Full text of "Works"
J
THE WORKS
OF
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, 44, DOVER STREET.
MDCCCXLVI.
LONDON
BRAOBimv ANl> EVANS, f-RINTKRS, WHITKKRIARS.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
SANDT AND KOTZEBUE
THE CARDINAL LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS .
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS . . .
THE MAID OP ORLEANS AND AGNES SOREL
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND SIR ROBERT INGLIS .
BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN . .
BLUCHER AND SANDT .
MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR ....
RHADAMISTUS AND ZENOBIA .
ELDON AND ENCOMBE .
TANCREDI AND CONSTANTIA .
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH .
PRINCESS MARY AND PRINCESS ELIZABETH .
JESOP AND RHODOPE .
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER .
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI
I4Q
PHILIP II. AND DONA JUAN A COELHO
STEELE AND ADDISON ....
DANTE AND BEATRICE .
154
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR. SECOND CONVERSATION .
QUEEN ELIZABETH, CECIL, DUKE OF ANJOU, AND DE LA MOTTE FENELON
177
WINDHAM AND SHERIDAN .
180
MARY AND BOTHWELL .
. 182
TASSO AND CORNELIA .
. . 186
SOLON AND PISISTRATUS
VI
CONTENTS.
IMAGINARY Co.N VKKSA TIONS, CONTINUKD.
LOUIS XVIII. AND TALLEYRAND - . .189
uESOP AND RHODOPE.— SECOND CONVKRSATION 193
ROMILLY AM) WILBEHFORCE 197
QUEEN POMARE, PRITCHARD, CAPTAINS POLVEREL AND DBS MITRAILLES,
LIEUTENANT POIGNAUNE2, MARINERS 202
I. A FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAFLT . . . 207
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI ... . . 213
.MELANCTHON AND CALVIN ... 221
WALKER, HATTAJI, GONDA, AND DEWAH ... ... 225
OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL 227
COUNT AND COUNTESS GLEICHEM 230
DANTE AND GEMMA DONATI . . 232
GALILEO, MILTON, AND A DOMINICAN 234
TALLEYRAND AND ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS 237
ESSEX AND SPENSER 239
MARSHAL BUGEAUD AND ARAB CHIEFTAIN 242
P. SCIPIO -fiMILIANUS, POLYBIU8, AND PAN^ETIUB . . . ^ ... . . . 243
CITATION AND EXAMINATION OF WILLIAM
SHAKSPEARE.
Editor's Preface ...
Memorandum by Ephraim Baraet .
Examination, &c., &c. . .
Post-Scriptum ....
259
260
263
300
THE PENTAMERON.
Editor's Introduction . . .
First Day's Interview ...
Second Day's Interview . .
Third Day's Interview ...
Fourth Day's Interview . .
Fifth Day's Interview ...
Pievano Grigi to the Reader .
Heads of Confession ...
The Translator's Remarks on the alleged
jealousy of Boccaccio and Petrarch . ib.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
1. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .361
303
305
316
326
336
346
354
356
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
2. Cleone to Aspasia
3. Aspasia to Cleone .
4. Aspasia to Cleone
5. Cleone to Aspasia .
6. Aspasia to Cleone
7. Aspasia to Cleone .
8. Cleone to Aspasia
9. Aspasia to Cleone .
10. Aspasia to Cleone
11. Aspasia to Cleone .
12. Cleone to Aspasia
13. Aspasia to Cleone .
14. Cleone to Aspasia
15. Pericles to Aspasia-
16. Aspasia to Pericles
17. Cleone to Aspasia .
18. Aspasia to Cleone
19. Aspasia to Cleone .
20. Xeniades to Aspasia .
21. Aspasia to Cleone .
361
ib.
ib.
362
ib.
363
ib.
364
ib.
365
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
366
ib.
ib.
367
ib.
CONTENTS.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
22. Aspasia to Xeniades .
23. Aspasia to Pericles
24. Pericles to Aspasia
25. Xeniades to Aspasia
26. Aspasia to Pericles
27. Cleone to Aspasia .
28. Pericles to Aspasia
29. Aspasia to Cleone .
30. Cleone to Aspasia
31. Aspasia to Cleone .
32. Aspasia to Cleone
33. Aspasia to Cleone .
34. Cleone to Aspasia
35. Aspasia to Cleone .
36. Cleone to Aspasia
37. Aspasia to Cleone .
38. Aspasia to Cleone
39. Cleone to Aspasia .
40. Aspasia to Cleone
41. Cleone to Aspasia .
42. Aspasia to Cleone
43. Cleone to Aspasia .
44. Aspasia to Cleone
45. Cleone to Aspasia .
46. Aspasia to Cleone . ;..•
47. Cleone to Aspasia .
48. Aspasia to Cleone
49. Cleone to Aspasia .
50. Aspasia to Cleone . :
51. Cleone to Aspasia .
52. Aspasia to Cleoue
53. Cleone to Aspasia .
54. Aspasia to Cleone
55. Cleone to Aspasia .
56. Aspasia to Cleone .
57. Cleone to Aspasia
58. Aspasia to Cleone .
59. Aspasia to Cleone
60. Aspasia to Cleone .
61. Aspasia to Pericles
62. Pericles to Aspasia
63. Aspasia to Pericles
64. Aspasia to Cleone .
65. Aspasia to Pericles .
66. Pericles to Aspasia
67. Aspasia to Cleone
68. Aspasia to Cleone .
69. Pericles to Aspasia
70. Aspasia to Pericles
71. Aspasia to Cleone
72. Aspasia to Cleone .
73. Cleone to Aspasia
74. Aspasia to Cleone .
367
ib.
ib.
ib.
368
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
369
ib.
ib.
370
371
ib.
ib.
ib.
372
ib.
373
ib.
374
ib.
375
ib,
376
ib,
377
ib.
ib
ib.
378
ib.
ib,
37£
ib
380
ib.
ib
ib
ib
ib,
381
ib
385
ib
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
75. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
76. Cleone to Aspasia ....
77. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
78. Aspasia to Cleone ....
79. Aspasia to Cleone . . .
80. Aspasia to Cleone ....
81. Cleone to Aspasia . . . .
82. Aspasia to Cleone ....
83. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
84. Aspasia to Cleone ....
85. Cleone to Aspasia . . . .
86. Aspasia to Cleone ....
87. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
88. Aspasia to Herodotus
89. Cleone to Aspasia . . .
90. Aspasia to Cleone ....
91. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
92. Aspasia to Cleone ....
93. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
Speech of Pericles to the Athenians,
on the Banishment of Cimon
94. Pericles to Cimon . . . .
95. Aspasia to Cleone ....
Speech of Pericles, on the defection
of Eubcea and Megara . . .
96. Aspasia to Cleone ....
97. Aspasia to Cleone ....
98. Cleone to Aspasia . . . .
99. Aspasia to Cleone ....
100. Cleone to Aspasia . . . .
101. Aspasia to Cleone ....
102. Pericles to Aspasia . . . .
103. Aspasia to Cleone ....
104. Pericles to Aspasia . . . .
105. Aspasia to Pericles
106. Pericles to Aspasia . . . .
107. Aspasia to Cleone ....
108. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
109. Cleone to Aspasia ....
110. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
Speech of Pericles to the Athenians,
on the war between Samos and
Miletus .....
111. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
112. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
113. Cleone to Aspasia ....
114. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
115. Cleone to Aspasia
Oration of Pericles to the Soldiers
round Samos ....
116. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
117. Cleone to Aspasia .
118. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .
382
383
ib.
384
385
386
ib.
ib.
387
ib.
389
ib.
ib.
ib.
390
391
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
392
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
393
394
ib.
395
ib.
ib.
ib.
'ib.
396
ib.
897
ib.
398
399
400
ib.
401
Vlll
CONTENTS.
PERICLES AND ASPASU, Continued.
119. Cleone to Aspasia .... 401
120. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 402
121. Cleone to Aspasia .... ib.
122. Cleone to Aspasia . . . . ib.
123. Cleone to Aspasia ib.
124. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 403
125. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
126. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
127. Aspasia to Cleone .... 404
128. Cleone to Aspasia . . . . ib.
129. Cleone to Aspasia .... 405
130. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 406
131. Cleone to Aspasia . . . ib.
132. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 407
1 33. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
134. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . ib.
135. Aspasia to Cleone . . .408
136. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . ib.
137. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .409
138. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 410
139. Cleone to Aspasia . . . .411
140. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
141. Aspasia to Cleone .... 412
142. Aspasia to Cleone . .• . . . ib.
143. Aspasia to Cleone . ; . .413
144. Pericles to Aspasia . . . . ib.
145. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
146. Reply of Pericles to the Accusation
of Cleone 414
147. Aspasia to Cleone .... ib.
148. Cleone to Aspasia . . . . 415
149. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
150. Cleone -to Aspasia . . . . ib.
151. Pericles to Alcibiades . . ib.
152. Cleone to Aspasia . . . . 416
153. Aspasia to Cleone . . . ib.
154. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 417
155. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .418
156. First Speech of Pericles to the
Athenians, on the Declarations
of Corinth and Lacedaemon . . ib.
157. Second Speech of Pericles . . ib.
1 58. Oration of f Pericles, on the approach
of the Lacedaemonians to Athens 419
159. Aspasia to Cleone . . . .420
1 60. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . ib.
161. Aspasia to Cleone .... 421
162. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . ib.
163. Aspasia to Cleone .... 422
164. Aspasia to Pericles . . . . 423
1 65. Pericles to Aspasia . . ib.
166. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . ib.
167. Aspasia to Cleone . . . . 424
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
168. Aspasia to Pericles .
1 69. Pericles to Aspasia
1 70. Aspasia to Pericles . ' ."
171. Pericles to Aspasia
172. Aspasia to Cleone
173. Aspasia to Pericles
174. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
175. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
176. Aspasia to Anaxagoras
177. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
178. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
179. Aspasia to Anaxagoras .
1 80. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
181. Psyllos to Pisander of Elea
182. Aspasia to Anaxagoras
183. Anaxagoras to Pericles .
1 84. Aspasia to Anaxagoras
185. Aspasia to Cleone .
186. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
187. Aspasia to Cleone .
188. Cleone to Aspasia
189. Aspasia to Cleone .
190. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
191. Aspasia to Anaxagoras .
192. Aspasia to Pericles .
193. Pericles to Aspasia .
194. Aspasia to Pericles .
195. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
196. Cleone to Aspasia
197. Anaxagoras to Pericles .
198. Pericles to Aspasia . .
199. Aspasia to Pericles
200. Aspasia to Cleone
201. Cleone to Aspasia .
202. Aspasia to Cleone
203. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
204. Cleone to Aspasia .
205. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
206. Anaxagoras to Aspasia • .
207. Anaxagoras to Aspasia .
208. Alcibiades to Pericles
209. Alcibiades to Pericles
210. Pericles to Alcibiades
211. Aspasia to Cleone .
212. Anaxagoras to Aspasia
213. Alcibiades to Pericles
214. Aspasia to Alcibiades
215. Aspasia to Pericles
216. Pericles to Aspasia . .
217. Aspasia to Cleone .
218. Cleone to Aspasia
219. Aspasia to Cleone .
220. Alcibiades to Pericles
424
ib.
ib.
ib.
425
ib.
ib.
426
427
ib.
428
ib.
429
432
ib.
433
ib.
ib.
434
ib.
ib.
ib.
ib.
435
436
ib.
437
438
ib.
439
ib.
440
ib.
ib.
441
ib.
442
ib.
ib.
ib.
443
ib.
ib.
ib.
444
ib.
ib.
445
ib.
CONTENTS.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
221. Pericles to Alcibiades
222. Alcibiades to Pericles
223. Alcibiades to Pericles
224. Pericles to Alcibiades
225. Aspasia to Cleone .
226. Cleone to Aspasia .
227. Aspasia to Cleone .
228. Cleone to Aspasia
229. Aspasia to Cleone .
446
ib.
447
449
ib.
450
PERICLES AND ASPASIA, Continued.
230. Aspasia to Cleone
231. Aspasia to Cleone .
232. Cleone to Aspasia
233. Aspasia to Pericles
234. Pericles to Aspasia
235. Pericles to Aspasia
236. Alcibiades to Aspasia .
237. Alcibiades to Aspasia
IX
PAGE
451
ib.
452
ib.
ib.
453
454
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
Opinions of Caesar, Cromwell, Milton, and
Buonaparte . . . . . . 457
A Story of Santander .... 460
The Death of Hofer .... 465
To Cornelius at Munich . . . 466
A Vision . . . . ib
The Dream of Petrarca . . . .468
Parable of Asabel . .... 469
Jeribohaniah ..... 470
POEMS.
HELLENICS.
1. Thrasymedes and Euiioe . . . 473
2. Drimacos . . . . 474
3. Theron and Zoe . . . . . 475
4. Dameetas and Ida . . . .476
5. Lysander, Alcanor, Phanoe . . . ib.
6. Hyperbion 477
7. Icarios and Erigone . . . . ib.
8. The Hamadryad .... 482
9. Alciphron and Leucippe . . . 481
10. Enallos and Cymodamcia . ib.
11. Iphigeneia . . . . . . 482
12. The Death of Artcmidora . . 483
13. Menelaus and Helen at Troy . . ib.
POEMS — HELLENICS, Continued.
14. Chrysaor
15.
GEBIR.
First Book .
Second Book
Third Book .
Fourth Book
Fifth Book .
Sixth Book
Seventh Book
ACTS AND SCENES.
Count Julian
Andrea of Hungary .
Giovanna of Naples
Fra Rupert ....
The Siege of Ancona
Ines de Castro ....
Ippolito di Este
Guzman and his Son .
The Coronation
Essex and Bacon
Walter Tyrrel and William Rufus
The Parents of Luther
Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyu
MISCELLANEOUS
. 484
. . 486
. 488
. . 490
. 492
. . 494
. 496
. . 498
. 500
. 503
. . 524
. 548
. . 564
. 581
. . 598
. 608
. . 610
. 611
. . 612
. 613
. . 615
. 617
619—676
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
SANDT AND KOTZEBUE.
Sandt. Generally men of letters in our days,
contrary to the practice of antiquity, are little
fond of admitting the young and unlearned into
their studies or their society.
Kotzebue. They should rather those than others.
The young must cease to be young, and the un-
learned may cease to be unlearned. According
to the letters you bring with you, sir, there is
only youth against you. In the seclusion of a
college life, you appear to have studied with much
assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued
no other courses than the paths of wisdom.
Sandt. Do you approve of the pursuit ]
Kotzebue. Who does not ?
Sandt. None, if you will consent that they
direct the chase, bag the game, inebriate some of
the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
slough. May I ask you another question ?
Kotzebue. Certainly.
Sandt. Where lie the paths of wisdom ] I did
not expect, my dear sir, to throw you back upon
your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
information from you ?
Kotzebue. The paths of wisdom, young man,
are those which lead us to truth and happiness.
Sandt. If they lead us away from fortune,, from
employments, from civil and political utility ; if
they cast us where the powerful persecute, where
the rich trample us down, and where the poorer
(at seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and
spurning our consolation ; what valuable truth do
they enable us to discover, or what rational hap-
piness to expect ? To say that wisdom leads to
truth, is only to say that wisdom leads to wisdom ;
for such is truth. Nonsense is better than false-
hood ; and we come to that.
Kotzebue. How?
Sandt. No falsehood is more palpable than that
wisdom leads to happiness ; I mean in this world;
in another we may well indeed believe that the
words are constructed of very different materials.
But here we are, standing on a barren molehill
that crumbles and sinks under our tread ; here
we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue,
a discoverer who has not suffered for his dis-
covery, whether it be of a world or of a truth,
whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come
down lower. Show me a man who has detected
the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
the malversation of a minister or the impiety of
a priest, and who has not been stoned, or hanged,
or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or reduced to
poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging
yet upon his rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily
in its rusty links. Who then, unless for others,
would be a darer of wisdom 1 And yet, how full
of it is even the inanimate world ] We may gather
it out of stones and straws. Much lies within the
reach of all : little has been collected by the wisest
of the wise. 0 slaves to passion ! 0 minions to
power ! ye carry your own scourges about you ; ye
endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
more. Ye believe that God beholds you ; ye know
that he will punish you, even worse than ye punish
yourselves ; and still ye lick the dust where the
Old Serpent went before you.
Kotzebue. I am afraid, sir, you have formed to
yourself a romantic and strange idea both of
happiness and of wisdom.
Sandt. I too am afraid it may be so. My idea
of happiness is, the power of communicating
peace, good-will, gentle affections, ease, comfort,
independence, freedom, to all men capable of them.
Kotzebue. The idea is, truly, no humble one.
Sandt. A higher may descend more securely
on a stronger mind. The power of communicat-
ing those blessings to the capable, is enough for
my aspirations. A stronger mind may exercise
its faculties in the divine work of creating the
capacity.
Kotzebue. Childish! childish! Men have crav-
ings enow already; give them fresh capacities,
and they will have fresh appetites. Let us be
contented in the sphere wherein it is the will of
Providence to place us ; and let us render our-
selves useful in it to the uttermost of our power,
'1
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
without idle aspirations after impracticable
good
Sandt. 0 sir ! you lead me where I tremble to
step ; to the haunts of your intellect, to the re-
cesses of your spirit Alas ! alas ! how small and
how vacant is the central chamber of the lofty
pyramid 1
Kotzfbue. Is this to me ?
Sandt. To you, and many mightier. Reverting
to your own words ; could not you yourself have
remained in the sphere you were placed in 1
Kotzebue. What sphere ] I have written dramas
and novels and travels. I have been called to
the Imperial Court of Russia.
Sandt. You sought celebrity: I blame not
that The thick air of multitudes may be good
for some constitutions of mind, as the thinner of
solitudes is for others. Some horses will not run
without the clapping of hands ; others fly out of
the course rather than hear it. But let us come
to the point. Imperial courts ! What do they
know of letters] What letters do they coun-
tenance, do they tolerate ?
Kotzebue. Plays.
Sandt. Playthings.
Kotzebue. Travels.
Sandt. On their business. 0 ye paviours of
the dreary road along which their cannon rolls for
conquest! my blood throbs at every stroke of
your rammers. When will ye lay them by ?
Kotzebue. We are not such drudges.
Sandt. Germans ! Germans ! Must ye never
have a rood on earth ye can call your own, in the
vast inheritance of your fathers ?
Kotztbue. Those who strive and labor, gain it;
and many have rich possessions.
Sandt. None ; not the highest.
Kotzebue. Perhaps you may think them inse-
cure; but they are not lost yet, although the
rapacity of France does indeed threaten to swal-
low them up. But her fraudulence is more to be
apprehended than her force. The promise of
liberty is more formidable than the threat of ser-
vitude. The wise know that she never will bring
us freedom ; the brave know that that she never
can bring us thraldom. She herself is alike im-
patient of both ; in the dazzle of arms she mis-
takes the one for the other, and is never more
agitated than in the midst of peace.
Sandt. The fools who went to war against her,
did the only thing that could unite her; and
every sword they drew was a conductor of that
lightning which fell upon their heads. But we
must now look at our homes. Where there is no
strict union, there is no perfect love ; and where
no perfect love, there is no true helper. Are you
satisfied, sir, at the celebrity and the distinctions
you have obtained 1
Kotzebue. My celebrity and distinctions, if I
must speak of them, quite satisfy me. Neither
in youth nor in advancing age, neither in diffi-
cult nor in easy circumstances, have I ventured to
proclaim myself the tutor or the guardian of
mankind.
Sandt. I understand the reproof, and receive
it humbly and gratefully. You did well in writ-
ing the dramas, and the novels, and the travels ;
but, pardon my question, who called you to the
courts of princes in strange countries ?
Kotzebue. They themselves.
Sandt. They have no more right to take you
away from your country, than to eradicate a forest,
or to subvert a church in it. You belong to the
land that bore you, and were not at liberty (if
right and liberty are one, and unless they are, they
are good for nothing), you were not at liberty, I
repeat it, to enter into the service of an alien.
Kotzebue. No magistrate, higher or lower, for-
bade me. Fine notions of freedom are these !
Sandt. A man is always a minor in regard to
his fatherland ; and the servants of his fatherland
are wrong and criminal if they whisper in his
ear that he may go away, that he may work in
another country, that he may ask to be fed in it,
and that he may wait there until orders and tasks
are given for his hands to execute. Being a Ger-
man, you voluntarily placed yourself in a position
where you might eventually be coerced to act
against Germans.
Kotzebue. I would not.
Sandt. Perhaps you think so.
Kotzebue. Sir, I know my duty.
Sandt. We all do ; yet duties are transgressed,
and daily. Where the will is weak in accepting,
it is weaker in resisting. Already have you left
the ranks of your fellow-citizens; already have
you taken the enlisting-money and marched away.
Kotzebue. Phrases ! metaphors ! and let me
tell you, M. Sandt, not very polite ones. You
have hitherto seen little of the world, and you
speak rather the language of books than of men.
Sandt. What ! are books written by some crea-
tures of less intellect than ours 1 I fancied them
to convey the language and reasonings of men.
I was wrong, and you are right, Von Kotzebue !
They are, in general, the productions of such as
have neither the constancy of courage nor the
continuity of sense, to act up to what they know
to be right, or to maintain it, even in words, to
the end of their lives. You are aware that I am
speaking now of political ethics. This is the
worst I can think of the matter; and bad enough
is this.
Kotzebue. You misunderstand me. Our con-
duct must fall in with our circumstances. We
may be patriotic, yet not puritanical in our
patriotism ; not harsh, nor intolerant, nor con-
tracted. The philosophical mind should consider
the whole world as its habitation, and not look
so minutely into it as to see the lines that divide
nations and governments ; much less should it
act the part of a busy shrew, and take pleasure
in giving loose to the tongue, at finding things a
little out of place.
Sandt. We will leave, the shrew where we find
her : she certainly is better with the comedian
than with the philosopher. But this indistinct-
ness in the moral and political line begets indif-
SANDT AND KOTZEBCTE.
ference. He who does not keep his own country
more closely in view than any other, soon mixes
land with sea, and sea with air, and loses sight of
everything, at last, for which he was placed in
contact with his fellow men. Let us unite, if
possible, with the nearest : let usages and fami-
liarities bind us : this being once accomplished,
let us confederate for security and peace with all
the people round, particularly with people of the
same language, laws, and religion. We pour out
wine to those about us, wishing the same fellow-
ship and conviviality to others : but to enlarge
the circle would disturb and deaden its harmony.
We irrigate the ground in our gardens : the pub-
lic road may require the water equally : yet we
give it rather to our borders ; and first to those
that lie against the house ! God himself did not
fill the world at once with happy creatures : he
enlivened one small portion of it with them, and
began with single affections, as well as pure and
unmixed. We must have an object and an aim,
or our strength, if any strength belongs to us, will
be useless.
Kotzebue. There is much good sense in these
remarks : but I am not at all times at leisure and
in readiness to receive instruction. I am old
enough to have laid down my own plans of life ;
and I trust I am by no means deficient in the
relations I bear to society.
Sandt. Lovest thou thy children ? Oh ! my
heart bleeds ! But the birds can fly ; and the
nest requires no warmth from the parent, no
cover against the rain and the wind.
Kotzebue. This is wildness: this is agony.
Your face is laden with large drops; some of
them tears, some not. Be more rational and
calm, my dear young man ! and less enthusiastic.
Sandt. They who will not let us be rational,
make us enthusiastic by force. Do you love your
children 1 I ask you again. If you do, you must
love them more than another man's. Only they
who are indifferent to all, profess a parity.
Kotzebue. Sir ! indeed your conversation very
much surprises me.
Sandt. I see it does: you stare, and would look
proud. Emperors and kings, and all but maniacs,
would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily
bring them to a just sense of their nothingness,
unless their ears were calked and pitched, although
I am no Savonarola. He too died sadly !
Kotzebue. Amid so much confidence of power,
and such an assumption of authority, your voice
is gentle, almost plaintive.
Sandt. It should be plaintive. Oh, could it but
be persuasive !
Kotzebue. Why take this deep interest in me ?
I do not merit nor require it. Surely anyone
would think we had been acquainted with each
other for many years.
Sandt. What ! should I have asked you such a
question as the last, after long knowing you ]
Kotzebue (aside). This resembles insanity.
Sandt. The insane have quick ears, sir, and
sometimes quick apprehensions.
Kotzebue. I really beg your pardon.
Sandt. I ought not then to have heard you, and
beg yours. My madness could release many from
a worse ; from a madness which hurts them griev-
iously; a madness which has been and will be
hereditary: mine, again and again I repeat it,
would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten
them to pillar and post. Sir ! sir ! if I entertained
not the remains of respect for you, in your domes-
tic state, I should never have held with you this
conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought
to have nothing political in common with what is
not Germany. Her freedom and security now
demand that she celebrate the communion of the
faithful. Our country is the only one in all the
explored regions on earth that never has been con-
quered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely ;
France falsely ; Eome falsely. A fragment off the
empire of Darius fell and crushed her: Valen-
tinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Eome was
buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this,
and men will not. Britain, the wealthiest and
most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the
most literate and humane, received from us colonies
and laws. Alas ! those laws, which she retains as
her fairest heritage, we value not : we surrender
them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves
within walled cities, and enter into leagues against
us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one
another's sword, and command us to thank God
for the victories that enslave us. These are the
glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we
hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors.
Blessed are those who lie under them ! blessed are
also those who remember what they were, and
call upon their names in the holiness of love.
Kotzebue. Moderate the transport that inflames
and consumes you. There is no dishonour in a
nation being conquered by a stronger.
Sandt. There may be great dishonour in letting
it be the stronger; great, for instance, in our dis-
union.
Kotzebue. We have only been conquered by the
French in our turn.
Sandt. No, sir, no : we have not been, in turn
or out. Our puny princes were disarmed by pro-
mises and lies : they accepted paper crowns from
the very thief who was sweeping into his hat their
forks and spoons. A cunning traitor snared
incautious ones, plucked them, devoured them, and
slept upon their feathers.
Kotzebue. I would rather turn back with you to
the ancient glories of our country than fix my
attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to us.
We may be justly proud of our literary men, who
unite the suffrages of every capital, to the exclu-
sion of almost all their own.
Sandt. Many Germans well deserve this honour,
others are manger-fed and hirelings.
Kotzebue. The English and the Greeks are the
only nations that rival us in poetry, or in any
works of imagination.
Sandt. While on this high ground we pretend
to a rivalship with England and Greece, can we
B 2
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
reflect without a sinking of the heart on our
inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why
are we lower than they ? Our mothers are like
their mothers; our children are like their children;
our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as
enlarged ; our desire of improvement in the arts
and sciences is neither less vivid and generous,
nor leas temperate and well-directed. The Greeks
were under disadvantages which never bore in any
degree on us; yet they rose through them vigor-
ously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what
ought to be the finer part of the affections ; their
women were veiled and secluded, never visited the
captive, never released the slave, never sat by the
sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson
repeated in the school. Ours are more tender,
compassionate, and charitable, than poets have
feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of
the future; and, nursed at their breasts and edu-
cated at their feet, blush we not at our degeneracy?
The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure at
finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her
various kingdoms ultimately mingled, although
the character of the governors, and perhaps of the
governed, is congenial to few. What delight then
must overflow on Europe, from seeing the mother
of her noblest nation rear again her venerable head,
and bless all her children for the first time united !
Kotzebue. I am bound to oppose such a project.
Sandt. Say not so : in God's name, say not so.
Kotzebue. In such confederacy I see nothing
but conspiracy and rebellion, and I am bound, I
tell you again, sir, to defeat it, if possible.
Sandt. Bound ! I must then release you.
Kotzebue. How should you, young gentleman,
release me ?
Sandt. May no pain follow the cutting of the
knot. But think again : think better : spare me !
Kotzebue. I will not betray you.
Sandt. That would serve nobody: yet, if in
your opinion betraying me could benefit you or
your family, deem it no harm ; so much greater
has been done by you in abandoning the cause of
Germany. Here is your paper; here is your ink.
Kotzebue. Do you imagine me an informer ?
Sandt. From maxims and conduct such as
yours, spring up the brood, the necessity, and the
occupation of them. There would be none, if
good men thought it a part of goodness to be as
active and vigilant as the bad. I must go, sir !
Return to yourself in time ! How it pains me to
think of losing you ! Be my friend !
Kotzebue. I would be.
Sandt. Be a German !
Kotzebue. I am.
Sandt, (having gone out). Perjurer and pro-
faner J Yet his heart is kindly. I must grieve for
him ! Away with tenderness ! I disrobe him of
the privilege to pity me or to praise me, as he
would have done had I lived of old. Better men
shall do more. God calls them : me too he calls :
I will enter the door again. May the greater
sacrifice bring the people together, and hold them
evermore in peace and concord. The lesser victim
follows willingly. (Enters again.)
Turn ! die ! (strikes.)
Alas ! alas ! no man ever fell alone. How many
innocent always perish with one guilty ! and
writhe longer !
Unhappy children! I shall weep for you else-
where. Some days are left me. In a very few
the whole of this little world will lie between us.
I have sanctified in you the memory of your father.
Genius but reveals dishonour, commiseration
covers it
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
MARCHKSK SCAMPA, CONTE BIANCHERIA, SIQNOR CORAZZA, CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI.
Legate. Most illustrious Signer Marchese ! I
grieve deeply to have incommoded you. Most
illustrious Signor Conte Cesare! I am sorry to
have caused you any disturbance. Most esteemed,
prized, and ornamented Signor Corazza! I feel
somewhat of uneasiness at requiring your attend-
ance.
Scampa. Your Eminence may dispose of me
purely at Her pleasure.
Biancheria* I am your Eminence's most obse-
quious, most devoted, and most humble servant.
Corazza. I kiss the sacred hem of her purple,
humbly inclining myself.
Legate. On my faith, Signors ! a pretty piece
of pastry yon have been making ! A fine embroil-
ment ! on my body !
Scampa. Eminence ! all men have had their
embroilments.
Biancheria. Pieces of pastry all men have
made, Eminence !
Legate. Signors! I fear these will stick upon
your fingers some time yet, although I pray God
you may, with his help, wash yourselves clean.
Scampa. We are in his hands.
Biancheria. . . And your Eminence's.
Scampa. I meant Hers all the while.
Corazza. Surely; securely! I am in Hers, the
whole of me.
Legate. 'Tis well. Now in the name of Domi-
nedio, most gentle sirs, how could you play these
tricks? What doings are these ! I accuse you of
nothing : I am convinced you are innocent, most
innocent, more than most innocent. And yet,
diamene ! they will have it otherwise.
Scampa. God and your Eminence with us, our
uprightness is not to be disputed.
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
Biancheria. We know what we know : we are
what we are : we can tell them that. Let them
mind it. What says Signor Marchese? Do I
speak well 1
Scampa. True ; most true ; Signor Conte !
always under the correction of his Eminence.
Legate. Forasmuch as I have understanding in
me, there are not two honester gentlemen in Bo-
logna. Very old houses ! vastly rich heretofore :
rich still. Honey does not run from the pot with-
out leaving some against the sides ; ay, Signor
Marchese 1
(Aside.) It sticks hard ; but I have a spoon
that will scrape it.
You appear to be incommoded by a cough,
Signor Marchese ! Will my snuff-box relieve it 1
Scampa. Infinite thanks, Eminence ! immortal
condescension ! It would cure Cairo : it would
have stopt the seven plagues of Egypt.
Legate. Signor Conte ! we are coming to the
business. Pardon my habits of despatch ! Only
be explicit ; be clear : I must do my duty : I may
be lenient. Much is left to my judgment and
discretion; and you noble personages are the
very last in the world who would wish to lead it
astray, or make it harsh.
An English gentleman, with more earnestness
than . . .
All at once. As usual with the nation.
Legate. . . has applied to me personally.
Scampa. Personally ! to a Porporato !
Biancheria. Personally ! to a Cardinal-Legate !
Corazza. Ohibo ! Personally ! to an Eminence
of Holy Church ! with a maggiorduomo, four
cooks, six chaplains, and (Sant Antonio) the six
finest mules in all the Patrimony ! Cospetto ! the
heretic !
Legate. So it is : by letter to me, I mean.
All. Letter ! more and more presumptuous !
Scampa. No preliminary !
Biancheria. Secretary, even secretary, had been
too high. Maestro di casa, maestro di scuderia,
cameriere, page, porter, or any other dignitary of
the household, might have received it in the first
instance, under the form of supplication. But
letter ! letter ! letter ! my head turns round
with it.
Scampa. Carbonaro !
Corazza. Giovane Italia ! disguised as an En-
glishman.
Scampa. Eminence ! we are gallant men, men
of honour, men of garb, and Her most obsequi-
ous. Some regards are due to persons of dis-
tinction. Why should he trouble your Eminence
with his concerns ? petty matters ! trifles ! trivial-
ities ! Law indeed to an Englishman is like his
native air : he flies to it as he flies to his ship ;
he loses his appetite if he misses it : and he never
thinks he has enough of it until it has fairly stript
him and begins to lie heavy on his stomach. It is
his tea, his plum-pudding, his punch, his nightcap.
Legate. Happy ! if he can throw it off so easily
when he wakens. Law in England ought to be
in capital condition, if exercise can accomplish it.
Biancheria. There are common laws and com-
mon lawyers in Bologna, blessed be his Holiness !
And nothing new about them, nothing wild and
extravagant, nothing visionary. They are an-
cient and awful as our Garisenda, and, like Gari-
senda, lean toward the inhabitants.
Scampa. Talk of patriotism ! this I call patriot-
ism. We can buy injustice of any tribunal in
Italy, and at a reasonable price : it would be hard
indeed if we can not buy justice for a little more,
in proportion to the rarity, and if we are forced
to go beyond our native country for this greatest
benefit of a paternal government. I should be
sorry to prefer any on earth to my own Bologna,
blest as it is with the rule and guidance of the
Prince of the Apostles, but more immediately
under his delegate the Holiness of our Lord, Leo
the Twelfth, now sitting and reigning, and wor-
thily and plenarily represented by your Emi-
nence. But, Eminence ! (pardon me if I sob
aloud and beat my breast at saying it) there are
countries, yes, there are countries in our Italy,
where insolent Englishmen are thrown utterly
into the shade, their audacity rising beyond en-
durance. One of them, believe me, had the
temerity to take the wall of Don Neri Corsini, a
Roman prince, a prime minister. Nobly and
worthily did his Highness treat this sacrilege.
Legate. I am uninterested in the event : excuse
my interruption.
Scampa. Condescend to listen. ' The proud
Englishman had bought a villa and a couple of
farms under Fiesole ; rooting up olives, cutting
down vines, the madman ! A Frenchman was
his neighbour. He had a right to the waste
water of the proud Englishman's fountain. The
proud Englishman, in his spite and malignity,
not only shaved every morning, and ordered all
his men servants, to the number of five, to shave
also just as frequently, but he washed his hands
and face several times in the day, and especially
at that season when water is most wanted. In
like manner did all his children, four of them ;
and all four bathed: all four, Eminence! all
four ! every day ! the malignant father setting
them the example.
Legate. Heretics and Turks are much addicted
to bathing. It might be superstition, or it might
be an idea of cleanliness. The English are mali-
cious one against another, almost universally, but
toward foreigners there appears to be more con-
temptuousness than malice.
Scampa. Your Eminence has the eye upon
the key-hole, and sees the whole chamber. Pride
and malice, the right side and the left side of the
Devil, constitute the Englishman. 0 the perse-
cutor ! This, the very worst of them all, except-
ing the wretch who would, in the presence of
your Eminence, deflower the fair fame of innocent
men like me, this one committed the injury
through wanton extravagance, shaving, wash-
ing, bathing, beside watering two hundred orange,
lemon, citron trees, and then laurels and myrtles
and rhododendrons and magnolias, and fantas-
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
tical outlandish flowers innumerable. No wonder
there was little waste water. The Frenchman
cited him before the tribunals. At first they
favored the Englishman, as was intended. The
Frenchman, as Frenchmen always do, shifted his
ground a little, and won the second cause. In
the third the Englishman had his turn, to prove
the fairness of processes in Tuscany. Then a
couple of the judges were persuaded to see their
error, and voted on the contrary side. Presently
more had their eyes opened for them. In vain
did the proud Englishman hold in contempt the
variations of the opponent and the judges : in
vain, over and over, did he offer tenfold the value
of the water, supposing the water was the thing
wanted, which the Frenchman had delared he
never cared about, having plenty on each side of
his house. No, this would never serve the pur-
pose of those who patted him on the back. His
suit assumed a somewhat different form, term
after term, otherwise it could not easily have
been so protracted. Nothing was now left for
the proud Englishman but appeal to the last re-
sort ; but, just before the defection of the two
favorable judges was decided on and arranged,
the Court of Appeal in the last resort was pur-
posely suppressed. Such was the fate of the
proud Englishman and his waste water.
Legate. I hope, Signer Marchese, that the mat-
ter ends here ; for you must remember that I
have other business in hand.
Scampa. Patience, Eminence, patience ! It
does not end here, nor could it reasonably. This
arrogant infuriated man, this devastator of vines
and olives, this substituter of grass and moss for
cabbages and onions, was sentenced to construct
with efficient masonry a competent reservoir in
front and within ten paces of his hall-door. Such
a sentence, if such a sentence had been possible
against, a noble Tuscan, would have broken the
heart of Conte Gherardesca, the late proprietor,
although he resided there but seldom, and enjoyed
but few perhaps of the cabbages and onions so
unworthily supplanted. Just punishment for this
overbearing pertinacious Englishman ! reminding
him for ever of what is due to a Roman prince
and prime minister ; such a diplomatist that he
had the honour of serving both his native sove-
reign the Granduke Ferdinand and the Em-
peror Napoleon at the same time, enjoying the
countenance of each, unsuspected by the other.
And a shining countenance it was. Faith of
Bacchus ! it was an omelet well fried on each
side, and enough of it to fatten a Carthusian.
Legate. To what does this tend, Signer Mar-
chese ?
Scampa. It tends, Eminence, to prove satis-
factorily the small regard entertained for English-
men in other quarters of our Italy : it tends to
prove, above all things, their contempt of digni-
ties, and how easily, by the grace of your Emi-
nence, they may be disappointed in their extrava-
gant recourse to litigation. The litigant was con-
demned to a series of lawsuits for nine years,
with more variations than ever were composed
by Rossini. It was decided from the beginning
that some should be won and some lost, and that
at last all the costs should be cast upon this
proud Englishman. The whole property of his
adversary amounts not to the sum expended in
the maintenance of what he presumed to call his
rights : a favorite word, Eminence, with those
islanders. Ue was a true Englishman, unbending
to authority, repulsive to rank, and bearing an
abominable dash of charcoal on his shoulders,
black, black as Satanasso. He would not have
gained his lawsuit even if he had consented to
pay down the fair market-price, which his proud
stomach would never do. But we are ready, Emi-
nence, we are ready; for no men alive observe
more strictly the usages of their fathers. We
hate revolutionary notions, we hate false doc-
trines : honour and religion, and love of our
neighbour, is our motto.
Legate. I wish so great a hardship had befallen
no better man than the person you describe : but,
remember, I am not sitting here to examine the
merits of his case. We have our own laws.
Scampa. I call that a happy country whose
law is as movable as Easter, and as managable
and pleasant as the Carnival. If it is not so in
the states of the Church, where upon earth ought
it to be ? I pay to His Holiness fifteen Roman
crowns yearly, for dispensation to eat flesh in
Lent.*
Legate. You seem strong and healthy, most
Illustrious !
Scampa. Under the blessing of heaven, by
paying the fifteen crowns I continue so. If all
would do the same their sins would fall off them
as the scales fall from a leper. Ling may help
to lift a man out of Purgatory; but Roman
crowns, legitimate and unclipt, can alone pave
the way to Paradise. I am no niggard, no Eng-
lishman : right well do I know, and more
especially do I acknowledge, that His Holiness is
not only an apostle, but a prince, and that His
dignity is to be duly supported by all true Chris-
tians. I glory in being one ; and God forbid I
should ever be so straitened in circumstances for
want of protection, as to cry out for an abate-
ment. In Tuscany the judges will hear reason,
when the wand of the apparitor is tipped with
gold and the litigant speaks in French. It is
better he should speak it first to Don Neri, who
understands it perfectly.
Legate. I do entreat you, Signer Marchese, to
come at once to the point.
Scampa. I would gladly, triumphantly, ex-
tatically, shed the last drop of my blood for His
Holiness ; but, ohibo ! what is all a man's blood
worth when it is robbed of its vital heat, of its
menestra, its fry, and its roast1? I am a good sub-
ject, a good Catholic, true, faithful, vigilant ; I am
a gallant man, a brave man ; but I have my fears.
* A. family, however healthy, may obtain it at that
price, and some very pious ones do.
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
There are carbonari everywhere : there is carbon
under the chair of His Holiness. A hard blow,
an angry breath, a humiliating indignity, a cruel
unpaternal . . what am I saying] what am I
thinking of ] . . may . . mercy upon usJ may
. . 0 holy Virgin avert it ! may, alas ! set his
footstool in such a blaze, ay, footstool and canopy,
purple and triple crown, as all the tears of your
Eminence, and of the devoted servant at your
feet, would be insufficient to extinguish.
Legate. What would you have, gentlemen ]
Biancheria. Eminence ! we do not ask more
for ourselves, who are Italians, than was gra-
ciously conceded to a foreigner.
Legate. The French have it always in their
power to do a great deal of mischief ; and such is
their natural disposition. The tiger in his cage
is just as restless as in his wilderness, and his
keeper must now and then humour him.
Biancheria. We ask to be protected from no
Frenchman upon earth, which would be beyond
any reasonable hope, but only from our accursed
Englishman, who, by his pertinacity and obdu-
racy, has proved himself to be made of the same
paste as the other, and drawn out of the same
oven. Like the other, he would rather put in
jeopardy three thousand crowns than distribute
a few hundreds in charity among the faithful do-
mestics of your Eminence, and their virtuous
wives and amiable children. What hearts, ahime !
what hearts these English carry with them about
Italy ! In fact, Eminence, an Englishman closes
his fist on these occasions as firmly as if he were
boxing. The main difference is, that on these if
he is beaten he has the folly to complain, whereas
on the other he would be silent if you had beaten
him half into a mummy. Knock out an eye, and
he gives you his hand ; mistake a picture in sell-
ing it to him, and he delivers you over to the ex3-
cutioner.
Scampa. If not quite that, he makes you give
back the money; and thus, blemishing your
honour, he leaves an incurable wound in the very
centre of the heart.
Legate. Gently, good Signer Marchese ! such
hard thumps on the exterior may produce an
effect no less fatal. I should apprehend ossifi-
cation and aneurism. We must bear with human
infirmity. All nations have their customs, all in-
dividuals their privileges and foibles. As the
English fight best upon the ocean, it is probable
and presumable that they see best with their
heads under water ; which opinion some of the
pictures bought by them on dry land, at enormous
prices, for their national gallery, seem to confirm.
Certainly they little know our usages : but they
know incomparably more about theoretical law
than about its practical administration. Per-
haps, as you suggest, they are somewhat too indif-
ferent to the deferential delicacy of its domestic
courtesies. Knowing the weaknesses to which,
as children of Adam, we all are liable, I would
not animadvert on them severely, nor prejudge
them. True it is, the Frenchman is more soci-
able at all times, and more amiable at most : and
if there are seasons when he must inevitably
swear and fight, we may charitably believe that
he follows the law of his nature in so doing;
that God made him so ; and we must take him
as we find him. And we shall the more readily
do this, if we remark his perfect ease and in-
difference what he swears to, and what he fights
for.
Biancheria. For my part, I have no complaint
to make against him : no Frenchman ever carried
off any of my pictures.
Legate. Signer Conte! keep your own secret.
Do not imply, as your speech would do, that
you never had any worth carrying off.
Corazza. Our Italy would rise up in arms
against the despoiler and deflowerer. Your
Eminence would issue a rescript, an ordi-
nance : we are safe. Ah, Signer Conte ! not
without an inspiration did you remind his Emi-
nence of our Garisenda, and her maternal leaning
toward us. Signer Conte and Signer Marchese
would melt Saint Peter and persuade Saint
Thomas, when they were stubbornest. I am ready
to weep.
Legate. At what, Signer Corazza ?
Corazza. Ca! at what] it lies beyond expres-
sion.
Legate. Well, in this article of weeping we per-
haps may help you.
Corazza (aside). Per Bacco ! it grows serious !
Legate. The foreigner threatens . .
All. The assassin !
Legate. . . to send the Process before the
Ruota Criminale at Rome, first submitting it to
the Pontifical Chancery.
Scampa. Chancery ! we are fresh eggs ; we are
live oysters; we are swallowed up; the Day of
Judgment can not piece us again ! If anything
reasonable had been offered, then indeed who
knows ] Eminence ! only hear the Englishman's
proposals! That the pictures should be sent
back ; true, at the purchaser's charge ; but what
compensation for losing the sight of our pictures!
Pictures that have been hanging in our palaces
from time immemorial ; pictures that have made
men, women, and children, stand breathless under
them; pictures that at last were given to the
Englishman at his own price ; for he would not
listen to reason. I told him I had a presentiment
of heartbreaking : I clasped my hands : I lifted up
my eyes imploringly to the ceiling, until my sighs
carried down a cobweb from a highth of twelve
braccie, and almost blinded me. I made no com-
plaint ; I bring no action for damages. There is
one Scampa in the world; only one; here he
stands.
Biancheria. Think! figure it! Eminence! he
offered us our pictures again, with only one-half
of the money! Could a Jew do worse ? The Pon-
tifical Chancery and the Ruota Criminale would
never tribulate gallant men in this guise. We
must go to Rome with sacks in our great coats :
and the judges there can smell silver from gold
I
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
through a Russia-leather portmanteau, mix it as
you will. Here in Bologna the judges are our
neighbours, and act like neighbours. No pride
no fastidiousness : they have patience and hear
reason. Only one word from your Eminence, urn
all stands well.
Legate. Reason too is heard at Rome.
Scampa. It goes by the Diligence to the bank
er's, and (Santa Maria !) makes but a short
there.
Biancheria. Yes, Eminence ! at Rome too t
hear reason and have patience : but they require
more reason from us, and more patience. Sacks
Eminence ! sacks and sacks, Eminence ! extermi
nated mountains ! Mexico, Peru, Cordilleras !
Corazza. Is money chaff, Signer Marchese
Signor Conte ! is money swept off with the bearc
and suds at the barber's? To me it does not
seem so. I am a poor man, but honest. I work
I work hard ; ca ! if anyone knew it !
Legate. At what do you work, most respectable
Signor Corazza, my most worshipful master '
Corazza. At my business ; day after day ; all
day long. O the life ! to gain a crown-piece after
years and years, and many and many ! To stand
and stand, and sigh and sigh, with my hands
before me ; now straight down, no* across ; sad
variety ! Now looking at one Virgin, now at
another; now at this Bambino, now at that;
never minding me ; tiring my heart and tearing
it, and gnawing it, summer and winter, spring
and autumn ; while others are in villa ! hosiers
and hatters, who can not distinguish a picture
from a counterpane, a Porporato from, a Pievano.
Ca ! and these people get more money than they
can spend : what livers and brains ! what capons !
what trout ! Their wine comes from twenty miles
off; cospetto ! One keeps his civetta, another his
billiard-table, another his . . what not! Here
am I ! no wine, no billiard, no pallone, no laugh-
ing, no noise ! The very carts in the streets
grumble to be in it at such a season. All I possess
of the country is a grillo in a cage of straw. The
blessed Saint who lost her eyes . . if she can be said
to have lost them when she carried them in a
dish . . suffered less than mine did when I lost my
Guide.
Legate. Have you nothing of the kind remain-
ing?
Corazza. Providence never abandons the faith-
ful. A Ludovico . . pure, sincere, intact; purest,
sincerest, intactest . . but alas ! no menestra in
pentola ; no more menestra than if there were no
rice-ground in Lombardy. This I call enduring
fatigue, Signor Marchese ! This I call sweating,
Signor Conte ! This I call tribulation, Eminence !
Your Eminence can feel all this for us poor people
in the trade. Look now ! look now ! only look !
Here comes an Englishman to the Pelican; a
milord ; a real milord of London. The fame of
the finest pieces in the world reaches him on the
steps ; not mine ; I do not say mine ; but the
pieces of Signor Marchese and Signor Conte, rim-
bombing through the universe. He hardly asks
for dinner : Signor Perotti, Signor Flavio, your
Eminence must know him, padrone of the Pelican,
says, "Leave that to me." Now Signor Flavio
speaks English as well as milord Beron or milord
Scacchesperro. " Do you want cash, sir ] I will
take any bill upon London, two months, three
months." 0 the ingratitude of the canaglia!
The pictures are given; thrown away, (do I
speak well, Signor Marchese ?), packed up, sealed
at the custom-house, sent off; Signor Flavio goes
along with them, loses his business, his rest, his
peace of mind, crosses the Appennines, as Annibal
did, and reaches Florence, eviscerated, exossated,
with nine great packages ! nine ! the treasures of
Bologna '
Biancheria. We lie near the woods, or we never
could have given the empty cases for the money
we gave the pictures at.
Scampa. I doubt, after all, whether they will
cover the carpenter's bill.
Corazza. Be tranquil, Signor Marchese ! I have
calculated that they certainly will, if he waits (as
usual) a reasonable while for the payment.
Scampa. It was a great inconvenience to me : I
made a great sacrifice : I thought of building a
palace with the planks. Will your Eminence just
look over the ground-plan ]
Legate. Prodigiously magnificent elevation !
Blessed Saints !
Scampa. One might imagine that a little of the
timber would be left. Quite the contrary. I have
ruined the way through my estate by the carriage
of supplementary loads ; and I should not have
regretted it if I could have given satisfaction. I
am ready to do the like again for anyone who
thinks more liberally.
BiancJieria. It must be by particular favour,
and with strong recommendations, that an En-
glishman ever enters my house again. My stock
of timber was small : however, if it had pleased
His Beatitude the Holiness of our Lord to equip
a galley or two against the Turks or Greeks, I had
wherewithall at his service. Now, now indeed,
not a stick is left me ! not a thorn, not a dead leaf
on the floor : the packages took all.
Corazza. Men of humble condition must be
cautious in their resentments. My temper is for-
giving; my heart is large; I am ready to press
my enemy to it again when he sees his error.
Legate. He fancies he has already seen it, my
most ornamented friend and worthy patron ! His
correspondent at Florence assures me, on the
.uthority of the whole Academy, that he has been
lefrauded.
BiancJieria. If this gentleman is a gentleman
of the law, he may lie legally: but if he acts
merely as a friend, and in private, he acts insidi-
'usly. What gentleman in Italy ever took upon
limself the business of another, where he fancied
he other had been imprudent and might lose by
hat imprudence, whether life or property ? The
Snglish alone are discontented with their own
[angers, and run into those of other people.
They pursue thieves ; they mount upon conflagra-
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
tions. Instead of joining the stronger, they join
the weaker, subverting the order of things. Even
dogs and wolves know better.
Scampa. I am ruined by them ; this is all I
pretend to know of their doings. Since I sold
them my pictures, I am infested and persecuted
and worried to death by duns. They belabor
and martellate my ears worse than the terza rima
of Dante, the next taking up the rhyme of the
last. I am not a dealer in pictures : I only sell
when anyone takes a fancy to this or that ; and
merely to show that we in Bologna are as con-
descending and polite to strangers as the people
of Rome or Florence.
Legate. Very proper ; but this double baptism
of pictures, this dipping of old ones in the font
again, and substituting a name the original
sponsor never dreamt of giving, this, methinks,
Signer Marchese ! under correction ! is somewhat
questionable and exceptionable.
Scampa. Under the correction of your Emi-
nence, bending myself most submissively, I have
as much right to call my pictures by what appel-
lation I please as my house-dog. He whose son
has been christened by the name of Tommaso,
may deem it more pleasurable to his ear, or more
conducive to his welfare, or more appertaining to
the dignity of his beloved heir, to designate him
by that of Pietro or Giovanni. Again, I have as
much right to ask a thousand crowns as a hun-
dred. Asking does not cut purses nor force open
bankers' desks. Beside, have I ever transgressed
by laying claim to infallibility ? Only one upon
earth is infallible ; and he not in pictures : it is
only in things that nobody in this world can com-
prehend.
Legate. Piously and judiciously spoken.
Scampa. Eminence ! I am liable to errors ; I
am frail ; I am a man : we are all of us dust ; we
are all of us ashes ; here to-day, there to-morrow :
but I stick to my religion ; I wear my honour
next my heart. I should like to catch this En-
glishman by twilight : I should like to hear how
he would answer an honest man to his face. No
subterfuges with me. Accidents have happened ;
malaria ; judgments. Many have fallen sick by
holding their noses too close to the ground, like
dogs in the grotto at Naples yonder.
Legate. Be calm, Signor Marchese !
Scampa. My blood rises against oppression and
injustice. These proud Englishmen shall never
govern us. We are under the Church ; God be
praised ! We are under his blessed Saints and
your Eminence. Englishmen ! what are English-
men? In their ships they may do something.
Give me one, visage to visage in the shaven field,
and, capperi ! he should soon see who was before
him : ay, capperi ! should he. Uh ! uh ! I almost
crack my teeth with my courage.
Legate. Spare them ! spare them ! good Signor
Marchese ! they are worth their weight in gold at
your age. Let us respect our veterans, so sadly
thinned by the enemy.
Scampa. I have the blood of youth in my veins.
Legate. You must feel it very comfortable.
Scampa. It boils within me.
Legate. Let it; let it; better within than with-
out. Surely it is applicable to pleasanter purposes
than broils.
Scampa. Stains upon honour . .
Legate. . . May be covered with blood more
easily than washed out with it. You are calmer,
Signor Conte ! Let me remark to you, then, that
the Englishman in question has sent to me an
attestation on a certain picture, purporting to
bear the seal of our Academy : this seal is declared
by one of our own Academicians (now in Florence)
to be a forgery.
All. A traitor! a traitor! a traitor to his
country !
Biancheria. The Englishman himself forged it.
Corazza. The English are capable. I never
saw people write with such ease and fluency.
Scampa. Very great forgers; very notorious.
Many are hanged for it every year in London ;
some of the most respectable persons in the whole
nation, who spend several thousand dollars a year ;
milords, bankers, bishops.
Biancheria. Bishops ! more shame upon them !
Ours in Italy are long-dips ; four-and-twenty to
the pound ; in England they are as substantial as
sausages. What the devil should they forge but
their credentials ?
Scampa. I said, and I repeat it, many English
are hanged for it every year; not one Italian.
Lord Kenyon, the greatest judge in the kingdom,
declared it lawful against an enemy : now Catho-
lics are enemies in the eye of the Anglican Church,
and the English laws acknowledge and act upon
it; therefore, on their own principles, we may fairly
and justifiably be guilty of it, at our good plea-
sure. Not that we ever are.
Biancheria. A secretary, by inadvertency, may
affix a seal to a wrong paper. We cannot look to
these bagatelles : we cannot light the taper for all
our letters : we have extensive correspondences :
a good deal of money comes yearly by this way
into the Legations.
Scampa. An easy quiet liberality; some slight
preference to the native; a little more regard
to his testimony who is a Christian, than to a
Quaker's, a Turk's, a Lutheran's, an Anabaptist's,
a Free-mason's, may benefit the individual, con-
solidate the government, and calm those uneasi-
nesses and ranklings which have kept our wretched
country . . .
Biancheria, whispering to him. Ohibo ! take
heed ! diamene !
Scampa. . . Wretched, until the arrival of
your Eminence, by perpetual insurrections. Only
two years ago (horrible to think of!) Cardinal
Rivarola was shot in his carriage. God knows
why. Mystery hangs over everything here below.
Idle men are seen about, ready to be hired : their
work requires but short instruments and short
warning.
Legate. Pooh ! pooh ! Signor Marchese ! never
fear them ; we will watch over you. Government
10
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
can pay them best : they are idle or at work as
we judge proper. Englishmen have long purses,
but never hire any help in their anger.
Corazza. Economical indeed! meanspirited
creatures !
Biancheria. But they carry sticks, and con-
found distinctions with them.
ScamiM. Bloody rogues are left yet in the Le-
gations ; and not all of them on the mountains.
Have a care, Eminence ! they pretend to love
their country. Such folks are always dangerous :
their whistle is heard farther than any. We have
seen, 0 Christ! 0 holy Virgin! . . Surgeon's
work does not stand well. I weep at thinking . .
my eyes overflow . . I kiss the feet that represent
His Holiness.
Legate. Signor Marchese ! you overpower me.
And, Signor Conte ! you also at my other ! nay,
nay, in the name of . . Cazzo ! . . you go too
fat. I do intreat you to rise up from my feet :
your lips make them too hot : they do indeed.
Gentlemen, the pleasure of your company has
almost caused me to forget that you do me the
honour of consulting with me on business of im-
portance. Forgery is really an ugly thing, in my
view of the subject. Swindling sounds indifferent-
ly. The Academicians of Florence have formally
and unanimously decided that your pictures are
not only no originals, but are wretched copies.
Fifteen names, the names of all present, are sub-
scribed to the declaration, signed by the president,
the senator Alessandri ! " Siamo di concorde
awiso che il primo sia una copia mediocre, &c. :
che il secondo appertenga ad un debole imitatore
della scuola Bolognese ; e gli ultiini due sieno fatti
da un cattivo seguace," &c.
Biancheria. Eminence ! let the Academicians
of Florence look at the pictures that the most
liberal and intelligent of our Italian princes (I
mean secular ; no offence to our Lord and Master
His Beatitude) has bought in their own city, and
under their own eyes. How happens it that he
has friends about him who recommend to him
the purchase, at many thousand crowns, of pieces
not worth five figs ] Domenichinos ! Salvators,
Leonardos, Murillos ! Is the Guido in the Tribuna
any Guido at all] Would your Eminence give
three crowns for it, out of the frame 1
Scampa. Their JDomenichino in the same Tri-
buna, did Domenichino ever see it] However, it
is better than a real work of his in the Palazzo
Pitti, which the Granduke's purveyors bought for
him at the price of fifteen hundred louis. Emi-
nence ! would you give fifty crowns for it] Our
Lord would never have talked a half-minute with
such a Magdalen as that : he would have thrown
her pot of pomatum in her face.
Corazza. Under favour, how happens it that
they recommend to the Granduke restorers and
cleaners who never learnt anything of the art, and
never attempted it on their own dirt and rags ]
Scampa. How happens it that the finest pic-
tures in the world have been ruined within these
two years ] The friend of His Imperial Highness,
who recommended these rascals and their rubbish,
has unquestionably his profits.
Corazza. And why should not we have ours ]
We who rub nothing out at all, and put little
on . .
Legate. . . Except in price, most adorned sir.
Biancheria. I would not wish my observations
to transpire. If the scourers at Florence go on as
they have been going on lately, the collections at
the gallery and at Pitti will be fit only for the
Committee of Taste in London ; and the Granduke
must have recourse to us for what is unsold in our
corridors.
Legate. Sorry am I to understand that so zealous
a protector, and so liberal an encourager of the
Arts, has fallen among thieves.
Scampa. However he has purchased some fine
pictures. Old pencils are redhot iron to young
fingers': all are burnt at first.
Biancheria. Unhappily, the two purest and
most perfect works of Raffael are transferred from
Tuscany to Bavaria : his Bindo Altoviti and his
Tempi Madonna.
Legate. Raffael has been surpassed in portraits
by Titian and Giorgione. But Tuscany may weep
for ever over her loss in the.Bindo Altoviti, which
I have often seen in the palace where it was
painted. Towns, fortresses, provinces, are won,
recovered, restored, repurchased : kings will keep
Raffaels; kings alone, or higher dignitaries,
should possess them.
Scampa. He who would sell his Eaffacl would
sell his child.
Biancheria. Cospetto! thirty.
Scampa. Or his father.
Biancheria. Cappari ! All, all, to the last.
Legate. Leonardos, Correggios, rare, very rare :
but only one genius ever existed who could unite
what is most divine on earth with what is most
adorable in heaven. He gives sanctity to her
youth, and tenderness to the old man that gazes
on her. He purifies love in the virgin's heart ; he
absorbs it in the mother's.
Corazza. Many allow him the preference over
our school.
Legate. Ca ! ca ! ca ! your School ! an immon-
dezzaio to a Sistine Chapel.
Scampa. Eminence ! in Rome, protected by
popes and cardinals, he reached perfection.
Legate. Protected ! He walked among saints
and prophets, their herald upon earth. What a
man ! what a man ! his shadow in our path will
not let lies pass current, nor flattery sink into the
breast. No, Marchese ! At Rome he thought he
could embellish what is most beautiful in senti-
ment: at Florence, until the scourers brought
their pestilence into the city, his genius soared in
all its light angelic strength. At Florence he
was the interpreter of Heaven : at Rome he was
only the conqueror of Michel- Angelo : he had left
Paradise, he had entered Eden.
Scampa. In your Rome the great Florentine
taught him dignity.
Legate. Strange mistake ! Was ever painter so
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
11
dignified as Frate Bartolommeo, whom he studied
before he went to Rome ] In amplitude, in gravi-
ty, in majesty, Fra Bartolommeo is much the su-
perior of Michel- Angelo : both want grace : both
are defective in composition. These two qualities
were in the soul of Raffael: had he looked for
them externally, he might have found them on
the gates of the Battisterio. I admire and vene-
rate the power of Michel-Angelo : but the boy of
Urbino reached the head of this giant at the first
throw. He did not strip your skins over your
heads to show where your muscles lie ; nor throw
Hercules into the manger at Bethlehem ; nor fall
upon Alcmena for Mary.
I know not how it happens, but love of the
Arts leads me astray. When persons of intelli-
gence on such subjects are about me, I am apt to
prolong the discourse. But the pleasantest day
must end ; the finest sunset is at last a sunset.
Gentlemen ! on the word of a friend, and such
I am to all entrusted to my governance, and espe-
cially to men of merit, to persons of distinction,
true Bolognese, real professors . . Gentlemen ! you
will find it better to contrive, if possible, that this
awkward question do not come before the ordinary
tribunals.
Scampa. Eminence ! what in God's name can
they do against us if we are protected ]
Biancheria. The milord erred in his judgment;
we did not err in ours. If men are to suffer for
errors, which, alas ! seems the lot of humanity, let
those suffer who do err, by no means those who
do not. No man was ever brave at this em-
broidery of picture-fancying until he had often
pricked his finger. Now I would advise milord
to put his between his lips, and not to hold it up
in public with a paltry jet bead of blood on it,
as if he endured the sufferings of a martyr. We
ought to complain; not he. Is it right or reason-
able, or according to justice or law, that good
quiet Christians, pursuing the steps of their fore-
fathers . . do I say well, Signer Marchese ]
Scampa. Capitally ! admirably ! sound argu-
ment ! touching truth ! But I am not to judge . .
I am a party, it seems !
Biancheria. That good quiet christians,eccetera ;
loyal subjects, eccetera; gallant men, men of
honour, men of garb, eccetera, eccetera . . should
be persecuted and ransacked and trodden upon
and torn and worried and dilacerated and de-
voured by these arrogant insatiable English.
Scampa. Bravo ! bravo ! bravo !
Corazza. Ancora ! ancora ! bisse, bisse, bisse !
Biancheria. These arrogant insatiable English,
what would they have ] I gave them my flesh
and blood; would they seize my bones? Let
them, let them ! since for even one's bones there
is no rest on earth ; none whatever ; not a pin's
point ; saving upon the breast of your Eminence.
Legate. Ohibo ! where is the need of weeping
and wailing, Signer Conte 1
Biancheria. Magdalen wept and wailed, Peter
wept and wailed : but they had gone astray, they
had slipped and sidled : I have followed my line
of duty ; I have acted consistently ; I have gone
on as I began. Why should these infuriated mon-
sters run from under the North Pole against me ]
why be permitted to stroke up, in a manner,
my spinal hair from tail to nape in this fashion]
merciful Jesu ! eradicating, eradicating ! flaying,
laying. The acquirer of the pictures, he com-
plain too ! he complain ! after spoiling his own
speculation. Had he kept his tongue from ring-
ing, his seven hundred louis, the poor compen-
sation for our master-pieces, would have pro-
cured him a seat in the Committee of Taste in
London, and every piece would have turned out a
miraculous loaf; a Christ in the Garden. What
power ! what patronage ! And they eat, Eminence !
they eat ; or they are much belied. If another
man's macaroni is a foot long, theirs is a yard.
Fry, fry, fry, all day : the kitchen hums and
buzzes like a spring meadow : it frets and fumes
and wheezes with its labour : one cook cannot
hear another : you might travel as far as from
Bologna to Ancona between the boiled and the
roast. And what do we get] at the uttermost
the scale of an anchovy, with scarcely oil enough
to float it . .
Corazza. . . And perhaps, late in the season,
the extremity of a radish, so cursedly tough, you
may twist it twenty times round the finger.
Scampa. We are amenable to your Eminence :
but what has the Academy of Florence to do
with us 1 Presently, no doubt, we shall be cited
before the Committee of Taste on the Thames.
Let us discuss a little the qualifications of our
future judges, now we have plainly shown what
our present are. Has not this glorious Committee
paid several thousand louis for a false Correggio,
which was offered at Rome heretofore for fifteen
crowns, and carried to Milan ere it found so much]
Has not this glorious Committee, which snatched
so eagerly at a false, rejected a real one at a low
price] Have the blockheads not allowed the
finest Andrea to slip out of London, and to hanp
on a banker's wall at Paris ] Could they not have
bought it at a third less than what the banker
paid for it ] and will he sell it again for a third
more?
Legate. In almost all the works of this other-
wise admirable painter there is a vulgarity which
repels me.
Biancheria. But what truth, Eminence, what
truth !
Legate. The most endearing quality, I perceive,
with Signer Conte Biancheria.
Biancheria. It stands indeed high with me.
Scampa. There is no answering any of the
Count's questions on the Committee of Taste.
Biancheria. The facts are known all over the
world. Not a cottage or cavern, not a skiff or
felucca, not a gondola or canoe, from Venice to
Van Diemen's Land, that does not echo them.
Legate. Indeed J
Biancheria. Upon my faith as a Christian !
Scampa. There is a certain duke at Rome, a
duke made after buckles were left off, who can
12
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
always sell what he proposes. He recommends
an original : over comes milord, sees it finished,
accepts in his condescension an inlaid table, and
fills the newspapers with the fine contours, the
aerial perspective, the topazes, rubies, and eme-
ralds, of this precious oil-cloth.
Biancheria. We poor Bolognese can not give
such dinners as a Roman duke and banker can.
We are hungry; yet we invite the stranger to
partake with us.
Legate. Of your hunger, most illustrious ?
Biancheria. With what we have we serve him.
Corazza. An honest man would do his business
regularly ; a good citizen makes no disturbances,
and is ashamed of troubling the courts of justice
or intruding on his superiors. Peace, concord,
faith, veneration, are inherent in the highest and
in the lowest of the Bolognese.
Scampa. And yet the Acadamy of Florence
makes war against the Academy of Bologna !
Would it not be wiser if those who preside over
the Arts imitated the conduct of those who pre-
side over the nations 1 Would it not be better if
they agreed that the same system should govern
all? Can not our Bologna and Florence come
closer, like England and Turkey, France and
Russia, Spain and Persia, Portugal and Congo ?
Are we never to follow our betters ? We indeed
do : why will not they ? Times are very much
altered for the worse, Eminence, since we were
children.
Legate. Ah Marchese ! You were a child long
after I was one.
Scampa. A year ; or may-be thirteen months.
I have seen forty some time.
Legate. I approach eighty.
Scampa. In dreams and visions ; not otherwise.
I am as near to Purgatory as your Eminence is to
Paradise.
Legate (aside). I believe it; on the wrong side
too.
Scampa. Did your Eminence speak to me ?
Legate. I was regretting to myself the strength
of the Declaration that lies before me.
Biancheria. A mere formulary ; signed by four-
teen or fifteen rival Academicians. Our pictures
had no such pedantry about them. We too have
signatures : the pen trembles with their emotion.
Legate. True enough ; few of the names are
legible, and those unknown.
Scampa. There now ! convincing ! convincing !
The better part of them could not see the paper
under them through their tears.
Biancheria. Well might they weep. Such pic-
tures then must leave Bologna? Our beloved
country must lose them for ever ! our dear chil-
dren must not enjoy what their fathers and fore-
fathers gloried in !
Corazza. What could we do? The English are
powerful at sea : they have a fleet in the Adriatic
no farther off than Corfu.
Legate. The question is the authenticity of the
pictures.
Scampa. And, after an attestation on the spot,
the Academy of Florence has the impudence to
sign and seal against it !
Corazza. May not pictures have suffered on the
road ? may not malicious men, artists and dealers,
jealous of the Bolognese school, jealous of an
honest man's good fortune . . .
Scampa. . . Carpers of titles, revilers of digni-
ties . .
Corazza. . . Ay, ay . . have given them a few
false touches ?
Biancheria. May not the air of Florence, moister
and heavier than ours, have suffused with a
duller tint and disturbed the transparency of the
glazing?
Scampa. People sign without reflection, Emi-
nence ! My uncle Matteo the Canonico, your
Eminence's old worshipper, used to say well and
truly, the day of judgment is the last day we
can expect on earth, and that he saw no signs
of it.
Legate. We have no proof of malice in the de-
cision.
Biancheria. Even good men have some. Saint
Cyprian said that the face of Saint Jerome, in
Correggio's picture, would have done better for
the lion, and the lion's for him.
Legate. Whether Saint Cyprian said it may
perhaps be questioned.
Corazza. 0 the Magdalen ! what a tint ! what
a touch ! The hair ! how it swells ! how it falls !
how it undulates ! how it reposes ! Music to the
eye, to the heart, to the intellect, to the soul ! the
music of Paesiello ! Then her . . ca ! ca ! ca !
what tongue can reach it ! Eminence ! look ; be-
hold her ! She has kissed the Bambino with the
endearing curl of her lip, where it loses itself in
the paler roses of the cheek : and she holds the
kiss, one would think, between the lip and the
child, afraid to drop it by moving. Tender,
tender, tender ! And such an ancle there ! oh !
oh ! the heart can not contain it.
Legate. Nevertheless, the holy child is a young
satyr, and the Saint a wild beast, come rather to
swallow than fondle him. Somebody seems to
have driven him up into the corner, else his
claws might alarm us. As to the lion, he has
been in the menagery from his birth, where some
other beast more leonine begot him.
Scampa. If this picture has its faults, well may
ours have them too. In regard to authenticity,
we did not see the artist paint them. We may
have been deceived : and because we have been
deceived must we be called deceivers ? Fine Flo-
rentine logic forsooth ! turning everything the
wrong side upward.
Corazza. I have studied the art from my youth,
aad have made the pot boil with it, although
there is not a cinder at present, hot or cold, under
it. I do know a little of the matter, if a modest
man may say it : a little I do know. These
Florentines . . my patience escapes me . .
Legate. We must attempt to catch it again for
you in this room, most prized and ornamented
Signor Corazza !
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
13
Corazza. I but humbly follow Signer Marchese.
Enter the Tribuna where the best pictures are sup-
posed to hang. The Magdalen's head is more
like a boiled calf's. She was flesh and blood, the
Magdalen was, I warrant her. She had fingers
fit for anything : and here are long sticks, no
better than those which some blockhead has stuck
upon the Medicean Venus, for Englishmen to ad-
mire upon tradition in this age, and Kamskatka-
dales in the next. We do not read that the fin-
gers of the Magdalen were broken or dislocated
at the cross or elsewhere, as these are. How
would you manage her heavy stupid head 1 Guido
would have put it in its right position : Guido
would have given it expression and grace, ten-
derness and emotion : it has verily no more of
these than an ox's heart at the shambles. Another
step, and we stand before the Holy Family of
Michel-Angelo.
Legate. Signor Corazza, my patron ! do not
pull down this picture : this is genuine : it was
painted for the Medici, and was never out of their
sight. There is some (however slight) reason to
believe that the other is a Guido : but Guido was
a youth before he was a man, and a boy before
he was a youth, and often painted a picture by
lamp-light, or by none, to get out of a scrape.
Scampa. Historical facts ! recondite biography !
Guido has got drunk upon a Magdalen, gone to
a brothel with a Saint Catharine, and gamed upon
Christ's coat. In Michel- Angelo's Holy Family,
why does the Virgin (who looks neither like vir-
gin nor mother) toss the poor Baby so carelessly
across her shoulder? And why do those idle
vagabonds sit naked on the wall behind her?
Have they no reverence ? no decency 1 God's
blood J master Michel-Angelo ! I suspect thy
nose was flattened by divine judgment for this
flagrant impudicity. In the same Tribuna is
another Holy Family; one among the few bad
works of Giulio Romano. Beyond it are two
Correggios by Vanni of Sienna, and then another
Holy Family, also by Vanni, but undoubted for
Correggio's.
Corazza. Ah Signor Marchese ! There is some-
what of his sweetness in the coloring of the
Scampa. But that wench with her twisted
face, her twisted hands, and her child sprawling
before her, like what has dropped from one's head
under the comb ! yet our judges, our censurers,
our incriminators, firmly believe in the transcen-
dent excellence of those works. They know
nothing of any school but their own, and little of
that. What a Perugino is there locked up in
their Academy ' while these inferior pictures oc-
cupy the most conspicuous situation, the satel-
lites of the Medicean Venus. They have heard,
and they repeat to you, that Perugino is hard and
dry. Certainly those who worked for him were
so, and so was he himself in the beginning : but
what at first was harshness became at last a pure
severity. He learned from the great scholar he
taught; and the wiser his followers were, the
more they venerated the abilities of their master.
He had no pupil so great as Raffael, nor had
Raffael any so great as he.
Legate. Titian ennobled men; Correggio raised
children into angels ; Raffael performed the more
arduous work of restoring to woman her pristine
purity. Perugino was worthy of leading him by
the hand. I am not surprised that Rubens is the
prime favorite of tulip-fanciers : but give me the
clear warm mornings of Correggio, which his
large-eyed angels, just in puberty, so enjoy. Give
me the glowing afternoons of Titian; his majestic
men, his gorgeous women, and (with a prayer to
protect my virtue) his Bacchantes. Yet, Signers !
we may descant on grace and majesty as we will ;
believe me, there is neither majesty so calm, con-
centrated, sublime, and self-possessed (true attri-
butes of the divine), nor is there grace at one time
so human, at another time so superhuman, as in
Raffael. He leads us into heaven; but neither in
satin robes nor with ruddy faces. He excludes
the glare of light from the sanctuary; but there
is an ever-burning lamp, an ever-ascending hymn;
and the purified eye sees, as distinctly as is lawful,
the divinity of the place. I delight in Titian, I
love Correggio, I wonder at the vastness of
Michel-Angelo ; I admire, love, wonder, and then
fall down before, Raffael.
Scampa. Eminence ! we have Titian, we have
Raffael, in our Academy; we want only Correggio.
At my decease perhaps . . And .yet he, who was
quite at home with angels, played but a sorry
part among saints : he seems to have considered
them as very indifferent company for him. How
they stare and straddle and sprawl about his
Cupola ! But what coloring on his canvas !
Would your Eminence favor me with another
ray of light on him and Raffael !
Legate. Signor Marchese ! I am afraid I can
say nothing on the subject that has not been said
twenty times before; and if I do, I may be
wrong.
All. Impossible.
Legate. Even the coloring of Correggio, so
transparent, so pure, so well considered and ar-
ranged, is perhaps too rich and luscious for the
divine ideas of Raffael : it might have overshot
the scope which his temperate suavity attained.
The drapery of Correggio is less simple than be-
comes the modest maid of Bethlehem, chosen by
the all-seeing eye for her simplicity.
Bianckeria. And yet, under favour, in the Ma-
donna della Seggiola, there is almost a fantastic
charm in the vivid colours of the tartan dress.
Legate. So much the worse. Let us admire the
composition, but neither the style of the drapery
nor the expression of the countenance. The
Virgin has ceased to be a virgin; and the child
has about it neither the sweetness of an amiable
infant, nor the mysterious indication of a half-
human god. Raffael in Rome had forgotten the
tenderness of his diviner love ; and the Tempter
had seduced him to change purity for power.
Nevertheless he remains, far beyond all com-
14
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
parison, the greatest genius that ever glorified the
Arts. He was not, like Michel-Angelo, a great
architect, a scientific sculptor, an admirable poet :
he attempted not universality; but he reached
perfection. What other mortal has?
All. Oracles! oracles!
Biancheria. I myself possess a little bit of
Perugino : honey, sugar, cinnamon.
Corazza (oxide). And a good deal of each ; two
dollars would not cover it. How he kisses the
tips of his two fingers and thumb, all three in a
cluster ! I wish he would pay me my twelve livres
for this honey and sugar and cinnamon, in which
however he will never catch the wary old wasp.
The thing is fairly worth a couple of zecchins, and
he knows it.
Legate. Signor Corazza, were you saying your
prayers behind me ?
Corazza. Fervently. Alas! I have no Perugino :
I had a Saint Peter : tears like pearls : an ear, you
might have put your finger in it up to the elbow :
hair, I was afraid of blowing a fly from it.
Strangers, when they entered the room, cried,
"Signor Corazza! do you keep poultry in your
saloon ?" ,
Legate. What of that?
Corrazza. Incidental The cock in the distance,
red, gold, emerald; six, seven, eight crowns'
worth of lapis lazuli ; wings displayed, neck out-
stretched, eyes that might have lighted up our
theatre ; comb . . I would never let a cook enter
the room, lest he should have cut it off. Every-
body fancied he heard him crow; for fancy it
must have been. And what became of this pic-
ture ? Two Englishmen tore it from the wall : I
thought they would have carried the house, the
street itself, away with it. They stopped my
mouth : no stirring, no breathing. England,
monopolising England, possesses now Saint Peter!
The milords threw down their paltry hundred
zecchins, leaving me lifeless at the loss of my
treasure, and sacking our Bologna in this inhu-
man way. 0 had your Eminence seen that cock;
had your Eminence seen that hair, fine, fine, fine
as an infant's ; the crown of the head smooth as
the cover of a soup-tureen ; nothing to hide the
veins on the temples : he would have been bald
within the year, unless by miracle. I had also an
Andromeda: Signor Conte knew her. Dignitaries
of the Church have stood before her until their
knees bent under them.
Legate. Did Englishmen dispossess you likewise
of your Andromeda ?
Corazza. Half the nation fell upon her at once :
all were after her : what was to be done ! I was
widowed of her too : they had her. One would
think, after this they might have been quiet: not
they : we must bleed and martyrise : no end or
remission of our sufferings. The English are very
unlike what they were formerly: surely the breed
of milords is extinct.
Legate. Quite the contrary, I believe.
Corazza. Then they are turned into chapmen.
No sooner do they come to an inn, than they
inquire how much the host asks for so many; and
if they do not like the price, they drive off.
Formerly if you skinned a milord you only tickled
him. Who, in the name of the Holy Virgin !
could have begotten the present race? They
have shockingly ill-treated our worthy fellow-citi-
zen, the most esteemed Signor Flavio Perotti of
the Pelican. He offered them his house; he
placed everything before them ; all unreservedly
at their disposal. He serves his country with
consummate zeal and fidelity: much money
flows into it through his hands : many pictures
that might peradventure do great dishonour to
the names of Domenichino and Guido, and the
whole family of the Caracci, and sweet Albano
. . my tears will flow at the name, it so much
resembles our illustrious protector's . . Yes,
yes, many and many slip quietly from the Pelican
out of the country, by Signor Flavio's interven-
tion. Hence there is scarcely an auction, I hear,
in England, without a dozen of Domenichinos ;
while in Italy dukes and princes lie on their
death-beds and gasp for one. The milords in
Florence conspired against poor Signor Flavio, as
an accomplice in what they were pleased to de-
nominate a cheat and forgery. Figure it ! your
Eminence ! figure it ! an accomplice ! Signor
Flavio told me that, unless he had quitted
Florence on the instant, the Police would have
consigned him to the Bargello. This comes of
accepting bills from foreigners ! this comes from
facilitating business !
Biancheria. Eminence ! we live in an ungrate-
ful world, a world full of snares, frauds, and perils.
Many saints have said it, and all honest men
have experienced it. I gave my pictures to this
Englishman, merely not to disgust or displease
him. He had them not at my price, but at his
own. I abandoned them ; I stood in desolation.
Recovering my senses, I saw bare walls ; Chiusi,
Populonia.
Legate. Signor Conte ! most illustrious ! had
the purchaser ever any dealings with you before ?
Biancheria. He never was before in Bologna.
We see many Englishmen from time to time, but
none come twice : the reason is, they take the
other road. Beside, they are men of business, and
carry off at once everything they like.
Corazza. I never heard of one entering the
same shop a second time. The French are called
inconstant: but in inconstancy the English outfly
them by leagues and latitudes. Him whom they
call an honest man one day, they call a rogue the
next : they are as mild as turnips in the morning,
and as hot as capsicums in the afternoon.
Scampa. Whenever an Englishman of distinc-
tion was inclined to favor me, he always found
my palace at his disposal I began at last to give
a preference to the Frenchman. Instead of such
outrageous words as accomplice, eccetera, eccettera,
when a Frenchman has rung a few changes on
the second and sixth letters of the alphabet, his
temperament grows cooler : you may compromise
with him : but the Got-dam of the Englishmen
THE CARDINAL-LEGATE ALBANI AND PICTURE-DEALERS.
15
sounds like the bursting of the doors of Janus,
and his fist is always ready to give it emphasis. I
regret that I have encountered more than once
such rudeness, after making him the master of
my house and servants.
Corazza (aside to the secretary). What servants!
they are all the Pelican's. Old Baltazzare-Cin-
cinnato never leaves off his cobbling under the
palace-stairs for the best heretic in London. He
has orders to the contrary, or the Pelican would
stand still in the negotiation. He has other per-
quisites.
Legate. Most prized and ornate Signer Corazza,
my patron ! I commend your modesty in taking
a place behind my chair, while Signer Marchese
and Signer Conte do me the honour of indulging
me with their presence on the opposite side of
the chamber ; yet, if you are desirous of whisper-
ing any remarks of yours to my secretary, who
appears to be an old acquaintance, pray, in cour-
tesy, go as far from .my chair as posssible ; for
whispers are apt to divert the attention more than
a louder tone.
Corazza. Signor Secretary ! accept this small
cameo.
Secretary. Don't mention it; don't think of it;
impossible ! Not to be observed . . (pockets it.)
I would render you service for service, my dear
Signor Corazza ! you are a man of parts, a man
of business, my most worshipful patron ! I have
only my good fortune to boast of, partly in the
satisfaction I give his Eminence, and partly in
the precious acquisition of your friendship. His
Eminence has taken under his protection a young
person, a relative of mine, sage, good, gentle ;
they call her handsome. She embroiders; she
can get up fine linen . .
His Eminence wishes her well. There can be
no scandal in it ; there never was a suspicion ;
seventeen comes too far under eighty. He would
not puff off the girl ; but he has told me in con-
fidence that five hundred crowns lie somewhere.
And her friends are men of substance ; they may
come down with what is handsome.
Corazza. Signor Secretary ! the sooner we are
in the midst of these things the better.
Secretary. I may misunderstand you, since your
impatience seems to have little of the rapturous
in it. Why then the better the sooner in the
midst of them]
Corazza. Because the sooner out ]
Secretary. Ohibo ! no better reason than this ?
Corazza. My most ornate and erudite Signor
Secretary ! I love women in canvas better than
in linen : they change less speedily, do an honest
man less harm, and are more readily off-hand.
Secretary. Eh, eh ! well, well ! I would not
build up a man's fortune against his will.
Legate. Signor Corazza !
Corazza. Her slave !
Legate. I have been turning over the papers
very attentively, and begin to think the affair
looks serious. If anything can be suggested to
relieve you, lawfully and conscientiously . . reflect
upon it ; meet half-way. There is nothing that
may not be arranged by wisdom and concession.
Scampa. Wisdom does much.
Legate. Concession helps her materially, my
dear Signor Marchese !
Biancheria. The gifted persons, who enjoy the
supreme felicity of frequent audiences with your
Eminence, admire the prodigious ease with which
she performs the greatest actions.
Scampa. What a stupendous wisdom falls from
the fountain of Her most eloquent lips! As the
shallowness of some is rendered less apparent by
an umbrageous impenetrability about them, so
the profundity of others is little suspected in the
placid and winning currency of their demeanour.
Corazza. Ah Eminence ! She has fairly won
her red stockings.
Legate. God put them on me only to try me.
He has since visited me with many afflictions. In
his inscrutable wisdom, he permitted the French
to plunder me of my pictures. I have yet some;
a few worthy friends have been ambitious to
sew up the rents and rips of my fortune : one
has offered me one fine piece, another another.
They only showed the heart in the right place.
I am sorry I rejected so many : I might have
restored them by my last will and testament, with
a slight remembrance, treating some according to
what I conceive to be their necessities, and others
in proportion to their rank and dignity. But why
these reflections ? Gentlemen ! I am involved
in a multiplicity of affairs, an account of which
must instantly be laid before his Holiness. In
obedience to his Edict, I must inquire into the
women who wear silver* combs and show their shift
sleeves : I must ascertain the number of equally
grave offenders whose houses are open in the dusk,
and the names of those who enter and go out.
Corazza. Your Eminence turns round and looks
at me. Upon the faith of a Catholic, I went out
but . . that is to say . .
Legate. It is indeed, my patron ! it is to say .,
quite enough. Respectable persons, substantial
housekeepers, are allowed an honest liberty ; but
Vice must be tributary to Virtue. The Serpent
may bite the Woman's heel, as was ordained ; but,
if he rises in his ambition, we must detach a golden
scale or two from his pericranium. In plain lan-
guage, gentlemen, the fisc is cracking into chinks
with dryness and vacuity : we must contrive to
oil it among us.
Corazza. I am no defaulter; I am no fre-
quenter . . .
Secretary (aside). Why tremble, why hesitate,
why excuse yourself, most worthy Signor Corazza?
Nobody can suspect you, my patron ! you stand
erect, above suspicion : your Venuses are upon
* There was issued an edict against them by Leo the
Twelfth. Creditable women among the poor usually
wore them, and they were heirlooms for many gene-
rations ! It is reported that his holiness had received
his last serious injury from a person who usurped this
matronly decoration.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Corazza (aside). Signer Secretary ! no jeering!
You shall never cram girls down my throat.
There are some that might be too large for it ;
do you understand me ? Mind, look-ye ! I do
not say all are : I do not say one is : no offence
to any relative or friend of yours : I had not a
thought of the kind in regard to the lady in ques-
tion ! God knows it !
Secretary. You convince me, my dear patron !
Legate. In this life, we must all make some
small sacrifices, and the sooner we make them the
more certain is our reward. I myself am an
instance of it. The enemy had despoiled me of
my gallery : but the Virgin opened my eyes the
wider the more I wept before her, the more pro-
mises I made her, and enabled me to foresee the
fall of paper-money. I effected large purchases
in it, very large indeed, engaging to repay it in
the same kind after six months, with great inte-
rest. My blessed Patroness enabled me to perform
it, at less expense than a plate of unpeppered
cucumbers in August. Nor did her favour and
inspiration end here. I went, I remember not on
what business, to Massa di Carrara. After passing
through all the bed-chambers, at the desire of the
Duchess, in order to make my choice, I fixed
upon one in which there was a Holy Family by
Titian.
A noble picture, Signer Marchese ! I do assure
you, Signer Conte ! the picture is worth ten
thousand crowns. Signor Corazza ! if you had
seen that picture, you would have cut off the head
of the Bambino for pure affection. Impossible
to resist the idea. I prayed and prayed before it,
and took out first my scissors, then my penknife;
then I thought it would be a pity to lose the
rest ; for there are parts about the Virgin, too,
most delicately touched. Ah what a carnation !
what a carnation ! the warmest local colors, the
most subtile demitints, a glow that creeps on
insensibily to lose itself in the shades, making
the heart pant and the innermost soul sigh
after it.
All. I seize it ! I seize it ! I seize it !
Legate. It was no easy matter to put up pen-
knife and scissors ; but it was easier than to sleep
in such a presence. About midnight I rose and
prayed to my Protectress, vowing that, if she
would incline the heart of the Duchess to my
wishes, I would place a crown of gold over her
head, and another of silver over the Bambino's.
Whenever, on the following day, any person en-
tered the chamber, he or she found me on my
knees before the picture. In the morning I
looked pale ; I sighed at breakfast ; I abstained
at dinner; I retired at supper. The Duchess
told her chaplain to inform me that her surgeon
might be depended on, being a man equally of
ability and discretion. I assured him I seldom
had had occasion to put any surgeon's ability to
the proof, and never his discretion and taciturnity.
I rose in her good opinion for both these merits,
if we may call them so. I then expressed to
him, in confidence, my long sufferings and ex-
ceeding love for the Virgin. Whether he or she
informed the Duchess of them, I never have dis-
covered : but her Highness said so many kind
words to me on the subject, that I could no
longer refuse to eat whatever she recommended.
Yet I was obliged to retire immediately after
dinner, partly from weakness of stomach, and
partly from the rigid devotion which occasioned
it.
" What can be the matter with the poor car-
dinal 1 " said her Highness. " Highness ! the
naked truth must out," replied the chaplain.
" He does whatever you command or wish : he
smiles, however languidly ; he drinks, one would
almost think, with relish ; he oats, I will not
say like one with an appetite, b"t at least as
much ; to remove all anxiety froL. ur High-
ness."
" Well but this naked truth . „ I have the
courage to encounter it," said the Duchess.
" There are baths at Pisa and Lucca, both near,
and there are minerals and instruments quite at
hand." The worthy chaplain shook his head, and
answered, " His Eminence does nothing, day or
night, but kneel before the Holy ^amily in his
bed-chamber." " Then get the cushion well
stuffed," said her Highness, "or let him have
another put upon it : bring him the green velvet
one from the chapel ; and take especial care that
no loose gold-wire, in the lace about it, catches
his stockings."
When I was going away I began to despair,
and I prayed again to my blessed Benefac-
tress.
Signor Marchese ! Signor Conte ! She never
abandons those who put their trust in her.
Both. Never, never. So bountiful is she that
she leaves them nothing to desire. She gives all
at once.
Legate. On the morning of my departure, the
Duchess sent up some fine Dresden porcelain to
my room, and several richly bound books, re-
questing my acceptance, she was graciously
pleased to say, of the few trifling things she had
ordered to be placed there. I humbly told her I
could not deprive her of any luxury, to every
kind of which I was indifferent and dead. Again
she politely asked me if there was nothing I would
accept as a remembrance of my visit to Massa.
After a pause, and after those protestations of
impossibility which good manners render neces-
sary, and indeed after four retrograde steps, it
occurred to me as an urgent duty, to declare
positively that I would only take the picture;
which, if left where it was, might deprive others,
equally devout, of as much sleep as I had
lost by it. The Duchess stood with her mouth
open . . and very pretty teeth she had in those
days . . I abashed my head, kissed her hand, and
thanked her with many tears and tendernesses,
for a gift which (to me at least) was a precious
one, said I, and a pledge of her piety, although
no proof of my desert.
. Scampa. The Duchess is wealthy, and . .
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
17
Legate. I do assure you, Marchese, she was
then a fine woman, little above fifty. Gentlemen,
I will visit your galleries, knowing their contents,
and will hear your reasonings, anticipating their
validity. (Rises and goes.)
All. We are lost!
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
Timotheus. I am delighted, my cousin Lucian,
to observe how popular are become your Dialogues
of the Dead. Nothing can be so gratifying and
satisfactory to a rightly disposed mind, as the
subversion of imposture by the force of ridicule.
It hath scattered the crowd of heathen gods as if
a thunderbolt had fallen in the midst of them.
Now, I am jednfident you never would have
assailed the false religion, unless you were pre-
pared for the reception of the true. For it hath
always been an indication of rashness and preci-
pitancy, to throw down an edifice before you have
collected materials for reconstruction.
Lucian. Of all metaphors and remarks, I be-
lieve this of yours, my good cousin Timotheus, is
the most trite, and pardon me if I add, the most
untrue. Surely we ought to remove an error the
instant we detect it, although it may be out of
our competence to state and establish what is
right, A lie should be exposed as soon as born :
we are not to wait until a healthier child is begot-
ten. Whatever is evil in any way should be
abolished. The husbandman never hesitates to
eradicate weeds, or to burn them up, because he
may not happen at the time to carry a sack on
his shoulder with wheat or barley in it. Even if
no wheat or barley is to be sown in future, the
weeding and burning are in themselves beneficial,
and something better will spring up.
Timotheus. That is not so certain.
Lucian. Doubt it as you may, at least you will
allow that the temporary absence of evil is an
advantage.
Timotheus. I think, 0 Lucian, you would reason
much better if you would come over to our belief.
Lucian. I was unaware that belief is an encou-
rager and guide to reason.
Timotheus. Depend upon it, there can be no
stability of truth, no elevation of genius, without
an unwavering faith in our holy mysteries. Babes
and sucklings who are blest with it, stand higher,
intellectually as well as morally, than stiff unbe-
lievers and proud sceptics.
Lucian. I do not wonder that so many are
firm holders of this novel doctrine. It is pleasant
to grow wise and virtuous at so small an expendi-
ture of thought or time. This saying of yours is
exactly what I heard spoken with angry gravity
not long ago.
Timotheus. Angry! no wonder! for it is im-
possible to keep our patience when truths so
incontrovertible are assailed. What was your
answer 1
Lucian. My ans%wer was. If you talk in this
manner, my honest friend, you will excite a spirit
of ridicule in the gravest and most saturnine men,
who never had let a laugh out of their breasts
before. Lie to me, and welcome ; but beware lest
your own heart take you to task for it, reminding
you that both anger and falsehood are reprehended
by all religions, yours included.
Timotheus. Lucian ! Lucian ! you have always
been called profane.
Lucian. For what? for having turned into
ridicule the gods whom you have turned out of
house and home, and are reducing to dust ?
Timotheus. Well ; but you are equally ready to
turn into ridicule the true and holy.
Lucian. In other words, to turn myself into a
fool. He who brings ridicule to bear against
Truth, finds in his hand a blade without a hilt.
The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit
flickers and expires against the incombustible
walls of her sanctuary.
Timotheus. Fine talking ! Do you know, you
have really been called an atheist 1
Lucian. Yes, yes; I know it well. But, in
fact, I believe there are almost as few atheists in
the world as there are Christians.
Timotheus. How ! as few 1 Most of Europe,
most of Asia, most of Africa, is Christian.
Lucian. Show me five men in each who obey
the commands of Christ, and I will show you five
hundred in this very city who observe the dictates
of Pythagoras. Every Pythagorean obeys his
defunct philosopher ; and almost every Christian
disobeys his living God. Where is there one who
practises the most important and the easiest of
his commands, to abstain from strife 1 Men easily
and perpetually find something new to quarrel
about ; but the objects of affection are limited in
number, and grow up scantily and slowly. Even
a small house' is often too spacious for them, and
there is a vacant seat at the table. Keligious
men themselves, when the Deity has bestowed on
them everything they prayed for, discover, as a
peculiar gift of Providence, some fault in the
actions or opinions of a neighbour, and run it
down, crying and shouting after it, with more
alacrity and more clamour than boys would a
leveret or a squirrel in the play-ground. Are our
years and our intellects, and the word of God
itself, given us for this, 0 Timotheu*.?
Timotheus. A certain latitude, a liberal con-
struction. . .
Lucian. Ay, ay! These "liberal constructions"
let loose all the worst passions into those " certain
latitudes." The priests themselves, who ought to
be the poorest, are the richest ; who ought to be
the most obedient, are the most refractory and
rebellious. All trouble and all piety are vicarious.
They send missionaries, at the cost of others, into
18
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
foreign lands, to teach observances which they
supersede at home. I have ridiculed the puppets
of all features, all colours, all sizes, by which an
impudent and audacious set of impostors have
been gaining an easy livelihood these two thou-
sand years.
Timotheus. Gently ! gently ! Ours have not
been at it yet two hundred. We abolish all
idolatry. We know that Jupiter was not the
father of gods and men : we know that Mars was
not the Lord of Hosts : we know who is : we
are quite at ease upon that question.
Lucian. Are you so fanatical, my good Timo-
theus, as to imagine that the Creator of the
world cares a fig by what appellation you adore
him ? whether you call him on one occasion
Jupiter, on another Apollo? I will not add
Mars or Lord of Hosts ; for, wanting as I. may be
in piety, I am not, and never was, so impious as
to call the Maker the Destroyer; to call him
Lord of Hosts who, according to your holiest of
books, declared so lately and so plainly that he
permits no hosts at all ; much less will he take
the command of one against another. Would
any man in his senses go down into the cellar,
and seize first an amphora from the right, and
then an amphora from the left, for the pleasure
of breaking them in pieces, and of letting out the
wine he had taken the trouble to put in 1 We
are not contented with attributing to the gods
our own infirmities ; we make them even more
wayward, even more passionate, even more exi-
gent and more malignant : and then some of us
try to coax and cajole them, and others run away
from them outright.
Timotheus. No wonder : but only in regard to
yours : and even those are types.
Lucian. There are honest men who occupy
their lives in discovering types for all things.
Timotheus. Truly and rationally thou speakest
now. Honest men and wise men above their
fellows are they, and the greatest of all disco-
verers. There are many types above thy reach,
0 Lucian!
Lucian. And one which my mind, and perhaps
yours also, can comprehend. There is in Italy, I
hear, on the border of a quiet and beautiful lake,*
a temple dedicated to Diana ; the priests of which
temple have murdered each his predecessor for
unrecorded ages.
Timotheus. What of that? They were idolaters.
Lucian. They made the type, however : take
it home with you, and hang it up in your
temple.
Timotheus. Why ! you seem to have forgotten
on a sudden that I am a Christian : you are talk-
ing of the heathens.
Lucian. True ! true ! I am near upon eighty
years of age, and to my poor eyesight one thing
looks very like another.
Timotheus. You are too indifferent.
Lucian. No indeed. I love those best who
* The lake of Nemi.
quarrel least, and who bring into public use the
most civility and good-humour.
Timotheus. Our holy religion inculcates this
duty especially.
Lucian. Such being the case, a pleasant story
will not be thrown away upon you. Xenophanes,
my townsman of Samosata, was resolved to buy
a new horse : he had tried him, and liked him
well enough. I asked him why he wished to dis-
pose of his old one, knowing how sure-footed he
was, how easy in his paces, and how quiet in his
pasture. " Very true, 0 Lucian," said he ; " the
horse is a clever horse ; noble eye, beautiful figure,
stately step ; rather too fond of neighing and of
shuffling a little in the vicinity of a mare ; but
tractable and good-tempered." " I would not
have parted with him then," said I. " The fact
is," replied he, "my grandfather, whom I am
about to visit, likes no horses but what are Sa-
tumized. To-morrow I begin my journey : come
and see me set out." I went at the hour
appointed. The new purchase looked quiet and
demure ; but he also pricked up his ears, and gave
sundry other tokens of equinity, when the more
interesting part of his fellow-creatures came near
him. As the morning oats began to operate, he
grew more and more unruly, and snapped at one
friend of Xenophanes, and sidled against another,
and gave a kick at a third. " All in play ! all in
play ! " said Xenophanes ; " his nature is more of
a lamb's than a horse's." However, these mute
salutations being over, away went Xenophanes.
In the evening, when my lamp had just been
replenished for the commencement of my studies,
my friend came in striding as if he were still
across the saddle. " I am apprehensive, 0 Xeno-
phanes," said I, "your new acquisition has dis-
appointed you." "Not in the least," answered
he. " I do assure you, 0 Lucian ! he is the very
horse I was looking out for." On my requesting
him to be seated, he no more thought of doing
so than if it had been in the presence of the
Persian king. I then handed my lamp to him,
telling him (as was true) it contained all the oil
I had in the house, and protesting I should be
happier to finish my Dialogue in the morning.
He took the lamp into my bed-room, and appeared
to be much refreshed on his return. Neverthe-
less, he treated his chair with great delicacy and
circumspection, and evidently was afraid of break-
ing it by too sudden a descent. I did not revert
to the horse : but he went on of his own accord.
" I declare to you, 0 Lucian ! it is impossible for
me to be mistaken in a palfrey. My new one is
the only one in Samosata that could carry me at
one stretch to my grandfather's." " But has he ?"
said I, timidly. " No ; he has not yet," answered
my friend. " To-morrow, then, I am afraid, we
really must lose you." "No," said he; "the
horse does trot hard : but he is the better for
that : I shall soon get used to him." In fine, my
worthy friend deferred his visit to his grandfather:
his rides were neither long ner frequent : he was
ashamed to part with his purchase, boasted of
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
19
him everywhere, and, humane as he is by nature,
could almost have broken on the cross the quiet
contented owner of old Bucephalus.
Timotheus. Am I to understand by this, 0
cousin Lucian, that I ought to be contented with
the impurities of paganism ?
Lucian. Unless you are very unreasonable. A
moderate man finds plenty in it.
Timotheus. We abominate the Deities who
patronise them, and we hurl down the images of
the monsters.
Lucian. Sweet cousin ! be tenderer to my feel-
ings. In such a tempest as this, my spark of
piety may be blown out. Hold your hand cau-
tiously before it, until I can find my way. Believe
me, no Deities (out of their own houses) patronise
immorality ; none patronise unruly passions, least
of all the fierce and ferocious. In my opinion,
you are wrong in throwing down the images of
those among them who look on you benignly :
the others I give up to your discretion. • But I
think it impossible to stand habitually in the
presence of a sweet and open countenance, graven
or depicted, without in some degree partaking of
the character it expresses. Never tell any man
that he can derive no good, in his devotions,
from this or from that : abolish neither hope nor
gratitude.
Timot/ieus. God is offended at vain efforts to
represent him.
Lucian. No such thing, my dear Timotheus.
If you knew him at all, you would not talk of him
so irreverently. He is pleased, I am convinced, at
every effort to resemble him, at every wish to
remind both ourselves and others of his benefits.
You can not think so often of him without an
effigy.
Timotheus. What likeness is there in the
perishable to the unperishable ]
Lucian. I see no reason why there may not be
a similitude. All that the senses can comprehend
may be represented by any material ; clay or
fig-tree, bronze or ivory, porphyry or gold
Indeed I have a faint remembrance that, accord
ing to your sacred volumes, man was made by
God after his own image. If so, man's intellectua
powers are worthily exercised in attempting to
collect all that is beautiful, serene, and dignified
and to bring him back to earth again by showing
him the noblest of his gifts, the work most lib
his own. Surely he can not hate or abandon those
who thus cherish his memory, and thus implor
his regard. Perishable and imperfect is every
thing human : but in these very qualities I fin
the best reason for striving to attain what is leas
so. Would not any father be gratified by seeing
his child attempt to delineate his features 1 An*
would not the gratification be rather increase*
than diminished by his incapacity? How lonj
shall the narrow mind of man stand betwee
goodness and omnipotence 1 Perhaps the effig,
of your ancestor Isknos is unlike him : whethe
it is or no, you can not tell : but you keep it i
your hall, and would be angry if anybody brok
to pieces or defaced it. Be quite sure there are
many who think as much of their gods as you
tiink of your ancestor Isknos, and who see in
heir images as good a likeness. Let men have
heir own way, especially their way to the temples,
t is easier to drive them out of one road than
nto another. Our judicious and good-humoured
^rajan has found it necessary on many occasions
o chastise the law-breakers of your sect, indiffer-
nt as he is what gods are worshipped, so long as
heir followers are orderly and decorous. The
iercest of the Dacians never knocked off Jupiter's
)eard, or broke an arm off Venus : and the
mperor will hardly tolerate in those who have
eceived a liberal education what he would punish
n barbarians. Do not wear out his patience :
ry rather to imitate his equity, his equanimity,
and forbearance.
Timotheus. I have been listening to you with
much attention, 0 Lucian! for I seldom have
icard you speak with such gravity. And yet,
0 cousin Lucian ! I really do find in you a sad
deficiency of that wisdom which alone is of any
value. You talk of Trajan ! what is Trajan 1
Lucian. A beneficent citizen, an impartial
udge, a sagacious ruler; the comrade of every
jrave soldier, the friend and associate of every
man eminent in genius, throughout his empire,
the empire of the world. All arts, all sciences,
all philosophies, all religions, are protected by
trim. Wherefore his name will flourish, when the
proudest of these have perished in the land of
Egypt. Philosophies and religions will strive,
struggle, and suffocate one another. Priesthoods,
1 know not how many, are quarrelling and scuf-
fling in the street at this instant, all calling on
Trajan to come and knock an antagonist on the
head ; and the most peaceful of them, as it wishes
to be thought, proclaiming him an infidel for
turning a deaf ear to its imprecations. Mankind
was never so happy as under his guidance : and
he has nothing now to do but to put down the
battles of the gods. If they must fight it out, he
will insist on our neutrality.
Timotheus. He has no authority and no influ-
ence over us in matters of faith. A wise and
upright man, whose serious thoughts lead him
forward to religion, will never be turned aside
from it by any worldly consideration or any
human force.
Lucian. True : but mankind is composed not
entirely of the upright and the wise. I suspect
that we may find some, here and there, who are
rather too fond of novelties in the furniture of
temples : and I have observed that new sects are
apt to warp, crack, and split, under the heat they
generate. Our homely old religion has run into
fewer quarrels, ever since the Centaurs and
Lapiths (whose controversy was on a subject
quite comprehensible), than yours has engendered
in twenty years.
Timotheus. We shall obviate that inconvenience
by electing a supreme Pontiff to decide all differ-
ences. It has been seriously thought about long
c 2 .
20
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
ago ; and latterly we have been making out an
ideal series down to the present day, in orde
that our successors in the ministry may hav
stepping-stones up to the fountain-head. A
first the disseminators of our doctrines wer
equal in their commission: we do not approv
of this any longer, for reasons of our own.
Lucian. You may shut, one after another, al
our other temples, but, I plainly see, you wil
never shut the temple of Janus. The Roman
empire will never lose its pugnacious characte
while your sect exists. The only danger is, les
the fever rage internally and consume the vitals
If you sincerely wish your religion to be long
lived, maintain in it the spirit of its constitution
and keep it patient, humble, abstemious, domestic
and zealous only in the services of humanity
Whenever the higher of your priesthood shal
attain the riches they are aiming at, the people
will envy their possessions and revolt from
their impostures. Do not let them seize upon
the palace, and shove their God again into the
manger.
Timotheus. Lucian 1 Lucian! I call this im-
piety.
Lucian. So do I, and shudder at its conse-
quences. Caverns which at first look inviting,
the roof at the aperture green with overhanging
ferns and clinging mosses, then glittering with
native gems and with water as sparkling and
pellucid, freshening the air all around ; these
caverns grow darker and closer, until you find
yourself among animals that shun the daylight,
adhering to the walls, hissing along the bottom,
flapping, screeching, gaping, glaring, making you
shrink at the sounds, and sicken at the smells,
and afraid to advance or retreat.
Timotheus. To what can this refer? Our
caverns open on verdure, and terminate in veins
of gold.
Lucian. Veins of gold, my good Timotheus,
such as your excavations have opened and are
opening, in the spirit of avarice and ambition,
will be washed (or as you would say purified) in
streams of blood. Arrogance, intolerance, resist-
ance to authority and contempt of law, distin-
guish your aspiring sectarians from the other
subjects of the empire.
Timotheus. Blindness hath often a calm and
composed countenance : but, my cousin Lucian !
it usually hath also the advantage of a cautious
and a measured step. It hath pleased God to
blind you, like all the other adversaries of our
faith : but he has given you no staff to lean upon.
You object against us the very vices from which
we are peculiarly exempt.
Lucian. Then it is all a story, a fable, a fabri-
cation, about one of your earlier leaders cutting
off with his sword a servant's ear 1 If the accusa-
tion is true, the offence is heavy. For not only
was the wounded man innocent of any provoca-
tion, but he is represented as being in the service
of the High Priest at Jerusalem. Moreover, from
the direction and violence of the blow, it is evi-
dent that his life was aimed at. According to
law, you know, my dear cousin, all the party
might have been condemned to death, as acces-
saries to an attempt at murder. I am unwilling
to think so unfavourably of your sect; nor indeed
do I see the possibility that, in such an outrage,
the principal could be pardoned. For any man
but a soldier to go about armed is against the
Roman law, which, on that head, as on many
others, is borrowed from the Athenian : and it is
incredible that in any civilised country so barba-
rous a practice can be tolerated. Travellers do
indeed relate, that, in certain parts of India, there
are princes at whose courts even civilians are
armed. But traveller has occasionally the same
signification as liar, and India as fable. How-
ever, if the practice really does exist in that
remote and rarely visited country, it must be in
some region of it very far beyond the Indus or
the Ganges : for the nations situated between
those rivers are, and were in the reign of Alex-
ander, and some thousand years before his birth,
as civilised as the Europeans : nay, incomparably
more courteous, more industrious, and more
pacific ; the three grand criterions.
But answer my question : is there any founda-
tion for so mischievous a report 1
Timotheus. There was indeed, so to say, an
ar, or something of the kind, abscinded ; pro-
jably by mistake. But High Priests' servants
are prepense to follow the swaggering gait of their
masters, and to carry things with a high hand, in
such wise as to excite the choler of the most quiet,
[f you knew the character of the eminently holy
man who punished the atrocious insolence of
rhat bloody-minded wretch, you would be sparing
of your animadversions. We take him for our
model.
Lucian. I see you do.
Timotheus. We proclaim him Prince of the
Apostles.
Lucian. I am the last in the world to question
lis princely qualifications : but, if I might advise
ou, it should be to follow in preference him whom
pou acknowledge to be an unerring guide ; who
lelivered to you his ordinances with his own hand,
equitable, plain, explicit, compendious, and com-
•lete ; who committed no violence, who counte-
lanced no injustice, whose compassion was with-
ut weakness, whose love was without frailty,
whose life was led in humility, in purity, in bene-
icence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to
is father's will.
Timotheus. Ah, Lucian ! what strangely im-
>erfect notions ! all that is little.
Lucian. Enough to follow.
Timotheus. Not enough to compell others. I
id indeed hope, 0 Lucian ! that you would again
ome forward with the irresistible arrows of your
wit, and unite with us against our adversaries.
5y what you have just spoken, I doubt no longer
tiat you approve of the doctrines inculcated by
lie blessed founder of our religion.
Lucian. To the best of my understanding.
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
21
Timotheus. So ardent is my desire for the sal-
vation of your precious soul, 0 my cousin ! that
I would devote many hours of every day to dis-
putation with you, on the principal points of our
Christian controversy.
Lucian. Many thanks, my kind Timotheus !
But I think the blessed founder of your religion
very strictly forbade that there should be any
points of controversy. Not only has he prohi-
bited them on the doctrines he delivered, but on
everything else. Some of the most obstinate
might never have doubted of his divinity, if the
conduct of his followers had not repelled them
from the belief of it. How can they imagine you
sincere when they see you disobedient ? It is in
vain for you to protest that you worship the God
of Peace, when you are found daily in the courts
and market-places with clenched fists and bloody
noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer ;
but really I am as anxious for the salvation of
your precious time, as you appear to be for the
salvation of my precious soul ; particularly since
I am come to the conclusion that souls can not be
lost, and that time can.
Timotheus. We mean by salvation exemption
from eternal torments.
Lucian. Among all my old gods and their
children, morose as some of the senior are, and
mischievous as are some of the junior, I have
never represented the worst of them as capable of
inflicting such atrocity. Passionate and capri-
cious and unjust are several of them; but a
skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed
to a vulture, are among the worst of their in-
flictions.
Timotheus. This is scoffing.
Lucian. Nobody but an honest man has a right
to scoff at anything.
Timotheus. And yet people of a very different
cast are usually those who scoff the most.
Lucian. We are apt to push forward at that
which we are without : the low-born at titles and
distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at the sem-
blance of probity. But I was about to remark,
that an honest man may fairly scoff at all philo-
sophies and religions which are proud, ambitious,
intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most
adverse to the spirit and essence of them all, is
falsehood. It is the business of the philosophical
to seek truth : it is the office of the religious to
worship her; under what name, is unimportant.
The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight
in comparison with what is conceived by the
heart, and executed by the whole man, through-
out life. If, professing love and charity to the
human race at large, I quarrel day after day with
my next neighbour ; if, professing that the rich
can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my
household a talent monthly ; if, professing to
place so much confidence in his word, that, in
regard to worldly weal, I need take no care for
to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what
would be necessary, though I quite distrusted
both his providence and his veracity ; if, profess-
ing that " he who giveth to the poor lendeth to
the Lord," I question the Lord's security, and
haggle with him about the amount of the loan ;
if, professing that I am their steward, I keep
ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emolu-
ment of my stewardship ; how, when God hates
liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other
such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter 1
Timotheus. Let us hope there are few of them.
Lucian. We can not hope against what is : we
may, however, hope that in future these will be
fewer ; but never while the overseers of a priest-
hood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in
politics, in debate, and strife. Such men bring
to ruin all religion, but their own first, and raise
unbelievers not only in divine providence, but in
human faith.
Timotheus. If they leave the altar for the
market-place, the sanctuary for the senate-house,
and agitate party questions instead of Christian
verities, everlasting punishments await them.
Lucian. Everlasting?
Timotheus. Certainly : at the very least. I
rank it next to heresy in the catalogue of sins ;
and the church supports my opinion.
Lucian. I have no measure for ascertaining the
distance between the opinions and practices of
men : I only know that they stand widely apart
in all countries on the most important occasions :
but this newly-hatched word heresy, alighting on
my ear, makes me rub it. A beneficent God
descends on earth in the human form, to redeem
us from the slavery of sin, from the penalty of
our passions : can you imagine he will punish an
error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief,
with everlasting torments ] Supposing it highly
criminal to refuse to weigh a string of arguments,
or to cross-question a herd of witnesses, on a sub-
ject which no experience has warranted and no
sagacity can comprehend ; supposing it highly
criminal to be contented with the religion which
our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to
us as the most precious of possessions, and which
it would have broken their hearts if they had
foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal
pains the just retribution of what at worst is but
indifference and supineness ]
Timotheus. Our religion has clearly this ad-
vantage over yours : it teaches us to regulate our
passions.
Lucian. Bather say it tells us. I believe all
religions do the same ; some indeed more empha-
tically and primarily than others ; but that indeed
would be incontestably of divine origin, and
acknowledged at once by the most sceptical,
which should thoroughly teach it. Now, my
friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventy-
five years of age.
Timotheus. Nigh upon it.
Lucian. Seventy-five years, according to my cal-
culation, are equivalent to seventy-five gods and
goddesses in regulating our passions for us, if we
speak of the amatory, which are always thought
in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.
22
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Timotheus. Execrable !
Lucian. I am afraid the sourest hang longest
on the tree. Mimnermus says,
In early youth we often sigh
Because our pulses beat so high ;
All this we conquer, and at last
We sigh that we are grown so chaste.
Timotheua. Swine !
Lucian. No animal sighs oftener or louder. But,
my dear cousin, the quiet swine is less troublesome
and less odious than the grumbling and growling
and fierce hyaena, which will not let the dead rest in
their graves. We maybe merry with the follies and
even the vices of men, without doing or wishing
them harm : punishment should come from the
magistrate, not from us. If we are to give pain
to anyone because he thinks differently from us,
we ought to begin by inflicting a few smart stripes
on ourselves ; for both upon light and upon grave
occasions, if we have thought much and often,
our opinions must have varied. We are always
fond of seizing and managing what appertains to
others. In the savage state all belongs to all.
Our neighbours the Arabs, who stand between
barbarism and civilisation, waylay travellers, and
plunder their equipage and their gold. The
wilier marauders in Alexandria, start up from
under the shadow of temples, force us to change
our habiliments for theirs, and strangle us with
fingere dipped in holy water if we say they sit
uneasily.
Timotkeus. This is not the right view of things.
Lucian. That is never the right view which
lets in too much light. About two centuries have
elapsed since your religion was founded. Show
me the pride it has humbled; show me the cruelty
it has mitigated ; show me the lust it has extin-
guished or repressed. I have now been living
ten years in Alexandria; and you never will
accuse me, I think, of any undue partiality for
the system in which I was educated : yet, from
all my observation, I find no priest or elder, in
your community, wise, tranquil, firm, and sedate,
as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno, and Epic-
tetus ; or indeed in the same degree as some who
were often called forth into political and military
life ; Epaminondas, for instance, and Phocion.
Timotkeus. I pity them from my soul : they
were ignorant of the truth : they are lost, my
cousin ! take my word for it, they are lost men.
Lucian. Unhappily, they are. I wish we had
them back again ; or that, since we have lost
them, we could at least find among us the virtues
they left for our example.
Timotheus. Alas, my poor cousin ! you too are
blind : you do not understand the plainest words,
nor comprehend those verities which are the most
evident and palpable. Virtues! if the poor
wretches had any, they were false ones.
Lucian. Scarcely ever has there been a poli-
tician, in any free state, without much falsehood
and duplicity. I have named the most illustrious
exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a
darker colour run along the bright blade that
decides the fate of nations, and may indeed be
necessary to the perfection of its temper. The
great warrior has usually his darker lines of
haracter, necessary (it may be) to constitute
lis greatness. No two men possess the same
quantity of the same virtues, if they have many
or much. We want some which do not far out-
step us, and which we may follow with the hope
of reaching ; we want others to elevate, and others
:o defend us. The order of things would be less
>eautiful without this variety. Without the ebb
and flow of our passions, but guided and mode-
rated by a beneficent light above, the ocean of
ife would stagnate ; and zeal, devotion, elo-
quence, would become dead carcases, collapsing
and wasting on unprofitable sands. The vices of
some men cause the virtues of others, as corrup-
tion is the parent of fertility.
Timotheus. 0 my cousin ! this doctrine is
diabolical.
Lucian. What is it ]
Timotheus. Diabolical : a strong expression in
daily use among us. We turn it a little from its
origin.
Lucian. Timotheus, I love to sit by the side
of a clear water, although there is nothing in it
but naked stones. Do not take the trouble to
muddy the stream of language for my benefit :
I am not about to fish in it.
Timotheus. Well ; we will speak about things
which come nearer to your apprehension. I only
wish you were somewhat less indifferent in your
choice between the true and the false.
Lucian. We take it for granted that what is
not true must be false.
Timotheus. Surely we do.
Lucian. This is erroneous.
Timotheus. Are you grown captious? Pray
explain.
Lucian. What is not true, I need not say, must
be untrue : but that alone is false which is in-
tended to deceive. A witness may be mistaken,
yet you would not call him a false witness unless
he asserted what he knew to be false.
Timotheus. Quibbles upon words !
Lucian. On words, on quibbles, if you please
to call distinctions so, rests the axis of the intel-
lectual world. A winged word hath stuck ineradi-
cably in a million hearts, and envenomed every
hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a
winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.
On a winged word hath human wisdom been
willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave
it dependent for all its future happiness. It is
because a word is unsusceptible of explanation,
or because they who employed it were impatient
of any, that enormous evils have prevailed, not
only against our common sense, but against our
common humanity. Hence the most pernicious
of absurdities, far exceeding in folly and mischief
the worship of three-score gods ; namely, that an
implicit faith in what outrages our reason, which
we know is God's gift and bestowed on us for our
guidance, that this weak, blind, stupid faith is
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
23
surer of his favour than the constant practice of
every human virtue. They at whose hands one
prodigious lie, such as this, hath been accepted,
may reckon on their influence in the dissemina-
tion of many smaller, and may turn them easily
to their own account. Be sure they will do it
sooner or later. The fly floats on the surface
for a while, but up springs the fish at last and
swallows it.
Timoiheus. Was ever man so unjust as you are?
The abominable old priesthoods are avaricious
and luxurious : ours is willing to stand or fall by
maintaining its ordinances of fellowship and
frugality. Point out to me a priest of our religion
whom you could, by any temptation or entreaty,
so far mislead, that he shall reserve for his own
consumption one loaf, one plate of lentils, while
another poor Christian hungers. In the mean-
while the priests of Isis are proud and wealthy,
and admit none of the indigent to their tables.
And now, to tell you the whole truth, my cousin
Lucian, I come to you this morning to propose
that we should lay our heads together and com-
pose a merry dialogue on these said priests of
Isis. What say you !
Lucian. These said priests of Isis have already
been with me, several times, on a similar business
in regard to yours.
Timotheus. Malicious wretches !
Lucian. Beside, they have attempted to per-
suade me that your religion is borrowed from
theirs, altering a name a little, and laying the
scene of action in a corner, in the midst of
obscurity and ruins.
Timotheus. The wicked dogs ! the hellish liars !
We have nothing in common with such vile im-
postors. Are they not ashamed of taking such
unfair means of lowering us in the estimation of
our fellow-citizens? And so, they artfully came
to you, craving any spare jibe to throw against
us ! They lie open to these weapons ; we do not :
we stand above the malignity, above the strength,
of man. You would do justly in turning their
own devices against them : it would be amusing
to see how they would look. If you refuse me,
I am resolved to write a Dialogue of the Dead,
myself, and to introduce these hypocrites in it.
Lucian. Consider well first, my good Timo-
theus, whether you can do any such thing with
propriety ; I mean to say judiciously in regard to
composition.
Timotheus. I always thought you generous and
open-hearted, and quite inaccessible to jealousy.
Lucian. Let nobody ever profess himself so
much as that : for, although he may be insensible
of the disease, it lurks within him, and only
waits its season to break out. But really, my
cousin, at present I feel no symptoms : and, to
prove that I am ingenuous and sincere with you,
these are my reasons for dissuasion. We believers
in the Homeric family of gods and goddesses,
believe also in the locality of Tartarus and
Elysium. We entertain no doubt whatever, that
the passions of men and demigods and gods, are
nearly the same above-ground and below; and
that Achilles would dispatch his spear through
the body of any shade who would lead Briseis too
far among the myrtles, or attempt to throw
the halter over the ears of any chariot-horse
belonging to him in the meads of asphodel.
We admit no doubt of these verities, delivered
down to us from the ages when Theseus and
Hercules had descended into Hades itself. Instead
of a few stadions in a cavern, with a bank and a
bower at the end of it, under a very small portion
of our diminutive Hellas, you Christians possess
the whole cavity of the earth for punishment, and
the whole convex of the sky for felicity.
Timotheus. Our passions are burnt out amid
the fires of purification, and our intellects are
elevated to the enjoyment of perfect intelligence.
Lucian. How silly then and incongruous would
it be, not to say how impious, to represent your
people as no better and no wiser than they were
before, and discoursing on subjects which no
longer can or ought to concern them. Christians
must think your Dialogue of the Dead no less
irreligious than their opponents think mine, and
infinitely more absurd. If indeed you are re-
solved on this form of composition, there is no
topic which may not, with equal facility, be dis-
cussed on earth ; and you may intersperse as
much ridicule as you please, without any fear of
censure for inconsistency or irreverence. Hitherto
such writers have confined their view mostly to
speculative points, sophistic reasonings, and sar-
castic interpellations.
Timotheus. Ha 4 you are always fond of throw-
ing a little pebble at the lofty Plato, whom we, on
the contrary, are ready to receive (in a manner)
as one of ourselves.
Lucian. To throw pebbles is a very uncertain
way of showing where lie defects. Whenever I
have mentioned him seriously, I have brought
forward, not accusations, but passages from his
writings, such as no philosopher or scholar or
moralist can defend.
Timotheus. His doctrines are too abstruse and
too sublime for you.
Lucian. Solon, Anaxagoras, and Epicurus, are
more sublime, if truth is sublimity.
Timotlieus. Truth is indeed ; for God is truth.
Lucian. We are upon earth to learn what can
be learnt upon earth, and not to speculate on
what never can be. This you, 0 Timotheus, may
call philosophy : to me it appears the idlest of
curiosity ; for every other kind may teach us
something, and may lead to more beyond. Let
men learn what benefits men ; above all things,
to contract their wishes, to calm their passions,
and, more especially, to dispell their fears. Now
these are to be dispelled, not by collecting clouds,
but by piercing and scattering them. In the
dark we may imagine depths and highths immea-
surable, which, if a torch be carried right before
us, we find it easy to leap across. Much of what
we call sublime is only the residue of infancy, and
the worst of it.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
The philosophers I quoted are too capacious for
schools and systems. Without noise, without
ostentation, without mystery, not quarrelsome, not
captious, not frivolous, their lives were commen-
taries on their doctrines. Never evaporating into
mist, never stagnating into mire, their limpid
and broad morality runs parallel with the lofty
summits of their genius.
Timotheus. Genius ! was ever genius like Plato's?
Lucian. The most admired of his Dialogues,
his Banquet, is beset with such puerilities, de-
formed with such pedantry, and disgraced with
Buch impurity, that none but the thickest beards,
and chiefly of the philosophers and the satyrs,
should bend over it. On a former occasion he
has given us a specimen of history, than which
nothing in our language is worse : here he gives
us one of poetry, in honour of Love, for which the
god has taken ample vengeance on him, by per-
verting his taste and feelings. The grossest of all
the absurdities in this dialogue is, attributing to
Aristophanes, so much of a scoffer and so little of
a visionary, the silly notion of male and female
having been originally complete in one person,
and walking circuitously. He may be joking :
who knows ?
Timotheus. Forbear ! forbear ! do not call this
notion a silly one : he took it from our Holy
Scriptures, but perverted it somewhat. Woman
was made from man's rib, and did not require to
be cut asunder all the way down : this is no proof
of bad reasoning, but merely of misinterpretation.
Lucian. If you would rather have bad reason-
ing, I will adduce a little of it. Farther on, he
wishes to extoll the wisdom of Agathon by attri-
buting to him such a sentence as this.
" It is evident that Love is the most beautiful
of the gods, because he is the youngest of them."
Now even on earth, the youngest is not always
the most beautiful ; how infinitely less cogent
then is the argument when we come to speak of
the Immortals, with whom age can have no con-
cern ! There was a time when Vulcan was the
youngest of the gods : was he also, at that time,
and for that reason, the most beautiful ? Your
philosopher tells us, moreover, that " Love is of
all deities the most liquid ; else he never could
fold himself about everything, and flow into and
out of men's souls."
The three last sentences of Agathon's rhapsody
are very harmonious, and exhibit the finest spe-
cimen of Plato's style ; but we, accustomed as
we are to hear him lauded for his poetical
diction, should hold that poem a very indifferent
one which left on the mind so superficial an im-
pression. The garden of Academus is flowery
without fragrance, and dazzling without warmth :
I am ready to dream away an hour in it after
dinner, but I think it unsalutary for a night's
repose. So satisfied was Plato with his Banquet,
that he says of himself, in the person of Socrates,
"How can I or anyone but find it difficult to
speak after a discourse so eloquent? It would
have been wonderful if the brilliancy of the sen-
tences at the end of it, and the choice of expression
throughout, had not astonished all the auditors.
I, who can never say anything nearly so beautiful,
would if possible have made my escape, and have
fairly run off for shame." He had indeed much
better run off before he made so wretched a pun
on the name of Gorgias. " I dreaded," says he,
"lest Agathon, measuring my discourse by the
head of the eloquent Gorgias, should turn me to
stone for inability of utterance."
Was there ever joke more frigid ? What painful
twisting of unelastic stuff! If Socrates was the
wisest man in the world, it would require another
oracle to persuade us, after this, that he was the
wittiest. But surely a small share of common
sense would have made him abstain from hazard-
ing such failures. He falls on his face in very flat
and very dry ground; and, when he gets up
again, his quibbles are well-nigh as tedious as his
witticisms. However, he has the presence of
mind to throw them on the shoulders of Diotima,
whom he calls a prophetess, and who, ten years
before the Plague broke out in Athens, obtained
from the gods (he tells us) that delay. Ah ! the
gods were doubly mischievous : they sent her
first. Read her words, my cousin, as delivered
by Socrates ; and if they have another Plague in
store for us, you may avert it by such an act of
expiation.
Timotheus. The world will have ended before
ten years are over.
Lucian. Indeed !
Timotheus. It has been pronounced.
Lucian. How the threads of belief and unbelief
run woven close together in the whole web of human
life! Come, come; take courage; you will have
time for your Dialogue. Enlarge the circle; enrich
it with a variety of matter, enliven it with a multi-
tude of characters, occupy the intellect of the
thoughtful, the imagination of the lively ; spread
the board with solid viands, delicate rarities, and
sparkling wines; and throw, along the whole
extent of it, geniality and festal crowns.
Timotheus. What writer of dialogues hath ever
done this, or undertaken, or conceived, or hoped it ]
Lucian. None whatever ; yet surely you your-
self may, when even your babes and sucklings are
endowed with abilities incomparably greater than
our niggardly old gods have bestowed on the very
best of us.
Timotheus. I wish, my dear Lucian, you would
let our babes and sucklings lie quiet, and say no
more about them : as for your gods, I leave them
at your mercy. Do not impose on me the per-
formance of a task in which Plato himself, if he
had attempted it, would have failed.
Lucian. No man ever detected false reasoning
with more quickness ; but unluckily he called in
Wit at the exposure ; and Wit, I am sorry to say,
held the lowest place in his household. He sadly
mistook the qualities of his mind in attempting
the facetious ; or rather, he fancied he possessed
one quality more than belonged to him. But, if
be himself had not been a worse quibbler than
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
25
any whose writings are come down to us, we
might have been gratified by the exposure of
wonderful acuteness wretchedly applied. It is no
small service to the community to turn into ridi-
cule the grave impostors, who are contending
which of them shall guide and govern us, whether
in politics or religion. There are always a few
who will take the trouble to walk down among
the sea-weeds and slippery stones, for the sake of
showing their credulous fellow-citizens that skins
filled with sand, and set upright at the forecastle,
are neither men nor merchandise.
Timotheus. I can bring to mind, 0 Lucian, no
writer possessing so great a variety of wit as you.
Lucian. No man ever possessed any variety of
this gift ; and the holder is not allowed to ex-
change the quality for another. Banter (and such
is Plato's) never grows large, never sheds its
bristles, and never do they soften into the humorous
or the facetious.
Timotheus. I agree with you that banter is the
worst species of wit. We have indeed no correct
}dea what persons those really were whom Plato
drags by the ears, to undergo slow torture under
Socrates. One sophist, I must allow, is precisely
like another : no discrimination of character,
none of manner, none of language.
Lucian. He wanted the fancy and fertility of
Aristophanes.
TimotJieus. Otherwise, his mind was more
elevated and more poetical.
Lucian. Pardon me if I venture to express my
dissent in both particulars. Knowledge of the
human heart, and discrimination of character, are
requisites of the poet. Few ever have possessed
them in an equal degree with Aristophanes :
Plato has given no indication of either.
Timotheus. But consider his imagination.
Lucian. On what does it rest 1 He is nowhere
so imaginative as in his Polity. Nor is there any
state in the world that is, or would be, governed
by it. One day you may find him at his counter
in the midst of old-fashioned toys, which crack
and crumble under his fingers while he exhibits
and recommends them : another day, while he is
sitting on a goat's bladder, I may discover his bald
head surmounting an enormous mass of loose
chaff and uncleanly feathers, which he would per-
suade you is the pleasantest and healthiest of beds,
and that dreams descend on it from the gods.
"Open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what
Zeus shall send you,"
says Aristophanes in his favourite metre. In this
helpless condition of closed optics and hanging
jaw, we find the followers of Plato. It is by shut-
ting their eyes that they see, and by opening their
mouths that they apprehend. Like certain broad-
muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch,
although few scent the game, and their lips wag;
and water, at whatever distance from the net.
We must leave them with their hands hanging
down before them, confident that they are wiser
than we are, were it only for this attitude of
humility. It is amusing to see them in it before
the tall well-robed Athenian, while he mis-spells
the charms, and plays clumsily the tricks, he
acquired from the conjurors here in Egypt. I
wish you better success with the same materials.
But in my opinion all philosophers should speak
clearly. The highest things are the purest and
brightest; and the best writers are those who
render them the most intelligible to the world
below. In the arts and sciences, and particularly
in music and metaphysics, this is difficult : but
the subjects not being such as lie within the range
of the community, I lay little stress upon them,
and wish authors to deal with them as they best
may, only beseeching that they recompense us,
by bringing within our comprehension the other
things with which they are intrusted for us. The
followers of Plato fly off indignantly from any
such proposal. If I ask them the meaning of
some obscure passage, they answer that I am
unprepared and unfitted for it, and that his mind
is so far above mine, I can not grasp it. I look up
into the faces of these worthy men, who mingle
so much commiseration with so much calmness,
and wonder at seeing them look no less vacant
than my own.
Timotheus. You have acknowledged his elo-
quence, while you derided his philosophy and
repudiated his morals.
Lucian. Certainly there was never so much
eloquence with so little animation. When he has
heated his oven, he forgets to put the bread into
it ; instead of which, he throws in another bundle
of faggots. His words and sentences are often too
large for the place they occupy. If a water-melon
is not to be placed in an oyster-shell, neither is a
grain of millet in a golden salver. At high festi-
vals a full band may enter : ordinary conversation
goes on better without it.
Timotheus. There is something so spiritual about
him, that many of us Christians are firmly of
opinion he must have been partially enlightened
from above.
Lucian. I hope and believe we all are. His
entire works are in our library. Do me the favour
to point out to me a few of those passages where
in poetry he approaches the spirit of Aristophanes,
or where in morals he comes up to Epictetus.
Timotheus. It is useless to attempt it if you
carry your prejudices with you. Beside, my dear
cousin, I would not offend you, but really your
mind has no point about it which could be brought
to contact or affinity with Plato's.
Lucian. In the universality of his genius there
must surely be some atom coincident with another
in mine. You acknowledge, as everybody must
do, that his wit is the heaviest and lowest : pray,
is the specimen he has given us of history at all
better ?
Timotheus. I would rather look to the loftiness
of his mind, and the genius that sustains him.
Lucian. So would I. Magnificent words, and
the pomp and procession of stately sentences, may
accompany genius, but are not always nor fre-
quently called out by it. The voice ought not to
26
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
be perpetually nor much elevated in the ethic
and didactic, nor to roll sonorously, as if it issued
from a mask in the theatre. The horses in the
plain under Troy are not always kicking and
neighing; nor is the dust always raised in whirl-
winds on the banks of Simois and Scamander;
nor are the rampires always in a blaze. Hector
has lowered his helmet to the infant of Andromache,
and Achilles to the embraces of Briseis. I do
not blame the prose-writer who opens his bosom
occasionally to a breath of poetry; neither, on
the contrary, can I praise the gait of that pedes-
trian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath
as in a corn-field. Be authority as old and obsti-
nate as it may, never let it persuade you that a
man is the stronger for being unable to keep
himself on the ground, or the weaker for breath-
ing quietly and softly on ordinary occasions. Tell
me, over and over, that you find every great qua-
lity in Plato : let me only once ask you in return,
whether he ever is ardent and energetic, whether
he wins the affections, whether he agitates the
heart. Finding him deficient in every one of
these faculties, I think his disciples have extolled
him too highly. Where power is absent, we may
find the robes of genius, but we miss the throne.
He would acquit a slave who killed another in
self-defence, but if he killed any free man even in
self-defence, he was not only to be punished with
death, but to undergo the cruel death of a parri-
cide. This effeminate philosopher was more severe
than the manly Demosthenes, who quotes a law
against the striking of a slave : and Diogenes, when
one ran away from him, remarked that it would
be horrible if Diogenes could not do without a
slave, when a slave could do without Diogenes ?
Timotheus. Surely the allegories of Plato are
evidences of his genius.
Lucian. A great poet in the hours of his idleness
may indulge in allegory: but the highest poetical
character will never rest on so unsubstantial a
foundation. The poet must take man from God's
hands, must look into every fibre of his heart and
brain, must be able to take the magnificent work
to pieces, and to reconstruct it. When this labour
is completed, let him throw himself composedly
on the earth, and care little how many of its
ephemeral insects creep over him. In regard to
these allegories of Plato, about which I have heard
so much, pray what and where are they? You
hesitate, my fair cousin Timotheus ! Employ one
morning in transcribing them, and another in
noting all the passages which are of practical
utility in the commerce of social life, or purify
our affections at home, or excite and elevate our
enthusiasm in the prosperity and glory of our
country. Useful books, moral books, instructive
books, are easily composed : and surely so great a
writer should present them to us without blot or
blemish : I find among his many volumes no copy
of a similar composition. My enthusiasm is not
easily raised indeed ; yet such a whirlwind of a
poet must carry it away with him ; nevertheless,
here I stand, calm and collected, not a hair of my
beard in commotion. Declamation will find its
echo in vacant places : it beats ineffectually on
the well-furnished mind. Give me proof; bring
the work ; show the passages ; convince, confound,
overwhelm me.
Timotheus. I may do that another time with
Plato. And yet, what effect can I hope to pro-
duce on an unhappy man who doubts even that
the world is on the point of extinction?
Lucian. Are there many of your association who
believe that this catastrophe is so near at hand ?
Timolheus. We all believe it; or rather, we
all are certain of it.
Lucian. How so 1 Have you observed any frac-
ture in the disk of the sun ? Are any of the stars
loosened in their orbits 1 Has the beautiful light
of Venus ceased to pant in the heavens, or has
the belt of Orion lost its gems 1
Timotheus. 0 for shame !
Lucian. Rather should I be ashamed of indif-
ference on so important an occasion.
Timotheus. We know the fact by surer signs.
Lucian. These, if you could vouch for them,
would be sure enough for me. The least of them
would make me sweat as profusely as if I stood
up to the neck in the hot preparation of a
mummy. Surely no wise or benevolent philo-
sopher could ever have uttered what he knew or
believed might be distorted into any such inter-
pretation. For if men are persuaded that they
and their works are so soon about to perish, what
provident care are they likely to take in the
education and welfare of their families ? What
sciences will they improve, what learning will
they cultivate, what monuments of past ages
will they be studious to preserve, who are certain
that there can be no future ones? Poetry will be
censured as rank profaneness, eloquence will be
converted into howls and execrations, statuary
will exhibit only Midases and Ixions, and all the
colours of painting will be mixed together to pro-
duce one grand conflagration : flammantia mcenia
mundi.
Timotheus. Do not quote an atheist ; especially
in Latin. I hate the language : the Romans are
beginning to differ from us already.
Lucian. Ah ! you will soon split into smaller
fractions. But pardon me my unusual fault of
quoting. Before I let fall a quotation I must be
taken by surprise. I seldom do it in conversa-
tion, seldomer in composition ; for it mars the
beauty and unity of style, especially when it
invades it from a foreign tongue. A quoter is
either ostentatious of his acquirements or doubt-
ful of his cause. And moreover, he never walks
gracefully who leans upon the shoulder of another,
however gracefully that other may walk. Hero-
dotus, Plato, Aristoteles, Demosthenes, are no
quoters. Thucydides, twice or thrice, inserts a
few sentences of Pericles : but Thucydides is an
emanation of Pericles, somewhat less clear in-
deed, being lower, although at no great distance
from that purest and most pellucid source. The
best of the Romans, I agree with you, are remote
f LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
27
from such originals, if not in power of mind, or
in acuteness of ^remark, or in sobriety of judg-
ment, yet In the graces of composition. While I
admired, with a species of awe such as not Homer
himself ever impressed me with, the majesty and
sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by
learned Romans that in the structure of his sen-
tences he is often inharmonious, and sometimes
uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the
goddess of battles, confident of power and victory,
when part of her hair is waving round the helmet,
loosened by the rapidity of her descent or the
vibration of her spear. Composition may be too
adorned even for beauty. In painting it is often
requisite to cover a bright colour with one less
bright ; and, in language, to relieve the ear from
the tension of high notes, even at the cost of a
discord. There are urns of which the borders are
too prominent and too decorated for use, and
which appear to be brought out chiefly for
state, at grand carousals. The author who imi-
tates the artificers of these, shall never have my
custom.
Timotheus. I think you judge rightly : but I
do not understand languages : I only understand
religion.
Lucian. He must be a most accomplished, a
most extraordinary man, who comprehends them
both together. We do not even talk clearly when
we are walking in the dark.
Timotheus. Thou art not merely walking in the
dark, but fast asleep.
Lucian. And thou, my cousin, wouldst kindly
awaken me with a red-hot poker. I have but a
few paces to go along the corridor of life : prythee
let me turn into my bed again and lie quiet.
Never was any man less an enemy to religion
than I am, whatever may be said to the con-
trary : and you shall judge of me by the sound-
ness of my advice. If your leaders are in earnest,
as many think, do persuade them to abstain
from quarrelsomeness and contention, and not
to declare it necessary that there should per-
petually be a religious as well as a political war
between east and west. No honest and consi-
derate man will believe in their doctrines, who,
inculcating peace and good-will, continue all the
time to assail their fellow-citizens with the utmost
rancour at every divergency of opinion, and, for-
bidding the indulgence of the kindlier affections,
exercise at full stretch the fiercer. This is certain :
if they obey any commander, they will never
sound a charge when his order is to sound a
retreat : if they acknowledge any magistrate, they
will never tear down the tablet of his edicts.
Timotheus. We have what is all-sufficient.
Lucian. I see you have.
Timotheus. You have ridiculed all religion and
all philosophy.
Lucian. I have found but little of either,
have cracked many a nut, and have come only to
dust or maggots.
Timotlieus. To say nothing of the saints, are al
philosophers fools or impostors? And, because
you can not rise to the ethereal highths of Plato,
nor comprehend the real magnitude of a man so
much above you, must he be a dwarf ?
Lucian. The best sight is not that which'sees
best in the dark or the twilight ; for no objects
are then visible in their true colours and just
proportions ; but it is that which presents to us
things as they are, and indicates what is within
our reach and what is beyond it. Never were
any three writers, of high celebrity, so little
understood in the main character, as Plato,
Diogenes, and Epicurus. Plato is a perfect
master of logic and rhetoric ; and whenever he
errs in either, as I have proved to you he does
occasionally, he errs through perverseness, not
through unwariness. His language often settles
into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes
an imperfect and incoherent shape of poetry, and
often, cloud against cloud, bursts with a vehement
detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both
by the vulgar and the philosophers. By the
philosophers, because he exposed their igno-
rance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked
their pride : by the vulgar, because they never
can endure a man apparently of their own class
who avoids their society and partakes in none
of their humours, prejudices, and animosities.
What right has he to be greater or better than
they are 1 he who wears older clothes, who eats
staler fish, and possesses no vote to imprison or
banish anybody. I am now ashamed that I
mingled in the rabble, and that I could not resist
the childish mischief of smoking him in his tub.
He was the wisest man of his time, not excepting
Aristoteles,- for he knew that he was greater
than Philip or Alexander. Aristoteles did not
know that he himself was, or, knowing it, did
not act up to his knowledge ; and here is a
deficiency of wisdom.
Timotheus. Whether you did or did not strike
the cask, Diogenes would have closed his eyes
equally. He would never have come forth and
seen the truth, had it shone upon the world in
that day. But, intractable as was this recluse,
Epicurus, I fear, is quite as lamentable. What
horrible doctrines !
Lucian. Enjoy, said he, the pleasant walks
where you are : repose, and eat gratefully the
fruit that falls into your bosom : do not weary
your feet with an excursion, at the end whereof
you will find no resting-place : reject not the
odour of roses for the fumes of pitch and sulphur.
What horrible doctrines !
Timotheus. Speak seriously. He was much
too bad for ridicule.
Lucian. I will then speak as you desire me,
seriously. His smile was so unaffected and so
graceful, that I should have thought it very
injudicious to set my laugh against it. No phi-
losopher ever lived with such uniform purity,
such abstinence from censoriousness, from con-
troversy, from jealousy, and from arrogance.
Timotheus. Ah poor mortal ! I pity him, as
far as may be ; he is in hell : it would be wicked
28
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
to wish him out : we are not to murmur against
the all-wise dispensations.
Ludan. I am sure he would not ; and it is
therefore I hope he is more comfortable than you
believe.
Timotheus. Never have I defiled my fingers,
and never will I defile them, by turning over his
writings. But in regard to Plato, I can have no
objection to take your advice.
Lucian. He will reward your assiduity : but he
will assist you very little if you consult him
principally (and eloquence for this should princi-
pally be consulted) to strengthen your humanity.
Grandiloquent and sonorous, his lungs seem to
play the better for the absence of the heart. His
imagination is the most conspicuous, buoyed up
by swelling billows over unsounded depths. There
are his mild thunders, there are his glowing
clouds, his traversing coruscations, and his shoot-
ing stars. More of true wisdom, more of trust-
worthy manliness, more of promptitude and power
to keep you steady and straightforward on the
perilous road of life, may be found in the little
manual of Epictetus, which I could write in the
palm of my left-hand, than there is in all the
rolling and redundant volumes of this mighty
rhetorician, which you may begin to transcribe on
the summit of the great Pyramid, carry down
over the Sphynx at the bottom, and continue on
the sands half-way to Memphis. And indeed the
materials are appropriate ; one part being far
above our sight, and the other on what, by the
most befitting epithet, Homer calls the no-corn-
bearing.
Timotheus. There are many who will stand
against you on this ground.
Lucian. With what perfect ease and fluency do
some of the dullest men in existence toss over
and discuss the most elaborate of all works !
How many myriads of such creatures would be
insufficient to furnish intellect enough for any
single paragraph in them ! Yet 'we think this,' 'we
advise that,' are expressions now become so custo-
mary, that it would be difficult to turn them into
ridicule. We must pull the creatures out while
they are in the very act, and show who and what
they are. One of these fellows said to Caius Fus-
cus in my hearing, that there was a time when
it was permitted him to doubt occasionally on
particular points of criticism, but that the time
was now over. »
Timotheus. And what did you think of such
arrogance ] What did you reply to such imper-
tinence 1
Lucian. Let me answer one question at a time.
First: I thought him a legitimate fool, of the
purest breed. Secondly : I promised him I would
always be contented with the judgment he had
rejected, leaving him and his friends in the
enjoyment of the rest.
Timotheus. And what said he ?
Ludan. I forget. He seemed pleased at my
acknowledgment of his discrimination, at my defe-
rence and delicacy. He wished, however, I had
studied Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, more atten-
tively ; without which preparatory discipline, no
two persons could be introduced advantageously
into a dialogue. I agreed with him on this posi-
tion, remarking that we ourselves were at that
very time giving our sentence on the fact. He
suggested a slight mistake on my side, and ex-
pressed a wish that he were conversing with a
writer able to sustain the opposite part. With
his experience and skill in rhetoric, his long
habitude of composition, his knowledge of life, of
morals, and of character, he should be less verbose
than Cicero, less gorgeous then Plato, and less
trimly attired than Xenophon.
Timotheus. If he spoke in that manner, he
might indeed be ridiculed for conceitedness and
presumption, but his language is not altogether
a fool's.
Lucian. I deliver his sentiments, not his words:
for who would read, or who would listen to me, if
such fell from me as from him 1 Poetry has its
probabilities, so has prose : when people cry out
against the representation of a dullard, Could he
have spoken all that ? ' Certainly no,' is the reply :
neither did Priam implore, in harmonious verse,
the pity of Achilles. We say only what might
be said, when great postulates are conceded.
Timotheus. We will pretermit these absurd and
silly men : but, cousin Lucian ! cousin Lucian !
the name of Plato will be durable as that of
Sesostris.
Lucian. So will the pebbles and bricks which
gangs of slaves erected into a pyramid. I do
not hold Sesostris in much higher estimation
than those quieter lumps of matter. They, O
Timotheus, who survive the wreck of ages, are
by no means, as a body, the . worthiest of our
admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at
sea, the best things are not always saved. Hen-
coops and empty barrels bob upon the surface,
under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven
or depicted images of the gods are scattered on
invisible rocks, and when those who most resem-
bled them in knowledge and beneficence are
devoured by cold monsters below.
Timotheus. You now talk reasonably, seriously,
almost religiously. Do you ever pray ?
Ludan. I do. It was no longer than five years
ago that I was deprived by death of my dog Mela-
nops. He had uniformly led an innocent life ;
for I never would let him walk out with me, lest
he should bring home in his mouth the remnant
of some god or other, and at last get bitten or
stung by one. I reminded Anubis of this : and
moreover I told him, what he ought to be aware
of, that Melanops did honour to his relationship.
Timotheus. I can not ever call it piety to pray
for dumb and dead beasts.
Lucian. Timotheus ! Timotheus ! have you no
heart? have you no dog1? do you always pray
only for yourself]
Timotheus. We do not believe that dogs can
live again.
Lucian. More shame for you ! If they enjoy
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
and suffer, if they hope and fear, if calamities and
wrongs befall them, such as agitate their hearts
and excite their apprehensions; if they possess
the option of being grateful or malicious, and
choose the worthier ; if they exercise the same
sound judgment on many other occasions, some
for their own benefit and some for the benefit of
their masters; they have as good a chance of a
future life, and a better chance of a happy one,
than half the priests of all the religions in the
world. Wherever there is the choice of doing
well or ill, and that choice (often against a first
impulse) decides for well, there must not only be
a soul of the same nature as man's, although of
less compass and comprehension, but, being of
the same nature, the same immortality must
appertain to it ; for spirit, like body, may change,
but can not be annihilated.
It was among the prejudices of former times
that pigs are uncleanly animals, and fond of wal-
lowing in the mire for mire's sake. Philosophy
has now discovered, that when they roll in mud
and ordure, it is only from an excessive love of
cleanliness, and a vehement desire to rid them-
selves of scabs and vermin. Unfortunately, doubts
keep pace with discoveries. They are like warts,
of which the blood that springs from a great one
extirpated, makes twenty little ones.
Timotheus. The Hydra would be a more noble
simily.
Lucian. I was indeed about to illustrate my
position by the old Hydra, so ready at hand and
so tractable ; but I will never take hold of a hydra,
when a wart will serve my turn.
Timotheus. Continue then.
Ludan. Even children are now taught, in de-
spite of jEsop, that animals never spoke. The
uttermost that can be advanced with any show
of confidence is, that if they spoke at all, they
spoke in unknown tongues. Supposing the fact,
is this a reason why they should not be respected]
Quite the contrary. If the tongues were unknown,
it tends to demonstrate our ignorance, not theirs.
If we could not understand them, while they
possessed the gift, here is no proof that they did
not speak to the purpose, but only that it was
not to our purpose : which may likewise be said
with equal certainty of the wisest men that ever
existed. How little have we learned from them,
for the conduct of life or the avoidance of cala-
mity ! Unknown tongues, indeed ! yes, so are
all tongues to the vulgar and the negligent.
Timotheus. It comforts me to hear you talk in
this manner, without a glance at our gifts and
privileges.
Lucian. I am less incredulous than you sup-
pose, my cousin ! Indeed I have been giving you
what ought to be a sufficient proof of it.
Timotheus. You have spoken with becoming
gravity, I must confess.
Ludan. Let me then submit to your judgment
some fragments of history which have lately fallen
into my hands. There is among them a Hymn,
of which the metre is so incondite, and the phra-
seology so ancient, that the grammarians have
attributed it to Linus. But the Hymn will inte-
rest you less, and is less to our purpose, than the
tradition ; by which it appears that certain priests
of high antiquity were of the brute creation.
Timotheus. No better, any of them.
Ludan. Now you have polished the palms of
your hands, I will commence my narrative from
the manuscript.
Timotheus. Pray do.
Ludan. There existed in the city of Nephosis
a fraternity of priests, reverenced by the appella-
tion of Gasteres. It is reported that they were
not always of their present form, but were birds,
aquatic and migratory, a species of cormorant.
The poet Linus, who lived nearer the transforma-
tion (if there indeed was any), sings thus, in his
Hymn to Zeus.
" Thy power is manifest, 0 Zeus ! in the Gas-
teres. Wild birds were they, strong of talon,
clanging of wing, and clamorous of gullet. Wild
birds, 0 Zeus ! wild birds ; now cropping the
tender grass by the river of Adonis, and breaking
the nascent reed at the root, and depasturing the
sweet nymphaea ; now again picking up serpents
and other creeping things on each hand of old
jEgyptos, whose head is hidden in the clouds.
" 0 that Mnemosyne would command the
staidest of her three daughters to stand and sing
before me ! to sing clearly and strongly. How
before thy throne, Saturnian ! sharp voices arose,
even the voices of Here and of thy children.
How they cried out that innumerable mortal
men, various-tongued, kid-roasters in tent and
tabernacle, devising in their many-turning hearts
and thoughtful minds how to fabricate well-
rounded spits of beech-tree, how such men,
having been changed into brute animals, it be-
hoved thee to trim the balance, and in thy wisdom
to change sundry brute animals into men ; in
order that they might pour out flame-coloured
wine unto thee, and sprinkle the white flower of
the sea upon the thighs of many bulls, to pleasure
thee. Then didst thou, 0 storm-driver ! over-
shadow far lands with thy dark eyebrows, looking
down on them, to accomplish thy will. And
then didst thou behold the Gasteres, fat, tall,
prominent-crested, purple-legged, daedal-plumed,
white and black, changeable in colour as Iris.
And lo ! thou didst will it, and they were men."
Timotheus. No doubt whatever can be enter-
tained of this Hymn's antiquity. But what
farther says the historian ?
Ludan. I will read on, to gratify you.
" It is recorded that this ancient order of a
most lordly priesthood went through many
changes of customs and ceremonies, which indeed
they were always ready to accommodate to the
maintenance of their authority and the enjoyment
of their riches. It is recorded that, in the begin-
ning, they kept various tame animals, and some
wild ones, within the precincts of the temple :
nevertheless, after a time, they applied to their
own uses everything they could lay their hands
30
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
on, whatever might have been the vow of those
who came forward with the offering. And when
it was expected of them to make sacrifices, they
not only would make none, but declared it an act
of impiety to expect it. Some of the people, who
feared the Immortals, were dismayed and indig-
nant at this backwardness ; and the discontent
at last grew universal. Whereupon, the two
chief priests held a long conference together, and
agreed that something must be done to pacify the
multitude. But it was not until the greater of
them, acknowledging his despondency, called on
the gods to answer for him that his grief was
only because he never could abide bad precedents :
and the other, on his side, protested that he was
over-ruled by his superior, and moreover had a
serious objection (founded on principle) to be
knocked on the head. Meanwhile the elder was
looking down on the folds of his robe, in deep
melancholy. After long consideration, he sprang
upon his feet, pushing his chair behind him, and
said, ' Well ; it is grown old, and was always too
long for me : I am resolved to cut off a finger's
breadth.'
" ' Having, in your wisdom and piety, well con-
templated the bad precedent,' said the other,
with much consternation in his countenance at
seeing so elastic a spring in a heel by no means
bearing any resemblance to a stag's . . ' I have,
I have,' replied the other, interrupting him;
' say no more ; I am sick at heart ; you must do
the same.'
"'A cursed dog has torn a hole in mine,'
answered the other, ' and, if I cut anywhere about
it, I only make bad worse. In regard to its
length, I wish it were as long again." ' Brother !
brother! never be worldly-minded,' said the senior.
' Follow my example : snip off it not a finger's
breadth, half a finger's breadth.'
" 'But,' expostulated the other, 'will that satisfy
the gods ] ' 'Who talked about them ] ' placidly said
the senior. ' It is very unbecoming to have them
always in our mouths : surely there are appointed
times for them. Let us be contented with laying
the snippings on the altar, and thus showing the
people our piety and condescension. They, and
the gods also, will be just as well satisfied, as if
we offered up a buttock of beef, with a bushel
of salt and the same quantity of wheaten flour
on it."
" 'Well, if that will do . . and you know best/
replied the other, ' so be it.' Saying which
words, he carefully and considerately snipped off
as much in proportion (for he was shorter by an
inch) as the elder had done, yet leaving on his
shoulders quite enough of materials to make
handsome cloaks for seven or eight stout-built
generals. Away they both went, arm-in-arm, and
then holding up their skirts a great deal higher
than was necessary, told the gods what they two
had been doing for them and their glory. About
the court of the temple the sacred swine were
lying in indolent composure : seeing which, the
brotherly twain began to commune with them.
selves afresh : and the senior said repentantly,
What fools we have been ! The populace will
laugh outright at the curtailment of our vestures,
but would gladly have seen these animals eat
daily a quarter less of the lentils.' The words
were spoken so earnestly and emphatically that
they were overheard by the quadrupeds. Sud-
denly there was a rising of all the principal ones
in the sacred inclosure : and many that were in
the streets took up, each according to his tem-
perament and condition, the gravest or shrillest
tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefore
the more desperate of the creatures, pushing their
snouts under the curtailed habiliments of the high
priests, assailed them with ridicule and reproach.
For it had pleased the gods to work a miracle in
their behoof, and they became as loquacious as
those who governed them, and who were appointed
to speak in the high places. ' Let the worst come
to the worst, we at least have our tails to our
hams,' said they. 'For how long]' whined
others piteously : others incessantly ejaculated
tremendous imprecations : others, more serious
and sedate, groaned inwardly; and, although
under their hearts there lay a huge mass of indi-
gestible sourness ready to rise up against the
chief priests, they ventured no farther than ex-
postulation. ' We shall lose our voices,' said
they, ' if we lose our complement of lentils ; and
then, most reverend lords, what will ye do for
choristers?' Finally, one of grand dimensions,
who seemed almost half-human, imposed silence
on every debater. He lay stretched out apart
from his brethren, covering with his side the
greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its
verdure native and imported. He crashed a few
measures of peascods to cool his tusks; then
turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far to-
ward the outer extremities of their sockets ; and
leered fixedly and sarcastically at the high priests,
showing every tooth in each jaw. Other men
might have feared them ; the high priests envied
them, seeing what order they were in, and what
exploits they were capable of. A great painter,
who flourished many olympiads ago, has, in his
volume entitled the Canon, defined the line of
beauty ! It was here in its perfection : it followed
with winning obsequiousness every member, but
delighted more especially to swim along that
placid and pliant curvature on which Nature had
ranged the implements of mastication. Pawing
with his cloven hoof, he suddenly changed his
countenance from the contemplative to the
wrathful. At one effort he rose up to his whole
length, breadth, and highth : and they who had
never seen him in earnest, nor separate from the
common swine of the inclosure, with which he
was in the habit of husking what was thrown to
him, could form no idea what a prodigious beast
he was. Terrible were the expressions of choler
and commiuations which burst forth from his
fulminating tusks. Erimanthus would have hid-
den his puny offspring before them ; and Hercules
would have paused at the encounter. Thrice he
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
31
called aloud to the high priests : thrice he swore in
their own sacred language that they were a couple
of thieves and impostors : thrice he imprecated
the worst maledictions on his own head if they
had not violated the holiest of their vows, and
were not ready even to sell their gods. A tremor
ran throughout the whole body of the united
swine ; so awful was the adjuration ! Even the
Gasteres themselves in some sort shuddered, not
perhaps altogether, at the solemn tone of its
impiety ; for they had much experience in these
matters. But among them was a Gaster who
was calmer than the swearer, and more prudent
and conciliating than those he swore against.
Hearing this objurgation, he went blandly up to
the sacred porker, and, lifting the flap of his
right ear between forefinger and thumb with
all delicacy and gentleness, thus whispered into
it : ' You do not in your heart believe that
any of us are such fools as to sell our gods,
at least while we have such a reserve to fall back
upon.'
" ' Are we to be devoured ] ' cried the noble
porker, twitching his ear indignantly from under
the hand of the monitor. ' Hush ! ' said he,
laying it again most soothingly, rather farther
from the tusks : ' hush ! sweet friend ! De-
voured 1 0 certainly not : that is to say, not
all : or, if all, not all at once. Indeed the holy
men my brethren may perhaps be contented
with taking a little blood from each of you,
entirely for the advantage of your health and
activity, and merely to compose a few slender
black-puddings for the inferior monsters of the
temple, who latterly are grown very exacting, and
either are, or pretend to be, hungry after they
have eaten, a whole handful of acorns, swallowing
I am ashamed to say what a quantity of water to
wash them down. We do not grudge them it, as
they well know : but they appear to have forgot-
ten how recently no inconsiderable portion of this
bounty has been conferred. If we, as they object
to us, eat more, they ought to be aware that it is
by no means for our gratification, since we have
abjured it before the gods, but to maintain the
dignity of the priesthood, and to exhibit the
beauty and utility of subordination.'
" The noble porker had beaten time with his
muscular tail at many of these periods ; but again
his heart panted visibly, and he could bear no
more.
" ' All this for our good ! for our activity !
for our health ! Let us alone : we have health
enough; we want no activity. Let us alone,
I say again, or by the Immortals ! . .' ' Peace,
my son ! Your breath is valuable : evidently
you have but little to spare : and what mortal
knows how soon the gods may demand the last
of itr
"At the beginning of this exhortation, the
worthy high priest had somewhat repressed the
ebullient choler of his refractory and pertinacious
disciple, by applying his flat soft palm to the sig-
net-formed extremity of the snout.
" ' We are ready to hear complaints at all times,'
added he, ' and to redress any grievance at our
own. But beyond a doubt, if you continue to
raise your abominable outcries, some of the people
are likely to hit upon two discoveries : first, that
your lentils would be sufficient to make daily for
every poor family a good wholesome porridge ;
and secondly, that your flesh, properly cured,
might hang up nicely against the forthcoming
bean-season.' Pondering these mighty words,
the noble porker kept his eyes fixed upon him for
some instants, then leaned forward dejectedly, then
tucked one foot under him, then another, cautious
to descend with dignity. At last he grunted (it
must for ever be ambiguous whether with despon-
dency or with resignation), pushed his wedgy
snout far within the straw subjacent, and sank
into that repose which is granted to the just."
Timotheus. Cousin! there are glimmerings of
truth and wisdom in sundry parts of this discourse,
not unlike little broken shells entangled in dark
masses of sea-weed. But I would rather you had
continued to adduce fresh arguments to demon-
strate the beneficence of the Deity, proving (if
you could) that our horses and dogs, faithful
servants and companions to us, and often treated
cruelly, may recognise us hereafter, and we them.
We have no authority for any such belief.
Lucian, We have authority for thinking and
doing whatever is humane. Speaking of humanity,
it now occurs to me, I have heard a report that
some well-intentioned men of your religion so
interpret the words or wishes of its founder, they
would abolish slavery throughout the empire.
Timotheus. Such deductions have been drawn
indeed from our Master's doctrine : but the saner
part of us receive it metaphorically, and would
only set men free from the bonds of sin. For if
domestic slaves were manumitted, we should
neither have a dinner dressed nor a bed made,
unless by our own children : and as to labour in
the fields, who would cultivate them in this hot
climate ? We must import slaves from Ethiopia
and elsewhere, wheresoever they can be procured :
but the hardship lies not on them; it lies on us, and
bears heavily ; for we must first buy them with
our money, and then feed them; and not only
must we maintain them while they are hale and
hearty and can serve us, but likewise in sickness
and (unless we can sell them for a trifle) in de-
crepitude". Do not imagine, my cousin, that we
are no better than enthusiasts, visionaries, sub-
verters of order, and ready to roll society down
into one flat surface.
Lucian. I thought you were maligned: I
said so.
Timotheus. When the subject was discussed in
our congregation, the meaner part of the people
were much in favour of the abolition : but the
chief priests and ministers absented themselves,
and gave no vote at all, deeming it secular, and
saying that in such matters the laws and customs
of the country ought to be observed.
Lucian. Several of these chief priests and
32
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
ministers are robed in purple and fine linen, and
fare sumptuously every day.
Timotheus. I have hopes of you now.
Lucian. Why so suddenly ?
Timotheus. Because you have repeated those
blessed words, which are only to be found in our
scriptures.
Lucian. There indeed I found them. But I
also found in the same volume words of the same
speaker, declaring that the rich shall never see
his face in heaven.
Timotheus. He docs not always mean what you
think he does.
Lucian. How is this? Did he then direct his
discourses to none but men more intelligent than
I am 7
Timotheus. Unless he gave you understanding
for the occasion, they might mislead you.
Lucian. Indeed !
Timotheus. Unquestionably. For instance, he
tells us to take no heed of to-morrow : he tells us
to share equally all our worldly goods : but we
know that we can not be respected unless we
bestow due care on our possessions, and that not
only the vulgar but the well-educated esteem us
in proportion to the gifts of fortune.
Lucian. The eclectic philosophy is most flourish-
ing among you Christians. You take whatever
suits your appetites, and reject the rest.
Timotheus. We are not half so rich as the
priests of Isis. Give us their possessions; and we
will not sit idle as they do, but be able and ready
to do incalculable good to our fellow-creatures.
Lucian. I have never seen great possessions
excite to great alacrity. Usually they enfeeble
the sympathies, and often overlie and smother
them.
Timotheus. Our religion is founded less on
sympathies than on miracles. Cousin ! you
smile most when you ought to be most serious.
Lucian. I was smiling at the thought of one
whom I would recommend to your especial notice,
as soon as you disinherit the priests of Isis. He
may perhaps be refractory; for he pretends
(the knave !) to work miracles.
Timotheus. Impostor ! who is he I
Lucian. Aulus of Pelusium. Idle and dissolute,
he never gained anything honestly but a scourg-
ing, if indeed he ever made, what he long merited,
this acquisition. Unable to run into debt where
he was known, he came over to Alexandria.
Timotheus. I know him r I know him well.
Here, of his own accord, he has betaken himself
to a new and regular life.
Lucian. He will presently wear it out, or make
it sit easier on his shoulders. My metaphor brings
me to my story. Having nothing to carry with
him beside an empty valise, he resolved on filling
it with somewhat, however worthless, lest, seeing
his utter destitution, and hopeless of payment, a
receiver of lodgers should refuse to admit him
into the hostelry. Accordingly, he went to a
tailor's, and began to joke about his poverty.
Nothing is more apt to bring people into good-
humour : for, if they are poor themselves, they
enjoy the pleasure of discovering that others are
no better off; and, if not poor, there is the
consciousness of superiority.
"The favour I am about to ask of a man BO
wealthy and so liberal as you are," said Aulus, " is
extremely small : you can materially serve me,
without the slightest loss, hazard, or inconveni-
ence. In few words, my valise is empty : and to
some ears an empty valise is louder and more
discordant than a bagpipe : I can not say I like
the sound of it myself. Give me all the shreds
and snippings you can spare me. They will feel
like clothes ; not exactly so to me and my person,
but to those who are inquisitive, and who may be
importunate."
The tailor laughed, and distended both arms
of Aulus with his munificence. Soon was the
valise well filled and rammed down. Plenty of
boys were in readiness to carry it to the boat.
Aulus waved them off, looking at some angrily,
at others suspiciously. Boarding the skiff, he
lowered his treasure with care and caution, stag-
gering a little at the weight, and shaking it
gently on deck, with his ear against it : and then,
finding all safe and compact, he sate on it ; but
as tenderly as a pullet on her first eggs. When
he was landed, his care was even greater, and
whoever came near him was warned off with loud
vociferations. Anxiously as the other passen-
gers were invited by the innkeepers to give their
houses the preference, Aulus was importuned
most : the others were only beset ; he was borne
off in triumphant captivity. He ordered a bed-
room, and carried his valise with him ; he ordered
a bath, and carried with him his valise. He
started up from the company at dinner, struck
his forehead, and cried out, " Where is my valise?"
"We are honest men here:" replied the host.
" You have left it, sir, in your chamber : where
else indeed should you leave it?"
" Honesty is seated on your brow," exclaimed
Aulus : " but there are few to be trusted in the
world we live in. I now believe I can eat." And
he gave a sure token of the belief that was in him,
not without a start now and then and a finger at
his ear, as if he heard somebody walking in the
direction of his bed-chamber. Now began his
first miracle : for now he contrived to pick up,
from time to time, a little money. In the pre-
sence of his host and fellow-lodgers, he threw a
few bbols, negligently and indifferently, among
the beggars. "These poor creatures," said he,
" know a new comer as well as the gnats do : in
one half-hour I am half-ruined by them ; and this
daily."
Nearly a month had elapsed since his arrival,
and no account of board and lodging had been deli-
vered or called for. Suspicion at length arose in the
host whether he really was rich. When another
man's honesty is doubted, the doubter's is some-
times in jeopardy. The host was tempted to
unsew the valise. To his amazement and horror
he found only shreds within it. However, he was
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
33
determined to be cautious, and to consult his
wife, who, although a Christian like Aulus, and
much edified by his discourses, might dissent
from him in regard to a community of goods, at
least in her own household, and might defy him
to prove by any authority that the doctrine was
meant for innkeepers. Aulus, on his return in
the evening, found out that his valise had been
opened. He hurried back, threw its contents into
the canal, and, borrowing an old cloak, he tucked
it up under his dress, and returned. Nobody
had seen him enter or come back again, nor was
it immediately that his host or hostess were will-
ing to appear. But, after he had called them
loudly for some time, they entered his apart-
ment : and he thus addressed the woman.
" 0 Eucharis ! no words are requisite to con-
vince you (firm as you are in the faith) of eternal
verities, however mysterious. But your unhappy
husband has betrayed his incredulity in regard
to the most^awful. If my prayers, offered up in
our holy temples all day long, have been heard,
and that they have been heard I feel within me
the blessed certainty, something miraculous has
been vouchsafed for the conversion of this miser-
able sinner. Until the present hour, the valise
before you was filled with precious relics from the
apparel of saints and martyrs, fresh as when on
them." " True, by Jove !" said the husband to him-
self. " Within the present hour," continued Aulus,
" they are united into one raiment, signifying
our own union, our own restoration."
He drew forth the cloak, and fell on his face.
Eucharis fell also, and kissed the saintly head
prostrate before her. The host's eyes were opened,
and he bewailed his hardness of heart. Aulus is
now occupied in strengthening his faith, not with-
out an occasional support to the wife's : all three
live together in unity.
Timotheus. And do you make a joke even of
this 1 Will you never cease from the habitude ?
Ludan. Too soon. The farther we descend
into the vale of years, the fewer illusions accom-
pany us : we have little inclination, little time,
for jocularity and laughter. Light things are
easily detached from us, and we shake off heavier
as we can. Instead of levity, we are liable to
moroseness : for always near the grave there are
more briars than flowers, unless we plant them
ourselves, or our friends supply them.
Timotheus. Thinking thus, do you continue to
dissemble or to distort the truth 1 The shreds
are become a cable for the faithful. That they
were miraculously turned into one entire garment
who shall gainsay ] How many hath it already
clothed with righteousness ! Happy men, casting
their doubts away before it ! Who knows, 0
cousin Lucian, but on some future day you your-
self will invoke the merciful interposition of
Aulus !
Ludan. Possibly : for if ever I fall among
thieves, nobody is likelier to be at the head of
them.
Timotheus. Uncharitable man ! how suspicious !
how ungenerous! how hardened in unbelief!
Reason is a bladder on which you may paddle
like a child as you swim in summer waters : but,
when the winds rise and the waves roughen, it
slips from under you, and you sink : yes, 0
Lucian, you sink into a gulf whence you never
can emerge.
Ludan. I deem those the wisest who exert the
soonest their own manly strength, now with the
stream and now against it, enjoying the exercise
in fine weather, venturing out in foul, if need be,
yet avoiding not only rocks and whirlpools, but
also shallows. In such a light, my cousin, I look
on your dispensations. I shut them out as we
shut out winds blowing from the desert ; hot,
debilitating, oppressive, laden with impalpable
sands and pungent salts, and inflicting an incur-
able blindness.
Timotheus. Well, cousin Lucian ! I can bear all
you say while you are not witty. Let me bid you
farewell in this happy interval.
Ludan. Is it not serious and sad, 0 my cousin,
that what the Deity hath willed to lie incompre-
hensible in his mysteries, we should fall upon with
tooth and nail, and ferociously growl over, or
ignorantly dissect ?
Timotheus. Ho ! now you come to be serious
and sad, there are hopes of you. Truth always
begins or ends so.
Ludan. Undoubtedly. But I think it more
reverential to abstain from that which, with what-
ever effort, I should never understand.
Timotheus. You are lukewarm, my cousin, you
are lukewarm. A most dangerous state.
Ludan. For milk to continue in, not for men.
I would not fain be frozen or scalded.
Timotheus. Alas! you are blind, my sweet
cousin !
Lucian. Well; do not open my eyes with
pincers, nor compose for them a collyrium of
spurge.
May not men eat and drink and talk together,
and perform in relation one to another all the
duties of social life, whose opinions are different
on things immediately under their eyes] If
they can and do, surely they may as easily on
things equally above the comprehension of each
party. The wisest and most virtuous man in
the whole extent of the Eoman empire is Plu-
tarch of Cheronsea : yet Plutarch holds a firm
belief in the existence of I know not how many
gods, every one of whom has committed noto-
rious misdemeanors. The nearest to the Che-
ronasan in virtue and wisdom is Trajan, who holds
all the gods dog-cheap. These two men are friends.
If either of them were influenced by your religion,
as inculcated and practised by the priesthood, he
would be the enemy of the other, and wisdom and
virtue would plead for the delinquent in vain.
When your religion had existed, as you tell us,
about a century, Caius Caecilius,* of Novum
Comum, was Proconsul in Bithynia. Trajan,
* The younger Pliny.
34
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
the mildest and most equitable of mankind,
desirous to remove from them, as far us might be,
the hatred and invectives of those whose old reli-
gion was assailed by them, applied to Csecilius
for information on their behaviour as good citi-
zens. The reply of Caecilius was favourable. Had
Trajan applied to the most eminent and authori-
tative of the sect, they would certainly have
brought into jeopardy all who differed in one tittle
from any point of their doctrine or discipline. For
the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension required
less than a century to flower on the steps of your
temple.
limotheiu. You are already half a Christian, in
exposing to the world the vanities both of philo-
sophy and of power.
Lucian. I have done no such thing: I have
exposed the vanities of the philosophising and
the powerful. Philosophy is admirable ; and
Power may be glorious : the one conduces to truth,
the other has nearly all the means of conferring
peace and happiness, but it usually, and indeed
almost always, takes a contrary direction. I have
ridiculed the futility of speculative minds, only
when they would pave the clouds instead of the
streets. To see distant things better than near,
is a certain proof of a defective sight. The people
I have held in derision never turn their eyes to
what they can see, but direct them continually
where nothing is to be seen. And this, by their
disciples, is called the sublimity of speculation !
There is little merit acquired, or force exhibited,
in blowing off a feather that would settle on my
nose : and this is all I have done in regard to the
philosophers : but I claim for myself the appro-
bation of humanity, in having shown the true
dimensions of the great. The highest of them
are no higher than my tunic ; but they are high
enough to trample on the necks of those wretches
who throw themselves on the ground before
them.
Timotheus. Was Alexander of Macedon no
higher 1
Lvtian. What region of the earth, what city,
what theatre, what library, what private study,
hath he enlightened ? If you are silent, I may
well be. It is neither my philosophy nor your
religion which casts the blood and bones of men
in their faces, and insists on the most reverence
for those who have made the most unhappy. If
the Romans scourged by the hands of children
the schoolmaster who would have betrayed them,
how greatly more deserving of flagellation, from
the same quarter, are those hundreds of peda-
gogues who deliver up the intellects of youth to
such immoral revellers and mad murderers ! They
would punish a thirsty child for purloining a
bunch of grapes from a vineyard, and the same
men on the same day would insist on his reverence
for the subverter of Tyre, the plunderer of Baby-
lon, and the incendiary of Persepolis. And are
these men teachers ] are these men philosophers ]
are these men priests? Of all the curses that ever
afflicted the earth, I think Alexander was the
worst. Never was he in so little mischief as when
he was murdering his friends.
Timotheus. Yet he built this very city ; a noble
and opulent one when Rome was of hurdles and
rushes.
Lucian. He built it ! I wish, 0 Timotheus ! he had
been as well employed as the stone-cutters or the
plasterers. No, no : the wisest of architects planned
the most beautiful and commodious of cities, by
which, under a rational government and equitable
laws, Africa might have been civilised to the
centre, and the palm have extended her conquests
through the remotest desert. Instead of which, a
dozen of Macedonian thieves rifled a dying
drunkard and murdered his children. In process
of time, another drunkard reeled hitherward from
Rome, made an easy mistake in mistaking a
palace for a brothel, permitted a stripling boy to
beat him soundly, and a serpent to receive the
last caresses of his paramour.
Shame upon historians and pedagogues for
exciting the worst passions of youth by the display
of such false glories ! If your religion hath any
truth or influence, her professors will extinguish
the promontory lights, which only allure to
breakers. They will be assiduous in teaching the
young and ardent that great abilities do not con-
stitute great men, without the right and unre-
mitting application of them; and that, in the
sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to
erect one cottage than to demolish a hundred
cities. Down to the present day we have been
taught little else than falsehood. We have been
told to do this thing and that : we have been told
we shall be punished unless we do : but at the
same time we are shown by the finger that pros-
perity and glory, and the esteem of all about us,
rest upon other and very different foundations.
Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most
easily and lead the most directly to the heart 1
But both eyes and ears are won over, and alike
are persuaded to corrupt us.
Timotheus. Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you
with the strangest of all notions in my head. I
began to think for a moment that you doubted my
sincerity in the religion I profess ; and that a man
of your admirable good sense, and at your ad-
vanced age, could reject that only sustenance which
supports us through the grave into eternal life.
Lucian. I am the most docile and practicable
of men, and never reject what people set before
me : for if it is bread, it is good for my own use ;
if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or mule.
But, although you know my weakness and faci-
lity, it is unfair to expect I should have admitted
at once what the followers, and personal friends
of your Master, for a long time hesitated to re-
ceive. I remember to have read in one of the
early commentators, that his disciples them-
selves* could not swallow the miracle of the
loaves ; and one who wrote more recently says,
that even his brethren did not believe t in him.
« Mark vi.
t John vii.
LUCIAN AND TIMOTHEUS.
35
Timotheus. Yet finally, when they have looked
over each other's accounts, they cast them up,
and make them all tally in the main sum ; and
if one omits an article, the next supplies its place
with a commodity of the same value. What
would you have 1 But it is of little use to argue
on religion with a man who, professing his readi-
ness to believe, and even his credulity, yet dis-
believes in miracles.
Lucian. I should be obstinate and perverse if
I disbelieved in the existence of a thing for no
better reason than because I never saw it, and
can not understand its operations. Do you be-
lieve, 0 Timotheus, that Perictione, the mother
of Plato, became his mother by the sole agency of
Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of
that god?
Timotheus. I indeed believe such absurdities !
Lucian. You touch me on a vital part if you
call an absurdity the religion or philosophy in
which I was educated. Anaxalides, and Cleara-
gus, and Speusippus, his own nephew, assert it.
Who should know better than they 1
Timotheus. Where are their proofs ?
Lucian. I would not be so indelicate as to
require them on such an occasion. A short time
ago I conversed with an old centurion, who was
in service by the side of Vespasian, when Titus,
and many officers and soldiers of the army, and
many captives, were present, and who saw one
Eleazar put a ring to the nostril of a demoniac (as
the patient was called) and draw the demon out
of it..
Timotheus. And do you pretend to believe
this nonsense ?
Lucian. I only believe that Vespasian and
Titus had nothing to gain or accomplish by the
miracle; and that Eleazar, if he had been de-
tected in a trick by two acute men and several
thousand enemies, had nothing to look forward
to but a cross ; the only piece of upholstery for
which Judea seems to have either wood or work-
men, and which are as common in that coun-
try as direction-posts are in any other.
Timotheus. The Jews are a stiff-necked people.
Lucian. On such occasions, no doubt.
Timotheus. Would you, 0 Lucian, be classed
among the atheists, like Epicurus ]
Lucian. It lies not at my discretion what name
shall be given me at present or hereafter, any
more than it did at my birth. But I wonder at
the ignorance and precipitancy of those who call
Epicurus an atheist. He saw on the same earth
with himself a great variety of inferior creatures,
some possessing more sensibility and more
thoughtfulness than others. Analogy would lead
so contemplative a reasoner to the conclusion,
that if many were inferior and in sight, others
might be superior and out of sight. He never
disbelieved in the existence of the gods ; he only
disbelieved that they troubled their heads with
our concerns. Have they none of their own ]
If they are happy, does their happiness depend
on us, comparatively so imbecile and vile ] He
believed, as nearly all nations do, in different
ranks and orders of superhuman beings : and
perhaps he thought (but I never was in his con-
fidence or counsels) that the higher were rather
in communication with the next to them in
intellectual faculties, than with the most remote.
To me the suggestion appears by no means
irrational, that, if we are managed or cared for
at all, by beings wiser than ourselves (which in
truth would be no sign of any great wisdom in
them), it can only be by such as are very far
from perfection, and who indulge us in the com-
mission of innumerable faults and follies, for their
own speculation or amusement.
Timotheus. There is only one such ; and he is
the Devil.
Lucian. If he delights in our wickedness,
which you believe, he must be incomparably the
happiest of beings, which you do not believe.
No god of Epicurus rests his elbow on his arm-
chair with less energetic exertion or discompo-
sure.
Timotheus. We lead holier and purer lives than
such ignorant mortals as are not living under
Grace.
Lucian. I also live under Grace, 0 Timotheus !
and I venerate her for the pleasures I have re-
ceived at her hands. I do not believe she has
quite deserted me. If my grey hairs are unat-
tractive to her, and if the trace of her fingers is
lost in the wrinkles of my forehead, still I some-
times am told it is discernible even on the latest
and coldest of my writings.
Timotheus. You are wilful in misapprehension.
The Grace of which I speak is adverse to plea-
sure and impurity.
Lucian. Rightly do you separate impurity and
pleasure, which indeed soon fly asunder when the
improvident would unite them. But never be-
lieve that tenderness of heart signifies corruption
of morals, if you happen to find it (which in-
deed is unlikely) in the direction you have taken :
on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener
found together, on mind as on matter, than hard-
ness and lubricity.
Believe me, cousin Timotheus, when we come
to eighty years of age we are all Essenes. In
our kingdom of heaven there is no marrying
or giving in marriage; and austerity in our-
selves, when Nature holds over us the sharp
instrument with which Jupiter operated on Sa-
turn, makes us austere to others. But how
happens it that you, both old and young, break
every bond which connected you anciently with
the Essenes ] Not only do you marry (a highth of
wisdom to which I never have attained, although
in others I commend it), but you never share
your substance with the poorest of your commu-
nity, as they did, nor live simply and frugally,
nor purchase nor employ slaves, nor refuse rank
and offices in the state, nor abstain from litiga-
tion, nor abominate and execrate the wounds
and cruelties of war. The Essenes did all this,
and greatly more, if Josephus and Philo, whose
D2
36
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
political and religious tenets are opposite to
theirs, are credible and trust-worthy.
Timotheus. Doubtless you would also wish us
to retire into the desert, and eschew the conver-
sation of mankind.
Lucian. No indeed ; but I would wish the
greater part of your people to eschew mine, for
they bring all the worst of the desert with them
wherever they enter; its smothering heats, its
blinding sands, its sweeping suffocation. Re-
turn to the pure spirit of the Essenes, with-
out their asceticism ; cease from controversy,
and drop party designations. If you will not
do this, do less, and be merely what you profess
to be, which is quite enough for an honest, a
virtuous, and a religious man.
Timotheus. Cousin Lucian, I did not come
hither to receive a lecture from you.
Lucian. I have often given a dinner to a
friend who did not come to dine with me.
Timotheus. Then, I trust, you gave him some-
thing better for dinner than bay-salt and dan-
delions. If you will not assist us in nettling
our enemies a little for their absurdities and
impositions, let me entreat you, however, to let
us alone, and to make no remarks on us. I
myself run into no extravagances, like the
Essenes, washing and fasting, and running into
solitude. I am not called to them : when I
am, I go.
Lucian. I am apprehensive the Lord may
afflict you with deafness in that ear.
Timotheus. Nevertheless, I am indifferent to
the world, and all things in it. This, I trust,
you will acknowledge to be true religion and
true philosophy.
Lucian. That is not philosophy which betrays
an indifference to those for whose benefit philo-
sophy was designed ; and those are the whole
human race. But I hold it to be the most un-
philosophical thing in the world, to call away
men from useful occupations and mutual help, to
profitless speculations and acrid controversies.
Censurable enough, and contemptible too, is that
supercilious philosopher, sneeringly sedate, who
narrates in full and flowing periods the persecu-
tions and tortures of a fellow-man, led astray by
his credulity, and ready to die in the assertion of
what in his soul he believes to be the truth. But
hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible,
is the tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies
that wisdom or honesty can exist beyond the
limits of his own ill-lighted chamber.
Timotheus. What ! is he sanguinary ]
Lucian. Whenever he can be, he is : and he
always has it in his power to be even worse than
that : for he refuses his custom to the industrious
and honest shopkeeper who has been taught
to think differently from himself, in matters
which he has had no leisure to study, and by
which, if he had enjoyed that leisure, he would
have been a less industrious and a less expert
artificer.
Timotheus. We can not countenance those hard
icarted men who refuse to hear the word of the
Lord.
Lucian. The hard-hearted knowing this of the
,ender-hearted, and receiving the declaration from
their own lips, will refuse to hear the word of the
Lord all their lives.
Timotheus. Well, well ; it can not be helped. I
see, cousin, my hopes of obtaining a little of your
assistance in your own pleasant way are disap-
pointed : but it is something to have conceived a
setter hope of saving your soul, from your readi-
ness to acknowledge your belief in miracles.
Lucian. Miracles have existed in all ages and
in all religions. Witnesses to some of them have
jeen numerous ; to others of them fewer. Occa-
sionally the witnesses have been disinterested in
;he result.
Timotheus. Now indeed you speak truly and
wisely.
Lucian. But sometimes the most honest and
the most quiescent have either been unable or
unwilling to push themselves so forward as to see
clearly and distinctly the whole of the operation ;
and have listened to some knave who felt a plea-
sure in deluding their credulity, or some other
who himself was either an enthusiast or a dupe.
It also may have happened in the ancient reli-
gions, of Egypt for instance, or of India, or even
of Greece, that narratives have been attributed to
authors who never heard of them ; and have been
circulated by honest men who firmly believed
them ; by half-honest, who indulged their vanity
in becoming members of a novel and bustling
society; and by utterly dishonest, who, having
no other means of rising above the shoulders of
the vulgar, threw dust into their eyes and made
them stoop.
Timotheus. Ha ! the rogues ! It is nearly all
over with them.
Lucian. Let us hope so. Parthenius and the
Roman poet Ovidius Naso, have related the trans-
formations of sundry men, women, and gods.
Timotheus. Idleness ! Idleness ! I never read
such lying authors.
Lucian. I myself have seen enough to incline
me toward a belief in them.
Timotheus. You ? Why ! you have always been
thought an utter infidel ; and now you are run-
ning, hot and heedless as any mad dog, to the
opposite extreme !
Ludan. I have lived to see, not indeed one man,
but certainly one animal turned into another :
nay, great numbers. I have seen sheep with the
most placid faces in the morning, one nibbling
the. tender herb with all its dew upon it; another,
negligent of its own sustenance, and giving it
copiously to the tottering lamb aside it.
Timotheus. How pretty ! half poetical !
Lucian. In the heat of the day I saw the very
same sheep tearing off each other's fleeces with
long teeth and longer claws, and imitating so ad-
mirably the howl of wolves, that at last the wolves
came down on them in a body, and lent their
best assistance at the general devouring. What
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND AGNES SOREL.
37
is more remarkable, the people of the villages
seemed to enjoy the sport ; and, instead of attack-
ing the wolves, waited until they had filled their
stomachs, ate the little that was left, said piously
and from the bottom of their hearts what you
call grace, and went home singing and piping.
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND AGNES SOREL.
Agnes. If a boy could ever be found so beauti-
ful and so bashful, I should have taken you for a
boy about fifteen years old. Really, and without
flattery, I think you very lovely.
Jeanne. I hope I shall be greatly more so.
Agnes. Nay, nay : do not expect to improve,
except a little in manner. Manner is the fruit,
blushes are the blossom : these must fall off before
the fruit sets.
Jeanne. By God's help, I may be soon more
comely in the eyes of men.
Agnes. Ha! ha ! even in piety there is a spice
of vanity. The woman can only cease to be
the woman when angels have disrobed her in
Paradise.
Jeanne. I shall be far from loveliness, even in
my own eyes, until I execute the will of God in
the deliverance of his people.
Agnes. Never hope it.
Jeanne. The deliverance that is never hoped
seldom comes. We conquer by hope and trust.
Agnes. Be content to have humbled the proud
islanders. 0 how I rejoice that a mere child has
done so.
Jeanne. A child of my age, or younger, chas-
tised the Philistines, and smote down the giant
their leader.
Agnes. But Talbot is a giant of another mould :
his will is immovable, his power is irresistible, his
word of command is Conquer.
Jeanne. It shall be heard no longer. The tem-
pest of battle drowns it in English blood.
Agnes. Poor simpleton ! The English will
recover from the stupor of their fright, believing
thee no longer to be a sorceress. Did ever sword
or spear intimidate them ? Hast thou never heard
of Creci? hast thou never heard of Agincourt? hast
thou never heard of Poictiers? where the chivalry
of France was utterly vanquished by sick and
starving men, one against five. The French are
the eagle's plume, the English are his talon.
Jeanne. The talon and the plume shall change
places.
Agnes. Too confident !
Jeanne. 0 lady ! is anyone too confident in God?
Agnes. We may mistake his guidance. Already
not only the whole host of the English, but many
of our wisest and most authoritative churchmen,
believe you on their consciences to act under the
instigation of Satan.
Jeanne. What country or what creature has the
Evil-one ever saved ? With what has he tempted
me ? with reproaches, with scorn, with weary days,
with slumberless nights, with doubts, distrusts,
and dangers, with absence from all who cherish
me, with immodest soldierly language, and perhaps
an untimely and a cruel death.
Agnes. But you are not afraid.
Jeanne. Healthy and strong, yet always too
timorous, a few seasons ago I fled away from the low-
ings of a young steer, if he ran opposite ; I awaited
not the butting of a full-grown kid ; the barking
of a house-dog at our neighbour's gate turned me
pale as ashes. And (shame upon me !) I scarcely
dared kiss the child, when he called on me with
burning tongue in the pestilence of a fever.
Agnes. No wonder ! A creature in a fever !
what a frightful thing !
Jeanne. It would be were it not so piteous.
Agnes. And did you kiss it? Did you really
kiss the lips ?
Jeanne. I fancied mine would refresh them a
little.
Agnes. And did they ? I should have thought
mine could do but trifling good in such cases.
Jeanne. Alas ! when I believed I had quite
cooled them, it was death had done it.
Agnes. Ah ! this is courage.
Jeanne. The courage of the weaker sex, inhe-
rent in us all, but as deficient in me as in any,
until an infant taught me my duty by its cries.
Yet never have I quailed in the front of the fight,
where I directed our ranks against the bravest.
God pardon me if I err ! but I believe his Spirit
flamed within my breast, strengthened my arm,
and led me on to victory.
Agnes. Say not so, or they will burn thee alive,
poor child !
Why fallest thou before me ? I have some power
indeed, but in this extremity I could little help
thee. The priest never releases the victim.
What ! how ! thy countenance is radiant with
a heavenly joy : thy humility is like an angel's
at the feet of God : I am unworthy to behold it.
Rise, Jeanne, rise !
Jeanne. Martyrdom too ! The reward were
too great for such an easy and glad obedience.
France will become just and righteous : France
will praise the Lord for her deliverance.
Agnes. Sweet enthusiast ! I am confident, I am
certain, of thy innocence.
Jeanne. 0 Lady Agnes !
Agnes. Why fixest thou thy eyes on me so
piteously ? Why sobbest thou ? thou, to whom
the representation of an imminent death to be
apprehended for thee, left untroubled, j oyous, exult-
ing. Speak ; tell me.
Jeanne. I must. This also is commanded me.
You believe me innocent ?
Agnes. In truth I do : why then look abashed?
Alas ! alas ! could I mistake the reason? I spoke
of innocence !
Leave me, leave me. Return another time.
Follow thy vocation.
38
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Jeanne, Agnes Sorel ! be thou more than inno-
cent, if innocence is denied thee. In the name of
the Almighty, I call on thee to earn his mercy.
Agnes. I implore it incessantly, by day, by
night.
Jeanne. Serve him as thou mayest best serve him ;
and thy tears, I promise thee, shall soon be less
bitter than those which are dropping on this
jewelled hand, and on the rude one which has
dared to press it.
Agnes. What can I, what can I do1?
Jeanne. Lead the king back to his kingdom.
Agnes. The king is in France.
Jeanne. No» no, no.
Agnes. Upon my word of honour.
Jeanne. And at such a time, 0 Heaven! in idle-
ness and sloth !
Agnes. Indeed no. He is busy (this is the
hour) in feeding and instructing two young hawks.
Could you but see the little miscreants, how they
dare to bite and claw and tug at him. He never
hurts or scolds them for it; he is so good-natured :
he even lets them draw blood; he is so very
brave !
Running away from France ! Who could have
raised such a report 1 Indeed he is here. He never
thought of leaving the country : and his affairs
are becoming more and more prosperous ever
since the battle. Can you not take my assevera-
tion ] Must I say it ] he is now in this very house.
Jeanne. Then not in France. In France all
love their country. Others of our kings, old men
tell us, have been captives ; but leas ignominously.
Their enemies have respected their misfortunes
and their honour.
Agnea. The English have always been merciful
and generous.
Jeanne. And will you be less generous, less
merciful ?
Agnes. I ?
Jeanne. You ; the beloved of Charles.
Agnes. This is too confident. No, no : do not
draw back : it is not too confident : it is only too
reproachful. But your actions have given you
authority. I have, nevertheless, a right to demand
of you what creature on earth I have ever treated
ignominiously or unkindly.
Jeanne. Your beloved ; your king.
Agnes. Never. I owe to him all I have, all
I am.
Jeanne. Too true ! But let him in return owe
to you, 0 Lady Agnes, eternal happiness, eternal
glory. Condescend to labor with the humble
handmaiden of the Lord, in fixing his throne and
delivering his people.
Agnes. I can not fight : I abominate war.
Jeanne. Not more than I do ; but men love it.
Agnes. Too much.
Jeanne. Often too much, for often unjustly.
But when God's right-hand is visible in the van-
guard, we who are called must follow.
Agnes. I dare not ; indeed I dare not.
Jeanne. You dare not ? you who dare withhold
the king from his duty !
Agnes. We must never talk of their duties to
our princes.
Jeanne. Then we omit to do much of our own.
It is now mine : but above all it is yours.
Agnes. There are learned and religious men
who might more properly.
Jeanne. Are these learned and religious men in
the court ? Pray tell me : since, if they are, seeing
how poorly they have sped, I may peradventure,
however unwillingly, however blameably, abate a
little of my reverence for learning, and look for
pure religion in lower places.
Agnes. They are modest; and they usually
ask of me in what manner they may best please
their master.
Jeanne. They believe then that your affection
is proportional to the power you possess over him.
I have heard complaints that it is usually quite
the contrary. But can such great men be loved 1
And do you love him 1 Why do you sigh so ]
Agnes. Life is but sighs, and when they cease,
'tis over.
Jeanne. Now deign to answer me : do you truly
love him ?
Agnes. From my soul ; and above it.
Jeanne. Then save him.
Lady ! I am grieved at your sorrow, although
it will hereafter be a source of joy unto you. The
purest water runs from the hardest rock. Neither
worth nor wisdom come without an effort ; and
patience and piety and salutary knowledge spring
up and ripen from under the harrow of affliction.
Before there is wine or there is oil, the grape
must be trodden and the olive must be pressed.
I see you are framing in your heart the reso-
lution.
Agnes. My heart can admit nothing but his
image.
Jeanne. It must fall thence at last.
Agnes. Alas ! alas ! Time loosens man's affec-
tions. I may become unworthy. In the sweetest
flower there is much that is not fragrance, and
which transpires when the freshness has passed
away.
Alas ! if he should ever cease to love me !
Jeanne. Alas ! if God should !
Agnes. Then indeed he might afflict me with
so grievous a calamity.
Jeanne. And none worse after?
Agnes. What can there be ?
0 Heaven ! mercy ! mercy !
Jeanne. Resolve to earn it : one hour suffices.
Agnes. I am lost. Leave me, leave me.
Jeanne. Do we leave the lost? Are they
beyond our care ? Remember who died for them,
and them only.
Agnes. You subdue me. Spare me : I would
only collect my thoughts.
Jeanne. Cast them away. Fresh herbage springs
From under the withered. Be strong, and, if you
love, be generous. Is it more glorious to make
a captive than to redeem one]
Agnes. Is he in danger ! 0 ! . . you see all
things . . is he ? is he ? is he 1
THE MAID OF ORLEANS AND AGNES SOREL.
39
Jeanne. From none but you.
Agnes. God, it is evident, has given to thee
alone the power of rescuing both him and France.
He has bestowed on thee the mightiness of virtue.
Jeanne. Believe, and prove thy belief, that he
has left no little of it still in thee.
Agnes. When we have .lost our chastity, we
have lost all, in his sight and in man's. But man
is unforgiving, God is merciful.
Jeanne. I am so ignorant, I know only a part
of my duties : yet those which my Maker has
taught me I am earnest to perform. He teaches
me that divine love has less influence over the
heart than human : he teaches me that it ought
to have more : finally, he commands me to an-
nounce to thee, not his anger, but his will.
Agnes. Declare it ; 0 declare it. I do believe
his holy word is deposited in thy bosom.
Jeanne. Encourage the king to lead his vassals
to the field.
Agnes. When the season is milder.
Jeanne. And bid him leave you for ever.
Agnes. Leave me ! one whole campaign ! one
entire summer ! Oh anguish ! It sounded in my
ears as if you said " for ever."
Jeanne. I say it again.
Agnes. Thy power is superhuman, mine is not.
Jeanne. It ought to be, in setting God at defi-
ance. The mightiest of the angels rued it.
Agnes. We did not make our hearts.
Jeanne. But we can mend them.
Agnes. Oh ! mine (God knows it) bleeds.
Jeanne. Say rather it expels from it the last
stagnant drop of its rebellious sin. Salutary pangs
may be painfuller than mortal ones.
Agnes. Bid him leave me ! wish it ! permit it !
think it near ! believe it ever can be ! Go, go . .
I am lost eternally.
Jeanne. And Charles too.
Agnes. Hush ! hush ! What has he done that
other men have not done also ?
Jeanne. He has left undone what others do.
Other men fight for their country.
I always thought it was pleasant to the young
and beautiful to see those they love victorious and
applauded. Twice in my lifetime I have been
present at wakes, where prizes were contended for :
what prizes I quite forget : certainly not king-
doms. The winner was made happy : but there
was one made happier. Village maids love truly :
ay, they love glory too ; and not their own. The
tenderest heart loves best the courageous one : the
gentle voice says, " Why wert thou so hazardous]"
the deeper-toned replies, " For thee, for thee."
Agnes. But if the saints of heaven are offended,
as I fear they may be, it would be presumptuous
in the king to expose his person in battle, until we
have supplicated and appeased them.
Jeanne. One hour of self-denial, one hour of
stern exertion against the assaults of passion, out-
values a life of prayer.
Agnes. Prayer, if many others will pray with us,
can do all things. I will venture to raise up that
arm which has only one place for its repose : I
will steal away from that undivided pillow, fra-
grant with fresh and unextinguishable love.
Jeanne. Sad earthly thoughts !
Agnes. You make them sad, you can not make
them earthly. There is a divinity in a love de-
scending from on high, in theirs who can see into
the heart and mould it to their will.
Jeanne. Has man that power?
Agnes. Happy, happy girl ! to ask it, and
unfeignedly.
Jeanne. Be happy too.
Agnes. How] how?
Jeanne. By passing resolutely through unhap-
piness. It must be done.
Agnes. I will throw myself on the pavement,
and pray until no star is in the heavens. Oh ! I
will so pray, so weep.
Jeanne. Unless you save the tears of others, in
vain you shed your own.
Agnes. Again I ask you, what can I do ?
Jeanne. When God has told you what you ought
to do, he has already told you what you can.
Agnes. I will think about it seriously.
Jeanne. Serious thoughts are folded up, chested,
and unlooked-at : lighter, like dust, settle all about
the chamber. The promise to think seriously
dismisses and closes the door on the thought.
Adieu ! God pity and pardon you. Through you
the wrath of Heaven will fall upon the kingdom.
Agnes. Denouncer of just vengeance, recall the
sentence ! I tremble before that countenance
severely radiant : I sink amid that calm, more
appalling than the tempest. Look not into my
heart with those gentle eyes! 0 how they pene-
trate ! They ought to see no sin : sadly must it
pain them.
Jeanne. Think not of me : pursue thy destina-
tion : save France.
Agnes (after a long pause). Glorious privilege !
divine appointment ! Is it thus, 0 my Redeemer !
my crimes are visited ?
Come with me, blessed Jeanne ! come instantly
with me to the king : come to him whom thy
virtue and valour have rescued.
Jeanne. Not now ; nor ever with thee. Again
I shall behold him ; a conqueror at Orleans, a king
at Rheims. Regenerate Agnes ! be this thy glory,
if there be any that is not God's.
40
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND SIR ROBERT INGLIS.
Duke. Good morning, Sir Robert Inglis, I am
glad to see you.
Inglis. Your Grace is extremely obliging in
fixing so early an hour for the audience I re-
quested.
Duke. We cannot meet too early for business,
long or short.
Inglis. The present is most important to the
Administration of which your Grace is the main
support.
Duke. If you think so, we will dispatch it at
once. I presume you mean the matter of Lord
Ellenborough.
Inglis. Exactly, my lord duke.
Duke. Your objections, I think, rest on some-
thing which wounded your feelings on the side of
religion ?
Inglia. Not mine only, may it please your
Grace.
Duke. It neither pleases nor displeases me,
Sir Robert Inglis. I am an impartial man ; and
this is a matter that lies among the bishops.
Inglis. I fear they will not stir in the business.
Duke. The wiser men they.
Inglis. But surely it is most offensive to pay
twenty thousand men, and two millions of money,
for a pair of sandal-wood gates, which are not of
sandal-wood, in order to fix them again to a
temple which does not exist; a temple which,
while it did exist, was dedicated to the most im-
moral and impure of worship ; which afterward
was converted to a mosque, and is now the recep-
tacle of all the filth in the city that is ever removed
at all.
Duke. You say the gates are not of sandal-
wood ; yet Lord Ellenborough is accused by the
Radicals of setting up sandal-wood gates. This is
frivolous.
Inglis. He made a proclamation in the style of
Buonaparte.
Duke. Not he, indeed; he is no more like
Buonaparte than you are ; another frivolous ob-
jection. I do assure you, Sir Robert Inglis, he
always thought Buonaparte a miserably poor
creature in comparison with himself; for, even
in his best days, or (to use the word well for
once) his palmy days, Buonaparte had notoriously
little hair, and wore it quite flat. Then, after he
made a peace, which to many, who pull back the
past to overlay the present, seems as glorious
as that which Lord Ellenborough has just con-
cluded ; what did Buonaparte ? Mind ! I am
speaking now his lordship's sentiments ; for I
never speak in disparagement of any person I
have been in the habit of meeting in society ;
but what, in his lordship's opinion, did he,
which could excite his envy or imitation ] In-
stead of turning his sword into a pruning-hook,
which would have been ostentation and folly in
one who never left behind him anything to
prune, and scarcely a pruner, he neglected the
only use to which Lord Ellenborough might rea-
sonably have expected him to apply it ; he over-
looked the obvious utility of its conversion into
curling-irons. The cannon his lordship has
taken from the enemy, no doubt, will be so em-
ployed ; at least, they may contribute to it, as far
as they go. I do not expect it will be thought
advisable, in the present state of her Majesty, to
discharge them in the Park. Really, I see no
reason why, after their remounting, they should
not enter on another career of conquest. And
where better than against the artillery on the
crested highths of Almack's"? Do not look so
grave, my good Sir Robert Inglis. We are both
of us on half-pay in the same department, and
our laurels grow rigidly cold upon us.
Inglis. I protest, my lord duke, I do not com-
prehend your Grace.
Duke. Then we will converse no longer on a
subject of such intricacy, in which only one of us
has had any practice.
Inglis. He was desirous of ingratiating himself
with the Hindoos.
Duke. So he should be. A third frivolous ob-
jection.
Inglis. But at the danger of alienating the
Mahometans.
Duke. They hate us as you hate the devil ;
therefore they are not to be alienated. A fourth
frivolous objection.
Inglis. My lord duke, I pretend to no know-
ledge of the parties in India, or their incli-
nations.
Duke. Then why talk about them ?
Inglis. My zeal for the religion of my country.
Duke. What have they to do with the religion
of our country, or we with theirs.
Inglis. We, as Englishmen and Christians, have
very much to do with theirs ?
Duke. Are they then Christians and English-
men ? We may worry those who are near us for
believing this and disbelieving that; but, until
there are none to worry at home, let the people
of India fight and work for us, and live content-
edly. You live contentedly. But you are too
grave and of too high standing to be bottle-holder
to conflicting religions. I am sure, Sir Robert
Inglis, I would wish fair play and no favour.
Inglis. I trust, my lord duke, I never wish any-
thing unfair.
Duke. And if I have any reputation in the
world, it is for loving all that is most fair.
Inglis. Such is your Grace's character.
Duke. Well then, let Somnauth and Jugger-
nauth share and share alike.
Inglis. In the bottomless pit !
Duke. Wherever is most convenient to the par-
ties. Juggernauth, I must confess to you, has
been taken most into consideration by us, being
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND SIR ROBERT INGLIS.
41
an old ally, in a manner; and our Government
has always paid six thousand a-year toward his
maintenance.
Inglis. I deplore it.
Duke. Every man is at liberty to deplore what
he likes ; but really I do not see why you should
hit upon this in particular. Not a bishop or arch-
bishop rose from his seat in Parliament to de-
nounce or censure or discommend it : therefore I
am bound in conscience as a member of the
Church of England, in duty as a peer, and in
honour as a gentleman, to believe it all right.
Inglis. Surely not, my lord duke. I yield to
no man in veneration for the Church as by law
established, or for those descendants of the Apos-
tles, nevertheless.
Duke. Better that I should be wrong in my
theology than they : but I can not well be wrong
when I agree with lords so learned, particularly
now you remind me of their unbroken descent
from the Apostles. They are the fairest and
most impartial men in the world : they let all
religions thrive that do not come too near their
own. They never cry "stand back," on slight
occasions : and I firmly believe you could never
engage more than a couple of them to lend a
hand at the car of Juggernauth, even in cool
weather. Some of them, whose skirts the reform-
ers have been clipping, would be readier than the
rest ; but they must have a very high minster in
view before they would let you buckle on the
harness.
Inglis. I respect their motives. In like man-
ner they abstained from voting on the question
of the slave-trade. It behoves them to avoid all
discussion and disquisition on the policy of minis-
ters.
Duke. So it does you and me. I lean to neither
of the contending gods in particular : they are
both well enough in their way : if they are quiet
with us, let them do as they like with their own
people, who certainly would not have worshipped
them so long if they had misbehaved. Do not
encourage men, ignorant men particularly, to
throw off any restraint you find upon them : it is
no easy matter to put another in the place, well-
looking as it may be, and clever as you may think
yourself in cutting it out and fitting it to the
wearer.
Inglis. These wretched men have souls, my
lord duke, to be saved from the flames of hell.
Duke. I hope so : but I am no fire-man. I know
what good, meanwhile, may be done with them in
the hands of the priests, if you let the priests
have their own way : but if you stop their feeds
what work can you expect out of them ]
Inglis. So long as they have their way, Chris-
tianity will never be established in Hindostan.
Duke. Bad news, indeed ! Upon my life, I am
sorry to hear it; especially, when other most reli-
gious men have taken the trouble to assure me
that it would prevail against the devil and all his
works. We must not be hasty, Sir Robert Inglis.
There are some things at which we may make a
dash ; others require wary circumspection and
slow approaches. I would curtail the foraging
ground of an enemy, never of an ally. We must
wink upon some little excesses of theirs, while we
keep our own men strictly to duty. Beside, we
are hard-driven, and cannot give up patronage.
Inglis. If your Grace's conscience is quite satis-
fied that the service of Government requires a
certain relaxation in what we consider vital essen-
tials, we must submit.
Duke. Our consciences may not be quite so easy
as one could wish, nor are our places; but we
must take into consideration the necessity of col-
lecting the revenue in Hindostan; and the priests
in all countries can make it difficult or easy.
Lord Ellenborough is affable ; and I trust he will
hang a religion in each ear, so that neither shall
hang higher than the other.
Inglis. We are taught and commanded to judge
not hastily. Now, I would not judge hastily my
Lord Ellenborough ; but certainly it does bear
hard on tender consciences, to believe he entertains
that lively faith which . .
Duke. Pooh, pooh ! If he has any faith at all, I
will answer for him it is as lively as a turtle ;
which, you know, is proverbial : no advertise-
ment calls the thing otherwise. You may call
Ellenborough a silly fellow, but never a dull
one, unless when wit and humour are required ;
and business wants none of their flashes to show
its path.
Inglis. Belief in his Creator . .
Duke. He believes in all of these, better than
they believe in him, from those who created him
Secretary of State, to those who created him Go-
vernor-General.
Inglis. I meant to signify his religion.
Duke. He might ask you what that signifies ?
Inglis. We require from all the servants of her
Majesty, from all who are in authority under her, as
our Church service most beautifully expresses it. .
Duke. Well, well ! what would you have ] I
will speak from my own knowledge of him ; I
know he believes in a deity ; I heard him use
the very name, in swearing at his groom ; and,
on the same occasion, he cried aloud, "The
devil take the fellow!" Can you doubt, after
this, that his religion is secure on both flanks 1
Inglis. God has, from the beginning, set his
face against idolatry.
Duke. I don't wonder. I am persuaded you
are correct in your statement, Sir Robert Inglis.
Inglis. He reproved it, in his wrath, as one
among the most crying sins of the Jews.
Duke. They have a good many of that descrip-
tion : but they must have been fine soldiers for-
merly. Do you think, Sir Robert Inglis, they are
likely, at last, to get into the Houses of Par-
liament ?
Inglis. God forbid !
Duke. For my own part I have no voice on the
occasion. Other rich folks, quite as crying, and
craving, and importunate, lawyers more espe-
cially, crowd both yours and ours. But I think a
42
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
sprinkling of Jews might help you prodigiously jusi
at present ; for, by what I hear about them, there
are nowhere such stiff sticklers against idolatry
at the present day, as those gentlemen ! We both
are connected, to a certain extent, with the Uni-
versity of Oxford. Now, people do tell me thai
many of those who voted for us, as well as many
of those who did not, are inclined to a spice
of it.
Inglia. They deny the charge.
Duke. Of course they do : so do the people oJ
Hindustan, even those among them who possess
no pluralities, no preferment. They all tell you
there is something at the bottom of it which you
do not see, because you are blind and stupid and
unbelieving. They all, both here and there, tell
you that, to learn things rightly, you must become
a child once more. Now, against the child's doc-
trine I have nothing to say, but I have a serious
objection, in my own person, to certain parts of
the discipline.
Inglia. Your Grace is grave apparently, which
could not surely be the case if such abomination
were about to be tolerated in our principal seats
of learning.
Duke. In truth I was not thinking about the
seats of learning: nor indeed do I see any danger
in pious men erecting the Cross to elevate their
devotion. I fear more the faggot than the solid
timber : and, when I know they came out of the
same wood, I am suspicious they may be travelling
the same road. But until an evil intention is mani-
fest, I would let people have their own way, both in
Oxfordshire and Hindostan. In regard to giving
them money, I leave that matter entirely to the
discretion of their votaries.
Inglis. I grieve for this lukewarmness in your
Grace.
Duke. It is high time for me to be lukewarm,
and hardly that.
Inglis. I did not enter upon politics, or ques-
tion an officer, a high, a very high functionary of
her Majesty, in regard to the expediency of
favoring one religion of the Hindoos against the
other, and that professed by the more warlike
and powerful.
Duke. Did not you ? Then what can you ques-
tion?
Inglis. I question, and more than question,
the correctness of his views in winking at im-
purity ; for the worship of the Lingam is most
impure.
Duke. We do wink at such things, Sir Robert ;
we do not openly countenance them. I am no
worshipper of the Lingam. I speak as an unpre-
judiced man; and, depend upon it, if Lord
Ellenborough had any tendency to that worship,
the priests would make him undergo a rigorous
examination, and probably would reject him after
all. Nothing in his past life lays him open to
such an imputation.
Inglis. God forbid I should imply such an ob-
scenity.
Duke. Do not embarrass by this implication, or
any other, the march of a Ministry which not
only has pointed stakes at every ten yards, but a
toll-bar at every twenty. I tell you from my own
knowledge, that Ellenborough is only a coxcomb.
Respect him, for he is the greatest in the world :
and the head of every profession should be re-
spected. What would you have? whom would
you have ? You are an aristocrat ; you have your
title ; and, no doubt, your landed estate. Would
you send to govern India, as was done formerly,
such men as Clive and Hastings] They could
conquer and govern empires : what then 1 Could
they keep Ministers and the friends of Ministers
in their places ? No such thing. Therefore, my
good worthy Sir Robert Inglis, do not let us talk
any more nonsense together. Our time is valu-
able ; we have not too much left.
Inglis. Whatever, by God's Providence, we may
still look forward to, let us devote to his service,
repressing to the utmost of our power all at-
tempts to aid or comfort a false and most impure
religion.
Duke. A bargain ! we will ; that is you and I.
Let us enter into a compact, this very hour,
never to worship the Lingam in word or deed.
We will neither bow down to it nor worship it,
nor do anything in word or deed which may
point to such a conclusion. I promise further-
more, to use all my interest with her Majesty's
Ministers, that they will immediately send a
dispatch to Lord Ellenborough, ordering him not
to set up the gates again in a temple which has
ceased to exist for many centuries ; but that, as
the gates have been carried about a thousand
miles, and as we have lost about as many men (to
say nothing of field-pieces) in conveying them
back, his Excellency do issue another proclama-
tion, empowering six of the Generals and six of
the Supreme Council, to leave India forthwith,
bearing with them, to show the devotion both of
Mahometans and Hindoos to her Majesty, a tooth-
pick-case and twelve tooth-picks, made therefrom,
for the use of her Majesty and her successors. Do
you ride, Sir Robert Inglis 1
Inglis. I have no horses in town.
Duke. My horse is waiting for me in the court-
yard, and I think it proper to set my servants an
ixample of punctuality. Perhaps I may have
the pleasure of meeting you in the park.
Inglis. I have occupied too much of your Grace's
iime?
Duke. Very little.
Inglis. I would only beg of your Grace that
you prevail on Ministers to hesitate before . .
Duke. I never tell any man to hesitate. Right
or wrong, to hesitate is imbecility. How the
deuce can a man fall while he is going on ] If
Peel stops suddenly, the Whigs will run in and
:ut his brush off.
Inglis. God forbid !
Duke. They don't mind what God forbids, not
.hey. A man is never quagmired till »he stops ;
and the rider who looks back has never a firm
seat. We must cast our eyes not at all behind nor
BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
43
too much before, but steadily just where we are.
Politicians are neither lovers nor penitents. I see,
Sir Robert Inglis, you are in haste. I will lay before
Peel, and the rest of them, all your suggestions.
In the meantime be a little patient ; Juggernauth
is not coming down St. James's-street.
BISHOP SHIPLEY AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
Shipley. There are very few men, even in the
bushes and the wildernesses, who delight in the
commission of cruelty ; but nearly all, throughout
the earth, are censurable for the admission. When
we see a blow struck, we go on and think no more
about it : yet every blow aimed at the most dis-
tant of our fellow creatures, is sure to come back,
some time or other, to our families and descend-
ants. He who lights a fire in one quarter is
ignorant to what other the winds may carry it,
and whether what is kindled in the wood may not
break out again in the corn-field.
Franklin. If we could restrain but one genera-
tion from deeds of violence, the foundation for a
new and a more graceful edifice of society, would
not only have been laid, but would have been
consolidated.
Shipley. We already are horrified at the bare
mention of religious wars ; we should then be
horrified at the mention of political. Why should
they who, when they are affronted or offended,
abstain from inflicting blows, some from a sense
of decorousness and others from a sense of religion,
be forward to instigate the infliction of ten thou-
sand, all irremediable, all murderous 1 Every chief
magistrate should be arbitrator and umpire in all
differences between any two, forbidding war.
Much would be added to the dignity of the most
powerful king by rendering him an efficient
member of such a grand Amphictyonic council.
Unhappily they are persuaded in childhood that a
reign is made glorious by a successful war. What
schoolmaster ever taught a boy to question it 1 or
indeed any point of political morality, or any in-
credible thing in history ? Caesar and Alexander
are uniformly clement : Themistocles died by a
draught of bull's blood : Portia by swallowing red
hot pieces of charcoal.
franklin. Certainly no woman or man could
perform either of these feats. In my opinion it
lies beyond a doubt that Portia suffocated herself
by the fumes of charcoal ; and that the Athenian,
whose stomach must have been formed on the
model of other stomachs, and must therefore have
rejected a much less quantity of blood than would
have poisoned him, died by some chemical prepa-
ration, of which a bull's blood might, or might
not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus
betray their trust, ought to be scourged by their
scholars, like him of their profession who under-
went the just indignation of the Eoman Consul.
You shut up those who are infected with the
plague ; why do you lay no coercion on those who
are incurably possessed by the legion-devil of car-
nage ? When a creature is of intellect so perverted
that he can discern no difference between a review
and a battle, between the animating bugle and
the dying groan, it were expedient to remove him,
as quietly as may be, from his devastation of God's
earth and his usurpation of God's authority. Com-
passion points out the cell for him at the bottom
of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned
in the ward : until then the house is insecure. .
Shipley. God grant our rulers wisdom, and our
brethren peace !
Franklin. Here are but indifferent specimens
and tokens. Those fellows throw stones pretty
well : if they practise much longer, they will
hit us : let me entreat you, my Lord, to leave
me here. So long as the good people were con-
tented with hooting and shouting at us, no great
harm was either done or apprehended : but now
they are beginning to throw stones, perhaps they
may prove themselves more dexterous in action
than their rulers have done latterly in council.
Shipley. Take care, Doctor Franklin ! That
was very near being the philosopher's stone.
Franklin. Let me pick it up, then, and send it to
London by the diligence. But I am afraid your
ministers, and the nation at large, are as little in
the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the experiment
they are making.
Shipley. While I was attending to you, William
had started. Look ! he has reached them : they
are listening to him. Believe me, he has all the
courage of an Englishman and of a Christian ;
and, if the stoutest of them force him to throw off
his new black coat, the blusterer would soon
think it better to have listened to less polemical
doctrine.
Franklin. Meantime a few of the town-boys are
come nearer, and begin to grow troublesome. I
am sorry to requite your hospitality with such
hard fare.
Shipley. True, these young bakers make their
bread very gritty, but we must partake of it toge-
ther so long as you are with us.
Franklin. Be pleased, my lord, to give us grace ;
our repast is over ; this is my boat.
Shipley. We will accompany you as far as to the
ship. Thank God ! we are now upon the water,
and all safe. Give me your hand, my good Doc-
tor Franklin ! and although you have failed in
the object of your mission, yet the intention will
authorise me to say, in the holy words of our
divine Redeemer, Blessed are the peacemakers !
Franklin. My dear lord ! if God ever blessed
a man at the intercession of another, I may rea-
sonably and confidently hope in such a benedic-
tion. Never did one arise from a warmer, a
tenderer, or a purer heart.
Infatuation! that England should
44
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
sacrifice to her king so many thousands of her
bravest men ; and ruin so many thousands of her
most industrious, in a vain attempt to destroy the
very principles on which her strength and her
glory are founded ! The weakest prince that ever
sat upon a throne, and the most needy and
sordid parliament that ever pandered to distem-
pered power, are thrusting our blindfold nation
from the pinnacle of prosperity.
Franklin. I believe your king (from this mo-
ment it is permitted me to call him ours no longer)
to be as honest and as wise a man as any of those
about him : but unhappily he can see no differ-
ence between a review and a battle. Such are the
optics of most kings and rulers. His parliament,
in both houses, acts upon calculation. There is
hardly a family, in either, that does not antici-
pate the clear profit of several thousands a-year,
to itself and its connections. Appointments to
regiments and frigates raise the price of papers ;
and forfeited estates fly confusedly about, and
darken the air from the Thames to the Atlantic.
Shipley. It is lamentable to think that war,
bringing with it every species of human misery,
should become a commercial speculation. Bad
enough when it arises from revenge; another
word for honour.
Franklin. A strange one indeed ! but not more
strange than fifty others that come under the same
title. Wherever there is nothing of religion,
nothing of reason, nothing of truth, we come at
once to honour ; and here we draw the sword,
dispense with what little of civilisation we ever
pretended to, and murder or get murdered, as
may happen. But these ceremonials both begin
and end with an appeal to God, who, before we
appealed to him, plainly told us we should do no
such thing, and that he would punish us most
severely if we did. And yet, my lord, even the
gentlemen upon your bench turn a deaf ear to
him on these occasions : nay, they go further ;
they pray to him for success in that which he has
forbidden so strictly, and when they have broken
his commandment, thank him. Upon seeing
these mockeries and impieties age after age re-
peated, I have asked myself whether the deposi-
taries and expounders of religion have really any
whatever of their own ; or rather, like the lawyers,
whether they do not defend professionally a cause
that otherwise does not interest them in the least.
Surely, if these holy men really believed in a just
retributive God, they would never dare to utter the
word war, without horror and deprecation.
Shipley. Let us attribute to infirmity what we
must else attribute to wickedness.
Franklin. Willingly would I : but children are
whipt severely for inobservance of things less evi-
dent, for disobedience of commands less audible
and less awful. I am loth to attribute cruelty to
your order : men so entirely at their ease have
seldom any. Certain I am that several of the
bishops would not have patted Cain upon the
back while he was about to kill Abel ; and my
wonder is that the very same holy men encourage
their brothers in England to kill their brothers
in America; not one, not two nor three, but
thousands, many thousands.
Shipley. I am grieved at the blindness with
which God has afflicted us for our sins. These
unhappy men are little aware what combustibles
they are storing under the church, and how soon
they may explode. Even the wisest do not reflect
on the most important and the most certain of
things ; which is, that every act of inhumanity
and injustice goes far beyond what is apparent
at the time of its commission ; that these, and all
other things, have their consequences ; and that
the consequences are infinite and eternal. If this
one truth alone could be deeply impressed upon
the hearts of men, it would regenerate the whole
human race.
Franklin. In regard to politics, I am not quite
certain whether a politician may not be too far-
sighted : but I am quite certain that, if it be a
fault, it is one into which few have fallen. The
policy of the Romans in the time of the republic,
seems to have been prospective. Some of the
Dutch also, and of the Venetians, used the tele-
scope. But in monarchies the prince, not the
people, is consulted by the minister of the day ;
and what pleases the weakest supersedes what is
approved by the wisest.
Shipley. We have had great statesmen : Bur-
leigh, Cromwell, Marlborough, Somers : and what-
ever may have been in the eyes of a moralist the
vices of Walpole, none ever understood more
perfectly, or pursued more steadily, the direct and
palpable interests of the country. Since his ad-
ministration, our affairs have never been managed
by men of business ; and it was more than could
have been expected that, in our war against the
French in Canada, the appointment fell on an
able commander.
Franklin. Such an anomaly is unlikely to re-
cur. - You have in the English parliament (I
speak of both houses) only two great men ; only two
considerate and clear-sighted politicians; Chatham
and Burke. Three or four can say clever things;
several have sonorous voices ; many vibrate sharp
comminations from the embrasures of portentously
slit sleeves ; and there are those to be found who
deliver their oracles out of wigs as worshipful as the
curls of Jupiter, however they may be grumbled
at by the flour-mills they have laid under
such heavy contribution; yet nearly all of all
parties want alike the sagacity to discover that
in striking America you shake Europe ; that
kings will come out of the war either to be victims
or to be despots ; and that within a quarter of a
century they will be hunted down like vermin by
the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces
by their own courtiers. In a peace of twenty
years you might have paid off the greater part
of your national debt, indeed as much of it as it
would be expedient to discharge, and you would
have left your old enemy France labouring and
writhing under the intolerable and increasing
weight of hers. This is the only way in which
BLUCHER AND SANDT.
45
you can ever quite subdue her ; and in this you
subdue her without a blow, without a menace,
and without a wrong. As matters now stand,
you are calling her from attending to the corrup-
tions of her court, and inviting her from bank-
ruptcy to glory.
Shipley. I see not how bankruptcy can be
averted by the expenditure of war.
Franklin. It can not. But war and glory are
the same thing to France, and she sings as shrilly
and as gaily after a beating as before. With a
subsidy to a less amount than she has lately been
accustomed to squander in six weeks, and with
no more troops than would garrison a single for-
tress, she will enable us to set you at defiance,
and to do you a heavier injury in two campaigns
than she has been able to do in two centuries,
although your king was in her pay against you.
She will instantly be our ally, and soon our
scholar. Afterward she will sell her crown-jewels
and her church-jewels, which cover the whole
kingdom, and will derive unnatural strength from
her vices and her profligacy. You ought to have
conciliated us as your ally, and to have had no
other, excepting Holland and Denmark. England
could never have, unless by her own folly, more
than one enemy. Only one is near enough to
strike her ; and that one is down. All her wars
for six hundred years have not done this ; and
the first trumpet will untrance her. You leave
your house open to incendiaries while you are
running after a refractory child. Had you laid
down the rod, the child would have come back.
And because he runs away from the rod, you take
up the poker. Seriously, what means do you
possess of enforcing your unjust claims and inso-
lent authority. Never since the Norman Con-
quest had you an army so utterly inefficient, or
generals so notoriously unskilful : no, not even in
the reign of that venal traitor, that French stipen-
diary, the second Charles. Those were yet living
who had fought bravely for his father, and those
also who had vanquished him : and Victory still
hovered over the mast that had borne the banners
of our Commonwealth : ours, ours, my Lord ! the
word is the right word here.
Shipley. I am depressed in spirit, and can sympa-
thise but little in your exultation. All the crimes
of Nero and Caligula are less afflicting to huma-
nity, and consequently we may suppose will bring
down on the offenders a less severe retribution,
than an unnecessary and unjust war. And yet
the authors and abettors of this most grievous
among our earthly calamities, the enactors and
applauders (on how vast a theatre!) of the first
and greatest crime committed upon earth, are
quiet complacent creatures, jovial at dinner,
hearty at breakfast, and refreshed with sleep !
Nay, the prime movers in it are called most reli-
gious and most gracious ; and the hand that signs
in cold blood the death-warrant of nations, is
kissed by the kind-hearted, and confers distinction
upon the brave ! The prolongation of a life that
shortens so many others, is prayed for by the
conscientious and the pious ! Learning is inqui-
sitive in the research of phrases to celebrate him
who has conferred such blessings, and the eagle
of genius holds the thunderbolt by his throne !
Philosophy, 0 my friend, has hitherto done little
for the social state ; and Eeligion has nearly all
her work to do ! She too hath but recently
washed her hands from blood, and stands neutrally
by, yes worse than neutrally, while others shed it.
I am convinced that no day of my life will be so cen-
sured by my own clergy, as this, the day on which
the last hopes of peace have abandoned us, and the
only true minister of it is pelted from our shores.
Farewell, until better times ! may the next genera-
tion be wiser ! and wiser it surely will be, for the les-
sons of Calamity are far more impressive than those
which repudiated Wisdom would have taught.
Franklin. Folly hath often the same results as
Wisdom : but Wisdom would not engage in her
school-room so expensive an assistant as Calamity.
There are, however, some noisy and unruly child-
ren whom she alone has the method of rendering
tame and tractable : perhaps it may be by setting
them to 'their tasks both sore and supperless.
The ship is getting under weigh. Adieu once
more, my most revered and noble friend ! Before
me in imagination do I see America, beautiful as
Leda in her infant smiles, when her father Jove
first raised her from the earth ; and behind me I
leave England, hollow, unsubstantial, and broken,
as the shell she burst from.
Shipley. 0 worst of miseries, when it is impiety
to pray that our country may be successful.
Farewell ! may every good attend you ! with as
little of evil to endure or to inflict, as national
sins can expect from the Almighty.
BLUCHER AND SANDT.
Blwher. Pardon an intrusion ere sunrise. Do
not move for me.
Sandt. Sir, I was not seated, nor inclined to
be. Sitting is the posture in which a prisoner
has a deeper sense of solitude and helplessness.
In walking there is the semblance of being free ;
and in standing there is a preparation for walking.
But perhaps these are only the vague ideas of my
situation. Many things are true which we do not
believe to be true, but more are false which we
do not suspect of falsehood.
Bluclier. So early a visit, or indeed any, may
be unwelcome on such a day.
Sandt. To one unprepared it might be. But
we are scarcely so early as you think we are. The
walls indeed do not yet bear upon them the plea-
sant pink hue of sunrise ; a rich decoration which
(I am sorry to think it) some other cells are per-
46
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
haps deprived of; but within a few minutes you
will discover the only thing in the apartment not
yet visible. Presently you shall see the spider's-
web, in the angle there, whiten and wave about.
Look ! I told you so. Does the sun's ray shake
it by striking it? or does the poor laborious
weaver of the tissue, by quitting it abruptly ?
Blucher. I never thought about the matter.
Sandt. You have not had much leisure then ?
You never have been idle against your will ?
Blucher. No indeed; not until lately. But
why have they walled up your chimney] could
not they have contracted it, if they feared your
escape 1
Sandt. Ah ! how we puzzle one another with
our questions ! Do not inquire why they have
done it: thank them rather, if you are my friend,
thank them with me for sparing to take down
the mantelpiece.
Slucher. A narrow slip of lime-washed stone.
Sandt. Wide enough for a cider-glass with a
flower in it. I should be unwilling to have a bird
so near me just at present; but a flower! I love
to have a flower. It leads me back, with its soft
cool touch, into the fields and into the garden ;
it was nurtured by the heavens ; it has looked at
them in its joyousness; and it leaves all for me !
Thou hast been out upon the dew, my little one !
thou hast seen everything as I saw it last ; thou
comest to show me the colours of the dawn, the
carelessness of boyhood, the quiet veins and balmy
breath of innocence, the brief seclusion and the
sound sleep of Sandt.
Are you going ?
Blucher. No.
Sandt. You turned away from me. I grew
tedious.
Blucher. I have not yet given you time, nor you
me. What are you looking at on the naked wall?
Sandt. I was looking at the reflection of the
window-bars against it.
Blucher. And yet you appeared to look at them
with pleasure and satisfaction.
Sandt. Did I ? Perhaps I did. Their milder
apparitions have been my daily visitors. Unob-
trusive, calm, consolatory, they teach me by their
transience and evanescence that imprisonment is
merely a shadow, as they are ; that life is equally
so ; that the one can not long detain us ; that we
can not long detain the other; and that our
enlargement and departure are appointed from
above. See how indistinct and how wide-open
they are become already. I fell into talking about
myself; and, what is worse, I now begin to
moralise. An invitation to sit down with one
condemned, might be offensive.
Blucher. Assure me that I do not offend, and
let me assure you I will not be offended. Suspect
me, doubt me, interrogate me, and, if you find
reason for it, reproach me.
Sandt. I have no right nor will.
Blucher. Then let us sit together at the foot of
the pallet. I would not assume the post of honour,
to which I have no right, by taking the three-
legged stool. And now we are side by side, may
I look at you ?
Sandt. As you will.
Blucher. I have seen many brave men ; I can
not see too many.
Sandt. The brave are confined in the fortresses ;
in places less healthy than this. Somebody has
misled you.
Blucher. Confined in the fortresses ! in places
less healthy than prisons! the landwehr! the
restorers . . . Have you slept well 1 I hope you
have ; I do think you have ; you look composed.
Sandt. Many thanks ! I have indeed.
Blucher. Soundly as usual ?
Sandt. My sleep was like spring ; if inconstant
and fitful, yet kindly and refreshing; such as
becomes the forerunner of a season more settled
and more permanent. It has invigorated me for
the journey I am to take : I wait in readiness.
Blucher. Blessings upon you ! blessings and
glory !
Sandt. Leave me blessings : glory lies within
them : where they are not, she is not.
Blucher. If I tell you that I am one of the same
society with yourself, one of the same heart in its
kind, though smaller and harder, you may doubt
me : you may imagine me some privy councillor
in his gentleness come to untwine and wheedle
your secrets out of you ; or some literator, in his
zeal for truth, in his affection for science, in his
spirit of confraternity, come to catch your words
and oil his salad with them.
Sandt. If you are that (but surely you can not
be) and poor also, I will answer you enough to
produce you, in this moment of public curiosity,
a small pittance for your family.
Blucher. You see I am old, and wear an old
coat.
Sandt. Go on. I have given my promise, and
would yet give it, had I not. We have no time
to spare. Let me direct you by the straightest road
to your business. I had no accomplice, no insti-
gator, no adviser, in letting fall the acid drop
which removed one stain from Germany. Here
is enough for your three volumes, three hundred
pages each. Yes ; I see the holes ; and you may
put the hand into that rent.
Blucher. It is a coat which many a ball has
hissed at, and many a courtier whom I cared as
little for.
Sandt. May I serve one man more ere I depart !
and may he have been, or live to be, an honest one !
Blucher. Is Blucher?
Sandt. The Kosciusko of Germany, the Wash-
ington of Europe.
Blucher. In wishes only.
Sandt. What news about him? Be explicit
and expeditious.
Blucher. He passes yet one hour with thee,
0 saint without arrogance ! 0 patriot without
imposture !
Sandt. Where am I ?
Blucher. Not yet in heaven, although thy looks
express it.
BLUCHER AND SANDT.
47
Sandt. But, what is next to heaven, on earth
as I yearned to see it, where the desire of good,
and the thrusting aside of evil, find their full
reward.
Blucher. Eeward .' What! death?
Sandt. After the embrace of Blucher, are
myriads of wrong thoughts worth a single just, or
myriads of cruel worth a single kind one ] If
men were what we could wish them to be, we need
not die for them : if they loved us, we might be
too contented, and less disposed to set them right.
I dare not attempt to penetrate or to question
what is inscrutable in the designs of Providence ;
but without evil, and much of it, and spread
widely, the highest part of God's creation would
sink lower, by contracting its capacity of reflection,
and abating its intensity of exertion.
0 general ! may it be unsafe for anyone to
pour bad counsel into the ear of princes ! Let
them slumber, heavy and satiated, in their sunny
orchards, without the instillation of that fatal
poison ! May I not perish, may you not live, in
vain!
The soldier is the highest or the lowest of man-
kind. He must be a rescuer or a robber : he can
be which he prefers. Illustrious choice ! magni-
ficent prerogative ! He can say, " My brethren
and children, like my carts and oxen, shall be let
out for hire, or driven off unpaid:" and he can
say, " They shall be free ; they shall be Germans."
Tell those who will hear and obey you, that what
was ever Germany must be Germany again.
Tongues are boundaries, rivers and mountains
none. Fatherland may never give up the inhe-
ritance of his children to a stranger : if force
compels him, let them be righted by the nearest
of kin, whether of the same generation or not.
Blucher. The politician may expect some trouble
in teaching this doctrine.
Sandt. He may expect it first in learning, then
in teaching, any lesson in which he encounters
the hard word, honesty. All evil, on the contrary,
finds everywhere pliant scholars and strong-
wristed head-masters.
Blucher. France will not loose her hold on Bel-
gium, Alsace, Lorraine, Franche Comte, and other
spoliations made by her glorious monarch, who
never gave up anything but his word and his
reason.
Sandt. If the panther withdraw not her paw,
out with thy sword and sever it, growl and grin
as she may. He who insists on less, is the sower
of perennial wars, half driveller, half traitor.
Blucher. I see the necessity : but those who have
strong shoulders have weak eyes. Our princes
think it easier to raise scaffolds than palisades.
The time however is not distant when even they
themselves will find virtue in patriotism, and
safety nowhere else.
Sandt. Single states are poor props : but who
can wrest out Germany 1
Blucher. German princes.
Sandt. 0 thou, direct their choice and exalt
their energy ! thou who hast resisted so gallantly
the great enslaver, the sworn adversary of free-
dom, truth, and honour, the false god of foul wor-
shippers; thou who hast broken the confederacy of
crowns, tied together by him across our provinces,
and hast turned adrift the trammelled hawks, with
their hoods yet flapping their eyes and their
strings entangling their talons. Impotent as
they are of themselves, and transitory as I foresee
them, they may beat down in their terror those
who labor with us to prepare the high-road for
deliverance. The slightest and least perceptible
of blows will terminate my worst anxieties : you
will have many, but withal much glory : I shall
be numbered with assassins. What then ] But
(I foresee it) a few, enthusiastic as myself, may
be cast into prison for naming me favorably.
This is sad to think of.
Blucher. Never fear it. Victory makes even
bad things good, and even bad men glorious. Do
not expect the world's approbation for cutting
down a ripe thistle, of which the seed would be
blown into many a field round about, and again
bear other seed like it. If the extinction of a
spark prevents a conflagration, may not I trample
it down ? If there is anywhere in my country that
which threatens worse things than conflagration,
the expansion of noxious principles, of slavish
propensities ; that which threatens to deprive
every man in a hundred cities of half his strength,
stature, and comeliness; never will I seize by the
collar the brave fellow who plants his foot on it.
Sandt. Yet the laws must be obeyed.
Blucher. Many actions which we consider the
most glorious in antiquity, would have been
punished as capital crimes under the mildest laws.
For instance, the death of Caesar by the gallows ;
the death of Cato by a stake through the body
in a cross-road. The same pedagogue applauds
both actions equally. We begin with falsehood,
continue with falsehood, and never leave falsehood
off. Such is the only constancy of man.
Sandt. Our men however are less flexible than
others. God never permits a nation to be sub-
jugated while a great genius is existing in it.
Blucher. Was not Greece subjugated by the
Macedonian while Demosthenes and Phocion were
living ]
Sandt. No ; not subjugated by him, but united ;
and united against the common and ancient
enemy, the Persian. France indeed has been
subjugated by a soldier of fortune, who is nothing
more : but in France there are no Alpine highths;
there are plenty of little angular gravel stones,
glimmering and glittering, and sharp enough to
wound the foot that trusts itself upon them. The
best man there, writer or statesman, is but an
epigrammatist.
Blucher. The generals of France have performed
great actions ; but they had great means. First
of them all was the spirit of Liberty, which played
round their helmets, like those brilliant lights
the ancients took for Castor or Pollux ; signs of
victory wherever they appeared. The enthusiasm
of Italy threw before them her ancient hoards of
48
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
wealth. Superstition had plotted, and Science
had toiled, in their service. Princes conspired
against freedom, and men trod down princes.
Nations rose against cabinets : the tiger gnashed
the fox, the ermine, and the sloth. All the crimes
were let loose upon one ; and first the most fero-
cious, then the most fraudulent, mounted over
myriads of carcases, amid the acclamations of
the people. It is impossible for an honest man to
be reconciled to dishonesty by time and repetition
on the contrary, his repugnance is exasperated.
Now in what country upon earth have falsehood
and wrong been so irremediable and so exten-
sive as in France ] A nation does not retain for
twenty centuries the same character, good or bad,
without deserving it. The Persians, now notorious
liars, were once described, even by hostile his-
torians, as unwavering lovers of truth : the French
never were, by foe or friend. Europe does not
detest France because in all ages she has suffered
by her slaughters, spoliations and conflagrations ;
she detests her because she is certain of nothing
from her but insecurity. The gamester now specu-
lating in the Palais Royal of the Tuileries has
loaded his dice and marked his cards to no purpose.
He has not the sense to know that, by continu-
ing in " double or quits," he must lose all at last.
No great general ever lost two whole armies : he
has lost four : each of veterans, brave men highly
disciplined : against troops which, by every cal-
culation, he should have subdued. The first was
captured in Egypt, the second was wasted in
Hayti, the third surrendered in Spain, the fourth
in Portugal.* He has squandered more men and
money than ever general squandered yet, and
has never done anything with means apparently
inadequate ; as was done by Hannibal, by Marius,
by Sertorius, by Julius Caesar, by Gustavus Adol-
phus, by Charles the Twelfth, by Hyder-Ali (the
greatest man among the Asiatics, not excepting
Mithridates), by Clive, and lastly by our own
Frederick. These never abused Good Fortune,
and never yielded to bad, but gave her frown for
frown, and set her at defiance. She turned and
smiled on them.
Blucher. It is easier for Buonaparte to retain
what he has won than it is to throw it away ; so
closely surrounded is it by vigilant and crafty
guardians, all having a deep interest in its con-
servation. But, ever changeable, ever restless,
ever intractable, captious, and quarrelsome, he
grumbles at Fortune for her tiresome fidelity,
calls her smile an importunity and intrusion, and
often has been resolute to kick her out of doors.
The next time he plays this prank, I trust she
will have the spirit to leave him altogether.
A slight puncture will let out all the wind in
the bladders that support him. Let him come
but once into perplexity, and he will never find
his way out again. He trusts his star ; and that
* The fifth was frozen in Russia ; the sixth cut to
pieces at Leipsig; the seventh found no refuge in its
retreat from Waterloo. In every extremity he always has
abandoned them.
is not the pole-star, but a false and wandering
one, generated by an overheated fancy, and never
rising much above the marsh. Nevertheless he was
made for those he governs : they must always have
the trumpet before or the scourge behind them.
Sandt. It is better not to be remembered than
to be remembered for evil actions. But as the
flesh that is branded is the last that rots, so it
appears that what is most wicked lies longest in
the memory.
Blucher. Men at present are in a state of fever
and delirium ; a flea leaps over the bed-clothes and
they fancy it a dragon ; I trust they will soon be
on their legs again, and shake the flea out of the
window.
Sandt. Joy opens the heart to generosity, sor-
row shuts it against the world. I thank my God
that he has exempted me from it in this captivity,
and that, without a thought of my own enlarge-
ment, I pant for the emancipation of mankind.
What am 1 1 What is my life or death ] Whether
a grain of dust is blown away in the morning or
in the evening, what matter ] Censure and praise,
I own it, are less indifferent to me than they
should be. 0 sir, I am young, and without my
knowing it, I may be vain. While the hair is
full and glossy, how pleasant is it to be patted on
the head ! But, God knows, I feared rather than
courted the opinion of thoughtful men upon my
deed. I ought not to have cared about it, favor-
able or unfavorable : but my fear, you see, did
not deter me from the execution of my duty. I
believed I could render my country a service :
may it, may it, be one ! All deeds requiring vio-
lence are of questionable good. I did question my
heart ; I opened it before me ; I repressed it ; I
wrung it.
Blucher. Its present rest shows its purity at the
bottom. Incomparably more doubtful is that
action, extolled in every school and college, which
deprived the world of the greatest soldier it ever
saw, excepting perhaps Hannibal, and equal to
that glorious prodigy of Africa, in conciliating
the affections of the ally, of the stranger, and of
the conquered. The clement man was betrayed
and slaughtered by the partisans of the merciless,
of the wretch who had threatened to reduce all
Italy to a cinder. Caesar was defamed by the
orator who praises this monster ; defamed by him
after he had delivered at his footstool the most
eloquent of his orations, by which he obtained
Tom the Dictator the pardon of Marcellus. Free-
dom is allowed to pass without a watchword ; and
many pass in his name. We think we are broad
awake while we fancy we see freedom on the sena-
torial side. The venal, unjust, oppressive men,
whom Caesar would have driven from their
benches, cried out for Brutus and Cassius, his
murderers. And so august is the title under
which they fought, that no one takes it in hand
io dispute it. The generous, the honest, the
lumane, and even the wise, give them glory for
slaying him. If our boyhood, in its first lessons,
repeats their exploit with admiration, shall we
BLUCHER AND SANDT.
49
condemn in our maturer age an action in which
no malignity can be suspected ? Bright is the
name of Timoleon ; but there is a spot of blood
on it. They who would be great in the eyes of
nations, are compelled to shed more than their
own : and it is not always in our choice to deter-
mine whose it shall be.
Sandt. It has been in mine.
Blucher. If there is any country under heaven
in which thy name shall bring down punishment
on him who praises it, that country is not worth
defending. Thy last breath shall be caught by
Germany, and shall sink deep into her bosom.
Exult, my boy !
Sandt. Composure now becomes me rather than
exultation. I may have caused many tears :
scarcely then ought I to be gifted with composure :
you speak to me of our country, and bestow it.
I have removed a petty mass of obstruction from
the path of her triumphs. In my heart lies the
sum of my recompense : and this hand, 0 gene-
ral ! which I have a right to kiss, largely overpays
me with its manly pressure. Say that you have
given it. My wish is that many young men may
deserve your esteem, by placing other things above
life, of which the breath was lent us for a season
to put those other things into action.
Blucher. I will tell them how calm I found
thee, how argumentative, how gentle, how unsus-
picious, how ready to die courageously.
Sandt. Say not that.
Bludier. Why?
Sandt. Do not ask me.
Blacker. Indeed I must ; pray tell me.
Sandt. Nay, do not insist on it.
Blucher. Hast thou any doubt then, any scruple,
care, solicitude, which friendship in these few
moments can allay ?
Sandt. None whatever. But the worst men
have died bravely : and, if they had not, why
should I assume the merit, or accept it ] Say, I
neither feared death nor displayed insensibility at
its approach : say, I would have lived if the laws
allowed it, and if the example I gave could be as
effective. Indeed, indeed, I would have spared
my life almost as gladly as I would have spared
that other : but both were called for.
Blucher. Many have lived longer than thou,
none better.
Sandt. Then why look grieved? you did not
look so before you showed me reason why we
neither of us ought. 0 sir ! should not grey
eyelashes be exempt from tears ]
Blucher. One of them is enough. The brave
extort what the unfortunate should win from me.
These are tears in which the sword is tempered.
Sandt. Health to Germany ! There spoke her
great deliverer. I too have performed one action
from which some good may follow : but that one
grieved me bitterly; all yours will cheer and
strengthen the breast they spring from. Comfort
my friends ; assure them it grieves me no longer,
in the hope that another blow like it will not soon
be necessary. For, sir! the slow and timid Sandt
. . such he was among his friends, and such he
might have been among his enemies . .
Blucher. Never, by heaven !
Sandt. . . had always more hopes than fears.
Blucher. Eight ! right ! I thought so. Adieu,
my brave Sandt ! I would steal, if I were able,
that smile from thee at parting.
Sandt. Every face in Germany must owe to you
every smile it wears henceforward. Would you have
mine 1 take it then. It is time to give it up : be
it yours, with God's peace, for evermore !
I wish you acquitted me of all blame in what
I did. Certainly it was done without malice and
without anger.
Blucher. My dear Sandt ! it is not German to
kill our fellow-men for a diversity of opinion, or
for a mere delinquency in politics. Manifest and
intentional evil must have sprung up before the
sword be drawn, which in our military school has
always been thought a better weapon than the
dagger. Unfriendly as you are, which every
German has reason to be, toward France, I am
afraid your mind has retained too long the heat
thrown out on every side by the French revolu-
tion. Although I hold in contempt the man
whose youth was unwarmed by it, I should enter-
tain but a mean opinion of his understanding
who perceived not at last the wickedness of its
agents, by the conflagrations they excited in all
quarters. I have lived long enough, and have read
extensively enough, to learn that no good what-
soever hath come at any time, to any part of the
world, from France. While Italy gave the model
of municipalities, that broad concrete on which
a safe, solid, substantial government must be
founded; while Germany invented printing;
what was the invention, the only one, of France ?
Her emblematic balloon, the symbol of herself !
flimsy, varnished, inflated, restless, wavering,
swaggering, and carried away by every current and
every gust, in the most opposite directions. It is
not for conquering their country, and for impos-
ing the laws and the very name of one among
our tribes upon it, that the French hate us : it
is for the eternal reproach of our calmness, our
consistency, and our probity. In calling us per-
fidious, like skilful enemies they take up the
ground we should be expected to take up against
them. Oaths are the produce of the soil, and
broken ones lie across it in all directions, like
twigs and rushes in the homestead of a basket-
maker. The most honest and moderate of their
politicians would immerge his country for twenty
years in the most calamitous war, to retain his
office or to displace another man. It is not by
striking the head of the serpent that we can extin-
guish the animal or shake out its venom ; we must
also crush down its voluminous risings, cut off its
tail, and break it in the middle.
Sandt. Oh life ! I am now sorry to lose thee !
I shall never see that event ! This hand, the last
hand I must ever press, accomplishes it.
50
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTI.
Michel-Angelo. And how do you like my for-
tification, Messcr Nicolo ?
Machiavelli. It will easily be taken, Messer
Michel-Angelo, because there are other points,
Bello-squardo for instance, and the Poggio above
Boboli, whence every street and edifice may be
cannonaded.
Michel-Angelo. Surely you do not argue with
your wonted precision, my good friend. Because
the enemy may occupy those positions and can-
nonade the city, is that a reason why our fort of
Samminiato should so easily be surrendered ?
Machiavelli. There was indeed a time when
such an argument would have been futile : but
that time was when Florence was ruled by only
her own citizens, and when the two factions that
devoured her, started up with equal alacrity from
their prey, and fastened on the invader. But it
being known to Charles that we have neglected
to lay in provisions, more than sufficient for one
year, he will allow our courageous citizens to pelt
and scratch and bite his men occasionally, for
that short time ; after which they must surrender.
This policy will leave to him the houses and fur-
niture in good condition; and whatsoever fines
and taxes may be imposed, will be paid the more
easily ; while the Florentines will be able to boast
of their courage and perseverance, the French of
their patience and clemency. It will be a good
example for other people to follow : and many
historians will praise both parties ; all will praise
one.
I have given my answer to your question ; and
I now approve and applaud the skill and solidity
with which you construct the works, regretting
only that we have neither time to erect the others
that are necessary, nor to enroll the countrymen
who are equally so for their defence. Charles is
a prudent aud a patient conqueror, and he knows
the temper and the power of each adversary. He
will not demolish nor greatly hurt the city.
What he can not effect by terror he will effect by
time ; that miner whom none can countermine.
We have brave men among our citizens; men
sensible of shame and ignominy in enduring the
dictation of a stranger, or the domination of an
equal : but we have not many of these, nor have
they any weight in our counsels. The rest are
far different, and altogether dissimilar to their
ancestors. They, whatever was their faction, con-
tended for liberty, for domestic ties, for personal
honour, for public approbation ; we for pictures,
for statues, bronze tripods, and tesselated tables :
these, and the transient smiles of dukes and car-
dinals, are deemed of higher value than our heir-
loom, worm-eaten, creaking, crazy freedom.
Michel-Angela. I never thought them so : and
yet somewhat of parental love may be supposed
to influence me in favour of the fairer, solider, and
sounder portion of the things you set before me.
Machiavetti. It is a misfortune to possess what
can be retained by servility alone ; and the more
precious the possession, the greater is the mis-
fortune.
Michel-Angelo. Dukes and cardinals, popes
and emperors, can not take away from me the
mind and spirit that God has placed immeasurably
high above them. If men are become so vile and
heartless as to sit down quietly and see pincers
and pulleys tear the sinews of their best benefac-
tors, they are not worth the stones and sand we
have been piling up for their protection.
Machiavelli. To rail is indecorous; to reason is
idle and troublesome. When you seriously intend
to lead people back again to their senses, do not
call any man wiser or better than the rabble ; for
this affronts all, and the bad and strong the most;
but tell them calmly that the chief difference
between the government of a republic and a
dukedom is this : in a republic there are more
deaths by day than bynight; in a dukedom the con-
trary : that perhaps we see as many taken to prison
in a republic ; certainly we see more come out.
Micliel-Angelo. If any man of reflection needs
to be shown the futility and mischief of heredi-
tary power, we Florentines surely may show it to
him in the freshest and most striking of examples.
Lorenzo de' Medici united a greater number of
high and amiable qualities than any other man
among his contemporaries ; and yet Lorenzo lived
in an age which must ever be reckoned most fer-
tile in men of genius and energy. His heart was
open to the poor and afflicted : his house, his
library, his very baths and bed-rooms, to the
philosopher and the poet. What days of my
youth have I spent in his society ! Even after he
was at the head of the commonwealth he had
society; for even then he had fellow-citizens.
What lessons has he himself given me in every-
thing relating to my studies! in mythology, in
architecture, in sculpture, in painting, in every
branch and ramification of eloquence ! Can I
ever forget the hour when he led me by the arm,
in the heat of the day, to the eastern door of our
baptistery, and said, " Michel-Angelo ! this is the
only wonder of the world : it rose, like the world
itself, out of nothing : its great maker was without
an archetype ; he drew from the inherent beauty
of his soul : venerate here its image." It was then
I said, " It is worthy to be the gate of Paradise :"
and he replied, " The garden is walled up : let us
open a space for the portal." He did it, as far as
human ability could do it : and if afterward he
took a station which belonged not of right to
him, he took it lest it should be occupied by
worse and weaker men. His son succeeded to
him : what a son ! The father thought and told
me that no materials were durable enough for
my works : perhaps he erred : but how did Piero
correct the error 1 He employed me in making
MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTTI.
51
statues of snow in the gardens of Boboli ; statues
the emblems at once of his genius and his
authority.
Machiaveltt. How little foresight have the very
wisest of those who invade the liberties of their
country ! how little true love for their children !
how little foresight for their descendants, in whose
interest they believe they labour. There neither
is nor ought to be any safety for those who clap
upon our shoulders their heavy pampered children,
and make us carry them whether we will or not.
Lorenzo was well versed in history : could he
forget, or could he overlook, the dreadful punish-
ments that are the certain inheritance of whoever
reaps the harvest of such misdeeds ? How many
sanguinary deaths by the avenging arm of violated
law ! how many assassinations from the people !
how many poisonings and stabbings from domes-
tics ! from guards ! from kindred ! fratricides,
parricides; and that horrible crime for which no
language has formed a name, the bloodshed of the
son by the parental hand. A citizen may perhaps
be happier, for the moment, by so bold and vast a
seizure as a principality ; but his successor, born
to the possession of supremacy, can enjoy nothing
of this satisfaction. For him there is neither the
charm of novelty nor the excitement of action,
nor is there the glory of achievement : no mazes
of perplexing difficulty gone safely through, no
summit of hope attained. But there is perpe-
tually the same fear of losing the acquisition, the
same suspicion of friends, the same certainty of
enemies, the same number of virtues shut out,
and of vices shut in, by his condition. This is
the end obtained, which is usually thought better
than the means. And what are the means, than
which this end is better ! They are such as, we
might imagine, no man who had ever spent a
happy hour with his equals would employ, even
if his family were as sure of advantage by employ-
ing them as we have shown that it is sure of
detriment. In order that a citizen may become
a prince, the weaker are seduced, and the wiser
are corrupted : for wisdom on this earth is earthly,
and stands not above the elements of corruption.
His successor, finding less tractability, works with
harder and sharper instruments. The revels are
over ; the dream is broken ; men rise, bestir them-
selves, and are tied down. Their confessors and
wives console them, saying, " You would not have
been tied down had you been quiet." The son is
warned not to run into the error of his father, by
this clear demonstration : " Yonder villa was his,
with the farms about it : he sold it and them to
pay the fine."
Michel-Angelo. And are these the doctrines
our children must be taught ? I will have none
then. I will avoid the marriage-bed as I would
the bed of Procrustes. 0 that by any exertion
of my art I could turn the eyes of my country-
men toward Greece ! I wish to excell in painting
or in sculpture, partly for my glory, partly for my
sustenance, being poor, but greatly more to arouse
in their breasts the recollection of what was higher.
Then come the questions, whence was it? how
was it1? Surely, too surely, not by Austrians,
French, and Spaniards ; all equally barbarous ;
though the Spaniards were in contiguity with the
Moors, and one sword polished the other.
Machiavelli. The only choice left us was the
choice of our enslaver : we have now lost even
that. Our wealthier citizens make up their old
shopkeeping silks into marquis-caps, and tran-
quilly fall asleep under so soft a coverture.
Represent to them what their grandfathers were,
and they shake the head with this furred foolery
upon it, telling us it is time for the world to go
to rest. They preach to us from their new cushions
on the sorrowful state of effervescence in our
former popular government, and the repose and
security to be enjoyed under hereditary princes,
chosen from among themselves.
Micliel-Angdo. Chosen by whom? and from
what ? ourselves ? Well might one of such crea-
tures cry, as Atys did, if liie Atys he could
recover his senses under a worse and more
shameful eviration,
Ego non quod habuerim ;
Ego Mamas ; ego mei pars ; ego vir sterilis ero.
Jam, jam dolet quod egi!
Yes indeed there was all this effervescence.
Men spoke loud : men would have their own,
although they might have blows with it. And
is it a matter of joyance to those wise and sober
personages, that the government which reared
and nurtured them to all their wisdom and
sobriety, and much other more erect and sub-
stantial, should be now extinct ? Elvers run on
and pass away : pools and morasses are at rest for
ever. But shall I build my house upon the
pool or the morass because it lies so still? or
shall I abstain from my recreation by the river-
side because the stream runs on ? Whatever you
have objected to republicanism, may, in its sub-
stance a little modified, be objected to royalty,
great and small, principalities, and dukedoms.
In republics, high and tranquil minds are liable
to neglect, and, what is worse, to molestation :
but those who molest them are usually grave
men or acute ones, and act openly, with fair for-
malities and professed respect. On the contrary,
in such governments as ours was recently, a
young commissary of police orders you to appear
before him ; asks you first whether you know why
he called you ; and then, turning over his papers
at his leisure, puts to you as many other idle
questions as come into his head ; remands you ;
calls you back at the door ; gives you a long
admonition, partly by order (he tells you) of his
superiors, partly his own; bids you to be more
circumspect in future, and to await the further
discretion of his Excellency the President of the
Buon Governo. O Messer Niccolo ! surely the
rack you suffered is more tolerable, not merely
than the experience, but even than the possi-
bility, of such arrogance and insult.
. Machiavelli. Caesar's head was placed on the
neck of the world, and was large enough for it :
B2
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
but our necks, Messer Michel- Angelo, are grasped,
wrung, and contracted, for the heads of geese to
surmount them. It was not the kick, it was the
a.-s, that made the sick lion roar and die. Either
the state of things which you have been describing
is very near its termination, or people are growing
low enough to accommodate themselves to their
abject fortunes. Some fishes, once of the ocean,
lost irretrievably, by following up a contracted
and tortuous channel, their pristine form and
nature, and became of a size and quality for dead
or shallow waters, which narrow and weedy and
slimy banks confine. There are stages in the
manners of principalities, as there are in human
life. Princes at first are kind and affable : their
successors are condescending and reserved: the
next, indifferent and distant : the last, repulsive,
insolent, and ferocious, or, what is equally fatal
to arbitrary power, voluptuous and slothful. The
cruel have many sympathisers ; the selfish, few.
These wretches bear heavily on the lower classes,
and usually fall as they are signing an edict of
famine, or protecting a favourite who enforces it.
By one or other of these diseases dies arbitrary
power: and much and various purification is
necessary, to render the chamber where it has
lain salubrious. Democracies may be longer-
lived, although they have enemies in most of
the rich, in more of the timorous, and nearly in
all the wise. The former will pamper them to
feed upon them ; the latter will kiss them to
betray them ; the intermediate will slink off and
wish them well. Those governments alone can
be stable, or are worthy of being so, in which
property and intellect keep the machine in right
order and regular operation ; each being conscious
that it is the natural ally and reciprocal protector
of the other; that nothing ought to be above
them ; and that what is below them ought to be
as little below as possible ; otherwise it never can
consistently, steadily, and effectually, support
them. None of these considerations seem to
have been ever entertained by men who, with
more circumspection and prudence, might have
effected the regeneration of Italy. The changes
they wished to bring about were entirely for their
own personal aggrandisement. Caesar Borgia
and Julius the Second would have expelled all
strangers from interference in our concerns. But
the former, although intelligent and acute, having
a mind less capacious than his ambition ; and the
latter more ambition than any mind, without more
instruments, could manage; and neither of them
the wish or the thought of employing the only
means suitable to the end, their vast loose projects
crumbled under them.
Michel-Angdo. Your opinion of Borgia is
somewhat high : and I fancied you did not despise
Pope Julius.
Machiavelli. Some of you artists ought to re-
gard him with gratitude ; but you yourself must
despise the frivolous dotard, who, while he should
have been meditating and accomplishing the deli-
verance of Italy, which Jie could have done, and
he only, was running after yon, and breathing at
one time caresses, at another time menaces, to
bring you back into the Vatican, after your
affront and flight. Instead of this grand work
of liberation (at least from barbarians) what was
he planning] His whole anxiety was about his
mausoleum ! Now certainly, Messer Michel-
Angelo, the more costly a man's monument is,
the more manifest, if he himself orders the erec-
tion, must be his consciousness that there is
much in him which he would wish to be covered
over by it, and much which never was Ms, and
which he is desirous of appropriating. But no
monument is a bed capacious enough for his
froward and restless imbecilities ; and any that is
magnificent, only shows one the more of them.
Michel-Angelo. He who deserves a mauso-
leum is not desirous even of a grave-stone. He
knows his mother earth ; he frets for no fine
cradle, but lies tranquilly and composed at her
feet. The pen will rise above the pyramid ; but
those who would build the pyramid would depress
the pen. Julius had as little love of true glory as
of civil liberty, which never ruler more pertina-
ciously suppressed. His only passion, if we may
call it one, was vanity. Caesar Borgia had pene-
tration and singleness of aim ; the great consti-
tuents of a great man. His birth, which raised
him many favourers in his ascent to power, raised
him more enemies in his highest elevation. He
had a greater number of friends than he could
create of fortunes : and bees, when no hive is
vacant, carry their honey elsewhere.
Machiavelli. Borgia was cruel, both by necessity
and by nature : now, no cruel prince can be quite
cruel enough : when he is tired of striking, he
falls. He who is desirous of becoming a prince
should calculate first how many estates can be
confiscated. Pompey learned and wrote fairly
out this lesson of arithmetic : but Julius Caesar
tore the copybook from his hand and threw it
among those behind him, who repeated it in
his ear until he gave them the reward of their
application.
Michel-Angelo. He alone was able and willing
to reform the state. It is well for mankind that
human institutions want revisal and repair. Our
bodies and likewise our minds require both re-
freshment and motion : and, unless we attend to
the necessities of both, imbecility and dissolution
soon ensue. It was as easy, in the middle ages,
for the towns of Italy to form themselves into
republics, which many did, as it was for the vil-
lages of Switzerland; and not more difficult to
retain their immunities. We are surely as popu-
lous; we are as well armed, we are as strong and
active, we are as docile to discipline, we are as
rich and flourishing : we want only their moral
courage, their resolute perseverance, their public
and private virtue, their self-respect and mutual
confidence. These are indeed great and many
wants, and have always been ill-supplied since
the extinction of the Gracchi. The channel that
has been dry so many centuries can only be reple-
MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTI.
53
nished by a great convulsion. Even now, if ever
we rise again to the dignity of men and citizens, it
must be from under the shield and behind the
broadsword of the Switzers.
Machiavelli. Thirty thousand of them, when-
ever France resumes her arms against the em-
peror, might be induced to establish our inde-
pendence and secure their own, by engaging
them to oblige the state of Lombardy first, and
successively Rome and Naples, to contribute a
subsidy, for a certain number of years, on the
overthrow of their infirm and cumbrous govern-
ments. The beggars, the idle and indigent of
those nations, might, beneficially to themselves,
be made provisional serfs to our defenders, who
on their part would have duties as imperative to
perform. In the Neapolitan and papal territo-
ries, there is an immensity of land ill cultivated,
or not cultivated at all, claimed and occupied as
the property of the government : enough for all
the paupers of Italy to till and all her defenders
to possess. Men must use their hands rightly
before they can rightly use their reason : those
usually think well who work well. Beside, I
would take especial care that they never were in
want of religion to instruct and comfort them :
they should enjoy a sprinkling of priests and
friars, with breviaries and mattocks in the midst
of them, and the labourer in good earnest should
be worthy of his hire. The feudal system, which
fools cry out against, was supremely wise. The
truckle bed of Valour and Freedom is not wadded
with nosh-silk: there are gnarls without and
knots within; and hard is the bolster of these
younger Dioscuri. Genoa, on receiving the do-
minion of Piedmont, would cede to Tuscany the
little she possesses on the south of the Trebbia :
Venice would retain what she holds : Bologna
would be the capital of all the country to the
eastward of the Apennines, from the Po to the
Ofanto : Rome from the sources of the Nar to
the mouth of the Tiber (which still should be a
Tuscan river, excepting what is within the walls)
and southward as far as the Vulturnus : Naples
would be mistress of the rest. These seven
republics should send each five deputies yearly,
for the first twenty days of March, enjoying
the means of living splendidly in the apart-
ments of the Vatican. For without a high
degree of splendour no magistrate is at all re-
spected in our country, and slightly anywhere
else. The consul, invested with the executive
power, should be elected out of the body of legates
on the third day of each annual session : he
should proceed daily to the hall of deliberation, at
the Capitol, in state : the trumpet should sound
as he mounts his carriage, drawn by eight horses,
and again as he alights : no troops should accom-
pany him, excepting twelve of the civic guard
on each side, twelve before and twelve behind,
on white chargers richly caparisoned, and apper-
taining to the consular establishment.
Michel-Angelo. I approve of this ; and I should
approve as heartily of any means whatsoever by
which it might be effected. But it appears to
me, Messer Niccolo, that the territories of Rome
and Bologna, although the Bolognese would con-
tinue to the whole extent of the Apennines,
would be less populous than the others.
Machiavelli. Where is the harm of that ? A
city may be angry and discontented if she can not
tear away somewhat from her neighbours. But,
in the system I propose, all enjoy equal laws ;
and as it can not be of the slightest advantage to
any town or hamlet to form a portion of a larger
state rather than of a smaller, so neither can the
smaller state be liable to a disadvantage by any
town or hamlet lying out of it. Rome has always
been well contented to repose on her ancient
glory. She loses nothing by the chain being
snapped that held others to her ; for it requires
no stretch of thought (if it did I would not ask it
of her) to recollect that it held her as well as
them. Bologna's territory would begin with Ferrara
on the north, and terminate with the Mediterra-
nean on the south ; still, excepting the Roman, it
would be the least. Her position will not allow
her more, and well is it that it will not. For
the priesthood has too long made its holes there,
running underground from Rome ; and you know,
Messer Michel-Angelo, the dairy will smell dis-
agreeably where the rats have burrowed lately.
Michel-Angelo. True enough. Let me now
make another remark. Apparently you would
allow no greater number of legates from the
larger states than from the smaller.
Machiavelli. A small community has need for
even more to protect its interests than a larger.
He who has a strong body has less occasion for
a loud voice, and fewer occasions to cry for assist-
ance. Five legates from each republic are suf-
ficient in number, if they are sufficient in energy
and information. If they are not, the fault lies
with their constituents. The more debaters there
are the less business will be done, and the fewer
inquiries brought to an issue. In federal states,
all having the same obligations and essentially
the same form of government, hardly is it pos-
sible for any two to quarrel : and the interest of
the remainder would require, and compell if ne-
cessary, a prompt and a firm reconciliation. No
state in Europe, desirous of maintaining a cha-
racter for probity, will refuse to another the
surrender of a criminal or debtor who has escaped
to avoid that other's laws. If churches and
palaces ought not to be sanctuaries for the pro-
tection of crime, surely whole kingdoms ought
not. Our republics, by avoiding this iniquity,
would obviate the most ordinary and most urgent
cause of discord. Mortgaging no little of what is
called the property of the church (subtracted
partly by fraud from ignorance and credulity,
and partly torn by violence from debility and
dissension), I would raise the money requisite to
obtain the co-operation of Switzerland and the
alliance of Savoy, but taking care that our own
forces much outnumber the allies, and, in case
of war, keeping all the artillery in our hands.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Midid-Angdo. But what would you do with
the pope ?
MacJiiaveUi. A very important consideration.
I would establish him in Venice, where he would
enjoy many advantages which Rome herself does
not afford him. First, he would be successor to
Saint Mark as well as to Saint Peter ; secondly,
he would enjoy the exercise of his highest autho-
rity more frequently, by crowning a prince every
year in the person of the Doge (for that title,
and every other borne by the chief magistrate of
each city, should continue) and a princess in the
person of the Adriatic, and moreover of solem-
nising the ceremony of their nuptials ; thirdly,
and what is more glorious, he would be within
call of the Bosniacs, who, hearing his paternal
voice, would surely renounce their errors, abandon
their vices, and come over and embrace the
faith. The Bull of Indulgences might be a little
modified in their favour. Germans had no objec-
tion to the bill of fare, but stamped and sweated
to see the price of the dishes, which more elegant
men in France and Italy, having tasted them all,
thought reasonable enough. But in Bosnia they
must be reduced a trifle lower ; else they will be
a stumbling-block to the Neophyte, whose in-
firmer knees yet totter in mounting the Santa
Scala.
Michd-Angelo. Do not joke so gravely, Messer
Nicolo, for it vexes and saddens me.
Machiavelli. If you dislike my reasons, take
some others very different. The nobility and
people of Venice have less veneration for the
Holy Father than have the rest of us Catholics,
and longer opposed his authority. Beside, as
they prefer Saint Mark to Saint Peter, there
would always be a salutary irritation kept up in
the body of Italy, and all the blood would not
run into the head.
Michel-Angelo, Its coagulation there has pa-
ralysed her.
Machiavelli. Furthermore, the Venetians would
take measures that Saint Mark should have fair
play, and that his part of the pugilistic ring
should be as open and wide as the opposite. And
now, in order to obtain your pardon for joking so
infelicitously, let me acknowledge it among my
many infirmities, that I can not laugh heartily.'
I experience the same sad constriction as those
who can not bring out a sneeze, or anything else
that would fain have its way. You however
have marvellously well performed the operation ;
and now the ripples on lip and cheek, on beard and
whisker, have subsided, let me tell you, Messer
Michel-Angelo, we form our wisest thoughts and
projects on the depth and density of men's igno-
rance ; our strength rises from the vast arena of
their weaknesses. I know not when my scheme
will be practicable : but it has been ; and it may
be again.
Michd-Angelo. Finally, what is to become of
Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica ?
MacJiiaveUi. I would place these islands at the
emperor's disposal, to conciliate him.
Michel-Angelo. It would exasperate France.
Machiavelli. Let him look to that : it would be
worth his while. Exasperated or not, France never
can rest quiet. Her activity is only in her pug-
nacity : trade, commerce, agriculture, are equally
neglected.* Indifferent to the harvests on the
earth before her, she springs on the palm-tree for
its scanty fruit.
Michel-Angelo. She would not be pleased at
your allusion.
Machiavelli. I wish she would render it inap-
plicable. Italy, in despite of her, would become
once more the richest and most powerful of na-
tions, the least liable to attacks, and the least
interested in disturbing her neighbours. Were
she one great kingdom, as some men and all
boys desire, she would be perpetually at vari-
ance with Hungary, Germany, France, and Spain.
The confederacies and alliances of republics
are always conducive to freedom, and never are
hurtful to independence: those of princes are
usually injurious to the liberty of the subject,
and often the origin of wars. Federal republics
give sureties for the maintenance of peace, in
their formation and their position : even those
states with which any of them is confederated,
are as much interested in impeding it from con-
quests as from subjection. In kingdoms the
case is widely different. Many pestilences grow
weaker by length of time and extent of action ;
but the pestilence of kingly power increases in
virulence at every stride and seizure, and expires
in the midst of its victims by the lethargy of
repletion. At no period of my life have I ne-
glected to warn my fellow-citizens of the fate
impending over them. Only a few drops of the
sultry and suffocating storm have yet fallen :
we stop on the road, instead of pushing on :
and whenever we raise our heads it will be in the
midst of the inundation.
Michd-Angelo. I do believe that Lorenzo
would have covered the shame of his parent state,
rather than have wantoned with its inebriety.
Machiavelli. He might, by his example and
authority, have corrected her abuses ; and by his
wealth, united to ours, have given work to the
poor and idle, in the construction of roads, and
the excavation of canals through the Maremma.
Michael-Angelo. It was easier to kill Anteus
than to lift him from the ground. Lorenzo was
unable to raise or keep up Tuscany : he there-
fore sought the less glorious triumph of leading
her captive, laden with all his jewels, and escorted
by men of genius in the garb of sycophants and
songsters.
Machiavelli. In fact, Messer Michel-Angelo,
* The population of France, at this time, amounted to
scarcely fourteen millions; Franche-comte, Lorraine,
Alsace, and several cities on the borders of the Nether-
lands, not being yet annexed. Her incessant wars, of late
generally disastrous, had depopulated her provinces, and
there was less industry than in any other great nation
round about her, not excepting the Spanish. Italy was
supreme in civilisation, commerce, and the fine arts, and
was at least as populous as at present.
MACHIAVELLI AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONARROTI.
55
we had borne too long and too patiently the petu-
lance and caprices of a brawling and impudent
democracy. We received instructions from those
to whom we should have given them, and we
gave power to those from whom we should have
received it. Republican as I have lived, and shall
die, I would rather any other state of social life,
than naked and rude democracy ; because I have
always found it more jealous of merit, more sus-
picious of wisdom, more proud of riding on great
minds, more pleased at raising up little ones
above them, more fond of loud talking, more im-
patient of calm reasoning, more unsteady, more
ungrateful, and more ferocious; above all, be-
cause it leads to despotism through fraudulence,
intemperance, and corruption. Let Democracy
live among the mountains, and regulate her vil-
lage, and enjoy her chalet ; let her live peacefully
and contentedly amid her flocks and herds;
never lay her rough hand on the balustrade of
the council-chamber ; never raise her boisterous
voice among the images of liberators and legisla-
tors, of philosophers and poets.
Michel-Angelo. In the course of human things
you can not hinder her. All governments run
ultimately into the great gulf of despotism,
widen or contract them, straighten or divert
them, as you will. From this gulf, the Provi-
dence that rules all nature, liberates them. Again
they return, to be again absorbed, at periods not
foreseen or calculable. Every form of govern-
ment is urged onward by another, and a different
one. The great receptacle, in which so many
have perished, casts up the fragments, and inde-
fatigable man refits them.
Machiavelli. Other forms may take the same
direction as democracy, but along roads less
miry, and infested with fewer thieves.
Michel-Angelo. Messer Niccolo, you have
spoken like a secretary and a patrician ; I am
only a mere mason, as you see, and (by your ap-
pointment) an engineer. You indeed have great
reason to condemn the levity, the stupidity, and
the ingratitude of the people. But if they prefer
worse men to better, the fault carries the punish-
ment with it, or draws it after ; and the graver
the fault, the severer the punishment. Neither
the populace nor the prince ever chooses the
most worthy of all, who indeed, if there were any
danger of their choosing him, would avoid the
nomination : for it is only in such days as these
that men really great come spontaneously forward,
and move with the multitude from the front,
stilling the voice of the cryer, and scattering the
plumes of the impostor. In ordinary times less
men are quite sufficient, and are always ready.
In a democracy the bad may govern when better
are less required; but if they govern injudi-
ciously, the illusion under which they were
elected vanishes, the harm they do is brief,
and attended by more peril to themselves than to
their country. Totally the reverse with heredi-
tary princes. Being farther from the mass of
the community, they know and care little about
us ; they do not want our votes ; they would be
angry if we talked of our esteem for them ; and,
if ever they treat us well, their security, not their
sympathy, is the motive. I agree with you,
Messer Niccolo, that never were there viler slaves
than our populace, except our nobles, and those
mongrels and curs intermediate, who lean indo-
lently on such sapless trunks, and deem it mag-
nificent to stand one palm higher than the pros-
trate.
Machiavelli. A fine picture have you been
drawing ! another Last Judgment !
Michel-Angelo. Your nobility, founded in
great measure on yourself, is such, that you would
accept from me no apology for my remarks on
that indiscriminately lavished, by our enslavers,
among later families. None in Tuscany, few in
Europe, can contend in dignity with yours, which
has given to our republic thirteen chief magis-
trates. The descendants of a hunter from an
Alpine keep in Switzerland can offer no pretence
to anything resembling it. Yet these are they
who bind and bruise us ! these are they who im-
pose on us as governors men whom we expunge
as citizens.
Machiavelli. In erecting your fortification, you
oppose but a temporary obstacle to the insult.
My proposal, many years ago, was the institution
of national guards, from which service no condi-
tion whatever, no age, from adolescence to de-
creptitude, should be exempt. But Italy must
always be in danger of utter servitude, unless her
free states, which are still rich and powerful,
enter into a cordial and strict alliance against all
arbitrary rule, instead of undermining or beating
down each other's prosperity. While one great
city holds another great city in subjection, as
Venice does with Padua and Verona, as Florence
with Siena and Pisa, the subdued will always
rejoice in the calamities of the subduer, and
empty her cup of bitterness into them when she
can, although without the prospect or hope of
recovering her independence. For there are
more who are sensible to affronts than there are
who are sensible to freedom ; and vindictiveness,
in many breasts the last cherished relic of justice,
is in some the only sign of it.
Micliel-Angelo. Small confederate republics
are the most free, the most happy, the most pro-
ductive of emulation, of learning, of genius, of
glory, in every form and aspect. They also, for
the reason you have given, are stronger and more
durable than if united under one principality.
This is proved too in the history of ancient Tus-
cany, which, under her Lucumons, resisted for
many centuries the violent and vast irruptions
of the Gauls, and the systematic encroachments
of the wilier Romans. But the governors of no
country possess so much wisdom as shall teach
them to renounce a portion of immediate autho-
rity, for the future benefit of those they govern ;
much less for any advantage to those who lie
beyond their jurisdiction.
Machiavelli. Italy, and Europe in general,
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
would avoid tho most frequent and the worst
calamities by manifold and just federation, to the
exclusion of all princes, ecclesiastical and secu-
lar. Spain, in the multitude of her municipalities,
is divided into republics, but jealous and inco-
herent. Wiser Germany possesses in many parts
the same advantages, and uses them better ; but
the dragon's teeth, not sown by herself, shoot up
between her cities. Switzerland rears among her
snows little fresh and stout republics. Italy in
particular is formed for them ; many of her cities
being free ; all bearing within them the memory,
most the desire, of freedom. No pontiff, no
despot, can ever be friendly to science ; least of
all to that best of sciences, which teaches us that
liberty and peace are the highest of human bless-
ings. And I wonder that the ministers of religion
(at least all of them who believe in it) do not
strenuously insist on this truth ; essentially divine,
since the founder of Christianity came on earth
on purpose to establish peace ; and peace can not
exist, and ought not, without liberty. But this
blessing is neither the produce nor the necessity
of one soil only. How different is the condition
of the free cities in Germany from that of territo-
ries under the sceptre of princes. If seven or
eight are thus flourishing, with such obstacles on
every side, why might not the rest without any ?
What would they all be when hindrances were
removed, when mutual intercourse, mutual in-
struction, mutual advantages of every kind, were
unrestricted 1 Why should not all be as free and
happy as the few ] They will be, when learning
has made way for wisdom ; when those for whom
others have thought begin to think for them-
selves. The intelligent and the courageous should
form associations everywhere ; and little trust
should be reposed on the goodwill of even good
men accustomed to authority and dictation. I
venerate the arts almost to the same degree as
you do ; for ignorance is nowhere an obstacle to
veneration ; but I venerate them because, above
them, I see the light separating from the dark-
ness.
Michel-Angelo.
dically obscured, but eternally existent in the
highest heaven of the soul, without which all
lesser lights would lose their brightness, their
station, their existence.
If these things should ever come to pass,
how bold shall be the step, how exalted the
head, of Genius. Clothed in glorified bodies
of living marble, instructors shall rise out of
the earth, deriders of Barbarism, conquerors of
Time, heirs and coequals of Eternity. Led on
by these, again shall man mount the ladder
that touches heaven ; again shall he wrestle with
the angels.
Machiavelli. You want examples of the arts in
their perfection : few models are extant. Apollo,
Venus, and three or four beside, are the only
objects of your veneration ; and although I do
not doubt of its sincerity, I much doubt of its
enthusiasm, and the more the oftener I behold
them. Perhaps the earth holds others in her
bosom more beautiful than the Mother of Love,
more elevated than the God of Day. Nothing
is existing of Phidias, nothing of Praxiteles,
nothing of Scopas. Their works, collected by
Nero, and deposited by him in his Golden Palace,
were broken by the populace, and their fragments
cast into the Tiber.
Michel-Angelo. All! surely not all?
Machiavelli. Every one, too certainly. For
such was the wealth, such the liberality, of this
prince, and so solicitous were all ranks, and espe-
cially the higher, to obtain his favour, I entertain
masters, was among the thousands in his vast
apartments. Defaced and fragmentary as they
are, they still exist under the waters of the
Tiber.
Michel-Angelo. The nose is the part most
liable to injury. I have restored it in many heads,
always of marble. But it occurs to me, at this
instant, for the first time, that wax would serve
better, both in leaving no perceptible line, and
in similarity of colour. The Tiber, I sadly fear,
will not give up its dead until the last day ; but
The Arts cannot long exist I do you think the luxurious cities of Sibaris and
without the advent of Freedom. From every new
excavation whence a statue rises, there rises simul-
taneously a bright vision of the age that pro-
duced it ; a strong desire to bring it back again ;
a throbbing love, an inflaming regret, a resolute
despair, beautiful as Hope herself: and Hope
comes too behind.
Men are not our fellow-creatures because
hands and articulate voices belong to them in
common with us : they are then, and then only,
when they precede us, or accompany us, or fol-
low us, contemplating one grand luminary, perio-
Croton hide no treasures of art under their
ruins'? And there are others in Southern Italy
of Greek origin, and rich (no doubt) in similar
divine creations. Sculpture awaits but the dawn
of Freedom to rise up before new worshippers in
the fulness of her glory. Meanwhile I must
work incessantly at our fortress here, to protect
my poor clay models from the Germans.
Machiavelli. And from the Italians ; although
the least ferocious, in either army, would rather
destroy a thousand men than the graven image
of one.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
Sowthey. Of all the beautiful scenery round
King's-weston, the view from this terrace, and
especially from this sundial, is the pleasantest.
Landor. The last time I ever walked hither
in company (which, unless with ladies, I rarely
have done anywhere) was with a just, a valiant,
and a memorable man, Admiral Nichols, who
usually spent his summer months at the village
of Shire-hampton, just below us. There, whether
in the morning or evening, it was seldom I found
him otherwise engaged than in cultivating his
flowers.
Southey. I never had the same dislike to com-
pany in my walks and rambles as you profess to
have, but of which I perceived no sign whatever
when I visited you, first at Lantony Abbey, and
afterward on the Lake of Como. Well do I
remember our long conversations in the silent
and solitary church of Sant* Abondio (surely the
coolest spot in Italy), and how often I turned
back my head toward the open door, fearing lest
Borne pious passer-by, or some more distant one
in the wood above, pursuing the pathway that
leads to the tower of Luitprand, should hear the
roof echo with your laughter, at the stories you
had collected about the brotherhood and sister-
hood of the place.
Landor. I have forgotten most of them, and
nearly all : but I have not forgotten how we
speculated on the possibility that Milton might
once have been sitting on the very bench we then
occupied, although we do not hear of his having
visited that part of the country. Presently we
discoursed on his poetry; as we propose to do
again this morning.
Sowthey. In that case, it seems we must con-
tinue to be seated on the turf.
Landor. Why so]
Sovihey. Because you do not like to walk in
company : it might disturb and discompose you :
and we never lose our temper without losing at
the same time many of our thoughts, which are
loth to come forward without it.
Landor. From my earliest days I have avoided
society as much as I could decorously, for I received
more pleasure in the cultivation and improvement
of my own thoughts than in walking up and down
among the thoughts of others. Yet, as you know,
I never have avoided the intercourse of men dis-
tinguished by virtue and genius; of genius,
because it warmed and invigorated me by my
trying to keep pace with it ; of virtue, that if I
had any of my own it might be called forth by
3uch vicinity. Among all men elevated in station
who have made a noise in the world (admirable
old expression !) I never saw any in whose presence
I felt inferiority, excepting Kosciusco. But how
many in the lower paths of life have exerted both
virtues and abilities which I never exerted, and
never possessed ! what strength and courage and
perseverance in some, in others what endurance
and forbearance ! At the very moment when
most, beside yourself, catching up half my words,
would call and employ against me in its ordinary
signification what ought to convey the most
honorific, the term self-sufficiency, I bow my
head before the humble, with greatly more than
their humiliation. You are better tempered
than I am, and are readier to converse. There
are half-hours when, although in good-humour
and good spirits, I would not be disturbed by the
necessity of talking, to be the possessor of all the
rich marshes we see yonder. In this interval
there is neither storm nor sunshine of the mind,
but calm and (as the farmer would call it) growing
weather, in which the blades of thought spring
up and dilate insensibly. Whatever I do, I must
do in the open air, or in the silence of night :
either is sufficient : but I prefer the hours of
exercise, or, what is next to exercise, of field-
repose. Did you happen to know the admiral ]
Southey. Not personally : but I believe the
terms you have applied to him are well merited.
After some experience, he contended that public
men, public women, and the public press, may
be all designated by one and the same trisyllable.
He is reported to have been a strict disciplinarian.
In the mutiny at the Nore he was seized by his
crew, and summarily condemned by them to be
hanged. Many taunting questions were asked
him, to which he made no reply. When the rope
was fastened round his neck, the ringleader cried,
" Answer this one thing, however, before you go,
sir ! What would you do with any of us, if we
were in your power as you are now in ours ]" The
admiral, then captain, looked sternly and con-
temptuously, and replied, "Hang you, by God !"
Enraged at this answer, the mutineer tugged at
the rope : but another on the instant rushed
forward, exclaiming " No, captain ! " (for thus he
called the fellow) "he has been cruel to us, flogging
here and flogging there, but before so brave a
man is hanged like a dog, you heave me over-
board." Others among the most violent now
interceded : and an old seaman, not saying a
single word, came forward with his knife in his
hand, and cut the noose asunder. Nichols did
not thank him, nor notice him, nor speak : but,
looking round at the other ships, in which there
was the like insubordination, he went toward his
cabin slow and silent. Finding it locked, he
called to a midshipman, " Tell that man with a
knife to come down and open the door." After a
pause of a few minutes, it was done : but he was
confined below until the quelling of the mutiny.
Landor. His conduct as Controller of the
Navy was no less magnanimous and decisive. In
this office he presided at the trial of Lord Mel-
ville. His lordship was guilty, we know, of all
the charges brought against him; but, having
58
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
more patronage than ever minister had before, he
refused to answer the questions which (to repeat
his own expression) might incriminate him. And
his refusal was given with a smile of indifference,
a consciousness of security. In those days, as
indeed in most others, the main use of power was
promotion and protection : and Iwneat man was
never in any age among the titles of nobility, and
has always been the appellation used toward the
feeble and inferior by the prosperous. Nichols said
on the present occasion, " If this man is permitted
to skulk away under such pretences, trial is here
a mockery." Finding no support, he threw up his
office as Controller of the Navy, and never after-
ward entered the House of Commons. Such a
person, it appears to me, leads us aptly and be-
comingly to that stedfast patriot on whose writ-
ings you promised me your opinion; not inci-
dentally, as before, but turning page after page.
It would ill beseem us to treat Milton with
generalities. Radishes and salt are the pic-nic
quota of slim spruce reviewers : let us hope to
find somewhat more solid and of better taste.
Desirous to be a listener and a learner when you
discourse on his poetry, I have been more occu-
pied of late in examining the prose.
Southey. Do you retain your high opinion of it 1
Landor. Experience makes us more sensible of
faults than of beauties. Milton is more correct
than Addison, but less correct than Hooker,
whom I wish he had been contented to receive as
a model in style, rather than authors who wrote
in another and a poorer language ; such, I think,
you are ready to acknowledge is the Latin.
Sauthey. This was always my opinion.
Landor. However, I do not complain that in
oratory and history his diction is sometimes
poetical.
Sowtliey. Little do I approve of it in prose on
any subject. Demosthenes and ^Eschines, Lisias
and Isseus, and finally Cicero, avoided it.
Landor. They did : but Chatham and Burke
and Grattan did not ; nor indeed the graver and
greater Pericles; of whom the most memorable
sentence on record is pure poetry. On the fall of
the young Athenians in the field of battle, he
said, "The year hath lost its spring." But how
little are these men, even Pericles himself, if you
compare them as men of genius with Livy ! In
Livy, as in Milton, there are bursts of passion which
can not by the nature of things be other than
poetical, nor (being so) come forth in other lan-
guage. If Milton had executed his design of writ-
ing a history of England, it would probably have
abounded in such diction, especially in the more
turbulent scenes and in the darker ages.
Southey. There are quiet hours and places in
which a taper may be carried steadily, and show
the way along the ground ; but you must stand
a-tiptoe and raise a blazing torch above your
head, if you would bring to our vision the obscure
and time-worn figures depicted on the lofty
vaults of antiquity. The philosopher shows
everything in one clear light; the historian
loves strong reflections and deep shadows, but,
above all, prominent and moving characters.
We are little pleased with the man who disen-
chants us: but whoever can make us wonder,
must himself (we think) be wonderful, and deserve
our admiration.
Landor. Believing no longer in magic and its
charms, we still shudder at the story told by
Tacitus, of those which were discovered in the
mournful house of Germanicus.
Southey. Tacitus was also a great poet, and
would have been a greater, had he been more con-
tented with the external and ordinary appearances
of things. Instead of which, he looked at a part of
his pictures through a prism, and at another part
through a camera obscura. If the historian were
as profuse of moral as of political axioms, we
should tolerate him less : for in the political we
fancy a writer is but meditating ; in the moral
we regard him as declaiming. In history we
desire to be conversant with only the great,
according to our notions of greatness : we take it
as an affront, on such an invitation, to be con-
ducted into the lecture-room, or to be desired to
amuse ourselves in the study.
Landor. Pray go on. I am desirous of hearing
more.
Southey. Being now alone, with the whole day
before us, and having carried, as we agreed at
breakfast, each his Milton in his pocket, let us
collect all the graver faults we can lay our hands
upon, without a too minute and troublesome
research ; not in the spirit of Johnson, but in
our own.
Landor. That is, abasing our eyes in reverence
to so great a man, but without closing them. The
beauties of his poetry we may omit to notice, if we
can : but where the crowd claps the hands, it will
be difficult for us always to refrain. Johnson, I
think, has been charged unjustly with expressing
too freely and inconsiderately the blemishes of
Milton. There are many more of them than he
has noticed.
Southey. If we add any to the number, and the
literary world hears of it, we shall raise an outcry
from hundreds who never could see either his
excellences or his defects, and from several who
never have perused the noblest of his writings.
Landor. It may be boyish and mischievous,
but I acknowledge I have sometimes felt a plea-
sure in irritating, by the cast of a pebble, those
who stretch forward to the full extent of the chain
their open and frothy mouths against me. I shall
seize upon this conjecture of yours, and say every-
thing that comes into my head on the subject.
Beside which, if any collateral thoughts should
spring up, I may throw them in also ; as you per-
ceive I have frequently done in my Imaginary
Conversations, and as we always do in real ones.
Sowthey. When we adhere to one point, what-
ever the form, it should rather be called a disqui-
sition than a conversation. Most writers of dia-
logue take but a single stride into questions the
most abstruse, and collect a heap of arguments to
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
59
be blown away by the bloated whiffs of some
rhetorical charlatan, tricked out in a multipli-
city of ribbons for the occasion.
Before we open the volume of poetry, let me
confess to you I admire his prose less than
you do.
Landor. Probably because you dissent more
widely from the opinions it conveys : for those
who are displeased with anything are unable to
confine the displeasure to one spot. We dislike
everything a little when we dislike anything
much. It must indeed be admitted that his prose
is often too latinized and stiff. But I prefer his
heavy cut velvet, with its ill-placed Roman fibula,
to the spangled gauze and gummed-on flowers
and puffy flounces of our present street-walking
literature. So do you, I am certain.
Southey. Incomparably. But let those who
have gone astray, keep astray, rather than bring
Milton into disrepute by pushing themselves into
his company and imitating his manner. As some
men conceive that if their name is engraven in
gothic letters, with several superfluous, it denotes
antiquity of family, so do others that a congestion
of words swept together out of a corner, and dry
chopped sentences which turn the mouth awry in
reading, make them look like original thinkers.
