SCENE II.-SCENE opens, and discovers Men and
Women at a Banquet, MALICORN standing by.

Mal. This is the solemn annual feast I keep,
As this day twelve year, on this very hour,
I signed the contract for my soul with hell.
I bartered it for honours, wealth, and pleasure,
Three things which mortal men do covet most;
And 'faith, I over-sold it to the fiend:

What, one-and-twenty years, nine yet to come!
How can a soul be worth so much to devils?
O how I hug myself, to out-wit these fools of hell!
And yet a sudden damp, I know not why,
Has seized my spirits, and, like a heavy weight,
Hangs on their active springs. I want a song
To rouse me; my blood freezes.-Music there.

A SONG BETWIXT A SHEPHERD AND SHEPHERDESS.

Shepherdess.

Tell me, Thyrsis, tell your anguish,
Why you sigh, and why you languish;
When the nymph whom you adore,

Grants the blessing

Of possessing,

What can love and I do more?

Shepherd.

Think it's love beyond all measure,
Makes me faint away with pleasure;

questo pensiero, perchè non l'aveva communicato ad alcun altro, e divulgandosi egli sarebbe stato colpevole d' averlo palesato. A questo rispose Griglione: Essere servitore di fede, d'onore, nè dover mai ridire i segreti interessi del padrone, e partito lasciò il Re grandemente dubbioso di quello dovesse operare. Lib. ix.

Strength of cordial may destroy.
And the blessing
Of possessing,

Kills me with excess of joy.

Shepherdess.

Thyrsis, how can I believe you!
But confess, and I'll forgive you;
Men are false, and so are you,
Never nature

Framed a creature

To enjoy, and yet be true.

After a Song and Dance, loud knocking at the Door.

Enter a Servant.

Mal. What noise is that?

Serv. An ill-looked surly man,

With a hoarse voice, says he must speak with Mal. Tell him I dedicate this day to pleasure.

you.

I neither have, nor will have, business with him.

[Erit SERV.

What, louder yet? what saucy slave is this?

Re-enter Servant.

[Knock louder.

Sero. He says you have, and must have, business with him.

Come out, or he'll come in, and spoil your mirth. Mal. I will not.

Serv. Sir, I dare not tell him so;

[Knocking again more fiercely. My hair stands up in bristles when I see him; The dogs run into corners; the spay'd bitch Bays at his back, and howls*.

Mal. Bid him enter, and go off thyself.

SCENE closes upon the company.

[Exit Sero.

A similar assemblage of terrific circumstances announces the arrival of a fiend upon a similar errand, in the old play, entitled, the "Merry Devil of Edmonton."

What means the trolling of this fatal chime?
O what a trembling horror strikes my heart!
My stiffened hair stands upright on my head,
As do the bristles of a porcupine.

Coreb, is't thou ?

I know thee well; I hear the watchful dogs,
With hollow howling, tell of thy approach.

The lights burn dim, affrighted with thy presence,

And this distempered and tempestuous night

Tells me the air is troubled with some devil!

Dryden certainly appears to have had the old play in his memory, though he has far excelled it.

5

Enter MELANAX, an hour-glass in his hand, almost empty.

How dar'st thou interrupt my softer hours?
By heaven, I'll ram thee in some knotted oak,
Where thou shalt sigh, and groan to whistling winds,
Upon the lonely plain.

Or I'll confine thee deep in the red sea, groveling on the sands,

Ten thousand billows rolling o'er thy head.
Mel. Hoh, hoh, hoh!

Mal. Laughest thou, malicious fiend?
I'll ope my book of bloody characters,
Shall rumple up thy tender airy limbs,
Like parchment in a flame.

Mel. Thou can'st not do it.

Behold this hour-glass.

Mal. Well, and what of that?

Mel. Seest thou these ebbing sands?

They run for thee, and when their race is run,
Thy lungs, the bellows of thy mortal breath,
Shall sink for ever down, and heave no more."
Mal. What, resty, fiend?

Nine years thou hast to serve.

Mel. Not full nine minutes.

Mal. Thou liest; look on thy bond, and view the

date.

Mel. Then, wilt thou stand to that without appeal? Mal. I will, so help me heaven!

Mel. So take thee hell.

[Gives him the bond.

There, fool; behold who lies, the devil, or thou? Mal. Ha! one-and-twenty years are shrunk to

twelve!

Do my eyes dazzle?

Mel. No, they see too true:

They dazzled once, I cast a mist before them,
So what was figured twelve, to thy dull sight
Appeared full twenty-one.

Mal. There's equity in heaven for this, a cheat. Mel. Fool, thou hast quitted thy appeal to heaven, To stand to this.

Mal. Then I am lost for ever!

Mel. Thou art.

Mal. O why was I not warned before?

Mel. Yes, to repent; then thou hadst cheated me. Mal. Add but a day, but half a day, an hour: For sixty minutes, I'll forgive nine years.

Mel. No, not a moment's thought beyond my time. Dispatch; 'tis much below me to attend For one poor single fare.

Mal. So pitiless?

But yet I may command thee, and I will:
I love the Guise, even with my latest breath,
Beyond my soul, and my lost hopes of heaven:
I charge thee, by my short-lived power, disclose
What fate attends my master.

Mel. If he goes

To council when he next is called, he dies.
Mal. Who waits?

Enter Servant.

Go, give my lord my last adieu;
Say, I shall never see his eyes again;

But if he goes, when next he's called, to council,
Bid him believe my latest breath, he dies.-[Exit Serv.
The sands run yet.--O do not shake the glass!——
[Devil shakes the glass.

I shall be thine too soon !-Could I repent!
Heaven's not confined to moments.--Mercy, mercy!
Mel. I see thy prayers dispersed into the winds,
And heaven has past them by.

I was an angel once of foremost rank,