Have we not long since proved to demonstration But these are dancing just like men and women. Is far above us all in his conceit: Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment; Is not to be considered as a step. There are few things that scandalize him not: Upon the strength of the resemblance. Broct. Fly! Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there! Come clean with all my pains!—it is a case The Girl. Then leave off teazing us so. Before my last step in the living dance To beat the poet and the devil together. Meph. At last he will sit down in some foul puddle; Until some leech, diverted with his gravity, (To Faust, who has seceded from the dance.) Why do you let that fair girl pass from you, Meph. That was all right, my friend. Be it enough that the mouse was not grey. Do not disturb your hour of happiness With close consideration of such trifles. Faust. Then saw I Meph. What? Faust. Seest thou not a pale Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away? She drags herself now forward with slow steps, Meph. Let it be-pass on No good can come of it—it is not well It freezes up the blood of man; and they Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone, Like those who saw Medusa. Faust. Oh, too true! Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse Which no beloved hand has closed, alas! That is the heart which Margaret yielded to me— Faust. Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn Meph. Aye, she can carry Her head under her arm upon occasion; And if I am not mightily deceived, I see a theatre-What may this mean? Attendant. Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for 'tis The custom now to represent that number. 'Tis written by a Dilettante, and The actors who perform are Dilettanti; ARIOSTO'S EPISODE OF CLORIDAN, MEDORO, AND ANGELICA. It is no great boast to say, that this is perhaps the first time an English reader has had any thing like a specimen given him of the Orlando Furioso. Harrington, the old translator, wrote with a crab-stick, and Hoole with a rule. (The rhyme is lucky for him, and perhaps for our gentilities; for he provokes one of some sort.) The characteristics of Ariosto's style are great animal spirits, great ease and flow of versification, and great fondness for natural and strait-forward expressions, particularly in scenes of humour and tenderness. What approaches Harrington makes to these with his sapless crutches, or Hoole with his conventional stilts, let those discover who can. Harrington has perhaps twenty good stanzas in his whole work; and he is to be preferred to Hoole, because he has at all events an air of greater good faith in what he does. Hoole is a mere bundle of common-places. He understood nothing of his author but the story. He sometimes apologizes for the difficulty he feels in "raising the style," and when he comes to a passage more than usually familiar, thinks that the most "tolerable" way of rendering it is by doing away all its movement and vivacity. "Most tolerable" it is certainly, and "not to be endured." Yet a friend once quoted to us one good line out of Hoole. "It was something," he said, " about |