28. DAVID'S LAMENTATION OVER SAUL AND JONATHAN.

1. The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

2. Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings; for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.

3. From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty.

Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death, they were not divided : they were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.

4. Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights; who put on ornaments of gold upon your apparel. How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle!

5. O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished !—2 Sam. i.

David's lamentation is the language of deep emotion and sorrow. K should be given with slow time, long quantity, and on a middle key.

29. OTHELLO'S APOLOGY FOR HIS MARRIAGE.—Shakspeare

1. Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,

My very noble and approved good masters,
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her;
The very head and front of my offending,
Hath this extent, no more.

Rude am I in speech And little bless'd with the set phrase of peace; For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us'd Their dearest action in the tented field; And little of this great world can I speak, More than pertains to feats of broil and battle And therefore little shall I grace my cause, In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience ( will a round unvarnished tale deliver, Of my

whole course of love ; what drugs, what charms What conjuration, and what mighty magic, (For such proceedings I'm charged withal,)

I won his daughter with.
? Her Father lov'd me; oft invited me;

Still questioned me the story of my life,
From

year to year ; the battles, sieges, fortunes
That I have pass’d.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it.
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents, by flood and field ;
Of hair-breadth 'scapes in the imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe,
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,
And with it all my travel's history.

4.

These things to hear,
Would Desdemona seriously incline;
But still the house affairs would draw her thence;
Which ever as she could with haste despatch,
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse ; which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour; and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not attentively.

5.

I did.consent ; And often did beguile her of her tears,

When I did speak of some distressful stroke,
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore,—In faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange ;
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful ;
She wish'd she had not heard it; yet she wish'd
That heaven had made her such a man.

6.

She thank'd me;
And bade me if I had a friend that lov'd her,
I should teach him how to tell my story
And that would woo her. On this hint, I spake;
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd ;
And I lov'd her, that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have us’d.

The reader is referred to the author's observations relating to Othello in the chapter on emphatic pause. The apology is one of Shakspeare's best efforts. Othello was charged by Brobantio, Desdemona's father, with having "enchanted her," with " drugs," as “a practiser of arts inhibited and out of warrant.' Upon that charge, he was apprehended and brought before the duke and senators. The duke inquired of Othello what, on his part, he could say to the charge; and the apology above given was his answer. It should be read or recited in a pleasant and yet animated man

That part of it in which he narrates the scenes through which he passed, requires rather a hurried rate of utterance.

Where he says, * Little of this great world can I speak,” it is better to make a gentle gesture with the right arm, than to extend both.

ner.

30. Cato's SOLILOQUY ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOL

Addison.

1. It must be so.—Plato, thou reasonest well!

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction ?.
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us,
'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter
And intimates eternity to man.

If there's a power

2. Eternity !—thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass ?
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
Here will I hold.

above

us, And that there is, all nature cries aloud Through all her works, he must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in, must be happy. But when ? or where? This world was made for Cæsar.

I'm weary of conjectures—this must end 'em. 3. Thus I am doubly arm'd. My death and life,

My bane and antidote, are both before me.
This, in a moment, brings me to my end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secure in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth;
Unhurt amid the war of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Marcus Portius Cato, a distinguished Roman philosopher, general, and patriot, was born 94 years before Christ. After the battle of Pharsalia, he fled to Utica, in Africa; and, retiring to his apartment, read Plato on the Immortality of the Soul, twice over, and then, rather than to fall into the hands of Julius Cæsar, by whom he was pursued, stabbed himself with his sword, and died at the age of 48. He thought, moreover, that the toils of life would be succeeded by a happy immortality. He ought not, however, to have committed suicide. Socrates was accustomed to say, " That God has put us in this life, as in a post which we cannot quit without his leave." If an individual knero that death would be more agreeable than life, or that somebody else would take his life, unless he did it himself, even then suicide would not be justifiable. Cato certainly found nothing in Plato's writings in favor of it. He only found the glorious doctrine of the immortality of the soul maintained, by arguments which carried conviction of its truth to his mind. The “Soliloquy” is from the excellant Addison's "Tragedy of Cato."

Cato is represented, seated, and holding Plato's treatise in his hand. When he says, in the last line of the second verse,

"this must end 'em !"

he takes his sword in his right hand. The book should be held in the left, not only in giving this piece, but generally, if not always, in reading. In the elocution of this sublime production, on the great subject of man's immortal destiny, the declaimer, as in other soliloquies, should appear to be unconscious that any body else is present. It should be given with great deliberation, and in the most solemn manner. The inflections, emphasis, quantity, rate of utterance, and rhetorical pauses, must be such, as will secure the natural expression of intense feeling and grand ideas. The voice and countenance should indicate, that the mind is absorbed in deep contemplation.

31. IMAGINANARY MEETING OF SATAN, SIN, AND DEATH.—Milton 1. Meanwhile the adversary of God and man,

Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell,
Explores his solitary flight; sometimes
He scours the right hand coast, sometimes the left;
Now shaves with level wing the deep, then soars

Up to the fiery concave towering high. 2. As when far off at sea, a fleet descried,

Hangs on the cloud, by equinoctial winds
Close sailing from Bengala, or the isles
Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring
Their spicy drugs; they, on the trading flood,
Through the wide Ethiopian to the Cape,
Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole; so seem'd

Far off, the flying fiend. 3.

At last appear
Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, -
And thrice three-fold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed. 4.

Before the gates there sat,
On either side, a formidable shape;
The one seem'd woman to the waist, and fair;
But ended foul in many a scaly fold,
Voluminous and vast; a serpent arm’d
With mortal sting; about her middle round,
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing, bark'd,

g*