These two plays of Willis did not add many leaves to his laurels. His genius was undramatic; in his stories the dramatic element is not the most pronounced. Both “Bianca” and “Tortesa” have passages which are good as poetry or declamation, and here and there occur bits of spirited dialogue; but in general the characters are only half vitalized, the situations are not firmly grasped and presented, and the language is stilted. In short, they are book plays merely, with nothing to distinguish them from the numerous experiments of other American literary gentlemen who have essayed to feed the stage with manuscripts from their library tables. In “Bianca Visconti” the main situation--the heroine’s connivance at her brother’s murder, in order that her husband might become Duke of Milan--is strongly imagined but feebly carried out. One cannot help thinking how Victor Hugo, for instance, would have dealt with this motive. “Tortesa the Usurer” seems to be made up of hints from Shakespeare. The hero has some slight resemblance to Shylock; the heroine drinks a sleeping potion, like Juliet, to escape an odious marriage; and in the last act, which is constructed with some skill, she stands in the frame of a picture, like Hermione in “Winter’s Tale,” though with a different purpose. Willis’s official connection with the “New York Mirror” had stopped with the termination of his “Pencillings,” and after January 16, 1836, his name ceased to appear at the head of the editorial column. His contributions, however, as we have seen, went on, and included not only “Letters from Under a Bridge,” but poems and miscellaneous correspondence, besides a half dozen of stories, afterwards collected in “Romance of Travel.” The verse contributions were added to the American edition of “Melanie,” 1837, which contained a number of things written since the appearance of the English edition two years previous. Notable among these were “Lines on Leaving Europe,” “To a Face Beloved,”--both of which have been mentioned,--“To Ermengarde,” and a song-like little piece entitled “Spring,” the opening lines of which are especially Willisy:-- “The Spring is here, the delicate-footed May, With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers; And with it comes a thirst to be away, Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours.”