunt;
+  And if she join not the resorts,
+    Where you and your wild playmates haunt:
+
+  Her milder province is at home;
+    When your diversions have an end,
+  When over-toil'd from play you come,
+    You'll find in her an in-doors friend.
+
+  Leave not your sister to another;
+    As long as both of you reside
+  In the same house, who but her brother
+    Should point her books, her studies guide?
+
+  If Nature, who allots our cup,
+    Than her has made you stronger, wiser;
+  It is that you, as you grow up,
+    Should be her champion, her adviser.
+
+  It is the law that Hand intends,
+    Which fram'd diversity of sex;
+  The man the woman still defends,
+    The manly boy the girl protects.
+
+
+WASPS IN A GARDEN
+
+  The wall-trees are laden with fruit;
+    The grape, and the plum, and the pear,
+  The peach, and the nect'rine, to suit
+    Ev'ry taste in abundance, are there.
+
+  Yet all are not welcome to taste
+    These kind bounties of nature; for one
+  From her open-spread table must haste,
+    To make room for a more favour'd son:
+
+  As that wasp will soon sadly perceive,
+    Who has feasted awhile on a plum;
+  And, his thirst thinking now to relieve,
+    For a sweet liquid draught he is come.
+
+  He peeps in the narrow-mouth'd glass,
+    Which depends from a branch of the tree;
+  He ventures to creep down,--alas!
+    To be drown'd in that delicate sea.
+
+  "Ah say," my dear friend, "is it right,
+    These glass bottles are hung upon trees:
+  'Midst a scene of inviting delight,
+    Should we find such mementoes as these?"
+
+  "From such sights," said my friend, "we may draw
+    A lesson, for look at that bee;
+  Compar'd with the wasp which you saw,
+    He will teach us what we ought to be.
+
+  "He in safety industriously plies
+    His sweet honest work all the day,
+  Then home with his earnings he flies;
+    Nor in thieving his time wastes away."--
+
+  "O hush, nor with _fables_ deceive,"
+    I replied; "which, though pretty, can ne'er
+  Make me cease for that insect to grieve,
+    Who in agony still does appear.
+
+  "If a _simile_ ever you need,
+    You are welcome to make a wasp do;
+  But you ne'er should mix fiction indeed
+    With things that are serious and true."
+
+
+WHAT IS FANCY?
+
+  SISTER
+
+  I am to write three lines, and you
+  Three others that will rhyme.
+  There--now I've done my task.
+
+  BROTHER
+
+  Three stupid lines as e'er I knew.
+  When you've the pen next time,
+  Some Question of me ask.
+
+  SISTER
+
+  Then tell me, brother, and pray mind,
+  Brother, you tell me true:
+  What sort of thing is _fancy_?
+
+  BROTHER
+
+  By all that I can ever find,
+  'Tis something that is very new,
+  And what no dunces _can see_.
+
+  SISTER
+
+  That is not half the way to tell
+  What _fancy_ is about;
+  So pray now tell me more.
+
+  BROTHER
+
+  Sister, I think 'twere quite as well
+  That you should find it out;
+  So think the matter o'er.
+
+  SISTER
+
+  It's what comes in our heads when we
+  Play at "Let's make believe,"
+  And when we play at "Guessing."
+
+  BROTHER
+
+  And I have heard it said to be
+  A talent often makes us grieve,
+  And sometimes proves a blessing.
+
+
+ANGER
+
+  Anger in its time and place
+  May assume a kind of grace.
+  It must have some reason in it,
+  And not last beyond a minute.
+  If to further lengths it go,
+  It does into malice grow.
+  'Tis the difference that we see
+  'Twixt the Serpent and the Bee.
+  If the latter you provoke,
+  It inflicts a hasty stroke,
+  Puts you to some little pain,
+  But it _never stings again_.
+  Close in tufted bush or brake
+  Lurks the poison-swelled snake,
+  Nursing up his cherish'd wrath.
+  In the purlieus of his path,
+  In the cold, or in the warm,
+  Mean him good, or mean him harm,
+  Whensoever fate may bring you,
+  The vile snake will _always sting you_.
+
+
+BLINDNESS
+
+  In a stage-coach, where late I chanc'd to be,
+    A little quiet girl my notice caught;
+  I saw she look'd at nothing by the way,
+    Her mind seem'd busy on some childish thought.
+
+  I with an old man's courtesy address'd
+    The child, and call'd her pretty dark-eyed maid
+  And bid her turn those pretty eyes and see
+    The wide extended prospect. "Sir," she said,
+
+  "I cannot see the prospect, I am blind."
+    Never did tongue of child utter a sound
+  So mournful, as her words fell on my ear.
+    Her mother then related how she found
+
+  Her child was sightless. On a fine bright day
+    She saw her lay her needlework aside,
+  And, as on such occasions mothers will,
+    For leaving off her work began to chide.
+
+  "I'll do it when 'tis day-light, if you please;
+    I cannot work, Mamma, now it is night."
+  The sun shone bright upon her when she spoke,
+    And yet her eyes receiv'd no ray of light.
+
+
+THE MIMIC HARLEQUIN
+
+  "I'll _make believe_, and fancy something strange:
+  I will suppose I have the power to change
+  And make all things unlike to what they were,
+  To jump through windows and fly through the air,
+  And quite confound all places and all times,
+  Like Harlequins we see in Pantomimes.
+  These thread-papers my wooden sword must be,
+  Nothing more like one I at present see.
+  And now all round this drawing-room I'll range
+  And every thing I look at I will change.
+  Here's Mopsa, our old cat, shall be a bird;
+  To a Poll Parrot she is now transferr'd.
+  Here's Mamma's work-bag, now I will engage
+  To whisk this little bag into a cage;
+  And now, my pretty Parrot, get you in it,
+  Another change I'll shew you in a minute."
+
+  "O fie, you naughty child, what have you done?
+  There never was so mischievous a son.
+  You've put the cat among my work, and torn
+  A fine lac'd cap that I but once have worn."
+
+
+WRITTEN IN THE FIRST LEAF OF A CHILD'S MEMORANDUM-BOOK
+
+  My neat and pretty book, when I thy small lines see,
+  They seem for any use to be unfit for me.
+  My writing, all misshaped, uneven as my mind,
+  Within this narrow space can hardly be confin'd.
+  Yet I will strive to make my hand less aukward look;
+  I would not willingly disgrace thee, my neat book!
+  The finest pens I'll use, and wond'rous pains I'll take,
+  And I these perfect lines my monitors will make.
+  And every day I will set down in order due,
+  How that day wasted is; and should there be a few
+  At the year's end that shew more goodly to the sight,
+  If haply here I find some days not wasted quite,
+  If a small portion of them I have pass'd aright,
+  Then shall I think the year not wholly was misspent,
+  And that my Diary has been by some good Angel sent.
+
+
+MEMORY
+
+  "For gold could Memory be bought,
+    What treasures would she not be worth!
+  If from afar she could be brought,
+    I'd travel for her through the earth!"
+
+  This exclamation once was made
+    By one who had obtain'd the name
+  Of young forgetful Adelaide:
+    And while she spoke, lo! Memory came.
+
+  If Memory indeed it were,
+    Or such it only feign'd to be--
+  A female figure came to her,
+    Who said, "My name is Memory:
+
+  "Gold purchases in me no share,
+    Nor do I dwell in distant land;
+  Study, and thought, and watchful care,
+    In every place may me command.
+
+  "I am not lightly to be won;
+    A visit only now I make:
+  And much must by yourself be done,
+    Ere me you for an inmate take.
+
+  "The only substitute for me
+    Was ever found, is call'd a pen:
+  The frequent use of that will be
+    The way to make me come again."
+
+
+THE REPROOF
+
+  Mamma heard me with scorn and pride
+  A wretched beggar boy deride.
+  "Do you not know," said I, "how mean
+  It is to be thus begging seen?
+  If for a week I were not fed,
+  I'm sure I would not beg my bread."
+  And then away she saw me stalk
+  With a most self-important walk.
+  But meeting her upon the stairs,
+  All these my consequential airs
+  Were chang'd to an entreating look.
+  "Give me," said I, "the Pocket Book,
+  Mamma, you promis'd I should have."
+  The Pocket Book to me she gave;
+  After reproof and counsel sage,
+  She bade me write in the first page
+  This naughty action all in rhyme;
+  No food to have until the time,
+  In writing fair and neatly worded,
+  The unfeeling fact I had recorded.
+  Slow I compose, and slow I write;
+  And now I feel keen hunger bite.
+  My mother's pardon I entreat,
+  And beg she'll give me food to eat.
+  Dry bread would be received with joy
+  By her repentant Beggar Boy.
+
+
+THE TWO BEES
+
+  But a few words could William say,
+    And those few could not speak plain.
+  Yet thought he was a man one day;
+    Never saw I a boy so vain.
+
+  From what could vanity proceed
+    In such a little lisping lad?
+  Or was it vanity indeed?
+    Or was he only very glad?
+
+  For he without his maid may go
+    To the heath with elder boys,
+  And pluck ripe berries where they grow:
+    Well may William then rejoice.
+
+  Be careful of your little charge;
+    Elder boys, let him not rove;
+  The heath is wide, the heath is large,
+    From your sight he must not move.
+
+  But rove he did: they had not been
+    One short hour the heath upon,
+  When he was no where to be seen;
+    "Where," said they, "is William gone?"
+
+  Mind not the elder boys' distress;
+    Let them run, and let them fly.
+  Their own neglect and giddiness
+    They are justly suffering by.
+
+  William his little basket fill'd
+    With his berries ripe and red;
+  Then, naughty boy, two bees he kill'd,
+    Under foot he stamp'd them dead.
+
+  William had cours'd them o'er the heath,
+    After them his steps did wander;
+  When he was nearly out of breath,
+    The last bee his foot was under.
+
+  A cruel triumph, which did not
+    Last but for a moment's space,
+  For now he finds that he has got
+    Out of sight of every face.
+
+  What are the berries now to him?
+    What the bees which he hath slain?
+  Fear now possesses every limb,
+    He cannot trace his steps again.
+
+  The poor bees William had affrighted
+    In more terror did not haste,
+  Than he from bush to bush, benighted
+    And alone amid the waste.
+
+  Late in the night the child was found:
+    He who these two bees had crush'd
+  Was lying on the cold damp ground,
+    Sleep had then his sorrows hush'd.
+
+  A fever follow'd from the fright,
+    And from sleeping in the dew;
+  He many a day and many a night
+    Suffer'd ere he better grew.
+
+  His aching limbs while sick he lay
+    Made him learn the crush'd bees' pain;
+  Oft would he to his mother say,
+    "I ne'er will kill a bee again."
+
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM SCHOOL AND TO SCHOOL
+
+  O what a joyous joyous day
+    Is that on which we come
+  At the recess from school away,
+    Each lad to his own home!
+
+  What though the coach is crammed full,
+    The weather very warm;
+  Think you a boy of us is dull,
+    Or feels the slightest harm?
+
+  The dust and sun is life and fun;
+    The hot and sultry weather
+  A higher zest gives every breast,
+    Thus jumbled all together.
+
+  Sometimes we laugh aloud aloud,
+    Sometimes huzzah, huzzah.
+  Who is so buoyant, free, and proud,
+    As we home-travellers are?
+
+  But sad, but sad is every lad
+    That day on which we come,
+  That last last day on which away
+    We all come from our home.
+
+  The coach too full is found to be:
+    Why is it crammed thus?
+  Now every one can plainly see
+    There's not half room for us.
+
+  Soon we exclaim, O shame, O shame,
+    This hot and sultry weather,
+  Who but our master is to blame,
+    Who pack'd us thus together!
+
+  Now dust and sun does every one
+    Most terribly annoy;
+  Complaints begun, soon every one
+    Elbows his neighbour boy.
+
+  Not now the joyous laugh goes round,
+    We shout not now huzzah;
+  A sadder group may not be found
+    Than we returning are.
+
+
+THE ORANGE
+
+  The month was June, the day was hot,
+  And Philip had an orange got.
+  The fruit was fragrant, tempting, bright,
+  Refreshing to the smell and sight;
+  Not of that puny size which calls
+  Poor customers to common stalls,
+  But large and massy, full of juice,
+  As any Lima can produce.
+  The liquor would, if squeezed out,
+  Have fill'd a tumbler thereabout--
+
+    The happy boy, with greedy eyes,
+  Surveys and re-surveys his prize.
+  He turns it round, and longs to drain,
+  And with the juice his lips to stain.
+  His throat and lips were parch'd with heat;
+  The orange seem'd to cry, _Come eat_.
+  He from his pocket draws a knife--
+  When in his thoughts there rose a strife,
+  Which folks experience when they wish,
+  Yet scruple to begin a dish,
+  And by their hesitation own
+  It is too good to eat alone.
+  But appetite o'er indecision
+  Prevails, and Philip makes incision.
+  The melting fruit in quarters came--
+  Just then there passed by a dame--
+  One of the poorer sort she seem'd,
+  As by her garb you would have deem'd--
+  Who in her toil-worn arms did hold
+  A sickly infant ten months old;
+  That from a fever, caught in spring,
+  Was slowly then recovering.
+  The child, attracted by the view
+  Of that fair orange, feebly threw
+  A languid look--perhaps the smell
+  Convinc'd it that there sure must dwell
+  A corresponding sweetness there,
+  Where lodg'd a scent so good and rare--
+  Perhaps the smell the fruit did give
+  Felt healing and restorative--
+  For never had the child been grac'd
+  To know such dainties by their taste.
+
+    When Philip saw the infant crave,
+  He straitway to the mother gave
+  His quarter'd orange; nor would stay
+  To hear her thanks, but tript away.
+  Then to the next clear spring he ran
+  To quench his drought, a happy man!
+
+
+THE YOUNG LETTER-WRITER
+
+  _Dear Sir, Dear Madam_, or _Dear Friend_,
+    With ease are written at the top;
+  When those two happy words are penn'd,
+    A youthful writer oft will stop,
+
+  And bite his pen, and lift his eyes,
+    As if he thinks to find in air
+  The wish'd-for following words, or tries
+    To fix his thoughts by fixed stare.
+
+  But haply all in vain--the next
+    Two words may be so long before
+  They'll come, the writer, sore perplext,
+    Gives in despair the matter o'er;
+
+  And when maturer age he sees
+    With ready pen so swift inditing,
+  With envy he beholds the ease
+    Of long-accustom'd letter-writing.
+
+  Courage, young friend; the time may be,
+    When you attain maturer age,
+  Some young as you are now may see
+    You with like ease glide down a page.
+
+  Ev'n then when you, to years a debtor,
+    In varied phrase your meanings wrap,
+  The welcom'st words in all your letter
+    May be those two kind words at top.
+
+
+THE THREE FRIENDS
+
+(_Text of 1818_)
+
+  Three young maids in friendship met;
+  Mary, Martha, Margaret.
+  Margaret was tall and fair,
+  Martha shorter by a hair;
+  If the first excell'd in feature,
+  Th' other's grace and ease were greater;
+  Mary, though to rival loth,
+  In their best gifts equall'd both.
+  They a due proportion kept;
+  Martha mourn'd if Margaret wept;
+  Margaret joy'd when any good
+  She of Martha understood;
+  And in sympathy for either
+  Mary was outdone by neither.
+  Thus far, for a happy space,
+  All three ran an even race,
+  A most constant friendship proving,
+  Equally belov'd and loving;
+  All their wishes, joys, the same;
+  Sisters only not in name.
+
+    Fortune upon each one smil'd,
+  As upon a fav'rite child;
+  Well to do and well to see
+  Were the parents of all three;
+  Till on Martha's father crosses
+  Brought a flood of worldly losses,
+  And his fortunes rich and great
+  Chang'd at once to low estate;
+  Under which o'erwhelming blow
+  Martha's mother was laid low;
+  She a hapless orphan left,
+  Of maternal care bereft,
+  Trouble following trouble fast,
+  Lay in a sick bed at last.
+
+    In the depth of her affliction
+  Martha now receiv'd conviction,
+  That a true and faithful friend
+  Can the surest comfort lend.
+  Night and day, with friendship tried,
+  Ever constant by her side
+  Was her gentle Mary found,
+  With a love that knew no bound;
+  And the solace she imparted
+  Sav'd her dying' broken-hearted.
+
+    In this scene of earthly things
+  Not one good unmixed springs.
+  That which had to Martha proved
+  A sweet consolation, moved
+  Different feelings of regret
+  In the mind of Margaret.
+  She, whose love was not less dear,
+  Nor affection less sincere
+  To her friend, was, by occasion
+  Of more distant habitation,
+  Fewer visits forc'd to pay her,
+  When no other cause did stay her;
+  And her Mary living nearer,
+  Margaret began to fear her,
+  Lest her visits day by day
+  Martha's heart should steal away.
+  That whole heart she ill could spare her,
+  Where till now she'd been a sharer.
+  From this cause with grief she pined,
+  Till at length her health declined.
+  All her chearful spirits flew,
+  Fast as Martha gather'd new;
+  And her sickness waxed sore,
+  Just when Martha felt no more.
+
+  Mary, who had quick suspicion
+  Of her alter'd friend's condition,
+  Seeing Martha's convalescence
+  Less demanded now her presence,
+  With a goodness, built on reason,
+  Chang'd her measures with the season;
+  Turn'd her steps from Martha's door,
+  Went where she was wanted more;
+  All her care and thoughts were set
+  Now to tend on Margaret.
+  Mary living 'twixt the two,
+  From her home could oft'ner go,
+  Either of her friends to see,
+  Than they could together be.
+
+    Truth explain'd is to suspicion
+  Evermore the best physician.
+  Soon her visits had the effect;
+  All that Margaret did suspect,
+  From her fancy vanish'd clean;
+  She was soon what she had been,
+  And the colour she did lack
+  To her faded cheek came back.
+  Wounds which love had made her feel,
+  Love alone had power to heal.
+
+    Martha, who the frequent visit
+  Now had lost, and sore did miss it,
+  With impatience waxed cross,
+  Counted Margaret's gain her loss:
+  All that Mary did confer
+  On her friend, thought due to her.
+  In her girlish bosom rise
+  Little foolish jealousies,
+  Which into such rancour wrought,
+  She one day for Margaret sought;
+  Finding her by chance alone,
+  She began, with reasons shown,
+  To insinuate a fear
+  Whether Mary was sincere;
+  Wish'd that Margaret would take heed
+  Whence her actions did proceed.
+  For herself, she'd long been minded
+  Not with outsides to be blinded;
+  All that pity and compassion,
+  She believ'd was affectation;
+  In her heart she doubted whether
+  Mary car'd a pin for either.
+  She could keep whole weeks at distance,
+  And not know of their existence,
+  While all things remain'd the same;
+  But, when some misfortune came,
+  Then she made a great parade
+  Of her sympathy and aid,--
+  Not that she did really grieve,
+  It was only _make-believe_,
+  And she car'd for nothing, so
+  She might her fine feelings shew,
+  And get credit, on her part,
+  For a soft and tender heart.
+
+    With such speeches, smoothly made,
+  She found methods to persuade
+  Margaret (who, being sore
+  From the doubts she'd felt before,
+  Was prepared for mistrust)
+  To believe her reasons just;
+  Quite destroy'd that comfort glad,
+  Which in Mary late she had;
+  Made her, in experience' spite,
+  Think her friend a hypocrite,
+  And resolve, with cruel scoff,
+  To renounce and cast her off.
+
+    See how good turns are rewarded!
+  She of both is now discarded,
+  Who to both had been so late
+  Their support in low estate,
+  All their comfort, and their stay--
+  Now of both is cast away.
+  But the league her presence cherish'd,
+  Losing its best prop, soon perish'd;
+  She, that was a link to either,
+  To keep them and it together,
+  Being gone, the two (no wonder)
+  That were left, soon fell asunder;--
+  Some civilities were kept,
+  But the heart of friendship slept;
+  Love with hollow forms was fed,
+  But the life of love lay dead:--
+  A cold intercourse they held
+  After Mary was expell'd.
+
+    Two long years did intervene
+  Since they'd either of them seen,
+  Or, by letter, any word
+  Of their old companion heard,--
+  When, upon a day, once walking,
+  Of indifferent matters talking,
+  They a female figure met;--
+  Martha said to Margaret,
+  "That young maid in face does carry
+  A resemblance strong of Mary."
+  Margaret, at nearer sight,
+  Own'd her observation right:
+  But they did not far proceed
+  Ere they knew 'twas she indeed.
+  She--but ah! how chang'd they view her
+  From that person which they knew her!
+  Her fine face disease had scarr'd,
+  And its matchless beauty marr'd:--
+  But enough was left to trace
+  Mary's sweetness--Mary's grace.
+  When her eye did first behold them,
+  How they blush'd!--but, when she told them
+  How on a sick bed she lay
+  Months, while they had kept away,
+  And had no inquiries made
+  If she were alive or dead;--
+  How, for want of a true friend,
+  She was brought near to her end,
+  And was like so to have died,
+  With no friend at her bed-side;--
+  How the constant irritation,
+  Caus'd by fruitless expectation
+  Of their coming, had extended
+  The illness, when she might have mended,--
+  Then, O then, how did reflection
+  Come on them with recollection!
+  All that she had done for them,
+  How it did their fault condemn!
+
+    But sweet Mary, still the same,
+  Kindly eas'd them of their shame;
+  Spoke to them with accents bland,
+  Took them friendly by the hand;
+  Bound them both with promise fast,
+  Not to speak of troubles past;
+  Made them on the spot declare
+  A new league of friendship there;
+  Which, without a word of strife,
+  Lasted thenceforth long as life.
+  Martha now and Margaret
+  Strove who most should pay the debt
+  Which they ow'd her, nor did vary
+  Ever after from their Mary.
+
+
+ON THE LORD'S PRAYER
+
+  I have taught your young lips the good words to say over,
+    Which form the petition we call the Lord's Pray'r,
+  And now let me help my dear child to discover
+    The meaning of all the good words that are there.
