the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the
amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of
his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though
otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what
by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced
business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the
end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward
situation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly any body to do
it but the sultan himself. In composing act the second, the author had
to proceed like Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely new
generation. Apparently this young generation, that ought to have been
so good, took no warning by what had happened to their ancestors in
act the first: one must conclude that they were quite as wicked, since
the poor sultan had found himself reduced to order them all for
execution in the course of this act the second. To the brazen age had
succeeded an iron age; and the prospects were becoming sadder and
sadder as the tragedy advanced. But here the author began to hesitate.
He felt it hard to resist the instinct of carnage. And was it right
to do so? Which of the felons whom he had cut of prematurely could
pretend that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence? But
the consequences were distressing. A new set of characters in every
act brought with it the necessity of a new plot; for people could not
succeed to the arrears of old actions, or inherit ancient motives,
like a landed estate. Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground
in each separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragedies
involved in one.

Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this moment my memory
furnishes, was the brother who now first laid open to me the gates of
war. The occasion was this. He had resented, with a shower of stones, an