proportions, even
making extensive use--as, we shall see, the author of _Damon and
Pythias_ did before him--of the Greek device of stichomythia. He was
most anxious, also, to provide stirring topics for his characters to
speak on, the queen's uncertainty between crime and religion in the
second scene being a notable example. But of necessity the distance of
time and space imposed by his methods between an event and the reporting
of it gives a measure of detachment to its discussion. In the matter of
personal feeling, too, he was hampered by this same unavoidable
detachment, and by the need of being impressive; for he and his friends
seem to have been convinced that the wider and less particular the
subject the greater would be the hearer's awe. We need only compare
Arthur's speech over Mordred's body with the lamentation of the mother
in _Cambyses_ to perceive how the new methods compel the king to hasten
from the thought of the 'hapless boy' to a consideration of their joint
fate as 'a mirror to the world'. Because, in _Cambyses_, we know so
little more of the boy and his mother than her grief, his murder fails
as tragedy; but had Arthur indulged a little in such grief as her's, how
much more moving would have been the tragedy of _The Misfortunes of
Arthur_! But this was not the way of the Senecan school. Everywhere we
find the same preference, as in _Gorboduc_, for broad argument and
easily detachable expressions of philosophic wisdom. What shall be said
of the style of language and verse? This much in praise, that Blank
Verse is retained. But--and the thoughtful reader will discern that the
same fatal influence is at work here as elsewhere--Hughes relapses,
deliberately, into the artificial speech of _Appius and Virginia_.
Alliteration charms him with its too artful aid. Nowhere has R.B. such
rant as falls from the pen of Hughes. In the last battle between Arthur
and Mordred 'boist'rous bangs with thumping thwacks fall thick', while
the younger leader rages over the field 'all fury-like, frounc'd up with
frantic frets'. Guenevera revives her declining wrath with this
invocation of supernatural aid:

Come, spiteful fiends, come, heaps of furies fell,
Not one by one, but all at once! my breast
Raves not enough: it likes me to be fill'd
With greater monsters yet. My heart doth throb,
My liver boils: somewhat my mind portends,
Uncertain what; but whatsoever, it's huge.

A fairer example, howev