"For souls just quitting earth, peep into heaven, Make swift acquaintance with their kindred forms, And partners of immortal secrets grow."

Many fine passages also occur in the "Edipus," by Lee, which, as well as the "Duke of Guise," was written in conjunction with Dryden. We question whether extracts of greater beauty than those we shall now quote from that play are to be found in Dryden-certainly not of tenderer cast.

Tiresias, feeling the inspiration of the god, thus addresses his daughter Manto, who is leading him:

"I feel him now,

Like a strong spirit charm'd into a tree,

That leaps, and moves the wood without a wind?
The roused God, as all this while he lay
Intomb'd alive, starts and dilates himself;
He struggles, and he tears my aged trunk
With holy fury; my old arteries burst,
My rivell'd skin,

Like parchment, crackles at the hallow'd fire e;
I shall be young again: Manto, my daughter,
Thou hast a voice that might have sav'd the bard
Of Thrace, and forc'd the raging bacchanals,

With lifted prongs, to listen to thy airs;

O charm this god, this fury in my bosom,

Lull him with tuneful notes, and artful strings,
With pow'rful strains; Manto, my lovely child,
Sooth the unruly god-head to be mild."

Edipus, talking in his sleep, thus addresses his wife:

66

Edip. O, my Jocasta! 'tis for this the wet

Starv'd soldier lies on the cold ground;

For this he bears the storms

Of winter camps, and freezes in his arms;

To be thus circled, to be thus embrac'd:

That I could hold thee ever."

Jocasta finding him in this situation, says,

"Then my fears were true.

Methought I heard your voice, and yet I doubted-
Now roaring like the ocean, when the winds
Fight with the waves; now, in a still small tone

Your dying accents fell, as racking ships

After the dreadful yell, sink murmuring down,
And bubble up a noise."

Jocasta finding the internal misery of Edipus, thus refuses consolation:

"In vain you sooth me with your soft endearments,

And set the fairest countenance to view;

Your gloomy eyes, my lord, betray a deadness

And inward languishing that oracle

Eats like a subtle worm its venom'd way,

Preys on your heart, and rots the noble core,
Howe'er the beauteous outside shews so lovely."

When Edipus hears his name called out by the Ghost, he falls into this soliloquy, which reminds us more nearly of Shakespear than any thing we have had the good fortune to discover in the plays of Dryden.

"Ha! again that scream of woe!

Thrice have I heard, thrice since the morning dawn’d—
It hollow'd loud, as if my guardian spirit

Call'd from some vaulted mansion, Edipus!

Or is it but the work of melancholy

When the sun sets, shadow, that shew'd at noon

But small, appear most long and terrible;
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds,
Owls, ravens, crickets seem the watch of death,
Nature's worst vermin scare her god-like sons.
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,

Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves :
Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge Olympus,
While we fantastic dreamers heave and puff,
And sweat with an imagination's weight;
As if, like Atlas, with these mortal shoulders
We could sustain the burden of the world."

What can be more beautiful than the "dying fall" of these lines:

"Of no distemper, of no blast he dy'd,
But fell like autumn-fruit that mellow'd long :
Ev'n wonder'd at, because he dropt no sooner.
Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more :
Till, like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still."

Or than the easy and natural picture thus drawn.
"Oft-times before I thither did resort,
Charm'd with the conversation of a man

Who led a rural life, and had command

O'er all the shepherds who about those vales
Tended their numerous flocks: in this man's arms
I saw you smiling at a fatal dagger,

Whose point he often offer'd at your throat;

But then you smil'd, and then he drew it back,
Then lifted it again, you smil'd again :
'Till he at last in fury threw it from him,

And cry'd aloud, the gods forbid thy death."

We cannot omit this awful description of the eclipsed

moon.

"Ha! my Jocasta, look! the silver moon!
A settling crimson stains her beauteous face!
She's all o'er blood? and look, behold again,
What mean the mystick heavens, she journeys on?
A vast eclipse darkens the labouring planet:
Sound there, sound all the instruments of war;
Clarions and trumpets, silver, brass, and iron,
And beat a thousand drums to help her labours.

