Note 37 — TABLE DES MATIÈRES CONTENUES DANS LE DEUXIÈME VOLUME.

1: The very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.

(Shakspeare.)

2: Ben Jonson, Every man in his humour;—Cynthia's Revels.

3: Winter's tale; Cymbeline; Julius Cæsar.

4: «Parmi les laïques, il y avait peu de dévotion; le jour du Seigneur était grandement profané et peu observé; les prières communes n'étaient pas fréquentées; plusieurs vivaient sans rendre aucun culte à Dieu. Beaucoup étaient purement païens et athées; la cour de la reine elle-même était un asile d'épicuriens et d'athées et de gens sans loi.» (Strype, année 1572.) «Dans ma jeunesse.... le dimanche.... le peuple ne voulait pas interrompre ses jeux et ses danses, et bien des fois celui qui lisait la Bible était forcé de s'arrêter jusqu'à ce que le joueur de flageolet et les acteurs eussent fini. Parfois les danseurs entraient dans l'église avec tous leurs accoutrements, leurs écharpes, leurs déguisements, et des clochettes qui sonnaient à leurs jambes, et, aussitôt que la prière commune était dite, retournaient ensuite à leur divertissement.» (Baxter's Narrative.)

5: Ben Jonson, Every man in his humour.

6: Chronique d'Hardinge.

7: Holinshed, 806, Lodge; Fenton; Harrington, Nugæ antiquæ. M. Philarète Chasles, Études sur Shakspeare. Voy. Shakspeare et tous les auteurs dramatiques.

8: Rôle de Calypso dans Massinger; de Putana dans Ford; de Protalyce dans Beaumont and Fletcher.

9: Middleton, Dutch Courtezan cité par Phil. Chasles, Études sur Shakspeare, 99.

10: Commission donnée par Henri VIII au comte d'Hertford, 1544.

You are there to put all to fire and sword, to burn Edinburg town, and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked it and gotten what you can out of it. Do what you can out of hand and without long tarrying, to beat down and overthrow the castle, sack Holyrood-House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburg as you conveniently can; sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man, woman and child to fire and sword, without exception when any resistance shall be made against you; and this done, pass over to the Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages whereunto you may reach conveniently, not forgetting among all the rest to spoil and turn upside down the cardinal's town of St Andrew, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such as either in friendship or blood be allied to the cardinal. This journey shall succeed most to His Majesty's honour. (T. II, 440, Pictorial history of England by Craig and Mac-Farlane.)

11: Laneham, A goodly relief.

12: 13 février 1587. Voy., pour tous ces détails, Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his times; Phil. Chasles, Études sur le seizième siècle.

13: Essex, souffleté par la reine, mit la main sur la garde de son épée.

14: Le grand chancelier Burleigh pleurait souvent, tant il était rudoyé par Élisabeth.

15: Middleton.

16: Voyez, pour comprendre ce caractère, les rôles de James Harlowe dans Richardson, du vieil Osborne dans Thackeray, de sir Giles Overreach dans Massinger, de Manly dans Wycherley.

17: Hentzner's Travels.—Benvenuto Cellini; voyez passim les costumes avec notices, imprimés à Venise et en Allemagne: Bellicosissimi.—Froude, t. I, p. 19, 52.

18: Voyez Froude, History of England, tomes I, II, III.

19: «Quand son cœur fut arraché, il poussa un gros gémissement.» Exécution de Parry, Strype, III, 251. Consulter Lingard, IV, 259; Holinshed, II, 938.

20: Holinshed, 940.

21: Sous Henri IV et Henri V.

22: Froude, I, 15.

23: Machine de bois qui servait pour les punitions; c'est une sorte de cangue.

24: En 1547. Pictorial history, t. II, 467.

25: Pictorial history, tome II, 907, année 1596.

26: Démonologie du roi Jacques, statuts du Parlement de 1597 à 1613: «Un nommé Scot, dit le roi Jacques, n'a pas eu honte de nier dans un imprimé public qu'il y eût une chose telle que la sorcellerie, soutenant ainsi la vieille erreur des Saducéens, lesquels niaient qu'il y eût des esprits.» Voyez le livre de Reginald Scot. 1584 (Nathan Drake).

27: Shakspeare, Measure for Measure, Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, acte IV.

To die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world, or to be worse them worst Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!—'Tis too horrible!

(Shakspeare, Measure for Measure, III, 2.)

We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

28: Διεπονήθη δὲ ἐν παισὶ χαὶ περὶ παλαίστραν χαὶ μουσιχὴν, ἐξ ὡν ἀμφότέρων ἐστεφανώθη. Φιλαθηναιότατος χαὶ θεοφιλής. (Scoliaste.)

29: Excepté Beaumont et Fletcher.

30: A literary hack, comme on dit aujourd'hui.

31: Drummond, à propos de Ben Jonson.

32: Voyez, entre autres, a Woman killed with kindness de Heywood. Mistress Frankford, si honnête de cœur, accepte Wendoll à la première proposition. Sir Francis Acton, à l'aspect de celle qu'il veut déshonorer et qu'il hait, tombe «en extase» et ne souhaite plus que de l'épouser.—Voyez l'entraînement subit de Juliette, de Roméo, de Macbeth, de Miranda, etc.; les recommandations de Prospero à Fernando, quand il le laisse seul un instant avec Miranda.

33: Paroles de Nash.

34: Voyez pareillement la Vie de Bohême et les Nuits d'hiver, de Murger; la Confession d'un enfant du siècle, par de Musset.

35: Brûlé en 1589.

36: Marlowe's Works, édition Dyce, appendice II.

37: Drab.

38: Voyez surtout le Titus Andronicus attribué à Shakspeare; il y a des parricides, des mères à qui on fait manger leurs enfants, une jeune fille violée qui paraît sur la scène avec la langue et les deux mains coupées.

39:

For in a field whose superficies Is cover'd with a liquid purple veil, And sprinkled with the brains of slaughter'd men, My royal chair of state shall be advanc'd, And he that means to place himself therein, Must armed wade up to the chin in blood.... And I whould strive to swim through pools of blood, Or make a bridge of murder'd carcasses, Whose arches should be fram'd with bones of Turks, Ere I whould lose the title of a king.

(Tamburlain, part. II, acte I, sc. iii.)

40:

First, be thou void of these affections, Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear; Be mov'd at nothing, see thou pity none, But to thyself smile when the Christian moan. .... I walk abroad o'nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls, Sometimes, I go out and poison wells.... Being young, I studied physic and began To practise first upon the Italian, There I enrich'd the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in use, With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells.... I fill'd the gaols with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hang himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll, How I with interest tormented him.

ITHAMORE.

O, how I long to see him shake his heels!... .... Pull amain. 'Tis neatly done, sir; here's no print at all.

41: So let him lean upon his staff. Excellent! He stands as if he were begging of bacon.

O mistress, I have the bravest, gravest, secret, subtle, bottle-nosed knave to my master that ever gentleman had.

42:

BARABBAS.

Heaven bless us! what, a friar a murderer! When shall you see a Jew commit the like?

ITHAMORE.

Why, a Turk could ha' done no more.

BARABBAS.

To morrow is the sessions, you shall to it. Come, Ithamore, let's help to take him hence.

FRIAR.

Villains, I am a sacred person; touch me not.

BARABBAS.

The law shall touch you; we'll but led you, we. 'Las, I could weep at your calamity!

(The Jew of Malt.)

43: À cette époque encore, en Angleterre, les empoisonneurs étaient jetés dans une chaudière bouillante.

44: Musée de Gand.

45: Voyez la séduction d'Ithamore, par Bellamira, peinture fruste et d'une vérité admirable.

46: Rien de plus faux que le Guillaume Tell de Schiller, ses hésitations et ses raisonnements; voyez par contraste le Gœtz, de Gœthe.—En 1377, Wyclef plaidait dans l'église de Saint-Paul devant l'évêque de Londres, et cela fit une dispute. Le duc de Lancastre, protecteur de Wyclef, «menaça de traîner l'évêque hors de l'église par les cheveux;» et le lendemain la foule furieuse pilla le palais du duc.—Pictorial history, I, 780.

47:

KING EDWARD.

Throw off his golden mitre, rend his stole, And in the channel christen him anew.... Fawn not on me, French strumpet; Get thee gone. Speak not unto her, let her droop and pine.

48:

LANCASTER.

He comes not back, Unless the sea cast up his shipwreck'd body.

MORTIMER.

And to behold so sweet a sight as that, There's none here but would run his horse to death....

LANCASTER.

We'll hale him by the ears unto the block.

KENT.

Let these their heads Preach upon poles, for trespass of their tongues.

49:

Base Fortune, now I see that in thy wheel There is a point to which when men aspire, They tumble headlong down. That point I touch'd, And seeing that there was no place to mount higher, Why should I grieve to my declining fall? Farewell, faire queen; weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and as a traveller, Goes to discover countries yet unknown.

(Edward the second.)

50:

A sound magician is a mighty God.... How I am glutted with conceit of this!... I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl.... I'll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrets of foreign kings; I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg.... Like lions shall they guard us when we please, Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves, Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides; Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows Than have the white breasts of the queen of Love.

51: How I am glutted with conceit of this!

52:

Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. By him I'll be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge thorough the moving air.... Why should'st thou not? Is not thy soul thy own?

53:

O this feeds my soul!

LUCIFER.

Know, Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight.

FAUSTUS.

O, might I see hell, and return again! How happy were I then!... I will renounce this magic and repent.

54:

My heart's so harden'd, I cannot repent; Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven, But fearful echoes thunder unto my ears, "Faustus, thou art damn'd!" Then swords, and knives, Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel Are laid before me to dispatch myself. And long ere this I should have slain myself, Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair. Have I not made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and Œnon's death? And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes, With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis? Why should I die then, or basely despair? I am resolv'd; Faustus shall ne'er repent.— Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again, And argue of divine astrology. Tell me, are there many heavens above the moon? Are all celestial bodies but one globe, As is the substance of this centric earth?... One thing.... let me crave of thee To glut the longing of my heart's desire.... Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships And burn'd the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul—see where it flies. Come, Helen, come give me my soul again; Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. O thou art fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!

55:

Ah, my God, I would weep! But the devil draws in my tears. Gush forth, blood, instead of tears! Yea, life and soul! O, he stays my tongue! I would lift up my hands. But see, they hold them, they hold them; Lucifer and Mephistophilis.

Oh, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live; And then thou must be damn'd perpetually. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease and midnight never come. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. Oh, I will leap to heaven: who pulls me down? See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament: One drop of blood will save me: Oh, my Christ, Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ. Yet will I call on him: Oh, half the hour is past: 't will all be past anon. Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved: It strikes, it strikes; Oh soul, be chang'd into small water drops, And fall into the ocean: ne'er be found.

56: Voir le jugement de Vittoria Accoramboni, celui de Virginia dans Webster, Coriolan et Jules César dans Shakspeare.

57: Rôle de Falstaff, dans Shakspeare; rôle de la reine, dans London, de Greene et Decker; rôle de Rosalinde, dans Shakespeare.

58: Voyez dans Webster, Duchess of Malfi, une scène d'accouchement admirable.

59: Voyez Hamlet, Coriolan, Hotspur.

Our son is fat and scant of breath.

60: Middleton, the Honest Whore.

61: Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinian; Thierry and Theodoret. Voir dans Massinger, the Picture: c'est la Barberine de Musset. La crudité, l'énergie extraordinaire et repoussante montreront la différence des deux siècles.

62: Massinger, Duke of Milan.

63:

For with this arm I'll swim through seas of blood, Or make a bridge arch'd with the bones of men, But I will grasp my aims in you, my dearest, Dearest and best of women!

(Massinger, Duke of Milan, acte II, sc. i.)

I'll follow him to hell, but I will find him, And there live a fourth fury to torment him. Then, for this cursed hand and arm that guided The wicked steel, I'll have them joint by joint, With burning irons sear'd off, which I will eat, I being a vulture fit to taste such carrion.

(Ibid., acte V, sc. ii.)

64: Massinger, The Fatal Dowry; Webster and Ford, A late meurther of the soun upon the mother; Ford, 'Tis a pity she is a whore. Voir encore The Broken Heart, de Ford, et les sublimes scènes d'agonie et de folie.

65:

Lost! I am lost! My fates have doom'd my death! The more I strive, I love. The more I love, The less I hope. I see my ruin certain.... I have even wearied heaven with pray'rs, dried up The spring of my continual tears, even starv'd My veins with continual fasts: what wit or art Could counsel, I have practised; but alas! I find all these but dreams, and old men's tales, To fright unsteady youth. I am still the same, Or I must speak or burst.

('T is a pity she is a whore, acte I.)

66:

Come, strumpet, famous whore! Harlot, rare, notable harlot, That with thy brazen face maintain'st thy sin, Was there no man in Parma to be bawd To your loose cunning whoredom else but I? Must your hot itch and pleurisy of lust, The heyday of your luxury, be fed Up to a surfeit, and could none but I Be pick'd out to be cloak to your close tricks, Your belly-sports?—Now, I must be the dad To all that gallimaufry that is stuff'd In thy corrupted bastard-bearing womb? Why, must I?

ANNABELLA.

Beastly man! why? 'Tis thy fate. I sued not for thee.

SORANZO.

Tell me by whom.

ANNABELLA.

Soft, 'Twas not in my bargain. Yet somewhat, sir, to stay your longing stomach I am content t'acquaint you with: the Man, The more than man, that got this sprightly boy (For 'tis a boy, and therefore glory, sir, Your heir shall be a son).

SORANZO.

Damnable monster!

ANNABELLA.

Nay, an you will not hear, I'll speak no more.

SORANZO.

Yes speak, and speak thy last.

ANNABELLA.

A match, a match!... ... You! why, you are not worthy once to name

His name without true worship, or indeed Unless you kneel'd, to hear another name him.

SORANZO.

What was he call'd?

ANNABELLA.

We are not come to that. Let it suffice, that you shall have the glory To father what so brave a father begot....

SORANZO.

Dost thou laugh? Come, whore, tell me your lover, or by truth I'll hew thy flesh to shreds. Who is he?

ANNABELLA.

(Sings) Che morte piu dolce che morire per amore.

SORANZO.

Thus will I pull thy hair and thus I'll drag Thy lust be-leper'd body through the dust.... (Hales her up and down.)

ANNABELLA.

Be a gallant hangman. I dare thee to the worst; strike and strike home. I leave revenge behind, and thou shall feel it. (To Vasquez.) Pish, do not beg for me, I prize my life As nothing, if the man will needs be mad, Why, let him take it.

(Ibid., acte IV, sc. iii.)

67:

These are the funeral tears Shed on your grave; these furrowed my cheeks When first I lov'd and knew not how to woo.... Give me your hand; how sweetly life doth run In these well-colour'd veins! How constantly These palms do promise health!... Kiss me again, forgive me.... Farewell.... Soranzo, see this heart, which was thy wife's. Thus I exchange it royally for thine.

(Ibid., acte V, sc. v.)

68: Édition Dyce, Duchess of Malfi, 60.

For places in court are but like beds in the hospital, where this man's head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and lower.

(Duchess of Malfi, acte II, sc. I.)

69: Personnages de Bosola, de Flaminio.

70: Voyez Stendhal, Chroniques italiennes: les Cenci, la Duchesse de Palliano, et toutes les Vies du temps; celle des Borgia, de Bianca Capello, de Vittoria Accoramboni, etc.

71:

I would have their bodies Burnt in a coal pit, with the ventage stopp'd, That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven; Or dip the sheets they lie in pitch or sulphur, Wrap them in't, and then light them as a match; Or else to boil their bastard to a cullis And give't his lecherous father to renew The sin of his back.

72:

DUCHESS.

Good comfortable fellow, Persuade a wretch that's broke upon the wheel To have all his bones new set: entreat him live To be executed again. Who must despatch me?

BOSOLA.

Come, be of comfort, I will save your life.

DUCHESS.

Indeed, I have not leisure to tend So small a business.

BOSOLA.

Now, by my life, I pity you.

DUCHESS.

Thou art a fool then To wast thy pity upon a thing so wretched As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers.

(Ibid., acte V, sc. i.)

73:

CARIOLA.

What think you of, madam?

DUCHESS.

Of nothing: When I muse thus, I sleep.

CARIOLA.

Like a madman, with your eyes open?

DUCHESS.

Dost thou think we shall know one another In the other world?

CARIOLA.

Yes, out of question.

DUCHESS.

O, that it were possible we might But hold some two days conference with the dead! From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure, I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle: I am not mad yet.... The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass. The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad. I am acquainted with sad misery As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar....

