"Show me the way," cries Arbaces to his supposed mother, and thinking of heredity, "to the inheritance I have by thee, which is a spacious world Of impious acts." And Amintor warns Evadne: "Let it not rise up for thy shame and mine To after-ages.... We will adopt us sons; The virtue shall inherit and not blood." "May all ages," prays the lascivious Bacha in Cupid's Revenge, "May all ages,"—
That shall succeed curse you as I do! and
If it be possible, I ask it, Heaven,
That your base issues may be ever monstrous,
That must for shame of nature and succession,
Be drowned like dogs!
So, passim, in Beaumont—'lasting to ages in the memory of this damnèd act'; 'a great example of their justice to all ensuing ages.'
FOOTNOTES:
[178] Elegy on the Countess of Rutland.
[179] I cannot understand how so careful a scholar as Professor Schelling (Engl. Lit. during Lifetime of Shakesp., 207) can attribute to him, from the hopelessly uncritical collection of Blaiklock, the poem entitled The Indifferent, and argue therefrom his "cynicism" concerning the constancy of woman.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS