manz_. Pure love had need be to itself a feast;
For, like pure elements, 'twill nourish least.

_Almah_. It therefore yields the only pure content;
For it, like angels, needs no nourishment.
To eat and drink can no perfection be;
All appetite implies necessity.

_Almanz_. 'Twere well, if I could like a spirit live;
But, do not angels food to mortals give?
What if some demon should my death foreshow,
Or bid me change, and to the Christians go;
Will you not think I merit some reward,
When I my love above my life regard?

_Almah_. In such a case your change must be allowed:
I would myself dispense with what you vowed.

_Almanz_. Were I to die that hour when I possess,
This minute shall begin my happiness.

_Almah_. The thoughts of death your passion would remove;
Death is a cold encouragement to love.

_Almanz_. No; from my joys I to my death would run,
And think the business of my life well done:
But I should walk a discontented ghost,
If flesh and blood were to no purpose lost.

This kind of Amoebaean dialogue was early ridiculed by the ingenious
author of "Hudibras."[1]

It partakes more of the Spanish than of the French tragedy, although it
does not demand that the parody shall be so very strict, as to re-echo
noun for noun, or verb for verb, which Lord Holland gives us as a law of
the age of Lope de Vega.[2] The English heroic poet did enough if he
displayed sufficient point in the dialogue, and alertness in adopting
and retorting the image presented by the preceding speech; though, if he
could twist the speaker's own words into an answer to his argument, it
seems to have been held the more ingenious mode of confutation.

While the hero of a rhyming tragedy was thus unboundedly submissive in
love, and dexterous in applying the metaphysical logic of amorous
jurisprudence it was essential to his character that he should possess
all the irresistible courage, and fortune of a _preux chevalier_.
Numbers, however unequal, were to be as chaff before the whirlwind of
his valour; and nothing was to be so impossible that, at the command of
his mistress, he could not with ease achieve. When, in the various
changes of fortune which such tragedies demand, he quarrelled with those
whom he had before assisted to conquer,

"Then to the vanquished part his fate he led,
The vanquished triumphed, and the victor fled."

The language of such a personage, unless when engaged in