DUCHESS.

Farewell, Cariola. 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. What death?

BOSOLA.

Strangling; here are your executioners.

DUCHESS.

I forgive them. The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o'the lungs Would do as much as they do.... .... My body Bestow upon my women, will you? Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They may then feed in quiet....

CARIOLA.

I will not die; I must not; I am contracted To a young gentleman.

FIRST EXECUTIONER.

Here's your wedding-ring.

CARIOLA.

If you kill me now, I am damn'd. I have not been at confession These two years.

BOSOLA.

When?

CARIOLA.

I am quick with child.

FIRST EXECUTIONER.

She bites and scratches.

BOSOLA.

Delays, throttle her.

(Ibid., acte IV, sc. ii.)

74:

O this gloomy world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!... We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves That, ruined, yield no echo.

(Duchess of Malfi, V, v.)

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But look'ed to near, have neither heat nor light.

(Vittoria, page 36.)

75:

This busy trade of life appears most vain, Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain.

(The White Devil, dernière scène.)

76:

VITTORIA.

To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace A dream I had last night....

FLAMINIO.

Excellent devil! she has taught him in a dream To make away his duchess and her husband!

77:

VITTORIA.

Pray, my lord, let him speak his usual tongue; I'll make no answer else.

FRANCESCO DE MEDICIS.

Why, you understand Latin.

VITTORIA.

I do, sir; but amongst that auditory Which comes to hear my cause, the half or more May be ignorant in it.... I am at the mark, sir; I'll give aim to you And tell you how near you shoot.... Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swallow'd Some pothecaries' bills or proclamations; And now the hard and indigestible words Come up, like stones we use give hawks for physic. Why, this is Welsh to Latin. To the point.

78:

Find me guilty, sever head from body, We'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life, At yours or any man's entreaty, sir.... These are but feigned shadows of my evils: Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils; I am past such needless palsy. For your names Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you, As if a man should spit against the wind, The filth returns in's face.

(The White Devil, p. 22, Ed. Dyce.)

79:

.... Take you your course; it seems you have beggar'd me first, And now would fain undo me. I have houses, Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes. Would those would make you charitable!... In faith, my lord, you might go to pistol flies; The sport would be more noble.

80:

VITTORIA.

A house of convertites! What's that?

MONTICELSO.

A house Of penitent whores.

VITTORIA.

Do the noblemen in Rome Erect it for their wives, that I am sent To lodge there?... I will not weep. No, I do scorn to call one poor tear To fawn on your injustice. Bear me hence Unto this house of.... What's your mitigating title?

MONTICELSO.

Of convertites.

VITTORIA.

It shall not be a house of convertites; My mind shall make it honester to me Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal.

(Ibidem.)

81: Comparez à Mme Marneffe, de Balzac.

82:

Yes, I shall welcome death As princes do some great ambassadors; I'll meet thy weapon half way.... 'Twas a manly blow, The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant; And then thou wilt be famous.... My soul, like a ship in a black storm, Is driven, I know not whither.

(Dernière scène.)

83: De là le bonheur et la solidité de leur mariage. En France, il n'est qu'une association de deux camarades, presque semblables et presque égaux, ce qui produit les tiraillements et la tracasserie continue.

84: Voir la peinture de ce caractère dans toute la littérature anglaise et allemande. Le plus grand des observateurs, Stendhal, tout imprégné des mœurs et des idées italiennes et françaises, est stupéfait à cette vue. Il ne comprend rien à cette espèce de dévouement, «à cette servitude, que les maris anglais, sous le nom de devoir, ont eu l'esprit d'imposer à leurs femmes.» Ce sont «des mœurs de sérail.» Voyez aussi Corinne.

85:

A perfect woman already: meek and patient.

Heywood.

86: Voir par contraste toutes les femmes de Molière, si françaises, même Agnès et la petite Louison.]

87: Beaumont and Fletcher. Philaster, acte V, sc. v.

EUPHRASIA.

My father oft would speak Your worth and virtue; and as I did grow More and more apprehensive, I did thirst To see the man so praised; but yet all this Was but a maiden longing, to be lost As soon as found; till sitting in my window, Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God, I thought (but it was you), enter our gates. My blood flew out, and back again as fast, As I had puff'd it forth and suck'd it in Like breath. Then was I call'd away in haste To entertain you. Never was a man Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, raised So high in thought as I: You left a kiss Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep From you for ever; I did hear you talk, Far above singing! After you were gone, I grew acquainted with my heart, and search'd What stirr'd it so: Alas I found it love: Yet far from lust. For could I have but lived In presence of you, I had had my end.... .... Blest be that hand! It meant me well; Again for pity's sake! .... Never, sir, will I Marry; it is a thing within my vow: But if I may have leave to serve the princess, To see the virtues of her lord and her, I shall have hope to live:

ARETHUSA

Come, live with me; Live free as I do; she that loves my lord, Curst be the wife that hates her!

88: Rôle de Kaled dans Lara, de lord Byron.

89: Chose étrange! la princesse n'est point jalouse: «Viens, vis avec moi, vis aussi librement que moi-même. Celle qui aime mon seigneur, maudite soit l'épouse qui voudrait la haïr!»

90:

I saw a god.

(Philaster, acte V, sc. v.)

91:

BIANCA.

So dearly I respected both your fame And quality, that I would first have perish'd In my sick thought, than e'er have given consent To have undone your fortunes, by inviting A marriage with so mean a one as I am. I should have died sure, and no creature known The sickness that had kill'd me.... Now since I know There is no difference 'twixt your birth and mine, Not much 'twixt our estates (if any be, The advantage is on my side), I come willingly To tender you the first-fruits of my heart, And am content so accept you for my husband Now when you are at lowest.

CESARIO.

Why, Bianca, Report has cozen'd thee. I am not fallen From my expected honours or possessions, Though from the hope of birth-right.

BIANCA.

Are you not? Then I am lost again! I have a suit too; You'll grant it, if you be a good man. Pray, do not talk of aught I have said to you.... .... Pity me, But never love me more.... I will pray for you, That you may have a virtuous wife, a fair one; And when I am dead....

CESARIO.

Fy, fy!

BIANCA.

Think on me sometimes, With mercy for this trespass!

CESARIO.

Let us kiss At parting as at coming.

BIANCA.

This I have As a free dower to a virgin's grave. All goodness dwell with you!

(The fair maid of the Inn, acte IV, sc. i.) Beaumont and Fletcher.

92: Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, The Maid's tragedy, Philaster. Voyez aussi le rôle de Lucina dans Valentinian.

93:

ORDELLA.

Let it be what it may be then, what it dare, I have a mind will hasard it.

THIERRY.

But, hark you; What may that woman merit, makes this blessing?

ORDELLA.

Only her duty sir.

THIERRY.

'Tis terrible!

ORDELLA.

'Tis so much the more noble.

THIERRY.

'Tis full of fearful shadows!

ORDELLA.

So is sleep, sir, Or anything that's merely ours and mortal. We were begotten Gods else. But those fears, Feeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts, Fly, like the shapes of the clouds we form, to nothing.

THIERRY.

Suppose it death!

ORDELLA.

I do.

THIERRY.

And endless parting With all we can call ours, with all our sweetness With youth, strength, pleasure, people, time, nay reason! For in the silent grave, no conversation, No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, No careful father's counsel, nothing's heard, Nor nothing is, but all oblivion, Dust and an endless darkness: and dare you, woman, Desire this place?

ORDELLA.

'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest: Children begin it to us, strong men seek it And kings from height of all their painted glories, Fall, like spent exhalations, to this centre....

THIERRY.

Then you can suffer?

ORDELLA.

As willingly as say it.

THIERRY.

Martell, a wonder! Here's a woman that dares die.—Yet tell me, Are you a wife?

ORDELLA.

I am, sir.

THIERRY.

And have children? She sighs, and weeps.

ORDELLA.

Oh none, sir.

THIERRY.

Dare you venture, For a poor barren praise you never shall hear, To part with these sweet hopes?

ORDELLA.

With all but heaven.

(Thierry and Theodoret, acte IV.)

94:

This lady Walks discontented, with her watery eyes Bent on the earth. The unfrequented woods Are her delights; and when she sees a bank Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell Her servants what a pretty place it were To bury lovers in; and make her maids Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corpse. She carries with her an infectious grief, That strikes all her beholders; she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh, and sing again; and when the rest Of our young ladies, in their wanton blood, Tell mirthful tales in course, that fill the room With laughter, she will, with so sad a look, Bring forth a story of the silent death Of some forsaken virgin, which her grief Will put in such a phrase, that, ere she end, She'll send them weeping, one by one, away.

(The Maid's tragedy, acte I.)

95:

Avant d'abandonner mon âme à mes douleurs, Il me faut essayer la force de mes pleurs; En qualité de fille ou de femme, j'espère Qu'ils vaincront un époux ou fléchiront un père: Que si sur l'un ou l'autre ils manquent de pouvoir, Je ne prendrai conseil que de mon désespoir. Apprends-moi cependant ce qu'ils ont fait au temple.

Impossible de rencontrer une femme plus raisonnable et plus raisonneuse. De même Éliante, Henriette, dans Molière.

96:

PENTHEA.

Pray, kill me.... Kill me, pray, nay, will you?

ITHOCLES.

How does thy lord esteem thee?

PENTHEA.

Such an one As only you have made me; a faith-breaker, A spotted whore. Forgive me, I am one, In act, not in desires, the Gods must witness...: For she that's wife to Orgilus, and lives In known adultery with Bassanes Is, at the best, a whore. Will kill me now? The hand-maid to the wages Of country toil, drinks the untroubled streams With leaping kids and with the bleating lambs, And so allays her thirst secure; whilst I Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears.

(Ford, the Broken heart.)

97:

My glass of life, sweet princess, has few minutes Remaining to run down; the sands are spent. For by an inward messenger I feel The summons of departure short and certain. Glories Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams And shadows soon decaying; on the stage Of my mortality, my youth has acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length By varied pleasures, sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue. That remedy Must be a winding sheet, a fold of lead, And some untrod-on corner in the earth.

(Ibid.)

In vain we labour in this course of life To piece our journey out at length, or crave Respite of breath; our home is in the grave.

(Ibid.)

98:

Sure if we were all sirens, we should sing pitifully, And 'twere a comely music, when in parts One sung another's knell; the turtle sighs When he hath lost his mate; and yet some say He must be dead first. 'Tis a fine deceit To pass away in a dream! Indeed, I've slept With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood Equals a broken faith. There's not a hair Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet, It sinks me to the grave; I must creep thither, This journey is not long. .... Since I was first a wife, I might have been Mother to many pretty prattling babes; They would have smiled when I smiled; and, for certain, I would have cried, when they cried;—Truly, brother, My father would have pick'd me out a husband, And then my little ones had been no bastards; But 'tis too late for me to marry now, I am past child bearing; 'tis not my fault.... Spare your hand. Believe me, I'll not hurt it.... Complain not though I wring it hard; I'll kiss it; Oh 'tis a fine soft palm!—Hark, in thine ear; Like whom I look, prithee?—Nay, no whispering. Goodness! we had been too happy; too much happiness Will make folk proud, they say.... There is no peace left for a ravish'd wife Widow'd by lawless marriage. To all memory Penthea's, poor Penthea's name is strumpeted.... Forgive me, oh, I faint.

(Ibidem.)

99: Schopenhauer, Métaphysique de l'amour et de la mort. Swift aussi disait que «la mort et l'amour sont les deux choses où l'homme soit foncièrement déraisonnable.» En effet, c'est l'espèce et l'instinct qui s'y manifestent, non la volonté et l'individu.

100: Mort d'Ophélia, funérailles d'Imogène.

101:

There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; Therewith fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples, That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead-men's fingers call them. There on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook.

(Hamlet, acte V, sc. i.)

With fairest flowers,... I'll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shallt not lack The flower, that's like thy face; pale primrose; nor The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, Outsweeten'd not thy breath.

(Cymbeline, IV, ii.)

102:

Hunting the buck I found him sitting by a fountain's side, Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst, And paid the nymph again so much in tears. A garland laid him by, made by himself, Of many several flowers, bred in the bay, Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness Delighted me: but ever when he turn'd His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep, As if he meant to make 'em grow again. Seeing such pretty helpless innocence Dwell in his face, I ask'd him all his story. He told me that his parents gentle died, Leaving him to the mercy of the fields. Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs Which did not stop their courses; and the sun Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light. Then he took up his garland, and did shew What every flower, as country people hold, Did signify; and how all, order'd thus Express'd his grief; and to my thoughts, did read The prettiest lecture of his country art That could be wish'd.... .... I gladly entertain'd him, Who was as glad to follow, and have got The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy, That ever master kept.

(Philaster, I, 2.)

103: The Sad Shepherd; The Faithful Shepherdess.

104:

Through yon same bending plain That flings his arms down to the main, And through these thick woods, have I run, Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun Since the lusty spring began....

(The Faithful Shepherdess, acte I, sc. i.)

For to that holy wood is consecrate A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds, By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes. Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh, and dull mortality.

(Ibid., sc. ii.)

See the dew-drops how they kiss Every little flower that is, Hanging on their velvet heads, Like a rope of crystal beads; See the heavy clouds low falling, And bright Hesperus down calling The dead night from under ground.

(Ibid., acte II, sc. i.)

Oh, you are fairer far Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star That guides the wandering seaman through the deep! .... I do believe thee: 'Tis as hard for me To think thee false, and harder than for thee To hold me foul.

(Ibid., acte I, sc. ii.)

105: Voyez la description de cette coutume dans Nathan Drake.

106:

Speak if thou be there, My Perigot! Thy Amoret, thy dear, Calles on thy loved name....

'Tis thy friend, Thy Amoret; come hither, to give end To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy! I have forgot those pains and dear annoy I suffer'd for thy sake, and am content To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent Those curled locks, where I have often hung Ribbons and damask roses, and have flung Waters distill'd to make thee fresh and gay, Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day? Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy face Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace From those two little heavens, upon the ground, Showers of more price, more orient, and more round, Than those that hang upon the moon's pale brow? Cease these complainings, shepherd! I am now The same I ever was, as kind and free, And can forgive before you ask of me: Indeed I am and will.... So this work hath end! Farewell and live! Be constant to thy friend That loves thee next! I am thy love! Thy Amoret, for ever more thy love! Strike once more on my naked breast, I'll prove As constant still. Oh! could'st thou love me yet, How soon could I my former griefs forget!

(The Faithful Shepherdess, acte V, sc. iii et v.)

107: Comparez, pour voir le contraste des races, les pastorales italiennes, l'Aminta du Tasse, il Pastor fido, de Guarini, etc.

108: Fuller's Worthies.

109: «Mountain belly, ungracious gait.» Paroles de Jonson sur lui-même.—Ed. Gifford.

110: Voyez, dans l'histoire de lord Castlereagh, une hallucination analogue. Lord Castlereagh s'est coupé la gorge.

111: Ce caractère tient le milieu entre ceux de Fielding et de Samuel Jonson.

112: À quarante-quatre ans, il s'en alla en Écosse à pied.

113: Rôles de Critès et d'Asper.

114: New Inn, 1627.

115:

If you expect more than you had to-night, The maker is sick and sad.... All that his faint and faltering tongue doth crave, Is, that you not impute it to his brain, That's yet unhurt, although, set round with pain, It cannot long hold out.

(The New Inn, épilogue.)

116:

Thy Pegasus.... He had bequeathed his belly unto thee To hold that little learning which is fled, Into thy guts from out thy emptye head.

117:

Disease the enemy, and his engineers, Want, with the rest of his conceal'd compeers Have cast a trench about me, now five years.... The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days; But lies block'd up, and straiten'd, narrow'd in, Fix'd to bed and boards, unlike to win Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been.

(An Epistle mendicant, 1631.)

118: The Devil is an ass.

119: Séjan, Catilina, passim.

120: Alfred de Musset, préface de La Coupe et les Lèvres. Platon, Ion.

121: Comparez sir Épicure Mammon au baron Hulot (Balzac, Parents pauvres). Balzac, qui est savant comme Jonson, fait des êtres réels comme Shakspeare.

122: Prologue de Every man out of his humour.

With an armed and resolute hand, I'll strip the ragged follies of the time. Naked as at their birth.... And with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow, When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice; I fear no strumpet's drugs, no ruffian's stab, Shoud I detect their hateful luxuries.

(Every man out of his humour; Prologue.)

