not carved with their eyes fixed upon the stars; but as their minds where wholly bent upon the world, the self-same way they seem to turn their faces.

DUTCH. Let me know fully therefore the effect Of this thy dismal preparation,

This talk, fit for a charnel.

Bos. Now I shall:

Enter EXECUTIONERS, with a coffin, cords, and a bell.
Here is a present from your princely brothers,
And may it arrive welcome, for it brings

Last benefit, last sorrow.

DUTCH. Let me see it:

I have so much obedience in my blood,
I wish it in their veins to do them good.
Bos. This is your last

presence-chamber.

CARI. O, my sweet lady!

DUTCH. Peace; it affrights not me.

Bos. I am the common bellman,

That usually is sent to condemn'd persons

The night before they suffer.

DUTCH. Even now thou said'st

Thou wast a tomb-maker.

Bos. 'Twas to bring you

By degrees to mortification. Listen.

Hark, now every thing is still,

The screech-owl, and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our dame aloud,

And bid her quickly don her shroud!

Much you had of land and rent;

Your length in clay's now competent:
A long war disturb'd your mind;

Here your perfect peace is sign'd.

Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,

Their death, a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,
And (the foul fiend more to check,)
A crucifix let bless your neck :

'Tis now full tide 'tween night and day;
End your groan, and come away.

CARI. Hence, villains, tyrants, murderers! alas ! What will you do with my lady?-Call for help. DUTCH. To whom, to our next neighbours? they are mad-folks.

Bos. Remove that noise.

DUTCH. Farewell, Cariola.

In my

last will, I have not much to give:

A many hungry guests have fed upon me;

Thine will be a poor reversion.

CARI. I will die with her.

DUTCH. I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl

Say her prayers ere she sleep.-Now what you please: [Cariola is forced out.

What death?

Bos. Strangling; here are your executioners.
DUTCH. I forgive them :

The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o'th' lungs,
Would do as much as they do.

Bos. Doth not death fright you ?

DUTCH. Who would be afraid on't, Knowing to meet such excellent company In th' other world?

Bos. Yet, methinks,

The manner of your death should much afflict you; This cord should terrify you.

DUTCH. Not a whit:

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered

With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and 'tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven
sake,

So I were out of your whispering. Tell my brothers,
That I perceive death, now I am well awake,

Best gift is they can give, or I can take.

I would fain put off my last woman's fault,
I'd not be tedious to you.

EXECUT. We are ready.

DUTCH. Dispose my breath how please you, but my body

Bestow

upon my women, will you?

EXECUT. Yes.

DUTCH. Pull, and pull strongly, for your able

strength,

Must pull down heaven upon me:

Yet stay, heaven-gates are not so highly arch'd*
As princes't palaces; they that enter there,
Must go upon their knees.

Come, violent death,

Serve for mandragora, to make me sleep.
Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
They then may feed in quiet.

[They strangle the Dutchess.

Bos. Where's the waiting-woman?

* Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arch'd

As princes' palaces, &c.] When Webster wrote this passage, the following charming lines of Shakespeare were in his mind; Stoop, boys: this gate

Instructs

you how to adore the heavens, and bows you

To a morning's holy office: the gates of monarchs

Are arch'd so high, that giants may jet through

And keep their impious turbands on, without

Good morrow to the sun."-Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 3.
princes'] The 4to. of 1640, "princely.”

"All the several parts of the dreadful apparatus with which the dutchess's death is ushered in are not more remote from the conceptions of ordinary vengeance than the strange character of suffering which they seem to bring upon their victim, is beyond the imagination of ordinary poets. As they are not like inflictions of this life, so her language seems not of this world. She has lived among horrors till she is become ' native and endowed unto that element.' She speaks the dialect of despair, her tongue has a smatch of Tartarus and the souls in bale. What are Luke's iron crown,' the brazen bull of Perillus, Procustes' bed, to the waxen images which counterfeit death, to the wild masque of madmen, the tomb-maker, the bell

Fetch her: some other strangle the children.
[Cariola and children brought in: they strangle
the children.

Look you there sleeps your mistress.
CARI. O, you are* damn'd

Perpetually for this! My turn is next;
Is't not so order'd?

Bos. Yes, and I am glad

You are so well prepar'd for't.
CARI. You are deceiv'd, sir,

I am not prepared for't, I will not die;
I will first come to my answer, and know
How I have offended.

Bos. Come, dispatch her.

You kept her counsel, now you shall keep ours. CARI. I will not die, I must not; I am contracted To a young gentleman.

EXECUT. Here's your wedding-ring.

man, the living person's dirge, the mortification by degrees! To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit; this only a Webster can do. Writers of an inferior genius may upon horror's head horrors accumulate,' but they cannot do this. They mistake quantity for quality, they 'terrify babes with painted devils,' but they know not how a soul is capable of being moved; their terrors want dignity, their affrightments are without decorum." C. Lamb, (Spec. of Eng. Dram. Poets, p. 217.)