+  "Our Father," the same appellation is given
+    To a parent on earth, and the parent of all--
+  O gracious permission, the God that's in heaven
+    Allows his poor creatures him Father to call.
+
+  To "hallow his name," is to think with devotion
+    Of it, and with reverence mention the same;
+  Though you are so young, you should strive for some notion
+    Of the awe we should feel at the Holy One's name.
+
+  His "will done on earth, as it is done in heaven,"
+    Is a wish and a hope we are suffer'd to breathe,
+  That such grace and favour to us may be given,
+    Like good angels on high we may live here beneath.
+
+  "Our daily bread give us," your young apprehension
+    May well understand is to pray for our food;
+  Although we ask bread, and no other thing mention,
+    God's bounty gives all things sufficient and good.
+
+  You pray that your "trespasses may be forgiven,
+    As you forgive those that are done unto you;"
+  Before this you say to the God that's in heaven,
+    Consider the words which you speak. Are they true?
+
+  If any one has in the past time offended
+    Us angry creatures who soon take offence,
+  These words in the prayer are surely intended
+    To soften our minds, and expel wrath from thence.
+
+  We pray that "temptations may never assail us,"
+    And "deliverance beg from all evil" we find;
+  But we never can hope that our pray'r will avail us,
+    If we strive not to banish ill thoughts from our mind.
+
+  "For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
+    For ever and ever," these titles are meant
+  To express God's dominion and majesty o'er ye:
+    And "Amen" to the sense of the whole gives assent.
+
+
+"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN, AND FORBID THEM NOT, TO COME UNTO ME"
+
+  To Jesus our Saviour some parents presented
+    Their children--what fears and what hopes they must feel!
+  When this the disciples would fain have prevented,
+    Our Saviour reprov'd their unseas'nable zeal.
+
+  Not only free leave to come to him was given,
+    But "Of such" were the blessed words Christ our Lord spake,
+  "Of such is composed the kingdom of heaven:"
+    The disciples, abashed, perceiv'd their mistake.
+
+  With joy then the parents their children brought nigher,
+    And earnestly begg'd that his hands he would lay
+  On their heads; and they made a petition still higher,
+    That he for a blessing upon them would pray.
+
+  O happy young children, thus brought to adore him,
+    To kneel at his feet, and look up in his face;
+  No doubt now in heaven they still are before him,
+    Children still of his love, and enjoying his grace.
+
+  For being so blest as to come to our Saviour,
+    How deep in their innocent hearts it must sink!
+  'Twas a visit divine; a most holy behaviour
+    Must flow from that spring of which then they did drink.
+
+
+THE MAGPYE'S NEST OR A LESSON OF DOCILITY
+
+A FABLE
+
+  When the arts in their infancy were,
+    In a fable of old 'tis exprest,
+  A wise Magpye constructed that rare
+    Little house for young birds, call'd a nest.
+
+  This was talk'd of the whole country round,
+    You might hear it on every bough sung,
+  "Now no longer upon the rough ground
+    Will fond mothers brood over their young.
+
+  "For the Magpye with exquisite skill
+    Has invented a moss-cover'd cell,
+  Within which a whole family will
+    In the utmost security dwell."
+
+  To her mate did each female bird say,
+    "Let us fly to the Magpye, my dear;
+  If she will but teach us the way,
+    A nest we will build us up here.
+
+  "It's a thing that's close arch'd over head,
+    With a hole made to creep out and in;
+  We, my bird, might make just such a bed,
+    If we only knew how to begin."
+
+  To the Magpye soon every bird went,
+    And in modest terms made their request,
+  That she would be pleas'd to consent
+    To teach them to build up a nest.
+
+  She replied, "I will shew you the way,
+    So observe every thing that I do.
+  First two sticks cross each other I lay--"
+    "To be sure," said the Crow; "why, I knew,
+
+  "It must be begun with two sticks,
+    And I thought that they crossed should be."
+  Said the Pye, "Then some straw and moss mix,
+    In the way you now see done by me."
+
+  "O yes, certainly," said the Jack Daw,
+    "That must follow of course, I have thought;
+  Though I never before building saw,
+    I guess'd that without being taught."
+
+  "More moss, straw, and feathers, I place,
+    In this manner," continued the Pye.
+  "Yes, no doubt, Madam, that is the case;
+    Though no builder myself, even I,"
+
+  Said the Starling, "conjectur'd 'twas so;
+    It must of necessity follow:
+  For more moss, straw, and feathers, I know,
+    It requires, to be soft, round, and hollow."
+
+  Whatever she taught them beside,
+    In his turn every bird of them said,
+  Though the nest-making art he ne'er tried,
+    He had just such a thought in his head.
+
+  Still the Pye went on shewing her art,
+    Till a nest she had built up half way;
+  She no more of her skill would impart,
+    But in anger went flutt'ring away.
+
+  And this speech in their hearing she made,
+    As she perched o'er their heads on a tree,
+  "If ye all were well skill'd in my trade,
+    Pray, why came ye to learn it of me?"--
+
+  When a scholar is willing to learn,
+    He with silent submission should hear.
+  Too late they their folly discern;
+    The effect to this day does appear:
+
+  For whenever a Pye's nest you see,
+    Her charming warm canopy view,
+  All birds' nests but hers seem to be
+    A Magpye's nest just cut in two.
+
+
+THE BOY AND THE SKY-LARK
+
+A FABLE
+
+  "A wicked action fear to do,
+  When you are by yourselves; for though
+    You think you can conceal it,
+  A little bird that's in the air
+  The hidden trespass shall declare,
+    And openly reveal it."
+
+  Richard this saying oft had heard,
+  Until the sight of any bird
+    Would set his heart a quaking;
+  He saw a host of winged spies
+  For ever o'er him in the skies,
+    Note of his actions taking.
+
+  This pious precept, while it stood
+  In his remembrance, kept him good
+    When nobody was by him;
+  For though no human eye was near,
+  Yet Richard still did wisely fear
+    The little bird should spy him.
+
+  But best resolves will sometimes sleep;
+  Poor frailty will not always keep
+    From that which is forbidden;
+  And Richard one day, left alone,
+  Laid hands on something not his own,
+    And hop'd the theft was hidden.
+
+  His conscience slept a day or two,
+  As it is very apt to do
+    When we with pain suppress it;
+  And though at times a slight remorse
+  Would raise a pang, it had not force
+    To make him yet confess it.
+
+  When on a day, as he abroad
+  Walk'd by his mother, in their road
+    He heard a sky-lark singing;
+  Smit with the sound, a flood of tears
+  Proclaim'd the superstitious fears
+    His inmost bosom wringing.
+
+  His mother, wond'ring, saw him cry,
+  And fondly ask'd the reason why;
+    Then Richard made confession,
+  And said, he fear'd the little bird
+  He singing in the air had heard
+    Was telling his transgression.
+
+  The words which Richard spoke below,
+  As sounds by nature upwards go,
+    Were to the sky-lark carried;
+  The airy traveller with surprise
+  To hear his sayings, in the skies
+    On his mid journey tarried.
+
+  His anger then the bird exprest:
+  "Sure, since the day I left the nest,
+    I ne'er heard folly utter'd
+  So fit to move a sky-lark's mirth,
+  As what this little son of earth
+    Hath in his grossness mutter'd.
+
+  "Dull fool! to think we sons of air
+  On man's low actions waste a care,
+    His virtues or his vices;
+  Or soaring on the summer gales,
+  That we should stoop to carry tales
+    Of him or his devices!
+
+  "Our songs are all of the delights
+  We find in our wild airy flights,
+    And heavenly exaltation;
+  The earth you mortals have at heart
+  Is all too gross to have a part
+    In sky-lark's conversation.
+
+  "Unless it be in what green field
+  Or meadow we our nest may build,
+    Midst flowering broom, or heather;
+  From whence our new-fledg'd offspring may
+  With least obstruction wing their way
+    Up to the walks of ether.
+
+  "Mistaken fool! man needs not us
+  His secret merits to discuss,
+    Or spy out his transgression;
+  When once he feels his conscience stirr'd,
+  That voice within him is the _bird_
+    That moves him to confession."
+
+
+THE MEN AND WOMEN, AND THE MONKEYS
+
+A FABLE
+
+  When beasts by words their meanings could declare,
+  Some well-drest men and women did repair
+  To gaze upon two monkeys at a fair:
+
+  And one who was the spokesman in the place
+  Said, in their count'nance you might plainly trace
+  The likeness of a wither'd old man's face.
+
+  His observation none impeach'd or blam'd,
+  But every man and woman when 'twas nam'd
+  Drew in the head, or slunk away asham'd.
+
+  One monkey, who had more pride than the other,
+  His infinite chagrin could scarcely smother;
+  But Pug the wiser said unto his brother:
+
+  "The slights and coolness of this human nation
+  Should give a sensible ape no mort'fication;
+  'Tis thus they always serve a poor relation."
+
+
+LOVE, DEATH, AND REPUTATION
+
+A FABLE
+
+  Once on a time, Love, Death, and Reputation,
+    Three travellers, a tour together went;
+  And, after many a long perambulation,
+    Agreed to part by mutual consent.
+
+  Death said: "My fellow tourists, I am going
+    To seek for harvests in th' embattled plain;
+  Where drums are beating, and loud trumpets blowing,
+    There you'll be sure to meet with me again"
+
+  Love said: "My friends, I mean to spend my leisure
+    With some young couple, fresh in Hymen's bands;
+  Or 'mongst relations, who in equal measure
+    Have had bequeathed to them house or lands."
+
+  But Reputation said: "If once we sever,
+    Our chance of future meeting is but vain:
+  Who parts from me, must look to part for ever,
+    For _Reputation lost comes not again_."
+
+
+THE SPARROW AND THE HEN
+
+  A Sparrow, when Sparrows like Parrots could speak,
+    Addressed an old Hen who could talk like a Jay:
+  Said he, "It's unjust that we Sparrows must seek
+    Our food, when your family's fed every day.
+
+  "Were you like the Peacock, that elegant bird,
+    The sight of whose plumage her master may please,
+  I then should not wonder that you are preferr'd
+    To the yard, where in affluence you live at your ease.
+
+  "I affect no great style, am not costly in feathers,
+    A good honest brown I find most to my liking,
+  It always looks neat, and is fit for all weathers,
+    But I think your gray mixture is not very striking.
+
+  "We know that the bird from the isles of Canary
+    Is fed, foreign airs to sing in a fine cage;
+  But your note from a cackle so seldom does vary,
+    The fancy of man it cannot much engage.
+
+  "My chirp to a song sure approaches much nearer,
+    Nay, the Nightingale tells me I sing not amiss;
+  If voice were in question I ought to be dearer;
+    But the Owl he assures me there's nothing in this.
+
+  "Nor is it your proneness to domestication,
+    For he dwells in man's barn, and I build in man's thatch,
+  As we say to each other--but, to our vexation,
+    O'er your safety alone man keeps diligent watch."
+
+  "Have you e'er learned to read?" said the Hen to the Sparrow.
+    "No, Madam," he answer'd, "I can't say I have,"
+  "Then that is the reason your sight is so narrow,"
+    The old Hen replied, with a look very grave.
+
+  "Mrs. Glasse in a Treatise--I wish you could read--
+    Our importance has shown, and has prov'd to us why
+  Man shields us and feeds us: of us he has need
+    Ev'n before we are born, even after we die."
+
+
+WHICH IS THE FAVOURITE?
+
+  Brothers and sisters I have many:
+  Though I know there is not any
+  Of them but I love, yet I
+  Will just name them all; and try,
+  As one by one I count them o'er,
+  If there be one a little more
+  Lov'd by me than all the rest.
+  Yes; I do think, that I love best
+  My brother Henry, because he
+  Has always been most fond of me.
+  Yet, to be sure, there's Isabel;
+  I think I love her quite as well.
+  And, I assure you, little Ann,
+  No brother nor no sister can
+  Be more dear to me than she.
+  Only, I must say, Emily,
+  Being the eldest, it's right her
+  To all the rest I should prefer.
+  Yet after all I've said, suppose
+  My greatest fav'rite should be Rose.
+  No, John and Paul are both more dear
+  To me than Rose, that's always here,
+  While they are half the year at school;
+  And yet that neither is no rule.
+  I've nam'd them all, there's only seven;
+  I find my love to all so even,
+  To every sister, every brother,
+  I love not one more than another.
+
+
+THE BEGGAR-MAN
+
+  Abject, stooping, old, and wan,
+  See yon wretched beggar man;
+  Once a father's hopeful heir,
+  Once a mother's tender care.
+  When too young to understand
+  He but scorch'd his little hand,
+  By the candle's flaming light
+  Attracted, dancing, spiral, bright,
+  Clasping fond her darling round,
+  A thousand kisses heal'd the wound.
+  Now abject, stooping, old, and wan,
+  No mother tends the beggar man.
+
+    Then nought too good for him to wear,
+  With cherub face and flaxen hair,
+  In fancy's choicest gauds array'd,
+  Cap of lace with rose to aid,
+  Milk-white hat and feather blue,
+  Shoes of red, and coral too
+  With silver bells to please his ear,
+  And charm the frequent ready tear.
+  Now abject, stooping, old, and wan,
+  Neglected is the beggar man.
+
+    See the boy advance in age,
+  And learning spreads her useful page;
+  In vain! for giddy pleasure calls,
+  And shews the marbles, tops, and balls.
+  What's learning to the charms of play?
+  The indulgent tutor must give way.
+  A heedless wilful dunce, and wild,
+  The parents' fondness spoil'd the child;
+  The youth in vagrant courses ran;
+  Now abject, stooping, old, and wan,
+  Their fondling is the beggar man.
+
+
+CHOOSING A PROFESSION
+
+  A Creole boy from the West Indies brought,
+  To be in European learning taught,
+  Some years before to Westminster he went,
+  To a Preparatory School was sent.
+  When from his artless tale the mistress found,
+  The child had not one friend on English ground,
+  She, ev'n as if she his own mother were,
+  Made the dark Indian her peculiar care.
+  Oft on her fav'rite's future lot she thought;
+  To know the bent of his young mind she sought,
+  For much the kind preceptress wish'd to find
+  To what profession he was most inclin'd,
+  That where his genius led they might him train;
+  For nature's kindly bent she held not vain.
+  But vain her efforts to explore his will;
+  The frequent question he evaded still:
+  Till on a day at length he to her came,
+  Joy sparkling in his eyes; and said, the same
+  Trade he would be those boys of colour were,
+  Who danc'd so happy in the open air.
+  It was a troop of chimney-sweeping boys,
+  With wooden music and obstrep'rous noise,
+  In tarnish'd finery and grotesque array,
+  Were dancing in the street the first of May.
+
+
+BREAKFAST
+
+  A dinner party, coffee, tea,
+  Sandwich, or supper, all may be
+  In their way pleasant. But to me
+  Not one of these deserves the praise
+  That welcomer of new-born days,
+  _A breakfast_, merits; ever giving
+  Cheerful notice we are living
+  Another day refresh'd by sleep,
+  When its festival we keep.
+  Now although I would not slight
+  Those kindly words we use "Good night,"
+  Yet parting words are words of sorrow,
+  And may not vie with sweet "Good morrow,"
+  With which again our friends we greet,
+  When in the breakfast-room we meet,
+  At the social table round,
+  Listening to the lively sound
+  Of those notes which never tire,
+  Of urn, or kettle on the fire.
+  Sleepy Robert never hears
+  Or urn, or kettle; he appears
+  When all have finish'd, one by one
+  Dropping off, and breakfast done.
+  Yet has he too his own pleasure,
+  His breakfast hour's his hour of leisure;
+  And, left alone, he reads or muses,
+  Or else in idle mood he uses
+  To sit and watch the vent'rous fly,
+  Where the sugar's piled high,
+  Clambering o'er the lumps so white,
+  Rocky cliffs of sweet delight.
+
+
+WEEDING
+
+  As busy Aurelia, 'twixt work and 'twixt play,
+    Was lab'ring industriously hard
+  To cull the vile weeds from the flow'rets away,
+    Which grew in her father's court-yard;
+
+  In her juvenile anger, wherever she found,
+    She pluck'd, and she pull'd, and she tore;
+  The poor passive suff'rers bestrew'd all the ground;
+    Not a weed of them all she forbore.
+
+  At length 'twas her chance on some nettles to light
+    (Things, till then, she had scarcely heard nam'd);
+  The vulgar intruders call'd forth all her spite;
+    In a transport of rage she exclaim'd,
+
+  "Shall briars so unsightly and worthless as those
+    Their great sprawling leaves thus presume
+  To mix with the pink, the jonquil, and the rose,
+    And take up a flower's sweet room?"
+
+  On the odious offenders enraged she flew;
+    But she presently found to her cost
+  A tingling unlook'd for, a pain that was new,
+    And rage was in agony lost.
+
+  To her father she hastily fled for relief,
+    And told him her pain and her smart;
+  With kindly caresses he soothed her grief,
+    Then smiling he took the weed's part.
+
+  "The world, my Aurelia, this garden of ours
+    Resembles: too apt we're to deem
+  In the world's larger garden ourselves as the flow'rs,
+    And the poor but as weeds to esteem.
+
+  "But them if we rate, or with rudeness repel,
+    Though some will be passive enough,
+  From others who're more independent 'tis well
+    If we meet not a _stinging rebuff_."
+
+
+PARENTAL RECOLLECTIONS
+
+  A child's a plaything for an hour;
+    Its pretty tricks we try
+  For that or for a longer space;
+    Then tire, and lay it by.
+
+  But I knew one, that to itself
+    All seasons could controul;
+  That would have mock'd the sense of pain
+    Out of a grieved soul.
+
+  Thou, straggler into loving arms,
+    Young climber up of knees,
+  When I forget thy thousand ways,
+    Then life and all shall cease.
+
+
+THE TWO BOYS
+
+  I saw a boy with eager eye
+  Open a book upon a stall,
+  And read as he'd devour it all:
+  Which when the stall-man did espy,
+  Soon to the boy I heard him call,
+  "You, Sir, you never buy a book,
+  Therefore in one you shall not look."
+  The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh
+  He wish'd he never had been taught to read,
+  Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need.
+
+    Of sufferings the poor have many,
+  Which never can the rich annoy.
+  I soon perceiv'd another boy
+  Who look'd as if he'd not had any
+  Food for that day at least, enjoy
+  The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder.
+  This boy's case, thought I, is surely harder,
+  Thus hungry longing, thus without a penny,
+  Beholding choice of dainty dressed meat:
+  No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat.
+
+
+THE OFFER
+
+    "Tell me, would you rather be
+  Chang'd by a fairy to the fine
+  Young orphan heiress Geraldine,
+    Or still be Emily?
+
+    "Consider, ere you answer me,
+  How many blessings are procur'd
+  By riches, and how much endur'd
+    By chilling poverty."
+
+    After a pause, said Emily:
+  "In the words orphan heiress I
+  Find many a solid reason why
+    I would not changed be.
+
+    "What though I live in poverty,
+  And have of sisters eight--so many,
+  That few indulgences, if any,
+    Fall to the share of me;
+
+    "Think you that for wealth I'd be
+  Of ev'n the least of them bereft,
+  Or lose my parent, and be left
+    An orphan'd Emily?
+
+    "Still should I be Emily,
+  Although I look'd like Geraldine;
+  I feel within this heart of mine
+    No change could worked be."
+
+
+THE SISTER'S EXPOSTULATION ON THE BROTHER'S LEARNING LATIN
+
+  Shut these odious books up, brother--
+  They have made you quite another
+  Thing from what you us'd to be--
+  Once you lik'd to play with me--
+  Now you leave me all alone,
+  And are so conceited grown
+  With your Latin, you'll scarce look
+  Upon any English book.
+  We had us'd on winter eyes
+  To con over Shakespeare's leaves,
+  Or on Milton's harder sense
+  Exercise our diligence--
+  And you would explain with ease
+  The obscurer passages,
+  Find me out the prettiest places
+  The poetic turns, and graces,
+  Which alas! now you are gone,
+  I must puzzle out alone,
+  And oft miss the meaning quite,
+  Wanting you to set me right.
+  All this comes since you've been under
+  Your new master. I much wonder
+  What great charm it is you see
+  In those words, _musa, musæ_;
+  Or in what they do excel
+  Our word, _song_. It sounds as well
+  To my fancy as the other.
+  Now believe me, dearest brother,
+  I would give my finest frock,
+  And my cabinet, and stock
+  Of new playthings, every toy,
+  I would give them all with joy,
+  Could I you returning see
+  Back to English and to me.
+
+
+THE BROTHER'S REPLY
+
+  Sister, fie, for shame, no more,
+  Give this ignorant babble o'er,
+  Nor with little female pride
+  Things above your sense deride.
+  Why this foolish under-rating
+  Of my first attempts at Latin?
+  Know you not each thing we prize
+  Does from small beginnings rise?
+  'Twas the same thing with your writing,
+  Which you now take such delight in.
+  First you learnt the down-stroke line,
+  Then the hair-stroke thin and fine,
+  Then a curve, and then a better,
+  Till you came to form a letter;
+  Then a new task was begun,
+  How to join them two in one;
+  Till you got (these first steps past)
+  To your fine text-hand at last.
+  So though I at first commence
+  With the humble accidence,
+  And my study's course affords
+  Little else as yet but words,
+  I shall venture in a while
+  At construction, grammar, style,
+  Learn my syntax, and proceed
+  Classic authors next to read,
+  Such as wiser, better, make us,
+  Sallust, Phædrus, Ovid, Flaccus:
+  All the poets (with their wit),
+  All the grave historians writ,
+  Who the lives and actions show
+  Of men famous long ago;
+  Ev'n their very sayings giving
+  In the tongue they us'd when living.