123:

O sacred Poesy, thou spirit of arts The soul of science, and the queen of souls, What profane violence, almost sacrilege, Hath here been offered thy divinities! That thine own guiltless poverty should arm Prodigious ignorance to wound thee thus!... .... Would men learn but to distinguish spirits, And set true difference 'twixt those jaded wits, That run a broken pace for common hire, And the high raptures of a happy muse, Borne on the wings of her immortal thought That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel, And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs; They would not then, with such distorted faces, And desperate censures, stab at Poesy.

(Poetaster, acte I, sc. i.)

124: Voir le deuxième acte de Catilina.

125:

.... Now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength, Quickness and will, to apprehend the means To your own good and greatness, I protest Myself through rarified, and turn'd all flame In your affection.

(Sejan, acte II, sc. i.)

126:

LIVIA.

How do I look to-day?

EUDEMUS.

Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus Was well laid on.

LIVIA.

Methinks 'tis here not white.

EUDEMUS.

Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun, Hath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse. You should have used of the white oil I gave you. Sejanus for your love! his very name Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts.... 'Tis now well, lady, you should Use the dentifrice I prescribed to you too, To clear your teeth, and the prepared pomatum To smooth the skin.—A lady cannot be Too curious of her form, that still would hold The heart of such a person, made her captive, As you have his; who to endear him more In your clear eye, hath put away his wife, Fair Apicata, and made spacious room To your new pleasures.

LIVIA.

Have not we return'd That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery Of all his counsels?

127:

When will you take some physik, lady?

LIVIA.

When I shall, Eudemus; but let Drusus' drug Be first prepared.

EUDEMUS.

Were Lygdus made, that's done; I have it ready. And to morrow morning I'll sent you a perfume, first to resolve And procure sweat; and then prepare a bath To cleanse and clear the cutis; against when I'll have an excellent new fucus made Resistive gainst the Sun, the rain or wind Which you shall lay on with a breath or oil As you but like, and last some fourteen hours. This change came timely, lady, for your health....

(Ibidem.)

128: Voy. Catilina, acte II, une très-belle scène, non moins franche et non moins vivante, sur la haute bohême de Rome.

129:

Protest not. Thy looks are vows to me.... Thou art a man made to make consuls. Go.

(Acte I, sc. ii.)

130:

Cæsar, Live long and happy, great and royal Cæsar; The Gods preserve thee, and thy modesty, Thy wisdom and thy innocence! Guard His meekness, Jove; his piety, his care, His bounty.

(Acte III, sc. i.)

131:

The majesty of great Tiberius Cæsar Propounds to this grave senate the bestowing Upon the man he loves, honour'd Sejanus, The tribunitial dignity and power. Here are his letters, signed with his signet. What pleaseth now the fathers to be done?

SENATORS.

Read them, read them, open, publicly read them.

COTTA.

Cæsar hath honour'd his own greatness much In thinking of this act.

TRIO.

It was a thought Happy, and worthy Cæsar.

LATIARIS.

And the lord As worthy it, on whom it is directed!

HATERIUS.

Most worthy!

SANQUINIUS.

Rome did never boast the virtue That could give envy bounds but his: Sejanus.

FIRST SENATOR.

Honour'd and noble!

SECOND SENATOR.

Good and great Sejanus!

PRÆCO.

Silence!

(Acte V, sc. x.)

132:

«Some there be that would interpret his public severity to be particular ambition; and under a pretext of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets; alleging the strength he has made to himself by the prætorian soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity and dependents, his urging and almost driving us to this our unwilling retirement, and, lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in-law.

SENATOR.

«This is strange!»

133:

«Your wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to examine and censure these suggestions. But were they left to our absolving voice, we durst pronounce them, as we think them, most malicious.

SENATOR.

«O, he has restored all; list!

«Yet they are offered to be avered, and on the lives of the informers....»

134:

FIRST SENATOR.

Away.

SECOND SENATOR.

Sit farther.

COTTA.

Let's remove....

REGULUS.

Take him hence. And all the gods guard Cæsar!

TRIO.

Take him hence.

HATERIUS.

Hence.

COTTA.

To the dungeon with him.

SANQUINIUS.

He deserves it.

SENATOR.

Crown all our doors with bays.

SANQUINIUS.

And let an ox, With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led Unto the Capitol.

HATERIUS.

And sacrified To Jove, for Cæsar's safety.

TRIO.

All our Gods Be present still to Cæsar!...

COTTA.

Let all the traitor's titles be defaced.

TRIO.

His images and statues be pull'd down.

SENATOR.

Liberty! liberty! liberty! Lead on, And praised be Macro, that hath saved Rome!

(Ibidem.)

135:

Though need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not better'd much, Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, As he dare serve the ill customs of the age, Or purchase your delight at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate. To make a child new-swaddled to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars.... He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see One such to-day as other plays should be; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please, Nor nimble squib is seen to make afear The gentlewomen.... But deeds and language such as men do use.... You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men.

(Every man in his humour, Prologue.)

136:

When some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour....

137:

I will scourge those apes, And to those courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomized in every nerve and sinew, With constant courage and contempt of fear.... My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls As lick up every idle vanity.

(Every man out of his humour, Prologue.)

138: Comparez le Volpone au Légataire de Regnard, le seizième siècle qui finit au dix-huitième qui commence.

139:

Good morning to the day, and, next, my gold! Open the shrine, that I may see my saint. Hail the world's soul and mine!... O thou son of Sol, But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, With adoration, thee and every relick Of sacred treasure in this blessed room!

(Acte I, sc. i.)

140:

Letting the cherry knock against their lips, And draw it by their mouths, and back again.

(Ibidem.)

141:

VOLTORE.

Am I inscribed his heir for certain?

MOSCA.

Are you? I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe To write me in your family. All my hopes Depend upon your worship. I am lost, Except the rising sun do shine on me.

VOLTORE.

It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca.

MOSCA.

Sir, I am a man that hath not done your love All the worst offices; here I wear your keys, See all your coffers and your caskets lock'd, Keep the poor inventory of your jewels, Your plate and monies; am your steward, sir, Husband your goods here.

VOLTORE.

But am I sole heir?

MOSCA.

Without a partner, sir; confirm'd this morning; The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry Upon the parchment.

VOLTORE.

Happy, happy me! By what good chance, sweet Mosca?

MOSCA.

Your desert, sir; I know no second cause.... When will you have your inventory brought, sir? Or see a copy of the will?

(Acte I, sc. i.)

142:

MOSCA.

His mouth Is ever gaping and his eyelids hang.

CORBACCIO.

Good.

MOSCA.

A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints And makes the colour of his flesh like lead.

CORBACCIO.

'Tis good.

MOSCA.

His pulse beats slow and dull.

CORBACCIO.

Good symptoms still.

MOSCA.

And from his brain....

CORBACCIO.

I conceive you; good.

MOSCA.

Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum, Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.

CORBACCIO.

Is't possible? Yet I am better, ha! How does he, with the swimming of his head?

MOSCA.

O, sir, 'tis past the scotomy; he now Hath left his feeling, and has left to snort: You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes.

CORBACCIO.

Excellent, excellent! Sure, I shall outlast him. This makes me young again, a score of years.

(Ibid.)

143:

CORVINO.

Am I his heir?

MOSCA.

Sir, I am sworn, I may not show the will Till he be dead; but here has been Corbaccio, Here has been Voltore, here were others too; I cannot number 'em, they were so many, All gaping here for legacies; but I, Taking the vantage of his naming you, Signior Corvino, signior Corvino, took Paper and pen and ink, and there I asked him, Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who Should be executor? Corvino. And To any question he was silent to, I still interpreted the nods he made Through weakness for consent, and sent home th' others, Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse.

CORVINO.

O, my dear Mosca!... Has he children?

MOSCA.

Bastards, Some dozen or more, that he begat on beggars, Gypsies and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk.... Speak out, You may be louder yet. Faith, I could stifle him rarely with a pillow, As well as any woman that should keep him.

CORVINO.

Do as you will; but I'll begone.

144:

My divine Mosca! Thou hast to-day outgone thyself.... Prepare Me music, dances, banquets, all delights; The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures Than will Volpone.

(Ibid.)

145:

VOLPONE.

Mosca, take my keys, Gold, plate and jewels, all's at thy devotion; Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too, So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca....

MOSCA.

Have you no kinswoman?... ... Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir. One o' the doctors offer'd his daughter.

CORVINO.

How?

MOSCA.

Yes, signior Lupo, the physician.

CORVINO.

His daughter!

MOSCA.

And a virgin, sir....

CORVINO.

Wretch! Covetous wretch!

(Acte II, sc. iii.)

146: Nous supplions le lecteur de nous pardonner les grossièretés de Jonson. Si je les omets, je ne puis plus peindre le seizième siècle. Accordez la même indulgence à l'historien qu'à l'anatomiste.

147:

Be damn'd! Heart, I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair, Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up Thy mouth into thine ears; and slit thy nose, Like a raw rocket!—Do not tempt me, come, Yield, I am loth.—Death! I will buy some slave Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive, And at my window hang you forth, devising Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters, Will eat into thy flesh with aqua-fortis, And burning corsives on this stubborn breast. Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it!

CELIA.

Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr.

CORVINO.

Be not thus obstinate; I have not deserved it. Think who it is intreats you. 'Prithee, sweet. Good faith, thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires, What thou wilt think and ask. Do but go kiss him. Or touch him, but. For my sake, at my suit. This once.—No? not? I shall remember this. Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing?

(Acte III, v.)

148:

MOSCA.

Sir, Signior Corvino.... hearing of the consultation had So lately for your health, is come to offer, Or rather, sir, to prostitute....

CORVINO.

Thanks, sweet Mosca.

MOSCA.

Freely, unask'd, or unintreated.

CORVINO.

Well.

MOSCA.

As the true fervent instance of his love, His own most fair and proper wife; the beauty Only of price in Venice.

CORVINO.

'Tis well urged.

(Ibid.)

149:

Take these, And wear, and lose them; yet remains an ear ring, To purchase them again, and this whole state. A gem but worth a private patrimony Is nothing. We will eat such at a meal. The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, The brains of peacocks and of estriches Shall be our food.... Conscience? 'Tis the beggar's virtue.... Thy bathes shall be the juice of july-flower, Spirit of roses and violets, The milk of unicorns and panther's breath Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber, Which we will take, until my roof whirl round With the vertigo; and my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic, Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales, Thou like Europa now, and I like Jove, Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine, So of the rest, till we have quite run through, And wearied all the fables of the Gods.

(Acte III, sc. v.)

150:

CORVINO.

This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore, Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich, Upon record.

FIRST AVOCAT.

No more.

CORVINO.

Neighs like a jennet.

NOTARY.

Preserve the honour of the court.

CORVINO.

I shall, And modesty of your most reverend ears. And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar, That fine well timber'd gallant; and that here The letters may be read, through the horn, That make the story perfect.

THIRD AVOCAT.

His grief hath made him frantic.

(Cœlia swoons.)

CORVINO.

Rare! Prettily feign'd; again!...

151:

MOSCA.

To gull the court.

VOLPONE.

And quite divert the torrent Upon the innocent....

MOSCA.

You are not taken with it enough, methinks.

VOLPONE.

O, more than if I had enjoy'd the wench!

(Acte IV, sc. ii; acte V, sc. i.)

152:

Why would you stay here? With what thought, what promise? Hear you; do you not know, I know you an ass, And that you would most fain have been a wittol, If fortune would have let you? That you are A declared cuckold, on good terms? This pearl, You'll say, was yours? Right. This diamond? I'll not deny't, but thank you. Much here else? It may be so. Why, think that all these good works May help to hide your bad....

CORBACCIO.

I am cozen'd, cheated, by a parasite slave; Harlot, thou hast gull'd me.

MOSCA.

Yes, sir; stop your mouth, Or I shall draw the only tooth is left. Are you not he, that filthy covetous wretch, With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey, Have, any time, this three years, snuff'd about, With your most grovelling nose, and would have hired Me to the poisoning of my patron, sir? Are you not he that have to day in court Profess'd the disinheriting of your son, Perjured yourself? Go home, and die, and stink.

(Acte V, sc. i.)

153:

CORVINO.

Yes, And have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish, Bruised fruit, and rotten eggs.—'Tis well. I am glad I shall not see my shame yet.

(Acte V, sc. viii.)

154:

Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?

(Acte III, scène ii.)

155:

Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors!... They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder, with their brazen throats.

(Acte IV, scène ii.)

156: Comparez M. de Pourceaugnac, dans Molière.

157: Polichinelle dans le Malade imaginaire, Géronte dans Scapin.

158: L'École des Femmes, Tartuffe, le Misanthrope, le Bourgeois gentilhomme, le Malade imaginaire, Georges Dandin.

159: Analogue aux Fourberies de Scapin.

160: Analogue aux Fâcheux.

161: Analogue aux Précieuses.

162: Analogue aux pièces de Destouches.

163: Entendez la reine Élisabeth.

164:

My light-feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him and can whisper a light message to a loose wench, with some round volubility? one that sweeps the gods' drinking room every morning and set the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another's head over night?

(Cynthia's Revels, acte I, sc. i.)

165:

See, see the mourning fount, whose springs Th' untimely fate of that too beauteous boy weep yet, That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature, Who, now transform'd into this drooping flower, Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream.... Witness thy youth's dear sweets here spent untasted, Like a fair taper with his own flame wasted!... But with thy water let this curse remain, As an inseparate plague, that who but taste A drop thereof, may with the instant touch, Grow dotingly enamour'd on themselves.

(Ibid.)

166:

But knowing myself an essence too sublimated and refined by travel.... able to speak the mere extraction of language, one that was your first that ever enrich'd his country with the true laws of duello, whose optics have drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince's courts where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred forty and five ladies, all nobly, if not princely descended.... In all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten her kisses upon me.

(Ibid.)

167:

O vanity, How are thy painted beauties doted on, By light and empty idiots! How pursued With open and extended appetite! How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath, Raised on their toes to catch thy airy forms, Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards, That buy the merry madness of an hour, With the long irksomeness of following time!

(Ibid.)

168:

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep.... Lay thy bow of pearl apart, And thy crystal shining quiver, Give unto the flying hart Space to breathe, how short soever.

(Acte V, sc. iii.)

169: A celebration of Charis. Miscellaneous poems.

170: Masque of Beauty.

171:

Earine, Who had her very being and her name, With the first knots or buddings of the spring, Born with the primrose, or the violet Or earliest roses blown; when Cupid smiled, And Venus led the Graces out to dance, And all the flowers and sweets in Nature's lap Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration To last but while she lived.

(Acte I, sc. ii.)

But she, as chaste as was her name, Earine, Died undeflower'd; and now her sweet soul hovers Here in the air above us.

(Acte III, sc. i.)

172: On pourra suivre cette idée en psychologie: la perception extérieure, la mémoire sont des hallucinations vraies, etc. Ceci est le point de vue analytique: à un autre point de vue, au contraire, la raison, la santé sont des buts naturels.

173: Voy. Spinosa et D. Stewart: La conception à son état naturel est croyance.

174: Halliwell's Life of Shakspeare.

175: Né en 1564, mort en 1616. Il retouche des pièces dès 1591. La première pièce qui soit de lui tout entière est de 1593. (Payne Collier.)

176: M. Halliwell et d'autres commentateurs tâchent de prouver qu'à cette époque les fiançailles préalables constituaient le vrai mariage; que ces fiançailles avaient eu lieu, et qu'ainsi il n'y a rien d'irrégulier dans la conduite de Shakspeare.

177: Halliwell, 123.

178: Toutes ces anecdotes sont des traditions, et partant plus ou moins douteuses; mais les autres faits sont authentiques.

179: 1589. Termes d'un document conservé. Il est nommé avec Burbadge et Greene.

180:

Alas; 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gor'd mine own thoughts; sold cheap what is most dear.

181: Sonnets 91 et 111. Hamlet, III, scène ii. Plusieurs des paroles d'Hamlet sont moins bien placées dans la bouche d'un prince que dans celle de l'auteur. Comparez le sonnet: Tired with all these; etc.

182:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my out-cast state, And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope; Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd..., With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in those thoughts myself almost despising.

183:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin?

184:

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide, Than public means, which public manners breed.

185: Anecdote écrite en 1602, d'après l'acteur Tooley.

186: William, nom de Shakspeare.

187: Le comte de Southampton avait dix-neuf ans quand Shakspeare lui dédia son Adonis.

188: Voy. les Amours des dieux, au château de Blenheim, par Titien.

189:

With blindfold fury she begins to forage, Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil.

