Something of the visionary exaltation of the dying Paracelsus thus hangs over the final scene in which Strafford goes to meet the fate which the one friend imposes on him and the other cannot turn aside.

All the characters have something of the "deep self-consciousness" of the author of _Pauline_.

Not that they are, any of them, drawn with very profound grasp of human nature or a many-sided apprehension of life.

They are either absolutely simple, like Lady Carlisle, or built upon a rivalry or conflict of simple elements, like Strafford and Charles; but there is so much restless vivacity in their discourse, the broad surface of mood is so incessantly agitated by the play and cross-play of thought and feeling, that they seem more complex than they are.
Though played for only five nights, _Strafford_ had won a success which might well have dazzled a young and untried aspirant, and which was sufficiently impressive to shrewd men of business like Messrs Longman to induce them to undertake its publication free of cost.

It appeared in April, with an interesting preface, subsequently withdrawn, from which a significant sentence has already been quoted.