Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.
(_Exit_ LUCRETIA.)
I do not feel as if I were a man,
But like a fiend appointed to chastise
The offences of some unremembered world.
My blood is running up and down my veins;
A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
My heart is beating with an expectation
Of horrid joy."
_Ohe! jam satis est!!_--The _minutiae_ of this _affectionate_ parent's
curses forcibly remind us of the equally minute excommunication so
admirably recorded in Tristram Shandy. But Sterne has the start of him;
for though Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y, Esquire, has contrived to include in
the imprecations of Cenci, the eyes, head, lips, and limbs of his
daughter, the other has anticipated his measures, in formally and
specifically anathematizing the lights, lungs, liver, and _all odd
joints_, without excepting even the great toe of his victim.--To proceed
in our review; the dying expostulations of poor Beatrice, are beautiful
and affecting, though occasionally tinged with the Cockney style of
burlesque; for instance, Bernado asks, when they tear him from the
embraces of his sister,
"Would ye divide body from soul?"
On which the judge sturdily replies--"That is the headsman's business.
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