Satan, enraged by a threatening of the angel Gabriel, answers thus:

Then when I am thy captive talk of chains,
Proud limitary cherub: but ere then

Far heavier load thyself expect to feel

From my prevailing arm, though Heaven's King-
Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy compeers,
Us'd to the yoke, draw'st his triumphant wheels
In progress through the road of heaven_star-pav'd.

PARADISE LOST.-BOOK IV.

The concluding epithet forms a grand and delightful image, which cannot be the genuine offspring of rage. Fourth. Sentiments too artificial for a serious passion. I give for the first example a speech of Percy, expiring:

O Harry, thou hast robb'd me of my growth:

I better brook the loss of brittle life,

Than those proud titles thou hast won of me;

They wound my thoughts, worse than thy sword my flesh.
But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;

And time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop.

FIRST PART HENRY IV.-ACT V. Sc. 4.

The sentiments of the Mourning Bride are, for the most part, no less delicate than just copies of nature: in the following exception the picture is beautiful, but too artful to be suggested by severe grief.

Almeria. O no! Time gives increase to my afflictions.
The circling hours, that gather all the woes

Which are diffus'd through the revolving year,
Come heavy laden with th' oppressive weight
To me; with me, successively they leave

The sighs, the tears, the groans, the restless cares,

And all the damps of grief, that did retard their flight.
They shake their downy wings, and scatter all
The dire collected dews on my poor head;
They fly with joy and swiftness from me.

ACT I. Sc. 1.

In the same play, Almeria, seeing a dead body, which she took to be Alphonso's, expresses sentiments strained and artificial, which nature suggests not to any person upon such an occasion:

Had they, or hearts, or eyes, that did this deed?
Could eyes endure to guide such cruel hands?

Are not my eyes guilty alike with theirs,

That thus can gaze, and yet not turn to stone?
-I do not weep! The springs of tears are dried,
And of a sudden I am calm, as if

All things were well; and yet my husband's murdered.
Yes, yes, I know to mourn: I'll sluice this heart,
The source of woe, and let the torrent loose.

ACT V. Sc. 11.

Lady Trueman. How could you be so cruel to defer giving me that joy which you knew I must receive from your presence? You have robb'd my life of some hours of happiness that ought to have been in it. DRUMMER.-ACT V.

Pope's Elegy to the memory of an unfortunate lady, expresses delicately the most tender concern and sorrow that one can feel for the deplorable fate of a person of worth. Such a poem, deeply serious and pathetic, rejects with disdain all fiction. Upon that account, the following passage deserves no quarter; for it is not the language of the heart, but of the imagination indulging its flights at ease; and thence eminently discordant with the subject. It would be a still more severe censure, if it should be ascribed to imitation, copying indiscreetly what has been said by others:

What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy relics made.

Fifth. Fanciful or finical sentiments-sentiments that degenerate into point or conceit, may amuse in an idle hour, but can never be the offspring of any serious or important passion.

Armida's lamentation respecting her lover Rinaldo, is of this vicious taste:

Queen. Give me no help in lamentation,
I am not barren to bring forth complaints:
All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,
That I, being govern'd by the wat'ry moon,

May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world!
Ah! for my husband, for my dear lord Edward.

RICHARD III.-ACT II. Sc. 2.

Jane Shore. Let me branded for the public scorn,
Turn'd forth, and driven to wander like a vagabond,
Be friendless and forsaken, seek my bread
Upon the barren wild, and desolate waste,
Feed on my sighs and drink my falling tears;
Ere I consent to teach my lips injustice,

Or wrong the Orphan who has none to save him.

JANE SHORE.-ACT IV.

Give me your drops, ye soft-descending rains,
Give me your streams, ye never-ceasing springs,
That my sad eyes may still supply my duty,
And feed an everlasting flood of sorrow.

IBID. ACT V.

Jane Shore utters her last breath in a witty con

ceit.

Then all is well, and I shall sleep in peace

'Tis very dark, and I have lost you now

Was there not something I would have bequeath'd you?
But I have nothing left me to bestow,

Nothing but one sad sigh. Oh mercy, heav'n!

[Dies.

JANE SHORE.-ACT V.

Guilford to Lady Jane Grey, when both were condemned to die:

Thou stand'st unmov'd;

Calm temper sits upon thy beauteous brow;
Thy eyes, that flow'd so fast for Edward's loss,
Gaze unconcern'd upon the ruin round thee,
As if thou hadst resolv'd to brave thy fate,
And triumph in the midst of desolation.
Ha! see, it swells, the liquid crystal rises,
It starts in spite of thee-but I will catch it,
Nor let the earth be wet with dew so rich.

LADY JANE GREY.-ACT IV. near the end.

The concluding sentiment is altogether finical, unsuitable to the importance of the occasion, and even to the dignity of the passion of love. Corneille observes, that if poets did not indulge sentiments more ingenious or refined than are prompted by passion, their performances would often be low, and extreme grief would neyer suggest but exclamations merely. This is in plain language to assert, that forced thoughts

are more agreeable than those that are natural, and ought to be preferred!!!

The second class is of sentiments that may belong to an ordinary passion, but are not perfectly concordant with it, as tinctured by a singular character.

If the sentiments of a passion ought to be suited to a peculiar character, it is still more necessary that actions be suited to the character. In the 5th Act of the Drummer, Addison makes his gardener act even below the character of an ignorant credulous rustic; he gives him the behavior of a gaping idiot.

The following instances are descriptions rather than sentiments, which compose a third class. Of this descriptive manner of painting the passions, there is in the Hippolytus of Euripides, Act V., an illustrious instance, namely, the speech of Theseus, upon hearing of his son's dismal exit. In Racine's tragedy of Esther, the queen, hearing of the decree issued against her people, instead of expressing sentiments suitable to the occasion, turns her attention upon herself, and describes with accuracy her own situation.

A man stabbed to the heart in a combat with his enemy, expresses himself thus:

So, now I am at rest:

I feel death rising higher still, and higher,
Within my bosom; every breath I fetch
Shuts up my life within a shorter compass,

And like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less
And less each pulse, till it be lost in air.

DRYDEN.

The fourth class is of sentiments introduced too early or too late.

Some examples mentioned above belong to this class. Add the following from Venice Preserved, Act V. at the close of the scene between Belvidera and her father Priuli. The account given by Belvidera of the danger she was in, and of her husband's threatening to murder her, ought naturally to have alarmed her relenting/ father, and to have made him express the most per

turbed sentiments. Instead of which he dissolves into tenderness and love for his daughter, as if he had already delivered her from danger, and as if there was a perfect tranquillity:

Canst thou forgive me all my follies past?
I'll henceforth be indeed a father; never,
Never more thus expose, but cherish thee,
Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life,

Dear as those eyes that weep in fondness o'er thee:
Peace to thy heart!

Immoral sentiments exposed in their native colors, instead of being concealed or disguised, compose the fifth class. The Lady Macbeth, projecting the death of the King, has the following soliloquy :

The raven himself's not hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come all you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to th' toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty: make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose.

MACBETH.-ACT I. Sc. 5.

This speech is not natural. A treacherous murder was never perpetrated without compunction: and that the lady here must have been in horrible agitation, appears from her invoking the infernal spirits to fill her with cruelty, and to stop up all the avenues to remorse. But in that state of mind, it is a never-failing artifice of self-deceit, to draw the thickest veil over the wicked action, and to extenuate it by all the circumstances that imagination can suggest: and if the crime cannot bear disguise, the next attempt is to thrust it out of mind altogether, and to rush on to action without thought. This last was the husband's method:

Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
ACT III. Sc. 4.

The lady follows neither of these courses, but in a deliberate manner endeavors to fortify her heart in the commission of an execrable crime, without even