To hear and speak the plain and simple truth.
The suppression of his indignation in this and the succeeding passages—the climax of passion marked in his face, his tone and his action, when he says to himself
If this were told!——
the gradation thence to
Hast thou no fears for thy presumptuous self?
till at last he flames into ungovernable rage in
Did I not fear to freeze thy shallow valour,
And make thee sink too soon beneath my sword,
I’d tell thee—what thou art—I know thee well.
was altogether a string of beauties such as it rarely falls to the lot of the critic to commemorate. Had age and personal hardihood been added, it would have defied the cavils of the most churlish criticism, and deprived even enmity of all pretence to censure.