Milton is none of these : and his language is never
a patchwork. We find daily, in almost every
book we open, expressions which are not English,
never were, and never will be : for the writers are
by no means of sufficiently high rank to be
masters of the mint. To arrive at this distinction,
it is not enough to scatter in all directions bold,
hazardous, undisciplined thoughts : there must be
lordly and commanding ones, with a full esta-
blishment of well-appointed expressions adequate
to their maintenance.
Occasionally I have been dissatisfied with
Milton, because in my opinion that is ill said in
prose which can be said more plainly. Not so in
poetry : if it were, much of Pindar and uEschy-
lus, and no little of Dante, would be censurable.
Landor. Acknowledge that he whose poetry I
am holding in my hand is free from every false
ornament in his prose, unless a few bosses of
latinity may be called so; and I am ready to
admit the full claims of your favourite South.
Acknowledge that, heading all the forces of our
language, he was the great antagonist of every
great monster which infested our country ; and he
disdained to trim his lion-skin with lace. No
other English writer has equalled Raleigh, Hooker,
and Milton, in the loftier parts of their works.
Southey. But Hooker and Milton, you allow,
are sometimes pedantic. In Hooker there is
nothing so elevated as there is in Raleigh.
Landor. Neither he, however, nor any modern,
nor any ancient, has attained to that summit on
which the sacred ark of Milton strikes and rests.
Reflections, such as we indulged in onthe borders of
the Larius, come over me here again. Perhaps from
the very sod where you are sitting, the poet in his
youth sate looking at the Sabrina he was soon> to
celebrate. There is pleasure in the sight of a
glebe which never has been broken ; but it de-
lights me particularly in those places where great
men have been before. I do not mean warriors :
for extremely few among the most remarkable of
them will a considerate man call great : but poets
and philosophers and philanthropists, the orna-
ments of society, the charmers of solitude, the
warders of civilisation, the watchmen at the gate
which Tyranny would batter down, and the
healers of those wounds which she left festering
in the field. And now, to reduce this demon into
its proper toad-shape again, and to lose sight of it,
open your Paradise Lost.
Southey. Shall we begin with it immediately ?
or shall we listen a little while to the woodlark ]
He seems to know what we are about ; for there
is a sweetness, a variety, and a gravity in his
cadences, befitting the place and theme. An-
other time we might afford the whole hour to him.
Landor. The woodlark, the nightingale, and
the ringdove, have made me idle for many, even
when I had gone into the fields on purpose to
gather fresh materials for composition. A little
thing turns me from one idleness to another. More
than once, when I have taken out my pencil to
fix an idea on paper, the smell of the cedar, held
by me unconsciously across the nostrils, hath so
absorbed the senses, that what I was about to
write down has vanished, altogether and irreco-
verably. This vexed me ; for although we may
improve a first thought, and generally do, yet if
we lose it, we seldom or never can find another
so good to replace it. The latter-math has less
substance, succulence, and fragrance, than the
summer crop. I dare not trust my memory for a
moment with anything of my own : it is more
faithful in storing up what is another's. But am
I not doing at this instant something like what I
told you about the pencil ? If the loss of my own
thoughts vexed me, how much more will the loss
of yours ! Now pray begin in good earnest.
Southey. Before we pursue the details of a poem,
it is customary to look at it as a whole, and to
consider what is the scope and tendency, or what
is usually called the moral. But surely it is a
silly and stupid business to talk mainly about the
moral of a poem, unless it professedly be a fable.
A good epic, a good tragedy, a good comedy, will
inculcate several. Homer does not represent the
anger of Achilles as being fatal or disastrous to
that hero; which would be what critics call
poetical justice. But he demonstrates in the
greater part of the Iliad the evil effects of arbi-
trary power, in alienating an elevated soul from
the cause of his country. In the Odyssea he shows
that every obstacle yields to constancy and per-
severance : yet he does not propose to show it :
and there are other morals no less obvious. Why
should the machinery of the longest poem be drawn
out to establish an obvious truth, which a single
verse would exhibit more plainly, and impress
more memorably? Both in epic and dramatic
poetry it is action, and not moral, that is first
60
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
demanded. The feelings and exploits of the
principal agent should excite the principal inte-
rest The two greatest of human compositions
are here defective : I mean the Iliad and Para-
dise Lost. Agamemnon is leader of the confede-
rate Greeks before Troy, to avenge the cause of
Menelaus : yet not only Achilles and Diomed on
his side, but Hector and Sarpedon on the opposite,
interest us more than the ' king of men,' the avenger,
or than his brother, the injured prince, about
whom they all are fighting. In the Paradise Lost
no principal character seems to have been in-
tended. There is neither truth nor wit however
in saying that Satan is hero of the piece, unless,
as is usually the case in human life, he is the
greatest hero who gives the widest sway to the
worst passions. It is Adam who acts and suffers
most, and on whom the consequences have most
influence. This constitutes him the main cha-
racter; although Eve is the more interesting,
Satan the more energetic, and on whom the greater
force of poetry is displayed. The Creator and his
angels are quite secondary.
Landor. Must we not confess that every epic
hitherto has been defective in plan ; and even that
each, until the time of Tasso, was more so than its
predecessor ? Such stupendous genius, so much
fancy, so much eloquence, so much vigour of intel-
lect, never were united as in Paradise Lost. Yet
it is neither so correct nor so varied as the Iliad,
nor, however important the action, so interesting.
The moral itself is the reason why it wearies even
those who insist on the necessity of it. Founded
on an event believed by nearly all nations, cer-
tainly by all who read the poem, it lays down a
principle which concerns every man's welfare, and
a fact which every man's experience confirms ;
that great and irremediable misery may arise
from apparently small offences. But will any one
say that, in a poetical view, our certainty of moral
truth in this position is an equivalent for the un-
certainty which of the agents is what critics call
the hero of the piece ]
Sowthey. We are informed in the beginning of
the Iliad that the poet, or the Muse for him, is
about to sing the anger of Achilles, with the dis-
asters it brought down on the Greeks. But these
disasters are of brief continuance, and this anger
terminates most prosperously? Another fit of
anger, from another motive, less ungenerous
and less selfish, supervenes; and Hector falls
because Patroclus had fallen. The son of Peleus,
whom the poet in the beginning proposed for his
hero, drops suddenly out of sight, abandoning a
noble cause from an ignoble resentment. Milton,
in regard to the discontinuity of agency, is in the
same predicament as Homer.
Let us now take him more in detail. He soon
begins to give the learned and less obvious sig-
nification to English words. In the sixth line,
That on the secret top, &c.
Here secret is in the same sense as Virgil's
Secretotque pios, his dantem jura Catoncm.
Would it not have been better to omit the fourth
and fifth verses, as incumbrances, and deadeners of
the harmony ? and for the same reason, the four-
teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth ?
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Landor. Certainly much better : for the har-
mony of the sentence is complete without them,
and they make it gasp for breath. Supposing the
fact to be true, the mention of it is unnecessary
and unpoetical. Little does it become Milton to
run in debt with Ariosto for his
Cose non dette mai ne in prosa o in rima.
Prosaic enough in a rhymed romance, for such is
the Orlando with all its spirit and all its beauty,
and far beneath the dignity of the epic.
Southey. Beside, it interrupts the intensity of
the poet's aspiration in the words,
And chiefly thou, O Spirit !
Again: I would rather see omitted the five which
follow that beautiful line,
Dovelikc satst brooding on the vast abyss.
Landor. The ear, however accustomed to the
rhythm of these sentences, is relieved of a burden
by rejecting them : and they are not wanted for
anything they convey.
Southey. I am , sorry that Milton (V. 34) did
not always keep separate the sublime Satan and
" the infernal Serpent." The thirty-eighth verse
is the first hendecasyllabic in the poem. It is much
to be regretted, I think, that he admits this metre
into epic poetry. It is often very efficient in the
dramatic, at least in Shakspeare, but hardly ever
in Milton. He indulges in it much less fluently in
the Paradise Lost than in the Paradise Regained.
In the seventy-third verse he tells us that the
rebellious angels are
As far removed from God and light of heaven
As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.
Not very far for creatures who could have mea-
sured all that distance, and a much greater, by a
single act of the will.
V. 188 ends with the word repair; 191 with
despair.
V. 335. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight
In which they were.
Landor. We are oftener in such evil plight of
foundering in the prosaic slough about your
neighbourhood than in Bunhill Fields.
V. 360. And Powers that erst in heaven sat on thrones.
Excuse my asking why you, and indeed most
poets in most places, make a monosyllable of
heaven ? I observe you treat spirit in the same
manner ; and although not peril, yet perilous. I
would not insist at all times on an iambic foot,
neither would I deprive these words of their right
to a participation in it.
Sowthey. I have seized all fair opportunities of
introducing the tribrachys, and these are the
words that most easily afford one. I have turned
SOUTHEY AND LANDOK.
61
over the leaves as far as verse 534, where I wish
he had written Damascus (as he does elsewhere)
for Damasco, which never was the English appel-
lation. Beside, he sinks the last vowel in Meroe
in Paradise Regained, which follows ; and should
consistently have done the same in Damasco,
following the practice of the Italian poets, which
certainly is better than leaving the vowels open
and gaping at one another.
V. 550. Anon they move
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood.
Thousands of years before there were phalanxes,
schools of music, or Dorians.
Landor. Never mind the Dorians, but look at
Satan :
V. 571. And now his heart
Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength,
Glories I
What an admirable pause is here. I wish he had
not ended one verse with " his heart," and the
next with " his strength."
Southey. What think you of
V. 585. That small infantry
Warred on by cranes.
Landor. I think he might easily have turned
the flank of that small infantry. He would have
done much better by writing, not
For never since created man
Met such imbodied force as named with these
Could merit more than that small infantry
Warred on by cranes, though all the giant-brood, &c.
but leaving behind him also these heavy and
unserviceable tumbrils, it would have been enough
to have written,
Never since created man,
Met such imbodied force ; though all the brood
Of Phlegra with the Heroic race were joined.
But where, in poetry or painting, shall we find
anything that approaches the sublimity of that
description, which begins v. 589 and ends in v.
620 ] What an admirable pause at
Tears such as angels weep, burst forth !
V. 542. But tempted our attempt. Such a
play on words would be unbecoming in the
poet's own person, and even on the lightest sub-
ject, but is most injudicious and intolerable in the
mouth of Satan, about to assail the Almighty.
V. 673. Undoubted sign
That in his womb was hid metallic ore.
I know not exactly which of these words in-
duces you to raise your eyes above the book and
cast them on me : perhaps both. It was hardly
worth his while to display in this place his know-
ledge of mineralogy, or his recollection that Virgil,
in the wooden horse before Troy, had said,
Uterumque armato milite eomplent.
and that some modern poets had followed him.
Southey.
V. 675. As when bands
Of pioneers, with spade and pick-axe armed,
Fore-run the royal camp to trench a field
Or cast a rampart.
Nothing is gained to the celestial host by com-
paring it with the terrestrial. Angels are not
promoted by brigading with sappers and miners.
Here we are entertained (V. 722) with
Dulcet symphonies . . and voices sweet,
among " pilasters and Doric pillars."
V. 745 is that noble one on Vulcan, who
Dropt from the zenith like a falling star.
Landor. The six following are quite super-
fluous. Instead of stopping where the pause is so
natural and so necessary, he carries the words on,
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the JEgean isle. Thus they relate,
Erring ; for he, with this rebellious rout,
Fell long before ; nor aught avail'd him now
To have built in Heaven high towers, nor did he scape
By all his engines, but was headlong scut
With his industrious crew to build in hell.
My good Milton ! why in a passion 1 If he was
sent to build in hell, and did build there, give
the Devil his due, and acknowledge that on this
one occasion he ceased to be rebellious.
Southey. The verses are insufferable stuff, and
would be ill placed anywhere.
Landor. Let me remark that in my copy I find
a hyphen before the first letter in scape.
Southey. The same in mine.
Landor. Scaped is pointed in the same manner
at the beginning of the fourth book. But Milton
took the word directly from the Italian scappare,
and committed no mutilation. We do not always
think it necessary to make the sign of an elision
in its relatives, as appears by scape-grace. In v. 752
what we write herald he more properly writes
harald; in the next sovran equally so, following
the Italian rather than the French.
Southey. At verse 769 we come to a series
of twenty lines, which, excepting the metamor-
phosis of the Evil Angels, would be delightful in
any other situation. The poem is much better
without these. And in these verses I think there
are two whole ones and two hemistics which you
would strike out :
As bees
In spring-time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters : they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the stnoothened plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs. So thick the aery crowd, &c.
Landor. I should be sorry to destroy the suburb
of the straw-built citadel, or even to remove the
smoothened plank, if I found them in any other
place. Neither the harmony of the sentence, nor
the propriety and completeness of the simile, would
suffer by removing all between " to and fro," and
"so thick," &c. But I wish I had not been called
upon to " Behold a wonder."
Southey. (Book II. )
High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous east, &c.
Are not Ormus and Ind within the gorgeous
East ? If so, would not the sense be better if he
62
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
had written, instead of " Or where," " Tliere
where."
Landor. Certainly.
Souihey. Turn over, if you please, another two
or three pages, and tell me whether in your
opinion the 150th verse,
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
might not also have been omitted advantageously.
Landor. The sentence is long enough and full
enough without it, and the omission would cause
no visible gap.
Southey.
V. 226. Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb,
Counsel'd ignoble eate and peaceful tloth,
Not peace.
These words are spoken by the poet in his own
person; very improperly : they would have suited
the character of any fallen angel; but the reporter
of the occurrence ought not to have delivered
such a sentence.
V. 299. Which when Beelzebub perceived (than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat) with grave
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed
A pillar of state. Deep on his front engraven
Deliberation sat and public care ;
And princely counsel in his face yet shone
Majestic, though in ruin : sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies.
Often and often have these verses been quoted,
without a suspicion how strangely the corporeal
is substituted for the moral. However Atlantean
his shoulders might be, the weight of monarchies
could no more be supported by them than by
the shoulders of a grasshopper. The verses are
sonorous, but they are unserviceable as an incan-
tation to make a stout figure look like a pillar of
state.
Landor. "We have seen pillars of state which
made no figure at all, and which are quite as mis-
placed as Milton's. But seriously ; the pillar's
representative, if any figure but a metaphorical
one could represent him, would hardly be brought
to represent the said pillar by rising up ; as,
Beelzebub in his rising seem'd, &c.
His fondness for latinisms induces him to write,
V. 329. What sit we then projecting peace and war ?
For " Why sit we ?" as quid for cur. To my ear
What sit sounds less pleasingly than why sit.
I have often wished that Cicero, who so delighted
in harmonious sentences, and was so studious of
the closes, could have heard,
V. 353. So was his will
Pronounced among the Gods, and, by an oath
That shook heaven' t whole circumference, confirm'd.
Although in the former part of the sentence two
cadences are the same.
So was his will,
And by an oath.
This is unhappy. But at 402 bursts forth again
such a torrent of eloquence as there is nowhere
else in the regions of poetry, although strict and
thick, in v. 402, sound unpleasantly.
V. 594. The parching wind
Burns frore, and cold per/ormt the effect of fire !
The latter part of this verse is redundant, and
ruinous to the former.
Southey. Milton, like Dante, has mixed the
Greek mythology with the Oriental. To hinder
the damned from tasting a single drop of the
Lethe they axe ferried over,
V. 604. Meduta with Gorgonian terror guards
The ford.
It is strange that until now they never had
explored the banks of the other four infernal
rivers.
Landor. It appears to me that his imitation of
Shakspeare,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice,
is feeble. Never was poet so little made to imi-
tate another. Whether he imitates a good or a
bad one, the offence of his voluntary degradation
is punished in general with ill success. Shaks-
peare, on the contrary, touches not even a worth-
less thing but he renders it precious.
Souihey. To continue the last verse I was
reading,
And of itself the water flies
All taste of living wight, as once it fled
The lip of Tantalus.
No living wight had ever attempted to taste it ;
nor was it this water that fled the lip of Tantalus
at any time ; least of all can we imagine that it
had already fled it. In the description of Sin
and Death, and Satan's interview with them,
there is a wonderful vigour of imagination and
of thought, with such sonorous verse as Milton
alone was capable of composing. But there is
also much of what is odious and intolerable. The
terrific is then sublime, and then only, when it
fixes you in the midst of all your energies, and
not when it weakens, nauseates, and repels you.
V. 678. God and his son except,
Created thing not valued he.
This is not the only time when he has used such
language, evidently with no other view than to
defend it by his scholarship. But no authority
can vindicate what is false, and no ingenuity can
explain what is absurd. You have remarked it
already in the Imaginary Conversations, referring
to
The fairett of her daughter!, Eve.
There is something not dissimilar in the form
of expression, when we find on a sepulchral stone
the most dreadful of denunciations against any
who should violate it.
Ultimus suum moriatur.
Landor. I must now be the reader. It is im-
possible to refuse the ear its satisfaction at
Thus roving on
In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands
With shuddering horror pale and eyes aghast,
View'd first their lamentable lot, and found
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale
They past, and many a region dolorous ;
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
63
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Bocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of
death,
A universe of death.
Now who would not rather have forfeited an
estate, than that Milton should have ended BO
deplorably,
Which God by curse
Created e\il,/or evil only good,
Where all life dies, death, lives.
Southey. How Ovidian ! This book would be
greatly improved, not merely by the rejection of
a couple such as these, but by the whole from
verse 647 to verse 1007. The number would still
be 705 ; fewer by only sixty-four than the first
would be after its reduction.
Verses 1088 and 1089 could be spared. Satan
but little encouraged his followers by reminding
them that, if they took the course he pointed
out, they were
So much the nearer danger,
nor was it necessary to remind them of the
obvious fact by saying,
Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain.
Landor. In the third book the Invocation
extends to fifty-five verses ; of these however there
are only two which you would expunge. He says
to the Holy Light,
But thou
Revisit'st not these eyes, that toil in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn,
So thick a drop serene hath quencht their orbs,
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more, &c.
The fantastical Latin expression gutta serena, for
amaurosis, was never received under any form
into our language, and a thick drop serene would
be nonsense in any. I think every reader would
be contented with
To find thy piercing ray. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt, &c.
Southey. Pope is not highly reverent to Milton,
or to God the Father, whom he calls a school
divine. The doctrines, in this place (V. 80) more
scripturally than poetically laid down, are apos-
tolic. But Pope was unlikely to know it; for
while he was a papist he was forbidden to read
the Holy Scriptures, and when he ceased to be a
papist, he threw them overboard and clung to
nothing. The fixedness of his opinions may be
estimated by his having written at the com-
mencement of his Essay, first,
A mighty maze, a maze without a plan,
And then,
A mighty maze, but not without a plan.
After the seventy-sixth verse I wish the poet had
abstained from writing all the rest until we come
to 345 : and that after the 382d from all that
precede the 418th. Again, all between 462 and
497. This about the Fool's Paradise,
The indulgences, dispenses, pardons, hulls,
is too much in the manner of Dante, whose
poetry, admirable as it often is, is at all times
very far removed from the dramatic and the epic.
Landor. Yerse 586 is among the few inhar-
monious in this poem.
Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep,
There has lately sprung up among us a Vulcan-
descended body of splay-foot poets, who, unwilling
Incudi reddere versus,
or unable to hammer them into better shape and
more solidity, tell us how necessary it is to shovel
in the dust of a discord now and then. But
Homer and Sophocles and Virgil could do
without it.
What a beautiful expression is there in v. 546,
which I do not remember that any critic has
noticed,
Obtains the brow of some high-climbing hill.
Here the hill itself is instinct with life and
activity.
V. 574. " But up or down" in " longitude" are
not worth the parenthesis.
V. 109.
Farewell remorse ! all good to me is lost.
Nothing more surprises me in Milton than that
his ear should have endured this verse.
Southey. How admirably contrasted with the
malignant spirit of Satan, in all its intensity, is
the scene of Paradise which opens at verse 131.
The change comes naturally and necessarily to
accomplish the order of events.
The Fourth Book contains several imperfec-
tions. The six verses after 166 efface the delightful
impression we had just received.
At one slight bound high overleapt all bound.
Such a play on words, so grave a pun, is
unpardonable ; and such a prodigious leap is ill
represented by the feat of a wolf in a sheepfold ;
and still worse by
A thief bent to unhoard the cash
Of some rich burgher, whose substantial doors,
Cross-barr'd and bolted fast, fear no assault,
In at the window climbs, or o'er the tiles.
Landor. This " in at the window" is very un-
like the " bound high above all bound :" and
climbing " o'er the tiles" is the practice of a more
deliberate burglar.
So since into his church lewd hirelings climb.
I must leave the lewd hirelings where I find
them ; they are too many for me. I would gladly
have seen omitted all between v. 160 and 205.
Southey.
Betwixt them lawns or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb.
There had not yet been time for flocks, or even
for one flock.
Landor. At two hundred and ninety-seven
commences a series of verses so harmonious, that
my ear is impatient of any other poetry for seve-
ral days after I have read them. I mean those
which begin,
For contemplation he and valour formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive grace,
and ending with,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay.
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Southey. Here indeed is the triumph of our
language, and I should say of our poetry, if, in
your preference of Shakspeare, you could endure
my saying it. But, since we seek faults rather
than beauties this morning, tell me whether you
are quite contented with,
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore,
Dishevel'd, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils ; which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle iteay,
And by her yielded, by him bett received.
Landor. Stopping there, you break the link
of harmony just above the richest jewel that
Poetry ever wore :
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous, delay.
I would rather have written these two lines
than all the poetry that has been written since
Milton's time in all the regions of the earth.
We shall see again things equal in their way to
the best of them : but here the sweetest of images
and sentiments is seized and carried far away
from all pursuers. Never tell me, what I think
is already on your lips, that the golden tresses in
their wanton ringlets implied nothing like sub-
jection. Take away, if you will,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
and all until you come to,
Under a tuft of shade.
Southey. In verse 388 I wish he had employed
some other epithet for innocence than harmless.
Verses 620 and 621 might be spared.
While other animals inactive range,
And of their doings God takes no account.
V. 660. Daughter of God and man, accomplisht Eve !
Surely she was not daughter of man : and of
all the words that Milton has used in poetry or
prose, this accomplisht is the worst. In his time
it had already begun to be understood in the
sense it bears at present.
Verse 674. "These, then, tho'" . . harsh
sounds so near together.
V. 700.
Motaic ; underfoot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone
Of costliest emblem.
The broidery and mosaic should not be set quite
so closely and distinctly before our eyes. I think
the passage might be much improved by a few
defalcations. Let me read it :
The roof
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade,
Laurel and myrtle, and what higher grew
Of firm and fragrant leaf ; the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth.
I dare not handle the embroidery. Is not this
sufficiently verbose ?
Landor. Quite.
Southey. Yet, if you look into your book again,
you will find a gap as wide as the bank on either
side of it :
On either side
Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub
Fenced up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, roses and jessamin
Reared high tbeirjlourished heads between, and wrought
Motaic.
He had before told us that there was every tree
of fragrant leaf: we wanted not " each odorous
shrub ;" nor can we imagine how it fenced up a
verdant wall : it constituted one itself; one very
unlike anything else in Paradise, and more re-
sembling the topiary artifices which had begun
to flourish in France. Here is indeed an exu-
berance, and " a wanton growth that mocks our
scant manuring."
In shadier bower
More sacred and sequestered, though but/eign'd,
Pan or Sylvanus never slept. V. 705.
He takes especial heed to guard us against the
snares of Paganism, at the expense of his poetry.
In Italian books, as you remember, where Fate,
Fortune, Pan, Apollo, or any mythological per-
sonage is named incidentally, notice is given at
the beginning that no harm is intended thereby
to the Holy Catholic-Apostolic religion. But
harm is done on this occasion, where it is intended
just as little.
On him who had stole Jove's authentic fire.
This is a very weak and unsatisfactory verse.
By one letter it may be much improved . . stolen,
which also has the advantage of rendering it
grammatical. The word who coalesces with Imd.
Of such coalescences the poetry of Milton is full.
In five consecutive lines you find three.
Thee only extolled, son of thy father's might
To execute his vengeance on his foes,
Not so on man ; him through their malice fallen.
Father of mercy and grace thou didst not doom
So strictly, but much more to pity inclined.
V. 722.
The God that made loth sky, air, earth, and heaven.
Both must signify two things or persons, and
never can signify more.
From v. 735 I would willingly see all removed
until we come to,
Hail wedded love !
After these eight I would reject thirteen.
In v. 73 and 74 there is an unfortunate recur-
rence of sound :
The flowery roof
Showered roses which the morn repaired. Sleep on
Blest pair!
and somewhat worse in the continuation,
And O yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
Five similar sounds in ten syllables, beside the
affectation of " know to know."
V. 780. To their night watches in warlike parade.
Is not only a slippery verse in the place where
it stands, but is really a verse of quite another
metre. And I question whether you are better
satisfied with the word parade.
V. 813. As when a spark
Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, lni<l
Fit for the tun, tome magazine to ttore
Against a rumoured war.
Its fitness for the tun and its convenience for
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
65
the magazine, adapt it none the better to poetry.
Would there be any detriment to the harmony or
the expression if we skip over that verse, reading,
Stored
Against a rumoured war ?
Landor. No harm to either. The verses 333 and
334 1 perceive have the same cesura, and precisely
that which rhyme chooses in preference, and Mil-
ton in his blank verse admits the least frequently.
A faithful leader, not to hazard all,
Through ways of danger by himself untrjed.
Presently what a flagellation he inflicts on the
traitor Monk !
To say and straight unsay, pretending first
Wise to fly pain, professing next the spy,
Argues no leader, but a liar traced.
When he loses his temper he loses his poetry,
in this place and most others. But such coarse
hemp and wire were well adapted to the stript
shoulders they scourged.
Satan ! and couldst thou fa/tlifitl add ? O name !
O sacred name of faithfulness profaned !
Faithful ! to whom ? to thy rebellious crew ?
Army of fiends, fit body to fit head,
Was this your discipline and faith engaged ?
Your military obedience, to dissolve
Allegiance to the acknowledged Power supreme ?
And thou, sly hypocrite, who now wouldst seem
Patron of liberty, who more than thou
Once fawned and cringed ?
You noticed the rhyme of supreme and seem.
Great heed should be taken against this grievous
fault, not only in the final syllables of blank verse,
but also in the cesuras. In our blank verse it is
less tolerable than in the Latin heroic, where Ovid
and Lucretius, and Virgil himself, are not quite
exempt from it.
Southey. It is very amusing to read Johnson
for his notions of harmony. He quotes these
exquisite verses, and says, " There are two lines
in this passage more remarkably inharmonious."
This delicious place,
For us too large, where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncropt/aW.« to the ground.
There are few so dull as to be incapable of per-
ceiving the beauty of the rhythm in the last.
Johnson goes out of his way to censure the best
thought and the best verse in Cowley.
And the soft wings of Peace cover him round.
Certainly it is not iambic where he wishes it to
be. Milton, like the Italian poets, was rather too
fond of this cadence, but in the instances which
Johnson has pointed out for reprobation, it pro-
duces a fine effect. So in the verse,
Not Typhon huge, ending in smoky wire.
It does the same in Samson Agonistes :
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place, to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind.
Johnson tells us that the third and seventh are
weak syllables, and that the period leaves the ear
unsatisfied. Milton's ear happened to be satisfied
by these pauses ; and so will any ear be that is
not (or was not intended by nature to be) nine
fair inches long. Johnson is sensible of the
harmony which is produced by the pause on
the sixth syllable; but commends it for no better
reason than because it forms a complete verse of
itself. There can be no better reason against it.
In regard to the pause at the third syllable,
it is very singular and remarkable that Milton
never has paused for three lines together on any
other. In the 327th, 328th, and 329th of Paradise
Lost are these.
His swift pursuers from heaven's gates pursue
The advantage, and descending tread us down,
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Another, whose name I have forgotten, has
censured in like manner the defection and falling
off in the seventh syllable of that very verse, which
I remember your quoting as among the innume-
rable proofs of the poet's exquisite sensibility and
judgment,
And toward the gate rotting her bestial train,
where another would have written
And rolling toward the gate, &c.
On the same occasion you praised Thomson
very highly for having once written a most admir-
able verse where an ordinary one was obvious.
And tremble every feather with desire.
Pope would certainly have preferred
And every feather trembles with desire.
So would Dryden probably. Johnson, who cen-
sures some of the most beautiful lines in Milton,
praises one in Virgil with as little judgment. He
says, " We hear the passing arrow "
Et fugit Uorrendiim ttridens elapsa sagitta.
Now there never was an arrow in the world that
made a horrible stridor in its course. The only
sound is a very slight one occasioned by the
feather. Homer would never have fallen into
such an incongruity.
How magnificent is the close of this fourth
book, from,
Then when I am thy captive.
Landor. I do not agree to the use of golden
scales, not figurative but real jewellers' gold, for
weighing events,
Battles and realms. In these he put two weights,
The sequel each of parting and of fight ;
The latter quick up-flew and kicked the beam.
To pass over the slighter objection of quick and
kick as displeasing to the ear, the vulgarity of
kicking the beam is intolerable : he might as well,
among his angels, and among sights and sounds
befitting them, talk of kicking the bucket. Here
again he pays a penalty for trespassing.
Southey. I doubt whether (Fifth Book) there ever
was a poet in a warm or temperate climate, who at
some time or other of his life has not written
about the nightingale. But no one rivals or
approaches Milton in his fondness or his success.
However, at the beginning of this book, in a pas-
sage full of beauty, there are two expressions, and
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
66
the first of them relates to the nightingale, which
I disapprove.
Tunes sweetest hi* love-laboured iong. V. 41.
In low-laboured, the ear is gained over by the
sweetness of the sound : but in the nightingale's
song there is neither the reality nor the appear-
ance of labour.
Sett off the face of things. V. 43,
is worthier of Addison than of Milton.
But know that in the soul, &c. V. 100.
This philosophy on dreams, expounded by Adam,
could never have been hitherto the fruit of his
experience or his reflection.
Landor.
These are thy glorious works, &o. V. 152.
Who could imagine that Milton, who translated
the Psalms worse than any man ever translated
them before or since, should in this glorious
hymn have made the 148th so much better than
the original1? But there is a wide difference
between being bound to the wheels of a chariot
and guiding it. He has ennobled that more noble
one,
O all ye works of the Lord, &c.
But in
Ye mists and exhalations that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, &c.
Such a verse might be well ejected from any
poem whatsoever : but here its prettiness is quite
insufferable. Adam never knew anything either
of paint or gold. But, casting out this devil of a
verse, surely so beautiful a psalm or hymn never
rose to the Creator.
Southey. " No fear lest dinner cool," v. 396,
might as well never have been thought of : ii
seems a little too jocose. The speech of Raphael
to Adam, on the subject of eating and drinking
and the consequences, is neither angelic nor
poetical : but the Sun supping with the Ocean is
at least Anacreontic, and not very much debased
by Cowley.
So down they tat
And to their viands fell.
Landor.
Meanwhile the eternal eye, whose sight discerns
Abstrusest thoughts, from forth his holy mount
And from within the golden lamps that burn
Nightly before him, saw without their light
Rebellion rising, &e.
And smiling to his only son thus said, &c. V. 7H.
Bentley, and several such critics of poetry, are
sadly puzzled, perplexed, and irritated at this
One would take refuge with the first grammar h
can lay hold on, and cry pars pro toto : anothe
strives hard for another suggestion. But if Mi]
ton by accident had written both Eternal and Ey
with a capital letter at the beginning, they woulc
have perceived that he had used a noble and sub
lime expression for the Deity. No one is offendec
at the words. "It is the will of Providence," or, " 1
is the will of the Almighty;" yet Providence is tha
which sees before; and uritt is different from migh
True it is that Providence and Almighty ar
ualities converted into appellations, and are well
nown to signify the Supreme Being : but, if the
Eternal Eye is less well known to signify him, or
ot known at all, that is no reason why it should
e thought inapplicable. It might be used inju-
iciously: for instance, the right Jiand of the
Eternal Eye would be singularly so ; but smiles
iot. The Eternal Eye speaks to his only Son.
-his is more incomprehensible to the critics than
he preceding. And truly if that eye were like
urs, and the organ of speech like ours also, it
might be strange. Yet the very same good people
lave often heard without wonder of a speaking
ye in a very ordinary person, and are conversant
with poets who precede an expostulation, or an
ntreaty for a reply, with " Lux mea." There is
much greater fault, which none of them has
bserved, in the beginning of the speech.
Son ! thou in whom my glory I behold
In full resplendence ! heir of all my might.
an heir is the future and not the present
)ossessor ; and he to whom he is heir must be
ixtinct before he comes into possession. But this
s nothing if you compare it with what follows, a
ew lines below :
Let us advise and to this hazard draw
With speed what force is left, and all employ
In our defence, lett unaware! we lote
Thil our high place, our tanctuary, our hill.
Such expressions of derision are very ill applied,
and derogate much from the majesty of the
Father. We may well imagine that far different
thoughts occupied the Divine Mind at the defec-
tion of innumerable angels, and their inevitable
and everlasting punishment.
Southey. The critics do not agree on the mean-
ing of the words,
Much less for thit to be our Lord. V. 799.
Nothing I think can be clearer, even without the
explanation which is given by Abdiel in v. 813 :
Canst thou with impious obloquy condemn
The just decree of God, pronounced and sworn
That to hit only Son, by right endued
With royal sceptre, every soul in heaven
Shall bend the knee 9
V. 860. There are those who can not understand
the plainest things, yet who can admire every
fault that any clever man has committed before.
Thus, beseeching or besieging, spoken by an angel,
is thought proper, and perhaps beautiful, because
a quibbler in a Latin comedy says, amentiun haud
amantium. It appears then on record that the
first overt crime of the refractory angels was pun-
ning : they fell rapidly after that.
Landor.
These tiding* carry to the anointed king} V. 870.
Whatever anointing the kings of the earth may
have undergone, the King of Heaven had no oc-
casion for it. Who anointed him 1 When did
his reign commence 1
Through the infinite hott. V. 874.
Although our poet would have made no difficulty
of accenting " infinite" as we do, and as he himself
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
has done in other places, I am inclined to think
that the accent is here on the second syllable. He
does not always accentuate the same word in the
same place. In v. 889 Bentley and the rest are in
a bustle about,
Well didst thou advite ;
Yet not for thy advice or threats 1 fly
These wicked hosts devoted, lest the wrath, $c.
One suggests one thing, another another ; but
nothing is more simple and easy than the con-
struction, if you put a portion of the second verse
in a parenthesis, thus,
Yet (not for thy advice or threats), &c.
Southey. The archangel Michael is commanded
(Book vi., v. 44,) to do what the Almighty, who
commands it, gave him not strength to do, as we
find in the sequel, and what was reserved for the
prowess of the Messiah.
Landor. V. 115. " Whose faith and realty,"
&c. Bentley, more unlucky than ever, here would
substitute fealty, as if there were any difference
between fealty a,nd faith : reale arid leale are the
same in Italian.
Southey.
Before thy fellows, ambitious to win, &c. V. 160.
Surely this line is a very feeble one, and where so
low a tone is not requisite for the harmony or
effect of the period. But the battle of Satan and
Michael is worth all the battles in all other poets.
I wish however I had not found
A stream of ncctarous humour issuing.
The ichor of Homer has lost its virtue by exposure
and application to ordinary use. Yet even this
would have been better :
Forthwith on all sides to his aid teas run
By angels.
This Latinism is inadmissible ; there is no loop-
hole in our language for its reception. He once
uses the same form in his History. " Now was
fought eagerly on both sides." Even here the
word it should have preceded : and the phrase
would still remain a stiff intractable Latinism. In
the remainder of this book there are much graver
faults, amid highest beauty. Surely it was un-
worthy of Milton to follow Ariosto, and Spenser,
and many others, in dragging up his cannon from
hell, although it is not, as in the Faery Queen,
represented to us distinctly,
Ram'd with bullets round.
Landor. I wish he had omitted all from
v. 483.
Which into hollow engines, long and round
Thick ramm'd at the other bore,
down to 525 : and again from 545, " barbed with
fire," to v. 627, where the wit, which Milton calls
the pleasant vein, is worthy of newly-made devils
who never had heard any before, and falls as foul
on the poetry as on the antagonist.
Their armour helpt their harm.
Here helpt means increased. A few lines above,
we find " Light as the lightning glimpse." We
should have quite enough of this description if
at v. 628 we substituted but for so, and continued
to v. 644, " They pluckt the seated hills," skip-
ping over all until we reach 654,
Which in the air, &c.
Southey. I think I would go much farther, and
make larger defalcations. I would lop off the
whole from " Spirits of purest light," v. 661, to
831; then (for He) reading " God on his impious
foes," as far as 843, " his ire." Again, omitting
nine verses, to "yet half his strength." The 866th
line is not a verse : it is turned out of an Italian
mould, but in a state too fluid and incohesive to
stand in English. This book should close with,
Hell at last
Yearning received them whole, and on them closed.
Landor. The poem would indeed be much
the better for all the omissions you propose ; if
you could anywhere find room for those verses
which begin at the 760th, " He in celestial pano-
ply," and end with that sublime,
He onward came : far off his coming shone.
The remainder, both for the subject and the
treatment of it, may be given up without a regret.
The last verse of the book falls " succiso
poplite,"
Remember ; and fear to transgress.
Beautiful as are many parts of the Invocation at
the commencement of the Seventh Book, I should
more gladly have seen it without the first forty
lines, and beginning,
The affable archangel.
Southey.
But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite.
He might have ended here : he goes on thus :
To know
In measure what the mind may well contain.
Even this does not satisfy him : he adds,
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.
Now certainly Adam could never yet have known
anything about the meaning of surfeit, and we
may suspect that the angel himself must have
been just as ignorant on a section of physics
which never had existed in the world below, and
must have been without analogy in the world
above.
Landor. His supper with Adam was unlikely
to produce a surfeit.
At least our envious foe hath fail'd. V. 139.
There is no meaning in at least ; " at last" would
be little better. I would not be captious nor irre-
verent ; but surely the words which Milton gives as
spoken by the Father to the Son, bear the appear-
ance of boastfulness and absurdity. The Son must
already have known both the potency and will
of the Father. How incomparably more judicious,
after five terrific verses, comes at once, without
any intervention,
Silence, ye troubled waves : and thou, deep, peace.
If we can imagine any thought or expression at
all worthy of the Deity, we find it here. In
F2
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
68
v. 242 we have another specimen of Milton's con-
summate art :
And earth, self-balanced, on her centre hung.
Unhappily he permitted his learning to render
him verbose immediately after :
Let there be light, said God, and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep.
The intermediate verse is useless and injurious ;
beside, according to his own account, light was
not " first of things." He represents it springing
from " the deep " after the earth had " hung on
her centre," and long after the waters had been
apparent. We do not want philosophy in the
poem, we only want consistency.
Southey. There is no part of Milton's poetry
where harmony is preserved, together with con-
ciseness, so remarkably as in the verses beginning
with 312, and ending at 338 : but in the midst of
this beautiful description of the young earth, we
find
The bush with frizzled hair implicit.
But what poet or painter ever in an equal degree
has raised our admiration of beasts, fowls, and
fish ? I know you have objected to the repetition
of shoal in the word scull.
Landor. Shoal is a corruption of scull, which
ought to be restored, serving the other with an
ejectment to another place. Nor do I like fry.
But the birds never looked so beautiful since
they left Paradise. Let me read however three
or four verses in order to offer a remark.
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast : the swan with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet, yet oft they quit
The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower, &c.
Frequently as the great poet pauses at the ninth
syllable, it is incredible that he should have done
it thrice in the space of five verses. For which
reason, and as nothing is to be lost by it, I would
place the comma after mantling. No word in the
whole compass of our language has been so often
ill applied or misunderstood by the poet as this.
Southey.
Speed to describe whose swiftness number fails.
Book 8, v. 38.
Adam could have had no notion of swiftness
in the heavenly bodies or the earth : it is among
the latest and most wonderful of discoveries.
Landor. Let us rise to Eve, and throw aside
our algebra. The great poet is always greatest at
this beatific vision. I wish however he had
omitted the 46th and 47th verses, and also the
60th, 61st, 62nd, and 63d. There is a beautiful
irregularity in the 62d,
And from about her shot darts of desire
But when he adds, "Into all eyes," as there
were but four, we must except the angel's two
the angel had no occasion for wishing to see
what he was seeing.
He his fabric of the heavens
Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move
His laughter.
I can not well entertain this opinion of the Crea-
tor's risible faculties and propensities. Milton
icre carries his anthropomorphism much farther
han the poem (which needed a good deal of it)
required.
Southey. I am sorry to find a verse of twelve
syllables in 216. I mean to say where no sylla-
)les coalesce ; in which case there are several
which contain that number unobjectionably.
Landor. In my opinion a greater fault is to be
bund in the passage beginning at 286.
There gentle sleep
First found me, and with soft oppression seiz'd
My drowsied sense, untroubled, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state,
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve.
flow could he think he was passing into a state
of which, at that time, he knew nothing]
Daughter of God and man, immortal Eve ! V. 291.
Magnificent verse, and worthy of Milton in his
own person : but Adam, in calling her thus, is
somewhat too poetical, and too presumptuous :
for what else does he call her, but " daughter of
God and me V Now, the idea of daughter could
never, by any possibility, have yet entered his
mind.
Affront* ns with his foul esteem
Of our integrity : his foul esteem
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns
Foul on himself. A*. 328.
The word affront is to be taken in its plain
English sense, not in its Italian : but what a
jingle and clash and clumsy play of words ! In
v. 353, I find, " But bid her well be ware," and
be ware is very properly in two words : so should
be gone, and can not.
To the garden of bliss, thy seat prepared. V. 299.
This verse is too slippery, too Italian.
What thinkest thou then of me and this my state?
Seem I to thee sufficiently possest
Of happiness or not, who am alone
From all eternity ; for none I know
Second to me or like, equal much less. V. 403.
This comes with an ill grace, after the long con-
sultation which the Father had holden with the
Son, equal (we are taught to believe) in the god-
head.
Southey.
And through all numbers absolute, though one. V. 421.
I wish he had had the courage to resist this
pedantic quibbling Latinism. Our language has
never admitted the phrase, and never will admit it.
Landor. I have struck it out, you see, and
torn the paper in doing so. In verse 576,
Made so adorn, &c.
I regret that we have lost this beautiful adjec-
tive, which was well worth bringing from Italy.
Here follows some very bad reasoning on love,
which (being human love) the angel could know
nothing about, and speaks accordingly. He adds,
In loving thou dost well, in passion not.
Now love, to be perfect, should consist of passion
and sentiment, in parts as nearly equal as possi-
ble, with somewhat of the material to second them.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
Southey. We are come to the Ninth Book, from
which I would cast away the first forty-seven
verses.
Landor. Judiciously. In the eighty-first you
will find a verb singular for two substantives,
" the land where flows Ganges and Indus." The
small fry will carp at this, which is often an ele-
gance, but oftener in Greek than in Latin, in Latin
than in French, in French than in English.
Here follow some of the dullest lines in Milton.
Him, after long debate irresolute
Of thoughts resolved, his final sentence chose
Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom
To enter, and his dark suggestion hide
From sharpest sight : for in the wily snake
Whatever sleights, none would suspicions mark,
As from his wit and native subtilty
Proceeding, which in other beasts observed,
Doubt might beget of diabolic power
Active within, beyond the sense of brute.
Not to insist on the prosaic of the passage, we
may inquire who could be suspicious, or who
could know anything about his wit and subtilty 1
He had been created but a few days, and proba-
bly no creature, (brute, human, or angelic,) had
ever taken the least notice of him, or heard any-
thing of his propensities. "Diabolic power" had
taken no such direction : and the serpent was so
obscure a brute, that the devil himself knew
scarcely where to find him. When however he
did find him,
In labyrinth of many a round self-rolled,
His head the midst, well stored with subtile wiles,
he made the most of him. But why had he
hitherto borne so bad a character? Who had
ever yet been a sufferer by his wit and subtilty ]
In the very next verses, the poet says he was
Not nocent yet ; but on the grassy herb
Fearless, unfear'd, he slept.
Southey. These are the contradictions of a
dreamer. Horace has said of Homer, " aliquando
bonus dormitat." This really is no napping ; it
is heavy snoring. But how fresh and vigorous he
rises the next moment. And we are carried by
him, we know not how, into the presence of Eve,
and help her to hold down the strong and strug-
gling woodbine for the arbour. I wish Milton
had forgotten the manner of Euripides in his dull
reflections, and had not forced into Adam's
mouth,
For nothing lovelier can be found
In woman than to ttudy household good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
All this is very true, but very tedious, and very
out of place.
Landor. Let us come into the open air again
with her. I wish she had not confessed such a
predilection for,
The smell of sweetest fennel, V. 581 ;
for although it is said to be very pleasant to ser-
pents, no serpent had yet communicated any of
his tastes to womankind. Again, I suspect you
would wish our good Milton a little farther from
the schools, when he tells Eve that
The wife, where danger or dishonour lurks,
Safest and seemliest by her husband stays,
Who guards her, or with her the worst endures.
But how fully and nobly he compensates the in-
appropriate thought by the most appropriate !
Just then return'd at $Uut of evening flower t.
Southey.
To whom the wily adder, blythe and glad. V. 625.
I strongly object to the word adder, which reduces
the grand serpent to very small dimensions. It
never is, or has been, applied to any other species
than the little ugly venomous viper of our country.
Of such a reptile it never could be said that,
He swiftly roll'd
In tangles,
Nor that
Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest.
Here again Homer would have run into no such
error. But error is more pardonable than wan-
tonness, such as he commits in verse 648.
Fruitless to me, though fruit be here to excess.
Landor. You have often, no doubt, repeated in
writing a word you had written just before. Milton
has done it inadvertently in
While each part,
Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue, &c. V.674.
Evidently each should be and. Looking at the
tempter in the shape of an adder, as he is last
represented to us, there is something which pre-
pares for a smile on the face of Eve, when he says,
Look on me,
Me, who have touch t and tasted, yet both live
And life more perfect have attained than fate
Meant me.
Now certainly the adder was the most hideous
creature that ever had crossed her path, and she
had no means of knowing, unless by taking his
own word for it, that he was a bit wiser than the
rest. Indeed she had heard the voices of many
long before she had heard his, and as they all ex-
celled him in stateliness, she might well imagine
they were by no means inferior to him in intel-
lect, and were more likely by their conforma-
tion to have reached and eaten the apple, although
they held their tongues. In verse 781,
She pluckt, she eat.
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her teat, &c.
Surely he never wrote eat for ate; nor would he
admit a rhyme where he could at least palliate it.
But although we met together for the purpose of
plucking out the weeds and briars of this bound-
less and most glorious garden, and not of over-
lauding the praises of others, we must admire the
wonderful skill of Milton in this section of his
work. He represents Eve as beginning to be
deceitful and audacious; as ceasing to fear, and
almost as ceasing to reverence the Creator ; and
shuddering not at extinction itself, until she
thinks
Of Adam wedded to another Eve.
Southey. We shall lose our dinner, our supper,
70
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and our sleep, if we expatiate on the innumerable
beauties of the volume : we have scarcely time
to note the blemishes. Among these,
In her face excuse
Came prologue and apology less prompt
There is a levity and impropriety in thus rushing
on the stage. I think the w. 957, 958, and 959,
superfluous, and somewhat dull ; beside that
they are the repetition of 915 and 916, in his
soliloquy.
Landor. I wish that after 1003,
Wept at completing of the mortal sin,
every verse were omitted, until we reach the
1821st.
They sat them down to weep.
A very natural sequence. We should indeed lose
some fine poetry; in which however there are
passages which even the sanctitude of Milton is
inadequate to veil decorously. At all events, we
should get fairly rid of " Herculean Sampson."
V. 1060.
Southey. But you would also lose such a flood
of harmony as never ran on earth beyond that
Paradise. I mean,
How shall I behold the face
Henceforth of God or angel, erst with joy
And rapture so oft beheld ? Those heavenly shapes
Will dazzle now this earthly with their blaze,
Insufferably bright O ! might I here
In solitude live savage ! in some glade
Obscured, where highest woods, impenetrable
To star or sunlight, spread their umbrage broad
And brown as evening. Cover me, ye pines,
Ye cedars, with innumerable boughs,
Hide me, where I may never see them more.
Landor. Certainly, when we read these verses,
the ear is closed against all others, for the day, or
even longer. It sometimes is a matter of amuse-
ment to hear the sillinesses of good men con-
versing on poetry ; but when they lift up some
favourite on their shoulders, and tell us to look
at one equal in height to Milton, I feel strongly
inclined to scourge the more prominent fool of the
two, the moment I can discover which it is.
Southey.
Long they sat, as ttrucken mute. V. 104.
Stillingfleet says, " This vulgar expression may
owe its origin to the stories in romances, of the
effect of the magical wand." Nothing more likely.
How many modes of speech are called vulgar, in
a contemptuous sense, which, because of their
propriety and aptitude, strike the senses of all
who hear them, and remain in the memory
during the whole existence of the language. This
is one, and although of daily parlance, it is
highly poetical, and among the few flowers of
romance that retain their freshness and odour.
Landor.
For what can 'scape the eye, &c. Book 10, v. 5.
When we find in Milton such words as 'scape,
'sdain, &c., with the sign of elision in front of
them, we may attribute such a sign to the wilful-
ness of the printer, and the indifference of the
author in regard to its correction. He wrote
both words without it, from the Italian scappare
and sdegnare. In v. 19,
Made baste to make appear,
is negligence or worse : but incomparably worse
still is,
And usher in
The evening cool, when he from wrath more cool. V. 95.
Southey. In 120, he writes revile (a substan-
tive) for rebuke. In 100 and 131 are two verses
of similar pauses in the same place.
I should conceal, and not expose to blame
By my complaint
The worst of it is, that the words become a verse,
and a less heavy one, by tagging the two pieces
together.
And not expose to blame by my complaint.
I agree with you that, in blank verse, the pause,
after the fourth syllable, which Pope and Johnson
seem to like the best, is very tiresome if often
repeated ; and Milton seldom falls into it. But
he knew where to employ it with effect : for ex-
ample, in this sharp reproof, twice over. Verses
143 and 146.
Was she thy God, that her thou didst obey
Before his voice ?
In v. 155 he represents the Almighty using a
most unseemly metaphor.
Which was thy part
And person.
A metaphor taken from the masks of the ancient
stage certainly ill suits " His part and person."
Landor. Here are seven (v. 175) such vile
verses, and forming so vile a sentence, that, it
appears to me, a part of God's malediction must
have fallen on them on their way from Genesis.
In 195, he says,
Children thou shall bring
In sorrow forth, and to thy husband's will
Thine shall submit : he over thee shall rule.
The Deity had commanded the latter part from
the beginning : it now comes as the completion
of the curse.
V. 198 is no verse at all.
Because thou hast barkened to the voice of thy wife.
There are very few who have not done this, bon-
gr6 mal-gre, and many have thought it curse
enough of itself; poor Milton, no doubt, among
the rest.
> Southey. I suspect you will abate a little of
your hilarity, if you continue to read from v. 220
about a dozen : they are most oppressive.
I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way thou leading.
Such is the punctuation; wrong, I think. I
would read,
I shall not lag behind nor err,
The way thou leading.
Landor. He was very fond of this Latinism : but
to err a way is neither Latin idiom nor English.
From 292 to 316, what a series of verses ! a struc-
ture more magnificent and wonderful than the
terrific bridge itself, the construction of which
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
71
required the united work of the two great van-
quishers of all mankind.
Southey. Pity that he could not abstain from a
pun at the bridge-foot, " by wondrous art ponti-
fical." In v. 348 he recurs to the word pontifice.
A few lines above, I mean v. 315, there must be
a parenthesis. The verses are printed,
Following the track
Of Satan to the self-same place where he
First lighted from his wing and landed safe
From out of chaos, to the outside bare
Of this round world.
I would place all the words after "Satan,"
including chaos, in a parenthesis ; else we must
alter the second to for on ; and it is safer and
more reverential to correct the punctuation of a
great poet than the slightest word. Bentley is
much addicted to this impertinence.
Landor. In his emendations, as he calls them,
both of Milton and of Horace, for one happy
conjecture, he makes at least twenty wrong, and
ten ridiculous. In the Greek poets, and some-
times in Terence, he, beyond the rest of the pack,
was often brought into the trail by scenting an
unsoundness in the metre. But let me praise him
where few think of praising him, or even of sus-
pecting his superiority. He wrote better English
than his adversary Middleton, and established for
his university that supremacy in classical litera-
ture which it still retains.
In v. 369 I find, " Thou us empowered." This is
ungrammatical : it should be empowered^, since
it relates to time past : had it related to time
present, it would still be wrong ; it should then
be empowered. I wonder that Bentley has not
remarked this, for it lay within his competence.
Southey. That is no reason why he omitted to
remark it. I like plain English so much that I
can not refrain from censuring the phraseology of
v. 345, " With joy and tidings fraught," meaning
joyful tidings, and defended by Virgil's munera
Icetitiamque dei. Phrases are not good, whether
in Latin or English, which do not convey their
meaning unbroken and unobstructed. The best
understanding would with difficulty master such
expressions, of which the signification is tradi-
tional from the grammarians, but beyond the
bounds of logic, or even the liberties of speech.
You, who have ridiculed Virgil's odor attulit
auras, and many similar foolish tricks committed
by him, will pardon my animadversion on a
smaller (though no small) fault in Milton.
Landor. Right. Again I go forward to punc-
tuation. Bentley is puzzled again at v. 368. It
is printed with the following :
Thou hast achieved our liberty, confined
Within hell-gates till now ; thou us empower'd
To fortify thus far, and overlay
With this portentous bridge, the dark abyss.
The punctuation should be,
Thou hast achieved our liberty : confined
Within hell.gates till now, thou us empoweredst, &c.
I wonder that Milton should a second time
have committed so grave a grammatical fault as
he does in writing " thou empowered," instead
of empoweredst Ver. 380,
Parted by the empyreal bounds,
His quadrature, from thy orbicular world.
Again the schoolmen, and the crazy philosophers
who followed them. It was believed that the
empyrean is a quadrangle, because in the Revela-
tions the Holy City is square. It is lamentable
that Milton should throw overboard such pro-
digious stores of poetry and wisdom, and hug
with such pertinacity the ill-tied bladders of crude
learning. But see him here again in all his glory.
I wish indeed he had rejected "the plebeian
angel militant," and that we might read, missing
four verses,
He through the midst unmaskt
Ascended his high throne.
What noble verses, fifteen together !
Southey. It is much to be regretted that most
of the worst verses and much of the foulest lan-
guage are put into the mouth of the Almighty.
For instance, v. 630, &c. I am afraid you will be
less tolerant here than you were about the qua-
drature.
My hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth . . .
. . till crammed and gorged, nigh burst . .
With suckt and glutted offal.
We are come
To the other five,
Their planetary motions and aspects,
In sextile, square, and trine, and opposite ....
Like change on sea and land ; sideral blast. V. 693.
Although he is partial to this scansion, I am
inclined to believe that here he wrote sidereal;
because the same scansion as sideral recurs in
the close of the verse next but one :
Now from the north.
And, if it is not too presumptuous, I should
express a doubt whether the poet wrote
Is his wrath also ? Be it : man is not so.
Not so and also, in this position are disagree-
able to the ear ; which might have been avoided
by omitting the unnecessary so at the close.
Landor. You are correct. "Ay me." So I find
it spelt (v. 813), not ah me! as usually. It is
wonderful that, of all things borrowed, we should
borrow the expression of grief. One would natu-
rally think that every nation had its own, and
indeed every man his. Ay me! is the a/time / of
the Italians. Alii lasso! is also theirs. Our
gadso, less poetical and sentimental, comes also
from them : we need not look for the root.
Southey. Again I would curtail a long and
somewhat foul excrescence, terminating with
coarse invectives against the female sex, and with
reflections more suitable to the character and
experience of Milton than of Adam. I would
insert my pruning-knife at v. 871,
To warn all creatures from thee . .
and cut clean through, quite to " household peace
confound," v. 908.
72
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Landor. The reply of Eve is exquisitely beau-
tiful, especially
Both have sinned, but thou
Against God only, I against God and thee.
At last her voice fails her,
Me, me only, just object of his ire.
Bentley, and thousands more, would read, " Me,
only me !" But Milton did not write for Bentley,
nor for those thousands more. Similar, in the
trepidation of grief, is Virgil's, " Me, me, adsum
qui feci," &c.
Why stand we longer shivering under fears,
That show no end but death, and have the power
Of many ways to die the shortest choosing,
Destruction with destruction to destroy. V. 1003, &c.
This punctuation is perhaps the best yet pub-
lished : but, after all, it renders the sentence little
better than nonsense. Eve, according to this,
talks at once of hesitation and of choice, " shiver-
ing under fears," and both of them " choosing the
shortest way," yet she expostulates with Adam
why he is not ready to make the choice. The
perplexity would be solved by writing thus :
Why stand we longer shivering under fears
That show no end but death ? and have the power
Of many ways to die ! the shortest choose . .
Destruction with destruction to destroy.
If we persist in retaining the participle choos-
ing, instead of the imperative choose, grammar,
sense, and spirit, all escape us. I am convinced
that it was an oversight of the transcriber : and
we know how easily, in our own works, faults to
which the eye and ear are accustomed, escape our
detection, and we are surprised when they are
first pointed out to us.
Soufhey. I wish you could mend as easily,
On me the curse aslope
Glanced on the ground : with labour I must earn, &c.
V. 1053.
Landor. In the very first verse of the Eleventh
Book, Milton is resolved to display his knowledge
of the Italian idiom. We left Adam and Eve pros-
trate; and prostrate he means that they should
still appear to us, although he writes,
Thus they, in loneliest plight, repentant ttood
(Praying.
Stavano pregando would signify they continued
praying. The Spaniards have the same expres-
sion : the French, who never stand still on any
occasion, are without it.
Southey. It is piteous that Milton, in all his
strength, is forced to fall back on the old fable of
Deucalion and Pyrrha. And the prayers which
the son of God presents to the Father in a " golden
censer, mixed with incense," had never yet been
offered to the Mediator, and required no such
accompaniment or conveyance. There are some
noble lines beginning at 72 ; but one of them is
prosaic in itself, and its discord is profitless to the
others. In v. 86,
Of that defended fruit.
I must remark that Milton is not quite exempt
from the evil spirit of saying things for the mere
pleasure of defending them. Chaucer used the
word defend as the English of education then
used it, in common with the French. It was
obsolete in that sense when Milton wrote ; so it
was even in the age of Spenser, who is forced to
imploy it for the rhyme.
Landor. This evil spirit which you find hang-
ing about Milton, fell on him from two school-
rooms, both of which are now become much less
noisy and somewhat more instructive, although
Phillpots is in the one, and although Brougham
is in the other; I mean the school-rooms of
theology and criticism.
Southey. You will be glad that he accents con-
trite (v. 90) on the last syllable, but the gladness
will cease at the first of receptacle, v. 123.
Landor. I question whether he pronounced
it so. My opinion is, that he pronounced it
•eceptade, Latinizing as usual, and especially in
B. 8, v. 574,
By attributing overmuch to things, &c.
We are strange perverters of Latin accentu-
ations. From imto we make Irritate; from
exato, excite. But it must be conceded that the
latter is much for the better, and perhaps the
former also. You will puzzle many good Latin
scholars in England, and nearly all abroad, if you
make them read any sentence containing irrito or
excito in any of their tenses. I have often tried
it ; and nearly all, excepting the Italians, have
pronounced both words wrong.
SoutJtey.
Watchful cherubim, four faces each
Had, like a double Janut.
Better left this to the imagination : double
Januses are queer figures. He continues,
All their shape
Spangled with eyes, more numerous than those
Of Argus.
At the restoration of learning it was very par-
donable to seize on every remnant of antiquity,
and to throw together into one great store-room
whatever could be collected from all countries,
and from all authors, sacred and profane. Dante
has done it ; sometimes rather ludicrously. Milton
here copies his Argus. And four lines farther
on, he brings forward Leucothoe, in her own per-
son, although she had then no existence.
Landor. Nor indeed had subscriptions, to arti-
cles or anything else : yet we find " but Fate
subscribed not," v. 182. And within three more
lines, " The bird of Jove." Otherwise the passage
is one of exquisite beauty. Among the angels,
and close at the side of the archangel, " Iris had
dipt her woof." Verse 267, retire is a substan-
tive, from the Italian and Spanish.
How divinely beautiful is the next passage ! It
is impossible not to apply to Milton himself the
words he has attributed to Eve :
From thee
How shall I part ? and whither wander down
Into a lower world ?
My ear, I confess it, is dissatisfied with every-
thing, for days and weeks after the harmony of
Paradise Lost. Leaving this magnificent temple,
SOUTHEY AND LANDOK.
73
I am hardly to be pacified by the fairy-built cham-
bers, the rich cupboards of embossed plate, and
the omnigenous images of Shakspeare.
Southey. I must interrupt your transports.
His eye might there command where-ever stood
City of old or modern fame.
Here are twenty-five lines describing cities to
exist long after, and many which his eye could not
have commanded even if they existed then, be-
cause they were situated on the opposite side of the
globe. But some of them, the poet reminds us
afterward, Adam might have seen in spirit. Dif-
fuse as he is, he appears quite moderate in com-
parison with Tasso on a similar occasion, who
expatiates not only to the length of five-and-
twenty lines, but to between four and five hundred.
Landor. At v. 480 there begins a catalogue of
diseases, which Milton increased in the second
edition of the poem. He added,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moonstruck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence !
There should be no comma after " melancholy,"
as there is in my copy.
Southey. And in mine too. He might have
afforded to strike out the two preceding verses
when these noble ones were presented.
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
are better to be understood than to be expressed.
His description of old age is somewhat less sor-
rowful and much less repulsive. It closes with
In thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry.
Nobody could understand this who had not read
the strange notions of physicians, which con-
tinued down to the age of Milton, in which we
find such nonsense as " adust humours." I think
you would be unreluctant to expunge w. 624,
625, 626, 627.
Landor. Quite : and there is also much ver-
biage about the giants, and very perplexed from
v. 88 to 97. But some of the heaviest verses in
the poem are those on Noah, from 717 to 737.
In the following we have " vapour and exhalation"
which signify the same.
Sea covered sea,
Sea without shore. V. 750.
This is very sublime : and indeed I could never
heartily join with those who condemn in Ovid
Omnia pontus erant ; deerant quoque litora ponto.'
It is true, the whole fact is stated in the first
hemistych ; but the mind's eye moves from the
centre to the circumference, and the pleonasm
carries it into infinity. If there is any fault in
this passage of Ovid, Milton has avoided it, but
he frequently falls into one vastly more than
Ovidian, and after so awful a pause as is nowhere
else in all the regions of poetry.
How didst thou grieve then, Adam, to hehold
The end of all thy offspring ! end so sad !
Depopulation !
Thee another flood,
Of tears and torrow aflood, thee also drowned,
And tank thee at thy son*.
It is wonderful how little reflection on many oc-
casions, and how little knowledge on some very
obvious ones, is displayed by Bentley. To pass
over his impudence in pretending to correct the
words of Milton (whose hand-writing was extant)
just as he would the corroded or corrupt text of
any ancient author, here in v. 895. " To drown
the world with man therein, or beast;" he tells us
that birds are forgot, and would substitute " With
man or beast or fowl." He might as well have
said thai fleas are forgot. Beast means everything
that is not man. It would be much more sensible
to object to such an expression as men andanimals,
and to ask, are not men animals ? and even more
so than the rest, if anima has with men a more
extensive meaning than with other creatures.
Bentley in many things was very acute ; but his
criticisms on poetry produce the same effect as
the water of a lead mine on plants. He knew no
more about it than Hallam knows, in whom acute-
ness is certainly not blunted by such a weight of
learning.
Southey. We open the Twelfth Book : we see
land at last.
Landor. Yes, and dry land too. Happily the
twelfth is the shortest. In a continuation of six
hundred and twenty-five flat verses, we are pre-
pared for our passage over several such deserts of
almost equal extent, and still more frequent, in
Paradise Regained. But at the close of the poem
now under our examination, there is a brief union
of the sublime and the pathetic for about twenty
lines, beginning with " All in bright array."
We are comforted by the thought that Provi-
dence had not abandoned our first parents, but
was still their guide ; that, although they had lost
Paradise, they were not debarred from Eden;
that, although the angel had left them solitary
and sorrowing, he left them " yet in peace." The
termination is proper and complete.
In Johnson's estimate I do not perceive the un-
fairness of which many have complained. Among
his first observations is this : " Scarcely any recital
is wished shorter for the sake of quickening the
main action." This is untrue : were it true, why
remark, as he does subsequently, that the poem
is mostly read as a duty; not as a pleasure. I think
it unnecessary to say a word on the moral or the
subject ; for it requires no genius to select a grand
one. The heaviest poems may be appended to
the loftiest themes. Andreini and others, whom
Milton turned over and tossed aside, are evi-
dences. It requires a large stock of patience to
travel through Vida ; and we slacken in our march,
although accompanied with the livelier sing-song
of Sannazar. Let any reader, who is not by many
degrees more pious than poetical, be asked whe-
ther he felt a very great interest in the greatest
actors of Paradise Lost, in what is either said or
done by the angels or the Creator ; and whether
the humblest and weakest does not most attract
him. Johnson's remarks on the allegory of Mil-
ton are just and wise ; so are those on the non-
materiality or non-immateriality of Satan. These
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
faults might have been easily avoided : but Mil-
ton, with all his strength, chose rather to make
Antiquity his shield-bearer, and to come forward
under a protection which he might proudly have
disdained.
Southey. You will not countenance the critic,
nor Dryden whom he quotes, in saying that
Milton "saw Nature through the spectacles of
books."
Landor. Unhappily both he and Dryden saw
Nature from between the houses of Fleet-street.
If ever there was a poet who knew her well,
and described her in all her loveliness, it was
Milton. In the Paradi&e Lost how profuse in his
descriptions, as became the time and place ! in the
Allegro and Penseroso, how exquisite and select !
Johnson asks, " What Englishman can take
delight in transcribing passages, which, if they
lessen the reputation of Milton, diminish, in
some degree, the honour of our country ! " I
hope the honour of our country will always rest
on truth and justice. It is not by concealing what
is wrong that anything right can be accomplished.
There is no pleasure in transcribing such passages,
but there is great utility. Inferior writers exercise
no interest, attract no notice, and serve no purpose.
Johnson has himself done great good by exposing
great faults in great authors. His criticism on
Mil ton's highest work is the most valuable of all his
writings. He seldom is erroneous in his censures,
but he never is sufficiently excited to admira-
tion of what is purest and highest in poetry. He
has this in common with common minds (from
which however his own is otherwise far remote),
to be pleased with what is nearly on a level with
him, and to drink as contentedly a heady beve-
rage with its discoloured froth, as what is of the
best vintage. He is morbid, not only in his weak-
ness, but in his strength. There is much to par-
don, much to pity, much to respect, and no little
to admire in him.
After I have been reading the Paradise Lost,
I can take up no other poet with satisfaction.
I seem to have left the music of Handel for
the music of the streets, or at best for drums
and fifes. Although in Shakspeare there are
occasional bursts of harmony no less sublime,
yet, if there were many such in continuation, it
would be hurtful, not only in comedy, but also in
tragedy. The greater part should be equable and
conversational. For, if the excitement were the
same at the beginning, the middle, and the end ;
if consequently (as must be the case) the language
and versification were equally elevated throughout ;
any long poem would be a bad one, and, worst of
all, a drama. In our English heroic verse, such as
Milton has composed it, there is a much greater
variety of feet, of movement, of musical notes and
bars, than in the Greek heroic; and the final
sounds are incomparably more diversified. My
predilection in youth was on the side of Homer ;
for I had read the Iliad twice, and the Odyssea
once, before the Paradise Lost. Averse as I
am to everything relating to theology, and espe-
cially to the view of it thrown open by this
poem, I recur to it incessantly as the noblest
specimen in the world of eloquence, harmony, and
genius.
Sovihey. Learned and sensible men are of •
opinion that the Paradise Lost should have ended
with the words "Providence their guide."
It might very well have ended there; but we
are unwilling to lose sight all at once of our
first parents. Only one more glimpse is allowed
us^ we are thankful for it. We have seen the
natural tears they dropped ; we have seen that
they wiped them soon. And why was it ? Not
because the world was all before them, but because
there still remained for them, under the guidance
of Providence, not indeed the delights of Paradise,
now lost for ever, but the genial clime and calm
repose of Eden.
Landor. It has been the practice in late years
to supplant one dynasty by another, political and
poetical. Within our own memory no man had
ever existed who preferred Lucretius, on the whole,
to Virgil, or Dante to Homer. But the great Flo-
rentine, in these days, is extolled high above the
Grecian and Milton. Few, I believe, have studied
him more attentively or with more delight than I
have ; but beside the prodigious disproportion of
the bad to the good, there are fundamental de-
fects which there are not in either of the other
two. In the Divina Commedia the characters are
without any bond of union, any field of action, any
definite aim. There is no central light above the
Bolge ; and we are chilled in Paradise even at the
side of Beatrice.
Southey. Some poetical Perillus must surely
have invented the terza rima. I feel in reading
it as a school-boy feels when he is beaten over the
head with a bolster.
Landor. We shall hardly be in time for dinner.
What should we have been if we had repeated
with just eulogies all the noble things in the poem
we have been reading ]
Soicthey. They would never have weaned you
from the Mighty Mother who placed her turreted
crown on the head of Shakspeare.
Landor. A rib of Shakspeare would have made
a Milton : the same portion of Milton, all poets
born ever since.
RHADAMISTUS AND ZENOBIA.
75
RHADAMISTUS AND ZENOBIA.
Zenobla. My beloved ! my beloved ! I can en-
dure the motion of the horse no longer; his
weariness makes his pace so tiresome to me.
Surely we have ridden far, very far from home ;
and how shall we ever pass the wide and rocky
stream, among the whirlpools of the rapid and
the deep Araxes? From the first sight of it,
0 my husband ! you have been silent : you have
looked at me at one time intensely, at another
wildly: have you mistaken the road] or the
ford ? or the ferry?
Rliadamistus. Tired, tired ! did I say? ay, thou
must be. Here thou shalt rest : this before us is
the place for it. Alight ; drop into my arms :
art thou within them 1
Zenobia. Always in fear for me, my tender
thoughtful Ehadamistus !
Rliadamistus. Khadamistus then once more
embraces his Zenobia !
Zenobia. And presses her to his bosom as with
the first embrace.
Rhadamistus. What is the first to the last !
Zenobia. Nay, this is not the last.
Rhadamistus. Not quite, (0 agony !) not quite;
once more.
Zenobia. So : with a kiss : which you forget
to take.
Rliadamistiis (aside). And shall this shake my
purpose ] it may my limbs, my heart, my brain ;
but what my soul so deeply determined, it shall
strengthen : as winds do trees in forests.
Zenobia. Come, come ! cheer up. How good
you are to be persuaded by me : back again at
one word ! Hark ! where are those drums and
bugles ? on which side are these echoes ?
Rhadamistus. Alight, dear, dear Zenobia !
And does Rhadamistus then press thee to his
bosom ? Can it be !
Zenobia. Can it cease to be ? you would have
said, my Rhadamistus ! Hark ! again those
trumpets ] on which bank of the water are they )
Now they seem to come from the mountains, and
now along the river. Men's voices too ! threats
and yells ! You, my Rhadamistus, could escape.
Rhadamistus. Wherefore 1 with whom ? and
whither in all Asia ?
Zenobia. Fly! there are armed men climbing
up the cliffs.
Rhadamistus. It was only the sound of the
waves in the hollows of them, and the masses of
pebbles that rolled down from under you as you
knelt to listen.
Zenobia. Turn round ; look behind ! is it dust
yonder, or smoke ? and is it the sun, or what is
it, shining so crimson? not shining any longer
now, but deep and dull purple, embodying into
gloom.
Rhadamistus. It is the sun, about to set at
mid-day ; we shall soon see no more of him.
Zenobia. Indeed ! what an ill omen ! but how
can you tell that? Do you think it? I do not.
Alas ! alas ! the dust and the sounds are nearer.
Rhadamistus. Prepare then, my Zenobia !
Zenobia. I was always prepared for it.
Rhadamistus. What reason, 0 unconfiding girl !
from the day of our union, have I ever given you,
to accuse, or to suspect me ?
Zenobia. None, none : your love, even in these
sad moments, raises me above the reach of for-
tune. How can it pain me so? Do I repine?
Worse may it pain me ; but let that love never
pass away !
Rhadamistus. Was it then the loss of power
and kingdom for which Zenobia was prepared ?
Zenobia. The kingdom was lost when Rhada-
mistus lost the affection of his subjects. Why did
they not love you ? how could they not ? Tell me
so strange a thing.*
Rliadamistus. Fables, fables ! about the death
of Mithridates and his children : declamations,
outcries : as if it were as easy to bring men to
life again as . . I know not what . . to call after
them.
Zenobia. But about the children ?
Rhadamistus. In all governments there are
secrets.
Zenobia. Between us ?
Rhadamistus. No longer : time presses : not a
moment is left us, not a refuge, not a hope !
Zenobia. Then why draw the sword?
Rhadamistus. Wanted I courage? did I not
fight as becomes a king ?
Zenobia. True, most true.
Rliadamistus. Is my resolution lost to me? did
I but dream I had it ?
Zenobia. Nobody is very near yet ; nor can
they cross the dell where we did. Those are
fled who could have shown the pathway. Think
not of defending me. Listen ! look ! what thou-
sands are coming. The protecting blade above
my head can only provoke the enemy. And
do you still keep it there ? You grasp my arm
too hard. Can you look unkindly? Can it be?
0 think again and spare me, Rhadamistus !
From the vengeance of man, from the judgments
of heaven, the unborn may preserve my husband.
Rhadamistus. We must die ! They advance ;
they see us ; they rush forward !
Zenobia. Me, me would you strike? Rather
let me leap from the precipice.
Rhadamistus. Hold! Whither would thy despe-
ration ? Art thou again within my grasp ?
Zenobia. 0 my beloved ! never let me call you
cruel ! let me love you in the last hour of seeing
you as in the first. I must, I must . . and be it
my thought in death that you love me so ! I
would have cast away my life to save you from
* From the seclusion of the Asiatic women, Zenobia
may be supposed to have been ignorant of the crimes
Rhadamistus had committed.
76
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
remorse : it may do that and more, preserved by
you. Listen ! listen ! among those who pursue
us there are many fathers ; childless by his own
hand, none. Do not kill our baby . . the best of
our hopes when we had many . . the baby not yet
ours ! Who shall then plead for you, my unhappy
husband '
Jthadamistua. My honour ; and before me, sole
arbiter and sole audience of our cause. Bethink
thee, Zenobia, of the indignities . . not bearing
on my fortunes . . but imminent over thy beauty !
What said I ? did I bid thee think of them ?
Rather die than imagine, or than question me,
what they are ! Let me endure two deaths before
my own, crueller than wounds or than age or than
servitude could inflict on me, rather than make
me name them.
Zenobia. Strike ! Lose not a moment so pre-
cious ! Why hesitate now my generous brave
defender?
Bhadamistus. Zenobia ! dost thou bid it 1
Zenobia. Courage is no longer a crime in you.
Hear the shouts, the threats, the imprecations !
Hear them, my beloved ! let me no more!
Khadamistus. Embrace me not, Zenobia ! loose
me, loose me !
Zenobia. I can not : thrust me away ! Divorce . .
but with death . . the disobedient wife, no longer
your Zenobia. (He strikes). Oh ! oh ! one innocent
head . . in how few days . . should have reposed
. . no, not upon this blood. Swim across ! is there
a descent . . an easy one, a safe one, anywhere 1 I
might have found it for you ! ill-spent time ! heed-
less woman !
Rhadamistus. An arrow hath pierced me : more
are showering round us. Go, my life's flower!
the blighted branch drops after. Away ! forth
into the stream ! strength is yet left me for it.
(He throws her into the river). She sinks not !
0 last calamity ! She sinks ! she sinks ! Now
both are well, and fearless ! One look more !
grant one more look ! On what ? where was it 1
which whirl1? which ripple? they are gone too.
How calm is the haven of the most troubled life !
1 enter it ! Rebels ! traitors ! slaves ! subjects !
why gape ye 1 why halt ye ? On, on, dastards !
Oh that ye dared to follow ! (He plunges armed
into the Araxes).
ELDON AND ENCOMBE.
Eldon. Encombe ! why do you look so grave
and sit so silent 1
Encombe. To confess the truth, I played last
evening, and lost.
Eldon. You played ? Do you call it playing, to
plunder your guest and over-reach your friends ?
Do you call it playing, to be unhappy if you can
not be a robber, happy if you can be one ] The
fingers of a gamester reach farther than a robber's
or a murderer's, and do more mischief. Against
the robber or murderer the country is up in arms
at once : to the gamester every bosom is open,
that he may contaminate or stab it.
Encombe. Certainly I have neither stabbed nor
contaminated; I have neither plundered nor
over-reached.
Eldon. If you did not fancy you had some
advantages over your adversary, you would never
have tried your fortune with him. I am not sorry
you lost ; it will teach you better.
Encombe. My dear father ! if you could but
advance me the money !
Eldon. Your next quarter, the beginning of
April, is nigh at hand. However, a part, a moiety,
forty days after date . . who knows !
Encombe. My loss, I am sorry to say, is heavy.
Eldon. Then wait.
Encombe. Losers would willingly : winners
have always a spur against the flank.
Eldon. Tell me the amount of the debt.
Encombe. Two thousand pounds.
Eldon. Two . . . what ! thousand . . . pounds !
Pounds did you say1? pounds sterling ? incredible !
Encombe. Too true !
Eldon. 0 my son Encombe ! 0 Encombe, my
son, my son !
Encombe. I now perceive you pity my condi-
tion, and I grieve to have given so tender-hearted
a parent so much uneasiness. Those blessed
words remind me of the royal psalmist's.
Eldon. I am very near in my misfortunes at
least, although God forbid that I should liken
myself in wisdom or piety to that good old
king, that king after God's own heart, of whom
I can discover no resemblance among men, ex-
cepting our own most gracious sovran George the
Fourth.
Encombe. Filial love suggests to me some
advantages of yours over that early light of the
gentiles. You never were guilty of idolatry nor
adultery, nor ever kept (aside) anything but his
money.
Eldon. The Lord exempted me from so horri-
ble a sin as idolatry, by placing me in the hap-
piest and most enlightened (as indeed it was
lately) of all the countries upon earth. Adultery
and concubinage did you mention ! Another
vorago, two voragoes, Scylla and Charybdis, of
national wealth.
Encombe. Not national, my dear father, but
private . . unless he must pay for . . .
Eldon. Hold ! hold ! No indecent reflections !
Son Encombe ! do begin to talk more discreetly
and more nobly, and call everything private,
national.
Encombe. Better so, than to make everything
national private.
Eldon. The laws will not allow that. A certain
latitude, a liberal construction, a privilege here,
a perquisite there . . these are things which only
the malignant would carp at : the wiser of both
parties take the same view of them, and shake
ELDON AND ENCOMBE.
77
their heads, leaving such trifles as they found
them.
I lane voniam petimusque damusque vicisslm.
But, son Encombe, I have often had occasion to
remark, that persons who have thrown them-
selves under tribulation by their extravagancies,
roll themselves up in a new morality with all the
nap upon it, and are profuse in the loan of sym-
pathies. They are furnished with every sort of
morality but that particular one which pinched
them ; and, when they have done an infinity of
private mischief, they are inflamed with a mar-
vellous passion for the public good. Is not this
somewhat like a man who has the plague about
him Joffering to cure a patient of the hiccup.
Another set of them is still more censurable, and,
I am sorry to say, a remark of yours reminded
me of the offence whereof they are habitually
guilty. Draw distinctions, draw distinctions,
Encombe ! One of the errors to which you
alluded in the mention of king David, if indeed
it was one, as perhaps it may appear at first sight,
was the error of the times and of the country.
We can pretend to no positive proof that he
cohabited with more than one of his handmaidens,
and possibly it was not without some injunction
from above, for purposes beyond our reach and
unbecoming our discussion. We must close our
eyes on those who are under God's guidance ;
I mean his more especial guidance, for under
it we are all, weak and ignorant creatures as
we are.
Encombe. I wish I had been rather more espe-
cially so ; then I should not have come upon you
in this disagreeable business.
Eldon. Don't mind that, Encombe ! you come
not upon me ; I step aside from it. The business
may be disagreeable to you, and those who played
with you. I grieve at the propensity, but I will
avert the ruin.
Encombe. My dear father ! do not grieve at it,
only pay the money.
Eldon. Only pay the money! only pay two
thousand pounds ! All the moments of my frail
life, nearly worn to nothing in the public service,
would scarcely suffice me for counting out the
sum.
Encombe. Never fear ; only give the order : the
banker's clerks are clever fellows, and have life
enough before them without encroachment upon
yours. I know you will pay it, my noble-minded
father, you look so relenting and generous.
Eldon. I would not abuse the time of those
worthy clerks. The hours we deduct from youth
can never be added to age. Time and virtue are
the only losses that are irrecoverable.
Encombe. And sometimes two thousand pounds.
Eldon. Ha ! you make me laugh. Pity> that
with so much ready wit you should not also keep
about you a little ready money. Well, now we
have recovered our spirits, we will dismiss all
further thought about these little pecuniary mat-
ters. I promise you, Encombe, you shall hear no
more from me about them, justly as I might
reprove a moment's indiscretion, which, were you
not insolvent, would be serious.
Encombe. One line then.
Eldon. The clever clerks you mention have
all got into parliament. A brace or leash of
them have been tossed up to the ticking of my
woolsack.
Encombe. There are others as clever as they,
and left behind. Let me bring the ink.
Eldon. Youths of business in these days will
bring their weight in gold, provided they have
words as well as figures at their disposal. I would
die with the reputation of having been a just and
frugal man. You, who have studied the classics,
know the value they entertained for the homo
frugi, and how many virtues that term included.
In conscience, in rectitude, I can not do for you
what a sense of paternal propriety forced me to
refuse your sister. Kelying on the benefices in
my gift as chancellor, and venturing to fall in
love with a clergyman who had nothing, what
does she but marry ! No other way was left of
showing her the imprudence she had committed,
than withholding all supplies. Nothing had
she from me for the whole year. The bonds of
compassion will yearn, Encombe. Fifteen months,
scarcely fifteen months, had elapsed, when Lady
Eldon made for the baby two flannel dresses,
much longer than itself; and, with very few re-
proaches, very few indeed, I sent her myself a
check for twenty pounds, payable at sight. Bis
dat qui cito dot : so you may say forty. It was
worth as much to her who was starving.
His Majesty in consideration of my infirmities
and in commiseration of my afflictions, has been
graciously pleased to send me a most noble breast
of mutton. The donation would have been more
royal had there been capers and crumbs of bread
with it. I have enemies, my son ! I have
enemies who intercepted the fulness of the royal
bounty. However, with God's blessing, here is
enough for ourselves and the servants on Christ-
mas day; and the superfluity of fat, discreetly
husbanded, may light the house until new year's :
indeed the evening of that joyous day may be
enlivened by it.
If there is anything in phrenology, my dear
Encombe, you must surely have a mountainous
boss of destructiveness on your cranium.
Encombe. I, my Lord ! Why 1
Eldon. Otherwise you would never have crum-
pled so that admirable piece of parchment. It
came but this morning, a ticket to a hare. None
such is fabricated in our days : it would have
served for letters patent to a dukedom, and would
have borne wax enough for the great seal. Now !
now! now! do discontinue such childishness.
Can not you leave entire even the list that was
about the hinder legs! I laid it aside for the
fruit-trees against the south-wall. Eemember,
the loss is yours, if you have fewer and smaller
apricots. All I can say is, list is exorbitant :
neither they who make the liveries, nor they who
78
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
sell the cloth, throw any in ; they have the
meanness to think of selling it. Nothing but
selling ! selling ! We are become much too mer-
cantile.
Encombe. I must interrupt once more the wis-
dom of your experience and reflections. The
matter is really urgent.
Eldon. Who is the creditor 1
Encombe. The Marquis of Selborough.
Eldon. Tell him I have made up my mind
never to pay a gambling debt
Encombe. Would you wish him to shoot me ?
Eldon. Shoot you!
Encombe. Yes, by all that is sacred !
Eldon. I am shocked at your impiety. He
dares not shoot you ; and no action will lie. Give
him my opinion.
Encombe. He would give me his in return, and
we should be just where we stood before.
Eldon. This horrid duelling! I have been
thinking of our fine walnut-tree. I did indeed
hope to derive some advantage from it in my
declining years, little as I apprehended they
would be obscured and chilled by the eclipse of
dignity and the storms of fortune. It was valued
at forty pounds : providential if it produce me
thirty at present.
Encombe. It will produce you walnuts.
Eldon. My double teeth are gone, and scarcely
any two meet of the single. They are like friends
to persons out of place : they stand apart and
look shy, and only wish they could serve us.
Encombe. Well, my dear father, let us rather
think about the payment of the money than
about this melancholy matter.
Eldon. Encombe ! Encombe ! take care of your
teeth. In youth we know not the real value of
anything ; age instructs us. If you lose a finger,
the rest remain ; if you lose a tooth, believe me
you hold the remainder on no valid security. A
dissolute life, care, loss of money, late hours,
hot liquors, rich gravies, many dishes, French
and Khenish wines, excursions on the sea in
yachts, the sea-coast in crowded places, and,
above all, the breath of horses on the race-course,
are prejudicial to the duration of teeth. Divine
Providence gives us two sets, and makes us suffer
acutely at each gift, in order that we may remem-
ber it and prize it. Should you happen to hear
of anyone desirous to purchase a fine walnut-
tree, particularly adapted to duelling pistol stocks,
you may tell him of ours near the house, where
dear Lady Eldon loves to sit and amuse herself
in the summer evenings, and where we enjoy
together the sweet reflection of a well-spent life.
It might not be amiss to mention that our
favourite tree was valued by admeasurement at
forty pounds or upward. Mark me, say or
upward. The virtuous man is observant of
truth, even to his serious loss and detriment.
There is much envy, much malignity, in the
world we live in. It is by no means clear to me
(indeed I am inclined to think the contrary) that
there was ever a more general or a more intense
hostility toward men in office than at present ;
especially if, by the appointment of the Almighty
they have the honour and happiness to be in the
confidence of his Majesty. Seeing this, it would
not at all surprise me if some wicked wretch or
other, desirous of bringing me and the laws of
England into contempt, should insinuate that I
would aid and abet, and lend my hand to, the
practice of duelling. Could he but see my heart ;
could he but hear this conversation ! God is
my judge ; I wish only, as a conscientious man,
upright in all my dealings, to sell my walnut-
tree. I know not whether, if the offer should
come through a third party, it might be useful to
remark that Lord Chancellor Eldon was in the
habit of meditating under this walnut-tree some
of his most important decrees, twenty years
together. Shakspeare's mulberry was cut up
into snuff-boxes, and a guinea has been given
for three inches square. I have drawn as many
tears as ever he did, and all in the line of duty,
and by law. Perhaps I may be remembered
a shorter time among men. Certain great ones,
to whom the services of my whole life were
devoted, seem to have forgotten me already. But
fidelity to our word, to our wives, to our God, and
to our king, ensures my happiness here and here-
after.
Encombe. Nevertheless, my dear father, your
tone and manner are excessively despondent.
Eldon. Not at all, not at all. Another would
be vexed at seeing a mere child take his chair in
the Court of Chancery : another would tremble at
the probable consequences of such inexperience . . .
Well, well ! they may want me yet, and may not
have me.
Encombe. Could you be insensible to the call
of king and country? You shed tears at the
very thought : I have touched the tender point,
the nerve of patriotism.
Eldon. Lend me your pocket-handkerchief ; for
mine is a clean one. Thank you ; I am truly
grateful for your sympathy and attention . .
Are you mad, Encombe 1 why, yours is clean too.
Take it back : I must go upstairs for my last.
Who is that man at the hall-door]
Encombe. Apparently a beggar.
Eldon. Go away, go away ; beggary is contrary
to law. I pity you, my good friend, from the
bottom of my heart.
Beggar. What a cold place his pity comes from !
No wonder it has caught the cramp, and limps.
Eldon. George the Third, of happy memory,
stood forward a bright example to all future
kings. But I am not about to cite him in that
high station. By God's appointment he also
shone a burning light for the guidance of parents.
Being the natural guardian of his blessed Majesty
now reigning, he received on his behalf the
proceeds of the duchies of Cornwall and Lan-
caster, together with certain proceeds from the
principality of Wales. In twenty-one years, with
compound interest of five per cent, his Royal
Highness, then prince of Wales, at present our
TANCREDI AND CONSTANTIA.
79
most gracious sovran, might have imbursed, at
the hands of his august parent, from the said
proceeds, some nine hundred thousand pounds.
But, knowing that a virtuous and a religious
education is more pleasing to the eyes of our
Maker, and more beneficial to the subject, he
expended the whole sum on his royal son's
education.
Encombe. Nine hundred thousand pounds ?
Eldon. A fraction more or less.
Encombe. Impossible !
Eldon. His Majesty himself declared it. Ee-
member, the tutors of princes are lords temporal
and spiritual.
Encombe. Oh then, in that case, his Majesty's
word may be relied on.
Eldon. I likewise have bestowed on you, son
Encombe, an education such as was suitable to
your future rank in society. It is beyond my
power to throw you back on Parliament. The
Houses would not accept my recommendation
for your relief.
Encombe. Indeed I am not so mad as to
expect it.
Eldon, It is worse madness to expect it from
me. The one has a precedent, the other none.
But my bowels yearn for you, although you have
brought a whole Vesuvius of ashes on my grey
hairs.
Encombe. Even our most gracious Eegent has
played at cards and lost.
Eldon. Cards were invented for the diversion
of a king, and therefore of right do belong to
kings. Well we know, Encombe, that our most
gracious ruler is the least addicted to light and
frivolous pleasures : and fairly may we infer that,
if he played and lost at cards, it could only be to
countenance the subject. Perhaps to encourage
the conversion of rags into paper. The colour-
man, the glue-man, entered (no doubt) into his
calculation. The money he graciously lost was
probably won by some faithful old servant, whose
family was in poverty and affliction. Delicate as
he is in all things, he could not act more delicately
in any than in this. That he is the most absti-
nent of mankind, not only his household, but all
around, have incontestable proofs before their
eyes. By the sagacity and sound discretion of
his royal father, of happy memory, he was pre-
cluded from these proceeds of which we already
have largely spoken, and consequently he is
reported to have incurred sundry debts. In order
to defray them, he took a consort.
Encombe. Being, in the eye of God, married
already.
Eldon. No, son Encombe, no; emphatically no.
Encombe. My dear father, you always lay the
strongest emphasis on that word, especially when,
as now . .
Eldon. Encombe ! I can not but rejoice and
smile at your ready wit. Your uncle Stowell has
it also. li lies deeply seated in the family : my
mine has never yet been worked : it might not
answer. But let me correct your error of judg-
ment, and inform you that what is not in the eye
of the law can not be in the eye of God. For
God is law, is order, economy, and perfection.
Blessed be his holy name ! I shall hardly be
accused of flattery in reverting from God to God's
vice-gerent ; more especially when my aim is
solely your admonition. Imitate him, Encombe,
imitate him !
Encombe. I was apprehensive I had imitated
him too closely.
Eldon. Take a wife of some substance.
Encombe. He certainly has done that : but I
am unambitious of so large a dominion.
Eldon. His royal highness was singularly
abstemious and patriotic in his union. The
instant that, by possibility, the hopes of his people
were accomplished, he was as chaste toward his
consort as his predecessor Edward the Confessor.
Encombe. In consequence of which abstemious-
ness . . .
Eldon. Hold ! hold ! We mortals are short-
sighted. God delivered the lady from her perils.
Reluctantly should I have pronounced a sentence
of blood. But God, in some cases, hath ordained
that the axe separate the impure from the pure.
Encombe. Both parties were equally safe, if
such be his ordinance.
Eldon. Furthermore, you have the authority
of your sovran for denying the validity of lawless
obligations. His Majesty, by right, took posses-
sion of the Duke of York's effects. His creditors
claimed them, pretending not only that they were
unpaid for, but also that they existed on the
premises at the Duke's decease. Yet his Majesty
demurred. The creditors may bring their action :
it will lie.
Encombe. For ever.
TANCREDI* AND CONSTANTIA.
Constantia. Is this in mockery, sir ? Do you
place me under a canopy, and upon what (no
doubt) you presume to call a throne, for de-
rision 1
Tancredi. Madonna ! if it never were a throne
* Tancredi was crowned 1190, and died of grief at the
lossof his onlyson, 1194. Constantia, daughter of William
It. of Sicily, was married to the Emperor Henry VI.
before, henceforward let none approach it but
with reverence. The greatest, the most virtuous,
of queens and empresses (it were indecorous in
such an inferior as I am to praise in your pre-
sence aught else in you that raises men's admira-
tion) leaves a throne for homage wherever she
has rested.
Constantia. Count Tancredi ! your past con-
80
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
duct ill accords with your present speech. Your
courtesy, great as it is, would have been much
greater, if you yourself had taken me captive, and
had not turned your horse and rode back, on pur-
pose that villanous hands might seize me.
Tancredi. Knightly hands (I speak it with all
submission) are not villanous. I could not in
my heart command you to surrender ; and I
would not deprive a brave man, a man dis-
tinguished for deference and loyalty, of the plea-
sure he was about to enjoy in encountering your
two barons. I am confident he never was dis-
courteous.
Constant™. He was; he took my horse's
bridle by the bit, turned his back on me, and
would not let me go.
Tancredi. War sometimes is guilty of such
enormities, and even worse.
Constantsa. I would rather have surrendered
myself to the most courageous knight in Italy.
Tancredi. Which may that be ?
Constantia. By universal consent, Tancredi,
Count of Lecce.
Tancredi. To possess the highest courage, is
but small glory ; to be without it, is a great dis-
grace.
Constantia. Loyalty, not only to ladies, but to
princes, is the true and solid foundation of it.
Countof Lecce! am I not the daughter of your king]
Tancredi. I recognise in the Lady Constantia
the daughter of our late sovran lord, King William,
of glorious memory.
Constantia. Recognise then your queen.
Tancredi. Our laws, and the supporters of
these laws, forbid it.
Constantia. Is that memory a glorious one, as
you call it, which a single year is sufficient to
erase ? And did not my father nominate me his
heir?
Tancredi. A kingdom is not among the chat-
tels of a king : a people is paled within laws, and
not within parks and chases : the powerfullest
have no privilege to sport in that inclosure.
The barons of the realm and the knights and the
people assembled in Palermo, and there by
acclamation called and appointed me to govern
the state. Certainly the Lady Constantia is
nearer to the throne in blood, and much wor-
thier : I said so then. The unanimous reply was
that Sicily should be independent of all other
lands, and that neither German Kings nor Roman
Emperors should controll her.
Constantia. You must be aware, sir, that an
armed resistance to the Emperor is presumptuous
and traitorous.
Tancredi. He has carried fire and sword into
my country, and has excited the Genoese and
Pisans, men speaking the same language as our-
selves, to debark on our coasts, to demolish our
villages, and to consume our harvests.
Constantia. Being a sovran, he possesses the
undoubted right.
Tancredi. Being a Sicilian, I have no less a
right to resist him.
Constantia. Right? Do rights appertain to
vassals '
Tancredi. Even to them ; and this one particu-
larly. Were J still a vassal, I should remember
that I am a king by election, by birth a Sicilian,
and by descent a Norman.
Constantia. All these fine titles give no right
whatever to the throne, from which an insuperable
bar precludes you.
Tancredi. What bar can there be which my
sword and my people's love are unable to bear
down?
Constantia. Excuse my answer.
Tancredi. Deign me one, I entreat you, Ma-
donna ! although the voice of my country may be
more persuasive with me even than yours.
Constantia. Count Lecce ! you are worthy of
all honour, excepting that alone which can spring
only from lawful descent.
Tancredi. My father was the first-born of the
Norman conqueror, king of Sicily : my mother,
in her own right, countess of Lecce. I have
no reason to blush at my birth ; nor did ever the
noble breast which gave me nourishment heave
with a sense of ignominy as she pressed me to it.
She thought the blessing of the poor equivalent
to the blessing of the priest.
Constantia. I would not refer to her ungently:
but she by her alliance set at nought our Holy
Father.
Tancredi. In all her paths, in all her words
and actions, she obeyed him.
Constantia. Our Holy Father ?
Tancredi. Our holiest, our only holy one, " our
Father which is in heaven." She wants no
apology: precedent is nothing : but remember
our ancestors : I say ours ; for I glory in the
thought that they are the same, and so near.
Among the early dukes of Normandy, vanquishers
of France, and (what is greater) conquerors of
England, fewer were born within the pale of
wedlock than without. Nevertheless the ladies
of our nation were always as faithful to love
and duty, as if hoods and surplices and psalms
had gone before them, and the church had been
the vestibule to the bedchamber.
Constantia. My cousin the countess was irre-
proachable, and her virtues have rendered you as
popular as your exploits.
Who is this pretty boy who holds down his head
so, with the salver in his hand ?
Tancredi. He is my son.
Constantia. Why then does he kneel before me ?
Tancredi. To teach his father his duty.
Constantia. You acknowledge the rights of
my husband ?
Tancredi. To a fairer possession than fair
Sicily.
Constantia. I must no longer hear this language.
Tancredi. I utter it from the depths of a heart
as pure as the coldest.
Constantia (to the boy). Yes, my sweet child !
I accept the refreshments you have been hold-
ing so patiently and present so gracefully. But
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOUETH.
81
you should have risen from your knees ; such a
posture is undue to a captive.
Boy. Papa! what did the lady say? Do you
ever make ladies captives ?
(To Constantia). Run away : I will hold his
hands for him.
Constantia. I intend to run away ; but you
are quite as dangerous as your father. Count !
you must name my ransom.
Tancredi. Madonna, I received it when you
presented your royal hand to my respectful
homage. The barons who accompanied you are
mounted at the door, in order to reconduct you ;
and the most noble and the most venerable of
mine will be proud of the same permission.
Constantia. I also am a Sicilian, Tancredi ! I
also am sensible to the glories of the Norman
race. Never shall my husband, if I have any
influence over him, be the enemy of so cour-
teous a knight. I could almost say, prosper !
prosper! for the defence, the happiness, the ex-
ample, of our Sicily.
Tancredi. We maybe deprived of territory and
power; but never of knighthood. The brave alone
can merit it, the brave alone can confer it, the recre-
ant alone can lose it. So long as there is Nor-
man blood in my veins I am a knight : and our
blood and our knighthood are given us to defend
the sex. Insensate ! I had almost said the weaker !
and with your eyes before me !
Constantia. He can not be a rebel, nor a false
bad man.
Tancredi. Lady! the sword which I humbly
lay at your feet was, a few years ago, a black mis-
shapen mass of metal: the gold that surrounds
it, the jewel that surmounts it, the victories it
hath gained,' constitute now its least value; it
owes the greatest to its position.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH.
Eugenius. Filippo ! I am informed by my son
Cosimo de' Medici of many things relating to thy
life and actions, and among the rest, of thy throw-
ing off the habit of a friar. Speak to me as to a
friend. Was that well done ?
Filippo. Holy Father ! it was done most unad-
visedly.
Eugenius. Continue to treat me with the same
confidence and ingenuousness ; and, beside the
remuneration I intend to bestow on thee for the
paintings wherewith thou hast adorned my palace,
I will remove with my own hand the heavy accu-
mulation of thy sins, and ward off the peril of
fresh ones, placing within thy reach every worldly
solace and contentment.
Filippo. Infinite thanks, Holy Father ! from
the innermost heart of your unworthy servant,
whose duty aiid wishes bind him alike and
equally to a strict compliance with your paternal
commands.
Eugenius. Was it a love of the world and its
vanities that induced thee to throw aside the
frock 1
Filippo. It was indeed, Holy Father ! I never
had the courage to mention it in confession among
my manifold offences.
Eugenius. Bad ! bad ! Repentance is of little
use to the sinner, unless he pour it from a full and
overflowing heart into the capacious ear of the
confessor. Ye must not go straightforward and
bluntly up to your Maker, startling him with the
horrors of your guilty conscience. Order, decency,
time, place, opportunity, must be observed.
Filippo. I have observed the greater part of
them : time, place, and opportunity.
Eugenius. That is much. In consideration of
it, I hereby absolve thee.
Filippo. I feel quite easy, quite new-born.
Eugenius. I am desirous of hearing what sdrt
of feelings thou experiencest, when thou givest
loose to thy intractable and unruly wishes. Now,
this love of the world, what can it mean1? A
love of music, of dancing, of riding ] What in
short is it in thee ?
Filippo. Holy Father ! I was ever of a hot and
amorous constitution.
Eugenius. Well, well ! I can guess, within a
trifle, what that leads unto. I very much disap-
prove of it, whatever it may be. And then ? and
then 1 Prythee go on : I am inflamed with a
miraculous zeal to cleanse thee.
FiUppo. I have committed many follies, and
some sins.
Eugenius. Let me hear the sins; I do not
trouble my head about the follies; the Church has
no business with them. The state is founded on
follies, the Church on sins. Come then, unsack
them.
Filippo. Concupiscence is both a folly and a
sin. I felt more and more of it when I ceased to
be a monk, not having (for a time) so ready means
of allaying it.
Eugenius. No doubt. Thou shouldst have
thought again and again before thou strippedst
off the cowl.
Filippo. Ah ! Holy Father 1 I am sore at heart.
I thought indeed how often it had held two heads
together under it, and that stripping it off was
double decapitation. But compensation and con-
tentment came, and we were warm enough with-
out it.
Eugenius. I am minded to reprove thee gravely.
No wonder it pleased the Virgin, and the saints
about her, to permit that the enemy of our faith
should lead thee captive into Barbary.
Filippo. The pleasure was all on their side.
Eugenius. I have heard a great many stories
both of males and females who were taken by
Tunisians and Algerines : and although there is
a sameness in certain parts of them, my especial
82
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
benevolence toward thee, worthy Filippo, would
induce me to lend a vacant ear to thy report.
And now, good Filippo, I could sip a small glass
of muscatel or Orvieto, and turn over a few
bleached almonds, or essay a smart dried apri-
cot at intervals, and listen while thou relatest to
me the manners and customs of that country,
and particularly as touching thy own adversities.
First, how wast thou taken ?
Filippo. I was visiting at Pesaro my wor-
shipful friend the canonico Andrea Paccone, who
delighted in the guitar, played it skilfully, and
was always fond of hearing it well accompanied
by the voice. My own instrument I had brought
with me, together with many gay Florentine
songs, some of which were of such a turn and
tendency, that the canonico thought they would
sound better on water, and rather far from
shore, than within the walls of the canonicate.
He proposed then, one evening when there was
little wind stirring, to exercise three young
abbates* on their several parts, a little way out
of hearing from the water's edge.
Eugenius. I disapprove of exercising young
abbates in that manner.
Filippo. Inadvertently, 0 Holy Father ! I have
made the affair seem worse than it really was. In
fact, there were only two genuine abbates; the
third was Donna Lisetta, the good canonico's
pretty niece, who looks so archly at your Holiness
when you bend your knees before her at bed-time.
Eugenius. How] Where?
Filippo. She is the angel on the right-hand
side of the Holy Family, with a tip of amethyst-
coloured wing over a basket of figs and pome-
granates. I painted her from memory : she was
then only fifteen, and worthy to be the niece of
an archbishop. Alas ! she never will be : she
plays and sings among the infidels, and perhaps
would eat a landrail on a Friday as unreluctantly
as she would a roach.
Eugenius. Poor soul ! So this is the angel with
the amethyst-coloured wing1? I thought she
looked wanton : we must pray for her release . .
from the bondage of sin. What followed in your
excursion 1
Filippo. Singing, playing, fresh air, and plash-
ing water, stimulated our appetites. We had
brought no eatable with us but fruit and thin
marzopane, of which the sugar and rose-water
were inadequate to ward off hunger ; and the sight
of a fishing-vessel between us and Ancona, raised
our host's immoderately. " Yonder smack,"
said he, " is sailing at this moment just over
the very best sole-bank in the Adriatic. If she
continues her course and we run toward her,
we may be supplied, I trust in God, with the finest
fish in Christendom. Methinks I see already the
bellies of those magnificent soles bestar the deck,
and emulate the glories of the orient sky." He
gave his orders with such a majestic air, that he
looked rather like an admiral than a priest.
* Little boys, wearing clerical habits, are often called
albati.
Eguenius. How now, rogue ! Why should
not the churchman look majestically and cou-
rageously 1 I myself have found occasion for it,
and exerted it.
Filippo. The world knows the prowess of your
Holiness.
Eugenius. Not mine, not mine, Filippo! but
His who gave me the sword and the keys, and the
will and the discretion to use them. I trust the
canonico did not misapply his station and power,
by taking the fish at any unreasonably low price ;
and that he gave his blessing to the remainder,
and to the poor fishermen and to their nets.
Filippo. He was angry at observing that the
vessel, while he thought it was within hail, stood
out again to sea.
Eugenius. He ought to have borne more man-
fully so slight a vexation.
Filippo. On the contrary, he swore bitterly he
would have the master's ear between his thumb
and forefinger in another half-hour, and regretted
that he had cut his nails in the morning lest
they should grate on his guitar. " They may fish
well," cried he, " but they can neither sail nor
row ; and, when I am in the middle of that tub of
theirs, I will teach them more than they look
for." Sure enough he was in the middle of it at the
time he fixed : but it was by aid of a rope about
his arms, and the end of another laid lustily on
his back and shoulders. " Mount, lazy long-
chined turnspit, as thou valuest thy life," cried
Abdul the corsair, "and away for Tunis." If
silence is consent, he had it. The captain, in the
Sicilian dialect, told us we might talk freely, for
he had taken his siesta. "Whose guitars are
those ?" said he. As the canonico raised his eyes
to heaven and answered nothing, I replied, " Sir,
one is mine : the other is my worthy friend's
there." Next he asked the canonico to what
market he was taking those young slaves, point-
ing to the abbates. The canonico sobbed and
could not utter one word. I related the whole
story ; at which he laughed. He then took up
the music, and commanded my reverend guest
to sing an air peculiarly tender, invoking the
compassion of a nymph, and calling her cold as
ice. Never did so many or such profound sighs
accompany it. When it ended, he sang one him-
self in his own language, on a lady whose eyes
were exactly like the scymeters of Damascus,
and whose eyebrows met in the middle like the
cudgels of prize-fighters. On the whole she resem-
bled both sun and moon, with the simple differ-
ence that she never allowed herself to be seen,
lest all the nations of the earth should go to war
for her, and not a man be left to breathe out his
soul before her. This poem had obtained the
prize at the University of Fez, had been trans-
lated into the Arabic, the Persian, and the Turk-
ish languages, and was the favourite lay of the
corsair. He invited me lastly to try my talent.
I played the same air on the guitar, and apolo-
gised for omitting the words, from my utter
ignorance of the Moorish. Abdul was much
FEA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH.
83
pleased, and took the trouble to convince me
that the poetry they conveyed, which he trans-
lated literally, was incomparably better than ours.
"Cold as ice!" he repeated, scoffing: "anybody
might say that who had seen Atlas : but a genuine
poet would rather say, " Cold as a lizard or a
lobster." There is no controverting a critic who
has twenty stout rowers and twenty well-knotted
rope-ends. Added to which, he seemed to know
as much of the matter as the generality of those
who talk about it. He was gratified by my atten-
tion and edification, and thus continued : " I have
remarked in the songs I have heard, that these
wild woodland creatures of the west, these nymphs,
are a strange fantastical race. But are your poets
not ashamed to complain of their inconstancy ?
whose fault is that? If ever it should be my
fortune to take one, I would try whether I could
not bring her down to the level of her sex ; and
if her inconstancy caused any complaints, by
Allah ! they should be louder and shriller than
ever rose from the throat of Abdul." I still
thought it better to be a disciple than a com-
mentator.
Eugenius. If we could convert this barbarian
and detain him awhile at Home, he would learn
that women and nymphs (and inconstancy also)
are one and the same. These cruel men have
no lenity, no suavity. They who do not as they
would be done by, are done by very much as they
do. Women will glide away from them like
water ; they can better bear two masters than half
one ; and a new metal must be discovered before
any bars are strong enough to confine them.
But proceed with your narrative.
Filippo. Night had now closed upon us.
Abdul placed the younger of the company apart,
and after giving them some boiled rice, sent them
down into his own cabin. The sailors, observing
the consideration and distinction with which their
master had treated me, were civil and obliging.
Permission was granted me, at my request, to sleep
on deck.
Eugenius. What became of your canonico ?
Filippo. The crew called him a conger, a priest,
and a porpoise.
Eugenius. Foul-mouthed knaves ! could not
one of these terms content them 1 On thy leaving
Barbary was he left behind ?
Filippo. Your Holiness consecrated him, the
other day, Bishop of Macerata.
Eugenius. True, true ; I remember the name,
Saccone. How did he contrive to get off ?
Filippo. He was worth little at any work ; and
such men are the quickest both to get off and to
get on. Abdul told me he had received three
thousand crowns for his ransom.
Eugenius. He was worth more to him than to
me. I received but two first-fruits, and such other
things as of right belong to me by inheritance.
The bishopric is passably rich : he may serve
thee.
Filippo. While he was a canonico he was a
jolly fellow ; not very generous ; for jolly fellows
are seldom that ; but he would give a friend a
dinner, a flask of wine or two in preference, and a
piece of advice as readily as either. I waited on
Monsignor at Macerata, soon after his elevation.
Eugenius. He must have been heartily glad to
embrace his companion in captivity, and the more
especially as he himself was the cause of so grievous
a misfortune.
Filippo. He sent me word he was so unwell he
could not see me. " What ! said I to his valet,
" is Monsignor's complaint in his eyes ?" The
fellow shrugged up his shoulders and walked away.
Not believing that the message was a refusal to
admit me, I went straight up-stairs, and finding
the door of an ante-chamber half open, and a
chaplain milling an egg-posset over the fire, I
accosted him. The air of familiarity and satisfac-
tion he observed in me, left no doubt in his mind
that I had been invited by his patron. " Will the
man never come?" cried his lordship. "Yes,
Monsignor !" exclaimed I, running in and em-
bracing him ; "behold him here!" He started
back, and then I first discovered the wide difference
between an old friend and an egg-posset.
Eugenius. Son Filippo ! thou hast seen but
little of the world, and art but just come from
Barbary. Go on.
Filippo. "Fra Filippo!" said he gravely, "I
am glad to see you. I did not expect you just at
present : I am not very well : I had ordered a
medicine and was impatient to take it. If you
will favour me with the name of your inn, I will
send for you when I am in a condition to receive
you ; perhaps within a day or two." " Monsignor !"
said I, " a change of residence often gives a man a
cold, and oftener a change of fortune. Whether
you caught yours upon deck (where we last saw
each other), from being more exposed than usual,
or whether the mitre holds wind, is no question
for me, and no concern of mine."
Eugenius. A just reproof, if an archbishop had
made it. On uttering it, I hope thou kneeledst and
kissedst his hand.
Filippo. I did not indeed.
Eugenius. 0 ! there wert thou greatly in the
wrong. Having, it is reported, a good thousand
crowns yearly of patrimony, and a canonicate worth
six hundred more, he might have attempted to
relieve thee from slavery, by assisting thy relatives
in thy redemption.
Filippo. The three thousand crowns were the ut-
termost he could raise, he declared to Abdul, and
he asserted that a part of the money was contributed
by the inhabitants of Pesaro. " Do they act out of
pure mercy T said he. " Ay, they must, for what
else could move them in behalf of such a lazy
unserviceable street-fed cur 1" In the morning, at
sunrise, he was sent a-board. And now, the vessel
being under weigh, " I have a letter from my lord
Abdul," said the master, "which, being in thy
language, two fellow slaves shall read unto thee
publicly." They came forward and began the read-
ing. "Yesterday I purchased these two slaves
from a cruel unrelenting master, under whose lash
a 2
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
they have laboured for nearly thirty years. I
hereby give orders that five ounces of my own
gold be weighed out to them." Here one of the
slaves fell on his face ; the other lifted up his
hands, praised God, and blessed his benefactor.
I'.tKj: ii'uif. The pirate ? the unconverted pirate ?
Filippo. Even so. " Here is another slip of
paper for thyself to read immediately in my pre-
sence," said the master. The words it contained
were, " Do thou the same, or there enters thy lips
neither food nor water until thou landest in Italy.
I permit thee to carry away more than double the
sum : I am no suttler : I do not contract for thy
sustenance." The canonico asked of the master
whether he knew the contents of the letter ; he
replied, no. " Tell your master, lord Abdul, that
I shall take them into consideration." " My lord
expected a much plainer answer, and commanded
me, in case of any such as thou hast delivered, to
break this seal." He pressed it to his forehead
and then broke it. Having perused the characters
reverentially, " Christian ! dost thou consent T
The canonico fell on his knees, and overthrew the
two poor wretches who, saying their prayers, had
remained in the same posture before him quite
unnoticed. " Open thy trunk and take out thy
money-bag, or I will make room for it in thy
bladder." The canonico was prompt in the exe-
cution of the command. The master drew out
his scales, and desired the canonico to weigh with
his own hand five ounces. He groaned and trem-
bled: the balance was unsteady. "Throw in
another piece : it will not vitiate the agreement,"
cried the master. It was done. Fear and grief
are among the thirsty passions, but add little to
the appetite. It seemed however as if every sigh
had left a vacancy in the stomach of the canonico.
At dinner the cook brought him a salted bonito,
half an ell in length ; and in five minutes his
Reverence was drawing his middle finger along
the white back-bone, out of sheer idleness, until
were placed before him some as fine dried locusts
as ever provisioned the tents of Africa, together
with olives the size of eggs and colour of bruises,
shining in oil and brine. He found them savoury
and pulpy, and, as the last love supersedes the
foregoing, he gave them the preference, even over
the delicate locusts. When he had finished them,
he modestly requested a can of water. A sailor
brought a large flask, and poured forth a plentiful
supply. The canonico engulfed the whole, and
instantly threw himself back in convulsive agony.
" How is this F cried the sailor. The master ran
up and, smelling the water, began to buffet him,
exclaiming, as he turned round to all the crew,
" How came this flask here T All were innocent.
It appeared however that it was a flask of mineral
water, strongly sulphureous, taken out of a Neapo-
litan vessel, laden with a great abundance of it for
some hospital in the Levant. It had taken the
captor by surprise in the same manner as the
canonico. He himself brought out instantly a
capacious stone jar covered with dew, and invited
the sufferer into the cabin. Here he drew forth
two richly-cut wine-glasses, and, on filling one of
hem, the outside of it turned suddenly pale, with
a myriad of indivisible drops, and the senses were
refreshed with the most delicious fragrance. He
icld up the glass between himself and his guest,
and looking at it attentively, said, " Here is no
appearance of wine ; all I can see is water. No-
thing is wickeder than too much curiosity : we
must take what Allah sends us, and render thanks
for it, although it fall far short of our expecta-
tions. Beside, our prophet would rather we should
even drink wine than poison." The canonico had
not tasted wine for two months : a longer ab-
stinence than ever canonico endured before.
He drooped : but the master looked still more
disconsolate. " I would give whatever I possess
on earth rather than die of thirst," cried the cano-
nico. " Who would not ?" rejoined the captain,
sighing and clasping his fingers. " If it were not
contrary to my commands, I could touch at some
cove or inlet." " Do, for the love of Christ !" ex-
claimed the canonico. " Or even sail back," con-
tinued the captain. " 0 Santa Vergine !" cried
in anguish the canonico. " Despondency," said
the captain, with calm solemnity, " has left many a
man to be thrown overboard : it even renders the
plague, and many other disorders, more fatal.
Thirst too has a powerful effect in exasperating
them. Overcome such weaknesses, or I must do
my duty. The health of the ship's company is
placed under my care ; and our lord Abdul, if he
suspected the pest, would throw a Jew, or a
Christian, or even a bale of silk, into the sea :
such is the disinterestedness and magnanimity of
my lord Abdul." " He believes in fate ; does he
not ]" said the canonico. " Doubtless : but he says
it is as much fated that he should throw into the
sea a fellow who is infected, as that the fellow should
have ever been so." " Save me, 0 save me !"
cried the canonico, moist as if the spray had
pelted him. " Willingly, if possible," answered
calmly the master. " At present I can discover
no certain symptoms ; for sweat, unless followed
by general prostration, both of muscular strength
and animal spirits, may be cured without a hook
at the heel." " Giesu-Maria !" ejaculated the
canonico.
Eugenius. And the monster could withstand
that appeal ?
Filippo. It seems so. The renegade who re-
lated to me, on my return, these events as they
happened, was very circumstantial. He is a Cor-
sican, and had killed many men in battle, and
more" out ; but is (he gave me his word for it) on
the whole an honest man.
Eugenius. How so? honest? and a renegade ?
Filippo. He declared to me that, although the
Mahomedan is the best religion to live in, the
Christian is the best to die in ; and that, when he
has made his fortune, he will make his confession,
and lie snugly in the bosom of the Church.
Eugenius. See here the triumphs of our holy
faith ! The lost sheep will be found again.
Filippo. Having played the butcher first.
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH.
85
Eugenius. Return we to that bad man, the
master or captain, who evinced no such disposi-
tions.
Filippo. He added, " The other captives, though
older men, have stouter hearts than thine."
" Alas ! they are longer used to hardships," an-
swered he. " Dost thou believe, in thy con-
science," said the captain, " that the water we
have aboard would be harmless to them ? for we
have no other ; and wine is costly ; and our quan-
tity might be insufficient for those who can afford
to pay for it." " I will answer for their lives,"
replied the canonico. " With thy own1?" inter-
rogated sharply the Tunisian. " I must not
tempt God," said, in tears, the religious man.
" Let us be plain," said the master. " Thou
knowest thy money is safe : I myself counted it
before thee when I brought it from the scrivener's :
thou hast sixty broad gold pieces : wilt thou be
answerable, to the whole amount of them, for the
lives of thy two countrymen if they drink this
water T " 0 Sir ! said the canonico, " I will give
it, if, only for these few days of voyage, you
vouchsafe me one bottle daily of that restorative
wine of Bordeaux. The other two are less liable
to the plague : they do not sorrow and sweat as
I do. They are spare men. There is enough of
me to infect a fleet with it ; and I can not bear to
think of being anywise the cause of evil to my
fellow-creatures." " The wine is my patron's,"
cried the Tunisian ; " he leaves everything at my
discretion: should I deceive him1?" "If he
leaves everything at your discretion," observed
the logician of Pesaro, " there is no deceit in dis-
posing of it." The master appeared to be satisfied
with the argument. " Thou shalt not find me
exacting," said he; "give me the sixty pieces,
and the wine shall be thine." At a signal, when
the contract was agreed to, the two slaves entered,
bringing a hamper of jars. " Read the contract
before thou signest," cried the master. He read.
" How is this 1 how is this ? Sixty golden ducats
to the brothers Antonio and Bernabo Panini, for
wine received from them?" The aged men tot-
tered under the stroke of joy ; and Bernabo, who
would have embraced his brother, fainted.
On the morrow there was a calm, and the
weather was extremely sultry. The canonico sat
in his shirt on deck, and was surprised to see, I
forget which of the brothers, drink from a goblet
a prodigious draught of water. "Hold!" cried
he angrily ; " you may eat instead ; but putrid or
sulphureous water, you have heard, may produce
the plague, and honest men be the sufferers by
your folly and intemperance." They assured
him the water was tasteless, and very excellent,
and had been kept cool in the same kind of
earthen jars as the wine. He tasted it, and lost
his patience. It was better, he protested, than
any wine in the world. They begged his accept-
ance of the jar containing it. But the master,
who had witnessed at a distance the whole pro-
ceeding, now advanced, and, placing his hand
against it, said sternly, " Let him have his
own." Usually, when he had emptied the second
bottle, a desire of converting the Mahometans
came over him: and they showed themselves
much less obstinate and refractory than they are
generally thought. He selected those for edifica-
tion who swore the oftenest and the loudest by
the Prophet; and he boasted in his heart of
having overcome, by precept and example, the
stiffest tenet of their abominable creed. Cer-
tainly they drank wine, and somewhat freely.
The canonico clapped his hands, and declared
that even some of the apostles had been more
pertinacious recusants of the faith.
Eugenius. Did he so ? Cappari ! I would not
have made him a bishop for twice the money if I
had known it earlier. Could not he have left them
alone ? Suppose one or other of them did doubt
and persecute, was he the man to blab it out
among the heathen ?
Filippo. A judgment, it appears, fell on him
for so doing. A very quiet sailor, who had always
declined his invitations, and had always heard his
arguments at a distance and in silence, being
pressed and urged by him, and reproved somewhat
arrogantly and loudly, as less docile than his mess-
mates, at last lifted up his leg behind him, pulled
off his right slipper, and counted deliberately and
distinctly thirty-nine sound strokes of the same,
on the canonico's broadest tablet, which (please
your holiness) might be called, not inaptly, from
that day, the tablet of memory. In vain he cried
out. Some of the mariners made their moves at
chess and waved their left-hands as if desirous of
no interruption ; others went backward and for-
ward about their business, and took no more
notice than if their messmate was occupied in
caulking a seam or notching a flint. The master
himself, who saw the operation, heard the com-
plaint in the evening, and lifted up his shoulders
and eyebrows, as if the whole were quite unknown
to him. Then, acting as judge-advocate, he called
the young man before him and repeated the accu-
sation. To this the defence was purely interro-
gative. " Why would he convert me ] I never
converted him." Turning to his spiritual guide, he
said, " I quite forgive thee : nay, I am ready to
appear in thy favour, and to declare that, in gene-
ral, thou hast been more decorous than people of
thy faith and profession usually are, and hast not
scattered on deck that inflammatory language
which I, habited in the dress of a Greek, heard
last Easter. I went into three churches ; and the
preachers in all three denounced the curse of
Allah on every soul that differed from them a
tittle. They were children of perdition, children
of darkness, children of the devil, one and all. It
seemed a matter of wonder to me, that, in such
numerous families and of such indifferent parent-
age, so many slippers were kept under the heel.
Mine, in an evil hour, escaped me : but I quite
forgive thee. After this free pardon I will indulge
thee with a short specimen of my preaching. I
will call none of you a generation of vipers, as ye
call one another ; for vipers neither bite nor eat
86
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
during many months of the year : I will call none
of you wolves in sheep's clothing j for if ye are,
it must be acknowledged that the clothing is very
clumsily put on. You priests, however, take peo-
ple's souls aboard whether they will or not, just
as we do your bodies : and you make them pay
much more for keeping these in slavery, than we
make you pay for setting you free body and soul
together. You declare that the precious souls,
to the especial care of which Allah has called and
appointed you, frequently grow corrupt, and stink
in his nostrils. Now, I invoke thy own testimony
to the fact : thy soul, gross as I imagine it to be
from the greasy wallet that holds it, had no carnal
thoughts whatsoever, and that thy carcase did not
even receive a fly-blow, while it was under my
custody. Thy guardian angel (I speak it in humi-
lity) could not ventilate thee better. Neverthe-
less, I should scorn to demand a single maravedi
for my labour and skill, or for the wear and tear
of my pantoufle. My reward will be in Paradise,
where a Houri is standing in the shade, above a
vase of gold and silver fish, with a kiss on her lip,
and an unbroken pair of green slippers in her
hand for me." Saying which, he took off his foot
again the one he had been using, and showed the
sole of it, first to the master, then to all the crew,
and declared it had become (as they might see)
so smooth and oily by the application, that it was
dangerous to walk on deck in it.
Eugenius. See! what notions these creatures
have, both of their fool's paradise and of our holy
faith ! The seven sacraments, I warrant you, go
for nothing ! Purgatory, purgatory itself, goes
for nothing !
Filippo. Holy Father ! we must stop thee. That
does not go for nothing, however.
Eugenius. Filippo ! God forbid I should suspect
thee of any heretical taint ; but this smells very
like it. If thou hast it now, tell me honestly. I
mean, hold thy tongue. Florentines are rather
lax. Even Son Cosimo might be stricter : so they
say : perhaps his enemies. The great always have
them abundantly, beside those by whom they are
served, and those also whom they serve. Now
would I give a silver rose with my benediction on
it, to know of a certainty what became of those
poor creatures the abbates. The initiatory rite
of Mahometanism is most diabolically malicious.
According to the canons of our catholic Church, it
disqualifies the neophyte for holy orders, without
going so far as adapting him to the choir of the
pontifical chapel. They limp ; they halt.
Filippo. Beatitude ! which of them ?
Eugenius. The unbelievers : they surely are
found wanting.
FUippo. The unbelievers too ?
Engenius. Ay, ay, thou half renegade ! Couldst
not thou go over with a purse of silver, and try
whether the souls of these captives be recoverable 1
Even if they should have submitted to such un-
holy rites, I venture to say they have repented.
FUippo. The devil is in them if they have
not.
Eugenius. They may become again as good Chris-
tians as before.
FUippo. Easily, methinks.
Eugenius. Not so easily ; but by aid of Holy
Church in the administration of indulgences.
Filippo. They never wanted those, whatever
they want.
Eugenius. The corsair then is not one of those
ferocious creatures which appear to connect our
species with the lion and panther.
Filippo. By no means, Holy Father ! He is an
honest man ; so are many of his countrymen, bating
the sacrament.
Eugenius. Bating ! poor beguiled Filippo ! Being
unbaptised, they are only as the beasts that perish :
nay worse : for the soul being imperishable, it
must stick to their bodies at the last day, whether
they will or no, and must sink with it into the fire
and brimstone.
Filippo. Unbaptised ! why, they baptise every
morning.
Eugenius. Worse and worse ! I thought they
only missed the stirrup ; I find they overleap the
saddle. Obstinate blind reprobates ! of whom it
is written . . of whom it is written . . of whom,
I say, it is written . . as shall be manifest before
men and angels in the day of wrath.
FUippo. More is the pity ! for they are hospi-
table, frank, and courteous. It is delightful to see
their gardens, when one has not the weeding and
irrigation of them. What fruit ! what foliage !
what trellises ! what alcoves ! what a contest of
rose and jessamine for supremacy in odour! of
lute and nightingale for victory in song! And
how the little bright ripples of the docile brooks,
the fresher for their races, leap up against one
another, to look on ! and how they chirrup and
applaud, as if they too had a voice of some impor-
tance in these parties of pleasure that are loth to
separate.
Eugenius. Parties of pleasure ! birds, fruits, shall-
low-running waters, lute-players and wantons !
Parties of pleasure ! and composed of these ! Tell
me now, Filippo, tell me truly, what complexion
in general have the discreeter females of that
hapless country.
FUippo. The colour of an orange-flower, on which
an over-laden bee has left a slight suffusion of her
purest honey.
Eugenius. We must open their eyes.
FUippo. Knowing what excellent hides the
slippers of this people are made of, I never once
ventured on their less perfect theology, fearing
to find it written that I should be a-bed on my
face the next fortnight. My master had expressed
his astonishment that a religion so admirable as
ours was represented, should be the only one in
the world the precepts of which are disregarded
by all conditions of men. " Our Prophet," said
he, "our Prophet ordered us to go forth and
conquer ; we did it : yours ordered you to sit
quiet and forbear ; and, after spitting in his face,
you threw the order back into it, and fought like
devils."
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH.
87
Eugenius. The barbarians talk of our Holy
Scriptures as if they understood them perfectly.
The impostor they follow has nothing but fustian
and rhodomantade in his impudent lying book from
beginning to end. I know it, Filippo, from those
who have contrasted it, page by page, paragraph
by paragraph, and have given the knave his due.
Filippo. Abdul is by no means deficient in a
good opinion of his own capacity and his Prophet's
all-sufficiency, but he never took me to task about
my faith or his own.
Eugenius. How wert thou mainly occupied ?
Filippo. I will give your Holiness a sample both
of my employments and of his character. He was
going one evening to a country-house, about fifteen
miles from Tunis ; and he ordered me to accom-
pany him. I found there a spacious garden, over-
run with wild-flowers and most luxuriant grass,
in irregular tufts, according to the dryness or the
humidity of the spot. The clematis overtopped
the lemon and orange-trees; and the perennial
pea, sent forth here a pink blossom, here a pur-
ple, here a white one, and, after holding (as it
were) a short conversation with the humbler
plants, sprang up about an old cypress, played
among its branches, and mitigated its gloom.
White pigeons, and others in colour like the dawn
of day, looked down on us and ceased to coo, until
some of their companions, in whom they had more
confidence, encouraged them loudly from remoter
boughs, or alighted on the shoulders of Abdul, at
whose side I was standing. A few of them ex-
amined me in every position their inquisitive eyes
could take : displaying all the advantages of their
versatile necks, and pretending querulous fear in
the midst of petulant approaches.
Eugenius. Is it of pigeons thou art talking, 0
Filippo ? I hope it may be.
Filippo. Of Abdul's pigeons. He was fond of tam-
ing all creatures; men, horses, pigeons, equally : but
he tamed them all by kindness. In this wilderness
is an edifice not unlike our Italian chapter -houses
built by the Lombards, with long narrow windows,
high above the ground. The centre is now a bath,
the waters of which, in another part of the inclo-
sure, had supplied a fountain, at present in ruins,
and covered by tufted canes, and by every variety
of aquatic plants. The structure has no remains
of roof : and, of six windows, one alone is uncon-
cealed by ivy. This had been walled up long ago,
and the cement in the inside of it was hard and
polished. " Lippi ! " said Abdul to me, after I
had long admired the place in silence, " I leave
to thy superintendence this bath and garden.
Be sparing of the leaves and branches : make
paths only wide enough for me. Let me see no
mark of hatchet or pruning-hook, and tell the
labourers that whoever takes a nest or an egg shall
be impaled."
Eugenius. Monster ! so then he would really
have impaled a poor wretch for eating a bird's
egg 1 How disproportionate is the punishment to
the offence !
Filippo. He efficiently checked in his slaves
the desire of transgressing his command. To
spare them as much as possible, I ordered them
merely to open a few spaces, and to remove the
weaker trees from the stronger. Meanwhile I
drew on the smooth blank window the figure of
Abdul and of a beautiful girl.
Eugenius. Rather say handmaiden : choicer
expression ; more decorous.
Filippo. Holy Father ! I have been lately so
much out of practice, I take the first that comes
in my way. Handmaiden I will use in preference
for the future.
Eugenius. On then ! and God speed thee !
Filippo. I drew Abdul with a blooming hand-
maiden. One of his feet is resting on her lap,
and she is drying the ancle with a saffron robe, of
which the greater part is fallen in doing it. That
she is a bondmaid is discernible, not only by her
occupation, but by her humility and patience, by
her loose and flowing brown hair, and by her
eyes expressing the timidity at once of servitude
and of fondness. The countenance was taken
from fancy, and was the loveliest I could imagine :
of the figure I had some idea, having seen it to
advantage in Tunis. After seven days Abdul
returned. He was delighted with the improve-
ment made in the garden. I requested him to
visit the bath. " We can do nothing to that,"
answered he impatiently. "There is no suda-
tory, no dormitory, no dressing-room, no couch.
Sometimes I sit an hour there in the summer,
because I never found a fly in it ; the principal
curse of hot countries, and against which plague
there is neither prayer nor amulet, nor indeed
any human defence." He went away into the
house. At dinner he sent me from his table some
quails and ortolans, and tomatas and honey and
rice, beside a basket of fruit covered with moss
and bay-leaves, under which I found a verdino fig,
deliciously ripe, and bearing the impression of
several small teeth, but certainly no reptile's.
Eugenius. There might have been poison in
them, for all that.
Filippo. About two hours had passed, when I
heard a whirr and a crash in the windows of the
bath (where I had dined and was about to sleep),
occasioned by the settling and again the flight of
some pheasants. Abdul entered. " Beard of the
Prophet! what hast thou been doing? That is
myself ! No, no, Lippi ! thou never canst have
seen her : the face proves it : but those limbs !
thou hast divined them aright : thou hast had
sweet dreams then ! Dreams are large possessions :
in them the possessor may cease to possess his
own. To the slave, 0 Allah ! to the slave is per-
mitted what is not his ! . . I burn with anguish
to think how much . . yea, at that very hour. I
would not another should, even in a dream . .
But, Lippi ! thou never canst have seen above the
sandal ? " To which I answered, " I never have
allowed my eyes to look even on that. But if
anyone of my lord Abdul's fair slaves resembles,
as they surely must all do, in duty and docility,
the figure I have represented, let it express to
88
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
him my congratulation on his happiness." " I
believe," said he, " such representations are for-
bidden by the Koran ; but as I do not remember
it, I do not sin. There it shall stay, unless the
angel Gabriel comes to forbid it." He smiled in
saying so.
Eugenius. There is hope of this Abdul. His
faith hangs about him more like oil than pitch.
FUippo. He inquired of me whether I often
thought of those I loved in Italy, and whether I
could bring them before my eyes at will. To
remove all suspicion from him, I declared I always
could, and that one beautiful object occupied all
the cells of my brain by night and day. He paused
and pondered, and then said, " Thou dost not
love deeply." I thought I had given the true
signs. " No, Lippi ! we who love ardently, we,
with all our wishes, all the efforts of our souls,
can not bring before us the features which, while
they were present, we thought it impossible we
ever could forget. Alas ! when we most love the
absent, when we most desire to see her, we try in
vain to bring her image back to us. The troubled
heart shakes and confounds it, even -as ruffled
waters do with shadows. Hateful things are more
hateful when they haunt our sleep : the lovely flee
away, or are changed into less lovely."
Eugenius. What figures now have these un-
believers 1
FUippo. Various in their combinations as the
letters or the numerals ; but they all, like these,
signify something. Almeida (did I not inform
your Holiness ?) has large hazel eyes . .
Eugenius. Has she ? thou never toldest me that.
Well, well ! and what else has she ? Mind ! be
cautious ! use decent terms.
FUippo. Somewhat pouting lips.
Eugenius. Ha ! ha ! What did they pout at1?
FUippo. And she isratherplump than otherwise.
Eugenius. No harm in that.
FUippo. And moreover is cool, smooth, and
firm as a nectarine gathered before sunrise.
Eugenius. Ha ! ha ! do not remind me of nec-
tarines. I am very fond of them ; and this is not
the season ! Such females as thou describest, are
said to be among the likeliest to give reasonable
cause for suspicion. I would not judge harshly,
I would not think uncharitably ; but, unhappily,
being at so great a distance from spiritual aid,
peradventure a desire, a suggestion, an inkling . .
ay? If she, the lost Almeida, came before thee
when her master was absent . . which I trust she
never did. . . But those flowers and shrubs and
odours and alleys and long grass and alcoves,
might strangely hold, perplex, and entangle, two
incautious young persons . . ay 1
FUippo. I confessed all I had to confess in this
matter, the evening I landed.
Eugenius. Ho ! I am no candidate for a seat at
the rehearsal of confessions : but perhaps my ab-
solution might be somewhat more pleasing and
unconditional. Well ! well ! since I am unworthy
of such confidence, go about thy business .
paint ! paint .'
FUippo. Am I so unfortunate as to have offended
your Beatitude 1
Eugenius. Offend me, man ! who offends me ?
I took an interest in thy adventures, and was con-
cerned lest thou mightest have sinned ; for by my
soul ! FUippo ! those are the women that the devil
hath set his mark on.
FUippo. It would do your Holiness's heart good
to rub it out again, wherever he may have had the
cunning to make it.
Eugenius. Deep! deep!
FUippo. Yet it may be got at; she being a
Biscayan by birth, as she told me, and not only
baptised, but going by sea along the coast for con-
firmation, when she was captured.
Eugenius. Alas ! to what an imposition of
hands was this tender young thing devoted !
Poor soul !
FUippo. I sigh for her myself when I think
of her.
Eugenius. Beware lest the sigh be mundane,
and lest the thought recur too often. I wish it
were presently in my power to examine her my-
self on her condition. What thinkest thou ?
Speak.
FUippo. Holy Father ! she would laugh in
your face.
Eugenius. So lost !
FUippo. She declared to me she thought she
should have died, from the instant she was cap-
tured until she was comforted by Abdul : but
that she was quite sure she should if she were
ransomed.
Eugenius. Has the wretch then shaken her
faith]
FUippo. The very last thing he would think of
doing. Never did I see the virtue of resignation
in higher perfection than in the laughing light-
hearted Almeida.
Eugenius. Lamentable ! Poor lost creature !
lost in this world and in the next.
FUippo. What could she do? how could she
help herself?
Eugenius. She might have torn his eyes out,
and have died a martyr.
FUippo. Or have been bastinaded, whipped,
and given up to the cooks and scullions for it.
Eugenius. Martyrdom is the more glorious the
greater the indignities it endures.
FUippo. Almeida seems unambitious. There
are many in our Tuscany who would jump at the
crown over those sloughs and briars, rather than
perish without them : she never sighs after the
like.
Eugenius. Nevertheless, what must she wit-
ness ! what abominations ! what superstitions !
FUippo. Abdul neither practises nor exacts any
other superstition than ablutions.
Eugenius. Detestable rites ! without our autho-
rity. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of
Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns
contains a bath ; and that the worst inmate of
either would shudder at the idea of observing such
a practice in common with the unbeliever. For
FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND POPE EUGENIUS THE FOURTH.
the washing of the feet indeed we have the autho-
rity of the earlier Christians ; and it may be done ;
but solemnly and sparingly. Thy residence among
the Mahometans, I am afraid, hath rendered thee
more favourable to them than beseems a Catholic,
and thy mind, I do suspect, sometimes goes back
into Barbary unreluctantly.
Filippo. While I continued in that country,
although I was well treated, I often wished myself
away, thinking of my friends in Florence, of music,
of painting, of our vUlegiatura at the vintage-time ;
whether in the green and narrow glades of Pra-
tolino, with lofty trees above us, and little rills
unseen, and little bells about the necks of sheep
and goats, tinkling together ambiguously ; or
amid the grey quarries or under, the majestic
walls of ancient Fiesole ; or down in the woods
of the Doccia, where the cypresses are of such a
girth that, when a youth stands against one of
them, and a maiden stands opposite, and they
clasp it, their hands at the time do little more
than meet. Beautiful scenes, on which Heaven
smiles eternally, how often has my heart ached
for you ! He who hath lived in this country, can
enjoy no distant one. He breathes here another
air ; he lives more life ; a brighter sun invigorates
his studies, and serener stars influence his repose.
Barbary hath also the blessing of climate ; and
although I do not desire to be there again, I feel
sometimes a kind of regret at leaving it. A bell
warbles the more mellifluously in the air when the
sound of the stroke is over, and when another
swims out from underneath it, and pants upon
the element that gave it birth. In like manner
the recollection of a thing is frequently more
pleasing than the actuality ; what is harsh is
dropped in the space between. There is in Abdul
a nobility of soul on which I often have reflected
with admiration. I have seen many of the highest
rank and distinction, in whom I could find nothing
of the great man, excepting a fondness for low
company, and an aptitude to shy and start at every
spark of genius or virtue that sprang up above or
before them. Abdul was solitary, but affable : he
was proud, but patient and complacent. I ven-
tured once to ask him, how the master of so rich
a house in the city, of so many slaves, of so many
horses and mules, of such corn-fields, of such pas-
tures, of such gardens, woods, and fountains,
should experience any delight or satisfaction in
infesting the open sea, the high-road of nations ?
Instead of answering my question, he asked me
in return, whether I would not respect any rela-
tive of mine who avenged his country, enriched
himself by his bravery, and endeared to him his
friends and relatives by his bounty? On my reply in
the affirmative, he said that his family had been
deprived of possessions in Spain, much more
valuable than all the ships and cargoes he could
ever hope to capture, and that the remains of his
nation were threatened with ruin and expulsion.
" I do not fight," said he, " whenever it suits the
convenience, or gratifies the malignity, or the ca-
price, of two silly quarrelsome princes, drawing my
sword in perfectly good-humour, and sheathing
it again at word of command, just when I begin
to get into a passion. "No ; I fight on my own
account ; not as a hired assassin, or still baser
journeyman."
Eugenius, It appears then really that the Infi-
dels have some semblances of magnanimity and
generosity ?
Filippo. I thought so when I turned over the
many changes of fine linen ; and I was little short
of conviction when I found at the bottom of my
chest two hundred Venetian zecchins.
Eugenius. Corpo di Bacco \ Better things, far
better things, I would fain do for thee, not exactly
of this description ; it would excite many heart-
burnings. Information has been laid before me,
Filippo, that thou art attached to a certain young
person, by name Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco
Buti, a citizen of Prato.
Filippo. I acknowledge my attachment : it
continues.
Eugenius. Furthermore, that thou hast off-
spring by her.
Filippo. Alas ! 'tis undeniable.
Eugenius. I will not only legitimatize the said
offspring by motu proprio and rescript to consis-
tory and chancery . .
Filippo. Holy Father ! Holy Father ! For the
love of the Virgin, not a word to consistory or
chancery, of the two hundred zecchins. As I
hope for salvation, I have but forty left: and
thirty-nine would not serve them.
Eugenius. Fear nothing. Not only will I per-
form what I have promised, not only will I give
the strictest order that no money be demanded by
any officer of my courts, but, under the seal of
Saint Peter, I will declare thee and Lucrezia Buti
man and wife.
Filippo. Man and wife !
Eugenius. Moderate thy transport.
Filippo. 0 Holy Father ! may I speak ?
Eugenius. Surely she is not the wife of another?
Filippo. No indeed.
Eugenius. Nor within the degrees of consan-
guinity and affinity 1
Filippo. No, no, no. But . . man and wife !
Consistory and chancery are nothing to this ful-
mination.
Eugenius. How so?
Filippo. It is man and wife the first fortnight,
but wife and man ever after. The two figures
change places : the unit is the decimal and the
decimal is the unit.
Eugenius. What then can I do for thee?
Filippo. I love Lucrezia : let me love her : let
her love me. I can make her at any time what
she is not : I could never make her again what
she is.
Eugenius. The only thing I can do then is to
promise I will forget that I have heard anything
about the matter. But, to forget it, I must hear
it first.
Filippo. In the beautiful little town of Prato,
reposing in its idleness against the hill that pro-
90
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
tects it from the north, and looking over fertile
meadows, southward to Poggio Cajano, westward
to Pistoja, there is the convent of Santa Margarita.
I was invited by the sisters to paint an altar-
piece for the chapel. A novice of fifteen, my own
sweet Lucrezia, came one day alone to see me
work at my Madonna. Her blessed countenance
had already looked down on every beholder lower
by the knees. I myself who made her could almost
have worshipped her.
Eugenius, Not while incomplete : no half-virgin
will do.
Filippo. But there knelt Lucrezia ! there she
knelt! first looking with devotion at the Madonna,
then with admiring wonder and grateful delight
at the artist. Could so little a heart be divided ?
Twere a pity ! There was enough for me : there
is never enough for the Madonna. Resolving on
a sudden that the object of my love should be the
object of adoration to thousands, born and unborn,
I swept my brush across the maternal face, and
left a blank in heaven. The little girl screamed :
I pressed her to my bosom.
Eugenius. In the chapel?
Filippo. I knew not where I was : I thought I
was in Paradise.
Eugenius. If it was not in the chapel, the sin is
venial. But a brush against a Madonna's month
is worse than a beard against her votary's.
Filippo. I thought so too, Holy Father !
Eugenius. Thou sayest thou hast forty zecchins :
I will try in due season to add forty more. The
fisherman must not venture to measure forces
with the pirate. Farewell ! I pray God, my son
Filippo, to have thee alway in his holy keeping.
PRINCESS MARY AND PRINCESS ELIZABETH.
Mary. My dear dear sister! it is long, very
long, since we met.
Elizabeth. Methinks it was about the time they
chopped off our uncle Seymour's head for him.
Not that he was our uncle though . . he was only
Edward's.
Mary. The Lord Protector, if not your uncle,
was always doatingly fond of you ; and he often
declared to me, even within your hearing, he
thought you very beautiful.
Elizabeth. He said as much of you, if that is all ;
and he told me why . . " not to vex me" . . as if,
instead of vexing me, it would not charm me. I
beseech your Highness, is there anything remark-
able or singular in thinking me . . what he
thought me 1
Mary. No indeed ; for so you are. But why
call me Highness ? drawing back and losing half
your stature in the circumference of the curtsey.
Elizabeth. Because you are now, at this blessed
hour, my lawful queen.
Mary. Hush, prythee hush ! The parliament
has voted otherwise.
Elizabeth. They would chouse you.
Mary. What would they do with me 1
Elizabeth. Trump you.
Mary. I am still at a loss.
Elizabeth. Bamboozle you.
Mary. Really, my dear sister, you have been so
courted by the gallants, that you condescend to
adopt their language, in place of graver.
Elizabeth. Cheat you then . . will that do ?
Mary. Comprehensibly.
Elizabeth. I always speak as the thing spoken
of requires. To the point. Would our father
have minded the caitiffs 1
Mary. Naming our father, I should have said,
our father now in bliss; for surely he must be;
having been a rock of defence against the tor-
rent of irreligion.
Elizabeth. Well ; in bliss or out, there, here, or
anywhere, would he, royal soul ! have minded
parliament ? No such fool he. There were laws
before there were parliaments; and there were
kings before there were laws. Were I in your
Majesty's place (God forbid the thought should
ever enter my poor weak head, even in a dream!)
I would try the mettle of my subjects : I would
mount my horse, and head them.
Mary. Elizabeth ! you were always a better
horsewoman than I am : I should be ashamed to
get a fall among the soldiers.
Elizabeth. Pish! Pish! it would be among
knights and nobles . . the worst come to the
worst. Lord o' mercy ! do you think they never
saw such a thing before ?
Mary. I must hear of no resistance to the powers
that be. Beside, I am but a weak woman.
Elizabeth. I do not see why women should be
weak, unless they like.
Mary. Not only the Commons, but likewise the
peers, have sworn allegiance.
Elizabeth. Did you ever in your lifetime, in any
chronicle or commentary, read of any parliament
that was not as ready to be forsworne as to swear]
Mary. Alas !
Elizabeth. If ever you did, the book is a rare
one, kept in an out-of-the-way library, in a cedar
chest all to itself, with golden locks and amber
seals thereto.
Mary. I would not willingly think so ill of
men.
Elizabeth. For my part, I can't abide 'em. All
that can be said, is, some are not so bad as others.
You smile, and deem the speech a silly and super-
fluous one. We may live, sister Mary, to see
and acknowledge that it is not quite so sure and
flat a verity as it now appears to us. I never
come near a primrose but I suspect an adder
under it ; and the sunnier the day the more mis-'
givings.
Mary. But we are now, by the settlement of
PRINCESS MARY AND PRINCESS ELIZABETH.
the monarchy, farther out of harm's way than
ever.
Elizabeth. If the wench has children to-morrow,
as she may have, they will inherit.
Mary. No doubt they would.
Elizabeth. No doubt ] I will doubt : and others
shall doubt too. The heirs of my body . . yours
first . . God prosper them ! Parliament may be
constrained to retrace its steps. One half sees
no harm in taking bribes, the other no guilt in
taking fright. Corruption is odious and costly :
but, when people have yielded to compulsion,
conscience is fain to acquiesce. Men say they
were forced, and what is done under force is
invalid.
Mary. There was nothing like compulsion.
Elizabeth. Then let there be. Let the few
yield to the many, and all to the throne. Now is
your time to stir. The furnace is mere smut, and
no bellows to blow the embers. Parliament is
without a leader. Three or four turnspits are
crouching to leap upon the wheel; but, while
they are snarling and snapping one at another,
what becomes of the roast ? Take them by the
scuf, and out with 'em. The people will applaud
you. They want bread within doors, and honesty
without. They have seen enough of partisans
and parliaments.
Mary. We can not do without one.
Elizabeth. Convoke it then : but call it with
sound of trumpet. Such a body is unlikely to
find a head. There is little encouragement for
an honest knight or gentleman to take the sta-
tion. The Commons slink away with lowered
shoulders, and bear hateful compunction against
the very names and memory of those braver men,
who, in dangerous times and before stern autho-
ritative warlike sovrans, supported their preten-
sions. Kings, who peradventure would have
strangled such ringleaders, well remember and
well respect them : their fellows would disown
their benefactors and maintainers. Kings abomi-
nate their example ; clowns would efface the
images on their sepulchres. What forbearance
on our part can such knaves expect, or what suc-
cour from the people 1
Mary. What is done is done. j
Elizabeth. Oftentimes it is easier to undo than
to do. I should rather be glad than mortified at
what has been done yonder. In addition to those
churls and chapmen in the lower house, there are
also among the peers no few who voted most
audaciously.
Mary. The majority of them was of opinion
that the Lady Jane should be invested with royal
state and dignity.
Elizabeth. The majority ! So much the better
. . so much the better, say I. I would find cer-
tain folk who should make sharp inquest into
their title-deeds, and spell the indentures syllable
by syllable. Certain lands were granted for cer-
tain services ; which services have been neglected.
I would not in such wise neglect the lands in
question, but annex them to my royal domains.
Mary. Sister! sister! you forget that the Lady
Jane Gray (as was) is now queen of the realm.
Elizabeth. Forget it indeed ! The vile woman !
I am minded to call her as such vile women are
called out of doors.
Mary. Pray abstain; not only forasmuch as it
would be unseemly in those sweet slender deli-
cate lips of yours, but also by reason that she is
adorned with every grace and virtue, bating
(which indeed outvalues them all) the true reli-
gion. Sister ! I hope and believe I in this my
speech have given you no offence : for your own
eyes, I know, are opened. Indeed, who that is
not wilfully blind can err in so straight a road,
even if so gentle and so sure a guidance were
wanting ? The mind, sister, the mind itself must
be crooked which deviates a hair's breadth.
Ay, that intelligent nod would alone suffice to
set my bosom quite at rest thereupon. Should
it not?
Elizabeth. It were imprudent in me to declare
my real opinion at this juncture. We must step
warily when we walk among cocatrices. I am
barely a saint; indeed far from it; and I am
much too young to be a martyr. But that odious
monster, who pretends an affection for reforma-
tion, and a reverence for learning, is counting the
jewels in the crown, while you fancy she is repeat-
ing her prayers, or conning her Greek.
Sister Mary ! as God is in heaven, I hold no-
thing so detestable in a woman as. hypocrisy.
Add thereunto, as you fairly may, avarice, man-
hunting, lasciviousness. The least atom of the
least among these vices is heavy enough to weigh
down the soul to the bottomless pit.
Mary. Unless divine grace , .
Elizabeth. Don't talk to me. Don't spread the
filth fine.
Now could not that empty fool, Dudley, have
found some other young person of equal rank with
Mistress Jane, and of higher beauty ? Not that
any other such, pretty as the boy is, would listen
to his idle discourse.
And, pray, who are these Dudleys ] The first
of them was made a man of by our grandfather.
And what was the man after all ? Nothing better
than a huge smelting-pot, with a commodious
screw at the colder end of the ladle.
I have no patience with the bold harlotry.
Mary. I see you have not, sister !
Elizabeth. No, nor have the people. They are
on tip-toe for rising in all parts of the kingdom.
Mary. What can they do ? God help them !
Elizabeth. Sister Mary ! good sister Mary ! did
you say God help them ? I am trembling into
a heap. It is well you have uttered such words
to safe and kindred ears. If they should ever
come whispered at the Privy Council, it might
end badly.
I believe my visit hath been of as long continu-
ance as may seem befitting. I must be gone.
Mary. Before your departure, let me correct a
few of your opinions in regard to our gentle kins-
woman and most gracious queen. She hath
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
nobly enlarged my poor alimony. Look here ! to
begin.
Elizabeth. What ! all golden pieces ? I have not
ten groats in the world.
Mary. Be sure she will grant unto you plente-
ously. She hath condescended to advise me of
her intent. Meanwhile I do entreat you will take
home with you the purse you are stroking down,
thinking about other things.
Elizabeth. Not I, not I, if it comes from such a
creature.
Mary. You accept it from me.
Elizabeth. Then indeed unreservedly. Passing
through your hands the soil has been wiped away.
However, as I live, I will carefully wash every
piece in it with soap and water. Do you believe
they can lose anything of their weight thereby ?
Mary. Nothing material.
Elizabeth. I may reflect and cogitate upon it.
I would not fain offer anybody light money.
Troth ! I fear the purse, although of chamois
and double stitched, is insufficient to sustain the
weight of the gold, which must be shaken violently
on the road as I return. Dear sister Mary ! as
you probably are not about to wear that head-tire,
could you, commodiously to yourself, lend it me
awhile, just to deposit a certain part of the monies
therein ? for the velvet is stout, and the Venetian
netting close and stiff : I can hardly bend the
threads. I shall have more leisure to admire its
workmanship at home.
Mary. Elizabeth ! I see you are grown forgiv-
ing. In the commencement of our discourse I
suggested a slight alteration of manner in speak-
ing of our father. Do you pray for the repose of
his soul morning and night ?
Elizabeth. The doubt is injurious.
Mary. Pardon me ! I feel it. But the voices
of children, 0 Elizabeth ! come to the ear of God
above all other voices. The best want interces-
sion. Pray for him, Elizabeth ! pray for him.
Elizabeth. Why not ? He did indeed, but he
was in a passion, order my mother up the three
black stairs, and he left her pretty head on the
landing : but I bear him no malice for it.
Mary. Malice ! The baneful word hath shot
up from hell in many places, but never between
child and parent. In the space of that one span,
on that single sod from Paradise, the serpent
never trailed. Husband and wife were severed by
him, then again clashed together : brother slew
brother : but parent and child stand where their
Creator first placed them, and drink at the only
source of pure untroubled love.
Elizabeth. Beside, you know, being king, he
had clearly a right to do it, plea or no plea.
Mary. We will converse no longer on so dolo-
rous a subject.
Elizabeth. I will converse on it as long as such
is my pleasure,
Mary. Being my visitor, you command here.
Elizabeth. I command nowhere. I am blown
about like a leaf : I am yielding as a feather in a
cushion, only one among a million. But I tell
you, honestly and plainly, I do not approve of it
anyhow ! It may have grown into a trick and
habit with him : no matter for that : in my view
of the business, it is not what a husband ought to
do with a wife. And, if she did . . . but she did
not . . . and I say it.
Mary. It seems indeed severe.
Elizabeth. Yea, afore God, methinks it smacks
a trifle of the tart.
Mary. Our father was God's vicegerent. Pro-
bably it is for the good of her soul, poor lady !
Better suffer here than hereafter. We ought to
kiss the rod, and be thankful.
Elizabeth. Kiss the rod, forsooth. I have been
constrained erewhile even unto that; and no
such a child neither. But I would rather have
kissed it fresh and fair, with all its buds and
knots upon it, than after it had bestowed on me,
in such a roundabout way, such a deal of its em-
broidery and lace-work. I thank my father for
all that. I hope his soul lies easier than my skin
did.
Mary. The wish is kind; but prayers would
much help it. Our father of blessed memory,
now (let us hope) among the saints, was some-
what sore in his visitations; but they tended
heaven-ward.
Elizabeth. Yea, when he cursed and cuffed and
kicked us.
Mary. He did kick, poor man !
Elizabeth. Kick ! Fifty folks, young and old,
have seen the marks his kicking left behind.
Mary. We should conceal all such his infirmi-
ties. They arose from an irritation in the foot,
whereof he died.
Elizabeth. I only know I could hardly dance or
ride for them ; chiefly caught, as I was, fleeing
from his wrath. He seldom vouchsafed to visit
me : when he did, he pinched my ear so bitterly, I
was fain to squeel. And then he said, I should
turn out like my mother, calling me by such
a name moreover as is heard but about the
kennel -, and even there it is never given to the
young.
Mary. There was choler in him at certain
times and seasons. Those who have much will,
have their choler excited when opposite breath
blows against it.
Elizabeth. Let them have will ; let them have
choler too, in God's name ; but it is none the
better, as gout is, for flying to hand or foot.
Mary. I have seen . . . now do, pray forgive
me ...
Elizabeth. Well, what have you seen 1
Mary. My sweet little sister lift up the most
delicate of all delicate white hands, and with their
tiny narrow pink nails tear off ruflfs and caps,
and take sundry unerring aims at eyes and
noses.
Elizabeth. Was that any impediment or hin-
drance to riding and dancing ? I would always
make people do their duty, and always will.
Remember (for your memory seems accurate
enough) that, whenever I scratched anybody's
AND EHODOPE.
face, I permitted my hand to be kist by the
offender within a day or two.
Mary. Undeniable.
Elizabeth. I may, peradventure, have been
hasty in my childhood : but all great hearts are
warm ; all good ones are relenting. If, in comb-
ing my hair, the hussy lugged it, I obeyed God's
command, and referred to the lex talionis. I
have not too much of it ; and every soul on earth
sees its beauty. A single one would be a public
loss. Uncle Seymour . . but what boots it ] there
are others who can see perhaps as far as uncle
Seymour.
Mary. I do remember his saying that he
watched its growth as he would a melon's. And
how fondly did those little sharp grey eyes of his
look and wink when you blushed and chided his
flattery.
Elizabeth. Never let any man dare to flatter
me : I am above it. Only the weak and ugly
want the refreshment of that perfumed fan. I
take but my own ; and touch it who dares.
Keally it is pleasant to see in what a pear-form
fashion both purse and cawl are hanging. Faith !
they are heavy : I could hardly lift them from
the back of the chair.
Mary. Let me call an attendant to carry them
for you.
Elizabeth. Are you mad ] They are unsealed,
and ill-tied : anyone could slip his hand in.
And so that . . the word was well nigh out of
my mouth . . gave you all this gold ?
Mary. For shame ! 0 for shame !
Elizabeth. I feel shame only for her. It turns
my cheeks red . . together with some anger upon
it. But I can not keep my eyes off that book, if
book it may be, on which the purse was lying.
Mary. Somewhat irreverently, God forgive me ?
But it was sent at the same time by the same fair
creature, with many kind words. It had always
been kept in our father's bedroom-closet, and was
removed from Edward's by those unhappy men
who superintended his education.
Elizabeth. She must have thought all those
stones are garnets : to me they look like rubies,
one and all. Yet, over so large a cover, they
cannot all be rubies.
Mary. I believe they are, excepting the glory
in the centre, which is composed of chrysolites.
Our father was an excellent judge in jewellery, as
in everything else, and he spared no expenditure
in objects of devotion.
Elizabeth. What creature could fail in devotion
with an object such as that before the eyes 1 Let
me kiss it . . partly for my Saviour's and partly
for my father's sake.
Mary. How it comforts me, 0 Elizabeth, to see
you thus press it to your bosom. Its spirit, I am
confident, has entered there. Disregard the
pebbles : take it home : cherish it evermore.
May there be virtue, as some think there is, even
in the stones about it ! God bless you, strengthen
you, lead you aright, and finally bring you to
everlasting glory.
Elizabeth (going.) The Popish puss !
MBOP AND RHODOPE.
. Albeit thou approachest me without
any sign of derision, let me tell thee before thou
advancest a step nearer, that I deem thee more
hard-hearted than the most petulant of those other
young persons, who are pointing and sneering
from the door-way.
Rhodope. Let them continue to point and sneer
at me : they are happy ; so am I ; but are you 1
Think me hard-hearted, 0 good Phrygian ! but
graciously give me the reason for thinking it ;
otherwise I may be unable to correct a fault too
long overlooked by me, or to deprecate a grave
infliction of the gods.
JEsop. I thought thee so, my little maiden,
because thou earnest toward me without the least
manifestation of curiosity.
Rhodope. Is the absence of curiosity a defect ?
jEsop. None whatever.
Rhodope. Are we blamable in concealing it if
we have it ?
jEsop. Surely not. But it is feminine; and
where none of it comes forward, we may suspect
that other feminine appurtenances, such as sym-
pathy for example, are deficient. Curiosity slips
in among you before the passions are awake;
curiosity comforts your earliest cries ; curiosity
intercepts your latest. For which reason Daedalus,
who not only sculptured but painted admirably,
represents her in the vestibule of the Cretan laby-
rinth as a goddess.
Rhodope. What was she like 1
JEsop. There now 1 Like ? Why like Rhodope.
Rhodope. You said I have nothing of the kind.
JEsop. I soon discovered my mistake in this,
and more than this, and not altogether to thy
disadvantage.
Rhodope. I am glad to hear it.
jEsop. Art thou? I will tell thee then how
she was depicted : for I remember no author who
has related it. Her lips were half-open ; her hair
flew loosely behind her, designating that she was
in haste; it was more disordered, and it was
darker, than the hair of Hope is represented, and
somewhat less glossy. Her cheeks had a very
fresh colour, and her eyes looked into every eye
that fell upon them ; by her motion she seemed
to be on her way into the labyrinth.
Rhodope. Oh, how I wish I could see such a
picture !
jEsop. I do now.
Rhodope. Where 1 where 1 Troublesome man !
Are you always so mischievous ? but your smile is
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
not ill-natured. 1 can not help thinking that the
smiles of men are pleasanter and sweeter than
of women ; unless of the women who are rather
old and decrepit, who seem to want help, and
who perhaps are thinking that we girls are now
the very images of what they were formerly. But
girls never look at me so charmingly as you do,
nor smile with such benignity ; and yet, 0 Phry-
gian ! there are several of them who really are
much handsomer.
JKaop. Indeed? Is that so clear ?
Rhodope. Perhaps in the sight of the gods they
may not be, who see all things as they are. But
some of them appear to me to be very beautiful.
jEsop. Which are those 1
Rhodope. The very girls who think me the
ugliest of them all. How strange !
jEaop. That they should think thee so ?
Rhodope. No, no : but that nearly all the most
beautiful should be of this opinion ; and the
others should often come to look at me, apparently
with delight, over each other's shoulder or under
each other's arm, clinging to their girdle or hold-
ing by their sleeve, and hanging a little back, as
if there were something about me unsafe. They
seem fearful regarding me ; for here are many
venomous things in this country, of which we have
none at home.
jEsop. And some which we find all over the
world. But thou art too talkative.
Rhodope. Now indeed you correct me with
great justice, and with great gentleness. I know
not why I am so pleased to talk with you. But
what you say to me is different from what others
say : the thoughts, the words, the voice, the look,
all different. And yet reproof is but little plea-
sant, especially to those who are unused to it.
jEsop. Why didst thou not spring forward and
stare at me, having heard as the rest had done,
that I am unwillingly a slave, and indeed not
over- willingly a deformed one ?
Rhodope. I would rather that neither of these
misfortunes had befallen you.
. JEsop. And yet within the year thou wilt re-
joice that they have.
Rhodope. If you truly thought so, you would
not continue to look at me with such serenity.
Tell me why you say it.
JEsop. Because by that time thou wilt prefer
me to the handsomest slave about the house.
Rhodope. For shame ! vain creature !
jEsotp. By the provision of the gods, the under-
sized and distorted are usually so. The cork of
vanity buoys up their chins above all swim-
mers on the tide of life. But, Rhodope, my
vanity has not yet begun.
Rhodope. How do you know that my name is
Rhodope ?
JEsop. Were I malicious I would inform thee,
and turn against thee the tables on the score of
vanity.
Rhodope. What can you mean ?
jEsop. I mean to render thee happy in life,
and glorious long after. Thou shalt be sought
by the powerful, thou shalt be celebrated by
the witty, and thou shalt be beloved by the
generous and the wise. Xanthus may adorn the
sacrifice, but the Immortal shall receive it from
the altar.
Rhodope. I am but fourteen years old, and
Xanthus is married. Surely he would not rather
love me than one to whose habits and endear-
ments he has been accustomed for twenty years.
jEsop. It seems wonderful : but such things
do happen.
Rhodope. Not among us Thracians. I have
seen in my childhood men older than Xanthus,
who, against all remonstrances and many strug-
gles, have fondled and kissed, before near relatives,
wives of the same age, proud of exhibiting the
honourable love they bore toward them : yet, in
the very next room, the very same day, scarcely
would they press to their bosoms while you could
(rather slowly) count twenty, nor kiss for half the
time, beautiful young maidens, who, casting down
their eyes, never stirred, and only said, " Don't !
Dontr
jEsop. What a rigid morality is the Thracian !
How courageous the elderly ! and how enduring
the youthful !
Rhodope. Here in Egypt we are nearer to
strange creatures; to men without heads, to
others who ride on dragons.
jEsop. Stop there, little Rhodope ! In all
countries we live among strange creatures. How-
ever, there are none such in the world as thou hast
been told of since thou earnest hither.
Rhodope. Oh yes there are. You must not begin
by shaking my belief, and by making me know
less than others of my age. They all talk of them :
nay, some creatures not by any means prettier,
are worshipped here as deities : I have seen them
with my own eyes. I wonder that you above all
others should deny the existence of prodigies.
/Esop. Why dost thou wonder at it particu-
larly in me ?
Rhodope. Because when you were brought
hither yesterday, and when several of my fellow-
maidens came around you, questioning you about
the manners and customs of your country, yon
began to tell them stories of beasts who spoke,
and spoke reasonably.
jEsop. They are almost the only people of my
acquaintance who do.
Rhodope. And you call them by the name of
people ?
jEsop. For want of a nobler and a better. Didst
thou hear related what I had been saying?
Rhodope, Yes, every word, and perhaps more.
JEsvp. Certainly more ; for my audience was
of females. But canst thou repeat any portion
of the narrative ?
Rhodope. They began by asking you whether
all the men in Phrygia were like yourself.
jEsop. Art thou quite certain that this was the
real expression they used ? Come : no blushes.
Do not turn round.
Rhodope. It had entirely that meaning.
JEsop. Did they not not inquire if all Phrygians
were such horrible monsters as the one before
them?
Rhodope. Oh heaven and earth ! this man is
surely omniscient. Kind guest ! do not hurt
them for it. Deign to repeat to me, if it is not
too troublesome, what you said about the talking
beasts.
jEsop. The innocent girls asked me many
questions, or rather half-questions ; for never was
one finished before another from the same or
from a different quarter was begun.
Rhodope. This is uncivil : I would never have
interrupted you.
jEsop. Pray tell me why all that courtesy.
Rhodope. For fear of losing a little of what you
were about to say, or of receiving it somewhat
changed. We never say the same thing in the
same manner when we have been interrupted.
Beside, there are many who are displeased at it ;
and if you had been, it would have shamed and
vexed me.
^Esop. Art thou vexed so easily?
Rhodope. When I am ashamed I am. I shall
be jealous if you are kinder to the others than to
me, and if you refuse to tell me the story you told
them yesterday.
jEsop. I have never yet made anyone jealous ;
and I will not begin to try my talent on little
Khodope.
They asked me who governs Phrygia at pre-
sent. I replied that the Phrygians had just placed
themselves under the dominion of a sleek and
quiet animal, half-fox, half-ass, named Alopiconos.
At one time he seems fox almost entirely; at
another, almost entirely ass.
Rhodope. And can he speak ?
JEsop. Few better.
Rhodope. Are the Phrygians contented with
him?
^Esop. They who raised him to power and
authority rub their hands rapturously : neverthe-
less, I have heard several of the principal ones, in
the very act of doing it, breathe out from closed
teeth, " The cursed fox !" and others, " The
Rhodope. What has he done ?
JBsop. He has made the nation the happiest
in the world, they tell us.
Rhodope. How?
jEsop. By imposing a heavy tax on the neces-
saries of life, and making it quite independent.
Rhodope. Oh JSsop ! I am ignorant of politics,
as of everything else. We Thracians are near
Phrygia : our kings, I believe, have not conquered
it : what others have ?
^Esop. None : but the independence which
Alopiconos has conferred upon it, is conferred by
hindering the corn of other lands, more fertile
and less populous, from entering it, until so many
of the inhabitants have died of famine and disease,
that there will be imported just enough for the
remainder.
Rhodope. Holy Jupiter ! protect my country !
and keep for ever its asses and its foxes wider
apart !
Tell me more. You know many things that
have happened in the world. Beside the strange
choice you just related, what is the most memo-
rable thing that has occurred in Phrygia since the
Trojan war ?
uEsop. An event more memorable preceded it :
but nothing since will appear to thee so extra-
ordinary.
Rhodope. Then tell me only that.
jEsop. It will interest thee less, but the effect
is more durable than of the other. Soon after the
dethronement of Saturn, with certain preliminary
ceremonies, by his eldest son Jupiter, who thus
became the legitimate king of gods and men, the
lower parts of nature on our earth were also much
affected. At this season the water in all the
rivers of Phryigia was running low, but quietly,
so that the bottom was visible in many places,
and grew tepid and warm and even hot in some.
At last it became agitated and excited : and loud
bubbles rose up from it, audible to the ears of
Jupiter, declaring that it had an indefeasible right
to exercise its voice on all occasions, and of rising
to the surface at all seasons. Jupiter, who was
ever much given to hilarity, laughed at this : but
the louder he laughed, the louder bubbled the
mud, beseeching him to thunder and lighten and
rain in torrents, and to sweep away dams and
dykes and mills and bridges and roads, and more-
over all houses in all parts of the country that
were not built of mud. Thunder rolled in every
quarter of the heavens : the lions and panthers
were frightened, and growled horribly : the foxes,
who are seldom at fault, began to fear for the
farm-yards: and were seen with vertical tails,
three of which, if put together, would be little
stouter than a child's whip for whipping-tops, so
thoroughly soaked were they and draggled in the
mire : not an animal in the forest could lick itself
dry : their tongues ached with attempting it.
But the mud gained its cause, and rose above the
river-sides. At first it was elated by success ; but
it had floated in its extravagance no long time
before a panic seized it, at hearing out of the
clouds the fatal word teleutaion, which signifies
final. It panted and breathed hard ; and, at the
moment of exhausting the last remnant of its
strength, again it prayed to Jupiter, in a formu-
lary of words which certain borderers of the
principal stream suggested, imploring him that
it might stop and subside. It did so. The
borderers enriched their fields with it, carting it
off, tossing it about, and breaking it into powder.
But the streams were too dirty for decent men to
bathe in them ; and scarcely a fountain in all
Phrygia had as much pure water, at its very
source, as thou couldst carry on thy head in an
earthen jar. For several years afterward there
were pestilential exhalations, and drought and
scarcity, throughout the country.
Rhodope. This is indeed a memorable event";
and yet I never heard of it before. .
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
JEsop. Dost thou like my histories?
Rhodope. Very much indeed.
jEsop. Both of them 1
Rhodope. Equally.
JEsop. Then, Rhodope, thou art worthier of
instruction than anyone I know. I never found
an auditor, until the present, who approved of
each ; one or other of the two was sure to be
defective in style or ingenuity : it showed an
ignorance of the times or of mankind : it proved
only that the narrator was a person of contracted
views, and that nothing pleased him.
Rhodope. How could you have hindered, with
as many hands as Gyas, and twenty thongs in
each, the fox and ass from uniting ] or how could
you prevail on Jupiter to keep the mud from
bubbling ? I have prayed to him for many things
more reasonable, and he has never done a single
one of them; except the last perhaps.
jEaop, What was it?
Rhodope. That he would bestow on me power
and understanding to comfort the poor slave from
Phrygia.
jEsop. On what art thou reflecting ?
Rhodope. I do not know. Is reflection that
which will not lie quiet on the mind, and which
makes us ask ourselves questions we can not
answer?
JEsop. Wisdom is but that shadow which we
call reflection ; dark always, more or less, but
usually the most so where there is the most light
around it.
Rhodope. I think I begin to comprehend you ;
but beware lest anyone else should. Men will
hate you for it, and may hurt you ; for they will
never bear the wax to be melted in the ear, as
your words possess the faculty of doing.
Msop. They may hurt me, but I shall have
rendered them a service first.
Rhodope. Oh JSsop ! if you think so, you must
soon begin to instruct me how I may assist you,
first in performing the service, and then in avert-
ing the danger : for I think you will be less liable
to harm if I am with you.
jEsop. Proud child !
Rhodope. Not yet ; I may be then.
jEsop. We must converse about other subjects.
Rhodope. On what rather ?
jEaop. I was accused by thee of attempting to
unsettle thy belief in prodigies and portents.
Rhodope. Teach me what is right and proper
in regard to them, and in regard to the gods of
this country who send them.
jEsop. We will either let them alone, or wor-
ship them as our masters do. But thou mayst
be quite sure, 0 Rhodope ! that if there were any
men without heads, or any who ride upon dragons,
they also would have been worshipped as deities
long ago.
Rhodope. Ay; now you talk reasonably: so
they would : at least I think so : I mean only in
this country. In Thrace we do not think so un-
worthily of the gods : we are too afraid of Cer-
berus for that.
JEsop. Speak lower ; or thou wilt raise ill blood
between him and Anubis. His three heads could
hardly lap milk when Anubis with only one could
crack the thickest bone.
Rhodope. Indeed ! how proud you must be to
have acquired such knowledge.
jEaop. It is the knowledge which men most
value, as being the most profitable to them ; but
I possess little of it.
Rhodope. What then will you teach me ?
jEsop. I will teach thee, O Rhodope, how to
hold Love by both wings, and how to make a
constant companion of an ungrateful guest.
Rhodope. I think I am already able to manage
so little a creature.
jEsop. He hath managed greater creatures
than^Rhodope.
Rhodope. They had no scissors to clip his
pinions, and they did not slap him soon enough
on the back of the hand. I have often wished to
see him ; but I never have seen him yet.
jEsop. Nor anything like ?
Rhodope. I have touched his statue ; and once
I stroked it down, all over ; very nearly. He
seemed to smile at me the more for it, until I was
ashamed. I was then a little girl : it was long
ago : a year at least.
jEsop. Art thou sure it was such a long while
since?
Rhodope. How troublesome i Yes ! I never
told anybody but you : and I never would have
told you, unless I had been certain that you would
find it out by yourself, as you did what those
false foolish girls said concerning you. I am sorry
to call them by such names, for I am confident
that on other things and persons they never speak
maliciously or untruly.
jEsop. Not about thee ?
Rhodope. They think me ugly and conceited,
because they do not look at me long enough to
find out their mistake. I know I am not ugly,
and I believe I am not conceited ; so I should be
silly if I were offended, or thought ill of them in
return. But do you yourself always speak the
truth, even when you know it ? The story of the
mud, I plainly see, is a mythos. Yet, after all, it
is difficult to believe ; and you have scarcely been
able to persuade me, that the beasts in any
country talk and reason, or ever did.
JEsop. Wherever they do, they do one thing
more than men do.
Rhodope. You perplex me exceedingly: but
I would not disquiet you at present with
more questions. Let me pause and consider a
little, if you please. I begin to suspect that,
as Gods formerly did, you have been turning
men into beasts, and beasts into men. But,
JEsop, you should never say the thing that is
untrue.
jEsop. We say and do and look no other all
our lives.
Rhodope. Do we never know better?
jEsop. Yes ; when we cease to please, and to
wish it ; when death is settling the features, and
.ESOP AND RHODOPE.
the cerements are ready to render them un-
changeable.
Rhodope. Alas ! alas !
JEsop. Breathe, Ehodope, breathe again those
painless sighs : they belong to thy vernal season.
May thy summer of life be calm, thy autumn
calmer, and thy winter never come.
Ehodope. I must die then earlier.
jEsop. Laodameia died ; Helen died ; Leda,
the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better
to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late ;
better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we
feel crumbling under us, and to protract an ine-
vitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we
are insensible of infirmity and decay : but the
present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it
appertains to what is past and what is to come.
There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the
grave : there are no voices, 0 Ehodope ! that are
not soon mute, however tuneful : there is no
name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love
repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.
Rhodope. Oh jEsop ! let me rest my head on
yours : it throbs and pains me.
jflsop. What are these ideas to thee 1
JRhodope. Sad, sorrowful.
JEsop. Harrows that break the soil, preparing
it for wisdom. Many flowers must perish ere a
grain of corn be ripened.
And now remove thy head : the cheek is cool
enough after its little shower of tears.
Rhodope. How impatient you are of the least
pressure !
JEsop. There is nothing so difficult to support
imperturbably as the head of a lovely girl, ex-
cept her grief. Again upon mine ! forgetful one !
Raise it, remove it, I say. Why wert thou re-
luctant ? why wert thou disobedient ? Nay, look
not so. It is I (and thou shalt know it) who
should look reproachfully.
Rhodope. Reproachfully1? did I? I was only
wishing you would love me better, that I might
come and see you often.
JEsop. Come often and see me, if thou wilt ;
but expect no love from me.
Rhodope. Yet how gently and gracefully you
have spoken and acted, all the time we have been
together. You have rendered the most abstruse
things intelligible, without once grasping my
hand, or putting your fingers among my curls.
jEsop. I should have feared to encounter the
displeasure of two persons, if I had.
Rhodope. And well you might. They would
scourge you, and scold me.
JEsop. That is not the worst.
Rhodope. The stocks too, perhaps.
JEsop. All these are small matters to the slave.
Rhodope. If they befell you, I would tear my
hair and my cheeks, and put my knees under
your ancles. Of whom should you have been afraid ?
jEsop. Of Rhodope and of jEsop. Modesty in
man, 0 Rhodope ! is perhaps the rarest and most
difficult of virtues : but intolerable pain is the
pursuer of its infringement. Then follow days
without content, nights without sleep, throughout
a stormy season, a season of impetuous deluge
which no fertility succeeds.
Rhodope. My mother often told me to learn
modesty, when I was at play among the boys.
jEsop. Modesty in girls is not an acquirement,
but a gift of nature : and it costs as much trouble
and pain in the possessor to eradicate, as the
fullest and firmest lock of hair would do.
Rhodope. Never shall I be induced to believe
that men at all value it in themselves, or much
in us, although from idleness or from rancour they
would take it away from us whenever they can.
JEsop. And very few of you are pertinacious :
if you run after them, as you often do, it is not to
get it back.
Rhodope. I would never run after anyone, not
even you : I would only ask you, again and again,
to love me.
JEsop. Expect no love from me. I will impart
to thee all my wisdom, such as it is ; but girls
like our folly best. Thou shalt never get a par-
ticle of mine from me.
Rhodope. Is love foolish 1
uEsop. At thy age and at mine. I do not love
thee : if I did, I would the more forbid thee ever
to love me.
Rhodope. Strange man !
jEsop. Strange indeed. When a traveller is
about to wander on a desert, it is strange to lead
him away from it ; strange to point out to him
the verdant path he should pursue, where the
tamarisk and lentisk and acacia wave overhead,
where the reseda is cool and tender to the foot
that presses it, and where a thousand colours
sparkle in the sunshine, on fountains incessantly
gushing forth.
Rhodope. Xanthus has all these ; and I could
be amid them in a moment.
jEsop. Why art not thou 1
Rhodope. I know not exactly. Another day
perhaps. I am afraid of snakes this morning.
Beside, I think it may be sultry out of doors.
Does not the wind blow from Libya ?
JEsop. It blows as it did yesterday when I
came over, fresh across the jEgean, and from
Thrace. Thou mayest venture into the morning
air.
Ehodope. No hours are so adapted to study as
those of the morning. But will you teach me 1
I shall so love you if you will.
JEsop. If thou wilt not love me, I will teach
thee.
Rhodope. Unreasonable man !
jEsop. Art thou aware what those mischievous
little hands are doing 1
Ehodope. They are tearing off the golden hem
from the bottom of my robe ; but it is stiff and
difficult to detach.
JEsop. Why tear it off]
Rhodope. To buy your freedom. Do you spring
up, and turn away, and cover your face from me ?
j£sop. My freedom 1 Go, Rhodope ! Rhodope !
This, of all things, I shall never owe to thee.
98
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Rhodope. Proud man ! and you tell me to go !
do you ? do you 1 Answer me at least. Must I ?
and so soon '
JEsop. Child ! begone !
Rhodope. Oh ,<Esop ! you are already more my
master than Xanthus is. I will run and tell him
so : and I will implore of him, upon my knees,
never to impose on you a command so hard to obey.
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.*
Parker. Most happy am I to encounter you,
Mr. Marvel. It is some time, I think, since we
met. May I take the liberty of inquiring what
brought you into such a lonely quarter as Bunhill-
Fields)
Marvel. My lord, I return at this instant from
visiting an old friend of ours, hard-by, in Artil-
lery-Walk, who, you will be happy to hear, bears
his blindness and asthma with truly Christian
courage.
Parker. And pray, who may that old friend be,
Mr. Marvel ?
Marvel. Honest John Milton.
Parker. The same gentleman whose ingenious
poem, on our first parents, you praised in some
elegant verses prefixed to it ]
Marvel. The same who likewise, on many
occasions, merited and obtained your lordship's
approbation.
Parker. I am happy to understand that no
harsh measures were taken against him, on the
return of our most gracious sovran. And it occurs
to me that you, Mr. Marvel, were earnest in his
behalf. Indeed I myself might have stirred upon
it, had Mr. Milton solicited me in the hour of need.
Marvel. He is grateful to the friends who con-
sulted at the same time his dignity and his safety :
but gratitude can never be expected to grow on a
soil hardened by solicitation. Those who are the
most ambitious of power are often the least ambi-
tious of glory. It requires but little sagacity to
foresee that a name will become invested with
eternal brightness by belonging to a benefactor of
Milton. I might have served him! is not always
* He wrote a work entitled, as Hooker's was, Eccletiat-
tical Polity, in which are these words: "It is better to
submit to the unreasonable impositions of Nero and Ca-
ligula than to hazard the dissolution of the state." It is
plain enough to what impositions he recommended the
duty of submission : for, in our fiscal sense of the word,
none ever bore more lightly on the subject than Caligula's
and Nero's : even the provinces were taxed very mode-
rately and fairly by them. He adds, " Princes may with
less danger give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries
than to their consciences." Marvel answered him in his
Rehearsal Transposed, in which he says of Milton, " I
well remember that, being one day at his house, I there
first met you, and accidentally. Then it was that you
wandered up and down Moor-fields, astrologising upon the
duration of His Majesty's Government. You frequented
John Milton's incessantly, and haunted his house day by
day. What discourses you there used he is too generous
to remember : but, he never having in the least provoked
you, it is inhumanely and inhospitably done to insult
thus over his old age. 1 hope it will be a warning to all
others, as it is tome, to avoid, I will not say such a Judas,
but a man that creeps into all companies, to jeer, trepan,
and betray them."
the soliloquy of late compassion or of virtuous
repentance : it is frequently the cry of blind and
impotent and wounded pride, angry at itself for
having neglected a good bargain, a rich reversion.
Believe me, my lord bishop, there are few whom
God has promoted to serve the truly great. They
are never to be superseded, nor are their names
to be obliterated in earth or heaven. Were I to
trust my observation rather than my feelings,
I should believe that friendship is only a state of
transition to enmity. The wise, the excellent in
honour and integrity, whom it was once our
ambition to converse with, soon appear in our sight
no higher than the ordinary class of our acquaint-
ance ; then become fit objects to set our own
slender wits against, to contend with, to interro-
gate, to subject to the arbitration, not of their
equals, but of ours ; and lastly, what indeed is
less injustice and less indignity, to neglect, aban-
don, and disown.
Parker. I never have doubted that Mr. Milton
is a learned man ; indeed he has proven it : and
there are many who, like yourself, see considerable
merit in his poems. I confess that I am an indif-
ferent judge in these matters ; and I can only
hope that he has now corrected what is erroneous
in his doctrines.
Marvel. Latterly he hath never changed a jot,
in acting or thinking.
Parker. Wherein I hold him blameable, well
aware as I am that never to change is thought an
indication of rectitude and wisdom. But if every-
thing in this world is progressive ; if everything
is defective; if our growth, if our faculties, are
obvious and certain signs of it ; then surely we
should and must be different in different ages and
conditions. Consciousness of error is, to a certain
extent, a consciousness of understanding ; and
correction of error is the plainest proof of energy
and mastery.
Marvel. No proof of the kind is necessary to
my friend : and it was not always that your lord-
ship looked down on him so magisterially in
reprehension, or delivered a sentence from so
commanding an elevation. I, who indeed am but
a humble man, am apt to question my judgment
where it differs from his. I am appalled by any
supercilious glance at him, and disgusted by any
austerity ill assorted with the generosity of his
mind. When I consider what pure delight we
have derived from it, what treasures of wisdom it
has conveyed to us, I find him supremely worthy
of my gratitude, love, and veneration : and the
neglect in which I now discover him, leaves me
only the more room for the free effusion of these
ANDREW MAEVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
sentiments. How shallow in comparison is every-
thing else around us, trickling and dimpling in
the pleasure-grounds of our literature ! If we are
to build our summer-houses against ruined temples,
let us at least abstain from ruining them for the
purpose.
Parker. Nay, nay, Mr. Marvel ! so much warmth
is uncalled for.
Marvel. Is there anything offensive to your
lordship in my expressions ?
Parker. I am not aware that there is. But let
us generalize a little : for we are prone to be
touchy and testy in favour of our intimates.
Marvel. I believe, my lord, this fault, or sin,
or whatsoever it may be designated, is among the
few that are wearing fast away.
Parker. Delighted am I, my dear sir, to join
you in your innocent pleasantry. But, truly and
seriously, I have known even the prudent grow
warm and stickle about some close affinity.
Marvel. Indeed? so indecorous before your
lordship ?
Parker. We may remember when manners
were less polite than they are now ; and not only
the seasons of life require an alteration of habits,
but likewise the changes of society.
Marvel. Your lordship acts up to your tenets.
Parker. Perhaps you may blame me, and more
severely than I would blame our worthy friend
Mr. John Milton, upon finding a slight variation
in my exterior manner, and somewhat more
reserve than formerly : yet wiser and better men
than I presume to call myself, have complied
with the situation to which it hath pleased the
Almighty to exalt them.
Marvel. I am slow to censure anyone for
assuming an air and demeanour which, he is per-
suaded, are more becoming than what he has left
off. And I subscribe to the justice of the observa-
tion, that wiser and better men than your lord-
ship have adapted their language and their looks
to elevated station. But sympathy is charity, or
engenders it : and sympathy requires proximity,
closeness, contact : and at every remove, and more
especially at every gradation of ascent, it grows a
little colder. When we begin to call a man our
worthy friend, our friendship is already on the
wane. In him who has been raised above his old
companions, there seldom remains more warmth
than what turns everything about it vapid : fami-
liarity sidles toward affability, and kindness
curtseys into condescension.
Parker. I see, we are hated for rising.
Marvel. Many do really hate others for rising :
but some who appear to hate them for it, hate
them only for the bad effects it produces on the
character.
Parker. We are odious, I am afraid, sometimes
for the gift, and sometimes for the giver : and
Malevolence cools her throbs by running to the
obscurity of neglected merit. We know whose
merit that means.
Marvel. What ! because the servants of a king
have stamped no measure above a certain compass,
and such only as the vulgar are accustomed to
handle, must we disbelieve the existence of any
greater in its capacity, or decline the use of it in
things lawful and commendable? Little men
like these have no business at all with the men-
suration of higher minds : gaugers are not astro-
nomers.
Parker. Really, Mr. Marvel, I do not under-
stand metaphors.
Marvel. Leaving out arithmetic and mathema-
tics, and the sciences appertaining to them, I
never opened a page without one ; no, not even a
title-page with a dozen words in it. Perhaps I
am unfortunate in my tropes and figures : perhaps
they come, by my want of dexterity, too near your
lordship. I would humbly ask, is there any
criminality in the calculation and casting up of
manifold benefits, or in the employment of those
instruments by which alone they are to be calcu-
lated and cast up ?
Parker. Surely none whatever.
Marvel. It has happened to me and my school-
fellows, that catching small fish in the shallows
and ditches of the Humber, we called a minnow
a perch, and a dace a pike ; because they pleased
us in the catching, and because we really were
ignorant of their quality. In like manner do some
older ones act in regard to men. They who are
caught and handled by them are treated with
distinction, because they are so caught and
handled, and because self-love and self-conceit
dazzle and delude the senses ; while those whom
they neither can handle nor catch are without a
distinctive name. We are informed by Aristoteles,
in his Treatise on Natural History, that solid
horns are dropt and that hollow ones are per-
manent. Now, although we may find solid men
cast on the earth and hollow men exalted, yet
never will I believe in the long duration of the
hollow, or in the long abasement of the solid.
Milton, although the generality may be ignorant of
it, is quite as great a genius as Bacon, bating the
chancellorship, which goes for little where a great
man is estimated by a wise one.
Parker. Rather enthusiastic ! ay, Mr. Marvel !
the one name having been established for almost
a century, the other but recently brought forward,
and but partially acknowledged. By coming so
much later into the world, he can not be quite so
original in his notions as Lord Verulam.
Marvel. Solomon said that, even in his time,
there was nothing new under the sun : he said it
unwisely and untruly.
Parker. Solomon] untruly? unwisely?
Marvel. The spectacles, which by the start you
gave, had so nearly fallen from the bridge of your
nose, attest it. Had he any? It is said, and
apparently with more reason than formerly, that
there are no new thoughts. What do the fools
mean who say it ? They might just as well assert
that there are no new men, because other men
existed before, with eyes, mouth, nostrils, chin,
and many other appurtenances. But as there are
myriads of forms between the forms of Scarron
H 2
100
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and Hudson* on one side, and of Mercury and
Apollo on the other, so there are myriads oi
thoughts, of the same genus, each taking its
peculiar conformation. ^Eschylus and Racine,
struck by the same idea, would express a sen-
timent very differently. Do not imagine that
the idea is the thought : the idea is that which
the thought generates, rears up to maturity, and
calls after its own name. Every note in music
has been sounded frequently ; yet a composition
of Purcell may be brilliant by its novelty. There
are extremely few roots in a language; yet the
language may be varied, and novel too, age after
age. Chess-boards and numerals are less capable
of exhibiting new combinations than poetry ; and
prose likewise is equally capable of displaying new
phases and phenomenons in images and reflec-
tions. Good prose, to say nothing of the original
thoughts it conveys, may be infinitely varied
in modulation. It is only an extension of metres,
an amplification of harmonies, of which even the
best and most varied poetry admits but few.
Comprehending at once the prose and poetry of
Milton, we could prove, before " fit audience," that
he is incomparably the greatest master of harmony
that ever lived.
There may be, even in these late days, more
originality of thought, and flowing in more chan-
nels of harmony, more bursts and breaks and
sinuosities, than we have yet discovered.
The admirers of Homer never dreamt that a
man more pathetic, more sublime, more thought-
ful, more imaginative, would follow.
Parker. Certainly not.
Marvel. Yet Shakspeare came, in the memory
of our fathers.
Parker. Mr. William Shakspeare of Stratford
upon Avon ? A remarkably clever man : nobody
denies it.
Marvel. At first people did not know very well
what to make of him. He looked odd : he seemed
witty ; he drew tears. But a grin and a pinch of
snuff can do that.
Every great author is a great reformer ; and the
reform is either in thought or language. Milton
is zealous and effective in both.
Parker. Some men conceive that, if their name
is engraven in Gothic letters, it signifies and
manifests antiquity of family ; and others, that a
congestion of queer words and dry chopt sen-
tences, which turn the mouth awry in read-
ing, make them look like original thinkers. I
have seen fantastical folks of this description who
write wend instead of go, and are so ignorant of
grammar as even to put wended for went. I do
not say that Mr. Milton is one of them ; but he
may have led weak men into the fault.
Marvel. Not only is he not one of them, but
his language is never a patchwork of old and new :
all is of a piece. Beside, he is the only writer
whom it is safe to follow in spelling : others are
inconsistent j some for want of learning, some for
* A dwarf in that age.
want of reasoning, some for want of memory, and
some for want of care. But there are certain
words which ceased to be spelt properly just
before his time : the substantives, childe and
wilde, and the verbs finde and winde, for instance.
Parker. Therein we agree. We ought never
to have deviated from those who delivered to
us our Litany, of which the purity is unap-
proachable and the harmony complete. Our
tongue has been drooping ever since.
Marvel. Until Milton touched it again with fire
from heaven.
Parker. Gentlemen seem now to have delegated
the correction of the press to their valets, and the
valets to have devolved it on the chambermaids.
But I would not advise you to start a fresh refor-
mation in this quarter ; for the round-heads can't
spell, and the royalists won't : and if you bring
back an ancient form retaining all its beauty, they
will come forward from both sides against you on
a charge of coining. We will now return, if you
please, to the poets we were speaking of. Both
Mr. Shakspeare and Mr. Milton have consider-
able merit in their respective ways; but both
surely are unequal. Is it not so, Mr. Marvel ?
Marvel. Under the highest of their immeasur-
able Alps, all is not valley and verdure : in some
places there are frothy cataracts, there are the
fruitless beds of noisy torrents, and there are dull
and hollow glaciers. He must be a bad writer, or
however a very indifferent one, in whom there are
no inequalities. The plants of such table-land are
diminutive, and never worth gathering. What
would you think of a man's eyes to which all
things appear of the same magnitude and at the
same elevation ? You must think nearly so of a
writer who makes as much of small things as of
great. The vigorous mind has mountains to
climb and valleys to repose in. Is there any
sea without its shoals ? On that which the poet
navigates, he rises intrepidly as the waves rise
round him, and sits composedly as they subside.
Parker. I can listen to this : but where the
authority of Solomon is questioned and rejected,
I must avoid the topic. Pardon me; I collect from
what you threw out previously, that, with strange
attachments and strange aversions, you cherish
singular ideas about greatness.
Marvel. To pretermit all reference to myself;
our evil humours, and our good ones too, are
brought out whimsically. We are displeased by
him who would be similar to us, or who would be
near, unless he consent to walk behind. To-day
we are unfriendly to a man of genius, whom ten
days hence we shall be zealous in extolling ; not
because we know anything more of his works or
his character, but because we have dined in his
company and he has desired to be introduced to
us. A flat ceiling seems to compress those ani-
mosities which flame out furiously under the open
sky.
Parker. Sad prejudices ! sad infirmities !
Marvel. The sadder are opposite to them.
Usually men, in distributing fame, do as old
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
101
maids and old misers do : they give everything to
those who want nothing. In literature, often a
man's solitude, and oftener his magnitude, disin-
clines us from helping him if we find him down.
We are fonder of wanning our hands at a fire
already in a blaze than of blowing one. I should
be glad to see some person as liberal of fame in
regard to Milton, as in regard to those literators
of the town who speedily run it out.
Parker. I have always called him a man of
parts. But, Mr. Marvel ! we may bestow as in-
judiciously as we detract.
Marvel. Perhaps as injudiciously, certainly not
as injuriously. If indeed we are to be called to
account for the misapplication of our bestowals, a
heavy charge will lie against me for an action I
committed in my journey hither from Hull. I
saw an old man working upon the road, who was
working upon the same road, and not far from the
same spot, when I was first elected to represent
that city in parliament. He asked me for some-
thing to make him drink : which, considering the
heat of the weather and the indication his nose
exhibited 'of his propensities, did appear super-
fluous. However, I gave him a shilling, in addi-
tion to as many good wishes as he had given me.
Parker. Not reflecting that he would probably
get intoxicated with it.
Marvel. I must confess I had all that reflection
with its whole depth of shade upon my conscience ;
and I tried as well as I could to remove the evil.
I inquired of him whether he was made the hap-
pier by the shilling. He answered that, if I was
none the worse for it, he was none. " Then," said
I, " honest friend ! since two are already the
happier, prythee try whether two more may not
become so : therefore drink out of it at supper
with thy two best friends."
Parker. I would rather have advised frugality
and laying-by. Perhaps he might have had a
wife and children.
Marvel. He could not then, unless he were a
most unlucky man, be puzzled in searching for
his two best friends. My project gave him more
pleasure than my money : and I was happy to
think that he had many hours for his schemes
and anticipations between him and sunset.
Parker. When I ride or walk, I never carry
loose money about me, lest, through an inconsi-
derate benevolence, I be tempted in some such
manner to misapply it. To be robbed would give
me as little or less concern.
Marvel. A man's self is often his worst robber.
He steals from his own bosom and heart what God
has there deposited, and he hides it out of his
way, as dogs and foxes do with bones. But the
robberies we commit on the body of our super-
fluities, and store up in vacant places, in places of
poverty and sorrow, these, whether in the dark
or in the daylight, leave us neither in nakedness
nor in fear, are marked by no burning-iron of
conscience, are followed by no scourge of reproach;
they never deflower prosperity, they never dis-
temper sleep.
Parker. I am ready at all times to award jus-
tice to the generosity of your character, and no
man ever doubted its consistency. Believing you
to be at heart a loyal subject, I am thrown back on
the painful reflection that all our acquaintance
are not equally so. Mr. Milton, for example, was
a republican, yet he entered into the service of a
usurper : you disdained it.
Marvel. Events proved that my judgment of
Cromwell's designs was corrector than his: but
the warier man is not always the wiser, nor the
more active and industrious in the service of his
country.
Parker. His opinions on religion varied also
considerably, until at last the vane almost wore
out the socket, and it could turn no longer.
Marvel. Is it nothing in the eyes of an Angli-
can bishop to have carried the gospel of Christ
against the Talmudists of Rome ; the Word of
God against the traditions of men ; the liberty of
conscience against'the conspiracy of tyranny and
fraud] If so, then the Protector, such was
Milton, not of England only, but of Europe, was
nothing.
Parker. You are warm, Mr. Marvel.
Marvel. Not by any addition to my cloth,
however.
Parker. He hath seceded, I hear, from every
form of public worship : and doubts are enter-
tained whether he believes any longer in the
co-equality of the Son with the Father, or indeed
in his atonement for our sins. Such being the
case, he forfeits the name and privileges of a
Christian.
Marvel. Notwith Christians, if theyknowthat he
keeps the ordinances of Christ. Papists, Calvinists,
Lutherans, and every other kind of scoria, explod-
ing in the furnace of zeal, and cracking off from
Christianity, stick alike to the side of this gloomy,
contracted, and unwholesome doctrine. But the
steadiest believer in the divinity of our Lord, and
in his atonement for us ; if pride, arrogance, per-
secution, malice, lust of station, lust of money,
lust of power, inflame him ; is incomparably less a
Christian than he who doubteth all that ever was
doubted of his genealogy and hereditary rights,
yet who never swerveth from his commandments.
A wise man will always be a Christian, because
the perfection of wisdom is to know where lies
tranquillity of mind, and how to attain it, which
Christianity teaches ; but men equally wise may
differ and diverge on the sufficiency of testimony,
and still farther on matters which no testimony
can affirm, and no intellect comprehend. To
strangle a man because he has a narrow swallow,
shall never be inserted among the "infallible
cures" in my Book of Domestic Remedies.
Parker. We were talking gravely : were it not
rather more seemly to continue in the same strain,
Mr. Marvel 1
Marvel. I was afraid that my gravity might
appear too specific : but, > with your lordship's
permission and exhortation, I will proceed in
serious reflections, to which indeed, on this occa-
102
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
sion, I am greatly more inclined. Never do I
take the liberty to question or examine any man
on his religion, or to look over his shoulder on his
account-book with his God. But I know that
Milton, and every other great poet, must be reli-
gious : for there is nothing so godlike as a love
of order, with a power of bringing great things
into it. This power, unlimited in the one, limited
(but incalculably and inconceivably great) in the
other, belongs to the Deity and the Poet.
Parker. I shudder.
Marvel. Wherefore] at seeing a man, what he
was designed to be by his Maker, his Maker's
image ? But pardon me, my lord ! the surprise
of such a novelty is enough to shock you.
Reserving to myself for a future time the
liberty of defending my friend on theology, in
which alone he shifted his camp, I may remark
what has frequently happened to me. I have
walked much : finding one side of the road miry,
I have looked toward the other and thought it
cleaner : I have then gone over, and when there
I have found it just as bad, although it did not
seem nearly so, until it was tried. This however
has not induced me to wish that the overseer
would bar it up ; but only to wish that both sides
were mended effectually with smaller and more
binding materials, not with large loose stones,
nor with softer stuff, soon converted into mud.
Parker. Stability then and consistency are the
qualities most desirable, and these I look for in
Mr. Milton. However fond he was of Athenian
terms and practices, he rejected them after he had
proved them.
Marvel. It was not in his choice to reject or
establish. He saw the nation first cast down and
lacerated by Fanaticism, and then utterly ex-
hausted by that quieter blood-sucker, Hypocrisy.
A powerful arm was wanted to drive away such
intolerable pests, and it could not but be a friendly
one. Cromwell and the saner part of the nation
were unanimous in beating down Presbyterian-
ism, which had assumed the authority of the
Papacy without its lenity.
Parker. He, and those saner people, had sub-
verted already the better form of Christianity
which they found in the Anglican church. Your
Samson had shaken its pillars by his attack on
Prelaty.
Marvel. He saw the prelates, in that reign,
standing as ready there as anywhere to wave the
censer before the king, and under its smoke to
hide the people from him. He warned them as
an angel would have done, nay, as our Saviour
has done, that the wealthy and the proud, the
flatterer at the palace and the flatterer at the altar,
in short the man for the world, is not the man for
heaven.
Parker. We must lay gentle constructions and
liberal interpretations on the Scriptures.
Marvel. Then let us never open them. If they
are true we should receive them as they are ;
if they are false we should reject them totally.
We can not pick and choose ; we can not say to
the Omniscient, " We think you right here ; we
think you wrong there ; however, we will meet
you half-way and talk it over with you." This is
such impiety as shocks us even in saying we must
avoid it: yet our actions tend to its countenance
and support. We clothe the ministers of Christ
in the same embroidery as was worn by the
proudest of his persecutors, and they mount into
Pilate's chair. The Reformation has effected little
more than melting down the gold lace of the old
wardrobe, to make it enter the pocket more
conveniently.
Parker. Who would have imagined Mr. John
Milton should ever have become a seceder and
sectarian ! he who, after the days of adolescence,
looked with' an eye of fondness on the idle super-
stitions of our forefathers, and celebrated them in
his poetry.
Marvel. When superstitions are only idle it is
wiser to look on them kindly than unkindly. I
have remarked that those which serve best for
poetry, have more plumage than talon, and those
which serve best for policy have more talon than
plumage. Milton never countenanced priestcraft,
never countenanced fraud and fallacy.
Parker. The business is no easy one to separate
devotion from practices connected with it. There
is much that may seem useless, retained through
ages in an intermixture with what is better : and
the better would never have been so good as it is
if you had cast away the rest. What is chaff when
the grain is threshed, was useful to the grain
before its threshing.
Marvel. Since we are come unaware on reli-
gion, I would entreat of your lordship to enlighten
me, and thereby some others of weak minds and
tender consciences, in regard to the criminality
of pretence to holiness.
Parker. The Lord abominates, as you know,
Mr. Marvel, from the Holy Scriptures, all hypo-
crisy.
Marvel. If we make ourselves or others, who
are not holy, seem holy, are we worthy to enter
his kingdom?
Parker. No; most unworthy.
Marvel. What if we set up, not only for good
men, but for exquisitely religious, such as violate
the laws and religion of the country ]
Parker. Pray, Mr. Marvel, no longer waste your
time and mine in such idle disquisitions. We
have beheld such men lately, and abominate them.
Marvel. Happily for the salvation of our souls,
as I conceive, we never went so far as to induce,
much less to authorise, much less to command,
anyone to fall down and worship them.
Parker. Such insolence and impudence would
have brought about the blessed Restoration much
earlier.
Marvel. We are now come to the point. It
seems wonderful to pious and considerate men,
unhesitating believers in God's holy word, that
although the Reformation, under his guidance,
was brought about by the prayers and fasting of
the bishops, and others well deserving the name
ANDREW MAEVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
103
of saints, chiefly of the equestrian order, no place
in the Kalendar hath ever been assigned to them.
Parker, Perhaps, as there were several, a
choice might have seemed particular and invi-
dious. Perhaps also the names of many as excel-
lent having been removed from the Rubric, it was
deemed unadvisable to inaugurate them.
Marvel. Yet, my lord bishop, we have inserted
Charles the Martyr. Now there have been saints
not martyrs, but no martyr not a saint.
Parker. Do you talk in this manner ? you who
had the manliness to praise his courage and con-
stancy to Cromwell's face.
Marvel. Cromwell was not a man to undervalue
the courage and constancy of an enemy : and, had
he been, I should have applauded one in his pre-
sence. But how happens it that the bishops,
priests, and deacons, throughout England, treat
Charles as a saint and martyr, and hold his death-
day sacred, who violated those ecclesiastical ordi-
nances, the violation whereof you would not only
reprobate in another, but visit with exemplary
punishment? Charles was present at plays in
his palace on the sabbath. Was he a saint in his
life-time ? or only after his death ? If in his life-
time, the single miracle performed by him was,
to act against his established church without a
diminution of holiness. If only in his death, he
holds his canonization by a different tenure from
any of his blessed predecessors.
It is curious and sorrowful that Charles the
Martyr should have suffered death on the scaffold,
for renewing the custom of arbitrary loans and
forced benevolences, which the usurper Richard III.
abolished. Charles, to be sure, had the misfor-
tune to add the practice of torture and mutilation,
to which those among the English who are most
exposed to it bear a great dislike. Being a mar-
tyr, he is placed above the saints in dignity : they
tortured only themselves.
Parker. Let me bring to your recollection, that
plays were not prohibited on the sabbath by our
great Reformers.
Marvel. But if it is unchristianlike now, it was
then ; and a saint must have been aware of it,
although it escaped a reformer.
Parker. You scoff, Mr. Marvel ! I never answer
the scoffer.
Marvel. I will now be serious. Is the can-
onization of Charles the effect of a firm convic-
tion that he was holier than all those ejected
from the Kalendar? or is it merely an ebulli-
tion of party-spirit, an ostentatious display of
triumphant spite against his enemies? In this
case, and there are too many and too cogent
reasons for believing it, would it not be wiser
never to have exhibited to the scrutinizing church
of Rome a consecration more reprehensible than
the former desecrations ? Either you must
acknowledge that saints are not always to be
followed in their practices, or you must allow
men, women, and children, to dance and fre-
quent the play-houses on Sundays, as our martyr
did before he took to mutilating and maiming ;
and he never left off the custom by his own free
will.
Parker. I think, Mr. Marvel, you might safely
leave these considerations to us.
Marvel. Very safely, my lord ! for you are per-
fectly sure never to meddle with them : you are
sure to leave them as they are ; solely from the
pious motive that there may be peace in our days,
according to the Litany. On such a principle
there have been many, and still perhaps there
may be some remaining, who would not brush the
dust from the bench, lest they should raise the
moths and discover the unsoundnesses and corro-
sions. But there is danger lest the people at
some future day should be wiser, braver, more
.inquisitive, more pertinacious; there is danger
lest, on finding a notorious cheat and perjurer set
up by Act of Parliament among the choice and
sterling old saints, they undervalue not only
saints but Parliaments.
Parker. I would rather take my ground where
politics are unmingled with religion, and I see
better reason to question the wisdom of Mr. Milton
than the wisdom of our most gracious King's
Privy Council. We enjoy, thank God ! liberty of
conscience. I must make good my objection on
the quarter of consistency, lest you think me
resolute to find fault where there is none. Your
friend continued to serve the Protector when he
had reconstructed a house of Lords, which for-
merly he called an abomination.
Marvel. He never served Cromwell but when
Cromwell served his country ; and he would not
abandon her defence for the worst wounds he had
received in it. He was offended at the renewal of
that house, after all the labour and pains he had
taken in its demolition : and he would hare given
his life, if one man's life could have paid for it, to
throw down again so unshapely and darkening an
obstruction. From his youth upward he had felt
the Norman rust entering into our very vitals ;
and he now saw that, if we had received from the
bravest of nations a longer sword, we wore a
heavier chain to support it. He began his
History from a love of the Saxon institutions,
than which the most enlightened nations had
contrived none better; nor can we anywhere
discover a worthier object for the meditations of
a philosophical or for the energies of a poetical
mind.
Parker. And yet you republicans are discon-
tented even with this.
Marvel. We are not mere Saxons. A wise
English republican will prefer (as having grown
up with him) the Saxon institutions generally
and mainly, both in spirit and practice, to those
of Rome and Athens. But the Saxon institu-
tions, however excellent, are insufficient. The
moss must be rasped off the bark, and the bark
itself must be slit, to let the plant expand. No-
thing is wholesomer than milk from the udder :
but would you always dine upon it ? The seasons
of growth, physical and intellectual, require dif-
ferent modes of preparation; different instruments
104
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
of tillage, different degrees of warmth and excite-
ment. Whatever is bad in our constitution we
derive from the Normans, or from the glosses put
against the text under their Welsh and Scotch
successors : the good is thrown back to us out of
what was ours before. Our boasted Magna Charta
is only one side of the old Saxon coat; and
it is the side that has the broken loopholes in
it. It hangs loose, and at every breeze 'tis a hard
matter to keep it on. In fact the Magna Charta
neither is, nor ever was long together, of much
value to the body of the people. Our princes
could always do what they wished to do, until
lately ; and this palladium was so light a matter,
that it was easily taken from the town-hall to
the palace. It has been holden back or missing
whenever the people most loudly called for it.
Municipalities, in other words small republics,
are a nation's main-stay against aristocratical and
regal encroachments.
Parker. If I speak in defence of the peerage,
you may think me interested.
Marvd. Bring forward what may fairly recom-
mend the institution, and I shall think you less
interested than ingenious.
Parker. Yet surely you, who are well con-
nected, cannot be insensible of the advantages it
offers to persons of family.
Marvel. Is that any proof of its benefit to the
public ? And persons of family ! who are they ?
Between the titled man of ancient and the titled
man of recent, the difference, if any, is in favour
of the last. Suppose them both raised for merit
(here indeed we do come to theory !), the benefits
that society has received from him are nearer us.
It is probable that many in the poor and abject
are of very ancient families, and particularly in
our county, where the contests of the York and
Lancaster broke down, in many places, the high
and powerful . Some of us may look back six
or seven centuries, and find a stout ruffian at
the beginning : but the great ancestor of the
pauper, who must be somewhere, may stand
perhaps far beyond.
Parker. If we ascend to the tower of Babel and
come to the confusion of tongues, we come also
to a confusion of ideas. A man of family, in all
countries, is he whose ancestor attracted, by some
merit, real or imputed, the notice of those more
eminent, who promoted him in wealth and
station. Now, to say nothing of the humble, the
greater part even of the gentry had no such
progenitors.
Marvel. I look to a person of very old family
as I do to anything else that is very old, and I
thank him for bringing to me a page of romance
which probably he himself never knew or heard
about. Usually, with all his pride and preten-
sions, he is much less conscious of the services
his ancestor performed, than my spaniel is of his
own when he carries my glove or cane to me. I
would pat them both on the head for it ; and the
civiler and more reasonable of the two would think
himself well rewarded.
Parker. The additional name may light your
memory to the national service.
Marvel. We extract this benefit from an ancient
peer; this phosphorus from a rotten post.
Parker. I do not complain or wonder that an
irreligious man should be adverse not only to
prelaty, but equally to a peerage.
Marvel. Herodotus tells us that among the
Egyptians a herald was a herald because he was a
herald's son, and not for the clearness of his voice.
He had told us before that the Egyptians were wor-
shippers of cats and crocodiles ; but he was too
religious a man to sneer at that. It was an
absurdity that the herald should hold his office
for no better reason than because his father held
it. Herodotus might peradventure have smiled
within his sleeve at no other being given for the
privileges of the peer ; unless he thought a loud
voice, which many do, more important than infor-
mation and discretion.
Parker. You will find your opinions discounte-
nanced by both our universities.
Marvel. I do not want anybody to corroborate
my opinions. They keep themselves up by their
own weight and consistency. Cambridge on one
side and Oxford on the other could lend me no
effectual support: and my skiff shall never be
impeded by the sedges of Cam, nor grate on the
gravel of Isis.
Parker. Mr. Marvel, the path of what we
fondly call patriotism, is highly perilous. Courts
at least are safe.
Marvel. I would rather stand on the ridge of
Etna than lower my head in the Grotto del
Cane. By the one I may share the fate of a
philosopher, by the other I must suffer the death
of a cur.
Parker. "We are all of us dust and ashes.
Marvel. True, my lord ! but in some we recog-
nise the dust of gold and the ashes of the phosnix ; in
others the dust of the gateway and the ashes of turf
and stubble. With the greatest rulers upon earth,
head and crown drop together, and are overlooked.
It is true, we read of them in history; but we also
read in history of crocodiles and hyaenas. With
great writers, whether in poetry or prose, what
falls away is scarcely more or other than a vesture.
The .features of the man are imprinted on his
works; and more lamps burn over them, and
more religiously, than are lighted in temples or
hurches. Milton, and men like him, bring their
own incense, kindle it with their own fire, and
leave it unconsumed and unconsumable : and
;heir music, by day^and by night, swells along a
vault commensurate with the vault of heaven.
Parker. Mr. Marvel, I am admiring the ex-
tremely fine lace of your cravat
Marvel. It cost me less than lawn would have
done : and it wins me a reflection. Very few
can think that man a great man, whom they
have been accustomed to meet, dressed exactly
like themselves : more especially if they happen
to find him, not in park, forest, or chase, but
warming his limbs by the reflected heat of the
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
105
bricks in Artillery-walk. In England a man
becomes a great man by living in the middle of a
great field ; .in Italy by living in a walled city ;
in France by living in a courtyard : no matter
what lives they lead there.
Parker. I am afraid, Mr. Marvel, there is some
slight bitterness in your observation.
Marvel. Bitterness it may be from the bruised
laurel of Milton.
What falsehoods will not men put on, if they
can only pad them with a little piety ! And how
few will expose their whole faces, from a fear of
being frost-bitten by poverty ! But Milton was
among the few.
Parker. Already have we had our Deluge : we
are now once more upon dry land again, and we
behold the same creation as rejoiced us formerly.
Our late gloomy and turbulent times are passed
for ever.
Marvel. Perhaps they are, if anything is for
ever : but the sparing Deluge may peradventure
be commuted for unsparing Fire, as we are threat-
ened. The arrogant, the privileged, the stiff up-
holders of established wrong, the deaf opponents
of equitable reformation, the lazy consumers of
ill-requited industry, the fraudent who, unable to
• stop the course of the sun, pervert the direction
of the gnomon, all these peradventure may be
gradually consumed by the process of silent con-
tempt, or suddenly scattered by the tempest of
popular indignation. As we see in masquerades
the real judge and the real soldier stopped and
mocked by the fictitious, so do we see in the car-
nival of to-day the real man of dignity hustled,
shoved aside, and derided, by those who are in-
vested with .the semblance by the milliners of
the court. The populace is taught to respect
this livery alone, and is proud of being permitted
to look through the grating at such ephemeral
frippery. And yet false gems and false metals
have never been valued above real ones. Until
our people alter these notions; until they estimate
the wise and virtuous above the silly and profli-
gate, the man of genius above the man of title ;
until they hold the knave and cheat of St. James's
as low as the knave and cheat of St. Giles's ; they
are fitter for the slave-market than for any other
station.
Parker. You would have no distinctions, I
fear.
Marvel. On the contrary, I would have greater
than exist at present. You can not blot or burn
out an ancient name : you can not annihilate past
services : you can not subtract one single hour
from eternity, nor wither one leaf on his brow
who hath entered into it. Sweep away from be-
fore me the soft grubs of yesterday's formation,
generated by the sickliness of the plant they feed
upon ; sweep them away unsparingly ; then will
you clearly see distinctions, and easily count the
men who have attained them worthily.
Parker. In a want of respect to established
power and principles, originated most of the cala-
mities we have latterly undergone.
Marvel. Say rather, in the averseness of that
power and the inadequacy of those principles to
resist the encroachment of injustice : say rather,
on their tendency to distort the poor creatures
swaddled up in them : add moreover the reluc-
tance of the old women who rock and dandle
them, to change their habiliments for fresh and
wholesome ones. A man will break the windows
of his own house that he may not perish by
foul air within : now, whether is he, or those who
bolted the door on him, to blame for it 1 If he is
called mad or inconsiderate, it is only by those
who are ignorant of the cause and insensible of
the urgency. I declare I am rejoiced at seeing a
gentleman, whose ancestors have signally served
their country, treated with deference and respect;
because it evinces a sense of justice and of grati-
tude in the people, and because it may incite a
few others, whose ambition would take another
course, to desire the same. Different is my sen-
tence, when he who has not performed the action
claims more honour than he who performed it,
and thinks himself the worthier if twenty are
between them than if there be one or none. Still
less accordant is it with my principles, and less
reducible to my comprehension, that they who
devised the ruin of cities and societies should be
exhibited as deserving much higher distinction
than they who have corrected the hearts and en-
larged the intellects, and have performed it not
only without the hope of reward, but almost with
the certainty of persecution.
Parker. Ever too hard upon great men, Mr.
Marvel !
Marvel. Little men in lofty places, who throw
long shadows because our sun is setting : the men
so little and the places so lofty, that, casting my
pebble, I only show where they stand. They
would be less contented with themselves if they
had obtained their preferment honestly. Luck
and dexterity always give more pleasure than
intellect and knowledge ; because they fill up
what they fall on to the brim at once, and people
run to them with acclamations at the splash.
Wisdom is reserved and noiseless, contented with
hard earnings, and daily letting go some early
acquisition, to make room for better specimens.
But great is the exultation of a worthless man,
when he receives, for the chips and raspings of
his Bridewell logwood, a richer reward than the
best and wisest, for extensive tracts of well-cleared
truths ; when he who has sold his country . . .
Parker. Forbear, forbear, good Mr. Marvel !
Marvel. When such is higher in estimation
than he who would have saved it ; when his emp-
tiness is heard above the voice that hath shaken
Fanaticism in her central shrine, that hath bowed
down tyrants to the scaffold, that hath raised up
nations from the dust, that alone hath been found
worthy to celebrate, as angels do, creating and
redeeming Love, and to precede with its solitary
sound the trumpet that will call us to our
doom.
Parker. I am unwilling to feign ignorance of
106
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
the gentleman you designate : but really now you
would make a very Homer of him.
Marvel. It appears to me that Homer is to
Milton what a harp is to an organ; though a
harp under the hand of Apollo.
Parker. I have always done him justice : I have
always called him a learned man.
Marvel. Call him henceforward the most 'glo-
rious one that ever existed upon earth. If two,
Bacon and Shakspeare, have equalled him in
diversity and intensity of power, did either of
these spring away with such resolution from the
sublimest highths of genius, to liberate and illu-
minate with patient labour the manacled human
race 1 And what is his recompense 1 The same
recompense as all men like him have received,
and will receive for ages. Persecution follows
Righteousness : the Scorpion is next in succession
to Libra. The fool however who ventures to
detract from Milton's genius, in the night which
now appears to close on him, will, when the dawn
has opened on his dull ferocity, be ready to bite
off a limb, if he might thereby limp away from
the trap he has prowled into. Among the gentler,
the better, and the wiser, few have entered yet
the awful structure of his mind ; few comprehend,
few are willing to contemplate, its vastness. Poli-
tics now occupy scarcely a closet in it. We sel-
dom are inclined to converse on them ; and, when
we do, it is jocosely rather than austerely. For
even the bitterest berries grow less acrid when
they have been hanging long on the tree. Be-
side, it is time to sit with our hats between our
legs, since so many grave men have lately seen
their errors, and so many brave ones have already
given proofs enough of their bravery, and trip
aside to lay down their laurels on gilt tables and
velvet cushions. If my friend condemns anyone
now, it is Cromwell ; and principally for recon-
structing a hereditary house of peers. He per-
ceives that it was done for the purpose of giving
the aristocracy an interest in the perpetuation of
power in his family, of which he discovered the
folly just before his death. He derides the stupi-
dity of those who bandy about the battered phrase
of useful checks and necessary counterpoises. He
would not desire a hinderance on his steward in
the receipt of his rent, if he had any, nor on his
attorney in prosecuting his suit : he would not
recommend any interest in opposition to that of
the people : he would not allow an honest man to
be arrested and imprisoned for debt, while a dis-
honest one is privileged to be exempt from it :
and he calls that nation unwise, and those laws
iniquitous, which tolerate so flagrant an abuse.
He would not allow a tradesman, who lives by
his reputation for honesty, to be calumniated as
dishonest, without the means of vindicating his
character, unless by an oppressive and dilatory
procedure, while a peer, who perhaps may live
by dishonesty, as some are reported to have done
in former reigns, recurs to an immediate and un-
costly remedy against a similar accusation. He
would not see Mother Church lie with a lawyer
on the woolsack, nor the ministry of the apostles
devolve on the crown, sacred and uncontaminated
as we see it is.
Parker. No scoffs at the crown, I do beseech
you, Mr. Marvel ! whatever enmity you and Mr.
Milton may bear against the peers. He would
have none of them, it seems.
Marvel. He would have as many as can prove
by any precedent or argument, that virtue and
abilities are hereditary ; and I believe he would
stint them exactly to that number. In regard to
their services, he made these observations a few
days ago : " Why, in God's name, friend Andrew,
do we imagine that a thing can be made stabile
by pulling at it perpetually in different directions ?
Where there are contrary and conflicting interests,
one will predominate at one time, another at
another. Now, what interest at any time ought
to predominate against the public? We hear
indeed that when the royal power is oppressive to
them, the peers push their horns against the
Leopards ; but did they so in the time of James
or his son ? And are not the people strong enough
to help and right themselves, if they were but
wise enough! And if they were wise enough,
would they whistle for the wolves to act in concert
with the shepherd-dogs! Our consciences tell
us," added he, " that we should have done some
good, had our intentions been well seconded and
supported. Collegians and barristers and cour-
tiers may despise the poverty of our intellects,
throw a few of their old scraps into our satchels,
and send the beadle to show us the road we ought
to take : nevertheless we are wilful, and refuse
to surrender our old customary parochial foot-
path."
Parker. And could not he let alone the poor
innocent collegians?
Marvel. Nobody ever thought them more in-
nocent than he, unless when their square caps
were fanning the flames round heretics : and
every man is liable to be a heretic in his turn.
Collegians have always been foremost in the
cure of the lues of heresy by sweating and caustic.
Parker. Sir ! they have always been foremost
in maintaining the unity of the faith.
Marvel. So zealously, that whatever was the
king's faith was theirs. And thus it will always
be, until their privileges and immunities are in
jeopardy; then shall you see them the most
desperate incendiaries.
Parker. After so many species of religion,
generated in the sty of old corruptions, we
return to what experience teaches us is best. If
the Independents, or any other sect, had reason
on their side, and truly evangelical doctrine, they
would not die away and come to nothing as they
nave done.
Marvel. Men do not stick very passionately and
tenaciously to a pure religion: there must be
honey on the outside of it, and warmth within,
and latitude around, or they make little bellow
and bustle about it. That Milton has been latterly
no frequenter of public worship, may be lamented,
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
107
but is not unaccountable. He has lived long
enough to perceive that all sects are animated by
a spirit of hostility and exclusion, a spirit the very
opposite to the Gospel. There is so much malig-
nity, hot-blooded and cold-blooded, in zealots,
that I do not wonder at seeing the honest man,
who is tired of dissension and controversy, wrap
himself up in his own quiet conscience, and in-
dulge in a tranquillity somewhat like sleep, apart.
Nearly all are of opinion that devotion is purer
and more ardent in solitude, but declare to you
that they believe it to be their duty to set an ex-
ample by going to church. Is not this pride and
vanity1? What must they conceive of their own
value and importance, to imagine that others will
necessarily look up to them as guides and models !
A hint of such an infirmity arouses all their
choler ; and from that moment we are unworthy
of being saved by them. But if they abandon us
to what must appear to them] so hopeless a con-
dition, can we doubt whether they would not
abandon a babe floating like Moses in a basket on
a Vide and rapid river ? I have always found
these people, whatever may be the sect, self-suf-
ficent, hard-hearted, intolerant, and unjust; in
short, the opposite of Milton. What wonder then
if he abstain from their society? particularly in
places of worship, where it must affect a rational
and religious man the most painfully. He thinks
that churches, as now constituted, are to religion
what pest-houses are to health : that they often
infect those who ailed nothing, and withhold them
from freedom and exercise. Austerity hath oftener
been objected to him than indifference. That
neither of the objections is well-founded, I think
I can demonstrate by an anecdote. Visiting him
last month, I found him hearing read by his
daughter the treatise of Varro On Agriculture':
and I said, laughingly, " We will walk over your
farm together." He smiled, although he could
not see that I did ; and he answered, " I never
wish to possess a farm, because I can enjoy the
smell of the hay and of the hawthorn in a walk to
Hampstead, and can drink fresh milk there.'
After a pause he added, " I can not tell (for nobody
is more ignorant in these matters) in what our
agriculture differs from the ancient : but I am
delighted to be reminded of a custom which my
girl has been recalling to my memory ; the custom
of crowning with a garland of sweet herbs, once
a-year, the brink of wells. Andrew! the old
moss-grown stones were not neglected, from under
which the father and son, the wife and daughter,
drew the same pure element with the same thank-
fulness as their hale progenitors." His piety is
infused into all the moods of his mind. Here it
was calm and gentle, at other times it was ardent
and enthusiastic. The right application of homely
qualities is of daily and general use. We all
want glass for the window, few want it for the
telescope.
Parker. It is very amiable to undertake the
defence of a person who, whatever may be his
other talents, certainly has possessed but in a
moderate degree the talent of making or of de-
taining friends.
Marvel. He, by the constitution of the human
mind, or rather by its configuration under those
spiritual guides who claim the tutelage of it, must
necessarily have more enemies than even another
of the same principles. The great abhor the
greater, who can humble but can not raise them.
The king's servants hate God's as much (one
would fancy) as if he fed them better, drest them
finelier, and gave them more plumy titles.
Poor Milton has all these against him ; what is
wanting in weight is made up by multitude and
multiformity. Judges and privy counsellors throw
axes and halters in his path : divines grow hard
and earthy about him : slim, straddling, blotchy
writers, those of quality in particular, feel them-
selves cramped and stunted under him : and
people of small worth, in every way, detract from
his, stamping on it as if they were going to spring
over it. Whatever they pick up against him they
take pains to circulate; and are sorrier at last
that the defamation is untrue than that they
helped to propagate it. I wish Truth were as
prolific as Falsehood, and as many were ready
to educate her offspring. But although we jsee
the progeny of Falsehood shoot up into amaz-
ing stature, and grow day by^ day more florid,
yet they soon have reached their maturity, soon
lose both teeth and tresses. As the glory of
England is in part identified with Milton's, his
enemies are little less than parricides. If they
had any sight beyond to-day, what would they
give, how would they implore and supplicate, to
be forgotten 1
Parker. Very conscientious men may surely
have reprehended him, according to the lights
that God has lent them.
Marvel. They might have burnt God's oil in
better investigations. Your conscientious men
are oftener conscientious in withholding than in
bestowing.
Parker. Writers of all ranks and conditions,
from the lowest to the highest, have disputed with
Mr. Milton on all the topics he has undertaken.
Marvel. And I am grieved to think that he has
noticed some of them. Salmasius alone was not
unworthy sublimiflagello. But what would your
lordship argue from the imprudence and irreve-
rence of the dwarfs? The most prominent rocks
and headlands are most exposed to the violence
of the sea : but those which can repell the waves
are in little danger from the corrosion of the
limpets.
Parker. Mr. Milton may reasonably be cen-
sured for writing on subjects whereof his know-
ledge is imperfect or null : on courts, for in-
stance. The greater part of those who allow
such a license to their pens, and he among the
rest, never were admitted into them. I am sorry
to remark that our English are the foremost bea-
gles in this cry.
Marvel. If Milton was never admitted within
them, he never was importunate for admittance :
108
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and if none were suffered to enter bnt such as are
better and wiser than he, the gates of Paradise are
themselves less glorious, and with less difficulty
thrown open. The great, as we usually call the
fortunate, are only what Solomon says about them,
" the highest part of the dust of the world," and
this highest part is the lightest. Do you imagine
that all the ministers and kings under the canopy
of heaven, are, in the sight of a pure Intelligence,
equivalent to him whom this pure Intelligence
hath enabled to penetrate with an unfailing voice
the dense array of distant generations] Can
princes give more than God can ? or are their
gifts better] That they are usually thought so,
is no conclusive proof of the fact. On the con-
trary, with me at least, what is usually thought on
any subject of importance, and on many of none,
lies under the suspicion of being wrong : for surely
the number of those who think correctly is
smaller than of those who think incorrectly, even
where passions and interests interfere the least.
Of those who appear to love God, and who sin-
cerely think they do, the greater part must be
conscious that they are not very fond of the men
whom he hath shown himself the most indulgent
to, and the most enriched with abilities and vir-
tues. Among the plants of the field we look out
for the salubrious, and we cultivate and cull them :
to the wholesomer of our fellow-creatures we ex-
hibit no such partiality : we think we do enough
when we only pass them without treading on
them : if we leave them to blossom and run to
seed, it is forbearance.
Parker. Mr. Milton hath received his reward
from his employers.
Marvel. His services are hardly yet begun;
and no mortal man, no series of transitory gene-
rations, can repay them. God will not delegate
this ; no, not even to his angels. I venture no
longer to stand up for him on English ground :
but, since we both are Englishmen by birth, I
may stand up for the remainder of our country-
men. Your lordship is pleased to remark that
they are the first beagles in the cry against
courts. Now I speak with all the freedom and
all the field-knowledge of a Yorkshireman, when
I declare that your lordship is a bad sports-
man, in giving a hound's title to dogs that hunt
vermin.
Parker. Mr. Marvel ! a person of your educa-
tion should abstain from mentioning thus con-
temptuously men of the same rank and condition
as yourself.
Marvel. All are of the same rank and condi-
tion with me, who have climbed as high, who have
stood as firmly, and who have never yet descended.
Neglect of time, subserviency to fortune, com-
pliance with power and passions, would thrust
men far below me, although they had been ex-
alted higher, to the uncalculating eye, than mortal
ever was exalted. Sardanapalus had more sub-
jects, and more admirers than Cromwell, whom
nevertheless I venture to denominate the most
sagacious and prudent, the most tolerant and
humane, the most firm and effective prince, in the
annals of our country.
Parker. Usurpers should not be thus com-
mended.
Marvel. Usurpers are the natural and impre-
scriptable successors of imbecile, unprincipled,
and lawless kings. In general they too are little
better furnished with virtues, and even their wis-
dom seems to wear out under the ermine. Am-
bition makes them hazardous and rash : these
qualities raise the acclamations of the vulgar, to
whom meteors are always greater than stars, and
the same qualities which raised them, precipitate
them into perdition. Sometimes obstreperous
mirth, sometimes gipsy-like mysteriousness, some-
times the austerity of old republicanism, and
sometimes the stilts of modern monarchy, come
into play, until the crowd hisses the actor off the
stage, pelted, broken-headed, and stumbling over
his sword. Cromwell used none of these grimaces.
He wore a mask while it suited him ; but its
features were grave ; and he threw it off in the
heat of action.
Parker. On the whole, yon speak more favour-
ably of a man who was only your equal, than of
those whom legitimate power has raised above
you.
Marvel. Never can I do so much good as he
did. He was hypocritical, and, in countermining
perfidy, he was perfidious; but his wisdom, his
valour, and his vigilance, saved the nation at
Worcester and Dunbar. He took unlawful and
violent possession of supreme authority ; but he
exercised it with moderation and discretion.
Even Fanaticism had with him an English cast of
countenance. He never indulged her appetite in
blood, nor carried her to hear the music of tortures
reverberated by the arch of a dungeon. He sup-
plied her with no optical glass at the spectacle of
mutilations : he never thought, as Archbishop
Laud did, he could improve God's image by am-
putating ears and slitting noses : he never drove
men into holy madness with incessant bowlings,
like the lycanthropic saints of the north.
Having then before me not only his arduous
achievements, but likewise his abstinence from
those evil practices in which all our sovrans his
predecessors had indulged, I should be the most
insolent and the most absurd of mortals if I sup-
posed that the Protector of England was only my
equal. But I am not obliged by the force of truth
and duty, to admit even to this position those
whom court servility may proclaim to the popu-
lace as my superiors. A gardener may write
sweet lupin on the cover of rape-seed ; but the
cover will never turn rape-seed into sweet lupin.
Something more than a couple of beasts, couchant
or rampant, blue or blazing, or than a brace of
birds with a claw on a red curtain, is requisite to
raise^an earl or a marquis up to me, although
lion-king-at-arms and garter-king-atrarms equip
them with all their harness, and beget them a
grandfather each. I flap down with the border
of my glove, and brush away and blow off these
ANDREW MAKVEL AND BISHOP PAEKEK.
109
gossamer pretensions ; and I take for my motto,
what the king bears for his, I hope as a model
for all his subjects, " Dieu et mon droit."
Parker. Mr. Marvel ! Mr. Marvel ! I did not
think you so proud a man.
Marvel. No, my lord] not when you know
that Milton is my friend ] If you wish to reduce
me and others to our level, pronounce that name,
and we find it. The French motto, merely from
its being French, recalls my attention to what I
was about to notice, when your lordship so oblig-
ingly led me to cover. I will now undertake to
prove that the English beagles are neither the first
nor the best in scenting what lieth about courts.
A French writer, an ecclesiastic, a dignitary, a
bishop, wrote lately :
"Courts are full of ill offices: it is there that all the
passions are in an uproar : * it is there that hatred and
friendship change incessantly for interest, and nothing is
constant but the desire of injuring. Friend, as Jeremiah
says, is fraudulent to friend, brother to brother. The art
of ensnaring has nothing dishonourable in it excepting
ill success. In short, Virtue herself, often false, becomes
more to be dreaded than Vice."
Now, if there were any like place upon earth,
would not even the worst prince, the worst people,
insist on its destruction? What brothel, what
gaming-house, what den of thieves, what wreck,
what conflagration, ought to be surrounded so
strictly by the protectors of property, the guardians
of morals, and the ministers of justice ] Should
any such conspirator, any aider or abettor, any
familiar or confidant of such conspiracy, be suffered
to live at large ] Milton, in the mildness of his
humanity, would at once let loose the delin-
quents, and would only nail up for ever the foul
receptacle.
Parker. The description is exaggerated.
Marvel. It is not a schoolboy's theme, begin-
ning with " Nothing is more sure," or " Nothing
is more deplorable ;" it is not an undergraduate's
exercise, drawn from pure fresh thoughts, where
there are only glimpses through the wood before
him, or taken up in reliance on higher men to
whom past ages have bowed in veneration : no ;
the view is taken on the spot by one experienced
and scientific in it ; by the dispassionate, the dis-
interested, the clear-sighted, and clear-souled
Massillon.
Parker. To show his eloquence, no doubt.
Marvel. No eloquence is perfect, none worth
showing, none becoming a Christian teacher, but
that in which the postulates are just, and the de-
ductions not carried beyond nor cast beside them,
nor strained hard, nor snatched hastily. I quote
not from stern republicans : I quote not from
loose lay people : but from the interior of the
court, from the closet of the palace, from under
the canopy and cope of Episcopacy herself. In
the same spirit the amiable and modest Fenelon
speaks thus : " Alas ! to what calamities are kings
* The original is defective in logic. "C'est la que toutes
les passions se reunissent pour s'entre-chocquer et se
detruire." Somuch the better, were it true.
exposed ! The wisest of them are often taken by
surprise : men of artifice, swayed by self-interest,
surround them : the good retire from them, be-
cause they are neither supplicants nor flatterers,
and because they wait to be inquired for : and
princes know not where they are to be found. 0 !
how unhappy is a king, to be exposed to the de-
signs of the wicked !"
It is impossible to draw any other deduction
from this hypothesis, than the necessity of abo-
lishing the kingly office, not only for the good of
the people, but likewise of the functionaries.
Why should the wisest and the best among them
be subject to so heavy a calamity1? a calamity so
easily avoided. Why should there be tolerated
a focus and point of attraction for wicked men ]
Why should we permit the good to be excluded,
whether by force or shame, from any place which
ought to be a post of honour ] Why do we suffer
a block to stand in their way, which by its nature
hath neither eyes to discern them, nor those about
it who would permit the use of the discovery if
it had]
Parker. Horrible questions ! leading God knows
whither !
Marvel. The questions are originally not mine.
No person who reasons on what he reads can ever
have read the words of Fenelon and not have
asked them. If what he says is true, they follow
necessarily : and the answer is ready for every
one of them. That they are true we may well
surmise ; for surely nobody was less likely to ex-
press his sentiments with prejudice, or precipi-
tacy, or passion. He and Massillon are such
witnesses against courts and royalty as can not
be rejected. They bring forward their weighty
and conclusive evidence, not only without heat,
but without intention, and! disclose what they
overheard as they communed with their con-
science. There may be malice in the thoughts,
and acrimony in the expressions, of those learned
men who, as you remark, were never admitted
into courts ; although malice and acrimony are
quite as little to be expected in them as in the
spectators at a grand amphitheatre, because they
could only be retired and look on, and were pre-
cluded from the arena in the combat of man and
beast.
Parker. There maybe malice where there is no
acrimony : there may be here.
Marvel. The existence of either is impossible
in well-regulated minds.
Parker. I beg your pardon, Mr. Marvel.
Marvel. What ! my lord ! do you admit that
even in well-regulated minds the worst passions
may be excited by royalty ] It must then be bad
indeed ; worse than Milton, worse than Massillon,
worse than Fenelon, represent it. The frugal
republican may detest it for its vicious luxury and
inordinate expenditure ; the strict religionist, as
one of the worst curses an offended God inflicted
on a disobedient and rebellious people ; the man
of calmer and more indulgent piety may grieve
at seeing it, with all its devils, possess the swine,
110
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
pitying the poor creatures into which it is per-
mitted to enter, not through their fault, but their
infirmity ; not by their will, but their position.
Parker. And do you imagine it is by their will
that what is inrooted is taken away from them ]
Marvel. Certainly not. Another proof of their
infirmity. Did you ever lose a rotten tooth, my
lord, without holding up your hand against it ?
or was there ever one drawn at which you did not
rejoice when it was done? All the authorities
we have brought forward may teach us, that the
wearer of a crown is usually the worse for it : that
it collects the most vicious of every kind about it,
as a nocturnal blaze in uncultivated lands collects
poisonous reptiles : and that it renders bad those
who, without it, might never have become so. But
no authority, before your lordship, ever went so
far as to throw within its noxious agency the
little that remained uncorrupted : none ever told
us, for our caution, that it can do what nothing
else can ; namely, that it can excite the worst
passions in well-regulated minds.
0 Royalty ! if this be true, I, with my lord
bishop, will detest and abhor thee as the most
sweeping leveller ! Go, go, thou indivisible in
the infernal triad with Sin and Death !
Parker. I must not hear this.
Marvel. I spoke hypothetically, and stood
within your own premises, referring to no actual
state of things, and least of all inclined to touch
upon the very glorious one in which we live.
Royalty is in her place and sits gracefully by the
side of our second Charles.
Parker. Here, Mr. Marvel, we have no diver-
gence of opinion.
Marvel. Enjoying this advantage, I am the
more anxious that my friend should partake in
it, whose last political conversation with me was
greatly more moderate than the language of the
eloquent French bishops. " We ought," said he,
" to remove anything by which a single fellow-
creature may be deteriorated : how much rather
then that which deteriorates many millions, and
brands with the stamp of servitude the brow of
the human race!"
Parker. Do you call this more moderate 1
Marvel. I call it so, because it is more argu-
mentative. It is in the temper and style of Mil-
ton to avoid the complaining tone of the one
prelate, and the declamatory of the other. His
hand falls on his subject without the softener of
cuff or ruffle.
Parker. So much the worse. But better as it
is than with an axe in it; for God knows where
it might fall.
Marvel. He went on saying that the most clear-
sighted kings can see but a little way before them
and around them, there being so many mediums,
and that delegated authority is liable to gross
abuses.
Parker. Republics too must delegate a portion
of their authority to agents at a distance.
Marvel. Every agent' in a well-regulated re-
public is a portion of itself. Citizen must resem-
ble citizen in all political essentials : but what
is privileged bears little resemblance to what is
unprivileged. In fact, the words privilege and
prerogative are manifestos of injustice, without
one word added.
Parker. Yet the people would not have your
republic when they had tried it ?
Marvel. Nor would the people have God when
they had tried him. But is this an argument
why we should not obey His ordinances, and serve
Him with all our strength ?
Parker. 0 strange comparison ! I am quite
shocked, Mr. Marvel !
Marvel. What ! at seeing any work of the
Deity at all resemble the maker, at all remind us
of him ? May I be often so shocked ! that light
thoughts and troublesome wishes and unworthy
resentments may be shaken off me ; and that the
Giver of all good may appear to me and converse
with me in the garden he has planted.
Parker. Then walk humbly with him, Mr.
Marvel.
Marvel. Every day I bend nearer to the dust
that is to receive me : and, if this were not suffi-
cient to warn me, the sight of my old friend
would. I repress my own aspirations that I may
continue to repeat his words, tending to prove
the vast difference between the administration
of a kingly government and a commonwealth,
where all offices in contact with the people are
municipal, where the officers are chosen on the
spot by such as know them personally, and by
such as have an immediate and paramount in-
terest in giving them the preference. This, he
insisted, is the greatest of all advantages ; and
this alone (but truly it is not alone) would give
the republican an incontestable superiority over
every other system.
Parker. Supposing it in theory to have its
merits, the laws no longer permit us to recom-
mend it in practice.
Marvel. I am not attempting to make or to
reclaim a convert. The foot that has slipped
back is less ready for progress than the foot that
never had advanced.
Parker. Sir ! I know my duty to God and my
king.
Marvel. I also have attempted to learn mine,
however unsuccessfully.
Parker. There is danger, sir, in holding such
discourses. The cause is no longer to be defended
without a violation of the statutes.
Marvel. I am a republican, and will die one ;
but rather, if the choice is left me, in my own
bed ; yet on turf or over the ladder unreluctantly,
if God draws thitherward the cause and conscience,
and strikes upon my heart to waken me. I have
been, I will not say tolerant and indulgent (words
applicable to children only), but friendly and
cordial toward many good men whose reason
stood in opposition and almost (if reason can be
hostile) in hostility to mine. When we desire to
regulate our watches, we keep them attentively
before us, and touch them carefully, gently,
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
Ill
delicately, with the finest and best-tempered in-
strument, day after day. When we would manage
the minds of men, finding them at all different
from our own, we thrust them away from us with
blind impetuosity, and throw them down in the
dirt to make them follow us the quicklier. In
the turbulence of attack from all directions, our
cause hath been decried by some, not for being
bad in itself, but for being supported by bad men.
What ! are there no pretenders to charity, to
friendship, to devotion ? Should we sit uneasy
and shuffling under it, and push our shoulders
against every post to rub it off, merely for the
Scotch having worn it in common with us, and
for their having shortened, unstitched, and sold
it?
Parker. Their history is over-run more rankly
than any other, excepting the French, with blood
and treachery.*
Marvel. Half of them are f Menteiths. Even
their quietest and most philosophical spirits are
alert and clamorous in defence of any villany
committed by power or compensated by wealth.
In the degeneracy of Greece, in her utter sub-
jugation, was there one historian or one poet
vile enough to represent as blameless the con-
duct of Clytemnestra 1 Yet what labours of the
press are bestowed on a queen of Scotland, who
committed the same crime without the same
instigation, who had been educated in the princi-
ples of Christianity, who had conversed from her
girlhood with the polite and learned, and who
had spent only a very few years among the barba-
rians of the north !
Parker. Her subjects were angry, not that she
was punished, but that she was unpaid for. They
would have sold her cheaper than they sold her
grandson : and, being so reasonable, they were
outrageous that there were no bidders. Mr. Marvel !
the Scotch have always been cringing when
hungry, always cruel when full : their avarice is
without satiety, their corruption is without
shame, and their ferocity is without remorse.
Marvel. Among such men there may be dema-
gogues, there can not be republicans ; there may
be lovers of free quarters, there can not be of
freedom. Reverencing the bold and the sincere,
and in them the character of tour country, we
Englishmen did not punish those ministers who
came forth uncited, and who avowed in the
House of Commons that they had been the
advisers of the Crown in all the misdemeanours
against which we brought the heaviest charges.
We bethought us of the ingratitude, of the
injuries, of the indignities, we had sustained :
we bethought us of our wealth transferred from
* Undoubtedly such were the sentiments of Milton and
Marvel ; and they were just. But Scotland in our days
has produced not only the calmest and most profound
reasoners, she has also given birth to the most enlightened
and energetic patriots.
t Menteith was the betrayer of Wallace, the bravest
hero, the hero in most points, our island has gloried in
since Alfred.
the nation to raise up enemies against it: we
bethought us of patient piety and of tranquil
courage, in chains, in dungeons, tortured, maimed,
mangled, for the assertion of truth and of freedom,
of religion and of law.
Parker. Our most gracious king is disposed to
allow a considerable latitude, repressing at the
same time that obstinate spirit which prevails
across the Border. Much of the Scottish character
may be attributed to the national religion, in
which the damnatory has the upper hand of the
absolving.
Marvel. Our judges are merciful to those who
profess the king's reputed and the duke's acknow-
ledged tenets : but let a man stand up for the
Independents, and out pops Mr. Attorney General,
throws him on his back, claps a tongue-scraper
into his mouth, and exercises it resolutely and
unsparingly.
Parker. I know nothing of your new-fangled
sects : but the doctrines of the Anglican and the
Romish church approximate.
Marvel. The shepherd of the seven hills teaches
his sheep in what tone to bleat before him, just
as the Tyrolean teaches his bull-finch; first by
depriving him of sight, and then by making
him repeat a certain series of notes at stated
intervals. Prudent and quiet people will choose
their churches as they choose their ale-houses;
partly for the wholesomeness of the draught and
partly for the moderation of the charges: but
the host in both places must be civil, and must
not damn you, body and soul, by way of invi-
tation. The wheat-sheaf is a very good sign for
the one, and a very bad one for the other.
Tythes are more ticklish things than tenets,
when men's brains are sound : and there are
more and worse stumbling-blocks at the barn-door
than at the church-porch. 1 never saw a priest,
Romanist or Anglican, who would tuck up his
surplice to remove them. Whichever does it
first, will have the most voices for him : but he
must be an Englishman, and serve only English-
men : he must resign the cook's perquisites to
the Spaniard : he must give up not only the fat
but the blood, and he must keep fewer faggots
in the kitchen. Since, whatever the country,
whatever the state of civilization, the Church of
Rome remains the same; since under her in-
fluence the polite Louis at .the present day
commits as much bloodshed and perfidy, and
commands as many conflagrations and rapes to
her honour and advancement, as the most bar-
barous kings and prelates in times past ; I do
hope that no insolence, no rapacity, no profligacy,
no infidelity, in our own lords spiritual, will render
us either the passive captives of her insinuating
encroachments, or the indifferent spectators of
her triumphal entrance. We shall be told it
was the religion of Alfred, the religion of the
Plantagenets. There may be victory, there may
be glory, there may be good men, under all forms
and fabrics of belief. Titus, Trajan, the two
Antonines, the two Gordians, Probus, Tacitus, ren-
112
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
dered their countrymen much happier than the
Plantagenets, or the greater and better Alfred
could do. Let us receive as brethren our country-
men of every creed, and reject as Christians those
only who refuse to receive them.
Parker. Most willingly; if such is the pleasure
of the King and Privy Council. And I am
delighted to find you, who are so steadfast a
republican, extolling the emperors.
Marvel. Your idea of emperor is incorrect or
inadequate. Cincinnatus and Cato were emperors
in the Roman sense of the word. The Germans
and Turks and Marocchines cut out theirs upon
another model. These Romans, and many more
in the same station, did nothing without the
consent, the approbation, the command (for such
was the expression), of the senate and the people.
They lived among the wiser and better citizens,
with whom they conversed as equals, and where
it was proper (for instance on subjects of lite-
rature), as inferiors. From these they took their
wives, and with the sons and daughters of these
they educated their children. In the decline of
the Commonwealth, kings themselves, on the
boundaries of the empire, were daily and hourly
conversant with honest and learned men. All
princes in our days are so educated, as to detest
the unmalleable and unmelting honesty which
will receive no impression from them : nor do
they even let you work for them unless they can
bend you double. We must strip off our own
clothes, or they never will let us be measured for
their livery, which has now become our only
protection.
Parker. It behoves us to obey ; otherwise we
can expect no forbearance and no tranquillity.
Marvel. I wish the tranquillity of our country
may last beyond our time, although we should
live, which we can not expect to do, twenty years.
Parker. God grant we may !
Marvel. Life clings with the pertinacity of an
impassioned mistress to many a man who is will-
ing to abandon it, while he who too much loves it,
loses it.
Parker. Twenty years !
Marvel. I have enjoyed but little of it at a time
when it becomes a necessary of life, and I fear I
shall leave as little for a heritage.
Parker. But in regard to living . . we are both
of us hale men : we may hope for many days yet :
we may yet see many changes.
Marvel. I have lived to see one too many.
Parker. Whoever goes into political life must
be contented with the same fare as others of the
same rank who embark in the same expedition.
Marvel. Before his cruize is over, he learns to
be satisfied with a very small quantity of fresh
provisions. His nutriment is from what is stale,
and his courage from what is heady : he looks
burly and bold, but a fatal disease is lying at the
bottom of an excited and inflated heart. We
think to thrive by surrendering our capacities :
but we can no more live, my lord bishop, with
breathing the breath of other men, than we can
by not breathing our own. Compliancy will
serve us poorly and ineffectually. Men, like
columns, are only strong while they are upright.
Parker. You were speaking of other times ;
and you always speak best among the Greeks and
Romans. Continue; pray!
Marvel. Sovranty, in the heathen world, had
sympathies with humanity ; and Power never
thought herself contaminated by touching the
hand of Wisdom. It was before Andromache
came on the stage painted and patched and
powdered, with a hogshead-hoop about her
haunches and a pack-saddle on her pole, sur-
mounted with upright hair larded and dredged :
it was before Orestes was created monseigneur :
it was before there strutted under a triumphal
arch of curls, and through a Via Sacra of
plumery, Lewis the fourteenth.
Parker. The ally of His Majesty . . .
Marvel. And something more. A gilded organ-
pipe, puffed from below for those above to play.
Parker. Respect the cousin . . .
Marvel. I know not "whose cousin ; but the
acknowledged brat of milliner and furrier, with
perruquier for godfather. And such forsooth are
the make-believes we must respect! A nucleus
of powder ! an efflorescence of frill !
Parker. Subject and prince stand now upon
another footing than formerly.
Marvel. Indeed they do. How'dignified is the
address of Plutarch to Trajan ! how familiar is
Pliny's to Vespasian ! how tender, how paternal,
is Fronto's to Antoninus ! how totally free from
adulation and servility is Julius Pollux to the
ungentle Commodus ! Letters were not trampled
down disdainfully either in the groves of Antioch
or under the colonnades of Palmyra. Not
pleasure, the gentle enfeebler of the human intel-
lect ; not tyranny and bigotry, its violent assailants ;
crossed the walk of the philosopher, to stand
between him and his speculations. What is more;
two ancient religions, the Grecian and Egyptian,
met in perfectly good temper at Alexandria, lived
and flourished there together for many centuries,
united in honouring whatever was worthy of
honour in each communion, and never heard of
persecution for matters of opinion, until Chris-
tianity came and taught it. Thenceforward, for
fifteen hundred years, blood has been perpetually
spouting from underneath her footsteps ; and the
wretch, clinging exhausted to the Cross, is left
naked by the impostor, who pretends to have
stript him only to heal his wounds.
Parker. Presbyterians, and other sectaries,
were lately as cruel and hypocritical as any in
former times.
Marvel. They were certainly not less cruel, and
perhaps even more hypocritical. English hearts
were contracted and hardened by an open ex-
posure to the north : they now are collapsing into
the putridity of the south. We were ashamed of
a beggarly distemper, but parasitical and skin-
deep; we are now ostentatious of a gentlemanly
one, eating into the very bones.
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PARKER.
113
Parker. Our children may expect from lord
Clarendon a fair account of the prime movers in
the late disturbances.
Marvel. He knew but one party, and saw it
only in its gala suit. He despises those whom he
left on the old litter ; and he fancies that all who
have not risen want the ability to rise. No doubt,
he will speak unfavourably of those whom I most
esteem : be it so : if their lives and writings do
not controvert him, they are unworthy of my
defence. Were I upon terms of intimacy with
him, I would render him a service, by sending
him the best translations, from Greek and Latin
authors, of maxims left us by the wisest men ;
maxims which my friends held longer than their
fortunes, and dearer than their lives. And are
the vapours of such quagmires as Clarendon to
overcast the luminaries of mankind 1 Should a
Hyde lift up, I will not say his hand, I will not
say his voice, should he lift up his eyes, against
a Milton 1
Parker. Mr. Milton would have benefited the
world much more by 'coming into its little
humours, and by complying with it cheerfully.
Marvel. As the needle turns away from the
rising sun, from the meridian, from the occidental,
from regions of fragrancy and gold and gems,
and moves with unerring impulse to the frosts
and deserts of the north, so Milton and some few
others, in politics, philosophy, and religion, walk
through the busy multitude, wave aside the im-
portunate trader, and, after a momentary oscilla-
tion from external agency, are found in the twi-
light and in the storm, pointing with certain index
to the polestar of immutable truth.
Parker. The nation in general thanks him
little for what he has been doing.
Marvel. Men who have been unsparing of their
wisdom, like ladies who have been unfrugal of
their favours, are abandoned by those who owe
most to them, and hated or slighted by the
rest. I wish beauty in her lost estate had conso-
lations like genius.
Parker. Fie, fie ! Mr. Marvel ! Consolations
for frailty !
Marvel. What wants them more ] The reed is
cut down, and seldom does the sickle wound the
hand that cuts it. There it lies ; trampled on,
withered, and soon to be blown away.
Parker. We should be careful and circumspect
in our pity, and see that it falls on clean ground.
Such a laxity of morals can only be taught in Mr.
Milton's school. He composed, I remember, a
Treatise on Divorce, and would have given it
great facilities.
Marvel. He proved by many arguments what
requires but few : that happiness is better than
unhappiness; that, when two persons can not
agree, it is wiser and more christianlike that
they should not disagree ; that, when they cease
to love each other, it is something if they be
hindered, by the gentlest of checks, from running
to the extremity of hatred; and lastly, how it
conduces to circumspection and forbearance to be
aware that the bond of matrimony is not indis-
soluble, and that the bleeding heart may be saved
from bursting.
Parker. Monstrous sophistry ! abominable
doctrines ! What more, sir ! what more ?
Marvel. He proceeds to demonstrate that
boisterous manners, captious contradictions, jars,
jealousies, suspicions, dissentions, are juster causes
of separation than the only one leading to it
through the laws. Which fault, grievous as it is
to morality and religion, may have occurred but
once, and may have been followed by immediate
and most sorrowful repentance, and by a greater
anxiety to be clear of future offence than before it
was committed. In itself it is not so irreconcilable
and inconsistent with gentleness, good-humour,
generosity, and even conjugal affection.
Parker. Palpable perversion !
Marvel. I suppose it to have been committed
but once, and then there is the fairest inference,
the most reasonable as well as the most charitable
supposition, nay, almost the plainest proof, of the
more legitimate attachment.
Parker. Fear, apprehension of exposure, of
shame, of abandonment, may force the vagrant to
retrace her steps.
Marvel. God grant, then, the marks of them
never may be discovered !
Parker. Let the laws have their satisfaction.
Marvel. Had ever the Harpies theirs, or the
Devil his ? and yet when were they stinted 1 Are
the laws or are we the better or the milder for
this satisfaction? or is keenness of appetite a
sign of it ]
Parker. Reverence the laws of God, Mr. Marvel,
if you contemn those of your country. Even the
parliament, which you and Mr. Milton must re-
spect, since no king was coexistent with it, dis-
countenanced and chastised such laxity.
Marvel. I dare not look back upon a parliament
which was without the benefit of a king, and had
also lost its spiritual guides, the barons of your
bench : but well do I remember that our blessed
Lord and Saviour was gentler in his rebuke to the
woman who had offended, than he was to Scribes
and Pharisees.
Parker. There is no argument of any hold on
men of slippery morals.
Marvel. My morals have indeed been so slip-
pery that they have let me down on the ground
and left me there. Every year I have grown
poorer ; yet never was I conscious of having spent
my money among the unworthy, until the time
came for them to show it by their ingratitude.
My morals have not made me slip into an epis-
copal throne . . .
Parker. Neither have mine me, sir! and I
would have you to know it, Mr. Marvel !
Marvel. Your lordship has already that satis-
faction.
Parker. Pardon my interruption, my dear sir !
and the appearance of warmth, such as truth and
sincerity at times put on.
Marvel. It belongs to your lordship to grant
114
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
pardon ; it is ours who have offended, to re-
ceive it.
Parker. Mr. Marvel ! I have always admired
your fine gentlemanly manners, and regretted
that you never have turned your wit to good
account , in an age when hardly anything else is
held of value. Sound learning rises indeed, but
rises slowly : piety, although in estimation with
the king, is less prized by certain persons who
have access to the presence : wit, Mr. Marvel, when
properly directed, not too high nor too low, will
sooner or later find a patron. It is well at all
times to avoid asperity and acrimony, and to sub-
mit with a willing mind to God's dispensations,
be what they may. Probably a great part of your
friend's misfortunes may be attributed to the in-
temperance of his rebukes.
Marvel. Then what you call immoral and im-
pious did him less harm '.
Parker. I would not say thai altogether. To
me indeed his treatise on Divorce is most offen-
sive : the treatise on Prelaty is contemptible.
Marvel. Nevertheless, in the narrow view of my
humble understanding, there is no human elo-
quence at all comparable to certain parts of it.
And permit me to remind your lordship that yon
continued on the most friendly terms with him
long after its publication.
Parker. I do not give up a friend for a trifle.
Marvel. Your lordship, it appears, must have
more than a trifle for the surrender. I have
usually found that those who make faults of
foibles, and crimes of faults, have within them-
selves an impulse toward worse, and give ready
way to such impulse whenever they can secretly
or safely. There is a gravity which is not austere
nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy,
nor dwells in contraction of heart, but arises from
tenderness and hangs upon reflection.
Parker. Whatsoever may be the gravity of Mr.
Milton, I have heard indistinctly that he has not
always been the kindest of husbands. Being a
sagacious and a prudent man, he ought never to
have taken a wife until he had ascertained her
character.
Marvel. Pray inform me whether the wisest
men have been the most fortunate, or, if you pre-
fer the expression, the most provident, in their
choice. Of Solomon's wives (several hundreds)
is it recorded that a single one sympathised with
him, loved him, respected him, or esteemed him ?
His wisdom and his poetry flowed alike on barren
sand ; his cedar frowned on him ; his lily drooped
and withered, before he had raised up his head
from its hard cold glossiness, or had inhaled its
fragrance with a second sigh. Disappointments
sour most the less experienced. Young ladies are
ready in imagining that marriage is all cake and
kisses ; but very few of them are housewives long,
before they discover that the vinous fermentation
may be followed too soon by the acetous. Rarely
do they discover, and more rarely do they admit,
that such is the result of their own mismanage-
ment. What woman can declare with sincerity,
that she never in the calmer days of life has felt
surprise, and shame also, if she is virtuous and
sensible, at recollecting how nearly the same in-
terest was excited in her by the most frivolous
and least frivolous of her admirers. The downy
thistle-seed, hard to be uprooted, is carried by the
lightest breath of air, and takes an imperceptible
hold on what it catches : it falls the more readily
into the more open breast, but sometimes the less
open is vainly buttoned up against it.
Milton has, I am afraid, imitated too closely
the authoritative voice of the patriarchs, and
been somewhat too oriental (I forbear to say
Scriptural) in his relations as a husband. But
who, whether among the graver or less grave, is
just to woman? There may be moments when
the beloved tells us, and tells us truly, that we
are dearer to her than life. Is not this enough 1
is it not above all merit ? Yet, if ever the ardour
of her enthusiasm subsides ; if her love ever loses,
later in the day, the spirit and vivacity of its
early dawn ; if between the sigh and the blush
an interval is perceptible; if the arm mistakes
the chair for the shoulder; what an outcry is
there ! what a proclamation of her injustice and
her inconstancy ! what an alternation of shrinking
and spurning at the coldness of her heart ! Do
we ask within if our own has retained all its
ancient loyalty, all its own warmth, and all that
was poured into it? Often the true lover has
little of true love compared with what he has un-
deservedly received and unreasonably exacts. But
let it also be remembered that marriage is the
metempsychosis of women ; that it turns them
into different creatures from what they were before.
Liveliness in the girl may have been mistaken for
good temper : the little pervicacity which at first
is attractively provoking, at hist provokes without
its attractiveness : negligence of order and pro-
priety, of duties and civilities, long endured, often
deprecated, ceases to be tolerable, when children
grow up and are in danger of following the ex-
ample. It often happens that, if a man unhappy
in the married state were to disclose the manifold
causes of his uneasiness, they would be found, by
those who were beyond their influence, to be of
such a nature as rather to excite derision than
sympathy. The waters of bitterness do not fall
on his head in a cataract, but through a colan-
der ; one however like the vases of the Danaides,
perforated only for replenishment. We know
scarcely the vestibule of a house of which we fancy
we have penetrated into all the corners. We
know not how grievously a man may have suf-
fered, long before the calumnies of the world
befell him as he reluctantly left his house-door.
There are women from whom incessant tears of
anger swell forth at imaginary wrongs ; but of
contrition for their own delinquencies, not one.
Milton, in writing his treatise, of which pro-
bably the first idea was suggested from his own
residence, was aware that the laws should provide,
not only against our violence and injustice, but
against our levity and inconstancy ; and that a
ANDREW MARVEL AND BISHOP PAEKEE.
115
man's capriciousness or satiety should not burst
asunder the ties by which families are united. Do
you believe that the crime of adultery has never
been committed to the end of obtaining a divorce 1
Do you believe that murder, that suicide, never
has been committed because a divorce was unat-
tainable ] Thus the most cruel tortures are ter-
minated by the most frightful crimes. Milton
has made his appeal to the authority of religion: we
lower our eyes from him, and point to the miseries
and guilt on every side before us, caused by the
corrosion or the violent disruption of bonds which
humanity would have loosened. He would have
tried with a patient ear and with a delicate hand
the chord that offended by its harshness; and,
when he could not reduce it to the proper tone,
he would remove it for another.
Parker. Mr. Marvel ! Mr. Marvel! lean not fol-
low you among these fiddlesticks. The age is
notoriously irreligious.
Marvel. I believe it ; I know it ; and, without
a claim to extraordinary acuteness, I fancy I can
discover by what means, and by whose agency, it
became so. The preachers who exhibit most ve-
hemence are the very men who support the
worst corruptions ; corruptions not a portion of
our nature, but sticking thereto by our slovenly
supineness. Of what use is it to rail against our
infirmities, of what use even to pity and bemoan
them, if we help not in removing the evils that
rise perpetually out of them 1 Were every man
to sweep the mire from before his house every
morning, he would have little cause to complain
of dirty streets. Some dust might be carried
into them by the wind ; the tread of multitudes
would make unsound what was solid ; yet, nothing
being accumulated, the labour of removing the
obstructions would be light. Another thing has
increased the irreligion and immorality of the
people, beside examples in elevated stations.
Whatever is overstrained will relax or crack.
The age of Milton (for that was his age in which
he was heard and honoured) was too religious,
if anything can be called so. Prelaty now lays
a soft and frilled hand upon our childishness.
Forty years ago she stripped up her sleeve,
scourged us heartily, and spat upon us. . . to re-
move the smart, no doubt ! This treatment made
people run in all directions from her ; not unlike
the primeval man described by Lucretius, fleeing
before the fiercer and stronger animals :
Viva videns vivo sepeliri viscera busto,
At quos ecfugium servarat, corpora adeso
Posterius, tremulas super ulcera tetra tcnentes
Palmas, horrificis adcibant vocibus orcum.
Parker. Dear me ! what a memory you possess,
good Mr. Marvel ; you pronounce Latin verses
charmingly. I wish you would go on to the end
of the book.
Marvel. Permit me to go on a shorter distance :
to the conclusion of my remarks. As Popery
caused the violence of the Eeformers, so did Pre-
laty (the same thing under another name) the
violence of the Presbyterians and Anabaptists.
She treated them inhumanly : she reduced to
poverty, she exiled, she maimed, she mutilated,
she stabbed, she shot, she hanged, those who fol-
lowed Christ in the narrow and quiet lane, rather
than along the dust of the market-road, and who
conversed with him rather in the cottage than
the toll-booth. She would have nothing pass un-
less through her hands ; and she imposed a heavy
and intolerable tax on the necessaries both of
physical and of spiritual life. This baronial pri-
vilege our parliament would have suppressed :
the king rose against the suppression, and broke
his knuckles in the cogs of the mill.
Parker. Sad times, Mr. Marvel ! sad times ! It
fills me with heaviness to hear of them.
Marvel Low places are foggy first : days of
sadness wet the people to the skin : they hang
loosely for some time upon the ermine, but at
last they penetrate it, and cause it to be thrown
off. I do not like to hear a man cry out with
pain ; but I would rather hear one than twenty.
Sorrow is the growth of all seasons : we had much
however to relieve it. Never did our England,
since she first emerged from the ocean, rise so
high above surrounding nations. The rivalry of
Holland, the pride of Spain, the insolence of
France, were thrust back by one finger each : yet
those countries were then more powerful than
they had ever been. The sword of Cromwell was
preceded by the mace of Milton ; by that mace
which, when Oliver had rendered his account,
opened to our contemplation the garden-gate of
Paradise. And there were some around not un-
worthy to enter with him. In the compass of
sixteen centuries, you will not number on the
whole earth so many wise and admirable men as
you could have found united in that single day,
when England showed her true magnitude, and
solved the question, Which is most, one or a million ?
There were giants in those days ; but giants who
feared God, and not who fought against him.
Less men, it appears, are braver. They show him
a legal writ of ejectment, seize upon his house,
and riotously carouse therein. But the morning
must come ; and heaviness, we know, cometh in
the morning.
Parker. Wide is the difference between carousal
and austerity. Your friend miscalculated the
steps to fortune, in which, as we all are the archi-
tects of our own, if we omit the insertion of one
or two, the rest are useless in farthering our
ascent. He was too passionate, Mr. Marvel ! he
was indeed.
Marvel. Superficial men have no absorbing
passion : there are no whirlpools in a shallow.
I have often been amused at thinking in what
estimation the greatest of mankind were holden
by their contemporaries. Not even the most
sagacious and prudent one could discover much
of them, or could prognosticate their future
course in the infinity of space ! Men like our-
selves are permitted to stand near and indeed in
the very presence of Milton : what do they see ?
dark clothes, grey hair, and sightless eyes ! Other
i2
116
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
men have better things: other men therefore
are nobler ! The stars themselves are only bright
by distance ; go close, and all is earthy. But
vapours illuminate these : from the breath and
from the countenance of God comes light on worlds
higher than they ; worlds to which he has given
the forms and names of Shakspeare and of Mil-
ton.
Parker. After all, I doubt whether much of his
doctrine is remaining in the public mind.
Marvel. Others are not inclined to remember
all that we remember, and will not attend to us
if we propose to tell them half. Water will take
up but a certain quantity of salt, even of the finest
and purest. If the short memories of men are to
be quoted against the excellence of instruction,
your lordship would never have censured them
from the pulpit for forgetting what was delivered
by their Saviour. It is much, my lord bishop,
that you allow my friend even the pittance of
praise you have bestowed : for, if you will permit
me to express my sentiments inverse, which I am
in the habit of doing, I would say,
Men like the ancient kalends, nones, and ides,
Are reckoned backward, and the first stand last.
I am confident that Milton is heedless of how
little weight he is held by those who are of none ;
and that he never looks toward those somewhat
more eminent, between whom and himself there
have crept the waters of oblivion. As the pearl
ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in
the tomb all the fame that is truly precious. In
fame he will be happier than in friendship. Were
it possible that one among the faithful of the
angels could have suffered wounds and dissolu-
tion in his conflict with the false, I should scarcely
feel greater awe at discovering on some bleak
mountain the bones of this our mighty defender,
once shining in celestial panoply, once glowing
at the trumpet-blast of God, but not proof against
the desperate and the damned, than I have felt
at entering the humble abode of Milton, whose
spirit already reaches heaven, yet whose corporeal
frame hath no quiet or safe resting-place here
below. And shall not I, who loved him early,
have the lonely and sad privilege to love him
still ? or shall fidelity to power be a virtue, and
fidelity to tribulation an offence ?
Parker. We may best show our fidelity by our
discretion. It becomes my station, and suits my
principles, to defend the English Constitution,
both in church and state.
Marvel. You highly praised the Defence of the
English People : you called it a masterly piece of
rhetoric and ratiocination.
Parker. I might have admired the subtilty of
it, and have praised the Latinity.
Marvel. Less reasonably. But his godlike mind
shines gloriously throughout his work; only
perhaps we look the more intently at it for the
cloud it penetrates. Those who think we have
enough of his poetry, still regret that we possess
too little of his prose, and wish especially for
more of his historical compositions. Davila and
Bacon. . .
Parker. You mean Lord Verulam.
Marvel. That idle title was indeed thrown over
his shoulders : but the trapping was unlikely to
rest long upon a creature of such proud paces.
He and Davila are the only men of high genius
among the moderns who have attempted it ; and
the greater of them has failed. He wanted honesty,
he perverted facts, he courted favor : the present
in his eyes was larger than the future.
Parker. The Italians, who far excell us in the
writing of history, are farther behind the ancients.
Marvel. True enough. From Guicciardini and
Machiavelli, the most celebrated of them, we ac-
quire a vast quantity of trivial information. There
is about them a sawdust which absorbs much
blood and impurity, and of which the level sur-
face is dry : but no traces by what agency rose
such magnificent cities above the hovels of France
and Germany : none
Ut fortis Etruria crevit,
or, on the contrary, how the mistress of the world
sank in the ordure of her priesthood.
Scilicet et rerum facta cst nequissima Roma.
We are captivated by no charms of description,
we are detained by no peculiarities of character :
we hear a clamorous scuffle in the street, and we
close the door. How different the historians of
antiquity ! We read Sallust, and always are in-
cited by the desire of reading on, although we
are surrounded by conspirators and barbarians :
we read Livy, until we imagine we are standing
in an august pantheon, covered with altars and
standards, over which are the four fatal letters
that spell-bound all mankind.* We step forth
again among the modern Italians : here we find
plenty of rogues, plenty of receipts for making
more; and little else. In the best passages we
come upon a crowd of dark reflections, which
scarcely a glimmer of glory pierces through ; and
we stare at the tenuity of the spectres, but never
at their altitude.
Give me the poetical mind, the mind poetical
in all things; give me the poetical heart, the
heart of hope and confidence, that beats the more
strongly and resolutely under the good thrown
down, and raises up fabric after fabric on the
same foundation.
Parker. At your time of life, Mr. Marvel1?
Marvel. At mine, my lord bishop ! I have
lived with Milton. Such creative and redeeming
spirits are like kindly and renovating Nature.
Volcano comes after volcano, yet covereth she
with herbage and foliage, with vine and olive,
and with whatever else refreshes and gladdens
her, the Earth that has been gasping under the
exhaustion of her throes.
Parker. He has given us such a description of
Eve's beauty as appears to me somewhat too pic-
torial, too luxuriant, too suggestive, too ... I
know not what.
* S. P. Q. R.
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
nr
Marvel. The sight of beauty, in her purity and
beatitude, turns us from all unrighteousness, and
is death to sin.
Parker. Before we part, my good Mr. Marvel,
let me assure you that we part in amity, and that
I bear no resentment in my breast against your
friend. I am patient of Mr. Milton ; I am more
than patient, I am indulgent, seeing that his
influence on society is past.
Marvel. Past it is indeed. What a deplorable
thing is it that Folly should so constantly have
power over Wisdom, and Wisdom so intermit-
tently over Folly ! But we live morally, as we
used to live politically, under a representative
system ; and the majority (to employ a phrase of
people at elections) carries the day.
Parker. Let us piously hope, Mr. Marvel, that
God in his good time may turn Mr. Milton from
the error of his ways, and incline his heart to
repentance, and that so he may finally be pre-
pared for death.
Marvel. The wicked can never be prepared
for it, the good always are. What is the pre-
paration which so many ruffled wrists point out 1
To gabble over prayer and praise and confession
and contrition. My lord ! Heaven is not to
be won by short hard work at the last, as some
of us take a degree at the university, after much
irregularity and negligence. I prefer a steady
pace from the outset to the end, coming in cool,
and dismounting quietly. Instead of which, I
have known many old playfellows of the devil
spring up suddenly from their beds and strike
at him treacherously ; while he, without a cuff,
laughed and made grimaces in the corner of the
room.
EMPEROE OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.*
A suspicion was entertained by the Emperor of
China, that England was devising schemes, com-
mercial and political, to the detriment of the
Celestial Empire. His majesty, we know, was ill-
informed on the subject. Never were ministers
so innocent of devices to take any advantages in
trade or policy ; and whatever may bubble up of
turbid and deleterious, is brewed entirely for
home consumption.
It requires no remark, it being universally
known, that the Emperor deems it beneath his
dignity to appoint ambassadors to reside in foreign
courts. On the present occasion he employed a
humbler observer, known in our northern lati-
tudes by the more ordinary appellation of Spy,
although the titular is never gazetted. Person-
ages of this subordinate dignity are often the real
ambassadors; and in zeal, information, and in-
tegrity, are rarely inferior to the ostensible repre-
sentatives of majesty.
Whatever might have been the Emperor's un-
easiness, whether at the near expiration of the
East India Company's charter, as liable to produce
new and less favourable relations between his em-
pire and England, or from any other cause, the
real motive of Tsing-Ti's mission hath been totally
misunderstood by the most intelligent of our
journalists. Politically much mistaken and tra-
duced, personally Tsing-Ti is become as well
known almost in England as in his native country.
At Canton it is reported that he was educated by
the late Emperor, as the companion of his son;
nor are there wanting those who would trace his
origin to the very highest source, celestiality
itself. Certain it is, that he long enjoyed the
confidence and friendship of his imperial master.
Whispers are afloat in the British factory, that
his mission was hastened by the dissemination of
certain religious tracts, imported from England
into the maritime towns of China. Several of
* This was written several years before our invasion of
China.
these were laid before his majesty the Emperor,
in all which it was declared by the pious writers
that Christianity is utterly extinct. His majesty
did not greatly care at first whether the assertion
were true or false, otherwise than as a matter of
history ; but protested that he would not allow a
fact, even of such trivial importance (such was
his expression), to be incorrectly stated in the
annals of his reign. By degrees however, the
more he reflected on the matter, the more he was
convinced that it was by no means trivial. He
entertained some hopes, although faint indeed, that
the case in reality was not quite so desperate as
the later religionists had represented it. From
the manuscript reports he had perused, relating
to the Jesuits on their expulsion, and from many
old Chinese authors, he was induced to believe
that the Christians were more quarrelsome and
irreconcilable than any other men; and he wished
to introduce a few of the first-rate zealots among
the Tartars, to sow divisions and animosities, and
to divert them hereafter from uniting their tribes
against him. No time, he thought, was to be
lost; and Tsing-Ti received his majesty's com-
mand to go aboard the Ganges East Indiaman,
and communicate with the captain. He had
studied the English language from his earliest
youth, and soon spoke it fluently and correctly.
His good-nature made him a favourite with the
officers and crew, and they were greatly pleased
and edified by his devotion. It was remarked
of him by one of the sailors, that " he must have
a cross of the Englishman in him, he takes so
kindly to his grog and his Bible."
He seems to have been much attached to the
Christian religion before his voyage. No doubt,
he had access to the imperial library early in life,
and then probably he laid the foundation of his
faith. Few can be unaware that the spoils of the
Jesuits still enrich it, and that the gospel in the
Chinese tongue is among the treasures it con-
tains.
113
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
On his arrival in England, Tsing-Ti bought a
good number of books, but they were little to his
taste, so that when he left us he took with him
only Hoyle on the Game of Whiet, and a Treatise
on Husbandry, beside a manuscript which he
purchased as a specimen of caligraphy. He dis-
coursed with admiration on the merits of the two
printed authors, declaring that throughout the
whole dissertation neither of them had ruffled
his temper, or spoken contumeliously of his pre-
decessors. He regretted that he could not in his
conscience pay a similar compliment to any other,
seeing that Spiritual Guides went booted and
spurred, that Pastoral Poets were bitten by mad
sheep, and that Sonnetteers sprang up from their
mistresses, or down from the moon, to grunt and
butt at one another. Such were the literal ex-
pressions of Tsing-Ti, who protested he would not
ehew such bitter betel nor such hot areeka.
TSING-TI'S NARRATIVE.
FIRST AUDIENCE.
Entering the chamber of audience through the
azure dragon and the two leopards, the green and
the yellow (such being the apartments, as all men
know, which are open from time immemorial to
the passage of him who bringeth glad tidings),
the eyes of his majesty met me with all their light ;
and, on my last prostration, he thus bespake me
with condescension and hilarity :
" Tsing-Ti ! Tsing-Ti ! health, prosperity, long
life and long nails to thee! and a tail at thy
girdle which might lay siege to the great wall."
Overcome by such ineffable goodness, I lessened
in all my limbs ; nevertheless my skin seemed
too small for them, it tightened so. His celes-
tiality then waved his hand, that whatever was
living in his presence, excepting me only, might
disappear. He ordered me to rise and stand be-
fore him, desirous to pour fresh gladness into me.
He then said, what, although it may surpass cre-
dibility, and subject me also to the accusation of
pride or the suspicion of deafness, I think it not
only my glory, but my duty, to record.
" 0 companion of my youth !" said his majesty,
" 0 dragon-claw of my throne !" said Chan-ting,*
" 0 thou who hast hazarded thy existence and
hast wetted thy slippers in a sea-boat for me!
Verily they shall be yellowf all thy days, shining
forth like the sun, after this self-devotion. So
then thou hast returned to my court from the
shores of England ! How couldst thou keep thy
footing on deck, where the ocean bends under it
like a cat's back in a rage, as our philosophers say
it does between us and the White Island?"
Whereunto I did expand both palms horizon-
tally, and abase my half-closed eyes, answering
with such gravity as became the occasion and the
presence : " Fables ! 0 my Emperor and protector !
* Chan-ting, Supreme Court; the Emperor is often so
called,
t The colour of the highest distinction in China.
mere fables ! I looked out constantly from the
vessel, and found it rise no higher the second day
than the first, nor the third day than the second,
nor more subsequently. The sea, if not always
quite level, had only little curvatures upon it,
which the Englishmen, in their language, call
waves and billows and porpoises. There are many
of the sailors who believe these porpoises to be
living creatures ; for mariners are superstitious.
Indeed they have greatly the resemblance of ani-
mals ; but so likewise have the others. For some-
times they lie seemingly asleep ; then are they
froward and skittish, and resolute to make the
vessel play with them ; then querulous and petu-
lant, if not attended to ; then sluggish and im-
movable and malicious;' then rising up and
flapping the sides, growing more and more
gloomy; then glaring and fierce; then rolling
and dashing, and calling to comrades at a dis-
tance ; then hissing and whistling and mutinously
roaring ; white, black, purple, green ; then lifting
and shaking us, and casting us abroad, to fall
upon anything but our legs."
Emperor. I never met before with such a tre-
mendous description of the sea.
Tsing-Ti. I could give a more tremendous
one, if imperial ears might entertain it.
Emperor. Our ears are open.
Tsing-Ti. Without any apparent exertion of
its potency, without the ministry of billow or
porpoise, it made me, a mandarin of the Celestial
Empire, surrender, from the interior provinces of
my person, the stores and munitions there de-
posited by the bounty of my Emperor.
Emperor. Whereas the time hath elapsed for
demanding their restitution, it shall be compen-
sated unto thee tenfold. And now, Tsing-Ti, to
business. In this audience I have shown less
anxiety than thou mightest have expected about
the success of thy mission. The reason is, I have
subdued my enemies, and do not care a rush
any longer whether they are converted to Chris-
tianity or not. Such is my clemency. However,
if thou hast brought back any popes or preachers
for the purpose, feed them well at my expense ;
and let them, if popes, swear and swagger and
blaspheme, without scourge or other hindrance ;
if ordinary preachers, let them take one another
by the throat, get drunk, and perform all the
other ceremonies of their religion, as freely as
at home, according to their oaths and con-
sciences.
Tsing-Ti. I have brought none with me, O
celestiality !
Emperor. So much the better, as things have
turned out. But, not knowing of my victories
and the submission of the rebels, how happens it
that none attend thee? Were none in the
market?
Tsing-Ti. Plenty, of all creeds and conditions,
bating the genuine old Christians. On my first
landing indeed they were scarcer, being all busied
in running from house to house, canvassing (as it
is called) for votes.
EMPEROR OP CHINA AND TSING-TI.
119
Emperor. Explain thy meaning; for verily
Tsing-Ti, thou hast brought with thee some foggi-
ness from the West.
Tsing-Ti. In England the hereditarily wise con-
stitute and appoint a somewhat more numerous
assembly, without which they can not lawfully
seize any portion of what belongs to the citizens,
nor prohibit them from raising plants to embitter
their beverage, nor even from heating their barley
to brew it with. Harder still ; they can not make
wars to make their children's fortunes, nor exe-
cute many other little things without which they
might just as well never have been hereditarily
wise. But having in their own hands the forma-
tion and management of those whose consent is
necessary, they lead happy lives. These however,
once in seven years, are liable to disturbance.
For in England there are some wealthy and some
reflecting men, and peradventure some refractory,
who oppose these appointments. On which occa-
sion it seems better to call out the clergy than
the military ; for the clergy are all appointed by
the hereditarily wise, and the people are obliged
both to listen to them and to pay them, whether
they like it or not ; nor can they be removed from
their places for any act of criminality. They
direct the votes by which are elected those who,
under the hereditarily wise, manage the affairs of
England.
Emperor. I am bewildered. I should have
liked very well a couple of popes for curiosities.
Tsing-Ti. They have none.
Emperor. What dost thou mean, Tsing-Ti]
Hereditarily wise, and no popes!
Tsing-Ti. None ; beside, in the country where
they are bred, there are seldom two found toge-
ther. When this happens, they are apt to fight
in their couples, like a pair of cockerels across
a staff on a market-man's shoulder.
Emperor. But some other of the many preach-
ers are less pugnacious.
Tsing-Ti. I have heard of none, except one
scanty sect. These never work in the fields or
manufactories, but buy up corn when it is cheap,
sell it again when it is dear, and are more thank-
ful to God for a famine than others are for plen-
teousness. Painting and sculpture they condemn ;
they never dance, they never sing ; music is as
hateful to them as discord. They always look
cool in hot weather, and warm in cold. Few of
them are ugly, fewer handsome, none graceful.
I do not remember to have seen a person of dark
complexion or hair quite black, or very curly, in
this confraternity. None of them are singularly
pale, none red, none of diminutive stature, none
remarkably tall. They have no priests among
them, and constantly refuse to make oblations
to the priests royal.
Emperor. Naturally ; not believing them.
Tsing-Ti. Naturally, yes; but oppositely to the
customs of the country.
Emperor. The service of the Christians, you
have told me heretofore, is the service of free
will.
Tsing-Ti. In England, the best Christianity,
like the best apple, bears no longer. The fruit
of the new plants is either sour or insipid.
No genuine ones of the old stock are left any-
where. I heard this from many opposite pulpits;
and it was the only thing they agreed in. Yet
if one preacher had asserted it in the presence
of another, they would forthwith have bandied
foul names. An Englishman has more of abu-
sive ones for his neighbour than a Portuguese
has of baptismal for his god-child. The first
personal proof I received of this copious nomen-
clature, was upon the identical day I ascertained
the suppression of the exercise of Christianity
in public.
Emperor. These tracts they are not so lying in
the main point 1 Give me thy exemplification.
Tsing-Ti. Among' the authors held in high re-
pute for piety, and whose hymns are still sung
in many of the temples, is one King David, a Jew.
Whether those who continue to sing them, sung
in earnest or in joke, I can not say. Probably in
ridicule ; for, on the first Sunday after my arrival,
I followed his example, where he says,
" I will sing unto the Lord a new song."
Resolved to do the same to the best of my poor
ability, I too composed a new one, and began to
sing it in the streets. Suddenly I was seized and
thrown into prison.
Emperor. Thrown into prison ! my mandarin !
Tsing-Ti. On the morrow I was brought before
the magistrate, who told me I had broken the
peace and the sabbath. I protested to him the
contrary : that nobody had fought or quarrelled
in my presence or hearing, and that the only
smiling faces I had seen the whole day were
around me while I was singing. " Smiling faces ! "
said he, "upon a Sunday ! during service ! in the
teeth of an Act of Parliament." I soon had
reason to think the Act of Parliament had rather
long and active ones, when twenty or thirty more
such offenders as myself came under their pres-
sure, for dancing on the night preceding, and
several minutes (it was asserted) after the hour of
its close had struck in some parts of the city.
Dancing is forbidden, not only to the poor, but
also to the middle ranks ; and this was an aggra-
vation of the offence.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! thou art a good jurist in
the institutions of my empire, and I did not
depute thee to enrich it with the enactments of
another : but this can not be among the statutes
of a nation which pretends to as much civility and
freedom as most in Asia. That such an order
was given from court, on some unlucky day when
the King was much afflicted with lumbago, is
credible enough.
Tsing-Ti. Nothing more probable : and the
magistrate told us, to our cost, it was an Act of
Parliament.
Emperor. I can not but smile at thy simpli-
ity. It was of course an Act of Parliament if
the King willed it. Doubtless when his loins
120
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
came into order again, his people might dance.
There are occasions when it would be unseason-
able and undutiful to exercise such agility near
the palace of an elderly prince, grown somewhat
unwieldly : otherwise might not music and dan-
cing keep a people like the English out of political
discontent and civil commotions] Might not
these amusements relieve the weight of their
taxes and dispell the melancholy of their tempers ?
No idler can get drunk while he is dancing or
while he is singing ; and against debauchery there
is no surer preservative than opening as many
sluices as possible to joy and happiness. Where
innocent pleasures are easily obtained, the guiltier
shun the competition. But how long is it since
the race of Christians, I mean the pure breed,
has quite disappeared from the land1?
Taing-Ti. Nobody could inform me : it can
not be long. I saw several thousand men who
were dressed exactly like them ; having cases for
their heads, cases for their bodies, cases for their
thighs. These the Christians, during many ages,
wore from pure humility ; it being the very dress
in which monkeys are carried about to play their
tricks before the populace, and which was invented
by a king of France ; whence he and his succes-
sors are styled, unto this day, the most Christian.
Never was there anything upon earth so ugly and
inconvenient. They devised it for mortification,
which they carried by this invention to such an
extremity, as should prevent the possibility of a
sculptor or painter giving them the appearance
of humanity. Several of the wickeder went still
farther in self-abasement ; not only covering their
heads with dust, which they contrived to procure
as white as possible, to give them the appearance
of extreme old age and imbecility, but mingled
with it (abominable to record) the fat of
swine !
Emperor. I have some miniatures which attest
the fact. Adultresses, and some other women of
ill repute, were marked with a black riband round
the neck, and their hair was drawn up tight,
exposing the roots, and fastened to a footstool,
which they were obliged to carry on their heads.
No rank exempted an offender. I possess several
favourites of the Most Christian King, the late
Loo-Hi, labouring under the infliction of this
disgrace.
Tsing-Ti. Self-imposed tortures survive Chris-
tianity. I have seen a portrait of the reigning
King of England,* in which he appears so pious
and devout, so resolved to please God at any
price, that he is represented with his legs con-
fined in narrow japanned cabinets, which the
English, when applied to these purposes, call
boots. They are stiff and black, without gold or
other ornament, or even an inscription to inform
us on what occasion he made the vow of endur-
ance.
Emperor. Humble soul ! may God pardon him
hia sins ! I pity the people too. When will the
* George the Fourth:
feeble blind whelps see the light and stand upon
their legs 1 No wonder there are eternal changes
in those countries. Such filthy litter wants often
a fresh tossing on the fork. The axe grapples
the neck of some among their rulers : others take
a neighbourly pinch out of the same box as the
rats : others have subjects who play the nightmare
with them; as lately in Muscovy. I find such
accidents occurring the most frequently where
the religion is most flourishing. My father, who
was curious in learning the customs and worships
of the West, related to me that the people of one
sect refuse to bury those of another> leaving them
exposed to the dogs.
Tsing-Ti. This, 0 my Emperor! was never
the custom in England all the time I resided
there. But indeed it can not be said that in
England there are any customs at all. The very
words of their language, I am informed, change
their signification and spelling, twice or thrice in
a man's lifetime. On my first arrival in London,
I was somewhat unwell in consequence of the
voyage, yet I could not resist the impulse of
curiosity, and the desire of walking about in the
spacious and lofty streets. After the second day
however I was constrained by illness to keep
within my chamber for five ; at the end of those
five, so great a change had taken place in the
habiliments of the citizens, that I fancied another
people had invaded and vanquished them ; and,
such were my fears, I kept my bed for seven.
At last I ventured to ask whether all was well.
My inquiry raised some surprise ; and, fancying
that I had spoken less plainly than I might have
done, I took courage to ask distinctly whether all
in the city was safe and quiet. After many inter-
rogatories for the motive and cause of mine, the
first circuitous, the last direct, I was highly grati-
fied at finding that I had succumbed to a false
alarm, and that novelty in dress is a religious
duty celebrated on the seventh day.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! thou never shalt command
for me against the Tartars, should they in future
dare to show their broad faces and distant eyes
over the desert.
Tsing-Ti. God's will and the Emperor's be
done ! In this wide empire there is no lack of
valour ; I will offend none by aspiring to an un-
due precedency. Modesty becomes the wise, and
more the unwise. Greatness may follow, and
ambition urge forward the bold, but the tardy
man cometh sooner to contentment. May we
never see the outermost corner of the Tartar's
eye ! none hath more evil in it.
Emperor. It must shoot far if it overtake and
harm thee, Tsing-Ti ! But prythee go on about
the fact of burial, and tell me whether there is
any nation so western, as to refuse it in time of
peace.
Tsing-Ti. The nations of Europe are so in-
finitely more barbarous than anything we in
China can conceive, that, however incredible it
may appear, the story is not unfounded. The first
avowed enemies of Christianity were the associates
EMPEROK OF CHINA AND TSING-TL
121
of a sorcerer, who shaved his head that he might
fit a crown upon it. He told people that he could
forgive more sins than they could commit. Both
parties tried, and it turned out that he was the
winner. He pocketed the stakes, and tempted
them to try again : and the game has been going
on ever since. Ill-tempered men were scandalised
at this exhibition, and many disturbances and
battles have been the consequence. The sorcerer,
now become a priest-king, refuses burial to those
who deny his power of remitting sins, and his right
to open the gates of paradise on paying toll and
tariff. Many of these begin to think they have gone
too far, and have slunk back to the old sorcerer,
who reproves them sharply, and treats them like
conger eels, putting salt into their mouths for puri-
fication. If they spit it out again, they frequently
are medicated with minerals more corrosive.
Emperor. Why, I wonder, do not the neigh-
bouring princes catch and cage him ?
Tsing-Ti. He frightens them. He has the
appointment of their nurses, who tell them mar-
vellous tales about his potency, and how he can
turn one thing into another. The English were
among the first to expose and abolish his impos-
tures; but many are coming back to him, now
they are tired of Christianity ; and already they
begin to stick up again the images of idlers and
fanatics, whom the magistrates of old whipt and
hung for sedition.
Emperor. Better such fellows should be vene-
rated (were it only that they are dead and out of
the way) than intolerant and blood-thirsty varlets,
who carry hatred in their bosoms as carefully as
an amulet, and who will not let the grave open
and close upon it.
Tsing-Ti. They are all of the same quality:
they are all either bark or blossom of that tree of
which the Jesuits are the nutmegs.
