however, as are fond of tracing the ideas of poets to those who have written before them, may consider Cassandra,--in her pride, her love, and her alternate schemes for saving and destroying Cleomenes,--as furnishing the original hint of the much more highly finished character of Zara in Congreve's "Mourning Bride." The conduct of the piece, being calculated to evince the Spartan virtue, patience, and courage, contains a long train of hopes disappointed, seducing temptations resisted, sufferings patiently endured, and finally closed by a voluntary death. There is no particular object to which the attention of the audience is fixed, as that upon which the conclusion of the piece necessarily depends. The liberation of Cleomenes from his Egyptian bondage is doubtless the consummation concerning which the poet meant that we should be anxious; but this event might be brought about in so many different ways, and, if accomplished, brings Cleomenes so little nearer to the restoration of Spartan liberty, that it is perhaps insufficient to excite that strong, concentrated, and vivid interest, which the plot of a drama ought properly to inspire. The mind is distracted among the various possibilities by which the desired catastrophe might be accomplished; and feels a consciousness, that even were Cleomenes dismissed with full sails from the port of Alexandria, it would be rather the beginning than the winding up of his history. For these reasons, the plot seems more deficient in interest than might have been expected, from the spirited delineation of the principal character. It appears that Dryden was unable, from illness, to put the finishing strokes to "Cleomenes." That task he committed to Southerne, now his intimate friend, and who, as may be easily imagined, felt himself much honoured by the task imposed upon him.[27] The half of the fifth act was that upon which Southerne exercised this power of revisal and finishing; for that it amounted to no more, will, I think, be obvious to any who takes the trouble to compare that act with those which precede it. The rabble-scene, introduced, as the poet himself tells us, to gratify the more barbarous part of his audience, is indeed deplorably bad.