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Have we not long since proved to demonstration
That ghosts move not on ordinary feet?

But these are dancing just like men and women.
The Girl. What does he want then at our ball?
Faust. Oh! he

Is far above us all in his conceit:

Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment;
And any step which in our dance we tread,
If it be left out of his reckoning,

Is not to be considered as a step.

There are few things that scandalize him not:
And when you whirl round in the circle now,
As he went round the wheel in his old mill,
He says that you go wrong in all respects,
Especially if you congratulate him

Upon the strength of the resemblance.

Broct. Fly!

Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there!
In this enlightened age too, since you have been
Proved not to exist!But this infernal brood
Will hear no reason and endure no rule.
Are we so wise, and is the pond still haunted?
How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish
Of superstition, and the world will not

Come clean with all my pains!—it is a case
Unheard of!

The Girl. Then leave off teazing us so.
Broct. I tell you spirits, to your faces now,
That I should not regret this despotism
Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not.
To night I shall make poor work of it,
Yet I will take a round with you, and hope

Before my last step in the living dance

To beat the poet and the devil together.

Meph. At last he will sit down in some foul puddle;
That is his way of solacing himself;

Until some leech, diverted with his gravity,
Cures him of spirits and the spirit together.

(To Faust, who has seceded from the dance.)

Why do you let that fair girl pass from you,
Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?
Faust. A red mouse in the middle of her singing
Sprung from her mouth.

Meph. That was all right, my friend.

Be it enough that the mouse was not grey.

Do not disturb your hour of happiness

With close consideration of such trifles.

Faust. Then saw I

Meph. What?

Faust. Seest thou not a pale

Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away?

She drags herself now forward with slow steps,
And seems as if she moved with shackled feet:
I cannot overcome the thought that she
Is like poor Margaret.

Meph. Let it be-pass on

No good can come of it—it is not well
To meet it-it is an enchanted phantom,
A lifeless idol; with a numbing look,

It freezes up the blood of man; and they

Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,

Like those who saw Medusa.

Faust. Oh, too true!

Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse

Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!

That is the heart which Margaret yielded to me—
Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!
Meph. It is all magic, poor deluded fool!
She looks to every one like his first love.

Faust. Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn
My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.
How strangely does a single blood-red line,
Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
Adorn her lovely neck!

Meph. Aye, she can carry

Her head under her arm upon occasion;
Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures
End in delusion.-Gain this rising ground,
It is as airy here as in a [

And if I am not mightily deceived,

I see a theatre-What may this mean?

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Attendant. Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for 'tis

The custom now to represent that number.

'Tis written by a Dilettante, and

The actors who perform are Dilettanti;
Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.
I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.

ARIOSTO'S EPISODE OF CLORIDAN,

MEDORO, AND ANGELICA.

It is no great boast to say, that this is perhaps the first time an English reader has had any thing like a specimen given him of the Orlando Furioso. Harrington, the old translator, wrote with a crab-stick, and Hoole with a rule. (The rhyme is lucky for him, and perhaps for our gentilities; for he provokes one of some sort.) The characteristics of Ariosto's style are great animal spirits, great ease and flow of versification, and great fondness for natural and strait-forward expressions, particularly in scenes of humour and tenderness. What approaches Harrington makes to these with his sapless crutches, or Hoole with his conventional stilts, let those discover who can. Harrington has perhaps twenty good stanzas in his whole work; and he is to be preferred to Hoole, because he has at all events an air of greater good faith in what he does. Hoole is a mere bundle of common-places. He understood nothing of his author but the story. He sometimes apologizes for the difficulty he feels in "raising the style," and when he comes to a passage more than usually familiar, thinks that the most "tolerable" way of rendering it is by doing away all its movement and vivacity. "Most tolerable" it is certainly, and "not to be endured." Yet a friend once quoted to us one good line out of Hoole. "It was something," he said, " about

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