Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/176

166 In a former paper, the author having treated the paſſion of jealouſy in various lights, and marked its progreſs through the human mind, concludes his animadverſions with this ſtory, which he ſays may ſerve as an example to whatever can be ſaid on that ſubject.

‘Mariamne had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth could give a woman, and Herod all the love that ſuch charms are able to raiſe in a warm and amorous diſpoſition. In the midſt of his fondneſs for Mariamne, he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was repreſented to Mark Anthony, who immediately ſummoned Herod into Egypt, to anſwer for the crime that was laid to his charge: Herod attributed the ſummons to Anthony’s deſire of Mariamne, whom therefore before his departure, he gave into the cuſtody of his uncle Joſeph, with private orders to put her to death, if any ſuch violence was offered to himſelf. This Joſeph was much delighted with Mariamne’s converſation, and endeavoured with all his art and rhetoric to ſet out the exceſs of Herod’s paſſion for her; but when he ſtill found her cold and incredulous, he inconſiderately told her, as a certain inſtance of her lord’s affecttion, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly ſhewed, according to Joſeph’s interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous inſtance of a wild unreaſonable paſſion quite put out for a time thoſe little remains of affection, ſhe ſtill had for her lord: Her thoughts were ſo wholly taken up with the cruelty of his orders, that ſhe could not conſider the kindneſs which produced them; and therefore repreſented him in her imagination, rather under the frightful idea of a murderer, than a lover. ‘Herod