_The Orphan_ I do not myself like so much as _Don Carlos_, but it is full of Otway's peculiar power, and has a greater reputation. The plot is repulsive, with a flavour of Elizabethan unsoundness. All the mischief and misery arise from a want of moral courage shown by Castalio, the passionate, but weak and irresolute hero, in concealing--partly from a kind of dastardly, rakish, bravado, and partly from fear of his father's disapproval, as well as a certain misplaced deference to fraternal affection--his own ardent and honourable affection for the orphan girl to whom he is secretly married. The character of Castalio is similar to that of Jaffier, Carlos, and of Otway himself, judging from what we know of his relations with Mrs. Barry. Monimia is another Belvidera, though less powerfully conceived. They are exquisite types of womanhood, own sisters to Cordelia, Imogen, Desdemona. There is no local colour in the play, but we miss that in _Don Carlos_ and _Venice Preserved_ more particularly. Otway's scenes might be in abstract space. The poetry of the period of Charles II., William, and Anne, was singularly blind to the face of external nature, a very serious defect; not even Greek or Latin poetry was thus blind. I have drawn a distinction between two kinds of poetry in drama--that of movement or crisis, and that of repose or contemplation. The poetry appropriate to the one condition must necessarily be different from that appropriate to the other, and he is so far a bad poet who confounds the species. It will be the second kind that can be transplanted to books of beautiful extracts, and lends itself to quotation, because that is more germane to many similar circumstances; whereas the former belongs especially to the particular event or crisis. In the former species I have allowed that Otway is not rich. We look in vain for the poetry of Hamlet, of brooding, irresolute, melancholy; for the poetry of Lorenzo, that of music; or Portia, which is that of mercy; for any lovely words like those of Perdita, the very breath and symphony of flowers; for any accents like those of heart-stricken Aspatia, in her swan-song of desertion; or visionary anthem of Helen's ideal beauty, as in Marlowe. No Claudio out of Shakespeare has uttered a final word concerning physical death equal to this: "To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot"; no Cæsar has fixed for us the visible tokens of a born conspirator; no Jaques summed for us the seasons of human life. Nor are these mere "purple patches"; far from it, they are of the seamless garment's very warp and woof. But, if we consider, we shall find that much of the poetry we love best in that earlier drama is the poetry of movement or supreme event; and this we do find in Otway, as the passages which I have already quoted, or mentioned, are sufficient to prove. We do find in him poetry parallel to that of mad Lear's heart-quaking utterance in presence of Cordelia, which commences--