"]
[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 of Alfieri; but that noble tragic writer could hardly have
put such fervor of austere passion into the rigid utterance, or touched
the note of emotion with such a glowing depth of rapture. That "bitter
and severe delight"--if I may borrow the superb phrase of Landor--which
inspires and sustains the imperial pride of self-immolation might have
found in his dramatic dialect an expression as terse and as sincere: it
could hardly have clothed itself with such majestic and radiant
solemnity of living and breathing verse.
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