190:

And, glutton-like, she feeds, yet never filleth; Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey, Paying what ransom the insulter willeth, Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast, Lives with her beak on feathers, flesh, and bone, Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste, Till either gorge be stuff'd, or prey be gone; Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin, And where she ends she doth anew begin.

191:

Lo, hear the gentle lark, weary of rest, From his moist cabinet mounts on up high, And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast, The sun ariseth in his majesty; Who doth the world so gloriously behold, The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

192: Comparez les premières poésies d'Alfred de Musset, Contes d'Italie et d'Espagne.

193: Crawley, cité par Chasles, Études sur Shakspeare.

194:

When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies.

195:

Those lips of thine That have profan'd their scarlet ornaments, And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine, Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents. Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.

196: Voy. la fin de Gérard de Nerval.

197:

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame, Which, like a canker in a fragrant rose, Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name! O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!

That tongue that tells the story of thy days, Making lascivious comments on thy sport, Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise; Naming thy name blesses an ill report.

198:

Elle était brune, ni belle, ni jeune, et mal famée. (Sonnets.)

199:

From you I have been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, Had put a spirit of youth in every thing, That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

200:

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose.

201:

The forward violet thus I did chide: «Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love's breath? The purple pride, Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dy'd.» The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair: The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair. A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both, And to this robbery had annex'd thy breath; More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee.

202:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, Who, like two spirits, do suggest me still. The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman, colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side.

.... Love is too young to know what conscience is.... For thou betraying me, I do betray My nobler part to my gross body's treason.... He is contented thy poor drudge to be, To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.

203: Cette interprétation nouvelle des Sonnets est due aux conjectures ingénieuses et solides de M. Chasles.

204: Love is my sin. (142^e sonnet.)

205: Miranda, Desdémona, Viola. Premières paroles du duc dans la Nuit des Rois:

DUKE.

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.— That strain again;—it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing, and giving odour.—Enough, no more, 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou! That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soever, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute, so full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high-fantastical.

206: Témoignages de Jonson et de Chettle. Melliferous, honey-tongued. Voy. Halliwell, 183.

207:

Haply I think of thee,—and then my state (Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate.

208:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest....

209:

No longer mourn for me, when I am dead, Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell Give warning to the world that I am fled From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell: Nay, if you read this line, remember not The hand that writ it; for I love you so, That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, If thinking on me then should make you woe.

210: Le rôle où il excellait était celui du fantôme dans Hamlet.

211: In his own conceit the only shake-scene in the country.

212: «He was a respectable man.—A good word: what does it mean?—He kept a gig.» Procès anglais.

213: Voy. ses portraits et surtout son buste.

214: Voy. surtout ses dernières pièces: Tempest, Twelfth night.

215: Hamlet, III, scène iv.

216:

The single and peculiar life is bound, With all the strength and armour of the mind, To keep itself from 'noyance; but much more That spirit, upon whose weal depend and rest The lives of many. The cease of majesty Dies not alone, but, like a gulf, doth draw What's near it, with it: it is a massy wheel, Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things Are mortis'd and adjoin'd, which, when it falls, Each small annexment, petty consequence, Attends the boist'rous ruin. Never alone Did the king sigh, but with a general groan.

217:

A station like the herald Mercury New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill.

218:

Such an act, that blurs the grace and blush of modesty; Calls virtue, hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage vows As false as dicers' oaths: O such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul; and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: Heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought sick at the act.

219: C'est pourquoi, aux yeux d'un écrivain du dix-septième siècle, le style de Shakspeare est le plus obscur, le plus prétentieux, le plus pénible, le plus barbare et le plus absurde qui fut jamais.

220: Le Dictionnaire de Shakspeare est le plus abondant de tous. Il comprend environ 15000 mots, et celui de Milton 8000.

221: Voy. dans Hamlet le discours de Laërtes à sa sœur, et de Polonius à Laërtes. Le style est hors de la situation, et on voit là à nu le procédé naturel et obligé de Shakspeare.

222: Winter's Tale, acte I, scène i.

223: Il y a ici un calembour intraduisible.

224:

What, hast smutch'd thy nose?— They say it's a copy out of mine. Come, captain, We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:... Come, sir page, look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain! Most dear'st! my collop! Looking on the lines Of my boy's face, methought, I did recoil Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled Lest it should bite its master.... How like, methought, I then was to this kernel, This squash, this gentleman:... My brother, are you so fond of your prince, As we do seem to be of ours?

225:

POLYXENES.

If at home, sir, He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter: Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy; My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all! He makes a July's day short as December; And, with his varying childness, cures in me Thoughts that would thick my blood.

226:

How now! how now, chop-logic? What is this? Proud,—and I thank you,—and I thank you not;— And yet not proud:—mistress minion, you, Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds; But settle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church, Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither. Out, you green sick carrion! out, you baggage, You tallow-face!

JULIET.

Good father, I beseech you on my knees, Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

CAPULET.

Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch! I tell thee what,—get thee to church o'Thursday, Or never after look me in the face: Speak not, reply not, do not answer me; My fingers itch....

LADY CAPULET.

You are too hot.

CAPULET.

God's bread! it makes me mad. Day, night, early, At home, abroad, alone, in company, Waking, or sleeping, still my care hath been To have her match'd: and having now provided A gentleman of princely parentage; Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd, Stuff'd (as they say) with honourable parts, Proportion'd as one's heart could wish a man,— And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender, To answer, "I'll not wed,—I cannot love,— I am too young,—I pray you pardon me;—" But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you: Graze where you will, you shall not house with me; Look to't, think on 't, I do not use to jest. Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise: An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend; An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die i' the streets, For, by my soul, I'll never acknowledge thee.

227: King Henri VIII, acte II, scène iii, etc.

228: Much ado about nothing. Voy. la façon dont Henri V fait la cour à Catherine de France.

229:

BENEDICT.

I will go to the antipodes... rather than bold three words' conference with this harpy.... I cannot endure my lady Tongue.

DON PEDRO.

You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.

BEATRICE.

So I would not he should do me, my lord, but I should prove the mother of fools.

230:

He call'd her whore; a beggar, in his drink, Could not have laid such terms upon his callet.

231: Henri VI, 2^e part., acte IV, scène iii.

232:

JAKE CADE.

There shall be in England seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny.... There shall be no money: all shall eat and drink on my score, and I will apparel them all in our livery.

And here, sitting upon London-stone, I charge and command, that, of the city's cost, the pissing-conduit run nothing but claret-wine this first year of our reign.... Away, burn all the records of the realm; my mouth shall be the parliament of England.... And henceforth all things shall be held in common.... What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Monsieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France?

The proudest peer of the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders unless he pays me tribute; there shall not be a maid married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it. (Re-enter rebels with the heads of Lord Say and his son-in-law.) But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive.

233:

Fellows, hold the chair: Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.

(Gloster is held down in the chair, while Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes, and sets his foot on it.)

GLOSTER.

He that will think to live till he be old, Give me some help:—O cruel! O ye gods!

REGAN.

One side will mock another; the other too.

CORNWALL.

If you see vengeance....

SERVANT.

Hold your hand, my lord. I have serv'd you ever since I was a child: But better service have I never done you, Than now to bid you hold.

CORNWALL.

How now, you dog?

SERVANT.

If you did wear a beard upon your chin, I'd shake it in this quarrel: What do you mean?

CORNWALL.

My villain! (Draws, and runs at him.)

SERVANT.

Nay, then come down, and take the chance of anger.

(Draws; they fight; Cornwall is wounded.)

REGAN.

Give me thy sword. (To another servant.) A peasant stand up thus!

(Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him.)

SERVANT.

O, I am slain! My lord! you have one eye left To see some mischief in him:—O! (Dies.)

CORNWALL.

Lest it see more, prevent it:—Out, vile jelly: Where is thy lustre now?

(Tears out Gloster's other eye, and throws it on the ground.)

GLOSTER.

All dark and comfortless. Where's my son?...

REGAN.

Go, thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover....

234:

CALIBAN.

Beat him enough: after a little time, I'll beat him too.

Pry thee, my king, be quiet: seest thou here, This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter: Do that good mischief, which may make this island Thine own for ever, and I, thy Caliban, For aye thy foot-licker.

235:

I am not warm yet: let us fight again.

Voyez acte III, scène II, la plaisante façon dont les généraux poussent en avant cette vaillante brute.

236:

CLOTEN.

His garment? Now, the devil,—

IMOGEN.

To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently.

CLOTEN.

You have abus'd me? His meanest garment? I'll be reveng'd:—his meanest garment, well.

With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her: First, kill him and in her eyes; there shall she see my valour, which will then be a torment to her contempt. He, on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his dead body,—and when my lust has dined,—(which, as I say, to vex her, I will execute in the clothes that she so praised) to the court I'll knock her back, foot her home again.

237: Roméo et Juliette.

238:

NURSE.

'Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour.

LADY CAPULET.

She's not fourteen.

NURSE.

Come Lammas eve at night, shall she be fourteen. Susan and she,—God rest all Christian souls!— Were of an age. Well, Susan is with God; She was too good for me: But, as I said, On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen; That shall she, marry; I remember it well. 'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years; And she was wean'd—I never shall forget it,— Of all the days of the year, upon that day: For I had then laid wormwood to my dug. Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall, My lord and you were then at Mantua:— Nay, I do bear a brain:—but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool! To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug. Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow, To bid me trudge. And since that time it is eleven years: For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood, She could have run and waddled all about. For even the day before she broke her brow.

239:

NURSE.

Jesu! What haste? Can you not stay awhile? Do you not see that I am out of breath?

JULIET.

How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? Is thy news good, or bad? Answer to that: Say either, and I will stay the circumstance: Let me be satisfied, is it good or bad?

NURSE.

Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: Romeo, no, not he; though his face be better than any man's. Yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body,—though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare: He is not the flower of courtesy,—but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.—Go thy ways, wench; serve God:—What, have you dined at home?

JULIET.

No, no: but all this did I know before: What says he of our marriage? What of that?

NURSE.

Lord! how my head aches,—what a head have I! It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back, o' t'other side,—O my back, my back!— Beshrew your heart, for sending me about, To catch my death with jaunting up and down!

JULIET.

I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well,— Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?

NURSE.

Your love says like an honest gentleman, And a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, And, I warrant, a virtuous:—Where is your mother?

240:

NURSE.

O, he's a lovely gentleman! Romeo's a dishclout to him; an eagle, Madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye, As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart, I think you are happy in this second match, For it excels your first.

241:

Alas, poor Romeo, he is already dead! Stabbed with a white wench's black eyes; shot through the ear with a love-song, the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft.

242:

O, she misused me past the endurance of a block; an oak, but with one green leaf on it, would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her.

243:

O, then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes In shape no bigger than the agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep; Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' legs; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; The traces, of the smallest spider's web; The collars, of the moonshine's watery beams; Her whip, of cricket's bones; the lash, of film; Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat; Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut; Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love; On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight: O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream.... Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose as he lies asleep, Then dreams he of another benefice: Sometimes she driveth on a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscades, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear; at which he starts, and wakes; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. This is that very Mab, That plats the manes of horses in the night; And bakes the elf locks in foul sluttish hairs, Which, once untangled, much misfortune bodes. This, this is she....

244:

There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together.... and the shirt stolen from my host at St. Alban.... they'll find linen enough on every hedge.

PRINCE.

I never did see such pitiful rascals.

FALSTAFF.

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder. They'll fill a pit as well as better. Tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

245:

Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold.... What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?

246:

Be thou assur'd, good Cassio.... My lord shall never rest; I'll watch him tame, and talk him out of patience; His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift; I'll intermingle everything he does With Cassio's suit....

247:

OTHELLO.

Not now, sweet Desdemona; some other time.

DESDEMONA.

But shall't be shortly?

OTHELLO.

The sooner, sweet, for you.

DESDEMONA.

Shall't be to-night at supper?

OTHELLO.

No, not to-night.

DESDEMONA.

To-morrow dinner, then?

OTHELLO.

I shall not dine at home.

DESDEMONA.

Why, then, to-morrow night; or Tuesday, Or Tuesday noon, or night; or Wednesday morn;— I pray thee, name the time, but let it not Exceed three days; in faith, he's penitent.... Why, this is not a boon; 'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves, Or keep you warm, or sue to you to do peculiar profit To your own person.... Shall I deny you? No: farewell, my lord; Emilia, come:—be it as your fancies teach you. Whate'er you be, I am obedient.

248:

His bloody brow! O, Jupiter, no blood!... Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!

.... No, good madam; I will not out of doors;... Indeed no, by your patience; I will not over the threshold till my lord return from the wars.

CORIOLUS.

My gracious silence, hail! Wouldst thou have laugh'd, had I come coffin'd home, That weep'st to see me triumph?

249:

MIRANDA.

I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of.

FERNANDO.

Wherefore weep you?

MIRANDA.

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give; and much less take, What I shall die to want:... I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I'll die your maid.

250:

«O sweetest, fairest lily!»

251:

O you, kind gods, Cure this great breach in his abused nature! The untun'd and jarring senses, O, wind up, Of this child-changed father! O my dear father! Restauration hang Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made! Was this a face To be exposed against the warring winds? Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire.... How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

252:

O, you're well met. The hoarded plague o' the gods Requite your love! If that I could for weeping, you should hear, Nay, and you shall hear some. I'll tell thee what.—Yet go. Nay, but thou shall stay too.—I would my son Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him, His good sword in his hand.

Voyez aussi la scène III, acte I. C'est le triomphe naïf et abandonné d'une femme du peuple.

I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child, than now in first seeing he has proved himself a man.

253:

As I am an honest man, I had thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more offence in that than in reputation.

254:

It cannot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor, nor he his to her.... These Moors are changeable in their wills. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must change for youth. When she is sated with his body, she will find the errors of her choice.

255:

Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea-hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon.

256:

To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.... O gentle lady, do not put me to 't; For I am nothing, if not critical.

257:

Work on, My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught.

258:

Thou art a villain. You are a senator.

You'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you'll have your nephews neigh to you, you'll have coursers for cousins, and gennets for germans.

259: Voyez le même cynisme et le même scepticisme dans Richard III. Tous les deux commencent par diffamer la nature humaine, et sont misanthropes de parti pris.

260:

And what's he, then, that says I play the villain? When this advice is free, I give, and honest, Probal to thinking, and indeed the course To win the Moor again.

261: Voyez sa conversation avec Brabantio, puis avec Roderigo, acte I.

262: Voyez encore dans Timon, et surtout dans Hotspur, l'exemple parfait de l'imagination véhémente et déraisonnable.

263:

CORIOLANUS.

By Jupiter, forget:— I am weary; yea, my memory is tir'd. Have we no wine here?

264:

CORIOLANUS.

Come I too late?... O! let me clip you In arms as sound as when I woo'd; in heart As merry as when our nuptial day was done.

265:

CORIOLANUS.

I thank you, general; But cannot make my heart consent to take A bribe to pay my sword....

266:

No more, I say; For that I have not wash'd my nose that bled, Or foil'd some debile wretch,—you shout me forth In acclamations hyperbolical; As if I loved my little should be dieted In praises sauc'd with lies.

267:

I will go wash; And when my face is fair, you shall perceive, Whether I blush, or no. Howbeit, I thank you, I mean to stride your steed....

268:

Bid them wash their faces, And keep their teeth clean.... To beg of Hob and Dick....

269:

What must I say? I pray, sir.... Plague upon 't! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace:—look, sir; my wounds; I got them in my country's service, when Some certain of your brethren roar'd, and ran From the noise of our own drums.

270:

.... Come, enough.—Enough, with over-measure.

CORIOLANUS.

No, take more: What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal:—at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison: .... Throw their power i' the dust.

271:

Hence, old goat! Hence, rotten thing, or I shall Shake thy bones out of thy garments. .... You speak o' the people, As if you were a god to punish, not a man Of their infirmity.

272:

VOLUMNIA.

.... My praises first made thee a soldier....

273:

.... The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks; and school-boy's tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips; and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That has receiv'd an alms. .... Yet were there but this single plot to lose, This mould of Marcius, they to dust should grind it. And throw it against the wind....

274:

Pray, be content; Mother, I am going to the market-place; Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves, Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov'd Of all the trades in Rome. Look, I am going.

275:

CORIOLANUS.

How! traitor?

MENENIUS.

Nay; temperately; your promise.

CORIOLANUS.

The fires i' the lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor!—Thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thine hands clutch'd as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say, Thou liest, unto thee, with a voice as free As I do pray the gods.

