circumſtance recalled into my thought a ſpeech in the tragedy, which very much affected the whole audience, and was attended to with the greateſt, and moſt ſolemn inſtance of approbation, and awful ſilence.’ The incidents of the play plunge a heroic character into the laſt extremity; and he is admoniſhed by a tyrant commander to expect no mercy, unleſs he changes the Chriſtian religion for the Mahometan. The words with which the Turkiſh general makes his exit from his priſoner are,
‘Farewel, and think of death.
‘Upon which the captive breaks into the following ſoliloquy,
‘Farewel! and think of death!—was it not ſo?
Do murtherers then, preach morality?
But how to think of what the living know not,
And the dead cannot, or elſe may not tell!
What art thou? O thou great myſterious terror!
The way to thee, we know; diſeaſes, famine,
Sword, fire, and all thy ever open gates,
That day and night ſtand ready to receive us.
But what, beyond them? who will draw that veil?
Yet death’s not there.—No, ’tis a point of time;
The verge ’twixt mortal, and immortal Being.
It mocks our thought—On this ſide all is life;
And when we’ve reach’d it, in that very inſtant,
’Tis paſt the thinking of—O if it be
The pangs, the throes, the agonizing ſtruggle,
When ſoul and body part, ſure I have felt it!
And there’s no more to fear.
‘The gentleman (continues Sir Richard) to whoſe memory I devote this paper, may be the emulation
