osite sensations, clashing against each other like two
rivers at their conflux, yet urging their united course down the same
channel. Actuated by a mixture of these feelings, Dorax meets
Sebastian; and the art of the poet is displayed in that admirable
scene, by suggesting a natural motive to justify to the injured
subject himself the change of the course of his feelings. As his
jealousy of Sebastian's favour, and resentment of his unjust neglect,
was chiefly founded on the avowed preference which the king had given
to Henriquez, the opportune mention of his rival's death, by removing
the cause of that jealousy, gives the renegade an apology to his own
pride, for throwing himself at the feet of that very sovereign, whom a
moment before he was determined to force to combat. They are little
acquainted with human passions, at least have only witnessed their
operations among men of common minds, who doubt, that at the height of
their very spring-tide, they are often most susceptible of sudden
changes; revolutions, which seem to those who have not remarked how
nearly the most opposite feelings are allied and united, the most
extravagant and unaccountable. Muly Moluch is an admirable specimen of
that very frequent theatrical character,--a stage tyrant. He is fierce
and boisterous enough to be sufficiently terrible and odious, and that
without much rant, considering he is an infidel Soldan, who, from the
ancient deportment of Mahomed and Termagaunt, as they appeared in the
old Mysteries, might claim a prescriptive right to tear a passion to
tatters. Besides, the Moorish emperor has fine glances of savage
generosity, and that free, unconstrained, and almost noble openness,
the only good quality, perhaps, which a consciousness of unbounded
power may encourage in a mind so firm as not to be totally depraved by
it. The character of Muly Moluch, like that of Morat, in
"Aureng-Zebe," to which it bears a strong resemblance, was admirably
represented by Kynaston; who had, says Cibber, "a fierce lion-like
majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind of
trembling admiration." It is enough to say of Benducar, that the cool,
fawning, intriguing, and unprincipled statesman, is fully developed in
his whole conduct; and of Alvarez, that the little he has to say and
do, is so said and done, as not to disgrace his common-place character
of the possessor of the secret on which the plot depends; for it may
be casually observe