Kill not thy sister: it is lack of wit To do an ill that brings no good with it. Alaham. Go, lead them hence. Prepare the funeral; Hasten the sacrifice and pomp of woe.

Where she did hide him, thither let them go.

A NUNTIUS (or Messenger) relates to ALAHAM the manner of his Father's, Brother's, and Sister's deaths, and the popular discontents which followed. ALAHAM, by the sudden working of remorse, is distracted, and imagines that he sees their ghosts.

Nuntius. The first which burnt, as Cain 1 his next of

kin,

In blood your brother, and your prince in state,
Drew wonder from men's hearts, brought horror in.
This innocent, this soul too meek for sin,
Yet made for others to do harm withal,
With his self-pity tears, drew tears from us;

His blood, compassion had; his wrong, stirr'd hate:
Deceit is odious in a king's estate.
Repiningly he goes unto his end :

Strange visions rise; strange furies haunt the flame;
People cry out, Echo repeats his name.
These words he spake, even breathing out his
breath :

"Unhappy weakness! never innocent!

If in a crown, yet but an instrument.

People! observe; this fact may make you see,
Excess hath ruin'd what itself did build :

But ah! the more oppress'd, the more you yield."
The next was he whose age had reverence;
His gesture something more than privateness;
Guided by one, whose stately grace did move
Compassion, even in hearts that could not love.

1 The execution, to make it plausible to the people, is coloured with the pretext, that the being burnt is a voluntary sacrifice of themselves by the victims at the funeral of Cain a bashaw and relative.

As soon as these approached near the flame,
The wind, the steam, or Furies rais'd their veils;
And in their looks this image did appear :

Each unto other, life to neither, dear.

.

These words he spake :-" Behold one that hath
lost
Himself within; and so the world without;
A king that brings authority in doubt:
This is the fruit of power's misgovernment.
People! my fall is just; yet strange your fate,
That, under worst, will hope for better state.'
Grief roars aloud. Your sister yet remain❜d,
Helping in death to him in whom she died;
Then going to her own, as if she gain'd,

These mild words spake with looks to heaven bent :

99

"O God! 'tis thou that sufferest here, not we:
Wrong doth but like itself in working thus:
At thy will, Lord! revenge Thyself, not us.'
The fire straight upward bears the souls in breath :
Visions of horror circle in the flame,

With shapes and figures like to that of Death;
But lighter-tongu'd and nimbler-wing'd than Fame:
Some to the church, some to the people fly:
A voice cries out: "Revenge and liberty.
Princes! take heed; your glory is your care;
And power's foundations, strengths, not vices, are."
Alaham. What change is this, that now I feel within?
Is it disease that works this fall of spirits?
Or works this fall of spirits my disease?
Things seem not as they did; horror appears.
What Sin embodied, what strange sight is this?
Doth sense bring back but what within me is,
Or do I see those shapes which haunt the flame?
What summons up remorse? Shall conscience rate
Kings' deeds, to make them less than their estate?
Ah silly ghost! is 't you that swarm about?

Wouldst thou, that art not now, a father be?
These body laws do with the life

go out.
What thoughts be these that do my entrails tear?
You wandering spirits frame in me your hell;
I feel my brother and my sister there.

MUSTAPHA, A TRAGEDY:

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ROSSA, wife to SOLYMAN the Turkish Emperor, persuades her husband, that MUSTAPHA, his son by a former marriage, and heir to his crown, seeks his life; that she may make way, by the death of MUSTAPHA, for the advancement of her own children, ZANGER and CAMENA. CAMENA, the virtuous daughter of Rossa, defends the innocence of MUSTAPHA, in a conference which she holds with the Emperor.

CAMENA. SOLYMAN.

Cam. They that from youth do suck at Fortune's breast,

And nurse their empty hearts with seeking higher,
Like dropsy-fed, their thirst doth never rest;
For still by getting, they beget desire :

Till thoughts, like wood, while they maintain the flame

Of high desires, grow ashes in the same.

But Virtue! those that can behold thy beauties, Those that suck, from their youth, thy milk of goodness,

Their minds grow strong against the storms of Fortune,

And stand, like rocks in winter-gusts, unshaken ;
Not with the blindness of desire mistaken.

O virtue therefore! whose thrall I think Fortune,
Thou who despisest not the sex of women,
Help me out of these riddles of my fortune,