we discover with mingled satisfaction, astonishment, and irritation that he can write when he pleases in a style of the purest and noblest simplicity; that he can make his characters converse in a language worthy of Sophocles when he does not prefer to make them stutter in a dialect worthy of Lycophron.  And in the tragedy of “Sophonisba” the display of this happy capacity is happily reserved for the crowning scene of the poem.  It would be difficult to find anywhere a more preposterous or disjointed piece of jargon than the speech of Asdrubal at the close of the second act: 

                    Brook open scorn, faint powers!—­
   Make good the camp!—­No, fly!—­yes, what?—­wild rage!—­
   To be a prosperous villain! yet some heat, some hold;
   But to burn temples, and yet freeze, O cold! 
   Give me some health; now your blood sinks:  thus deeds
   Ill nourished rot:  without Jove nought succeeds.

And yet this passage occurs in a poem which contains such a passage as the following: 

   And now with undismayed resolve behold,
   To save you—­you—­for honor and just faith
   Are most true gods, which we should much adore—­
   With even disdainful vigor I give up
   An abhorred life!—­You have been good to me,
   And I do thank thee, heaven.  O my stars,
   I bless your goodness, that with breast unstained,
   Faith pure, a virgin wife, tried to my glory,
   I die, of female faith the long-lived story;
   Secure from bondage and all servile harms,
   But more, most happy in my husband’s arms.

The lofty sweetness, the proud pathos, the sonorous simplicity of these most noble verses might scarcely suffice to attest the poet’s possession of any strong dramatic faculty.  But the scene immediately preceding bears evidence of a capacity for terse and rigorous brevity of dialogue 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?