"Dire lightnings! Scoundrel! Help!"

_Martinuzzi_ conveys a wish for his nobles to laugh--an order for a sort
of court cachinnation--in these pretty terms:--

"_Blow it about_, ye opposite winds of heaven,
Till the loud chorus of derision shake
The world with laughter!"

When he feels uncomfortable at something he is told in the first act, the
Cardinal complains thus:--

"Ha! earthquakes quiver in my flesh!"

which the _Britannia_ is so good as to tell us is superior to Byron; while
the _Morning Herald_ kindly remarks, that "a more vigorous and expressive
line was _never_ penned. In five words it illustrates the fiercest
passions of humanity by the direst convulsion of nature:" (_Opinions_, p.
7) a criticism which illustrates the fiercest throes of nonsense, by the
direst convulsions of ignorance.

_Castaldo_, being anxious to murder the Cardinal with, we suppose, all
"means and appliances to boot," asks of heaven a trifling favour:--

"Heaven, that look'st on,
Rain thy broad deluge first! All-teeming earth
Disgorge thy poisons, till the attainted air
Offend the sense! Thou, miscreative hell,
Let loose calamity!"