We get as little philosophy or theology, as political and historic sympathy from Otway. In this respect he is inferior not only to Shakespeare, but to Dryden, who is able to afford more food for the intellect, if less for the heart. The terse and nervous expression of ripe and mellow life-wisdom in Dryden's _Spanish Friar_, for instance, is very remarkable. The greater poets indeed are usually men of great general intellectual power. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Goethe, Dante, Milton, Byron, Coleridge, Browning, occur at once to memory. Otway is perhaps exceptional in this respect. Possibly the free-thinking sentiments so fiercely hurled in the teeth of the priest by Pierre on the scaffold afford a clue to Otway's own attitude toward religion. In _The Orphan_ we find the same ardour of friendship and attachment between the sexes, the same raging despair and revolted denial, when those fierce affections are disappointed--no faith. Castalio's last words are-- Patience! preach it to the winds, To roaring seas, or raging fires; the knaves That teach it laugh at ye when ye believe them. * * * Now all I beg is, lay me in one grave, Thus with my love! Farewell, I now am--nothing. And Chamfort's, the last in the play: 'Tis thus that Heaven its empire does maintain; It may afflict, but man must not complain. The scenes in _Don Carlos_, where Carlos and the Queen meet, are admirably right in their abrupt, interrupted utterance, and must have been most effective on the stage. On the whole, no better opportunity exists for comparing the classical and romantic manners than in the examples afforded by these three plays on the reign of Philip. Don John's soliloquy about bastardy and free love is exceptionally good as a purple patch of poetry in Otway, though not without a reminiscence of Shakespeare's Edmund. There are likewise two splendid lines uttered by the King when Gomez is tempting him to suspect his son and queen. Gomez says: 'Tis true they gazed, but 'twas not very long. _King._ Lie still, my heart. Not long was't that you said? _Gomez._ No longer than they in your presence stayed. _King. No longer? Why a soul in less time flies_ _To Heaven, and they have changed theirs at their eyes._