For nature puts me to a heavy task ;-
Stand all aloof,-but, uncle, draw you near,
To shed obsequious tears upon this trunk :-
O, take this warm kiss on thy pale cold lips,
[Kisses TITUS.
These sorrowful drops upon thy blood-stain❜d face,
The last true duties of thy noble son!

Mar. Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss,
Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips:
O, were the sum of these that I should pay
Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!

Luc. Come hither, boy; come, come, and learn

of us

To melt in showers: Thy grandsire lov'd thee well:
Many a time he danc'd thee on his knee,
Sung thee asleep, his loving breast thy pillow;
Many a matter hath he told to thee,

Meet, and agreeing with thine infancy;
In that respect then, like a loving child,

Shed yet some small drops from thy tender spring,
Because kind nature doth require it so:

Friends should associate friends in grief and woe:
Bid him farewell; commit him to the grave;
Do him that kindness, and take leave of him.

Boy. O grandsire, grandsire! even with all my heart

Would I were dead, so you did live again!-
O lord, I cannot speak to him for weeping;
My tears will choke me, if I ope my mouth.

Enter Attendants, with AARON.

1 Rom. You sad Andronici, have done with woes; Give sentence on this execrable wretch,

That hath been breeder of these dire events.

Luc. Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him ; There let him stand, and rave and cry for food: If any one relieves or pities him,

For the offence he dies. This is our doom:
Some stay, to see him fasten'd in the earth7.
Aar. O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
I am no baby, I, that, with base prayers,
I should repent the evil I have done;
Ten thousand, worse than ever yet I did,
Would I perform if I might have my will;
If one good deed in all my life I did,

I do repent it from my very soul.

Luc. Some loving friends convey the emperor hence,

And give him burial in his father's grave:

My father, and Lavinia, shall forthwith
Be closed in our household's monument.
As for that heinous tiger, Tamora,

prey:

No funeral rite, nor man in mournful weeds,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts, and birds of
Her life was beast-like, and devoid of pity;
And, being so, shall have like want of pity.
See justice done to Aaron, that damn'd Moor,
By whom our heavy haps had their beginning:
Then, afterwards, to order well the state;
That like events may ne'er it ruinate.

[Exeunt.

7 That justice and cookery may go hand in hand to the conclusion of the play, in Ravenscroft's alteration of it, Aaron is at once racked and roasted on the stage.

ALL the editors and criticks agree in supposing this play spurious. I see no reason for differing from them; for the colour of the style is wholly different from that of the other plays, and there is an attempt at regular versification, and artificial closes, not always inelegant, yet seldom pleasing. The barbarity of the spectacles, and the general massacre which are here exhibited, can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience, yet we are told by Jonson that they were not only borne but praised. That Shakspeare wrote any part, though Theobald declares it incontestable, I see no reason for believing. JOHNSON.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

MR. DOUCE observes that the very great popularity of this play in former times may be supposed to have originated from the interest which the story must have excited. To trace the fable beyond the period in which the favourite romance of Apollonius Tyrius was composed, would be a vain attempt: that was the probable original; but of its author nothing decisive has been discovered. Some have maintained that it was originally written in Greek, and translated into Latin by a Christian about the time of the decline of the Roman empire; others have given it to Symposius, a writer whom they place in the eighth century, because the riddles which occur in the story are to be found in a work entitled Symposii Ænigmata. It occurs in that storehouse of popular fiction the Gesta Romanorum, and its antiquity is sufficiently evinced by the existence of an Anglo Saxon version, mentioned in Wanley's list, and now in Bene't College, Cambridge. One Constantine is said to have translated it into modern Greek verse, about the year 1500, (this is probably the MS. mentioned by Dufresne in the index of authors appended to his Greek Glossary), and afterwards printed at Venice in 1563. It had been printed in Latin prose at Augsburg in 1471, which is probably as early as the first dateless impression of the Gesta Romanorum*.

Towards the latter end of the twelfth century Godfrey of Viterbo, in his Pantheon, or Universal Chronicle, inserted this romance as part of the history of the third Antiochus, about two hundred years before Christ. It begins thus [MS. Reg. 14, c. xi.]:

Filia Seleuci stat clara decore

Matreque defunctâ pater arsit in ejus amore
Res habet effectum, pressa puella dolet.

The rest is in the same metre, with one pentameter only to two hexameters.'-Tyrwhitt.