Now judge what cause* had Titus to revenge Now you have heard the truth, what say you, Romans? The poor remainder of Andronici Will, hand in hand, all headlong cast us down, EMIL. Come, come, thou reverend man of Rome, The common voice do cry, It shall be so! ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal emperor! a To be adjudg'd some direful-slaughtering death, [To Attendants, who go into the house. ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor! Stand all aloof;-but, uncle, draw you near, MARC. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss, Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them! [Kisses TITUS. LUC. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn of us To melt in showers. Thy grandsire lov'd thee well: Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee, Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow; Meet and agreeing with thine infancy; In that respect, then, like a loving child, Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring, (*) Old text, course. (†) Old text, bloud-slaine. ROMANS. Lucius, all hail, Rome's royal emperor!] This and the subsequent line, 'Lucius, all hail, Rome's gracious governor!" are in the old copies ascribed to Marcus; but surely in error. Friends should associate friends in grief and woe: BOY. O, grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart Re-enter Attendants, with AARON. 1 ROMAN. You sad Andronici, have done with woes: Give sentence on this execrable wretch, That hath been breeder of these dire events. LUC. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him, There let him stand, and rave, and cry for food: If any one relieves or pities him, For the offence he dies. This is our doom. Some stay to see him fasten'd in the earth. AARON. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb? I should repent the evils I have done : I do repent it from my very soul. Luc. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence. My father and Lavinia shall forthwith As for that heinous tiger, Tamora, No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds, But throw her forth to beasts and birds of prey: • No mournful bell-] Query, "No solemn bell," &c.? [Exeunt. ILLUSTRATIVE COMMENTS. (1) SCENE III. ACT II. Be unto us as is a nurse's song Douce, in his "Illustrations of Shakspeare," has an interesting note on the burden lullaby. "It would be a hopeless task to trace the origin of the northern verb to lull, which means to sing gently; but it is evidently connected with the Greek is, loquor, or Aάan, the sound made by the beach at sea. Thus much is certain, that the Roman nurses used the word lalla to quiet their children, and that they feigned a deity called Lallus, whom they invoked on that occasion; the lullaby or tune itself was called by the same name. As lallare meant to sing lalla, to lull might in like manner denote the singing of the nurse's lullaby to induce the child to sleep. Thus in an ancient carol composed in the fifteenth century, and preserved among the Sloane MSS. No. 2593: "che song a slepe w her lullynge here dere sone our savyoure.' "In another old ballad, printed by Mr. Ritson in his Ancient Songs, p. 198, the burden is lully, lully, lullaby, lullyby, sweete baby,' &c.; from which it seems probable that lullaby is only a comparatively modern contraction of lully baby, the first word being the legitimate offspring of the Roman lalla. In another of these pieces, still more ancient, and printed in the same collection, we have 'lullay, lullow, lully, bewy, lulla "The Welsh appear to have been famous for their lullaby songs. Jones, in his Arte and science of preserving bodie and soule, 1579, 4to., says:-The best nurses, but especially the trim and skilfull Welch women, doe use to sing some preaty sonets, wherwith their copious tong is plentifully stoared of divers pretie tunes and pleasaunt ditties, that the children disquicted might be brought to reste: but translated never so well, they want their grace in Englishe, for lacke of proper words: so that I will omit them, as I wishe they would theyr lascivious Dymes, wanton Lullies, and amorous Englins. "Mr. White, in reviewing his opinion of the etymology of good-by, will perhaps ineline to think it a contraction, when properly written good b'ye, of God be with you, and not 'may your house prosper!' "To add to the stock of our old lullaby songs, two are here subjoined. The first is from a pageant of The slaughter of the innocents, acted at Coventry in the reign of Henry the Eighth, by the taylors and shearers of that city, and most obligingly communicated by Mr. Sharpe. The other is from the curious volume of songs mentioned before in p. 262. Both exhibit the simplicity of ancient manners :-- (2) SCENE IV.-A precious ring, that lightens all the hole.] The gem supposed to possess a property of emitting native light was called a carbuncle, and is frequently men. tioned in early books; thus, in "The Gesta Romanorum," b. vi. :-" He further beheld and saw a carbuncle in the hall that lighted all the house." So also in Lydgate's "Description of King Priam's Palace," L. II. : "And for most chefe all derkeness to confound, A carbuncle was set as kyng of stones all, To recomforte and gladden all the hall. And so Drayton, in "The Muses' Elysium :" "Is that admired mighty stone, That in the very darkest night But the best illustration of the passage we have met with occurs in a letter from Boyle, containing "Observations on a Diamond that shines in the dark:"-"Though Vortomannus was not an eye-witness of what he relates, that the King of Pegu had a true Carbuncle of that bigness and splendour, that it shined very gloriously in the dark; and though Garcias ab Horto, the Indian Vice-Roy's physician, speaks of another carbuncle only on the report of one that he discoursed with; yet as we are not sure that these men that gave themselves out to be eye-witnesses, speak true, yet they may have done so for aught we know to the contrary. I must not omit that some virtuosi questioning me the other day at Whitehall, and meeting amongst them an ingenious Dutch gentleman whose father was long embassador for the Netherlands in England, I learned of him that he is acquainted with a person who was admiral of the Dutch in the East Indies, and who assured this gentleman Monsieur Boreel, that at his return from thence, he brought back with him into Holland a stone which though it looked but like a pale dull diamond, yet it was a real carbuncle; and did without rubbing shine so much, that when the admiral had occasion to open, a chest which he kept under deck in a dark place where it was forbidden to bring candles for fear of mischances, as soon as he opened the trunk, the stone would by its native light shine so as to illustrate a great part of it."-Boyle's Works, Vol. II. D. 82. VOL. VI. R (1) SCENE III. ACT V. Then, afterwards, to order well the state, The following is the ballad registered by Danton when he entered the “Historye of Tytus Andronicus" on the Stationers' Rolls. It is extracted from Percy's "Reliques of Antient Poetry," Vol. I. : "TITUS ANDRONICUS'S COMPLAINT. "You noble minds and famous martiall wights, "In Rome I lived in fame fulle threescore yeeres, "For when Romes foes their warlike forces bent, "Just two and twenty of my sonnes were slaine Of five and twenty sonnes, I brought but three "When wars were done I conquest home did bring, "The emperour did make this queene his wife, "The Moore soe pleased this new-made empress' eie, For to abuse her husbands marriage bed, "Then she, whose thoughts to murder were inclined, "Soe when in age I thought to live in peace, "My deare Lavinia was betrothed than To Cæsars sonne, a young and noble man: "He being slaine was cast in cruel wise |