nveniencies of imprisonment is not wholly
without verbal quaintness:

--I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air, imprison'd also, close and damp.

From the sentiments we may properly descend to the consideration of the
language, which, in imitation of the ancients, is through the whole
dialogue remarkably simple and unadorned, seldom heightened by epithets,
or varied by figures; yet sometimes metaphors find admission, even where
their consistency is not accurately preserved. Thus Samson confounds
loquacity with a shipwreck:

How could I once look up, or heave the head,
Who, like a foolish _pilot_, have _shipwreck'd_
My _vessel_ trusted to me from above,
Gloriously _rigg'd_; and for a word, a tear,
Fool! have _divulg'd_ the _secret gift_ of God
To a deceitful woman?--

And the chorus talks of adding fuel to flame in a report:

He's gone, and who knows how he may _report_
Thy _words_, by _adding fuel to the flame_?

The versification is in the dialogue much more smooth and harmonious,
than in the parts allotted to the chorus, which are often so harsh and
dissonant, as scarce to preserve, whether the lines end with or without
rhymes, any appearance of metrical regularity:

Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
That heroic, that renown'd,
Irresistible Samson? whom unarm'd
No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand;
Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid.

Since I have thus pointed out the faults of Milton, critical integrity
requires that I should endeavour to display his excellencies, though
they will not easily be discovered in short quotations, because they
consist in the justness of diffuse reasonings, or in the contexture and
method of continued dialogues; this play having none of those
descriptions, similies, or splendid sentences, with which other
tragedies are so lavishly adorned. Yet some passages may be selected
which seem to deserve particular notice, either as containing sentiments
of passion, representations of life, precepts of conduct, or sallies of
imagination. It is not easy to give a stronger representation of the
weariness of despondency, than in the words of Samson to his father:

--I feel my genial spirits droop,
My hopes all flat, Nature within me seems
In all her functions weary of herself,
My race of glory run, and race of shame,
And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

The reply of Samson to the flat