Emperor. I thought my ancestors, of blessed
memory, had given an intelligible lesson to the
potentates of Europe, how to grate those said
nutmegs into powder. I thought our wisdom had
entered into their councils, and such malefactors
were everywhere supprest.
Tsing-Ti. They were so, for a time. But there
are many things which were formerly known only
as poisons, and which are now employed as salu-
tary drugs. Jesuitism is one of these.
Emperor. After all our inquiries, how very im-
perfect is our knowledge of Europe ! The books
of Europeans serve only to perplex us. Those
which have been interpreted to me, on their
polity, represent the English as a free people,
'that is, a people in which several hundred manda-
rins have a certain weight in the government. Yet
it appears that there are provinces in the empire
where the inhabitants pay stipends to priests, who
abominate and curse them, and with whom they
have nothing in common but their corn and cat-
tle. Furthermore it is represented, that those
who are making the noisiest appeals to liberality,
would leave exposed to the fowls of the air the
dead bodies of other sects.
Tsing-Ti. This inhumanity can not be practised
in England : it belongs to the old sorcerers : it
however is gaining ground in every part of Europe.
Where it predominates, all dissentients are denied
the rites of burial ; and some entire professions
lie under the same interdict. Actors of comedy,
who render men ashamed of their follies and vices,
are conceived to intrench on the attributes of the
priesthood : they must lie unburied. Actors of
tragedy, who have awakened all the sympathies
of the human heart, must hope for none when
they have left the scene.
Emperor. Yet haply the sage himself, when
living, hath less deeply impressed the lessons of
wisdom than his representative in the theatre ;
and even the hero hath excited less enthusiasm.
The English, I suspect, are too humane, too
generous, too contemplative, to countenance or
endure so hideous an imposture.
Tsing-Ti. Gratification is not sterile in their
country: gratitude, lovely gratitude, is her
daughter. The great actor is received on equal
terms among the other great. I have inquired of
almost every sect, to the number of forty or fifty,
and every one abhors the imputation of posthumous
rancour, excepting the old sorcerers. The argu-
ments of another, with a priest of that persuasion,
are fresh in my memory.
Emperor. What an ice-house must thy memory
be, Tsing-Ti ! to keep such things fresh in it !
Tsing-Ti. They might have been uttered in the
serenity of the Celestial Empire, and in the most
holy place.
Emperor. Indeed ! I would hear 'em then.
Tsing-Ti. " Good God ! " said the appellant to the
sorcerer's man, "if anyone hath injured us in life,
ought we not at least to cast our enmity aside
when life is over ) Even supposing we disregard
the commandment of our heavenly father, to for-
give as we hope to be forgiven; even supposing we
disbelieve him when he tells us that on this con-
dition, and on this only, we can expect it ; would
not humanity lead us through a path so pleasant,
to a seat so soft, to so wholesome and invigorating
a repose ? The pagan, the heathen, the idolater,
the sacrificer of his fellow-men, beholding a corpse
on the shore, stopt, bent over it, tarried, cast upon
it three handfuls of sand, and bade the spirit that
had dwelt in it, and was hovering (as they thought)
uneasily about it, go its way in peace. Would
you do less than this, for one who had lived in the
same city, and bowed to the same God as your-
self?"
Emperor. The sorcerer's man must have learnt
more than sorcery, if his ingenuity supplied him
with an answer in the affirmative.
Tsing-Ti. " Yes," replied he, " if the holiness of
our lord commanded it."
Emperor. Moderate the prancing of thy speech,
0 Tsing-Ti, that I may mount it easily, look down
from it complacently, and descend from it again
without sore or irksomeness. What holiness?
What lord ? Thou wert talking of the sorcerer.
Are these ruffians called lords and holinesses?
122
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Do people at once obey and ridicule them ? How
can this be ?
Tsing-Ti. I know not, O celestiality ! but s
it is.
Emperor. The other spoke rationally an<
kindly. Had he a tail? a top-knot '
Tsing-Ti. None whatever.
Emperor. He must hare travelled into far
regions under milder skies ; not peradventure to
our beautiful coast, but midway. He may, b;
God's providence, have enjoyed the conversation
of those hermits, now under the protection o:
England, the Ho-Te-Nto-Ts. This surely is some
thing in advance of such as believe that one
chapman can procure eternal life, on commission
for another who corresponds with him ! thai
mummery can dispense with obligations, anc
that money can absolve from sin. Call for tea
my head is dizzy, and my stomach is out ol
order.
SECOND AUDIENCE.
On the morrow I was received at the folding
doors by Pru-Tsi, and ushered by him into the
presence of his majesty the Emperor, who was
graciously pleased to inform me that he had ren-
dered thanks to Almighty Go'd for enlightening
his mind, and for placing his empire far beyond
the influence of the persecutor and fanatic. " But,"
continued his majesty, " this story of the sorcerer's
man quite confounds me. Little as the progress
is which the Europeans seem to have made in the
path of humanity, yet the English, we know, are
less cruel than their neighbours, and more given
to reflection and meditation. How then is it pos-
sible they should allow any portion of their fellow-
citizens to be hood-winked, gagged, and carried
away into darkness, by such conspirators and
assassins ? Why didst thou not question the man
thyself]"
Tsing-Ti. I did, 0 Emperor! and his reply was,
" We can bury such only as were in the household
of the faith. It would be a mockery to bid those
spirits go in peace which we know are condemned
to everlasting fire."
Emperor. Amazing! have they that? Who
invented it? Everlasting fire ! It surely might
be applied to better purposes. And have those
rogues authority to throw people into it? In
what part of the kingdom is it? If natural, it
ought to have been marked more plainly in the
maps. The English, no doubt, are ashamed of
letting it be known abroad that they have any
such places in their country. If artificial, it is no
wonder they keep such a secret to themselves.
Tsing-Ti, I commend thy prudence in asking no
questions about it ; for I see we are equally at a
loss on this curiosity.
Tsing-Ti. The sorcerer has a secret for diluting
it. Oysters and the white of eggs, applied on
lucky days, enter into the composition; but cer-
tain charms in a strange language must also be
employed, and must be repeated a certain num-
ber of times. There are stones likewise, and wood
cut into particular forms, good against this eternal
fire, as they believe. The sorcerer has the power,
they pretend, of giving the faculty of hearing and
seeing to these stones and pieces of wood ; and
when he has given them the faculties, they be-
come so sensible and grateful, they do whatever
he orders. Some roll their eyes, some sweat, some
bleed ; and the people beat their breasts before
them, calling themselves miserable sinners.
Emperor. Sinners is not the name I should
have given them, although no doubt they are in
the right.
Tsing-Ti. Sometimes, if they will not bleed
freely, nor sweat, nor roll their eyes, the devouter
break their heads with clubs, and look out for
others who will.
Emperor. Take heed, Tsing-Ti ! Take heed !
I do believe thou art talking all the while of idols.
Thou must be respectful ; remember I am head of
all the religions in the empire. We have some-
thing in our own country not very unlike them,
only the people do not worship them ; they
merely fall down before them as representatives of
a higher power. So they say.
Tsing-Ti. I do not imagine they go much far-
ther in Europe, excepting the introduction of this
club-law into their adoration.
Emperor. And difference enough, in all con-
science. Our people is less ferocious and less
childish. If any man break an idol here for not
sweating, he himself would justly be condemned
to sweat, showing him how inconvenient a thing
it is when the sweater is not disposed. As for
rolling the eyes, surely they know best whom they
should ogle ; as for bleeding, that must be regu-
lated by the season of the year. Let every man
choose his idol as freely as he chooses his wife ;
let him be constant if he can ; if he can not, let
turn at least be civil. Whoever dares to scratch
the face of anyone in' my empire, shall be con-
demned to varnish it afresh, and moreover to keep
"t in repair all his lifetime.
Tsing-Ti. In Europe such an offence would be
punished with the extremities of torture.
Emperor. Perhaps their idols cost more, and
are newer. Is there no chance, in all their changes,
.hat we may be called upon to supply them with
a few?
Tsing-Ti. They have plenty for the present,
and they dig up fresh occasionally.
Emperor. In regard to the worship of idols,
,hey have not a great deal to learn from us; and
what is deficient will come by degrees as they
grow humaner. But how little care can any
ruler have for the happiness and improvement of
iis people, who permits such ferocity in the priest-
lood. If its members are employed by the
government to preside at burials, as according to
hy discourse I suppose, a virtuous prince would
irder a twelvemonth's imprisonment, and spare
liet, to whichever of them should refuse to per-
orm the last office of humanity toward a fellow-
:reature. What separation of citizen from citizen,
and necessarily what diminution of national
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
123
strength, must be the consequence of such a sys-
tem ! A single act of it ought to be punished
more severely than any single act of sedition,
not only as being a greater distractor of civic
union, but, in its cruel sequestration of the best
affections, a fouler violator of domestic peace.
I always had fancied, from the books in my
library, that the Christian religion was founded
on brotherly love and pure equality. I may cal-
culate ill ; but, in my hasty estimate, damnation
and dog-burial stand many removes from these.
" Wait a little," the Emperor continued : " I
wish to read in my library the two names that my
father said are considered the two greatest in the
West, and may vie nearly with the highest of our
own country."
Whereupon did his majesty walk forth into his
library ; and my eyes followed his glorious figure
as he passed through the doorway, traversing the
gallery of the peacocks, so called because fifteen of
those beautiful birds unite their tails in the centre
of the ceiling, painted so naturally as to deceive
the beholder, each carrying in his beak a different
flower, the most beautiful in China, and bending
his neck in such a manner as to present it to the
passer below. Traversing this gallery, his maj esty
with his own hand drew aside the curtain of the
library-door. His majesty then entered; and,
after some delay, he appeared with two long
scrolls, and shook them gently over the fish-pond,
in this dormitory of the sages. Suddenly there
were so many splashes and plunges that I was
aware of the gratification the fishes had received
from the grubs in them, and the disappointment
in the atoms of dust. His maj esty, with his own
right hand, drew the two scrolls trailing on the
marble pavement, and pointing to them with his
left, said,
" Here they are ; Nhu-Tong : Pa-Kong.* Sup-
pose they had died where the sorcerer's men held
firm footing, would the priests have refused them
burial ] "
I bowed my head at the question ; for a single
tinge of red, whether arising from such ultra-
bestial cruelty in those who have the impudence
to accuse the cannibals of theirs, or whether from
abhorrent shame at the corroding disease of in-
tractable superstition, hereditary in the European
nations for fifteen centuries, a tinge of red came
over the countenance of the Emperor. When I
raised up again my forehead, after such time as I
thought would have removed all traces of it, still
fixing my eyes on the ground, I answered,
" 0 Emperor! the most zealous would have done
worse. They would have prepared these great men
for burial, and then have left them unburied."
Emperor. So ! so ! they would have embalmed
them, in their reverence for meditation and
genius, although their religion prohibits the cere-
mony of interring them.
Tsing-Ti. Alas, sire, my meaning is far dif-
ferent. They would have dislocated their limbs
* Newton, Bacon. The Chinese have no B.
with pullies, broken them with hammers? and
then have burnt, the flesh off the bones. This is
called an act of faith.
Emperor. Faith, didst thou say? Tsing-Ti,
thou speakest bad Chinese : thy native tongue is
strangely occidentalised.
Tsing-Ti. So they call it.
Emperor. God hath not given unto all men the
use of speech. Thou meanest to designate the
ancient inhabitants of the country, not those who
have lived there within the last three centuries.
Tsing-Ti. The Spaniards and Italians (such are
the names of the nations who are most under the
influence of the spells) were never so barbarous
and cruel as during the first of the last three cen-
turies. The milder of them would have refused
two cubits of earth to the two philosophers ; and
not only would have rejected them from the
cemetery of the common citizens, but from the
side of the common hangman ; the most ignorant
priest thinking himself much wiser, and the most
enlightened prince not daring to act openly as
one who could think otherwise. The Italians had
formerly two illustrious men among them ; the
earlier was a poet, the later a philosopher; one was
exiled, the other was imprisoned, and both were
within a span of being burnt alive.
Emperor. We have in Asia some odd religions
and some barbarous princes, but neither are like
the Europeans. In the name of God ! do the
fools think of their Christianity as our neighbours
in Tartary (with better reason) think of their
milk ; that it will keep the longer for turning
sour] or that it must be wholesome because it
is heady ] Swill it out, swill it out, say I, and
char the tub.
THIRD AUDIENCE.
The third morning had dawned, and the skies
had assumed the colour of a beautiful maiden's
nails, when the Emperor my master sent unto me
Pru-Tsi, to command me to be of good health and
to have a heart in my bosom. Flattered and
gratified beyond all measure by the graciousness
of such commands, I ordered tea to be brought to
Pru-Tsi, who no sooner heard the servant on the
other side of the door, than he told me that he
saw in my tea-cup the ocean of my bounty, the
abysses of my wisdom, the serene and interminable
sky of my favour and affection. To which I
replied, that in the countenance of Pru-Tsi I be-
held the sun which irradiated them all. He was
dissatisfied at the shortness and incompleteness
of my compliment, as wanting two divisions :
and from that instant may be dated his ill offices
toward me. Here I must confess my deficiency
in politeness, which, not having been neglected
in my education, I can attribute to nothing but
my long absence from our civilised and courteous
people.
Observing by the profusion of Pru-Tsi's genti-
lities, and by the fluttering of his tamarind-tree
vest under which his breast wheezed and laboured,
that my rusticity had wounded him, I took from
124
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
off the table the finest rose in the central vase,
and entreated that, by touching it, he would ren-
der those of next year more fragrant and more
double. " The parent," said I, " will be pene-
trated by the glory shed upon her daughter." I
remarked that he smelt it only on one side, and
only once ; and that he bowed but when he re-
ceived it, and when he smelt it, and the last
time less profoundly ; yet he could not but have
noticed that, in rising, I laid above half of each
hand on the table, with the fingers spread, and
that I rested for seven or eight seconds in an
inclined position, looking up at his face, as one
irresolute and deferential. I record it not in
anger, but I hope there are few Chinese who could
have seen this unmoved. God forbid that we
should degenerate from our fathers, or that even
a signification of our desire to please should fail
in obtaining pardon, even for a voluntary and a
grave offence. No acknowledgment of a fault is
so explicit, none can so little wound the delicacy
of the offended, none so gracefully show our reli-
ance on his generosity and affability. Let the
westernman call satisfaction that which humiliates
and afflicts another; but, oh Chinese ! let us
demand much more . . the contentment of both
parties. I have often mused on these reflections ;
I must now return to Pru-Tsi, who caused them.
He informed me that the Emperor was ready to
receive me, under his " guidance." This word has
much meaning. Pru-Tsi drew it with all dexterity
and gracefulness, but he showed too plainly its
edge and point. I then added, " My heart is a
cabinet on which all the figures and all the letters
are embossed in high relief by your hands, most
munificent lord ! "
" Deign, 0 Tsing-Ti, to place us within it," said
Wi-Hong, who stood behind, " and it shall be our
glory to become the camphor, preservative against
the moths and insects which would consume its
precious stores."
" The cedar wants not the camphor," said
Flthat-Wang, bowing at the back of Wi-Hong,
three paces off. Whereat the pupils of Pru-Tsi's
eyes verged toward the bridge of his nose; for
he remembered not in what book the words were
written. This made him the readier to depart.
He walked at my left-hand, Wi-Hong and Flthat-
Wang following us at equal distances. On my
entering the chamber of audience, Pru-Tsi was
dismissed ; which (I was sorry to observe) made
his mouth as low as a lamprey's, and elicited a
sound not unlike the drawing off a somewhat wet
boot. Scarcely had he passed into the corridor of
the dancers, so called because there are painted on
each side the figures of young maidens, some
dancing, but the greater part inviting the passer-
by, either with open arms, or only with the fingers,
and others behind, among the lofty flowers, with
various seductive signs : scarcely had Pru-Tsi
reached this corridor, when the Emperor's children
entered from the opposite one, the corridor of the
parrots, so called because it represents these birds
performing various actions ; one flying with a boy
into the air, having caught him by a bunch of
prodigiously large cherries, which he will not let
go; one teaching an ancient mandarin his letters,
and much resembling him in physiognomy ; two
playing at chess for little girls in cages on the
table ; and a flight of smaller ones clawing a
sceptre and pecking at a globe ; while several apes
creep on their bellies close behind, and several
more from furnaces in the distance, each with his
firebrand ready to singe their plumage. The
parrots do not see the mischievous beasts that are
so near, nor do those see, coming from under
scarlet drapery, a vast serpent's jaw, wide enough
to swallow them all. The serpent's jaw is in a
corner, near a sofa, in the shape of a woolsack,
off which a comely man (apparently) has tumbled,
extending both feet in the air over it, and hold-
ing the serpent's tail between his teeth, and trying
(apparently) to urge him onward. I am thus
particular in my description of this corridor,
because there is no part of the whole palace which
has been described in general so inaccurately, and
because there are few who can pretend to have
examined it so closely or so long as I have :
added to which, in all due humility be it
spoken, few in China have a better eye for forms
and colours.
The celestial sons and daughters, I have said
already, had passed through the corridor of the
parrots and entered the hall of audience. What
I am now about to say will subject me to much
obloquy, and render my name suspected in vera-
city, but the graciousness of my patron is com-
mensurate with the greatness of my emperor. He
made a sign to the children that they should walk
into the smaller library, and when he had signi-
fied the same by words, and they, after all of them
had long fixed their eyes on his majesty, were
quite certain, the elder son, Fo-Kien, advanced
toward his elder sister, Rao-Fa, kissed her little
fair hand and then her forehead, and conducted
her : after his seventh step, Min-Psi, the second
son, acted in like manner ; but when he rose on
tiptoe (being, as the world knows, two years
younger than his sister, Lao-Lo, then almost nine),
she bit the tip of his ear, not with her teeth
indeed, but with her lips. The Emperor, who sur-
veyed his beautiful progeny with intense delight,
was indulgent to this fault, and beckoning to me,
said, " I am to blame, Tsing-Ti ! In the fifth year
of her age, I did the very same to Lao-Lo : but,"
recovering himself, "it was not in the hall of
audience. Come along, come along, I may do the
same again in the little library, and before thee,
for Lao-Lo is the light of my eyes, and makes it
sweeter to be a father than an emperor. I have
sent for my children," continued his majesty,
that they may be amused by thy narrative ; for
nothing is so delightful to the youthful mind as
voyages. But prythee do not relate to them any
act of intolerance or inhumanity. The young
should not be habituated to hear or see what is
offensive to our nature and derogatory to the
beneficence of our God. Surely all the absurdities
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
.125
of those mischievous priests are not inseparably
mixed up with blood and bile. Follow me ; for
the children must be very dull when there are
only books about them."
Suddenly the Emperor stopped, and made a
sign to me to look toward the pond. Lao-Lo was
standing with her arm upon the golden balustrade
and looking at Min-Psi, who, from time to time,
gave her a pearl or two, which he was detaching,
with all the force and agility of his teeth, from the
border of her silver sash. No sooner had he suc-
ceeded, than she threw it to the fish. Those which
swallowed one she called " sweet creatures," and
those which detected the fraud "cunning old man-
darins." When the baits were exhausted, and
Min-Psi shook his head at the melancholy ques-
tion, "are there no more1?" the Emperor drew back
softly, and said to me, " We must give her time to
smoothen her sash, and take care not to see it."
Perhaps the same kindness moved Fo-Kien and
Rao-Fa to begin a game at chess, not opposite
each other, but both with the back toward the
pond. Fo-Kien once or twice moved an eye in
that direction, and smiled : but Rao-Fa told him
he might smile when he had won, and never
glanced from the chess-board. At the sound of
the Emperor's feet they both arose and turned
toward him. Min-Psi did not come quite oppo-
site. I saw one ear, the left, and it was crimson,
although it was not the ear that Lao-Lo had
pinched with her rubies. He held down his head
a little; and Lao-Lo struck his hand with her
sash, saying, " I wonder what in the world can
ever make Min-Psi look as if he had been in mis-
chief." His ear grew more transparent. Lao-Lo
asked her father's permission to give him three
kisses; only three. The request was granted;
but Min-Psi ran behind me, and laughed at her
vain attempts. As they were rather rough and
boisterous with my robe, the Emperor said, " Lao-
Lo ! do not you remember that you are in the
presence of a mandarin ] " " Oh papa ! there are
several not far off; are there not, Min-Psi ]" said
the child, " but is anyone so good as Tsing-Ti is ?
It is impossible not to admire his beautiful dress,
now we are in a part of the palace where we may
admire anything we like." The Emperor seated
himself, and waving his hand, the children bowed
gracefully. He waved his hand a second time,
and Fo-Kien made two steps toward Rao -Fa, who
made likewise two steps toward him. He then
made another step, slightly bending ; the princess
had no other steps to make, but inclined her head
somewhat lower, so that her hand came forward a
little. The imperial prince supported her arm
above the wrist, and she was seated. Min-Psi too
performed with equal grace and gravity the same
duties toward Lao-Lo, who looked as diffident as
if she had never seen him until then. He, being
the younger, bowed twice before her, which salute
she returned by opening her hand each time. On
this occasion her brow came a little forward, and,
as was required by the ceremonial, much to Min-
Psi's contentment, her lips were quite closed. He
then bowed twice to Rao-Fa, on whom it was not
incumbent to open her hand, but merely to make
a like movement with her fan. Her beautiful lips
parted for a moment to compensate him for the
difference, and her eyes looked tenderly upon the
courtly child.
There are many, in the Celestial Empire itself,
to whom these statutes of the imperial court
are unknown, although they have regulated
the movements of each successive dynasty three
thousand years. Hence that polish which is
proof against contact ; hence that lofty urbanity
in every member of it which separates them
widely from all other potentates ; hence that gen-
tleness and obliging demeanour which render
domestic offence impossible, and throw additional
charms over every affection and every endearment.
No unkind, no unpleasant word ever was uttered
in these chambers ; where the wisdom of royalty,
receiving fresh tributes in almost every century
from inborn sages, has given form and substance
to fairer imagery than poets and visionaries have
dreamed. No duties are so punctilious as to be
troublesome to a well-regulated mind, which
always finds complacency and satisfaction in exe-
cuting perfectly the most complex and difficult ;
while rudeness can never do enough for its grati-
fication, and grows continually more uneasy and
untoward. I say these things, because what I am
writing may, peradventure, be carried by ships
into lands where such reflections have seldom
fallen, and where scratches and buffets are thought
more natural than courtesies and caresses.
I related to the imperial children much of what
I had seen in the several countries of my voyage.
" But do tell them a few tricks of the sorcerer,"
said his majesty, " and what are called the mys-
teries." Accordingly I began. Their laughter
was interrupted by questions, and their questions
by laughter ; for both were permitted in the small
library. One absurdity struck Fo-Kien particu-
larly : it related to numerals. The princesses sate
with their eyelids raised, perhaps in doubt of my
correctness, either as to judgment or to fact :
Min-Psi counted his fingers, first on one hand and
then on the other, and looked hard at me; I
fancied he was uneasy. Fo-Kien asked me whe-
ther the English too believed in this, being thought
such good accountants. My reply was, that,
"Although they had rejected, in great measure,
the practice of Christianity, yet they retained the
dogmas ; and this among the rest."
" I wonder then," said he, " that the merchants
of Canton do not often sell their tobacco for opium,
and a pound for a quintal, since they appear to be
ignorant both of substances and numbers. I do
not wonder they are so cheated by those who ma-
nage their affairs at home as we hear they are."
"Methinks," said his majesty, "they must
nevertheless have some calculators among them,
else how could they become such good astrono-
mers ? "
" I have heard," said Lao-Lo, " that these astro-
nomers pick up stars every day like cockle-shells.
126
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Tell us about it, good Tsing-Ti ! can it be true 1
what can they do with so many? must not they
leave them where they find them ? are they not
all in the sky?"
"Excepting some few," said Min-Psi, "that fall
into the canals."
His majesty the Emperor was graciously pleased
to inquire of me whether the English retained the
same confidence as formerly in judicial astronomy.
I acknowledged my ignorance of the fact, whether
they were stationary in that science, or had latterly
made any improvements in it.
" Certain it is," said I, " that, under the gui-
dance of the stars, they are steadfast in their obser-
vance of lucky days."
" It is only grown-up men that ever see unlucky
ones," said Min-Psi, " unless it rains."
A soft vibration of a gong was audible in the
corridor. The children rose from their seats,
performing the same ceremonies as before, each
saying, in turn, after a pause,
"May Tsing-Ti be blessed with health and
happiness!"
Then they kissed the hand of their imperial
father, and requested he would grant them an
appetite for their pilaw; which his majesty most
graciously conceded.
"Go on, Tsing-Ti," said his majesty, "about
the observations of the astronomers in the White
Island."
Tsing-Ti. There is scarcely an hour in the
twenty-four of any day throughout the twelve-
month, on which I have not requested, from the
wisest men I know among them, the solution of
my doubts on theological topics. The answer was
invariably,
" This is not the time for it"
Turning over many newspapers ... a strange im-
proper name ! for the editors call one another rogue,
turncoat, &c., which is no news at all, and report
speeches made in parliament, the purport of which
is always known beforehand, it being the custom
for every man to carry his mind into the house,
and his money out . . .
Emperor, Tsing-Ti ! Tsing-Ti ! put the hyphen
to thy parenthesis : thou art giving me a rather
long elucidation of what is no news at off.
Tsing-Ti. I received the same declaration from
the political leaders as from the theological.
When a reform of any abuse was proposed, no
denial of its existence, none of its multiplicity,
none of its magnitude, none of its intensity, was
resorted to : the objection was,
" This is not the time for considering it."
Were the people quiet, it was a strong subsidiary !
were they turbulent, it was a stronger ; were they
between both, it was the very worst season of all
to agitate the question.
Were the people in a state of famine, and were
a reduction advised in the national expenditure,
whether of sums voted for race-horses or brilliants,
for pensions or services of plate, the adviser was
counter-advised not to render the people dissatis-
fied by reminding them of their hunger, and was
assured,
•« This is not the time."
In fact, the English are religiously, not to say
superstitiously, scrupulous in that one matter, and
perhaps the rather for having rejected all other
kinds of religion : and the higher orders seem to
be more so than the lower. The bishops and
chancellors sit watching for the auspicious hour,
and have watched for it above half a century :
and although they declare they are tired of sitting
and watching, and it would do their hearts good
if they could see it, yet, in their honesty and for-
bearance, they never have pretended or hinted
that the discovery was made by them. Such
patience and modesty are unexampled.
Emperor. Dost thou verily think, Tsing-Ti,
that these chancellors and bishops are in earnest?
Tsing-Ti. They appear so. I never heard of
anyone among them caught stealing on the river,
or riding off with another's horse or ass, or setting
fire to houses for plunder, or infesting the high-
road.
Emperor. Calm and moral as they are, I per-
ceive that much more lying and shuffling is
required and practised in their government than
in mine. England is all mercantile, from the
pinnacle of the Temple to the sewer of the Ex-
change. Our dealers may be as thievish as theirs :
our mandarins, praised be God, are better. Al-
though they feel at seasons a superficial itch for
lucre, they are not blotched and buboed with its
pestilence : they do not lead their children to be
fed out of the platters of the poor, nor make the
citizens, who have idols of their own, worship
theirs, and pay for it.
His majesty then rose from his seat, wiped his
mouth, and went away.
FOUBTH AUDIENCE.
The third audience may appear to have been
shorter than the first, but in fact was longer by
much. The imperial children asked me such a
variety of questions, which I think it unnecessary
to repeat, and made such a variety of remarks on
my answers, that the hour allotted for their pas-
time in the small library wore insensibly away.
They puzzled me, as children often do, and made
me wish they would have turned their inquiries
toward the sea, or toward men and manners, or
toward anything intelligible and instructive. His
majesty too puzzled me almost as much as they
did.
However, on this my fourth audience, he re-
warded me amply for every toil and perplexity.
The first words he uttered were, that he admired
my judgment and ingenuity, in passing through
so many lanes and turning so many corners, with-
out a rip or a soil on my garment. He was gra-
ciously pleased to add, that he would never have
allowed any other than myself to display before
his children such fantastic mysteries ; that, how-
ever, I had gone far enough into them to disgust
EMPEKOK OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
127
an ingenuous mind with their darkness and dou-
blings, and to render a lover of truth well contented
with the simple institutions of his forefathers.
"My children," said his majesty, "will disdain
to persecute even the persecutor, but will blow
away both his fury and his fraudulence. The
philosopher whom my house respects and vene-
rates, Kong-Fu-Tsi, is never misunderstood by the
attentive student of his doctrines ; there is no con-
tradiction in them, no exaction of impossibilities,
nothing above our nature, nothing below it. The
most vehement of his exhortations is to industry
and concord, the severest of his denunciations is
against the self-tormentor, vice. He entreats us
to give justice and kindness a fair trial as conduc-
tresses to happiness, and only to abandon them
when they play us false. He assures us that every
hour of our existence is favourable to the sowing or
the gathering of some fruit ; and that sleep and
repose are salutary repasts, to be enjoyed at stated
times, and not to be long indulged nor frequently
repeated. He is too honourable to hold out bribes,
too gentle to hold out threats; he says only,
' satisfy your conscience ; and you will satisfy
your God.' But antecedently to the satisfaction
of this conscience, he takes care to look into it
minutely, to see that it hangs commodiously and
lightly on the breast, that all its parts be sound,
and all its contents in order, that it be not con-
tracted, nor covered with cobwebs, nor crawled
over with centipedes and tarantulas."
Emperor. I am so well satisfied with thy prudence
and delicacy, 0 Tsing-Ti, in the explanation of
things ludicrous and ferocious, that I do not only
grant unto thy father, Nun-Pek, who is dead, a title
of nobility, making him mandarin of the first class,
but likewise the same to thy grandfather who died
long before ; so much hast thou merited from me;
and so much have they merited who begat thee.
Thy grandfather's name I well remember was . .
Tsing-Ti. Peh-Nun; may it please your majesty!
Emperor. Who else could have been the grand-
father of Tsing-Ti ? From this moment he has
yellow slippers on his feet, and he makes but one
prostration in my presence. And now inform me
in what manner do the kings of the White Island
mark the deserts of their subjects.
I bowed my head several times before the
throne, to collect fronTmy memory as much of
this matter as was deposited within it. At last
I said,
" 0 Emperor ! light of the East ! since nobody
in England is fond of talking of another's deserts,
here my store of intelligence is scanty ; and the
king of the country seems to have found himself
in the same penury. For it is not the custom of
his mandarins to approach him with such narra-
tions ; and none are proposed to his majesty as
worthy of advancement to high offices, or even
of bearing such titles as exalt them a span above
the common class of citizens, unless they have
slain many or ruined many ; such are soldiers and
lawyers."
Emperor. No quieter ornament of his country,
none whom future ages will venerate, must raise
up his head in his own ? Is this thy meaning ?
He may irrigate the garden of genius ; he may
delight in the fruits that will -grow from it ; he
may anticipate with transport the day when his
enemy's children, united with his own, shall re-
pose under the tree he has planted : glory never
breaks in upon his labour; applause never dis-
turbs his meditations ! Is that the state of Eng-
land ? Tell me ; how could these lawyers find
admittance to the king ? Have they nothing to
do in their tribunals'? Will nobody employ them]
Tsing-Ti. Not only do they find admittance,
but they come near enough his person to throw
some sacred dust in his eyes out of certain ancient
parchments. When they have done this, they tie
his hands behind him, loosing him only when he
has given them titles for themselves and children,
who are also created great lawyers under the
royal signet.
Emperor. Art thou mad, Tsing-Ti ]
Tsing-Ti. I thought I was ; but the madness,
I was glad to find, was merely reflected.
Emperor. The kings of England do this 1 they
reward the children for being begotten by clever
fellows 1 and never for making them 1 Now in-
deed may we believe that the soles of their feet
are opposed to the soles of ours. Didst thou tell
me they delegate to their servants the granting
of distinctions to worthless men ?
Tsing-Ti. Too true, in eleven instances out of
the dozen.
Emperor. Well then may the English be called
regicides ; for he who lowers the kingly character
spills the most precious blood of his king. Go
home : I must ponder on these subjects. Methinks
I have caught thy old sea-sickness, my head turns
round so, and every thing seems so disproportioned
and confused.
FIFTH AUDIENCE.
On my return the following day, his majesty
took my sleeve between the tips of his imperial
thumb and finger, and said blandly, " Thou, being
in thy heart a Christian, shalt now enter more
deeply with me on that religion. Albeit, I see
nothing but a quagmire in it, bearing unwhole-
some weeds on the surface, and unfathomable mud
within. Another swarm of insects hath recently
been hatched on it, some of which, my manda-
rins inform me, have been blown over into Can-
ton. They style themselves Good-news-mongers.
By the accounts I have received of them, they
resemble a jar of tamarinds with little pulp and
no sugar. I apprehend they will do small credit
to their master in heaven."
Tsing-Ti. Whose blessed name, 0 Emperor ! be
praised for ever. He came before the arrogant,
firm in meekness. He said, " Abstain from
violence, abstain from fraud : be continent, be
pure, be patient : love one another."
Emperor. How happy would men be univer-
sally, if they observed these precepts ! Life would
bring few wishes, death few fears. We should
123
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
come and go, jocund as children enter and leave
a garden, entering it to play in and leaving it to
sleep. Alas ! they do not toil to earn repose at
the day's end : bmt the whole occupation of their
existence is to make the last hour solicitous and
restless.
We are friends, Tsing-Ti ! for we both have
listened to the words of wisdom, and in youth,
and together. Recollections such as these unite
the high and the humble, and make benevolence
grow up even where the soil is sterile. Sterile it
is not with thee; but yielding a hundred-fold.
Come then freely to me every day, as thou wert
wont formerly, and let us exchange, what alone
can make both of us the richer, our thoughts and
knowledge. Thou hast travelled afar, and art
master of many things which none have laid
before me. I will turn them over, partly for
curiosity and partly for acquisition, like those
who enter the house of the jeweller.
I am wearied with the inconsistencies and
shocked at the irreligion of the islanders. At
some future time I may perhaps have leisure
and patience to examine them more minutely.
At present I am more desirous to take a view of
their literature. My father of blessed memory
planted poetry in their island : does it flourish ?
Tsing-Ti. From the specimens I purchased, it
appears to me, 0 Emperor ! that the English may
become poets, and reach nearer to the perfection
of the Chinese than any people of the West ; for
I observe that a greater number of their verses
end in monosyllables.
Emperor. Indeed ! are they arrived at that ?
Bring me to-morrow a few of the least heavy
from among thy volumes, and such as by their
nature may, with skilful comments, be the most
intelligible to me. At the same time thou wilt
be able to render me some account of those who
read their verses at the king's bedside.
Taing-Ti. His majesty is a sound sleeper: none
are called in.
Emperor. At his table then.
Tsing-Ti. None recite verses there. The fic-
tions of poetry are not exactly those which find
the readiest admittance into the palaces of the
West. The ornaments of style and composition
are thought in England to denote a vacant mind.
If flowers exhale their fragrance from a silver
vase, the English doubt at once whether it is
silver. Their princes are no cultivators of poetry
and eloquence ; which is the more remarkable,
as they are fanciers of old porcelain, and can dis-
tinguish and estimate it almost as correctly as our
best dealers. They are likewise so judicious in
paintings, that they invariably buy from Dutch
artists such pieces as bear the nearest affinity to
ours.
Emperor. Then, by degrees, Tsing-Ti, their
nails will lengthen and their feet contract. We
shall be all one people, as the oldest sages have
foretold.
Tsing-Ti. Alas, sire ! the youngest will never
live to see that day. No sovran in England ever
conversed an hour together with poet or philoso-
pher ; many for days and nights with gamesters
and other pickpockets, especially the king now
reigning.
Emperor. I have heard some such reports : I
have also heard that there are fewer of like
character in the island than on the continent.
Tsing-Ti. The English, although they have
lost their religion, are still in many of their
dealings the most honest and abstinent people in
the world. I have walked by the side of a canal
in the vicinity of the capital, and I have seen
rats, cats, dogs, very delicate sucking kittens,
and the tenderest plumpest puppies, and even fine
long snakes, green and yellow, of several pounds
each, enough to give an appetite to an opium-
eater at day-break. I have seen them, sire,
killed upon the banks, without a man or a woman
or a child to guard them : and I have waited in
vain, for hours together, in the hope of making
a contract for a quota of the stock, the proprietor
never appearing. In some instances it has hap-
pened that they remained there until they rotted.
Such is the fertility of soil, and the scantiness of
population in proportion to it. Even frogs are
neglected as articles of luxury. I have noticed
some lying dead by the side of ditches, having
been stoned by peasants, who would have been
banished to the extremity of the earth for attempt-
ing to kill a granivorous bird, or for stealing a
sour apple.
Emperor. Do the English offer up sour apples
in sacrifice ? do they worship birds ?
Tsing-Ti. In public, no : what they may do
privately, in the present state of religion among
them, it is difficult for a traveller to ascertain.
Certainly they think differently on these subjects
from what we read in the history of more ancient
nations which worshipped brute animals. These
selected for preservation the creatures that bene-
fited the husbandman, by devouring the reptiles
and insects, or by rendering him some other good
service. The English nobles preserve foxes, that
kill his lambs ; hares, pheasants, partridges, that
consume his corn ; and, instead of remunerating
him for exterminating the pests of agriculture,
confiscate his property, condemn him to die of
famine, or, when the sentence is mildest, remove
him for ever from that land which he has
enriched with the sweat of his brow.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti! it was in a moment of
irritation, it was when the rebels had sorely
vexed me, that I was malicious enough to think
of sending such Christians as these among the
Tartars.
Tsing-Ti. On the imperial footstool I lay the
few pieces of poetry I have collected in England.
Wishing to procure some specimens of elegant
handwriting, I went to my tailor and intreated his
recommendation. It was not 'particularly for his
honesty that I selected him, but because I had
found him the most acute reasoner I had met with.
My first acquaintance was contracted with him by
desiring him to mend a rent in my dress. It
EMPEROR OP CHINA AND TSING-TI.
129
appeared to me that his charge was exorbitant,
and I asked him whether he did not think the
same.
" Certainly I do," replied he.
" But, my friend, the price of a new vest would
not exceed this demand."
" Certainly not," replied he, with equal calmness.
" To cut the thing short, as we tailors are fond
of doing," said he before I could go on, " it is an
easier matter to make than to mend : try at a
speech, try at a teacup, try at a wife."
" Excuse me," answered I, " we may have trials
enough in this world without that;" and gave
him the sum demanded. He told me to take
his arm (a strange unwieldy ^custom of the
English), and conducted me into an alley, where
I found a middle-aged man, in a grey coat, em-
ployed in transcribing what he told us were
sermons.
Emperor. Hold, Tsing-Ti ! What species of
poetry may that be 1
Tsing-Ti. None whatever, 0 Emperor ! but
religious exhortations, religious explanations, or
religious damnations, for they all come under
these three heads.
Emperor. And pretty bulky heads too.
Tsing-Ti. The grey-coated man was sedulous
in transcribing them from printed books, into a
book covered with black. He told me that no
other colour was serviceable in church (church
means pagod), and that it would be shameful for
a preacher, expositor, exhorter, or damner, to
preach another man's words without making it
appear that they were his own. He was to receive
a dollar for each sermon, from a priest who had
three livings.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! do the rogues pretend to
have found out the Elixir ] Three livings ! one
man hold three livings! Have I any horse that
can eat in any three of my stables at a time ?
Have I any that can carry me along three roads
at once 1 It is difficult for the best and wisest
man to perform his duty of exhortation and
admonition to the near and to the few : how
then shall he perform it to the distant and the
many]
Tsing-Ti. Those about the king have sons and
brothers, of whom it is easier to make priests
than to make poets, and who would rather receive
twenty thousand golden pieces annually, than the
two-hundredth part only.
Emperor. If this immense wealth belongs to
certain families, as appears to be the case, yet the
king might command them to expend a portion
of it on canals and roads, or, if there are any poor
in the country, on the poor.
Tsing-Ti. A tenth of the produce of the land,
and of all the money spent on it in manure and
culture (for these are considered as nothing by the
priesthood), is paid annually to the successors of
the Christians. Out of which tenth, anciently,
a fourth was set apart by the Christians for the
maintenance of the poor. No law whatever has
alienated this portion from its destination. There-
fore on all benefices, which have not regularly
paid it, there exists a just debt of the arrears.
This statement was submitted to the consider-
ation of the king's ministers, and farthermore
that parliament should be called upon to enforce
it. The ministers, who courted the people where
the courtship was uncostly, were very disdainful
against the author of the proposal, and declared
that he was no better than a robber.
Emperor. Could that be their real objection to
him]
Tsing-Ti. They declared him a robber who
would plunder their relatives of their possessions,
and their children of their inheritance.
Emperor. Perhaps he was as they said: for
robbers are clear-sighted, as we find in cats, rats,
weasels, and the like. And it is not probable
that there should be in the country any notorious
one quite unknown to them.
Tsing-Ti. It was found, on examination, that
he had only robbed himself; to which they, reco-
vering their courtesy, said he was very welcome.
Emperor. I do not wonder that they are loth
to alienate the rich possessions of the crown,
which it appears they share, under the pretext of
religion.
Tsing-Ti. This is not the pretext : the pretext
is, that they can not in their consciences bear to
hear of organic changes. Such is the expression :
I am unable to divine what it means.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! is it then so long since
thou leftest thy country ] hast thou quite forgotten
thy music ] Dost not thou remember that the
organ creaks and grunts, when the foot presses
the pedal and the wind has no direction ] But
organic changes, as the affected foola call them,
require skilful hands ; if they have not them, let
them get up and give the seat to those who have.
Tsing-Ti. Sire ! the instrument is a noble one.
Children and madmen have played upon it, and
its treasure of rich tones lies within it still. Not
a pipe is impaired ; not a key is loosened ; but
there are impudent idlers, who insist on putting
their hats and gloves on it ; and the audience,
ere long, will throw them over the rails of the
gallery.
Emperor. That were violent : let them promote
them, by an elevation of the foot, quietly down-
stairs, and break no bones.
Thy estimate of the sacerdotal domains, and
royalties annexed to them, must be erroneous.
Tsing-Ti. May it please your majesty ! on this
subject my information, I venture to affirm, is
both ample and correct. There are yet remaining
in the White and the Green Island, a dozen of
priests each of whom receives a larger sum than
all the poets and philosophers of both united have
received in two thousand years.
Emperor. Prodigious ! computing that one
thousand years have produced one philosopher
and one poet.
Tsing-Ti. A priest of the first order, on which
it is not incumbent either to preach or sing,
either to pray or curse, receives an emolument of
130
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
which the amount is greater than the consolidated
pay of a thousand soldiers, composing the king's
body-guard.
Emperor. Did they tell thee this ?
Tsing-Ti. They did.
Emperor. And dost thou believe it ?
Tsing-Ti. I do.
Emperor. Then, Tsing-Ti, thou hast belief
enough for both of us. It is not usually a kind
of dust that travellers are apt to gather. There
is, on the contrary, much attrition of it, in gene-
ral, unless the wheels are guarded and greased.
But what is the business then of these priests?
Tsing-Ti. Chiefly to lay their hands, through
a sack, on a row of children's heads, to keep them
firm and steady in the new faith.
Emperor. I doubt whether, when the hand is
taken off, the heads do not rise up again, like the
keys of the organ we talked about, and retain as
little of the music. He must very soon have the
same to do over again.
Tsing-Ti. No, no, no ; that would spoil all.
Emperor. This is incomprehensible ; the salary
incredible. I am afraid, Tsing-Ti, thou hast
set thy face against the priests, for no better rea-
son than because thou couldst not find thy favou-
rite Christianity among them. In what manner,
out of what funds, and by whom, are they remu-
nerated ] For to suppose the stout farmer will
let them carry off his tenth sheaf, would be silly,
let the farmer be as learned as he may in theology,
and as zealous to promote the study of it. Come,
tell me this, and allow them their deserts.
Tsing-Ti. 0 my Emperor ! I do indeed, with
all humility, still adhere to that humane and pure
religion ; and I may peradventure be disappointed
and displeased at finding its place made desolate,
its image thrown down, and what was erected
for its support rendered the instrument of its
destruction.
The priests of the establishment which has
been substituted for it, are not rewarded in pro-
portion to their learning, their virtues, their zeal,
or the proficiency of those whom they instruct.
Emperor. Bad ! bad ! bad ! how then?
Tsing-Ti. In proportion to the fertility of the
land around them.
Emperor. There spoke the honest man, the true
sage, the genuine Tsing-Ti. I approve of this dis-
pensation : labour should be thus remunerated.
Such an example, set by an order of men who are
not always the most industrious in mind or body,
must produce an admirable effect on the people.
Tsing-Ti. They labour not, but punish the
labour of others by severe and unrelenting exac-
tion. In proportion as the farmer works, he pays
the priest. In proportion to the one's industry
rise the means of the other's idleness. Whether
the English believe fertility to spring from the
sacerdotal presence, I have never ascertained.
Some, I apprehend, are doubters. But this scep-
ticism is become more dangerous than any merely
on theological points. The performer has warmer
partisans than the composer of the music, of which
truly the theme is lost among fugues and varia-
tions. I would not however strip the better sort
of the priests of their deserts, or call them all
idlers. Many are far from it, and the earth owes
them a portion of her fruits. I myself have seen
them diligent in clearing the fields of birds and
vermin : I have seen several on horseback . . .
Emperor. Priests ! priests on horseback !
Tsing-Ti. In that posture, 0 my Emperor ! have
I seen them ; and, farthermore, in pursuit of wild
animals.
Emperor. Conscientious men ! these at least
would earn their stipends.
Tsing-Ti. Even the fox hath not escaped their
scrutiny. Some, I am told, are not afraid of
handling a gun, and have been known to kill
birds upon wing, at the distance of many paces.
Emperor. Cormorants are vast and heavy bids
but are they so tame in the north ? and kites and
hawks do they fly like ours 1 Well, if the priests
actually perform these things, they are more use-
ful than I fancied. These must be of a different
sect from those who despoil the farmer.
Tsing-Ti. The very same.
Emperor. Ah Tsing-Ti ! ah my friend ! thou
art shrewd, thou art observative ; but either thou
hast confounded two objects, or thine eyes are not
long enough to comprehend at once the extre-
mities of these strange creatures, which vary so
widely in their parts.
[Thus spake the Emperor, and it was my duty to
be in the wrong].
Emperor. I tell thee plainly, 0 Tsing-Ti ! ' that
I was puzzled how to sow dissensions among the
Tartar tribes, unless I could introduce Christianity
among them. But thy discourse hath convinced
me that, weakened as it is in virulence, enough
of it remains in Europe to serve my purposes, if
they should rise up again in arms. It will be
worth my while to order a cargo by the next East
India fleet. I will breathe upon these trouble-
some marauders such a blast from that quarter,
as shall cover and hide for ever the names of Khu-
Li-Chang and Chin-Ki-Se-Han.* What an advan-
tage to our Celestial Empire, not only to abolish all
combination and concord from the tents of our
enemy, but likewise to decimate his cavalry, his
curds, and whey; to throw the soldier out of the
stirrup, and toss the priest into it ! Thou shalt
indulge in thy own fancies, and none shall ever
molest thee, for thou art kind and quiet. Chris-
tianity makes such men even better than they
were before. Like wine, it brings out every
humour. The ferocious it renders more ferocious,
the exacting more exacting, the hypocritical more
hypocritical, the austere more austere; and it
lays more gracefully on the gentle breast the
folded hands of devotion. Such are the observa-
tions of our forefathers on the Jesuits and their
disciples, whose religion (they pretended) was
founded on Christianity. I know not whether,
in theirs, there were more than four things which
* Kouli Khan'and Gengiz Khan.
EMPEROE OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
131
diverged from it : they lied, they sought riches,
they persecuted, and they murdered. These are
the principal divergences from the ordinances of
Christ ; several others were proved against them,
but rather as private men than as a public body,
and prevalent in other religions to nearly the same
extent. I never could discover how long the
Christian continued in any part of Europe. In
Asia the habits and institutions of men are of
much longer duration : there, in one extremely
small part indeed, we know from good authority,
it existed (we can not say flourished) about six
centuries. Every other had lasted longer, and
that which succeeded it has continued double
the time, and with much less deviation.
Tsing-Ti. Yet a purer law was never laid
down, gentler maxims never inculcated, better
example never given.
Emperor. How then could the religion pass
away so soon ?
Tsing-Ti. For those very reasons. Eeligions
may differ, but priests are similar in all countries.
They will have blood, they will have mysteries,
they will have money ; they will threaten, they
will persecute, they will command.
Emperor. Not here .
Tsing-Ti. For which reason the empire has
lasted long; fathers, and princes who resemble
them, are respected ; and the nation, though sur-
rounded by barbarians, by predatory and warlike
tribes, has enjoyed more peace and prosperity than
any other. Industry and quiet, charity and hospi-
tality, cleanly and frugal habits, are always in
exact proportion to the poverty and paucity of
the priesthood. This is the only important truth
I have learned with certainty in my travels.
Emperor. Strange indeed ! that neither Eng-
lish nor Americans have betrayed the secret,
that Christianity was extirpated from among
them.
Tsing-Ti. The establishment or abolition of a
religion, is a less matter in the view of an Ame-
rican, than the sowing of a corn-field, or the
killing of a snake. The English have better rea-
sons for their silence. The Christian priests had
rich possessions : people still dress and read and
preach like them, and call themselves by the name,
and drag any man into a court of justice who says
they are not Christians. They hold the lands of
the ancient priests on this tenure ; which priests,
before they were ejected, made a joke of the voca-
tion, as they called their trade ; but ejection is a
bitter antidote to jocularity.
Emperor. I do not wonder that those who occupy
the places of the priests, and dress and speak like
them, should be angry at being called by any other
name than that under which they hold their pro-
perty : my wonder is, why the conditions should
have been imposed, since the nation has no taste
for any particle of the old religion.
Tsing-Ti. There are some occasions on which
it is thought decorous to relax a little in the per-
tinacity of adherence to the name. For instance,
they do not expect you to call them by it, and are
almost angry if you do, when they are dancing or
drinking or dicing, or riding in pursuit of foxes,
or occupied in the humaner recreation of unap-
propriated girls, of which there are as many in
the streets of London, as we hear there are of dogs
unappropriated in Stamboul.
Emperor. Well governed and abundant country
must be Turkey, wherein even the poor can see
dogs about the streets, and yet abstain from
filching a cutlet or an ear.
Tsing-Ti. The dogs must be very old and thin,
or the Turks must fear that poison has been given
them by the Franks; for human forbearance
hath its limits, and Hunger hears neither Ulemah
nor Kadi.
Emperor. As thou didst not travel far beyond
the limits of London, which, according to the
map laid at the feet of my father by Mak ArTni,
the mandarin, occupies only a small portion of
the British isles . . but first, is that true ]
Tsing-Ti. Perfectly.
Emperor. I ask the question, because a French-
man would persuade my minister, in the name of
His Most Christian Majesty, that although Lon-
don is nearly the whole of Britain, and encroaches
far upon Ireland, yet it might be contained in the
court-yard of His Most Christian Majesty, Lu Is
the Eighteenth.
Tsing-Ti. No, nor in his belly, capacious as he
was, and worthy of reigning. But the French
have always undervalued the English, since the
English conquered and rendered them tributary :
and the Englishman has always looked up to the
Frenchman, since he threw the Frenchman down
and tied his wrists behind him.
Emperor. I was about to ask thee whether thou
art quite certain, 0 Tsing-Ti, that some latent
spark of Christianity may not possibly be found
under the ashes, in the remoter parts of the
country.
Tsing-Ti. I have heard it, and do believe it.
Emperor. Imaginest thou that thou canst com-
putate, by approximation, the number of Chris-
tians now existing in the world ?
Tsing- Ti. I believe the number of Christians in the
world is about the same as the number of Parsees.
These two religions are the purest in existence.
That of the Parsees was always good, always rigo-
rously observed ; and those who followed it were
always temperate, hospitable, and veracious. It
does not appear that the followers of the Christian
were remarkable for these qualities, first or last ;
yet certainly they were much better than those
who have succeeded to their houses and dresses,
and who (in England at least) seize for their own
use what the Christian priests gave partly to the
infirm, partly to the poor, partly to the traveller,
and partly to the stranger. Before I had heard of
the revolution in religion, my heart bounded at
the pleasure I expected to communicate, in taking
a frugal repast with a minister of Christ. I de-
sired the captain, who was much my friend, to con-
duct me, not mentioning to him the purport of my
visit, and happy to hear that he must return when
K2
132
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
he had knocked at the door for me, I being un-
willing to trouble the religious man with a second
guest, who was neither poor nor a stranger in the
land. A female of pleasurable aspect opened the
door, and complimented me on my facility in the
language, and examined my dress not less atten-
tively with her hands than her eyes. Her master
heard her, and cried " What the devil does that
fellow want 1 " looking at me all the while.
" I am come," said I, " to break bread with thee,
0 minister of Christ ! "
" TJiee ! " cried he, with anger and disdain : for
in England and France every man must be ad-
dressed as four or five ; in other parts of Europe,
as a young lady. He took me violently by the
collar and threw me out of the house ; and a few
minutes afterward a more civil person came up to
me, desiring me to follow him, and to answer for
myself before a justice of the peace. My heart
again bounded : what delightful words, justice !
peace! I told him I had no complaint to make.
"Come along," said he; and I rejoiced at his
earnestness. I was brought before a member of
parliament, whose father (I heard) was as famous
for flogging boys, as the member is for torturing
men. He heard me without deigning to answer ;
and said to my conductor,
" Take the fellow to the treadmill."
I do not regret my inability to give an account of
this place, since it appears to be a place of punish-
ment. At the door I met my captain, who was
introducing another inmate for theft. He asked
me what I was doing there. I replied that I be-
lieved I was about to have the honour 'of dining
there with a member of the church, and a mem-
ber of the parliament ; the dignity of the latter
having been imparted to me on the road. After
some explanation from me in the presence of the
miller, he prevailed on that worthy tradesman to
allow me a chair in his parlour, and, in about an
hour, returned with an elderly man, also a mem-
ber of parliament, who heard me in my defence,
and laughed heartily. In fine, I was constrained
to order my dinner in another place, having first
thanked the captain, and expressed a wish that
we might meet again.
"Not here, I hope, Mr. Tsing-Ti!" said my
friend : " I like dancing upon my own deck better
than upon yon fellow's." He shook my hand, and
went away : I never saw him after.
Emperor. I wonder the King of England does
not introduce a few specimens of better precepts
and better religions. If he has never heard of
ours, and those of Thibet, there are some very
excellent in his own dominions of India.
Tsing-Ti. The people about his late majesty
frightened him; telling him that, if he pulled
down an altar at the extremity of his kingdom,
his throne would fall at the same moment, and
that he would fracture a thigh at the least. This
was whispered to me ; so was what shall follow.
Being corpulent, as becomes his station, he
greatly dreaded a broken thigh, and paid seve-
ral carpenters, whom he maintained in an old
chapel, to knock nails every year into the altars
throughout the country, and to lay their rules
stoutly, and occasionally their hammers, on the
backs of those people who would over-curiously
try whether the said altars are upright, and what
timber they are made of. The carpenters are at
once the greatest chatterers and the greatest
rogues in the whole community, and enjoy the
privilege of exemption from the payment of their
debts.
Emperor. From what province are they ?
Tsing-Ti. From all : every city sends to the
old chapel, for the king's service, those whom the
citizens are afraid to trust for mutton and beef, or
to leave too near their wives and daughters,
making each one promise he will furnish them
with nails and chips, and little reflecting that
for every nail they must give an iron-mine, and
for every chip a forest. At last the king's ma-
jesty chose a proper fellow to superintend his bu-
siness. A clamorous old ringleader, who worked
upstairs, was desired to walk down. He begged,
with tears in his eyes, permission to stay half an
hour longer, and spent it in picking up pins on
the floor. Unbending his back from this labo-
rious function, he groaned heavily, went home,
and prevailed on his wife, after a long entreaty, to
promise him two sheep-tails to sit upon, as he had
been used to a cushion of wool. His wife bought
only one sheep-tail, apprising him that, cutting
it cleverly through the middle, it would serve the
purpose of two. He threw up his eyes to heaven,
and thanked God for inspiring her to save the
family from ruin, when his thoughts were dis-
tracted by his tribulations. Carpenters, who
formerly were criers in the courts, were clamorous
in their assembly. An old soldier walked among
them with the look of an eagle : he made no
reply, but (it is reported) he opened a drawer,
and showed them a Peruvian glue, admirable
for sticking lips together : the very sight of
it draws them close. He has promised to all
those who work under him a continuance of
their wages, but threatens the refractory with
dismissal.
Emperor. I fancied the English were intract-
able and courageous.
Tsing-Ti. To others. Dogs know that dogs
have sharp teeth, and that calves have flat ones.
The man who has the purse in his own fist, has
the sword in his servant's.
Emperor. Proverbs, 0 Tsing-Ti ! prove one
man wise, but rarely make another so. Expe-
rience, adversity, and affliction, impress divine
lessons deeply.
Tsing-Ti. Then the English are the most
learned people upon earth. Those they have con-
quered leave the table of the conquerors without
bread and salt upon it; those they have protected
strip off them the last shirt ; and, while they sit
and scratch their shoulders, they agree to praise
in letters of gold, and on monuments of marble,
the wisdom of such as misguided, and the inte-
grity of such as ruined them.
EMPEROR OP CHINA AND TSING-TI.
133
SIXTH AUDIENCE.
Emperor. I am curious of any fresh and certain
information, about a country which appears to be
separated from others more widely in character
than in locality. May we not surmise, that a
fragment of a star hath dropped, with two or three
of its inhabitants, on this part of our globe ?
Tsing-Ti. Highly probable. Even yet there
appears a strange disinclination in the English to
associate with those of other regions. Their
neighbours meet a foreigner with a smile and a
salutation : the English withdraw from him star-
ing and frowning, as if the fright of the fall were
recent, and the intent of the stranger worse than
uncertain. The rest of the Europeans give indi-
cations of good will or good manners, by an em-
brace, or an interchange of the hand, or by inser-
tion of their noses into that portion of the hair
which grows between the ear and the chin, and
which, being to them what the interior of the tail
is to dogs, they nourish for that purpose. You
must bruise an Englishman's face into the figure
and dimensions of a football, ere he can discern
to his satisfaction that he ought to recognise you
as a friend. To this obliquity and perversity I
must attribute it, that every ordinance of Jesus
Christ hath been cast aside by him, having first
ascertained the fact, that every one hath been
thus rejected, on the authority of a public
preacher. He sat in a sort of tub or barrel, over
which was suspended by a chain (not without
some support from the hinder part of the barrel)
the cover of a wine-press, at the height of about
two feet above his head. He smiled at his audi-
tors ; called them his brothers, though there were
before him more of the female sex than of the
male ; and assured them that, according to the
Book of Glad Tidings, the greater part of them
must inevitably go to the devil, and gnash their
teeth eternaUy. Upon which, he and his audience
began to sing and ogle ; and I saw among them
several sets of teeth which I thought too pretty
for their destination ; and several mouths, on the
contrary, which never could pay the penalty de-
nounced. A young person sat beside me beat-
ing time, but beating it where it was impossible
she should hear it, and seeming to provoke an ac-
companiment. A sallow man under the preacher,
a man with watery eyes, not unlike a duck's in
form and colour, and with nostrils opening and
shutting, and with a mouth semicircular in front,
and drawn upward at the corners, caught me by
the elbow as I left the temple, and told me the
labourer was worthy of his hire. I did not com-
prehend his meaning, and perhaps might have
stared at him for an explanation, when an agricul-
turist came up between us, to whom I bowed, and
said, " He means you." The agriculturist made
me no answer, but said to the other, " He looks
like a Dutch sailor in his holiday suit." And
turning to me, " Master, I say, tip him five shil-
lings : he comes but once a quarter, and damns
the parish, he and his parson, at a reasonable
rate." Then winking, " If you sleep at the Green
Dragon, he will see that your bed is warmed to
your wish, and sing you a stave at the opening of
the service." In fact, such was the good man's
gratitude, he brought me his daughter at dusk ;
which is often done in London, although not so
often, we may suppose, as in the time of the
Christians. I wish the young woman had pro-
fited by the father's" example, and had rather
asked for money than run off with it.
The love of the generous man expands and dis-
plays itself in the sunshine of his liberality ; the
love of the wise man reposes in the shade of his
discretion. Neither of these was left to my choice;
and, 0 Emperor ! friend of my youth ! I lost at
once my money, my watch, and my silk trousers.
Emperor. I can hail and rain and overflood
with money ; watches I have many as stars are iu
the firmament ; and with silk I can array the
earth, and cover the billows of the ocean. Money
take thou from my coffers with both hands. Take
forty-four robes from my closet, called the closet
of ambergris, all worn by the members of my im-
perial house, some by the bravest and most an-
cient of our ancestors, and many flowered with
verses and proverbs. Take likewise what watches
thou needest and approvest, from the wall of any
edifice in my gardens, in most of which there are
hundreds to relieve the tiresomeness we suffer
from the rude obstreperance of the birds in
spring.
Tsing-Ti. 0 Emperor ! friend of my youth !
one watch suffices, and be it any one plain and
good. In the vestments I would make a selection ;
not taking what the bravest or most ancient of
our Emperors have sanctified, nor much regarding
the literature impressed on them, which I am afraid
the moths may have divided into somewhat too
minute paragraphs, and dramatised with unne-
cessary interjections.
Emperor. Thou shalt then have forty-four
newer : twenty-two of them flowered with gold,
sixteen hung with pearls, and six interwoven with
my father's verses.
Tsing-Ti. These six will never wear out : the
others too will preserve through many ages the
odour of my gratitude, and the richer fragrance
of my prince's love.
Emperor. It is much to be regretted that the
better religion of the English was little durable.
Tsing-Ti. Religions, like teas, suffer by passing
the salt water.
Emperor. Kong-Fu-Tsi wrote not this.
Tsing-Ti. He wrote it not.
Emperor. Write it thou on the blank leaf at
the termination of his sayings, in that copy which
my ancestor, Chow-Hi, of blessed memory,
bought at the expense of a rice-ground in Wong-
Wa, and of the tea-cup called Chang-Chang, trans-
parent and thin as a white rose-leaf, though a
soldier's span in diameter, and little short of a
lawyer's ; and so smooth, that (it is written in our
chronicles) flies have broken their legs in attempt-
ing to climb it.
134
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Taing-Ti. They must have been young ones, or
very decrepit.
Emperor. The chronicles of my ancestors do
not commemorate that particular, nor offer a con-
jecture at their ages.
Tsing-Ti. History is much improved of late, and
chiefly by the sedulity of the English. In Eng-
land we should have known all about it, to a day,
and some duels would have been fought, and
many calumnies and curses dealt reciprocally in
the outset. For although their denominations in
hostility are much longer and much more ponde-
rous than ours, they cast them with great dexte-
rity and velocity. The English historians are
double-handed.
Emperor. So are ours.
Tsing-Ti. But theirs] keep one hand for his-
tory, the other for controversy; the one being
blackened with ink, the other with gunpowder.
Their favourite words anciently were saint and
hero ; the present in fashion are rogue and rebel.
One of their kings ordered the bones of his
father's enemies to be disinterred, long after their
burial. This monarch seems to unite more suf-
frages from the modern historians than any other,
and their works relating to his reign are enriched
with more sermons, and pleadings, and opinions
of counsel, and depositions of witnesses.
Emperor. Such histories, with their depositions,
must be as unsavoury as the oldest street in Can-
ton ; and, with their sermons and pleadings and
opinions, must be equally long and crooked.
Tsing-Ti. The English, like the ants, follow
one another in a regular line, through wet and
dry, their leaders choosing in preference those
places which have a pungent odour.
Emperor. Nay, nay, Tsing-Ti ! thou dislikest
them for disappointing thee in thy favourite reli-
gion.
Tsing-Ti. Certainly I do not like them the
better for it : but I love my country and my em-
peror the more when I return and see the tolera-
tion of every sect and creed. What a strange
institution is prevalent in Europe ! Christianity
is known and confessed to be so excellent and
divine a thing, that no man is permitted at once
to be a Christian and to call himself so. He
may take which division he likes : he may practise
the ordinances of Christ without assuming the
name, or he may assume the name on condition
that he abstain from the ordinances. However,
it is whispered that several whole families are
privileged, and neither deny that they are Chris-
tians, nor abstain with any rigour from the duties
enjoined. I was but a year in the country : I say
only what I have heard. Often that which is
beautiful at a distance, loses its effect as we ap-
proach it. The cloud whereon the departing sun
pours his treasures, which he invests with purple
and gold, and appears to leave as a representative
not unworthy of himself, fills us with gladness,
pure and chastened, from the horizon ; but is the
mountain it hath rested on less dreary and less
sterile the day after 1 I was a Christian when I
quitted my native land : I return to my native
land, and am a Christian. My tears fell abun-
dantly, genially, sweetly, on first reading the ser-
mon of the blessed Teacher to his disciples.
How I wished to press my brow upon the herbs
below him, in ttae midst of that faithful and frater-
nal multitude ! How I wished to humble it, even
unto the insects, and so quiet my heart for ever
by its just abasement !
When I had resided a short time in England, I
began to suspect that some few sentences were
interpolated by Act of Parliament ; such as,
" If any man will sue thee at law, and take away thy
coat, let him have thy cloak also."
And again, speaking of prisons,
" Thou shalt by no means come out thence till tbou hast
paid the uttermost farthing."
I saw several poor soldiers in the streets, who
had been in Egypt about the time (I suspect) when
Christianity was breathing her last. They were
holy men, but somewhat more addicted to the
ancient part of the Bible than to the newer, calling
often upon God to confound and damn this person
and that. However they had observed with punc-
tuality the hardest of the more recent command-
ments ; which is,
" If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from
thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be
cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut
it off and cast it from thee."
The precept is plain; the reasons, I imagine,
are parliamentary. However, there were many
who thought them quite sufficient, and who not
only cut off the hand but the arm likewise. Won-
derful in how short a time so complete a change
was effected !
I myself did not aim precipitately at this
perfection, but, in order to be well received in
the country, I greatly wished the favour of a
blow on the right cheek. Unfortunately I got
several on the left before I succeeded. At last I
was so happy as to make the acquisition of a most
hearty cuff under the socket of the right eye,
giving me all those vague colours which we Chi-
nese reduce into regular features, or into strange
postures of the body, by means of glasses. As
soon as I knew positively whether my head was
remaining on my neck or not, I turned my left
cheek for the testimony of my faith. The assail-
ant cursed me and kicked me; the by-standers,
instead of calling me Christian, called me Turk
and Malay ; and, instead of humble and modest,
the most impudent dog and devil they had ever
set eyes upon. I fell on my knees, and praised
God, since at last I had been admitted into so
pure and pious a country, that even this action
was deemed arrogant and immodest. Seeing a
Jew on my return (as I soon found he was) who
had several things to sell, I asked of him whether
lie had any medicine good for the contusion of my
cheek-bone.
" Come along with me," said he.
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
135
We entered an alley; he unlocked a door in the
narrowest part of it, and conducted me to the
summit of the house. His wife and children ran
out to meet him ; and a little girl had caught him
by the hand before any of the party saw that a
stranger was behind; for the stairs were narrow
and dark. The exuberance of pleasure was re-
pressed. The little girl did not loose her father's
hand, nor did the mother draw her back, although
she held her by the arm. The little girl looked
steadfastly at me, and then loosed her father's
hand, and turned her back toward me, and placed
her finger, I conjecture, to her ej-e. But the
mother was excusing her dress, and her ignorance
how to receive such a personage, when the child,
impatient that her signs were ineffectual, cried,
" 0 mother ! can not you see how he is bruised ] "
The words had scarcely escaped her lips, before
the father brought a white liquid in a teacup, and
said calmly, " Rachel ! put down your hands from
above your head, and neither grieve nor wonder,
but help." I imagine I had been detained on the
outside of the door, until several things were re-
moved from the crowded and small apartment, in
which the air had by no means all the benefit it
might have had from its elevation. When I
entered it and came fully into the light, every face,
excepting the husband's, expressed the most tender
pity. Rachel had scarcely touched me with the
cooling remedy, ere she said she was sure she hurt
me. The little girl said to me, " let me do it,"
and " It does not hurt at all. See ! I have put
some on the same place in my own cheek," and
then whispered in the mother's ear, " can not you
encourage him better ] does he cry 1 "
Then escaped me those words, 0 my Emperor
and friend ! those which never before fell from
me, and which I do believe are original, " Yes, a
wise man may marry."
The husband did not confine his inquiries to
the cause of what he called the quarrel ; and on
my saying that I never could have expected so
little of commiseration, so little of assistance, from
Christians, " Why not," cried he abruptly. " Are
Turks more cruel]" "I can not speak of the
Turks," said I, " but I could Avish that so pure and
so pious a sect as the Christians were humaner."
I then began to ask questions in my turn ; cer-
tainly not, whether he was among the professing
or the acting ; but how long ago it was forbidden
that the same person should be both ? He began
to feel my head, unceremoniously, in places where
there were no bruises, and thought it would be
better for me to lose a little blood, as an ugly blow
might be unlucky to the brain. The wife made
signs to him, but could not stop him ; and her
anxiety that he should desist, only urged him to
explain and defend himself. The little girl slipped
away!
" We children of Abraham," said he, " have our
law and keep it ; while every year some new fun-
gus, whiter or blacker, more innocent or more
poisonous, springs from the scatterings of the old
dunghill, forked up and littered and trimmed
within the walls of Rome. Persecution has not
shaken us nor our fathers : we hold fast by their
robes, and are burnt or stoned together."
The wife lifted up her hands, and said nothing :
but a boy, about five years old, seeing her
hands lifted up, knelt under them and asked her
blessing : she gave it, shedding tears over him.
The husband too himself was moved; for no-
thing rouses the soul like another's patient suf-
fering. He likewise was moved; but less with
tenderness than indignation.
" They have burned, yes," cried he, " they have
burned even such as thou art, 0 my Abel ! "
Here he entered into historical facts, so hor-
rible and atrocious, that the princes of .Europe
thought it expedient to unite, and to exert their
utmost authority, in order that two of the perpe-
trators might be kept on their thrones, against
the reclamation of their subjects; these two
having repeatedly committed perjury, and re-
peatedly attempted parricide.
Emperor. And the other kings aided and as-
sisted them !
Tsing-Ti. AH, all : never were they unanimous
before. These kings, it is reported, are of differ-
ent sects; yet they most formally agreed, and
most solemnly protested, that parricide and per-
jury are legitimate in princes. In England there
are some who doubt it, but they are deemed
shallow and insufficient ; and though indeed they
think more rigidly than the rest, they are called
free-thinkers.
Emperor. High compliment !
Tsing-Ti. Far otherwise in the opinion of the
people ; the word liberal is the only word more
odious.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! Tsing-Ti ! art thou quite
sure that this contusion may not have jolted and
confounded and estranged thy memory] for,
although men change their religion, or lose their
principles, a reminiscence of right and wrong
must remain. That any should voluntarily lay
impediments on the operation of their minds, is
really incredible ; that they should hate you for
smoothening the way before them, and for leaving
it open, can only be attributed to the worst de-
pravity, or to insanity the most irremediable.
Tsing-Ti. Things less enormous may be more
easily forgotten. The blow on my cheek-bone
rather improved than impaired my memory : at
least supplying it with another fact for its store-
house.
Emperor. I would more willingly hear again of
the Jew than of the princes: he seems much
honester and much wiser. The distance in rank
between us is the same, therefore the same would
be my sympathy with them as with him, if they
deserved it. I can, however, show no counte-
nance to such execrable wretches as those who
not only held alliance with perjurers and parri-
cides, but who abstained from bringing them to
punishment. Indifferent and heedless am I
what religion they profess or hold. Some is
requisite ; since imbecile men (and such are
136
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
those princes) can only learn morality under the
rod of fear.
Taing-Ti. The English treat theirs as the
Malays we see in China treat their serpents, first
drawing their teeth, then teaching them to dance
to one certain tune. But these serpents, when-
ever they get loose, make off toward other ser-
pents and join them, forgetting the wrist and
tabor, and preferring any holes and brambles to
the level well-brushed ground upon which they
received their education.
When I pressed the Jew to join me and become
a Christian, he declared he had no aversion to
the precepts of Christ, who had given a strong
testimony for his nation.
" I am sorry that, by the laws of the land,"
said he, " so humane and devoted a creature was
condemned to death. But the laws of our land,
in this instance, were not more rigorous than the
laws of others. The public men endured him
longer than the public men of any other country
in the world would endure one who excited so
pertinaciously the populace against them. Scribes,
publicans, pharisees, are for ever in his mouth,
mixed with much bitterness. What government
could go on regularly and securely in the midst
of mobs and invectives] Yet he received for
many years far less molestation than he gave.
These scribes, these publicans, these pharisees,
were the richest, the most powerful, and the most
enlightened men in the country. Call the judges,
and the bishops, and the secretaries of state in
England, by such names ; point them out for
hatred, for abhorrence, for indignation, in the
same manner ; and your personal liberty, instead
of remaining three or four years, would not be
left you, my friend, so many mornings."
This is true ; and I attempted to evade it : for,
though many men like truth, there is always
something they like better. Victory is so sweet
a thing, we not only shed words but blood for it ;
just as the wild men did in the first ages on
record.
" Where!'' cried I, with an air of triumph (for
an escape is often one), " where does Jesus Christ
bear testimony in your favour ? he often bears it
against you."
He replied calmly, " In these plain words :
* Think not I am come to destroy the Law or the
Prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill :
for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from
the law, till all be fulfilled.' "
He confounded me : I thanked him and his
wife for their courtesy, and, not knowing what to
<lo with my fingers, wrapped up in a piece of
coarse paper a ring, taken from my little one,
and requested the good Rachel to give the
contents to her daughter, when she happened to
have a cough. I escaped the formulary of accep-
tance or refusal which she might have employed
had she discovered them.
Every day showed me the vestiges of a religion
in ruins. The Teacher and his disciples and
apostles taught not only the justice but the ne-
cessity of enjoying all things in common : and
those who disobeyed, were declared guilty of the
crime against the Holy Ghost.
Emperor. In the name of wonder, what crime
can that be ?
Tsing-Ti. One indeed not very clear in ita
nature, but manifest enough in its effects. Those
who sinned against it were instantly stricken
dead, particularly in that said article concerning
the community of goods. No other crime what-
ever was punished so summarily, or with such
severity, as the holding back a particle of pro-
perty. And yet perhaps the warier might rea-
sonably have had some scruples and perplexities
about it, seeing that one Judas Iscariot, a special
knave, who betrayed the Teacher to crucifixion,
had been the treasurer.*
Women were forbidden to attend the churches
in fine clothes. The women of England, at the
present day, turn up their noses at anyone who
does not put on her best upon the Sunday;
and the principal part of the service seems to
be a most rigid examination how far this neces-
sary compliment is paid to the anti-christian
priest.
The Teacher orders men to pray little, and in
private, f One who had persecuted him, and af-
terward came over to his party, one Saul or Paul,
could not in his conscience let him have his own
way in everything, and told people to pray pub-
licly. The day of my arrival in London, I wished
to accommodate myself to the habits of the nation,
and having read in my Bible, " If any be merry,
let him sing Psalms," and thinking that a pecu-
liarity of pronunciation is disguised more easily
in singing than in talking, I began to sing Psalms
through the streets. The populace pelted me ;
the women cried, " scandalous !" the boys, " let us
have some fun !" and proof was made upon me with
many eggs, even after I had declared I could per-
form no miracles with them, and had plainly
proved I could neither catch one in my mouth,
nor restore to life the chicken that had long ago
died within it. An anti-christian priest of great
austerity, with legs like a flamingo's, asked me
whether I was not ashamed of my profaneness, in
singing Psalms along the public walks 1 Another,
who was called Ms chaplain, and rode with him
in his coach, cried, " My lord, drive on ! Coach-
man, drive on ! Send the son of a .... to
Bedlam." Extensive as are the commercial re-
lations of the English, I was astonished that a
chaplain, which means the priest that prays for
another (none of consideration performing for
himself so menial an office), should (never having
visited China) have known so much of my mother,
and should designate by so coarse an appellation
the concubine of a prince. After a time, I ac-
quired the intelligence, that no woman in England
is exempt from it who forms an alliance, unsanc-
tioned by marriage, with any except the king.
» 1 John, xii.
t Matthew, v. 6.
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
137
The lady in that case is styled the king's favourite,
or, more properly, his mistress, having the ap-
pointment of his ambassadors and his bishops, the
stocking of his fish-ponds, and the formation of his
ministry. In fact, she alone has the care of his
dignity and of his comforts and of his conscience,
and may tickle his ribs and make him laugh,
without being hanged for it.
Emperor. Prodigious privilege! in a country
where two hundred other offences are subject to
that punishment.
Tsing-Ti. The heads of the law bend before
her, the gravest of them and the most religious,
even those who would punish with death the
adultery of a queen.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! Tsing-Ti ! that blow
upon the cheek-bone ! those rotten eggs ! that
flamingo perch ! that odd dignity emblazoned on
thy mother ! surely they have wasped thee ! The
lowest in the land may be guilty of such baseness,
the highest may be guilty of such cruelty ; but
even crimes have their classes and their lines
betwixt: the worst man in the worst nation of
the earth never could be guilty at once of crimes
so different. What freezeth may burn, what
burneth may freeze, but not at one moment.
Thou hast indeed had some reason for displea-
sure ; but how much greater wouldst thou feel, 0
Tsing-Ti ! if thou earnest from it on the thorns
along the precipice of falsehood. No, my friend,
thy words were always true ; and what is there,
or should there be incredible, of a nation where
justice is more costly than violence, and religion
more rapacious than theft ! I would hear farther
upon this, and what thou hast to say in defence
of Saul or Paul, who gave an ordinance in contra-
diction to his master's. He must have put
strong weapons into the hands of the anti-
christians.
Tsing-Ti. I can not understand the anti-chris-
tians at all, and the Christiana not much better.
These last extolled him highly, but perhaps at
the time when they thought of becoming anti-
christians, as giving a sanction to disobedience
and persecution. He had many strange by-ways
of doing things. For instance now : Satan is
god of blasphemy : he stands opposite to the
Creator.
Emperor. Why does the Creator let the rogue
stand opposite 1
Tsing-Ti. I know not : he does however stand
eternally in that position, and breathes fire and
defiance at him, dividing the universe with him,
taking the richer and more beautiful to his own
share. Finding the wife of the unhappy man in
whose house I lodged ill-humoured and sullen,
though much addicted to her Bible, I repeated to
her from it,
" Let the woman learn in silence with all sub-
jection."
She stared at me ; and when, to make her easy,
I would have given her the kiss of peace, as com-
manded us, she cried, '•' You canting hound ! I
will give you a cuff in the muzzle !" It came
almost too quick for a promise. Nor did it end
here. The husband, who was present, said,
" Master Orange-face, your pocket shall sweat for
this," and took me to Bow Street, so called from
the numbers of fashionable men resorting there,
and bowing to the magistrate. A pickpocket
was before him, who, while he raised one hand to
heaven in protestation of his innocence, robbed
me with the other of all the money I carried for
my acquittal.
Emperor. How then didst thou escape 1 Thy
situation was deplorable.
Tsing-Ti. I was in prison three days.
Emperor. My mandarin ? by what law ?
Tsing-Ti. I can not say by what law : I can only
say it was for preaching the clearest text of Paul,
and for practising the best ceremony of the church.
A short time afterward, I sat at table one day
with a young lady of exquisite beauty, and of
equal modesty. Her mother had invited me to
dinner for my love of the Bible. The gentleman
who sat next to me on the right hand (his lady
was on the left), observing me very diffident in
my conversation with her, wished to give me a
little more courage, by entering with me into the
concerns of his family.
" Angelica," said he after a while, " has an
independent and ample fortune ; and yet I will
dare to say before her that I married her for love.
She will not flatter me by making the same con-
fession." Angelica blushed and looked happy;
and said her mother had wished her to marry
again, and she had thought it her duty to comply.
I found she was in her twentieth year, and had
one daughter by her first husband, dead about
eighteen months. This information was given
me the following day by the mother, in whose
face I looked earnestly as she spoke. " What !"
cried I, " unhappy woman ! did you acquiesce
in it! did you sanction it1? did you wish it?'
" Why not !" said she. " And does your Angelica
read the Bible ? and dares she take a second hus-
band in spite of Timothy and Paul ! " having
damnation because she hath cast off her first
faith."* Knowing that the English are superior to
other nations in a species of wit denominated
quizzing, and that they consider it a particular act
of politeness toward a stranger, I suspected they
were beginning to initiate me in some of its cere-
monies, and I resolved to make further inquiries of
the mother ; and the more, as both exclamation
and text were intercepted by an elderly gentleman
in an arm-chair, who shook the loose skin of his
cheeks at me, and told me, some questions were
to be asked, and some not. Therefore, when
she and I were alone, I did not repeat the passage,
but showed it in the book. She replied gravely
and circuitously.
" Mister Tsing-Ti . . pardon me . . perhaps I
ought to address you as Sir Tsing-Ti . . for I
can never think a person of your appearance,
moving in an elevated sphere . .
* Paul. Eph. i. 16.
138
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Emperor. What ! like a parrot in a gold wire-
cage from the ceiling ? Well, go on.
Tsing-Ti. . . would be long without a recom-
mendation to his majesty, that he might be
graciously pleased to confer on you the dignity
of knighthood or baronetcy.
Emperor. My eyes are as long and narrow as
most men's, thanks be to God! yet I can not
slip them into the crevices of thy discourse. Pro-
ceed.
Tsing-Ti. " For his majesty," continued she,
" is growing old, poor man ! and takes nothing
in hand so often as the sword : and when he is
tired of making knights, he makes a baronet
or two, in order to laugh and get a good diges-
tion, by discussing the merits and genealogies
of the new-created."
Emperor. New created! Hast thou eaten
opium ? Tsing-Ti, continue.
Tsing-Ti. She apologised, and protested she
did not mean to insinuate that anyone could
make merry with mine, the worst Chinese fami-
lies being older than the best English.
Emperor. I must smell thy breath, Tsing-Ti.
I fear thou hast acquired bad habits : no : no ;
upon my faith ! I am satisfied. Conclude the
story.
Tsing-Ti. At last I brought the lady to the
point ; and finding her sincere in her belief, and
extremely angry to prove it, I went through the
whole passage, word for word. It puzzled her ;
she could only say, " The apostles very often
differ apparently . . apparently, Sir Tsing! for
nobody in his senses will presume to say they
do really. Indeed the words sometimes are widely
at variance : but so are the passages in the finest
music ; and without them the composer would
lose all pretence to harmony."
I looked at the elderly gentleman, who had
entered the room in the midst of our conversation :
he took a pinch of snuff and offered me one. I
frequently have observed in others, although I
never could experience it in myself, that snuff, as
compounded in Europe, hath wonderful properties.
Sometimes it matures a reply, as straw does apples :
again it turns an argument to a witticism, or a
witticism to an argument : and I have known
even a rap on the box-lid bring over and convince
a whole party. The elderly gentleman, when he
had offered me his snuff-box, and I had taken a
pinch in a manner to give him a good opinion of
me, drew his chair still closer, and, surveying both
my face and my body, seemed to signify that he
thought me not unfit for the reception of reason.
Placing his hand with extreme gentleness on my
wrist, he said in an under-tone, " Our religion is
to us what your gum-elastic is to you. It is
rounder or longer, thinner or thicker, darker or
lighter, as you leave it or. pull it : we rub out
whatever we will with it, and, although some dirt
is left upon it, we employ it again and again.
There is much demand for it in the market. No
wonder ! Severe as the apostle was to the young
widow, in prohibiting her to dry her tears on the
pillow where another head had rested, he was
liberal in letting men eat what they like, although
he had agreed with the other companions of the
Teacher that nobody should eat strangled animals
or their blood. The diviner part of his cha-
racter (for what is most different from ours may
even in him be called the diviner) was toleration
and forgiveness."
Emperor. Did the Christians at any time ob-
serve this law ]
Tsing-Ti. Never; not even the apostles. Saint
Paul prayed God to execute vengeance for him :
and Saint Peter used the sword, which God com-
manded should be sheathed for ever, and used it
with much intemperance and little provocation.
We believe that the Holy Spirit was always pre-
sent in their councils ; and nothing is more diffi-
cult for us than to reconcile the precept of Paul
with the decision of the rest, and the action of
Peter with the command of his master.
Emperor. In other words, with the inspiration
of what you Christians call the Holy Ghost. In-
deed I do think you must strain hard to bring
them close.
Tsing-Ti. It perplexes us.
Emperor. The more fools you. There arc many
things of which it is shameful to be ignorant ; and
more at which it is shameful to be perplexed.
Did thy eating these meats ever hurt thy sto-
mach?
Tsing-Ti. Never.
Emperor. Did thy eating them ever hurt thy
neighbour's ?
Tsing-Ti. Fountain of wisdom ! how could it ?
Emperor. Did thy eating them ever make
thee wish to partake of human flesh ?
- Tsing-Ti. Horrible ! Surely not.
Emperor. Draw then thy own conclusion. Pro-
duced it on any man one of these effects, him should
my finger bid abstain.
Tsing-Ti. The old Christians slipped aside
and feasted heartily on a noosed hare or black
pudding.
Emperor. What ! even the old ones )
Tsing-Ti. Alas ! even they, for the most-part.
* Emperor. Tell me no more about these dis-
agreements, but rather how the oral doctrines of
the Teacher himself were taken.
Tsing-Ti. There is one of them which I appre-
hend was never believed in, since a community of
goods was abolished. *' It is easier for a camel (or
cable) to pass through the eye of a needle, than
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
If this be true, and what is God's word must be,
the softest bed that ever rich man died on, sup-
posing him a true believer, was more excruciat-
ing to him than if he were corded up within a
sack of vipers.
Emperor. Thou sayest well ; but who believes,
or ever believed it 1
Tsing-Ti. All Christians.
Emperor. Do not wonder then that Christianity
has existed so short a time ; so much shorter than
any religion upon record.
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
139
Tsing-Ti. 0 Emperor! my light and leader!
there are acute and wary men in Europe who can
penetrate through all our objections and explain
all our difficulties. I heard it reported of an old
lady, one of the last Christians left in England,
that she ate some hemlock in mistake for celery,
her eyes being too dull and her vinegar too sharp
for the discovery. She told her children and
grandchildren not to fear for her, since, among
the signs of those who believe, it is written that
" they shall take up serpents ; and that if they
drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them."
A quarter of an hour after this exhortation she
died in excruciating agonies. The priest who
attended her hi her malady, caught her last breath
and requested his bishop to remove his inquietude.
The bishop answered,
" The matter is easy. She did not drink the
deadly thing ; she ate it."
"My Lord, suppose it had been a liquid . .
God forbid I should doubt or question, but is it
certain ... so very certain, I would say V
" Her faith might have staggered, during its
operation, and then could not save her. The
slightest doubt, the slightest fear, forfeits the re-
ward."
" But, my Lord, we may take up serpents."
*' " You are no such fool; Saint Matthew says you
may take them up ; but where does he say they
won't bite you ] Brother Grimstone ! the greatest
of follies is, for old people to play young tricks ;
and the greatest of sins is, to tempt God. Ex-
hort your parishioners, as they value their salva-
tion, never to tempt him in this way."
I myself went to the learned expositor, and
consulted him.
Emperor. So then thou wouldst cling to Christi-
anity after the loss of thy watch and silk trousers .
Tsing-Ti. I would; knowing that my emperor
loves a man with a religion as well as a man with-
out, and hath no partiality fora mandarin because
he eateth of the same dish, but would quite as
willingly see him dip his fingers into another.
Emperor. Rightly said : kings and emperors
should think so.
Tsing-Ti. The distiller, who gains his liveli
hood by his distillery, may be displeased if a
basketful of yellow lilies be brought to .him for a
basketful of white, and may throw the lilies and
the basket at the bearer, in much anger ; but the
possessor of a spacious garden, in which are clus-
ters of lilies, both white and yellow, finds a plea-
sure in the smell of the one and in the colour of
the other, and loves to see a portion of that variety
which the Creator's hand implanted.
Emperor. Thou speakest well. Emperors
should have wide eyes and broad nostrils, and
should never turn the diversity of things to their
displeasure ; all being God's, and they his guests,
invited to partake and to enjoy the entertainment,
and not to derange and discompose it. Thou
rememberest my father's verses :
" The narrow mind i8 the discontented one.
There is pleasure in wisdom, there is wisdom in pleasure.
If thou findest no honey in thy cake,
Put thy cake into honey with thine own right-hand,
Nor think it defiled thereby."
About what didst thou consult the expositor ?
Tsing-Ti. Being a mandarin, and possessing
no mean inheritance, the camel or cable, of which
I spake, bore heavily upon me. The expositor is
one of the richest men in the kingdom, and moves
lightly under it.
Emperor. He must have laughed at thee.
Tsing-Ti. Not a muscle in his cheek was altered.
He received me, and heard my question graciously ;
and he rang the bell with his own hand, and ordered
his servant to show me the door, bowed to me,
and even gave me a piece of silver called a shil-
ling. Whether my pride was raised too high by
so refined a piece of courtesy, as his insinuation
that a man of exalted rank or philosophical cha-
racter should be deemed incapable of finding the
door himself, or whether it was to contend with
him in liberality, when I kissed the shilling and
deposited it in my bosom, I presented to him a
broad piece of gold, elaborately worked with many
figures, in a case of ivory, carved by an artificer
of skill. He begged my pardon, and actually
pushed away the present. I kissed his hand and
wept upon it ; the true Christian's ! the humble
man's ! Declining my gold and ivory, he entreated
me to be seated, and asked me how he could
serve me, with more than Asiatic politeness. In
vain I besought him again and again to accept the
tribute of his slave, and to shower on me the dew
of wisdom. He was inexorable as to the offering,
but appeared to be very well pleased with my
expressions. I had soon discovered that those
which Christ used, and received, were now thought
unfit for the lowest of his ministers, even for such
as sweep the temples and ring the bells, and were
not only obsolete, but offensive. The expositor
said he could perceive I was a person of distinc-
tion, and must have moved in the highest circles.
Emperor. Again ! what canst thou mean 1 Do
the principal men educate their children with
parrots and monkeys and squirrels and marmo-
sets] Hast thou translated those words cor-
rectly ?
Tsing-Ti. Quite correctly.
Emperor. The strangest expression I ever heard
in my life-time ! So then really those short coats,
and buttoned vests, and cases of all kinds, were
invented to give them in some measure the ad-
vantages of animals. I would rather see gold-fish
in glass globes. Surely it is only when they are
very young ; only to teach them kindness toward
these creatures, held by them in captivity. Well,
the idea is not so irrational as it appeared at
first.
Tsing-Ti. Whatever may formerly have been
the custom of the country, the expression, I be-
lieve, is metaphorical at present. The bishop
himself was said universally to move in the higher
circles ; yet I could see neither globe nor cage in
his house, nor any hook in the ceiling. His lord-
ship said he would attempt to solve my question
140
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
according to his poor abilities, if the best scholars
were unanimous on the signification of the text.
I answered that it seemed plain enough.
" By no means," replied he ; " some translate
the Hebrew word by camel, some by cable."
" Either will do," said I.
"God forbid," cried his lordship, "that we
should be indifferent or lukewarm on the condi-
tions of our eternal bliss ! Whenever the passage
is clear, we will discourse again upon it. Every-
thing is not yet manifested : let us wait in
patience."
As he sighed, and appeared to be much out of
spirits, I thought it indecorous to press him far-
ther, and took my leave. On the morrow I saw
him going to court ; but there were so many ser-
vants about him, and the dresses stood out so
with golden lace and embroidery, he could not
well see me : otherwise I would have requested to
be present at the sacrifice he was about to offer ;
his dress being purple, to hide the blood, and his
shirt-sleeves being tucked up in readiness. The
cable or camel, whichever it was, made me uneasy ;
and I continued in agitation for several days. At
last I saw another anti-christian, who loudly pro-
fessed Christianity from a table in a field, and who
familiarly asked questions, and winked and
laughed and told stories, and advised his audi-
ence to laugh on that day, because after two or
three more they would, with few exceptions, be
burned to eternity. He then cried, "Answer
me ; answer me : or ask me, and I will be the
answerer."
Although I thought his reason for laughing
in some degree inconclusive, I was persuaded he
had better in store on other points.
" Sir," said I, and there was instantaneously a
universal silence, " Sir, permit an ignorant man
to ask one question."
"Babe!" answered he blandly, "come and suck."
I then related to him my visit, my inquiry, and
the reply.
" Tough chewing ! hard digestion ! camel or
cable," cried he to the crowd. " So, in God's very
teeth, he dares call a camel a cable ! Look ! my
brethren, is here the cable or the camel?" opening
the book. They all groaned. "I could have
taught the wilful man better," said he, " but the
Lord has taken the words of wisdom from above
his tongue, and has put them under ; and they
are as uneasy to him as an ear of barley would be.
There they are, and he makes a wry face over 'em,
and can never get 'em out."
An elderly lady, fresh, fat, with flowers in her
bonnet, and some few pimples in her face, seemed
much affected, and cried, " What shall I do to be
saved ? "
" Sister," said the preacher, " let our brother
Dick (I would say Richard) support your head
upon his bosom, now that he has alighted from
behind the carriage. Hide not, 0 sister, your
head therein, as one unworthy; but turn your
face hitherward, as one yearning for the truth.
There is no cure so easy for any malady as for the
disease of wealth. You may scratch it off with a
nail, and it returns no more, although it leave a
little soreness in the place. Now to the text.
Camel is the word ; and none but camel for me !
Suppose there were a drove of 'em : do you believe
that our Lord, if he pleases, can not make a drove
of 'em . . a drove, I say, hunched and mounted
and laden, pass, not in line, but in squadron,
through the finest needle you ever bought at
Whitechapel 1 And if he pleases, will he not
do it? And, if he pleases, will not the rich man
enter the kingdom of Heaven ? Sister Kattern !
be of good faith ! The words are, rick man ; not
rich woman. And even rich men may lay aside
what is onerous and dangerous in riches, entrust-
ing them to the servants of the Lord, who watch
and pray." "0 rogue and vagabond!" I was
ready to exclaim, " though indeed thou art not
red-legged, thy claw and thy craw are the same a»
the flamingo's."
Among my acquaintance was a barrister, who
belonged to neither of the sects, and evaded
my inquiries, by saying they did not belong to
his profession. Wishing to pay him a compli-
ment, I studied the law with assiduity, and felt
great satisfaction when I had seventy-four ques-
tions for him, on difficult points in the English
jurisprudence. I had often called on him, and
he was out, which I ceased to regret, on finding
the catalogue of my interrogatories swell out so
copiously. At last I caught him on the staircase,
and gave him my pocket-book. " A flaw in the
second word! "cried he, "English jurisprudence!"
He took out the remaining inch of pencil and
wrote statutes, " Of these we have plenty," said
he, " of that nothing. Honest Tsing ! your studies
have lain elsewhere since your arrival; other-
wise this neat pocket-book of yours, instead of the
seventy-four questions, which fill only four pages,
would have others drawn out over charades and
sonnets and dresses for the season; and this deli-
cate green binding would look as if it were covered
with ants, by holding its share of your little black
letters ; and even this fine steel clasp would be
displaced to make room." "Can you speak thus
lightly," said I, " on such imperfections in your
profession?" "Dear Tsing," said he, smiling,
" you have sometimes enriched me with a pro-
verb : I have but one of my own, and will give it
you freely. ' On the imperfection of law is built
the perfection of lawyers.' I could not eat, drink,
nor sleep, without 'em : they are my fish, flesh, and
fowl ; they are my bread, wine, and fuel ; they are
my theatre, friends, and concubines. Leap into
my carriage with me; I am going to Maidstone;
I will open to you some new commentaries on our
religion" . .
" Will you indeed?" cried I . .
" Indeed will I," said he ; " and what is more,
I will introduce you at a ball."
I had never seen an English dance ; the amuse-
ment is forbidden by law to the poorer and
middling classes, and I arrived in London when
the richer and gayer were departing. It was now
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
141
Midsummer. Great was my surprise, as we
approached the town of Maidstone, at seeing a
procession, accompanied by spearmen and an-
nounced by trumpets. After it there came in a
carriage, drawn by four horses, an old man with
a pinkish face, not unlike veal fly-blown and
putrescent. He wore over each shoulder the tail
either of an Angola goat or Cashmere sheep, oi
which the upper extremity was fastened on his
head. Whether a part had been consumed by
time, or rubbed away by the carriage, I know
not ; but it was neatly mended by a piece oi
black silk, about the size of that which is applied
to a part less visible, when it suffers by riding.
The rest of the person was covered with a scarlet
robe. I asked my companion who it could be ?
" The judge," he answered.
" Judge of what ] How can he be a judge of
anything, who wears a thick scarlet vesture in
the middle of July, and perhaps all his other
cases under it ] Nay, he has fur upon it, two
palms thick !"
" Friend Tsing !" replied he, " neither our laws
nor the dresses of those who decide on them are
changed according to the times and seasons.
What was, is ; and it must be, because it was."
I attended the court of justice three consecutive
days, and could not but admire the patience and
ingenuity of the rulers, to rid the country from all
remains of Christianity. Not an edict or sentence
but ran counter to it. Some were punished for
disobeying the Bible ; others for obeying.
Emperor. Great impartiality !
Tsing-Ti. The very men who were to pronounce
on the guilt or innocence of others, began to fit
themselves for it by breaking the law of Christ.
He says, " Swear not at all." They all swore ;
twelve of them : every witness swore. Several
offenders were brought forward in their chains,
for striking and stealing.
Emperor. Properly enough ; and punished, no
doubt.
Tsing-Ti. Certainly ; but with somewhat less
severity than others for capturing wild animals,
birds, and fishes.
Emperor. They were idle fellows.
Tsing-Ti. Some had caught so many that they
could not be called idle : it was their trade. I
suspect they were treated with the greater seve-
rity for following the law of Christ.
Emperor. Law ! what ! these rogues !
Tsing-Ti. Christ ordered men never to reap,
never to sow, because the fowls did neither.
Emperor. Tsing-Ti ! I love thee from my soul ;
but beware ; let no man utter this in China.
Tsing-Ti. He ordered men to take no thought
of what they put on ; and indeed not to clothe at
all ; assuring them that God would clothe them,
as he clothed the grass of the field ; and would
much rather clothe them than the grass.* Inter-
pretation of what is commanded is less censurable
in its strictness than in its laxity. Those who
* Matthew, vi. 30.
obeyed God's word undoubtingly ; those who
obeyed it to the letter ; those who obeyed it both
because it was his, and because he had conde-
scended to give his reasons for their obedience,
in the birds namely and the grass ; were strangely
persecuted. I saw a man tortured for taking as
little care as the grass did about his raiment ;
and I am assured, if he had gone into a corn-field,
and had satisfied his necessities as the birds satisfy
theirs, his religion would have led him into
greater difficulties. On the whole there were
about fifty criminals. Most were condemned,
like this believer, to the torture, by means of wire
twisted about hempen ropes, and employed as
scourges : ten were hanged. The bells rang mer-
rily ; and the ladies danced all night. I thought
they had looked prettier in the morning.
There was another court open, wherein few
causes were decided. My friend assured me, that
several being civil, would last for years.
"How!" exclaimed I, "and thirty men tor-
tured, and ten hanged, at one sitting !"
Emperor. I hope the King of England hangs
gratis.
Tsing-Ti. To my shame be it spoken, I did not
ask. The English are far from explicit in their
elucidation. I inquired how it happened that,
having wholly rejected Christianity, and being
ashamed of following the plainest and easiest
ordinances of Christ, they are almost unanimous
in calling themselves Christians ? Most of those
present were angry at the question : some asked
me what I meant ; others swore they would make
me explain, forgetting that I came for expla-
nation. The gentler and more moderate said I
quite mistook the spirit of Christianity ; that it
altered its form and features as was required by
the time or the people ; that it was no less easy
in its operation than salutary in its effect.
" I am quite convinced it is," cried I ; " and it
being so easy to abstain from war, from strife, and
from evil-speaking, it is grievous that these
unequivocal commands of the Teacher are dis-
obeyed by the most conscientious of his followers."
The man is a Methodist ; the man is mad ; the
man is more knave than fool ; the man is a
Jesuit ; the man is a radical : were the opinions
formed upon me.
Emperor. Of these expressions there are some
requiring elucidation : we will have it another
time. For the present let me assure thee, 0
friend of my youth ! that, among the reasons of
my affection for thee, is this. Whereas many who
hange their religion, are proud of displaying the
fresh plumage, and zealous to bring others after
them, and noisy and quarrelsome against those
who stay behind ; thou didst long conceal thy
discovery of antiquated impostures, long worship
in secrecy thy purer God, long permit thy parents
(best of all in thee !) to imagine thy faith unalter-
ably like theirs, and lookedst not upon their idols
with abhorrence or with disdain.
Tsing-Ti. My emperor! my friend! my father!
[ would not make uneasy the last years of any-
142
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
one who loved me; no, not even to be thought
by future ages the most acute, the most eloquent,
the most philosophical of mankind.
SEVENTH AUDIENCE.
The last was a most graciously long audience.
Every day the Emperor my master was pleased
to demand my attendance. But the discourses he
now condescended to hold with me were usually
on subjects not at all connected with my travels.
Suddenly one morning he stopped me in the
walk of cassowaries ; and holding my arm, said
condescendingly,
. " I forgot, 0 Tsing-Ti ! to question thee about
thy ten days' visit to Frenchland. It can not
much interest me, seeing that he who was called
the cleverest among them, was caught in a fray
by the most ignorant and stupid of the Tartar
tribes, and that he never had acquired the know-
ledge how a man may eventually die by frost or
famine. As for religion, it produced such evil
fruits in Frenchland, it was wisely done to root it
up, provided they had levelled the ground about
it, and made it fit for something better."
Perceiving that his majesty had paused, and
waited for an answer, my first words were these :
Tsing-Ti. Imperfect as is my acquaintance
with the language of that country, and short my
residence in it, I fear to offer any opinion on what
I heard or saw. Although I carried with me the
advantage of introductory letters, both from my
friend the poet, whose manuscript I purchased,
and from my friend the lawyer, and did derive all
the benefit I expected from them, my observations
are unsatisfactory to myself : what must they be
then to the clearer and more searching sight of
your majesty !
Emperor. More tolerable : we never let things
puzzle us at all, nor interest us much. So go on,
Tsing-Ti, from thy embarkment.
Tsing-Ti. Of my two servants one was an
Englishman, the other a native of Malta, a small
island in a great lake, conquered by the English
from the French. He entered at that time the
maritime service of England, and served aboard
the ship which landed me there. He understood
three languages, the French, the English, and the
Italian : he could also write legibly. He was a
pagan, but not strict nor superstitious. This I
discovered soon after he entered my house; for
while he was on shipboard I knew not of what
religion he was, or whether he was of any. The
hour I entered my apartments I had occasion to
call for something, and I found him with an idol
in his hand, and saying a prayer. He tossed the
idol down, and cried out in the midst of the
prayer, " Eccomi, eccellenza ! " Understanding
not a syllable, I thought he was angry, and had
reason for it ; so I said,
"Van ! (such being his name among the sailors,
although at home Gio- Van-Ni-Pa-Ti-Sta*) Van, I
* Giovanni Battista.
am much to be blamed for interrupting you in
your devotions."
"Cospetto! Cappari!" cried he.
I drew out my purse, thinking his animation
was anger, and that no concession of mine could
appease him, or induce him to remain a day longer
in my service. I was soon undeceived.
"Eccellenza!" said he, "I can neither pray nor
swear in any but the older languages : do excuse
me !"
"Proceed," said I, "not in swearing, but in
praying."
"As your excellency commands," replied he,
" at the same time I can receive and execute
your lordship's wishes." He recommenced his
prayers, and in the midst of a sentence (as it
appeared by his abruptness), "but your excel-
lency has forgotten the orders." " No, Van ! "
said I, " when your oration is completed." He
went on with a few syllables more, looking at me
all the while. "Command me, Eccellenza Singa!
we are losing our time. The devil is in me if I
can not say my prayers and hear my master too."
He then went on with a little more, and stopped
suddenly. I turned and left the room, but heard,
as I was passing through the door, the words,
" Ah poor heretic ! he knows nothing of religion !"
Van was however the most ingenious and the
most accomplished man aboard, private or officer.
Beside his knowledge of three languages, he
played on two instruments of music, and he could
pray fluently in a language which not even the
captain understood, nor Van either, nor perhaps
his idols. My friend the lawyer had taken a great
fancy to him, and declared to me he was the
quickest fellow he had ever met with. His clerk
likewise, who happened to be fond of music,
offered to teach him short-hand, if Van in return
would bestow on him a few lessons. Van was
indefatigable, and told me that, when he lost
the honour of serving me, he would become a
professor of short-hand, and make " a deafening,
stupifying, overwhelming fortune." " Those En-
glish," said he, " who have no talents, get on very
well, but those who have any, know not what to
do with them. They sit in a corner and mope,
while the others eat the sausage."
Your majesty is too gracious in listening to such
recitals, but really all I can relate is owing to my
servant. He wrote down in short-hand whatever
passed in Frenchland, and on board the vessel
which conveyed us thither. And perhaps in this
passage there occurred as much to interest a
hearer, as during our residence the whole ten
days on the continent. The two factions in
England retain their ancient appellations, having
interchanged principles. A Whig and a Tory, as
they are called, were on board ; probably there
were many; but these two held an argument, of
which I have the honour of laving a copy at the
feet of your majesty.
Emperor. No, no, you have laid enough and a
superfluity before my feet already, and I doubt
whether I shall ever get through it: for things
EMPEROR OP CHINA AND TSING-TI.
143
that are laid before royal feet seldom mount
much higher. Take it up again and read away,
Tsing-Ti. What I may catch of it, is all clear
gain, and I can afford to lose the rest without
repining.
Tsing-Ti (reads.) " Whig. Shall a king of
England be as intolerant as a monk of Sassofer-
rato ! Shall he withhold from Englishmen and
Irishmen what he has bestowed on Bremeners
and Hanoverians ? We fear danger, it seems, to
our laws, from the event of a Catholic majority
in our parliament. The Catholics will never
constitute a tenth of it, reckoning both houses.
Nothing but coercion keeps them together. Brave
and honest and wise men are Catholics, because
they are persecuted for it, and because it would
be cowardice and baseness (and therefore folly)
to recede before aggression. Where there are
sounder creeds and more liberal institutions,
Catholicism may long be a party cry, but can not
long be a religion. It will retain as little of its
old signification as Whig or Tory. Gentlemen
will disdain an authority which rests upon equi-
vocation and prevarication, which is convicted of
frauds and fallacies, and which insists that false-
hood is requisite to ensure the concord and tran-
quillity of nations. The fever is kept up by shut-
ting the door. Open it, and the sufferer will walk
out with you, enjoy the same prospects, and en-
gage in the same interests and pursuits. While
the Catholics are in a state of pupilage, the priests
will continue to lead them : no longer. Perform
the act of justice they demand, and what differ-
ence in any great political question can divide
the Catholic from the Protestant ) Can the Pope
persuade the Irish to hazard their houses when
we have made them comfortable 1 Hold nothing
back from any man that is his ; and least of all
urge as a reason for it, that you hold it back now
because you have been holding it back many
years. Be strictly just and impartial, and the
priest may poison his affections and paralyse his
intellect, but will never shake off" his allegiance
to legitimate authority. Construct the Catholic
church in Ireland as you find it constructed in
France and Germany ; and then, if the Pope
fraudulently enters it, and stands at the door
and threatens, seize him wherever he may run,
and punish him severely for his impudence. No
power in these days would interfere in his behalf;
for however some may resist the oppressing, none
can stand up against the avenging arm of Britain.
We have given proofs of it, age after age, and I
trust we need not whisper in the gallery of the
Vatican what we proclaimed so lately from the
summit of Montmartre.
" Tory. The Whigs have inherently so little of
liberality, that another party has carried off" the
title. Englishmen have been deprived of the
elective franchise ; and by whom ? by Whigs.
Voters may give directions, may give orders, to
representatives ; but representatives can neither
give orders nor directions to voters. How much
less then are we to suppose that they shall, in law
or reason, sign a mandate for the extinction of as
many as they please, in order to become, not the
representatives and executors, but the arbiters
and rulers of the rest ! Representation can not
be changed or modified in this manner while a
constitution is standing. When a constitution is
thrown down, and another is about to be erected,
the people may then draw narrower boundaries
for the exercise of its power, in the hope (rational
or irrational) of being more peaceable and
secure.
" Whig. But we drew wider.
" Tory. You excluded some, and made a dis-
tinction in franchises. It is a solemn and a sacred
thing to draw a new line for the pomceria of a
state. When septennial Parliaments were decreed
by you Whigs in place of triennial, I wonder that
not a jurist, not a demagogue, told the populace
that Parliament had inherently no authority for
it. I wonder that all the counties and all the
boroughs in the kingdom did not recall their
betrayers, and insist on the preservation of their
franchises. This invasion, this utter overthrow
of the English constitution, was the work of our
enemies, the Whigs. Whenever they have among
them an honest sentiment, they borrow it ; and
when they have done what they want with it,
they throw it aside. Faction in other countries
has come forward in a' fiercer and more formidable
attitude ; none ever growled so long and felt so
little anger ; none ever grovelled so low and ex-
pected so little benefit; none ever wagged its
tail so winningly and earned so little confidence.
" Whig. It is idle to speculate on the irreme-
diable, or to censure the measures of the extinct :
beside, we were talking not of curtailment but of
concession.
" Tory. The coronation-oath opposes-it.
" Whig. Parliament, that can place clauses and
inabilities before kings, can certainly remove them.
Some have indeed been mad enough to deny the
right of the English people to check or regulate
the royal prerogative ; but nobody was ever mad
enough to deny the right of removing an impe-
diment to the exercise of the royal beneficence.
If I exact an oath from you for my security, I may
absolve you from it when I feel secure without it.
" Tory. Kings may have their scruples.
" Whig. Some people wish they had more.
But when the scruples are about our safety, if we
feel perfectly safe, and they persist in telling us
we can have no such feeling unless we are insane,
they grossly wrong and insult us.
" Tory. Harsh words ! very harsh words !
" Whig. Words are made harsh by what they
fall on. The ground gives the fruit its flavour.
" Tory. Excuse me, but you are a very young
man, sir ! and although I am well aware that your
merits quite correspond with your reputation, yet,
pray excuse me ! I can not think the opinions you
have delivered are altogether your own : certainly
the language and the manner are not : for, really
and truly, my dear sir, the last sentences, in my
humble opinion, were somewhat short and cap-
144
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
tious, and not quite so applicable to the subject
as a close consistent reasoner might desire.
" Whig. I resign them to your discretion, being
unable to ascertain the author; and conscientiously
believing they were mine. If wiser men have
delivered them, they must appear worth your con-
sideration : if unwiser, what am I to think of
arguments, thus urged by reasoners of less ability
than my own, and yet such as you, so acute in
ratiocination and so superior to sophistry, can
not grapple with and dare not meet 1
" Tory. Any fair plain question, any intelligible
proposition ! But young birds take long flights,
and there is no coming up with them. If there
were nothing to fight for but creeds, everybody
would hold his private one quietly : but the
Catholic priest is soured at the sight of old
steeples above new sounding-boards, and stamps
for his own again.
" Whig. I would not have ventured on the
remark. Should it be just, people may perhaps,
and before twenty years are over our heads, hang
the cat on this side of the door and the dog on
the other, and end their difference with one
string.
" Tory. God forbid ! But better twenty years
hence than now. May I never live to see the
day when we concede an iota to the people of
Ireland ! We have given them too much already.
" Whig. Certainly; if you never intended to
give more. You showed your fears then, your
injustice now, your obstinacy and perverseness
ever. It is wiser .to give freely than by force, and
better to call forth their gratitude than their
strength.
" Tory. We must treat them like brawn : we
must keep them long over the fire, turn them out
slowly, and bind them tight, or we can never slice
them regularly and neatly.
" Whig. We may pay dear for the ordinary.
No nation is likely to rely on the probity of
France, after her ingratitude and falsehood to
every ally on the continent ; to Spain, to Italy,
to Poland. Nevertheless there is none that
would not receive from her all the assistance it
could, consistently with its own independence.
At present, for a time at least, she makes no trial
of strength by the tenacity of bondage, but would
rather win, apparently, the affections of her sub-
jects than control the consciences.
" Tory. She will soon see her error, if she goes
much farther, and, let us hope, correct it : other-
wise we must have another war against her in
support of our constitution. For such principles
spread like oil upon water, and are inflammable
as oil upon fire. France may discover to her
cost that we retain both our principles and our
courage.
" Whig. Our principles, I trust, are out of
danger ; and, in case of invasion, our courage too
would be sufficient. But as our wars have usually
been conducted, if every man in England had as
much courage and as much strength as Samson,
it would avail us little, unless we had in addition
the scrip of his countryman Rothschild. Men like
these support wars, and men like Grenville beget
them.
" Tory. Not a word against that immortal
man, if you please, sir ! This coat is his gift,
and his principles keep it upon my shoulders.
Your economists, the most radical of them, will
inform you that, not money, but the rapid circu-
lation of money, is wealth. Now what man ever
made it circulate so rapidly? All the steam-
engines that ever were brought into action would
hardly move such quantities of the precious metals
with such velocity. England is England yet.
" Whig. In maps and histories. After her strug-
gles and triumphs, she is like her soldiers in the
field of Waterloo, slumberous from exhaustion.
The battles of Marlborough were followed by far
different effects. The nation was only the more
alert for its exertions : generous sentiments pre-
vailed over sordid, public bver selfish : the Tory
showed that he was a gentleman, and the Whig
that he was ready to become one.
" Tory. Where are all these promises of his 1
" Whig. Partially, if but partially, fulfilled.
Come, we have been dragging our net long
enough over weeds and shallows : let us each pull
in our end of the cord, and see what we have
caught.
" Tory. Admirable proposal ! The debates of
parties always end in this manner, either by word •
or deed.
" Whig. My meaning is different.
" Tory. My version is best.
" Whig. Perhaps it may be : you have many
adherents. All things in this world have two
sides and various aspects. Sensible men, after
fair discussion, come into one another's terms at
last. Position gives colour to men as to cameleons.
Those on the treasury-bench are of a fine spring-
green ; those on the opposite are rather blue."
Thus terminated the discussion; and Van,
striking his thigh, cried out in his own language,
" Corbezzoli ! Sant- Antonio 1 I thought we had
rogues in Malta."
EIGHTH AUDIENCE.
His majesty could understand so much of the
foregoing debate (interrupting it often to ask me
for explanations) as made his royal countenance
gleam with smiles. When they fairly had sub-
sided, he said compassionately,
" I pity a people that has always a thief at each
pocket, and is doomed at once to hear their
blusterings and to suffer their spoliations. The
only respite is, when the left-hand thief is taking
the right-hand thief's place. Let me hear no
more about them ; but rather say something of
your descent on Frenchland."
Tsing-Ti. It was happy, most happy. No
sooner had I landed than I had the good fortune
to save the life of a fellow-creature. In the city
of Calais there are many women who, for various
offences, are condemned to carry on their heads
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
145
pyramidal towers of nearly the same height as
themselves. The French have invented, with
wonderful ingenuity, a process by which linen is
tempered to the hardness of steel. Of such linen
are these pyramidal towers constructed. Rushing
toward me, under the weight of one, the unfortu-
nate creature tripped. I sprang forward in time
to save her ; otherwise a swing-gate of the mate-
rial, which swing-gate is called a lappet, turning
under the chin as she stumbled, must inevitably
have cut the head off. My first impulse was to
run into a church and render thanks to the
Almighty for the interposition of his providence.
But the woman, in an ecstasy of joy, kissed me
again and again, twirled me round, and danced a
religious dance ; in which, to the best of my
ability, I joined. The people of this city are
devout. Innumerable parties were instantly
formed about us, and the rejoicings at so signal
a delivery were loud and universal. Indeed, now
I speak of loudness, I never was five minutes,
from sunrise until sunset, in any place so solitary,
that some loud voice, human or animal, did not
reach me : yet several times I was afar from cities,
and, as I thought, from habitations. When the
people sing, they sing to the utmost pitch of their
voices ; the children cry and scream and despair
as loudly ; the dogs themselves think growling
lost time, and unworthy of their courage, and
bark vociferously. I wondered to find the women
in Calais of darker complexion than ours in Can-
ton ; not only the condemned, and others exposed
to hard labour, but nearly all. The population
in general of this province is much uglier than
any I visited in my travels. The men forcing
their wives and daughters to live exposed to the
sun, and to work hard, may account for the
brownness and the wrinkles of the skin, but I
am unable to form any conjecture on what causes
the hideousness of their features. My servant
cried out at three who ogled him, " 0 my sweet
Marzia-Paolina ! are these spettacoli of the same
pasta that thouart?" and, crossing himself, spat
upon the ground. He then ran into every term
of admiration for the beauties of Italy. " There,"
said he, " they are what Domine-Dio made them ;
natural, liberal, sweet-tempered, and sincere. In
Italy they let you see what they are ; in England
they wish to make you fancy what they ought to
be. Capriciousness will not permit them to be
tender ; and tenderness will not permit ours to
be capricious : ours are mutable without im-
modesty, and love you again for letting them
go free."
" I would have driven him away with stripes,"
said the Emperor, " if he had given me such a
description of women ... so far off. We must
think no more about them, for we have not here
the castellated saint of Calais to preserve our
equipoise. I am anxious to find thee safe at the
capital of the country."
" Glad was I, 0 my Emperor ! to reach it.
Every bone in my body was in pain, as if dis-
located. No public road in England or China
is kept in such a wretched condition as the road
from Calais to Paris. The poorest states in
Europe would be ashamed of such a communi-
cation of village with village. I had been un-
dressed at Calais by the king's officers; I was
undressed again at the barrier of Paris,"
" I did not expect such an honour would be paid
to my subject," said his majesty the Emperor,
" as his undressing by the king's own officers."
" It was not intended," said I, " as any peculiar
mark of favour; for the same undressing was per-
formed by the same agents on the persons of
several men and women."
" How !" exclaimed his majesty.
" Under pretext," replied I, " of examining the
dresses, lest anything contraband should be con-
cealed within them, but in reality to extort money
from the men and blushes from the females. A
blush in Frenchland is a rarity, and must be
imported. I never saw one on any native face ;
but then I visited only the capital and some
smaller cities, and remained there only ten days.
Travellers are apt to form too hasty conclusions :
I would avoid it. Yet surely if blushes were either
inherent or transferable, some must have made their
appearance at the theatre. The brothel and the
slaughter-house seem to unite their forces to sup-
port the Parisian stage : Civilisation and humanity
stand aghast before it : Honour is travestied and
derided. Without any knowledge of the language,
I might have been mistaken in the dialogue, but
fortunately Van Ni procured the pieces in print,
and translated them into English. He himself
was greatly shocked at the scenes of selfishness
and dishonesty which signalised the principal
personages in the drama. These however were
applauded by both sexes. He sought relief in his
devotions, and went to perform them in the prin-
cipal church. No sooner had he begun his prayers,
than two young men, who had been walking up
and down the church, the one with a small monkey
on his shoulder, the other with a poodle-dog half-
sheared, stepped before him, and remarked in more
than a whisper, that, being an Italian, he must
certainly have assassinated somebody, otherwise
on the right side of forty he never could have
fallen into such imbecility and decrepitude. Van
Ni hearing the word assassin applied to him, cried,
' Stay there, Excellencies, and, by Cosimo and
Damiano ! when I have said another five ave-
marias, I will give you soap to lather your faces
with.' He hurried through them, and spinning
on his legs, cried, ' Now, Excellencies, you
porkers, this being holy church, come out, and
meet a gallant man, who will make tripe of you.'
" He came up close to them, so close that the
monkey sprang upon his head. Whether he
feared a bite or was startled at the suddenness of
the action, he struck the animal off; and the
poodle, not having formed any friendship with it,
seized it, shook it by the throat, and tossed it into
the side aperture of the confessional. Van Ni
was struck with horror, and exclaimed, " See now
what you have done ! 0 Santa Orsola ! Santa
140
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Apollonia ! I am disembowelled with desperation !
That scurvy animal will die in the confessional !
0 Giesu-Maria ! and the asinaccio of a father,
whoever he is, has taken away the key: Giesu-
Maria ! ' The two young men, who had been
storming and lamenting, now burst forth into
immoderate laughter. Finding that, in despite
of his displeasure, the young men continued in
their irrisory mood, Van Ni admonished them a
second time, and with greater seriousness.
"'Excellencies!' said he, 'how is this? Is it
convenient to turn into mockery a gallant man 1
and before the saints ? Holy Virgin ! if you make
any more of those verses at Gio-Van-Ni-Pa-Ti-Sta,
1 will show you what you shall see, and you will
favour me by letting me hear what you feel. What !
again ! Mind me ! I have killed rats as good
meat as your Excellencies, and where your Excel-
lencies (pest on such porkery !) dared not come . . .
on board a British ship, you cullions ! Remem-
ber now the words of Gio-Van-Ni-Pa-Ti-Sta, and
bear him respect another time. Cospetto ! Signori !
you go laughing on. If you will only step out of
this church, where I would not commit a spro-
posito, by the martyrs ! you shall laugh in laugh
minore, and shake and quaver to my instrument.
Eh ! Eh ! Eh ! but hear another word. I have
tossed over the fire better omelets than your Ex-
cellencies. And now you know who I am.'
" The young persons screamed aloud with merri-
ment, and left the church.
"Van returned to me with tears in his eyes, re-
lated the whole occurrence, and begged leave to
run into another church and make confession.
' Yonder two towers/ said he, * are solid as
Malta and Gozzo ; but Domine-Dio guard me from
ever walking under them or within reach of their
shadows ! That cursed monkey will have died in
the confessional ! No arm can reach down to him !
Santa Vergine ! A pretty story to be told up there
in Paradiso ! Was the fault mine ? Did I throw
him in ] I ask ye all, all : have ye the faces to say
it? O Misericordia ! . . I wish I were fairly out
of the country, after this ; particularly if, before I
go, I could meet those two gentlemen who caused
so much heart-breaking and scandal. San Cris-
tofano ! '
"He continued quite uneasy for several days: at
last he found a master, who was going into Italy ;
but he declared his resolution to continue with me
until my departure, although he should lose his
place. My regard for him would not allow this.
I rewarded his services more largely than he ex-
pected, and his tears fell together with his kisses
on my hand. I reminded him of his resolution to
make that stupendous fortune by his short-hand.
'Non pensi ! non perm, ! lasciamifare ! ' said he,
confident and contented.
" I was resolved to visit the temple so calamitous
to him. It was full of people ; but before the
altar I could discern two figures kneeling in rich
dresses. The one was a man with a face like a
horse's, the other was a woman with a face like a
wolf's. I thought they had come thither to offer
up prayers and supplications that their ancient
visages might be restored to them, with any other
feature of lost humanity which their dresses might
conceal. No such thing. They were the heirs to
the crown ; and the female was prostrate before
her favourite idol, to entreat she might have a
child. The idol, I was told, only promised her a
man, and did not perform even that. On the very
next day was the horrible rebellion which drove
the reigning dynasty out of Frenchland. No re-
past was brought me at the usual hour, nor indeed
had I any appetite for it. But toward the same
hour on the day following I grew hungry, and
was about to ring the bell for the waiter, when
Van entered the room and threw his arms about
my neck.
" ' Heavens be praised !' cried he.
"I was greatly moved at his affection, and assured
him I rejoiced in his safety as heartily as he re-
joiced in mine.
" ' Ke ! Ke !' said he, ' that is all well ; but what
do you think, Eccellenza Singa ? the monkey is
alive and safe ! The confessional pure and holy !
Bestiacda! how it moved my entrails.'
"Van had been present in the midst of the car-
nage, and heard a laugh close to him. Active as
he was in the combat, he turned his eye to that
quarter, and saw the two young men fighting most
valiantly. He bowed to them, and they cheered
him. The fire of their opponents now began to
slacken, and they came up to him and shook him
by the hand.
" ' Excellencies !' said he, ' I bear you no ill-will,
for a Christian has no malice in his heart, but you
and that monkey have put my soul in peril, and
it is right you should know it. The money that
ugly beast used to cost you in feeding him, ought
to go to the priest.'
" ' I could not find a more legitimate heir,' said
the owner ; ' but he may make his own will yet.'
" ' He lives then ! he lives !' cried Van Ni. 'The
saints be praised ! I shall not want your money
for masses, should the worst befall me.'
"Van Ni, knowing my state of inanition, ran to
the nearest cook's shop for a dish of meat, telling
me that his master had escaped from Paris, and
had left a note, the purport of which was,
that he would write to him again when he had
found a place of safety in Switzerland or Tyrol.
On this day I did not perceive any difference
in the cookery, and although I did perceive it
the day following, I said nothing. However at
last I remarked it : whereupon Van Ni said, ' Ec-
cellenza ! I quite forgot to tell you that he who
was pamphleteer and gazetteer, and critic and
cook, is now become, or about to become, prime
minister.' "
When I had recited so much of my narrative
to his majesty the Emperor, he laid his imperial
hand benignly on my shoulder, saying,
" 0 Tsing-Ti ! the occidental world orientalises
rapidly. Anything farther about this dexterous
lucky slave !"
" Little more," answered I. " On his eleva-
EMPEROR OF CHINA AND TSING-TI.
147
tion a Parisian poet wrote some complimentary
verses; but the ancient idiom of the French
language, which he chose, is beyond my compre-
hension : permit me therefore to lay before the
footstool of your Majesty the scroll containing
them.
Die sodes, animose, die Thiersi !
Tantus quum fueris domi forisque,
Ilia denique nations cretus
Quae jacentia, quse m inuta, verbis
(N6sti) magnificis solet vocare ; ",
Die, quum sis patre major in eulin.-i
(Nee pater tamen infimus coquorum)
Cur, tanto ingenio unice maligni,
Te Galli vocitent tui Coquinum f
Quare te minuant ita, O Tbiersi ?
His majesty the Emperor cast his eye on them
as they were lying on the carpet, and said gravely,
" The characters are European, but several of
the words I discover to bear a close affinity to the
Kobolsk Tartar."
His majesty is an etymologist.
" I have been thinking," said his majesty the
Emperor, " how that ancient French resembles
the loftier language under the rising sun. I re-
gret that thou hadst not leisure to acquire some
knowledge both of the ancient and the modern."
" I regret it also, my Emperor," said I ;
" not because the nations of Europe agree to
converse .in the modern as being central, but
because it contains our Fables, told in a manner
far more delightful than with us. No language
in Europe is said to be so scanty or so inhar-
monious : but, there being so little room in it,
you can not get out of your way. Precision is its
merit. As in England the belief of Christianity
is allowed to one sect and the profession to
another, so in Frenchland the written language
is one thing, another the spoken. There is how-
ever a faint similitude, which may be discovered
even by a learner. I took but seven lessons, yet
could perceive it when it was carefully pointed
out. My teacher was an impostor, who wished
to keep me long under his hands. Not contented
with asserting that the authors of Frenchland
are superior to the best of England, of Italy, of
Germany, of Spain, and that the language is softer
and more flexible than the Russian and the
Swedish, he attempted to persuade me that et,
est, ez, ex, oien, ais, oit, aix, and many more, had
all the same sound. This was evidently to save
his trouble, and to make me ridiculed. ."
" That can not be a language," said the Empe-
ror, " of which the sounds are reducible to no rules;
unless as we apply the term when we say the
language of birds and beasts. Letters and sylla-
bles were not made to be thrown away or spit out.
Every sign, every symbol, denotes one thing, and
only one. The same finger of a direction-post can
not show twenty roads. Having now the advantage
of thy servant again, I hope thou enjoyedst by his
means the opportunity of conversing with the
learned, and greatly more to thy comfort than
if thou hadst been under the guidance of a teacher
so mischievous and malicious."
" Yes," answered I, " the moment my fears
abated, I was conducted to visit a few of them,
carrying with me my letters of introduction. I
had none for scientific men, of whom there are
several in Paris of the first eminence. Works
of genius, apart from science, there are few, and,
by what I heard, of quite another order. There
are however two poets of some distinction : one
raises the enthusiasm of the vivacious and the
liberal by the energy of his songs, the other is
more in esteem with the devout, which compen-
sates for the want of vigour and originality. I
thought I could not conciliate the lover of liberty
more readily than by comparing its triumph at
the previous day with its suppression under the
iron hand of Napoleon. 'He abolished your
republic, he devised a catechism for your children,
by which unquestioning and blind obedience was
inculcated ; he forged the glorious arms of your
patriots and defenders into chains long and strong
enough to hold everlastingly in thraldom all their
future progeny.' . „ ' Sit down, sir,' said the poet,
' and hold your tongue. Don't repeat in this
house the eastern dream of an opium-eater. We
are warm with the unsetting glory of France.'
" Perceiving that I had given offence, and sus-
pecting that I had mistaken the house, I returned
home, and, when his speech was interpreted to
me, I looked in my dictionary for the word glory.
I found it often meant the glitter that painters
put over the heads of idols ; and this was truly
its most intelligible and its most common accep-
tation. Knowing to a certainty that the devouter
poet was attached to the king of the last week, I
condoled with him on the disaster of a monarch
so pious and unfortunate. He bowed. The only
comfort I could offer him was, that talents had
never lost their value in Frenchland, through all
the vicissitudes of thirty years ; and that scarcely
Prussia or Russia was more admirable for the ad-
vancement of literary men. He bowed, and
answered in an undertone of voice, ' I really do
not pretend to know anything of those people : I
only know that our houses are degraded at every
step that his majesty has been constrained to take.
All ranks and orders are confounded, and the
high sense of honour which was peculiar to
Frenchland, and which formerly made the meanest
Frenchman's heart leap impatiently out of his
bosom, lies prostrate and half-extinct.'
" I thought I had been listening to a Montmo-
rency (French for old noble) ; but on inquiry I
found I had not been guilty of that mistake.
" Out of respect to the ancient nobility, such at
least I presume is the motive, many young per-
sons in that country, whether of the commissariat
or the coach-office, are grave and taciturn when
privileges or privations are mentioned. They
draw themselves up into the stiffness and concen-
tration of mummies, and from their swathings
and cases stare us into stone. These however
are civil and distant ; and perhaps their distance
is the best part of their civility. Another set is
less tolerable : it assumes the name of Young
L2
148
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
France. Whatever can be conceived of insolence
and audacity is put into daily practice by these
troublesome and restless barbarians. I could not
refrain from making the remark to a gentleman
of philosophical cast, who came to visit me, add-
ing, that surely all the abuses of the extinct nobi-
lity, with all the absurdity and injustice of its
hereditariness, were less intolerable.
" ' The older creation of the nobility,' said he,
'like, the older of animals lately discovered by
the geologists, is more ill-constructed and ill-
favoured than the recenter; so that it pleased
God to put an end to it, and to try such other
forms as might be convenient to carry his designs
into execution. But either is, as you say, better
than this ditch-spawn.'
"Finding him a calm and reasonable man, I ven-
tured to congratulate him on the near prospect
of peace and tranquillity in his country, and on
the enthusiasm his new king excited. He bowed
to me, and answered,
" 'We have at last a chance of it. These forty
years past we have had our Goddesses of Liberty,
Goddesses of Reason, Goddesses of Theophilan-
thropy, Goddesses of War, screaming and pulling
caps in the Place de la Concorde. We have had
white feathers, red feathers, eagle's feathers, cock's
feathers, and at last no feathers at all. We have
gone kingless, breechless, lawless, and constitu-
tionless : we can not be well less at present. We
have gone booted into every drawing-room on the
continent, and our spurs have torn off every
flounce and train. Finally, we put them on our-
selves, and swaggered about for a while with
much theatrical effect. One unlucky day the
first actor, who never could walk straight nor see
three inches before him, caught his own long-
tailed robe with his spur, and being an impetuous
man, gave such a plunge that it fell off his shoul-
ders, and left the whole of him as bare as the
back of my hand. The inferior actors were scan-
dalised at the disgrace brought on the profession,
but no one had the dexterity or presence of mind
to pick up the long-tailed robe. At last it was
claimed by a fat man, who drew it across his
belly, and made the ends meet as well as he
could ; but much was wanting. When he died,
the priests seized upon it, and cut it up in pieces
to put under their wine-cups. But you were
speaking of our happy acquisition. Depend upon
it, the present king is no such a novice in the
trade as some about him would persuade him.
He is fitter to govern us than any man we have
seen for two centuries. He will never have a
minister who is not taken from the ranks ; never
a man of genius, never an honest man ; but se-
condary and plausible. The reason is, that
whenever they displease him, their removal will
only render him more popular. Added to which,
it is always gratifying to the populace, and by no
means offensive to the middle classes, to see low
people raised. In one word, Louis-Philippe is
the only person of ancient family in France who
may not justly be reproached with degeneracy.
I do assure you, he is as honest a man as his
father, and farthermore, has learned the secret
of keeping a wiser head on his shoulders. He
has the shrewdness of Richelieu, the suppleness
of Mazarin ; all their rapacity, all their pertina-
city; the arrogance of both, the vanity of neither.
Whatever there is about him tells for something ;
and we must pay its value to the uttermost. His
royal foot rests so assuredly on well-beaten and
levelled France, that the telescope with which he
looks leisurely on the world around him is not
shaken a hair's breadth. I will answer for him,
there is no potentate in Europe whom he has not
already convinced of his loyalty and good inten-
tions; and when you return to China you will
find that he has offered your Emperor to assist
him in putting down the refractory spirit of the
Tartars, being well in harmony with his brother
the Emperor of Russia, who is equally ready to
exert his kind offices to the same effect.' "
Emperor. It is unhandsome to sue for such
generosity until the time of need, or to take every
word to the letter.
Tsing-Ti. I was not aware of the existence
of such a sect as Young France, until I was
shoved off the pavement by a stripling, who
was troubled with a hairy mole on the nether
lip. Not being his father, the misfortune could
nohow be attributed to me. I had acquired
enough of the language to enable me to ask him
to what dignitary I had the honour of surrendering
my station. " I represent the Young France,"
cried he.
I bowed profoundly, and was constrained to
answer in English, for my French failed me at so
long a breath. " I shall be most happy in the
opportunity of congratulating the Young France
on her having learned by heart the first lesson of
politeness."
He raised his arm to strike me ; but a German,
of about the same age, who happened to be pass-
ing at the time, said to him calmly, " Remember,
sir, we have fired at the same academy, and my
ball usually went nearer the bull's eye."
Young France recovered at once his memory
and his temper. I returned home in perturba-
tion: for, 0 my Emperor! I have not yet outlived
all my passions. God has been pleased to grant
me a lively consciousness of my existence, by
implanting in me deeply the fear of losing it.
My servant was not alone when I entered. In
his walk homeward, hearing his native tongue in
the streets, he accosted the speakers : " Excellen-
cies !" cried he. " We are no excellencies ; we
are exiles," answered one of them. " The better !
the better !" said honest warm-hearted Van Ni.
" I dare invite you then to my house. Come
along : pardon me if I walk before you."
Hearing voices in my apartment, I halted
at the door, and caught what I was afterward
told were these words, which Van Ni wrote
down : " We have no right to complain of our for-
tune, young or old. Was not Tasso chained to his
bed-post ? Was not he half-starved in the house
PHILIP II. AND DONA JUANA COELHO.
149
of Cardinal Scipione 1 Was not he driven out of
it 1 Was not he defrauded of his own cottage ]
Would his best friend lend him the few crowns
which, he said, might save him from starvation
and distraction1? Princes, you see, did much
against him ; but not all. The manly breast can
bear any blow unless from the hand it cherished."
He who was listening now struck his forehead,
and .groaned aloud. "'Tis there!" cried he,
"and that blow reaches me in this chamber."
"I," said the exhorter and comforter, "I can
only pity you then. No balm grows in those
deserts ; no dew falls there ! Alas, my friend !
if only persecuted genius were pouring forth his
lamentation, I could soar above him and bring
him airs from heaven. I would point up to Dante
in the skies. Was not Dante an exile ] was not
Dante in danger of being burnt alive 1 was not
that sentence passed against him1? A republic
did it ; his own republic. Italy is beautiful yet,
and once was glorious ; but the nurse of genius
is older than she. Brought up and fostered in
the soft clime of Syracuse, she breathed her last
in the palm-groves of the Ptolemies."
I took advantage of this pause, and instantly
told my servant to be seated again and to call
his friends. " Eccellenza ! " said he, " how is it
possible 1 how is it possible I can be so wanting to
my duty 1 These gentlemen are my countrymen,
and in tribulation."
Meanwhile they were standing, and making
many apologies.
" Persons of your worth and misfortunes pain
me more than sufficiently," said I, " without the
trouble you are taking in these explanations."
"I invited them to my house, Eccellenza!"
said Van Ni. " Now, Signori ! do not servants
in Italy always use the expression, my house] We
should think it more presumptuous to say our
house; because it would seem to indicate that
we placed ourselves on an equality with our
masters." They acknowledged that the expres-
sion was universal in their country, and had only
to regret' that by its misrepresentation it had
caused me such an inconvenience.
I could not but compare their manners with
the French, very greatly to their advantage, and
fancied that even the English might learn some-
thing from them. Certainly the islanders are
thick-rinded and rather sour.
No persuasion of mine could induce the exiles
to remain. They fancied I was an Englishman
from the East Indies, and hoped I would exert
my influence for the delivery of their country.
" If my master were an Englishman, he would
feel it his duty," said Van Ni ; " for Englishmen
threw you, bound hand and foot, among the dogs."
His majesty the Emperor asked me whether
the Italians were not from that country which
pretended to the monopoly of religion. I was
not quite sure, and told him so.
" I have a suspicion," said his majesty, " that
the old sorcerer lay somewhere thereabout."
I believe he was near the mark ; but my me-
mory failed me. He then asked about the causes
of the insurrection and revolution in Frenchland.
My reply was, that the king had been persuaded
by his courtiers to take away some things which
he had given ; and his people said that he had
given them what was theirs before ; that it was
an indignity to offer it at first; that it was a
defiance to seize it again; and that he had no
right to stand above the laws.
" It is the glory of princes," said his majesty the
Emperor, " to stand the foremost under them."
PHILIP II. AND DONA JUANA COELHO.
Juana. Condescend, 0 my king ! to hear me.
Philip. By what means, Dona Juana, have you
obtained this admission to my presence ]
Juana. Sire, by right of my sex and my mis-
fortunes.
Philip. And what misfortune of yours, pray,
madam, is it in my power to remove or alleviate ]
Juana. All mine, 0 most puissant monarch !
and nearly all the heaviest that exist on earth ;
the providence of God having placed the larger
part of the known world under the sceptre or the
influence of your majesty.
Philip. And the more suffering part, no doubt.
God, and his mother, and the blessed saints, have
exalted me to my station, that I may bring chas-
tisement on the perverse and rebellious, and ward
it off from the dutiful and obedient. I have now
little leisure : to the point then.
Juana. 0 sire ! my husband has offended : I
know not how.
Philip. Nor should you. His offence is against
the state.
Juana. He has been secretary many years to
your majesty; and in times and circumstances
the most trying, he has ever been a faithful vassal.
The riches he possesses flowed in great measure
from royal bounty ; none from treason, none from
peculation, none from abuse of power.
Philip. Know you his steps, his thoughts ?
Juana. I have always shared them.
Philip. Always 1 no madam. Let me tell you,
he aspires too high.
Juana. 0 sire ! that is a generous fault, the
fault of every one who loves glory, of every true
Spaniard, and, above all, of Antonio Perez.
Philip. When did he first begin to look so
loftily 1
Juana. When first he aspired to serve your
majesty.
Philip. Has he no gratitude, no sense of duty,
no feeling of nothingness, as becomes a subject?
I made him what he is. Tell me no more I en-
riched him ; that is little : beside, I know not
that I did it ; and I could only wish to have done
150
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
it, that I might undo it. I can not remember that
he has had anything from me beyond the salary
of his offices ; but those who accept my money for
any services would just as readily accept it from
my enemies. They care no more from whose hand
it comes, than whose effigy it bears.
Juana. He had enough and abundantly from
his offices ; nor indeed was he without a patri-
mony, nor I without a dower.
Philip. He should have minded his business ;
he should have taken example from Scovedo.
Juana. Sire, it becomes not me to express
astonishment, or even to feel it, in the august
presence.
Philip. Something very like astonishment pro-
duces good effects occasionally. Madam, would
you wish further audience 1
Juana. Too graciously vouchsafed me ! Sire !
Antonio Perez, my husband, is accused of being
privy to the assassination . . .
Philip. Unmannerly, ill-featured expression !
Juana. Of his colleague Scovedo. I come to
intreat, on the part of his family and of mine, that
he may be brought to trial speedily and openly.
If your majesty will indulge us with this further
act of royal clemency and favour, I engage that a
crime so detestable, a crime from which the nature
of Don Antonio is abhorrent, shall be removed
for ever from our house.
Philip. At my good pleasure I may confront
him with his accomplices.
Juana. Alas ! alas ! who are the guilty ?
Philip. Who! who? (Aside.) Suspicious, auda-
cious woman ! Some have suspected those about
the Princess of Evoli, and have watched her.
Juana. Kind soul ! may never harm befall her
from their wiles! Beauty, that should fill the
world with light and happiness, brings only evil
spirits into it, and is blighted by malignity and
grief. Who upon earth could see the Princess of
Evoli, and not be softened ?
Philip. The injured ; the insulted.
Juana. Alas! even she then serves the pur-
poses of the envious. From the plant that gives
honey to the bee, the spider and waep draw
poison.
Philip. You know the lady very intimately.
Juana. She honours me with her notice.
Philip. She honours your husband too with
her notice, does she not?
Juana. Most highly.
Philip. Then, madam, by the saints, he dies !
Juana. 0 sire ! recall the threat !
Philip. We never threaten ; we sentence.
Juana. He is innocent ! By the beloved of
God ! by the Fountain of Truth and Purity ! he is
innocent !
Philip. And she too ! and she too ! marvel of
virtue ! A brazen breast would split with laughter.
She ! Evoli ! Evoli !
Juana. Is as innocent as he. 0 sire ! this
beautiful and gentle lady . . .
Philip. Ay, ay, very gentle ; she brings men's
heads to the scaffold if they have ever lain in
her lap.
Juana. The unsuspicious, generous princess . .
Philip. Killed the poor fool Scovedo.
Juana. Pardon me, sire ! she hardly knew him,
and bore no ill-will toward him.
Philip. Nor toward Perez ; at worst, not very
spiteful. Dead secretaries and dead rats should
drive off living ones. He was useful to me, I
mean Scovedo, even when alive ; I can not afford
one like him every day. Do you hear, Dona
Juana?
Juana. Perfectly, sire.
Philip. And understand ?
Juana. As well as I dare.
Philip. Could you live in privacy, with your
accomplishments and your beauty ?
Juana. Alas ! I wish it had always been my lot !
Philip. I may promote you to 'that enviable
situation.
Juana. My husband, now he has lost the coun-
tenance of your majesty, would retreat with me
from the world.
Philip. It is not in open places that serpents
hatch their eggs. God protects me : I must pro-
tect the state : Perez is unworthy of you.
Juana. Sire, if I thought him so, I would try
to make him worthy.
Philip. There are offences that women can not
pardon.
Juana. Then they should retire, and learn how.
Philip. That insolent and ungrateful man
wrongs and despises you. He too, among the
rest, presumes to love the Princess of Evoli.
Juana. Who does not ?
Philip. Who shall dare? Perez, I tell you
again, has declared his audacious passion to her !
Juana. Then God forgive him his impetuosity
and sinfulness ! If she rejected him, he is punished.
Philip. If! . . if! Do you pretend, do you
imagine, she would listen to one like him ? Do you
reason about it ; do you calculate on it ; do you
sigh and weep at it, as if in your spite and stupi-
dity you could believe it ! By the blood of the
martyrs, I will drain the last drop of that traitor's !
Off! unclasp my knee ! I can. not wait for the
words in your throat !
STEELE AND ADDISON.
151
STEELE AND ADDISON.
Addison. Dick! I am come to remonstrate
with you on those unlucky habits which have
been so detrimental to your health and fortune.
Stede. Many thanks, Mr. Addison ; but really
my fortune is not much improved by your arrest-
ing me for the hundred pounds; nor is my health,
if spirits are an indication of it, on seeing my
furniture sold by auction to raise the money.
Addison. Pooh, pooh, Dick ! what furniture
had you about the house ?
Steele. At least I had the arm-chair, of which
you never before had dispossessed me longer than
the evening ; and happy should I have been to
enjoy your company in it again and again, if you
had left it me.
Addison. We will contrive to hire another.
I do assure you, my dear Dick, I have really felt
for you.
Stede. I only wish, my kind friend, you had
not put out your feelers quite so far, nor exactly
in this direction; and that my poor wife had
received an hour's notice ; she might have carried
a few trinkets to some neighbour. She wanted
her salts ; and the bailiff thanked her for the bot-
tle that contained them, telling her the gold head
of it was worth pretty nearly half-a-guinea.
Addison. Lady Steele then wanted her smell-
ing-bottle 1 Dear me ! the weather, I apprehend,
is about to change. Have you any symptoms of
your old gout ?
Stede. My health has been long on the decline,
you know.
Addison. Too well I know it, my dear friend,
and I hinted it as delicately as I could. Nothing
on earth beside this consideration should have
induced me to pursue a measure in appearance so
unfriendly. You must grow more temperate . .
you really must.
Stede. Mr. Addison, you did not speak so
gravely and so firmly when we used to meet at
Will's. You always drank as much as I did, and
often invited and pressed me to continue, when I
was weary, sleepy, and sick.
Addison. You thought so, because you were
drunk. Indeed, at my own house I have some-
times asked you to take another glass, in compli-
ance with the rules of society and hospitality.
Stede. Once, it is true, you did it at your house;
the only time I ever had an invitation to dine in
it. The Countess was never fond of the wit that
smells of wine : her husband could once endure it.
Addison. We could talk more freely, you know,
at the tavern. There we have dined together
some hundred times.
Ste,de. Most days, for many years.
Addison. Ah Dick ! Since we first met there,
several of our friends are gone off the stage.
Steele. And some are still acting.
Addison. Forbear, my dear friend, to joke and
smile at infirmities or vices. Many have departed
from us, in consequence, I apprehend, of indul-
ging in the bottle ! When passions are excited,
when reason is disturbed, when reputation is sul-
lied, when fortune is squandered, and when health
is lost by it, a retreat is sounded in vain. Some
can not hear it, others will not profit by it.
Steele. I must do you the justice to declare,
that I never saw any other effect of hard drink-
ing upon you, than to make you more circumspect
and silent.
Addison. If ever I urged you, in the warmth
of my heart, to transgress the bounds of sobriety,
I entreat you, as a Christian, to forgive me.
Stede. Most willingly, most cordially.
Addison. I feel confident that you will think
of me, speak of me, and write of me, as you have
ever done, without a diminution of esteem. We
are feeble creatures ; we want one another's aid
and assistance ; a want ordained by Providence,
to show us at once our insufficiency and our
strength. We must not abandon our friends
from slight motives, nor let our passions be our
interpreters in their own cause. Consistency is
not more requisite to the sound Christian, than to
the accomplished politician.
Steele. I am inconsistent in my resolutions of
improvement . . no man ever was more so ; but
my attachments have a nerve in them neither to
be deadened by ill treatment nor loosened by
indulgence. A man grievously wounded, knows
by the acuteness of the pain that a spirit of vita-
lity is yet in him. I know that I retain my
friendship for you by what you have made me
suffer.
Addison. Entirely for your own good, I do pro-
test, if you could see it.
Stede. Alas ! all our sufferings are so ; the
only mischief is, that we have no organs for
perceiving it.
Addison. You reason well, my worthy sir; and
relying on your kindness in my favour (for every
man has enemies, and those mostly who serve
their friends best) I say, Dick, on these considera-
tions, since you never broke your word with me,
and since I am certain you would be sorry it were
known that only four-score pounds' worth could
be found in the house, I renounce for the present
the twenty yet wanting. Do not beat about for
an answer ; say not one word : farewell.
Steele. Ah ! could not that cold heart,* often
and long as I reposed on it, bring me to my
senses ! I have indeed been drunken ; but it is
hard to awaken in such heaviness as this of mine
is. I shared his poverty with him ; I never aimed
to share his prosperity. Well, well ; I can not
* Doubts are now entertained whether the character of
Addison is fairly represented by Pope and Johnson. It is
better to make this statement than to omit a Conversation
in this edition which had appeared elsewhere.
152
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
break old habits. I love my glass ; I love Addi-
son. Each will partake in killing me. Why
can not I see him again in the arm-chair, his right
hand upon his heart under the fawn-coloured
waistcoat, his brow erect and clear as his
conscience; his wig even and composed as his
temper, with rneasurely curls and antithetical
top-knots, like his style; the calmest poet, the
most quiet patriot ; dear Addison ! drunk, delibe-
rate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth
and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and
only the worse in one ruffle for the wine.
DANTE AND BEATRICE.
Dante. When you saw me profoundly pierced
with love, and reddening and trembling, did it
become you, did it become you, you whom I
have always called the most gentle Bice, to join in
the heartless laughter of those girls around you ?
Answer me. Reply unhesitatingly. Requires it
so long a space for dissimulation and duplicity 1
Pardon ! pardon ! pardon ! My senses have left
me : my heart being gone, they follow.
Beatrice. Childish man ! pursuing the impos-
sible.
Dante. And was it this you laughed at ? We
can not touch the hem of God's garment ; yet we
fall at his feet and weep.
Beatrice. But weep not, gentle Dante ! fall not
before the weakest of his creatures, willing to
comfort, unable to relieve you. Consider a little. Is
laughter at all times the signal or the precursor
of derision ? I smiled, let me avow it, from the
pride I felt in your preference of me ; and if I
laughed, it was to conceal my sentiments. Did
you never cover sweet fruit with worthless leaves?
Come, do not drop again so soon so faint a smile.
I will not have you grave, nor very serious. I pity
you ; I must not love you : if I might, I would.
Dante. Yet how much love is due to me, 0
Bice, who have loved you, as you well remember,
even from your tenth year. But it is reported,
and your words confirm it, that you are going to
be married.
Beatrice. If so, and if I could have laughed at
that, and if my laughter could have estranged you
from me, would you blame me ?
Dante. Tell me the truth.
Beatrice. The report is general.
Dante. The truth ! the truth ! Tell me, Bice.
Beatrice. Marriages, it is said, are made in
heaven.
Dante. Is heaven then under the paternal
roof?
Beatrice. It has been to me hitherto.
Dante. And now you seek it elsewhere.
Beatrice, I seek it not. The wiser choose for
the weaker. Nay, do not sigh so. What would
you have, my grave pensive Dante ? What can
I do?
Dante. Love me.
Beatrice. I always did.
Dante. Love me 1 0 .bliss of heaven !
Beatrice. No, no, no ! Forbear ! Men's kisses
are always mischievous and hurtful ; everybody
says it. If you truly loved me, you would never
think of doing so.
Dante. Nor even this !
Beatrice. You forget that you are no longer a
boy ; and that it is not thought proper at your
time of life to continue the arm at all about the
waist. Beside, I think you would better not put
your head against my bosom ; it beats too much
to be pleasant to you. Why do you wish it ? why
fancy it can do you any good ? It grows no cooler :
it seems to grow even hotter. 0 ! how it burns !
Go, go ; it hurts me too : it struggles, it aches, it
sobs. Thank you, my gentle friend, for removing
your brow away; your hair is very thick and long;
and it began to heat me more than you can
imagine. While it was there, I could not see
your face so well, nor talk with you so quietly.
Dante. 0 ! when shall we talk quietly in
future?
Beatrice. When I am married. I shall often
come to visit my father. He has always been
solitary since my mother's death, which happened
in my infancy, long before you knew me. •
Dante. How can he endure the solitude of his
house when you have left it ?
Beatrice. The very question I asked him.
Dante. You did not then wish to . . to . . go
away?
Beatrice. Ah no ! It is sad to be an outcast at
fifteen.
Dante. An outcast ?
Beatrice. Forced to leave a home.
Dante. For another ?
Beatrice. Childhood can never have a second.
Dante. But childhood is now over.
Beatrice. I wonder who was so malicious as to
tell my father that ? He wanted me to be married
a whole year ago.
Dante. And, Bice, you hesitated ?
Beatrice. No ; I only wept. He is a dear good
father. I never disobeyed him but in those wicked
tears ; and they ran the faster the more he_repre-
hended them.
Dante. Say, who is the happy youth ?
Beatrice. I know not who ought to be happy if
you are not.
Dante. I?
Beatrice. Surely you deserve all happiness.
Dante. Happiness ! any happiness is denied
me. Ah, hours of childhood ! bright hours ! what
fragrant blossoms ye unfold ! what bitter fruits to
ripen !
Beatrice. Now can not you continue to sit
under that old fig-tree at the corner of the garden1?
It is always delightful to me to think of it.
Dante. Again you smile : I wish I could smile
too.
DANTE AND BEATRICE.
153
Beatrice. You were usually more grave than I,
although very often, two years ago, you told me
I was the graver. Perhaps I was then indeed ;
and perhaps I ought to be now : but really I must
smile at the recollection, and make you smile
with me.
Dante. Eecollection of what in particular ]
Beatrice. Of your ignorance that a fig-tree is
the brittlest of trees, especially when it is in leaf;
and moreover of your tumble, when your head was
just above the wall, and your hand (with the
verses in it) on the very coping-stone. Nobody
suspected that I went every day to the bottom of
our garden, to hear you repeat your poetry on the
other side ; nobody but yourself : you soon found
me out. But on that occasion I thought you
might have been hurt ; and I clambered up our
high peach-tree in the grass-plot nearest the place;
and thence I saw Messer Dante, with his white
sleeve reddened by the fig-juice, and the seeds
sticking to it pertinaciously, and Messer blushing,
and trying, to conceal his calamity, and still hold-
ing the verses. They were all about me.
Dante. Never shall any verse of mine be uttered
from my lips, or from the lips of others, without
the memorial of Bice.
Beatrice. Sweet Dante ! in the purity of your
soul shall Bice live ; as (we are told by the goat-
herds and foresters) poor creatures have been
found preserved in the serene and lofty regions of
the Alps, many years after the breath of life had
left them. Already you rival Guido Cavalcante
and Cino da Pistoja : you must attempt, nor per-
haps shall it be vainly, to surpass them in
celebrity.
Dante. If ever I am above them . . and I must
be . . I know already what angel's hand will have
helped me up the ladder. Beatrice, I vow to
heaven, shall stand higher than Selvaggia, high
and glorious and immortal as that name will be.
You have given me joy and sorrow ; for the worst
of these (I will not say the least) I will confer
on you all the generations of our Italy, all the
ages of our world. But first (alas, from me you
must not have it !) may happiness, long happiness,
attend you !
Beatrice. Ah ! those words rend your bosom !
why should they ]
Dante. I could go away contented, or almost
contented, were I sure of it. Hope is nearly as
strong as despair, and greatly more pertinacious
and enduring. You have made me see clearly
that you never can be mine in this world : but at
the same time, 0 Beatrice, you have made me see
quite as clearly that you may and must be mine
in another. I am older than you : precedency is
given to age, and not to worthiness, in our way to
heaven. I will watch over you ; I will pray for
you when I am nearer to God, and purified from
the stains of earth and mortality. He will per-
mit me to behold you, lovely as when I left • you.
Angels in vain should call me onward.
Beatrice. Hush, sweetest Dante ! hush !
Dante. It is there, where I shall have caught
the first glimpse of you again, that I wish all my
portion of Paradise to be assigned me ; and there,
if far below you, yet within the sight of you, to
establish my perdurable abode.
Beatrice. Is this piety] Is this wisdom] 0
Dante ! And may not I be called away first?
Dante. Alas ! alas ! how many small feet have
swept off the early dew of life, leaving the path
black behind them ! But to think that you should
go before me ! It almost sends me forward on my
way, to receive and welcome you. If indeed, 0
Beatrice, such should be God's immutable will,
sometimes look down on me when the song to
Him is suspended. Oh ! look often on me with
prayer and pity ; for there all prayers are accepted,
and all pity is devoid of pain. Why are you
silent ]
Beatrice. It is very sinful not to love all crea-
tures in the world. But is it true, 0 Dante ! that
we always love those the most who make us the
most unhappy ]
Dante. The remark, I fear, is just.
Beatrice. Then, unless the Virgin be pleased to
change my inclinations, I shall begin at last to
love my betrothed ; for already the very idea of
him renders me sad, wearisome, and comfortless.
Yesterday he sent me a bunch of violets. When
I took them up, delighted as I felt at that
sweetest of odours, which you and I once inhaled
together . .
Dante. And only once.
Beatrice. You know why. Be quiet now, and
hear me. I dropped the posy; for around it,
hidden by various kinds of foliage, was twined the
bridal necklace of pearls. 0 Dante ! how worth-
less are the finest of them (and there are many
fine ones) in comparison with those little pebbles,
some of which (for perhaps I may nothave gathered
up all) may be still lying under . the peach-tree,
and some (do I blush to say it ?) under the fig.
Tell me not who threw these, nor for what. But
you know you were always thoughtful, and some-
times reading, sometimes writing, and sometimes
forgetting me, while I waited to see the crimson
cap, and the two bay-leaves I fastened in it, rise
above the garden-wall. How silently you are lis-
tening, if you do listen !
Dante. Oh ! could my thoughts incessantly and
eternally dwell among these recollections, undis-
turbed by any other voice . . undistracted by any
other presence ! Soon must they abide with me
alone, and be repeated by none but me . . repeated
in the accents of anguish and despair ! Why
could you not have held in the sad home of your
heart that necklace and those violets ]
Beatrice. My Dante ! we must all obey . . I
my father, you your God. He will never abandon
you.
Dante. I have ever sung, and will for ever sing,
the most glorious of His works : and yet, 0 Bice !
He abandons me, He casts me off; and He uses
your hand for this infliction.
Beatrice. Men travel far and wide, and see many
on whom to fix or transfer their affections ; but
154
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
we maidens have neither the power nor the will.
Casting our eyes on the ground, we walk along the
straight and narrow road prescribed for us ; and,
doing thus, we avoid in great measure the thorns
and entanglement^ of life. We know we are per-
forming our duty ; and the fruit of this knowledge
is contentment. Season after season, day after day,
you have made me serious, pensive, meditative,
and almost wise. Being so little a girl, I was
proud that you, so much taller, should lean on my
shoulder to overlook my work. And greatly more
proud was I when in time you taught me several
Latin words, and then whole sentences, both in
prose and verse, pasting a strip of paper over, or
obscuring with impenetrable ink, those passages
in the poets which were beyond my comprehen-
sion, and might perplex me. But proudest of all
was I when you began to reason with me. What
will now be my pride if you are convinced by the
first arguments I ever have opposed to you; or
if you only take them up and try if they are
applicable. Certainly do I know (indeed, indeed
I do) that even the patience to consider them will
make you happier. Will it not then make me
so ? I entertain no other wish. Is not this true
love)
Dante. Ah yes ! the truest, the purest, the least
perishable, but not the sweetest. Here are the rue
and hyssop ; but where the rose !
Beatrice. Wicked must be whatever torments
you : and will you let love do it? Love is the
gentlest and kindest breath of God. Are you
willing that the Tempter should intercept it, and
respire it polluted into your ear 1 Do not make
me hesitate to pray to the Virgin for you, nor
tremble lest she look down on you with a reproach-
ful pity. To her alone, O Dante ! dare I confide
all my thoughts. Lessen not my confidence in
my only refuge.
Dante. God annihilate a power so criminal !
0, could my love flow into your breast with hers!
It should flow with equal purity.
Beatrice. You have stored my little mind with
many thoughts ; dear because they are yours, and
because they are virtuous. May I not, 0 my
Dante ! bring some of them back again to your
bosom ; as the Contadina lets down the string
from the cottage-beam in winter, and culls a few
bunches of the soundest for the master of the
vineyard? You have not given me glory that
the world should shudder at its eclipse. To prove
that I am worthy of the smallest part of it, I must
obey God; and, under God, my father. Surely
the voice of Heaven comes to us audibly from a
parent's lips. You will be great, and, what is above
all greatness, good.
Dante. Rightly and wisely, my sweet Beatrice,
have you spoken in this estimate. Greatness is
to goodness what gravel is to porphyry : the one
is a moveable accumulation, swept along the sur-
face of the earth ; the other stands fixt and solid
and alone, above the violence of war and of the tem-
pest; above all that is residuous of a wasted
world. Little men build up great ones ; but the
snow colossus soon melts : the good stand under
the eye of God ; and therefore stand.
Beatrice. Now you are calm and reasonable,
listen to Bice. You must marry.
Dante. Marry?
Beatrice. Unless you do, how can we meet again
unreservedly? Worse, worse than ever ! lean
not bear to see those large heavy tears following
one another, heavy and slow as nuns at the funeral
of a sister. Come, I will kiss off one, if you will
promise me faithfully to shed no more. Be tran-
quil, be tranquil ; only hear reason. There are
many who know you ; and all who know you must
love you. Don't you hear me ? Why turn aside ?
and why go farther off? I will have that hand.
It twists about as if it hated its confinement.
Perverse and peevish creature ! you have no more
reason to be sorry than I have ; and you have
many to the contrary which I have not. Being
a man, you are at liberty to admire a variety, and
to make a choice. Is that no comfort to you ?
Dante.
Bid this bosom cease to grieve ?
Bid these eyes fresh objects see ?
Where 's the comfort to believe
None might once have rivall'd me ?
What ! my freedom to receive ?
Broken hearts, are they the free ?
For another can I live
When I may not live for thee ?
Beatrice. I will never be fond of you again if
you are so violent. We have been together too long,
and we may be noticed.
Dante. Is this our last meeting? If it is . . and
that it is, my heart has told me . . you will not,
surely you will not refuse . .
Beatrice. Dante ! Dante ! they make the heart
sad after : do not wish it. But prayers . . 0, how
much better are they ! how much quieter and
lighter they render it ! They carry it up to heaven
with them ; and those we love are left behind no
longer.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
SECOND CONVERSATION.
Southey. As we are walking on, and before we
open our Milton again, we may digress a little in
the direction of those poets who have risen up
from under him, and of several who seem to have
never had him in sight.
Landor. We will, if you please : and I hope
you may not find me impatient to attain the
object of our walk. However, let me confess to
you, at starting, that I disapprove of models, even
of the most excellent. Faults may be avoided,
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
155
especially if they are pointed out to the inexpe-
rienced in such bright examples as Milton : and
teachers in schools and colleges would do well to
bring them forward, instead of inculcating an indis-
criminate admiration. But every man's mind, if
there is enough of it, has its peculiar bent. Milton
may be imitated, and has been, where he is stiff,
where he is inverted, where he is pedantic; and
probably those men we take for mockers were
unconscious of their mockery. But who can teach,
or who is to be taught, his richness, or his tender-
ness, or his strength ? The closer an inferior poet
conies to a great model, the more disposed am I
to sweep him out of my way.
Southey. Yet you repeat with enthusiasm the
Latin poetry of Robert Smith, an imitator of
Lucretius.
Landor. I do ; for Lucretius himself has no-
where written such a continuity of admirable
poetry. He is the only modern Latin poet who
has composed three sentences together worth
reading ; and indeed, since Ovid, no ancient has
done it. I ought to bear great ill-will toward him;
for he. drove me from the path of poetry I had
chosen, and I crept into a lower. What a wonderful
thing it is, that the most exuberant and bril-
liant wit, and the purest poetry in the course
of eighteen centuries, should have flowed from two
brothers !
Southey. We must see through many ages
before we see through our own distinctly-
Few among the best judges, and even among
those who desired to judge dispassionately and
impartially, have beheld their contemporaries
in those proportions in which they appeared a
century later. The ancients have greatly the
advantage over us. Scarcely can any man believe
that one whom he has seen in coat and cravat,
can possibly be so great as one who wore a chlamys
and a toga. Those alone look gigantic whom
Time " multo acre sepsit," or whom childish
minds, for the amusement of other minds more
childish, have lifted upon stilts. Nothing is
thought so rash as to mention a modern with an
ancient: but when both are ancient, the last-
comer often stands first. The present form one
cluster, the past another. We are petulant if
some of the existing have pushed by too near
us : but we walk up composedly to the past, with
all our prejudices behind us. We compare them
leisurely one with another, and feel a pleasure in
contributing to render them a plenary, however a
tardy, justice. In the fervour of our zeal we
often exceed it ; which we never are found doing
with our contemporaries, unless in malice to one
better than the rest. Some of our popular and
most celebrated authors are employed by the
booksellers to cry up the wares on hand or forth-
coming, partly for money and partly for payment
in kind. Without such management the best
literary production is liable to moulder on the
shelf.
Landor. A wealthy man builds an ample man-
sion, well proportioned in all its parts, well stored
with the noblest models of antiquity ; extensive
vales and downs and forests stretch away from it
in every direction ; but the stranger must of
necessity pass it by, unless a dependent is sta-
tioned at a convenient lodge to admit and show
him in. Such, you have given me to understand,
is become the state of our literature. The bustlers
who rise into notice by playing at leap-frog over
one another's shoulders, will disappear when the
game is over ; and no game is shorter. But was
not Milton himself kept beyond the paling?
Nevertheless, how many toupees and roquelaures,
and other odd things with odd names, have
fluttered among the jays in the cherry orchard,
while we tremble to touch with the finger's end
his grave close-buttoned gabardine ! He was
called strange and singular long before he was
acknowledged to be great : so, be sure, was Shak-
speare ; so, be sure, was Bacon ; and so were all
the rest, in the order of descent. You are too
generous to regret that your liberal praise of
Wordsworth was seized upon with avidity by his
admirers, not only to win others to their party,
but also to depress your merits. Nor will you
triumph over their folly in confounding what is
pitiful with what is admirable in him ; rather
will you smile, and, without a suspicion of malice,
find the cleverest of these good people standing
on his low joint-stool with a slender piece of waver-
ing tape in his hand, measuring him with Milton
back to back. There is as much difference between
them as there is between a celandine and an
ilex. The one lies at full length and full breadth
along the ground; the other rises up, stiff,
strong, lofty, beautiful in the play of its slenderer
branches, overshadowing with the infinitude
of its grandeur.
Southey. You will be called to account as
resentful ; and not for yourself, which you never
have been thought, but for another: a graver
fault in the estimation of most.
Landor. 1 do not remember that resentment
has ever made me commit an injustice. Instead
of acrimony, it usually takes the form of ridicule ;
and the sun absorbs whatever is noxious in the
vapour.
Southey. You think me mild and patient:
yet I have found it difficult to disengage from
my teeth the clammy and bitter heaviness of
some rotten nuts with which my Edinburgh
hosts have regaled me; and you little know
how tiresome it is to wheeze over the chaff
and thistle-beards in the chinky manger of
Hallam.
Landor. We are excellent Protestants in assert-
ing the liberty of private judgment on all the
mysteries of poetry, denying the exercise of a
decretal to any one man, however intelligent and
enlightened, but assuming it for a little party
of our own, with self in the chair. A journalist
who can trip up a slippery minister, fancies him-
self able to pull down the loftiest poet or the
soundest critic. It is amusing to see the labours
of Lilliput.
156
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
SoutJiey. I have tasted the contents of every
bin, down to the ginger-beer of Brougham. The
balance of criticism is not yet fixed to any beam
in the public warehouses that offer it, but is held
unevenly by intemperate hands, and is swayed
about by every puff of wind.
Landor. Authors should never be seen by
authors, and little by other people. The Dalai
Lama is a God to the imagination, a child to the
sight : and a poet is much the same ; only that
the child excites no vehemence, while the poet
is staked and faggoted by his surrounding bre-
thren : all from pure love, however ; partly for
himself, partly for truth. When it was a matter
of wonder how Keats, who was ignorant of
Greek, could have written his Hyperion, Shelley,
whom envy never touched, gave as a reason, " be-
cause he was a Greek." Wordsworth, being asked
his opinion of the same poem, called it scoffingly,
" a pretty piece of paganism." Yet he himself,
in the best verses he ever wrote, and beautiful
ones they are, reverts to the powerful influence of
the pagan creed.
Southey. How many who write fiercely or con-
temptuously against us, not knowing us at all,
would, if some accident or whim had never pushed
them in the wrong direction, write with as much
satisfaction to themselves a sonnet full of tears
and tenderness on our death ! In the long voyage
we both of us may soon expect to make, the little
shell-fish will stick to our keels, and retard us
one knot in the thousand. But while we are
here, let us step aside, and stand close by the walls
of the old houses, making room for the swell-mob
of authors to pass by, with their puflmess of
phraseology, their german silver ornaments, their
bossy and ill-soldered sentences, their little and
light parlour-faggots of trim philosophy, and their
topheavy baskets of false language, false criticism,
and false morals.
Landor. Our sinews have been scarred and
hardened with the red-hot implements of Byron ;
and by way of refreshment we are now standing
up to the middle in the marsh. We are told
that the highly-seasoned is unwholesome; and we
have taken in good earnest to clammy rye-bread,
boiled turnips, and scrag of mutton. If there is
nobody who now can guide us through the glades
in the Forest of Arden, let us hail the first
who will conduct us safely to the gates of Lud-
low Castle. But we have other reasons left
on hand. For going through the Paradise
Regained how many days' indulgence will you
grant me ?
Southey. There are some beautiful passages, as
you know, although not numerous. As the poem
is much shorter than the other, I will spare you
the annoyance of uncovering its nakedness. I
remember to have heard you say that your ear
would be better pleased, and your understanding
equally, if there had been a pause at the close of
the fourth verse.
Landor. True ; the three following are useless
I would also make another defalca-
tion, of the five after " else mute." If the deeds
he relates are
Above heroic, though in tecret done,
it was unnecessary to say that they are
Worthy to have not remained so long unsung.
Southey. Satan, in his speech, seems to have
caught hoarseness and rheumatism since we met
him last. What a verse is
This is my son beloved, in him, am pleased.
It would not have injured it to have made it
English, by writing " in him I am pleased." It
would only have continued a sadly dull one.
Of many a pleasant realm . . and province wide,
The Holy Ghost, and the power of the Highest. V . 1 1 8.
But this is hardly more prosaic than " 0 what
a multitude of thoughts, at once awakened in
me, swarm, while I consider what from within I
feel myself, and hear," &c. But the passage has
reference to the poet, and soon becomes very
interesting on that account.
But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles.
It is difficult so to modulate our English verse as
to render this endurable to the ear. The first
line in the Gerusalemme Liberata begins with a
double trochee Canto I'arme. The word " But "
is too feeble for the trochee to turn on. We come
presently to such verses as we shall never see
again out of this poem.
And he still on was led, but with such thoughts
Accompanied, of things past and to come,
Lodged in his breast, a; well might recommend
Such tolitude before choicest society.
But was driven
With them from bliss to the bottomless deep.
This is dactylic.
With them from | bliss to the bottomless | deep.
He before had sat
Among the prime in splendour, now deposed,
Ejected, emptied, gazed, unpitied, shunn'd,
A spectacle of ruin or of scorn, &c. V. 412.
Or should be and.
Which they who ask'd have seldom understood,
And, not well understood, as good not known.
To avoid the jingle, which perhaps he preferred,
he might have written " as well," but how prosaic !
Landor. The only tolerable part of the first
book are the six closing lines, and these are the
more acceptable because they are the closing ones.
Southey. The second book opens inauspiciously.
The devil himself was never so unlike the devil as
these verses are unlike verses.
Andrew and Simon, famous after known,
With others though in holy writ not named,
Now missing him, &c.
Plain fishermen, no greater men them call.
Landor. I do not believe that anything short of
your friendship would induce me to read a third
time during my life the Paradise Regained : and
I now feel my misfortune and imprudence in having
given to various friends this poem and many
others, in which I had marked with a pencil the
faults and beauties. The dead level lay wide
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
157
and without a finger-post: the highest objects
appeared, with few exceptions, no higher or
more ornamental than bulrushes. We shall spend
but little time in repeating all the passages where
they occur, and it will be a great relief to us.
Invention, energy, and grandeur of design, the
three great requisites to constitute a great poet,
and which no poet since Milton hath united, are
wanting here. Call the design a grand one, if
you will; you can not however call it his.
Wherever there are thought, imagination, and
energy, grace invariably follows ; otherwise the
colossus would be without its radiance, and we
should sail by with wonder and astonishment, and
gather no roses and gaze at no images on the
sunny isle.
Southey.' Shakspeare, whom you not only prefer
to every other poet, but think he contains more
poetry and more wisdom than all the rest united,
is surely less grand in his designs than several.
Landor. To the eye. But Othello was loftier
than the citadel of Troy ; and what a Paradise
fell before him ! Let us descend ; for from
Othello we must descend, whatever road we take ;
let us look at Julius Caesar. No man ever over-
came such difficulties, or produced by his life and
death such a change in the world we inhabit.
But that also is a grand design which displays ,the
interior workings of the world within us, and
where we see the imperishable and unalterable
passions depicted alfresco on a lofty dome. Our
other dramatists painted only on the shambles,
and represented what they found there ; blood
and garbage. We leave them a few paces behind
us, and step over the gutter into the green-market.
There are however men rising up among us
endowed with exquisiteness of taste and intensity
of thought. At no time have there been so many
who write well in so many ways.
Southey. Have you taken breath ? and are you
ready to go on with me ?
Landor. More than ready, alert. For we see
before us a longer continuation of good poetry
than we shall find again throughout the whole
poem, beginning at verse 155, and terminating at
224. In these however there are some bad
verses, such as
Among daughters of men the fairest found,
And made him bow to the gods of his wives.
V. 180,
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,
is false grammar; "thou cast for thou castedst."
I find the same fault where I am as much sur-
prised to find it, in Shelley.
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Shelley in his Cenci has overcome the greatest
difficulty that ever was overcome in poetry, al-
though he has not risen to the greatest elevation.
He possesses less vigour than Byron, and less com-
mand of language than Keats ; but I would rather
have written his
" Music, when soft voices die,"
than all that Beaumont and Fletcher ever wrote,
together with all of their contemporaries, excepting
Shakspeare.
Southey. It is wonderful that Milton should
praise the continence of Alexander as well as of
Scipio. Few conquerors had leisure for more
excesses, or indulged in greater, than Alexander.
He was reserved on one remarkable occasion : we
hear of only one. Scipio, a much better man, and
temperate in all things, would have been detested,
even in Borne, if he had committed that crime
from which the forbearance is foolishly celebrated
as his chief virtue.
You will not refuse your approbation to another
long passage beginning at verse 260, and ending
at 300. But at the conclusion of them, where the
devil says that " beauty stands in the admiration
only of weak minds," he savours a little of the
Puritan. Milton was sometimes angry with her,
but never had she a more devoted or a more
discerning admirer. For these forty good verses,
you will pardon,
After forty days' fasting had remained.
Landor. Very much like the progress of Milton
himself in this jejunery. I remember your de-
scription of the cookery in Portugal and Spain,
which my own experience most bitterly confirmed :
but I never met with a bonito " gris-amber-
steamed." This certainly was reserved for the
devil's own cookery. Our Saviour, I think, might
have fasted another forty days before he could have
stomached this dainty ; and the devil, if he had
had his wits about him, might have known as
much.
Southey. I have a verse in readiness which
may serve as a napkin to it.
And with these words his temptation pursued,
where it would have been very easy to have ren-
dered it less disagreeable to the ear by a trans-
position.
And his temptation with these words pursued.
I am afraid you will object to a redundant heavi-
ess in,
Get riches first . . get wealth . . and treaiure heap ,•
and no authority will reconcile you to roll-calls of
proper names, such as
and
Launcelot or Pellias or Pellenore,
Quintius, Fahricius, Curius, Regulus,
or again, to such a verse as
Not difficult, if thou hearken to me.
V. 461,
To him who wears the regal diadem
is quite superfluous, and adds nothing to the har-
mony. Verses 472, 473, 474, 475, and 476, have
the same cesura. This, I believe, has never been
remarked, and yet is the most remarkable thing in
all Milton's poetry.
It is wonderful that any critic should be so
stupid as a dozen or two of them have proved
158
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
themselves to be, in applying the last verses of
this second book to Christina of Sweden.
To give a kingdom hath been thought
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down
Far more magnanimous, than to assume.
Riches are needless then, &c.
Whether he had written this before or after the
abdication of Richard Cromwell, they are equally
applicable to him. He did retire not only from
sovranty but from riches. Christina took with
her to Rome prodigious wealth, and impoverished
Sweden by the pension she exacted.
The last lines are intolerably harsh :
0/test better mitt'd.
It may have been written " often :" a great relief
to the ear, and no detriment to the sense or
expression. We never noticed his care in avoid-
ing such a ruggedness in verse 401,
Whose pains have earn'd thefar-fet spoil.
He employed "f&r-fet" instead of " iKr-fetch'd,"
not only because the latter is in conversational
use, but because no sound is harsher than
"fetch'd;" and especially before two sequent
consonants, followed by such words as "with
that" It is curious that he did not prefer "where-
urith;" both because a verse ending in "that"
followed by one ending in " quite," and because
" that" also begins the next. I doubt whether
you will be satisfied with the first verse I have
marked in the third book,
From that placid aspect and meek regard.
Landor. The trochee in "placid" is feeble
there, and "meek regard" conveys no new idea to
"placid aspect." Presently we come to
Mules after these, camels and dromedaries.
And wagons fraught with utensils of war.
And here, if you could find any pleasure in a
triumph over the petulance and frowardness of
a weak adversary, you might laugh at poor Hal-
lam, who cites the following as among the noble
passages of Milton :
Such forces met not, nor to wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallafron, from whence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica.
Sowthey. How very like Addison, when his
milk was turned to whey. I wish I could believe
that the applauders of this poem were sincere,
since it is impossible to think them judicious;
their quotations, and especially Hallam's, having
been selected from several of the weakest parts
when better were close before them ; but we have
strong evidence that the opinion was given in
the spirit of contradiction, and from the habit of
hostility to what is eminent. I would be chari-
table : Hallam may have hit upon the place by
hazard : he may have been in the situation of a
young candidate for preferment in the church,
who was recommended to the Chancellor Thur-
low. After much contemptuousness and fero-
city, the chancellor throwing open on the table
his Book of Livings, commanded him to choose
for himself. The young man modestly and
timidly thanked him for his goodness, and en-
treated his lordship to exercise his own discre-
tion. With a volley of oaths, of which he was at
all times prodigal, but more especially in the
presence of a clergyman, he cried aloud, " Put
this pen, sir, at the side of one or other." Hesi-
tation was now impossible. The candidate placed
it without looking where : it happened to be at
a benefice of small value. Thurlow slapped his
hand upon the table, and roared, " By God, you
were within an ace of the best living in my
gift."
Landor. Hear the end.
His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both 1'aynim and the peers of Charlemagne.
iSouihey. It would be difficult to extract, even
from this poem, so many schoolboy's verses toge-
ther. The preceding, which also are verbose, are
much more spirited, and the illustration of one
force by the display of another, and which the
poet tells us is less, exhibits but small dis-
crimination in the critic who extols it. To praise
a fault is worse than to commit one. I know not
whether any such critic has pointed out for admi-
ration the "glass of telescope" by which the Tempter
might* have shown Rome to our Saviour, v. 42,
Book 4. But we must not pass over lines nearer
the commencement, v. 10.
But as a man who had been matchless held
In cunning, over-reach' d where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite
Still will be tempting him who foils him still.
This is no simily, no illustration, but exactly what
Satan had been doing.
Landor. The Devil grows very dry in the
desert, where he discourses
Of Academicks old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripateticks, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoick severe.
Southey. It is piteous to find the simplicity of
the Gospel overlaid and deformed by the scholastic
argumentation of our Saviour, and by the pleasure
he appears to take in holding a long conversation
with the Adversary.
Not therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought. He who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light.
What a verse v. 287, &c. ! A dissertation from our
Saviour, delivered to the Devil in the manner our
poet has delivered it, was the only thing wanting
to his punishment ; and he catches it at last.
V. 396.
Darkness now rote
As daylight sunk, and brought in lowering night,
Her shadowy offspring.
This is equally bad poetry and bad philosophy :
the Darkness rising and bringing in the Night
lowering ; when he adds,
Unsubstantial both,
Privation mere of light . . and absent day.
How ! privation of its absence ? He wipes away
with a single stroke of the brush two very indis-
tinct and ill-drawn figures.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOK.
159
Landor.
Our Saviour meek and with untroubled mind,
After his airy jaunt, tho' hurried fore,
How " hurried sore," if with untroubled mind ?
Hungry and cold, betook him to his rest.
I should have been quite satisfied with a quarter
of this. ;
Darkness now rose ;
Our Saviour meek hetook him to hisjrest.
Such simplicity would be the more grateful and
the more effective in preceding that part of
Paradise Regained which is the most sublimely
pathetic. It would be idle to remark the pro-
priety of accentuation on concourse, and almost as
idle to notice that in verse 420 is
Thou only sloodst unshaken ;
and in v. 425,
t Thou iatst unappalled.
But to stand, as I said before, is to remain, or to
be, in Milton, following the Italian. Never was
the eloquence of poetry so set forth by words and
numbers in any language as in this period. Par-
don the infernal and hellish.
Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
Environ'd thee : some howl'd, some yell'd, some shrickt,
Some hent at thee their fiery darts, while thou
Satst unappalled in calm and sinless peace.
The idea of sitting is in itself more beautiful than
of standing or lying down, but our Saviour is
represented as lying down, while
The tempter watcht, and soon with ugly dreams
Disturbed his sleep.
he could disturb, but not appall him, as he him-
self says in verse 487.
Southey. It is thought by Joseph Warton
and some others, that, where the Devil says,
Then hear, O Son of David, virgin-born,
For Son of God to me is yet in doubt, &c.
he speaks sarcastically in the word virgin-bom.
But the Devil is not so bad a rhetorician as to
turn round so suddenly from the ironical to the
serious. He acknowledges the miracle of the
Nativity ; he pretends to doubt its Divinity.
So saying he caught him up, and without wing
Ofhippogrif, bore through the air sublime.
Satan had given good proof that his wing was
more than a match for a hippogrif 's ; and if he
had borrowed a hippogrif 's for the occasion, he
could have made no use of it, unless he had bor-
rowed the hippogrif too, and rode before or behind
on him,
Over the wilderness . . and o'er the plain.
Two better verses follow; but the temple of
Jerusalem could never have appeared
Topt with golden spires.
So Satan fell ; and straight a fiery globe
Of angels on full sail of whig flew nigh,
Who on their plumy vans received him soft.
He7 means our Saviour, not Satan. In any
ancient we should manage a little the ductus lite-
rarum, and, for the wretched words, " him soft,"
purpose to substitute their lord. But by what
ingenuity can we erect into a verse v. 597 1
In the bosom of bliss and light of light.
In 613 and 614 we find rhyme.
Landor. The angels seem to have lost their
voices since they left Paradise. Their denuncia-
tions against Satan are very angry, but very
weak.
Thee and thy legions ; yelling they shall fly
And beg to hide them in a herd of swine,
Lest he command them down into the deep,
Bound, and to torment sent before their tune.
Surely they had been tormented long before.
The close of the poem is extremely languid,
however much it has been commended for its
simplicity.
Southey.
He, unobserved,
Home, to his mother's house, private return'd.
Unobserved and private; home and his "mother's
house," are not very distinctive.
Landor. Milton took but little time in forming
the plan of his Paradise Regained, doubtful and
hesitating as he had been in the construction of
Paradise Lost. In composing a poem or any
other work of imagination, although it may be
well and proper to lay down a plan, I doubt
whether any author of any durable work has con-
fined himself to it very strictly. But writers will
no more tell you whether they do or not, than
they will bring out before you the foul copies, or
than painters will admit you into the secret of
composing or of laying on their colours. I con-
fess to you that a few detached thoughts and
images have always been the beginnings of my
works. Narrow slips have risen up, more or
fewer, above the surface. These gradually
became larger and more consolidated: fresh-
ness and verdure first covered one part, then
another; then plants of firmer and of higher
growth, however scantily, took their places, then
extended their roots and branches ; and among
them and round about them in a little while you
yourself, and as many more as I desired, found
places for study and for recreation.
Keturning to Paradise Regained. If a loop in the
netting of a purse is let down, it loses the money
that is in it ; so a poem by laxity drops the weight
of its «ontents. In theanimal body,not onlynerves
and juices are necessary, but also continuity and
cohesion. Milton is caught sleeping after his
exertions in Paradise Lost, and the lock of his
strength is shorn off; but here and there a pro-
minent muscle swells out from the vast mass of
the collapsed.
Southey. The Samson A gonistes,no-w'beforem, is
less languid, but it may be charged with almost the
heaviest fault of a poem, or indeed of any compo-
sition, particularly the dramatic, which is, there is
insufficient coherency, or dependence of part on
part. Let us not complain that, while we look at
Samson and hear his voice, we are forced to think
of Milton, of his blindness, of his abandonment,
with as deep a commiseration. If we lay open the
160
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
few faults covered by his transcendant excellen-
cies, we feel confident that none are more willing
(or would be more acceptable were he present) to
pay him homage. I retain all my admiration
of his poetry ; you all yours, not only of his
poetry, but of his sentiments on many grave
subjects.
Landor. I do ; but I should be reluctant to see
disturbed the order and course of things, by altera-
tions at present unnecessary, or by attempts at
what might be impracticable. When an evil can
no longer be borne manfully and honestly and
decorously, then down with it, and put something
better in its place. Meanwhile guard strenuously
against such evil. The vigilant will seldom be
constrained to vengeance.
Southey. Simple as is the plan of this drama,
there are prettinesses in it which would be far
from ornamental anywhere. Milton is much more
exuberant in them than Ovid himself, who cer-
tainly would never have been so commended by
Quinctilian for the Medea, had he written
Where I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
The air imprisoned also. V. 7.
But into what sublimity he soon ascends !
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves.
Landor. My copy is printed as you read it;
but there ought to be commas after eyeless, after
Gaza, and after mill. Generally our printers
or writers put three commas where one would
do ; but here the grief of Samson is aggravated
at every member of the sentence. Surely it must
have been the resolution of Milton to render his
choruses as inharmonious as he fancied the Greek
were, or would be, without the accompaniments of
instrument, accentuation, and chaunts ; otherwise
how can we account for " abandoned, and by him-
self given over ; in slavish habit, ill-jitted weeds,
over-worn and soiled. Or do my eyes 'misrepre-
sent ? Can this be he, that heroic, that renowned,
irresistible Samson I "
Southey. We are soon compensated, regretting
only that the chorus talks of " Clwlybian tem-
pered steel " in the beginning, and then informs
us of his exploit with the jaw-bone,
In Ramath-lechi./amott* to this day.
It would be strange indeed if such a victory as
was never won before, were forgotten in twenty
years, or thereabout.
Southey. Passing Milton's oversights, we next
notice his systematic defects. Fondness for
Euripides made him too didactic when action
was required. Perhaps the French drama kept
him in countenance, although he seems to have
paid little attention to it, comparatively.
Landor. The French drama contains some of
the finest didactic poetry in the world, and is
peculiarly adapted both to direct the reason and
to control the passions. It is a well-lighted saloon
of graceful eloquence, where the sword-knot is
appended by the hand of Beauty, and where the
snuff-box is composed of such brilliants as, after
a peace or treaty, kings bestow on diplomatists.
Whenever I read a French alexandrine, I fancy
I receive a box on the ear in the middle of it, and
another at the end, sufficient, if not to pain, to
weary me intolerably, and to make the book drop
out of my hand. Moliere and La Fontaine can
alone by their homoeopathy revive me. Such is
the power of united wit and wisdom, in ages
the most desperate ! These men, with Montaigne
and Charron, will survive existing customs, and
probably existing creeds. Millions will be capti-
vated by them, when the eloquence of Bossuet
himself shall interest extremely few. Yet the
charms of language are less liable to be dissipated
by time than the sentences of wisdom. While the
incondite volumes of more profound philosophers
are no longer in existence, scarcely one of writers
who enjoyed in a high degree the gift of eloquence,
is altogether lost. Among the Athenians there
are indeed some, but in general they were worth-
less men, squabbling on worthless matters : we
have little to regret, excepting of Phocion and
of Pericles. If we turn to Rome, we retain all the
best of Cicero ; and we patiently and almost indif-
ferently hear that nothing is to be found of Mar-
cus Antonius or Hortensius ; for the eloquence of
the bar is, and ought always to be, secondary.
Southey. You were remarking that our poet
paid little attention to the French drama. In-
deed in his preface he takes no notice of it what-
soever, not even as regards the plot, in which
consists< its chief excellence, or perhaps I should
say rather its superiority. He holds the opinion
that "a plot, whether intricate or explicit, is
nothing but such economy or disposition of the
fable, as may stand best with verisimilitude and
decorum." Surely the French tragedians have
observed this doctrine attentively.
Landor. It has rarely happened that dramatic
events have followed one another in their natural
order. The most remarkable instance of it is in
the King (Edipus of Sophocles. But Racine is
in general the most skilful of the tragedians, with
little energy and less invention. I wish Milton
had abstained from calling," Jischylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequalled
yet by any ;" because it may leave a suspicion that
he fancied he, essentially undramatic, could equal
them, and had now done it ; and because it ex-
hibits him as a detractor from Shakspeare. I am
as sorry to find him in this condition as I should
have been to find him in a fit of the gout, or
treading on a nail with naked foot in his blind-
ness.
Southey. Unfortunately it is impossible to ex-
culpate him ; for you must have remarked where,
a few sentences above, are these expressions.
" This is mentioned to vindicate from the small
esteem, or rather infamy, which in the account of
many, it undergoes at this day, with other com-
mon interludes ; happening through the poet's
error of intermixing comick stuff with tragick sad-
ness and gravity, or intermixing trivial and
vulgar persons, which, by all judicious, hath
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
161
been counted absurd, and brought in without
discretion, corruptly to gratify the people."
Landor. It may be questioned whether the
people in the reign of Elizabeth, or indeed the
queen herself, would have been contented with a
drama without a smack of the indecent or the
ludicrous. They had alike been accustomed to
scenes of ribaldry and of bloodshed ; and the
palace opened on one wing to the brothel, on the
other to the shambles. The clowns of Shakspeare
are still admired by not the vulgar only.
Southey. The more the pity. Let them appear
in their proper places. But a picture by Morland
or Frank Hals ought never to break a series of
frescoes by the hand of Raphael, or of senatorial
portraits animated by the sun of Titian. There is
much to be regretted in, and (since we are alone I
will say it) a little which might without loss or
injury be rejected, from, the treasury of Shaks-
peare.
Landor. It is difficult to sweep away anything
and not to sweep away gold-dust with it ! but viler
dust lies thick in some places. The 'grave Milton
too has cobwebs hanging on his workshop,
which a high broom, in a steady hand, may reach
without doing mischief. But let children and
short men, and unwary ones, stand out of the
way.
Southey. Necessary warning ! for nothing else
occasions so general satisfaction as the triumph of a
weak mind over a stronger. And this often hap-
pens ; for the sutures of a giant's armour are most
penetrable from below. Surely no poet is so
deeply pathetic as the one before us, and nowhere
more than in those verses which begin at the six-
tieth and end with the eighty-fifth. There is
much fine poetry after this ; and perhaps the pro-
lixity is very rational in a man so aiflicted, but
the composition is the worse for it. Samson
could have known nothing of the interlunar cave ;
nor could he ever have thought about the light of
the soul, and of the soul being all in every part.
Landor. Reminiscences of many sad afflictions
have already burst upon the poet, but instead of
overwhelming him, they have endued him with
redoubled might and majesty. Verses worthier
of a sovran poet, sentiments worthier of a pure,
indomitable, inflexible, republican, never issued
from the human heart, than these referring to
the army, in the last effort made to rescue the
English nation from disgrace and servitude.
Had Judah that day joined, or one whole tribe,
They had by this possest the towers of Gath,
And lorded over them whom now they serve.
But what more oft, in nations grown corrupt
And by their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty,
And to despise or envy or suspect
Whom God hath of his special favour rais'd
As their deliverer ! If he ought begin,
How frequent to desert him ! and at last
To heap ingratitude on worthiest deeds !
Southey. I shall be sorry to damp your enthu-
siasm, in however slight a degree, by pursuing our
original plan in the detection of blemishes. Eyes
the least clear-sighted could easily perceive one in
For of such doctrine never was there school
But the heart of the fool.
And no man therein doctor but himself. V. 299.
They could discern here nothing but the quaint
conceit ; and it never occurred to them that the
chorus knew nothing of schools and doctors. A
line above, there is an expression not English.
For " who believe not the existence of God,"
Who think not God at all. V. 295.
And is it captious to say that, when Manoah's locks
are called "white as down," whiteness is no
characteristic of down 1 Perhaps you will be pro-
pitiated by the number of words in our days
equally accented on the first syllable, which in
this drama the great poet, with all his authority,
has stamped on the second; such as impulse,
edict, contrary, prescript, the substantive contest,
instinct, crystalline, pretext.
Landor. I wish we had preserved them all in
that good condition, excepting the substantive
contest, which ought to follow the lead of " con-
quest." But " now we have got to the worst, let us
keep to the worst," is the sound conservative maxim
of the day.
Southey. I perceive you adhere to your doctrine
in the termination of Aristofefes.
Landor. If we were to say Aristotle, why not
ThemistocZe, Empecfocfe, and Pericle ? Here,
too, neath has always a hyphen before it, quite
unnecessarily. From neath comes nether, which
reminds me that it would be better spelt, as it was
formerly, nethe.
But go on : we can do no good yet.
Southey.
That invincible Samson, far renowned. Y. 341.
Here, unless we place the accent on the third
syllable, the verse assumes another form, and such
as is used only in the ludicrous or light poetry,
scanned thus ;
That invin | cible Sam | son, &c.
There is great eloquence and pathos in the speech
of Manoah : but the " scorpion's tail behind," in
v. 360, is inapposite. Perhaps my remark is un-
worthy of your notice ; but, as you are reading
on, you seem to ponder on something which is
worthy.
Landor. How very much would literature have
lost, if this marvellously great and admirable man
had omitted the various references to himself and
his contemporaries. He had grown calmer at the
close of life, and saw in Cromwell as a fault what
he had seen before as a necessity or a virtue.
The indignities offered to the sepulchre and re-
mains of the greatest of English sovrans by the
most ignominious, made the tears of Milton gush
from his darkened eyes, and extorted from his
generous and grateful heart this exclamation :
Alas ! methinks when God hath chosen one
To worthiest deeds, if he through frailty err
He should not so o'erwhelm, and as u thrall
Subject him to so foul indignities,
Be it but for honour's sake of former deeds.
162
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
How supremely grand is the close of Samson's
speech 1
Southey. In v. 439 we know what is meant by
Slewst them many a slain ;
but the expression is absurd : he could not slay
the slain. We also may object to
The use of strongest wines
And strongest drinks,
knowing that wines were the " strongest drinks "
in those times : perhaps they might have been
made stronger by the infusion of herbs and spices.
You will again be saddened by the deep harmony
of those verses in which the poet represents his
own condition. V. 590.
All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, &c.
In verses 729 and 731, the words address and
addrest are inelegant.
And words addrest seem into tears dissolved,
Wetting the borders of her silken veil ;
But now again she makes address to speak.
In v. 734,
Which to have united, without excuse,
I cannot but acknowledge,
the comma should be expunged after excuse, else
the sentence is ambiguous. And in 745, " what
amends is in my power." We have no singular,
as the French have, for this word, although many
use it ignorantly, as Milton does inadvertently.
V. 934. Thy fair enchanted cup and warbling charms.
Here we are forced by the double allusion to re-
cognise the later mythos of Circe. The cup alone,
or the warbling alone, might belong to any other
enchantress, any of his own or of a preceding age,
since we know that in all times certain herbs and
certain incantations were used by sorceresses.
The chorus in this tragedy is not always concili-
ating and assuaging. Never was anything more
bitter against the female sex than the verses from
1010 to 1060. The invectives of Euripides aranever
the outpourings of the chorus, and their venom
is cold as hemlock; those of Milton are hot and
corrosive.
It is not virtue, wisdom, valour, wit,
Strength, comeliness of shape, or amplest merit,
That woman's love can win or long inherit ;
But what it is, is hard to say,
Harder to hit,
Which way soever men refer it :
Much like thy riddle, Samson, in one day
Or seven, though one should musing sit.
Never has Milton, in poetry or prose, written
worse than this. The beginning of the second
line is untrue ; the conclusion is tautological. In
the third it is needless to inform us that what is
not to be gained is not to be inherited ; or in the
fourth, that what is hard to say is hard to hit ;
but it really is a new discovery that it is harder.
Where is the distinction in the idea he would
present of saying and hitting ? However, we will
not " musing sit " on these dry thorns.
Whate'er it be, to wisest men and best
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, Ac.
This is a very ugly mis-shapen alexandrine. The
verse would be better and more regular by the
omission of " seeming " or " at first," neither of
which is necessary.
Landor. The giant Harapha is not expected
to talk wisely : but he never would have said to
Samson
Thou knowst me now,
Ifthou at all art known ,• much I have heard
Of thy prodigious strength. V. 1031.
A pretty clear evidence of his being somewhat
known.
And black enchantments, some magician's art.
No doubt of that. But what glorious lines from
1167 to 1179 i I can not say so much of these :
Have they not sword-players and every sort
Of gymnic artists, wrestlers, riders, runners,
Jugglers and dancers, antics, mummers, mimics ?
No, certainly not : the jugglers and the dancers
they probably had, but none of the rest. Mum-
mers are said to derive their appellation from the
word mum. I rather think mum came corrupted
from them. Mummer in reality is mime. We
know how frequently the letter r has obtained an
undue place at the end of words. The English
mummers were men who acted, without speaking,
in coarse pantomime. There are many things which
I have marked between this place and v. 1665.
V. 1634. That to the arched roof gave main support.
There were no arches in the time of Samson : but
the mention of the two pillars in the centre makes
it requisite to imagine such a structure. V. 1 660,
O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious.
It is Milton's practice to make vowels syllabically
weak either coalesce with or yield to others.
In no place but at the end of a verse would
he protract glorious into a trisyllable. The
structure of his versification was founded on the
Italian, in which io and ia in some words are
monosyllables in all places but the last. V. 1665,
Among thy slain self-kill'd,
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire necessity, whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
Than all thy life hath slain before.
Milton differs extremely from the Athenian dra-
matists in neglecting the beauty of his chorusses.
Here the third line is among his usually bad
alexandrines ; and there is not only a debility of
rhythm but also a redundancy of words. The
verse would be better, and the sense too, without
the words " in death." And " slaughtered " is
alike unnecessary in the next. Farther on, the
chorus talks about the phoenix. Now the phoenix,
although oriental, was placed in the orient by
the Greeks. If the phoanix " no second knows,"
it is probable it knows " no third." All this non-
sense is prated while Samson is lying dead be-
fore them. But the poem is a noble poem, and
the characters of Samson and Delilah are drawn
with precision and truth. The Athenian drama-
tists, both tragic and comic, have always one
chief personage, one central light. Homer has
not in the Iliad, nor has Milton in the Paradise
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
163
Lost, nor "has Shakspeare in several of his best
tragedies. We find it in Racine, in the great
Corneille, in the greater Schiller. In Calderon,
and the other dramatists of Spain, it rarely is
wanting ; but their principal delight is in what
we call plot or intrigue, in plainer English (and
very like it) intricacy and trick. Kurd, after saying
of the Samson Agonistes, that " it is, as might
be expected, a masterpiece," tucks up his lawn
sleeve and displays his slender wrist against
Lowth. Nothing was ever equal to his cool
effrontery when he says, " This critic, and all
such, are greatly out in their judgments," &c.
He might have profited, both in criticism
and in style, by reading Lowth more attentively
and patiently. In which case he never would
have written out in, nor obliged to such free-
doms, nor twenty more such strange things.
Lowth was against the chorus : Kurd says, " It
will be constantly wanting to rectify^the wrong
conclusions of the audience." Would it not be
quite as advisable to drop carefully a few drops of
laudanum on a lump of sugar, to lull the excite-
ment of the sufferers by the tragedy ] The chorus
in Milton comes well provided with this narcotic.
Voltaire wrote an opera, and intended it for a
serious one, on the same subject. He decorated
it with chorusses sung to Venus and Adonis, and
represented Samson more gallantly French than
either. He pulled down the temple on the stage,
and cried,
" J'ai repare ma honte, et j'expire en vainqueur ! "
And yet Voltaire was often a graceful poet, and
sometimes a judicious critic. It may be vain
and useless to propose for imitation the chief
excellences of a great author, such being the
gift of transcendent genius, and not an acqui-
sition to be obtained by study or labour • but
it is only in great authors that defects are me-
morable when pointed out, and unsuspected until
they are distinctly. For which reason I think
it probable that at no distant time I may publish
your remarks, if you consent to it.
Soutliey. It is well known in what spirit I made
them ; and as you have objected to few, if any, I
leave them at your discretion. Let us now pass
on to Lycidas. It appears to me, that Warton is
less judicious than usual, in his censure of
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
I find in his note, " The mellowing year could
not affect the leaves of the laurel, the myrtle, and
the ivy, which last is characterised before as never
sere." The ivy sheds its leaves in the proper
season, though never all at once, and several hang
on the stem longer than a year. In v. 88,
But now my oar'proceeds
And listens to the herald of the sea.
Does the oar listen ]
Blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook. V. 119.
Now although mouths and bellies may designate
the possessors or bearers, yet surely the blind
mouth holding a shepherd's crook is a fitter re-
presentation of the shepherd's dog than of the
shepherd. V. 145, may he not have written the
gloming violet ] not indeed well ; but better than
glowing.
V. 154. Ay me ! while thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away.
Surely the shores did not.
V. 1750. And hears the inexpressive nuptial song
In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.
What can be the meaning ?
Landor. It is to be regretted, not so much that
Milton has adopted the language and scenery and
mythology of the ancients, as that he confounds
the real simple field-shepherds with the mitred
shepherds of St. Paul's Churchyard and West-
minster Abbey, and ties the two-handed sword
against the crook. I have less objection to the
luxury spread out before me, than to be treated
with goose and mince-pie on the same plate.
No poetry so harmonious had ever been written
in our language; but in the same free metre both
Tasso and Guarini had captivated the ear of Italy.
In regard to poetry, the Lycidas will hardly bear
a comparison with the Allegro and Penseroso.
Many of the ideas in both are taken from Beau-
mont and Fletcher, from Raleigh and Marlowe,
and from a poem in the first edition of Burton's
Melancholy. Each of these has many beauties ;
but there are couplets in Milton's worth them all.
We must, however, do what we set about. If we
see the Faun walk lamely, we must look at hia
foot, find the thorn, and extract it.
Southey. There are those who defend, in the
first verses, the matrimonial, or other less legiti-
mate alliance, of Cerberus and Midnight ; but I
have too much regard for Melancholy to subscribe
to the filiation, especially as it might exclude
her presently from the nunnery, whither she is
invited as pensive, devout, and pure. The union
of Erebus and Night is much spoken of in poetical
circles, and we have authority for announcing
it to the public; but Midnight, like Cerberus,
is a misnomer. We have occasionally heard, in
objurgation, a man called a son of a dog, on the
mother's side; but never was there goddess of
that parentage. You are pleased to find Milton
writing pincht instead of pinched.
Landor. Certainly ; for there never existed the
word " pinched," and never can exist the word
pinc/tW." In the same verse he writes sed for
said. We have both of these, and we should keep
them diligently. The pronunciation is always
sed, excepting in rhyme. For the same reason
we should retain agen as well as again.
What a cloud of absurdities has been whiffed
against me, by no unlearned men, about the
Conversation of Tooke and Johnson ! Their own
petty conceits rise up between their eyes and the
volume they are negligently reading, and utterly
obscure or confound it irretrievably. One would
represent me as attempting to undermine our
native tongue ; another as modernising ; a third
M 2
164
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
aa antiquating It. Whereas I am trying to un-
derprop, not to undermine : I am trying to stop
the man-milliner at his ungainly work of trim-
ming and flouncing : I am trying to show how
graceful is our English, not in its stiff decrepi-
tude, not in its riotous luxuriance, but in its hale
mid-life. I would make bad writers follow good
ones, and good writers accord with themselves.
If all cannot be reduced into order, is that any
reason why nothing should be done toward it 1
If languages and men too are imperfect, must we
never make an effort to bring them a few steps
nearer to what is preferable ? If we find on the
road a man who has fallen from his horse, and
who has three bones dislocated, must we refuse
him our aid because one is quite broken 1 It is
by people who answer in the affirmative to these
questions, or seem to answer so, it is by such
writers that our language for the last half-century
has fallen more rapidly into corruption and de-
composition than any other ever spoken among
men. The worst losses are not always those
which are soonest felt, but those which are felt
too late.
Southey. I should have adopted all your sug-
gestions in orthography, if I were not certain that
my bookseller would protest against it as ruinous.
If you go no farther than to write compett and
foretell, the compositor will correct your over-
sight : yet surely there should be some sign that
the last syllable of those verbs ought to be spelt
differently, as they are pronounced differently,
from shrivel and level.
Landor. Let us run back to our plantain. But
a bishop stands in the way ; a bishop no other
than Kurd, who says that " Milton shows his
judgment in celebrating Shakspeare's comedies
rather than his tragedies." Pity he did not live
earlier ! he would have served among the mum-
mers both for bishop and fool. We now come to
the Penseroso, in which title there are many who
doubt the propriety of the spelling. Marsand,
an editor of Petrarca, has defended the poet, who
used equally pensiero and pensero. The mode is
more peculiarly Lombard. The Milanese and
Comascs invariably say penser. Yet it is wonder-
ful how, at so short a distance, and professing to
speak the same language, they differ in many
expressions. The wonder ceases with those who
have resided long in the country, and are curious
about such matters, when they discover that at
two gates of Milan two languages are spoken.
The same thing occurs in Florence itself, where a
street is inhabited by the Camaldolese, whose
language is as little understood by learned
academicians as that of Dante himself. Beyond
the eastern gates a morning's walk, you come
into Varlunga, a pastoral district, in which the
people speak differently from both. I have always
found a great pleasure in collecting the leaves
and roots of these phonetic simples, especially in
hill-countries. Nothing so conciliates many, and
particularly the uneducated, as to ask and receive
instruction from them. I have not hesitated to
collect it from swineherds and Fra Diavolo : I
should have looked for it in vain among universi-
ties and professors.
Southey. Turning back to the Allegro, I find an
amusing note, conveying the surprising intelli-
gence, all the way from Oxford, that eglantine
means really the dog-rose, and that both dog-rose
and honeysuckle (for which Milton mistook it),
" are often growing against the side or walls of
a house." Thus says Mr. Thomas Warton. I
wish he had also told us in what quarter of the
world a house has sides without wcUls of some
kind or other. But it really is strange that Mil-
ton should have misapplied the word, at a time
when botany was become the favourite study. I
do not recollect whether Cowley had yet written
his Latin poems on the appearances and qualities
of plants. What are you smiling at ]
Landor. Our old field of battle, where Milton
Calls up him who left untold
* The story of Cambuscan bold.
Chaucer, like Shakspeare, like Homer, like Mil-
ton, like every great poet that ever lived, derived
from open sources the slender origin of his im-
mortal works. Imagination is not a mere work-
shop of images, great and small, as there are
many who would represent it; but sometimes
thoughts also are imagined before they are felt,
and descend from the brain into the bosom.
Young poets imagine feelings to which in reality
they are strangers.
Southey. Copy them rather.
Landor. Not entirely. The copybook acts on
the imagination. Unless they felt the truth or
the verisimilitude, it could not take possession
of them. Both feelings and images fly from dis-
tant coverts into their little field, without their
consciousness whence they come, and rear young
ones there which are properly their own. Chat-
terton hath shown as much imagination in the
Bristowe Tragedie, as in that animated allegory
which begins,
When Freedom dreste in blood-stain'd veste.
Keats is the most imaginative of our poets, after
Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton.
Southey. I am glad you admit my favourite,
Spenser.
Landor. He is my favourite too, if you admit
the expression without the signification of prece-
dency. I do not think him equal to Chaucer even
in imagination, and he appears to me very inferior
to him in all other points, excepting harmony.
Here the miscarriage is in Chaucer's age, not in
Chaucer, many of whose verses are highly beau-
tiful, but never (as in Spenser) one whole period.
I love the geniality of his temperature : no
straining, no effort, no storm, no fury. His vivid
thoughts burst their way to us through the
coarsest integuments of language.
The heart is the creator of the poetical world ;
only the atmosphere is from the brain. Do I
then undervalue imagination'! No indeed : but I
find imagination where others never look for it :
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
165
in character multiform yet consistent. Chaucer
first united the two glorious realms of Italy and
England. Shakspeare came after, and subjected
the whole universe to his dominion. But he
mounted the highest steps of his throne under
those bland skies which had warmed the conge-
nial breasts of Chaucer and Boccaccio.
The powers of imagination are but slender
when it can invent only shadowy appearances ;
much greater are requisite to make an inert and
insignificant atom grow up into greatness ; to
give it form, life, mobility, and intellect. Spenser
hath accomplished the one ; Shakspeare and Chau-
cer the other. Pope and Dryden have displayed
a little of it in their Satires. In passing, let me
express my wish that writers who compare them
in generalities, and who lean mostly toward the
stronger, would attempt to trim the balance, by
placing Pope among our best critics on poetry,
while Dryden is knee-deep below John Dennis.
You do not like either: I read both with plea-
sure, so long as they keep to the couplet. But St.
Cecilia's music-book is interlined with epigrams,
and Alexander's Feast smells of gin at second-
hand, with true Briton fiddlers full of native
talent in the orchestra.
Southey. Dryden says, " It were an easy matter
to produce some tliousands of Chaucer's verses
which are lame for want of half, and sometimes a
whole foot, which no pronunciation can make
otherwise."
Landor. Certainly no pronunciation but the
proper one can do it.
Sowthey. On the opposite quarter, comparing
him with Boccaccio, he says, " He has refined on
the Italian, and has mended his stories in his way
of telling. Our countryman carries weight, and
yet wins the race at disadvantage."
Landor. Certainly our brisk and vigorous poet
carries with him no weight in criticism.
Southey. Vivacity and shrewd sense are Dry-
den's characteristics, with quickness of percep-
tion rather than accuracy of remark, and con-
sequently a facility rather than a fidelity of
expression.
We are coming to our last days if, according
to the prophet Joel, " blood and fire and pillars
of smoke" are signs of them. Again to Milton
and the Penseroso.
V. 90. What worlds, or what vast regions.
Are not vast regions included in worlds? In
119, 120, 121, 122, the same rhymes are repeated.
Thus, night, oft see me in thy pale career,
is the only verse of ten syllables, and should be
reduced to the ranks. You always have strongly
objected to epithets which designate dresses and
decoration ; of which epithets, it must be acknow-
ledged, both Milton and Shakspeare are unrea-
sonably fond. Civil-suited, frownced, kercheft,
come close together. I suspect they will find as
little favour in your eyes as embroidered, trimmed,
and gilded.
Landor. I am fond of gilding, not in our
poetry, but in our apartments, where it gives a
sunniness greatly wanted by the climate. Pindar
and Virgil are profuse of gold, but they reject the
gilded.
Sowthey. I have counted ninety-three lines in
Milton where gold is used, and only four where
gilded is. A question is raised whether pale, in t
To walk the studious cloisters pale,
is substantive or adjective. What is your
opinion 1
Landor. That it is an adjective. Milton was
very Italian, as you know, in his custom of adding
a second epithet after the substantive, where one
had preceded it. The Wartons followed him.
Yet Thomas Warton would read in this verse the
substantive, giving as his reason that our poet is
fond of the singular. In the present word there
is nothing extraordinary in finding it thus. We
commonly say within the pale of the church, of
the law, &c. But pale is an epithet to which
Milton is very partial. Just before, he has writ-
ten "pale career," and we shall presently see the
"pale-eyed priest."
Southey.
With antick pillars massy-proof.
The Wartons are fond of repeating in their poetry
the word massy-proof: in my opinion an inele-
gant one, and, if a compound, compounded badly.
It seems more applicable to castles, whose mas-
siveness gave proof of resistance. Antick was
probably spelt antike by the author, who dis-
dained to follow the fashion in antique, Pinda-
ricqwe, &c., affected by Cowley and others, who
had been, or would be thought to have been,
domiciliated with Charles II. in France.
Landor. Whenever 1 come to the end of these
poems, or either of them, it is always with a sigh
of regret. We will pass by the Arcades, of which
the little that is good is copied from Shakspeare.
Sowthey. Nevertheless we may consider it as a
nebula, which was not without its efficiency in
forming the star of Comus. This Mask i/modelled
on another by George Peele. Two brothers wan-
der in search of a sister enthralled by a magician.
They call aloud her name, and Echo repeats it, as
here in Comus. Much also has been taken from
Puteanus, who borrowed at once the best and the
worst of his poem from Philostratus. In the third
verse I find spirits a dissyllable, which is unusual
in Milton.
Landor. I can account for his monosyllabic
sound by his fondness of imitating the Italian
spirto. But you yourself are addicted to these
quavers, if you will permit me the use of the
word here ; and I find spirit, peril, &c., occupying
no longer a time than if the second vowel were
wanting. I do not approve of the apposition in
The nodding horrour of whose shady brows. V. 47.
Before which I find
Sea-girt isles
That, like to rich and various gems inlay
The unadorned bosom of the deep*
166
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
How can a bosom be unadorned which already is
inlaid with gems 1
Southey. You will object no less strongly to
Sounds and seas with all their finny drove,
sounds being parts of seas.
Landor. There are yet graver faults. Where
did the young kdy ever hear or learn such ex-
pressions as "Swilled insolence"?
The grey-hooded Even,
Like a Bad votarist in palmer'* weed,
Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phoebus' wain.
Here is Eve a manifest female, with her own pro-
per hood upon her head, taking the other parts
of male attire, and rising (by good luck) from
under a waggon-wheel. But nothing in Milton,
and scarcely anything in Cowley, is viler than
Else, O thievish night,
Why should'st thou, but for some/eloniout end,
In thy dark-lantern thus close up the stars.
It must have been a capacious dark-lantern that
held them all.
That Nature hung in heaven, and fill'd their lamps
With everlasting_oil.
Hardly so bad ; but very bad is
Does a table cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night ?
f
A greater and more momentous fault is, that
three soliloquies come in succession for about 240
lines together.
What time the laboured ox
In his loose traces from the furrow came
And the swinkt hedger at his supper sat.
These are blamed by Warton, but blamed in the
wrong place. The young lady, being in the wood,
could have seen nothing of ox or hedger, and was
unlikely to have made any previous observations
on their work-hours. But in the summer, and
this was in summer, neither the ox nor the hedger
are at work : that the ploughman always quits it
at noon, as Warton says he does, is untrue.
When he quits it at noon, it is for his dinner.
Gray says :
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way.
He may do that, but certainly not at the season
when
The beetle wheels her drony flight
Nevertheless the stricture is captious ; for the
ploughman may return from the field, although
not from ploughing ; and ploughman may be ac-
cepted for any agricultures Certainly such must
have been Virgil's meaning when he wrote
Quo* durus orator
Observans nido implumes detraxit.
For ploughing, in Italy more especially, is never
the labour in June, when the nightingale's young
are hatched. Gray's verse is a good one, which is
more than can be said of Virgil's.
Sweet Echo ! sweetest nymph ! that livest unseen
Within thy airy shell !
The habitation is better adapted to an oyster than
to Echo. We must however go on and look
after the young gentlemen. Comus says :
I saw them under a green mantling vine
Plucking ripe clusters, &c.
It is much to be regretted that the banks of the
Severn in our days present no such facilities. You
would find some difficulty in teaching the readers
of poetry to read metrically the exquisite verses
which follow. What would they make of
And as I I past I | worshipt it !
These are the true times ; and they are quite
unintelligible to those who divide our verses into
iambics, with what they call licences.
Southey. We have found the two brothers ; and
never were two young gentlemen in stiffer
doublets.
Unmuffie, ye faint stars, &c.
The elder, although "as smooth as Hebe's his
unrazor'd lip," talks not only like a man, but like
a philosopher of much experience.
What need a man foretell his date of grief, dec.
How should he know that
Beauty, like the fair Hesperian tree,
Laden with blooming gold, had need the guard
Of dragon watch with unenchanted eye
To save her blossoms and defend her fruit, £c.
Landor. We now come to a place where we have
only the choice of a contradiction or a nonsense.
She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings.
There is no sense in pluming a plume. Beyond a
doubt Milton wrote prunes, and subsequently it
was printed plumes to avoid what appeared a con-
trariety. And a contrariety it would be if the
word prune were to be taken in no other sense
than the gardener's. We suppose it must
mean to cut shorter : but its real signification is
to trim, which is usually done by that process.
Milton here means to smoothen and put in order;
prine is better. Among the strange unaccount-
able expressions which, within our memory, or a
little earlier, were carried down, like shingle by a
sudden torrent, over our language, can you tell
me what writer first wrote " unbidden tears!"
Southey. No indeed. The phrase is certainly a
curiosity, although no rarity. I wish some logi-
cian or (it being beyond the reach of any) some
metaphysician would attempt to render us an
acount of it. Milton has never used unbidden,
where it really would be significant, and only once
unhid. Can you go forward with this "Elder
Brother"?
Landor. Let us try. I wish he would turn off
his "liveried angels," v. 455, and would say nothing
about lust. How could he have learned that
lust
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, &c.
Can you tell me what wolves are "stabled wolves,"
v. 534.
Southey. Not exactly. But here is another
verse of the same construction as you remarked
before :
And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
167
This was done by choice, not by necessity. He
might have omitted the But, and have satisfied
the herd bovine and porcine. Just below are two
others in which three syllables are included in the
time of two.
But for that damn VI magician, let him be girt, &c. V. 802.
Harpies and hydras, or all the monstrous forms, &c. V.,605.
And again
And crumble all thy sinews. Why, prithee, shepherd,
V. 615
Landor. You have crept unsoiled from
Under the sooty flag of Acheron. V. 600.
And you may add many dozens more of similar
verses, if you think it worth your while to go back
for them. In v. 610, 1 find "yet" redundant.
I love thy courage yet, and bold emprise.
Commentators and critics boggle sadly a little
farther on
But in another country, as he said,
Bore a bright golden flower ; but not in this soil.
On which hear T. Warton. " Milton, notwith-
standing his singular skill in music, appears to
have had a very bad ear." Warton was celebrated in
his time for his great ability in raising a laugh in
the common-room. He has here shown a capa-
city more extensive in that faculty. Two or three
honest men have run to Milton's assistance, and
have applied a remedy to his ear : they would
help him to mend the verse. In fact, it is a bad
one : he never wrote it so. The word but is use-
less in the second line, and comes with the worse
grace after the But in the preceding. They who
can discover faults in versification where there are
none but of their own imagining, have failed to
notice v. 666.
Why are you | vext, lady, \ why do you | frown.
Now, this in reality is inadmissible, being of a
metre quite different from the rest. It is dacty-
lic ; and consequently, although the number of
syllables is just, the number of feet is defective.
But Milton, in reciting it, would bring it back to
the order he had established. He would read it
Why are y6u vext ?
And then in a faultering and falling accent, and
in the tender trochee,
Lady I why do y&u frOwn ?
There are some who in a few years can learn all
the harmony of Milton ; there are others who
must go into another state of existence for this
felicity.
Southey. I am afraid I am about to check for a
moment your enthusiasm, in bringing you
To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
whom Comus is holding in derision.
Landor. Certainly it is odd enough to find him
in such company. It is the first time either cynic
or stoic ever put on fur, and it must be confessed
it little becomes them. We are told that, v. 727,
And live like Nature's bastards, not her sons,
is taken from the Bible. Whencesoever it may
be taken, the expression is faulty ; for a son may
be a bastard, and quite as surely a bastard may be
a son. In v. 732, "the unsought, diamonds " are
ill-placed ; and we are told that Doctors Warbur-
ton and Newton called these four lines " exceed-
ing childish." They are so, for all that. I won-
der none of the fraternity had his fingers at liberty
to count the syllables in v. 753.
If yon let I slip time, like a neglected rose, &c.
I wish he had cast away the yet in v. 745.
Think what ; and be advised ; you are but young yet.
Not only is yet an expletive, and makes the verse
inharmonious, but the syllables young and yet
coming together would of themselves be intoler-
able anywhere. What a magnificent passage !
how little poetry in any language is comparable to
this, which closes the lady's reply,
Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced. Vv. 792—799.
This is worthy of Shakspeare himself in his highest
mood, and is unattained and unattainable by any
other poet. What a transport of enthusiasm !
what a burst of harmony ! He who writes one
sentence equal to this, will have reached a higher
rank in poetry than any has done since this was
written.
Southey. I thought it would be difficult to con-
fine you to censure, as we first proposed. The
anger and wit of Comus effervesce into flatness,
one dashed upon the other.
Come, no more ;
This is mere moral babble, and direct
Against the canon laws of our foundation.
He rolls out from the " cynic tub" to put on cap
and gown. The laughter of Milton soon assumed
a wry puritanical cast. Even while he had the
molle he wanted thefacetum, in all its parts and
qualities. It is hard upon Milton, and harder
still upon inferior poets, that every expression of
his used by a predecessor should be noted as bor-
rowed or stolen. Here in v. 822
Will bathe the drooping spirits in delight
is traced to several, and might be traced to more.
Chaucer, in whose songs it is more beautiful than
elsewhere, writes,
His harte bathed in a bath of blisse.
Probably he took the idea from the bath of
knights. You could never have seen Chaucer,
nor the rest, when you wrote those verses at
Eugby on Godiva : you drew them out of the
Square Pool, and assimilated them to the tran-
quillity of prayer, such a tranquillity as is the
effect of prayer on the boyish mind, when it has
any effect at all.
Landor. I have expunged many thoughts for
their close resemblance to what others had writ-
ten whose works I never saw until after. But all
thinking men must think, all imaginative men
must imagine, many things in common, although
they differ. Some abhor what others embrace ;
but the thought strikes them equally. With
some an idea is productive, with others it lies
inert. I have resigned and abandoned many
things because I unreasonably doubted my legiti-
168
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
mate claim to them, and many more because I
believed I had enough substance in the house
without them, and that the retention might raise
a clamour in my court-yard. I do not look very
sharply after the poachers on my property. One
of your neighbours has broken down a shell in my
grotto, and a town gentleman has lamed a rabbit
in my warren : heartily welcome both. Do not
shut your book, we have time left for the rest.
Southey, Sabrina in person is now before us.
Johnson talks absurdly, not on the long narration,
for which he has reason, but in saying that " it is
of no use, because it is false, and therefore unsuit-
able to a good being." Warton answers this ob-
jection with great propriety. It may be added
that things in themselves very false are very true
in poetry, and produce not only delight, but bene-
ficial moral effects. This is an instance. The
part before us is copied from Fletcher's Faithful
Shepherdess. The Spirit, in his thanksgiving to
Sabrina for liberating the lady, is extremely warm
in good wishes. After the aspiration,
May thy lofty head be crown 'd
With many a tower and terrace round,
he adds,
And here and there, thy banki upon,
With groves of myrrh and cinnamon.
Jt would have been more reasonable to have
said,
And here and there some fine fat geese,
And ducklings waiting for green peas.
The conclusion is admirable, though it must
be acknowledged that the piece is undramatic.
Johnson makes an unanswerable objection to the
prologue : but he must have lost all the senses
that are affected by poetry when he calls the whole
drama tediously instructive. There is indeed here
and there prolixity ; yet refreshing springs burst
out profusely in every part of the wordy wilder-
ness. We are now at the Sonnets. I know your
dislike of this composition.
Landor. In English ; not in Italian : but Mil-
ton has ennobled it in our tongue, and has
trivialised it in that. He who is deficient in readi-
ness of language, is half a fool in writing, and
more than half in conversation. Ideas fix them-
selves about the tongue, and fall to the ground
when they are in want of that support. Unhap-
pily Italian poetry in the age of Milton was
almost at its worst, and he imitated what he
heard repeated or praised. It is better to say no
more about it, or about his Psalms, when we come
to them.
Southey. Among his minor poems several are
worthless.
Landor. True ; but if they had been lost, we
should be glad to have recovered them. Crom-
well would not allow Lely to omit or diminish a
single wart upon his face ; yet there were many
and great ones. If you had found a treasure o
gold and silver, and afterward in the same exca-
vation an urn in which only brass coins were
contained, would you reject them ? You will find
in his English Sonnets some of a much higher
strain than even the best of Dante's. The great
poet is sometimes recumbent, but never languid ;
often unadorned, I wish I could honestly say not
often inelegant. But what noble odes (for such
we must consider them) are the eighth, the fif-
teenth, the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and above all
the eighteenth. There is a mild and serene sub-
limity in the nineteenth. In the twentieth there
is the festivity of Horace, with a due observance
of his precept, applicable metaphorically,
Simplici myrto nihil adlabores.
This is among the few English poems which are
quite classical, according to our notions, as the
Greeks and Romans have impressed them. It is
pleasing to find Milton, in his later days, thus
disposed to cheerfulness and conviviality. There
are climates of the earth, it is said, in which a
warm season intervenes between autumn and
winter. Such a season came to reanimate, not
the earth itself, but what was highest upon it.
A few of Milton's Sonnets are extremely bad :
the rest are excellent. Among all Shakspeare's
not a single one is very admirable, and few sink
very low. They are hot and pothery : there is
much condensation, little delicacy; like raspberry-
jam without cream, without crust, without bread,
to break its viscidity. But I would rather sit
down to one of them again, than to a string of
such musty sausages as are exposed in our streets
at the present dull season. Let us be reverent ;
but only where reverence is due, even in Milton
and in Shakspeare. It is a privilege to be near
enough to them to see their faults : never are we
likely to abuse it. Those in high station, who
have the folly and the impudence to look down on
us, possess none such. Silks perish as the silk-
worms have perished : kings as their carpets and
canopies. There are objects too great for these
animalcules of the palace to see well and wholly.
Do you doubt that the most fatuous of the
Georges, whichever it was, thought himself New-
ton's superior ? or that any minister, any peer of
parliament, held the philosopher so high as the
assayer of the mint? Was it not always in a
grated hole, among bars and bullion, that they
saw whatever they could see of his dignity ? was
it ever among the interminable worlds he brought
down for men to contemplate ? Yet Newton stood
incalculably more exalted above the glorious
multitude of stars and suns, than these ignorant
and irreclaimable wretches above the multitude of
the street. Let every man hold this faith, and it
will teach him what is lawful and right in venera-
tion; namely, that there are divine beings and
immortal men on the one side, mortal men and
brute beasts on the other. The two parties stand
compact; each stands separate; the distance is
wide ; but there is nothing in the interval.
Will you go on, after a minute or two, for I am
inclined to silence ?
Southey. Next to the Sonnets come the Odes,
written much earlier. One stanza in that On the
Morning of the Nativity, has been often admired.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOK.
169
What think you of this stanza, the fourth ] but
the preceding and the following are beautiful too.
Landor. I think it incomparably the noblest
piece of lyric poetry in any modern language I
am conversant with : and I regret that so much of
the remainder throws up the bubbles and fetid
mud of the Italian. In the thirteenth what a
rhyme is harmony with symphony! In the
eighteenth,
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail.
I wish you would unfold the folded tail for me :
I do not like to meddle with it.
Southey. Better to rest on the fourth stanza,
and then regard fresh beauties in the preceding
and the following. Beyond these, very far beyond,
are the nineteenth and twentieth. But why is
the priest pale-eyed^
Landor. Who knows ] I would not delay you
with a remark on the modern spelling of what
Milton wrote kist, and what some editors have
turned into Mss'd; a word which could not exist
in its contraction, and never did exist in speech,
even uncontracted. Yet they make kiss'd rhyme
with whist. Let me remark again, on the word
unexpressive, 116, used before in Lycidas, v. 176,
and defended by the authority of Shakspeare.
(As You Like It. Act III., 82.)
The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she.
This is quite as wrong as resistless for irresis-
tible, and even more so. I suspect it was used
by Shakspeare, who uses it only once, merely
to turn into ridicule a fantastic euphuism of the
day. Milton, in his youth, was fond of seizing on
odd things wherever he found them.
Southey.
And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow. V. 130.
Landor. No ; I will not : I am too puritanical
in poetry for that.
Southey. The twenty-third, " And sullen Mo-
loch," is grand, until we come to
The brutish gods of Nile, as fast
Isis and Osiris and the dog Anubis, haste.
As fast as what ? We have heard of nothing but
the ring of cymbals calling the grisly king. We
come to worse in twenty-six,
So when the sun in bed
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin, &o.
And all about the courtly table
Bright-harnest angels sit . . in order serviceable.
They would be the less serviceable by being seated,
and not the more so for being harnest.
The Passion. The five first verses of the sixth
stanza are good, and very acceptable after the
" letters where my tears have washt a wannish
white." The two last verses are guilty of such an
offence as Cowley himself was never indicted for.
The sixth stanza lies between two others full of
putrid conceits, like a large pearl which has ex-
hausted its oyster.
Landor. But can anything be conceived more
exquisite than
Grove and spring
Would soon unbosom all their echoes mild !
This totally withdraws us from regarding the
strange superfetation just below.
The Circumcision, v. 6.
Now mourn ; and if sad share with us to bear.
Death of an Infant. It is never at a time when
the feelings are most acute that the poet expresses
them : but sensibility and taste shrink alike, on
such occasions, from witticisms and whimsies.
Here are too many ; but the two last stanzas are
very beautiful. Look at the note. Here are six
verses, four of them in Shakspeare, containing
specimens of the orthography you recommend.
Sweet Rose ! fair flower, untimely pluckt, soon vaded,
Pluckt in the bud and vaded in the spring,
Bright orient pearle, alack too timely shaded !
Fair creature ! kil'd too soon by Death's sharp sting.
Again,
Sweete lovely Rose ! ill pluckt before thy time,
Fair worthy sonne, not conquered, but betraid.
Southey. The spelling of Milton is not always
to be copied, though it is better on the whole
than any other writer's. He continues to write
fift and sixt. In what manner would he write
eighth ? If he omitted the final h there would be
irregularity and confusion. Beside, how would
he continue ] Would he say the tent for the tenth,
and the thirtent, fourtent, &c.
Landor. We have corrected and fixed a few
inconsiderate and random spellings, but we have
as frequently taken the wrong and rejected the
right. No edition of Shakspeare can be valuable
unless it strictly follows the first editors, who
knew and observed his orthography.
Southey.
From thy prefixed seat didst post. St. 9, v. 59.
We find the same expression more than once in
Milton ; surely one very unfit for grave subjects,
in his time as in ours.
Let us, sitting beneath the sun-dial, look at the
poem On Time.
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping Hours
Whose speed is but the weary plummet's pace.
Now, although the Hours may be the lazier for
the lead about them, the plummet is the quicker
for it.
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.
It is incredible how many disgusting images Mil-
ton indulges in.
Landor. In his age, and a century earlier, it
was called strength. The Graces are absent from
this chamber of Ilithyia. But the poet would
have defended his position with the horse of
Virgil.
" Uterumgue armato milite complent."
Southey.
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss,
meaning undivided; and he employs the same
170
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
word in the same sense again in the Paradise
Lost. How much more properly than as we are
now in the habit of using it, calling men and
women, who never saw one another, individuals,
and often employing it beyond the person : for
instance, " a man's individual pleasure," although
the pleasure is divided with another or with
many. The last part, from " When everything,"
to the end, is magnificent. The word sincerely
bears its Latin signification.
The next is, At a Solemn Music. And I think
you will agree with me that a sequence of rhymes
never ran into such harmony as those at the con-
clusion, from " That we on earth."
Landor. Excepting the commencement of
Dryden's Religio Laid, where indeed the poetry
is of a much inferior order : for the head of Dry-
den does not reach so high as to the loins of Milton.
Southey. No, nor to the knees. We now come
to the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester.
He has often much injured this beautiful metre by
the prefix of a syllable which distorts every foot.
The entire change in the Allegro, to welcome
Euphrosyne, is admirably judicious. The flow
in the poem before us is trochaic : he turns it into
the iambic, which is exactly its opposite. The
verses beginning
The God that sits at marriage-feast,
are infinitely less beautiful than Ovid's. These,
He at their invoking came,
But with a scarce well-lighted flame,
bear a faint resemblance to
Fax quoque quam tenuit lacrimoso stridula fumo
Usque fuit, nullosque invenit motibus ignet.
Here the conclusion is ludicrously low,
No marchioness, but now a queen.
In Vacation Exercise.
Driving dumb tilence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely tat two years before.
What do you think of that ?
Landor. Why, I think it would have been as
well if he had sat there still. In the 27th verse
he uses the noun substantive suspect for suspicion;
and why not ] I have already given my reasons
for its propriety. From 33 to 44 is again such a
series of couplers as you will vainly look for in
any other poet.
Southey. " On the Ens" Nothing can be more
ingenious. It was in such subjects that the royal
James took delight. I know not what the Rivers
have to do with the present, but they are very
refreshing after coming out of the Schools.
The Epitaph on Shakspeare is thought un-
worthy of Milton. I entertain a very different
opinion of it, considering it was the first poem he
ever published. Omit the two lines,
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a live-long monument,
and the remainder is vigorous, direct, and en-
thusiastic ; after invention, the greatest qualities
of all great poetry.
On the Forces of Conscience. Milton is
among the least witty of mankind. He seldom
attempts a witticism unless he is angry ; and
then he stifles it by clenching his fist. His un-
rhymed translation of Quis multa gracilis, is
beautiful for four lines only. Plain in thy neat-
ness is almost an equivoke ; neat in thy plainness
of attire would be nearer the mark.
Landor. Simplex munditiis does not mean
that, nor plain in thy " ornaments," as Warton
thinks ; but, without any reference to ornaments,
plain in attire. Mundus muliebris (and from
mundus munditice) means the toilet ; and always
will mean it, as long as the world lasts. We
now come upon the Psalms ; so let us close the
book.
Southey. Willingly ; for I am desirous of hear-
ing you say a little more about the Latin poetry
of Milton than you have said in your Dissertation.
Landor. Johnson gives his opinion more freely
than favourably. It is wonderful that a critic, so
severe in his censures on the absurdities and extra-
vagancies of Cowley, should prefer the very worst
of them to the gracefulness and simplicity of
Milton. His gracefulness he seldom loses ; his
simplicity he not always retains. But there is no
Latin verse of Cowley worth preservation. Thomas
May indeed is an admirable imitator of Lucan;
so good a one, that if in Lucan you find little
poetry, in May you find none. But his verses
sound well upon the anvil. It is surprising that
Milton, who professedly imitated Ovid, should so
much more rarely have run into conceits than
when he had no such leader. His early English
poetry is full of them, and in the gravest the
most. The best of his Latin poems is that ad-
dressed to Christina in the name of Cromwell : it
is worthy of the classical and courtly Bembo.
But in the second verse ludda Stella violates the
metre : Stella serena would be more descriptive
and applicable. It now occurs to me that he who
edited the last A insworth's Dictionary, calls Cowley
poetarum sceculi sui facile princeps, and totally
omits all mention of Shakspeare in the obituary
of illustrious men. Among these he has placed
not only the most contemptible critics, who bore
indeed some relation to learning, but even such
people as lord Cornwallis and lord Thurlow.
Egregious ass ! above all other asses by a good
ear's length ! Ought a publication so negligent
and injudicious to be admitted into our public
schools, after the world has been enriched by the
erudition of Facciolati and Furlani] Shall we
open the book again, and go straight on.
Southey. If you please. But as you insist on
me saying most about the English, I expect at
your hands a compensation in the Latin.
Landor. I do not promise you a compensation,
but I will waste no time in obeying your wishes.
Severe and rigid as the character of Milton has
been usually represented to us, it is impossible
to read his Elegies without admiration for his
SOUTHEY AND LANDOR.
171
warmth of friendship, and his eloquence in ex-
pressing it. His early love of Ovid, as a master
in poetry, is enthusiastic.
Non tune lonio quidquam cessisset ITomcro,
Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro !
Neve is often used by the moderns for neque, very
improperly. Although we hear much about
the Metamorphoses and the ^neid being left in-
complete, we may reasonably doubt whether the
authors could have much improved them. There
is a deficiency of skill in the composition of both
poems ; but every part is elaborately worked out.
Nothing in Latin can excell the beauty of Virgil's
versification. Ovid's at one moment has the
fluency, at another the discontinuance, of mere
conversation. Sorrow, passionate, dignified, and
deep, is never seen in the Metamorphoses as in
the Mneid; nor in the jEneid is any eloquence so
sustained, any spirit so heroic, as in the contest
between Ajax and Ulysses. But Ovid frequently,
in other places, wants that gravity and potency
in which Virgil rarely fails : declamation is no
substitute for it. Milton, in his Latin verses,
often places words beginning with sc, st, sp, &c.,
before a dactyl, which is inadmissible.
Ah ! quoties dignae stupui miracula fonnae
Quas possit senium vel reparare Jovis.
No such difficult a matter as he appears to repre-
sent it : for Jupiter, to the very last, was much
given to such reparations. This elegy, with
many slight faults, has great facility and spirit
of its own, and has caught more by running at the
side of Ovid and Tibullus. In the second elegy,
alipes is a dactyl ; pes, simple or compound, is
long. This poem is altogether unworthy of its
author. The third is on the death of Launcelot An-
drews, bishop of Winchester. It is florid, puerile,
and altogether deficient in pathos. The conclu-
sion is curious :
Flebam turbatos Cepheleia pellice somnos ;
Talia continuant somnia icepe mihi.
Ovid has expressed the same wish in the same
words, but the aspiration was for somewhat very
dissimilar to a bishop of Winchester. The fourth
is an epistle to Thomas Young, his preceptor, a
man whose tenets were puritanical, but who en-
couraged in his scholar the love of poetry. Much
of this piece is imitated from Ovid. There are
several thoughts which might have been omitted,
and several expressions which might have been
improved. For instance :
Namque eris ipse Dei radiante sub cegide tutus,
llle tibi custos et pugil ille tibi.
All the verses after these are magnificent The
next is on Spring; very inferior to its prede-
cessors.
Nam doing et cedes et vis, cum nocte reccssit
Neve giganteum Dei metuere sceliis.
How thick the faults lie here ! But the invitation
of the Earth to the Sun is quite Ovidian.
Semicaperque deus semideusque caper
is too much so. Elegy the sixth is addressed to
Deodati.
Mitto tibi sanam non pleno ventre salutem,
Qua tu, distento, forte carere potes.
I have often observed in modern Latinists of the
first order, that they use indifferently forte and
forsan or forsitan. Here is an example. Forte
is, by accident, without the implication of a doubt ;
forsan always implies one. Martial wrote bad
latin when he wrote " Si forsan." Eunchenius
himself writes questionably to D'Orville "sed forte
res non est tanti." It surely would be better to
have written fortasse. I should have less won-
dered to find forte in any modern Italian (ex-
cepting Bembo, who always writes with as much
precision as Cicero or Caesar), because ma forse,
their idiom, would prompt sed forte.
Naso Corallaeis mala carmina misit ab agris.
Untrue. He himself was discontented with them
because they had lost their playfulness; but their
only fault lies in their adulation. I doubt whether
all the elegiac verses that have been written in
the Latin language ever since, are worth the books
of them he sent from Pontus. Deducting one
couplet from Joannes Secundus, I would strike
the bargain.
Si modo saltern.
The saltern is here redundant and contrary to
Latinity.
Southey. This elegy, I think, is equable and
pleasing, without any great fault or great beauty.
Landor. In the seventh he discloses the first
effects of love on him. Here are two verses
which I never have read without the heart-ache :
TJt mihi adhuc refugam qucerebant lamina noctem
Nee matutinum sustinuerc jubar.
We perceive at one moment the first indication
of love and of blindness. Happy, had the blind-
ness been as unreal as the love. Cupid is not
exalted by a comparison with Paris and Hylas,
nor the frown of Apollo magnified by the Par-
thian. He writes, as many did, author for auctor :
very improperly. In the sixtieth verse is again
neve for nee ; nor is it the last time. But here
come beautiful verses :
Deme meos tandem, verum nee deme, furores ;
Nescio cur, miser est suaviter omnis amans.
I wish cur had been qui. Subjoined to this
elegy are ten verses in which he regrets the
time he had wasted in love. Probably it was on
the day (for it could not have cost him more) on
which he composed it.
Southey. The series of these compositions ex-
hibits little more than so many exercises in my-
thology. You have repeated to me all that is
good in them, and in such a tone of enthusiasm
as made me think better of them than I had ever
thought before. The first of his epigrams, on
Leonora Baroni, has little merit : the second,
which relates to Tasso, has much.
172
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Landor. I wish however that in the sixth line
he had substituted ilia for eadem ; and not on
account of the metre ; for eadem becomes a spon-
dee, as eodem in Virgil's " uno eodemque igni."
And sibi, which ends the poem, is superfluous ;
if there must be any word it should be ei, which
the metre rejects. The Scazons against Salma-
sius are a miserable copy of Persius's heavy
prologue to his satires ; and moreover a copy at
second-hand : for Manage had imitated it in
his invective against Mommor, whom he calls
Gargilius. He begins,
Quis expedivit psittaco suo x<";<-
But Persius's and Menage's at least are metrical,
which Milton's in one instance are not. The fifth
foot should be an iambic. In primatum we have
a spondee. The iambics which follow, on Salma-
sius again, are just as faulty. They start with a
false quantity, and go on stumbling with the same
infirmity. The epigram on More, the defender of
Salmasius, is without wit ; the pun is very poor.
The next piece, a fable of the Fanner and Master,
is equally vapid. But now comes the " Bellipo-
tens Virgo," of which we often have spoken, but ot
which no one ever spoke too highly. Christina
was flighty and insane ; but it suited the policy
of Cromwell to flatter a queen almost as vain as
Elizabeth, who could still command the veterans
of Gustavus Adolphus. We will pass over the
Greek verses. They are such as no boy of the
sixth form would venture to show up in any of
our public schools. We have only one alcaic ode
in the volume, and a very bad one it is. The
canons of this metre were unknown in Milton's
time. But, versed as he was in mythology, he
never should have written
Nee puppe lustrasses Charontis
Horribiles barathri recessus.
The good Doctor Goslyn was not rowed in that
direction, nor could any such place be discovered
from the bark of Charon, from whom Dr. Goslyn
had every right, as Vice-Chancellor of the Univer-
sity, to expect civility and attention.
Southey. We come now to a longer poem, and in
heroic verse, on the Gunpowder Plot. It appears
to me to be even more Ovidian than the elegies.
Monstrosus Typhoeus, Mavortigena Quirinus, the
Pope, and the mendicant friars, meet strangely.
However, here they are, and now come Saint Peter
and Bromius.
Landor.
Hio Dolus Lnsortis semper sedet ater ocellit.
Though ocellus is often used for ocidus, being
diminutive, it is, if not always a word of endear
ment, yet never applicable to what is terrific or
heroic. In the one hundredth and sixty-thirc
verse the Pope is represented as declaring the
Protestant religion to be the true one.
Et quotquot fidei caluerc cupidine verae.
This poem, which ends poorly, is a wonderfu
work for a boy of seventeen, although much less
so than Chatterton's Bristowe Tragedy and
Southey. I suspect you will be less an admirer
if the next, on Obitum Prceulis Eliensea,
Qui rex sacrorum ilia fuisti in insula
Qua nomen Anguillts tenet,
where he wishes Death were dead.
Et imprecor neci necem.
Again,
Sub regna furvi luctuosa Tartar!
Sedetque subterraneas.
Landor. He never has descended before to such
a bathos as this, where he runs against the coming
jlackamoor in the dark. However, he recovers
'rom the momentary stupefaction, and there
follow twenty magnificent verses, such as
Horace himself, who excells in this metre, never
wrote in it. But the next, Naturam non pati
senium, is still more admirable. I wish only he
tiad omitted the third verse.
Heu quam perpetuis erroribus acta fatiscit
Avia mens.hominum, tenebrisque iminersa profundis
CEdipodioniam volvit sub pectore nocteni.
Sublime as volvit sub pectore noctem is, the
lumbering and ill-composed word, CEdipodio-
niam, spoils it. Beside, the sentence would go on
very well, omitting the whole line. Gray has
much less vigour and animation in the fragment
of his philosophical poem. Robert Smith alone
has more : how much more ! Enough to rival
Lucretius in his noblest passages, and to deter the
most aspiring from an attempt at Latin poetry.
The next is also on a philosophical subject, and
entitled De Idea Platonica quemadmodum Aris-
toteles intellexit. This is obscure. Aristoteles
knew, as others do, that. Plato entertained the
whimsy of God working from an archetype ; but
he himself was too sound and solid for the admis-
sion of such a notion. The first five verses are
highly poetical : the sixth is Cowleian. At the
close he scourges Plato for playing the fool so
extravagantly, and tells him either to recall the
poets he has turned out of doors, or to go out
himself. There are people who look up in asto-
nishment at this archetypus gigas, frightening
God while he works at him. Milton has invested
him with great dignity, and slips only once into
the poetical corruptions of the age.
Southey. Lover as you are of Milton, how highly
must you be gratified by the poem he addresses to
his father !
Landor. I am happy, remote as we are, to
think of the pleasure so good a father must have
felt on this occasion, and how clearly he must
have seen in prospective the glory of his son.
In the verses after the forty-second,
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,
Cum nondum luxus vastaeque immensa vorago
Nota guise, et modico fumabat caena Lyseo,
Turn de more sedens festa ad convivia vates, &c.
I wish he had omitted the two intermediate lines,
and had written,
Carmina regales epulas ornare solebant,
Cum, de more, &c.
The four toward the conclusion,
At tibi, chare pater, &c.
SOUTHEY AND LANDOK.
173
must have gratified the father as much almost by
the harmony as the sentiment.
Southey. The scazons to Salsilli are a just and
equitable return for his quatrain ; for they are
full of false quantities, without an iota of poetry.
Landor. But how gloriously he burst forth
again in all his splendour for Manso ; for Manso,
who before had enjoyed the immortal honour of
being the friend of Tasso.
Diis dilecte senex ! te Jupiter aequus oportet
Nascentem et miti lustraritlumine Phoebus,
Atlantisque nepos ; neque enim nisi charus ab ortu
Dili superit poterit magno favisse poetee.
And the remainder of the poem is highly enthu-
siastic. What a glorious verse is,
Frangam Saxonicas Britonum sub marte phalanges.
Southey. I have often wondered that our poets,
and Milton more especially, should.be the parti-
sans of the Britons rather than of the Saxons. I
do not add the Normans ; for very few of our
poets are Norman by descent. The Britons seem
to have been a barbarous and treacherous race,
inclined to drunkenness and quarrels. Was the
whole nation ever worth this noble verse of Milton?
It seems to come sounding over the ^Egean Sea,
and not to have been modulated on the low
country of the Tiber.
Landor. In his pastoral on the loss of Diodati,
entitled Epitaphium Damonis, there are many
beautiful verses : for instance,
Ovium quoque taedet, at illae
Moerent, inque suum convertunt ora magistrum.
The pause at mcerent, and the word also, show the
great master. In Virgil himself it is impossible
to find anything more scientific. Here, as in
Lycidas, mythologies are intermixed, and the
heroic bursts forth from the pastoral. Apollo
could not for ever be disguised as the shepherd-
boy of Admetus.
Supra caput imber et Earns
Triste Bona.nt,fractceque agitato, crepuscula sylva.
Southey. This is finely expressed : but he found
the idea not untouched before. Gray, and others
have worked upon it since. It may be well to
say little on the Presentation of the poems to the
Bodleian Library. Strophes and antistrophes are
here quite out of place ; and on no occasion has
any Latin poet so jumbled together the old me-
tres. Many of these are irregular and imperfect.
Ion Actea genitus Creusa
is not a verse : authorum is not Latin.
Et tutela dabit talert RoUsi
is defective in metre. This Pindaric ode to Rouse
the librarian, is indeed fuller of faults than any
other of his Latin compositions. He tells us
himself that he has admitted a spondee for the
third foot in the phaleucian verse, because Catul-
lus had done so in the second. He never wrote
such bad verses, or gave such bad reasons, all
his life before. But beautifully and justly has he
said,
Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet.
Landor. I find traces in Milton of nearly all
the best Latin poets, excepting Lucretius. This
is singular ; for there is in both of them a gene-
rous warmth and a contemptuous severity. I ad-
mire and love Lucretius. There is about him a
simple majesty, a calm and lofty scorn of every-
thing pusillanimous and abject : and consistently
with this character, his poetry is masculine, plain,
concentrated, and energetic. But since inven-
tion was precluded by the subject, and glimpses of
imagination could be admitted through but few
and narrow apertures, it is the insanity of enthu-
siasm to prefer his poetical powers to those of
Virgil, of Catullus, and of Ovid ; in all of whom
every part of what constitutes the true poet is
much more largely displayed. The excellence of
Lucretius is, that his ornaments are never out
of place, and are always to be found wherever
there is a place for them. Ovid knows not what
to do with his, and is as fond of accumulation as
the frequenter of auction-rooms. He is playful
so out of season, that he reminds me of a young
lady I saw at Sta. Maria Novella, who at one mo-
ment crossed herself, and at the next tickled her
companion, by which process they were both put
upon their speed at their prayers, and made very
good and happy. Small as is the portion of
glory which accrues to Milton from his Latin
poetry, there are single sentences in it, ay, single
images, worth all that our island had produced
before. In all the volume of Buchanan I doubt
whether you can discover a glimpse of poetry ;
and few sparks fly off the anvil of May.
There is a confidence of better days expressed
in this closing poem. Enough is to be found in
his Latin to insure him a high rank and a last-
ing name. It is however to be regretted that
late in life he ran back to the treasures of his
youth, and estimated them with the fondness of
that undiscerning age. No poet ever was sorry
that he abstained from early publication. But
Milton seems to have cherished his first effusions
with undue partiality. Many things written later
by him are unworthy of preservation, especially
those which exhibit men who provoked him into
bitterness. Hatred, the most vulgar of vulgar-
isms, could never have belonged to his natural
character. He must have contracted the distem-
per from theologians and critics. The scholar in
his days was half clown and half trooper. Col-
lege-life could leave but few of its stains and
incrustations on a man who had stept forward
so soon into the amenities of Italy, and had con-
versed so familiarly with the most polished
gentlemen of the most polished nation.
Southey. In his attacks on Salmasius, and others
more obscure, he appears to have mistaken his
talent in supposing he was witty.
Landor. Is there a man in the world wise
enough to know whether he himself is witty or
not, to the extent he aims at ] I doubt whether
any question needs more self-examination. It is
only the fool's heart that is at rest upon it. He
never asks how the matter stands, and feels con-
174
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
fident he has only to stoop for it. Milton's dough,
it must be acknowledged, is never the lighter
for the bitter barm he kneads up with it.
Smiihey. The sabbath of his mind required
no levities, no excursions or amusements. But
he was not ill-tempered. The worst-tempered
men have often the greatest and readiest store of
pleasantries. Milton, on all occasions indignant
and wrathful at injustice, was unwilling to repress
the signification of it when it was directed against
himself. However, I can hardly think he felt so
much as he expresses ; but he seized on bad
models in his resolution to show his scholarship.
Disputants, and critics in particular, followed one
another with invectives ; and he was thought to
have given the most manifest proof of original
genius who had invented a new form of reproach.
I doubt if Milton was so contented with his dis-
comfiture of Satan, or even with his creation of
Eve, as with the overthrow of Salmasius under
the loads of fetid brimstone he fulminated
against him.
It is fortunate we have been sitting quite alone
while we detected the blemishes of a poet we both
venerate. The malicious are always the most
ready to bring forward an accusation of malice :
and we should certainly have been served, before
long, with a writ pushed under the door.
Landor. Are we not somewhat like two little
beggar-boys, who, forgetting that they are in tat-
ters, sit noticing a few stains and rents in their
father's 'raiment ?
Southey. But they love him.
Let us now walk homeward. We leave behind
us the Severn and the sea and the mountains ;
and, if smaller things may be mentioned so sud-
denly after greater, we leave behind us the sun-
dial, which marks, as we have been doing in
regard to Milton, the course of the great lumi-
nary by a slender line of shadow.
Landor. After witnessing his glorious ascen-
sion, we are destined to lower our foreheads over
the dreary hydropathy and flanelly voices of the
swathed and sinewless.
Southey. Do not be over-sure that you are come
to the worst, even there. Unless you sign a cer-
tificate of their health and vigour, your windows
and lamps may be broken by the mischievous
rabble below.
Landor. Marauders will cook their greens and
bacon, though they tear down cedar pannels for
the purpose.
Southey. There is an incessant chatterer, who
has risen to the first dignities of state, by the
same means as nearly all men rise now by;
namely, opposition to whatever is done or pro-
jected by those invested with authority. He will
never allow us to contemplate greatness at our
leisure : he will not allow us indeed to look at it
for a moment. Caesar must be stript of his lau-
rels and left bald ; or some reeling soldier, some
insolent swaggerer, some stilted ruffian, thrust
before his triumph. If he fights, he does not
know how to use his sword ; if he speaks, he
speaks vile Latin. I wonder that Cromwell fares
no better ; for he lived a hypocrite and he died a
traitor. I should not recall to you this ridiculous
man, to whom the Lords have given the run of
the House . . a man pushed off his chair by every
party he joins, and enjoying all the disgraces he
incurs . . were it not that he has also, in the fulness
of his impudence, raised his cracked voice and
incondite language against Milton.
Landor. I hope his dapple fellow-creatures in
the lanes will be less noisy and more modest as
we pass along them homeward.
Southey. Wretched as he is in composition,
superficial as he is in all things, without a glim-
mer of genius, or a grain of judgment, yet his
abilities and acquirements raise him somewhat
high above those more quiescent and unaspiring
ones, you call his fellow-creatures.
Landor. The main difference is, that they are
subject to have their usual burdens laid upon
them all their lives, while his of the woolsack is
taken off for ever. The allusion struck me from
the loudness and dissonance of his voice, the
wilfulness and perverseness of his disposition, and
his habitude of turning round on a sudden and
kicking up behind.
QUEEN ELIZABETH, CECIL, DUKE OF ANJOU, AND DE LA MOTTE FENELON.
Elizabeth. You are only nineteen, M. D'Anjou :
I, as all the world knows, am bordering on thirty.
La Motte (aside.) Thirty-nine, that is. (Pretty
bordering).
Elizabeth (continuing.) If in fifteen or twenty
years, sooner or later, I should haply lose a part
of those personal charms which, for the benefit of
my people, God's providence hath so bountifully
bestowed on me, and which your partial eye hath
multiplied ; if they should wane, and their power
over your gentle heart become fainter . . die I
must; die of grief; the grievousest of grief ; the
loss of your affection.
Anjou. Impossible! Such charms perish ! wane!
decline ! in fifteen or twenty years !
La Motte (aside.) They have all been gone the
best part of the time.
Anjou. Angelic vision! I am unworthy of
them; Earth may be so too. Death alone can
deprive her of their radiance ; but the angels can
be happy without them; and mankind hath not
so sinned a second time as to deserve a deluge,
a universal deluge of tears for which no ark hath
been provided.
Elizabeth (to Cecil.) He speaks well, rationally,
religiously : but, Cecil ! the inches are wanting.
Anjou. A few years are as unlikely to produce
a change on that countenance of a seraph, as
eternity is to produce it in my passion.
Elizabeth. I can not but smile at you, my sweet
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND DUKE OF ANJOU.
cousin ! But surely you mock me. Do my fea-
tures (which, alas ! like my heart, were ever too
flexible) seem to you so settled ?
Anjou. Not otherwise than as the stars above
are settled in the firmament.
Elizabeth. Believe it or not believe it, I have
been more beautiful.
La Moihe (aside.) No heretic will ever be burnt
for disputing the verity of that article.
Anjou. More beautiful still ?
Elizabeth. Ay truly, two years ago.
Anjou. Truth is powerful; but modesty is
powerfuller. Here indeed Truth flies before her.
For this uncourteous speech, thus extorted from
me, on my knees do I crave your pardon, 0 gra-
cious queen ! 0 empress of my heart !
Elizabeth. I increase in glory by that appli-
cation.
Anjou. I have always heard that the lofty of
both sexes love the less in stature, and that the
beautiful are partial to the plain.
Elizabeth. Am I plain ] false traitor ! I could
almost find it in my heart to beat you, for chang-
ing your tone so suddenly.
Anjou. That gracious glance could heal even
wounds inflicted by the rack, and turn agonies into
ecstacies. I spake (alas too truly !) of myself.
Whatever are the graces which the world sees in
my person, I am shorter than several in the courts
of France and England. Indeed I never saw so
many personable men before, as I have seen about
your Majesty.
Elizabeth (aside.) He has caught some of his
brother Henry's jealousy : maybe he hath spied at
Dudley: maybe he hath heard of the admiral and
. . the rest.
Sir ! my cousin ! they are well enough : that is,
they are well enough for grooms, and servitors
about the house.
Anjou. Your Majesty is now looking at those
unfortunate holes and seams left all over my face
by the small-pox.
Elizabeth. Dimples ! dimples ! hiding-places of
Love.
. La Motte ! did you not assure me that there is
a surgeon in London who can remove them all ?
La Motte. And most truly. I have conversed
with him myself, and have seen many whose faces
he hath put into repair. You would believe that
the greater part had never had a speck upon
them.
Elizabeth. Touch your face ? would you let him ]
would you suffer him to alter one feature, one
component of feature, in that countenance ?
Anjou. My mother has insisted that it might
be improved.
Elizabeth. My dear sister the Queen Catarina
is the wisest of queens and of women. A mother
so perspicacious might espy a defect, when another
of equal perspicacity (if any such existed) could
find none.
(To Cectt.) What a monkey ! How hideous !
and how vain ! worst of all !
Cecil. His Highness hath much penetration.
Elizabeth. But the inches ! Cecil ! the inches !
Anjou. I perceive your Majesty has been com-
paring my stature with my lord Burleigh's. I
wish indeed I resembled his lordship in figure
and dignity. I would gladly be half an inch
taller.
Elizabeth. Men never are contented. You are
between five and six feet high.
(Aside) Eleven inches from six though.
Anjou. If my highth is unobjectionable, my
heart is quite at ease : for it has been certified to
me that the surgeon can render my face as
smooth as . .
Elizabeth (aside.) The outside of- an oyster-
shell.
Anjou. And should he fail, should he perad-
venture, my beard in another year will overgrow
the marks.
Elizabeth (to Cecil.) Such creatures are usually
born with beards from chin to eyebrow, and from
eyebrow to nose.
(To Anjou.) Beards so comprehensive add more
to majesty than to comeliness.
(To Cecil.) 'Fore Gad ! Cecil, I would not have
him for a husband, were he ten inches taller, and
ten wider across the shoulders. To gratify my
beloved people, on whom all my thoughts are
bent, I must look narrowly to the succession,
seeing that from my body must descend the issue
of their future kings. We want the inches, Cecil !
we verily do want the inches. My father was a
portly man, Cecil ! and my grandfather, albeit
spare, was wirily elastic. For reasons of state, I
would never have my sister Mary's widower. The
nation might possibly have been disappointed in
the succession, and I should have wasted away
among the bleeding hearts of my people. Say
something to the man, and let him go. Were
there the inches . . but we must not press upon
that point.
Cecil. May it please your Majesty, ten or a
dozen in highth and breadth would cover a multi-
tude of sins, and almost atone for the mass.
Elizabeth. At him upon that !
Anjou. I do perceive there are difficulties ; but
I humbly trust that none of them are insur-
mountable.
Elizabeth. Excuse my maidenly sighs, sweet
cousin !
La Motte (aside) No sighs of that description
have escaped her since she was fourteen. The
first and last of them caught the sails of the High
Admiral, and cast him on the breakers.
Anjou. Those tender breathings, most gracious
lady, seem to arise from my breast, and to mur-
mur on your lips ; those beauteous lips which
may soften or shorten the thread of my destiny.
Elizabeth. Faith and troth, Cecil, this rogue
duke possesses a vast treasury of jewelled lan-
guage. The boy is well educated and hath much
discernment. It would cost no ordinary poet half
a day's labour, and the better part of his ten
nails, to have devised what our cousin hath spoken
off-hand.
176
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
(To Anjou}. Sir, my cousin ! of all the prince
who have wooed me, none so well knows th
avenues to my heart as you do. I beseech you
urge me no further in this moment of my weak
ness. The woman who avoweth her love losetl
her lover. Forbear ! 0 forbear ! have patience
leave my wits to settle ! Time, too clearly I per
ceive it, will only rivet my chains.
La Motte (to Anjou). He hath taken his leisure
in forging them, and hath left them brittle at last
Anjou (to La Motte). Forty-nine years! Women
of that age have bent down their spectacles over
the cradles of their great-grandchildren. In God's
name, La Motte ! how much older do they ever
grow]
Elizabeth. What did I overhear of children
The Lord vouchsafe us whatever number of girls
it may please his Divine Providence ! I would
implore of it, in addition, only just two boys ; one
for France, and one for England.
La Motte. We can not be quite happy with
fewer than four girls, may it please your majesty.
Elizabeth. It pleaseth me well : and I see no
difficulty in inserting so discreet a prayer in our
Litany. But why four ] why four precisely ?
La Motte. May it please your majesty ! in order
to represent their mother and the Graces. In the
first I have presumed to mention, the cardinal
virtues have already their representative.
Cecil. M. De La Motte Fenelon ! her majesty
has been graciously pleased to impose on me her
royal command, that I should express her majes-
ty's deep sorrow (since she herself is incapable in
this presence of expressing any such sentiment)
at the strange misadventure, the sad untoward
demise, of so many Protestant lords and gentle-
men, in his most Christian majesty's good city of
Paris, on the feast of St. Bartholomew last past.
And her most gracious majesty, in the tenderness
of her royal heart, urged by the cries and clamours
of her loving subjects, would remonstrate, how-
ever blandly, thereupon. In order to pacify her
people, who are dearer to her than life, and in
order that no delay whatever may be interposed
to your forthcoming nuptials, her majesty would
fain insure your highness's compliance with the
established religion of the realm ; and is ready to
accept any valid security, that your and her
royal progeny (the first-born and second-born
son especially) be educated in the same. The
daughters, in course, follow the footsteps of the
mother.
Anjou. My children can receive no better
instruction than from their most religious and
accomplished mother. I am tolerant of all reli-
gions ; and to give a proof of it, I am going to
fight for the Protestants in the Low-Countries.
Elizabeth (to Cecil). Do not let him go : he will
obtain great influence over them, and curtail our
traffic and taxes.
(To Anjou). 0 Anjou ! Anjou ! 0 my beloved
Francis ! do you, must you, can you, leave us ]
My sobs choke me. Is war, is even glory, pre-
ferable to love ? Alas ! alas ! you can not answer
me : yon know not what love is. 0 imperfection
of speech ! In the presence of Anjou to separate
war and glory ! But when will you return ]
Anjou. Before the end of next month at
farthest.
Elizabeth. What years, what ages, roll within
that period ! My heart is already on the ocean
with you, swelling more tumultuously. The
danger I most dread is from the elements; no
other enemy is great enough to hurt you. Only
look from the window ! The waves are beating
and roaring against our town of Sandwich, ready
to engulf it.
Anjou. Sweet lady ! the sun is shining on the
eighth of February as brightly as it ever shone
on May before. But shines it not at this mo-
ment on May ?
Elizabeth. Flatterer! deceiver! I am ship-
wrecked and lost already. Adieu ! adieu ! . . .
must I only say . . my cousin!
Anjou. She is gone . . God be praised ! why
did not you tell me, Fenelon ! what a hysena the
creature is ? Her smile cured me at once of love-
qualms.
La Motte. She is not so amiss. Really she was
well-looking no longer than some twenty years
ago. But every woman has been several women
if she has lived long. The English at this hour
call her handsome.
Anjou. The English may be good historians;
they are bad grammarians; they confound the
preterite and the present. Beside, to call her
otherwise, would cost the best among them his
head. How many days ago is it that she chopped
off the hand of the most eloquent and honest man
n her universities, for disapproving of her in-
tended marriage with me 1 and yet he praised her
and spoke affectionately. What prince, whether
in modern times or ancient, ever inflicted so many
and such atrocious pains and penalties, or ever
sxpected such enormous sums in proportion to
he ability of the people ) But in England the
jack is well whipt in, and always follows the first
lound at full cry, muzzle to hoof. The English
lave belief for everything but religion : there
jhey would run wild; only a few good Catho-
ics whimper and sit quiet. Englishmen verily
>elieve the queen loves them tenderly, while they
ee one after another led with the halter round
heir necks up the ladder, some wanting their
sars, some their noses, and some their hands.
Talk to me of St. Bartholomew's day ! The dead
jpon that day died whole.
What stomachs have these islanders ! The
iord High Admiral well deserved his commis-
ion ; but he was braver on land than at sea.
La Motte. The English drink valiantly, and
lo not see clearly small defects in beauty by bed-
ime. They are hale, and deem it unmeet and
unmanly to be squeamish.
Anjou. So it appears, by what my brother told
me, and by what (as we know) went against the
grain with him. But he was heir-apparent. If
)udley had been a gentleman by descent, Charles
WINDHAM AND SHERIDAN.
177
perhaps might not have so taken to heart his
precedency.
La Motte. She has points about her.
Anjou. Ay truly; too many. Were her nose
but awry, she might see to read through it. Then
(mercy upon us !) those long narrow ferret's teeth,
intersecting a face of such proportions, that it is
like a pared cucumber set on end. And then those
foxy eyelashes and eyebrows ! And those wild-
fire eyes, equal in volubility to her tongue and
her affections, and leering like a panther's when
it yawns. Gramercy! the fellow who pretends
he can fill up the trenches and pitfalls in my
face, may try his hand at hers; I never will.
Sacre ! the skinny old goshawk, all talon and
plumage. By St. Martin ! I would not have her
. . no, not even to nail against my stable-door.
I do not wonder that Dudley requires a couple of
wives to take the taste of this wormwood out of
his mouth. My wonder is, that he should have
been at the trouble to murder the same number
of handsome ones to make room for her. I
myself would have done a good deal, perhaps as
much, or nearly so, to get a kingdom ! but my
charger could never overleap this bar. No, La
Motte! I must be contented with the Netherlands.
WINDHAM AND SHERIDAN.
Windham. It is seldom, Mr. Sheridan, that we
have met anywhere out of the House of Commons
these last two years ; and I rejoice in the opportu-
nity of expressing my admiration of your generous
conduct, on an occasion in which the country at
large, and I particularly as minister, was deeply
interested.
Sheridan. I am happy, sir, to be countenanced
by your favourable opinion on any : but I presume
you now refer to my speech on the mutiny at the
Nore.
Windham. Indeed I do : you stood nobly forth
from your party. Never was behaviour more
ignominious than the behaviour of the Whigs has
been, systematically, since the commencement of
the war. Whatever they could do or suggest to
the detriment of their country, or to the advance-
ment of France, they seized on with avidity. But
you manfully came forward and apart from those
traitors, declaring that insubordination should be
reduced, and that rebellion should be crushed.
I heartily wish, and confidently hope, that you
will display the same energy and decision in the
great measure of the Union now projected with
Ireland.
Sheridan. I have heard nothing about it, as
likely to be carried speedily into execution. But
the vast number of indigent and worthless people
who have lately been made Irish peers, might
excite a suspicion that something of moment was
in agitation. Many must be bought over again.
Such men, for instance, as Hely Hutchinson, Lord
Clonmel, Lord Clare, and other exhalations of the
bog and dunghill, who have always in readiness
for the service of any Administration a menace,
a defiance, and a pistol ; such men will never be
contented with the few thousands of income they
have in various ways obtained : their demands
will rise with their services ; and unless the de-
mands are satisfied, the petitioners will turn into
patriots. In such a course is usually the begin-
ning or the termination of public men : seldom
both. The Irish have begun to learn arithmetic
in the English school. Fortunes in this country
have risen so high and so suddenly on the base
of politics, as to have attracted the gaze and to
haye excited the aspiration of Ireland. She sees
how the Grenvilles and Temples have always
speculated on this grand Exchange. They have
bought in and sold out with singular discretion.
Hence a family of small pretensions to antiquity,
far from affluent until recently, has been some-
what enriched at every generation. Lord Gren-
ville, who receives forty thousand a-year from
his tellership of the Exchequer, which in time of
peace brought him scarcely a tenth, was strenuous
for war; while Pitt hung back, in suspense for a
moment whether he should comply with the
king's wishes or retire from office. The Duke of
Portland, as you know, stipulated for a renewal
of the lease of Marybone Park, before he would
join the ministry with his adherents. The value
of this lease is calculated at two hundred thou-
sand. The Irish peers may fairly demand some-
thing handsome for the surrender of their power
and patronage ; I should have added their digni-
ties, had I not been aware that either to laugh or
to excite laughter, is, at times, unseasonable.
Windham. The terms are not exactly known
at present ; and indeed the business is so compli-
cated, that doubts are beginning to arise whether
the scheme will be practicable in the present year.
Sheridan. Much depends on the amount of
secret service money the parliament will consent
to vote.
This union might be the greatest blessing that
ever was conferred on Ireland. But when I con-
sider how unjustly, how harshly, how treache-
rously, she has been treated by all administra-
tions, my suspicions rise far above my hopes. It
is rumoured that the conditions (which however
there will be time enough to reconsider and to
modify) are less favourable than were granted
to Scotland : and that what is, and always has
been in every country under heaven, the main
object, is not to be conceded : I mean the reli-
gion of the majority. On the abolition of epis-
copacy in Scotland, its revenues were applied to
the religious and moral education of the people,
who renounced the old religion, rejected the
formulary of the English, and chose another.
Surely then in common justice, to say nothing
of policy, nothing of conciliation, those from
whom churches and church-lands were taken
178
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
away, having at least as fair a claim to such
things as those who never were in possession of
them, should receive the plunder back. In doing
this to the full extent, you would still do less for
Ireland than was done for Scotland.
Wind/mm. We have always been tender in
touching vested rights.
Sheridan. To my apprehension you were not
very tender in your touch on the vestment of the
Irish Catholic church. The vestment had indeed
too many folds and flounces about it, and, instead
of covering the brawny shoulders of twenty or
thirty fathers, might have been conveniently cut
up for the shirts and shifts of as many hundred
children. But you never drew out scissars or
measure for that purpose : you only stripped
the vesture off one fat fellow to clap it on another
fatter.
Windliam. True enough. The bishop of Derry's
landed property extends, I hear, over a hundred
and fifty thousand acres ; and cottagers pay thirty
shillings a year for half acres, not the best, of
this very land. Suppose that at the termination
of the war, after hard cruises, hard battles, and
harder blockades, all our admirals return home,
many with amputated limbs, many with incurable
wounds, many (indeed most) with broken or
impaired constitutions ; raise the number of them
to half a hundred ; and the consolidated pay of
these half hundred great and glorious defenders
of their country, will be less than the pay of one
churchman.
Sheridan. And it is painful to think of how
much shorter date.
Windham. Have they no reason to complain of
such inequality? have they no right to check and
correct it 1
All of what are called church lands belong
to the state, as the church itself does; and
bishoprics have, since the Reformation, not only
been curtailed, but abolished. If Parliament can
take away a whole bishopric, it surely can take
away a moiety, especially that moiety which
bishops care least about, the temporalities. Griev-
ous responsibility would be thus removed from
them. No longer a necessity to rise early and
to sit down late, for the purpose of supplying the
indigent and afflicted : no longer a solicitude in
seeking out the faithful, merciful, discreet, and
active almoner : no longer the worldly care of
laying aside the larger part of their revenues, in
just and exact proportions, for families more or
less numerous, for curates more or less laborious,
" for sick widows and young children."
In other parts of Europe to which the Reforma-
tion has extended, not only the religion but also
its emoluments have been revised and corrected.
Government in England should exercise this
authority where required. Where there are no,
or only few, communicants of the Anglican
church in Ireland, it is expedient for them to
remove to places where there are many. At all
events I would maintain no church establishment
for a less number than a hundred adults.
Windham. There are gentlemen in the House
of Commons who insist that where a single man,
woman, or child, exists in any parish, that parish
should enjoy its parson, if Protestant.
Sheridan. But there are many parishes in
which there is not a single Protestant, man,
woman, or child : however, as there is a steeple,
and not only a steeple, but a pulpit, no doubt
there should also be a minister of religion for
their benefit. If towns which contain several
thousand inhabitants have no representative at
all, there would be no worse hardship in fewer
than one hundred having no established pastor.
But this hardship might not befall them : for they
might elect one ; and they might themselves pay
him proportionally to the service he renders ; or
they might remove into a more convenient and
less contracted fellowship. The most pious and
serious of the English people are taught the doc-
trines of the English church by unendowed minis-
ters. The followers of Wesley do not hanker
after gowns and surplices; at least such gowns
and surplices as mount the pulpit. Well-educated
young men of his persuasion are always in readi-
ness to accept the cure of souls. It is only the
earnest and patient who are likely to file the old
rust and new paint off the crucifix. The Wesley-
ans may be too impetuous, heady, and frothy ; but
a gutter that runs with rapidity is less unwhole-
some than a stagnant ditch. I feel that I lie
open to a charge of partiality in this recommen-
dation of the Methodists ; but I do assure you I
am not about to join them : and I venture to
hope that your smile is not a smile of incredulity.
Windham. Be perfectly at ease. But seriously;
in turning out this acid on such putridity, there
would be a violent fermentation : there would
be animosities and conflicts. However, what
harm, if there should be 1 Turn out the weasel
against the rat, and, at least while they are fight-
ing, neither of them can corrode the rafters or
infest the larder. Your countrymen are a joyous
and light-hearted people, and run with alacrity
to festivals and fairs. They would not so readily
fall in with Calvinism ; they are more disposed
to fighting, frolic, and pardon.
Sheridan. Frolic and pardon they would never
find among the Calvinists, who however in strict
justice would amply make out the difference, with
fighting.
Windham. We will revert to the right which
all governments possess, of curtailing or abolish-
ing the hire of their servants : I admit it. The
question at last resolves itself into mere expe-
diency. If our government, after a war, reduces
the pay of its soldiers, and abolishes altogether the
pay of its sailors, it may consistently, justly, and
legally, do the same in regard to the church
militant. Whether the pay arises from a turf or
from a counter, no matter.
Sheridan. Apply the principle more especially
to Ireland. A nation has been misruled for
above six centuries by its conqueror. The con-
queror has derived the most powerful and efficient
WINDHAM AND SHERIDAN.
179
aid from it, against all his enemies, and wishes to
derive more. To accomplish which, a sudden
thought strikes him, which never entered his
head until now; that by rendering it more
flourishing, he renders it more effectual in his
defence. Another sudden thought strikes him.
He remembers that, a century ago, he made a
compact of Union with another out-lying coun-
try, and that both grew richer and happier
instantaneously. The out-lying country had
fought, and would fight again, for the establish-
ment and maintenance of its religion. The con-
queror cares little about the matter, as far as God
and conscience are concerned, but very much
about the interests of some riotous idlers and rich
absentees.
Ireland would be contented with a less measure
of justice than was meted out to Scotland : and
you may gain ten-fold as much by it. Scotland
has no important bays and harbours : Ireland has
more than any country of the same extent.
Windham. More than Norway 1
Sheridan. Those of Norway are unimportant,
although capacious. Surrounded by barren rocks,
affording no anchorage, there is neither traffic
nor population. Ireland has better and more
than all France. What wars would not England
engage in to wrest them from an enemy !
What a bustle in the last century about Dun-
kirk ! and in the century before about such a
pitiful hole as Calais ! A single act of benefi-
cence, of justice, of policy, of policy the most
advantageous to ourselves, would render these
noble bays and harbours ours for ever, guarded
at no expense to us, by as brave and loyal a
nation as any upon earth. Can stubbornness
and stupidity be imagined grosser, than in re-
fusing to curtail the superfluity of about eight
hundred inefficient drones, detested in general
by the majority of their neighbours, when it
would conciliate eight millions, and save the
perpetual expenditure of a standing army to
controll them.
Windliam. His Majesty is averse to concession.
Sheridan. His Majesty was averse to conces-
sion to America : and into what disasters and
disgraces, unexperienced, unapprehended, un-
heard of among us until His Majesty's reign,
did this pig-headedness of His Majesty thrust us
down !
Windham. By what I hear, there is also an-
other thing which may disincline the Irish from
the Union. Not only will the property of the
Irish Catholic Church be withholden from its first
destination, from which destination, I acknow-
ledge, it was forcibly and violently torn away,
but a certain part of our own national debt
will be saddled on that people.
Sheridan. What ! when we lie on the debtor's
side, and they on the creditor's 1 If Ireland were
paid for her soldiers, in the same proportion as we
pay for the Hanoverians and Hessians and other
Germans, what a balance would she strike against
us !
By reducing the English Church in Ireland to
the same condition of wealth as the reformed
churches of Germany ; by selling all church-lands
there, and by devoting to the religious and
moral education of the people the whole proceeds,
in just proportion to the Papal and Protestant
communicants, you would conciliate all far-
sighted, all humane, all equitable men through-
out the island. The lands held under the Crown
might also be added.
Windham. Now indeed you are a visionary,
Mr. Sheridan ! You could sooner uproot the
whole island from the Atlantic, than tear from
His Majesty an acre of the worst land in it.
Sheridan. I do believe in my conscience he
would rather lose the affection of half his subjects
than the carcase of one fat sheep. I am informed
that all his possessions in Ireland never yielded
him five thousand a-year. Give him ten ; and he
will chuckle at over-reaching you ; and not you
only, but his own heirs for ever ; as he chuckled
when he cheated his eldest son of what he pock-
eted in twenty years from Cornwall, Lancashire,
and Wales. The crown-lands in Ireland, unpro-
fitable at present, are large enough to support
half a million subjects, reduced to poverty and
starvation by his oppressive policy and unjust
wars.
Windham. You have been suggesting two
impracticabilities, however desirable.
Sheridan. Ministers then have been suggesting
another, the Union. They may bring about an
Act of Parliament called an Act of Union : but
they will be necessitated to piece out their parch-
ment with cartridge paper.
Windham. We can have fighting enough on
easier terms elsewhere. If the framers of the
Union are equitable and indulgent, Ireland in
half a century from its commencement may con-
tribute ten millions a year to the national revenue.
If they are unjust, not only will she contribute
less than half that amount, but she will oblige the
Government to keep up a standing army to
coerce her. Instead of furnishing us with a third
of our forces, she will paralyse a third of them
and keep them sedentary.
Sheridan. Beside, she will become a temptation
to France, and even to inferior Powers, to pro-
voke us with aggression and insult, showing them
that one hand is tied up behind us. What a farce
in the meanwhile is the diversionary talk about
the abolition of the slave-trade ! What insanity
to think of throwing down fifteen or twenty mil-
lions to compass an impracticability, to consoli-
date a dream ! Half the money laid out upon
Ireland, not in an unmanageable mass all at once,
but million by million, year after year, would
within ten years render that country prosperous
and contented : not however if you resolve to
proscribe her religion, to strip its ministers to the
skin, and to parade before them and their com-
municants, on their own ground, your greasy
pastors; mere boils and blotches covered with
the vestments purloined from their church.
N2
180
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
WindJuim. Indeed it would be well, and cer-
tainly is expedient, to conciliate so brave a people.
When we are richer we may encourage their agri-
culture and their fisheries.
Sheridan. They want no other encouragement
from you than equity and security. Let the
people be contented ; and tranquillity is neces-
sarily the result. Let tranquillity be established,
and speculators will cover land and sea with
English capital.
Windham, As politicians we may rejoice in a
religion which, were the natives in easy circum-
stances, would be favourable to the fisheries.
Sheridan. At the present time there are
millions of Roman Catholics in the country
who never tasted fish.
Windham. It must be acknowledged that little
has been hitherto effected for the comforts of the
people. The first man that ever made a move-
ment to assist them was Lord Bacon. He would
have given to them the same advantages of every
kind as we ourselves enjoy. Humanity was never
very urgent with him ; but his consummate wis-
dom prompted to this counsel. I am afraid we
must wait until we have men equally wise among
us before the counsel is taken.
Sheridan. What hope then? No nation in
Europe has treated the conquered so iniquitously
as the English have treated the Irish. We must
go back to Sparta and the Helots for a parallell.
But Sparta did not send out missionaries to
establish her pure faith in other lands : Sparta
did not piously curse her poorer citizens if they
happened to enjoy one day in seven. We, having
such advantages over her, may feel somewhat too
confident of God's countenance and blessing, and
we may at last encroach and push his patience
until he loudly cries out and curses us.
Windham. I indulge in few golden dreams
about the green island ; but certainly no country
is capable of such improvement so easily effected.
Sheridan. Henry the Fourth expressed a wish
and indulged a hope to see the day, when every
householder in France should have a pullet for
dinner once a-week : I only wish that every poor
Irishman could add a duck annually to his house-
hold. Pig and duck (as Lord Castlereagh would
express it, if he knew anything or cared anything
about the matter) play into one another's hands
very nicely. Even this addition to the comforts
of an Irish family is little to be expected from the
framers of the Union.
MARY AND BOTHWELL.
Mary. Bothwell ! Bothwell ! what would you have?
I can hardly believe my senses. It was wrong, it
was very wrong indeed, to commit such an out-
rage. You forget my condition, my station, and
what you owe me . . the allegiance, the duty . .
Bothwell. Nay, nay, my gracious queen ! I
thought of nothing else all our ride. What a
sweet fresh colour it has given my royal mistress!
0 ! could the ugly Elizabeth but see it ! I should
hail you queen of England the next hour.
Mary. How dare you call my cousin ugly? and
to my face ! And do you think she would give
the crown of England to look at me ? 0 you silly
man ! But what can you mean ?
Bothwell. I mean, she would burst and crack
at it, like a dry and gnarly log of mountain-ash
on a Christmas hearth.
Mary. At me ! at my colour ! I can not help
laughing at your absurdity, most wicked, flatter-
ing, deceiving creature !
Bothwell. I flatter ! I deceive ! I never try to
do what I am likely to fail in : here I must : here
all must.
Mary. I wish you had indeed failed altogether.
Bothwell. So then, my royal dove ! I did not
quite ?
Mary. Impudent man ! go away.
Ah Bothwell ! you are now a traitor after this.
They would treat you like one. The laws call it
abduction . . and God knows what beside.
Bothwell. Treat me like a traitor ! me ! the
truest man among them. Yea, if I would let
them, and this fair hand could sign it.
Mary. 0 heaven ! Do not talk so ; you make
me very sad. I will never be so cruel to you as
you have been to me.
Bothwell. The laws too ; the laws forsooth !
Neither in our country, nor in any other, do the
laws touch anything higher than the collar of the
most diminutive thief : and a lawyer is always at
hand to change his coat and character with him
for a groat.
Mary. With what derision and scorn you speak
of laws and lawyers ! You little know how vin-
dictive they are.
Bothwell. Faith ! we are not well acquainted ;
but I know enough of them to know that.
Mary. Are not you afraid ?
Bothwell. I tremble in the presence of majesty
and beauty. Where they are, there lies my law.
I do confess I am afraid, and hugely ; for I feel
hard knockings (there must surely be all the Pan-
dects) where my heart was lately.
Mary. You never had any heart, or you would
not have treated me in this manner.
Bothwell. You shall want nothing with me :
you shall never pine after the past.
Mary. Ah but ! ah but ! indeed, indeed, good
Bothwell ! he was very handsome ; and you must
acknowledge it . . if he had only been less cross
and jealous and wayward and childish . .
Bothwell. Too childish by half for you, fair
lady ! and he was all those other little things
beside.
Mary. What is over is over ! God forgive you,
bad man ! Sinner ! serpent ! it was all you. And
you dare smile ! Shame upon you, varlet ! Yes ;
now you look as you should do. Nobody ought
MARY AND BOTHWELL.
181
to be more contrite. You may speak again, if
you will only speak to the purpose. Come ; no
wicked thoughts ! I mean if you will speak rea-
sonably. But you really are a very, very wicked
man indeed.
Sothwell. Happy the man who hears those
blessed words ! they grow but on soft sweet lips,
fresh pouting from ardent pressure.
Mary. If you presume to talk so, I will kill
myself. Are you not ashamed ?
Bothwell. My blushes quite consume me : I feel
my hair crackle on my head : my beard would
burn my fingers.
Mary. I will not laugh, sirrah !
Botliwdl. No, my most gracious lady ! in mercy
stop half-way ! that smile is quite sufficient.
Mary. Do you fancy I am capable of smiling 1
I am quite serious. You have carried me away,
and now you have nothing to do but to take me
back again.
Bothwett. It would be dangerous : you have too
many enemies.
Mary. I do not mind them while you are with
me. Am I wild ? You have frightened me so I
scarcely know what I say.
Bothwett. A part of your understanding, most
gracious lady ! seems at last to have fallen on me.
Mary. Whither now would you carry me?
You know it is quite against my will : absolute
downright force.
Bothwett. Pardon, sweet lady ! pardon my ex-
cess of zeal and devotion, my unutterable . .
Mary. What?
Bothwett. Love.
Mary. A subject's is loyalty. Love indeed !
Bothwett. Let me perish, but not against an
iceberg.
Mary. Ah, bold cruel man ! this is scoffing.
Does it end so !
Bothwell. Nay, never let it end so ; never let
it end at all ; let one thing under heaven be
eternal.
Mary. As if I, so helpless a creature, could
order it.
Bothwell. What have the Powers above denied
you?
Mary. Happiness, innocence, peace. No, they
did not deny them. Bothwell ! Bothwell ! they
were mine ; were they not ?
Bothwett. And good things they are, no doubt; but
there are other good things beside ; all which you
possess, and these too. These should not always
be shut up in the casket. Where there are peace
and happiness, there is sure to be innocence ; for
what else can anyone wish 1 but those who can
bring them into the hearts of others, and will not,
I never will call innocent. I do not remember
that any living person has entreated me and met
with a refusal.
Mary. Ah ! such men may be beloved, but can
not love. What is that to me ? It is unbecoming
in me to reason with a profligate, or to listen any
longer. You have often run then into such
courses ?
Bothwett. Alas ! from my youth upward I have
always been liable to these paroxysms.
Mary. For shame! I do not understand a
single word of what you are saying. Again I ask
you, and I insist upon an answer, whither are you
conducting me !
Bothwell. To freedom, to safety, to the protec-
tion of a dutiful subject, to the burning heart of
a gallant man.
Mary. I am frightened out of my senses at the
mere mention of any such things. What can you
possibly mean 1 I never knew the like. I will
not hear of it, you rebel ! And you dare already . .
Bothwell. Do you look so sternly on me, when
you yourself have reduced me to this extremity?
And now, worse ! worse ! do you deprive me of
the last breath, by turning away from me those
eyes, the bright unerring stars of my destiny ?
Mary. If they had any power (but they have
none !) I would strike you almost dead with them
for that audacity? Again? 0 madman! madman!
madman !
Bothwell. To mistake the lips for the hand!
hallucination !
Mary. Now if you should (and you must !) be
overtaken !
Bothwell. You would deliver me up to death
and ignominy?
Mary. Our pure religion teaches us forgiveness.
Bothwell.
Then by my troth is it pure and bright
As a pewter plate on a Saturday night.
Here is a stave of my own to its honour and glory.
Mary. You sing too ?
Bothwell. Yes ; but I am no tenor.
Mary (aside). Ah ! sweet soul ! thou * wert
gentle, fond, and faithful !
Bothwell (catching the last word). Capital for
the faithful : and moreover it is the cleverest and
rarest religion in the world. Few, even of the
adventurously pious, so far interfere with the
attributes of the Almighty as to take pardon into
their own hands . . unless for offences against
others. There indeed they find as little difficulty
in practising as in preaching.
Mary. I am quite edified at seeing you grow so
serious. I once heard that you had abandoned
the religion of your ancestors.
Bothwett. I did not abandon it ; it dropped off
me unaware. Now to prove my constancy, I never
would take another. It is hard that a man like
me should be accused of irreligion. They may do
anything with me they like, if they will only let
me be quiet. I am long-suffering : I never preach
again.
Mary. Well ; at least you have not fallen into
heresy ? you are not malignant ?
Bothwett. By Jupiter ! no ; neither the one nor
the other. Sweet gracious lady ! how could you
suspect me ?
Mary. Because you men are so violent and so
* Thinking of Kizzio.
182
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
fond of change. You will never hear reason ; you
will never do your duty.
BoOiwell. By the stare above ! I will do mine
before I ever presume to pray again.
Mary. And so, you dare to swear and laugh in
my presence ! I do really think, Bothwell, you
are one of the most impudent men I ever met
withal.
/ Bothwdl. Ah, my beloved lady !
Mary. Stop, stop ! I shall not let you say that.
Botiiwell. My most gracious queen and mistress !
Mary. You are now, I believe, within the rules
and regulations . . that is, if you would not look
up to me in such a very odd way. Modest men
always look down on the eyelashes, not between
them. «
Bothvsett. Happy the modest men, if they do.
Mary. There ! now you look exactly as you
should always.
Bothwell. Faint as I am and sinking betwixt
fear and love, I feel that, by thus taking my hand,
your Highness in part forgives and entirely pities
the most unfortunate of your servants. For surely
he is the most unfortunate, who, having ventured
the most to serve you, has given you thereby the
most offence. I do not say I hazarded my free-
dom ; it was lost when I first beheld you : I do
not say I hazarded my life ; I had none until
to-day : and who dares touch it on the altar where
I devote it. Lady ! vouchsafe to hear me !
Mary. What a rough hand you have, Bothwell !
what a heavy one! and (holy Virgin!) what a
vastly broad one ; it would cover I don't know
what ! and what a briary bower of hair over-arch-
ing it ! Curious ! it is quite red all over; every-
where but where there is this long scar; and these
two ugly warts. Do I hurt you ]
Bothwell. My heart and every fibre feel it, but
can well bear it.
Mary. How much whiter the back of the hand
is, for a moment, by just passing two fingers over
it ! look ! But really warts are frightful things ;
and scars not much better. And yet there are
silly girls who, when they have nothing else to
think about, could kiss them.
Bothwell. Ay, ay; but be girls as silly as they will,
I never let them play such idle tricks with me.
Mary. I am glad to hear it : I fancied you had
said something very different : you must not joke ;
it vexes inc.
Bothwell. The warts will vanish under the royal
touch. As for the scar, I would not lose the scar
for the crown of Scotland, in defence whereof I
fairly won it.
Mary. 0 ! you are a very brave man, but a very
bold one.
Bothwell. Illiterate and ignorant as I am, I
would gladly learn from the best-informed and
most intellectual of God's creatures, where lies the
difference.
Mary. I don't know, I don't know ; I am quite
bewildered. Move your hand off my knee. Do
not lay your cheek there, sir !
0 Bothwell ! I am tired to death. Take me
back ! 0 take me back ! pray do ! if you have
any pity.
Bothwell. Would your Highness 'he pleased to
repose awhile, and remain by yourself in a chamber
up-stairs ?
Mary. I think it might do me good.
Bothwdl. May I order the trustiest of the hand-
maidens to attend your Highness 1
Mary. You may. Go, go ; I thought I desired
you before not to look up at me in that manner.
Thank you, gentle Bothwell ! I did not speak
too harshly, did I ] If I did, you may kiss my
hand.
Bothwell. If this scar and these warts (which
are fast disappearing, I perceive) are become less
frightful to your Highness, might the humblest of
your servitors crave permission to conduct your
Highness nigh unto the chamber-door ?
Mary. Ah me ! where are my own women 1
where are my ushers ?
Bothwell. Your Highness, in all your wrongs
and straits, has the appointment of one super-
numerary.
