II.i.49 (437,6) Now o'er the one half world/Nature seems dead] That is,
_over our hemisphere all action and motion seem to have ceased_. This
image, which is perhaps the most striking that poetry can produce, has
been adopted by Dryden in his _Conquest of Mexico_:
_All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead,
The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head;
The little birds in dreams their song repeat,
And sleeping flow'rs beneath the night dews sweat.
Even lust and envy sleep!_
These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast
between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately
observed.
Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of
quiet, the other of perturbation. In the night of Dryden, all the
disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing
but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake. He that reads Dryden, finds
himself lull'd with serenity, and disposed to solitude and
contemplation. He that peruses Shakspeare looks round alarmed, and
starts to find himself alone. One is the night of a lover, the other, of
a murderer.
II.i.52 (438,8)
--wither'd Murther,
--thus with hia stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, tow'rds his design
moves like a ghost.--]
This was the reading of this passage [ravishing sides] in all the
editions before that of Mr.
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