Eve. Give to the winds thy fear of death, or ill;
And think us made but for each other's will.

Adam. I will, at least, defer that anxious thought,
And death, by fear, shall not be nigher brought:
If he will come, let us to joys make haste;
Then let him seize us when our pleasure's past.
We'll take up all before; and death shall find
We have drained life, and left a void behind.[Exeunt.

Enter Lucifer.

Lucif. 'Tis done:
Sick Nature, at that instant, trembled round;
And mother Earth sighed, as she felt the wound.
Of how short durance was this new-made state!
How far more mighty than heaven's love, hell's hate!
His project ruined, and his king of clay:
He formed an empire for his foe to sway.
Heaven let him rule, which by his arms he got;
I'm pleased to have obtained the second lot.
This earth is mine; whose lord I made my thrall:
Annexing to my crown his conquered ball.
Loosed from the lakes my regions I will lead,
And o'er the darkened air black banners spread:
Contagious damps, from hence, shall mount above,
And force him to his inmost heaven's remove. [A clap of thunder is heard.
He hears already, and I boast too soon;
I dread that engine which secured his throne.
I'll dive below his wrath, into the deep,
And waste that empire, which I cannot keep.[Sinks down.

Raphael and Gabriel descend.

Gab. I saw the angelic guards from earth ascend,
(Grieved they must now no longer man attend:)
The beams about their temples dimly shone;
One would have thought the crime had been their own.
The etherial people flocked for news in haste,
Whom they, with down-cast looks, and scarce saluting past:
While each did, in his pensive breast, prepare
A sad account of their successless care.

Raph. The Eternal yet, in majesty severe,
And strictest justice, did mild pity bear:
Their deaths deferred; and banishment, (their doom,)
In penitence foreseen, leaves mercy room.

Gab. That message is thy charge: Mine leads me hence;
Placed at the garden's gate, for its defence,
Lest man, returning, the blest place pollute,
And 'scape from death, by life's immortal fruit. [Another clap of thunder. Exeunt severally.

Enter Adam and Eve, affrighted.

Adam. In what dark cavern shall I hide my head?
Where seek retreat, now innocence is fled?
Safe in that guard, I durst even hell defy;
Without it, tremble now, when heaven is nigh.

Eve. What shall we do? or where direct our flight?
Eastward, as far as I could cast my sight,
From opening heavens, I saw descending light.
Its glittering through the trees I still behold;
The cedar tops seem all to burn with gold.

Eve. In vain: What hope to shun his piercing sight,
Who from dark chaos struck the sparks of light?

Adam. These should have been your thoughts, when, parting hence,
You trusted to your guideless innocence.
See now the effects of your own wilful mind:
Guilt walks before us; death pursues behind.
So fatal 'twas to seek temptations out:
Most confidence has still most cause to doubt.

Eve. Such might have been thy hap, alone assailed;
And so, together, might we both have failed.
Cursed vassalage of all my future kind!
First idolized, till love's hot fire be o'er,
Then slaves to those who courted us before.

Adam. I counselled you to stay; your pride refused:
By your own lawless will you stand accused.

Eve. Have you that privilege of only wise,
And would you yield to her you so despise?
You should have shown the authority you boast,
And, sovereign-like, my headlong will have crost:
Counsel was not enough to sway my heart;
An absolute restraint had been your part.

Eve. You have yourself your kindness overpaid;
He ceases to oblige, who can upbraid.

Adam. On women's virtue, who too much rely,
To boundless will give boundless liberty.
Restraint you will not brook; but think it hard
Your prudence is not trusted as your guard:
And, to yourselves so left, if ill ensues,
You first our weak indulgence will accuse.
Curst be that hour,
When, sated with my single happiness,
I chose a partner, to controul my bliss!
Who wants that reason which her will should sway,
And knows but just enough to disobey.

Eve. Better with brutes my humble lot had gone;
Of reason void, accountable for none:
The unhappiest of creation is a wife,
Made lowest, in the highest rank of life:
Her fellow's slave; to know, and not to chuse:
Curst with that reason she must never use.

Eve. Unkind! wilt thou forsake me, in distress, [Kneeling.
For that which now is past me to redress?
I have misdone, and I endure the smart,
Loth to acknowledge, but more loth to part.
The blame be mine; you warned, and I refused:
What would you more? I have myself accused.
Was plighted faith so weakly sealed above,
That, for one error, I must lose your love?
Had you so erred, I should have been more kind,
Than to add pain to an afflicted mind.

Adam. You're grown much humbler than you were before;
I pardon you; but see my face no more.

