"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy."

They are her only waking acknowledgments of having mistaken life! So—they forebode the Sleep-Walking, and the Death—as an owl, or a raven, or vulture, or any fowl of obscene wing, might flit between the sun and a crowned but doomed head—the shadow but of a moment, yet ominous, for the augur, of an entire fatal catastrophe.

SEWARD.

They do. But to say the truth, I had either forgot them, or never discovered their significancy. O that William Shakspeare!

TALBOYS.

O that Christopher North!

NORTH.

Speak so, friends—'tis absurd, but I like it.

TALBOYS.

It is sincere.