Dor. Haste to attend Almeyda:—For your sake
Your father is forgiven; but to Antonio
He forfeits half his wealth. Be happy both;
And let Sebastian and Almeyda's fate
This dreadful sentence to the world relate,—
That unrepented crimes, of parents dead,
Are justly punished on their children's head.

Footnotes:

  2. This whimsical account of the Slave-market is probably taken from the following passage in the "Captivity and escape of Adam Elliot, M.A."—"By sun-rising next morning, we were all of us, who came last to Sallee, driven to market, where, the Moors sitting taylor-wise on stalls round about, we were severally run up and down by persons who proclaimed our qualities or trades, and what might best recommend us to the buyer. I had a great black who was appointed to sell me; this fellow, holding me by the hand, coursed me up and down from one person to another, who called upon me at pleasure to examine what trade I was of, and to see what labour my hands had been accustomed to. All the seamen were soon bought up, but it was mid-day ere I could meet with a purchaser."—See A modest Vindication of Titus Oates, London, 1682.
  4. The knight much wondered at his sudden wit;
  5. And said, The term of life is limited,
  6. Ne may a man prolong nor shorten it;
  7. The soldier may not move from watchful sted,
  8. Nor leave his stand until his captain bed.
  9. Fairy Queen, Book i. Canto 9.
  11. The same artifice is used in "Œdipus," vol. vi. p. 149. to impress, by a description of the feelings of the unfortunate pair towards each other, a presentiment of their fatal relationship. The prophecy of Nostradamus is also obviously imitated from the response of the Delphic Pythoness to Œdipus.—Ibid. See p. 156.
  13. For, interpreter; more usually spelled dragoman.
  15. A horrid Moorish punishment. The criminal was precipitated from a high tower upon iron scythes and hooks, which projected from its side. This scene Settle introduces in one of his tragedies.
  17. These presages of misfortune may remind the reader of the ominous feelings of the Duke of Guise, in the scene preceding his murder. The superstitious belief, that dejection of spirits, without cause, announces an impending violent death, is simply but well expressed in an old ballad called the "Warning to all Murderers:"
  18. And after this most bad pretence,
  19. The gentleman each day
  20. Still felt his heart to throb and faint,
  21. And sad he was alway.
  22. His sleep was full of dreadful dreams,
  23. In bed where he did lie;
  24. His heart was heavy in the day,
  25. Yet knew no reason why.
  26. And oft as he did sit at meat,
  27. His nose most suddenly
  28. Would spring and gush out crimson blood,
  29. And straight it would be dry.
  31. There is great art in rendering the interpretation of this ominous dream so ingeniously doubtful. The latter circumstance, where the Emperor recognises his murderer as a personage in his vision, seems to be borrowed from the story of one of the caliphs, who, before his death, dreamed, that a sable hand and arm shook over his head a handful of red earth, and denounced, that such was the colour of the earth on which he should die. When taken ill on an expedition, he desired to know the colour of the earth on which his tent was pitched. A negro slave presented him with a specimen; and in the black's outstretched arm, bared, from respect, to the elbow, as well as in the colour of the earth, the caliph acknowledged the apparition he had seen in his sleep, and prepared for immediate death.
  33. Et quum fata volunt, bina venena juvant.—Ausonius.
  35. Idiots were anciently wards of the crown; and the custody of their person, and charge of their estate, was often granted to the suit of some favourite, where the extent of the latter rendered it an object of plunder. Hence the common phrase of being begged for a fool.
  37. This incident seems to be taken from the following passage in the Continuation of the Adventures of Don Sebastian.
  38. "In Moran, an island some half league from Venice, there is an abbot called Capelo, a gentleman of Venice, a grave personage, and of great authority, hearing that the king laid wait for certain jewels that he had lost, (hoping thereby to recover some of them,) having a diamond in his keeping with the arms of Portugal, came to the town to the conventicles of St Francis, called Frari, where the king lay concealed, for that he was pursued by some that meant him no good, who no sooner beheld the ring, but he said, 'Verily this is mine, and I either lost the same in Flanders, or else it was stolen from me.' And when the king had put it upon his finger, it appeared otherwise engraven than before. The abbot enquiring of him that brought him the ring, how he came by it? he answered, it is true that the king hath said. Hence arose a strange rumour of a ring, that, by turning the stone, you might discern three great letters engraven, S.R.P. as much as to say, Sebastianus Rex Portugallix."—Harl. Mis. vol. v. p. 462.
  40. It is said, in the pamphlets alluded to, that Don Sebastian, out of grief and shame for having fought against the advice of his generals, and lost the flower of his army, took the resolution of never returning to his country, but of burying himself in a hermitage; and that he resided for three years as an anchorite, on the top of a mountain in Dalmatia.

"In Moran, an island some half league from Venice, there is an abbot called Capelo, a gentleman of Venice, a grave personage, and of great authority, hearing that the king laid wait for certain jewels that he had lost, (hoping thereby to recover some of them,) having a diamond in his keeping with the arms of Portugal, came to the town to the conventicles of St Francis, called Frari, where the king lay concealed, for that he was pursued by some that meant him no good, who no sooner beheld the ring, but he said, 'Verily this is mine, and I either lost the same in Flanders, or else it was stolen from me.' And when the king had put it upon his finger, it appeared otherwise engraven than before. The abbot enquiring of him that brought him the ring, how he came by it? he answered, it is true that the king hath said. Hence arose a strange rumour of a ring, that, by turning the stone, you might discern three great letters engraven, S.R.P. as much as to say, Sebastianus Rex Portugallix."—Harl. Mis. vol. v. p. 462.

444

EPILOGUE,
SPOKEN BETWIXT ANTONIO AND MORAYMA

Mor. I quaked at heart, for fear the royal fashion
Should have seduced us two to separation:
To be drawn in, against our own desire,
Poor I to be a nun, poor you, a friar.

Ant. I trembled, when the old man's hand was in,
He would have proved we were too near of kin:
Discovering old intrigues of love, like t'other,
Betwixt my father and thy sinful mother;
To make us sister Turk and Christian brother.
}
}
}

Mor. Excuse me there; that league should have been rather
Betwixt your mother and my Mufti father;
'Tis for my own and my relations' credit,
Your friends should bear the bastard, mine should get it.

Ant. Suppose us two, Almeyda and Sebastian,
With incest proved upon us—