The Works of Henry Fielding Part 19

Nor can I pa.s.s by a particular sort of soul in a particular sort of description in the New Sophonisba:

Ye mysterious powers, --Whether thro' your gloomy depths I wander, Or on the mountains walk, give me the calm, The steady smiling soul, where wisdom sheds Eternal sunshine, and eternal joy.

_Hunc_. [1]Oh! what is music to the ear that's deaf, Or a goose-pie to him that has no taste?

What are these praises now to me, since I Am promised to another?

[Footnote 1: This line Mr Banks has plunder'd entire in his Anna Bullen.]

_Thumb_. Ha! promised?

_Hunc_. Too sure; 'tis written in the book of fate.

_Thumb_. [1]Then I will tear away the leaf Wherein it's writ; or, if fate won't allow So large a gap within its journal-book, I'll blot it out at least.

[Footnote 1: Good Heaven! the book of fate before me lay, But to tear out the journal of that day.

Or, if the order of the world below Will not the gap of one whole day allow, Give me that minute when she made her vow.

--_Conquest of Granada_.

SCENE VII.--GLUMDALCA, TOM THUMB, HUNCAMUNCA

_Glum_. [1]I need not ask if you are Huncamunca.

Your brandy-nose proclaims----

[Footnote 1: I know some of the commentators have imagined that Mr Dryden, in the altercative scene between Cleopatra and Octavia, a scene which Mr Addison inveighs against with great bitterness, is much beholden to our author. How just this their observation is I will not presume to determine.]

_Hunc_. I am a princess; Nor need I ask who you are.

_Glum_. A giantess; The queen of those who made and unmade queens.

_Hunc_. The man whose chief ambition is to be My sweetheart hath destroy'd these mighty giants.

_Glum_. Your sweetheart? Dost thou think the man who once Hath worn my easy chains will e'er wear thine?

_Hunc_. Well may your chains be easy, since, if fame Says true, they have been tried on twenty husbands.

[1]The glove or boot, so many times pull'd on, May well sit easy on the hand or foot.

[Footnote 1: "A cobling poet indeed," says Mr D.; and yet I believe we may find as monstrous images in the tragick authors: I'll put down one:

Untie your folded thoughts, and let them dangle loose as a bride's hair.--_Injured Love_.

Which line seems to have as much t.i.tle to a milliner's shop as our author's to a shoemaker's.]

_Glum_. I glory in the number, and when I Sit poorly down, like thee, content with one, Heaven change this face for one as bad as thine.

_Hunc_. Let me see nearer what this beauty is That captivates the heart of men by scores.

[_Holds a candle to her face_.

Oh! Heaven, thou art as ugly as the devil.

_Glum_. You'd give the best of shoes within your shop To be but half so handsome.

_Hunc_. Since you come [1]To that, I'll put my beauty to the test: Tom Thumb, I'm yours, if you with me will go.

[Footnote 1: Mr L---- takes occasion in this place to commend the great care of our author to preserve the metre of blank verse, in which Shakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, were so notoriously negligent; and the moderns, in imitation of our author, so laudably observant:

Then does Your majesty believe that he can be A traitor?--_Earl of Ess.e.x_.

Every page of Sophonisba gives us instances of this excellence.

_Glum_. Oh! stay, Tom Thumb, and you alone shall fill That bed where twenty giants used to lie.

_Thumb_. In the balcony that o'erhangs the stage, I've seen a wh.o.r.e two 'prentices engage; One half-a-crown does in his fingers hold, The other shews a little piece of gold; She the half-guinea wisely does purloin, And leaves the larger and the baser coin.

_Glum_. Left, scorn'd, and loathed for such a chit as this; [1] I feel the storm that's rising in my mind, Tempests and whirlwinds rise, and roll, and roar.

I'm all within a hurricane, as if [2] The world's four winds were pent within my carcase.

[3] Confusion, horror, murder, guts, and death!

[Footnote 1: Love mounts and rolls about my stormy mind.

--_Aurengzebe_.

Tempests and whirlwinds thro' my bosom move.

--_Cleomenes_.

[Footnote 2: With such a furious tempest on his brow, As if the world's four winds were pent within His bl.u.s.tering carcase.--_Anna Bullen_.

[Footnote 3: Verba Tragica.]

SCENE VIII.--KING, GLUMDALCA.

_King_. [1] Sure never was so sad a king as I!

[2] My life is worn as ragged as a coat A beggar wears; a prince should put it off.

[3] To love a captive and a giantess!

Oh love! oh love! how great a king art thou!

My tongue's thy trumpet, and thou trumpetest, Unknown to me, within me. [4] Oh, Glumdalca!

Heaven thee designed a giantess to make, But an angelick soul was shuffled in.

[5] I am a mult.i.tude of walking griefs, And only on her lips the balm is found [6] To spread a plaster that might cure them all.