Mary. Be it so : I can not help myself, as you
know ; and the blame is all yours.
Bothwell. When your Highness is ready to
receive the services of the handmaiden, how may
it please your Highness that she shall know it?
Mary. Let her tap twice with her knuckles : I
can open the door myself . . or she may.
Bothwdl. My queen's most gracious commands
shall be duly executed.
TASSO AND CORNELIA.
Tasso. She is dead, Cornelia ! she is dead !
Cornelia. Torquato ! my Torquato ! after so
many years of separation do I bend once more
your beloved head to my embrace ]
Tasso. She is dead !
Cornelia. Tenderest of brothers ! bravest and
best and most unfortunate of men ! What, in the
name of heaven ! so bewilders you ]
Tasso. Sister ! sister ! sister ! I could not save
her.
Cornel'la. Certainly it was a sad event; and
they who are out of spirits may be ready to take
it for an evil omen. At this season of the year
the vintagers are joyous and negligent.
Tasso. How ! what is this ]
Cornelia. The little girl was crushed, they say,
by a wheel of the car laden with grapes, as she
held out a handful of vine-leaves to one of the
oxen. And did you happen to be there just at
the moment 1
Tasso. So then the little too can suffer ! the
ignorant, the indigent, the unaspiring! Poor
child ! She was kind-hearted, else never would
calamity have befallen her.
TASSO AND CORNELIA.
183
Cornelia. I wish you had not seen the accident.
Tasso. I see it 1 I ? I saw it not. No other is
crushed where I am. The little girl died for her
kindness ! Natural death !
Cornelia. Be calm, be composed, my brother !
Tasso. You would not require me to be com-
posed or calm if you comprehended a thousandth
part of my sufferings.
Cornelia. Peace ! peace ! we know them all.
Tasso. Who has dared to name them? Im-
prisonment, derision, madness.
Cornelia. Hush ! sweet Torquato ! If ever these
existed, they are past.
Tasso. You do think they are sufferings ? ay?
Cornelia. Too surely.
Tasso. No, not too surely : I will not have that
answer. They would have been; but Leonora was
then living. Unmanly as I am ! did I complain
of them ? and while she was left me ?
Cornelia. My own Torquato ! is there no com-
fort in a sister's love ? Is there no happiness but
under the passions? Think, 0 my brother, how
many courts there are in Italy : are the princes
more fortunate than you ? Which among them
all loves truly, deeply, and virtuously 1 Among
them all is there any one, for his genius, for his
generosity, for his gentleness, ay, for his mere
humanity, worthy to be beloved 1
Tasso. Princes ! talk to me of princes ! How
much cross-grained wood a little gypsum covers!
a little carmine quite beautifies ! Wet your fore-
finger with your spittle ; stick a broken gold-leaf on
the sinciput ; clip off a beggar's beard to make it
tresses ; kiss it ; fall down before it ; worship it.
Are you not irradiated by the light of its coun-
tenance ! Princes ! princes ! Italian princes !
Estes ! What matters that costly carrion ? Who
thinks about it ? (After a pause). She is dead !
She is dead !
Cornelia. We have not heard it here.
Tasso. At Sorrento you hear nothing but the
light surges of the •sea, and the sweet sprinkles of
the guitar.
Cornelia. Suppose the worst to be true.
Tasso. Always, always.
Cornelia. If she ceases, as then perhaps she must,
to love and to lament you, think gratefully, con-
tentedly, devoutly, that her arms had clasped your
neck before they were crossed upon her bosom, in
that long sleep which you have rendered placid,
and from which your harmonious voice shall once
more awaken her. Yes, Torquato ! her bosom had
throbbed to yours, often and often, before the
organ-peal shook the fringes round the catafalc.
Is not this much, from one so high, so beautiful ]
Tasso. Much? yes; for abject me. But I did
so love her ! so love her !
Cornelia. Ah ! let the tears flow : she sends
you that balm from heaven.
Tasso. So love her did poor Tasso ! Else, 0 Cor-
nelia, it had indeed been much. I thought,
in the simplicity of my heart, that God was as great
as an emperor, and could bestow and had bestowed
on me as much as the German had conferred or
could confer on his vassal. No part of my insanity
was ever held in such ridicule as this. And yet
the idea cleaves to me strangely, and is liable
to stick to my shroud.
Cornelia. Woe betide the woman who bids you
to forget that woman who has loved you : she sins
against her sex. Leonora was unblameable. Never
think ill of her for what you have suffered.
Tasso. Think ill of her? I? I? I? No; those
we love, we love for everything ; even for the pain
they have given us. But she gave me none : it
was where she was not, that pain was.
Cornelia. Surely, if love and sorrow are destined
for companionship, there is no reason why the
last comer of the two should supersede the first.
Tasso. Argue with me, and you drive me into
darkness. I am easily persuaded and led on while
no reasons are thrown before me. With these you
have made my temples throb again. Just Heaven !
dost thou grant us fairer fields, and wider, for the
whirlwind to lay waste ? Dost thou build us up
habitations above the street, above the palace,
above the citadel, for the Plague to enter and
carouse in ? Has not my youth paid its dues, paid
its penalties ? Can not our griefs come first, while
we have strength to bear them ? The fool ! the
fool ! who thinks it a misfortune that his love is
unrequited. Happier young man ! look at the
violets until thou drop asleep on them. Ah ! but
thou must wake !
Cornelia. 0 heavens ! what must you have suf-
fered ! for a man's heart is sensitive in proportion
to its greatness.
Tasso. And a woman's ?
Cornelia. Alas ! I know not ; but I think it can
be no other. Comfort thee, comfort thee, dear
Torquato !
Tasso. Then do not rest thy face upon my arm ;
it so reminds me of her. And thy tears too ! they
melt me into her grave.
Cornelia. Hear you not her voice as it appeals
to you ? saying to you, as the priests around have
been saying to her, Blessed soul ! rest in peace !
Tasso. I heard it not ; and yet I am sure she
said it. A thousand times has she repeated it,
laying her hand on my heart to quiet it, simple
girl ! She told it to rest in peace . . and she went
from me ! Insatiable love ! ever self-torturer,
never self-destroyer! the world, with all its weight
of miseries, can not crush thee, can not keep thee
down. Generally men's tears, like the droppings
of certain springs, only harden and petrify what
they fall on ; but mine sank deep into a tender
heart, and were its very blood. Never will I
believe she has left me utterly. Oftentimes, and
long before her departure, I fancied we were in
heaven together. I fancied it in the fields, in the
gardens, in the palace, in the prison. I fancied it
in the broad daylight, when my eyes were open,
when blessed spirits drew around me that golden
circle which one only of earth's inhabitants could
enter. Oftentimes in my sleep also I fancied it ;
and sometimes in the intermediate state, in that
serenity which breathes about the transported
184
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
soul, enjoying its pure and perfect rest, a span
below the feet of the Immortal.
Cornelia. She has not left you ; do not disturb
her peace by these repinings.
Tasso. She will bear with them. Thou knowest
not what she was, Cornelia ; for I wrote to thee
about her while she seemed but human. In my
hours of sadness, not only her beautiful form, but
her very voice bent over me. How girlish in the
gracefulness of her lofty form ! how pliable in her
majesty ! what composure at my petulance and
reproaches ! what pity in her reproofs ! Like the
air that angels breathe in the metropolitan temple
of the Christian world, her soul at every season
preserved one temperature. But it was when she
could and did love me ! Unchanged must ever
be the blessed one who has leaned in fond security
on the unchangeable. The purifying flame shoots
upward, and is the glory that encircles their brows
when they meet above.
Cornelia. Indulge in these delightful thoughts,
my Torquato ! and believe that your love is and
ought to be imperishable as your glory. Gene-
rations of men move forward in endless procession
to consecrate and commemorate both. Colour-
grinders and gilders, year after year, are bargained
with to refresh the crumbling monuments and
tarnished decorations of rude unregarded royalty,
and to fasten the nails that cramp the crown upon
its head. Meanwhile, in the laurels of my Tor-
quato there will always be one leaf above man's
reach, above time's wrath and injury, inscribed
with the name of Leonora.
Tasso. 0 Jerusalem ! I have not then sung in
vain the Holy Sepulchre.
Cornelia. After such devotion of your genius,
you have undergone too many misfortunes.
Tasso. Congratulate the man who has had
many, and may have more. I have had, I have,
I can have, one only.
Cornelia. Life runs not smoothly at all seasons,
even with the happiest ; but after a long course,
the rocks subside, the views widen, and it flows
on more equably at the end.
Tasso. Have the stars smooth surfaces? No,
no ; but how they shine !
Cornelia. Capable of thoughts so exalted, so
far above the earth we dwell on, why suffer any
to depress and anguish you ?
Tasso. Cornelia, Cornelia ! the mind has within
it temples and porticoes and palaces and towers:
the mind has under it, ready for the course, steeds
brighter than the sun and stronger than the
storm ; and beside them stand winged chariots,
more in number than the Psalmist hath attributed
to the Almighty. The mind, I tell thee again,
hath its hundred gates, compared whereto the
Theban are but willow wickets; and all those
hundred gates can genius throw open. But there
are some that groan heavily on their hinges, and
the hand of God alone can close them.
Cornelia. Torquato has thrown open those of
bis holy temple ; Torquato hath stood, another
angel, at his tomb ; and am I the sister of Tor-
quato ? Kiss me, my brother, and let my tears
run only from my pride and joy ! Princes have
bestowed knighthood on the worthy and unwor-
thy ; thou hast called forth those princes from
their ranks, pushing back the arrogant and pre-
sumptuous of them like intrusive varlets, and con-
ferring on the bettennost crowns and robes,
imperishable and unfading.
Tasso. I seem to live back into those days. I feel
the helmet on my head ; I wave the standard over
it : brave men smile upon me ; beautiful maidens
pull them gently back by the scarf, and will not
let them break my slumber, nor undraw the
curtain. Corneliolina ! . . .
Cornelia. Well, my dear brother ! why do you
stop so suddenly in the midst of them ? They
are the pleasantest and best company, and they
make you look quite happy and joyous.
Tasso. Corneliolina, dost thou remember Ber-
gamo] What city was ever so celebrated for
honest and valiant men, in all classes, or for beau-
tiful girls ! There is but one class of those :
Beauty is above all ranks ; the true Madonna, the
patroness and bestower of felicity, the queen of
heaven.
Cornelia. Hush, Torquato, hush ! talk not so.
Tasso. What rivers, how sunshiny and revelling,
are the Brembo and the Serio ! What a country
the Valtellina ! I went back to our father's house,
thinking to find thee again, my little sister;
thinking to kick away thy ball of yellow silk as
thou wast stooping for it, to make thee run after
me and beat me. I woke early in the morning ;
thou wert grown up and gone. Away to Sorrento :
I knew the road : a few strides brought me back :
here I am. To-morrow, my Cornelia, we will
walk together, as we used to do, into the cool and
quiet caves on the shore ; and we will catch the
little breezes as they come in and go out again
on the backs of the jocund waves.
Cornelia. We will indeed to-morrow ; but before
we set out we must take a few hours' rest, that we
may enioy our ramble the better.
Tasso. Our Sorrentines, I see, are grown rich
and avaricious. They have uprooted the old pome-
granate hedges, and have built high walls to pro-
hibit the wayfarer from their vineyards.
Cornelia. I have a basket of grapes for you in
the book-room that overlooks our garden.
Tasso. Does the old twisted sage-tree grow still
against the window ?
Cornelia. It harboured too many insects at
last, and there was always a nest of scorpions in
the crevice.
Tasso. 0 ! what a prince of a sage-tree ! And
the well too, with its bucket of shining metal,
large enough for the largest cocomero * to cool in
it for dinner.
Cornelia. The well, I assure you, is as cool as ever.
Tasso. Delicious ! delicious ! And the stone-
work round it, bearing no other marks of waste
than my pruning-hook and dagger left behind ]
* Water-melon.
TASSO AND CORNELIA.
185
Cornelia. None whatever.
Tasso. White in that place no longer 1 There
has been time enough for it to become all of one
colour ; grey, mossy, half-decayed.
Cornelia. No, no; not even the rope has wanted
repair.
Tasso. Who sings yonder ?
Cornelia. Enchanter ! No sooner did you say
the word cocome.ro, than here comes a boy carry-
ing one upon his head.
Tasso. Listen ! listen ! I have read in some
book or other those verses long ago. They are
not unlike my Aminta. The very words !
Cornelia. Purifier of love, and humaniser of
ferocity ! how many, my Torquato, will your
gentle thoughts make happy !
Tasso. At this moment I almost think I am
one among them.*
Cornelia. Be quite persuaded of it. Come,
brother, come with me. You shall bathe your
heated brow and weary limbs in the chamber of
your childhood. It is there we are always the
most certain of repose. The boy shall sing to
you those sweet verses ; and we will reward him
with a slice of his own fruit.
Tasso. He deserves it ; cut it thick.
Cornelia. Come then, my truant ! Come along,
my sweet smiling Torquato !
Tasso. The passage is darker than ever. Is
this the way to the little court ? Surely those are
not the steps that lead down toward the bath?
0 yes ! we are right ; I smell the lemon-blossoms.
Beware of the old wilding that bears them ; it
may catch your veil ; it may scratch your fingers !
Pray, take care : it has many thorns about it.
And now, Leonora ! you shall hear my last verses !
Lean your ear a little toward me; for I must
repeat them softly under this low archway, else
* The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagina-
tion and the heart. In the metropolis of the Christian
world, with many admirers and many patrons, bishops,
cardinals, princes, he was left destitute, and almost
famished. These are his own words : " Appena in questo
state ho comprato due meloni : e benche io sia stato quasi
sempre in/ermo, molte volte mi sono contentato del : manzo
e la ministra di latte o di zucca, quando ho potuto averne,
mi e stata in vece di delizie." In another part he says
that he was unable to pay the carriage of a parcel. No
wonder ; if he had not wherewithal to buy enough of zucca
for a meal. Even had he been in health and appetite, he
might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five far-
things, and have left half for supper. And now a word on
his insanity. Having been so imprudent not only as to
make it too evident in his poetry that he was the lover of
Leonora, but also to signify (not very obscurely) that his
love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of Fer-
rara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the
necessity of feigning madness. The lady's honour re-
quired it from a brother ; and a true lover, to convince the
world, would embrace the project with alacrity. But there
was no reason why the seclusion should be in a dungeon,
or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty,
and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compassion, may
well be imagined to have produced at last the malady he
had feigned. But did Leonora love Tasso as a man would
be loved ? If we wish to do her honour, let us hope it :
for what greater glory can there be, than to have estimated
at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate and
so generous a heart !
others may hear them too. Ah ! you press my
hand once more. Drop it, drop it ! or the verses
will sink into my breast again, and lie there
silent ! Good girl !
Many, well I know, there are
Ready in your joys to share,
And (I never blame it) you
Are almost as ready too.
But when comes the darker day,
And those friends have dropt away,
Which is there among them all
You should, if you could, recall ?
One who wisely loves and well
Hears and shares the griefs you tell ;
Him you ever call apart
When the springs o'erflow the heart ;
For you know that he alone
Wishes-they were but his own.
Give, while these he may divide,
Smiles to all the world beside.
Cornelia. We are now in the full light of the
chamber : can not you remember it, having looked
so intently all around ?
Tasso. 0 sister! I could have slept another hour.
You thought I wanted rest : why did you waken me
so early? I could have slept another hour or longer.
AVhat a dream ! But I am calm and happy.
Cornelia. May you never more be otherwise !
Indeed, he can not be whose last verses are such
as those.
Tasso. Have you written any since that
morning ]
Cornelia. What morning 1
Tasso. When you caught the swallow in my
curtains, and trod upon my knees in catching it,
luckily with naked feet. The little girl of thir-
teen laughed at the outcry of her brother Torqua-
tino, and sang without a blush her earliest lay.
Cornelia. I do not recollect it.
Tasso. I do.
Rondinello ! rondinello !
Tu sei nero, ma sei bello.
Cosa fa se tu sei nero ?
Rondinello ! sei il primiero
De' volanti, palpitanti,
( K vi sono quanti quanti !)
Mai tenuto a questo petto,
E perci6 sei il mio diletto.*
Cornelia. Here is the cocomero ; it can not be
more insipid. Try it.
Tasso. Where is the boy who brought it?
where is the boy who sang my Aminta ? Serve
him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the
knife is too short : deeper; mia brava Corneliolina !
quite through all the red, and into the middle of
the seeds. Well done !
* The author wrote the verses first in English, but he
found it easy to write them better in Italian : they stood
in the text as below : they only do for a girl of thirteen :
Swallow ! swallow ! though so jetty
Are your pinions, you are pretty :
And what matter were it though
You were blacker than a crow ?
Of the many birds that fly
'And how many pass me by ! •
You 're the first I ever prest,
Of the many, to my breast:
Therefore it is very right
You should be my own delight.
186
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
SOLON AND PISISTRATUS.
• Pisistratus. Here is a proof, Solon, if any were
wanting, that either my power is small or my
inclination to abuse it : you speak just as freely to
me as formerly, and add unreservedly, which you
never did before, the keenest sarcasms and the
bitterest reproaches. Even such a smile as that,
so expressive of incredulity and contempt, would
arouse a desire of vengeance, difficult to controll,
in any whom you could justly call impostor and
usurper.
Solon. I do you no injustice, Pisistratus, which
I should do if I feared you. Neither your policy
nor your temper, neither your early education nor
the society you have since frequented, and whose
power over the mind and affections you can not
at once throw off, would permit you to kill or
imprison, or even to insult or hurt me. Such an
action, you well know, would excite in the people
of- Athens as vehement a sensation as your im-
posture of the wounds, and you would lose your
authority as rapidly as you acquired it. This
however, you also know, is not the consideration
which hath induced me to approach you, and to
entreat your return, while the path is yet open, to
reason and humanity.
Pisistratus. What inhumanity, my friend, have
I committed?
Solon. No deaths, no tortures, no imprison-
ments, no stripes : but worse than these ; the
conversion of our species into a lower ; a crime
which the poets never feigned, in the wild at-
tempts of the Titans or others who rebelled
against the gods, and against the order they esta-
blished here below.
Pisistratus. Why then should you feign it
ofmel
Solon. I do not feign it ; and you yourself shall
bear me witness that no citizen is further removed
from falsehood, from the perversion of truth by
the heat of passion, than Solon. Choose between
the friendship of the wise and the adulation of the
vulgar. Choose, do I say, Pisistratus 1 no, you can
not : your choice is already made. Choose then
between a city in the dust and a city flourishing.
Pisistratus. How so ] who could hesitate ?
Solon. If the souls of the citizens are debased,
who cares whether its walls and houses be still
upright or thrown down ] When free men become
the property of one, when they are brought to
believe that their interests repose on him alone,
and must arise from him, their best energies are
broken irreparably. They consider his will as the
rule of their conduct, leading to emolument and
dignity, securing from spoliation, from scorn, from
contumely, from chains, and seize this compendi-
ous blessing (such they think_ it) without exertion
and without reflection. From which cause alone
there are several ancient nations so abject, that
they have not produced in many thousand years
as many rational creatures as we have seen
together round one table in the narrowest lane of
Athens.
Pisistratus. But, Solon, you yourself are an
example, ill treated as you have been, that the
levity of the Athenian people requires a guide
and leader.
Solon. There are those who by their discourses
and conduct, inflate and push forward this levity,
that the guide and leader may be called for ; and
who then offer their kind services, modestly, and
by means of friends, in pity to the weakness of
their fellow-citizens ; taking care not only of their
follies, but also their little store of wisdom, put-
ting it out to interest where they see fit, and
directing how and where it shall be expended.
Generous hearts ! the Lacedemonians themselves,
in the excess of their democracy, never were
more zealous that corn and oil should be thrown
into the common stock,, than these are that minds
should, and that no one swell a single line above
another. Their own meanwhile are fully ade-
quate to all necessary and useful purposes, and
constitute them a superintending Providence over
the rest.
Pisistratus. Solon, I did not think you so ad-
dicted to derision : you make me join you. This
in the latter part is a description of despotism ; a
monster of Asia, and not yet known even in the
most uncivilised region of Europe. For the
Thracians and others, who have chieftains, have
no kings, much less despots. In speaking of
them we use the word carelessly, not thinking it
worth our while to form names for such creatures,
any more than to form collars and bracelets for
them, or rings (if they use them) for their ears
and noses.
Solon. Preposterous as this is, there are things
more so, under our eyes : for instance, that the
sound should become lame, the wise foolish, and
this by no affliction of disease or age. You go
further ; and appear to wish that a man should
become a child again : for what is it else, when he
has governed himself, that he should go back to
be governed by another 1 and for no better rea-
son than because, as he is told, that other has
been knocked down and stabbed. Incontrover-
tible proofs of his strength, his prudence, and the
love he has been capable of conciliating in those
about him !
Pisistratus. Solon ! it would better become the
gravity of your age, the dignity of your character,
and the office you assume of adviser, to address me
with decorous and liberal moderation, and to treat
me as you find me.
Solon. So small a choice of words is left us,
when we pass out of Atticism into barbarism, that
I know not whether you, distinguished as you are
both for the abundance and the selection of them,
would call yourself in preference king or tyrant.
The latter is usually the most violent, at least in
SOLON AND PISISTEATUS.
187
the beginning-; the former the most pernicious.
Tyrants, like ravens and vultures, are solitary :
they either are swept off, or languish and pine
away, and leave no brood in their places. Kings,
as the origin of them is amid the swamps and
wildernesses, take deeper root, and germinate more
broadly in the loose and putrescent soil, and pro-
pagate their likenesses for several generations ; a
brood which (such is the power of habitude) does
not seem monstrous, even to those whose corn,
wine, and oil, it swallows up every day, and whose
children it consumes in its freaks and festivals.
I am ignorant under what number of them, at the
present day, mankind in various countries lies
prostrate ; just as ignorant as I am how many are
the desarts and caverns of the earth, or the eddies
and whirlpools of the sea ; but I should not be
surprised to find it stated that, in Asia and Africa,
there may be a dozen, greater or less. Europe
has never been amazed at such a portent, either
in the most corrupted or the most uncivilised of
her nations, as a hereditary chief in possession of
absolute power.
Pisistratus. The first despots were tyrannical
and cruel.
Solon. And so the last will be. This is wanting,
on some occasions, to arouse a people from the
lethargy of servitude; and therefore I would rather
see the cruellest usurper than the mildest king.
Under him men lose the dignity of their nature :
under the other they recover it.
Pisistratus. Hereditary kkings too have been
dethroned.
Solon. Certainly : for, besotted as those must
be who have endured them, some subject at last
hath had the hardihood and spirit to kick that
fellow in the face and trample on him, who insists
that the shoe must fit him because it fitted his
father and grandfather, and that, if his foot will
not enter, he will pare and rasp it.
Pisistratus. The worst of wickedness is that of
bearing hard on the unfortunate ; and near it is
that of running down the fortunate : yet these
are the two commonest occupations of man-
kind. We are despised if we are helpless; we
are teased by petulance and tormented by re-
prehension if we are strong. One tribe of bar-
barians would drag us into their own dry desarts,
and strip us to the skin : another would pierce
us with arrows for being naked. What is to be
done?
Solon. Simpler men run into no such perplexi-
ties. Your great wisdom, O Pisistratus ! will
enable you in some measure to defend your con-
duct ; but your heart is the more vulnerable from
its very greatness.
Pisistratus. I intend to exert the authority that
is conferred on me by the people, in the mainte-
nance of your laws, knowing no better.
Solon. Better there may be, but you will render
worse necessary ; and would you have it said here-
after by those who read them, " Pisistratus was
less wise than Solon ? "
Pisistratus. It must be said ; for none among
men hath enjoyed so high a character as you, in
wisdom and integrity.
Solon. Either you lie now, Pisistratus, or you
lied when you abolished my institutions.
Pisistratus. They exist, and shall exist, I swear
to you.
Solon. Yes, they exist like the letters in a burnt
paper, which are looked down on from curiosity,
and just legible, while the last of the consuming
fire is remaining, but they crumble at a touch,
and indeed fly before it, weightless and inco-
herent.
Do you desire, Pisistratus, that your family shall
inherit your anxieties 1 If you really feel none
yourself, which you never will persuade me, nor
(I think) attempt it, still you may be much hap-
pier, much more secure and tranquil, by ceasing
to possess what you have acquired of late, provided
you cease early ; for long possession of any pro-
perty makes us anxious to retain it, and insensible,
if not to the cares it brings with it, at least to the
real cause of them. Tyrants will never be per-
suaded that their alarms and sorrows, their per-
plexity and melancholy, are the product of tyranny :
they will not attribute a tittle of them to their
own obstinacy and perverseness, but look for it
all in another's. They would move everything
and be moved by nothing; and yet lighter
things move them than any other particle of
mankind.
Pisistratus. You are talking, Solon, of mere
fools.
Solon. The worst of fools, Pisistratus, are those
who once had wisdom. Not to possess what is
good is a misfortune ; to throw it away is a folly :
but to change what we know hath served us, and
would serve us still, for what never has and never
can, for what on the contrary hath always been
pernicious to the holder, is the action of an incor-
rigible idiot. Observations on arbitrary power
can never be made usefully to its possessors.
There is not a foot-page about them at the bath
whose converse on this subject is not more rea-
sonable than mine would be. I could adduce no
argument which he would not controvert, by the
magical words "practical things" and "present
times:" a shrug of the shoulder would overset
all that my meditations have taught me in half a
century of laborious inquiry and intense thought.
" These are theories," he would tell his master,
"fit for Attica before the olive was sown among
us. Old men must always have their way. Will
their own grey beards never teach them that time
changes things?"
One fortune hath ever befallen those whom the
indignant gods have cursed with despotical power;
to feed upon falsehood, to loath and sicken at
truth, to avoid the friendly, to discard the wise, to
suspect the honest, and to abominate the brave.
Like grubs.in rotten kernels, they coil up for safety
in dark hollowness, and see nothing but death in
bursting from it. Although they place violence
in the highest rank of dignities and virtues, and
draw closely round their bodies those whose valour,
188
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
from the centre to the extremities, should animate
the state, yet they associate the most intimately
with singers, with buffoons, with tellers of tales,
with prodigies of eating and drinking, with
mountebanks, with diviners. These captivate
and enthrall their enfeebled and abject spirits ;
and the first cry that rouses them from their tor-
por is .the cry that demands their blood. Then
would it appear by their countenances, that all
they had scattered among thousands, had come
secretly back again to its vast repository, and
was issuing forth from every limb and feature,
from every pore, from every hair upon their
heads.
What is man at last, 0 Pisistratus, when he is
all he hath ever wished to be ! the fortunate, the
powerful, the supreme ! Life in its fairest form
(such he considers it) comes only to flatter and
deceive him. Disappointments take their turn,
and harass him ; weakness and maladies cast him
down : pleasures catch him again when he rises
from them, to misguide and blind and carry him
away : ambition struggles with those pleasures,
and only in struggling with them seems to be his
friend : they mar one another, and distract him :
enemies encompass him ; associates desert him ;
rivalries thwart, persecutions haunt him : another's
thoughts molest and injure him ; his own do worse
than join with them : and yet he shudders and
shrinks back at nothing so much as the creak-
ing of that door by which alone there is any
escape.
Pisistratus ! 0 Pisistratus ! do we tire out the
patience of mankind, do we prey upon our hearts,
for this ? Does Nature crave it ? Does Wisdom
dictate it ] Can Power avert it ? Descend then
from a precipice, it is difficult to stand, it is impos-
sible to repose on. Take the arm that would lead
you and support you back, and restore you to your
friends and country. He who places himself far
above them, is (any child might tell you) far from
them. What on earth can be imagined so horrible
and disheartening, as to live without ever seeing
one creature of the same species ! Being a tyrant
or despot, you are in this calamity. Imprison-
ment in a dungeon could not reduce you to it :
false friends have done that for you which ene-
mies could but attempt. If such is the harvest
of their zeal, when they are unsated and alert,
what is that which remains to be gathered in by
you, when they are full and weary ? Bitterness ;
the bitterness of infamy! And how will you
quench it] By swallowing the gall of self-
reproach !
Let me put to you a few questions, near to the
point : you will answer them, I am confident, easily
and affably.
Pisistratus, have you not felt yourself the hap-
pier, when in the fulness of your heart, you have
made a large offering to the gods ]
Pisistratus. Solon, I am not impious : I have
made many such offerings to them, and have always
been the happier.
Solon. Did they need your sacrifice ]
Pisistratus. They need nothing from us mortals';
but I was happy in the performance of what I have
been taught is my duty.
Solon. Piously, virtuously, and reasonably said,
my friend. The gods did not indeed want your
sacrifice : they, who give everything, can want
nothing. The Athenians do want a sacrifice from
you : they have an urgent necessity of something ;
the necessity of that very thing which you have
taken from them, and which it can cost you no-
thing to replace. You have always been happier,
you confess, in giving to the gods what you could
have yourself used in your own house : believe
me, you will not be less so in giving back to your
fellow-citizens what you have taken out of theirs,
and what you very well know they will seize when
they can, together with your property and life.
You have been taught, you tell me, that sacrifice
to the gods is a duty : be it so : but who taught
you it ? Was it a wiser man than you or I ] Or
was it at a time of life when your reason was more
mature than at present, or your interests better
understood 1 No good man ever gave anything
without being the more happy for it, unless to
the undeserving, nor ever took anything away
without being the less so. But here is anxiety
and suspicion, a fear of the strong, a subjection
to the weak; here is fawning, in order to be
fawned on again, as among sucking whelps half
awake. He alone is the master of his fellow-men,
who can instruct and improve them; while he
who makes the people another thing from what it
was, is master of that other thing, but not of the
people. And supposing we could direct the city
exactly as we would, is our greatness to be founded
on this 1 A ditcher may do greater things : he
may turn a torrent (a thing even more turbid and
more precipitate) by his ditch ! A sudden in-
crease of power, like a sudden increase of blood,
gives pleasure; but the new excitement being
once gratified, the pleasure ceases.
I do not imagine the children of the powerful
to be at any time more contented than the chil-
dren of others, although I concede that the pow-
erful themselves may be so for some moments,
paying however very dearly for those moments, by
more in quantity and in value. Give a stranger,
who has rendered you no service, four talents : the
suddenness of the gift surprises and delights him:
take them away again, saying, "Excuse me; I
intended them for your brother ; still, not wholly
to disappoint you, I give you two." What think
you ; do you augment or diminish that man's
store of happiness ]
Pisistratus. It must depend on his temper and
character : but I think in nearly all instances you
would diminish it.
Solon. Certainly. When we can not have what
we expect, we are dissatisfied ; and what we have
ceases to afford us pleasure. We are like infants ;
deprive them of one toy, and they push the rest
away, or break them, and turn their faces from
you, crying inconsolably.
If you desire an increase of happiness, do not
SOLON AND PISISTRATFS.
189
look for it, 0 Pisistratus, in an increase of power.
Follow the laws of nature on the earth. Spread
the seeds of it far and wide : your crop shall be in
proportion to your industry and liberality. What
you concentrate in yourself, you stifle ; you pro-
pagate what you communicate.
Still silent ? Who is at the door ?
Pwiatratus. The boys.
Solon. Come, my little fugitives! turn back
again hither ! come to me, Hippias and Hippar-
chus ! I wish you had entered earlier ; that you
might have witnessed my expostulation with your
father, and that your tender age might have pro-
duced upon him the effect my declining one has
failed in. Children, you have lost your patri-
mony. Start not, Pisistratus ! I do not tell
them that you have squandered it away : no, I
will never teach them irreverence to their parent :
aid me, I entreat you, to teach them reverence.
Do not, while the thing is recoverable, deprive
them of filial love, of a free city, of popular
esteem, of congenial sports, of kind confidence, of
that which all ages run in pursuit of, equals.
Children seek those of the same age, men those
of the same condition. Misfortunes come upon
all : who can best ward them off! not those above
us nor those below, but those on a level with our-
selves. Tell me, Pisistratus, what arm hath ever
raised up the pillow of a dying despot ! He hath
loosened the bonds of nature : in no hour, and
least of all in the last, can they be strengthened
and drawn together. It is a custom, as you
know, for you have not yet forgotten all our cus-
toms, to conduct youths with us when we mark
the boundaries of our lands, that they may give
their testimony on any suit about them in time to
come. Unfortunate boys ! their testimony can
not be received : the landmarks are removed from
their own inheritance by their own father.
Armed men are placed in front of them for ever,
and their pleasantest walks throughout life must
be guarded by armed men. Who would endure
it 1 one of the hardest things to which the cap-
tive, or even the criminal, is condemned. The
restraints which everyone would wish away, are
eternally about them ; those which the best of us
require through life, are removed from them on
entering it. Their passions not only are uncon-
trolled, but excited, fed, and flattered, by all
around, and mostly by their teachers. Do not
expose them to worse monsters than the young
Athenians were exposed to in the time of Theseus.
Never hath our city, before or since, endured
such calamity, such ignominy. A king, a con-
queror, an injured and exasperated enemy, im-
posed them : shall a citizen, shall a beneficent
man, shall a father, devise more cruel and more
shameful terms, and admit none but his own off-
spring to fulfill them? That monster perhaps
was fabulous. 0 that these were so ! and that
pride, injustice, lust, were tractable to any clue or
conquerable by any courage, of despotism !
Weak man ! will sighing suffocate them ? will
holding down the head confound them ?
Hippias and Hipparchus ! you are now the chil-
dren of Solon, the orphans of Pisistratus. If I
have any wisdom, it is the wisdom of experience:
it shall cost you nothing from me, from others
much. I present to you a fruit which the gods
themselves have fenced round, not only from the
animals, but from most men ; one which I have
nurtured and watched day and night for seventy
years, reckoning from the time when my letters
and duties were first taught me ; a lovely, sweet,
and wholesome fruit, my children, and which,
like the ambrosia of the blessed in Olympus,
grows by participation and enjoyment.
You receive it attentively and gratefully : your
father, who ought to know its value, listens and
rejects it. I am not angry with him for this ;
and, if I censure him before you, I blame myself
also in his presence. Too frequently have I re-
peated my admonition : I am throwing my time
away . . I who have so little left me : I am con-
suming my heart with sorrow . . when sorrow
and solicitudes should have ceased . . and from
whom 1 from him principally who will derive no
good from it, and will suffer none to flow on
others, not even on those the dearest to him.
Think, my children, how unwise a man is Solon,
how hard a man Pisistratus, how mistaken in both
are the Athenians. Study to avoid our errors, to
correct our faults, and by simplicity of life, by
moderation in your hopes and wishes, to set a
purer and (grant it, Heaven !) a more stabile exam-
ple than we have done.
LOUIS XVIII. AND TALLEYRAND.
Louis. M. Talleyrand ! in common with all my
family, all France, all Europe, I entertain the
highest opinion of your abilities and integrity.
You have convinced me that your heart, through-
out the storms of the revolution, leaned constantly
toward royalty ; and that you permitted and even
encouraged the caresses of the usurper, merely
that you might strangle the more certainly and
the more easily his new-born empire. After this,
it is impossible to withhold my confidence from
you.
Talleyrand. Conscious of the ridicule his arro-
gance and presumption would incur, the usurper
attempted to silence and stifle it with other
and far different emotions. Half his cruelties
were perpetrated that his vanity might not be
wounded : for scorn is superseded by horror.
Whenever he committed an action or uttered a
sentiment which would render him an object of
derision, he instantly gave vent to another which
paralysed by its enormous wickedness. He would
extirpate a nation to extinguish a smile. No
man alive could deceive your Majesty : the ex-
tremely few who would wish to do it, lie under
190
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
that vigilant and piercing eye, which discerned
in perspective from the gardens of Hartwcll those
of the Tuileries and Versailles. Aa joy arises
from calamity, so spring arises from the bosom of
winter, purely to receive your Majesty, inviting
the august descendant of their glorious founder
to adorn and animate them again with his bene-
ficent and gracious presence. The waters mur-
mur, in voices half-supprest, the reverential hymn
of peace restored : the woods bow their heads . . .
Louis. Talking of woods, I am apprehensive
all the game has been wofully killed up in my
forests.
Talleyrand. A single year will replenish them.
Louis. Meanwhile ! M. Talleyrand ! mean-
while !
Talleyrand. Honest and active and watchful
gamekeepers, in sufficient number, must be
sought ; and immediately.
Louis. Alas ! if the children of my nobility had
been educated like the children of the English,
I might have promoted some hundreds of them in
this department. But their talents lie totally
within the binding of their breviaries. Those of
them who shoot, can shoot only with pistols;
which accomplishment they acquired in England,
that they might challenge any of the islanders
who should happen to look with surprise or dis-
pleasure in their faces, expecting to be noticed by
them in Paris, for the little hospitalities the
proud young gentlemen, and their prouder fathers,
were permitted to offer them in London and at
their country seats. What we call reconnaisance,
they call gratitude, treating a recollector like a
debtor. This is a want of courtesy, a defect in
civilisation, which it behoves us to supply. Our
memories are as tenacious as theirs, and rather
more eclectic.
Since my return to my kingdom I have under-
gone great indignities from this unreflecting
people. One Canova, a sculptor at Rome, visited
Paris in the name of the Pope, and in quality of
his envoy, and insisted on the cession of those
statues and pictures which were brought into
France by the French armies. He began to re-
move them out of the Gallery : I told him I would
never give my consent : he replied, he thought it
sufficient that he had Wellington's. Therefore,
the next time Wellington presented himself at
the Tuileries, I turned my back upon him before
the whole court. Let the English and their
allies be aware, that I owe my restoration not to
them, but partly to God and partly to Saint
Louis. They and their armies are only brute
instruments in the hands of my progenitor and
intercessor.
Talleyrand. Fortunate, that the conqueror of
France bears no resemblance to the conqueror of
Spain. ^Peterborough (I shudder at the idea)
would have ordered a file of soldiers to seat your
Majesty in your travelling carriage, and would
have reinstalled you at Hartwell. The English
people are so barbarous, that he would have done
it not only with impunity, but with applause.
Louis. But the sovran of his country . . would
the sovran suffer it ?
Talleyrand. Alas ! sire ! Confronted with such
men, what are sovrans, when the people are the
judges? Wellington can drill armies: Peter-
borough could marshal nations.
Louis. Thank God! we have no longer any
such pests on earth. The most consummate
general of our days (such is Wellington) sees
nothing one single inch beyond the field of battle;
and he is so observant of discipline, that if I
ordered him to be flogged in the presence of
the allied armies, he would not utter a com-
plaint nor shrug a shoulder ; he would only write
a despatch.
Talleyrand. But his soldiers would execute the
Duke of Brunswick's manifesto, and Paris would
sink into her catacombs. No man so little be-
loved was ever so well obeyed : and there is not a
man in England, of either party, citizen or soldier,
who would not rather die than see him disgraced.
His firmness, his moderation, his probity, place
him more opposite to Napoleon than he stood in
the field of Waterloo. These are his lofty lines
of Torres Vedras, which no enemy dares assail
throughout their whole extent.
Louis. M. Talleyrand ! is it quite right to ex-
tol an enemy and an Englishman in this manner?
Talleyrand. Pardon ! Sire ! I stand corrected.
Forgive me a momentary fit of enthusiasm, in
favour of those qualities by which, although an
Englishman's, I am placed again in your Majesty's
service.
Louis. We will now then go seriously to busi-
ness. Wellington and the allied armies have
interrupted and occupied us. I will instantly
write, with my own hand, to the Marquis of
Buckingham, desiring him to send me five hun-
dred pheasant-eggs. I am restored to my throne,
M. Talleyrand ! but in what a condition ! Not a
pheasant on the table ! I must throw myself on
the mercy of foreigners, even for a pheasant !
When I have written my letter, I shall be ready
to converse with you on the business on which I
desired your presence. [ Writes.
Here ; read it. Give me your opinion : is not
the note a model ?
Talleyrand. If the 'charms of language could
be copied, it would be. But what is intended for
delight may terminate in despair : and there are
words which, unapproachable by distance and
sublimity, may wither the laurels on the most
exalted of literary brows.
Louis. There is grace in that expression of
yours, M. Talleyrand ! there is really no incon-
siderable grace in it. Seal my letter : direct it
to the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe. Wait :
open it again : no, no : write another in your own
name : instruct him how sure you are it will be
agreeable to me, if he sends at the same time fifty
or a hundred brace of the birds as well as the
eggs. At present I am desolate. My heart is
torn, M. Talleyrand ! it is almost plucked out of
my bosom. I have no other care, no other thought,
LOUIS XVIII. AND TALLEYRAND.
191
day or night, but the happiness of my people.
The allies, who have most shamefully overlooked
the destitution of my kitchen, seem resolved to
turn a deaf ear to its cries evermore ; nay, even
to render them shriller and shriller. The allies,
I suspect, are resolved to execute the design of
the mischievous Pitt.
Talleyrand. May it please your Majesty to in-
form me which of them ; for he formed a thousand,
all mischievous, but greatly more mischievous to
England than to France. Eesolved to seize the
sword, in his drunkenness, he seized it by the
edge, and struck at us with the hilt, until he
broke it off, and until he himself was exhausted
by loss of breath and of blood. We owe alike to
him the energy of our armies, the bloody scaffolds
of Public Safety, the Reign of Terror, the empire
of usurpation, and finally, as the calm is successor
to the tempest, and sweet fruit to bitter kernel,
the blessing of your Majesty's restoration. Ex-
cepting in this one event, he was mischievous to
our country ; but in all events, and in all under-
takings, he was pernicious to his own. No man
ever brought into the world such enduring evil ;
few men such extensive.
Louis. His king ordered it. George the Third
loved battles and blood.
Talleyrand. But he was prudent in his appetite
for them.
Louis. He talked of peppering his people as I
would talk of peppering a capon.
Talleyrand. Having split it. His subjects cut
up by his subjects were only capers to his leg of
mutton. From none of his palaces and parks
was there any view so rural, so composing to his
spirits, as the shambles. When these were not
fresh, the gibbet would do.
I wish better luck to the pheasant-eggs than
befell Mr. Pitt's designs. Not one brought forth
anything.
Louis. No : but he declared in the face of his
parliament, and of Europe, that he would insist
on indemnity for the past and security for the
future. These were his words. Now, all the
money and other wealth the French armies levied
in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and everywhere else,
would scarcely be sufficient for this indemnity.
Talleyrand. England shall never receive from
us a tithe of that amount.
Louis. A tithe of it ! She may demand a
quarter or a third, and leave us wondering at
her moderation and forbearance.
Talleyrand. The matter must be arranged im-
mediately, before she has time for calculation or
reflection. A new peace maddens England to
the same paroxysm as a new war maddens France.
She hath sent over hither for minister . . or rather
her prime minister himself is come to transact all
the business . . the most ignorant and most short-
sighted man to be found in any station of any
public office throughout the whole of Europe. He
must be treated as her arbiter : we must talk to
him of restoring her, of regenerating her, of pre-
serving her, of guiding her, which (we must pro-
test with our hands within our frills) he alone is
capable of doing. We must enlarge on his gene-
rosity (and generous he indeed is), and there is
nothing he will not concede.
Louis. But if they do not come over in a week,
we shall lose the season. I ought to be eating a
pheasant-poult by the middle of July. 0 ! but
you were talking to me about the other matter,
and perhaps the weightier of the two ; ay, cer-
tainly. If this indemnity is paid to England,
what becomes of our civil list, the dignity of my
family and household ]
Talleyrand. I do assure your Majesty, England
shall never receive . . did I say a tithe ? . . I say
she shall never receive a fiftieth of what she ex-
pended in the war against us. It would be out
of all reason, and out of all custom in her to
expect it. Indeed it would place her in almost
as good a condition as ourselves. Even if she
were beaten she could hardly hope that: she never
in the last three centuries has demanded it when
she was victorious. Of all the sufferers by the
war, we shall be the least.
Louis. The English are calculators and traders.
Talleyrand. Wild speculators, gamblers in trade,
who hazard more ventures than their books can
register. It will take England some years to cast
up the amount of her losses.
Louis. But she, in common with her allies, will
insist on our ceding those provinces which my
predecessor Louis the Fourteenth annexed to his
kingdom. Be quite certain that nothing short of
Alsace, Lorraine, and Franc Comte, will satisfy
the German princes. They must restore the
German language in those provinces : for lan-
guages are the only true boundaries of nations,
and there will always be dissension where there is
difference of tongue. We must likewise be pre-
pared to surrender the remainder of the Nether-
lands ; not indeed to England, who refused them
in the reign of Elizabeth : she wants only Dun-
kirk, and Dunkirk she will have.
Talleyrand. This seems reasonable : for which
reason it must never be. Diplomacy, when she
yields to such simple arguments as plain reason
urges against her, loses her office, her efficacy, and
her name.
Louis. I would not surrender our conquests in
Germany, if I could help it.
Talleyrand. Nothing more easy. The Emperor
Alexander may be persuaded that Germany united
and entire, as she would then become, must be a
dangerous rival to Russia.
Louis. It appears to me that Poland will be
more so, with her free institutions.
Talleyrand. There is only one statesman in the
whole number of those assembled at Paris, who
believes that her institutions will continue free ;
and he would rather they did not ; but he stipu-
lates for it, to gratify and mystify the people of
England.
Louis. I see this clearly. I have a great mind
to send Blacas over to Stowe. I can trust to him
to look to the crates and coops, and to see that
192
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
the pheasants have enough of air and water, and
that the governor of Calais finds a commodious
place for them to roost in, forbidding the drums
to beat and disturb them, evening or morning.
The next night, according to my calculation, they
repose at Montreuil. I must look at them before
they are let loose. I can not well imagine why
the public men employed by England are usually,
indeed constantly, so inferior in abilities to those
of France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. What
say you, M. Talleyrand 1 I do not mean about the
pheasants ; I mean about the envoys.
Talleyrand. It can only be that I have con-
sidered the subject more frequently and attentively
than suited the avocations of yourMajesty, that the
reason comes out before me clearly and distinctly.
The prime ministers, in all these countries, are in-
dependent, and uncontrolled in the choice of agents.
A prime minister in France may perhaps be will-
ing to promote the interests of his own family; and
hence he may appoint from it one unworthy of
the place. In regard to other families, he cares
little or nothing about them, knowing that his
power lies in the palace, and not in the club-room.
Whereas in England he must conciliate the great
families, the hereditary dependents of his faction,
whig or tory. Hence even the highest commands
have been conferred on such ignorant and worth-
less men as the Duke of York and the Earl of
Chatham, although the minister was fully aware
that the honour of his nation was tarnished, and
that its safety was in jeopardy, by such appoint-
ments. Meanwhile he kept his seat however, and
fed from it his tame creatures in the cub.
Louis. Do you apprehend any danger (talking
of cubs) that my pheasants will be bruised against
the wooden bars, or suffer by sea-sickness] I
would not command my bishops to offer up public
prayers against such contingencies : for people
must never have positive evidence that the prayers
of the church can possibly be ineffectual : and we
can not pray for pheasants as we pray for fine
weather, by the barometer. We must drop it.
Now go on with the others, if you have done with
England.
Talleyrand. A succession of intelligent men
rules Prussia, Russia, and Austria ; because these
three are economical, and must get their bread
by creeping, day after day, through the hedges
next to them, and by filching a sheaf or two, early
and late, from cottager or small farmer ; that is
to say, from free states and petty princes. Prussia,
like a mongrel, would fly at the legs of Austria
and Russia, catching them with the sack upon
their shoulders, unless they untied it and tossed
a morsel to her. These great powers take espe-
cial care to impose a protective duty on intellect ;
to let none enter the country, and none leave it,
without a passport. Their diplomatists are as
clever and conciliatory as thfse of England are
ignorant and repulsive, who, while they offer an
uncounted sum of secret-service money with ihe
left hand, give a sounding slap on the face with
the right.
Louis. We, by adopting a contrary policy, gain
more information, raise more respect, inspire more
awe, and exercise more authority. The weightiest
of our disbursements are smiles and flatteries,
with a ribbon and a cross at the end of them.
But, between the Duke of York and the Earl
of Chatham, I must confess, I find very little
difference.
Talleyrand. Some, however. The one was only
drunk all the evening and all the night ; the
other was only asleep all the day. The accumu-
lated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate in
his brain, pufling out at intervals just sufficient
to affect with typhus and blindness four thousand
soldiers. A cake of powder rusted their musket-
pans, which they were too weak to open and wipe.
Turning round upon their scanty and mouldy
straw, they beheld their bayonets piled together
against the green dripping wall of the chamber,
which neither bayonet nor soldier was ever to
leave again.
Louis. We suffer by the presence of the allied
armies in our capital: but we shall soon be
avenged : for the English minister in another fort-
night will return and remain at home.
Talleyrand. England was once so infatuated as
to give up Malta to us, although fifty Gibraltars
would be of inferior value to her. Napoleon
laughed at her : she was angry : she began to
suspect she had been duped and befooled : and
she broke her faith.
Louis. For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and
with a man who never had any.
Talleyrand. We shall now induce her to eva-
cuate Sicily, in violation of her promises to the
people of that island. Faith, having lost her
virginity, braves public opinion, and never blushes
more.
Louis. Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the
lock.
Talleyrand. What, if I induce the minister to
restore to us Pondicherry?
Louis. M. Talleyrand ! you have done great
things, and without boasting. Whenever you do
boast, let it be that you will perform only the
thing which is possible. The English know well
enough what it is to allow us a near standing-
place anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman to
plant one foot in India, it will upset all Asia be-
fore the other touches the ground. It behoves
them to prohibit a single one of us from ever
landing on those shores. Improbable as it is that
a man uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali
did political and military genius, will appear in
the world again for centuries ; most of the princes
are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few
are credulous. While England is confiding in our
loyalty, we might expatiate on her perfidy, and
our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in
the dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the
king's ministers may be, the East India Company
is well-informed on its interests, and alert in
maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so
wealthy and so wise should be supported on the
.ESOP AND RHODOPE.
193
bosom of royalty. Believe me, her merchants
will take alarm, and arouse the nation.
Talleyrand. We must do all we have to do,
while the nation is feasting and unsober. It will
awaken with sore eyes and stiff limbs.
Louis. Profuse as the English are, they will
never cut the bottom of their purses.
Talleyrand. They have already done it. When-
ever I look toward the shores of England, I fancy
I descry the Dauaids there, toiling at the replen-
ishment of their perforated vases, and all the
Nereids leering and laughing at them in the
mischievous fulness of their hearts.
Louis. Certainly she can do me little harm at
present, and for several years to come : but we
must always have an eye upon her, and be ready
to assert our superiority.
Talleyrand. We feel it. In fifty years, by ab-
staining from war, we may discharge our debt and
replenish our arsenals. England will never shake
off the heavy old man from her shoulders. Over-
laden and morose, she will be palsied in the hand
she unremittingly holds up against Ireland. Proud
and perverse, she runs into domestic warfare as
blindly as France runs into foreign : and she re-
fuses to her subject what she surrenders to her
enemy.
Louis. Her whole policy tends to my security.
Talleyrand. We must now consider how your
Majesty may enjoy it at home, all the remainder
of your reign.
Louis. Indeed you must, M. Talleyrand ! Be-
tween you and me be it spoken, I trust but little
my loyal people ; their loyalty being so ebullient,
that it often overflows the vessel which should
contain it, and is a perquisite of scouts and scul-
lions. I do not wish to offend you.
Talleyrand. Really I can see no other sure
method of containing and controlling them, than
by bastions and redoubts, the whole circuit of
the city.
Louis. M. Talleyrand ! I will not doubt your
sincerity : I am confident you have reserved the
whole of it for my service ; and there are large
arrears. But M. Talleyrand ! such an attempt
would be resisted by any people which had ever
heard of liberty, and much more by a people
which had ever dreamt of enjoying it.
Talleyrand. Forts are built in all directions
above Genoa.
Louis. Yes; by her conqueror, not by her
king.
Talleyrand. Your Majesty comes with both
titles, and rules, like your great progenitor,
"Et par droit de conqu§te et par di-oit de naissance. "
Louis. True ; my arms have subdued the rebel-
lious ; but not without great firmness and great
valour on my part, and some assistance (however
tardy) on the part of my allies. Conquerors must
conciliate : fatherly kings must offer digestible
spoon-meat to their ill-conditioned children. There
would be sad screaming and kicking were I to
swaddle mine in stone-work. No, M. Talleyrand ;
if ever Paris is surrounded by fortifications to
coerce the populace, it must be the work of some
democrat, some aspirant to supreme power, who
resolves to maintain it, exercising a domination
too hazardous for legitimacy. I will only scrape
from the Chambers the effervescence of superficial
letters and of corrosive law.
Talleyrand. Sire ! under all their governments
the good people of Paris have submitted to the
octroi. Now, all complaints, physical or political,
arise from the stomach. Were it decorous in a
subject to ask a question (however humbly) of his
king, I would beg permission to inquire of your
Majesty, in your wisdom, whether a bar across the
shoulders is less endurable than a bar across the
palate. Sire ! the French can bear anything now
they have the honour of bowing before your
Majesty.
Louis. The compliment is in a slight degree (a
very slight degree) ambiguous, and (accept in good
part my criticism, M. Talleyrand) not turned with
your usual grace.
Announce it as my will and pleasure that the
Due de Blacas do superintend the debarcation
of the pheasants ; and I pray God, M. de Talley-
rand, to have you in his holy keeping.
AND RHODOPE.
SECOND CONVERSATION.
jEsop. And so, our fellow-slaves are given to
contention on the score of dignity 1
Rhodope. I do not believe they are much ad-
dicted to contention: for, whenever the good
Xanthus hears a signal of such misbehaviour, he
either brings a scourge into the midst of them, or
sends our lady to scold them smartly for it,
j£sop. Admirable evidence against their pro-
pensity !
Rhodope. I will not have you find them out so,
nor laugh at them.
jEsop. Seeing that the good Xanthus and our
lady are equally fond of thee, and always visit thee
both together, the girls, however envious, can not
well or safely be arrogant, but must of necessity
yield the first place to thee.
Rhodope. They indeed are observant of the
kindness thus bestowed upon me : yet they afflict
me by taunting me continually with what I am
unable to deny.
JEsop. If it is true, it ought little to trouble
thee ; if untrue, less. I know, for I have looked
into nothing else of late, no evil can thy heart
have admitted : a sigh of thine before the Gods
would remove the heaviest that could fall on it.
Pray tell me what it may be. Come, be courageous ;
be cheerful. I can easily pardon a smile if thou
empleadest me of curiosity.
194
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Rhodope. They remark to me that enemies or
robbers took them forcibly from their parents . .
and that . . and that . . .
JEaop. Likely enough : what then ? Why desist
from speaking ? why cover thy face with thy hair
and hands 1 Rhodope ! Rhodope ! dost thou weep
moreover ?
Rhodope. It is so sure .'
JSsop. Was the fault thine ?
Khodope. 0 that it were . . if there was any.
jEaop. While it pains thee to tell it, keep thy
silence : but when utterance is a solace, then im-
part it.
Rhodope. They remind me (oh ! who could have
had the cruelty to relate it?) that my father, my
own dear father . . .
jEsop. Say not the rest: I know it: his day
was come.
Khodope. Sold me, sold me. You start : you
did not at the lightning, last night, nor at the roll-
ing sounds above. And do you, generous ./Esop !
do you also call a misfortune a disgrace ?
JEsop. If it is, I am among the most disgraceful
of men. Didst thou dearly love thy father 1
Rhodope. All loved him. He was very fond of
me.
JEsop. And yet sold thee ! sold thee to a
stranger !
Khodope. He was the kindest of all kind fathers,
nevertheless. Nine summers ago, you may have
heard perhaps, there was a grievous famine in
our land of Thrace.
JEsop. I remember it perfectly.
Khodope. 0 poor jEsop ! and were you too
famishing in your native Phrygia?
jEsop. The calamity extended beyond the nar-
row sea that separates our countries. My appetite
was sharpened : but the appetite and the wits are
equally set on the same grindstone.
Khodope. I was then scarcely five years old :
my mother died the year before : my father sighed
at every funereal, but he sighed more deeply at
every bridal, song. He loved me because he loved
her who bore me : and yet I made him sorrowful
whether I cried or smiled. If ever I vexed him,
it was because I would not play when he told me,
but made him, by my weeping, weep again.
jEsop. And yet he could endure to lose thee !
he, thy father! Could any other? could any
who lives on the fruits of the earth, endure it ?
0 age, that art incumbent over me ! blessed be
thou ; thrice blessed ! Not that thou stillest the
tumults of the heart, and promisest eternal calm,
but that, prevented by thy beneficence, I never
shall experience this only intolerable wretched-
ness.
Rhodope. Alas ! alas !
jEsop. Thou art now happy, and shouldst not
utter that useless exclamation.
Rhodope. You said something angrily and
vehemently when you stepped aside. Is it not
enough that the handmaidens doubt the kind-
ness of my father ? Must so virtuous and so wise
a man as JSsop blame him also ?
. Perhaps he is little to be blamed ; cer-
tainly he is much to be pitied.
Khodope. Kind heart! on which mine must
never rest.
jEsop. Rest on it for comfort and for counsel when
they fail thee : rest on it, as the Deities on the
breast of mortals, to console and purify it.
Rhodope. Could I remove any sorrow from it,
I should be contented.
jEsop. Then be so ; and proceed in thy narrative.
Rhodope. Bear with me a little yet. My
thoughts have overpowered my words, and now
themselves are overpowered and scattered.
Forty-seven days ago (this is only the forty-
eighth since I beheld you first) I was a child : I
was ignorant, I was careless.
jEsop. If these qualities are signs of childhood,
the universe is a nursery.
Rhodope. Affliction, which makes many wiser,
had no such effect on me. But reverence and
love (why should I hesitate at the one avowal
more than at the other ?) came over me, to ripen
my understanding.
jEsop. 0 Rhodope ! we must loiter no longer
upon this discourse.
Rhodope. Why not ?
jEsop. Pleasant is yonder beanfield, seen over
the high papyrus when it waves and bends :
deep-laden with the sweet heaviness of its odour
is the listless air that palpitates dizzily above it :
but Death is lurking for the slumberer beneath
its blossoms.
Rhodope. You must not love then ! . . but may
not I?
jEsop. We will . . but . . .
Rhodope. We! 0 sound that is to vibrate on
my breast for ever ! 0 hour ! happier than all
other hours since time began ! 0 gracious Gods !
who brought me into bondage !
JEsop. Be calm, be composed, be circumspect.
We must hide our treasure that we may not
lose it.
Rhodope. I do not think that you can love me ;
and I fear and tremble to hope so. Ah, yes ; you
have said you did. But again you only look at
me, and sigh as if you repented.
j£sop. Unworthy as I may be of thy fond
regard, I am not unworthy of thy fullest confi-
dence : why distrust me ?
Rhodope. Never will I . . never, never. To
know that I possess your love, surpasses all other
knowledge, dear as is all that I receive from you.
I should be tired of my own voice if I heard it
on aught beside : and even yours is less melodious
in any other sound than Rhodope.
jEsop. Do such little girls learn to flatter ?
Rhodope. Teach me how to speak, since you
could not teach me how to be silent.
jEsop. Speak no longer of me, but of thyself;
and only of things that never pain thee.
Rhodope. Nothing can pain me now.
jEsop. Relate thy story then, from infancy.
Rhodope. I must hold your hand : I am afraid
of losing you again.
AND RHODOPE.
195
jEsop. Now begin. Why silent so long ?
Rhodope. I have dropped all memory of what
is told by me and what is untold.
^Esop. Recollect a little. I can be patient with
this hand in mine.
Rhodope. I am not certain that yours is any
help to recollection.
jEsop. Shall I remove it 1
Rhodope. 0 ! now I think I can recall the whole
story. What did you say! did you ask any
question ?
jEsop. None, excepting what thou hast an-
swered.
Rhodope. Never shall I forget the morning
when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the
house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a
chlamys of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He
watched the merchant out of the door, and then
looked wistfully into the corn-chest. I, who
thought there was something worth seeing, looked
in also, and, finding it empty, expressed my dis-
appointment, not thinking however about the
corn. A faint and transient smile came over his
countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded
the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands
before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I
looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed
with joy. He then went out ; and I know not
what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many ;
and some he placed in my bosom, and some in
my hair. But I told him with captious pride,
first that I could arrange them better, and again
that I would have only the white. However,
when he had selected all the white, and I had
placed a few of them according to my fancy, I
told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown
me with the remainder. The splendour of my
apparel gave me a sensation of authority. Soon
as the flowers had taken their station on my head,
I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste
displayed by my father, just as if I could have
seen how they appeared ! But he knew that
there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it,
and perhaps we divided the latter (alas ! not
both) pretty equally. He now took me into the
market-place, where a concourse of people was
waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants
came and looked at me; some commending, others
disparaging ; but all agreeing that I was slender
and delicate, that I could not live long, and that
I should give much trouble. Many would have
bought the chlamys, but there was something less
saleable in the child and flowers.
JEsop. Had thy features been coarse and thy
voice rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks
and found no fault in thee.
RJtodope. As it was, everyone had bought
exactly such another in time past, and been a
loser by it. At these speeches I perceived the
flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my
father's agitation. Although he scoffed at them,
knowing my healthiness, he was troubled in-
ternally, and said many short prayers, not very
unlike imprecations, turning his head aside.
Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last
several talents were offered for me, and by the
very man who in the beginning had undervalued
me the most, and prophesied the worst of me.
My father scowled at him, and refused the money.
I thought he was playing a game, and began to
wonder what it could be, since I never had seen
it played before. Then I fancied it might be
some celebration because plenty had returned to
the city, insomuch that my father had bartered
the last of the corn he hoarded. I grew more
and more delighted at the sport. But soon there
advanced an elderly man, who said gravely,
" Thou hast stolen this child : her vesture alone
is worth above a hundred drachmas. Carry her
home again to her parents, and do it directly, or
Nemesis and the Eumenides will overtake thee."
Knowing the estimation in which my father had
always been holden by his fellow-citizens,! laughed
again, and pinched his ear. He, although natu-
rally choleric, burst forth into no resentment at
these (reproaches, but said calmly, "I think I
know thee by name, 0 guest ! Surely thou art
Xanthus the Samian. Deliver this child from
famine."
Again I laughed aloud and heartily; and,
thinking it was now my part of the game, I held
out both my arms and protruded my whole body
toward the stranger. He would not receive me
from my father's neck, but he asked me with
benignity and solicitude if I was hungry : at
which I laughed again, and more than ever : for
it was early in the morning, soon after the first
meal, and my father had nourished me most
carefully and plentifully in all the days of the
famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer,
took out of a sack, which one of his slaves carried
at his side, a cake of wheaten bread and a piece
of honey-comb, and gave them to me. I held the
honey-comb to my father's mouth, thinking it
the most of a dainty, He dashed it to the ground ;
but, seizing the bread, he began to devour it fe-
rociously. This also I thought was in play ; and
I clapped my hands at his distortions. But
Xanthus looked on him like one afraid, and
smote the cake from him, crying aloud, " Name
the price." My father now placed me in his
arms, naming a price much below what the other
had offered, saying, " The Gods are ever with
thee, 0 Xanthus ! therefore to thee do I consign
my child." But while Xanthus was counting out
the silver, my father seized the cake again, which
the slave had taken up and ^as about to replace
in the wallet. His hunger was exasperated by
the taste and the delay. Suddenly there arose
much tumult. Turning round in the old woman's
bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw
my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid
and speechless. The more violent my cries, the
more rapidly they hurried me away ; and many
were soon between us. Little was I suspicious
that he had suffered the pangs of famine long
before : alas ! and he had suffered them for me.
Do I weep while I am telling you they ended 1 I
196
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
could not have closed his eyes ; I was too young ;
but I might have received his last breath ; the
only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now
think him blameable, 0 JEsopl
jEtop. It was sublime humanity : it was for-
bearance and self-denial which even the immortal
gods have never shown us. He could endure to
perish by those torments which alone are both
acute and slow : he could number the steps of
death and miss not one : but he could never see
thy tears, nor let thee see his. 0 weakness above
all fortitude ! Glory to the man who rather bears
a grief corroding his breast, than permits it to
prowl beyond, and to prey on the tender and
compassionate. Women commiserate the brave,
and men the beautiful. The dominion of Pity
has usually this extent, no wider. Thy father was
exposed to the obloquy not only of the malicious,
but also of the ignorant and thoughtless, who
condemn in the unfortunate what they applaud
in the prosperous. There is no shame in poverty
or in slavery, if we neither make ourselves poor
by our improvidence nor slaves by our venality.
The lowest and highest of the human race are
sold : most of the intermediate are also slaves, but
slaves who bring no money in the market.
Ehodope. Surely the great and powerful are
never to be purchased : are they 1
Msop. It may be a defect in my vision, but I
can not see greatness on the earth. What they
tell me is great and aspiring, to me seems little
and crawling. Let me meet thy question with
another. What monarch gives his daughter for
nothing ] Either he receives stone walls and un-
willing cities in return, or he barters her for a
parcel of spears and horses and horsemen, waving
away from his declining and helpless age young
joyous life, and trampling down the freshest and
the sweetest memories. Midas in the height
of prosperity would have given his daughter to
Lycaon, rather than to the gentlest, the most
virtuous, the most intelligent of his subjects. Thy
father threw wealth aside, and, placing thee under
the protection of Virtue, rose up from the house
of Famine to partake in the festivals of the
gods.
.Release my neck, 0 Rhodope ! for I have other
questions to ask of thee about him.
Rhodope. To hear thee converse on him in such
a manner, I can do even that.
jEsop. Before the day of separation was he
never sorrowful ? did he never by tears or silence
reveal the secret of his soul ?
Rhodope. I was too infantine to perceive or
imagine his intention. The night before I be-
came the slave of Xanthus, he sat on the edge of
my bed. I pretended to be asleep: he moved
away silently and softly. I saw him collect in the
hollow of his hand the crumbs I had wasted on
the floor, and then eat them, and then look if any
were remaining. I thought he did so out of
fondness for me, remembering that, even before
the famine, he had often swept up off the table
the bread I had broken, and had made me put it
between his lips. I would not dissemble very
long, but said,
" Come, now you have wakened me, you must
sing me asleep again, as you did when I was
little."
He smiled faintly at this, and, after some delay,
when he had walked up and down the chamber,
thus began :
" I will sing to thee one song more, my wake-
ful Rhodope ! my chirping bird ! over whom is
no mother's wing ! That it may lull thee asleep,
I will celebrate no longer, as in the days of wine
and plenteousness, the glory of Mars, guiding in
their invisibly rapid onset the dappled steeds of
Rhsesus. What hast thou to do, my little one,
with arrows tired of clustering in the quiver?
How much quieter is thy pallet than the tents
which whitened the plain of Simb'is ! What
knowest thou about the river Eurotasl What
knowest thou about its ancient palace, once trod-
den by assembled Gods, and then polluted by the
Phrygian ] What knowest thou of perfidious
men or of sanguinary deeds ?
" Pardon me, 0 goddess who presidest in
Cythera ! I am not irreverent to thee, but ever
grateful. May she upon whose brow I lay my
hand, praise and bless thee for evermore !
" Ah yes ! continue to hold up above the cover-
let those fresh and rosy palms claspt together :
her benefits have descended on thy beauteous
head, my child ! The Fates also have sung, beyond
thy hearing, of pleasanter scenes than snow-fed
Hebrus; of more than dim grottoes and sky-
bright waters. Even now a low murmur swells
upward to my ear : and not from the spindle
comes the sound, but from those who sing slowly
over it, bending all three their tremulous heads
together. I wish thou couldst hear it; for seldom
are their voices so sweet. Thy pillow intercepts
the song perhaps : lie down again, lie down, my
Rhodope ! I will repeat what they are saying :
" ' Happier shalt thou be, nor less glorious, than
even she, the truly beloved, for whose return to
the distaff and the lyre the portals of Tsenarus
flew open. In the woody dells of Ismarus, and
when she bathed among the swans of Strymon,
the Nymphs called her Eurydice. Thou shalt
behold that fairest and that fondest one hereafter.
But first thou must go unto the land of the lotos,
where famine never cometh, and where alone the
works of man are immortal.'
" 0 my child ! the undeceiving Fates have
uttered this. Other Powers have visited me, and
have strengthened my heart with dreams and
visions. We shall meet again, my Rhodope ! in
shady groves and verdant meadows, and we shall
sit by the side of those who loved us."
He was rising : I threw my arms about his
neck, and, before I would let him go, I made him
promise to place me, not by the side, but between
them : for I thought of her who had left us. At
that time there were but two, 0 ^Esop.
You ponder : you are about to reprove my
assurance in having thus repeated my own praises.
KOMILLY AND WILBERFORCE.
197
I would have omitted some of the words, only that
it might have disturbed the measure and cadences,
and have put me out. They are the very words
my dearest father sang ; and they are the last :
yet shame upon me ! the nurse (the same who
stood listening near, who attended me into this
country) could remember them more perfectly : it
is from her I have learnt them since : she often
sings them, even by herself.
jEsop. So shall others. There is much both in
them and in thee to render them memorable.
Rhodope. Who flatters now 1
jEsop. Flattery often runs beyond Truth, in a
hurry to embrace her ; but not here. The dullest
of mortals, seeing and hearing thee, could never
misinterpret the prophecy of the Fates.
If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of
years, and could stand on the mountain-top, and
could look again far before me at the bright
ascending morn, we would enjoy the prospect to-
gether ; we would walk along the summit hand in
hand, 0 Rhodope, and we would only sigh at last
when we found ourselves below with others.
ROMILLY AND WILBERFORCE.
Romilly. Indeed, sir, I can not but suspect that
the agitation of this question on the abolition of
the slave-trade, is countenanced by Mr. Pitt chiefly
to divert the attention of the people from crying
grievances nearer home. Our paupers are increas-
ing daily both in number and in wretchedness ;
our workhouses, our hospitals, and our jails, are
crowded and overflowing ; our manufactories are
almost as stifling as slave-ships, and more immoral ;
apprentices, milliners, dressmakers, work through-
out the greater part of the night, and, at last dis-
abled by toil, take the sorrowful refuge of the
street. After so many have coldly repeated that
vice leads to misery, is there no generous man
who will proclaim aloud that misery leads to
vice ? We all see it every day : we warn the
wretched too late : we are afraid of warning the
affluent too soon : we are prodigal of reproaches
that make the crushed heart bleed afresh : we
think it indecorous to approach the obdurate one,
and unsafe to touch it . . barbarous and dastardly
as we are.
Wilberforce. Postponing all these considera-
tions, not immediately applicable to the subject
on which, Mr. Romilly, I have taken the liberty to
knock at your door, I must assure you that my
friend Mr. Pitt is not only the most unbending
and unchanging, but also the most sincere man
living.
Romilly. It is happy when we can think so of
any, especially of one in power.
Wilberforce. Do you doubt it ?
Romilly. I never oppose, without reluctance,
opinion to sentiment ; or, when I can help it, a
bad opinion to a good one.
Wilberforce. 0 ! if you knew him as I do !
Romilly. The thing is impossible.
Wilberforce. Why so ? I should be proud to
introduce you.
Romilly. The pride would rest* entirely apart
from me. It may be that coarse metals are less
flexible than finer ; certain it is that they do not
well cohere.
Wilberforce. But on this occasion you invariably
vote together.
Romilly. In the House of Commons.
Wilberforce. It is there we must draw up our
forces.
Romilly. Do you never doubt, however slightly,
and only on one occasion, the fidelity of your
leader 1
Wilberforce. Leader ! Mr. Romilly ! leader !
Humble as I am, the humblest indeed of that
august assembly, on this question, on this alone
perhaps, yesi certainly on this alone, I am acknow-
ledged, universally acknowledged, I know too well
how unworthily, yet I do know, and God has
given me strength and grace to declare it before
men, that I, the weakest of his creatures, there am
leader. It is I, a band of withy, who bind giants :
it is I who keep together on this ground the two
rival parties : it is I, a potter's vessel, who hold
out across the Atlantic the cup of freedom and of
fellowship.
Romilly. Certainly you have seconded with ad-
mirable zeal the indefatigable Clarkson. Those
who run with spirit and celerity have no breath
for words : the whole is expended in action.
Wilberforce. Just so with me. However, I can
spare a speech of a few hours every session, in ex-
pounding the vexations and evils of slavery, and
in showing how opposite it is to Christianity.
Romilly. I am almost a believer in that doctrine.
Wilberforce. Almost]
Romilly. I should be entirely, if many of the
most orthodox men in both Houses, including a
great part of the bishops, had been assenters.
Wilberforce. Are they not ?
Romilly. Apparently no. Otherwise they would
never be absent when the question is discussed,
nor would they abstain from a petition to the
Crown, that a practice so dangerous to salvation,
so certain to bring down a curse on the country,
be, with all expedient speed, abolished.
Wilberforce. It is unnecessary for me to defend
the conduct of my Right Reverend friends : men
of such piety as no other country hath exhibited;
but permit me to remark, Mr. Romilly, that you
yourself betray a lukewarmness in the cause, when
you talk of expedient speed. Expedient indeed !
Gracious Jesu ! Ought such a crime to be tole-
rated for one hour 1 Are there no lightnings in
heaven . .
Romilly. Probably there are : there were last
summer. But I would rather see them purifying
the air than scorching the earth before me. My
198
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
good Mr. Wilberforce ! abstain, I beseech you,
from a species of eloquence in which Mr. Sheridan
and Mr. Pitt excell you, especially when it is late
in the evening: at that season such men are
usually the most pious. The lightnings of heaven
fall as frequently on granaries as on slave-ships.
It is better at all times to abstain from expostu-
lating with God; and more especially on the
righteousness of his judgments and the delay of
his vengeance.
Wilberforce. Mr. Romilly! Mr. Romilly! the
royal psalmist . . .
JtomUly. Was too often like other royal per-
sonages, and, with much power of doing evil, was
desirous of much more. Whenever we are con-
scious of such propensities, it would be wiser and
more religious to implore of God to pardon than
to promote them.
Wilberforce. We must bow to authority in all
things.
Romilly. So we hear : but we may be so much
in the habit of bowing as at last to be unable to
stand upright. Before we begin at all, it is useful
to inquire what is authority. We are accustomed
to mistake place and power for it. Now the Devil,
on this earth at least, possesses as much power as
the Deity, and more place. Unless he did, we tell
a manifest lie in every prayer and supplication.
For we declare that we are, and always have been,
miserable sinners, and that there is no truth in us.
Wilberforce. Ah, my dear sir ! you are no
theologian, I see. Some of us, by the blessing of
God, are under grace ; and, once under grace, we
are safe. But it is not on this business I visit
you. Here we may differ ; but on the Abolition
we think alike.
Romilly. I am not quite sure of that.
Wilberforce. Indeed ! Then, pray, my dear sir,
correct your judgment.
Romilly. I have been doing it, to the best of my
ability, all my life.
Wilberforce. If you had only clung to the Cross,
you would have been sure and stedfast from your
very childhood.
Romilly. Alas ! I see but one cross remaining
on earth, and it is that of the unrepentant thief.
What thousands of the most venomous wasps and
hornets swarm about it, and fight for its putre-
scencies ! The blessed one was pulled down long
ago, indeed soon after its erection, in the scuffle
of those who would sell the splinters. Great
fortunes are daily made by it, and it maintains
as many clerks and treasurers as the South-sea.
The money-changers in the Temple of old did
at least give change : ours bag the money and
say call to-morrow.
Wilberforce. Unholy as the gains may be, we
must not meddle with vested rights and ancient
institutions.
Romilly. Then, worthy Mr. Wilberforce, let
slavery continue; for certainly no institution is
more ancient. In this also am I to correct my
judgment 1
Wilberforce. The fact is too true. You were
erroneous there only where you differed from
me on that subject, which I had examined atten-
tively and minutely.
Romilly. Namely, the Abolition.
Wilberforce. Exactly so.
Romilly. The clearers of ground in the forests
of America clear first the places round about the
homestead. On this principle I would begin to
emancipate and enlighten the suffering labourers
in my own vicinity. Look at the draught-horses
now passing under the window. The first quar-
ter of their lives was given to their growth :
plentiful food came before painful service. They
are ignorant of our vices, insensible of our affec-
tions : ease is all in all to them ; and while they
want it most, and while it is most profitable or
promissory to the master, they enjoy it.
Wilberforce. We then put blinkers before their
eyes, that nothing may make them swerve on
the road. Here is another act of humanity.
Romilly. If you attempt to put blinkers be-
fore the intellectual eye, you only increase its
obliquity. Give as much clear-sightedness as
possible, give reasonable leisure, or you never will
conciliate affection to your institutions. Inflict on
men the labour and privations of brutes, and you
impress on them the brutal character : render
them rationally happy, and they are already on
the highway to heaven. No man rationally happy
will barter the possession he enjoys for the most
brilliant theory: but the unhappy will dream of
daggers until he clutches them. If your friend
Mr. Pitt wishes to retard the revolutionary move-
ment, he will not attempt to put the fetter on the
white man while you are taking it off the black :
he will not bring forward a flogged soldiery to
confront an enthusiastical one : he will not dis-
play to the vigorous sons of starving yeomen
the sight of twenty farm-houses rising up from
the ruins of one chdteau. Peace is easier to retain
than to recall.
Wilberforce. Well, Mr. Romilly! we are depart-
ing a little from the object of my visit : and, if
we continue to digress, I am afraid you may not
be so entirely at leisure to hear me repeat the
speech I have prepared on the Abolition. Your
room appears to be well adapted to my voice.
Romilly. Already I have had the benefit of
your observations the three last sessions.
Wilberforce. You will hear me again, I confi-
dently hope, with the same pleasure in a very
crowded House.
Romilly. You represent a Riding in the county
of York.
Wilberforce. I have that honour.
Romilly. To represent a county is not in itself
an honour; but it offers opportunities of earning
many. Inform your constituents that the slavery
in the West Indies is less cruel and pernicious
than the slavery in their own parishes : that the
condition of the Black is better on the whole
than the condition of the pauper in England,
and that his children are incomparably more
comfortable and happy.
ROMILLY AND WILBERFORCE.
199
Wilberforce. Lord of mercy ! do I hear this
from a philanthropist]
Romilly. I venture to assert, you do, however
deficient I may be in the means of showing it.
You might, in any Session of Parliament, obtain
a majority of votes in favour of a Bill to diminish
the hours of a child's labour in factories. Every
country gentleman, every peer, would vote that
none under his eighth year should be incarcerated
in these pesthouses.
Wilberforce. 0 Sir ! is such a word applicable ?
Bomitty. Precisely: although a pesthouse is
usually the appellation of that building which ex-
cludes the malady and receives the endangered.
From eight years to twelve, I would prohibit a
longer daily work than of six hours, with two
hours between each three, for food and exercise.
After the twelfth year the sexes should not be
confounded.
Wilberforce. The first regulation would create
much discontent among our wealthiest supporters;
and even the parents would object to them.
Romilly. Two signal and sorrowful truths !
There are also two additional. They who feel the
least for others feel the most for themselves : and
the parents who waste away their own strength in
gin-shops are ready to waste their children's in
factories. If our inconsiderate war and our pro-
digal expenditure permitted the exercise of policy,
we should bethink ourselves that manly hearts
and sound bodies are the support of states, not
creaking looms nor over-pressed cotton-bags in
human shape. We have no right to break down
the sinews of the rising generation : we have no
right to devote the children of the poor either to
Belial or to Moloch. I do care about the Blacks;
I do care greatly and anxiously about them ;
but I would rather that slavery should exist for
seven centuries longer in the West Indies, than
for seven years longer in Lancashire and York-
shire. If there be any sincerity in the heart of
Mr. Pitt, why does he not order his dependents in
both Houses (and nearly all are his dependents in
both alike) to vote for your motion 1
Wilberforce. He wishes us well : but he is
aware that a compensation must be made to the
masters of the slaves; and he has not money
for it.
Romilly. Whose fault is that ? He always has
found money enough for extending the miseries
of other nations and the corruption of his own.
By his extravagance and the excess of taxation
he is leading to that catastrophe which he avowed
it was his object to prevent.
Wilberforce. God forbid !
Romilly. God has forbidden ; but he does not
mind that.
Wilberforce. You force me to say, Mr. Romilly,
what I hope you will not think a personality. The
French Revolution was brought about in great
measure by the gentlemen of your profession.
Romilly. The people were rendered so extremely
poor by the imposts, that there were few litiga-
tions in the courts of law. Hence the lawyers,
who starved others until now, began to be starved
in turn, and incited the people to revolution, that
there might be crime and change of property.
England has now taken the sins of the world upon
her, and pays for all.
Wilberforce. Awful expression ! Let us return
to the Blacks. It is calculated that twenty mil-
lions are requisite to indemnify the slave-holders.
Romilly. Do you wonder then that he is
evasive]
Wilberforce. I should wonder if a man of his
integrity were so upon any occasion. But he has
frankly told me that he does not see clearly at
what time the measure may be expedient.
Romilly. Everything can be calculated, except
the hour for the abolition of injustice. It is not
always in our power to retrace our steps when we
have committed it. Nay, sometimes is it requisite
not only to go on with it, but even to add fresh.
We waged a most unnecessary, a most impolitic,
a most unjust war against France. Nothing
else could have united her people : nothing else
could have endangered or have interrupted our com-
merce. Having taken the American islands from
our enemy, we should have exported from them
the younger slaves into our own, taking care that
the number of females be proportional to the num-
ber of males. We should have granted our pro-
tection to Brazil and Cuba, on condition that the
traffic in African slaves immediately cease, and that
everyone belonging to Spaniard or Portuguese,
who had served fourteen years, should be free.
Unhappily we ourselves can do little more at
present for our own, without a grievous injustice
to a large body of our fellow-subjects. We can
however place adequate power in the hands of
the civil and military governors, authorising them
to grant any slave his freedom who shall be proved
to have been cruelly treated by his master. What
a curse is it upon us, that at present we nei-
ther can make peace nor abolish slavery! We
can decree, and we ought instantly, that the
importation and sale of slaves do cease at this
very hour throughout the world. We can decree,
and we ought instantly, that husband and wife be
united, and separated no more. We can decree,
and ought instantly, that children from seven to
ten years of age be instructed one hour daily.
But, as things are now constituted, I think I have
no right to deprive a proprietor of his property,
unless he has forfeited it by a violation of law.
To repay me for my protection, and for granting
him a monopoly during the war, I would stipulate
with him, that whoever had served him fourteen
years should be emancipated. He should also be
obliged to maintain as many females as males, or
nearly, and to set apart a plot of ground for every
emancipated slave, enough for his support, on
lease for life, at such a rent as those deputed
by the governor may think reasonable. The
proposition of granting twenty, or ten, or five
millions to carry into execution the abolition of
slavery, by way of indemnity to the slave-holders,
is absurd. Abolish all duties of importation and
200
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
exportation; that will be sufficient. The abo-
lition of the slave-trade is greatly more import-
ant than the abolition of slavery in our islands.
The traffic can be terminated at once ; the servi-
tude but gradually. It is in politics as in diet.
They who have committed excesses can not be-
come quite temperate at the first perception of
their perilous situation. The consequences of a
sudden change might be fatal.
Wilberforce. Religion teaches us that we should
consent to no truce with Sin.
Romilly. We should enter into no engagements
with her : but the union is easier than the divorce.
There are materials which, being warped, are not
to be set right again by a stroke of the hammer,
but by temperance and time. Our system of
slavery is in this condition. We have done wrong
with impunity; we can not with impunity do
right. We wound the state in stripping the in-
dividual.
Wilberforce. I would not strip him ; I would
grant him a fair and full indemnity.
Romilly. What! when all your property is
mortgaged? When you are without a hope of
redeeming it, and can hardly find wherewithal
to pay the interest? If ever you attempt the
undertaking, it can be only at the peace.
- Wilberforce. I am sorry to find you so de-
spondent.
Romttly. I am more despondent than I have
yet appeared to be.
Wilberforce. With what reason ?
Romilly. Hostilities having ceased, the people
will be clamorous for the removal of many taxes ;
and some of the most productive will be remitted
the first. In my opinion, unwise as was the war,
and entered into for the gratification of an old
madman, who never knew the difference between
a battle and a review, and who chuckled at the
idea of his subjects being peppered when they were
shot; a war conducted by grasping men, out-
rageous at the extortion of their compliance, and
at the alternative that either their places or their
principles must be surrendered ; we nevertheless
ought to discharge the debt we contracted, and
not to leave the burden for our children. If our
affairs are as ill conducted in peace as they are in
war, it is greatly to be feared that we may injure
the colonist more than we benefit the slave. We
may even carry our imprudence so far as to restore
to our enemies the lands we have conquered from
them, cultivated'by blacks.
Wilberforce. Impossible. Mr. Pitt has declared
that peace is never to be signed without indem-
nity for the past, and security for the future.
These are his very words.
Romitty. Not as a politician, but as an arith-
metician, he knew when he uttered these words
that they never could be accomplished. War
is alike the parent and the child of evil. It would
surpass your ingenuity, or Mr. Pitt's, to discover
any whatsoever which does not arise from war, or
follow war, or romp and revel in the midst of war.
It begins in pride and malice, it continues in
cruelty and rapine, it terminates in poverty and
oppression. Our bishops, who pray for success in
it, are much bolder men than our soldiers who
engage in it bayonet to bayonet. For the soldier
fights only against man, and under the command
of man : the bishop fights against the command
of God, and against God himself. Every hand
lifted up in prayer for homicide, strikes him in
the face.
Wilberforce. Mr. Romilly! I entertain a due
respect for you, as being eminent in your pro-
fession, a member of Parliament, a virtuous and
(I hope) a religious man : you would however rise
higher in my estimation if you reverenced your
superiors.
Romilly. It must be a man immeasurably above
me, both in virtue and intellect, whom, knowing
my own deficiency, I could reverence. Seldom
is it that I quote a verse or a sentiment, but there
is in a poet not very original a thought so original
that nobody seems ever to have applied it to him-
self or others :
" Below the good how far ! how far above the great !"
Wilberforce. There is only one half of it I would
hear willingly. When men begin to think them-
selves above the great, social order is wofully de-
ranged. I deplore the absence of that self-abase-
ment on which is laid the foundation of all Chris-
tian virtues.
Romilly. Unless we respect ourselves, our re-
spect for superiors is prone to servility. No man
can be thrown by another from such a height as
he can throw himself from. I never have observed
that a tendency toward the powerful was a suffi-
cient check to spiritual pride : and extremely few
have I known, or heard of, who, tossing up their
nostrils into the air and giving tongue that they
have hit upon the trail to heaven, could distin-
guish humility from baseness. Mostly they dirty
those they fawn on, and get kicked before they
get fed.
Wilberforce. Christianity makes allowances for
human infirmity.
Romilly. Christianity, as now practised by the
highest of its professors, makes more infirmities
than allowances. Can we believe in their belief
who wallow in wealth and war ? in theirs who vote
subsidies for slaughter 1 who speed the slave-ship
with their prayers'? who bind and lacerate and
stifle the helpless wretches they call men and
brethren ?
Wilberforce. Parliamentary steps must be taken
before you can expect to mitigate the curses of
war and slavery.
Romilly. By whom first should the steps be
taken ? Persuade the bishops, if you can, to raise
their voices for the double abolition. Let them
at least unite and join you in that which, appa-
rently, you have most at heart. In order to effect
it gradually, I am ready to subscribe my name to
any society, of which the main object shall be
the conversion of our spiritual lords to Chris-
tianity. The waters of Jordan, which were
ROMILLY AND WILBERFORCE.
201
formerly used for bleaching, serve at present no
other purpose than the setting of scarlet and
purple.
Wilberforce. There is danger in touching the
altar. We may overturn the table and bruise the
chalice in attempting any restoration of the
structure.
Romilly. Christianity is a plant which grows
well from seed, but ill from cuttings : they who
have grafted it on a wilding have sometimes suc-
ceeded ; never they who (as we have) inoculated it
on one cracked in the stem and oozing over with
foul luxuriance. I do not deny that families and
small communities have profited by secession
from more corrupt religions : but as soon as ever
cities and provinces have embraced the purer
creed, ambitious men have always been ready to
materialize the word of God and to raise houses
and estates upon it.
Wilberforce. The prosperity of the labourers in
Christ's vineyard has excited the envy of the ill-
disposed.
Romilly. What prosperity] Success in im-
proving it ?
Wilberforce. No indeed, but their honest
earnings.
Romilly. Did the master pay such earnings to
those whose work was harder1? or did he com-
mand, or will, that such should be paid on any
future day ]
Wilberforce. I am sorry, Mr. Romilly, that you
question and quibble (pardon me the expression)
just like those unhappy men, miscalled philoso-
phers, who have brought down the vengeance of
Heaven on France, Voltaire at the head of them.
Romilly. No indeed ; I never have sunned my-
self on the trim and short grass bordered by the
papered pinks and powdered ranunculuses of
Voltaire. His pertness is amusing : but I thought
it pleasanter to bathe in the deep wisdom of wit
running up to its banks through the romantic
scenery of Cervantes.
Wilberforce. Little better than infidelity.
Romilly. But not, as infidelity generally is,
sterile and flimsy. Christians themselves are all
infidels in the sight of some other Christians ; and
they who come nearest to them are the most ob-
noxious. Strange interpretation of "Love your
neighbour ! " If there are grades of belief, there
must also be grades of unbelief. The worst of
unbelief is that which regrets the goodness of our
heavenly Father, and from which there springs in
us a desire of breaking what we can not bend, and
of twisting wire after wire and tying knot after knot
in his scourge. Christianity, as I understand it, lies
not in belief but in action. That servant is a
good servant who obeys the just orders of his
master ; not he who repeats his words, measures
his stature, or traces his pedigree ! On all occa-
sions it is well to be a little more than tolerant ;
especially when a wiser and better man than our-
selves thinks differently from us. Religious
minds will find an additional reason for their
humility, when they observe such excellent men
as Borromeo and Fenelon adhering to the religion
they were born in, amidst the discussions and
commotions of every land around.
Wilberforce. My opinion is, that religion should
be mixed up in all our institutions, and that it
not only should be a part, but the main part of
the state.
Romilly. I am unwilling to obtrude my senti-
ments on this question, and even to answer any.
For I always have observed that the most religious
men become the most impatient in the course of
discussion, calling their opponents weak wavering
sceptics, or obstinate reckless unbelievers. But
since the constitution of our country is involved
in it, together with its present defects and future
meliorations, I must declare to you my conviction
that even the best government and the best
religion should be kept apart in their ministries.
In building a house, brick and lime are
ingredients. Let the brick be imbedded in the
lime reduced to mortar : but if you mix it in the
composition of the brick, it swells and cracks and
falls to pieces in the kiln.
Wilberforce. That is no argument.
Romilly.* Arguments cease to be arguments the
moment they come home. But this, I acknow-
ledge, is only an illustration. To detain you no
longer, Mr. Wilberforce, I give you my promise I
will attend at the debate, and vote with you.
Neither of us can live long enough to see the
Africans secure from bondage, or from the violence
of tribe against tribe, and from the myriads of
other calamities that precede it. Europe is semi-
barbarous at the present hour ; and, even among
the more civilized, one state is as suspicious of
another as one Black is of another in the belli-
gerents of Senegal and Gambia. For many years
to come, no nation will unite with us in any work
or project for the furtherance of our mutual well-
being : little then can we expect that Honour, now
totally lost sight of on the Continent, will be re-
cognised in a character so novel as the Knight-
errant of Humanity.
One more remark at parting ; the only one by
which in this business I can hope to serve you
materially. Permit me to advise you, Mr. Wil-
berforce, to display as small a portion of historical
research as you possibly can, consistently with
your eloquence and enthusiasm.
Wilberforce. Why so, Mr. Romilly 1
Romilly. Because it may counteract your bene-
volent intentions.
Wilberforce. Nothing shall counteract them.
* Parliament has been proved in our times, and indeed
in most ethers, a Blippery foundation for names, although
a commodious one for fortunes. But Romilly went into
public life with temperate and healthy aspirations. Pro-
vidence, having blessed him with domestic peace, with-
held him from political animosities. He knew that the
sweetest fruits grow nearest the ground, and he waited for
the higher to fall into his bosom, without an effort or a
wish to seize on them. No man whosoever in our Parlia-
mentary history has united in more perfect accordance
and constancy pure virtue and lofty wisdom.
202
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Romitty. Arc you aware to which of our sovrans
we must attribute the deadly curse of African
slavery, inasmuch as our country is concerned
in it?
Wilberforce. Certainly to none of our justly
revered kings can so horrible a crime be imputed,
although the royal power, according to the limi-
tations of our constitution, may have been insuffi-
cient to repress it effectively.
Eomilly. Queen Elizabeth equipped two vessels
for her own sole profit, in which two vessels,
escorted by the fleet under the command of
Hawkins, were the first unhappy Blacks inveigled
from their shores by Englishmen, and doomed to
end their lives in servitude. Elizabeth was ava-
ricious and cruel; but a small segment of her
heart had a brief sunshine on it, darting obliquely.
We are under a king notoriously more avaricious ;
one who passes without a shudder the gibbets his
sign-manual has garnished ; one who sees on the
field of the most disastrous battles, battles in
which he ordered his people to fight his people,
nothing else to be regretted than the loss of horses
and saddles, of haversacs and jackets. If this
insensate and insatiable man even hears that
Queen Elizabeth was a slave-dealer, he will assert
the inalienable rights of the Crown, and swamp
your motion.
QUEEN POMARE, PRITCHARD, CAPTAINS POLVEREL AND DES MITRAILLES,
LIEUTENANT POIGNAUNEZ, MARINERS.
Polverel. Mr. Pritchard, I have desired your
presence, as a gentleman of great influence and
authority.
Pritchard. Sir, I know not exactly in what
manner I can be of service to crews of vessels
which invade this island.
Polverel, The island is in a state of insurrection.
We come opportunely to aid the legitimate Power
in quelling it. Among the natives there are many
discontented, as you know.
Pritchard. The very men who apparently ought
to be the most contented : for they not only enjoy
the fruits of French principles, but also of French
manufactures, and they possess many luxuries
which the others never heard of.
Polverel. Is it possible ?
Pritchard. They have displayed, most ostenta-
tiously and boastingly, knives, cutlasses, tobacco,
brandy, rum, plates, dishes, mirrors, and other
articles of furniture and luxury, which a generous
magnanimous ally, ever devoted to their welfare,
ever watchful over their prosperity, has munifi-
cently bestowed.
Polverel. Mr. Pritchard ! every word you utter
raises my wonder higher. We are both of us
philanthropists : let us then, dispassionately and
amicably, talk together on the present condition
of these misguided people, so mysteriously de-
luded.
PritcJutrd. Our conversation, I suspect, would
alter but little what is predetermined.
Polverel. Mon Dieu ! What can that be ?
Pritchard. Evidently the subjugation of the
natives.
Polverel. Mr. Pritchard ! your language is quite
unintelligible to me. France never subjugates.
She receives with open arms all nations who run
into her bosom for protection : she endows them
with all the blessings of peace, of civilisation, of
industry, of the sciences, of the fine arts.
Pritchard. Certainly no arts are finer than the
arts they receive from that bosom of hers, at once
so expansive and so stringent.
Polverel. Ah, Mr. Pritchard ! Mr. Pritchard !
you know my humour, my temperament, my taste,
by intuition. I enjoy a joke, no man better.
Pritchard. Especially such jokes, M. le Capi-
taine, as you utter vivaciously from the mouth of
your cannon, and which play with lambent light
about your cutlasses and bayonets.
Polverel. We have done with war,' totally and for
ever done with it. France, having conquered
the confederated world, desires only peace. She
has subdued and civilised Africa. The desert
teems with her harvests. Temples and theatres
rise above and beyond the remotest tent of Moor
and Arab. The conquerors of Spain implore the
pardon of France. The camel bends his arched
neck and falls on his flat knees, supplicating the
children of mothers from our beautiful country,
to mount the protuberance which provident
Nature framed expressly for the purpose, and to
alight from it in the astonished streets of Tim-
buctoo. We swear he shall alight in safety. Yes,
we swear it, Mr. Pritchard !
Pritchard. You have sworn many things, M. le
Capitaine, some of which were very soon counter-
sworn, and others are unaccomplished: but in
this, impracticable as it appears to me, I heartily
wish you success.
Polverel. Consider it as done, completely, irre-
versibly.
Pritchard. Population is increasing rapidly
both in France and England : industry should
increase proportionally. By conciliating and
humanising the various tribes in Africa, you en-
large the field of commerce, in which the most
industrious and the most honest will ultimately
be the most successful. It might be offensive to
you if, in addition to this, I mention to you the
blessings of religion.
Polverel. Not at all, not at all. I have given
proofs already that I can endure very dark re-
flections, and can make very large allowances.
Our soldiers will relieve the poor devils of Maho-
metans from the grievous sin of polygamy. If
anyone of them is rich enough to keep a couple of
wives or concubines, he is also rich enough to
QUEEN POMARE, PRITCHARD AND POLVEREL.
203
keep a confessor, who will relax a little the bonds
of Satan for him, and carry a link or two of the
chain on his own shoulders. Seriously, for at
bottom I am a true believer and a good catholic,
we must establish the mass both there and here.
France has recovered her fine old attitude, and
can endure no longer the curse of irreligion. Asia
now lies at her feet, but intermediately the Pacific
Ocean. It shall roll its vast waves before her with
due submission, and everyone of them shall reflect
her tricolor.
Pritchard. Sir, you promised that we should
converse together amicably, and that neither of
us, in the course of our discussion, should give or
take offence.
Polverel. A Frenchman's word was never vio-
lated : a grain of dust never could lie upon his
honour.
Pritchard (aside). Certainly not without the
cramp, if dust could catch it.
Polverel. I perceive your mute acknowledgment.
Speak then freely.
Pritchard. How happens it, M. le Ca"pitaine,
that having subdued such restless and powerful
tribes, and thereby possessing such extensive ter-
ritories, so fertile, so secure, so near home, you
covet what can bring you no glory and no ad-
vantage ?
Polverel. The honour of France demands it.
Pritchard. You promised you would retire
from Barbary when you had avenged the insults
you complained of; and Europe believed you.
Polverel. The more fool Europe.
PritcJiard. And the more what France ?
Polverel. No remarks on France, sir ! She is
never to be questioned. Reasons of state, let me
tell you, are above all other reasons, as the sword
is the apex of the law. We often see after a few
steps what we never saw until those steps were
taken. Thus my country sees the necessity of
retaining her conquests in Barbary. England is
reconciled to what she could not prevent nor
resist.
Pritchard. She destroyed those batteries which
you occupied.
Polverel. Exactly so. She is always so com-
plaisant as to pave the way for us, either with her
iron or her gold. She has in some measure done
it here; but neglecting to support legitimate
power, the task devolves on us of protecting the
queen from the violence and artifice of her ene-
mies. We offer the Entente Cordiale to Queen
Pomare as we offered it to Queen Victoria. The
one is unsuspicious ; the other would be if evil
counsellors were removed from about her. I have
difficulties to surmount, if indeed, where French-
men are, difficulties can be.
Pritchard. Certainly there are fewer impedi-
ments and restrictions in their way than in the
way of any other men upon earth.
Polverel. Bravo ! M. Pritchard ! I love an
enlightened and unprejudiced man, rarely found
(if ever) among your countrymen.
Pritchard. We have indeed our prejudices :
and although we are perhaps more free in general
from suspicion than might be expected in a nation
so calm and contemplative, yet, if armed men
landed in Engknd, and demanded terms and
conditions, and on protecting those who refused
their protection, we should suspect a hostile dis-
position.
Polverel. On this remark of yours, M. Prit-
chard, I declare to you, as a man who have studied
my profession in all its parts, and who am far from
ignorant of England and of her present means of
defence, we could at any time land twenty thou-
sand men upon her shores, and as many on the
coast of Ireland.
PritcJiard. Nelson saw this before steamers
were invented : and the most intelligent and far-
sighted of our engineers, General Birch, has re-
cently warned the nation of its danger. Wooden
heads still reverberate the sound of our wooden
walls : we want these : but we also want such as
render France secure on every coast. Beside
which, we require a strong central fortress, not
indeed so extensive as those of Paris, but capable
of protecting a large body of troops in readiness
for any quarter of the island. Birmingham, which
may be considered as our grand arsenal and
foundry, is unfit: but Warwick, united to it by
canals and railway, is so situated that all access
to the town may be inundated by three or four
brooks, and the river and an artificial piece of
water, broad and deep, render it a place admirably
suited for an entrenched camp.
Polverel. You talk, M. Pritchard, of places
which may hereafter be defended, but which at
present are without defence. Our generosity alone
has spared you.
Pritchard. Doubtless, the King of the French,
so prompt to gratify the humour of his Parisians
for hostilities with us, which this wanton aggres-
sion fully proves, would have invaded Ireland,
were it not for the certainty of insurrection in
various parts of his own kingdom. All the libe-
rals and robbers and rabble arc republicans : half
the poorer tradesmen and ignorant peasants are
royalists, in favour of the ejected dynasty.
Polverel. Insurrection indeed ! Do you English-
men talk of insurrection ? you whose whole army
is wanted, and would be insufficient, to keep it
down in Ireland.
Pritchard. It must be acknowledged that all
the atrocities of France are fewer and lighter and
more intermittent than ours in Ireland, In that
country, not one in eight is of the religion whose
priesthood all are equally bound to maintain.
And to maintain in what manner ! Far more
sumptuously than the favourites of the Pope are
maintained in Italy. I could mention ten bishop-
rics in the Papal and Neapolitan states, of
which the united emoluments fall short of a single
protestant one in Ireland. The least reformed
church is our reformed church. But I see not
how one injustice can authorise another in another
country. We refuse to the Irish what we granted
to the Scotch. And we are in danger of losing
204
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Ireland in our first war, whatever may be our
enemy. The people are justly exasperated against
us : and they will throw up many advantages
rather than continue in the endurance of an
indignity.
PolvereL I am charmed at hearing a man speak
so reasonably, especially an Englishman : for I
respect and esteem you in such a degree that
I would rather have the pleasure of fighting you
than any other people upon earth.
Pritchard. I am apprehensive the pleasure you
anticipate is not remote. For certainly, fll able
as we are at present to cope with any enemy, the
people of England will never bear your interfer-
ence with a nation they always have protected,
and have taught the advantages of peace, com-
merce, morality, and religion.
PolvereL Religion ! Never shall the poor
Tahitians lose that blessing by any interference
or any negligence of ours. I have brought over
with me a few gentlemen of the Company of Jesus.
Pritcliard. In these latter ages the company
kept by the blessed Jesus, much against his will,
as when he was among the scourgers and between
the thieves, is a very different sort of company
from what he was accustomed to meet by the Sea
of Galilee and at the Mount of Olives.
Polverel. Between ourselves, they are sad dogs.
If ever we land, which is possible, I fear my sailors
and they will speedily come to blows about certain
articles of the first necessity : and the Jesuits are
the least likely to be the sufferers.
Pritchard. It is not because I am a missionary,
and profess a doctrine widely different from theirs,
that I adjure you to abstain from giving any
countenance to the turbulent and the traitorous.
It is already well known at whose instigation they
became so : and not only the English, but also
the Americans, will promulgate the disgraceful
fact. If war (which God forbid !) is to rage again
between the two nations which alone could impose
eternal peace on the world, let it never spring
from wanton insolence, but rather from some
great motive, which must display to future gene-
rations how much less potent, in the wisest of
rulers, is reason than resentment and ambition.
We have been fighting seven hundred years, nearly
eight hundred, and have lately breathed longer
between the rounds than we ever breathed before :
we have time and room to consider how little has
either party gained, and how much both have
suffered.
Polverel. M. Pritchard ! I really beg your par-
don : I yawned quite involuntarily, I do assure
you.
Pritdiard. What afflicts me most, is the cer-
tainty that my countrymen will be confirmed in
their old prejudices and antipathies, by this ag-
gression in the season of profound peace, and that
they will call it treachery.
Polverel. The ignorant call that treachery which
the wiser call policy and decision.
Pritduird, And by what name do the virtuous
call it.
Polverel. I carry no dictionary in my pocket.
We can discourse more intelligibly on the condi-
tion of Ireland.
Parbleu ! I believe there neither is nor ever was
anything similar in any other country under the
sun. We must invade Ireland ; I see we must.
My ship is in readiness to sail into the bay of
Dublin : my brave crew has already planted the
tricolor on the castle-walls. I see the Atlantic,
the Pacific, California, China, India. We have
been too merciful, M. Pritchard ! we have been too
merciful to you ; but we must correct that error.
Pritchard. It is a foible, sir, in you, of which
few beside yourselves have complained. If others
had shown as little of it, I should not at this
moment have had the honour of conversing with
you on the protectorate of Tahiti.
Polverel. We fear and respect no power that
omits its opportunity of crushing an enemy. You
have omitted this, and more. America and France,
justly proud of free institutions, have each its
National Guards. Where are yours 1 You ought
to have in England at least two hundred thousand
of them, beside forty thousaad artillerymen and
engineers; and in Ireland half the number. If
there is in England any class of men which appre-
hends the danger of such an institution, you must
instantly annihilate that class, or submit to anni-
hilation. Have you any reply for this ]
Pritchard. I wish I had. More temperate men
than yourself entertain the same opinion. You
happen to be governed at the present time by the
wisest king that ever reigned over you, or per-
haps over any people ; his wisdom would render
him pacific, if his power and popularity consented.
But our negligence is a temptation to him. There
are many who would not tear a straw-bonnet off
the head of a girl wide awake, yet would draw a
diamond-ring from the finger if they caught her
unprotected and fast asleep. We must fortify all
our ports and roadsteads in both islands. To
conciliate popularity, every minister is ready
to abolish a tax. We should never have abolished
one : on the contrary we should have quoted the
authority of Nelson on the dangers we have
escaped, and on the necessity of guarding against
them for the future. My own opinion is, that a
less sum than twenty millions of pounds sterling
would be inadequate. But in twenty weeks of
the last war we expended as much : we may now
disburse more leisurely.
Polverel. We shall at all times be a match for
you.
Pritchard. As a minister of religion, and an
advocate for whatever tends to promote the inte-
rests of humanity, of which things peace is the
first, I can not but regret this commencement of
hostilities, so unworthy in its object, even if the
object be ultimately attained.
Polverel. Sir, after such strong language, so
derogatory to the dignity of France, I must in-
form you that I merely sent for you in order to
let you know that I am not ignorant of your
designs.
QUEEN POMARE, PRITCHARD, AND POLVEREL.
205
Pritchard. You have greatly the advantage over
me, M. le Capitaine, I remain in profound igno-
rance of yours, if you intend no aggression.
Polverel. I come by order of his Majesty the
king of the French to protect the queen and
people of Tahiti, from rebels, incendiaries, and
fanatics.
Pritchard. Namely, those who have risen in all
quarters of the island to escape from the protection
you offer.
Polverel. At your instigation.
Pritchard. It required no instigation from me,
or from any other man, native or stranger. For
many years, indeed ever since we discovered the
country they inhabit, they have lived peaceably
and happily, subject to no foreign laws or con-
troul. Under the guidance of disinterested men,
men contented with laborious poverty, they have
abandoned their ancient superstitions, immoral
and sanguinary, and have listened to the promises
of the Gospel.
Polverel. It is now their duty to listen to ours,
more positive and immediate. We have nothing
to do with Gospel or with missionaries : we come
to liberate a people crushed by your avarice.
Pritchard. Of what have we ever deprived
them] what taxes, what concessions, what obe-
dience, have we ever exacted ] They never fought
against us, never fled from us, never complained
of us.
Polverel. How dared they ?
Pritchard. Yet they dare attack men so much
braver.
Polverel. M. Pritchard ! I perceive you are a
person of impartiality and discernment. You
bestow on us unreservedly the character we claim
and merit. The rabble is not to be consulted in
affairs of state : and the rabble alone is in insur-
rection against us.
Pritchard. I did imagine, sir, that the word
rabble had no longer a place in the French lan-
guage.
Polverel. It never had for the French. But
these wretches must be taught obedience to the
laws.
Pritchard. What laws?
[Des Mitrailles enters^
Polverel. Permit me to present to you M. le
Capitaine Des Mitrailles, and to take my leave.
Des Mitrailles. On my entrance you were ask-
ing what laws the people of Tahiti are to obey :
the answer is easy and simple : ours, and no
other.
Pritchard. The answer is easier than the
execution.
[Des Mitrailles, clenching his Jist.]
Pritchard. I am a man of peace, M. le Capitaine,
and a servant of God. But if any impertinent
arrogant outrageous aggressor should strike me,
I might peradventure wipe the dust off the wall
with his whiskers : so take care. King Louis-
Philippe, I imagine, issued no orders to bestow on
so humble an individual as myself an earnest of
his Protectorate by a blow in the face, which is a
ceremonial he reserves for the defenceless, in
order to establish the glory of his navy. You
begin it with a priest, and (no doubt) you will
end it with a woman.
Des Mitrailles. If that abominable hag Pomare
were present at this instant, I would strike her
to the earth, were it only to irritate the English.
Pritchard. You would succeed in both exploits.
Our queen must be enamoured of your king's
gallantry, when she hears that his officers have
executed his commission so delicately.
Des Mitrailles. The queen Pomare has con-
cealed herself.
Pritchard. How! From the Protectorate she
solicited so earnestly 1
Des Mitrailles. Find her : bring her in : or
expect the confiscation of your property, and a
prison.
Pritchard. Find her ! bring her in ! I am no
bloodhound.
Des Mitrailles. Unless she comes forward and
acknowledges our Protectorate, I dethrone her
in the name of Louis Philippe, king of the
French.
Pritchard. Europe may not see with tranquillity
the execution of such violence.
Des Mitrailles. We have a long account to settle
with Europe, and our quarrel must commence
with her Paymaster-general.
Pritchard. I hope he does not reside in Tahiti.
Des Mitrailles. You understand me better.
Pritchard. Until now there has been little dis-
cord in the island, no insurrection and murder.
He who first brings war into any country will be
remembered and execrated by all others to the
end of time. Can Englishmen believe that a king
who hath seen so much suffering, and hath en-
dured so much himself, will ever enjoy a phantom
of power rising up over blood and carnage 1 This
happy people want protection against no enemy.
Our mariners discovered their island, and have
continued to live among them not as masters, or
what .you call protectors, but simply as instructors.
We do not even exercise the right which is
usually conceded to discoverers : we are unwilling
to receive, and more unwilling to exact, submis-
sion. Improbable then is it that we should let
another, under any pretext, usurp it.
Des Mitrailles. We are aware of that senti-
ment ; otherwise my frigate would not have sailed
at present to the South Sea. I shall act according
to my orders.
Pritchard. Consider, sir, the responsibility.
What is now occurring in this obscure little island,
may agitate the minds of the most powerful in
the present age, and of the most intellectual in the
future. What were once the events of the day are
become the events of all days. Historians and
orators of the first order have founded their fame
on what at the beginning raised only a little dust
round the market-place.
Des Mitrailles. You have the presumption and
impertinence, sir, to reason and argue and dogma-
tise with me, and even to call me to account. I
206
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
am responsible only to the king my master, and
to the minister who gave me his instructions.
Pritchard. If that minister is a demagogue
whose daily bread is baked on the ashes of ruined
habitations; if that minister is a firebrand of
which every spark is supplied by the conflagration
of the household gods . .
Des MitraUles. Do not talk to me of households
and gods.
Pritchard. Depend upon it there are men in
England who can catch the ball with whatever
force you bat it ; and you will not win the game.
You threatened to strike a woman to the
ground, a defenceless woman, whom you avowedly
came to protect.
Des MitraUles. We did come to protect her,
and she insults our generosity by her flight. A
Frenchman never threatens what he finds himself
unable to execute. Were the wretch here, you
should see the proof.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. My captain ! we have
brought in the fugitive, the incendiary, the
traitress.
Des MUrailles. Chain her, and carry her aboard.
Pritchard. I protest against either outrage.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. You protest ! who are you ]
Pritchard. British Consul.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. What are British con-
suls in the presence of French officers ? My cap-
tain ! with submission ! knock out at least a
tooth as a trophy. I have set my heart on a couple
of her front teeth ; they are worth a louis in the
Palais RoyaL M. du Petit Thouars, our admiral,
has extorted his six thousand dollars ; are 'a
couple of teeth above a lieutenant's share of the
booty ?
Des Mitrattles. Knock out one yourself; it is
not among the duties of a French capitaine de
vaisseau. You may strike her safely ; she is so
heavy with child she can not run after you.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. Madame, the queen !
I carry the orders of Monsieur le Capitaine, serving
in the Pacific, by appointment of his Majesty
Louis-Philippe, king of the French, to knock out
a tooth.
[Strikes her in the face; sailors hold Pritchard.
Pomare. O inhumanity ! Although I am a
woman, a Christian, and a queen, and although
you are Frenchmen, I never could have expected
this.
Des MitraUles. Bravo ! bravo ! but rather lower,
Poignaunez ! hit rather lower. How the tiger
defends her breast ! Well ; the eyes will do.
Again ! Bravo ! you have pretty nearly knocked
out one.
Pomare. Spare my life ! do not murder me !
0 brave captain ! can such be your orders ?
Des MitraUles. May it please your Majesty!
1 bear no such injunctions from the King my
master, or from Monsieur his minister of state
for the marine and colonies.
Pritchard. Have you received or given orders
that I should be seized and detained ?
Des MitraUles. Sir, I call upon you to attest in
writing the perfect good-faith and composure with
which we have acted.
Pritchard. Every man in England receives a
slap in the face when a woman receives one in any
quarter of the globe.
Des MitraUles. Queen Pomare did not receive
a slap on the face.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. By no means.
Des MitraUles. She had only a tooth knocked out.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. My captain ! pardon !
you concede too much. The tooth is in its place,
and in accordance with all the rest : it has merely
undergone the declension of a few degrees toward
the horizon.
Des MitraUles. Madame ! I am exceedingly con-
cerned, and intimately penetrated, that, by some
strange unaccountable interpretation, so untoward
an accident has befallen your Majesty.
Lieutenant Poignaunez (to the crew). Cry, you
fools, cry.
Sailor. I thought, M. le Lieutenant, we were to
carry her off in chains. Here they are.
Lieutenant Poignaunez. Presently, presently.
But now deploy your throats, and cry, rascals, cry
' Vive la Reine.'
x Crew. Vive la Reine ! A bas les fuyards !
A bas les Anglais ! A bas les tyrans. Vive le
Roi!
LA FONTAINE AND DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT.
La Fontaine. I am truly sensible of the honour
I receive, M. de la Rochefoucault, in a visit from
a personage so distinguished by his birth and by
his genius. Pardon my ambition, if I confess to
you that I have long and ardently wished for the
good fortune, which I never could promise myself,
of knowing you personally.
Rochefoucault. My dear M. de la Fontaine !
La Fontaine. Not ' de la,' not 'de la..' I am
La Fontaine purely and simply.
Rochefoucault. The whole ; not derivative. You
appear, in the midst of your purity, to have been
educated at court, in the lap of the ladies. What
was the last day (pardon !) I had the misfortune
to miss you there i
La Fontaine. I never go to court. They say
one can not go without silk stockings ; and I have
only thread : plenty of them indeed, thank God !
Yet, would you believe it ? Nanon, in putting a
solette to the bottom of one, last week, sewed it
so carelessly, she made a kind of cord across : and I
verily believe it will lame me for life ; for I walked
the whole morning upon it.
Rochefoucault. She ought to be whipt.
La Fontaine. I thought so too, and grew the
warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier
LA FONTAINE AND KOCHEFOUCAULT.
207
or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had
I begun with my garter, when in came the bishop
of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another
lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both
interceded for her so long and so touchingly, that
at last I was fain to let her rise up and go. I
never saw men look down on the erring and af-
flicted more compassionately. The bishop was
quite concerned for me also. But the other, al-
though he professed to feel even more, and said
that it must surely be the pain of purgatory to
me, took a pinch of snuff, opened his waistcoat,
drew down his ruffles, and seemed rather more
indifferent.
Rocliefoucault. Providentially, in such moving
scenes, the worst is soon over. But Godeau's
friend was not too sensitive.
La Fontaine. Sensitive ! no more than if he
had been educated at the butcher's or the Sor-
bonne.
Rochefoucault. I am afraid there are as many
hard hearts under satin waistcoats, as there are
ugly visages under the same material in minia-
ture-cases.
La Fontaine. My lord, I could show you a
miniature-case which contains your humble ser-
vant, in which the painter has done what no
tailor in his senses would do ; he has given me
credit for a coat of violet silk, with silver frogs
as large as tortoises. But I am loth to get up
for it while the generous heart of this dog (if I
mentioned his name he would jump up) places
such confidence on my knee.
Rochefoucault. Pray do not move on any ac-
count; above all, lest you should disturb that
amiable grey cat, fast asleep in his innocence on
your shoulder.
La Fontaine. Ah rogue ! art thou there ?
Why! thou hast not licked my face this half-
hour.
Rochefoucault. And more too, I should imagine.
I do not judge from his somnolency, which, if he
were President of the Parliament, could not be
graver, but from his natural sagacity. Cats weigh
practicabilities. What sort of tongue has he 1
La Fontaine. He has the roughest tongue and
the tenderest heart of any cat in Paris. If you
observe the colour of his coat, it is rather blue
than grey; a certain indication of goodness in
these contemplative creatures.
Rochefoucault. We were talking of his tongue
alone ; by which cats, like men, are flatterers.
La Fontaine. Ah ! you gentlemen of the court
are much mistaken in thinking that vices have
so extensive a range. There are some of our
vices, like some of our diseases, from which the
quadrupeds are exempt ; and those, both diseases
and vices, are the most discreditable.
Rochefoucault. I do not bear patiently any evil
spoken of the court : for it must be acknowledged,
by the most malicious, that the court is the puri-
fier of the whole nation.
La Fontaine. I know little of the court, and
less of the whole nation ; but how can this be 1
Rochefoucault. It collects all ramblers and gam-
blers ; all the market-men and market-women who
deal in articles which God has thrown into their
baskets, without any trouble on their part ; all the
seducers and all who wish to be seduced ; all the
duellists who erase their crimes with their swords,
and sweat out their cowardice with daily practice ;
all the nobles whose patents of nobility lie in gold
snuff-boxes, or have worn Mechlin ruffles, or are
deposited within the archives of knee-deep waist-
coats; all stock-jobbers and church-jobbers, the
black-legged and the red-legged game, the flower
of the justaucorps, the robe, and the soutane. If
these were spread over the surface of France, in-
stead of close compressure in the court or cabinet,
they would corrupt the whole country in two years.
As matters now stand, it will require a quarter
of a century to effect it.
La Fontaine. Am I not right then in prefer-
ring my beasts to yours 1 But if yours were loose,
mine, (as you prove to me,) would be the last to
suffer by it, poor dear creatures ! Speaking of
cats, I would have avoided all personality that
might be offensive to them : I would not exactly
have said, in so many words, that, by their
tongues, they are flatterers, like men. Language
may take a turn advantageously in favour of our
friends. True, we resemble all animals in some-
thing: I am quite ashamed and mortified that
your lordship, or anybody, should have had the
start of me in this reflection. When a cat flatters
with his tongue he is not insincere : you may
safely take it for a real kindness. He is loyal,
M. de la Eochefoucault ! my word for him, he is
loyal. Observe too, if you please, no cat ever
licks you when he wants anything from you ; so
that there is nothing of baseness in such an act
of adulation, if we must call it so. For my part,
I am slow to designate by so foul a name, that
(be it what it may) which is subsequent to a kind-
ness. Cats ask plainly for what they want.
Rochefoucault. And, if they can not get it by
protocols, they get it by invasion and assault.
La Fontaine. No ! no ! usually they go else-
where, and fondle those from whom they obtain
it. In this I see no resemblance to invaders and
conquerors. I draw no parallels : I would excite
no heart-burnings between us and them. Let all
have their due.
I do not like to lift this creature off, for it would
waken him, else I could find out, by some sub-
sequent action, the reason why he has not been
on the alert to lick my cheek for so long a
time.
Rochefoucault. Cats are wary and provident.
He would not enter into any contest with you,
however friendly. He only licks your face, I pre-
sume, while your beard is but a match for his
tongue.
La Fontaine. Ha ! you remind me. Indeed I
did begin to think my beard was rather of the
roughest ; for yesterday Madame de Kambouillet
sent me a plate of strawberries, the first of the
season, and raised (would you believe it 1) under
208
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
glass. One of these strawberries was dropping
from my lips, and I attempted to stop it. When
I thought it had fallen to the ground, " Look
for it, Nanon ; pick it up and eat it," said I.
" Master !" cried the wench, " your beard has
skewered and spitted it." " Honest girl," I
answered, " come, cull it from the bed of its
adoption."
I had resolved to shave myself this morning :
but our wisest and best resolutions too often come
to nothing, poor mortals !
Rochefoucault. We often do very well everything
but the only thing we hope to do best of all ; and
our projects often drop from us by their weight.
A little while ago your friend Moliere exhibited a
remarkable proof of it.
La Fontaine. Ah, poor Moliere ! the best man
in the world ; but flighty, negligent, thoughtless.
He throws himself into other men, and does not
remember where. The sight of an eagle, M. de
la Rochefoucault, but the memory of a fly !
Rochefoucault. I will give you an example : but
perhaps it is already known to you.
La Fontaine. Likely enough. We have each
so many friends, neither of us can trip but the
other is invited to the laugh. Well ; I am sure
he has no malice, and I hope I have none : but
who can see his own faults ?
Rochefoucault. He had brought out a new
edition of his comedies.
La Fontaine. There will be fifty ; there will be
a hundred : nothing in our language, or in any,
is so delightful, so graceful ; I will add, so clear
at once and so profound.
Rochefoucavlt. Tou are among the few who,
seeing well his other qualities, see that Moliere is
also profound. In order to present the new
edition to the Dauphin, he had put on a sky-blue
velvet coat, powdered with fleur-de-lis. He laid
the volume on his library-table ; and, resolving
that none of the courtiers should have an oppor-
tunity of ridiculing him for anything like absence
of mind, he returned to his bedroom, which, as
may often be the case in the economy of poets, is
also his dressing-room. Here he surveyed himself
in his mirror, as well as the creeks and lagoons in
it would permit.
La Fontaine. I do assure "you, from my own
observation, M. de la Rochefoucault, that his mir-
ror is a splendid one. I should take it to be nearly
three feet high, reckoning the frame with the Cupid
above and the elephant under. I suspected it was
the present of some great lady ; and indeed I have
since heard as much.
Rochefoucavlt. Perhaps then the whole story
may be quite as fabulous as the part of it which
I have been relating.
La Fontaine. In that case, I may be able to
set you right again.
Rochefoucault. He found his peruke a model
of perfection ; tight, yet easy ; not an inch more
on one side than on the other. The black patch
on the forehead . .
La Fontaine. Black patch too ! I would have
given a fifteen-sous piece to have caught him with
that black patch.
Rochefoucault. He found it lovely, marvellous,
irresistible. Those on each cheek . .
La Fontaine. Do you tell me he had one on
each cheek ?
Rochefoucault. Symmetrically. The cravat was
of its proper descent, and with its appropriate
charge of the best Strasburg snuff upon it.
The waistcoat, for a moment, puzzled and per-
plexed him. He was not quite sure whether the
right number of buttons were in their holes; nor
how many above, nor how many below, it was
the fashion of the week to leave without occupa-
tion. Such a piece of ignorance is enough to dis-
grace any courtier on earth. He was in the act
of striking his forehead with desperation ; but he
thought of the patch, fell on his knees, and
thanked heaven for the intervention.
La Fontaine. Just like him ! just like him t
good soul !
Rochefoucault. The breeches . . ah ! those re-
quire attention : all proper : everything in. its
place. Magnificent ! The stockings rolled up,
neither too loosely nor too negligently. A pic-
ture ! The buckles in the shoes . . all but
one . . soon set to rights . . well thought of!
And now the sword . . ah that cursed sword ! it
will bring at least one man to the ground if it
has its own way much longer . . up with it ! up
with it higher . . Aliens ! we are out of danger.
La Fontaine. Delightful ! I have him before
my eyes. What simplicity ! aye, what simplicity !
Rochefoucault. Now for hat. Feather in? Five
at least. Bravo.
He took up hat and plumage, extended his arm
to the full length, raised it a foot above his head,
lowered it thereon, opened his fingers, and let
them fall again at his side.
La Fontaine. Something of the comedian in
that ; aye, M. de la Rochefoucault ] But, on the
stage or off, all is natural in Moliere.
Rochefoucavlt. Away he went : he reached the
palace, stood before the Dauphin . . 0 conster-
nation ! 0 despair ! " Morbleau ! bete que je
suis," exclaimed the hapless man, " le livre, oil
done est-il1?" You are forcibly struck, I perceive,
by this adventure of your friend.
La Fontaine. Strange coincidence ! quite un-
accountable ! There are agents at work in our
dreams, M. de la Rochefoucault, which we shall
never see out of them, on this side the grave. [To
himself \. Sky-blue ? no. Fleurs-de-lis ? bah ! bah !
Patches ] I never wore one in my life.
Rochefoucault. It well becomes your character
for generosity, M. La Fontaine, to look grave, and
ponder, and ejaculate, on a friend's untoward ac-
cident, instead of laughing, as those who little
know you, might expect. I beg your pardon for
relating the occurrence.
La Fontaine. Right or wrong, I can not help
laughing any longer. Comical, by my faith !
above the tip-top of comedy. Excuse my flashes
and dashes and rushes of merriment. Incon-
LA FONTAINE AND KOCHEFOUCAULT.
209
trollable ! incontrollable ! Indeed the laughter is
immoderate. And you allt he while are sitting as
grave as a judge ; I mean a criminal one ; who
has nothing to do but to keep up his popularity
by sending his rogues to the gallows. The civil
indeed have much weighty matter on their minds :
they must displease one party : and sometimes a
doubt arises whether the fairer hand or the fuller
shall turn the balance.
Rochefoucault. I congratulate you on the re-
turn of your gravity and composure.
La Fontaine. Seriously now : all my lifetime I
have been the plaything of dreams. Sometimes
they have taken such possession of me, that no-
body could persuade me afterward they were
other than real events. Some are very oppressive,
very painful, M. de la Kochefoucault ! I have
never been able, altogether, to disembarrass my
head of the most wonderful vision that ever took
possession of any man's. There are some truly
important differences, but in many respects this
laughable adventure of my innocent honest friend
Moliere, seemed to have befallen myself. I can
only account for it by having heard the tale when
I was half-asleep.
Rochefoucault. Nothing more probable.
La Fontaine. You absolutely have relieved me
from an incubus.
Rochefoucault. I do not yet see how.
La Fontaine. No longer ago than when you
entered this chamber, I would have sworn that I
myself had gone to the Louvre, that I myself had
been commanded to attend the dauphin, that I
myself had come into his presence,* had fallen
on my knee, and cried, " Peste ! ou est done le
livre !" Ah, M. de la Rochefoucault, permit me
to embrace you : this is really to find a friend at
court.
Rochefoucault. My visit is even more auspicious
than I could have ventured to expect : it was
chiefly for the purpose of asking your permission
to make another at my return to Paris . . I am
forced to go into the country on some family af-
fairs : but hearing that you have spoken favourably
of my Maxims, I presume to express my satis-
faction and delight at your good opinion.
La Fontaine. Pray, M. de la Rochefoucault, do
me the favour to continue here a few minutes : I
would gladly reason with you on some of your
doctrines.
Rochefoucault. For the pleasure of hearing your
sentiments on the topics I have treated, I will,
although it is late, steal a few minutes from the
court, of which I must take my leave on parting
for the province.
La Fontaine. Are you quite certain that all
your Maxims are true, or, what is of greater con-
sequence, that they are all original ? I have lately
read a treatise written by an Englishman, M.
Hobbes ; so loyal a man that, while others tell
you kings are appointed by God, he tells you God
is appointed by kings.
» This happened.
Rochefoucault. Ah ! such are precisely the men
we want. If he establishes this verity, the rest
will follow.
La Fontaine. He does not seem to care so much
about the rest. In his treatise I find the ground-
plan of your chief positions.
Rochefoucault. I have indeed looked over his
publication ; and we agree on the natural de-
pravity of man.
La Fontaine. Reconsider your expression. It
appears to me that what is natural is not depraved :
that depravity is deflection from nature. Let it
pass : I can not however concede to you that the
generality of men are naturally bad. Badness is
accidental, like disease. We find more tempers
good than bad, where proper care is taken in
proper time.
Rochefoucault. Care is not nature.
La Fontaine. Nature is soon inoperative with-
out it ; so soon indeed as to allow no opportunity
for experiment or hypothesis. Life itself requires
care, and more continually than tempers and
morals do. The strongest body ceases to be a
body in a few days without a supply of food.
When we speak of men being naturally bad or
good, we mean susceptible and retentive ind com-
municative of them. In this case (and there can
be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that
the more are good ; and nearly in the same pro-
portion as there are animals and plants produced
healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly.
Strange is the opinion of M. Hobbes, that, when
God hath poured so abundantly his benefits on
other creatures, the only one capable of great good
should be uniformly disposed to greater evil.
Rochefoucault. Yet Holy Writ, to which Hobbes
would reluctantly appeal, countenances the sup-
position.
La Fontaine. The Jews, above all nations, were
morose and splenetic. Nothing is holy to me
that lessens in my view the beneficence of my
Creator. If you could show him ungentle and
unkind in a single instance, you would render
myriads of men so, throughout the whole course
of their lives, and those too among the most
religious. The less that people talk about God,
the better. He has left us a design to fill up : he
has placed the canvas, the colours, and the pen-
cils, within reach ; his directing hand is over
ours incessantly ; it is our business to follow it,
and neither to turn round and argue with our
master, nor to kiss and fondle him. We must
mind our lesson, and not neglect our time : for
the room is closed early, and the lights are sus-
pended in another, where no one works. If every
man would do all the good he might within an
hour's walk from his house, he would live the
happier and the longer : for nothing is so condu-
cive to longevity as the union of activity and
content. But, like children, we deviate from the
road, however well we know it, and run into mire
and puddles in despite of frown and ferule.
Rocliefoucault. Go on, M. la Fontaine ! pray
go on. We are walking in the same labyrinth,
210
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
always within call, always within sight of each
other. We set out at its two extremities, and
shall meet at last.
La Fontaine. I doubt it. From deficiency of
care proceed many vices, both in men and chil-
dren, and more still from care taken improperly.
M. Hobbes attributes not only the order and
peace of society, but equity and moderation and
every other virtue, to the coercion and restriction
of the laws. The laws, as now constituted, do a
great deal of good ; they also do a great deal of
mischief. They transfer more property from the
right owner in six months than all the thieves of
the kingdom do in twelve. What the thieves
take they soon disseminate abroad again ; what
the laws take they hoard. The thief takes a part
of your property : he who prosecutes the thief for
you takes another part : he who condemns the
thief, goes to the tax-gatherer and takes the third.
Power has been hitherto occupied in no employ-
ment but in keeping down Wisdom. Perhaps the
time may come when Wisdom shall exert her
energy in repressing the sallies of Power.
Jtochffoucault. I think it more probable that
they will agree ; that they will call together their
servants of all liveries, to collect what they can
lay their hands upon : and that meanwhile they
will sit together like good housewives, making
nets from our purses to cover the coop for us. If
you would be plump and in feather, pick up your
millet and be quiet in your darkness. Speculate
on nothing here below, and I promise you a nose-
gay in Paradise.
La Fontaine.' Believe me, I shall be most happy
to receive it there at your hands, my lord duke.
The greater number of men, I am inclined
to think, with all the defects of education, all
the frauds committed on their credulity, all
the advantages taken of their ignorance and
supineness, are disposed, on most occasions, rather
to virtue than to vice, rather to the kindly affec-
tions than the unkindly, rather to the social than
the selfish.
Rochpfoucault. Here we differ : and were my
opinion the same as yours, my book would be
little read and less commended.
La Fontaine. Why think so "\
Rockefoucault. For this reason. Every man
likes to hear evil of all men : every man is de-
lighted to take the air of the common, though
not a soul will consent to stand within his own
allotment No inclosure-act ! no finger-posts !
You may call every creature under heaven fool
and rogue, and your auditor will join with you
heartily : hint to him the slightest of his own
defects or foibles, and he draws the rapier. You
and he are the judges of the world, but not its
denizens.
La Fontaine. M. Hobbes has taken advantage
of these weaknesses. In his dissertation he be-
trays the timidity and malice of his character.
It must be granted, he reasons well, according to
the view he has taken of things ; but he has given
no proof whatever that his view is a correct one.
I will believe that it is, when I am persuaded that
sickness is the natural state of the body, and health
the unnatural. If you call him a sound philoso-
pher, you may call a mummy a sound man. Its
darkness, its hardness, its forced uprightness, and
the place in which you find it, may commend it
to you : give me rather some weakness and pec-
cability, with vital warmth and human sympathies.
A shrewd reasoner is one thing, a sound philoso-
pher is another. I admire your power and pre-
cision. Monks will admonish us how little the
author of the Maxims knows of the world ; and
heads of colleges will cry out " a libel on human
nature !" but when they hear your titles, and,
above all, your credit at court, they will cast back
cowl and peruke, and lick your boots. You start
with great advantages. Throwing off from a
dukedom, you are sure of enjoying, if not the
tongue of these puzzlers, the full cry of the more
animating, and will certainly be as long-lived as
the imperfection of our language will allow. I
consider your Maxims as a broken ridge of hills,
on the shady side of which you are fondest of
taking your exercise : but the same ridge hath
also a sunny one. You attribute (let me say it
again) all actions to self-interest. Now a senti-
ment of interest must be preceded by calculation,
long or brief, right or erroneous. Tell me then
in what region lies the origin of that pleasure
which a family in the country feels on the arrival
of an unexpected friend. I say a family in the
country ; because the sweetest souls, like the
sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no
purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.
If I may judge from the few examples I have
been in a position to see, no earthly one can be
greater. There are pleasures which lie near the
surface, and which are blocked up by artificial
ones, or are diverted by some mechanical scheme,
or are confined by some stiff evergreen vista of low '
advantage. But these pleasures do occasionally
burst forth in all their brightness ; and, if ever
you shall by chance find one of them, you will
sit by it, I hope, complacently and cheerfully, and
turn toward it the kindliest aspect of your medi-
tations.
Rochefoucault. Many, indeed most people, will
differ from me. Nothing is quite the same to
the intellect of any two men, much less of all.
When one says to another, " I am entirely of your
opinion," he uses in general an easy and indifferent
phrase, believing in its accuracy, without exami-
nation, without thought. The nearest resem-
blance in opinions, if we could trace every line of
it, would be found greatly more divergent than
the nearest in the human form or countenance,
and in the same proportion as the varieties of
mental qualities are more numerous and fine than
of the bodily. Hence I do not expect nor wish
that my opinions should in all cases be similar to
those of others : but in many I shall be gratified
if, by just degrees and after a long survey, those
of others approximate to mine. Nor does this
my sentiment spring from a love of power, as in
LA FONTAINE AND ROCHEFOUCAULT.
211
many good men quite unconsciously, when they
would make proselytes, since I shall see few and
converse with fewer of them, and profit in no way
by their adherence and favour; but it springs from
a natural and a cultivated love of all truths what-
ever, and from a certainty that these delivered by
me are conducive to the happiness and dignity
of man. You shake your head.
La Fontaine. Make it out.
Rochefoucavlt. I have pointed out to him at
what passes he hath deviated from his true interest,
and where he hath mistaken selfishness for gene-
rosity, coldness for judgment, contraction of heart
for policy, rank for merit, pomp for dignity ; of
all mistakes, the commonest and the greatest. I
am accused of paradox and distortion. On para-
dox I shall only say, that every new moral truth
has been called so. Inexperienced and negligent
observers see no difference in the operations of
raveling and unraveling : they never come close
enough : they despise plain work.
La Fontaine. The more we simplify things, the
better we descry their substances and qualities.
A good writer will not coil them up and press
them into the narrowest possible space, nor
macerate them into such particles that nothing
shall be remaining of their natural contexture.
You are accused of this too, by such as have for-
gotten your title-page, and who look for treatises
where maxims only have been promised. Some
of them perhaps are spinning out sermons and
dissertations from the poorest paragraph in the
volume.
Rochefoucault. Let them copy and write as
they please ; against or for, modestly or impu-
dently. I have hitherto had no assailant who is
not of too slender a make to be detained an hour
in the stocks he has unwarily put his foot into.
If you hear of any, do not tell of them. On the
subjects of my remarks, had others thought as I
do, my labour would have been spared me. I am
ready to point out the road where I know it, to
whosoever wants it ; but I walk side by side with
few or none.
La Fontaine. We usually like those roads which
show us the fronts of our friends' houses and the
pleasure-grounds about them, and the smooth
garden-walks, and the trim espaliers, and look at
them with more satisfaction than at the docks
and nettles that are thrown in heaps behind. The
Offices of Cicero are imperfect ; yet who would not
rather guide his children by them than by the
line and compass of harder-handed guides ; such
as Hobbes for instance 1
Rochefoucault. Imperfect as some gentlemen in
hoods may call the Offices, no founder of a philo-
sophical or of a religious sect has been able to
add to them anything important.
La Fontaine. Pity ! that Cicero carried with
him no better authorities than reason and hu-
manity. He neither could work miracles, nor
damn you for disbelieving them. Had he lived
fourscore years later, who knows but he might
have been another Simon Peter, and have talked
Hebrew as fluently as Latin, all at once ! Who
knows but we might have heard of his patrimony !
who knows but our venerable popes might have
claimed dominion from him, as descendant from
the kings of Rome !
Rochefoucavlt. The hint, some centuries ago,
would have made your fortune, and that saintly
cat there would have kittened in a mitre.
La Fontaine. Alas ! the hint could have done
nothing : Cicero could not have lived later.
Rochefoucavlt. I warrant him. Nothing is
easier to correct than chronology. There is not
a lady in Paris, nor a jockey in Normandy, that
is not eligible to a professor's chair in it. I have
seen a man's ancestor, whom nobody ever saw be-
fore, spring back over twenty generations. Our
Vatican Jupiters have as little respect for old
Chronos as the Cretan had : they mutilate him
when and where they think necessary, limp as
he may by the operation.
La Fontaine. When I think, as you make me
do, how ambitious men are, even those whose
teeth are too loose (one would fancy) for a
bite at so hard an apple as the devil of ambition
offers them, I am inclined to believe that we are
actuated not so much by selfishness as you repre-
sent it, but under another form, the love of
power. Not to speak of territorial dominion or
political office, and such other things as we usually
class under its appurtenances, do we not desire
an exclusive control over what is beautiful and
lovely 1 the possession of pleasant fields, of well-
situated houses, of cabinets, of images, of pictures,
and indeed of many things pleasant to see but
useless to possess ; even of rocks, of streams, and
of fountains'? These things, you will tell me,
have their utility. True, but not to the wisher,
nor does the idea of it enter his mind. Do not
we wish that the object of our love should be
devoted to us only; and that our children
should love us better than their brothers and sis-
ters, or even than the mother who bore them 1
Love would be arrayed in the purple robe of sov-
ranty, mildly as he may resolve to exercise his
power.
Rochefoucavlt. Many things which appear to
be incontrovertible, are such for their age only,
and must yield to others which, in their age, are
equally so. There are only a few points that are
always above the waves. Plain truths, like plain
dishes, are commended by everybody, and every-
body leaves them whole. If it were not even
more impertinent and presumptuous to praise a
great writer in his presence than to censure him
in his absence, I would venture to say that your
prose, from the few specimens you have given of
it, is equal to your verse. Yet, even were I the
possessor of such a style as yours, I would never
employ it to support my Maxims. You would
think a writer very impudent and self-sufficient
who should quote his own works : to defend them
is doing more. We are the worst auxiliaries in
the world to the opinions we have brought into
the field. Our business is, to measure the ground,
212
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and to calculate the forces ; then let them try
their strength. If the weak assails me, he thinks
me weak ; if the strong, he thinks me strong.
He is more likely to compute ill his own vigour
than mine. At all events, I love inquiry, even when
I myself sit down. And I am not offended in my
walks if my visitor asks me whither does that
alley lead ] It proves that he is ready to go on
with me ; that he sees some space before him ;
and that he believes there may be something
worth looking after.
La Fontaine. You have been standing a long
time, my lord duke : I must entreat you to be
seated.
Rochefoucault. Excuse me, my dear M. la
Fontaine ; I would much rather stand.
La Fontaine. Mercy on us ! have you been
upon your legs ever since you rose to leave me?
Rochefoucault. A change of position is agree-
able : a friend always permits it.
La Fontaine. Sad doings ! sad oversight ! The
other two chairs were sent yesterday evening to
be scoured and mended. But that dog is the
best-tempered dog ! an angel of a dog, I do assure
you ; he would have gone down in a moment, at
a word. I am quite ashamed of myself for such
inattention. With your sentiments of friendship
for me, why could you not have taken the liberty
to shove him gently off, rather than give me this
uneasiness ]
Rochefoucault. My true and kind friend ! we
authors are too sedentary ; we are heartily glad
of standing to converse, whenever we can do it
without any restraint on our acquaintance.
La Fontaine. I must reprove that animal when
he uncurls his body. He seems to be dreaming
of Paradise and Houris. Ay, twitch thy ear, my
child ! I wish at my heart there were as trouble-
some a fly about the other : God forgive me ! The
rogue covers all my clean linen ! shirt and cravat !
what cares he !
Rochefoucault. Dogs are not very modest.
La Fontaine. Never say that, M. de la Roche-
foucault ! The most modest people upon earth !
Look at a dog's eyes ; and he half-closes them, or
gently turns them away, with a motion of the
lips, which he licks languidly, and of the tail,
which he stirs tremulously, begging your for-
bearance. I am neither blind nor indifferent to
the defects of these good and generous creatures.
They are subject to many such as men are subject
to : among the rest, they disturb the neighbour-
hood in the discussion of their private causes;
they quarrel and fight on small motives, such as
a little bad food, or a little vain-glory, or the sex.
But it must be something present or near that
excites them ; and they calculate not the extent
of evil they may do or suffer.
Rochefoucault. Certainly not : how should dogs
calculate ?
La Fontaine. I know nothing of the process.
I am unable to inform you how they leap over
hedges and brooks, with exertion just sufficient,
and no more. In regard to honour and a sense
of dignity, let me tell you, a dog accepts the sub-
sidies of his friends, but never claims them : a
dog would not take the field to obtain power for
a son, but would leave the son to obtain it by his
own activity and prowess. He conducts his visitor
or inmate out a-hunting, and makes a present of
the game to him as freely as an emperor to an
elector. Fond as he is of slumber, which is in-
deed one of the pleasantest and best things in the
universe, particularly after dinner, he shakes it
off as willingly as he would a gadfly, in order to
defend his master from theft or violence. Let
the robber or assailant speak as courteously as he
may, he waives your diplomatical terms, gives his
reasons in plain language, and makes war. I
could say many other things to his advantage ;
but I never was malicious, and would rather let
both parties plead for themselves : give me the
dog, however.
Rochefoucault. Faith ! I will give you both, and
never boast of my largess in so doing.
La Fontaine. I trust I have removed from you
the suspicion of selfishness in my client, and I feel
it quite as easy to make a properer disposal of
another ill attribute, namely cruelty, which we
vainly try to shuffle off our own shoulders upon
others, by employing the offensive and most un-
just term, brutality. But to convince you of my
impartiality, now I have defended the dog from
the first obloquy, I will defend the man from the
last, hoping to make you think better of each.
What you attribute to cruelty, both while we are
children and afterward may be assigned for the
greater part, to curiosity. Cruelty tends to the
extinction of life, the dissolution of matter, the
imprisonment and sepulture of truth ; and if it
were our ruling and chief propensity, the human
race would have been extinguished in a few centu-
ries after its appearance. Curiosity, in its primary
sense, implies care and consideration.
Rochefoucault. Words often deflect from their
primary sense. We find the most curious men
the most idle and silly, the least observant and
conservative.
La Fontaine. So we think; because we see
every hour the idly curious, and not the strenu-
ously; we see only the persons of the one set,
and only the works of the other.
More is heard of cruelty than of curiosity, be-
cause while curiosity is silent both in itself and
about its object, cruelty on most occasions is like
the wind, boisterous in itself, and exciting a mur-
mur and bustle in all the things it moves among.
Added to which, many of the higher topics
whereto our curiosity would turn, are intercepted
from it by the policy of our guides and rulers ;
while the principal ones on which cruelty is most
active, are pointed to by the sceptre and the trun-
cheon, and wealth and dignity are the rewards of
their attainment. What perversion! He who
brings a bullock into a city for its sustenance is
called a butcher, and nobody has the civility to
take off the hat to him, although knowing him
as perfectly as I know Matthieu le Mince, who
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI.
213
served me with those fine kidneys you must have
remarked in passing through the kitchen : on the
contrary, he who reduces the same city to famine
is styled M. le General or M. le Marechal, and
gentlemen like you, unprejudiced (as one would
think) and upright, make room for him in the
antechamber.
Rochefoucaidt. He obeys orders without the de-
grading influence of any passion.
La Fontaine. Then he commits a baseness the
more, a cruelty the greater. He goes off at
another man's setting, as ingloriously as a rat-trap :
he produces the worst effects of fury, and feels
none : a Cain unirritated by a brother's incense.
Rochefoucault. I would hide from you this little
rapier, which, like the barber's pole, I have often
thought too obtrusive in the streets.
La Fontaine. Never shall I think my country-
men half civilised while on the dress of a courtier
is hung the instrument of a cut-throat. How de-
plorably feeble must be that honour which requires
defending at every hour of the day !
Rochefoucault. Ingenious as you are, M. Fon-
taine, I do not believe that, on this subject, you
could add anything to what you have spoken
already : but really, I do think, one of the most
instructive things in the world would be a disser-
tation on dress by you.
La Fontaine. Nothing can be devised more
commodious than the dress in fashion. Perukes
have fallen among us by the peculiar dispensation
of Providence. As in all the regions of the globe
the indigenous have given way to stronger crea-
tures, so have they (partly at least) on the human
head. At present the wren and the squirrel are
dominant there. Whenever I have a mind for a
filbert, I have only to shake myforetop. Improve-
ment does not end in that quarter. I might for-
get to take my pinch of snuff when it would do
me good, unless I saw a store of it on another's
cravat. Furthermore, the slit in the coat behind
tells in a moment what it was made for : a thing
of which, in regard to ourselves, the best preachers
have to remind us all our lives : then the central
part of our habiliment has either its loop-hole or
its portcullis in the opposite direction, still more
demonstrative. All these are for very mundane
purposes : but Eeligion and Humanity have whis-
pered some later utilities. We pray the more
commodiously, and of course the more frequently,
for rolling up a royal ell of stocking round about
our knees : and our high-heeled shoes must surely
have been worn by some angel, to save those in-
sects which the flat-footed would have crushed to
death.
Rochefoucault. Ah ! the good dog has awakened :
he saw me and my rapier, and ran away. Of what
breed is he 1 for I know nothing of dogs.
La Fontaine. And write so well !
Rochefoucault. Is he a trufler ]
La Fontaine. No, not he; but quite as innocent.
Rochefoucault. Something of the shepherd-dog,
I suspect.-
La Fontaine. Nor that neither ; although he
fain would make you believe it. Indeed he is
very like one : pointed nose, pointed ears, appa-
rently stiff, but readily yielding ; long hair, par-
ticularly about the neck ; noble tail over his back,
three curls deep, exceedingly pleasant to stroke
down again ; straw-colour all above, white all
below. He might take it ill if you looked for it ;
but so it is, upon my word : an ermeline might
envy it.
Rochefoucault. What are his pursuits ?
La Fontaine. As to pursuit and occupation, he
is good for nothing. In fact, I like those dogs
best . . and those men too.
Rochefoucault. Send Nanon then for a pair of
silk stockings, and mount my carriage with me :
it stops at the Louvre.
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI.
Vittoria. What has detained you so long,
Michel-Angelo ? Were we not to have read to-
gether, early in the forenoon, the little book of
poetry which is lying there on the table ?
Michel-Angelo. Excuse me, Madonna. The
fault, if mine at all, is mine only in part.
Vittoria. I will pardon it the rather, because,
whatever it was, it has removed the traces of care
and of study from your brow, and supplanted
them with an unwonted smile. Pray now what
provokes this hilarity ?
Michel-Angelo. Not the delay, I 'assure you,
which never has any such effect when I am
coming to the Palazzo Pescara, but merely the
mention of poetry.
Vittoria. Why so *? I perceive there is mischief
in your countenance ; let me also have a hand in
it, if I find it is such as I like.
Michel-Angelo. When I was walking hither, a
middle-aged gentleman, tall, round-shouldered,
somewhat grizzly, of a complexion rather cindery
than pale, with a look half leering and half
imploring, and in a voice half querulous and
half passionate, accosted me. He offered many
apologies for never having heard of me until this
morning, although my fame (he protested) had
filled the universe. Whatever he said at one
instant he unsaid the next, in like manner.
" But you shall forgive me ; you shall soon
forgive me," cried he, thrusting into my hand a
large volume, from its more opportune station
under the coat-flap. I felt it damp, having lain
perhaps in the middle of a thousand, two entire
winters ; and I apprehended cold and rheumatism
as much almost at the cover as at the contents.
While I held it, uncertain how to reply, he
suddenly snatched it back, and cut open the
leaves with a very sharp penknife, injuring few
of them by the operation, for he was cautious
and tender in the extreme.
214
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
" I would not delay you in the reading," said
he, returning it, "for your praise will richly
crown my labours."
Vittoria. What was it ] and where is it ?
Micftel-Angelo. Madonna, let me be an ex-
ample of patience to you. Wait a little, and you
shall hear the whole.
.„ Vittoria. No, no, no !
Michel-Angelo. I do not mean the whole of
the poem, I mean only the whole of the occur-
rence. I saw on the title-page that it was a poem
in twenty-four cantos, each containing a hundred
stanzas, entitled The Strangulation of Cethegits.
Between the moments of my surprise and my
dismay, . .
" You will find," exclaimed the author, " how
wrongfully I have been accused by the malevo-
lent and invidious (and there are few others in
the world) of copying our most celebrated writers,
and of being destitute of originality myself. If
occasionally I resemble them in some sort, it is
only to show them how they might have written,
with a little more care, judgment, and . . we will
not say . . genius ! "
Vittoria. On such emergencies, a spice of
ridicule is our speediest and most palatable
remedy for disgust.
Michel-Angelo. When I inquired of him to
what gentleman I was indebted for so valuable a
present, he stood in amaze at first ; then he
repeated his family name, then his baptismal,
then a poetical intermediate one of his own
invention. These, he told me, I must frequently
have heard. I now recognised the peculiar object
of ebullient jocularity among my juvenile scholars,
one of whom said, "He has cracked a biscuit
which was baked for a long voyage, and, pouring
a profusion of tepid water on it, he has quad-
rupled its bulk and heaviness !"
Vittoria. Poor man ! his vanity must often be
wounded.
Miclid-Angelo. He has none.
Vittoria. None?
Michel-Angelo. He told me so himself.
" I have been called vain," said he ; " but only
by those who never knew me. Proud ! yes,
proud I am ! Vanity, in my opinion, (and I am
certain that you and all sensible men must think
with me,) belongs only to weak minds ; pride to
the strongest and most sublime. Poets, we hear,
are often vain ; ay, but what poets V
His eyes, which before were only on a level
with the cheek-bones and the frontal, now ex-
panded beyond, and assumed the full majesty of
the orbicular.
Vittoria. Well, in what manner has he treated
his subject 1
Michel-Angelo. He could not resist the
pleasure of telling me :
" I believe, Signor Buonarotti, you are, among
other things, a painter. Proportions ! ay, pro-
portions ! The pyramidal, ay ! We look to that,
don't we 1 See here then. Caesar is a stripling,
just old enough to fall in love. In Pagan Rome
they fell early. The man of genius will seize on
the most trifling objects in nature, and raise up a
new creation from them. Did you never see an
apple or a strawberry which had another more
diminutive growing to it ? Well, now from this
double strawberry or apple I have made out a
double Csesar, such as never was seen before ; one
the stern resolute senator ; the other the gentle
sentimental young lover."
On which I submissively asked, whether the
stripling who had been received so favorably by
the lady, would on the same afternoon be sure of
the same facility at his entrance into the senate ;
and whether it was not requisite to have attained
his fortieth year ? He smiled at me, and said,
" Surely no, when a poet of the first order
gives him a ticket of admission. Does not
Horace say we poets have the privilege of daring
anything?"
I was afraid to answer, " Yes : but, unhappily,
we readers have not the power of bearing any-
thing." He continued,
" Cicero is an old gentleman."
Here I ventured to interrupt him, asking if
there were in reality more than five or six years
between their ages, and by remarking, that
although in obscure men and matters, introduced
into works of invention, facts might be repre-
sented not quite accordant with exact chronology,
yet that the two most remarkable characters in
the Roman Commonwealth, known by every
schoolboy to have entered into public life at the
same time, could safely be pushed so far asunder.
" No matter, sir !" replied he sharply ; " there
they are, the poet's own creation. Observe, if
you please, I have placed Cethegus between
them ; a well-grown personage, in his meridian.
Behold my pyramid ! "
I was silent.
" No originality, I suppose 1 "
" Very great indeed !" answered I.
" Here is one man," cried he, seizing my hand,
" one man in the world, willing to the uttermost of
his power to do me justice. Strangers give me
praise ; friends give me only advice ; and such
advice, Signor Buonarotti, as would ^impoverish
the realms of literature, if taken."
I stared at him even more wildly than before.
"Perhaps you do not recognise me?" said he.
" Many have taken me for Ariosto ; but I hope
I am loftier and graver, and more innocent.
Wherever he has gone I have followed him, in
order to abolish the impression of wantonness,
and to purify (I repeat the words of our mutual
admirers) the too warm air of his enchantments."
" I hope you have not forgotten," said I, " that
in lustral water salt is always an ingredient."
He thrust his hands into his pockets, mis-
understanding me ; at which action I could not
but smile. He perceived it ; and, after a pause,
" Ha ! ha ! ha ! " replied he, in measured laughter,
"you. are a wit too, Messer Michel-Angelo!
Who would have thought it of so considerable a
man ? Well now, I never venture on it, even
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI.
215
among friends. We may be easy and familiar in
writing or conversing, without letting ourselves
down ; we may countenance wit ; we may even
suggest it ; I am not rigorous on that head, as
some other great writers are. You see I have
helped you to a trifle of it ; a mere trifle. Now
you must confess you caught the spark from me,"
added he, coaxingly. " I will never claim it in
public ; I will not indeed ! I scarcely consider it in
the light of a plagiarism. I have forborne greater
things very long, and have only been compelled
at last to declare, in a preface, that I wrote the
better part of Orlando Furioso many years before
it was conceived by Messer Ludovico. I heard
his injurious claims, and told nobody the fact."
" How does your poem end, sir ? " said I, with
all the rapidity of impatience.
He mistook my motive, and cried, " Really I
am flattered and charmed at the interest you
take in it. You have devoured it in your mind
already, and would have the very shell. In com-
pliance with your earnestness I will answer the
question, although it might be hurtful, I fear, to
the effect the whole composition, grasped at once,
would produce on you."
I declared the contrary, with many protesta-
tions. He raised up his head from its slanting
position of distrust and doubt. Again I assured
him of my resolution to despatch it at a sitting.
Vittoria. I never thought you capable of such
duplicity.
Michel-Angelo. Of what may I not be capable,
if you absolve me with so gracious a smile ?
" I will then tell you how it ends," continued
he, " if you never have read the history. Cethegus
was, I am sorry to say, a person of bad character,
although of birth. With perfect fidelity I have
translated the speeches of Sallust ; but Sallust
had no notion (and history could do nothing for
him) of placing the culprit bound between two
Turkish mutes, with a friar in the rear, while the
great bell tolled from Santa Maria Maggiore."
I started.
"That is the place, the real place; he was
strangled just below."
"Bell!" I soliloquized, rather too audibly.
" If you never have felt the effect of a bell at
executions, and particularly on the stage ; if you
never have felt the effect of a bell, Signer
Buonarotti, through your brain and heart," said
he, breathing hard, and allowing his watery
diagonal eyes only half their width, " then do I
most sincerely pity you, Signor Buonarotti, and
wish you a very good morning."
I bowed, and fancied my deliverance was ac-
complished. But he instantly turned round
again, and added,
" If you object to a bell, you may object to a
clock. Now, it was precisely as the clock struck
midnight that justice was done by me upon the
execrable Cethegus, as a warning to all future
generations."
" Nobody can be more firmly convinced," said
I, " how execrable is this violation of all laws,
moral, social, political, and, " I was about to add
inwardly, poetical, when he seized my hand, and
said, with firm deliberation,
" There are two men in degenerate Rome who
abhor the vicious in conduct and embrace the
pure in poetry. When you have bestowed as
much time as I have on the contemplation and
composition of it, your surprise (but not your
admiration, I humbly trust) will be considerably
diminished, on the repeated perusal of my few
edited volumes. I am as sure of eternal fame as
if I had it in my pocket. Fame, Signor Michel-
Angelo, has a snail's growth ; true, real, genuine
fame has, and you may know it by that. But, I
promise you, in another century or two you shall
see mine a very giant. I have sometimes thought
I have a host of enemies : I now begin to think I
can have only one : I have him in my eye. He
is capable of putting on all manner of faces. I
myself have seen him looking like an elderly
man ; some of my friends have seen him looking
quite young; and others have seen him what
they thought was middle-aged. He manages his
voice equally well. If you go into twenty streets,
only mention me, and you will find him at the same
moment in all of them. Happily, he always hits
in the wrong place. He says I am restless for
celebrity ! he says I want vigour and originality ! "
He ended with three little titters ; and these
at least were in good metre, and showed care in
the composition.
Vittoria. Happy man ! for vanity is rarely at-
tended by vexation of spirit, and nobody is
oppressed by a sense of emptiness. I must now
undertake his defence.
Michel-Angelo. Properly then have you ex-
claimed happy man !
Vittoria. The clock and bell indeed are stum-
bling-blocks; but there are some instances in
which even so inopportune an introduction of
them is less censurable than in others. Suppose
for example a dramatic poet in an age when the
greater part of his audience was rude and igno-
rant. After he had supplied the more learned
and intellectual with the requisites of his art, I
would not quarrel with him for indulging the
market-folk with a hearty peal of bells, or per-
haps a discharge of artillery, while they are fol-
lowing the triumphal car of Caesar, or shouting
round the conflagration of Persepolis ! But if
another, in offering his tragedy for the perusal of
our times, should neglect to sweep away the
remnants of an old largess given to the multi-
tude, it can only be from the conviction that
they are his proper company ; that he is about to
be tried by his own order ; that his services are
mostly due to the majority ; and that the world's
population in simpletons is by no means on the
wane. Consider now, my dear Michel-Angelo,
if inconsistencies, absurdities, anachronisms, are
to be found only in one department of the
arts. I appeal to you, the president, prince, dic-
tator of them all, whether it is as ridiculous to
represent an angel playing on a violin, for which
216
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
your master Ghirlandaio and some other more
ancient painters have been reprehended, as it is
to represent, what we find on many recent monu-
ments, a poet or a musician with a lyre in his
hand. For, if angels play on any instrument at
all, they may as well play on such as men in-
vented late as early ; since, at whatever time men
invented them, angels may have invented them
before.
Michd-Angdo. A lyre in the hand of poet or
musician born in our times, is a contradiction to
ages, a defiance to chronology, and might mislead
in regard to usages a remote posterity. So indeed
might our silly inscriptions about the manes and
ashes of our uncles and aunts, who would have
been horrified at the idea of being burnt like
Pagans, bottled up in urns, and standing bolt-up-
right, where milk and honeyare lapped and sucked
before their faces, by an ugly brood of devils un-
amenable to priest or purgatory. But while
emperors and kings are hoisted upon columns a
hundred palms above the earth, where only a
pigeon would feel secure, and while saints and
martyrs, instead of receiving us at the door or on
the steps, are perched on the slope of a ballus-
trade, we need not look on the ground for a fresh
crop of absurdities. The ancient Romans, quite
barbarous enough in violating the pure architec-
ture of Greece, abstained from such as these, and
went no farther (nor truly was there any occasion)
than to narrow the street, instead of enlarging it,
for the march of armies through triumphal arches.
The idea, so abused, was taken from the boughs
and branches hung on poles, which shaded their
forefathers at their return from plunder, while
wine was poured out to them in the dusty path
by wives and daughters. The songs alone con-
tinued just the same as they were at first, coarse,
ribald, in the trochaic measure, which appears to
be the commonest and earliest in most nations.
Vittoria. The difference between poetry and
all other arts, all other kinds of composition, is
this : in them utility comes before delight ; in
this, delight comes before utility.
Mickel-Angelo. In some pleasing poems there
is nothing whatsoever of the useful.
Vittoria. My friend, I think you are mistaken.
An obvious moral is indeed a heavy protuberance,
which injures the gracefulness of a poem; but
there is wisdom of one kind or other in every
sentence of a really good composition, and it pro-
duces its effect in various ways. You employ gold
in your pictures ; not always of the same consis-
tency or the same preparation, but several of your
colours, even the most different, are in part com-
posed of it. This is a matter of which those in
general who are gratified with the piece are un-
suspicious. The beautiful in itself is useful by
awakening our finer sensibilities, which it must
be our own fault if we do not often carry with us
into action. A well-ordered mind touches no
branch of intellectual pleasure so brittle and in-
compliant as never to be turned to profit.
Michd-Angelo. The gift that was just now
forced into my hand, I sadly suspect would have
produced but little.
Vittoria. Have you brought your treasure with
you? Where is it?
Michd-Angelo. Knowing your antipathy to
bad smells and bad poems, knowing also that
Father Tiber is accustomed to both of them, I
devoutly made my offering to him as I crossed
the bridge.
Victoria. Indeed I am not over-curious about a
specimen ; and few things that are hopeless ever
gave anyone less concern.
Michel- Angdo. Such resignation merits all pos-
sible reward ; and all that lies in me you shall
receive. As the last page fluttered on the bat-
tlement, I caught two verses, without the inter-
mediate :
" Signer Cetego ! la preghiera 6 vana.
Spicciti 1 senti ! suona la campana."
and these two in sequence, which are the con-
clusion :
" Cetego casea in terra come un bove,
£ 1'anima gli scappa . . die sa dove !"
Vittoria. If I could suppress my smile, perhaps
I should reprove you ; but at last I will be grave.
Men like yourself, men of reputation and au-
thority, should not only be lenient and indulgent,
but even grateful, to the vain and imbecile who
attempt to please us. If we are amused at an
ebullition of frowardness in children, at their
little contortions, stamps, and menaces, are not
the same things at least inoffensive to us, when
children of the same character are grey, wrinkled,
and toothless ? From those of three feet we only
see ourselves in a convex mirror ; we see what we
were at the same age ; but from others of six feet
we gather stores for pleasantry, for imagination,
and for thought. Against their blank wall is
inserted the standard by which we may measure
our friends and ourselves. As we look up at it,
Comedy often lays her playful hand on our
shoulder ; and, as we turn our faces back, we
observe Philosophy close behind her. If men in
general were much nearer to perfection than they
are, the noblest of human works would be far-
ther from it. From the fall of Adam to the
slaughter of Hector, how vastly has genius been
elevated by our imperfections ! What history,
what romance, what poem, interests us by un-
mixed good or by unwavering consistency ? We
require in you strong motives, pertinacious re-
solves, inflexible wills, and ardent passions ; you
require in us all our weaknesses. From your
shore start forth abrupt and lofty precipices ; on
ours, diametrically opposite, lie sequestered bays
and deep recesses. We deride the man who is,
or would be, like us in anything, the vain one in
particular. Vanity in women is not invariably,
though it is too often, the sign of a cold and sel-
fish heart ; in men it always is : therefore we
ridicule it in society, and in private hate it.
Michel-Angelo. You prove to me, Donna Vit-
toria, that from base materials may rise clear
and true reflections !
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI.
217
Vittoria. I wonder that poets who have en-
countered what they call the injustice of the world,
hold with such pertinacity to the objects of
attack.
Michel-Angela. We are unwilling to drown
our blind puppies, because they are blind ; we
are then unwilling to throw them into the pond,
because they are just beginning to open their
eyes ; lastly, we refuse idle boys, who stand ready
for the sport, the most mis-shapen one of the
litter, he having been trodden on in the stable,
and kicked about by the grooms for his lame-
ness.
Vittoria. Pretty tropes indeed ! and before one
who dabbles in poetry.
MichelrAngelo. So the silver-footed Thetis
dabbled in the sea, when she could descend at
pleasure to its innermost depths.
Vittoria. You must certainly think in good
earnest that I lay high claims to poetry. Here
is more than enough flattery for the vainest wo-
man, who is not a poetess also. Speak, if you
please, about others, particularising or general-
ising.
Michel-Angelo,. Then to generalise a little.
In our days poetry is a vehicle which does not
carry much within it, but is top-heavy with what
is corded on. Children, in a hurry to raise plants,
cover their allotment of border with all the seeds
the pinafore will hold : so do small authors their
poetry-plots. Hence what springs up in either
quarter has nothing of stamen, but only sickly
succulence for grubs to feed on.
Vittoria. Never say in our days, unless you
include many other days in most ages. In those
when poetry was very flourishing there were com-
plaints against it, as we find by Horace and Aris-
tophanes. I am afraid, Michel-Angelo, some
idle boy has been putting a pebble into his sling
and aiming at your architraves ; in other words,
some poetaster or criticaster has been irreverent
toward you. I do not mean about your poetry,
which perhaps you undervalue, but about the
greater things in which you are engaged.
Michel-Angelo. Nothing more likely; but as
only the worst can be guilty of it, I shall let them
fall into other offences, that heavier punishment
than I ever take the trouble to inflict, may befall
them. It is only the few that have found the
way into my heart, who can wound it !
Vittoria. You are safe then.
Michel-Angelo. Whoever is engaged in great
and difficult works, as I am, must inevitably meet
with rivals and enemies !
Vittoria. Enemies ! yes ! Say that word only.
What a pyramid of skulls from the insanely
hostile does every predominant genius erect !
Leave those of your light assailants to whiten in
their native deserts ; and march on. Indeed it is
unnecessary to exhort you to magnanimity, for
you appear unusually at ease and serene.
Michel-Angelo. Serenity is no sign of security.
A stream is never so smooth, equable, and silvery,
as at the instant before it becomes a cataract. The
children of Niobe fell by the arrows of Diana
under a bright and cloudless sky.
Vittoria. Alas ! the intellectual, the beautiful,
and the happy, are always the nearest to danger.
Michel-Angelo. I come to you at all times,
my indulgent friend, to calm my anxieties when-
soever they oppress me. You never fail; you
never falter. Sometimes a compassionate look,
sometimes a cheerful one, alights on the earthly
thought, and dries up all its noxiousness. Music,
and a voice that is more and better, are its last
resorts. The gentleness of your nature has led
you to them when we both had paused. There
are songs that attract and melt the heart more
sweetly than the Siren's. Ah ! there is love too,
even here below, more precious than immortality ;
but it is not the love of a Circe or a Calypso.
Vittoria. Nor were they happy themselves ;
and yet perhaps they were not altogether unde-
serving of it, they who could select for the object
of their affections the courageous, the enduring,
and the intelligent. There are few men at any
time whom moral dignity and elevation of genius
have made conspicuous above the mass of society ;
and fewer still are the women who can distinguish
them from persons of ordinary capacity, endowed
with qualities merely agreeable. But if it hap-
pens that a man of highest worth has been read
attentively and thoroughly by those eyes which
he has taught the art of divination, let another
object intervene and occupy their attention, let
the beloved be induced to think it a merit and a
duty to forget him, yet memory is not an outcast
nor an alien when the company of the day is
gone, but says many things and asks many ques-
tions which she would not turn away from if she
could.
Michel-Angelo. The morning comes, the fresh
world opens, and the vestiges of one are trodden
out by many : they were only on the dew, and
with the dew they are departed.
Vittoria. Although you are not alluding to
yourself at the present time, nor liable to be in-
terrupted in the secreter paths of life, yet I think
you too susceptible in those you are pursuing,
and I was anxious to discover if anything un-
pleasant had occurred. For, little minds in high
places are the worst impediments to great. Chest-
nuts and esculent oaks permit the traveller to
pass onward under them ; briars and thorns and
unthrifty grass entangle him.
Michel-Angelo. You teach me also to talk
figuratively ; yet not remotely from one of the arts
I profess. We may make a large hole in a brick
wall and easily fill it up ; but the slightest flaw in
a ruby or a crysolite is irreparable. Thus it is in
minds. The ordinary soon take offence and (as
they call it) make it up again ; the sensitive and
delicate are long-suffering, but their wounds heal
imperfectly, if at all.
Vittoria. Are you quite certain you are without
any1?
Michel-Angelo. You and Saint Peter insure
me. The immortal are invulnerable !
218
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Vittoria. Evader! but glad am I that you
have spoken the word, although- you set at nought
thereby the authority of Homer. For you re-
mind me that he, like Dante, often has a latent
meaning by the side of an evident one, which
indeed is peculiar to great poets. Unwise com-
manders call out all their forces to the field ; the
more prudent have their reserves posted where
it is not everybody that can discover them.
In the Iliad two immortals are wounded ; Venus
slightly, Mars severely. The deities of Love and
War are the only ones exposed to violence. In
the former, weakness is shown to be open to ag-
gression ; in the latter, violence to resistance and
repulse ; and both are subject to more pain than
they can well endure. At the same time, Juno
and Pallas, Mercury and Apollo and Neptune,
do not stand aloof, but stand unassailable. Here
we perceive that sometimes the greater gods are
subtilised and attenuated into allegories. Homer
bestows on them more or less potency at his
pleasure. One moment we see a bright and
beautiful god stand manifest before us ; presently
his form and radiance are indistinct ; at last, in
the place where he was standing, there are only
some scattered leaves, inscribed with irregular
and uncouth characters ; these invite our curiosity
with strange similitudes; we look more atten-
tively, and they seem brought closer together :
the god has receded to deliver the oracle of his
wisdom.
Michel-Angelo. Homer left a highway, over-
shadowed with lofty trees and perennial leafage,
between the regions of Allegory and Olympus.
The gloom of Dante is deeper, and the boundaries
even more indiscernible. We know the one is
censured for it ; perhaps the other was.
Vittoria. To the glory of our Italy be it spoken,
we are less detractive than our forefathers the
Romans. Dante and Petrarca were estimated
highly by those nearest them. Indeed, to confess
the truth, Petrarca has received for his poetry
what ought rather to have been awarded him for
rarer and sublimer deserts. Dante has fared less
sumptuously, and there are fewer who could en-
tertain him. Petty latin, things called classics, as
their betters are, smooth, round, light, hollow,
regularly figured like pasteboard zodiacs, were
long compared and even preferred to the triple
world of Dante. I speak not of Grecian litera-
ture, because I know it not sufficiently ; but I
imagine Rome is to Greece what a bull-ring is to
a palaestra, the games of the circus to the Olympic,
fighting bondmen to the brothers of Helen, the
starry twins of Jupiter and Leda.
Michel-Angelo. Boccaccio first scattered the
illusion by which the guide seemed loftier and
grander than the guided. The spirit of the im-
mortal master, our Tuscan, no longer led by the
hand, nor submissively following, soared beyond
Italy, and is seen at last, in his just proportions,
right against the highest pinnacle of Greece.
Ariosto has not yet been countenanced by the
Italian potentates, nor fostered in the genial fur
of our Holy Fathers, with the same tenderness as
some minute poets, who dirty their cold fingers
with making little clay models after old colossal
marbles. But Ariosto is too marked in his fea-
tures to be fondled, and too broad in his shoulders
for the chairs they occupy. He is to Ovid what
Sicily is to Italy ; divided by a narrow channel ;
the same warm climate, the same flowery glebe ;
less variety, less extent. Not only these, but per-
haps all poets excepting Pindar and .JSschylus,
want compression and curtailment ; yet the par-
ings of some would be worth the pulp of others.
Vittoria. Those to whom, I will not say genius,
but splendid talents have been given, are subject
to weaknesses to which inferior men are less
liable ; as the children of the rich are to diseases
from which those jof the poorer generally are
exempt.
MicJiel-Angelo. The reason, I conceive, is
this. Modern times have produced no critic
contemporary with an eminent poet. There is a
pettishness and frowardness about some literary
men, in which, at the mention of certain names,
they indulge without moderation or shame. They
are prompt and alert at showing their sore places,
and strip for it up to the elbow. They feel only
a comfortable warmth when they are reproved for
their prejudices and antipathies, which often are
no more to be traced to their origin than the
diseases of the body, and come without contact,
without even breathing the same air. No remedy
being sought for them, they rapidly sink into
the mental constitution, weakening its internal
strength and disfiguring its external character.
In some persons at first they are covered and
concealed ; but afterward, when they are seen and
remarked, are exhibited in all their virulence with
swaggering effrontery.
Vittoria. Geese and buffaloes are enraged at
certain colours ; there are certain colours also of
the mind lively enough to excite choler at a dis-
tance in the silly and ferine. I have witnessed in
authors the most vehement expression of hatred
against those whose writings they never read, and
whose persons they never approached : all these
are professors of Christianity, and some of moral
philosophy.
Michel-Angelo. Do not wonder then if I take
my walk at a distance from the sibilant throat
and short-flighted wing ; at a distance from the
miry hide and blindly directed horn. Such
people as you describe to me may be men of
talents ; but talents lie below genius.
Occasionally we attribute to a want of benevo-
lence what in reality is only a want of discern-
ment. The bad sticks as closely as the good, and
often more readily. If we would cover with gold
a cornice or a statue, we require a preparation for
it ; smoke does its business in a moment.
Vittoria. Sometimes we ourselves may have
exercised our ingenuity, but without any con-
sciousness of spleen or ill-humour, in detecting
and discussing the peculiar faults of great poets.
This has never been done, or done very clumsily,
VITTORIA COLONNA AND MICHEL-ANGELO BUONAROTTI.
219
by our critics, who fancy that a measureless and
shapeless phantom of enthusiasm leaves an im-
pression of a powerful mind, and a quick appre-
hension of the beautiful.
"Who," they ask us, "who would look for
small defects in such an admirable writer 1 who
is not transported by his animation, and blinded
by his brightness 1 "
To this interrogation my answer is,
" Very few indeed ; only the deliberate, the in-
structed, and the wise. Only they who partake
in some degree of his nature know exactly where
to find his infirmities."
We perhaps on some occasions have spoken of
Dante in such a manner as would make the un-
wary, if they heard us, believe that we estimate
him no higher than Statius, Silius, Valerius, and
the like. On the other hand, we have admired
the versatility, facility, and invention of Ovid, to
such, a degree as would excite a suspicion that we
prefer him even to Virgil. But in one we spoke
of the worst parts, in the other of the best. Cen-
sure and praise can not leave the lips at the same
breath : one is caught before the other comes : our
verdict is distributed abroad when we have sum-
med up only one column of the evidence.
Michel-Angelo. Surely I have heard you declare
that you could produce faults out of Virgil graver
than any in Ovid.
Vittorla. The faults of Ovid are those of a play-
ful and unruly boy ; the faults of Virgil are those
of his master. I do not find in Ovid (as you may
remember I then observed) the hypallage ; such
for instance as Virgil's, ' The odour brought the
wind,' instead of ' The wind brought the odour.' No
child could refrain from laughter at such absurd-
ity, no pedagogue from whipping him for laugh-
ing at such authority. This figure (so the gram-
marians are pleased to call it) far exceeds all other
faults in language, for it reverses the thing it
should represent. If I buy a mirror, I would
rather buy one which has fifty small flaws in it,
than one which places my feet where my head
should be.
There are poems of Ovid which I have been
counselled to cast aside, and my curiosity has
never violated the interdict. But even in Homer
himself nothing of the same extent is more
spirited, or truly epic, than the contest of Ajax
and Ulysses. You shall hear in this apartment,
some day soon, what our Bembo thinks about it.
No Roman, of any age, either has written more
purely, or shown himself a more consummate
judge both of style and matter.
Michel-Angela. I think so too; but some
have considered him rather as correct and elegant
than forcible and original.
Vittoria. Because he is correct ; of which alone
they can form a notion, and of this imperfectly.
Had he written in a negligent and disorderly
manner, they would have admired his freedom
and copiousness, ignorant that, in literature as in
life, the rich and noble are as often frugal as the
indigent and obscure. The cardinal never talks
vaguely and superficially on any species of com-
position ; no, not even with his friends. Where
a thing is to be admired or censured, he explains
in what it consists. He points to the star in the
ascendant, and tells us accurately at what distance
other stars are from it. In lighter mood, on
lighter matters, he shakes the beetle out of the
rose, and shows us what species of insect that is
which he has thrown on its back at our feet, and
in what part and to what extent the flower has
been corroded by it. He is too noble in his nature
to be habitually sarcastic, and too conscious of
power to be declamatory or diffuse.
MicJtel-Angelo. Nevertheless, in regard to
sarcasm, I have known him to wither a fungus
of vanity by a single beam of wit.
Vittoria. He may indeed have chastised an evil-
doer, but a glance of the eye or a motion of the
hand is enough. Throughout the ample palace of
his mind not an instrument of torture can be
found.
Michel-Angelo. Perhaps in the offices below,
a scourge may be suspended for intrusive curs, or
for thieves disguised in stolen liveries. I wish my
friend of this morning had met the Cardinal in-
stead of me. Possessing no sense of shame or
decency, and fancying that wherever he has thrust
a book he has conferred a distinction, he would
have taken the same easy liberty with his Emi-
nence.
Vittoria. If he continues to be so prolific, we
shall soon see another island emerging from the
Tiber. Our friend the Cardinal has indeed no
time to squander on those who, like your way-
layer, infest the public roads of literature, by sing-
ing old songs and screaming old complaints. But
I wish his political occupations would allow him
to pursue his pleasanter studies, and especially in
exercising his acute judgment on our primary
poets. For our country, both anciently and of late,
has always wanted a philosophical critic on poeti-
cal works, and none are popular in the present day
but such as generalise or joke. Ariosto, in de-
spite of them, is, however tardily and difficultly,
coming into favour. There is quite enough in
him for our admiration, although we never can
compare him with some among the ancients. For
the human heart is the world of poetry ; the ima-
gination is only its atmosphere. Fairies, and
genii, and angels themselves, are at best its insects,
glancing with unsubstantial wings about its lower
regions and less noble edifices.
Michel-Angelo. You have been accustomed,
0 Madonna, to contemplate in person those illus-
trious men who themselves were the destinies of
nations, and you are therefore less to be satisfied
with the imaginative and illusory.
Vittoria. There are various kinds of greatness,
as we all know ; however, the most-part of those
who profess one species is ready to acknowledge
no other. The first and chief is intellectual. But
surely those also are to be admitted into the num-
ber of the eminently great, who move large masses
by action, by throwing their own ardent minds
220
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
into the midst of popular assemblies or conflicting
armies, compelling, directing, and subjecting.
This greatness is indeed far from so desirable as
that which shines serenely from above, to be our
hope, comfort, and guidance ; to lead us in spirit
from a world of sad realities into one fresh from
the poet's hand, and blooming with all the variety
of his creation. Hence the most successful gene-
rals, and the most powerful kings, will always be
considered by the judicious and dispassionate as
invested with less dignity, less extensive and en-
during authority, than great philosophers and
great poets.
Michel-Angela. By the wise indeed ; but little
men, like little birds, are attracted and caught by
false lights.
Vittoria. It was beautifully and piously said in
days of old, that, wherever a spring rises from the
earth, an altar should be erected. Ought not we,
my friend, to bear the same veneration to the
genius which springs from obscurity in the loneli-
ness of lofty places, and which descends to irrigate
the pastures of the mind with a perennial fresh-
ness and vivifying force? If great poets build
their own temples, as indeed they do, let us at
least offer up to them our praises and thanks-
givings, and hope to render them acceptable by
the purest incense of the heart.
Michel-Angelo. First, we must find the
priests, for ours are inconvertible from their
crumbling altars. Too' surely we are without an
Aristoteles to precede and direct them.
Vittoria. We want him not only for poetry,
but philosophy. Much of the dusty perfumery,
which thickened for a season the pure air of Attica,
was dissipated by his breath. Calm reasoning,
deep investigation, patient experiment, succeeded
to contentious quibbles and trivial irony. The
sun of Aristoteles dispersed the unwholesome
vapour that arose from the garden of Academus.
Instead of spectral demons, instead of the mons-
trous progeny of mystery and immodesty, there
arose tangible images of perfect symmetry. Ho-
mer was recalled from banishment : ^Eschylus
followed : the choruses bowed before him, divided,
and took their stands. Symphonies were heard ;
what symphonies ! So powerful as to lighten the
chain that Jupiter had riveted on his rival. The
conquerors of kings until then omnipotent, kings
who had trampled on the towers of Babylon and
had shaken the eternal sanctuaries of Thebes,
the conquerors of these kings bowed their olive-
crowned heads to the sceptre of Destiny, and
their tears ran profusely over the immeasurable
wilderness of human woes.
Michel-Angelo. We have no poetry of this kind
now, nor have we auditors who could estimate or
know it if we had. Yet, as the fine arts have
raised up their own judges, literature may, ere
long, do the same. Instead of undervaluing and
beating down, let us acknowledge and praise any
resemblance we may trace to the lineaments of a
past and stronger generation.
Vittoria. But by the manners and habitudes of
antiquity ours are little to be improved. Scholars
who scorn the levity of Ariosto, and speak disdain-
fully of the middle ages, in the very centre of the
enchantment thrown over them by the magician
of Ferrara, never think how much we owe, not
only to him, but also to those ages ; never think
by what energies, corporeal and mental, from the
barbarous soldier rose the partially polished
knight, and high above him, by slower degrees,
the accomplished and perfect gentleman, the
summit of nobility.
Michel-Angelo. 0 that Pescara were present !
Pescara! whom your words seem to have em-
bodied and recalled ! Pescara ! the lover of all
glory, but mostly of yours, Madonna ! he to whom
your beauty Was eloquence and your eloquence
beauty, inseparable as the influences of deity.
Vittoria. Present ! and is he not ] Where I am
there is he, for evermore. Earth may divide,
Heaven never does. The beauty you speak of is
the only thing departed from me, and that also is
with him perhaps. He may, I hope he may, see
me as he left me, only more pacified, more re-
signed. After I had known Pescara, even if I
had never been his, I should have been espoused
to him ; espoused to him before the assembled
testimonies of his innumerable virtues, before his
genius, his fortitude, his respectful superiority, his
manly gentleness. Yes, I should have been mar-
ried to his glory ; and, neither in his lifetime nor
when he left the world, would I have endured,
0 Michel-Angelo, any other alliance. The
very thought, the very words conveying it, are
impiety. But friendship helps to support that
heavy pall to which the devoted cling tenaciously
for ever.
Michel-Angelo. Oh ! that at this moment . . .
Vittoria. Hush ! hush ! Wishes are by-paths
on the declivity to unhappiness ; the weaker ter-
minate in the sterile sand, the stronger in the
vale of tears. If there are griefs, which we know
there are, so intense as to deprive us of our intel-
lects, griefs in the next degree of intensity, far
from depriving us of them, amplify, purify, regu-
late, and adorn them. We sometimes spring
above happiness, and fall on the other side. This
hath happened to me ; but strength enough is left
me to raise myself up again, and to follow the
guide who calls me.
Michel-Angelo. Surely God hath shown that
mortal what his own love is, for whom he hath
harmonised a responsive bosom, warm in the last
as in the first embraces. One look of sympathy,
one regret at parting, is enough, is too much ; it
burdens the heart with overpayment. You can
not gather up the blossoms which, by blast after
blast, have been scattered and whirled behind
you. Are they requisite 1 The fruit was formed
within them ere they fell upon the walk; you
have culled it in its season.
Vittoria. Before we go into another state of
existence, a thousand things occur to detach us
imperceptibly from this. To some (who knows to
how many?) the images of early love return with
MELANCTHON AND CALVIN.
221
an inviting yet a saddening glance, and the breast
that was laid out for the sepulchre bleeds afresh.
Such are ready to follow where they are beckoned,
and look keenly into the darkness they are about
to penetrate.
Did we not begin to converse on another sub-
ject 1 Why have you not spoken to me this half-
hour]
Michel-Angelo. I see, 0 Donna Vittoria, I
may close the volume we were to read and cri-
ticise.
Vittwria. Then I hope you have something of
your own for me instead.
Michel- A ngelo. Are you not tired of my verses ]
Your smile is too splendid a reward, but too
indistinct an answer. Pray, pray tell me, Ma-
donna ! and yet I have hardly the courage to hear
you tell me . . have I not sometimes written to
you] . .
Vittoria. My cabinet can answer for that. Lift
up your sphinx if you desire to find it. Anything
in particular ]
Michel-Angelo. I would say, written to you
with . . .
Vittoria. With what ] a golden pen ]
Michel-Angelo. No, no.
Vittoria. An adamantine one?
You child ! you child ! are you hiding it in my
sleeve ] An eagle's plume ] a nightingale's ] a
dove's ] I must have recourse to the living sphinx,
if there is any, not to the porphyry. Have you
other pens than these ] I know the traces of them
all, and am unwilling to give you credit for any
fresh variety. But come, tell me, what is it]
Michel-Angelo. I am apprehensive that I some-
times have written to you with an irrepressible
gush of tenderness, which is but narrowed and
deepened and precipitated by entering the chan-
nel of verse. This, falling upon vulgar ears, might
be misinterpreted.
Vittoria. If I have deserved a wise man's praise
and a virtuous man's affection, I am not to be
defrauded of them by stealthy whispers, nor de-
terred from them by intemperate clamour. She
whom Pescara selected for his own, must excite
the envy of too many ; but the object of envy is
not the sufferer by it : there are those who convert
it even into recreation. One star hath ruled my
destiny and shaped my course. Perhaps . . no,
not perhaps, but surely, under that clear light I
may enjoy unreproved the enthusiasm of his
friend, the greatest man, the most ardent and
universal genius, he has left behind him. Cou-
rage ! courage ! Lift up again the head which
nothing on earth should lower. When death ap-
proaches me, be present, Michel-Angelo, and shed
as pure tears on this hand as I did shed on the
hand of Pescara.
Michel-Angelo. Madonna! they are these;
they are these ! endure them now rather !
Merciful God ! if there is piety in either, grant
me to behold her at that hour, not in the palace
of a hero, not in the chamber of a saint, but from
thine everlasting mansions !
MELANCTHON AND CALVIN.
Calvin. Are you sure, 0 Melancthon ! that you
yourself are among the elect ]
Melancthon. My dear brother ! so please it God,
I would rather be among the many.
Calvin. Of the damned ]
Melancthon. Alas ! no. But I am inclined to
believe that the many will be saved and will be
happy, since Christ came into the world for the
redemption of sinners.
Calvin. Hath not our Saviour said explicitly,
that many are called, but few chosen.
Melancthon. Our Saviour] hath he said it]
Calvin. Hath he forsooth ! Where is your New
Testament ]
Melancthon. In my heart.
Calvin. Without this page however.
Melancthon. When we are wiser and more
docile, that is, when we are above the jars and
turmoils and disputations of the world, our Saviour
will vouchsafe to interpret what, through the
fumes of our intemperate vanity, is now indistinct
or dark. He will plead for us before no inexora-
ble judge. He came to remit the sins of man ;
not the sins of a few, but of many ; not the sins of
many, but of all
Calvin. What ! of the benighted heathen too ]
of the pagan ] of the idolater 1
Melancthon. I hope so; but I dare not say it.
Calvin. You would include even the negligent,
the indifferent, the sceptic, the unbeliever.
Melancthon. Pitying them for a want of happi-
ness in a want of faith. They are my brethren :
they are God's children. He will pardon the pre-
sumption of my wishes for their welfare ; my sor-
row that they have fallen, some through their
blindness, others through their deafness, others
through their terror, others through their anger
peradventure at the loud denunciations of unfor-
giving man. If I would forgive a brother, may
not he, who is immeasurably better and more
merciful, have pity on a child ] He came on earth
to take our nature upon him : will he punish, will
he reprehend us, for an attempt to take as much
as may be of his upon ourselves ]
Calvin. There is no bearing any such fallacies.
Melancthon. Is it harder to bear these fallacies
(as they appear to you, and perhaps are, for we all
are fallible, and many even of our best thoughts
are fallacies), is it harder, 0 my friend, to bear
these, than to believe in the eternal punishment
of the erroneous ]
Calvin. Erroneous indeed ! Have they not the
Book of Life, now at last laid open before them,
for their guidance]
Melancthon. No, indeed ; they have only two or
three places, dog-eared and bedaubed, which they
222
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
are commanded to look into and study. These
are so uninviting, that many close again the
volume of salvation, clasp it tight, and throw it
back in our faces. I would rather show a man
green fields than gibbets : and if I called him to
enter the service of a plenteous house and power-
ful master, he may not be rendered the more will-
ing to enter it by my pointing out to him the
stocks in the gateway, and telling him that nine-
tenths of the household, however orderly, must
occupy that position. The book of good news
under your interpretation, tells people not only
that they may go and be damned, but that unless
they are lucky, they must inevitably. Again it
informs another set of inquirers that if once they
have been under what they feel to be the influence
of grace, they never can relapse. All must go
well who have once gone well ; and a name once
written in the list of favorites can never be
erased.
Calvin. This is certain.
Mdancfhon. Let us hope then, and in holy con-
fidence let us believe, that the book is large and
voluminous ; that it begins at an early date of
man's existence ; and that amid the agitation of
inquiry, it comprehends the humble and submis-
sive doubter. For doubt itself, between the richest
patrimony and utter destitution, is quite sufficiently
painful : and surely it is a hardship to be turned
over into a criminal court for having lost in.a civil
one. But if all who have once gone right can
never go astray, how happens it that so large a
part of the angels fell off from their allegiance ?
They were purer and wiser than we are, and had
the advantage of seeing God face to face. They
were the ministers of his power ; they knew its
extent; yet they defied it. If we err, it is in
relying too confidently on his mercies; not in
questioning his omnipotence. If our hopes forsake
us, if the bonds of sin bruise and corrode us, so
that we can not walk upright, there is, in the
midst of these calamities, no proof that we are
utterly lost. Danger far greater is there in the
presumption of an especial favour, which men in-
comparably better than ourselves can never have
deserved. Let us pray, 0 Calvin, that we may
hereafter be happier than our contentions and
animosities will permit us to be at present ; and
that our opponents, whether now in the right or
in the wrong, may come at last where all error
ceases.
Calvin. I am uncertain whether such a wish is
rational : and I doubt more whether it is religious.
God hath willed them to walk in their blindness.
To hope against it, seems like repining at his
unalterable decree ; a weak indulgence in an un-
permitted desire ; an unholy entreaty of the heart
that He will forego his vengeance, and abrogate
the law that was from the beginning. Of one
thing I am certain : we must lop off the un-
sound.
Melancthon. What a curse hath metaphor been
to religion ! It is the wedge that holds asunder
the two great portions of the Christian world. We
hear of nothing so commonly as fire and sword.
And here indeed what was metaphor is converted
into substance and applied to practice. The un-
soundness of doctrine is not cut off nor cauterised ;
the professor is. The head falls on the scaffold,
or fire surrounds the stake, because a doctrine is
bloodless and incombustible. Fierce outrageous
animals, for want of the man who has escaped
them, lacerate and trample his cloak or bonnet.
This, although the work of brutes, is not half so
brutal as the practice of theologians, seizing the
man himself, instead of bonnet or cloak.
Cahin. We must leave such matters to the
magistrate.
Melancthon. Let us instruct the magistrate in
his duty; this is ours. Unless we can teach
humanity, we may resign the charge of religion.
For fifteen centuries, Christianity has been con-
veyed into many houses, in many cities, in many
regions, but always through slender pipes; and
never yet into any great reservoir in any part of
the earth. Its principal ordinances have never
been observed in the polity of any state whatever.
Abstinence from spoliation, from oppression, from
bloodshed, has never been inculcated by the chief
priests of any. These two facts excite the doubts
of many in regard to a divine origin and a divine
protection. Wherefore it behoves us the more
especially to preach forbearance. If the people are
tolerant one toward another in the same country,
they will become tolerant in time toward those
whom rivers or seas have separated from them.
For surely it is strange and wonderful that nations
which are near enough for hostility should never
be near enough for concord. This arises from
bad government ; and bad government arises from
a negligent choice of counsellors by the prince,
usually led or terrified by a corrupt, ambitious,
wealthy (and therefore unchristian) priesthood.
While their wealth lay beyond the visible horizon,
they tarried at the cottage, instead of pricking on
for the palace.
Calvin. By the grace and help of God we will
turn them back again to their quiet and whole-
some resting-place, before the people lay a rough
hand upon the silk.
But you evaded my argument on predestination.
Melancthon. Our blessed Lord himself, in his
last hours, ventured to express a wish before his
heavenly Father, that the bitter cup might pass
away from him. I humbly dare to implore that
a cup much bitterer may be removed from the
great body of mankind ; a cup containing the
poison of eternal punishment, where agony suc-
ceeds to agony, but never death.
Calvin. I come armed with the Gospel.
Melancthon. Tremendous weapon ! as we have
seen it through many ages, if man wields it against
man : but like the fabled spear of old mythology,
endued with the faculty of healing the saddest
wound its most violent wielder can inflict. Ob-
scured and rusting with the blood upon it, let us
hasten to take it up again, and apply it, as best
we may, to its appointed uses.
MELANCTHON AND CALVIN.
223
The life of our Saviour is the simplest exposi-
tion of his words. Strife is what he both discoun-
tenanced and forbade. We ourselves are right-
minded, each of us all: and others are right-
minded in proportion as they agree with us, chiefly
in matters which we insist are well worthy of our
adherence, but which whosoever refuses to em-
brace displays a factious and unchristian spirit.
These for the most part are matters which neither
they nor we understand, and which, if we did
understand them, would little profit us. The
weak will be supported by the strong, if they can;
if they can not, they are ready to be supported
even by the weaker, and cry out against the
strong, as arrogant or negligent, or deaf or blind ;
at last even their strength is questioned, and the
more if, while there is fury all around them, they
are quiet.
I remember no discussion on religion in which
religion was not a sufferer by it, if mutual for-
bearance, and belief in another's good motives
and intentions, are. (as I must always think
they are) its proper and necessary appurte-
nances.
Calvin. Would you never make inquiries ?
Melancthon. Yes ; and as deep as possible ;
but into my own heart ; for that belongs to
me ; and God hath entrusted it most especially
to my own superintendence.
Calvin. We must also keep others from going
astray, by showing them the right road, and, if
they are obstinate in resistance, then by coercing
and chastising them through the magistrate.
Melancthon. It is sorrowful to dream that we
are scourges in God's hand, and that he appoints
for us no better work than lacerating one another.
I am no enemy to inquiry, where I see abuses, and
where I suspect falsehood. The Romanists, our
great oppressors, think it presumptuous to search
into things abstruse ; and let us do them the jus-
tice to acknowledge that, if it is a fault, it is one
which they never commit. But surely we are kept
sufficiently in the dark by the infirmity of our
nature : no need to creep into a corner and put our
hands before our eyes. To throw away or turn
aside from God's best gifts is verily a curious sign
of obedience and submission. He not only hath
given us a garden to walk in, but he hath planted
it also for us, and he wills us to know the nature
and properties of everything that grows up within
it. Unless we look into them and handle them
and register them, how shall we discover this to
be salutary, that to be poisonous; this annual,
that perennial ?
Calvin. Here we coincide; and I am pleased
to find in you less apathy than I expected. It
becomes us, moreover, to denounce God's ven-
geance on a sinful world.
Melancthon. Is it not better and pleasanter to
show the wanderer by what course of life it may
be avoided] is it not better and pleasanter to
enlarge on God's promises of salvation, than to
insist on his denunciations of wrath] is it not
better and pleasanter to lead the wretched up to
his mercy-seat, than to hurl them by thousands
under his fiery chariot?
Calvin. We have no option. By our heavenly
Father many are called, but few are chosen.
Melancthon. There is scarcely a text in the Holy
Scriptures to which there is not an opposite text,
written in characters equally large and legible ;
and there has usually been a sword laid upon
each. Even the weakest disputant is made so
conceited by what he calls religion, as to think
himself wiser than the wisest who thinks differ-
ently from him ; and he becomes so ferocious
by what he calls holding it fast, that he appears
to me as if he held it fast much in the same
manner as a terrier holds a rat, and you have about
as much trouble in getting it from between his
incisors. When at last it does come out, it is
mangled, distorted, and extinct.
Calvin. M. Melancthon ! you have taken a very
perverse view of the subject. Such language as
yours would extinguish that zeal which is to en-
lighten the nations, and to consume the tares by
which they are overrun.
Melancthon. The tares and the corn are so
intermingled throughout the wide plain which our
God hath given us to cultivate, that I would rather
turn the patient and humble into it to weed it
carefully, than a thresher who would thresh
wheat and tare together before the grain is
ripened, or who would carry fire into the furrows
when it is.
Calvin. Yet even the most gentle, and of the
gentler sex, are inflamed with a holy zeal in the
propagation of the faith.
Melancthon. I do not censure them for their
earnestness in maintaining truth. We not only
owe our birth to them, but also the better part
of our education ; and if we were not divided
after their first lesson, we should continue to live
in a widening circle of brothers and sisters all
our lives. After our infancy and removal from
home, the use of the rod is the principal thing we
learn of our alien preceptors ; and, catching their
dictatorial language, we soon begin to exercise
their instrument of enforcing it, and swing it
right and left, even after we are paralysed by age,
and until Death's hand strikes it out of ours. I
am sorry you have cited the gentler part of the
creation to appear before you, obliged as I am to
bear witness that I myself have known a few
specimens of the fair sex become a shade less
fair, among the perplexities of religion. Indeed
I am credibly informed that certain of them have
lost their patience, running up and down in the
dust where many roads diverge. This surely is
not walking humbly with their God, nor walking
with him at all ; for those who walk with him are
always readier to hear His voice than their own,
and to admit that it is more persuasive. But at
last the zealot is so infatuated, by the serious
mockeries he imitates and repeats, that he really
takes his own voice for God's. Is it not wonder-
ful that the words of eternal life should have
hitherto produced only eternal litigation; and
224
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
that, in our progress heavenward, we should think
it expedient to plant unthrifty thorns over bitter
wells of blood in the wilderness we leave behind us?
Calvin. It appears to me that you are inclined
to tolerate even the rank idolatry of our perse-
cutors. Shame ! shame !
Melancthon. Greater shame if I tolerated it
within my own dark heart, and waved before it
the foul incense of self-love.
Calvin. I do not understand you. What I do
understand is this, and deny it at your peril . . I
mean at the peril of your salvation . . that God is a
jealous God : he himself declares it.
Melancthon. We are in the habit of considering
the God of Nature as a jealous God, and idolatry
as an enormous evil ; an evil which is about to
come back into the world, and to subdue or seduce
once more our strongest and most sublime affec-
tions. Why do you lift up your eyes and hands ?
Calvin. An evil about to come back ! about to
come ! Do we not find it in high places ]
Melancthon. We do indeed, and always shall,
while there are any high places upon earth.
Thither will men creep, and there fall prostrate.
Calvin. Against idolatry we still implore the
Almighty that he will incline our hearts to keep
his law.
Melancthon. The Jewish law,* the Jewish ido-
latry. You fear the approach of this, and do not
suspect the presence of a worse.
Calvin. A worse than that which the living God
hath denounced ?
Melancthon. Even so.
Calvin. Would it not offend, would it not wound
to the quick, a mere human creature,, to be likened
to a piece of metal or stone, a calf or monkey ?
Melancthon. A mere human creature might be
angry ; because his influence among his neigh-
bours arises in great measure from the light in
which he appears to them ; and this light does
not emanate from himself, but may be thrown on
him by any hand that is expert at mischief : be-
side, the likeness of such animals to him could
never be suggested by reverence or esteem, nor
be regarded as a type of any virtue. The mere
human creature, such as human creatures for the
most-part are, would be angry; because he has
nothing which he can oppose to ridicule but
resentment.
Calvin. I am in consternation at your luke-
warmness. If you treat idolaters thus lightly,
what hope can I entertain of discussing with you
the doctrine of grace and predestination.
Melancthon. Entertain no such hope at all.
Wherever I find in the Holy Scriptures a dis-
putable doctrine, I interpret it as judges do, in
favour of the culprit : such is man : the benevolent
judge is God. But in regard to idolatry, I see
more criminals who are guilty of it than you do.
I go beyond the stone-quarry and the pasture,
beyond the graven image and the ox-stall. If we
bow before the distant image of good, while there
exists within our reach one solitary object of sub-
stantial sorrow, which sorrow our efforts can
remove, we are guilty (I pronounce it) of idolatry :
we prefer the intangible effigy to the living form.
Surely we neglect the service of our Maker if we
neglect his children. He left us in the chamber
with them, to take care of them, to feed them, to
admonish them, and occasionally to amuse them :
instead of which, after a warning not to run into
the fire, we slam the door behind us in their faces,
and run eagerly down-stairs to dispute and quar-
rel with our fellows of the household who are
about their business. The wickedness of idolatry
does not consist in any inadequate representation
of the Deity, for whether our hands or our hearts
represent him, the representation is almost alike
inadequate. Every man does what he hopes and
believes will be most pleasing to his God ; and
God, in his wisdom and mercy, will not punish
gratitude in its error.
Calvin. How do you know that ]
Melancthon. Because I know his loving-kindness,
and experience it daily.
Calvin. If men blindly and wilfully run into
error when God hath shown the right way, he
will visit it on their souls.
Melancthon. He will observe from the serenity
of heaven, a serenity emanating from his pre-
sence, that there is scarcely any work of his creation
on earth which hath not excited, in some people
or other a remembrance, an admiration, a symbol,
of his power. The evil of idolatry is this. Rival
nations have raised up rival deities: war hath
been denounced in the name of Heaven : men
have been murdered for the love of God : and
such impiety hath darkened all the regions of the
world, that the Lord of all things hath been
invoked by all simultaneously as the Lord of
Hosts. This is the only invocation in which men
of every creed are united : an invocation to which
Satan, bent on the perdition of the human race,
might have listened from the fallen angels.
Calvin. We can not hope to purify men's hearts
until we lead them away from the abomination of
Babylon : nor will they be led away from it until
we reduce the images to dust. So long as they
stand, the eye will hanker after them, and the
spirit be corrupt.
Melancthon. And long afterward, I sadly fear.
We attribute to the weakest of men the appel-
lations and powers of Deity : we fall down
before them : we call the impious and cruel by
the title of gracious and most religious : and, even
in the house of God himself, and before his very
altar, we split his Divine Majesty asunder, and
offer the largest part to the most corrupt and
most corrupting of his creatures.
Calvin. Not we, M. Melancthon. I will preach,
I will exist, in no land of such abomination.
Melancthon. So far, well : but religion demands
more. Our reformers knock off the head from
Jupiter : thunderbolt and sceptre stand. The
attractive, the impressive, the august, they would
annihilate, leaving men nothing but their sordid
fears of vindictive punishment, and their impious
doubts of our Saviour's promises.
WALKER, HATTAJI, GONDA, AND DEWAH.
225
Calvin. We should teach men to retain for ever
the fear of God before their eyes, never to cease
from the apprehension of His wrath, to be well
aware that He often afflicts when He is farthest
from wrath, and that such infliction is a benefit
bestowed by Him.
Melancthon. What! if only a few are to be
saved when the infliction is over ?
Calvin. It beeometh not us to repine at the
number of vessels which the supremely wise arti-
ficer forms, breaks, and casts away, or at the
paucity it pleaseth him to preserve. The ways of
Providence are inscrutable.
Melancthon. Some of them are, and some of them
are not ; and in these it seems to be his design
that we should see and adore his wisdom. We
fancy that all our inflictions are sent us directly
and immediately from above : sometimes we
think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in
moroseness and discontent. It would, however,
be well if we attempted to trace the causes of
them. We should probably find their origin in
some region of the heart which we never had well
explored, or in which we had secretly deposited
our worst indulgences. The clouds that intercept
the heavens from us, come not from the heavens,
but from the earth.
Why should we scribble our own devices over
the Book of God, erasing the plainest words, and
rendering the Holy Scriptures a worthless palimp-
sest ? Can not we agree to show the nations of
the world that the whole of Christianity is prac-
ticable, although the better parts never have been
practised, no, not even by the priesthood, in any
single one of them. Bishops, confessors, saints,
martyrs, have never denounced to king or people,
nor ever have attempted to delay or mitigate, the
most accursed of crimes, the crime of Cain, the
crime indeed whereof Cain's was only a germ, the
crime of fratricide, war, war, devastating, depo-
pulating, soul-slaughtering, heaven-defying war.
Alas ! the gentle call of mercy sounds feebly, and
soon dies away, leaving no trace on the memory :
but the swelling cries of vengeance, in which we
believe we imitate the voice of Heaven, run and
reverberate in loud peals and multiplied echoes
along the whole vault of the brain. All the man
is shaken by them ; and he shakes all the earth.
Calvin ! I beseech you, do you who guide and
govern so many, do you (whatever others may)
spare your brethren. Doubtful as I am of lighter
texts, blown backward and forward at the opening
of opposite windows, I am convinced and certain
of one grand immovable verity. It sounds strange ;
it sounds contradictory.
Calvin. I am curious to hear it.
Melancthon. You shall. This is the tenet. There
is nothing on earth divine beside humanity.
WALKER, HATTAJI, GONDA, AND DEWAH.*
Walker. Hattaji ! you may rest assured that
the operation is not dangerous to the boys, and
that it will preserve them in future from the most
loathsome and devastating of maladies.
Hattaji. I do not fear that it will impair the
strength of the children, or remove an evil by a
worse : but will it not, like the other, leave marks,
and spoil the features 1
Gonda, Spoil what features, father] Are we
not boys ?
Dewah. Gonda ! be still !
Walker. How is this? what do they mean,
Hattaji ] why do you look so discomposed ?
Hattaji. Ah, children ! you now discover your
sex. Dissimulation with you will soon grow
easier, with me never. Praise be to God ! I
am a robber, not a merchant : falsehood is my
abhorrence.
Thou knowest the custom of our Jerijah tribe.
Every female our wives bring forth, is, in less
time and with less trouble, removed from the
sunshine that falls upon the threshold of life. A
drop of poppy-juice restores it to the stillness it
* Among the Jerijahs, a tribe in Guzerat, it was cus-
tomary for mothers to kill every female infant, and the
race was perpetuated by women from Sada. Hattaji had
saved two daughters, Gonda and Dewah, dressed like boys,
and brought to Colonel Walker's camp to be vaccinated.
Walker abolished this infanticide ; yet we hear of no
equestrian statue or monument of any kind erected to
him in England or India.
VOL. n.
has just quitted ; or the parent lays on the lip an
unrelenting finger, saying, " 0 pretty rose-bud,
thou must breathe no fragrance ! I must never
irrigate, I must never wear thee !"
Walker. We know this horrid custom. Thou
hast then broken through it 1 Eternal glory to
thee, Hattaji ! The peace of God, that dwells in
every man's breast while he will let it dwell there,
be with thee now and evermore !
Hattaji. Children ! you must keep this secret
better than your own. He wishes me the peace
of God. I should be grieved were he condemned
to many penances for it. The Portuguese call
it heresy to hope anything from God for men of
another creed. Will not thy priests, like theirs,
force thee to swallow some ass-loads of salt for it ?
When I was last in Goa, I saw several of them in
girl's frocks, and with little wet rods in their
hands,. put a quantity of it into the mouth of a
Malay, as we do into the mouths of carp and eels,
to purify them before we eat them ; and with the
same effect. Incredible what a quantity of here-
sies of all colours it brought up. He would have
performed his ablutions after this function ; and
never did they appear more necessary ; but the
priests buffetted him well, and dragged him away,
lest, as they said, he should relapse into idolatry.
You Englishmen do not entertain half so much
abhorrence of idolatry, as the French and Portu-
guese do : for I have seen many of you wash your
hands and faces, without fear and without shame ;
226
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and it is reported that your women are still less
scrupulous.
You can pardon me the preservation of my
girls. So careful are you yourselves in the con-
cealment of your daughters, that I have heard of
several sent over to India, to keep them away
from the sofa of Rajahs, and the finger of mothers :
even the Portuguese take due precautions. None
perhaps of their little ones born across the ocean,
are considered worth the expenditure of so long a
voyage, like yours; but those who are born in
Goa, are seldom left to the mercy of a parent.
The young creatures are suckled and nursed, and
soon afterward are sent into places where they
are amused by bells and beads and embroidery,
and where none beside their priests and santons
can get access to them. These holy men not only
save their lives, but treat them with every ima-
ginable kindness, teaching them many mysteries.
Indeed, they perform such a number of good
offices in their behalf, that on this account alone
they, after mature deliberation, hold it quite un-
necessary to hang by the hair or ribs from trees
and columns, or to look up at the sun till they
are blind.
Walker. Were I a santon, I should be much of
the same opinion.
Gonda. 0 no, no, no. So good a man would
gladly teach us anything, but surely would rather
think with our blessed dervishes, and would be
overjoyed to hang by the hair or the ribs, to please
God.
Walker. Sweet child ! We are accustomed to
so many sights of cruelty on the side of the power-
ful, that our intellects stagger under us, until we
fancy we see in the mightiest of beings, the most
cruel.
Does not every kind action, every fond word of
your father, please you greatly ?
Gonda. Everyone : but I am little ; all things
please me.
Walker. Well, Hattaji ! thou art not little ; tell
me then, does not every caress of these children
awaken thy tenderness ?
Hattaji. It makes me bless myself that I gave
them existence, and it makes me bless God that
he destined me to preserve it.
Walker. It opens to thee in the desarts of life,
the two most exuberant and refreshing sources of
earthly happiness, love and piety. And if either
of these little ones should cut a foot with a stone,
or prick a finger with a thorn, would it delight
thee?
Hattaji. A drop of their blood is worth all
mine : the stone would lame me, the thorn would
pierce my eye-balls.
Walker. Wise Hattaji ! for tender love is true
wisdom ; the truest wisdom being perfect happi-
ness. Thinkest thou God less wise, less beneficent
than thyself, or better pleased with the sufferings
of his creatures ?
Gonda. No ; God is wiser even than my father,
and quite as kind : for God has done many things
which my father could never do, nor understand,
he tells us; and God has made us all three happy,
and my father has made happy only me and
Dewah. He seems to love no one else in the
world ; and now we are with him, he seldom
goes forth to demand his tribute of the Rajahs,
and is grown so idle, he permits them to take it
from every poor labourer ; so that in time a Rajah
will begin to think himself as brave and honest a
man as a robber. Can not you alter this] Why do
you smile]
Walker. We Englishmen exercise both digni-
ties, and therefore are quite impartial, but we
must not interfere with Hattaji and his subsidiary
Rajahs. Have you lately been at Goa, Hattaji?
Hattaji. Not very.
Walker. Nevertheless you appear to have paid
great attention to their religious rites.
Hattaji. They are better off than you are in
those matters. I would advise you to establish a
fishery as near as possible to the coasts of their
territory, and seize upon their salt-works for curing
the fish.
Walker. Why so?
Hattaji. They have several kinds which are effec-
tual remedies for sins. I do not know whether
they have any that are preventative ; nor does
that seem a consideration in their religion. In-
deed, why should it? when the most flagrant crime
can be extinguished by putting a fish against
it, with a trifle of gold or silver at head and tail.
Walker. A very ingenious contrivance !
Hattaji. I would not offend . . but surely their
priests outdo yours.
Walker. In the application of fish ? or what ?
Hattaji. When I say it of yours, I say it also of
ours, in one thing. We have people among us,
who can subdue our worst serpents, by singing :
theirs manage a great one, of which perhaps you
may have heard some account, and make him ap-
pear and disappear, and devour one man and spare
another, although of the same size and flavour ;
which the wisest of our serpent-singers can not do
with the most tractable and the best-conditioned
snake.
Gond,a. 0 my dear father ! what are you saying !
You would make these infidels as great as those
of the true faith. Be sure it is all a deception ;
and we have jugglers as good as theirs. We
alone have real miracles, framed on purpose for
us, not false ones like those of the Mahometans
and Portuguese.
Walker. What are theirs, my dear ?
Gonda. I do not know : I only know they are
false ones.
Hattaji. Who told thee so ? ay, child !
Gonda. Whenever a holy man of our blessed
faith has come to visit you, he seized the oppor-
tunity, as he told me, if you were away for a
moment, to enlighten and instruct me, taking
my hand and kissing me, and telling me to be-
lieve him in everything as I would Vishnou, and
assuring me that nothing is very hateful but un-
belief, and that I may do what I like if I believe.
Walker. And what was your answer?
OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
227
Gonda. I leaped and danced for joy, and cried
" may I indeed ? Then I will believe everything;
for then I may follow my dear father all over
Guzerat ; and if ever he should be wounded again,
I may take out my finest shawl (for he gave me
two) and tear it and tie it round the place."
Hattaji. Chieftain ! I did well to save this girl.
. . And thou, timid tender Dewah ! wilt thou too
follow me all over Guzerat ]
Dewah. Father ! I am afraid of elephants and
horses, and armed men : I should run away.
Hattaji. What then wilt thou do for me ?
Dewah. I can do nothing.
Hattaji (to himself). I saved her : yes, I am glad
1 saved her : I only wish I had not questioned
her : she pains me now for the first time. He
has heard her : 0, this is worst ! I might forget
it ; can he ]
Child why art thou afraid ?
Dewah. I am two years younger than Gonda.
Hattaji. But the women of Sada would slay
thee certainly, wert thou left behind, and per-
haps with stripes and tortures, for having so long
escaped.
Dewah. I do not fear women ; they dress rice,
and weave robes, and gather flowers.
Hattaji. Dewah ! I fear for thee more than thou
fearest for thyself.
Dewah. Dear, dear father! I am ready to go
with you all over Guzerat, and to be afraid of any-
thing as much as you are, if you will only let me.
I tremble to think I could do nothing if a wicked
man should try to wound you ; or even if only a
tiger came unawares upon you, I could but shriek
and pray; and it is not always that Vishnou hears
in time. And now, 0 father, do remember that,
although Gonda has two shawls, I have one ; and
she likes both hers better than mine. If ever you
are hurt anywhere . . Ah, gracious God forbid it !
. . have mine first : I will try to help her : how
can I ! how can I ! I can not see you even now :
I shall cry all the way through Guzerat! For
shame, Gonda ! I am but nine years old, and you
are eleven. Do girls at your age ever cry ] Is
there one tear left upon my cheek 1
Hattaji. By my soul, there is one on mine,
worth an empire to me.
Dewah. 0 Vishnou ! hear me in thy happy
world ! and never let Gonda tear her shawl for my
father!
Hattaji. And should it please Vishnou to take
thy father away ?
Dewah. I would cling to him and kiss him
from one end of heaven to the other.
Hattaji. Vishnou would not let thee come buck
again.
Dewah. Hush ! hush ! would you ask him? Do
not let him hear what you are saying.
Hattaji. Chieftain ! this is indeed the peace of
God.
May he spare you to me, pure and placid souls !
rendering pure and placid everything around you.
And have thousands like you been cast away !
One innocent smile of yours hath more virtue in
it than all manhood, is more powerful than all
wealth, and more beautiful than all glory. I pos-
sess new life, I will take a new name ;* the
daughter-gifted Hattaji.
OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
Sir Oliver. How many saints and Sions dost
carry under thy cloak, lad ? Ay, what dost groan
at ? JWhat art about to be delivered of] Troth,
it must be a vast and oddly-shapen piece of roguery
which findeth no issue at such capacious quarters.
I never thought to see thy face again. Prythee
what, in God's name, hath brought thee to Ram-
sey, fair Master Oliver ?
Oliver. In His name verily I come, and upon
His errand ; and the love and duty I bear unto
my godfather and uncle have added wings, in a
sort, unto my zeal.
Sir Oliver. Take 'em off thy zeal and dust thy
conscience with 'em. I have heard an account of
a saint, one Phil Neri, who in the midst of his
devotions was lifted up several yards from the
ground. Now I do suspect, Nol, thou wilt finish
by being a saint of his order ; and nobody will
promise or wish thee the luck to come down on
thy feet again, as he did. So ! because a rabble
of fanatics at Huntingdon have equipped thee as
their representative in Parliament, thou art free
of all men's houses, forsooth ! I would have thee
to understand, sirrah, that thou art fitter for the
house they have chaired thee unto than for mine.
Yet I do not question but thou wilt be as trouble-
some and unruly there as here. Did I not turn
thee out of Hinchinbrook when thou wert scarcely
half the rogue thou art latterly grown up to 1 And
yet wert thou immeasurably too big a one for it
to hold.
Oliver. It repenteth me, 0 mine uncle ! that
in my boyhood and youth the Lord had not
touched me.
Sir Oliver. Touch thee ! thou wast too dirty a
dog by half.
Oliver. Yea, sorely doth it vex and harrow me
that I was then of ill conditions, and that my
name . . even your godson's . . stank in your
nostrils.
Sir Oliver. Ha ! polecat ! it was not thy name,
although bad enough, that stank first; in my
house, at least.f But perhaps there are worse
maggots in stauncher mummeries.
* The Orientals are fond of taking an additional name
from some fortunate occurrence.
. f See Forster's Life of Cromwell.
§2
228
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Oliver. Whereas in the bowels of your charity
you then vouchsafed me forgiveness, so the more
confidently may I crave it now in this my
urgency.
Sir Oliver. More confidently ! "What 1 hast got
more confidence 1 Where didst find it 1 I never
thought the wide circle of the world had within it
another jot for thee. Well, Nol, I see no reason
why thou shouldst stand before me with thy hat
off, in the courtyard and in the sun, counting the
stones in the pavement. Thou hast some knavery
in thy head, I warrant thee. Come, put on thy
beaver.
Oliver. Uncle Sir Oliver ! I know my duty too
well to stand covered in the presence of so wor-
shipful a kinsman, who, moreover, hath answered
at baptism for my good behaviour.
Sir Oliver. God forgive me for playing the fool
before Him so presumptuously and unprofitably !
Nobody shall ever take me in again to do such an
absurd and wicked thing. But thou hast some
left-handed business in the neighbourhood, no
doubt, or thou wouldst never more have come
under my archway.
Olvcer. These are hard times for them that
seek peace. We are clay in the hand of the
potter.
Sir Oliver. I wish your potters sought nothing
costlier, and dug in their own grounds for it.
Most of us, as thou sayest, have been upon the
wheel of these artificers ; and little was left but
rags when we got off. Sanctified folks are the
cleverest skinners in all Christendom, and their
Jordan tans and constringes us to the averdupois
of mummies.
Oliver. The Lord hath chosen his own vessels.
Sir Oliver. I wish heartily He would pack them
off, and send them anywhere on ass-back or cart,
(cart preferably,) to rid our country of 'em. But
now again to the point : for if we fall among the
potsherds we shall hobble on but lamely. Since
thou art raised unto a high command in the army,
and hast a dragoon to hold yonder thy solid and
stately piece of horse-flesh, I can not but take it
into my fancy that thou hast some commission of
array or disarray to execute hereabout.
Oliver. With a sad sinking of spirit, to the pitch
well-nigh of swounding, and with a sight of bitter
tears, which will not be put back nor staid in
anywise, as you bear testimony unto me, uncle
Oliver !
Sir Oliver. No tears, Master Nol, I beseech
thee ! Wet days, among those of thy kidney, por-
tend the letting of blood. What dost whimper at?
Oliver. That I, that I, of all men living, should
be put upon this work !
Sir Oliver. What work, prythee ?
Oliver. I am sent hither by them who (the Lord
in his loving-kindness having pity and mercy
upon these poor realms) do, under his right hand,
administer unto our necessities, and righteously
command us, 6^ the aforesaid as aforesaid (thus
runs the commission), hither am I deputed (woe is
me !) to levy certain fines in this county, or shire,
on such as the Parliament in its wisdom doth
style malignants.
Sir Oliver. If there is anything left about the
house, never be over-nice : dismiss thy modesty
and lay hands upon it. In this county or shire,
we let go the civet-bag to save the weazon.
Oliver. 0 mine uncle and godfather ! be witness
for me,
Sir Oliver. Witness for thee ! not I indeed. But
I would rather be witness than surety, lad, where
thou art docketed.
Oliver. From the most despised doth the Lord
ever choose his servants.
Sir Oliver. Then, faith ! thou art his first
butler.
Oliver. Serving him with humility, I may per-
adventure be found worthy of advancement.
Sir Oliver. Ha ! now if any devil speaks from
within thee, it is thy own : he does not sniffle : to
my ears he speaks plain English. Worthy or
unworthy of advancement, thou wilt attain it.
Come in ; at least for an hour's rest. Formerly
thou knewest the means of setting the heaviest
heart afloat, let it be sticking in what mud-bank
it might : and my wet-dock at Ramsey is pretty
near as commodious as that over-yonder at Hinch-
inbrook was erewhile. Times are changed, and
places too ! yet the cellar holds good.
Oliver. Many and great thanks ! But there
are certain men on the other side of the gate,
who might take it ill if I turn away and neglect
them.
Sir Oliver. Let them enter also, or eat their vic-
tuals where they are.
Oliver. They have proud stomachs : they are
recusants.
Sir Oliver. Recusants of what ] of beef and ale ?
We have claret, I trust, for the squeamish, if they
are above the condition of tradespeople. But of
course you leave no person of higher quality in the
outer court.
Oliver. Vain are they and worldly, although such
wickedness is the most abominable in their cases.
Idle folks are fond of sitting in the sun : I would
not forbid them this indulgence.
Sir Oliver. But who are they 1
Oliver. The Lord knows. May-be priests, dea-
cons, and such like.
Sir Oliver. Then, sir, they are gentlemen. And
the commission you bear from the parliamentary
thieves, to sack and pillage my mansion-house, is
far less vexatious and insulting to me, than your
behaviour in keeping them so long at my stable-
door. With your permission, or without it, I shall
take the liberty to invite them to partake of my
poor hospitality.
Oliver. But, uncle Sir Oliver! there are rules
and ordinances whereby it must be manifested
that they lie under displeasure . . not mine . .
not mine . . but my milk must not flow for
them.
Sir Oliver. You may enter the house or remain
where you are, at your option ; I make my visit to
these gentlemen immediately, for I am tired of
OLIVER CROMWELL AND SIR OLIVER CROMWELL.
229
standing. If thou ever reaches! my age,* Oliver !
(but God will not surely let this be) thou wilt
know that the legs become at last of doubtful
fidelity in the service of the body.
Oliver. Uncle Sir Oliver ! now that, as it seemeth,
you have been taking a survey of the courtyard
and its contents, am I indiscreet in asking your
worship whether I acted not prudently in keeping
the men-at-betty under the custody of the men-at-
arms ? This pestilence, like unto one I remem-
ber to have read about in some poetry of Master
Chapman'Sjf began with the dogs and the mules,
and afterwards crope up into the breasts of
men.
Sir Oliver. I call such treatment barbarous;
their troopers will not let the gentlemen come
with me into the house, but insist on sitting
down to dinner with them. And yet, having
brought them out of their colleges, these brutal
half-soldiers must know that they are fellows.
Oliver. Yea, of a truth are they, and fellows well
met. Out of their superfluities they give nothing
to the Lord or his Saints ; no, not even stirrup or
girth, wherewith we may mount our horses and
go forth against those who thirst for our blood.
Their eyes are fat, and they raise not up their
voices to cry for our deliverance.
Sir Oliver. Art mad? What stirrups and
girths are hung up in college halls and libraries 1
For what are these gentlemen brought hither ?
Oliver. They have elected me, with somewhat
short of unanimity, not indeed to be one of them-
selves, for of that distinction I acknowledge and
deplore my unworthiness, nor indeed to be a poor
scholar, to which, unless it be a very poor one, I
have almost as small pretension, but simply to
undertake a while the heavier office of burser for
them ; to cast up their accounts ; to overlook the
scouring of their plate ; and to lay a list thereof,
with a few specimens, before those who fight the
fight of the Lord, that his Saints, seeing the abase-
ment of the proud and the chastisement of worldly-
mindedness, may rejoice.
Sir Oliver. I am grown accustomed to such
saints and such rejoicings. But, little could I
have thought, threescore years ago, that the
hearty and jovial people of England would ever
join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even
the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome,
who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years
before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less
bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but
* Sir Oliver, who died in 1655, aged ninety-three, might,
by possibility, have seen all the men of great genius, ex-
cepting Chaucer and Roger Bacon, whom England has
produced from its first discovery down to our own times.
Francis Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Newton, and the pro-
digious shoal that attended these leviathans through the
intellectual deep. Newton was but in his thirteenth jear
at Sir Oliver's death. Raleigh, Spenser, Hooker, Eliot,
Selden, Taylor, Hobbes, Sidney, Shaftesbury, and Locke,
were existing in his lifetime ; and several more, who may
be compared with the smaller of these.
i Chapman's Homer, first book.
they were not all hypocritical; they had not always
" the Lord " in their mouth.
Oliver. According to their own notions, they
might have had, at an outlay of a farthing.
Sir Oliver. Art facetious, Nol ] for it is as hard
to find that out as anything else in thee, only it
makes thee look, at times> a little the grimmer
and sourer.
But, regarding these gentlemen from Cambridge.
Not being such as, by their habits and profes-
sions, could have opposed you in the field, I hold
it unmilitary and unmanly to put them under any
restraint, and to lead them away from their peace-
ful and useful occupations.
Oliver. I always bow submissively before the
judgment of mine elders; and the more rever-
entially when I know them to be endowed with
greater wisdom, and guided by surer experience
than myself. Alas ! those collegians not only are
strong men, as you may readily see if you mea-
sure them round the waistband, but boisterous
and pertinacious challengers. When we, who live
in the fear of God, exhorted them earnestly unto
peace and brotherly love, they held us in derision.
Thus far indeed it might be an advantage to us,
teaching us forbearance and self-seeking, but we
can not countenance the evil spirit moving them
thereunto. Their occupations, as you remark
most wisely, might have been useful and peaceful,
and had formerly been so. Why then did they
gird the sword of strife about their loins against
the children of Israel ? By their own declaration,
not only are they our enemies, but enemies the
most spiteful and untractable. When I came
quietly, lawfully, and in the name of the Lord, for
their plate, what did they 1 Instead of surrender-
ing it like honest and conscientious men, they
attacked me and my people on horseback, with
syllogisms and enthymemes, and the Lord
knows with what other such gimcracks ; such
venemous and rankling old weapons as those who
have the fear of God before their eyes are fain to
lay aside. Learning should not make folks
mockers . . should not make folks malignants . .
should not harden their hearts. We came with
bowels for them.
Sir Oliver. That ye did ! and bowels which
would have stowed within them all the plate on
board of a galloon. If tankards and wassail bowls
had stuck between your teeth, you would not
have felt them.
Oliver. We did feel them ; some at least : per-
haps we missed too many.
Sir Oliver. How can these learned societies raise
the money you exact from them, beside plate?
dost think they can create and coin it ?
Oliver. In Cambridge, uncle Sir Oliver, and
more especially in that college named in honour
(as they profanely call it) of the blessed Trinity,
there are great conjurors or chemists. Now the
said conjurors or chemists not only do possess the
faculty of making the precious metals out of old
books and parchments, but out of the skulls of
young lordlings and gentlefolks, which verily pro-
230
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
mise less. And this they bring about by certain
gold wires fastened at the top of certain caps. Of
said metals, thus devilishly converted, do they
make a vain and sumptuous use ; so that, finally,
they are afraid of cutting their lips with glass.
But indeed it is high time to call them.
Sir Oliver. Well . . at last thou hast some
mercy.
Oliver (aloud). Cuffsatan Ramsbottom ! Sadsoul
Kiteclaw ! advance ! Let every gown, together
with the belly that is therein, mount up behind
you and your comrades in good fellowship. And
forasmuch as you at the country-places look to
bit and bridle, it seemeth fair and equitable that
ye should leave unto them, in full propriety, the
mancipular office of discharging the account. If
there be any spare beds at the inns, allow the
doctors and dons to occupy the same . . they
being used to lie softly ; and be not urgent that
more than three lie in each . . they being mostly
corpulent. Let pass quietly and unreproved any
light bubble of pride or impetuosity, seeing that
they have not always been accustomed to the ser-
vice of guards and ushers. The Lord be with
ye ! . . Slow trot ! And now, uncle Sir Oliver, I
can resist no longer your loving-kindness. I kiss
you, my godfather, in heart's and soul's duty; and
most humbly and gratefully do I accept of your
invitation to dine and lodge with you, albeit the
least worthy of your family and kinsfolk. After
the refreshment of needful food, more needful
prayer, and that sleep which descendeth on the
innocent like the dew of Hermon, to-morrow at
daybreak I proceed on my journey London-
ward.
Sir Oliver (aloud). Ho, there ! (To a servant.)
Let dinner be prepared in the great dining-room ;
let every servant be in waiting, each in full livery;
let every delicacy the house affords be placed
upon the table in due courses ; arrange all the
plate upon the side-board : a gentleman by
descent . . a stranger . . has claimed my hospitality.
(Servant goes.)
Sir ! you are now master. Grant me dispen-
sation, I entreat you, from a further attendance
on you.
THE COUNT GLEICHEM : THE COUNTESS : THEIR CHILDREN, AND ZAIDA.'
Countess. Ludolph ! my beloved Ludolph ! do
we meet again ! Ah ! I am jealous of these little
ones, and of the embraces you are giving them.
Why sigh, my sweet husband ?
Come back again, Wilhelm ! Come back again,
Annabella ! How could you run away ? Do you
think you can see better out of the corner]
Annabella. Is this indeed our papa? What,
in the name of mercy, can have given him so dark
a colour1? I hope I shall never be like that ; and
yet everybody tells me I am very like papa.
Wilhelm. Do not let her plague you, papa ; but
take me between your knees (I am too old to sit
upon them), and tell me all about the Turks, and
how you ran away from them.
Countess. Wilhelm ! if your father had run
away from the enemy, we should not have been
deprived of him two whole years. -
Wilhelm. I am hardly such a child as to sup-
pose that a Christian knight would run away
from a rebel Turk in battle. But even Christians
are taken, somehow, by their tricks and con-
trivances, and their dog Mahomet. Beside, you
know you yourself told me, with tear after tear,
and scolding me for mine, that papa was taken by
them.
Annabella. Neither am I, who am only one
year younger, so foolish as to believe there is any
dog Mahomet. And, if there were, we have dogs
that are better and faithfuller and stronger.
Wilhelm (to his father). I can hardly help laugh-
ing to think what curious fancies girls have about
* Andreas Hundorff relates that the Pope sanctioned
the double marriage of Count Gleichena, who carried his
second wife into Thuringia, where she was well received
by the first, and, having no children, was devoted to her
rival's.
Mahomet. We know that Mahomet is a dog-
spirit with three horsetails.
Annabella. Papa ! I am glad to see you smile
at Wilhelm. I do assure you he is not half so bad
a boy as he was, although he did point at me, and
did tell you some mischief.
Count. I ought to be indeed most happy at see-
ing you all again.
Annabella. And so you are. Don't pretend to
look grave now. I very easily find you out. I
often look grave when I am the happiest. But
forth it bursts at last : there is no room for it in
tongue, or eyes, or anywhere.
Count. And so, my little angel, you begin to
recollect me.
Annabella. At first I used to dream of papa,
but at last I forgot how to dream of him : and
then I cried, but at last I left off crying. And
then, papa, who could come to me in my sleep,
seldom came again.
Count. Why do you now draw back from me,
Annabella ?
Annabella. Because you really are so very very
brown : just like those ugly Turks who sawed the
pines in the saw-pit under the wood, and who
refused to drink wine in the heat of summer, when
Wilhelm and I brought it to them. Do not be
angry ; we did it only once.
Wilhelm. Because one of them stamped and
frightened her when the other seemed to bless us.
Count. Are they still living ?
Countess. One of them is.
Wilhelm. The fierce one.
Count. We will set him free, and wish it were
the other.
Annabella. Papa ! I am glad you are come back
without your spurs.
COUNT AND COUNTESS GLEICHEM.
231
Countess. Hush, child, hush.
A nnabella. Why, mama ? Do not you remem-
ber how they tore my frock when I clung to him
at parting] Now I begin to think of him again :
I lose everything between that day and this.
Countess. The girl's idle prattle about the spurs
has pained you : always too sensitive ; always soon
hurt, though never soon offended.
Count. 0 God ! 0 my children ! 0 my wife !
it is not the loss of spurs I now must blush for.
Annabella. Indeed, papa, you never can blush
at all, until you cut that horrid beard off.
Countess. Well may you say, my own Ludolph,
as you do ; for most gallant was your bearing in
the battle.
Count. Ah ! why was it ever fought ?
Countess. Why were most battles ? But they
may lead to glory even through slavery.
Count. And to shame and sorrow.
Countess. Have I lost the little beauty I pos-
sessed, that you hold my hand so languidly, and
turn away your eyes when they meet mine 1 It
was not so formerly . . unless when first we loved.
That one kiss restores to me all my lost hap-
piness.
Come ; the table is ready : there are your old
wines upon it : you must want that refreshment.
Count. Go, my sweet children ! you must eat
your supper before I do.
Countess. Eun into your own room for it.
Annabella. I will not go until papa has patted
me again on the shoulder, now I begin to remember
it. I do not much mind the beard : I grow used
to it already : but indeed I liked better to stroke
and pat the smooth laughing cheek, with my arm
across the neck behind. It is very pleasant even
so. Am I not grown? I can put the whole
length of my finger between your lips.
Count. And now, will not you come, Wilhelm ?
Wilhelm. I am too tall and too heavy : she is
but a child. ( Whispers.) Yet I think, papa, I am
hardly so much of a man but you may kiss me
over again . . if you will not let her see it.
Countess. My dears ! why do not you go to
your supper 1
Annabella. Because he has come to show us
what Turks are like.
Wilhelm. Do not be angry with her. Do not
look down, papa !
Count. Blessings on you both, sweet children !
WilJidm. We may go now.
Countess. And now, Ludolph, come to the table,
and tell me all your sufferings.
Count. The worst begin here.
Countess. Ungrateful Ludolph !
Count. I am he : that is my name in full.
Countess. You have then ceased to love me ?
Count. Worse ; if worse can be : I have ceased
to deserve your love.
Countess. No : Ludolph hath spoken falsely
for once ; but Ludolph is not false.
Count. I have forfeited all I ever could boast
of, your affection and my own esteem. Away
with caresses! Kepulse me, abjure me; hate, and
never pardon me. Let the abject heart lie untorn
by one remorse. Forgiveness would split and
shiver what slavery but abased.
Countess. Again you embrace me ; and yet tell
me never to pardon you ! O inconsiderate man !
0 idle deviser of impossible things !
But you have not introduced to me those who
purchased your freedom, or who achieved it by
their valour.
Count. Mercy ! 0 God !
Countess. Are they dead? Was the plague
abroad.
Count. I will not dissemble . . such was never
my intention . . that my deliverance was brought
about by means of . .
Countess. Say it at once . . a lady.
Count. It was.
Countess. She fled with you.
Count. She did.
Countess. And have you left her, sir ]
Count. Alas ! alas ! I have not ; and never can.
Countess. Now come to my arms, brave, honour-
able Ludolph ! Did I not say thou couldst not
be ungrateful? Where, where is she who has
given me back my husband ?
Count. Dare I utter it ! in this house.
Countess. Call the children.
Count. No; they must not affront her: they
must not even stare at her : other eyes, not theirs,
must stab me to the heart.
Countess. They shall bless her ; we will all.
Bring her in. [Zaida is led in by tlie Count.
Countess. We three have stood silent long
enough : and much there may be on which we
will for ever keep silence. But, sweet young crea-
ture ! can I refuse my protection, or my love, to
the preserver of my husband 1 Can I think it a
crime, or even a folly, to have pitied the brave
and the unfortunate ? to have pressed (but alas !
that it ever should have been so here !) a generous
heart to a tender one ?
Why do you begin to weep ?
Zaida. Under your kindness, 0 lady, lie the
sources of these tears.
But why has he left us ? He might help me
to say many things which I want to say.
Countess. Did he never tell you he was married ?
Zaida. He did indeed.
Countess. That he had children?
Zaida. It comforted me a little to hear it.
Countess. Why ? prythee why ?
Zaida. When I was in grief at the certainty of
holding but the second place in his bosom, I
thought I could at least go and play with them,
and win perhaps their love.
Countess. According to our religion, a man
must have only one wife.
Zaida. That troubled me again. But the
dispenser of your religion, who binds and unbinds,
does for sequins or services what our Prophet does
purely through kindness.
Countess. We can love but one.
Zaida. We indeed can love only one : but men
have large hearts.
232
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Countess. Unhappy girl !
Zaida. The very happiest in the world.
Countess. Ah ! inexperienced creature !
Zaida. The happier for that perhaps.
Countess. But the sin !
Zaida. Where sin is, there must be sorrow :
and I, my sweet sister, feel none whatever. Even
when tears fall from my eyes, they fall only to
cool my breast : I would not have one the fewer :
they all are for him : whatever he does, whatever
he causes, is dear to me.
Countess (aside). This is too much. I could
hardly endure to have him so beloved by another,
even at the extremity of the earth. (To Zaida).
You would not lead him into perdition.
Zaida. I have led him (Allah be praised !) to
his wife and children. It was for those I left my
father. He whom we love might have stayed
with me at home : but there he would have been
only half happy, even had he been free. I could
not often let him see me through the lattice; I
was too afraid : and I dared only once let fall the
water-melon ; it made such a noise in dropping
and rolling on the terrace : but, another day, when
I had pared it nicely, and had swathed it up
well among vine-leaves, dipped in sugar and
sherbet, I was quite happy. I leaped and danced
to have been so ingenious. ' I wonder what crea-
ture could have found and eaten it. I wish he
were here, that I might ask him if he knew.
Countess. He quite forgot home then !
Zaida. When we could speak together at all,
he spoke perpetually of those whom the calamity
of war had separated from him.
Countess. It appears that you could comfort
him in his distress, and did it willingly.
Zaida. It is delightful to kiss the eye-lashes of
the beloved : is it not ? but never so delightful as
when fresh tears are on them.
Countess. And even this too ? you did this ?
Zaida. Fifty times.
Countess. Insupportable !
He often then spoke about me 1
Zaida. As sure as ever we met : for he knew
I loved him the better when I heard him speak
so fondly.
Countess (to herself). Is this possible 1 It may
be . . of the absent, the unknown, the unfeared,
the unsuspected.
Zaida. We shall now be so happy, all three.
Countess. How can we all live together ?
Zaida. Now he is here, is there no bond of
union?
Countess. Of union? of union? (Aside). Slavery
is a frightful thing ! slavery for life too ! And
she released him from it. What then ? Impos-
sible ! impossible ! (To Zaida). We are rich . .
Zaida. I am glad to hear it. Nothing any-
where goes on well without riches.
Countess. We can provide for you amply . .
Zaida. Our husband . .
Countess. Our! . . husband! . .
Zaida. Yes, yes ; I know he is yours too ; and
you, being the elder and having children, are lady
above all. He can tell you how little I want : a
bath, a slave, a dish of pilau, one jonquil every
morning, as usual ; nothing more. But he must
swear that he has kissed it first. No, he need not
swear it ; I may always see him do it, now.
Countess (aside). She agonizes me. (To Zaida.)
Will you never be induced to return to your own
country ? Could not Ludolph persuade you ?
Zaida. He who could once persuade me any-
thing, may now command me everything : when
he says I must go, I go. But he knows what
awaits me.
Countess. No, child ! he never shall say it.
Zaida. Thanks, lady ! eternal thanks ! The
breaking of his word would break my heart ; and
better that break first. Let the command come
from you, and not from him.
Countess (catting aloud). Ludolph ! Ludolph !
hither ! Kiss the hand I present to you, and
never forget it is the hand of a preserver.
DANTE AND GEMMA DONATI.
Gemma. We have now been blessed with seven
children, my dear husband !
Dante. And the newly-born, as always happens,
is the fairest, lovely as were all the rest.
Gemma. Whether it so happens or not, we
always think so, the mother in particular. And
your tenderness is like a mother's.
Dante. What a sweet smile is that, my Gemma !
But do not talk long, although you talk with the
voice and the serenity of an angel. How fresh
you look ! escaped from so great a danger, and so
recently. A smile is ever the most bright and
beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn
without its dew? The tear is rendered by the
smile precious above the smile itself.
There is something playful, I perceive, in your
thoughts, my little wife ! Can not you as readily
trust me with them as with the playfulness about
them?
Gemma. I do not know whether I can.
Dante. Beware ! I shall steady those lips with
kisses if they are not soon more quiet. Irreso-
lute ! why do not you tell me at once what is
thrilling and quivering at each corner of your
beautiful mouth ?
Gemma. I will, my Dante! But already it
makes me graver.
Healthy as is the infant, it was predicted by the
astrologer and caster of nativities, and the pre-
diction has been confirmed by the most intelligent
of nurses, that it must be our last.
Dante. While I look on it, I think I could not
love another so well.
Gemma. And yet you have loved them
DANTE AND GEMMA DONATI.
233
all equally, tenderest of fathers, best of hus-
bands !
Dante. Say happiest, my Gemma ! It was nol
always that you could have said it ; and it may
not be always ; but it shall be now.
Gemma. Well spoken ! yes, it shall. Therefore
promise me that henceforward you will never
again be a suitor for embassies abroad, or nail
down your noble intellect to the coarse-grained
wood of council-boards.
Dante. I can easily and willingly make that
promise.
Gemma. Kecollecting that they have caused
you trouble enough already.
Dante. If they alone had occupied my mind,
they would have contracted and abased it. The
larger a plant is, the sooner it sickens and withers
in close confinement, and in a place too low for
it. But a mind that has never been strained to
exertions, and troubled by anxieties, will never
project far any useful faculty. The stream must
swell before it fertilises. It is pleasant to gaze
on green meadows and gentle declivities : but the
soul, 0 my Gemma, that men look up to with
long wonder, is suspended on rocks, and exposed
to be riven by lightning. The eagle neither
builds his nest nor pursues his quarry in the
marsh.
Gemma. Should my Dante then in the piazza?
Dante. However, we must all, when called
upon, serve our country as we can best.
Gemma. Despicable is the man who loveth
not his country : but detestable is he who prefers
even his country to her who worships him,
supremely on earth, and solely.
Dante. To me a city is less than a home. The
world around me is but narrow ; the present age
is but annual. I will plant my Tree in Paradise;
I will water it with the waters of immortality ;
and my beloved shall repose beneath its shadow.
Gemma. 0 Dante ! there are many who would
be contented to die early, that after-ages might
contemplate them as the lover did; young, ardent,
radiant, uncrossed by fortune, and undisturbed
by any anxiety but the gentlest. I am happier
than poetry, with all its praise and all its fiction,
could render me : let another be glorious. I have
been truly blessed.
If Florence had never exiled you, if she had
honoured you as highly as she must honour you
hereafter, tell me, could you have loved her as
you loved your Bice ?
Dante. You also loved Bice.
Gemma. Answer me plainly and directly, sly
evader !
Dante. We can hardly love the terrestrial as
we love the heavenly. The stars that fall on the
earth are not stars of eternal light ; they are not
.our hope ; they are not our guidance ; they often
blight, they never purify. Distinctions might
have become too precious in my sight, if never a
thought of her had intervened.
Gemma. Indignant as you were at the injustice
of your fellow-citizens, did not the recollection
of the little maid honey your bitter bread, and
quite console you 1
Dante. I will pour into your faithful bosom
not only all my present love, but all my past. I
lost my country ; I went into another ; into many
others. To men like me, irksome is it, 0 Gemma !
to mount the stairs of princes ; hard to beseech
their favour ; harder to feel the impossibility of
requiting it ; hardest of all to share it with the
worthless. But I carried •with me everywhere
the memory of Bice : I carried with me that pal-
ladium which had preserved the citadel of my
soul. Under her guard what evil could enter it ?
Before her image how faintly and evanescently
fell on me the shadows of injury and grief!
Gemma. Brave, brave Dante ! I love you for all
things ; nor least for your love of her. It was she,
under God, who rendered you the perfect creature
I behold in you. She animated you with true
glory when she inspired you with the purity of
her love. Worthier of it than I am, she left you
on earth for me.
Dante. And with nothing on earth to wish
beyond.
Ought I to be indignant that my country has
neglected me 1 Do not men in all countries like
those best who most resemble them 1 And would
you wish me to resemble the multitude who are
deluded 1 or would you rather that I were seated
among the select who are in a situation to delude 1
My Gemma ! I could never, by any knowledge or
discipline, teach foxes to be honest, wolves to be
abstemious, or vipers to be grateful. For the more
ravenous I have excavated a pitfall, deep and dura-
ble as the foundations of the earth ; to the reptile
I toss the file. Let us love those who love us, and
be contented to teach those who will hear us.
Neither the voice nor the affections can extend
beyond a contracted circle. But we may carry a
wand with us and mark out with it that circle in
every path of life. Never in future will I let men
approach too near me. Familiarities are the
aphides that imperceptibly suck out the juices
intended for the germ of love. Contented with
the few who can read my heart, and proud, my
sweet Gemma, of the precious casket that encloses
it, I am certainly this day the happiest of men.
Gemma. To-morrow you shall be happier.
Dante. By what possibility ?
Gemma. It is too late in the evening to carry
our infant to the baptismal font : but to-morrow,
early in the morning, in the presence of God and
angels, in the presence of the blessed Virgin, I
name it Beatrice.
Dante. Gemma ! she hears thee. Gemma ! she
!oves thee for it more than she ever could love me :
for this is heavenly.
Gemma. How much I owe her ! Under her
influence hath grown up into full maturity the
lappiness of my existence.
Dante. And of mine. Modesty is the bride-
maid of Concord. She not only hangs her garland
on the door of the nuptial chamber, but she be-
strews with refreshing herbs the whole apartment
234
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
every day of life. Without her where is Harmony]
or what is Beauty ] Without her, the sight of re-
turning spring has bitter pangs in it : without her,
the songs of love in the woodland, and the symbols
of mated innocence on the tree apart, afflict the
bosom, sensitive no longer but to reminiscences
and wrath. Can it be wondered that she who
held my first affections holds them yet ? the same
spirit in another form, the same beauty in another
countenance, the same expression in another
voice . . the girl Beatrice in the bride Gemma.
0 how much more than bride ! but bride still !
Gemma. Kiss me, Dante ! And now let me
sleep ! Gently ! Do not disturb the child . .
your Beatrice to-morrow. Further, further from
the cradle ! Your eyes upon her would surely
awaken her. Beloved ! beloved ! how considerate
and careful ! I am sleepy . . can I sleep < I am
too happy.
GALILEO, MILTON, AND A DOMINICAN.
Milton. Friend ! let me pass.
Dominican. Whither ] To whom 1
Milton. Into the prison ; to Galileo Galilei.
Dominican. Prison ! we have no prison.
Milton. No prison here ! What sayest thou ?
Dominican. Son ! For heretical pravity indeed,
and some other less atrocious crimes, we have a
seclusion, a confinement, a penitentiary : we have
a locality for softening the obdurate, and furnish-
ing them copiously with reflection and recollec-
tion : but prison we have none.
Milton. Open !
Dominican (to himself). What sweetness ! what
authority ! what a form ! what an attitude ! what
a voice !
Milton. Open ! delay me no longer.
Dominican. In whose,name 1
Milton. In the name of humanity and of God.
Dominican. My sight staggers : the walls shake :
he must be .... Do angels ever come hither 1
Milton. Be reverent, and stand apart. [To
Galileo.] Pardon me, sir, an intrusion.
Galileo. Young man! if I may judge by your
voice and manner, you are little apt to ask par-
don or to want it. I am as happy at hearing you
as you seem unhappy at seeing me. I perceive at
once that you are an Englishman.
Milton. I am.
Galileo. Speak then freely ; and I will speak
freely too. In no other man's presence, for these
many years, indeed from my very childhood,
have I done it.
Milton. Sad fate for any man ! most sad for one
like you ! the follower of Truth, the companion of
Reason in her wanderings on earth !
Galileo. We live among priests and princes
and empoisoners. Your dog, by his growling,
seems to be taking up the quarrel against them.
Milton. We think and feel alike in many
things. I have observed that the horses and dogs
of every country, bear a resemblance in character
to the men. We English have a wonderful variety
of both creatures. To begin with the horses :
some are remarkable for strength, others for
spirit ; while in France there is little diversity of
race ; all are noisy and windy, skittish and mor-
dacious, prancing and libidinous, fit only for a
rope, and fond only of a riband. Where the
riband is not to be had, the jowl of a badger will
do : anything but what is native to the creature
is a decoration. In Flanders you find them slow
and safe, tractable and substantial. In Italy there
are few good for work, none for battle ; many for
light carriages, for standing at doors, and for
every kind of street- work.
Galileo. Do let us get among the dogs.
Milton. In France they are finely combed and
pert and pettish ; ready to bite if hurt, and to
fondle if caressed ; without' fear, without animo-
sity, without affection. In Italy they creep and
shiver and rub their skins against you, and insi-
nuate their slender beaks into the patronage of
your hand, and lick it, and look up modestly, and
whine decorously, and supplicate with grace. The
moment you give them anything, they grow im-
portunate; and the moment you refuse them,
they bite. In Spain and England the races are
similar ; so indeed are those of the men.
Spaniards are Englishmen in an ungrafted state,
however with this great difference, that the Eng-
lish have ever been the least, cruel of nations,
excepting the Swedes; and the Spaniards the
most cruel, excepting the French. Then they
were under one and the same religion, the most
sanguinary and sordid of all the institutions that
ever pressed upon mankind.
Galileo. To the dogs, to the dogs again, be they
of what breed they may.
Milton. The worst of them could never have
driven you up into this corner, merely because he
had been dreaming, and you had disturbed his
dream. How long shall this endure 1
Galileo. I sometimes ask God how long. I
should repine, and almost despair, in putting the
question to myself or another.
Milton. Be strong in Him, through reason, his
great gift.
Galileo. I fail not, and shall not fail. I can
fancy that the heaviest link in my heavy chain
has dropped off me since you entered.
MUton. Let me then praise our God for it !
Not those alone are criminal who placed you here,
but those no less who left unto them the power of
doing it. If the learned and intelligent in all the
regions of Europe would unite their learning and
intellect, and would exert their energy in disse-
minating the truth throughout the countries they
inhabit, soon must the ignorant and oppressive,
now at the summit of power, resign their offices ;
and the most versatile nations, after this purify-
GALILEO, MILTON, AND A DOMINICAN.
235
ing and perfect revolution, rest for ages. But,
bursting from their collegiate kennels, they range
and hunt only for their masters ; and are content
at last to rear up and catch the offal thrown
among them negligently, and often too with
scourges on their cringing spines, as they scramble
for it. Do they run through mire and thorns, do
they sweat from their tongues' ends, do they
breathe out blood, for this ? The Dominican is
looking in ; not to interrupt us, I hope, for my
idle exclamation.
Galileo. Continue to speak generously, ration-
ally, and in Latin, and he will not understand one
sentence. The fellow is the most stupid, the most
superstitious, the most hard-hearted, and the most
libidinous, in the confraternity. He is usually at
my door, that he may not be at others', where he
would be more in the way of his' superiors. You
Englishmen are inclined to melancholy ; but what
makes you so very grave? so much graver than
before 1
Milton. I hardly know which is most afflicting;
to hear the loudest expression of intolerable an-
guish from the weak who are sinking under it, or
to witness an aged and venerable man bearing up
against his sufferings with unshaken constancy.
And, alas! that blindness should consummate your
sufferings !
Galileo. There are worse evils than blindness,
and the best men suffer most by them. The spirit
of liberty, now rising up in your country, will
excite a blind enthusiasm, and leave behind a
bitter disappointment. Vicious men will grow
popular, and the interests of the nation will be
intrusted to them, because they descend from
their station, in order, as they say, to serve you.
Milton. Profligate impostors ! We know there
are such among us ; but truth shall prevail against
them.
Galileo. In argument, truth always prevails
finally ; in politics, falsehood always ; else would
never states fall into decay. Even good men, if
indeed good men will ever mix with evil ones for
any purpose, take up the trade of politics, at first
intending to deal honestly; the calm bower of the
conscience is soon converted into the booth of
inebriating popularity; the shouts of the multi-
tude then grow unexciting, then indifferent, then
troublesome ; lastly, the riotous supporters of the
condescendent falling half-asleep, he looks agape
in their faces, springs upon his legs again, flings
the door behind him, and escapes in the livery of
Power. When Satan would have led our Saviour
into temptation, he did not conduct him where
the looser passions were wandering ; he did not
conduct him amid flowers and herbage, where a
fall would have only been a soilure to our frail
human nature ; no, he led him up to an exceed-
ingly high mountain, and showed him palaces
and towers and treasuries, knowing that it was by
those alone that he himself could have been so
utterly lost to rectitude and beatitude. Our Sa-
viour spurned the temptation, and the greatest of
his miracles was accomplished. After which, even
the father of lies never ventured to dispute His
divine nature.
Dominican. I must not suffer you to argue on
theology ; you may pervert the young man.
Milton. In addition to confinement, must this
fungus of vapid folly stain your cell 1 If so, let me
hope you have received the assurance that the
term of your imprisonment will be short.
Galileo. It may be, or not, as God wills : it is
for life.
Milton. For life !
Galileo. Even so. I regret that I can not go
forth; and my depression is far below regret when
I think that, if ever I should be able to make a
discovery, the world is never to derive the benefit.
I love the fields, and the country air, and the
sunny sky, and the starry ; and I could keep my
temper when, in the midst of my calculations, the
girls brought me flowers from lonely places, and
asked me their names, and puzzled me. But now
I fear lest a compulsory solitude should have ren-
dered me a little moroser. And yet methinks I
could bear again a stalk to be thrown in my face,
as a deceiver, for calling the blossom that had
been on it Andromeda; and could pardon as
easily as ever a slap on the shoulder for my Ursa
Major. Pleasant Arcetri !
Milton. I often walk along its quiet lanes,
somewhat too full of the white eglantine in the
narrower parts of them. They are so long and
pliant, a little wind is enough to blow them in the
face ; and they scratch as much as their betters.
Galileo. Pleasant Arcetri !
Milton. The sigh that rises at the thought of a
friend may be almost as genial as his voice. 'Tis
a breath that seems rather to come from him than
from ourselves.
Galileo. I sighed not at any thought of friend-
ship. How do I know that any friend is left me]
I was thinking that, in those unfrequented lanes,
the birds that were frightened could fly away.
Pleasant Arcetri ! Well : we (I mean those who
are not blind) can see the stars from all places ;
we may know that there are other worlds, and we
may hope that there are happier. So then you
often walk to that village ?
Milton. Oftener to Fiesole.
Galileo. You like Fiesole better 1
Milton Must I confess it ? For a walk, I do.
Galileo. So did I, so did I. What friends we
are already ! I made some observations from
Fiesole.
Milton. I shall remember it on my return, and
shall revisit the scenery with fresh delight. Alas!
is this a promise I can keep, when I must think
of you here 1
Galileo. My good compassionate young man !
I am concerned that my apartment allows you so
little space to walk about.
Milton. Could ever I have been guilty of such
disrespect ! 0 sir, far remote, far beyond all
others, is that sentiment from my heart! It
swelled, and put every sinew of every limb into
motion, at your indignity. No, no ! Suffer me
236
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
still to bend in reverence and humility on this
hand, now stricken with years and with captivity !
. . on this hand, which Science has followed, which
God himself has guided, and before which all the
worlds above us, in all their magnitudes and dis-
tances, have been thrown open.
Galileo. Ah my too friendly enthusiast ! may
yours do more, and with impunity.
Milton. At least, be it instrumental in remov-
ing from the earth a few of her heaviest curses ;
a few of her oldest and worst impediments to
liberty and wisdom . . mitres, tiaras, crowns,
and the trumpery whereon they rest. I know
but two genera of men, the annual and the peren-
niaL Those who die down, and leave behind
them no indication of the places whereon they
grow, are cognate with the gross matter about
them; those on the contrary who, ages after
their departure, are able to sustain the lowliest,
and to exalt the highest, those are surely the
spirits of God, both when upon earth and when
with Him. What do I see, in letting fall the
sleeve ! The scars and lacerations on your arms
show me that you have fought for your country.
Galileo. I can not claim that honour. Do not
look at them. My guardian may understand
that.
Milton. Great God ! they are the marks of the
torture !
Galileo. My guardian may understand that
likewise. Let us converse about something else.
Milton. Italy ! Italy ! Italy ! drive thy poets
into exile, into prison, into madness ! spare, spare
thy one philosopher ! What track can the mind
pursue, in her elevations or her plains or her
recesses, without the dogging and prowling of
the priesthood ]
Galileo. They have not done with me yet. A
few days ago they informed me that I was accused
or suspected of disbelieving the existence of
devils. When I protested that in my opinion
there are almost as many devils as there are men,
and that every wise man is the creator of hun-
dreds at his first appearance, they told me with
much austerity and scornfulness of rebuke, that
this opinion is as heretical as the other ; and that
we have no authority from Scripture for believing
that the complement exceeded some few legions,
several of which were thinned and broken by
beating up their quarters : thanks chiefly to the
Dominicans. I bowed, as became me : for these
our worthy masters, and their superiors, the suc-
cessors of Peter, would burn us for teaching
anything untaught before.
Milton. They would burn you then for resem-
bling the great apostle himself?
Galileo. In what but denying the truth and
wearing chains ?
Milton. Educated with such examples before
them, literary societies are scarcely more tolerant
to the luminaries of imagination than theological
societies are to the luminaries of science. I myself
indeed should hesitate to place Tasso on an equa-
lity, or nearly on an equality, with Ariosto ; yet,
since his pen hath been excelled on the Continent
by only two in sixteen centuries, he might have
expected more favour, more forbearance, than he
found. I was shocked at the impudence of his
critics in this country : their ignorance less sur-
prised me. *
Galileo. Of yours I am unable to speak.
Milton. So much the better.
Galileo. Instead of it, you will allow me to
express my admiration of what (if I understand
anything) I understand. No nation has produced
any man, except Aristoteles, comparable to either
of the Bacons. The elder was the more wonder-
ful : the later in season was the riper and the
greater. Neither of them told all he knew, or
half he thought ; and each was alike prodigal in
giving, and prudent in withholding. The learn-
ing and genius of Francis led him onward to
many things which his nobility and stateliness
disallowed. Hence was he like the leisurely and
rich agriculturist, who goeth out a-field after din-
ner, well knowing where lie the nests and covies ;
and in such idle hour throweth his hat partly
over them, and they clutter and run and rise and
escape from him without his heed, to make a
louder whirr thereafter, and a longer flight
elsewhere.
Milton. I believe I have discovered no few
inaccuracies in his reasoning, voluntary or in-
voluntary. But I apprehend he committed them
designedly, and that he wanted in wisdom but
the highest . . the wisdom of honesty. It is
comfortable to escape from him, and return again
to Sorrento and Tasso. He should have been
hailed as the worthy successor, not scrutinised as
the presumptuous rival, of the happy Ferrarese.
He was ingenious, he was gentle, he was brave :
and what was the reward ] Did cities contend for
his residence within them] did princes throw open
their palaces at his approach 1 did academies send
deputations to invite and solicit his attendance 1
did senators cast branches of laurel under his
horse's hoofs'? did prelates and princes hang
tapestries from their windows, meet him at the
gates, and conduct him in triumph to the Capi-
tol1? Instead of it, his genius was derided, his
friendship scorned, his love rejected ; he lived
despairingly, he died broken-hearted.
Galileo. My friend ! my friend ! you yourself
in your language are almost a poet.
Milton. I may be in time to come.
* Criticism is still very low in Italy. Tiraboschi has
done little for it : nothing can be less exact than his
judgments on the poets. There is not one remarkable
sentence, or one happy expression, In sll his volumes.
The same may be said of Abbate Cesarotti. and of the
Signor Calsabigi, who wrote on Alfieri. There is scarcely
a glimpse of poetry in Alfieri, yet his verses are tight-
braced, and his strokes are animating : not indeed to the
Signor Calsibigi. The Italians are grown more generous
to their literary men in proportion as they are grown
poorer in them. Italy is the only great division of Eu-
rope where there never hath existed a Review bearing
some authority or credit. These things do not greatly
serve literature, but they rise from it, and show it.
TALLEYRAND AND ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS.
237
Galileo. What! with such an example before
your eyes 1 Rather be a philosopher : you may
be derided in this too, but you will not be broken-
hearted. I am ashamed when I reflect that the
worst enemies of Torquato, pushing him rudely
against Ariosto, are to be found in Florence.
Milton. Be the difference what it may between
them, your academicians ought to be aware that
the lowest of the animals are nearer to the highest
of them, than these highest are to the lowest of
those two. For in what greatly more do they
benefit the world than the animals do, or how
much longer remain in the memory of their
species ?
Galileo. Little, very little ; and the same thing
may be easily proved of those whom they praise
and venerate. My knowledge of poetry is nar-
row ; and, having little enthusiasm, I discover
faults where beauties escape me. I never would
venture to say before our Italians what I will con-
fess to you. In reading the Gerusalemme Libe-
rate, I remarked, that among the epithets the
poet is fondest of grande : I had remarked that
Virgil is fondest of altus. Now we can not make
anything greater or higher by clapping these
words upon it : where the substructure is not suf-
ficiently broad and solid, they will not stick. The
first verses in the Gerusalemme for instance,
are,
" Canto le anne pietose e "1 capitano
Che il gran sepolcro Iiber6 di Cristo."
Surely the poet would rather have had a great
captain than a great cenotaph.
Milton. He might have written, with a modes-
ter and less sonorous exordium,
Canto le anne pietose e '1 capitano,
Lui che il sepolcro liberd di Cristo.
Galileo. It would not have done for our people,
either the unlearned or learned. They must have
high, gigantic, immense ; they must have ebony,
gold, azure ; they must have honey, sugar, cinna-
mon, as regularly in their places as blue-lettered
jars, full or empty, are found in apothecaries'
shops. Dante and Ariosto, different as they are,
equally avoided these sweet viscidities. I wish
you would help me to exonerate Tasso from the
puffy piece of impediment at the beginning of his
march.
Milton. Let us imagine that he considered all
Jerusalem as the sepulchre of Christ.
Galileo. No friend or countryman hath said it
for him. We will accept it, and go on. Our best
histories, excepting Giovio's and Davila's, contain
no picture, no character, no passion, no eloquence ;
and Giovio's is partial and faithless. Criticism is
more verbose and less logical here than among
the French, the Germans, and the Dutch.
Milton. Let us return to Ariosto and Tasso,
who, whatever the academicians may gabble in
their assemblies, have delighted the most culti-
vated minds, and will delight them for incalcul-
able ages.
Galileo. An academician, a dunghill-cock, and
a worm, do indeed form a triangle more nearly
equilateral than an Academician, a Lodovico, and
a Torquato. The Dominican is listening yet.
Behold, he comes in !
Dominican. Young gentleman, I did not sus-
pect, when you entered, that you would ever talk
about authors whose writings are prohibited.
Ariosto is obscene. I have heard the same of
Tasso, in some part or other.
Milton. Prythee, begone !
Dominican. We retire together.
Galileo. It would be better to leave me, if he
urges it, otherwise I may never expect again the
pleasure I have received to-day.
Dominican. Signor Galileo, do you talk of plea-
sure to young persons? Most illustrious signo-
rino, the orders of my superior are to reconduct
you.
Milton. Adieu then, 0 too great man !
Galileo. For to-day adieu !
Dominican (out of the door). In my lowly cell,
0 signorino ! (if your excellency in her inborn gen-
tleness could condescend to favour her humblest
slave with her most desired presence) are pre-
pared some light refreshments.
Milton. Swallow them, swallow them; thou
seemest thirsty : I enter but one cell here.
Dominican (aside, having bowed respectfully).
Devil ! heretic ! never shalt thou more !
TALLEYRAND AND ARCHBISHOP OF PARIS.
Archbishop. M. de Talleyrand, it is painful to
me to see you in this deplorable state of health,
although it places me in the company of the most
distinguished and celebrated man in France, and
offers me the opportunity of rendering him a ser-
vice and a duty.
Talleyrand. Infinite thanks, Monseigneur, for
so friendly a visit, quite without ceremony, quite
without even an invitation or request. It over-
powers me. I can not express my sense of your
goodness.
Archbishop. Alas ! What aro the dignities and
honours of the world !
Talleyrand. Ask the spy-dukes Savery and
Fouche. Because they were dukes I would not be
one. But is not the Prince of Piombino a prince ?
Is not the king of Naples a king 1 Is not Francis
of Austria an emperor? Games are to be played
with counters of the same form and valuation.
Archbishop. All these things are by God's
appointment.
Talleyrand. No doubt of it ; none whatever.
Archbishop. We mortals are too dimsighted to
discern the fitness or utility of them.
Talleyrand. I do think, I do humbly think, I
can espy it. They render the poorest devils on
238
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
earth almost contented, finding that they are at
least beyond the finger of scorn for assuming false
appearances.
Archbisliop. M. le Prince ! we are now most
especially in the presence of the Almighty. Your
Highness has had leisure to contemplate the
nothingness of the world, and to see that we all are
but dust ; one particle each.
Talleyrand. I am unused to pay compliments,
(aside) . . or indeed to pay anything else if I could
help it . . yet, Monseigneur, I do declare to you
that, dry and old as the dust is, there is something
to my mind very spiritual in one partide each.
I never met with it before. The rest is found in
most books of divinity, I believe ; but I suspect
the one particle each is extra-parochial.
Archbishop. I am much flattered, M. de Talley-
rand, by your criticism. I know the extent of
your information and its exactness. Believe me,
I did not come hither quite unprepared for so in-
genious and acute a penitent. I filed down my
preparatory exhortation to this point. If you are
pleased with it, I take infinite glory to myself, and
have half accomplished my mission. We must
all regret that, having embraced the church, you
left her (unwillingly, no doubt) without your pow-
erful support.
Talleyrand. I saw her tottering over my head,
which she had clawed and bitten rather sharply
now and then, and I was afraid of her falling down
on me and crushing me. After picking up a few
of her spangles, I s"et fire to the gauze about her,
and scorched a little of the flannel ; but it only
made her the more alert; and she begins to
walk the streets again with as brave an air as
ever.
Archbishop. Fie ! fie ! M. de Talleyrand. This
resembles levity.
Talleyrand. I am so gratified at the sight of it,
I can not but be light-hearted for a moment. Ah,
Monseigneur ! what should we all be without the
Church ]
Archbishop. Infidels, heretics, Mahometans,
anabaptists.
Talleyrand. Worse, worse : without respecta-
bility, without hotels. Now I think of it, I have
this morning a few little money-matters to arrange.
How are the stocks]
Archbishop. Indeed I am utterly ignorant of
all such affairs. Reduced as my dignity is, I
have barely sufficient to supply my table with
twelve covers, exclusive of dessert. But if your
Highness has transactions at the Bourse this morn-
ing, may it not be as well that I should execute
first the object of my visit ?
Talleyrand. Certainly, 0 certainly.
Ardibisliop. You are going, by the appoint-
ment of our Heavenly Father, to exchange.
Talleyrand. First let me hear what fluctuations
there have been since yesterday, and whether
La Fitte . .
Archbishop. My dear Prince ! pardon ! pardon!
you seem wandering.
Talleyrand. Quite the contrary. I never turn
my eyes from their object. I caught a word
about the exchange.
Archbishop. Alas! Alas!
Talleyrand. The devil ! Down then ] aye ]
Archbishop. I can not but be amused at so
curious a mistake. No, upon the honour of a Peer
of France and the faith of an Archbishop of Paris,
I never have heard by any accident that the funds
had fallen.
Talleyrand. My Lord Archbishop ! your words
were enough to shake any man's nerves, lying in
this horizontal position.
Archbishop. I firmly hope, M. de Talleyrand, I
have some for you more comfortable. I was say-
ing, and confidently, that, within a time which
the wisest of mortals can not fix definitively, you
will throw aside these mundane honours for much
higher.
Talleyrand. I have no cupidity : it is all past :
I would stay as I am : a quarter per cent, more
might be welcome : it would make me easier : I
do not want it, and shall not ever, but I hate to
be foiled in my speculations. It would vex me if
anybody could say, the Prince Talleyrand lost his
wits before he left the world ; and he, who threw
the most sagacious diplomatists off their scent,
omitted by his stupidity to acquire a thousand
francs the day before his death.
Archbishop. Durum ! sed levius fit patientia.
Talleyrand. What would Monseigneur in his
wisdom and piety suggest?
Archbishop. With submission, with hesitation,
and with all the deference due to your manifold
wishes and your exalted rank, I would suggest,
my prince, that you have taken several, not false
(the expression were unpolite and inadmissible),
but contradictory oaths.
Talleyrand. All good Frenchmen have taken as
many of the same quality, for the glory of France.
Where should we have been if we had not] Verily
our hands would have kin on one side of the
fosse and our honour on the other. I thought it
best never to separate the active from the passive,
and I have kept them both together down to the
present hour.
Archbishop. As a religious man, although not
as a gentleman and a peer, I am bound to place
an oath above a word of honour.
Talleyrand. I am no chamberlain or master of
ceremonies, and would excite no heartburnings
between them on the score of precedency. A
word, whether thumped out of the breast as
parole d'honneur, or demanded at the drum-head
as an oath, is but a small portion of a man's breath,
which, whether he will or not, he must breathe
out continually ; a breath is but a small portion
of his life ; a word of honour is but the gaseous
and volatile part of honour, which would blow up
a true Frenchman if he tried to retain it within
him. He may -give a dozen, or a score, one after
another, black and white alternately, like the
chequers of a backgammon-board, and devised
like them on purpose for moves. I never thought,
Monseigneur, that you were infected with the
ESSEX AND SPENSER.
239
Anglomania, of which an imagining of such vain
things is among the primary symptoms. It was
only the very old practitioner who held that a
trivial stroke through the epidermis of honour is
as fatal as through the same cuticle of the heart.
ArchbisJiop. Religion alone can reconcile these
discordances. The holy chrism, and the equally
holy crucifix, are the only remedies. One loosens
and removes all rust from the wards of the lock ;
the other taps gently, but audibly and effectually,
at the door of eternal life.
Talleyrand. I had once a flask of the oil in my
keeping, but it was thought the premises were
too hot for it.
Archbishop. Excuse my interpolation. Are
you ready to confess, my prince 1
Talleyrand. Perfectly. On second thoughts . .
but let this serve for the beginning . . I have for-
gotten how, in great measure.
Archbishop. Try to recollect any little foible.
Talleyrand. I must go very far back to find
any worth the trouble.
Archbishop. Possibly, at one time or other, in
so long a life, you may, to a certain extent, have
been ambitious of titles and dignities.
Talleyrand. Let me recall and refresh my
memory . . . Your lordship has spoken with much
insight into my heart, and has observed the few
black specks left by a fire which now is extinct.
A book, whatever be its contents, is unfit for the
drawing-room unless it is bound and gilt : in like
manner a gentleman is unfit for state or society
unless he is decorated and titled.
Archbishop. It is well, my prince, that these
wise and quiet considerations have mortified in
you the domineering influences of Lucifer and
Mammon.
TaUeyrand. It is honest and religious to con-
fess the worst.
Archbishop. God be praised for placing you,
my prince, in this frame of mind ! Confess freely;
and unload altogether from your conscience the
last remnant that oppresses it.
Talleyrand. It is said, my lord archbishop, that
we are too much inclined to look narrowly into
one another's faults, and to neglect the examina-
tion of our own. Certainly I can never be accused
of this inhumanity. Wherever I have found them
I have always turned them to some account.
Neither in the body nor in the mind is it advan-
tageous to possess too microscopic a vision. Pit-
falls may be found in those pores which are of a
satin texture to the gentle touch of a discreet
observer ; and those lips which to the enthusiastic
poet are roses, rise before the minute philosopher
into the ruggedest coral rocks, not uninhabited
by their peculiar monsters. For which reason,
my good lord archbishop, I never pry too inqui-
sitively into the physical or the moral of those
about me ; and I abstain on all occasions from
exercising any severity on others or myself.
Nevertheless, if I thought my confession would
be satisfactory to your lordship, nothing on my
part should be wanting but memory, which ap-
pears to me to be as needful to it as fat bacon to
a fricandeau of veal.
But in regard to the last remnant of concu-
piscence, since it is so recent and so near at hand,
confess it I will, if time and courage are left me.
As things have turned round again, I am afraid
I may occasionally have had a hankering . . .
Archbishop. After what]
Talleyrand. After the archbishopric of Paris.
Archbishop. Alas ! it will soon be vacant : I am
half-starved.
Talleyrand. I am not half-starved, but I am
half-asleep : the medicine is beginning to operate,
or my hour is come. [Turns aside.
Archbishop (retiring). He must go to the devil
his own way, with a piece of fresh malice in his
mouth as a ticket of admittance. However, I
have his conversion at full length, at home, in
readiness for the papers. He shall perform the
harmonious trio with Voltaire and Alfieri, for the
benefit of the faithful.
ESSEX AND SPENSER.
Essex. Instantly on hearing of thy arrival from
Ireland, I sent a message to thee, good Edmund,
that I might learn from one so judicious [and dis-
passionate as thou art, the real state of things in
that distracted country ; it having pleased the
queen's majesty to think of appointing me her
deputy, in order to bring the rebellious to sub-
mission.
Spenser. Wisely and well considered ; but more
worthily of her judgment than her affection.
May your lordship overcome, as you have ever
done, the difficulties and dangers you foresee.
Essex. We grow weak by striking at random ;
and knowing that I must strike, and strike
heavily, I would fain see exactly where the stroke
shall fall.
Some attribute to the Irish all sorts of excesses ;
others tell us that these are old stories ; that there is
not a more inoffensive race of merry creatures
under heaven, and that their crimes are all hatched
for them here in England, by the incubation of
printers' boys, and are brought to market at times
of distressing dearth in news. From all that I
myself have seen of them, I can only say that
the civilised (I mean the richer and titled) are as
susceptible of heat as iron, and as impenetrable to
light as granite. The half -barbarous are probably
worse ; the utterly barbarous may be somewhat
better. Like game-cocks, they must spur when
they meet. One fights because he fights an
Englishman ; another because the fellow he quar-
rels with comes from a distant county ; a third
because the next parish is an eyesore to him, and
his fist-mate is from it. The only thing in which
240
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
they all agree as proper law is the tooth-for-tooth
act. Luckily we have a bishop who is a native,
and we called him before the queen. He repre-
sented to her majesty, that everything in Old
Ireland tended to re-produce its kind; crimes
among others ; and he declared frankly, that if an
honest man is murdered, or what is dearer to an
honest man, if his honour is wounded in the per-
son of his wife, it must be expected that he will
retaliate. Her majesty delivered it as her opinion,
that the latter case of vindictiveness was more
likely to take effect than the former. But the
bishop replied, that in his conscience he could not
answer for either if the man was up. The dean
of the same diocese gave us a more favourable
report. Being a justice of the peace, he averred
most solemnly that no man ever had complained
to him of murder, excepting one who had lost so
many fore-teeth by a cudgel that his deposition
could not be taken exactly; added to which, his
head was a little clouded with drunkenness ; fur-
thermore, that extremely few women had adduced
sufficiently clear proofs of violence, excepting those
who were wilful, and resisted with tooth and nail.
In all which cases it was difficult, nay impossible,
to ascertain which violence began first and lasted
longest
There is not a nation upon earth that pretends
to be so superlatively generous and high-minded ;
and there is not one (I speak from experience) so
utterly base and venal. I have positive proof that
the nobility, in a mass, are agreed to sell, for a
stipulated sum, all their rights and privileges, so
much per man ; and the queen is inclined there-
unto. But would our parliament consent to pay
money for a cargo of rotten pilchards? And
would not our captains be readier to swamp than
to import them ? The noisiest rogues in that
kingdom, if not quieted by a halter, may be
quieted by making them brief-collectors, and by
allowing them first to encourage the incendiary,
then to denounce and hang him, and lastly to
collect all the money they can, running up and
down with the whining ferocity of half-starved
hyaenas, under pretence of repairing the damages
their exhausted country hath sustained. Others ask
modestly a few thousands a year, and no more,
from those whom they represent to us as naked
and famished ; and prove clearly to every dispas-
sionate man who hath a single drop of free blood
in his veins, that at least this pittance is due to
them for abandoning their liberal and lucrative
professions, and for endangering their valuable
lives on the tempestuous seas, in order that the
voice of Truth may sound for once upon the shores
of England, and Humanity cast her shadow on
the council-chamber.
I gave a dinner to a party of these fellows a
few weeks ago. I know not how many kings and
princes were among them, nor how many poets
and prophets and legislators and sages. When
they were half-drunk, they coaxed and threatened ;
when they had gone somewhat deeper, they joked ;
and croaked, and hiccupped, and wept over sweet
Ireland ; and when they could neither stand nor
sit any longer, they fell upon their knees and their
noddles, and swore that limbs, life, liberty, Ireland,
and God himself, were all at the queen's service.
It was only their holy religion, the religion of
their forefathers . . . here sobs interrupted some,
howls others, execrations more, and the liquor
they had ingulfed the rest. I looked down on
them with stupor and astonishment, seeing faces,
forms, dresses, much like ours, and recollecting
their ignorance, levity, and ferocity. My pages
drew them gently by the heels down the steps ;
my grooms set them upright (inasmuch as might
be) on their horses ; and the people in the streets,
shouting and pelting, sent forward the beasts to
their straw.
Various plans have been laid before us for
civilising or coercing them. Among the pacific,
it was proposed to make an offer to five hundred
of the richer Jews in the Hanse-towns and in
Poland, who should be raised to the dignity of the
Irish peerage, and endowed with four thousand
acres of good forfeited land, on condition of each
paying two thousand pounds, and of keeping up
ten horsemen and twenty foot, Germans or Poles,
in readiness for service.
The Catholics bear nowhere such ill-will toward
Jews as toward Protestants. Brooks make even
worse neighbours than oceans do.
I myself saw no objection to the measure : but
our gracious queen declared she had an insuperable
one; they stank! We all acknowledged the
strength of the argument, and took out our hand-
kerchiefs. Lord Burleigh almost fainted; and
Ealeigh wondered how the Emperor Titus could
bring up his men against Jerusalem.
" Ah ! " said he, looking reverentially at her
majesty, "the star of Berenice shone above him !
and what evil influence could that star not quell !
what malignancy could it not annihilate ! "
Hereupon he touched the earth with his brow
until the queen said,
" Sir Walter ! lift me up those laurels."
At which manifestation of princely good-will
he was advancing to kiss her majesty's hand, but
she waved it, and said sharply,
" Stand there, dog ! "
Now what tale have you for us 1
Spenser. Interrogate me, my lord, that I may
answer each question distinctly, my mind being
in sad confusion at what I have seen and under-
gone.
Essex. Give me thy account and opinion of these
very affairs as thou leftest them ; for I would
rather know one part well, than all imperfectly ;
and the violences of which I have heard within
the day surpass belief.
Why weepest thou, my gentle Spenser? Have
the rebels sacked thy house ?
Spenser. They have plundered and utterly de-
stroyed it.
Essex. I grieve for thee, and will see thee
righted.
Spenser. In this they have little harmed me.
ESSEX AND SPENSEK.
241
Essex. How ! I have heard it reported that thy
grounds are fertile, and thy mansion * large and
pleasant.
Spenser. If river and lake and meadow-ground
and mountain could render any place the abode
of pleasantness, pleasant was mine, indeed !
On the lovely banks of Mulla I found deep con-
tentment. Under the dark alders did I muse and
meditate. Innocent hopes were my gravest cares,
and my playfullest fancy was with kindly wishes.
Ah ! surely of all cruelties the worst is to extin-
guish our kindness. Mine is gone : I love the
people and the land no longer. My lord, ask me
not about them ; I may speak injuriously.
Essex. Think rather then of thy happier hours
and busier occupations ; these likewise may in-
struct me.
Spenser. The first seeds I sowed in the garden,
ere the old castle was made habitable for my lovely
bride, were acorns from Penshurst. I planted a
little oak before my mansion at the birth of each
child. My sons, I said to myself, shall often play
in the shade of them when I am gone, and every
year shall they take the measure of their growth,
as fondly as I take theirs.
Essex. Well, well; but let not this thought
make thee weep so bitterly.
Spenser. Poison may ooze from beautiful
plants ; deadly grief from dearest reminiscences.
I must grieve, I must weep : it seems the law of
God, and the only one that men are not disposed
to contravene. In the performance of this alone
do they effectually aid one another.
Essex. Spenser ! I wish I had at hand any
arguments or persuasions, of force sufficient to
remove thy sorrow : but really I am not in the habit
of seeing men grieve at anything, except the loss
of favour at court, or of a hawk, or of a buck-
hound. And were I to swear out my condolences
to a man of thy discernment, in the same round
roll-call phrases we employ with one another upon
these occasions, I should be guilty, not of insin-
cerity but of insolence. True grief hath ever
something sacred in it ; and when it visiteth a
wise man and a brave one, is most holy.
Nay, kiss not my hand : he whom God smiteth
hath God with him. In his presence what am I ?
Spenser. Never so great, my lord, as at this
hour, when you see aright who is greater. May
He guide your counsels, and preserve your life
and glory !
Essex. Where are thy friends? Are they with
thee?
Spenser. Ah, where, indeed ! Generous, true-
hearted Philip ! where art thou ! whose presence
was unto me peace and safety ; whose smile was
contentment, and whose praise renown. My lord !
I can not but think of him among still heavier
losses : he was my earliest friend, and would have
taught me wisdom.
Essex. Pastoral poetry, my dear Spenser, doth
* It was purchased by a victualler and banker, the
father or grandfather of Lord Riversdale.
VOL. ir.
not require tears and lamentations. Dry thine
eyes ; rebuild thine house : the queen and council,
I venture to promise thee, will make ample
amends for every evil thou hast sustained. What !
does that enforce thee to wail yet louder ?
Spenser. Pardon me, bear with me, most noble
heart ! I have lost what no council, no queen,
no Essex, can restore.
Essex. We will see that. There are other
swords, and other arms to wield them, beside a
Leicester's and a Kaleigh's. Others can crush
their enemies and serve their friends.
Spenser. 0 my sweet child ! And of many so
powerful, many so wise and so beneficent, was
there none to save thee ? None ! none !
Essex. I now perceive that thou lamentest what
almost every father is destined to lament. Hap-
piness must be bought, although the payment
may be delayed. Consider ; the same calamity
might have befallen thee here in London. Neither
the houses of ambassadors, nor the palaces of
kings, nor the altars of God himself, are asylums
against death. How do I know but under this
very roof there may sleep some latent calamity,
that in an instant shall cover with gloom every
inmate of the house, and every far dependant?
Spenser. God avert it !
Essex. Every day, every hour of the year, do
hundreds mourn what thou mournest.
Spenser. Oh, no, no, no ! Calamities there are
around us ; calamities there are all over the
earth ; calamities there are in all seasons ; but
none in any season, none in any place, like
mine.
Essex. So say all fathers, so say all husbands.
Look at any old mansion-house, and let the sun
shine as gloriously as it may on the golden vanes,
or the arms recently quartered over the gateway,
or the embayed window, and on the happy pair
that haply is toying at it; nevertheless, thou
mayest say that of a certainty the same fabric
hath seen much sorrow within its chambers, and
heard many wailings : and each time this was the
heaviest stroke of all. Funerals have passed along
through the stout-hearted knights upon the wain-
scot, and amid the laughing nymphs upon the
arras. Old servants have shaken their heads, as
if somebody had deceived them, when they found
that beauty and nobility could perish.
Edmund ! the things that are too true pass by
us as if they were not true at all ; and when they
have singled us out, then only do they strike us.
Thou and I must go too. Perhaps the next year
may blow us away with its fallen leaves, f
Spenser. For you, my lord, many years (I trust)
are waiting : I never shall see those fallen leaves.
No leaf, no bud, will spring upon the earth before
I sink into her breast for ever.
Essex. Thou, who art wiser than most men,
shouldst bear with patience, equanimity, and cour-
age, what is common to all.
Spenser. Enough ! enough ! enough ! Have
f It happened so.
242
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
all men seen their infant burned to ashes before
their eyes?
Essex. Gracious God ! Merciful Father ! what
is this '.'
Spenser. Burned alive ! burned to ashes ! burned
to ashes ! The flames dart their serpent tongues
through the nursery-window. I can not quit thee,
my Elizabeth ! I can not lay down our Edmund.
Oh these flames ! they persecute, they enthrall
me, they curl round my temples, they hiss upon
my brain, they taunt me with their fierce foul
voices, they carp at me, they wither me, they con-
sume me, throwing back to me a little of life, to
roll and suffer in, with their fangs upon me. Ask
me, my lord, the things you wish to know from
me ; I may answer them ; I am now composed
again. Command me, my gracious lord ! I would
yet serve you ; soon I shall be unable. You have
stooped to raise me up ; you have borne with me ;
you have pitied me, even like one not powerful ;
you have brought comfort, and will leave it with
me ; for gratitude is comfort.
Oh ! my memory stands all a tip-toe on one
burning point : when it drops from it, then it
perishes. Spare me : ask me nothing ; let me
weep before you in peace; the kindest act of
greatness.
Essex. I should rather have dared to mount
into the midst of the conflagration than I now
dare intreat thee not to weep. The tears that
overflow thy heart, my Spenser, will staunch and
heal it in their sacred stream, but not without
hope in God.
Spenser. My hope in God is that I may soon
see* again what he has taken from me. Amid
the myriads of angels there is not one so beautiful :
and even he (if there be any) who is appointed
my guardian, could never love me so. Ah ! these
are idle thoughts, vain wanderings, distempered
dreams. If there ever were guardian angels, he
who so wanted one, my helpless boy, would not
have left these arms upon my knees.
Essex. God help and sustain thee, too gentle
Spenser ! I never will desert thee. But what
am I ? Great they have, called me ! Alas, how
powerless then and infantile is greatness in the
presence of calamity !
Come, give me thy hand : let us walk up and
down the gallery. Bravely done ! I will envy
no more a Sidney or a Raleigh.
MARSHAL BUGEAUD AND ARAB CHIEFTAIN.
Bugeaud. Such is the chastisement the God of
battles in his justice and indignation has inflicted
on you. Of seven hundred refractory and rebel-
lious, who took refuge in the caverns, thirty, and
thirty only, are alive : and of these thirty there
are four only who are capable of labour, or indeed
of motion. Thy advanced age ought to have ren-
dered thee wiser, even if my proclamation, dictated
from above in the pure spirit of humanity and
fraternity, had not been issued. Is thy tongue
scorched, that thou listenest and starest and
scowlest, without answering me? What mercy
after this obstinacy can thy tribe expect ?
Arab. None; even if it lived. Nothing is now
wanting to complete the glory of France. Mothers
and children, in her own land, hath she butchered
on the scaffold : mothers and children in her own
land hath she bound together and cast into the
deep : mothers and children in her own land hath
she stabbed in the streets, in the prisons, in the
temples. Ferocity such as no tales record, no lover
of the marvellous and of the horrible could listen
to or endure ! In every country she has repeated
the same atrocities, unexampled by the most san-
guinary of the Infidels. To consume the helpless
with fire, for the crime of flying from pollution
and persecution, was wanting to her glory : She
has won it. We are not indeed her children ; we
are not even her allies; this, and this alone,
may, to her modesty, leave it incomplete.
Bugeaud. Traitor ! I never ordered the con-
flagration.
Arab. Certainly thou didst not forbid it : and,
when I consider the falsehood of thy people, I dis-
believe thy assertion, even though thou hast not
sworn it.
Bugeaud. Miscreant! disbelieve, doubt a mo-
ment, the word of a Frenchman !
Arab. Was it not the word of a Frenchman
that no conquest should be made of this country ?
Was it not the word of a Frenchman that when
chastisement had been inflicted on the Dey of
Algiers, even the Algerines should be unmolested?
Was it not the word .of two kings, repeated by
their ministers to every nation round ? But we
never were Algerines, and never fought for them.
Was it not the word of a Frenchman which pro-
mised liberty and independence to every nation
upon earth. Of all who believed in it, is there
one with which it has not been broken 1 Perfidy
and insolence brought down on your nation the
vengeance of all others. Simultaneously a just
indignation burst forth from every quarter of the
earth against it, for there existed no people within
its reach or influence who had not suffered by its
deceptions.
Bugeaud. At least you Arabs have not been
deceived by us. I promised you the vengeance of
heaven ; and it has befallen you.
Arab. The storm hath swept our country,
and still sweeps it. But wait. The course of
pestilence is from south to north. The chastise-
ment that overtook you thirty years ago, turns
back again to consummate its imperfect and need-
ful work. Impossible that the rulers of Europe,
whoever or whatever they are, should be so torpid
to honour, so deaf to humanity, as to suffer in the
midst of them a people so full of lies and treachery,
P. SCIPIO JEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^TIUS.
243
so sportive in cruelty, so insensible to shame. If
they are, God's armoury contains heavier and
sharper and surer instruments. A brave and just
man, inflexible, unconquerable, Abdul Kader, will
never abandon our cause. Every child of Islam,
near and far, roused by the conflagration in the
cavern, will rush forward to exterminate the heart-
less murderers.
Bugeaud. A Frenchman hears no threat with-
out resenting it : his honour forbids him.
Arab. That honour which never has forbidden
him to break an engagement or an oath : that
honour which binds him to remain and to devas-
tate the country he swore before all nations he
would leave in peace : that honour which impels
him to burn our harvests, to seize our cattle, to
murder our youths, to violate our women. Europe
has long experienced this honour : we Arabs
have learned it perfectly in much less time.
Bugeaud. Guards ! seize this mad chatterer.
Go, thief ! assassin! traitor! blind grey-beard !
Arab. Cease there. Thou canst never make me
beg, for bread, for water, or for life. My grey
beard is from God : my blindness and lameness
are from thee.
Bugeaud. Begone, reptile ! Expect full justice ;
no mercy. The president of my military tribunal
will read to thee what is written.
Arab. Go ; enter ; and sing and whistle in the
cavern, where the bones of brave men are never to
bleach, are never to decay. Go, where the mother
and infant are inseparable for ever ; one mass of
charcoal ; the breasts that gave life, the lips that
received it ; all, all ; save only where two arms,
in colour and hardness like corroded iron, cling
round a brittle stem, shrunken, warped, and
where two heads are calcined. Go ; strike now ;
strike bravely :' let thy sword in its playfulness
ring against them. What are they but white stones,
under an arch of black ; the work of thy creation !
Bugeaud. Singed porcupine ! thy quills are
blunted, and stick only into thyself.
Arab. Is it not in the memory of our elders, and
will it not remain in the memory of all genera-
tions, that, when four thousand of those who spoke
our language and obeyed our Prophet, were pro-
mised peace and freedom on laying down their
arms, in the land of Syria, all, to a man, were slain
under the eyes of your leader ? Is it not notori-
ous that this perfidious and sanguinary wretch is
the very man whom, above all others, the best of
you glory in imitating, and whom you rejected
only when fortune had forsaken him ] It is then
only that atrocious crimes are visible or looked
for in your country. Even this last massacre, no
doubt, will find defenders and admirers there ;
but neither in Africa nor in Asia, nor in Europe,
one. Many of you will palliate it, many of you
will deny it : for it is the custom of your country
to cover blood with lies, and lies with blood.
Bugeaud. And, here and there, a sprinkling of
ashes over both, it seems.
Arab. Ending in merriment, as befits ye. But
is it ended 1
Bugeaud. Yes, yes, at least for thee, vile prowler,
traitor, fugitive, incendiary! And thou too,
singed porcupine, canst laugh !
Arab. At thy threats and stamps and screams.
