Are heinous crimes, and full of foul reproach;
Yet none offence, but deck’d with noble name
Of glorious conquests in the hands of kings.’
The principal characters make as many invocations to the names of their children, their country, and their friends, as Cicero in his Orations, and all the topics insisted upon are open, direct, urged in the face of day, with no more attention to time or place, to an enemy who overhears, or an accomplice to whom they are addressed; in a word, with no more dramatic insinuation or byeplay than the pleadings in a court of law. Almost the only passage that I can instance, as rising above this didactic tone of mediocrity into the pathos of poetry, is one where Marcella laments the untimely death of her lover, Ferrex.
‘Ah! noble prince, how oft have I beheld
Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed,
Shining in armour bright before the tilt;
And with thy mistress’ sleeve tied on thy helm,
And charge thy staff to please thy lady’s eye,
That bowed the head-piece of thy friendly foe!