Is circl'd with divinity, which, without reverence
To touch, is sacrilege; to look on, sin;
Unlesse each glance is usher'd with a prayer.
Kings are but living temples, wherein is,
As in the nation's center, the chief seat
Of their protecting god: and shall I then
Pollute my hands in bloud, whose every drop
Would swell my countrey's tears into a floud?

King. Are my attempts priz'd at so cheap a rate?
Wears not my sword a danger on it's point
As well as thine ?-draw-or I shall conclude
"Tis fear, not loyalty, that charms thy hand.

Oro. This stirs my bloud :- were you a private man,
That only had his better genius to

Protect him, though allied to me by all
The ties of nature and of friendship, yet,
Being this far urged, our swords long since should have
Made known whose stars the brighter influence had.

King. I have unfetter'd all those legall bondes-draw;
For thy denying now but sleights my power.
Oro. Then, since there's no evasion,
Witnesse, ye gods, my innocence is wrong'd.
-But, gratious sir,-

Before I fall, or stand lesse fortunate
To see your overthrow, oh let me know
What fate, what cruell fate, hath robb'd me of
The treasures of your love: I never yet
Sullied my soul with any thought that might
Deserve your hate; heaven is my faithful witnesse
I harbour none of you, but such as are

More full of zeal than those pure orizons,

Which martyr'd saints mix with their dying groans.

King. And must such goodnesse die!-know, noble youth,

I am so far from calling it desert

In thee, that hath unsheath'd my sword, that, in
This midnight storm of fancy, I can shed
Some drops of pity too; pity, to change
So true a subject for a treacherous guest.
I come not rashly to attempt thy life,
But long have strugl'd with my hot desire;
Stood fiery trials of temptations, which
Have sublimated reason, till it's grown
Too volatile to be contain❜d within
My brain, that over-heated crucible.
I am diseas'd, and know no way to health

But through a deluge of thy bloud.

Oro. There needs not, then, this storm to break down
The bayes
that verge the crimson sea: this stroke
Shall open all the sluces of my bloud.

King. Hold-or else thou rob'st me of my fixt resolves.
-There is a cause,

Commands me die in the attempt, or kill thee.
Oro. Dear sir, reveal it;

That, ere I fall, my penitential tears

May from that leprous crime expunge my soul.

King. Alas, brave youth! thy innocence needs not
The laver of a tear; thy candid thoughts

White as the robes of angels are, but mine
The dresse of devills: I that should protect,
Am come to rob my best of subjects-to rob
Thee of thy dearest treasure: I know thy love
To fair Eurione, inseparable,

As goodnesse from a deity; yet must
Deprive thee of this darling of thy soul.

Oro. With pardon, royall sir, I cannot think
The Cyprian princesse is so soon forgot;
With whom compar'd, my poor Eurione
Though bright to me, to more discerning eyes
Shines dim as the pale moon, when she lets fall
Through a dark grove her melancholy beams.

King. Dost thou affect her, yet dispraise a beauty
That in its orb contracts divinity?
This profanation, what had else been sin,
Will render meritorious-guard thyself."

[They fight, and the King falls. Act IV. Scene II.

There is great dignity in the preceding scene; the following passage and soliloquy, also, possess considerable merit-there are some beautiful touches of natural emotion in the bitter agonies of self-reproach of Oroandes-in the gushing out of an anguished heart;-such appeals are never made in vain— they strike upon the golden chain which links us with our common nature, and awaken the deepest sympathies of the heart.

Enter Oroandes and a Surgeon.

"Oro. Not find the body, say'st?

Sur. No, sir; yet, by the large effusion of his bloud,

Had a too sad assurance of the place:

Some mountaineers have certainly conveyed

His body thence to burial; those bloudy characters
Are arguments of no lesse ill than death.

Oro. Then I am lost eternally-lost to all
That bears a shew of goodnesse; heaven and earth
Will both strive to forget they ever knew
A soul deform'd with wickednesse like mine,
-My feverish sins dry up the dews of mercy
In their descent, and blast all vertue that
Approaches neer me; I shall never find
A saint in heaven, or friend on earth, but will,
As a dire prodigy, created to

Scatter infection, through the world, forsake
My hated company, as fit to mix

With none but the society of devils.

Sur. Sir, I wish, I in ought else could serve you.

