The duke of Guise is dead.

1 Sher. Dead, colonel!

2 Sher. Undone, undone !

Gril. The world cannot redeem you; For what, sirs, if the king, provoked at last, Should join the Spaniard, and should fire your city; Paris, your head,—but a most venomous one, Which must be blooded?

1 Sher. Blooded, colonel!

Gril. Ay, blooded, thou most infamous magistrate, Or you will blood the king, and burn the Louvre; But ere that be, fall million miscreant souls, Such earth-born minds as yours; for, mark me, slaves, Did you not, ages past, consign your lives, Liberties, fortunes, to Imperial hands,

Made them the guardians of your sickly years? And now you're grown up to a booby's greatness, What, would you wrest the sceptre from his hand? Now, by the majesty of kings I swear,

You shall as soon be saved for packing juries. 1 Sher. Why, sir, mayn't citizens be saved? Gril. Yes, sir,

From drowning, to be hanged, burnt, broke o’the wheel.

1 Sher. Colonel, you speak us plain.

Gril. A plague confound you,

Why should I not? what is there in such rascals,
Should make me hide my thought, or hold my tongue?
Now, in the devil's name, what make you here,
Daubing the inside of the court, like snails,
Sliming our walls, and pricking out your horns?
To hear, I warrant, what the king's a doing,
And what the cabinet-council; then to the city,
To spread your monstrous lies, and sow sedition?
Wild fire choke you!

1 Sher. Well, we'll think of this; And so we take our leaves.

Gril. Nay, stay, my masters;

For I'm a thinking now just whereabouts
Grow the two tallest trees in Arden forest.

1 Sher. For what, pray, colonel, if we may be so bold?

Gril. Why, to hang you upon the highest branches. 'Fore God, it will be so; and I shall laugh

To see you dangling to and fro i'the air,

With the honest crows pecking your traitors' limbs.
All. Good colonel!

Gril. Good rats, my precious vermin.

You moving dirt, you rank stark muck o'the world,
You oven-bats, you things so far from souls,
Like dogs, you're out of Providence's reach,
And only fit for hanging; but be gone,
And think of plunder.-You right elder sheriff,
Who carved our Henry's image on a table,

At your club-feast, and after stabbed it through,-† 1 Sher. Mercy, good colonel.

Gril. Run with your nose to earth;

Run, blood-hound, run, and scent out royal murder.

+ This alludes to the defacing the Duke of York's picture at Guildhall; an outrage stigmatized in the epilogue to "Venice Preserved," where Otway says,

Nothing shall daunt his pen, when truth does call;
No, not the picture-mangler at Guildhall.

The rebel tribe, of which that vérmin's one,
Have now set forward, and their course begun;
And while that prince's figure they deface,

As they before had massacred his name,

Durst their base fears but look him in the face,
They'd use his person as they've used his fame;
A face, in which such lineaments they read

Of that great Martyr's, whose rich blood they shed.

The picture-mangler is explained by a marginal note to be; "the rascal, that cut the Duke of York's picture." The same circumstance is mentioned in "Musa Præfica, or the London Poem, or a humble Oblation on the sacred Tomb of our late gracious Monarch King Charles II., of ever blessed and eternal Me

You second rogue, but equal to the first,

Plunder, go hang,-nay, take your tackling with you, For these shall hold you fast,-your slaves shall hang

you,

To the mid region in the sun :

Plunder! Begone, vipers, asps, and adder'

[Exeunt Sheriff's and People.

Enter MALICORN.

Ha! but here comes a fiend, that soars above;
A prince o'the air, that sets the mud a moving.
Mal. Colonel, a word.

Gril. I hold no speech with villains.

Mal. But, sir, it may concern your fame and safety. Gril. No matter; I had rather die traduced, Than live by such a villain's help as thine.

Mal. Hate then the traitor, but yet love the treason. Gril. Why, are you not a villain ?

Mal. 'Tis confessed.

