Come, come, come, come, nay come to bed, Pr'ythee my love! The winds! Hark how they whistle, And the rain beats; oh! how the weather shrinks me! You're angry now; who cares? * * * [JAFFIER'S _ghost rises_. Are you returned? See, father, here he's come again! Am I to blame to love him? Oh, the dear one! [_Ghost sinks._ Why do you fly me? Are you angry still then? Father, where art thou? Father, why do you do thus? Stand off. Don't hide him from me. He's here somewhere. The apparitions of Jaffier and Pierre rise again bleeding. When they sink, she vows passionately that she will dig for them till she find them; and, imagining that they are drawing her downward, she dies. Though nearly all authorities have objected vehemently to the gross quasi-comic scenes with which Otway has lightened the intense gloom of his tragedy, I am not sure that the illustrious French critic, Taine, is not right in his approval of them. However ghastly, they give some relief. Though coarse and disgusting, they do stand out distinctly in the memory. The conspirators met at the house of one Aquilina, a Greek courtesan, who had private motives for favouring their cause. The old senator, Antonio (intended for a caricature of the debauched Shaftesbury), had robbed Pierre of this mistress, which was one of his main incentives to plotting against the State. Taine's comment on the picture is striking: "Comme l'homme est prompt à s'avilir, quand, échappé de son rôle, il revient à lui-même!" He thinks that Otway alone in that epoch reproduced the tragedy of Shakespeare: "Il ne lui manque que de naître cent ans plus tôt." Perhaps; only his form might then have suffered. And now as to Otway's diction. There is nothing convulsive about it; in him, to borrow a simile from Lowell, "every word does not seem to be underlined, like those of a school girl's letter." In the eyes of those to whom expression is good in proportion as it foregoes its function of expressing, in favour of a bedizenment, as of some window so prettily daubed that it lets in no light, the diction of Dryden, Otway, Goldsmith, Byron may appear poor. Otway speaks the language of nature and passion. Still, I admit that Otway's diction often does want distinction, and his metre rhythmical quality. He has not always the right word ready. But his language has certainly the merit of doing more justice to his subject than that of his euphuistic predecessors. Take, for instance, an example from that portion of the fine play, entitled _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, on good grounds attributed to Shakespeare. A queen, the body of whose slain lord remains unburied by order of a cruel king, implores redress from one able to grant it in these terms: Oh, my petition was Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied Melts into drops * * * he that will fish For my least minnow, let him lead his line To catch one at my heart.