+
+  Think not I shall do that wrong
+  Either to my native tongue,
+  English authors to despise,
+  Or those books which you so prize;
+  Though from them awhile I stray,
+  By new studies call'd away,
+  Them when next I take in hand,
+  I shall better understand.
+  For I've heard wise men declare
+  Many words in English are
+  From the Latin tongue deriv'd,
+  Of whose sense girls are depriv'd
+  'Cause they do not Latin know.--
+  But if all this anger grow
+  From this cause, that you suspect
+  By proceedings indirect,
+  I would keep (as misers pelf)
+  All this learning to myself;
+  Sister, to remove this doubt,
+  Rather than we will fall out,
+  (If our parents will agree)
+  You shall Latin learn with me.
+
+
+NURSE GREEN
+
+  "Your prayers you have said, and you've wished Good night:
+    What cause is there yet keeps my darling awake?
+  This throb in your bosom proclaims some affright
+    Disturbs your composure. Can innocence quake?
+
+  "Why thus do you cling to my neck, and enfold me,
+    What fear unimparted your quiet devours?"
+  "O mother, there's reason--for Susan has told me,
+    A dead body lies in the room next to ours."
+
+  "I know it; and, but for forgetfulness, dear,
+    I meant you the coffin this day should have seen,
+  And read the inscription, and told me the year
+    And day of the death of your poor old Nurse Green."
+
+  "O not for the wealth of the world would I enter
+    A chamber wherein a dead body lay hid,
+  Lest somebody bolder than I am should venture
+    To go near the coffin and lift up the lid."
+
+  "And should they do so and the coffin uncover,
+    The corpse underneath it would be no ill sight;
+  This frame, when its animal functions are over,
+    Has nothing of horror the living to fright.
+
+  "To start at the dead is preposterous error,
+    To shrink from a foe that can never contest;
+  Shall that which is motionless move thee to terror;
+    Or thou become restless, 'cause they are at rest?
+
+  "To think harm of her our good feelings forbid us
+    By whom when a babe you were dandled and fed;
+  Who living so many good offices did us,
+    I ne'er can persuade me would hurt us when dead.
+
+  "But if no endeavour your terrors can smother,
+    If vainly against apprehension you strive,
+  Come, bury your fears in the arms of your mother;
+    My darling, cling close to me, I am alive."
+
+
+GOOD TEMPER
+
+  In whatsoever place resides
+  Good Temper, she o'er all presides;
+  The most obdurate heart she guides.
+
+  Even Anger yields unto her power,
+  And sullen Spite forgets to lour,
+  Or reconciled weeps a shower;
+
+  Reserve she softens into Ease,
+  Makes Fretfulness leave off to teaze,
+  She Waywardness itself can please.
+
+  Her handmaids they are not a few:
+  Sincerity that's ever true,
+  And Prompt Obedience always new,
+
+  Urbanity that ever smiles,
+  And Frankness that ne'er useth wiles,
+  And Friendliness that ne'er beguiles,
+
+  And Firmness that is always ready
+  To make young good-resolves more steady,
+  The only safeguard of the giddy;
+
+  And blushing Modesty, and sweet
+  Humility in fashion neat;
+  Yet still her train is incomplete,
+
+  Unless meek Piety attend
+  Good Temper as her surest friend,
+  Abiding with her to the end.
+
+
+MODERATION IN DIET
+
+  The drunkard's sin, excess in wine,
+    Which reason drowns, and health destroys,
+  As yet no failing is of thine,
+    Dear Jim; strong drink's not given to boys.
+
+  You from the cool fresh steam allay
+    Those thirsts which sultry suns excite;
+  When choak'd with dust, or hot with play,
+    A cup of water yields delight.
+
+  And reverence still that temperate cup,
+    And cherish long the blameless taste;
+  To learn the faults of men grown up,
+    Dear Jim, be wise and do not haste.
+
+  They'll come too soon.--But there's a vice,
+    That shares the world's contempt no less;
+  To be in eating over-nice,
+    Or to court surfeits by excess.
+
+  The first, as finical, avoid;
+    The last is proper to a swine:
+  By temperance meat is best enjoy'd;
+    Think of this maxim when you dine.
+
+  Prefer with plain food to be fed,
+    Rather than what are dainties styl'd;
+  A sweet tooth in an infant's head
+    Is pardon'd, not in a grown child.
+
+  If parent, aunt, or liberal friend,
+    With splendid shilling line your purse,
+  Do not the same on sweetmeats spend,
+    Nor appetite with pampering nurse.
+
+  Go buy a book; a dainty eaten
+    Is vanish'd, and no sweets remain;
+  They who their minds with knowledge sweeten,
+    The savour long as life retain.
+
+  Purchase some toy, a horse of wood,
+    A pasteboard ship; their structure scan;
+  Their mimic uses understood,
+    The school-boy make a kind of man.
+
+  Go see some show; pictures or prints;
+    Or beasts far brought from Indian land;
+  Those foreign sights oft furnish hints,
+    That may the youthful mind expand.
+
+  And something of your store impart,
+    To feed the poor and hungry soul;
+  What buys for you the needless tart,
+    May purchase him a needful roll.
+
+
+INCORRECT SPEAKING
+
+  Incorrectness in your speech
+    Carefully avoid, my Anna;
+  Study well the sense of each
+    Sentence, lest in any manner
+  It misrepresent the truth;
+  Veracity's the charm of youth.
+
+  You will not, I know, tell lies,
+    If you know what you are speaking.--
+  Truth is shy, and from us flies;
+    Unless diligently seeking
+  Into every word we pry,
+  Falsehood will her place supply.
+
+  Falsehood is not shy, not she,--
+    Ever ready to take place of
+  Truth, too oft we Falsehood see,
+    Or at least some latent trace of
+  Falsehood, in the incorrect
+  Words of those who Truth respect.
+
+
+
+CHARITY
+
+  O why your good deeds with such pride do you scan,
+    And why that self-satisfied smile
+  At the shilling you gave to the poor working man,
+    That lifted you over the stile?
+
+  'Tis not much; all the bread that can with it be bought
+    Will scarce give a morsel to each
+  Of his eight hungry children;--reflection and thought
+    Should you more humility teach.
+
+  Vain glory's a worm which the very best action
+    Will taint, and its soundness eat thro';
+  But to give one's self airs for a small benefaction,
+    Is folly and vanity too.
+
+  The money perhaps by your father or mother
+    Was furnish'd you but with that view;
+  If so, you were only the steward of another,
+    And the praise you usurp is their due.
+
+  Perhaps every shilling you give in this way
+    Is paid back with two by your friends;
+  Then the bounty you so ostentatious display,
+    Has little and low selfish ends.
+
+  But if every penny you gave were your own,
+    And giving diminish'd your purse;
+  By a child's slender means think how little is done,
+    And how little for it you're the worse.
+
+  You eat, and you drink; when you rise in the morn,
+    You are cloth'd; you have health and content;
+  And you never have known, from the day you were born,
+    What hunger or nakedness meant.
+
+  The most which your bounty from you can subtract
+    Is an apple, a sweetmeat, a toy;
+  For so easy a virtue, so trifling an act,
+    You are paid with an innocent joy.
+
+  Give thy bread to the hungry, the thirsty thy cup;
+    Divide with th' afflicted thy lot:
+  This can only be practis'd by persons grown up,
+    Who've possessions which children have not.
+
+  Having two cloaks, give one (said our Lord) to the poor;
+    In such bounty as that lies the trial:
+  But a child that gives half of its infantile store
+    Has small praise, because small self-denial.
+
+
+MY BIRTH-DAY
+
+  A dozen years since in this house what commotion,
+    What bustle, what stir, and what joyful ado;
+  Ev'ry soul in the family at my devotion,
+    When into the world I came twelve years ago.
+
+  I've been told by my friends (if they do not belie me)
+    My promise was such as no parent would scorn;
+  The wise and the aged who prophesied by me,
+    Augur'd nothing but good of me when I was born.
+
+  But vain are the hopes which are form'd by a parent,
+    Fallacious the marks which in infancy shine;
+  My frail constitution soon made it apparent,
+    I nourish'd within me the seeds of decline.
+
+  On a sick bed I lay, through the flesh my bones started,
+    My grief-wasted frame to a skeleton fell;
+  My physicians foreboding took leave and departed,
+    And they wish'd me dead now, who wished me well.
+
+  Life and soul were kept in by a mother's assistance,
+    Who struggled with faith, and prevail'd 'gainst despair;
+  Like an angel she watch'd o'er the lamp of existence,
+    And never would leave while a glimmer was there.
+
+  By her care I'm alive now--but what retribution
+    Can I for a life twice bestow'd thus confer?
+  Were I to be silent, each year's revolution
+    Proclaims--each new birth-day is owing to her.
+
+  The chance-rooted tree that by way-sides is planted,
+    Where no friendly hand will watch o'er its young shoots,
+  Has less blame if in autumn, when produce is wanted,
+    Enrich'd by small culture it put forth small fruits.
+
+  But that which with labour in hot-beds is reared,
+    Secur'd by nice art from the dews and the rains,
+  Unsound at the root may with justice be feared,
+    If it pay not with int'rest the tiller's hard pains.
+
+
+THE BEASTS IN THE TOWER
+
+  Within the precincts of this yard,
+  Each in his narrow confines barr'd,
+  Dwells every beast that can be found
+  On Afric or on Indian ground.
+  How different was the life they led
+  In those wild haunts where they were bred,
+  To this tame servitude and fear,
+  Enslav'd by man, they suffer here!
+
+  In that uneasy close recess
+  Couches a sleeping Lioness;
+  The next den holds a Bear; the next
+  A Wolf, by hunger ever vext;
+  There, fiercer from the keeper's lashes,
+  His teeth the fell Hyena gnashes;
+  That creature on whose back abound
+  Black spots upon a yellow ground,
+  A Panther is, the fairest beast
+  That haunteth in the spacious East.
+  He underneath a fair outside
+  Does cruelty and treach'ry hide.
+
+  That cat-like beast that to and fro
+  Restless as fire does ever go,
+  As if his courage did resent
+  His limbs in such confinement pent,
+  That should their prey in forests take,
+  And make the Indian jungles quake,
+  A Tiger is. Observe how sleek
+  And glossy smooth his coat: no streak
+  On sattin ever match'd the pride
+  Of that which marks his furry hide.
+  How strong his muscles! he with ease
+  Upon the tallest man could seize,
+  In his large mouth away could bear him,
+  And into thousand pieces tear him:
+  Yet cabin'd so securely here,
+  The smallest infant need not fear.
+
+  That lordly creature next to him
+  A Lion is. Survey each limb.
+  Observe the texture of his claws,
+  The massy thickness of those jaws;
+  His mane that sweeps the ground in length,
+  Like Samson's locks, betok'ning strength.
+  In force and swiftness he excels
+  Each beast that in the forest dwells;
+  The savage tribes him king confess
+  Throughout the howling wilderness.
+  Woe to the hapless neighbourhood,
+  When he is press'd by want of food!
+  Of man, or child, of bull, or horse,
+  He makes his prey; such is his force.
+  A waste behind him he creates,
+  Whole villages depopulates.
+  Yet here within appointed lines
+  How small a grate his rage confines!
+
+  This place methinks resembleth well
+  The world itself in which we dwell.
+  Perils and snares on every ground
+  Like these wild beasts beset us round.
+  But Providence their rage restrains,
+  Our heavenly Keeper sets them chains;
+  His goodness saveth every hour
+  His darlings from the Lion's power.
+
+
+THE CONFIDANT
+
+  Anna was always full of thought
+    As if she'd many sorrows known,
+  Yet mostly her full heart was fraught
+    With troubles that were not her own;
+  For the whole school to Anna us'd to tell
+  Whatever small misfortunes unto them befell.
+
+  And being so by all belov'd,
+    That all into her bosom pour'd
+  Their dearest secrets, she was mov'd
+    To pity all--her heart a hoard,
+  Or storehouse, by this means became for all
+  The sorrows can to girls of tender age befall.
+
+  Though individually not much
+    Distress throughout the school prevail'd,
+  Yet as she shar'd it all, 'twas such
+    A weight of woe that her assail'd,
+  She lost her colour, loath'd her food, and grew
+  So dull, that all their confidence from her withdrew.
+
+  Released from her daily care,
+    No longer list'ning to complaint,
+  She seems to breathe a different air,
+    And health once more her cheek does paint.
+  Still Anna loves her friends, but will not hear
+  Again their list of grievances which cost so dear.
+
+
+THOUGHTLESS CRUELTY
+
+  There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly--
+  And should you thousand ages try
+  The life you've taken to supply,
+      You could not do it.
+
+  You surely must have been devoid
+  Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd
+  A thing which no way you annoy'd--
+      You'll one day rue it.
+
+  'Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say,
+  That's born in April, dies in May;
+  That does but just learn to display
+      His wings one minute,
+
+  And in the next is vanish'd quite.
+  A bird devours it in his flight--
+  Or come a cold blast in the night,
+      There's no breath in it.
+
+  The bird but seeks his proper food--
+  And Providence, whose power endu'd
+  That fly with life, when it thinks good,
+      May justly take it.
+
+  But you have no excuses for't--
+  A life by Nature made so short,
+  Less reason is that you for sport
+      Should shorter make it.
+
+  A fly a little thing you rate--
+  But, Robert, do not estimate
+  A creature's pain by small or great;
+      The greatest being
+
+  Can have but fibres, nerves, and flesh,
+  And these the smallest ones possess,
+  Although their frame and structure less
+      Escape our seeing.
+
+EYES
+
+  Lucy, what do you espy
+  In the cast in Jenny's eye
+  That should you to laughter move?
+  I far other feelings prove.
+  When on me she does advance
+  Her good-natur'd countenance,
+  And those eyes which in their way
+  Saying much, so much would say,
+  They to me no blemish seem,
+  Or as none I them esteem;
+  I their imperfection prize
+  Above other clearer eyes.
+
+    Eyes do not as jewels go
+  By the brightness and the show,
+  But the meanings which surround them,
+  And the sweetness shines around them.
+
+    Isabel's are black as jet,
+  But she cannot that forget,
+  And the pains she takes to show them
+  Robs them of the praise we owe them.
+  Ann's, though blue, affected fall;
+  Kate's are bright, but fierce withal;
+  And the sparklers of her sister
+  From ill-humour lose their lustre.
+  Only Jenny's eyes we see,
+  By their very plainness, free
+  From the vices which do smother
+  All the beauties of the other.
+
+
+PENNY PIECES
+
+    "I keep it, dear Papa, within my glove."
+  "You do--what sum then usually, my love,
+  Is there deposited? I make no doubt,
+  Some Penny Pieces you are not without."
+
+    "O no, Papa, they'd soil my glove, and be
+  Quite odious things to carry. O no--see,
+  This little bit of gold is surely all
+  That I shall want; for I shall only call
+  For a small purchase I shall make, Papa,
+  And a mere trifle I'm to buy Mamma,
+  Just to make out the change: so there's no need
+  To carry Penny Pieces, Sir, indeed."
+
+    "O now I know then why a blind man said
+  Unto a dog which this blind beggar led,--
+  'Where'er you see some fine young ladies, Tray,
+  Be sure you lead me quite another way.
+  The poor man's friend fair ladies us'd to be;
+  But now I find no tale of misery
+  Will ever from their pockets draw a penny.'--
+  The blind man did not see _they wear not any_."
+
+
+THE RAINBOW
+
+  After the tempest in the sky
+  How sweet yon Rainbow to the eye!
+  Come, my Matilda, now while some
+  Few drops of rain are yet to come,
+  In this honeysuckle bower
+  Safely shelter'd from the shower,
+  We may count the colours o'er.--
+  Seven there are, there are no more;
+  Each in each so finely blended,
+  Where they begin, or where are ended,
+  The finest eye can scarcely see.
+  A fixed thing it seems to be;
+  But, while we speak, see how it glides
+  Away, and now observe it hides
+  Half of its perfect arch--now we
+  Scarce any part of it can see.
+  What is colour? If I were
+  A natural philosopher,
+  I would tell you what does make
+  This meteor every colour take:
+  But an unlearned eye may view
+  Nature's rare sights, and love them too.
+  Whenever I a Rainbow see,
+  Each precious tint is dear to me;
+  For every colour find I there,
+  Which flowers, which fields, which ladies wear;
+  My favourite green, the grass's hue,
+  And the fine deep violet-blue,
+  And the pretty pale blue-bell,
+  And the rose I love so well,
+  All the wondrous variations
+  Of the tulip, pinks, carnations,
+  This woodbine here both flower and leaf;--
+  'Tis a truth that's past belief,
+  That every flower and every tree,
+  And every living thing we see,
+  Every face which we espy,
+  Every cheek and every eye,
+  In all their tints, in every shade,
+  Are from the Rainbow's colours made.
+
+
+THE FORCE OF HABIT
+
+  A little child, who had desired
+  To go and see the Park guns fired,
+  Was taken by his maid that way
+  Upon the next rejoicing day.
+  Soon as the unexpected stroke
+  Upon his tender organs broke,
+  Confus'd and stunn'd at the report,
+  He to her arms fled for support,
+  And begg'd to be convey'd at once
+  Out of the noise of those great guns,
+  Those naughty guns, whose only sound
+  Would kill (he said) without a wound:
+  So much of horror and offence
+  The shock had giv'n his infant sense.
+  Yet this was He in after days
+  Who fill'd the world with martial praise,
+  When from the English quarter-deck
+  His steady courage sway'd the wreck
+  Of hostile fleets, disturb'd no more
+  By all that vast conflicting roar,
+  That sky and sea did seem to tear,
+  When vessels whole blew up in air,
+  Than at the smallest breath that heaves,
+  When Zephyr hardly stirs the leaves.
+
+
+CLOCK STRIKING
+
+  Did I hear the church-clock a few minutes ago,
+  I was ask'd, and I answer'd, I hardly did know,
+    But I thought that I heard it strike three.
+  Said my friend then, "The blessings we always possess
+  We know not the want of, and prize them the less;
+    The church-clock was no new sound to thee.
+
+  "A young woman, afflicted with deafness a year,
+  By that sound you scarce heard, first perceiv'd she could _hear;_
+    I was near her, and saw the girl start
+  With such exquisite wonder, such feelings of pride,
+  A happiness almost to terror allied,
+    She shew'd the sound went to her heart."
+
+
+WHY NOT DO IT, SIR, TO-DAY?
+
+    "Why so I will, you noisy bird,
+      This very day I'll advertise you,
+      Perhaps some busy ones may prize you.
+    A fine-tongu'd parrot as was ever heard,
+  I'll word it thus--set forth all charms about you,
+  And say no family should be without you."
+
+    Thus far a gentleman address'd a bird,
+  Then to his friend: "An old procrastinator,
+  Sir, I am: do you wonder that I hate her?
+    Though she but seven words can say,
+    Twenty and twenty times a day
+    She interferes with all my dreams,
+    My projects, plans, and airy schemes,
+    Mocking my foible to my sorrow:
+    I'll advertise this bird to-morrow."
+
+    To this the bird seven words did say:
+    "Why not do it, Sir, to-day?"
+
+
+HOME DELIGHTS
+
+  To operas and balls my cousins take me,
+  And fond of plays my new-made friend would make me.
+  In summer season, when the days are fair,
+  In my godmother's coach I take the air.
+  My uncle has a stately pleasure barge,
+  Gilded and gay, adorn'd with wondrous charge;
+  The mast is polish'd, and the sails are fine,
+  The awnings of white silk like silver shine;
+  The seats of crimson sattin, where the rowers
+  Keep time to music with their painted oars;
+  In this on holydays we oft resort
+  To Richmond, Twickenham, or to Hampton Court.
+  By turns we play, we sing--one baits the hook,
+  Another angles--some more idle look
+  At the small fry that sport beneath the tides,
+  Or at the swan that on the surface glides.
+  My married sister says there is no feast
+  Equal to sight of foreign bird or beast.
+  With her in search of these I often roam:
+  My kinder parents make me blest at home.
+  Tir'd of excursions, visitings, and sights,
+  No joys are pleasing to these home delights.
+
+
+THE COFFEE SLIPS
+
+  Whene'er I fragrant coffee drink,
+  I on the generous Frenchman think,
+  Whose noble perseverance bore
+  The tree to Martinico's shore.
+  While yet her colony was new,
+  Her island products but a few,
+  Two shoots from off a coffee-tree
+  He carried with him o'er the sea.
+  Each little tender coffee slip
+  He waters daily in the ship,
+  And as he tends his embryo trees,
+  Feels he is raising midst the seas
+  Coffee groves, whose ample shade
+  Shall screen the dark Creolian maid.
+  But soon, alas! his darling pleasure
+  In watching this his precious treasure
+  Is like to fade,--for water fails
+  On board the ship in which he sails.
+  Now all the reservoirs are shut,
+  The crew on short allowance put;
+  So small a drop is each man's share,
+  Few leavings you may think there are
+  To water these poor coffee plants;--
+  But he supplies their gasping wants,
+  Ev'n from his own dry parched lips
+  He spares it for his coffee slips.
+  Water he gives his nurslings first,
+  Ere he allays his own deep thirst;
+  Lest, if he first the water sip,
+  He bear too far his eager lip.
+  He sees them droop for want of more;--
+  Yet when they reached the destin'd shore,
+  With pride th' heroic gardener sees
+  A living sap still in his trees.
+  The islanders his praise resound;
+  Coffee plantations rise around;
+  And Martinico loads her ships
+  With produce from those dear-sav'd slips.[1]
+
+[Footnote 1: The name of this man was Desclieux, and the story is to
+be found in the Abbé Raynal's History of the Settlements and Trade of
+the Europeans in the East and West Indies, book XIII.]
+
+
+THE DESSERT
+
+  With the apples and the plums
+  Little Carolina comes,
+  At the time of the dessert she
+  Comes and drops her new last curt'sy;
+  Graceful curt'sy, practis'd o'er
+  In the nursery before.
