How glorious to live!  Even in one thought
    The wisdom of past times to fit together,
    And from the luminous minds of many men
    Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye,
    Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets
    Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered
    Into one ray.

The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing—­that art by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other.  It is, however, impossible to do more than touch upon this side—­the technical side—­of Beddoes’ genius.  But it may be noticed that in his mastery of phrasing—­as in so much besides—­he was a true Elizabethan.  The great artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an eighteenth-century dramatist—­Addison, for instance—­to understand how right they were.

Beddoes’ power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had already begun to show itself in The Brides’ Tragedy, reached its full development in his subsequent work.  The opening act of The Second Brother—­the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies—­is a striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost.  The duke’s next brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar—­to find his younger brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the duke dies.  The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes’ heart.  While Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate, Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand.  ‘Wine in a ruby!’ he exclaims, gazing into his mistress’s eyes: 

    I’ll solemnize their beauty in a draught
    Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines.

Meanwhile Marcello pushes himself forward, and attempts to salute his brother.

    Orazio.  Insolent beggar!

Marcello.  Prince!  But we must shake hands.  Look you, the round earth’s like a sleeping serpent, Who drops her dusky tail upon her crown Just here.  Oh, we are like two mountain peaks Of two close planets, catching in the air:  You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer, Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top Of the ghosts’ deadly world, naked and dark, With nothing reigning on my desolate head But an old spirit of a murdered god, Palaced within the corpse of Saturn’s father.

They begin to dispute, and at last Marcello exclaims—­