who, besides noticing the extravagant egotism of the hero, questions,
with some probability, whether Abdalla would have chosen to scale
Almanzor's fate, at the risque of the personal consequences of having
all his men piled on his own back. In the same scene, Almanzor is so
unreasonable as to tell his rival,

--Thou shalt not dare
To be so impudent as to despair.

And again,

What are ten thousand subjects, such as they?
If I am scorned, I'll take myself away.

Dryden's apology for these extravagancies seems to be, that Almanzor
is in a passion. But, although talking nonsense is a common effect of
passion, it seems hardly one of those consequences adapted to shew
forth the character of a hero in theatrical representation.

It must be owned, however, that although the part of Almanzor contains
these and other bombastic passages, there are many also which convey
what the poet desired to represent--the aspirations of a mind so
heroic as almost to surmount the bonds of society and even the very
laws of the universe, leaving us often in doubt whether the vehemence
of the wish does not even disguise the impossibility of its
accomplishment.

Good heaven! thy book of fate before me lay,
But to tear out the journal of this day.
Or, if the order of the world below