The Sun.
London, England, 1827-03-15 00:00:00

THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 15, 1827.

morse, has no superior in the wide compass of the British'
Drama. The following extract, descriptive of the mental
agonies of Faustus previous to his dissolution, will fully
justify our remarks :
(Hell is discovered.)
Bad Ang.—Now, Faustus, let thine eyes with horror stare
Into that vast perpetual torture-house :
There are the furies tossing damned souls
On burning forks; their bodies boil in lead :
There are live quarters broiling on the coals,
That ne'er can die ; this ever-burning chair
Is for o'er-tortured soul! to rest them in ;
These that are fed with sops of flaming tire,
Were gluttons, and lov'd only delicate',
And laugh'd to see the poor starve at their gates ;
But yet all these are nothing; thou shalt see
. Ten thousand tortures that more horrid he.
Faust —Oh ! I have seen enough to torture me.
Bad Ang.—Nay, thou must feel them, taste the smart of all ;
He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall :
And so I leave thee, Fetettus, till anon ;
Then wilt thou tremble itt Confusion.

• (The clock strikes eleven.)
Faust.—Oh, Faustus !
Now bast thou but one bare hour to lire,
And .then thou must be damn'd perpetually.
Stand still you ever-moving spheres of heav'n,
That time may cease, and midnight never come.
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but a year,
A month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
0 lente lente eurrite noctis equi
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
Oh, I'll leap up to heav'n !--Who pulls me down ?
See where Christ's blood streams in the firmament :
One drop of blood will save me : oh, my Christ !
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ;
Yet will I call on him. Oh, spare me, Lucifer !
Where is it now?—'tis gone !
And see, a threatening arm, an angry brow.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of heav'n !
No ! Then will I headlong run into the earth :
Gape, earth! 0 no, it will not harbour me.
You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence bath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist,
Into the entrails of yon labouring cloud ;
That when ye vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths ;
But let my soul mount and ascend to heav'n.
(The clock strikes the half hour.)
Oh ! half the hour is past ; 'twill all he past anon.
Oh ! if my soul must suffer for my sin,
Impose some end to my incessant pain.
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and, at last be sav'd :
No end is limited to damned souls,
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul ?
Or whv is this immortal that thou bast?
Oh ! Pythagoras, Metemsycusis ! were" that true,
This soul should fly from me, and I be chang'd
Into some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die
Their souls are soon dissoly'd in elements ;
But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell.
Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me!
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer,
That bath depriv'd thee of the joys of heav'n.
(The clock strikes twelve.)
It strikes, it strikes ! now, body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will hear thee quick to hell.
O soul ! be chang'd into small water-drops,
And fall into the ocean ; ne'er be found.
Thunder. Enter the Devils.
Oh ! mercy, heav'n look not so fierce on me !
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile !
Ugly hell, gape not !—Come not, Lucifer !
I'll burn my books !—Oh, Mephostophilis !—Exeunt.
The play of Richard 11. abounds in passages equally
imtense and terrific ; the character of Lightborn, the vil-
lain, is one that, though brief, cannot be read without
a shudder.. Our limits here compel us to a close; but we
cannot wholly pass by the warm and glowing poem of
Hero and Leander, which with much mythological conceit,
and no slight bombast, possesses passages of exquisite
descriptive beauty; the description of a sudden sun-rise is
uncommonly striking, en voici
" Now had the morn espied her lover's steeds,
Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds,
And red for anger, that he stayed so long,
All headlong throws herself the clouds among."
The translations from Ovid are conceived in a spirit of
kindred beauty, but as the original is very exceptionable,
whenever he touches upon love, his translation for the
same reason is inadmissible in the columns of a modern
publication. Suffice to say, that they are distinguished by
great luxuriance and command of language. We have left
ourselves little space to speak of the other plays of
Marlowe, such as his Jew of Malta, Tamburlain the
Great, and Lascivious Queen, because the first is well
known on the boards of the modern stage, and the two
last are of spurious authority, consisting chiefly of bom-
bast and inflated sentiment. With all their faults, how-
ever (anti they abound in them), enough remains in the
pages of our olden dramatists, Marlowe in particular, to
reward the labour of research and attentive perusal. Mr.
C. Lamb's work, while perhaps, it gives them undue
praise, being the manifest production of an enthusiast on
the subject, yet affords a very fair and creditable specimen
of the magnificent intellect of the Elizabethan age. We
may, perhaps, hereafter resort to the subject.

, , tt,104-'' ' 047,7C*4 •• - •-7,7,- 7,"'-_`‘, )
( ~. ''' •,- •'./,',4P- ;;Ar.p.p.,,,- 1, " -----rf{ll \\
41-3711hatik!
No