should omit all mention of them. He is not bound to believe them
himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them.

If this air of the miraculous is excused, the reader will find
nothing else unworthy of his perusal. Allow the possibility of the
facts, and all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in
their situation. There is no bombast, no similes, flowers,
digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Everything tends
directly to the catastrophe. Never is the reader's attention
relaxed. The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the
conduct of the piece. The characters are well drawn, and still
better maintained. Terror, the author's principal engine, prevents
the story from ever languishing; and it is so often contrasted by
pity, that the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude of
interesting passions.

Some persons may perhaps think the characters of the domestics too
little serious for the general cast of the story; but besides their
opposition to the principal personages, the art of the author is
very observable in his conduct of the subalterns. They discover
many passages essential to the story, which could not be well
brought to light but by their naivete and simplicity. In
particular, the womanish terror and foibles of Bianca, in the last
chapter, conduce essentially towards advancing the catastrophe.

It is natural for a translator to be prejudiced in favour of his
adopted work. More impartial readers may not be so much struck
with the beauties of this piece as I was. Yet I am not blind to my
author's defects. I could wish he had grounded his plan on a more
useful moral than this: that "the sins of fathers are visited on