| And thou, dark earth, our cradle, nurse, and grave, |
| And more than all, free truth and penal justice, |
| Conspire with all your dreadful influence |
| Against his blood, whose crime ye now behold! |
| Make him a byeword, and a name of woe, |
| A conquered warrior, and a throneless outcast, |
| To teach all kings the law of evil power, |
| Till by an end more friendless and abhorred |
| Than his great victim’s, and with heavier pain, |
| Let him slink off to a detested grave! |
| And now I give your majesty leave to go, |
| And may you carry from my house away, |
| That fixed incurable ulcer of the heart, |
| Which I have helped your thoughts to fasten there. |
If these burning words had as much power to kindle her own heart, as they must that of the hearer, we only realize our anticipations, when we find her sending to the five members the news of the intention of Charles to arrest them, thus placing him in a position equally ridiculous and miserable, having incurred all the odium of this violent transaction to no purpose. That might well be a proud moment of gratified vengeance to her, when he stood amid the sullen and outraged parliament, baffled like a schoolboy, loathed as a thief, exclaiming, “The birds are flown,” and all owing to “the advices of the honorable Lady Carlisle.”
The play opens with Strafford’s return to London. He is made to return in rather a different temper from what he really did, not only trusting the king, but in his own greatness fearless of the popular hatred. The opening scenes are very good, compact, well wrought, and showing at the very beginning the probable fortunes of the scene, by making the characters the agents of their own destinies. A weight of tragedy is laid upon the heart, and at the same time we are inspired with deep interest as to how it shall be acted out.
Strafford appears before us as he does in history, a grand and melancholy figure, whose dignity lay in his energy of will, and
