Then little strength rings out the doleful knell;
So Lucrece set a-work, sad tales doth tell

To pencil'd pensiveness and colour'd sorrow;
She lends them words, and she their looks doth

borrow.

She throws her eyes about the painting, round',
And whom she finds forlorn, she doth lament:
At last she sees a wretched image bound,
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent;
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content.

Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes,
So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his

woes.

In him the painter labour'd with his skill
To hide deceit, and give the harmless show?
An humble gait, calm looks, eyes wailing still,
A brow unbent, that seem'd to welcome woe ;
Cheeks, neither red nor pale, but mingled so

That blushing red no guilty instance gave,
Nor ashy pale the fear that false hearts have.

9 She throws her eyes about the PAINTING, round,] i. e. She throws her eyes round about, &c. The octavo 1616, and all the subsequent copies, read :-about the painted round.

MALONE. · So mild, that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes.] That is, the woes suffered by Patience. We have nearly the same image in our author's Twelfth Night :

“ She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.”
Again, in Pericles :

Yet thou dost look
“ Like Patience, gazing on king's graves, and smiling

Extremity out of act." MALONE.
- the harmless show -] The harmless painted figure.

Malone. - no guilty InstANCE — ] No example or symptom of guilt. See vol. xi. p. 482, n. 3. Malone. VOL. XX,

o

2

3

But, like a constant and confirmed devil,
He entertain'd a show so seeming just,
And therein so ensconc'd his secret evil",
That jealousy itself could not mistrust,
False-creeping craft and perjury should thrust

Into so bright a day such black-fac'd storms,
Or blot with hell-born sin such saint-like forms.

The well-skill'd workman this mild image drew
For perjur'd Sinon, whose enchanting story
The credulous old Priam after slew ;
Whose words, like wild-fire, burnt the shining glory
Of rich-built Ilion, that the skies were sorry,

And little stars shot from their fixed places,
When their glass fell, wherein they view'd their

faces.
This picture she advisedly perus'd',
And chid the painter for his wond'rous skill ;
Saying, some shape in Sinon's was abus'd,
So fair a form lodg'd not a mind so ill;
And still on him she gaz'd; and gazing still,

3 And therein so Ensconc'd his secret evil,] And by that means so concealed his secret treachery. A sconce was a species of fortification.. MALONE. 4 And little staRS Shot from their piXED PLACES,

When the glass fell, wherein they view'd their faces.] So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream :

the rude sea grew civil at her song,
“ And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

“ To hear the sea-maid's musick.". Why, Priam's palace, however beautiful or magnificent, should be called the mirrour in which the fixed stars beheld themselves, I do not see. The image is very quaint and far-fetched. Malone. Lydgate says of Priam's palace

“ That verely when so the sonne shone,

· Upon the golde meynt amonge the stone, “ They gave a lyght withouten any were,

“ As doth Apollo in his mid-day sphere." Boswell. This picture she ADVISEDLY perus'd,] Advisedly is attentively; with deliberation. Malone.

Such signs of truth in his plain face she spy'd,

That she concludes the picture was bely'd.
It cannot be, quoth she, that so much guile-
(She would have said) can lurk in such a look ;
But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
And from her tongue, can lurk from cannot took ;
It cannot be she in that sense forsook,

And turn'd it thus: “ It cannot be, I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind:

For even as subtle Sinon here is painted,
So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted,)
To me came Tarquin armed; so beguild
With outward honesty, but yet defil'd

With inward vice: as Priam him did cherish,

So did I Tarquin; so my Troy did perish.
Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes,
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds.
Priam, why art thou old, and yet not wise ?
For every tear he falls ?, a Trojan bleeds;
His eye drops fire, no water thence proceeds:

So sober-sad, so weary, and so mild,
(As if with grief or travail he had fainted,)
To me came Tarquin ARMED ; so beguilid

With outward honesty,-) “ To me came Tarquin with the same armour of hypocrisy that Sinon wore.". The old copy reads :

“ To me came Tarquin armed to beguild

“With outward honesty," &c. To must, I think, have been a misprint for so. Beguild is beguiling. Our author frequently confounds the active and passive participle. Thus, in Othello, delighted for delighting :

“ If virtue no delighted beauty lack—.". MALONE. I think the reading proposed is right; and would point thus :

“ To me came Tarquin armed; so beguild

“ With outward honesty, but yet," &c. So beguild is so cover'd, so masked with fraud, i. e. like Sinon. Thus in The Merchant of Venice, Act III. Sc. II.:

“ Thus orqament is but the guiled shore
“ To a most dangerous sea.'

STEevens.

Those round clear pearls of his, that move thy

pity,
Are balls of quenchless fire to burn thy city.
Such devils steal effects from lightless hell;
For Sinon in his fire doth quake with cold,
And in that cold, hot-burning fire doth dwell ;
These contraries such unity do hold,
Only to flatter fools, and make them bold :

So Priam's trust false Sinon's tears doth flatter,

That he finds means to burn his Troy with water.
Here, all enrag'd, such passion her assails,
That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
Comparing him to that unhappy guest
Whose deed hath made herself, herself detest:

At last she smilingly with this gives o'er;
Fool! fool! quoth she, his wounds will not be

sore.

Thus ebbs and flows the current of her sorrow, And time doth weary time with her complaining. She looks for night, and then she longs for morrow, And both she thinks too long with her remaining: Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.

Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps;

And they that watch, see time how slow it creeps. Which all this time hath overslipp'd her thought, That she with painted images hath spent ; Being from the feeling of her own grief brought 7 For every tear he falls —] He lets fall. So, in Othello:

" Each tear she falls would prove a crocodile.” Malone. A similar thought occurs in Troilus and Cressida :

“For every false drop in her bawdy veins,
" A Grecian's life hath sunk; for every scruple
“ In her contaminated carrion weight,
“ A Trojan hath been slain.” Steevens.

By deep surmise of other's detriment;
Losing her woes in shows of discontent.

It easeth some, though none it ever cur'd,
To think their dolour others have endur'd.

But now the mindful messenger, come back,
Brings home his lord and other company;
Who finds his Lucrece clad in mourning black :
And round about her tear-distained eye
Blue circles stream'd, like rainbows in the sky;

These water-galls in her dim elemento
Foretell new storms to those already spent.

Which when her sad-beholding husband saw,
Amazedly in her sad face he stares :
Her eyes, though sod in tears, look'd red and raw?
Her lively colour kill'd with deadly cares.
He hath no power to ask her how she fares;

But stood, like old acquaintance in a trance,
Met far from home, wondering each other's

chance.

At last he takes her by the bloodless hand,
And thus begins: What uncouth ill event
Hath thee befalin, that thou dost trembling stand?
Sweet love, what spite hath thy fair colour spent ?
Why art thou thus attir'd in discontent'?
Unmask, dear dear, this moody heaviness,

And tell thy grief, that we may give redress.

9

8 Those WATER-GAlls in her dim element -] The water.. gall is some appearance attendant on the rainbow. The word is current among the shepherds on Salisbury plain. Steevens.

- look'd red and raw,] So, in Hamlet:

“The Danish cicatrice looks red and raw.” STEEVENS. Why art thou thus attir’D IN DISCONTENT?] So, in Much Ado About Nothing :

“ For my part, I am so attir'd in wonder,
“I know not what to say." STEEVENS.

1