Orestes
immediately after meets the Usurper at the Entrance of his Palace; and by a very happy Thought of the Poet avoids killing him before the Audience, by telling him that he should live some Time in his present Bitterness of Soul before he would dispatch him; and
by
ordering him to retire into that Part of the Palace where he had slain his Father, whose Murther he would revenge in the very same Place where it was committed. By this means the Poet observes that Decency, which
Horace
afterwards established by a Rule, of forbearing to commit Parricides or unnatural Murthers before the Audience.
Nec coram populo natos Medea trucidet.
Let not Medea draw her murth'ring Knife,
And spill her Children's Blood upon the Stage.
The
French
have therefore refin'd too much upon