+  What shall we compare her to?
+  The dessert itself will do.
+  Like preserves she's kept with care,
+  Like blanch'd almonds she is fair,
+  Soft as down on peach her hair,
+  And so soft, so smooth is each
+  Pretty cheek as that same peach,
+  Yet more like in hue to cherries;
+  Then her lips, the sweet strawberries,
+  Caroline herself shall try them
+  If they are not like when nigh them;
+  Her bright eyes are black as sloes,
+  But I think we've none of those
+  Common fruit here--and her chin
+  From a round point does begin,
+  Like the small end of a pear;
+  Whiter drapery she does wear
+  Than the frost on cake; and sweeter
+  Than the cake itself, and neater,
+  Though bedeck'd with emblems fine,
+  Is our little Caroline.
+
+
+TO A YOUNG LADY, ON BEING TOO FOND OF MUSIC
+
+  Why is your mind thus all day long
+    Upon your music set;
+  Till reason's swallow'd in a song,
+    Or idle canzonet?
+
+  I grant you, Melesinda, when
+    Your instrument was new,
+  I was well pleas'd to see you then
+    Its charms assiduous woo.
+
+  The rudiments of any art
+    Or mast'ry that we try,
+  Are only on the learner's part
+    Got by hard industry.
+
+  But you are past your first essays;
+    Whene'er you play, your touch,
+  Skilful, and light, ensures you praise:
+    All beyond that's too much.
+
+  Music's sweet uses are, to smooth
+    Each rough and angry passion;
+  To elevate at once, and soothe:
+    A heavenly recreation.
+
+  But we misconstrue, and defeat
+    The end of any good;
+  When what should be our casual treat,
+    We make our constant food.
+
+  While, to th' exclusion of the rest,
+    This single art you ply,
+  Your nobler studies are supprest,
+    Your books neglected lie.
+
+  Could you in what you so affect
+    The utmost summit reach;
+  Beyond what fondest friends expect,
+    Or skilful'st masters teach:
+
+  The skill you learn'd would not repay
+    The time and pains it cost,
+  Youth's precious season thrown away,
+    And reading-leisure lost.
+
+  A benefit to books we owe,
+    Music can ne'er dispense;
+  The one does only _sound_ bestow,
+    The other gives us _sense_.
+
+
+TIME SPENT IN DRESS
+
+  In many a lecture, many a book,
+    You all have heard, you all have read,
+  That time is precious. Of its use
+    Much has been written, much been said.
+
+  The accomplishments which gladden life,
+    As music, drawing, dancing, are
+  Encroachers on our precious time;
+    Their praise or dispraise I forbear.
+
+  They should be practis'd or forborne,
+    As parents wish, or friends desire:
+  What rests alone in their own will
+    Is all I of the young require.
+
+  There's not a more productive source
+    Of waste of time to the young mind
+  Than dress; as it regards our hours
+    My view of it is now confin'd.
+
+  Without some calculation, youth
+    May live to age and never guess,
+  That no one study they pursue
+    Takes half the time they give to dress.
+
+  Write in your memorandum-book
+    The time you at your toilette spend;
+  Then every moment which you pass,
+    Talking of dress with a young friend:
+
+  And ever when your silent thoughts
+    Have on this subject been intent,
+  Set down as nearly as you can
+    How long on dress your thoughts were bent.
+
+  If faithfully you should perform
+    This task, 'twould teach you to repair
+  Lost hours, by giving unto dress
+    Not more of time than its due share.
+
+
+THE FAIRY
+
+  Said Ann to Matilda, "I wish that we knew
+  If what we've been reading of fairies be true.
+  Do you think that the poet himself had a sight of
+  The fairies he here does so prettily write of?
+  O what a sweet sight if he really had seen
+  The graceful Titania, the Fairy-land Queen!
+  If I had such dreams, I would sleep a whole year;
+  I would not wish to wake while a fairy was near.--
+  Now I'll fancy that I in my sleep have been seeing
+  A fine little delicate lady-like being,
+  Whose steps and whose motions so light were and airy,
+  I knew at one glance that she must be a fairy.
+  Her eyes they were blue, and her fine curling hair
+  Of the lightest of browns, her complexion more fair
+  Than I e'er saw a woman's; and then for her height,
+  I verily think that she measur'd not quite
+  Two feet, yet so justly proportion'd withal,
+  I was almost persuaded to think she was tall.
+  Her voice was the little thin note of a sprite--
+  There--d'ye think I have made out a fairy aright?
+  You'll confess, I believe, I've not done it amiss."
+  "Pardon me," said Matilda, "I find in all this
+  Fine description, you've only your young sister Mary
+  Been taking a copy of here for a fairy."
+
+
+CONQUEST OF PREJUDICE
+
+  Unto a Yorkshire school was sent
+    A Negro youth to learn to write,
+  And the first day young Juba went
+    All gaz'd on him as a rare sight.
+
+  But soon with alter'd looks askance
+    They view his sable face and form,
+  When they perceive the scornful glance
+    Of the head boy, young Henry Orme.
+
+  He in the school was first in fame:
+    Said he, "It does to me appear
+  To be a great disgrace and shame
+    A black should be admitted here."
+
+  His words were quickly whisper'd round,
+    And every boy now looks offended;
+  The master saw the change, and found
+    That Orme a mutiny intended.
+
+  Said he to Orme, "This African
+    It seems is not by you approv'd;
+  I'll find a way, young Englishman,
+    To have this prejudice remov'd.
+
+  "Nearer acquaintance possibly
+    May make you tolerate his hue;
+  At least 'tis my intent to try
+    What a short month may chance to do."
+
+  Young Orme and Juba then he led
+    Into a room, in which there were
+  For each of the two boys a bed,
+    A table, and a wicker chair.
+
+  He lock'd them in, secur'd the key,
+    That all access to them was stopt;
+  They from without can nothing see;
+    Their food is through a sky-light dropt.
+
+  A month in this lone chamber Orme
+    Is sentenc'd during all that time
+  To view no other face or form
+    Than Juba's parch'd by Afric clime.
+
+  One word they neither of them spoke
+    The first three days of the first week;
+  On the fourth day the ice was broke;
+    Orme was the first that deign'd to speak.
+
+  The dreary silence o'er, both glad
+    To hear of human voice the sound,
+  The Negro and the English lad
+    Comfort in mutual converse found.
+
+  Of ships and seas, and foreign coast,
+    Juba can speak, for he has been
+  A voyager: and Orme can boast
+    He London's famous town has seen.
+
+  In eager talk they pass the day,
+    And borrow hours ev'n from the night;
+  So pleasantly time past away,
+    That they have lost their reckoning quite.
+
+  And when their master set them free,
+    They thought a week was sure remitted,
+  And thank'd him that their liberty
+    Had been before the time permitted.
+
+  Now Orme and Juba are good friends;
+    The school, by Orme's example won,
+  Contend who most shall make amends
+    For former slights to Afric's son.
+
+
+THE GREAT GRANDFATHER
+
+  My father's grandfather lives still,
+    His age is fourscore years and ten;
+  He looks a monument of time,
+    The agedest of aged men.
+
+  Though years lie on him like a load,
+    A happier man you will not see
+  Than he, whenever he can get
+    His great grand-children on his knee.
+
+  When we our parents have displeas'd,
+    He stands between us as a screen;
+  By him our good deeds in the sun,
+    Our bad ones in the shade are seen.
+
+  His love's a line that's long drawn out,
+    Yet lasteth firm unto the end;
+  His heart is oak, yet unto us
+    It like the gentlest reed can bend.
+
+  A fighting soldier he has been--
+    Yet by his manners you would guess,
+  That he his whole long life had spent
+    In scenes of country quietness.
+
+  His talk is all of things long past,
+    For modern facts no pleasure yield--
+  Of the fam'd year of forty-five,
+    Of William, and Culloden's field.
+
+  The deeds of this eventful age,
+    Which princes from their thrones have hurl'd,
+  Can no more interest wake in him
+    Than stories of another world.
+
+  When I his length of days revolve,
+    How like a strong tree he hath stood,
+  It brings into my mind almost
+    Those patriarchs old before the flood.
+
+
+THE SPARTAN BOY
+
+  When I the memory repeat
+  Of the heroic actions great,
+  Which, in contempt of pain and death,
+  Were done by men who drew their breath
+  In ages past, I find no deed
+  That can in fortitude exceed
+  The noble Boy, in Sparta bred,
+  Who in the temple minist'red.
+
+    By the sacrifice he stands,
+  The lighted incense in his hands.
+  Through the smoking censer's lid
+  Dropp'd a burning coal, which slid
+  Into his sleeve, and passed in
+  Between the folds ev'n to the skin.
+  Dire was the pain which then he prov'd;
+  But not for this his sleeve he mov'd,
+  Or would the scorching ember shake
+  Out from the folds, lest it should make
+  Any confusion, or excite
+  Disturbance at the sacred rite.
+  But close he kept the burning coal,
+  Till it eat itself a hole
+  In his flesh. The slanders by
+  Saw no sign, and heard no cry,
+  Of his pangs had no discerning,
+  Till they smell'd the flesh aburning
+  All this he did in noble scorn,
+  And for he was a Spartan born.
+
+    Young student, who this story readest,
+  And with the same thy thoughts now feedest,
+  Thy weaker nerves might thee forbid
+  To do the thing the Spartan did;
+  Thy feebler heart could not sustain
+  Such dire extremity of pain.
+  But in this story thou mayst see,
+  What may useful prove to thee.
+  By his example thou wilt find,
+  That to the ingenuous mind
+  Shame can greater anguish bring
+  Than the body's suffering;
+  That pain is not the worst of ills,
+  Not when it the body kills;
+  That in fair religion's cause,
+  For thy country, or the laws,
+  When occasion due shall offer
+  'Tis reproachful _not to suffer._
+  If thou shouldst a soldier be,
+  And a wound should trouble thee,
+  If without the soldier's fame
+  Thou to chance shouldst owe a maim,
+  Do not for a little pain
+  On thy manhood bring a stain;
+  But to keep thy spirits whole,
+  Think on the Spartan and the _coal._
+
+
+QUEEN ORIANA'S DREAM
+
+(_Text of 1818_)
+
+  On a bank with roses shaded,
+  Whose sweet scent the violets aided,
+  Violets whose breath alone
+  Yields but feeble smell or none,
+  (Sweeter bed Jove ne'er repos'd on
+  When his eyes Olympus closed on,)
+  While o'er head six slaves did hold
+  Canopy of cloth o' gold,
+  And two more did music keep,
+  Which might Juno lull to sleep,
+  Oriana who was queen
+  To the mighty Tamerlane,
+  That was lord of all the land
+  Between Thrace and Samarchand,
+  While the noon-tide fervor beam'd,
+  Mused herself to sleep, and _dream'd_.
+
+    Thus far, in magnific strain,
+  A young poet sooth'd his vein,
+  But he had nor prose nor numbers
+  To express a princess' slumbers.--
+  Youthful Richard had strange fancies,
+  Was deep versed in old romances,
+  And could talk whole hours upon
+  The great Cham and Prester John,--
+  Tell the field in which the Sophi
+  From the Tartar won a trophy--
+  What he read with such delight of,
+  Thought he could as eas'ly write of--
+  But his over-young invention
+  Kept not pace with brave intention.
+  Twenty suns did rise and set,
+  And he could no further get;
+  But, unable to proceed,
+  Made a virtue out of need,
+  And, his labours wiselier deem'd of,
+  Did omit _what the queen dream'd of._
+
+
+ON A PICTURE OF THE FINDING OF MOSES BY PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER
+
+  This Picture does the story express
+  Of Moses in the Bulrushes.
+  How livelily the painter's hand
+  By colours makes us understand!
+
+    Moses that little infant is.
+  This figure is his sister. This
+  Fine stately lady is no less
+  A personage than a princess,
+  Daughter of Pharaoh, Egypt's king;
+  Whom Providence did hither bring
+  This little Hebrew child to save.
+  See how near the perilous wave
+  He lies exposed in the ark,
+  His rushy cradle, his frail bark!
+  Pharaoh, king of Egypt land,
+  In his greatness gave command
+  To his slaves, they should destroy
+  Every new-born Hebrew boy.
+  This Moses was an Hebrew's son.
+  When he was born, his birth to none
+  His mother told, to none reveal'd,
+  But kept her goodly child conceal'd.
+  Three months she hid him; then she wrought
+  With Bulrushes this ark, and brought
+  Him in it to this river's side,
+  Carefully looking far and wide
+  To see that no Egyptian eye
+  Her ark-hid treasure should espy.
+  Among the river-flags she lays
+  The child. Near him his sister stays.
+  We may imagine her affright,
+  When the king's daughter is in sight.
+  Soon the princess will perceive
+  The ark among the flags, and give
+  Command to her attendant maid
+  That its contents shall be display'd.
+  Within the ark the child is found,
+  And now he utters mournful sound.
+  Behold he weeps, as if he were
+  Afraid of cruel Egypt's heir!
+  She speaks, she says, "This little one
+  I will protect, though he the son
+  Be of an Hebrew." Every word
+  She speaks is by the sister heard.
+  And now observe, this is the part
+  The painter chose to show his art.
+  Look at the sister's eager eye,
+  As here she seems advancing nigh.
+  Lowly she bends, says, "Shall I go
+  And call a nurse to thee? I know
+  A Hebrew woman liveth near,
+  Great lady, shall I bring her here?"
+  See! Pharaoh's daughter answers, "Go."--
+  No more the painter's art can show.
+  He cannot make his figures move.--
+  On the light wings of swiftest love
+  The girl will fly to bring the mother
+  To be the nurse, she'll bring no other.
+  To her will Pharaoh's daughter say,
+  "Take this child from me away:
+  For wages nurse him. To my home
+  At proper age this child may come.
+  When to our palace he is brought,
+  Wise masters shall for him be sought
+  To train him up, befitting one
+  I would protect as my own son.
+  And Moses be a name unto him,
+  Because I from the waters drew him."
+
+
+DAVID
+
+  It is not always to the strong
+  Victorious battle shall belong.
+  This found Goliath huge and tall:
+  Mightiest giant of them all,
+  Who in the proud Philistian host
+  Defied Israel with boast.
+
+    With loud voice Goliath said:
+  "Hear, armed Israel, gathered,
+  And in array against us set:
+  Ye shall alone by me be met.
+  For am not I a Philistine?
+  What strength may be compar'd to mine?
+
+    "Chuse ye a man of greatest might:
+  And if he conquer me in fight,
+  Then we will all servants be,
+  King of Israel, unto thee.
+  But if I prove the victor, then
+  Shall Saul and all his armed men
+  Bend low beneath Philistian yoke."
+  Day by day these words he spoke,
+  Singly traversing the ground.
+  But not an Israelite was found
+  To combat man to man with him,
+  Who such prodigious force of limb
+  Display'd. Like to a weaver's beam
+  The pond'rous spear he held did seem.
+  In height six cubits he did pass,
+  And he was arm'd all o'er in brass.
+
+    Him we will leave awhile--and speak
+  Of one, the soft down on whose cheek
+  Of tender youth the tokens bare.
+  Ruddy he was and very fair.
+  David, the son of Jesse he,
+  Small-siz'd, yet beautiful to see.
+  Three brothers had he in the band
+  Of warriors under Saul's command;
+  Himself at home did private keep
+  In Bethlem's plains his father's sheep.
+
+    Jesse said to this his son:
+  "David, to thy brothers run,
+  Where in the camp they now abide,
+  And learn what of them may betide.
+  These presents for their captains take,
+  And of their fare inquiries make."
+  With joy the youth his sire obey'd.--
+  David was no whit dismay'd
+  When he arrived at the place
+  Where he beheld the strength and face
+  Of dread Goliath, and could hear
+  The challenge. Of the people near
+  Unmov'd he ask'd, what should be done
+  To him who slew that boasting one,
+  Whose words such mischiefs did forebode
+  To th' armies of the living God?
+
+    "The king," they unto David say,
+  "Most amply will that man repay,
+  He and his father's house shall be
+  Evermore in Israel free.
+  With mighty wealth Saul will endow
+  That man: and he has made a vow;
+  Whoever takes Goliath's life,
+  Shall have Saul's daughter for his wife."
+
+    His eldest brother, who had heard
+  His question, was to anger stirr'd
+  Against the youth: for (as he thought)
+  Things out of his young reach he sought.
+  Said he, "What mov'd thee to come here,
+  To question warlike men? say, where
+  And in whose care are those few sheep,
+  That in the wilderness you keep?
+  I know thy thoughts, how proud thou art:
+  In the naughtiness of thy heart,
+  Hoping a battle thou mayst see,
+  Thou comest hither down to me."
+
+  Then answer'd Jesse's youngest son
+  In these words: "What have I done?
+  Is there not cause?" Some there which heard,
+  And at the manner of his word
+  Admir'd, report this to the king.
+  By his command they David bring
+  Into his presence. Fearless then,
+  Before the king and his chief men,
+  He shews his confident design
+  To combat with the Philistine.
+  Saul with wonder heard the youth,
+  And thus address'd him: "Of a truth,
+  No pow'r thy untried sinew hath
+  To cope with this great man of Gath."
+
+  Lowly David bow'd his head,
+  And with firm voice the stripling said:
+  "Thy servant kept his father's sheep.--
+  Rushing from a mountain steep
+  There came a lion, and a bear,
+  The firstlings of my flock to tear.
+  Thy servant hath that lion kill'd,
+  And kill'd that bear, when from the field
+  Two young lambs by force they seiz'd.
+  The Lord was mercifully pleas'd
+  Me to deliver from the paw
+  Of the fierce bear, and cruel jaw
+  Of the strong lion. I shall slay
+  Th' unrighteous Philistine this day,
+  If God deliver him also
+  To me." He ceas'd. The king said, "Go:
+  Thy God, the God of Israel, be
+  In the battle still with thee."
+
+    David departs, unarmed, save
+  A staff in hand he chanc'd to have.
+  Nothing to the fight he took,
+  Save five smooth stones from out a brook;
+  These in his shepherd's scrip he plac'd,
+  That was fasten'd round his waist.
+  With staff and sling alone he meets
+  The armed giant, who him greets
+  With nought but scorn. Looking askance
+  On the fair ruddy countenance
+  Of his young enemy--"Am I
+  A dog, that thou com'st here to try
+  Thy strength upon me with a staff--?"
+  Goliath said with scornful laugh.
+  "Thou com'st with sword, with spear, with shield,
+  Yet thou to me this day must yield.
+  The Lord of Hosts is on my side,
+  Whose armies boastful thou'st defied.
+  All nations of the earth shall hear
+  He saveth not with shield and spear."
+
+    Thus David spake, and nigher went,
+  Then chusing from his scrip, he sent
+  Out of his slender sling a stone.--
+  The giant utter'd fearful moan.
+  The stone though small had pierced deep
+  Into his forehead, endless sleep
+  Giving Goliath--and thus died
+  Of Philistines the strength and pride.
+
+
+DAVID IN THE CAVE OF ADULLAM
+
+(_Text of 1818_)
+
+  David and his three captains bold
+  Kept ambush once within a hold.
+  It was in Adullam's cave,
+  Nigh which no water they could have,
+  Nor spring, nor running brook was near
+  To quench the thirst that parch'd them there.
+  Then David, king of Israel,
+  Strait bethought him of a well,
+  Which stood beside the city gate,
+  At Bethlem; where, before his state
+  Of kingly dignity, he had
+  Oft drunk his fill, a shepherd lad;
+  But now his fierce Philistine foe
+  Encamp'd before it he does know.
+  Yet ne'er the less, with heat opprest,
+  Those three bold captains he addrest,
+  And wish'd that one to him would bring
+  Some water from his native spring.
+  His valiant captains instantly
+  To execute his will did fly.
+  The mighty Three the ranks broke through
+  Of armed foes, and water drew
+  For David, their beloved king,
+  At his own sweet native spring.
+  Back through their armed foes they haste,
+  With the hard earn'd treasure graced.
+  But when the good king David found
+  What they had done, he on the ground
+  The water pour'd. "Because," said he,
+  "That it was at the jeopardy
+  Of your three lives this thing ye did,
+  That I should drink it, God forbid."
+
+
+
+
+THREE POEMS NOT IN _POETRY FOR CHILDREN_
+
+
+SUMMER FRIENDS
+
+  The Swallow is a summer bird;
+    He in our chimneys, when the weather
+  Is fine and warm, may then be heard
+    Chirping his notes for weeks together.
+
+  Come there but one cold wintry day,
+    Away will fly our guest the Swallow:
+  And much like him we find the way
+    Which many a gay young friend will follow.
+
+  In dreary days of snow and frost
+    Closer to Man will cling the Sparrow:
+  Old friends, although in life we're crost,
+    Their hearts to us will never narrow.
+
+  Give me the bird--'give me the friend--
+    Will sing in frost--will love in sorrow--
+  Whate'er mischance to-day may send,
+    Will greet me with his sight to-morrow.
+
+
+A BIRTH-DAY THOUGHT
+
+  Can I, all gracious Providence!
+    Can I deserve thy care:
+  Ah! no; I've not the least pretence
+    To bounties which I share.
+
+  Have I not been defended still
+    From dangers and from death;
+  Been safe preserv'd from ev'ry ill
+    E'er since thou gav'st me breath?
+
+  I live once more to see the day
+    That brought me first to light;
+  Oh! teach my willing heart the way
+    To take thy mercies right!
+
+  Tho' dazzling splendour, pomp, and show,
+    My fortune has denied,
+  Yet more than grandeur can bestow,
+    Content hath well supplied.
+
+  I envy no one's birth or fame,
+    Their titles, train, or dress;
+  Nor has my pride e'er stretched its aim
+    Beyond what I possess.
+
+  I ask and wish not to appear
+    More beauteous, rich, or gay:
+  Lord, make me wiser every year,
+    And better every day.