Eve. Vain pardon, which includes a greater ill;
Be still displeased, but let me see you still.
Without your much-loved sight I cannot live;
You more than kill me, if you so forgive.
The beasts, since we are fallen, their lords despise;
And, passing, look at me with glaring eyes:
Must I then wander helpless, and alone?
You'll pity me, too late, when I am gone.

Adam. Your penitence does my compassion move;
As you deserve it, I may give my love.

Eve. On me, alone, let heaven's displeasure fall;
You merit none, and I deserve it all.

Adam. You all heaven's wrath! how could you bear a part,
Who bore not mine, but with a bleeding heart?
I was too stubborn, thus to make you sue;
Forgive me—I am more in fault than you.
Return to me, and to my love return;
And, both offending, for each other mourn.

Raph. Of sin to warn thee I before was sent;
For sin, I now pronounce thy punishment:
Yet that much lighter than thy crimes require;
Th' All-good does not his creatures' death desire:
Justice must punish the rebellious deed;
Yet punish so, as pity shall exceed.

Adam. I neither can dispute his will, nor dare:
Death will dismiss me from my future care,
And lay me softly in my native dust,
To pay the forfeit of ill-managed trust.

Eve. Why seek you death? consider, ere you speak,
The laws were hard, the power to keep them, weak.
Did we solicit heaven to mould our clay?
From darkness to produce us to the day?
Did we concur to life, or chuse to be?
Was it our will which formed, or was it He?
Since 'twas his choice, not ours, which placed us here,
The laws we did not chuse why should we bear?

Adam. Seek not, in vain, our Maker to accuse;
Terms were proposed; power left us to refuse.
The good we have enjoyed from heaven's free will,
And shall we murmur to endure the ill?
Should we a rebel son's excuse receive,
Because he was begot without his leave?
Heaven's right in us is more: first, formed to serve;
The good, we merit not; the ill, deserve.

Raph. Death is deferred, and penitence has room
To mitigate, if not reverse the doom:
But, for your crime, the Eternal does ordain
In Eden you no longer shall remain.
Hence, to the lower world, you are exiled;
This place with crimes shall be no more defiled.

Eve. Must we this blissful paradise forego?

Adam. Heaven is all mercy; labour I would chuse;
And could sustain this paradise to lose:
The bliss, but not the place: Here, could I say,
Heaven's winged messenger did pass the day;
Under this pine the glorious angel staid:
Then, show my wondering progeny the shade.
In woods and lawns, where-e'er thou didst appear,
Each place some monument of thee should bear.
I, with green turfs, would grateful altars raise,
And heaven, with gums, and offered incense, praise.

Raph. Where-e'er thou art, He is; the Eternal Mind
Acts through all places; is to none confined:
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above,
And through the universal mass does move.
Thou canst be no where distant: Yet this place
Had been thy kingly seat, and here thy race,
From all the ends of peopled earth had come
To reverence thee, and see their native home.
Immortal, then; now sickness, care, and age,
And war, and luxury's more direful rage,
Thy crimes have brought, to shorten mortal breath,
With all the numerous family of death.

Eve. My spirits faint, while I these ills foreknow,
And find myself the sad occasion too.
But what is death?

The Scene shifts, and discovers deaths of several sorts. A Battle at Land, and a Naval Fight.

Adam. O wretched offspring! O unhappy state
Of all mankind, by me betrayed to fate!
Born, through my crime, to be offenders first;
And, for those sins they could not shun, accurst.

Eve. Why is life forced on man, who, might he chuse,
Would not accept what he with pain must lose?
Unknowing, he receives it; and when, known,
He thinks it his, and values it, 'tis gone.

Raph. Behold of every age; ripe manhood see,
Decrepid years, and helpless infancy:
Those who, by lingering sickness, lose their breath;
And those who, by despair, suborn their death:
See yon mad fools, who for some trivial right,
For love, or for mistaken honour, fight:
See those, more mad, who throw their lives away
In needless wars; the stakes which monarchs lay,
When for each other's provinces they play.
Then, as if earth too narrow were for fate,
On open seas their quarrels they debate:
In hollow wood they floating armies bear;
And force imprisoned winds to bring them near.

Eve. Who would the miseries of man foreknow?
Not knowing, we but share our part of woe:
Now, we the fate of future ages bear,
And, ere their birth, behold our dead appear.

Adam. The deaths, thou show'st, are forced and full of strife,
Cast headlong from the precipice of life.
Is there no smooth descent? no painless way
Of kindly mixing with our native clay?

Adam. So noiseless would I live, such death to find;
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough,
And, dying, nothing to myself would owe.

