The bird of night sits screaming o'er the roof; GRATITUDE. MY father! Oh! let me unlade my breast; INTREATY. REWARD him for the noble deed, just Heavens For this one action, guard him, and distinguish him With signal mercies, and with great deliverance, Save him from wrong, adversity, and shame. Let never fading honours flourish round him; And consecrate his name, ev'n to times end. Let him know nothing else, but good on earth And everlasting blessedness hereafter. COMMANDING. SILENCE, ye winds ! That make outrageous war upon the ocean : Hear, hear my powerful voice, through all thy regions COURAGE. A GENEROUS few, the vet'ran hardy gleanings Of many a hapless fight, with a fierce Heroic fire, inspirited each other: Resolv❜d on death, disdaining to survive. Their dearest country. "If we fall," I cry'd, "Let us not tamely fall, like passive cowards! BOASTING. I WILL tell you, Sir, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman; and live here, obscure, and to myself; but, were I known to his majesty, and the Lords, observe me, I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public bencfit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of his subjects in general, but to save the one half, nay three parts of his yearly charge, in holding war, and against what enemy soever." And how would I do it, think you? Why thus, Sir. I would select nineteen more to myself, throughout the land; gentlemen they should be; of good spirit, strong and able constitution. I would chuse them by an instinct that I have. And I would teach these nineteen the special rules; as your Punto, your reverso, your Stoccato, your Imbroccato, your Passada, your Montonto; till they could all play very near, or altogether, as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong. We twenty, would come into the field the tenth of March or thereabouts; and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not, in their honour refuse us: Well, we would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill then too. And thus, would we kill, every ran, his twenty a day; that's twenty score; twenty score; that's two hundred two hundred a day; five days, a thousand: forty thousand-forty times five-five times forty-two hundred days kill them all up by computation." And this I will venture my poor gentleman-like carcase to perform (provided there be no treason practised upon) by fair and discreet manhood; that is, civilly by the sword. -Let me think PERPLEXITY. What can this mean-Is it to me aversion? Hayes-perhaps the king, the young count Tancred? Does not his crown depend upon the deed? SUSPICION. WOULD he were fatter-but I fear him not, He loves no plays: he hears no music. WIT AND HUMOUR. A GOOD sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain. Dries me there, all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours which environ it: makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive; full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris, is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale: which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it, and makes its course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illuminateth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man to arm; and then, the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great, and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage... and this value comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon, is nothing without sack; for that sets it awork; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, steril, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be....to foreswear thin potations, and to addict theinselves to sack. no virtue extant? A PLAGUE on all cowards, I say, and a vengeance too, marry and amen! Give me a cup of sack, boy-Ere I lead this life long, I'll sew nether socks and mend them, and foot them too. A plague on all cowards! Give me a cup of sack, rogue. Is there [Drinks. You rogue! here's lime in this sack too. There is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man. Yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it. Go thy ways, old Jack! die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then a't I a shotten herring. There lives not three good men unhanged in England; and one of them is fat, and grows old, God help the while-A plague on all cowards, I say still!Give me a cup of sack. [Drinks. All I am a rogue if I were not at half-sword with a dozen of them two hours together. I have escaped by miracle, I am eight times thrust through the doublet; four through the hose; iny buckler out through and through; my sword hacked like a handsaw-ecce signum ! I never dealt better since I was a man. would not do. A plague on all cowards! But I have peppered two of them; two, I am sure, I have paid; two rogues in buckram suits. I tell thee what, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face ; call me a horse. Thou knowest my old ward. Here I lay; and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me. These four cane ail afront, and mainly thrust at me. I made no more ado, but took all their seven points in my target, thus. Then, these nine in buckram, that I told thee of, began to give me ground. But I followed them close; came in foot and hand; and, with a thought....seven of these eleven I paid. A plague on all cowards, say I!- -Give me a cup of sack. Drinks. RIDICULE. I CAN as well be hanged, as tell the manner o t; it was mere foolery.-I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown: and as I told you, he put it by once-but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then, he put it by again-but, to my thinking, he was very loth to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it a third time; he put it the third time by ; and still as he refused it, the rabblemen shouted, and clapt their chopt hands, and threw by their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath, because Cæsar refused the crown, that it had almost choaked Cæsar, for he swooned, and fell down at it: and for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips, and receiving the bad air. Before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd were glad, he refused the crown, he pucked me ope his doublet, and offered them his throat to cut: an' I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I might go to hell among the rogues!—and so he fell. When he came to himself again, he said, "if he had done, or said any thing amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity." Three or four wenches where I stood, cried, Alas, good soul!...and forgave him with all their hearts. there's no heed to be taken of them: if Cæsar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less. PERTURBATION. VENGEANCE! death! plague! confusion! I beg his pardon: and I'll chide my rashness, For the sound man.-But wherefore sits he there... But |