+
+
+THE BOY, THE MOTHER, AND THE BUTTERFLY
+
+[1827]
+
+  Young William held the Butterfly in chase,
+  And it was pretty to observe the race
+  Betwixt the Fly and Child, who nigh had caught him
+  But for a merry jest his Mother taught him.
+  "My valiant Huntsman, fie!" she said, "for shame,
+  You are too big a match for so small game,
+  To catch the Hare, or nimble Squirrel try,
+  Remember, William, He is BUT A FLY."
+
+  Not always is Humanity imprest
+  By serious schooling; a light word or jest
+  Will sometimes leave a moral sting behind
+  When graver lessons vanish out of mind.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCE DORUS
+
+OR
+
+FLATTERY PUT OUT OF COUNTENANCE
+
+
+A POETICAL VERSION OF AN ANCIENT TALK
+
+  In days of yore, as Ancient Stories tell,
+  A King in love with a great Princess fell.
+  Long at her feet submiss the Monarch sigh'd,
+  While she with stern repulse his suit denied.
+  Yet was he form'd by birth to please the fair,
+  Dress'd, danc'd, and courted with a Monarch's air;
+  But Magic Spells her frozen breast had steel'd
+  With stubborn pride, that knew not how to yield.
+
+  This to the King' a courteous Fairy told,
+  And bade the Monarch in his suit be bold;
+  For he that would the charming Princess wed,
+  Had only on her cat's black tail to tread,
+  When straight the Spell would vanish into air,
+  And he enjoy for life the yielding fair.
+
+  He thank'd the Fairy for her kind advice.--
+  Thought he, "If this be all, I'll not be nice;
+  Rather than in my courtship I will fail
+  I will to mince-meat tread Minon's black tail."
+
+  To the Princess's court repairing strait,
+  He sought the cat that must decide his fate;
+  But when he found her, how the creature stared!
+  How her back bristled, and her great eyes glared!
+  That [tail] which he so fondly hop'd his prize,
+  Was swell'd by wrath to twice its usual size;
+  And all her cattish gestures plainly spoke
+  She thought the affair he came upon, no joke.
+  With wary step the cautious King draws near,
+  And slyly means to attack her in her rear;
+  But when he thinks upon her tail to pounce,
+  Whisk--off she skips--three yards upon a bounce--
+  Again he tries, again his efforts fail--
+  Minon's a witch--the deuce is in her tail--
+
+  The anxious chase for weeks the Monarch tried,
+  Till courage fail'd, and hope within him died.
+  A desperate suit 'twas useless to prefer,
+  Or hope to catch a tail of quicksilver.--
+  When on a day, beyond his hopes, he found
+  Minon, his foe, asleep upon the ground;
+  Her ample tail behind her lay outspread,
+  Full to the eye, and tempting to the tread.
+  The King with rapture the occasion bless'd.
+  And with quick foot the fatal part he press'd.
+  Loud squalls were heard, like howlings of a storm,
+  And sad he gazed on Minon's altered form,--
+  No more a cat, but chang'd into a man
+  Of giant size, who frown'd, and thus began:
+
+  "Rash King, that dared with impious design
+  To violate that tail, that once was mine;
+  What though the spell be broke, and burst the charms,
+  That kept the Princess from thy longing arms,--
+  Not unrevenged shall thou my fury dare,
+  For by that violated tail I swear,
+  From your unhappy nuptials shall be born
+  A Prince, whose Nose shall be thy subjects' scorn.
+  Bless'd in his love thy son shall never be,
+  Till he his foul deformity shall see,
+  Till he with tears his blemish shall confess,
+  Discern its odious length, and wish it less!"
+
+  This said, he vanish'd; and the King awhile
+  Mused at his words, then answer'd with a smile
+  "Give me a child in happy wedlock born,
+  And let his Nose be made like a French horn;
+  His knowledge of the fact I ne'er can doubt,--
+  If he have eyes, or hands, he'll find it out."
+
+  So spake the King, self-flatter'd in his thought,
+  Then with impatient step the Princess sought.
+  His urgent suit no longer she withstands,
+  But links with him in Hymen's knot her hands.
+
+    Almost as soon a widow as a bride,
+  Within a year the King her husband died;
+  And shortly after he was dead and gone,
+  She was deliver'd of a little son,
+  The prettiest babe, with lips as red as rose,
+  And eyes like little stars--but such a nose--
+  The tender Mother fondly took the boy
+  Into her arms, and would have kiss'd her joy;
+  His luckless nose forbade the fond embrace--
+  He thrust the hideous feature in her face.
+
+  Then all her Maids of Honour tried in turn,
+  And for a Prince's kiss in envy burn;
+  By sad experience taught, their hopes they miss'd,
+  And mourn'd a Prince that never could be kiss'd.
+
+  In silent tears the Queen confess'd her grief,
+  Till kindest Flattery came to her relief.
+  Her maids, as each one takes him in her arms,
+  Expatiate freely o'er his world of charms--
+  His eyes, lips, mouth--his forehead was divine--
+  And for the nose--they called it Aquiline--
+  Declared that Cæsar, who the world subdued,
+  Had such a one--just of that longitude--
+  That Kings like him compelled folks to adore them,
+  And drove the short-nos'd sons of men before them--
+  That length of nose portended length of days,
+  And was a great advantage many ways--
+  To mourn the gifts of Providence was wrong--
+  Besides, _the Nose was not so very long_.--
+
+  These arguments in part her grief redrest,
+  A mother's partial fondness did the rest;
+  And Time, that all things reconciles by use,
+  Did in her notions such a change produce.
+  That, as she views her babe, with favour blind,
+  She thinks him handsomest of human kind.
+
+  Meantime in spite of his disfigured face,
+  Dorus (for so he's call'd) grew up apace;
+  In fair proportion all his features rose,
+  Save that most prominent of all--his Nose.
+  That Nose, which in the infant could annoy,
+  Was grown a perfect nuisance in the boy.
+  Whene'er he walk'd, his Handle went before,
+  Long as the snout of Ferret, or Wild Boar;
+  Or like the Staff, with which on holy day
+  The solemn Parish Beadle clears the way.
+
+  But from their cradle to their latest year,
+  How seldom Truth can reach a Prince's ear!
+  To keep th' unwelcome knowledge out of view,
+  His lesson well each flattering Courtier knew;
+  The hoary Tutor, and the wily Page,
+  Unmeet confederates! dupe his tender age.
+  They taught him that whate'er vain mortals boast--
+  Strength, Courage, Wisdom--all they value most--
+  Whate'er on human life distinction throws--
+  Was all comprised--in what?--a length of nose!
+  Ev'n Virtue's self (by some suppos'd chief merit)
+  In short-nosed folks was only want of spirit.
+
+  While doctrines such as these his guides instill'd,
+  His Palace was with long-nosed people fill'd;
+  At Court, whoever ventured to appear
+  With a short nose, was treated with a sneer.
+  Each courtier's wife, that with a babe is blest,
+  Moulds its young nose betimes; and does her best,
+  By pulls, and hauls, and twists, and lugs and pinches,
+  To stretch it to the standard of the Prince's.
+
+  Dup'd by these arts, Dorus to manhood rose,
+  Nor dream'd of aught more comely than his Nose,
+  Till Love, whose pow'r ev'n Princes have confest,
+  Claim'd the soft empire o'er his youthful breast.
+  Fair Claribel was she who caused his care;
+  A neighb'ring Monarch's daughter, and sole heir.
+  For beauteous Claribel his bosom burn'd;
+  The beauteous Claribel his flame return'd;
+  Deign'd with kind words his passion to approve,
+  Met his soft vows, and yielded love for love.
+  If in her mind some female pangs arose
+  At sight (and who can blame her?) of his Nose.
+  Affection made her willing to be blind;
+  She loved him for the beauties of his mind;
+  And in his lustre, and his royal race,
+  Contented sunk--one feature of his face.
+
+  Blooming to sight, and lovely to behold,
+  Herself was cast in Beauty's richest mould;
+  Sweet female majesty her person deck'd,
+  Her face an angel's--save for one defect--
+  Wise Nature, who to Dorus over kind,
+  A length of nose too liberal had assign'd,
+  As if with us poor mortals to make sport,
+  Had giv'n to Claribel a nose too short:
+  But turned up with a sort of modest grace;
+  It took not much of beauty from her face;
+  And subtle Courtiers, who their Prince's mind
+  Still watch'd, and turned about with every wind,
+  Assur'd the Prince, that though man's beauty owes
+  Its charm to a majestic length of nose,
+  The excellence of Woman (softer creature)
+  Consisted in the shortness of that feature.
+  Few arguments were wanted to convince
+  The already more than half persuaded Prince;
+  Truths, which we hate, with slowness we receive,
+  But what we wish to credit, soon believe.
+
+  The Princess's affections being gain'd,
+  What but her Sire's approval now remain'd?
+  Ambassadors with solemn pomp are sent
+  To win the aged Monarch to consent
+  (Seeing their States already were allied)
+  That Dorus might have Claribel to bride.
+  Her Royal Sire, who wisely understood
+  The match propos'd was for both kingdoms' good,
+  Gave his consent; and gentle Claribel
+  With weeping bids her Father's court farewell.
+
+  With gallant pomp, and numerous array,
+  Dorus went forth to meet her on her way;
+  But when the Princely pair of lovers met,
+  Their hearts on mutual gratulations set,
+  Sudden the Enchanter from the ground arose,
+  (The same who prophesied the Prince's nose)
+  And with rude grasp, unconscious of her charms,
+  Snatch'd up the lovely Princess in his arms,
+  Then bore her out of reach of human eyes,
+  Up in the pathless regions of the skies.
+
+  Bereft of her that was his only care,
+  Dorus resign'd his soul to wild despair;
+  Resolv'd to leave the land that gave him birth,
+  And seek fair Claribel throughout the earth.
+  Mounting his horse, he gives the beast the reins,
+  And wanders lonely through the desert plains;
+  With fearless heart the savage heath explores,
+  Where the wolf prowls, and where the tiger roars,
+  Nor wolf, nor tiger, dare his way oppose;
+  The wildest creatures see, and shun, his NOSE.
+  Ev'n lions fear! the elephant alone
+  Surveys with pride a trunk so like his own.
+  At length he to a shady forest came,
+  Where in a cavern lived an aged dame;
+  A reverend Fairy, on whose silver head
+  A hundred years their downy snows had shed.
+  Here ent'ring in, the Mistress of the place
+  Bespoke him welcome with a cheerful grace,
+  Fetch'd forth her dainties, spread her social board
+  With all the Store her dwelling could afford.
+  The Prince with toil and hunger sore opprest,
+  Gladly accepts, and deigns to be her guest.
+  But when the first civilities were paid,
+  The dishes rang'd, and Grace in order said;
+  The Fairy, who had leisure now to view
+  Her guest more closely, from her pocket drew
+  Her spectacles, and wip'd them from the dust,
+  Then on her nose endeavour'd to adjust;
+  With difficulty she could find a place
+  To hang them on in her unshapely face;
+  For if the Princess's was somewhat small,
+  This Fairy scarce had any nose at all.
+  But when by help of spectacles the Crone
+  Discern'd a Nose so different from her own,
+  What peals of laughter shook her aged sides!
+  While with sharp jests the Prince she thus derides.
+
+FAIRY
+
+  "Welcome, great Prince of Noses, to my cell;
+  'Tis a poor place,--but thus we Fairies dwell.
+  Pray, let me ask you, if from far you come--
+  And don't you sometimes find it cumbersome?"
+
+PRINCE
+
+  "Find what?"
+
+FAIRY
+
+          "Your Nose--."
+
+PRINCE
+
+                  "My Nose, Ma'am!"
+
+FAIRY
+
+                               "No offence.--
+  The King your Father was a man of sense,
+  A handsome man (but lived not to be old)
+  And had a Nose cast in the common mould.
+  Ev'n I myself, that now with age am grey,
+  Was thought to have some beauty in my day,
+  And am the Daughter of a King. Your sire
+  In this poor face saw something to admire--
+  And I to shew my gratitude made shift--
+  Have stood his friend--and help'd him at a lift--
+  'Twas I that, when his hopes began to fail,
+  Shew'd him the spell that lurk'd in Minon's tail--
+  Perhaps you have heard--but come, Sir, you don't eat--
+  That Nose of yours requires both wine and meat--
+  Fall to, and welcome, without more ado--
+  You see your fare--what shall I help you to?
+  This dish the tongues of nightingales contains;
+  This, eyes of peacocks; and that, linnets' brains;
+  That next you is a Bird of Paradise--
+  We fairies in our food are somewhat nice.--
+  And pray, Sir, while your hunger is supplied,
+  Do lean your Nose a little on one side;
+  The shadow, which it casts upon the meat,
+  Darkens my plate, I see not what I eat "--
+
+  The Prince on dainty after dainty feeding,
+  Felt inly shock'd at the old Fairy's breeding;
+  And held it want of manners in the Dame,
+  And did her country education blame.
+  One thing he only wonder'd at,--what she
+  So very comic in his nose could see.
+  Hers, it must be confest, was somewhat short,
+  And time and shrinking age accounted for't;
+  But for his own, thank heaven, he could not tell
+  That it was ever thought remarkable;
+  A decent nose, of reasonable size,
+  And handsome thought, rather than otherwise.
+  But that which most of all his wonder paid,
+  Was to observe the Fairy's waiting Maid;
+  How at each word the aged Dame let fall
+  She courtsied low, and smil'd assent to all;
+  But chiefly when the rev'rend Grannam told
+  Of conquests, which her beauty made of old.--
+  He smiled to see how Flattery sway'd the Dame,
+  Nor knew himself was open to the same!
+  He finds her raillery now increase so fast,
+  That making hasty end of his repast,
+  Glad to escape her tongue, he bids farewell
+  To the old Fairy, and her friendly cell.
+
+  But his kind Hostess, who had vainly tried
+  The force of ridicule to cure his pride,
+  Fertile in plans, a surer method chose,
+  To make him see the error of his nose;
+  For till he view'd that feature with remorse,
+  The Enchanter's direful spell must be in force.
+
+  Midway the road by which the Prince must pass,
+  She rais'd by magic art a House of Glass;
+  No mason's hand appear'd, nor work of wood;
+  Compact of glass the wondrous fabric stood.
+  Its stately pillars, glittering in the sun,
+  Conspicuous from afar, like silver, shone.
+  Here, snatch'd and rescued from th' Enchanter's might,
+  She placed the beauteous Claribel in sight.
+  The admiring Prince the chrystal dome survey'd,
+  And sought access unto his lovely Maid;
+  But, strange to tell, in all that mansion's bound,
+  Nor door, nor casement, was there to be found.
+  Enrag'd, he took up massy stones, and flung
+  With such a force, that all the palace rung;
+  But made no more impression on the glass,
+  Than if the solid structure had been brass.
+  To comfort his despair, the lovely maid
+  Her snowy hand against her window laid;
+  But when with eager haste he thought to kiss,
+  His Nose stood out, and robb'd him of the bliss.
+  Thrice he essay'd th' impracticable feat;
+  The window and his lips can never meet.
+
+  The painful Truth, which Flattery long conceal'd,
+  Rush'd on his mind, and "O!" he cried, "I yield;
+  Wisest of Fairies, thou wert right, I wrong--
+  _I own, I own, I have a Nose too long_."
+
+  The frank confession was no sooner spoke,
+  But into shivers all the palace broke,
+  His Nose of monstrous length, to his surprise
+  Shrunk to the limits of a common size;
+  And Claribel with joy her Lover view'd,
+  Now grown as beautiful as he was good.
+  The aged Fairy in their presence stands,
+  Confirms their mutual vows, and joins their hands.
+  The Prince with rapture hails the happy hour,
+  That rescued him from self-delusion's power;
+  And trains of blessings crown the future life
+  Of Dorus, and of Claribel, his wife.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+CHARLES LAMB AND BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
+
+
+Charles Lamb's activities as a writer for children seem to have begun
+and ended in the service of Godwin. The earliest effort in this
+direction of which we have any knowledge is _The King and Queen of
+Hearts_, 1805, and the latest _Prince Dorus_, 1810 or 1811, unless we
+count _Beauty and the Beast_, possibly 1811, which in my opinion he
+did not write.
+
+Lamb first met William Godwin (1756-1836), the philosopher, probably
+through the instrumentality of their mutual friend Thomas Holcroft,
+not long after Gillray had satirised Lamb and Lloyd, in his plate in
+the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_, August,
+1798, as a frog and a toad, seated in the vicinity of Coleridge and
+Southey and reading together a volume labelled "Blank Verse, by Toad
+and Frog." "Pray, Mr. Lamb," said Godwin when he first made Lamb's
+acquaintance, "are you toad or frog?" It was feared that trouble might
+ensue, but Lamb and Godwin were found the next morning at breakfast
+together and they became good, though never very intimate, friends.
+
+Godwin, who had been for a while a minister at Ware, in Hertfordshire,
+came to London in 1779, and took up literature as a profession
+seriously in 1783. His _Political Justice_ was published in 1793,
+_Caleb Williams_ in 1794, and _St. Leon_ in 1799. After loving at
+a distance Mrs. Opie and Mrs. Inchbald, Godwin married Mary
+Wollstonecraft in 1797. Their daughter afterwards became Mrs. Shelley,
+the wife of the poet. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died in the year of
+her marriage, and in 1801 Godwin married again, a Mrs. Clairmont,
+a widow. Lamb detested her. None the less it was she who took to
+publishing and who incited him and his sister to write the charming
+children's books in this volume.
+
+Lamb helped Godwin with other literary ventures before the publishing
+business was started. In 1800 he wrote an epilogue to his tragedy
+of "Antonio" (see the essay in Vol. II., "The Old Actors," for a
+description of the luckless first night), and he advised him in the
+composition of "Faulkener," another tragedy, which failed in 1807 and
+which also had a prologue by Lamb. And a letter is extant showing Lamb
+toiling at a review of Godwin's _Chaucer_ in 1803, but the review
+itself is not forthcoming.
+
+The publishing business was started in 1805 on Mrs. Godwin's
+initiative. At first, owing to the undesirability of connecting the
+name of a political and moral firebrand like Godwin with books for
+children, it was arranged that the business, which was in Hanway
+Street, Oxford Street, should bear the name of the manager, Thomas
+Hodgkins, while the books contributed by Godwin were to be signed
+Edward Baldwin. In 1806, however, Mrs. Godwin opened a shop at 41
+Skinner Street, Snow Hill (now demolished), and published in her own
+name as M.J. Godwin & Co., at The Children's Library.
+
+For her the Lambs wrote _The King and Queen of Hearts_ (by Charles
+Lamb), 1805; _Tales from Shakespear_, 1807; _The Adventures of
+Ulysses_ (by Charles Lamb), 1808; _Mrs. Leicester's School and Poetry
+for Children_, 1809; and _Prince Dorus_ (by Charles Lamb), 1811. Mrs.
+Godwin translated tales from the French, Godwin contributed _Baldwin's
+Fables_, _Baldwin's Pantheon_, and histories of Greece, England and
+Rome, and Hazlitt wrote an English Grammar. The principal illustrator
+to the firm was William Mulready.
+
+Although Lamb had the most cordial disliking for Mrs. Godwin, he
+always stood by his old friend her husband. Between 1811 and 1821
+the two men seem to have had little to do with each other; but in
+1822 Lamb came to Godwin's assistance to much purpose. The title to
+Godwin's house in Skinner Street was successfully contested in that
+year, and Godwin became a bankrupt. A fund was therefore set on
+foot for him by Lamb and others, Lamb's own contribution being £50.
+Godwin, however, never rightly rallied, and thenceforward lived very
+quietly, wrote the _History of the Commonwealth_ and _Lives of the
+Necromancers_, and died in 1836. Mrs. Godwin survived him until 1841.
+
+Knowing what we do--from Dowden's _Shelley_ and other sources--it is
+not possible greatly to admire Godwin's character, nor is the second
+Mrs. Godwin a subject for enthusiasm; but the part played by them in
+the Lambs' literary life was extremely valuable. Charles Lamb had,
+it is true, other stimulus, and without his work for children, sweet
+though it is, his name would still be a household word; but Mary Lamb
+might, but for the Godwins, have gone almost silent to the grave. Her
+writings, with their sweet gravity and tender simplicity, were called
+forth wholly by the Bad Baby, as Lamb called Mrs. Godwin.
+
+Lamb's views on the literature of the nursery had crystallised long
+before he began to write children's books himself. In a letter to
+Coleridge, October 23,1802, he had said:--
+
+"'Goody Two Shoes' is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has
+banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at
+Newberry's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner
+of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's
+nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs.
+Barbauld's books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the _shape
+of knowledge_, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his
+own powers when he has learnt, that a horse is an animal, and Billy is
+better than a horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest
+in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the while he
+suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded
+to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is
+there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would
+have been now, if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives'
+fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural
+history!"
+
+Hence when the time came Lamb was all ready with a nursery method of
+his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 1. TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR.
+
+Mary Lamb was asked to write the _Tales from Shakespear_, with help
+from her brother, in the spring of 1806 or the winter of 1805. I have
+seen the statement that this was at the instigation of Hazlitt, but
+Lamb does not say so. The first mention of the work is in Lamb's
+letter to Manning, May 10, 1806:--
+
+"She [Mary] says you saw her writings about the other day, and she
+wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's
+bookseller twenty of Shakspeare's plays, to be made into children's
+tales. Six are already done by her, to wit, 'The Tempest,' 'Winter's
+Tale,' 'Midsummer Night,' 'Much Ado,' 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' and
+'Cymbeline'; and the 'Merchant of Venice' is in forwardness. I have
+done 'Othello' and 'Macbeth,' and mean to do all the tragedies. I
+think it will be popular among the little people, besides money. It's
+to bring in sixty guineas. Mary has done them capitally, I think,
+you'd think. These are the humble amusements we propose, while you are
+gone to plant the cross of Christ among barbarous pagan anthropophagi.
