torments him till in his agony he invokes Despair. Despair appears, almost in the guise of the ‘accursed wight’ in Spenser, and, with like arguments, urges him to make away with his life:— And brings unto him swords, rope, poison, fire, And all that might him to perdition draw, And bids him choose what death he would desire. Or in the more homely language of the old French mystery,— Il faut que tu passes le pas! Voici dagues et coutelas, Forcettes, poinçons, allumettes,— Avise, choisis les plus belles, Et celles de meilleure forge, Pour te couper à coup la gorge; Ou si tu aimes mieux te pendre, Voici lacs et cordes à vendre. The offer here of the bodkins and the allumettes reminds us of the speech of Falconbridge:— If thou would’st drown thyself, Put but a little water in a spoon, And it shall be as all the ocean, Enough to stifle such a villain up. Judas chooses the rope, and hangs himself forthwith; ‘and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out:’ which account is explained by an early tradition, that being found and cut down, his body was thrown over the parapet of the Temple into the ravine below, and, in the fall, was riven and dashed to pieces. There required but one more touch of horror to complete the picture; and this is furnished by a sonnet of Giani, which I remember to have read in my youth. When Judas falls from the fatal tree, his evil genius seizes the broken rope, and drags him down to the seething abyss below: at his approach, hell sends forth a shout of rejoicing; Lucifer smooths his brow, corrugated with fire and pain, and rises from his burning throne to welcome a greater sinner than himself:— Poi fra le braccia incatenò quel tristo, E colla bocca sfavillante e nera Gli rese il bacio ch’ avea dato a Christo! The retribution imaged in the last two lines borders, I am afraid, on a _concetto_; but it makes one shiver, notwithstanding.