Oro. I thank thee, friend

Heavens

What an unwieldy monster am I grown,
Since, by this act, swel'd to a regicide-

Oh! my accursed stars, that only lent
Your influence to light me to damnation;
Not all my penitential tears will ere

Wash off the spots from my stain'd soul; this gangrene
Is cur'd by no lixivium, but of bloud.

My heart is lodg'd within a bed of snakes,

Such as old fancies arm'd the furies with.

Conscience waits on me like the frighting shades
Of ghosts, when gastly messengers of death.
My thoughts are but the inforc't retreats
Of tortur'd reason to a troubled fancy.

[Exit Sur.

Cannot preserve from trembling; he looks on
Dejected wretches as assassinates,

Enter Oroandes, alone, in the habit of a Forrester.

Oro. Not yet not yet at quiet-no disguise
Is dark enough to curtain o'er my guilt;
Pale as the ghastly looks of men condemn'd,
It sits upon my conscience. I see there is
No place affords that soul a safe retreat,
That is pursued by a sharp-scented sin.
The prosperous murtherer, that hath cloth'd his guilt
In royall ermins, all those furs of state

Act V.

And each petition for a ponyard feers.
-Yet these are more secure than I, they may
Pretend to merit in their wickednesse,
And call their crimes the cure of sickly states;
But I am left no refuge, lesse to know
The depth of horror can no further go.
-Alas! poor virtue, all thy white-wing'd zeal
Is wrought into a bed of sables, since,
Leaving thy heavenly dictates, I betrayed
Myself unto these sooty guards of hell,
Whose black inhabitants already call
Me one of their society;-my eyes
Are grown more killing than the basilisk's,
And each vein fill'd with poison, since these hands,
These cursed hands, were stained with royall bloud.
-Hah!-all this is true-

But do I want more desperation yet?

Are there not fiends enough, now waiting on me,
To guide my trembling hand untill it reach
The center of my
life?

[Draws his sword.

This fatall weapon slew my prince;

-This was his bloud that stains it,—

The bloud that warm'd those browes, a crown imbrac'd,
-Let forth by me t' embalm the earth, and in
Warm vapors spend the pretious breath of life,

Which, mounting upwards, sent perfumes to heaven;

*

*

*

-No, I will live-live, till divellop'd guilt

Makes me a publick spectacle of hate—and then
Fall with my sins about me, when each tongue
Adds to their ponderous weight a full-mouthed curse.'

Act V.

$

A gentle and tender melancholy is diffused over the affecting reflections, in the soliloquies of Vanlore, a noble gentleman, but of low fortune, to whom his rival, a rich simpleton, is preferred by the father of Theocrine.

"Van. How purblind is the world, that such a monster,

In a few dirty acres swadled, must
Be mounted, in opinion's empty scale,
Above the noblest virtues that adorn

Souls that make worth their center, and to that
Draw all the lines of action! Worn with age,
The noble soldier sits, whilst, in his cell

The scholar stews his catholique brains for food.
The traveller, return'd and poor, may go
A second pilgrimage to farmer's doors, or end
His journey in a hospital; few being
So generous to relieve, where vertue doth
Necessitate to crave. Harsh poverty,

That moth, which frets the sacred robe of wit,
Thousands of noble spirits blunts, that else
Had spun rich threads of fancy from their brain :
But they are souls too much sublim'd to thrive."

"The morning pearls,

Dropt in the lillie's spotlesse bosome, are
Lesse chastly cool, ere the meridian sun
Hath kist them into heat."

Act I. Scene I,

The following lines, addressed by Oroandes to Eurione, are exquisitely beautiful :

Oroandes says to Zannazarro, when in rebellion:

"Nobility, like heaven's bright plannets, waits
Upon the sun of majesty, whilst none

But comets drop from their usurped spheres."

ART. VII. The Felicitie of Man, or, his Summum Bonum. Written by S R. Barckley, K

In cœli summum permanet arce bonum. Boeth. de Cons. Philos. lib. 3. London: Printed by R. Y. and are sold by Rich. Roystone, at his Shop in Ivie Lane. 1631. Small 4to, pp. 717.

Of this author, or his book, we have not been able to find any notice or account whatever. It is a quarto, of a pretty good thickness,-is rare, and purports to be an ethical treatise on human happiness, consisting of six books. In the first, the author offers to prove, and by example to shew, that felicity consists not in pleasure,-In the second, not in riches,-In the third, not in honour and glory,-In the fourth, not in moral virtue, or in the action of virtue, after the academicks and peripateticks, nor in philosophical contemplation,—In the