+Quam homo homini præstat! but then, perhaps, you'll get murdered, and
+we shall die in our beds with a fair literary reputation."
+
+Mary Lamb's letters to Sarah Stoddart (afterwards Sarah Hazlitt),
+continue the story. This is on June 2, 1806:--
+
+My _Tales_ are to be published in separate story-books; I mean, in
+single stories, like the children's little shilling books. I cannot
+send you them in Manuscript, because they are all in the Godwins'
+hands; but one will be published very soon, and then you shall have
+it _all in print_. I go on very well, and have no doubt but I shall
+always be able to hit upon some such kind of job to keep going on. I
+think I shall get fifty pounds a year at the lowest calculation; but
+as I have not yet seen any _money_ of my own earning, for we do not
+expect to be paid till Christmas, I do not feel the good fortune, that
+has so unexpectedly befallen me, half so much as I ought to do. But
+another year, no doubt, I shall perceive it.
+
+When I write again, you will hear tidings of the farce, for Charles is
+to go in a few days to the Managers to inquire about it. But that must
+now be a next-year's business too, even if it does succeed; so it's
+all looking forward, and no prospect of present gain. But that's
+better than no hopes at all, either for present or future times.
+
+Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet;
+you would like to see us, as we often sit writing on one table (but
+not on one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer
+Night's Dream; or, rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan: I
+taking snuff; and he groaning all the while, and saying he can make
+nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he
+finds out he has made something of it....
+
+Martin [Burney] has just been here. My Tales (_again_) and Charles's
+Farce has made the boy mad to turn Author; and he has written a Farce,
+and he has made the Winter's Tale into a story; but what Charles says
+of himself is really true of Martin, for _he can make nothing at all
+of it_; and I have been talking very eloquently this morning, to
+convince him that nobody can write farces, &c., under thirty years of
+age. And so I suppose he will go home and new model his farce.
+
+A little later, June 26, Lamb writes to Wordsworth:--
+
+"Mary is just stuck fast in All's Well that Ends Well. She complains
+of having to set forth so many female characters in boy's clothes. She
+begins to think Shakspear must have wanted Imagination. I to encourage
+her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work,
+flatter her with telling how well such and such a play is done. But
+she is stuck fast and I have been obliged to promise to assist her."
+
+Then we have Mary Lamb to Sarah Stoddart again (early in July, 1806):
+"I am in good spirits just at this present time, for Charles has been
+reading over the _Tale_ I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks
+it one of the very best: it is 'All's Well that Ends Well.'"
+
+The work was finished in the autumn of 1806 and published at the end
+of the year, dated 1807. Lamb sent Wordsworth a copy on January 29,
+1807, with the following letter:--
+
+    "We have book'd off from Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, this day
+    (per Coach) the Tales from Shakespear. You will forgive the
+    plates, when I tell you they were left to the direction of Godwin,
+    who left the choice of subjects to the bad baby, who from mischief
+    (I suppose) has chosen one from damn'd beastly vulgarity (vide
+    'Merch. Venice'), where no atom of authority was in the tale to
+    justify it--to another has given a name which exists not in the
+    tale, Nic Bottom, and which she thought would be funny, though in
+    this I suspect _his_ hand, for I guess her reading does not reach
+    far enough to know Bottom's Christian name--and one of Hamlet, and
+    Grave digging, a scene which is not hinted at in the story, and
+    you might as well have put King Canute the Great reproving his
+    courtiers--the rest are Giants and Giantesses. Suffice it, to save
+    our taste and damn our folly, that we left it all to a friend W.G.
+    who in the first place cheated me into putting a name to them,
+    which I did not mean, but do not repent, and then wrote a puff
+    about their _simplicity_, &c., to go with the advertisement as in
+    my name! Enough of this egregious dupery. I will try to abstract
+    the load of teazing circumstances from the Stories and tell you
+    that I am answerable for Lear, Macbeth, Timon, Romeo, Hamlet,
+    Othello, for occasionally a tail piece or correction of grammar,
+    for none of the cuts and all of the spelling. The rest is my
+    Sister's.--We think Pericles of hers the best, and Othello of
+    mine--but I hope all have some good. As You Like It, we like
+    least.
+
+    "So much, only begging you to tear out the cuts and give them to
+    Johnny, as 'Mrs. Godwin's fancy'.
+
+    "C.L.
+
+      "_Our love to all_.
+
+    "I had almost forgot, My part of the Preface begins in the middle
+    of a sentence, in last but one page, after a colon, thus:--
+
+    ":--_which if they be happily so done_, &c. (see page 2, line 7
+    from foot).
+
+    The former part hath a more feminine turn and does hold me up
+    something as an instructor to young ladies: but upon my modesty's
+    honour I wrote it not.
+
+    "Godwin told my Sister that the Baby chose the subjects: a fact in
+    taste."
+
+This letter not only tells us how the preface was written--the first
+part, I take it, by William Godwin--but what Lamb himself thought of
+the pictures; which I reproduce in the large edition. It is customary
+to attribute the designs to Mulready and the engraving to William
+Blake.
+
+I have set up the _Tales_ from the second edition, 1809, because it
+embodies certain corrections and was probably the last edition in
+which the Lambs took any interest. The changes of word are few. I note
+the more important; Page 5, line 1, "recollection" was "remembrance"
+in the first edition; page 10, line 27, "voracious" was "ugly" in the
+first edition; page 15, line 21, "vessel" was "churn"; page 42, line
+30, "continued" was in the first edition "remained"; page 108, foot,
+"But she being a woman" had run in the first edition, "But she being
+a bad ambitious woman." I leave other minute differences to the
+Bibliographer.
+
+The second edition was issued in two forms: one similar to the first
+edition and one with only frontispiece, a portrait of Shakespear, and
+the following foreword from the pen, I imagine, of Mr. Godwin:--
+
+    ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+    The Proprietors of this work willingly pay obedience to the voice
+    of the public. It has been the general sentiment, that the style
+    in which these Tales are written, is not so precisely adapted for
+    the amusement of mere children, as for an acceptable and improving
+    present to young ladies advancing to the state of womanhood.
+    They therefore now offer to the public an edition prepared with
+    suitable elegance. In the former impression they gave twenty
+    prints, illustrative of the twenty tales which compose these
+    volumes, for they knew that it was a grievous thing and a
+    disappointment to a child, to find some tales without the
+    recommendation of a print, which the others possessed. The prints
+    were therefore made from spirited designs, but did not pretend to
+    high finishing in the execution. To this edition they have annexed
+    merely a beautiful head of our immortal Dramatist, from a much
+    admired painting by Zoust.--They are satisfied that every reader
+    of taste will thank them for not suppressing the former Preface,
+    though not exactly applicable on the present occasion.
+
+    N.B.--A few copies have been worked off on the plan of the former
+    impression, for the use of those who rather coincide in the
+    original conception of the writer, than in the opinion above
+    stated.
+
+Lamb, we may be sure, had no hand in this manifesto, but whatever
+protest he may have made was unsuccessful. It reappears in the third
+edition, while the preface there has the general alteration of the
+first person singular to the first person plural: "our young readers"
+for "my young readers," and so forth. But this was probably Godwinian
+work.
+
+The Godwins also issued some or all of the _Tales_ separately at
+sixpence each (the two ordinary volumes cost eight shillings) with
+three plates to each, of a different design from those in the
+two-volume edition. These little books are exceedingly rare, but
+copies have been discovered both plain and coloured. The plates are
+attributed to Blake.
+
+The Lambs' _Tales from Shakespear_ were not, Mr. Bertram Dobell has
+pointed out, the first experiment of the kind. In 1783 was published
+in Paris _Contes Moraux, Amusans et Instructifs, à l'usage de la
+Jeunesse tirés des Tragédies de Shakespear_. Par M. Perrin. The Lambs
+did not, however, borrow anything from M. Perrin, even if they were
+aware of his work. The _Tales_ are peculiarly their own.
+
+The _Tales from Shakespear_ are, and probably will continue to be,
+the most widely distributed of all the Lambs' work. In England it may
+be that _Elia_ has had as many readers; but abroad the _Tales from
+Shakespear_ easily lead. In the British Museum catalogue I find
+translations in French, German, Swedish, Spanish, and Polish. (No
+complete translation of _Elia_ into any language is known, not even in
+French, although a selection of the essays will be found at the end of
+Depret's monograph, _De L'Humeur Littéraire en Angleterre_, 1877.) In
+England almost every Christmas brings a new edition of the _Tales_ and
+often an imitation.
+
+Although Mary Lamb was the true author of the book, as of _Mrs.
+Leicester's School_ and of _Poetry for Children_, her share being much
+greater than her brother's in all of these, she was not until many
+years later associated publicly with any of them. The _Tales_ were
+attributed to Charles Lamb, presumably against his wish, as we see
+from a sentence in the letter to Wordsworth quoted above, and the
+other two books had no name attached to them at all. Why Mary Lamb
+preserved such strict anonymity we do not now know; but it was
+probably from a natural shrinking from any kind of publicity after the
+unhappy publicity which she had once gained by her misfortune.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 240. THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES.
+
+Lamb must have been as busy in the years 1806-1808 as in any of his
+life; for he then not only had his India House work, but wrote his
+share of the _Tales from Shakespear_, _Mrs. Leicester's School_ and
+_Poetry for Children_, wrote all of _The Adventures of Ulysses_, and
+finally prepared his _Dramatic Specimens_. Moreover in 1806 he had the
+harassment of the alterations and impending production of "Mr. H."
+
+On February 26, 1808, he tells Manning that he has just finished _The
+Adventures of Ulysses_ and the _Specimens_, describing _The Adventures
+of Ulysses_ as "intended to be an introduction to the reading of
+Telemachus! it is done out of the Odyssey, not from the Greek. I
+would not mislead you: nor yet from Pope's Odyssey, but from an older
+translation of one Chapman. The 'Shakspeare Tales' suggested the doing
+it." Many years after Lamb wrote to Barton (August 10, 1827): "Did
+you ever read my 'Adventures of Ulysses,' founded on Chapman's old
+translation of it? for children or _men_. Ch. is divine, and my
+abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity."
+
+Chapman's _Homer_ was the folio which Leigh Hunt tells us he once saw
+Lamb kiss.
+
+Writing to Coleridge on October 23, 1802, Lamb says:--
+
+    "I have just finished Chapman's Homer. Did you ever read it?--it
+    has most the continuous power of interesting you all along, like a
+    rapid original, of any; and in the uncommon excellence of the more
+    finished parts goes beyond Fairfax or any of 'em. The metre is
+    fourteen syllables, and capable of all sweetness and grandeur.
+    Cowper's ponderous blank verse detains you every step with some
+    heavy Miltonism; Chapman gallops off with you his own free
+    pace....
+
+    "I will tell you more about Chapman and his peculiarities in my
+    next. I am much interested in him."
+
+A brief correspondence which passed between Godwin and Lamb just
+before the publication of _The Adventures of Ulysses_ may be given
+here.
+
+WILLIAM GODWIN TO CHARLES LAMB
+
+    Skinner Street, _March_ 10, 1808.
+
+    Dear Lamb,--I address you with all humility, because I know you to
+    be _tenax propositi_. Hear me, I entreat you, with patience.
+
+    It is strange with what different feelings an author and
+    a bookseller looks at the same manuscript. I know this by
+    experience: I was an author, I am a bookseller. The author thinks
+    what will conduce to his honour: the bookseller what will cause
+    his commodities to sell.
+
+    You, or some other wise man, I have heard to say, It is children
+    that read children's books, when they are read, but it is parents
+    that choose them. The critical thought of the tradesman put itself
+    therefore into the place of the parent, and what the parent will
+    condemn.
+
+    We live in squeamish days. Amid the beauties of your manuscript,
+    of which no man can think more highly than I do, what will the
+    squeamish say to such expressions as these,--'devoured their
+    limbs, yet warm and trembling, lapping the blood,' page 10. Or
+    to the giant's vomit, page 14; or to the minute and shocking
+    description of the extinguishing the giant's eye in the page
+    following. You, I daresay, have no formed plan of excluding the
+    female sex from among your readers, and I, as a bookseller, must
+    consider that if you have you exclude one half of the human
+    species.
+
+    Nothing is more easy than to modify these things if you please,
+    and nothing, I think, is more indispensable.
+
+    Give me, as soon as possible, your thoughts on the matter.
+
+    I should also like a preface. Half our customers know not Homer,
+    or know him only as you or I know the lost authors of antiquity.
+    What can be more proper than to mention one or two of those
+    obvious recommendations of his works, which must lead every human
+    creature to desire a nearer acquaintance.--Believe me, ever
+    faithfully yours,
+
+    W. GODWIN.
+
+CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM GODWIN
+
+    _March_ 11, 1808.
+
+    Dear Godwin,--The giant's vomit was perfectly nauseous, and I am
+    glad you pointed it out. I have removed the objection. To the
+    other passages I can find no other objection but what you may
+    bring to numberless passages besides, such as of Scylla snatching
+    up the six men, etc.,--that is to say, they are lively images of
+    _shocking_ things. If you want a book, which is not occasionally
+    to _shock_, you should not have thought of a tale which was so
+    full of anthropophagi and wonders. I cannot alter these things
+    without enervating the Book, and I will not alter them if the
+    penalty should be that you and all the London booksellers should
+    refuse it. But speaking as author to author, I must say that I
+    think _the terrible_ in those two passages seems to me so much to
+    preponderate over the nauseous, as to make them rather fine than
+    disgusting. Who is to read them, I don't know: who is it that
+    reads Tales of Terror and Mysteries of Udolpho? Such things sell.
+    I only say that I will not consent to alter such passages, which
+    I know to be some of the best in the book. As an author I say to
+    you, an author, Touch not my work. As to a bookseller I say, Take
+    the work such as it is, or refuse it. You are as free to refuse it
+    as when we first talked of it. As to a friend I say, Don't plague
+    yourself and me with nonsensical objections. I assure you I will
+    not alter one more word.
+
+As the reader will see, Lamb made only the one alteration; nor did he
+add a preface recommending the works of Homer.
+
+I have set up _The Adventures of Ulysses_ from the second edition,
+1819, because it probably contains Lamb's final revision of the text.
+The punctuation differs considerably from that of the first edition,
+but there are, I think, only four changes of words. On page 251, line
+34, "and" was inserted before "snout"; on page 257, line g, "does"
+was substituted for "do"; on page 266, line 7 from foot, "over" was
+substituted for "above"; and on page 276, line 5 from foot, "it" was
+inserted after "keep."
+
+The suggestion has been made that, since Lamb states in the preface
+that this work was designed as a supplement to _The Adventures
+of Telemachus_, he was also the author of one of the versions of
+Fénélon's popular tale. But this, I think, has no foundation in fact.
+We know from Lamb's letter to Godwin that the impulse to write _The
+Adventures of Ulysses_ came from Godwin, and it was natural that he,
+a bookseller, should wish to associate this new venture with a volume
+so well known and so acceptable as the _Telemachus_. Now and then in
+the story Lamb deliberately refers to Fénélon's work, as when in the
+fourth chapter he says:--
+
+"It were useless to describe over again what has been so well told
+already; or to relate those soft arts of courtship which the goddess
+used to detain Ulysses; the same in kind which she afterwards
+practised upon his less wary son, whom Minerva, in the shape of
+Mentor, hardly preserved from her snares when they came to the
+Delightful Island together in search of the scarce departed Ulysses."
+
+This is drawn not from Chapman or Homer, but from the Archbishop of
+Cambrai. Lamb introduced it in accordance with the first sentence of
+his preface.
+
+Lamb adapted Chapman very freely. For the material in Chapter I. we
+must go to Chapman, Books IX. and X.; for Chapter II., to Books X.
+and XL; for Chapter III., to Book XII.; for Chapter IV., to the early
+books; for Chapters V., VI. and VII., to Chapman, Books V.-IX. and
+XIII.; for Chapter VIII., to Books XIII. and XIV.; and for Chapter IX.
+to the end, to Chapman, Book XVI. and onwards. It must be agreed
+that Lamb performed a difficult task with great skill and success,
+especially when we consider his want of interest, frequently admitted,
+in stories. But the pleasure of adding dignity and sweetness to the
+character of Ulysses seems to have been very considerable as he
+worked (or so I imagine), and he made practically a new thing, a very
+persuasive blend of ancient and modern. The book has not been so
+popular as the _Tales from Shakespear_, but it has, I think, finer
+literary merits and may perhaps be read by older intellects with more
+satisfaction.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 316. MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL.
+
+This charming little book was published by Mrs. Godwin at the end of
+1808, dated 1809, with no author's name attached. Besides, however,
+ample internal evidence as to its authorship, there are many
+references to it in Lamb's letters. Why it was issued anonymously we
+cannot now learn; probably, as I have suggested, from Mary Lamb's
+unwillingness to have her name in print. The _Tales from Shakespear_,
+it will be remembered, were described always as being by Charles Lamb,
+although Mary did far more than half, and it was at the outset her
+book. Her share of _Mrs. Leicester's School_ was equally great, and
+a sentence in one of her letters to Sarah Stoddart suggests that it
+was hers in inception also: "I have been busy making waistcoats, and
+plotting new work to succeed the _Tales_." Possibly it was because
+his share in the book was so small that Lamb refused to sign _Mrs.
+Leicester's School_ as he had the _Tales from Shakespear_; possibly
+he had other reasons, the title-page of his _Dramatic Specimens_
+being one of them. When, a little while afterwards, the _Poetry for
+Children_ was published, it was stated to be "by the author of _Mrs.
+Leicester's School_," while several of the poems when reprinted by
+Mylius (see notes below) were signed Mrs. Leicester. Thus, Mary Lamb's
+last chance of seeing her name on a title-page vanished. But we may
+feel confident that her own wishes were consulted in the matter.
+
+Lamb's share in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ we know from a letter to
+Bernard Barton (January 23, 1824): "My Sister's part in the Leicester
+School (about two thirds) was purely her own; as it was (to the same
+quantity) in the Shakspeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the
+Witch Aunt, the first going to Church, and the final Story, about a
+little Indian girl in a ship."
+
+The little book was well received, and was quietly popular for some
+years, running into eight editions by 1823. I imagine, however, that
+it was little known between 1830 and the end of the century. Latterly
+there has been a revival in interest. One or two critics have touched
+rapturous heights in their praise. Landor wrote to Crabb Robinson in
+April, 1831:--
+
+    It is now several days since I read the book you recommended to
+    me, "Mrs. Leicester's School;" and I feel as if I owed you a debt
+    in deferring to thank you for many hours of exquisite delight.
+    Never have I read anything in prose so many times over within so
+    short a space of time as "The Father's Wedding-day." Most people,
+    I understand, prefer the first tale--in truth a very admirable
+    one--but others could have written it. Show me the man or woman,
+    modern or ancient, who could have written this one sentence: "When
+    I was dressed in my new frock, I wished poor mamma was alive,
+    to see how fine I was on papa's wedding day; and I ran to my
+    favourite station at her bedroom door." How natural, in a little
+    girl, is this incongruity--this impossibility! Richardson would
+    have given his "Clarissa," and Rousseau his "Heloïse" to have
+    imagined it. A fresh source of the pathetic bursts out before
+    us, and not a bitter one. If your Germans can show us anything
+    comparable to what I have transcribed, I would almost undergo a
+    year's gargle of their language for it. The story is admirable
+    throughout--incomparable, inimitable....
+
+Landor wrote to Lady Blessington to the same effect. Praise of this
+book is so pleasant to read that I quote his second letter too:--
+
+    One of her tales is, with the sole exception of the _Bride of
+    Lammermoor_, the most beautiful tale in prose composition in any
+    language, ancient or modern. A young girl has lost her mother, the
+    father marries again, and marries a friend of his former wife. The
+    child is ill reconciled to it, but being dressed in new clothes
+    for the marriage, she runs up to her mother's chamber, filled with
+    the idea how happy that dear mother would be at seeing her in all
+    her glory--not reflecting, poor soul! that it was only by her
+    mother's death that she appeared in it. How natural, how novel is
+    all this! Did you ever imagine that a fresh source of the pathetic
+    would burst forth before us in this trodden and hardened world? I
+    never did, and when I found myself upon it, I pressed my temples
+    with both hands, and tears ran down to my elbows.
+
+And Coleridge remarked to Allsop:--
+
+    It at once soothes and amuses me to think--nay, to know--that
+    the time will come when this little volume of my dear and
+    well-nigh oldest friend, Mary Lamb, will be not only enjoyed but
+    acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury of our permanent
+    English literature; and I cannot help running over in my mind the
+    long list of celebrated writers, astonishing geniuses, Novels,
+    Romances, Poems, Histories and dense Political Economy quartos
+    which, compared with _Mrs. Leicester's School_, will be remembered
+    as often and prized as highly as Wilkie's and Glover's _Epics_ and
+    Lord Bolingbroke's _Philosophies_ compared with _Robinson Crusoe_.
+
+I have set up the book from the second edition, 1809, because the
+Lambs' final text is probably to be found there. Although certain
+additional minor differences were made in the eighth and ninth
+editions, 1821 and 1825, I think it very unlikely that they were
+made by Mary or Charles Lamb. The principal alteration between the
+second and first editions is page 317, line 6, "your eyes were red
+with weeping," for "The traces of tears might still be seen on your
+cheeks." The other differences are very slight, mostly being in
+punctuation, but there are also a few changes of word. I leave these,
+however, to the Bibliographer.
+
+The eighth edition was furnished with the following preface; which,
+though it is signed "The Author," is not, I think, from either Mary or
+Charles Lamb's pen. I rather suspect Mrs. Godwin.
