SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town crier had spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus: but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustuous periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the ground, lings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing, but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing ter magant; it outherods Herod. Pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither; but let your own dicretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and boay of the time, his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy of, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of one of which must in your allowance o'er weigh a whie thease of others. On! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highy (not to speak it profanely) that, neither have the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and benowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymca have made

them, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably.

And let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered:-that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. SHAKSPEARE

-00000

CHAP. XI.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDICATED.

HEAV'N from all creatures hides the book of

fate,

All but the page prescrib'd, their present state: :
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below;

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by heav'n,
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher death; and God adore. What future buss, he gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest: The soul uneasy, and contin'd from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor❜d mind
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd ;
Some happier island in the watʼry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no christians thirst for gold.
TO BE, contents his natural desire,

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much :
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet, cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there :
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.

In Pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies ;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies,
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel;
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of ORDER, sins against th' eternal cause.

РОРЕ.

SEE, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go !
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being which from God began,
Nature's ethereal, human, angel, man;
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd.
From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll,
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth, unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and sun rush lawless thro' the sky;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to the centre nod,
And nature tremble to the throne of God.
All this dread ORDER break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm?-oh madness! pride! impiety!
What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,

Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame :
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing MIND of ALL ordains.

All

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul:
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars,

and blossoms in the trees,

part,

;

Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small
He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all.
Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name;
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit, -In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear :
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see ;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;

All partial Evil, universal Good:

And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.

РОРЕ.

0000

CHAP. XIV.

THE ORIGIN OF SUPERSTITION AND TYRANNY.

WHO first taught souls enslav'd and realms un

done;

Th' enormous faith of many made for one? That proud exception to all Nature's laws, 'I'invert the world, and counter work its Cause ?