—‘Oh, Faustus! Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn’d perpetually. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heav’n, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but a year, A month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent, and save his soul. (_The Clock strikes Twelve._) It strikes, it strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. Oh soul! be chang’d into small water-drops, And fall into the ocean; ne’er be found. (_Thunder. Enter the_ Devils.) Oh! mercy, Heav’n! Look not so fierce on me! Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!— Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books! Oh! Mephostophilis.’ Perhaps the finest _trait_ in the whole play, and that which softens and subdues the horror of it, is the interest taken by the two scholars in the fate of their master, and their unavailing attempts to dissuade him from his relentless career. The regard to learning is the ruling passion of this drama; and its indications are as mild and amiable in them as its ungoverned pursuit has been fatal to Faustus. ‘Yet, for he was a scholar once admir’d For wondrous knowledge in our German schools, We’ll give his mangled limbs due burial; And all the students, clothed in mourning black, Shall wait upon his heavy funeral.’ So the Chorus: ‘Cut is the branch that might have grown full strait, And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough, That sometime grew within this learned man.’