+
+    "Tell me a story, Mamma," was almost the first request my own
+    child made me when she understood the meaning of a story, and
+    I soon discovered I had no easier method of managing a very
+    difficult temper than by adapting my stories to the errors she
+    committed, or the good qualities she announced; but as I found it
+    a very difficult and troublesome task to repeat the same story
+    precisely the same each time, and as a sensible child, even at
+    so early a period as three years of age, will remember where the
+    narrator forgets, and never fail to detect the mistakes of the
+    second repetition, I came to the resolution to print a small
+    collection of stories for very young children, composed merely of
+    circumstances incidental to their age.
+
+The great error of many juvenile books is their deviation from truth;
+and as so much is absolutely necessary to be taught, why add to
+the labour by impressing false ideas on the mind of an infant, and
+thus lose the opportunity of making amusement the vehicle to convey
+instruction? A Mother only is, perhaps, capable of adapting stories to
+the capacities of very young Children; for a Mother only watches the
+unfolding of their ideas, and the bent of their dispositions. If one
+good Mother finds these tales of service to her in her arduous but
+pleasing task, my purpose will be answered.
+
+It is stated that a French version of _Mrs. Leicester's School_, under
+the title _Les Jeunes Pensionnaires_, was published. I have seen,
+however, only _Petits Conies à l'usage de la Feunesse traduits de
+l'Anglais par M'me M. D'Avot_, 1823, which contains "Elisabeth
+Villiers, ou l'Oncle marin," "Charlotte Wilmot," "Marguerite Green, ou
+la jeune Mahométane," and "Arabella Hardy, ou la Traversée."
+
+_Mrs. Leicester's School_ calls for little annotation, except for the
+purpose of relating the stories to the lives of their writers; for it
+contains some very valuable autobiographical matter. But there are a
+few minor points too.
+
+Page 316. _Dedication_.
+
+In the choice of Amwell School as the name of Mrs. Leicester's
+establishment Mary (or Charles) returned after an inveterate Lamb
+habit to the old Hertfordshire days. Amwell, where the New River
+rises, is only a few miles from Widford and Blakesware. The signature
+to the dedication, "M.B.," may have been a little joke for the
+amusement of Martin Burney, who had taken such interest in the
+progress of the _Tales from Shakespear_ and was in those days a
+special favourite with Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 319. I.--_Elizabeth Villiers_. "The Sailor Uncle."
+
+By Mary Lamb. The story of the little girl learning her letters from
+her mother's grave may have belonged to Widford churchyard; otherwise
+there seems to be no personal memory here.
+
+Page 328. II.--_Louisa Manners_. "The Farm House."
+
+By Mary Lamb. Much of the description of the farm and country is
+probably from memory of the old days at Mackery End, where we know
+Mary Lamb to have gone with her little brother Charles some time
+about 1780, and perhaps herself earlier. It is, however, possible
+that Blakesware is meant, since Mary Lamb speaks of the grandmother:
+Mrs. Bruton of Mackery End was her great aunt. One feels that the
+grandmother's sorrow at not being remembered (on page 329) is from
+life; and also the episode with Will Tasker (on the same page), and
+the description (and probably the name) of Old Spot, the shepherd, on
+page 333.
+
+Page 334. III.--_Ann Withers_. "The Changeling."
+
+By Mary Lamb. In one of the later editions of this story certain small
+changes were made, not, I fancy, by Mary Lamb. For example, on page
+349, line 19, the sentence was made to read: "Neither dancing, nor
+any foolish lectures, could do much for Miss Lesley, she remained
+_for some time_ wanting in gracefulness of carriage; but all that is
+usually attributed to dancing music _finally effected_." The italics
+indicate the additions of the nice editorial hand.
+
+Page 350. IV.--_Elinor Forester_. "The Father's Wedding Day."
+
+By Mary Lamb. It is this story which Landor so much admired (see
+above). The pretty song, "Balow, my babe," was probably "Ann
+Bothwell's Lament," beginning "Balow, my boy."
+
+Page 354. V.--_Margaret Green_. "The Young Mahometan."
+
+By Mary Lamb, and perhaps her most perfect work. Here we have a
+description of Blakesware, the home of the Plumers, which for many
+years was uninhabited by the family, and left from 1778 to 1792 in the
+sole charge of Mrs. Field, Charles and Mary's maternal grandmother.
+Charles, since he was born in 1775, would on his visits have known no
+power superior to his grandmother; but Mary, who was born in 1764,
+would have occasionally encountered Mrs. Plumer, just as Margaret
+Green met Mrs. Beresford. Probably Mrs. Plumer and Mrs. Beresford
+were very like. Probably also Mrs. Field maintained silence with her
+grandchild, for we know that neither she nor her daughter rightly
+understood Mary Lamb. Mrs. Field used to speak of her "poor moythered
+brains." Mary's description of the old house should be compared
+with Charles's in the _Elia_ essays "Blakesmoor in H----shire" and
+"Dream-Children." In one point they are at variance; for Mary says
+that the twelve Cæsars "hung" round the hall, and her brother that
+they were life-size busts. I have the authority of a gentleman who
+remembers them at Gilston, whither they were removed, for saying that
+Charles Lamb's memory was the more accurate. The picture of the little
+girl with a lamb seems to have made an equal impression on both their
+minds; and both mention the shuttlecocks on the table.
+
+Page 360. VI.--_Emily Barton_. "Visit to the Cousins."
+
+By Mary Lamb. Possibly autobiographical in the matter of the first
+play. Charles Lamb's first play was the opera "Artaxerxes;" Mary's may
+quite well have been Congreve's "Mourning Bride." The book-shop at the
+corner of St. Paul's Churchyard would be Harris's (late Newbery's);
+that in Skinner Street (No. 41) was, of course, Godwin's, where _Mrs.
+Leicester's School_ was published and sold. This pleasant art of
+advertising one's wares in one's own children's books was brought
+to perfection by Newbery, and by Harris, his successor, whose tiny
+histories are full of reminders of the merits of the corner of St.
+Paul's Churchyard. By making Mr. Barton hesitate between the two shops
+and then go to Mrs. Godwin's, Lamb (for here it was probably he and
+not his sister) carried the joke a step farther than Newbery.
+
+The following account of the figures on old St. Dunstan's Church (the
+children of to-day are taken to Cheapside to see Bennett's clock) is
+given in Hughson's _London_ (1805):--
+
+    On the outside of the church, within a niche and pediment at the
+    south-west end, over the clock, are two figures of savages or wild
+    men, carved in wood, and painted natural colour, as big as the
+    life, standing erect, with each a knotty club in his hand, with
+    which they alternately strike the quarters, not only their arms,
+    but even their heads, moving at every blow.
+
+Moxon tells us that when the old church was pulled down and the
+figures were removed, Lamb shed tears. The figures I am told
+still exist in the garden of the villa in Regent's Park--"St.
+Dunstan's"--that once belonged to the Marquis of Hertford and is now
+the Earl of Londesborough's London House.
+
+Miss Pearson kept a toy-shop at No. 7 Fleet Street. The Lambs knew her
+through Charles's old schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds.
+
+Page 368. VII.--_Maria Howe_. "The Witch Aunt."
+
+By Charles Lamb. This story is peculiarly interesting to students of
+Lamb's life, for it describes, probably with absolute fidelity, his
+Aunt Hetty, and elaborates the passage concerning Stackhouse's _New
+History of the Bible_, which is to be found in the _Elia_ essay
+"Witches and other Night Fears." Aunt Hetty is described elsewhere by
+Lamb in his _Elia_ essays, "Christ's Hospital" and "My Relations;" and
+in the poem "Written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral." In Mary Lamb's
+letter to Sarah Stoddart on September 21, 1803, is a short passage
+corroborative of Lamb's account of the relations subsisting between
+his aunt and his parents:--
+
+    My father had a sister lived with us--of course, lived with my
+    Mother, her sister-in-law; they were, in their different ways, the
+    best creatures in the world--but they set out wrong at first. They
+    made each other miserable for full twenty years of their lives--my
+    Mother was a perfect gentlewoman, my Aunty as unlike a gentlewoman
+    as you can possibly imagine a good old woman to be; so that my
+    dear Mother (who, though you do not know it, is always in my poor
+    head and heart) used to distress and weary her with incessant and
+    unceasing attention and politeness, to gain her affection. The old
+    woman could not return this in kind, and did not know what to make
+    of it--thought it all deceit, and used to hate my Mother with a
+    bitter hatred; which, of course, was soon returned with interest.
+
+Lamb told Coleridge, in a letter upon his aunt's death, "she was to me
+the 'cherisher of infancy.'"
+
+In the _Elia_ essay on "Witches" no mention is made of Glanvil; but
+there is a passage in the unpublished version of _John Woodvil_ which
+mentions both it and Stackhouse:--
+
+  I can remember when a child the maids
+  Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me,
+  As silly women use, and tell me stories
+  Of Witches--Make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft,"
+  And in conclusion show me in the Bible,
+  The old Family-Bible, with the pictures in it,
+  The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel,
+  Which so possest my fancy, being a child,
+  That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came
+  And sat upon my pillow.
+
+That was written some eight or nine years earlier than "Maria Howe;"
+the essay on "Witches" some fifteen years later. Joseph Glanvill
+(1636-1680) issued his _Philosophical Considerations touching Witches
+and Witchcraft_, in 1666.
+
+Page 375. VIII.--_Charlotte Wilmot_. "The Merchant's Daughter."
+
+By Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 378. IX.--_Susan Yates_. "First Going to Church."
+
+By Charles Lamb. John Lamb, the father, came from Lincolnshire, but
+Charles did not know that county at all. The remark, "to see how
+goodness thrived," may well have been John Lamb's, or possibly his
+father's; and Lamb's own first impressions of church, probably
+acquired at the Temple (which he mentions here by comparison), were,
+it is easy to believe, identical with the imaginary narrator's. Church
+bells seem always to have had an attraction for him: he has a pretty
+reference to them in _John Woodvil_, and a little poem in _Blank
+Verse_, 1798, entitled "The Sabbath Bells."
+
+Page 384. X.--_Arabella Hardy_. "The Sea Voyage."
+
+By Charles Lamb. Nothing else that Lamb wrote is quite so far from the
+ordinary run of his thoughts; and nothing has, I think, more charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 389. The King and Queen of Hearts This is probably the first of
+Charles Lamb's books for children. Of its history nothing is known:
+the proof that Charles Lamb wrote it is to be found in a letter
+from Lamb to Wordsworth, now in America, dated February 1, 1806,
+the concluding portion of which, and the only portion that has been
+printed--beginning "_Apropos_ of Spenser"--will be found in most
+editions of the correspondence tacked on to the letter dated June,
+1806. In the earlier part of this missive Lamb enumerates the books
+which he has just despatched to Wordsworth by carrier from London.
+Among these is an edition of Spenser, leading to the "_apropos_."
+Also: "there comes W. Hazlitt's book about Human Action for Coleridge;
+a little song book for Sarah Coleridge; a Box for Hartley ...; a
+Paraphrase on _The King and Queen of Hearts_, of which I, being the
+author, beg Mr. Johnny Wordsworth's acceptance and opinion. _Liberal
+Criticism_, as G. Dyer declares, I am always ready to attend to."
+
+As Charles Lamb is not known to have written children's books for any
+one but the Godwins, who in 1806 were still publishing under cover of
+Thomas Hodgkins' name, in Hanway Street, it is reasonable to assume
+that if a paraphrase of _The King and Queen of Hearts_ nursery rhyme
+could be found, bearing Hodgkins' or Godwin's name, and dated 1805 or
+1806, Lamb would be its author. That such a work did exist was proved
+by the advertisements at the end of other of Godwin's juvenile books.
+In the first edition of _Mrs. Leicester's School_, 1809, is this
+announcement:--
+
+    "Likewise, the following elegant and approved Publications,
+    containing each of them the Incidents of an agreeable Tale,
+    exhibited in a Series of Engravings, Price 1s. plain, or 1s. 6d.
+    coloured.
+
+    "1. _The King and Queen of Hearts: showing how notably the Queen
+    made her Tarts, and how Scurvily the Knave stole them away._ &c."
+
+This series was called the Copperplate Series. In due course a copy
+of No. 1, _The King and Queen of Hearts_, was found in the library of
+Miss Edith Pollock, bought by her at the sale of the late Mr. Andrew
+W. Tuer, an authority upon old children's literature and the publisher
+to whose enterprise we owe the facsimile editions of _Prince Dorus_
+and _Poetry for Children_. Mr. Tuer, however, had not suspected Lamb's
+authorship. The cover of Miss Pollock's copy bears the date 1809,
+which means that the little book was re-bound as required with the
+date of the current year upon it. Copies of the first edition have
+since been discovered and sold for enormous sums. The date is 1806.
+
+In a copy of _The Looking Glass_, another of Godwin's books, _The King
+and Queen of Hearts_ is thus advertised, with a new quatrain, probably
+also from Lamb's pen:--
+
+    "Price 1s. Plain; or 15. 6ed. Coloured,
+      The King and Queen of Hearts,
+          With the
+  Rogueries of the Knave who stole away the Queen's Pies.
+      Illustrated in Fifteen elegant Engravings:
+  Agreeably to the famous Historical Ballad on the Subject.
+
+    "I write of Tarts; how sweet a tale!
+    You'll lick your lips to hear it told:
+  I show you mighty Kings and Queens,
+    Robes of scarlet, Crowns of gold."
+
+This little book, _The Looking Glass_, which relates the early life
+of William Mulready (1786-1863), was issued in facsimile by Mr. F.G.
+Stephens in 1885, with an interesting account of its history. Therein
+Mr. Stephens wrote: "Mr. Linnell told me that the cuts to the once
+well-known _Nongtong Paw_ [Vol. 6 of "The Copperplate Series;" see
+above], _The Sullen Woman and the Pedlar_ [Vol. 2 of the same series],
+_Think before you speak_, and _The King and Queen of Hearts_, were
+designed by Mulready." We thus discover who was the illustrator. My
+own feeling is that the plates came first and Lamb's verses later.
+
+_The King and Queen of Hearts_ cannot be said to add anything
+characteristic to the body of Lamb's writings. But its discovery
+is historically valuable in establishing--by the date 1805 on the
+engraved title-page--the fact that before the _Tales from Shakespear_,
+which are usually thought to be the brother and sister's first
+experiment in writing for children, Charles at any rate had tried his
+hand at that pastime. _The King and Queen of Hearts_ thus becomes his
+first juvenile work.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 404. POETRY FOR CHILDREN.
+
+This little book, attributed on the title-page merely to the author
+of _Mrs. Leicester's School_, was published in two minute volumes at
+three shillings by Mrs. Godwin in 1809.
+
+Robert Lloyd, writing from London to his wife in April, 1809, says
+of Charles and Mary Lamb: "If we may use the expression, their Union
+of affection is what we conceive of marriage in Heaven. They are
+the World _one_ to the _other_. They are writing a Book of Poetry
+for children together." Later: "It is _task_ work to them, they are
+writing for money, and a Book of Poetry for Children being likely to
+sell has induced them to compose one." Writing to Coleridge of the
+_Poetry for Children_, in June, 1809, Lamb says: "Our little poems are
+but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering
+they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of
+subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Bachelor and an old
+Maid. Many parents would not have found so many." Charles Lamb, by the
+way, was then thirty-four, and Mary Lamb forty-four. In sending the
+book to Manning, Lamb said that his own share of the poems was only
+one-third.
+
+The little book seems to have been quickly allowed by its publisher
+to pass into the void. Possibly the two-volume form was found to be
+impracticable: at any rate _Poetry for Children_ disappeared, many
+of its pieces at various times reappearing with the signature Mrs.
+Leicester in _The Junior Class-Book_ (two pieces), in _The First Book
+of Poetry_ (twenty-two pieces) and _The Poetical Class Book_ (three
+pieces), all compiled by William Frederic Mylius, a Christ's Hospital
+master, and published by Mrs. Godwin. Hence the extreme rarity of
+_Poetry for Children_, which seemed to be completely lost until, in
+1877, a copy was found in Australia. Two or three other copies of
+the English edition have since come to light. Mylius used also the
+frontispieces to the two volumes. As I have not seen all the editions
+of these compilations, it is possible that my figures may not be
+complete.
+
+An American edition of _Poetry for Children_ was published in 1812 at
+Boston. The poems "Clock Striking," "Why not do it, Sir, To-day?" and
+"Home Delights," were omitted.
+
+I have placed against the poems, in the notes that follow, the
+authorship--brother or sister's--which seems to me the more probable.
+But I hope it will be understood that I do this at a venture, and,
+except in a few cases, with no exact knowledge.
+
+Page 404. _Envy_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 404. _The Reaper's Child_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 405. _The Ride_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 406. _The Butterfly_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. The poet referred to was William Roscoe, author of _The
+Butterfly's Ball_, 1807.
+
+Page 407. _The Peach_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 408. _Chusing a Name_.
+
+By Charles Lamb; as we know from a letter from Lamb to Robert Lloyd.
+
+Page 408. _Crumbs to the Birds_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 409. _The Rook and the Sparrows_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 410. _Discontent and Quarrelling_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 411. _Repentance and Reconciliation_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 412. _Neatness in Apparel_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 412. _The New-born Infant_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 413. _Motes in the Sun-beams_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 413. _The Boy and Snake_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. This poem was the subject of the frontispiece to
+Vol. I. of the original edition. According to a letter from Jean D.
+Montgomery printed in _The County Gentleman_ in August, 1907, there is
+extant in Kirkcudbrightshire a legend on which this poem is probably
+based. She writes thus:--
+
+    "At the farm of Newlaw, in the parish of Rerrick, in
+    Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, some people named Crosbie lived
+    about the year 1782--at least, they had a son, Douglas, who was
+    born there in that year. When the child grew old enough to trot
+    about by himself his mother was in the habit of giving him his
+    plate of porridge and milk to take outside the farm and eat every
+    morning. He had probably done so for long enough, when one day,
+    his mother, happening to go out, saw him seated on the ground
+    eating his porridge in company with an adder, who, however,
+    instead of hurting the child, merely supped up the milk. When the
+    reptile edged a little nearer to the boy than was quite equal,
+    Douglas slapped the adder on his head with his horn spoon, saying,
+    "Keep yer ain side o' the plate, Grey Bairdie."
+
+The mother was, of course, terrified, but waited until the boy had
+finished his meal, when she called in the neighbours and killed the
+adder.
+
+Curiously enough a precisely similar story turned up in Hungary in
+1907 and was telegraphed to the London press from Budapest.
+
+Page 415. _The First Tooth_.
+
+Mary Lamb. The last line was quoted by Lamb in his Popular Fallacy
+"That Home is Home": "It has been prettily said, that 'a babe is fed
+with milk and praise.'"
+
+Page 416. _To a River in which a Child was Drowned_.
+
+By Charles Lamb. It was reprinted by him in the _Works_, 1818, the
+text of which is here given. I imagine Lamb to have found the metre
+and manner of the poem in the ballad "Gentle River, Gentle River"
+(translated from the Spanish "Rio Verde, Rio Verde"), which is
+printed in the _Percy Reliques_. Reprinted by Mylius in _The Junior
+Class-Book_.
+
+Page 416. _The First of April_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 417. _Cleanliness_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. In the little essay "Saturday Night," written in
+1829, Lamb disputes the truth of the adage "Cleanliness is next to
+Godliness."
+
+Page 418. _The Lame Brother_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. John Lamb, Charles's elder brother, was lamed when a
+young man (much older than the brother in the verses) by a falling
+stone. In "Dream-Children" Lamb states that he himself was once
+lame-footed too, and had to be carried by John. Somewhere between the
+two brothers the historical truth of this poem probably resides.
+
+Page 419. _Going into Breeches_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 420. _Nursing_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 421. _The Text_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 422. _The End of May_.
+
+Mary Lamb. Talfourd writes, apparently with reference to this poem:
+"One verse, which she did not print--the conclusion of a little poem
+supposed to be expressed in a letter by the son of a family who, when
+expecting the return of its father from sea, received news of his
+death,--recited by her to Mr. Martin Burney, and retained in his fond
+recollection, may afford a concluding example of the healthful wisdom
+of her lessons:--
+
+  'I can no longer feign to be
+  A thoughtless child in infancy;
+  I tried to write like young Marie,
+    But I am James her brother;
+  And I can feel--but she's too young--
+  Yet blessings on her prattling tongue,
+    She sweetly soothes my mother.'"
+
+Page 424. _Feigned Courage_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 425. _The Broken Doll_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 426. _The Duty of a Brother_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb, amended by Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 427. _Wasps in a Garden_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 428. _What is Fancy?_
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 429. _Anger_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 429. _Blindness_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 430. _The Mimic Harlequin_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 430. _Written in the First Leaf of a Child's Memorandum Book_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 431. _Memory_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 432. _The Reproof_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 432. _The Two Bees_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 434. _The Journey from School and to School_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 435. _The Orange_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 436. _The Young Letter-writer_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 437. _The Three Friends_.
+
+By Charles Lamb. Reprinted by him in his _Works_, 1818, with the text
+now given, which differs very slightly from that of 1809.
+
+Page 442. _On the Lord's Prayer_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 443. "_Suffer little Children_ ..."
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. With this poem ended Vol. I. of the original edition of
+_Poetry for Children_. With the following poem Vol. II. began.
+
+Page 445. _The Magpye's Nest, or a Lesson of Docility_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. In this poem some trace of John Lamb senior's poetical
+manner may be seen. Fables drawn from bird life stand at the beginning
+of his _Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions_ (see Vol. II.).
+
+Page 447. _The Boy and the Sky-lark_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. The frontispiece to Vol. II. of _Poetry for
+Children_ took its subject from this poem.
