power; and an annual consulship was substituted for monarchical government.

When Lucius Junius Brutus died, funeral honors were publicly paid him. The senators, whom Brutus had raised in number to three hundred, came to receive his body at the gates of the city, it being brought to Rome from the field of battle; and the Roman matrons wore a year's mourning for him, as the avenger of Lucretia. His statue was erected in the Capitol, bearing in the hand a dagger.

Sextus Tarquin was not long subject either to the stings of remorse, or to the reproaches of his family for being the cause of their downfal. He retired to the city of Gabii, where he held command; and perished there soon after.

Lucretia's death took place in the year 244 of the Roman era, -509 B. C.

This narrative of Lucretia, has, of course, closely adhered to the historical account; but it is interesting to trace the different representations of her speech and demeanour at the point in her sad story where her husband and friends come to her on the morning after the outrage-as variously given by those who have depicted the scene. Livy, with the staidness of a historian, and the patriotic bent of a Roman, records the address of the Roman matron, Lucretia, to her husband, in words which convey the idea that she seeks to urge his indignation to take the shape of revenge upon her undoer, to turn her wrongs into a means of redressing those of Rome; and while pleading her cause with her injured friends, inciting them to make it one with that of the oppressed Romans, groaning beneath Tarquin tyranny. She seems, in this writer's pages, less occupied with the horror and pain of the revelation she has to make, than solicitous to convert it into a source of future avenging retribution. She brings forward

almost with unfeminine coolness-the circumstances that may be pleaded in extenuation of her unhappy fall; and receives the consoling assurances of her husband and friends,-that as her will had no part in the foul deed, she cannot be accounted culpable,more like arguments that require answering, than soothings of her affliction. Upon their telling her that when the spirit is innocent, the body is guiltless, and that there can be no fault committed where the intention remains pure, she replies, "It is for you to decide upon the doom of Sextus. For myself, if I absolve myself from crime, I cannot exempt myself from the penalty. Henceforth, no woman surviving her shame, shall venture to cite the example of Lucretia!" And she forthwith plunges the steel into her bosom, and dies.

Ovid has told the whole story, in the second book of his Fasti," with great beauty and tenderness. At the point in question, he describes her silence, her confusion, her troubled aspect; her hidden face, her streaming tears, her hesitation and distress in having to relate the circumstances which she has summoned her husband and father to hear. He has given to their words a manly belief in the goodness of her they love, a noble confidence in her faith and virtue. "Thou hast not failed in truth or purity!" they exclaim; "thou yieldedst to violence !" And to her speech he has imparted a womanly tenderness, very characteristic of her modest worth,-gentle, yet firm and constant to her own conviction of right: "You pardon me!" she returns, "but I, I cannot pardon myself!" And she falls, self-struck, at their feet.

Chaucer has a similar touch, here, with the Latin poet; indeed his "Legend of Lucrece," is, all through, almost a paraphrase of many of the passages in Ovid. The touch adverted to, is strictly in keeping with the character of the chaste Lucretia, marking her

scrupulons modesty in the very last act of her dying moments. The old Saxon poet tells it in his own quaintly simple style :—

"But privily she caughten forth a knife,
And therewithal she reft herself of life,
And as she fell adown, she cast her look,
And of her clothes yet good heed she took;
For in her falling, yet she had a care,

Lest that her feet or suché things lay bare ;-
So well she loved cleanness, and eke truth."

Chaucer's description of her manner when faltering out the terrible revelation she has to make to her husband and friends, forms also a graceful parallel with Ovid's diction; but, as usual, Shakespeare transcends them all, in his wording of the circumstance. The pathos, the delicacy, the bashful reluctance, the wifely and impassioned regret for his sake, which Shakespeare has thrown into Lucretia's speech to Collatinus are completely his own.

"And now this pale swan in her watery nest

Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending:
(Few words), quoth she, shall fit the trespass best,
Where no excuse can give the fault amending:
In me more woes than words are now depending,
And my laments would be drawn out too long,
To tell them all with one poor tired tongue.

Then, be this all the task it hath to say:
Dear husband, in the interest of thy bed

A stranger came, and on that pillow lay
Where thou wast wont to rest thy weary head;

And what wrong else may be imagined
By foul enforcement might be done to me,
From that, alas! thy Lucrece is not free."

In this early poem of the great dramatist, he faintly anticipated some of those exquisite touches which afterwards shone forth with such refulgence in his glorious play of Cymbeline. We are

reminded of Posthumus Leonatus's rash wager, in Collatine's boast and challenge; of Imogen's fervent-chaste wifehood, in Lucretia's modest dignity; and of Iachimo's turpitude in Sextus Tarquin's villainy. Shakespeare, like his brother poets, Ovid and Chaucer, told the story with full homage to the mingled beauty and delicacy of the real Lucretia; but there is one subtle point, which perhaps only the painter of Imogen would have thought of adding. When Sextus first arrives:

The instinct which induces even the intended violator to make his first appeal to the wife through her husband's praises, is precisely one of the thousand instances of Shakespeare's keen perception of human sentiment; while Lucretia's silent drinking in of the joy, with devout exaltation of heart, is true Imogen. Afterwards, too, when Tarquin, alone, admiringly recalls her beauteous looks and manner, how vividly he depicts the innocent unconsciousness of Lucretia; reading no hint of the unlawful fire that flames in his eyes, and seeing nothing there save interest, as she thinks, for him she loves.

"Quoth he, she took me kindly by the hand,

And gaz'd for tidings in my eager eyes,
Fearing some hard news from the warlike band,
Where her beloved Collatinus lies.

O how her fear did make her colour rise!

First red as roses that on lawn we lay,
Then white as lawn, the roses took away."

The two stanzas pourtraying Lucretia as she lies asleep, so beautifully prefigure the similar passage describing Imogen, that the poet himself seems reminded of his own former-written picture; for he makes the Italian Iachimo commence the lovely speech with these words :

"Our Tarquin thus

Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded.-Cytherea,

How bravely thou becom'st thy bed! fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch!
But kiss; one kiss!-Rubies unparagon'd
How dearly they do't!-'Tis her breathing that
Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o' the taper
Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids
To see the enclosed lights, now canopied
Under these windows; white and azure, lac'd
With blue of heaven's own tinct."

And here is Lucretia :

Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under,
Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss,

Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder

Swelling on either side to want his bliss,

Between whose hills her head intombed is;
Where, like a virtuous monument, she lies,
To be admir'd of lewd unhallowed eyes.

Without the bed her other fair hand was,
On the green coverlet; whose perfect white
Show'd like an April daisy on the grass,
With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath'd their light,

And canopied in darkness sweetly lay,

Till they might open to adorn the day.

The subject has inspired Ovid with a delicacy of description unusual to him. Those passages in which he describes Lucretia's personal demeanour, are signalized by refined beauty and grace of