y vivid picture can be found, of a subject so awfully
interesting. Born with a strong tendency to all that was honourable
and virtuous, the very excess of his virtues became vice, when his own
ill fate, and Sebastian's injustice, had driven him into exile. By
comparing, as Dryden has requested, the character of Dorax, in the
fifth act, with that he maintains in the former part of the play, the
difference may be traced betwixt his natural virtues, and the vices
engrafted on them by headlong passion and embittering calamity. There
is no inconsistence in the change which takes place after his scene
with Sebastian; as was objected by those, whom the poet justly terms,
"the more ignorant sort of creatures." It is the same picture in a new
light; the same ocean in tempest and in calm; the same traveller, whom
sunshine has induced to abandon his cloak, which the storm only forced
him to wrap more closely around him. The principal failing of Dorax is
the excess of pride, which renders each supposed wound to his honour
more venomously acute; yet he is not devoid of gentler affections,
though even in indulging these the hardness of his character is
conspicuous. He loves Violante, but that is a far subordinate feeling
to his affection for Sebastian. Indeed, his love appears so inferior
to his loyal devotion to his king, that, unless to gratify the taste
of the age, I see little reason for its being introduced at all. It is
obvious he was much more jealous of the regard of his sovereign, than
of his mistress; he never mentions Violante till the scene of
explanation with Sebastian; and he appears hardly to have retained a
more painful recollection of his disappointment in that particular,
than of the general neglect and disgrace he had sustained at the court
of Lisbon. The last stage of a virtuous heart, corroded into evil by
wounded pride, has been never more forcibly displayed than in the
character of Dorax. When once induced to take the fatal step which
degraded him in his own eyes, all his good affections seem to be
converted into poison. The religion, which displays itself in the
fifth act in his arguments against suicide, had, in his efforts to
justify his apostacy, or at least to render it a matter of no moment,
been exchanged for sentiments approaching, perhaps to atheism,
certainly to total scepticism. His passion for Violante is changed
into contempt and hatred for her sex, which he expresses in the
coarsest terms. His feel