+
+Page 449. _The Men and Women, and the Monkeys_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 449. _Love, Death, and Reputation_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. Mr. Swinburne contributed to _The Athenæum_ of
+February 2, 1878, a note on this poem:--
+
+At the 96th page of the new edition of Charles and Mary Lamb's
+'_Poetry for Children_' is a little poem of which the authorship can
+hardly be doubtful, done into rhyme from the blank verse of Webster; a
+translation by no means to its advantage. The original is to be found
+in the third act of the "Duchess of Malfi," in the magnificent scene
+where the privacy of the wedded lovers is invaded by Ferdinand; in
+whose mouth the apologue transferred or "conveyed" by Lamb into the
+quaint and delightful little book over the recovery of which all the
+hearts of his lovers are yet warm with rejoicing, has a tragic and
+terrible significance. It may be worth remark that the _Poetry for
+Children_ appeared the year after that--most fortunate of years
+for all students of the higher English drama--which was made nobly
+memorable by the appearance of the matchless and priceless volume of
+'_Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of
+Shakespear_,' in which the fratricide's apologue is translated at
+length; so that while some part of Lamb's too rare leisure was given
+to the gentle "task work" of making rhymes for little children, the
+first strong savour of a fierce delight in his new intimacy with the
+third and most tragic of English tragic poets must have been fresh and
+hot upon him.
+
+Page 450. _The Sparrow and the Hen_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. Mrs. Glasse would be Hannah Glasse, of _The Art of
+Cookery made Plain and Easy_, 1747.
+
+Page 451. _Which is the Favourite?_
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 451. _The Beggar-Man_.
+
+By John Lamb, Charles and Mary's brother; as we know from a letter
+from Charles Lamb to Robert Lloyd.
+
+Page 452. _Choosing a Profession_.
+
+By Mary Lamb, as we know on the evidence of Robert Lloyd.
+
+Page 453. _Breakfast_.
+
+This also, on Robert Lloyd's evidence, is by Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 454. _Weeding_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 455. _Parental Recollections_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. The first line was quoted by him in the _Elia_ essay
+"The Old and the New Schoolmaster." The poem may be considered as the
+poetical correlative of the beautiful _Elia_ essay "Dream-Children."
+
+Page 455. _The Two Boys_.
+
+By Mary Lamb. Quoted by Lamb, as by "a quaint poetess," in his _Elia_
+essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading."
+
+Page 456. _The Offer_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 456. _The Sister's Expostulation on the Brother's Learning
+Latin_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. Many years later Mary Lamb wrote a sonnet in
+_Blackwood_ on a kindred subject, addressed to Emma Isola. Mary Lamb
+taught Latin to Mary Cowden Clarke (when Mary Victoria Novello) and to
+William Hazlitt's son, also to Miss Kelly.
+
+Page 457. _The Brother's Reply_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 459. _Nurse Green_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 460. _Good Temper_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 460. _Moderation in Diet_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. The "splendid shilling" (borrowed from Phillips' parody
+of Milton) suggests a touch of Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 462. _Incorrect Speaking_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 462. _Charity_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 463. _My Birth-day_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 464. _The Beasts in the Tower_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. There is a hint of Blake's "Tiger, tiger burning
+bright" (which Lamb so greatly admired) in--
+
+  That cat-like beast that to and fro
+  Restless as fire doth ever go.
+
+Page 466. _The Confidant_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 466. _Thoughtless Cruelty_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 467. _Eyes_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 468. _Penny Pieces_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 469. _The Rainbow_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 470. _The Force of Habit_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 470. _Clock Striking_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb. The late R.H. Shepherd, in his edition of Lamb,
+remarks upon the resemblance between lines 10 and 11 and the couplet
+in "Hester"--
+
+          if 'twas not pride
+  It was a joy to that allied--
+
+as proving Charles Lamb to be the author.
+
+Page 471. _Why not do it, Sir, To-day?_
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 471. _Home Delights_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 472. _The Coffee Slips_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 473. _The Dessert_.
+
+(?) Charles Lamb.
+
+Page 474. _To a Young Lady, on being too fond of Music_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb. Melesinda also was the name of the heroine in "Mr. H."
+
+Page 475. _Time spent in Dress_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 476. _The Fairy_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 476. _Conquest of Prejudice_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 478. _The Great Grandfather_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 479. _The Spartan Boy_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 480. _Queen Oriana's Dream_.
+
+By Charles Lamb. Reprinted by him in his _Works_, 1818, the text of
+which is here given.
+
+Page 481. _On a Picture of the Finding of Moses, etc_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 483. _David_.
+
+(?) Mary Lamb.
+
+Page 486. _David in the Cave of Adullam_.
+
+Reprinted by Lamb, with Mary Lamb's name to it, in the _Works_, 1818,
+the text of which is here given. This was the last poem in _Poetry for
+Children_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 488, _Summer Friends_.
+
+By Mary Lamb. This poem was sent by Robert Lloyd to his wife in April,
+1809, as being one of the poems which Mary Lamb was writing for
+_Poetry for Children_. It was not, however, included in that
+collection.
+
+Page 488. _A Birth-day Thought_.
+
+This poem is printed by Mylius in his _First Book of Poetry_. In the
+edition of 1811 the initials M.L. are appended; in later editions,
+C.L. Hence it is included here. But we have no proof that M.L. stands
+for Mary Lamb, or C.L. for Charles Lamb; although the coincidence
+would be very striking if they did not.
+
+Page 489. _The Boy, the Mother, and the Butterfly_.
+
+These verses, which have not before been collected with Lamb's
+writings, exist in an album which belonged probably to Thomas
+Westwood, son of the Lambs' providers at Enfield. They are signed
+Charles Lamb and dated October 9, 1827, at Enfield Chase.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Page 490. PRINCE DORUS, OR FLATTERY PUT OUT OF COUNTENANCE.
+
+Apart from the internal evidence, which is very strong, I think, the
+only reason for attributing this tale to Charles Lamb is an entry
+in Crabb Robinson's diary for May 15, 1811: "A very pleasant call
+on Charles and Mary Lamb. Read his version of _Prince Dorus, the
+Long-Nosed King_." In his reminiscences of Lamb and others (in MS.)
+Robinson said, under 1811: "C. Lamb wrote this year for children a
+version of the Nursery Tale of Prince Dorus. I mention this, because
+it is not in his collected works and like two vols. of Poems for
+Children likely to be lost. I this year tried to persuade him to make
+a new version of the old Tale of Reynard the Fox. He said he was sure
+it would not succeed--sense for humour, said L., is extinct." What
+particular version of the story was used by Lamb we cannot tell, but
+in a little book called _Adventures of Musul; or, The Three Gifts_,
+printed for Vernor & Hood and E. Newbery in 1800, "The Prince that had
+a Long Nose" is one of the tales. Lamb's version does not call for
+annotation.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+A
+
+"Adventures of Ulysses," 240, 505.
+"All's Well that Ends Well," 115.
+Allsop, Thomas, and Coleridge, 509.
+Amwell and the Lambs, 510.
+"Anger," 429, 518.
+"Ann Withers," 334, 511.
+_Anti-Jacobin and Review, The_, 499.
+"Arabella Hardy," 384, 513.
+"As You Like It," 44.
+
+
+B
+
+Baldwin, Edward (Godwin's pseudonym), 500.
+Barbauld, Mrs., Lamb on, 500.
+Barton, Bernard, Lamb's letters to, 505, 508.
+"Beasts in the Tower, The," 464, 520.
+"Beggar Man, The," 451, 520.
+Bells and Lamb, 513.
+"Birthday Thought, A," 488, 522.
+Blake, William, 503, 520.
+Blakesware and the Lambs, 511.
+"Blindness," 429, 518.
+"Boy and the Sky-lark, The," 447, 519.
+"Boy and the Snake, The," 413, 516.
+"Boy, Mother, and Butterfly, The," 489, 522.
+"Breakfast," 453, 520.
+"Broken Doll, The," 425, 518.
+"Brother's Reply, The," 457, 520.
+Burney, Martin, and the Lambs, 502, 510, 518.
+"Butterfly, The," 406, 516.
+
+
+C
+
+"Changeling, The," 334, 511.
+Chapman, George, his _Homer_, 505, 507.
+"Charity," 462, 520.
+"Charlotte Wilmot," 375, 513.
+"Choosing a Profession," 452, 520.
+"Chusing a Name," 408, 516.
+Clairmont, Mrs. (afterwards Mrs. Godwin), 499.
+"Cleanliness," 417, 517.
+"Clock Striking," 470, 521.
+"Coffee Slips, The," 472, 521.
+Coleridge, S.T., Lamb's letters to, 500, 505, 515.
+---- on _Mrs. Leicester's School_, 509.
+"Comedy of Errors," 136.
+"Confidant, The," 466, 521.
+"Conquest of Prejudice," 476, 521.
+"Crumbs to the Birds," 408, 516.
+"Cymbeline," 81.
+
+
+D
+
+"David," 483, 521.
+"---- in the Cave of Adullam," 486, 522.
+"Dessert, The," 473, 521.
+"Discontent and Quarrelling," 410, 516.
+"DORUS, PRINCE," 490, 522.
+"Duchess of Malfi," Lamb's paraphrase from, 449, 519.
+"Duty of a Brother, The," 426, 518.
+
+
+E
+
+_Elia_ in translation, 504.
+"Elinor Forester," 350, 511.
+"Elizabeth Villiers," 319, 510.
+"Emily Barton," 360, 511.
+"End of May, The," 422, 518.
+"Envy," 404, 516.
+"Eyes," 467, 521.
+
+
+F
+
+"Fairy, The," 476, 521.
+"Farmhouse, The," 328, 310.
+"Father's Wedding Day, The," 350, 511.
+"Feigned Courage," 424, 518.
+Fénélon, his _Telemachus_, 507.
+Field, Mary, the Lambs' grandmother, 511.
+"First Going to Church," 378, 513.
+"---- of April, The," 416, 517.
+"---- Tooth, The," 415, 517.
+"Force of Habit, The," 470, 521.
+
+
+G
+
+Gillray, James, his caricature of Lamb, 499.
+Glanvill, Joseph, on witchcraft, 513.
+Godwin, Mrs., Lamb's hostility to, 500.
+---- her choice in pictures, 502.
+---- her preface to _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (?), 509.
+-- William, his meeting with Lamb, 499.
+---- becomes a publisher, 500.
+---- his influence on Lamb's career, 500.
+---- his preface to _Tales from Shakespear_, 503.
+---- his criticism of _The Adventures of Ulysses_, 506.
+---- Lamb's reply to him, 506.
+"Going into Breeches," 419, 517.
+"Good Temper," 460, 520.
+"Great Grandfather, The," 478, 521.
+
+
+H
+
+"Hamlet," 199.
+Hazlitt, Sarah. _See_ Sarah Stoddart.
+Hazlitt, William, 500, 501.
+Hodgkins, Thomas, Godwin's manager, 500.
+"Home Delights," 471, 521.
+Homer, in Chapman's translation, 505, 507.
+
+
+I
+
+"Incorrect Speaking," 462, 520.
+
+
+J
+
+"JOHN WOODVIL" quoted, 513.
+"Journey from School and to School, The," 434, 518.
+Juvenile literature, Lamb on, 500.
+
+
+K
+
+"King Lear," 92.
+"KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS," 389, 513.
+
+
+L
+
+Lamb, Charles, and books for children, 499.
+---- and William Godwin, 499, 505.
+---- and Mrs. Godwin, 500, 502.
+---- on Mrs. Barbauld and Mrs. Trimmer, 500, 501.
+---- and _Tales from Shakespear_, 501.
+---- and the Godwins' illustrator, 502.
+---- and _The Adventures of Ulysses_, 505.
+---- kisses Chapman's _Homer_, 505.
+---- commends it to Coleridge, 505.
+---- on publishers and authors, 506.
+---- and Mrs. _Leicester's School_, 508.
+---- his affection for St. Dunstan's giants, 512.
+---- and Stackhouse's picture of the witch, 513.
+---- his father and Lincolnshire, 513.
+Lamb, Charles, and church bells, 513.
+---- his first children's book, 513.
+---- and _The King and Queen of Hearts_, 513.
+---- and _Poetry for Children_, 515.
+---- his union with his sister, 515.
+---- and _Prince Dorus_, 522.
+-- Elizabeth, the Lambs' mother, 512.
+-- John, the Lambs' father, 513.
+---- the Lambs' brother, his poem, 451, 520.
+---- his lameness, 517.
+-- Mary, and _Tales from Shakespear_, 501.
+---- her difficulty with "All's Well that Ends Well," 502.
+---- her anonymity, 504.
+---- and _Mrs. Leicester's School_, 508.
+---- her "new source of the pathetic," 509.
+---- a preface in her name, 509.
+---- her memory of Mackery End (?), 510.
+---- her recollections of Blakesware, 511.
+---- her relations with her grandmother, 511.
+---- her first play, 511.
+---- on her aunt Hetty and her mother, 512.
+---- and _Poetry for Children_, 515.
+---- her union with her brother, 515.
+"Lame Brother, The," 418, 517.
+Landor, Walter Savage, on _Mrs. Leicester's School_, 508.
+"LEICESTER, MRS., HER SCHOOL," 316, 508.
+Lloyd, Robert, and the Lambs, 515.
+_Looking Glass, The_, 514.
+"Louisa Manners," 328, 510.
+"Love, Death, and Reputation," 449, 519.
+
+
+M
+
+"Macbeth," 106.
+Mackery End and the Lambs, 510.
+"Magpye's Nest, The," 445, 519.
+Manning, Thomas, Lamb's letters to, 501, 505.
+"Margaret Green," 354, 511.
+"Maria Howe," 368, 512.
+"Measure for Measure," 148.
+"Memory," 431, 518.
+"Men and Women, and the Monkeys, The," 449, 519.
+"Merchant of Venice, The," 69.
+"Merchant's Daughter, The," 375, 513.
+"Midsummer Night's Dream," 13.
+"Mimic Harlequin, The," 430, 518.
+"Moderation in Diet," 460, 520.
+"Motes in the Sunbeams," 413, 516.
+"MRS. LEICESTER'S SCHOOL," 316, 508.
+---- in translation, 510.
+"Much Ado About Nothing," 33.
+Mulready, William, 500, 503, 515.
+"My Birthday," 463, 520.
+Mylius, W.F., his gleanings from Lamb, 516.
+
+
+N
+
+"Neatness in Apparel," 412, 516.
+Newbery's art of advertisement, 512.
+"New-born Infant, The," 412, 516.
+"Nurse Green," 459, 520.
+"Nursing," 420, 518.
+
+
+O
+
+_Odyssey, The_. _See_ Chapman.
+"Offer, The," 456, 520.
+"On a Picture of the Finding of Moses," 481, 521.
+"On the Lord's Prayer," 442, 519.
+"Orange, The," 435, 518.
+"Othello," 213.
+
+
+P
+
+"Parental Recollections," 455, 520.
+"Peach, The," 407, 516.
+Pearson, Miss, 512.
+"Penny Pieces," 468, 521.
+"Pericles," 225.
+Plumer, Mrs., and Mary Lamb, 511.
+"POETRY FOR CHILDREN," 404, 515.
+"PRINCE DORUS," 490, 522.
+
+
+Q
+
+"Queen Oriana's Dream," 480, 521.
+
+
+R
+
+"Rainbow, The," 469, 521.
+"Reaper's Child, The," 404, 516.
+"Repentance and Reconciliation," 411, 516.
+"Reproof, The," 432, 518.
+"Ride, The," 405, 516.
+Robinson, Crabb, and Lamb, 522.
+---- and Landor, 508.
+"Romeo and Juliet," 184.
+"Rook and the Sparrows, The," 409, 516.
+
+
+S
+
+"Sailor Uncle, The," 319, 510.
+St. Dunstan's giants, 512.
+"Sea-Voyage, The," 384, 513.
+"SHAKESPEAR, TALES FROM," 1, 501.
+Shakespeare, William, and the Lambs, 1, 501.
+"Sister's Expostulation on the Brother's Learning Latin, The," 456, 520.
+"Sparrow and the Hen, The," 450, 519.
+"Spartan Boy, The," 479, 521.
+Stoddart, Sarah, Mary Lamb's letters to, 501, 502, 508, 512.
+"Suffer Little Children...," 443, 519.
+"Summer Friends," 488, 522.
+"Susan Yates," 378, 513.
+Swinburne, Mr. A.C., on Lamb, 519.
+
+
+T
+
+"TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR," 1.
+---- how written, 501.
+---- how illustrated, 502.
+---- Godwin's preface, 503.
+---- translation, 504.
+"Taming of the Shrew," 126.
+_Telemachus, The Adventures of_, 507.
+"Tempest, The," 3.
+"Text, The," 421, 518.
+"Thoughtless Cruelty," 466, 521.
+"Three Friends, The," 437, 519.
+"Time Spent in Dress," 475, 521.
+"Timon of Athens," 173.
+"To a River in which a Child was Drowned," 416, 517.
+"To a Young Lady, on being Too Fond of Music," 474, 521.
+Translations of Lamb's work, 504, 510.
+Trimmer, Mrs., Lamb on, 501.
+"Twelfth Night," 161.
+"Two Bees, The," 432, 518.
+"---- Boys, The," 455, 520.
+"---- Gentlemen of Verona," 58.
+
+
+U
+
+"ULYSSES, ADVENTURES OF," 240, 505.
+
+
+V
+
+"Visit to the Cousins," 360, 511.
+
+
+W
+
+"Wasps in a Garden," 427, 518.
+Webster, Thomas, and Lamb, 519.
+"Weeding," 454, 520.
+"What is Fancy?" 428, 518.
+"Which is the Favourite?" 451, 519.
+"Why not do it, Sir, To-day?" 471, 521.
+"Winter's Tale, The," 23.
+"Witch Aunt, The," 368, 512.
+Wollstonecraft, Mary, 499.
+"WOODVIL, JOHN," quoted, 513.
+Wordsworth, William, Lamb's letters to, 502, 514.
+"Written in the First Leaf of a Child's Memorandum-Book," 430, 518.
+
+
+Y
+
+"Young Letter-Writer, The," 436, 519.
+"---- Mahometan," 354, 511.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF FIRST LINES
+
+
+A bird appears a thoughtless thing, 408.
+A child's a plaything for an hour, 455.
+A Creole boy from the West Indies brought, 452.
+A dinner party, coffee, tea, 453.
+A dozen years since in this house what commotion, 463.
+A little boy with crumbs of bread, 409.
+A little child, who had desired, 470.
+A Sparrow, when Sparrows like Parrots could speak, 450.
+A wicked action fear to do, 447.
+Abject, stooping, old, and wan, 451.
+After the tempest in the sky, 469.
+An infant is a selfish sprite, 425.
+Anger in its time and place, 429.
+Anna was always full of thought, 466.
+As busy Aurelia, 'twixt work and 'twixt play, 454.
+Brothers and sisters I have many, 451.
+But a few words could William say, 432.
+Can I, all gracious Providence, 488.
+Come my little Robert near, 417.
+David and his three captains bold, 486.
+_Dear Sir, Dear Madam, or Dear Friend_, 436.
+Did I hear the church-clock a few minutes ago, 470.
+Do, my dearest brother John, 406.
+For gold could Memory be bought, 431.
+Henry was every morning fed, 413.
+High on a Throne of state is seen, 390.
+Horatio, of ideal courage vain, 424.
+I am to write three lines, and you, 429.
+I have got a new-born sister, 408.
+I have taught your young lips the good words to say over, 442.
+I keep it, dear Papa, within my glove, 468.
+I saw a boy with eager eye, 455.
+I'll _make believe_, and fancy something strange, 430.
+If you go to the field where the Reapers now bind, 404.
+In a stage-coach, where late I chanc'd to be, 429.
+In days of yore, as Ancient Stories tell, 490.
+In many a lecture, many a book, 475.
+In whatsoever place resides, 460.
+In your garb and outward clothing, 412.
+Incorrectness in your speech, 462.
+It is not always to the strong, 483.
+Joy to Philip, he this day, 419.
+Lately an Equipage I overtook, 405.
+Lucy, what do you espy, 467.
+Mamma gave us a single Peach, 407.
+Mamma heard me with scorn and pride, 432.
+Mamma is displeased and look very grave, 411.
+Miss Lydia every day is drest, 410.
+My father's grandfather lives still, 478.
+My neat and pretty book, when I thy small lines see, 430.
+My parents sleep both in one grave, 418.
+O hush, my little baby brother, 420.
+O what a joyous joyous day, 434.
+O why your good deeds with such pride do you scan, 462.
+On a bank with roses shaded, 480.
+Once on a time, Love, Death, and Reputation, 449.
+One Sunday eve a grave old man, 421.
+Our Governess is not in school, 422.
+Said Ann to Matilda, I wish that we knew, 476.
+Shut these odious books up, brother, 456.
+Sister, fie, for shame, no more, 457.
+Smiling river, smiling river, 416.
+Tell me what is the reason you hang down your head, 416.
+Tell me, would you rather be, 456.
+The drunkard's sin, excess in wine, 460.
+The month was June, the day was hot, 435.
+The motes up and down in the sun, 413.
+The Swallow is a summer bird, 488.
+The wall-trees are laden with fruit, 427.
+There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly, 466.
+This Picture does the story express, 481.
+This rose-tree is not made to bear, 404.
+Three young maids in friendship met, 437.
+Through the house what busy joy, 415.
+To Jesus our Saviour some parents presented, 443.
+To operas and balls my cousins take me, 471.
+Unto a Yorkshire school was sent, 476.
+When beasts by words their meanings could declare, 449,
+When I the memory repeat, 479.
+When the arts in their infancy were, 445.
+Whene'er I fragrant coffee drink, 472.
+Whether beneath sweet beds of roses, 412.
+Why is your mind thus all day long, 474.
+Why on your sister do you look, 427.
+Why so I will, you noisy bird, 471.
+With the apples and the plums, 473.
+Within the precincts of this yard, 464.
+Young William held the Butterfly in chase, 489.
+Your prayers you have said, and you've wished Good night, 459.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Books for Children, by Charles and Mary Lamb
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10130 ***