Page:Osorio; a tragedy, as originally written in 1797 (IA cu31924105501831).pdf/28

 regret that the part of Ordonio was disposed of before his appearance at Drury Lane. We have had nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with Remorse for very many years, and I should think that the reception of that play was sufficient to encourage the highest hopes of author and audience."

With the calmer criticism which the lapse of half a century brings, Mr. Swinburne writes of Remorse in these measured terms:—"There is little worth praise or worth memory in the Remorse except such casual fragments of noble verse as may readily be detached from the loose and friable stuff in which they lie imbedded. In the scene of the incantation, in the scene of the dungeon, there are two such pure and precious fragments of gold. In the part of Alhadra there are lofty and sonorous interludes of declamation and reflection. The characters are flat and shallow; the plot is at once languid, violent, and heavy."

In the original Osorio, however, these "fragments of noble verse" are much more numerous and frequent than in the play as remodelled to suit the exigencies of the stage. Speaking of the