Ah, _Sylvia_, how have you in one day destroyed that repose I have been designing so many years! Oh, thou false----but wondrous fair creature! Why did heaven ordain so much beauty, and so much perfidy, so much excellent wit, and so much cunning, (things inconsistent in any but in _Sylvia_) in one divine frame, but to undo mankind: yes, _Sylvia_, thou wert born to murder more believing men than the unhappy and undone _Philander_. Tell me, thou charming hypocrite, why hast thou thus deluded me? Why? oh, why was I made the miserable object of thy fatal vow-breach? What have I done, thou lovely, fickle maid, that thou shouldst be my murderer? And why dost thou call me from the grave with such dear soft commands as would awake the very quiet dead, to torture me anew, after my eyes (curse on their fatal sense) were too sure witnesses of thy infidelity? Oh, fickle maid, how much more kind it had been to have sent me down to earth, with plain heart-breaking truth, than a mean subtle falsehood, that has undone thy credit in my soul? Truth, though it were cruel, had been generous in thee; though thou wert perjured, false, forsworn----thou shouldst not have added to it that yet baser sin of treachery: you might have been provoked to have killed your friend, but it were base to stab him unawares, defenceless and unwarned; smile in my face, and strike me to the heart; soothe me with all the tenderest marks of my passion----nay, with an invitation too, that would have gained a credit in one that had been jilted over the world, flattered and ruined by all thy cozening sex, and all to send me vain and pleased away, only to gain a day to entertain another lover in. Oh, fantastic woman! destructive glorious thing, what needed this deceit? Hadst thou not with unwonted industry persuaded me to have hasted to _Cesario_, by heaven, I had dully lived the tedious day in traversing the flowery meads and silent groves, laid by some murmuring spring, had sigh’d away the often counted hours, and thought on _Sylvia_, till the blessed minute of my ravishing approach to her; had been a fond, believing and imposed on coxcomb, and never had dreamt the treachery, never seen the snake that basked beneath the gay, the smiling flowers; securely thou hadst cozened me, reaped the new joys, and made my rival sport at the expense of all my happiness: yes, yes, your hasty importunity first gave me jealousy, made me impatient with _Cesario_, and excuse myself to him by a hundred inventions; neglected all to hasten back, where all my joys, where all my killing fears and torments resided--but when I came----how was I welcomed? With your confirming billet; yes, _Sylvia_, how! Let _Dorillus_ inform you, between whose arms I fell dead, shame on me, dead--and the first thought my soul conceived when it returned, was, not to die in jest. I answered your commands, and hastened to the grove, where----by all that is sacred, by thyself I