Verily our Prophet did well and with farsighted-
ness, in forbidding the human form and features
to be graven or depicted, if such be human.
Henceforward will monkeys and hyaenas abhor
the resemblance and disclaim the relationship.*
P. SCIPIO ^EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN^ETIUS.
Scipio. Polybius, if you have found me slow
in rising to you, if I lifted not up my eyes to
salute you on your entrance, do not hold me un-
grateful . . proud there is no danger that you
will ever call me : this day of all days would least
make me so : it shows me the power of the im-
mortal gods, the mutability of fortune, the insta-
bility of empire, the feebleness, the nothingness,
of man. The earth stands motionless ; the grass
upon it bends and returns, the same to-day as
yesterday, the same in this age as in a hundred
past ; the sky darkens and is serene again ; the
clouds melt away, but they are clouds another
time, and float like triumphal pageants along the
heavens. Carthage is fallen ! to rise no more !
the funereal horns have this hour announced to
us, that, after eighteen days and eighteen nights
of conflagration, her last embers are extinguished.
Polybius. Perhaps, 0 Jimilianus, I ought not
to have come in.
Scipio. Welcome, my friend.
Polybius. While you were speaking I would by
no means interrupt you so idly, as to ask you to
whom you have been proud, or to whom could
you be ungrateful.
Scipio. To him, if to any, whose hand is in
mine ; to him on whose shoulder I rest my head,
weary with presages and vigils. Collect my
thoughts for me, O my friend ! the fall of Car-
thage hath shaken and scattered them. There
are moments when, if we are quite contented with
ourselves, we never can remount to what we were
before.
Polybius. Pansetius is absent.
Scipio. Feeling the necessity, at the moment,
of utter loneliness, I despatched him toward the
city. There may be (yes, even there) some
sufferings which the Senate would not censure us
for assuaging. But behold he returns ! We were
speaking of you, Panaetius !
Pancetius. And about what beside ? Come,
honestly tell me, Polybius, on what are you re-
* Sismondi relates a similar massacre by the French in
;he caverns of Masaro, near Vicenza, in w hich six thousand
perished. Vol. 14, p. 47.
R 2
244
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
fleeting and meditating with such sedately intense
enthusiasm >.
Polybius. After the burning of some village,
or the overleaping of some garden-wall, to exter-
minate a few pirates or highwaymen, I have seen
the commander's tent thronged with officers ; I
have heard as many trumpets around him as
would have shaken down the places of themselves ;
I have seen the horses start from the pretorium,
as if they would fly from under their trappings,
and spurred as if they were to reach the east and
west before sunset, that nations might hear of
the exploit, and sleep soundly. And now do I
behold in solitude, almost in gloom, and in such
silence that, unless my voice prevents it, the
grasshopper is audible, him who has levelled to
the earth the strongest and most populous of
cities, the wealthiest and most formidable of
empires. I had seen Rome ; I had seen (what
those who never saw never mil see) Carthage ; I
thought I had seen Scipio : it was but the image
of him : here I find him.
Scipio. There are many hearts that ache this
day : there are many that never will ache more :
hath one man done it 1 one man's breath ] What
air, upon the earth, or upon the waters, or in the
void of heaven, is lost so quickly ! it flies away
at the point of an arrow, and returns no more !
the sea-foam stifles it ! the tooth of a reptile stops
it ! a noxious leaf suppresses it What are we in
our greatness ? whence rises it ] whither tends it ]
Merciful gods ! may not Rome be what Car-
thage is ? may not those who love her devotedly,
those who will look on her with fondness and af-
fection after life, see her in such condition as to
wish she were so ?
Pplybius. One of the heaviest groans over fallen
Carthage, burst from the breast of Scipio : who
would believe this tale 1
Scipio. Men like my Polybius : others must
never hear it.
Polybius. You have not ridden forth, JSmili-
anus, to survey the ruins.
Scipio. No, Polybius : since I removed my
tent to avoid the heat from the conflagration, I
never have ridden nor walked nor looked toward
them. At this elevation, and three miles off, the
temperatiire of the season is altered. I do not
believe, as those about me would have persuaded
me, that the gods were visible in the clouds ; that
thrones of ebony and gold were scattered in all
directions ; that broken chariots, and flaming
steeds, and brazen bridges, had cast their frag-
ments upon the earth ; that eagles and lions, dol-
phins and tridents, and other emblems of power
and empire, were visible at one moment, and at
the next had vanished ; that purple and scarlet
overspread the mansions of the gods ; that their
voices were heard at first confusedly and discord-
antly ; and that the apparition closed with their
high festivals. I could not keep my eyes on the
heavens : a crash of arch or of theatre or of tower,
a column of flame rising higher than they were,
or a universal cry, as if none until then had
perished, drew them thitherward. Such were the
dismal sights and sounds, a fresh city seemed to
have been taken every hour, for seventeen days.
This is the eighteenth since the smoke arose from
the level roofs and from the lofty temples, and
thousands died, and tens of thousands ran in
search of death.
Calamity moves me ; heroism moves me more.
That a nation whose avarice we have so often re-
prehended, should have cast into the furnace gold
and silver, from the insufficiency of brass and iron
for arms ; that palaces the most magnificent
should have been demolished by the proprietor
for their beams and rafters, in order to build a
fleet against us ; that the ropes whereby the slaves
hauled them down to the new harbour, should in
part be composed of hair, for one lock of which
kings would have laid down their diadems ; that
Asdrubal should have found equals, his wife none
. . my mind, my very limbs, are unsteady with
admiration.
0 Liberty! what art thou to the valiant and
brave, when thou art thus to the weak and timid !
dearer than life, stronger than death, higher than
purest love. Never will I call upon thee where
thy name can be profaned, and never shall my
soul acknowledge a more exalted power than
thee.
Pancetius. The Carthaginians and Moors have,
beyond other nations, a delicate feeling on female
chastity. Rather than that their women should
become slaves and concubines, they slay them : is
it certain that Asdrubal did not observe or cause
to be observed, the custom of his country ?
Polybitis. Certain : on the surrender of his
army his wife threw herself and her two infants
into the flames. Not only memorable acts, of
what the dastardly will call desperation, were
performed, but some also of deliberate and signal
justice. Avaricious as we called the people, and
unjustly, as you have proved, .ffimilianus, I will
relate what I myself was witness to.
In a part of the city where the fire had sub-
sided, we were excited by loud cries, rather of
indignation, we thought, than of such as fear or
lament or threaten or exhort ; and we pressed
forward to disperse the multitude. Our horses
often plunged in the soft dust, and in the holes
whence the pavement had been removed for mis-
siles, and often reared up and snorted violently
at smells which we could not perceive, but which
we discovered to rise from bodies, mutilated
and half-burnt, of soldiers and horses, laid bare,
some partly, some wholly, by the march of the
troop. Although the distance from the place
whence we parted to that where we heard the
cries, was very short, yet from the incumbrances
in that street, and from the dust and smoke
issuing out of others, we were some time before
we reached it. On our near approach, two old
men threw themselves on the ground before us,
and the elder spake thus. " Our age, 0 Romans,
neither will nor ought to be our protection : we
are, or rather we have been, judges of this land;
P. SCIPIO jEMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS.
245
and to the uttermost of our power we have invited
our countrymen to resist you. The laws are now
yours."
The expectation of the people was intense and
silent : we had heard some groans ; and now the
last words of the old man were taken up by others,
by men in agony.
" Yes, 0 Komans ! " said the elder who accom-
panied him that had addressed us, " the laws are
yours ; and none punish more severely than you
do treason and parricide. Let your horses turn
this corner, and you will see before you traitors
and parricides."
We entered a small square : it had been a
market-place : the roofs of the stalls were de-
molished, and the stones of several columns,
(thrown down to extract the cramps of iron and
the lead that fastened them) served for the spec-
tators, male and female to mount on. Five men
were nailed on crosses ; two others were nailed
against a wall, from scarcity (as we were told) of
wood.
" Can seven men have murdered their parents
in the same year?" cried I.
" No, nor has any of the seven," replied the
first who had spoken. " But when heavy impo-
sitions were laid upon those who were backward
in voluntary contributions, these men, among the
richest in our city, protested by the gods that
they had no gold or silver left. They protested
truly."
" And they die for this ! inhuman, insatiable,
inexorable wretch!"
" Their books," added he, unmoved at my re-
proaches, " were seized by public authority and
examined. It was discovered that, instead of
employing their riches in external or internal
commerce, or in manufactories, or in agriculture,
instead of reserving it for the embellishment of
the city, or the utility of the citizens, instead of
lending it on interest to the industrious and the
needy, they had lent it to foreign kings and
tyrants, some of whom were waging unjust wars by
these very means, and others were enslaving their
own country. For so heinous a crime the laws
had appointed no specific punishment. On such
occasions the people and elders vote in what
manner the delinquent shall be prosecuted, lest
any offender should escape with impunity, from
their humanity or improvidence. Some voted
that these wretches should be cast amid the pan-
thers ; the majority decreed them (I think wisely)
a more lingering and more ignominious death."
The men upon the crosses held down their
heads, whether from shame or pain or feebleness.
The sunbeams were striking them fiercely ; sweat
ran from them, liquefying the blood that had
blackened and hardened on their hands and feet.
A soldier stood by the side of each, lowering the
point of his spear to the ground ; but no one of
them gave it up to us. A centurion asked the
nearest of them how he dared to stand armed
before him.
" Because the city is in ruins, and the laws still
live," said he. " At the first order of the con-
queror or the elders, I surrender my spear."
" What is your pleasure, 0 commander?" said
the elder.
" That an act of justice be the last public act
performed by the citizens of Carthage, and that
the sufferings of these wretches be not abridged."
Such was my reply. The soldiers piled their
spears, for the points of which the hearts of the
crucified men thirsted ; and the people hailed us
as they would have hailed deliverers.
Scipio. It is wonderful that a city, in which
private men are so wealthy as to furnish the
armories of tyrants, should have existed so long,
and flourishing in power and freedom.
Pancetiw. It survived but shortly this flagrant
crime in its richer citizens. An admirable form
of government, spacious and safe harbours, a fer-
tile soil, a healthy climate, industry and science
in agriculture, in which no nation is equal to the
Moorish, were the causes of its prosperity : there
are many of its decline.
Scipio. Enumerate them, Panaetius, with your
wonted clearness.
Pancetius. We are fond, 0 my friends ! of liken-
ing power and greatness to the luminaries of
heaven ; and we think ourselves quite moderate
when we compare the agitations of elevated souls
to whatever is highest and strongest on the earth,
liable alike to shocks and sufferings, and able
alike to survive and overcome them. And truly
thus to reason, as if all things around and above
us sympathized, is good both for heart and in-
tellect. I have little or nothing of the poetical in
my character; and yet from reading over and
considering these similitudes, I am fain to look
upon nations with somewhat of the same feeling ;
and, dropping from the mountains and disen-
tangling myself from the woods and forests, to
fancy I see in states what I have seen in corn-
fields. The green blades rise up vigorously in an
inclement season, and the wind itself makes them
shine against the sun. There is room enough for
all of them ; none wounds another by collision or
weakens by overtopping it ; but, rising and bend-
ing simultaneously, they seem equally and mu-
tually supported. No sooner do the ears of corn
upon them lie close together in their full maturity,
than a slight inundation is enough to cast them
down, or a faint blast of wind to shed and scatter
them. In Carthage we have seen the powerful
families, however discordant among themselves,
unite against the popular ; and it was only when
their lives were at stake that the people co-ope-
rated with the senate.
A mercantile democracy may govern long and
widely ; a mercantile aristocracy can not stand.
What people will endure the supremacy of those,
uneducated and presumptuous, from whom they
buy their mats and faggots, and who receive their
money for the most ordinary and vile utensils ?
If no conqueror enslaves them from abroad, they
would, under such disgrace, welcome as their
deliverer, and acknowledge as their master, the
246
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
citizen most distinguished for his military achieve-
ments. The rich men who were crucified in the
weltering wilderness beneath us, would not have
employed such criminal means of growing richer,
had they never been persuaded to the contrary,
and that enormous wealth would enable them to
commit another and a more flagitious act of treason
against their country, in raising them above the
people, and enabling them to become its taxers
and oppressors.
0 JSmilianus ! what a costly beacon here hath
Rome before her in this awful conflagration : the
greatest (I hope) ever to be, until that wherein
the world must perish.
Polybius. How many Sibylline books are legible
in yonder embers.
The causes, 0 Pansetius, which you have stated,
of Carthage's former most flourishing condition,
are also those why a hostile senate hath seen the
necessity of her destruction, necessary not only to
the dominion, but to the security of Rome. Italy
has the fewest and the worst harbours of any
country known to us : a third of her soil is sterile,
a third of the remainder is pestiferous : and her
inhabitants are more addicted to war and rapine
than to industry aud commerce. To make room
for her few merchants on the Adriatic and Ionian
seas, she burns Corinth : to leave no rival in
traffic or in power, she burns Carthage.
Pancetius. If the Carthaginians had extended
their laws and language over the surrounding
states of Africa, which they might have done by
moderation and equity, this ruin could not have
been effected. Rome has been victorious by hav-
ing been the first to adopt a liberal policy, which
even in war itself is a wise one. The parricides
who lent their money to the petty tyrants of other
countries, would have found it greatly more ad-
vantageous to employ it in cultivation nearer
home, and in feeding those as husbandmen whom
else they must fear as enemies. So little is the
Carthaginian language known, that I doubt whe-
ther we shall in our lifetime see anyone translate
their annals into Latin or Greek : and within
these few days what treasures of antiquity have
been irreparably lost ! The Romans will repose
at citrean* tables for ages, and never know at
last perhaps whence the Carthaginians brought
their wood.
Scipio. It is an awful thing to close as we have
done the history of a people. If the intelligence
brought this morning to Polybius be true,t in one
year the two most flourishing and most beautiful
cities in the world have perished, in comparison
* The trabs citrea is not citron wood as we understand
the fruit tree. It was often of great dimensions : it appears
from the description of its colour to have been mahogany.
The trade to the Atlantic continent and islands must
have been possessed by a company, bound to secrecy by
oath and interest. The prodigious price of this wood at
Rome proves that it had ceased to be imported, or perhaps
found, in the time of Cicero.
f Corinth in fact was not burnt until some months after
Carthage ; but as one success is always followed by the
rumour of another, the relation is not improbable.
with which our Rome presents but the pent-houses
of artisans or the sheds of shepherds. With what-
ever celerity the messenger fled from Corinth and
arrived here, the particulars must have been known
at Rome as early, and I shall receive them ere
many days are past.
Pancetius. I hardly know whether we are not
less affected at the occurrence of two or three
momentous and terrible events, than at one ; and
whether the gods do not usually place them to-
gether in the order of things, that we may be
awe-stricken by the former, and reconciled to their
decrees by the latter, from an impression of their
power. I know not what Babylon may have
been ; but I presume that, as in the case of all
other great Asiatic capitals, the habitations of the
people (who are slaves) were wretched, and that
the magnificence of the place consisted in the
property of the king and priesthood, and in the
walls erected for the defence of it. Many streets
probably were hardly worth a little bronze cow
of Myron, such as a stripling could steal and carry
off. The case of Corinth and of Carthage was very
different. Wealth overspread the greater part of
them, competence and content the whole. Wher-
ever there are despotical governments, poverty
and industry dwell together; Shame dogs them
in the public walks ; Humiliation is among their
household gods.
Scipio. I do not remember the overthrow of
any two other great cities within so short an
interval.
Pancetiw. I was not thinking so much of cities
or their inhabitants, when I began to speak of
what a breath of the Gods removes at once from
earth. I was recollecting, 0 jEmilianus, that in
one Olympiad the three greatest men that ever
appeared together were swept off. What is
Babylon, or Corinth, or Carthage, in comparison
with these ! what would their destruction be, if
every hair on the head of every inhabitant had
become a man, such as most men are ! First in
order of removal was, he whose steps you have
followed and whose labours you have completed,
Africanus : then Philopoemen, whose task was
more difficult, more complex, more perfect : and
lastly Hannibal. What he was you know better
than any.
Scipio. Had he been supported by his country,
had only his losses been filled up, and skilful
engineers sent out to him with machinery and
implements for sieges, we should not be discours-
ing here on what he was : the Roman name had
been extinguished.
Polybius. Since JSmilianus is as unwilling to
blame an enemy as a friend, I take it on myself
to censure Hannibal for two things, subject how-
ever to the decision of him who has conquered
Carthage.
Scipio. The first I anticipate : now what is the
second ?
Pancetiw. I would hear both stated and dis-
coursed on, although the knowledge will be of
little use to me.
P. SCIPIO ^MILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS.
247
Polybius. I condemn, as everyone does, his
inaction after the battle of Cannae ; and, in his
last engagement with Africanus, I condemn no
less his bringing into the front of the centre, as
became some showy tetrarch rather than Hannibal,
his eighty elephants, by the refractoriness of which
he lost the battle.
Scipio. What would you have done with them,
Polybius ]
Polybius. Scipio, I think it unwise and un-
military to employ any force on which we can by
no means calculate.
Scipio. Gravely said, and worthy of Polybius.
In the first book of your history, which leaves me
no other wish or desire than that you should con-
tinue as you begin it, we have, in three different
engagements, three different effects produced by
the employment of elephants. The first, when
our soldiers in Sicily, under Lucius Postumius
and Quinctus Mamilius, drove the Carthaginians
into Heraclea; in which battle the advanced guard
of the enemy, being repulsed, propelled these
animals before it upon the main body of the army,
causing an irreparable disaster : the second, in
the ill-conducted engagement of Atilius Regulus,
who, fearing the shock of them, condensed his
centre, and was outflanked. He should have
opened the lines to them and have suffered them
to pass through, as the enemy's cavalry was in the
wings, and the infantry not enough in advance to
profit by such an evolution. The third was evinced
at Panormus, when Metellus gave orders to the
light-armed troops to harass them and retreat
into the trenches, from which, wounded and con-
founded, and finding no way open, they rushed
back (as many as could) against the Carthaginian
army, and accelerated its discomfiture.
Polybius. If I had employed the elephants at
all, it should rather have been in the rear or on
the flank ; and even there not at the beginning
of the engagement, unless I knew that the horses
or the soldiers were unused to encounter them.
Hannibal must have well remembered (being
equally great in memory and invention) that the
Romans had been accustomed to them in the war
with Pyrrhus, and must have expected more ser-
vice from them against the barbarians of the two
Gauls, against the Insubres and Taurini, than
against our legions. He knew, that the Romans
had on more than one occasion made them detri-
mental to their masters. Having with him a large
body of troops collected by force from various
nations, and kept together with difficulty, he
should have placed the elephants where they
would have been a terror to these soldiers, not
without a threat that they were to trample down
such of them as attempted to fly or declined to
fight.
Scipio. Now, what think you, Pansetius ?
Pancetius. It is well, 0 ^Emilianus, when soldiers
would be philosophers ; but it is ill when philoso-
phers would be soldiers. Do you and Polybius
agree on the point ] if you do, the question need
be asked of none other.
Scipio. Truly, 0 Panaetius, I would rather hear
the thing from him than that Hannibal should
have heard it : for a wise man will say many
things which even a wiser may not have thought
of. Let me tell you both however, what Polybius
may perhaps know already, that combustibles
were placed by Africanus both in flank and rear,
at equal distances, with archers from among the
light horsemen, whose arrows had liquid fire
attached to them, and whose movements would
have irritated, distracted, and wearied down the
elephants, even if the wounds and scorchings had
been ineffectual. But come, Polybius, you must
talk now as others talk ; we all do sometimes.
Polybius. I am the last to admit the authority
of the vulgar ; but here we all meet and unite.
Without asserting or believing that the general
opinion is of any weight against a captain like
Hannibal ; agreeing on the contrary with Panae-
tius, and firmly persuaded that myriads of little
men can no more compensate a great one than
they can make him ; you will listen to me if I
adduce the authority of Laslius.
Scipio. Great authority ! and perhaps, as living
and conversing with those who remembered the
action of Cannae, preferable even to your own.
Polybius. It was his opinion that, from the
consternation of Rome, the city might have been
taken.
Scipio. It suited not the wisdom or the expe-
rience of Hannibal to rely on the consternation
of the Roman people. I too, that we may be on
equal terms, have some authority to bring forward.
The son of Africanus, he who adopted me into the
family of the Scipios, was, as you both remember,
a man of delicate health and sedentary habits,
learned, elegant, and retired. He related to me,
as having heard it from his father, that Hannibal
after the battle sent home the rings of the Roman
knights, and said in his letter, " If you will in-
stantly give me a soldier for each ring, together
with such machines as are already in the arsenal,
I will replace them surmounted by the statue of
Capitoline Jupiter, and our supplications to the
gods of our country shall be made along the streets
and in the temples, on the robes of the Roman
senate." Could he doubt of so moderate a supply?
he waited for it in vain.
And now I will relate to you another thing,
which lam persuaded you will accept as a sufficient
reason of itself why Hannibal did not besiege our
city after the battle of Cannas. His own loss was
so severe, that, in his whole army, he could not
muster ten thousand men.*
But, my friends, as I am certain that neither of
you will ever think me invidious, and as the great-
ness of Hannibal does not diminish the reputation
of Africanus, but augment it, I will venture to
remark that he had little skill or practice in
sieges ; that, after the battle of Thrasymene, he
attacked (you remember) Spoletum unsuccessfully;
* Plutarch says, and undoubtedly upon some ancient
authority, that both armies did not contain that number.
248
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
and that, a short time before the unhappy day at
Cannes, a much smaller town than Spoletum had
resisted and repulsed him. Perhaps he rejoiced
in his heart that he was not supplied with mate-
rials requisite for the capture of strong places ;
since in Rome, he well knew, he would have found
a body of men, partly citizens who had formerly
borne arms, partly the wealthier of our allies who
had taken refuge there, together with their slaves
and clients, exceeding his army in number, not
inferior in valour, compensating the want of gene-
ralship by the advantage of position and by the
desperation of their fortunes, and possessing the
abundant means of a vigorous and long defence.
Unnecessary is it to speak of its duration. When
a garrison can hold our city six months, or even
less, the besieger must retire. Such is the hu-
midity of the air in its vicinity, that the Cartha-
ginians, who enjoyed here at home a very dry and
salubrious climate, would have perished utterly.
The Gauls, I imagine, left us unconquered on a
former occasion from the same necessity. Beside,
they are impatient of inaction, and would have
been most so under a general to whom, without
any cause in common, they were but hired auxi-
liaries. None in any age hath performed such
wonderful exploits as Hannibal ; and we ought
not to censure him for deficiency in an art which
we ourselves have acquired but lately. Is there,
Polybius, any proof or record that Alexander of
Macedon was master of it ?
Polybius. I have found none. We know that
he exposed his person, and had nearly lost his life,
by leaping from the walls of a city ; which a com-
mander-in-chief ought never to do, unless he
would rather hear the huzzas of children, than
the approbation of military men, or any men of
discretion or sense. Alexander was without an
excuse for his temerity, since he was attended by
the generals who had taken Thebes, and who
therefore, he might well know, would take the
weaker and less bravely defended towns of Asia.
Scipio. Here again you must observe the supe-
riority of Hannibal. He was accompanied by no
general of extraordinary talents, resolute as were
many of them, and indeed all. His irruption into
and through Gaul, with so inconsiderable a force ;
his formation of allies out of enemies, in so brief
a space of time ; and then his holding them toge-
ther s<J long; are such miracles, that, cutting
through eternal snows, and marching through
paths which seem to us suspended loosely and
hardly poised in the heavens, are less. And these
too were his device and work. Drawing of paral-
lels, captain against captain, is the occupation of
a trifling and scholastic mind, and seldom is com-
menced, and never conducted, impartially. Yet,
my friends, who of these idlers in parallelograms
is so idle, as to compare the invasion of Persia
with the invasion of Gaul, the Alps, and Italy ;
Moors and Carthaginians with Macedonians and
Greeks ; Darius and his hordes and satraps with
Roman legions under Roman consuls ?
While Hannibal lived, 0 Polybius and Pansetius !
although his city lay before us smouldering in its
ashes, ours would be ever insecure.
Pancetius. You said, 0 Scipio, that the Romans
had learnt but recently the business of sieges ; and
yet many cities in Italy appear to me very strong,
which your armies took long ago.
Scipio. By force and patience. If Pyrrhus had
never invaded us, we should scarcely have ex-
celled the Carthaginians, or even the nomades, in
castrametation, and have been inferior to both in
cavalry. Whatever we know, we have learned
from your country, whether it be useful in peace
or war . . I say your country ; for the Macedo-
nians were instructed by the Greeks. The father
of Alexander, the first of his family who was not
as barbarous and ignorant as a Carian or Arme-
nian slave, received his rudiments in the house of
Epamiuondas.
Pancetius. Permit me now to return, 0 Scipio,
to a question not unconnected with philosophy.
Whether it was prudent or not in Hannibal to
invest the city of Rome after his victory, he might
somewhere have employed his army, where it
should not waste away with luxury.
Scipio. Philosophers, 0 Panaetius, seem to know
more about luxury than we military men do. I
can not say upon what their apprehensions of it
are founded, but certainly they sadly fear it.
Polybius. For us. I wish I could as easily
make you smile to-day, 0 JSmilianus, as I shall
our good-tempered and liberal Panastius ; a phi-
losopher, as we have experienced, less inclined
to speak ill or ludicrously of others, be the
sect what it may, than any I know or have
heard of.
In my early days, one of a different kind, and
whose alarms at luxury were (as we discovered)
subdued in some degree, in some places, was in-
vited by Critolaus to dine with a party of us, all
then young officers, on our march from Achaia
into Elis. His florid and open countenance
made his company very acceptable; and the
more so, as we were informed by Critolaus that he
never was importunate with his morality at
dinner-time.
Philosophers, if they deserve the name, are by
no means indifferent as to the places in which it
is their intention to sow their seeds of virtue.
They choose the ingenuous, the modest, the sensi-
ble, the obedient. We thought rather of where
we should place our table. Behind us lay the
forest of Pholde, with its many glens opening to
the plain : before us the Temple of Olympian
Zeus, indistinctly discernible, leaned against the
azure heavens : and the rivulet of Selinus ran a
few stadions from us, seen only where it received
a smaller streamlet, originating at a fountain
close by.
The cistus, the pomegranate, the myrtle, the
sorpolet, bloomed over our heads and beside us ;
for we had chosen a platform where a projecting
rock, formerly a stone-quarry, shaded us, and
where a little rill, of which the spring was there,
bedimmed our goblets with the purest water.
P. SCIPIO .EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS.
249
The awnings we had brought with us to protect
us from the sun, were unnecessary for that pur-
pose : we rolled them therefore into two long seats,
filling them with moss, which grew profusely a
few paces below. " When our guest arrives," said
Critolaus, " every one of these flowers will serve
him for some moral illustration ; every shrub will
be the rod of Mercury in his hands." We were
impatient for the time of his coming. Thelymnia,
the beloved of Critolaus, had been instructed by
him in a stratagem, to subvert, or shake at least
and stagger, the philosophy of Euthymedes. Has
the name escaped me ! no matter . . perhaps he is
dead . . if living, he would smile at a recoverable
lapse, as easily as we did.
Thelymnia wore a dress like ours, and acceded
to every advice of Critolaus, excepting that she
would not consent so readily to entwine her head
with ivy. At first she objected that there was
not enough of it for all. Instantly two or three
of us pulled down (for nothing is more brittle)
a vast quantity from the rock, which loosened
some stones, and brought down together with
them a bird's nest of the last year. Then she
said, " I dare not use this ivy : the omen is a
bad one."
"Do you mean the nest, Thelymnia?" said
Critolaus.
"No, not the nest so much as the stones,"
replied she, faltering.
" Ah ! those signify the dogmas of Euthymedes,
which you, my lovely Thelymnia, are to loosen and
throw down."
At this she smiled faintly and briefly, and began
to break off some of the more glossy leaves ; and
we who stood around her were ready to take them
and place them in her hair ; when suddenly she
held them tighter, and let her hand drop. On her
lover's asking her why she hesitated, she blushed
deeply, and said, " Phoroneus told me I look best
in myrtle."
Innocent and simple and most sweet (I remem-
ber) was her voice, and, when she had spoken, the
traces of it were remaining on her lips. Her
beautiful throat itself changed colour ; it seemed
to undulate ; and the roseate predominated in its
pearly hue. Phoroneus had been her admirer :
she gave the preference to Critolaus : yet the
name of Phoroneus at that moment had greater
effect upon him than the recollection of his
defeat.
Thelymnia recovered herself sooner. We ran
wherever we saw myrtles, and there were many
about, and she took a part of her coronal from
every one of us, smiling on each ; but it was only
of Critolaus that she asked if he thought that
myrtle became her best. " Phoroneus," answered
he, not without melancholy, "is infallible as
Paris." There was something in the tint of the
tender sprays resembling that of the hair they
encircled : the blossoms too were white as her
forehead. She reminded me of those ancient
fables which represent the favorites of the gods
as turning into plants ; so accordant and identi-
fied was her beauty with the flowers and foliage
she had chosen to adorn it.
In the midst of our felicitations to her we heard
the approach of horses, for the ground was dry
and solid ; and Euthymedes was presently with us.
The mounted slave who led off his master's charger,
for such he appeared to be in all points, suddenly
disappeared ; I presume lest the sight of luxury
should corrupt him. I know not where the groom
rested, nor where the two animals (no neglected
ones certainly, for they were plump and stately)
found provender.
Euthymedes was of lofty stature, had somewhat
passed the middle age, but the Graces had not
left his person, as they usually do when it begins
to bear an impression of authority. He was placed
by the side of Thelymnia. Gladness and expecta-
tion sparkled from every eye : the beauty of The-
lymnia seemed to be a light sent from heaven for
the festival ; a light the pure radiance of which
cheered and replenished the whole heart. Desire
of her was chastened, I may rather say was re-
moved, by the confidence of Critolaus in our
friendship.
Pancetius. Well said ! The story begins to
please and interest me. Where love finds the
soul he neglects the body, and only turns to
it in his idleness as to an afterthought. Its
best allurements are but the nuts and figs of the
divine repast.
Polybius. We exulted in the felicity of our
friend, and wished for nothing which even he
would not have granted. Happy still was the
man from whom the glancing eye of Thelymnia
seemed to ask some advice, how she should act or
answer ! Happy he who, offering her an apple
in the midst of her discourse, fixed his keen
survey upon the next, anxious to mark where
she had touched it ! For it was a calamity to
doubt upon what streak or speck, while she
was inattentive to the basket, she had placed
her finger.
Pancetius. I wish, JSmilianus, you would look
rather more severely than you do . . upon my
life ! I can not . . and put an end to these dithy-
rambics. The ivy runs about us, and may in-
furiate us.
Scipio. The dithyrambics, I do assure you,
Panaetius, are not of my composing. We are both
in danger from the same thyrsus : we will parry
it as well as we can, or bend our heads before it.
Pancetius. Come, Polybius, we must follow you
then, I see, or fly you.
Polybius. Would you rather hear the remainder
another time ?
Pancetius. By Hercules ! I have more curiosity
than becomes me.
Polybius. No doubt, in the course of the con-
versation, Euthymedes had made the discovery
we hoped to obviate. Never was his philosophy
more amiable or more impressive. Pleasure was
treated as a friend, not as a master : many things
were found innocent that had long been doubtful :
excesses alone were condemned. Thclvmnia was
250
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
enchanted by the frankness and liberality of her
philosopher, although, in addressing her, more
purity on his part and more rigour were discerni-
ble. His delicacy was exquisite. When his eyes
met hers, they did not retire with rapidity and
confusion, but softly and complacently, and as
though it were the proper time and season of
reposing from the splendours they had encoun-
tered. Hers from the beginning were less go-
vernable : when she found that they were so,
she contrived scheme after scheme for diverting
them from the table, and entertaining his unob-
servedly.
The higher part of the quarry, which had pro-
tected us always from the western sun, was
covered with birch and hazel ; the lower with
innumerable shrubs, principally the arbutus and
myrtle.
" Look at those goats above us," said Thelym-
nia. "What has tangled their hair so? they
seem wet."
" They have been lying on the cistus in the
plain," replied Euthymedes ; " many of its broken
flowers are sticking upon them yet, resisting all
the efforts, as you see, of hoof and tongue."
" How beauteous," said she, " are the flexible
and crimson branches of this arbutus," taking it
in one hand and beating with it the back of the
other. " It seems only to have come . out of its
crevice to pat my shoulder at dinner, and twitch
my myrtle when my head leaned back. I wonder
how it can grow in such a rock."
"The arbutus," answered he, "clings to the
Earth with the most fondness where it finds her
in the worst poverty, and covers her bewintered
bosom with leaves, berries, and flowers. On the
same branch is unripe fruit of the most vivid
green ; ripening, of the richest orange ; ripened,
of perfect scarlet. The maidens of Tyre could
never give so brilliant and sweet a lustre to the
fleeces of Miletus ; nor did they ever string such
even and graceful pearls as the blossoms are, for
the brides of Assyrian or Persian kings."
"And yet themyrtle is preferred to the arbutus,"
said Thelymnia, with some slight uneasiness.
" I know why," replied he . . " may I tell it ? "
She bowed and smiled, perhaps not without the
expectation of some compliment. He continued
. . " The myrtle has done what the arbutus comes
too late for.
" The myrtle has covered with her starry crown
the beloved of the reaper and vintager: the
myrtle was around the head of many a maiden
celebrated in song, when the breezes of autumn
scattered the first leaves, and rustled among
them on the ground, and when she cried timidly,
Rise, rise ! people are coming ! here ! there !
many ! "
Thelymnia said, "That now is not true. Where
did you hear it V and in a softer and lower voice,
if I may trust Androcles, " 0 Euthymedes, do noi
believe it ! "
Either he did not hear her, or dissembled it'; and
went on . . " This deserves preference ; this deserves
immortality; this deserves a place in the temple
of Venus ; in her hand, in her hair, in her breast:
Thelymnia herself wears it."
We laughed and applauded : she blushed and
:ooked grave and sighed . . for she had never
icard anyone, I imagine, talk so long at once.
However it was, she sighed : I saw and heard her.
Wtolaus gave her some glances : she did not
catch them. One of the party clapped his hands
onger than the rest, whether in approbation or
derision of this rhapsody, delivered with glee and
melody, and entreated the philosopher to indulge
us with a few of his adventures.
" You deserve, young man," said Euthymedes
gravely, " to have as few as I have had, you whose
idle curiosity would thus intemperately reveal the
most sacred mysteries. Poets and philosophers
may reason on love, and dream about it, but
rarely do they possess the object, and, whenever
they do, that object is the invisible deity of a silent
worshipper."
"Reason then or dream," replied the other,
breathing an air of scorn to sooth the soreness of
the reproof.
'' When we reason on love," said Euthymedes,
" we often talk as if we were dreaming : let me try
whether the recital of my dream can make you
think I talk as if I were reasoning. You may call
it a dream, a vision, or what you will.
" I was in a place not very unlike this, my head
lying back against a rock, where its crevices were
tufted with soft and odoriferous herbs, and where
vine-leaves protected my face from the sun, and
from the bees, which however were less likely to
molest me, being busy in their first hours of honey-
making among the blossoms. Sleep soon fell upon
me ; for of all philosophers I am certainly the
drowsiest, though perhaps there are many quite of
equal ability in communicating the gift of drowsi-
ness. Presently I saw three figures, two of which
were beautiful, very differently, but in the same
degree : the other was much less so. The least of
the three, at the first glance, I recognised to be
Love, although I saw no wings, nor arrows, nor
quiver, nor torch, nor emblem of any kind desig-
nating his attributes. The next was not Venus,
nor a Grace, nor a Nymph, nor Goddess of whom
in worship or meditation I had ever conceived an
idea ; and yet my heart persuaded me she was a
Goddess, and from the manner in which she spoke
to Love, and he again to her, I was convinced she
must be. Quietly and unmovedly as she was
standing, her figure I perceived was adapted to
the perfection of activity. With all the succulence
and suppleness of early youth, scarcely beyond
puberty, it however gave me the idea, from its
graceful and easy languor, of its being possessed
by a fondness for repose. Her eyes were large
and serene, and of a quality to exhibit the intensity
of thought, or even the habitude of reflection, but
incapable of expressing the plenitude of joy ; and
her countenance was tinged with so delicate a
colour, that it appeared an effluence from an irra-
diated cloud, passing over it in the heavens. The
P. SCIPIO .EMILIANUS, POLYBITJS, PAN^TIUS.
251'
third figure, who sometimes stood in one place
and sometimes in another, and of whose counte-
nance I could only distinguish that it was pale,
anxious, and mistrustful, interrupted her perpe-
tually. I listened attentively and with curiosity
to the conversation, and by degrees I caught the
appellations they interchanged. The one I found
was Hope ; and I wondered I did not find it out
sooner : the other was Fear ; which I should not
have found out at all ; for she did not look terri-
ble nor aghast, but more like Sorrow or Despon-
dency. The first words I could collect of Hope
were these, spoken very mildly, and rather with a
look of appeal than of accusation. ' Too surely
you have forgotten, for never was child more for-
getful or more ungrateful, how many times I have
carried you in my bosom, when even your mother
drove you from her, and when you could find no
other resting-place in heaven or earth.'
"'0 unsteady unruly Love!' cried the pale
Goddess with much energy,, 'it has often been
by my intervention that thy wavering authority
was fixed. For this I have thrown alarm after
alarm into the heedless breast that Hope had
once beguiled, and that was growing insensible
and torpid under her feebler influence. I do not
upbraid thee ; and it never was my nature to
caress thee ; but I claim from thee my portion of
the human heart, mine, ever mine, abhorrent as
it may be of me. Let Hope stand on one side of
thy altars, but let my place be on the other ; or, I
swear by all the gods ! not any altars shalt thou
possess upon the globe.'
" She ceased . . and Love trembled. He turned
his eyes upon Hope, as if in his turn appealing to
her. She said, ' It must be so ; it was so from the
beginning of the world : only let me never lose
you from my sight.' She clasped her hands upon
her breast, as she said it, and he looked on her
with a smile, and was going up (I thought) to kiss
her, when he was recalled, and stopped.
"'Where Love is, there will I be also,' said Fear,
' and even thou, 0 Hope ! never shalt be beyond
my power.'
" At these words I saw them both depart. I then
looked toward Love : I did not see him go ; but he
was gone."
The narration being ended, there were some
who remarked what very odd things dreams are :
but Thelymnia looked almost as if she herself was
dreaming; and Alcimus, who sat opposite, and
fancied she was pondering on what the vision
could mean, said it appeared to him a thing next
to certainty, that it signified how love can not
exist without hope or without fear. Euthymedes
nodded assent, and assured him that a soothsayer
in great repute had given the same interpretation.
Upon which the younger friends of Alcimus im-
mediately took the ivy from his forehead, and
crowned him with laurel, as being worthy to serve
Apollo. But they did it with so much noise and
festivity, that, before the operation was completed,
he began to suspect they were in jest. Thelymnia
had listened to many stories in her lifetime, yet
never had she heard one from any man before who
had been favored by the deities with a vision.
Hope and Love, as her excited imagination re-
presented them to her, seemed still to be with
Euthymedes. She thought the tale would have
been better without the mention of Fear: but
perhaps this part was only a dream, all the rest a
really true vision. She had many things to ask
him : she did not know when, nor exactly what,
for she was afraid of putting too hard a question
to him in the presence of so many, lest it might
abash him if he could not answer it : but she
wished to ask him something, anything. She
soon did it, not without faltering, and was en-
chanted by the frankness and liberality of her
philosopher.
" Did you ever love ? " said she smiling, though
not inclined to smile, but doing it to conceal (as
in her simplicity she thought it would) her blushes,
and looking a little aside, at the only cloud in the
heavens, which crossed the moon, as if adorning
her for a festival, with a fillet of pale sapphire and
interlucent gold.
" I thought I did," replied he, lowering his eyes
that she might lower hers to rest upon him.
" Do then people ever doubt this ] " she asked
in wonder, looking full in his face with earnest
curiosity.
" Alas ! " said he softly, " until a few hours ago,
until Thelymnia was placed beside me, until an
ungenerous heart exposed the treasure that should
have dwelt within it, to the tarnish of a stranger,
if that stranger had the baseness to employ the
sophistry that was in part expected from him,
never should I have known that I had not loved
before. We may be uncertain if a vase or an
image be of the richest metal, until the richest
metal be set right against it. Thelymnia! if I
thought it possible at any time hereafter, that
you sljpuld love me as I love you, I would exert
to the uttermost my humble powers of persuasion
to avert it."
" Oh ! there is no danger," said she, disconcerted;
" I did not love anyone : I thought I did, just
like you ; but indeed, indeed, Euthymedes, I was
equally in an error. Women have dropped into
the grave from it, and have declared to the last
moment that they never loved : men have sworn
they should die with desperation, and have lived
merrily, and have dared to run into the peril fifty
times. They have hard cold hearts, incommuni-
cative and distrustful."
"Have I too, Thelymnia?" gently he expostu-
lated.
" No, not you," said she ; " you may believe I
was not thinking of you when I was speaking.
But the idea does really make me smile and almost
laugh, that you should fear me, supposing it pos-
sible, if you could suppose any such thing. Love
does not kill men, take my word for it."
He looked rather in sorrow than in doubt, and
answered : " Unpropitious love may not kill us
always, may not deprive us at once of what at their
festivals the idle and inconsiderate call life ; but,
252
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
0 Thelymnia ! our lives are truly at an end when
we are beloved no longer. Existence may be con-
tinued, or rather may be renewed, yet the agonies
of death and the chilliness of the grave have been
passed through ; nor are there Elysian fields, nor
the sports that delighted in former times, awaiting
us, nor pleasant converse, nor walks with linked
hands, nor intermitted songs, nor vengeful kisses
for leaving them off abruptly, nor looks that
shake us to assure us afterward, nor that bland
inquietude, as gently tremulous as the expansion
of buds into blossoms, which hurries us from
repose to exercise and from exercise to repose,"
" 0 ! I have been very near loving ! " cried The-
lymnia. " Where in the world can a philosopher
have learned all this about it ! "
The beauty of Thelymnia, her blushes, first at
the deceit, afterward at the encouragement she
received in her replies, and lastly from some other
things which we could not penetrate, highly grati-
fied Critolaus. Soon however (for wine always
brings back to us our last strong feeling) he thought
again of Phoroneus, as young, as handsome, and
once (is that the word ]) as dear to her. He sad-
dened at the myrtle on the head of his beloved ; it
threw shadows and gloom upon his soul ; her
smiles, her spirits, her wit, above all her nods of
approbation, wounded him. He sighed when she
covered her face with her hand; when she dis-
closed it he sighed again. Every glance of pleasure,
every turn of surprise, every movement of her
body, pained and oppressed him. He cursed in his
heart whoever it was who had stuffed that portion
of the couch ; there was so little moss, thought he,
between Thelymnia and Euthymedes. He might
have seen Athos part them, and would have mur-
mured still.
The rest of us were in admiration at the facility
and grace with which Thelymnia sustained her
part, and observing less Critolaus than we .did in
the commencement, when he acknowledged and
enjoyed our transports, indifferently and content-
edly saw him rise from the table and go away,
thinking his departure a preconcerted section of
the stratagem. He retired, as he told us after-
ward, into a grot. So totally was his mind ab-
stracted from the entertainment, he left the
table athirst, covered as it was with fruit and wine,
and abundant as ran beside us the clearest
and sweetest and most refreshing rill. He related
to me that, at the extremity of the cavern, he
applied his parched tongue to the dripping rock,
shunning the light of day, the voice of friendship,
so violent was his desire of solitude and conceal-
ment, and he held his forehead and his palms
against it when his lips had closed. We knew
not and suspected not his feelings at the time, and
rejoiced at the anticipation of the silly things a
philosopher should have whispered, which Thelym-
nia in the morning of the festival had promised
us to detail the next day. Love is apt to get
entangled and to trip and stumble when he puts
on the garb of Friendship : it is too long and loose
for him to walk in, although he sometimes finds
it convenient for a covering. Euthymedes the
philosopher made this discovery, to which per-
haps others may lay equal claim.
After the lesson he had been giving her, which
amused her in the dictation, she stood composed
and thoughtful, and then said hesitatingly, " But
would it be quite proper 1 would there be nothing
of insincerity and falsehood in it, my Critolaus '!"
He caught her up in his arms, and, as in his
enthusiasm he had raised her head above his, he
kissed her bosom. She reproved and pardoned
him, making him first declare and protest he
would never do the like again. " 0 soul of truth
and delicacy !" cried he aloud ; and Thelymnia,
no doubt, trembled lest her lover should in a
moment be forsworn ; so imminent and inevitable
seemed the repetition of his offence. But he
observed on her eyelashes, what had arisen from
his precipitation in our presence,
A hesitating long suspended tear,
Like that which hangs upon the vine fresh-pruned,
Until the morning kisses it away.
The Nymphs, who often drive men wild (they
tell us) have led me astray : I must return with
you to the grot. We gave every facility to the
stratagem. One slipt away in one direction,
another in another; but, at a certain distance,
each was desirous of joining some comrade, and
of laughing together; yet each reproved the
laughter, even when far off, lest it should do
harm, reserving it for the morrow. While they
walked along, conversing, the words of Euthy-
medes fell on the ears of Thelymnia softly as
cistus-petals, fluttering and panting for a moment
in the air, fall on the thirsty sand. She, in a
voice that makes the brain dizzy as it plunges
into the breast, replied to him,
" 0 Euthymedes ! you must have lived your
whole life-time in the hearts of women to know
them so thoroughly. I never knew mine before
you taught me."
Euthymedes now was silent, being one of the
few wise men whom love ever made wiser. But,
in his silence and abstraction, he took especial
care to press the softer part of her arm against
his heart, that she might be sensible of its quick
pulsation: and, as she rested her elbow within
the curvature of his, the slenderest of her fingers
solicited, first one, then another, of those beneath
them, but timidly, briefly, inconclusively, and
then clung around it pressingly for countenance
and support. Pansetius, you have seen the moun-
tains on the left hand, eastward, when you are in
Olympia, and perhaps the little stream that runs
from the nearest of them into the Alpheus. Could
you have seen them that evening ! the moon
never shone so calmly, so brightly, upon Latmos,
nor the torch of Love before her. And yet many
of the stars were visible ; the most beautiful were
among them ; and as Euthymedes taught The-
lymnia their names, their radiance seemed more
joyous, more effulgent, more beneficent. If you
have ever walked forth into the wilds and open
P. SCIPIO ^MILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PANvETIUS.
253
plains upon such moonlight nights, cautious as
you are, I will venture to say, Pansetius, you have
often tript, even though the stars were not your
study. There was an arm to support or to catch
Thelymnia : yet she seemed incorrigible. Euthy-
medes was patient : at last he did I know not
what, which was followed by a reproof, and a won-
der how he could have done so, and another how
he could answer for it. He looked ingenuously
and apologetically, forgetting to correct his fault
in the meanwhile. She listened to him atten-
tively, pushing his hand away at intervals, yet
less frequently and less resolutely in the course of
his remonstrance, particularly when he complained
to her that the finer and more delicate part of us,
the eye, may wander at leisure over what is in its
way ; yet that its dependents in the corporeal
system must not follow it ; that they must hunger
and faint in the service of a power so rich and
absolute. " This being hard, unjust, and cruel,"
said he, " never can be the ordinance of the gods.
Love alone feeds the famishing ; Love alone places
all things, both of matter and of mind, in perfect
harmony ; Love hath less to learn from Wisdom
than Wisdom hath to learn from Love."
" Modest man !" said she to herself, " there is
a great deal of truth in what he says, considering
he is a philosopher." She then asked him, after
a pause, why he had not spoken so in the con-
versation on love, which appeared to give ani-
mation, mirth, and wit, to the dullest of the com-
pany, and even to make the wines of Chios, Crete,
and Lesbos, sparkle with fresh vivacity in their
goblets.
" I who was placed by the fountain-head," re-
plied he, " had no inclination to follow the shal-
low and slender stream, taking its course toward
streets and lanes, and dipt into and muddied by
unhallowed and uncleanly hands. After dinner
such topics are usually introduced, when the ob-
jects that ought to inspire our juster sentiments
are gone away. Anindelicacy worse than Thracian !
The purest gales of heaven, in the most perfect
solitudes, should alone lift up the aspiration of
our souls to the divinities all men worship."
" Sensible creature !" sighed Thelymnia in her
bosom, " how rightly he does think ! "
" Come, fairest of wanderers," whispered he
softly and persuasively, " such will I call you,
though the stars hear me, and though the gods
too in a night like this pursue their loves upon
earth . . the moon has no little pools filled with
her light under the rock yonder ; she deceives
us in the depth of these hollows, like the limpid
sea. Beside, we are here among the pinks and
sand-roses : do they never prick your ankles with
their stems and thorns? Even their leaves at
this late season are enough to hurt you."
" I think they do," replied she, and thanked
him, with a tender timid glance, for some fresh
security his arm or hand had given her in escap-
ing from them. " 0 now we are quite out of
them all ! How cool is the saxifrage ! how cool
the ivy-leaves!"
" I fancy, my sweet scholar ! or shall I rather
say (for you have been so oftener) my sweet
teacher ! they are not ivy-leaves : to me they
appear to be periwinkles."
" I will gather some and see," said Thelymnia.
Periwinkles cover wide and deep hollows : of
what are they incapable when the convolvulus is
in league with them ! She slipped from the arm
of Euthymedes, and in an instant had disappeared.
In an instant too he had followed.
Pancetius. These are mad pranks, and always
end ill. Moonlights ! cannot we see them
quietly from the tops of our houses, or from the
plain pavement? Must we give challenges to
mastiffs, make appointments with wolves, run
after asps, and languish for stonequarries ? Un-
wary philosopher and simple girl ! Were they
found again ]
Polybius. Yea, by Castor ! and most unwil-
lingly.
Sdpio. I do not wonder. When the bones are
broken, without the consolation of some great
service rendered in such misfortune, and when
beauty must become deformity, I can well believe
that they both would rather have perished.
Polybiu8. Amaranth on the couch of Jove and
Hebe was never softer than the bed they fell on.
Critolaus had advanced to the opening of the
cavern : he had heard the exclamation of The-
lymnia as she was falling . . he forgave her . .
he ran to her for her forgiveness . . he heard some
low sounds . . he smote his heart, else it had
fainted in him . . he stopped.
Euthymedes was raising up Thelymnia, forget-
ful (as was too apparent) of himself. " Traitor ! "
exclaimed the fiery Critolaus, " thy blood shall
pay for this. Impostor ! whose lesson this very
day was, that luxury is the worst of poisons."
" Critolaus," answered he calmly, drawing his
robe about him (for, falling in so rough a place,
his vesture was a little disordered), " we will not
talk of blood ; but as for my lesson of to-day, I
must defend it. In few words then, since I think
we are none of us disposed for many, hemlock
does not hurt goats, nor luxury philosophers."
Thelymnia had risen more beautiful from her
confusion ; but her colour soon went away, and,
if any slight trace of it were remaining on her
cheeks, the modest moonlight and the severer
stars would let none show itself. She looked as
the] statue of Pygmalion would have looked, had
she been destined the hour after animation to
return into her inanimate state. Offering no
excuse, she was the worthier of pardon : but there
is one hour in which pardon never entered the
human breast, and that hour was this. Critolaus,
who always had ridiculed the philosophers, now
hated them from the bottom of his heart. Every sect
was detestable to him, the Stoic, the Platonic, the
Epicurean ; all equally ; but especially those hy-
pocrites and impostors in each, who, under the
cloak of philosophy, came forward with stately
figures, prepossessing countenances, and bland
discourse.
254
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
Panastius. We do not desire to hear what such
foolish men think of philosophers, true or false ;
but pray tell us how he acted on his own notable
discovery ; for I opine he was the unlikeliest of
the three to grow quite calm on a gudden.
Polybius. He went away ; not without fierce
glances at the stars, reproaches to the gods them-
selves, and serious and sad reflections upon des-
tiny. Being however a pious man by constitution
and education, he thought, he had spoken of the
omens unadvisedly, and found other interpreta-
tions for the stones we had thrown down with
the ivy. " And ah ! " said he sighing, " the
bird's nest of last year too ! I now know what
that is ! "
Pancetius. Polybius, I considered you too grave
a man to report such idle stories. The manner
is not yours : I rather think you have torn out a
page or two from some love-feast (not generally
known) of Plato.
Polybius. Your judgment has for once deserted
you, my friend. If Plato had been present, he
might then indeed have described what he saw,
and elegantly ; but if he had feigned the story,
the name that most interests us would not have
ended with a vowel.
Scipio. You convince me, Polybius.
Pancetius. I join my hands, and give them to
you.
Polybius. My usual manner is without variety.
I endeavour to collect as much sound sense and
as many solid facts as I can, to distribute them
as commodiously, and to keep them as clear of
ornament. If anyone thought of me or my style
in reading my history, I should condemn myself
as a defeated man.
Scipio. Polybius, you are by far the wisest that
ever wrote history, though .many wise have writ-
ten it, and if your facts are sufficiently abundant,
your work will be the most interesting and im-
portant.
Polybius. Live then, Scipio !
Pancetius. The gods grant it !
Polybius. I know what I can do and what I
can not (the proudest words perhaps that ever
man uttered). I say it plainly to you, my sincere
and judicious monitor ; but you must also let me
say that, doubtful whether I could amuse our
jEmilianus in his present mood, I would borrow a
tale, unaccustomed as I am to such, from the
, libraries of Miletus, or snatch it from the bosom
of Elephantis.
Scipio. Your friendship comes under various
forms to me, my dear Polybius, but it is always
warm and always welcome. Nothing can be
kinder or more delicate in you, than to diversify
as much as possible our conversation this day.
Panaetius would be more argumentative on luxury
than I : even Euthymedes (it appears) was un-
answerable.
Pancetius. 0 the knave ! such men bring re-
proaches upon philosophy.
Scipio. I see no more reason why they should,
than why a slattern who empties a certain vase
on your head in the street, should make you cry,
:' 0 Jupiter ! what a curse is water ! "
Pancetius. I am ready to propose almost such
an exchange with you, JSmilianus, as Diomedes'
with Glaucus . . . my robe for yours.
Scipio. Panaetius, could it be done, you would
wish it undone. The warfare you undertake is
the more difficult : we have not enemies on both
sides, as you have.
Pancetius. If you had seen" strait, you would
lave seen that the offer was, to exchange my
philosophy for yours. You need less meditation,
and employ more, than any man. Now if you
lave aught to say on luxury, let me hear it.
Scipio. It would be idle to run into the parts
of it, and to make a definition of that which we
agree on ; but it is not so to remind you that we
were talking of it in soldiers ; for the pleasant
tale of Thelymnia is enough to make us forget
;hem, even while the trumpet is sounding. Be-
lieve me,myfriend (or ask Polybius), agood general
will turn this formidable thing, luxury, to some
account. He will take care that, like the strong
vinegar the legionaries carry with them, it should
be diluted, and thus be useful.
Pancetius. Then it is luxury no longer.
Scipio. True ; and now tell me, Panaetius, or
you Polybius, what city was ever so exuberant in
riches, as to maintain a great army long together
in sheer luxury 1 I am not speaking of cities that
have been sacked, but of the allied and friendly,
whose interests are to be observed, whose affection
to be conciliated and retained. Hannibal knew
this, and minded it.
Polybius. You might have also added to the
interrogation, if you had thought proper, those
cities which have been sacked ; for there plenty is
soon wasted, and not soon supplied again.
Scipio. Let us look closer at the soldier's board,
and see what is on it in the rich Capua. Is plen-
tiful and wholesome food luxury ? or do soldiers
run into the market-place for a pheasant ? or do
those on whom they are quartered pray and press
them to eat it ] Suppose they went hunting
quails, hares, partridges ; would it render them
less active? There are no wild boars in that
neighbourhood, or we might expect from a boar-
hunt a visitation of the gout. Suppose the men
drew their idea of pleasure from the school or
from the practices of Euthymedes. One vice is
corrected by another, where a higher principle
does not act, and where a man does not exert the
proudest dominion over the most turbulent of
states . . . himself. Hannibal, we may be sure,
never allowed his army to repose in utter inacti-
vity ; no, nor to remain a single day without its
exercise ... a battle, a march, a foraging, a con-
veyance of wood or water, a survey of the banks
of rivers, a fathoming of their depth, a certification
of their soundness or unsoundness at bottom, a
measurement of the greater or less extent of their
fords, a review, or a castrametation. The plenty
of his camp at Capua (for you hardly can imagine,
Pansetius, that the soldiers had in a military sense
P. SCIPIO .EMILIANUS, POLYBIUS, PAN.ETIUS.
255
the freedom of the city, and took what they pleased
without pay and without restriction) attached to
him the various nations of which it was composed,
and kept together the heterogeneous and discor-
dant mass. It was time that he should think of
this : for probably there was not a soldier left who
had not lost in battle or by fatigue his dearest
friend and comrade.
Dry bread and hard blows are excellent things
in themselves, and military requisites . . to those
who converse on them over their cups, turning
their heads for the approbation of others on whose
bosom they recline, and yawning from sad dis-
quietude at the degeneracy and effeminacy of the
age. But there is finally a day when the cement
of power begins to lose its strength and coherency,
and when the fabric must be kept together by
pointing it anew, and by protecting it a little
from that rigour of the seasons which at first
compacted it.
The story of Hannibal and his army wasting
away in luxury, is common, general, universal :
its absurdity is remarked by few, or rather by
none.
Polybius. The wisest of us are slow to disbelieve
what we have learned early: yet this story has
always been to me incredible.
Scipio. Beside the reasons I have adduced, is it
necessary to remind you that Campania is subject
to diseases which incapacitate the soldier 1 Those
of Hannibal were afflicted by them : few indeed
perished; but they were debilitated by their
malady, and while they were waiting for the
machinery which (even if they had had the arti-
ficers among them) could not have been con-
structed in double the time requisite for importing
it, the period of dismay at Rome, if ever it existed,
had elapsed. The wonder is less that Hannibal did
not take Rome, than that he was able to remain
in Italy, not having taken it. Considering how
he held together, how he disciplined, how he pro-
visioned (the most difficult thing of all, in the face
of such enemies) an army in great part, as one
would imagine, so intractable and wasteful ; what
commanders, what soldiers, what rivers, and what
mountains, opposed him ; I think Polybius, you
will hardly admit to a parity or comparison with
him, in the rare union of political and military
science, the most distinguished of your own
countrymen; not Philopcemen, nor Philip of
Macedon; if indeed you can hear me without
anger and indignation name a barbarian king
with Greeks.
Polybius. When kings are docile, and pay due
respect to those who are wiser and more virtuous
than themselves, I would not point at them as
objects of scorn or contumely, even among the
free. There is little danger that men educated as
we have been should value them too highly, or
that men educated as they have been should
eclipse the glory of Flriloposmen. People in a
republic know that their power and existence must
depend on the zeal and assiduity, the courage and
integrity, of those they employ in their first offices
of state ; kings on the contrary lay the foundations
of their power on abject hearts and prostituted
intellects, and fear and abominate those whom the
breath of God hath raised higher than the breath
of man. Hence, from being the dependents of
their own slaves, both they and their slaves
become at last the dependents of free nations, and
alight from their cars to be tied by the neck to
the cars of better men.
Scipio. Deplorable condition! if their education
had allowed any sense of honour to abide in them.
But we must consider them as the tulips and
anemones and other gaudy flowers, that shoot
from the earth to be looked upon in idleness,
and to be snapped by the stick or broken by the
wind, without our interest, care, or notice. We
can not thus calmly contemplate the utter sub-
version of a mighty capital ; we can not thus
indifferently stand over the strong agony of an
expiring nation, after a gasp of years in a battle
of ages, to win a world, or be for ever fallen.
Pancetius. You estimate, 0 jEmilianus, the
abilities of a general, not by the number of battles
he has won, nor of enemies he hath slain or led
captive, but by the combinations he hath formed,
the blows of fortune he hath parried or avoided,
the prejudices he hath removed, and the difficul-
ties of every kind he hath overcome. In like
manner we should consider kings. Educated still
more barbarously than other barbarians, sucking
their milk alternately from Vice and Folly, guided
in their first steps by Duplicity and Flattery,
whatever they do but decently is worthy of ap-
plause ; whatever they do virtuously, of admiration.
I would say it even to Caius Gracchus ; I would
tell him it even in the presence of his mother ;
unappalled by her majestic mien, her truly Roman
sanctity, her brow that can not frown, but that
reproves with pity ; for I am not so hostile to
royalty as other philosophers are . . perhaps
because I have been willing to see less of it.
Polybius. Eternal thanks to]the Romans ! who,
whatever reason they may have had to treat the
Greeks as enemies, to traverse and persecute such
men as Lycortas my father, and as Philopremen
my early friend, to consume our cities with fire,
and to furrow our streets with torrents (as we
have read lately) issuing from the remolten
images of gods and heroes, have however so far
respected the mother of Civilisation and of Law,
as never to permit the cruel mockery of erecting
Barbarism and Royalty on their vacant bases.
Pawxtius, Our ancient institutions in part exist ;
we lost the rest when we lost the simplicity of our
forefathers. Let it be our glory that we have
resisted the most populous and wealthy nations,
and that, having been conquered, we have been
conquered by the most virtuous ; that every one
of our cities hath produced a greater number of
illustrious men than all the remainder of the earth
around us ; that no man can anywhere enter his hall
or portico, and see the countenances of his ancestors
from their marble columels, without a commemo-
rative and grateful sense of obligation to us ; that
256
IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS.
neither his solemn feasts nor his cultivated fields
are silent on it ; that not the lamp which shows
him the glad faces of his children, and prolongs
his studies, and watches by his rest ; that not the
ceremonies whereby he hopes to avert the ven-
geance of the gods, nor the tenderer ones whereon
are founded the affinities of domestic life, nor
finally those which lead toward another ; would
have existed in his country, if Greece had not
conveyed them. Bethink thee, Scipio, how little
hath been done by any other nation, to promote the
moral dignity or enlarge the social pleasures of
the human race. What parties ever met, in their
most populous cities, for the enjoyment of liberal
and speculative conversation ] What Alcibiades,
elated with war and glory, turned his youthful
mind from general admiration and from the
cheers and caresses of coeval friends, to strengthen
and purify it under the cold reproofs of the aged]
What Aspasia led Philosophy to smile on Love, or
taught Love to reverence Philosophy ? These, as
thou knowest, are not the safest guides for either
sex to follow; yet in these were united the gravity
and the graces of wisdom, never seen, never
imagined, out of Athens.
I would not offend thee by comparing the
genius of the Roman people with ours: the offence
is removable, and in part removed already, by thy
hand. The little of sound learning, the little of
pure wit, that hath appeared in Rome from her
foundation, hath been concentrated under thy
roof: one tile would cover it. Have we not
walked together, 0 Scipio, by starlight, on the
shores of Surrentum and Baiee, of Ischia and
Caprea, and hath it not occurred to thee that the
heavens themselves, both what we see of them
and what lieth above our vision, are peopled with
our heroes and heroines ? The ocean, that roars
so heavily in the ears of other men, hath for us
its tuneful shells, its placid nymphs, and its bene-
ficent ruler. The trees of the forest, the flowers,
the plants, passed indiscriminately elsewhere,
awaken and warm our affection ; they mingle with
the objects of our worship; they breathe the spirit
of our ancestors ; they lived in our form ; they
spoke in our language ; they suffered as our
daughters may suffer; the deities revisit them
with pity; and some (we think) dwell among
them.
Scipio. Poetry ! poetry !
Pwnodius. Yes; I own it. The spirit of Greece,
passing through and ascending above the world,
hath so animated universal nature, that the very
rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds
burst forth with it ... and it falls, jEmilianus !
even from me.
Scipio. It is from Greece I have received my
friends, Paneetius and Polybius.
Pancetius. Say more, ^Emilianus ! You have
indeed said it here already ; but say it again at
Rome : it is Greece who taught the Romans all
beyond the rudiments of war : it is Greece who
placed in your hand the sword that conquered
Carthage.
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
OF
WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE,
EUSEBY TREEN, JOSEPH CARNABY, AND SILAS GOUGH, CLERK,
BEFORE THE WORSHIPFUL
SIR THOMAS LUCY, KNIGHT,
TOUCHING DEER-STEALING,
ON THE 19TH DAY OP SEPTEMBER, IN THE YEAR OP GRACE 1582.
EDITOR'S .PREFACE.
" IT was an ancestor of my husband who brought out the famous Shakspeare."
These words were really spoken, and were repeated in conversation as ridiculous. Certainly such was very far
from the lady's intention ; and who knows to what extent they are true ?
The frolic of Shakspeare in deer-stealing was the cause of his Hegira ,- and his connection with players in London
was the cause of his writing plays. Had he remained in his native town, his ambition had never been excited by the
applause of the intellectual, the popular, and the powerful, which, after all, was hardly sufficient to excite it. He
wrote from the same motive as he acted ; to earn his daily bread. He felt his own powers, but he cared little for
making them felt by others more than served his wants.
The malignant may doubt, or pretend to doubt, the authenticity of the Examination here published. Let us, who
are not malignant, be cautious of adding anything to the noisome mass of incredulity that surrounds us ; let us avoid
the crying sin of our age, in which the Memoirs of a Parish Clerk, edited as they were by a pious and learned dignitary
of the Established Church, are questioned in regard to their genuineness.
Examinations taken from the mouth are surely the most trustworthy : whoever doubts it, may be convinced by
Ephraim Barnett.
The reader will form to himself, from this Examination of Shakspeare, a more favourable opinion of Sir Thomas
than is left upon his mind by the Dramatist in the character of Justice Shallow. The knight indeed is here exhibited
in all his pride of birth and station, in all his pride of theologian and poet ; he is led by the nose, while he believes
that nobody can move him, and shows some other weaknesses, which the least attentive observer will discover ; but
he is not without a little kindness at the bottom of the heart, a heart too contracted to hold much, or to let what it
holds ebulliate very freely. But, upon the whole, we neither can utterly hate nor utterly despise him. Ungainly
as he is,
Circum praecordia ludit.
The author of the Imaginary Conversations seems, in his Boccacio and Petrarca, to have taken his idea of Sir
Magnus from this manuscript. He however has adapted that character to the times ; and in Sir Magnus the coward
rises to the courageous, the unskilful in arms becomes the skilful, and war is to him a teacher of humanity. With
much superstition, theology never molests him : scholarship and poetry are no affairs of his : he doubts of himself and
others, and is as suspicious in his ignorance as Sir Thomas is confident.
With these wide diversities, there are family features, such as are likely to display themselves in different times
and circumstances, and some so generically prevalent as never to lie quite dormant in the breed. In both of them there
is parsimony, there is arrogance, there is contempt of inferiors, there is abject awe of power, there is irresolution,
there is imbecility. But Sir Magnus has no knowledge, and no respect for it. Sir Thomas would almost go thirty miles,
even to Oxford, to see a fine specimen of it, although, like most of those who call themselves the godly, he entertains
the most undoubting belief that he is competent to correct the errors of the wisest and most practised theologian.
A part only of the many deficiencies which the reader will discover in this book is attributable to the Editor.
These however it is his duty to account for, and he will do it as briefly as he can.
The facsimiles (as printers' boys call them, meaning specimens) of the handwriting of nearly all the persons intro-
duced, might perhaps have been procured, had sufficient tune been allowed for another journey into Warwickshire.
That of Shakspeare is known already in the signature to his will, but deformed by sickness : that of Sir Thomas Lucy
is extant at the bottom of a commitment of a female vagrant, for having a sucking child in her arms on the public
road : that of Silas Gough is affixed to the register of births and marriages, during several years, in the parishes of
Hampton Lucy and Charlecote, and certifies one death ; Euseby Treen's ; surmised at least to be his by the letters
E. T. cut on a bench seven inches thick, under an old pollard-oak outside the park paling of Charlecote, toward the
north-east. For this discovery the Editor is indebted to a most respectable intelligent farmer in the adjoining parish of
Wasperton, in which parish Treen's elder brother lies buried. The worthy farmer is unwilling to accept the large por-
tion of fame justly due to him for the services he has thus rendered to literature, in elucidating the history of Shakspeare
and his times. In possession of another agricultural gentleman there was recently a very curious piece of iron,
believed by many celebrated antiquaries to have constituted a part of a knight's breast-plate. It was purchased for
two hundred pounds by the trustees of the British Museum, among whom, the reader will be grieved to hear, it pro-
duced dissention and coldness ; several of them being of opinion that it was merely a gorget, while others were
inclined to the belief that it was the fore-part of a horse-shoe. The Committee of Taste and the Heads of the Archae-
ological Society were consulted. These learned, dispassionate, and benevolent men had the satisfaction of conciliating
the parties at variance ; each having yielded somewhat ; and every member signing, and affixing his seal to the
signature, that, if indeed it be the fore-part of a horse-shoe, it was probably Ismael's ; there being a curved indentation
along it, resembling the first letter of his name ; and there being no certainty or record that he died in France, or was
left in that country by Sir Magnus.
s'2
260 EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The Editor is unable to render adequate thanks to the Rev. Stephen Turnover, for the gratification he received in
his curious library by a sight of Joseph Carnaby's name at full length, in red ink, coining from a trumpet in the
mouth of an angel. This invaluable document is upon an engraving in a frontispiece to the New Testament.
But since unhappily he could procure no signature of Hannah Hathaway, nor of her mother, and only a question-
able one of Mr. John Shakspeare, the poet's father, there being two, in two very different hands, both he and the
publisher were of opinion that the graphical part of the volume would be justly censured as extremely incomplete,
and that what we could give would only raise inextinguishable regret for that which we could not On this reflection
all have been omitted.
The Editor is unwilling to affix any mark of disapprobation on the very clever engraver who undertook the sorrel
mare ; but as, in the memorable words of that ingenious gentleman from Ireland, whose polished and elaborate
epigrams raised him justly to the rank of prime minister,
" White was not to very white,"
in like manner it appeared to nearly all the artists he consulted, that the sorrel mare was not so sorrel in print.
There is another and a graver reason why the Editor was induced to reject the contribution of his friend the
engraver : and this is, a neglect of the late improvements in his art, he having, unadvisedly or thoughtlessly, drawn,
in the old-fashioned manner, lines at the two sides, and at the top and bottom of his print, confining it to such limits
as paintings are confined in by their frames. Our spirited engravers, it is well known, disdain this thraldom, and not
only give unbounded space to their scenery, but also melt their figures in the air ; so advantageously, that, for the
most-part, they approach the condition of cherubs. This is the true aerial perspective, so little understood heretofore.
Trees, castles, rivers, volcanoes, oceans, float together in absolute vacancy : the solid earth is represented, what we
know it actually is, buoyant as a bubble : so that no wonder if every horse is endued with all the privileges of Pegasus,
save and except our sorrel. Malicious carpers, insensible or invidious of England's glory, deny her in this beautiful
practice the merit of invention, assigning it to the Chinese in their tea-cups and saucers : but, if not absolutely new
and ours, it must be acknowledged that we have greatly improved and extended the invention.
Such are the reasons why the little volume here laid before the public is defective in those decorations which the
exalted state of literature demands. Something of compensation is supplied by a Memorandum of Ephraim Barnett,
written upon the inner cover, and printed below.
The Editor, it will be perceived, is but little practised in the ways of literature, much less is he gifted with that
prophetic spirit which can anticipate the judgment of the public. It may be that he is too idle or too apathetic to
think anxiously or much about the matter ; and yet he has been amused, in his earlier days, at watching the first
appearance of such few books as he believed to be the production of some powerful intellect. He has seen people
slowly rise up to them, like carp in a pond when food is thrown into it ; some of which carp snatch suddenly at a
morsel, and swallow it ; others touch it gently with their barbe, pass deliberately by, and leave it ; others wriggle and
rub against it more disdainfully ; others, in sober truth, know not what to make of it, swim round and round it, eye
it on the sunny side, eye it on the shady ; approach it, question it, shoulder it, flap it with the tail, turn it over, look
askance at it, take a pea-shell or a worm instead of it, and plunge again their heads into the comfortable mud.
MEMORANDUM.
Studying the benefit and advantage of such as by God's blessing may come after me, and willing to show them the
highways of Providence from the narrow by-lane in the which it hath been his pleasure to station me, and being now
advanced full-nigh unto the close and consummation of my earthly pilgrimage, methinks I can not do better, at this
juncture, than preserve the looser and lesser records of those who'have gone before me in the same, with higher heel-
piece to their shoe and more polished scallop to their beaver. And here, beforehand, let us think gravely and religiously
on what the pagans, in their blindness, did call Fortune, making a goddess of her, and saying,
" One body she lifts up so high
And suddenly, she makes him cry
And scream as any wench might do
That you should play the rogue unto :
And the same Lady Light sees good
To drop another in the mud,
Against all hope and likelihood." *
My kinsman, Jacob Eldridge, having been taught by me, among other useful things, to write a fair and laudable
hand, was recommended and introduced by our worthy townsman, Master Thomas Greene, unto the Earl of Essex, to
keep his accounts, and to write down sundry matters from his dictation, even letters occasionally. For although our
nobility, very unlike the French, not only can read and write, but often do, yet some from generosity, and some from
dignity, keep in their employment what those who are illiterate, and would not appear so, call an amanuentis, thereby
meaning secretary or tcribe. Now it happened that our gracious queen's highness was desirous of knowing all that
could be known about the rebellion in Ireland ; and hearing but little truth from her nobility in that country, even the
fathers in God inclining more unto court favour than will be readily believed of spiritual lords, and moulding their
ductile depositions on the pasteboard of their temporal mistress, until she was angry at seeing the lawn- sleeves so
besmirched from wrist to elbow, she herself did say unto the Earl of Essex :
"Essex ! these fellows lie ! I am inclined to unfrock and scourge them sorely for their 1 casings. Of that anon.
Find out, if you can, somebody who hath his wit and his honesty about him at the same time. I know, that when one
of these panniers is full, the other is apt to be empty, and that men walk crookedly for want of balance. No matter :
* The Editor has been unable to discover who was the author of this very free translation of an Ode in Horace. He
is certainly happy in his amplification of the stridore acuto. May it not be surmised that he was some favourite
scholar of Ephraim Barnett ?
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 261
we must search and find. Persuade . . thou canst persuade, Essex ! . say anything ; do anything.- We must talk
gold and give iron. Dost understand me ? "
The earl did kiss the jewels upon the dread fingers, for only the last joint of each is visible : and surely no mortal
was ever so fool-hardy as to take such a monstrous liberty as touching it, except in spirit ! On the next day there did
arrive many fugitives from Ireland: and among the rest was Master Edmund Spenser, known even in those parts for
his rich vein of poetry, in which he is declared by our best judges to excell the noblest of the ancients, and to leave all
the moderns at his feet. Whether be notified his arrival unto the earl, or whether fame brought the notice thereof
unto his lordship, Jacob knoweth not. But early in the morning did the earl send for Jacob, and say unto him,
" Eldridge ! thou must write fairly and clearly out, and in somewhat large letters, and in lines somewhat wide
apart, all that thou hearest of the conversation I shall hold with a gentleman from Ireland. Take this gilt and
illumined vellum, and albeit the civet make thee sick fifty times, write upon it all that passes ! Come not out of the
closet until the gentleman hath gone homeward. The queen requireth much exactness ; and this is equally a man of
genius, a man of business, and a man of worth. I expect from him not only what is true, but what is the most
important and necessary to understand rightly and completely ; and nobody in existence is more capable of giving me
both information and advice. Perhaps if he thought another were within hearing he would be offended or over-
cautious. His delicacy and mine are warranted safe and sound by the observance of those commands which I am
delivering unto thee."
It happened that no information was given in this conference relating to the movements or designs of the
rebels. So that Master Jacob Eldridge was left possessor of the costly vellum, which, now Master Spenser is
departed this life, I keep as a memorial of him, albeit oftener than once I have taken pounce-box and pen-knife in
hand, in order'to make it a fit and proper vehicle for my own very best writing. But I pretermitted it, finding that
my hand is no longer the hand it was, or rather that the breed of geese is very much degenerated, and that their
quills, like men's manners, are grown softer and flaccider. Where it will end God only knows ; I shall not live
to see it.
Alas, poor Jacob Eldridge ! he little thought that within twelve months his glorious master, and the scarcely less
glorious poet, would be no more ! In the third week of the following year was Master Edmund buried at the charges
of the earl ; and within these few days hath this lofty nobleman bowed his head under the axe of God's displeasure ;
such being our gracious queen's. My kinsman Jacob sent unto me by the Alcester drover, old Clem Fisher, this
among other papers, fearing the wrath of that offended highness, which allowed not her own sweet disposition to
question or thwart the will divine. Jacob did likewise tell me in his letter, that he was sure I should be happy to
hear the success of William Shakspeare, our townsman. And in truth right glad was I to hear of it, being a principal
in bringing it about, as those several sheets will show which have the broken tile laid upon them to keep them
down compactly.
Jacob's words are these :
" Now I speak of poets, you will be in a maze at hearing that our townsman hath written a power of matter for the
playhouse. Neither he nor the booksellers think it quite good enough to print : but I do assure you, on the faith of a
Christian, it is not bad ; and there is rare fun in the last thing of his about Venus, where a Jew, one Shiloh, is
choused out of his money and his revenge. However, the best critics and the greatest lords find fault, and very justly,
in the words,
" ' Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with the
same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled
by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is ? '
" Surely this is very unchristianlike. Nay, for supposition sake, suppose it to be true, was it his business to tell the
people so? Was it his duty to ring the crier's bell and cry to them, the sorry Jews are quite as much men as you are ?
The church, luckily, has let him alone for the present ; and the queen winks upon it. The best defence he can make
for himself is, that it comes from the mouth of a Jew, who says many other things as abominable. Master Greene
may over-rate him ; but Master Greene declares that if William goes on improving and taking his advice, it will be
desperate hard work in another seven years to find so many as half-a-dozen chaps equal to him within the liberties.
" Master Greene and myself took him with us to see the burial of Master Edmund'Spenser in Westminster Abbey, on
the 19th of January last. The halberdmen pushed us back as having no business there. Master Greene told them he
belonged to the queen's company of players. William Shakspeare could have said the same, but did not. And I,
fearing that Master Greene and he might be halberded back into the crowd, showed the badge of the Earl of Essex.
Whereupon did the Serjeant ground his halberd, and say unto me,
" ' That badge commands admittance everywhere : your folk likewise may come in.'
" Master Greene was red-hot angry, and told me he would bring him before the council.
" William smiled, and Master Greene said,
" ' Why ! would not you, if you were in my place ? '
" He replied,
" ' I am an half inclined to do worse ; to bring him before the audience some spare hour.' ,
" At the close of the burial-service all the poets of the age threw their pens into the grave, together with the pieces
they had composed in praise or lamentation of the deceased. William Shakspeare was the only poet who abstained
from throwing in either pen or poem ; at which no one marvelled, he being of low estate, and the others not having
yet taken him by the hand. Yet many authors recognised him, not indeed as author, but as player ; and one,
eiviler than the rest, came up unto him triumphantly, his eyes sparkling with glee and satisfaction, and said
consolatorily,
" 'In due time, my honest friend, you may be admitted to do as much for one of us.'
" ' After such encouragement,' replied our townsman, ' I am bound in duty to give you the preference, should I
indeed be worthy."
" This was the only smart thing he uttered all the remainder of the day ; during the whole of it he appeared to be
half lost, I know not whether in melancholy or in meditation, and soon left us."
Here endeth all that my kinsman Jacob wrote about William Shakspeare, saving and excepting his excuse for
having written so much. The rest of his letter was on a matter of wider and weightier import, namc4y, on the price
262 EDITOR'S PREFACE.
of Cotteswolde cheese at Evesham fair. And yet, although ingenious men be not among the necessaries of life, there
is something in them that makes us curious in regard to their goings and doings. It were to be wished that some of
them had attempted to be better accountants ; and others do appear to have laid aside the copybook full early in the
day. Nevertheless, they have their uses and their merits. Master Eldridge's letter is the wrapper of much whole-
some food for contemplation. Although the decease (within so brief a period) of such a poet as Master Spenser, and
such a patron as the earl, be unto us appalling, we laud and magnify the great Disposer of events, no less for his good-
ness in raising the humble than for his power in extinguishing the great. And peradventure ye, my heirs and
descendants, who shall read with due attention what my pen now writeth, will say with the royal Psalmist, that it
inditeth of a good matter, when it showeth unto you that, whereas it pleased the queen's highness to send a great lord
before the judgment-seat of Heaven, having fitted him by means of such earthly instruments as princes in like cases
do usually employ, and deeming (no doubt) in her princely heart, that by such shrewd tonsure his head would be best
fitted for a crown of glory, and thus doing all that she did out of the purest and most considerate love for him . . it
likewise hath pleased her highness to use her right hand as freely as her left, and to raise up a second burgess of our
town to be one of her company of players. And ye also, by industry and loyalty, may cheerfully hope for promotion
in your callings, and come up (some of you) as nearly to him in the presence of royalty, as he cometh up (far off
indeed at present) to the great and wonderful poet, who lies dead among more spices than any phoenix, and more
quills than any porcupine. If this thought may not prick and incitate you, little is to be hoped from any gentle
admonition or any earnest expostulation of
Your loving friend and kinsman,
E. B.
ANNO XT. SVJE 74, DOM. 1599,
DKCEMB. 16 ;
GLORIA DP. DF. ET DSS.
AMOK VERSUS VIRGINEM REG I NAM !
PROTESTANTICE LOqUOR ET HONESTO SKNSU :
OBTESTOR CONSCIENTIAM MKAM !
EXAMINATION, &„. &c.
ABOUT one hour before noontide, the youth
William Shakspeare, accused of deer-stealing, and
apprehended for that offence, was brought into
the great hall at Charlecote, where, having made
his obeisance, it was most graciously permitted
him to stand.
The worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, see-
ing him right opposite, on the farther side of the
long table, and fearing no disadvantage, did frown
upon him with great dignity; then, deigning
ne'er a word to the culprit, turned he his face to-
ward his chaplain, Sir Silas Gough, who stood
beside him, and said unto him most courteously,
and unlike unto one who in his own right com-
mandeth,
" Stand out of the way ! What are those two
varlets bringing into the room?"
" The table, sir," replied Master Silas, " upon
the which the consumption of the venison was
perpetrated."
The youth, William Shakspeare, did thereupon
pray and beseech his lordship most fervently,
in this guise :
" 0 sir ! do not let him turn the tables against
me, who am only a simple stripling, and he an
old cogger."
But Master Silas did bite his nether lip, and
did cry aloud,
" Look upon those deadly spots ! "
And his worship did look thereupon most
staidly, and did say in the ear of Master Silas,
but in such wise that it reached even unto mine,
" Good honest chandlery, methinks ! "
" God grant it may turn out so ! " ejaculated
Master Silas.
The youth, hearing these words, said unto him,
" I fear, Master Silas, gentry like you often
pray God to grant what he would rather not;
and now and then what you would rather not."
Sir Silas was wroth at this rudeness of speech
about God in the face of a preacher, and said,
reprovingly,
" Out upon thy foul mouth, knave ! upon which
lie slaughter and venison."
Whereupon did William Shakspeare sit mute
awhile, and discomfited ; then, turning toward
Sir Thomas, and looking and speaking as one
submiss and contrite, he thus appealed unto
him :
" Worshipful sir ! were there any signs of
venison on my mouth, Master Silas could not
for his life cry out upon it, nor help kissing it
as 'twere a wench's."
Sir Thomas looked upon him with most lordly
gravity and wisdom, and said unto him in a
voice that might have come from the bench,
" Youth ! thou speakest irreverently ; " and
then unto Master Silas, " Silas ! to the business
on hand. Taste the fat upon yon boor's table,
which the constable hath brought hither, good
Master Silas ! And declare upon oath, being
sworn in my presence, first, whether said fat do
proceed of venison ; secondly, whether said venison
be of buck or doe."
Whereupon the reverend Sir Silas did go incon-
tinently, and did bend forward his head, shoul-
ders, and body, and did severally taste four white
solid substances upon an oaken board ; said board
being about two yards long, and one yard four
inches wide ; found in, and brought thither from,
the tenement or messuage of Andrew Haggit,
who hath absconded. Of these four white solid
substances, two were somewhat larger than a
groat, and thicker ; one about the size of King
Henry the Eighth's shilling, when our late sov-
ran lord of blessed memory was toward the
lustiest ; and the other, that is to say the mid-
dlemost, did resemble in some sort a mushroom,
not over fresh, turned upward on its stalk.
" And .what sayest thou, Master Silas ] " quoth
the knight.
In reply whereunto Sir Silas thus averred:
" Venison ! o' my conscience !
Buck ! or burn me alive !
The three splashes in the circumference are verily
and indeed venison ; buck, moreover, and Char-
lecote buck, upon my oath ! "
Then carefully tasting the protuberance in the
centre, he spat it out, crying,
264
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
" Plu> ! pho ! villain ! villain ! " and shaking
his fist at the culprit.
Whereat the said culprit smiled and winked,
and said off-hand,
" Save thy spittle, Master Silas ! It would
supply a gaudy mess to the hungriest litter ; but
it would turn them from whelps into wolvets.
'Tis pity to throw the best of thee away. Nothing
comes out of thy mouth that is not savory and
solid, bating thy wit, thy sermons, and thy
promises."
It was my duty to write down the very words,
irreverent as they are, being so commanded.
More of the like, it is to be feared, would have
ensued, but that Sir Thomas did check him,
saying shrewdly,
" Young man ! I perceive that if I do not
stop thee in thy courses, thy name, being in-
volved in thy company's, may one day or other
reach across the county ; and folks may handle
it and turn it about, as it deserveth, from Coles-
hill to Nuneaton, from Bromwicham to Browns-
over. And who knoweth but that, years after
thy death, the very house wherein thou wert
born may be pointed at, and commented on, by
knots of people, gentle and simple ! What a
shame for an honest man's son ! Thanks to me,
who consider of measures to prevent it ! Pos-
terity shall laud and glorify me for plucking
thee clean out of her head, and for picking up
timely a ticklish skittle, that might overthrow
with it a power of others just as light. I will
rid the hundred of thee, with God's blessing!
nay, the whole shire. We will have none such
in our county : we justices are agreed upon it,
and we will keep our word now and for ever-
more. Woe betide any that resembles thee in
any part of him ! "
Whereunto Sir Silas added,
" We will dog him, and worry him, and haunt
him, and bedevil him ; and if ever he hear a
comfortable word, it shall be in a language very
different from his own."
" As different as thine is from a Christian's,"
said the youth.
" Boy ! thou art slow of apprehension," said
Sir Thomas, with much gravity ; and, taking up
the cue, did rejoin :
" Master Silas would impress upon thy ductile
and tender mind the danger of evil doing ; that
we, in other words, that justice, is resolved to fol-
low him up, even beyond his country, where he
shall hear nothing better than the Italian or the
Spanish, or the black language, or the language of
Turk or Troubadour, or Tartar or Mongle. And
forsooth, for this gentle and indirect reproof, a gen-
tleman in priest's orders is told by a stripling that
he lacketh Christianity! Who then shall give it?"
Shakspeare. Who, indeed ] when the founder
of the feast leaveth an invited guest so empty !
Yea, sir, the guest was invited, and the board was
spread. The fruits that lay upon it be there still,
and fresh as ever ; and the bread of life in those
capacious canisters is unconsumed and unbroken.*
Sir Silas (aside). The knave maketh me
hungry with his mischievous similitudes.
Sir Thomas. Thou hast aggravated thy
offence, Will Shakspeare ! Irreverent caitiff! is
this a discourse for my chaplain and clerk ? Can
he or the worthy scribe Ephraim (his worship was
pleased to call me worthy) write down such words
as those, about litter and wolvets, for the perusal
and meditation of the grand jury ? If the whole
corporation of Stratford had not unanimously
given it against thee, still his tongue would catch
thee, as the evet catcheth a gnat. Know, sirrah,
the reverend Sir Silas, albeit ill appointed for
riding, and not over-fond of it, goeth to every
house wherein is a venison feast for thirty miles
round. Not a buck's hoof on any stable-door but
it awakeneth his recollections like a red letter.
This wholesome reproof did bring the youth
back again to his right senses ; and then said he,
with contrition, and with a wisdom beyond his
years, and little to be expected from one who had
spoken just before so unadvisedly and rashly,
" Well do I know it, your worship ! And verily
do I believe that a bone of one, being shovelled
among the soil upon his coffin, would forthwith
quicken* him. Sooth to say, there is ne'er a
buckhound in the county but he treateth him as
a godchild, patting him on the head, soothing his
velvety ear between thumb and fore-finger, eject-
ing tick from tenement, calling him fine fellow,
noble lad, and giving him his blessing, as one
dearer to him than a king's death to a debtor,t
or a bastard to a dad of eighty. This is the only
kindness I ever heard of Master Silas toward his
fellow creatures. Never hold me unjust, Sir
Knight, to Master Silas. Could I learn other
good of him, I would freely say it ; for we do
good by speaking it, and none is easier. Even
bad men are not bad men while they praise the
just. Their first step backward is more trouble-
some andwrenchingto them than the first forward."
" In God's name, where did he gather all this?"
whispered his worship to the chaplain, by whose
side I was sitting. " Why, he talks like a man of
forty-seven, or more ! "
" I doubt his sincerity, sir! " replied the chap-
lain. " His words are fairer now . . . ."
" Devil choke him for them ! " interjected he
in an undervoice.
" . . . . and almost book- worthy ; but out of
place. What the scurvy cur yelped against me,
I forgive him as a Christian. Murrain upon
such varlet vermin ! It is but of late years
that dignities have come to be reviled ; the
other parts of the Gospel were broken long be-
fore ; this was left us; and now this likewise is to
be kicked out of doors, amid the mutterings of
such mooncalves as him yonder."
" Too true, Silas ! " said the knight, sighing
deeply. " Things are not as they were in our
* Quicken, bring to life.
t Debtors were often let out of prison at the coronation
of a new king, but creditors never paid by him.
OP WILLIAM SHAKSPEAEE.
265
glorious wars of York and Lancaster. The knaves
were thinned then; two or three crops a year
of that rank squitch-grass whichit has become the
fashion of late to call the people. There was some
difference then between buff doublets and iron
mail; and the rogues felt it. Well-a-day! we
must bear what God willeth, and never repine,
although it gives a man the heart-ache. "We are
bound in duty to keep these things for the closet,
and to tell God of them only when we call upon
his holy name, and have him quite by ourselves."
Sir Silas looked discontented and impatient,
and said snappishly,
" Cast we off here, or we shall be at fault.
Start him, sir ! prythee, start him."
Again his worship, Sir Thomas, did look
gravely and grandly, and, taking a scrap of paper
out of the Holy Book then lying before him, did
read distinctly these words :
" Providence hath sent Master Silas back
hither this morning to confound thee in thy
guilt."
Again, with all the courage and composure of
an innocent man, and indeed with more than
what an innocent man ought to possess in the
presence of a magistrate, the youngster said,
pointing toward Master Silas,
" The first moment he ventureth to lift up his
visage from the table, hath Providence marked
him miraculously. I have heard of black malice.
How many of our words have more in them than
we think of ! Give a countryman a plough of
silver, and he will plough with it all the season,
and never know its substance. 'Tis thus with
our daily speech. What riches lie hidden in the
vulgar tongue of the poorest and most ignorant!
What flowers of Paradise lie under our feet,
with their beauties and parts undistinguished
and undiscerned, from having been daily trodden
on ! 0 sir, look you ! but let me cover my eyes !
look at his lips ! Gracious Heaven ! they were
not thus when he entered : they are blacker now
than Harry Tewe's bull-bitch's ! "
Master Silas did lift up his eyes in astonish-
ment and wrath ; and his worship Sir Thomas did
open his wider and wider, and cried by fits and
starts,
" Gramercy ! true enough ! nay, afore God,
too true by half ! I never saw the like ! Who
would believe it ! I wish I were fairly rid of this
examination ! my hands washed clean thereof !
Another time ! anon ! We have our quarterly
sessions ! We are many together : at present I
remand . . . ."
And now indeed, unless Sir Silas had taken his
worship by the sleeve, he would mayhap have re-
manded the lad. But Sir Silas, still holding the
sleeve and shaking it, said hurriedly,
" Let me entreat your worship to ponder.
What black does the fellow talk of? My blood
and bile rose up against the rogue ; but surely I
did not turn black in the face, or in the mouth, as
the fellow calls it ] "
Whether Master Silas had some suspicion and
inkling of the cause, or not, he rubbed his right
hand along his face and lips, and, looking upon
it, cried aloud,
" Ho ! ho ! is it off? There is some upon my
finger's end, I find. Now I have it ; ay, there it
is. That large splash upon the centre of the table
is tallow, by my salvation ! The profligates sat
up until the candle burned out, and the last of it
ran through the socket upon the board. We
knew it before. I did convey into my mouth
both fat and smut ! "
" Many of your cloth and kidney do that, good
Master Silas, and make no wry faces about it,"
quoth the youngster, with indiscreet merriment,
although short of laughter, as became him, who
had already stepped too far, and reached the mire.
To save paper and time, I shall now, for the
most-part, write only what they all said, not say-
ing that they said it, and just copying out in my
clearest hand what fell respectively from their
mouths.
Sir Silas. I did indeed spit it forth, and emunge
my lips, as who should not 1
Shakspeare. Would it were so !
Sir Silas. Would it were so ! in thy teeth,
hypocrite !
Sir Thomas. And truly I likewise do incline
to hope and credit it, as thus paraphrased and
expounded.
Shakspeare. Wait until this blessed day next
year, sir, at the same hour. You shall see it forth
again at its due season : it would be no miracle if
it lasted. Spittle may cure sore eyes, but not
blasted mouths and scald consciences.
Sir TJwmas. Why! who taught thee all
this]
. . Then turned he leisurely toward Sir Silas, and
placing his hand outspredden upon the arm of the
chaplain, said unto him in a low, judicial, hollow
voice,
" Every word true and solemn ! I have heard
less wise saws from between black covers."
Sir Silas was indignant at this under-rating, as
he appeared to think it, of the church and its
ministry, and answered impatiently, with Chris-
tian freedom,
" Your worship surely will not listen to this
wild wizard in his brothel-pulpit ! "
Shakspeare. Do I live to hear Charlecote Hall
called a brothel-pulpit ? Alas then I have lived
too long !
Sir 'Silas. We will try to amend that for
thee.
. . William seemed not to hear him, loudly as he
spake and pointedly unto the youngster, who
wiped his eyes, crying,
" Commit me, sir ! in mercy commit me !
Master Ephraim ! 0 Master Ephraim ! A
guiltless man may feel all the pangs of the
guilty ! Is it you who are to make out the
commitment 1 Dispatch ! dispatch ! I am a-weary
of my life. If I dared to lie, I would plead
guilty."
Sir Thomas. Heyday ! No wonder, Master
266
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
Ephraim, thy entrails are moved and wamble.
Dost weep, lad 1 Nay, nay ; thou bearest up
bravely. Silas ! I now find, although the example
come before me from humble life, that what my
mother said was true ; 'twas upon my father's
demise. ' In great grief there are few tears.' "
Upon which did the youth, Willy Shakspeare,
jog himself by the memory, and repeat these short
verses, not wide from the same purport.
" There are, alas, some depths of woe
Too vast for tears to overflow."
Sir Thomas. Let those who are sadly vexed
in spirit mind that notion, whoever indited it, and
be men : I always was ; but some little griefs have
pinched me woundily.
. . Master Silas grew impatient, for he had ridden
hard that morning, and had no cushion upon his
seat, as Sir Thomas had. I have seen in my time,
that he who is seated on beech-wood hath very
different thoughts and moralities from him who
is seated on goose-feathers under doe-skin. But
that is neither here nor there, albeit, an I die,
as I must, my heirs, Judith and her boy Elijah,
may note it.
Master Silas, as above, looked sourishly, and
cried aloud,
" The witnesses ! the witnesses ! testimony !
testimony ! We shall now see whose black goes
deepest. There is a fork to be had that can hold
the slipperiest eel, and a finger that can strip the
slimiest. I cry your worship to the witnesses."
Sir Thomas. Ay indeed, we are losing the
day : it wastes toward noon, and nothing done.
Call the witnesses. How are they called by
name ? Give me the paper.
. . The paper being forthwith delivered into his
worship's hand by the learned clerk, his worship
did read aloud the name of Euseby Treen. Where-
upon did Euseby Treen come forth through the
great hall-door, which was ajar, and answer most
audibly,
" Your worship !"
Straightway did Sir Thomas read aloud, in
like form and manner, the name of Joseph Car-
naby ; and in like manner as aforesaid did Joseph
Carnaby make answer and say,
" Your worship !"
Lastly did Sir Thomas turn the light of his
countenance on William Shakspeare, saying,
" Thou seest these good men deponents against
thee, William Shakspeare."
And then did Sir Thomas pause. And pending
this pause did William Shakspeare look sted-
fastly in the faces of both; and stroking down his
own with the hollow of his hand, from the jaw-bone
to the chin-point, said unto his honour,
" Faith ! it would give me much pleasure, and
the neighbourhood much vantage, to see these two
fellows good men. Joseph Carnaby and Euseby
Treen ! Why ! your worship ! they know every
hare's form in Luddington-field better than1 their
own beds, and as well pretty nigh as any wench's
in the parish."
Then turned he, with jocular scoff, unto Joseph
Carnaby, thus accosting him, whom his shirt,
being made stiffer than usual for the occasion,
rubbed and frayed.
" Ay, Joseph ! smoothen and soothe thy collar-
piece again and again ! Hark-ye ! I know what
smock that was knavishly cut from."
Master Silas rose up in high choler, and said
unto Sir Thomas,
" Sir ! do not listen to that lewd reviler : I
wager ten groats I prove him to be wrong in his
scent. Joseph Carnaby is righteous and dis-
creet."
Shakspeare. By daylight and before the par-
son. Bears and boars are tame creatures and
discreet in the sunshine and after dinner.
Treen. I do know his down-goings and up-
risings.
Shakspeare. The man and his wife are one,
saith holy Scripture.
Treen. A sober-paced and rigid man, if such
there be. Few keep Lent like unto him.
Shakspeare. I warrant him, both lent and
stolen.
Sir Thomas. Peace and silence ! Now, Joseph
Carnaby, do thou depose on particulars.
Carnaby. May it please your worship ! I was
returning from Hampton upon Allhallowmas
eve, between the hours of ten and eleven at night,
in company with Master Euseby Treen; and
when we came to the bottom of Mickle Meadow,
we heard several men in discourse. I plucked
Euseby Treen by the doublet, and whispered in
his ear, ' Euseby ! Euseby ! let us slink along in
the shadow of the elms and willows.'
Treen. Willows and elm-trees were the words.
Shakspeare. See, your worship ! what discord-
ances ! They can not agree in their own story.
Sir Silas. The same thing, the same thing,
in the main.
Shakspeare. By less differences than this,
estates have been lost, hearts broken, and England,
our country, filled with homeless, helpless, desti-
tute orphans. I protest against it !
Sir Silas. Protest, indeed ! He talks as if he -
were a member of the House of Lords. They
alone can protest.
Sir Thomas. Your attorney may object, not
protest, before the lord judge.
Proceed you, Joseph Carnaby.
Carnaby. In the shadow of the willows and
elm-trees then . .
Shakspeare. No hints, no conspiracies ! Keep
to your own story, man, and do not borrow his.
Sir Silas. I over-rule the' objection. Nothing
can be more futile and frivolous.
Shakspeare. So learned a magistrate as your
worship will surely do me justice by hearing me
attentively. I am young: nevertheless, having
more than one year written in the office of an
attorney, and having heard and listened to many
discourses and questions on law, I can not but
remember the heavy fine inflicted on a gentle-
man of this county, who committed a poor man
to prison for being in possession of a hare, it
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEAEE.
267
being proved that the hare was in his possession,
and not he in the hare's.
Sir Silas. Synonymous term ! synonymous
term !
Sir Thomas. In what term sayest thou was
it ? I do not remember the case.
Sir Silas. Mere quibble ! mere equivocation !
Jesuitical ! Jesuitical !
Shakspeare. It would be Jesuitical, Sir Silas,
if it dragged the law by its perversions to the
side of oppression and cruelty. The order of
Jesuits, I fear, is as numerous as its tenets are
lax and comprehensive. I am sorry to see their
frocks flounced with English serge.
Sir Silas. I don't understand thee, viper !
Sir Thomas. Cease thou, Will Shakspeare !
Know thy place. And do thou, Joseph Carnaby,
take up again the thread of thy testimony.
Carnaby. We were still at some distance from
the party, when on a sudden Euseby hung an . .*
Sir Thomas. As well write ' drew back,'
Master Ephraim and Master Silas ! Be circum-
specter in speech, Master Joseph Carnaby ! I did
not look for such rude phrases from that starch-
warehouse under thy chin. Continue, man !
Carnaby. ' Euseby ! ' said I in his ear, ' what
ails thee, Euseby V ' I wag no farther,' quoth he.
' What a number of names and voices ! '
Sir Thomas. Dreadful gang! a number of
names and voices ! Had it been any other day
in the year but Allhallowmas eve ! To steal a
buck upon such a day ! Well ! God may pardon
even that. Go on, go on. But the laws of our
country must have their satisfaction and atone-
ment. Were it upon any other day in the calen-
dar less holy, the buck were nothing, or next to
nothing, saving the law and our conscience and
our good report. Yet we, her majesty's justices,
must stand in the gap, body and soul, against
evil-doers. Now do thou, in furtherance of this
business, give thine aid unto us, Joseph Carnaby !
remembering that mine eye from this judgment-
seat, and her majesty's bright and glorious one
overlooking the whole realm, and the broader of
God above, are upon thee.
. . Carnaby did quail a matter at these words
about the judgment-seat and the broad eye, aptly
and gravely delivered by him, moreover, who hath
to administer truth and righteousness in our
ancient and venerable laws, and especially at the
present juncture in those against park-breaking
and deer-stealing. But finally, nought discomfited,
and putting his hand valiantly atwixt hip and
midriff, so that his elbow well-nigh touched the
taller pen in the ink-pot, he went on.
Carnaby. ' In the shadow of the willows and
elm-trees,' said he, ' and get nearer.' We were
still at some distance, maybe a score of furlongs,
from the party . .
Sir Thomas. Thou hast said it already, all
save the score of furlongs.
Hast room for them, Master Silas 1
* The word here omitted is quite illegible.
Sir Silas. Yea and would make room for fifty,
to let the fellow swing at his ease.
Sir Thomas. Hast room, Master Ephraim 1
" 'Tis done, most worshipful !" said I. Thelearned
knight did not recollect that I could put fifty fur-
longs in a needle's eye, give me pen fine enough.
But far be it from me to vaunt of my penman-
ship, although there be those who do malign it,
even in my own township and parish ; yet they
never have unperched me from my calling, and
have had hard work to take an idle wench or
two from under me on Saturday nights.
I memorize thus much, not out of any malice
or any soreness about me, but that those of my
kindred into whose hands it please God these
papers do fall hereafter, may bear up stoutly in
such straits ; and if they be good at the cudgel,
that they, looking first at their man, do give it
him heartily and unsparingly, keeping within law.
Sir Thomas, having overlooked what we had
written, and meditated awhile thereupon, said
unto Joseph,
" It appeareth by thy testimony that there was
a huge and desperate gang of them a-foot. Ee-
vengeful dogs ! it is difficult to deal with them.
The laws forbid precipitancy and violence. A
dozen or two may return and harm me ; not me
indeed, but my tenants and servants. I would
fain act with prudence, and like unto him who
looketh abroad. He must tie his shoe tightly,
who passeth through mire ; he must step softly
who steppeth over stones ; he must walk in the
fear of the Lord (which, without a brag, I do at
this present feel upon me), who hopeth to reach
the end of the straightest road in safety."
Sir Silas. Tut ! tut ! your worship ! Her
majesty's deputy hath matchlocks and halters at
a knight's disposal, or the world were topsyturvy
indeed.
Sir Thomas. My mental ejaculations, and an
influx of grace thereupon, have shaken and washed
from my brain all thy last words, good Joseph !
Thy companion here, Euseby Treen, said unto
thee . . ay? . .
Carnaby. Said unto me, ' What a number of
names and voices ! And there be but three living
men in all ! And look again ! Christ deliver us !
all the shadows save one go leftward : that one
lieth right upon the river. It seemeth a big squat
monster, shaking a little, as one ready to spring
upon its prey.'
Sir Thomas. A dead man in his last agonies,
no doubt. Your deer-stealer doth boggle at
nothing. He hath alway the knife in doublet and
the devil at elbow.
I wot not of any keeper killed or missing. To
lose one's deer and keeper too, were overmuch.
Do, in God's merciful name, hand unto me
a glass of sack, Master Silas ! I wax faintish at
the big squat man. He hath harmed not only
me, but mine. Furthermore, the examination is
grown so long.
. . Then was the wine delivered by Sir Silas into
the hand of his worship, who drank it off in a
268
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
beaker of about half a pint, but little to his satis-
faction : for he said shortly afterward,
" Hast thou poured no water into the sack,
good Master Silas? It seemeth weaker and
washier than ordinary, and affordeth small com-
fort unto the breast and stomach."
Sir Silas. Not I, truly, sir, and the bottle is a
fresh and sound one. The cork reported on draw-
ing, as the best diver doth on sousing from
Warwick bridge into Avon. A rare cork ! as
bright as the glass bottle, and as smooth as the
lips of any cow.
Sir Thomas. My mouth is out of taste this
morning ; or the same wine, mayhap, hath a dif-
ferent force and flavour in the dining-room and
among friends. But to business. What more?
Carnaby. ' Euseby Treen, what may it be ? '
said I. 'I know/quoth he, 'but dare not breathe it.'
Sir Thomas. I thought I had taken a glass of
wine verily. Attention to my duty as a magis-
trate is paramount. I mind nothing else when
that lies before me.
Carnaby ! I credit thy honesty, but doubt thy
manhood. Why not breathe it, with a ven-
geance ?
Carnaby. It was Euseby who dared not.
Sir Thomas. Stand still : say nothing yet :
mind my orders : fair and softly : compose thyself.
. . They all stood silent for some time, and looked
very composed, awaiting the commands of the
knight. His mind was clearly in such a state of
devotion, that peradventure he might not have
descended for a while longer to his mundane
duties, had not Master Silas told him that, under
the shadow of his wing, their courage had returned
and they were quite composed again.
" You may proceed," said the knight.
Carnaby. Master Treen did take off his cap
and wipe his forehead. I, for the sake of com-
forting him in this his heaviness, placed my hand
upon his crown ; and truly I might have taken
it for a tuft of bents, the hair on end, the skin
immovable as God's earth.
. . Sir Thomas, hearing these words, lifted up his
hands above his own head, and, in the loudest
voice he had yet uttered, did he cry,
" Wonderful are thy ways in Israel, 0 Lord !"
So saying, the pious knight did strike his knee
with the palm of his right hand ; and then gave
he a sign, bowing his head and closing his eyes,
by which Master Carnaby did think he signified his
pleasure that he should go on deposing. And he
went on thus :
Carnaby. At this moment one of the accom-
plices cried, ' Willy ! Willy ! prythee stop !
enough in all conscience ! First thou divertedst us
from our undertaking with thy strange vagaries ;
thy Italian girls' nursery sighs ; thy Pucks and
pinchings, and thy Windsor whimsies. No kitten
upon a bed of marum ever played such antics. It
was summer and winter, night and day, with us
within the hour; and in such religion did we
think and feel it, we would have broken the man's
jaw who gainsayed it We have slept with thee
under the oaks in the ancient forest of Arden,
and we have wakened from our sleep in the tem-
pest far at sea.* Now art thou for frightening
us again out of all the senses thou hadst given us,
with witches, and women more murderous than
they.'
Then followed a deeper voice : ' Stouter men
and more resolute are few ; but thou, my lad, hast
words too weighty for flesh and bones to bear up
against. And who knows but these creatures
may pop among us at last, as the wolf did, sure
enough, upon him, the noisy rogue, who so long
had been crying wolf! and wolf!'
Sir Thomas. Well spoken, for two thieves ;
albeit I miss the meaning of the most-part. Did
they prevail with the scapegrace, and stop him ?
Carnaby. The last who had spoken did slap
him on the shoulder, saying, 'Jump into the
punt, lad, and across.' Thereupon did Will Shak-
spearejump into said punt, and begin to sing a
song about a mermaid.
Shakspeare. Sir ! is this credible ? I will be
sworn I never saw one ; and verily do believe that
scarcely one in a hundred years doth venture so
far up the Avon.
Sir Thomas. There is something in this.
Thou mayest have sung about one, nevertheless.
Young poets take great liberties with all female
kind ; not that mermaids are such very unlawful
game for them, and there be songs even about
worse and staler fish. Mind ye that ! Thou hast
written songs, and hast sung ^them, and lewd
enough they be, God wot !
SJuikspeare. Pardon me, your worship ! they
were not mine then. Peradventure the song about
the mermaid may have been that ancient one
which every boy in most parishes has been singing
for many years, and perhaps his father before
him ; and somebody was singing it then, mayhap,
to keep up his courage in the night
Sir Thomas. I never heard it.
Shakspeare. Nobody would dare to sing in the
presence of your worship, unless commanded ; not
even the mermaid herself.
Sir TJiomas. Canst thou sing it ?
Shakspeare. Verily, I can sing nothing.
Sir Thomas. Canst thou repeat it from
memory ?
Shakspeare. It is so long since I have thought
about it, that I may fail in the attempt.
Sir Thomas. Try, however.
Shakspeare.
The mermaid sat upon the rocks
All day long.
Admiring her beauty and combing her locks,
And singing a mermaid song.
Sir TJiomas. What was it? what was it?
I thought as much. There thou standest, like a
woodpecker, chattering and chattering, breaking
the bark with thy beak, and leaving the grub
* By this deposition it would appear that Shakspeare
had formed the idea, if not the outline, of several plays
already, much as he altered them, no doubt, in after-life.
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
269
where it was. This is enough to put a saint out
of patience.
Slxikspeare. The wishes of your worship
possess a mysterious influence : I now remember
all:
And hear the mermaid's song you may,
As sure as sure can be,
If you will but follow the sun all day,
And souse with him into the sea.
Sir Thomas. It must be an idle fellow who
would take that trouble : beside, unless he nicked
the time he might miss the monster. There be
many who are slow to believe that the mermaid
singeth.
Shakspeare. Ah sir! not only the mermaid
singeth, but the merman sweareth, as another old
song will convince you.
Sir Thomas. I would fain be convinced "of
God's wonders in the great deeps, and would lean
upon the weakest reed, like unto thee, to manifest
his glory. Thou mayest convince me.
Shakspeare.
A wonderful story, my lasses and lads,
Perad venture you "ve heard from your grannams or dads,
Of a merman that came every night to woo
The spinster of spinsters, our Catherine Crewe.
But Catherine Crewe
Is now seventy-two,
And avers she hath half forgotten
The truth of the tale, when you ask her about it,
And says, as if fain to deny it or flout it,
Pooh ! the merman is dead and rotten.
The merman came up, as the mermen are wont,
To the top of the water, and then swam upon't ;
And Catherine saw him with both her two eyes,
A lusty young merman full six feet in size.
And Catherine was frighten'd,
Her scalp-skin it tighten'd,
And her head it swam strangely, although on dry land ;
And the merman made bold
Eftsoons to lay hold
(This Catherine well recollects) of her hand.
But how could a merman, if ever so good,
Or if ever so clever, be well understood
By a simple young creature of our flesh and blood ?
Some tell us the merman
Can only speak German,
In a voice between grunting and snoring ;
But Catherine says he had learnt in the wars
The language, persuasions, and oaths of our tars,
And that even his voice was not foreign.
Yet when she was asked how he managed to hide
The green fishy tail, coming out of the tide
For night after night above twenty,
' You troublesome creatures ! ' old Catherine replied,
' In hit pocket : won't that now content ye ? '
Sir Thomas. I have my doubts yet. I shoulc
have said unto her seriously, ' Kate ! Kate ! I am
not convinced.1 There may be witchcraft or sorti
lege in it. I would have made it a star-chamber
matter.
Shakspeare. It was one, sir !
Sir Thomas. And now I am reminded by this
silly childish song, which, after all, is not the tru<
mermaid's, thou didst tell me, Silas, that th
apers found in the lad's pocket were intended
or poetry.
Sir Silas. I wish he had missed his aim, sir,
n your park, as he hath missed it in his poetry.
The papers are not worth reading ; they do not
jo against him in the point at issue.
Sir Thomas. We must see that; they being
aken upon his person when apprehended.
Sir Silas. Let Ephraim read them then : it
behoveth not me, a Master of Arts, to con a
whelp's whining.
Sir Thomas. Do thou read them aloud unto
us, good Master Ephraim.
. . Whereupon I took the papers, which young
Willy had not bestowed much pains on ; and they
posed and puzzled me grievously, for they were
jlottedand scrawled in many places, as if somebody
iad put him out. These likewise I thought fit,
after long consideration, to write better, and pre-
serve, great as the loss of time is when men of
business take in hand such unseemly matters.
However, they are decenter than most, and not
without their moral : for example :
TO THE OWLET.
Who, O thou sapient saintly bird !
Thy shouted warnings ever heard
Unbleached by fear ?
The blue-faced blubbering imp, who steals
Yon turnips, thinks thee at his heels,
Afar or near.
The brawnier churl who brags at times
To front and top the rankest crimes,
To paunch a deer,
Quarter a priest, or squeeze a wench,
Scuds from thee, clammy as a tench,
He knows not where.
For this the righteous Lord of all
Consigns to thee the castle-wall,
When, many a year,
Closed in the chancel- vault, are eyes
Rainy or sunny at the sighs
Of knight or peer.
Sir Thomas, when I had ended, said unto me,
" No harm herein ; but are they over ? "
I replied, " Yea, sir ! "
" I miss the posy" quoth he ; " there is usually
a lump of sugar, or a smack thereof, at the bottom
of the glass. They who are inexperienced in
poetry do write it as boys do their copies in the
copy-book, without a flourish at the finis. It ia
only the master who can do this befittingly."
I bowed unto his worship reverentially, thinking
of a surety he meant me, and returned my best
thanks in set language. But his worship rebuffed
them, and told me graciously that he had an eye
on another of very different quality; that the
plain sense of his discourse might do for me, the
subtiler was certainly for himself. He added,
that in his younger days he had heard from a
person of great parts, and had since profited by it,
that ordinary poets are like adders ; the tail blunt
and the body rough, and the whole reptile cold-
blooded and sluggish ; whereas we, he subjoined,
leap and caracole and curvet, and are as warm as
velvet, and as sleek as satin, and as perfumed as
270
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
a Naples fan, in every part of us ; and the end of
our poems is as pointed as a perch's back-fin, and
it requires as much nicety to pick it up as a
needle * at nine groats the hundred."
Then turning towards the culprit, he said mildly
unto him,
" Now why canst thou not apply thyself unto
study? Why canst thou not ask advice of thy
superiors in rank and wisdom ] In a few years,
under good discipline, thou mightest rise from the
owlet unto the peacock. I know not what pleasant
things might not come into the youthful head
thereupon.
" He was the bird of Venus,t goddess of beauty.
He flew down (I speak as a poet, and not in my
quality of knight and Christian) with half the
stars of heaven upon his tail; and his long blue
neck doth verily appear a dainty slice out of the
solid sky."
Sir Silas smote me with his elbow, and said in
my ear,
" He wanteth not this stuffing : he beats a
pheasant out of the kitchen, to my mind, take
him only at the pheasant's size, and don't (upon
your life) overdo him.
" Never be cast down in spirit, nor take it too
grievously to heart, if the colour be a suspicion
of the pinkish : no sign of rawness in that : none
whatever. It is as becoming to him as to the
salmon ; it is as natural to your pea-chick in his
best cookery, as it is to the finest October morning,
moist underfoot, when partridge's and puss's
and reynard's scent lies sweetly."
Willy Shakspeare in the meantime lifted up his
hands above his ears half a cubit, and, taking
breath again, said audibly, although he willed it
to be said unto himself alone,
" 0 that knights could deign to be our teachers !
Methinks I should briefly spring up into heaven,
through the very chink out of which the peacock
took his neck."
Master Silas, who, like myself and the worship-
ful knight, did overhear him, said angrily,
" To spring up into heaven, my lad, it would be
as well to have at least one foot upon the ground
to make the spring withal. I doubt whether we
shall leave thee this vantage."
" Nay, nay ! thou art hard upon him, Silas ! "
said the knight.
I was turning over the other papers taken from
the pocket of the culprit on his apprehension,
and had fixed my eyes on one, when Sir Thomas
caught them thus occupied, and exclaimed,
" Mercy upon us ! have we more ? "
" Your patience, worshipful sir !" said I ; "must
I forward 1 "
* The greater part of the value of the present work
arises from the certain information it affords us on the
price of needles in the reign of Elizabeth : fine needles in
her days were made only at Liege, and some few cities in
the Netherlands, and may be reckoned among those things
which were much dearer than they are now.
t Mr. Tooke had not yet published his Pantheon.
" Yea, yea," quoth he, resignedly, " we must go
through : we are pilgrims in this life."
Then did I read, in a clear voice, the contents of
paper the second, being as followeth :
THE MAID'S LAMENT.
I loved him not ; and yet now he is gone
I feel I am alone.
I check'd him while he spoke ; yet could he speak,
Alas ! I would not check.
For reasons not to love him once I sought,
And wearied all my thought
To vex myself and him : I now would give
My love, could he but live
Who lately lived for me, and when he found
'Twas vain, in holy ground
He hid his face amid the shades of death.
I waste for him my breath
Who wasted his for me : but mine returns,
9 And this lorn bosom burns
With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep,
And waking me to weep
Tears that had melted his soft heart : for years
Wept he as bitter tears.
Merciful God ! such was his latest prayer,
These may she never share !
Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold,
Than daisies in the mould,
Where children spell, athwart the churchyard gate,
His name and life's brief date.
Pray for him, gentle souls, whoe'er you be,
And oh ! pray too for me !
Sir Thomas had fallen into a most comfortable
and refreshing slumber ere this lecture was con-
cluded : but the pause broke it, as there be many
who experience after the evening service in our
parish-church. Howbeit, he had presently all his
wits about him, and remembered well that he
had been carefully counting the syllables, about
the time when I had pierced as far as into the
middle.
" Young man," said he to Willy, " thou givest
short measure in every other sack of the load.
Thy uppermost stake is of right length ; the
undermost falleth off, methinks.
" Master Ephraim, canst thou count syllables ?
I mean no offence. I may have counted wrong-
fully myself, not being born nor educated for an
accountant."
At such order I did count ; and truly the
suspicion was as just as if he had neither been a
knight nor a sleeper.
"Sad stuff! sad stuff indeed!" said Master
Silas, " and smelling of popery and wax-candles."
" Aye ? " said Sir Thomas, " I must sift that."
" If praying for the dead is not popery," said
Master Silas, " I know not what the devil is.
Let them pray for us ; they may know whether it
will do us any good : we need not pray for them ;
we can not tell whether it will do them any. I
call this sound divinity."
"Are our churchmen all agreed thereupon?"
asked Sir Thomas.
" The wisest are," replied Master Silas. " There
are some lank rascals who will never agree upon
anything but upon doubting. I would not give
ninepence for the best gown upon the most thrifty
of 'em ; and their fingers are as stiff and hard with
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
271
their pedlary knavish writing, as any bishop's are
with chalk-stones won honestly from the gout."
Sir Thomas took the paper up from the table
on which I had laid it, and said, after a while,
" The man may only have swooned. I scorn to
play the critic, or to ask anyone the meaning of
a word ; but, sirrah ! "
Here he turned in his chair from the side of
Master Silas, and said unto Willy,
" William Shakspeare ! out of this thraldom in
regard to popery, I hope, by God's blessing, to
deliver thee. If ever thou repeatest the said
verses, knowing the man to be to all intents and
purposes a dead man, prythee read the censurable
line as thus corrected,
Pray for our Virgin Queen, gentles ! whoe'er you be,
although it is not quite the thing that another
should impinge so closely on her skirts.
" By this improvement, of me suggested, thou
mayest make' some amends, a syllable or two,
for the many that are weighed in the balance and
are found wanting."
Then turning unto me, as being conversant by
my profession in such matters, and the same
being not very worthy of learned and staid clerks
the like of Master Silas, he said,
" Of all the youths that did ever write in verse,
this one verily is he who hath the fewest flowers
and devices. But it would be loss of time to form
a border in the fashion of a kingly crown, or a
dragon or a Turk on horseback, out of buttercups
and dandelions.
" Master Ephraim ! look at these badgers ! with
a long leg on one quarter and a short leg on the
other. The wench herself might well and truly
have said all that matter without the poet, bating
the rhymes and metre. Among the girls in the
country there are many such shilly-shallys, who
give themselves sore eyes and sharp eye-water :
I would cure them rod in hand."
Whereupon did William Shakspeare say, with
great humility,
" So would ;l, may it please your worship, an
they would let me."
" Incorrigible sluts ! Out upon 'em ! and thou
art no better than they are," quoth the knight.
Master Silas cried aloud, " No better, marry !
they at the worst are but carted and whipt for the
edification of the market-folks.* Not a squire or
parson in the county round but comes in his best
to see a man hanged."
" The edification then is higher by a deal," said
William, very composedly.
"Troth! is it," replied Master Silas. "The
most poisonous reptile has the richest jewel in his
head : thou shalt share the richest gift bestowed
upon royalty, and shalt cure the king's evil." f
* This was really the case within our memory.
t It was formerly thought, and perhaps is thought still,
that the hand of a man recently hanged being rubbed on
the tumour of the king's evil was able to cure it. The
crown and the gallows divided the glory of the sovran
remedy.
" It is more tractable, then, than the church's,"
quoth William ; and, turning his face toward the
chair, he made an obeisance to Sir Thomas,
saying,
" Sir ! the more submissive my behaviour is,
the more vehement and boisterous is Master
Silas. My gentlest words serve only to carry him
toward the contrary quarter, as the south-wind
bloweth a ship northward."
" Youth ! " said Sir Thomas, smiling most be-
nignly, " I find, and well indeed might I have
surmised, thy utter ignorance of winds, equinoxes,
and tides. Consider now a little! With what
propriety can a wind be called a south-wind if it
bloweth a vessel to the north ? Would it be a
south-wind that blew it from this hall into
Warwick market-place ? "
" It would be a strong one," tsaid Master Silas
unto me, pointing his remark, as witty men are
wont, with the elbow-pan.
But Sir Thomas, who waited for an answer,
and received none, continued,
" Would a man be called a good man who
tended and pushed on toward evil ? "
Shakspeare. I stand corrected. I could sail
to Cathay or Tartary* with half the nautical
knowledge I have acquired in this glorious hall.
The devil impelling a mortal to wrong
courses, is thereby known to be the devil. He,
on the contrary, who exciteth to good is no devil,
but an angel of light, or under the guidance of
one. The devil driveth unto his own home ; so
doth the south-wind, so doth the north-wind.
Alas ! alas ! we possess not the mastery over
our own weak minds, when a higher spirit
standeth nigh, and draweth us within his
influence.
Sir Thomas. Those thy words are well enough ;
very well, very good, wise, discreet, [judicious
beyond thy years. But then that sailing comes
in an awkward, ugly way across me ; that Cathay,
that Tartarus!
Have a care ! Do thou nothing rashly.
Mind ! an thou stealeth my punt for the purpose,
I send the constable after thee or e'er thou art
half way over.
Shakspeare. He would make a stock-fish of
me an he caught me. It is hard sailing out of
his straits, although they be carefully laid down
in most parishes, and many have taken them
from actual survey.
Sir Silas. Sir, we have bestowed on him
already well-nigh a good hour of our time.
. . Sir Thomas, who was always fond of giving
admonition and reproof to the ignorant and
erring, and who had found the seeds (little
mustard-seeds, 'tis true, and never likely to arise
into the great mustard-tree of the Gospel) in the
poor lad Willy, did let his heart soften a whit
tenderer and kindlier than Master Silas did, and
said unto Master Silas,
* And yet he never did sail] any farther than into
Bohemia.
272
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
" A good hour of our time ! Yea, Silas ! and
thou wouldst give him eternity ! "
"What, sir! would you let him go?" said
Master Silas. " Presently we shall have neither
deer nor dog, neither hare nor coney, neither
swan nor heron ; every carp from pool, every
bream from brook, will be groped for. The
marble monuments in the church will no longer
protect the leaden coffins ; and if there be any
ring of gold on the finger of knight or dame, it
will be torn away with as little ruth and ceremony
as the ring from a butchered sow's snout."
" Awful words ! Master Silas," quoth the knight,
musing ; " but thou mistakest my intentions. I
let him not go : howbeit, at worst I would only
mark him in the ear, and turn him up again
after this warning, peradventure with a few
stripes to boot, athwart the shoulders, in order to
make them shrug a little, and shake off the
burden of idleness."
Now I, having seen, I dare not say the inno-
cence, but the innocent and simple manner of
Willy, and pitying his tender years, and having an
inkling that he was a lad, poor Willy ! whom
God had endowed with some parts, and into whose
breast he had instilled that milk of loving-kind-
ness, by which alone we can be like unto those
little children of whom is the household and
kingdom of our Lord, I was moved, yea even
unto tears. And now, to bring gentler thoughts
into the hearts of Master Silas and Sir Thomas,
who in his wisdom deemed it a light punishment
to slit an ear or two, or inflict a wiry scourging,
I did remind his worship that another paper was
yet unread, at least to them, although I had been
perusing it.
This was much pleasanter than the two former,
and overflowing with the praises of the worthy
knight and his gracious lady; and, having an
echo to it in another voice, I did hope thereby to
disarm their just wrath and indignation. It was
thus couched.
FIRST SHEPHERD.
Jesu ! what lofty elms are here !
Let me look through them at the clear
Deep sky above, and bless my star
That such a worthy knight's they are !
SECOND SHEPHERD.
Innocent creatures ! how those deer
Trot merrily, and romp and rear !
FIRST SHEPHERD.
The glorious knight who walks beside
His most majestic lady bride,
SECOND SHEPHERD.
Under these branches spreading wide,
FIRST SHEPHERD.
Carries about so many cares
Touching his ancestors and heirs,
That came from Athens and from Rome,
SECOND SHEPHERD.
As many of them as are come,
FIRST SHEPHERD.
Nought else the smallest lodge can find
In the vast manors of his mind ;
Envying not Solomon his wit,
SECOND SHEPHERD.
No, nor his women ; not a bit ;
Being well-built and well-behaved
As Solomon, I trow, or David.
FIRST SHEPHERD.
And taking by his jewell'd hand
The jewel of that lady bland,
He sees the tossing antlers pass
And throw quaint shadows o'er the grass ;
While she alike the hour beguiles,
And looks at him and them, and smiles.
SECOND SHEPHERD.
With conscience proof 'gainst Satan's shock,
Albeit finer than her smock,*
Marry ! her smiles are not of vanity,
But resting on sound Christianity.
Faith you would swear had nail'd f her ears on
The book and cushion of the parson.
" Methinks the rhyme at the latter end might
be bettered," said Sir Thomas. " The remainder
is indited not unaptly. But, young man ! never
having obtained the permission of my honourable
dame to praise her in guise of poetry, I can not
see all the merit I would fain discern in the
verses. She ought first to have been sounded ;
and it being certified that she disapproved not
her glorification, then might it be trumpeted
forth into the world below."
" Most worshipful knight !" replied the youngster ;
" I never could take it in hand to sound a dame
of quality ; they are all of them too deep and too
practised for me, and have better and abler men
about 'em. And surely I did imagine to myself,
that if it were asked of any honourable man
(omitting to speak of ladies) whether he would give
permission to be openly praised, he would reject the
application as a gross offence. It appeareth to
me that even to praise one's self, although it be
shameful, is less shameful than to throw a burn-
ing coal into the incense-box that another doth
hold to waft before us, and then to snift and
simper over it, with maidenly wishful coyness, as
if forsooth one had no hand in setting it a-smoke."
Then did Sir Thomas, in his zeal to instruct the
ignorant, and so make the lowly hold up their
heads, say unto him,
" Nay, but all the great do thus. Thou must
not praise them without leave and license. Praise
unpermitted is plebeian praise. It is presumption
to suppose that thou knowest enough of the noble
and the great to discover their high qualities.
They alone could manifest them unto thee. It
requireth much discernment and much time to
enucleate and bring into light their abstruse
wisdom and gravely featured virtues. Those of
ordinary men lie before thee in thy daily walks:
thou mayest know them by converse at their
tables, as thou knowest the little tame squirrel
* Smock, formerly a part of the female dress, corre-
sponding with shroud, or what we now call (or lately
called) thirt, of the man's. Fox, speaking of Latimer's
burning, says, " Being slipped into his shroud."
t Faith nailing the ears is a strong and sacred metaphor.
The rhyme is imperfect : Shakspearc was not always
attentive to these minor beauties.
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEAEE.
273
that chippeth his nuts in the open sunshine of a
bowling-green. But beware how thou enterest
the awful arbours of the great, who conceal their
magnanimity in the depths of their hearts, as
lions do."
He then paused ; and observing the youth in
deep and earnest meditation over the fruits of his
experience, as one who tasted and who would
fain digest them, he gave him encouragement,
and relieved the weight of his musings by kind
interrogation :
" So then these verses are thine own V
The youth answered,
" Sir, I must confess my fault."
" And who was the shepherd written here
' Second Shepherd,' that had the ill manners to
interrupt thee ? Methinks, in helping thee to
mount the saddle, he pretty nigh tossed thee
over,* with his jerks and quirks."
Without waiting for any answer, his worship
continued his interrogations :
" But do you woolstaplers call yourselves by
the style and title of shepherds V
" Verily, sir, do we ; and I trust by right. The
last owner of any place is called the master, more
properly than the dead and gone who once held it.
If that be true (and who doubts it ?) we, who have
the last of the sheep, namely the wool and skin,
and who buy all of all the flock, surely may more
properly be called shepherds, than those idle
vagrants who tend them only for a season, selling
a score or purchasing a score, as may happen."
Here Sir Thomas did pause awhile, and then
said unto Master Silas,
" My own cogitations, and not this stripling,
have induced me to consider and to conclude a
weighty matter for knightly scholarship. I never
could rightly understand before how Colin Clout,
and sundry others calling themselves shepherds,
should argue like doctors in law, physic, and
divinity.
" Silas ! they were woolstaplers ; and they
must have exercised their wits in dealing with
tithe-proctors aud parsons, and moreover with
fellows of colleges from our two learned universi-
ties, who have sundry lands held under them, as
thou knowest, and take the small tithes in kind.
Colin Clout, methinks, from his extensive learning,
might have acquired enough interest with the
Queen's Highness to change his name for the
better, and, furthermore, her royal license to carry
armorial bearings, in no peril of taint from so
unsavory an appellation."
* Shakspeare seems to have profited afterward by this
metaphor, even more perhaps than by all the direct pieces
of instruction in poetry given him so handsomely by the
worthy knight. And here it may be permitted the editor
to profit also by the manuscript, correcting in Shakspeare
what is absolute nonsense as now printed :
Vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other side.
Other side of what ? It should be ft* sell. Sell is saddle
in Spenser and elsewhere, from the Latin and Italian.
VOL. n.
Master Silas did interrupt this discourse, by
saying,
" May it please your worship, the constable is
waiting."
Whereat Sir Thomas said tartly,
" And let him wait."*
Then to me,
" I hope we have done with verses, and are not
to be befooled by the lad's nonsense touching
mermaids or worse creatures."
Then to Will,
" William Shakspeare ! we live in a Christian
land, a land of great toleration and forbearance.
Threescore cartsful of faggots a year are fully suf-
ficient to clear our English air from every pesti-
lence of heresy and witchcraft. It hath not alway
been so, God wot ! Innocent and guilty took their
turns before the fire, like geese and capons. The
spit was never cold ; the cook's sleeve was ever
above the elbow. Countrymen came down from
distant villages, into towns and cities, to see per-
verters whom they had never heard of, and to
learn the righteousness of hatred. When heretics
waxed fewer, the religious began to grumble, that
God, in losing his enemies, had also lost his
avengers.
" Do not thou, William Shakspeare, dig the
hole for thy own stake. If thou canst not make
men wise, do not make them merry at thy cost.
We are not to be paganised any more. Having
struck from our calendars, and unnailed from our
chapels, many dozens of decent saints, with as
little compunction and remorse as unlucky lads
throw frog-spawn and tadpoles out of stagnant
ditches, never let us think of bringing back
among us the daintier divinities they ousted.
All these are the devil's imps, beautiful as they
appear in what we falsely call works of genius,
which really and truly are the devil's own ; sta-
tues more graceful than humanity, pictures more
living than life, eloquence that raised single cities
above empires, poor men above kings. If these
are not Satan's works, where are they ? I will
tell thee where they are likewise. In holding
vain converse with false gods. The utmost we
can allow in propriety is to call a knight Phosbus,
and a dame Diana. They are not meat for every
trencher.
"We must now proceed straightforward with the
business on which thou comest before us. What
further sayest thou, witness ?'
Treen. His face was toward me : I saw it
clearly. The graver man followed him into the
punt, and said roughly, ' We shall get hanged as
sure as thou pipest.'
* It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed
from Virgil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of
the manuscript. The editor's memory was upon the
stretch to recollect the words : the learned critic supplied
them :
" Solum .Eneas vocat : et vocet, oro."
The editor could only reply, indeed weakly, that calling
and waiting are not exactly the same, unless when trades-
men rap and gentlemen are leaving town.
274
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
Whereunto he answered,
' Naturally, as fall upon the ground
The leaves in winter and the girls in spring.'
And then began he again with the mermaid :
whereat the graver man clapped a hand before
his mouth, and swore he should take her in wed-
lock, to have and to hold, if he sang another stave.
' And thou shalt be her pretty little bridemaid,'
quoth he gaily to the graver man, chucking him
under the chin.
Sir Thomas. And what did Carnaby say unto
thee, or what didst thou say unto Carnaby 1
Treen. Carnaby said unto me, somewhat
tauntingly, ' The big squat man, that lay upon
thy breadbasket like a night-mare, is a punt at
last, it seems.'
' Punt, and more too,' answered I. ' Tarry
awhile, and thou shalt see this punt (so let me
call it) lead them into temptation, and swamp
them, or carry them to the gallows : I would not
stay else.'
Sir Thomas. And what didst thou, Joseph
Carnaby ]
Carnaby. Finding him neither slack nor shy,
I readily tarried. We knelt down opposite each
other, and said our prayers ; and he told me he
was now comfortable. ' The evil one,' said he,
' hath enough to mind yonder : he shall not hurt
us.' Never was a sweeter night, had there been
but some mild ale under it, which anyone would
have sworn it was made for. The milky way
looked like a long drift of hailstones on a sunny
ridge.
Sir Thomas. Hast thou done describing ?
Carnaby. Yea, an please your worship.
Sir Thomas. God's blessing be upon thee,
honest Carnaby ! I feared a moon-fall. In our
days nobody can think about a plum-pudding but
the moon comes down upon it. I warrant ye this
lad here hath as many moons in his poems as the
Saracens had in their banners.
Shakspeare. I have not hatched mine yet,
sir. Whenever I do I trust it will be worth tak-
ing to market.
Carnaby. I said all I know of the stars ; but
Master Euseby can run over half a score and up-
ward, here and there. ' Am I right or wrong V
cried he, spreading on the back of my hand all
his fingers, stiff as antlers and cold as icicles.
' Look up, Joseph ! Joseph ! there is no Lucifer
in the firmament.' I myself did feel queerish
and qualmy upon hearing that a star was missing,
being no master of gainsaying it ; and I abased
my eyes, and entreated of Euseby to do in like
manner. And in this posture did we both of us
remain; and the missing star did not disquiet
me ; and all the others seemed as if they knew us
and would not tell of us ; and there was peace
and pleasantness over sky and earth. And I said
to my companion,
' How quiet now, good Master Euseby, are all
God's creatures in this meadow, because they never
pry into such high matters, but breathe sweetly
among the pig-nuts. The only things we hear or
see stirring are the glow-worms and dormice, as
though they were sent for our edification, teaching
us to rest contented with our own little light, and
to come out and seek our sustenance where none
molest or thwart us.'
Shakspeare. Ye would have it thus, no doubt,
when your pockets and pouches are full of gins
and nooses.
Sir Thomas. A bridle upon thy dragon's
tongue ! And do thou, Master Joseph, quit the
dormice and glow-worms, and tell us whither did
the rogues go.
Carnaby. I wot not after they had crossed the
river : they were soon out of sight and hearing.
Sir Thomas. Went they toward Charlecote]
Carnaby. Their first steps were thitherward.
Sir TJiomas. Did they come back unto the
punt?
Carnaby. They went down the stream in it,
and crossed the Avon some fourscore yards below
where we were standing. They came back in it,
and moored it to the sedges in which it had stood
before.
Sir Thomas. How long were they absent 1
Carnaby. Within an hour, or thereabout, all
the three men returned. Will Shakspeare and
another were sitting in the middle, the third
punted.
' Remember now, gentles ! ' quoth William
Shakspeare, ' the road we have taken is hence-
forward a footpath for ever, according to law.'
' How so ? ' asked the punter, turning toward
him.
' Forasmuch as a corpse hath passed along it,'
answered he.
Whereupon both Euseby and myself did forth-
with fall upon our faces, commending our souls
unto the Lord.
Sir Thomas. It was then really the dead body
that quivered so fearfully upon the water, covering
all the punt ! Christ, deliver us ! I hope the
keeper they murdered was not Jeremiah. His
wife and four children would be very chargeable,
and the man was by no mean amiss. Proceed !
what further 1
Carnaby. On reaching the bank, ' I never sat
pleasanter in my lifetime,' said William Shaks-
peare, ' than upon this carcass.'
Sir Thomas. Lord have mercy upon us !
Thou upon a carcass, at thy years ?
. . And the knight drew back his chair half an
ell further from the table, and his lips quivered
at the thought of such inhumanity.
'•' And what said he more 1 and what did he V
asked the knight.
Carnaby. He patted it smartly, and said,
' Lug it out ; break it.'
Sir TJiomas. These four poor children ! who
shall feed them 1
Sir Silas. Sir ! in God's name have you for-
gotten that Jeremiah is gone to Nun-Eaton to see
his father, and that the murdered man is the
buck?
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
275
Sir Thomas. They killed the buck likewise.
But what, ye cowardly varlets ! have ye been
deceiving me all this time? And thou, youngster,
couldst thou say nothing to clear up the case 1
Thou shalt smart for it. Methought I had lost
by a violent death the best servant ever man had ;
righteous, if there be no blame in saying it, as
the prophet whose name he beareth, and brave as
the lion of Judah.
Shakspeare. Sir, if these men could deceive
your worship for a moment, they might deceive
me for ever. I could not guess what their story
aimed at, except my ruin. I am inclined to lean
for once toward the opinion of Master Silas, and
to believe it was really the stolen buck on which
this William (if indeed there is any truth at all in
the story) was sitting.
Sir Thomas. What more hast thou for me that
is not enigma or parable 1
Carnaby. I did not see the carcass, man's or
beast's, may it please your worship, and I have
recited and can recite that only which I saw and
heard. After the words of lugging out and break-
ing it, knives were drawn accordingly. It was no
time to loiter or linger. We crope back under the
shadow of the alders and hazels on the high bank
that bordereth Mickle Meadow, and, making
straight for the public road, hastened homeward.
Sir Thomas. Hearing this deposition, dost
thou affirm the like upon thy oath, Master Euseby
Treen, or dost thou vary in aught essential ]
Treen. Upon my oath I do depose and affirm
the like, and truly the identical same ; and I will
never more vary upon aught essential.
Sir Thomas. I do now further demand of thee
whether thou knowest anything more apper-
taining unto this business.
Treen. Ay, verily : that your worship may
never hold me for timorsome and superstitious,
I do furthermore add that some other than deer-
stealers was abroad. In sign whereof, although it
was the dryest and clearest night of the season,
my jerkin was damp inside and outside when
I reached the house-door.
SJiakspeare. I warrant thee, Euseby, the damp
began not at the outside. A word in thy ear :
Lucifer was thy tapster, I trow.
Sir Thomas. Irreverent swine ! hast no awe
nor shame ? Thou hast aggravated thy offence,
William Shakspeare, by thy foul-mouthedness.
Sir Silas. I must remind your worship, that
he not only has committed this iniquity afore, but
hath pawed the puddle he made, and relapsed
into it after due caution and reproof. God forbid
that what he spake against me, out of the gall of
his proud stomach, should move me. I defy him,
a low ignorant wretch, a rogue and vagabond, a
thief and cut-throat, a . . .* monger and mutton-
eater.
Shakspeare. Your worship doth hear the
* Here the manuscript is blotted; but the probability
is, that it was fishmonger, rather than ironmonger, fish-
mongers having always been notorious cheats and liars.
learned clerk's testimony in my behalf. ' Out of
the mouth of babes and sucklings . .'
Sir Thomas. Silas ! The youth has failings ; a
madcap ; but he is pious.
Shakspeare. Alas, no, sir ! Would I were !
But Sir Silas, like the prophet, came to curse and
was forced to bless me, even me, a sinner, a
mutton-eater !
Sir Thomas. Thou urgedst him. He beareth
no ill-will toward thee. Thou knewedst, I suspect,
that the blackness in his mouth proceeded from
a natural cause.
Shakspeare. The Lord is merciful ! I was
brought hither in jeopardy ; I shall return in joy.
Whether my innocence be declared or otherwise,
my piety and knowledge will be forwarded and
increased : for your worship will condescend, even
from the judgment-seat, to enlighten the ignorant
where a soul shall be saved or lost ! And I, even
I, may trespass a moment on your courtesy.
I quail at the words natural cause. Be there
any such ?
Sir Thomas. Youth ! I never thought thee
so staid. Thou hast, for these many months, been
represented unto me as one dissolute and light,
much given unto mummeries and mysteries, wakes
and carousals, cudgel-fighters and mountebanks,
and wanton women. They do also represent of
thee (I hope it may be without foundation) that
thou enactest the parts, not simply of foresters
and fairies, girls in the green-sickness and friars,
lawyers and outlaws, but likewise, having small
reverence for station, of kings and queens, knights
and privy-counsellors, in all their glory. It hath
been whispered moreover, and the testimony of
these two witnesses doth appear in some measure
to countenance and confirm it, that thou hast at
divers times this last summer been seen and heard
alone, inasmuch as human eye may discover, on
the narrow slip of greensward between the Avon
and the chancel, distorting thy body like one
possessed, and uttering strange language, like
unto incantation. This however cometh not
before me. Take heed ! take heed unto thy ways :
there are graver things in law even than homicide
and deer-stealing.
Sir Silas. And strong against him. Folks
have been consumed at the stake for pettier
felonies and upon weaker evidence.
Sir Thomas. To that anon.
. . William Shakspeare did hold down his head,
answering nought. And Sir Thomas spake again
unto him,, as one mild and fatherly, if so be that
such a word may be spoken of a knight and
parliament-man. And these are the words he
spake :
" Eeason and ruminate with thyself now. To
pass over and pretermit the danger of representing
the actions of the others, and mainly of lawyers and
churchmen, the former of whom do pardon no
offences, and the latter those only against God,
(having no warrant for more) canst thou believe it
innocent to counterfeit kings and queens ? Sup-
posest thou that if the impression of their faces on
276
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
a farthing be felonious and rope-worthy, the imita-
tion of head and body, voice and bearing, plume
and strut, crown and mantle, and everything else
that maketh them royal and glorious, be aught
less? Perpend, young man, perpend ! Consider
who among inferior mortals shall imitate them
becomingly? Dreamest thou they talk and act
like checkmen at Banbury fair? How can thy
shallow brain suffice for their vast conceptions ?
How darest thou say, as they do, hang this fellow,
quarter that, flay, mutilate, stab, shoot, press,
hook, torture, burn alive ? These are royalties.
Who appointed thee to such office 1 The Holy
Ghost ? He alone can confer it ; but when wert
thou anointed ? "
William was so zealous in storing up these
verities, that he looked as though he were uncon-
scious that the pouring-out was over. He started,
which he had not done before, at the voice of
Master Silas ; but soon recovered his complacency,
and smiled with much serenity at being called
low-minded varlet.
" Low-minded varlet !" cried Master Silas, most
contemptuously, "dost thou imagine that king
calleth king, like thy chums, filcher and fibber,
whirligig and nincompoop ? Instead of this low
vulgarity and sordid idleness, ending in nothing,
they throw at one another such fellows as thee by
the thousand, and when they have cleared the
land, render God thanks and make peace."
Willy did now sigh out his ignorance of these
matters ; and he sighed mayhap too at the
recollection of the peril he had run into, and had
ne 'er a word on the nail.*
The bowels of Sir Thomas waxed tenderer and
tenderer ; and he opened his lips in this fashion :
" Stripling ! I would now communicate unto
thee, on finding thee docile and assentaneous, the
instruction thou needest on the signification of
the words natural cause, if thy duty toward thy
neighbour had been first instilled into thee."
Whereupon Master Silas did interpose, for the
dinner-hour was drawing nigh.
" We can not do all at once," quoth he. "Coming
out of order, it might harm him. Malt before
hops, the world over, or the beer muddies."
But Sir Thomas was not to be pricked out of
his form even by so shrewd a pricker ; and, like
unto one who heareth not, he continued to look
most graciously on the homely vessel that stood
ready to receive his wisdom.
"Thy mind," said he, "being unprepared for
higher cogitations, and the groundwork and
religious duty not being well rammer-beaten and
flinted, I do pass over this supererogatory point,
and inform thee rather, that bucks and swans and
herons have something in their very names
announcing them of knightly appertenance. And
(God forfend that evil do ensue therefrom !) that
a goose on the common, or a game-cock on the
loft of cottager or villager, may be seized, bagged,
* Perhaps a pun was intended ; or possibly it might, in
* On the nail appears to be intended to express ready the age of Elizabeth, have been a vulgar term for hanging,
payment. although we find no trace of the expression in other books.
and abducted, with far less offence to the laws-
In a buck there is something so gainly and so
grand, he treadeth the earth with such ease and
such agility, he abstaineth from all other animals
with such punctilious avoidance, one would imagine
God created him when he created knighthood. In
the swan there is such purity, such coldness is
there in the element he inhabiteth, such solitude
of station, that verily he doth remind me of the
Virgin Queen herself. Of the heron I have less
to say, not having him about me ; but I never
heard his lordly croak without the conceit that it
resembled a chancellor's or a primate's.
" I do perceive, William Shakspeare, thy com-
punction and contrition."
Shakspeare. I was thinking, may it please
your worship, of the game-cock and the goose,
having but small notion of herons. This doctrine
of abduction, please your worship, hath been
alway inculcated by the soundest of our judges.
Would they had spoken on other points with the
same clearness. How many unfortunates might
thereby have been saved from crossing the
Cordilleras ! *
Sir Thomas. Ay, ay ! they have been fain to
fly the country at last, thither or elsewhere.
. . And then did Sir Thomas call unto him
Master Silas, and say,
" Walk we into the bay-window. And thou
mayest come, Ephraim."
And when we were there together, I, Master
Silas, and his worship, did his worship say unto
the chaplain, but oftener looking toward me,
" I am not ashamed to avouch that it goeth
against me to hang this young fellow, richly as
the offence in its own nature doth deserve it ; he
talketh so reasonably ; not indeed so reasonably,
but so like unto what a reasonable man may listen
to and reflect on. There is so much too of com-
passion for others in hard cases, and something
so very near in semblance to innocence itself in
that airy swing of lightheartedness about him. I
can not fix my eyes (as one would say) on the
shifting and sudden shade-and-shine, which
cometh back to me, do what I will, and mazes me
in a manner, and blinks me."
At this juncture I was ready to fall upon the
ground before his worship, and clasp his knees
for Willy's pardon. But he had so many points
about him, that I feared to discompose 'em, and
thus make bad worse. Beside which, Master
Silas left me but scanty space for good resolutions,
crying,
" He may be committed to save time. After-
ward he may be sentenced to death, or he may
not."
Sir Thomas. 'Twere shame upon me were he
not : 'twere indication that I acted unadvisedly
in the commitment.
Sir Silas. The penalty of the law may be
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
277
commuted, if expedient, on application to the
fountain of mercy in London.
Sir Thomas. Maybe, Silas, those shall be
standing round the fount of mercy who play in
idleness and wantonness with its waters, and let
them not flow widely, nor take their natural
course. Dutiful gallants may encompass it, and
it may linger among the flowers they throw into
it, and never reach the parched lip on the way-
side.
These are homely thoughts, thoughts from
a-field, thoughts for the study and housekeeper's
room. But whenever I have given utterance
unto them, as my heart hath often prompted me
with beatings at the breast, my hearers seemed
to bear toward me more true and kindly affection
than my richest fancies and choicest phraseologies
could purchase.
'Twere convenient to bethink thee, should
any other great man's park have been robbed this
season, no judge upon the bench will back my
recommendation for mercy. And indeed how
could I expect it ? Things may soon be brought
to such a pass that their lordships shall scarcely
find three haunches each upon the circuit.
. . " Well, sir!" quoth Master Silas, " you have
a right to go on in your own way. Make him
only give up the girl.
Here Sir Thomas reddened with righteous in-
dignation, and answered,
" I can not think it ! such a stripling ? poor,
penniless : it must be some one else."
And now Master Silas did redden in his turn
redder than Sir Thomas, and first asked me,
" What the devil do you stare at ]"
And then asked his worship,
" Who should it be if not the rogue V and his
lips turned as blue as a blue-bell.
Then Sir Thomas left the window, and again
took his chair, and having stood so long on his
legs, groaned upon it to ease him. His worship
scowled with all his might, and looked exceedingly
wroth and vengeful at the culprit, and said unto
him,
" Harkye, knave ! I have been conferring with
my learned clerk and chaplain in what manner I
may, with the least severity, rid the county
(which thou disgracest) of thee."
William Shakspeare raised up his eyes, modestly
and fearfully, and said slowly these few words,
which, had they been a better and nobler man's,
would deserve to be written in letters of gold. I,
not having that art nor substance, do therefore
write them in my largest and roundest character,
and do leave space about 'em, according to their
rank and dignity :
" Worshipful sir !
" A WORD IN THE EAR IS OFTEN AS GOOD AS A
HALTER UNDER IT, AND SAVES THE GROAT."
" Thou discoursest well," said Sir Thomas,
" but others can discourse well likewise : thou
shalt avoid ; I am resolute."
SJiakspeare. I supplicate your honour to
impart unto me, in your wisdom, the mode and
means whereby I may surcease to be disgraceful
to the county.
Sir Thomas. I am not bloody-minded.
First, thou shalt have the fairest and fullest
examination. Much hath been deposed against
thee : something may come forth for thy advan-
tage. I will not thy death : thou shalt not die.
The laws have loopholes like castles, both to
shoot from and to let folks down.
Sir Silas. That pointed ear would look the
better for paring, and that high forehead can hold
many letters.
. . Whereupon did William, poor lad ! turn deadly
pale, but spake not.
Sir Thomas then abated a whit of his severity,
and said staidly :
" Testimony doth appear plain and positive
against thee ; nevertheless am I minded and
prompted to aid thee myself, in disclosing and
unfolding what thou couldst not of thine own
wits, in furtherance of thine own defence.
" One witness is persuaded and assured of the
evil spirit having been abroad, and the punt ap-
peared unto him diversely from what it appeared
unto the other."
Shakspeare. If the evil spirit produced one
appearance, he might have produced all, with
deference to the graver judgment of your wor-
ship.
If what seemed punt was devil, what seemed
buck might have been devil too ; nay, more easily,
the horns being forthcoming.
Thieves and reprobates do resemble him more
nearly still ; and it would be hard if he could not
make free with their bodies, when he has their
souls already.
Sir Thomas. But, then, those voices ! and thou
thyself, Will Shakspeare !
Shakspeare. 0 might I kiss the hand of my
deliverer, whose clear-sightedness throweth such
manifest and plenary light upon my innocence ]
Sir Thomas. How so ? What light, in God's
name, have I thrown upon it as yet 1
Shakspeare. 0 those voices ! those faeries
and spirits ! whence came they "? None can deal
with 'em but the devil, the parson, and witches.
And does not the devil oftentimes take the very
form, features, and habiliments, of knights, and
bishops, and other good men, to lead them into
temptation and destroy them1? or to injure their
good name, in failure of seduction !
He is sure of the wicked : he lets them go
their ways out of hand.
I think your worship once delivered some
such observation, in more courtly guise, which I
would not presume to ape. If it was not your
worship, it was our glorious lady the queen, or
the wise Master Walsingham, or the great Lord
Cecil. I may have marred and broken it, as sluts
do a pancake, in the turning.
Sir Thomas. Why ! ay, indeed, I had occasion
once to remark as much.
Shakspeare. So have I heard in many places :
although I was not present when Matthew Atterend
278
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
fought about it, for the honour of Kineton hun-
dred.
Sir Thomas. Fought about it !
Shakspeare. As your honour recollects. Not
but on other occasions he would have fought no
less bravely for the queen.
Sir Thomas. We must get thee through,
were it only for thy memory ; the most precious
gift among the mental powers that Providence
hath bestowed upon us. I had half forgotten the
thing myself. Thou mayest, in time, take thy
satchel for London, and aid good old Master
Holingshed.
We must clear thee, Will ! I am slow to sur-
mise that there is blood upon thy hands !
. . His worship's choler had all gone down again;
and he sat as cool and comfortable as a man
sitteth to be shaved. Then called he on Euseby
Treen, and said,
" Euseby Treen ! tell us whether thou ob-
servedst anything unnoticed or unsaid by the last
witness."
Treen. One thing only, sir ! When they had
passed the water, an owlet hooted after them ;
and methought, if they had any fear of God
before their eyes, they would have turned back,
he cried so lustily.
Shakspeare. Sir, I can not forbear to take the
owlet out of your mouth. He knocks them all
on the head like so many mice. Likely story !
One fellow hears him cry lustily, the other doth
not hear him at all.
Carnaby. Not hear him ! A body might
have heard him at Barford or Sherbourne.
Sir Thomas. Why didst not name him 1 Canst
not answer me 1
Carnaby. He doubted whether punt were punt,
I doubted whether owlet were owlet, after Lucifer
was away from the roll-call. We say, 'speak the
truth and shame the devil ;' but shaming him is
one thing, your honour, and facing him another !
I have heard owlets, but never owlet like
him.
Shakspeare. The Lord be praised ! All, at
last, a-running to my rescue.
Owlet, indeed ! Your worship may have re-
membered in an ancient book ; indeed what book
is so ancient that your worship doth not remember
it 1 a book printed by Doctor Faustus.
Sir Thomas. Before he dealt with the devil "?
Shakspeare. Not long before; it being the very
book that made the devil think it worth his while
to deal with him.
Sir Thomas. What chapter thereof wouldst
thou recall unto my recollection ]
Shakspeare. That concerning owls, with the
grim print afore it.
Doctor Faustus, the wise doctor, who knew
other than owls and owlets, knew the tempter in
that form. Faustus was not your man for fancies
and figments ; and he tells us that, to his certain
knowledge, it was verily an owl's face that whis-
pered so much mischief in the ear of our first
parent.
One plainly sees it, quoth Doctor Faustus,
under that gravity which in human life we call
dignity, but of which we read nothing in the Gos-
pel. We despise the hangman, we detest the
hanged ; and yet, saith Duns Scotus, could we
turn aside the heavy curtain, or stand high enough
a-tiptoe to peep through its chinks and crevices,
we should perhaps find these two characters to
stand justly among the most innocent in the
drama. He who blinketh the eyes of the poor
wretch about to die doeth it out of mercy ; those
who preceded him, bidding him in the garb of
justice to shed the blood of his fellow-man, had
less or none. So they hedge well their own
grounds, what care they 1 For this do they catch
at stakes and thorns, at quick and rotten . .
. . Here Master Silas interrupted the discourse
of the devil's own doctor, delivered and printed by
him before he was the devil's, to which his wor-
ship had listened very attentively and delightedly.
But Master Silas could keep his temper no longer,
and cried fiercely, " Seditious sermonizer ! hold
thy peace, or thou shalt answer for 't before con-
vocation."
Sir Thomas. Silas ! thou dost not approve
then the doctrine of this Doctor Duns ]
Sir Silas. Heretical Eabbi !
Shakspeare. If two of a trade can never agree,
yet surely two of a name may.
Sir Silas. Who dares call me heretical ? who
dares call me rabbi ? who dares call me Scotus ]
Spider ! spider ! yea, thou hast one corner left :
I espy thee ; and my broom shall reach thee
yet.
Shakspeare. I perceive that Master Silas doth
verily believe I have been guilty of suborning the
witnesses, at least the last, the best man (if any
difference) of the two. No, sir, no. If my family
and friends have united their wits and money for
this purpose, be the crime of perverted justice
on their heads ! They injure whom they intended
to serve. Improvident men ! (if the young may
speak thus of the elderly) ; could they imagine
to themselves that your worship was to be hood-
winked and led astray 1
Sir Thomas. No man shall ever dare to
hoodwink me, to lead me astray, no, nor lead me
anywise. Powerful defence ! Heyday ! Sit quiet,
Master Treen ! Euseby Treen ! dost hear me ]
Clench thy fist again, sirrah ! and I clap thee
in the stocks. Joseph Carnaby ! do not scratch
thy breast nor thy pate before me.
. . Now Joseph had not only done that in his
wrath, but had unbuckled his leathern garter,
fit instrument for strife and blood, and perad-
venture would have smitten, had not the knight,
with magisterial authority, interposed.
His worship said unto him gravely, " Joseph
Carnaby ! Joseph Carnaby ! hast thou never read
the words Pitt up thy sword ? "
" Subornation ! your worship ! " cried Master
Joe. " The fellow hath ne'er a shilling in leather
or till, and many must go to suborn one like
me."
OP WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
279
" I do believe it of thee," said Sir Thomas ;
" but patience, man ! patience ! he rather tended
toward exculpating thee. Ye have far to walk
for dinner ; ye may depart."
They went accordingly.
Then did Sir Thomas say, " These are hot men,
Silas ! "
And Master Silas did reply unto him, " There
are brands that would set fire to the bulrushes
in the mill-pool. I know these twain for quiet
folks, having coursed with them over Wincott."
Sir Thomas then said unto William, "It be-
hoveth thee to stand clear of yon Joseph, unless
when thou mayest call to thy aid the Matthew
Atterend thou speakest of. He did then fight
valiantly, eh ? "
Shakspeare. His cause fought valiantly; his
fist but seconded it. He won ; proving the golden
words to be no property of our lady's, although her
highness hath never disclaimed them.
Sir Thomas. What art thou saying ?
Shakspeare. So I heard from a preacher at
Oxford, who had preached at Easter in the chapel-
royal of Westminster.
Sir Thomas. Thou ! why how could that hap-
pen 1 Oxford ! chapel-royal !
Shakspeare. And to whom I said (your wor-
ship will forgive my forwardness), I have the
honour, sir, to live within two measured miles
of the very Sir Thomas Lucy who spake that ;
and I vow I said it without .any hope or belief
that he would invite me, as he did, to dine with
him thereupon.
Sir Thomas. There be nigh upon three miles
betwixt this house and Stratford bridge-end.
Shakspeare. I dropt a mile in my pride and
exultation, God forgive me ! I would not conceal
my fault.
Sir Thomas. Wonderful ! that a preacher so
learned as to preach before majesty in the chapel-
royal, should not have caught thee tripping over
a whole lawful mile, a good third of the distance
between my house and the cross roads. This is
incomprehensible in a scholar.
Sliakspeare. God willed that he should be-
come my teacher, and, in the bowels of his
mercy, hid my shame.
Sir Thomas. How earnest thou into the con-
verse of such eminent and ghostly men 1
Shakspeare. How indeed ! Everything against
me. . .
. . He sighed and entered into a long discourse,
which Master Silas would at sundry times have
interrupted, but that Sir Thomas more than
once frowned upon him, even as he had frowned
heretofore on young Will, who thus began and
continued his narration :
" Hearing the preacher preach at St. Mary's
(for being about my father's business on Satur-
day, and not choosing to be a-horseback on
Sundays, albeit time-pressed, I footed it to Ox-
ford for my edification on the Lord's day,
leaving the sorrel with Master Hal Webster of
the Tankard and Unicorn) hearing him preach,
as I was saying, before the University in St. Mary's
church, and hearing him use moreover the very
words that Matthew fought about, I was impa-
tient (God forgive me !) for the end and consum-
mation, and I thought I never should hear those
precious words that ease every man's heart, 'Now
to conclude.' However, come they did. I hur-
ried out among the. foremost, and thought the
congratulations of the other doctors and dons
would last for ever. He walked sharply off, and
few cared to keep his pace ; for they are lusty men
mostly ; and spiteful bad women had breathed* in
the faces of some among them, or the gowns had
got between their legs. For my part, I was not
to be balked : so, tripping on aside him, I looked
in his face askance. Whether he misgave, or
how, he turned his eyes downward. No matter,
have him I would. I licked my lips and smacked
them loud and smart, and, scarcely venturing to
nod, I gave my head such a sort of motion as
dace and roach give an angler's quill when they
begin to bite. And this fairly hooked him.
" ' Young gentleman ! ' said he, ' where is your
gown]'
" ' Reverend sir ! ' said I, ' I am unworthy to
wear one.'
" ' A proper youth, nevertheless, and mightily
well spoken ! ' he was pleased to say.
" ' Your reverence hath given me heart, which
failed me,' was my reply. ' Ah, your reverence !
those words about the devil were spicy words;
but, under favour, I do know the brook-side they
sprang and flowered by. 'Tis just where it runs
into Avon ; 'tis called Hog-brook.'
" ' Right ! ' quoth he, putting his hand gently
on my shoulder ; ' but if I had thought it needful
to say so in my sermon, I should have affronted
the seniors of the University, since many claim
them, and some peradventure would fain trans-
pose them into higher places, and, giving up all
right and title to them, would accept in lieu
thereof the poor recompense of a mitre.'
" I wished (unworthy wish for a Sunday !) I had
Matthew Atterend in the midst of them. He
would have given them skulls mitre-fashioned, if
mitres are cloven now as we see them on ancient
monuments. Matt is your milliner for gentles,
who think no more harm of purloining rich saws
in a mitre, than laneborn boys do of embezzling
hazel-nuts in a woollen cap. I did not venture to
* In that age there was prevalent a sort of cholera, on
which Fracastorius, half a century before, wrote a Latin
poem, employing the graceful nymphs of Homer and
Hesiod, somewhat disguised, in the drudgery of pounding
certain barks and minerals. An article in the Impeach-
ment of Cardinal Wolsey, accuses him of breathing in the
king's face, knowing that he was affected with this cholera.
It was a great assistant to the Reformation, by removing
some of the most vigorous champions that opposed it. In
the Holy College it was followed by the sweating sickne»g,
which thinned it very sorely ; and several even of God's
vicegerents were laid under tribulation by it. Among the
chambers of the Vatican it hung for ages, and it crowned
the labours of Pope Leo XII., of blessed memory, with a
crown somewhat uneasy.
280
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
expound or suggest my thoughts, but feeling my
choler rise higher and higher, I craved permission
to make my obeisance and depart.
"'Where dost thou lodge, young man?' said
the preacher.
" ' At the public,' said I, ' where my father
customarily lodgeth. There too is a mitre of the
old fashion, swinging on the sign-post in the
middle of the street.'
" ' Respectable tavern enough ! ' quoth the reve-
rend doctor ; ' and worthy men do turn in there,
even quality : Master Davenant, Master Powel,
Master Whorwood, aged and grave men. But
taverns are Satan's chapels, and are always well
attended on the Lord's day, to twit him. Hast
thou no friend in such a city as Oxford 1 '
" ' Only the landlady of the Mitre,' said I.
" ' A comely woman,' quoth he, ' but too young
for business by half. Stay thou with me to-day,
and fare frugally, but safely. What may thy
name be, and where is thy abode ? '
" ' William Shakspeare, of Stratford-upon-Avon,
at your service, sir.'
" ' And welcome,' said he ; ' thy father ere now
hath bought our college wool. A truly good man
we everfound him ; and I doubt not he hath educated
his son to follow him in his paths. There is in
the blood of man, as in the blood of animals, that
which giveth the temper and disposition. These
require nurture and culture. But what nurture
will turn flint-stones into garden mould 1 or what
culture rear cabbages in the quarries of Hedington
Hill ] To ,be well born is the greatest of all God's
primary blessings, young man, and there are many
well born among the poor and needy. Thou art
not of the indigent and destitute, who have great
temptations ; thou art not of the wealthy and
affluent, who have greater still. God hath placed
thee, William Shakspeare, in that pleasant island,
on one side whereof are the syrens, on the other
the harpies, but inhabiting the coasts on the wider
continent, and unable to make their talons felt
or their voices heard by thee. Unite with me
in prayer and thanksgiving for the blessings thus
vouchsafed. We must not close the heart when
the finger of God would touch it. Enough, if
thou sayest only, My soul, praise thou the
Lord!'"
Sir Thomas said "Amen!" Master Silas was
mute for the moment, but then quoth he, " I can
say amen too, in the proper place."
The knight of Charlecote, who appeared to
have been much taken with this conversation,
then interrogated Willy :
" What farther might have been thy discourse
with the doctor? or did he discourse at all at
trencher-time ? Thou must have been very much
abashed to sit down at table with one who weareth
a pure lamb-skin across his shoulder, and more-
over a pink hood."
Shakspeare. Faith ! was I, your honour ! and
could neither utter nor gulp.
Sir Thomas. These are good signs. Thou
hast not lost all grace.
Shakspeare. With the encouragement of Doctor
Glaston . .
Sir Thomas. And was it Dr. Glaston ?
Shakspeare. Said I not so ]
Sir Thomas. The learnedst clerk in Christen-
dom ! a very Friar Bacon ! The pope offered a
hundred marks in Latin to who should eviscerate
or evirate him (poisons very potent, whereat the
Italians are handy) ; so apostolic and desperate a
doctor is Doctor Glaston ! so acute in his quid-
dities, and so resolute in his bearing ! He knows
the dark arts, but stands aloof from them.
Prythee, what were his words unto thee ?
Shakspeare. Manna, sir, Manna ! pure from
the desert !
Sir Thomas. Ay, but what spake he 1 for most
sermons are that, and likewise many conversations
after dinner.
Shakspeare. He spake of the various races
and qualities of men, as before stated ; but chiefly
on the elect and reprobate, and how to distinguish
and know them.
Sir Thomas. Did he go so far ?
Shakspeare. He told me, that by such discus-
sion he should say enough to keep me constantly
out of evil company.
Sir Thomas. See there ! see there ! and yet
thou art come before me ! Can nothing warn
thee]
Shakspeare. I dare not dissemble, nor feign,
nor hold aught back, although it be to my con-
fusion. As well may I speak at once the whole
truth ; for your worship could find it out if
I abstained.
Sir Thomas. Ay, that I should indeed, and
shortly. But, come now, I am sated of thy follies
and roguish tricks, and yearn after the sound
doctrine of that pious man. What expounded the *
grave Glaston upon signs and tokens whereby ye
shall be known ]
Shakspeare. Wonderful things ! things beyond
belief ! ' There be certain men,' quoth he ...
Sir Thomas. He began well. This promises.
But why canst not thou go on ?
Shakspeare. ' There be certain men, who, rub-
bing one corner of the eye, do see a peacock's
feather at the other, and even fire. We know,
William, what that fire is, and whence it cometh.
Those wicked men, William, all have their marks
upon them, be it only a corn, or a wart, or a mole,
or a hairy ear, or a toe-nail turned inward. Suffi-
cient, and more than sufficient ! He knoweth his
own by less tokens. There is not one of them
that doth not sweat at some secret sin committed,
or some inclination toward it unsnaffled.
' Certain men are there likewise who venerate
so little the glorious works of the Creator, that
I myself have known them to sneeze at the sun !
Sometimes it was against their will, and they
would gladly have checked it had they been able ;
but they were forced to show what they are. In
our carnal state we say, Wfiat is one against
numbers ? In another, we shall truly say, What
are numbers against one ? '
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEAEE.
281
..Sir Thomas did ejaculate, Amen! Amen!
And then his lips moved silently, piously, and
quickly ; and then said he, audibly and loudly,
And make us at last true Israelites !
After which he turned to young Willy, and said
anxiously,
" Hast thou more, lad 1 give us it while the
Lord strengtheneth."
"Sir," answered Willy, " although I thought it
no trouble on my return to the Mitre to write
down every word I could remember, and although
few did then escape me, yet at this present I can
bring to mind but scanty sentences, and those so
stray and out of order that they would only prove
my incapacity for sterling wisdom, and my incon-
tinence of spiritual treasure."
Sir Thomas. Even that sentence hath a
twang of the doctor in it. Nothing is so sweet
as humility. The mountains may descend, but
the valleys can not rise. Every man should know
himself. Come, repeat what thou canst. I would
fain have three or four more heads.
Shakspeare. I know not whether I can give
your worship more than one other. Let me try.
It was when Doctor Glaston was discoursing on
the protection the wise and powerful should afford
to the ignorant and weak :
' In the earlier ages of mankind, your Greek
and Latin authors inform you, there went forth
sundry worthies, men of might, to deliver, not
wandering damsels, albeit for those likewise they
had stowage, but low-conditioned men, who fell
under the displeasure of the higher, and groaned
in thraldom and captivity. And these mighty
ones were believed to have done such services to
poor humanity, that their memory grew greater
than they, as shadows do than substances at day-
fall. And the sons and grandsons of the delivered
did laud and magnify those glorious names ; and
some in gratitude, and some in tribulation, did
ascend the hills, which appeared unto them as
altars bestrewn with flowers and herbage for
heaven's acceptance. And many did go far into
the quiet groves, under lofty trees, looking for
whatever was mightiest and most protecting.
And in such places did they cry aloud unto the
mighty, who had left them, Return ! return !
help us ! help us ! be blessed ! for ever blessed !
' Vain men ! but, had they stayed there, not
evil. Out of gratitude, purest gratitude, rose
idolatry. For the devil sees the fairest, and soils
it.
' In these our days, metbinks, whatever other
sins we may fall into, such idolatry is the least
dangerous. For, neither on the one side is there
much disposition for gratitude, nor on the other
much zeal to deliver the innocent and oppressed.
Even this deliverance, although a merit, and a
high one, is not the highest. Forgiveness is be-
yond it. Forgive, or ye shall not be forgiven.
This ye may do every day ; for, if ye find not
offences, ye feign them ; and surely ye may remove
your own work, if ye may remove another's. To
rescue requires more thought and wariness : learn
then the easier lesson first. Afterward, when ye
rescue any from another's violence, or from his
own (which oftentimes is more dangerous, as the
enemies are within not only the penetrals of his
house but of his heart), bind up his wounds before
ye send him on his way. Should ye at any time
overtake the erring, and resolve to deliver him
up, I will tell you whither to conduct him. Con-
duct him to his Lord and Master, whose house-
hold he hath left. It is better to consign him to
Christ his Saviour than to man his murderer : it
is better to bid him live than to bid him die. The
one word our Teacher and Preserver said, the
other our enemy and destroyer. Bring him back
again, the stray, the lost one ! bring him back,
not with clubs and cudgels, not with halberts and
halters, but generously and gently, and with the
linking of the arm. In this posture shall God
above smile upon ye : in this posture of yours
he shall recognise again his beloved Son upon
earth. Do ye likewise, and depart in peace.'
. . William had ended, and there was silence in
the hall for some time after, when Sir Thomas
said,
" He spake unto somewhat mean persons, who
may do it without disparagement. I look for
authority, I look for doctrine, and find none yet.
If he could not have drawn us out a thread or two
from the coat of an apostle, he might have given
us a smack of Augustin, or a sprig of Basil. Our
older sermons are headier than these, Master Silas !
our new beer is the sweeter and clammier, and
wants more spice. The doctor hath seasoned his
with pretty wit enough (to do him justice), which
in a sermon is never out of place ; for if there be
the bane, there likewise is the antidote.
" What dost thou think about it, Master
Silas?"
Sir Silas. 1 would not give ten farthings for
ten folios of such sermons.
Shakspeare. These words, Master Silas, will
oftener be quoted than any others of thine ; but
rarely (do I suspect) as applicable to Doctor
Glaston. I must stick unto his gown. I must
declare that, to my poor knowledge, many have
been raised to the bench of bishops for less wis-
dom, and worse, than is contained in the few sen-
tences I have been commanded by authority to
recite. No disparagement to anybody ! I know,
Master Silas, and multitudes bear witness,
that thou above most art a dead hand at a
sermon.
Sir Silas. Touch my sermons, wilt dare ?
Shakspeare. Nay, Master Silas, be not angered:
it is courage enough to hear them.
Sir Thomas. Now, Silas, hold thy peace and
rest contented. He hath excused himself unto
thee, throwing in a compliment far above his
station, and not unworthy of Rome or Florence.
I did not think him so ready. Our Warwickshire
lads are fitter for football than courtesies ; and,
sooth to say, not only the inferior.
. . His worship turned from Master Silas toward
William, and said, " Brave Willy, thou hast given
282
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
us our bitters: we are ready now for anything
solid. What hast left r
Shakspeare. Little or nothing, sir.
Sir Thomas. Well, give us that little or
nothing.
. . William Shakspeare was obedient to the com-
mands of Sir Thomas, who had spoken thus kindly
unto him, and had deigned to cast at him from
his " lordly dish " (as the Psalmist hath it) a
fragment of facetiousness.
Shakspeare. A las, sir ! may I repeat it with-
out offence, it not being doctrine but admonition,
and meant for me only ?
Sir Thomas. Speak it the rather for that.
. . Then did William give utterance to the words
of the preacher, not indeed in his sermon at St.
Mary's, but after dinner :
' Lust seizeth us in youth, ambition in mid-
life, avarice in old age ; but vanity and pride are
the besetting sins that drive the angels from our
cradle, pamper us with luscious and most un-
wholesome food, ride our first stick with us, mount
our first horse with us, wake with us in the morn-
ing, dream with us in the night, and never at any
time abandon us. In this world, beginning with
pride and vanity, we are delivered over from tor-
mentor to tormentor, until the worst tormen-
tor of all taketh absolute possession of us for
ever, seizing us at the mouth of the grave, en-
chaining us in his own dark dungeon, standing
at the door, and laughing at our cries. But the
Lord, out of his infinite mercy, hath placed in the
hand of every man the helm to steer his course
by, pointing it out with his finger, and giving
him strength as well as knowledge to pursue
it.
' William ! William ! there is in the moral
straits a current from right to wrong, but no
reflux from wrong to right ; for which destination
we must hoist our sails aloft and ply our oars in-
cessantly, or night and the tempest will overtake
us, and we shall shriek out in vain from the bil-
lows, and irrecoverably sink.'
" Amen !" cried Sir Thomas most devoutly,
sustaining his voice long and loud.
" Open that casement, good Silas ! the day is
sultry for the season of the year ; it approacheth
unto noontide. The room is close, and those
blue flies do make a strange hubbub."
Shakspeare. In troth do they, sir ; they come
from the kitchen, and do savour woundily of roast
goose ! And, methinks . .
Sir Tliomas. What bethinkest thou ?
Shakspeare. The fancy of a moment, a light
and vain one.
Sir Thomas. Thou relievest me ; speak it?
Shakspeare. How could the creatures cast
their coarse rank odour thus far1? even into your
presence ! A noble and spacious hall ! Charle-
cote,- in my mind, beats Warwick Castle, and chal-
lenges Kenilworth.
Sir Thomas. The hall is well enough : I must
say it is a noble hall, a hall for a queen to sit down
in. And I stuffed an arm-chair with horse-hair
on purpose, feathers over it, swan-down over them
again, and covered it with scarlet cloth of Bruges,
five crowns the short ell. But her highness came
not hither ; she was taken short ; she had a tongue
in her ear.
Shakspeare. Where all is spring, all is buzz
and murmur.
Sir Thomas. Quaint and solid as the best
yew-hedge ! I marvel at thee. A knight might
have spoken it under favour. They stopped her
at Warwick . . to see what? two old towers
that don't match.* Charlecote Hall, I could
have told her sweet highness, was built by those
Lucies who came over with Julius Caesar and
William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-
shell on breast and beaver.
But, honest Willy ! . .
. . Such were the very words ; I wrote them down
with two signs in the margent ; one a mark of
admiration, as thus (!), the other of interroga-
tion (so we call it) as thus (1)
" But, honest Willy, I would fain hear more,"
quoth he, "about the learned Doctor Glaston.
He seemeth to be a man after God's own heart."
Shakspeare. Ay is he ! Never doth he sit
down to dinner but he readeth first a chapter
of the Eevelations ; and if he tasteth a pound
of butter at Carfax, he saith a grace long enough
to bring an appetite for a baked bull'sf . . . zle.
If this be not after God's own heart, I know
not what is.
Sir Thomas. I would fain confer with him,
but that Oxford lieth afar off; a matter of thirty
miles, I hear. I might indeed write unto him :
but our Warwickshire pens are mighty broad-
nibbed ; and there is a something in this plaguy
ink of ours sadly ropy.
" I fear there is ! " quoth Willy.
" And I should scorn," continued his worship,
" to write otherwise than in a fine Italian charac-
ter, to the master of a college near in dignity to
knighthood."
Shakspeare. Worshipful sir ! is there no other
way of communicating but by person, or writing,
Sir Thomas. I will consider and devise. At
present I can think of none so satisfactory.
. . And now did the great clock over the gateway
strike. And Bill Shakspeare did move his lips,
even as Sir Thomas had moved his erewhile in
ejaculating. And when he had wagged them
twice or thrice after the twelve strokes of the
* Sir Thomas seems to have been jealous of these two
towers, certainly the finest in England. If Warwick
Castle could borrow the windows from Kenilworth, it
would be complete.
f Another untoward blot ! but leaving no doubt of the
word. The only doubt is, whether he meant the muzzle
of the animal itself, or one of those leathern muzzles
which are often employed to coerce the violence of
animals. In besieged cities men have been reduced to
such extremities. But the muzzle, in this place, would
more properly be called the blinker, which is often put
upon bulls in pastures when they are vicious.
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
283
clock were over, again he ejaculated with voice
also, saying,
" Mercy upon us ! how the day wears ! Twelve
strokes ! Might I retire, please your worship,
into the chapel for about three quarters of an
hour, and perform the service* as ordained ? "
Before Sir Thomas could give him leave or
answer, did Sir Silas cry aloud,
" He would purloin the chalice, worth forty-
eight shillings, and melt it down in the twink-
ling of an eye, he is so crafty."
But the knight was more reasonable, and said
reprovingly,
" There now, Silas ! thou talkest widely, and
verily in malice, if there be any in thee."
" Try him," answered Master Silas ; " I don't
kneel where he does. Could he have but his
wicked will of me he would chop my legs off, as
he did the poor buck's."
Sir Thomas. No, no, no; he hath neither
guile nor revenge in him. We may let him
have his way, now that he hath taken the right
one.
Sir Silas. Popery ! sheer popery ! strong as
hartshorn ! Your papists keep these outlandish
hours for their masses and mummery. Surely we
might let God alone at twelve o'clock ! Have we
no bowels ?
Shakspeare. Gracious sir ! I do not urge it ;
and the time is now past by some minutes.
Sir Thomas. Art thou popishly inclined,
William 1
Shakspeare. Sir, I am not popishly inclined :
I am not inclined to pay tribute of coin or under-
standing to those who rush forward with a pistol
at my breast, crying, ' Stand, or you are a dead
man.' I have but one guide in faith, a powerful,
an almighty one. He will not suffer to waste
away and vanish the faith for which he died. He
hath chosen in all countries pure hearts for its
depositaries ; and I would rather take it from a
friend and neighbour, intelligent and righteous,
and rejecting lucre, than from some foreigner edu-
cated in the pride of cities or in the inoroseness of
monasteries, who sells me what Christ gave me,
his own flesh and blood.
I can repeat by heart what I read above
a year agone, albeit I can not bring to mind the
title of the book in which I read it. These are
the words.
' The most venal and sordid of all the super-
stitions that have swept and darkened our globe,
may indeed, like African locusts, have consumed
the green corn in very extensive regions, and may
return periodically to consume it ; but the strong
unwearied labourer who sowed it, hath alway sown
it in other places less exposed to such devouring
pestilences. Those cunning men who formed to
* Let not this countenance the opinion that Shakspeare
was a Roman Catholic. His contempt of priests may have
originated from the unfairness of Silas. Friars he treats
kindly, perhaps in return for somewhat less services than
Friar Lawrence's to Romeo.
themselves the gorgeous plan of universal do-
minion, were aware that they had a better chance
of establishing it than brute ignorance or brute
force could supply, and that soldiers and their
paymasters were subject to other and powerfuller
fears than the transitory ones of war and invasion.
What they found in heaven they seized ; what
they wanted they forged.
' And so long as there is vice and ignorance
in the world, so long as fear is a passion, their
dominion will prevail ; but their dominion is not,
and never shall be, universal. Can we wonder
that it is so general ] can we wonder that any-
thing is wanting to give it authority and effect,
when every learned, every prudent, every power-
ful, every ambitious man in Europe, for above a
thousand years, united in the league to consoli-
date it 1
' The old dealers in the shambles, where
Christ's body is exposed for sale, in convenient
marketable slices, have not covered with blood
and filth the whole pavement. Beautiful usages
are remaining still, kindly affections, radiant
hopes, and ardent aspirations !
' It is a comfortable thing to reflect, as they
do, and as we may do unblamably, that we are
uplifting to our Guide and Maker the same in-
cense of the heart, and are uttering the very words,
which our dearest friends in all quarters of the
earth, nay in heaven itself, are offering to the
throne of grace at the same moment.
' Thus are we together through the immen-
sity of space. What are these bodies 1 Do they
unite us 1 No ; they keep us apart and asunder
even while we touch. Eealms and oceans, worlds
and ages, open before two spirits bent on heaven.
What a choir surrounds us when we resolve
to live unitedly and harmoniously in Christian
faith ! '
Sir Thomas. Now, Silas, what sayest thou ]
Sir Silas. Ignorant fool !
Shakspeare. Ignorant fools are bearable,
Master Silas ! your wise ones are the worst.
Sir Thomas. Prythee no bandying of logger-
heads.
Shakspeare.
Or else what mortal man shall say
Whose shins may suffer in the fray.
Sir Thomas. Thou reasonest aptly and timest
well. And surely being now in so rational and
religious a frame of mind, thou couldst recall to
memory a section or head or two of the sermon
holden at St. Mary's. It would do thee and us
as much good as ' Lighten our darkness,' or ' For-
asmuch as it hath pleased ; ' and somewhat less
than three quarters of an hour (may-be less than
one quarter) sufnceth.
Sir Silas. Or he hangs without me. I am
for dinner in half the time.
Sir Thomas. Silas ! Silas ! he hangeth not
with thee or without thee.
Sir Silas. Hethinketh himself a clever fellow;
but he (look ye) is the cleverest that gets off".
284
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
" I hold quite the contrary," quoth Will Shaks-
peare, winking at Master Silas, from the comfort
and encouragement he had just received touching
the hanging.
And Master Silas had his answer ready, and
showed that he was more than a match for poor
Willy in wit and poetry.
He answered thus :
" If winks are wit,
Who wanteth it ?
Thou hadst other bolts to kill bucks withal. In
wit, sirrah, thou art a mere child."
Shakspeare. Little dogs are jealous of children,
great ones fondle them.
Sir Thomas. An that were written in the
Apocrypha, in the very teeth of Bel and the
Dragon, it could not be truer. I have witnessed
it with my own eyes, over and over.
Sir Silas. He will take this for wit, likewise,
now the arms of Lucy do seal it.
Sir Thomas. Silas, they may stamp wit, they
may further wit, they may send wit into good
company, but not make it.
Shakspeare. Behold my wall of defence !
Sir Silas. An thou art for walls, I have one
for thee from Oxford, pithy and apposite, sound
and solid, and trimmed up becomingly, as a collar
of brawn with a crown of rosemary, or a boar's
head with a lemon in the mouth.
Shakspeare. Egad, Master Silas ! those are
your walls for lads to climb over, an they were
higher than Babel's.
Sir SU<w. Have at thee !
Thou art a wall
To make the ball
Rebound from.
Thou hast a back
For beadle's crack
To sound from, to sound from.
The fooliahest dolts are the ground-plot of the
most wit, as the idlest rogues are of the most
industry. Even thou hast brought wit down from
Oxford. And before a thief is hanged parliament
must make laws, attorneys must engross them,
printers stamp and publish them, hawkers cry
them, judges expound them, juries weigh and
measure them with offences, then executioners
carry them into effect. The farmer hath already
sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it ;
sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together
the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all
this truly for fellows like unto thee !
Shakspeare. Whom a God came down from
heaven to save !
Sir Thomas. Silas ! he hangeth not. Wil-
liam ! I must have the heads of the sermon, six
or seven of 'em : thou hast whetted my appetite
keenly. How ! dost duck thy pate into thy hat 1
nay, nay, that is proper and becoming at church ;
we need not such solemnity. Repeat unto us the
setting forth at Saint Mary's.
. . Whereupon did William Shakspeare entreat of
Master Silas that he would help him in his ghostly
endeavours, by repeating what he called the pre-
liminary prayer ; which prayer I find nowhere in
our ritual, and do suppose it to be one of those
Latin supplications used in our learned universi-
ties, now or erewhile.
I am afeard it hath not the approbation of the
strictly orthodox, for inasmuch as Master Silas at
such entreaty did close his teeth against it, and
with teeth thus closed did say, Athanasius-wise,
" Go and be damned !"
Bill was not disheartened, but said he hoped
better, and began thus :
" 'My brethren !' said the preacher, ' or rather
let me call you my children, such is my age con-
fronted with yours, for the most part, my chil-
dren then, and my brethren, (for here are both,)
believe me, killing is forbidden.' "
Sir Thomas. This, not being delivered unto
us from the pulpit by the preacher himself, we
may look into. Sensible man ! shrewd reasoner !
what a stroke against deer-stealers ! how full of
truth and ruth. Excellent discourse !
Shakspeare. The last part was the best.
Sir Thomas. I always find it so. The softest
of the cheesecake is left in the platter when the
crust is eaten. He kept the best bit for the last,
then ] He pushed it under the salt, eh 1 He told
thee . .
Shakspeare. Exactly so.
Sir Thomas. What was it 1
Shakspeare. ' Ye shall not kill.'
Sir Thomas. How ! did he run in a circle
like a hare1? One of his mettle should break
cover and off across the country, like a fox or
hart.
Shakspeare. ' And yet ye kill time when ye
can, and are uneasy when ye can not.'
. . Whereupon did Sir Thomas say aside unto
himself, but within my hearing,
" Faith and troth ! he must have had a head
in at the window here one day or other."
Shakspeare. ' This sin cryeth unto the Lord.'
Sir Thomas. He was wrong there. It is not
one of those that cry : mortal sins cry. Surely
he could not have fallen into such an error ! it
must be thine : thou misunderstoodest him.
Shakspeare. Mayhap, sir ! A great heaviness
came over me : I was oppressed in spirit, and
did feel as one awakening from a dream.
Sir Thomas. Godlier men than thou art do
often feel the right hand of the Lord upon their
heads in like manner. It followeth contrition,
and precedeth conversion. Continue.
Shakspeare. ' My brethren and children,'
said the teacher, ' whenever ye want to kill time
call God to the chase, and bid the angels blow the
horn : and thus ye are sure to kill time to your
heart's content. And ye may feast another day,
and another after that . .'
. . Then said Master Silas unto me, concernedly,
" This is the mischief-fullest of all the devil's
imps, to talk in such wise at a quarter past
twelve !"
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
285
But William vent straight on, not hearing
him,
" ' Upon what ye shall in such pursuit have
brought home with you. Whereas, if ye go alone,
or two or three together, nay, even if ye go in
thick and gallant company, and yet provide not
that these be with ye, my word for it, and a power-
fuller word than mine, ye shall return to your
supper tired and jaded, and rest little when ye
want to rest most.'"
" Hast no other head of the Doctor's ]" quoth
Sir Thomas.
" Verily none," replied Willy, " of the morn-
ing's discourse, saving the last words of it, which,
with God's help, I shall always remember."
" Give us them, give us them," said Sir Tho-
mas. " He wants doctrine ; he wants authority ;
his are grains of millet; grains for unfledged
doves : but they are sound, except the crying.
Deliver unto us the last words ; for the last of
the preacher, as of the hanged, are usually the
best."
Then did William repeat the concluding words
of the discourse, being these :
" ' As years are running past us, let us throw
something on them which they can not shake off
in the dust and hurry of the world, but must carry
with them to that great year of all, whereunto the
lesser of this mortal life do tend and are sub-
servient.' "
Sir Thomas, after a pause, and after having bent
his knee under the table, as though there had
been the church-cushion, said unto us,
" Here he spake through a glass, darkly, as
blessed Paul hath it."
Then turning towards Willy,
" And nothing more ]"
"Nothing but the glory," quoth Willy; "at
which there is always such a clatter of feet upon
the floor, and creaking of benches, and rustling
of gowns, and bustle of bonnets, and justle of
cushions, and dust of mats, and treading of toes,
and punching of elbows from the spitefuller, that
one wishes to be fairly out of it, after the scramble
for the peace of God is at an end . .''
Sir Thomas threw himself back upon his arm-
chair, and exclaimed in wonderment, " How !"
Shakspeare. . . And in the midst of the ser-
vice again, were it possible. For nothing is pain-
fuller than to have the pail shaken off the head
when it is brim-full of the waters of life, and we
are walking staidly under it.
Sir Thomas, Had the learned Doctor preached
again in the evening, pursuing the thread of his
discourse, he might peradventure have made up
the deficiencies I find in him.
Shakspeare. He had not that opportunity.
Sir Thomas. The more's the pity.
Shakspeare. The evening admonition, de-
livered by him unto the household . .
Sir Thomas. What ! and did he indeed show
wind enough for that 1 Prythee out with it, if
thou didst put it into thy tablets.
Shakspeare. Alack, sir ! there were so many
Latin words, I fear me I should be at fault in such
attempt.
Sir Thomas. Fear not ; we can help thee out
between us, were there a dozen, or a score.
Shakspeare. Bating those latinities, I do verily
think I could tie up again most of the points in
his doublet.
Sir Thomas. At him then ! What was his
bearing ]
Shakspeare. In dividing his matter, he spooned
out and apportioned the commons in his discourse,
as best suited the quality, capacity, and constitu-
tion of his hearers. To those in priests' orders
he delivered a sort of catechism.
Sir Silas. He catechise grown men ! He
catechise men in priests' orders ! being no bishop,
nor bishop's ordinary !
Shakspeare. He did so ; it may be at his
peril.
Sir Thomas. And what else 1 for catechisms
are baby's pap.
Shakspeare. He did not catechise, but he
admonished, the richer gentlemen with gold tas-
sels for their top-knots.
Sir Silas. I thought as much. It was no
better in my time. Admonitions fell gently upon
those gold tassels ; and they ripened degrees as
glass and sunshine ripen cucumbers. We priests,
forsooth, are catechised ! The worst question to
any gold tasseller is, ' How do you do V Old
Alma Mater coaxes and would be coaxed. But
let her look sharp, or spectacles may be thrust
upon her nose that shall make her eyes water.
Aristotle could make out no royal-road to wisdom;
but this old woman of ours will show you one, an
you tip her.
Tilley valley ! * catechise priests, indeed !
Sir Thomas. Peradventure he did it dis-
creetly. Let us examine and judge him. Kepeat
thou what he said unto them.
Shakspeare. ' Many,' said he, ' are ingenuous,
many are devout, some timidly, some strenuously,
but nearly all flinch, and rear, and kick, at the
slightest touch, or least inquisitive suspicion of an
unsound part in their doctrine. And yet, my
brethren, we ought rather to flinch and feel sore
at our own searching touch, our own serious in-
quisition into ourselves. Let us preachers, who
are sufficiently liberal in bestowing our advice
upon others, inquire of ourselves whether the
exercise of spiritual authority may not be some-
times too pleasant, tickling our breasts with a
plume from Satan's wing, and turning our heads
with that inebriating poison which he hath been
seen to instill into the very chalice of our salva-
tion. Let us ask ourselves in the closet, whether,
after we have humbled ourselves before God in
our prayers, we never rise beyond the due standard
in the pulpit ; whether our zeal for the truth be
never over-heated by internal fires less holy;
whether we never grow stiffly and sternly perti-
* Tilley valley was the favourite adjuration of James
the Second. It appears in the comedies of Shakspeare.
286
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
nacious, at the very time when we are reproving
the obstinacy of others ; and whether we have not
frequently so acted as if we believed that oppo-
sition were to be relaxed and borne away by self-
sufficiency and intolerance. Believe me, the wisest
of us have our catechism to learn ; and these, my
dear friends, are not the only questions contained
in it. No Christian can hate ; no Christian can
malign : nevertheless, do we not often both hate
and malign those unhappy men who are insensible
to God's mercies] And I fear this unchristian
spirit swells darkly, with all its venom, in the
marble of our hearts, not because our brother is
insensible to these mercies, but because he is
insensible to our faculty of persuasion, turning a
deaf ear unto our claim upon his obedience, or a
blind or sleepy eye upon the fountain of light,
whereof we deem ourselves the sacred reservoirs.
There is one more question at which ye will
tremble when ye ask it in the recesses of your
souls: I do tremble at it, yet must utter it.
Whether we do not more warmly and erectly stand
up for God's word because it came from our mouths,
than because it came from his? Learned and
ingenious men may indeed find a solution and
excuse for all these propositions; but the wise
unto salvation will cry, Forgive me, 0 my God, if,
called by thee to walk in thy way, I have not
swept this dust from the sanctuary ! '
Sir Thomas. All this, methinks, is for the
behoof of clerks and ministers.
Shalcspeare. He taught them what they who
teach others should learn and practise. Then did
he look toward the young gentlemen of large
fortune : and lastly his glances fell upon us poorer
folk, whom he instructed in the duty we owe to
our superiors.
Sir Thomas. Ay, there he had a host.
Shakspeare. In one part of his admonition
he said,
' Young gentlemen ! let not the highest of
you who hear me this evening be led into the de-
lusion, for such it is, that the founder of his family
was originally a greater or a better man than the
lowest here. He willed it, and became it. He
must have stood low; he must have worked hard ;
and with tools moreover of his own invention
and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten
thousand strong and importunate temptations ;
he dashed the dice-box from the jewelled hand of
Chance, the cup from Pleasure's, and trod under
foot the sorceries of each ; he ascended steadily
the precipices of Danger, and looked down with
intrepidity from the summit ; he overawed Arro-
gance with Sedateness ; he seized by the horn and
overleaped low Violence ; and he fairly swung
Fortune round.
' The very high cannot rise much higher ; the
very low may : the truly great must have done it.
'This is not the doctrine, my friends, of the
silkenly and lawnly religious ; it wears the coarse
texture of the fisherman, and walks uprightly and
straightforward under it. I am speaking now
more particularly to you among us upon whom
God hath laid the incumbrances of wealth, the
sweets whereof bring teazing and poisonous things
about you, not easily sent away. What now are
your pretensions under sacks of money ] or your
enjoyments under the shade of genealogical trees]
Are they rational ] Are they real 1 Do they
exist at all 1 Strange inconsistency ! to be proud
of having as much gold and silver laid upon you as
a mule hath, and yet to carry it less composedly !
The mule is not answerable for the conveyance
and discharge of his burden : you are. Stranger
infatuation still ! to be prouder of an excellent
thing done by another than by yourselves, sup-
posing any excellent thing to have actually been
done ; and, after all, to be more elated on his
cruelties than his kindnesses, by the blood he hath
spilt than by the benefits he hath conferred ; and
to acknowledge less obligation to a well-informed
and well-intentioned progenitor than to a lawless
and ferocious barbarian. Would stocksand stumps,
if they could utter words, utter such gross stupidity]
Would the apple boast of his crab origin, or the
peach of his prune] Hardly any man is ashamed
of being inferior to his ancestors, although it is the
very thing at which the great should blush, if indeed
the great in general descended from the worthy.
I did expect to see the day, and although I shall
not see it, it must come at last, when he shall be
treated as a madman or an impostor who dares to
claim nobility or precedency, and can not show his
family name in the history of his country. Even
he who can show it, and who can not write his
own under it in the same or as goodly characters,
must submit to the imputation of degeneracy,
from which the lowly and obscure are exempt.
'He alone who maketh you wiser, maketh
you greater ; and it is only by such an implement
that Almighty God himself effects it. When he
taketh away a man's wisdom, he taketh away his
strength, his power over others and over himself.
What help for him then ! He may sit idly and
swell his spleen, saying, Who is this? who is
that? and at the question's end the spirit of
inquiry dies away in him. It would not have
been so, if, in happier hour, he had said within
himself, Who am I ? what am 1 ? and had pro-
secuted the search in good earnest.
. ' When we ask who this man is, or who that
man is, we do not expect or hope for a plain
answer : we should be disappointed at a direct, or
a rational, or a kind one. We desire to hear that
he was of low origin, or had committed some
crime, or been subjected to some calamity. Who-
ever he be, in general we disregard or despise him,
unless we discover that he possesseth by nature
many qualities of mind and body which he never
brings into use, and many accessories of situation
and fortune which he brings into abuse every
day. According to the arithmetic in practice, he
who makes the most idlers and the most ingrates
is the most worshipful. But wiser ones than the
scorers in this school will tell you how riches and
power were bestowed by Providence, that gene-
rosity and mercy should be exercised : for, if
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
287
every gift of the Almighty were distributed in
equal portions to every creature, less of such
virtues would be called into the field ; con-
sequently there would be less of gratitude, less of
submission, less of devotion, less of hope, and, in
the total, less of content.'
. . Here he ceased, and Sir Thomas nodded, and
said,
" Reasonable enough ! nay, almost too rea-
sonable !
" But where are the apostles'? Where are the
disciples'? Where are the saints'? Where is
hell-fire?
" Well ! patience ! we may come to it yet. Go
on, Will!"
With such encouragement before him, did Will
Shakspeare take breath and continue :
" ' We mortals are too much accustomed to
behold our superiors in rank and station as we
behold the leaves in the forest. While we stand
under these leaves, our protection and refuge from
heat and labour, we see only the rougher side of
them, and the gloominess of the branches on
which they hang. In the midst of their benefits
we are insensible to their utility and their beauty,
and appear to be ignorant that, if they were
placed less high above us, we should derive from
them less advantage.' "
Sir Thomas. Ay; envy of superiority made
the angels kick and run restive.
Shakspeare. May it please your worship ! with
all my faults, I have ever borne submission and
reverence toward my superiors.
Sir Thomas. Very right ! very scriptural !
But most folks do that. Our duty is not fulfilled
unless we bear absolute veneration ; unless we are
ready to lay down our lives and fortunes at the
foot of the throne, and everything else at the foot
of those who administer the laws under virgin
majesty.
Shakspeare. Honoured sir ! I am quite ready
to lay down my life and fortune, and all the rest
of me, before that great virgin.
Sir Silas. Thy life and fortune, to wit ! What
are they worth ] A June cob-nut, maggot and
all.
Sir Thomas. Silas ! we will not repudiate nor
rebuff this Magdalen, that bringeth a pot of oint-
ment. Rather let us teach and tutor than twit.
It is a tractable and conducible youth, being in
good company.
Sir Silas. Teach and tutor ! Hold hard, sir.
These base varlets ought to be taught but two
things : to bow as beseemeth them to their betters,
and to hang perpendicular. We have authority
for it, that no man can add an inch to his stature;
but, by aid of the sheriff, I engage to find a chap
who shall add two or three to this whoreson's.*
* Whoreson, if we may hazard a conjecture, means the
son of a woman of ill-repute. In this we are borne out
by the context. It appears to have escaped the com-
mentators on Shakspeare.
Whoreson, a word of frequent occurrence in the come-
dies ; more rarely found in the tragedies. Although now
Sir Thomas. Nay, nay, now> Silas ! the lad's
mother was always held to be an honest woman.
Sir Silas. His mother may be an honest
woman for me.
Shakspeare. No small privilege, by my faith !
for any woman in the next parish to thee, Master
Silas !
Sir Silas. There again ! out comes the filthy
runlet from the quagmire, that but now lay so
quiet with all its own in it.
Shakspeare. Until it was trodden on by the
ass that could not leap over it. These, I think,
are the words of the fable.
Sir Thomas. They are so.
Sir Silas. What fable1?
Sir Thomas. Tush ! don't press him too hard :
he wants not wit, but learning.
Sir Silas. He wants a rope's-end ; and a
rope's-end is not enough for him, unless we throw
in the other.
Sir Thomas. Peradventure he may be an
instrument, a potter's clay, a type, a token.
I have seen many young men, and none like
unto him. He is shallow, but clear; he is simple,
but ingenuous.
Sir Silas. Drag the ford again then. In my
mind he is as deep as the big tankard ; and a
mouthful of rough burrage will be the beginning
and end of it.
Sir TJiomas. No fear of that. Neither, if
rightly reported by the youngster, is there so
much doctrine in the doctor as we expected. He
doth not dwell upon the main ; he is worldly : he
is wise in his generation ; he says things out of
his own head.
Silas, that can't hold ! We want props ;
fulcrums, I think you called 'em to the farmers ;
or was it stimuLums ?
Sir Silas. Both very good words.
Sir Thomas. I should be mightily pleased to
hear thee dispute with that great don.
Sir Silas. I hate disputations. Saint Paul
warns us against them. If one wants to be thirsty,
the tail of a stockfish is as good for it as the head
of a logician.
The doctor there, at Oxford, is in flesh and
mettle : but let him be sleek and gingered as he
may, clap me in Saint Mary's pulpit, cassock me,
lamb-skin me, give me pink for my colours, glove
me to the elbow, heel-piece me half an ell high,
cushion me before and behind, bring me a mug
of mild ale and a rasher of bacon, only just to con
over the text withal ; then allow me fair play, and
as much of my own way as he had; and the devil
take the hindermost. I am his man at any time.
Sir Thomas. I am fain to believe it. Verily,
I do think, Silas, thou hast as much stuff in thee
as most men. Our beef and mutton at Charlecote
rear other than babes and sucklings.
obsolete, the expression proves that there were (or were
believed to be) such persons formerly.
The editor is indebted to two learned friends for these
two remarks, which appear no less just than ingenious.
288
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
I like words taken, like thine, from black-
letter books. They look stiff and sterling, and as
though a man might dig about 'em for a week,
and never loosen the lightest.
Thou hast alway at hand either saint or devil,
as occasion needeth, according to the quality of
the sinner, and they never come uncalled for.
Moreover, Master Silas, I have observed that thy
hell-fire is generally lighted up in the pulpit about
the dog-days. .
. . Then turned the worthy knight unto the
youth, saying,
" 'Twere well for thee, William Shakspeare, if
the learned doctor had kept thee longer in his
house, and had shown unto thee the danger of
idleness, which hath often led unto deer-stealing
and poetry. In thee we already know the one,
although the distemper hath eaten but skin-deep
for the present ; and we have the testimony of
two burgesses on the other. The pursuit of
poetry, as likewise of game, is unforbidden to
persons of condition."
Shakspeare. Sir, that of game is the more
likely to keep them in it.
Sir Thomas. It is the more knightly of the two;
but poetry hath also her pursuers among us. I
myself, in my youth, had some experience that
way ; and I am fain to blush at the reputation I
obtained. His honour, my father, took me to
London at the age of twenty ; and, sparing no
expense in my education, gave fifty shillings to
one Monsieur Dubois to teach me fencing and
poetry in twenty lessons. In vacant hours he
taught us also the laws of honour, which are dif-
ferent from ours.
In France you are unpolite unless you solicit
a judge or his wife to favour your cause, and you
inevitably lose it. In France there is no want of
honour where there is no want of courage : you
may lie, but you must not hear that you lie. I
asked him what he thought then of lying ; and he
replied,
' C'est selon."
'And suppose you should overhear the whisper?'
' Ah parbleu ! Cela m'irrite ; cela me pousse
au bout.'
I was going on to remark that a real man of
honour could less bear to lie than to hear it;
when he cried, at the words real man of honour,
' Le voila, Monsieur ! le voila ! ' and gave
himself such a blow on the breast as convinced me
the French are a brave people.
He told us that nothing but his honour was
left him, but that it supplied the place of all he
had lost. It was discovered some time afterward
that M. Dubois had been guilty of perjury,
had been a spy, and had lost nothing but a
dozen or two of tin patty-pans, hereditary in his
family, his father having been a cook on his own
account.
William, it is well at thy time of life that
thou shouldst know the customs of far countries,
particularly if it should be the will of God to
place thee in a company of players. Of all
nations in the world, the French best understand
the stage. If thou shouldst ever write for it,
which God forbid, copy them very carefully.
Murders on their stage are quite decorous and
cleanly. Few gentlemen and ladies die by vio-
lence who would not have died by exhaustion.
For they rant and rave until their voice fails
them, one after another ; and those who do not
die of it, die consumptive. They can not bear
to see cruelty : they would rather see any image
than their own. These are not my observations,
but were made by Sir Everard Starkeye, who like-
wise did remark to Monsieur Dubois, that cats,
if you hold them up to the looking-glass, will
scratch you terribly; and that the same fierce
animal, as if proud of its cleanly coat and velvety
paw, doth carefully put aside what other animals
of more estimation take no trouble to conceal.
' Our people,' said Sir Everard, ' must see
upon the stage what they never could have
imagined; so the best men in the world would
earnestly take a peep of hell through a chink,
whereas the worser would skulk away.'
Do not thou be their caterer, William!
Avoid the writing of comedies and tragedies.
To make people laugh is uncivil, and to make
people cry is unkind. And what, after all, are
these comedies and these tragedies 1 They are
what, for the benefit of all future generations, I
have myself described them,
The whimsies of wantons, and stories of dread
That make the stout-hearted look under the bed.
Furthermore, let me warn thee against the same
on account of the vast charges thou must stand
at. We Englishmen can not find it in our hearts
to murder a man without much difficulty, hesita-
tion, and delay. We have little or no invention
for pains and penalties ; it is only our acutest
lawyers who have wit enough to frame them.
Therefore it behoveth your tragedy-man to pro-
vide a rich assortment of them, in order to
strike the auditor with awe and wonder. And a
tragedy-man, in our country, who can not afford a
fair dozen of stabbed males, and a trifle under
that mark of poisoned females, and chains enow
to moor a whole navy in dock, is but a scurvy
fellow at the best. Thou wilt find trouble in pur-
veying these necessaries ; and then must come
the gim-cracks for the second course ; gods, god-
desses, fates, furies, battles, marriages, music, and
the maypole. Hast thou within thee where-
withall)'
. . " Sir ! " replied Billy, with great modesty, " I
am most grateful for these ripe fruits of your ex-
perience. To admit delightful visions into my
own twilight chamber, is not dangerous nor for-
bidden. Believe me, sir, he who indulges in
them will abstain from injuring his neighbour :
he will see no glory in peril, and no delight in
strife. The world shall never be troubled by
any battles and marriages of mine, and I
desire no other music and no other maypole
than have lightened my heart at Stratford."
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEAEE.
289
Sir Thomas finding him well-conditioned and
manageable, proceeded :
" Although I have admonished thee of sundry
and insurmountable impediments, yet more are
lying in the pathway. We have no verse for
tragedy. One in his hurry hath dropped rhyme,
and walketh like unto the man who wanteth the
left-leg stocking. Others can give us rhyme in-
deed, but can hold no longer after the tenth or
eleventh syllable. Now Sir Everard Starkeye, who
is a pretty poet, did confess to Monsieur Dubois
the potency of the French tragic verse, which
thou never canst hope to bring over.
" ' I wonder, Monsieur Dubois ! ' said Sir Eve-
rard, 'that your countrymen should have thought
it necessary to transport their heavy artillery into
Italy. No Italian could stand a volley of your
heroic verses from the best and biggest pieces.
With these brought into action, you never could
have lost the battle of Pavia.'
" Now my friend Sir Everard is not quite so
good a historian as he is a poet : and Monsieur
Dubois took advantage of him.
" ' Pardon ! Monsieur Sir Everard ! ' said Mon-
sieur Dubois, smiling at my friend's slip, ' we did
not lose the battle of Pavia. We had the misfor-
tune to lose our king, who delivered himself up,
as our kings always do, for the good and glory of
his country.'
" ' How was this1?' said Sir Everard, in surprise.
" ' I will tell you, Monsieur Sir Everard ! ' said
Monsieur Dubois. 'I had it from my own
father, who fought in the battle, and told my
mother, word for word. The king seeing bis house-
hold troops, being only one thousand strong,
surrounded by twelve regiments, the best Spanish
troops, amounting to eighteen thousand four
hundred and forty-two, although he doubted not
of victory, yet thought he might lose many brave
men before the close of the day, and rode up
instantly to King Charles, and said, " My brother !
I am loath to lose so many of those brave men
yonder. Whistle off your Spanish pointers, and I
agree to ride home with you."
" ' And so he did. But what did King Charles]
Abusing French loyalty, he made our Francis his
prisoner, would you believe it ? and treated him
worse than ever badger was treated at the bottom
of any paltry stable-yard, putting upon his table
beer and Rhenish wine and wild boar.'
" I have digressed with thee, young man,"
continued the knight, much to the improvement
of my knowledge, I do reverentially confess, as it
was of the lad's. " We will now," said he, " en-
deavour our best to sober thee, finding that
Doctor Glaston hath omitted it."
" Not entirely omitted it," said William, grate-
fully ; " he did, after dinner, all that could be done
at such a time toward it. The doctor could
however speak only of the Greeks and Romans,
and certainly what he said of them gave me but
little encouragement."
Sir Thomas. What said he ?
Shakspeare. He said, 'the Greeks conveyed
all their wisdom into their theatre ; their stages
were churches and parliament-houses ; but what
was false prevailed over what was true. They had
their own wisdom ; the wisdom of the foolish.
Who is Sophocles, if compared to Doctor Ham-
mersley of Oriel ] or Euripides, if compared
to Doctor Prichard of Jesus? Without the
Gospel, light is darkness; and with it, children
are giants.
' William, I need not expatiate on Greek with
thee, since thou knowest it not, but some crumbs
of Latin are picked up by the callowest beaks.
The Romans had, as thou findest, and have
still, more taste for murder than morality, and,
as they could not find heroes among them,
looked for gladiators. Their only very high
poet employed his elevation and strength to de-
throne and debase the Deity. They had several
others, who polished their language and pitched
their instruments with admirable skill : several
who glued over their thin and flimsy gaberdines
many bright feathers from the wide-spread downs
of Ionia, and the richly cultivated rocks of Attica.
' Some of them have spoken from inspiration :
for thou art not to suppose that from the heathen
were withheld all the manifestations of the Lord.
We do agree at Oxford that the Pollio of Virgil
is our Saviour. True, it is the dullest and poor-
est poem that a nation not very poetical hath
bequeathed unto us ; and even the versification,
in which this master excelled, is wanting in
fluency and sweetness. I can only account for it
from the weight of the subject. Two verses,
which are fairly worth two hundred such poems,
are from another pagan : he was forced to sigh
for the Church without knowing her : he saith,
May I gaze upon thee when my latest hour is come !
May I hold thy hand when mine faileth me !
This, if adumbrating the Church, is the most
beautiful thought that ever issued from the heart
of man : but if addressed to a wanton, as some do
opine, is filth from the sink, nauseating and
insufferable.
' William ! that which moveth the heart
most is the best poetry ; it comes nearest unto
God, the source of all power.'
Sir Thomas. Yea ; and he appeareth unto
me to know more of poetry than of divinity.
Those ancients have little flesh upon the body
poetical, and lack the savour that sufiiceth. The
Song of Solomon drowns all their voices : they
seem but whistlers and guitar-players compared
to a full-cheeked trumpeter ; they standing under
the eaves in some dark lane, he upon a well-
caparisoned stallion, tossing his mane and all his
ribands to the sun. I doubt the doctor spake too
fondly of the Greeks ; they were giddy creatures.
William ! I am loath to be hard on them ; but
they please me not. There are those now living
who could make them bite their nails to the
quick, and turn green as grass with envy.
Shakspeare. Sir, one of those Greeks, me-
290
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
thinks, thrown into the pickle-pot, would be a
treasure to the housewife's young gherkins.
Sir Thomas. Simpleton ! simpleton ! but
thou valuest them justly. Now attend. If ever
thou shouldst hear, at Oxford or London, the
verses I am about to repeat, prythee do not com-
municate them to that fiery spirit Matt Atterend.
It might not be the battle of two hundreds, but
two counties ; a sort of York and Lancaster war,
whereof I would wash my hands. Listen !
. . And now did Sir Thomas clear his voice, always
high and sonorous, and did repeat from the stores
of his memory these rich and proud verses.
" ' Chloe ! mean men must ever make mean loves,
They deal in dog-roses, but I in cloves.
They are just scorch 'd enough to blow their fingers,
I am a phoenix downright burnt to cinders.' "
At which noble conceits, so far above what poor
Bill had ever imagined, he lifted up his eyes to
heaven, and exclaimed,
" The world itself must be reduced to that con-
dition before such glorious verses die ! Chloe and
Clove ! Why, sir ! Chloe wants but a V toward
the tail to become the very thing ! Never tell
me that such matters can come about of them-
selves. And how truly is it said that we mean
men deal in dog-roses !
" Sir, if it were permitted me to swear on that
holy Bible, I would swear I never until this day
heard that dog-roses were our provender ; and yet
did I, no longer ago than last summer, write, not
indeed upon a dog-rose, but upon a sweet-briar,
what would only serve to rinse the mouth withal
after the clove."
Sir Thomas. Kepeat the same, youth ! We
may haply give thee our counsel thereupon.
. . Willy took heart, and, lowering his voice,
which hath much natural mellowness, repeated
these from memory :
" My briar that smelledst sweet
When gentle spring's first heat
Ran through thy quiet veins ;
Thou that wouldst injure none,
But wouldst be left alone,
Alone thou leavest me, and nought of thine remains.
" What ! hath no poet's lyre
O'er thee, sweet-breathing briar,
Hung fondly, ill or well ?
And yet methinks with thee
A poet's sympathy,
Whether in weal or woe, in life or death, might dwell.
" Hard usage both must bear,
Few hands your youth will rear,
Few bosoms cherish you ;
Your tender prime must bleed
Ere you are sweet, but freed
From life, you then are prized ; thus prized are poets too."
Sir Thomas said, with kind encouragement,
" He who beginneth so discreetly with a dog-
rose, may hope to encompass a damask-rose ere
he die."
Willy did now breathe freely. The commen-
dation of a knight and magistrate worked power-
fully within him : and Sir Thomas said furthermore,
' These short matters do not suit me. Thou
mightest have added some moral about life and
beauty : poets never handle roses without one :
but thou art young, and mayest get into the
train."
Willy made the best excuse he could; and no
bad one it was, the knight acknowledged ; namely,
that the sweet-briar was not really dead, although
left for dead.
" Then," said Sir Thomas, " as life and beauty
would not serve thy turn, thou mightest have
had full enjoyment of the beggar, the wayside,
the thieves, and the good Samaritan ; enough to
tapestry the bridal chamber of an empress."
William bowed respectfully, and sighed.
" Ha ! thou hast lost them, sure enough, and
it may not be quite so fair to smile at thy
quandary," quoth Sir Thomas.
" I did my best the first time," said Willy,
and fell short the second."
" That indeed thou must have done," said
Sir Thomas. " It is a grievous disappointment,
in the midst of our lamentations for the dead, to
find ourselves balked. I am curious to see how
thou couldst help thyself. Don't be abashed ; I
am ready for even worse than the last."
Bill hesitated, but obeyed :
And art thou yet alive ?
And shall the happy hive
Send out her youth to cull
Thy sweets of leaf and flower,
And spend the sunny hour
With thee, and thy faint heart with murmuring music lull ?
Tell me what tender care,
Tell me what pieus prayer,
Bade thee arise and lire.
The fondest-favoured bee
Shall whisper nought to thee
More loving than the song my grateful muse shall give.
Sir Thomas looked somewhat less pleased at
the conclusion of these verses than at the con-
clusion of the former ; and said gravely,
" Young man ! methinks it is betimes that
thou talkest of having a muse to thyself; or even
in common with others. It is only great poets
who have muses ; I mean to say, who have the
right to talk in that fashion. The French, I
hear, Pliozbus it and Muse-me it right and left;
and boggle not to throw all nine, together with
mother and master, into the compass of a dozen
lines or thereabout. And your Italian can hardly
do without 'em in the multiplication-table. We
Englishmen do let them in quietly, shut the door,
and say nothing of what passes. I have read a
whole book of comedies, and ne'er a muse to
help the lamest."
Shakspeare. Wonderful forbearance! I mar-
vel how the poet could get through.
Sir Thomas. By God's help. And I think
we did as well without 'em : for it must be an
unabashable man that ever shook his sides in
their company. They lay heavy restraint both
upon laughing and crying. In the great master
Virgil of Rome, they tell me they come in to
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
291
count the ships, and having cast up the sum
total, and proved it, make off again. Sure
token of two things : first, that he held 'em dog-
cheap; secondly, that he had made but little
progress (for a Lombard born) in book-keeping at
double entry.
He, and every other great genius, began with
small subject-matters, gnats and the like. I my-
self, similar unto him, wrote upon fruit. I would
give thee some copies for thy copying, if I thought
thou wouldst use them temperately, and not ren-
der them common, as hath befallen the poetry of
some among the brightest geniuses. I could show
Ihee how to say new things, and how to time the
same. Before my day, nearly all the flowers and
fruits had been gathered by poets, old and young,
from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the
wall : roses went up to Solomon, apples to Adam,
and so forth.
Willy ! my brave lad ! I was the first that
ever handled a quince, I'll be sworn.
Hearken !
Chloe ! I would not have thee wince
That I unto thee send a quince.
I would not have thee say unto 't
Begone .' and trample 't under foot,
For, trust me, 'tis no fulsome fruit.
It came not out of mine own garden,
But all the way from Henly in Arden,
Of an uncommon fine old tree
Belonging to John Asbury.
And if that of it thou shalt eat
"Twill make thy hreath e'en yet more sweet ;
As a translation here doth shew,
On fruit-trees, by Jean Mirabeau.
The frontispiece is printed so.
But eat it with some wine and cake,
Or it may give the belly-ake.*
This doth my worthy clerk indite,
I sign,
SIR THOMAS LUCY, Knight.
Now, Willy, there is not one poet or lover
in twenty who careth for consequences. Many
hint to the lady what to do ; few what not to
do ; although it would oftentimes, as in this case,
go to one's heart to see the upshot.
. . " Ah sir ! " said Bill in all humility, " I would
make bold to put the parings of that quince under
my pillow, for sweet dreams and insights, if Doc-
tor Glaston had given me encouragement to con-
tinue the pursuit of poetry. Of a surety it would
bless me with a bedful of churches and cruci-
fixions, duly adumbrated."
Whereat Sir Thomas, shaking his head, did
inform Mm,
"It was in the golden age of the world, as
pagans call it, that poets of condition sent fruits
and flowers to their beloved, with posies fairly
penned. We, in our days, have done the like.
* Belly-ake, a disorder once not uncommon in England.
Even the name is now almost forgotten ; yet the elder of
us may remember at least the report of it, and some per-
haps even the complaint itself, in our schooldays. It
usually broke out about the cherry season ; and, in some
cases, made its appearance again at the first nutting.
But manners of late are much corrupted on the
one side, if not on both.
" Willy ! it hath been whispered that there be
those who would rather have a piece of brocade
or velvet for a stomacher, than the touchingest
copy of verses, with a bleeding heart at the
bottom."
Shakspeare. Incredible!
Sir Thomas. 'Tis even so !
Shakspeare. They must surely be rotten frag-
ments of the world before the flood, saved out
of it by the devil.
Sir Thomas. I am not of that mind. Their
eyes, mayhap, fell upon some of the bravery cast
ashore from the Spanish Armada. In ancienter
days, a few pages of good poetry outvalued a
whole ell of the finest Genoa.
Shakspeare. When will such days return !
Sir Thomas. It is only wiflun these few years
that corruption and avarice have made such
ghastly strides. They always did exist, but were
gentler.
My youth is waning, and has been nigh upon
these seven years, I being now in my forty-
eighth.
Shakspeare. I have understood that the god
of poetry is in the enjoyment of eternal youth ; I
was ignorant that his sons were.
Sir Thomas. No, child ! we are hale and
comely, but must go the way of all flesh.
Shakspeare. Must it, can it, be 1
Sir Thomas. Time was, my smallest gifts were
acceptable, as thus recorded :
From my fair hand, O will ye, will ye
Deign humbly to accept a gilly-
Flower for thy bosom, sugared maid !
Scarce had I said it, ere she took it,
And in a twinkling, faith ! had stuck it,
Where e'en proud knighthood might have laid.
. . William was now' quite unable to contain him-
self, and seemed utterly to have forgotten the
grievous charge against him ; to such a pitch did
his joy o'erleap his jeopardy.
Master Silas in the mean time was much dis-
quieted ; and first did he strip away all the white
feather from every pen in the ink-pot, and then
did he mend them, one and all, and then did he
slit them with his thumb-nail, and then did he
pare and slash away at them again, and then did
he cut off the tops, until at last he left upon them
neither nib nor plume, nor enough of the middle
to serve as quill to a virginal. It went to my
heart to see such a power of pens so wasted : there
could not be fewer than five. Sir Thomas was less
wary than usual, being overjoyed. For great poets
do mightily affect to have little poets under them ;
and little poets do forget themselves in great
company, as fiddlers do, who hail fellow well
met I even with lords.
Sir Thomas did not interrupt our Bill's wild
gladness. I never thought so worshipful a per-
sonage could bear so much. At last he said unto
the lad :
" I do bethink me, if thou hearest much more
u 2
292
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
of my poetry, and the success attendant thereon,
good Doctor Glaston would tear thy skirt off, ere
he could drag thee back from the occupation."
Shakspeare. I fear me, for once, all his wisdom
would sluice out in vain.
Sir Thomas. It was reported to me, that when
our virgin queen's highness (her Dear Dread's* ear
not being then poisoned) heard these verses, she
said before her courtiers, to the sore travail of
some, and heart's content of others . .
' We need not envy our young cousin James
of Scotland his ass's bite of a thistle, having such
flowers as these gilliflowers on the chimney-stacks
of Charlecote.'
I could have told her highness that all this
poetry, from beginning to end, was real matter of
fact, well and truly spoken by mine own self. I
had only to harness the rhymes thereunto, at my
leisure.
Shakspeare. None could ever doubt it. Greeks
and Trojans may fight for the quince ; neither
shall have it
While a Warwickshire lad
Is on earth to be had,
With a wand to wag
On a trusty nag,
He shall keep the lists
With cudgel or fists ;
And black shall be whose eye
Looks evil on Lucy.
Sir Thomas. Nay, nay, nay ! do not trespass
too soon upon heroics. Thou seest thou canst
not hold thy wind beyond eight lines. What
wouldst thou do under the heavy mettle that
should have wrought such wonders at Pavia, if
thou findest these petards so troublesome in dis-
charging? Surely the good doctor, had he en-
tered at large on the subject, would have been
very particular in urging this expostulation.
Shakspeare. Sir, to my mortification I must
confess that I took to myself the counsel he was
giving to another ; a young gentleman who, from
his pale face, his abstinence at table, his cough,
his taciturnity, and his gentleness, seemed already
more than half poet. To him did Doctor Glaston
urge, with all his zeal and judgment, many argu-
ments against the vocation; telling him that,
piness giveth elasticity unto the heavy. As
the mightier streams of the unexplored world,
Amerio*, run languidly in the night,* and await
the sun on high to contend with him in strength
and grandeur, so doth genius halt and pause in
the thraldom of outspread darkness, and move
onward with all his vigour then only when creative
light and jubilant warmth surround him.'
Ethelbert coughed faintly ; a tinge of red, the
size of a rose-bud, colored the middle of his cheek ;
and yet he seemed not to be pained by the re-
proof. He looked fondly and affectionately at his
teacher, who thus proceeded :
'My dear youth, do not carry the stone of
Sisyphus on thy shoulder to pave the way to dis-
appointment. If thou writest but indifferent
poetry, none will envy thee and some will praise
thee : but Nature in her malignity hath denied
unto thee a capacity for the enjoyment of such
praise. In this she hath been kinder to most
others than to thee : we know wherein she hath
been kinder to thee than to most others. If thou
writest good poetry, many will call it flat, many
will call it obscure, many will call it inharmonious ;
and some of these will speak as they think ; for,
as in giving a feast to great numbers, it is easier
to possess the wine than to procure the cups, so
happens it in poetry ; thou hast the beverage of
thy own growth, but canst not find the recipients.
What is simple and elegant to thee and me, to
many an honest man is flat and sterile ; what to
us is an innocently sly allusion, to as worthy a
one as either of us is dull obscurity; and that
moreover which swims upon our brain, and which
throbs against our temples, and which we delight
in sounding to ourselves when the voice has done
with it, touches their ear and awakens no har-
mony in any cell of it. Rivals will run up to thee
and call thee a plagiary, and, rather than that
proof should be wanting, similar words to some of
thine will be thrown in thy teeth out of Leviticus
and Deuteronomy.
' Do you desire calm studies 1 do you desire
high thoughts 1 penetrate into theology. What
is nobler than to dissect and discern the opinions
of the gravest men upon the subtilest matters?
even in college, he had few applauders, being the
first, and not the second or third, who always are
more fortunate ; reminding him that he must
solicit and obtain much interest with men of rank
and quality, before he could expect their favour ;
and that without it the vein chilled, the nerve re-
laxed, and the poet was left at next door to the
bellman. ' In the coldness of the world,' said he,
' in the absence of ready friends and adherents, to
light thee upstairs to the richly tapestried cham-
ber of the muses, thy spirits will abandon thee,
thy heart will sicken and swell within thee : over-
laden, thou wilt make, 0 Ethelbert ! a slow and
painful progress, and, ere the door open, sink.
And what glorious victories are those over Infi-
delity and Scepticism 1 How much loftier, how
much more lasting in their effects, than such as
ye are invited unto by what this ingenious youth
hath contemptuously and truly called
" The swaggering drum, and trumpet hoarse with rage."
And what a delightful and edifying sight it is, to
see hundreds of the most able doctors, all stripped
for the combat, each closing with his antagonist,
and tugging and tearing, tooth and nail, to lay
down and establish truths which have been float-
ing in the air for ages, and which the lower order
of mortals are forbidden to see, and commanded
to embrace. And then the shouts of victory!
* Sir Thomas borrowed this expression from Spenser.
Praise giveth weight unto the wanting, and hap- An(j then the crowns of amaranth held over their
* Ilumboldt notices this.
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
293
heads by the applauding angels. Beside, thes
combats have other great and distinct advantage
Whereas, in the carnal, the longer ye contend th
more blows do ye receive ; in these against Satan
the more fiercely and pertinaciously ye drive i
him, the slacker do ye find him : every good h
makes him redden and rave with anger, bu
diminishes its effect.
' My dear friends ! who would not enter a se:
vice in which he may give blows to his morta
enemy, and receive none ; and in which not onl
the eternal gain is incalculable, but also the tern
poral, at four-and-twenty, may be far above th
emolument of generals, who, before the priest wa
Worn, had bled profusely for his country, esta
blished her security, brightened her glory, an<
augmented her dominions.'
. . At this pause did Sir Thomas turn unto Si
Silas, and asked,
" What sayest thou, Silas V
Whereupon did Sir Silas make answer . .
" I say it is so, and was so, and should be so
and shall be so. If the queen's brother had no
sopped the priests and bishops out of the Catholi
cup, they could have held the Catholic cup in
their own hands, instead of yielding it into his
They earned their money : if they sold their con
sciences for it, the business is theirs, not ours,
call this facing the devil with a vengeance. We
have their coats ; no matter who made 'em ; wi
have 'em, I say, and we will wear 'em ; and not a
button, tag, or tassel, shall any man tear away."
Sir Thomas then turned to Willy, and requestec
him to proceed with the doctor's discourse, who
thereupon continued.
" ' Within your own recollection, howmanygood
quiet, inoffensive men, unendowed with any ex
traordinary abilities, have been enabled, by means
of divinity, to enjoy a long life in tranquillity and
affluence.'
" Whereupon did one of the young gentlemen
smile, and, on small encouragement from Doctor
Glaston to enounce the cause thereof, he repeated
these verses, which he gave afterward unto me.
" ' In the names on our books
Was standing Tom Flooke's,
Who took in due time his degrees ;
Which when he had taken,
Like Ascham or Bacon,
By night he could snore, and by day he could sneeze.
" ' Calm, pithy, pragmatical,*
Tom Flooke he could at a call
Rise up like a hound from his sleep ;
And if many a quarto
He gave not his heart to,
If pellucid in lore, in his cups he was deep.
" 'He never did harm,
And his heart might be warm,
For his doublet most certainly was so :
And now has Tom Flooke
A quieter nook
Than ever had Spenser er Tasso.
* Prapmatical here means only precite.
" ' He lives in his house
As still as a mouse
Until he has eaten his dinner ;
But then doth his nose
Outroar all the woes
That encompass the death of a sinner.
" ' And there oft has been seen
No less than a dean
To tarry a week in the parish,
In October and March,
When deans are less starch,
And days are less gleamy and garish.
" ' That Sunday Tom's eyes
Lookt alway more wise,
He repeated more often his text ;
Two leaves stuck together,
(The fault of the weather)
And . . . . the rest ye shall hear in my next.
" ' At mess he lost quite
His small appetite,
By losing his friend the good dean :
The cook's sight must fail her !
The eggs sure are staler !
The beef too ! Why, what can it mean ?
" ' He turned off the butcher,
To the cook, could he clutch her,
What his choler had done there's no saying . .
'Tis verily said
He smote low the cock's head
And took other pullets for laying,' "
" On this being concluded, Doctor Glaston said
be shrewdly suspected an indigestion on the part
of Mr. Thomas Flooke, caused by sitting up late
and studying hard with Mr. Dean ; and protested
that theology itself should not carry us into the
rawness of the morning air, particularly in such
critical months as March and October, in one of
which the sap rises, in the other sinks, and there
are many stars very sinister."
. . Sir Thomas shook his head, and declared he
would not be uncharitable to rector, or dean, or
doctor, but that certain surmises swam upper-
most. He then winked at Master Silas, who said,
ncontinently,
" You have it, Sir Thomas ! The blind buzzards !
with their stars and saps ! "
" Well, but Silas ! you yourself have told us
over and over again, in church, that there are
zrcana."
"So there are; I uphold it," replied Master
Silas, " but a fig for the greater part, and a fig-
eaf for the rest ! As for these signs, they are as
>lain as any page in the Revelations."
Sir Thomas, after short pondering, said scof-
" In regard to the rawness of the air having any
fleet whatsoever on those who discourse ortho-
oxically on theology, it is quite as absurd as to
magine that a man ever caught cold in a Protes-
ant church. I am rather of opinion that it was
judgment on the rector for his evilmindedness
oward the cook, the Lord foreknowing that he
was about to be wilful and vengeful in that quarter.
t was, however, more advisedly that he took
;her pullets, on his own view of the case, although
might be that the same pullets would suit him
294
again as well as ever, when his appetite should
return ; for it doth not appear that they were loath
to lay, but laid somewhat unsatisfactorily.
" Now, youth ! " continued his worship, " if in
our clemency we should spare thy life, study this
higher elegiacal strain which thou hast carried
with thee from Oxford : it containeth, over and
above an unusual store of biography, much sound
moral doctrine, for those who are heedful in the
weighing of it. And what can be more affecting
than,
' At mess he lost quite
His small appetite,
By losing bis friend the good dean ! ' ?
And what an insight into character ! Store it up ;
store it up ! Small appetite, particular; good dean,
generic."
Hereupon did Master Silas jerk me with his
indicative joint, the elbow to wit, and did say
in my ear,
"He means deanery. Give me one of those
bones so full of marrow, and let my lord bishop
have all the meat over it, and welcome. If a
dean is not on his stilts, he is not on his stumps :
he stands on his own ground : he is a noli-me-
tangeretarian."
" What art thou saying of those sectaries, good
Master Silas?" quoth Sir Thomas, not hearing
him distinctly.
"I was talking of the dean," replied Master
Silas. " He was the very dean who wrote and sang
that song called the Two Jacks."
" Hast it ? " asked he.
Master Silas shook his head, and, trying in vain
to recollect it, said at last,
" After dinner it sometimes pops out of a filbert-
shell in a crack ; and I have known it float on the
first glass of Herefordshire cider ; it also hath
some affinity with very stiff and old bottled beer ;
but in a morning it seemeth unto me like a rem-
nant of over-night."
" Our memory waneth, Master Silas ! " quoth
Sir Thomas, looking seriously. " If thou couldst
repeat it, without the grimace of singing, it were
not ill."
Master Silas struck the table with his fist, and
repeated the first stave angrily ; but in the second
he forgot the admonition of Sir Thomas, and did
sing outright,
" Jack Calvin and Jack Cade,
Two gentles of one trade,
Two tinkers,
Very gladly would pull down .
Mother Church and Father Crown,
And would starve or would drown
Right thinkers.
Honest man ! honest man !
Fill the can, fill the can,
They are coming ! they are coming ! they are coming !
If any drop be left,
It might tempt 'em to a theft
Zooks ! 't was only the ale that was humming."
" In the first stave, gramercy ! there is an awful
verity," quoth Sir Thomas; " but I wonder that a
dean should let his skewer slip out, and his fat
catch fire so woefully, in the second. Light stuff,
Silas ! fit only for ale-houses."
Master Silas was nettled in the nose, and
answered,
'•' Let me see the man in Warwickshire, and in
all the counties round, who can run at such a rate
with so light a feather in the palm of his hand. I
am no poet, thank God ! but I know what folks
can do, and what folks can not do."
" Well, Silas ! " replied Sir Thomas, " after thy
thanksgiving for being no poet, let us have the
rest of the piece."
" The rest ! " quoth Master Silas. " When the
ale hath done with its humming, it is time, me-
thinks, to dismiss it. Sir, there never was any
more : you might as well ask for more after Amen
or the See of Canterbury."
Sir Thomas was dissatisfied, and turned off the
discourse; and peradventure he grew more in-
clined to be gracious unto Willy from the slight
rub his chaplain had given him, were it only for
the contrariety. When he had collected his
thoughts, he was determined to assert his supre-
macy on the score of poetry.
" Deans, I perceive, like other quality," said he,
" can not run on long together. My friend, Sir
Everard Starkeye, could never overleap four bars.
I remember but one composition of his, on a
young lady who mocked at his inconsistency, in
calling her sometimes his Grace and at other times
his Muse.
' My Grace shall Fanny Carew be,
While here she deigns to stay ;
And (ah how sad the change for me !)
My Muse when far away ! '
And when we laughed at him for turning his back
upon her after the fourth verse, all he could say
for himself was, that he would rather a game at
all fours with Fanny, than ombre &nd.picquet with
the finest furbelows in Christendom. Men of
condition do usually want a belt in the course."
Whereunto said Master Silas,
" Men out of condition are quite as liable to
lack it, methinks."
" Silas ! Silas ! " replied the knight, impatiently,
"prythee keep to thy divinity, thy stronghold
upon Zion ; thence none that faces thee can draw
thee without being bitten to the bone. Leave
poetry to me."
" With all my heart," quoth Master Silas, " I
will never ask a belt from her, until I see she can
afford to give a shirt. She has promised a belt
indeed, not one however that doth much im-
prove the wind, to this lad here, and will keep her
word ; but she was forced to borrow the pattern
from a Carthusian friar, and somehow it slips
above the shoulder."
" I am by no means sure of that," quoth Sir
Thomas. " He shall have fair play. He carrieth
in his mind many valuable things, whereof it hath
pleased Providence to ordain him the depositary.
He hath laid before us certain sprigs of poetry
from Oxford, trim as pennyroyal, and larger
leaves of household divinity, the most mildly-
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
295
savoured ; pleasant in health, and wholesome in
sickness."
" I relish not such mutton-broth divinity," saic
Master Silas. " It makes me sick in order to settl<
my stomach."
" We may improve it," said the knight, " bu
first let us hear more."
Then did William Shakspeare resume Dr. Glas
ton's discourse.
" ' Ethelbert ! I think thou walkest but little
otherwise I should take thee with me, some fine
fresh morning, as far as unto the first hamlet on
the Cherwell. There lies young Wellerby, who
the year before, was wont to pass many hours o:
the day poetising amid the ruins of Godstow
nunnery. It is said that he bore a fondness to
ward a young maiden in that place, formerly a
village, now containing but two old farm-houses
In my memory there were still extant several
dormitories. Some love-sick girl had recollected
an ancient name, and had engraven on a stone with
a garden-nail, which lay in rust near it,
POORS ROSAMUND.
I entered these precincts, and beheld a youth of
manly form and countenance, washing and wiping
a stone with a handful of wet grass ; and on my
going up to him, and asking what he had found,
he showed it to me. The next time I saw him
was near the banks of the Cherwell. He had tried,
it appears, to forget or overcome his foolish pas-
sion, and had applied his whole mind unto study.
He was foiled by his competitor; and now he
sought consolation in poetry. Whether this
opened the wounds that had closed in his youth-
ful breast, and malignant Love, in his revenge,
poisoned it; or whether the disappointment he
had experienced in finding others preferred to
him, first in the paths of fortune, then in those
of the muses; he was thought to have died
broken-hearted.
" ' About half a mile from St. John's College is
the termination of a natural terrace, with the
Cherwell close under it, in some places bright with
yellow and red flowers glancing and glowing
through the stream, and suddenly in others dark
with the shadows of many different trees, in broad
overbending thickets, and with rushes spear-high,
and party-coloured flags.
" ' After a walk in Midsummer, the immersion
of our hands into the cool and closing grass is
surely not the least among our animal delights. I was
just seated, and the first sensation of rest vibrated
in me gently, as though it were music to the
limbs, when I discovered by a hollow in the
herbage that another was near. The long mea-
dow-sweet and blooming burnet half concealed
from me him whom the earth was about to hide
totally and for ever.
" ' Master Batchelor ! ' said I, ' it is ill sleeping
by the water-side.'
" ' No answer was returned. I arose, went to
the place, and recognised poor Wellerby. His
brow was moist, his cheek was warm. A few mo-
ments earlier, and that dismal lake whereunto and
wherefrom the waters of life, the buoyant blood,
ran no longer, might have received one vivifying
ray reflected from my poor casement. I might
not indeed have comforted : I have often failed :
but there is one who never has; and the
strengthener of the bruised reed should have
been with us.
" ' Kemembering that his mother did abide one
mile further on, I walked forward to the mansion,
and asked her what tidings she lately had received
of her son. She replied, that having given up
his mind to light studies, the fellows of the col-
lege would not elect him. The master had warned
him before-hand to abandon his selfish poetry,
take up manfully the quarterstaff of logic, and
wield it for St. John's, come who would into the
ring. "'We want our man,' said he to me, 'and
your son hath failed us in the hour of need.
Madam, he hath been foully beaten in the
schools by one he might have swallowed, with
due exercise.' I rated him, told him I was poor,
and he knew it. He was stung, and threw himself
upon my neck, and wept. Twelve days have
passed since, and only three rainy ones. I hear he
has been seen upon the knoll yonder, but hither
he hath not come. I trust he knows at last the
value of time, and I shall be heartily glad to see
him after this accession of knowledge. Twelve
days, it is true, are rather a chink than a gap in
time ; yet, 0 gentle sir ! they are that chink which
makes the vase quite valueless. There are light
words which may never be shaken off the mind
they fall on. My child, who was hurt by me,
will not let me see the marks." "Lady!" said I,
" none are left upon him. Be comforted ! thou
shalt see him this hour. All that thy God hath
not taken is yet thine."
" ' She looked at me earnestly, and would have
then asked something, but her voice failed her.
There was no agony, no motion, save in the lips
and cheeks. Being the widow of one who fought
under Hawkins, she remembered his courage and
sustained the shock, saying calmly, " God's will be
done ! I pray that he find me as worthy as he
findeth me willing to join them."
" ' Now, in her unearthly thoughts, she had led
lier only son to the bosom of her husband ; and in
her spirit (which often is permitted to pass the
gates of death with holy love) she left them both
with their Creator.
The curate of the village sent those who
should bring home the body; and some days
afterward he came unto me, beseeching me to
write the epitaph. Being no friend to stone-
cutter's charges, I entered not into biography,
>ut wrote these few words :
"JOANNES WELLERBY
LITERARUM Qt7,£SIVIT GLORIAM,
VIDET DEI." '
" Poor tack ! poor tack !" sourly quoth Master
Silas. " If your wise doctor could say nothing
296
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
more about the fool, who died like a rotten sheep
among the darnels, his Latin might have held
out for the father, and might have told people he
was as cool as a cucumber at home, and as hot
as pepper in battle. Could he not find room
enough on the whinstone, to tell the folks of the
village how he played the devil among the dons,
burning their fingers when they would put
thumbscrews upon us, punching them in the
weasand as a blacksmith punches a horse-shoe,
and throwing them overboard like bilgewater?
" Has Oxford lost all her Latin 1 Here is no
capitani jttiua ; no more mention of family than
a Welshman would have allowed him ; no hie
jocet ; and, worse than all, the devil a tittle of spe
redemptionis, or anno Domini."
"Willy!" quoth Sir Thomas, "I shrewdly do
suspect there was more, and that thou hast for-
gotten it."
" Sir !" answered Willy, " I wrote not down the
words, fearing to mis-spell them, and begged them
of the doctor, when I took my leave of him on
the morrow ; and verily he wrote down all he had
repeated. I keep them always in the tin-box in
my waistcoat-pocket, among the eel-hooks, on a
scrap of paper a finger's length and breadth,
folded in the middle to fit. And when the eels
are running, I often take it out and read it before
I am aware. I could as soon forget my own
epitaph as this."
" Simpleton !" said Sir Thomas, with his gentle
compassionate smile ; " but thou hast cleared thy-
self."
Sir Silas. I think the doctor gave one idle
chap as much solid pudding as he could digest,
with a slice to spare for another.
Shakspeare. And yet after this pudding the
doctor gave him a spoonful of custard, flavoured
with a little bitter, which was mostly left at the
bottom for the other idle chap.
. . Sir Thomas not only did endure this very good-
naturedly, but deigned even to take in good part
the smile upon my countenance, as though he
were a smile-collector, and as though his estate
were so humble that he could hold his laced-
bonnet (in all his bravery) for bear and fiddle.
He then said unto Willy,
" Place likewise this custard before us."
" There is but little of it ; the platter is shal-
low," replied he; "'twas suited to Master Ethel-
bert's appetite : the contents were these :
" ' The things whereon thy whole soul brooded
in its innermost recesses, and with all its warmth
and energy, will pass unprized and unregarded,
not only throughout thy lifetime, but long after.
For the higher beauties of poetry are beyond the
capacity, beyond the vision, of almost all. Once
perhaps in half a century a single star is dis-
covered, then named and registered, then men-
tioned by five studious men to five more ; at last
some twenty say, or repeat in writing, what they
have heard about it. Other stars await other dis-
coveries. Few and solitary, and wide asunder,
are those who calculate their relative distances,
their mysterious influences, their glorious magni-
tude, and their stupendous height. 'Tis so, be-
lieve me, and ever was so, with the truest and best
poetry. Homer, they say, was blind ; he might
have been ere he died; that he sat among the
blind, we are sure.
" ' Happy they who, like this young lad from
Stratford, write poetry on the saddle-bow when
their geldings are jaded, and keep the desk for
better purposes.'
" The young gentlemen, like the elderly, all
turned their faces toward me, to my confusion, so
much did I remark of sneer and scoff at my cost.
Master Ethelbert was the only one who spared me.
He smiled and said,
" ' Be patient ! From the higher heavens of
poetry, it is long before the radiance of the bright-
est star can reach the world below. We hear that
one man finds out one beauty, another man finds
out another, placing his observatory and instru-
ments on the poet's grave. The worms must have
eaten us before it is rightly known what we are.
It is only when we are skeletons that we are boxed
and ticketed and prized and shown. Be it so ! I
shall not be tired of waiting.1 "
"Reasonable youth!" said Sir Thomas; "yet
both he and Glaston walk rather a-straddle, me-
thinks. They might have stepped up to thee more
straightforwardly, and told thee the trade ill
suiteth thee, having little fire, little fantasy, and
little learning. Furthermore that one poet, as
one bull, sufficeth for two parishes ; and that,
where they are stuck too close together, they are
apt to fire, like haystacks. I have known it my-
self : I have had my malignants and scoffers."
Shakspeare. I never could have thought it.
Sir Thomas. There again ! Another proof of
thy inexperience.
Shakspeare. Matt Atterend ! Matt Atterend !
where wert thou sleeping !
Sir Thomas. I shall now from my own stores
impart unto thee what will avail to tame thee,
showing the utter hopelessness of standing on
that golden weathercock which supporteth but
one at a time.
The passion for poetry wherewith Monsieur
Dubois would have inspired me, as he was bound
to do, being paid before-hand, had cold water
thrown upon it by that unlucky one, Sir Everard.
He ridiculed the idea of male and female rhymes,
and the necessity of trying them as rigidly by the
eye as by the ear; saying to Monsieur Dubois
that the palate, in which the French excell all
mortals, ought also to be consulted in their ac-
ceptance or rejection. Monsieur Dubois told us
that if we did not wish to be taught French verse,
he would teach us English. Sir Everard pre-
ferred the Greek ; but Monsieur Dubois would
not engage to teach the mysteries of that poetry
in fewer than thirty lessons, having (since his
misfortunes) forgotten the letters and some other
necessaries.
The first poem I ever wrote was in the cha-
racter of a shepherd, to Mistress Anne Nanfan,
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
297
daughter of Squire Fulke Nanfan, of "Worcester-
shire, at that time on a visit to the worshipful
family of Compton at Long Compton.
We were young creatures; I but twenty-four
and seven months (for it was written on the 14th
of May), and she well-nigh upon a twelvemonth
younger. My own verses (the first) are neither
here nor there ; indeed they were imbedded in
solid prose, like lampreys and ram's-horns in our
limestone, and would be hard to get out whole.
What they are may be seen by her answer, all
in verse :
Faithful shepherd ! dearest Tommy !
I have received the letter from ye,
And mightily delight therein.
But mother, she says, "Nanny ! Nanny !
HOK, 'being staid and prudent, can ye
Think of a man, and not of sin ? "
Sir Shepherd ! I held down my head,
And " Mother ! fie for shame ! " I said ;
All I could say would not content her ;
Mother she would for ever harp on't,
" A man's no better than a sarpent,
And not a crumb more innocenter."
I know not how it happeneth, but a poet
doth open before a poet, albeit of baser sort. It
is not that I hold my poetry to be better than
some other in time past, it is because I would
show thee that I was virtuous and wooed vir-
tuously, that I repeat it. Furthermore, I wished
to leave a deep impression on the mother's mind
that she was exceedingly wrong in doubting my
innocence.
Shakspeare. Gracious Heaven! and was this
too doubted ?
Sir Thomas. May-be not ; but the whole race
of men, the whole male sex, wanted and found in
me a protector. I showed her what I was ready
to do.
Shakspeare. Perhaps, sir, it was for that very
thing that she put the daughter back and herself
forward.
Sir Thomas. I say not so, but thou mayest
know as much as befittelh, by what follows :
Worshipful lady ! honoured madam !
I at this present truly glad am
To have so fair an opportunity
Of saying I would he the man
To bind in wedlock Mistress Anne,
Living with her in holy unity.
And for a jointure I will gi'e her
A good two hundred pounds a-year
Accruing from my landed rents,
Whereof see t'other paper, telling
Lands, copses, and grown woods for felling,
Capons, and cottage tenements.
And who must come at sound of horn,
And who pays but a barley-corn,
And who is bound to keep a whelp,
And what is brought me for the pound,
And copyholders, which are sound,
. And which do need the leech's help.
And you may see in these two pages
Exact their illnesses and ages,
Enough (God willing) to content ye ;
Who looks full red, who looks full yellow,
Who plies the mullen, who the mallow,
Who fails at fifty, who at twenty.
Jim Yates must go ; he's one day very hot
And one day ice ; I take a heriot ;
And poorly, poorly "s Jacob Burgess.
The doctor tells me he ha6 pour'd
Into his stomach half his hoard
Of anthelminticals and purges.
Judith, the wife of Ebenezer
Fillpots, won't have him long to teaze her ;
Fillpots blows hot and cold like Jim,
And, sleepless lest the boys should plunder
His orchard, he must soon knock under ;
Death has been looking out for him.
He blusters ; but his good yard-land
Under the church, his ale-house, and
His Bible, which he cut in spite,
Must all fall in ; he stamps and swears
And sets his neighbours by the ears . .
Fillpots .' thy saddle sits not tight !
Thy epitaph is ready ; " Here
Lies one whom all hit friends did fear
More than they ever feared the Lord .•
In peace he was at times a Christian ,•
In strife what stubborner Philistian!
Sing, sing his psalm with one accord."
And the brave lad who sent the bluff
Olive-faced Frenchman (sure enough)
Screaming and scouring like a plover,
Must follow ; him I mean who dasht
Into the water, and then thrash t
The cullion past the town of Dover.
But first there goes the blear old dame
Who nurst me ; you have heard her name
(No doubt) at Compton, Sarah Salways }
There are twelve groats at once, beside
The frying-pan in which she fried
Her pancakes.
Madam, I am always, &c.
SIR THOMAS Lucy, Knight.
I did believe that such a clear and con-
scientious exposure of my affairs would have
brought me a like return. My letter was sent
back to me with small courtesy. It may be
there was no paper in the house, or none equal-
ling mine in whiteness. No notice was taken of
the rent-roll ; but between the second and third
stanza these four lines were written, in a very fine
hand:
Most honor'd knight, Sir Thomas .' two
For merry Nan will never do ;
Now under favour let me say 't,
She will bring more herself than that.
I have reason to believe that the worthy lady did
neither write nor countenance the same, perhaps
did not ever know of them. She always had at
her elbow one who jogged it when he listed, and,
although he could not overrule the daughter, he
took especial care that none other should remove
her from his tutelage, even when she had fairly
grown up to woman's estate.
Now, after all this condescension and con-
fidence, promise me, good lad, promise that thou
wilt not edge and elbow me. Never let it be
said, when people say, Sir Thomas was a poet
when he willed it ; so is Bill Shakspeare ! It be-
seemeth not that our names do go together cheek
by jowl in this familiar fashion, like an old beagle
and a whelp, in couples, where if the- one would,
the other would not.
298
CITATION AND EXAMINATION
Sir Silas. Sir, while these thoughts are passing
in your mind, remember there is another pair of
couples out of which it would be as well to keep
the cur's neck.
Sir Thomas. Young man ! dost thou under-
stand Master Silas '.'
Shakspeare. But too well. Not those couples
in which it might be apprehended that your wor-
ship and my unworthiness should appear too close
together; but those sorrowfuller which perad-
venture might unite Master Silas and me in our
road to Warwick and upward. But I resign all
right and title unto these as willingly as I did unto
the other, and am as ready to let him go alone.
Sir Silas. If we keep wheeling and wheeling,
like a flock of pigeons, and rising again when we
are within a foot of the ground, we shall never fill
the craw.
Sir Thomas. Do thou then question him,
Silas.
Sir Silas. I am none of the quorum : the busi-
ness is none of mine.
. .'Then Sir Thomas took Master Silas again into
the bay-window, and said softly,
" Silas, he hath no inkling of thy meaning : the
business is a ticklish one : I like not overmuch to
meddle and make therein."
Master Silas stood dissatisfied awhile, and then
answered,
" The girl's mother, sir, was housemaid and
sempstress in your own family, time back, and you
thereby have a right over her unto the third and
fourth generation."
" I may have, Silas," said his worship, " but it
was no longer than four or five years agone that
folks were fain to speak maliciously of me for only
finding my horse in her hovel."
Sir Silas looked red and shiny as a ripe straw-
berry on a Snitterfield tile, and answered some-
what peevishly,
" The same folks, I misgive me, may find the
rogue's there any night in the week."
Whereunto replied Sir Thomas, mortifiedly,
" I can not think it, Silas ! I can not think it."
And after some hesitation and disquiet,
" Nay, I am resolved I will not think it : no
man, friend or enemy, shall push it into me."
" Worshipful sir ! " answered Master Silas, " I
am as resolute as anyone in what I would think
and what I would not think, and never was known
to fight dunghill in either cockpit.
" Were he only out of the way, she might do
her duty : but what doth she now ?
" She points his young beard for him, persuad-
ing him it grows thicker and thicker, blacker and
blacker ; she washes his ruff, stiffens it, plaits it,
tries it upon his neck, removes the hair from
tinder it, pinches it with thumb and forefinger,
pretending that he hath moiled it, puts her hand
all the way round it, setting it to rights, as she
calleth it. . .
" Ah Sir Thomas ! a louder whistle than that
will never call her back again when she is off with
him."
Sir Thomas was angered, and cried tartly,
" Who whistled ? I would know."
Master Silas said submissively,
" Your honour, as wrongfully I fancied."
" Wrongfully indeed, and to my no small dis-
paragement and discomfort," said the knight,
verily believing that he had not whistled ; for deep
and dubious were bis cogitations.
" I protest," went he on to say, " I protest it
was the wind of the casement ; and if I live an-
other year I will put a better in the place of it.
Whistle indeed ! for what ? I care no more about
her than about an unfledged cygnet . . a child,*
a chicken, a mere kitten, a crab-blossom in the
hedge."
The dignity of hia worship was wounded by
Master Silas unaware, and his wrath again turned
suddenly upon poor William.
" Hark-ye, knave ! hark-ye again, ill-looking
stripling, lanky from vicious courses ! I will re-
claim thee from them : I will do what thy own
father would, and can not. Thou shalt follow his
business."
" I can not do better, may it please your wor-
ship ! " said the lad.
" It shall lead thee unto wealth and respecta-
bility," said the knight, somewhat appeased by his
ready compliancy and low gentle voice. " Yea,
but not here ; no witches, no wantons (this word
fell gravely and at full-length upon the ear), no
spells hereabout.
" Gloucestershire is within a measured mile of
thy dwelling. There is one at Bristol, formerly a
parish-boy, or little better, who now writeth himself
gentleman in large round letters, and hath been
elected, I hear, to serve as burgess in parliament
for his native city ; just as though he had eaten
a capon or turkey-poult in his youth, and had
actually been at grammar-school and college.
When he began, he had not credit fora goat-skin;
and now, behold ye ! this very coat upon my back
did cost me eight shillings the dearer for him, he
bought up wool so largely."
Shakspeare. May it please your worship ! if
my father so ordereth, I go cheerfully.
Sir Thomas. Thou art grown discreet and
dutiful : I am fain to command thy release, taking
thy promise on oath, and some reasonable security,
that thou wilt abstain and withhold in future from
that idle and silly slut, that sly and scoffing gig-
gler, Hannah Hathaway, with whom, to the heart-
ache of thy poor worthy father, thou wantonly
keepest company.
. . Then did Sir Thomas ask Master Silas Gough
for the Book of Life, bidding him deliver it into
the right hand of Billy, with an eye upon him
that he touch it with both lips ; it being taught
by the Jesuits, and caught too greedily out of
their society and communion, that whoso toucheth
it with one lip only, and thereafter sweareth
* She was then twenty-eight years of age. Sir Thomas
must have spoken of her from earlier recollections. Shak-
speare was in his twentieth year.
OF WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE.
299
falsely, can not be called a perjurer, since perjury
is breaking an oath. But breaking half an oath,
as he doth who toucheth the Bible or crucifix with
one lip only, is no more perjury than breaking an
eggshell is breaking an egg, the shell being a
part, and the egg being an integral.
William did take the Holy Book with all due
reverence the instant it was offered to his hand.
His stature seemed to rise therefrom as from a
pulpit, and Sir Thomas was quite edified.
" Obedient and conducible youth ! " said he.
" See there, Master Silas ! what hast thou now to
say against him ? who sees farthest1?"
" The man from the gallows is the most likely,
bating his nightcap and blinker," said Master
Silas peevishly. " He hath not outwitted me yet."
" He seized upon the Anchor of Faith like a
martyr," said Sir Thomas, " and even now his face
burns red as elder- wine before the gossips."
Shdkspeare. I await the further orders of your
worship from the chair.
Sir Thomas. I return and seat myself.
. . And then did Sir Thomas say with great com-
placency and satisfaction in the ear of Master
Silas,
" What civility, and deference, and sedateness
of mind, Silas!"
But Master Silas answered not.
Shakspeare. Must I swear, sir ?
Sir Thomas. Yea, swear ; be of good courage.
I protest to thee by my honour and knighthood,
no ill shall come unto thee therefrom. Thou shalt
not be circumvented in thy simpleness and inex-
perience.
. . Willy, having taken the Book of Life, did kiss
it piously, and did press it unto his breast, saying,
" Tenderest love is the growth of my heart, as
the grass is of Alvescote mead.
" May I lose my life or my friends, or my
memory, or my reason ; may I be viler in my own
eyes than those men are "...
Here he was interrupted most lovingly by Sir
Thomas, who said unto him,
" Nay, nay, nay ! poor youth ! do not tell me
so ! they are not such very bad men ; since thou
appealest unto Caesar ; that is, unto the judgment-
seat."
Now his worship did mean the two witnesses,
Joseph and Euseby ; and, sooth to say, there be
many worse. But William had them not in his
eye ; his thoughts were elsewhere, as will be evi-
dent, for he went on thus :
. ..." If ever I forget or desert thee, or ever
cease to worship* and cherish thee, my Hannah!"
Sir Silas. The madman ! the audacious, despe-
rate, outrageous villain ! Look-ye, sir ! where he
flung the Holy Gospel ! Behold it on the holly
and box boughs in the chimney-place, spreaden
all abroad, like a lad about to be whipt !
Sir Thomas. Miscreant knave! I will send
after him forthwith ! Ho there ! is the caitiff at
hand, or running off?
. . Jonas Greenfield the butler did budge forward
after a while, and say, on being questioned,
" Surely, that was he ! Was his nag tied to the
iron gate at the lodge, Master Silas?"
" What should I know about a thief's nag,
Jonas Greenfield?"
"And didst thou let him go, Jonas? even
thou ?" said Sir Thomas. " What ! are none found
faithful?"
" Lord love your worship," said Jonas Green-
field ; " a man of threescore and two may miss
catching a kite upon wing. Fleetness doth not
make folks the faithfuller, or that youth yonder
beats us all in faithfulness.
" Look ! he darts on like a greyhound whelp
after a leveret. He, sure enough, it was ! I now
remember the sorrel mare his father bought of
John Kinderley last Lammas, swift as he threaded
the trees along the park. He must have reached
Wellesbourne ere now at that gallop, and pretty
nigh Walton-hill."
Sir Thomas. Merciful Christ ! grant the
country be rid of him for ever ! What dishonour
upon his friends and native town ! A reputable
wool-stapler's son turned gipsy and poet for life.
Sir Silas. A Beelzebub; he spake as biglyand
fiercely as a soaken yeoman at an election feast
.... this obedient and conducible youth !
Sir Thomas. It was so written. Hold thy
peace, Silas!
* It is to be feared that his taste for venison outlasted
that for matrimony, spite of this vow.
BY ME, EPHRAIM BARNETT.
TWKLVE days are over and gone since William
Shakspeare did leave our parts. And the spinster,
Hannah Hathaway, is in sad doleful plight about
him ; forasmuch as Master Silas Gough went yes-
terday unto her, in her mother's house at Shottery,
and did desire both her and her mother to take
heed and be admonished, that if ever she, Hannah,
threw away one thought after the runagate Wil-
liam Shakspeare, he should swing.
The girl could do nothing but weep ; while as
the mother did give her solemn promise that her
daughter should never more think about him all
her natural life, reckoning from the moment of
this her promise.
And the maiden, now growing more reasonable,
did promise the same. But Master Silas said,
" / doubt you will, though."
"No," said the mother, " I answer for her site
shall not think of him, even if she sees his ghost."
Hannah screamed, and swooned, the better to
forget him. And Master Silas went .home easier
and contenteder. For now all the worst of his
hard duty was accomplished ; he having been, on
the Wednesday of last week, at the speech of
Master John Shakspeare, Will's father, to inquire
whether the sorrel mare was his. To which
question the said Master John Shakspeare did
answer, " Yea."
" Enough said!" rejoined Master Silas.
" Horse-stealing is capital. We shall bind thee
over to appear against the culprit, as prosecutor,
at the next assizes."
May the Lord in his mercy give the lad a good
deliverance, if so be it be no sin to wish it !
OCTOBER 1. A.D. 1582.
LAUS DEO.
E. B.
THE PENTAMERON;
INTERVIEWS OF MESSER GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO AND
MESSER FRANCESCO PETRARCA,
SAID MESSER GIOVANNI LAY INFIRM AT HIS VILLETTA HARD BY CERTALDO ;
AFTER WHICH THEY SAW NOT EACH OTHER ON OUR SIDE OF PARADISE:
SHOWING HOW THEY DISCOURSED UPON THAT FAMOUS THEOLOGIAN
MESSER DANTE ALIGHIERI,
AND SUNDRY OTHER MATTERS.
EDITED BY PIEVANO D. GRIGI.
THE EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
WANTING a bell for my church at San Vivaldo, and hearing that our holy religion is rapidly gaining ground in
England, to the unspeakable comfort and refreshment of the Faithful, I bethought myself that I might peradventure
obtain such effectual aid, from the piety and liberality of the converts, as well-nigh to accomplish the purchase of one.
Desirous moreover of visiting that famous nation, of whose spiritual prosperity we all entertain such animated
hopes, now that the clouds of ignorance begin to break and vanish, I resolved that nothing on my part should be
wanting to so blessed a consummation. Therefore, while I am executing my mission in regard to the bell, I omit no
opportunity of demonstrating how much happier and peaeef uller are we who live in unity, than those who, abandoning
the household of Faith, clothe themselves with shreds and warm themselves with shavings.
Subsidiary to the aid I solicit, I brought with me, and here lay before the public, translated by the best hand I
could afford to engage, " Certain Interviews of Messer Francesco Petrarca and Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, &c.,"
which, the booksellers tell me, should be entitled " The Pentameron," unless I would return with nothing in my
pocket. I am ignorant what gave them this idea of my intent, unless it be my deficiency in the language, for
certainly I had come to no such resolution. Assurances are made to me by the intelligent and experienced in such
merchandise, that the manuscript is honestly worth from twenty-five to thirty francesconi, or dollars. To such a
pitch hath England risen up again, within these few years, after all the expenditure of her protracted war !
Is there any true Italian, above all is there any worthy native of Certaldo or San Vivaldo, who revolveth not in
his mind what a surprise and delight it will be to Giovanni in Paradise, the first time he hears, instead of that cracked
and jarring tumbril (which must have grated in his ear most grievously ever since its accident, and have often tried
his patience), just such another as he was wont to hear when he rode over to join our townspeople at their festa ? It
will do his heart good, and make him think of old times : and perhaps he may drop a couple of prayers to the
Madonna for whoso had a hand in it.
Lest it should be bruited in England or elsewhere, that being in my seventieth year, I have unadvisedly quitted
my parish, "fond of change," to use the blessed words of Saint Paul, I am ready to show the certificate of Monsignore,
my diocesan, approving of my voyage. Monsignore was pleased to think me capable of undertaking it, telling me
that I looked hale, spoke without quavering, and, by the blessing of our lady, had nigh upon half my teeth in their
sockets, while, pointing to his own and shaking his head, he repeated the celebrated lines of Horatius Flaccus, who
lived in the reign of Augustus, a short time before the Incarnation :
" Non ebur, sed horridum
Bucca dehiscit in mea lacuna ! "
Then, turning the discourse from so melancholy a topic, he was pleased to relate from the inexhaustible stores of
his archaeological acquirements, that no new bell whatever had been consecrated in his diocese of Samminiato since
the year of our Lord 1611 : in which year, on the first Sunday of August, a thunderbolt fell into the belfry of the
Duomo, by the negligence of Canonico Malatesta, who, according to history, in his hurry to dine with Conte Geronimo
Bardi, at our San Vivaldo, omitted a word in the mass. While he was playing at bowls after dinner on that Sunday,
or, as some will have it, while he was beating Ser Matteo Filicaia at backgammon, and the younger men and ladies
of those two noble families were bird-catching with the civetta, it began to thunder : and, within the evening, intel-
ligence of the thunderbolt was brought to the Canonico. On his return the day following it was remarked, says the
chronicler, that the people took off their caps at the distance of only two or three paces, instead of fifteen or twenty,
and few stopped who met him : for the rumour had already gone abroad of his omission. He often rode as usual to
Conte Geronimo's, gammoned Ser Matteo, hooded the civetta, limed a twig or two, stood behind the spinette, hummed
the next note, turned over the pages of the music-book of the contestine, beating time on the chair-back, and showing
them what he could do now and then on the viola di gamba. Only eight years had elapsed when, in the flower of
his age (for he had scarcely seen sixty), he was found dead in his bed, after as hearty and convivial a supper as ever
Canonico ate. No warning, no olio tanto, no viaticum, poor man ! Candles he had ; and it was as much as he had,
poor sinner ! And this also happened in the month of August ! Monsignore, in his great liberality, laid no heavy
stress on the coincidence ; but merely said,
" Well, Pievano ! a mass or two can do him no harm ; let us hope he stands in need of few more ; but when you
happen to have leisure, and nobody else to think about, prythee clap a wet clout on the fire there below in behalf of
Canonico Malatesta."
I have done it gratis, and I trust he finds the benefit of it. In the same spirit and by the same authority I gird
myself for this greater enterprise. Unable to form a satisfactory opinion on the manuscript, I must again refer to my
304 THE EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
superior. It is the opinion then of Monsignore, that our five dialogues were written down by neither of the inter-
locutors, but rather by some intimate, who loved them equally. " For," said Monsignore, " it was the practice of
Boccaccio to stand up among his personages, and to take part himself in their discourses. Petrarca, who was fonder
of sheer dialogue and had much practice in it, never acquired any dexterity in this species of composition, it being
all question and answer, short, snappish, quibbling, and uncomfortable. I speak only of his Remediet of Advertity
and Protperity, which indeed leave his wisdom all its wholesomeness, but render it somewhat apt to cleave to the
roof of the mouth. The better parts of Homer are in dialogue : and downward from him to Galileo the noblest works
of human genius have assumed this form : among the rest I am sorry to find no few heretics and scoffers. At the
present day the fashion is over : every man pushes every other man behind him, and will let none speak out but
himself."
The Interviews took place not within the walls of Certaldo, although within the parish, at Boccaccio's villa. It
should be notified to the curious, that about tbis ancient town, small, deserted, dilapidated as it is, there are several
towers and turrets yet standing, one of which belongs to the mansion inhabited in its day by Ser Giovanni. His
tomb and effigy are in the church. Nobody has opened the grave to throw light upon his relics ; nobody has painted
the marble ; nobody has broken off a foot or a finger to do him honour ; not even an English name is engraven on the
face ; although the English hold confessedly the highest rank in this department of literature. In Italy, and particu-
larly in Tuscany, the remains of the illustrious are inviolable ; and, among the illustrious, men of genius bold the
highest rank. The arts are more potent than curiosity, more authoritative than churchwardens : what Englishman
will believe it ? Well ! let it pass, courteous strangers ! ye shall find me in future less addicted to the marvellous.
At present I have only to lay before you an ancient and (doubt it not) an authentic account of what passed between
my countrymen, Giovanni and Francesco, before they parted for ever. It seemed probable, at this meeting, that
Giovanni would have been called away first ; for heavy and of long continuance had been his infirmity : but he
outlived it three whole years. He could not outlive his friend so many months, but followed him to the tomb before
he had worn the glossiness off the cloak Francesco in his will bequeathed to him.
We struggle with Death while we have friends around to cheer us : the moment we miss them we lose all heart
for the contest. Pardon my reflection ! I ought to have remembered I am not in my stone pulpit, nor at home.
PRBTE DOMENICO GRIOI,
Pievano of San Vivaldo.
LONDON, October 1, 1836.
THE PENTAMERON.
Boccaccio. Who is he that entered, and now
steps so silently and softly, yet with a foot so
heavy it shakes my curtains 1
Frate Biagio ! can it possibly be you 1
No more physic for me, nor masses neither, at
present. «
Assunta ! Assuntina ! who is it 1
Assunta. I can not say, signor Padrone ! he
puts his finger in the dimple of his chin, and
smiles to make me hold my tongue.
Boccaccio. Fra Biagio ! are you come from Sam-
miniato for this 1 You need not put your finger
there. We want no secrets. The girl knows her
duty and does her business. I have slept well,
and wake better. [liaising himself up a little.
Why ! who are you 1 It makes my eyes ache
to look aslant over the sheets ; and I can not get
to sit quite upright so conveniently ; and I must
not have the window-shutters opener, they tell me.
Petrarca. Dear Giovanni ! have you then been
very unwell ?
Boccaccio. 0 that sweet voice ! and this fat
friendly hand of thine, Francesco !
Thou hast distilled all the pleasantest flowers,
and all the wholesomest herbs of spring, into my
breast already.
What showers we have had this April, ay ! How
could you come along such roads 1 If the devil
were my labourer, I would make him work upon
these of Certaldo. He would have little time and
little itch for mischief ere he had finished them,
but would gladly fan himself with an Agnus-castus,
and go to sleep all through the carnival.
Petrarca. Let us cease to talk both of the
labour and the labourer. You have then^been
dangerously ill ?
Boccaccio. I do not know : they told me I was :
and truly a man might be unwell enough, who
has twenty masses said for him, and fain sigh
when he thinks what he has paid for them. As
I hope to be saved, they cost me a lira each.
Assunta is a good market-girl in eggs, and mut-
ton, and cow-heel ; but I would not allow her to
argue and haggle about the masses. Indeed she
knows best whether they were not fairly worth
all that was asked for them, although I could have
bought a winter cloak for less money. However,
we do not want both at the same time. I did not
want the cloak : I wanted them, it seems. And
yet I begin to think God would have had mercy
on me, if I had begged it of him myself in my
own house. What think you 1
Petrarca. I think he might.
Boccaccio. Particularly if I offered him the
sacrifice on which I wrote to you.
Petrarca. That letter has brought me hither.
Boccaccio. You do then insist on my fulfilling
my promise, the moment I can leave my bed. I
am ready and willing.
Petrarca. Promise ! none was made. You only
told me that, if it pleased God to restore you to
your health again, you are ready to acknowledge
his mercy by the holocaust of your Decameron.
What proof have you that God would exact it ] If
you could destroy the Inferno of Dante, would
you1?
Boccaccio. Not I, upon my life ! I would not
promise to burn a copy of it on the condition of a
recovery for twenty years.
Petrarca. You are the only author who would
not rather demolish another's work than his own;
especially if he thought it better : a thought
which seldom goes beyond suspicion.
Boccaccio. I am not jealous of anyone : I think
admiration pleasanter. Moreover, Dante and I
did not come forward at the same time, nor take
the same walks. His flames are too fierce for you
and me : we had trouble enough with milder. I
never felt any high gratification in hearing of
people being damned ; and much less would I toss
them into the fire myself. I might indeed have
put a nettle under the nose of the learned judge
in Florence, when he banished you and your
family; but I hardly think I could -have voted
for more than a scourging to the foulest and fiercest
of the party.
Petrarca. Be as.compassionate, be as amiably
irresolute, toward your own Novelle, which have
injured no friend of yours, and deserve more
affection.
30(J
PENTAMERON.
Boccaccio. Francesco! no character I ever knew,
ever heard of, or ever feigned, deserves the same
affection as you do ; the tenderest lover, the truest
friend, the firmest patriot, and, rarest of glories !
the poet who cherishes another's fame as dearly as
his own.
Petrarca. If aught of this is true, let it be re-
corded of me that my exhortations and intreaties
have been successful, in preserving the works of
the most imaginative and creative genius that our
Italy, or indeed our world, hath in any age beheld.
Boccaccio. I would not destroy his poems, as I
told you, or think I told you. Even the worst of
the Florentines, who in general keep only one of
God's commandments, keep it rigidly in regard
to Dante . .
"Love them who curse you."
He called them all scoundrels, with somewhat less
courtesy than cordiality, and less afraid of censure
for veracity than adulation : he sent their fathers
to hell, with no inclination to separate the child
and parent : and now they are hugging him
for it in his shroud ! Would' you ever have sus-
pected them of being such lovers of justice ]
You must have mistaken my meaning ; the
thought never entered my head : the idea of de-
stroying a single copy of Dante ! And what effect
would that produce ] There must be fifty, or near
it, in various parts of Italy.
Petrarca. I spoke of you.
Boccaccio. Of me! My poetry is vile; I have
already thrown into the fire all of it within my
reach.
Petrarca. Poetry was not the question. We
neither of us are such poets as we thought our-
selves when we were younger, and as younger
men think us still. I meant your Decameron ;
in which there is more character, more nature,
more invention, than either modern or ancient
Italy, or than Greece, from whom she derived
her whole inheritance, ever claimed or ever knew.
Would you consume a beautiful meadow because
there are reptiles in it ; or because a few grubs
hereafter may be generated by the succulence of
the grass ]
Boccaccio. You amaze me : you utterly con-
found me.
Petrarca. If you would eradicate twelve or thir-
teen of the Novelle, and insert the same number
of better, which you could easily do within as
many weeks, I should be heartily glad to see it
done. Little more than a tenth of the Decameron
is bad : less than a twentieth of the Divina Corn-
media is good.
Boccaccio. So little t
Petrarca. Let me never seem irreverent to our
master.
Boccaccio. Speak plainly and fearlessly, Fran-
cesco ! Malice and detraction are strangers to you.
Petrarca. Well then : at least sixteen parts in
twenty of the Inferno and Purgatorio are detest-
able, both in poetry and principle : the higher parts
are excellent indeed.
Boccaccio. I have been reading the Paradiso
more recently. Here it is, under the pillow. It
brings me happier dreams than the others, and
takes no more time in bringing them. Prepara-
tion for my lectures made me remember a great
deal of the poem. I did not request my auditors
to admire the beauty of the metrical version ;
Osanna sanctus dcus Sabbaoth,
Super-illustrans charitate tua
Felices ignes horum Malabo th,
nor these, with a slip of Italian between two pales
of latin ;
Modicum,* et non videbitis me,
Et iterum, sorelle mie dilette,
Modicum, et vos videbitis me.
I dare not repeat all I recollect of
Pepe Set an, Pepe Setan, aleppe,
as there is no holy-water-sprinkler in the room :
and you are aware that other dangers awaited me,
had I been so imprudent as to show the Florentines
the allusion of our poet. His gergo is perpetually
in play, and sometimes plays very roughly.
Petrarca. We will talk again of him presently.
I must now rejoice with you over the recovery and
safety of your prodigal son, the Decameron.
Boccaccio. So then, you would preserve at any
rate my favourite volume from the threatened con-
flagration.
Petrarca. Had I lived at the time of Dante, I
would have given him the same advice in the
same circumstances. Yet how different is the
tendency of the two productions ! Yours is some-
what too licentious; and young men, in whose na-
ture, or rather in whose education and habits, there
is usually this failing, will read you with more plea-
sure than is commendable or innocent. Yet the
very time they occupy with you, would perhaps be
spent in the midst of those excesses or irregulari-
ties, to which the moralist, in his utmost severity,
will argue that your pen directs them. Now there
are many who are fond of standing on the brink of
precipices, and who nevertheless are as cautious
as any of falling in. And there are minds desirous
of being warmed by description, which, without
this warmth, might seek excitement among the
things described.
I would not tell you in health what I tell you in
convalescence, nor urge you to compose what I dis-
suade you from cancelling. After this avowal, I
do declare to you, Giovanni, that in my opinion,
the very idlest of your tales will do the world as
much good as evil ; not reckoning the pleasure of
reading, nor the exercise and recreation of the
mind, which in themselves are good. What I re-
prove you for, is the indecorous and uncleanly; and
these, I trust, you will abolish. Even these, how-
ever, may repel from vice the ingenuous andgrace-
* It may puzzle an Englishman to read the lines begin-
ning with Modicum, so as to give the metre. The secret
is, to draw out et into a dissyllable, et-te, as the Italians
do, who pronounce latin verse, if possible, worse than we,
adding a syllable to such as end with a consonant
PENTAMEKON.
307
ful spirit, and can never lead any such toward
them. Never have you taken an inhuman plea-
sure in blunting and fusing the affections at the
furnace of the passions ; never, in hardening by
sour sagacity and ungenial strictures, that delicacy
which is more productive of innocence and happi-
ness, more estranged from every track and tendency
of their opposites, than what in cold crude systems
hath holden the place and dignity of the highest
virtue. May you live, 0 my friend, in the enjoy-
ment of health, to substitute the facetious for the
licentious, the simple for the extravagant, the true
and characteristic for the indefinite and diffuse.
Boccaccio, I dare not defend myself under the
bad example of any : and the bad example of a
great man is the worst defence of all. Since how-
ever you have mentioned Messer Dante Alighieri,
to whose genius I never thought of approaching,
I may perhaps have been formerly the less cau-
tious of offending by my levity, after seeing him
display as much or more of it in hell itself.
Petrarca. The best apology for Dante, in his
poetical character, is presented by the indulgence
of criticism, in considering the Inferno and Pur-
gatorio as a string of Satires, part in narrative and
part in action ; which renders the title of Comme-
dia more applicable. The filthiness of some pas-
sages would disgrace the drunkenest horse-dealer ;
and the names of such criminals are recorded by
the poet as would be forgotten by the hangman in
six months. I wish I could expatiate rather on
his injudiciousness than on his ferocity, in devising
punishments for various crimes ; or rather, than
on his malignity in composing catalogues of cri-
minals to inflict them on. Among the rest we find
a gang of coiners. He calls by name all the rogues
and vagabonds of every city in Tuscany, and curses
every city for not sending him more of them. You
would fancy that Pisa might have contented him ;
no such thing. He hoots,
" Ah Pisa ! scandal to the people in whose fine
country si means yes, why are thy neighbours slack
to punish thee ] May Capraia and Gorgona stop
up the mouth of the Arno, and drown every soul
within thee ! "
Boccaccio. None but a prophet is privileged to
swear and curse at this rate, and several of those
got broken heads for it.
Petrarca. It did not happen to Dante, though
he once was very near it, in the expedition of the
exiles to recover the city. Scarcely had he taken
breath after this imprecation against the Pisans,
than he asks the Genoese why such a parcel* of
knaves as themselves were not scattered over the
face of the earth.
Boccaccio. Here he is equitable. I wonder he
did not incline to one or other of these rival
republics.
Petrarca. In fact, the Genoese fare a trifle
better under him than his neighbours the Pisans
do.
Boccaccio. Because they have no Gorgona and
Capraia to block them up. He can not do all he
wishes, but he does all he can, considering the
means at his disposal. In like manner Messer
Gregorio Peruzzi, when he was tormented by the
quarrels and conflicts of Messer Gino Ubaldini's
trufle-dog at the next door, and Messer Guidone
Fanteccbi's shop-dog, whose title and quality are
in abeyance, swore bitterly, and called the Virgin
and St. Catherine to witness, that he would cut
off their tails if ever he caught them. His cook,
Niccolo Buonaccorsi, hoping to gratify his master,
set baits for them, and captured them both in the
kitchen. But unwilling to cast hands prematurely
on the delinquents, he, after rating them for their
animosities and their ravages, bethought himself
in what manner he might best conduct his enter-
prise to a successful issue. He was the rather in-
clined to due deliberation in these counsels, as
they, laying aside their private causes of conten-
tion in front of their common enemy, and turning
the principal stream of their ill-blood into another
channel, agreed in demonstrations which augured
no little indocility. Messer Gregorio hath many
servants, and moreover all the conveniences which
so plenteous a house requires. Among the rest is
a long hempen cloth suspended by a roller. Nic-
colo, in the most favourable juncture, was minded
to slip this hempen cloth over the two culprits,
whose consciences had made them slink toward the
door against which it was fastened. The smell of
it was not unsatisfactory to them, and an influx of
courage had nearly borne away the worst sus-
picions. At this instant, while shrewd inquisi-
tiveness and incipient hunger were regaining the
ascendancy, Niccolo Buonaccorsi, with all the
sagacity and courage, all the promptitude and
timeliness of his profession, covered both con-
spirators in the inextricable folds of the fatal
winding-sheet, from which their heads alone
emerged. Struggles, and barkings, and exhibi-
tions of teeth, and plunges forward, were equally
ineffectual. He continued to twist it about them,
until the notes of resentment partook of remon-
strance and pain : but he told them plainly he
would never remit a jot, unless they became more
domesticated and reasonable. In this state of
exhaustion and contrition he brought them 'onto
the presence of Ser Gregorio, who immediately
turned round toward the wall, crossed himself,
and whispered an ave. At ease and happy as he
was at the accomplishment of a desire so long
cherished, no sooner had he expressed his piety at
so gracious a dispensation, than, reverting to the
captor and the captured, he was seized with
unspeakable consternation. He discovered at
once that he had made as rash a vow as Jephtha's.
Alas! one of the children of captivity, the trufle-
dog, had no tail ! Fortunately for Messer Gre-
gorio, he found a friend among the White Friars,
Frate Geppone Pallorco, who told him that when
we can not do a thing promised by vow, whether
we fail by moral inability or by physical, we must
do the thing nearest it ; " which," said Fra Gep-
pone, " hath always been my practice. And now,"
added this cool considerate white friar, " a dog
may have no tail, and yet be a dog to all intents
x 2
308
PENTAMERON.
and purposes, and enable a good Christian to per-
form anything reasonable he promised in his
behalf. Whereupon I would advise you, Messer
Oregorio, out of the loving zeal I bear toward the
whole family of the Peruzzi, to amerce him of
that which, if not tail, is next to tail. Such func-
tion, I doubt not, will satisfactorily show the
blessed Virgin, and Saint Catherine, your readi-
ness and solicitude to perform the vow solemnly
made before those two adorable ladies, your pro-
tectresses and witnesses." Ser Gregorio bent his
knee at first hearing their names, again at the
mention of them in this relationship toward him,
called for the kitchen knife, and, in absolving
his promise, had lighter things to deal with than
Gorgona and Capraia.
Petrarca. Giovanni ! this will do instead of one
among the worst of the hundred : but with little
expenditure of labour you may afford us a better.
Our great fellow-citizen, if indeed we may de-
nominate him a citizen who would have left no
city standing in Italy, and less willingly his native
one, places in the mouth of the devil, together
with Judas Iscariot, the defenders of their coun-
try, and the best men in it, Brutus and Cassius.
Certainly his feeling of patriotism was different
from theirs.
I should be sorry to imagine that it subjected
him to any harder mouth or worse company than
his own, although in a spirit so contrary to that of
the two Romans, he threatened us Florentines with
the sword of Germans. The two Romans, now in
the mouth of the devil, chose rather to lose their
lives than to see their country, not under the go-
vernment of invaders, but of magistrates from their
own city placed irregularly over them; andthelaws,
not subverted, but administered unconstitution-
ally. That Frenchmen and Austrians should argue
and think in this manner, is no wonder, no incon-
sistency : that a Florentine, the wisest and greatest
of Florentines, should have done it, is portentous.
How merciful is the Almighty, 0 Giovanni !
What an argument is here ! how much stronger
and more convincing than philosophers could devise
or than poets could utter, unless from inspiration,
against the placing of power in the hands of one
man only, when the highest genius at that time
in the world, or perhaps at any time, betrays a dis-
position to employat with such a licentiousness of
inhumanity.
Boccaccio. He treats Nero with greater civility :
yet Brutus and Cassius, at worst, but slew an
atheist, while the other rogue flamed forth like the
pestilential dogstar, and burnt up the first crop of
Christians to light the ruins of Rome. And
the artist of these ruins thought no more of his
operation than a scene-painter would have done
at the theatre.
Petrarca. Historians have related that Rome
was consumed by Nero for the purpose of suppress-
ing the rising sect, "by laying all the blame on it.
Do you think he cared what sect fell or what sect
rose ? Was he a zealot in religion of any kind ?
I am sorry to see a lying spirit the most prevalent
one, in some among the earliest and firmest holders
of that religion which is founded on truth and sin-
gleness of intention. There are pious men who
believe they are rendering a sen-ice to God by
bearing false witness in his favour, and who call
on the father of lies to hold up his light before the
Sun of righteousness.
We may mistake the exact day when the con-
flagration began : certain it is, however, that it
was in summer : * and it is presumable that the
commencement of the persecution was in winter,
since Juvenal represents the persecuted as serving
for lamps in the streets. Now as the Romans did
not frequent the theatres, nor other places of pub-
lic entertainment, by night, such conveniences
were uncalled for in summer, a season when the
people retired to rest betimes, from the same mo-
tive as at present, the insalubrity of the evening
air in the hot weather. Nero must have been
very forbearing if he waited those many months
before he punished a gang of incendiaries. Such
clemency is unexampled in milder princes.
Boccaccio. But the Christians were not incen-
diaries, and he knew they were not.
Petrarca. It may be apprehended that, among
the many virtuous of the new believers, a few sfe-
ditious were also to be found, forming separate and
secret associations, choosing generals or superiors
to whom they swore implicit obedience, and under
whose guidance or impulse they were ready to re-
sist, and occasionally to attack, the magistrates,
and even the prince; men aspiring to rule the
state by carrying the sword of assassination under
the garb of holiness. Such persons are equally
odious to the unenlightened and the enlightened,
to the arbitrary and the free. In the regular
course of justice, their crimes would have been re-
sisted by almost as much severity, as they appear
to have undergone from despotic power and popu-
lar indignation.
Boccaccio. We will talk no longer about these
people. But since the devil has really and bond
fide Brutus and Cassius in his mouth, I would ad-
vise him to make the most of them, for he will
never find two more such morsels on the same
platter. Kings, emperors, and popes, would be
happy to partake with him of so delicate and choice
a repast : but I hope he has fitter fare for them. ~
Messer Dante Alighieri does not indeed make
the most gentle use of the company he has about
him in hell and purgatory. Since however he
hath such a selection of them, I wish he could
have been contented, and could have left our fair
Florentines to their own fancies in their dressing-
rooms.
'' The time," he cries, " is not far distant, when
there will be an indictment on parchment, forbid-
ding the impudent young Florentines to show their
breasts and nipples."
Now, Francesco, I have been subject all my
* Des Vignolles has calculated that the conflagration
began on the 19th of July, in the year 64, and the perse-
cution on the 15th of November.
PENTAMEROK
309
life to a strange distemper in the eyes, which no
oculist can cure, and which, while it allows me to
peruse the smallest character in the very worst
female hand, would never let me read an indict-
ment on parchment where female names are im-
plicated, although the letters were a finger in
length. I do believe the same distemper was very
prevalent in the time of Messer Dante ; and those
Florentine maids and matrons who were not af-
flicted by it, were too modest to look at letters and
signatures stuck against the walls.
He goes on, " Was there ever girl among the
Moors or Saracens, on whom it was requisite to
inflict spiritual or other discipline to make her go
covered ?"
Some of the other discipline, which the spiritual
guides were, and are still, in the habit of adminis-
tering, have exactly the contrary effect to make
them go covered, whatsoever may be urged by the
confessor.
"If the shameless creatures," he continues,
" were aware of the speedy chastisement which
Heaven is preparing for them, they would at this
instant have their mouths wide open to roar withal."
Petrarca. This is not very exquisite satire, nor
much better manners.
Boccaccio. Whenever I saw a pretty Florentine
in such a condition, I lowered my eyes.
Petrarca. I am glad to hear it.
Boccaccio. Those whom I could venture to
cover, I covered with all my heart.
Petrarca. Humanely done. You might like-
wise have added some gentle admonition.
Boccaccio. They would have taken anything at
my hands rather than that. Truly they thought
themselves as wise as they thought me : and who
knows but they were, at bottom ?
Petrarca. I believe it may, in general, be best
to leave them as we find them.
Boccaccio. I would not say that, neither. Much
may be in vain, but something sticks.
Petrarca. They are more amused than settled
by anything we can advance against them, and
are apt to make light of the gravest. It is only
the hour of reflection that is at last the hour of
sedateness and improvement.
Boccaccio. Where is the bell that strikes it ?
Petrarca. Fie ! fie ! Giovanni ! This is worse
than the indictment on parchment.
Boccaccio. Women like us none the less for
joking with them about their foibles. In fact,
they take it ill when we cease to do so, unless it
is age that compels us. We may give our courser
the rein to any extent, while he runs in the com-
mon field and does not paw against privacy, nor
open his nostrils on individuality. I mean the
individuality of the person we converse with, for
another's is pure zest.
Petrarca. Surely you can not draw this hideous
picture from your own observation : has any graver
man noted it ?
Boccaccio. Who would believe your graver men
upon such matters 1 Gout and gravel, bile and
sciatica, arc the upholsterers that stuff their moral
sentences. Crooked and cramp are truths written
with chalkstones. When people like me talk as I
have been talking, they may be credited. We have
no ill-will, no ill-humour, to gratify ; and vanity
has no trial here at issue. He was certainly born
on an unlucky day for his friends, who never
uttered any truths but unquestionable ones. Give
me food that exercises my teeth and tongue,
and ideas that exercise my imagination and dis-
cernment.
Petrarca. When you are at leisure, and in per-
fect health, weed out carefully the few places of
your Decameron which are deficient in these
qualities.
Boccaccio. God willing ; I wish I had under-
taken it when my heart was lighter. Is there any-
thing else you can suggest for its improvement, in
particular or in general ?
Petrarca. Already we have mentioned the in-
considerate and indecorous. In what you may
substitute hereafter, I would say to you, as I have
said to myself, do not be on all occasions too cere-
monious in the structure of your sentences.
Boccaccio. You would surely wish me to be
round and polished. Why do you smile ?
Petrarca. I am afraid these qualities are often
of as little advantage in composition as they are
corporeally. When action and strength are chiefly
the requisites, we may perhaps be better with
little of them. The modulations of voice and lan-
guage are infinite. Cicero has practised many of
them; but Cicero has his favourite swells, his
favourite flourishes and cadences. Our Italian
language is in the enjoyment of an ampler scope and
compass ; and we are liberated from the horrible
sounds of us, am, um, ant, int, unt, so predominant
in the finals of Latin nouns and verbs. We may
be told that they give strength to the dialect : we
might as well be told that bristles give strength
to the boar. In our Italian we possess the privi-
lege of striking off the final vowel from the greater
part of masculine nouns, and from the greater
part of tenses in the verbs, when we believe they
impede our activity and vigour.
Boccaccio. We are as wealthy in words as is
good for us ; and she who gave us these, would
give us more if needful. In another age it is pro-
bable that curtailments will rather be made than
additions ; for it was so with the Latin and Greek.
Barbaric luxury sinks down into civic neatness,
and chaster ornaments fill rooms of smaller
dimensions.
Petrarca. Cicero came into possession of the
stores collected by Plautus, which he always held
very justly in the highest estimation ; and Sallust
is reported to have misapplied a part of them. At
his death they were scattered and lost.
Boccaccio. I am wiser than I was when I studied
the noble orator, and wiser by his means chiefly.
In return for his benefits, if we could speak on
equal terms together, the novelist with the philo-
sopher, the citizen of Certaldo with the Koman
consul, I would fain whisper in his ear, " Escape
from rhetoric by all manner of means : and if you
310
PENTAMERON.
must cleave (as indeed you must) to that old shrew,
Logic, be no fonder of exhibiting her than you
would be of a plain economical wife. Let her be
always busy, never intrusive ; and readier to keep
the chambers clean and orderly than to expa
tiate on their proportions or to display their
furniture."
