Serap. 'Twas what I feared.—
Charmion, is this well done?
Char. Yes, 'tis well done, and like a queen, the last
Of her great race: I follow her.[Sinks down; dies.
Alex. 'Tis true,
She has done well: Much better thus to die,
Than live to make a holiday in Rome.
Serap. See, how the lovers sit in state together,
As they were giving laws to half mankind!
The impression of a smile, left in her face,
Shows she died pleased with him for whom she lived.
And went to charm him in another
Cæsar's just entering: grief has now no leisure.
Secure that villain, as our pledge of safety,
To grace the imperial triumph.—Sleep, blest pair,
Secure from human chance, long ages out,
While all the storms of fate fly o'er your tomb;
And fame to late posterity shall tell,
No lovers lived so great, or died so well.[Exeunt.
Footnotes:
- There was anciently some foolish idea about a wren soaring
on an eagle's back. Colley Cibber, as Dr Johnson observed, converted
the wren into a linnet:
- Perched on the eagle's towering wing,
- The lowly linnet loves to sing.
- Approach there—Ay, you kite!—
- —Now, gods and devils!
- Authority melts from me: of late, when I cried ho!
- Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth
- And cry, your will.—Have you no ears?
- I am Antony yet.—
- The same idea, which bursts from Shakespeare's Antony in a transport of passion, is used by Dryden's hero. The one is goaded by the painful feeling of lost power; to the other, absorbed in his sentimental distresses, it only occurs as a subject of melancholy, but not of agitating reflection.
- Imitated, or rather copied, from Shakespeare.
- Don John. I came hither to tell you, and circumstances shortened (for she hath been too long a talking of) the lady is disloyal.
- Claudia. Who? Hero?
- Don John. Even she; Leonato's Hero, your Hero, every man's Hero.
EPILOGUE.
Poets, like disputants, when reasons fail,
Have one sure refuge left—and that's to rail.