"It had been much more to his purpose, if he had designed to render the senseless play little, to have searched for some such pedantry as this:
"Two ifs scarce make one possibility. If justice will take all and nothing give, Justice, methinks, is not distributive. To die or kill you, is the alternative. Rather than take your life, I will not live.
"Observe how prettily our author chops logick in heroick verse. Three such fustian canting words as _distributive, alternative_, and _two ifs_, no man but himself would have come within the noise of. But he's a man of general learning, and all comes into his play.
"'Twould have done well too if he could have met with a rant or two, worth the observation; such as,
"Move swiftly, sun, and fly a lover's pace, Leave months and weeks behind thee in thy race.
"But surely the sun, whether he flies a lover's or not a lover's pace, leaves weeks and months, nay, years too, behind him in his race.
"Poor Robin, or any other of the philo-mathematicks, would have given him satisfaction in the point:
"If I could kill thee now, thy fate's so low, That I must stoop, ere I can give the blow. But mine is fixt so far above thy crown, That all thy men, Piled on thy back, can never pull it down.
"Now where that is, Almanzor's fate is fixt, I cannot guess; but, wherever it is, I believe Almanzor, and think that all Abdalla's subjects, piled upon one another, might not pull down his fate so well as without piling: besides, I think Abdalla so wise a man, that, if Almanzor had told him piling his men upon his back might do the feat, he would scarce bear such a weight, for the pleasure of the exploit; but it is a huff, and let Abdalla do it if he dare.
"The people like a headlong torrent go, And ev'ry dam they break or overflow. But, unoppos'd, they either lose their force, Or wind in volumes to their former course.
"A very pretty allusion, contrary to all sense or reason. Torrents, I take it, let them wind never so much, can never return to their former course, unless he can suppose that fountains can go upwards, which is impossible; nay, more, in the foregoing page he tells us so too; a trick of a very unfaithful memory:
"But can no more than fountains upward flow;