a moment of jealous spleen, her
accomplished rival gives her that epithet.[77] It is possible that her
beautiful character, if brought more forward and colored up to the
historic portrait, would still be eclipsed by the dazzling splendor of
Cleopatra's; for so I have seen a flight of fireworks blot out for a
while the silver moon and ever-burning stars. But here the subject of
the drama being the love of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavia is very
properly kept in the background, and far from any competition with her
rival: the interest would otherwise have been unpleasantly divided, or
rather Cleopatra herself must have served but as a foil to the tender,
virtuous, dignified, and generous Octavia, the very _beau ideal_ of a
noble Roman lady:--

Admired Octavia, whose beauty claims
No worse a husband than the best of men;
Whose virtues and whose general graces speak
That which none else can utter.

Dryden has committed a great mistake in bringing Octavia and her
children on the scene, and in immediate contact with Cleopatra. To have
thus violated the truth of history[78] might have been excusable, but to
sacrifice the truth of nature and dramatic propriety, to produce a mere
stage effect, was unpardonable. In order to preserve the unity of
interest, he has falsified the character of Octavia as well as that of
Cleopatra:[79] he has presented us with a regular scolding-match
between the rivals, in which they come sweeping up to each other from
opposite sides of the stage, with their respective trains, like two
pea-hens in a passion. Shakspeare would no more have brought his
captivating, brilliant, but meretricious Cleopatra into immediate
comparison with the noble and chaste simplicity of Octavia, than a
connoisseur in art would have placed Canova's Dansatrice, beautiful as
it is, beside the Athenian Melpomene, or the Vestal of the Capitol.

The character of Octavia is merely indicated in a few touches, but every
stroke tells. We see her with "downcast eyes sedate and sweet, and looks
demure,"--with her modest tenderness and dignified submission--the very
antipodes of her rival! Nor should we forget that she has furnished one
of the most graceful similes in the whole compass of poetry, where her
soft equanimity in the midst of grief is compared to

The swan's down feather
That stands upon the swell at flood of tide,
And neither way inclines.

The fear which, seems to haunt the mind