How fares your Majefty?

K. John. Poifon'd, ill Fare! dead, forfook, caft off;
And none of you will bid the Winter come,
To thruft bis icy Fingers in my Maw;

Nor let my Kingdoms Rivers take their Courfe
Thro' my burnt Bofom; nor intreat the North
To make his bleak Winds kifs my parched Lips,
And comfort me with Cold -I ask not much,
I beg cold Comfort.

The first and laft Lines are to be rang'd among the Faults that so much difgrace Shakespear, which he committed to please the corrupt Taste of the Age he liv'd in, but to which Beaumont and Fletcher's Learning and Fortune made them fuperior. The intermediate Lines are extremely beautiful, and mark'd as fuch by the late great Editor, but yet are much improv'd in two Plays of our Authors, the firft in Valentinian, where the Emperor poifon'd in the fame Manner, dies with more Violence, Fury, and Horror, than King John; but the Paffage which I fhall quote is from A Wife for a Month, a Play which does not upon the whole equal the poetic Sublimity of Valentinian, tho' it rather excels it in the poisoning Scene. The Prince Alphonfo, who had been long in a Phrenfy of Melancholy, is poifon'd with a hot fiery Potion; under the Agonies of which he thus raves.

Give me more Air, more Air, Air; blow,blow, blow,
Open thou Eastern Gate, and blow upon me ;
Diftil thy cold Dews, O thou icy Moon,
And Rivers run thro' my afflicted Spirit.

I am all Fire, Fire, Fire; the raging Dog-ftar Reigns in my Blood; Oh! which Way Shall I turn

me?

Ætna and all her Flames burn in my Head.
Fling me into the Ocean or I perish.

Dig, dig, dig, dig, until the Springs fly up,
The cold, cold Springs, that I may leap into
them,

And bathe my Scorch'd Limbs in their purling Pleasures

Or fhoot me into the higher Region,

Where Treasures of delicious Snow are nourish'd, And Banquets of fweet Hail.

Rug. Hold him faft, Fryar,

O how he burns!

Alph. What, will ye facrifice me?

Upon the Altar lay my willing Body,

And pile your Wood up, fling your boly Incense; And, as I turn me, you shall fee all flame, Confuming Flame. Stand off me, or you're Ashes.

Mart. To Bed, good Sir.

Alph. My Bed will burn about me;

Like Phaeton, in all-confuming Flashes

Am I inclos'd; let me fly, let me fly, give Room;

VOL. I.

C

'Twixt

* 'Twixt the cold Bears, far from the raging Lion,
Lies my fafe Way; O for a Cake of Ice now
To clap unto my Heart to comfort me.
Decrepit Winter bang upon my Shoulders,
And let me wear thy frozen Ificles,

Like Jewels round about my Head, to cool me.
My Eyes burn out and fink into their Sockets,
And my infected Brain like Brimftone boils;

* 'Twixt the cold Bears, far from the raging Lion] I have inferted here a Reading very different from what the Reader will find in this or any of the Editions; for it occurr'd to me only now in transcribing the Paffige.

The former Reading is,

Betwixt the cold Bear and the raging Lion.

The learned Reader need not be told that the Bear and Lion here, by a beautiful Synecdoche, ftand for the frigid and the torrid Zones, and betwixt the two Means the temperate Zone: But does Safety dwell here to a Man wrapt in Flames? No, the frigid Zone only, which might quench their Violence, can bring him Safety, and all his other Wishes hurry him

To Night and Cold, to nipping Frofts and Winds,

That cut the ftubborn Rocks and make them fhiver.

The Abfurdity therefore of the old Reading was no fooner obferved
than a Probability occurr'd of the manner how it came into the Text.
I believe the Author's Manufcript had accidentally omitted the s in
Bears, and run thus:

'Twixt the cold Bear, far from the raging Lion,
Lies my fafe Way.

A Playhouse Prompter, or common Corrector of the Prefs, thinking this not English, without entering into the Spirit of the Author, would naturally correct it into the old Text:

Betwixt the cold Bear and the raging Lion.

And that I have therefore only restored the Original is further probable from hence: The Allufion to Phaeton is evidently carried on in this Line, and Ovid nakes Phoebus advile him particularly to avoid the Serpent, i. e. the Conftellation that lies betwixt the two Bears. The Reverie of this therefore would naturally occur on this Occafion.

I

I live in Hell and feveral Furies vex me.
O carry me where never Sun e'er fhew'd yet
A Face of Comfort, where the Earth is Crystal,
Never to be diffolv'd, where nought inhabits
But Night and Cold, and nipping Frofts and
Winds,

That cut the stubborn Rocks, and make them
Shiver;

Set me there Friends.

Every Reader of Tafte will fee how fuperior this is to the Quotation from Shakespear. The Images are vastly more numerous, more judicious, more nervous, and the Paffions are wrought up to the highest Pitch; fo that it may be fairly preferred to every thing of its Kind in all Shakespear, except one Scene of Lear's Madness, which it would emulate too, could we fee fuch an excellent Comment on it as Lear receives from his Reprefentative on the Stage.

As these laft Quotations are not only Specimens of Diction and Sentiment, but of Paffions inflam'd into Poetic Enthufiafm; I fhall refer the Reader to fome other Parallels of Paffions and Characters that greatly refemble, and fometimes rival the Spirit and Sublimity of Shakespear. He will please therefore to compare the Phrenfy and the whole fweet Character of the foaler's Daughter in the Two noble Kinfmen to Ophelia in Hamlet, where the Copy is so extremely like the Original that either the fame Hand drew both, or Fletcher's is not to be diftinguifh'd from Shakespear's: To compare the Deaths of Pontius and Ecius in Valentinian with that of Caffius, Brutus and their Friends in Julius Cafa

C 2

Cæfar, and if he admires a little lefs, he will weep much more; it more excells in the Pathetic than it falls fhort in Dignity:-To compare the Character and Paffions of Cleopatra in the Falfe One, to thofe of Shakespear's Cleopatra: To compare the pious Deprecations and Grief-mingled Fury of Edith (upon the Murder of her Father by Rollo, in the Bloody Brother) to the Grief and Fury of Macduff, upon his Wife and Children's Murder. Our Authors will not, we hope, be found light in the Scale in any of these Inftances, tho' their Beam in general fly fome little upwards, it will fometimes at leaft tug hard for a hard for a Poife. But be it allowed, that as in Diction and Sentiment, fo in Characters and Pafions, Shakespear in general excells, yet here too a very strong Inftance occurs of Preeminence in our Authors. It is Juliana in the Double Marriage, who, thro' her whole Character, in conjugal Fidelity, unfhaken Conftancy and amiable Tenderness, ev'n more than rivals the Portia of Shakefpear, and her Death not only far excells the others, but e'en the most pathetic Deaths that Shakespear has any where defcrib'd or exhibited; King Lear's with Cordelia dead in his Arms, most resembles, but by no Means equals it; The Grief, in this Cafe, only pushes an old Man into the Grave, already half buried with Age and Misfortunes; In the other, it is fuch confummate Horror, as in a few Minutes freezes Youth and Beauty into a Monumental Statue. The laft Parallel I fhall mention, fhall give Shakefpear his due Preference, where our Authors very vifibly emulate but cannot reach him. It is the Quarrel of Amintor and Melantius in the Maids Tragedy compared to that of Brutus and Caffius. The Beginning of the Quarrel is upon as just Grounds,

and