276:

Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death, Vagabond exile, flaying; pent to linger But with a grain a day, I would not buy Their mercy at the price of one fair word; Nor check my courage for what they can give, To hav't with saying, Good morrow.

277:

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcases of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you. .... Despising, For you, the city, thus I turn my back: There is a world elsewhere.

278:

MACBETH.

.... Why do I yield to that suggestion, Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs?... .... My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is, But what is not.

279:

.... Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd Murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus, with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design, Moves like a ghost. (A bell rings.) I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

280:

What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine eyes!

281:

MACBETH.

One cried, God bless us! and Amen, the other; As they had seen me with these hangman's hands Listening their fear; I could not say, Amen, When they did say, God bless us! .... But wherefore could I not pronounce, Amen? I had most need of blessing, and Amen Stuck in my throat.

282:

Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder Sleep, the innocent Sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath! Balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life's feast. .... Glamis hath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more!

283:

To know my deed,—'twere best not know myself. (Knock.) Wake Duncan with thy knocking! Ay, would thou couldst.

284:

Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys: renown and grace, is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of.

285:

I am in blood, Steep'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er. .... But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave; After life's fretful fever he sleeps well, Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him farther!

286:

Prithee, see there! Behold! look! lo! how say you? If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury, back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites. Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,— Ay, and since too, murthers have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear. The times have been That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end. But now! they rise again With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns, And push us from our stools.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with!

287:

Alas, poor country! Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing But he who knows nothing, is once seen to smile, Where ... the dead man's knell Is scarce ask'd, for whom and good men's lives Expire before the flowers in their caps, Dying, or ere they sicken.

288:

She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word.— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.... I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. .... They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But, bear-like, I must fight the course. .... I have supp'd full with horrors. Direness, familiar to my slaught'rous thoughts, Cannot once start me.

289: Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.

290:

O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on 't! O fye! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature, Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king.... So loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! .... And yet, within a month, Let me not think on 't;—Frailty, thy name is woman!... A little month; or ere those shoes were old, With which she follow'd my poor father's body.... Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married:—O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot, come to good; But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

291:

Hold, hold, my heart; And you my sinews, grow not instant old, But bear me stiffly up!—Remember thee? Ay, poor Ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past. And thy commandment all alone shall live. O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tablet;—meet it is, I set it down, That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; At least, I am sure, it may be so in Denmark: So, uncle, there you are.

292:

HAMLET.

Ha, ha, boy, say'st thou so? art thou there, true-penny? Come on, you hear this fellow in the cellarage,—Consent to swear.

GHOST (beneath).

Swear.

HAMLET.

Hic et ubique? Then we will shift our ground; Come hither, gentlemen, swear by my sword.

GHOST (beneath).

Swear by his sword.

HAMLET.

Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioneer!

293:

HAMLET.

Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers (if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me), with two provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?

294:

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the sky, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, nor woman neither.

295:

Get thee to a nunnery; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.

296:

KING.

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

HAMLET.

At supper.

KING.

At supper? Where?

HAMLET.

Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.

297:

HAMLET.

Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

298: Twelfth Night, As you like it, Tempest, Winter's Tale, etc., Cymbeline, Merchant of Venise, etc.

299:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony, Sit, Jessica; look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold; There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins, Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. Come, ho, and wake Diana with a hymn: With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, And draw her home with sweet music.

JESSICA.

I'm never merry when I hear sweet music.

300:

Alas the day! What did he, when thou saw'st him? What said he? How look'd he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? When shalt thou see him again?... Looks he as fresh as he did the day he wrestled?

.... Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.

301:

ROSALIND.

Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while? You a lover?

.... Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent:—What would you say to me now, an I were your very Rosalind?

.... And I am your Rosalind, am I not your Rosalind?

302:

O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love....

303:

PHEBE.

Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.

SILVIUS.

It is to be all made of sighs and tears;— And so I am for Phebe.

PHEBE.

And I for Ganymede.

ORLANDO.

And I for Rosalind.

ROSALIND.

And I for no woman.

SILVIUS.

It is to be all made of fantasy, All made of passion, and all made of wishes; All adoration, duty, observance, All humbleness, all patience, and impatience, All purity, all trial, all observance;— And so I am for Phebe.

PHEBE.

And so I am for Ganymede.

ORLANDO.

And so I am for Rosalind.

ROSALIND.

And so I am for no woman.

304:

DUKE.

Come, shall we go and kill us venison? And yet it irks me, the poor dappled fools,— Being native burghers of this desert city,— Should, on their own confines, with forked heads, Have their round haunches gor'd.

305:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude; Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Heigh, ho! sing heigh, ho! unto the green holly:— Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly! Then, heigh, ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.

306: Comparez Jacques à Alceste. C'est le contraste d'un misanthrope par raisonnement et d'un misanthrope par imagination.

307:

JACQUES.

Rosalind is your love's name?

ORLANDO.

Yes, just.

JACQUES.

I do not like her name.

308:

A fool, a fool!—I met a fool i' the forest, A motley fool!—a miserable world!— As I do live by food, I met a fool, Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun, And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms, In good set terms,—and yet a motley fool. .... O noble fool! worthy fool! Motley's the only wear. .... O that I were a fool! I am ambitious for a motley coat.

309:

JACQUES.

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the enfant, Mewling and puking in his nurse's arms: And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then, the soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel; Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then, the justice, In fair round belly, with good capon lined, With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd Pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side; His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide For his shrunk shanks; and his big manly voice, Turning again towards childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion: Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

310:

LYSANDER.

To-morrow night when Phœbe doth behold Her silver visage in her wat'ry glass, Ducking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, (A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal) Through Athen's gates have we devised to steal....

HERMIA.

.... And in the wood, where often you and I Upon faint primrose beds were wont to lie.... There my Lysander and myself shall meet.

311:

OBERON.

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds Was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, Stood now within the pretty flowrets' eyes, Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

312:

TITANIA.

Be kind and courteous to this gentleman; Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes, Feed him with apricocks, and dewberries; With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries; The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And, for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, To have my love to bed and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes: Come, wait upon him, lead him to my bower. The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye; And when she weeps, weeps every little flower, Lamenting some enforced chastity. Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently.

313:

Come, sit down on this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. So doth the wood-bine, the sweet honey-suckle, Gently intwist,—the femal ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O how I love thee! how I dote on thee!

314:

OBERON.

Even till the eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.

315:

These things seem small and extinguishable, Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. .... I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.

316:

My dainty Ariel.... ... When the bee sucks, there suck I In a cowslip's bell I lie.... Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. .... I drink the air before me, and return Or e'er your pulse twice beat. .... We the globe may compass soon, Swifter than the wandering moon.

317: Même loi dans le monde organique et dans le monde moral. C'est ce que Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire appelle unité de composition.

318: Édition des œuvres complètes, t. I.

319: Voyez dans Corinne le jugement de lord Nevil sur les Italiens.

320: Tischreden, passim.

321: Voyez dans le Corpus historicorum medii ævi, par G. Eccard, t. II: Stephanus Infessuræ, p. 1995; Burchard, grand camérier d'Alexandre VI, p. 2134.—Guichardin, p. 211, édit. Panthéon littéraire.

322: Voyez, dans les Mémoires de Casanova, le tableau de cette pourriture.—Voyez les Mémoires de Scipion Rossi, sur les couvents de Toscane, à la fin du dix-huitième siècle.

323: D'Homère à Constantin, la cité antique est une association d'hommes libres qui a pour but la conquête et l'exploitation d'autres hommes libres.

324: Voyage de Misson, 1700. Mémoires de la margrave de Baireuth. Voyez encore aujourd'hui les mœurs des étudiants.

«Les Allemands sont, comme vous savez, d'étranges buveurs; il n'y a point de gens au monde plus caressants, plus civils, plus officieux; mais encore un coup ils ont de terribles coutumes sur l'article de boire. Tout s'y fait en buvant; on y boit en faisant tout. On n'a pas eu le temps de se dire trois paroles dans les visites, qu'on est tout étonné de voir venir la collation, ou tout au moins quelques brocs de vin accompagnés d'une assiette de croûtes de pain hachées avec du poivre et du sel: fatal préparatif pour de mauvais buveurs. Il faut vous instruire des lois qui s'observent ensuite, lois sacrées et inviolables. On ne doit jamais boire, sans boire à la santé de quelqu'un; aussitôt après avoir bu, on doit présenter du vin à celui à la santé de qui on a bu. Jamais il ne faut refuser le verre qui est présenté, et il faut naturellement vider jusqu'à la dernière goutte. Faites, je vous prie, quelques réflexions sur ces coutumes, et voyez par quel moyen il est possible de cesser de boire; aussi ne finit-on jamais. C'est un cercle perpétuel en Allemagne; boire en Allemagne, c'est boire toujours.» (Misson, Voyage en Italie.)

325: Voyez ses lettres et la sympathie qu'il y témoigne pour Luther.

326: Collection des gravures sur bois d'Albert Dürer. Remarquez la concordance de son Apocalypse et des conversations familières de Luther.

327: Calvin, le logicien de la Réforme, explique très-bien la filiation de toutes les idées protestantes (Institution chrétienne, liv. I). 1. L'idée du Dieu parfait, juge rigide. 2. L'alarme de la conscience. 3. L'impuissance et la corruption de la nature. 4. L'arrivée de la grâce gratuite. 5. Le rejet des pratiques et cérémonies.

328: «Selon que l'orgueil est enraciné en nous, il nous semble toujours que nous sommes justes et entiers, sages et saints; sinon que nous soyons convaincus par arguments manifestes de notre injustice, souillure, folie et immondicité. Car nous n'en sommes pas convaincus si nous jetons l'œil sur nos personnes seulement, et que nous ne pensions pas aussi bien à Dieu, lequel est la seule règle à laquelle il nous faut ordonner et compasser ce jugement.... (Et alors) ce qui avait belle montre de vertu se découvrira n'être que fragilité.

«Voilà d'où est procédé l'horreur et étonnement duquel l'Écriture récite que les saints ont été affligés et abattus toutes et quantes fois qu'ils ont senti la présence de Dieu. Car nous voyons ceux qui étaient comme eslongnés de Dieu et se trouvaient assurés et allaient la tête levée, sitôt qu'il leur manifeste sa gloire, être ébranlés et effarouchés, en sorte qu'ils sont opprimés, voire engloutis en l'horreur de mort et qu'ils s'évanouissent.» (Calvin, Institution chrétienne, liv. I, p. 2.)

329: Mot de saint Augustin.

330: Mélanchthon, préface des Œuvres de Luther. «Manifestum est libros Thomæ, Scoti et similium prorsus mutos esse de justitia fidei, et multos errores continere de rebus maximis in Ecclesia. Manifestum conciones monachorum in templis fere ubique terrarum aut fabulas fuisse de Purgatorio et de Sanctis, aut fuisse qualemcumque legis doctrinam seu disciplinæ, sine voce Evangelii de Christo, aut fuisse nenias de discrimine ciborum, de feriis et aliis traditionibus humanis.... Evangelium purum, incorruptum, et non dilutum ethnicis opinionibus.» Voyez aussi Fox, Acts and monuments, t. II, p. 42.

331: Voyez Froude, History of England. La conduite de Henri VIII est présentée là sous un nouveau jour.

332: Froude, I, 175, 191. Petition of Commons. Cette récrimination publique et authentique montre tout le détail de l'organisation et de l'oppression cléricales.

333: Froude, I, 26, 193. Great and excessive fees. Voyez le détail, ib.

334: En mai 1528. Froude, I, 179, 85, 201; II, 435.

335: Hale's Criminal causes; Suppression of the monasteries, Camden Society's publications.

336: «Down with them.» (Latimer's Sermons.)

337: Horsyn Preste. Hale, 99.

338: Froude, I, 90. En 1514. Improbus animus.

339: Fox, Acts and Monuments. In-folio, t. II, 23. En 1521.

340: Voyez, passim, les estampes dans Fox.—Tous les détails qu'on va lire sont tirés des biographies. Voyez celles de Cromwell par Carlyle, de Fox le quaker, de Bunyan, et les procès rapportés tout au long par Fox.

341: Froude, II, 33, 1529. «Grâce à Dieu, disent les évêques, aucune personne notable de notre temps n'est tombée dans le crime d'hérésie.»

342: En 1536. Strype's memorials, appendix, 42. Froude, III, chap. xii.

343: Covenants.

344: 1549. Traduction de Tyndal (Bibliothèque impériale).

345: Le mot est de Stendhal; c'est son impression d'ensemble.

346: Voyez la traduction de Lemaistre de Sacy, si peu biblique.

347: Voy. Ewald, Geschichte des Volks Israel. Apostrophe d'Ewald au troisième rédacteur du Pentateuque: Erhabener Geist..., etc.

348: Comparez le psaume 104, dans l'admirable traduction de Luther et dans la traduction anglaise.

349: Le premier rudiment considérable est de 1545. Froude, V, 145 et 146. Le Prayer-Book subit plusieurs changements en 1552, d'autres sous Élisabeth, et quelques-uns enfin à la Restauration.

350: Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy on us, miserable offenders; spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore Thou them that are penitent, according to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu, our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for His sake, that we may hereafter live a godly righteous and sober life.

351: Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and doth forgive the sins of all them who are penitent; create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.

352: Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her, in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?

I take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.

353: Dearly beloved, know this that Almighty God is the Lord of life and death, and of all things to them pertaining, as youth, strength, health, age, weakness, and sickness. Wherefore, whatsoever your sickness is, know you certainly, that it is God's visitation. And for what cause soever this sickness is sent unto you, whether it be to try your patience, for the example of others..., or else it be sent unto you to correct and amend in you whatsoever doth offend the eyes of your heavenly Father, know you certainly that, if you truly repent you of your sins and bear your sickness patiently, trusting in God's mercy.... submitting yourself wholly unto His will, it shall turn to your profit, and help you forward in the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life.

354: Lettre de Henri VIII à Cranmer. Froude, IV, 484. «Faire usage des paroles d'une langue étrangère, avec un simple sentiment de dévotion, quand l'esprit n'en retire aucun fruit, ne peut être ni agréable à Dieu, ni salutaire à l'homme. Celui qui ne comprend pas la force et l'efficacité de l'entretien qu'il a avec Dieu ressemble à une harpe ou à une flûte, qui a un son, mais ne comprend pas le bruit qu'elle fait. Un chrétien est plus qu'un instrument, et les sujets du roi doivent être capables de prier comme des hommes raisonnables dans leur propre langue.»

355: Sternhold, 1549.

356: On peut voir dans l'Oraison funèbre de la comtesse de Richmond, par John Fisher, les pratiques auxquelles cette religion succédait.

As for fasting, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not bound, yet those days that by the church were appointed, she kept them diligently and seriously, and in especial the holy Lent throughout, that she restrained her appetite, till one meal of fish on the day; besides her other peculiar fasts of devotion, as St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Catharine, with other; and throughout all the year, the Friday and Saturday she full truly observed. As to hard clothes wearing, she had her shirts and girdles of hair, which, when she was in health, every week she failed not certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the other, that full often her skin, as I heard say, was pierced therewith.

In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so after them, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our Lady; then she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain she said also matins of the day; and after that, daily heard four or five masses upon her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day, was ten of the clocks, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her stations to three altars daily; daily her dirges and commendations she would say, and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our Lady, beside many other prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily when she was in health, she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which after the manner of Rome, containeth sixty and three aves, and at every ave, to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here before have heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same those that were present at any time when she was houshilde, which was full nigh a dozen times every year, what floods of tears there issued forth of her eyes!

357: A plowland must have sheepe, yea they must have sheepe, to dung their ground for bearing of corn; for if they have no sheepe to helpe to fat the ground, they shall have but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make them veneries or bacon of. Their bacon is their venison. (For they shall now have hangum tuum if they get any other venison.) So that bacon is their necessary meate to feed on, which they may not lack. They must have other cattels, as horses to draw their plows, and for carriage of things to the markets, and kine for their milke and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their rents. These cattell must have pasture, which pasture if they lack, the rest must needs fail them. And pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in, and inclosed from them. (Latimer's Sermons, édition 1635, p. 105.)

