laws of Aristotelian criticism: and, omitting, at present,
all other considerations, whether it exhibits a beginning, a middle, and
an end.

The beginning is undoubtedly beautiful and proper, opening with a
graceful abruptness, and proceeding naturally to a mournful recital of
facts necessary to be known:

_Samson_. A little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun and shade:
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me.--
O, wherefore was my birth from Heav'n foretold
Twice by an Angel?--
Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd,
As of a person separate to God,
Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
Betray'd, captiv'd, and both my eyes put out?--
Whom have I to complain of but myself?
Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
Under the seal of silence could not keep:
But weakly to a woman must reveal it.

His soliloquy is interrupted by a chorus or company of men of his own
tribe, who condole his miseries, extenuate his fault, and conclude with
a solemn vindication of divine justice. So that at the conclusion of the
first act there is no design laid, no discovery made, nor any
disposition formed towards the consequent event.

In the second act, Manoah, the father of Samson, comes to seek his son,
and, being shewn him by the chorus, breaks out into lamentations of his
misery, and comparisons of his present with his former state,
representing to him the ignominy which his religion suffers, by the
festival this day celebrated in honour of Dagon, to whom the idolaters
ascribed his overthrow.

--Thou bear'st
Enough, and more, the burthen of that fault;
Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying
That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains,
This day the Philistines a popular feast
Here celebrate in Gaza; and proclaim
Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud
To Dagon, as their God who hath deliver'd
Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their hands,
Them out of thine, who slew'st them many a slain.

Samson, touched with this reproach, makes a reply equally penitential
and pious, which his father considers as the effusion of prophetick
confidence:

_Samson_.--He, be sure,
Will not connive, or linger, thus provok'd,
But will arise and his