The songs of holy hearts, sweet virtuous verse. _Fitzwater._ Bring Persian silks, to deck her monument; _John._ Arabian spices, quick’ning by their scent; _Fitzwater._ Numidian marble, to preserve her praise, _John._ Corinthian ivory, her shape to praise: _Fitzwater._ And write in gold upon it, In this breast Virtue sate mistress, Passion but a guest. _John._ Virtue is sweet; and, since griefs bitter be, Strew her with roses, and give rue to me. _Bruce._ My noble brother, I’ve lost a wife and son;[33] You a sweet daughter. Look on the king’s penitence; His promise for the public peace. Prefer A public benefit.[34] When it shall please, Let Heaven question him. Let us secure And quit the land of Lewis.[35] _Fitzwater._ Do any thing; Do all things that are honorable; and the Great King Make you a good king, sir! and when your soul Shall at any time reflect upon your follies, Good King John, weep, weep very heartily; It will become you sweetly. At your eyes Your sin stole in; there pay your sacrifice. _John._ Back unto Dunmow Abbey. There we’ll pay To sweet Matilda’s memory, and her sufferings, A monthly obsequy, which (sweet’ned by The wealthy woes of a tear-troubled eye) Shall by those sharp afflictions of my face Court mercy, and make grief arrive at grace. _Song._ Matilda, now go take thy bed In the dark dwellings of the dead; And rise in the great waking day Sweet as incence, fresh as May. Rest there, chaste soul, fix’d in thy proper sphere, Amongst Heaven’s fair ones; all are fair ones there. Rest there, chaste soul, whilst we here troubled say: Time gives us griefs, Death takes our joys away. This scene has much passion and poetry in it, if I mistake not. The last words of Fitzwater are an instance of noble temperament; but to understand him, the character throughout of this mad, merry, feeling, insensible-seeming lord, should be read. That the venomous John could have even counterfeited repentance so well, is out of nature; but supposing the possibility, nothing is truer than the way in which it is managed. These old playwrights invested their bad characters with notions of good, which could by no possibility have coexisted with their actions. Without a soul of goodness in himself, how could Shakspeare’s Richard the Third have lit upon those sweet phrases and inducements by which he attempts to win over the dowager queen to let him wed her daughter. It is not Nature’s nature, but Imagination’s substituted nature, which does almost as well in a fiction. (_To be continued._)