" and, sooth to say, like
that rebellion, his outbreak is lawless and irregular, as well as
strong; as in that rebellion, too, there is a rather needless
expenditure of blood. What Byron says of Dr. Polidori's tragedy, is
nearly true of "Sophy"--

"All stab, and everybody dies."

Nothing can be more horrible and disgusting than many of the incidents.
A father suspecting and plotting against a dear and noble son; a son
deprived of sight by the command of a father, and meditating in his rage
and revenge the murder of his own favourite daughter, because she is
beloved by his father; and the deaths of both son and father by poison,
administered through means of a courtier who has betrayed both. Such are
the main hinges on which the plot of the piece turns. The versification,
too, is exceedingly unequal; sometimes swelling into rather full and
splendid blank verse, and anon shrinking up into lines stunted and
shrivelled, like boughs either touched by frost, or lopped by the axe of
the woodman. Still there are in "Sophy" a force of style, a maturity of
mind, an energy of declamation, and, here and there, an appreciation of
Shakspeare--shewn in a generous though hopeless rivalry of his manner--
which account for the reception it at first met with, and seem to have
excited in Denham's contemporaries expectations which were never
fulfilled. This uprise, as well as that of the Irish (which took place
the year before it), turned out, on the whole, abortive. And yet what
fine lines and sentiments are the following, culled from "Sophy" almost
_ad aperturam libri_:--

"Fear and guilt
Are the same thing, and when our _actions are not_,
_Our fears are crimes_.
The east and west
Upon the globe, a _mathematic point
Only divides_; thus happiness and misery,
And all extremes, are still contiguous.

More gallant actions have been lost, for want of being
Completely wicked, than have been performed
By being exactly virtuous. 'Tis hard to be
Exact in good, or excellent in ill;
Our will wants power, or else our power wants skill.

When in the midst of fears we are surprised
With unexpected happiness, the first
_Degrees of joy are mere astonishment_.
Fear, the shadow
Of danger, like the shadow of our bodies,
_Is greater, then, when that which is the cause
Is farthest off_."

The blinded prince's soliloquy, in the first scene of the fifth act, is
worthy of Shakspeare. We must quo