 | Madrigal And Trulletta |  |
SCENE I.
An Apartment.(Thunder and Lightning.
Trulletta, Scourella.
Trul.
Heaven's! 'tis a fearful night!
Scour.
Tho' age hath snow'd
Almost thrice twenty winters on my head,
I never saw a night so terrible—
Most terrible indeed—The moon's eclips'd;
The stars sleep in their sockets: scarce a ray
Of light t'illume the welkin's pitchy cope,
But what the sheeted light'ning's flash affords.
The bursting thunder roars with frightful crack,
As if heaven's magazines were blowing up.
The blust'ring Boreas, like a bully, storms,
And threatens to unhinge earth's mass, which rocks
Affrighted on its axis, like a sign.
Owls, magpies, ravens on the chimney tops
Screech, chatter, croak: geese cackle, crickits chirp,
In concert dissonant.
Trul.
'Tis said, strange sights
Appear ith' air?
Scour.
Ten thousand hags and wizzards,
On broomsticks mounted, thro' the frightful sky
Gallop apace their fiery footless steeds—
Squadrons of bodkins, press-boards, yardwands, sheers,
'Gainst penknives, sheets of paper, inkhorns, quills,
Appear drawn up in battailous array —
Such sights seem certain prologue to the fall
Of mightiest empires, or the crush of worlds.
Trul.
What is this puny tempest in the sky,
With ominous presage—No joy, no comfort
Remains, but what the hopes of lengthen'd life
To Sculliona leave—would I were plac'd
With my dear father in his cold last bed!—
I shall not long survive him.
Many of our tragic authors have judiciously usher'd in a dreadful night, by way of prologue or preparative to the catastrophe of their plays. Such preparative seldom fails of success, as it throws a gloomy melancholy o'er the mind, and renders the reader, or audience, more susceptible of the ensuing distress of the performance. It further serves to heighten the character of the hero, or heroine; for certainly nothing can be a stronger proof of the dignity and importance of any personage, than when we are convinced, that even nature itself is mourning the impending fall of her favourites.
Hath snow'd a hundred winters on thy head.
What a triumph must this, and a few of the preceding lines, afford a half-finish'd critick? how will he swell with his wonderful discovery? Methinks I hear him exulting to the following effect.—“I thought I should catch our author tripping! A few lines ago he tells us it was a very dark night; and yet an old woman of sixty, whose sight we may naturally imagine to be none of the best, is able to discern with the naked eye such minute objects as bodkins and inkhorns in the air.” To such critick I shall reply, and pray what is there unnatural in all this? Might not the light'ning enable our matron to make such discovery? Tho' her eyes were none of the best, yet she might discern these objects through her spectacles; nay, possibly, thro' a telescope. But pray, Sir, who inform'd you of the size of bodkins and inkhorns, which you arbitrarily call such minute objects? Not our author I'm confident. For any thing you know to the contrary, they might be as large as a maypole; nay, as the Monument itself. In short, Sir, if you knew any thing of the figure Hyperbole, which every author hath a right to use, you would have been silent on this occasion.—Besides, with all your sagacity, you cannot even tell whether Scourella really saw them or no; from the relation she gives, she may be as naturally suppos'd to have taken the account from those that had seen them, as that she had seen them herself, for it is no uncommon thing now-a-days to see with other people's eyes. Dr. Humbug.
| Madrigal And Trulletta | |