Petrarca. The citizen of Certaldo is fiftyfold
more richly endowed with genius than the Eoman
consul, and might properly . .
Boccaccio. Stay ! stay ! Francesco ! or they will
shave all the rest of thy crown for thee, and physic
thee worse than me.
Petrarca. Middling men, favoured in their life-
time by circumstances, often appear of higher
stature than belongs to them ; great men always
of lower. Time, the sovran, invests with befit-
ting raiment and distinguishes with proper en-
signs the familiars he has received into his eternal
habitations : in these alone are they deposited :
you must wait for them.
No advice is less necessary to you, than the
advice to express your meaning as clearly as you
can. Where the purpose of glass is to be seen
through, we do not want it tinted nor wavy. In
certain kinds of poetry the case may be slightly
different : such, for instance, as are intended to
display the powers of association and combination
in the writer, and to invite and exercise the com-
pass and comprehension of the intelligent. Pindar
and the Attic tragedians wrote in this manner,
and rendered the minds of their audience more
alert and ready and capacious. They found some
fit for them, and made others. Great painters
have always the same task to perform. What is
excellent in their art can not be thought excellent
by many, even of those who reason well on ordi-
nary matters, and see clearly beauties elsewhere.
All correct perceptions are the effect of careful
practice. We little doubt that a mirror would direct
us in the most familiar of our features, and that
our hand would follow its guidance, until we try
to cut a lock of our hair. We have no such cri-
terion to demonstrate our liability to error in
judging of poetry ; a quality so rare that perhaps
no five contemporaries ever were masters of it.
Boccaccio. We admire by tradition ; we censure
by caprice ; and there is nothing in which we are
more ingenious and inventive. A wrong step in
politics sprains a foot in poetry ; eloquence is never
so unwelcome aa when it issues from a familiar
voice ; and praise hath no echo but from a certain
distance. Our critics, who know little about them,
would gaze with wonder at anything similar, in
our days, to Pindar and Sophocles, and would cast
it aside, as quite impracticable. They are in the
right : for sonnet and canzonet charm greater
numbers. There are others, or may be hereafter,
to whom far other things will afford far higher
gratification.
Petrarca. But our business at present is with
prose and Cicero ; and our question now is, what
is Ciceronian. He changed his style according
to his matter and his hearers. His speeches to
the people vary from his speeches to the senate.
Toward the one he was impetuous and exacting ;
toward the other he was usually but earnest and
anxious, and sometimes but submissive and im-
ploring, yet equally unwilling, on both occasions,
to conceal the labour he had taken to captivate
their attention and obtain success. At the tribu-
nal of Caesar the dictator he laid aside his costly
armour, contracted the folds of his capacious robe,
and became calm, insinuating, and adulative,
showing his spirit not utterly extinguished, his
dignity not utterly fallen, his consular year not
utterly abolished from his memory, but Rome,
and even himself, lowered in the presence of his
judge.
Boccaccio. And after all this, can you bear to
think what I am ]
Petrarca. Complacently and joyfully ; ventur-
ing, nevertheless, to offer you a friend's advice.
Enter into the mind and heart of your own
creatures : think of them long, entirely, solely :
never of style, never of self, never of critics,
cracked or sound. Like the miles of an open
country, and of an ignorant population, when they
are correctly measured they become smaller. In
the loftiest rooms and richest entablatures are
suspended the most spider-webs ; and the quarry
out of which palaces are erected is the nursery of
nettle and bramble.
Boccaccio. It is better to keep always in view
such writers as Cicero, than to run after those
idlers who throw stones that can never reach us.
Petrarca. If you copied him to perfection, and
on no occasion lost sight of him, you would be an
indifferent, not to say a bad writer.
Boccaccio. I begin to think you are in the right.
Well then, retrenching some of my licentious
tales, I must endeavour to fill up the vacancy with
some serious and some pathetic.
Petrarca. I am heartily glad to hear of this de-
cision; for, admirable as you are in the jocose,
you descend from your natural position when you
come to the convivial and the festive. You were
placed among the Affections, to move and master
them, and gifted with the rod that sweetens the
fount of tears. My nature leads me also to the
pathetic ; in which, however, an imbecile writer
may obtain celebrity. Even the hard-hearted are
fond of such reading, when they are fond of any ;
and nothing is easier in the world than to find and
accumulate its sufferings. Yet this very profusion
and luxuriance of misery is the reason why few
iave excelled in describing it. The eye wanders
over the mass without noticing the peculiarities.
To mark them distinctly is the work of genius ;
a work so rarely performed, that, if time and space
may be compared, specimens of it stand at wider
distances than the trophies of Sesostris. Here
we return again to the Inferno of Dante, who
overcame the difficulty. In this vast desert are
ts greater and its less oasis ; Ugolino and Fran-
:esca di Rimini. The peopled region is peopled
;hiefly with monsters and moschitoes: the rest
'or the most-part is sand and suffocation.
PENTAMERON.
311
Boccaccio. Ah-! had Dante remained through
life the pure solitary lover of Bice, his soul had
been gentler, tranquiller, and more generous. He
scarcely hath described half the curses he went
through, nor the roads he took on the journey :
theology, politics, and that barbican of the Inferno,
marriage, surrounded with its
Selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte.
Admirable is indeed the description of Ugolino,
to whoever can endure the sight of an old soldier
gnawing at the scalp of an old archbishop.
Petrarca. The thirty lines from
Ed io sentj,
are unequalled by any other continuous thirty in
the whole dominions of poetry.
Boccaccio. Give me rather the six on Francesca :
for if in the former I find the simple, vigorous,
clear narration, I find also what I would not wish,
the features of Ugolino reflected full in Dante.
The two characters are similar in themselves;
hard, cruel, inflexible, malignant, but, whenever
moved, moved powerfully. In Francesca, with
the faculty of divine spirits, he leaves his own
nature (not indeed the exact representative of
theirs) and converts all his strength into tender-
ness. The great poet, like the original man of
the Platonists, is double, possessing the further
advantage of being able to drop one half at his
option, and to resume it. Some of the tenderest
on paper have no sympathies beyond ; and some
of the austerest in their intercourse with their
fellow-creatures, have deluged the world with tears.
It is not from the rose that the bee gathers her
honey, but often from the most acrid and the most
bitter leaves and petals.
Quando legemmo il disiato viso
Esser baciato di cotanto amante,
Questi, chi mai da me non sia diviso !
La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante . . .
Galeotlo f u il libro, e chi lo scrisse . . .
Quel giorno piii non vi legemmo avante.
In the midst of her punishment, Francesca, when
she comes to the tenderest part of her story, tells
it with complacency and delight ; and, instead of
naming Paolo, which indeed she never has done
from the beginning, she now designates him as
Questi chi mai da me non sia diviso '
Are we not impelled to join in her prayer, wishing
them happier in their union 1
Petrarca. If there be no sin in it.
Boccaccio. Ay, and even if there be ... God
help us !
What a sweet aspiration in each cesura of the
verse ! three love-sighs fixed and incorporate !
Then, when she hath said
La bocca mi bacio, tutto tremante,
she stops : she would avert the eyes of Dante from
her : he looks for the sequel : she thinks he looks
severely : she says,
" Galeotto is the name of the book,"
fancying by this timorous little flight she has
drawn him far enough from the nest of her young
loves. No, the eagle beak of Dante and his piercing
eyes are yet over her.
" Galeotto is the name of the book."
" What matters that?"
" And of the writer."
"Or that either?"
At last she disarms him : but how 1
" That day we read no more."
Such a depth of intuitive judgment, such a
delicacy of perception, exists not in any other
work of human genius ; and from an author who,
on almost all occasions, in this part of the work,
betrays a deplorable want of it.
Petrarca. Perfection of poetry ! The greater
is my wonder at discovering nothing else of the
same order or cast in this whole section of the
poem. He who fainted at the recital of Francesca,
And he who fell as a dead body falls,
would exterminate all the inhabitants of every
town in Italy ! What execrations against Florence,
Pistoia, Siena, Pisa, Genoa ! what hatred against
the whole human race ! what exultation and mer-
riment at eternal and immitigable sufferings !
Seeing this, I can not but consider the Inferno as
the most immoral and impious book that ever was
written. Yet, hopeless that our country shall
ever see again such poetry, and certain that with-
out it our future poets would be more feebly urged
forward to excellence, I would have dissuaded
Dante from cancelling it, if this had been his
intention. Much however as I admire his vigour
and severity of style in. the description of Ugolino,
I acknowledge with you that I do not discover so
much imagination, so much creative power, as in
the Francesca. I find indeed a minute detail of
probable events : but this is not all I want in a
poet : it is not even all I want most in a scene of
horror. Tribunals of justice, dens of murderers,
wards of hospitals, schools of anatomy, will afford
us nearly the same sensations, if we hear them
from an accurate observer, a clear reporter, a
skilful surgeon, or an attentive nurse. There is
nothing of sublimity in the horrific of Dante,
which there always is in ^Bschylus and Homer.
If you, Giovanni, had described so nakedly the
reception of Guiscardo's heart by Gismonda, or
Lorenzo's head by Lisabetta, we could hardly
have endured it.
Boccaccio. Prythee, dear Francesco, do not place
me over Dante : I stagger at the idea of approach-
ing him.
Petrarca. Never think I am placing you blindly
or indiscriminately. I have faults to find with
you, and even here. Lisabetta should by no
means have been represented cutting off the head
of her lover, " as well as she could " with a clasp-
knife. This is shocking and improbable. She
might have found it already cut off by her brothers,
in order to bury the corpse more commodiously
and expeditiously. Nor indeed is it likely that
she should have intrusted it to her waiting-maid,
who carried home in her bosom a treasure so
312
PENTAMERON.
dear to her, and found so unexpectedly and so
lately.
Boccaccio. That is true : I will correct the over-
sight. Why do we never hear of our faults until
everybody knows them, and until they stand in
record against us ?
Petrarca. Because our ears are closed to truth
and friendship for some time after the triumphal
course of composition. We are too sensitive for
the gentlest touch ; and when we really have the
most infirmity, we are angry to be told that we
have any.
Boccaccio. Ah Francesco ! thou art poet from
scalp to heel : but what other would open his
breast as thou hast done ! They show ostenta-
tiously far worse weaknesses ; but the most honest
of the tribe would forswear himself on this. Again,
I acknowledge it, you have reason to complain of
Lisabetta and Gismonda.
Petrarca. They keep the soul from sinking in
such dreadful circumstances by the buoyancy of
imagination. The sunshine of poetry makes the
colour of blood less horrible, and draws up a sha-
dowy and a softening haziness where the scene
would otherwise be too distinct. Poems, like
rivers, convey to their destination what must with-
out their appliances be left unhandled : these to
ports and arsenals, this to the human heart.
Boccaccio. So it is ; and what is terror in poetry
is horror in prose. We may be brought too close
to an object to leave any room for pleasure. TJgo-
lino affects us like a skeleton, by dry bony verity.
Petrarca. We can not be too distinct in our
images; but although distinctness, on this and
most other occasions, is desirable in the imitative
arts, yet sometimes in painting, and sometimes in
poetry, an object should not be quite precise. In
your novel of Andrevola and Gabriotto, you afford
me an illustration.
Le pareva dal corpo di lui useire una
cosa oscura e terribile.
This is like a dream : this is a dream. Afterward,
you present to us such palpable forms and pleasing
colours as may relieve and soothe us.
Ed avendo molte rose, blanche e vermi-
glie, colte, perciocche la stagione era.
Boccaccio. Surely you now are mocking me.
The roses, I perceive, would not have been there,
had it not been the season.
Petrarca. A poet often does more and better
than he is aware at the time, and seems at last to
know as little about it as a silkworm knows about
the fineness of her thread.
The uncertain dream that still hangs over us in
the novel, is intercepted and hindered from hurt-
ing us by the spell of the roses, of the white and
the red ; a word the less would have rendered it
incomplete. The very warmth and geniality of
the season shed their kindly influence on us ; and
we are renovated and ourselves again by virtue
of the clear fountain where we rest. Nothing of
this poetical providence comes to our relief in
Dante, though we want it oftener. It would by
difficult to form an idea of a poem, into which so
many personages are introduced, containing so few
delineations of character, so few touches that ex-
cite our sympathy, so few elementary signs for our
instruction, so few topics for our delight, so few
excursions for our recreation. Nevertheless, his
powers of language are prodigious ; and, in the
solitary places where he exerts his force rightly,
the stroke is irresistible. But how greatly to be
pitied must he be, who can find nothing in para-
dise better than sterile theology ! and what an
object of sadness and of consternation, he who
rises up from hell like a giant refreshed !
Boccaccio. Strange perversion! A pillar of
smoke by day and of fire by night ; to guide no
one. Paradise had fewer wants for him to satisfy
than hell had ; all which he fed to repletion. But
let us rather look to his poetry than his temper.
Petrarca. We will then.
A good poem is not divided into little panes
like a cathedral window ; which little panes them-
selves are broken and blurred, with a saint's coat
on a dragon's tail, a doctor's head on the bosom
of a virgin martyr, and having about them more
lead than glass, and more gloom than colouring.
A good satire or good comedy, if it doea-not
always smile, rarely and briefly intermits it,
and never rages. A good epic shows us more
and more distinctly, at every book of it we open,
the features and properties of heroic character, and
terminates with accomplishing some momentous
action. A good tragedy shows us that greater men
than ourselves have suffered more severely and more
unjustly ; that the highest human power hath sud-
denly fallen helpless and extinct; or, what is better
to contemplate and usefuller to know, that uncon-
trolled by law, unaccompanied by virtue, unfollowed
by contentment, its possession is undesirable and
unsafe. Sometimes we go away in triumph with
Affliction proved and purified, and leave her under
the smiles of heaven. In all these consummations
the object is excellent ; and here is the highest
point to which poetry can attain. Tragedy has no
bye-paths, no resting-places ; there is everywhere
action and passion. What do we find of this nature,
or what of the epic, in the Orpheus and Judith,
the Charon and Can della Scala, the Sinon and
Maestro Adamo ]
Boccaccio. Personages strangely confounded !
In this category it required a strong hand to make
Pluto and Pepe Satan keep the peace, both having
the same pretensions, and neither the sweetest
temper.
Petrarca. Then the description of Mahomet is
indecent and filthy. Yet Dante is scarcely more
disgusting in this place, than he is insipid and
spiritless in his allegory of the marriages, between
Saint Francesco and Poverty, Saint Dominico and
Faith. I speak freely and plainly to you, Giovanni,
and the rather, as you have informed me that I have
been thought invidious to the reputation of our
great poet ; for such he is transcendently, in the
midst of his imperfections. Such likewise were
PENTAMERON.
313
Ennius and Lucilius in the same period of Eoman
literature. They were equalled, and perhaps ex-
celled : will Dante ever be, in his native tongue ?
The past generations of his countrymen, the glo-
ries of old Eome, fade before him the instant he
springs upward, but they impart a more constant
and a more genial delight.
Boccaccio. They have less hair-cloth about them,
and smell less cloisterly ; yet they are only choris-
ters.
The generous man, such as you, praises and cen-
sures with equal freedom, not with equal pleasure :
the freedom and the pleasure of the ungenerous
are both contracted, and lie only on the left hand.
Petrarca. When we point out to our friends an
object in the country, do we wish to diminish it ?
do we wish to show it overcast 1 Why then should
we in those nobler works of creation, God's only
representatives, who have cleared our intellectual
sight for us, and have displayed before us things
more magnificent than Nature would without them
have revealed 1
We poets are heated by proximity. Those who
are gone, warm us by the breath they leave behind
them in their course, and only warm us : those who
are standing near, and just before, fever us. Soli-
tude has kept me uninfected ; unless you may hint
perhaps that pride was my preservative against
the malignity of a worse disease.
Boccaccio. It might well be, though it were not ;
you having been crowned in the capital of the
Christian world.
Petrarca. That indeed would have been some-
thing, if I had been crowned for my Christianity,
of which Isuspect there are better judges in Rome
than there are of poetry. I would rather be pre-
ferred to my rivals by the two best critics of the
age than by all the others ; who, if they think dif-
ferently from the two wisest in these matters, must
necessarily think wrong.
Bocccacio. You know that not only the two first,
but many more, prefer you ; and that neither they,
nor any who are acquainted with your character,
can believe that your strictures on Dante are invi-
dious or uncandid.
Petrarca. I am borne to ward him by many strong
impulses. Our families were banished by the same
faction : he himself and my father left Florence on
the same day, and both left it for ever. This recol-
lection would rather make me cling to him than
cast him down. Ill fortune has many and tena-
cious ties : good fortune has few and fragile ones.
1 saw our illustrious fellow citizen once only, and
when I was a child. Even the sight of such a poet,
in early days, is dear to him who aspires to become
one, and the memory is always in his favour. The
worst I can recollect to have said against his poem
to others, is, that the architectural fabric of the
Inferno is unintelligible without a long study, and
only to be understood after distracting our atten-
tion from its inhabitants. Its locality and dimen-
sions are at last uninteresting, and would better
have been left in their obscurity. The zealots of
Dante compare it, for invention, with the infernal
regions of Homer and Virgil. I am ignorant how
much the Grecian poet invented, how much existed
in the religion, how much in the songs and tradi-
tions of the people. But surely our Alighieri
has taken the same idea, and even made his des-
cent in the same part of Italy, as ^Eneas had done
before. In the Odyssea the mind is perpetually
relieved by variety of scene and character. There
are vices enough in it, but rising from lofty or
from powerful passions, and under the veil of mys-
tery and poetry : there are virtues too enough,
and human and definite and practicable. We have
man, although a shade, in his own features, in his
own dimensions : he appears before us neither
cramped by systems nor jaundiced by schools ; no
savage, no cit, no cannibal, no doctor. Vigorous
and elastic, he is such as poetry saw him first ; he is
such as poetry would ever see him. In Dante, the
greater part of those who are not degraded, are de-
bilitated and distorted. No heart swells here, either
for overpowered valour or for unrequited love.
In the shades alone, but in the shades of Homer,
does Ajax rise to his full loftiness : in the shades
alone, but in the shades of Virgil, is Dido the arbi-
tress of our tears.
Boccaccio. I must confess there are nowhere two
whole cantos in Dante which will bear a sustained
and close comparison with the very worst book of
the Odyssea or the ^Eneid ; that there is nothing of
the same continued and unabated excellence, as
Ovid's in the contention for the armour of Achilles;
the most heroic of heroic poetry, and only censur-
able, if censurable at all, because th e eloquence of the
braver man is more animated and more persuasive
than his successful rival's. I do not think Ovid the
best poet that ever lived, but I think he wrote the
most of good poetry, and, in proportion to its quan-
tity, the least of bad or indifferent. The Inferno, the
Purgatorio, the Paradiso, are pictures from the
walls of our churches and chapels and monasteries,
some painted by Giotto and Cimabue, some earlier.
In several of these we detect not only the cruelty,
but likewise the satire and indecency of Dante.
Sometimes there is also his vigour and simplicity,
but oftener his harshness and meagreness and dis-
proportion. I am afraid the good Alighieri, like
his friends the painters, was inclined to think the
angels were created only to flagellate and burn us :
and Paradise only for us to be driven out of it.
And in .truth, as we have seen it exhibited, there
is but little hardship in the case.
The opening of the third canto of the Inferno
has always been much admired. There is indeed
a great solemnity in the words of the inscription
on the portal of hell : nevertheless, I do not see
the necessity for three verses out of six. After
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore,
it surely is superfluous to subjoin
Per me si va fra la perduta gente ;
for, beside the perduta gente, who else can suffer
the eternal woe ] And when the portal has told
us that " Justice moved the high Maker to make it,"
314
PENTAMERON.
surely it might have omitted the notification that
his " divine power " did it.
Fecemi la divina potestate.
The next piece of information I wish had been
conveyed even in darker characters, so that they
never could have been decyphered. The following
line is,
La somnia Sapienza e '1 primo Amore.
If God's first love was hell-making, we might
almost wish his affections were as mutable as ours
are : that is, if holy church would countenance us
therein.
Petrarca. Systems of poetry, of philosophy, of
government, form and model us to their own pro-
portions. As our systems want the grandeur, the
light, and the symmetry of the ancient, we can
not hope for poets, philosophers, or statesmen, of
equal dignity. Very justly do you remark that
our churches and chapels and monasteries, and
even our shrines and tabernacles on the road-side,
contain in painting the same punishments as
Alighieri hath registered in his poem : and several
of these were painted before his birth. Nor surely
can you have forgotten that his master, Brunetto
Latini, composed one on the same plan.
The Virtues and Vices, and persons under their
influence, appear to him likewise in a wood,
wherein he, like Dante, is bewildered. Old walls
are the tablets both copy : the arrangement is the
devise of Brunetto. Our religion is too simple in
its verities, and too penurious in its decorations,
for poetry of high value. We can not hope or
desire that a pious Italian will ever have the auda-
city to restore to Satan a portion of his majesty, or
to remind the faithful that he is a fallen angel.
Boccaccio. No, no, Francesco; let us keep as
much of him down as we can, and as long.
Petrarca. It might not be amiss to remember
that even human power is complacent in security,
and that Omnipotence is ever omnipotent, without
threats and fulminations.
Boccaccio. These, however, are the main springs
of sacred poetry, of which I think we already have
enough.
Petrarca. But good enough ]
Boccaccio. Even much better would produce
less eftect than that which has occupied our ears
from childhood, and comes sounding and swelling
with a mysterious voice from the deep and dark
recesses of antiquity.
Petrarca. I see no reason why we should not
revert, at times, to the first intentions of poetry.
Hymns to the Creator were its earliest efforts.
Boccaccio. I do not believe a word of it, unless
He himself was graciously pleased to inspire the
singer ; of which we have received no account.
I rather think it originated in pleasurable song,
perhaps of drunkenness, and resembled the dithyr-
ambic. Strong excitement alone could force and
hurry men among words displaced and exagge-
rated ideas.
Believing that man fell, first into disobedience,
next into ferocity and fratricide, we may reason-
ably believe that war-songs were among the
earliest of his intellectual exertions. When he
rested from battle he had leisure to think of love ;
and the skies and the fountains and the flowers
reminded him of her, the coy and beautiful, who
fled to a mother from the ardour of his pursuit.
In after years he lost a son, his companion in the
croft and in the forest : images too grew up there,
and rested on the grave. A daughter, who had
wondered at his strength and wisdom, looked to
him in vain for succour at the approach of death.
Inarticulate grief gave way to passionate and
wailing words, and Elegy was awakened. We
have tears in this world before we have smiles,
Francesco ! we have struggles before we have
composure ; we have strife and complaints before
we have submission and gratitude. I am suspi-
cious that if we could collect the " winged words "
of the earliest hymns, we should find that they
called upon the Deity for vengeance. Priests and
rulers were far from insensible to private wrongs.
Chryses in the Iliad is willing that his king and
country should be enslaved, so that his daughter
be sent back to him. David in the Psalms is no
unimportunate or lukewarm applicant for the
discomfiture and extermination of his adversaries :
and, among the visions of felicity, none brighter
is promised a fortunate warrior, than to dash the
infants of his enemy against the stones. The
Holy Scriptures teach us that the human race was
created on the banks of the Euphrates, and where
the river hath several branches. Here the climate
is extremely hot; and men, like birds, in hot
climates, never sing well. I doubt whether there
was ever a good poet in the whole city and whole
plain of Babylon. Egypt had none but such as
she imported. Mountainous countries bear them
as they bear the' more fragrant plants and savoury
game. Judaea had hers : Attica reared them
among her thyme and hives : and Tuscany may
lift her laurels not a span below. Never have the
accents of poetry been heard on the fertile banks
of the Vistula ; and Ovid taught the borderers of
the Danube an indigenous* song in vain.
Petrarca. Orpheus, we hear, sang on the banks
of the Hebrus.
Boccaccio. The banks of the Hebrus may be
level or rocky, for what I know about them : but
the river is represented by the poets as rapid and
abounding in whirlpools ; hence, I presume, it
runs among rocks and inequalities. Be this as it
may : do you imagine that Thrace in those early
days produced a philosophical poet ]
Petrarca. We have the authority of history
for it.
Boccaccio. Bad authority too, unless we sift
and cross-examine it. Undoubtedly there were
narrow paths of commerce, in very ancient times,
from the Euxine to the Caspian, and from the
* ' Aptaque aunt nostris barbara verba modis.'
What are all the other losses of literature in comparison
with this?
PENTAMERON.
315
Caspian to the kingdoms of the remoter East.
Merchants in those days were not only the most
adventurous, but the most intelligent men : and
there were ardent minds, uninfluenced by a spirit
of lucre, which were impelled by the ardour of
imagination into untravelled regions. Scythia
was a land of fable, not only to the Greeks, but
equally to the Romans. Thrace was a land of fable,
we may well believe, to the nearest towns of
northern India. I imagine that Orpheus, whoever
he was, brought his knowledge from that quarter.
We are too apt to fancy that Greece owed every-
thing to the Phoenicians and Egyptians. The
elasticity of her mind threw off, or the warmth of
her imagination transmuted, the greater part
of her earlier acquisitions. She was indebted to
Phoenicia for nothing but her alphabet; and even
these signs she modified, and endowed them with
a portion of her flexibility and grace.
Petrarca. There are those who tell us that
Homer lived before the age of letters in Greece.
Boccaccio. I wish they knew the use of them as
well as he did. Will they not also tell us that
the commerce of the two nations was carried on
without the numerals (and such were letters) by
which traders cast up accounts ? The Phoenicians
traded largely with every coast of the Jilgean sea ;
and among their earliest correspondents were the
inhabitants of the Greek maritime cities, insular
and continental. Is it credible that Cyprus, that
Crete, that Attica, should be ignorant of the most
obvious means by which commerce was main-
tained ? or that such means should be restricted
to commerce, among a people so peculiarly fitted
for social intercourse, so inquisitive, so imagina-
tive, as the Greeks ?
Petrarca. Certainly it is not.
Boccaccio. The Greeks were the most creative,
the Romans the least creative, of mankind. No
Roman ever invented anything. Whence then
are derived the only two works of imagination we
find among them; the story of the Ephesiari*
Matron, and the story of Psyche, $ Doubtless
from some country farther eastward than Phoe-
nicia and Egypt. The authors in which we find
these insertions are of little intrinsic worth.
When the Thracians became better known to
the Greeks they turned their backs upon them as
worn-out wonders, and looked toward the inex-
haustible Hyperboreans. Among these too she
placed wisdom and the arts, and mounted instru-
* One similar, and better conceived, is given by Du
Halde from the Chinese. If the fiction of Psyche had
reached Greece so early as the time of Plato, it would
have caught his attention, and he would have delivered it
down to us, however altered.
ments through which a greater magnitude was
given to the stars.
Petrarca. I will remain no longer with you
among the Thracians or the Hyperboreans. But
in regard to low and level countries, as unproduc-
tive of poetry, I entreat you not to be too fanciful
nor too exclusive. Virgil was born on the Mincio,
and has rendered the city of his birth too cele-
brated to be mistaken.
Boccaccio. He was born in the territory of
Mantua, not in the city. He sang his first child's
song on the shoulders of the Apennines; his first
man's under the shadow of Vesuvius.
I would not assert that a great poet must neces-
sarily be born on a high mountain : no indeed,
no such absurdity : but where the climate is hot,
the plains have never shown themselves friendly
to the imaginative faculties. We surely have more
buoyant spirits on the mountain than below, but
it is not requisite for this effect that our cradles
should have been placed on it.
Petrarca. What will you say about Pindar !
Boccaccio. I think it more probable that he was
reared in the vicinity of Thebes than within the
walls. For Bceotia, like our Tuscany, has one
large plain, but has also many eminences, and is
bounded on two sides by hills.
Look at the vale of Capua ! Scarcely so much
as a sonnet was ever heard from one end of it to
the other ; perhaps the most spirited thing was
some Carthaginian glee, from a soldier in the
camp of Hannibal. Nature seems to contain in
her breast the same milk for all, but feeding one
for one aptitude, another for another ; and, as
if she would teach him a lesson as soon as he
could look about him, she has placed the poet
where the air is unladen with the exhalations of
luxuriance.
Petrarca. In my delight to listen to you after
so long an absence, I have been too unwary ; and
you have been speaking too much for one infirm.
Greatly am I to blame, not to have moderated my
pleasure and your vivacity. You must rest now :
to-morrow we will renew our conversation.
Boccaccio. God bless thee, Francesco ! I shall
be talking with thee all night in my slumbers.
Never have I seen thee with such pleasure as to-
day, excepting when I was deemed worthy by our
fellow-citizens of bearing to thee, and of placing
within this dear hand of thine, the sentence of
recall from banishment, and when my tears
streamed over the ordinance as I read it, whereby
thy paternal lands were redeemed from the public
treasury.
Again God bless thee ! Those tears were not
quite exhausted : take the last of them.
316
PENTAMERON.
SECOND DAY'S INTERVIEW.
Petrarca. How have you slept, Giovanni?
Boccaccio. Pleasantly, soundly, and quite long
enough. You too methinks have enjoyed the
benefit of riding; for you either slept well or
began late. Do you rise in general three hours
after the sun?
Petrarca. No indeed.
Boccaccio. As for me, since you would not in-
dulge me with your company an hour ago, I could
do nothing more delightful than to look over
some of your old letters.
Petrarca. Ours are commemorative of no re-
proaches, and laden with no regrets. Far from us
With drooping wing the epell-bound spirit moves
O'er flickering friendships and extinguish t loves.
Boccaccio. Ay, but as I want no record of your
kindness now you are with me, I have been look-
ing over those to other persons, on past occasions.
In the latin one to the tribune, whom the people
at Rome usually call Rienzi, I find you address
him by the denomination of Nicolaus Laurentii.
Is this the right one ?
Petrarca. As we Florentines are fond of omit-
ting the first syllable in proper names, calling
Luigi Oigi, Giovanni Nanni, Francesco Cecco, in
like manner at Rome they say Renzi for Lorenzi,
and by another corruption it has been pronounced
and written Rienzi. Believe me, I should never
have ventured to address the personage who held
and supported the highest dignity on earth, until
I had ascertained his appellation : for nobody ever
quite forgave, unless in the low and ignorant, a
wrong pronunciation of his name ; the humblest
being of opinion that they have one of their own,
and one both worth having and worth knowing.
Even dogs, they observe, are not miscalled. It
would have been as latin in sound, if not in struc-
ture, to write Rientius as Laurentius : but it
would certainly have been offensive to a dignitary
of his station, as being founded on a sportive and
somewhat childish familiarity.
Boccaccio. Ah Francesco ! we were a good deal
younger in those days ; and hopes spraag up before
us like mushrooms : the sun produced them, the
shade produced them, every hill, every valley, every
busy and every idle hour.
Petrarca. The season of hope precedes but little
the season of disappointment. Where the ground
is unprepared, what harvest can be expected ? Men
bear wrongs more easily than irritations ; and the
Romans, who had sunk under worse degradation
than any other people on record, rose up against
the deliverer who ceased to consult their igno-
rance. I speak advisedly and without rhetoric on
the foul depths of their debasement. The Jews,
led captive into Egypt and into Babylon, were left
as little corrupted as they were found ; and per-
haps some of their vices were corrected by the
labours that were imposed on them. But the sub-
jugation of the Romans was effected by the depra-
vation of their morals, which the priesthood took
away, giving them ceremonies and promises instead.
God had indulged them in the exercise of power :
first the kings abused it, then the consuls, then
the tribunes. One only magistrate was remaining
who never had violated it, farther than in petty
frauds and fallacies suited to the occasion, not
having at present more within his reach. It was
now his turn to exercise his functions, and no less
grievously and despotically than the preceding had
done. For this purpose the Pontifex Maximus
needed some slight alterations in the popular be-
lief; and he collected them from that Pantheon
which Roman policy had enlarged at every con-
quest. The priests of Isis had acquired th« high-
est influence in the city : those of Jupiter were
jealous that foreign gods should become more than
supplementary and subordinate : but as the women
in general leaned toward Isis, it was in vain
to contest the point, and prudent to adopt a little
at a time from the discipline of the shaven bro-
therhood. The names and titles of the ancient
gods had received many additions, and they were
often asked which they liked best. Different ones
were now given them ; and gradually, here and
there, the older dropped into desuetude. Then
arose the star in the east ; and all was manifested.
Boccaccio. Ay, ay, but the second company of
shepherds sang to a different tune from the first,
and put them out. Trumpeters ran in among
them, horses neighed, tents waved their pennons,
and commanders of armies sought to raise them-
selves to supreme authority, some by leading the
faction of the ancient faith, and some by support-
ing the recenter. At last the priesthood suc-
ceeded to the power of the pretorian guard, and
elected, or procured the election of, an emperor.
Every man who loved peace and quiet took refuge
in a sanctuary, now so efficient to protect him ;
and nearly all who had attained a preponderance
in wisdom and erudition, brought them to bear
against the worn-out and tottering institutions,
and finally to raise up the coping-stone of an edifice
which overtopped them all.
Petrarca, At present we fly to princes as we fly
to caves and arches, and other things of the mere
earth, for shelter and protection.
Boccaccio. And when they afford it at all, they
afford it with as little care and knowledge. Like
Egyptian embalmers, they cast aside the brains as
useless or worse, but carefully swathe up all that
is viler and heavier, and place it in their painted
catacombs.
Petrarca. What Dante saw in his day, we see
in ours. The danger is, lest first the wiser, and
PENTAMEROK
317
soon afterward the unwiser, in abhorrence at the
presumption and iniquity of the priesthood, should
abandon religion altogether, when it is forbidden
to approach her without such company.
Boccaccio. Philosophy is but the calix of that
plant of paradise, religion. Detach it, and it dies
away ; meanwhile the plant itself, supported by
its proper nutriment, retains its vigour.
Petrarca. The good citizen and the calm rea-
soner come at once to the same conclusion ; that
philosophy can never hold many men together ;
that religion can ; and those who without it
would not let philosophy, nor law, nor humanity
exist. Therefore it is our duty and interest to
remove all obstruction from it ; to give it air, light,
space, and freedom ; carrying in our hands a
scourge for fallacy, a chain for cruelty, and an
irrevocable ostracism for riches that riot in the
house of God.
Boccaccio. Moderate wealth is quite enough to
teach with.
Petrarca. The luxuryand rapacity of the church,
together with the insolence of the barons, excited
that discontent which emboldened Nicolode Rienzi
to assume the station of tribune. Singular was
the prudence, and opportune the boldness, he
manifested at first. His modesty, his piety, his
calm severity, his unbiassed justice, won to him
the affections of every good citizen, and struck
horror into the fastnesses of every castellated
felon. He might by degrees have restored the
republic of Rome, had he preserved his mode-
ration : he might have become the master of
Italy, had he continued the master of himself :
but he allowed the weakest of the passions to run
away with him : he fancied he could not inebriate
himself soon enough with the intemperance of
power. He called for seven crowns, and placed
them successively on his head. He cited Lewis of
Bavaria and Charles of Bohemia to appear and
plead their causes before him; and lastly, not
content with exasperating and concentrating the
hostility of barbarians, he set at defiance the best
and highest feelings of his more instructed coun-
trymen, and displayed his mockery of religion
and decency by bathing in the porphyry font of
the Lateran. How my soul grieved for his defec-
tion ! How bitterly burst forth my complaints,
when he ordered the imprisonment of Stefano
Colonna in his ninetieth year ! For these atro-
cities you know with what reproaches I assailed
him, traitor as he was to the noblest cause that
ever strung the energies of mankind. For this
cause, under his auspices, I had abandoned all
hope of favour and protection from the pontiff : I
had cast into peril, almost into perdition, the friend-
ship, familiarity, and love of the Colonnas. Even
you, Giovanni, thought me more rash than you
would say you thought me, and wondered at seeing
me whirled along with the tempestuous triumphs
that seemed mounting toward the Capitol. It is
only in politics that an actor appears greater by
the magnitude of the theatre ; and we readily and
enthusiastically give way to the deception. In-
deed, whenever a man capable of performing great
and glorious actions is emerging from obscurity,
it is our duty to remove, if we can, all obstruction
from before him ; to increase his scope and his
powers, to extoll and amplify his virtues. This is
always requisite, and often insufficient, to counter-
act the workings of malignity round about him.
But finding him afterward false and cruel, and,
instead of devoting himself to the commonwealth,
exhausting it by his violence and sacrificing it to
his vanity, then it behoves us to stamp the foot,
and to call in the people to cast down the idol.
For nothing is so immoral or pernicious as to keep
up the illusion of greatness in wicked men. Their
crimes, because they have fallen into the gulf of
them, we call misfortunes; and, amid ten thousand
mourners, grieve only for him who made them so.
Is this reason 1 is this humanity ?
Boccaccio. Alas ! it is man.
Petrarca. Can we wonder then that such
wretches have turned him to such purposes'?
The calmness, the sagacity, the sanctitude of
Rienzi, in the ascent to his elevation, rendered
him only the more detestable for his abuse of
power.
Boccaccio. Surely the man grew mad.
Petrarca. Men often give the hand to the mad-
ness that seizes them. He yielded to pride and
luxury : behind them came jealousy and distrust ;
fear followed these, and cruelty followed fear.
Then the intellects sought the subterfuge that be-
wildered them ; and an ignoble flight was precluded
by an ignominious death.
Boccaccio. No mortal is less to be pitied, or
more to be detested, than he into whose hands are
thrown the fortunes of a nation, and who squanders
them away in the idle gratification of his pride
and his ambition. Are not these already grati-
fied to the full by the confidence and deference of
his countrymen? Can silks, and the skins of
animals, can hammered metals and sparkling
stones, enhance the value of legitimate dominion
over the human heart? Can a wise man be de-
sirous of having a less wise successor ? And, of all
the world, would he exhibit this inferiority in a
son ? Irrational as are all who aim at despotism,
this is surely the most irrational of their specula-
tions. Vulgar men are more anxious for title and
decoration than for power ; and notice, in their
estimate, is preferable to regard. We ought as
little to mind the extinction of such existences as
the dying down of a favourable wind in the pro-
secution of a voyage. They are fitter for the cal-
endar than for history, and it is well when we find
them in last year's.
Petrarca. What a year was Rienzi's last to me !
What an extinction of all that had not been yet
extinguished ! Visionary as was the flash of his
glory, there was another more truly so, which this,
my second great loss and sorrow, opened again
before me.
Verona ! loveliest of cities, but saddest to my
memory! while the birds were singing in thy
cypresses the earliest notes of spring, the blithest
818
PENTAMERON.
of hope, the tenderest of desire, she, my own
Laura, fresh as the dawn around her, stood be-
fore me. It was her transit ; I knew it ere she
spake.*
O Giovanni ! the heart that has once been
bathed in love's pure fountain, retains the pulse of
youth for ever. Death can only take away the
sorrowful from our affections : the flower expands ;
the colourless film that enveloped it falls off and
perishes.
Boccaccio, We may well believe it : and, believ-
ing it, let us cease to be disquieted for their ab-
sence who have but retired into another chamber.
We are like those who have overslept the hour :
when we rejoin our friends, there is only the more
joyance and congratulation. Would we break a
precious vase, because it is as capable of contain-
ing the bitter as the sweet ? No : the very things
which touch us the most sensibly are those which
we should be the most reluctant to forget. The
noble mansion is most distinguished by the beauti-
ful images it retains of beings past away ; and so
is the noble mind.
The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and
prepare them for the necessity of their fall : and
thus insensibly are we, as years close round us,
detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle
pressure of recorded sorrows. When the graceful
dance and its animating music are over, and the
clapping of hands (so lately linked) hath ceased ;
when youth and comeliness and pleasantry are
departed,
Who would desire to spend the following day
Among the extinguisht lamps, the faded wreaths,
The dust and desolation left behind ?
But whether we desire it or not, we must sub-
mit. He who hath appointed our days hath
placed their contents within them, and our efforts
can neither cast them out nor change their quality.
In our present mood we will not dwell too long on
this subject, but rather walk forth into the world,
and look back again on the bustle of life. Neither
of us may hope to exert in future any extraordi-
nary influence on the political movements of our
country, by our presence or intervention : yet
surely it is something to have set at defiance the
mercenaries who assailed us, and to have stood
aloof from the distribution of the public spoils. I
have at all times taken less interest than you have
taken in the affairs of Rome ; for the people of
that city neither are, nor were of old, my
favourites.
It appears to me that there are spots accursed,
spots doomed to eternal sterility; and Rome is
one of them. No gospel announces the glad tid-
ings of resurrection to a fallen nation. Once
down, and down for ever. The Babylonians, the
Macedonians, the Romans, prove it. Babylon is
a desart, Macedon a den of thieves, Rome (what
is written as an invitation on the walls of her
* This event is related by Petrarca as occurring on the
sixth of April, the day of her decease.
streets) one vast immondezzaio, morally and sub-
stantially.
Petrarca. The argument does not hold good
throughout. Persia was conquered : yet Persia
long afterward sprang up again with renovated
strength and courage, and Sapor mounted his
war-horse from the crouching neck of Valentinian.
In nearly all the campaigns with the Romans she
came off victorious : none of her kings or gene-
rals was ever led in triumph to the Capitol ; but
several Roman emperors lay prostrate on their
purple in the fields of Parthia. Formidable at
home, victorious over friends and relatives, their
legions had seized and subdivided the arable plains
of Campania and the exuberant pastures of the Po;
but the glebe that bordered the Araxes was un-
broken by them. Persia, since those times, has
passed through many vicissitudes, of defeat and
victory, of obscurity and glory : and why may not
our country ? Let us take hopes where we can
find them, and raise them where we find none.
Boccaccio. In some places we may ; in others,
the fabric of hopes is too arduous an undertaking.
When I was in Rome nothing there reminded me
of her former state, until I saw a goose in the
grass under the Capitoline hill. This perhaps was
the only one of her inhabitants that had not de-
generated. Even the dogs looked sleepy, mangy,
suspicious, perfidious, and thievish. The goose
meanwhile was making his choice of herbage
about triumphal arches and monumental columns,
and picking up worms ; the surest descendants,
the truest representatives, and enjoying the in-
alienable succession, of the Caesars. This is all
that goose or man can do at Rome. She, I think,
will be the last city to rise from the dead.
Petrarca. There is a trumpet, and on earth,
that shall awaken even her.
Boccaccio. I should like to live and be pre-
sent.
Petrarca. This can not be expected. But you
may live many years, and see many things to
make you happy. For you will not close the doors
too early in the evening of existence against the
visits of renovating and cheerful thoughts, which
keep our lives long up, and help them to sink at
last without pain or pressure.
Boccaccio. Another year or two perhaps, with
God's permission. Fra Biagio felt my pulse on
Wednesday, and cried, " Courage ! ser Giovanni !
there is no danger of Paradise yet : the Lord
forbid!"
" Faith !" said I, "Fra Biagio ! I hope there is
not. What with prayers and masses, I have planted
a foot against my old homestead, and will tug
hard to remain where I am."
" A true soldier of the faith !" quoth Fra Biagio,
and drank a couple of flasks to my health. No-
thing else, he swore to Assunta, would have
induced him to venture beyond one ; he hating
all excesses, they give the adversary such advan-
tage over us ; although God is merciful and makes
allowances.
Petrarca. Impossible as it is to look far and
PENTAMEROK
319
with pleasure into the future, what a privilege is
it, how incomparably greater than any other that
genius can confer, to be able to direct the back-
ward flight of fancy and imagination to the reces-
ses they most delighted in ; to be able, as the
shadows lengthen in our path, to call up before
us the youth of our sympathies in all their tender-
ness and purity !
Boccaccio, Mine must have been very pure, I
suspect, for I am sure they were very tender. But
I need not call them up ; they come readily enough
of their own accord ; and I find it perplexing at
times to get entirely rid of them. Sighs are very
troublesome when none meet them half-way.
The worst of mine now are while I am walking
uphill. Even to walk upstairs, which used occa-
sionally to be as pleasant an exercise as any,
grows sadly too much for me. For which rea-
son I lie here below ; and it is handier too for
Assunta.
Petrarca. Very judicious and considerate. In
high situations, like Certaldo and this villetta,
there is no danger from fogs or damps of any kind.
The skylark yonder seems to have made it her
first station in the air.
Boccaccio. To welcome thee, Francesco !
Petrarca. Eather say, to remind us both of our
Dante. AH the verses that ever were written on
the nightingale are scarcely worth the beautiful
triad of this divine poet on the lark.
La lodoletta che in aere si spazia,
Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
Dell' ultima dolcezza che la sazia.
In the first of them do not you see the twinkling
of her wings againt the sky ] As often as I repeat
them my ear is satisfied, my heart (like her's)
contented.
Boccaccio. I agree with you in the perfect and
unrivalled beauty of the first ; but in the third
there is a redundance. Is not contenta quite
enough, without che la sazia? The picture is
before us, the sentiment within us, and behold !
we kick when we are full of manna.
Petrarca. I acknowledge the correctness and
propriety of your remark ; and yet beauties in
poetry must be examined as carefully as blemishes,
and even more ; for we are more easily led away
by them, although we do not dwell on them so
long. We two should never be accused, in these
days, of malevolence to Dante, if the whole world
heard us. Being here alone, we may hazard our
opinions even less guardedly, and set each other
right as we see occasion.
Boccaccio. Come on then ; I will venture. I will
go back to find fault; I will seek it even in
Francesca.
To hesitate, and waver, and turn away from the
subject, was proper and befitting in her. The
verse, however, in no respect satisfies me. Any-
one would imagine from it that Galeotto was really
both the title of the book and the name of the
author ; neither of which is true. Galeotto, in the
Tavola Ritonda, is the person who interchanges
the correspondence between Lancilotto and
Ginevra. The appellation is now become the
generic of all men whose business it is to promote
the success of others in illicit love. Dante was
stimulated in his satirical vein, when he attributed
to Francesca a ludicrous expression, which she was
very unlikely in her own nature, and greatly more
so in her state of suffering, to employ or think of,
whirled round as she was incessantly with her
lover. Neither was it requisite to say, " the book
was a Galeotto, and so was the author," when she
had said already that a passage in it had seduced
her. Omitting this unnecessary and ungraceful
line, her confusion and her delicacy are the more
evident, and the following comes forth with fresh
beauty. In the commencement of her speech
I wish these had likewise been omitted,
E cio sa il tuo dottore ;
since he knew no more about it than anybody else.
As we proceed, there are passages in which I can
not find my way, and where I suspect the poet
could not show it me. For instance, is it not
strange that Briareus should be punished in the
same way as Nimrod, when Nimrod sinned against
the living God; and when Briareus attempted to
overthrow one of the living God's worst anta-
gonists, Jupiter? an action which our blessed Lord,
and the doctors of the holy church, not only
attempted, but (to their glory and praise for ever-
more) accomplished.
Petrarca. Equally strange that Brutus and
Cassius (a remark which escaped us in our mention
of them yesterday) should be placed in the hottest
pit of hell for slaying Caesar, and that Cato, who
would have done the same thing with less com-
punction, should be appointed sole guardian and
governor of purgatory.
Boccaccio. What interest could he have made to
be promoted to so valuable a post, in preference to
doctors, popes, confessors, and fathers ] Wonder-
ful indeed ! and they never seemed to take it much
amiss.
Petrarca. Alighieri not only throws together
the most opposite and distant characters, but even
makes Jupiter and our Saviour the same person.
E se lecito m' 6, o sommo Glove !
Che fosti in terra per noi crocijisso.
Boccaccio. Jesus Christ ought no more to be
called Jupiter than Jupiter ought to be called
Jesus Christ.
Petrarca. In the whole of the Inferno I find
only the descriptions of Francesca and of Ugolino
at all admirable. Vigorous expressions there are
many, but lost in their application to base objects ;
and insulated thoughts in high relief, but with
everything crumbling round them. Propor-
tionally to the extent, there is a scantiness of
poetry, if delight is the purpose or indication of
it. Intensity shows everywhere the powerful
master : and yet intensity is not invitation. A
great poet may do everything but repell us.
Established laws are pliant before him : neverthe-
less his office hath both its duties and its limits.
Boccaccio. The simile in the third canto, the
320
PENTAMERON.
satire at the close of the fourth, and the descrip-
tion at the commencement of the eighth, if not
highly admirable, are what no ordinary poet could
have produced.
Petrarca. They are streaks of light in a thunder-
cloud. You might have added the beginning of
the twenty-seventh, in which the poetry of itself
is good, although not excellent, and the subject of
it assuages the weariness left on us, after passing
through so many holes and furnaces, and under-
going the dialogue between Simon and master
Adam.
Boccaccio. I am sorry to be reminded of this.
It is like the brawl of the two fellows in Horace's
Journey to Brundusium. They are the straitest
parallels of bad wit and bad poetry that ancient
and modern times exhibit. Ought I to speak so
sharply of poets who elsewhere have given me so
great delight 1
Petrarca. Surely you ought. No criticism is
less beneficial to an author or his reader than one
tagged with favour and tricked with courtesy.
The gratification of our humours is not the intent
and scope of criticism, and those who indulge in
it on such occasions are neither wise nor honest.
Boccaccio. I never could see why we should
designedly and prepensely give to one writer more
than his due, to another less. If we offer an
honest man ten crowns when we owe him only
five, he is apt to be offended. The perfumer and
druggist weigh out the commodity before them to
a single grain. If they do it with odours and
powders, should not we attempt it likewise, in
what is either the nutriment or the medicine of
the mind ? I do not wonder that Criticism has
never yet been clear-sighted and expert among
us : I do, that she has never been dispassionate
and unprejudiced. There are critics who, lying
under no fear of a future state in literature, and
all whose hope is for the present day, commit in-
justice without compunction. Every one of these
people has some favourite object for the embraces
of his hatred, and a figure of straw will never
serve the purpose. He must throw his stone at
what stands out ; he must twitch the skirt of him
who is ascending. Do you imagine that the worst
writers of any age were treated with as much
asperity as you and I ? No, Francesco ! give the
good folks their due : they are humaner to their
fellow-creatures.
Petrarca. Disregarding the ignorant and pre-
sumptuous, we have strengthened our language
by dipping it afresh in its purer and higher
source, and have called the Graces back to it.
We never have heeded how Jupiter would have
spoken, but only how the wisest men would, and
how words follow the movements of the mind.
There are rich and copious veins of mineral in
regions far remote from commerce and habita-
tions : these veins are useless : so are those
writings of which the style is uninviting and
inaccessible, through its ruggedness, its chasms,
its points, its perplexities, its obscurity. There
are scarcely three authors, beside yourself, who
appear to heed whether any guest will enter the
gate, quite satisfied with the consciousness that
they have stores within. Such wealth, in another
generation, maybe curious, but can not be current.
When a language grows up all into stalk, and
its flowers begin to lose somewhat of their cha-
racter, we must go forth into the open fields,
through the dingles, and among the mountains,
for fresh seed. Our ancestors did this, no very
long time ago. Foremost in zeal, in vigour and
authority, Alighieri took on himself the same
patronage and guardianship of our adolescent
dialect, as Homer of the Greek : and my Gio-
vanni hath since endowed it so handsomely, that
additional bequests, we may apprehend, will only
corrupt its principles, and render it lax and
lavish.
Boccaccio. Beware of violating those canons of
criticism you have just laid down. We have no
right to gratify one by misleading another, nor,
when we undertake to show the road, to bandage
the eyes of him who trusts us for his conductor. In
regard to censure, those only speak ill who speak
untruly, unless a truth be barbed by malice and
aimed by passion. To be useful to as many as
possible is the especial duty of a critic, and his
utility can only be attained by rectitude and pre-
cision. He walks in a garden which is not his
own ; and he neither must gather the blossoms to
embellish his discourse, nor break the branches
to display his strength. Bather let him point to
what is out of order, and help to raise what is lying
on the ground.
Petrarca. Auditors, and readers in general,
come to hear or read, not your opinion delivered,
but their own repeated. Fresh notions are as
disagreeable to some as fresh air to others ; and
this inability to bear them is equally a symptom
of disease. Impatience and intolerance are sure
to be excited at any check to admiration in the
narratives of Ugolino and of Francesca : nothing
is to be abated : they are not only to be admirable,
but entirely faultless.
Boccaccio. You have proved to me that, in
blaming our betters, we ourselves may sometimes
be unblamed. When authors are removed by
death beyond the reach of irritation at the touch
of an infirmity, we best consult their glory by
handling their works comprehensively and un-
sparingly. Vague and indefinite criticism suits
only slight merit, and presupposes it. Linea-
ments irregular and profound as Dante's are
worthy of being traced with patience and fidelity.
In the charts of our globe we find distinctly
marked the promontories and indentations, and
oftentimes the direction of unprofitable marshes
and impassable sands and wildernesses : level sur-
faces are unnoted. I would not detract one atom
from the worth of Dante ; which can not be done
by summing it up exactly, but may be by negli-
;ence in the computation.
Petrarca. Your business, in the lectures, is not
to show his merits, but his meaning ; and to give
only so much information as may be given without
PENTAMERON.
321
offence to the factious. Whatever you do beyond
is for yourself, your friends, and futurity.
Boccaccio. I may write more lectures, but never
shall deliver them in person, as the first. Pro-
bably, so near as I am to Florence, and so dear as
Florence hath always been to me, I shall see tha'
city no more. The last time I saw it, I only
passed through. Four years ago, you remember
I lost my friend Acciaioli. Early in the summer
of the preceding, his kindness had induced him
to invite me again to Naples, and I undertook a
journey to the place where my life had been too
happy. There are many who pay dearly for sun
shine early in the season : many, for pleasure in
the prime of life. After one day lost in idleness
at Naples, if intense and incessant thoughts (how
ever fruitless) may be called so, I proceeded by
water to Sorento, and thence over the mountain!
to Amain. Here, amid whatever is most beautifu'
and most wonderful in scenery, I found the Senis
calco. His palace, hisgardens, his terraces, his woods,
abstracted his mind entirely from the solicitudes
of state; and I was gratified at finding in the
absolute ruler of a kingdom, the absolute master
of his time. Rare felicity ! and he enjoyed it the
more after the toils of business and the intricacies
of policy. His reception of me was most cordial.
He showed me his long avenues of oranges and
citrons : he helped me to mount the banks oJ
slippery short herbage, whence we could look down
on their dark masses, and their broad irregu-
lar belts, gemmed with golden fruit and sparkling
flowers. We stood high above them, but not
above their fragrance, and sometimes we wished
the breeze to bring us it, and sometimes to carry
a part of it away : and the breeze came and went
as if obedient to our volition. Another day he
conducted me farther from the palace, and showed
me, with greater pride than I had ever seen in
him before, the pale-green olives, on little smooth
plants, the first year of their bearing. " I will
teach my people here," said he, "to make as
delicate oil as any of our Tuscans." We had feasts
among the caverns : we had dances by day under
the shade of the mulberries, by night under the
lamps of the arcade : we had music on the shore
and on the water.
When next I stood before him, it was afar from
these. Torches flamed through the pine-forest of
the Certosa : priests and monks led the procession :
the sound of the brook alone filled up the inter-
vals of the dirge : and other plumes than the dan-
cers' waved round what was Acciaioli.
Petrarca. Since in his family there was nobody
who, from education or pursuits or consanguinity,
could greatly interest him ; nobody to whom so
large an accumulation of riches would not rather
be injurious than beneficial, and place rather in
the way of scoffs and carpings than exalt to respec-
tability; I regret that he omitted to provide for the
comforts of your advancing years.
Boccaccio. The friend would not spoil the phi-
losopher. Our judgment grows the stronger by the
dying-down of our affections.
Petrarca. With a careful politician and diploma-
tist all things find their places but men : and yet
he thinks he has niched it nicely, when, as the gar-
dener is left in the garden, the tailor on his board
at the casement, he leaves the author at his desk :
to remove him would put the world in confusion.
Boccaccio. Acciaioli knew me too well to sup-
pose we could serve each other : and his own capa-
city was amply sufficient for all the exigencies of
the 'state. Generous,* kind, constant soul ! the
emblazoned window throws now its rich mantle
over him, moved gently by the vernal air of Ma-
rignole, or, as the great chapel-door is opened to
some visitor of distinction, by the fresh eastern
breeze from the valley of the Elsa. We too (may-
hap) shall be visited in the same condition ; but
in a homelier edifice, but in a humbler sepulchre,
but by other and far different guests ! While they
are discussing and sorting out our merits, which
are usually first discovered among the nettles in
the church-yard, we will carry this volume with
us, and show Dante what we have been doing.
Petrarca. We have each of us had our warn-
ings : indeed all men have them : and not only
at our time of life, but almost every day of their
existence. They come to us even in youth ;
although, like the lightnings that are said to
play incessantly, in the noon and in the morning
and throughout the year, we seldom see and never
look for them. Come, as you proposed, let us now
continue with our Dante.
TJgolino relates to him his terrible dream, in
which he fancied that he had seen Gualando, Sis-
mondi, and Lanfranco, killing his children : and
he says that, when he awakened, he heard them
moan in their sleep. In such circumstances, his
awakening ought rather to have removed the im-
pression he laboured under ; since it showed him
the vanity of the dream, and afforded him the con-
solation that the children were alive. Yet he adds
immediately, what, if he were to speak it at all, he
should have deferred,
" You are very cruel if you do not begin to
•rieve, considering what my heart presaged to me ;
and, if you do not weep at it, what is it you are
wont to weep at ] "
Boccaccio. Certainly this is ill-timed ; and the
inference would indeed be better without it
anywhere.
Petrarca. Farther on, in whatever way we
interpret
Poscia piu che '1 dolor pote '1 digiuno,
e poet falls sadly from his sublimity.
Boccaccio. If the fact were as he mentions, he
should have suppressed it, since we had already
seen the most pathetic in the features, and the
most horrible in the stride, of Famine. Gnawing,
not in hunger, but in rage and revenge, the arch-
)ishop's scull, is, in the opinion of many, rather
udicrous than tremendous.
* This sentiment must be attributed to the gratitude of
Joccaccio, not to the merits of Acciaioli, who treated him
imvorthily.
322
PENTAMERON.
Petrarca. In mine, rather disgusting than ludi-
crous: but Dante (we must whisper it) is the great
master of the disgusting. When the ancients wrote
indecently and loosely, they presented what either
had something alluring or something laughable
about it, and, if they disgusted, it was involuntarily.
Indecency is the most shocking in deformity. We
call indecent, while we do not think it, the naked-
ness of the Graces and the Loves.
Boccaccio. When we are less barbarous we shall
become more familiar with them, more tolerant of
sliding beauty, more hospitable to erring passion,
and perhaps as indulgent to frailty as we now are
to ferocity. I wish I could find in some epitaph,
" he loved so many : " it is better than, " he killed
so many." Yet the world hangs in admiration
over this ; you and I should be found alone before
the other.
Petrarca. Of what value are all the honours we
can expect from the wisest of our species, when
even the wisest hold us lighter in estimation than
those who labour to destroy what God delighted
to create, came on earth to ransom, and suffered
on the cross to save ! Glory then, glory can it be,
to devise with long study, and to execute with
vast exertions, what the fang of a reptile or the
leaf of a weed accomplishes in an hour ] Shall
anyone tell me, that the numbers sent to death or
to wretchedness make the difference, and consti-
tute the great ? Away then from the face of na-
ture as we see her daily ! away from the intermix
able varieties of animated creatures ! away from
what is fixed to the earth and lives by the sun
and dew ! Brute inert matter does it : behold it in
the pestilence, in the earthquake, in the conflagra-
tion, in the deluge !
& Boccaccio. Perhaps we shall not be liked the
better for what we ourselves have written : yet I
do believe we shall be thanked for having brought
to light, and for having sent into circulation, the
writings of other men. We deserve as much,
were it only that it gives people an opportunity
of running over us, as ants over the images of gods
in orchards, and of reaching by our means the
less crude fruits of less ungenial days. Be this as
it may, we have spent our time well in doing it,
and enjoy (what idlers never can) as pleasant a
view in looking back as forward.
Now do tell me, before we say more of the
Paradiso, what can I offer in defence of the Latin
scraps from litanies and lauds, to the number of
fifty or thereabout 1
Petrarca. Say nothing at all, unless you can
obtain spine Indulgences for repeating them.
Boccaccio. And then such verses as these, and
several score of no better :
I credo ch' ei credette ch' io credessi.
O Jacomo, dicea, di Bant Andrea.
Come Livio scrisse, che non erra.
Nel quale un cinque cento dieci e cinque.
Mille ducento con sessanta sei.
Pepe Satan, Pepe Satan, Pepe.
Raffael mai amec, zdbe, almt.
Non avria pur dell orlo fatto crich.
Petrarca. . There is no occasion to look into and
investigate a puddle ; we perceive at first sight its
impurity ; but it is useful to analyse, if we can,
a limpid and sparkling water, in which the com-
mon observer finds nothing but transparency and
freshness : for in this, however the idle and igno-
rant ridicule our process, we may exhibit what is
unsuspected, and separate what is insalubrious.
We must do then for our poet that which other
men do for themselves ; we must defend him by
advancing the best authority for something as
bad or worse; and although it puzzle our inge-
nuity, yet we may almost make out in quantity,
and quite in quality, our spicilege from Virgil
himself. If younger men were present, I would
admonish and exhort them to abate no more of
their reverence for the Roman poet on the demon-
stration of his imperfections, than of their love
for a parent or guardian who had walked with
them far into the country, and had shown them
its many beauties and blessings, on his lassitude
or his debility. Never will such men receive too
much homage. He who can best discover their
blemishes, will best appreciate their merit, and
most zealously guard their honour. The flippancy
with which genius is often treated by mediocrity,
is the surest sign of a prostrate mind's inconti-
nence and impotence. It will gratify the national
pride of our Florentines, if you show them how
greatly the nobler parts of their fellow-citizen
excell the loftiest of his Mantuan guide.
Boccaccio. Of Virgil ?
Petrarca. Even so.
Boccaccio. He had no suspicion of his equality
with this prince of Roman poets, whose footsteps
he follows with reverential and submissive obse-
quiousness.
Petrarca. Have you never observed that persons
of high rank universally treat their equals with
deference ; and that ill-bred ones are often smart
and captious ? Even their words are uttered with
a brisk and rapid air, a tone higher than the
natural, to sustain the factitious consequence and
vapouring independence they assume. Small
critics and small poets take all this courage when
they licentiously shut out the master ; but Dante
really felt the veneration he would impress. Sus-
picion of his superiority he had none whatever,
nor perhaps have you yourself much more.
Boccaccio. I take all proper interest in my
author ; I am sensible to the duties of a commen-
tator ; but in truth I dare hardly entertain that
exalted notion. I should have the whole world
against me.
Petrarca. You must expect it for any exalted
notion ; for anything that so startles a prejudice
as to arouse a suspicion that it may be dispelled.
You must expect it if you throw open the windows
of infection. Truth is only unpleasant in its
novelty. He who first utters it, says to his hearer,
" You are less wise than I am." Now who likes
this?
Boccaccio. But surely if there are some very high
places in our Alighieri, the inequalities are per-
PENTAMERON.
323
petual and vast ; whereas the regularity, the con-
tinuity, the purity of Virgil, are proverbial.
Petrarca. It is only in literature that what is
proverbial is suspicious; and mostly in poetry.
Do we find in Dante, do we find in Ovid, such
tautologies and flatnesses as these,
Quam si dura silex . . aut stet Marpessia cautef
Majus adorta nefas . . majoremque orsa furorem.
Anna amens capio . . nee tat rationis in annis.
Superatne . . et vescetur aura
JEtheria . . neque adhuc credelibut occubat umbrisf
Omnes . . coelicolas . . omnes supera alta tenentes.
Scuta latentia condunt.
Has inter voces . . media inter talia verba.
Finem dedit . . ore loquendi.
Insonuere cavas . . tonitumque dedere cavernce.
Ferro accitam . . crebrisque bipennibus.
Nee nostri generis puerum . . nee tanguinis.
Boccaccio. These things look very ill in Latin ;
and yet they had quite escaped my observation.
We often find, in the Psalms of David, one section
of a sentence placed as it were in symmetry with
another, and not at all supporting it by present-
ing the same idea. It is a species of piety to drop
the nether lip in admiration ; but in reality it is
not only the modern taste that is vitiated ; the
ancient is little less so, although differently. To
say over again what we have just ceased to say,
with nothing added, nothing improved, is equally
bad in all languages and all times.
Petrarca. But in these repetitions we may
imagine one part of the chorus to be answering
another part opposite.
Boccaccio. Likely enough. However, you have
ransacked poor Virgil to the skin, and have stripped
him clean.
Petrarca. Of all who have ever dealt with Win-
ter, he is the most frost-bitten. Hesiod's descrip-
tion of the snowy season is more poetical and more
formidable. What do you think of these icicles,
CEraque dissiliunt vulgo ; vestesque rigescunt !
Boccaccio. Wretched falling-off.
Petrarca. He comes close enough presently.
Stiriaque birsutis dependent horrida barbis.
We will withdraw from the Alps into the city.
And now are you not smitten with reverence at
seeing
Romanos rerum dominos ; gentemque togatam f
The masters of the world . . and long-tailed coatt !
Come to Carthage. What a recommendation to
a beautiful queen does tineas offer, in himself and
his associates !
Lupi ceu
Haptores ; atrS in nebula, quos improba ventrit
Exegit csccos rabies !
Ovid is censured for his
Consiliit non curribus utere nostris.
Virgil never for
Inceptoque et tedibut haeret in iisdem.
The same in its quality, but more forced.
The affectation of Ovid was light and playful ;
Virgil's was wilful, perverse, and grammatistical.
Are we therefore to suppose that every hand able
to elaborate a sonnet may be raised up against the
majesty of Virgil1? Is ingratitude so rare and
precious, that we should prefer the exposure of
his faults to the enjoyment of his harmony 1 He
first delivered it to his countrymen in unbroken
links under the form of poetry, and consoled them
for the eloquent tongue that had withered on the
Rostra. It would be no difficult matter to point
out at least twenty bad passages in the jffineid, and
a proportionate number of worse in the Georgics.
In your comparison of poet with poet, the defects
as well as the merits of each ought to be placed
side by side. This is the rather to be expected,
as Dante professes to be Virgil's disciple. You
may easily show that his humility no more became
him than his fierceness.
Boccaccio. You have praised the harmony of
the Roman poet. Now in single verses I think
our poetry is sometimes more harmonious than the
latin, but never in whole sentences. Advantage
could perhaps be taken of our metre if we broke
through the stanza. Our language is capable, I
think, of all the vigour and expression of the
latin ; and, in regard to the pauses in our versifi-
tion, in which chiefly the harmony of metre con-
sists, we have greatly the advantage. What for
instance is more beautiful than your
Solo . . e pensoso . . i piu deserti campi
Vo . . misurando . . a passi tardi . . e lenti.
Petrarca. My critics have found fault with the
lenti, calling it an expletive, and ignorant that
equally in Italian and Latin the word signifies both
slow and languid, while tardi signifies slow only.
Boccaccio. Good poetry, like good music, pleases
most people, but the ignorant and inexpert lose
half its pleasures, the invidious lose them all.
What a paradise lost is here !
Petrarca. If we deduct the inexpert, the igno-
rant, and the invidious, can we correctly say it
pleases most people ? But either my worst com-
positions are the most admired, orthe insincere and
malignant bring them most forward for admira-
tion, keeping the others in the back-ground ! Son-
netteers, in consequence, have started up from all
quarters.
Boccaccio. The sonnet seems peculiarly adapted
to the languor of a melancholy and despondent
love, the rhymes returning and replying to every
plaint and every pulsation. Our poetasters are
now converting it into the penfold and pound of
stray thoughts and vagrant fancies. No sooner
have they collected in their excursions as much
matter as they conveniently can manage, than
they seat themselves down and set busily to
work, punching it neatly out with a clever cubic
stamp of fourteen lines in diameter.
Petrarca. A pretty sonnet may be written on a
lambkin or a parsnep ; there being room enough
for truth and tenderness on the edge of a leaf or
the tip of an ear ; but a great poet must clasp the
higher passions breast high, and compell them in
an authoritative tone to answer his interrogatories.
v2
321
PENTAMERON.
We will now return again to Virgil, and consider
in what relation he stands to Dante. Our Tuscan
and Homer are never inflated.
Boccaccio. Pardon my interruption ; but do
you find that Virgil is ? Surely he has always
borne the character of the most chaste, the most
temperate, the most judicious among the poets.
Petrarca. And will not soon lose it. Yet never
had there swelled, in the higher or the lower
regions of poetry, such a gust as here, in the ex-
ordium of the Georgia :
Tuque ndeo, quern mox quae sint habitura deorum
Concilia incertum est, urbisne invisere, Caesar,
Terrarumque velis curam, et te maximus orbis
Auctorem frugum ? . . . .
Boccaccio. Already forestalled !
Petrarca.
.... tempestatumque potentem.
Boccaccio. Very strange coincidence of opposite
qualifications.
Petrarca.
Accipiat, cingens materna tempera myrto :
An dens immensi venias maris ....
Boccaccio. Surely he would not put down
Neptune !
Petrarca.
. . . . ac tua nautae
Numina sola colant : tibi serviat ultima Thule.
Boccaccio. Catch him up ! catch him up ! un-
coil the whole of the vessel's rope ! never did man
fall overboard so unluckily, or sink so deep on a
sudden.
Petrarca.
Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undit t
Boccaccio. Nobody in his senses would bid
against her : what indiscretion ! and at her time
of life too !
Tethys then really, most gallant Caesar !
If you would only condescend to please her,
With all her waves would your good graces buy,
And you should govern all the Isle of Skie.
Petrarca.
Anne novum tardis sidus te mensibus addas ?
Boccaccio. For what purpose 1 If the months
were slow, he was not likely to mend their speed
by mounting another passenger. But the vacant
place is such an inviting one !
Petrarca.
Qua locus Erigonen inter Chelasque sequentes
Panditur.
Boccaccio. Plenty of room, sir !
Petrarca.
.... ipse tibi jam brachia contrahit ardens,
Scorpius . . .
Boccaccio. I would not incommode him; I
•would beg him to be quite at his ease.
Petrarca.
. . . . et cceli just a plus parte reliquit.
Quicquid eris (nam te nee sperent Tartara regem
Nee tibi regnandi veniet tarn dira cupido,
Quamvis Elysios miretur Grsecia campos,
Nee repetita sequi curet Proserpina matrem.)
Boccaccio. Was it not enough to have taken all
Varro's invocation, much enlarged, without adding
these verses to the other twenty-three ]
Petrarca. Vainly will you pass through the
later poets of the empire, and look for the like ex-
travagance and bombast. Tell me candidly your
opinion, not of the quantity but of the quality.
Boccaccio. I had scarcely formed one upon them
before. Honestly and truly, it is just such a
rumbling rotundity as might have been blown,
with much ado, if Lucan and Nero had joined
their pipes and puffed together into the same
bladder. I never have admired, since I was a
schoolboy, the commencement or the conclusion
of the Oeorgics; an unwholesome and consuming
fungus at the foot of the tree, a withered and loose
branch at the summit.
Boccaccio. Virgil and Dante are altogether so
different, that, unless you will lend me your whole
store of ingenuity, I shall never bring them to
bear one upon the other.
Petrarca. Frequently the points of comparison
are salient in proportion as the angles of simili-
tude recede : and the absence of a quality in one
man usually makes us recollect its presence in
another ; hence the comparison is at the same
time natural and involuntary. Few poets are so
different as Homer and Virgil, yet no comparison
has been made oftener. Ovid, although unlike
Homer, is greatly more like him than Virgil is ;
for there is the same facility, and apparently the
same negligence, in both. The great fault in
the Metamorphoses is in the plan, as proposed in
the argument,
primaqueab origine mundi
In mea perpetuum deducere tempera carmen.
Had he divided the more interesting of the
tales, and omitted all the transformations, he
would have written a greater number of exquisite
poems than any author of Italy or Greece. He
wants on many occasions the gravity of Virgil ; he
wants on all the variety of cadence ; but it is a
very mistaken notion that he either has heavier
faults or more numerous. His natural air of levity,
his unequalled and unfailing ease, have always
made the contrary opinion prevalent. Errors
and faults are readily supposed, in literature as in
life, where there is much gaiety : and the appear-
ance of ease, among those who never could acquire
or understand it, excites a suspicion of negligence
and faultiness. Of all the ancient Eomans, Ovid
had the finest imagination ; he likewise had the
truest tact in judging the poetry of his contem-
poraries and predecessors. Compare his estimate
with Quintilian's of the same writers, and this
will strike you forcibly. He was the only one of
his countrymen who could justly appreciate the
labours of Lucretius.
Carmina sublimis tune sunt peritura Luoreti,
Kxitio terras quum dabit una dies. ,
And the kindness with which he rests on all the
others, shows a benignity of disposition which is
PENTAMERON.
325
often lamentably deficient in authors who write
tenderly upon imaginary occasions.
I begin to be inclined to your opinion in regard
to the advantages of our Italian versification. H
surely has a greater variety, in its usual measure
than the Latin, in dactyls and spondees. We
admit several feet into ours : the Latin, if we
believe the grammarians, admits only two into
the heroic ; and at least seven verses in every ten
conclude with a dissyllabic word.
Boccaccio. "We are taught indeed that the fina'
foot of an hexameter is always a spondee : but our
ears deny the assertion, and prove to us that it
never is, any more than it is in the Italian. In
both the one and the other the last foot is uni-
formly a trochee in pronunciation. There is only
one species of Latin verse which ends with a true
inflexible spondee, and this is the scazon. Its
name of the limper is but little prepossessing, yet
the two most beautiful and most perfect poems oJ
the language are composed in it; the Miser Catulle
and the Sirmio.
Petrarca. This is likewise my opinion of those
two little golden images, which however are in-
sufficient to raise Catullus on an equality with
Virgil : nor would twenty such. Amplitude of
dimensions is requisite to constitute the greatnes;
of a poet, beside his symmetry of form and his
richness of decoration. We have conversed more
than once together on the defects and oversights
of the correct and elaborate Mantuan, but never
without the expression of our gratitude for the
exquisite delight he has afforded us. We may
forgive him his Proteus and his Pollio ; but we
can not well forbear to ask him, how -(Eneas came
to know that Acragas was formerly the sire of
high-mettled steeds, even if such had been the
fact ? But such was only the fact a thousand
years afterward, in the reign of Gelon.
Boccaccio. Was it then? Were the horses of
Gelon and Theron and Hiero, of Agrigentine or
Sicilian breed ) The country was never celebrated
for a race adapted to chariots ; such horses were
mostly brought from Thessaly, and probably some
from Africa. I do . not believe there was ever a
fine one in Italy before the invasion of Pyrrhus.
No doubt, Hannibal introduced many. Greece
herself, I suspect, was greatly indebted to the
studs of Xerxes for the noblest 'of her prizes on
the Olympic plain. In the kingdom of Naples I
have observed more horses of high blood than in
any other quarter of Italy. It is there that
Pyrrhus and Hannibal were stationary : and, long
after these, the most warlike of men, the Nor-
mans, took possession of the country. And the
Normans would have horses worthy of their
valour, had they unyoked them from the chariot of
the sun. Subduers of France, of Sicily, of Cyprus,
they made England herself accept their laws.
Virgil, I remember, in the Georgics, has given
some directions in the choice of horses. He speaks
unfavourably of the white : yet painters have been
fond of representing the leaders of armies mounted
on them. And the reason is quite as good as the
reason of a writer on husbandry, Cato or Colu-
mella, for choosing a house-dog of a contrary
colour : it being desirable that a general should
be as conspicuous as possible, and a dog, guarding
against thieves, as invisible.
I love beyond measure in Virgil his kindness
toward dumb creatures. Although he represents
his Mezentius as a hater of the Gods, and so
inhuman as to fasten dead bodies to the living,
and violates in him the unity of character more
than character was ever violated before, we treat
as impossible all he has been telling us of his
atrocities, when we hear his allocution to Rhoabus.
Petrarca. The dying hero, for hero he is tran-
scendently above all the others in the Mneid, is
not only the kindest father, not only the most pas-
sionate in his grief for Lausus, but likewise gives
way to manly sorrows for the mute companion of
his warfare.
Rhcebe diu, res A qua diu mortalibus usquam,
Viximus.
Here the philosophical reflection addressed to
the worthy quadruped, on the brief duration of
human and equine life, is ill applied. It is not
the thought for the occasion; it is not the thought
for the man. He could no mor^ have uttered it
than Rhcebus could have appreciated it. This
is not however quite so great an absurdity as the
tender apostrophe of the monster Proteus to the
dead Eurydice. Beside, the youth of Lausus, and
the activity and strength of Mezentius, as exerted
in many actions just before his fall, do not allow
us to suppose that he who says to his horse
Diu viximus,
had passed the meridian of existence.
Boccaccio. Francesco ! it is a pity you had no
opportunity of looking into the mouth of the
good horse Rhoebus : perhaps his teeth had not
lost all their marks.
Petrarca. They would have been lost upon me,
though horses' mouths to the intelligent are more
trustworthy than many others.
Boccaccio. I have always been of opinion that
Virgil is inferior to Homer, not only in genius,
but in judgment, and to an equal degree at the
very least. I shall never dare to employ half
your suggestions in our irritable city, for fear of
raising up two new factions, the Virgilians and
the Dantists.
Petrarca. I wish in good truth and seriousness
you could raise them, or anything like zeal for
genius, with whomsoever it might abide.
Boccaccio. You really have almost put me out
of conceit with Virgil.
Petrarca. I have done a great wrong then both
io him and you. Admiration is not the pursuivant
to all the steps even of an admirable poet ; but
respect is stationary. Attend him where the
ploughman is unyoking the sorrowful ox from his
companion dead at the furrow ; follow him up the
arduous ascent where he springs beyond the strides
of Lucretius ; and close the procession of his glory
with the coursers and cars of Elis.
326
PENTAMEBON.
THIRD DAY'S INTERVIEW.
It being now the Lord's day, Messer Fran-
cesco thought it meet that he should rise early
in the morning and bestir himself, to hear
mass in the parish church at Certaldo. Where-
upon he went on tiptoe, if so weighty a man could
indeed go in such a fashion, and lifted softly the
latch of Ser Giovanni's chamber-door, that he
might salute him ere he departed, and occasion
no wonder at the step he was about to take. He
found Ser Giovanni fast asleep, with the missal
wide open across his nose, and a pleasant smile on
his genial joyous mouth. Ser Francesco leaned
over the couch, closed his hands together, and,
looking with even more than his usual benignity,
said in a low voice,
" God bless thee, gentle soul ! the mother of
purity and innocence protect thee !"
He then went into the kitchen, where he found
the girl Assunta, and mentioned his resolution.
She informed him that the horse had eaten his*
two beans, and was as strong as a lion and as
ready as a lover. Ser Francesco patted her on the
cheek, and called her semplicetta ! She was over-
joyed at this honour from so great a man, the
bosom-friend of her good master, whom she had
always thought the greatest man in the world, not
excepting Monsignore, until he told her he was
only a dog confronted with Ser Francesco. She
tripped alertly across the paved court into the
stable, and took down the saddle and bridle from
the farther end of the rack. But Ser Francesco,
with his natural politeness, would not allow her
to equip his palfrey.
" This is not the work for maidens," said he ;
" return to the house, good girl ! "
She lingered a moment, then went away ; but,
mistrusting the dexterity of Ser Francesco, she
stopped and turned back again, and peeped
through the half-closed door, and heard sundry
sobs and wheezes round about the girth. Ser
Francesco's wind ill seconded his intention ; and,
although he had thrown the saddle valiantly and
stoutly in its station, yet the girths brought him
into extremity. She entered again, and, dissem-
bling the reason, asked him whether he would not
take a small beaker of the sweet white wine before
he set out, and offered to girdle the horse while
his Reverence bitted and bridled him. Before
any answer could be returned, she had begun.
And having now satisfactorily executed her un-
dertaking, she felt irrepressible delight and glee
at being able to do what Ser Francesco had failed
in. He was scarcely more successful with his
allotment of the labour ; found unlooked-for in-
tricacies and complications in the machinery,
wondered that human wit could not simplify it, and
* Literally, due fave, the expression on such occasions
to signify a small quantity.
declared that the animal had never exhibited such
restiveness before. In fact, he never had expe-
rienced the same grooming. At this conjuncture,
a green cap made its appearance, bound with straw-
coloured ribbon, and surmounted with two bushy
sprigs of hawthorn, of which the globular buds
were swelling, and some bursting, but fewer yet
open. It was young Simplizio Nardi, who some-
times came on the Sunday morning to sweep the
court-yard for Assunta.
" 0 ! this time you are come just when you
were wanted," said the girl.
" Bridle, directly, Ser Francesco's horse, and
then go away about your business."
The youth blushed, and kissed Ser Francesco's
hand, begging his permission. It was soon done.
He then held the stirrup ; and Ser Francesco, with
scarcely three efforts, was seated and erect on the
saddle. The horse however had somewhat more
inclination for the stable than for the expedition ;
and, as Assunta was handing to the rider his long
ebony staff, bearing an ivory caducous, the qua-
druped turned suddenly round. Simplizio called
him bestiaccia ! and then, softening it, poco gar-
bato ! and proposed to Ser Francesco that he
should leave the bastone behind, and take the
crab-switch he presented to him, giving at the
same time a sample of its efficacy, which covered
the long grizzle hair of the worthy quadruped
with a profusion of pink blossoms, like embroider}'.
The offer was declined; but Assunta told Sim-
plizio to carry it himself, and to walk by the side
of Ser Canonico quite up to the church-porch,
having seen what a sad dangerous beast his reve-
rence had under him.
With perfect good will, partly in the pride of
obedience to Assunta, and partly to enjoy the re-
nown of accompanying a canon of holy church,
Simplizio did as she enjoined.
And now the sound of village bells, in many
hamlets and convents and churches out of sight,
was indistinctly heard, and lost again ; and at
last the five of Certaldo seemed to crow over the
faintness of them all. The freshness of the morn-
ing was enough of itself to excite the spirits of
youth ; a portion of which never fails to descend
on years that are far removed from it, if the mind
has partaken in innocent mirth while it was its
season and its duty to enjoy it. Parties of young
and old passed the canonico and his attendant
with mute respect, bowing and bare-headed ; for
that ebony staff threw its spell over the tongue,
which the frank and hearty salutation of the
bearer was inadequate to break. Simplizio, once
or twice, attempted to call back an intimate of
the same age with himself; but the utmost he
could obtain was a riveritissimo ! and a genu-
flexion to the rider. It is reported that a heart-
PENTAMERON.
327
burning rose up from it in the breast of a cousin,
some days after, too distinctly apparent in the
long-drawn appellation of Gnor* Simplizio.
Ser Francesco moved gradually forward, his
steed picking his way along the lane, and looking
fixedly on the stones with all the sobriety of a
mineralogist. He himself was well satisfied with
the pace, and told Simplizio to be sparing of the
switch, unless in case of a hornet or gadfly. Sim-
plizio smiled, toward the hedge, and wondered at
the condescension of so great a theologian and
astrologer, in joking with him about the gadflies
and hornets in the beginning of April. " Ah !
there are men in the world who can make wit
out of anything ! " said he to himself.
As they approached the walls of the town, the
whole country was pervaded by a stirring and di-
versified air of gladness. Laughter and songs
and flutes and viols, inviting voices and complying
responses, mingled with merry bells and with
processional hymns, along the woodland paths
and along the yellow meadows. It was really the
Lord's Day, for he made his creatures happy in
it, and their hearts were thankful. Even the cruel
had ceased from cruelty ; and the rich man alone
exacted from the animal his daily labour. Ser
Francesco made this remark, and told his youthful
guide that he had never been before where he
could not walk to church on a Sunday ; and that
nothing should persuade him to urge the speed of
his beast, on the seventh day, beyond his natural
and willing foot's-pace. He reached the gates of
Certaldo more than half an hour before the time
of service, and he found laurels suspended over
them, and being suspended ; and many pleasant
and beautiful faces were protruded between the
ranks of gentry and clergy who awaited him.
Little did he expect such an attendance ; but
Fra Biagio of San Vivaldo,who himself had offered
no obsequiousness or respect, had scattered the
secret of his visit throughout the whole country.
A young poet, the most celebrated in the town,
approached the canonico with a long scroll of
verses, which fell below the knee, beginning,
" How shall we welcome our illustrious guest ?"
To which Ser Francesco immediately replied,
" Take your favourite maiden, lead the dance with
her, and bid all your friends follow ; you have a
good half-hour for it."
Universal applauses succeeded, the music struck
up, couples were instantly formed. The gentry
on this occasion led out the cittadinanza, as they
usually do in the villeggiatura, rarely in the car-
nival, and never at other times. The elder of the
priests stood round in their sacred vestments, and
looked with cordiality and approbation on the
youths, whose hands and arms could indeed do
much, and did it, but whose active eyes could
rarely move upward the modester of their
partners.
While the elder of the clergy were thus gather-
* Contraction of signur, customary in Tuscany.
ing the fruits of their liberal cares and paternal
exhortations, some of the younger looked on with
a tenderer sentiment, not unmingled with regret.
Suddenly the bells ceased ; the figure of the dance
was broken ; all hastened into the church ; and
many hands that joined on the green, met toge-
ther at the font, and touched the brow recipro-
cally with its lustral waters, in soul-devotion.
After the service, and after a sermon a good
church-hour in length to gratify him, enriched
with compliments from all authors, Christian and
pagan, informing him at the conclusion that, al-
though he had been crowned in the Capitol, he
must die, being born mortal, Ser Francesco rode
homeward. The sermon seemed to have sunk
deeply into him, and even into the horse under
him, for both of them nodded, both snorted,
and one stumbled. Simplizio was twice fain
to cry,
" Ser Canonico ! Eiverenza ! in this country if
we sleep before dinner it does us harm. There are
stones in the road, Ser Canonico, loose as eggs in
a nest, and pretty nigh as thick together, huge
as mountains."
" Good lad ! " said Ser Francesco, rubbing his
eyes, " toss the biggest of them out of the way,
and never mind the rest."
The horse, although he walked, shuffled almost
into an amble as he approached the stable, and
his master looked up at it with nearly the same
contentment. Assunta had been ordered to wait
for his return, and cried,
" 0 Ser Francesco ! you are looking at our
long apricot, that runs the whole length of the
stable and barn, covered with blossoms as the old
white hen is with feathers. You must come in
the summer, and eat this fine fruit with Signer
Padrone. You can not think how ruddy and
golden and sweet and mellow it is. There are
peaches in all the fields, and plums, and pears,
and apples, but there is not another apricot for
miles and miles. Ser Giovanni brought the stone
from Naples before I was born : a lady gave it to
him when she had eaten only half the fruit off it :
but perhaps you may have seen her, for you have
ridden as far as Rome, or beyond. Padrone looks
often at the fruit, and eats it willingly ; and I
have seen him turn over the stones in his plate,
and choose one out from the rest, and put it into
his pocket, but never plant it."
' Where is the youth 1" inquired Ser Francesco.
' Gone away," answered the maiden.
' I wanted to thank him," said the Canonico.
' May I tell him so ]" asked she.
' And give him," continued he, holding a piece
of silver . . .
" I will give him something of my own, if he
goes on and behaves well," said she : " but Signor
Padrone would drive him away for ever, I am
sure, if he were tempted in an evil hour to accept
a quattrino, for any service he could render the
friends of the house."
Ser Francesco was delighted with the graceful
animation of this ingenuous girl, and asked her.
323
PENTAMERON.
with a little curiosity, how she could afford to
make him a present.
" I do not intend to make him a present," she
replied : " but it is better he should be rewarded
by me," she blushed and hesitated, " or by Signer
Padrone," she added, " than by your reverence.
He has not done half his duty yet ; not half. I
will teach him : he is quite a child ; four months
younger than me."
Ser Francesco went into the house, saying to
himself at the doorway,
" Truth, innocence, and gentle manners, have
not yet left the earth. There are sermons that
never make the ears weary. I have heard but
few of them, and come from church for this."
Whether Simplizio had obeyed some private
signal from Assunta, or whether his own delicacy
had prompted him to disappear, he was now again
in the stable, and the manger was replenished
with hay. A bucket was soon after heard ascend-
ing from the well ; and then two words, " Thanks,
Simplizio."
When Petrarca entered the chamber, he found
Boccaccio with his breviary in his hand, not look-
ing into it indeed, but repeating a thanksgiving
in an audible and impassioned tone of voice.
Seeing Ser Francesco, he laid the book down
beside him, and welcomed him.
" I hope you have an appetite after your ride,"
said he, " for you have sent home a good dinner
before you."
Ser Francesco did not comprehend him, and
expressed it not in words but in looks.
" I am afraid you will dine sadly late to-day :
noon has struck this half-hour, and you must wait
another, I doubt. However, by good luck, I had
a couple of citrons in the house, intended to
assuage my thirst if the fever had continued. This
being over, by God's mercy, I will try (please
God !) whether we two greyhounds can not be a
match for a leveret."
"How is this?" said Ser Francesco.
" Young Marc- Antonio Grilli, the cleverest lad
in the parish at noosing any wild animal, is our
patron of the feast. He has wanted for many a
day to say something in the ear of Matilda
Vercelli. Bringing up the leveret to my bedside,
and opening the lips, and cracking the knuckles,
and turning the foot round to show the quality
and quantity of the hair upon it, and to prove
that it really and truly was a leveret, and might
be eaten without offence to my teeth, he informed
me that he had left his mother in the yard, ready
to dress it for me ; she having been cook to the
prior. He protested he owed the crovmed martyr
a forest of leverets, boars, deer, and everything
else within them, for having commanded the
most backward girls to dance directly. Where-
upon he darted forth at Matilda, saying, 'The
crowned martyr orders it,' seizing both her hands,
and swinging her round before she knew what
she was about. He soon had an opportunity of
applying a word, no doubt as dexterously as hand
or foot ; and she said submissively, but seriously,
and almost sadly, ' Marc-Antonio, now all the
people have seen it, they will think it.'
" And, after a pause,
" ' I am quite ashamed : and so should you be :
are not you now?'
" The others had run into the church. Matilda,
who scarcely had noticed it, cried suddenly,
" ' 0 Santissima ! we are quite alone.'
" ' Will you be mine?' cried he, enthusiastically.
" ' 0 ! they will hear you in the church,' replied
she.
" ' They shall, they shall,' cried he again, as
loudly.
" * If you will only go away.'
" 'And then?'
" ' Yes, yes, indeed.'
" ' The Virgin hears you : fifty saints are wit-
nesses.'
" ' Ah ! they know you made me : they will
look kindly on us.'
" He released her hand : she ran into the church,
doubling her veil (I will answer for her) at the door,
and kneeling as near it as she could find a place.
" ' By St. Peter/ said Marc- Antonio, ' if there
is a leveret in the wood, the crowned martyr shall
dine upon it this blessed day.' And he bounded
off, and set about his occupation. I inquired
what induced him to designate you by such a
title. He answered, that everybody knew you
had received the crown of martyrdom at Rome,
between the pope and antipope, and had per-
formed many miracles, for which they had
canonised you, and that you wanted only to die
to become a saint."
The leveret was now served up, cut into small
pieces, and covered with a rich tenacious sauce,
composed of sugar, citron, and various spices.
The appetite of Ser Francesco was contagious.
Never was dinner more enjoyed by two com-
panions, and never so much by a greater number.
One glass of a fragrant wine, the colour of honey,
and unmixed with water, crowned the repast. Ser
Francesco then went into his own chamber, and
found, on his ample mattress, a cool refreshing
sleep, quite sufficient to remove all the fatigues
of the morning ; and Ser Giovanni lowered the
pillow against which he had seated himself, and
fell into his usual repose. Their separation was
not of long continuance : and, the religious duties
of the Sabbath having been performed, a few re-
flections on literature were no longer interdicted.
Boccaccio. How happens it, 0 Francesco ! that
nearly at the close of our lives, after all our efforts
and exhortations, we are standing quite alone in
the extensive fields of literature ? We are only
like to scoria struck from the anvil of the gigantic
Dante. We carry our fire along with us in our
parabola, and, behold ! it falls extinguished on
the earth.
Petrarca. Courage ! courage ! we have hardly
yet lighted the lamp and shown the way.
Boccaccio. You are a poet ; I am only a com-
mentator, and must soothe my own failures in the
success of my master.
PENTAMERON.
329
1 can not but think again and again, how fruit-
lessly the bravest have striven to perpetuate the
ascendancy or to establish the basis of empire,
when Alighieri hath fixed a language for thousands
of years, and for myriads of men ; a language far
richer and more beautiful than our glorious Italy
ever knew before, in any of her regions, since the
Attic and the Dorian contended for the prize of
eloquence on her southern shores. Eternal
honour, eternal veneration, to him who raised up
our country from the barbarism that surrounded
her ! .Kemember how short a time before him,
his master Brunette Latini wrote in French ;
prose indeed ; but whatever has enough in it for
poetry, has enough for prose out of its shreds and
Petrarca. Brunetto ! Brunetto ! it was not well
done in thee. An Italian, a poet, write in French !
What human ear can tolerate its nasty nasalities?
what homely intellect be satisfied with its bare-
bone poverty ? By good fortune we have nothing
to do with it in the course of our examination.
Several things in Dante himself you will find
more easy to explain than to excuse. You have
already given me a specimen of them, which I
need not assist you in rendering more copious.
Boccaccio. There are certainly some that re-
quire no little circumspection. Difficult as they
are to excuse, the difficulty lies more on the side
of the clergy than the laity.
Petrarca. I understand you. The gergo of your
author has always a reference to the court of the
Vatican. Here he speaks in the dark : against
his private enemies he always is clear and explicit.
Unless you are irresistibly pressed into it, give
no more than two, or at most three lectures, on
the verse which, I predict, will appear to our
Florentines the cleverest in the poem.
Che vel vise degli uomini legge O M O.
Boccaccio. We were very near a new civil war
about the interpretation of it.
Petrarca. Foolisher questions have excited
general ones. What, I wonder, rendered you all
thus reasonable at last ]
Boccaccio. The majority, which on few occa-
sions is so much in the right, agreed with me that
the two eyes are signified by the two vowels, the
nose by the centre of the consonant, and the tem-
ples by its exterior lines.
Petrarca. In proceeding to explore the Paradise
more minutely, I must caution you against re-
marking to your audience, that, although the nose
is between the eyes, the temples are not, exactly.
An observation which, if well established, might
be resented as somewhat injurious to the Divinity
of the Corn-media.
Boccaccio. With all its flatnesses and swamps,
many have preferred the Paradiso to the other
two sections of the poem.
Petrarca. There is as little in it of very bad
poetry, or we may rather say, as little of what is
no poetry at all, as in either, which are uninviting
from an absolute lack of interest and allusion,
from the confusedness of the ground-work, the
indistinctness of the scene, and the paltriness (in
great measure) of the agents. If we are amazed
at the number of Latin verses in the Inferno and
Purgatorio, what must we be at their fertility in
the- Paradiso, where they drop on us in ripe
clusters through every glen and avenue! We
reach the conclusion of the sixteenth canto before
we come in sight of poetry, or more than a glade
with a gleam upon it. Here we find a descrip-
tion of Florence in her age of innocence : but the
scourge of satire sounds in our ears before we fix
the attention.
Boccaccio. I like the old Ghibelline best in the
seventeenth, where he dismisses the doctors, corks
up the Latin, ceases from psalmody, looses the
arms of Calfucci and Arigucci, sets down Capon-
sacco in the market, and gives us a stave of six
verses which repays us amply for our heaviest toils
and sufferings.
Tu lascierai ogni cosa diletta, &c.
But he soon grows weary of tenderness and sick
of sorrow, and returns to his habitual exercise of
throwing stones and calling names.
Again we are refreshed in the twentieth. Here
we come to the simile : here we look up and see
his lark, and are happy and lively as herself. Too
soon the hard fingers of the master are round. our
wrists again : we are dragged into the school, and
are obliged to attend the divinity-examination,
which the poet undergoes from Saint Simon-Peter.
He acquits himself pretty well, and receives a
handsome compliment from the questioner, who,
"inflamed with love" acknowledges he has given
"a good account of the coinage, both in regard to
weight and alloy."
" Tell me," continues he, " have you any of it
in your pocket 1"
" Yea," replies the scholar, " and so shining and
round that I doubt not what mint it comes from."
Saint Simon-Peter does not take him at his
word for it, but tries to puzzle and pose him with
several hard queries. He answers both warily
and wittily, and grows so contented with his
examining master, that, instead of calling him
" a sergeant of infantry," as he did before, he now
entitles him " the baron."
I must consult our bishop ere I venture to
comment on these two verses,
Credo una essenza, si una e si trina
Che soffera congiunto stint et cute,
as, whatever may peradventure lie within them,
they are hardly worth the ceremony of being
burnt alive for, although it should be at the ex-
pense of the Church.
Petrarca. I recommend to you the straightfor-
ward course ; but I believe I must halt a little,
and advise you to look about you. If you let
people see that there are so many faults in your
author, they will reward you, not according to
your merits, but according to its defects. On
celebrated writers, when we speak in public, it is
330
PENTAMERON.
safer to speak magnificently than correctly. There-
fore be not too cautious in leading your disciples,
and in telling them, here you may step securely,
here you must mind your footing : for a florin
will drop out of your pocket at every such crevice
you stop to cross.
Boccaccio. The room is hardly light enough to
let me see whether you are smiling : but, being
the most ingenuous soul alive, and by no means
the least jocose one, I suspect it. My office is, to
explain what is difficult, rather than to expatiate
on what is beautiful or to investigate what is
amiss. If those who invite me to read the lec-
tures, mark out the topics for me, nothing is
easier than to keep within them. Yet with how
true and entire a pleasure shall I point out to my
fellow-citizens such a glorious tract of splendour
as there is in the single line,
Cio ch'io vedevo mi sembrava un riso
Dell* universe !
With what exultation shall I toss up my gauntlet
into the balcony of proud Antiquity, and cry,
Descend! Contend!
I have frequently heard your admiration of
this passage, and therefore I dwell on it the more
delighted. Beside, we seldom find anything in
our progress that is not apter to excite a very
different sensation. School-divinity can never be
made attractive to the Muses ; nor will Virgil
and Thomas Aquinas ever cordially shake hands.
The unrelenting rancour against the popes is more
tedious than unmerited : in a poem I doubt whe-
ther we would not rather find it unmerited than
tedious. For, of all the sins against the spirit of
poetry, this is the most unpardonable. Something
of our indignation, and a proportion of our scorn,
may fairly be detached from the popes, and thrown
on the pusillanimous and perfidious who suffered
such excrescences to shoot up, exhausting and
poisoning the soil they sprang from.
Petrarca. I do not wonder they make Saint
Peter " redden," as we hear they do, but I regret
that they make him stammer,
Quegli che usurpa in terra il luogo mio,
II luogo mio, il luogo mio, &c.
Alighieri was not the first catholic who taught
us that the papacy is usurpation, nor will he be
(let us earnestly hope) the last to inculcate so
evident a doctrine.
Boccaccio. Canonico of Parma! Canonico of
Parma ! you make my hair stand on end. But
since nobody sees it beside yourself, prythee tell
me how it happens that an infallible pope should
denounce as damnable the decision of another
infallible pope, his immediate predecessor] Gio-
vanni the twenty-second, whom you knew inti-
mately, taught us that the souls of the just could
not enjoy the sight of God until after the day of
universal judgment. But the doctors of theology
at Paris, and those learned and competent clerks,
the kings of France and Naples, would not allow
him to die before he had swallowed the choke-
pear they could not chew. The succeeding pope,
who called himself an ass, in which infallibility
was less wounded, and neither king nor doctor
carped at it (for not only was he one, but as truth-
telling a beast as Balaam's), condemned this error,
as indeed well he might, after two kings had set
their faces against it. But on the whole, the thing
is ugly and perplexing. That they were both in-
fallible we know; and yet they differed! Nay,
the former differed from himself, and was pope all
the while ; of course infallible ! Well, since we
may not solve the riddle, let us suppose it is only
a mystery the more, and be thankful for it.
Petrarca. That is best.
Boccaccio. I never was one of those who wish
for ice to slide upon in summer. Being no theo-
logian, I neither am nor desire to be sharp-sighted
in articles of heresy : but it is reported that there
are among Christians some who hesitate to wor-
ship the Virgin.
Petrarca. Few, let us hope.
Boccaccio. Hard hearts ! Imagine her, in her
fifteenth year, fondling the lovely babe whom she
was destined to outlive ! destined to see shedding
his blood, and bowing his head in agony. Can we
ever pass her by and not say from our hearts,
" 0 thou whose purity had only the stain of
compassionate tears upon it ! blessings, blessings
on thee !"
I never saw her image but it suspended my steps
on the highway of the world, discoursed with me,
softened and chastened me, showing me too clearly
my unworthiness by the light of a reproving
smile.
Petrarca. Woe betide those who cut off from
us any source of tenderness, and shut out from
any of our senses the access to devotion !
Beatrice, in the place before us, changes colour
too, as deeply as ever she did on earth ; for Saint
Peter, in his passion, picks up and flourishes some
very filthy words. He does not recover the use
of his reason on a sudden ; but, after a long and
bitter complaint that faith and innocence are only
to be found in little children ; and that the child
moreover who loves and listens to its mother
while it lisps, wishes to see her buried when it can
speak plainly ; he informs us that this corruption
ought to excite no wonder, since the human race
must of necessity go astray, not having any one
upon earth to govern it.
Boccaccio. Is not this strange though ; from the
mouth of one inspired 1 We are taught that there
never shall be wanting a head to govern the church ;
could Saint Peter say that it icas wanting 1 I feel
my Catholicism here touched to the quick. How-
ever, I am resolved not to doubt : the more diffi-
culties I find, the fewer questions I raise : the
saints must settle it, as well as they can, among
themselves.
Petrarca. They are nearer the fountain of truth
than we are ; and I am confident Saint Paul was
in the right.
Boccaccio. I do verily believe he may have been,
although at Home we might be in jeopardy for
saying it. Well is it for me that my engagement
PENTAMEROK
331
is to comment on Alighieri's Divina Corn-media,
instead of his treatise De Monarchia. He says
bold things there, and sets apostles and popes to-
gether by the ears. That is not the worst. He
would destroy what is and should be, and would
establish what never can nor ought to be.
Petrarca. If a universal monarch could make
children good universally, and keep them as inno-
cent when they grow up as when they were in the
cradle, we might wish him upon his throne to-
morrow. But Alighieri, and those others who
have conceived such a prodigy, seem to be unaware
that what they would establish for the sake of
unity, is the very thing by which this unity must
be demolished. For, since universal power does
not confer on its possessor universal intelligence,
and since a greater number of the cunning could
and would assemble round him, he must (if we
suppose him like the majority and nearly the
totality of his class) appoint a greater proportion
of such subjects to the management and controul
of his dominions. Many of them would become
the rulers of cities and of provinces in which they
have no connexions or affinities, and in which the
preservation of character is less desirable to them
than the possession of power. The operations of
injustice, and the opportunities of improvement,
would be alike concealed from the monarch in
the remoter parts of his territories ; and every man
of high station would exercise more authority
than he.
Boccaccio. Casting aside the impracticable
scheme of universal monarchy, if kings and princes
there must be, even in the midst of civility and
letters, why can not they return to European cus-
toms, renouncing those Asiatic practices which
are become enormously prevalent! why can not
they be contented with such power as the kings
of Rome and the lucumons of Etruria were con-
tented with ] But forsooth they are wiser ! and
such customs are obsolete ! Of their wisdom I shall
venture to say nothing, for nothing, I believe, is
to be said of it, but the customs are not obsolete
in other countries. They have taken deep root in
the north, and exhibit the signs of vigour and
vitality. Unhappily, the weakest men always
think they least want help ; like the mad and the
drunk. Princes and geese are fond of standing
on one leg, and fancy it (no doubt) a position of
gracefulness and security, until the cramp seizes
them on a sudden : then they find how helpless
they are, and how much better it would have been
if they had employed all the support at their
Petrarca. When the familiars of absolute princes
taunt us, as they are Avont to do, with the only
apophthegm they ever learnt by heart, namely,
that it is better to be ruled by one master than
by many, I quite agree with them ; unity of power
being the principle of republicanism, while the
principle of despotism is division and delegation.
In the one system, every man conducts his own
affairs, either personally or through the agency of
some trust-worthy representative, which is essen-
tially the same : in the other system, no man, in
quality of citizen, has any affairs of his own to
conduct : but a tutor has been as much set over
him as over a lunatic, as little with his option or
consent, and without any provision, as there is in
the case of the lunatic, for returning reason.
Meanwhile, the spirit of republics is omnipresent
in them, as active in the particles as in the mass,
in the circumference as in the centre. Eternal it
must be, as truth and justice are, although not
stationary. Yet when we look on Venice and
Genoa, on the turreted Pisa and our own fair
Florence, and many smaller cities self-poised in
high serenity; when we see what edifices they
have raised, and then glance at the wretched
habitations of the slaves around, the Austrians,
the French, and other fierce restless barbarians ;
difficult is it to believe that the beneficent God,
who smiled upon these our labours, will ever in
his indignation cast them down, a helpless prey to
such invaders.
Morals and happiness will always be nearest to
perfection in small communities, where function-
aries are appointed by as numerous a body as can
be brought together of the industrious and intel-
ligent, who have observed in what manner they
superintend their families, and converse with their
equals and dependents. Do we find that farms
are better cultivated for being large1? is your
neighbour friendlier for being powerful 1 is your
steward honester and more attentive for having a
mortgage on your estate or a claim to a joint
property in your mansion ] Yet well-educated
men are seen about the streets, so vacant and
delirious, as to fancy that a country can only be
well governed by somebody who never saw and
will never see a twentieth part of it, or know a
hundredth part of its necessities ; somebody who
has no relationships in it, no connexions, no re-
membrances. A man without soul and sympathy
is alone to be the governor of men ! Giovanni !
our Florentines are, beyond all others, a trea-
cherous, tricking, mercenary race. What in the
name of heaven will become of them, if ever
they listen to these ravings ; if ever they lose,
by their cowardice and dissensions, the crust of
salt that keeps them from putrescency, their
freedom ?
Boccaccio. Alas ! I dare hardly look out some-
times, lest I see before me the day when German
and Spaniard will split them down the back and
throw them upon the coals. Sad thought ! here
we will have done with it. We can not help them :
we have made the most of them, like the good
tailor who, as Dante says, cuts his coat accord-
ing to his cloth.
Petrarca. Do you intend, if they should call
upon you again, to give them occasionally some
of your strictures on his prose writings 1
Boccaccio. It would not be expedient. Enough
of his political sentiments is exhibited, in various
places of his poem, to render him unacceptable
to one party ; and enough of his theological, or
rather his ecclesiastical, to frighten both. You
332
PENTAMERON.
and I were never passionately fond of the papacy,
to which we trace in great measure the miseries
of our Italy, its divisions and its corruptions, the
substitution of cunning for fortitude, and of creed
for conduct. He burst into indignation at the
sight of this, and, because the popes took away
our Christianity, he was so angry he would throw
her freedom after it. Any thorn in the way is
fit enough to toss the tattered rag on. A German
king will do; Austrian or Bavarian, Swabian or
Switzer. And, to humiliate us more and more,
and render us the laughing-stock of our house-
hold, he would invest the intruder with the title
of Roman emperor. What ! it is not enough
then that he assumes it ! We must invite him,
forsooth, to accept it at our hands !
Petrarca. Let the other nations of Europe be
governed by their hereditary kings and feudal
princes : it is more accordant with those ancient
habits which have not yet given way to the blan-
dishment of literature and the pacific triumph
of the arts : but let the states of Italy be guided
by their own citizens. May nations find out by
degrees that the next evil to being conquered is
to conquer, and that he who assists in making
slaves gives over at last by becoming one.
Boccaccio. Let us endure a French pope, or any
other, as well as we can ; there is no novelty in
his being a stranger. The Romans at all times
picked up recruits from the thieves, gods, and
priests, of all nations. Dante is wrong, I suspect,
in imagining the popes to be infidels; and, no
doubt, they would pay for indulgences as honestly
as they sell them, if there were anybody at hand
to receive the money. But who in the world ever
thought of buying the cap he was wearing on his
own head ] Popes are no such triflers. After all,
an infidel pope (and I do not believe there are
three in a dozen) is less noxious than a sanguinary
soldier, be his appellation what it may, if his power
is only limited by his will. My experience has
however taught me, that where there is a great
mass of power concentrated, it will always act
with great influence on the secondary around it.
Whether pope or emperor or native king occupy
the most authority within the Alps, the barons
will range themselves under his banner, apart from
the citizens. Venice, who appears to have re-
ceived by succession the political wisdom of repub-
lican Rome, has less political enterprise : and the
jealousies of her rivals will always hold them back,
or greatly check them, from any plan suggested
by her for the general good.
Petrarca. It appears to be the will of Provi-
dence that power and happiness shall never
co-exist. Whenever a state becomes power-
ful, it becomes unjust; and injustice leads
it first to the ruin of others, and next, and
speedily, to its own. We, whose hearts are re-
publican, are dazzled by looking so long and so
intently at the eagles, and standards, and golden
letters, S. P. Q. R. We are reluctant to admit
that the most wretched days of ancient Rome
were the days of her most illustrious men ; that
they began amid the triumphs of Scipio, when
the Gracchi perished, and reached the worst under
the dictatorship of Caesar, when perished Liberty
herself. A milder and better race was gradually
formed by Grecian instruction. Vespasian, Titus,
Nerva, Trajan, the Antonines, the Gordians,
Tacitus, Probus, in an almost unbroken series, are
such men as never wore the diadem in other
countries ; and Rome can show nothing compara-
ble to them in the most renowned and virtuous of
her earlier consuls. Humanity would be consoled
in some degree by them, if their example had
sunk into the breasts of the governed. But fero-
city is unsoftened by sensuality ; and the milk of
the wolf could always be traced in the veins of the
effeminated Romans.
Petrarca. That is true : and they continue to
this day less humane than any other people of
Italy. The better part of their character has fallen
off from them ; and in courage and perseverance
they are far behind the Venetians and Ligurians.
These last, a scanty population, were hardly to be
conquered by Rome in the plenitude of her power,
and with all her confederates : for which reason
they were hated by her beyond all other 'nations.
To gratify the pride and malice of Augustus, were
written the verses,
Vane Ligur ! frustraque animis elate superbis,
Nequicquam patrias tentasti lubricus artes.
Since that time, the inhabitants of Genoa and
Venice have been enriched with the generous
blood of the Lombards. This little tribe on the
Subalpine territory, and the Norman on the Apu-
lian, demonstrate to us, by the rapidity and exten-
sion of their conquests, that Italy is an over-ripe
fruit, ready to drop from the stalk under the feet
of the first insect that alights on it.
Boccaccio. The Germans, although as ignorant
as the French, are less cruel, less insolent and
rapacious. The French have a separate claw for
every object of appetite or passion, and a spring
that enables them to seize it. The desires of the
German are overlaid with food and extinguished
with drink, which to others are stimulants and
incentives. The German loves to see everything
about him orderly and entire, however coarse and
:ommon : the nature of the Frenchman is to
derange and destroy everything. Sometimes when
he has done so, he will reconstruct and refit it in
his own manner, slenderly . and fantastically;
oftener leaving it in the middle, and proposing to
lay the foundation when he has pointed the pin-
nacles and gilt the weathercock.
Petrarca. There is no danger that the French
will have a durable footing in this or any other
country. Their levity is more intolerable than
German pressure, their arrogance than German
pride, their falsehood than German rudeness, and
,heir vexations than German exaction.
Boccaccio. If I must be devoured, I have little
shoice between the bear and the panther. May
we always see the creatures at a distance and
across the grating. The French will fondle us, to
PENTAMERON.
333
show us how vastly it is our interest to fondle
them ; watching all the while their opportunity ;
looking mild and half-asleep ; making a dash at
last ; and laying bare and fleshless the arm we
extend to them, from shoulder-blade to wrist.
Petrarca. No nation, grasping at so much, ever
held so little, or lost so soon what it had inveigled.
Yet France is surrounded by smaller and by
apparently weaker states, which she never ceases
to molest and invade. Whatever she has won,
and whatever she has lost, has been alike won and
lost by her perfidy; the characteristic of the
people from the earliest ages, and recorded by a
succession of historians, Greek and Roman.
Boccaccio. My father spent many years among
them, where also my education was completed ;
yet whatever I have seen, I must acknowledge,
corresponds with whatever I have read, and cor-
roborates in my mind the testimony of tradi-
tion. Their ancient history is only a preface to
their later. Deplorable as is the condition of
Italy, I am more contented to share in her suffer-
ings than in the frothy festivities of her frisky
neighbour.
Petrarca. So am I : but we must never deny or
dissemble the victories of the ancient Gauls, many
traces of which are remaining ; not that a nation's
glory is the greener for the ashes it has scattered
in the season of its barbarism.
Boccaccio. The Cisalpine regions were indeed
both invaded and occupied by them ; yet, from
inability to retain the acquisition, how inconsider-
able a part of the population is Gaulish ! Long
before the time of Caesar, the language was Latin
throughout : the soldiers of Marius swept away
the last dregs and stains on the ancient hearth.
Nor is there in the physiognomy of the people the
slightest indication of the Gaul, as we perceive by
medals and marbles. These would surely preserve
his features ; because they can only be the memo-
rials of the higher orders, which of course would
have descended from the conquerors. They merged
early and totally in the original mass : and the
countenances in Cisalpine busts are as beautiful
and dignified as our other Italian races.
Petrarca. The French imagine theirs are too.
Boccaccio. I heartily wish them the full enjoyment
of their blessings, real or imaginary : but neither
their manners nor their principles coincide with
ours, nor can a reasonable hope be entertained of
benefit in their alliance. Union at home is all we
want, and vigilance to perpetuate the better of our
institutions.
Petrarca. The land, 0 Giovanni, of your early
youth, the land of my only love, fascinates us no
longer. Italy is our country ; and not ours only,
but every man's, wherever may have been his
wanderings, wherever may have been his birth,
who watches with anxiety the recovery of the
Arts, and acknowledges the supremacy of Genius.
Beside, it is in Italy at last that all our few
friends are resident. Yours were left behind you at
Paris in your adolescence, if indeed any friendship
can exist between a Florentine and a Frenchman :
mine at Avignon were Italians, and older for the
most-part than myself. Here we know that we
are beloved by some, and esteemed by many. It
indeed gave me pleasure the first morning as Hay
in bed, to overhear the fondness and earnestness
which a worthy priest was expressing in your
behalf.
Boccaccio. In mine 1
Petrarca. Yes indeed : what wonder ?
Boccaccio. A worthy priest ?
Petrarca. None else, certainly.
Boccaccio. Heard in bed ! dreaming, dreaming ;
ay?
Petrarca. No indeed : my eyes and ears were
wide open. »
Boccaccio. The little parlour opens into your
room. But what priest could that be 1 Canonico
Casini ] He only comes when we have a roast of
thrushes, or some such small matter at table : and
this is not the season ; they are pairing. Plover
eggs might tempt him hitherward. If he heard
a plover he would not be easy, and would fain
make her drop her oblation before she had settled
her nest .
Petrarca. It is right and proper that you should
be informed who the clergyman was, to whom you
are under an obligation.
Boccaccio. Tell me something about it, for truly
I am at a loss to conjecture.
Petrarca. He must unquestionably have been
expressing a kind and ardent solicitude for your
eternal welfare. The first words I heard on
awakening were these :
"Ser Giovanni, although the best of masters . . ."
Boccaccio. Those were Assuntina's.
Petrarca. . . . "may hardly be quite so holy
(not being priest or friar) as your Reverence."
She was interrupted by the question, " What
conversation holdeth he ] "
She answered,
" He never talks of loving our neighbour with
all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength,
although he often gives away the last loaf in the
pantry."
Boccaccio. It was she ! Why did she say that ]
the slut !
Petrarca. " He doth well," replied the confessor.
"Of the church, of the brotherhood, that is, of
me, what discourses holdeth he ? "
I thought the question an indiscreet one ; but
confessors vary in their advances to the seat of
truth.
She proceeded to answer :
" He never said anything about the power of the
church to absolve us, if we should happen to go
astray a little in good company, like your Reve-
rence."
Here, it is easy to perceive, is some slight am-
biguity. Evidently she meant to say, by the se-
duction of " bad" company, and to express that
his Reverence had asserted his power of absolu-
tion ; which is undeniable.
Boccaccio. I have my version.
Petrarca. What may your's be ?
334
PENTAMERON.
Boccaccio. Frate Biagio; broad as daylight;
the whole frock round !
I would wager a flask of oil against a turnip,
that he laid another trap for a penance. Let us
see how he went on. I warrant, as he warmed, he
left off limping in his paces, and bore hard upon
the bridle.
Petrarca. " Much do I fear," continued the ex-
positor, "he never spoke to thee, child, about
another world."
There was a silence of some continuance.
" Speak ! " said the confessor.
" No indeed he never did, poor Padrone ! "
was the slow and evidently reluctant avowal of the
maiden ; for, in»the midst of the acknowledgment
her sighs came through the crevices of the door :
then, without any farther interrogation, and with
little delay, she added,
" But he often makes this look like it."
Boccaccio. And now, if he had carried a holy
scourge, it would not have been on his shoulders
that he would have laid it.
Petrarca. Zeal carries men often too far afloat ;
and confessors in general wish to have the sole
steerage of the conscience. When she told him
that your benignity made this world another
heaven, he warmly and sharply answered,
" It is only we who ought to do that."
" Hush," said the maiden ; and I verily believe
she at that moment set her back against the
door, to prevent the sounds from coming through
the crevices, for the rest of them seemed to be just
over my night-cap. " Hush," said she, in the
whole length of that softest of all articulations,
" There is Ser Francesco in the next room : he
sleeps long into the morning, but he is so clever a
clerk, he may understand you just the same. I
doubt whether he thinks Ser Giovanni in the
wrong for making so many people quite happy ;
and if he should, it would grieve me very much to
think he blamed Ser Giovanni."
" Who is Ser Francesco ? " he asked, in a low
voice.
" Ser Canonico," she answered.
'•' Of what Duomo 1 " continued he.
" Who knows ] " was the reply ; " but he is
Padrone's heart's friend, for certain."
" Cospetto di Bacco ! It can then be no other
than Petrarca. He makes rhymes and love like
the devil. Don't listen to him, or you are un-
done. Does he love you too, as well as Padrone ? "
he asked, still lowering his voice.
"I can not tell that matter," she answered,
somewhat impatiently : "but I love him."
" To my face ! " cried he, smartly.
" To the Santissima ! " replied she, instanta-
neously ; " for have not I told your Reverence
he is Padrone's true heart's friend ! And are
not you my confessor, when you come on pur-
pose 1 "
" True, true ! " answered he : " but there are
occasions when we are shocked by the confession,
and wish it made less daringly."
"I was bold; but who can help loving him
who loves my good Padrone ? " said she, much
more submissively.
Boccaccio. Brave girl, for that !
Dog of a Frate ! They are all of a kidney ; all
of a kennel. I would dilute their meal well and
keep them low. They should not waddle and
wallop in every hollow lane, nor loll out their
watery tongues at every wash-pool in the parish.
We shall hear, I trust, no more about Fra Biagio
in the house while you are with us. Ah ! were it
then for life.
Petrarca. The man's prudence may be reason-
ably doubted, but it were uncharitable to question
his sincerity. Could a neighbour, a religious one
in particular, be indifferent to the welfare of Boc-
caccio, or any belonging to him ?
Boccaccio. I do not complain of his indifference.
Indifferent ! no, not he. He might as well be,
though. My Villetta here is my castle : it was
my father's ; it was his father's. Cowls did not
hang to dry upon the same cord with caps in their
podere ; they shall not in mine. The girl is an
honest girl, Francesco, though I say it. Neither
she nor any other shall be befooled and bam-
boozled under my roof. Methinks Holy Church
might contrive some improvement upon confes-
sion.
Petrarca. Hush ! Giovanni ! But, it being a
matter of discipline, who knows but she might.
Boccaccio. Discipline ! ay, ay, ay ! faith and
troth there are some who want it.
Petrarca. You really terrify me. These are sad
surmises.
Boccaccio. Sad enough : but I am keeper of my
handmaiden's probity.
Petrarca. It could not be kept safer.
Boccaccio. I wonder what the Frate would be
putting into her head.
Petrarca. Nothing, nothing ; be assured.
Boccaccio. Why did he ask her all those ques-
tions ;
Petrarca. ' Confessors do occasionally take cir-
cuitous ways to arrive at the secrets of the human
heart.
Boccaccio. And sometimes they drive at it, me-
thinks, a whit too directly. He had no business
to make remarks about me.
Petrarca. Anxiety.
Boccaccio. 'Fore God, Francesco, he shall have
more of that ; for I will shut him out the moment
I am again up and stirring, though he stand but a
nose's length off. I have no fear about the girl; no
suspicion of her. He might whistle to the moon on
a frosty night, and expect as reasonably her de-
scending. Never was a man so entirely at his
ease as I am about that; never, never. She is
adamant ; a bright sword now first unscabbarded ;
no breath can hang about it. A seal of beryl, of
chrysolite, of ruby ; to make impressions (all in
good time and proper place though) and receive
none : incapable, just as they are, of splitting, or
cracking, or flawing, or harbouring dirt. Let him
mind that. Such, I assure you, is that poor little
wench, Assuntina.
PENTAMERON.
335
Petrarca. I am convinced that so well-behaved
a young creature as Assunta . . .
JSoccaccio. Eight ! Assunta is her name by bap-
tism ; we usually call her Assuntina, because she
is slender, and scarcely yet full-grown, perhaps :
but who can tell 1
As for those friars, I never was a friend to im-
pudence : I hate loose suggestions. In girls'
minds you will find little dust but what is carried
there by gusts from without. They seldom, want
sweeping; when they do, the broom should be
taken from behind the house-door, and the master
should be the sacristan.
. . . Scarcely were these words uttered when
Assunta was heard running up the stairs ; and
the next moment she rapped. Being ordered to
come in, she entered with a willow twig in her
hand, from the middle of which willow twig (for
she held the two ends together) hung a fish,
shining with green and gold.
" What hast there, young maiden 1 " said Ser
Francesco.
" A fish, Eiverenza ! " answered she. " In Tus-
cany we call it tinea."
Petrarca. I too am a little of a Tuscan.
Assunta. Indeed! well, you really speak very like
one, but only more sweetly and slowly. I wonder
how you can keep up with Signer Padrone, he
talks fast when he is in health ; and you have
made him so. Why did not you come before ?
Your Keverence has surely been at Certaldo in
time past.
Petrarca. Yes, before thou wert born.
Assunta. Ah sir ! it must have been long ago
then.
Petrarca. Thou hast just entered upon life.
Assunta. I am no child.
Petrarca. What then art thou ?
Assunta. I know not : I have lost both father
and mother ; there is a name for such as I am.
Petrarca. And a place in heaven.
Boccaccio. Who brought us that fish, Assunta ]
hast paid for it ? there must be seven pounds : I
never saw the like.
Assunta. I could hardly lift up my apron to my
eyes with it in my hand. Luca, who brought it
all the way from the Padule, could scarcely be
entreated to eat a morsel of bread or sit down.
Boccaccio. Give him a flask or two of our wine ;
he will like it better than the sour puddle of the
plain.
Assunta. He is gone back.
Boccaccio. Gone ! who is he, pray ?
Assunta. Luca, to be sure.
Boccaccio. What Luca?
Assunta. Dominedio ! 0 Kiverenza ! how sadly
must Ser Giovanni, my poor padrone, have lost
his memory in this cruel long illness ! he can not
recollect young Luca of the Bientola, who married
Maria.
Boccaccio. I never heard of either, to the best of
my knowledge.
Assunta. Be pleased to mention this in your
prayers to-night, Ser Canonico ! May Our Lady
soon give him back his memory ! and everything
else she has been pleased (only in play, I hope) to
take away from him ! Ser Francesco, you must
have heard all over the world how Maria Garga-
relli, who lived in the service of our paroco, some-
how was outwitted by Satanasso. Monsignore
thought the paroco had not done all he might
have done against his wiles and craftiness, and
sent his Reverence over to the monastery in the
mountains, Laverna yonder, to make him look
sharp ; and there he is yet.
And now does Signor Padrone recollect ?
Boccaccio. Rather more distinctly.
Assunta. Ah me ! Rather more distinctly ! have
patience, Signor Padrone ! I am too venturous,
God help me ! But, Riverenza, when Maria was
the scorn or the abhorrence of everybody else, ex-
cepting poor Luca Sabbatini, who had always
cherished her, and excepting Signor Padrone, who
had never seen her in his lifetime . . for paroco
Snello said he desired no visits from any who
took liberties with Holy Church . . as if Padrone
did ! Luca one day came to me out of breath,
with money in his hand for our duck. Now it so
happened that the duck, stuffed with noble chest-
nuts, was going to table at that instant. I told
Signor Padrone.
Boccaccio. Assunta, I never heard thee repeat
so long and tiresome a story before, nor put thy-
self out of breath so. Come, we have had enough
of it.
Petrarca. She is mortified : pray let her pro-
ceed.
Boccaccio. As you will.
Assunta. I told Signor Padrone how Luca was
lamenting that Maria was seized with an imagina-
tion.
Petrarca. No wonder then she fell into misfor-
tune, and her neighbours and friends avoided her.
Assunta. Riverenza ! how can you smile ] Si-
gnor Padrone ! and you too ? You shook your
head and sighed at it when it happened. The
Demonio, who had caused all the first mischief,
was not contented until he had given her the
imagination.
Petrarca. He could not have finished his work
more effectually.
Assunta. He was balked, however. Luca said,
" She shall not die under her wrongs, please
God ! "
I repeated the words to Signor Padrone . . .
He seems to listen, Riverenza ! and will remember
presently . . . and Signor Padrone cut away one
leg for himself, clean forgetting all the chestnuts
inside, and said sharply, " Give the bird to Luca ;
and, hark ye, bring back the minestra."
Maria loved Luca with all her heart, and Luca
loved Maria with all his : but they both hated
paroco Snello for such neglect about the evil one.
And even Monsignore, who sent for Luca on pur-
pose, had some difficulty in persuading him to
forbear from choler and discourse. For Luca, who
never swears, swore bitterly that the devil should
play no such tricks again, nor alight on girls nap-
336
PENTAMERON.
ping in the parsonage. Monsignore thought he
intended to take violent possession, and to keep
watch there himself without consent of the in-
cumbent. " I will have no scandal," said Mon-
signore ; so there was none. Maria, though she
did indeed, as I told your Reverence, love her
Luca dearly, yet she long refused to marry him,
and cried very much at last on the wedding-
day, and said, as she entered the porch,
" Luca ! it is not yet too late to leave me."
He would have kissed her, but her face was
upon his shoulder.
Pievano Locatelli married them, and gave them
his blessing : and going down from the altar, he
said before the people, as he stood on the last step,
" Be comforted, child ! be comforted ! God above
knows that thy husband is honest, and that thou
art innocent." Pievano's voice trembled, for he
was an aged and holy man, and had walked two
miles on the occasion. Pulcheria, his governante,
eighty years old, carried an apronful of lilies to
bestrew the altar ; and partly from the lilies, and
partly from the blessed angels who (although in-
visible) were present, the church was filled with
fragrance. Many who heretofore had been
frightened at hearing the mention of Maria's
name, ventured now to walk up toward her; and
some gave her needles, and some offered skeins of
thread, and some ran home again for pots of
honey.
Boccaccio. And why didst not thou take her
some trifle ?
Assunta. I had none.
Boccaccio. Surely there are always such about
the premises.
Assunta. Not mine to give away.
Boccaccio. So then at thy hands, Assunta, she
went off not overladen. Ne'er a bone-bodkin out
of thy bravery, ay 1
Atsunta. I ran out knitting, with the woodbine
and syringa in the basket for the parlour. I made
the basket, . . I and . . but myself chiefly, for
boys are loiterers.
Boccaccio. Well, well : why not bestow the bas-
ket, together with its rich contents ?
Assunta. I am ashamed to say it . . I covered
my half-stocking with them as quickly as I could,
and ran after her, and presented it. Not knowing
what was under the flowers, and never minding
the liberty I had taken, being a stranger to her,
she accepted it as graciously as possible, and bade
me be happy.
Petrarca. I hope you have always kept her
command.
Assunta. Nobody is ever unhappy here, ex-
cepting Fra Biagio, who frets sometimes : but
that may be the walk ; or he may fancy Ser Gio-
vanni to be worse than he really is.
. . . Having now performed her mission and
concluded her narrative, she bowed, and said,
" Excuse me, Riverenza ! excuse me, Signor
Padrone ! my arm aches with this great fish."
Then, bowing again, and moving her eyes
modestly toward each, she added, " with permis-
sion !" and left the chamber.
" About the Sposina," after a pause began Ser
Francesco : " about the Sposina, I do not see the
matter clearly."
" You have studied too much for seeing all
things clearly," answered Ser Giovanni : " you
see only the greatest. In fine, the devil, on this
count, is acquitted by acclamation : and the paroco
Snello eats lettuce and chicory up yonder at La-
verna. He has mendicant friars for his society
every day ; and snails, as pure as water can wash
and boil them, for his repast on festivals. Under
this discipline, if they keep it up, surely one devil
out of legion will depart from him."
FOURTH DAY'S INTERVIEW.
Petrarca. Do not throw aside your Paradiso for
me. Have you been reading it again so early1?
Boccaccio. Looking into it here and there. I
had spare time before me.
Petrarca. You have coasted the whole poem,
and your boat's bottom now touches ground. But
tell me what you think of Beatrice.
Boccaccio. I think her in general more of the
seraphic doctor than of the seraph. It is well she
retained her beauty where she was, or she would
scarcely be tolerable now and then. And yet, in
other parts, we forget the captiousness in which
Theology takes delight, and feel our bosoms re-
freshed by the perfect presence of the youthful
and innocent Bice.
There is something so sweetly sanctifying in
pure love !
Petrarca.
Pure love ? there is no other ; nor shall be,
Till the worse angels hurl the better down
And heaven lie under hell : if God is one
And pure, so surely love is pure and one.
Boccaccio. You understand it better than I do :
you must have your own way.
Above all, I have been admiring the melody of
the cadence in this portion of iheDivinaCommedia.
Some of the stanzas leave us nothing to desire in
facility and elegance.
Alighieri grows harmonious as he grows hu-
mane, and does not, like Orpheus, play the better
with the beasts about him.
Petrarca. It is in Paradise that we might ex-
pect his tones to be tried and modulated.
Boccaccio. None of the imitative arts should
repose on writhings and distortions. Tragedy
herself, unless she lead from Terror to Pity, has
lost her way.
Petrarca. What then must be thought of a long
and crowded work, whence Pity is violently CXT
eluded, and where Hatred is the first personage
we meet, and almost the last we part from ?
Boccaccio. Happily the poet has given us here
a few breezes of the morning, a few glimpses of
PENTAMERON.
337
the stars, a few similes of objects to which we
have been accustomed among the amusements or
occupations of the country. Some of them would
be less admired in a meaner author, and are wel-
come here chiefly as a variety and relief to the
mind, after a long continuance in a painful pos-
ture. Have you not frequently been pleased with
a short quotation of verses in themselves but
indifferent, from finding them in some tedious
dissertation ? and especially if they carry you forth
a little into the open air.
Petrarca. I am not quite certain whether, if the
verses were indifferent, I should willingly exchange
the prose for them ; bad prose being less weari-
some than bad poetry r so much less indeed, that
the advantage of the exchange might fail to
balance the account.
Bocca-ccio. Let me try whether I can not give
you an example of such effect, having already
given you the tedious dissertation.
Petrarca. Do your worst.
Boccaccio. Not that neither, but bad enough.
THE PILGRIM'S SHELL.
Under a tuft of eglantine, at noon,
I saw a pilgrim loosen his broad shell
To catch the water off a stony tongue ;
Medusa's it might be, or Pan's, erewhile,
For the huge head was shapeless, eaten out
By time and tempest here, and here embost
With clasping tangles of dark maidenhair.
" How happy is thy thirst ! how soon assuaged !
How sweet that coldest water this hot day ! "
Whispered my thoughts ; not having yet observ'd
His shell so shallow and so chipt around.
Tall though he was, he held it higher, to meet
The sparkler at its outset : with fresh leap,
Vigorous as one just free upon the world,
Impetuous too as one first checkt, with stamp
Heavy as ten such sparklers might be deemed,
Ruslit it amain, from cavity and rim
And rim's divergent channels, and dropt thick
(Issuing at wrist and elbow) on the grass.
The pilgrim shook his head, and fixing up
His scallop,
" There is something yet," said he,
" Too scanty in this world for my desires ! "
Petrarca. 0 Giovanni! these are better thoughts
and opportuner than such lonely places formerly
supplied us with. The whispers of rose-bushes
were not always so innocent : under the budding
and under the full-blown we sometimes found
other images : sometimes the pure fountain failed
in bringing purity to the heart.
Unholy fire sprang up in fields and woods ;
The air that fann'd it came from solitudes.
If our desires are worthy ones and accomplished,
we rejoice in after-time ; if unworthy and unsuc-
cessful, we rejoice no less at their discomfiture and
miscarriage. We can not have all we wish for.
Nothing is said oftener, nothing earlier, nothing
later. It begins in the arms with the chidings
of the nurse ; it will terminate with the milder
voice of the physician at the deathbed. But al-
though everybody has heard and most have said
it, yet nobody seems to have said or considered,
that it is much, very much,to be able to form and
project our wishes ; that, in the voyage we take
to compass and turn them to account, we breathe
freely and hopefully ; and that it is chiefly in the
stagnation of port we are in danger of disappoint-
ment and disease.
Boccaccio. The young man who resolves to
conquer his love, is only half in earnest or has
already half conquered it. But fields and woods
have no dangers now for us. I may be alone
until doomsday, and loose thoughts will be at
fault if they try to scent me.
Petrarca. When the rest of our smiles have
left us, we may smile at our immunities. There
are indeed, for nearly all,
Rocks on the shore wherefrom we launch on life,
Before our final harbour rocks again,
And (narrow sun-paced plains sailed swiftly by)
Eddies and breakers all the space between.
Yet Nature preserves her sedater charms for
us both : and I doubt whether we do not enjoy
them the more, by exemption from solicitations
and distractions. We are not old while we can
hear and enjoy, as much as ever,
The lonely bird, the bird of even-song,
When, catching one far call, he leaps elate,
In his full fondness drowns it, and again
The shrill shrill glee through Serravalle rings.
Boccaccio. The nightingale is a lively bird to
the young and joyous, a melancholy one to the
declining and pensive. He has notes for every
ear ; he has feelings for every bosom ; and he
exercises over gentle souls a wider and more wel-
come dominion than any other creature. If I
must not offer you my thanks, for bringing to me
such associations as the bed-side of sickness is
rarely in readiness to supply ; if I must not de-
clare to you how pleasant and well placed are
your reflections on our condition ; I may venture
to remark on the nightingale, that our Italy is
the only country where this bird is killed for
the market. In no other is the race of Avarice
and Gluttony so hard run. What a triumph for j
a Florentine, to hold under his fork the most
delightful being in all animated nature ! the being
to which every poet, or nearly every one, dedicates
the first fruits of his labours. A cannibal who
devours his enemy, through intolerable hunger,
or, what he holds as the measure of justice and
of righteousness, revenge, may be viewed with
less abhorrence than the heartless gormandiser,
who casts upon his loaded stomach the little
breast that has poured delight on thousands.
Petrarca. The English, I remember Ser Geof-
freddo* telling us, never kill singing-birds nor
swallows.
Boccaccio. Music and hospitality are sweet and
sacred things with them ; and well may they
value their few warm days, out of which, if the
produce is not wine and oil, they gather song and
garner sensibility.
Petrarca. Ser Geoffreddo felt more pleasure in
the generosity and humanity of his countrymen,
* Chaucer.
338
PENTAMERON.
than in the victories they had recently won, with
incredibly smaller numbers, over their boastful
enemy.
Boccaccio, I know not of what nation I could
name so amusing a companion as Ser Geoffreddo.
The Englishman is rather an island than an
islander; bluff, stormy, rude, abrupt, repulsive,
inaccessible. We must not however hold back
or dissemble the learning, and wisdom, and cour-
tesy, of the better. While France was without one
single man above a dwarf in literature, and we
in Italy had only a small sprinkling of it, Richard
de Bury was sent ambassador to Rome by King
Edward. So great was his learning, that he com-
posed two grammars, one Greek, one Hebrew ;
neither of which labours had been attempted by
the most industrious and erudite of those who
spoke the languages : he likewise formed so com-
plete a library as belongs only to the Byzantine
emperors. This prelate came into Italy attended
by Ser Geoffreddo, in whose company we spent, as
you remember, two charming evenings at Arezzo.
Petrarca. What wonderful things his country-
men have been achieving in this century !
Boccaccio. And how curious it is to trace them
up into their Norwegian coves and creeks three
or four centuries back !
Petrarca. Do you think it possible that Norway,
which never could maintain sixty thousand* male
adults, was capable of sending, from her native
population, a sufficient force of warriors to conquer
the best province of France, and the whole of
England] And you must deduct from these
sixty thousand, the aged, the artisans, the cul-
tivators, and the clergy, together with all the de-
pendents of the church : which numbers, united,
we may believe amounted to above one half.
Boccaccio. That she could embody such an
army from her own very scanty and scattered
population ; no, indeed : but if you recollect that a
vast quantity of British had been ejected by in-
cursions of Picts, and that also there had been
on the borders a general insurrection against the
Romans, and against those of half-blood (which
is always the case in a rebellion of the Aboriginals),
and if you believe, as I do, that the ejected
Romans, of the coast at least, became pirates,
and were useful to the Scandinavians, by intro-
ducing what was needful of their arts and saleable
of their plunder, taking in exchange their iron
and timber, you may readily admit as a probabi-
lity, that by the display of spoils and the spirit
of enterprise, they encouraged, headed, and car-
ried into effect the invasion of France, and sub-
sequently of England. The English gentlemen of
Norman descent have neither blue eyes, in general,
nor fair complexions, differing in physiognomy
altogether both from the Belgic race and the
Norwegian. Beside, they are remarkable for a
sedate and somewhat repulsive pride, very different
* With the advantages of her fisheries, which did not
exist in the age of Petrarca, and of her agriculture, which
prohably is quintupled since, Norway does not contain at
present the double of the number.
from the effervescent froth of the one, and the
sturdy simplicity of the other. Ser Geoffreddo
is not only the greatest genius, but likewise the
most amiable of his nation. He gave his thoughts
and took yours with equal freedom. His country-
men, if they give you any, throw them at your
head ; and, if they receive any, cast them under
their feet before you. Courtesy is neither a qua-
lity of native growth, nor communicable to them.
Their rivals, the French, are the best imitators in
the world ; the English the worst ; particularly
under the instruction of the Graces. They have
many virtues, no doubt ; but they reserve them
for the benefit of their families, or of their ene-
mies ; and they seldom take the trouble to unpack
them in their short intercourse abroad.
Petrarca. Ser Geoffreddo, I well remember, was
no less remarkable for courtesy than for cordiality.
Boccaccio. He was really as attentive and polite
toward us as if he had made us prisoners. It is
on that occasion the English are most unlike their
antagonists and themselves. What an evil must
they think it to be vanquished ! when, struggling
with their bashfulness and taciturnity, they become
so solicitous and inventive in raising the spirits
of the fallen. The Frenchman is ready to truss
you on his rapier, unless you acknowledge the
perfection of his humanity, and to spit in your
face, if you doubt for a moment the delicacy of his
politeness. The Englishman is almost angry if
you mention either of these as belonging to him,
and turns away from you that he may not hear it.
Petrarca. Let us felicitate ourselves that we
rarely are forced to witness his self-affliction.
Boccaccio. In palaces, and especially the ponti-
fical, it is likely you saw the very worst of them :
indeed there are few in any other country of such
easy, graceful, unaffected manners as our Italians.
We are warmer at the extremities than at the
heart : sunless nations have central fires. The
Englishman is more gratified when you enable
him to show you a fresh kindness, than when you
remind him of a past one ; and he forgets what
he has conferred as readily as we forget what we
have received. In our civility, in our good-nature,
in our temperance, in our frugality, none excell us ;
and greatly are we in advance of other men, in
the arts, in the sciences, in the culture, in the
application, and in the power of intellect. Our
faculties are perfect, with the sole exception of
memory ; and our memory is only deficient in its
retentiveness of obligation.
Petrarca. Better had it failed in almost all its
other functions. Yet, if our countrymen presented
any flagrant instances of ingratitude, Alighieri
would have set apart a bolga for their reception.
Boccaccio. When I correct and re-publish my
Commentary, I must be as careful to gratify, as
my author was to affront them. I know, from the
nature of the Florentines and of the Italians in
general, that in calling on me to produce one, they
would rather I should praise indiscriminately than
parsimoniously. And respect is due to them for
repairing, by all the means in their power, the in-
PENTAMERON.
339
justice their fathers committed ; for enduring in
humility his resentment ; and for investing him
with public honours, as they would some deity
who had smitten them. Respect is due to them,
and I will offer it, for placing their greatness on
so firm a plinth, for deriving their pride from so
wholesome a source, and for declaring to the world
that the founder of a city is less than her poet and
instructor.
Petrarca. In the precincts of those lofty monu-
ments, those towers and temples, which have
sprung up amid her factions, the name of Dante
is heard at last, and heard with such reverence as
only the angels or the saints inspire.
Boccaccio. There are towns so barbarous, that
they must be informed by strangers of their own
great man, when they happen to have produced
one ; and would then detract from his merits, that
they might not exhibit their awkwardness in doing
him honour, or their shame in withholding it.
There are such ; but not in Italy. I have seen
youths standing and looking with seriousness, and
indeed with somewhat of veneration, on the broad
and low stone bench, to the south of the cathedral,
where Dante sat to enjoy the fresh air in summer
evenings ; and where Giotto, in conversation with
him, watched the scaffolding rise higher and
higher up his gracefullest of towers. It was truly a
bold action, when a youngster pushed another
down on the poet's seat. The surprised one blushed
and struggled, as those do who unwittingly have
been drawn into a penalty (not lightened by
laughter) for having sitten in the imperial or the
papal chair.
Petrarca. These are good signs, and never fal-
lacious. In the presence of such young persons we
ought to be very cautious how we censure a man
of genius. One expression of irreverence may eradi-
cate what demands the most attentive culture,
may wither the first love for the fair and noble,
and may shake the confidence of those who are
about to give the hand to a guidance less liable
to error. We have ever been grateful to the Deity,
for saving us from among the millions swept away
by the pestilence, which depopulated the cities of
Italy, and ravaged the whole of Europe : let us be
equally grateful for an exemption as providential
and as rare in the world of letters ; an exemption
from that Plica Polonica of invidiousness, which
infests the squalider of poetical heads, and has
not always spared those which ought to have
been cleanlier.
Boccaccio. Critics are indignant if we are silent,
and petulant if we complain. You and I are so
kindly and considerate in regard to them, that we
rather pat their petulance than prick up their in-
dignation. Marsyas, while Apollo was flaying him
leisurely and dexterously, with all the calmness of
a god, shortened his upper lip prodigiously, and
showed how royal teeth are fastened in their gums :
his eyes grew blood-shot, and expanded to the size
of rock-melons, though naturally, in length and
breadth, as well as colour, they more resembled a
well-ripened bean-pod. And there issued from his
smoking breast, and shook the leaves above it, a
rapid irregular rush of yells and bowlings. Re-
marking so material a change in his countenance
and manners, a satyr, who was much his friend
and deeply interested in his punishment, said
calmly, ' Marsyas ! Marsyas ! is it thou who criest
out so unworthily ? If thou couldst only look down
from that pleasant, smooth, shady beech-tree, thou
wouldst have the satisfaction of seeing that thy
skin is more than half drawn off thee : it is hardly
worth while to make a bustle about it now.'
Petrarca. Every Marsyas hath his consoling
satyr. Probably when yours was flayed, he was
found out to be a good musician, by those who re-
commended the flaying and celebrated the flayer.
Among authors, none hath so many friends as he
who is just now dead, and had the most enemies
last week. Those who were then his adversaries
are now sincerely his admirers, for moving out of
the way, and leaving one name less in the lottery.
And yet, poor souls ! the prize will never fall to
them. There is something sweet and generous in
the tone of praise, which captivates an ingenuous
mind, whatever may be the subject of it ; while
propensity to censure not only excites suspicion
of malevolence, but reminds the hearer of what he
can not disentangle from his earliest ideas of vul-
garity. There being no pleasure in thinking ill,
it is wonderful there should be any in speaking
ill. You, my friend, can find none in it : but
every step you are about to take in the revisal of
your Lectures, will require much caution. Aware
you must be that there are many more defects in
our author than we have touched or glanced at :
principally, the loose and shallow foundation of so
vast a structure ; its unconnectedness ; its want
of manners, of passion, of action, consistently and
uninterruptedly at work toward a distinct and
worthy purpose ; and lastly (although less impor-
tantly as regards the poetical character) that sple-
netic temper, which seems to grudge brightness
to the flames of hell, to delight in deepening its
gloom, in multiplying its miseries, in accumula-
ting weight upon depression, and building laby-
rinths about perplexity.
Boccaccio. Yet, 0 Francesco ! when I remem-
ber what Dante had suffered and was suffering
from the malice and obduracy of his enemies;
when I feel (and how I do feel it !) that you also
have been following up his glory through the
same paths of exile ; I can rest only on what is
great in him, and the exposure of a fault appears
to me almost an inhumanity.
The first time I ever walked to his villa on the
Mugnone, I felt a vehement desire to enter it ; and
yet a certain awe came upon me, as about to take
an unceremonious and an unlawful advantage of
his absence. While I was hesitating, its inhabi-
tant opened the gate, saluted, and invited me.
My desire vanished at once; and although the
civility far exceeded what a stranger as I was, and so
young a stranger too, could expect, or what pro-
bably the more illustrious owner would have
vouchsafed, the place itself and the disparity of its
340
PENTAMEROK
occupier made me shrink from it in sadness, and
stand before him almost silent. I believe I should
do the same at the present day.
Petrarca. With such feelings, which are ours
in common, there is little danger that we should
be unjust toward him ; and, if ever our opinions
come before the public, we may disregard the
petulance and aspersions of those whom nature
never constituted our judges, as she did us of
Dante. It is our duty to speak with freedom ; it
is theirs to listen with respect.
Boccaccio. History would come much into the
criticism, and would perform the most interesting
part in it. But I clearly see how unsafe it is to
meddle with the affairs of families : and every
family in Florence is a portion of the government,
or has been lately. Every one preserves the annals
of the republic ; the facts being nearly the same, the
inferences widely diverging, the motives utterly
dissimilar. A strict examination of Dante would
involve the bravest and most intelligent ; and the
court of Rome, with its royal agents, would per-
secute them as conspirators against religion,
against morals, against the peace, the order, the
existence of society. When studious and quiet
men get into power, they fancy they can not show
too much activity, and very soon prove, by exert-
ing it, that they can show too little discretion.
The military, the knightly, the baronial, are
spurred on to join in the chase ; but the fleshers
have other names and other instincts.
Petrarca. Posterity will regret that many of
those allusions to persons and events, which we
now possess in the pages of Dante, have not
reached her. Among the ancients there are few
poets who more abound in them than Horace does,
and yet we feel certain that there are many which
are lost to us.
Boccaccio. I wonder you did not mention him
before. Perhaps he is no favourite with you.
Petrarca. Why can not we be delighted with an
author, and even feel a predilection for him,
without a dislike to others 1 An admiration of
Catullus or Virgil, of Tibullus or Ovid, is never to
be heightened by a discharge of bile on Horace.
Boccaccio. The eyes of critics, whether in com-
mending or carping, are both on one side, like a
turbot's.
Petrarca. There are some men who delight in
heating themselves with wine, and others with
headstrong frowardness. These are resolved to
agitate the puddle of their blood by running into
parties, literary or political, and espouse a cham-
pion's cause with such ardour that they run
against everything in their way. Perhaps they
never knew or saw the person, or understood his
merits : what matter] No sooner was I about to
be crowned, than it was predicted by these astro-
logers, that Protonatory Nerucci and Cavallerizzo
Vuotasacchetti (two lampooners, whose hands had
latterly been kept from their occupation by draw-
ing gold-embroidered gloves on them) would be
rife .in the mouths of men after my name had
fallen into oblivion.
Boccaccio. I never heard of them before.
Petrarca. So much the better for them, and
none the worse for you. Vuotasacchetti had been
convicted of filching in his youth ; and Nerucci
was so expert a logician, and so rigidly economical
a moralist, that he never had occasion for veracity.
Boccaccio. The upholders of such gentry are
like little girls with their dolls : they must clothe
them, although they strip every other doll in the
nursery. It is reported that our Giotto, a great
mechanician as well as architect and painter, in-
vented a certain instrument by which he could
contract the dimensions of any head laid before
him. But these gentlemen, it appears, have im-
proved upon it, and not only can contract one,
but enlarge another.
Petrarca. He could perform his undertaking
with admirable correctness and precision ; can
they theirs ]
Boccaccio. I never heard they could : but well
enough for their customers and their consciences.
Petrarca. I see then no great accuracy is re-
quired.
Boccaccio. If they heard you they would think
you very dull.
Petrarca. They have always thought me BO:
and, if they change their opinion, I shall begin to
think so myself.
Boccacdo. They have placed themselves just
where, if we were mischievous, we might desire to
see them. We have no power to make them false
and malicious, yet they become so the moment
they see or hear of us, and thus sink lower than
our force could ever thrust them. Pigs, it is said,
driven into a pool beyond their depth, cut their
throats by awkward attempts at swimming. We
could hardly wish them worse luck, although each
had a devil in him. Come, let us away; we shall
find a purer stream and pleasanter company on
the Sabine farm.
Petrarca. We may indeed think the first ode
of little value, the second of none, until we come
to the sixth stanza.
Boccaccio. Bad as are the first and second, they
are better than that wretched one, sounded so lu-
gubriously in our ears at school, as the master-
piece of the pathetic ; I mean the ode addressed
to Virgil on the death of Quinctilius Varus.
Praecipe lugubres
Cantus, Melpomene, cut liquidam pater
Vocem cum cithara dedit.
Did he want any one to help him to cry 1 What
man immersed in grief cares a quattrino about
Melpomene, or her father's fairing of an artificial
cuckoo and a gilt guitar ] What man, on such
an occasion, is at leisure to amuse himself with
the little plaster images of Pudor and Fides, of
Justitia and Veritas, or disposed to make a com-
parison of Virgil and Orpheus 1 But if Horace
had written a thousand-fold as much trash, we are
never to forget that he also wrote
Coelotonantem, &o.
in competition with which ode, the finest in the
PENTAMERON.
Greek language itself has, to my ear, too many
low notes, and somewhat of a wooden sound.
And give me Vixi puellis, and give me Quis
multa gracilis, and as many more as you please ;
for there are charms in nearly all of them. It
now occurs to me that what is written, or inter-
polated,
Acer et Mauri peditis cruentum
Vultus in hostem,
should be manci ; a foot soldier mutilated, but
looking with indignant courage at the trooper
who inflicted the wound. The Mauritanians were
celebrated only for their cavalry. In return for my
suggestion, pray tell me what is the meaning of
Obliquo laborat
Lympha fugax trepidare rivo.
Petrarca. The moment I learn it you shall have
it. Laborat trepidare ! lympha rivo ! fugax too !
Fugacity is not the action for hard work, or labour.
Boccaccio. Since you can not help me out, I
must give up the conjecture, it seems, while it has
cost me only half a century. Perhaps it may be
curiosafelicitas.
Petrarca. There again ! Was there ever such
an unhappy (not to say absurd) expression ! And
this from the man who wrote the most beautiful
sentence in all latinity.
Boccaccio. What is that ?
Petrarca. I am ashamed of repeating1 it, al-
though in itself it is innocent. The words are,
Gratias ago languor! tuo, quo diutius sub
umbra voluptatis lusimus.
Boccaccio. Tear out this from the volume ; the
rest, both prose and poetry, may be thrown away.
In the Dinner of Nasidienus. I remember the
expression nosse laboro ; I am anxious to know :
this expedites the solution but little. In the
same piece there is another odd expression :
Turn in lecto qudque videret
Stridere secreta divisos aure susurros.
Petrarca. I doubt Horace's felicity in the choice
of words, being quite unable to discover it, and
finding more evidences of the contrary than in
any contemporary or preceding poet ; but I do
not doubt his infelicity in his transpositions of
them, in which certainly he is more remarkable
than whatsoever writer of antiquity. How simple,
in comparison, are Catullus* and Lucretius in the
structure of their sentences ! but the most simple
and natural of all are Ovid and Tibullus.. Your
main difficulty lies in another road : it consists
not in making explanations, but in avoiding
them. Some scholars will assert that everything
I have written in my sonnets is allegory or allu-
sion ; others will deny that anything is ; and
similarly of Dante. It was known throughout
Italy that he was the lover of Beatrice Porticari.
He has celebrated her in many compositions ; in
prose and poetry, in Latin and Italian. Hence it
became the safer for him afterward to introduce
her as an allegorical personage, in opposition to
* Except " Non ita me divi vera gemunt juerint."
the Meretrice ; under which appellation he (and
I subsequently) signified the Papacy. Our great
poet wandered among the marvels of the Apoca-
lypse, and fixed his eyes the most attentively on
the words,
Veni, et ostendam tibi sponsam. uxorein Agni.
He, as you know, wrote a commentary on his
Commedia at the close of his Treatise de Mo-
narchid. But he chiefly aims at showing the
duties of pope and emperor, and explaining such
parts of the poem as manifestly relate to them.
The Patarini accused the pope of despoiling and
defiling the church ; the Ghibellines accused him
of defrauding and rebelling against the emperor;
Dante enlists both under his flaming banner,
and exhibits the Meretrice stealing from Beatrice
both the divine and the august chariot ; the church
and empire. Grave critics will protest their in-
ability to follow you through such darkness, say-
ing you are not worth the trouble, and they must
give you up. If Laura and Fiametta were allego-
rical, they could inspire no tenderness in our
readers, and little interest. But, alas ! these are
no longer the days to dwell on them.
Let human art exert her utmost force,
Pleasure can rise no higher than its source ;
And there it ever stagnates where the ground
Beneath it, O Giovanni ! is unsound.
Boccaccio. You have given me a noble quater-
nion ; for which I can only offer you such a string
of beads as I am used to carry about with me.
Memory, they say, is the mother of the Muses :
this is her gift, not theirs.
DEPARTURE FROM FIAMETTA.
When go I must, as well she knew,
And neither yet could say adieu,
Sudden was my Piametta's fear
To let me see or feel a tear.
It could but melt my heart away,
Nor add one moment to my stay.
But it was ripe and would be shed . .
So from her cheek upon my head
It, falling on the neck behind,
Hung on the hair she oft had twined.
Thus thought she, and her arm's soft strain
Claspt it, and down it fell again.
Come, come, bear your disappointment, and for-
give my cheating you in the exchange J Ah
Francesco ! Francesco ! well may you sigh ; and
I too ; seeing we can do little now but make verses
and doze, and want little but medicine and masses,
while Fra Biago is merry as a lark, and half mas-
ter of the house. Do not look so grave upon me
for remembering so well another state of exist-
ence. He who forgets his love may still more
easily forget his friendships. I am weak, I con-
fess it, in yielding my thoughts to what returns
no more ; but you alone know my weakness.
Petrarca. We have loved ;* and so fondly as we
* The tender and virtuous Shenstone, in writing the most
beautiful of epitaphs, was unaware how near he stood to
Petrarca. Heu quanto minus est cum aliis versari quam
tui meminisse.
Pur mi consola che morir per lei
Meglio e che gioir d'altra.
342
PENTAMERON.
believe none other ever did ; and yet, although it
was in youth, Giovanni, it was not in the earliest
white dawn, when we almost shrink from its
freshness, when everything is pure and quiet,
when little of earth is seen, and much of heaven.
It was not so with us ; it was with Dante. The
little virgin Beatrice Porticari breathed all her
purity into his boyish heart, and inhaled it back
again ; and if war and disaster, anger and disdain,
seized upon it in her absence, they never could
divert its course nor impede its destination.
Happy the man who carries love with him in his
opening day ! he never loses its freshness in the
meridian of life, nor its happier influence in the
later hour. If Dante enthroned his Beatrice in
the highest heaven, it was Beatrice who conducted
him thither. Love, preceding passion, ensures,
sanctifies, and I would say survives it, were it not
rather an absorption and transfiguration into its
own most perfect purity and holiness.
Boccaccio. Up ! up ! look into that chest of
letters, out of which I took several of yours to
run over yesterday morning. All those of a friend
whom we have lost, to say nothing of a tenderer
affection, touch us sensibly, be the subject what it
may. When, in taking them out to read again, we
happen to come upon him in some pleasant mood,
it is then the dead man's hand is at the heart.
Opening the same paper long afterward, can we
wonder if a tear has raised its little island in it ]
Leave me the memory of all my friends, even of
the ungrateful ! They must remind me of some
kind feeling; and perhaps of theirs ; and for that
very reason they deserve another. It was not my
fault if they turned out less worthy than I hoped
and fancied them. Yet half the world complains
of ingratitude, and the remaining half of envy.
Of the one I have already told you my opinion,
and heard yours ; and the other we may surely
bear with quite as much equanimity. For rarely
are we envied, until we are so prosperous that
envy is rather a familiar in our train than an
enemy who waylays us. If we saw nothing of
such followers and outriders, and no scabbard
with our initials upon it, we might begin to doubt
our station.
Petrarca. Giovanni, you are unsuspicious, and
would scarcely see a monster in a minotaur. It
is well, however, to draw good out of evil, and it
is the peculiar gift of an elevated mind. Never-
theless, you must have observed, although with
greater curiosity than concern, the slipperiness
and tortuousness of your detractors.
Boccaccio. Whatever they detract from me,
they leave more than they can carry away. Be-
side, they always are detected.
Petrarca. When they are detected, they raise
themselves up fiercely, as if their nature were
erect and they could reach your height.
Boccaccio. Envy would conceal herself under
the shadow and shelter of contemptuousness, but
she swells too huge for the den she creeps into.
Let her lie there and crack, and think no more
about her. The people you have been talking of
can find no greater and no other faults in my
writings than I myself am willing to show them,
and still more willing to correct. There are
many things, as you have just now told me, very
unworthy of their company.
Petrarca. He who has much gold is none the
poorer for having much silver too. When a king
of old displayed his wealth and magnificence
before a philosopher, .the philosopher's exclama-
tion was,
" How many things are here which I do not
want ! "
Does not the same reflection come upon us,
when we have laid aside our compositions for a
time, and look into them again more leisurely ?
Do we not wonder at our own profusion, and say
like the philosopher,
" How many things are here which I do not
want ! "
It may happen that we pull up flowers with
weeds ; but better this than rankness. We must
bear to see our first-born despatched before our
eyes, and give them up quietly.
Boccaccio. The younger will be the most reluc-
tant. There are poets among us who mistake in
themselves the freckles of the hay-fever for beauty-
spots. In another half-century their volumes will
be inquired after ; but only for the sake of cutting
out an illuminated letter from the title-page, or of
transplanting the willow at the end, that hangs so
prettily over the tomb of Amaryllis. If they wish
to be healthy and vigorous, let them open their
bosoms to the breezes of Sunium ; for the air of
Latium is heavy and overcharged. Above all,
they must remember two admonitions ; first, that
sweet things hurt digestion ; secondly, that great
sails are ill adapted to small vessels. What is
there lovely in poetry unless there be moderation
and composure 1 Are they not better than the
hot uncontrollable harlotry of a flaunting dishe-
velled enthusiasm? Whoever has the power of
creating, has likewise the inferior power of keeping
his creation in order. The best poets are the
most impressive, because their steps are regular ;
for without regularity there is neither strength nor
state. Look at Sophocles, look at .iEschylus, look
at Homer.
Petrarca. I agree with you entirely to the whole
extent of your observations ; and, if you will con-
tinue, I am ready to lay aside my Dante for the
present.
Boccaccio. No, no; we must have him again
between us : there is no danger that he will sour
our tempers.
Petrarca. In comparing his and yours, since
you forbid me to declare all I think of your genius,
you will at least allow me to congratulate you as
being the happier of the two.
Boccaccio. Frequently, where there is great
power in poetry, the imagination makes encroach-
ments on the heart, and uses it as her own. I
have shed tears on writings which never cost the
writer a sigh, but which occasioned him to rub
the palms of his hands together, until they were
PENTAMEEON.
343
ready to strike fire, with satisfaction at having
overcome the difficulty of being tender.
Petrarca. Giovanni ! are you not grown sa-
tirical ?
Boccaccio. Not in this. It is a truth as broad
and glaring as the eye of the Cyclops. To make
you amends for your shuddering, I will express
my doubt, on the other hand, whether Dante felt
all the indignation he threw into his poetry. We
are immoderately fond of warming ourselves ; and
we do not think, or care, what the fire is composed
of. Be sure it is not always of cedar, like Circe's.*
Our Alighieri had slipt into the habit of vitupe-
ration ; and he thought it fitted him ; so he never
left it off.
Petrarca. Serener colours are pleasanter to our
eyes and more becoming to our character. The
chief desire in every man of genius is to be thought
one; and no fear or apprehension lessens it.
Alighieri, who had certainly studied the gospel,
must have been conscious that he not only was
inhumane, but that ne betrayed a more vindictive
spirit than any pope or prelate who is enshrined
within the fretwork of his golden grating.
Boccaccio. Unhappily, his strong talon had
grown into him, and it would have pained him to
suffer its amputation. This eagle, unlike Jupiter's,
never loosened the thunderbolt from it under the
influence of harmony.
Petrarca. The only good thing we can expect
in such minds and tempers, is good poetry : let us
at least get that ; and, having it, let us keep and
value it. If you had never written some wanton
stories, you would never have been able to show
the world how much wiser and better you grew
afterward.
Boccaccio. Alas ! if I live, I hope to show it.
You have raised my spirits : and now, dear Fran-
cesco ! do say a couple of prayers for me, while I
lay together the materials of a tale ; a right merry
one, I promise you. Faith ! it shall amuse you,
and pay decently for the prayers ; a good honest
litany-worth. I hardly know whether I ought to
have a nun in it : do you think I may 1
Petrarca. Can not you do without one 1
Boccaccio. No ; a nun I must have : say nothing
against her ; I can more easily let the abbess alone.
Yet Frate Biagio t . . that Frate Biagio, who
* Dives inaccessis ubi Solis filialucis
Urit odoratam nocturna in luminacedrum. 3Zn.
\ Our San Vivaldo is enriched by his deposit. In the
church, on the fifth flagstone from before the high altar,
is this inscription,
HIC SITUS EST,
BEATAM IMMORTALITATKM EXPECTANS,
D. BLASIUS DE BLASTIS,
Hr.irs CO3NOBH ABBAS,
SINGULARI VIR CHARITATE,
MORIBUR INTEGERRJMIS,
RBI THEOLOGICJE NEC NON PHYSIC/E
PBRITJSS1MUS.
ORATE PRO ANIMA EJUS.
To the word orate have been prefixed the letters PL, the
aspiration, no doubt, of some friendlj monk; although
Monsignore thinks it susceptible of two interpretations ;
the other he reserves in petto. Domenico Grigi.
never came to visit me but when he thought I
was at extremities or asleep . . . Assuntina ! are
you there 1
Petrarca. No ; do you want her ?
Boccaccio. Not a bit. That Frate Biagio has
heightened my pulse when I could not lower it
again. The very devil is that Frate for heighten-
ing pulses. And with him I shall now make
merry . . God willing . . in God's good time . .
should it be his divine will to restore me ! which
I think he has begun to do miraculously. I seem
to be within a frog's leap of well again; and we will
presently have some rare fun in my Tale of the Frate.
Petrarca. Do not openly name him.
Boccaccio. He shall recognise himself by one
single expression. He said to me, when I was at
the worst,
" Ser Giovanni ! it would not be much amiss
(with permission !) if you begin to think (at any
spare time) just a morsel, of eternity."
" Ah ! Fra Biagio ! " answered I, contritely, " I
never heard a sermon of yours but I thought of
it seriously and uneasily, long before the discourse
was over."
" So must all," replied he, " and yet few have
the grace to own it."
Now mind, Francesco ! if it should please the
Lord to call me unto him, I say, Tlie Nun and
Fra Biagio will be found, after my decease, in the
closet cut out of the wall, behind yon Saint Zacha-
rias in blue and yellow.
Well done ! well done ! Francesco. I never
heard any man repeat his prayers so fast and
fluently. Why ! how many (at a guess) have you
repeated ] Such is the power of friendship, and
such the habit of religion ! They have done me
good : I feel myself stronger already. To-mor-
row I think I shall be able, by leaning on that
stout maple stick in the corner, to walk half over
my podere.
Have you done ] have you done 1
Petrarca. Be quiet : you may talk too much.
Boccaccio. I can not be quiet for another hour ;
so, if you have any more prayers to get over, stick
the spur into the other side of them : they must
verily speed, if they beat the last.
Petrarca. Be more serious, dear Giovanni.
Boccaccio. Never bid a convalescent be more
serious : no, nor a sick man neither. To health
it may give that composure which it takes away
from sickness. Every man will have his hours of
seriousness ; but, like the hours of rest, they often
are ill chosen and unwholesome. Be assured, our
heavenly Father is as well pleased to see his chil-
dren in the playground as in the schoolroom. He
has provided both for us, and has given us intima-
tions when each should occupy us.
Petrarca. You are right, Giovanni! but we
know which bell is heard the most distinctly. We
fold our arms at the one, try the cooler part of
the pillow, and turn again to slumber ; at the
first stroke of the other, we are beyond our moni-
tors. As for you, hardly Dante himself could
make you grave.
344
PENTAMERON.
Boccaccio. I do not remember how it happened
that we slipped away from hia side. One of us
must have found him tedious.
Petrarca. If you were really and substantially at
his side, he would have no mercy on you.
Boccaccio. In sooth, our good Alighieri seems to
have had the appetite of a dogfish or shark, and
to have bitten the harder the warmer he was. I
would not voluntarily be under his manifold rows
of dentals. He has an incisor to every saint in
the calendar. I should fare, methinks, like Brutus
and the Archbishop. He is forced to stretch him-
self, out of sheer listlessness, in so idle a place as
Purgatory ; he loses half his strength in Para-
dise: Hell alone makes him alert and lively:
there he moves about and threatens as tremen-
dously as the serpent that opposed the legions on
their march in Africa. He would not have been
contented in Tuscany itself, even had his enemies
left him unmolested. Were I to write on his model
a tripartite poem, I think it should be entitled,
Earth, Italy, and Heaven.
Petrarca. You will never give yourself the
trouble.
Boccaccio. I should not succeed.
Petrarca. Perhaps not : but you have done
very much, and may be able to do very much
more.
Boccaccio. Wonderful is it to me, when I con-
sider that an infirm and helpless creature, as I am,
should be capable of laying thoughts up in their
cabinets of words, which Time, as he rushes by,
with the revolutions of stormy and destructive
years, can never move from their places. On this
coarse mattress, one among the homeliest in the
fair at Impruneta, is stretched an old burgess of
Certaldo, of whom perhaps more will be known
hereafter than we know of the Ptolemies and the
Pharaohs ; while popes and princes are lying as
unregarded as the fleas that are shaken out of the
window. Upon my life, Francesco ! to think of
this is enough to make a man presumptuous.
Petrarca. No, Giovanni ! not when the man
thinks justly of it, as such a man ought to do,
and must. For, so mighty a power over Time,
who casts all other mortals under his, comes down
to us from a greater ; and it is only if we abuse
the victory that it were .better we had encountered
a defeat. Unremitting care must be taken that
nothing soil the monuments we are raising : sure
enough we are that nothing can subvert, and
nothing but our negligence, or worse than negli-
gence, efface them. Under the glorious lamp
entrusted to your vigilance, one among the lights
of the world, which the ministering angels of our
God have suspended for his service, let there
stand, with unclosing eyes, Integrity, Compassion,
Self-denial.
Boccaccio. These are holier and cheerfuller
images than Dante has been setting up before us.
I hope every thesis in dispute among his theolo-
gians will be settled ere I set foot among them.
I like Tuscany well enough : it answers all my
purposes for the present : and I am without the
benefit of those preliminary studies which might
render me a worthy auditor of incomprehensible
wisdom.
Petrarca. I do not wonder you are attached to
Tuscany. Many as have been your visits and ad-
ventures in other parts, you have rendered it plea-
santcr and more interesting than any : and indeed
we can scarcely walk in any quarter from the
gates.of Florence, without the recollection of some
witty or affecting story related by you. Every
street, every farm, is peopled by your genius : and
this population can not change with seasons or with
ages, with factions or with incursions. Ghibellines
and Guelphs will have been contested for only by
the worms, long before the Decameron has ceased
to be recited on our banks of blue lilies and under
our arching vines. Another plague may come
amidst us ; and something of a solace in so terrible
a visitation would be found in your pages, by those
to whom letters are a refuge and relief.
Boccaccio. I do indeed think my little bevy
from Santa Maria Novella would be better com-
pany on such an occasion, than a devil with three
heads, who diverts the pain his claws inflicted,
by sticking his fangs in another place.
Petrarca. This is atrocious, not terrific nor
grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by
his shadows ; by his human affections, not by his
infernal. As the minutest sands are the labours
of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast
mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and
wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a tur-
bulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things and
penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning
on the earth in loneliness and sadness.
Boccaccio. Among men he is what among waters
is
The strange, mysterious, solitary Nile.
Petrarca. Is that his verse 1 I do not remem-
ber it.
Boccaccio. No, it is mine for the present : how
long it may continue mine I can not tell. I never
run after those who steal my apples : it would
only tire me : and they are hardly worth recover-
ing when-they are bruised and bitten^ as they are
usually. I would not stand upon my verses : it is
a perilous boy's trick, which we ought to leave off
when we put on square shoes. Let our prose show
what we are, and our poetry what we have been.
Petrarca. You would never have given this ad-
vice to Alighieri.
Boccaccio. I would never plough porphyry; there
is ground fitter for grain. Alighieri is the parent
of his system, like the sun, about whom all the
worlds are but particles thrown forth from him. We
may write little things well, and accumulate one
upon another ; but never will any be justly called
a great poet unless he has treated a great subject
worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and
of the idler, he may be the poet of green fields or
gay society ; but whoever is this can be no more.
A throne is not built of birds'-nests, nor do a
thousand reeds make a trumpet.
PENTAMERON.
345
Petrarca. I wish Alighieri had blown his on
nobler occasions.
Boccaccio. We may rightly wish it : but, in
regretting what he wanted, let us acknowledge
what he had : and never forget (which we omitted
to mention) that he borrowed less from his pre-
decessors than any of the Roman poets from theirs.
Reasonably may it be expected that almost all
who follow will be greatly more indebted to an-
tiquity, to whose stores we, every year, are mak-
ing some addition.
Petrarca It can be held no flaw in the title-
deeds of genius, if the same thoughts re-appear as
have been exhibited long ago. The indisputable
sign of defect should be looked for in the propor-
tion they bear to the unquestionably original.
There are ideas which necessarily must occur to
minds of the like magnitude and materials, aspect
and temperature. When two ages are in the same
phasis, they will excite the same humours, and
produce the same coincidences and combinations.
In addition to which, a great poet may really
borrow : he may even condescend to an obligation
at the hand of an equal or inferior : but he forfeits
his title if he borrows more than the amount of
his own possessions. The nightingale himself
takes somewhat of his song from birds less glori-
fied : and the lark, having beaten with her wing
the very gates of heaven, cools her breast among
the grass. The lowlier of intellect may lay out a
table in their field, at which table the highest one
shall sometimes be disposed to partake : want does
not compell him. Imitation, as we call it, is often
weakness, but it likewise is often sympathy.
Boccaccio. Our poet was seldom accessible in this
quarter. Invective picks up the first stone on the
wayside, and wants leisure to consult a forerunner.
Petrarca. Dante (original enough everywhere)
is coarse and clumsy in this career. Vengeance
has nothing to do with comedy, nor properly with
satire. The satirist who told us that Indignation
made his verses* for him, might have been told
in return that she excluded him thereby from the
first class, and thrust him among the rhetori-
cians and declaimers. Lucretius, in his vitupera-
tion, is graver and more dignified than Alighieri.
Painful ; to see how tolerant is the atheist, how
intolerant the catholic : how anxiously the one
removes from among the sufferings of Mortality,
her last and heaviest, the fear of a vindictive Fury
pursuing her shadow across rivers of fire and tears ;
how laboriously the other brings down Anguish
and Despair, even when Death has done his work.
How grateful the one is to that beneficent philo-
sopher who made him at peace with himself, and
tolerant and kindly toward his fellow-creatures !
how importunate the other that God should forego
his divine mercy, and hurl everlasting torments
both upon the dead and the living !
* Facit indignatio versum. Juv.
Boccaccio. I have always heard that Ser Dante
was a very good man and sound catholic : but
Christ forgive me if my heart is oftener on the
side of Lucretius !* Observe, I say, my heart ;
nothing more. I devoutly hold to the sacraments
and the mysteries : yet somehow I would rather
see men tranquillised than frightened out of their
senses, and rather fast asleep than burning. Some-
times I have been ready to believe, as far as our
holy faith will allow me, that it were better our
Lord were nowhere, than torturing in his inscrut-
able wisdom, to all eternity, so many myriads of
us poor devils, the creatures of his hands. Do
not cross thyself so thickly, Francesco ! nor hang
down thy nether lip so loosely, languidly, and
helplessly ; for I would be a good catholic, alive
or dead. But, upon my conscience, it goes hard
with me to think it of him, when I hear that
woodlark yonder, gushing with joyousness, or
when I see the beautiful clouds, resting so softly
one upon another, dissolving . . and not damned
for it. Above all, I am slow to apprehend it, when I
remember his great goodness vouchsafed to me, and
reflect on my sinful life heretofore, chiefly in sum-
mer time, and in cities, or their vicinity. But I
was tempted beyond my strength ; and I fell as
any man might do. However, this last illness,
by God's grace, has well nigh brought me to my
right mind again in all such matters : and if I
get stout in the present month, and can hold out
the next without sliding, I do verily think I am
safe, or nearly so, until the season of beccaficoes.
Petrarca. Be not too confident 1
Boccaccio. Well, I will not be.
Petrarca. But be firm.
Boccaccio. Assuntina ! what ! are you come in
again !
Assunta. Did you or my master call me, River-
enza?
Petrarca. No, child !
Boccaccio. 0 ! get you gone ! get you gone ! you
little rogue you !
Francesco, I feel quite well. Your kindness to
my playful creatures in the Decameron has revived
me, and has put me into good-humour with the
greater part of them. Are you quite certain the
Madonna will not expect me to keep my promise 1
You said you were : I need not ask you again.
I will accept the whole of your assurances, and
half your praises.
Petrarca. To represent so vast a variety of per-
sonages so characteristically as you have done, to
give the wise all their wisdom, the witty all their
wit, and (what is harder to do advantageously)
the simple all their simplicity, requires a genius
such as you alone possess. Those who doubt it are
the least dangerous of your rivals.
* Qy. How much of Lucretius (or Petronius or Catullus,
before cited) was then known ? Remark by Montignore.
346
PENTAMERON.
FIFTH DAY'S INTERVIEW.
It being now the last morning that Petrarca
could remain with his friend, he resolved to pass
early into his bed-chamber. Boccaccio had risen,
and was standing at the open window, with his
arms against it. Renovated health sparkled in
the eyes of the one; surprise and delight and
thankfulness to heaven, filled the other's with
sudden tears. He clasped Giovanni, kissed his
flaccid and sallow cheek, and falling on his knees,
adored the Giver of life, the source of health to
body and soul. Giovanni was not unmoved : he
bent one knee as he leaned on the shoulder of
Francesco, looking down into his face, repeating
his words, and adding,
" Blessed be thou, 0 Lord ! who sendest me
health again! and blessings on thy messenger
who brought it."
He had slept soundly; for ere he closed his
eyes he had unburdened his mind of its freight,
not only by employing the prayers appointed by
Holy Church, but likewise by ejaculating; as
sundry of the fathers did of old. He acknowledged
his contrition for many transgressions, and chiefly
for uncharitable thoughts of Fra Biagio : on which
occasion he turned fairly round on his couch, and
leaning his brow against the wall, and his body
being in a becomingly curved position, and proper
for the purpose, he thus ejaculated,
" Thou knowest, 0 most Holy Virgin ! that
never have I spoken to handmaiden at this vil-
letta, or within my mansion at Certaldo, wantonly
or indiscreetly, but have always been, inasmuch
as may be, the guardian of innocence ; deeming it
better, when irregular thoughts assailed me, to
ventilate them abroad than to poison the house
with them. And if, sinner as I am, I have
thought uncharitably of others, and more espe-
cially of Fra Biagio, pardon me, out of thy exceed-
ing great mercies ! And let it not be imputed to
me, if I have kept, and may keep hereafter, an
eye over him, in wariness and watchfulness ; not
otherwise. For thou knowest, 0 Madonna ! that
many who have a perfect and unwavering faith
in thee, yet do cover up their cheese from the
nibblings of vermin."
Whereupon, he turned round again, threw him-
self on his back at full length, and feeling the
sheets cool, smooth, and refreshing, folded his
arms, and slept instantaneously. The conse-
quence of his wholesome slumber was a calm
alacrity : and the idea that his visitor would be
happy at seeing him on his feet again, made him
attempt to get up : at which he succeeded, to
his own wonder. And it was increased by the
manifestation of his strength in opening the case-
ment, stiff from being closed, and swelled by the
continuance of the rains. The morning was warm
and sunny : and it is known that on this occa-
sion he composed the verses below :
My old familiar cottage-green !
I see once more thy pleasant sheen ;
The gossamer suspended over
Smart celandine by lusty clover ;
And the last blossom of the plum
Inviting her first leaves to come ;
Which hang a little back, but show
'Tis not their nature to say no.
I scarcely am in voice to sing
How graceful are the steps of Spring ;
And ah ! it makes me sigh to look
How leaps along my merry brook,
The very same to-day as when
He chirrupt first to maids and men.
Petrarca. I can rejoice at the freshness of your
feelings : but the sight of the green turf reminds
me rather of its ultimate use and destination.
For many serves the parish pall,
The turf in common serves for all.
Boccaccio. Very true ; and, such being the case,
let us carefully fold it up, and lay it by until we
call for it.
Francesco, you made me quite light-headed yes-
terday. I am rather too old to dance either with
Spring, as I have been saying, or with Vanity :
and yet I accepted her at your hand as a partner.
In future, no more of comparisons for me ! You
not only can do me no good, but you can leave
me no pleasure : for here I shall remain the few
days I have to live, and shall see nobody who will
be disposed to remind me of your praises. Beside,
you yourself will get hated for them. We neither
can deserve praise nor receive it with impunity.
Petrarca. Have you never remarked that it is
into quiet water that children throw pebbles to dis-
turb it 1 and that it is into deep caverns that the
idle drop sticks and dirt ] We must expect such
treatment.
Boccaccio. Your admonition shall have its
wholesome influence over me, when the fever
your praises have excited has grown moderate.
. . After the conversation on this topic and va-
rious others had continued some time, it was in-
terrupted by a visiter. The clergy and monkery
at Certaldo had never been cordial with Messer
Giovanni, it being suspected that certain of his
Novelle were modelled on originals in their or-
ders. Hence, although they indeed both professed
and felt esteem for Canonico Petrarca, they ab-
stained from expressing it at the villetta. But
Frate Biagio of San Vivaldo was (by his own ap-
pointment) the friend of the house ; and, being
considered as very expert in pharmacy, had, day
after day, brought over no indifferent store of
simples, in ptisans, and other refections, during
the continuance of Ser Giovanni's ailment. Some-
thing now moved him to cast about in his mind
whether it might not appear dutiful to make
another visit. Perhaps he thought it possible
that, among those who peradventure had seen
him lately on the road, one or other might expect
from him a solution of the questions, What sort
of person was the crowned martyr ? whether he
carried a palm in his hand 1 whether a seam was
PENTAMERON.
347
visible across the throat ? whether he wore a ring
over his glove, with a chrysolite in it, like the
bishops, but representing the city of Jerusalem
and the judgment-seat of 'Pontius Pilate1? Such
were the reports ; but the inhabitants of San Vi-
valdo could not believe the Certaldese, who, inha-
biting the next township to them, were naturally
their enemies. Yet they might believe Frate
Biagio, and certainly would interrogate him ac-
cordingly. He formed his determination, put his
frock and hood on, and gave a curvature to his
shoe, to evince his knowledge of the world, by
pushing the extremity of it with his breast-bone
against the corner of his cell. Studious of his
figure and of his attire, he walked as much as
possible on his heels, to keep up the reformation
he had wrought in the workmanship of the cord-
wainer. On former occasions he had borrowed a
horse, as being wanted to hear confession or to
carry medicines, which might otherwise be too
late. But, having put on an entirely new habi-
liment, and it being the season when horses are
beginning to do the same, he deemed it prudent
to travel on foot. Approaching the villetta, his
first intention was to walk directly into his pa-
tient's room : but he found it impossible to resist
the impulses of pride, in showing Assunta his
rigid and stately frock, and shoes rather of the
equestrian order than the monastic. So he went
into the kitchen where the girl was at work, having
just taken away the remains of the breakfast.
" Frate Biagio I " cried she, " is this you ? Have
you been sleeping at Conte Jeronimo's ?"
" Not I," replied he.
" Why !" said she, " those are surely his shoes !
Santa Maria ! you must have put them on in the
dusk of the morning, to say your prayers in !
Here ! here ! take these old ones of Signor Pa-
drone, for the love of God ! I hope your Reve-
rence met nobody."
Frate. What dost smile at?
Assunta. Smile at ! I could find in my heart to
laugh outright, if I only were certain that nobody
had seen your Keverence in such a funny trim.
Riverenza ! put on these.
Frate. Not I indeed.
Assunta. Allow me then ?
Frate. 'No, nor you.
Assunta. Then let me stand upon yours, to
push down the points.
. . . Frate Biagio now began to relent a little,
when Assunta, who had made one step toward the
project, bethought herself suddenly, and said,
" No ; I might miss my footing. But, mercy
upon us ! what made you cramp your Reverence
with those ox-yoke shoes ? and strangle your Re-
verence with that hang-dog collar?"
" If you must know," answered the Frate, red-
dening, " it was because I am making a visit to the
Canonico of Parma. I should like to know some-
thing about him : perhaps you could tell me ? "
Assunta. Ever so much.
Frate. I thought no less : indeed I knew it.
Which goes to bed first?
Assunta. Both together.
Frate. Demonio ! what dost mean ?
Assunta. He tells me never to sit up waiting,
but to say my prayers and dream of the Virgin.
Frate. As if it was any business of his ! Does
he put out his lamp himself?
Assunta. To be sure he does : why should not
he ? what should he be afraid of ? It is not winter :
and beside, there is a mat upon the floor, all round
the bed, excepting the top and bottom.
Frate. I am quite convinced he never said any-
thing to make you blush. Why are you silent ?
Assunta. I have a right.
Frate. He did then? ay? Do not nod your head :
that will never do. Discreet girls speak plainly.
Assunta. What would you have ?
Frate. The truth ; the truth ; again, I say, the
truth.
Assunta. He did then.
Frate. I knew it ! The most dangerous man
living !
Assunta. Ah ! indeed he is ! Signor Padrone
said so.
Frate. He knows him of old : he warned you,
it seems.
Assunta. Me ! He never said it was I who was
Frate. He might : it was his duty.
Assunta. Am £ so fat? Lord! you may feel
every rib. Girls who run about as I do, slip away
from apoplexy.
Frate. Ho ! ho ! that is all, is it ?
Assunta. And bad enough too ! that such good-
natured men should ever grow so bulky ; and stand
in danger, as Padrone said they both do, of such
a seizure?
Frate. What? and art ready to cry about it?
Old folks can not die easier : and there are always
plenty of younger to run quick enough for a con-
fessor. But I must not trifle in this manner. It is
my duty to set your feet in the right way : it is
my bounden duty to report to Ser Giovanni all
irregularities I know of, committed in his domicile.
I could indeed, and would, remit a trifle, on hear-
ing the worst. Tell me now, Assunta ! tell me, you
little angel ! did you ... we all may, the very
best of us may, and do ... sin, my sweet ?
Assunta. You may be sure I do not : for when-
ever I sin I run into church directly, although it
snows or thunders : else I never could see again
Padrone's face, or any one's.
Frate. You do not come to me.
Assunta. You live at San Vivaldo.
Frate. But when there is sin so pressing I am
always ready to be found. You perplex, you puzzle
me. Tell me at once how he made you blush.
Assunta. Well then !
Frate. Well then ! you did not hang back so
before him. I lose all patience.
Assunta. So famous a man! . . .
Frate. No excuse in that.
Assunta. So dear to Padrone . . .
Frate. The more shame for him !
Assunta. Called me. .
348
PENTAMERON.
Frate. And called you, did he ! the traitorous
swine !
Assunta. Called me . . good girl.
Frate. Psha ! the wenches, I think, are all mad :
but few of them in this manner.
. . Without saying another word, Era Biagio
went forward and opened the bedchamber-door,
saying, briskly,
" Servant ! Ser Giovanni ! Ser Canonico ! most
devoted ! most obsequious ! I venture to incom-
mode you. Thanks to God, Ser Canonico, you are
looking well for your years. They tell me you were
formerly (who would believe it !) the handsomest
man in Christendom, and worked your way glibly,
yonder at Avignon.
" Capperi ! Ser Giovanni ! I never observed that
you were sitting bolt-upright in that long-backed
arm-chair, instead of lying abed. Quite in the
right. I am rejoiced at such a change for the
better. Who advised it T
Boccaccio. So many thanks to Era Biagio ! I
not only am sitting up, but have taken a draught
of fresh air at the window, and every leaf had a
little present 'of sunshine for me.
There is one pleasure, Era Biagio, which I fancy
you never have experienced, and I hardly know
whether I ought to wish it you ; the first sensa-
tion of health after a long confinement.
Frate. Thanks ! infinite ! I would take any man's
word for that, without a wish to try it. Everybody
tells me I am exactly what I was a dozen years
ago ; while, for my part, I see everybody changed :
those who ought to be much about my age, even
those . . Per Bacco ! I told them my thoughts
when they had told me theirs ; and they were not
so agreeable as they used to be in former days.
Boccaccio. How people hate sincerity.
Cospetto ! why, Frate ! what hast got upon thy
toes 1 Hast killed some Tartar and tucked his
bow into one, and torn the crescent from the
vizier's tent to make the other match it ] Hadst
thou fallen in thy mettlesome expedition (and it
is a mercy and a miracle thou didst not) those
sacrilegious shoes would have impaled thee.
Frate. It was a mistake in the shoemaker. But
no pain or incommodity whatsoever could detain
me from paying my duty to Ser Canonico, the first
moment I heard of his auspicious arrival, or from
offering my congratulations to Ser Giovanni, on
the annunciation that he was recovered and look-
ing out of the window. All Tuscany was standing
on the watch for it, and the news flew like light-
ning. By this time it is upon the Danube.
And pray, Ser Canonico, how does Madonna
Laura do ?
Petrarca. Peace to her gentle spirit ! she is de-
parted.
Frate. Ay, true. I had quite forgotten : that
is to say, I recollect it. You told us as much, I
think, in a poem on her death. Well, and do you
know ! our friend Giovanni here is a bit of an
author in his way.
Boccaccio. Frate ! you confuse my modesty.
Frate. Murder will out. It is a fact, on my
conscience. Have you never heard anything
about it, Canonico ] Ha ! we poets are sly fellows :
we can keep a secret. •
Boccaccio". Are you quite sure you can ]
Frate. Try, and trust me with any. I am a
confessional on legs : there is no more a whisper
in me than in a woolsack.
I am in feather again, as you see ; and in tune,
as you shall hear.
April is not the month for moping. Sing
it lustily.
Boccaccio. Let it be your business to sing it,
being a Frate : I can only recite it.
Frate. Pray do then.
Boccaccio.
Frate Biagio ! sempre quando
Qua tu vieni cavalcando,
Pensi cbe le buone strade
Per il tnondo sien ben rade ;
E, di quante sono brutte.
La piu brutta e tua di tuttc.
Badi, nun cascare sulle
Graziosissime fanciulle,
Che con capo dritto, alzato,
Uova portano al mercato.
Pessima mi pare 1'opra
Rovesciarle sottosopra.
Deh ' scansando le erte e sassi,
Sempre con premura passi.
Caro amico ! Frate Biagio !
Passi pur, ma passi adagio.*
Frate. Well now really, Canonico, for one not
exactly one of us, that can/one of Ser Giovanni has
merit ; has not it ] I did not ride, however, to-
day ; as you may see by the lining of my frock.
But plus non vitiat ; ay, Canonico ! About the
roads he is right enough ; they are the devil's
own roads ; that must be said for them.
Ser Giovanni ! with permission ; your mention
of eggs in the canzone, has induced me to fancy
I could eat a pair of them. The hens lay well
now : that white one of yours is worth more than
the goose that laid the golden : and you have a
store of others, her equals or betters : we have
none like them at poor St. Vivaldo. A riverderci,
Ser Giovanni ! Schiavo ! Ser Canonico ! mi com-
mandino.
. . Era Biagio went back into the kitchen, helped
himself to a quarter of a loaf, ordered a flask of
* Avendo io fatto comparire nel nostro idioma toscano,
e senza traduzione, i leggiadri versi snpra stampati, chiedo
perdono da chi legge. Non potei, badando con dovuta
premura ai miei interessi ed a quelli del proposito mio,
non potei, dico, far di meno ; stanteche una riuniono de'
critici, i piu vistosi del Kegno unito d'Inghilterra ed Ir-
landa, avra con unanimita dichiarato, che nessuno, di
quanti esistono i mortali, sapramai indovinarela versione.
Stimo assai il tradduttore ; lavora per poco, e agevolmente ;
mi pare piutosto galantuomo ; non c' e male ; ma poeta
poco felice poi. Parlano que' Signori critici riveritissimi
di certi poemetti e frammenti giadn noi ammessi in questo
volume, ed anche di altri del medesimo autore forse origi-
nali, e restano di avviso commune, che non vi sia neppure
una sola parola veramente da intendersi ; che il senso
(chi sa ?) sara di ateisimo, ovvero di alto tradimento. Che
questo non lo sia, ne palsesamente ne occultamente, fermo
col proprio pugno. Domenico Grigi.
PENTAMEROK
wine, and, trying several eggs against his lips,
selected seven, which he himself fried in oil, al-
though the maid offered her services. He never
had been so little disposed to enter into conversa-
tion with her ; and, on her asking him how he
found her master, he replied, that in bodily health
Ser Giovanni, by his prayers and ptisans, had
much improved, but that his faculties were wear-
ing out apace. " He may now run in the same
couples with the Canonico : they can not catch the
mange one of the other : the one could say nothing
to the purpose, and the other nothing at all. The
whole conversation was entirely at my charge,"
added he. " And now, Assunta, since you press
it, I will accept the service of your master's shoes.
How I shall ever get home I don't know." He
took the shoes off the handles of the bellows,
where Assunta had placed them out of her way,
and tucking one of his own under each arm, limped
toward St. Vivaldo.
The unwonted attention to smartness of apparel,
in the only article wherein it could be displayed,
was suggested to Frate Biagio by hearing that
Ser Francesco, accustomed to courtly habits and
elegant society, and having not only small hands,
but small feet, usually wore red slippers in the
morning. Fra Biagio had scarcely left the outer
door, than he cordially cursed Ser Francesco for
making such a fool of him, and wearing slippers
of black list. " These canonicoes," said he, " not
only lie themselves, but teach everybody else to
do the same. He has lamed me for life : I burn
as if I had been shod at the blacksmith's forge."
The two friends said nothing about him, but
continued the discourse which his visit had inter-
rupted.
Petrarca. Turn again, I entreat you, to the
serious ; and do not imagine that because by na-
ture you are inclined to playfulness, you must
therefore write ludicrous things better. Many of
your stories would make the gravest men laugh,
and yet there is little wit in them.
Boccaccio. I think so myself ; though authors,
little disposed as they are to doubt their posses-
sion of any quality they would bring into play, are
least of all suspicious on the side of wit. You
have convinced me. I am glad to have been
tender, and to have written tenderly : for I am
certain it is this alone that has made you love me
with such affection.
Petrarca. Not this alone, Giovanni ! but this
principally. I have always found you kind and
compassionate, liberal and sincere, and when For-
tune does not stand very close to such a man, she
leaves only the more room for Friendship.
Boccaccio. Let her stand off then, now and for
ever ! To my heart, to my heart, Francesco !
preserver of my health, my peace of mind, and
(since you tell me I may claim it) my glory.
Petrarca. Recovering your strength you must
pursue your studies to complete it. What can
you have been doing with your books ? I have
searched in vain this morning for the treasury.
Where are they kept 1 Formerly they were al-
ways open. I found only a short manuscript,
which I suspect is poetry, but I ventured not on
looking into it, until I had brought it with me
and laid it before you.
Boccaccio. Well guessed ! They are verses
written by a gentleman who resided long in this
country, and who much regretted the necessity
of leaving it. He took great delight in composing
both Latin and Italian, but never kept a copy of
them latterly, so that these are the only ones I
could obtain from him. Read : for your voice
will improve them.
TO MY CHILD CARLINO.
Carlino ! what art thou about, my boy ?
Often I ask that question, though in vain,
For we are far apart : ah ! therefore 'tis
I often ask it ; not in such a tone
As wiser fathers do, who know too well.
Were we not children, you and I together ?
Stole we not glances from each other's eyes ?
Swore we not secrecy in such misdeeds ?
Well could we trust each other. Tell me then
What thou art doing. Carving out thy name,
Or haply mine, upon my favourite seat,
With the new knife I sent thee over sea?
Or hast thou broken it, and hid the hilt
Among the myrtles, starr'd with flowers, behind ?
Or under that high throne whence fifty lilies
(With sworded tuberoses dense around)
Lift up their heads at once, not without fear
That they were looking at thee all the while.
Does Cincirillo follow thee about ?
Inverting one swart foot suspensively,
And wagging his dread jaw at every chirp
Of bird above him on the olive-branch ?
Frighten him then away ! 'twas he who slew
Our pigeons, our white pigeons peacock-tailed,
That fear'd not you and me. . .alas, nor him !
I flattened his striped sides along my knee.
And reasoned with him on his bloody mind,
Till he looked blandly, and half-closed his eyea
To ponder on my lecture in the shade.
I doubt his memory much, his heart a little,
And in some minor matters (may I say it ?)
Could wish him rather sager. But from thee
God hold back wisdom yet for many years !
Whether in early season or in late
It always comes high-priced. For thy pure breast
I have no lesson ; it for me has many.
Come throw it open then ! What sports, what cares
(Since there are none too young for these) engage
Thy busy thoughts ? Are you again at work,
Walter and you, with those sly labourers,
Geppo, Giovanni, Cecco, and Poeta,
To build more solidly your broken dam
Among the poplars, whence the nightingale
Inquisitively watch *d you all daylong?
I was not of your council in the scheme,
Or might have saved you silver without end,
And sighs too without number. Art thou gone
Below the mulberry, where that cold pool
Urged to devise a warmer, and more fit
For mighty swimmers, swimming three :i breast ?
Or art thou panting in this summer noon
Upon the lowest step before the hull.
Drawing a slice of watermelon, long
As Cupid's bow, athwart thy wetted lips
(Like one who plays Pan's pipe) and letting drop
The sable seeds from all their separate cells,
And leaving bays profound and rocks abrupt,
Redder than coral round Calypso's cave.
Petrarca. There have been those anciently who
350
PENTAMERON.
would have been pleased with such poetry, and
perhaps there may be again. I am not sorry to
see the Muses by the side of childhood, and form-
ing a part of the family. But now tell me about
the books.
Boccaccio. Resolving to lay aside the more
valuable of those I had collected or transcribed,
and to place them under the guardianship of
richer men, I locked them up together in the
higher story of my tower at Certaldo. You re-
member the old tower 1
Petrarca. Well do I remember the hearty laugh
we had together (which stopped us upon the
staircase) at the calculation we made, how much
longer you and I, if we continued to thrive as we
had thriven latterly, should be able to pass within
its narrow circle. Although I like this little
villa much better, I would gladly see the place
again, and enjoy with you, as we did before, the
vast expanse of woodlands and mountains and
maremma ; frowning fortresses inexpugnable ;
and others more prodigious for their ruins ; then
below them, lordly abbeys, overcanopied with
stately trees and girded with rich luxuriance ;
and towns that seem approaching them to do them
honour, and villages nestling close at their sides
for sustenance and protection.
Boccaccio. My disorder, if it should keep its
promise of leaving me at last, will have been pre-
paring me for the accomplishment of such a pro-
ject. Should I get thinner and thinner at this
rate, I shall soon be able to mount not only a
turret or a belfry, but a tube of macarone,*
while a Neapolitan is suspending it for deglu-
tition. .
What I am about to mention, will show you
how little you can rely on me ! I have pre-
served the books, as you desired, but quite con-
trary to my resolution : and, no less contrary to
it, by your desire I shall now preserve the De-
cameron. In vain had I determined not only to
mend in future, but to correct the past ; in vain
had I prayed most fervently for grace to accom-
plish it, with a final aspiration to Fiametta that
she would unite with your beloved Laura, and
that, gentle and beatified spirits as they are, they
would breathe together their purer prayers on
mine. See what follows.
Petrarca. Sigh not at it. Before we can see all
that follows from their intercession, we must join
them again. But let me hear anything in which
they are concerned.
Boccaccio. I prayed ; and my breast, after some
few tears, grew calmer. Yet sleep did not ensue
until the break of morning, when the dropping of
soft rain on the leaves of the fig-tree at the window,
and the chirping of a little bird, to tell another
there was shelter under them, brought me repose
and slumber. Scarcely had I closed my eyes, if
* This is valuable, since it shows that macarone (here
called pasta) was invented in the time of Boccaccio ; so
are the letters of Petrarca, which inform us equally in
regard to spectacles. Ad ocularium (occhiali) mini con-
fugiendum csset nuxilium. Dome.nico Grigi.
indeed time can be reckoned any more in sleep
than in heaven, when my Fiametta seemed to
have led me into the meadow. You will see it below
you : turn away that branch : gently ! gently ! do
not break it ; for the little bird sat there.
Petrarca. I think, Giovanni, I can divine the
place. Although this fig-tree, growing out of the
wall between the cellar and us, is fantastic enough
in its branches, yet that other which 1 see yonder,
bent down and forced to crawl along the grass by
the prepotency of the young shapely walnut tree, is
much more so. It forms a seat, about a cubit above
the ground, level and long enough for several.
Boccaccio. Ha ! you fancy it must be a favourite
spot with me, because of the two strong forked
stakes wherewith it is propped and supported !
Petrarca. Poets know the haunts of poets at first
sight ; and he who loved Laura ... 0 Laura ! did
I say he who loved thee ] . . . hath whisperings
where those feet would wafcder which have been
restless after Fiametta.
Boccaccio. It is true, my imagination has often
conducted her thither ; but here in this chamber
she appeared to me more visibly in a dream.
"Thy prayers have been heard, 0 Giovanni,"
said she.
I sprang to embrace her.
" Do not spill the water ! Ah ! you have spilt
a part of it."
I then observed in her hand a crystal vase. A
few drops were sparkling on the sides and running
down the rim : a few were trickling from the base
and from the hand that held it.
"I must go down to the brook," said she, "and
fill it again as it was filled before."
What a moment of agony was this to me ! Could
I be certain how long might be her absence 1 She
went : I was following : she made a sign for me to
turn back : I disobeyed her only an instant : yet
my sense of disobedience, increasing my feebleness
and confusion, made me lose sight of her. In the
next moment she was again at my side, with the
cup quite full. I stood motionless : I feared my
breath might shake the water over. I looked her
in the face for her commands . . and to see it . . to
see it so calm, so beneficent, so beautiful. I was for-
getting what I had prayed for, when she lowered
her head, tasted of the cup, and gave it me. I
drank; and suddenly sprang forth before me,
many groves and palaces and gardens, and their
statues and their avenues, and their labyrinths
of alaternus and bay, and alcoves of citron, and
watchful loopholes in the retirements of impene-
trable pomegranate. Farther off, just below where
the fountain slipt away from its marble hall and
guardian gods, arose, from their beds of moss
and drosera and darkest grass, the sisterhood of
oleanders, fond of tantalising with their bosomed
flowers and their moist and pouting blossoms the
little shy rivulet, and of covering its face with all
the colours of the dawn. My dream expanded and
moved forward. I trod again the dust of Posi-
lipo, soft as the feathers in the wings of Sleep. I
emerged on Baia ; I crossed her innumerable
PENTAMERON.
351
arches ; I loitered in the breezy sunshine of her
mole ; I trusted the faithful seclusion of her
caverns, the keepers of so many secrets ; and I
reposed on the buoyancy of her tepid sea. Then
Naples, and her theatres and her churches, and
grottoes and dells and forts and promontories,
rushed forward in confusion, now among soft
whispers, now among sweetest sounds, and sub-
sided, and sank, and disappeared. Yet a memory
seemed to come fresh from every one : each had
time enough for its tale, for its pleasure, for its re
flection, for its pang. As I mounted with silent
steps the narrow staircase of the old palace, how
distinctly did I feel against the palm of my hand
the coldness of that smooth stone-work, and the
greater of the cramps of iron in it !
"Ah me! is this forgetting? " cried I anxiously
to Fiametta.
" We must recall these scenes before us," she
replied : " such is the punishment of them. Let
us hope and believe that the apparition, and the
compunction which must follow it, will be accepted
as the full penalty, and that both will pass away
almost together."
I feared to lose anything attendant on her
presence : I feared to approach her forehead with
my lips : I feared to touch the lily on its long wavy
leaf in her hair, which filled my whole heart with
fragrance. Venerating, adoring, I bowed my head
at last to kiss her snow-white robe, and trembled
at my presumption. And yet the effulgence of her
countenance vivified while it chastened me. I
loved her ... I must not say more than ever . . .
better than ever ; it was Fiametta who had inha-
bited the skies. As my hand opened toward her,
" Beware !" said she, faintly smiling ; " beware,
Giovanni ! Take only the crystal ; take it, and
drink again."
"Must all be then forgotten?" said I sorrowfully.
" Remember your prayer and mine, Giovanni 1
Shall both have been granted ... 0 how much
worse than in vain]"
I drank instantly ; I drank largely. How cool
my bosom grew ; how could it grow so cool before
her ! But it was not to remain in its quiescency ;
its trials were not yet over. I will not, Francesco !
no, I may not commemorate the incidents she
related to me, nor which of us said, " I blush for
having loved first;" nor which of us replied, "Say
least, say least, and blush again."
The charm of the words (for I felt not the en-
cumbrance of the body nor the acuteness of the
spirit) seemed to possess me wholly. Although
the water gave me strength and comfort, and
somewhat of celestial pleasure, many tears fell
around the border of the vase as she held it up
before me, exhorting me to take courage, and in-
viting me with more than exhortation to accom-
plish my deliverance. She came nearer, more
tenderly, more earnestly ; she held the dewy globe
with both hands, leaning forward, and sighed and
shook her head, drooping at my pusillanimity. It
was only when a ringlet had touched the rim, and
perhaps the water (for a sun-beam on the surface
could never have given it such a golden hue) that
I took courage, clasped it, and exhausted it. Sweet
as was the water, sweet as was the serenity it gave
me . . . alas ! that also which it moved away from
me was sweet !
" This time you can trust me alone," said she,
and parted my hair, and kissed my brow. Again
she went toward the brook : again my agitation,
my weakness, my doubt, came over me : nor could
I see her while she raised the water, nor knew I
whence she drew it. When she returned, she was
close to me at once : she smiled : her smile pierced
me to the bones : it seemed an angel's. She
sprinkled the pure water on me ; she looked most
fondly ; she took my hand ; she suffered me to
press hers to my bosom ; but, whether by design
I can not tell, she let fall a few drops of the chilly
element between.
" And now, 0 my beloved !" said she, " we have
consigned to the bosom of God our earthly joys
and sorrows. The joys can not return, let not the
sorrows. These alone would trouble my repose
among the blessed.
" Trouble thy repose ! Fiametta ! Give me
the chalice !" cried I ... "not a drop will I leave
in it, not a drop."
" Take it !" said that soft voice. " 0 now most
dear Giovanni ! I know thou hast strength enough ;
and there is but little ... at the bottom lies our
first kiss."
" Mine ! didst thou say, beloved one? and is that
left thee still ?"
"Mine, said she, pensively; and as she abased
her head, the broad leaf of the lily hid her brow
and her eyes ; the light of heaven shone through
the flower."
" 0 Fiametta ! Fiametta ! " cried I in agony,
"God is the God of mercy, God is the God of
love. . . can I, can I ever?" I struck the chalice
against my head, unmindful that I held it ; the
water covered my face and my feet. I started up,
not yet awake, and I heard the name of Fia-
metta in the curtains.
Petrarca. Love, O Giovanni, and life itself, are
but dreams at best. I do think
Never so gloriously was Sleep attended
As with the pageant of that heavenly maid.
But to dwell on such subjects is sinful. The recol-
lection of them, with all their vanities, brings tears
into my eyes.
Boccaccio. And into mine too . . they were so
very charming.
Petrarca. Alas, alas ! the time always comes
when we must regret the enjoyments of our youth.
Boccaccio. If we have let them pass us.
Petrarca. I mean our indulgence in them.
Boccaccio. Francesco ! I think you must remem-
ber Raffaellino degli Alfani.
Petrarca. Was it Raffaellino who lived near
San Michele in Orto ?
Boccaccio. The same. He was an innocent soul,
and fond of fish. But whenever his friend Sabba-
telli sent him a trout from Pratolino, he always
J'ENTAMERON.
kept it until next day or the day after, just long
enough to render it unpalatable. He then turned
it over in the platter, smelt at it closer, although
the news of its condition came undeniably from a
distance, touched it with his forefinger, solicited
a testimony from the gills which the eyes had
contradicted, sighed over it, and sent it for a
present to somebody else. Were I a lover of trout
as Eaffaellino was, I think I should have taken an
opportunity of enjoying it while the pink and
crimson were glittering on it.
Petrarca. Trout, yes.
Boccaccio. And all other fish I could encompass.
Petrarca. 0 thou grave mocker ! I did not sus-
pect such slyness in thee : proof enough I had
almost forgotten thee.
Boccaccio. Listen ! listen ! I fancied I caught a
footstep in the passage. Come nearer ; bend your
head lower, that I may whisper a word in your ear.
Never let Assunta hear you sigh. She is mis-
chievous : she may have been standing at the
door : not that I believe she would be guilty of
any such impropriety : but who knows what girls
are capable of ! She has no malice, only in laugh-
ing ; and a sigh sets her windmill at work, van
over van, incessantly.
Petrarca. I should soon check her. I have no
notion . . .
Boccaccio. After all, she is a good girl . . a
trifle of the wilful. She must have it that many
things are hurtful to me . . reading in particular
. . it makes people so odd. Tina is a small mat-
ter of the madcap . . in her own particular way
. . but exceedingly discreet, I do assure you, if
they will only leave her alone.
I find I was mistaken, there was nobody.
Petrarca. A cat perhaps.
Boccaccio. No such thing. I order him over to
Certaldo while the birds are laying and sitting :
and he knows by experience, favourite as he is,
that it is of no use to come back before he is sent
for. Since the first impetuosities of youth, he
has rarely been refractory or disobliging. "We
have lived together now these five years, unless I
miscalculate ; and he seems to. have learnt some-
thing of my manners, wherein violence and enter-
prise by no means predominate. I have watched
him looking at a large green lizard ; and, their
eyes being opposite and near, he has doubted
whether it might be pleasing to me if he began
the attack; and their tails on a sudden have
touched one another at the decision.
Petrarca. Seldom have adverse parties felt the
same desire of peace at the same moment, and
none ever carried it more simultaneously and
promptly into execution.
Boccaccio. He enjoys his otium cum dignitate
at Certaldo : there he is my castellan, and his
chase is unlimited in those domains. After thej
doom of relegation is expired, he comes hither at
midsummer. And then if you could see his joy !
His eyes are as deep as a well, and as clear as a
fountain : he jerks his tail into the air like a
royal sceptre, and waves it like the wand of a
magician. You would fancy that, as Horace with
his head, he was about to smite the stars with
it. There is ne'er such another cat in the parish ;
and he knows it, a rogue ! We have rare repasts
together in the bean-and-bacou time, although in
regard to the bean he sides with the philosopher
of Samos ; but after due examination. In clean-
liness he is a very nun ; albeit in that quality
which lies between cleanliness and godliness, there
is a smack of Fra Biagio about him. What is
that book in your hand ?
Petrarca. My breviary.
Boccaccio. Well, give me mine too . . there,
on the little table in the corner, under the glass
of primroses. We can do nothing better.
Petrarca. What prayer were you looking for ?
let me find it.
Boccaccio. I don't know how it is : I am
scarcely at present in a frame of mind for it.
We are of one faith : the prayers of the one will
do for the other : and I am sure, if you omitted
my name, you would say them all over afresh. I
wish you could recollect in any book as dreamy a
thing to entertain me as I have been just repeat-
ing. We have had enough of Dante : I believe
few of his beauties have escaped us : and small
faults, which we readily pass by, are fitter for small
folks, as grubs are the proper bait for gudgeons.
Petrarca. I have had as many dreams as most
men. We are all made up of them, as the webs
of the spider are particles of her own vitality.
But how infinitely less do we profit by them !
I will relate to you, before we separate, one among
the multitude of mine, as coming the nearest to
the poetry of yours, and as having been not totally
useless to me. Often have I reflected on it ;
sometimes with pensiveness, with sadness never.
Boccaccio. Then, Francesco, if you had with
you as copious a choice of dreams as clustered on
the elm-trees where the Sibyl led ^Eneas, this, in
preference to the whole swarm of them, is the
queen dream for me.
Petrarca. When I was younger I was fond of
wandering in solitary places, and never was afraid
of slumbering in woods and grottoes. Among
the chief pleasures of my life, and among the
commonest of my occupations, was the bringing
before me such heroes and heroines of antiquity,
such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and
the unfortunate, as most interested me by their
courage, their wisdom, their eloquence, or their
adventures. Engaging them in the conversation
best suited to their characters, I knew perfectly
their manners, their steps, their voices : and often
did I moisten with my tears the models I had
been forming of the less happy.
Boccaccio. Great is the privilege of entering
into the studies of the intellectual ; great is that
of conversing with the guides of nations, the
movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly
will, stiff, in its impurity and rust, against the
finger of the Almighty Power that formed it:
but give me, Francesco, give me rather the crea-
ture to sympathise with ; apportion me the snf-
PENTAMERON.
853
ferings to assuage. Ah, gentle soul ! thou wilt
never send them over to another ; they have
better hopes from thee.
Petrarca. We both alike feel the sorrows of
those around us. He who suppresses or allays
them in another, breaks many thorns off his own ;
and future years will never harden fresh ones.
My occupation was not always in making the
politician talk politics, the orator toss his torch
among the populace, the philosopher run down
from philosophy to cover the retreat or the ad-
vances of his sect; but sometimes in devising
how such characters must act and discourse, on
subjects far remote from the beaten track of their
career. In like manner the philologist, and again
the dialectician, were not indulged in the review
and parade of their trained bands, but, at times,
brought forward to show in what manner and in
what degree external habits had influenced the
conformation of the internal man. It was far
from unprofitable to set passing events before past
actors, and to record the decisions of those whose
interests and passions are unconcerned in them.
Boccaccio. This is surely no easy matter. The
thoughts are in fact your own, however you dis-
tribute them.
Petrarca. All can not be my own ; if you mean
by thoughts the opinions and principles I should
be the most desirous to inculcate. Some favour-
ite ones perhaps may obtrude too prominently,
but otherwise no misbehaviour is permitted them :
reprehension and rebuke are always ready, and
the offence is punished on the spot.
Boccaccio. Certainly you thus throw open, to
its full extent, the range of poetry and invention ;
which can not but be very limited and sterile,
unless where we find displayed much diversity of
character as disseminated by nature, much pe-
culiarity of sentiment as arising from position,
marked with unerring skill through every shade
and gradation; and finally and chiefly, much
intertexture and intensity of passion. You thus
convey to us more largely and expeditiously the
stores of your understanding and imagination,
than you ever could by sonnets or canzonets, or
sinewless and sapless allegories.
But weightier works are less captivating. If
you had published any such as you mention, you
must have waited for their acceptance. Not
only the fame of Marcellus, but every other,
Crescit occulto velut arbor aevo ;
and that which makes the greatest vernal shoot
is apt to make the least autumnal. Authors in
general who have met celebrity at starting, have
already had their reward ; always their utmost
due, and often much beyond it. We can not hope
for both celebrity and fame : supremely fortunate
are the few who are allowed the liberty of choice
between them. We two prefer the strength that
springs from exercise and toil, acquiring it gra-
dually and slowly : we leave to others the earlier
blessing of that sleep which follows enjoyment.
How many at first sight are enthusiastic in their
favour ! Of these how large a portion come away
empty-handed and discontented ! like idlers who
visit the seacoast, fill their pockets with pebbles
bright from the passing wave, and carry them off
with rapture. After a short examination at
home, every streak seems faint and dull, and the
whole contexture coarse, uneven, and gritty : first
one is thrown away, then another ; and before
the week's end the store is gone, of things so
shining and wonderful.
Petrarca. Allegory, which you named with
sonnets and canzonets, had few attractions for
me, believing it to be the delight in general of
idle, frivolous, inexcursive minds, in whose man-
sions there is neither hall nor portal to receive
the loftier of the Passions. A stranger to the
Affections, she holds a low station among the
handmaidens of Poetry, being fit for little but
an apparition in a mask. I had reflected for
some time on this subject, when, wearied with
the length of my walk over the mountains, and
finding a soft old molehill, covered with grey
grass, by the way-side, I laid my head upon it,
and slept. I can not tell how long it was before a
species of dream or vision came over me.
Two beautiful youths appeared beside me ;
each was winged ; but the wings were hanging
down, and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of
them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard,
looking at me frequently, said to the other,
" He is under my guardianship for the present :
do not awaken him with that feather."
Methought, hearing the whisper, I saw some-
thing like the feather on an arrow ; and then the
arrow itself ; the whole of it, even to the point ;
although he carried it in such a manner that it
was difficult at first to discover more than a
palm's length of it : the rest of the shaft, and the
whole of the barb, was behind his ankles.
" This, feather never awakens anyone," replied
he, rather petulantly ; " but it brings more of
confident security, and more of cherished dreams,
than you without me are capable of imparting."
"Be it so !" answered the gentler . . "none is
less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am.
Many whom you have wounded grievously, call
upon me for succour. But so little am I disposed
to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more
for them than to whisper a few words of comfort
in passing. How many reproaches on these
occasions have been cast upon me for indifference
and infidelity ! Nearly as many, and nearly in
the same terms, as upon you !"
" Odd enough that we, 0 Sleep ! should be
thought so alike ! " said Love, contemptuously.
" Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance
to you : the dullest have observed it." I fancied
I turned my eyes to where he was pointing, and
saw at a distance the figure he designated. Mean-
while the contention went on uninterruptedly.
Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his
benefits. Love recapitulated them ; but only
that he might assert his own above them. Sud-
denly he called on me to decide, and to choose
354
PENTAMERON.
my patron. Under the influence, first of the one,
then of the other, I sprang from repose to
rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose . .
and knew not which was sweetest. Love was
very angry with me, and declared he would cross
me throughout the whole of my existence. What-
ever I might on other occasions have thought of
his veracity, I now felt too surely the conviction
that he would keep his word. At last, before the
close of the altercation, the third Genius had
advanced, and stood near us. I can not tell how
I knew him, but I knew him to be the Genius of
Death. Breathless as I was at beholding him, I
soon became familiar with his features. First
they seemed only calm ; presently they grew
contemplative ; and lastly beautiful : those of
the Graces themselves are less regular, less har-
monious, less composed. Love glanced at him
unsteadily, with a countenance in which there
was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain ;
and cried, " Go away ! go away ! nothing that
thou touchest, lives."
" Say rather, child ! " replied the advancing
form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier,
" Say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glo-
rious lives its own true life until my wing hath
passed over it." '
Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with
his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his arrow-
head ; but replied not. Although he frowned
worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less
and less, and scarcely looked toward him. The
milder and calmer Genius, the third, in propor-
tion as I took courage to contemplate him, re-
garded me with more and more complacency. He
held neither flower nor arrow, as the others did ;
but, throwing back the clusters of dark curls that
overshadowed his countenance, he presented to
me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank on
looking at him so near, and yet I sighed to lore
him. He smiled, not without an expression of
pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity :
for I remembered how soft was the hand of Sleep,
how warm and entrancing was Love's. By de-
grees, I became ashamed of my ingratitude ; and
turning my face away, I held out my arms, and
felt my neck within his. Composure strewed and
allayed all the throbbings of my bosom ; the cool-
ness of freshest morning breathed around; the
heavens seemed to open above me; while the
beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on my head.
I would now have looked for those others ; but
knowing my intention by my gesture, he said
consolatorily,
" Sleep is on his way to the Earth, where many
are calling him ; but it is not to these he
hastens ; for every call only makes him fly farther
off. Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is
nearly as capricious and volatile as the more arro-
gant and ferocious one."
" And Love I" said I, "whither is he departed?
If not too late, I would propitiate and appease
him."
" He who can not follow me, he who can- not
overtake and pass me," said the Genius, " is un-
worthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or
heaven. Look up J Love is yonder, and ready
to receive thee."
I looked : the earth was under me : I saw only
the clear blue sky, and something brighter
above it.
PIEVANO GRIGI TO THE READER.
BEFORE I proceeded on my mission, I had a
final audience of Monsignore, in which I asked
his counsel, whether a paper sewed and pasted
to the Interviews, being the substance of an in-
tended Confession, might, according to the De-
cretals, be made public. Monsignore took the
subject into his consideration, and assented.
Previously to the solution of this question, he was
graciously pleased to discourse on Boccaccio, and
to say, " I am happy to think he died a good
catholic, and contentedly."
"No doubt, Monsignore!" answered I, "for
when he was on his death-bed, or a little sooner,
the most holy man in Italy admonished him
terribly of his past transgressions, and frightened
him fairly into Paradise."
" Pievano ! " said Monsignore, " it is customary
in the fashionable literature of our times to finish
a story in two manners. The most approved is,
to knock on the head every soul that has been
interesting you : the second is, to put the two
youngest into bed together, promising the same
treatment to another couple, or more. Our fore-
fathers were equally zealous about those they
dealt with. Every pagan turned Christian : every
loose woman had bark to grow about her, as thick
and astringent as the ladies had in Ovid's Meta-
morphoses; and the gallants, who had played
false with them, were driven mad by the monks
at their death-bed. I neither hope nor believe
that poor Boccaccio gave way to their importu-
nities, but am happy in thinking that his decease
was as tranquil as his life was inoffensive. He
was not exempt from the indiscretions of youth :
he allowed his imagination too long a dalliance
with his passions ; but malice was never found
PENTAMERON.
355
among them. Let us then, in charity to him
and to ourselves, be persuaded that such a pest
as this mad zealot had no influence over him,
Ne turbd il tuono di nebbiosa mente
Acqua si limpida e ridente.*
I can not but break into verse, although no poet,
while I am thinking of him. Such men as he,
would bring over more to our good-natured honest
old faith again, than fifty monks with scourges at
their shoulders."
" Ah Monsignore!" answered I, "could I but
hope to be humbly instrumental in leading back
the apostate church to our true catholic, I should
be the happiest man alive."
" God forbid you should be without the hope ! "
said Monsignore. "The two chief differences
now are ; with ours, that we must not eat butcher's
meat on a Friday ; with the Anglican, that they
must not eat baked meat on a Sunday. Secondly,
that we say, Come, and be saved : the Anglican
says, Go, and be damned."
Since the exposition of Monsignore, the Par-
liament has issued an Act of Grace in regard to
eating. One article says,
" Nobody shall eat on a Sunday, roast or
baked or other hot victuals whatsoever, unless he
goes to church in his own carriage ; if he goes
thither in any other than his own, be he halt or
blind, he shall be subject to the penalty of twenty
pounds. Nobody shall dance on a Sunday, or
play music, unless he also be able to furnish
three tcarte tables, at the least, and sixteen wax-
lights."
I write from memory ; but if the wording is in-
exact, the sense is accurate. Nothing can be
more gratifying to a true catholic, than to see the
amicable game played by his bishops with the
Anglican. The catholic never makes a false move.
His fish often slips into the red square, 'marked
Sunday, but the shoulder of mutton can never
get into its place, marked Friday : it lies upon
the table and nobody dares touch it. Alas ! I am
forgetting that this is purely an English game,
and utterly unknown among us, or indeed in any
other country under heaven.
To promote still farther the objects of religion,
as understood in the Universities and the Parlia-
ment, it was proposed that public prayers should
be offered up for rain on every Sabbath-day, the
more effectually to encompass the provisions of
the Bill. But this clause was cancelled in the
Committee, on the examination of a groom, who
deposed that a coach-horse of his master's, the
bishop of London, was touched in the wind, and
might be seriously a sufferer : "for the bishop,"
said he, " is no better walker than a goose."
There is, moreover, great and general discon-
tent in the lower orders of the clergy, that some
should be obliged to serve a couple of churches,
and perhaps a jail or hospital to boot, for a sti-
* Nor did the thunderings of a cloudy mind
Trouble so limpid and serene a water.
pend of a hundred pounds, and even less, while
others are incumbents of pluralities, doing no
duty at all, and receiving three or four thousands.
It is reported that several of the more fortunate
are so utterly shameless as to liken the Church to
a Lottery-office, and to declare that, unless there
were great prizes, no man in his senses would
enter into the service of our Lord. I my-
self have read with my own eyes this declaration :
but I hope the signature is a forgery. "What is
certain is, that the emoluments of the bishopric
of London are greater than the united revenue of
twelve cardinals ; that they are amply sufficient
for the board, lodging, and education of three
hundred young men destined to the ministry ;
and that they might relieve from famine, rescue
from sin, and save perhaps from eternal punish-
ment, three thousand fellow-creatures yearly. On
a narrow inspection of one manufacturing town in
England, I deliver it as my firm opinion, that it
contains more crime and wretchedness than all
the four continents of our globe. If these enor-
mous masses of wealth had been fairly subdivided
and carefully expended ; if a more numerous and
a more efficient clergy had been appointed ; how
very much of sin and sorrow had been obviated
and allayed ! Ultimately the poor will be driven to
desperation, there being no check upon them, no
guardian over them : and the eyes of the sleeper,
it is to be feared, will be opened by pincers. In
the midst of such woes, originating in her iniqui-
ties and aggravated by her supineness, the Church
of England, the least reformed church in Christ-
endom, and the most opposite to the institutions
of the State, boasts of being the purest member of
the Reformation. Shocked at such audacity and
impudence, the conscientious and pious, not only
of her laity but also of her clergy, fall daily off
from her, and, resigning all hope of parks and
palaces, embrace the cross.
Never since the Reformation (so called) have
our prospects been so bright as at the present
day. Our own prelates and those of the English
church are equally at work to the same effect ;
and the catholic clergy will come into possession
of their churches, with as little change in the
temporals as in the spirituals. It is the law of
the land that the church can not lose her rights
and possessions by lapse of time ; impossible
then that she should lose it by fraud and fallacy.
Although the bishops of England, regardless of
their vocations and vows, have, by deceit and
falsehood, obtained acts of parliament, under sanc-
tion of which they have severed from their sees,
and made over to their families, the possessions
of the episcopacy, it can not be questioned that
what has been wrongfully alienated will be right-
fully restored. No time, no trickery, no subter-
fuge, can conceal it. The exposure of such
thievery in such eminent stations, worse and more
shameful than any on the Thames or in the low-
est haunts of villany and prostitution, and of
attempts to seize from their poorer brethren a
few decimals to fill up a deficiency in manj-
A A 2
356
PENTAMERON.
thousands, has opened wide the eyea of England.
Consequently, there are religious men who resort
from all quarters to the persecuted mother they
had so long abandoned. Qod at last has made
his enemies perform his work : and the English
prelates, not indeed on the stool of repentance,
as would befit them, but thrust by the scorner
into his uneasy chair, are mending with scarlet
silk, and seaming with threads of gold, the copes
and dalmatics of their worthy predecessors. I
London, June \"Jth, 1837.
am overjoyed iu declaring to my townsmen, that
the recent demeanour of these prelates, refractory
and mutinous as it has been (in other matters) to
the government of their patron the king, has ulti-
mately (by joining the malcontents in abolish-
ing the favourite farce of religious freedom, and in
forbidding roast meat and country air on the
sabbath) filled up my subscription for the bell of
San Vivaldo.
Salve Eegina Coeli !
PRETB DOMENICO GRIGI.
HEADS OF CONFESSION ; A MONTHFUL.
Printed and published Superiorum Licentid.
March 14. Being ill at ease, I cried, " Diavolo !
I wish that creaking shutter was at thy bedroom,
instead of mine, old fellow ! " Assuntina would
have composed me, showing me how wrong it
was. Perverse ; and would not acknowledge my
sinfulness to her. I said she had nothing to do
with it ; which vexed her.
March 23. Reproved Assuntina, and called
her ragazzaccia ! for asking of Messer Piero Pim-
perna half the evening's milk of his goat. Very
wrong in me ; it being impossible she should have
known that Messer Piero owed me four lire since
. . I forget when.
March 31. It blowing tramontana, I was ruf-
fled : suspected a feather in the minestra : said
the rice was as black as a coal. Sad falsehood !
made Assuntina cry . . Saracenic doings.
Recapitulation. Shameful all this month : I did
not believe such bad humour was in me.
Reflection. The devil, if he can not have his walk
one way, will take it another ; never at a fault.
Manifold proof; poor sinner !
April 2. Thought uncharitably of Fra Biagio.
The Frate took my hand, asking me to confess,
reminding me that I had not confessed since the
3rd of March, although I was so sick and tribu-
lated I could hardly stir. Peevish ; said, " Confess
yourself : I won't : I am not minded : you will find
those not far off who . . " and then I dipped my
head under the coverlet, and saw my error.
April 6. Whispers of Satanasso ; pretty clear !
A sprinkling of vernal thoughts, much too ad-
vanced for the season. About three hours before
sunset, Francesco came. Forgot my prayers ;
woke at midnight; recollected, and did not say
them. Might have told him : never occurred
that, being a Canonico, he could absolve me:
now gone again these three days, this being the
fourteenth. Must unload ere heavier-laden. Gra-
tise plena ! have mercy upon me !
THE TRANSLATOR'S REMARKS
ON THE ALLEGED JEALOUSY OF BOCCACCIO AND PETRARCA.
AMONG the most heinous crimes that can be
committed against society, is the
temerati crimen amioi,
and no other so loosens the bonds by which it is
held together. Once and only once in my life,
I heard it defended by a person of intellect and
integrity. It was the argument of a friendly man,
who would have invalidated the fact : it was the
solicitude of a prompt and dexterous man, holding
up his hat to cover the shame of genius. I have
indeed had evidence of some who saw nothing
extraordinary or amiss in these filchings and
twitchings; but there are persons whose ther-
mometer stands higher by many degrees at other
points than at honour. There are insects on the
shoals and sands of literature, shrimps which
must be half-boiled before they redden ; and there
are blushes (no doubt) in certain men, of which
the precious vein lies so deep that it could hardly
be brought to light by cordage and windlass.
Meanwhile their wrathfulness shows itself at once
by a plashy and pufly superficies, with an exuber-
ance of coarse rough stuff upon it, and is ready
to soak our shoes with its puddle at the first
pressure.
" Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbour" is a commandment which the literary
cast down from over their communion-table, to
nail against the doors of the commonalty, with a
fist and forefinger pointing at it. Although the
depreciation of any work is dishonest, the attempt
is more infamous when committed against a
friend. The calumniator on such occasions may
in some measure err from ignorance, or from in-
adequate information, but nothing can excuse him
if he speaks contemptuously. It is impossible
to believe that such writers as Boccaccio and
Petrarca could be widely erroneous in each other's
merits : no less incredible is it that, if they did
PENTAMERON.
357
err at all, they would openly avow a disparaging
opinion. This baseness was reserved for days
when the study opens into the market-place,
when letters are commodities, and authors chap-
men. Yet even upon their stalls, where an antique
vase would stand little chance with a noticeable
piece of blue-and-white crockery, and shepherds
and sailors and sunflowers in its circumference,
it might be heartily and honestly derided; but
less probably by the fellow-villager of the vendor,
with whom he had been playing at quoits every
day of his life. When an ill-natured story is once
launched upon the world, there are many who
are careful that it shall not soon founder. Thus
the idle and inconsiderate rumour, which has
floated through ages, about the mutual jealousy
of Boccaccio and Petrarca, finds at this day a
mooring in all quarters. Never were two men so
perfectly formed for friendship ; never were two
who fulfilled so completely that happy destination.
True it is, the studious and exact Petrarca had
not elaborated so entirely to his own satisfaction
his poem, Africa, as to submit it yet to the in-
spection of Boccaccio, to whom unquestionably
he would have been delighted to show it the
moment he had finished it. He died, and left it
incomplete. We have, it must be acknowledged,
the authority of Petrarca himself, that he never
had read the Decameron through, even to the
last year of his life, when he had been intimate
with Boccaccio four-and-twenty. How easy would
it have been for him to dissemble this fact ! how
certainly would any man have dissembled it who
doubted of his own heart or of his friend's ! I
must request the liberty of adducing his whole
letter, as already translated.
"I have only run over your Decameron, and
therefore I am not capable of forming a true
judgment of its merit : but upon the whole it has
given me a great deal of pleasure. The freedoms
in it are excusable ; from having been written in
youth, from the subjects it treats of, and from the
persons for whom it was designed. Among a
great number of gay and witty jokes, there are
however many grave and serious sentiments. I
did as most people do : I paid most attention to
the beginning and the end. Your description of
the people in the Plague is very true and pa-
thetic : and the touching story of Griseldis has
been ever since laid up in my memory, tJiat I may
relate it in my conversations with my friends.
A friend of mine at Padua, a man of wit and
knowledge, undertook to read it aloud; but he
had scarcely got through half of it, when his tears
prevented him going on. He attempted it a
second time ; but his sobs and sighs obliged him
to desist. Another of my friends determined on
the same venture ; and, having read it from begin-
ning to end, without the least alteration of voice
or gesture, he said, on returning the book,
" ' It must be owned this is an affecting history,
and I should have wept could I have believed it
true ; but there never was and never will be a
woman like Griseldis.' "
Here was the termination of Petrarca's literary
life : he closed it with the last words of this letter;
which are, " Adieu, my friends ! adieu my cor-
respondence." Soon afterward he was found dead
in his library, with his arm leaning on a book.
In the whole of this composition, what a careful-
ness and solicitude to say everything that could
gratify his friend ; with what ingenuity are those
faults not palliated but excused (his own expres-
sion) which must nevertheless have appeared very
grievous ones to the purity of Petrarca.
But why did not Boccaccio send him his Decame-
ron long before ? Because there never was a more
perfect gentleman, a man more fearful of giving
offence, a man more sensitive to the delicacy of
friendship, or more deferential to sanctity of cha-
racter. He knew that the lover of Laura could
not amuse his hours with mischievous or idle pas-
sions ; he knew that he rose at midnight to repeat
his matins, and never intermitted them. On
what succeeding hour could he venture to seize 1
with what countenance could he charge it with
the levities of the world? Perhaps the Recluse of
Arqua, the visitor of old Certaldo, read at last the
Decameron, only that he might be able the better
to defend it. And how admirably has the final
stroke of his indefatigable pen effected the pur-
pose! Is this the jealous rival? Boccaccio received
the last testimony of unaltered friendship in the
month of October, 1373, a few days after the
writer's death. December was not over when they
met in heaven : and never were two gentler
spirits united there.
The character of Petrarca shows itself in almost
every one of his various works. Unsuspicious,
generous, ardent in study, in liberty, in love, with
a self-complacence which in less men would be
vanity, but arising in him from the general admi-
ration of a noble presence, from his place in the
interior of a heart which no other could approach
or merit, and from the homage of all who held
the principalities of Learning in every part of
Europe.
Boccaccio is only reflected in full from a larger
mass of compositions : yet one letter is quite suffi-
cient to display the beauty and purity of his mind.
It was written from Venice, when finding there
not Petrarca whom he expected to find, but
Petrarca's daughter, he describes to the father her
modesty, grace, and cordiality in his reception.
The imagination can form to itself nothing more
lovely than this picture of the gentle Ermissenda :
and Boccaccio's delicacy and gratitude are equally
affecting. No wonder that Petrarca, in his will,
bequeathed to his friend a sum the quintuple in
amount of that which he bequeathed to his only
brother, whom however he loved tenderly. Such
had been, long before their acquaintance, the ce-
lebrity of Petrarca, such the honours conferred
on him wherever he resided or appeared, that he
never thought of equality or rivalry. And such
was Boccaccio's reverential modesty, that, to the
very close of his life, he called Petrarca his master.
Immeasurable as was his own superiority, he no
358
PENTAMEEOK
more thought himself the equal of Petrarca, than
Dante (in whom the superiority was almost as
great) thought himself Virgil's. These, I believe,
are the only instances on record, where poets
have been very tenaciously erroneous in the esti-
mate of their own inferiority. The same obser-
vation can not be made so confidently on the de-
cisions of contemporary critics. Indeed the ba-
lance in which works of the highest merit are
weighed, vibrates long before it is finally adjusted.
Even the most judicious men have formed inju-
dicious opinions on the living and the recently
deceased. Bacon and Hooker could not estimate
Shakspeare, nor could Taylor and Barrow give
Milton his just award. Cowley and Dryden were
preferred . to both, by a great majority of the
learned. Many, although they believe they dis-
cover in a contemporary the qualities which ele-
vate him above the rest, yet hesitate to acknow-
ledge it; part, because they are fearful of censure
for singularity; part, because they differ from him
in politics or religion : and part, because they de-
light in hiding, like dogs and foxes, what they
can at any time surreptitiously draw out for their
sullen solitary repast. Such persons have little
delight in the glory of our country, and would
hear with disapprobation and moroseness it has
produced four men so pre-eminently great, that no
name, modern or ancient, excepting Homer, can
stand very near the lowest : these are, Shakspeare,
Bacon, Milton, and Newton. Beneath the least of
these (if anyone can tell which is least) are Dante
and Aristoteles; who are unquestionably the next.*
Out of Greece and England, Dante is the only
man of the first order ; such he is, with all his
imperfections. Less ardent and energetic, but
having no less at command the depths of thought
and treasures of fancy, beyond him in variety,
animation, and interest, beyond him in touches
of nature and truth of character, is Boccaccio.
* AVe can speak only of those whose works are extant.
DcmocrituH and Anaxagoras were perhaps the greatest in
discovery and invention.
Yet he believed his genius was immeasurably in-
ferior to Alighieri's ; and it would have surprised
and pained him to find himself preferred to his
friend Petrarca ; which indeed did not happen in
his lifetime. So difficult is it to shake the tenure
of long possession, or to believe that a living man
is as valuable as an old statue, that for five hun-
dred years together the critics held Virgil far
above his obsequious but high-souled scholar, who
now has at least the honour of standing alone, if
not first. Milton and Homer may be placed to-
gether : on the continent Homer will be seen
at the right hand ; in England, Milton. Supreme,
above all, immeasurably supreme, stands Shak-
speare. I do not think Dante is any more the
equal of Homer than Hercules is the equal of
Apollo. Though Hercules may display more
muscles, yet Apollo is the powerfuller without
any display of them at all. Both together are just
equivalent to Milton, shorn of his Sonnets, and of
his Allegro and Penseroso; the most delightful
of what (wanting a better name) we call lyrical
poems. But in the contemplation of these pro-
digies we must not lose the company we entered
with. Two contemporaries so powerful in interest-
ing our best affections, as Giovanni and Francesco,
never existed before or since. Petrarca was ho-
noured and beloved by all conditions. He collated
with the student and investigator, he planted with
the husbandman, he was the counsellor of kings,
the reprover of pontiffs, and the pacificator of
nations. Boccaccio, who never had occasion to
sigh for solitude, never sighed in it : there was
his station, there his studies, there his happiness.
In the vivacity and versatility of imagination, in
the narrative, in the descriptive, in the playful, in
the pathetic, the world never saw his equal, until
the sunrise of our Shakspeare. Ariosto and
Spenser may stand at no great distance from him
in the shadowy and unsubstantial ; but multiform
Man was utterly unknown to them. The human
heart, through all its foldings, vibrates to Boc-
caccio.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
I. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
CLEONE! I write from Athens. I hasten to
meet your reproaches, and to stifle them in my
embrace. It was wrong to have left Miletus at all :
it was wrong to have parted from you without en-
trusting you with my secret. No, no, neither was
wrong. I have withstood many tears, my sweet
Cleone, but never your's ; you could always do
what you would with me ; and I should have been
windbound by you on the Mseander, as surely and
inexorably as the fleet at Aulis by Diana.
Ionia is far more beautiful than Attica, Miletus
than Athens ; for about Athens there is no ver-
dure, no spacious and full and flowing river, few
gardens, many olive-trees, so many indeed that we
seem to be in an eternal cloud of dust. However,
when the sea-breezes blow, this tree itself looks
beautiful ; it looks, in its pliable and undulating
branches, irresolute as Ariadne when she was
urged to fly, and pale as Orithyia when she was
borne away.
II. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Come out, Aspasia, from among those olives.
You would never have said a word about any such
things, at such a time, unless you had met with
an adventure. When you want to hide somewhat,
you always run into the thickets of poetry. Pray
leave Ariadne with Bacchus, she can not be safer;
and Orithyia with Boreas, if you have any rever-
ence for the mysteries of the gods. Now I have
almost a mind to say, tell me nothing at all of
what has happened to you since you left us. This
would punish you as you deserve, for you know
that you are dying to tell it. The venerable and
good-natured old widow, Epimedea, will have
trouble enough, I foresee, with her visitor from
Asia. The Milesian kid will overleap her garden-
wall, and browse and butt everywhere. I take it
as a matter of certainty that you are with her, for
I never heard you mention any other relative in
Athens, and she was, I remember, the guest of
your house. How she loved you, dear good woman !
She would have given your father Axiochus all
her wealth for you. But when you were seven
years old you were worth seven times over what
you are now. I loved you then myself. Well, I
am resolved to relieve you of your secret.
Prodigal scatterer of precious hopes, and of
smiles that seem to rise from the interest you feel,
and not from the interest you excite, what victim
have you crowned with flowers, and selected to
fall at your altar 1
III. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Spirit of divination ! how dared you find me
out "? And how dared you accuse me of poetizing?
You who poetize more extravagantly yourself.
Mine, I do insist 'upon it, is no worse than we
girls in general are apt to write : " and no better,"
you will reply, " than we now and then are con-
demned to listen to, or disposed to read."
Poetry is the weightless integument that our
butterflies always shed in our path, ere they wing
their way toward us. It is precisely of the same
form, colour, and substance, for the whole genera-
tion. Are all mine well 1 and all yours ? I shall
be very angry to hear that mine are. If they do
not weep, and look wan, and sicken, why then I
must, out of very spite. But may the Gods in
their wisdom keep not only their hearts, but their
persons too, just where they are ! I intend to be
in love here at Athens. It is true, I do assure you,
when I have time, and idleness, and courage for it.
Ay, ay, now your eyes are running over all the
rest of the letter. Well, what have you found ]
where is the place ? I will keep you in suspense
no longer.
As soon as there was any light at all, we dis-
covered, on the hill above the city, crowds of people
and busy preparations. You are come to it.
IV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I was determined to close my letter when your
curiosity was at the highest, that you might flutter
and fall from the clouds like Icarus. I wanted
two things ; first, that you should bite your lip,
an attitude in which you alone look pretty ; and
secondly, that you should say half-angrily, " This
now is exactly like Aspasia." I will be remem-
362
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
bered ; and I will make you look just as I would
have you.
How fortunate ! to have arrived at Athens at
dawn on the twelfth of Elaphebolion. On this
day begin the festivals of Bacchus, and the theatre
is thrown open at sunrise.
What a theatre ! what an elevation ! what a
prospect of city and port, of land and water, of
porticoes and temples, of men and heroes, of
demi-gods and gods !
It was indeed my wish and intention, when I
left Ionia, to be present at the first of the Diony-
siacs ; but how rarely are wishes and intentions
so accomplished, even when winds and waters do
not interfere !
I will now tell you all. No time was to be lost :
so I hastened on shore in the dress of an Athenian
b»y who came over with his mother from Lemnos.
In the giddiness of youth he forgot to tell me that,
not being yet eighteen years old, he could not be
admitted ; and he left me on the steps. My heart
sank within me ; so many young men stared and
whispered ; yet never was stranger treated with
more civility. Crowded as the theatre was (for
the tragedy had begun) every one made room for
me. When they were seated, and I too, I looked
toward the stage ; and behold there lay before
me, but afar off, bound upon a rock, a more majes-
tic form, and bearing a countenance more heroic,
I should rather say more divine, than ever my
imagination had conceived ! I know not how
long it was before I discovered that as many eyes
were directed toward me as toward the competitor
of the gods. I was neither flattered by it nor
abashed. Every wish, hope., sigh, sensation, was
successively with the champion of the human
race, with his antagonist Zeus, and his creator
JSsehylus. How often, 0 Cleone, have we throbbed
with his injuries ! how often hath his vulture torn
our breasts ! how often have we thrown our arms
around each other's neck, and half-renounced the
religion of our fathers ! Even your image, in-
separable at other times, came not across me
then; Prometheus stood between us. He had
resisted in silence and disdain the cruellest tor-
tures that Almightiness could inflict ; and now
arose the Nymphs of ocean, which heaved its vast
waves before us ; and now they descended with
open arms and sweet benign countenances, and
spake with pity ; and the insurgent heart was
mollified and quelled.
I sobbed ; I dropt.
V. CLEOITE TO ASPASIA.
Is this telling me all ) you faithless creature !
There is much to be told when Aspasia faints in
a theatre : and Aspasia in disguise !
My sweet and dear Aspasia! with all your
beauty, of which you can not but be conscious,
how is it possible you could have hoped to be un-
detected) Certainly there never was any woman,
or even any man, so little vain as you arc. For-
merly you were rather so about your poetry : but ,
now you really write it well, you have overcome
this weakness ; nay, you doubt whether your best
verses are tolerable. You have told me this several
times : and you always say what you think, unless
when anyone might be hurt or displeased. I am
glad the observation comes across me, for I must
warn you upon it.
Take care then, Aspasia ! do not leave off en-
tirely all dissimulation. It is as feminine a virtue,
and as necessary to a woman, as religion. If you
are without it, you will have a grace the less, and
(what you could worse spare) a sigh the more.
VI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I was not quite well when I wrote to you.
When I am not quite well I must always write to
you ; I am better after it.
Where did I leave off)
Ah Cleone ! Cleone ! I have learnt your
lesson ; I am dissembling ; it must not be with
you. My tears are falling. I acted unworthily.
And are these tears indeed for my fault against
you ) I can not tell ; if I could, I would candidly.
Everything that has happened, everything that
shall happen hereafter, I will lay upon your knees.
Counsel me ; direct me. Even were I as sensible
as you are, I should not be able to discover my
own faults. The clearest eyes do not see the
cheeks below, nor the brow above them.
To proceed then in my narrative. Everything
appeared to me an illusion but the tragedy. What
was divine seemed human, and what was human
seemed divine.
An apparition of resplendent and unearthly
beauty threw aside, with his slender arms, the
youths, philosophers, magistrates, and generals,
that surrounded me, with a countenance as confi-
dent, a motion as rapid, and a command as unre-
sisted as a god.
"Stranger!" said he, "I come from Pericles,
to offer you my assistance."
I looked in his face ; it was a child's.
" We have attendants here who shall conduct
you from the crowd," said he.
" Venus and Cupid ! " cried one.
" We are dogs," growled another.
"Worse !" rejoined a third, "we are slaves."
" Happy man ! happy man ! if thou art theirs,"
whispered the next in his ear, and followed us
close behind.
I have since been informed that Pericles, who
sate below us on the first seat, was the only man
who did not rise. No matter ; why should he )
why did the rest) But it was very kind in him
to send his cousin ; I mean it was very kind for
so proud a man.
Epimedea wept over me when I entered her
house, and burnt incense before the Gods, and led
me into my chamber.
" I have a great deal to say to you, my dear
Aspasia ; but you must go to sleep : your bath
shall be ready at noon : but be sure you sleep till
then," said she.
PEEICLES AND ASPASIA.
363
I did indeed sleep, and (will you believe it!)
instantly and soundly. Never was bath more re-
• freshing, never was reproof more gentle, than
Epimedea's.
I found her at my pillow when I awoke, and
she led me to the marble conch.
" Dear child ! " said she when I had stept in,
" you do not know our customs. You should
have come at once to my house ; you never should
have worn men's clothes : indeed you should not
have gone to the theatre at all ; but, being there,
and moreover in men's habiliments, you should
have taken care not to have fainted, as they say
you did. My husband Thessalus would never
hear of fainting ; he used to tell me it was a bad
example. But he fainted at last, poor man ! and
. . I minded his admonition. Why ! what a
lovely child you are grown, my little Aspasia ! >Is
the bath too hot ? Aspasia ! can it be 1 why, you
are no child at all ! "
I really do believe that this idle discourse of
Epimedea, which will tire you perhaps, was the
only one that would not have wearied out my
spirits. It neither made me think nor answer.
What a privilege ! what a blessing ! how seldom
to be enjoyed in our conferences with the silly !
Ah ! do not let me wrong the kind Epimedea !
Those are not silly who have found the way to
our hearts ; and far other names do they deserve
who open to us theirs.
VII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The boy about whom I wrote to you in my
letter of yesterday, is called Alcibiades.* He
lisps and blushes at it. His cousin Pericles, you
may have heard, enjoys the greatest power and
reputation, both as an orator and a general, of
any man in Athens. Early this morning the
beautiful child came to visit me. and told me that
when his cousin had finished his studies, which
he usually had done about three hours after sun-
rise, he would desire him to come also.
I replied, " By no means do it, my beautiful
and brave protector ! Surely, on considering the
matter, you will think you are taking too great a
liberty with a person so distinguished."
" I take no liberties with any other," said he.
When I expressed in my countenance a little
surprise at his impetuosity, he came forward and
kissed my brow. Then said he, more submis-
sively, " Pardon my rudeness. I like very well
to be told what to do by those who are fond of
me; but never to be told what not to do; and
the more fond they are of me the less I like it.
Because when they tell me what to do, they give
me an opportunity of pleasing them ; but when
* He had no right to be at the theatre ; but he might
have taken the liberty, for there was nobody in Athens
whom he feared, even in his childhood. Thucydides calls
him a youth m the twelfth year of the Peloponnesian war.
He was, on the mother's side, grandson of Megacles, whose
grand-daughter Isodoce married Cimon : her father Euryp-
tolemus was cousin-german to Pericles.
they tell me what not to do, it is a sign that I
have displeased, or am likely to displease them.
Beside . . I believe there are some other reasons,
but they have quite escaped me.
" It is time I should return," said he, " or I
shall forget all about the hour of his studies (I
mean Pericles) and mine too."
I would not let him go however, but inquired
who were his teachers, and repeated to him many
things from Sappho and Alcseus and Pindar and
Simonides. He was amazed, and told me he
preferred them to Fate and Necessity, Pytho and
Pythonissa.
I would now have kissed him in my turn, but
he drew back, thinking (no doubt) that I was
treating him like a child ; that a kiss is never
given but as the price of pardon ; and that I had
pardoned him before for his captiousuess.
VIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! I foresee that henceforward you will
admire the tragedy of Prometheus more than
ever. But do not tell anyone, excepting so fond
a friend as Cleone, that you prefer the author to
Homer. I agree with you that the conception
of such a drama is in itself a stupendous effort
of genius ; that the execution is equal to the con-
ception ; that the character of Prometheus is more
heroic than any in heroic poetry ; and that no
production of the same extent is so magnificent
and so exalted. But the Iliad is Hot a region ; it
is a continent ; and you might as well compare
this prodigy to it as the cataract of the Nile to
the Ocean. In the one we are overpowered by
the compression and burst of the element : in
the other we are carried over an immensity of
space, bounding the earth, not bounded by her,
and having nothing above but the heavens.
Let us enjoy, whenever we have an opportu-
nity, the delight of admiration, and perform the
duties of reverence. May others hate what is
admirable ! We will hate likewise, 0 my Aspasia !
when we can do no better. I am unable to fore-
tell the time when this shall Tiappen : it lies, I
think, beyond the calculations of Meton.
I am happy to understand that the Athenians
have such a philosopher among them. Hitherto
we have been inclined to suppose that philosophy,
at Athens, is partly an intricate tissue of subtile
questions and, illusory theories, knotted with syl-
logisms, and partly an indigested mass of unex-
amined assertions and conflicting dogmas. The
lonians are more silent, contemplative, and re-
cluse. Knowing that Nature will not deliver her
oracles in the crowd nor by sound of trumpet,
they open their breasts to Jier in solitude with the
simplicity of children, and look earnestly in her
face for a reply. Meton and Democritus and
Anaxagoras may perhaps lay their hands upon
the leapings of your tettinxes, and moderate their
chirping, but I apprehend that the genius of _the
people will always repose upon the wind-skins of
the sophists. Comedy might be their corrector ;
364
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
but Comedy seems to think she has two offices
to perform ; from one side of the stage to explode
absurdity, and from the other to introduce in-
decency. She might, under wise regulations (and
these she should impose upon herself) render
more service to a state than Philosophy could, in
whatsoever other character. And I wonder that
Aristophanes, strong in the poetical faculty, and
unrivalled in critical acuteness, should not per-
ceive that a dominion is within his reach
which is within the reach of no mortal beside ;
a dominion whereby he may reform the man-
ners, dictate the pursuits, and regulate the
affections of his countrymen. Perhaps he never
could have done it so effectually, had he been
better and begun otherwise ; but having, however
unworthy might have been the means and
methods, seized upon their humours, they now
are as pliable to him as waxen images to Thessa-
lian witches. He keeps them before the fire he has
kindled, and he has only to sing the right song.
Beware, my dear Aspasia, never to offend him :
for he holds more terrors at his command than
^Eschylus. The tragic poet rolls the thunder that
frightens, the comic wields the lightning that
kills. Aristophanes has the power of tossing you
among the populace of a thousand cities for a
thousand years.
A great poet is more powerful than Sesostris,
and a wicked one more formidable than Phalaris.
•
IX. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
Epimedea has been with me in my cham-
ber. She asked me whether the women of
Ionia had left off wearing ear-rings. I answered
that I believe they always had worn them, and
that they were introduced by the Persians, who
received them from nations more remote.
" And do you think yourself too young " said
she " for such an ornament ] " producing at the
same instant a massy pair, inlaid with the largest
emeralds. " Alas! alas !" said she, " your mother
neglected you strangely. There is no hole in the
ear, right or left ! We can mend that, however ;
I know a woman who will bring us the prettiest
little pan of charcoal, with the prettiest little
steel rod in it ; and, before you can cry out, one
ear lets light through. These are yours," said
she, "and so shall everything be when I am
gone . . house, garden, quails, leveret."
" Generous Epimedea ! " said I, " do not say
things that pain me. I will accept a part of the
present; I will wear these beautiful emeralds on
one arm. Thinking of nailing them in my ears,
you resolve to make me steady ; but I am unwil-
ling they should become dependencies of Attica."
" All our young women wear them ; the God-
desses too."
" The Goddesses are in the right," said I ;
" their ears are marble; but I do not believe any
one of them would tell us that women were made
to be the settings of pearls and emeralds."
I had taken one, and was about to kiss her,
when she said, " Do not leave me an odd ear-ring :
put the other in the hair."
" Epimedea," said I, " I have made a vow
never to wear on the head anything but one single
flower, a single wheat-ear, green or yellow, and
ivy or vine-leaves : the number of these are not
mentioned in the vow."
"Bash child!" said Epimedea, shaking her
head : " I never made but two vows ; one was
when I took a husband."
" And the other? Epimedea!"
" No matter," said she ; " it might be, for
what I know, never to do the like again."
X. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Pericles has visited me. After many grave and
gentle inquiries, often suspended, all relating to
my health ; and after praises of Miletus, and pity
for my friends left behind, he told me that, when
he was quite assured of my recovery from the
fatigues of the voyage, he hoped I would allow
him to collect from me, at my leisure hours, the
information he wanted on the literature of Ionia.
Simple-hearted man ! in praising the authors of
our country, he showed me that he knew them
perfectly, from first to last. And now indeed his
energy was displayed : I thought he had none at
all. With how sonorous and modulated a voice
did he repeat the more poetical passages of our
elder historians ! and how his .whole soul did lean
upon Herodotus ! Happily for me, he observed
not my enthusiasm. And now he brought me
into the presence of Homer. " We claim him,"
said he ; " but he is yours. Observe with what
partiality he always dwells on Asia ! How infi-
nitely more civilised are Glaucus and Sarpedon
than any of the Grecians he was called upon to
celebrate ! Priam, Paris, Hector, what polished
men ! Civilisation has never made a step in ad-
vance, and never will, on those countries; she
had gone so far in the days of Homer. He keeps
Helen pretty rigorously out of sight, but he opens
his heart to the virtues of Andromache. What
a barbarian is the son of a goddess ! Pallas must
seize him by the hair to avert the murder of his
leader ; but at the eloquence of the Phrygian king
the storm of the intractable homicide bursts in
tears."
" And jEschylus," said I, but could not con-
tinue : blushes rose into my cheek, and pained
me at the recollection of my weakness.
'•' He has left us," said Pericles, who pretended
not to have perceived it ; I am grieved that my
prayers were inadequate to detain him. But what
prayers or what expostulations can influence the
lofty mind, labouring and heaving under injustice
and indignity 1 ^Eschylus knew he merited, by
his genius and his services, the gratitude and ad-
miration of the Athenians. He saw others pre-
ferred before him, and hoisted sail. At the ru-
mour of his departure such was the consternation
as if the shield of Pallas in the Parthenon had dropt
from her breast upon the pavement. That glory
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
365
shines now upon the crown of Hiero which has
sunk for Athens."
" You have still great treasures left," said I ;
for he was moved.
" True," replied he, " but will not everyone
remark who hears the observation, that we know
not how to keep them, and have never weighed
them?"
I sate silent ; he resumed his serenity.
" We ought to change places," said he, " at the
feet of the poets. ^Eschylus, I see, is yours ;
Homer is mine. Aspasia should be a Pallas to
Achilles ; and Pericles a subordinate power, com-
forting and consoling the afflicted demi-god. Im-
petuosity, impatience, resentment, revenge itself,
are pardonable sins in the very softest of your
sex : on brave endurance rises our admiration."
" I love those better who endure with con-
stancy," said I.
"Happy!" replied he, "thrice happy! 0
Aspasia, the constancy thus tried and thus re-
warded!"
He spoke with tenderness ; he rose with ma-
jesty ; bowed to Epimedea : touched gently,
scarcely at all, the hand§ I presented to him, bent
over it, and departed.
XI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I told you I would love, 0 Cleone ! but I am so
near it that I dare not.
Tell me what I am to do ; I can do anything
but write and think.
Pericles has not returned.
I am nothing here in Athens.
Five days are over ; six almost.
0 what long days are these of Elaphebolion !
XII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Take heed, Aspasia! All orators are deceivers;
and Pericles is the greatest of orators.
1 will write nothing more, lest you should at-
tend in preference to any other part of my letter.
Yes ; I must repeat my admonition : I must
speak out plainly ; I must try other words . .
stronger . . more frightful. Love of supremacy,
miscalled political glory, finds most, and leaves
all, dishonest.
The Gods and Goddesses watch over and pre-
serve you, and send you safe home again !
XIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Fear not for me, Cleone ! Pericles has attained
the summit of glory ; and the wisdom and virtue
that acquired it for him are my sureties.
A great man knows the value of greatness : he
dares not hazard it, he will not squander it.
Imagine you that the confidence and affection of
a people, so acute, so vigilant, so jealous, as the
Athenians, would have rested firmly and con-
stantly on one inconstant and infirm.
If he loves me the merit is not mine ; the fault
will be if he ceases.
XIV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
I must and will fear for you, and the more be-
cause I perceive you are attracted as the bees are,
by an empty sound, the fame of your admirer.
You love Pericles for that very quality which
ought to have set you on your guard against him.
In contentions for power, the philosophy and the
poetry of life are dropt and trodden down. Do-
mestic affections can no more bloom and flourish
in the hardened race -course of politics, than
flowers can find nourishment in the pavement of
the streets. In the politician the whole creature
is factitious; if ever he speaks as before, he speaks
either from memory or invention.
But such is your beauty, such your genius, it
may alter the nature of things. Endowed with
the power of Circe, you will exert it oppositely,
and restore to the most selfish and most voracious
of animals the uprightness and dignity of man.
XV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
It is not wisdom in itself, 0 Aspasia ! it is the
manner of imparting it that affects the soul, and
alone deserves the name of eloquence. I have
never been moved by any but yours.
Is it the beauty that shines over it, is it the
voice that ripens it, giving it those lovely colours,
that delicious freshness; is it the modesty and
diffidence with which you present it to us, look-
ing for nothing but support1? Sufficient were
anyone of them singly ; but all united have
come forward to subdue me, and have deprived
me of my courage, my self-possession, and my
repose.
I dare not hope to be beloved, Aspasia ! I did
hope it once in my life, and have been disap-
pointed. Where I sought for happiness none is
offered to me : I have neither the sunshine nor the
shade.
So unfortunate in earlier days, ought I, ten
years later, to believe that she, to whom the earth,
with whatever is beautiful and graceful in it, bows
prostrate, will listen to me as her lover ] I dare
not ; too much have I dared already. But if, 0
Aspasia ! I should sometimes seem heavy and
dull in conversation, when happier men surround
you, pardon my infirmity.
I have only one wish; I may not utter it : I have
only one fear ; this at least is not irrational, and
I will own it ; the fear that Aspasia could never
be sufficiently happy with me.
XVI. ASPASIA TO PEKICLES.
Do you doubt, 0 Pericles, that I shall be suffi-
ciently happy with you 1 This doubt of yours
assures me that I shall be.
I throw aside my pen to crown the Gods. And
I worship thee first, 0 Pallas ! who protectest the
life, enlightenest the mind, establishest the power,
and exaltest the glory, of Pericles.
366
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
XVTI. CLEONE TO ASl'ASIA.
I tremble both for you and your lover. The
people of Athens may applaud at first the homage
paid to beauty and genius; nevertheless there
are many whose joy will spring from malignity,
and who will exult at what they think (I know
not whether quite unjustly) a weakness in Pericles.
I shall always be restless about you. Let me
confess to you, I do not like your sheer demo-
cracies. What are they good for] Why yes, they
have indeed their use ; the filth and ferment of
the compost are necessary for raising rare plants.
0 how I wish we were again together in that
island on our river which we called the Fortunate!
It was almost an island when your father cut
across the isthmus of about ten paces, to preserve
the swan-nest.
Xeniades has left Miletus. We know not whi-
ther he is gone, but we presume to his mines in
Lemnos. It was always with difficulty he could
be persuaded to look after his affairs. He is too
rich, too young, too thoughtless. But, since you
left Miletus, we have nothing here to detain him.
1 wish I could trifle [with you about your Pericles.
Any wager, he is the only lover who never wrote
verses upon you.
In a politician a verse is an ostracism.
XVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
My Pericles (mine, mine he is) has written
verses upon me ; not many, nor worth his prose,
even the shortest sentence of it. But you will
read them with pleasure for their praises of
Miletus.
N"o longer ago than yesterday an ugly young
philosopher declared his passion for me, as you
shall see. I did not write anything back to
Pericles : I did to the other. I will not run the
risk of having half my letter left unread by you,
in your hurry to come into the poetry.
Here it all is :
PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Flower of Ionia's fertile plains,
Where Pleasure leagued with Virtue reigns,
Where the Pierian Maids of old,
Yea, long ere llion's tale was told,
Too pure, too sacred for our sight,
Descended with the silent night
To young Arctinus, and M scantier
Delay'd his course for Melesamler !
If there be city on the earth
Proud in the children of her birth,
Wealth, science, beauty, story, song,
These to Miletus all belong.
To fix the diadem on his brow
For ever, one was wanting . . thou.
I could not be cruel to such a suitor, even if he
asked me for pity. Love makes one half of every
man foolish, and the other half cunning. Pericles
touched me on the side of Miletus, and Socrates
came up to me straightforward from Prometheus :
SOCRATES TO ASPASIA.
He who stole fire from heaven,
Long heav'd his bold and patient breast ; 'twas riven
By the Caucasian bird and bolts of Jove.
Stolen that fire have I,
And am enchain'd to die
By every jealous Power that frowns above.
I call not upon thee again
To hear my vows and calm my pain,
Who Bittest high enthron'd
Where Venus rolls her gladsome star,
Propitious Love ! But thou disown'd
By sire and mother, whosoe'er they are,
Unblest in form and name, Despair !
Why dost thou follow that bright demon? why
His purest altar art thou always nigh ?
I was sorry that Socrates should suffer so much
for me.
Pardon the fib, Cleone ! let it pass : I was sorry
just as we all are upon such occasions, and wrote
him this consolation :
O thou who sittest with the wise,
And searchest higher lore,
And openest regions to their eyes
Unvisited before !
I'd run to loose thee if I could,
Nor let the vulture taste thy blood.
But, pity! pity! Attic bee !
'Tis happiness forbidden me.
Despair is not for good or wise,
And should not be for love ;
We all must bear our destinies
And bend to those above.
Birds flying o'er the stormy seas
Alight upon their proper trees,
Yet wisest men not always know
Where they should stop or whither go.
XIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I am quite ashamed of Alcibiades, quite angry
with him. What do you imagine he has been
doing1? He listened to my conversation with
Pericles, on the delaration of love from the Phi-
losopher Bound, and afterward to the verses I re-
peated in answer to his, which pleased my Pericles
extremely, not perhaps for themselves, but be-
cause I had followed his advice in writing them,
and had returned to him with the copy so speedily.
Alcibiades said he did not like them at all, and
could write better himself. We smiled at this ;
and his cousin said, " Do then, my boy ! "
Would you believe it ] he not only wrote, but I
fear (for he declares he did) actually sent these :
O Satyr-son of Sophroniscns !
Would Alcon cut me a hibiscus,
I'd wield it as the goatherds do,
And swing thee a sound stroke or two,
Bewilder, if thou canst, us boys,
Us, or the sophists, with thy toys —
Thy kalokagathons . . beware !
Keep to the good, and leave the fair.
Could he really be the composer ] what think
you ] or did he get any of his wicked friends to
help him ] The verses are very bold, very scan-
dalous, very shocking. I am vext and sorry ;
but what can be done] We must seem to know
nothing about the matter.
The audacious little creature . . not very little,
he is within four fingers of my height . . is half
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
367
in love with me. He flames up at the mention
of Socrates : can he be jealous ?
Pericles tells me that the philosophers here are
as susceptible of malice as of love. It may be so,
for the plants which are sweet in some places are
acrid in others.
He said to me, smiling, " I shall be represented
in their schools as a sophist, because Aspasia and
Alcibiades were unruly. 0 that boy ! who knows
but his mischievous verses will be a reason suffi-
cient, in another year, why I am unable to com-
mand an army or harangue an assembly of the
people V
XX. XENIADES»TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia! Aspasia! have you forgotten me1?
have you forgotten us ? Our childhood was one,
our earliest youth was undivided. Why should
you not see me ] Did you fear that you would
have to reproach me for any fault I have com-
mitted ] This would have pained you formerly ;
ah, how lately !
Your absence . . not absence . . flight . . has
broken my health, and left me fever and frenzy.
Eumedes is certain I can only recover my health
by composure. Foolish man ! as if composure
were more easy to recover than health. Was
there ever such a madman as to say, " You will
never have the use of your limbs again unless you
walk and run!"
I am weary of advice, of remonstrance, of pity,
of everything ; above all, of life.
Was it anger (how dared I be angry with you1?)
that withheld me from imploring the sight of
you 1 Was it pride ? Alas ! what pride is left
me ? I am preferred no longer ; I am rejected,
scorned, loathed. Was it always so ] Well may
I ask the question; for 'everything seems uncer-
tain to me but my misery. At times I know not
whether I am mad or dreaming. No, no, As-
pasia! the past was a dream, the present is a
reality. The mad and the dreaming do not shed
tears as I do. And yet in these bitter tears are
my happiest moments; and some angry demon
knows it, and presses my temples that there shall
fall but few.
You refused to admit me. I asked too little,
and deserved the refusal. 'Come to me. This you
will not refuse, unless you are bowed to slavery.
Go, tell your despot this, with my curses and de-
fiance.
I am calmer, but insist. Spare yourself, As-
pasia, one tear, and not by an effort, but by a duty.
XXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Of all men living, what man do you imagine has
come to Athens ] Insensate ! now you know.
What other, so beloved, would ever have left Mi-
letus ! I wish I could be convinced that your
coldness or indifference had urged him to this
extravagance. I can only promise you we will
not detain him. Athens is not a refuge for the
perfidious or the flighty. But if he is unfortu-
nate ; what shall we do with him 1 Do ] I will
tell him to return. Expect him hourly.
XXII. ASPASIA TO XENIADES.
I am pained to my innermost heart that you
are ill.
Pericles is not the person you imagine him.
Behold his billet ! And can not you think of me
with equal generosity 1
True, we saw much of each other in our child-
hood, and many childish things we did together.
This is the reason why I went out of your way as
much as I could afterward. There is another too.
I hoped you would love more the friend that I
love most. How much happier would she make
you than the flighty Aspasia ! We resemble each
other too much, Xeniades ! we should never have
been happy, so ill-mated. Nature hates these
alliances : they are like those of brother and sis-
ter. I never loved anyone but Pericles : none
else attracts the admiration of the world. I stand,
0 Xeniades ! not only above slavery, but above
splendour, in that serene light which Homer de-
scribes as encompassing the Happy on Olympus.
1 will come to visit you within the hour ; be
calm, be contented ! love me, but not too much,
Xeniades !
XXIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Xeniades, whom I loved a little in my child-
hood, and (do not look serious now, my dearest
Pericles !) a very little afterward, is sadly ill.
He was always, I know not how, extravagant in
his wishes, although not so extravagant as many
others ; and what do you imagine he wishes now?
He wishes . . but he is very ill, so ill he can not
rise from his bed, . . that I would go and visit
him. I wonder whether it would be quite consi-
derate : I am half inclined to go, if you approve
of it.
Poor youth ! he grieves me bitterly.
I shall not weep before him ; I have wept so
much here. Indeed, indeed, I wept, my Pericles,
only because I had written too unkindly.
XXIV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Do what your heart tells you : yes, Aspasia, do
all it tells you. Remember how august it is : it
contains the temple, not only of Love, but of
Conscience ; and a whisper is heard from the ex-
tremity of the one to the extremity of the other.
Bend in pensiveness, even in sorrow, on the
flowery bank of youth, whereunder runs the
stream that passes irreversibly! let the garland
drop into it, let the hand be refreshed by it ; but
may the beautiful feet of Aspasia stand firm!
XXV. XENIADES TO ASPASIA.
You promised you would return. I thought
you only broke hearts, not promises.
368
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
It is now broad daylight : I see it clearly, al-
though the blinds are closed. A long sharp ray
cuts off one corner of the room, and we shall hear
the crash presently.
Come ; but without that pale silent girl : I hate
her. Place her on the other side of you, not on
mine.
And this plane-tree gives no shade whatever.
We will sit in some other place.
No, no ; I will not have you call her to us. Let
her play where she is . . the notes are low . .
she plays sweetly.
XXVI. ASPASIA TO PEKICLES.
See what incoherency ! He did not write it ;
not one word. The slave who brought it, told
me that he was desired by the guest to write his
orders, whenever he found his mind composed
enough to give any.
About four hours after my departure, he called
him mildly, and said, " I am quite recovered."
He gave no orders however, and spake nothing
more for some time. At last he raised himself
up, and rested on his elbow, and began (said the
slave) like one inspired. The slave added, that
finding he was indeed quite well again, both in
body and mind, and capable of making aa fine
poetry as any man in Athens, he had written
down every word with the greatest punctuality •
and that, looking at him for more, he found he
had fallen into as sound a slumber as a reaper's.
" Upon this I ran off with the verses," said he.
XXVII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Comfort him. But you must love him, if you
do. Well ! comfort him. Forgive my inconsi-
derateness. You will not love him now. You
would not receive him when your bosom was with-
out an occupant. And yet you saw him daily.
Others, all others, pine away before him. I wish
I could solace my soul with poetry, as you have
the power of doing. In all the volumes I turn
over, I find none exactly suitable to my condition :
part expresses my feelings, part flies off from
them to something more light and vague. I do
not believe the best writers of love -poetry ever
loved. How could they write if they did ? where
could they collect the thoughts, the words, the
courage ? Alas ! alas ! men can find all these,
Aspasia, and leave us after they have found them.
But in Xeniades there is no fault whatever : he
never loved me: he never said he did : he fled only
from my immodesty in, loving him. Dissembler
as I was, he detected it. Do pity him, and help
him : but pity me too, who am beyond your help.
XXVIII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Tears, 0 Aspasia, do not dwell long upon the
cheeks of youth. Rain drops easily from the bud,
rests on the bosom of the maturer flower, and
breaks down that one only which hath lived its day.
Weep, and perform the offices of friendship.
The season of life, leading you by the hand, will
not permit you to linger at the tomb of the de-
parted ; and Xeniades, |when your first tear fell
upon it, entered into the number of the blessed.
XXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
What shall I say to you, tender and sweet
Cleone ! The wanderer is in the haven of happi-
ness ; the restless has found rest.
Weep not ; I have shed all your tears . . not
all . . they burst from me again.
XXX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Oh ! he was too beautiful to live ! Is there any-
thing that shoots through the world so swiftly as a
sunbeam ! Epialtes has told me everything. He
sailed back without waiting at the islands ; by
your orders, he says.
What hopes could I, with any prudence, enter-
tain 1 The chaplet you threw away would have
cooled and adorned my temples ; but how could
he ever love another who had once loved you 1 I
am casting my broken thoughts before my As-
pasia : the little shells upon the shore, that the
storm has scattered there, and that heedless feet
have trampled on.
I have prayed to Venus ; but I never prayed
her to turn toward me the fondness that was
yours. I fancied, I even hoped, you might accept
it ; and my prayer was, " Grant I may never love !
Afar from me, 0 Goddess ! be the malignant
warmth that dries up the dews of friendship."^ ^
XXXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Pericles has insisted on it that I should change
the air, and has recommended to me an excursion
to the borders of the state.
" If you pass them a little way," said he, " you
will come to Tanagra, and that will inflame you
with ambition."
The honour in which I hold the name of Co-
rinna induced me to undertake a journey to her
native place. Never have I found a people so hos-
pitable as the inhabitants. Living at a distance
from the sea, they are not traders, nor adventurers,
nor speculators, nor usurers, but cultivate a range
of pleasant hills, covered with vines. Hermes is
the principal God they worship ; yet I doubt whe-
ther a single prayer was ever offered up to him by
a Tanagrian for success in thievery.
The beauty of Corinna is no less 'celebrated than
her poetry. I remarked that the women speak of
it with great exultation, while the men applaud
her genius ; and I asked my venerable host Age-
silaus how he could account for it.
" I can account for nothing that you ladies do"
said he " although I have lived among you seventy-
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
369
five years : I only know that it was exactly the
contrary while she was living. We youths were
rebuked by you when we talked about her beauty;
and the rebuke was only softened by the candid
confession, that she was clever . . in her way."
" Come back with me to Athens, 0 Agesilaus ! "
said I, "and we will send Aristophanes to Tanagra."
XXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I have been reading all the poetry of Corinna
that I could collect. Certainly it is better than
Hesiod's, or even than Myrtis's, who taught her
and Pindar, not the rudiments of the art, for this
is the only art in which the rudiments are incom-
municable, but what was good, what was bad, in
her verses ; why it was so, and how she might cor-
rect the worse and improve the better.
Hesiod, who is also a Boeotian, is admirable for
the purity of his life and soundness of his pre-
cepts, but there is hardly a trace of poetry in his
ploughed field.
I find in all his writings but one verse worth
transcribing, and that only for the melody :
" In a soft meadow and on vernal flowers."
I do not wonder he was opposed to Homer.
What an advantage to the enemies of greatness
(that is, to mankind) to be able to match one so
low against one so lofty !
The Greek army before Troy would have been
curious to listen to a dispute between Agamem-
non and Achilles, but would have been transported
with ecstasy to have been present at one between
the king of men and Thersites.
There are few who possess all the poetry of any
voluminous author. I doubt whether there are
ten families in Athens in which all the plays of
jEschylus are preserved. Many keep what pleases
them most : few consider that every page of a
really great poet has something in it which dis-
tinguishes him from an inferior order : something
which, if insubstantial as the aliment, serves at
least as a solvent to the aliment, of strong and
active minds.
I asked my Pericles what he thought of Hesiod.
" I think myself more sagacious," said he.
" Hesiod found out that half was more than all ;
I have found out that one is."
XXXIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONK.
A slave brought to me, this morning, an enor-
mous load of papers, as many as he could carry
under both arms. They are treatises by the most
celebrated philosophers. Some hours afterward,
when the sun was declining, Pericles came in, and
asked me if I had examined or looked over any
portion of them. I told him I had opened those
only which bore the superscription of famous
names, but that, unless he would assist me, I was
hopeless of reconciling one part with another in
the same writers.
" The first thing requisite," said I, " is, that as
many as are now at Athens should meet together,
and agree upon a nomenclature of terms. From de-
finitions we may go on to propositions; but we can
not make a step unless the foot rests somewhere."
He smiled at me. " Ah my Aspasia !" said he,
" Philosophy does not bring her sons together ;
she portions them off early, gives them a scanty
stock of worm-eaten furniture, a chair or two on
which it is dangerous to sit down, and at least as
many arms as utensils ; then leaves them : they
seldom meet afterward."
" But could not they be brought together by
some friend of the mother 1" said I, laughing.
" Aspasia !" answered he, "you have lived but
few years in the world, and with only one philo-
sopher . . yourself."
" I will not be contented with a compliment, "
said I, " and least of all from you. Explain to me
the opinions of those about you."
He traced before me the divergencies of every
sect, from our countryman Thales to those now
living. Epimedea sat with her eyes wide open,
listening attentively. When he went away, I asked
her what she thought of his discourse. She half
closed her eyes, not from weariness, but (as many
do) on bringing out of obscurity into light a
notable discovery ; and, laying her forefinger on
my arm, " You have turned his head," said she.
" He will do no longer ; he used to be plain and
coherent ; and now . . did ever mortal talk so
widely? I could not understand one word in
twenty, and what I could understand was sheer
nonsense."
"Sweet Epimedea!" said I, "this is what I
should fancy to be no such easy matter."
" Ah ! you are growing like him already," said
she ; " I should not be surprised to find, some
morning, a cupola at the top of this pretty head."
Pericles, I think I never told you, has a little
elevation on the crown of his ; I should rather say
his head has a crown, others have none.
XXXIV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Do, my dear Aspasia, continue to write to me
about the poets ; and if you think there is any-
thing of Myrtis or Corinna, which is wanting to us
at Miletus, copy it out. I do not always approve of
the Trilogies. Nothing can be more tiresome,
hardly anything more wicked, than a few of them.
It may be well occasionally to give something of
the historical form to the dramatic, as it is occa-
sionally to give something of the dramatic to the
historical ; but never to turn into ridicule and
buffoonery the virtuous, the unfortunate, or the
brave. Whatever the Athenians may boast of
their exquisite judgment, their delicate percep-
tions, this is a perversion of intellect in its highest
place, unworthy of a Thracian. There are many
bad tragedies both of JSschylus and Sophocles, but
none without beauties, few without excellences :
I tremble then at your doubt. In another cen-
tury it may be impossible to find a collection of
the whole, unless some learned and rich man, like
370
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Pericles, or some protecting king, like Hiero,
should preserve them in his library.
XXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
Prudently have you considered how to preserve
all valuable authors. The cedar doors of a royal
library fly open to receive them : ay, there they
will be safe . . and untouched.
Hiero is however no barbarian : he deserves a
higher station than a throne ; and he is raised to
it. The protected have placed the protector where
neither the malice of men nor the power of Gods
can reach him . . beyond Time . . above Fate.
XXXVI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
From the shortness of your last, I am quite
certain that you are busy for me in looking out
pieces of verse. If you cannot find any of Myrtis
or Corinna, you may do what is better ; you may
compose a panegyric on all of our sex who have
excelled in poetry. This will earn for you the
same good office, when the world shall produce
another Aspasia.
Having been in Boeotia, you must also know a
great deal more of Pindar than we do. Write
about any of them ; they all interest me ; and my
mind has need of exercise. It is still too fond of
throwing itself down on one place.
XXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
And so, Cleone, you wish me to write a eulogy
on Myrtis and Corinna, and all the other poetesses
that ever lived ; and this is for the honour of our
sex ! Ah Cleone ! no studied eulogy does honour
to anyone. It is always considered, and always
ought to be, as a piece of pleading, in which the
pleader says everything the most in favor of his
client, in the most graceful and impressive manner
he can. There is a city of Greece, I hear, in
which reciprocal flattery is so necessary, that,
whenever a member of the assembly dies, his
successor is bound to praise him before he takes
the seat.
I do not speak this from my own knowledge ;
indeed I could hardly believe in such frivolity,
until I asked Pericles if it were true ; or rather,
if there were any foundation at all for the report.
"Perfectly true," said he, "but the citizens of
this city are now become our allies ; therefore do
not curl your lip, or I must uncurl it, being an
archon."
Myrtis and Corinna have no need of me. To
read and recommend their works, to point out
their beauties and defects, is praise enough.
" How ! " methinks you exclaim. " To point
out defects ! is that praising ? "
Yes, Cleone : if with equal good faith and ac-
curacy you point out their beauties too. It is
only thus a fair estimate can be made ; and it is
only by such fair estimate that a writer can be
exalted to his proper station. If you toss up the
scale too high, it descends again rapidly below its
equipoise ; what it contains drops out, and people
catch at it, scatter it, and lose it.
We not only are inclined to indulge in rather
more than a temperate heat (of what we would
persuade ourselves is wholesome severity) toward
the living, but even to peer sometimes into the
tomb, with a wolfish appetite for an unpleasant
odor.
We must patronise, we must pull down; in
fact, we must be in mischief, men or women.
If we are capable of showing what is good in
another, and neglect to do it, we omit a duty ; we
omit to give rational pleasure, and to conciliate
right good-will ; nay more, we are abettors, if not
aiders, in the vilest fraud, the fraud of purloining
from respect. We are entrusted with letters of
great interest; what a baseness not to deliver
them!
XXXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
It is remarkable that Athens, so fertile in men
of genius, should have produced no women of
distinction, while Bceotia, by no means celebrated
for brightness of intellect in either sex, presented
to the admiration of the world her Myrtis and
Corinna. At the feet of Myrtis it was that
Pindar gathered into his throbbing breast the
scattered seeds of poetry ; and it was under the
smile of the beautiful Corinna that he drew his
inspiration and wove his immortal crown.
He never quite overcame his grandiloquence.
The animals we call half-asses, by a word of the
sweetest sound, although not the most seducing
import, he calls
" The daughters of the tempest-footed steeds ! "
0 Fortune ! that the children of so illustrious
a line should carry sucking-pigs into the market-
place, and cabbage-stalks out of it !
XXXIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Will you always leave off, Aspasia, at the very
moment you have raised our expectations to the
highest] A witticism, and a sudden spring from
your seat, lest we should see you smile at it, these
are your ways ; shame upon you ! Are you deter-
mined to continue all your life in making everyone
wish something ]
Pindar should not be treated like ordinary
XL. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I have not treated Pindar like an ordinary
man ; I conducted him into the library of Cleone,
and left him there. However, I would have my
smile out, behind the door. The verse I quoted,
you may be sure, is much admired by the learned,
and no less by the brave and worthy men whom
he celebrates for charioteership, and other such
dexterities ; but we of old Miletus have been
always taught that words should be subordinate
PERICLES 'AND ASPASIA.
371
to ideas, and we never place the pedestal on the
head of the statue.
Now do not tell anybody that I have spoken a
single word in dispraise of Pindar. Men are not
too apt to admire what is admirable in their
superiors, but on the contrary are apt to detract
from them, and to seize on anything which may
tend to lower them. Pindar would not have
written so exquisitely if no fault had ever been
found with him. He would have wandered on
among such inquiries as those he began in :
"Shall I sing the wide-spreading and noble
Ismenus? or the beautiful and white-ancled
Melie ? or the glorious Cadmus ? or the mighty
Hercules ? or the blooming Bacchus ] "
Now a poet ought to know what he is about
before he opens his lips : he ought not to ask, like
a poor fellow in the street, "Good people ! what
song will you have 1" This however was not the
fault for which he was blamed by Corinna. In our
censures we are less apt to consider the benefit we
may confer than the ingenuity we can display.
She said, " Pindar ! you have brought a sack of
corn to sow a perch of land; and, instead of
sprinkling it about, you have emptied the sack
at the first step."
Enough : this reproof formed his character : it
directed his beat, it singled his aim, it concen-
trated his forces. It was not by the precepts of
Corinna, it was not by her example, it was by one
witticism of a wise and lovely woman, that he far
excels all other poets in disdain of triviality and
choice of topics. He is sometimes very tedious
to us in his long stories of families, but we may
be sure he was not equally so to those who were
concerned in the genealogy. We are amused at
his cleverness in saving the shoulder of Pelops
from the devouring jaw of a hungry god. No
doubt he mends the matter; nevertheless he
tires us.
Many prefer his Dithyrambics to his Olym-
pian, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean Odes : I do
not; nor is it likely that he did himself. We
may well suppose that he exerted the most power
on the composition, and the most thought on the
correction, of the poems he was to recite before
kings and nations, in honour of the victors at
those solemn games. Here the choruses and
bands of music were composed of the first
singers and players in the world ; in the others
there were no performers but such as happened
"to assemble on ordinary festivals, or at best at a
festival of Bacchus. In the Odes performed at
the games, although there is not always perfect
regularity of corresponding verse, there is always
enough of it to satisfy the most fastidious ear.
In the Dithyrambics there is no order whatso-
ever, but verses and half-verses of every kind,
cemented by vigorous and sounding prose.
I do not love dances upon stilts; they may
excite the applauses and acclamations of the
vulgar, but we, Cleone, exact the observance of
established rules, and never put on slippers, how-
ever richly embroidered, unless they pair.
XLI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
We hear that between Athens and Syracuse
there has always been much communication.
Let me learn what you have been able to collect
about the lives of Pindar and JEschylus in Sicily.
Is it not strange that the two most high-
minded of poets should have gone to reside in a
foreign land, under the dominion of a king ?
I am ashamed of my question already. Such
men are under no dominion. It is not in their
nature to offend against the laws, or to think
about what they are, or who administers them ;
and they may receive a part of their sustenance
from kings, as well as from cows and bees. We
will reproach them for emigration, when we
reproach a man for lying down in his neighbour's
field, because the grass is softer in it than in his
own.
XLII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Not an atom have I been able to collect in
regard to the two poets, since they went to the
court of Hiero : but I can give you as correct and
as full information as if I had been seated between
them all the while.
Hiero was proud of his acquisition ; the
courtiers despised them, vexed them whenever
they could, and entreated them to command their
services and rely upon their devotion. What
more 1 They esteemed each other ; but poets are
very soon too old for mutual love.
He who can add one syllable to this, shall have
the hand of Cleone.
XLIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Torturing girl ! and you, Aspasia, may justly
say ungrateful girl ! to me. You did not give me
what I asked for, but you gave me what is better,
a glimpse of you. This is the manner in which
you used to trifle with me, making the heaviest
things light, the thorniest tractable, and throwing
your own beautiful brightness wherever it was
most wanted.
But do not slip from me again. jEschylus, we
know, is dead ; we hear that Pindar is. Did they
die abroad ]
Ah poor Xeniades ! how miserable to be buried
by the stranger !
XLIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
jEschylus, at the close of his seventieth year,
died in Sicily. I know not whether Hiero
received him with all the distinction he merited,
or rewarded him with the same generosity as
Pindar; nor indeed have I been able to learn,
what would very much gratify me, that Pindar,
who survived him four years and died lately, paid
those honours to the greatest man of the most
glorious age since earth rose out of chaos, which
he usually paid with lavish hand to the prosperous
and powerful. I hope he did; but the words wealth
and gold occur too often in the poetry of Pindar.
372
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Perhaps I may wrong him, for a hope is akin
to a doubt; it may be that I am mistaken, since
we have not all his poems even here in Athens.
Several of these too, particularly the Dithyram-
bics, are in danger of perishing. The Odes on
the victors at the games will be preserved by the
vanity of the families they celebrate ; and, being
thus safe enough for many years, their own
merit will sustain them afterward. It is owing to
a stout nurse that many have lived to an extreme
old age.
Some of the Odes themselves are of little value
in regard to poetry, but he exercises in all of
them as much dexterity as the worthies he ap-
plauds had displayed in their exploits.
To compensate the disappointment you com-
plained of, I will now transcribe for you an ode
of Corinna to her native town, being quite sure
it is not in your collection. Let me first inform
you that the exterior of the best houses in
Tanagra is painted with historical scenes, adven-
tures of Gods, allegories, and other things ; and
under the walls of the city flows the rivulet Ther-
modon. This it is requisite to tell you of so
small and so distant a place.
CORINNA TO TANAGRA.
From Athens.
Tanagra ! think not I forget
. Thy beautifully- storied streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy,
Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheav'dwith sylvan fruit ; away he bounds, and blushes.
A gift I promise : one I see
Which thou with transport wilt receive,
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal shall bereave
In later times thy mouldering walls,
Until the last old turret falls ;
A crown, a crown from Athens won,
A crown no God can wear, beside Latona's son.
There may be cities who refuse
To their own child the honours due,
And look ungently on the Muse ;
But ever shall those cities rue
The dry, unyielding, niggard breast,
Offering no nourishment, no rest.
To that young head which soon shall rise
Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies.
Sweetly where cavern 'd Dirce flows
Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay,
Flapping the while with laurel-rose
The honey-gathering tribes away ;
And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues
Lisp your Corinna's early songs ;
To her with feet more graceful come
The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home.
O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance,
While others as in holy trance
Look np to heaven : be such my praise !
Why linger ? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays.
XLV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Epimedea, it appears, has not corrupted very
grossly your purity and simplicity in dress. Yet,
remembering your observation on armlets, I
can not but commend your kindness and suffer-
ance in wearing her emeralds. Your opinion was
formerly, that we should be careful not to sub-
divide our persons. The arm is composed of
three parts ; no one of them is too long. Now
the armlet intersects that portion of it which
must be considered as the most beautiful. In
my idea of the matter, the sandal alone is sus-
ceptible of gems, after the zone has received the
richest. The zone is necessary to our vesture,
and encompasses the person, in every quarter of
the humanized world, in one invariable manner.
The hair too is divided by nature in the middle
of the head. There is a cousinship between the
hair and the flowers ; and from this relation the
poets have called by the same name the leaves
and it. They appear on the head as if they had
been seeking one another. Our national dress,
very different from the dresses of barbarous
nations, is not the invention of the ignorant or
the slave ; but the sculptor, the painter, and the
poet, have studied how best to adorn the most
beautiful object of their fancies and contempla-
tions. The Indians, who believe that human
pains and sufferings are pleasing to the deity,
make incisions in their bodies, and insert into
them imperishable colours. They also adorn the
ears and noses and foreheads of their gods.
These were the ancestors of the Egyptian ; we
chose handsomer and better-tempered ones for
our worship, but retained the same decorations
in our sculpture, and to a degree which the so-
briety of the Egyptian had reduced and chastened.
Hence we retain the only mark of barbarism
which dishonours our national dress, the use of
ear-rings. If our statues should all be broken by
some convulsion of the earth, would it be believed
by future ages that, in the country and age of
Sophocles, the women tore holes in their ears to
let rings into, as the more brutal of peasants do
with the snouts of sows !
XLVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Cleone, I do not know whether I ought to
write out for you anything of Mimnermus.
What is amatory poetry without its tenderness ?
and what was ever less tender than his ? Take
however the verses, such as they are. Whether
they make you smile or look grave, without
any grace of their own they must bring one
forward. Certainly they are his best, which
can not be said of every author out of whose
rarer works I have added something to your col-
lection.
I wish not Thasos rich in mines,
Nor Naxos girt around with vines,
Nor Crete nor Samos, the abodes
Of those who govern men and gods,
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
373
Nor wider Lydia, where the sound
Of tymbrels shakes the thymy ground,
And with white feet and with hoofs cloven
The dedal dance is spun and woven :
Meanwhile each prying younger thing
Is sent for water to the spring,
Under where red Priapus rears
His club amid the junipers.
In this whole world enough for me
Is any spot the gods decree ;
Albeit the pious and the wise
Would tarry where, like mulberries,
In the first hour of ripeness fall
The tender creatures one and all.
To take what falls with even mind
Jove wills, and we must be resign'd.
XLVII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
There is less effrontery in those verses of
Mimnermus than in most he has written. He is
among the many poets who never make us laugh
or weep ; among the many whom we take into
the hand like pretty insects, turn them over,
look at them for a moment, and toss them into
the grass again. The earth swarms with these ;
they live their season, and others similar come
into life the next.
I have been reading works widely different
from theirs ; the odes of the lovely Lesbian. I
think she has injured the phaleucian verse, by
transposing one foot, and throwing it backward.
How greatly more noble and more sonorous are
those hendecasyllabics commencing the Scolion
on Harmodius and Aristogiton, than the very
best of hers, which, to my ear, labour and shuffle
in their movement. Her genius was wonderful,
was prodigious. I am neither blind to her
beauties nor indifferent to her sufferings. We
love for ever those whom we have wept for when
we were children : we love them more than even
those who have wept for us. Now I have grieved
for Sappho, and so have you, Aspasia ! we shall
not therefore be hard judges of her sentiments or
her poetry.
Frequently have we listened to the most ab-
surd and extravagant praises of the answer she
gave Alcaeus, when he told her he wished to say
something, but shame prevented him. This
answer of hers is a proof that she was deficient
in delicacy and in tenderness. Could Sappho
be ignorant how infantinely inarticulate is early
love1? Could she be ignorant that shame and
fear seize it unrelentingly by the throat, while
hard-hearted impudence stands at ease, prompt
at opportunity, and profuse in declarations !
There is a gloom in deep love, as in deep water :
there is a silence in it which suspends the foot,
and the folded arms and the dejected head are
the images" it reflects. No voice shakes its sur-
face : the Muses themselves approach it with a
tardy and a timid step, and with a low and tre-
mulous and melancholy song.
The best Ode of Sappho, the Ode to Anactoria,
" Happy as any God is he," &c.,
shows the intemperance and disorder of passion.
The description of her malady may be quite cor-
rect, but I confess my pleasure ends at the first
strophe, where it begins with the generality of
readers. I do not desire to know the effects of
the distemper on her body, and I run out of the
house into the open air, although the symptoms
have less in them of contagion than of unseemli-
ness. Both Sophocles and Euripides excite our
sympathies more powerfully and more poetically.
I will not interfere any farther with your re-
flections ; and indeed when I began, I intended
to remark only the injustice of Sappho's reproof
to Alcaeus in the first instance, and the justice of
it in the second, when he renewed his suit to her
after he had fled from battle. We find it in the
only epigram attributed to her.