Truly, in spite of the serious blemishes which disfigure the Edipus, it is a very powerful drama, and though the dramatic points of the fable are not seized with the taste, nor worked up with the masterly genius of Sophocles, yet it contains scenes of almost awful grandeur. Excepting a few lines, the opening scene is worthy of being quoted. The effect it produces upon the mind, is almost as dreary as the pestilence itself; the sentences seem to drop from the lips of the speakers, as if, amidst the wreck of all things, they hardly thought it worth while to finish them. The only brisk speech in it, is where Alcander wraps himself all round in the argument of necessity.

"Methinks we stand on ruins; nature shakes

About us;

and the universal frame

So loose, that it but wants another push

To leap from off its hinges.

Dioc. No sun to cheer us; but a bloody globe

That rolls above; a bold and beamless fire:

His face o'er grown with scurf: The sun's sick too :
Shortly he'll be an earth.

Pyr. Therefore the seasons

Lie all confus'd; and, by the heav'ns neglected,
Forget themselves; blind winter meets the summer
In his mid-way, and, seeing not his livery,
Has driv'n him headlong back; and the new damps

With flaggy wings fly heavily about,

Scattering their pestilential colds and rheumes
Through all the lazy air.

Alc. Hence murrains follow'd

On bleating flocks, and on the lowing herds;
At last, the malady

Grew more domestic, and the faithful dog
Dy'd at his master's feet.

Dioc. And next, his master;

For all those plagues which earth and air had brooded,
First on inferior creatures try'd their force :

And last they seiz❜d on man.

Pyr. And then a thousand deaths at once advanc'd,
And every dart took place; all was so sudden,
That scarce a first man fell; one but began
To wonder, and straight fell, a wonder too;
A third, who stoop'd to raise his dying friend,
Dropt in the pious act- Heard you that groan?

[Groan within.

Dioc. A troop of ghosts took flight together there;
Now death's grown riotous, and will play no more
For single stakes, but families and tribes;

How are we sure we breathe not now our last,

And that, next minute,

Our bodies cast into some common pit,

Shall not be built upon, and overlaid

By half a people?

Alc. There's a chain of causes

Link'd to effects; invincible necessity,

That whate'er is, could not but so have been ;

That's my security.

To them, enter Creon.

Cre. So had it need, when all our streets lie cover'd

With dead and dying men ;

And earth exposes bodies on the pavement

More than she hides in graves!

Betwixt the bride and bridegroom have I seen

The nuptial torch do common offices

Of marriage and of death."

In drawing the character of Creon, Dryden doubtless had Shakespear's crook-backed Richard in his

eye.

Why love renounc'd thee ere thou saw'st the light;
Nature herself start back when thou wert born ;

And cry'd, the work's not mine

The midwife stood aghast; and when she saw
Thy mountain back, and thy distorted legs,
Thy face itself,

Half-minted with the royal stamp of man,

And half o'ercome with beast, stood doubting long,
Whose right in thee were more;

And knew not, if to burn thee in the flames,
Were not the holier work.

Cre. Am I to blame, if nature threw my body
In so perverse a mould; yet when she cast
Her envious hand upon my supple joints,
Unable to resist, and rumpled 'em

On heaps in their dark lodging, to revenge

Her bungled work she stamp'd my mind more fair;
And as from chaos, huddled and deform'd,
The God strook fire, and lighted up the lamps
That beautify the sky, so he inform'd

This ill-shap'd body with a daring soul;

And making less than man, he made me more."

Act I. Sc. III.

There is in the first act, a truly dramatic effect, produced by this little dialogue between Tiresias and his daughter, who is leading the blind old man.

"Now stay.

Methinks I draw more open, vital air.
Where are we?

Man. Under covert of a wall;

The most frequented once, and noisy part

Of Thebes, now midnight silence reigns ev'n here?
And
grass untrodden springs beneath our feet.

Tir. If there be nigh this place a sunny bank,

There let me rest awhile: A sunny bank!

Alas! how can it be, where no sun shines!

But a dim winking taper in the skies,

That nods, and scarce holds up his drowzy head

To glimmer through the damps."

Creon thus soliliquizes on death.

"Cre. The thought of death to one near death is dreadful?

O'tis a fearful thing to be no more.

Or if to be, to wander after death!

To walk as spirits do, in brakes all day?

And when the darkness comes, to glide in paths