Eve. Thus, daily changing, with a duller taste
Of lessening joys, I, by degrees, would waste:
Still quitting ground, by unperceived decay,
And steal myself from life, and melt away.

Raph. Death you have seen: Now see your race revive,
How happy they in deathless pleasures live;
Far more than I can show, or you can see,
Shall crown the blest with immortality.

Here a Heaven descends, full of Angels, and blessed Spirits, with soft Music, a Song and Chorus.

Adam. O goodness infinite! whose heavenly will
Can so much good produce from so much ill!
Happy their state!
Pure, and unchanged, and needing no defence
From sins, as did my frailer innocence.
Their joy sincere, and with no sorrow mixt:
Eternity stands permanent and fixt,
And wheels no longer on the poles of time;
Secure from fate, and more secure from crime.

Eve. Ravished with joy, I can but half repent
The sin, which heaven makes happy in the event.

Adam. Then farewell all; I will indulgent be
To my own ease, and not look back to see.
When what we love we ne'er must meet again,
To lose the thought is to remove the pain.

Eve. Farewell, you happy shades!
Where angels first should practise hymns, and string
Their tuneful harps, when they to heaven would sing.
Farewell, you flowers, whose buds, with early care,
I watched, and to the chearful sun did rear:
Who now shall bind your stems? or, when you fall,
With fountain streams your fainting souls recal?
A long farewell to thee, my nuptial bower,
Adorned with every fair and fragrant flower!
And last, farewell, farewell my place of birth!
I go to wander in the lower earth,
As distant as I can; for, dispossest,
Farthest from what I once enjoyed, is best.

Raph. The rising winds urge the tempestuous air;
And on their wings deformed winter bear:
The beasts already feel the change; and hence
They fly to deeper coverts, for defence:
The feebler herd before the stronger run;
For now the war of nature is begun:
But, part you hence in peace, and, having mourned your sin,
For outward Eden lost, find Paradise within.[Exeunt.

AURENG-ZEBE.

A
TRAGEDY.

AURENG-ZEBE.

And what a poor figure would Mr Bayes have made, without his Egad, and all that?" But, by means of this easy flow of versification in which the rhime is sometimes almost lost by the pause being transferred to the middle of the line, Dryden, in some measure indemnified himself for his confinement, and, at least, muffled the clank of his fetters. Still, however, neither the kind of verse, nor perhaps the poet, himself, were formed for expressing rapid and ardent dialogue; and the beauties of "Aureng-Zebe" will be found chiefly to consist in strains of didactic morality, or solemn meditation. The passage, descriptive of life, has been distinguished by all the critics, down to Dr Johnson:

Nor is the answer of Nourmahal inferior in beauty:

To this account may be added the following passage from Davies' "Dramatic Miscellanies."

"Dryden's last and most perfect rhiming tragedy was 'Aureng-Zebe.' In this play, the passions are strongly depicted, the characters well discriminated, and the diction more familiar and dramatic than in any of his preceding pieces. Hart and Mohun greatly distinguished themselves in the characters of Aureng-Zebe, and the Old Emperor. Mrs Marshall was admired in Nourmahal, and Kynaston has been much extolled by Cibber, for his happy expression of the arrogant and savage fierceness in Morat. Booth, in some part of this character, says the same critical historian, was too tame, from an apprehension of raising the mirth of the audience improperly.

"Though I pay great deference to Cibber's judgment, yet I am not sure whether Booth was not in the right. And I cannot help approving the answer which this actor gave to one, who told him, he was surprised, that he neglected to give a spirited turn to the passage in question:

"'Sir,' said Booth, 'it was not through negligence, but by design, that I gave no spirit to that ludicrous bounce of Morat. I know very well, that a laugh of approbation may be obtained from the understanding few, but there is nothing more dangerous than exciting the laugh of simpletons, who know not where to stop. The majority is not the wisest part of the audience, and therefore I will run no hazard.'

The introduction states all that can be said in favour of the management of the piece; and it is somewhat amusing to see the anxiety which Dryden uses to justify the hazardous experiment, of ascribing to emperors and princesses the language of nature and of passion. He appears with difficulty to have satisfied himself, that the decorum of the scene was not as peremptory as the etiquette of a court. "Aureng-Zebe" was received with the applause to which it is certainly entitled. It was acted and printed in 1676.

I am sure his master Epicurus, and my better master Cowley, preferred the solitude of a garden, and the conversation of a friend, to any consideration, so much as a regard, of those unhappy people, whom, in our own wrong, we call the great. True greatness, if it be any where on earth, is in a private virtue; removed from the notion of pomp and vanity, confined to a contemplation of itself, and centering on itself: