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And Llyr and his daughter subdued the island before the end of the year, from one sea to another, and chased his two sonsin-law away out of the island.

"And, after the isle of Britain had been conquered by Llyr, a messenger came from France, to inform Cordeilla of the death of Aganippus; and she took that very heavily to heart, and from thenceforth she preferred dwelling in the isle of Britain, with her father, than return to France on her dowry. Whereupon, after they had reduced the island to them, they governed it for a long time in peace and quietness until Llyr died. And, after his death, he was honourably buried in a temple, which he had himself built in Caer Llyr, under the river Soram, to the honour of some god, who was called Janus Bifrons. And, upon the festival of that temple, all the craftsmen of the city used to come to honour it, and then they would begin every work, that was to be taken in hand to the conclusion of the

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year.

After the decease of Llyr, Cordeilla took the government of the isle of Britain; and she managed it for five years in peace and tranquillity, and in the sixth year rose her two nephews, sons of her sisters, who were young men of great fame, namely, Margan, the son of Maglon, prince of Scotland, and Cunedda, the son of Henwyn, prince of Cornwall. And they assembled an army, and made war on Cordeilla; and, after frequent conflicts between them, they subdued the island, and took her and confined her in prison. And, when she thought of her former grandeur, which she had lost, and there remained no hopes that she should be again restored, out of excessive anguish she killed herself, which was done by stabbing herself with a knife under her breast, so that she lost her soul. And, thereupon, it was adjudged, that it was the foulest death of any for a person to kill himself. This happened a thousand and five hundred years after the deluge."

It can scarcely be necessary to notice the various parts of this story, which have not been preserved in the tragedy, as they must be sufficiently obvious to all readers of Shakespeare, as must those passages in the play which have been engrafted upon the original; such, for instance, are the episode of Gloucester and his sons, taken from Sydney's "Arcadia," and the character of the Steward, borrowed from the "Mirrour of Magistrates." It may be requisite, however, to remark, that the poet has not adhered to the genuine story in killing Cordelia as he has done, during the life of her father, on which account Tate's version has the merit, not only of being more consonant, as Johnson properly observes, but also of being more faithful to the original.

A MELANCHOLY FANCY.-BY DR. SINEROES.

green,

CANST lead me to a plot of ground
Whose face the sun did never mask in
Or never step of human foot was seen;
Where the shrill lark never called up the morn;
Where night's sweet pearls of dew were never worn;
Where never beasts, but toads and adders, fed;
Where day's white silver beams were never spread;
Where never Satyr danc'd the grassy ring;

Where nought but serpents hiss and screech-owls sing?
O! could'st thou bring me thither,

Where grief and I might live and die together!

Lansdown MSS. No. 777.

THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO.

THE story, on which Shakespeare's Tragedy of Othello is founded, is taken from Cynthio's novels, the seventh in the third decade. Whence Shakespeare obtained the name of Othello cannot now be ascertained, as no English translation of this work, so early as the time of Shakespeare, is known. There is a French translation of Cynthio, by Gabriel Chappreys, printed at Paris in 1584, which is, however, not a faithful one; but it is probable that this was the medium through which it came into English. That many small and interesting pamphlets have been lost between that time and the present, cannot be doubted; and, if there was an English translation of this novel, it must have been among the number.

In God's Revenge against Adultery, by John Reynolds, History the Eighth, there is an argument of his, as follows: "She marries Othello, an old German soldier." In this history, also, which professes to be an Italian one, the name of Iago occurs. It may perhaps be urged, that those names were adopted from the tragedy before us; but every reader, in the least conversant with the peculiar style and method in which the work of honest John Reynolds is composed, will acquit him of even the slightest familiarity with the scenes of Shakespeare.

The date of the occurrence of the story, on which this play is founded, may be ascertained from the following circumstances: Selymus the Second formed his design against Cyprus in 1569, and took it in 1571. This was the only

attempt the Turks ever made upon that island after it came into the hands of the Venetians, (which was in the year 1473,) wherefore the time must have been in some part of that interval. We learn from the play, that there was a junction of the Turkish fleet at Rhodes, in order to the invasion of Cyprus. These are real historical facts, which happened when Mustapha, Selymus's general, attacked Cyprus in May 1570, which must have been in the time of the play.

TRUE HISTORY OF MACBETH.

