"When I am dead, As speedily I shall be, let my grave Be very humble in that mournful spot. I pray thee, sometimes visit it at eve, And when you look upon the fading rose That grows beside a pillar down the aisle, And watch it drooping in the twilight dews, Then think of one who bloomed a little while, E'en as that sickly rose, and bloomed to die." There is more here of the small sweets of Anna Matilda than of the pathos and harmony of Otway, or the vigour of Lee. Whatever promise this first tragedy gave, there was nothing of realisation in the author's next tragedy, the "Apostate." In this piece, Hermeya, the Moslem hero, renounces his faith, for love of the Christian lady Florinda, who is so perplexed between love and duty, even more than he between love and patriotism, that she at length finds expression for her condition in the unusually majestic line--"This is too much for any mortal creature!"--a line which was echoed by more than one critic. "Adelaide" was feeble; the "Apostate," in place of being stronger, was only furious. There was the bombast of Lee, but none of his brilliancy; the hideousness of his images without anything of their grand picturesqueness. Florinda, looking on at the execution of Hermeya, exclaims-- "Lo! they wrench his heart away: They drink his gushing blood!" --and when a compassionate gentleman requests that the lady may be removed, she sets forth this series of screaming remarks:-- "You shall not tear me hence; No!--Never! never! He is my lord!--My husband!--Death!--'twas death! Death married us together!--Here I will dig A bridal bed, and we'll lie there for ever! I will not go!--Ha! You may pluck my heart out, I will never go!--Help!--Help!--Hermeya! They drag me to Pescara's cursed bed! They rend the chains of fire that bind me to thee! Help!--Help!" --and so, screaming, she dies. Not thus, despite some raving, was Belvidera frantic, calling on Jaffier;--and the audience failed to see a second Otway in Lalor Sheil.