Page:The Poetical Works of Elijah Fenton (1779).djvu/23

 The observation which Herod makes upon this is very affecting. The poet has drawn him so tortured with his passion, that he seems almost sufficiently punished for the barbarity of cutting off the father and brother of Mariamne.

Some critics have blamed Mariamne for yielding her affections to Herod, who had embrued his hands in her father and brother's blood: in this, perhaps, she cannot be easily defended; but the poet had a right to represent this as he literally found it in history, and being the circumstance upon which all the others depended. Though this play is one of the most beautiful in our language, yet it is in many places exposed