To prove that the “mantle of the Elizabethan poets seems to have fallen upon Mr. Stephens” (Opinions, p. 11), that the “Hungarian Daughter” is quite as good as Knowles’s best plays (Id. p. 4, in two places), that “it is equal to Goethe” (Id. p. 11), that “in after years the name of Mr. S. will be amongst those which have given light and glory to their country” (Id. p. 10); to prove, in short, the truth of a hundred other laudations collected and printed by this modest author, we shall quote a few passages from his play, and illustrate his genius by pointing out their beauties—­an office much needed, particularly by certain dullards, the magazine of whose souls are not combustible enough to take fire at the electric sparks shot forth up out of the depths of George Stephens’s unfathomable genius!

The first gem that sparkles in the play, is where Isabella, the Queen Dowager of Hungary, with a degree of delicacy highly becoming a matron, makes desperate love to Castaldo, an Austrian ambassador.  In the midst of her ravings she breaks off, to give such a description of a steeple-chase as Nimrod has never equalled.

    ISABELLA (hotly).  “Love rides upon a thought,
  And stays not dully to inquire the way,
  But right o’erleaps the fence unto the goal.”

To appreciate the splendour of this image, the reader must conceive Love booted and spurred, mounted upon a thought, saddled and bridled.  He starts. Yo-hoiks! what a pace!  He stops not to “inquire the way”—­whether he is to take the first turning to the right, or the second to the left—­but on, on he rushes, clears the fence cleverly, and wins by a dozen lengths!

What soul, what mastery, what poetical skill is here!  We triumphantly put forth this passage as an instance of the sublime art of sinking in poetry not to be matched by Dibdin Pitt or Jacob Jones.  Love is sublimed to a jockey, Thought promoted to a race-horse!—­“Magnificent!”

But splendid as this is, Mr. Stephens can make the force of bathos go a little further.  The passage continues ("a pause” intervening, to allow breathing ime, after the splitting pace with which Love has been riding upon Thought) thus:—­

  “Are your lips free?  A smile will make no noise. 
  What ignorance!  So!  Well! I’ll to breakfast straight!”

Again:—­

    ISABELLA.  “Ha! ha!  These forms are air—­mere counterfeits
  Of my imaginous heart, as are the whirling
  Wainscot and trembling floor!”

The idea of transferring the seat of imagination from the head to the heart, and causing it to exhibit the wainscot in a pirouette, and the floor in an ague, is highly Shakesperesque, and, as the Courier is made to say at page 3 of the Opinions, “is worthy of the best days of that noble school of dramatic literature in which Mr. Stephens has so successfully studied.”