All things are hush’d as Nature’s self lay dead, The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head; The little birds in dreams their song repeat, And sleeping flow’rs beneath the night dews sweat.  Even lust and envy sleep!

These lines, though so well known, I have transcribed, that the contrast between them and this passage of Shakespeare may be more accurately observed.

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 lull’d with serenity, and disposed to solitude and contemplation.  He that peruses Shakspeare looks round alarmed, and starts to find himself alone.  One is the night of a lover, the other, of a murderer.

II.i.52 (438,8)

—­wither’d Murther, —­thus with hia stealthy pace, With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, tow’rds his design moves like a ghost.—­]

This was the reading of this passage [ravishing sides] 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 at 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 te be, as Milton expresses it,

  Smooth sliding without step.

This hemiatic 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 a-sleep, 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.

II.i.59 (439,3) And take the present horrour from the time,/Which now suits with it] Of this passage an alteration was once proposed by me, of which I have now a less favourable opinion, yet will insert it, as it may perhaps give some hint to other critics: