Page:The Poetical Works of Elijah Fenton (1779).djvu/15

 No. 171, which the ingenious Author collected out of Josephus. As this story so fully displays the nature of the passion of jealousy, and discovers so extraordinary a character as that of Herod, we shall here insert it, after which we shall consider with what success Mr. Fenton has managed the plot.

In a former paper the author having treated the passion of jealousy in various lights, and marked its progress through the human mind, concludes his animadversions with this story, which, he says, may serve as an example to whatever can be said on that subject.

"Mariamne had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth, could give a woman, and Herod all the love that such charms are able to raise in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of his fondness for Mariamne he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Anthony, who immediately summoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Anthony's desire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death if any such violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured, with all his art and rhetoric, to set out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredu-