+

No languid pause of bliss near her was known,
But, with new joys, new hours came laughing on.

By arts like these was wiser Julius won,
And Antony, more fond, was more undone.
His soul enamour'd to the wanton clung,
Glow'd at her eyes, or melted from her tongue;
Lull'd in the dear Elysium of her arms,

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Nor interest moves him, nor ambition warms:
Sometimes with short remorse he look'd within,
But kept at once the conscience and the sin :
In vain he saw the yawning ruin nigh;
Content with her, he bade the world go by;
He sought no covert of the friendly shade,
'Twas half the zest to have his shame display'd.
He deem'd it still his best exchange through life,
A melting mistress for a railing wife.

Perpetual orgies unabash'd they keep,

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Wine fires their veins, and revels banish sleep:
Timbrels, and songs, and feasts of deaf'ning joy,
By arts till then unknown, forbore to cloy.

See

+ Not yet (the loiterer cries) in love's late noon, To be unbless'd and wise will be be too soon?' Thus Sloth, procrastinaring Sloth will plead, "Tis time enough to do a virtuous deed!" But Engle-winged the swift occasion flies, While the slow Fool who might have seized it, dies,

See for one banquet a whole kingdom sink, 2065
And gems dissolv'd impearl her luscious drink.'
Pleasure was hunted through each impious mode;
An Isis she, and he the vine-crown'd God."
Old Nile, astonish'd, on his bosom bore

Monsters more strange than e'er deform'd his shore;
For what so monstrous sight beneath the skies,
As self-created human deities?-

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But heaven, for vengeful retribution, means,' Thesword and asp should close these frantick scenes.R

5 Tunc arridens regina phialam poposcit, cui aceti nonnihil acris infundit, atque illuc unionem demptum ex aure altera festinabunda demisit; eumque mature dissolutum,-absorbuit. MACROB. I. ii. c. 13.

t

-tum redimitis hederis, coronâque velatus aureâ, et thyrsum tenens, cothurnisque succinctus, [Antonius] curru, velut Liber pater, vectus esset Alexandriæ. VEL. PAT. 1. ii. c. 87.

▾ Though the less enlightened heathens seem to have had no clear conception of a future state of rewards and punishments, the minds of all, except the followers of Epicurus, were strongly impressed with the idea of the interference of a Providence with respect to the temporal consequences of human actions and conduct.

* Antonius seipse non segniter interemit. VEL. Pat. l. ii. c. 87. Λεγουσι δε οι μεν, οτι ασπίδα εν ύδρια, η και εν ανθεσι τισιν εσκομισθεισαν οι προσέθετο. DION. CASS. 1. li. c. 13.

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Spectators

Spectators mute, the sorrowing captains stand, While empire moulders from his palsied hand : But rous'd at length, unwilling, to the fight, 2077 His star at Actium sunk in endless night.

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With equal pomp, as when down Cydnus' stream
Her burnish'd prow struck back the sun's bright beam,
The enchantress bade her bloated train prepare,
To meet the horrours of the naval war;
But the first shouts her trembling spirits quail;
She flies, and he pursues her shameful sail :
His heart-strings to the harlot's rudder tied,
What lust began, his dotage ratified:
In Alexandria's towers he veil'd his head,
Where, self-expell'd, the vital spirit fled.

He try'd all vices, and surpass'd in all,
Luxurious, cruel, wild, and prodigal ;

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Lavish

The character of Mark Antony has in our country acquired a degree of favour with several very young, and with some fair, readers, to which he is by no means entitled. They judge of him, not from history, but from the colouring under which he is exhibited to view in two well known and popular tragedies. In Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar, we see him

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Lavish of hours, of character, and gold,
But warlike, hardy, and in dangers bold;
His mind was suited to the boist❜rous times,
A soldier's virtues, and a tyrant's crimes.'

OCTAVIA.

him only as the grateful and affectionate friend of his benefactor Cæsar, as the gallant avenger of his death, and as a powerful orator possessed of all the arts of persuasion. In Dryden's All for Love, he appears to still greater advantage. The murder of Cicero, had he committed no other great crime, is sufficient to transmit him to posterity as a ruffian not less insensible to the claims of genius, than shamefully indifferent to the censure or approbation of mankind in general. What opinion too severe can be formed of his disposition, who could deliberately wade through the slaughter of a most cruel and bloody proscription, to get at the throat of a helpless old man, whom by his own insolence he had provoked to be his enemy? To estimate the whole of a character from its exhibition in a play, is somewhat like forming an idea of a man's whole figure from seeing his head and shoulders in a portrait: his countenance may be very engaging, and the rest of his person very deformed. Whoever remembers the late Earl of Bath, will not want a strong confirmation of the truth of this remark.

The following anecdote, not so well known as the murder of Cicero, furnishes another shocking example of the cruel ferocity of Antony's disposition. Three of Julius Cæsar's legions, returning from Macedonia, refused to follow him. He ascribed this defection to the influence of their centurions; and to revenge it, he ordered them, to the number of three hundred, to be butchered in his presence; his wife Fulvia, who was then with him, with great composure looking on at the massacre. This

execrable