When, in the course of
the denouement, the usurer bursts forth into an eloquence virtue-
inspired, we cannot sympathize very heartily in his fine speeches,
since they proceed from the mouth of the self-same egotist who,
urged by a disgusting vanity, uttered so many sotticisms (about his
fine legs, etc.) in the earlier passages of the play. Tomaso is,
upon the whole, the best personage. We recognize some originality in
his conception, and conception was seldom more admirably carried out.
One or two observations at random. In the third Scene of the fifth
Act, Tomaso, the buffoon, is made to assume paternal authority over
Isabella (as usual, without sufficient purpose), by virtue of a law
which Tortesa thus expounds:-
"My gracious liege, there is a law in Florence
That if a father, for no guilt or shame,
Disown and shut his door upon his daughter,
She is the child of him who succours her,
Who by the shelter of a single night,
Becomes endowed with the authority
Lost by the other."
No one, of course, can be made to believe that any such stupid law
as this ever existed either in Florence or Timbuctoo; but, on the
ground que le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable, we say that
even its real existence would be no justification of Mr. Willis.
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