Terms affirming unacquaintance with sin, or abstention from it, tend to be quickly reft of what praise they are fraught with; none of us likes to be saluted as innocent, guileless, or unsophisticated, and to be dubbed silly no longer makes us feel blessed.

What of that other child Ye reft from me but now? TALTHYBIUS (speaking with some constraint).

"For whilest I was thus without dread or dout, 155 A cruel Satyre with his murdrous dart, Greedie of mischiefe, ranging all about, Gave her the fatall wound of deadly smart, And reft from me my sweete companion, And reft from me my love, my life, my hart: 160 My Lyonesse, ah woe is me!

On Oeta's top thus Hercules lay dead, 9 With ruin'd oaks and pines about him spread; The poplar, too, whose bough he wont to wear On his victorious head, lay prostrate there; Those his last fury from the mountain rent: Our dying hero from the Continent Ravish'd whole towns: and forts from Spaniards reft As his last legacy to Britain left.

They wanted him to change his name from Reaves to Cox and he did.

That so, before Colonna's host, your arms Lie crush'd and sullied with dishonour's stain; So, reft in sunder by contending factions, Be your Italian provinces; so torn By discord and dissension this vast empire; So broken and disjoin'd your subjects' loves; So fallen your son's ambition, and your pride.