Plunderer of all, and tyrant of his own,
invaded his country. Osmyn was thrown into the dungeon of his own castle, where he was kept for years. A time came when his prison walls were destroyed by a tempest—that is, an earthquake—and he gained his liberty. Being recognized by no one he wandered about in the streets and became witness of a procession where Matilda, now the wife of Manfred, was borne in solemn festival. In despair he left the country:
On the last shore of Italy I kissed
A cross my mother bound about my neck,
And flung it towards these towers. On Asia’s coast
I grasped the crescent.
The story, we see, is rather improbable, and the deliverance of Osmyn from his prison belongs to the most hackneyed tricks of the older school of terror. The hero is, however, typically Maturineian. He is a kind of Bertram in Ottoman costume; the one returns as a robber-chief, the other as the leader of an infidel army, and the speech of Osmyn is a distinct echo from Maturing first play:
If thou would’st make man wretched, make him vile:
Sear up his conscience—make his mind a desert,
His heart an ulcer, and his frame a stone;