358: Now after I had been acquainted with him, I went with him to visit the prisoners in the tower at Cambridge, for he was ever visiting prisoners and sick folk. So we went together, and exhorted them as well as we were able to do; minding them to patience, and to acknowledge their faults. Among other prisoners, there was a woman which was accused that she had killed her child, which act she plainly and steadfastly denied, and could not be brought to confess the act; which denying gave us occasion to search for the matter, and so we did; and at length we found that her husband loved her not, and therefore he sought means to make her out of the way. The matter was thus:—

A child of hers had been sick by the space of a year, and so decayed, as it were, in a consumption. At length it died in harvest time; she went to her neighbours and other friends to desire their help to prepare the child for burial; but there was nobody at home, every man was in the field. The woman, in a heaviness and trouble of spirit, went, and being herself alone, prepared the child for burial. Her husband coming home, not having great love towards her, accused her of the murder, and so she was taken and brought to Cambridge. But as far forth as I could learn, through earnest inquisition, I thought in my conscience the woman was not guilty, all the circumstances well considered.

Immediately after this, I was called to preach before the king, which was my first sermon that I made before His Majesty, and it was done at Windsor; where His Majesty, after the sermon was done, did most familiarly talk with me in a gallery. Now, when I saw my time, I kneeled down before His Majesty, opening the whole matter, and afterwards most humbly desired His Majesty to pardon that woman. For I thought in my conscience she was not guilty, or else I would not for all the world sue for a murderer. The king most graciously heard my humble request, insomuch that I had a pardon ready for her at my returning homeward. In the mean season, that woman was delivered of a child in the tower of Cambridge, whose godfather I was, and Mistress Cheak was godmother. But all that time I hid my pardon, and told her nothing of it, only exhorting her to confess the truth. At length the time came when she looked to suffer; I came as I was wont to do, to instruct her; she made great moan to me, and most earnestly required me that I would find the means that she might be purified before her suffering. For she thought she would have been damned if she should suffer without purification. So we travailed with this woman till we brought her to a good opinion; and at length showed her the king's pardon, and let her go.

This tale I told you by this occasion, that though some women be very unnatural, and forget their children, yet when we hear any body so report, we should not be too hasty in believing the tale, but rather suspend our judgments till we know the truth.

359: Dépêche de Noailles, ambassadeur français et catholique. Pictorial history, II, 524.

360: John Fox, History of the acts and monuments of the Church.

In the mean time William's father and mother came to him, and desired heartily of God that he might continue to the end in that good way which he had begun, and his mother said to him, that she was glad that ever she was so happy to bear such a child, which could find in his heart to lose his life for Christ's name's sake.

Then William said to his mother, 'For my little pain which I shall suffer, which is but a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown of joy: may you not be glad of that, mother?' With that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying, 'I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end: yea, I think thee as well-bestowed as any child that ever I bare....'

Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped over the parlour grounsel, and went forward cheerfully, the sheriff's servant taking him by one arm, and his brother by another; and thus going in the way, he met with his father according to his dream, and he spake to his son, weeping, and saying, 'God be with thee, son William;' and William said, 'God be with you, good father, and be of good comfort, for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry.' His father said, 'I hope so, William,' and so departed. So William went to the place where the stake stood, even according to his dream, whereas all things were very unready. Then William took a wet broom faggot, and kneeled down thereon, and read the 51st psalm, till he came to these words, 'The sacrifice of God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and a broken heart, O God, thou wilt not despise....'

Then said the sheriff, 'Here is a letter from the queen: if thou wilt recant, thou shalt live; if not, thou shalt be burned.' 'No,' quoth William, 'I will not recant, God willing.' Then William rose, and went to the stake, and stood upright to it. Then came one Richard Pond, a bailiff, and made fast the chain about William.

Then said Master Brown, 'Here is not wood enough to burn a leg of him.' Then said William, 'Good people, pray for me; and make speed, and dispatch quickly; and pray for me while ye see me alive, good people, and I will pray for you likewise.' 'How?' quoth Master Brown, 'pray for thee? I will pray no more for thee than I will pray for a dog....'

Then there was a gentleman which said, 'I pray God have mercy upon his soul.' The people said, 'Amen, Amen.'

Immediately fire was made. Then William cast his psalter right into his brother's hand, who said, 'William, think on the holy Passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death.' And William answered, 'I am not afraid.' Then lift he up his hands to heaven, and said, 'Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit!' And casting down his head again into the smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of God.

361: Neal, History of the puritans, I, 69, 72.

362: Dépêche de Renard à Charles-Quint.

363: «Ô éloquente, juste et puissante mort! Celui que personne n'osait avertir, tu l'as persuadé. Ce que personne n'osait faire, tu l'as fait. Celui que tout le monde a flatté, toi seule tu l'as jeté hors du monde et méprisé. Ta as ramassé ensemble toute la grandeur si fort tendue, tout l'orgueil, la cruauté, l'ambition de l'homme, et couvert tout ensemble de ces deux mots étroits: Hic jacet.»

364: The Ecclesiastical policy, 1594. In-folio.

365: That which doth assign unto each thing the kinde, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term Law....

Now, if Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, though it were but for a while, the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the forme of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should losen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions; if the prince of the Light of Heaven, which now as a giant doth run his unwearied course, should, as it were, through a languishing sickness, begin to stand and to rest himself.... what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly, that obedience of Creature unto the law of Nature is the stay of the whole world?...

Between men and beasts there is no possibility of sociable communion, because the well-spring of that communion is a natural delight which man hath to transfuse from himself into others, and to receive from others into himself, specially those things wherein the excellency of this kinde doth most consist. The chiefest instrument of humane communion therefore is speech, because thereby we impart mutually one to another the conceits of our reasonable understanding. And for that cause, seeing beasts are not hereof capable, for so much as with them we can use no such conference, they being in degree, although above other creatures on earth to whom Nature has denied sense, yet lower than to be sociable companions of man to whom Nature has given reason: it is of Adam said, that among the beasts he found not for himself any meet companion. Civil society doth more content the nature of man than any private kind of solitary living, because in society this good of mutual participation is so much larger than otherwise. Herewith notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we covet (if it might be) to have a kind of society and fellowship, even with all mankind.

366: For if the natural thought of man's wit may by experience and studie attain into such ripeness in the knowledge of things humane, that men in this respect may presume to build somewhat upon their judgment, what reason have we to think but that, even in matters Divine, the like wits furnished with necessary helps, exercised in Scripture with like diligence, and assisted with the grace of Almighty God, may grow into a such perfection of knowledge that men shall have just cause, when any thing pertinent unto faith and religion is doubted of, the more willingly to incline their minds toward that which the sentence of so grave, wise, and learned in that faculty shall judge most sound? (Liv. II, p. 54.)

367: Voyez les Dialogues de Galilée; c'est la même idée qui, en même temps, est poursuivie à Rome par l'Église et défendue en Angleterre par l'Église.

368: For more comfort it were for us (so small is the joy we take in these strifes) to labor under the same yoke, as men that look for the same eternal reward of their labours, to be conjoined with you in bands of indissoluble love and amity, to live as if our persons being many, our souls were but one, rather than in such dismembered sort, to spend our few and wretched days in a tedious prosecuting of wearisome contentions.

369: Témoignage de Clarendon.

370: Voyez dans J. Taylor (Liberty of prophesying) les mêmes doctrines, 1647.

371: «I have learned from the ancient fathers of the Church that nothing is more against religion than to force religion.... If protestants did offer violence to other men's conscience and compell them to embrace their Reformation, I excuse them not.»

372: And what can we complain of the weakness of our strength or the pressure of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach, almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slacked by a greater pain and a huge fear? This man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchfull; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimensions; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him, but one that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he runs from all this misery. (Holy dying, sect. IV, chap. 3.)

373: I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

374: Apples of Sodom. We have already opened this dung-hill covered with snow, which was indeed on the outside white as the spots of leprosy, but it was not better, etc.

375: For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings, till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man.

376: «Lorsque Jésus-Christ est né, il a pleuré et crié comme un autre enfant. Marie a dû le soigner et veiller sur lui, l'allaiter, lui donner à manger, l'essuyer, le tenir, le porter, le coucher, etc., tout comme une mère fait pour son enfant. Ensuite il a été soumis à ses parents; il leur a souvent porté du pain, de la boisson et autres objets. Marie lui aura dit: «Mon petit Jésus, où as-tu été? Ne peux-tu donc pas rester tranquille?» Et lorsqu'il aura grandi, il aura aidé Joseph dans son état de charpentier.» (Tischreden.)

Paroles à Carlostad: «Tu crois apparemment que l'ivrogne Christ, ayant trop bu à souper, a étourdi ses disciples de paroles superflues.»

377: «The unknown country.»

378: Holy dying, chap. I, sect. i.

379: All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton, Time, throws up the earth, and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity. Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death; and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to all those months which we have already lived, and we shall never live them over again: and still God makes little periods of our age. First we change our world, when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun. Then we sleep and enter into the image of death in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world: and if our mothers, or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroys your vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but, during that state, are as disinterested as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us, representing a formal prologue to the tragedy; and still, every seven years it is odds but we shall finish the last scene: and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening some parts and loosening others, we taste the grave and the solemnities of our own funerals, first, in those parts that ministered to vice, and, next, in them that served for ornament; and, in a short time, even they that served for necessity become useless and entangled like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of death: and we have many more of the same signification—gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night, when we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits of a man pray upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue for one death, and lays up for another, and while we think a thought, we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of our nostrils—we have the less to live upon for every word we speak.

Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it; and God, by all the variety of his providence, makes us see death every where, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies, and the expectation of every single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two: and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and, all the summer long, men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till winter only, stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus, death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a dead man's bones.

380: Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced upon its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age: it bowed the head, and broke its stalk; and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and our beauty so changed that our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and that change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings, that they who, six hours ago, tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious services, cannot, without some regret, stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and honour. I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving way, that, after a few days' burial, they might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you as me; and then what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral?

381: Golden grove.

382: Eternal God, Almighty Father of thousand angels, by whose care and providence I am preserved and blessed, comforted and assisted, I humbly beg of thee to pardon the sins and follies of this day, the weakness of my services, and the strength of my passions, the rashness of my words, and the vanity and evil of my actions. O just and dear God, how long shall I confess my sins, and pray against them, and yet fall under them? O let it be so no more; let me never return to the follies of which I am ashamed, which bring sorrow and death, and thy displeasure, worse than death. Give me a command over my evil inclinations and a perfect hatred of sin, and a love to thee above all the desires of this world. Be pleased to bless and preserve me this night from all sin and violence of chance, and the malice of the spirits of darkness: watch over me in my sleep, and, whether I sleep or wake, let me be thy servant. Be thou first and last in all my thoughts and the guide and continual assistance of all my actions. Preserve my body, pardon the sin of my soul, and sanctify my spirit. Let me always live holily and justly and soberly; and, when I die, receive my soul into thy hands.

383: Voir le théâtre de Beaumont et Fletcher, les personnages de Bawder, Protalyce et Brunehaut dans Thierry et Théodoret.—Dans The custom of the country, plusieurs scènes représentent l'intérieur d'une maison de prostitution, chose fréquente du reste dans ce théâtre (Massinger, Shakspeare). Mais ici les pensionnaires de la maison sont des hommes.—Voyez aussi Rule a wife and have a wife.

384: Calvin, cité par Haag, II, 216, Histoire des dogmes chrétiens.

385: Ce sont les supralapsaires.

386: Traduction de Tyndal, 1549.

387: Interrogatoire de M. Axton, 1570. «Je ne puis consentir à porter ce surplis; c'est contre ma conscience. J'espère qu'avec l'aide de Dieu je ne mettrai jamais cette manche, qui est une marque de la bête.»—Interrogatoire de White, gros bourgeois de Londres, accusé de ne pas aller à son église paroissiale (1572): «Toutes les Écritures sont pour détruire l'idolâtrie et chaque chose qui s'y rapporte.—Quel est l'endroit où est cette défense?—Le Deutéronome et d'autres endroits; et Dieu par Isaïe nous commande de ne point nous souiller avec les vêtements de l'image, mais de les rejeter comme une impureté de femme.»

388: Préface de Tyndal.

389: Un mot revient sans cesse: Tenderness of conscience. A squeamish stomach.... Our weaker brethern, etc.

390: La séparation des anglicans et des dissidents peut être datée de 1564.

391: 1592.

392: Burton's Diary, I, 54, etc.

393: Guizot, Portraits politiques, 63. Voyez Carlyle, Cromwell's speeches and letters.

394: Cromwell's speeches and letters, by Carlyle.

395: Voyez ses discours. Le style est décousu, obscur, passionné, extraordinaire, comme d'un homme qui n'est pas maître de son cerveau, et qui, malgré cela, voit juste par une sorte d'intuition.

396: Carlyle, ib., I, 254.

397: Fox's Journal, 511, 543.

398: Burton's Diary, I, 54.—Neal, History of the Puritans (supplément, t. III).—Pictorial History, III, 813.

399: En anglais, classical.

400: Neal, II, 359.

401: Whitelocke's memorials, I, 68.

402: Neal, II, 155.

403: Comparer à notre Révolution: la Bastille démolie, on y mit l'écriteau suivant: «Ici l'on danse.» Dans ce contraste on voit en abrégé l'opposition des deux doctrines et des deux nations.

404: Neal, II, 552, 562, 571.

405: Baxter, 101.

406: Macaulay, History of England, I, 152.

407: «Le nommé John Denis est fouetté en public pour avoir chanté une chanson profane. La petite Mathias ayant donné des marrons rôtis à Jérémie Boosy, et lui ayant dit avec ironie qu'il les lui rendra en Paradis, criera trois fois grâce à l'église, et sera trois jours au pain et à l'eau en prison.» Massachussets, 1660-1670.

408: Neal, II, 384.

409: «Selon le sens ordinaire de l'Écriture, dit le major Disbrowne, presque tous commettent des blasphèmes, selon ce mot de notre Sauveur dans saint Marc: «Péché, blasphème;—si cela est, il n'y a personne sans blasphème. Ainsi furent accusés David et le fils d'Éli, selon le texte: «Tu as blasphémé et fait blasphémer les autres.»

410: Guizot, Portraits politiques.

411: Also I should, at these years, be greatly troubled with the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell-fire, still fearing that it would be my lot to be found at last among those devils and hellish fiends, who are there bound down with the chains and bonds of darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

These things, I say, when I was but a child but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul, that then, in the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often much cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith, yet could I not let go my sins. Yea, I was also then so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil, supposing they were only tormentors, that if it must needs be that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor than be tormented myself.

412: Another time, being in the field with my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway, so I, having a stick, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers, by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end.

413: But withal I was so overrun with the spirit of superstition, that I adored, and that with great devotion, even all things (both the high-place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else) belonging to the church; counting all things holy that were therein contained, and especially the priest and clerk most happy, and, without doubt, greatly blessed, because they were the servants, as I then thought, of God, and were principal in the holy temple, to do his work therein. This conceit grew so strong upon my spirit, that had I but seen a priest (though never so sordid and debauched in his life), I should find my spirit fall under him, reverence him, and knit unto him; yea, I thought for the love I did bear unto them (supposing they were the ministers of God), I could have laid down at their feet, and have been trampled upon by them—their name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.

414: Now you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered; wherefore I would go to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion neither; yet I forced myself and would look on still. But quickly after, I began to think, 'How, if one of the bells should fall?' Then I chose to stand under a main beam that lay over-thwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple-door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any farther than the steeple-door; but then it came into my head, 'How, if the steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my head.

415: In these days, when I have heard others talk of what was the sin against the Holy Ghost, then would the tempter so provoke me to desire to sin that sin, that I was as if I could not, must not, neither should be quiet until I had committed it; now no sin would serve but that: if it were to be committed by speaking of such a word, then I have been as if my mouth would have spoken that word whether I would or no; and in so strong a measure was the temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hands under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; at other times, to leap with my head downward into some muck-hill hole, to keep my mouth from speaking.

416: But hold, it lasted not, for before I had well dined, the trouble began to go off my mind, and my heart returned to its old course; but oh, how glad was I that this trouble was gone from me, and that the fire was put out, that I might sin again without control! Wherefore, when I had satisfied nature with my food, I shook the sermon out of my mind, and to my old custom of sports and gaming I returned with great delight.

But the same day, as I was in the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looked down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and other ungodly practices.

417: At this reproof I was silenced, and put to secret shame, and that, too, as I thought, before the God of heaven; wherefore, while I stood there, hanging down my head, I wished that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so accustomed to it, that it is in vain to think of a reformation, for that could never be. But how it came to pass I know not, I did from this time forward so leave my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it; and whereas before I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before, and another behind, to make my words have authority, now I could without it speak better, and with more pleasantness, than ever I could before.

