_Le
ciel nous vend toujours les biens qu'il nous prodigue_. Nervous
derangement is a dear price to pay even for genius and sensibility. Too
often, even if not the direct effect of these privileges, it is the
accompanying drawback; hypochondria may almost be called the
intellectual man's malady.
"The Duke D'Ormond", which was written 24 years before its publication
in 1822, that is in 1798, soon after Mr, Lloyd's residence at Stowey,
has great merit as a dramatic poem, in the delineation of character and
states of mind; the plot is forced and unnatural; not only that, but
what is worse, in point of effect, it is tediously subjective; and we
feel the actions of the piece to be improbable while the feelings are
true to nature; yet there is tragic effect in the scenes of the
'denouement'. I understand what it was in Mr. Lloyd's mind which Mr. De
Quincey calls 'Rousseauish'. He dwelt a good deal on the temptations to
which human nature is subject, when passions, not in themselves
unworthy, become, from circumstances, sins if indulged, and the source
of sin and misery; but the effect of this piece is altogether favourable
to virtue, and to the parent and nurse of virtue, a pious conviction of
the moral government of the world. The play contains an 'anatomy' of
passion, not a 'picture' of it in a concrete form, such as the works of
Richardson and of Rousseau present, a picture fitted to excite
'feelings' of baneful effect upon the mind, rather than to awaken
'thought', which counteracts all such mischief.
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