e
in a style as curt and condensed as that of Tacitus or Dante:

_Sophonisba_. What unjust grief afflicts my worthy lord?

_Massinissa_. Thank me, ye gods, with much beholdingness;
For, mark, I do not curse you.

_Sophonisba_. Tell me, sweet,
The cause of thy much anguish.

_Massinissa_. Ha, the cause?
Let's see; wreathe back thine arms, bend down thy neck,
Practise base prayers, make fit thyself for bondage.

_Sophonisba_. Bondage!

_Massinissa_. Bondage: Roman bondage.

_Sophonisba_. No, no![1]

_Massinissa_. How then have I vowed well to Scipio?

_Sophonisba_. How then to Sophonisba?

_Massinissa_. Right: which way
Run mad? impossible distraction![2]

_Sophonisba_. Dear lord, thy patience; let it maze all power,
And list to her in whose sole heart it rests
To keep thy faith upright.

_Massinissa_. Wilt thou be slaved?

_Sophonisba_. No; free.

_Massinissa_. How then keep I my faith?

_Sophonisba_. My death
Gives help to all. From Rome so rest we free:
So brought to Scipio, faith is kept in thee.

_Massinissa_. Thou darest not die!--Some wine.--Thou
darest not die!

_Sophonisba_. How near was I unto the curse of man, Joy!
How like was I yet once to have been glad!
He that ne'er laughed may with a constant face
Contemn Jove's frown. Happiness makes us base.

[Footnote 1: This verse, unmusical to an English ear, is good Italian
metre; possibly an intentional and deliberate example of the poet's
Italian predilections, and if so certainly a less irrational and
inexplicable one than the intrusion of some villanously bad Italian
lines and phrases into the text of "Antonio and Mellida."]

[Footnote 2: In other words--intolerable or unimaginable division or
divulsion of mind and spirit between two contending calls of honor,
two irreconcilable claims of duty. Modern editors of this great scene
have broken up the line into pieces, marked or divided by superfluous
dashes and points of exclamation. Campbell, who had the good taste to
confute his own depreciatory criticism of Marston by including the
passage among his "Selections," was the first, as far as I know, to
adopt this erroneous and rather spasmodic punctuation.]

The man or the boy does not seem to me enviable who can read or remember
these verses without a thrill. In sheer force of concision they recall
the manner