Armida’s lamentation respecting her lover Rinaldo[54], is in the same vitious taste.
Queen. Give me no help in lamentation,
I am not barren to bring forth complaints:
All springs reduce their currents to mine eyes,
That I, being govern’d by the wat’ry moon,
May send forth plenteous tears to drown the world.
Ah, for my husband, for my dear Lord Edward.
King Richard III. act 2. sc. 2.
Jane Shore. Let me be branded for the public scorn,
Turn’d forth, and driven to wander like a vagabond,
Be friendless and forsaken, seek my bread
Upon the barren wild, and desolate waste,
Feed on my sighs, and drink my falling tears;
Ere I consent to teach my lips injustice,
Or wrong the orphan who has none to save him.
Jane Shore, act 4.
Give me your drops, ye soft-descending rains,
Give me your streams, ye never-ceasing springs,
That my sad eyes may still supply my duty,
And feed an everlasting flood of sorrow.
Jane Shore, act 5.
Jane Shore utters her last breath in a witty conceit.
Then all is well, and I shall sleep in peace——
’Tis very dark, and I have lost you now——
Was there not something I would have bequeath’d you?
But I have nothing left me to bestow,
Nothing but one sad sigh. Oh mercy, Heav’n! [Dies.
Act 5.
Gilford to Lady Jane Gray, when both were condemned to die:
Thou stand’st unmov’d;
Calm temper sits upon thy beauteous brow;
Thy eyes that flow’d so fast for Edward’s loss,
Gaze unconcern’d upon the ruin round thee,
As if thou hadst resolv’d to brave thy fate,
And triumph in the midst of desolation.
Ha! see, it swells, the liquid crystal rises,
It starts in spight of thee—— but I will catch it,
Nor let the earth be wet with dew so rich.
Lady Jane Gray, act 4. near the end.
The concluding sentiment is altogether sinical, unsuitable to the importance of the occasion, and even to the dignity of the passion of love.
Corneille, in his Examen of the Cid[55], answering an objection, that his sentiments are sometimes too much refined for persons in deep distress, observes, that if poets did not indulge sentiments more ingenious or refined than are prompted by passion, their performances would often be low; and extreme grief would never suggest but exclamations merely. This is in plain language to assert, That forced thoughts are more relished than such as are natural, and therefore ought to be preferred.