I'll glew my ears to every word.
]
Queen. Would I had heard, at the still noon of night,
The hallalloo of fire in every street!
Odsbobs! I have a mind to hang myself,
To think I should a grandmother be made
By such a rascal!—Sure the king forgets
When in a pudding, by his mother put,
The bastard, by a tinker, on a stile
Was dropp'd.—O, good lord Grizzle! can I bear
To see him from a pudding mount the throne?
Or can, oh can, my Huncamunca bear
To take a pudding's offspring to her arms?
Griz. Oh horror! horror! horror! cease, my queen, [1] Thy voice, like twenty screech-owls, wracks my brain.
[Footnote 1: Screech-owls, dark ravens, and amphibious monsters, Are screaming in that voice.—Mary Queen of Scots. ]
Queen. Then rouse thy spirit—we may yet prevent This hated match.
Griz.—We will[1]; nor fate itself,
Should it conspire with Thomas Thumb, should cause it.
I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll roar;
Fierce as the man whom[2] smiling dolphins bore
From the prosaick to poetick shore.
I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.
[Footnote 1: The reader may see all the beauties of this speech in a late ode called the Naval Lyrick.]
[Footnote 2: This epithet to a dolphin doth not give one so clear an idea as were to be wished; a smiling fish seeming a little more difficult to be imagined than a flying fish. Mr Dryden is of opinion that smiling is the property of reason, and that no irrational creature can smile:
Smiles not allow'd to beasts from reason move.
—State of Innocence.
]
Queen. Oh, no! prevent the match, but hurt him not; For, though I would not have him have my daughter, Yet can we kill the man that kill'd the giants?