He who from battle runs away
May pray and sing, and sing and pray ;
Nathless, Alcaeus, howsoe'er
Dulcet his song and warm his prayer
And true his vows of love may be,
He ne'er shall run away with me.
In my opinion no lover should be dismissed with
contumely, or without the expression of commise-
ration, unless he has committed some bad action.
0 Aspasia ! it is hard to love and not to be loved
again. I felt it early ; I still feel it. There is a
barb beyond the reach of dittany ; but years, as
they roll by us, benumb in some degree our sense
of suffering. Season comes after season, and
covers as it were with soil and herbage the flints
that have cut us so cruelly in our course.
XIVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Alcaeus, often admirable in his poetry, was a
vain-glorious and altogether worthless man. I
must defend Sappho. She probably knew his
character at the beginning, and sported a witti-
cism (not worth much) at his expense. He made
a pomp and parade of his generosity and courage,
with which in truth he was scantily supplied,
and all his love lay commodiously at the point of
his pen, among the rest his first.
He was unfit for public life, he was unfit for
private. Perverse, insolent, selfish, he hated
tyranny because he could not be a tyrant. Suffi-
ciently well-born, he was jealous and intolerant of
those who were nothing less so, and he wished
they were all poets that he might expose a weak-
ness the more in them. For rarely has there been
one, however virtuous, without some vanity and
some invidiousness ; despiser of the humble, de-
tractor of the high, iconoclast of the near, and
idolater of the distant.
Return we to Alcaeus. Factitious in tenderness,
factitious in heroism, addicted to falsehood, and
unabashed at his fondness for it, he attacked and
overcame every rival in that quarter. He picked
up all the arrows that were shot against him, re-
cocted all the venom of every point, and was
almost an Archilochus in satire.
I do not agree with you in your censure of
Sappho. There is softness by the side of power,
374
discrimination by the side of passion. In this
however I do agree with you, that her finest ode
is not to be compared to many choruses in the
tragedians. We know that Sappho felt acutely ;
yet Sappho is never pathetic. Euripides and
Sophocles are not remarkable for their purity, the
intensity, or the fidelity of their loves, yet they
touch, they transfix, the heart. Her imagination,
her whole soul, is absorbed in her own breast :
she is the prey of the passions ; they are the lords
and masters.
Sappho has been dead so long, and we live so
far from Lesbos, that we have the fewer means of
ascertaining the truth or falsehood of stories told
about her. Some relate that she was beautiful,
some that she was deformed. Lust, it is said, is
frequently the inhabitant of deformity ; and cold-
ness is experienced in the highest beauty. I be-
lieve the former case is more general than the
latter : but where there is great regularity of fea-
tures I have often remarked a correspondent re-
gularity in the affections and the conduct.
XLIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Do you remember the lively Hegemon, whose
curls you pressed down with your forefinger to see
them spring up again] Do you remember his
biting it for the liberty you had taken ; and his
kissing it to make it well ; and his telling you
that he was not quite sure whether some other
kisses, here and there, might not be requisite to
prevent the spreading of the venom ] And do
you remember how you turned pale ] and how you
laughed with me, as we went away, at his think-
ing you turned pale because you were afraid of it1?
The boy of fifteen, as he was then, hath lost all his
liveliness, all his assurance, all his wit ; and his
radiant beauty has taken another character. His
cousin Praxinoe, whom he was not aware of loving
until she was betrothed to Callias, a merchant of
Samos, was married a few months ago. There
are no verses I read oftener than the loose dithy-
rambics of poor Hegemon. Do people love any-
where else as we love here at Miletus ? But per-
haps the fondness of Hegemon may abate after a
time ; for Hegemon is not a woman. How long
and how assiduous are we in spinning that thread,
the softest and finest in the web of life, which
Destiny snaps asunder in one moment !
HEGEMON TO PRAXINOE.
Is there any season, O my soul,
When the sources of bitter tears dry up,
And the uprooted flowers take their places again
Along the torrent-bed ?
Could I wish to live, it would be for that season,
To repose my limbs and press my temples there.
15 ut should I not speedily start away
In the hope to trace and follow thy steps !
Thou art gone, thou art gone, Praxinoe !
And hast taken farfrom me thy lovely youth,
Leaving me naught that was desirable in mine.
Alaa .' alas ! what hast thou left me ?
The helplessness of childhood, the solitude of age,
The laughter of the happy, the pity of the scorner,
A colorless and broken shadow am I,
Seen glancing in troubled waters.
My thoughts too are scattered ; thou hast cast them off;
They beat against thee, they would cling to thee,
But they are viler than the loose dark weeds,
Without a place to root or rest in.
I would throw them across my lyre ; they drop from it ;
My lyre will sound only two measures ;
That Pity will never, never come,
Or come to the sleep that awakeneth not unto her.
L. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Tell Hegemon that his verses have made a
deeper impression than his bite, and that the
Athenians, men and women, are pleased with
them. He has shown that he is a poet, by not
attempting to show that he is overmuch of one.
Forbear to inform him that we Athenians disap-
prove of irregularity in versification : we are little
pleased to be rebounded from the end of a line to
the beginning, as it often happens, and to be
obliged to turn back and make inquiries in regard
to what we have been about. There have latterly
been many compositions in which it is often re-
quisite to read twice over the verses which have
already occupied more than a due portion of our
time in reading once. The hop-skip-and-jump is
by no means a pleasant or a graceful exercise, but
it is quite intolerable when we invert it to a jump-
skip-and-hop. I take some liberty in these strange
novel compounds, but no greater than our friend
Aristophanes has taken, and not only without
reproof or censure, but with great commendation
for it. However, I have done it for the first and
last time, and before the only friend with whom
they can be pardonable. Henceforward, I pro-
mise you, Cleone, I will always be Attic, or, what
is gracefuller and better, Ionian. You shall for
ever hear my voice in my letters, and you shall
know it to be mine, and mine only. Already I
have had imitators in the style of my conversa-
tions, but they have imitated others too, and this
hath saved me. In mercy and pure beneficence
to me, the Gods have marred the resemblance.
Nobody can recognise me in my metempsychosis.
Those who had hoped and heard better of me, will
never ask themselves, " Was Aspasia so wordy,
so inelegant, affected, and perverse 1 " Inconside-
rate friends have hurt me worse than enemies
could do : they have hinted that the orations of
Pericles have been retouched by my pen. Cleone !
the Gods themselves could not correct his lan-
guage. Human ingenuity, with all the malice
and impudence that usually accompany it, will
never be able to remodel a single sentence, or to
substitute a single word, in his speeches to the
people. What wealth of wisdom has he not
thrown away lest it encumber him in the Agora !
how much more than ever was carried into it by
the most popular of his opponents ! Some of my
expressions may have escaped from him in crowded
places ; sonic of his cling to me in retirement: we
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
375
can not love without imitating ; and we are as
proud in the loss of our originality as of our free-
dom. I am sorry that poor Hegemon has not
had an opportunity of experiencing all this. Per-
suade his friends never to pity him, truly or
feignedly, for pity keeps the wound open : per-
suade them rather to flatter him on his poetry,
for never was there poet to whom the love of
praise was not the first and most constant of
passions. His friends will be the gainers by it :
he will divide among them all the affection he
fancies he has reserved for Praxinoe. With most
men, nothing seems to have happened so long
ago as an affair of love. Let nobody hint this to
him at present. It is among the many truths
that ought to be held back; it is among the
many that excite a violent opposition at one time,
and obtain at another (not much later) a very
ductile acquiescence ; he will receive it hereafter
(take my word for him) with only one slight re-
monstrance . . you are too hard upon us lovers :
then follows a shake of the head, not of abnega-
tion, but of sanction, like Jupiter's.
Praxinoe, it seems, is married to a merchant,
poor girl ! I do not like these merchants. Let
them have wealth in the highest, but not beauty
in the highest; cunning and calculation can
hardly merit both. At last they may aspire, if
any civilized country could tolerate it, to honours
and distinctions. These too let them have, but at
Tyre and Carthage.
LI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
How many things in poetry, as in other matters,
are likely to be lost because they are small ! Cleo-
buline of Lindos wrote no long poem. Her lover
was Cycnus of Colophon. There is not a single
verse of hers in all that city ; proof enough that
he took no particular care of them. At Miletus
she was quite unknown, not indeed by name, but
in her works, until the present month, when a
copy of them was offered to me for sale. The first
that caught my eyes was this :
Where is the swan of breast so white
It made my bubbling life run bright
On that one spot, and that alone,
On which he rested ; and I stood
Gazing : now swells the turbid flood ;
Summer and he for other climes are flown !
I will not ask you at present to say anything
in praise of Cleobuline, but do be grateful to
Myrtis and Corinna !
LII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Grateful I am, and shall for ever be, to Myrtis
and Corinna. But what odour of bud or incense
can they wish to be lavished on the empty sepul-
chre, what praises of the thousand who praise in
ignorance, or of the learned who praise from tra-
dition, when they remember that they subdued
and regulated the proud unruly Pindar, and
agitated with all their passion the calm pure
breast of Cleone !
Send me the whole volume of Cleobuline ;
transcribe nothing more. To compensate you as
well as I can, and indeed I think the compensa-
tion is not altogether an unfair one, here are two
little pieces from Myrtis, autographs, from the
library of Pericles.
Artemia, while Arion sighs,
Raising her white and taper finger,
Pretends to loose, yet makes to linger,
The ivy that o'ershades her eyes.
" Wait, or you shall not have the kiss,"
Says she ; but he, on wing to pleasure,
"Are there not other hours for leisure?
For love is any hour like this ? "
Artemia ! faintly thou respondest,
As falsely deems that fiery youth ;
A God there is who knows the truth,
A God who tells me which is fondest.
Here is another, in the same hand, a clear and
elegant one. Men may be negligent in their
hand- writing, for men may be in a hurry about
the business of life ; but I never knew either a
sensible woman or an estimable one whose writing
was disorderly.
Well, the verses are prettier than my reflection,
and equally true.
I will not love !
. These sounds have often
Burst from a troubled breast ;
Rarely from one no sighs could soften,
Rarely from one at rest.
Myrtis and Corinna, like Anacreon and Sappho
who preceded them, were temperate in the luxu-
ries of poetry. They had enough to do with one
feeling ; they were occupied enough with one
reflection. They culled but few grapes from the
bunch, and never dragged it across the teeth,
stripping off ripe and unripe.
LIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
The verses of Myrtis, which you sent me last,
are somewhat less pleasing to me than those
others of hers which I send you in return. A
few loose ideas on the subject (I know not whe-
ther worth writing) occur to me at this moment.
Formerly we were contented with schools of phi-
losophy ; we now begin to talk about schools of
poetry. Is not that absurd 1 There is only one
school, the universe ; one only school mistress,
Nature. Those who are reported to be of such
or such a school, are of none ; they have played
the truant. Some are more careful, some more
negligent, some bring many dishes, some fewer,
some little seasoned, some highly. Ground how-
ever there is for the fanciful appellation. The
young poets at Miletus are beginning to throw
off their allegiance to the established and acknow-
ledged laws of Athens, and are weary of following
in the train of the graver who have been crowned.
The various schools, as they call them, have
assumed distinct titles ; but the largest and most
376
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
flourishing of all would be discontented, I am
afraid, with the properest I could inscribe it with
the queer. We really have at present in our city
more good poets than we ever had; and the
queer might be among the best if they pleased.
But whenever an obvious and natural though!
presents itself, they either reject it for coming
without imagination, or they phrygianize it with
such biting and hot curling-irons, that it rolls
itself up impenetrably. They declare to us that
pure and simple imagination is the absolute per-
fection of poetry ; and if ever they admit a sen-
tence or reflection, it must be one which requires
a whole day to unravel and wind it smoothly on
the distaff.
To me it appears that poetry ought neither to
be all body nor all soul. Beautiful features, limbs
compact, sweetness of voice, and easiness of transi
tion, belong to the Deity who inspires and repre-
sents it. We may loiter by the stream and allay our
thirst as it runs, but we should not be forbidden the
larger draught from the deeper well.
FROM JIYRTIS.
Friends, whom she look'd at blandly from her couch
And her white wrist above it, gem-bedewed,
Were arguing with Pentheusa : she had heard
Report of Creon's death, whom years before
She listened to, well-pleas'd ; and sighs arose ;
For sighs full often fondle with reproofs
And will be fondled by them. When I came
After the rest to visit her, she said,
" Myrtis ! how kind ! Who better knows than thou
The pangs of love '! and my first love was he !"
Tell me (if ever, Eros ! are reveal'd
Thy secrets to the earth) have they been true
To any love who speak about the first ?
What ! shall these holier lights, like twinkling stars
In the few hours assign'd them, change their place,
And, when comes ampler splendour, disappear ?
Idler I am, and pardon, not reply,
Implore from thee, thus questioned ; well I know
Thou strikest, like Olympian Jove, but once.
LIV. ASPASIA TO C1EONE.
Lysicles, a young Athenian, fond of travelling,
has just returned to us from a voyage in Thrace.
A love of observation, in other words curiosity,
, could have been his only motive, for he never was
addicted to commerce, nor disciplined in philo-
sophy ; and indeed were he so, Thrace is hardly
the country he would have chosen. I believe he
is the first that ever travelled with no other inten-
tion than to see the cities and know the manners
of barbarians. He represents the soil as extremely
fertile in its nature, and equally well cultivated,
and the inhabitants as warlike, hospitable, and
courteous. All this is credible enough, and perhaps
as generally known as might be expected of
regions so remote and perilous. But Lysicles will
appear to you to have assumed a little more than
the fair privileges of a traveller, in relating that
the people have so imperfect a sense of religion as
to bury the dead in the temples of the Gods, and
the priests are so avaricious and shameless as to
claim money for the permission of this impiety.
He told us furthermore that he had seen a mag-
nificent temple, built on somewhat of a Grecian
model, in the interior of which there are many flat
marbles fastened with iron cramps against the
walls, and serving for monuments. Continuing
his discourse, he assured us that these monuments,
although none are ancient, are of all forms and
dimensions, as if the Thracians were resolved to
waste and abolish the symmetry they had adopted ;
and that they are inscribed in an obsolete
language, so that the people whom they might
animate and instruct, by recording brave and
virtuous actions, pass them carelessly by, breaking
off now and then a nose from a conqueror, and a
wing from an agathodemon.
Thrace is governed by many princes. One of
them, Teres, an Odrysan,* has gained great advan-
tages in war. No doubt, this is uninteresting to
you, but it is necessary to the course of my narra-
tion. Will you believe it? yet Lysicles is both
intelligent and trustworthy, .-will you believe that,
at the return of the Thracian prince to enjoy the
fruits of his victory, he ordered an architect to
build an arch for himself and his army to pass
under, on their road into the city 1 As if a road, on
such an occasion, ought not rather to be widened
than narrowed ! If you will not credit this of a
barbarian, who is reported to be an intelligent and
prudent man in other things, you will exclaim, I
fear, against the exaggeration of Lysicles and my
credulity, when I relate to you on his authority
that, to the same conqueror, by his command,
there has been erected a column sixty cubits high,
supporting his effigy in marble !
Imagine the general of an army standing upon a
column of sixty cubits to show himself! A crane
might do it after a victory over a pigmy; or it
might aptly represent the virtues of a rope-dancer,
exhibiting how little he was subject to dizziness.
I will write no more about it, for really I am
beginning to think that some pretty Thracian has
given poor Lysicles a love-potion, and that it has
affected his brain.
/
LV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Never will I believe that a people, however
otherwise ignorant and barbarous, yet capable of
turning a regular arch and of erecting a lofty
column, can be so stupid and absurd as you have
represented. What! bury dead bodies in the
temples ! cast them out of their own houses into
the houses of the Gods ! Depend upon it, Aspasia,
they were the bones of victims ; and the strange
uncouth inscriptions commemorate votive offer-
ings, in the language of the priests, whatever it
may be. So far is. clear. Kegarding the arch,
Lysicles saw them removing it, and fancied they
were building it. This mistake is really ludicrous.
The column, you must have perceived at once, was
* Teres not only governed the larger part of Thrace, but
nfluenced many of the free and independent states in that
country, and led into the field the Getes, the Agrianians,
;he Lescans, and the Pceonians. Sitalces, son of Teres,
•avaged all Macedonia in the reign of Terdiccas.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
377
erected, not to display the victor, but to expose the
vanquished. A blunder very easy for an idle tra-
veller to commit. Few of the Thracians, I conceive,
even in the interior, are so utterly ignorant of
Grecian arts, as to raise a statue at such a highth
above the ground that the vision shall not com-
prehend all the features easily, and the spectator
see and contemplate the object of his admiration,
as nearly and in the same position as he was used
to do in the Agora.
The monument of the greatest man should be
only a bust and a name. If the name alone is insuf-
ficient to illustrate the bust, let them both perish.
Enough about Thracians ; enough about tombs
and monuments. Two pretty Milesians, Aga-
pentha and Peristera, who are in love with you
for loving me, are quite resolved to kiss your hand.
You must not detain them long with you : Miletus
is not to send all her beauty to be kept at Athens :
we have no such treaty.
LVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
There is such a concourse of philosophers, all
anxious to show Alcibiades the road to Virtue,
that I am afraid they will completely block it up
before him. Among the rest is my old friend
Socrates, who seems resolved to transfer to him
all the philosophy he designed for me, with very
little of that which I presented to him in return.
And Alcibiades, who began with ridiculing him,
now attends to him with as much fondness as
Hyacinthus did to Apollo. The graver and uglier
philosophers, however they differ on other points,
agree in these ; that beauty does not reside in the
body, but in the mind ; that philosophers are the
only true heroes ; and that heroes alone are en-
titled to the privilege of being implicitly obeyed
by the beautiful.
Doubtless there may be very fine pearls in very
uninviting shells; but our philosophers never wade
knee-deep into the beds, attracted rather to what
is bright externally.
LVII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Alcibiades ought not to have captious or inqui-
sitive men about him. I know not what the
sophists are good for; I only know they are the
very worst instructors. Logic, however unper-
verted, is not for boys ; argumentation is among
the most dangerous of early practices, and sends
away both fancy and modesty. The young mind
should be nourished with simple and grateful food,
and not too copious. It should be little exercised
until its nerves and muscles show themselves, and
even then rather for air than anything else. Study
is the bane of boyhood, the aliment of youth, the
indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of age.
I am confident that persons like you and Peri-
cles see little of these sharpers who play tricks
upon words. It is amusing to observe how they
do it, once or twice. As there are some flowers
which you should smell but slightly to extract all
that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do
otherwise, emit what is unpleasant or noxious, so
there are some men with whom a slight acquaint-
ance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is
agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatis-
factory and unsafe.
LVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Pericles rarely says he likes anything ; but
whenever he is pleased, he expresses it by his
countenance, although when he is displeased he
never shows it, even by the faintest sign. It was
long before I ventured to make the observation
to him : he replied,
" It would be ungrateful and ungentle not to
return my thanks for any pleasure imparted to
me, when a smile has the power of conveying
them. I never say that a thing pleases me while
it is yet undone or absent, lest I should give some-
body the trouble of performing or producing it.
As for what is displeasing, I really am insensible
in general to matters of this nature ; and when I
am not so, I experience more of satisfaction in
subduing my feeling than I ever felt of displeasure
at the occurrence which excited it. Politeness is
in itself a power, and takes away the weight and
galling from every other we may exercise. I fore-
see," he added, "that Alcibiades will be an elegant
man, but I apprehend he will never be a polite
one. There is a difference, and a greater than
we are apt to perceive or imagine. Alcibiades
would win without conciliating : he would seize
and hold, but would not acquire. The man who
is determined to keep others fast and firm, must
have one end of the bond about his own breast,
sleeping and waking."
LIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Agapenthe and Peristera, the bearers of your
letter, came hither in safety and health, late as
the season is for navigation. They complain of
our cold climate in Athens, and shudder at the
sight of snow upon the mountains in the horizon.
Hardly had they been seen with me, before the
housewives and sages were indignant at their
effrontery. In fact, they gazed in wonder at the
ugliness of our sex in Attica, and at the gravity
of philosophers, of whom stories so ludicrous are
related. I do not think I shall be able to find
them lovers here. Peristera hath lost a little of
her dove-like faculty (if ever she had much) at
the report which has been raised about her cousin
and herself. Dracontides was smitten at first
sight by Agapenthe ; she however was not at all
by him, which is usually the case when young
men would warm us at their fire before ours is
kindled. For, honestly to confess the truth, the
best of us are more capricious than sensitive, and
more sensitive than grateful. Dracontides is not
indeed a man to excite so delightful a feeling.
He is confident that Peristera must be the cause
of Agapcnthe's disinclination to him ; for how is
378
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
it possible that a young girl of unperverted mind
could be indifferent to Dracontides ? Unable to
discover that any sorceress was employed against
him, he turned his anger toward Peristera, and
declared in her presence that her malignity alone
could influence so abusively the generous mind of
Agapcnthe. At my request the playful girl con-
sented to receive him. Seated upon an amphora
in the aviary, she was stroking the neck of a
noble peacock, while the bird pecked at the ber-
ries on a branch of arbutus in her bosom. Dra-
contides entered, conducted by Peristera, who
desired her cousin to declare at once whether it
was by any malignity of hers that he had hitherto
failed to conciliate her regard.
" O the ill-tempered frightful man ! " cried
Agapenthe ; " does anybody that is not malicious
ever talk of malignity ? "
Dracontides went away, calling upon the Gods
for justice.
The next morning a rumour ran through
Athens, how he had broken off his intended
nuptials, on the discovery that Aspasia had des-
tined the two lonians to the pleasures of Pericles.
Moreover, he had discovered that one of them,
he would not say which, had certainly threads of
several colours in her threadcase, not to mention
a lock of hair, whether of a dead man, or no, might
by some be doubted; and that the other was
about to be consigned to Pyrilampes, in exchange
for a peacock and sundry smaller birds.
No question could be entertained of the fact,
for the girls were actually in the house, and the
birds in the aviary.
Agapenthe declares she waits only for the
spring, and will then leave Athens for her dear
Miletus, where she never heard such an expression
as malignity.
"0 what rude people the Athenians are!"
said she,
LX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Rather than open my letter again, I write another .
Agapenthe's heart is won by Mnasylos : I never
suspected it.
On his return out of Thessaly (whither I fancy
he went on purpose) he brought a cage of night-
ingales. There are few of them in Attica ; and
none being kept tame, none remain with us
through the winter. Of the four brought by
Mnasylos, one sings even in this season of the
year. Agapenthe and Peristera were awakened
in the morning by the song of a bird like a night-
ingale in the aviary. They went down together ;
and over the door they found these verses : —
Maiden or youth, who standest here,
Think not, if haply we should fear
A stranger's voice or stranger's face,
(Such is the nature of our race)
That we would gladly fly again
To gloomy wood or windy plain.
Certain we are we ne'er should find
A care so provident, so kind,
Altho' by flight we repossest
The tenderest mother's warmest nest.
O may you prove, as well as we,
That even in Athens there may be
A sweeter thing than liberty.
" This is surely the hand-writing of Mnasylos,"
said Agapenthe.
" How do you know his hand-writing ? " cried
Peristera.
A blush and a kiss, and one gentle push, were
the answer.
Mnasylos, on hearing the sound of footsteps,
had retreated behind a thicket of laurustine and
pyracanthus, in which the aviary is situated, fear-
ful of bringing the gardener into reproof for
admitting him. However, his passion was uncon-
trollable ; and Peristera declares, although Aga-
penthe denies it, that he caught a kiss upon each
of his cheeks by the interruption. Certain it is,
for they agree in it, that he threw his arms around
them both as they were embracing, and implored
them to conceal the fault of poor old Alcon, " who
showed me," said he, "more pity than Agapenthe
will ever show me."
" Why did you bring these birds hither ? " said
she, trying to frown.
" Because you asked," replied he, " the other
day, whether we had any in Attica, and told me
you had many at home."
She turned away abruptly, and, running up to
my chamber, would have informed me why.
Superfluous confidence ! Her tears wetted my
cheek.
" Agapenthe ! " said I, smiling, " are you sure
you have cried for the last time, ' 0 what rude
people the Athenians are !' "
LXI. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
I apprehend, 0 Pericles, not only that I may
become an object of jealousy and hatred to the
Athenians, by the notice you have taken of me,
but that you yourself, which affects me greatly
more, may cease to retain the whole of their
respect and veneration.
Whether, to acquire a great authority over the
people, some things are not necessary to be done
on which Virtue and Wisdom are at variance, it
becomes not me to argue or consider ; but let me
suggest the inquiry to you, whether he who is
desirous of supremacy should devote the larger
portion of his time to one person.
Three affections of the soul predominate ; Love,
Religion, and Power. The first two are often
united ; the other stands widely apart from them,
and neither is admitted nor seeks admittance to
their society. I wonder then how you can love
so truly and tenderly. Ought I not rather to say
I did wonder ? Was Pisistratus affectionate ? Do
not be angry. It is certainly the first time a friend
has ever ventured to discover a resemblance, al-
though you are habituated to it from your oppo-
nents. In these you forgive it ; do you in me 1
LXII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Pisistratus was affectionate : the rest of his
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
379
character you know as well as I do. You know
that he was eloquent, that he was humane, that
he was contemplative, that he was learned ; that
he not only was profuse to men of genius, but
cordial, and that it was only with such men he
was familiar and intimate. You know that he
was the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous,
excepting Solon and Lycurgus, that ever ruled
any portion of the human race. Is it not happy
and glorious for mortals, when, instead of being
led by the ears under the clumsy and violent
hand of vulgar and clamorous adventurers, a
Pisistratus leaves the volumes of Homer and the
conversation of Solon, for them ]
We may be introduced to Power by Humanity,
and at first may love her less for her own sake
than for Humanity's, but by degrees we become
so accustomed to her as to be quite uneasy without
her.
Religion and Power, like the Cariatides in
sculpture, never face one another ; they sometimes
look the same way, but oftener stand back to
back.
We will argue about them one at a time, and
about the other in the triad too : let me have the
choice.
LXIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
We must talk over again the subject of your
letter ; no, not talk, but write about it.
I think, Pericles, you who are so sincere with
me, are never quite sincere with others. You
have contracted this bad habitude from your cus-
tom of addressing the people. But among friends
and philosophers, would it not be better to speak
exactly as we think, whether ingeniously or not ?
Ingenious things, I am afraid, are never perfectly
true : however, I would not exclude them, the
difference being wide between perfect truth and
violated truth ; I would not even leave them in a
minority ; I would hear and say as many as may
be, letting them pass current for what they are
worth. Anaxagoras rightly remarked that Love
always makes us better, Religion sometimes,
Power never.
LXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Pericles was delighted with your letter on edu-
cation. I wish he were as pious as you are ; oc-
casionally he appears so. I attacked him on his
simulation, but it produced a sudden and powerful
effect on Alcibiades. You will collect the whole
from a summary of our conversation.
" So true," said he, " is the remark of Anaxa-
goras, that it was worth my while to controvert
it. Did you not observe the attention paid to it
by young and old] I was unwilling that the
graver part of the company should argue to-
morrow with Alcibiades on the nature of love, as
they are apt to do, and should persuade him that
he would be the better for it.
" On this consideration I said, while you were
occupied, ' 0 Anaxagoras ! if we of this household
knew not how religious a man you are, your dis-
course would in some degree lead us to counte-
nance the suspicion of your enemies. Religion is
never too little for us ; it satisfies all the desires
of the soul. Love is but an atom of it, consuming
and consumed by the stubble on which it falls.
But when it rests upon the Gods, it partakes of
their nature, in its essence pure and eternal. Like
the ocean, Love embraces the earth ; and by Love,
as by the ocean, whatever is sordid and unsound
is borne away.'
" ' Love indeed works great marvels,' said
Anaxagoras, ' but I doubt whether the ocean, in
such removals, may not peradventure be the more
active of the two.'
" ' Acknowledge at least,' said I, ' that the
flame of Love purifies the temple it burns in.'
" ' Only when first lighted,' said Anaxagoras.
' Generally the beat is either spent or stifling
soon afterward ; and the torch, when it is ex-
tinguished, leaves an odour very different from
myrrh and frankincense.'
" I think, Aspasia, you entered while he was
speaking these words."
He had turned the stream. Pericles then
proceeded.
" Something of power," said he, " hath been
consigned to me by the favour and indulgence of
the Athenians. I do not dissemble that I was
anxious to obtain it ; I do not dissemble that my
vows and supplications for the prosperity of the
country were unremitted. It pleased the Gods to
turn toward me the eyes of my fellow-citizens, but
had they not blessed me with religion they never
would have blessed me with power, better and
more truly called an influence on their hearts and
their reason, a high and secure place in the acro-
polis of their affections. Yes, Anaxagoras ! yes,
Meton ! I do say, had they not blessed me with
it ; for, in order to obtain it, I was obliged to
place a daily and a nightly watch over my thoughts
and actions. In proportion as authority was con-
signed to me, I found it both expedient and easy
to grow better, time not being left me for seden-
tary occupations or frivolous pursuits, and every
desire being drawn on and absorbed in that mighty
and interminable, that rushing, renovating, and
purifying one, which comprehends our country.
If any young man would win to himself the hearts
of the wise and brave, and is ambitious of being
the guide and leader of them, let him be assured
that his virtue will give him power, and power
will consolidate and maintain his virtue. Let
him never then squander away the inestimable
hours of youth in tangled and trifling disquisitions,
with such as perhaps have an interest in pervert-
ing or unsettling his opinions, and who speculate
into his sleeping thoughts and dandle his nascent
passions. But let him start from them with ala-
crity, and walk forth with firmness ; let him early
take an interest in the business and concerns of
men ; and let him, as he goes along, look stead-
fastly at the images of those who have benefited
his country, and make with himself a solemn
compact to stand hereafter among them."
380
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
I had heard the greater part of this already, all
but the commencement. At the conclusion Al-
cibiades left the room ; I feared he was conscious
that something in it was too closely applicable to
him. How I rejoiced when I saw him enter
again, with a helmet like Pallas's on his head, a
spear in his hand, crying, " To Sparta, boys ! to
Sparta ! "
Pericles whispered to me, but in a voice audible
to those who sate farther off, " Alcibiades, I trust,
is destined to abolish the influence and subvert
the power of that restless and troublesome rival."
LXV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
I disbelieve, 0 Pericles, that it is good for us,
that it is good for men, women, or nations, to be
without a rival.
Acquit me now of any desire that, in your gene-
rosity, you should resolve on presenting me with
such a treasure, for I am without the ability of
returning it. But have you never observed how
many graces of person and demeanour we women
are anxious to display, in order to humble a rival,
which we were unconscious of possessing until
opposite charms provoked them ?
Sparta can only be humbled by the prosperity
and liberality of Athens. She was ever jealous
and selfish ; Athens has been too often so. It is
only by forbearance toward dependent states, and
by kindness toward the weaker, that her power
can long preponderate. Strong attachments are
strong allies. This truth is so clear as to be
colourless, and I should fear that you would cen-
sure me for writing what almost a child might
have spoken, were I ignorant that its importance
hath made little impression on the breasts of
statesmen.
I admire your wisdom in resolving to increase
no farther the domains of Attica ; to surround
her with the outworks of islands, and more closely
with small independent communities. It is only
from such as these that Virtue can come forward
neither hurt nor heated ; the crowd is too dense
for her in larger. But what is mostly our con-
sideration, it is only such as these that are sen-
sible of benefits. They cling to you afHictedly in
your danger; the greater look on with folded
arms, nod knowingly, cry sad work ! when you
are worsted, and turn their backs on you when
you are fallen.
LXVI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
There are things, Aspasia, beyond the art of
Phidias. He may represent Love leaning upon
his bow and listening to Philosophy ; but not for
hours together : he may represent Love, while he
is giving her a kiss for her lesson, tying her arms
behind her : loosing them again must be upon
another marble..
LXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The philosophers are less talkative in our con-
versations, now Alcibiades hath given up his mind
to mathematics and strategy, and seldom comes
among them
Pericles told me they will not pour out the
rose-water for their beards, unless into a Co-
rinthian or golden vase.
" But take care," added he, " to offend no phi-
losopher of any sect whatever. Indeed to offend
any person is the next foolish thing to being
offended. I never do it, unless when it is requisite
to discredit somebody who might otherwise have
the influence to diminish my estimation. Polite-
ness is not always a sign of wisdom; but the
want of it always leaves room for a suspicion of
folly, if folly and imprudence are the same. I
have scarcely had time to think of any blessings
that entered my house with you, beyond those
which encompass myself ; yet it can not but be
obvious that Alcibiades hath now an opportunity
of improving his manners, such as even the
society of scholastic men will never counter-
vail. This is a high advantage on all occasions,
particularly in embassies. Well-bred men re-
quire it, and let it pass : the ill-bred catch at it
greedily ; as fishes are attracted from the mud,
and netted, by the shine of flowers and shells."
-
LXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
At last I have heard him speak in public.
Apollo may shake the rocks of Delphi, and
may turn the pious pale ; my Pericles rises with
serenity ; his voice hath at once left his lips and
entered the heart of Athens. The violent and
desperate tremble in every hostile city ; a thun-
derbolt seems to have split in the centre, and to
have scattered its sacred fire unto the whole cir-
cumference of Greece.
The greatest of prodigies are the prodigies of a
mortal ; they are indeed the only ones : with the
Gods there are none.
Alas ! alas ! the eloquence and the wisdom, the
courage and the constancy of my Pericles, must
have their end ; and the glorious shrine, wherein
they stand pre-eminent, must one day drop into
the deformity of death !
0 Aspasia ! of the tears thou art shedding,
tears of pride, tears of fondness, are there none
(in those many) for thyself? Yes ; whatever was
attributed to thee of grace or beauty, so valuable
for his sake whose partiality assigned them to
thee, must go first, and all that he loses is a loss
to thee ! Weep then on.
LXIX. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Do you love me ? do you love me ? Stay,
reason upon it, sweet Aspasia ! doubt, hesitate,
question, drop it, take it up again, provide, raise
obstacles, reply indirectly. Oracles are sacred,
and there is a pride in being a diviner.
LXX. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
1 will do none of those things you tell me to
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
381
do ; but I will say something you forgot to say,
about the insufficiency of Phidias.
He may represent a hero with unbent brows,
a sage with the lyre of Poetry in his hand, Am-
bition with her face half-averted from the City,
but he cannot represent, in the same sculpture,
at the same distance, Aphrodite higher than
Pallas. He would be derided if he did ; and a
great man can never do that for which a little
man may deride him.
I shall love you even more than I do, if you
will love yourself more than me. Did ever lover
talk so ? Pray tell me, for I have forgotten all
they ever talked about. But, Pericles ! Pericles !
be careful to lose nothing of your glory, or you
lose all that can be lost of me ; my pride, my
happiness, my content; everything but my poor
weak love. Keep glory then for my sake !
LXXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I am not quite certain that you are correct in
your decision, on the propriety of sculpturing the
statues of our deities from one sole material.
Those however of mortals and nymphs and
genii should be marble, and marble only. But
you will pardon a doubt, a long doubt, a doubt
for the chin to rest upon in the palm of the hand,
when Cleone thinks one thing and Phidias
another. I debated with Pericles on the subject.
" In my opinion," said he, "no material for sta-
tuary is so beautiful as marble ; and, far from
allowing that two or more materials should com-
pose one statue, I would not willingly see an
interruption made in the figure of a god or god-
dess, even by the folds of drapery. I would ven-
ture to take the cestus from Venus, distinguishing
her merely by her own peculiar beauty. But in
the representations of the more awful Powers,
who are to be venerated and worshipped as the
patrons and protectors of cities, we must take
into account the notions of the people. In their
estimate, gold and ivory give splendour and
dignity to the Gods themselves, and our wealth
displays their power ! Beside . . but bring your
ear closer . . when they will not indulge us with
their favour, we may borrow their cloaks and
ornaments, and restore them when they have
recovered their temper."
LXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
After I had written to you, we renewed our
conversation on the same subject. I inquired of
Pericles whether he thought the appellation of
golden was applied to Venus for her precious gifts,
or for some other reason. His answer was :
" Small statues of Venus are more numerous
than of any other deity ; and the first that were
gilt in Greece, I believe, were hers. She is wor-
shipped, you know, not only as the goddess of
beauty, but likewise as the goddess of fortune.
In the former capacity we are her rapturous
adorers for five years perhaps ; in the latter we
persevere for life. Many carry her image with
them on their journeys, and there is scarcely a
house in any part of Greece wherein it is not a
principal ornament."
I remarked to him that Apollo, from the colour
of his hair and the radiance of his countenance,
would be more appropriately represented in gold,
and yet that the poets were unmindful to call him
the golden.
"They never found him so," said he; "but
Venus often smiles upon them in one department.
Little images of her are often of solid gold, and
are placed on the breast or under the pillow.
Other deities are seldom of such diminutive size
or such precious materials. It is only of late that
they have even borne the semblance of them.
The Egyptians, the inventors of all durable
colours, and indeed of everything else that is
durable in the arts, devised the means of invest-
ing other metals with dissolved gold ; the Phoe-
nicians, barbarous and indifferent to elegance and
refinement, could only cover them with lamular
incrustations. , By improving the inventions of
Egypt, bronze, odious in its own proper colour
for the human figure, and more odious for Di-
vinities, assumes a splendour and majesty which
almost compensate for marble itself."
" Metal," said I, " has the advantage in du-
rability."
" Surely not," answered he ; " and it is more
exposed to invasion and avarice. But either of
them, under cover, may endure many thousand
years, I apprehend, and without corrosion. The
temples of Egypt, which have remained two
thousand, are fresh at this hour as when they
were first erected ; and all the violence of Cam-
byses and his army, bent on effacing the images,
has done little more harm, if you look at them
from a short distance, than a single fly would do
in a summer day, on a statue of Pentelican
marble. The Egyptians have laboured more to
commemorate the weaknesses of man than the
Grecians to attest his energies. This however
must be conceded to the Egyptians ; that they
are the only people on earth to whom destruction
has not been the first love and principal occupa-
tion. The works of their hands will outlive the
works of their intellect : here at least I glory in
the sure hope that we shall differ from them.
Judgment and perception of the true and beau-
tiful will never allow our statuaries to represent
the human countenance, as they have done, in
granite, and porphyry, and basalt. Their statues
have resisted Time and War ; ours will vanquish
Envy and Malice.
" Sculpture has made great advances in my
time ; Painting still greater : for until the last
forty years it was inelegant and rude. Sculpture
can go no farther ; Painting can : she may add
scenery and climate to her forms. She may give
to Philoctetes, not only the wing of the sea-bird
wherewith he cools the throbbing of his wound ;
not only the bow and the quiver at his feet, but
likewise the gloomy rocks, the Vulcanian vaults,
382
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
and the distant fires of Lemnos, the fierce in-
habitants subdued by pity, the remorseless be-
trayer, and the various emotions of his retiring
friends. Her reign is boundless, but the fairer
and the richer part of her dominions lies within
the Odyssea. Painting by degrees will perceive
her advantages over Sculpture ; but if there are
paces between Sculpture and Painting, there are
parasangs between Painting and Poetry. The
difference is that of a lake confined by moun-
tains, and a river running on through all the
varieties of scenery, perpetual and unimpeded.
Sculpture and Painting are moments of life ;
Poetry is life itself, and everything around it and
above it.
" But let us turn back again to the position
we set out from, and offer due reverence to the
truest diviners of the Gods. Phidias in ten days
is capable of producing what would outlive ten
thousand years, if man were not resolved to be
the subverter of man's glory. The Gods them-
selves will vanish away before their images."
0 Cleone ! this is painful to hear. I wish
Pericles, and I too, were somewhat more religious :
it is so sweet and graceful.
LXXIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
She, 0 Aspasia, who wishes to be more religi
ous, hath much religion, although the volatility of
her imagination and the velocity of her pursuits
do not permit her to settle fixedly on the object
of it. How could I have ever loved you so, if I
believed the Gods would disapprove of my attach-
ment, as they certainly would if you underrated
their power and goodness ! They take especial
care both to punish the unbeliever, and to strike
with awe the witnesses of unbelief. I accompanied
my father, not long since, to the temple of Apollo;
and when we had performed the usual rites of our
devotion, there came up to us a young man of
somewhat pleasing aspect, with whose family ours
was anciently on terms of intimacy. After my
father had made the customary inquiries, he con-
versed with us about his travels. He had just
left Ephesus, and said he had spent the morning in
a comparison between Diana's temple and Apollo's.
He told us that they are similar in design ; but
that the Ephesian Goddess is an ugly lump of
dark-coloured stone ; while our Apollo is of such
transcendent beauty that, on first beholding him,
he wondered any other God had a worshipper.
My father was transported with joy at such a
declaration.
" Give up the others," said he ; " worship here,
and rely on prosperity."
" Were I myself to select," answered he, " any
deity in preference to the rest, it should not be
an irascible, or vindictive, or unjust one."
" Surely not," cried my father . . "it should be
Apollo ; and &ur Apollo ! What has Diana done
for any man, or any woman? I speak submissively
. . with all reverence . . I do not question."
The young man answered, " I will forbear to
say a word about Diana, having been educated in
great fear of her : but surely the treatment of
Marsyas by Apollo was bordering on severity."
" Not a whit," cried my father, " if under-
stood rightly."
" His assent to the request of Phaeton," con-
tinued the young man, " knowing (as he did) the
consequences, seems a little deficient in that fore-
sight which belongs peculiarly to the God of
prophecy."
My father left me abruptly, ran to the font,
and sprinkled first himself, then me, lastly the
guest, with lustral water.
" We mortals," continued he gravely, " should
not presume to argue on the Gods after our own
inferior nature and limited capacities. What ap-
pears to have been cruel might have been most
kindly provident."
" The reasoning is conclusive," said the youth ;
" you have caught by the hand a benighted and
wandering dreamer, and led him from the brink
of a precipice. I see nothing left now on the
road-side but the skin of Marsyas, and it would
be folly to start or flinch at it."
My father had a slight suspicion of his sin-
cerity, and did not invite him to the house. He
has attempted to come, more than once, evidently
with an earnest desire to explore the truth. Se-
veral days together he has been seen on the very
spot where he made the confession to my father,
in deep thought, and, as we hope, under the in-
fluence of the Deity.
I forgot to tell you that this young person is
Thraseas, son of Phormio, the Coan.
LXXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
If ever there was a youth whose devotion was
ardent, and whose face (I venture to say, although
I never saw it) was prefigured for the offices of
adoration, I suspect it must be Thraseas, son of
Phormio, the Coan.
Happy the man who, when every thought else
is dismissed, comes last and alone into the warm
and secret foldings of a letter !
LXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Alcibiades entered the library one day when I
was writing out some verses. He discovered
what I was about, by my hurry in attempting to
conceal them.
" Alcibiades !" said I "we do not like to be de-
tected in anything so wicked as poetry. Some
day or other I shall perhaps have my revenge,
and catch you committing the same sin with more
pertinacity."
" Do you fancy," said he, " that I can not write
a'verse or two, if I set my heart upon it ]"
" No," replied I, " but I doubt whether your
heart, in its lightness and volubility, would not
roll off so slippery a plinth. We remember your
poetical talents, displayed in all their brightness
on poor Socrates."
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
383
" Do not laugh at Socrates," said he. " The
man is by no means such a quibbler and impostor
as some of his disciples would represent him,
making him drag along no easy mule-load, by
Hercules ! no summer robe, no every-day vesture,
no nurse of an after-dinner nap, but a trailing,
troublesome, intricate piece of sophistry, inter-
woven with flowers and sphynxes, stolen from an
Egyptian temple, with dust enough in it to blind
all the crocodiles as far as to the cataracts, and to
dry up the Nile at its highest overflow. He is
rather fond of strangling an unwary interloper
with a string of questions, of which it is difficult
to see the length or the knots, until the two ends
are about the throat ; but he lets him off easily
when he has fairly set his mark on him. Anaxa-
goras tells me that there is not a school in Athens
where the scholars are so jealous and malicious,
while he himself is totally exempt from those
worst and most unphilosophical of passions ; that
the parasitical weed grew up together with their
very root, and soon overtopped the plant, but that
it only hangs to his railing. NowAnaxagoras envies
nobody, and only perplexes us by the admiration
of his generosity, modesty, and wisdom.
" I did not come hitherto disturb you, Aspasia!
and will retire when I have given you satisfaction,
or revenge; this, I think, is the word. Not i"only
have I written verses, and, as you may well sup-
pose, long after those upon the son of Sophro-
niscos, but verses upon love."
" Are we none of us in the secret!" said I.
" You shall be," said he ; " attend and pity."
I must have turned pale, I think, for I shud-
dered. He repeated these, and relieved me.
I love to look on lovely eyes,
And do not shun the sound of sighs,
If they are level with the ear ;
But if they rise just o'er my chin,
O Venus ! how I hate their din !
My own I am too weak to bear.
IXXVr. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Do you remember little Artemidora, the mild
and bashful girl, whom you compared to a white
blossom on the river, surrounded by innumerable
slender reeds, and seen only at intervals as they
waved about her, making way to the breeze, and
quivering and bending 1 Not having seen her for
some time, and meeting Deiphobos who is inti-
mate with her family, I ventured to ask him whe-
ther he had been lately at the house. He turned
pale. Imprudent and indelicate as I am, I accused
him instantly, with much gaiety, of love for her.
Accused ! 0 Aspasia, how glorious is it in one to
feel more sensibly than all others the beauty that
lies far beyond what they ever can discern ! From
their earthly station they behold the Sun's bright
disk : he enters the palace of the God. Exter-
nally there is fire only : pure inextinguishable
aether fills the whole space within, and increases
the beauty it displays.
" Cleone !" said he, " you are distressed at the
apprehension of having pained me. Believe me,
you have not touched the part where pain lies.
Were it possible that a creature so perfect could
love me, I would reprove her indiscretion; I
would recall to her attention what surely her eyes
might indicate at a glance, the disparity of our
ages ; and I would teach her, what is better taught
by friendship than by experience, that youth alone
is the fair price of youth. However, since there is
on either side nothing but pure amity, there is no
necessity for any such discourse. My soul could
hardly be more troubled if there were. Her
health is declining while her beauty is scarcely
yet at its meridian. I will not delay you, 0
Cleone ! nor will you delay me. Earely do I enter
the temples ; but I must enter here before I sleep.
Artemis and Aphrodite may perhaps hear me :
but I entreat you, do you also, who are more pious
than I am, pray and implore of their divine
goodness, that my few years] may be added to
hers ; the few to them any, the sorrowful (not
then so) to the joyous."
He clasped my hand : I withdrew it, for it burnt
me. Inconsiderate and indelicate before, call me
now (what you must ever think me) barbarous
and inhuman.
LXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The largest heart, 0 Cleone, is that which only
one can rest upon or impress ; the purest is that
which dares to call itself impure ; the kindest' is
that which shrinks rather at its own inhumanity
than at another's. Cleone barbarous ! Cleone in-
human ! Silly girl ! you are fit only to be an
instructress to the sillier Aspasia. In some things
(in this for instance) I am wiser than you. I have
truly a great mind to make you blush again, and so
make you accuse yourself a second time of indiscre-
tion. After a pause, I am resolved on it. Now then.
Artemidora is the very girl who preferred you to
me both for manners and beauty. Many have
done the same, no doubt, but she alone to my
face. When we were sitting, one evening in au-
tumn, with our feet in the Maeander, her nurse
conducted her toward us. We invited her to sit
down between us, which at first she was afraid of
doing, because the herbage had recovered from
the drought of summer and had become succulent
as in spring, so that it might stain her short white
dress. But when we showed her how this danger
might be quite avoided, she blushed, and, after
some hesitation, was seated. Before long, I in-
quired of her who was her little friend, and whe-
ther he was handsome, and whether he was sen-
sible, and whether he was courageous, and whe-
ther he was ardent. She answered all these ques-
tions in the affirmative, excepting the last, which
she really did not understand. At length came
the twilight of thought and showed her blushes.
I ceased to persecute her, and only asked her
which of us she liked the best and thought the
most beautiful. " I like Cleone the best," said
she, " and think her the most beautiful, because
she took my hand and pitied my confusion when
such very strange questions were put to me."
884
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
However, she kissed me when she saw I was con-
cerned at my impropriety : may-be a part of the
kiss was given as a compensation for the severity
of her sentence.
LXXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
We are but pebbles in a gravel walk,
Some blacker and some whiter, pebbles still,
Fit only to be trodden on.
These words were introduced into a comedy
lately written by Polus, a remarkably fat person
and who appears to have enjoyed life and liberty
as much as any citizen in Athens. I happen to
have rendered some services to Philonides the
actor, to whom the speech is addressed. He brought
me the piece before its representation, telling me
that Polus and his friends had resolved to ap-
plaud the passage, and to turn their faces toward
Pericles. I made him a little present, on condi-
tion that, in the representation, he should repeat
the following verses in reply, instead of the poet's.
Fair Polus !
Can such fierce winds blow over such smooth seas !
I never saw a pebble in my life
So richly set as thou art : now, by Jove,
He who would tread upon thee can be none
Except the proudest of the elephants,
The tallest and the surest-footed beast
In all the stables of the kings of Ind.
The comedy was interrupted by roars of laugh-
ter : the friends of Polus slunk away, and he
himself made many a violent effort to do the
same; but Amphicydes, who stood next, threw
his arms round his neck, crying,
" Behold another Codrus ! devoting himself for
his country. The infernal Powers require no black
bull for sacrifice ; they are quite satisfied. Eter-
nal peace with Boaotia ! eternal praise to her ! what
a present ! where was he fatted ?"
We had invited Polus to dine with us, and now
condoled with him on his loss of appetite. The
people of Athens were quite out of favour with him.
" I told them what they were fit for," cried he,
"and they proved it. Amphicydes . . I do not
say he has been at Sparta . . I myself saw him, no
long time ago, on the road that leads to Megara . .
that city rebelled soon after. His wife died strangely:
she had not been married two years, and had
grown ugly and thin : he might have used her for
a broom if she had hair enough . . perhaps he did ;
odd noises have been heard in the house. I have
no suspicion or spite against any man living . .
and, praise to the Gods ! I can live without being
an informer."
We listened with deep interest, but could not un-
derstand the allusion, as he perceived by our looks.
" You will hear to-morrow," said he, " how un-
worthily I have been treated. Wit draws down
Folly on us, and she must have her fling. It does
not hit ; it does not hit."
Slaves brought in a ewer of water, with several
napkins. They were not lost upon Polus, and he
declared that those two boys had more sagacity
and intuition than all the people in the theatre.
"In your house and your administration, 0
Pericles, everything is timed well and done well,
without our knowing how. Dust will rise," said
he, " dust will rise ; if we would not raise it we
must never stir. They have begun with those
who would reform their manners ; they will pre-
sently carry their violence against those who main-
tain and execute the laws."
Supper was served.
"A quail, 0 best Polus !"*
" A quail, O wonderful ! may hurt me ; but
being recommended . . "
It disappeared.
" The breast of that capon . ."
" Capons, being melancholic, breed melancholy
within."
" Coriander-seed might correct it, together with
a few of those white plump pine-seeds."
" The very desideration ! "
It was corrected.
" Tunny under oil, with marjoram and figs, pick-
led locusts and pistachioes . . Your stomach seems
delicate."
" Alas ! indeed it is declining. Tunny ! tunny !
I dare not, 0 festoon of the Graces ! I dare not
verily. Chianwine alone can appease its seditions."
They were appeased.
Some livers were offered him, whether of fish
or fowl, I know not, for I can hardly bear to look
at that dish. He waved them away, but turned
suddenly round, and said, " Youth ! I think I
smell fennel."
" There is fennel, 0 mighty one ! " replied the
slave, " and not fennel only, but parsley and honey,
pepper and rosemary, garlick from Salamis,and . ."
" Say no more, say no more ; fennel is enough
for moderate men and brave ones. It reminds me
of the field of Marathon."
The field was won ; nothing was left upon it.
Another slave came forward, announcing loudly
and pompously, " Gosling from Brauron ! Sauce . .
prunes, mustard-seed, capers, fenu-greek, sesa-
mum, and squills."
"Squills ! " exclaimed Polus, "they soothe the
chest. It is not every cook that is deep in the
secrets of nature. Brauron ! an ancient city : I
lave friends in Brauron : I will taste, were it only
'or remembrance of them."
He made several essays, several pauses.
" But when shall we come to the squills'? " said
ic, turning to the slave ; " the qualities of the
others are negative."
The whole dish was, presently.
" Our pastry," said I, " 0 illustrious Polus ! is
.he only thing I can venture to recommend at
iable ; the other dishes are merely on sufferance,
)ut really our pastry is good : I usually dine en-
tirely upon it."
" Entirely ! " cried he, in amaze.
* Obett! O wonderful! O lady .' tec.
ft fitkrwrl : ft Bau/Mifit : fl Jea-jrooa.
Conversation was never carried on without these terms,
even among philosophers, as we see in Plato, &c.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
385
"With a glass of water," added I, "and Borne
grapes, fresh or dry."
" To accompany you, 0 divine Aspasia ! though
in good truth this said pastry is but a sandy sort
of road ; no great way can be made in it."
The diffident Polus was not a bad engineer how-
ever, and he soon had an opportunity of admiring
the workmanship at the bottom of the salver.
Two dishes of roast meat were carried to him.
I know not what one was, nor could Polus easily
make up his mind upon it : experiment following
experiment. Kid however was an old acquaint-
ance.
" Those who kill kids " said he " deserve well of
their country, for they grow up mischievous : the
Gods, aware of this, make them very eatable. They
require some management, some skill, some reflec-
tion : mint, shalot, dandelion, vinegar : strong
coercion upon them. Chian wine, boy ! "
" What does Pericles eat ? "
" Do not mind Pericles. He has eaten of the
quails, and some roast fish, besprinkled with bay-
leaves for sauce."
" Fish ! ay, that makes him so vigilant. Cats . ."
Here he stopped, not ho we ver without a diversion
in his favour from me, observing that he usually
dined on vegetables, fish, and some bird : that his
earlier meal was his longest, confectionary, honey,
and white bread, composing it.
" And Chian or Lesbian ? "
" He enjoys a little wine after dinner, preferring
the lighter and subacid."
"Wonderful man!" cried he; "and all from
such fare as that ! "
When he rose from table he seemed by his
countenance to be quiet again at heart ; neverthe-
less he said in my ear with a sigh, " Did I possess
the power of Pericles, or the persuasion of Aspasia,
by the Immortals ! I would enrich the galleys
with a grand dotation. Every soul of them should
. . I, yes, every soul of them . . monsters of ingra-
titude, hypocrites, traitors, they should for Egypt,
for Carthage, Mauritania, Numidia. He will find
out before long what dogs he has been skimming
the kettle for."
It required an effort to be perfectly composed,
at a simile which I imagine has never been used
in the Greek language since the days of Medea ;
but I cast down my eyes, and said consolatorily,
" It is difficult to do justice to such men as Pericles
and Polus."
He would now have let me into the secret, but
others saved me.
Our farmers, in the number of their supersti-
tions, entertain a firm belief that any soil is ren-
dered more fertile by burying an ass's head in it.
On this idea is founded the epigram I send you :
it raised a laugh at dinner.
Leave me thy head when thou art dead,
Speusippus ! Prudent farmers say
An ass's skull makes plentiful
The poorest soil ; and ours is clay.
LXXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Anaxagoras is the true, firm, constant friend of
Pericles; the golden lamp that shines perpetually
on the image I adore. Yet sometimes he speaks
severely. On one of these occasions, Pericles took
him by the hand, saying,
" 0 Anaxagoras ! sincere and ardent lover of
Truth ! why do not you love her in such a manner
as never to let her see you out of humour? "
" Because," said Anaxagoras, "you divide my
affections with her, much to my shame."
Pericles was called away on business ; I then said:
" 0 Anaxagoras ! is not Pericles a truly great
man?"
He answered, " If Pericles were a truly great
man, he would not wish to appear different from
what he is ; he would know himself, and make
others know him ; he seems to guard against both.
Much is wanting to constitute his greatness. He
possesses, it is true, more comprehensiveness and
concentration than any living ; perhaps more than
any since Solon ; but he thinks that power over
others is better than power over himself ; as if a
mob were worth a man, and an acclamation were
worth a Pericles."
" But," said I, " he has absolute command over
himself; and it is chiefly by exerting it that he has
obtained an ascendancy over the minds of others."
' Has he rendered them wiser and more virtu-
ous?" said he.
" You know best," replied I, " having lived
much longer among them."
"Perhaps," said Anaxagoras, " I may wrong him ;
perhaps he has saved them from worse disasters."
" You think him then ambitious ? " said I, with
some sadness.
" Ambitious ! " cried he ; " how so ! He might
have been a philosopher, and he is content to be
a ruler."
I was ill at ease.
" Come," said I, " Anaxagoras ! come into the
garden with me. It is rather too warm indeed
out of doors, but we have many evergreens, high
and shady, and those who, like you and me, never
drink wine, have little to dread from the heat."
Whether the ilexes and bays and oleanders
struck his imagination, and presented the simile,
[ can not tell, but he thus continued in illustration
of his discourse,
" There are no indeciduous plants, Aspasia ! the
greater part lose their leaves in winter, the rest in
summer. It is thus with men. The generality
yield and are stripped under the first chilly blasts
.hat shake them. They who have weathered these,
drop leaf after leaf in the sunshine. The virtues
by which they arose to popularity, take another
garb, another aspect, another form, and totally
disappear. Be not uneasy ; the heart of Pericles
will never dry up, so many streams run into it."
He retired to his studies; I spoke but little
that evening, and slept late.
386
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
LXXX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
How can I ever hope to show you, in all its
brightness, the character of my friend ? I will tell
you how; by following Love and Truth. Like
most others who have no genius, I do not feel the
want of it, at least not here.
A shallow water may reflect the sun as perfectly
as a deeper.
The words of Anaxagoras stuck to me like this-
tles. I resolved to speak in playfulness with the
object of our conversation. First I began to hint
at enemies. He smiled.
" The children in my orchard," said he, " are
not yet grown tall enough to reach the fruit; they
may throw at it, but can bring none down."
" Do tell me, 0 Pericles !" said I, "now we are
inseparable for ever, how many struggles with
yourself (to say nothing of others) you must have
had, before you attained the position you have
taken."
"It is pleasanter," answered he, "to think of our
glory than of the means by which we acquired it.
" When we see the horses that have won at the
Olympian games, do we ask what oats they have
eaten to give them such velocity and strength 1
Do those who swim admirably, ever trouble their
minds about the bladders they swam upon in
learning, or inquire what beasts supplied them ?
When the winds are filling our sails, do we lower
them and delay our voyage, in order to philo-
sophise on the particles of air composing them, or
to speculate what region produced them, or what
becomes of them afterward'?"
LXXXI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
At last, Aspasia, you love indeed. The perfec-
tions of your beloved interest you less than the
imperfections, which you no sooner take up for
reprehension, than you admire, embrace, and
defend. Happy, happy, Aspasia ! but are you
wise and good and equable, and fond of sincerity,
as formerly ! Nay, do not answer me. The Gods
forbid that I should force you to be ingenious,
and love you for it. How much must you have
lost before you are praised for that !
Archelaiis, of all our philosophers the most
quiet man, and the most patient investigator, will
bring you this. He desires to be the hearer of
LXXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I received our countryman with great pleasure.
He was obliged to be my hearer for several hours :
I hope his patience will never be so much tried
by Anaxagoras. I placed them together at table ;
but Anaxagoras would not break through his cus-
tom ; nothing of philosophy. Our repast would
have been even less talkative than usual, had not
Anaxagoras asked our guest whether the earlier
Milesian authors, poets or historians, had men-
tioned Homer.
" I find not a word about him in any one of
them," replied he, " although we have the works
of Cadmus and Phocylides, the former no admi-
rable historian, the latter an indifferent poet, but
not the less likely to mention him ; and they are
supposed to have lived within three centuries of
his age. Permit my first question to you, in my
search after truth, to be this ; whether his age were
not much earlier?"
" This is not the only question," said Anax-
agoras, " on which you will hear from me the con-
fession of my utter ignorance. I am interested in
everything that relates to the operations of the
human mind ; and Pericles has in his possession
every author whose works have been transcribed.
The number will appear quite incredible to you :
there can not be fewer than two hundred. I find
poetry to which is attributed an earlier date than
to Homer's ; but stupidity and barbarism are no
convincing proofs. I find Cretan, Ionian, Laco-
nian, and Boeotian, written certainly more than
three centuries ago ; the language is not copious,
is not fluent, is not refined. Pericles says it is all
of it inharmonious : of this I can not judge ; he
can. Dropides and Mimnermus wrote no better
verses than the servant-girls sing upon our stair-
cases. Archilocus and Alcman, who lived a century
earlier, composed much grander ; but where there
is at once ferocity and immodesty, either the age
must have been barbarous or the poet must have
been left behind it. Sappho was in reality the
reviver of poetry, teaching it to humanise and
delight ; Simonides brought it to perfection. The
muse of Lesbos, as she is called, and Alcaeus, in-
vented each a novel species of strophe. Aspasia
prefers the poetry of Sappho and the metre of
Alcaeus, which however, I think she informs us,
is less adapted to her subjects than her own is."
"It appears to me," said I, "that everyone
who felt strong in poetry was ambitious of being
an inventor in its measures. Archilochus, the last
of any note, invented the iambic."
" True, 0 Aspasia ! " said Pericles, " but not
exactly in the sense usually received. He did
not invent, as many suppose, the senarian iambic,
which is coeval almost with the language itself,
and many of which creep into the closest prose
composition, but he was the first who subjoined a
shorter to it, the barb to the dart, so fatal to Cleo-
bule and Lycambes."
" His first," said I, " is like the trot of a mastiff,
his second is like the spring at the throat.
" Homer alone has enriched the language with
sentences full of harmony. How long his verse
was created, how long his Gods had lived, before
him, how long he himself before us, is yet uncer-
tain, although Herodotus* is of opinion that he is
nearer to us than Pericles and Anaxagoras admit.
But these two philosophers place sun, moon, and
stars, beyond all reasonable limits ; I know not
how far off."
* The Life of Homer, appended to the works of Hero-
dotus, is spurious.
PEKICLES AND ASPASIA.
387
" We none of us know ;" said Pericles, " but
Anaxagoras hopes that, in a future age, human
knowledge will be more extensive and more cor-
rect ; and Meton has encouraged us in our specu-
lations. The heavenly bodies may keep their
secrets two or three thousand years yet ; but one
or other will betray them to some wakeful favourite,
some Endymion beyond Latmos, perhaps in re-
gions undiscovered, certainly in uncalculated
times. Men will know more of them than they
will ever know of Homer. Our knowledge on this
miracle of our species is unlikely to increase."
LXXXIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Pericles, who is acknowledged to have a finer
ear than any of our poets or rhetoricians, is of
opinion that the versification in all the books, of
both Iliad and Odyssea, was modulated by the
same master-key. Sophocles too, certainly less
jolted than you would suppose, by the deep ruts,
angular turns, and incessant jerks of the iambic,
tells me that he finds no other heroic verses at
all resembling it in the rhythm, and that, to his
apprehension, it is not dissimilar in the two
poems.
But I must continue, while I remember them
perfectly, the words of Pericles.
" The Ulysses of the Iliad and Odyssea is not
the same, but the Homer is. Might not the poet
have collected, in his earlier voyages, many won-
derful tales about the chieftain of Ithaca ; about
his wanderings and return ; about his wife and her
suitors ] Might not afterward the son or grand-
son have solicited his guest and friend to place
the sagacious, the courageous, the enduring man,
among the others whom he was celebrating in
detached poems, as leaders against Troy? He
describes with precision everything in Ithaca ; it
is evident he must nave been upon the spot. Of
all other countries, of Sicily, of Italy, of Phrygia,
he quite as evidently writes from tradition and
representation. Phrygia was subject to the Assy-
rian kings at the time when he commences his
siege. The Greeks, according to him, had been
ravaging the country many years, and had swept
away many cities. What where the Assyrian
kings doing ? Did the Grecians lose no men by
war, by climate, by disease, by time, in the whole
ten years ? Their horses must have been strong
and long-lived : an excellent breed ! to keep their
teeth and mettle for five-and-twenty. I should
have imagined that some of them must have got
lamed, some few perhaps foundered ; surely here
and there a chariot can have had but one remain-
ing, and he, in all probability, not in the very best
condition. I can not but think that Homer took
from Sesostris the shield that he has given to
Achilles. The Greeks never worked gold so skil-
fully as in this shield, until our own Phidias
taught them ; and even he possesses not the art
of giving all the various colours to the metal,
which are represented as designating the fruitage,
and other things included in this stupendous
work, and which the Egyptians in his time, and
long earlier, understood. How happened it that
the Trojans had Greek names, and the leader of the
Greeks an Egyptian one ? When I was at Byzan-
tion, I had the curiosity to visit the imaginary
scene of their battles. I saw many sepulchral
monuments, of the most durable kind, conical
elevations of earth, on which there were sheep
and goats at pasture. There were ruins beyond,
but neither of a great city nor of an ancient one.
The only ancient walls I saw were on the European
coast, those of Byzantion, which Aspasia claims
as the structure of Miletus, and which the people
of Megara tell us were founded by their forefathers,
less than two centuries ago. But neither Miletus
nor Megara was built when these walls were entire.
They belong to the unknown world, and are some-
times called Pelasgian, sometimes Cyclopean ;
appellations without meaning ; signs that signify
nothing ; inscriptions that point out the road to
places where there is neither place nor road. Walls
of this massive structure surround the ruins of
Phocoea, destroyed by Cyrus ; they are also found
in Tyrrhenia. Our acropolis was surmounted by
such, until the administration of Themistocles,
who removed the stones to serve as foundations to
the works in the harbour ; the occasion being
urgent, and the magnitude of the blocks being
admirably proper for that solid structure."
Cleone ! are you tired 1 rest then.
LXXXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Several times had Pericles been silent, expecting
and inviting our guests to assist him in the inves-
tigation.
" I have no paradox to maintain, no partiality
to defend," said he. " Some tell us that there
were twenty Homers, some deny that there was
ever one. It were idle and foolish to shake the
contents of a vase in order to let them settle at
last. We are perpetually labouring to destroy our
delight, our composure, our devotion to superior
power. Of all the animals upon earth we least
know what is good.for us. My opinion is, that what
is best for us is our admiration of good. No man
living venerates Homer more than I do. He was
the only author I read when I was a boy, for our
teachers are usually of opinion that wisdom and
poetry are like fruit for children, unwholesome if
too fresh. Simonides had indeed grown somewhat
sound ; Pindar was heating ; ^Eschylus ... ay, but
jEschylus was almost at the next door. Homer
then nourished my fancy, animated my dreams,
awoke me in the morning, marched with me, sailed
with me, taught me morals, taught me language,
taught me music and philosophy and war.
" Ah, were he present at this hour among us !
that I might ask him how his deities entered Troy.
In Phrygia there was but one goddess, the mother
of all the Gods, Cybele. Unlike our mortal mo-
thers, she was displeased if you noticed her chil-
dren ; indeed she disowned them. Her dignity,
her gravity, her high antiquity, induced the natives
cc 2
388
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
df the islands, and afterward the other Greeks, to
place their little Gods under her protection, and
to call her their mother. Jupiter had his Ida,
but not the Phrygian ; and Pallas was worshipped
in her citadels, but not above the streams of
Simois and Scamander. Our holy religion has
not yet found its way far beyond us; like the
myrtle and olive, it loves the sea-air, and flourishes
but upon few mountains in the interior. The
Cabiri still hold Samothrace ; and we may almost
hear the cries of human victims in the north.
" If there were any true history of the times we
are exploring, perhaps we might find in it that
many excursions, combined and simultaneous,
had utterly failed ; and that the disasters of many
chiefs engaged in them were partly concealed
from the nations they governed by the sacred veil
of poetry. Of those who are reputed to have
sailed against Troy, none returned prosperous,
none with the men he had led out ; most were
forbidden to land again upon their native shores,
and some who attempted it were slain. Such is
usually the fate of the unsuccessful. It is more
probable that the second great naval expe-
dition of the Greeks went out to avenge the
disasters of the first, the Argonautic; and the
result was nearly the same. Of the Argonauts
few returned. Sparta lost her Castor and Pollux ;
Thessaly her Jason ; and I am more disposed to
believe that the head of Orpheus rolled down the
Phasis than down the Hebrus.
" The poets gave successes which the Gods de-
nied. But these things concern us little; the
poet is what we seek. Needless is it to remark
that the Iliad is a work of much reflection and
various knowledge ; the Odyssea is the marvellous
result of a vivid and wild imagination. Aspasia
prefers it. Homer, in nearly the thirty years
which I conceive to have intervened between the
fanciful work and the graver, had totally lost his
pleasantries. Polyphemus could amuse him no
longer ; Circe lighted up in vain her fires of cedar-
wood ; Calypso had lost her charms ; her maidens
were mute around her ; the Lestrigons lay asleep ;
the Syrens sang
' Come hither, O passer by ! come hither,
O glory of the Achaians ! '
and the smooth waves quivered with the sound,
but the harp of the old man had no chord that
vibrated.
" In the Odyssea he invokes the Muse ; in the
Iliad he invokes her as a Goddess he had invoked
before. He begins the Odyssea as the tale of a
family, to which he would listen as she rehearsed
it ; the Iliad as a song of warriors and divinities,
worthy of the Goddess herself to sing before the
world.
" Demonstrate that metaphors are discoverable,
drawn from things believed to have been unin-
vented in the Homeric age ; what does it prove?
Merely that Homer, who lived among the islands,
and among those who had travelled into all the
known regions of the world, had collected more
knowledge than the shepherds and boar-hunters
on the continent.
" Demonstrate that some books in the compila-
tion retain slight traces of a language not exactly
the same as the others. What then] Might
they not have been composed while he visited
countries in which that dialect was indigenous ?
or might they not have been found there at the
first collection of the songs, having undergone
some modification from the singers, adapted to
the usages and phraseology of the people ?
" Who doubts that what was illegible or ob-
scure in the time of Lycurgus, was rendered
clearer by the learned Spartan ? that some Cretan
words, not the Dorian of Sparta, had crept in ;
that others were substituted ; that Solon, Pisis-
tratus, and Hipparchus, had also to correct a few
of these corrections, and many things more ] They
found a series of songs ; never was there a series
of such length without an oversight or gap.
" Shall the salpinx be sounded in my ear ]
Homer may have introduced it by way of allusion
in one poem, not wanting it in the other. The
Grecians of his time never used it in battle ; east-
ern nations did ; and perhaps had he known the
Phrygians better, its blasts would have sounded
on the plains of Troy. He would have discovered
that trumpets had been used among them for
many ages. We possess no knowledge of any
nation who cultivated the science of music so
early, or employed so great a variety of wind-in-
struments, unless it be the Sidonian. Little did
he know of Phrygia, and as little do we know of
him. His beautiful creation lies displayed before
us ; the creator is hidden in his own splendour.
I can more easily believe that his hand constructed
the whole, than that twenty men could be found,
at nearly the same time, each of genius sufficient
for the twentieth part ; because in many cen-
turies there arose not a single one capable of such
a production as that portion.
" Archilochus and Simonides are excellent
only in their shorter poems ; they could not have
whistled so well throughout a long march. Diffi-
culties are to be overcome on both sides. We have
no grammarians worthy of the appellation ; none
in any district of Greece has studied the origin
and etymology of his language. We sing like the
birds, equally ignorant whence our voice arises.
What is worse, we are fonder of theories than of
truth, and believe that we have not room enough
to build up anything, until we subvert what we
find before us. Be it so ; but let it be only what
is obnoxious, what opposes our reason, what dis-
turbs our tranquillity of mind ; not what shows
us the extent of the one, the potency of the other,
and, consoling us for being mortal, assures us that
our structures may be as durable as those of the
Gods themselves. The name of Homer will be
venerated as long as the holiest of theirs ; I dare
not say longer ; I dare not say by wiser men. I
hope I am guilty of no impiety; I should aggra-
vate it by lowering Homer, the loftiest of their
works."
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
389
LXXXV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
We are losing, day by day, one friend or other.
Artemidora of Ephesus was betrothed to Elpenor,
and their nuptials, it was believed, were at hand.
How gladly would Artemidora have survived
Elpenor. I pitied her almost as much as if she
had. I must ever love true lovers on the eve of
separation. These indeed were little known to
me until a short time before. We became friends
when our fates had made us relatives. On these
occasions there are always many verses, but not
always so true in feeling and in fact as those
which I shall now transcribe for you.
" Artemidora ! Gods invisible,
While thou art lying faint along the couch,
Have tied the sandal to thy veined feet,
And stand beside thee, ready to convey
Thy weary steps where other rivers flow.
Refreshing shades will waft thy weariness
Away, and voices like thine own come nigh,
Soliciting, nor vainly, thy embrace."
Artemidora sigh'd, and would have press'd
The hand now pressing hers, but was too weak.
Fate's shears were over her dark hair unseen
While thus Elpenor spake : he look'd into
Eyes that had given light and life erewhile
To those above them, those now dim with tears
And watchfulness. Again he spake of joy
Eternal. At that word, that sad word, Joy,
Faithful and fond her bosom heav'd once more,
Her head fell back : one sob, one loud deep sob
Swell'd through the darken'd chamber ; 'twas not hers:
With her that old boat incorruptible,
Unwearied, undiverted in its course,
Had plash 'd the water up the farther strand.
LXXXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Aristophanes often dines with us ; nevertheless
he is secretly an enemy of Pericles, and, fearing
to offend him personally, is satirical on most of
our friends. Meton, whose character you know
already, great in astronomy, great in geometry,
great in architecture, was consulted by Pericles
on beautifying the streets of the city, which are
close and crooked. No sooner had Aristophanes
heard this, than he began to compose a comedy,
entitled The Birds. He has here represented our
quiet contemplative Meton, with a rule and com-
pass in his hands, uttering the most ludicrous
absurdities. Meton is a plain, unassuming, in-
offensive man, and never speaks inconsiderately.
The character is clumsily drawn ; but that fault
was easily corrected, by representing poor Meton
under the chastisement of the cudgel. There is
so much wit in this, I doubt whether any audience
can resist it. There is magic in every stroke, and
what was amiss is mended and made whole again
ere the hammer falls. How easy a way of setting all
things to rights, with only one dissentient voice !
In the same comedy is ridiculed the project of
Pericles, on a conformity of weights and measures
in Attica and her dependencies. More wit ! an-
other beating !
When Aristophanes made us the next visit, Pe-
ricles, after greeting him with much good-nature,
and after various conversations with him, seemed
suddenly to recollect something, and, with mofe
familiarity than usual, took him gently by the
elbow, led him a little aside, and said with a
smile, and in a low voice,
" My dear friend Aristophanes ! I find you are
by no means willing to receive the same measure as
you give ; but remember, the people have ordered
the adjustment, the surest preservative against
fraud, particularly that by which the poorer are
mostly the sufferers. Take care they do not im-
peach you, knowing as you do how inefficient is
my protection. It is chiefly on such an occasion
I should be sorry to be in a minority."
Aristophanes blushed and looked alarmed. Pe-
ricles took him by the hand, whispering in his
ear, " Do not let us enter into a conspiracy against
Equity, by attacking the uniformity of weights
and measures ; nor against Comedy, by giving the
magistrates a pretext to forbid its represen-
tation."
Aristophanes turned toward Pentarces, who
stood near him, and said,
" I can write a comedy as well as most ; Peri-
cles can act one better than any."
Aristophanes, in my opinion, might have easily
been the first lyric poet now living, except Sopho-
cles and Euripides ; he chose rather to be the
bitterest satirist. How many, adorned with all
the rarities of intellect, have stumbled on the en-
trance into life, and have made a wrong choice on
the very thing which was to determine their
course for ever ! This is among the reasons, and
perhaps is the principal one, why the wise and the
happy are two distinct classes of men.
LXXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
I had retired before Aristophanes went home.
On my return, it was evident that some one pre-
sent had inveighed against the poet's effrontery,
for I was in time to catch these words of Pericles :
" Why should I be angry with the writers of
comedy 1 Is it because they tell me of the faults
I find in myself? Surely not ; for he who finds
them in himself may be quite certain that others
have found them in him long before, and have
shown much forbearance in the delay.
" Is it because I am told of those I have not
discovered in »e? Foolish indeed were this. I
am to be angry, it seems, because a man forewarns
me that I have enemies in my chamber, who will
stab me when they find me asleep, and because he
helps me to catch them and disarm them.
" But it is such an indignity to be ridiculed !
I incurred a greater when I threw myself into the
way of ridicule : a greater still should I suffer if I
tried whether it could be remedied by resentment.
" Ridicule often parries resentment, but resent-
ment never yet parried ridicule."
LXXXV III. ASPASIA TO HERODOTUS.
Herodotus ! if there is any one who admires
your writings more than another, it is I. No
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
residence in Attica will ever make me prefer the
dialect to ours ; no writer will charm my ear as
you have done ; and yet you can not bring me to
believe that the sun is driven out of his course by
storms ; nor any of the consequences you deduce
from it, occasioning the overflow of the Nile.
The opinion you consider as unfounded, namely,
that it arises from the melting of the snows, and
from the periodical rains on the mountains of
Ethiopia, is however that of Pericles and Anax-
agoras, who attribute it also to Thales, in their
estimation the soundest and shrewdest of philo-
sophers. They appear to have very strange
notions about the sun, about his magnitude, his
position, and distance ; and I doubt whether you
could persuade them that the three stoutest winds
are able to move him one furlong. I am a great
doubter, you see ; but they, I do assure you, are
greater. Pericles is of opinion that natural
philosophy has made but little progress ; and yet
that many more discoveries have burst open
before the strenuous inquirer than have been
manifested to the world ; that some have been
suppressed by a fear of the public, and some by a
contempt for it.
" In the intellectual," said he, " as in the phy-
sical, men grasp you firmly and tenaciously by the
hand, creeping close at your side, step for step,
while you lead them into darkness; but when you
conduct them into sudden light, they start and
quit you."
0 Herodotus ! may your life and departure be
happy ! But how can it be expected ! No other
deities have ever received such honours as you
have conferred upon the Muses ; and alas, how
inefficient are they to reward or protect their
votaries !
LXXXIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
The tragedy of Phrynicus, on the devastation
of our city by the Persians, will outlast all the
cities now flourishing on earth.* Heavy was the
mulct to which the poet was condemned by the
Athenians for the tears he drew from them in
the theatre.
Is it not remarkable that we have never found
any Milesian poem on the same subject? Surely
there must have been several. Within how short
a period have they perished ! Lately, in searching
the houses of such inhabitants as were suspected
of partiality to the interests of Lacedaemon,
these verses were discovered. They bear the
signature of Aktheia, daughter of Charidemus
and Astyage.
We have often heard her story. Often have we
sat upon the mound of ruins under which she
lies buried : often have we plucked from it the
white cyclamen, sweetest of all sweet odours, and
played with its stiff reverted little horns, pouring
* This tragedy, which produced a more powerful effect
than any other on record, haa failed however to fulfill the
prophecy of Cleone : the Ode of Alctheia, on which she
places so small a value, has outlived it.
forth a parsimonious fragrance, won only when we
applied to them tenderly and closely.
Whether poor Aletheia gave for life more than
life's value, it were worse than curiosity to inquire.
She loved her deliverer ; and, at the instigation
of many less gentle, she was slain for loving him.
When the city was again in possession of the
citizens, she was stoned to death for favouring the
invader; and her mother rushed forward and
shared it. These are things you know; her poem,
her only one extant, you do not. You will find in
it little of poetry, but much of what is better and
rarer, true affection.
ALKTHRIA TO PHRAORTES.
Phraortes ! where art thou ?
The flames were panting after us, their darts
Had pierced to many hearts
Before the Gods, who heard nor prayer nor vow ;
Temples had sunk to earth, and other smoke
O'er riven altars broke
Than curled from myrrh and nurd,
When like a God among
Arm'd hosts and unarm'd throng
Thee I discern'd, implored, and caught one brief regard.
Thou passest : from thy side
Sudden two bowmen ride
And hurry me away.
Thou and all hope were gone . .
They loos'd me . . and alone
In a closed tent 'mid gory arms I lay.
How did my tears then burn
When, dreading thy return,
Behold thee reappear !
Nor helm nor sword nor spear . .
In violet gold-hemm'd vest
Thou earnest forth ; too soon !
Fallen at thy feet, claspt to thy breast,
I struggle, sob, and swoon.
" O send me to my mother ! bid her come,
And take my last farewell !
One blow ! . . enough for both . . one tomb . .
'Tis there our happy dwell."
Thou orderest : call'd and gone
At once they are who breathe for thy command.
Thou stoodest nigh me, soothing every moan,
And pressing in both thine my hand.
Then, and then only, when it tore
My hair to hide my face ;
And gently did thy own bend o'er
The abject head war-doomed to dire disgrace.
Ionian was thy tongue,
And when, thou badest me to raise
That head, nor fear in aught thy gaze,
I dared look up . . but dared not long.
" Wait, maiden, wait ! if none are here
Bearing a charm to charm a tear,
There may (who knows ?) be found at last
Some solace for the sorrow past."
My mother, ere the sounds had ceas'd,
Burst in, and drew me down :
Her joy o'erpowered us both, her breast
Covered lost friends and ruin'd town.
Sweet thought ! but yielding now
To many harsher ! By what blow
Art thou dissevered from me ? War,
That hath career'd too far,
Closeth his pinions. " Come, Phraortes, come
To thy fond friends at home ! "
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
391
Thus beckons Love. Away then, wishes wild !
O may thy mother be as blest
As one whose eyes will sink to rest
Blessing thee for her rescued child !
Ungenerous still my heart must be :
Throughout the young and festive train
Which thou revisitest again
May none be happier (this I fear) than she !
XC. ASPASIA TO CLEONK.
Perhaps I like the Ode of Aletheia more than
you do, because you sent it me ; and you perhaps
would have liked it more than I, had I sent it
you. There are writings which must lie long
upon the straw before they mellow to the taste;
and there are summer fruits which can not abide
the keeping.
My heart assures me that Aletheia, had she
lived, might have excelled in poetry ; and the
loss of a lover is a help to it. We must defer our
attempts to ascertain her station in the world of
poetry : for we never see the just dimensions of
what is close before our eyes. Faults are best dis-
covered near, and beauties at some distance.
Aletheia, who found favour with Cleone, is
surely not unworthy to take her seat in the library
of Pericles.
I will look for a cyclamen to place within the
scroll : I must find it and gather it and place it
there myself. Sweet, hapless Aletheia !
XCI. ASPASIA TO OLEONE.
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in
a library. What a delight in being a discoverer !
Among a loose accumulation of poetry, the greater
part excessively bad, the verses I am about to
transcribe are perhaps the least so.
Life passes not as some men say,
If you will only urge his stay,
And treat him kindly all the while.
He flies the dizzy strife of towns,
Cowers before thunder- bearing frowns,
But freshens up again at song and smile.
Ardalia ! we will place him here,
And promise that nor sigh nor tear
Shall ever trouble his repose.
What precious seal will you impress
To ratify his happiness?
That rose thro' which you breathe ? Come, bring that rose.
XCII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Knowing how desirous I have always been to
learn the history of Athens for these last fifty
years, and chiefly that part of it in which my
Pericles has partaken so largely ; and to reward
my forbearance in abstaining from every close and
importunate inquiry, he placed a scrap of paper in
my hands this morning.
" Read that," said he.
It was no easy matter : few sentences would
have been legible without my interpreter ; indeed
there were not many unerased.
" This speech," replied he, " occupied me one
whole night, and somewhat of the next morning :
I had so very much not to say."
Aware that the party of Cimon would interest
the people in his behalf, so that a leader from
among his relatives or friends might be proposed
and brought forward, Pericles was resolved to
anticipate these exertions. See his few words.
" We have lost, 0 Athenians ! not a town, nor
a battle ; these you would soon regain ; but we
have lost a great man, a true lover of his country,
Cimon, son of Miltiades.
" I well remember the grief you manifested at
the necessity of removing him for a time, from
among the insidious men who would have worked
upon his generous temper, ductile as gold. Never
could I have believed I had sufficient interest with
some I see before me, firm almost unto hardness,
whose patriotism and probity had been the most
alarmed ; but they listened to me with patience,
and" revoked the sentence of banishment. Cimon
returned from Sparta, took the command of your
armies, vanquished the Persians, and imposed on
them such conditions as will humble their pride
for ever.
" Our fathers were ungenerous to his : we will,
as becomes us, pay their debts, and remove the
dust from their memory. Miltiades was always
great, and only once unsuccessful : Cimon was
greater, and neverunfortunate but in the temporary
privation of your affections. History offers us no
example of so consummate a commander.
" I propose that a statue be erected to Cimon,
son of Miltiades, vanquisher of the Persians."
XCin. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
There are secrets which not even love should
try to penetrate. I am afraid of knowing who
caused the banishment of Cimon : certainly he was
impeached by Pericles, who nevertheless praised
him highly whenever his name was mentioned.
He has allowed me to transcribe his speech after
the sentence of the judges, and with it his letter
of recall
TO THE ATHENIANS,
On the Banishment of Cimon.
In your wisdom, 0 Athenians, you have decreed
that Cimon son of Miltiades be exiled from our city.
Whatever may have been the errors or the crimes
of Cimon, much of them should, injustice to your-
selves, and in humanity to the prosecuted, be
ascribed to the perversity of that faction, which
never ceases or relaxes in its attempts to thwart
your determinations, and to deprive you of autho-
rity at home, of respect in the sight of Greece.
But I adjure you to remember the services both
of Cimon and of Miltiades ; and to afford the ban-
ished man no reason or plea to call in question your
liberality. Permit the rents of his many farms
in Attica to be carried to him in Sparta ; and let
it never be said that a citizen of Athens was obliged
to the most illiberal and penurious of people for
a sustenance. Not indeed that there is any danger
392
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
of Sparta entertaining him too honourably. She
may pay for services ; but rather for those which
are to be performed than for those which have
been ; and to the man rather who may do her
harm than to him who can do it no longer.
Let us hope that at some future day Cimon
maybe aware of his mistake, and regard with
more veneration the image of his father than the
throne of his father's enemy.
XCIV. PERICLES TO CIMON.
There are few cities, 0 Cimon, that have men
for their inhabitants. Whatever is out of Greece,
and not Grecian, is nearer the animal world
than the intellectual : some even in Greece are
but midway. Leave them behind you ; return to
your country, and conquer her assailants. Whole-
some is the wisdom that we have gathered from
misfortune, and sweet the repose that dwells upon
renown.
XCV. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
Generally we are little apt to exaggerate merit.
In our maladies of the mind the cold fit usually is
longer and more intense than the hot, and our
dreams are rarely of water in the desert. We
must have been among the departed before we
experience this sensation. In our road through
life, we may happen to meet with a man casting
a stone reverentially to enlarge the cairn of an-
other, which stone he had carried in his bosom
to sling against that very other's head. Seriously,
my Cleone, I am inclined to think that even in
these dark days (as they are called) of literature
we may occasionally catch a glimpse of poetry.
We should be laughed at if we ventured to com-
pare the living with the dead, who always are
preferable, but there are choruses in Sophocles
and Euripides as pathetical as those tender words
of Sappho in her invocation to Hesperos : " Thou
bringest the wine, thou bringest the kid, thou
bringest the maiden to her mother." Certainly
these words are very unsophistical, and they who
have seen others weep at them, weep also. But
pardon me, if looking attentively, you find no letter
in the sentence obliterated by a tear of mine.
Sometimes I fancy that the facility and pliancy of
our language is the reason why many of the most
applauded verses are written with more intense-
ness of feeling and less expenditure of thought.
What is graceful must be easy ; but many things
are very easy which are not very graceful. There is
a great deal even of Attic poetry in which a slight
covering of wax is drawn over a bundle of the
commonest tow and tatters : we must not bring
it too near the lamp . . But it is something to
abstain from an indulgence in grossness, prolixity,
and exaggeration, which are never the signs of
fertility, but frequently the reverse. This abstin-
ence is truly Attic, but Attic not exclusively : for
Pindar has given manifold examples of it, and is
heavy and tedious then only when he wipes away the
foam off his bit with old stories and dry genealogies.
SPEECH OF PERICLES.
On the Defection o/Eubaa and Megara.
Euboea has rejected our authority and alliance,
Megara our friendship. Under what pretext ]
That we have employed in the decoration of our
city the sums of money they stipulated to contri-
bute annually ; a subsidy to resist the Persians.
What ! must we continue a war of extermination
with Persia, when she no longer has the power to
molest us ] when peace has been sworn and pro-
claimed ? Do we violate the compact with our
confederates ? No ; men of Athens ! our fleets are
in harbour, every ship in good condition ; our
arsenals are well stored ; and we are as prompt and
as able now to repell aggression as we ever were.
Are our dues then to be withholden from us,
because we have anticipated our engagements ?
because our navy and our army are in readiness
before they are wanted 1 because, while our un-
grateful allies were plotting our ruin, we were
watching over their interests and providing for
their security ? States, like private men, are sub-
ject to the distemper of ingratitude, erasing from
their memory the impression of past benefits ; but
it appears to be peculiar to the Megarians to re-
compense them with hatred and animosity. Not
only have we protected them from aggression, by
building for them the very walls from which they
now defy us ; but, when Mardonius sent against
them, at Mount Cithaeron, the whole force of the
Median cavalry, under the command of Magestios,
and when they called aloud to every near battalion
of the Grecian army, and when Pausanias in vain
repeated the exhortation, three hundred Atheni-
ans, led by Olympiodoros son of Lampon, threw
themselves forward from Erythrai, and, after losing
many brave comrades, rescued from imminent
death the fathers of those degenerate men who are
now in the vanguard of conspirators against us.
Ingratitude maybe left to the chastisement of the
Gods, but the sword must consolidate broken
treaties. No state can be respected if fragment
after fragment may be detached from it with im-
punity ; if traitors are permitted to delude and
discompose the contented, and to seduce the igno-
rant from their allegiance ; if loyalty is proclaimed
a weakness, sedition a duty, conspiracy wisdom,
and rebellion heroism. It is a crime then for us
to embellish our city ! it is a reproach to enlarge
and fortify our harbours ! In vain have we repre-
sented to the clamorous and refractory, that their
annual contributions are partly due to us for past
exertions, and partly the price of our protection,
at this time, and in future ; and not against Persia
only, but against pirates. Our enemies have per-
suaded them that rebellion and war are better
things ; our enemies, who were lately theirs, and
who by this perfidious instigation are about to
become so more cruelly than ever. Are Athenians
avaricious ? are Athenians oppressive ? Even the
slaves in our city have easier access to the comforts
and delights of life than the citizens of almost
any other. Until of late the Megarians were proud
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
393
of our consanguinity, and refused to be called the
descendants of Apollo, in hopes to be acknow-
ledged as the children of Pandion. Although in
later times they became the allies of Sparta, they
can not but remember that we have always been
their friends, often their deliverers ; and it is only
for their dishonesty and perfidy that we now are
resolved at last to prohibit them from the advan-
tages of our ports. Sparta and Corinth have
instigated them ; Corinth, whose pride and injus-
tice have driven Corcyra, with her fleets, to seek
deliverance in the Piraeus. What have we to fear
from so strange a union as that of Corinth and
Sparta ? Are any two nations so unlike ? so little
formed for mutual succour or for mutual esteem 1
Hitherto we have shared both our wealth and our
dangers with Euboea. At the conclusion of a suc-
cessful war, at the signature of a most honourable
and advantageous peace, we are derided and re-
proached. What is it they discover to despise in
us 1 I will tell you what it is. It is the timid
step of blind men : this they saw in us while they
were tampering with Sparta. Not ashamed of
their seduction, they now walk hand in hand, with
open front, and call others to join in their infamy.
They have renounced our amity, they have spurned
our expostulations, they have torn our treaties,
and they have defied our arms. At the peril of
being called a bad citizen, I lament your blind-
ness, 0 Megara and Euboea !
XCVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I find, among the few records in my hands, that
Pericles went in person, and conquered the faith-
less Megara and the refractory Euboea. Before
he sailed to attack the island, he warned the
Athenians against an inconsiderate parsimony,
which usually terminates in fruitless expenditure.
He told them plainly that Euboea was capable of
a protracted and obstinate resistance ; and he
admonished them that, whatever reverses the
arms of Athens might experience, they should
continue the war, and consider the dominion of
the island a thing necessary to their existence as a
nation; that whoever should devise or counsel
the separation of Euboea from Athens, be declared
guilty of treason, and punished with death.
" If Thebes, in a future war," said he, " should
take possession of this productive country, and
shut up, as she easily might, the passage of the
Euripus, she would gain an ascendancy over us,
from which we never could recover. Losses,
defeats, inadequate supplies, may tempt her; she
would always have Sparta for an ally on such an
occasion. Indeed, it is wonderful that the
Boeotians, as brave a race of men as any in Greece,
and stronger in body, should not have been
her masters. Perhaps it is the fertility of her own
territory that kept her content with her pos-
sessions, and indisposed the cultivators of so rich
a soil from enterprise and hazard. Euboea is no
less fertile than Bocotia, from which she is
separated by the distance of a stone's throw.
Give me fifty galleys, and five thousand men, and
Euboea shall fall ere Sparta can come to her
assistance."
XCVII. ASPASIA TO OLEONE.
Perpetual as have been the wars of Attica, she
is overpeopled. A colony hoisted sail for the
Chersonese ; another to repeople the ruined walls
of Sybaris. Happy the families whose fathers
give them lands to cultivate, instead of keeping
them in idleness at home ; such are the founders
of colonies. The language of this city is spoken
in Italy, in Sicily, in Asia, in Africa, and even on
the coast of Gaul, among the yelpings and yells of
Kimbers and Sicambers.
Surely the more beneficent of the Gods must
look down with delight on these fruit-trees planted
in the forest. May the healthfullest dews of
heaven descend on them !
We are now busied in the Propylaea ; they, although
unfinished, are truly magnificent. Which will
remain the longest, the traces of the walls or of
the colonies! Of the future we know nothing,
of the past little, of the present less ; the mirror
is too close to our eyes, and our own breath dims it.
XOVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
I have only time to send you a few perfumes
and a few verses. These I transcribe out of a
little volume of Erinna : the perfumes came to me
from Syria.
Blessed be the man whose beneficent provi-
dence gave the flowers another life ! We seem to
retain their love when their beauty has departed.
ERINNA TO I-KUCONOB.
If comfort is unwelcome, can I think
Reproof aught less will be ?
The cup I bring to cool thee, wilt thou drink,
Fever'd Leuconoe?
Rather with Grief than Friendship wouldst thou dwell,
Because Love smiles no more !
Bent down by culling bitter herbs, to swell
A cauldron that boils o'er.
XCIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Thanks for the verses ! I hope Leuconoe was
as grateful as I am, and as sensible to their power
of soothing.
Thanks too for the perfumes ! Pericles is
ashamed of acknowledging he is fond of them ;
but I am resolved to betray one secret of his : I
have caught him several times trying them, as he
called it.
How many things are there that people pretend
to dislike, without any reason, as far as we know,
for the dislike or the pretence !
I love sweet odours. Surely my Cleone herself
must have breathed her very soul into these !
Let me smell them again : let me inhale them into
the sanctuary of my breast, lighted up by her love
for their reception.
394
But, ah Cleonc ! what an importunate and
exacting creature is Aspasia ! Have you no
willows fresh-peeled ? none lying upon the Lank
for baskets, white, rounded, and delicate, as your
fingers ! How fragrant they were formerly ! 1
have seen none lately. Do you remember the
cross old Hermesionax 1 how he ran to beat us for
breaking his twigs 1 and how, after looking in our
faces, he seated himself down again, finished his
basket, disbursed from a goat-skin a corroded
clod of rancid cheese, put it in, pushed it to us,
forced it under my arm, told us to carry it home
with the Gods! and lifted up both hands and
blest us.
I do not wish that one exactly ; cheese is the
cruellest of deaths to me ; and Pericles abhors it.
I am running over trifling occurrences which
you must have forgotten. You are upon the spot,
and have no occasion to recall to memory how
the munificent old basket-maker looked after us,
not seeing his dog at our heels ; how we coaxed
the lean, shaggy, suspicious animal ; how many
devices we contrived to throw down, or let slip, so
that the good man might not observe it, the
pestilence you insisted on carrying; how many
names we called the dog by, ere we found the true
one, Cyrus ; how, when we had drawn him behind
the lentisk, we rewarded him for his assiduities,
holding each an ear nevertheless, that he might
not carry back the gift to his master ; and how
we laughed at our fears, when a single jerk of the
head served at once to engulf the treasure and
to disengage him.
I shall always love the smell of the peeled
willow. Have you none for me! Is there no
young poplar then, with a tear in his eye on
bursting into bud 1 I am not speaking by me-
taphor and Asiatically. I want the poplars, the
willows, the water-lilies, and the soft green
herbage. How we enjoyed it on the Mseander !
what liberties we took with it ! robbing it of the
flowers it had educated, of those it was rear-
ing, of those that came confidently out to meet
us, and of those that hid themselves. None
escaped us. For these remembrances, green is
the colour I love best. It brings me to the
Fortunate Island and my Cleone ; it brings me
back to Childhood, the proud little nurse of Youth,
brighter of eye and lighter of heart than Youth
herself.
These are not regrets, Cleone ; they are respira-
tions, necessary to existence. You may call them
half-wishes if you will. We are poor indeed when
we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and
the imagination close the shutters the instant
they are gone.
Do not chide me then for coming to you after
the blossoms and buds and herbage : do not keep
to yourself all the grass on the Maeander. We
used to share it ; we will now. I love it where-
over I can get a glimpse of it. It is the home of
the eyes, ever ready to receive them, and spread-
ing its cool couch for their repose.
0. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Demophile, poor honest faithful creature ! has
yielded to her infirmities. I have spent almost
as many hours with her in these last autumnal
months, as I did in the earliest of my existence.
She could not carry me in her arms again, but she
was happy when mine were about her neck, and
said they made her stronger. Do you remember
how often she dropt my hand to take yours,
because you never cried I saying,
" People never weep nor work, themselves, who
can make others weep and work for them. That
little one will have weeper and worker too about
her presently. Look at her, Cleone ! Can not you
look like that? Have not you two lips and two
eyes ? Aspasia has not three. Try now ! Mind
how I do it!"
Good simple heart !
When she was near her end, she said to me,
" Do you ever go and read those names and bits
of verses on the stones yonder? You and Aspasia
used formerly. Some of them tell us to be sad
and sorry for folks who died a hundred years ago;
others to imitate men and women we never should
have had a chance of seeing, had they been living
yet. All we can learn from them is this, that our
city never had any bad people in it, but has been
filled with weeping and wailing from its founda-
tion upward."
These things puzzled Demophile : she was
somewhat vext that she could not well compre-
hend them, but praised the Gods that our house
was safe, when many others must have been rent
asunder : such a power of lamentation !
" My name," said she, " I believe, is a difficult
and troublesome one to pinfold in a tombstone :
nobody has ever tried how it would sound in
verse : but if you and Aspasia think me worth
remembering, I am sure you could do more with
it than others could; and you would lead your
little ones, when the Gods have given you any, to
come and see it, and tell them many things of old
Demophile."
I assured her that, if I outlived her, I would
prove, in the manner she wished, that my memory
and love outlived her likewise.
She died two days afterward.
Nothing is difficult, not even an epitaph, if we
prefer the thoughts that come without calling, and
receive the first as the best and truest. I would
not close my eyes to sleep until I had performed
my promise.
Demophile rests here : we will not say
That she was aged, lest ye turn away ;
Nor that she long had suffered : early woes
Alone can touch you ; go, and pity those !
CI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Ah poor Demophile! she remembered me
then ! How sorry I am I can not tell her I re-
member her !
Cleone ! there are little things that leave no
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
395
little regrets. I might have said kind words,
and perhaps have done kind actions, to many
who now are beyond the reach of them. One
look on the unfortunate might have given a day's
happiness ; one sigh over the pillow of sickness
might have insured a night's repose ; one whis-
per might have driven from their victim the
furies of despair.
We think too much upon what the Gods have
given us, and too little why.
We both are young; and yet we have seen
several who loved us pass away ; and we never
can live over again as we lived before. A portion
of our lives is consumed by the torch we follow
at their funerals. We enter into another state of
existence, resembling indeed and partaking of
the former, but another ! it contains the substance
of the same sorrows, the shadow of the same
joys. Alas ! how true are the words of the old
poet.
We lose a life in every friend we lose,
And every death is painful but the last.
I often think of my beautiful nurse, Myrtale,
now married very happily in Clazomenai. My
first verses were upon her. These are the verses
I thought so good, that I wrote a long disserta-
tion on the trochaic metre, to prove it the most
magnificent of metres ; and I mentioned in it all
the poets that ever wrote, from epigrammatic to
epic, praising some and censuring others, a judge
without appeal upon all.
How you laughed at me ! Do you remember
the lines? I wonder they are not worse than
they are.
Myrtale ! may heaven reward thee
For thy tenderness and care !
Dressing me in all thy virtues,
Docile, duteous, gentle, fair.
One alone thou never heededst,
I can boast that one alone ;
Grateful beats the heart thy nurseling,
Myrtale! 'tis all thy own.
Oil. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Receive old Lycoris, and treat her affably. She
has much influence in her tribe. The elderly of
your sex possess no small authority in our city,
and I suspect that in others too they have their
sway. She made me tremble once. Philotas
asked her how she liked my speech, I forget upon
what occasion : she answered,
" His words are current words, and ring well ;
but unless he gives us more of them for the
trouble of our attendance, he shall not be archon,
I promise him."
Now I know not how long I could protract a
speech, nor how long I could keep my head under
water : these are accomplishments I have never
studied. Lycoris and I are still friends however.
In my favour she has waved her promise, and lets
me be an archon.*
* Plutarch says he never was archon ; he means perhaps
first archon.
CHI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
It is difficult and unsafe to pick up a pearl
dropped by Alcman. Usually it is moist with
the salt of its habitation ; and something not
quite cleanly may be found adhering to it. Here
however is one which even my chaste Cleone may
look down on with complacency.
« So pure my love is, I could light
The torch on Aglae's wedding-night,
Nor bend its flame with sighs,
See, from beneath, her chamber-door
Unclose, and bridemaids trip before,
With undetected eyes."
Cupid stood near and heard this said,
And full of malice shook his head,
Then cried " 111 trust him when he swears
He can not mount the first three stairs ;
Even then I'll take one look below
And see with my own eyes 'tis so."
And even Mimnermus, who bears but an in-
different character with the chaste, is irreproach-
able in those verses, which he appears to have
written in the decline of life.
Love ran with me, then walk'd, then sate,
Then said " Come, come .' it growt too late : "
And then he would have gone . . but . . no . .
You caught his eye ; he could not go.
CIV. PEKIOLES TO ASPASIA.
Send me a note whenever you are idle and
thinking of me, dear Aspasia ! Send it always
by some old slave, ill-dressed. The people will
think it a petition, or something as good, and
they will be sure to observe the pleasure it throws
into my countenance. Two winds at once will
blow into my sails, each helping me onward.
If I am tired, your letter will refresh me ; if
occupied, it will give me activity. Beside, what
a deal of time we lose in business !
CV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Would to heaven, 0 Pericles ! you had no busi-
ness at all, but the conversation of your friends.
You must always be the greatest man in the city,
whoever may be the most popular. I wish we
could spend the whole day together; must it
never be ? Are you not already in possession of
all you ever contended for ?
It is time, methinks, that you should leave off
speaking in public, for you begin to be negligent
and incorrect. I am to write you a note when-
ever I am idle and thinking of you !
Pericles ! Pericles ! how far is it from idleness
to think of you ! We come to rest before we
come to idleness.
CVI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
In our republic it is no easy thing to obtain an
act of divorce from power. It usually is delivered
to us by the messagcr of Death, or presented in
396
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
due form by our judges where the oyster keeps
open house.
Now, oysters are quite out of season in the
summer of life ; and life, just about this time, I
do assure you, is often worth keeping. I thought
so even before I knew you, when I thought but
little about the matter. It is a casket not pre-
cious in itself, but valuable in proportion to what
Fortune, or Industry, or Virtue, has placed
within it.
CVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
When Pericles is too grave and silent, I usually
take up my harp and sing to it ; for music is often
acceptable to the ear when it would avoid or re-
pose from discourse. He tells me that it not only
excites the imagination, but invigorates eloquence
and refreshes memory : that playing on my harp
to him is like besprinkling a tessellated pavement
with odoriferous water, which brings out the
images, cools the apartment, and gratifies the
senses by its fragrance.
"That instrument," said he, "is the rod of
Hermes ; it calls up the spirits from below, or
conducts them back again to Elysium. With
what ecstacy do I throb and quiver under those
refreshing showers of sound ! "
Come sprinkle me soft music o'er the breast,
Bring me the varied colours into light
That now obscurely on its tablet rest,
Show me its flowers and figures fresh and bright.
Waked at thy voice and touch, again the chords
Restore what restless years had moved away,
Restore the glowing cheeks, the tender words,
Youth's short-lived spring and Pleasure's summer-day.
I believe he composed these verses while I was
playing, although he disowns them, asking me
whether I am willing to imagine that my execu-
tion is become so powerless.
You remember my old song : it was this I had
been playing :
The reeds were green the other day,
Among the reeds we loved to play,
We loved to play while they were green.
The reeds are hard and yellow now,
No more their tufted heads they bow
To beckon us behind the scene.
" What is it like ? " my mother said,
And laid her hand upon my head ;
" Mother ! I can not tell indeed.
I've thought of all hard things I know,
I've thought of all the yellow too ;
It only can be like the reed."
CVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Panenos is our best painter : he was educated
by Pheidias, who excels all the painters in correct-
ness of design. Panenos has travelled into
Egypt, in which country, he tells us, the colours
are as fresh upon the walls of the temples as
when they were painted, two thousand years ago.
Pericles wishes to have a representation of me in
the beginning of every Olympiad. Alas ! what
an imprudence ! The most youthful lover never
committed one greater.
I will not send a stranger to you, Cleone ! I
will send the fugitive of Miletus when Epimedea
was giving her the lecture in the bath. Be quiet
now ; say nothing ; even the bath itself is quite
imaginary.
Panenos plays upon the harp. I praised him
for the simplicity and melody of the tune, and
for his execution. He was but little pleased.
" Lady" said he to me " a painter can be two
things ; he can be painter and statuary, which is
much the easier : make him a third, and you
reduce him to nothing."
" Yet Pericles," said I, " plays rather well."
"Rather well, I can believe," said he, " because
I know that his master was Damon, who was very
skilful and very diligent. Damon, like every
clever composer I have met with, or indeed ever
heard of, was a child in levity and dissipation.
His life was half feast, half concert."
" But, Panenos," said I, "surely we may be fond
of music, and yet stand a little on this side of
idiocy."
"Aspasia!" he replied, "he who loves not
music is a beast of one species ; he who overloves
it is a beast of another, whose brain is smaller
than a nightingale's, and his heart than a lizard's.
Record me one memorable saying, one witticism,
one just remark, of any great musician, and I
consent to undergo the punishment of Marsyas.
Some among them are innocent and worthy men ;
not many, nor the first. Dissipation, and, what
is strange, selfishness, and disregard to punc-
tuality in engagements, are common and nearly
general in the more distinguished of them.
" 0 Music ! how it grieves me, that imprudence,
intemperance, gluttony, should open their chan-
nels into thy sacred stream ! "
Panenos said this : let us never believe a word
of it. He himself plays admirably, although no
composer.
CIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
0 Aspasia ! have you heard (you surely must)
that the people of Samos have declared war
against us] It is hardly sixty years since our
beautiful city was captured and destroyed by the
Persians. In vain hath she risen from her ashes
with fresh splendour ! Another Phrynicus will
have perhaps to write another tragedy upon us.
Is it an offence to be flourishing and happy ?
The unfortunate meet and embrace : the for-
tunate meet and tear each other to pieces. What
wonder that the righteous Gods allow to pros-
perity so brief a space !
CX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Be composed and tranquil : read the speech of
Pericles to the Athenians.
BPKKCH OF PERICLES.
The Milesians, it appears, have sent cmbas-
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
397
eadors to you, 0 men of Athens ! not entreating
the co-operation of your arms, but the interpo-
sition of your wisdom and integrity. They have
not spoken, nor indeed can they deem it neces-
sary to speak, of dangers recently undergone to-
gether with you, of ancient, faithful, indissoluble
alliances, or the glory of descending from the
same forefathers. On this plea Miletus might
have claimed as a right what she solicits as a
favour.
Samos, 0 Athenians, has dared to declare war
against the people of Miletus. She envies us our
commerce, and, unable to find a plea for assailing
us, strikes our friend in our sight, and looks im-
pudently in our faces to see whether we will re-
sent it.
No, Athenians, we will not resent it, until we
have sent embassadors, to ask her why she has
taken up arms against the peaceful and unoffend-
ing ? It were well were it permitted us to abstain.
Yes, I feel I am hazarding your favour by recom-
mending delay and procrastination : but I do not
apprehend that we are losing much time. We
have weapons, we have ships, we have the same
soldiers who quelled braver enemies. The van-
quished seem again to be filling up the ranks we
have thinned. They murmur, they threaten, they
conspire, they prepare (and preparation denounces
it) hostility. Let them come forth against us.
Wealth rises up to our succour in that harbour :
Glory stands firm and bids them defiance on
those walls.
Wait, wait ! twenty days only. Ten. Not ten?
Little becomes it me, 0 Athenians ! to oppose
your wishes or to abate your ardour.
Depart, then, heralds ! and carry with you war.
CXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I have asked Pericles to let me see all his
speeches. He declared to me that he has kept
no copies, but promised that he would attempt to
recover some of them from his friends. I was
disappointed and grieved, and told him I was
angry with him. He answered thus, taking me
by the hand.
"So, you really are angry that I have been
negligent in the preservation of my speeches, after
all my labour in modelling and correcting them.
You are anxious that I should be praised as a
writer, by writers who direct the public in these
matters. Aspasia ! I know their value. Under-
stand me correctly and comprehensively. I mean
partly the intrinsic worth of their commendations,
and partly (as we pay in the price of our utensils')
the fashion. I have been accused of squandering
away both the public money and my own : nobody
shall ever accuse me of paying three obols for the
most grandly embossed and most sonorous pane-
gyric. I would excite the pleasure ( it were too
much to say the admiration ) of judicious and
thoughtful men ; but I would neither soothe nor
irritate these busybodies. I have neither honey
nor lime for ants. We know that good writers
are often gratified by the commendation of bad
ones ; and that even when the learned and intel-
ligent have brought the materials to crown their
merits, they have looked toward the door at some
petulant smirking page, for the thread that was
to bind the chaplet. Little do I wish to hear
what I am, much less what I am not. Enough
for me to feel the consciousness and effect of health
and strength : surely it is better than to be told by
those who salute me, that I am looking very well.
" You may reply that the question turns not
upon compliments, but upon censure.
"Really I know not what my censurers may
write, never having had the advantage of reading
their lucubrations ; all I know is this; if I am not
their Pericles, I am at least the Pericles of Aspasia
and the Athenians."
CXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
We were conversing on oratory and orators,
when Anaxagoras said, looking at Pericles and
smiling,
" They are described by Hesiod in two verses,
which he applies to himself and the poets :
Lies very like the truth we tell,
And, when we wish it, truth as well.
Meton relaxed from his usual seriousness, but
had no suspicion of the application, saying,
" Cleverly applied indeed ! "
Pericles enjoyed equally the simplicity of Meton
and the slyness of Anaxagoras, and said,
" Meton ! our friend Anaxagoras is so modest
a man, that the least we can do for him is to ac-
knowledge his claims as heir general to Hesiod :
see them registered."
I have never observed the temper of Pericles
either above or below the enjoyment of a joke ; he
invites and retaliates, but never begins, lest he
should appear to take a liberty.
There are proud men of so much delicacy
that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly
excuses it.
Meton never talks, but answers questions with
great politeness, although with less clearness and
precision than you would expect. I remarked to
him, one evening, that mathematicians had great
advantages over others in disputation, from the
habitude they had acquired of exactness in solving
their problems.
" We mathematicians," answered he, " lay claim
to this precision. I need not mention to you,
Aspasia, that of all the people who assemble at
your house, I am the only one that ever wants a
thought or word. We are exact in our own proper
workmanship. Give us time, and we can discover
what is false in logic ; but I never was acquainted
with a mathematician who was ready at correcting
in himself a flaw of ratiocination, or who pro-
duced the fitting thing in any moderate time.
Composition is quite beyond our sphere. I am
not envious of others ; but I often regret in my-
PERICLES AND A SPA SI A.
self that, while they are delivering their opinions
freely and easily, I am arranging mine; and that,
in common with all the mathematicians of my
acquaintance, I am no prompt debater, no acute
logician, no clear expositor, but begin in hesi-
tation and finish in confusion."
I assure you, Cleone, I have been obliged to
give order and regularity to these few words of
the wise contemplative Meton, and to remove from
among them many that were superfluous and
repeated. When he had paused, I told him I
sometimes wished he would exercise his powerful
mind in conversation.
" I have hardly time," said he, " for study, much
less for disputation. Earely have I known a dis-
putant who, however dexterous, did not either
drive by Truth or over her, or who stopped to
salute her, unless he had something fine or novel
to display. He would stumble over my cubes and
spheres, and I should leave my leg in his noose."
" And yet Anaxagoras and you agree well to-
gether," said I.
"Anaxagoras," replied he, "usually asks me
short questions, and helps me himself to explain
them. He comes to me when I am alone, and
would find no pleasure in showing to others my
perplexity. Seldom do I let him go again, until
he has given me some help or some incitement
in my studies. He suggests many things."
" Silence, good Meton !" cried Anaxagoras, " or
I may begin to talk of a luminary whose light has
not yet reached the earth."
The three men smiled : they have some mean-
ing uncommunicated to me. Perhaps it is a re-
mark of Pericles, in encouragement of Anaxago-
ras, that, while others pass before us like a half-
obol tow-link across a dark alley, and dazzle and
disappear, his loftier light has not yet come down
to the intellects of his fellow-citizens ; or perhaps
it may really have a reference to some discovery
in astronomy.
Pericles goes in person to command the expe-
dition against Samos. He promises me it will
soon be ready to sail, and tells me to expect him
back again within a few months. Artemon is
preparing machines of great magnitude for the
attack of the city. He teaches me that the
Samians are brave and wealthy, and that no city
is capable of such a resistance. Certainly never
were such preparations. I hope at least that the
report of them will detain your enemies at home,
and at all events that, before they land, you will
leave Miletus and come to me. The war is very
popular at Athens : I dare say it is equally so at
Samos, equally so at Miletus. Nothing pleases
men like renewing their ancient alliance with the
brutes, and breaking off the more recent one with
their fellow creatures.
War is it, O grave heads ! that ye
With stern and stately pomp decree ?
Inviting all the Gods from far
To join you in the game of war !
Have ye then lived so many years
To, find no purer joy than tears ?
And seek ye now the highest good
In strife, in anguish, and in blood?
Your wisdom may be more than ours,
But you have spent your golden hours,
And have methinks but little right
To make the happier fret and fight.
Ah ! when will come the calmer day
When these dark clouds shall pass away ?
When (should two cities disagree)
The young, the beauteous, and the free,
Rushing with all their force, shall meet
And struggle with embraces sweet,
Till they who may have suffer 'd most
Give in, and own the battle lost.
Philosophy does not always play fair with us.
She often eludes us when she has invited us,
and leaves us when she has led us the farthest
way from home. Perhaps it is because we have
jumped up from our seats at the first lesson she
would give us, and the easiest, and the best.
There are few words in the precept,
Give pleasure : receive it :
Avoid giving pain : avoid receiving it.
For the duller scholar, who may find it difficult to
learn the whole, she cuts each line in the middle,
and tells him kindly that it will serve the purpose,
if he will but keep it in his memory.
CXIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Will you never be serious, even upon the most
serious occasions'? There are so many Grecian
states, on both continents and in the islands, that
surely some could always be found both willing
and proper to arbitrate on any dissension. If liti-
gations are decided by arbiters when two men
contend (as they often are) surely it would be an
easier matter with cities and communities; for
they are not liable to the irritation arising from
violent words, nor to the hatred that springs up
afresh between two men who strive for property,
every time they come within sight. I believe the
Greeks are the happiest people upon earth, or
that ever are likely to exist upon it; and chiefly
from their separation into small communities,
independent governments, and laws made by the
people for the people ! But unless they come to the
determination that no war whatever shall be un-
dertaken until the causes of quarrel are examined,
and the conditions of accommodation are proposed
by others, from whom impartiality is most reason-
ably to be expected, they will exist without enjoy-
ing the greatest advantage that the Gods have
offered them. Religious men, I foresee, will be
sorry to displease the God of battles. Let him
have all the kingdoms of the world to himself,
but I wish he would resign to the quieter Deities
our little Greece.
Preparations are going on here for resistance
to the Samians, and we hear that Athenian ships
are cruizing off their island.
In case of necessity, everything is ready for my
departure to the sources of the Maeander. I will
prove to you that I am not hurried nor frightened ;
I have leisure to write out what perhaps may be
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
399
the last verses written in Miletus, unless we are
relieved.
LITTLE AGLAE,
To her Father, on her Statue being called like her.
Father ! the little girl we see
Is not, I fancy, so like me ;
You never hold her on your knee.
When she came home the other day
You kiss'd her ; but I can not say
She kiss'd you first and ran away.
CXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Herodotus, on returning from his victory at the
Olympian games, was the guest of Pericles. You
saw him afterward ; and he might have told you
that Pericles was urgent with him to remain at
Athens. True, as a stranger, he would have been
without influence here in political affairs. It is
evident that he desires no such thing, but prefers,
as literary men should always do, tranquillity and
retirement. These he may enjoy in perfection
where he is, and write the truth intrepidly. Peri-
cles has more than once heard from him. Life
passes in no part of the world so easily and placidly
as among the Grecian colonies in Italy. They
rarely quarrel; they have room enough, men
enough, wealth enough, and not too much. One
petty tyrant has sprung up among them lately,
and has imprisoned, exiled, and murdered, the
best citizens.
Pericles was asked his advice what should be
done with him. He answered,
" I never interfere in the affairs of others. It
appears to me that, where you have nothing but a
weazel to hunt, you should not bring many dogs
into the field, nor great ones ; but in fact the rat-
catcher is the best counsellor on these occasions :
he neither makes waste nor noise."
The tyrant, we hear, is sickening, and many
epitaphs are already composed for him ; the
shortest is,
The pigmy despot Mutinas lies here ;
He was not godless ; no ; his God was Fear.
Herodotus tells us, that throughout the lower Italy
poverty is unknown; every town well governed,
every field well ploughed, every meadow well irri-
gated, every vineyard pruned scientifically. The
people choose their higher magistrates from the
most intelligent, provided they are not needy.
The only offices that are salaried are the lower,
which all the citizens have an equal chance of
attaining ; some by lot, some by suffrage. This is
the secret why the governments are peaceful and
durable. No rich man can become the richer for
them; every poor man may, but honestly and
carefully.
CXV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Corinna was honoured in her native place as
greatly as abroad. This is the privilege of our sex.
Pindar and jEschylus left their country, not be-
cause the lower orders were indifferent or unjust
to them, but because those who were born their
equals could not endure to see them rise their
superiors.
What a war against the Gods is this !
It seems as if it were decreed by a public edict,
that no one shall receive from them any gift above
a certain value ; and that, if they do receive it,
they shall be permitted to return the Gods no
thanks for it in their native city.
So then ! republics must produce genius, and
kings reward it !
So then ! Hiero and Archelaiis must be elevated
to the rank of Cimon and Pericles ! O shame ! 0
ignominy !
What afflicts me deeply is the intelligence we
receive that Herodotus has left Ionia. He was
crowned at the Olympian games; he was invited
to a public festival in every city he visited through-
out the whole extent of Greece ; even his own was
pleased with him : yet he too has departed ; not
to Archelaiis or to Hiero, but to the retirement
and tranquillity of Italy.
I do believe, Aspasia, that studious men, who
look so quiet, are the most restless men in existence.
ORATION OF PERICLES TO THE SOLDIERS
BOUND SAMOS.
Little time is now left us, 0 Athenians, between
the consideration and the accomplishment of our
duties. The justice of the cause, when it was first
submitted to your decision in the Agora, was
acknowledged with acclamations ; the success of it
you have insured by your irresistible energy. The
port of Samos is in our possession, and we have oc-
cupied all the eminences round her walls. Patience
is now as requisite to us as to the enemy : for,
although every city which can be surrounded, can
be captured, yet in some, where courage and num-
bers have been insufficient to drive off the besieger,
Nature and Art may have thrown up obstacles to
impede his progress. Such is Samos; the strongest
fortress in Europe, excepting only Byzantion.
But Byzantion fell before our fathers ; and unless
she become less deaf to the reclamations of honour,
less indifferent to the sanctitude of treaties, unless
she prefer her fellow-soldiers to her common
enemy, freedom to aristocracy, friends to strangers,
Greeks to Asiatics, she shall abase her Thracian
fierceness before vs. However, we will neither
spurn the suppliant nor punish the repentant :
our arms we will turn for ever, as we turn them
now, against the malicious rival, the alienated
relative, the apostate confederate, and the proud
oppressor. Where a sense of dignity is faint and
feeble, and where reason hath lain unexercised
and inert, many nations have occasionally been
happy and even flourishing under kings : but
oligarchy hath ever been a curse to all, from its
commencement to its close. To remove it eter-
nally from the vicinity of Miletus, and from the
well-disposed of that very city by which hostilities
are denounced against her, is at once our interest
and our duty. For oligarchs in every part of the
400
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
world are necessarily our enemies, since we have
always shown our fixed determination to aid and
support with all our strength the defenders of
civility and freedom. It is not in our power (for
against our institutions and consciences we Athe-
nians can do nothing), it is not in our power, I
repeat it, to sit idly by, while those who were our
fellow-combatants against the Persian, and who
suffered from his aggression even more than we
did, are assailed by degenerate lonians, whose
usurpation rests on Persia. We have enemies
wherever there is injustice done to Greeks ; and
we will abolish that injustice, and we will quell
those enemies. Wherever there are equal laws we
have friends ; and those friends we will succour,
and those laws we will maintain. On which side
do the considerate and religious look forward to
the countenance of the Gods ? Often have they
deferred indeed their righteous judgments, but
never have they deserted the long-suffering and
the brave. Upon the ground where we were stand-
ing when you last heard my appeal to you, were
not Xerxes and his myriads encamped? What
drove them from it ] The wisdom, force, and for-
titude, breathed into your hearts by the immortal
Gods. Preserve them with equal constancy ; and
your return, I promise you, shall not have been
more glorious from Salamis than from Samos.
CXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I must always send you poetry when I find it,
whether in a greater quantity or a smaller : not
indeed all I happen to find ; for certainly the most-
part even of careful collections is mere trash. If
there is a word too much in sense or sentiment,
it is no poem ; just as, if there is a syllable in a
verse too much, it is no metre. I speak only of
these shorter ; not of those which are long enough
to stretch ourselves on and sleep in. But there
are poetical cooks so skilful in dividing the tendons
of their cub-fed animals, that they contrive to fill
a capacious dish with a few couples of the most
meagre and tottering. From Athens you shall
have nothing that is not attic. I wish I could
always give you the names of the authors.
Look at that fountain 1 Gods around
Sit and enjoy its liquid sound.
Come, come : why should not we draw near ?
Let them look on : they can not hear.
But if they envy what we do,
Say, have not Gods been happy too ?
The following were composed on a picture in
which Cupid is represented tearing a rose-bud.
Ah Cupid! Cupid! let alone
That bud above the rest :
The Graces wear it in their zone,
Thy mother on her breast.
Does it not grieve thee to destroy
So beautiful a flower ?
If thou must do it, cruel boy,
Far distant be the hour .'
If the sweet bloom (so tinged with fire
Prom thy own torch) must die,
Let it, O generous Love ! expire
Beneath a lover's sigh.
The next is, A Faun to Eriopis, a Wood-
nymph, who had permitted a kiss, and was sorry
for it.
Tell me, Eriopis, why
Lies in shade that languid eye ?
Hast thou caught the hunter's shout
Far from Dian, and without
Any sister nymph to say
Whither leads the downward way ?
Trust me : never be afraid
Of thy Faun, my little maid !
He will never call thee Dear,
Press thy finger, pinch thy ear,
To admire it overspread
Swiftly with pellucid red,
Nor shall broad and slender feet
Under fruit-laid table meet.
Doth not he already know
All thy wandering, all thy woe?
Come ! to weep is now in vain,
I will lead thee back again.
Slight and harmless was the slip
That but soil'd the sadden 'd lip.
Now the place is shown to me
Peace and safety shall there be.
CXVII. CLEOKE TO ASPASIA
Samoa has fallen. Pericles will have given you
this information long before my letter can reach
you, and perhaps the joy of the light-hearted
Athenians will be over ere then. So soon dies
away the satisfaction of great exploits, even of
such as have swept a generation from before us,
have changed the fortunes of a thousand more,
and indeed have shaken the last link in the
remotest. We hear, but perhaps the estimate is
exaggerated, that the walls of Miletus, of Ephesus,
of Priene, are in comparison to Samos as the
fences of a farm-yard are to them. Certain it is
that the vanquished fleet was more formidable
than the united navies of Corinth and of Carthage,
which are rated as next in force to the Athenian.
By this conquest we are delivered from im-
minent danger ; yet, I am ashamed to say it, our
citizens are ungrateful already. It is by the exer-
tions of the Athenians that they are not slaves ;
and they reason as basely as if they were. They
pretend to say that it was jealousy of Samos, and
the sudden and vast increase of her maritime
power, but by no means any affection for Miletus,
which induced them to take up arms ! Athens
had just reason for hostility; why should she
urge, in preference, unjust ones ? Alas ! if equity
is supported by violence, little can be the wonder
if power be preceded by falsehood. Such a reflec-
tion may be womanish ; but are not all peculiarly
so which are quiet, compassionate, and consistent !
The manly mind, in its continual course of impedi-
ments and cataracts, receives and gives few true
images; our stagnant life in this respect has
greatly the advantage.
Xanthus, the friend (you remember) of poor
Xeniades, fought as a volunteer in the Athenian
army, and was entrusted with the despatches to
our government.
" Xanthus ! " said the general, " your country-
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
401
men will hereafter read your name, although it i
not written here ; for we conquerors of Samoa are
no little jealous one of another. Go and congra-
tulate the Milesians: they will understand u
both."
I asked him many questions. He replied wit!
much simplicity, " I was always too much in it tc
know anything about it. The principal thing !
remember is, that Pericles (I was told) smiled a
me for a moment in the heat of battle, and wen
on to another detachment."
CXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The wind, I understand, has delayed my lasi
letter in harbour, and continues adverse. Every
day we receive some fresh vessel from Samos, anc
some new intelligence. True is it, we discover,
that the prevailing party had been supported al
once by the Peloponnesians and the Persians.
The chastisement of the delinquents is repre-
sented as much too mild. "They would have
made us slaves, let us make them so." Such,
with scourges and tortures, were the denunciations
of the people and the soldiery ; and more vehe-
mently in Samos than in Miletus. The leaders oi
the oligarchy (now supprest for ever) were two
men of low extraction, Lysimachus and Elpenor.
We daily hear some story, well known in Samos
only, of these incendiaries. Lysimachus was en-
riched by the collocation of his wife with an old
dotard, worn out by gluttony and disordered in
intellect. By his last testament, made when he
had lost his senses, he bequeathed her fifty talents.
The heirs refused to pay them ; and Lysimachus
would have pleaded her cause before the people,
had they not driven him away with shouts and
stones. Nevertheless, he was thought a worthy
champion of the faction, and the rather as his
hatred of his fellow-citizens and former compa-
nions must be sincere and inextinguishable. El-
penor is far advanced in age. His elder son was
wounded by accident, and died within the walls.
Avarice and parsimony had always been his cha-
racteristics, under the veil however of morality
and religion. The speech he made at the funeral
is thus reported,
" It hath been, 0 men of Samos ! the decree
of the immortal Gods, whose names be ever
blessed ! . .
" Hold hard there ! Can not you see that there
are no more sparks in the pyre? . . the wine
smells sadly . . throw no more on them . . take
it home to the cellar . .
" To remove from my aged eyes, from my frail
embraces, the delight of my life, the staff of my
declining years, all spent in the service of my be-
loved country. It is true I have another son, rising
out of his adolescence . . here beside me . .
" 0 my child ! Molismogis ! Molismogis ! on
such a melancholy occasion dost thou, alas ! tie
indissolubly and wastefully that beautiful piece of
packthread ] Thy poor bereaved mother may want
it ; and it will fail her in the hour of need."
Two torches were borne before the funeral.
One of them presently gave signs rather prema-
turely emblematical of our mortal state, and could
be restored to its functions by no exertion of the
bearer, first waving it gently toward its compa-
nion, then shaking it with all his might, hori-
zontally, vertically, diagonally, then holding it
down despondingly to the earth. Elpenor beck-
oned to him, and asked him in his ear how much
he had paid for it.
" Half a drachma."
"Fraud!" cried Elpenor, "fraud, even at the
tomb! before the dead, and before the Gods
of the dead ! From whom did you make the
purchase ] "
" From Gylippides son of Agoracles."
" Tell Gylippides son of Agoracles," calmly said
Elpenor, " that in my love of equity, in my duty
to the state, in my piety to the Gods, in my pure
desire to preserve the tranquillity of his conscience,
I cite him before the tribunal unless he refund
an obol." Then aloud, " It was not in this man-
ner, 0 Athenians ! that our forefathers reverenced
the dead."
He gave way under his grief, and was carried
back with little commiseration. Elpenor is
among the richest men in Greece, unless the con-
querors have curtailed his treasures. It is but
reasonable that everything such men possess
should compensate the people for years of rapine,
disunion, and turbulence ; for the evil laws they
enacted, and for the better they misadministered
and perverted.
CXIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Worse verses, it may be, than any of those
which you lately sent to me, affect me more.
There is no giddiness in looking down the preci-
pices of youth : it is the rapidity and heat of its
iourse that brings the giddiness. When we are
near its termination a chilly thrill comes over us,
whether we look before or behind. Yet there is
something like enchantment in the very sound
of the word youth, and the calmest heart, at
every season of life, beats in double time to it.
ST ever expect a compensation for what you send
me, whether prose or poetry : but expect a plea-
sure, because it has given me one. Now here are
,he worse verses for the better, the Milesian for
the Attic.
We mind not how the sun in the mid-sky
Is hastening on ; but when the golden orb
Strikes the extreme of earth, and when the gulphs
Of air and ocean open to receive him,
Dampness and gloom invade us ; then we think
Ah ! thus is it with Youth. Too fast his feet
Run on for sight ; hour follows hour ; fair maid
Succeeds fair maid ; bright eyes bestar his couch ;
The cheerful horn awakens him ; the feast,
The revel, the entangling dance, allure,
And voices mellower than the Muse's own
Heave up his buoyant bosom on their wave.
A little while, and then . . Ah Youth ! dear Youth !
Listen not to my words . . but stay with me !
When thou art gone, Life may go too ; the sigh
That follows is for thee, and not for Life.
D D
402
PEKICLES AND ASPASIA.
CXX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Enough, enough is it for me to see my Pericles
safe at home again. Not a word has he spoken,
not a question have I asked him, about the odious
war of Samos. He made in Samos, I hear, a
most impressive oration, to celebrate the obse-
quies of these brave soldiers who fell. In Athens,
where all is exultation, he has rendered the slain
the most glorious and triumphant, and the father-
less the proudest, of the living. But at last how
little worth is the praise of eloquence ! Elpenor
and Lysimachus lead councils and nations !
Great Gods ! surely ye must pity us when we
worship you ; we, who obey, and appear to rever-
ence, the vilest of our species! I recover my
step ; I will not again slip into this offal. Come,
and away to Xanthus. Ay, ay, Cleone ! Simpli-
city, bravery, well-merited and well-borne dstinc-
tion ! Take him, take him : we must not all be
cruel . . to ourselves.
CXXI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! you mistake. Grant me the presence
of friendship and the memory of love ! It is only
in this condition that a woman can be secure
from fears and other weaknesses. I may admire
Xanthus; and there is pleasure in admiration.
If I thought I could love him, I should begin to
distrust and despise myself. I would not dese-
crate my heart, even were it in ruins ; but I am
happy, very happy ; not indeed altogether as I
was in early youth : perhaps it was youth itself
that occasioned it. Let me think so ! Indulge
me in the silence and solitude of this one fancy.
If there was anything else, how sacred should it
ever be to me ! Ah yes, there was ! and sacred it is,
and shall be.
Laodamia saw with gladness, not with passion,
a God, conductor of her sole beloved. The shade
of Xeniades follows the steps of Xanthus.
CXXII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Parties of pleasure are setting sail, every day
almost, for Samos. We begin to be very brave ;
we women, I mean. I suspect that no few of us
take an unworthy delight in the humiliation and
misery of the fair Samians. Not having seen, nor
intending to see them myself, I can only tell you
what I have heard of their calamities.
Loud outcries were raised by the popular orators
against such of them as were suspected of favour-
ing the Persian faction, and it was demanded of
the judges that they should be deported and
exposed for slaves. This menace, you may well
imagine, caused great anxiety and alarm, even
among those who appeared to be quite resigned
to such a destiny while the gallant young Athe-
nians were around the walls. But, to be sold !
and the Gods alone know to whom ! old morose
men perhaps, and jealous women ! Some sus-
pect it was at the instigation of Pericles that a
much severer chastisement has befallen them.
They have been condemned to wear the habili-
ments of Persians. Surely no refinement of cruelty
can surpass the decree, by which a Greek woman
is divested of that beautiful dress which alone
can be called an ornament to the female form.
This decree has been carried into execution ; and
you would pity even the betrayers of their coun-
try. Whether in ignorance of what the Persian
habit is, or from spite and malice, the Samian
ladies are obliged to wear sleeves of sufficient
amplitude to conceal a traitor in each ; and chains
intersecting the forehead with their links and
ornaments ; and hair not divided along the whole
summit of the head, but turned back about the
centre, to make them resemble the heads of some
poisonous snakes. Furthermore, the dresses are
stripped ignominiously off the shoulders, as for
some barely conceivable punishment, and fastened
round the arms in such a manner that, when they
attempt to reach anything, or even to move, they
are constrained to shrug and writhe, like the
uncleanliest persons. Beside, they are quite at
the mercy of any wicked idler in the street, who,
by one slight touch, or by treading on the hem,
might expose them far more undisguisedly to the
gazes of the multitude. This barbarian garb has
already had such an effect, that two have cast
themselves into the sea; and others have entreated
that they may, as was first threatened, rather be
sold for slaves.
CXXIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Odious as undoubtedly was the conduct of the
Samian oligarchy and priesthood, and liable as
are all excesses to a still farther exaggeration in
the statement of them, you will hardly believe the
effrontery of the successful demagogues. Not
contented with undeniable proofs, in regard to
the enormous and mismanaged wealth torn away
from the priests of Bacchus, they have invented
the most improbable falsehood that the malevo-
lence of faction ever cast against the insolence of
power. They pretend that certain men, some of
ancient family, more of recent, had conspired to
transmit the reins of government to their elder
sons. Possession for life is not long enough !
They are not only to pass laws, but (whenever it
so pleases) to impede them ! They decree that
the first-born male is to be the wisest and best of
the family, and shall legislate for all Samos!
Democracy has just to go one step farther, and to
persuade the people (ready at such times to believe
anything) that the oligarchy had resolved to
render their power hereditary, not only for one
generation, but for seven. The nation, so long
abused in its understanding, would listen to and
believe the report, ignorant that arbitrary power
has never been carried to such extravagance even
in Persia itself, although it is reported that in
India the lower orders of people were hereditarily
subject to the domination of a privileged class.
But this may be false ; and indeed it must be,
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
403
if what is likewise told us concerning them
be true, which is, that they have letters among
them.
CXXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
You have given me in your two last a great
deal of curious information, about the/liscoveries
that the demagogues made, or pretended to have
made, in Samos. It is credible enough that the
oligarchs were desirous of transmitting their au-
thority to their children : but that they believed
so implicitly in the infatuation of the citizens, or
the immutability of human events, as to expect a
continuation of power in the same families for
seven generations, is too gross and absurd, even
to mislead an insurgent and infuriated populace.
He indeed must be composed of mud from the
Nile, who can endure with patience this rancor-
ous fabrication. In Egypt, we are told by Hero-
dotus in his Erato, that, " the son of a herald is
of course a herald ; and, if any man hath a louder
voice than he, it goes for nothing."
Hereditary heralds are the proper officers of
hereditary lawgivers ; and both are well worthy
of dignity where the deities are cats.
Strange oversight ! that no provision should
ever have been devised, to ensure in these tutelar
and truly household Gods an equal security for
lineal succession !
CXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Abuses of many kinds, and of great enormity,
have been detected by the Samians in their over-
thrown government. What exasperates the peo-
ple most, and indeed the most justly, is the dis-
covery that the ruling families have grossly abused
the temples, to the high displeasure of the Gods.
Sacrilege has been carried to such a pitch, that
some among them have appointed a relative or
dependent to the service of more than one sanctu-
ary. You remember that anciently all the wor-
ship of this island was confined to Juno. She
displeased the people, I know not upon what occa-
sion, and they suffered the greater part of her
fanes to fall in ruins, and transferred the richest
of the remainder to the priests of Bacchus. Seve-
ral of those who had bent the knee before Juno,
took up the thyrsus with the same devotion. The
people did indeed hope that the poor and needy,
and particularly such as had lost their limbs in
war, or their parents or their children by ship-
wreck, would be succoured out of the wealth
arising from the domains of the priesthood ; and
the rather as these domains were bequeathed by
religious men, whose whole soul rested upon
Juno, and whose bequest was now utterly frus-
trated, by taking them from the sister of Jupiter
and giving them exclusively to his son. Beside,
it was recollected by the elderly, that out of these
vast possessions aid was afforded to the state when
the state required it ; and that, wherever there
stood one of these temples, hunger and sickness,
sorrow and despair, were comforted and assuaged.
The people, it appears, derived no advantages from
the change, and only grew more dissatisfied and
violent ; for, if those who had officiated in the
temples of Juno were a little more licentious than
became the ministers of a Goddess, they did not
run into the streets, and through the country
places, drunk and armed ; nor did they seize upon
the grapes because they belonged to Bacchus;
nor upon the corn because it is unwholesome to
drink wine without bread ; nor upon the cattle
because man can not live on bread alone. These
arguments you may suspect of insufficiency : what
then will you think when you hear another reason
of theirs, which is, that the nation has no right
to take from them what belongs to the Goddess.
The people cry, " How then can it belong to you?"
Pushed upon this side, they argue that they should
not be deprived of their salaries, because they are
from land. What ! reply the citizens, " Are not
gold and silver the products of land also 1 " But
long possession . . " We will remedy that too, as
well as we can." The soldiers and sailors have
the most reason to complain, when they see
twelve priests in the enjoyment of more salary
than seven thousand of the bravest combatants.
The military are disbanded and deprived of pay
at the instant when their services are no longer
necessary ; yet no part, it appears, of a superfluous
and idle priesthood is ta be reduced or regulated;
on the contrary, it is rapacious and irreligious to
take away three temples from a venerable occu-
pant of four. Was ever soldier so impudent as to
complain that rations were not allowed him in
four detachments of his army ? The downfall of
the old faction will be of little benefit to Samos,
while these insults and iniquities press upon the
people. Unless those who are now entrusted
with power, resolve to abolish the gross abuses of
the priesthood, the wealth of which is greater and
worse applied in Samos than it is even in those
countries where the priests are sovrans, and vene-
rated as deities, little imports it by whom they
are governed, or what Gods they venerate. It is
better to be ruled by the kings of Lacedaemon,
and wiser to salute in worship the sun of Persia.
Never surely will the island be pacified, until
what was taken from Juno shall also be taken from
Bacchus, and until the richest priest be reduced
in his emoluments far below the level of a
polemarc.
CXXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Those of your letters, my Cleone, which relate
to the affairs of Samos, and especially to the
priests of Juno and Bacchus, have led me into
many reflections. The people of Athens are the
most religious of any upon earth ; but I doubt
whether they are the most just, the most generous,
the most kindly. There is not a friend, whatever
benefit they may have received from him, whom
they would not abandon or denounce, on a sus-
picion of irreverence to Pallas ; and those in
general are the most fanatical and furious whom,
as Goddess of wisdom, she has least favoured.
D D2
404
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Your neighbours the Samians arc more judicious
in their worship of Juno. They know that, as
long as Jupiter hath a morsel of ambrosia, she
will share it, although he may now and then in
dulge in a draught of nectar to which her lips
have no access. The Samians have discovered
that wealth is not a requisite of worship, and that
a temple needs not a thousand parasangs of land
for its inclosure. If we believed that Gods could
be jealous, we might fear that there would be
much ill blood between Juno and Bacchus. It is
more probable that they will look on calmly, and
let their priests fight it out. The Persians in these
matters are not quite so silly as we are. Hero-
dotus tells that, instead of altars and temples, the
verdure of the earth is chosen for their sacrifice ;
and music and garlands, prayers and thanksgiv-
ings, are thought as decent and acceptable as
comminations and blood. It does not appear that
they are less moral or less religious than those
who have twenty Gods, and twenty temples for
each. The wiser men in Athens tell us that the
vulgar have their prejudices. Where indeed is the
person who never has repeated this observation 1
Yet believe me, Cleone, it is utterly untrue. The
vulgar have not their prejudices : they have the
prejudices of those who ought to remove them if
they had any. Interested men give them, not
their religion, but clubs and daggers for enforcing
it ; taking from them, in return, their time, their
labour, their benevolence, their understanding,
and their wealth. And are such persons to be
invested with the authority of lawgivers and the
splendour of satraps 1 The Samians have decided
that question. Priests of Bacchus, let them diffuse
the liberality and joyousness, and curtail a little
from the swaggering stateliness of him whom the
poet calls in his dithyrambic,
" The tiger-borne and mortal-mothered God."
CXXVII. ASFASIA TO CLEONE.
Hephaestion, whom I never have mentioned to
you, and whom indeed I hardly know by name, is
going to Italy, and has written this poem on the
eve of his departure. It is said that his verses
are deficient in tenderness and amenity. Certain
it is that he by no means indulges in the display
of them, whatever they may be. When Pericles
had read the following, I asked him what he
thought of the author. " I think," replied Peri-
cles, " that he will never attempt to deprive me
of my popularity."
I am afraid he is an ill-tempered man : yet I
hear he has suffered on many occasions, and par-
ticularly in regard to his fortune, very great in-
justice with equally great unconcern. He is never
seen in the Agora, nor in the theatre, nor in the
temples, nor in any assemblage of the people, nor
in any society of the learned ; nor has he taken
the trouble to enter into a confederacy or strike
a bargain, as warier men do, with any praiser ;
no, not even for the loan of a pair of palms in the
Keramicos.
I have now said all I believe you will think it
requisite for me to say, on a citizen so obscure,
and so indifferent a poet. Yet even he, poor
man ! imagines that his effusions must endure.
This is the most poetical thought I can find in
him ; but perhaps he may have written what is
better than my specimen.
THE IAMBICS OF HEPHJKSTIO.V.
Speak not too ill of me, Athenian friends !
Nor ye, Athenian sages, speak too ill !
From others of all tribes am I secure.
I leave your confines : none whom you caress.
Finding me hungry and athirst, shall dip
Into Cephisus the grey bowl to quench
My thirst, or break the horny bread, and scoop
Stiffly around the scanty vase, wherewith
To gather the hard honey at the sides,
And give it me for having heard me sing.
Sages and friends .' a better cause remains
For wishing no black sail upon my mast.
"Tis, friends and sages ! lest, when other men
Say words a little gentler, ye repent,
Yet be forbidden by stern pride to share
The golden cup of kindness, pushing back
Your seats, and gasping for a draught of scorn.
Alas ! shall this too, never lack'd before,
Be, when you most would crave it, out of reach !
Thus on the plank, now Neptune is invoked,
I warn you of your peril : I must live,
And ye, O friends ! howe'er unwilling, may.
CXXVIII. OLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! I have many things to say in reply
to your last letter.
Believe me, I can take little interest in any ill-
tempered man. Hephsestion is this, you tell me,
and there is nothing in his Iambics to make me
doubt it. Neither do they contain, you justly
remark, anything so characteristic of a poet as
the confidence he expresses that he shall live.
All poets, good and bad, are possessed by this
confidence ; because the minds of them all, how-
ever feeble, however incapacious, are carried to
the uttermost pitch of enthusiasm. In this
dream, they fancy they stand upon the same emi-
nence, or nearly so, and look unto the same dis-
tance. But no poet or other writer, supposing
dim in his senses, could ever think seriously that
his works will be eternal ; for whatever had a
beginning must also have an end; and in this
predicament are languages. Like the fowls of
the air, they are driven from the plains and take
refuge in the mountains, until at last they disap-
pear, leaving some few traces, some sounds im-
perfectly caught up. Highly poetical works, or
;hose in which eloquence is invested with the
richest attributes of poetry, are the only ones
;hat can prolong the existence of a dialect. Egypt
and Phoenicia and Chaldeea, beyond doubt, con-
;ain many treatises on the arts and sciences, al-
ihough unpublished, and preserved only by the
priesthood, or by the descendants of the authors
and discoverers. These are certainly to pass away
jefore inventions and improvements more im-
portant. But if there is anything of genius in
;heir hymns, fobles, or histories, it will remain
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
405
among them, even when their languages shall
have undergone many variations : and afterward,
when they are spoken no longer, it will be incor-
porated with others, and finally be claimed as
original and indigenous by nations the most re-
mote and dissimilar. Many streams, whose
fountains are now utterly dried up, have flowed
from afar to be lost in the ocean of Homer. Our
early companions, the animals of good old jEsop,
have spoken successively in every learned tongue.
And now a few words on that gentlest and most
fatherly of masters. Before we teach his fables
to children, we should study them attentively
ourselves. They were written for the wisest and
the most powerful, whose wisdom they might
increase, and whose power they might direct.
There are many men, of influence and authority,
apt enough to take kindly a somewhat sharp bite
from a dog or monkey, and to be indignant at
the slightest touch on the shoulder from a fellow-
creature. It is improbable that a fable will do
many of them much good, but it may do a little
to one in twenty, and the amount is by no means
unimportant in that number of generations. The
only use of Msop to children, after the delight he
gives them, is the promotion of familiarity and
friendship with animals, in proportion as they
appear to deserve it : and a great use indeed it is.
If I were not afraid that one or other of these
vigilant creatures might snap at me, I would now
begin to quarrel a little with you. And yet I
think I should have on my side some of the more
sagacious, were I to reprehend you for letting an
ill-tempered man render you supercilious and
unjust. How do you know, pray, that Hephsestion
may not live '< and quite as long as he fancies he
shall ; a century, or two, or three. Even in the
Iambics there is a compression and energy of
thought, which the best poets sometimes want ;
and there is in them as much poetry as was
necessary on the occasion. The poet has given
us, at one stroke, the true impression of a feature
in his character ; which few have done, and few
can do, excepting those features only which are
nearly alike in the whole fraternity.
Doubtless we are pleased to take our daily walk
by streams that reflect the verdure and the flowers :
but the waters of a gloomy cavern may be as
pellucid and pure, and more congenial to our
graver thoughts and bolder imaginations.
For any high or any wide operation, a poet
must be endued, not with ' passion indeed, but
with power and mastery over it; with imagination,
with reflection, with observation, and with discern-
ment. There are however some things in poetry
which admit few of these qualities. Comedy for
instance would evaporate under too fervid a
fancy : and the sounds of the Ode would be dulled
and deadened by being too closely overarched
with the fruitage of reflection. Homer in himself
is subject to none of the passions ; but he sends
them all forth on his errands, with as much pre-
cision and velocity as Apollo his golden arrows.
The hostile Gods, the very Fates themselves, must
have wept with Priam in the tent before Achilles :
Homer stands unmoved.
Aspasia ! there is every reason why a good-
natured person should make us good-natured, but
none whatever why an ill-natured one should
make us ill-natured : neither of them ought to
make us unjust. *You do not know Hephaestion,
and you speak ilKof him on the report of others,
who perhaps know him as little as you do. You
would shudder if I ventured to show you the
position you have taken. Ill-tempered you can not
be ; you would not be unfair : what if, in the
opinion of your friends, you should be a more
shocking thing than either ! what, in the name of
the immortal Gods ! if I should have found you,
on this one occasion, a somnambulist on the
verge of vulgarity ! Take courage : nobody has
seen it but myself. If there are bad people in the
world, and may-be there are plenty, we ought
never to let it be thought that we are near enough
to be aware of it. Again to Hephsestion. It is
better to be austere than ambitious : better to live
out of society than to court the worst. How
many of the powerful, even within the con-
fines of their own household, will be remem-
bered less affectionately and lastingly than tame
sparrows and talking daws ! and, among the
number of those who are destined to be known
hereafter, of how many will the memory be laden
with contempt or with execration ! To the
wealthy, proud, and arrogant, the Gods have
allotted no longer an existence, than to the
utensils in their kitchens or the vermin in their
sewers : while, to those whom such perishables
would depress and vilify, the same Eternal Beings
have decreed and ratified their own calm con-
sciousness of plastic power, of immovable superi-
ority, with a portion (immeasurably great) of their
wisdom, their authority, and their duration.
CXXIX. CLEONB TO ASPASIA.
We have kept your birth-day, Aspasia ! On
these occasions I am reluctant to write anything.
Politeness, I think, and humanity, should always
check the precipitancy of congratulation. Nobody
is felicitated on losing. Even the loss of a
bracelet or tiara is deemed no subject for merri-
ment and alertness in our friends and followers.
Surely then the marked and registered loss of an
irreparable year, the loss of a limb of life, ought to
excite far other sensations. So long is it, 0 Aspasia !
since we have read any poetry together, I am
quite uncertain whether you know the Ode to
Asteroessa.
Asteroessa ! many bring
The vows of verse and blooms of spring
To crown thy natal day.
Lo, my vow too amid the rest !
" Ne'er mayst thou sigh from that white breast,"
0 take them all away !
For there are cares and there are wrongs,
And withering eyes and venom 'd tongues ;
They now are far behind ;
406
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
But come they must : and every year
Some flowers decay, some thorns appear,
Whereof these gifts remind.
Cease, raven, cease ! nor scare the dove
With croak around and swoop above ;
Be peace, be joy, within !
Of all that hail this happy tide
My verse alone be cast aside !
Lyre, cymbal, dance, begin !
Although there must be some myriads of Odes
written on the same occasion, yet, among the
number on which I can lay my hand, none con-
veys my own sentiment so completely.
Sweetest Aspasia, live on ! live on ! but rather,
live back the past !
CXXX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The Hecatompedon, which many of the citizens
begin to call the Parthenon, is now completed,
and waits but for the Goddess. A small temple,
raised by Cimon in honour of Theseus, is the
model. This until lately was the only beautiful
edifice in the Athenian dominions. Pericles is
resolved that Athens shall not only be the mistress,
but the admiration of the world, and that her
architecture shall, if possible, keep pace with her
military and intellectual renown. Our country-
men, who have hitherto been better architects
than the people of Attica, think it indecorous
and degrading that lonians, as the Athenians are,
should follow the fashion of the Dorians, so
inferior a race of mortals. Many grand designs
were offered by Ictinos to the approbation and
choice of the public. Those which he calls Ionian,
are the gracefuller. Crateros, a young architect,
perhaps to ridicule the finery and extravagance of
the Corinthians, exposed to view a gorgeous
design of slender columns and top-heavy capitals,
such as, if ever carried into execution, would be
incapable of resisting the humidity of the sea-
breezes, or even the action of the open air,
uninfluenced by them. These however would not
be misplaced as in-door ornaments, particularly in
bronze or ivory ; and indeed small pillars of such
a character would be suitable enough to highly
ornamented apartments. I have conversed on
the subject with Ictinos, who remarked to me
that what we call the Doric column is in fact
Egyptian, modified to the position and the
worship ; and that our noblest specimens are but
reduced and petty imitations of those ancient and
indestructible supporters, to the temples of Thebes,
of Memphis and of Tentyra. He smiled at the
ridicule cast on the Corinthians by the name
designating those florid capitals, but agreed with
me that, on a smaller scale, in gold or silver, they
would serve admirably for the receptacles of wax-
lights on solemn festivals. He praised the designs
of our Ionian architects, and acknowledged that
their pillars alone deserve the appellation oi
Grecian, but added that, in places liable to earth-
quakes, inundations, or accumulations of sand,
the solider column was in its proper situation.
The architraves of the Parthenon are chiselled by
;he scholars of Pheidias, who sometimes gave a
portion of the design. It is reported that two of
the figures bear the marks of the master's own
hand : he leaves it to the conjecture of future ages
which they are. Some of the young architects,
Ionian and Athenian, who were standing with me,
disputed not only on the relative merits of their
architecture, but of their dialect. One of them,
Psamiades of Ephesus, ill enduring the taunt of
Brachys the Athenian, that the Ionian, from its
open vowels, resembles a pretty pulpy hand which
could not close itself, made an attack on the
letter T usurping the place of S, and against the
augments.
"Is it not enough," said he, "that you lisp, but
you must also stammer 1"
Let us have patience if any speak against us, 0
Cleone ! when a censure is cast on the architecture
of Ictinos and on the dialect of Athens.
CXXXI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
When the weather is serene and bright, I think
of the young Aspasia ; of her liveliness, her play-
fulness, her invitations to sit down on the grass ;
and her challenges to run, to leap, to dance, and
if nobody was near, to gambol. The weather at
this season is neither bright nor serene, and I
think the more of my Aspasia, because I want
her more. Fie upon me ! And yet on the whole,
Happy to me has been the day,
The shortest of the year,
Though some, alas ! are far away
Who made the longest yet more brief appear.
I never was formed for poetry : I hate whatever I
have written, five minutes afterward. A weakly
kid likes the warm milk, and likes the drawing
of it from its sources ; but place the same before
her, cold, in a pail, and she smells at it and turns
away.
Among the Tales lately come out here, many
contain occasional poetry. In the preface to one,
the scene of which lies mostly in Athens, the
author says,
" My reader will do well to draw his pen across
the verses : they are not good for him. The olive,
especially the Attic, is pleasing to few the first
time it is tasted."
This hath raised an outcry against him ; so that
of the whole fraternity he is the most unpopular.
" The Gods confound him with his Atticisms !"
exclaim the sober-minded. " Is not the man
contented to be a true and hearty Carian ? Have
we not roses and violets, lilies and amaranths,
crocuses and sowthistles? Have we not pretty
girls and loving ones; have we not desperate girls
and cruel ones, as abundantly as elsewhere ] Do
not folks grieve and die to his heart's content?
We possess the staple; and by Castor and Pollux !
we can bleach it and comb it and twist it, as
cleverly as the sharpest of your light-fingered
locust-eaters."
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
407
You will soon see his works, among others more
voluminous. In the meanwhile, I can not end my
letter in a pleasanter way than with a copy of
these verses, which are nearer to the shortest than
to the best.
Perilla ! to thy fates resign'd,
Think not what years are gone :
While Atalanta look't behind
The golden fruit roll'd on.
Albeit a mother may have lost
The plaything at her breast,
Albeit the one she cherish' t most,
It but endears the rest.
Youth, my Perilla, clings on Hope,
And looks into the skies
For brighter day ; she fears to cope
With grief, she shrinks at sighs.
Why should the memory of the past
Make you and me complain ?
Come, as we could not hold it fast,
We'll play it o'er again.
CXXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
There are odes in Alcaeus which the pen would
stop at, trip at, or leap over. Several in our col-
lection are wanting in yours; this among them : —
Wormwood and rue be on his tongue
And ashes on his head,
Who chills the feast and checks the song
With emblems of the dead !
By young and jovial, wise and brave,
Such mummers are derided.
His sacred rites shall Bacchus have,
Unspared and undivided.
Couch't by my friends, I fear no mask
Impending from above,
I only fear the later flask
That holds me from my love.
Show these to any priest of Bacchus, especially to
any at Samos, and he will shake his head at you,
telling you that Bacchus will never do without
his masks and mysteries, which it is holier to fear
than the later flask. On this subject, he would
prove to you, all fears are empty ones.
CXXXIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONB.
In ancient nations there are grand repositories
of wisdom, although it may happen that little of itis
doled out to the exigencies of the people. There
is more in the fables of ^Esop than in the schools
of our Athenian philosophers : there is more in
the laws and usages of Persia, than in the
greater part of those communities which are loud
in denouncing them for barbarism. And yel
there are some that shock me. We are told by
Herodotus, who tells us whatever we know with
certainty a step beyond our thresholds, that a boy
in Persia is kept in the apartments of the women,
and prohibited from seeing his father, until the
fifth year. The reason is, he informs us, that if
he dies before this age, his loss may give the
parent no uneasiness. And such a custom he
thinks commendable. Herodotus has no child
Dleone ! If he had, far other would be his feelings
and his judgment. Before that age, how many
seeds are sown, which future years, and distant
ones, mature successively ! How much fondness,
low much generosity, what hosts of other virtues,
courage, constancy, patriotism, spring into the
father's heart from the cradle of his child ! And
does never the fear come over him, that what is
most precious to him upon earth is left in
careless or perfidious, in unsafe or unworthy
lands 1 Does it never occur to him that he loses
a son in every one of these five years 1 What is
;here so affecting to the brave and virtuous man,
as that which perpetually wants his help and
can not call for it ! What is so different as the
speaking and the mute ! And hardly less so are
inarticulate sounds, and sounds which he receives
balf-formed, and which he delights to modulate,
and which he lays with infinite care and patience,
not only on the tender attentive ear, but on the
half-open lips, and on the eyes, and on the cheeks ;
as if they all were listeners. In every child there
are many children ; but coming forth year after
year, each somewhat like and somewhat varying.
When they are grown much older, the leaves (as it
were) lose their pellucid green, the branches their
graceful pliancy.
Is there any man so rich in happiness that he
can afford to throw aside these first five years ] is
there any man who can hope for another five so
exuberant in unsating joy ?
0 my sweet infant ! I would teach thee to kneel
before the Gods, were it only to thank 'em for
being Athenian and not Persian.
CXXXIV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Our good Anaxagoras said to me this morning,
" You do well, Aspasia, to read history in prefer-
ence to philosophy, not only on the recommen-
dation but according to the practice of Pericles.
A good historian will also be a good philosopher,
but will take especial care that he be never caught
in the attitude of disquisition or declamation.
The golden vein must run through his field, but
we must not see rising out of it the shaft and the
machinery. We should moderate or repress our
curiosity and fastidiousness. Perhaps at no time
will there be written, by the most accurate and
faithful historian, so much of truth as untruth.
But actions enow will come out with sufficient
prominence before the great tribunal of mankind,
to exercise their judgment and regulate their
-proceedings. If statesmen looked attentively at
everything past, they would find infallible guides
in all emergencies. But leaders are apt to
shudder at the idea of being led, and little know
what different things are experiment and ex-
perience. The sagacity of a Pericles himself is
neither rule nor authority to those impetuous
men, who would rather have rich masters than
frugal friends.
"The young folks from the school of your
suitor Socrates, who begin to talk already of
408
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
travelling in Egypt when the plague is over, are
likely to return with a distemper as incurable,
breaking bulk with demons and dreams. They
carry stem and stern too high out of the water,
and are more attentive to the bustling and bellying
of the streamers, than to the soundness of the
mast, the compactness of the deck, or the capacity
and cleanliness of the hold."
CXXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Anaxagoras told me yesterday that he had been
conversing with some literary men, philosophers
and poets, who agreed in one thing only, which
is, that we are growing worse day after day, both
in morality and intellect. Hints were thrown
out that philosophy had mistaken her road, and
that it was wonderful how she could be at once so
dull and so mischievous. The philosophers them-
selves made this complaint : the poets were as
severe on poetry, and were amazed that we were
reduced so low as to be the hearers of Sophocles
and Euripides, and three or four more, who how-
ever were quite good enough for such admirers.
" It is strange," said Anaxagoras, " that we are
unwilling to receive the higher pleasures, when
they come to us and solicit us, and when we are
sure they will do us great and lasting good ; and
that we gape and pant after the lower, when we
are equally sure they will do us great and lasting
evil. I am incapable," continued he, " of enjoying
so much pleasure from the works of imagination
as these poets are, who would rather hate Euri-
pides and Sophocles than be delighted by them,
yet who follow the shade of Orpheus with as
ardent an intensity of love as Orpheus followed
the shade of Eurydice. Ignorant as I am of
poetry, I dared not hazard the opinion that our
two contemporaries were really deserving of more
commendation on the score of verse, inferior as
they might in originality be to Marsyas and
Thamyris and the Centaur Chiron : and to the
philosophers I could only say, My dear friends !
let us keep our temper firmly and our tenets
laxly; and let any man correct both who will take
the trouble. I come to you, Aspasia, to console
me for the derision I bring home with me."
I kissed his brow, which was never serener,
and assured him that he possessed more comfort
than any mortal could bestow upon him, and
that he was the only one living who never
wanted any.
" I am not insensible," said he, " that every
year, at my time of life, we lose some pleasure ;
some twig that once blossomed, cankers."
I never was fond of looking forward : I have
invariably checked both hopes and wishes. It is
but fair then that I should be allowed to turn
away my eyes from the prospect of age : even if
I could believe that it would come to me as
placidly as it has come to Anaxagoras, I would
rather lie down to sleep before the knees tremble
as they bend. With Anaxagoras I never con-
verse in this manner : for old men more willingly
talk of age than hear others talk of it ; and nei-
ther fool nor philosopher likes to think of the
time when he shall talk no longer. I told my
dear old man that, having given a piece of moral
to the philosophers, he must not be so unjust as
to refuse a like present to the poets. About an
hour before I began my letter, he came into the
library, and, to my great surprise, brought me
these verses, telling me that, if they were satirical,
the satire fell entirely upon himself.
Pleasures ! away ; they please no more.
Friends .' are they what they were before ?
Lores ! they are very idle things,
The best about them are their wings.
The dance ! 'tis what the bear can do ;
Music ! I hate your music too.
Whene'er these witnesses that Time
Hath snatcht the chaplet from our prime,
Are call'd by Nature, as we go
With eye more wary, step more slow,
And will be heard and noted down,
However we may fret or frown,
Shall we desire to leave the scene
Where all our former joys have been ?
No, 'twere ungrateful and unwise !
But when die down our charities
For human weal and human woes,
Then is the time our eyes should close.
CXXXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
We hear that another state has been rising up
gradually to power, in the centre of Italy. It
was originally formed of a band of pirates from
some distant country, who took possession of two
eminences, fortified long before, and overlooking
a wide extent of country. Under these eminences,
themselves but of little elevation, are five hillocks,
on which they inclosed the cattle by night. It is
reported that here were the remains of an ancient
and extensive city, which served the robbers for
hiding-places j and temples were not wanting in
which to deprecate the vengeance of the Gods for
the violences and murders they committed daily.
The situation is unhealthy, which perhaps is the
reason why the city was abandoned, and is like-
wise a sufficient one why it was rebuilt by the
present occupants. They might perpetrate what
depredations they pleased, confidenHhat no force
could long besiege them in a climate so pestilen-
tial. Relying on this advantage, they seized
from time to time as many women as were requi-
site for any fresh accession of vagabonds, rogues,
and murderers.
The Sabines bore the loss tolerably well, until
the Komans (so they call themselves) went beyond
all bounds, and even took their cattle from the
yoke. The Sabines had endured all that it be-
came them to endure ; but the lowing of their
oxen from the seven hills reached their hearts
and inflamed them with revenge. They are a
pastoral and therefore a patient people, able to
undergo the exertions, and endure the privations
of war, but, never having been thieves, the
Romans over-matched them in vigilance, activity,
and enterprise ; and have several times since
PEEICLES AND ASPASIA.
409
made incursions into their country, and forced
them to disadvantageous conditions. Emboldened
by success, they ventured to insult and exaspe-
rate the nearest of the Tyrrhenian princes.
The Tyrrhenians are a very proud and very
ancient nation, and, like all nations that are
proud and ancient, excell chiefly in enjoying
themselves. Demaratos the Corinthian dwelt
among them several years; and from the Co-
rinthians they learned to improve their pottery,
which however it does not appear that they ever
have carried to the same perfection as the Co-
rinthian, the best of it being indifferently copied,
both in the form and in the figures on it.
Herodotus has written to Pericles all he could
collect relating to them; and Pericles says the
account is interesting. For my part I could
hardly listen to it, although written by Herodotus
and read by Pericles. I have quite forgotten the
order of events. I think they are such as neither
you nor anyone else, excepting those who live
near them, will ever care about. But the Tyr-
rhenians really are an extraordinary people. They
have no poets, no historians, no orators, no statu-
aries, no painters : they say they once had them :
so much the more disgraceful. The Komans went
out against them and dispersed them, although
they blew many trumpets bravely, and brought
(pretty nearly into action) many stout soothsayers.
The enemy, it appears, has treated them with
clemency : they may still feed soothsayers, blow
horns, and have wives in common.
I hope it is near your bed-time : if it is, you will
thank me for my letter.
CXXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Who would have imagined that the grave
sedate Pericles could take such delight in mis-
chief! After reading my dissertation on the
Tyrrhenians and Komans, he gave it again into
my hands, saying,
" Pray amuse your friend Cleone with your
first attempt at history."
I sent it off, quite unsuspicious. In the evening
he looked at me with a smile of no short conti-
nuance, and said at last,
" Aspasia ! I perceive you are emulous of our
Halicarnassian ; but pray do not publish that
historical Essay either in his name or your own.
He does not treat the Komans quite so lightly
as you do, and shows rather more justice to the
Tyrrhenians. You forgot to mention some im-
portant facts recorded by him, and some doubts
as weighty. We shall come to them presently.
" Having heard of the Komans, but nothing
distinctly, I wished to receive a clearer and a fuller
account of them, and wrote to Herodotus by the
first ship that sailed for Tarentum. The city
where he is residing lies near it, and I gave orders
that my letter should be taken ^thither, and deli-
vered into his hands. Above a year is elapsed,
during which time Herodotus tells me he has
made all the inquiries which the pursuit of his
studies would allow ; that he is continuing to cor-
rect the errors, elucidate the doubtful points, and
correct the style and arrangement of his history ;
and that, when he has completed it to his mind,
he shall have time and curiosity to consider
with some attention this remarkable tribe of
barbarians.
" At present he has not been able to answer
my questions ; for never was writer so sedulous in
the pursuit and examination of facts. What he
sees, he describes clearly; what he hears, he relates
faithfully ; and he bestows the same care on the
composition as he had bestowed on the inves-
tigation.
" The Romans I imagined had been subdued by
Numa, a Sabine ; for it can hardly be credited
that so ferocious a community sent a friendly in-
vitation to be governed and commanded by the
prince of a people they had grossly and repeatedly
insulted. What services had he rendered them ?
or by what means had they become acquainted
with his aptitude for government 1 They had ever
been rude and quarrelsome : he was distinguished
for civility and gentleness. They had violated all
that is most sacred in public and private life :
virgins were seized by treachery, detained by force,
and compelled to wipe the blood of their fathers
off the sword of their ravishers. A fratricide
king had recently been murdered by a magistracy
of traitors. Whatman in his senses would change
any condition of life to become the ruler of such
a nation ? None but he who had conquered and
could control them : none but one who had swords
enough for every head among them. Absolute
power alone can tame them and fit them for any-
thing better ; and this power must reside in the
hands of a brave and sagacious man, who will not
permit it to be shared, or touched, or questioned.
Under such a man such a people may become
formidable, virtuous, and great. It is too true
that, to be martial, a nation must taste of blood
in its cradle. Philosophers may dispute it ; but
time past has written it down, and time to come
will confirm it. Of these matters the sophists
can know nothing : he who understands them best
will be the least inclined to discourse on them.
" Another thing I doubted, and wished to know.
Numa is called a Sabine. The Sabines are illite-
rate still : in the time of Numa they were ruder;
they had no commerce, no communication with
countries beyond Italy ; and yet there are writers
who tell us that he introduced laws, on the whole
not dissimilar to ours, and corrected the calendar.
Is it credible ? Is it possible ? I am disposed to
believe that both these services were rendered by
the son of Demaratos, and that the calendar might
have been made better, were it not requisite on
such an occasion, more than almost any other, to
consult the superstition of the populace.
" I myself am afraid of touching the calendar
here in Athens, many as have been my conferences
with Meton on the subject. Done it shall be ;
but it must be either just before a victory or just
after.
410
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
" If the Sabine had sent an embassy, or even
an individual, to Athens, in order to collect our
laws, the archives of the city would retain a record
of so wonderful an event. He certainly could not
have picked them up in the pastures or woodlands
of his own country. But the Corinthians know
them well, and have copied most of them. All
nations are fond of pushing the date of their civi-
lization as high up as possible, and care not how
remotely they place the benefits they have re-
ceived. And probably some of the Romans,
aware that Numa was their conqueror, helped
to abolish the humiliating suspicion, by invest-
ing him successively with the robes of a priest,
of a legislator, and of an astronomer.
" His two nearest successors were warriors and
conquerors. The third was the son of that De-
maratos of whom we have spoken, and who, exiled
from Corinth, settled among the Tyrrhenians, and
afterward, being rich and eloquent, won over to
his interest the discontented and venal of the
Romans ; at all times the great majority. We
hear that he constructed of hewn stone a long, a
spacious, and a lofty channel, to convey the filth
of the town into the river : we hear, at the same
time, that the town itself was fabricated of hurdles
and mud, upon ruins of massy workmanship ;
that the best houses were roofed with rushes, and
that the vases of the temples were earthen. Now,
kings in general, and mostly those whose au-
thority is recent and insecure, think rather of
amusing the people by spectacles, or pampering
their appetites by feasts and donatives, or daz-
zling their imagination by pomp and splendour.
Theatres, not common sewers, suited best the
Romans. Their first great exploit was performed
in a theatre, at the cost of the Sabines. Moreover
they were religious, and stole every God and God-
dess they could lay their hands on. Surely so
considerate a person as the son of Demaratos
would have adapted his magnificence to the
genius of the people, who never cared about filth,
but were always most zealous in their devotions.
This we might imagine would occur to him as
more and more requisite on the capture of every
town or village ; for, when the Romans had killed
the inhabitants, they transferred the Gods very
diligently into their city, that they might not
miss their worshippers. Now the Gods must
have wanted room by degrees, and might not
have liked their quarters. Five hundred temples
could have been erected at less expense than the
building of this stupendous duct. Did the son of
Demaratos build it then ?
" The people are still ignorant, still barbarous,
still cruel, still intractable ; but they are acute in
the perception of their interests, and have es-
tablished at last a form of government more
resembling the Carthaginian than ours. As their
power does not arise from commerce, like the
power of Carthage, but strikes its roots into the
solid earth, its only sure foundation, it is much
less subject to the gusts of fortune, and will
recover from a shock more speedily. Neither is
there any great nation in contact with them.
When they were much weaker, the Tyrrhenians
conquered them, under the command of their
prince Porsena; but thought they could leave
them nowhere less inconveniently than in the
place they themselves had abandoned. The
Sabines, too, conquered them a second time, and
imposed a king over them, but were so unsus-
picious and inconsiderate as not to destroy the
city, and parcel out the inhabitants for Greece,
Sicily, and Africa.
" Living as they did on their farms, with no
hold upon the Romans but a king, who, residing
in the city with few of his own countrymen about
him, was rather a hostage than a ruler, his au-
thority was soon subverted. The Sabines at this
time are partly won by conquest, and partly do-
miciliated by consanguinity. The Tyrrhenians are
spent and effete. The government of the Romans,
from royal, is now become aristocratical ; and the
people, deprived of their lawful share in the lands
they conquered from so many enemies, swear
hatred to kings, and sigh for their return. One
flagrant crime consumed the regal authority ; a
thousand smouldering ones eat deep into the
consular. The military system stands apart,
admirable in its formation ; and, unless that too
falls, the Roman camps will move forward year
after year, until the mountains and the seas of
Italy shall not contain them. They are heirs to
the wealth of worn-out nations, and, when they
have seized upon their inheritance, they will fight
with braver. The Romans will be to Italy what the
Macedonians at some future day will be to Greece.
" The old must give way to the young, nations
like men, and men like leaves."
OXXXVIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Buildings of high antiquity have usually been
carried by the imagination much higher still.
But, by what we hear of the Tyrrhenians, we may
believe that in their country there are remains of
earlier times than in ours. Everything about them
shows a pampered and dissolute and decaying
people.
You will hardly think a sewer a subject for
curiosity and investigation : yet nothing in Eu-
rope is so vast and so well-constructed as the
sewer at Rome, excepting only the harbour walls
and propylaea, built recently here at Athens,
under the administration of Pericles. I have
asked him some further questions on the won-
derful work still extant in the city occupied by
the Romans. I will now give you his answer.
" Do not imagine that, unable as I am to ascer-
tain the time when the great sewer of Rome was
constructed, I am desirous of establishing one
opinion in prejudice of another, or forward in de-
nying that a rich Corinthian might have devised
so vast an undertaking. But in Corinth herself
we find nothing of equal magnitude, nothing at
all resembling its architecture : the Tyrrhenians,
who are stated to have been employed in building
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
411
it, have ceased for many ages to be capable of
anything similar ; all their great fabrics may be
dated more than a thousand years before the age
of Tarquin. I feel no interest in the support of
an hypothesis. Take it, or reject it ; I would
rather that you rejected it, if you would replace it
with another and a better. Many things pass
across the mind, which are neither to be detained
in it with the intention of insisting on them as
truths, nor are to be dismissed from it as idle and
intrusive. Whatever gives exercise to our
thoughts, gives them not only activity and
strength, but likewise range. We are not obliged
to continue on the training-ground ; nor on the
other hand is it expedient to obstruct it or plough
it up. The hunter, in quest of one species of
game, often finds another, and always finds what
is better, freshness and earnestness and animation.
Were I occupied in literature, I should little fear
stumbling in my ascent toward its untrodden and
abstruser scenery : being a politician, I know
that a single false step is a fall, and a fall is ruin.
We may begin wrong, and continue so with im-
punity ; but we must not deviate from wrong to
right."
He said this with one of his grave smiles ; and
then to me,
" A slender shrub, the ornament of your private
walk, may with moderate effort be drawn straight
again from any obliquity ; but such an attempt,
were it practicable, would crack every fibre in the
twisted tree that overshades the forest."
CXXXIX. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Who told you, Aspasia, that instead of poetry,
of history, of philosophy, our writers at Miletus
are beginning to compose a species of tales founded
on love or madness, and ending in miserable
death or wealthy marriage ; and that at the con-
clusion of the work a strict account is rendered of
all estrays, of all that had once come into it and
had disappeared 1 Very true, the people at large
run after the detail of adventures, and are as
anxious to see the termination as they are to
reach the bottom of an amphora : but I be-
seech you never to imagine that we are reduced
in our literature to such a state of destitution, as
to be without the enjoyment of those treasures
which our ancestors left behind them. No, As-
pasia, we are not yet so famished that a few
morsels of more nutritious food would overpower
us. I assure you, we do not desire to see a death
or a marriage set upon the table every day. We
are grateful for all the exercises and all the ex-
cursions of intellect, and our thanks are peculiarly
due to those by whose genius our pleasure in
them is increased or varied. If we have among
us any one capable of devising an imaginary tale,
wherein all that is interesting in poetry is united
with all that is instructive in history, such an
author will not supersede the poets and historians,
but will walk between them, and be cordially
hailed by both.
OXL. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
When we are dull we run to music. I am sure
you must be dull enough after so much of history
and of politics. My Pericles can discover portents
in Macedonia and Italy : Anaximander could see
mountains in the moon : I desire to cast my eyes
no farther than to Miletus.
Take your harp.
ODE TO MILETUS.
Maiden there was whom Jove
Illuded into love,
Happy and pure was she ;
Glorious from her the shore became,
And Helle lifted up her name
To shine eternal o'er the river-sea.
And many tears are shed
Upon thy bridal-bed,
Star of the swimmer in the lonely night !
Who with unbrnided hair
Wipedst a breast so fair,
Bounding with toil, more bounding with delight.
But they whose prow hath past thy straits
And, ranged before Byzantion's gates,
Bring to the God of sea the victim due,
Even from the altar raise their eyes,
And drop the chalice with surprise,
And at such grandeur have forgotten you.
At last there swells the hymn of praise,
And who inspires those sacred lays ?
" The founder of the walls ye see."
What human power could elevate
Those walls, that citadel, that gate ?
" Miletus, O my sons ! was he."
Hail then, Miletus ! hail beloved town,
Parent of me and mine J
But let not power alone be thy renown,
Nor chiefs of ancient line,
Nor visits of the Gods, unless
They leave tlieir thoughts below,
And teach us that we most should bless
Those to whom most we owe.
Restless is Wealth ; the nerves of Power
Sink, as a lute's in rain :
The Gods lend only for an hour
And then call back again
All else than Wisdom ; she alone,
In Truth's or Virtue's form,
Descending from the starry throne
Thro' radiance and thro' storm,
Remains as long as godlike men
Afford her audience meet,
Nor Time nor War tread down again
The traces of her feet.
Always hast thou, Miletus, been the friend,
Protector, guardian, father, of the wise ;
Therefore shall thy dominion never end
Till Fame, despoil'd of voice and pinion, dies.
With favouring shouts and flowers thrown fast behind,
Arctinos ran his race,
No wanderer he, alone and blind . .
And Melesander was untorn by Thrace.
There have been, but not here,
Rich men who swept aside the royal feast
On child's or bondman's breast,
Bidding the wise and aged disappear.
Revere the aged and the wise,
Aspasia ! but thy sandal is not worn
To trample on these things of scorn ;
By his own sting the fire-bound scorpion dies.
412
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
CXLI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
To-day there came to visit us a writer who is
not yet an author : his name is Thucydidea. We
understand that he has been these several years
engaged in preparation for a history. Pericles
invited him to meet Herodotus, when that won-
derful man had returned to our country, and
about to sail from Athens. Until then, it was
believed by the intimate friends of Thucydides
that he would devote his life to poetry, and such
is his vigour both of thought and of expression,
that he would have been the rival of Pindar.
Even now he is fonder of talking on poetry than
any other subject, and blushed when history was
mentioned. By degrees however he warmed, and
listened with deep interest to the discourse of
Pericles on the duties of a historian.
" May our first Athenian historian not be the
greatest !" said he " as the first of our dramatists
has been, in the opinion of many. ^Eschylus was
the creator of Tragedy, nor did she ever shine
with such splendour, ever move with such state-
liness and magnificence, as at her first apparition
on the horizon. The verses of Sophocles are
more elaborate, the language purer, the sentences
fuller and more harmonious ; but in loftiness of
soul, and in the awfulness with which he invests
his characters, JSschylus remains unrivalled and
unapproached.
" We are growing too loquacious, both on the
stage and off. We make disquisitions which ren-
der us only more and more dim-sighted, and ex-
cursions that only consume our stores. If some
among us who have acquired celebrity by their
compositions, calm, candid, contemplative men,
were to undertake the history of Athens from the
invasion of Xerxes, I should expect a fair and full
criticism on the orations of Antiphon, and expe-
rience no disappointment at their forgetting the
battle of Salamis. History, when she has lost her
Muse, will lose her dignity, her occupation, her
character, her name. She will wander about the
Agora ; she will start, she will stop, she will look
wild, she will look stupid, she will take languidly
to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations,
some of which ought to go before her, some to
follow, and all to stand apart. The field of His-
tory should not merely be well tilled, but well
peopled. None is delightful to me, or interesting,
in which I find not as many illustrious names as
have a right to enter it. We might as well in a
drama place the actors behind the scenes, and
listen to the dialogue there, as in a history push
valiant men back, and protrude ourselves with
husky disputations. Show me rather how great
projects were executed, great advantages gained,
and great calamities averted. Show me the gene-
rals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I
may bend to them in reverence ; tell me their
names, that I may repeat them to my children.
Teach me whence laws were introduced, upon
what foundation laid, by what custody guarded,
in what inner keep preserved. Let the books of
the treasury lie closed as religiously as the Sibyl's ;
leave weights and measures in the market-place,
Commerce in the harbour, the Arts in the light
they love, Philosophy in the shade : place History
on her rightful throne, and, at the sides of her,
Eloquence and War.
" Aspasia ! try your influence over Thucydides :
perhaps he would not refuse you the pleasure of
hearing a few sentences of the work he has begun.
I may be a plagiary if I am a listener, and yet I
would request permission to be present."
Thucydides was pleased at this deference, and
has promised to return soon.
CXLII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Polynices, a fishmonger, has been introduced
upon the stage. He had grown rich by his honesty
and good-nature ; and latterly, in this hot season,
had distributed among the poorer families the fish
he could not sell in the day-time at a reasonable
price. Others of the same trade cried out against
his unfairness, and he was insulted and beaten in
the market-place. So favourable an incident
could not escape the sagacious scent of our comic
writers. He was represented on the stage as
aiming at supreme power, riding upon a dolphin
through a stormy sea, with a lyre in one hand, a
dogfish in the other, and singing,
I, whom you see so high on
A dolphin's back, am not Arion,
But (should the favouring breezes blow me faster)
Cecropians ! by the Gods .' . . your master !
The people were indignant at this, and demanded
with loud cries the closing of the theatre, and the
abolition of comedies for ever.
What the abuse of the wisest and most power-
ful men in the community could not effect, the
abuse of a fishmonger has brought about.
The writers and actors of comedy came in a
body to Pericles, telling him'' they had seen the
madness of the people, and had heard with won-
der and consternation that it was supported by
some of the archons.
He answered, that he was sorry to see Comedy
with a countenance so altered as to make him
tremble for her approaching dissolution; her
descent into the regions of Tragedy. He won-
dered how the Archons should deem it expedient
to correct those, whose office and employment it
had hitherto been to correct them ; and regretted
his inability to interpose between two conflicting
authorities ; he must leave it entirely to the peo-
ple, who would soon grow calmer, and renew their
gratitude to their protectors and patrons.
In the midst of these regrets the theatre for
comedy was closed. The poets and actors, as
they departed, made various observations.
Dogs sweat and despots laugh inwardly," said
" Did you note his malice 1 the Sisy-
phus ! "
" We have nothing left for it," said Hipponax,
" but to fall on our knees among the scales, fins,
and bladders at the fish-stall."
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
413
" Better," said Aristophanes, " make up to
Eeligion, and look whether the haughty chieftain
has no vulnerable place in his heel for an arrow
from that quarter."
" He has broken your bow," said Pherecydes :
" take heed that the people do not snatch at the
string : they have shown that they can pull hard,
and may pull where we would not have them."
CXLIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Thucydides has just left us. He has been
reading to me a portion of history. At every
pause I nodded to Pericles, who, it seems to me,
avoided to remark it purposely, but who in reality
was so attentive and thoughtful that it was long
before he noticed me. When the reading was
over, I said to him,
" So, you two sly personages have laid your
sober heads together in order to deceive me ; as
if I am so silly, so ignorant of peculiarity in style,
as not to discover in an instant the fraud you
would impose on me. Thucydides !" said I "you
have read it well ; only one could have read it
better . . the author himself" . . shaking my
head at Pericles.
"0 Aspasia!" said our guest, "I confess to
you I was always a little too 'fond of praise, al-
though I have lived in retirement to avoid it until
due, wishing to receive the whole sum at once,
however long I might wait for it. But never did
I expect so much as this : it overturns the scale
by its weight."
" 0 Thucydides !" said Pericles " I am jealous
of Aspasia. No one before ever flattered her so
in my presence."
I entreated him to continue to write, and to
bring down his history to the present times.
" My reverence for Herodotus," said he, " makes
me stand out of his way and look at him from a
distance : I was obliged to take another model of
style. I hope to continue my work beyond the
present day, and to conclude it with some event
which shall have exalted our glory and have
established our supremacy in Greece."
" Go on," said I ; " fear no rivals. Others are
writing who fear not even Herodotus, nor greatly
indeed respect him. They will be less courteous
with you perhaps, whose crown is yet iii the gar-
den. The creatures run about and kick and
neigh in all directions, with a gadfly on them
ever since they left the race-course at Olympia.
At one moment they lay the muzzle softly and
languidly and lovingly upon each other's neck ;
at another they rear and bite like Python."
" I ought to experience no enmity from them,"
said -he, "before my time comes, theirs will be
over."
CXLIV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
I am pleased with your little note, and hope
you may live to write a commentary on the same
author. You speak with your usual. judgment,
in commending our historian for his discretion
in metaphors. Not indeed that his language is
without them, but they are rare, impressive, and
distinct. History wants them occasionally; in
oratory they are nearly as requisite as in poetry ;
they come opportunely wherever the object is
persuasion or intimidation, and no less where de-
light stands foremost. In writing a letter I would
neither seek nor reject one : but I think, if; more
than one came forward, I might decline its ser-
vices. If however it had come in unawares, I
would take no trouble to send it away. But we
should accustom ourselves to think always with
propriety, in little things as in great, and neither
be too solicitous of our dress in the house, nor
negligent because we are at home. I think it as
improper and indecorous to write a stupid or a
silly note to you, as one in a bad hand or on
coarse paper. Familiarity ought to have another
and worse name, when it relaxes in its attentive-
ness to please.
We began with metaphors, I will end with
one. Do not look back over the letter to see
whether I have not already used my privilege of
nomination, whether my one is not there. Take
then a simile instead. It is a pity that they are
often lamps which light nothing, and show only
the nakedness of the walls they are nailed against.
CXLV. ASPASIA TO. CLEONE.
Sophocles left me about an hour ago.
Hearing that he was with Pericles on business,
I sent to request he would favour me with a visit
when he was disengaged. After he had taken a
seat, I entreated him to pardon me, expressing a
regret that we hardly ever saw him, knowing as I
did that no person could so ill withstand the
regrets of the ladies. I added a hope that, as
much for my sake as for the sake of Pericles, he
would now and then steal an hour from the Muses
in our behalf.
" Lady ! " said he, " it would only be changing
the place of assignation."
" I shall begin with you," said I, "just as if I
had a right to be familiar, and desire of you to
explain the meaning of a chorus in King (Edipus,
which, although I have read the tragedy many
times, and have never failed to be present at the
representation, I do not quite comprehend."
I took up a volume from the table . .
" No," said I, " this is Electro, : give me the
other." We unrolled it together.
" Here it is : what is the meaning of these
words about the Laws ? "
He looked over them, first without opening his
lips ; then he read them in alow voice to himself;
and then, placing the palm of his left hand against
his forehead,
" Well ! I certainly did think I understood it
at the time I wrote it."
Cleone ! if you could see him you would fall in
love with him. Fifteen olympiads have not quite
run away with all his youth. What a noble
presence ! what an open countenance ! what a
414
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
brow ! what a mouth ! what a rich harmonious
voice ! what a heart, full of passion and of
poetry!
OXLVI. REPLY OF PERICLB8 TO THB ACCUSATION
OF CLEON.
There is a race of men, (and they appear to
have led colonies into many lands,) whose courage
is always in an inverse ratio to their danger.
There is also a race who deem that a benefit done
to another is an injury done to them. Would
you affront them, speak well of their friends ;
would you deprive them of repose, labour and
watch incessantly for their country.
Cleon ! in all your experience, in all the terri-
tories you have visited, in all the cities and islands
you have conquered for us, have you never met
with any such people? And yet, 0 generous
Cleon ! I have heard it hinted that the observa-
tion is owing to you.
Were my life a private one, were my services
done toward my friends alone, had my youth
been exempt as yours hath been from difficulty and
peril, I might never have displeased you ; I might
never have been cited to defend my character
against the foulest of imputations. 0 Athenians !
let me recall your attention to every word that
Cleon has uttered. I know how difficult is the
task, where so much dust is blown about by so
much wind. The valorous Cleon has made your
ears tingle and ring with Harmodius and Aristo-
giton. I am ignorant which of the two he would
take for imitation, the handsomer or the braver.
He stalks along with great bustle and magnificence,
but he shows the dagger too plainly : he neglects
to carry it in myrtle.
In your astonishment at this sudden procedure,
there are doubtless many of you who are unable to
comprehend the title of the denunciation. Let
me tell you what it is.
"Pericles, son of Xanthippus" . . (may all
Greece hear it ! may every herald in every city
proclaim it at every gate!) "Pericles, son of
Xanthippus, is accused of embezzling the public
money, collected, reserved, and set apart, for the
building and decoration of the Parthenon. The
accuser is Cleon, son of Cleaeretus."
The scribe has designated the father of our
friend by this name, in letters very legible, other-
wise I should have suspected it was the son of
Cligenes, the parasite of the wealthy, the oppressor
of the poor, the assailer of the virtuous, and the
ridicule of all. Charges more substantial might
surely be brought against me, and indeed were
threatened. But never shall I repent of having,
by my advice, a little decreased the revenues of
the commonwealth, in lowering the price of ad-
mission to the theatres, and in offering to the
more industrious citizens, out of the public trea-
sury, the trifle requisite for this enjoyment. In
the theatre let them see before them the crimes
and the calamities of Power, the vicissitudes of
Fortune, and the sophistries of the Passions. Let
it be there, and there only, that the just man
suffers, and that murmurs are heard against the
dispensations of the Gods.
But I am forgetting the accusation. Will Cleon
do me the favour to inform you in what place I
have deposited, or in what manner I have spent,
the money thus embezzled 1 Will Cleon tell you
that I alone had the custody of it ; or that I had
anything at all to do in the making up of the
accounts ? Will Cleon prove to you that I am
now richer than I was thirty years ago, excepting
in a portion of the spoil, won bravely by the armies
you decreed I should command ; such a portion
as the laws allow, and the soldiers carry to their
general with triumphant acclamations. Cleon
has yet to learn all this ; certainly his wealth is
derived from no such sources ; far other acclama-
tions does Cleon court ; those of the idle, the dis-
solute, the malignant, the cowardly, and the false.
But if he seeks them in Athens, and not beyond,
his party is small indeed, and your indignation
will drown their voices. What need have I of
pilfer and peculation? Am I avaricious? am I
prodigal? Does the indigent citizen, does the
wounded soldier, come to my door and return
unsatisfied ? Point at me, Cleon ! and tell your
friends to mark that. Let them mark it ; but for
imitation, not for Calumny. Let them hear, for
they are idle enough, whence I possess the means
of relieving the unfortunate, raising the dejected,
and placing men of worth and genius (too often
in that number !) where all their fellow-citizens
may distinguish them. My father died in my
childhood ; careful guardians superintended it,
managing my affairs with honesty and diligence.
The earliest of my ancestors, of whom anything
remarkable is recorded, was Cleisthenes, whom
your forefathers named general with Solon, order-
ing them to conquer Cirrha. He devoted his
portion of the spoils to the building of a portico.
I never have heard that he came by night and
robbed the labourers he had paid by day : perhaps
Cleon has. He won afterward at the Olympian
games : I never have ascertained that he bribed
his adversaries. These actions are not in history
nor in tradition : but Cleon no doubt has autho-
rities that outvalue tradition and history. Some
years afterward, Cleisthenes proclaimed his deter-
mination to give in marriage his daughter Aga-
rista to the worthiest man he could find, whether
at home or abroad. It is pity that Cleon was not
living in those days. Agarista and her father, in
default of him, could hear of none worthier than
Megacles, son of Alcmaeon. Their riches all
descended to me, and some perhaps of their better
possessions. These at least, with Cleon's leave, I
would retain ; and as much of the other as may be
serviceable to my friends, without being dangerous
to the commonwealth.
CXLVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Surely of all our pursuits and speculations, the
most instructive is, how the braver pushed back
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
415
their sufferings, how the weaker bowed their
heads and asked for sympathy, how the soldier
smote his breast at the fallacies of glory, and how
the philosopher paused and trembled at the depths
of his discoveries. But the acquirement of such
instruction presses us down to the earth. We see
the basest and most inert of mankind the tor-
mentors and consumers of the loftiest : the worm
at last devours what the lion and tiger paused at
and fled from. But Pericles for the present is
safe and secure ; and I am too happy for other
thoughts or reflections. Anaxagoras also is only
doubted : he may disbelieve in some mysteries,
but he is surely too wise a man to divulge it.
OXLVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Now we are quiet and at peace again, I wish
you would look into your library for more pieces
of poetry. To give you some provocation, I will
transcribe a few lines on the old subject, which,
like old fountains, is inexhaustible, while those of
later discover}' are in danger of being cut off at
the first turn of the plough.
KKINNA TO LOVE.
Who breathes to thee the holiest prayer,
O Love ! is ever least thy care.
Alas ' I may not ask thee why 'tis so . .
Because a fiery scroll I see
Hung at the throne of Destiny,
Reason with Love and register with Woe.
Few question thee, for thou art strong,
And, laughing loud at right and wrong,
Seizest, and dasbest down, the rich, the poor ;
Thy sceptre's iron studs alike
The meaner and the prouder strike,
And wise and simple fear thee and adore.
CXLIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Among the poems of Sappho I find the follow-
ing, but written in a different hand from the rest.
It pleases me at least as much as any of them ; if
it is worse, I wish you would tell me in what it is
so. How many thoughts might she have turned
over and tossed away for it ! Odious is the econo-
my in preserving all the scraps of the intellect,
and troublesome the idleness of tacking them
together. Sappho is fond of seizing, as she runs
on, the most prominent and inviting flowers : she
never stops to cut and trim them : she throws
twenty aside for one that she fixes in her bosom ;
and what is more singular, her pleasure at their
beauty seems never to arise from another's admi-
ration of it. See it or not see it, there it is.
Sweet girls ! upon whose breast that God descends
Whom first ye pray to come and next to spare,
O tell me whither now his course he bends,
Tell me what hymn shall thither waft my prayer !
Alas ! my voice and lyre alike he flies,
And only in my dreams, nor kindly then, replies.
CL. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Instead of expatiating on the merits of the
verses you last sent me, pr, on the other hand, of
looking for any pleasure in taking them to pieces,
I venture to hope you will be of my opinion, that
these others are of equal authenticity. Neither
do I remember them in the copy you possessed
when we were together.
SAPPHO TO HESPERUS.
I have beheld thee in the morning hour
A solitary star, with thankless eyes,
Ungrateful as I am ! who bade thee rise
When sleep all night had wandered from my bower.
Can it be true that thou art he
Who shinest now above the sea
Amid a thousand, but more bright ?
Ah yes, the very same art thou
That heard me then, and nearest now . .
Thou seemest, star of love ! to throb with light.
Sappho is not the only poetess who has poured
forth her melodies to Hesperus, or who had reason
to thank him. I much prefer these of hers to what
appear to have been written by some confident
man, and (no doubt) on a feigned occasion.
Hesperus, hail ! thy winking light
Best befriends the lover,
Whom the sadder Moon for spite
Gladly would discover.
Thou art fairer far than she,
Fairer far, and chaster :
She may guess who smiled on me,
I know who embraced her.
Pan of Arcady . . 'twas Pan,
In the tamarisk bushes . .
Bid her tell thee, if she can,
Where were then her blushes.
And, were I inclined to tattle,
I could name a second,
Whom asleep with sleeping cattle
To her cave she beckon 'd.
Hesperus, hail ! thy friendly ray
Watches o'er the lover,
Lest the nodding leaves betray,
Lest the Moon discover.
Phryne heard my kisses given
Acte's rival bosom . .
'Twas the buds, I swore by heaven,
Bursting into blossom.
What she heard, and half espied
By the gleam, she doubted,
And with arms uplifted, cried
How they must have sprouted !
Hesperus, hail again ! thy light
Best befriends the lover,
Whom the sadder Moon for spite
Gladly would discover.
The old poets are contented with narrow
couches : but these couches are not stuffed with
chaff which lasts only for one season. They do
not talk to us from them when they are half-
asleep ; but think it more amusing to entertain
us in our short visit with lively thoughts and
fancies, than to enrich us with a paternal prolixity
of studied and stored-up meditations.
Oil. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.
My Alcibiades, if I did not know your good
temper from a whole life's experience, I should be
416
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
afraid of displeasing you by repeating what I have
heard. This is, that you pronounce in public as
well as in private a few words somewhat differentlj
from our custom. You can hot be aware how much
hostility you may excite against you by such a
practice. Remember, we are Athenians ; and do
not let us believe that we have finer organs
quicker perceptions, or more discrimination, than
our neighbours in the city. Every time we pro
nounce a word differently from another, we show
our disapprobation of his manner, and accuse him
of rusticity. In all common things we must do
as others do. It is more barbarous to undermine
the stability of a language than of an edifice that
hath stood as long. This is done by the intro-
duction of changes. Write as others do, but only
as the best of others : and if one eloquent man,
forty or fifty years ago, spoke and wrote differently
from the generality of the present, follow him,
though alone, rather than the many. But in
pronunciation we are not indulged in this lati-
tude of choice ; we must pronounce as those do
who favour us with their audience. Never hazard
a new expression in public : I know not any
liberty we can take, even with our nearest friends,
more liable to the censure of vanity. Whatever
we do we must do from authority or from analogy.
A young man, however studious and intelligent,
can know, intrinsically and profoundly, but little
of the writers who constitute authority. For my
part, in this, our country, where letters are far
more advanced than in any other, I can name no
one whatever who has followed up to their origin
the derivation of words, or studied with much
success their analogy. I do not, I confess, use all
the words that others do, but I never use one that
others do not. Remember, one great writer may
have employed a word which a greater has avoided,
or, not having avoided it, may have employed in
a somewhat different signification. It would be
needless to offer you these remarks, if our language
were subject to the capriciousness of courts, the
humiliation of sycophants, and the defilement of
slaves. Another may suffer but little detriment
by the admission of barbarism to its franchises ;
but ours is attic, and the words, like the citizens
we employ, should at once be popular and select.
CLII. CLEONE TO AgPASIA.
The poetical merits of the unhappy Lesbian are
sufficiently well known. Thanks, and more than
thanks, if indeed there is anything more on earth,
are due for even one scrap from her. But allow
me, what is no great delicacy or delight to me, a
reprehension, a censure. An admirer can make
room for it only when it comes from an admirer.
Sappho, in the most celebrated of her Odes, tells
us that she sweats profusely. Now surely no
female, however low-born and ill-bred, in short
however Eolian, could without indecorousness
speak of sweating and spitting, or any such things.
We never ought to utter, in relation to ourselves,
what we should be ashamed of being seen in.
Writing of war and contention, such an expression
is unobjectionable. To avoid it by circumlocu-
tion, or by any other word less expressive and
direct, would be the most contemptible and
ludicrous of pedantry: and, were it anywhere
reduced to practice in the conversation of ordinary
life, it would manifestly designate a coarse-grained
unpolishable people. There is nothing in poetry,
or indeed in society, so unpleasant as affectation.
In poetry it arises from a deficiency of power and
a restlessness of pretension ; in conversation, from
insensibility to the Graces, from an intercourse
with bad company, and a misinterpretation of
better.
'CLIII. ASPASIA TO CI/EOHE.
You desire to know what portion of history it
is the intention of Thucydides to undertake. He
began with the earlier settlers of Greece, but he
has now resolved to employ this section as merely
the portico to his edifice. The Peloponesian war
appears to him worthier of the historian than any
other. He is of opinion that it must continue for
many years and comprehend many important
events, for Pericles is resolved to wear out the
energy of the Spartans by protracting it. At
present it has been carried on but few months,
with little advantage to either side, and much
distress to both. What our historian has read to
us does not contain any part of these transactions,
which however he carefully notes down as they
occur. We were much amused by a speech he
selected for recitation, as one delivered by an
orator of the Corinthians to the Ephors of Lace-
daemon, urging the justice and necessity of hosti-
lities. Never was the Athenian character painted
in such true and lively colours. In composition
tiis characteristic is brevity, yet the first sentence
of the volume runs into superfluity. The words,
;o the best of my recollection, are these :
" Thucydides of Athens has composed a his-
tory of the war between the Peloponesians and
Athenians."
This is enough ; yet he adds,
"As conducted by each of the belligerents."
Of course : it could not be conducted by one only.
I observed that in the fourth sentence he went
rom the third person to the first.
By what I could collect, he thinks the Pelopo-
nesian war more momentous than the Persian :
yet had Xerxes prevailed against us, not a vestige
would be existing of liberty or civilisation in the
world. If Sparta should, there will be little
mough ; and a road will be thrown open to the
>arbarians of the north, Macedonians and others
with strange names. We have no great reason
o fear it ; although the policy of Thebes, on whom
much depends, is ungenerous and unwise.
He said moreover that "transactions of an
larlier time are known imperfectly, and were of
imall importance either in the wars or anything
else."
Yet without these wars, or some other of these
ransactions, our Miletus and Athens, our Pericles
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
and Thucydides, would not be ; so much does one
thing depend upon another. I am little disposed
to overvalue the potency and importance of the
eastern monarchies ; but surely there is enough
to excite our curiosity, and interest our inquiries,
in the fall of Chaldaea, the rise of Babylon, and
the mysteries of Egypt . . not indeed her mysteries
in theology, which are impostures there as else-
where, but the mysteries in arts and sciences,
which will outlive the Gods. Barbarians do not
hold steadily before us any moral or political
lesson; but they serve as graven images, pro-
tuberantly eminent and gorgeously uncouth, to
support the lamp placed on them by History and
Philosophy. If we knew only what they said and
did, we should turn away with horror and disgust :
but we pound their mummies to colour our narra-
tives ; and we make them as useful in history as
beasts are in fable.
Thucydides shows evidently, by his preliminary
observations, that he considers the Trojan war
unimportant. Yet, according to Homer, the
Grecian troops amounted to above a hundred
thousand. In reality, so large a force hath never
been assembled in any naval expedition, nor even
one half. How was it provisioned at Aulis 1 how,
on the shores of the Troad] And all these
soldiers, with chariots and horses, were embarked
for Troy a few years after the first ship of war left
the shores of Greece ! yes, a very few years indeed ;
for the Argo had among her crew the brothers of
Helen, who can not well be supposed to have been
five years older than herself. It is of rare occur-
rence, even in the climate of Sparta, that a mother
bears children after so long an interval ; and we
have no reason to believe that such a time had
elapsed between the brothers and their sister. Sup-
pose the twins to have been twenty-two years old
(for they had become celebrated for horsemanship
and boxing) and Helen seventeen, you will find
little space left between the expeditions.
But away with calculation. We make a bad
bargain when we change poetry for truth in the
affairs of ancient times, and by no means a good
one in any.
Remarkable men of remote ages are collected
together out of different countries within the
same period, and perform simultaneously the
same action. On an accumulation of obscure
deeds arises a wild spirit of poetry ; and images
and names burst forth and spread themselves,
which carry with them something like enchant-
ment, far beyond the infancy of nations. What
was vague imagination settles at last and is
received for history. It is difficult to effect and
idle to attempt the separation : it is like breaking
off a beautiful crystallisation from the vault of
some intricate and twilight cavern, out of mere
curiosity to see where the accretion terminates
and the rock begins.
CUV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
We have lost another poet, and have none left
beside the comic. Euripides is gone to the court
of Archelaiis. A few years ago he gained the
prize against all competitors. He was hailed by
the people as a deliverer, for subverting the
ascendancy and dominion which Sophocles had
acquired over them. The Athenians do not like to
trust any man with power for life. Sophocles is
now an old man, sixty years of age at the least, and
he had then been absolute in the theatre for above
a quarter of a century. What enthusiasm ! what
acclamations! for overthrowing the despot who
had so often made them weep and beat their
breasts. He came to visit us on the day of his
defeat : Euripides was with us at the time.
" Euripides," said he, " we are here alone,
excepting our friends Aspasia and Pericles. I
must embrace you, now it can not seem an act of
ostentation."
He did so, and most cordially.
" I should be glad to have conquered you,"
continued he ; "it would have been very glorious."
I never saw Pericles more moved. These are
the actions that shake his whole frame, and make
his eyes glisten. Euripides was less affected. He
writes tenderly, but is not tender. There are
hearts that call for imagination : there are others
that create it.
I must abstain from all reflections that fall too
darkly on the departed. We may see him no
more perhaps : I am sorry for it. He did not
come often to visit us, nor indeed is there anything
in his conversation to delight or interest me. He
has not the fine manners of Sophocles ; nor the
open unreserved air, which Pericles tells me he
admired so much in the soldierly and somewhat
proud ^Eschylus ; grave and taciturn, I hear, like
himself, unless when something pleased him ; and
then giving way to ebullitions and bursts of
rapture, and filling everyone with it round about.
The movers and masters of our souls have
surely a right to throw out their limbs as care-
lessly as they please, on the world that belongs to
them, and before the ereatures they have animated.
It is only such insects as petty autocrats that
feel oppressed by it, and would sting them for it.
Pericles is made of the same clay. He can not
quite overcome his stateliness, but he bends the
more gracefully for bending slowly.
When I think of Euripides, I think how short
a time it is since he was hailed as a deliverer, and
how odious he is become for breaking in upon our
affections at an unseasonable hour, and for carry-
ing our hearts into captivity. All the writers of
the day were resolved to humble him, and ran
about from magistrate to magistrate, to raise
money enough for the magnificent representation
of his rival . . I have forgotten the man's name.
Pericles never thwarts the passions and prejudices
of the citizens. In his adolescence he visited the
humble habitation of the venerable JSschylus :
throughout life he has been the friend of Sophocles :
418
PERICLES AND ASP ASIA.
he has comforted Euripides in his defeats, telling
him that by degrees he would teach the people to
be better judges: he rejoiced with him on his first
victory, reminding him of his prophecy, and
remarking that they two, of all the Athenian?, had
shown the most patience and had been the best
rewarded for it.
We hope he may return.
• l.v. ASPA8IA TO CLEONE.
The two pieces I am about to transcribe are of
styles very different. I find them among the
collections of Pericles, but am ignorant of the
authors.
Far from the harp's and from the singer's noise,
The bird of Pallas lights on ruin'd towers.
I know a wing that flaps o'er girls and boys
To harp and song and kiss in myrtle bowers ;
When age is come, I too will sit apart,
While age is absent, that shall fan my heart.
CUPID AND L1GEIA.
Cupid had played some wicked trick one day
On sharp Ligeia ; and I heard her say,
" You little rogue ! you ought to be unsext."
He was as spiteful tho' not quite so vest,
And said (but held half-shut the folding-doors)
" Ah then my beard will never grow like yours ! "
CLVI. FIRST SPEECH OP PERICLES TO THE ATHENIANS.
On the Declarations of Corinth and Lacedamon.
The Regency at Lacedaemon has resolved to
make an irruption into Attica, if we attempt any-
thing adverse to Potidaea, hearing that on the
declaration of hostilities by Corinth, we ordered
the Potidaeans, whose infidelity we had detected,
to demolish the wall facing Pallene. In reliance
on their treason, Perdiccas and the Corinthians
had entered into confederacy, and were exciting
the defection of our Thracian auxiliaries. Per-
diccas prevailed with the Chalcidians to dismantle
all their towns upon the seaside, and to congregate
in Olynthos. We made a truce, and afterward a
treaty, with Perdiccas : he evacuates the territory
he had invaded ; we strictly beleaguer the
revolted Potidaea. The ephors of Lacedaemon
now summon to appear before them not only
their allies, but whosoever has any complaint to
prefer against the Athenians. Hereupon the
Megaraeans come forward, and protest that they
have been prohibited from our markets, contrary
to treaty; and what is worse, that we exclude
them from the possession of Potidaea, so con-
venient for extending their power and authority
into Thrace. They appear, in their long oration,
to have forgotten nothing, unless that they had
murdered our citizens and ambassadors.
By what right, 0 Athenians, is Lacedaemon our
judge ] Corinth may impell her into war against
us; but Corinth can never place her on the
judgment-seat of Greece; nor shall their united
voices make us answer to the citation. We will
declare, not to her but to all, our reasons and our
rights. The Corcyraeans had erected a trophy at
Leucimna, and had spared after the victory their
Corinthian captives : they had laid waste the
territory of Leucas and they had burnt the
arsenal of Cyllene. Meanwhile the Corinthians
sent ambassadors to every power in the Pelopo-
nese, and enlisted mariners for their service upon
every coast. If valour and skill and constancy
could have availed the Corcyraeans, they would
have continued to abstain, as they had ever done,
from all alliances. They only sought ours when
destruction was imminent ; knowing that, in
policy and humanity, we never could allow the
extinction of one Grecian state, nor consequently
the aggrandisement and preponderance of another ;
and least so when the insolence of Corinth had
threatened our naval ascendancy (by which all
Greece was saved), and the rivalry of Lacedeemon
our equality on land. By our treaty with the
Lacedaemonians it is provided that, if any com-
munity be not in alliance with one of the
parties, it may confederate with either, at its dis-
cretion ; and this compact it was agreed should be
binding not only on the principals but likewise on
the subordinates. In such a predicament stands
Corcyra.
It might behove us to chastise the inhumanity
of a nation which, like Corinth, would devour her
own offspring ; but it certainly is most just and
most expedient, when, instead of reasoning or
conferring with us on the propriety of our inter-
ference, she runs at once to Sparta, conspiring with
her to our degradation, and, if possible, to our
ruin. Satisfactorily to demonstrate our justice
and moderation, I advise that we stipulate with
Corcyra for mutual defence, never for aggression,
and admitting no article which, even by a forced
intepretation, may contravene our treaty with
Lacedaemon.
CLVII. SECOND SPEECH OP PERICLES.
The jealousy that Sparta hath ever entertained
against us, was declared most flagrantly, when
Leotychides, who commanded the Grecian forces
at Mycale, drew away with him all the confederates
of the Peloponese. We continued to assail the
barbarians until we drove them from Sestos, their
last hold upon the Hellespont. It was then, and
then only, that the Athenians brought back again
from miserable refuge their wives and children,
and began to rebuild their habitations, and walls
for their defence. Did the Spartans view this
constancy and perseverance with admiration and
with pity, as the patriotic, the generous, the
humane, would do 1 Did they send ambassadors
to congratulate your fathers on their valour, their
endurance, their prosperous return, their ultimate
security? Ambassadors they sent indeed, but
insisting that our walls should never rise again
from their ruins. A proposal so unjust and
arrogant we treated with scorn and indignation,
when our numbers were diminished and our
wealth exhausted : shall we bend to their decisions
and obey their orders now ] If their power of
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
419
injuring us were in proportion to their malice,
their valour to their pride, or their judgment to
their ferocity, then were they most formidable
indeed : but turn we to the examination of facts.
Having occasion to reduce to obedience a few
revolted Helotes in the city of Ithome, to whom
did they apply! to the Athenians; for they them-
selves were utterly ignorant how to attack or even
to approach a fortress. Even then they showed
their jealousy, rewarding our promptitude to
assist them by the ignominious dismissal of our
troops. What was the consequence 1 a ten years
siege. And these, 0 Athenians! are the men who
now threaten the Acropolis and Piraeus !
I can compare the Lacedaemonians to nothing
more fitly than to the heads of spears without the
shafts. There would be abundantly the power of
doing mischief, were there only the means and
method of directing it. Where these are wanting,
we have no better cause for apprehension than at
the sparks of fire under our horse's hoof, lest they
produce a conflagration; which indeed they might
do, if by their nature they were durable and
directable.
Let us see what powerful aid our enemies are
expecting ; what confederates they are stirring up
against us. The Megaraeans, who left their
alliance for ours; the Megaraeans, whom we
defended against the Corinthians, and whose walls
we constructed at our own expense from Megara
to Nisaea. Is it on the constancy or on the
gratitude of this people that Lacedaemon in her
wisdom so confidently relies "? No sooner had we
landed in Eubaea, than intelligence was brought
us that the Peloponesians were about to make an
incursion into Attica, and that the Athenian
garrison was murdered by the Megaraeans, who
already had formed a junction with the Corin-
thians, Sicyonians, and Epidaurians. We sailed
homeward, and discomfited the Peloponesians;
returned, and reduced Eubaea. A truce for thirty
years was granted to Lacedaemon, restoring to
her Nisaea, Calchis, Pegai, and Trcezene. Five
years afterward a war broke out between the
Samians and Miletus. Justice and our treaties
obliged us to rescue that faithful and unfortunate
city from the two-fold calamity that impended
over her. Many of the Samians were as earnest
in imploring our assistance as the Milesians were :
for, whatever might be the event of the war, they
were sure of being reduced to subjection; if con-
quered, by a wronged and exasperated enemy ; if
conquerors, by the king. A rapacious and
insolent oligarchy saw no other means of retaining
its usurped authority, than by extending it with
rigour ; and were conscious that it must fall from
under them unless the sceptre propped it. Honest
men will never seek such aid, and free men will
never endure such.
There may be nations monarchal and aristocra-
tical, where the public good is little thought of,
and often impeded by restless steps toward per-
sonal or family aggrandisement. But there is no
man, even among these, so barbarous and inhu-
man, as to be indifferent to the approbation of
some one in his city beloved above all the rest,
from whom the happy rush forward for admira-
tion, the less fortunate are gratified with a tear :
life, they would tell us, is well lost for either.
We Athenians have loftier views, and, I will not say
purer, but the same and more ardent aspirations.
In the late brief war, the greater part of you
here present have won immortal glory ; and let us
not believe that those who fell from your ranks in
battle are yet insensible to the admiration and
the gratitude of their countrymen. No one among
us, whatever services he may have rendered to
Athens, has received such praises, such benedic-
tions, such imperishable rewards, as they have.
Happy men ! they are beyond the reach of calumny
and reverses. There is only one sad reflection
resting with them : they can serve their country
no more. How high was the value of their lives !
they knew it, and bartered them for renown. We,
in this war unjustly waged against us, shall be
exposed to fewer dangers, but more privations.
In the endurance of these, our manliness will be
put severely to the proof, and virtues which have
not been called forth in fifty years, virtues which
our enemies seem to have forgotten that we possess,
must again come into action, as if under the eyes
of a Themistocles and an Aristides. We have all
done much ; but we have all done less than we
can do, ought to do, and will do.
Archidamos, king of Sparta, now about to
march against us, is bound to me by the laws of
hospitality. Should he, whether in remembrance
of these, or in the design of rendering me sus-
pected, abstain from inflicting on my possessions
the violence he is about to inflict on the rest of
Attica, let it be understood that henceforth I have
no private property in this land, but, in the pre-
sence of the Gods, make a free donation of it to
the commonwealth. Let all withdraw their cattle,
corn, and other effects, from the country, and
hold Athens as one great citadel, from which the
Deity who presides over her hath forbidden us
to descend.
CLVIII. ORATION OF PERICLES,
On the approach of the Lacedcemoniant to Athens.
Long ago, and lately, and in every age inter-
vening, 0 Athenians ! have you experienced the
jealousy and insolence of Lacedaemon. She listens
now to the complaints of Corinth, because the
people of Corcyra will endure no longer her vexa-
tions, and because their navy, in which the
greater part of the mariners have fought and
conquered by the side of ours, seek refuge in the
Piraeus. A little while ago she dared to insist
that we should admit the ships of Megara to our
harbour, her merchandise to our markets, when
Megara had broken her faith with us, and gone
over to the Spartans. Even this indignity we
might perhaps have endured. We told the Lace-
daemonians that we would admit the Megaraeans
to that privilege, if the ports of Sparta would ad-
E R 2
420
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
mit ns and our allies : although wo and our allies
were never in such relationship with her, and
therefore could never have fallen off from her. She
disdained to listen to a proposal so reasonable, to
a concession so little to be expected from us.
Resolved to prove to her that generosity, and not
fear, dictated it, we chastised the perfidious
Megara.
The king of the Lacedaemonians, Archidamos,
a wiser and honester man than any of his people,
is forced to obey the passions he would control ;
and an army of sixty thousand men is marching
under his command to ravage Attica. The braver
will rather burn their harvests than transfer to a
sanguinary and insatiable enemy the means of
inflicting evil on their relatives and friends. Few,
I trust, are base enough, sacrilegious enough, to
treat as guests, those whom you before men and
Gods denounce as enemies. We will receive
within our walls the firm and faithful. And now
let the orators who have blamed our expenditure
in the fortification of the city, tell us again that
it was improvident. They would be flying
in dismay had not those bulwarks been raised
effectually. Did it require any sagacity to fore-
see that Athens would be the envy of every state
around ] Was there any man so ignorant as' not
to know that he who has lost all hia enemies will
soon lose all his energy ] and that men are no
more men when they cease to act, than rivers are
rivers when they cease to run? The forces of our
assailants must be broken against our walls. Our
fleets are our farms henceforward, until the Spar-
tans find that, if they can subsist on little, they
can not so well subsist on stones and ashes.
Their forces are vast ; but vast forces have never
much hurt us. Marathon and Plataea were
scarcely wide enough for our trophies ; a victo-
rious army, an unvanquished fleet, Miltiades him-
self, retired unsuccessful from the rock of Paros.
Shall we tremble then before a tumultuous multi-
tude, ignorant how cities are defended or assailed ?
Shall we prevent them from coming to their dis-
comfiture and destruction 1 Firmly do I believe
that the Protectress of our city leads them against
it to avenge her cause. They may ravage the
lands ; they can not cultivate, they can not hold
them. Mischief they will do, and great; much of
our time, much of our patience, much of our per-
severance, and something of our courage, are
required. At present I do not number this event
among our happiest. We must owe our glory
partly to ourselves and partly to our enemies.
They offer us the means of greatness ; let us ac-
cept their offer. Brief danger is the price of long
security. The countryman, from the mists of the
morning, not only foretells the brightness of the
day, but discerns in them sources of fertility ;
and he remembers in his supplications to the im-
mortal Gods to thank them alike for both blessings.
It is thus, 0 men of Athens, that you have con-
stantly looked up at calamities. Never have they
depressed you : always have they chastened your
hearts, always have they exalted your courage.
Impelled by the breath of Xerxes, the locusts of
Asia consumed your harvests ; your habitations
crumbled away as they swarmed along: the
temples of the Gods lay prostrate; the Gods them-
selves bowed and fell : the men of Athens rose
higher than ever. They had turned their faces
in grief from the scene of devastation and impiety ;
but they listened to a provident valour, and the
myriads of insects that had plagued them were
consumed.
There is affront in exhortation. I have spoken.
OLIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
On the shore overlooking the fountain of Are-
thusa there is a statue of JSschylus. An Athenian
who went to visit it, crowned it with bay and ivy,
and wrote these verses at the base.
Stranger ! Athenian hands adorn
A bard thou knowest well.
Ah ! do not ask where he was born,
For we must blush to telL
Proud are we, but we place no pride
On good, or wise, or brave ;
Hence what Cephisus had denied
T was Arethusa gave.
You remember the story of a barbarous king,
who would have kept the Muses in captivity.
His armoury furnished an enemy of the poet
Lysis with these materials for skirmishing.
A curse upon the king of old
Who would have kidnapp'd all the Muses !
Whether to barter them for gold
Or keep them for his proper uses.
Lysis ! aware he meant them ill,
Birds they became, and flew away . .
Thy Muse alone continues still
A titmouse to this very day.
Do not call me sly and perfidious, if, after
tickling you with this feather, I have not only
permitted a wicked thought to enter my head, but
have also devised a place for it, if possible, in
yours. The lines below are none of my composi-
tion, as you may well imagine from my character.
There is in kisses a delight ;
A fragrance of the wine
Quaff by the happier in the genial night
Is there ; may these be mine !
What said I? empty kisses? none are empty.
Gods ! all the just who give
That graceful feast from every grief exempt ye !
Blest, honour'd, grant they live !
And now I have written them fairly out, I am
afraid of sending them : for I remember that if ever
I uttered such a word as kiss, you wondered at me.
Really and truly it was as far from wonder as any-
thing could be, and so it will be now ; but it was
very near a slight displeasure, which now it must
not be.
CLX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
After an interval of nearly three years, Comedy
may re-appear on the stage. It is reported that
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
421
Pericles obtained this indulgence from the archons;
and in consequence of it he is now represented by
the dramatists as a Jupiter, who lightens and
thunders, and what not. Before he became a
Jupiter, I believe he was represented as the enemy
of that God, and most of the others ; and the
people having no public amusement, no diversion
to carry off their ill-humours, listened gloomily to
such discourses. Pericles noted it, and turned
them into their fold again, and had them piped
to ; but not before the fly entered the fleece.
CLXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Twenty days, 0 Cleone, twenty days are not
elapsed, since Anaxagoras told me that he was
about to leave Attica for the Propontis. I urged
him to alter his resolution. He affirmed that his
presence in the house of Pericles had brought a
cloud over it, which would only disappear by his
absence. " Of late" said he "I have received so
much kindness from the philosophers, that I begin
to suspect a change of fortune, by no means in my
favour. I must fly while the weather is temper-
ate, as the swallows do."
He mixes not with the people, he converses
with none of them, and yet he appears to have
penetrated into the deepest and darkest recesses
of their souls.
Pericles has lost their favour; Anaxagoras is
banished; Aspasia . . but what is Aspasia?
Yours ; and therefore you must hear about her.
We have all been accused of impiety ; Anax-
agoras and myself have been brought to trial for
the offence. Diopeithes is the name of our accuser.
He began with Anaxagoras ; and having proved
by three witnesses that he in their hearing had
declared his opinion, that lightning and thunder
were the effect of some combustion and concus-
sion in the clouds, and that they often happened
when Jupiter was in perfectly good-humour, not
thinking at all about the Athenians, there was
instantly such a rage and consternation in the
whole assembly, that the judges were called upon
from every quarter to condemn him for impiety ;
sentence, death.
Pericles rose. He for the first time in his life
was silenced by the clamorous indignation of the
people. All parties, all classes, men, women,
children, priests, sailors, tavern-keepers, diviners,
slave-merchants, threatened, raved, foamed.
" Pericles ! you yourself will soon be cited before
this august tribunal" said Diopeithes. The clamour
now began to subside. Curiosity, wonder, appre-
hension of consequences, divided the assembly ;
and, when Pericles lifted up his arm, the agita-
tion, the murmurs, and the whispers, ceased.
" 0 men of Athens ! " said he calmly " I wish
it had pleased the Gods that the vengeance of
Diopeithes had taken its first aim against me,
whom you have heard so often, known so long,
and trusted so implicitly. But Diopeithes hath
skulked from his ambush and seized upon the
unsuspecting Anaxagoras, in the hope that, few
knowing him, few can love him. The calculation
of Diopeithes is correct : they who love him are
but those few. They however who esteem and
reverence him can only be numbered by him who
possesses a register of all the wise and all the
virtuous men in Greece."
Anaxagoras stepped forward, saying,
" You, 0 Athenians ! want defenders, and will
want them more : I look for protection to no mortal
arm ; I look for it to that divine power, the exist-
ence of which my accuser tells you I deny."
" He shirks the thunder" said one.
" He sticks to the blind side of Jupiter" said
another.
Such were the observations of the pious and
malicious, who thought to expiate all their sins
by throwing them on his shoulders, and driving
him out of the city. He was condemned by a
majority of voices. Pericles followed him through
the gates, beyond the fury of his persecutors.
CLXII, ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Three days after the banishment of Anaxagoras,
the threat of Diopeithes was carried into effect ;
not against the person of Pericles, but against
your Aspasia. Diopeithes had himself denounced
me, on the same count as Anaxagoras : and Her-
mippos, whose entire life has been (they tell me)
one sluggish stream of gross impurities, impeached
me as a corruptress of the public morals.
You will imagine, my Cleone, that something
loose and lascivious was brought forward in accusa-
tion against me. No such thing. Nothing of the
kind is considered as having any concern with
public morals here in Athens. My crime was,
seducing young men from their parents and
friends; retaining them in conversation at our
house ; encouraging them to study the sciences in
preference to the machinations of sophists; to
leave the declaimers an empty room for the benefit
of their voices, and to adhere more closely to logic
before they venture upon rhetoric.
You will now perceive, that all who have the
most interest and the most exercise in the various
artifices of deception, were my enemies. I feared
lest Pericles should run further into the danger
of losing his popularity by undertaking my
defence, and resolved to be my own pleader. The
hour had been appointed for opening the trial : I
told him it was one hour later. When it was
nearly at hand, I went out of the house unob-
served, and took my place before the assembly of
the people. My words were these.
" If any of the accusations brought against me
were well-founded, they would have been known
to Pericles. It would be strange were he indifferent
to any offence of mine against the laws, especially
such as you accuse me of, unless he is, as the accusa-
tion would imply, insensible to honour, propriety,
and decency. Is this his character ] He never
has had an enemy bold and false enough to say
it : I wonder at this ; yet he never has."
The people, who had been silent, now began to
422
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
favour me, when Diopeithes aaked me, whether I
could deny my conversations with Anaxagoras,
and my adherence to his tenets.
Love of truth, pity for Anaxagoras, and pride
(it may be) in the strength of mind he had given
me, and in the rejection of unworthy notions on
the Gods, urged me to say,
" I deny no conversation I ever had with him,
no tenet I ever received, no duty I ever learnt from
him. He taught me veneration for the Gods; and
I pray them to render me grateful for it."
Pericles at this moment stood at my side.
Indignation that he should have followed Anax-
agoras out of the gates, and should have embraced
him affectionately at parting, turned many furious
faces, furious cries, and furious gestures against
him. He looked round disdainfully, and said aloud,
"Respect the laws and the unfortunate, you
who revere the Gods !
" It was not the condemned man I followed out
of the city : it was age, which would have sunk
under blows ; it was rectitude, which feared not
death ; it was friendship, which if I can not make
you esteem, I will not implore you to pardon.
"At last, 0 Athenians ! my enemies and yours
have persuaded you to assemble in this place, and
to witness the humiliation and affliction of one
who never failed to succour the unfortunate, and
who has been the solace of my existence many
years. Am I, of all in Athens, the man who
should mistake crimes for virtues : the man
pointed out from among the rest as the most
insensible to his dignity ? How widely then have
you erred in calling me to your counsels ! how
long, how wilfully, how pertinaciously ! Is it not
easier to believe that two or three are mistaken
now, than that you all, together with your fathers
and best friends, whose natal days and days of
departure from us, you still keep holy, have been
always so?"
Hermippos and Diopeithes, seeing that many
were moved, interrupted him furiously.
" 0 Pericles !" cried Hermippos, "we are aware
that this woman of Ionia, this Milesian, this
Aspasia, entertains the same opinions as yourself."
" Highly criminal ! " answered Pericles, with a
smile ; " I hope no other Athenian is cursed with
a wife liable to so grievous an accusation."
" Scoffer ! " cried Diopeithes ; " dare you deny
that in the summer of this very year, when you
were sailing to lay waste the coasts of the Pelo-
ponese, you attempted to pervert the religion of
the sailors ? The sun was suddenly bedimmed :
darkness came over the sea, as far even as unto
our city ! the pilot fell upon his face and prayed :
and did not you, 0 Pericles ! raise him up with
one hand, and, throwing your mantle over his
eyes with the other, ask whether he found any-
thing dreadful in it ! And when he answered in
is piety, ' It is not that,' did not you reply,
" ' The other darkness is no otherwise different
than in its greater extent, and produced by some-
what larger than my mantle ? ' "
" Proceed to interrogate" said Pericles.
" Answer that' first, 0 sacrilegious man ! " ex-
claimed Diopeithes.
"Athenians!" said Pericles, "many of you
here present were with me in the expedition. Do
assure Diopeithes that it was not my mantle which
darkened the sea and sun, that to your certain
knowledge both sun and sea were dark before I
took it off. So that the Gods, if they were angry
at all, were angry earlier in the day. And not
only did the sun shine out again, bright and serene
as ever, but the winds were favourable, the voyage
prosperous, the expedition successful.
" It appears to me that the Gods are the most
angry when they permit the malicious and the
false to prevail over the generous and simple-
hearted ; when they permit the best affections to
be violated, and the worst to rise up in disorder to
our ruin. Nor do I believe that they are very well
pleased at hearing their actions and motives called
in question ; or at winks and intimations that
they want discernment to find out offenders, and
power and justice to punish them."
"In spite of philosophers" cried Diopeithes
" we still have our Gods in Athens."
"And our men too" replied he "or these
before me must only be the shadows of those who,
but lately under my command, won eternal
renown in Samos."
Tears rose into his eyes : they were for me ; but
he said in a low voice, audible however in the
silence that had succeeded to a loud and almost
universal acclamation,
" At least for our lost comrades a few tears are
not forbidden us."
The people struck their breasts : the judges
unanimously acquitted me, surrounded Pericles,
and followed us home with enthusiastical congra-
tulations.
OLXIII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Never did our house receive so my visitors as on
my acquittal. Not only our friends and acquaint-
ances, but every one who had fought under Peri-
cles, came forward to offer his felicitations and his
services. I was forgotten . . the danger, the insult,
seemed his. When they had all retired to dinner,
he too left me with my music and I did not see
him again until late the next morning. It was
evident he had slept but little. He came up to
me, and pressing my hand, said,
" Aspasia ! I have gained a great victory ; the
greatest, the most glorious, and the only one not
subject to a reverse."
I thought his words related to his defence of
me : I was mistaken.
" It was yesterday, for the first time" said he
" that I knew the extent of my power. I could
have demolished the houses of my adversaries ; I
could have exiled them from the city ; I could
have been their master : I am more ; I am my own.
" Great injuries create great power ; no feeble
virtues are necessary to its rejection. In polity"
continued he " the humble may rise, but not the
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
423
fallen. States live but once. Had I no Aspasia,
no children, I am ignorant what support I could
have found against the impulses of ambition.
Many who seize upon kingly power, are the more
desirous of possessing it because they have sons
to succeed them. Imprudent men ! they expose
those sons to infinite dangers, and create no new
advantages for them. If they provided for their
security, they would abdicate their power, when
about to be taken away by death from those over
whom they exercised it. If they provided for
their glory, they would not subject them to the
reproach, alway s merited, of possessing less activity
and sagacity than their father. Do they care about
their wisdom or their virtue ] they will not cast
them among idlers and sycophants, nor abandon
them on a solitary island, where many sing and
none discourse. What life is wretcheder ] what
state more abject1?"
" Yours, my dear Pericles ! " said I " is far
happier, but by no means enviable."
" True!" answered he : "I am subject to threats,
curses, denunciations, ostracism, and hemlock : but
I glory in the glory of the state, and I know that
I can maintain it."
I was listening with attention, when he said to
me with an air of playfulness,
" Am I not a boaster ] am I not proud of my
command ] am I not over-fond of it, when I am
resolved not to transmit it hereditarily to another1?"
"Rightly judged! dear Pericles!" said I: "you
always act judiciously and kindly."
" Political men, like goats," continued he,
"usually thrive best among inequalities. I have
chosen the meadow ; and not on the whole impru-
dently. My life has been employed in making it
more pleasurable, more even, more productive.
The shepherds have often quarrelled with me ; and
but now the sheep too, in their wisdom, turned
their heads against me."
We went into the air, and saw Alcibiades walk-
ing in the garden. He, not observing us, strode
along rapidly, striking with his cane every tree
in the alley. When we came up nearer, he was
repeating,
"The fanatical knaves! I would knock the
heads off all their Mercuries.
" Noisy demagogues ! I would lead them into
the midst of the enemy . . I would drag them on
by the ears . . not fifty should return. They in
their audacity, impeach Aspasia ! they bring tears
into the eyes of Pericles ! I will bring more into
theirs, by holy Jupiter ! "
He started at our approach. My husband laid
his hands upon the youth's shoulder, and said to
him,
" But, Alcibiades ! if you do not lead fifty back,
where will you leave the captives 1 "
He sprang to the neck of his guardian, and, turn-
ing his face toward me, blushed and whispered,
" Did she too hear me ]"
CLXIV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
I would not disturb you, my beloved Pericles !
but let not anything else ! Why are you so busy
now the danger is over ] why do so many come to
you, with countenances so earnest when they
enter, and so different from composed when they
go away] You never break your resolutions,
otherwise I should fear they might lead you above the
place of fellow citizen. Then farewell happiness,
farewell manliness, security, sincerity, affection,
honour !
0 Pericles ! descend from the car of Victory
on the course itself. In abandoning power and
station, what do you abandon but inquietude and
ingratitude ]
CLXV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
We never alight from a carriage while it is going
down a hill, but always at the top or at the bottom.
There is less danger in being shaken out than
there is in leaping out.
Were I at this juncture to abdicate my authority,
I should appear to the people to confess a fault,
and to myself to commit one.
1 must defend those who would have defended
me. Rely on my firmness in all things ; on
Pericles, one, immutable.
CLXVI. ASPASIA TO CLEOKE.
Alcibiades will one time or other bring us all
into peril by his recklessness and precipitation.
When he heard I was arraigned and Pericles
threatened, he ran from house to house among
the officers of the army, embraced them, knelt
before them, adjured them to save their general
from ignominy, his wife from insult, the city
from mourning, and themselves from inactivity.
He swore that if they would not, he would : that
two thousand of the same age, or rather older,
would join him and obey him, and that he would
throw judges, accusers, applauders, listeners, over
the Piraeus. Not a soldier did he pass without
a kiss, without a pressure of the hand, without
a promise ; not a girl in Athens that was not his
sister, not a matron that was not his mother.
Within an hour, in every part of the city there
were cries,
"The Lacedaemonians have none of these
rogues among them."
" No accusers there : no judges there."
" Archidamos is wise ; Pericles is wiser : shall
the one be a king, the other a culprit?"
"Shall his war-horse" cried a soldier "carry
panniers ] "
" Fore-foot and hind-foot say I " cried another,
"against these market-place ^swine, these black-
muzzled asses ! "
" Out upon them ! what have they won for us?"
cried another.
" And what have we not won for them]" roared
the next.
424
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
" What was all the stir about?" asked one more
quiet.
" They dared to accuse our General of denying
their dues to the Gods. Liars ! he gives every
man his due." A laugh arose. " No laughing
here ! I uphold it, we soldiers can take as good
care of the Gods as they can. Who believes they
ever were in danger ) Pericles might have cracked
them by the dozen : he has left them all standing;
not a head missing. Save him, comrades, from
the cowards, the poisoners."
On all sides of the city the soldiers ran to their
officers, and then toward the house of Pericles.
It was with difficulty he could dissuade them from
their resolution to confer upon him the same
authority and station as Archidamos holds among
the Spartans.
" We shall then meet the enemy upon equal
terms," said they; "ay, more than equal; affability
for moroseness, liberality for parsimony."
The greater part of the citizens would have
followed ; the turbulent for change, the peaceable
for tranquillity.
My husband has allayed the tempest : his ambi-
tion is higher. Nothing can be taken from the
name of Pericles, and what is added to it must be
of baser metal.
CLXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
The poet Hermippos will be remembered for
the malignity of his accusation against me, when
all the poetry he has ever written, even the worst
of it, is forgotten. At what a price would many
men purchase the silence of futurity ! Hermippos
will procure it reasonably, excepting two memo-
rable words, Prosecutor of Aspasia. Such
people show me only the more clearly to the
world, by throwing their torches at me. Pallas
hath whispered in my ear, both dreaming and
awake, that distant times shall recognise me,
never perhaps alone, but sometimes by the side of
Pericles, aud sometimes on the bosom of Cleone.
CLXVIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
What but the late outrages, or rather, what
but the ascendancy you have obtained in conse-
quence, could have brought the aristocratical
party to offer you their services, in helping to
keep down the ferocity of the populace) It
might indeed be well to unite them, were it pos-
sible; but not being possible, I would rather
place the more confidence in the less ignorant
and turbulent.
CLXIX. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! as you are cautious not to look ear-
nestly at a handsome man, but rather turn your
eyes another way, so must I do in regard to Aris-
tocracy. It is not proper that I should discover
any charms in her.
Among the losses I sustained by the flight of
youth, I ought to regret my vanity. I had not
enough of it for a robe, but I had enough for a
vest ; enough to keep me warm and comfortable.
Not a remnant have I now. Why be ashamed of
our worthy party) Did I espouse it for its
virtues) Was it ever in high repute for its
fidelity ) What is it to me whether a couple or
two of housed pards bite one another's tails off or
not, excepting that they lie down the quieter for it
afterward ) They have still heads and necks to be
led along by. We have only to walk up to them
firmly, to look at them steadily, speak to them
boldly, lay the hand upon them confidently as
their masters, and grasp them with a tenacity that
neither relaxes nor hurts. He who does this, and
there are some who can do it, may go forth and
catch other beasts with them, and feast all his
friends in the city.
CLXX. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
There is irritation in your irony, 0 Pericles !
your spirit is not at rest. Unworthily, for the
first time since I knew you, have you thought and
spoken ! Thought ! no, Pericles ! passion is not
thought. Contumely has produced this bitterness ;
it left you with the words.
CLXXI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! you have looked into my heart, and
purified it. Your indignities sometimes rise up
before me ; and it is only when I am prompted to
do wrong by others, that I recover all my firm-
ness. Athens has a right to my solicitude and
devotion. I will forget no favour she has ever
shown me, and remember no enmity.
CLXXII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Peace is at all times a blessing ; and war, even
the most prosperous, a curse. In war extremely
few of men's desires are gratified, and those the
most hateful ; in peace many, and those the
kindliest. Were it possible to limit the duration of
hostilities, the most adverse nations, in the enjoy-
ment of a long security, would find time enough for
the cultivation of the social affections, and for the
interchange of hospitality and other friendly
offices. As some bodily diseases, if they can only be
deferred for a certain time, terminate altogether,
so might the worst of social diseases, war. I do
not much wonder that no statesman ever upheld
this truth : but I do greatly that it is to be found
among the tenets of no philosopher. We women,
who are liable to the worst outrages, and are
framed by nature to the greatest susceptibility of
fears, usually love war the most, until it enters
our houses. We are delighted at the sound
and at the spectacle from afar ; and no music is
more pleasing to our ears than that which is the
prelude to the cries of agony and death. The
Spartans are now ravaging all the country round
about us. Will they never let me visit their
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
425
celebrated city] Must I never fancy I am a
Helen while I am bathing in the Eurotas or the
Tiasa? I am curious to see their Skeias,* and to
compare it with our Hecatompedon. It would
interest me the more, because in this edifice the
lyre of our countryman Timotheus is suspended.
It was forfeited, you know, for his having added
four strings. Woe betide those improvident crea-
tures who add anything to our delights! But
surely poor Timotheus must have fallen among
the poets.
CLXXIII. ASPASIA TO PEKIOLES.
When the war is over, as surely it must be in
another year, let us sail among the islands of the
^Egaean, and be young as ever. 0 that it were
permitted us to pass together the remainder of
our lives in privacy and retirement ! This is
never to be hoped for in Athens.
I inherit from my mother a small yet beautiful
house in Tenos : I remember it well. Water,
clear and cold, ran before the vestibule : a syca-
more shaded the whole building. I think Tenos
must be nearer to Athens than to Miletus. Could
we not go now for a few days ? How temperate
was the air, how serene the sky, how beautiful the
country ! the people how quiet, how gentle, how
kind-hearted !
Is there'any station so happy as an uncontested
place in a small community, where manners are
simple, where wants are few, where respect is the
tribute of probity, and love is the guerdon of
beneficence. 0 Pericles ! let us go ; we can return
at any time.
CLXXIV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
The gratitude and love I owe to Pericles induces
me to write the very day I have landed at Lamp-
sacos. You are prudent, Aspasia ! and your pru-
dence is of the best quality ; instinctive delicacy.
But I am older than you, or than Pericles,
although than Pericles by only six years ; and,
having no other pretext to counsel you, will rest
upon this. Do not press him to abstain from
public business : for, supposing he is by nature
no obstinate man, yet the long possession of
authority has accustomed him to grasp the tighter
what is touched ; as shell-fish contract the claws
at an atom. The simile is not an elegant one,
but I offer it as the most apposite. He might
believe that you fear for him, and that you wish
him to fear : this alone would make him pertina-
cious. Let everything take its season with him.
Perhaps it is necessary that he should control
the multitude : if it is, he will know it ; even you
could not stir him, and would only molest him
* "It was of a circular form, with a roof like an um-
brella, and erected about 760 years B. C." St. John's
Ancient Greece. The most learned, the most compre-
hensive, and the most judicious work ever written
about the manners, the institutions, and the localities of
that country.
by the attempt. Age is coming on. This will
not loosen his tenacity of power . . it usually has
quite the contrary effect, .but it will induce him
to give up more of his time to the studies he has
always delighted in, which however were insuf-
ficient for the full activity of his mind. Mine is
a sluggard : I have surrendered it entirely to phi-
losophy, and it has made little or no progress : it
has dwelt pleased with hardly anything it has em-
braced, and has often run back again from fond
prepossessions to startling doubts : it could not
help it.
But as we sometimes find one thing while we
are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me,
happiness and contentment fell in my way, and
have accompanied me even to Lampsacos.
Be cautious, 0 Aspasia ! of discoursing on phi-
losophy. Is it not in philosophy as in love 1 the
r\ore we have of it, and the less we talk about it,
the better. Never touch upon religion with any-
body. The irreligious are incurable and insensi-
ble ; the religious are morbid and irritable : the
former would scorn, the latter would strangle you.
It appears to me to be not only a dangerous, but,
what is worse, an indelicate thing, to place our-
selves where we are likely to see fevers and
phrenzies, writhings and distortions, debilities
and deformities. Religion at Athens is like a
fountain near Dodona, which extinguishes a
lighted torch, and which gives a flame of its
own to an unlighted one held down to it. Keep
yours in your chamber ; and let the people run
about with theirs ; but remember, it is rather apt
to catch the skirts. Believe me, I am happy : I
am not deprived of my friends. Imagination is
little less strong in our later years than in our
earlier. True, it alights on fewer objects, but it
rests longer on them, and sees them better. Peri-
cles first, and then you, and then Meton, occupy
my thoughts. I am with you still ; I study with
you, just as before, although nobody talks aloud
in the schoolroom.
This is the pleasantest part of life. Oblivion
throws her light coverlet over our infancy ; and,
soon after we are out of the cradle we forget how
soundly we had been slumbering, and how delight-
ful were our dreams. Toil and pleasure contend
for us almost the instant we rise from it : and
weariness follows whichever has carried us away.
We stop awhile, look around us, wonder to find
we have completed the circle of existence, fold
our arms, and fall asleep again.
CLXXV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
Proxenos, a native of Massilia, is lately come
over to visit his relations and correspondents.
The Phocaeans, you know, were the founders of
Lampsacos, long before they were driven by the
invasion of Cyrus into Italy and Gaul. Like the
generality of mercantile men, Proxenos is little
attached to any system of philosophy, but appears
to hold in some esteem the name and institutions
of Pythagoras. Formerly we have conversed
426
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
together with Pericles on this extraordinary man,
regretting that so little is known of him in the
midst of his celebrity. Hardly a century hath
elapsed since he left his native Samos, and settled
on the peaceful shores of Italy. His presence, his
precepts, his authority, his example, were unavail-
ing to the preservation of that tranquillity, which
the beauty of the climate, the fertility of the soil,
and the freedom of the institutions, ought to have
established and perpetuated. But it is in the
regions of the earth as in the regions of the air;
the warm and genial are absorbed by the cold and
void, and tempests and storms ensue. The happi-
ness of thousands is the happiness of too many,
in the close calculation of some inexpert contriver;
and he spoils the honey by smoking the hive. No
sooner is a nation at ease, than he who should be
the first to participate in the blessing, is the most
uneasy ; and, when at last he has found a place to
his mind, before he lies down he scratches a hole
in it, as the dogs do. Such had been the case at
Samos, and such was likewise the case at Croton.
The difference lay merely in this. Polycrates was
a man of abilities, and capable of holding the
government in his single hand : he loved power,
he loved pleasure, he contented the populace, and
he reconciled the wise : Croton was subject to
the discretion of an oligarchy, incompetent, arro-
gant, jealous, and unjust. It is untrue that Py-
thagoras was ever at enmity with him, or was
treated by him with disrespect. The one was as
fond of authority as the other, and neither was
willing to divide it. Whatever could be done to
promote the studies of the philosopher was done
spontaneously by the chief magistrate, who gave
him letters of recommendation to the king of
Egypt. By these, and perhaps by these only, could
he ever have penetrated into the innermost
recesses of the priesthood. Conversing with them,
and observing their power over the people, he
lost nothing of his inclination to possess the same,
and added much to the means of acquiring it.
Epimenides the Cretan was perhaps the exemplar
he had resolved to follow, but with mitigated
severity. Solon with all his wisdom, and never
had mortal more, was unable to bring back the
Athenians to the simplicity and equity of their
forefathers. Knowing well their propensity to
superstition, which always acts with its greatest
intensity on the cruel and the loose, he invited
Epimenides to come and overawe them by his
sanctity and his sacrifices. We can not doubt that
he left the whole management of their conversion
to the discretion of the stranger. An Epimenides,
in all ages of the world, will possess more influence
than a Solon. Lustrations and sacrifices followed
prodigies and omens ; and among the marvels
and miracles which the Cretan seer displayed, the
last was the greatest in the eyes of Athens. He
announced his determination to return home, and
refused all the honours and riches the people
would have lavished on him. Epimenides wanted
nothing : the Gods were less moderate ; they re-
quired a human victim. Cratinos was too happy
in devoting his blood at the altar ; Ctesibias, on
the bosom of his friend.
Proxenos is come in by appointment and has
broken off an old story which you know as well as
I do. I will give you his ; but not without an ac-
count from you in return, of what is going on
among the craft at Athens.
CLXXVI. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.
Secrecy and mystery drive the uninitiated into
suspicion and distrust : an honest man never will
propose, and a prudent man never will comply
with, the condition. What is equitable and pro-
per lies wide open on the plain, and is accessible
to all, without an entrance through labyrinth or
defile. I do not love Pythagoras nor Epimenides,
nor indeed my friend Socrates so much as per-
haps I should, who however, beside his cleverness,
has many good qualities. He, like Pythagoras,
is endowed with an extraordinary share of intel-
lect ; but neither of them has attained the fixed
and measured scope of true philosophy : the one
being in perpetual motion to display his surpris-
ing tricks of rhetorical ingenuity, which tend only
to the confusion of truth and falsehood, and con-
sequently to indifference in the choice of them ;
the other was no less active and restless in the
acquisition and maintenance of power. The
business of philosophy is to examine and estimate
all those things which come within the cogni-
zance of the understanding. Speculations on any
that lie beyond, are only pleasant dreams, leaving
the mind to the lassitude of disappointment.
They are easier than geometry and dialectics ;
they are easier than the efforts of a well-regulated
imagination in the structure of a poem. These
are usually held forth by them as feathers and
thistle-down ; yet condescend they nevertheless
to employ them ; numerals as matter and mind ;
harmony as flute and fiddle-strings to the dances
of the stars. In their compositions they adopt
the phraseology and curtsey to the cadences of
poetry. Look nearer ; and what do you see before
you] the limbs of Orpheus, bloodless, broken,
swollen, and palpitating on the cold and misty
waters of the Hebrus. Such are the rhapsodical
scraps in their visionary lucubrations. They
would poison Homer, the purest and soundest of
moralists, the most ancient and venerable of phi-
losophers, not out of any ill-will to him, but out
of love to the human race. There is often an en-
chantment in their sentences, by which the ear is
captivated, and against which the intellectual
powers are disinclined to struggle; and there is
sometimes, but very rarely, a simplicity of man-
ner, which wins like truth. But when ambition
leads them toward the poetical, they fall flat upon
thorny ground. No writer of florid prose ever
was more than a secondary poet. Poetry, in her
high estate, is delighted with exuberant abun-
dance, but imposes on her worshipper a severity of
selection. She has not only her days of festival,
but also her days of abstinence, and, unless upon
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
427
some that are set apart, prefers the graces of
sedateness to the revelry of enthusiasm. She
rejects, as inharmonious and barbarous, the
mimicry of her voice and manner by obstreperous
sophists and argute grammarians, and she scatters
to the winds the loose fragments of the schools.
Socrates and his disciples run about the streets,
pick up every young person they meet with,
carry him away with them, and prove to him that
everything he ever heard is false, and everything
he ever said is foolish. He must love his father
and mother in their way, or not at all. The only
questions they ask him are those which they
know he can not answer, and the only doctrines
they inculcate are those which it is impossible he
should understand. He has now fairly reached
sublimity, and looks of wonder are interchanged at
liis progress. Is it sublime to strain our vision
into a fog ? and must we fancy we see far because
we are looking where nobody can see farther ?
CLXXVII. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
The Massilian is intelligent and communicative.
Some matters which he related at our conference
you will perhaps remember in Herodotus : others
are his own story ; so let him tell the whole in
his own manner.
" The unbroken force of Persia was brought
under the walls of Phocaea. Harpagos, equally
wise and generous, offered to our citizens the most
favourable terms of surrender. They requested
one day for deliberation. Aware of their inten-
tions, he dissembled his knowledge, and allowed
them to freight their ships, embark, and sail
away. His clemency was however no security to
his garrison. Within a few days the expatriated
citizens landed again, slew every Persian within
the walls, then, casting a mass of iron into the
sea, swore they would never return a second time
until it rose and floated on the surface. Some
historians would persuade us that, after this cruel
vengeance, this voluntary and unanimous oath,
the greater part returned. Such a tale is idle and
absurd. The Persians would too surely have in-
flicted due vengeance on their perfidy. Some
however did indeed separate from the main body
of the emigration, and came to reside here in
Lampsacos, which their ancestors had founded,
and where they continued on the most hospitable
terms by frequent intermarriages. The bulk of
the expedition reached Alalia, a colony of theirs,
led recently into Corsica. Here they continued
to reside but a little time unmolested by the
jealousy of the Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians.
Undaunted by the coalition against them, and by
the loss of many ships in a battle with the united
fleet of the confederates, they sailed to the neigh-
bourhood of the more ancient Grecian cities, and
founded Elea, near Poseidonia. And now pro-
bably they first became acquainted with the dis-
ciples of Pythagoras. He himself, it is said,
retired to Metaponton, and died there. When
he went from Samos to Croton he was in the
vigour of life ; and not many years elapsed ere he
beheld the overthrow of his institutions. He is
reported by some to have attained an extreme
old age, which his tranquillity and temperance
render probable. Even without this supposition,
he may perhaps have visited the coast of Gaul,
before or after the arrival of the Phocseans. Col-
lecting, we may imagine, additional forces from
the many lonians whom the generals of Cyrus
had expelled, they began to build the city of
Massilia, not long after the settlement at Elea,
which the vicinity of powerful states, and its inca-
pacity and insecurity for the mooring of a navy,
rendered ineligible as the seat of government, or
as a constant station."
Thus much I had collected fromProxenos, when
he began to give me information on anchorages
and harbours, imports fand exports : I could not
in common civility interrupt him, or ask any-
thing better than what it pleased him to bestow
on me. As our acquaintance strengthens, I will
draw more unreservedly from his stores.
CLXXVIII. AKAXAGOKAS TO ASPASIA.
Proxenos runs into some errors both in regard
to facts and motives. It is false that Pythagoras,
on returning from his voyage in Egypt, was in-
dignant at finding a tyrant in his native city.
Polycrates was in possession of the supreme power
when the philosopher left the island, and used it
with clemency and discretion. The traveller
might have gone and might have returned with
discontent, but indignation is averse to favours,
and these he was by no means reluctant to accept.
Finding he could not be the principal man among
his fellow-citizens, he resolved to attain that rank
where the supremacy was yet unoccupied. He
had seen enough of the Egyptian and heard
enough of the Indian priesthood, to convince him
that, by a system somewhat similar to theirs,
absolute power was more attainable and more
safe. He took lessons and precautions; and
wherever there was a celebrated and ancient
temple, he visited its priests, and explored the
origin and conduct of their institutions and au-
thority. In recompense for these, he is reported
to have raised his tunic to the holy ones at Olym-
pia, and to have displayed a golden thigh. No-
thing so royal, so godlike, had been seen since the
reign of Pelops. A golden thigh is worth an
ivory shoulder. Such a miracle, we may be sure,
was not altogether lost upon the prophetess at
Delphi, the fair Themistocleia, who promulgated
to him her secrets in return.
His doctrines were kept within his own circle,
under the safeguard of an oath. This in all
countries is and ought to be forbidden, as being
the prerogative of the magistracy. Love of su-
premacy was the motive in all his injunctions and
in all his actions. He avoided the trouble of
office and the danger of responsibility : he excluded
the commons, and called to him the nobles, who
alone were deemed worthy of serving him. Among
428
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
these he established an equality, which, together
with the regularity and frugality of their living,
must have tended to conciliate and gratify in some
measure the poorer citizens. Certain kinds of
animal food were forbidden, as in India and other
countries less remote, but, contrary to what we have
often heard asserted, no species of pulse or veget-
able. 'A bstctinfromthebean' signified 'abstainfrom
elections to political employments.' The teacher was
in the place of parent to his disciples, who appear
to have renounced all the natural affections that
had sprung up before they entered the society.
His regimen was mild and generous : its principal
merit was, however, the repression of loquacity ;
common in the ardour of youth after its chase in
the fields of knowledge ; commoner, and more un-
becoming, in the morose repose of an arrogant
philosophy. The history of Pythagoras, forasmuch
as he interests us in being the leader of a sect and
of a party, is neither long nor obscure. The
commons of Croton soon began to perceive that,
under his management, the sons of the aristocracy
would be no better inclined than their fathers had
been to concede them an equal share in the govern-
ment : and the rulers themselves, day after day,
lost somewhat of authority in their families.
.During the whole time that he had resided in
Italy, the people of nearly all the Greek cities
heaved indignantly under oppressive oligarchies.
Sybaris, whose health they were absorbing in
more than Circaean luxuries, rose first upon her feet,
and expelled the council of five hundred. They
retired for refuge to the lords of Croton ; and,
when the Sybarites called for justice on them, the
demand was voted an affront. And now indeed
the veil of sanctity and seclusion was violently
rent by the disciples of the Samian. He incited
them to maintain peace and good government;
pointed out to them the phantom of Freedom, how
it blasted every region it past over; and adjured
them to the defence of their rulers by the purity
of their religion. They marched, fought a battle,
won it, and Sybaris was swept from the earth.
Discord, I suspect, 0 Aspasia ! is the readiest
of all the Deities to appear at our invocation.
The oligarchs of Croton, long accustomed to
uncontrolled power and irresponsible injustice,
refused to the army, now comprehending all the
active citizens, even the smallest portion of the
spoils. Again did the Crotoniats cry to arms ; and
again, and in a better cause, were conquerors.
Pythagoras* and his disciples fled before them,
and the hall in which they assembled was reduced
to ashes.
It is only a free city that is strong ; for it is
only in a free city that the mass of the people can
be armed.
CLXXIX. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.
Men of powerful minds, although they never
give up Philosophy, yet cease by degrees to make
their professions in form, and lay ultimately the
* Pythagoras was a Prsc-jesuit.
presents they have received from her at the feet
of History. Thus did Herodotus, thus did
Hecatseus, and thus, let me hope, will Anaxago-
ras. The deeds of past ages are signally reflected
on the advancing clouds of the future : here
insurrections and wrecks and conflagrations; here
the ascending, there the drooping diadem ; the
mighty host, the mightier man before it ; and, in
the serener line on the horizon, the emersion of
cities and citadels over far-off seas. There are
those who know in what quarter to look for them :
but it is rarely to their hands the power of pro-
moting the good, or averting the evil, is entrusted.
Yet, 0 Anaxagoras ! all is not hideous in the
past, all is not gloomy in the future. There are
communities where the best and wisest are not
utterly cast aside, and where the robe of Philosophy
is no impediment to the steps of men. Idly do
our sages cry out against the poets for mistuning
the heart and misgoverning the intellect. Mean-
while they themselves are occupied in selfish
vanities on the side of the affections ; and, on the
side of the understanding, in fruitless, frivolous,
indefinite, interminable disquisitions. If our
thoughts are to be reduced to powder. I would
rather it were for an ingredient in a love-potion,
to soften with sympathies the human heart, than
a charm for raising up spectres to contract and to
coerce it. If dust is to be thrown into our eyes,
let it be dust from under a bright enlivening sun,
and not the effect of frost and wind.
CLXXX. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
Philosophy is but dry bread : men will not live
upon it, however wholesome : they require the
succulent food and exciting cup of Religion. We
differ in bodily strength, in compactness of bone,
and elasticity of sinew ; but we all are subject to
the same softness, and nearly to the same distem-
perature, in the nobler animators of the frame, the
brain and blood. Thus it is in creeds : the sage and
simple, the ardent enthusiast and the patient inves-
tigator, fall into and embrace with equal pertinacity
the most absurd and revolting tenets. There are as
many wise men who have venerated the ibis and
cat, as there are who have bent their heads before
Zeus and Pallas. No extravagance in devotion
but is defended by some other towering above it ;
no falsehood but whose features are composed to
the semblance of truth. By some people those
things are adored that eat them ; by others, those
that they eat. Men must rest here : superstition,
satiated and gorged, can go no farther.
The progression of souls is not unreasonable,
the transmigration is. That we shall pass here-
after into many states of successive existence is
credible enough; but not upon earth, not with
earthly passions. Yet Pythagoras was so resolute
and so unguarded, that he asserted to himself a
series of lives here among men, by the peculiar
and especial favour of the Gods, with a perfect
consciousness of every change he had undergone.
Others became dogs, wolves, bears, or peradvcn-
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
429
ture men again ; "but knowing as little of what
had happened. Nevertheless, he pretended that
these transmigrations were punishments and
rewards. Which is punished ? the dead creature
or the living ] the criminal man or the guiltless
animal ] Some believe they can throw their sins
into a fox : others (in Africa for instance) into a
priest. Now the priest may have received what
he esteems an equivalent : the fox is at once a
creditor and a debtor, with little hope, on either
side, of indemnity, or balance. It is only when you
or Pericles were my audience, that I ever was
inclined to press hard against the inconsistencies
of philosophers. But we must trace things to
their origin where we can. The greater part of
those now prevalent are ascribable to the school
of Samos. Numerals were considered by the
teacher as materials, and not only as the compo-
nents, but as the elements, of the world. He
misunderstood his own theory : the reason is, he
made it his own by theft. The young persons who
are hearers of the warier Socrates, catch at it in
the playground, and the ill-compacted cake
crumbles under their hands.
Unfavourable as my evidence must appear, and
is, I am fortunate in being able to lay before you
another and comelier representation of a philoso-
pher so enriched by genius. I have always, in all
companies, and upon all occasions, been sparing
of my questions, and have exerted the uttermost
ingenuity I am master of, in drawing the truth
on, without such an instrument of torture. Pro-
bably I have lost by age a part of my dexterity,
or presence of mind, or determination ; for Prox-
enos, at the close of our conference, said aloud and
sharply,
" You shall never make (hat out. I think him
a very honest man ; and I think nobody an honest
man who thinks otherwise."
" Fair Proxenos ! " I replied, " you are now
greatly more than a philosopher. Some favourite
God alone could have inspired all this enthusiasm.
In the vigorous expression of that terse apothegm
is there not somewhat more of the poet than of
the Pythagorean 1 "
" I believe there may be " replied he, " I was
always much given to poetry."
He grew instantly calm upon my compliment,
and said with the most polite complacency,
" Well ! I am not a match for you Half- Athe-
nians ; but read this little volume by my friend
Psyllos of Metaponton ; it will open your eyes, I
warrant it."
" Blessings upon it then ! " said I, bending over
and taking it with due reverence ; " many of late
have done quite the contrary."
CLXXXI. PSYLLOS TO PISANDER OF ELBA.
On the Lawgiver of the Gauls, forwarded to CLEONE.
" Pisander ! when last we met, I promised you
I would make farther inquiries into the subject of
our conversation at the house of Euryalos, and
that I doubted not of success in attempting to
prove the identity of Pythagoras and Samotes.
Strange, that the idea should have occurred to no
one else in the course of many generations. Was
it not sufficiently clear for the follower of truth ]
or was it not sufficiently dark and intricate for
the lover of mystery and paradox 1 I imagine
it stood between both, at an equal distance from
the road of each, and thus it was past unnoticed.
There is nobody then who can explain to me
what was the religion of the Gauls at the time of
the Phocaean emigration. Samotes is recorded as
their legislator. Legislation here includes, as it
necessarily must in ages of barbarism, not only
the civil institutions of the people, but likewise
the religious. Yet neither the character nor the
tenets, neither the period nor the country, nor
indeed the existence of Samotes, have ever been
ascertained. Ask the people who he was, and
they will tell you that he came to them over the
sea, long ago. Computation of time, past and
future, never occupies, never occurs to, the
barbarian. It was long ago that the old tree,
against which his cabin leans, sprang up ; long
ago since the cabin was built ; long ago since he
was a child. Whatever is not visible to him, or
was not, has feeble hold on his memory, and never
enters into his calculation. As lawgiver of the
Gauls, Samotes is acknowledged to have instructed
them both in the ceremony of human oblations
and in the creed of the metempsychosis ; for these
are mentioned together in the first opening of
their history. But it appears to me that the
metempsychosis, which is generally held as the
basis of druidism, is adventitious. We shall find
that this institution is composed of two extremely
different and obstinately discordant parts. One,
the result of ferocity, varies but little from what
exists in the early state of most nations ; which
diversity may be accounted for, from their climate,
their wants, their habits, and pursuits. The other
is engrafted on its savage stock, by the steady but
not sufficiently impressive hand of a gentle and
provident philosophy. You ask me when] by
whom ] One word will solve both questions : by
Samotes ; by the man of Samos. Do you doubt
that he ever was in Gaul ] And do you think it
probable that, with his fondness for travelling, his
alacrity in inquiry, he would have resided many
years in Italy, and have never once visited a
country so near to him, a country so singular in
its customs, at least in the combination of them,
if such customs then existed, a country on whose
shores the most valiant of his own countrymen
were landing ? If at this early epoch the tribes
of Gaul believed in the metempsychosis, would
not sympathy, would not admiration, have im-
pelled him thither ] But if, on the contrary, the
doctrine did not prevail, who introduced it 1 what
author of greater weight 1 I am curious to learn,
his name or his country. Perhaps by knowing
the one, we may guess the other, since the ideas
he impressed and left behind Him are stamped
with a peculiar mark. It may be argued that,
able to inculcate lastingly on the mind of his
430
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Gallic proselytes, a dogma which seems to have
been received but partially, and to have soon
disappeared, where he lived in the full exercise of
authority, he still was unable to abolish, as he
would wish to do, their sanguinary rites. He
was : for it is easier to learn than to unlearn what
incessantly works and excites and agitates our
passions. The advantages of the metempsychosis
were perhaps the most striking of any that could
be presented to warlike minds ; to which minds,
you must have remarked, 0 Pisander, advantages
will present themselves more readily than disad-
vantages. Beside, the Druids, whom we can not
well consider at any time a very enlightened
order, or likely to see every consequence, every
contingency, had no direct interest in suppressing
such a doctrine. New colonies were endeavouring
to establish themselves in their country ; and
colonies are the unfailing seed of wars. For, if they
flourish, they require an accession of territory ; if
they do not nourish, they either turn into vagabonds
and robbers, or employ violence to remove the
obstacles that impede their industry. Something
great then and something new was wanting, since
the danger that impended was both new and
great. Immolations before them on one side, and
the sublime view of the metempsychosis on the
other, what could either shake the confidence or
abate the courage of the Gauls ] A new body was
new armour, beautiful, strong, in which they
would elude the rage and laugh at the impotence
of War. It was delightful to try other scenes of
existence, to extinguish their burning wounds in
the blood of their enemies, and to mount from the
shields of their comrades into fresh life and glory.
A religion thus compounded is absurd and
contradictory, but contradiction and absurdity in
religion are not peculiar to barbarians. The
sacrifice of a human victim was deemed the most
solemn and important duty, and they would rather
abandon any other ceremony than this. They
were savage ; we are civilised : they fought, and
their adversaries were to share their immortality;
we fight to make others as abject as ourselves.
They had leaders of proud spirit who raised them
to the heavens : we have heavy oligarchs who bend
us to the earth.
Rituals, in even the less ardent and intractable,
are not soon, nor easily, nor all at once, re-
signed. We must cease then to marvel that the
most impressive, the most awful, and perhaps the
most universal of devotions, human sacrifice,
should not have been overthrown by the declining
years of Pythagoras. It is true he retained his
faculties to the last ; he retained also the energy
of his mind ; but the voluntary exile of Samos
was purely a lawgiver in philosophy. His religion
was not intolerant nor intrusive, but mainly
adapted to the humbler offices of temperance and
peace. Beyond this, little is known and much
is feigned of him. It would have been well if his-
torians had related to us more of what he did,
and less of what he did not. If, instead of the
story of his dying in a bean-field, through horror
of its impurity, they had carefully traced and
pointed out his travels, they would neither have
mentioned his voyage to India* nor have omitted
his voyage to Gaul. The priests on the Nile
were at all times well acquainted with their bre-
thren on the Indus and Ganges ; and indeed I
believe that all the great temples of the world
have secret communications. Do not lift up
your hands, my good Pisander ! not underground,
not magical, but opened from time to time, in
cases of difficulty and danger, through confiden-
tial agents.+
All religions, in which there is no craft nor
cruelty, are pleasing to the immortal Gods ; be-
cause all acknowledge their power, invoke their
presence, exhibit our dependence, and exhort our
gratitude. Therefore let us never be remiss in
our duty of veneration to those holy men, who
not only manifest their good-will toward such as
think and worship with them, but also toward
the stranger at the steps of other altars. While
orators and poets, and philosophers too, are
riotous and quarrelsome, malicious and vindictive,
Religion leads to herself, and calls her own, the
priests of all persuasions, who extend their hands
one to another from a distance, unrestricted by
jealousy and undefiled by blood.
How great, 0 my friend, is our consolation, in
the certainty that our prayers and sacrifices are
accepted ! so long as the priests in our country
and around us live fraternally, let us likewise be
of the household. But if any devastating religion
should spring up, any which rouses strife and
spreads distrust, any which sunders man from
man, that religion must be rejected by the Gods
as wicked, and renounced by their worshippers as
ineffectual. The claimants of such an imposition
shall never have from me white flour or salt.
Should you question why the milder creed had
little effect in Gaul, — why the golden rules are not
valued by the people as the precious relics of a
departed master, I reply that in such a state of
society it was impossible to bring them bodily
into use. The priests alone (and it is not every
priest who will readily sit down to be instructed )
could profit by his knowledge of geometry, or
would apply to practice or speculation his theory
of numbers. A few of them are not utterly igno-
rant of either ; and it is hence that the trickling
may be traced. Men living in a state of barbarism
and warfare would entertain but small respect for
injunctions to abstain from any obvious and
palatable food. Silence, forbearance, quietude, it
can not be expected should be the inmates of a
camp. Soldiers without regular supplies (in
* If Pythagoras had visited India, the learned men who
accompanied Alexander would have inquired after him,
and would have given the result.
t The use of gunpowder, for instance, if not of guns,
was known to the priests in countries the most distant,
mid of the most different religions. The army of the Mace-
donians was smitten by its lightnings under the walls of
the Oxydracians ; the Gauls, and afterward the Persians,
under the temple of Delphi.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
431
which consists the main difficulty and on which
depend the main advantages in the science oi
war) must subsist on whatever they can seize ; and
men without regular government (by which I can
intend no other than of magistrates chosen by
the people) would, if we consider the bean as em-
ployed in ballot, be ignorant of the lax and
foreign interpretation.
As the fountains of the most celebrated rivers
are neither easily discoverable nor large, so it
often happens that things of the greatest moment,
in the political and moral world, are derived from
an obscure, from a remote, and from a slender
origin. I have given you my opinion on the
eause of the supposition; but having heard another,
however less probable, I will report it.*
In the south of Italy, where Pythagoras resided,
are several cities, Tarentum in particular, of La-
cedaemonian foundation. One festival of this
people, whose ancestors were distinguished for
frugality, was nevertheless, even in the midst of
primitive Lacedaeinon, even in the bosom of
Temperance herself, deformed with foul excess.
It was called The Feast of the Nurses. They car-
ried male infants to the Temple of Diana, and,
after exposing themselves among the tents where
the populace was assembled, fed them with the
entrails of swine, which had been sacrificed, and
with figs, vetches, and beans. Their morals, we
may believe, were not rendered more austere by
the fertility and invitations of a delicious climate.
At a distance from Taygetos and Cithseron, they
were (allow me the expression) beyond the lati-
tudes of checking breezes from the headlands of
bluff morality; and the voice of the Syrens
sounded in ears sealed only to the call of repre-
hension and reproof. The hunter of Laconia
would have smiled to hear them imitate his shout,
and tell the trembling Sybarite, their neighbour,
that such were the shouts of Spartans. He would
have wondered that terror should be excited in
another by that which excited only ridicule in
himself; he would have stared not a little at the
start from the couch, and the rustle of roses on
the marble floor.
Pythagoras could not say, Abstain from the
city, abstain from the fellowship of the Taren-
tines ; it would have exasperated them against
him ; but he might have heard related to him
some instance of sensuality which happened at
this festival, and might have said briefly, yet
significantly, Abstain from beans.' Ordinances
have often been observed and commemorated far
beyond the intent and expectation of their
founder. Certain it is that, formerly as at present,
in the popular states of Italy, the election and
rejection of magistrates were signified by beans ;
and no less evidently was it the interest of the
philosophical stranger to dissuade his auditors
from the concerns of state. This, while it pro-
cured toleration and conciliated esteem, intro-
* Qu. whether any author now extant, excepting
Psyllos in his epistle, mentions this.
duced them to such habitudes of close reflection,
as withheld them from being the agitators, and
fitted them to become, by just degrees, the leaders
of the commonwealth. After all, if they pursued
any other line of conduct, he at least would escape
uncensured, and might complete without juridical,
or, what he would more have deprecated, popular
molestation, his scheme of general reform.
'Abstain from beans' we have considered in a
moral and political, but also in a religious ipoint ;
it may easily be defended, by high authorities.
However, I must express my doubts whether in
the lifetime of Pythagoras his followers abstained
from this article of food. Is it not probable that
those who came after him took the letter for the
spirit, as we know it to have happened in some
other doctrines, and within a century from the
founder's death! To abstain with rigour from
things indifferent (and from some indeed they
did abstain), may not appear consistent with the
exercise of reason. Arrogant it may be thought
in him who commanded, and infantine in those
who obeyed. But, in the religions which have
continued the longest, certain foods (it is said)
are prohibited ; and the observance of such pro-
hibition is the moral cause of their duration. He
who will not obey in what is easy, will not obey
in what is difficult : but the subjects of these
theocratical governments are every day refreshed
with the exercise of salutary compliance. At the
moment when a sense of duty is liable to be ex-
tinguished in others, in them it is sure to be
excited : there is piety if they fast ; if they satisfy
their hunger there is piety. It appears to me,
that the wisest and most provident of oriental
legislators are in nothing more worthy of our
esteem and veneration, than in the ordinance of
these prohibitions. Can we ascertain what
nations have, or what nations have not, been can-
nibals ? Why does it revolt more strongly against
our senses to eat a man than to kill one ! The
crime in itself is surely not so great. Nature has
fixed certain barriers, of which many seem fanci-
fully chosen and arranged, against the irruption
of our appetites. There are animals never
brought upon our tables, although the flesh is
said to be wholesome and the flavour grateful.
It is needless to seek how first it happened that
man violated the semblance of himself and of his
Gods. Was it war, was it fanaticism, or was it
famine, that impelled him to the accursed sacri-
fice ? Pisander ! Pisander ! he had tasted the
fatness of the lamb that he carried in his bosom :
be had tempted the fawn by caresses from afar :
it had licked his hand, and he had shed its blood !
Cannibals have been found where food was
plentiful : and the savage does not loathe for its
ugliness the hugest serpent. There must be
something, and it must be in the brute creation,
which he shall fear to consume for the impiety of
the deed.
The sacrifice of a human victim can only be per-
formed with the concurrence of prince or magis-
tracy. Of course Pythagoras could not oppose it,
432
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
consistently with hia profession of abstaining from
their concerns. Nevertheless he was at liberty to
introduce a doctrine which, as the day of cultiva-
tion advanced, would undermine the pyre and
release the victim. The Druids were, and are,
and always will be, barbarous. Their order has
not existed long, and will soon terminate, the
Gauls being not only the most ferocious of man-
kind, but the most suspicious and acute ; they
are also the most versatile, the most inconstant,
and (what makes sad work with solemnities), on
the detection of halt or blemish, men of irrepres-
sible mimicry and unquenchable derision. Those
in the vicinity of Massilia are free already from
the furies of fanaticism. Intercourse with the
Tyrrhenians and Ligurians has humanised them
greatly, and the softer voice of Ionia has now per-
suaded them, that the Gods can take us when they
want us, without wicker baskets ; and that the
harp and dance are as pleasant to them as the
cries and agonies of dying men."
Thus ends the epistle of Psyllos ; and at least
in the end of it I think we shall agree. His com-
fits will sweeten my pomegranate.
CLXXXII. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.
Whatever may be the partiality of your Massi-
lian to Pythagoras; it is evident enough that the
philosopher of Sainos, possessing great acquired
intelligence and gifted with extraordinary powers
of mind, was an intriguer and an impostor. And
truly, 0 Anaxagoras, it is much to be desired that
others now living were exempt from a certain
part of such an imputation. Our friend Socrates,
I am sorry to say, intimates to his friends in pri-
vate that he has a kind of Genius always at his
ear, who forewarns him in affairs apparently the
most indifferent. If we consider it well, we shall
be of opinion that there are few things so indif-
ferent as they seem to us ; few, the consequence
of which may not, visibly or invisibly, act with
grave importance on the future. But if a Genius,
a superhuman power, were to influence the actions
of any man, surely it would be those which must
necessarily put in motion the levers and regula-
tors of a commonwealth. We are all under the
guidance of a Deity if we will let him act on
us; but it is as easy to slip from under his
guidance, as it is difficult to escape from the
penalties of our error. Already there are some
who are jealous of Socrates and his Genius ; and
who perhaps may try hereafter whether the
Genius will help him to elude the laws. For
novelties in religion, as you know, are not held
guiltless ; and a Genius that renders a man wiser
or better is indeed an innovator. As they can not
catch him, I fear they may lay their hands upon our
Socrates.
CiXXXIH. ANAXAGORAS TO PERICLES.
It is easier to answer the questions than the
kindnesses of your letter. I will begin then.
We have not two factions ; aristocracy has kept
aloof from Lampsacos. The people find them-
selves so secure and comfortable under the ancient
laws, that they would no more hazard any inno-
vation, than they would alter their course at sea
when they were sailing with a favourable wind.
They hardly can be brought to believe that any
nation hath abrogatedjtwo laws in twenty or thirty
years, or hath been obliged by prosperity or ad-
versity to enact so many in so brief a space of
time. Miletus was always just to her colonies.
She has founded more than sixty ; and not a single
one has ever had reason to complain of her exac-
tions or restrictions. All the great empires that
have existed in the world, Chaldsea, Babylonia,
Media, Persia, all these taken together, have not
sent out the hundredth part of what has gone
forth from the bosom of Miletus. Surely, of
political glory this is the highest : to rear care-
fully a numerous family, educate it honestly, pro-
tect it bravely, and provide for it plenteously and
independently. Her citizens have more reason to
be proud of this section in their polity, than some
others who are much powerfuller. Would not
every mother wish to see her own features in her
daughter! her own constitutional strength, her
own character, her own prosperity ? What incon-
sistency then, what folly, what madness, for the
metropolis to wish otherwise in regard to her
colony ! Is the right arm stronger by rendering
the left weaker? Gain we any vantage-ground
against our enemy by standing on the prostrate
body of our child ?
To whom am I writing1? to Pericles? yes, to
him; to the man who best knows that the
strongest reasons of state proceed from the mouth
of justice.
And now let me loose again. Seldom have I
written, and never have I spoken, so long at a
time on such a subject. Could you ever draw
from me even an opinion on these matters, in a city-
where (excepting myself) you alone preserved in
them your calmness, equanimity, and composure ?
Even Aspasia, who unites the wisdom of the heart
to the wisdom of the understanding, and has
more in both than anyone else in either, was some-
times in perturbation at politics, and sometimes in
grief.
A while since I sent her a dozen or more of such
verses as our young people, and others who should
know better, are idle enough to compose in the
open air. My neighbour, Proxenos the Massilian,
has been employed in making a collection from
the gardens round about. The greater part, he
tells me, are upon love and flowers, dews and suns,
stars and moons, evenings and mornings, springs
and autumns. He observes that summer is rather
out of favour with the poets; and that where
winter is mentioned, he has often found the whole
composition scored across with a nail, or with a
piece of tile, or defaced in some other way as
nigh at hand. Proxenos is no poet, and there-
fore it is the more amusing to hear him discourse
on poetry.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
433
" I am sated with flowers," said he. " The
Muses ought to keep out of the market : if they
must come into it, let them not come as green-
grocers. See, what a large proportion in my col-
lection is upon flowers and foliage, with here and
there a solitary turtle-dove, and a nightingale
deplorably belimed. A few pious men indeed
have written in reverence of the tutelary God, and
have done all they could to repress the licentious-
ness of the young and thoughtless. The best
inscription I have found among them is in the
garden of Mnestheus ; and this perhaps is worth
preservation rather for its grave admonition and
religious sentiment than its poetry."
So far Proxenos. I do not remember what were
those verses I sent to Aspasia ; there may be more
good sense in these,
INSCRIPTION ON A PMNTH IN THE GARDEN OP MNESTHEUS
AT LAMPSACOS.
Youngsters! who write false names, and slink behind
The honest garden-god to hide yourselves,
Take heed unto your ways ! the worshipful
Requires from all upright straightforwardness.
Away, away then subterfuge with him !
I would not chide severely ; nor would he,
Unless ye thwart him ; for alike we know
Ye are not childisher than elder folk,
Who piously (in doing ill) believe
That every God sees every man . . but one.
CLXXXIV. ASPASIA TO AKAXAGORAS.
The style of your Psyllos is, I presume, Massilian.
He walks heavily through high-stemmed leafy
flowers. Does he not deserve now this little piece
of imitation ]
Forbear to call it mockery; for mockery is
always rude and inhumane.
Our friend Socrates has taken a wife. In every
danger he has been thought singularly _brave ; and,
if she is what she is represented, the action proves
it. He retains his custom of sitting in the porti-
coes, and beckoning to passers, and conversing on
loveliness, and commending equanimity, and
driving the schoolmen mad. Yet among the
Epithalamions, the cleverest is one which cele-
brates him for the quality most remote from his
character. Thales and Pherecydes and Pythago-
ras, and some few more, would really have made
Philosophy domestic. Our epithalamiast, intend-
ing nothing satirical, tells Socrates (whom neither
celibacy nor marriage have detained at home, and
who never could resist an opportunity of wrang-
ling, while a sophist or a straw was before him)
that he first brought Philosophy from heaven into
private houses ! I hope he will find her in his
own as often as he wants her : but if he is resolved
to bring her down into ours, such as we have seen
her lately, the city will be all in a bustle with the
double-bolting of doors.
Let the archons look to it.
CLXXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I have been exhorting Pericles to leave Attica
for a while, and to enjoy with me the pleasures
of retirement in the little isle of Tenos. He lis-
tened to my entreaty with his usual attention and
interest, and soon began to expatiate on the
charms, on the benefits, on the necessity, of re-
tirement. Without a question I fancied I had
persuaded him to compliance, when, with an air
of sadness so attempered with sweetness as it
never was in any other man, he said to me, " As-
pasia ! you can create in me as many wishes as
spring up in the bosom of a child ; and it is
partly by planting the slips of your own in mine,
and partly by the warmth of your eloquence.
What then must be my sense of duty to my
country, if, after all these representations, and after
all my fatigues and injuries, my determination is
fixed to remain some time longer in the city.
Hereafter we may visit Tenos : hereafter I may
drink of the limpid brook, before the house,
whose cold water has reddened this hand when
you were little. We will build our navies on it :
we will follow them along the bank, and applaud
them as they clash. Even I foresee a perfidy in
Aspasia : she will pretend to run as fast as she
can, and yet let Pericles outrun her. No, no ; that
kiss shall not obviate such duplicity. Have I
no reason for the suspicion, when you often have
let me get the better of you in argument 1 An-
other and easier life may await us there, when this
political one is uncoiled from us. But our child
must associate with the children of the Athenians :
he must love his father's friends ; he must over-
come and pardon his father's adversaries. We
ought never to buy happiness with our children's
fortunes : but happiness is not the commodity ;
it is desertion, it is evasion, it is sloth. However,
there is at last a time when we may hang up our
armour, and claim the stipend of retirement and
repose. Meanwhile let us fix our eyes on Tenos."
Whether, 0 Cleone, we regard the moral or the
material world, there is a silent serenity in the
highest elevation. Pericles appears the greater
when seen on his solitary eminence against the
sky. Power has rendered him only more gracious
and compliant, more calm and taciturn.
CLXXXVI. ANAXAGOKAS TO ASPASIA.
Pericles tells me that you are less tranquil than
you were formerly, and that he apprehends you
are affected not a little by the calumnies of your
enemies.
If it is true that there can be no calumny
without malice, it is equally so that there can be
no malice without some desirable quality to excite
it. Make up your mind, Aspasia, to pay the
double rate of rank and genius. It is much to
be the wife of Pericles ; it is more to be Aspasia.
Names that lie upon the ground are not easily
set on fire by the torch of Envy, but those quickly
catch it which are raised up by fame, or wave to
the breeze of prosperity. Everyone that passes
is ready to give them a shake and a rip; for
there are few either so busy or so idle as not to
lend a hand at undoing.
434
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
You, Pericles, and myself, have a world of our
own, into which no Athenian can enter without
our permission. Study, philosophise, write poetry.
These things I know are difficult when there is a
noise in the brain; but begin, and the noise
ceases. The mind, slow in its ascent at first,
accelerates every moment, and is soon above the
hearing of frogs and the sight of brambles.
CLXXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEOKB.
A pestilence has broken out in the city, so
virulent in its character, so rapid in its progress,
so intractable to medicine, that Pericles, in despite
of my remonstrances and prayers, insisted on my
departure. He told me that, if I delayed it a
single day, his influence might be insufficient to
obtain me a reception in any town, or any hamlet,
throughout the whole of Greece. He has promised
to write to me daily, but he declared he could
not assure me that his letters would come regu-
larly, although he purposes to send them secretly
by the shepherds, fumigated and dipped in oil
before they depart from Athens. He has several
farms in Thessaly under Mount Ossa, near Sicu-
rion. Here I am, a few stadions from the walls.
Never did I breathe so pure an air, so refreshing
in the midst of summer. And the lips of my
little Pericles are ruddier and softer and sweeter
than before. Nothing is wanting, but that he
were less like me, and more like his father. He
would have all my thoughts to himself, were
Pericles not absent.
CLXXXVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! I will not allow either the little Peri-
cles, or the great one, or both together, to possess
all your thoughts. Nay, your letter itself con-
tradicts you. Cleone and the plague must inter-
cept and divide them occasionally.
Pestilences are maladies that rage with more
violence than others, but, like all violent things,
soon pass away. The worst effects of them are
the seditions, and other sad irregularities, that
always burst forth when the banner of Death is
unfurled in a populous city. But it is mostly the
intemperate that are swept away.
Alas ! I must not dissemble the magnitude of
the danger ; for I know your resolution, I might
say rashness. What I have written is true ; but
I am most afraid that you will not fear enough.
Keep up your courage where you are ; do not
exert it anywhere else.
CLXXXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Cleone ! Cleone ! if you could but see Athens,
you would find it a ditch to throw all your dog-
mas into. The pestilence has not only seized 'the
intemperate, but, like that which Chryses impre-
cated on the Greeks before Troy, smitten nobler
heads after the viler. Pericles himself has not
escaped it. He refused to abstain from appearing
in the assemblies of the people, and among the
consultations to regulate (as far as might be) the
burial and burning of the dead. His temperance
and courage, the most efficacious preservatives
against contagion, failed at length in the effect.
The fever seized him, and although he has risen
from his bed free from all symptoms of the dis-
temper, his strength is impaired, and many
years (he tells me) seem to have crowded into a
few days.
CXO. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
Behold, 0 Aspasia ! I send you verses. They
certainly are less valuable than some in your col-
lection, but, to make up the difference, I inclose a
cockle-shell.
Beauty ! thpu art a wanderer on the earth,
And hast no temple in the fairest isle
Or eity over-sea, where Wealth and Mirth
And all the Graces, all the Muses, smile.
Yet these have always nurst thee, with such fond,
Such lasting love, that they have followed up
Thy steps thro' every land, and placed beyond
The reach of thirsty Time thy nectar-cup.
Thou art a wanderer, Beauty ! like the rays
That now upon the platan, now upon
The sleepy lake, glance quick or idly gaze,
And now are manifold and now are none.
I have call'd, panting, after thee, and thou
Hast turn'd and look'd and said some pretty word,
Parting the hair, perhaps, upon my brow,
And telling me none ever was preferr'd.
In more than one bright form hast thou appear'd,
In more than one sweet dialect hast spoken :
Beauty ! thy spells the heart within me heard,
Griev'd that they bound it, grieves that they are
broken.
AH the verbiage which you will find below I
found rudely scrawled on a stone-table, in the
garden of my next neighbour Pannenio. I per-
ceive it to be of little worth by this ; it has found
an imitator, or rather a correspondent : yet, as he,
writes angrily, it may not be much amiss.
These are scratched under the preceding.
I have some merit too, old man !
And show me greater if you can.
I always took what Beauty gave,
Nor, when she snatch'd it back, look'd grave.
Us modest youths it most beseems
To drink from out the running streams :
Love on their banks delights to dwell . . .
The bucket of the household well
He never tugs at, thinking fit
Only to quench his torch in it.
Shameless old fellow ! do you boast
Of conquests upon every coast ?
I, O ye Gods ! should be content
(Yea, after all the sighs I've spent,
The sighs, and, what is yet more hard,
The minus, talents, gone in nard .')
With only one : I would confine
Meekly this homesick heart of mine
Twixt Lampsacos and Hammon's shrine.
CXCI. ASPASIA TO ANAXAGORAS.
It is really odd enough that no temple or altar
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
435
•was ever dedicated to Beauty. Vengeance and
other such personages, whom we, Anaxagoras,
venture occasionally to call allegorical, have altars
enow, and more than enow of worshippers.
Whatever, in your satirical mood, you may
think about the cockle-shell, I shall always value
it, as much nearly as the verses, and I have ordered
it to be made into a clasp for them. Taunt me
then as often as you please : it will be like girls
pelting with roses : if there is any harm done, it
is only to the fingers of the pelter.
CXCII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Now the fever is raging, and we are separated,
my comfort and delight is in our little Pericles.
The letters you send me come less frequently, but
I know you write whenever your duties will allow
you, and whenever men are found courageous
enough to take charge of them. Although you
preserved with little care the speeches you de-
livered formerly, yet you promised me a copy of
the latter, and as many of the earlier as you could
collect among your friends. Let me have them
as soon as possible. Whatever bears the traces of
your hand, is precious to me : how greatly more
precious what is imprest with your genius, what
you have meditated and spoken ! I shall see your
calm thoughtful face while I am reading, and will
be cautious not to read aloud lest I lose the illusion
of your voice.
CXCIII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
Aspasia ! do you know what you have asked of
me 1 Would you accept it, if you thought it might
make you love me less ? Must your affections be
thus loosened from me, that the separation, which
the pestilence may render an eternal one, may be
somewhat mitigated ] I send you the papers.
The value will be small to you, and indeed would
be small to others, were it possible that they could
fall into any hands but yours. Remember the
situation in which my birth and breeding and
bent of mind have placed me : remember the
powerful rivals I have had to contend with, their
celebrity, their popularity, their genius, and their
perseverance. You know how often I have re-
gretted the necessity of obtaining the banishment
of Cimon, a man more similar to myself than any
other. I doubt whether he had quite the same
management of his thoughts and words, but he
was adorned with every grace, every virtue, and
invested by Nature with every high function of
the soul. We happened to be placed by our fel-
low-citizens at the head of two adverse factions.
Son of the greatest man in our annals, he was
courted and promoted by the aristocracy : I, of a
family no less distinguished, was opposed to him
by the body of the people. You must have ob-
served, Aspasia, that although one of the popu-
lace may in turbulent times be the possessor of
great power, it rarely has happened that he
retained it long, or without many sanguinary
struggles. Moroseness is the evening of turbu-
lence. Every man after a while begins to think
himself as capable of governing as one (whoever
he may be) taken from his own rank. Amid all
the claims and pretensions of the ignorant and
discontented, the eyes of a few begin to be turned
complacently toward the more courteous demean-
our of some well-born citizen, who presently has
an opportunity of conciliating many more, by
affability, liberality, eloquence, commiseration,
diffidence, and disinterestedness. Part of these
must be real, part may not be. Shortly afterward
he gains nearly all the rest of the citizens by de-
serting his order for theirs : his own party will
not be left- behind, but adheres to him bravely, to
prove they are not ashamed of their choice, and to
avoid the imputation of inconsistency.
Aspasia ! I have done with these cares, with
these reflections. Little of life is remaining, but
my happiness will be coetaneous with it, and my
renown will survive it : for there is no example of
any who has governed a state so long, without a
single act of revenge or malice, of cruelty or seve-
rity. In the thirty-seven years of my administra-
tion I have caused no citizen to put on mourning.
On this rock, 0 Aspasia ! stand my Propylsea and
my Parthenon.
OXOIV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Gratitude to the immortal Gods overpowers
every other impulse of my breast. You are
safe.
Pericles ! 0 my Pericles ! come into this purer
air ! live life over again in the smiles of your
child, in the devotion of your Aspasia ! Why did
you fear for me the plague within the city, the
Spartans round it 1 why did you exact the vow at
parting, that nothing but your command should
recall me again to Athens? Why did I ever
make it 1 Cruel ! to refuse me the full enjoyment
of your recovered health ! crueller to keep me in
ignorance of its decline ! The happiest of pillows
is not that which Love first presses ; it is that
which Death has frowned on and past over.
OXCV. ANAXAGORAS TO ASPASIA.
Have you never observed, 0 most observant
Aspasia, that there are many things which we can
say in writing, and which we can not so well de-
liver in speech, even to our nearest friend 1 During
all the time of my residence with you and Peri-
cles, intimate as was our familiarity from the
commencement, never once did either of you
express a wish to hear the reason why I left my
countrymen for strangers. The dislike I always
had to relate my concerns, and to present my
features for inspection, withheld me from the
narrative : and delicacy withheld you from
inquiry.
Come, I will live over with you now that por-
tion of my life which I did not live with you
before. I would not escape for refuge into crowds :
F F 2
430
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
I would not repair my fortune by hammering on
the anvil in the Agora : I would not (pardon my
application of our proverb at Clazomenai) make
my purse of swine's ears. Such is the occupa-
tion of those who intend to profit by a public
auditory.
Often had I been solicited by the worthier of
the citizens to appear in public, and to lake a
part, if not in the administration of affairs, at
least in the debates. It ill suited my temper and
turn of mind. Ours, like most free cities, was
divided into two factions, the aristocratical and
democratical. While others were making their
way forward to the head of them, I sat quietly at
home, and, to relax my mind occasionally from
its sustained and fixed position for loftier and
purer speculations, meditated on the advantages
and disadvantages of each government. No
small quantity had I written at last of remarks
and aphorisms : behold a specimen : ' In most
cities the majority is composed of the ignorant,
the idle, and the profligate. In most cities, after
a time, there are enough of bad citizens to sub-
vert good laws. Immoral life in one leader of the
people is more pernicious than a whole streetful
of impurities in the lower quarters of the com-
munity, seeing that streams, foul or fair, can not
flow upward.'
Be sure, Aspasia, I never promulgated such
perilous doctrines. To prove that I was erroneous
in the two first positions, the citizens would have
poisoned or stoned me, and their orators would
clearly show my unfitness to give advice, in my
attempting to demonstrate no more important or
novel a truth than that water can not run up a
mountain. Such is the employment, such the
ingenuity and sincerity of eloquence.
