dishonour at thee, which no innocence of heart or integ1.rity of conduct shall set rightwinest

The fortunes of thy house shall totter-thy character, which led the way to them, shall bleed on every side of it thy faith questioned thy works belied-thy wit forgotten-thy learning trampled on. To wind up the last scene of thy tragedy, Cruelty and Cowardice, twin ruffians, hired and set on by Malice in the dark, shall strike together at all thy infirmities and mistakes: the best of us, my friend, lie open there, and trust me-when to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it is strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

HAMLET'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE PLAYERS.

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 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 temperence that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robusteous periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shew and noise: I could have such a fellowe whipped for overdoing termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid its

i

Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion 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 shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body 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 which must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely) that, neither having the accent of Christian, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, 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 themsevles laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the mean time, some necessary qestion of the play be then to be considered :that's villainous: and shews a most pitiful ambition in thefool that uses it. SHAKSPEARE

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CHAP. XII.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MAN VINDI-
CATED.

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 rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero peevish, 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 bliss, 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 bless'd;
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo! the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or 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 giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, nor 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 engross not heaven'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.

POPE.

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CHAP. XIII.

ON THE ORDER OF NATURE.

SEE, thro' 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 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 strikes:

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 Suns run 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 their 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 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,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
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.

J