“The wise should watch th’ event on Fortune’s wheel,”

and the seven following lines.  The images are very fine, but demand more attention than common audiences are capable of.  In Braganza every image is strikingly clear.

I am afraid I am not quite satisfied with the conduct of your piece.  Bireno’s conduct on the attack on the princess seems too precipitate, and not managed.  It is still more incredible, that Paladore should confess his passion to his rival; and not less so, that a private man and a stranger should doubt the princess’s faith, when she had preferred him to his rival, a prince of the blood and her destined husband; and that without the smallest inquiry he should believe Bireno was admitted privately to her apartment, when on her not rejecting him, he might have access to her openly.  One cannot conceive her meaning in offending her father by refusing so proper a match, `and intriguing with the very man she was to marry, and whom she had refused.  Paladore’s credulity is not of a piece with the account given of his wisdom, which had made him admitted to the king’S Counsels.

I think, when you bestow Sophia on Paladore, you forget that the king had declared he was obliged to give his daughter to a prince of his own blood; nor do I see any reason for Bireno’s stabbing Ascanio, who was sure of being put to death when their treachery was discovered.

The character of the princess is very noble and well sustained.  When I said I did not conceive her meaning, I expressed myself ill.  I did not suppose she, did intrigue with Bireno; but I meant that it was not natural Paladore should suspect she did, since it is inconceivable that a princess should refuse her cousin in marriage for the mere caprice of intriguing with him.  Had she managed her father, and, from the dread of his anger, temporized about Bireno, Paladore would have had more reason to doubt her.  Would it not too be more natural for Bireno to incense the king against Paladore than to endeavour to make the latter jealous of Sophia?  At least I think Bireno would have more chance of Poisoning Paladore’s mind, if he did not discover to him that he knew of his passion.  Forgive me, Sir but I cannot reconcile to probability Paladore’s believing that Sophia had rejected Bireno for a husband, though it would please her father, and yet chose to intrigue with him in defiance of so serious and extraordinary a law.  Either his credulity or his jealousy reduce Paladore to a lover very unworthy of such a woman as Sophia.  For her sake I wish to see him more deserving of her.

You are so great a poet, Sir, that you have no occasion to labour any thing but your plots.  You can express any thing you please.  If the conduct is natural, you will not want words.  Nay, I rather fear your indulging your poetic vein too far, for your language is sometimes sublime enough for odes, which admit the height of enthusiasm, which Horace will not allow to tragic writers.  You could set up twenty of our tragic authors with lines that you could afford to reject, though for no reason but their being too fine, as in landscape-painting some parts must be under-coloured to give the higher relief to the rest.  Will you not think me too difficult and squeamish, when I find the language of “The Law of Lombardy” too rich?