Cres. Enough, my lord; you've said enough.
This faithless, perjured, hated Cressida,

Shall be no more the subject of your curses:
Some few hours hence, and grief had done your work;
But then your eyes had missed the satisfaction,
Which thus I give you,-thus-

[She stabs herself; they both run to her.

Diom. Help save her, help!

Cres. Stand off, and touch me not, thou traitor Diomede ;

But you, my only Troilus, come near:

Trust me, the wound, which I have given this breast,
Is far less painful than the wound you gave it.
Oh, can you yet believe, that I am true?

Troil. This were too much, even if thou hadst been false!

But oh, thou purest, whitest innocence,~
For such I know thee now, too late I know it!-
May all my curses, and ten thousand more,
Heavier than they, fall back upon my head;
Pelion and Ossa, from the giants' graves
Be torn by some avenging deity,

And hurled at me, a bolder wretch than they,
Who durst invade the skies!

Cres. Hear him not, heavens;

But hear me bless him with my latest breath!
And, since I question not your hard decree,
That doomed my days unfortunate and few,
Add all to him you take away from me;
And I die happy, that he thinks me true.

[Dies.

Troil. She's gone for ever, and she blest me dying! Could she have cursed me worse! she died for me, And, like a woman, I lament for her. Distraction pulls me several ways at once: Here pity calls me to weep out my eyes, Despair then turns me back upon myself, And bids me seek no more, but finish here.

[Points his Sword to his Breast.

Ha, smilest thou, traitor! thou instruct'st me best,
And turn'st my just revenge to punish thee.
Diom. Thy worst, for mine has been beforehand
with thee;

I triumph in thy vain credulity,

Which levels thy despairing state to mine;
But yet thy folly, to believe a foe,

Makes thine the sharper and more shameful loss.
Troil. By my few moments of remaining life,
I did not hope for any future joy;

But thou hast given me pleasure ere I die,
To punish such a villain.-Fight apart;

[To his Soldiers. For heaven and hell have marked him out for me, And I should grudge even his least drop of blood To any other hand.

[TROILUS and DIOMEDE fight, and both Parties engage at the same time. The Trojans make the Greeks retire, and TROILUS makes D:0MEDE give ground, and hurts him. Trumpets sound. ACHILLES enters with his Myrmidons, on the backs of the Trojans, who fight in a ring, encompassed round. TROILUS, singling DIOMEDE, gets him down, and kills him; and ACHILLES kills TROILUS upon him. All the Trojans die upon the place, TROILUS last.

Enter AGAMEMNON, MENELAUS, ULYSSES, NESTOR, AJAX, and Attendants.

Achil. Our toils are done, and those aspiring walls, The work of gods, and almost mating heaven, Must crumble into rubbish on the plain.

Agam. When mighty Hector fell beneath thy sword, Their old foundations shook; their nodding towers Threatened from high the amazed inhabitants; And guardian-gods, for fear, forsook their fanes. Achil. Patroclus, now be quiet; Hector's dead;

And, as a second offering to thy ghost,
Lies Troilus high upon a heap of slain;
And noble Diomede beneath, whose death
This hand of mine revenged.

Ajax. Revenged it basely:

For Troilus fell by multitudes opprest,
And so fell Hector; but 'tis vain to talk.
Ulys. Hail, Agamemnon! truly victor now!
While secret envy, and while open pride,
Among thy factious nobles discord threw;
While public good was urged for private ends,
And those thought patriots, who disturbed it most;
Then, like the headstrong horses of the sun,
That light, which should have cheered the world,
consumed it:

Now peaceful order has resumed the reins,
Old Time looks young, and Nature seems renewed.
Then, since from home-bred factions ruin springs,
Let subjects learn obedience to their kings.

3

[Exeunt.

EPILOGUE,

SPOKEN BY THERSITES.

THESE cruel critics put me into passion;
For, in their lowering looks I read damnation :
You expect a satire, and I seldom fail;
When I'm first beaten, 'tis my part to rail.
You British fools, of the old Trojan stock,
That stand so thick, one cannot miss the flock,
Poets have cause to dread a keeping pit,
When women's cullies come to judge of wit.
As we strew rat's-bane when we vermin fear,
"Twere worth our cost to scatter fool-bane here;
And, after all our judging fops were served,
Dull poets, too, should have a dose reserved;
Such reprobates, as, past all sense of shaming,
Write on, and ne'er are satisfied with damning:
Next, those, to whom the stage does not belong,
Such whose vocation only is-to song;
At most to prologue, when, for want of time,
Poets take in for journey-work in rhime.
But I want curses for those mighty shoals
Of scribbling Chloris's, and Phyllis' fools:
Those oafs should be restrained, during their lives,
From pen and ink, as madmen are from knives.
I could rail on, but 'twere a task as vain,
As preaching truth at Rome, or wit in Spain:
Yet, to huff out our play was worth my trying;
John Lilburn 'scaped his judges by defying: +
If guilty, yet I'm sure o' the church's blessing,
By suffering for the plot, without confessing.

Lilburn, the most turbulent, but the boldest and most upright of men, had the merit of defying and resisting the tyranny of the king, of the parliament, and of the protector. He was convicted in the star-chamber, but liberated by the parliament; he was tried on the parliamentary statute for treasons in 1651, and before Cromwell's high court of justice in 1654 ; and notwithstanding an audacious defence, which to some has been more perilous than a feeble cause, he wasy in both cases, triumphantly acquitted.