four flowing verses of the
death-scene are in his more inspired manner, and must be held good for
redeeming a multitude of peccadilloes and some graver transgressions.
Read them over again--

"Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw,
Though less and less of Emily he saw;
So, speechless for a little space he lay;
Then grasp'd the hand he held, and sigh'd his soul away."

When years rolling have in a manner exhausted the tears due to the
remembrance of the heroic Arcite, a parliament, held upon matters of
public interest, gives occasion to Theseus of requiring the attendance
of Palamon from Thebes to Athens. The benign monarch, however, is
revolving affairs of nearer and more private concern. The national
council is assembled; Palamon is in his place, and Emelie has been
called into presence. His majesty puts on a very serious countenance,
fixes his eyes, heaves a sigh, and begins unburthening his bosom of its
concealed purposes. He "begins from the beginning" in this fashion:--

"When the First Mover established the great chain of love, in which he
bound the four elements, the mighty ordering proceeded of high wisdom.
The same author, himself inaccessible to alteration, has appointed to
all natural things the law of transiency and succession. The kinds
endure; the individuals pass away. Nature examples us with decay. Trees,
rivers, mighty towns, wax and wane--much more we. All must die--the
great and the small: and the wish to live is an impiety. Better it is to
fall in the pride of strength and in the splendour of renown, than to
droop through long years into the grave; and the friend who survives
should rejoice in his friend's happy and honourable departure.
Wherefore, then, shall we longer mourn for Arcite?" This is the copious
preamble. The conclusion is more briefly dispatched. Emelie must accept
the hand of her faithful servant Palamon. He wants no persuasion; and
the knot of matrimony happily ties up at last their destinies, wishes,
and expectations, which the Tale in its progress has spun.

The royal harangue is long; and marked, doubtless, with a sort of
artificial solemnity. However, it has a deliberative stateliness and a
certain monarchal tone. _We_ do not now, in the Speeches from the
Throne, begin regularly from the Creation--but that is a refinement.
There has been eloquence of which Chaucer's deep display of philosophy
and high deduction of argument is no ill-conceived representati