yon azure heav'n!'--
"But the guards still remaining restive, Sempronius himself attacks
Juba, while each of the guards is representing Mr. Spectator's sign of
the Gaper, awed, it seems, and terrified by Sempronius's threats. Juba
kills Sempronius, and takes his own army prisoners, and carries them in
triumph away to Cato. Now I would fain know if any part of Mr. Bayes's
tragedy is so full of absurdity as this?
"Upon hearing the clash of swords, Lucia and Marcia come in. The
question is, why no men come in upon hearing the noise of swords in the
governor's hall? Where was the governor himself? Where were his guards?
Where were his servants? Such an attempt as this, so near the governor
of a place of war, was enough to alarm the whole garrison: and yet, for
almost half an hour after Sempronius was killed, we find none of those
appear who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise
of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most
certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia
appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:--
"'Luc. Sure 'twas the clash of swords! my troubled heart
Is so cast down, and sunk amidst its sorrows,
It throbs with fear, and aches at every sound!'
And immediately her old whimsy returns upon her:--
"O Marcia, should thy brothers, for my sake--
I die away with horror at the thought.'
"She fancies that there can be no cutting of throats but it must be for
her. If this is tragical, I would fain know what is comical. Well, upon
this they spy the body of Sempronius; and Marcia, deluded by the habit,
it seems, takes him for Juba; for, says she,
"'The face is muffled up within the garment.'
"Now, how a man could fight, and fall, with his face muffled up in his
garment, is, I think, a little hard to conceive! Besides, Juba, before
he killed him, knew him to be Sempronius. It was not by his garment
that he knew this; it was by his face, then: his face therefore was
not muffled. Upon seeing this man with his muffled face, Marcia falls
a-raving; and, owning her passion for the supposed defunct, begins to
make his funeral oration. Upon which Juba enters listening, I suppose
on tip-toe; for I cannot imagine how any one can enter listening in any
other posture. I would fain know how it came to pass that, during all
this time, he had sent nobody--no, not so much as a candle-snuffer--to
take
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