Gril. Then, in the name of all thy brother-devils, What wouldst thou have with me?

Mal. I know you're honest;

Therefore it is my business to disturb you.

mory; by a Loyal Apprentice of the honourable City of London." The writer mentions the Duke of York as

loaded with indignity,

Already martyred in effigy.

O blast the arm, that dared that impious blow!
Let heaven reward him with a vengeance meet,

Who God's anointed dared to overthrow!

His head had suffered, when they pierced his feet.

Explained to allude to the Duke of York's "picture in Guildhall, cut from the legs downward undiscovered."

In another tory ballad, we have this stanza in the character of a fanatic:

We'll smite the idol in Guildhall,

And then, as we are wont,

We'll cry it was a Popish plot,

And swear these rogues have done't.

Gril. 'Fore God, I'll beat thee, if thou urge me

farther.

Mal. Why, though you should, yet, if you hear me after,

The pleasure I shall take in your vexation,
Will heal my bruises.

Gril. Wert thou definite rogue,

I'faith, I think, that I should give thee hearing;
But such a boundless villainy as thine

Admits no patience.

Mal Your niece is come to court,

And yields her honour to our Henry's bed.
Gril. Thou liest, damned villain.

Mal. So: why this I looked for;

[Strikes him.

But yet I swear by hell, and my revenge, 'Tis true, as you have wronged me.

Gril. Wronged thee, villain!

And name revenge! O wert thou Grillon's match,
And worthy of my sword, I swear, by this
One had been past an oath; but thou'rt a worm,
And if I tread thee, darest not turn again.

Mal. 'Tis false; I dare, like you, but cannot act;
There is no force in this enervate arm.
Blasted I was ere born-curse on my stars!———
Got by some dotard in his pithless years,
And sent a withered sapling to the world.
Yet I have brain, and there is my revenge;
Therefore I say again, these eyes have seen
Thy blood at court, bright as a summer's morn,
When all the heaven is streaked with dappled fires,
And flecked with blushes like a rifled maid;
Nay, by the gleamy fires that melted from her,
Fast sighs and smiles, swol'n lips, and heaving
breasts,

My soul presages Henry has enjoyed her.

Gril. Again thou liest! and I will crumble thee, Thou bottled spider, into thy primitive earth, Unless thou swear thy very thought's a lie.

Mal. I stand in adamant, and thus defy thee! Nay, draw, and with the edge betwixt my lips, Even while thou rak'st it through my teeth, I'll swear All I have said is true, as thou art honest, Or I a villain.

Gril. Damned infamous wretch !

So much below my scorn, I dare not kill thee;
And yet so much my hate, that I must fear thee.
For should it be as thou hast said, not all
The trophies of my laurelled honesty

Should bar me from forsaking this bad world,
And never draw my sword for Henry more.

Mal. Ha! 'tis well, and now I am revenged.
I was in hopes thou wouldst have uttered treason,
And forfeited thy head, to pay me fully.

Gril. Hast thou compacted for a lease of years With hell, that thus thou ventured to provoke me? Mal. Perhaps I have: (How right the blockhead

hits!)

Yet more to rack thy heart, and break thy brain,
Thy niece has been before the Guise's mistress.
Gril. Hell-hound, avaunt!

Mal. Forgive my honest meaning.

[Exit.

Grit. 'Tis hatched beneath, a plot upon mine

honour;

And thus he lays his baits to catch my soul:-
Ha! but the presence opens; who comes here?
By heaven, my niece! led by Alphonso Corso!
Ha, Malicorn! is't possible? truth from thee!
'Tis plain! and I, in justifying woman,
Have done the devil wrong.

Enter ALPHONSO CORSO, leading in MARMOUTIERE.
Alph. Madam, the king

(Please you to sit) will instantly attend you. [Erit. Gril. Death, hell, and furies! ha! she comes to seek him!-

O prostitute!-and, on her prodigal flesh,