Night is described by two great poets, but one describes a night of quiet, the other of perturbation.  In the night of Dryden, all the disturbers of the world are laid asleep; in that of Shakespeare, nothing but sorcery, lust, and murder, is awake.  He that reads Dryden, finds himself lulled with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation.  He that peruses Shakespeare, looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone.  One is the night of a lover; the other, that of a murderer.

  (b)—­Wither’d murder,
 —­thus with his stealthy pace,
  With Tarquin’s ravishing sides tow’rds his design,
  Moves like a ghost.—­

This was the reading of this passage in all the editions before that of Mr. Pope, who for sides, inserted in the text strides, which Mr. Theobald has tacitly copied from him, though a more proper alteration might, perhaps, have been made.  A ravishing stride is an action of violence, impetuosity, and tumult, like that of a savage rushing on his prey; whereas the poet is here attempting to exhibit an image of secrecy and caution, of anxious circumspection and guilty timidity, the stealthy pace of a ravisher creeping into the chamber of a virgin, and of an assassin approaching the bed of him whom he proposes to murder, without awaking him; these he describes as moving like ghosts, whose progression is so different from strides, that it has been in all ages represented to be, as Milton expresses it,

  Smooth sliding without step.

This hemistich will afford the true reading of this place, which is, I think, to be corrected thus: 

   —­and wither’d murder,
   —­thus with his stealthy pace,
  With Tarquin ravishing, slides tow’rds his design,
  Moves like a ghost.

Tarquin is, in this place, the general name of a ravisher, and the sense is:  Now is the time in which every one is asleep, but those who are employed in wickedness, the witch who is sacrificing to Hecate, and the ravisher, and the murderer, who, like me, are stealing upon their prey.

When the reading is thus adjusted, he wishes with great propriety, in the following lines, that the earth may not hear his steps.

  (c) And take the present horror from the time. 
  Which now suits with it.—­

I believe every one that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is at least obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the author.  I shall, therefore, propose a slight alteration,

     —­Thou sound and firm-set earth,
  Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
  Thy very stones prate of my where-about,
  And talk—­the present horror of the time!—­
  That now suits with it.—­