Wainscot and trembling floor!”
The idea of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the floor in an ague, is highly Shakesperesque, and, as the Courier is made to say at page 3 of the Opinions, “is worthy of the best days of that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. Stephens has so successfully studied.”
This well-deserved praise—the success with which the author has studied, in a school, the models of which were human feelings and nature,—we have yet to illustrate from other passages. Mr. Stephens evinces his full acquaintance with Nature by a familiarity with her convulsions: whirlwinds, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and volcanoes—are this gentleman’s playthings. When, for instance, Rupert is going to be gallant to Queen Isabella, she exclaims:—
“Dire lightnings! Scoundrel! Help!”
Martinuzzi conveys a wish for his nobles to laugh—an order for a sort of court cachinnation—in these pretty terms:—
“Blow it about, ye opposite winds of heaven,
Till the loud chorus of derision shake
The world with laughter!”
When he feels uncomfortable at something he is told in the first act, the Cardinal complains thus:—
“Ha! earthquakes quiver in my flesh!”