As on a first reading of the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides we feel that, for all the grace and freshness and lyric charm of its opening scenes, the claim of the poem to our ultimate approval or disapproval must needs depend on the success or failure of the first interview between Theseus and his calumniated son; and as on finding that scene to be feeble and futile and prosaic and verbose we feel that the poet who had a woman's spite against women has here effectually and finally shown himself powerless to handle the simplest elements of masculine passion, of manly character and instinct; so in this less important case we feel that the writer, having ventured on such a subject as the compulsory temptation of a daughter by a father, who has been entrapped into so shameful an undertaking through the treacherous exaction of an equivocal promise unwarily confirmed by an inconsiderate oath, must be judged by the result of his own enterprise; must fail or stand as a poet by its failure or success. And his failure is only not complete; he is but just redeemed from utter discomfiture by the fluency and simplicity of his equable but inadequate style. Here as before we find plentiful examples of the gracefully conventional tone current among the lesser writers of the hour. _Warwick_. How shall I enter on this graceless errand? I must not call her child; for where's the father That will in such a suit seduce his child? Then, _Wife of Salisbury_;--shall I so begin? No, he's my friend; and where is found the friend That will do friendship such endamagement?--{255} Neither my daughter, nor my dear friend's wife, I am not Warwick, as thou think'st I am, But an attorney from the court of hell; That thus have housed my spirit in his form To do a message to thee from the king. This beginning is fair enough, if not specially fruitful in promise; but the verses following are of the flattest order of commonplace. Hay and grass and the spear of Achilles--of which tradition the moral is, What mighty men misdo, they can amend-- these are the fresh and original types on which our little poet is compelled to fall back for support and illustration to a scene so full of terrible suggestion and pathetic possibility. The king will in his glory hide thy shame; And those that gaze on him to find out thee Will lose their eyesight, looking on the sun. What can one drop of poison harm the sea, Whose hugy vastures can digest the ill And make it lose its operation? And so forth, and so forth; _ad libitum_ if not _ad nauseam_. Let us take but one or two more instances of the better sort. _Countess_. Unnatural besiege! Woe me unhappy, To have escaped the danger of my foes, And to be ten times worse invir'd by friends! (Here we come upon two more words unknown to Shakespeare; {256} _besiege_, as a noun substantive, and _invired_ for _environed_.)