aced in rather an interesting point of
view. But Dryden has himself informed us, that he was apprehensive the
justice of a wife's claim upon her husband would draw the audience to
her side, and lessen their interest in the lover and the mistress. He
seems accordingly to have studiedly lowered the character of the
injured Octavia, who, in her conduct towards her husband, shews much
duty and little love; and plainly intimates, that her rectitude of
conduct flows from a due regard to her own reputation, rather than
from attachment to Antony's person, or sympathy with him in his
misfortunes. It happens, therefore, with Octavia, as with all other
very good selfish kind of people; we think it unnecessary to feel any
thing for her, as she is obviously capable of taking very good care of
herself. I must not omit, that her scolding scene with Cleopatra,
although anxiously justified by the author in the preface, seems too
coarse to be in character, and is a glaring exception to the general
good taste evinced throughout the rest of the piece.

It would be too long a task to contrast the beauties of these two
great poets in point of diction and style. But the reader will
doubtless be pleased to compare the noted descriptions of the voyage
of Cleopatra down the Cydnus. It is thus given in Shakespeare:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them: The oars were silver;
Which, to the tune of flutes, kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat, to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue),
O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see,
The fancy outwork nature; on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: At the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: The silken tackle
Swells with the touches of those flower-soft hands
That yarely frame the office. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned in the market-place, did