Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/299

 Ann.So I have read too, Gio.But 'twere somewhat strange To see the waters burn; could I believe This might be true, I could believe as well There might be hell or heaven. Ann.That's most certain. Gio.A dream, a dream! else in this other world We should know one another. Ann.So we shall. Gio.Have you heard so?"

All the horror of this wonderful scene is tempered into beauty by the grace and glow of tenderness which so suffuses it as to verify the vaunt of Giovanni—

"If ever after-times should hear Of our fast-knit affections, though perhaps The laws of conscience and of civil use May justly blame us, yet when they but know Our loves, that love will wipe away that rigour Which would in other incests be abhorred. Give me your hand; how sweetly life doth run In these well-coloured veins! how constantly These palms do promise health! but I could chide With nature for this cunning flattery— Kiss me again—forgive me."

The soft and fervent colour of Ford's style, the smooth and finished measure of his verse, never fail him throughout the nobler parts of this tragedy; but here as elsewhere we sometimes find, instead of these, a certain hardness of tone peculiar to him, The ferocious nakedness of reciprocal invective in the scene where Soranzo discovers the pregnancy of Annabella has no parallel in the works of his great compeers. M. Taine has translated the opening passages of that scene in the division of his history of English literature which treats of our great dramatists. He has done full justice to the