Garrick Plays.
No. XXXIX.
[From the “Ambitious Statesman,” a Tragedy, by John Crowne, 1679.]
Vendome, returning from the wars, hears news, that Louize is false to him.
Ven. (solus.) Wherere I go, I meet a wandering rumour,
Louize is the Dauphin’s secret mistress.
I heard it in the army, but the sound
Was then as feeble as the distant murmurs
Of a great river mingling with the sea;
But now I am come near this river’s fall,
Tis louder than the cataracts of Nile.
If this be true,
Doomsday is near, and all the heavens are falling.—
I know not what to think of it, for every where
I meet a choking dust, such as is made
After removing all a palace furniture:
If she be gone, the world in my esteem
Is all bare walls; nothing remains in it
But dust and feathers, like a Turkish inn,
And the foul steps where plunderers have been.—
Valediction.
Vendome (to his faithless Mistress.) Madam, I’m well assur’d, you will not send
One poor thought after me, much less a messenger,
To know the truth; but if you do, he’ll find,
In some unfinish’d part of the creation,
Where Night and Chaos never were disturb’d,
But bed-rid lie in some dark rocky desart,
There will he find a thing—whether a man,
Or the collected shadows of the desart
Condens’d into a shade, he’ll hardly know;
This figure he will find walking alone,
Poring one while on some sad book at noon
By taper-light, for never day shone there:
Sometimes laid grovelling on the barren earth,
Moist with his tears, for never dew fell there:
And when night comes, not known from day by darkness,
But by some faithful messenger of time,
He’ll find him stretcht upon a bed of stone,
Cut from the bowels of some rocky cave,
Offering himself either to Sleep or Death;
And neither will accept the dismal wretch:
At length a Slumber, in its infant arms,
Takes up his heavy soul, but wanting strength
To bear it, quickly lets it fall again;
At which the wretch starts up, and walks about
All night, and all the time it should be day;
Till quite forgetting, quite forgot of every thing
But Sorrow, pines away, and in small time
Of the only man that durst inhabit there,
Becomes the only Ghost that dares walk there.
Incredulity to Virtue.
Vendome. Perhaps there never were such things as Virtues,
But only in men’s fancies, like the Phœnix;
Or if they once have been, they’re now but names
Of natures lost, which came into the world,
But could not live, nor propagate their kind.