Such a
conception, clothed in mere prose or in merely passable verse, would be
proof sufficient of the mental power which conceived it; when expressed
in such verse as follows, it proves at once and preserves forever the
claim of the designer to a place among the immortals:
Thou sallow picture of my poisoned love,
My study's ornament, thou shell of death,
Once the bright face of my betrothed lady,
When life and beauty naturally filled out
These ragged imperfections;
When two heaven-pointed diamonds were set
In these unsightly rings;--then 'twas a face
So far beyond the artificial shine
Of any woman's bought complexion
That the uprightest man (if such there be,
That sin but seven times a day) broke custom
And made up eight with looking after her.
The very fall of the verse has a sort of fierce and savage pathos in the
note of it; a cadence which comes nearer to the echo of such laughter as
utters the cry of an anguish too deep for weeping and wailing, for
curses or for prayers, than anything in dramatic poetry outside the
part of Hamlet. It would be a conjecture not less plausible than futile,
though perhaps not less futile than plausible, which should suggest that
the influence of Shakespeare's Hamlet may be responsible for the
creation of Tourneur's Vindice, and the influence of Tourneur's Vindice
for the creation of Shakespeare's Timon.
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