I see the blaze of torches from afar,
  And hear the trampling of thick-beating feet—­
  This way they move.—­

The following account, given by the slave sent to observe what passed in the castle of Dorax, believed to be dead, or dying, is equally striking: 

Haly. Two hours I warily have watched his palace:  All doors are shut, no servant peeps abroad; Some officers, with striding haste, past in; While others outward went on quick dispatch.  Sometimes hushed silence seemed to reign within; Then cries confused, and a joint clamour followed; Then lights went gliding by, from room to room, And shot like thwarting meteors cross the house.  Not daring further to inquire, I came With speed to bring you this imperfect news.

The description of the midnight insurrection of the rabble is not less impressive: 

Ham. What you wish:  The streets are thicker in this noon of night, Than at the mid-day sun:  A drouzy horror Sits on their eyes, like fear, not well awake:  All crowd in heaps, as, at a night alarm, The bees drive out upon each others backs, T’imboss their hives in clusters; all ask news:  Their busy captain runs the weary round To whisper orders; and, commanding silence, Makes not noise cease, but deafens it to murmurs.

These illustrations are designedly selected from the parts of the lower characters, because they at once evince the diligence and success with which Dryden has laboured even the subordinate points of this tragedy.

“Don Sebastian” has been weighed, with reference to its tragic merits, against “Love for Love;” and one or other is universally allowed to be the first of Dryden’s dramatic performances.  To the youth of both sexes the latter presents the most pleasing subject of emotion; but to those whom age has rendered incredulous upon the romantic effects of love, and who do not fear to look into the recesses of the human heart, when agitated by darker and more stubborn passions, “Don Sebastian” offers a far superior source of gratification.

To point out the blemishes of so beautiful a tragedy, is a painful, though a necessary, task.  The style, here and there, exhibits marks of a reviving taste for those frantic bursts of passion, which our author has himself termed the “Dalilahs of the theatre.”  The first speech of Sebastian has been often noticed as an extravagant rant, more worthy of Maximin, or Almanzor, than of a character drawn by our author in his advanced years, and chastened taste: 

  I beg no pity for this mouldering clay;
  For if you give it burial, there it takes
  Possession of your earth: 
  If burnt and scatter’d in the air, the winds,
  That strew my dust, diffuse my royalty,
  And spread me o’er your clime; for where one atom
  Of mine shall light, know, there Sebastian reigns.

The reader’s discernment will discover some similar extravagancies in the language of Almeyda and the Emperor.