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PRINCIPLES OF
Chap. XII.
It will be allowed that there is much merit in these lines, and that the last stanza in particular is eminently beautiful and delicate. Yet there is in my opinion an equal vein of poetry, and more passion, in the corresponding verses of Motteux:
O thou, by whose destructive hate
I'm hurry'd to this doleful fate,
When I'm no more, thy pity spare!
I dread thy tears; oh, spare them then—
But, oh! I rave, I was too vain—
My death can never cost a tear! Motteux.
In the song of Cardenio, there is a happy combination of tenderness of expression with ingenious thought; the versification is likewise of a peculiar structure, the second line forming an echo to the first. This song has beentranslated