ABOUT the lineage and station of Macbeth, whose misdeeds have been dramatized, writers have written variously, as their purposes were either narrative or dramatic. The fabulous Boece was the first, who said, that Macbeth's father was thane of Angus, and married Doada, the second daughter of Malcolm II. Buchanan, without inquiry, adopted the fables of Boece, Holinshed followed Boece, as to the station of Macbeth, and Shakespeare repeated the echoes of Holinshed. The more veracious Wyntown calls Macbeth the thane of Crumbachty, which is the Gaelic name of Cromarty: and in the well-known story of the Weird Sisters, the chronicler makes the first witch hail Macbeth thane of Crumbachty; the second, thane of Moray; and the third, king. These intimations lead directly up to the several fictions of Boece, Holinshed, and Shakespeare. Macbeth was, by birth, the thane of Ross; by marriage with the Lady Gruoch, the thane of Moray; and, by his crimes, the king of Scots. Finley, as we may learn from Torfæus, was maormor, or, as the Norwegian historian calls him, jarl of Ross, who, at the commencement of the eleventh century, carried on a vigorous war, in defence of his country, against the incursions of that powerful vikingr, Sigurd, the earl of Orkney and Caithness. With his dominions, the district of Finley was contiguous, while the country of Angus lay, southward, at a great distance. Finley lost his life about 1020, in some hostile conflict with Malcolm II. This fact alone evinces, that Finley would scarcely have fought with his wife's father, if he had been the husband of Doada. The Lady Gruoch, when driven from her castle by the cruel fate of her husband, the maormor of Moray, naturally fled, with her infant son, Lulach, into the neighbouring country of Ross, which was then ruled by Macbeth, who married her, during the reign of Duncan. We have now seen distinctly, that Macbeth was maormor of Ross,

the son of Finley, and the grandson of Rory, or Roderick; and that he was the husband of Gruoch, who was the daughter of Boedhe, and the grand-daughter of Kenneth IV. Macbeth thus united in himself all the power which was possessed by the partizans of Kenneth IV., all the influence of the lady Gruoch, and of her son Lulach, together with the authority of maormor of Ross, but not of Angus. With all these powers, in addition to his own character for address and vigour, Macbeth became superior to Duncan and the partisans of his family. Macbeth had to avenge the wrongs of his wife, and to resent, for himself, the death of his father. The superiority of Macbeth, and the weakness of Duncan, were felt, when the unhappy king expiated the crimes of his fathers, by "his most sacrilegious murder;" and Macbeth hastily marched to Scone, where he was inaugurated as the king of Scots, supported by the clans of Moray and Ross, and applauded by the partisans of Kenneth IV. If Macbeth had been in fact, what fiction has supposed, the son of the second daughter of Malcolm, his title to the throne would have been preferable to the right of Duncan's son, according to the Scottish constitution, from the earliest epoch of the monarchy. Whatever defect there may have been in his title to the sullied sceptre of his unhappy predecessor, he seems to have been studious to make up for it, by a vigorous and beneficent administration. He even practised the hospitality, which gives shelter to the fugitive. During his reign, plenty is said to have abounded; justice was administered; the chieftains, who would have raised disturbances, were either overawed by his power, or repressed by his valour. Yet, injury busied herself in plotting vengeance. Crian, the abbot of Dunkeld, who, as the father of Duncan, and the grandfather of his sons, must have been now well-stricken in years, put himself at the head of the friends of Duncan, and made a gallant, but unsuccessful attempt, to restore them to their rights. The odious crime, however, by which Macbeth acquired his authority, seems to have haunted his most prosperous moments. He tried, by distributing money at Rome, by largesses to the clergy, and by charity to the poor, to obtain relief from "the affliction of those terrible dreams that did shake him nightly." Macbeth, and the lady Gruoch, his wife, gave the lands of Kirkness, and also the manor of Bolgy, to the Culdees of Lochleven. Yet, the friendship of the pope, and the support of the clergy, did not ensure Macbeth a quiet reign. His rigour increased with his sense of insecurity. The injuries of Macduff, the maormor of Fife, constantly prompted the son of Duncan to attempt the redress of their wrongs. With the approbation,

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perhaps by the command, of Edward the Confessor, Siward, the potent earl of Northumberland, and the relation of Malcolm, conducted a numerous army into Scotland, during the year 1054. The Northumbrians, led by Siward and his son Osbert, penetrated, probably, to Dunsinane. In this vicinity, were they confronted by Macbeth, when a furious conflict ensued. The numbers of the slain evince the length of the battle, and the bravery of the combatants. Osbert was slain : yet Macbeth, after all his efforts of valour, and vigour of conduct, was overcome. He retired into the north, where he had numerous friends, and where he might find many fastnesses Siward returned into Northumberland, and died, at York, in 1055. Meantime, Macbeth continued his bloody contest with Malcolm and this uncommon character was at length slain, at Lumphanan, on the 5th of December, 1056, by the hand of the injured Macduff.

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EXTEMPORE LINES TO A PINT POT.

OLD poets Hippocrene admire,
And pray to water to inspire

Their muse's birth and heavenly fire;
Had they this seemly fountain seen,

Sack both their drink and muse had been,
And this pint pot their Hippocrene.

Had truly they considered it,
They had, like me, thought it unfit
To pray to water for their wit;
But had ador'd sack as divine,
And made a poet, god of wine;
Then this pint pot had been a shrine.

Sack unto them had been, instead
Of Nectar, and the heavenly bread,
And every boy a Ganymede;
And had they made a god of it,
And styled it patron of their wit,
This pot had been a temple fit.

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