418: Voici l'abrégé des événements: Du haut du ciel, une voix a crié vengeance contre la cité de la Destruction où vit un pécheur nommé Chrétien. Effrayé, il se lève parmi les railleries de ses voisins et part pour n'être point dévoré par le feu qui consumera les criminels. Un homme secourable, Évangéliste, lui montre le droit chemin. Un homme perfide, Sagesse-Mondaine, essaye de l'en détourner. Son camarade Maniable, qui l'avait d'abord suivi, s'embourbe dans le marais du Découragement et le quitte. Pour lui, il avance bravement à travers l'eau trouble et la boue glissante, et parvient à la porte étroite, où un sage interprète l'instruit par des spectacles sensibles et lui indique la voie de la cité céleste. Il passe devant une croix et le lourd fardeau des péchés qu'il portait à ses épaules se détache et tombe. Il grimpe péniblement la colline escarpée de la Difficulté, et parvient dans un superbe château, où Vigilant, le gardien, le remet aux mains de ses sages filles, Piété, Prudence, qui l'avertissent et l'arment contre les monstres d'enfer. Il trouve la route barrée par un de ces démons, Apollyon, qui lui ordonne d'abjurer l'obéissance du roi Céleste. Après un long combat, il le tue. Cependant la route se rétrécit, les ombres tombent plus épaisses, les flammes sulfureuses montent le long du chemin: c'est la vallée de l'Ombre de la Mort. Il la franchit, et arrive dans la ville de la Vanité, foire immense de trafics, de dissimulations et de comédies, où il passe les yeux baissés sans vouloir prendre part aux fêtes ni aux mensonges. Les gens du lieu le chargent de coups, le jettent en prison, le condamnent comme traître et révolté, brûlent son compagnon Fidèle. Échappé de leurs mains, il tombe dans celles d'un Géant, Désespoir, qui le meurtrit, le laisse sans pain dans un cachot infect, et, lui présentant des poignards et des cordes, l'exhorte à se délivrer de tant de malheurs. Il parvient enfin sur les montagnes Heureuses, d'où il aperçoit la divine cité. Pour y entrer, il ne reste à franchir qu'un courant profond où l'on perd pied, où l'eau trouble la vue, et qu'on appelle la rivière de la Mort.

419: I saw then in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch. That ditch is it into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold on the left hand, there was a very dangerous quagg into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on....

The pathway was here also exceedingly narrow, and therefore good Christian was the more put to it: for when he sought in the dark to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to top over into the mire on the other; also, when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch. Then he went on, and I heard him here sigh bitterly: for, besides the danger mentioned above, the pathway was here so dark, that often times when he lift up his foot to set forward, he knew not where or upon what he should set it next.

About the midst of this valley, I perceived the mouth of Hell to be; and it stood also hard by the way-side. Now, thought Christian, what shall I do? And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises, that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon called All-prayer: so he cried in my hearing: «O Lord, I beseech thee; deliver my soul!»—Thus he went a great while. Yet still the flame would be reaching toward him; also he heard doleful voices, and rushing to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he would be torn in pieces, or trodden down like mire in the street....

420: Then the water stood in my eyes, and I asked further: But Lord, may such a great sinner as I am be indeed accepted of thee, and be saved by thee? And I heard him say: And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.... And now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and mine affections running over with love to the name, people, and ways of Jesus Christ....

It made me see that all the world, notwithstanding all the righteousness thereof, is in a state of condemnation. It made me see that God the Father, though he be just, can justly justifie the coming sinner. It made me greatly ashamed of the vileness of my former life, and confounded me with the sense of my own ignorance; for there never came thought into my heart before now that shewed me so the beauty of Jesus Christ. It made me love an holy life, and long to do something for the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus. Yea, I thought, that had I now a thousand gallons of blood in my body, I could spill it all for the sake of the Lord Jesus.

421: Then the interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a very large parlour that was full of dust, because never swept; the which, after he had reviewed a little while, the interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choked. Then said the interpreter to a damsel that stood by: Bring hither water and sprinkle the room; the which when she had done, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure.

Then said Christian: What means this?

The interpreter answered: This parlour is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel—the dust is his original sin, and inward corruptions, that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first is the Law; but she that brought that water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now, whereas thou sawest that, so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about, that the room by him could not be cleansed; but that thou wast almost choked therewith,—this is to show thee that the Law, instead of cleansing the heart, by its working, from sin, doth revive, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue it.

Again, as thou sawest the damsel sprinkle the room with water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure,—this is to show thee that when the Gospel comes in and the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart, then, I say, even as thou sawest the damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of Glory to inhabit.

422: Voici une autre de ces allégories, presque spirituelle, tant elle est juste et simple.

Now, I saw in my dream that at the end of this valley lay blood, bones, ashes, and mingled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly. And while I was musing what would be the reason, I espied a little before me a cave where two giants, Pope and Pagan, dwelt in old times, by whose power and tyranny the men whose bones, blood, ashes, etc., lay there, were cruelly put to death. But by this place Christian went without much danger, whereat I somewhat wondered. But I have learned since that Pagan has been dead many a day; and as for the other, though he yet be alive, he is, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he has met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pilgrims as they go by, and biting his nails, because he cannot come at them.

423: Par exemple, l'œuvre de Hollar, Cités d'Allemagne.

424: Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence: so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning, he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste: then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or turn upon the floor.

425: Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day.... Here they were within sight of the city they were going to; also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof: for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven.... Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, 'Say ye to the daughter of Zion, behold thy salvation cometh! Behold, his reward is with him!' Here all the inhabitants of the country called them 'The holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out.'

Now, as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and drawing nearer to the city yet, they had a more perfect view thereof: it was built of pearls and precious stones, also the streets thereof were paved with gold; so that, by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflexion of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease: wherefore here they lay by it awhile, crying out, because of their pangs, 'If you see my Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.'

426: They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the foundation upon which the city was framed was higher than the clouds; they therefore went up through the region of the air, sweetly talking as they went, being comforted because they got safely over the river, and had such glorious companions to attend them.

The talk that they had with the shining ones was about the glory of the place; who told them, that the beauty and glory of it was inexpressible. There, said they, is 'Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect.' You are going now, said they, to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall see the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof; and when you come there, you shall have white robes given you, and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days of eternity.

427: There came also out at this time to meet them several of the king's trumpeters, clothed in white and shining raiment, who, with melodious and loud noises, made even the heavens to echo with their sound. These trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the world; and this they did with shouting and sound of trumpet.

This done, they compassed them round about on every side; some went before, some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as it were to guard them through the upper regions), continually sounding as they went, with melodious noise, in notes on high; so that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if Heaven itself was come down to meet them.

428: And now were these two men, as it were, in Heaven, before they came at it, being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing their melodious notes. Here, also, they had the city itself in view, and thought they heard all the bells therein to ring, to welcome them thereto. But, above all, the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there with such company, and that for ever and ever. Oh! by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed!

429: Now, I saw in my dream that these two men went in at the gate; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also that met them with harps and crowns, and gave to them the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, 'Enter ye into the joy of your Lord.' I also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, 'Blessing, honour, and glory, and power be to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever.'

Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold the city shone like the sun; the streets, also, were paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps, to sing praises withal.

There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord.' And after that they shut up the gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself among them.

430: Life by Keightley. «Matre probatissima et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota.» (Defensio secunda.)

431: Life by Masson. «My father destined me while yet a child to the study of polite literature.»

432: La reine Élisabeth.

433: Paradise Regained.

434: Voyez aussi les sonnets italiens et leur sentiment si religieux.

435: Apology for Smectymnus.

436: Above them all, (I) preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after, that I was confirmed in this opinion that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem; that is a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy. (Apology for Smectymnus.)

These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-esteem.... kept me still above those low descents of mind, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself that can agree to saleable and unlawful prostitution. (Ibid.)

437: I argued to myself that, if unchastity in a woman, whom St. Paul terms the glory of man, be such a scandal and dishonour, then certainly in a man, who is both the image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more deflouring and dishonourable. (Ibid.)

Only this my mind gave me that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight. (Ibid.)

438: Voyez passim son Traité du Divorce, qui est transparent.

439: «Quand même je n'aurais eu qu'une faible teinture du christianisme, une certaine réserve naturelle d'humeur et la discipline morale enseignée par la plus noble philosophie eussent suffi pour m'inspirer le dédain des incontinences.» (Apologie pour Smectymnus.)

440: Mot de Jean-Paul Richter. Voir un excellent article sur Milton, National Review, July, 1859.

441: 1643, à trente-cinq ans.

442: Mute and spiritless mate.

«The bashful muteness of the virgin may oftentimes hide all the unloveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation.

«A man shall find himself bound fast to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet and delightsome society.» (Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.)

Une jolie femme dira en revanche: «Je n'aime pas un homme qui porte sa tête comme un saint sacrement.»

443: Undutiful and unkind.

444: 1641. Of Reformation in England and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it.

A treatise of Prelatical Episcopacy. The Reasons of church Government urged against Episcopacy. Apology for Smectymnus.

445: The tenure of Kings and Magistrates.

Iconoclastes: Defensio Populi Anglicani; Defensio secunda. Authoris pro se defensio. Responsio.

446: Cette défense est écrite en latin:

«Les deux plus grandes pestes de la vie humaine et les plus hostiles à la vertu, la tyrannie et la superstition, Dieu vous en a affranchis les premiers des hommes; il vous a inspiré assez de grandeur d'âme pour juger d'un jugement illustre votre roi prisonnier vaincu par vos armes, pour le condamner et le punir, vous les premiers des mortels. Après une action si glorieuse, vous ne devez penser ni faire rien de bas ni de petit, rien qui ne soit grand et élevé. Pour atteindre cette gloire, la seule voie est de montrer que, comme vous avez vaincu vos ennemis par la guerre, de même vous pouvez dans la paix, plus courageusement que tous les autres hommes, abattre l'ambition, l'avarice, le luxe, tous les vices qui corrompent la fortune prospère et tiennent subjugués le reste des mortels,—et que vous avez pour conserver la liberté autant de modération, de tempérance et de justice que vous avez eu de valeur pour repousser la servitude.»

447: The Reformation, 272.

448: A ready and easy way to establish a free commonwealth.

449: He who had the art and proper eloquence.... might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage.... infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardor, as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men.

450: Un scrivener lui fit perdre une somme de 2000 liv. sterl.

La Restauration refusa de lui payer 2000 liv. sterl. qu'il avait placées sur l'Excise-Office, et lui reprit une terre de 50 liv. par an, achetée par lui sur les biens du chapitre de Westminster.

Sa maison fut brûlée dans le grand feu de Londres.

Quand il mourut, il ne laissa en tout que 1500 liv., y compris le produit de sa bibliothèque.

451: 1554, 22^e sonnet.

452:

Cyriac, this three years day, those eyes, tho' clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of sight, their seeing have forgot, Nor to their idle orbs does day appear, Or sun, or moon, or stars throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will; nor bate one jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer Right onwards. What supports me, dost thou ask? The conscience, friend, t'have lost them overply'd In Liberty's defence, my noble task, Whereof all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through this world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no other guide.

(Sonnet XIX.)

But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts.... Thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest. They also serve who only stand and wait.

(Sonnet XX.)

453: Sonnets italiens, VI, 4.

454: Voici les titres des principaux écrits en prose de Milton: History of Reformation,—the Reason of Church government urged against prelacy,—Animadversions upon the remonstrant,—Doctrine and discipline of Divorce,—Tetrachordon,—Tractate of Education,—Areopagitica,—Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,—Iconoclastes,—History of Britain,—Thesaurus linguæ latinæ,—History of Moscovy,—de Logicæ Arte, etc.

455: Professor triobolaris.

456: Saumaise disait de la mort du roi: «Horribilis nuntius aures nostras atroci vulnere, sed magis mentes perculit.»—Milton répond: «Profecto nuntius iste horribilis aut gladium multo longiorem eo quem strinxit Petrus habuerit oportet, aut aures istæ auritissimæ fuerint, quas tam longinquo vulnere perculerit.»

—«Oratorem tam insipidum et insulsum ut ne ex lacrymis quidem ejus mica salis exiguissima possit exprimi.»

«Salmasius nova quadam metamorphosi salmacis factus est.»

457: Je transcris un de ces griefs et une de ces plaintes. Le lecteur jugera par la grandeur des outrages de la grandeur des ressentiments:

«L'humble pétition du docteur Alexandre Leighton, prisonnier dans la Flotte.

«Il remontre humblement:

«Que le 17 février 1630 il fut appréhendé, revenant du sermon, par un mandat de la haute commission, et traîné le long des rues avec des haches et des bâtons jusqu'à la prison de Londres.—Que le geôlier de Newgate, étant appelé, lui mit les fers et l'emmena de haute force dans un trou à chien, infect et tombant en ruine, plein de rats et de souris, n'ayant de jour que par un petit grillage, le toit étant effondré, de sorte que la pluie et la neige battaient sur lui; n'ayant point de lit, ni de place pour faire du feu, hormis les ruines d'une vieille cheminée qui fumait: dans ce lamentable endroit, il fut enfermé environ quinze semaines, personne n'ayant permission de venir le voir, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin sa femme seule fut admise.—Que le quatrième jour après son emprisonnement, le poursuivant, avec une grande multitude, vint dans sa maison pour chercher des livres de jésuites, et traita sa femme d'une façon si barbare et si inhumaine qu'il a honte de la raconter, qu'ils dépouillèrent toutes les chambres et toutes les personnes, portant un pistolet sur la poitrine d'un enfant de cinq ans et le menaçant de le tuer s'il ne découvrait les livres....—Que pour lui il fut malade, et, dans l'opinion de quatre médecins, empoisonné, parce que tous ses cheveux et sa peau tombèrent.—Qu'au plus fort de cette maladie la cruelle sentence fut prononcée contre lui et exécutée le 26 novembre, où il reçut sur son dos nu trente-six coups d'une corde à trois brins, ses mains étant liées à un poteau.—Qu'il fut debout près de deux heures au pilori par le froid et par la neige, puis marqué d'un fer rouge au visage, le nez fendu et les oreilles coupées. Qu'après cela il fut emmené par eau à la Flotte et enfermé dans une chambre telle qu'il y fut toujours malade et au bout de huit ans jeté dans la prison commune.» Il avait soixante-douze ans.

(Neal, History of the Puritans, II, 19.)

458: Réponse au Portrait royal, ouvrage attribué au roi, en faveur du roi.

459: The sour leaven of human traditions mixed in one putrified mass with the poisonous dregs of hypocrisie in the heart of Prelates that lie basking in the sunny warmth of wealth and promotion, is the serpent's egg that will hatch an antechrist wheresoever, and ingender the same monster as big or little as the lump is which breeds him (p. 268).

460: Of Reformation in England.

461: The loss of Cicero's works alone, or those of Livy could not be repaired by all the fathers of the church. (Areopagitica.)

462: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.

463: Dans son Areopagitica.

464: What advantage is it to be a man, over it is to be a boy at school, if we have only escaped the ferula, to come under the fescue of an imprimatur? if serious and elaborate writings, as if they were no more than the theme of a grammar-lad under his pedagogue, must not be uttered without the cursory eyes of a temporizing and extemporizing licenser? He who is not trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evil, and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great arguments to think himself reputed in the commonwealth wherein he was born for other than a fool or a foreigner. When a man writes to the world, he summons up all his reason and deliberation to assist him; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends; after all which done, he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that wrote before him; if in this, the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his midnight watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guardian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.

465: Yet these are the men cryed out against for schismatick and sectaries, as if while the temple of the Lord was building, some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united in a continuity, it can be but contiguous in this world; nay, rather, the perfection consists in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportionnal, arises the goodly and graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure.

466: Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansionhouse, of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war has not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas, wherewith to present with their homage and fealty the approaching Reformation. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies?

467: Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

468: Le mot anglais est plus vrai et plus frappant: peasantly regard.

469: If in less noble and almost mechanick arts he is not esteemed to deserve the name of a compleat architect, an excellent painter, or the like, that bears not a generous mind above the peasantly regard of wages and hire, much more must we think him a most imperfect and incompleat Divine, who is so far from being a contemner of filthy lucre, that his whole Divinity is moulded and bred up in the beggarly and brutish hopes of a fat prebendary, deanery, or bishoprick.

470: In this manner the Prelats coming from a mean and plebeian life, on a sudden, to be lords of stately palaces, rich furniture, delicious fare, and princely attendance, thought the plain and home-spun verity of Christ's gospel unfit any longer to hold their Lordship's acquaintance, unless the poor thread-bare matron were put into better clothes; her chast and modest veil surrounded with celestial beams, they overlaid with wanton tresses, and in a flaring attire bespeckled her with all the gaudy allurements of a whore.

