To give an answer for the rest intends:
Once Proteus, now Equivocus he hight.
Father of cheaters, spring of cunning lies,
Of sly deceit, and refin'd perjuries,

That hardly hell itself can trust his forgeries!

The speech of this demon strongly reminds us of the replies of the fallen angels to Satan, in "Paradise Lost," more particularly that of Belial, who seems to be his counterpart. Fletcher, according to the prejudice of his time, has made Equivocus the patron of the followers of Ignatius, whose qualifications as devilish agents are set forth very much at full in his speech.He advises (and here again the resemblance to Milton is very striking,) the infernal prince to carry the war from heaven to earth; to assail in particular the "Wrestler" and his subjects in the obnoxious "little isle" and to employ the agency of his friends the Jesuits for that particular enterprise-the synod approves his counsel.

With that the bold black spirit invades the day,
And heaven, and light, and lord of both defies.
All hell run out, and sooty flags display,

A foul deformed rout: heaven shuts his eyes; The stars look pale, and early mornings' ray

Lays down her head again, and dares not rise:
A second night of spirits the air possest;

The wakeful cock that late forsook his nest,
Maz'd how he was deceived, flies to his roost and rest.

So when the south, dipping his sable wings
In humid seas, sweeps with his dropping beard
The ayer, earth, and ocean, down he flings
The laden trees, the ploughman's hopes new ear'd
Swim on the plain; his lips loud thund'rings,
And flashing eyes make all the world afraid:

Light with dark clouds, waters with fires are met,
The sun but now is rising, now is set,

And finds west's shades in east, and seas in ayers wet.

Canto the third opens with the following stanza :—

False world how dost thou witch dim reason's eyes!
I see thy painted face, thy changing fashion :
Thy treasures, honours, all are vanities,

Thy comforts, pleasures, joys are all vexation,
Thy words are lies; thy oaths foul perjuries,

Thy wages, care, grief, beggary, death, damnation, All this I know: I know thou dost deceive me, :

Yet cannot as thou art, but seem'st, conceive thee:
I know I should, I must, yet oh! I would not leave thee!

Look as in dreams where the idle fancy plays,

One thinks that fortune high his head advances; Another spends in woe his weary days;

A third sees sport in love and courtly dances; This groans and weeps, that chants his merry lays; A sixth to find some glittering treasure chances: Soon as they wake they see their thoughts were vain, And quite forget and mock their idle brain;

This sighs, that laughs to see how true false dreams can feign.

Such is the world, such life's short acted play:

This base and scorn'd; this high in great esteeming, This poor and patched seems, this rich and gay; This sick, that strong; yet all is only seeming : Soon as the parts are done, all slip away;

So like, that waking, oft we think we're dreaming, And dreaming hope we wake.-Wake watch mine eyes!

What can be in this world, but flatteries, Dreams, cheats, deceits, whose prince is king of night and lies?

The scene now shifts from the infernal regions, to the theatre of the world, and we are introduced to the Jesuits and the countries of Europe most favourable to their opinions and subject to their influence. The fiend Equivocus is dispatched to Rome which is well described as contrasted with its former state.

Say Muses, say, who now in those rich fields
Where silver Tibris swims in golden sands,
Who now, ye Muses, that great sceptre wields,
Which once swayed all the earth in servile bands?
Who now those Babel towers, once fallen, builds?
Say, say, how first it fell, how now it stands?
How, and by what degrees that city sunk?
Oh! are those haughty sp'rits so basely shrunk,
Cæsars to change for friars,—a monarch for a monk?

Upon the ruins of those marble towers,

Founded, and rais'd, with skill and great expence Of ancient kings, great lords, and emperors,

*

He builds his Babel up to heaven, and thence Thunders through all the world; on sandy floors The ground-work slightly floats, the walls to sense Seem porphyr fair, which blood of martyrs taints; But was base loam, mixed with strawey saints; Daub'd with untempered lime, which glittering tinfoil paints.

*The Pope.

The 4th Canto describes a conclave at the Vatican.The pontiff addresses his assembled dignitaries, in a long and violent speech, describing the ancient glory of the papacy, its absolute dominion over the opinions and actions of mankind,-and the late defections in the Protestant states of Europe, particularly England. This speech is answered by the chief of the Jesuits, who proposes a plan for the destruction of the English heretics, in a summary manner.

That blessed Isle, so often cursed in vain,
Triumphing in our loss and idle spight,

Of force shall shortly stoop to Rome and Spain;
I'll take a way ne'er known to man or spright.
To kill a king is stale, and I disdain :

That fits a secular, not a jesuite.

Kings, nobles, clergy, commons, high and low,
The flower of England in one hour I'll mow,

And head all th' isle with one unseen, unfenced blow!

In short, he projects the famous plot for blowing up the Parliament House and all its assembled inmates, with gunpowder; which is hailed with acclamation, and the assembly disperses.

The 5th Canto brings forward the subordinate agents in the plot, busy in their operations in the "celerage," disposing their mine, and laying their trains. Guy

Faux is thus described:

Among them all, none so impatient

Of stay, as fiery Faux, whose grisly feature Adorn'd with colours of hell's regiment,

Soot black, and fiery red, betrays his nature. His frighted mother, when her time she went, Oft dream'd she bore a strange and monstrous creature, A brand of hell sweltering in fire and smoke,

Who all, and's mother's self would burn and choke; So dream'd she in her sleep, so found she when she 'woke.

Rome was his nurse, and Spain his tutor; she
With wolfish milk fleshed him in deadly lies,
In hate of truth and stubborn error: he

Fats him with human blood, inures his eyes,
Dashed brains, torn limbs, and trembling hearts to see,
And tunes his ear with groans and shrieking cries.
Thus nurs'd, bred, grown a cannibal, now prest
To be the leader of this troop, he blest

His bloody maw with thought of such a royal feast.

Meanwhile the "eye" of providence surveys the diabolical preparations, and summoning

That mounting eagle, which beneath his throne,
His sapphire throne, fixed in chrystal base,
Broadly dispreads his heaven-wide pinion,

On whom, when sinful earth he strikes with 'maze, He wide displays his black pavilion,

And thundering, fires high towers with flashing blaze:

Dark waters draw their sable curtains o'er him,

With flaming wings the burning angels shore him, The clouds and guilty heavens for fear fly fast before him.

The winged messenger is sent to warn the " "great peace-maker" and his "council" of the impending danger, and the king receives a special intimation of the plot.

that learned royal mind, Lighted from heaven, soon the knot and plot untwined.

The action of the poem terminates with the discovery of the mine, and the apprehension of the traitor