Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands,
Was fick almost to doomsday with eclipse.

Ghosts vanish at the crowing of the Cock, and the

Reverence paid to Christmas-Time.

Ber. It was about to speak when the cock crew.

Hor. And then it started like a guilty thing,
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and thrill-founding throat
Awake the god of day; and at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine. And of the truth herein,
This present object made probation.

Mar. It faded at the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning fingeth all night long :
And then, they fay, no fpirit walks abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,

(2) No

No victim can atone the impious age;
No sacrifice the wrathful gods assuage :
Dire wars and civil fury threat the state,
And ev'ry omen points out Cæsar's fate :
Around each hallow'd shrine and sacred dome,
Night-howling dogs disturb the peaceful gloom;
Their filent seats and wand'ring shades forsake,
And fearful tremblings the rock'd city shake.

(Welfted.) The originals consist, the first of 23 lines, the latter of 16, the translations of 31 and 22 lines: Shake fpear has but eight, and perhaps, were we to say he was as expressive and elegant as Virgil and Ovid on this subject, we might not be tax’d with too great partiality to him : however, it may be no disagreeable amusement to the reader to compare these three passages together, allowing for the great spirit the ancients muft lose in a tranflatione See teo Julius Coefar, A. 2. S. 4.

(2) No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.

Morning.
(3) But look, the morn in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill.
SCENE II.

Real Grief.
Seems, madam! nay, it is; I know not seems :
"Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of folemn black,
Nor windy fufpiration of forc'd breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the

eye,
Nor the dejected 'haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shews of grief,
That can denote me truly. These, indeed, seem,
For they are actions that a man might play ;
But I have that within, which passeth shew;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Immoderate Grief discommended. "Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlety To give these mourning duties to your father: But you must know your

father loft a father That father his, and the survivor bound In filial obligation for some term

Το

(2) No fairy takes.] The poet here plainly alludes to that wellknown characteristic of the fairies, their taking away, or changing children: the whole dispute in the Midsummer Night's Dream, between Oberon and Titania, is concerning a boy she had taken away, or stolen from its mother : the reader will find a pretty fable on this subject in Gay's Fables: and indeed the thing is so generally known by all read in the economy of these little dapper elves, it needs not insisting on.

(3) But,&c.] See Midsummer Night's Dream, Act. 1. Sc. 8. and the note.

To do obsequious forrow. (4) But to persevere
In obftinate condolement, does express
An impious stubbornness, unmanly grief,
It shews a will most incorrect to heaven;
A heart unfortify'd, a mind impatient,
An understanding fimple and unschool'd:
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any of the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition,
Take it to heart? Fie! 'is a fault to heav'n,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reafon most absurd, whose common theme
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cry'd
From the first corse, till he that died to-day,
This must be so.

}

Hamlet's Soliloquy on his Mother's Marriage. (5) O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew;

Ol (4) But to, &c.] Juvenal says, Sat, 13-)

Ponamus nimios gemitus: flagrantior æquo
Non debet dolor ele viri, nec vulnere major.
Abate thy passion nor too much complain,
Grief should be forc’d: and it becomes a man
To let it rise no higher than his pain.

Creech.
(5) 0, that, &c.] The late translator of Longinus obseryes,
upon that section, (the 22d) where his excellent author is speaks
ing of the Hyperbaton, “ That nothing can better illustrate his
remarks than a celebrated paffage in Shakespcar's Hamlet,
where the poet's art has hit off the strongest and most exact
resemblance of nature. The behaviour of his mother makes
fuch impression on the young prince, that his mind is big
with abhorrence of it, but expressions fail him : he begins ab-
ruptly, but as reflections crowd thick upon his mind, he runs
off into commendations of his father. Some time after, his
thoughts turn again on that action of his mother, which had
rais’d his resentments, but he only touches it, and flies off an

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst felf-llaughter! Oh, God! oh, God!
How weary, ftale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world.
Fie on't! O, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to feed; things rank and gross in nature
Poffess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two
So excellent a king, that was to this,
Hyperion to a fatyr: fo loving to my mother,

That

gain ; in short, he takes up eighteen lines in telling us that his mother married again in less than two months after her husband's death." Speaking of self-Naughter, in Cymbeline, he says;

'Gainst self-Naughter There is a prohibition so divine

That cravens my weak mind. Hyperion was a name of the sun ; Hamlet, afterwards speaking of his father, says;

See what a grace was seated on his brow,

Hyperion's curls.
Mr. Dryden observes, on the famous

Varium & mutabik femper Fæminarof Virgil, that it is the sharpest satire in thefe west words, that ever was made on womankind; for both the adjectives are neuter, and animal must be understood to make them grammar. Mr. Theobald is of opinion, this of Shakespear-Ofrailty thing name is woman, is, as being equally concise in the terms, and more sprightly in the thought and image, to be preferred to Vira gil, and the Tharper satire of the two.

It is, I think, observed, either in the Tarlers or Spectators, how greatly Ilanlet exaggerates his mother's offence by continually leffening the time the 1tayed before her second marriage. 'Tis at first two months--then immediately not so much as two –presently after 'tis within a month; that is again lefsenel 'twas not only within a month, but within a little month nay, even before her eyes were dry, and no longer gall’d with her most unrighteous tears,

d on; and

That he might not let e'en the winds of heav'n
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember?-why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed

yet,

within a month ? -
Let me not think on't ;-Frailty thy name is woman :
A little month!-or ere those shoes were old,
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears- - M'hy she, even she
O heav'n! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would haye mourn'd longer-married with mine uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father,
Than I to Hercules. Within a month!
Ere
yet

the talt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the fluihing in her galled eyes,
She married. Onost wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets !
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.

SCENE IV. A complete Man. (6) He was a man, take him for all in all, I Thall not look upon his like again.

SCENE

(6) He, &c.] This (as Mr. Whalley obseryes in his Enquiry into she learning of Shakespear) will perhaps be thought too much the suggestion of nature and the human heart, to be taken froin a place of Sophocles, to which it has great affinity;

Παντων αριςον ανδρα των επι χθ.
Κτεινας' οποιον αλλον εκ οψει ποτε.

Trachin. v. 821. Which in the most literal translation, is,

You've kill'd the very best of men on earth,

And shall not look upon his like again.
In Gymbeline there is a character very similar to this;

-A creature such
As to seek through the regions of the earth,

For