itself preyed on by a torment, which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth.

The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.

JOHN WEBSTER.

WEBSTER, JOHN, an English dramatist; born, probably, in 1582; died in 1638. Little is known concerning his life. He wrote in collaboration with Ford and Dekker between 1601 and 1624. His individual plays are "The Duchess of Malfi" (1623); "Guise, or the Massacre of France;" "The Devil's Law-Case;" "Appius and Virginia;" and "The White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona" (1612). Webster has been called the "dramatist of terror and of pity." Hazlitt calls him "the noble-minded." "Webster possessed very considerable powers," says Hallam, "and ought to be ranked, I think, the next below Ford. With less of poetic grace than Shirley, he had incomparably more vigor; with less of nature and simplicity than Heywood, he had a more elevated genius and a bolder pencil. But the deep sorrows and terrors of tragedy were peculiarly his provinces." His plays were first published collectively by Dyce in 1830.

FROM "THE DUCHESS OF MALFI."

[The Duchess of Malfi, having secretly married her steward Antonio, arouses thereby the wrath of her brother, Duke Ferdinand, the heir of her great fortune had she died childless. She is forced to separate from her husband, and by the order of her brother she and her children and her attendant Cariola are put to death.]

Scene: Room in the Duchess's Lodging. Enter Duchess and CARIola.
DUCHESS. What hideous noise was that?
CARIOLA.

'Tis the wild consort

Of madmen, lady, which your tyrant brother
Hath placed about your lodging: this tyranny,

I think, was never practised till this hour.

DUCHESS. Indeed, I thank him: nothing but noise and folly Can keep me in my right wits; whereas reason

And silence make me stark mad. Sit down;

Discourse to me some dismal tragedy.

CARIOLA. Oh, 't will increase your melancholy.
DUCHESS.

To hear of greater grief would lessen mine.
This is a prison?

Thou art deceived:

When I muse thus I sleep.

CARIOLA. Like a madman, with your eyes open ? DUCHESS. Dost thou think we shall know one another In the other world?

DUCHESS. Oh that it were possible we might
But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,

I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle:

I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow;

The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.

I am acquainted with sad misery

As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar:

Necessity makes me suffer constantly,

And custom makes it easy. Who do I look like now?
CARIOLA. Like to your picture in the gallery,-

A deal of life in show, but none in practice;

Or rather like some reverend monument

Whose ruins are even pitied.

Your brother hath intended you some sport.
A great physician, when the Pope was sick.
Of a deep melancholy, presented him

With several sorts of madmen, which wild object,
Being full of change and sport, forced him to laugh,
And so the imposthume broke: the selfsame cure
The duke intends on you.

SERVANT. There's a mad lawyer; and a secular priest; A doctor that hath forfeited his wits

By jealousy; an astrologian

That in his works said such a day o' the month
Should be the day of doom, and, failing o't,

Ran mad; an English tailor crazed i' the brain
With the study of new fashions; a gentleman-usher
Quite beside himself with care to keep in mind
The number of his lady's salutations

Or "How do you" she employed him in each morning;
A farmer too, an excellent knave in grain,

Mad 'cause he was hindered transportation:

And let one broker that's mad loose to these,
You'd think the Devil were among them.

---

DUCHESS. Sit, Cariola. Let them loose when you please, For I am chained to endure all your tyranny.

Enter Madmen.

[Here this song is sung to a dismal kind of music by a Madman.] Oh, let us howl some heavy note,

Some deadly doggèd howl,

Sounding as from the threatening throat
Of beasts and fatal fowl!

As ravens, screech-owls, bulls, and bears,
We'll bell, and bawl our parts,

Till irksome noise have cloyed your ears
And corrosived your hearts.

And last, whenas our quire wants breath,
Our bodies being blest,

We'll sing, like swans, to welcome death,
And die in love and rest.

FIRST MADMAN. Doomsday not come yet! I'll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire upon the instant. I cannot sleep-my pillow is stuffed with a litter of porcupines.

SECOND MADMAN. Hell is a mere glass-house, where the devils are continually blowing up women's souls on hollow irons, and the fire never goes out.

FIRST MADMAN. I have skill in heraldry.
SECOND MADMAN. Hast?

FIRST MADMAN. You do give for your crest a woodcock's head with the brains picked out on 't; you are a very ancient gentleman. THIRD MADMAN. Greek is turned Turk: we are only to be saved by the Helvetian translation.

FIRST MADMAN. Come on, sir, I will lay the law to you.

SECOND MADMAN. Oh, rather lay a corrosive: the law will eat to the bone.

THIRD MADMAN. He that drinks but to satisfy nature is damned.

FOURTH MADMAN. I have pared the Devil's nails forty times, roasted them in raven's eggs, and cured agues with them.

THIRD MADMAN. Get me three hundred milch bats, to make possets to procure sleep.

[Here a dance of Eight Madmen, with music answerable thereto, after which BoSOLA, like an Old Man, enters.]

DUCHESS. Is he mad too?
SERVANT.

Pray, question him. I'll leave you.

[Exeunt Servant and Madmen.

BOSOLA. I am come to make thy tomb.

DUCHESS. Ha! my tomb!

Thou speak'st as if I lay upon my death-bed,

Gasping for breath: dost thou perceive me sick? BOSOLA. Yes, and the more dangerously, since thy sickness is insensible.

DUCHESS. Thou art not mad, sure: dost know me?

BOSOLA. Yes.

DUCHESS. Who am I?

BOSOLA. Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy. What's this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth-worms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison.

DUCHESS. Am not I thy duchess?

BOSOLA. Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milkmaid's. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

DUCHESS. I am Duchess of Malfi still.

BOSOLA. That makes thy sleep so broken:

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.