42 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
determines to seek forgiveness of Heaven. She goes to the cathedral, 
where Filippo, her husband, has also come in disguise. Wishing to know 
the truth of horrible rumours that have reached his ear, he sacriligeously 
enters the confessional and hears his wife’s wretched tale of sin and con- 
trition. He promises her absolution if she will reveal the name of her 
paramour, but she refuses to do so, and goes away in despair, unshriven. 
In the end the affair comes to the ears of the aged Duke, and all 
the actors in the tragedy are brought before him. Hylas weakly throws 
the blame on Gallantio, who is executed, for this and countless other 
sins. The Duke dies, and Hylas is to succeed him, but as Volina, whom 
Filippo has surrended, will not share his throne, they both retire from 
the world, she to a nunnery and he to become a cloistered monk. So the 
drama ends. With the exception of two or three passages, it is rather a 
weak production, and adds nothing material to Heavysege’s reputation.* 
Jephthah’s Daughter,? Heavysege’s third and last book, was published 
at London, in 1865. It was not a drama, as the other two are, but rather 
a dramatic poem, some twelve hundred and fifty lines in length, in 
the “heroic metre” which Heavysege had already made use of in Saul 
and Count Filippo. It is founded on the familiar Biblical story of 
Jephthah’s rash vow, resulting in the sacrifice of his only daughter upon 
the altar. 
This poem, while it reveals in an even more marked degree than 
Count Filippo, Heavysege’s advance in the artistic value of his poetry, 


* “The plot is painful and somewhat overstrained, but the story, and the 
manner of telling it, have a-strange power over the reader.—(Charles Lanman, 
Haphazard Personalities, p. 271.) 
“We weary of watching this continual strain for the grasp of two thoughts 
at once, as the eye wearies of long looking at stereoscopic figures, and we 
long for the simple statement of a great truth, or the hearty and direct 
expression of strong feeling. This is the great fault of the drama, to which 
is to be added the defect of characterization. Briefly, too, as to the rest, the 
author does not show in wise or philosophical views of life the fruits of pro- 
found knowledge or instinctive comprehension of its relations. This is to 
judge the play by a very high standard, it is true; but its merits are so 
great that it can be gauged by no lower. If it be the work of a young man, 
and he has the genius to create a style of his own, he may become the first 
dramatic poet of the age.’’—Albion (New York). 
2 Jephthah’s Daughter. By Charles Heavysege, Author of “ Saul.” Mont- 
real: Dawson Brothers. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. 1865. 
pp. 74 (20 pages of sonnets added.) (This is the only one of his books of verse 
which bears his name.) 
George Murray, F.R.S.C., reviewed Jephthah’s Daughter at length, soon after 
its publication. His treatment of this, as of the two previous books, which 
he had also reviewed upon publication, was eminently keen and impartial. 
