and Ambition, of whom are born Fraud and Seduction." It is here that the poet takes the opportunity to deliver his opinion on Sixtus V., the Pope of that day:—
"Under her consecrated tyrants, Rome
Regretted her false gods…
. . . . . . .
"Sixtus was chief of Rome and of the Church.
If to be honoured with the title "great,"
Lies, truculence, austerity, suffice,
Among the greatest kings must Sixtus rank.
To fifteen years of fraud he owed his place—
So long he hid his merits and his faults,
Seemed to evade the rank for which he burned,
While self-abasement helped him to the prize."
Up to this point readers of the "Henriade" will proceed with pleasure, enjoying its good sense, its spirit, and the clearness and vigour of the poetry. But they will generally lament the introduction of these allegorical actors, who employ themselves, like the partisan deities of Homer, in sowing dissension, instigating crime, and interfering to protect those of one party, or to injure or tempt those of the other, but without the individuality and picturesqueness of the Olympian powers. All they do could have been done, with equal advantage to the plot, by a malignant spirit (like Goethe's Mephistopheles), the emissary of the powers of evil, who might have been represented as the insidious, unseen prompter of passions, words, and actions. Being thus the personification only of the evil tendencies of the actors themselves, such an addition to the dramatis personæ, if skilfully managed and rendered vague, shadowy, and mysterious, could have helped to exalt the characters and scenery into an unfamiliar and supernatural atmosphere,