471: What greater debasement can there be to Royal dignity, whose towering and stedfast heights rest upon the immovable foundations of justice and heroic virtue, than to chain it, in a dependance of subsisting or ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness of prelatry, which wants but one puff of the king to blow them down like a paste-board house built of court cards.

C'est au commencement de la guerre civile que Milton écrivait cela: il n'était pas encore républicain.

472:.... As if they could make God earthly and fleshy, because they could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual, they began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily form.... They hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocence, but of pure linnen, with other deformed and fantastick dresses, in palls and mitres, and guegaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the Flamin's vestry. Then was the priest set to con his motions and his postures, his Liturgies and his Lurries, till the soul by these means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshy delights, bated her wing apace downward; and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous collegue the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high-soaring any more, forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and drailing carcase to plod on the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity. (Of Reformation in England.)

473: I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered, unexercised and unbreathed virtue, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. (P. 429.)

474: He never left baiting and goring the successor of his best Lord Constantine by his barking curses and excommunications. (P. 264.)

475: No envious Juno sat cross-legged over the nativity of any man's intellectual offspring. (P. 427.)

476: Whatsoever either time or the heedless hand of blind chance has drawn down to this present in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells, or shrubs, unpick'd, unchosen, those are the Fathers. (On Prelatical Episcopacy.)

477: For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a kind of martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal and soft essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life.

478: The Council of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendering together brought forth or perfected those catalogues, and expurging Indexes that rake through the entrails of many an old good author with a violation worse than any that could be offered to his tomb. (P. 426.)

479: A man may be an heretic in the truth if he believes things only because his pastor says so.... The very truth he holds becomes his heresie.... A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds religion to be a traffic so entangled and of so many piddling accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon his trade.... What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toyling and to find himself out some factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs? Some Divine of note, and estimation that must be. To him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, with all the locks and keys, in his custody; and indeed makes the person of this man his religion. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual moveable, and goes and comes near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supt, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and, after the malmsey, or some well-spiced beverage, and better breakfasted, his religion walks abroad at night, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion.

480: Quand il est simplement comique, il arrive comme Swift et Hogarth à la bizarrerie rude et drolatique: «A bishop's foot that has all his toes (maugre the gout) and a linen sock over it, is the aptest emblem of the prelat himself; who being a pluralist may, under one surplice, hide four benefices, besides that great metropolitan toe.»

481: The table of communion now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with a bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramental bread, as familiar as his tavern bisket.

482: They shall be thrown eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful controul, the trample and spurn of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercice a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodded vassals of perdition.

483: When I recall to mind, at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of Error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful Reformation, by Divine power, strook through the black and settled night of ignorance and Anti-Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven.

484: Thou, therefore, that sitst in light and glory inapprochable, Parent of Angels and Men! Next, Thee I implore, Omnipotent King, redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume, ineffable and everlasting Love! and Thou, the third substance of Divine infinitude, illuminating Spirit; the joy and solace of created thing! look upon this Thy poor and almost spent, and expiring Church.... O let them not bring about their damned designs,... to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of the morning sing....

485: O Thou the ever-begotten light, and perfect image of thy Father,... who is there that cannot trace Thee now in Thy beamy walke through the midst of Thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness among us, through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken with the mention of their gold than of their starry light? Come, therefore, O Thou that hast the seven starres in Thy right hand, appoint Thy chosen priests, according to their orders and courses of old, to minister before Thee, and duely to dresse and poure out the consecrated oil into Thy holy and everburning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon Thy servants over all the land to this effect, and stirred up their vowes as the sound of many waters about Thy throne.... O perfect and accomplish Thy glorious acts.... Come forth out of Thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the Earth; put ou the visible robes of Thy imperial majesty; take up that unlimited scepter which Thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed Thee; for now the voice of Thy bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.

486: Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original.

487: Voyez l'hymne sur la Nativité, entre autres les premières strophes. Voyez aussi Lycidas.

488:

And ye, the breathing roses of the wood, Fair silver-buskin'd nymphs.... They left us, when the grey-hooded Even, Like a sad votarist in a palmer's weed, Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus's wain.... .... In the violet-embroidered vales.... .... Flowery-kirtled naiades....

All the sea-girt isles, That like to rich and various gems, inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep....

489: At a solemn music. Lycidas.

That undisturbed song of pure concent, Ay sung before the saphir-color'd throne, To him that sit thereon, With saintly shout and solemn jubilee, Where the bright seraphim, in burning row, Their loud-uplifted angel-trumpets blow.

490: Lycidas.

491:

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks, On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks, Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes, That on the green turf suck the honey'd show'rs, And purple all the ground with vernal flow'rs. Bring the rath primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, The white-pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd wood-bine With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And ev'ry flow'r that sad embroid'ry wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.

492: Faust, Prolog im Himmel.

493: Voyez dans Lycidas la prophétie contre l'archevêque Laud:

But that two-handed engin at the door, Stands ready to smite once and smite no more.

494: Arcades.

495:

But else in deep of night, when drowsiness Hath locked up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens' harmony, That sit upon the nine infolded spheres, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the adamantin spindle round, On which the fate of gods and man is wound; Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie, To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measured motion draw After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Of human mold with gross unpurged ear.

496: These abilities, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ. (Reason of Church government.)

497:

And in thy right-hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty: And, if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew, To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free.... To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-brier, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine: While the ploughman near at hand Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, And the milk-maid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And ev'ry shepherd tells his tale, Under the hawthorn in the dale.... Sometimes, with secure delight, The upland hamlets will invite, When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid, Dancing in the chequer'd shade; And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday.... Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold... And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out? With wanton heed, and giddy cunning, The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.

498: Il Penseroso.

499:

Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain, Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypress-lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Come, but keep thy wonted state, With even step, and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.... Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the earth, Or the bellman's drowsy charm, To bless the doors from nightly harm. Or let my lamp, at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tow'r, Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, With thrice-great Hermes; or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions, hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook. Me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallow'd haunt. There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from the day garish light. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale; And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voic'd quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstacies, And bring all heav'n before mine eyes.

500:

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court My mansion is, where those immortal shapes Of bright aereal spirits live insphered In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care Confin'd, and pestered in this pin-fold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives After this mortal change, to her true servants Amongst the enthron'd gods on sainted seats.

The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.

501:

At last a soft and solemn breathing sound Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, And stole upon the air.

O welcome pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hov'ring angel, girt with golden wings, And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity! I see ye visibly, and now believe That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, Would send a glist'ring guardian, if need were, To keep my life and honour unassail'd. Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night? I did not err; there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

502:

Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast, And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence: How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty vaulted night, At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness, till it smil'd! I have oft heard My mother Circe, with the Syrens three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs and baleful drugs, Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul And lap it in Elysium: Scylla wept, And chid her barking waves into attention. And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause. Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense, And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself; But such a sacred and home-felt delight, Such sober certainty of waking bliss, I never heard till now.

503:

But when lust, By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies and imbrutes till she quite lose The divine property of her first being; Such are these thick and gloomy shadows damp Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, As loathe to leave the body that it loved.

504:

To the ocean now I fly, And those happy climes that lie Where day never shuts his eye, Up in the broad fields of the sky: There I suck the liquid air All amidst the gardens fair Of Hesperus and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree: Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund spring; The Graces, and the rosy-bosom'd Hours Thither all their bounties bring; There eternal summer dwells, And west-winds, with musky wing, About the cedar'n alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with humid bow Waters the odorous banks, that blow Flowers of more mingled hue Than her purfled scarf can shew; And drenches with Elysian dew (List, mortals, if your ears be true) Beds of hyacinth and roses, Where young Adonis oft reposes, Waxing well of his deep wound In slumber soft, and on the ground Sadly sits the Assyrian queen: But far above in spangled sheen Celestial Cupid, her fam'd son, advanc'd, Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranc'd After her wandering labours long, Till free consent the gods among Make her his eternal bride, And from her fair unspotted side Two blissful twins are to be born, Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn. But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run, Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend; And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue; she alone is free: She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.

505: Edward King, 1637.

506:

"And from that time see, How beauty is excell'd by manly grace, And wisdom, which alone is truly fair." So spoke our general mother, and with eyes Of conjugal attraction unreproved, And meek surrender, half-embracing lean'd On our first father; half her swelling breast Naked met his, under the flowing gold Of his loose tresses hid; he in delight Both of her beauty and submissive charms Smiled with superior love.... And press'd her matron lip With kisses pure.

(Liv. IV.)

507:

Fair consort, the hour Of night and all things now retired to rest Mind us of like repose; since God hath set Labour and rest, as day and night, to men Successive; and the timely dew of sleep, Now falling with soft slumbrous weight, inclines Our eyelids. Other creatures all day long Rove idle, unemployed, and less need rest. Man hath his daily work of body or mind Appointed, which declares his dignity And the regard of Heaven on all his ways, While other animals inactive range, And of their doings God takes no account.

(Ibid.)

508: Impossible qu'un homme si docte, si raisonneur, s'emploie pour toute occupation à jardiner, à arranger des bouquets.

509:

Know that in the soul Are many lesser faculties, that serve Reason as chief; among these Fancy next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful senses represent, She forms imaginations, aery shapes, Which Reason joining or disjoining, frames All what we affirm or we deny, and call Our knowledge and opinion.... Oft in her absence, mimic Fancy wakes To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes, Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams, Ill matching words and deeds long past or late. Yet be not sad. Evil into the mind of God or man May come and go, so unapproved, and leave No spot or blame behind.

(Liv. V.)

510:

Go with speed, And what thy stores contain bring forth and pour Abundance, fit to honour and receive Our heavenly stranger.

511:

He Beholding shall confess, that here on Earth God has dispensed his bounties as in Heaven.... What choice to choose for delicacy best, What order so contrived as not to mix Tastes not well join'd, inelegant, but bring Taste after taste upheld with kindliest change? .... For drink the grape She crushes, inoffensive must, and meaths From many a berry, and from sweet kernels press'd She tempers dulcet creams.

512:

Adam.... walks forth, without more train Accompanied than with his own complete Perfection, in himself was all his state....

513:

No fear lest dinner cool.... So down they sat, And to their viands fell; not seemingly The Angel, nor in mist, the common glose Of theologians, but with keen dispatch Of real hunger, and concoctive heat To transsubstantiate. What redounds transpires Through spirits, with ease....

514:

So spake our Sire, and by his countenance seem'd Entering on studious thought abstruse; which Eve Perceiving, where she sat retired in sight, With lowliness majestic from her seat, And grace that won who saw to wish her stay, Rose, and went forth among her fruits and flowers.... Her nursery.... Her husband the relater she preferr'd.... «But apt the mind or fancy is to rove Unchecked, and of her roving is no end, Till warn'd or by experience taught, she learn That, not to know at large of things remote From us, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom. What is more is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us, in things that most concern, Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek.»

(Liv. VIII.)

515:

Nothing lovelier can be found, In woman, as to study household good, And good works in her husband to promote.

(Liv. IX.)

516:

His forbidding Commends thee more, while it infers the good By thee communicated and our want; For good unknown is sure not had; or, had, And yet unknown, is as not had at all.... Such prohibitions bind not.

(Liv. IX.)

517:

I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Such I created all the etherial powers And spirits, both them who stood and them who fail'd.... Not free, what proof would had they given sincere Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love, Where only what they needs must do appeared, Not what they would? What praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, When will and reason (reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd, Made passive both, had served necessity, Not me? They therefore, as to right belong'd, So were created, nor can justly accuse Their Maker, or their making, or their fate, As if predestination over-ruled Their will disposed by absolute decree Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed Their own revolt, not I. If I foreknew, Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Who had no less proved certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of fate, Or aught by me immutably foreseen, They trespass, authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and choose.

(Liv. III.)

518: Fin du deuxième Faust.—Prologue dans le ciel.

519:

This let him know, Lest, wilfully transgressing, he pretend Surprisal, unadmonish'd, unforewarn'd.

(Liv. V.)

520:

But us he sends upon his high behests For state, as sovran king; and to inure Our prompt obedience.... Glad we return'd up to the coasts of light Ere Sabbath-evening. So we had in charge.

(Liv. VIII.)

521:

Those who Melodious hymns, about the sovran throne, Alternate all night long.

522: Cela fait penser à l'histoire d'Irax, dans Voltaire, condamné à souffrir sans trêve et sans fin les éloges de quatre chambellans, et cette cantate:

Que son mérite est extrême! Que de grâces, que de grandeur! Ah! combien monseigneur Doit être content de lui-même!

523:

Ten thousand thousand ensigns high advanced,... And for distinction serve Of hierarchies, of order, and degree, Or in their glittering tissues bear emblazed Holy memorials, acts of zeal and love Recorded eminent..... To him shall bow All knees in Heaven; him who disobeys Me disobeys.... All seem'd well pleased; all seem'd, but were not all. That day, as other solemn days, they spent In song and dance about the sacred hill.... Forthwith from dance to sweet repast they turn Desirous; all in circles as they stood Tables are set.

(Liv. V.)

524: Dieu est si bien rabaissé jusqu'à la condition de roi et d'homme, qu'il dit (à la vérité ironiquement) des vers comme ceux-ci:

«Lest unawary we lose This place, our sanctuary, our hill.»

Son fils, un jeune chevalier qui va faire ses premières armes, lui répond:

If I be found the worst in heaven, etc.

525:

O argument blasphemous, and proud.

526:

Vanguard, to right and left the front unfold.... Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, Of hard contents, and full of force urged home.... Who receives them right Has need from head to foot well understand.

(Liv. VI.)

527: Par exemple celle de Raphaël aux portes de l'enfer. Il s'ennuya fort, et fut «très-joyeux» de revenir au ciel.

528: Quand Raphaël descend sur la terre, les anges qui montent la garde autour du paradis lui présentent les armes.

Le trait désagréable et marquant de ce paradis, c'est que le moteur universel y est l'obéissance, tandis que chez Dante c'est l'amour.

Lowly reverent They bow.... Our happy state Hold, like yours, while our obedience holds.

529:

In this the region, this the soil, the clime, Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat That we must change for Heav'n? this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is sov'reign can dispose and bid What shall be right; farthest from him is best; Whom reason has equall'd, force has made supreme Above his equals.—Farewell, happy fields, Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors, hail! Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell, Receive thy new possessor! one who brings A mind not to be chang'd by place or time: The mind is its own place; and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same? And what I should be, all but less than He Whom thunder has made greater? Here, at least, We shall be free; th'Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

530:

The inconquerable will And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not to be overcome: That glory never shall his wrath or might Extort from me.

(Liv. I.)

531:

He views The dismal situation waste and wild: A dungeon terrible on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed: yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades.... «Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, The seat of desolation, void of light, Save what the glimmering of these livid flames Cast pale and dreadful?»

(Liv. I.)

Beyond this flood a frozen continent Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms, Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems Of ancient pile.

(Liv. II.)

As when Heaven's fire Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath.

(Liv. I.)

532:

In bulk as huge.... As that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

(Liv. I.)

533:

At least appear Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates: three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed.—Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape. The one seem'd a woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast: a serpent arm'd With mortal sting. About her middle round A cry of Hell-hounds never ceasing bark'd With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb, And kennel there: yet there still bark'd and howl'd, Within, unseen.... The other shape, If shape it might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint or limb; Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd, For each seem'd either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The monster moving onward came as fast With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode. The undaunted Fiend what this might be admired, Admired, not fear'd.

(Liv. II.)

534:

On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild, Up from the bottom turn'd by tempestuous winds And surging waves, as mountains, to assault Heaven's height and with the centre mix the pole. "Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou, Deep, peace," Said then the omnific word; "your discord end!".... .... Let there be light, said God, and forthwith Light Etherial, first of things, quintessence pure, Sprung from the deep; and from her native East To journey through the very gloom began, Sphered in a radiant cloud.... The Earth was form'd; but in the womb as yet Of waters, embryon immature involved, Appear'd not: over al the faces of Earth Main Ocean flow'd, not idle; but, with warm Prolific humour softening all her globe, Fermented the great mother to conceive, Satiate with genial moisture; when God said: "Be gather'd now, ye water under Heaven, "Into one place, and let dry land appear." Immediately the mountains huge appear Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky. So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep Capacious bed of waters. Thither they Hasted with glad precipitance, unroll'd, As drops on dust conglobing from the dry.

535:

The sun now fallen.... Arraying with reflected purple and gold The clouds that on his western throne attend. Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied: for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleas'd: now glow'd the firmament With living sapphires; Hesperus that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.