great name assert:
Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him
Of all these boasted trophies won on me.

_Manoah_. With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words
I as a prophecy receive; for God,
Nothing more certain, will not long defer
To vindicate the glory of his name.

This part of the dialogue, as it might tend to animate or exasperate
Samson, cannot, I think, be censured as wholly superfluous; but the
succeeding dispute, in which Samson contends to die, and which his
father breaks off, that he may go to solicit his release, is only
valuable for its own beauties, and has no tendency to introduce any
thing that follows it.

The next event of the drama is the arrival of Dalila, with all her
graces, artifices, and allurements. This produces a dialogue, in a very
high degree elegant and instructive, from which she retires, after she
has exhausted her persuasions, and is no more seen nor heard of; nor has
her visit any effect but that of raising the character of Samson.

In the fourth act enters Harapha, the giant of Gath, whose name had
never been mentioned before, and who has now no other motive of coming,
than to see the man whose strength and actions are so loudly celebrated:

_Haraph_.--Much I have heard
Of thy prodigious might and feats perform'd,
Incredible to me, in this displeas'd,
That I was never present in the place
Of those encounters, where we might have tried
Each other's force in camp or listed fields;
And now am come to see of whom such noise
Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey,
If thy appearance answer loud report.

Samson challenges him to the combat; and, after an interchange of
reproaches, elevated by repeated defiance on one side, and imbittered by
contemptuous insults on the other, Harapha retires; we then hear it
determined by Samson, and the chorus, that no consequence good or bad
will proceed from their interview:

_Chorus_. He will directly to the lords, I fear,
And with malicious counsel stir them up
Some way or other yet farther to afflict thee.

_Sams_. He must allege some cause, and offer'd fight
Will not dare mention, lest a question rise
Whether he durst accept the offer or not;
And, that he durst not, plain enough appear'd.

At last, in the fifth act, appears a messenger from the lords assembled
at the festival of Dagon, with a summons by which Samson is required to