I was inclined to the democracy, because I
knew that all government ought to be chiefly
for the advantage of the many ; but when I con-
sidered long and attentively its operations and
effects, I began to doubt whether the people are
more likely to know their interests than the
aristocracy are to promote them. Immovable
property is the only sure pledge for political
equity, and the holders are not at all times ready
to offer it. Merchants are the worst of adven-
turers and gamesters, because their native land
is not their country. They are the sucklings of
an alien, and love her best who gives them' nu-
triment. Their preponderance in a state will
invariably be its subversion.
I intended to speak of myself, but you see I
can not keep to my theme ; it soon tires me . .
soon escapes me. The scanty streamlet has run
but a little way, and is lost among the sands. A
few words more, however. Before I left my coun-
try, I offered some brief observations on important
matters, then in discussion, to persons in autho-
rity. Do I much over-estimate my solidity of
intellect, my range of comprehension, or my clear-
ness of discernment, in believing that all these
qualities in me, however imperfect, are somewhat
more than equivalent to theirs 1 I concealed this
truth from them, if truth it be, and told them
only what I thought it was their interest, and
would surely be their intention, to perform. They
rewarded me by suffering me to depart in peace,
unanswered and unnoticed. We might imagine
that advice, like manure, is only good and appli-
cable when it has lain a long while by. He reasons
ill who reasons with a bad reasoner . . he walks
on chaff, and tires himself without progress and
without impression. I never expostulate with the
self-sufficient ; but on this occasion I desired a
friend of theirs to inquire of them whether they
thought a conflagration in Clazomenai would only
warm their baths and cook their dinners. Had
I been willing to abuse my faculties, it would have
been an easy matter for me to have swept them
from their places, and to have assumed the
highest ; for the rapacious has no hold upon the
people, and vulgar manners in the candidate for
office are no recommendation even to vulgar men.
Here ended my life in my own country.
CXCVI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
It has been wisely said that Virtue hath only
to be seen to be beloved : but unwisely, that Vice
hath only to be seen to be hated. Certain it is
that the more habituated we are to the contem-
plation of a pure and placid life, the more do we
delight in it. I wish it were equally so that every
glance at Vice loosens a feather from her plumage,
and that on a nearer approach and more stedfast
observation she grows hideous. Proofs to the con-
trary come before us every day.
Eupolisand Mnesilochosand Calliasand Cratinos,
like most other authors, are indifferent to any
result from their writings but popularity and
emolument. A/id we are informed here at Miletus
that several of your philosophers are now employ-
ing a language, on the powers and provinces of love,
far more seductive to the passions of their youthful
auditors than the most indecent of theatrical
ribaldry. For surely there is little seductive in
a boisterous jocularity, that seizes and holds down
the hand from the painfully blushing forehead, and
forces the eyes to see what they would shun.
Ionian manners, I am afraid, are as licentious as
the Athenian : but ours are become so by our inter-
course with the Persians, the Athenian by theirs
with the Philosophers. It is only of late that such
poisonous perfumery has had this influence on the
brain ; it is only since the departure of the sedate
unostentatious Anaxagoras, that syllogists have
snapped their fingers at experiment. Against such
men the arrows of ridicule are well directed : but
these arrows fall harmlessly from flowing robes; and
indeed the purple dye is everywhere a panacea.
CXCVII. ANAXAGORAS TO PERICLES.
Thanks, 0 Pericles, for your provident care of
me ! Povident do I say ? no, anything but that ;
kind, generous, profuse ; but if you really saw the
extent of my wants, you would only send me
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
437
notice that you and those about you are well and
happy.
The fever which has broken out in your city
will certainly spare you if you reside in the
Acropolis : and yet you tell me that you are re-
solved on taking no such [precaution, lest you
should appear to claim an exemption from the
common peril.
What prudent men were my enemies in Athens,
to send me back hither ! they would not let me
live nor die among them !
You have little curiosity to know anything about
private men and retired places. Nevertheless I
will tell you and Aspasia what is Lampsacos.
Shrimps and oysters are the lower order of the
inhabitants : and these, it is pretended, have reason
to complain of the aristocracy above them. The
aristocracy on their side contend that such com-
plaints are idle and unfounded ; that they are well
fed and well clothed, and that the worst that ever
happens to them is to be taken out of their beds,
and to be banded, marshalled, and embarked, in
the service of their country. In few more words,
we all are either fishermen or vine-dressers. I
myself am a chief proprietor ; my tenement is
small, but my vineyard is as spacious as any about.
It is nearly a hundred of my paces broad : its
length I cannot tell you, for in this direction it is
too steep for me to walk up it. My neighbours
have informed me that there is a fine spacious
view of the Hellespont and headlands from the
summit. I only know that there is a noble God,
a century old at the least . . he who protects our
gardens and vines. An image of him stands
either at the top or the bottom of every avenue in
the vicinity. He frowns in many of them ; yet,
amid all his threats, there is in his good-humoured
gravity something like a half-invitation. The
boys and girls write verses under him, very dero-
gatory to his power and dignity. They usually
write them, I understand, in one another's name;
just as if he could not find them out, and would
not punish them in due season. Enough of this :
I have somewhat less to say about myself. The
people love me, for I am no philosopher here, and
have scarcely a book in the house. I begin to
find that eyes are valuables and books utensils.
Sitting at my door, I am amused at the whistle of
curlews, and at their contentions and evolutions,
for a better possession than a rabble's ear. Some-
times I go down, and enjoy a slumber on the soft
deep sands ; an unexpected whisper and gentle
flap on the face from the passing breeze awakens
me, or a startling plash from the cumbersome
wave as it approaches nearer. Idleness is as dear
to me, reflection as intense, and friendship 'as warm
as ever. Yes, Pericles ! Friendship may pause,
may question, may agonize, but her semblance
alone can perish.
My moon is in the last quarter, and my days
ought now to be serene : they are so. Be yours no
less ; yours and Aspasia's !
CXCVIII. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
One true and solid blessing I owe to my popu-
larity. Seldom is it that popularity has afforded
any man more than a fallacious one. Late wisdom,
and dearly bought, is mine, Aspasia ! But I am
delaying your delight, at one moment by the
hurry of my spirits, at another by the intensity of
my reflections. Our Pericles is Athenian in
privileges as in birth. I have obtained a law to
revoke a former one enforced by me . . and felt
no shame. If I could hope that other statesmen
would take example from my faults, if I could
hope that at any future time they would cease to
be opinionative, imperious, and self-willed, mis-
taking the eminence of station for the supremacy
of wisdom, I would entreat them to urge no
measure in which might be traced the faintest
sign of malice or resentment, whether in regard to
parties or private men. But alas ! the inferior
part of man is the stronger : we cannot cut the
centaur in twain : we must take him as we find
him composed, and derive all the advantage we
can both from his strength and his weakness.
I am growing the politician again, when I should
be the husband and father.
The odious law, the weight of which I drew
upon my own head,* is abrogated. The children
of women not Athenian are declared free citizens.
Many good men, many good mothers, have
mourned the degradation of theirs through my
severity.
How dear, above the sweetest of Spring, are the
blossoms that appear in the less genial hours of
winter ! how dear, above earth, above all things
upon earth (Aspasia will pardon this, whether true
or false), is our little Pericles ! Am I dreaming
when I imagine I see this beautiful boy, with
Health and Hope beside him, kneeling on the
border of the tomb, and raising up from it a whole
family, in long perspective ! We were gone, I
thought, we were lost for ever. The powerful
father merged his whole progeny in utter darkness;
an infant shall reclaim it.
No longer is there a cloud upon my brow ! no
longer is there, I am apt to think, a pestilence in
Athens.
* It is stated in every Life of Pericles that he obtained
the enactment of it. This is incorrect. The law was an
ancient one, and required fresh vigour and vigilant obser-
vance at a time when hostilities were imminent, and when
many thousands were residing in the city who would
otherwise have claimed a right to vote as citizens, while
their connexions were to be found among the inveterate
enemies or the seceding allies of Athens. Long antece-
dently to the administration of Pericles, it appears that at
a certain age the illegitimate were assembled at Cynosargcs,
in the wrestling-ring dedicated to Hercules, who himself
was in that predicament : and these alone entered it. On
which occasion Themistocles, his mother being a Thracian,
gave the earliest proof of his astuteness, by inviting some
of unmixed blood and aristocratical lineage to wrestle
with him. It is far from improbable that Pericles insisted
the rather on the execution of this law in opposition to
Cimon, whose father Miltiades had married the daughter
of Oloros, a prince of Thrace, and who himself was de-
scended also from a ruler of that nation.
433
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
CXCIX. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Blessings on the generosity of the Athenians
blessings a thousaud-fold on the paternal heart oi
Pericles !
0 Pericles ! how wrong are all who do not for
ever follow Love, under one form or other ! There
is no God but he, the fratner, the preserver of the
world, the pure Intelligence ! All wisdom that is
not enlightened and guided by him is perturbed
and perverted. He will shed, 0 my husband, his
brightest tints over our autumnal days. Were we
ever happy until now? Ah yes, we were . . but
undeserving. A fresh fountain opens before us,
subject to no droughts, no overflowings. How
gladly, how gratefully, do I offer to immortal Love
the first libation !
Come hither, my sweet child ! come hither to
my heart ! thou art man, thou art Athenian, thou
art free. We are now beyond the reach, beyond
the uttermost scope and vision, of Calamity.
CO. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Alcibiades is grown up to the highest beauty of
adolescence. I think I should be enamoured of
him were I a girl, and disengaged. No, Cleone !
the so easy mention of him proves to me that I
never should be. He is petulant, arrogant, im-
petuous, and inconsistent. Pericles was always
desirous that he should study oratory, in order
that it might keep him at home, gratify his vanity
the most perfectly and compendiously, and render
him master of his own thoughtsand those of others.
He plainly told Pericles that he could learn little
from him except dissimulation.
" Even that," replied Pericles, " is useful and
necessary : it proceeds from self-command. Simu-
lation, on the contrary, is falsehood, and easily
acquired by the meanest intellect. A powerful
man often dissembles : he stands erect in the
course of glory, with open brow but with breath
feupprest : the feebler mind is ready to take refuge
in its poverty, under the sordid garb of whining
simulation."
He then remarked to Pericles, that his oratory
was somewhat like his economy, wanting in
copiousness and display.
" Alcibiades !" said my husband, " it is particu-
larly this part of it which I could wish you to
adopt. In oratory there are few who can afford
to be frugal : in economy there are few who can
afford to act otherwise than frugally. I am a
public man, and it little becomes me to leave
room for suspicion that, by managing ill my own
small affairs, I may be negligent in the greater of
the commonwealth. There are kingdoms in
Thrace and Asia, where the cares of government
are consigned to ministers or satraps, and where
it shall be thought honourable and glorious in
one of these functionaries to die in debt, after
managing the treasury. But surely there is in
this no proof whatever that he managed it dis-
creetly : there is a fair presumption that, neglect-
ing his household, he left the community in worse
disorder. Unquestionably he was a dishonest
man, to incur a debt beyond the extent of his
estate. Forbearance from accumulation in his
own house, is hardly to be deemed a merit by the
most inconsiderate, in one who can unlock the
treasury to every relative, every friend, every
associate, and every dependant. Such persons
will generally be found to have been gamesters
and prodigals, and to have entrusted the subordi-
nate branches of public concerns to servants, as
unfaithful and improvident as those menials who
administered their own : and the reigns of the
princes who employed them, if recorded at all,
are recorded as prodigies of expenditure, profli-
gacy, and disaster.
" Aristides died poor : but Ai- vtides never was
rich : he threw away nothing but his good ex-
ample. And was his the fault there ] He was
frugal, he was provident : every action he per-
formed, every word he uttered, will excite, inform,
and direct, remotest generations. Thus indeed
it can not properly be said that, however now
neglected, his example was thrown away. Like
the seeds of plants which a beneficent God hath
scattered throughout the earth, although many
fail to come up soon after the season of their
sowing, yet do they not decay and perish, but
germinate in the sterilest soils many ages later.
Aristides will be forefather to many brave and
honest men not descended from his lineage nor
his country: he will be founder of more than
nations : he will give body, vitality, and activity,
to sound principles. Had he merely been a phi-
losopher, he could effect little of this ; commander
as he was, imperial Persia served only for a mir-
ror to reflect his features from Attica on the
world."
Alcibiades, in several parts of this discourse,
had given signs of weariness and impatience.
Pericles perceived it, and reverted to Aristides.
At every word that was now spoken he grew more
and more animated : at the close he sprang up,
seized the hand of Pericles, and told him he would
listen as long as he went on in that manner.
' Speak to the purpose, as you have begun to
do, and about Aristides, and I shall like you
better than Aspasia. I think, after all, I may
perhaps let you be my teacher." He said this
laughing.
My husband replied,
" I will not undertake it, Alcibiades ! Perad-
venture I may offer you, from time to time, a little
at once, some serviceable observations, some fruits
of my experience : but it is only to grace and
beauty that your restless intractable mind is
obedient for an hour."
'Call me anything, do anything, or nothing,"
said the youth, " if you will only give me such a
smile again."
' Go and ride into the country," said my hus-
band, as he was rising. " If you retain your high
opinion of me on your return, you will find me at
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
439
leisure to continue. I leave you, for the present,
with Aristides."
Away he went, without a word more to either
of us. When he was out of the apartment,
Pericles said, after a thoughtful and serious pause,
" He is as beautiful, playful, and uncertain, as
any half-tamed young tiger, feasted and caressed
on the royal carpets of Persepolis : not even
Aspasia will ever quite subdue him."
CCI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
I shall never more be in fear about you, my
Aspasia ! Frolicsome and giddy as you once ap-
peared to me, at no time of your life could Alci-
biades have interested your affections. You will
be angry with me when I declare to you that I do
not believe you ever were in love. The renown
and genius of Pericles won your imagination : his
preference, his fondness, his constancy, hold, and
will for ever hold, your heart. The very beautiful
rarely love at all. Those precious images are
placed above the reach of the Passions : Time
alone is permitted to efface them ; Time, the
father of the Gods, and even their consumer.
CCII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Angry ! yes indeed, very angry am I : but let
me lay all my anger in the right place. I was
often jealous of your beauty, and I have told you
so a thousand times. Nobody for many years
ever called me so beautiful as Cleone ; and when
some people did begin to call me so, I could not
believe them. Few will allow the first to be first;
but the second and third are universal favourites.
We are all insurgents against the despotism of
excellence.
Ah Cleone ! if I could divide my happiness with
you, I do think I should have much to give you.
I would demand a good deal of your sound judg-
ment for it ; but you should have it. We both of
us value our beauty, I suspect, less than we used
to do, which is certainly wrong ; for whatever we
may be told, or may tell ourselves, we have rather
a scantier store of it. However, we are not yet
come to the last loaf in the citadel.
I did not see Alcibiades again, that day or the
following. When he came to me, he told me he
was ashamed of having said an uncivil thing.
" Of which are you ashamed?" said I, " 0 Alci-
biades ! for there were several not distinguished
for courtesy."
" As usual, in good humour, which always
punishes me," said he. "But I remember I made
a rude observation on what lies within your de-
partment."
" Economy T said I.
Before he could answer me, Pericles, informed
that Alcibiades had inquired for him, entered
the apartment.
" I am glad you are come in," cried he, " for,
although I have taken two days to collect my
courage and words, I think I shall have more of
both, now you arc present."
He then began his apology, which Pericles thus
interrupted.
" Be prepared for chastisement : I shall impose
a heavy mulct on your patience : I shall render
an account to you of my administration, and I
hope you will permit it to pass.
" I have a son, as y6*u know, in whose character
parsimony is not among the more prominent
qualities. I am unwilling to shock him by it,
which is always apt to occasion a rebound to the
opposite side : and I am equally unwilling to offer
an example or pretext for luxury and expense.
My own character will permit neither. I never
gave a splendid feast : I never gave a sparing en-
tertainment : I never closed my dining-room to a
man of elegant manners or of sound information.
I have not the ample fortune of our cousin Cimon,
who always used it magnificently : and glad am I
that I have it not; for it would oblige me to
receive many who must disgust me, and who
would occupy more hours of my leisure than I
can spare. My system of domestic life has pro-
duced me contentment and happiness. May
yours, my dear Alcibiades, whether like it or
unlike it, do the same ! "
"Thank you!" said he carelessly, and added,
" But your manner of speaking, which we first
began to talk about, the other day, is proper only
for yourself : in any other man it would be ridi-
culous. Were I to employ it, people would be-
lieve I assumed the character of Jupiter or Hermes
walking' among mortals. Aspasia's is good
enough for me. Many think her language as
pure and elegant as yours: and I have never
known it enrage and terrify men as yours does."
" Study then Aspasia in preference," said he.
" You possess already some of her advantages.
A beautiful mouth is always eloquent : its defects
are taken for tropes and figures. Let us try
together which can imitate her best. Neither of
us hath ever seen her out of temper, or forgetful
what argument to urge first and most forcibly.
When we have much to say, the chief difficulty is
to hold back some favourite thought, which
presses to come on before its time, and thereby
makes a confusion in the rest. If you are master
of your temper, and conscious of your superiority,
the words and thoughts will keep their ranks, and
will come into action with all their energy, com-
pactness, and weight. Never attempt to alter
your natural tone of voice ; never raise it above
its pitch : let it at first be somewhat low and slow.
This appears like diffidence ; and men are obliged
to listen the more attentively, that they may hear
it. Beginning with attention, they will retain it
during the whole, speech : but attention is with
difficulty caught in the course of one.
" I am intruding a little on the province of As-
pasia. If she approves of my advice, pursue it ; if
she disapproves, be sure I have spoken inconsider-
ately; although I fancy I have observed such effects
on several occasions."
He ceased : I enforced as well as I could his
admonition. But Alcibiades, with grace nearly
440
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
equal, wants his gravity ; and, if ever he should
be his successor in the administration of the
Republic, he must become so by other methods.
OC1II. ANAXAdORAS TO ASPASIA.
Proxenos is sailing back to Massilia. Before
he left us, he collected a large cargo of Inscrip-
tions, chiefly poetical. In Massilia these matters
are curiosities. The people, who can not have
them fresh, are glad to accept them dry, although,
according to Proxenos, they are little acute in
relishing or distinguishing them.
In his last conversation with me, he gave evi-
dence that, should he ever fail as a merchant, he
hopes to make his fortune as a critic. Among
his remarks was this.
" I can not for my life imagine why Zephyr is
such a favourite with the poets."
I answered that we- lonians were always shy of
him ; but that in other parts, and especially to-
ward Gaul and Italy, he certainly was better be-
haved.
" Better behaved ! " cried Proxenos. " By the
Twins ! he hath split my sail more than once."
To comfort him, I replied : " He has done that
with his best friends, 0 Proxenos ! "
" And no longer ago," continued he, " than
last Boedromion, he carried off my nether garment
that was drying upon deck."
" Ah ! there," said I, "mischievous as he is, he
could not do the same to them without homicide :
few of them have one to spare."
At the recollection of his superior wealth and
dignity, he grew composed again. The Gods grant
him a prosperous voyage ! Ere this letter shall
reach Athens, he must be almost as far as Cythera.
What labours and perils do seafaring men un-
dergo ! What marvels are ships ! They travel
in a month farther than the fleetest horse can do ;
to such perfection have they been brought, and
such confidence is there now in human courage
and skill. As there hath been little or no im-
provement in them for some centuries, we may
suppose that, contrary to all other inventions, the
ingenuity of mortals can do nothing more for them.
I forgot to mention of Proxenos, what may-be
it were better not to mention at all, that he is
reported to have broken off the extremity of a
leaf or two on some curious old vases, and a par-
ticle of a volute * from a small column at the
* One Eyles Irwin, who was not poor nor quite unedu-
cated, tella us in his Travels that he broke off a volute as
a relic from what was called Pompey's Pillar. This hap-
pened so lately as the last century. We are, it seems,
about to remove from Egypt the obelisk named Cleopatra's
Needle. Do we believe that Egypt is never to come to life
again? It may be some hundreds, it may be some thou-
sands of years ; but these are to the glories of Egypt as
pounds are to our national debt . . itself so glorious, and
of which the formation has constituted our glorious men !
Are we sure that the Genius who created these eternal
works, derives no portion of his beatitude from the hourly
contemplation of them, in the country where they were
formed and fixed ?
corner of a lane. Nothing can so distinctly
prove, say the Lampsacenes, that Proxenos has a
few drops of barbarian blood in him. Genuine
Greeks may travel through all the world, and see
every vase, every column, every statue, worth
seeing in its whole circumference, without a
thought of mutilation. Those people who can
not keep their hands from violating the purest
works of ancient days, ought, if there are not too
many of them, to be confined in separate cages,
among the untameable specimens of zoology.
The Lampsacenes, you see by this, are not
averse to protect the Arts.
CCIV. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
I have found eight verses, of which I send you
only the four last. So entirely do they express
what I have felt, it seems as if I myself had com-
posed them.
They who tell us that love and grief are with-
out fancy and invention, never knew invention
and fancy, never felt grief and love.
The thorns that pierce most deep are prest
Only the closer to the breast :
To dwell on them is now relief,
And tears alone are balm to grief !
You perhaps will like these better, Aspasia !
though very unlike in sentiment and expression.
Pyrrha ! your smiles are gleams of sun
That after one another run
Incessantly, and think it fun.
Pyrrha .' your tears are short sweet rain
That glimmering on the flower-lit plain
Zephyrs kiss back to heaven again.
Pyrrha ! both anguish me : do please
To shed but (if you wish me ease)
Twenty of those, and two of these.
CCV. ANAXAOORAS TO ASPASIA.
Ships are passing and repassing through the
Hellespont all hours of the day ; some of them
from the Piraeus, urging the allies of Athens to
come forward in her defence ; others from the
Peloponese, inciting them to rise up in arms, and
at once to throw off allegiance.
Would there be half this solicitude in either of
the belligerents to be virtuous and happy, sup-
posing it possible to persuade the one or the
other that she might be, and without an effort ?
supposing it, in other words, to be quite as easy
and pleasant to receive a truth as an untruth.
Would these mariners and soldiers, and those
statesmen who send them out, exert half the
anxiety, half the energy and prowess, to extinguish
the conflagration of a friend's house in the neigh-
bourhood, as they are exerting now to lay in ashes
all the habitations that lie beyond it ? And such
are brave men, such are wise men, such are the
rulers of the world ! Well hath it been said by
some old poet,
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
441
Men let them selves slide onward by degrees
Into the depths of madness ; one bold spring
Back from the verge, had saved them ; but it seems
There dwells rare joy within it ! O thou Sire
Of Gods and mortals, let the blighting cloud
Pass over me ! O grant me wholesome rest
And innocent uprisings, although call'd
The only madman on thy reeling earth !
CCVI. ANAXAGOKAS TO ASPASIA.
It is well that you are removed from the city,
and that the enemies of Athens pay respect either
to your birth-place or your wisdom, either to your
celebrity or your confidence. I remember that,
speaking of the human form and countenance,
both as existing in life and represented in the
ideal, you remarked that the perfection of beauty
is what is farthest from all similitude to the
brutes. Surely then, in like manner, the perfec-
tion of our moral nature is in our remoteness from
all similitude to their propensities. Now the
worst propensity of the worst beasts is bloodshed,
for which we pursue them as nearly as we can to
extermination, but which they never commit with
so little urgency, or to so great an extent, as we
do. Until we bring ourselves at least to an
equality with them, we can hardly be said to
have made much progress in wisdom. It will
appear wonderful and perhaps incredible to future
generations, that what are now considered the two
highest gifts of man, oratory and poetry, should
be employed, the one chiefly in exciting, the
other in emblazoning, deeds of slaughter and
devastation. If we could see, in the nature of
things, a child capable of forming a live tiger,
and found him exercising his power of doing it,
I think we should say to him,
" You might employ your time better, child ! "
But then, Aspasia, we must not be orators nor
poets, nor hope for any estimation in the state.
Beware how you divulge this odd opinion ; or
you may be accused, as before, of crimes against
the purity of morals, against the customs of our
forefathers, and against the established and due
veneration of the Gods. I hardly know what I
am treading on, when I make a single step to-
ward philosophy. On sand I fear it is; and,
whether the impression be shallow or profound,
the eternal tide of human passions will cover and
efface it. There are many who would be vexed
and angry at this, and would say, in the bitter-
ness of their hearts, that they have spent their
time in vain. Aspasia ! Aspasia ! they have indeed,
if they are angry or vext about it.
CCVII. ANAXAGOKAS TO ASPASIA.
Did I tell you, 0 Aspasia, we were free and
remote from the calamities of war? we were.
The flute and the timbrel and the harp alone
were heard along our streets ; and the pavement
was bestrewn with cistus and lavender and myrtle,
which grow profusely on the rocks behind us.
Melanthos had arrived from the Chersonese to
marry Eurycleia; and his friend Sosigenes of
Corinth had determined to be united on the same
day with her sister Phanera.
Those who have seen them say that they were
the prettiest girls in the city : they were also the
happiest; but less happy than their lovers, who
however owed at present but a part of the hap-
piness to either. They were sworn friends from
early youth, and had not met since, but always
had corresponded.
Why can not men draw a line against war as
against plague, and shut up the infected ? Instead
of which, they are proud of being like the dogs
in the worst feature ; rushing forth into every
affray, and taking part in it instantly with equal
animosity. I wish we had arrived at such a de-
gree of docility, and had advanced so many steps
in improvement, that by degrees we might hope
to acquire anything better of these good crea-
tures. We have the worst of every beast, and the
best of none.
This is not, 0 Aspasia ! my usual tone of think-
ing and discoursing : nor is what has happened
here among the usual occurrences of my life.
The generous heart needs little to be reminded
what are the embraces of young and ardent
friends ; and the withered one could ill represent
them.
Eurycleia, in the silence of fondness, in the
fulness of content, was holding the hand of her
Melanthos. Love has few moments more sweet,
Philosophy none more calm. That moment was
interrupted by the entrance of Sosigenes; and
composure was exchanged for rapture by the
friendly soul of Melanthos. Yes, yes, Aspasia !
friendship, even in the young, may be more
animated than love itself. It was not long,
however.
" Where is Phanera ] "
" I will call her," said Eurycleia, and went out.
Phanera, fond of ornament, it may be, and
ambitious to surpass her sister and enchant her
lover, came not speedily, nor indeed did Eurycleia
very soon, for it was not at first that she could
find her. Conversation had begun in the mean-
while about the war. Melanthos was a little
more vehement than the mildness of his nature,
it is said, ever allowed him before, and blamed
the Corinthians for inciting so many states to
hostility. Often had Sosigenes been looking
toward the door, expecting his Phanera, and now
began to grow impatient. The words of Melan-
thos, who felt the cruelty of war chiefly because
it would separate the two sisters and the two
friends, touched the pride of Sosigenes. Unable
to moderate his temper, now excited by the ab-
sence of Phanera after the sister had some time
returned, he said fiercely,
" It is well to blame the citizens of the noblest
city upon earth, for not enduring an indignity.
It is well ; but in slaves alone, or viler depend-
ents."
"Sosigenes! Sosigenes!" cried Melanthos,
starting up and rushing toward him. At that
instant the impetuous Sosigenes, believing vio-
442
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
lence was about to follow affront, struck him with
his dagger to the heart.
• "I could not then calm thy anger with an
embrace ! my too unhappy friend ! " while the
blood gurgled through the words, sobbed forth
Melanthos.
CCVIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
You commanded me, 0 Pericles, that I should
write to you, whenever I found an opportunity
on land. Phormio cast anchor before Naupactos :
we command the Gulf of Crissa and check the
movements of the Corinthians. The business of
blockading is little to my mind. Writing is
almost as insufferable : it is the only thing I do
not willingly undertake when my friends desire
it. Beside, I have nothing in the world to write
about. We have done little but sink a few vessels
and burn a few villages. It is really a hard mat-
ter to find a table to write upon, so quick and
so complete is the devastation. I fancied war had
something in it more animating and splendid.
The people of the Peloponese are brave, however.
They sometimes ask for their children (if very
young) but never for their lives. Why can not
we think them as little worth taking as they of
giving ]
I am heartily tired of this warfare ; and Phor-
mio has told me, in plain words, he is heartily
tired of me. Upon this, I requested his permis-
sion to join without delay our army before Poti-
daea. I expected not only an uncivil refusal, but
a sharp rebuke.
" The Gods have begun to favour us ! " cried
Phormio. " This offer is better than the luckiest
omen. Alcibiades ! thou art the whitest of white
birds ; and thy flight, whichever wind it float
upon, is worth a victory."
I would have been angry ; but laughter sprang
uppermost ; so, throwing my arms round old
Phormio's neck, I almost pulled him down
with it.
" How now, stripling ! " cried he, as willing to
be angry as I was, " all this buffoonery before the
commander of the fleet ! "
CCIX. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
Hardly could it have been expected that "the
whitest of white birds" should have been so speedily
on the wing. The day had not closed when Phor-
mio told me, that, knowing my fickleness, he had
given orders for my voyage back. Every voyage
is prosperous that brings me within sight of an
enemy worth seeing. Brave fellows these Poti-
daeans ! They never lose their appetite, even in
the greatest want of air and exercise. You, who
hear everything, must know that they eat one
another rather than surrender. I have been but
three days in the camp, where, to my delight, I
found the brave and kindly Socrates. Do you
disapprove of my renewing my intimacy with
Philosophy in the midst of battles ? Let Philo-
sophy then stand aside ; and behold in her place
the defender of his country and the saviour of his
friend.
The morning after my arrival, the Potidseans
burst forth with incredible bravery from their
gates, overthrowing all opposition. Now was my
time. The heavy-armed in general, being old
soldiers, were somewhat slower ; and many of the
enemy were assailing me when they came up :
nor indeed was it then in sufficient force. I was
wounded and overthrown, and, at the beginning,
stunned : but presently I fancied I heard the
sound of a brisk sword on armour over me, and
felt something heavy fall on my legs. I was drawn
forcibly from under the last of my antagonists.
Socrates raised me up, and defended me from the
weapons of not a few, unwilling to retire and
irresolute to renew the engagement.
I write now, because I am so wounded I can do
nothing else.
COX. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.
You are courageous, my Alcibiades, to a degree
which I hardly ever observed in another. This
alone induces me to doubt whether you will be-
come, so soon as we both of us wished it, an accom-
plished and perfect soldier. To rush against the
enemy before your comrades, is not indeed quite
so unseemly as to lag behind ; yet it may be even
more detrimental in an officer. With old troops,
who know their duty, it is always so : with younger
alone, who want encouragement, it may not be.
Socrates deserved the first honours in the action :
his modesty and his affection transferred them to
the imprudent and the vanquished, whom he
rescued from the shame of rashness and the
wretchedness of captivity. With all my fondness
for you, I could not have given you my vote ; and,
had I commanded against Potidaea, I must have
reproved you in presence of the army.
Never, 0 Alcibiades, inflict on me the misery
of passing so severe a sentence. I praised you be-
fore others did ; I condemn you after them. Your
high spirit deserved its reward ; your temerity its
rebuke. I, who have been the careful guardian
of your fortune, am the more anxious one of your
safety and of your fame. In my former letter I
gave unobstructed way to the more pleasurable
emotions : and, in everyone that I shall have occa-
sion to write to you hereafter, I am confident of
the same enjoyment. Reply to me as your friend,
your comrade, the partaker of your pains and
pleasures, and at most the director of your studies.
But here, my Alcibiades, we must be grave and
serious : I must, for once, not guide, but dictate :
no answer is here admissible, excepting the an-
swer of a soldier to his general.
CCXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
You know that to Niconoe was awarded by
her judge Priapos the prize of beauty in the
Kallisteia. In return for this favourable decision,
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
443
she dedicated to him a golden ewer and a fawn-
skin. Under his image a poet, who perhaps was
her admirer, and who was grateful to the arbiter,
wrote this epigram.
Nicono'e is inclined to deck
Thy ruddy shoulder and thick neck
With her own fawn-skin, Lampsacene !
Beside, she brings a golden ewer
To cool thy hands in, very sure
Among what herbage they have been.
Ah ! thou hast wicked leering eyes,
And any maiden were unwise
Who should invest thee face to face ;
Therefore she does it from behind,
And blesses thee, so just and kind
In giving her the prize for grace.
Here are some others, I believe by Erinna her-
self, but I find inscribed on them Address to
Erinna.
Ay, shun the dance and shun the grape,
Erinna ! thou shalt not escape.
Idle the musing maid who thinks
To lie unseen by sharp-eyed lynx
Where Bacchus, god of joy and truth,
Hunts with him, hunts for bashful youth.
So take the thyrsus if you please,
And come and join the Moenades.
CCXII. ANAXAQORAS TO ASPASIA.
We are now so near winter that there may not
be, after the vessel which is about to sail, any
more of them bound for Athens, all the remainder
of the year. And who knows what another may
bring or take away %
I remain in health, but feeble. Life slips from
me softly and imperceptibly. I am unwilling to
tire myself by blowing a fire which must soon go
out, whether I blow it or not. Had I any species
of curiosity to send you, were it pebble, sea-weed,
or new book, I would send it ; not (for it is idle
to talk so) as a memorial of me. If the friend is
likely to be forgotten, can we believe that any-
thing he has about him will repose a longer time
on the memory 1
Thus far had I written, when my strength
failed me. Stesicles and Apollodoros have
told me I must prepare for a voyage. The pas-
sage is neither so broad nor so stormy as the
Hellespont.
I was resolved not to go until I had looked in
my garden for some anemonies, which I recol-
lected to have seen blossoming the other day. It
occurred to me that usually they appear in spring :
so does poetry. I will present to you a little of
both ; for the first time. They are of equal value ;
and are worth about as much as the pebble, or
the sea-weed, or the new book.
Where are theblooms of many dyes
That used in every path to rise ?
Whither are gone the lighter hours ?
What leave they ? I can only send
My wisest, loveliest, latest friend
These weather-worn and formless flowers.
Think me happy that I am away from Athens ;
I, who always lose my composure in the presence
of crime or calamity. If anyone should note to
you my singularities, remembering me a year
hence, as I trust you and Pericles will do, add to
them, but not aloud, a singularity of felicity,
" He neither lived nor died with the multitude."
There are however some Clazomenians who know
that Anaxagoras was of Clazomenai.
CCXIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
Pericles ! I did wrong and rashly. The praises
of the Athenians are to me as the hum of insects :
they linger in my ear, but are senseless and unex-
citing. I swear to you I will do better; but I must
see you before I go.
Aspasia, whose letter you have sent me since,
is even more severe than you have been; and she
has neither right nor reason. She is the only
woman upon earth that ever railed at rashness,
the only one that could distinguish it from forti-
tude. But every man must be rash once : it saves
him from as much inconvenience and mischief as
being oftener rash would incur.
Do not consider this nonsense as vindication or
reply; and let it not stand in the way of your
pardon.
CCXIV. ASPASIA TO ALCIBIADES.
Are you not ashamed, young man, to leave the
aged behind you, with all their wounds, merely to
show how dexterous you are become in the ma-
nagement of your sword 1 Unworthy Alcibiades !
Never expect that the Athenians, whatever be
their levity and inconsiderateness, will award to
you the honour of superiority in valour. Socrates
well deserved it ; not for saving a life which on
the next occasion will be thrown away, but for
giving to every one capable of profiting by it, an
example of steadiness and constancy. Pericles, I
hope, will not allow you to disembark, until you
have acquired the rudiments of discipline, in the
only art in which you ever seemed likely to excell.
Have you forgotten too that the pestilence is
raging in the city ] 0 rash Alcibiades ! the sight
of Pericles himself, to you at least, could hardly
have been worth so desperate a hazard. But Pe-
ricles will reprove you, confident boy ! Let me
hear no more of you until I have heard that he
has granted you his forgiveness.
CCXV. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Censure not too severely, 0 my Pericles, your
inconsiderate cousin ! In these days, when so
many of your adherents are fallen, some by the
fever, some by war, we must be parsimonious in
the treasury of friendship, at all times far from
inexhaustible.
A hundred men of more wisdom and more
virtue than Alcibiades would prevail much less
with the multitude, should anything sinister be-
fall you. May the Gods avert it ! but I always
fear something ; and, what certainly is more fool-
ish, I fancy my presence could avert from you any
444
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
calamity. I wish I were persuaded that the Im-
mortals hear us : I would then so perpetually pray
for you as hardly to give myself time to read your
letters; and you should quarrel with the short-
ness of mine. But reason, which strengthens our
religion, weakens our devotion. Happy are those
who have retained throughout life their infantine
simplicity, which nurses a tractable idol in an un-
suspicious bosom, is assured it knows and heeds
the voice addressing it, and shuts it up again with
a throb of joy, and keeps it warm. For this, the
mind must be nurtured to the last with the same
milky food as in childhood ; the Gods must have
their tangible images, and must laugh to us out
of ivy and flowers.
Thinking of you, I had forgotten that I began
to write in favour of Alcibiades. Lest, by taxing
him with impetuosity and imprudence, you should
alienate his fickle mind, I myself have written to
him with quite enough severity : at least I think
so : you shall judge for yourself. When you have
perused it, let it go to him instantly; for here
we are uncertain at what point the troops will
land from Potidaea. I shall be grieved if anything
happens to him. He has more life in him than
is enough to animate a city ; yet the point of an
arrow may extinguish it in an instant. With
however long experience before us, we yet might
wonder that what is so animated should ever
cease at all. You men often talk of glorious
death, of death met bravely for your country : I
too have been warmed by the bright idea in
oratory and poetry : but ah ! my dear Pericles ! I
would rather read it on an ancient tomb than on
a recent one.
CCXVI. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
I had already warned Alcibiades of his impru-
dence and irregularity ; but your letter will ensure
his correction. The reply he sent me is worthy
of a man formed for command. We must watch
over him : he will do great good or great evil.
Those who are most capable of both, always end
miserably; for, although they may have done
many things well, yet the first or second that they
do badly is their ruin. They know not whom to
choose as their follower up the scaling-ladder,
nor when to loosen their grasp of the pinnacle.
Intractable as you may think Alcibiades, there is
not a youth in Athens so easily led away by a
weaker judgment than his own. He wishes to
excell in everything, and succeeds : but this wish
brings him into contact with too many ; and he
can not at present push them off far enough from
him to see plainly and distinctly what they are. He
will soon stand above them and know them better.
I must leave off: the dying call me forth. Bless-
ings on my Aspasia and her little Athenian !
COXVII. ASPASIA TO OLEONE.
The verses I shall presently write out for you,
at the bottom of my letter, are composed, as you
will perceive, in the broadest Dorian, on the extra-
ordinary death of JSschylus. Probably the un-
happy poet was murdered by some enemy or some
robber. He was found with his skull fractured,
and, may-be, with a tortoise near him. But who
in the world can believe that an eagle dropped it
from above ] that the quickest in sight of all ani-
mals mistook a bald head for a rock 1 And did
ever man walk in the fields of Sicily with his head
uncovered ] If he did, his death might easily be
accounted for, without a tortoise or eagle : a sun-
beam is stronger and surer. Whenever I find a
book containing this gross absurdity, I instantly
throw it aside, as the effusion of an idle and silly
writer, and am well assured it must be incapable
of instructing or interesting me.
The petulant author of the verses you will find
below, is evidently a disappointed poet. Hie;o
and Theron could never treat JEschylus with ne-
glect or with indifference. Little as may be our
regard and our respect for royalty, we hardly can
suppose any king, who knows Greek, so barbarous
and stupid as to fancy in himself a nobility more
exalted than in ^Eschylus, or gifted by the Gods
with a higher office, than stewardship to the
greatest of men among whom he himself is the
richest.
Bard of Elensis ! art thou dead
So strangely ! can it be
An eagle dropt upon thy head
A tortoise ? no, not he.
They who devised the fable, marr'd
The moral of their song :
They meant the eagle by the bard
But placed the creature wrong.
Quickest in courts those ever move
Whom nature made most slow:
Tortoise wears plumes and springs above
While eagle moults below.
I have room enough for another short piece,
which carries with it somewhat more than the
dialect for a testimonial of its atticism. They
who are ill-trained in the course of poetry, puff
mid blow, as the trainers express it, at short dis-
tances : they who are trained better, move with
little difficulty and no appearance of exertion.
Strength does not lie in varicose veins. This is,
however, a subject which requires grace only.
You like to drink water ; but you like to drink it
from a silver cup.
To LOVE.
Where is my heart, perfidious boy ?
Give it, O give it, back again !
I ask no more for hours of joy ;
Lift but thy hand and burst my chain.
LOVE'S REPLY.
Fond man ! the heart we rashly gave
She values not, yet won't restore :
She passes on from slave to slave ;
Go, go ; thy heart is thine no more.
CCXVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
The Athenians, my dear Aspasia, are reported
to be a religious people; yet I have often wondered
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
445
at their freedom and boldness, in depriving the
Immortal Gods of their power on some occasions,
and on others in accosting them with familiarity
and disrespect. It would have been satisfactory
to me if you had related what befell the unhappy
man who presumed to call perfidious and&oy one of
the most powerful. Certainly we are inspired by
our holy religion to believe that Love is youthful :
but Anacreon is the only poet who represents
him as a child. There is an absurdity in making
him appear younger than we ourselves are when
we begin to be under the influence of the passion.
But the graver fault is in calling him (what I
tremble to write) perfidious ! You will relieve
my mind of some anxiety by assuring me that
nothing sinister has befallen so captious and irre-
verential a votary. If his fault is recent, and if
he is yet living, it would be wise and considerate
in him to implore the blessed mother of this al-
mighty deity, that she may be pleased to avert
his anger, should he not have forgotten the offence.
I say it, because the most experienced and the most
pious are of opinion that he is oftener oblivious.
Was not he both wiser and more pious who wrote
a poem in a very different spirit, and, whether
more or less attic, fuller of thought, consistency,
and reflection. If you have forgotten it, let me
bring it back again, and fix it as firmly as may be
in your memory :
Ah ! what a blessed privilege it is
To stand upon this insulated rock
On the north side of youth ! I see below
Many at labour, many at a game
Than labour more laborious, wanting breath
And crying help ! What now ! what vexes them ?
Only a laughing maid and winged boy,
Obstinate boy indeed, who will not shoot
His other arrow, having shot the first.
Where is the harm in this? yet they meanwhile
Make all the air about them pant with sobs,
And with one name weary poor Echo down.
Aspasia ! I too have suffered ; and Love knows
it : yet I dare not even tell him that he knows it.
To remind him would be indelicate ; to complain
would be irreligious. And what could all his
power do for me now 1 But this, believe me, is
not the reason why I endure in silence, and bend
in submission to the arbitrement of the Gods.
Surely, too surely, whoever has breathed has sighed.
When we have lost, 0 Aspasia, those we love,
whether by impassable distance or any other dis-
pensation of the Gods, youth is less happy than
age, and age than death.
CCXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Youth, like the aloe, blossoms but once, and its
flower springs from the midst of thorns : but see
with what strength and to what height the aloe-
flower rises over them : be not surpassed by it.
On love, on grief, on every human thing,
Time sprinkles Lethe's water with his wing.
If I continue to reason, or to moralize, or to
versify, you will begin to doubt my sincerity, or
at least the warmth of my affection. I am in-
duced to believe, 0 Cleone, that the Deity you
venerate so profoundly and solemnly, is far from
unforgiving. In the verses I now send you, there
appears to be a proof of it ; for the writer seems
to have treated him not only as a child, but a
child much addicted to mischief; yet never was
man treated in return with more benignity. I
should tremble at the manner in which the Fates
are mentioned, if matters were left at their arbi-
tration. But we know the contrary : we know
positively that they can spin only what is on
their distaffs, and not a thread can be turned to a
new pattern.
I would be grave, Cleone ! I would indeed : but
really there is no harm in laughing at children
and old women, Gods or not. We know they
have a good deal to do in the affairs of this world,
however : and it is unwise to laugh at those who
are as capable of extinguishing our laughter as of
exciting it.
" What art thou doing with those shears ?"
I shouted in an urchin's ears,
Who notched them and who made them grate,
While three old women near him sate,
And scowl'd at every scratch they heard,
But never said a single word.
In a dark corner thus all three
Sate with an elbow on the knee,
And three blue fingers held their tips
Imprest on three still bluer lips.
Although the froward boy I chid
Did not (boys will not) what was bid,
His countenance was not malign
As that was of the elder trine.
" Look at those frightful ones ! " he said,
And each one shook her thin-hair'd head.
'' Nay, never fear the angry crones " . .
Said he ; and each replied with groans.
" They are all vicious ; for they knew
That what I did I did for you,
Contemplating the fairest maid
That ever with my bow has play'd.
Crones ! by my help your shears have got
A set of teeth, which you have not.
Come ! come ! Death's bridemaids ! snip as fast
As snip ye may, her years shall last
In spite of you, her beauty bloom
On this side and beyond the tomb :
I swear by Styx."
" And I by thee,"
Cried I, " that what thou sayst shall be."
CCXX. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
Pray why did you tell Phanomachos to station
some confidential one near me, who should be an
eternal check on me ] There is little chance
that I should do anything extravagant, unless
the Potidaeans invite me to dinner and I accept
the invitation. I will not allow any man to de-
fend me before I stand in need of defence, and
before I have deserved to save my life by proving
it worth something. I should quarrel with So-
crates himself, much more with another, presum-
ing to take what belongs to me, of danger or of
glory. It is not kind in you, nor open, nor pru-
dent. Would you wish anyone to say " Pericles
takes care of his own relatives !" This ought only
446
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
to be said of the vilest men in the worst govern-
ments ; and of you until now it never could be.
You have given no such orders in regard to
Xanthippos. He may be as rash and violent as he
pleases. Even here he dares to call me Neaniskos
and Kouridion and Ta paidika* By Castor ! if
he were not the son of Pericles, his being my cousin
should not save from a stroke of the sabre that
fierce disdainful visage. I promise you it shall
soon be seen which of us is the braver and the
better man. I would not say this to you unless
that you might let him know my sentiments. I
have no words, written or spoken, for the contu-
melious : my complaints are for the ear of those
only who are kind to me.
CCXXI. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.
Do not think, my Alcibiades, that I recom-
mended you to the guardianship of Phanomachos,
in order that he should exercise over you a
troublesome vigilance of controul, or indulge to-
ward you an unmilitary partiality. But I am
more intimate with him than I am with Xeno-
phon or Aristoclides orHestiodorosjf and having
sons, he knows that restraints are often necessary
on the impatience of military ardour.
Your letter is a proof that I judged rightly.
My praises of your valour are lost amid those of
the army and of the city : but the delight it has
given me is, I am confident, one among the
thoughts that have assuaged your wounds. On
your return, the citizens will express their sense
of your conduct.
Endeavour to prove, now that you are acknow-
ledged to be the first in bravery, that you are
more discreet than Xanthippos. Many in every
army are so nearly on an equality in courage, that
any attempt of theirs to show a superiority is
ineffectual. Unbecoming language can neither
prove nor disprove it, but must detract from its
worth and merit. Discretion, on the contrary,
is the sure sign of that presence of mind without
which valour strikes untimely and impotently.
Judgment alone makes courage available, and
conciliates power with genius. Consider that you
never will have attained the scope of your am-
bition, until you lead and govern those men
against whom your passions now exasperate you :
and, unless you do conciliate them, you never can
induce them to acknowledge your superiority,
much less submit to your governance. It is best
the germs of power should spring forth early, that
they may have time enough for gaming strength :
therefore I write to you, no longer as a youth in
pupilage, but as a candidate for the highest offices
of the commonwealth.
Try whether your forbearance may not produce
a better effect on Xanthippos than my remon-
strances. I write to you rather than to him, be-
* This expression was usually reproachful ; not always ;
as we see in Plato.
•f These three were appointed to commands with Pha-
nomachos.
cause I rely more firmly on your affection. Be
worthy of such a secret, 0 Alcibiades ! and think
how highly I must esteem your prudence and
manliness, when I delegate to you, who are the
younger, the power of correcting in him the faults
which I have been unable to eradicate or suppress.
Go, and, in the spirit with which I send it, give
my love to Xanthippos. He may neglect it, he
may despise it, he may cast it away, but I will
gather it all up again for him : you must help me.
CCXXII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
Pericles, I was much edified by your letter;
but, pardon me, when I came to the close of it I
thought you rather mad.
" What !" said I " beard this panther !"
However, when I had considered a little more
and a little better on it, I went to him and de-
livered your love. He stared at me, and then
desired to see the direction. " Ay," said he, " I
remember the handwriting. He oftener writes to
me than I to him. I suppose he has less to do
and less to think of."
The few other words he added are hardly worth
the trouble of repetition : in fact, they were not
very filial. Dear Pericles! I would love him,
were it only out of perversity. But, beside all
other rights over me, you have made me more
disposed than ever to obey you, in making me more
contented with myself, as you have by this com-
mission. I may do something yet, if we can but
fumigate or pray away the plague. Of two thou-
sand four hundred soldiers, who landed but forty
days before me from the Bosphorus, under the
command of Agnon son of Nikias, one thousand
and fifty are already dead. I shall have nobody
to persuade or manage, or even to fight with, if
we go on so.
CCXXIII. ALCIBIADES TO PERICLES.
Potidaea has surrendered. The dead of the city
are scarcely more shadows than the living, and
yet how bravely they fought to the last ! I should
have been sorry for them a few months ago ; but
I have now learnt what it is to be a soldier. We
must rise superior to pain, and then take another
flight, farther afield, and rise superior to pity.
Beside, the Potidaeans were traitors ; and next,
they were against us ; and furthermore, they were
so wicked as to eat one another rather than sub-
mit. This shows their malice. Now we have
done nothing half so bad toward them ; and I
assure you, if others are disposed to such cruelty,
I will take no part in it : for who would ever kiss
me afterward ]
CCXXIV. PERICLES TO ALCIBIADES.
The remembrance of past days that were happy,
increases the gloominess of those that are not,
and intercepts the benefits of those that would be.
In the midst of the plague this reflection
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
447
strikes me, on the intelligence I have received
from Lampsacos. You likewise will be sorry, 0
Alcibiades, to hear that Anaxagoras is dying.
Although he seldom conversed with you, and sel-
dom commended you in private, believe me, he
never omitted an occasion of pointing out to your
friends any sign you had manifested of ability or
virtue. He declined the character of teacher, yet
few have taught so much, wherever his wisdom
was accessible. Philosophers there have been in-
deed, at Athens and elsewhere, earnest in the
discovery and in the dissemination of truth ; but,
excepting Thalesand Pherecydes, none among them
has been free from ostentation, or from desire of
obtaining the absolute and exclusive possession of
weak and ductile minds. Now the desire of great
influence over others is praiseworthy only where
great good to the community may arise from it.
To domineer in the arbitrary sway of a dogma-
tical and grasping, yet loose and empty-handed
philosophy, which never bears upon inventions
and uses, nor elevates nor tranquillises the mind,
and to look upon ourselves with a sweet compla-
cency from so petty an eminence, is worse than
boyish ambition. To call idlers and stragglers to
us, and to sit among them and regale on their
wonder, is the selfishness of an indigent and ill-
appointed mind. Anaxagoras was subject to none
of these weaknesses, nor to the greater of conde-
scending to reprove, or to argue with, those who
are. He made every due allowance for our in-
firmities of understanding ; and variations of tem-
per, the effect of them ; and he was no less
friendly toward those who differed widely in opi-
nion from him, than toward those who quite
agreed. When a friend of his was admiring and
praising him for it, he interrupted him, saying,
" Why not ? Is it not too self-evident for lan-
guage, that, if I had taken the same road, I should
have gone in the same direction 1 and would not
the same direction have led to the same conclusion1? "
Yes, Alcibiades ! it is indeed self-evident, and,
were it spoken unwarily, it would be reprehended
for being so : and yet scarcely one man in ten
millions acts consistently upon it.
There are humanities, my friend, which require
our perpetual recollection, and are needful to
compensate, in some measure, for those many
others we must resign to the necessities and
exactions of war.
CCXXV. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Serene and beautiful are our autumnal days in
Thessaly. We have many woods about us, and
many woodland sounds among them. In this sea-
son of the year I am more inclined to poetry than
in any other ; and I want it now more than ever
to flow among my thoughts, and to bear up the
heavier.
I hesitate, 0 Cleone, to send you what T have
been writing. You will say it is a strange fancy of
mine, and fitter for me in those earlier hours of
life when we were reposing in the Island.
Nothing, I must confess, would be more ill-
placed than a Drama or Dialogue in the world
below ; at least if the Shades entered into captious
disquisitions or frivolous pleasantries. But we
believe that our affections outlive us, and that
Love is not a stranger in Elysium. Humours,
the idioms of life, are lost in the transition, or
are generalised in the concourse and convergency
of innumerable races : passions, the universal
speech, are throughout intelligible.
The Genius of Homer is never to be gainsaid
by us : and he shows us how heroes, and women
worthy of heroes, felt and reasoned. A long dia-
logue, a formal drama, would be insupportable :
but perhaps a single scene may win attention and
favour from my own Cleone.
I imagine then Agamemnon to descend from
his horrible death, and to meet instantly his
daughter. By the nature of things, by the sud-
denness of the event, Iphigeneia can have heard
nothing of her mother's double crime, adultery
and murder.
I suspend my pen. Although I promised you
in the morning my short Acherusian scene, I am
almost ready to retract my words. Everybody
has found out that I am deficient in tenderness.
While I was writing I could not but shed tears . .
just as priests do libations, you will say, to save
other people the trouble.
THE SHADES OP AGAMEMNON AND OF IPHJGBNBIA.
Iphigeneia. Father ! I now may lean upon your breast,
And you with unreverted eyes will grasp
Iphigeneia's hand.
We are not shades
Surely ! for yours throbs yet.
And did my blood
Win Troy for Greece ?
Ah ! 'twas ill done to shrink,
But the sword gleam'd so sharp, and the good priest
Trembled, and Pallas frown 'd above, severe.
Ayamemnon. Daughter !
Iphigeneia. Beloved father ! is the blade
Again to pierce my bosom ? 'tis unfit
For sacrifice ; no blood is in its veins ;
No God requires it here ; here are no wrongs
To vindicate, no realms to overthrow.
You are standing as at Aulis in the fane,
With face averted, holding (as before)
My hand ; but yours burns not, as then it burn'd ;
This alone shows me we are with the Blest,
Nor subject to the sufferings we have borne.
I will win back past kindness.
Tell me then,
Tell how my mother fares who loved me so,
And griev'd, as 'twere for you, to see me part.
Frown not, but pardon me for tarrying
Amid too idle words, nor asking how
She prais'd us both (which most ?) for what we did.
Agamemnon. Ye Gods who govern here ! do human pangs
Reach the pure soul thus far below ? do tears
Spring in these meadows?
Iphigeneia. No, sweet father, no . .
I could have answered that ; why ask the Gods ?
Agamemnon. Iphigeneia ! O my child ! the Earth
Has gendered crimes unheard-of heretofore,
And Nature may have changed in her last depths,
Together with the Gods and all their laws.
Iphigeneia. Father! we must not let you here condemn ;
Not, were the day less joyful : recollect
We have no wicked here ; no king to judge.
448
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
Poseidon, we have heard, with bitter rage
Lashes his foaming steeds against the skies,
And, laughing with loud yell at winged fire
Innoxious to his fields and palaces,
Affrights the eagle from the sceptred hand ; '
While Pluto, gentlest brother of the three
And happiest in obedience, views sedate
His tranquil realm, nor envies theirs above.
No change have we, not even day for night
Nor spring for summer.
All things are serene,
Serene too be your spirit ! None on earth
Ever was half so kindly in his house,
And so compliant, even to a child.
Never was snatch 'd your robe away from me,
Though going to the council. The blind man
Knew his good king was leading him indoors
Before he heard the voice that marshall'd Greece.
Therefore all prais'd you.
Proudest men themselves «
In others praise humility, and most
Admire it in the sceptre and the sword.
What then can make you speak thus rapidly
And briefly ? in your step thus hesitate ?
Are you afraid to meet among the good
Incestuous Helen here ?
Agamemnon. O ! Gods of Hell !
Iphigeneia. She hath not past the river.
We may walk
With our hands link'd nor feel our house's shame
Agamemnon. Never mayst thou, Iphigeneia, feel it !
Aulis had no sharp sword, thou wouldst exclaim,
Greece no avenger . . I, her chief so late,
Through Erebos, through Elysium, writhe beneath it.
Iphigeneia. Come, I have better diadems than those
Of Argos and Mycenai : come away,
And I will weave them for you on the bank.'
You will not look so pale when you have walk'd '
A little in the grove, and have told all
Those sweet fond words the widow sent her child.
Agamemnon. O Earth ! I suffered less upon thy shores '
(Aside.) The bath that bubbled with my blood, the blows
That spilt it (O worse torture !) must she know ?
Ah ! the first woman coming from Mycenai
Will pine to pour this poison in her ear,
Taunting sad Charon for his slow advance.
Iphigeneia !
Iphigeneia. Why thus turn away ?
Calling me with such fondness ! I am here,
Father ! and where you are, will ever be.
Agamemnon. Thou art my child ; yes, yes, thou art my
child.
All was not once what all now is ! Come on,
Idol of love and truth ! my child ! my child !
(Alone.) Fell woman! ever false! false was thy last
Denunciation, as thy bridal vow ;
And yet even that found faith with me ! The dirk
Which sever'd flesh from flesh, where this hand rests,
Severs not, as thou boastedst in thy scoffs,
Iphigeneia'slove from Agamemnon:
The wife's a spark may light, a straw consume,
The daughter's not her heart's whole fount hath quench'd,
"Tis worthy of the Gods, and lives for ever.
Iphigeneia. What spake my father to the Gods above ?
Unworthy am I then to join in prayer ?
If, on the last, or any day before,
Of my brief course on earth, I did amiss,
Say it at once, and let me be unblest ;
But, O my faultless father ! why should you ?
And shun so my embraces ?
Am I wild
And wandering in my fondness?
We are shades !
Groan not thus deeply ; blight not thus the season
Of full-orb'd gladness ! Shades we are indeed,
But mingled, let us feel it, with the blest.
I knew it, but forgot it suddenly,
Altho' I felt it all at your approach.
Look on me ; smile with me at my illusion . .
You are so like what you have ever been
(Except in sorrow !) I might well forget
I could not win you as I used to do.
It was the first embrace since my descent
I ever aim'd at : those who love me live,
Save one, who loves me most, and now would chide me.
Agamemnon. We want not, O Iphigeneia, we
Want not embrace, nor kiss that cools the heart
With purity, nor words that more and more
Teach what we know from those we know, and sink
Often most deeply where they fall most light.
Time was when for the faintest breath of thine
Kingdom and life were little.
Tphigeneia. Value them
As little now.
Agamemnon. Were life and kingdom all !
Iphigeneia. Ah ! by our death many are sad who loved us.
The little fond Electra, and Orestes
So childish and so bold ! O that mad boy !
They will be happy too.
Cheer ! king of men !
Cheer ! there are voices, songs . . Cheer ! arms advance.
Agamemnon. Come to me, soul of peace! These, these
alone,
These are not false embraces.
Iphigeneia. Both are happy !
Agamemnon. Freshness breathes round me from some
breeze above.
What are ye, winged ones ! with golden urns ?
The Hours (descending.)
The Hours. To each an urn we bring.
Earth's purest gold
Alone can hold
The lymph of the Lethean spring.
We, son of Atreus ! we divide
The dulcet from the bitter tide
That runs athwart the paths of men.
No more our pinions shalt thou see.
Take comfort ! We have done with thee,
And must away to earth again.
(Ascending.)
Where thou art, thou
Of braided brow,
Thou cull'd too soon from Argive bow'rs,
Where thy sweet voice is heard among
The shades that thrill with choral song,
None can regret the parted Hours.
Chorus ofArgivet.
Maiden ! be thou the spirit that breathes
Triumph and joy into our song !
Wear and bestow these amaranth-wreaths,
Iphigeneia ! they belong
To none but thee and her who reigns
(Less chaunted) on our bosky plains.
Semichorus.
Iphigeneia ! 'tis to thee
Glory we owe and victory.
Clash, men of Argos, clash your arms
To martial worth and virgin charms.
Other Semichorui.
Ye men of Argos ! it was sweet
To roll the fruits of conquest at the feet
Whose whispering sound made bravest hearts beat fast.
This we have known at home,
But hither we are come
To crown the king who ruled us first and last.
Chorus.
Father of Argos ! king of men !
We chaunt the hymn of praise to thee.
In serried ranks we stand again,
Our glory safe, our country free.
Clash, clash the arms we bravely bore
Against Pcamander's God-defended shore.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
449
Semichorus.
Blessed art thou who hast repell'd
Battle's wild fury. Ocean's whelming foam ;
Blessed o'er all, to have beheld
Wife, children, house avenged, and peaceful home !
Other Semichorus.
We too, thou seest, are now
Among the happy, though the aged brow
From sorrow for us we could not protect,
Nor, on the polisht granite of the well
Folding our arms, of spoils and perils tell,
Nor lift the vase on the lov'd head erect.
Semichorus.
What whirling wheels are those behind ?
What plumes come flaring through the wind,
Nearer and nearer ? From his car
He who defied the heaven-born Powers of war
Pelides springs ! Dust, dust are we
To him, O king, who bends the knee,
Proud only to be first in reverent praise of thee.
Other Semichorus.
Clash, clash the arms ! None other race
Shall see such heroes face to face.
We too have fought ; and they have saen
Nor sea-sand grey nor meadow green
Where Dardans stood against their men . .
Clash ! lo Paean ! clash again !
Repinings for lost days repress . .
The flames of Troy had cheer'd us less.
Chorus.
Hark ! from afar more war-steeds neigh,
Thousands o'er thousands rush this way.
Ajax is yonder ! ay, behold
The radiant arms of Lycian gold !
Arms from admiring valour won,
Tydeus ! and worthy of thy son.
'Tis Ajax wears them now ; for he
Rules over Adria's stormy sea.
He threw them to the friend who lost
(By the dim judgment of the host)
Those wet with tears which Thetis gave •
The youth most beauteous of the brave.
In vain ! the insatiate soul would go
For comfort to his peers below.
Clash ! ere we leave them all the plain,
Clash ! lo Pa?an ! once again !
Hide these things away, Cleone ! I dare never
show them to any but Pericles. I can reach no
further than a chorus ; hardly that. Tragedy is
quite above me : I want the strength, the pathos,
the right language. Fie ! when there are so
many who would teach me. Concede, that the
shades were not happy at once in Elysium ; and
that the Hours are not more shadowy than they.
./Eschylus brings into our world Beings as allego-
rical : and where shall we fix a boundary between
the allegorical and divine 1
CCXXVI. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
You build your nest, Aspasia, like the swallow,
Bringing a little on the bill at once,
And fixing it attentively and fondly,
And trying it, and then from ylrar soft breast
Warming it with the inmost of the plumage.
Nests there are many, of this very year
Many the nests are, which the winds shall shake,
The rains run through, and other birds beat down ;
Yours, O Aspasia ! rests against the temple
Of heavenly love, and thence inviolate,
It shall not fall this winter, nor the next.
VOL. n.
COXXVII. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
You have encouraged me to proceed in the
most difficult tract of poetry. Had I openly pro-
tested that the concluding act of Agamemnon,
the Electra of our tragedian, dissatifies me, he
alone of the Athenians would have pardoned my
presumption. But Electra was of a character to
be softened rather than exasperated by grief. An
affectionate daughter is affectionate even to an
unworthy mother ; and female resentment (as all
resentment should do) throws itself down inert at
the entrance of the tomb. Hate with me, if you
can hate anything, my Cleone ! the vengeance that
rises above piety, above sorrow ; the vengeance
that gloats upon its prostrate victim. Compunc-
tion and pity should outlive it ; and the child's
tears should blind her to the parent's guilt. I
have restored to my Electra such a heart as
Nature had given her ; torn by suffering, but large
and alive with tenderness. In her veneration
for the father's memory, with his recent blood
before her eyes, she was vehement in urging the
punishment of the murderess. The Gods had com-
manded it at the hands of their only son. When
it was accomplished, he himself was abhorrent of
the deed, but defended it as a duty ; she in her
agony cast the whole on her own head. If character
is redeemed and restored ; if Nature, who always
is consistent, is shown so ; if pity and terror are
concentrated at the close ; I have merited a small
portion of what my too generous Cleone bestowed
on me in advance.
THB DEATH OF CLYTBMNESTR4.
Orestes and Electra.
Electra. Pass on, my brother ! she awaits the wretch,
Dishonorer, despoiler, murderer . . .
None other name shall name him . . . she awaits
As would a lover . .
Heavenly Gods ! what poison
O'erflows my lips !
Adultress ! husband-slayer !
Strike her, the tigress !
Think upon our father . .
Give the sword scope . . think what a man was he,
How fond of her ! how kind to all about,
That he might gladden and teach us . . how proud
Of thee, Orestes ! tossing thee above
His joyous head and calling thee his crown.
Ah ! boys remember not what melts our hearts
And marks them evermore !
Bite not thy lip,
Nor tramp as an unsteady colt the ground,
Nor stare against the wall, but think again
How better than all fathers was our father.
Go ..
Orestes. Loose me then ! for this white band, Electra,
Hath fastened upon mine with fiercer grasp
Than mine can grasp the sword.
Electra. Go, sweet Orestes!
I knew not I was holding thee . . Avenge him !
(Alone.) How he sprang from me !
. . Sure, he now has reach t
The room before the bath . .
The bath-door creaks '
. . It hath creakt thus since he . . since thou, O father !
Kver since thou didst loosen its strong valves,
Either with all thy dying weight, or strength
Agonised with her stabs . .
G G
450
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
What plunge was that ?
Ah me!
. . What groans are those?
Orettet (returning). They sound through hell
Rejoicing the Eumenides.*
She slew
Our father ; she made thee the scorn of slaves ;
Me (son of him who ruled this land and more)
She made an outcast . . .
Would I had been so
For ever ! ere such vengeance . . .
Electro. O that Zeus
Had let thy arm fall sooner at thy side
Without those drops ! list ! they are audible . .
For they are many . . from the sword's point falling,
And down from the mid blade !
Too rash Orestes I
Couldst thou not then have spared our wretched mother ?
Orestes. The Gods could not
Electro. She was not theirs, Orestes.
Orestes. And didst not thou . .
Electro. Twas I, 'twas I, who did it ;
Of our unhappiest house the most unhappy !
Under this roof, by every God accurst,
There is no grief, there is no guilt, but mine.
Orestes. Electra ! no !
'Tis now my time to suffer . .
Mine be, with all its pangs, the righteous deed.
CCXXVIII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
I will never praise you again until you complete
the tragedy. This is the time for it, now all the
dramatic poets of your country are dead or silent.
Not that I would invite you to have it represented
or published : but, believe me, the exertion of
poetical power, in these elevations, throws off
many of the mind's diseases. Little or nothing
of the sort can be effected by slenderer and more
desultory attempts. A bushel of garnets and
amethysts and topazes is not worth a single ruby
the size of the smallest : and yet they are pretty
things enough, and attract as many people. One
single act of such a tragedy as you are able to
compose, outvalues a thousand pieces of less
cohesive and infrangible materials. Let others
expatiate on trivial objects, ordinary characters,
and uninteresting events : let them be called
poets by themselves and by their households: but
remember, 0 Aspasia, that you have Athenians
for judges, and that the progeny of heroes and
gods is about to plead before them.
Again, I declare it, I will never praise you
until you comply with me : I will only love you ;
and hardly that.
CCXXIX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
I will never take so many steps up the highths
of poetry, as to make any poet doubt whether he
can overtake me. There is not enough honey in
* An ancient scholiast has recorded that the name of
Eumenides was given to these Goddesses after the expiation
of Orestes. But Catullus (called the learned by his coun-
trymen) represents Ariadne invoking them by this appella-
tion long before the Trojan war. The verses are the most
majestic in the Roman language.
Eumenides ! quarum anguineis redimita capillis
Frons expirantes prteportat pectoris iras,
Hue, hue adventate ! &c.
my cells to attract the wasps; nor shall there
be. If you really think I have done better in
some parts than the generality, keep the secret ;
at least from others ; and if you desire to see the
tragedy completed . . . finish it yourself. You
have often done work for me greatly more dif-
ficult. I never could work anything with the
needle : and it was not because I feared its
roughening my fingers, as you were pleased to
say after you had finished it. I do not like any
labour of the hands ; that is the matter of fact ;
not even so little as the writing out of a tragedy.
I will, however, on this one occasion, give you a
little assistance.
THE MADNESS OF OHKSTKS.
Orestes and Electra.
Orestes. Heavy and murderous dreams, O my Electra,
Have dragged me from myself.
Is this Mycenai ?
Are we ... are all who should be ... in our house ?
Living ? unhurt ? our father here ? our mother ?
Why that deep gasp ? for 'twas not sigh nor groan.
She then . . . 'twas she who fell ! when ? how ? beware !
No, no, speak out at once, that my full heart
May meet it, and may share with thee in all . .
In all ... but that one thing.
It was a dream.
AVe may share all.
They live ? both live ?
0 say it !
Electra. The Gods have placed them from us, and there
rolls
Between us that dark river . . .
Orestes. Blood ! blood ! blood !
1 see it roll ; I see the hand above it,
Imploring ; I see her.
Hiss me not back,
Ye snake-hair'd maids ! I will look on ; I will
Hear the. words gurgle thro' that cursed stream,
And catch that hand . . that hand . . which slew my father !
It can not be .... how could it slay my father ?
Death to the slave who spoke it ! ... slay my father !
It tost me up to him to earn a smile,
And was a smile then such a precious boon,
And royal state and proud affection nothing ?
Ay, and tbee too, Electra, she once taught
To take the sceptre from him at the door . .
Not the bath-door, not the bath-door, mind that ! . .
And place it in the vestibule, against
The spear of Pallas, where it used to stand.
Where is it now ? methinks I missed it there.
How we have trembled to be seen to move it !
Both looking up, lest that stern face should frown
Which always gazed on Zeus right opposite.
O ! could but one tear more fall from my eyes,
It would shake off those horrid visages,
And melt them into air.
I am not yours,
Fell Goddesses ! A just and generous Power,
A bright-hair'd God, directed me.
And thus
Abased is he whom such a God inspired .'
(After a pause.)
Into whose kingdom went they ? did they go
Together?
Electra. Oh ! ^hey were not long apart.
Orestes. I know why thou art pale ; I know whose head
Thy flower-like hands have garlanded ; I know
For whom thou hast unbraided all thy love.
He well deserves it .... he shall have it all.
Glory and love shall crown thee, my brave sister !
Electra. I am not she of Sparta. Let me live
(If live I must, Orestes .') not unnamed
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
451
Nor named too often. Speak no more of love,
Ill-omen'd and opprobrious in this house . .
A mother should have had, a father had it,
0 may a brother let it dwell with him,
Unchangeable, unquestioned, solitary,
Strengthened and hallowed in the depths of grief !
Gaze not so angrily . . I dare not see thee,
1 dare not look where comfort should be found.
Orestes. I dare and do behold them all day lonsr,
And, were that face away so like my mother's,
I would advance and question and compel them . •
They hear me and they know it.
Electro,.. Hear me too,
Ye mighty ones ! to me invisible !
And spare him ! spare him ! for without the Gods
He wrought not what he wrought : And are not ye
Partakers of their counsels and their power ?
0 spare the son of him whom ye and they
Sent against Ilion, to perform your will
And bid the rulers of the earth be just.
Orestes. And dare they frighten thee too? frighten
thee?
And bend thee into prayer ?
Off, hateful eyes !
Look upon me, not her.
Ay, thus ; 'tis well.
Cheer, cheer thee, my Electra !
I am strong,
Stronger than ever . . steel, fire, adamant . .
But can not bear thy brow upon my neck,
Can not bear these wild writhings, these loud sobs.
By all the Gods ! I think thou art half mad . . .
1 must away . . follow me not . . stand there !
Here is the Prayer of Orestes, in his madness,
to Apollo ; and there follows, what is not im-
mediately connected with it, the Reply of the
Priestess.
Orestes. O king Apollo ! god Apollo ! god
Powerful to smite and powerful to preserve 1
If there is blood upon me, as there seems,
Purify that black stain (thou only canst)
With every rill that bubbles from these caves
Audibly ; and come willing to the work.
No ; 'tis not they ; 'tis blood ; 'tis blood again
That bubbles in my ear, that shakes the shades
Of thy dark groves, and lets in hateful gleams,
Bringing me . . what dread sight ! what sounds abhorr'd !
What screams ! They are my mother's : 'tis her eye
That through the snakes of those three furies glares,
And makes them hold their peace that she may speak.
Has thy voice bidden them all forth ? There slink
Some that would hide away, but must turn back,
And others like blue lightnings bound along
From rock to rock ; and many hiss at me
As they draw nearer. Earth, fire, water, all
Abominate the deed the Gods commanded !
Alas ! I came to pray, not to complain ;
And lo I my speech is impious as my deed !
Priestess of Apollo.
Take refuge here amid our Delphian shades,
O troubled breast !
Here the most pious of Mycenai's maids
Shall watch thy rest
And wave the cooling laurel o'er thy brow,
Nor insect swarm
Shall ever break thy slumbers, nor shalt thou
Start at the alarm
Of boys infesting (as they do) the street
With mocking songs,
Stopping and importuning all they meet,
And heaping wrongs
Upon thy diadem'd and sacred head,
Worse than when base
CEgisthus (shudder not !) his toils outspread
Around thy race.
Altho' even in this fane the fitful blast
Thou may'st hear roar,
Thy name among our highest rocks shall last
For evermore.
Orestes. A calm comes over me : life brings it not
With any of its tides : my end is near.
O Priestess of the purifying God
Receive her ! * and when she hath closed mine eyes,
Do thou (weep not, my father's child !) close hers.
CCXXX. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Many are now recovering from the fever, which
no longer can be called a pestilence. Pericles,
though he tells me he is weak in body and altered
in appearance, will soon overcome his fears about
me. We shall presently meet again. And so,
Cleone, you really have ventured at last to accept
the invitation of Euphorbia. If she talked to you
of her son she was imprudent and indiscreet :
perhaps in her earlier invitations she was hardly
less so. But who can foresee the end of sorrow,
or would foresee the end of happiness ] It usually
is nearer at hand. When we enter a place whence
the beloved has been long absent, part of the
presence seems to be left behind. Again we draw
back from the window as we did before, because
then we were told people were coming. Foolish !
foolish ! I am representing my own sensations in
times past : girlish sensations, which never were
Cleone's, even in girlhood. Ah, Cleone ! the
beautiful smooth dove's plumage is hard and cold
externally ; but what throbbing, what warmth,
what ardour, what tenderness, deep within ! We
must neither of us prefix ah! to any thing in future :
we must be the happiest of the happy. Here are
two pieces of verse for you. That on Dirce was
sent to me by Pericles ; to prove that his Athe-
nians can sport with Charon even now. The last
quaternion seems the production of an elderly
man : and some of the ladies, on whom it was
not written, and to whom it is not applicable, cry
shame on him, beyond a doubt.
Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat cpnvey'd,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old, and she a shade.
Love ran with me, then walkt, then sate,
Then said, Come.' come! it grows too late.
And then he would have gone, but . . no . .
You caught his eye : he could not go.
CCXXXI. ASPASIA TO CLEONE.
Where on earth is there so much society as in a
beloved child ? He accompanies me in my walks,
gazes into my eyes for what I am gathering from
books, tells me more and better things than they
do, and asks me often what neither I nor they
can answer. When he is absent I am filled with
reflections : when he is present I have room for
none beside what I receive from him. The charms
of his childhood bring me back to the delights
* Pointing to his sister.
o Q 2
452
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
of mine, and I fancy I hear my own words in a
sweeter voice. Will he (0 how I tremble at the
mute oracle of futurity !) will he ever be as happy
as I have been ? Alas ! and must he ever be as
subject to fears and apprehensions'? No ; thanks
to the Gods ! never, never. He carries his father's
heart within his breast : I see him already an
orator and a leader. I try to teach him daily
some of his father's looks and gestures, and I
never smile but at his docility and gravity. How
his father will love him ! the little thunderer !
the winner of cities ! the vanquisher of Cleones !
COXXXII. CLEONE TO ASPASIA.
The Lacedaemonians, we hear, have occupied
not only all Attica, but are about to enter, if they
have not entered already, the territory of their
confederates the Thebans, and to join their forces.
Whither will you go, my Aspasia 1 Thessaly is
almost as perilous as Boeotia. It is worse than
criminal to be so nearly allied to the greatest man
on earth, who must always have the greatest
enemies. There are more who will forgive injury
than there are who will forgive station : and
those who assail in vain the power of Pericles,
will exert their abilities in diminishing his
equanimity and happiness. I fear your fondness
will have induced you again to enter the city,
that you may assuage and divide those cares
which must weigh heavily on his wisdom and
patriotism; and the more, since his health has
been undermined by the pestilence. I dare not
advise you to forego a duty : but remember he
has commanded you to remain away. Your return
would afflict him. I am quite incapable of judg-
ing for you. Were I with you, then perhaps I
might know many things which should influence
your decision.
And can two years have passed over since this
evil entered your city, without my flying to com-
fort you ? Two years have indeed passed over ;
but my house has also had its days of mourning.
The prayers of my father were heard : he died
contentedly, and even joyfully. He told me he
had implored of the Gods that they would bestow
on me a life as long and happy as his own, and
was assured they would. Until we have seen
some one grown old, our existence seems sta-
tionary. When we feel certain of having seen it
(which is not early) the earth begins a little to
loosen from us. Nothing now can detain me at
Miletus, although when I have visited you I shall
return. You must return with me, which you
can do from any region but Attica. Pericles will
not refuse, for you have already conciliated me his
favour. In the meanwhile, do not think yourseU
bound by the offices of humanity, to bestow those
cares on others which are all required for your
own family. Do not be so imprudent as to let
the most intimate of your friends persuade you
to visit them. You have a child, you have a
husband, and, without your presence, you possess
the means of procuring every human aid for the
infected. O that I were with you ! to snatch you
away from the approach of the distemper. But
I sadly fear I should grow hard-hearted toward
others, in your danger.
I must be with my Aspasia ; and very soon.
0 Athens ! Athens ! are there not too many
of the dead within thy walls already ] and are
none there who never should have been 1*
CCXXXIII. ASPASIA TO PERICLES.
Never tell me, 0 my Pericles, that you are
suddenly changed in appearance. Hay every
change of your figure and countenance be gra-
dual, so that I shall not perceive it : but if you
really are altered to such a degree as you describe,
I must transfer my affection . . from the first
Pericles to the second. Are you jealous ! If you
are, it is I who am to be pitied, whose heart is
destined to fly from the one to the other inces-
santly. In the end it will rest, it shall, it must,
on the nearest. I would write a longer letter ;
but it is a sad and wearisome thing to aim at
playfulness where the hand is palsied by affliction.
Be well ; and all is well : be happy ; and Athens
rises up again, alert and blooming and vigorous,
from between war and pestilence. Love me : for
love cures all but love. How can we fear to die,
how can we die, while we cling or are clung to
the beloved "?
' COXXXIV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
The pestilence has taken from me both my
sons. You, who were ever so kind and affectionate
to them, will receive a tardy recompense, in hear-
ing that the least gentle and the least grateful did
acknowledge it.
I mourn for Paralos, because he loved me ; for
Xanthippos, because he loved me not.
Preserve with all your maternal care our little
Pericles. I can not be fonder of him than I have
always been ; I can only fear more for him.
Is he not with my Aspasia] What fears then
are so irrational as mine1? But oh ! I am living
in a widowed house, a house of desolation ; I am
living in a city of tombs and torches ; and the
last I saw before me were for my children.
OCXXXV. PERICLES TO ASPASIA.
It is right and orderly, that he who has 'par-
taken so largely in the prosperity of the Athenians,
should close the procession of their calamities.
The fever that has depopulated our city, returned
upon me last night, and Hippocrates and Acron
tell me that my end is near.
When we agreed, 0 Aspasia, in the beginning
of our loves, to communicate our thoughts by
writing, even while we were both in Athens, and
when we had many reasons for it, we little foresaw
the more powerful one that has rendered it neces-
* This seems to refer to Xeniades.
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
453
sary of late. We never can meet again : the laws
forbid it, and love itself enforces them. Let wis-
dom be heard by you as imperturbably, and af-
fection as authoritatively, as ever : and remember
that the sorrow of Pericles can arise but from the
bosom of Aspasia. There is only one word of
tenderness we could say, which we have not said
oftentimes before ; and there is no consolation in
it. The happy never say, and never hear said,
farewell.
Reviewing the course of my life, it appears to
me at one moment as if we met but yesterday ; at
another as if centuries had passed within it ; for
within it have existed the greater part of those
who, since the origin of the world, have been the
luminaries of the human race. Damon called me
from my music to look at Aristides on his way
to exile : and my father pressed the wrist by
which he was leading me along, and whispered in
my ear,
" Walk quickly by ; glance cautiously ; it is
there Miltiades is in prison."
In my boyhood Pindar took me up in his arms,
when he brought to our house the dirge he had
composed for the funeral of my grandfather : in
my adolescence I offered the rites of hospitality
toEmpedocles : not long afterward I embraced the
neck of JEschylus, about to abandon his country.
With Sophocles I have argued on eloquence ; with
Euripides on polity and ethics ; I have discoursed,
as became an inquirer, with Protagoras and De-
mocritus, with Anaxagoras and Meton. From
Herodotus I have listened to the most instructive
history, conveyed in a language the most copious
and the most harmonious ; a man worthy to carry
away the collected suffrages of universal Greece ;
a man worthy to throw open the temples of Egypt,
and to celebrate the exploits of Cyrus. And from
Thueydides, who alone can succeed to him, how
recently did my Aspasia hear with me the ener-
getic praises of his just supremacy !
As if the festival of life were incomplete, and
wanted one great ornament to crown it, Phidias
placed before us, in ivory and gold, the tutelary
Deity of this land, and the Zeus of Homer and
Olympus.
To have lived with such men, to have enjoyed
their familiarity and esteem, overpays all labours
and anxieties. I were unworthy of the friend-
ships I have commemorated, were I forgetful of
the latest. Sacred it ought to be, formed as it
was under the portico of Death, my friendship
with the most sagacious, the most scientific, the
most beneficent of philosophers, Acron and Hip-
pocrates. If mortal could war against Pestilence
and Destiny, they had been victorious. I leave
them in the field : unfortunate he who finds them
among the fallen !
And now, at the close of my day, when every
light is dim and every guest departed, let me own
that these wane before me, remembering, as I do
in the pride and fulness of my heart, that Athens
confided her glory, and Aspasia her happiness, to
Have I been a faithful guardian ] do I resign
them to the custody of the Gods undiminished
and unimpaired? Welcome then, welcome, my
last hour ! After enjoying for so great a num-
ber of years, in my public and my private life,
what I believe has never been the lot of any
other, I now extend my hand to the urn, and
take without reluctance or hesitation what is the
lot of all.
CCXXXVI. ALCIBIADES TO ASPASIA.
I returned to Athens in time to receive the
last injunctions of my guardian. What I pro-
mised him, to comfort him in his departure, I
dare not promise his Aspasia, lest I fail in the
engagement; nevertheless I will hope that my
natural unsteadiness may sometimes settle on his
fixed principles. But what am I, what are all
my hopes, in comparison with the last few words
of this great man, surely the greatest that earth
has ever seen, or ever will see hereafter! Let
me repeat them to you, for they are more ,than
consolation, and better. If on such a loss I or
anyone could console you, I should abominate
you eternally.
I found him surrounded by those few friends
whom pestilence and despair had left in the city.
They had entered but a little while before me ;
and it appears that one or other of them had
been praising him for his exploits.
" In these," replied he, " Fortune hath had her
share : tell me rather, if you wish to gratify me,
that never have I caused an Athenian to put on
mourning."
I burst forward from the doorway, and threw
my arms around his neck.
" 0 Pericles ! my first, last, only friend ! afar
be that hour yet!" cried I, and my tears rolled
abundantly on his cheeks. Either he felt them
not, or dissembled, or disregarded them ; for,
seeing his visitors go away, he began with perfect
calmness to give me such advice as would be the
best to follow in every occurrence, and chiefly in
every difficulty. When he had ended, and I was
raising my head from above his pillow (for I con-
tinued in that posture, ashamed that he, who
spake so composedly, should perceive my uncon-
trollable emotion), I remarked I knew not what
upon his bosom. He smiled faintly, and said,
" Alcibiades ! I need not warn you against su-
perstition : it never was among your weaknesses.
Do not wonder at these amulets : above all, do
not order them to be removed. The kind old
nurses, who have been carefully watching over
me day and night, are persuaded that these
will save my life. Superstition is rarely so kind-
hearted ; whenever she is, unable as we are to
reverence, let us at least respect her. After the
good patient creatures have found, as they must
soon, all their traditional charms unavailing, they
will surely grieve enough, and perhaps from some
other motive than their fallability in science. In-
flict not, 0 Alcibiades ! a fresh wound upon their
454
PERICLES AND ASPASIA.
grief, by throwing aside the tokens of their affec
tion. In hours like these we are the most indif
ferent to opinion and greatly the most sensible
to kindness."
The statesman, the orator, the conqueror, the
protector, had died away ; the philosopher, the
humane man, yet was living . .' alas ! few mo
ments more.
CCXXXVII. ALCIBIADES TO ASPASIA.
Must I again, Aspasia, torment my soul 1 again
must I trouble yours ] Has the pestilence then
seized me, that I want hardihood, strength
understanding, to begin my labour ? No ; I walk
through the house of mourning, firmly, swiftly,
incessantly : my limbs are alert as ever.
Write it I must. Somebody was at the house-
door; admittance was, it seems, not granted
readily. I heard a voice, feeble and hoarse, and,
looking forth, saw two women who leaned against
the lintels.
" Let her enter, let her enter : look at her : she
is one of us."
These words were spoken by the younger ; and
maliciously. Scarcely had she uttered them
when her head dropped forward. The stranger
caught and supported her, and cried help ! help !
and rubbed her temples, and, gazing on her with
an intensity of compassion, closed her eyelids :
for death had come over them. In my horror
(my fright and dastardly cowardice I should
rather call it) I failed to prevent or check her.
Aspasia has then her equal on the earth !
Aspasia is all that women in their wildest
wishes can desire to be ; Cleone, all that the Im-
mortals are. But she has friendship, she has
sympathy : have those 1
She has, did I say! And can nothing then
bring me back my recollection] not even she! I
want it not : those moments are present yet, and
will never pass away.
She asked for you.
" Aspasia," answered I, " is absent." '
" Not with her husband ? not with her hus-
band ]" cried she.
" Pericles," I replied, " is gone to the Blessed."
" She was with him then, while hope remained
for her ! I knew she would be. Tell me she was."
And saying it, she grasped my arm and looked
earnestly in my face. Suddenly, as it appeared
to me, she blushed slightly : on her countenance
there was, momentarily, somewhat less of its
paleness. She walked into the aviary : the lattice
stood open : the birds were not flown, but dead.
She drew back ; she hesitated ; she departed. I
followed her: for now, and not earlier, I be-
thought me it was Cleone. Before I came up to
her, she had asked a question of an elderly man,
who opened his lips but could not answer her,
and whose arm, raised with difficulty from the
pavement, when it would have directed her to the
object of her inquiry, dropped upon his breast.
A boy was with him, gazing in wonder at the
elegance and composure of her attire, such as, in
these years of calamity and of indifference to
seemliness, can nowhere be found in Athens. He
roused himself from his listless posture, beckoned,
and walked before us. Beaching the garden of
Epimedea, we entered it through the house;
silent, vacant, the doors broken down. Sure sign
that some family, perhaps many, had, but few
days since, utterly died off within its chambers.
For nearly all the habitations, in all quarters of
the city, are crowded with emigrants from the
burghs of Attica. The pestilence is now the
least appalling where it has made the most havoc.
But how hideous, how disheartening, is the sud-
den stride before our eyes, from health and
beauty to deformity and death ! In this waste
and desolation there was more peacefulness, I
believe, than anywhere else beyond, in the whole
extent of our dominions. It was not to last.
A tomb stood opposite the entrance : Cleone
rushed toward it, reposed her brow against it,
and said at intervals,
" I am weary : I ache throughout : I thirst
bitterly : I can not read the epitaph."
The boy advanced, drew his finger slowly along,
at the bottom of the letters, and said,
Surely they are plain enough.
" Xeniades son of Charondas."
He turned round and looked at me, well satis-
ied. Cleone lowered her cheek to the inscription ;
jut her knees bent under her, and she was fain to
>e seated on the basement.
"Cleone!" said I, . . she started at the name
. " Come, I beseech you, from that sepulchre."
"The reproof is just !" she replied . . "Here
,00, even here I am an alien ! "
Aspasia ! she will gladden your memory no
more : never more will she heave your bosom
with fond expectancy. There is none to whom,
in the pride of your soul, you will run with her
etters in your hand. He, upon whose shoulder
rou have read them in my presence, lies also in
he grave. The last of them is written.
MINOB PEOSE PIECES.
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
OPINIONS OF CAESAR, CROMWELL, MILTON, AND BUONAPARTE.
No person has a better right than Lord
Brougham to speak contemptuously of Caesar, of
Cromwell, and of Milton. Caesar was the purest
and most Attic writer of his country, and there is
no trace of intemperance, in thought or expres-
sion, throughout the whole series of his hostilities.
He was the most generous friend, he was the most
placable enemy ; he rose with moderation, and he
fell with dignity. Can we wonder then at Lord
Brougham's unfeigned antipathy and assumed
contempt 1 Few well-educated men are less able
to deliver a sound opinion of style than his lord-
ship ; and perhaps there are not many of our con-
temporaries who place a just value on Caesar's,
dissimilar as it is in all its qualities to what they
turn over on the sofa-table. There is calmness,
there is precision, there is a perspicuity which
shows objects in their proper size and position,
there is strength without strain, and superiority
without assertion. I acknowledge my preference
of his style, and he must permit me to add
Cicero's, to that which he considers the best of all,
namely his own ; and he must pardon me if I
entertain an early predilection for easy humour
over hard vulgarity, and for graceful irony over
intractable distortion. I was never an admirer,
even in youth, of those abrupt and splintery sen-
tences, which, like many coarse substances, sparkle
only when they are broken, and are looked at only
for their sharpnesses and inequalities.
Caesar and Cromwell are hung up in the same
wicker basket, as an offering to the warrior God
of our formidable Celt's idolatry. Cromwell was
destitute of all those elegancies which adorned
the Eoman dictator, but he alone possessed in an
equal degree all those which ensure the constancy
of Fortune. Both were needful : one against an
unjust and reckless aristocracy, whose leader had
declared that he would follow up the steps ol
Sulla, and cover the fields of Italy with slaughter
the other, to rescue the most religious and most
conscientious of his countrymen from the perse
cution of an unchristian and intolerant episcopacy
and the bravest friends of ancient freedom, from
torture, from mutilation, and from solitude anc
death in pestilential gaols. Were such the deeds
of Charles ? Yes ; but before an infallible church
had commanded us to worship him among th
martyrs. Among 1 no, not among ; above ; anc
,o the exclusion of all the rest. This was wanting
as the finishing stroke of our Reformation. And
was Cromwell then pure ? Certainly not ; but
ic began in sincerity ; and he believed to the last
that every accession of power was an especial
manifestation of God's mercy. Fanaticism hath
always drawn to herself such conclusions from
;he Bible. Power made him less pious, but more
ionfident. God had taken him by the hand at
first, and had now let him walk by himself : to
show how he could walk, he strode. Religion, in
the exercise of power, is more arbitrary, more
intolerant, and more cruel than monarchy ; and
the sordid arrogance of Presbyterianism suc-
ceeded to the splendid tyranny of Episcopacy.
The crosier of Laud was unbroken : those who
had been the first in cursing it, seized and exer-
cised it : it was to fall in pieces under the sword
of Cromwell. To him alone are we indebted for
the establishment of religious liberty. If a Vane
and a Milton have acknowledged the obligation,
how feeble were the voices of all men living, if
the voices of all men living were raised against it.
Of our English rulers Oliver holds the next place
to Alfred; and it would be unjust and igno-
minious to station him merely on a level with the
most intelligent, the most energetic, and the most
patriotic, of succeeding kings. He did indeed
shed blood ; but the blood he shed was solely for
his country, although without it he never would
have risen to the Protectorate. The same can not
be said of Caesar ; nor of that extraordinary per-
sonage whom some of his flatterers place beside,
and some before him.
The first campaigns of Buonaparte were admir-
ably conducted, and honour and glory in the
highest degree are due to him for abstaining from
the plunder of Italy. It would be ungenerous to
seize the obvious idea that, by his vivid imagina-
tion, he probably saw in the land of his forefathers
his future realm, without any such hope regarding
France, and was desirous of winning those golden
opinions which bear so high an interest. But
Egypt seems to be the country in which the
renown of conquerors is destined to be tarnished.
The latent vices of the Persian, of the Macedo-
nian, of Pompey, of Julius, of Antonius, of Octa-
vius, shot up here and brought forth fruits after
their kind. It was here also that the eagle eye of
458
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
Buonaparte was befilmed ; here forty thousand of
the best troops in the world were defeated under
his guidance, and led captive after his desertion.
He lost Haiti, which he attempted to recover by
force ; he lost Spain, which he attempted to seize
by perfidy. And what generosity or what policy
did he display with Toussaint 1'Ouverture or with
Ferdinand 1 Imprisonment and a miserable death
befell the braver. Is there a human heart that
swells not at the deliberate murder of the intrepid
and blameless Hofer] I say nothing of Palm;
I say nothing of D'Enghein ; even in such atoms
as these he found room enough for the perpetra-
tion of a crime. They had indeed friends to
mourn for them ; but they were not singly worth
whole nations. Their voices did not breathe courage
into ten thousand breasts ; children were not car-
ried into churches to hear their names uttered
with God's ; if they had virtues, those virtues
perished with them; Hofer's will ring eternally
on every mountain and irradiate every mine of
Tyrol ; Universal Man, domestic, political, and
religious, will be the better for him. When he
was led to slaughter in Mantua, some of those
Italian soldiers who had followed Buonaparte in
his earliest victories, shed tears. The French
themselves, from the drummer on the platform to
the governor in the citadel, thought of the cause
that first united them in arms, and knew that it
was Hofer's. Buonaparte could no more pardon
bravery in his enemy than cowardice in his sol-
dier. No expression was too virulent for Hofer,
for Sir Sydney Smith, or for any who had foiled
him. He spoke contemptuously of Kleber, mali-
ciously of Hoche : he could not even refrain from
an unmanly triumph on the death of the weak
Moreau. If this is greatness, he certainly did not
inherit it from any great man on record. Sym-
pathy with men at large is not among their attri-
butes, but sympathy with the courageous and
enterprising may be found in all of them, and
sometimes a glance has fallen from them so low
as on the tomb of the unfortunate. The inhu-
manity of Napoleon was certainly not dictated by
policy, whose dictates, rightly understood, never
point in that direction. It is unnecessary to dis-
cuss what instruction he received in his military
school, after which he had small leisure for any
unconnected with his profession. And so little
was his regard for literature in others, that he
drove out of France the only person in that
country* who had attained any eminence in it.
His Catechism was adapted to send back the rising
generation to the middle ages.
But let us consider that portion of his policy
which he studied most, and on which he would
have founded his power and looked forward to the
establishment of his dynasty. He repudiated the
woman who attached to him the best of all parties,
by the sweetness of her temper and the activity
of her beneficence ; and he married into the only
family proscribed by the prejudices of his nation.
* Madame de'Stael.
He soon grew restless with peace, and uneasy
under the weight of his acquisitions. No public
man, not Pitt himself, ever squandered such pro-
digious means so unprofitably. Anxious to aggran-
dise his family, could he not have given the whole
of Italy to one brother, leaving Spain as his privy
purse in the hands of its imbecile Bourbon ? Could
he not have given Poland and Polish Prussia to
the King of Saxony, and have placed an eternal
barrier between France and Russia ? The Saxon
dominions, with Prussian Silesia, would have re-
compensed Austria for the cession of the Vene-
tian territories on the west of the Tagliamento.
I do not suggest these practicabilities as fair
dealings toward nations : I suggest them only as
suitable to the interests of Napoleon, who shook
and > threw nations as another gamester shakes
and throws dice. Germany should have been
broken up into its old Hanse towns and small
principalities.
With such arrangements, all feasible at one time
or other, France would have been unassailable. In-
stead of which, her ruler fancied it necessary to
make an enemy of Russia. Had it been so, he
might have profited by the experience of all who
had ever invaded the interior of that country. The
extremities of the Muscovite empire are easily
broken off, by lying at so great a distance from the
trunk ; added to which, they all are grafts, imper-
fectly granulated on an uncongenial stock, and
with the rush-bound cement fresh and friable
about them. Moscow never could be long retained
by any hostile forces ; subsistence would be per-
petually cut off and carried away from them by
hostile tribes, assailing and retreating as necessity
might demand, and setting fire to the harvests and
the forests. The inhabitants of that city, especially
the commercial body and the ancient nobility,
would have rej oiced at the demolition of Petersburg,
which nothing could prevent, the ports of the
Baltic being in the hands of Buonaparte, and
Dantzic containing stores of every kind, sufficient
for an army the most numerous that ever marched
upon the earth. For the Asiatic have contained,
in all ages, less than a fifth of fighting men, the
rest being merchants, husbandmen, drovers, arti-
sans, and other followers of the camp. The stores
had been conveyed by the coast, instead of employ-
ing two-thirds of the cavalry ; and the King of
Sweden had been invited to take possession of a
fortress (for city there would have been none) pro-
tecting a province long under his crown, and
reluctantly torn away from it. No man ever yet
obtained the lasting renown of a consummate
general, who committed the same mistakes as had
been committed in the same position by those
before him ; who suffered great reverses by great
improvidence ; who never rose up again after one
discomfiture ; or who led forth army upon army
fruitlessly. Napoleon, in the last years of his
sovranty, fought without aim, vanquished without
glory, and perished without defeat.
Did Gustavus Adolphus, did Frederick, did
Washington, ever experience a great reverse by
OPINIONS OF OffiSAB, CROMWELL, MILTON, AND BUONAPARTE.
459
committing a great imprudence1? For on this
main question rests the solid praise of general-
ship. Buonaparte, aft£r affronting every potentate
of every dimension by the rudeness of his nature
and the insolence of his domination, left to every
one of them sufficient power to retaliate. Surely
he must have read 'h is Machiavelli upside-down !
A king should never be struck unless in a vital
part. Cromwell, with many scruples, committed
not this mistake : Buonaparte, with none, com-
mitted it. The shadow of Cromwell's name
overawed the most confident and haughty. He
intimidated Holland, he humiliated Spain, and
he twisted the supple Mazarine, the ruler of
France, about his finger. All those nations had
then attained the summit of their prosperity ; all
were unfriendly to the rising power of England ;
all trembled at the authority of that single man
who coerced at once her aristocracy, her priest-
hood, and her factions. No agent of equal potency
and equal moderation had appeared upon earth
before. He walked into a den of lions and scourged
them growling out : Buonaparte was pushed into
a menagerie of monkeys, and fainted at their
grimaces. His brother's bell and Oudinot's grena-
diers frightened them off, and saved him. Meteors
look larger than fixed stars, and strike with more
admiration the beholder. Those who know not
what they are, call them preternatural. They
venerate in Buonaparte what they would ridicule
in a gipsy on the road-side; his lucky and un-
lucky days, his ruling star, his ascendant. They
bend over his emetic with gravity, and tell us that
poison has no power over him. Nevertheless, the
very men who owed their fortunes to him found
him incompetent to maintain them in security.
In the whole of Europe there was one single great
man opposed to him, wanting all the means of
subsistence for an army, and thwarted in all his
endeavours by those for whose liberation he
fought. His bugles on the Pyrenees dissolved
the trance of Europe. He showed the world that
military glory may be intensely bright without
the assumption of sovranty, and that history is
best occupied with it when she merely transcribes
his orders and despatches. Englishmen will always
prefer the true and modest to the false and mere-
tricious : and every experienced eye will estimate
a Vatican fresco more highly than a staircase
transparency. Rudeness, falsehood, malignity,
and revenge, have belonged in common to many
great conquerors, but never to one great man.
Cromwell had indulged in the least vile of these ;
but on his assumption of power he recollected
that he was a gentleman. No burst of rage, no
sally of ribaldry, no expression of contemptuous-
ness, was ever heard from the Lord Protector. He
could subdue or conciliate or spell-bind the mas-
ter-spirits of his age : but it is a genius of a far
different order that is to seize and hold Futurity :
it must be such a genius as Shakspeare's or Mil-
ton's. No sooner was Cromwell in his grave, than
all he had won for himself and for his country
vanished. If we must admire the successful, how-
ever brief and hollow the advantages of their
success, our admiration is not due to those whose
resources were almost inexhaustible, and which
nothing but profligate imprudence could exhaust,
but to those who resisted great forces with means
apparently inadequate, such as Kosciusko and
Hofer, Hannibal and Sertorius, Alexander and
Caesar, Charles of Sweden and Frederick of
Prussia. Above all these, and indeed above all
princes, stands high Gustavus Adolphus; one of
whose armies in the space of six weeks had seen
the estuary of the Elbe and the steeples of
Vienna ; another, if a fever had not wasted it on
the Lake of Como, would within less time have
chaunted Luther's Hymn in St. Peter's. But
none of these potentates had attempted the down-
fall or the disgrace of England. Napoleon, on the
contrary, stood at the head of that confederacy
whose orators were consulting the interests of
France in the British parliament. He has left to
the most turbulent and unprincipled of them a
very memorable lesson. The schoolmaster is
abroad in the guise of Buonaparte. He reminds
them how, when his hands were full, they dropped
what they held by grasping at what they could
not hold : how he made enemies of those who
might have been neutrals or friends : how he was
driven out by weaker men than himself : and how
he sank at last the unpitied victim of disappointed
ambition. Lord Brougham will not allow us to
contemplate greatness at our leisure : he will not
allow us indeed to look at it for a moment.
Caesar must be stript of all his laurels and left
bald, or some rude soldier with bemocking ges-
tures must be thrust before his triumph. If he
fights, he does not know how to hold his sword ;
if he speaks, he speaks vile Latin. I wonder that
Cromwell fares no better ; if, signal as were his
earlier services to his country, he lived a hypocrite
and he died a traitor. Milton is indeed less par-
donable. He adhered through good report and
through evil report (and there was enough of
both) to those who had asserted liberty of con-
science, and who alone were able to maintain it.
But an angry cracked voice is now raised
against that eloquence
" Of which all Europe rang from side to side."
I shall make only a few remarks on his English,
and a few preliminary on the importance of style
in general, which none understood better than he.
The greater part of those who are most ambitious
of it are unaware of all its value. Thought does
not separate man from the brutes ; for the brutes
think : but man alone thinks beyond the moment
and beyond himself. Speech does not separate
them ; for speech is common to all perhaps, more
or less articulate, and conveyed and received
through different organs in the lower and more
inert. Man's thought, which seems imperishable,
loses its form, and runs along from proprietor to
impropriator, like any other transitory thing, un-
less it is invested so becomingly and nobly that no
successor can improve upon it, by any new fashion
460
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
or combination. For want of dignity or beauty,
many good things are passed and forgotten ; and
much ancient wisdom ia over-run and hidden by
a rampant verdure, succulent but unsubstantial.
It would be invidious to bring forward proofs of
this out of authors in poetry and prose, now living
or lately dead. A distinction must, however, be
made between what falls upon many, like rain,
and what is purloined from a cistern or a conduit
belonging to another man's house. There are
things which were another's before they were
ours, and are not the less ours for that ; not less
than my estate is mine because it was my grand-
father's. There are features, there are voices,
there are thoughts, very similar in many ; and
when ideas strike the same chord in any two with
the same intensity, the expression must be nearly
the same. Let those who look upon style as un-
worthy of much attention, ask themselves how
many, in proportion to men of genius, have ex-
celled in it. In all languages, ancient and modern,
are there ten prose-writers at once harmonious,
correct, and energetic] Harmony and correct-
ness are not uncommon separately, and force is
occasionally with each ; but where, excepting in
Milton, where, among all the moderns, is energy
to be found always in the right place? Even
Cicero is defective here, and sometimes in the
most elaborate of his orations. In the time of
Milton it was not customary for men of abilities
to address to the people at large what might
inflame their passions. The appeal was made to
the serious, to the •well-informed, to the learned,
and was made in the language of their studies.
The phraseology of our Bible, on which no subse-
quent age has improved, was thought to carry
with it solemnity and authority ; and even when
popular feelings were to be aroused to popular
interests, the language of the prophets was pre-
ferred to the language of the vulgar. Hence,
amid the complicated antagonisms of war there
was more austerity than ferocity. The gentlemen
who attended the court avoided the speech as
they avoided the manners of their adversaries.
Waller, Cowley, and South, were resolved to refine
what was already pure gold, and inadvertently
threw into the crucible many old family jewels,
deeply enchased within it. Eliot, Pym, Selden,
and Milton, reverenced their father's house, and
retained its rich language unmodified. Lord
Brougham would make us believe that scarcely a
sentence in Milton is easy, natural, and verna-
cular. Nevertheless, in all his dissertations, there
are many which might appear to have been written
in our days, if indeed any writer in our days were
endowed with the same might and majesty. Even
in his Treatise on Divorce where the Bible was
most open to him for quotations, and where he
might be the most expected to recur to the grave
and antiquated, he has often employed, in the
midst of theological questions and juridical formu-
laries, the plainest terms of his contemporaries.
Even his arguments against prelacy, where he
rises into poetry like the old prophets, and where
his ardent words assume in their periphery the
rounded form of verse, there is nothing stiff or
constrained. I remember a glorious proof of this
remark, which I believe I have quoted before,
but no time is lost by reading it twice.
"... But when God commands to take the trumpet,
And blow a dolorous or thrilling blast,
It rests not with man's will what he shall say,
Or what he shall conceal."
Was ever anything more like the inspiration it
refers to ] Where is the harshness in it ] where is
the inversion ?
The style usually follows the conformation of
the mind.- Solemnity and stateliness are Milton's
chief characteristics. Nothing is less solemn,
less stately, less composed, or less equable, than
Lord Brougham's. When he is most vivacious,
he shows it by twitches of sarcasm ; and when he
springs highest, it is from agony. He might have
improved his manner by recurring to Shaftesbury
and Bolingbroke, equally discontented politicians :
but there was something of high breeding in their
attacks, and more of the rapier than of the blud-
geon. He found their society uncongenial to him,
and trundled home in preference the sour quarter-
cask of Smollett. Many acrid plants throw out
specious and showy flowers ; few of these are to
be found in his garden. What then has he ? I
will tell you what he has : more various and
greater talents than any other man ever was
adorned with, who had nothing of genius and
little of discretion. He has exhibited a clear
compendious proof, that a work of extraordinary
fiction may be elaborated in the utter penury of
all those qualities which we usually assign to
imagination. Between the language of Milton
and Brougham there is as much difference as
between an organ and a bagpipe. One of these
instruments fills, and makes to vibrate, the
amplest, the loftiest, the most venerable edifices,
and accords with all that is magnificent and
holy; the other is followed by vile animals in
fantastical dresses and antic gestures, and sur-
rounded by the clamorous and disorderly.
A STORY OF SANTANDER.
DON Luis CABEZA-DE-MORO was a widower, with
two sons, Antonio and Ignacio. His younger
brother, named also Ignacio, had married a rich
heiress in the island of Cuba. Both parents died,
leaving an only daughter, seven years old, to the
guardianship of Don Luis, and intimating a wish,
and providing by will and testament, that Ines in
due time should espouse her cousin Ignacio.
Don Luis was rejoiced at the injunction : for
he disliked his elder son from the cradle. This
was remarkable ; especially as his lady, the Dona
Pedrila, had continued long without offspring,
A STORY OF SANTANDER.
461
and Antonio was her first-born. Beside which,
there were mysteries, and signs, and tokens, such
as ought to have taught him better. His whole
household were amazed, and edified, and awed, at
the result of supplications which, after four years
of fruitless marriage, had produced this blessing :
and the Moor's head, the blazon of the family,
was displayed by them, with greater pride than
ever, in the balcony of the ancient mansion-house.
About a year before this event, an Irish ensign
had entered the service of Spain. Leave of ab-
sence was given him to visit his maternal uncle,
the dean of Santander, near which city was the
residence of Don Luis. Subsequently, Dona
Pedrila saw him so often, and was so impressed"
by his appearance, that it was reported in the
family, and the report was by no means discou-
raged by the dean, that Ensign Lucius O'Donnell,
now entitled Don Lucio, had been dreamt of by
Dona Pedrila, not once only, or occasionally, but
on the three successive vigils of the three glorious
saints who were more especially the patrons of
the house. Under the impression of these
dreams, there was a wonderful likeness of the in-
fant to Don Lucio, which Don Luis was the first
to perceive, and the last to communicate. It ex-
tended to the colour of the hair and of the eyes.
Surely it ought to have rendered a reasonable
man more pious and paternal, but it produced
quite a contrary effect. He could hardly endure
to hear the three glorious saints mentioned ; and,
whenever he uttered their names, he elongated
the syllables with useless emphasis and graceless
pertinacity. Moreover, in speaking of the child
to its numerous admirers, he swore that the crea-
ture was ugly and white-blooded. Within two
more years, Dona Pedrila bore another son to
him, and died. This son, Ignacio, came into the
world a few months before his cousin Ines, and
the fathers were confident that the union of two
such congenial names would secure the happiness
of the children, and of their posterity.
Before Antonio had completed quite eleven
years, he was sent for his education to Salamanca,
not as a collegian, but as a pupil under an old
officer, a friend of Don Luis, who, being some-
what studious, had retired to end his days in that
city. Here the boy, although he made no unsa-
tisfactory progress in polite literature, engaged
more willingly with his tutor in manly exercises,
likewise in singing and playing on the guitar.
He was never invited home for three entire years ;
but Ignacio, who was of the mildest temper and
kindest disposition, remembering the playfulness
and fondness of Antonio, united his entreaties
with those of Ifies, that he might return. Don
Luis, in reply, threw a leg over a knee.
" Uncle," said Ines, " he cannot ride on that
knee all the way from Salamanca ; send my mule
for him, saddle, bridle, and ropes, and the little bit
of gilt leather for the crupper, from the shrine of
blessed St. Antonio, his patron, no less than the
patron of mules and horses. Ignacio says we
must have him, and have him we will, if prayers
and masses go for anything. Can not we sing]
can not we play 1 What would you wish for his
studies'? heresy, magic, freemasonry, chemistry.,
necromancy 1 We want him, dear uncle ; we want
him sadly with us. You always give us what we
ask for in reason. Come now, a kiss, uncle ! and
then the mule out of the stable. Come ; we will
help you to write the letter, as you are somewhat
out of practice, and I know how to fold one up,
after a trial or two."
No one could resist this appeal : Antonio was
sent for ; he returned in raptures. On his first
entrance, the lively eyes of Ines, full of curiosity,
were bent toward him ; but he regarded her not ;
he threw his arms round Ignacio, lifted him off
the ground, set him down again, gazed on his
face, and burst suddenly into tears.
" Ignacio, my Ignacio, how light you are ! how
thin ! how pallid ! how weak ! "
Don Luis looked on, and muttered something
inaudible. Antonio, fearful of having offended
his worthy genitor by neglect of duty, sprang from
his dejection, clasped the waist of Don Luis, and
then falling at his feet, asked his blessing. Don
Luis, with bitter composure, prayed the three
saints to bestow it, as they might well do, he said,
on the young Senor Don Antonio now before
them. The boy kissed his hand and thanked him
fervently; and now, in his inconsiderate joyous-
ness, another spring forward ; but he stopped in
the midst of it, and instead of running up at once
to Ines, who bit her lip and pinched her veil, he
turned again to Ignacio, and asked him in a
whisper whether cousins were forced to kiss, after
an absence of only three years ]
" Certainly not," replied Ignacio. But Ines
came up, and pouting a little, gave him her hand
spontaneously, and helped him moreover to raise
it to his lips, saying, as he blushed at it, " You
simpleton ! you coward ! "
Antonio bore simpleton pretty well; coward
amused him, and gave him spirit ; he seized her
hand afresh, and kept it within his, although she
pushed the other against his breast; the little
hand, with its five arches of pink polished nails
half hidden in his waistcoat, the little hand sprout-
ing forth at him, soft and pulpy as that downy
bud which swells and bursts into the vine-leaf.
Antonio never saw in her any other object than
the betrothed of his brother, and never was with
her so willingly as with him. Nor indeed did
Ines care much about Antonio, but wished he
could be a little more attentive and polite, and
sing in a chamber as willingly as in a chesnut-tree.
After six weeks, Don Luis observed that Antonio
was interrupting the studies of Ignacio, and ne-
glecting his own. Accordingly he was sent back
to Salamanca, where he continued five whole years
without recall. At this time the French armies
had invaded Spain : the old officer, Don Pablo
Espinosa, who directed the studies of Antonio,
wrote to his father that the gallant youth, now in
his twentieth year, desired to be enrolled in the
regiment of the province, next to himself, as a
462
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
volunteer and a private. In the fulness of joy,
Don Luis announced these tidings to Ignacio and
Ifies. They both turned pale, both threw them-
selves on the floor before him, entreating and
imploring him to forbid it. Their supplications
and their tears for many days were insufficient to
mollify Don Luis. By this time, a large division
of the French army had surrendered, and insur-
rection was universal. Don Pablo was constrained,
by three urgent letters, of which the father's was
however the least so, to leave his pupil at the
university : he himself took the field, and pe-
rished in the first battle. Antonio, disappointed
in his hopes of distinction, swore to avenge his
tutor's death, and his country's honour. His
noble person, his extraordinary strength, his elo-
quent tongue, his unquestioned bravery, soon
placed him at the head of many students, and he
was always the first to advise and execute the
most difficult and dangerous enterprises.
Toward the north of Spain the enemy had ral-
lied, and had won indeed the battle of Rio-Seco,
but within a month were retreating in all direc-
tions. Antonio, bound by no other duties than
those of a volunteer, acceded at last to the earnest
and repeated wishes of his brother and cousin,
that he would in this interval return to them.
Don Luis said he would be a madman wherever
he was, but might return if he liked it, both he
and his guitar. On the first of August, 1808, the
visitor passed again the threshold of his native
home. Covered as he was with dust, he entered
the apartment where the family were seated. The
sun was setting, and the supper had just been
taken off the table, excepting two small flasks of
red and white wine, part of a water-melon, and
some pomegranates. In fact, more was remain-
ing than had been eaten or removed, not reckon-
ing a radish of extraordinary length and tenuity,
which the Sefiorita Ifies was twisting round her
thumb. It was no waste ; there was not any use
for it ; many things in the house were better to
mend harness with. Moreover on the sideboard
there were sundry yellow peaches, of such a size,
weight, and hardness, that only a confident and
rash invader would traverse the country in the
season of their maturity, unless he had collected
the most accurate information that powder was
deficient in the arsenals.
At the dusty apparition, at the beard and
whiskers never seen before, at the broad and
belted shoulder, at the loud spurred boot, at the
long and hurried stride toward the party, Don
Luis stared ; Don Ignacio stared ; Dona Ifies cast
her eyes on the ground, and said, " 'Tis he ! " The
brother, whether he heard her or not, repeated
the words, " 'tis he ! " and rushed into his arms.
Don Luis himself rose slowly from his chair, and
welcomed him. Ifies was the nearest to him, and
seemed abashed.
" My cousin ! " said Antonio, bending down to
her, " I have yet to remove in part the name of
coward," and, .lifting her hand from her apron, he
kissed the extremities of her fingers. " Brother !
one more embrace, and then for those promegra-
nates : I am thirsty to death. God be with you,
my dear, kind, honoured father ! you look upon
me with more than usual, and much more than
merited, affection." Don Luis did indeed regard
him with much complacency. "I must empty
those two flasks, my beloved father, to your
health." So saying, he poured the contents of
one into a capacious beaker, with about the same
quantity of water, and swallowed it at a draught.
"What lady have you engulfed with that
enormous gasp 1 " asked Ines, with timid shyness ;
" will she never rise up, do you think, in judg-
ment against you ] "
" Pray mix me the flask near you," said he, " in
like manner as the last, and then perhaps I may
answer you, my sweet cousin ; but tell me, Ines,
whether I did not rasp your nails with my thirsty
and hard lips ] "
" Yes, and .with that horrid brake above," said
she, pouring out the wine and water, and offer-
ing it.
Don Luis all this time had kept his eyes con-
stantly on his son, and began to prognosticate in
him a valiant defender ; then discovered, first in
one feature, afterward in another, a resemblance
to himself; and lastly, he was persuaded in his
own mind, that he had been prejudiced and pre-
cipitate when he was younger. The spirit of
hospitality was aroused by paternal love : he gave
orders for a fowl to be killed instantaneously, even
the hen on her nest rather than none, although
the omelet might be thinner for it on the
morrow. Such was the charm the gallant and
gay Antonio breathed about the house. He was
peculiarly pleased and gratified by the suavity of
his father, not that he ever had doubted of his
affection, but he had fancied that his own bois
terous manners had rendered him less an object of
solicitude. He had always been glad to see it be-
stowed on his brother, whose delicate health and
sensitive nature so much required it.
No house in Spain, where few were happy then,
contained four happier inmates. Ignacio, it is
true, became thinner daily, and ceased after a
time to join in the morning walks of his brother
and Ifies ; but he was always of the party when,
returning from the siesta, they took up their
guitars, and tuned each other's.
Were there ever two comely and sensitive
young persons, possessing sweet voices, exercising
them daily together, bending over the same book,
expressing the same sentiment in its most pas-
sionate accents, were they ever long exempt from
the gentle intrusion of one sweet stranger 1
Neither Ifies nor Antonio was aware of it : both
would have smiled in the beginning, and both
would have afterward been indignant at any such
surmise. But revolutions in states effect no revo-
lutions in nature. The French, who changed
everything else, left the human heart as they
found it. Ignacio feared, but said nothing. An-
tonio too, although much later, was awakened to
the truth, and determined on departure. And
A STORY OF SANTANDER.
463
now Ignacio was ashamed and grieved at his sus-
picions, and would have delayed his brother, who
dissembled his observation of them ; but the poor
youth's health, always slender, had given way
under them. For several days he had taken to
his bed ; fever had seized him, and had been sub-
dued. But there is a rose which Death lays
quietly on the cheek of the devoted, before the
poppy sheds on it its tranquillising leaves : it had
settled immoveably in the midst of Ignacio's
smiles, smiles tranquilly despondent. Seldom
did Antonio leave his bedside, but never had he
yet possessed the courage to inquire the cause of
those sighs and tears, which burst forth in every
moment of silence, and then only. At length
however he resolved on it, that he might assure
him the more confidently of his recovery, having
first requested Ines that, whenever he was absent,
she would supply his place.
" Can not we go together 1 " said she, disquieted.
" No, senora ! " answered he, with stern sadness,
" we can not. You owe this duty to the compa-
nion of your girlhood, to the. bequeathed of your
parents, to your betrothed ! "
At that word sudden paleness overspread her
countenance; her lips, which never before had
lost their rich colour, faded and quivered ; no
reply could pass them, had any been ready : even
the sigh was drawn suddenly back : not one
escaped. In all that was visible she was motion-
less. But now with strong impulse she pressed
both palms against her bosom, and turned away.
The suddenness and the sound struck terror into
the heart of Antonio. He laid his hand on her
shoulder, and looked into her face. Tears glit-
tered on the folds of the long black veil; and
they were not the tears of Ines. But now she also
shed them. Alas ! from how many and from
what distant sources do they flow !
Ines went; she sobbed at the door, but she
went. No song that evening, no book, no ro-
mance of love, no narrative of war : the French
were as forgotten as the Moors.
Morning rose fresh and radiant : but the dim
lavender on each side of the narrow pathway had
all its dew upon it; the cistus was opening its
daily flowers, with no finger to press down and
attempt to smoothen the crumpled leaves ; none
to apply its viscous cup in playful malice against
the trim ornament of a smiling lip. Nobody
thought of looking for the large green lizard on
the limestone by the twisted rosemary-bush,
covered with as many bees as blossoms, and up-
rearing as many roots as branches above the pros-
trate wall. Nobody thought of asking " Did you
ever know any creature who panted so quickly as
that foolish lizard] . . I mean in battle." Nobody
met the inquiry with, " Did you ever hear of any
one who felt anything a little, a very little like it,
at the cembalo ] "
Antonio, at this early hour, was seated on the
edge of his brother's bed, asking him, with kind
dissimulation, what reason he could possibly have
to doubt Ines' love and constancy.
"At first," replied Iguacio, " she used to hold
my hand, to look anxiously in my face, and to
wipe away her tears that she might see it the
more distinctly in this darkened chamber. Now
she has forgotten to take my hand ; she looks as
often into my face, but not anxiously ; not even
inquiringly ; she lets her tears rise and dry again;
she never wipes them away, and seldom hides
them. This at least is a change in her ; perhaps
no favourable one for me." Antonio thus an-
swered him : " Ignacio, if we would rest at all,
we must change our posture in grief as in bed.
The first moments are not like the second, nor
the second like the last. Be confident in her ; be
confident in me : within two hours you shall, I
promise you, whether you will or not. Farewell,
my beloved brother ! You are weary ; close but
your eyes for sleep, and sleep shall come. I will
not awaken you, even with glad tidings."
Folding his arms, he left the chamber with a
firm step. Within two hours he entered it again ;
but how] Hateful as monastic life had ever
appeared to him, ridiculous as he daily in Sala-
manca had called its institutions, indifferent and
incredulous as he lately had become to many
articles of the faith, having been educated under
the tuition of a soldier, so free in his opinions
as once to have excited the notice and question-
ings of the Inquisition, he went resolutely forth
at daybreak, and prevailed on the superior of a
monastic order to admit him into it at once, as
its sworn defender. He returned in the vestments
of that order, and entered the bedchamber in
silence. His brother had slept, and was yet sleep-
ing. He gently undrew the curtain, and stood
motionless. Ignacio at last moved his elbow, and
sighed faintly ; he then rested on it a little, and
raised his cheek higher on the pillow ; it had lost
the gift of rest ; its virtues were departed from
it ; there was no cool part left. He opened his
eyes and looked toward Antonio ; then closed
them, then looked again.
" Ignacio ! " said Antonio softly, " you see me ;
it is me you see, Ignacio ! " The sick exhausted
youth sighed again, and closing his hands, raised
them up as if in prayer. This movement fully
awakened him. He now opened his eyes in
wonder on his brother, who pressed those raised
hands within his, and kissed that brow which the
fever had shortly left. Ignacio sighed deeply,
and sank back again. The first words he uttered
afterward were these :
" Oh Antonio ! why could you not have waited]
impetuous, impatient Antonio ! I might have
seen you both from Paradise; I might have blest
you from thence; from thence I might indeed.
0 God ! 0 Virgin ! 0 Mary, pure and true ! par-
don my ingratitude ! Should love ever bear that
bitter fruit ] Forbid it, 0 host of Heaven ! forbid
it ! it must not be."
" Brother ! speak not so : it is accomplished,"
said Antonio; "and now can you doubt your
bride ] "
Ines at this moment rushed into the chamber :
464
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
she knew the stately figure, she knew the lofty
head, although tonsured ; she screamed and
fainted. Antonio drew her forth by the arm,
and, when she recovered her senses, thus addressed
her :
" Cousin ! my heart reproaches me for having
loved you. If yours (how incomparably less
guijty !) should haply feel some compunction, not
indeed at what is past, but at what you see," and
he extended his large mantle to his arm's length,
" return from the unworthy to the worthy ; from
him who renounces the world to him whose world
you are. Now, Ifies, now we can with unabashed
front go together into his chamber."
" I will tend him," said she, " day and night :
I will follow him to the grave ; I will enter it
with him : yes, and even that chamber, while he
suffers in it, I will enter." She paused awhile,
then continued : " Antonio ! oh Antonio ! you
have never loved. They tell us, none can love
twice. That is false ; but this is true : we can
never love twice the same object."
Antonio stood mute with wonder at the speech
of this innocent girl, retired alike from society
and unbeguiled by books. Little had he consi-
dered how strong a light is sometimes thrown on
the intellect, what volumes of thought are ex-
panded and made clearly legible, by the first out-
flaming of the passions. And yet Antonio should
have known it ; for in the veins of Antonio one
half was blood, the other half was fire. While,
with eyes fixed on the ground, he stood yet before
her, who perhaps was waiting for his reply, she
added briefly :
" Let me repair my fault as well as may be.
You shall see me no more. Leave me, sir."
Antonio did leave her. In a fortnight the
gentle spirit of Ignacio had departed.
The French armies had again defeated the
Spanish, penetrated to Santander, laid waste all the
country around, and demolished the convent in
which Ifies had taken refuge. Some women in
Spanish cities were heroines; in Spanish convents
if any became so, the heroism was French. They
who have visited Santander, will remember the
pointed hill on the north-west of the city, looking
far over the harbour, the coast, and the region of
La Mancha. Even while the enemy was in pos-
session of the place, a solitary horseman was often
seen posted on this eminence, and many were the
dead bodies of French soldiers found along the
roads on every side under it. Doubtless, the
horseman had strong and urgent reasons for oc-
cupying a position so exposed to danger. It was
Antonio. He had heard that Ifies, after the dese-
cration of the convent, had been carried back by
the invaders into Santander. Early in October,
the officers of the garrison made parties with the
ladies of the city to enjoy the vintage in its vici-
nity. One morning a peasant boy employed by
Antonio, ran breathless up to him on the moun-
tain-side, saying, as soon as he could say it :
" Illustrious senor ! the senora Ifies, and the
other senoras, and an officer and a soldier, all
French, are coming ; and only a mile behind are
many more."
" I have watched them," replied Antonio, " and
shall distinguish them presently." He led his
horse close behind a high waggon, laden with
long and narrow barrels of newly gathered grapes,
standing upright in it, and then tied his bridle
to the bar which kept them in their position.
Only one horse could pass it at a time. Ifies was
behind ; the officer was showing her the way, and
threatening both vintagers and mules for their
intractability. Antonio sprang forward, seized
him by the collar, and threw him under them,
crying to Ifies :
" Fly into the mountains with me : not a mo-
ment is to be lost. Pass me : he is out of the
way. Fly ! fly ! Distrust my sanctity, but trust
my honour, 0 Ifies of Ignacio ! "
Ines drew in her bridle, turned her face aside,
and said irresolutely.
" I can not . . Oh ! I can not. I am . . I am . ."
She could not utter what she was : perhaps the
sequel may in part reveal it. Scarcely had she
spoken the last words, before she leapt down from
her saddle, and hung with her whole weight on
Antonio's arm, in which the drawn sword was
uplifted over the enemy, and waiting only until
he could rise upon his feet again, and stand upon
his defence. He was young, as was discernible
even through the dense forest of continuous hair,
which covered all but nose and forehead.
Roughly and with execrations did he thrust Ifies
away from him, indignant at her struggles for his
protection. Before the encounter (for which both
were eager) could begin, the private had taken his
post behind an ilex at the back of Antonio, and
discharged his musket. Gratitude, shame, love
perhaps too, hurried Ifies to his help. She fell
on her kness to raise him. Gently, with open
palm and quivering fingers, he pushed her arm
away from him, and, turning with a painful effort
quite round, pressed his brow against the way-
side sward. The shepherd-dogs, in the evening
of that sultry day, tried vainly to quench their
thirst, as they often had done in other human
blood, in the blood also of Antonio : it was hard,
and they left it. The shepherds gave them all
the bread they carried with them, and walked
home silently.
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
THE DEATH OF HOFER.
I PASSED two entire inonths in Germany, and
like the people. On my way I saw Waterloo, an
ugly table for an ugly game. At Innspruck
I entered the church in which Andreas Hofer
is buried. He lies under a plain slab, on the left,
near the door. I admired the magnificent tomb
of bronze, in the centre, surrounded by heroes,
real and imaginary. They did not fight, tens
against thousands ; they did not fight for wives
and children, but for lands and plunder : there-
fore they are heroes ! My admiration for these
works of art was soon satisfied, which perhaps
it would not have been in any other place.
Snow, mixed with rain, was falling, and was
blown by the wind upon the tomb of Hofer.
I thought how often he had taken advantage
of such weather for his attacks against the
enemies of his country, and I seemed to hear
his whistle in the wind. At the little village of
Landro (I feel a whimsical satisfaction in the
likeness of the name to mine) the innkeeper was
the friend of this truly great man . . the greatest
man that Europe has produced in our days, ex-
cepting his true compeer, Kosciusko. Andreas
Hofer gave him the chain and crucifix he wore
three days before his death. You may imagine this
man's enthusiasm, who, because I had said that
Hofer was greater than king or emperor, and had
made him a present of small value, as the com-
panion and friend of that harmless and irreproach-
able hero, took this precious relic from his neck
and offered it to me. By the order of Buonaparte,
the companions of Hofer, eighty in number, were
chained, thumbscrewed, and taken out of prison in
couples, to see him shot. He had about him one
thousand florins, in paper currency, which he
delivered to his confessor, requesting him to
divide it impartially among his unfortunate
countrymen. The confessor, an Italian who spoke
German, kept it, and never gave relief from it to
any of them, most of whom were suffering, not
only from privation of wholesome air, to which,
among other privations, they never had been
accustomed, but also from scantiness of nourish-
ment and clothing. Even in Mantua, where, as
in the rest of Italy, sympathy is both weak and
silent, the lowest of the people were indignant at
the sight of so brave a defender of his country, led
into the public square to expiate a crime unheard
of for many centuries in their nation. When they
saw him walk forth, with unaltered countenance
and firm step before them ; when, stopping on the
ground which was about to receive his blood, they
heard him with unfaltering voice commend his
soul and his country to the Creator ; and, as if still
under his own roof (a custom with him after the
evening prayer), implore a blessing for his boys
and his little daughter, and for the mother who
had reared them up carefully and tenderly thus
far through the perils of childhood ; finally, when
in a lower tone, but earnestly and emphatically, he
besought pardon from the Fount of Mercy for her
brother, his betrayer, many smote their breasts
aloud ; many, thinking that sorrow was shameful,
lowered their heads and wept; many, knowing that
it was dangerous, yet wept too. The people re-
mained upon the spot an unusual tim'fe ; and the
French, fearing some commotion, pretended to
have received an order from Buonaparte for the
mitigation of the sentence, and publicly announced
it. Among his many falsehoods, anyone of which
would have excluded him for ever from the society
of men of honour, this is perhaps the basest ; as
indeed of all his atrocities the death of Hofer,
which he had ordered long before and appointed
the time and circumstances, is, of all his actions,
that which the brave and virtuous will reprobate
the most severely. He was urged by no necessity,
he was prompted by no policy : his impatience of
courage in an enemy, his hatred of patriotism and
integrity in all, of which he had no idea himself,
and saw no image in those about him, outstripped
his blind passion for fame, and left him nothing
but power and celebrity.
The name of Andreas Hofer will be honoured
by posterity far above any of the present age, and
together with the most glorious of the last, Wash-
ington and Kosciusko. For it rests on the same
foundation, and indeed on a higher basis. In
virtue and wisdom their co-equal, he vanquished
on several occasions a force greatly superior to his
own in numbers and in discipline, by the courage
and confidence he inspired, and by his brotherly
care and anxiety for those who were fighting at
his side. Differently, far differently, ought we to
estimate the squanderers of human blood and the
scorners of human tears. We also may boast of
our great men in a cause as great; for without it
they could not be so. We may look back upon our
Blake ; whom the prodigies of a Nelson do not
eclipse, nor would he have wished (such was his
generosity) to obscure it. Blake was among the
founders of freedom ; Nelson was the vanquisher .
of its destroyers; Washington was both; Kosciusko
was neither ; neither was Hofer. But the aim of
all three was alike ; and in the armoury of God
are suspended the arms the two last of them bore ;
suspended for success more signal and for ven-
geance more complete.
I am writing this from Venice, which is among
cities what Shakspeare is among men. He will
give her immortality by his works, which neither
her patron saint could do nor her surrounding
466
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
TO CORNELIUS AT MUNICH.
ON coming to England, and on looking at the
Cartoons exhibited for decorating the Houses of
Parliament, you will wonder, Cornelius, that the
most important facts and most illustrious men
have been overlooked. The English are certainly
less sensitive to national glory than to party
politics; to past achievements than to passing
celebrity. Wilkes excited more enthusiasm than
Hampden. It appears to be certain that the
Protector Cromwell will be expunged from the
pictorial history of the nation; of that nation
which he raised to the summit of political power.
It is contended that he usurped his authority. We
will not argue the point, nor take the trouble to
demonstrate that the greatest and best princes, in
many countries, have been usurpers. Without
great services none of them could ever have been
invested with sufficient power to assume the first
dignity of the State. William of Normandy was
manifestly a usurper ; and, if breaking the direct
line of succession is usurpation, so was William
the Third. Henry the Fourth and Henry the
Seventh were usurpers also, yet their reigns were
signally beneficial to their people. And to Richard
the Third, whatever may have been his crimes in
the ascent to sovereignty, the nation at large is
perhaps more indebted for provident statutes of
perdurable good, than to any other of her kings.
But the glory of them all is cast into obscurity by
Cromwell. He humbled in succession the domi-
nant powers of Europe, at a time when they were
governed by the ablest men, and had risen to the
zenith of their prosperity. Spain, France, Holland,
crouched before him ; and the soldiers of Gustavus
Adolphus, the greatest king the world ever
beheld, thought he had risen from the grave to
accomplish the delivery of nations. For how
little, in comparison, is France indebted to Napo-
leon ! Yet both king and people are united in
raising a monument to his memory. Compare
the posthumous honours conferred by the two
great nations on the two great men. The body
of the one is brought back from the extremities
of the ocean, to be venerated by a people he had
reduced to servitude ; the body of the other was
treated as the vilest malefactor's, in the midst of
a nation he had vindicated from double slavery,
the slavery of a lawless prince and an intolerant
priesthood. It is enough for Frenchmen that
Napoleon had once humbled the enemies of
France. We, who judge more calmly, judge that
whatever he did was done for the advancement of
his power and the perpetuation of his dynasty.
He had the quickest and the shortest sight of all
men living, and his arrogance brought into
France the nations that subdued her. Different
in ali these points was Oliver. Never was man
more bravely humane, or more tranquilly ener-
getic. He stood above fear, above jealousy, above
power: he was greater than all things but his
country.
The English are erecting a column and statue
to Nelson. No such monument has been raised
to Blake, because he fought for a country without
a king at the head of it. This courageous and
virtuous man abstained from party and from
politics, and would have defended his country
even under the king who sold her. No action of
Nelson himself is more glorious than the action
of Blake at Cadiz, and his character, on every
side, is without a stain; but in England the
authorities and the arts neglect him.
" Caret quia rege sacro."
In the list of the committee which is to decide
on fit subjects for painting the Houses of Parlia-
ment, you will find the name of Eastlake, a good
painter, and a good scholar; and of Rogers,
endowed with every quality of a gentleman, and
with an exquisite judgment in everything relat-
ing to literature and the fine arts. Yet I doubt
if either of them would not prefer an allegory
in the Faery Queen, or a witchery in Faust,
for a decoration of the Chambers, if highly pic-
turesque, to the most appropriate scene in par-
liamentary annals, if less so. English history, in
fact, is now represented without living figures,
and worked by machinery. We see the events,
and wonder where are the actors. The later his-
torians keep them carefully out of sight, and
make their own voices suffice for all within the
boxes they exhibit.
The histories of other nations are alive with
human agents ; the earth moves and heaves with
their energies : we see not only the work they
have done, but we see them doing it. Whereas,
in our own sandy deserts, the only things astir
are small animals intent on their burrows, or
striving to possess a knot of fresh herbage. All
beyond is indistinct : if ever we come to it, we
find only scanty eminences, under which are
evanescent features and weightless bones : we
trample them down and walk back again.
A VISION.
BLESSED be they who erected temples to the
ancient Gods ! Mistaken they may have been,
but they were pious and they were grateful. The
deities of Olympus, although no longer venerated,
have thrown open, both to the enthusiastic and
to the contemplative, many a lofty view beyond
the sterile eminences of human life, and have
adorned every road of every region with images
of grandeur and of grace. Never are they malig-
nant or indifferent to the votary who has aban-
A VISION.
467
doned them ; and I believe, there is no record of
any appearing by night with frowns and threats :
but, on the contrary, I know from my own ex-
experience, that neither time nor neglect has
worn the celestial smile off their placid coun-
tenances. An instance of this fact I am now about
to relate. Let me begin by observing that my
eyes, perhaps by an imprudent use of them, grow
soon weary with reading, even while curiosity and
interest have lost little or nothing of excitement.
A slumber of a few minutes is sufficient to refresh
them ; during which time I often enjoy the benefit
of a dream ; and, what is (I believe) remarkable
and singular, it usually takes a direction far wide
of the studies on which I had been engaged. On
one occasion, perhaps it might have been that
(pushing my book away from me to the middle of
the table) the last object I saw was a picture by
Swaneveldt, on the left of which there is a tem-
ple ; for a temple, sure enough, stood before me
in my dream : beside it ran a river, and beyond
it rose a mountain, each sensible alike of the sky
that glowed above. So far the picture and the
dream were in accordance. But the dream's
temple was entirely its own : it had no sheep nor
shepherd near it, as the picture had : and, al-
though dreams are apt to take greater liberties
than pictures do, yet in the picture there was an
autumnal tree by the side of a summer tree ; the
one of rich yellow, the other of deep green. In
the dream I remember nothing of the kind ; yet
I verily think I remember every particle of it. I
remember a cool and gentle hand conducting me
over some narrow planks, thrown across a deep
channel of still water. I remember the broad leaves
underneath us, and how smooth, how quiet, how
stainless. I remember we tarried here awhile, not
leaning on the rail, for there was none, but tacitly
agreeing to be mistaken in what we reciprocally
were leaning on. At length we passed onward,
by the side of a cottage in ruins, with an oven
projecting from it at the gable-end : on the out-
side of its many-coloured arch were gilliflowers
growing in the crevices : very green moss, in
rounded tufts, and blossoming, had taken pos-
session of its entrance : and another plant, as
different as possible, was hanging down from it,
so long and slender and flexible, that a few bees,
as they alighted on it, shook it. Suddenly I
stumbled : my beautiful guide blushed deeply,
and said,
" Do you stumble at the first step of the tem-
ple ] What an omen ! "
I had not perceived that we had reached any
temple : but now, abashed at the reproof, I looked
up, and could read the inscription, although the
letters were ancient, for they were deeply and well
engraven.
Sacred to Friendship were the words, in Greek.
The steps were little worn, and retained all their
smoothness and their polish. After so long a
walk as I had taken, I doubt whether I should
have ascended them without the hand that was
offered me. In the temple I beheld an image, of
a marble so purely white, that it seemed but re-
cently chiselled. I walked up -to it and stood
before it. The feet were not worn as the feet of
some images are, by the lips of votaries : indeed
I could fancy that scarcely the tip of a finger had
touched them ; and I felt pretty sure that words
were the only offerings, and now and then a sigh
at a distance. Yet the longer I gazed at it the
more beautiful did it appear in its colour and pro-
portions ; and turning to my companion, who (I
then discovered) was looking at me,
" This image," said I, " has all the features and
all the attributes of Love, excepting the bow,
quiver, and arrows."
" Yes," answered she, smiling ; " all, excepting
the mischievous. It has all that the wiser and
the better of the ancients attributed to him. But
do you really see no difference ? "
Again I raised my eyes, and after a while I
remarked that the figure was a female, very
modest, very young, and little needing the zone
that encompassed her. I suppressed this por-
tion of my observations, innocent as it was, and
only replied,
" I see that the torch is borne above the head,
and that the eyes are uplifted in the same
direction."
" Do you remember," said she, " any image of
Love in this attitude1?"
" It might be," I answered ; " and with perfect
propriety."
" Yes ; it both might and should be," said she.
" But," she continued, " we are not here to worship
Love, or to say anything about him. Like all the
other blind, he is so quick at hearing ; and above
all others, blind or sighted, he is so ready to take
advantage of the slightest word, that I am afraid
he may one day or other come down on us un-
aware. He has been known before now to assume
the form of Friendship, making sad confusion.
Let us deprecate this, bending our heads devoutly
to the Deity before us."
Was it a blush, or was it the sun of such a
bright and genial day, that warmed my cheek so
vividly while it descended in adoration ; or could
it be, by any chance or casualty, that the veil
touched it through which the breath of my virgin
guide had been passing] Whatever it was, it
awakened me. Again my eyes fell on the open
book ; to rest on it, not to read it ; and I neither
dreamed nor slumbered a second time that
day.
H H 2
463
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
THE DREAM OP PETRARCA.
WHEN I was younger, I was fond of wandering
in solitary places, and never was afraid of slum-
bering in woods and grottoes. Among the chief
pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of
my occupations, was the bringing before me such
heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and
sages, s.uch of the prosperous and of the unfortu-
nate, as most interested me by their courage, their
wisdom, their eloquence, or their adventures.
Engaging them in the conversation best suited to
their characters, I knew perfectly their manners,
their stops, their voices ; and often did I moisten
with my tears the models I had been forming of
the less happy. Great is the privilege of entering
into the studies of the intellectual ; great is that
of conversing with the guides of nations, the
movers of the mass, the regulators of the unruly
will, stiff in its impurity, and rash against the
finger of the Almighty Power that formed it; but
give me rather the creature to sympathise with ;
apportion me the sufferings to assuage. Allegory
had few attractions for me ; believing it to be the
delight, in general, of idle, frivolous, inexcursive
minds, in whose mansions there is neither hall
nor portal to receive the loftier of the Passions.
A stranger to the affections, she holds a -low sta-
tion among the hand-maidens of Poetry, being fit
for little but an apparition ,in a mask. I had
reflected for some time on this .subject, when,
wearied with the length of my walk over the
mountains, and finding a soft old mole-hill covered
with grey grass by the way-side, I laid my head
upon it, and slept. I cannot tell how long it was
before a species of dream, or vision, came over me.
Two beautiful youths appeared beside me ; each
was winged ; but the wings were hanging down,
and seemed ill adapted to flight. One of them,
whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking
at me frequently, said to the other, " He is under
my guardianship for the present : do not awaken
him with that feather." Methought, on hearing
the whisper, I saw something like the feather of
an arrow, and then the arrow itself, the whole of
it, even to the point ; although he carried it in
such a manner that it was difficult at first to dis-
cover more than a palm's length of it; the rest of
the shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind
his ancles.
" This feather never awakens anyone," replied
he, rather petulantly; " but it brings more of
confident security, and more of cherished dreams,
than you, without me, are capable of imparting."
" Be it eo ! " answered the gentler ; " none is
less inclined to quarrel or dispute than I am.
Many whom you have wounded grievously, call
upon me for succour ; but so little am I disposed
to thwart you, it is seldom I venture to do more
for them than to whisper a few words of comfort
in passing. How many reproaches, on these oc-
casions, have been cast upon me for indifference
and infidelity ! Nearly as many, and nearly in
the same terms, as upon you."
" Odd enough, that we, 0 Sleep ! should be
thought so alike ! " said Love, contemptuously.
" Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance to
you : the dullest have observed it."
I fancied I turned my eyes to where he was
pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he de-
signated. Meanwhile the contention went on
uninterruptedly. Sleep was slow in asserting his
power or his benefits. Love recapitulated them ;
but only that he might assert his own above
them. Suddenly he called on me to decide, and
to choose my patron. Under the influence, first
of the one, then of the other, I sprang from
repiose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on
repose, and knew not which was sweetest. Love
was very angry with me, and declared he would
cross me throughout the whole of my existence.
Whatever I might on other occasions have
thought of his veracity, I now felt too surely the
conviction that he would keep his word. At last,
before the close of the altercation, the third
Genius had advanced, and stood near us. I can
not tell how I knew him, but I knew him to be
the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at be-
holding him, I soon became familiar with his
features. First they seemed only calm ; presently
they grew contemplative ; and lastly beautiful :
those of the Graces themselves are less regular,
less harmonious, less composed. Love glanced at
him unsteadily, with a countenance in which
there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of dis-
dain ; and cried, " Go away ! go away ! Nothing
that thou touchest, lives."
" Say rather, child !" replied the advancing
form, and advancing grew loftier and statelier,
" say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glo-
rious lives its own true life until my wing hath
passed over it."
Love pouted; and rumpled and bent down
with his forefinger the stiff short feathers on his
arrow-head; but replied not. Although he
frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded
him less and less, and scarcely looked toward him.
The milder and calmer Genius, the third, in pro-
portion as I took courage to contemplate him,
regarded me with more and more complacency.
He held neither flower nor arrow, as the others
did ; but throwing back the clusters of dark curls
that overshadowed his countenance, he presented
to me his hand, openly and benignly. I shrank
on looking at him so near ; and yet I sighed to
love him. He smiled, not without an expression
of pity, at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity :
for I remembered how soft was the hand of
Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's. By
degrees I grew ashamed of my ingratitude ; and
turning my face away, I held out my arms, and
felt my neck within his. Composure allayed all
PARABLE OF ASABEL.
469
the throbbings of my bosom, the coolness of
freshest morning breathed around, the heavens
seemed to open above me, while the beautiful
cheek of my deliverer rested on my head. I would
now have looked for those others ; but, knowing
my intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily,
" Sleep is on his way to the earth, where many
are calling him ; but it is not to them he hastens ;
for every call only makes him fly further off.
Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as
capricious and volatile as the more arrogant and
ferocious one."
" And Love," said I, " whither is he departed 1
If not too late, I would propitiate and appease
him."
" He who can not follow me, he who can not
overtake and pass me," said the Genius, " is un-
worthy of the name, the most glorious in earth or
heaven. Look up ! Love is yonder ; and ready
to receive thee."
I looked : the earth was under me : I saw only
the clear blue sky, and something brighter
above it.
PARABLE OF ASABEL.
CHAPTER I.
ASABEL in his youth had been of those who
place their trust in God, and he prospered in the
land, and many of his friends did partake of his
prosperity.
After a length of years it came to pass that he
took less and less delight in the manifold gifts oJ
God ; for that his heart grew fat within him, and
knew not any work-day for its work ; nor did
thankfulness enter into it, as formerly, to awake
the sluggard.
Nevertheless did Asabel praise and glorify the
Almighty, both morning and evening, and did
pray unto him for the continuance and increase
of his loving mercies; and did call himself, as
the godly are wont to do, miserable sinner, and
leper, and worm, and dust.
And all men did laud Asabel, inasmuch as,
being clothed in purple and smelling of spike-
nard, he was a leper, and worm, and dust.
And many did come from far regions to see
that dust, and that worm, and that leper ; and
did marvel at him ; and did bow their heads ;
and did beseech of God that they might be like
unto him.
But God inclined not his ear; and they re-
turned unto their own country.
CHAPTER II.
And behold it came to pass that an angel from
above saw Asabel go forth from his house.
And the angel did enter, and did seat himself
on the seat of Asabel.
After a while, a shower fell in sunny drops upon
the plane-tree at the gate, and upon the hyssop
thereby, and over the field nigh unto the dwelling.
Whereon did Asabel hasten him back ; and,
coming into the doorway, he saw another seated
upon his seat, who arose not before him, but said
only, " Peace unto thee !"
Asabel was wroth, and said, " Lo ! the rain
abateth, the sun shineth through it ; if thou wilt
eat bread, eat ; if thou wilt drink water, drink; but,
having assuaged thy hunger and thy thirst,depart ! "
Then said the angel unto Asabel, " I will neither
eat bread nor drink water under thy roof, 0 Asabel,
forasmuch as thou didst send therefrom the master
whom I serve."
And now the wrath of Asabel waxed hotter, and
he said, " Neither thy master nor the slave of thy
master have I sent away, not knowing nor having
seen either."
Then rose the angel from the seat, and spake :
" Asabel ! Asabel ! thy God hath filled thy house
with plenteousness. Hath he not verily done this
and more unto thee ]"
And Asabel answered him, and said : " Verily
the Lord my God hath done this and more unto
his servant : blessed be his name for ever ! "
Again spake the angel :
" He hath given thee a name among thy people ;
and many by his guidance have come unto thee
for counsel and for aid."
" Counsel have I given ; aid also have I given,"
said Asabel, "and neither he who received it nor
he who gave it, hath repented himself thereof."
Then answered the angel :
" The word that thou spakest is indeed the true
word. But answer me in the name of the Lord
thy God. Hath not thy soul been farther from
him as thy years and his benefits increased ] The
more wealth and the more wisdom (in thy esti-
mation of it) he bestowed upon thee, hast thou
not been the more proud, the more selfish, the
more disinclined to listen unto the sorrows and
wrongs of men ?"
And Asabel gazed upon him, and was angered
that a youth should have questioned him, and
.hought it a shame that the eyes of the young
should see into the secrets of the aged ; and stood
reproved before him.
But the angel took him by the hand and spake
hus : "Asabel ! behold the fruit of all the good
seed thy God hath given thee ; pride springing
from wealth, obduracy from years, and from know-
ledge itself uncontrollable impatience and in-
flexible perversity. Couldst thou not have em-
ployed these things much better 1 Again I say
it, thou hast driven out the God that dwelt with
thee; that dwelt within thy house, within thy
breast ; that gave thee much for thyself, and en-
trusted thee with more for others. Having seen
thee abuse, revile, and send him thus away
from thee, what wonder that I, who am but the
lowest of his ministers, and who have bestowed
no gifts upon thee, should be commanded to de-
part ! " Asabel covered his eyes, and when he
470
MINOR PROSE PIECES.
raised them up again, the angel no longer was
before him.
" Of a truth," said he, and smote his breast,
" it was the angel of the Lord." And then did he
shed tears. But they fell into his bosom, after a
while, like refreshing dew, bitter as were the first
of them ; and his heart grew young again, and
felt the head that rested on it ; and the weary in
spirit knew, as they had known before, the voice
of Asabel. Thus wrought the angel's gentleness
upon him, even as the quiet and silent water wins
itself an entrance where tempest and fire pass
over. It is written that other angels did look up
with loving and admiration into the visage of
this angel on his return ; and he told the younger
and more zealous of them, that whenever they
would descend into the gloomy vortex of the human
heart, under the softness and serenity of their voice
and countenance its turbulence would subside.
" Beloved ! " said the angel, " there are portals
that open to the palm-branches we carry, and
that close at the flaming sword."
JERIBOHANIAH.
JERIBOHANIAH sate in his tent, and was grieved
and silent, for years had stricken him.
And behold there came and stood before him
a man who also was an aged man, who, howbeit,
was not grieved, neither was he silent.
Nevertheless, until Jeribohaniah spake unto
him, spake not he.
But Jeribohaniah had alway been one of ready
speech ; nor verily had age minished his words,
nor the desire of his heart to question the stranger.
Wherefore uttered he first what stirred within
him, saying,
" Methinks thou comest from a far country : now
what country may that be whence thou comest ? "
And the stranger named by name the country
whence his feet, together with the staff of his
right-hand, had borne him.
" Bad, exceeding bad, and stinking in our nos-
trils," said Jeribohaniah, " is that country ; never-
theless mayst thou enter and eat within my tent,
and welcome ; seeing that thy scrip hangeth down
to thy girdle, round and large as hangeth the
gourd in the days of autumn ; and it is fitting and
right that, if I give unto thee of mine, so likewise
thou of thine, in due proportion, give unto me ;
and the rather, forasmuch as my tent containeth
few things within it, and thy wallet (I guess)
abundant."
Whereupon did Jeribohaniah step forward/ and
strive to touch with his right hand the top of the
wallet, and the bottom with his left. But the
stranger drew back therefrom, saying, "Nay."
Then Jeribohaniah waxed wroth, and would have
smitten the stranger at the tent, asking him in
his indignation why he drew back, and wherefore
he withheld the wallet from the most just; the
most potent, the most intelligent, and the most
venerable of mankind ! Whereupon the stranger
answered him, and said, " Far from thy servant
be all strife and wrangling, all doubt and suspi-
cion. Verily he hath much praised thee, even
until this day, unto those among whom he was
born and abided. And when some spake evil ol
thee and of thine, then did thy servant, even 1
who stand before thee, say unto them, ' Tarry ! ]
will myself go forth unto Jeribohaniah, and see
unto his ways, and report unto ye truly whai
they be.' "
"And now I guess," quoth Jeribohaniah, "thou
wouldst return and tell them the old story ; how
and my children have lusted after the goods of
)thermen, and have taken them. Now we only
,ook the goods ; the men took we not ; yet so
rebellious and ungrateful were they, that we were
ain to put them to the edge of the sword. And
thus did we. And lest another such generation
of vipers should spring up in the wilderness beyond
them, we sent onward just men, who should turn
and harrow the soil, and put likewise to the edge
of the sword such as would hinder us in doing
what is lawful and right, namely, that which our
wills ordained. To prevent such an extremity,
our prudence and humanity led us, under God, to
detain the silver and gold intrusted to us by the
most suspicious and spiteful of our enemies. And
now thou art admitted into my confidence, lay
down thy scrip, and eat and drink freely."
" Pleaseth it thee," replied the stranger, " that
I carry back unto my own country what thou hast
related unto me as seeming good in thine eyes ? "
" Carry back what thou wilt," calmly said Jeri-
bohaniah, " save only that which my sons, whose
long shadows are now just behind thee, may hold
back."
Scarcely had he spoken when the sons entered
the tent, and, occupying all the seats, bade the
stranger be seated and welcome. Venison brought
they forth in deep dishes ; wine also poured they
out ; and they drank unto his health. And when
they had wiped their lips with the back of the
hand, which the Lord in his wisdom had made
hairy for that purpose, they told the stranger that
other strangers had blamed curiosity in their
kindred ; and, that they might not be reproved
for it, they would ask no questions as to what
might peradventure be contained within the scrip,
but would look into it at their leisure.
Jeribohaniah told his guest that they were wild
lads, and would have their way. He then looked
more gravely and seriously, saying,
" Everything in this mortal life ends better than
we, short-sighted creatures, could have believed or
hoped. Providence hath sent us back those boys,
purely that thy mission might be accomplished.
Unless they had come home in due time, how little
wouldst thou have had to relate to thy own tribe
concerning us, save only what others, envying our
probity and prosperity, and far behind us in wis-
dom and enterprise, have discoursed about, year
after year."
POEMS.
HELLENICS.
I. THRASYMEDES AND EUNOE.
WHO will away to Athens with me ] who
Loves choral songs and maidens crown'd with
flowers,
Unenvious ] mount the pinnace ; hoist the sail.
I promise ye, as many as are here,
Ye shall not, while ye tarry with me, taste
From unrinsed barrel the diluted wine
Of a low vineyard or a plant ill-pruned,
But such as anciently the JSgaean isles
Pour'd in libation at their solemn feasts :
And the same goblets shall ye grasp, embost
With no vile figures of loose languid boors,
But such as Gods have lived with, and have led.
The sea smiles bright before us. What white sail
Plays yonder ? what pursues it ? Like two hawks
Away they fly. Let us away in time
To overtake them. Are they menaces
We hear t And shall the strong repulse the weak,
Enraged at her defender ? Hippias !
Art thou the man 1 'Twas Hippias. He had found
His sister borne from the Cecropian port
By Thrasymedes. And reluctantly 1
Ask, ask the maiden ; I have no reply.
" Brother ! 0 brother Hippias ! 0, if love,
If pity, ever toucht thy breast, forbear !
Strike not the brave, the gentle, the beloved,
My Thrasymedes, with his cloak alone
Protecting his own head and mine from harm."
" Didst thou not once before," cried Hippias,
Kegardless of his sister, hoarse with wrath
At Thrasymedes, " didst not thou, dog-eyed,
Dare, as she walkt up to the Parthenon,
On the most holy of all holy days,
In sight of all the city, dare to kiss
Her maiden cheek 1 "
"Ay, before all the Gods,
Ay, before Pallas, before Artemis,
Ay, before Aphrodite, before Hera,
I dared ; and dare again. Arise, my spouse !
Arise ! and let my lips quaff purity
From thy fair open brow."
The sword was up.
And yet he kist her twice. Some God withheld
The arm of Hippias; his proud blood seeth'd slower
And smote his breast less angrily ; he laid
His hand on the white shoulder, and spake thus :
" Ye must return with me. A second time
Offended, will our sire Pisistratos
Pardon the affront? Thou shouldst have askt
thyself
This question ere the sail first flapt the mast."
" Already thou hast taken life from me ;
Put up thy sword," said the sad youth, his eyes
Sparkling ; but whether love or rage or grief
They sparkled with, the Gods alone could see.
Pirseos they re-entered, and their ship
Drove up the little waves against the quay,
Whence was thrown out a rope from one above,
And Hippias caught it. From the virgin's waist
Her lover dropt his arm, and blusht to think
He had retain'd it there in sight of rude
Irreverent men : he led her forth, nor spake ;
Hippias walkt silent too, until they reacht
The mansion of Pisistratos her sire.
Serenely in his sternness did the prince
Look on them both awhile : they saw not him,
For both had cast their eyes upon the ground.
" Are these the pirates thou hast taken, son 1 "
Said he. " Worse, father ! worse than pirates they,
Who thus abuse thy patience, thus abuse
Thy pardon, thus abuse the holy rites
Twice over."
" Well hast thou performed thy duty,"
Firmly and gravely said Pisistratos.
" Nothing then, rash young man ! could turn thy
heart
From Eunoe, my daughter ? "
" Nothing, sir,
Shall ever turn it. I can die but once
And love but once. 0 Eunoe ! farewell ! "
" Nay, she shall see what thou canst bear for her."
" 0 father ! shut me in my chamber, shut me
In my poor mother's tomb, dead or alive,
But never let me see what he can bear ;
I know how much that is, when borne for me."
" Not yet: come on. And lag not thou behind,
Pirate of virgin and of princely hearts !
Before the people and before the Goddess
Thou hadst evinced the madness of thy passion, '
And now wouldst bear from home and plenteous-
ness,
To poverty and exile, this my child."
474
HELLENICS.
Then shuddered Thrasymedes, and exclaim'd,
" I see my crime ; I saw it not before.
The daughter of Pisistratos was born
Neither for exile nor for poverty,
Ah ! nor for me ! " He would have wept, but one
Might see him, and weep worse. The prince un-
moved
Strode on, and said, "To-morrow shall the people,
All who beheld thy trespasses, behold
The justice of Pisistratos, the love
He bears his daughter, and the reverence
In which he holds the highest law of God."
He spake ; and on the morrow they were one.
II. DRIMACOS.
In Crete reign'd Zeus and Minos; and there sprang
From rocky Chios (but more years between)
Homer. Ah ! who near Homer's side shall stand?
A slave, a slave shall stand near Homer's side.
Come from dark ages forth, come, Drimacos !
0 gems of Ocean, shining here and there
Upon his vest of ever-changeful green,
Eicher are ye than wide-spread continents,
Richer in thoughtful men and glorious deeds.
Drimacos was a slave ; but Liberty
By him from Slavery sprang, as day from night.
Intolerable servitude o'erran
The isle of Chios. They whose sires had heard
The blind man, and the muse who sat beside,
Constant, as was the daughter to the king
Of Thebes, and comforting his sunless way,
Yea, even these bore stones within their breasts,
Buying by land or capturing by sea,
And torturing too limbs fashion'd like their own,
Limbs like the Gods' they all fell down before.
But Zeus had from Olympus lookt oblique,
Then breath'd into the breasts of suffering slaves
Heroic courage and heroic strength,
And wisdom for their guidance and support.
Drimacos he appointed to coerce
The pride of the enslaver, and to free
All those who laboured and were heavy-laden
With griefs, not even by the avenging Gods
Inflicted, wrongs which men alone inflict
On others, when their vices have scoopt out
A yoke far more opprobrious for themselves.
From field to field the clang of arms was heard ;
Fires from the rocks and the hill-tops by night
Collected all the valiant, all the young,
Female and male, stripling and suckling babe,
By mother (then most fond) not left behind.
But many were o'ertaken ; many dropt
Faint by the road ; thirst, hunger, terror, seiz'd
Separate their prey. Among the fugitives,
In the most crowded and the narrowest path
That led into the thickets on the hill,
Was Amymone with her infant boy,
Eiarinos. She pray'd the Gods, nor pray'd
Inaudible, although her voice had fail'd.
On Drimacos she called by name ; he heard
"The voice ; he tura'd his head, and cried aloud :
" Comrades ! take up yon infant from the arms
That sink with it ; and help the mother on."
Far in advance was he ; all urged amain ;
All minded their own household, nor obey'd.
But he rusht back amid them till he reacht
The mother, who had fallen under-foot,
Trampled, but not relinquishing her hold.
Scarcely was space to stoop in, yet he stoopt
And rais'd what feebly wail'd among men's legs,
And placed it on his head, that the fresh air
Might solace it : soon it began to play,
To pat the hair of some, of some the eyes,
Unconscious that its mother's soul had fled.
The dust rose lower, for the sultry day
Was closing, and above shone Hesperus
Alone. On mossy banks within the brake
The men threw down their weapons snatcht in
haste,
Impenetrable woods received their flight,
And shelter'd and conceal'd them from pursuit.
There many years they dwelt ; nor only there,
But also in the plain and in the towns
Fought they, and overthrew the wealthier race,
And drove their cattle off and reapt their grain.
Drimacos, strong injustice, strong in arms,
Prompt, vigilant, was everywhere obey'd.
He proffer'd the proud Chiots, half-subdued,
Repression of invaders, in return
For their repression of invaders too,
And corn and wine and oil enough for all,
And horned victims to avenger Zeus.
But plenteousness and sloth relaxt his hold
Upon a few, men yearning to partake
The vices of a city : murmurs rose
And reacht the ear of Drimacos, and reacht
The wealthy towns and their impatient lords.
Rewards were offered for the leader's head,
And askt perhaps ere offered. When he found
Ingratitude so nigh and so alert,
He listened calmly to the chiefs around,
His firm defenders ; then replied :
" My friends !
Already in the days of youth ye watcht
Over the common-weal, but now your eyes
And mine too want repose. Fear not for me,
But guard yourselves. The Gods who placed me
here
Call me away, not you."
They heard, and went,
Sorrowing. Then called he unto him the youth
Eiarinos, who two whole years had fought
Beside him, and fought well.
" Eiarinos !
I may have saved thy life ('tis said I did),
In infancy : it now behoves me, boy,
To give thee substance such as parents give.
Alas ! 'tis wanting : nought is in the house
Save arms, as thou well knowest ; but those men
Who left me now, had talkt with thee before,
And there are marks along thy cheek which tears
Leave upon maidens' cheeks, not upon men's.
Eiarinos spake not, but threw his arms
Around his guardian's neck and shook with grief.
" Thou shalt not be quite destitute, my son ! "
Said he, " Thou knowest what reward awaits
Him who shall bring my head within the town.
HELLENICS.
475
Here ! strike ! let never traitor grasp the gold."
Forward he held the hilt and lowered his brow.
" Bequeathest thou to parricidal hand,
0 father ! that accursed gold ] " cried he,
And ran against the portal, blind with tears.
But the calm man now caught his arm, and said,
" Delay may bring on both what comes for one.
Inevitable is my death : at least
Promise me this one thing, Eiarinos !
And I release thee : swear that, when I die,
Thou wilt, against all adversaries, bear
My head to those who seek it, pledge of peace."
Calmer, but sobbing deep, the youth replied,
" When Zeus the liberator shall appoint
The pastor of the people to depart,
His will be done ! if such be his and thine."
He lowered his eyes in reverence to the earth ;
And Drimacos then smote into his breast
The unaccepted sword. The pious youth
Fell overpowered with anguish, nor arose
Until the elders, who had gone, return'd.
They comforted the orphan, and implored
He would perform the duty thus enjoined.
Nor Muse, nor Memory her mother, knows
The sequel : but upon the highest peak
Of Chios is an altar of square stone
Koughened by time, and some believe they trace
In ancient letters, cubit-long, the words
Drimacos and Eiarinos and Zeus.
III. THERON AND ZOE.
Zoe. Changed 1 very true, 0 Theron, I am
changed.
Theron. It would at least have been as merciful
To hold a moment back from me the briar
You let recoil thus sharply on my breast.
Not long ago, not very long, you own'd
With maiden blushes, which became your brow
Better than corn-flower, or that periwinkle
Trained round it by a very careful hand,
A long while trimming it (no doubt) and proud
Of making its blue blossom laugh at me.
Zoe. I could laugh too. What did I own 1 It
seems
(It was so little) you have quite forgot.
Theron. That, since we sate together day by day,
And walkt together, sang together, none
Of earliest, gentlest, fondest, maiden friends
Loved you as formerly. If one remained
Dearer to you than any of the rest,
You could not wish her greater happiness . .
Zoe. Than what]
Theron. I think you never could have said it . .
I must have dreamt it . .
Zoe. Tell me then your dream.
Theron. I thought you said . . nay, I will swear
you said . .
More than one heard it . . that you could not wish
The nearest to your heart more perfect joy
Than Theron's love.
Zoe. Did II
Theron. The Gods in heaven
Are witnesses, no less than woodland Gods,
That you did say it. 0 how changed ! no word,
No look, for Theron now !
Zoe. Girls often say
More than they mean : men always do.
Theron. By Pan !
Who punishes with restless nights the false,
Hurling the sleeper down the precipice
Into the roaring gulph, or letting loose
Hounds, wolves, and tigers after him, his legs
Meanwhile tied not quite close, but just apart,
In withy bands . . by him I swear, my tongue,
Zoe ! can never utter half my love.
Retract not one fond word.
Zoe. I must retract
The whole of those.
Theron. And leave me most unblest !
Zoe. I know not.
Theron. Heed not, rather say. Farewell.
Zoe. Farewell. I will not call you back again.
Go, Theron ! hatred soon will sear your wound.
Theron. Falsehood I hate : I can not hate the
false.
Zoe. Never 1 Then scorn her.
Theron. I can scorn myself,
And will ; for others are preferr'd to me ;
The untried to the tried.
Zoe. You said farewell.
Theron. Again I say it.
Zoe. Now I can believe
That you, repeating it, indeed are gone.
Yet seem you standing where you stood before.
Hath Pan done this 1 Pan, who doth such strange
things.
Theron. Laugh me to scorn : derision I deserve :
But let that smile . . 0 let it be less sweet !
Sorrowful let me part, but not insane.
Zoe. I know some words that charm insanity
Before it can take hold.
Theron. Speak them; for now
Are they most wanted.
Zoe. I did say, 'tis true,
If on this solid earth friend dear enough
Remain'd to me, that Theron is the youth
I would desire to bless her.
Theron. To avoid
My importunity ; to hear no more
The broken words that spoilt our mutual song,
The sobs that choakt my flute, the humidity
(Not from the lip) that gurgled on the stops.
Zoe. I would avoid them all ; they troubled me.
Theron. Now then, farewell.
Zoe. I will do all the harm
I can to any girl who hopes to love you ;
Nor shall you have her.
Theron. Vain and idle threat !
Zoe. So, Theron ! you would love then once
again]
Theron. Never; were love as possible and
easy . . .
Zoe. As what ]
Theron. As death.
Zoe. 0 Theron ! once indeed*
I said the words which then so flatter'd you,
And now so pain you. Long before my friends
476
HELLENICS.
Left me through envy of your fondness for me,
No, not the dearest of them could I bear
To see beloved by you. False words I spake,
Not knowing then how false they were.
Theron. Speak now
One that shall drown them all.
Zoe. My voice is gone.
Why did you kiss me, if you wisht to hear it '<
IV. DAM.STAS AND IDA.
Damsetas is a boy as rude
As ever broke maid's solitude.
He watcht the little Ida going
Where the wood-raspberries were growing,
And, under a pretence of fear
Lest they might scratch her arms, drew near,
And, plucking up a stiff grey bent,
The fruit (scarce touching it,) he sent
Into both hands : the form they took
Of a boat's keel upon a brook ;
So not a raspberry fell down
To splash her foot or stain her gown.
When it was over, for his pains
She let his lips do off the stains
That were upon two fingers ; he
At first kist two, and then kist three,
And, to be certain every stain
Had vanisht, kist them o'er again.
At last the boy, quite shameless, said
"See ! I have taken out the red !
Now where there 's redder richer fruit
Pray, my sweet Ida, let me do V
" Audacious creature ! " she cried out,
" What in the world are you about ] "
He had not taken off the red
All over ; on both cheeks 'twas spread ;
And the two lips that should be white
With fear, if not with fear, with spite
At such ill usage, never show'd
More comely, or more deeply glow'd.
Damsotas fancied he could move
The girl to listen to his love :
Not he indeed.
DamcKtas. For pity's sake !
Ida. Go ; never more come nigh this brake.
Damcetas. Must I, why must I, press in vain !
Ida. Because I hate you.
Damcetas. Think again
Think better of it, cruel maid !
Ida. Well then . . because I am afraid.
Damcetas. Look round us : nobody is near.
Ida. All the more reason for my fear.
Damcetas. Hatred is overcome by you,
And Fear can be no match for two.
V. LYSANDEK, ALCANOR, PHANOE.
Lysander. Art thou grown hoarse by sitting in
the sun
Of early spring, when winds come down adrift
To punish them they find asleep at noon ?
Alcanor. Hoarse I am not, but I am tired of
song,
Therefore do I retire, where, without pipe,
The goat-foot God brought all the nymphs to sit
Half-way up Maenalos. If she I love
Will follow me, I swear to thee by him,
Bitter to those who slight him or forswear,
Thou shalt hear something sweet, do thou but stay.
Lysander. Lysander well can stay, do thou but
sing.
Alcanw. But not unless a Nymph or Nymph-
like maid
Will listen.
Lysander. Here comes Phanoe. Thou art pale.
Sing : Phanoe ! bid him sing.
Phanoe. By Artemis !
I bade him never more repeat my name,
And if he disobeys me . . .
Lysander. Hush ! 'twere ill
To call down vengeance upon those who love :
And he hath sworn by Pan that he will sing
If thou wilt follow him up Msenalos.
Pliande. He may snatch off my slipper while I
kneel
To Pan, upon the stone so worn aslant
That it is difficult to kneel upon
Without my leaving half a slipper loose.
Little cares he for Pan : he scarcely fears
That other, powerfuller and terribler,
To whom more crowns are offered than to Zeus,
Or any God beside, and oftener changed.
In spring we garland him with pointed flowers,
Anemone and crocus and jonquil,
And tender hyacinth in clustering curls ;
Then with sweet-breathing mountain strawberry ;
Then pear and apple blossom, promising
(If he is good) to bring the fruit full-ripe,
Hanging it round about his brow, his nose,
Down even to his lips. When autumn comes,
His russet vine-wreath crackles under grapes :
Some trim his neck with barley, wheat, and oat :
Some twine his naked waist with them : and last
His reverend head is seen and worshipt through
Stiff narrow olive-leaves, that last till spring.
Say, ought I not to fear so wild a boy,
Who fears not even him ! but once has tried
By force to make me pat him, after prayers ]
How fierce then lookt the God ! and from above
How the club reddened, as athirst for blood !
Yet, fearing and suspecting the audacious,
Up Maenalos I must, for there my herd
Is browsing on the thorn and citisus
At random.
Lysander. He hath not endured thy frown,
But hurries off.
Phanoe. And let him.
Lysander. Captious Pan
On one or other may look evil-eyed.
Phanoe. I mind my Goddess, let him mind his
God.
. . Away she went, and as she went she sang.
Brief cries were heard ere long, faint and more
faint.
Pan ! was it thou ) was it thou, Artemis 1
Frolicsome kids and hard goats glassy-eyed
HELLENICS.
477
Alone could tell the story, had they speech.
The maiden came not back : but, after rites
Due to the goat-foot God, the pious youth
Piped shrilly forth and shook off all his woe.
VI. HYPERBION.
Hyperbion was among the chosen few
Of Phoebus ; and men honoured him awhile,
Honouring in him the God. But others sang
As loudly ; and the boys as loudly cheer'd.
Hyperbion (more than bard should be) was wroth,
And thus he spake to Phoebus : " Hearest thou,
0 Phoebus ! the rude rabble from the field,
Who swear that they have known thee ever since
Thou feddest for Admetus his white bull ] "
" I hear them," said the God. " Seize thou the
first,
And haul him up above the heads of men,
And thou shalt 'hear them shout for thee as
pleas'd."
Headstrong and proud Hyperbion was : the crown
Of laurel on it badly cool'd his brow :
So, when he heard them singing at his gate,
While some with flints cut there the rival's name,
Rushing he seized the songster at their head :
The songster kickt and struggled hard : in vain.
Hyperbion claspt him round with arm robust,
And with the left a hempen rope uncoil'd,
Whereon already was a noose : it held
The calf until its mother's teat was drawn
At morn and eve ; and both were now afield.
With all his strength he pull'd the wretch along,
And haul'd him up a pine-tree, where he died.
But one night, not long after, in his sleep
He saw the songster : then did he beseech
Apollo to enlighten him, if perchance
In what he did he had done aught amiss.
" Thou hast done well, Hyperbion ! " said the God,
"As I did also to one Marsyas
Some years ere thou wert born : but better 'twere
If thou hadst understood my words aright,
For those around may harm thee, and assign
As reason, that thou wentest past the law.
My meaning was, that thou shouldst hold him up
In the high places of thy mind, and show
Thyself the greater by enduring him."
Downcast Hyperbion stood : but Phoebus said
" Be of good cheer, Hyperbion ! if the rope
Is not so frayed but it may hold thy calf,
The greatest harm is, that, by hauling him,
Thou hast chafed, sorely, sorely, that old pine ;
And pine-trea bark will never close again."
VII. ICARIOS AND ERIGONE.
Improvident were once the Attic youths,
As (if we may believe the credulous
And testy) various youths have been elsewhere.
But truly 'such was their improvidence,
Ere Pallas in compassion was their guide,
They never stowed away the fruits of earth
For winter use ; nor knew they how to press
Olive or grape : yet hospitality
Sate at the hearth, and there was mirth and song.
Wealthy and generous in the Attic land,
Icarios ! wert thou ; and Erigone,
Thy daughter, gave with hearty glee the milk,
Buzzing in froth beneath unsteady goat,
To many who stopt near her ; some for thirst,
And some to see upon its back that hand
So white and small and taper, and await
Until she should arise and show her face.
The father wisht her not to leave his house,
Nor she to leave her father ; yet there sued
From all the country round both brave and rich.
Some, nor the wealthier of her wooers, drove
Full fifty slant-brow'd kingly-hearted swine,
Reluctant ever to be led aright,
Race autocratical, autochthon race,
Lords of the woods, fed by the tree of Jove.
Some had three ploughs ; some had eight oxen ;
some
Had vines, on oak, on maple, and on elm,
In long and strait and gleamy avenues,
Which would have tired you had you reacht the
end
Without the unshapen steps that led beyond
Up the steep hill to where they leaned on poles.
Yet kind the father was, and kind the maid.
And now when winter blew the chaff about,
And hens pursued the grain into the house,
Quarrelsome and indignant at repulse,
And rushing back again with ruffled neck,
They and their brood; and kids blinkt at the
brand,
And bee-nosed oxen, with damp nostrils lowered
Against the threshold, stampt the dogs away;
Icarios, viewing these with thoughtful mind,
Said to Erigone, " Not scantily
The Gods have given us these birds and these
Short-bleating kids, and these loose-hided steers.
The Gods have given : to them will we devote
A portion of their benefits, and bid
The youths who love and honour us partake :
So shall their hearts, and so shall ours,' rejoice."
The youths were bidden to the feast : the flesh
Of kid and crested bird was plentiful :
The steam hung on the rafters, where were nail'd
Bushes of savory herbs, and figs and dates ;
And yellow-pointed pears sent down long stalks
Through nets wide-mesht, work of Erigone
When night was long and lamp yet unsupplied.
Choice grapes Icarios had ; and these, alone
Of all men in the country, he preserved
For festive days ; nor better day than this
To bring them from beneath his reed-thatcht
roof.
He mounted the twelve stairs with hearty pride,
And soon was heard he, breathing hard : he now
Descended, holding in both arms a cask,
Fictile, capacious, bulging : cork-tree bark
Secured the treasure ; wax above the mouth,
And pitch above the wax. The pitch he brake,
The wax he scraped away, and laid them by.
Wrenching up carefully the cork-tree bark,
A hum was heard. "What! are there bees
within 1 "
478
HELLENICS.
Euphprbas cried. "They came then with the
grapes,"
Replied the elder, and pour'd out clear juice
Fragrant as flowers, and wrinkled husks anon.
" The ghosts of grapes ! " cried Phanor, fond of
jokes
Within the house, but ever abstinent
Of such as that, in woodland and alone,
Where any sylvan God might overhear.
No few were saddened at the ill-omen'd word,
But sniffing the sweet odour, bent their heads,
Tasted, sipt, drank, ingurgitated : fear
Flew from them all, joy rusht to every breast,
Friendship grew warmer, hands were join'd, vows
sworn.
From cups of every size, from cups two-ear'd,
From ivy-twisted and from smooth alike,
They dash the water ; they pour in the wine ;
(For wine it was,) until that hour unseen.
They emptied the whole cask ; and they alone ;
For both the father and the daughter sate
Enjoying their delight. But when they saw
Flusht faces, and when angry words arose
As one more fondly glanced against the cheek
Of the fair maiden on her seat apart,
And she lookt down, or lookt another way
Where other eyes caught hers, and did the like,
Sadly the sire, the daughter fearfully,
Upon each other fixt wide-open eyes.
This did the men remark, and, bearing signs
Different, as were their tempers, of the wine,
But feeling each the floor reel under him,
Each raging, with more thirst at every draught,
Acastor first (sidelong his step) arose,
Then Phanor, then Antyllos :
"Zeus above
Confound thee, cursed wretch ! " aloud they cried,
" Is this thy hospitality ] must all
Who loved thy daughter perish at a blow 1
Not at a blow, but like the flies and wasps."
Madness had seiz'd them all. Erigone
Ran out for help : what help 1 Before her sprang
Moera, and howl'd and barkt, and then return'd
Presaging. They had dragg'd the old man out
And murdered him. Again flew Moera forth,
Faithful, compassionate, and seized her vest,
And drew her where the body lay, unclosed
The eyes, and rais'd toward the stars of heaven.
Raise thine, for thou hast heard enough, raise
thine
And view Bootes bright among those stars,
Brighter the Virgin : Moera too shines there.
But where were the Eumenides ? Repress
Thy anger. If the clear calm stars above
Appease it not, and blood must flow for blood,
Listen, and hear the sequel of the tale.
Wide-seeing Zeus lookt down ; as mortals knew
By the woods bending under his dark eye,
And huge towers shuddering on the mountain tops
And stillness in the valley, in the wold,
And over the deep waters all round earth.
He lifted up his arm, but struck them not
In their abasement : by each other's blow
They fell ; some suddenly ; but more beneath
The desperate gasp of long-enduring wounds.
VIII. THE HAMADRYAD.
lhaicos was born amid the hills wherefrom
Gnidos the light of Caria is discern'd,
And small are the white-crested that play near,
And smaller onward are the purple waves.
Thence festal choirs were visible, all crown'd
With rose and myrtle if they were inborn ;
f from Pandion sprang they, on the coast
Where stern Athene raised her citadel,
Then olive was intwined with violets
Cluster'd in bosses, regular and large.
For various men wore various coronals ;
But one was their devotion : 'twas to her
Whose laws all follow, her whose smile withdraws
The sword from Ares, thunderbolt from Zeus,
And whom in his chill caves the mutable
Of mind, Poseidon, the sea-king, reveres,
And whom his brother, stubborn Dis, hath pray'd
To turn in pity the averted cheek
Of her he bore away, with promises,
Nay, with loud oath before dread Styx itself,
To give her daily more and sweeter flowers
Than he made drop from her on Enna's dell.
Rhaicos was looking from his father's door
At the long trains that hastened to the town
From all the valleys, like bright rivulets
Gurgling with gladness, wave outrunning wave,
And thought it hard he might not also go
And offer up one prayer, and press one hand,
He knew not whose. The father call'd him in,
And said, " Son Rhaicos ! those are idle games ;
Long enough I have lived to find them so."
And ere he ended, sigh'd ; as old men do
Always, to think how idle such games are.
" I have not yet," thought Rhaicos in his heart,
And wanted proof.
" Suppose thou go and help
Echion at the hill, to bark yon oak
And lop its branches off, before we delve
About the trunk and ply the root with axe :
This we may do in winter."
Rhaicos went ;
For thence he could see farther, and see more
Of those who hurried to the city-gate.
Echion he found there, with naked arm
Swart-hair'd, strong sinew'd, and his eyes intent
Upon the place where first the axe should fall :
He held it upright. "There are bees about,
Or wasps, or hornets," said the cautious eld,
" Look sharp, 0 son of Thallinos !" The youth
Inclined his ear, afar, and warily,
And cavern'd in his hand. He heard a buzz
At first, and then the sound grew soft and clear,
And then divided into what seem'd tune,
And there were words upon it, plaintive words.
He turn'd, and said, " Echion ! do not strike
That tree : it must be hollow ; for some God
Speaks from within. Come thyself near." Again
Both turn'd toward it : and behold ! there sat
Upon the moss below, with her two palms
HELLENICS.
479
Pressing it, on each side, a maid in form.
Downcast were her long eyelashes, and pale
Her cheek, but never mountain-ash display'd
Berries of colour like her lip so pure,
Nor were the anemones about her hair
Soft, smooth, and wavering like the face beneath.
" What dost thou here?" Echion, half-afraid,
Half-angry, cried. She lifted up her eyes,
But nothing spake she. Ehaicos drew one step
Backward, for fear came likewise over him,
But not such fear : he panted, gaspt, drew in
His breath, and would have turn'd it into words,
But could not into one.
" 0 send away
That sad old man!" said she. The old man
went
Without a warning from his master's son,
Glad to escape, for sorely he now fear'd,
And the axe shone behind him in their eyes.
Hamadryad. And wouldst thou too shed the
most innocent
Of blood 1 no vow demands it ; no God wills
The oak to bleed.
Rhaicos. Who art thou ] whence 1 why
here?
And whither wouldst thou go ] Among the robed
In white or saffron, or the hue that most
Eesembles dawn or the clear sky, is none
Array'd as thou art. What so beautiful
As that gray robe which clings about thee close,
Like moss to stones adhering, leaves to trees,
Yet lets thy bosom rise and fall in turn,
As, toucht by zephyrs, fall and rise the boughs
Of graceful platan by the river-side.
Hamadryad. Lovest thou well thy father's
house ]
Ehaicos. Indeed
I love it, well I love it, yet would leave
For thine, where'er it be, my father's house,
With all the marks upon the door, that show
My growth at every birth-day since the third,
And all the charms, o'erpowering evil eyes,
My mother nail'd for me against my bed,
And the Cydonian bow (which thou shalt see) ,
Won in my race last spring from Eutychos.
Hamadryad. Bethink thee what it is to leave
a home
Thou never yet hast left, one night, one day.
Rhaicos. No, 'tis not hard to leave it ; 'tis not
hard
To leave, 0 maiden, that paternal home,
If there be one on earth whom we may love
First, last, for ever ; one who says that she
Will love for ever too. To say which word,
Only to say it, surely is enough . .
It shows such kindness . . if 'twere possible
We at the moment think she would indeed.
Hamadryad. Who taught thee all this folly at
thy age 1
Rhaicos. I have seen lovers and have learnt to
love.
Hamadryad. But wilt thou spare the tree ]
Rhaicos. My father wants
The bark ; the tree may hold its place awhile.
Hamadryad. Awhile] thy father numbers
then my days ]
Rhaicos. Are there no others where the moss
beneath
Is quite as tufty 1 Who would send thee forth
Or ask thee why thou tarriest ] Is thy flock
Anywhere near 1
Hamadryad. I have no flock : I kill
Nothing that breathes, that stirs, that feels the
air,
The sun, the dew. Why should the beautiful
(And thou art beautiful) disturb the source
Whence springs all beauty] Hast thou never
heard
Of Hamadryads ]
Rhaicos. Heard of them I have :
Tell me some tale about them. May I sit
Beside thy feet] Art thou not tired ] The herbs
Are very soft ; I will not come too nigh ;
Do but sit there, nor tremble so, nor doubt.
Stay, stay an instant : let me first explore
If any acorn of last year be left
Within it ; thy thin robe too ill protects
Thy dainty limbs against the harm one small
Acorn may do. Here's none. Another day
Trust me : till then let me sit opposite.
Hamadryad. I seat me; be thou seated, and
content.
Rhaicos. 0 sight for gods ! Ye men below !
adore
The Aphrodite. Is she there below ]
Or sits she here before me ] as she sate
Before the shepherd on those highths that shade
The Hellespont, and brought his kindred woe.
Hamadryad. Reverence the higher Powers ;
nor deem amiss
Of her who pleads to thee, and would repay . .
Ask not how much . . but very much. Rise not :
No, Rhaicos, no ! Without the nuptial vow
Love is unholy. Swear to me that none
Of mortal maids shall ever taste thy kiss,
Then take thou mine ; then take it, not before.
Rhaicos. Hearken, all gods above! 0 Aphrodite!
0 Here ! let my vow be ratified !
But wilt thou come into my father's house ]
Hamadryad. Nay : and of mine I can not give
thee part.
Rhaicos. Where is it ]
Hamadryad. In this oak.
Rhaicos. Ay ; now begins
The tale of Hamadryad : tell it through.
Hamadryad. Pray of thy father never to cut
down
My tree ; and promise him, as well thou mayst,
That every year he shall receive from me
More honey than will buy him nine fat sheep,
More wax than he will burn to all the gods.
Why fallest thou upon thy face ] Some thorn
May scratch it, rash young man ! Rise up ; for
shame !
Rhaicos. For shame I can not rise. 0 pity
me !
1 dare not sue for love . . but do not hate !
Let me once more behold thee . . not once more,
480
HELLENICS.
But many days : let me love on . . unloved !
I aimed too high : on my own head the bolt
Falls back, and pierces to the very brain.
Hamadryad. Go . . rather go, than make me
say I love.
RJudcos. If happiness is immortality,
(And whence enjoy it else the gods above ?)
I am immortal too : my vow is heard :
Hark ! on the left . . Nay, turn not from me now,
I claim my kiss.
Hamadryad. Do men take first, then claim?
Do thus the seasons run their course with them ?
. . Her lips were seal'd ; her head sank on his
breast.
'Tis said that laughs were heard within the wood :
But who should hear them 1 . . and whose laughs ?
and why ?
Savoury was the smell and long past noon,
Thallinos ! in thy house ; for marjoram,
Basil and mint, and thyme and rosemary,
Were sprinkled on the kid's well roasted length,
Awaiting Ehaicos. Home he came at last,
Not hungry, but pretending hunger keen,
With head and eyes just o'er the maple plate.
" Thou seest but badly, coming from the sun,
Boy Khaicos !" said the father. " That oak's bark
Must have been tough, with little sap between ;
It ought to run ; but it and I are old."
Rhaicos, although each morsel of the bread
Increast by chewing, and the meat grew cold
And tasteless to his palate, took a draught
Of gold-bright wine, which, thirsty as he was,
He thought not of until his father fill'd
The cup, averring water was amiss,
But wine had been at all times pour'd on kid, . .
It was religion.
He thus fortified,
Said, not quite boldly, and not quite abasht,
" Father, that oak is Jove's own tree : that oak
Year after year will bring thee wealth from wax
And honey. There is one who fears the gods
And the gods love . . that one "
(He blusht, nor said
What one)
" Has promist this, and may do more.
Thou hast not many moons to wait until
The bees have done their best: if then there
come
Nor wax nor honey, let the tree be hewn."
" Zeus hath bestow'd on thee a prudent mind,"
Said the glad sire : " but look thou often there,
And gather all the honey thou canst find
In every crevice, over and above
What has been promist; would they reckon that?"
Rhaicos went daily ; but the nymph as oft •
Invisible. To play at love, she knew,
Stopping its breathings when it breathes most s6ft,
Is sweeter than to play on any pipe.
She play'd on his : she fed upon his sighs :
They pleased her when they gently waved her hair,
Cooling the pulses of her purple veins,
And when her absence brought them out they
pleased.
Even among the fondest of them all,
What mortal or immortal maid is more
Content with giving happiness than pain 1
One day he was returning from the wood
Despondently. She pitied him, and said
"Come back!" and twined her fingers in the
hem
Above his shoulder. Then she led his steps
To a cool rill that ran o'er level sand
Through lentisk and through oleander, there
Bathed she his feet, lifting them on her lap
When bathed, and drying them in both her hands.
He dared complain; for those who most are
loved
Most dare it ; but not harsh was his complaint.
" 0 thou inconstant!" said he, " if stern law
Bind thee, or will, stronger than sternest law,
0, let me know henceforward when to hope
The fruit of love that grows for me but here."
He spake; and pluckt it from its pliant stem.
" Impatient Rhaicos ! why thus intercept
The answer I would give ? There is a bee
Whom I have fed, a bee who knows my thoughts
And executes my wishes : I will send
That messenger. If ever thou art false,
Drawn by another, own it not, but drive
My bee away : then shall I know my fate,
And, . . for thou must be wretched, . . weep at thine.
But often as my heart persuades to lay
Its cares on thine and throb itself to rest,
Expect her with thee, whether it be morn
Or eve, at any time when woods are safe."
Day after day the Hours beheld them blest,
And season after season : years had past,
Blest were they still. He who asserts that Love
Ever is sated of sweet things, the same
Sweet things he fretted for in earlier days,
Never, by Zeus ! loved he a Hamadryad.
The nights had now grown longer, and perhaps
The Hamadryads find them lone and dull
Among their woods ; one did, alas ! She called
Her faithful bee : 'twas when all bees should sleep,
And all did sleep but hers. She was sent forth
To bring that light which never wintry blast
Blows out, nor rain nor snow extinguishes,
The light that shines from loving eyes upon
Eyes that love back, till they can see no more.
Rhaicos was sitting at his father's hearth :
Between them stood the table, not o'erspread
With fruits which autumn now profusely bore,
Nor anise cakes, nor odorous wine ; but there
The draft-board was expanded ; at which game
Triumphant sat old Thallinos ; the son
Was puzzled, vext, discomfited, distraught.
A buzz was at his ear : up went his hand,
And it was heard no longer. The poor bee
Return'd (but not until the morn shone bright)
And found the Hamadryad with her head
Upon her aching wrist, and showed one wing
Half-broken off, the other's meshes marr'd,
And there were bruises which no eye could see
Saving a Hamadryad's.
HELLENICS.
481
At this sight
Down fell the languid brow, both hands fell down,
A shriek was carried to the ancient hall
Of Thallinos : he heard it not ; his son
Heard it, and ran forthwith into the wood.
No bark was on the tree, no leaf was green,
The trunk was riven through. From that day forth
Nor word nor whisper sooth'd his ear, nor sound
Even of insect wing : but loud laments
The woodmen and the shepherds one long year
Heard day and night; for Rhaicos would not quit
The solitary place, but moan'd and died.
Hence milk and honey wonder not, 0 guest,
To find set duly on the hollow stone.
IX. ALCIPHRON AND LEUCIPPE.
An ancient chestnut's blossoms threw
Their heavy odour over two :
Leucippe, it is said, was one,
The other then was Alciphron.
" Come, come ! why should we stand beneath
This hollow tree's unwholesome breath,"
Said Alciphron, " here 's not a blade
Of grass or moss, and scanty shade.
Come ; it is just the hour to rove
In the lone dingle shepherds love,
There, straight and tall, the hazel twig
Divides the crooked rock-held fig,
O'er the blue pebbles where the rill
In winter runs, and may run still.
Come then, while fresh and calm the air,
And while the shepherds are not there. "
Leucippe. But I would rather go when they
Sit round about and sing and play.
Then why so hurry me 1 for you
Like play and song and shepherds too.
Alciphron. I like the shepherds very well,
And song and play, as you can tell.
But there is play I sadly fear,
And song I would not have you hear.
Leucippe. What can it be 1 what can it be 1
Alciphron. To you may none of them repeat
The play that you have played with me,
The song that made your bosom beat.
Leucippe. Don't keep your arm about my waist.
Alciphron. Might not you stumble1?
Leucippe. Well then, do.
But why are we in all this haste 1
Alciphron. To sing.
Leucippe. Alas ! and not play too ]
X. ENALLOS AND CYMODAMEIA.
A vision came o'er three young men at once,
A vision of Apollo : each had heard
The same command ; each followed it ; all three
Assembled on one day before the God
In Lycia, where he gave his oracle.
Bright shone the morning; and the birds that
build
Their nests beneath the column-heads of fanes
And eaves of humbler habitations, dropt
From under them and wheeled athwart the sky,
When, silently and reverently, the youths
Marcht side by side up the long steps that led
Toward the awful God who dwelt within.
Of those three youths fame hath held fast the
name
Of one alone ; nor would that name survive
Unless Love had sustain'd it, and blown off
With his impatient breath the mists of time.
" Ye come/' the God said mildly, " of one will
To people what is desert in the isle
Of Lemnos. But strong men possess its shores ;
Nor shall you execute the brave emprize
Unless, on the third day from going forth,
To him who rules the waters ye devote
A virgin, cast into the sea alive."
They heard, and lookt in one another's face,
And then bent piously before the shrine
With prayer and praises and thanksgiving hymn,
And, after a short silence, went away,
Taking each other's hand and swearing truth,
Then to the ship in which they came, return'd.
Two of the youths were joyous, one was sad ;
Sad was Enallos ; yet those two by none
Were loved ; Enallos had already won
Cymodameia, and the torch was near.
By night, by day, in company, alone,
The image of the maiden fill'd his breast
To the heart's brim. Ah ! therefore did that heart
So sink within him.
They have sail'd ; they reach
Their home again. Sires, matrons, maidens, throng
The plashing port, to watch the gather'd sail,
And who springs first and farthest upon shore.
Enallos came the latest from the deck.
Swift ran the rumour what the God had said,
And fearful were the maidens, who before
Had urged the sailing of the youths they loved,
That they might give their hands, and have their
homes,
And nurse their children; and more thoughts
perhaps
Led up to these, and even ran before.
But they persuaded easily their wooers
To sail without them, and return again
When they had seiz'd the virgin on the way.
Cymodameia dreamt three nights, the three
Before their fresh departure, that her own
Enallos had been cast into the deep,
And she had saved him. She alone embarkt
Of all the maidens, and unseen by all,
And hid herself before the break of day
Among the cloaks and fruits piled high aboard.
But when the noon was come, and the repast
Was call'd for, there they found her. Not quite
stern,
But more than sad, Enallos lookt upon her.
Forebodings shook him : hopes rais'd her, and love
Warm'd the clear cheek while she wiped off the
spray.
Kindly were all to her and dutiful ;
And she slept soundly mid the leaves of figs
And vines, and far as far could be apart.
Now the third morn had risen, and the day
Was dark, and gusts of wind and hail and fogs
482
HELLENICS.
Perplext them : land they saw not yet, nor knew
Where land was lying. Sudden lightnings blaz'd,
Thunder-claps rattled round them. The pale
crew
Howled for the victim. " Seize her, or we sink."
0 maid of Pindus ! I would linger here
To lave my eyelids at the nearest rill,
For thou hast made me weep, as oft thou hast,
Where thou and I, apart from living men,
And two or three crags higher, sate and sang.
Ah ! must I, seeing ill my way, proceed ]
And thy voice too, Cymodameia ! thine
Comes back upon me, helpless as thyself
In this extremity. Sad words ! sad words !
" 0 save me ! save ! Let me not die so young !
Loving you so ! Let me not cease to see you ] "
Thou claspedest the youth who would have died
To have done less than save thee. Thus he
prayed.
" 0 God ! who givest light to all the world,
Take not from me what makes that light most
blessed !
Grant me, if 'tis forbidden me to save
This hapless helpless sea-devoted maid,
To share with her (and bring no curses up
From outraged Neptune) her appointed fate ! "
They wrung her from his knee ; they hurl'd her
down
(Clinging in vain at the hard slippery pitch)
Into the whitening wave. But her long hair
Scarcely had risen up again, before
Another plunge was heard, another form
Clove the straight line of bubbling foam, direct
As ringdove after ringdove. Groans from all
Burst, for the roaring sea ingulpht them both.
Onward the vessel flew ; the skies again
Shone bright, and thunder roll'd along, not wroth,
But gently murmuring to the white-wing'd sails.
Lemnos at close of evening was in sight.
The shore was won ; the fields markt out ; and
roofs
Collected the dun wings that seek house-fare ;
And presently the ruddy-bosom'd guest
Of winter, knew the doors : then infant cries
Were heard within ; and lastly, tottering steps
Pattered along the image-stationed hall.
Ay, three full years had come and gone again,
And often, when the flame on windy nights
Suddenly flicker'd from the mountain-ash
Piled high, men pusht almost from under them
The bench on which they talkt about the dead.
Meanwhile beneficent Apollo saw
With his bright eyes into the sea's calm depth,
And there he saw Enallos, there he saw
Cymodameia. Gravely-gladsome light
Environed them with its eternal green:
And many nymphs sate round : one blew aloud
The spiral shell ; one drew bright chords across
Shell more expansive ; tenderly a third
With cowering lip hung o'er the flute, and stopt
At will its dulcet sob, or waked to joy ;
A fourth took up the lyre and pincht the strings,
Invisible by trembling : many rais'd
Clear voices. Thus they spent their happy hours.
I know them all ; but all with eyes downcast,
Conscious of loving, have entreated me
[ would not utter now their names above.
Behold, among these natives of the sea
There stands but one young man : how fair! how
fond!
Ah ! were he fond to them ! It may not be !
Yet did they tend him morn and eve ; by night
They also watcht his slumbers : then they heard
His sighs, nor his alone ; for there were two
To whom the watch was hateful. In despair
Upward he rais'd his arms, and thus he prayed,
" 0 Phoebus ! on the higher world alone
Showerest thou all thy blessings ] Great indeed
Hath been thy favour to me, great to her ;
But she pines inly, and calls beautiful
More than herself the Nymphs she sees around,
And asks me 'Are they not more beautiful? '
Be all more beautiful, be all more blest,
But not with me ! Release her from the sight ;
Restore her to a happier home, and dry
With thy pure beams, above, her bitter tears ! "
She saw him in the action of his prayer,
Troubled, and ran to soothe him. From the
ground,
Ere she had claspt his neck, her feet were borne.
He caught her robe ; and its white radiance rose
Rapidly, all day long, through the green sea.
Enallos loost not from that robe his grasp,
But spann'd one ancle too. The swift ascent
Had stunn'd them into slumber, sweet, serene,
Invigorating her, nor letting loose
The lover's arm below ; albeit at last
It closed those eyes intensely fixt thereon,
And still as fixt in dreaming. Both were cast
Upon an island till'd by peaceful men,
And few (no port nor road accessible)
Fruitful and green as the abode they left,
And warm with summer, warm with love and song.
'Tis said that some, whom most Apollo loves,
Have seen that island, guided by his light ;
And others have gone near it, but a fog
Rose up between them and the lofty rocks ;
Yet they relate they saw it quite as well,
And shepherd-boys and credulous hinds believe.
XI. IPHIGENEIA.
Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom
At Aulis, and when all beside the king
Had gone away, took his right-hand, and said,
" 0 father ! I am young and very happy.
I do not think the pious Calchas heard
Distinctly what the Goddess spake. Old age
Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew
My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood,
While I was resting on her knee both arms
And hitting it to make her mind my words,
And looking in her face, and she in mine,
Might not he also hear one word amiss,
Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus'?"
The father placed his cheek upon her head,
And tears dropt down it, but the king of men
Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more.
HELLENICS.
483
" 0 father ! sayst thou nothing ? Hear'st thou
not
Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour,
Listen'd to fondly, and awaken'd me
To hear my voice amid the voice of birds,
When it was inarticulate as theirs,
And the down deadened it within the nest ] "
He moved her gently from him, silent still,
And this, and this alone, brought tears from her,
Altho' she saw fate nearer : then with sighs,
"I thought to have laid down my hair before
Benignant Artemis, and not have dimm'd
Her polisht altar with my virgin blood ;
I thought to have selected the white flowers
To please the Nymphs, and to have askt of each
By name, and with no sorrowful regret,
Whether, since both my parents will'd the change,
I might at Hymen's feet bend my dipt brow ;
And (after these who mind us girls the most)
Adore our own Athena,* that she would
Eegard me mildly with her azure eyes.
But, father ! to see you no more, and see
Your love, 0 father ! go ere I am gone ! "
Gently he moved her off, and drew her back,
Bending his lofty head far over her's,
And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst.
He turn'd away ; not far, but silent still.
She now first shudder'd ; for in him, so nigh,
So long a silence seem'd the approach of death,
And like it. Once again she rais'd her voice.
" 0 father ! if the ships are now detain'd,
And all your vows move not the Gods above,
When the knife strikes me there will be one
prayer
The less to them : and purer can there be
Any, or more fervent than the daughter's prayer
For her dear father's safety and success 1 "
A groan that shook him shook not his resolve.
An aged man now enter'd, and without
One word, stept slowly on, and took the wrist
Of the pale maiden. She lookt up, and saw .
The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes.
Then turn'd she where her parent stood, and cried
" 0 father ! grieve no more : the ships can sail."
XII. THE DEATH OP ARTEMIDORA.
''Artemidora ! Gods invisible,
While thou art lying faint along the couch,
Have tied the sandal to thy slender feet
And stand beside thee, ready to convey
Thy weary steps where other rivers flow.
Kefreshing shades will waft thy weariness
Away, and voices like thy own come near
And nearer, and solicit an embrace."
Artemidora sigh'd, and would have prest
The hand now pressing hers, but was too weak.
Iris stood over her dark hair unseen
While thus Elpenor spake. He lookt into
Eyes that had given light and life erewhile
To those above them, but now dim with tears
And wakefulness. Again he spake of joy
* Pallas Athena was the patroness of Argos.
Eternal. At that word, that sad word, joy,
Faithful and fond her bosom heav'd once more :
Her head fell back : and now a loud deep sob
Swell'd thro' the darken'd chamber; 'twas not
hers.
XIII. MENELAUS AND HELEN AT TROY.
HELEN is pursued by MENBLAUS up the steps of the
palace : an old attendant deprecates and intercepts his
vengeance.
Menelam. Out of my way ! Off ! or my sword
may smite thee,*
Heedless of venerable age. And thou,
Fugitive ! stop. Stand, traitress, on that stair . .
Thou mountest not another, by the Gods !
(She stops : he seizes her.)
Now take the death thou meritest, the death
Zeus who presides o'er hospitality,
And every other god whom thou hast left,
And every other who abandons thee
In this accursed city, sends at last.
Turn, vilest of vile slaves ! turn, paramour
Of what all other women hate, of cowards,
Turn, lest this hand wrench back thy head, and
toss
It and its odours to the dust and flames.
Helen. Welcome the death thou promisest !
Not fear
But shame, obedience, duty, make me turn.
Menelaus. Duty ! false harlot !
Helen. Name too true ! severe
Precursor to the blow that is to fall,
It should alone suflice for killing me.
Menelans. Ay, weep : be not the only one in
Troy
Who wails not on this day . . its last . . the day
Thou and thy crimes darken with dead on dead.
Helen. Spare ! spare ! 6 let the last that falls
be me !
There are but young and old.
Menelaus. There are but guilty
Where thou art, and the sword strikes none amiss.
Hearest thou not the creeping blood buzz near
Like flies 1 or wouldst thou rather hear it hiss
Louder, against the flaming roofs thrown down
Wherewith the streets are pathless? Ay, but
vengeance
Springs over all; and Nemesis and Ate
Drove back the flying ashes with both hands.
I never saw thee weep till now : and now
There is no pity in thy tears. The tiger
Leaves not her young athirst for the first milk,
As thou didst. Thine could scarce have claspt
thy knee
If she had felt thee leave her.
Helen. 0 my child !
My only one ! Thou livest : 'tis enough :
Hate me, abhor me, curse me . . these are duties . .
Call me but Mother in the shades of death !
* The reader must be reminded that this is no transla-
tion from a French tragedy : such really and truly were
the manners of the Greeks in the time of the Trojan war :
they respected age, but disregarded sex.
484
HELLENICS.
She now is twelve years old, when the bud swells
And the first colours of uncertain life
Begin to tinge it.
Mendaus (aside). Can she think of home ?
Hers once, mine yet, and sweet Hermione's !
Is there one spark that cheer'd my hearth, one
left,
For thee, my last of love !
Scorn, righteous scorn
Blows it from me . . but thou mayst . . never,
never.
Thou shalt not see her even there. The slave
On earth shall scorn thee, and the damn'd below.
Helen. Delay not either fate. If death is
mercy,
Send me among the captives ; so that Zeus
May see his offspring led in chains away,
And thy hard brother, pointing with his sword
At the last wretch that crouches on the shore,
Cry, " She alone shall never sail for Greece ! "
Menelaus. Hast thou more words 1
Her voice is musical
As the young maids who sing to Artemis :
How glossy is that yellow braid my grasp
Seiz'd and let loose ! Ah ! can then years have
past
Since . . but the children of the Gods, like them,
Suffer not age.
Helen ! speak honestly,
And thus escape my vengeance . . was it force
That bore thee off?-
Helen. It was some evil God.
Menelaus. Helping that hated man 1
Helen. How justly hated !
Menelaus. By thee too ?
Helen. Hath he not made thee unhappy ]
0 do not strike.
Menelaus. Wretch !
Helen. Strike, but do not
Menelaus. Lest thou remember me against thy
will.
Helen. Lest I look up and see you wroth and
sad,
Against my will ; 0 ! how against my will
They know above, they who perhaps can pity.
Menelaus. They shall not save thee.
Helen. Then indeed they pity.
Menelaus. Prepare for death.
Helen. Not from that hand :
'twould pain you.)
Menelaus. Touch no,t my hand. Easily dost
thou drop it !
Helen. Easy are all things, do but thou com-
mand.
Menelaus. Look up then.
Helen. To the hardest proof of all
I am now bidden : bid me not look up.
Menelaus. She looks as when I led her on
behind
The torch and fife, and when the blush o'erspread
Her girlish face at tripping in the myrtle
On the first step before the wreathed gate.
Approach me. Fall not on thy knees.
Helen. The hand
That is to slay me, best may slay me thus.
I dare no longer see the light of heaven,
Nor thine . . alas ! the light of heaven to me.
Menelaus. Follow me.
She holds out both arms . . and now
Drops them again . . She comes . . Why stoppest
thou]
Helen. 0 Menelaus ! could thy heart know
mine,
As once it did . . for then did they converse,
Generous the one, the other not unworthy . .
Thou wouldst find sorrow deeper even than guilt.
Menelaus. And must I lead her by the hand
again 1
Nought shall persuade me. Never. She draws
back . .
The true alone and loving sob like her . .
Come, Helen ! [He takes her hand.
Helen. Oh ! let never Greek see this !
Hide me from Argos, from Amyclai hide me,
Hide me from all.
Menelaus. Thy anguish is too strong
For me to strive with.
Helen. Leave it all to me.
Menelaus. Peace ! peace ! The wind, I hope,
is fair for Sparta.
XIV. CHRYSAOK.
Come, I beseech ye, Muses ! who, retired
Deep in the shady glens by Helicon,
Yet know the realms of Ocean, know the laws
Of his wide empire, and throughout his court
Know every Nymph, and call them each by name ;
Who from your sacred mountain see afar
O'er earth and heaven, and hear and memorise
The crimes of men and counsels of the Gods ;
Sing of those crimes and of those counsels, sing
Of Gades sever'd from the fruitful main,
And what befell and from what mighty hand,
Chrysaor, wielder of the golden sword.
'Twas when the high Olympus shook with fear,
Lest all his temples, all his groves, be crusht
By Pelion piled on Ossa : but the sire
Of mortals and immortals waved his arm
Around, and all below was wild dismay :
Again ; 'twas agony : again ; 'twas peace.
Chrysaor still in Gades tarrying,
Hurl'd into ether, tinging, as it flew,
With sudden fire the clouds round Saturn's throne,
No pine surrender'd by retreating Pan,
Nor ash, nor poplar pale ; but swoln with pride
Stood towering from the citadel ; his spear
One hand was rested on, and one with rage
Shut hard, and firmly fixt against his side ;
His frowning visage, flusht with insolence,
Rais'd up oblique to heaven. " 0 thou," he cried,
" Whom nations kneel to, not whom nations know,
Hear me, and answer, if indeed thou canst,
The last appeal I deign thee or allow.
Tell me, and quickly, why should I adore,
Adored myself by millions ? why invoke,
Invoked with all thy attributes ? Men wrong
HELLENICS.
485
By their prostrations, prayers, and sacrifice,
Either the gods, their rulers, or themselves :
But flame and thunder fright them from the Gods ;
Themselves they can not, dare not, they are ours ;
Us, dare they, can they, us ? but triumph, Jove !
Man for one moment hath engaged his lord,
Henceforth let merchants value him, not kings.
No ! lower thy sceptre, and hear Atrobal,
And judge aright to whom men sacrifice.
' My children,' said the sage and pious priest,
' Mark there the altar ! though the fumes aspire
Twelve cubits ere a nostril they regale,
'Tis myrrh for Titans, 'tis but air for Gods.'
Time changes, Nature changes, I am changed !
Fronting the furious lustre of the sun,
I yielded to his piercing swift-shot beams
Only when quite meridian, then abased
These orbits to the ground, and there survey'd
My shadow : strange and horrid to relate !
My very shadow almost disappear'd !
Restore it, or by earth and hell I swear
WJth blood enough will I refascinate
The cursed incantation : thou restore,
And largely ; or my brethren, all combined,
Shall rouse thee from thy lethargies, and drive
Far from thy cloud-soft pillow, minion-prest,
Those leering lassitudes that follow Love."
The smile of disappointment and disdain
Sat sallow on his pausing lip half-closed ;
But, neither headlong importunity
Nor gibing threat of reed-propt insolence
Let loose the blast of vengeance : heaven shone
bright,
And proud Chrysaor spurn'd the prostrate land.
But the triumphant Thunderer, now mankind
(Criminal most.ly for enduring crimes)
Provoked his indignation, thus besought
His trident-sceptered brother, triton-borne.
" 0 Neptune ! cease henceforward to repine.
They are not cruel, no; the Destinies
Intent upon their loom, unoccupied
With aught beyond its moody murmuring sound,
Will neither see thee weep nor hear thee sigh :
And wherefore weep, 0 Neptune, wherefore sigh !
Ambition 1 'tis unworthy of a God,
Unworthy of a brother ! I am Jove,
Thou Neptune : happier in uncitied realms,
In coral hall or grotto samphire-ceil'd,
Amid the song of Nymphs and ring of shells
Thou smoothest at thy will the pliant wave
Or liftest it to heaven. I also can
Whatever best beseems me, nor for aid
Unless I loved thee, Neptune, would I call.
Though absent, thou hast heard and hast beheld
The profanation of that monstrous race,
That race of earth-born giants; one survives;
The rapid-footed Ehodan mountain-rear'd
Beheld the rest defeated ; still remain
Scatter'd throughout interminable fields,
Sandy and sultry, and each hopeless path
Choakt up with crawling briars and bristling
thorns,
The flinty trophies of their foul disgrace.
Chrysaor, wielder of the golden sword,
Still hails as brethren men of stouter heart,
But, wise confederate, shuns Phlegrasan fields.
No warrior he, yet who so fond of war,
Unfeeling, scarce ferocious ; flattery's dupe,
He fancies that the gods themselves are his ;
Impious, but most in prayer. Now re-assert
Thy friendship, raise thy trident, strike the rock,
Sever him from mankind." Then thus replied
The Nymph-surrounded monarch of the main.
" Empire bemoan I not, however shared,
Nor Fortune frail, nor stubborn Fate, accuse :
No ! mortals I bemoan ! when Avarice,
Ploughing these fruitless furrows, shall awake
The basking Demons and the dormant Crimes,
Horrible, strong, resistless, and transform
Meekness- to Madness, Patience to Despair.
What is Ambition ] what but Avarice ]
But Avarice in richer guise array'd,
Stalking erect, loud-spoken, lion-mien'd,
Her brow uncrost by care, but deeply markt,
And darting downward 'twixt her eyes hard-lasht
The wrinkle of command. Could ever I
So foul a fiend, so fondly too, caress ]
Judge me not harshly, judge me by my deeds."
Though seated then on Afric's further coast,
Yet sudden at his voice, so long unheard,
(For he had grieved, and treasured up his grief)
With short kind greeting meet from every side
The Triton herds, and warm with melody
The azure concave of their curling shells.
Swift as an arrow, as the wind, as light,
He glided through the deep, and now arrived,
Leapt from his pearly beryl-studded car.
Earth trembled : the retreating tide, black-brow'd,
Gather'd new strength, and rushing on, assail'd
The promontory's base : but when the God
Himself, resistless Neptune, struck one blow,
Rent were the rocks asunder, and the sky
Was darken'd with their fragments ere they fell.
Lygeia vocal, Zantho yellow-hair'd,
Spio with sparkling eyes, and Berde
Demure, and sweet lone, youngest-born,
Of mortal race, but grown divine by song ;
Had you seen playing round her placid neck
The sunny circles, braidless and unbound,
0 ! who had call'd them boders of a storm !
These, and the many sister Nereids,
Forgetful of their lays and of their loves,
All unsuspicious of the dread intent,
Stop suddenly their gambols, and with shrieks
Of terror plunge amid the closing wave;
Yet, just above, one moment more appear
Their darken'd tresses floating in the foam.
Thrown prostrate on the earth, the Sacrilege
Rais'd up his head astounded, and accurst
The stars, the destinies, the gods; his breast
Panted from consternation and dismay,
And pride untoward on himself o'erthrown.
From his distended nostrils issued gore
At intervals, with which his wiry locks,
Huge arms, and bulky bosom, shone beslimed :
And thrice he call'd his brethren, with a voice
48G
HELLENICS.
More dismal than the blasts from Phlegethon
Below, that urge along ten thousand ghosts
Wafted loud-wailing o'er the fiery tide.
But answer heard he none : the men of might
Who gather'd round him formerly, the men
Whom frozen at a frown, a smile revived,
Were far : enormous mountains interposed,
Nor ever had the veil-hung pine out-spread
O'er Tethys then her wandering leafless shade :
Nor could he longer under wintry stars
Suspend the watery journey, nor repose
Whole nights on Ocean's billowy restless bed ;
No longer, bulging through the tempest, rose
That bulky bosom ; nor those oarlike hands
Trusted ere mortal's keenest ken conceived
The bluest shore, threw back opposing tides.
Shrunken mid brutal hair his violent veins
Subsided, yet were hideous to behold
As dragons panting in the noontide brake.
At last, absorbing deep the breath of heaven,
And stifling all within his deadly grasp,
Struggling and tearing up the glebe to turn,
And from a throat that, as it throbb'd and rose,
Seem'd shaking ponderous links of dusky iron,
Uttering one anguish-forced indignant groan,
Fired with infernal rage, the spirit flew.
Nations of fair Hesperia ! lo o'erthrown
Your peace-embracing war-inciting king !
Ah ! thrice twelve years and longer ye endured
Without one effort to rise higher, one hope
That heaven would wing the secret shaft aright,
The abomination : hence 'twas Jove's command
That many hundred, many thousand more,
Freed from one despot, still from one unfreed,
Ye crouch unblest at Superstition's feet.
Her hath he sent among ye ; her the pest
Of- men below and curse of Gods above :
Hers are the last worst tortures they inflict
On all who bend to any king but them.
Born of Sicanus in the vast abyss
Where never light descended, she survived
Her parent ; he omnipotence defied,
But thunderstruck fell headlong from the clouds ;
She, though the radiant ether overpower'd
Her eyes, accustom'd to the gloom of night,
And quencht their lurid orbs, Religion's helm
Assuming, vibrated her Stygian torch,
Till thou, Astraea ! though behind the sire's
Broad egis, trembledst on thy heavenly throne.
We are what suns and winds and waters make us;
The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills
Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles.
But where the land is dim from tyranny,
There tiny pleasures occupy the place
.Of glories and of duties ; as the feet
Of fabled faeries when the sun goes down
Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then Justice, eall'd the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever-varying ocean : what is best
Then becomes worst ; what loveliest, most de-
formed.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die.
thou vast tablet of these awful truths,
That fillest all the space between the seas,
Spreading from Venice's deserted courts
To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole,
What lifts thee up I what shakes thee ) 'tis the
breath
3f God. Awake, ye nations ! spring to life !
Let the last work of his right hand appear
Fresh with his image, Man. Thou recreant slave
That sittest afar off and helpest not,
0 thou degenerate Albion ! with what shame
Do I survey thee, pushing forth the spunge
At thy spear's length, in mockery at the thirst
Of holy Freedom in his agony,
And prompt and keen to pierce the wounded side !
Must Italy then wholly rot away
Amid her slime, before she germinate
Into fresh vigour, into form again 1
What thunder bursts upon mine ear ! some isle
Hath surely risen from the gulphs profound,
Eager to suck the sunshine from the breast
Of beauteous Nature, and to catch the gale
From golden Hermus and Melena's brow.
A greater thing than isle, than continent,
Than earth itself, than ocean circling earth,
Hath risen there ; regenerate Man hath risen.
Generous old bard of Chios ! not that Jove
Deprived thee in thy latter days of sight
Would I complain, but that no higher theme
Than a disdainful youth, a lawless king,
A pestilence, a pyre, awoke thy song,
When on the Chian coast, one javelin's throw
From where thy tombstone, where thy cradle stood,
Twice twenty self-devoted Greeks assail'd
The naval host of Asia, at one blow
Scattered it into air ... and Greece was free . . .
And ere these glories beam'd, thy day had closed.
Let all that Elis ever saw, give way,
All that Olympian Jove e'er smiled upon :
The Marathonian columns never told
A tale more glorious, never Salamis,
Nor, faithful in the centre of the false,
Platea, nor Anthela, from whose mount
Benignant Ceres wards the blessed Laws,
And sees the Amphictyon dip his weary foot
In the warm streamlet of the strait below.*
Goddess ! altho' thy brow was never rear'd
Among the powers that guarded or assail'd
Perfidious Ilion, parricidal Thebes,
Or other walls whose war-belt e'er inclosed
Man's congregated crimes and vengeful pain,
Yet hast thou toucht the extremes of grief and
joy;
Grief upon Enna's mead and Hell's ascent,
A solitary mother ; joy beyond,
Far beyond, that thy woe, in this thy fane :
The tears were human, but the bliss divine.
* The Amphictyons met annually in the temple of Ceres
near Anthela.
HELLENICS.
487
I, in the land of strangers, and deprest
With sad and certain presage for my own,
Exult at hope's fresh dayspring, tho afar,
There where my youth was not unexercised
By chiefs in willing war and faithful song :
Shades as they were, they were not empty shades,
Whose bodies haunt our world and blear our sun,
Obstruction worse than swamp and shapeless
sands.
Peace, praise, eternal -gladness, to the souls
That, rising from the seas into the heavens,
Have ransom'd first their country with their
blood !
0 thou immortal Spartan ! at whose name
The marble table sounds beneath my palms,
Leonidas ! even thou wilt not disdain
To mingle names august as these with thine ;
Nor thou, twin-star of glory, thou whose rays
Stream'd over Corinth on the double sea,
Achaian and Saronic ; whom the sons
Of Syracuse, when Death removed thy light,
Wept more than slavery ever made them weep,
But shed (if gratitude is sweet) sweet tears . .
The hand that then pour'd ashes o'er their heads
Was loosen'd from its desperate chain by thee.
What now can press mankind into one mass,
For Tyranny to tread the more secure ?
From gold alone is drawn the guilty wire
That Adulation trills : she mocks the tone
Of Duty, Courage, Virtue, Piety,
And under her sits Hope. 0 how unlike
That graceful form in azure vest array'd,
With brow serene, and eyes on heaven alone
In patience fixt, in fondness unobscured !
What monsters coil beneath the spreading tree
Of Despotism ! what wastes extend around !
What poison floats upon the distant breeze !
But who are those that cull and deal its fruit ?
Creatures that shun the light and fear the shade,
Bloated and fierce, Sleep's mien and Famine's cry.
Rise up again, rise in thy dignity,
Dejected Man! and scare this brood away.
G E B I K.
FIRST BOOK.
I SING the fates of Gebir. He had dwelt
Among those mountain-caverns which retain
His labours yet, vast halls and flowing wells,
Nor have forgotten their old master's name
Though sever'd from his people : here, incenst
By meditating on primeval wrongs,
He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose
Whole nations; here, ten thousand of most
might
He call'd aloud ; and soon Charoba saw
His dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile. 10
What should the virgin do ? should royal knees
Bend suppliant ? or defenceless hands engage
Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms 1
For 'twas reported that nor sword sufficed,
Nor shield immense nor coat of massive mail,
But that upon their towering heads they bore
Each a huge stone, refulgent as the stars.
This told she Dalica, then cried aloud,
" If on your bosom laying down my head
I sobb'd away the sorrows of a child,
If I have always, and Heav'n knows I have,
Next to a mother's held a nurse's name,
Succour this one distress, recall those days,
Love me, tho' twere because you lov'd me then."
But whether confident in magic rites
Or toucht with sexual pride to stand implor'd,
Dalica smiled, then spake : " Away those fears.
Though stronger than the strongest of his
kind,
He falls ; on me devolve that charge ; he falls.
Rather than fly him, stoop thou to allure ;
Nay, journey to his tents. A city stood
Upon that coast, they say, by Sidad built,
Whose father Gad built Gadir ; on this ground
Perhaps he sees an ample room for war.
Persuade him to restore the walls himself
In honour of his ancestors, persuade . .
But wherefore this advice ? young, unespoused,
Charoba want persuasions ! and a queen !"
" 0 Dalica ! " the shuddering maid exclaim'd, w
" Could ,1 encounter that fierce frightful man 1
Could I speak ? no, nor sigh." " And canst thou
reign ]"
Cried Dalica ; " yield empire or comply."
Unfixt, though seeming fixt, her eyes down-
cast,
The wonted buzz and bustle of the court
From far through sculptured galleries met her ear;
Then lifting up her head, the evening sun
Pour'd a fresh splendour on her burnisht throne :
The fair Charoba, the young queen, complied.
But Gebir, when he heard of her approach,
Laid by his orbed shield ; his vizor-helm,
His buckler and his corset he laid by,
And bade that none attend him : at his side
Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course,
Shaggy, deep-chested, croucht ; the crocodile,
Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears
And push their heads within their master's
hand.
There was a brightening paleness in his face,
Such as Diana rising o'er the rocks
Shower'd on the lonely Latmian ; on his brow
Sorrow there was, yet nought was there severe. w
But when the royal damsel first he saw,
Faint, hanging on her handmaid, and her knees
Tottering, as from the motion of the car,
His eyes lookt earnest on her, and those eyes
Show'd, if they had not, that they might have,
lov'd,
For there was pity in them at that hour.
With gentle speech, and more with gentle looks,
He sooth'd her ; but lest Pity go beyond
And crpst Ambition lose her lofty aim,
Bending, he kist her garment, and retired. n
He went, nor slumber'd in the sultry noon,
When viands, couches, generous wines, persuade,
And slumber most refreshes ; nor at night,
When heavy dews are laden with disease ;
And blindness waits not there for lingering age.
Ere morning dawn'd behind him, he arrived
At those rich meadows where young Tamar fed
The royal flocks entrusted to his care.
" Now," said he to himself, " will I repose
At least this burthen on a brother's breast."
His brother stood before him : he, amazed,
Rear'd suddenly his head, and thus began.
" Is it thou, brother ! Tamar, is it thou !
Why, standing on the valley's utmost verge,
Lookest thou on that dull and dreary shore
Where beyond sight Nile blackens all the sand?
And why that sadness 1 When I past our sheep
The dew-drops were not shaken off the bar,
Therefore if one be wanting, 'tis untold."
" Yes, one is wanting, nor is that untold,"
GEBIR.
489
Said Tamar ; " and this dull and dreary shore
Is neither dull nor dreary at all hours."
Whereon the tear stole silent down his cheek,
Silent, but not by Gebir unobserv'd :
Wondering he gazed awhile, and pitying spake.
" Let me approach thee ; does the morning light
Scatter this wan suflusion o'er thy brow,
This faint blue lustre under both thine eyes V
" 0 brother, is this pity or reproach1?"
Cried Tamar, " cruel if it be reproach,
If pity, 0 how vain ! " " Whate'er it be
That grieves thee, I will pity, thou but speak,
And I can tell thee, Tamar, pang for pang."
" Gebir ! then more than brothers are we now !
Everything (take my hand) will I confess.
I neither feed the flock nor watch the fold ;
How can I, lost in love ] But, Gebir, why
That anger which has risen to your cheek ]
Can other men 1 could you 1 what, no reply !
And still more anger, and still worse conceal'd ! 110
Are these your promises] your pity this]"
" Tamar, I well may pity what I feel . .
Mark me aright . . I feel for thee . . proceed . .
Relate me all." " Then will I all relate,"
Said the young shepherd, gladden'd from his
heart.
" 'Twas evening, though not sunset, and the tide
Level with these green meadows, seem'd yet
higher :
'Twas pleasant ; and I loosen'd from my neck
The pipe you gave me, and began to play.
0 that I ne'er had learnt the tuneful art ! 12°
It always brings us enemies or love.
Well, I was playing, when above the waves
Some swimmer's head methought 1 saw ascend ;
I, sitting still, survey'd it, with my pipe
Awkwardly held before my lips half-closed,
Gebir ! it was a Nymph ! a Nymph divine !
1 can not wait describing how she came,
How I was sitting, how she first assum'd
The sailor; of what happen'd there remains 13°
Enough to say, and too much to forget.
The sweet deceiver stept upon this bank
Before I was aware ; for with surprise
Moments fly rapid as with love itself.
Stooping to tune afresh the hoarsen'd reed,
I heard a rustling, and where that arose
My glance first lighted on her nimble feet.
Her feet resembled those long shells explored
By him who to befriend his steed's dim sight
Would blow the pungent powder in the eye.
Her eyes too ! 0 immortal Gods ! her eyes 14°
Resembled . . what could they resemble ] what
Ever resemble those ] Even her attire
Was not of wonted woof nor vulgar art :
Her mantle show'd the yellow samphire-pod,
Her girdle the dove-colour'd wave serene.
' Shepherd,' said she, ' and will you wrestle now,
And with the sailor's hardier race engage ]'
I was rejoiced to hear it, and contrived
How to keep up contention : could I fail
By pressing not too strongly, yet to press ? 15°
' Whether a shepherd, as indeed you seem,
Or whether of the hardier race you boast,
I am not daunted ; no ; I will engage.'
' But first,' said she, ' what wager will you lay ] '
' A sheep,' I answered : ' add whate'er you will.'
' I can not,' she replied, ' make that return :
Our hided vessels in their pitchy round
Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep.
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed m
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave :
Shake one and it awakens, then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
And I have others given me by the nymphs,
Of sweeter sound than any pipe you have ;
But we, by Neptune ! for no pipe contend,
This time a sheep I win, a pipe the next.'
Now came she forward eager to engage,
But first her dress, her bosom then survey'd,
And heav'd it, doubting if she could deceive.
Her bosom seem'd, inclos'd in haze like heav'n,
To baffle touch, and rose forth undefined :
Above her knee she drew the robe succinct,
Above her breast, and just below her arms.
' This will preserve my breath when tightly
bound,
If struggle and equal strength should so con-
strain.'
Thus, pulling hard to fasten it, she spake,
And, rushing at me, closed : I thrill'd throughout
And seem'd to lessen and shrink up with cold.
Again with violent impulse gusht my blood,
And hearing nought external, thus absorb'd,
I heard it, rushing through each turbid vein,
Shake my unsteady swimming sight in air.
Yet with unyielding though uncertain arms
I clung around her neck ; the vest beneath
Rustled against our slippery limbs entwined : 19°
Often mine springing with eluded force
Started aside and trembled till replaced :
And when I most succeeded, as I thought,
My bosom and my throat felt so comprest
That life was almost quivering on my lips,
Yet nothing was there painful : these are signs
Of secret arts and not of human might ;
What arts I can not tell ; I only know
My eyes grew dizzy and my strength decay'd ;
I was indeed o'ercome . . with what regret,
And more, with what confusion, when I reacht 20°
The fold, and yielding up the sheep, she cried.
This pays a shepherd to a conquering maid.'
She smiled, and more of pleasure than disdain
Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip.
And eyes that languisht, lengthening, just like
love.
She went away ; I on the wicker gate
Leant, and could follow with my eyes alone.
The sheep she carried easy as a cloak ;
But when I heard its bleating, as I did,
And saw, she hastening on, its hinder feet
Struggle, and from her snowy shoulder slip,
One shoulder its poor efforts had unveil'd,
Then all my passions mingling fell in tears ;
490
CEBIE.
Restless then ran I to the highest ground
To watch her; she was gone ; gone down the tide ;
And the long moon-beam on the hard wet sand
Lay like a jasper column half up-rear'd."
" But, Tamar ! tell me, will she not return 1 "
" She will return, yet not before the moon
Again is at the full : she promist this,
Tho' when she promist I could not reply."
" By all the Gods I pity thee ! go on,
Fear not my anger, look not on my shame,
For when a lover only hears of love
He finds his folly out, and is ashamed.
Away with watchful nights and lonely days,
Contempt of earth and aspect up to heaven,
With contemplation, with humility,
A tatter'd cloak that pride wears when deform'd,
Away with all that hides me from myself,
Parts me from others, whispers I am wise :
From our own wisdom less is to be reapt
Than from the barest folly of our friend.
Tamar ! thy pastures, large and rich, afford
Flowers to thy bees and herbage to thy sheep,
But, battened on too much, the poorest croft
Of thy poor neighbour yields what thine denies."
They hasten'd to the camp, and Gebir there
Resolved his native country to forego,
And order'd from those ruins to the right
They forthwith raise a city. Tamar heard
With wonder, tho' in passing 'twas half-told,
His brother's love, and sigh'd upon his own.
SECOND BOOK.
THE Gadite men the royal charge obey.
Now fragments weigh'd up from the uneven streets
Leave the ground black beneath ; again the sun
Shines into what were porches, and on steps
Once warm with frequentation ; clients, friends,
All morning, satchel'd idlers all mid-day,
Lying half-up and languid tho' at games.
Some raise the painted pavement, some on
wheels
Draw slow its laminous length, some intersperse
Salt water thro' the sordid heaps, and seize !
The flowers and figures starting fresh to view ;
Others rub hard large masses, and essay
To polish into white what they misdeem
The growing green of many trackless years.*
Far off at intervals the axe resounds
With regular strong stroke, and nearer home
Dull falls the mallet with long labour fringed.
Here arches are discover'd; there huge beams
Eesist the hatchet, but in fresher air
Soon drop away : there spreads a marble squared a
And smoothen'd ; some high pillar for its base
Chose it, which now lies ruin'd in the dust.
Clearing the soil at bottom, they espy
A crevice, and, intent on treasure, strive
Strenuous and groan to move it : one exclaims,
" I hear the rusty metal grate ; it moves !"
Now, overturning it, backward they start,
And stop again, and see a serpent pant,
* Verde Antico is found here.
ee his throat thicken and the crisped scales
ise ruffled, while upon the middle fold
le keeps his wary head and blinking eye,
Curling more close and crouching ere hp strike.
, mighty men, invade far cities, go,
And be such treasure portions to your heirs.
Six days they labour'd : on the seventh day
.eturning, all their labours were destroyed.
Pwas not by mortal hand, or from their tents
Twere visible ; for these were now removed
Above, where neither noxious mist ascends
^ or the way wearies ere the work begin,
^here Gebir, pierced with sorrow,spake these words :
" Ye men of Gades, arm'd with brazen shields,
A.nd ye of near Tartessus, where the shore
Stoops to receive the tribute which all owe
'o Bcetis and his banks for their attire,
Ye too whom Durius bore on level meads,
nherent in your hearts is bravery,
for earth contains no nation where abounds
The generous horse and not the warlike man.
3ut neither soldier now nor steed avails,
!f or steed nor soldier can oppose the Gods,
!for is there aught above like Jove himself,
Nor weighs against his purpose, when once fixt,
Aught but, with supplicating knee, the Prayers.
Swifter than light are they, and every face,
Tho' different, glows with beauty; at the throne
Of Mercy, when clouds shut it from mankind,
They fall bare-bosom'd, and indignant Jove
Drops at the soothing sweetness of their voice
The thunder from his hand. Let us arise
On these high places daily, beat our breast,
Prostrate ourselves and deprecate his wrath."
The people boVd their bodies and obey'd.
Nine mornings with white ashes on their heads
Lamented they their toil each night o'erthrown,
And now the largest orbit of the year,
Leaning o'er black Mocattam's rubied brow,*
Proceeded slow, majestic, and serene,
Now seem'd not further than the nearest cliff,
And crimson light struck soft the phosphorwave. ^
Then Gebir spake to Tamar in these words :
" Tamar ! I am thy elder and thy king,
But am thy brother too, nor ever said
Give me thy secret and become my slave :
But haste thee not away ; I will myself
Await the nymph, disguised in thy attire."
Then, starting from attention, Tamar cried,
" Brother ! in sacred truth it can not be.
My life is yours, my love must be my own.
0 surely he who seeks a second love
Never felt one, or 'tis not one I feel."
But Gebir with complacent smile replied,
" Go then, fond Tamar, go in happy hour,
But, ere thou partest, ponder in thy breast
And well bethink thee, lest thou part deceived,
Will she disclose to thee the mysteries
Of our calamity ? and unconstrain'd 1
When even her love thy strength had to disclose.
My heart indeed is full, but, witness heaven !
My people, not my passion, fill my heart."
* The summits are of a deep red.
GEBIR.
491
"Then let me kiss thy garment," said the
youth,
" And heaven be with thee, and on me thy grace."
Him then the monarch thus once more addrest :
" Be of good courage : hast thou yet forgot
What chaplets languisht round thy unburnt hair,
In colour like some tall smooth beech's leaves
Curl'd by autumnal suns 1" How flattery
Excites a pleasant, soothes a painful shame !
" These," amid stifled blushes Tamar said,
" Were of the flowering raspberry and vine : 10°
But ah ! the seasons will not wait for love,
Seek out some other now." They parted here :
And Gebir, bending through the woodland, cull'd
The creeping vine and viscous raspberry,
Less green and less compliant than they were,
And twisted in those mossy tufts that grow
On brakes of roses when the roses fade :
And as he passes on, the little hinds
That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough,
Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied ;
Pleas'd more if chesnut, out of prickly husk
Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade.
And thus unnoticed went he, and untired
Stept up the acclivity ; and as he stept,
And as the garlands nodded o'er his brow,
Sudden from under a close alder sprang
Th' expectant nymph, and seiz'd him unaware.
He stagger'd at the shock ; his feet at first
Slipt backward from the wither'd grass short-
grazed,
But striking out one arm, tho' without aim, 12°
Then grasping with his other, he enclosed
The struggler ; she gain'd not one step's retreat,
Urging with open hands against his throat
Intense, now holding in her breath constrain'd,
Now pushing with quick impulse and by starts,
Till the dust blacken'd upon every pore.
Nearer he drew her and yet nearer, claspt
Above the knees midway, and now one arm
Fell, and her other lapsing o'er the neck
Of Gebir, swung against his back incurved, 13°
The swoln veins glowing deep, and with a groan
On his broad shoulder fell her face reclined.
But ah ! she knew not whom that roseate face
Cool'd with its breath ambrosial ; for she stood
Higher on the bank, and often swept and broke
His chaplets mingled with her loosen'd hair.
Whether, while Tamar tarried, came desire,
And she, grown languid, loost the wings of Love
Which she before held proudly at her will,
And, nought but Tamar in her soul, and nought 1W
(Where Tamar was) that seem'd or fear'd deceit,
To fraud she yielded what no force had gain'd ;
Or whether Jove in pity to mankind,
When from his crystal fount the visual orbs
He fill'd with piercing ether, and endued
With somewhat of omnipotence, ordain'd
That never two fair forms at once torment
The human heart and draw it different ways,
And thus, in prowess like a god, the chief
Subdued her strength nor softened at her charms,160
The nymph divine, the magic mistress, fail'd.
Recovering, still half-resting on the turf,
She lookt up wildly, and could now descry
The kingly brow archt lofty for command.
" Traitor!" said she undaunted, tho' amaze
Threw o'er her varying cheek the air of fear,
" Thinkest thou thus that with impunity
Thou hast forsooth deceived me] dar'stthou deem
Those eyes not hateful that have seen me fall ?
0 heaven ! soon may they close on my disgrace.160
Merciless man ! what! for one sheep estranged
Hast thou thrown into dungeons and of day
Amerced thy shepherd1? hast thou, while the iron
Pierced thro' his tender limbs into his soul,
By threats, by tortures, torn out that offence,
And heard him (0 could I) avow his love 1
Say, hast thou *? cruel, hateful ! ah my fears !
1 feel them true ! speak, tell me, are they true V
She, blending thus entreaty with reproach,
Bent forward, as tho' falling on her knee 17°
Whence she had hardly risen, and at this pause
Shed from her large dark eyes a shower of tears.
The Iberian King her sorrow thus consoled.
" Weep no more, heavenly maiden, weep no more :
Neither by force withheld nor choice estranged,
Thy Tamar lives, and only lives for thee.
Happy, thrice happy, you ! 'tis me alone
Whom heaven and earth and ocean with one hate
Conspire on, and throughout each path pursue.
Whether in waves beneath or skies above
Thou hast thy habitation, 'tis from heaven,
From heaven alone, such power, such charms
descend.
Then 0 ! discover whence that ruin comes
Each night upon our city ; whence are heard
Those yells of rapture round our fallen walls :
In our affliction can the Gods delight,
Or meet oblation for the Nymphs are tears'?"
He spake, and indignation sank in woe.
Which she perceiving, pride refresht her heart,
Hope wreath'd her mouth with smiles, and she
exclaim'd :
" Neither the Gods afflict you, nor the Nymphs.
Return me him who won my heart, return
Him whom my bosom pants for, as the steeds
In the sun's chariot for the western wave.
The Gods will prosper thee, and Tamar prove
How Nymphs, the torments that they cause,
assuage.
Promise me this ; indeed I think thou hast,
But 'tis so pleasing, promise it once more."
"Once more I promise," cried the gladden'd
king,
" By my right-hand and by myself I swear,
And ocean's Gods and heaven's Gods I adjure,
Thou shalt be Tamar's, Tamar shall be thine."
Then she, regarding him long fixt, replied :
" I have thy promise, take thou my advice.
Gebir ! this land of Egypt is a land
Of incantation, demons rule these waves ;
These are against thee, these thy works destroy.
Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left
The seven pillars to remain in front,
Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe. 21°
Go, but go early, ere the gladsome Hours
Strew saffron in the path of rising Morn,
41)2
GEBIR.
Ere the bee buzzing o'er flowers fresh disclosed
Examine where he may the best alight
Nor scatter off the bloom, ere cold-lipt herds
Crop the pale herbage round each other's bed,
Lead seven bulls well pastur'd and well form'd,
Their neck unblemisht and their horn unring'd,
And at each pillar sacrifice thou one.
Around each base rub thrice the blackening
blood,
And burn the curling shavings of the hoof,
And of the forehead locks thou also burn :
The yellow galls, with equal care preserv'd,
Pour at the seventh statue from the north."
He listen'd, and on her his eyes intent
Perceiv'd her not, and she had disappear'd ;
So deep he ponder'd her important words.
And now had morn arisen and he perform'd
Almost the whole enjoined him : he had reacht
The seventh statue, pour'd the yellow galls, 23°
The forelock from his left he had releast,
And burnt the curling shavings of the hoof
Moisten'd with myrrh ; when suddenly a flame
Spired from the fragrant smoke, nor sooner spired
Down sank the brazen fabric at his feet.
He started back, gazed, nor could aught but gaze,
And cold dread stiffen'd up his hair flower-twined ;
Then with a long and tacit step, one arm
Behind, and every finger wide outspread,
He lookt and totter'd on a black abyss.
He thought he sometimes heard a distant voice
Breathe thro' the cavern's mouth, and further on
Faint murmurs now, now hollow groans reply.
Therefore suspended he his crook above,
Dropt it, and heard it rolling step by step :
He enter'd, and a mingled sound arose
Like one (when shaken from some temple's roof
By zealous hand, they and their fretted nest)
Of birds that wintering watch in Memnon's tomb,
And tell the halcyons when spring first returns.250
THIRD BOOK.
0 FOR the spirit of that matchless man
Whom Nature led throughout her whole domain,
While he embodied breath'd ethereal air !
Tho' panting in the play-hour of my youth
1 drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught,
That rous'd within the feverish thirst of song,
Yet never may I trespass o'er the stream
Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend
The silent and unsearchable abodes
Of Erebus and Night, nor unchastised 10
Lead up long-absent heroes into day.
When on the pausing theatre of earth
Eve's shadowy curtain falls, can any man
Bring back the far-off intercepted hills,
Grasp the round rock-built turret, or arrest
The glittering spires that pierce the brow of
Heaven 1
Rather can any with outstripping voice
The parting Sun's gigantic strides recall 1
Twice sounded Gebir! twice th' Iberian king
Thought it the strong vibration of the brain !0
That struck upon his car ; but now descried
A form, a man, come nearer : as he came
His unshorn hair (grown soft in these abodes)
Waved back, and scatter'd thin and hoary light.
Living men called him Aroar, but no more
In celebration or recording verse
His name is heard, no more by Arnon's side
The well-wall'd city, which he rear'd, remains.
Gebir was now undaunted, for the brave
When they no longer doubt, no longer fear, 'M
And would have spoken, but the shade began.
" Brave son of Hesperus ! no mortal hand
Has led thee hither, nor without the Gods
Penetrate thy firm feet the vast profound.
Thou knowest not that here thy fathers lie,
The race of Sidad ; their's was loud acclaim
When living, but their pleasure was in war ;
Triumphs and hatred followed : I myself
Bore, men imagin'd, no inglorious part ;
The Gods thought otherwise, by whose decree 40
Depriv'd of life, and more, of death depriv'd,
I still hear shrieking thro' the moonless night
Their discontented and deserted shades.
Observe these horrid walls, this rueful waste !
Here some refresh the vigour of the mind
With contemplation and cold penitence.
Nor wonder while thou hearest, that the soul,
Thus purified, hereafter may ascend
Surmounting all obstruction, nor ascribe
The sentence to indulgence ; each extreme
Hath tortures for ambition ; to dissolve
In everlasting languor, to resist
Its impulse, but in vain ; to be enclosed
Within a limit, and that limit fire ;
Sever'd from happiness, from eminence,
And flying, but hell bars us, from ourselves.
Yet rather all these torments most endure
Than solitary pain, and sad remorse,
And towering thoughts on their own breast o'er-
turn'd
And piercing to the heart : such penitence,
Such contemplation theirs ! thy ancestors
Bear up against them, nor will they submit
To conquering Time the asperities of Fate :
Yet could they but revisit earth once more,
How gladly would they poverty embrace,
How labour, even for their deadliest foe !
It little now avails them to have rais'd
Beyond the Syrian regions, and beyond
Phenicia, trophies, tributes, colonies :
Follow thou me : mark what it all avails."
Him Gebir follow'd, and a roar confused
Rose from a river rolling in its bed,
Not rapid, that would rouse the wretched souls,
Nor calmly, that might lull them to repose ;
But with dull weary lapses it upheaved
Billows of bale, heard low, yet heard afar ;
For when hell's iron portals let out night,
Often men start and shiver at the sound,
And lie so silent on the restless couch,
They hear their own hearts beat. Now Gebir
breath'd
Another air, another sky beheld :
Twilight broods here, lull'd by no nightingale
Nor waken'd by the shrill lark dewy-wing'd,
GEBIR.
493
But glowing with one sullen sunless heat.
Beneath his foot nor sprouted flower nor herb,
Nor chirpt a grasshopper ; above his head
Phlegethon form'd a fiery firmament ;
Part were sulphurous clouds involving, part
Shining like solid ribs of molten brass ;
For the fierce element, which else aspires
Higher and higher and lessens to the sky,
Below, Earth's adamantine arch rebuft,
Gebir, tho' now such languor held his limbs,
Scarce aught admir'd he, yet he this admir'd ;
And thus addrest him then the conscious guide.
" Beyond that river lie the happy fields ;
From them fly gentle breezes, which when drawn
Against yon crescent convex, but unite
Stronger with what they could not overcome.
Thus theythat scatter freshness thro' the groves 10°
And meadows of the fortunate, and fill
With liquid light the marble bowl of Earth,
And give her blooming health and sprightly force,
Their fire no more diluted, nor its darts
Blunted by passing thro' thick myrtle-bowers,
Neither from odours rising half dissolved,
Point forward Phlegethon's eternal flame ;
And this horizon is the spacious bow
Whence each ray reaches to the world above."
The hero pausing, Gebir then besought
What region held his ancestors, what clouds,
What waters, or what Gods, from his embrace.
Aroar then sudden, as tho' rous'd, renew'd.
" Come thou, if ardour urges thee and force
Suffices . . mark me, Gebir, I unfold
No fable to allure thee . . on ! behold
Thy ancestors ! " and lo ! with horrid gasp
The panting flame above his head recoil'd,
And thunder through his heart and life-blood
throb'd.
Such sound could human organs once conceive, 12°
Cold, speechless, palsied, not the soothing voice
Of friendship or almost of Deity
Could raise the wretched mortal from the dust;
Beyond man's home condition they ! With eyes
Intent, and voice desponding, and unheard
By Aroar, tho' he tarried at his side,
" They know me not," cried Gebir, " 0 my sires,
Ye know me not ! they answer not, nor hear.
How distant are they still ! what sad extent
Of desolation must we overcome !
Aroar ! what wretch that nearest us 1 what wretch
Is that with eyebrows white and slanting brow ?
Listen ! him yonder, who, bound down supine,
Shrinks yelling from that sword there engine-
hung ;
He too among my ancestors 1 " " 0 King !
Iberia bore him, but the breed accurst
Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east."
" He was a warrior then, nor fear'd the Gods?"
" Gebir ! he fear'd the Demons, not the Gods,
Tho' them indeed his daily face adored,
And was no warrior ; yet the thousand lives
Squander'd as stones to exercise a sling,
And the tame cruelty and cold caprice . .
Oh madness of mankind ! addrest, adored !
0 Gebir ! what are men 1 or where are Gods ?
Behold the giant next him, how his feet
Plunge floundering mid the marshes yellow-
flower'd,
His restless head just reaching to the rocks,
His bosom tossing with black weeds besmear'd,
How writhes he 'twixt the continent and isle ! 15°
What tyrant with more insolence e'er claim'd
Dominion 1 when from the heart of Usury
Rose more intense the pale-flamed thirst for gold?
And call'd forsooth Deliverer/ False or fools
Who prais'd the dull-ear'd miscreant, or who
hoped
To soothe your folly and disgrace with praise !
Hearest thou not the harp's gay simpering air
And merriment afar ? then come, advance ;
And now behold him ! mark the wretch accurst
Who sold his people to a rival king :
Self-yoked they stood two ages unredeem'd."
" 0 horror ! what pale visage rises there !
Speak, Aroar ! me perhaps mine eyes deceive,
Inured not, yet methinks they there descry
Such crimson haze as sometimes drowns the*
moon.
What is yon awful sight 1 why thus appears
That space between the purple and the crown 1 "
" I will relate their stories when we reach
Our confines," said the guide ; " for thou, 0 king,
Differing in both from all thy countrymen, 17°
Seest not their stories and hast seen their fates.
But while we tarry, lo again the flame
Riseth, and murmuring hoarse, points straighter;
haste, '
'Tis urgent, we must hence." " Then 0 adieu ! "
Cried Gebir and groan'd loud : at last a tear
Burst from his eyes turn'd back, and he exclaimed :
" Am I deluded ? 0 ye powers of hell !
Suffer me . . 0 my fathers ! am I torn . . "
He spake, and would have spoken more, but
flames
En wrapt him round and round intense ; he turn'd 18°
And stood held breathless in a ghost's embrace.
" Gebir ! my son ! desert me not ! I heard
Thy calling voice, nor fate withheld me more :
One moment yet remains ; enough to know
Soon will my torments, soon will thine, expire.
0 that I e'er exacted such a vow !
When dipping in the victim's blood thy hand,
First thou withdrew'st it, looking in my face
Wondering; but when the priest my will ex-
plain'd,
Then swarest thou, repeating what he said, 19°
How against Egypt thou wouldst raise that hand
And bruise the seed first risen from our line.
Therefore in death what pangs have I endured !
Rackt on the fiery centre of the sun,
Twelve years I saw the ruin'd world roll round.
Shudder not ; I have borne it ; I deserved
My wretched fate ; be better thine ; farewell."
" 0 stay, my father ! stay one moment moje . .
Let me return thee that embrace . . 'tis past . .
Aroar ! how could I quit it unreturn'd !
And now the gulf divides us, and the waves
Of sulphur bellow thro' the blue abyss.
And is he gone for ever ! and I come
494
GEBIR.
In vain ? " Then sternly said the guide : " In vain !
Sayst thou? what wouldst thou more? alas, 0
prince,
None come for pastime here ! but is it nought
To turn thy feet from evil 1 is it nought
Of pleasure to that shade if they are turn'd 1
For this thou earnest hither : he who dares
To penetrate this darkness, nor regards
The dangers of the way, shall reascend
In glory, nor the gates of hell retard
His steps, nor demon's nor man's art prevail.
Once in each hundred years, and only once,
Whether by some rotation of the world,
Or whether will'd so by some pow'r above,
This flaming arch starts back, each realm descries
Its opposite, and Bliss from her repose
Freshens and feels her own security."
" Security ! " cried out the Gadite king,
" And feel they not compassion 1 " " Child of
Earth,"
Calmly said Aroar at his guest's surprise,
"•Some so disfigur'd by habitual crimes,
Others are so exalted, so refined,
So permeated by heaven, no trace remains
Graven on earth : here Justice is supreme ;
Compassion can be but where passions are.
Here are discover'd those who tortured Law
To silence or to speech, as pleas'd themselves ;
Here also those who boasted of their zeal
And lov'd their country for the spoils it gave.
Hundreds, whose glitt'ring merchandise the lyre
Dazzled vain wretches drunk with flattery,
And wafted them in softest airs to Heaven,
Doom'd to be still deceiv'd, here still attune
The wonted strings and fondly woo applause :
Their wish half granted, they retain their own,
But madden at the mockery of the shades.
Upon the river's other side there grow
Deep olive groves ; there other ghosts abide, 24°
Blest indeed they, but not supremely blest.
We can not see beyond, we can not see
Aught but our opposite ; and here are fates
How opposite to ours ! here some observ'd
Eeligious rites, some hospitality :
Strangers, who from the good old men retired,
Closed the gate gently, lest from generous use
Shutting and opening of its own accord,
It shake unsettled slumbers off their couch :
Some stopt revenge athirst for slaughter, some 25°
Sow'd the slow olive for a race unborn.
These had no wishes, therefore none are crown'd :
But theirs are tufted banks, theirs umbrage, theirs
Enough of sunshine to enjoy the shade,
And breeze enough to lull them to repose."
Then Gebir cried : " Illustrious host, proceed.
Bring me among the wonders of a realm
Admired by all, but like a tale admired.
We take our children from their cradled sleep,
And on their fancy from our own impress
Ethereal forms and adulating fates ;
But, ere departing for such scenes ourselves,
We seize the hand, we • hang upon the neck,
Our beds cling heavy round us with our tears,
Agony strives with agony. Just Gods !
Wherefore should wretched mortals thus believe,
Or wherefore should they hesitate to die 1 "
Thus while he question'd, all his strength
dissolv'd
Within him, thunder shook his troubled brain, 27°
He started, and the cavern's mouth survey'd
Near, and beyond his people ; he arose,
And bent toward them his bewilder'd way.
FOURTH BOOK.
THE king's lone road, his visit, his return,
Were not unknown to Dalica, nor long
The wondrous tale from royal ears delay'd.
When the young queen had heard who taught the
rites,
Her mind was shaken, and what first she askt
Was, whether the sea-maids were very fair,
And was it true that even gods were moved
By female charms beneath the waves profound,
And join'd to them in marriage, and had sons.
Who knows but Gebir sprang then from the Gods ! 10
He that could pity, he that could obey,
Flatter'd both female youth and princely pride,
The same ascending from amid the shades
Show'd Power in frightful attitude : the queen
Marks the surpassing prodigy, and strives
To shake off terror in her crowded court,
And wonders why she trembles, nor suspects
How Fear and Love assume each other's form,
By birth and secret compact how allied.
Vainly (to conscious virgins I appeal)
Vainly with crouching tigers, prowling wolves,
Rocks, precipices, waves, storms, thunderbolts,
All his immense inheritance, would Fear
The simplest heart, should Love refuse, assail :
Consent, the maiden's pillowed ear imbibes
Constancy, honour, truth, fidelity,
Beauty and ardent lips and longing arms ;
Then fades in glimmering distance half the scene,
Then her heart quails and flutters and would fly ;
'Tis her beloved ! not to her ! ye Powers !
What doubting maid exacts the vow] behold
Above the myrtles his protesting hand !
Such ebbs of doubt and swells of jealousy
Toss the fond bosom in its hour of sleep
And float around the eyelids and sink thro'.
Lo ! mirror of delight in cloudless days,
Lo ! thy reflection : 'twas when I exclaim'd,
With kisses hurried as if each foresaw
Their end, and reckon'd on our broken bonds,
And could at such a price such loss endure, *°
" 0 what to faithful lovers met at morn,
What half so pleasant as imparted fears ! "
Looking recumbent how Love's column rose
Marmoreal, trophied round with golden hair,
How in the valley of one lip unseen
He slumber'd, one his unstrung bow imprest.
Sweet wilderness of soul-entangling charms !
Led back by Memory, and each blissful maze
Retracing, me with magic power detain
Those dimpled cheeks, those temples violet-
tinged,
Those lips of nectar and those eyes of heaven !
GEBIR.
495
Charoba, tho' indeed she never drank*
The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown,
Or, when she wanted cool and calm repose,
Dreamt of the crawling asp and grated tomb,
Was wretched up to royalty : the jibe
Struck her, most piercing where love pierced
before,
From those whose freedom centres in their tongue,
Handmaidens, pages, courtiers, priests, buffoons.
Congratulations here, there prophecies,
Here children, not repining at neglect
While tumult sweeps them ample room for
play;
Every-where questions answer'd ere begun,
Every-where crowds, for every-where alarm.
Thus winter gone, nor spring (tho' near) arriv'd,
Urged slanting onward by the bickering breeze
That issues from beneath Aurora's car,
Shudder the sombrous waves ; at every beam
More vivid, more by every breath impell'd,
Higher and higher up the fretted rocks
Their turbulent refulgence they display.
Madness, which like the spiral element
The more it seizes on the fiercer burns,
Hurried them blindly forward, and involved
In flame the senses and in gloom the soul.
Determin'd to protect the country's gods,
And asking their protection, they adjure
Each other to stand forward, and insist
With zeal, and trample under foot the slow ;
And disregardful of the Sympathies
Divine, those Sympathies whose delicate hand
Touching the very eyeball of the heart,
Awakens it, not wounds it nor inflames,
Blind wretches ! they with desperate embrace
Hang on the pillar till the temple fall.
Oft the grave judge alarms religious wealth
And rouses anger under gentle words.
Woe to the wiser few who dare to cry
" People ! these men are not your enemies,
Inquire their errand, and resist when wrong'd." 90
Together childhood, priesthood, womanhood,
The scribes and elders of the land, exclaim
" Seek they not hidden treasure in the tombs ]
Eaising the ruins, levelling the dust,
Who can declare whose ashes they disturb !
Build they not fairer cities than our own,
Extravagant enormous apertures
For light, and portals larger, open courts
Where all ascending all are unconfin'd,
And wider streets in purer air than ours ?
Temples quite plain with equal architraves
They build, nor bearing gods like ours imbost.
0 profanation ! 0 our ancestors ! "
Tho' all the vulgar hate a foreign face,
It more offends weak eyes and homely age,
Dalica most, who thus her aim pursued.
" My promise, 0 Charoba, I perform.
Proclaim to gods and men a festival
* Antonius was afraid of poison : Cleopatra, to prov
the injustice of his suspicions, and the ease with which a
poison might be administered, shook it from her crown
of flowers into his goblet : before 'he had raised it to hi
lips, she told him, and established his confidence.
Throughout the land, and bid the strangers eat;
?heir anger thus we haply may disarm." no
" 0 Dalica," the grateful queen replied,
' Nurse of my childhood, soother of my cares,
'reventer of my wishes, of my thoughts,
0 pardon youth, 0 pardon royalty !
"f nastily to Dalica I sued,
?ear might impell me, never could distrust.
>o then, for wisdom guides thee, take my name,
Issue what most imports and best beseems,
And sovranty shall sanction the decree."
And now Charoba was alone, her heart 12°
rew lighter ; she sat down, and she arose,
She felt voluptuous tenderness, but felt
That tenderness for Dalica ; she prais'd
Her kind attention, warm solicitude,
Her wisdom ; for what wisdom pleas'd like her's !
She was delighted ; should she not behold
jebir ? she blusht ; but she had words to speak,
She form'd them and reform'd them, with regret
That there was somewhat lost with every change ;
She could replace them ; what would that
avail1? 13D
Moved from their order they have lost their charm.
While thus she strew'd her way with softest words,
Others grew up before her, but appear'd
A plenteous rather than perplexing choice :
She rubb'd her palms with pleasure, heav'd a sigh,
Grew calm again, and thus her thoughts revolv'd.
" But he descended to the tombs ! the thought
Thrills me, I must avow it, with affright.
And wherefore ] shows he not the more belov'd
Of heav'n ] or how ascends he back to day 1 M0
Then has he wrong'd me1? could he want a cause
Who has an army and was bred to reign 1
And yet no reasons against rights he urged,
He threaten'd not, proclaim'd not ; I approacht,
He hasten'd on ; I spake, he listen'd ; wept,
He pity*d me ; he lov'd me, he obey'd ;
He was a conqueror, still am I a queen."
She thus indulged fond fancies, when the sound
Of timbrels and of cymbals struck her ear,
And horns and bowlings of wild jubilee. 15°
She fear'd, and listened to confirm her fears ;
One breath sufficed, and shook her refluent soul.
Smiting, with simulated smile constrain'd,
Her beauteous bosom, " 0 perfidious man,
0 cruel foe !" she twice and thrice exclaim 'd,
" 0 my companions, equal-aged ! my throne !
My people ! 0 how wretched to presage
This day ! how tenfold wretched to endure !"
She ceast, and instantly the palace rang
With gratulation roaring into rage ;
'Twas her own people. " Health to Gebir ! health
To our compatriot subjects ! to our queen
Health and unfaded youth ten thousand years ! "
Then went the victims forward crown'd with
flowers,
Crown'd were tame crocodiles, and boys white-
robed
Guided their creaking crests across the stream.
In gilded barges went the female train,
And, hearing others ripple near, undrew
The veil of sea-green awning : if they found
496
GEBIR.
Whom they desired, how pleasant was the breeze ! 1"°
If not, the frightful water forced a sigh.
Sweet airs of music ruled the rowing palms,
Now rose they glistening and aslant reclined,
Now they descended and with one consent
Plunging, seem'd swift each other to pursue,
And now to tremble wearied o'er the wave.
Beyond and in the suburbs might be seen
Crowds of all ages : here in triumph past
Not without pomp, tho' rais'd with rude device,
The monarch and Charoba ; there a throng 18°
Shone out in sunny whiteness o'er the reeds ;
Nor could luxuriant youth, or lapsing age
Propt by the corner of the nearest street,
With aching eyes and tottering knees intent,
Loose leathery neck and wormlike lip outstretcht,
Fix long the ken upon one form, so swift
Thro' the gay vestures fluttering on the bank,
And thro' the bright-eyed waters dancing round,
Wove they their wanton wiles and disappear'd.190
Meantime, with pomp august and solemn, borne
On four white camels tinkling plates of gold,
Heralds before and Ethiop slaves behind,
Each with the sign of office in his hand,
Each on his brow the sacred stamp of years,
The four ambassadors of peace proceed.
Kich carpets bear they, corn and generous wine,
The Syrian olive's cheerful gift they bear,
With stubborn goats that eye the mountain-top
Askance, and riot with reluctant horn,
And steeds and stately camels in their train.
The king, who sat before his tent, descried
The dust rise redden'd from the setting sun :
Thro' all the plains below the Gadite men
Were resting from their labour : some surveyed
The spacious site ere yet obstructed ; walls
Already, soon will roofs have interposed ;
Some ate their frugal viands on the steps
Contented ; some, remembering home, prefer 21°
The cot's bare rafters o'er the gilded dome,
And sing (for often sighs too end in song)
" In smiling meads how sweet the brook's repose
To the rough ocean and red restless sands ! "
Where are the woodland voices that increast
Along the unseen path on festal days,
When lay the dry and outcast arbutus
On the fane-step, and the first privet-flowers
Threw their white light upon the vernal shrine ?
Some heedless trip along with hasty step
Whistling, and fix too soon on their abodes ;
Haply and one among them with his spear
Measures the lintel, if so great its highth
As will receive him with his helm unlower'd.
But silence went throughout, e'en thoughts
were husht,
When to full view of navy and of camp
Now first expanded the bare-headed train.
Majestic unpresuming, unappall'd,
Onward they marcht, and neither to the right
Nor to the left, tho' there the city stood,
Turn'd they their sober eyes; and now they
reacht
Within a few steep paces of ascent
The lone pavilion of the Iberian king :
He saw them, he awaited them, he rose,
He hail'd them, " Peace be with you :" they replied
" King of the western world, be with you peace."
FIFTH BOOK.
ONCE a fair city, courted then by kings,
Mistress of nations, throng'd by palaces,
Raising her head o'er destiny, her face
Glowing with pleasure and with palms refrcsht,
Now pointed at by Wisdom or by Wealth,
Bereft of beauty, bare of ornament,
Stood in the wilderness of woe, Masar.
Ere far advancing, all appear'd a plain,
Treacherous and fearful mountains, far advanced.
Her glory so gone down, at human step
The fierce hyena frighted from the walls
Bristled his rising back, his teeth unsheathed,
Drew the long growl and with slow foot retired.
Yet were remaining some of ancient race,
And ancient arts were now their sole delight.
With Time's first sickle they had markt the'
hour
When at their incantation would the Moon
Start back, and shuddering shed blue blasted
light.
The rifted rays they gather'd, and immerst
In potent portion of that wondrous wave,
Which, hearing rescued Israel, stood erect,
And led her armies thro' his crystal gates.
Hither (none shared her way, her counsel none)
Hied the Masarian Dalica : 'twas night,
And the still breeze fell languid on the waste.
She, tired with journey long and ardent thoughts,
Stopt ; and before the city she descried
A female form emerge above the sands :
Intent she fixt her eyes, and on herself
Relying, with fresh vigour bent her way ;
Nor disappear'd the woman ; but exclaim'd,
(One hand retaining tight her folded vest)
" Stranger ! who loathest life, there lies Masar.
Begone, nor tarry longer, or ere morn
The cormorant in his solitary haunt
Of insulated rock or sounding cove
Stands on thy bleached bones and screams for
prey.
My lips can scatter them o'er every sea
Under the rising and the setting sun,
So shrivel'd in one breath as all the sands
We tread on, could not in a hundred years.
Wretched who die nor raise their sepulchre !
Therefore begone." But Dalica unaw'd,
(Tho' in her wither'd but still firm right-hand,
Held up with imprecations hoarse and deep,
Glimmer'd her brazen sickle, and enclosed
Within its figured curve the fading moon)
Spake thus aloud. " By yon bright orb of Heaven,
In that most sacred moment when her beam
(Guided first thither by the forked shaft,)
Strikes thro' the crevice of Arishtah's tower . ."
" Sayst thou ? " astonisht cried the sorceress,
" Woman of outer darkness, fiend of death,
From what inhuman cave, what dire abyss,
Hast thou invisible that spell o'erheard >
GEBIR.
497
What potent hand hath toucht thy quicken'd
corse,
What song dissolv'd thy cerements? who unclosed
Those faded eyes and fill'd them from the stars ?
But if with inextinguish'd light of life
Thou breathest, soul and body unamerst,
Then whence that invocation ] who hath dared
Those hallow'd words, divulging, to profane ? ''
Dalica cried, " To heaven not earth addrest
Prayers for protection can not be profane."
Here the pale sorceress turn'd her face aside
Wildly, and mutter'd to herself amazed,
" I dread her who, alone at such an hour,
Can speak so strangely, who can thus combine
The words of reason with our gifted rites,
Yet will I speak once more. If thou hast seen 70
The city of Charoba, hast thou markt
The steps of Dalica i "
"What then 1"
" The tongue
Of Dalica has then our rites divulged."
" Whose rites ? "
" Her mother's."
" Never."
" One would think,
Presumptuous, thou wert Dalica."
" I am ;
Woman ! and who art thou 1 "
With close embrace,
Clung the Masarian round her neck, and cried,
" Art thou then not my sister 1 ah ! I fear
The golden lamps and jewels of a court
Deprive thine eyes of strength and purity : ^
0 Dalica ! mine watch the waning moon,
For ever patient in our mother's art,
And rest on Heaven suspended, where the founts
Of Wisdom rise, where sound the wings of Power ;
Studies intense of strong and stern delight !
And thou too, Dalica, so many years
Wean'd from the bosom of thy native land,
Returnest back and seekest true repose.
0 what more pleasant than the short-breath'd sigh
When, laying down your burthen at the gate
And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace w
The cool and quiet of a homespun bed."
" Alas !" said Dalica " tho' all commend
This choice, and many meet with no controul,
Yet none pursue it ! Age by care opprest
Peels for the couch and drops into the grave.
The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth :
Frenzied Ambition and desponding Love
Consume Youth's fairest flowers ; compared with
Youth
Age has a something, like repose.
Myrthyr, I seek not here a boundary 10°
Like the horizon, which, as you advance,
Keeping its form and colour, yet recedes :
But mind my errand, and my suit perform.
" Twelve years ago Charoba first could speak :
If her indulgent father askt her name,
She would indulge him too, and would reply
What? why, Charoba! rais'd with sweet surprise,
And proud to shine a teacher in her turn.
Show her the graven sceptre ; what its use 1
'Twas to beat dogs with, and to gather flies. J1°
She thought the crown a plaything to amuse
Herself, and not the people, for she thought
Who mimick infant words might infant toys :
But while she watcht grave elders look with awe
On such a bauble, she withheld her breath ;
She was afraid her parents should suspect
They had caught childhood from her in a kiss ;
She blusht for shame, and fear'd ; for she believ'd.
Yet was not courage wanting in the child.
No ; I have often seen her with both hands 12°
Shake a dry crocodile of equal highth,
And listen to the shells within the scales,
And fancy there was life, and yet apply
The jagged jaws wide-open to her ear.
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean ; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here :
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all !
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest, 13°
Capacious then as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,
Is gone, (I fear) .for ever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast.
I since have watcht her in each lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name,
Then would she change it for Egyptian sounds
More sweet, and Beem to taste them on her lips,1JO
Then loathe them ; Gebir, Gebir still return'd.
Who would repine, of reason not bereft !
For soon the sunny stream of Youth runs down,
And not a gadfly streaks the lake beyond.
Lone in the gardens, on her gather'd vest
How gently would her languid arm recline !
How often have I seen her kiss a flower,
And on cool mosses press her glowing cheek !
Nor was the stranger free from pangs himself.
Whether by spell imperfect, or, while brew'd, 1SO
The swelling herbs infected him with foam,
Oft have the shepherds met him wandering
Thro' unfrequented paths, oft overheard
Deep groans, oft started from soliloquies,
Which they believe assuredly were meant
For spirits who attended him unseen.
But when from his illuded eyes retired
That figure Fancy fondly chose to raise,
He claspt the vacant air and stood and gazed ;
Then owning it was folly, strange to tell,
Burst into peals of laughter at his woes ;
Next, when his passion had subsided, went
Where from a cistern, green and ruin'd, ooz'd
A little rill, soon lost ; there gather'd he
Violets, and harebells of a sister bloom,
Twining complacently their tender stems
With plants of kindest pliability.
These for a garland woven, for a crown
He platted pithy rushes, and ere dusk
The grass was whiten'd with their roots nipt off".
These threw he, finisht, in the little rill
And stood surveying them with steady smile :
But such a smile as that of Gebir bids
498
GEBIR.
To Comfort a defiance, to Despair
A welcome, at whatever hour she please.
Had I obseiVd him I had pitied him,
I have observed Charoba : I have askt
If she loved Gebir. Love him ! she exclaim'd
With such a start of terror, such a flush
Of anger, / love Gebir ? I in love ? 18°
And lookt so piteous, so impatient lookt . .
And burst, before I answered, into tears.
Then saw I, plainly saw I, 'twas not love ;
For such her natural temper, what she likes
She speaks it out, or rather she commands :
And could Charoba say with greater ease
Bring me a water-melon from the Nile,
Than, if she lov"d him, Bring me him I love.
Therefore the death of Gebir is resolv'd."
" Kesolv'd indeed," cried Myrthyr, nought
surprised,
" Precious my arts ! I could without remorse
Kill, tho' I hold thee dearer than the day,
E'en thee thyself, to exercise my arts.
Look yonder ! mark yon pomp of funeral !
Is this from fortune or from favouring stars ?
Dalica, look thou yonder, what a <train !
What weeping ! 0 what luxury ! come, haste,
Gather me quickly up these herbs I dropt,
And then away . . hush ! I must unobserv'd
From those two maiden sisters pull the spleen : 20°
Dissemblers ! how invidious they surround
The virgin's tomb, where all but virgins weep."
" Nay, hear me first," cried Dalica, " 'tis hard
To perish to attend a foreign king."
" Perish ! and may not then mine eye alone
Draw out the venom drop, and yet remain
Enough ] the portion can not be perceiv'd."
Away she hasten'd with it to her home,
And, sprinkling thrice fresh sulphur o'er the
hearth,
Took up a spindle with malignant smile, 21°
And pointed to a woof, nor spake a word ;
'Twas a dark purple, and its dye was dread.
Plunged in a lonely house, to her unknown,
Now Dalica first trembled : o'er the roof
Wander'd her haggard eyes . . 'twas some relief. .
The massy stones, tho' hewn most roughly, shoVd
The hand of man had once at least been there :
But from this object sinking back amazed,
Her bosom lost all consciousness, and shook
As if suspended in unbounded space. 22°
Her thus entranced the sister's voice recall'd,
" Behold it here ! dyed once again, 'tis done."
Dalica stept, and felt beneath her feet
The slippery floor, with moulder'd dust bestrewn :
But Myrthyr seiz'd with bare bold-sinew'd arm
The grey cerastes, writhing from her grasp,
And twisted off his horn, nor fear'd to squeeze
The viscous poison from his glowing gums.
Nor wanted there the root of stunted shrub
Which he lays ragged, hanging o'er the sands, 23°
And whence the weapons of his wrath are
death ;
Nor the blue urchin that with clammy fin
Holds down the tossing vessel for the tides.
Together these her scient hand combined,
And more she added, dared I mention more.
Which done, with words most potent, thrice she
dipt
The reeking garb ; thrice waved it through the air :
She ceast ; and suddenly the creeping wool
Shrunk up with crisped dryness in her hands :
"Take this," she cried, "and Gebir is no more." 24°
SIXTH BOOK.
Now to Aurora borne by dappled steeds
The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold,
Smitten with Lucifer's light silver wand,
Expanded slow to strains of harmony ;
The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves
Glancing with wanton coyness toVrd their queen,
Heav'd softly ; thus the damsel's bosom heaves
When from her sleeping lover's downy cheek,
To which so warily her own she brings"
Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth10
Of coming kisses fann'd by playful Dreams.
Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee,
For 'twas the morning pointed out by Fate
When an immortal maid and mortal man
Should share each other's nature knit in bliss.
The brave Iberians far the beach o'erspread
Ere dawn, with distant awe ; none hear the mew,
None mark the curlew flapping o'er the field ;
Silence held all, and fond expectancy.
Now suddenly the conch above the sea J0
Sounds, and goes sounding through the woods
profound.
They, where they hear the echo, turn their eyes,
But nothing see they, save a purple mist
Roll from the distant mountain down the shore :
It rolls, it sails, it settles, it dissolves :
Now shines the Nymph to human eye reveal'd,
And leads her Tamar timorous o'er the waves.
Immortals crowding round congratulate
The shepherd ; he shrinks back, of breath bereft :
His vesture clinging closely round his limbs ^
TJnfelt, while they the whole fair form admire,
He fears that he has lost it, then he fears
The wave has mov'd it, most to look he fears.
Scarce the sweet-flowing music he imbibes,
Or sees the peopled ocean ; scarce he sees
Spio with sparkling eyes, and Beroe
Demure, and young lone, less renown'd,
Not less divine ; mild-natured, Beauty form'd
Her face, her heart Fidelity ; for Gods
Design'd, a mortal too lone loVd.
These were the Nymphs elected for the hour 40
Of Hesperus and Hymen ; these had strown
The bridal bed, these tuned afresh the shells,
Wiping the green that hoarsen'd them within ;
These wove the chaplets, and at night resolv'd
To drive the dolphins from the wreathed door.
Gebir surveyed the concourse from the tents,
The Egyptian men around him ; 'twas observ'd
By those below how wistfully he lookt,
From what attention with what earnestness
Now to his city, now to theirs, he waved
His hand, and held it, while they spake, outspread.
They tarried with him and they shared the feast ;
GEBIR.
499
They stoopt with trembling hand from heavy jars
The wines of Gades gurgling in the bowl ;
Nor bent they homeward till the moon appear'd
To hang midway betwixt the earth and skies.
'Twas then that leaning o'er the boy belov'd,
In Ocean's grot where Ocean was unheard,
" Tamar ! " the Nymph said gently, " come,
awake !
Enough to love, enough to sleep, is given,
Haste we away." This Tamar deem'd deceit,
Spoken so fondly, and he kist her lips,
Nor blusht he then, for he was then unseen.
But she arising bade the youth arise.
" What cause to fly ? " said Tamar ; she replied
" Ask none for flight, and feign none for delay."
" 0 am I then deceived ! or am I cast
From dreams of pleasure to eternal sleep,
And, when I cease to shudder, cease to be ! "
She held the downcast bridegroom to her breast, 7°
Lookt in his face and charm'd away his fears.
She said not " wherefore have I then embraced
You a poor shepherd, or at most a man,
Myself a Nymph, that now I should deceive 1 "
She said not . . Tamar did, and was ashamed.
Him overcome her serious voice bespake.
"Grief favours all who bring the gift of tears :
Mild at first sight he meets his votaries
And casts no shadow as he comes along ;
But, after his embrace, the marble chills ^
The pausing foot, the closing door sounds loud,
The fiend in triumph strikes the roof, then falls
The eye uplifted from his lurid shade.
Tamar, depress thyself, and miseries
Darken and widen : yes, proud-hearted man !
The sea-bird rises as the billows rise ;
Nor otherwise when mountain floods descend
Smiles the unsullied lotus glossy-hair'd ;
Thou, claiming all things, leanest on thy claim
Till overwhelmed through incompliancy. ^
Tamar, some silent tempest gathers round !
" Round whom? " retorted Tamar, " thou
describe
The danger, I will dare it."
" Who will dare
What is unseen ? "
" The man that is unblest."
" But wherefore thou1? It threatens not thyself,
Nor me, but Gebir and the Gadite host."
" The more I know, the more a wretch am I,"
Groan'd deep the troubled youth, " still thou pro-
ceed."
" Oh seek not destin'd evils to divine,
Found out at last too soon ! cease here the search,100
'Tis vain, 'tis impious, 'tis no gift of mine :
I will impart far better, will impart
What makes, when Winter comes, the Sun to rest
So soon on Ocean's bed his paler brow,
And Night to tarry so at Spring's return.
And I will tell sometimes the fate of men
Who loost from drooping neck the restless arm
Adventurous, ere long nights had satisfied
The sweet and honest avarice of love ;
How whirlpools have absorb'd them, storms o'er-
whelm'd, no
And how amid their struggles and their prayers
The big wave blacken'd o'er the mouth supine :
Then, when my Tamar trembles at the tale,
Kissing his lips half-open with surprise,
Glance from the gloomy story, and with glee
Light on the fairer fables of the Gods.
" Thus we may sport at leisure when we go
Where, lov'd by Neptune and the Naiad, lov'd
By pensive Dryad pale, and Oread,
The sprightly Nymph whom constant Zephyr
woos, 12°
Rhine rolls his beryl-colour'd wave ; than Rhine
What river from the mountains ever came
More stately ? most the simple crown adorns
Of rushes and of willows intertwined
With here and there a flower : his lofty brow
Shaded with vines and mistletoe and oak
He rears, and mystic bards his fame resound.
Or gliding opposite, th' Illyrian gulf
Will harbour us from ill." While thus she spake
She toucht his eyelashes with libant lip 13°
And breath'd ambrosial odours, o'er his cheek
Celestial warmth suffusing : grief disperst,
And strength and pleasure beam'd upon his brow.
Then pointed she before him ; first arose
To his astonisht and delighted view
The sacred isle that shrines the queen of love.
It stood so near him, so acute each sense,
That not the symphony of lutes alone
Or coo serene or billing strife of doves,
But murmurs, whispers, nay the very sighs 14°
Which he himself had utter'd once, he heard.
Next, but long after and far off, appear
The cloudlike cliffs and thousand towers of Crete,
And further to the right the Cyclades ;
Phoebus had rais'd and fixt them, to surround
His native Delos and aerial fane.
He saw the land of Pelops, host of Gods,
Saw the steep ridge where Corinth after stood
Beckoning the serious with the smiling Arts
Into her sunbright bay ; unborn the maid 15°
That to assure the bent-up hand unskill'd
Lookt oft, but oftener fearing who might wake.
He heard the voice of rivers ; he descried
Pindan Peneiis and the slender Nymphs
That tread his banks but fear the thundering tide ;
These, and Amphrysos and Apidanos
And poplar-crown'd Sperchios, and, reclined
On restless rocks, Enipeus, where the winds
Scatter'd above the weeds his hoary hair.
Then, with Pirene and with Panope,
Evenos, troubled from paternal tears,
And last was Acheloos, king of isles.
Zacynthos here, above rose Ithaca,
Like a blue bubble floating in the bay.
Far onward to the left a glimmering light
Glanced out oblique, nor vanisht ; he inquired
Whence that arose ; his consort thus replied.
" Behold the vast Eridanus ! ere long
We may again behold him and rejoice.
Of noble rivers none with mightier force 17°
Rolls his unwearied torrent to the main."
And now Sicanian ./Etna rose to view :
Darkness with light more horrid she confounds,
500
GEBIR.
Baffles the breath and dims the sight of day.
Tamar grew giddy with astonishment
And, looking up, held fast the bridal vest ;
He heard the roar above him, heard the roar
Beneath, and felt it too, as he beheld,
Hurl, from Earth's base, rocks, mountains, to the
skies.
Meanwhile the Nymph had fixt her eyes be-
yond, 18°
As seeing somewhat, not intent on aught.
He, more amazed than ever, then exclaim'd
" Is there another flaming isle ? or this
Illusion, thus past over unobserved 1 "
"Look yonder" cried the Nymph, without
reply,
" Look yonder ! " Tamar lookt, and saw afar
Where the waves whitened on the desert shore.
When from amid grey ocean first he caught
The highths of Calpe, sadden'd he exclaim'd,
" Rock of Iberia ! fixt by Jove, and hung 19°
With all his thunder-bearing clouds, I hail
Thy ridges rough and cheerless ! what tho'
Spring
Nor kiss thy brow nor cool it with a flower,
Yet will I hail thee, hail thy flinty couch
Where Valour and where Virtue have reposed."
The Nymph said, sweetly smiling " Fickle Man
Would not be happy could he not regret ;
And I confess how, looking back, a thought
Has toucht and tuned or rather thrill'd my heart,
Too soft for sorrow and too strong for joy ; £0°
Fond foolish maid ! 'twas with mine own accord
It sooth'd me, shook me, melted, drown'd, in tears.
But weep not thou ; what cause hast thou to weep?
Would'st thou thy country 1 would'st those caves
abhorr'd,
Dungeons and portals that exclude the day ?
Gebir, though generous, just, humane, inhaled
Eank venom from these mansions. Rest, 0 king,
In Egypt thou ! nor, Tamar ! pant for sway.
With horrid chorus, Pain, Diseases, Death,
Stamp on the slippery pavement of the proud, 21°
And ring their sounding emptiness through earth.
Possess the ocean, me, thyself, and peace."
And now the chariot of the Sun descends,
The waves rush hurried from his foaming steeds,
Smoke issues from their nostrils at the gate,
Which, when they enter, with huge golden bar
Atlas and Calpe close across the sea.
SEVENTH BOOK.
What mortal first by adverse fate assail'd,
Trampled by tyranny or scofft by scorn,
Stung by remorse or wrung by poverty,
Bade with fond sigh his native land farewell 1
Wretched ! but tenfold wretched who resolv'd
Against the waves to plunge the expatriate keel
Deep with the richest harvest of his land !
Driven with that weak blast which Winter
leaves
Closing his palace-gates on Caucasus,
Oft hath a berry risen forth a shade ; 10
From the same parent plant another lies
Deaf to the daily call of weary hind ;
Zephyrs pass by and laugh at his distress.
By every lake's and every river's side
The Nymphs and Naiads teach equality ;
In voices gently querulous they ask,
" Who would with aching head and toiling arms
Bear the full pitcher to the stream far-off 1
Who would, of power intent on high emprise,
Deem less the praise to fill the vacant gulf M
Than raise Charybdis upon ^Etna's brow ] "
Amid her darkest caverns most retired,
Nature calls forth her filial elements
To close around and crush that monster Void :
Fire, springing fierce from his resplendent throne,
And Water, dashing the devoted wretch
Woundless and whole with iron-colour'd mace,
Or whirling headlong in his war-belt's fold.
Mark well the lesson, man ! and spare thy kind.
Go, from their midnight darkness wake the woods,30
Woo the lone forest in her last retreat ;
Many still bend their beauteous heads unblest
And sigh aloud for elemental man.
Thro' palaces and porches evil eyes
Light upon e'en the wretched, who have fled
The house of bondage or the house of birth ;
Suspicions, murmurs, treacheries, taunts, retorts,
Attend the brighter banners that invade,
And the first horn of hunter, pale with want,
Sounds to the chase, the second sounds to war.
The long awaited day at last arrived w
When, linkt together by the seven-armed Nile,
Egypt with proud Iberia should unite.
Here the Tartessian, there the Gaditc tents
Rang with impatient pleasure : here engaged
Woody Nebrissa's quiver-bearing crew,
Contending warm with amicable skill,
While they of Durius raced along the beach
And scatter'd mud and jeers on all behind.
The strength of Baetis too removed the helm 50
And stript the corslet off, and stauncht the
foot
Against the mossy maple, while they tore
Their quivering lances from the hissing wound.
Others push forth the prows of their compeers,
And the wave, parted by the pouncing beak,
Swells up the sides and closes far astern :
The silent oars now dip their level wings,
And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave.
Others, afraid of tardiness, return :
Now, entering the still harbour, every surge w
Runs with a louder murmur up their keel,
And the slack cordage rattles round the mast.
Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears
Had Gebir risen ere the break of dawn,
And o'er the plains appointed for the feast
Hurried with ardent step : the swains admired
What so transversely could have swept the dew ;
For never long one path had Gebir trod,
Nor long, unheeding man, one pace preserved.
Not thus Charoba : she despair'd the day ; 7°
The day was present ; true ; yet she despair'd.
In the too tender and once tortured heart
Doubts gather strength from habit, like disease ;
Fears, like the needle verging to the pole,
GEBIR.
501
Tremble and tremble into certainty.
How often, when her maids with merry voice
CalPd her, and told the sleepless queen 'twas
morn,
How often would she feign some fresh delay,
And tell 'em (though they saw) that she arose.
Next to her chamber, closed by cedar doors,
A bath of purest marble, purest wave,
On its fair surface bore its pavement high :
Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof,
With fluttering boys adorn'd and girls unrobed ;
These, when you touch the quiet water, start
From their aerial sunny arch, and pant
Entangled mid each other's flowery wreaths,
And each pursuing is in turn pursued.
Here came at last, as ever wont at morn,
Charoba : long she lingered at the brink,
Often she sigh'd, and, naked as she was,
Sate down, and leaning on the couch's edge,
On the soft inward pillow of her arm
Rested her burning cheek : she moved her eyes ;
She blusht ; and blushing plunged into the wave
Now brazen chariots thunder through each
street,
And neighing steeds paw proudly from delay.
While o'er the palace breathes the dulcimer,
Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed,
Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the
throng 10°
And urge the high-shoulder'd vulgar; now are
heard
Curses and quarrels and constricted blows,
Threats and defiance and suburban war.
Hark ! the reiterated clangour sounds !
Now murmurs, like the sea or like the storm
Or like the flames on forests, move and mount
From rank to rank, and loud and louder roll,
Till all the people is one vast applause.
Yes, 'tis herself, Charoba. Now the strife
To see again a form so often seen.
Feel they some partial pang, some secret void,
Some doubt of feasting those fond eyes again 1
Panting imbibe they that refreshing sight
To reproduce in hour of bitterness ]
She goes, the king awaits her from the camp :
Him she descried, and trembled ere he reacht
Her car, but shuddered paler at his voice.
So the pale silver at the festive board
Grows paler fill'd afresh and dew'd with wine ;
So seems the tenderest herbage of the spring
To whiten, bending from a balmy gale.
The beauteous queen alighting he received,
And sigh'd to loose her from his arms ; she hung
A little longer on them through her fears.
Her maidens follow'd her ; and one that watcht,
One that had call'd her in the morn, observ'd
How virgin passion with unfuel'd flame
Burns into whiteness, while the blushing cheek
Imagination heats and shame imbues.
Between both nations drawn in ranks they pass :130
The priests, with linen ephods, linen robes,
Attend their steps, some follow, some precede,
Where clothed with purple intertwined with gold
Two lofty thrones commanded land and main.
Behind and near them numerous were the tents
As freckled clouds o'erfbat our vernal skies,
Numerous as wander in warm moonlight nights
Along Meander's or Cayster's marsh
Swans pliant-neckt and village storks revered.
Throughout each nation moved the hum confused,140
Like that from myriad wings o'er Scythian cups
Of frothy milk, concreted soon with blood.
Throughout the fields the savoury smoke ascends,
And boughs and branches shade the "hides un-
broacht.
Some roll the flowery turf into a seat,
And others press the helmet. Now resounds
The signal ! queen and monarch mount the
thrones.
The brazen clarion hoarsens : many leagues
Above them, many to the south, the heron
Rising with hurried croak and throat outstretcht,160
Ploughs up the silvering surface of her plain.
Tottering with age's zeal and mischief's haste
Now was discover'd Dalica ; she reacht
The throne, she leant against the pedestal,
And now ascending stood before the king.
Prayers for his health and safety she preferr'd,
And o'er his head and o'er his feet she threw
Myrrh, nard, and cassia, from three golden urns ;
His robe of native woof she next removed,
And round his shoulders drew the garb accurst, 16°
And bow'd her head, departing : soon the queen
Saw the blood mantle in his manly cheeks,
And fear'd, and faltering sought her lost replies,
And blest the silence that she wisht were broke.
Alas, unconscious maiden ! night shall close,
And love and sovranty and life dissolve,
And Egypt be one desert drencht in blood.
When thunder overhangs the fountain-head,
Losing its wonted freshness every stream
Grows turbid, grows with sickly warmth suffused :17°
Thus were the brave Iberians when they saw
The king of nations from his throne descend.
Scarcely, with pace uneven, knees unnerv'd,
Reacht he the waters : in his troubled ear
They sounded murmuring drearily ; they rose
Wild, in strange colours, to his parching eyes ;
They seem'd to rush around him, seem'd to lift
From the receding earth his helpless feet.
He fell : Charoba shriekt aloud ; she ran ;
Frantic with fears and fondness, mazed with woe,180
Nothing but Gebir dying she beheld.
The turban that betray'd its golden charge
Within, the veil that down her shoulder hung,
All fallen at her feet ! the furthest wave
Creeping with silent progress up the sand,
Glided through all, and rais'd their hollow folds.
In vain they bore him to the sea, in vain
Rubb'd they his temples with the briny warmth ;
He struggled from them, strong with agony,
He rose half up, he fell again, he cried
" Charoba ! 0 Charoba ! " She embraced
His neck, and raising on her knee one arm,
Sigh'd when it moved not, when it fell she
shriekt,
And clasping loud both hands above her head,
She call'd on Gebir, call'd on earth, on heaven,
502
GEBIH.
" Who will believe me ? what shall I protest ?
How innocent, thus wretched ? God of Gods,
Strike me . . who most offend thee most defy . .
Charoba most offends thee : strike me, hurl
From this accursed land, this faithless throne. 20°
0 Dalica ! see here the royal feast !
See here the gorgeous robe ! you little thought
How have the demons dyed that robe with death.
Where are ye, dear fond parents ! when ye heard
My feet in childhood pat the palace-floor,
Ye started forth and kist away surprise :
Will ye now meet me 1 how, and where, and when?
And must I fill your bosom with toy tears,
And, what I never have done, with your own I
Why have the Gods thus punisht me? what
harm
Have ever I done them? have I profaned
Their temples, askt too little, or too much ?
Proud if they granted, griev'd if they withheld ?
0 mother ! stand between your child and them !
Appease them, soothe them, soften their revenge,
Melt them to pity with maternal tears.
Alas, but if you can not ! they themselves
Will then want pity rather than your child.
0 Gebir ! best of monarchs, best of men,
What realm hath ever thy firm even hand 2SO
Or lost by feebleness or held by force ?
Behold thy cares and perils how repaid !
Behold the festive day, the nuptial hour ! "
Thus raved Charoba : horror, grief, amaze,
Pervaded all the host ; all eyes were fixt ;
All stricken motionless and mute : the feast
Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword
Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrain'd,
And the hilt rattled in his marble hand.
She heard not, saw not, every sense was gone ; 23°
One passion banisht all ; dominion, praise,
The world itself, was nothing. Senseless man !
What would thy fancy figure now from worlds ?
There is no world to those that grieve and love.
She hung upon his bosom, prest his lips,
Breath'd, and would feign it his that she resorb'd,
She chafed the feathery softness of hia veins,
That swell'd out black, like tendrils round their
vase
After libation : lo ! he moves ! he groans !
He seems to struggle from the grasp of death I240
Charoba shriekt and fell away, her hand
Still clasping his, a sudden blush o'erspread
Her pallid humid cheek, and disappear'd.
'Twas not the blush of shame ; what shame has
woe?
'Twas not the genuine ray of hope ; it flasht
With shuddering glimmer through unscatter'd
clouds,
It flasht from passions rapidly opposed.
Never so eager, when the world was waves,
Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried
(Innocent this temptation !) to recall
With folded vest and casting arm the dove ;
Never so fearful, when amid the vines
Rattled the hail, and when the light of heaven
Closed, since the wreck of Nature, first eclipst,
As she was eager for his life's return,
As she was fearful how his groans might end.
They ended : cold and languid calm succeeds ;
His eyes have lost their lustre, but his voice
Is not unheard, though short: he spake these
words.
" And weepest thou, Charoba ! shedding tears260
More precious than the jewels that surround
The neck of kings entomb'd ! then weep, fair
queen,
At once thy pity and my pangs assuage.
Ah ! what is grandeur ? glory ? they are past !
When nothing else, not life itself, remains,
Still the fond mourner may be call'd our own.
Should I complain of Fortune ? how she errs,
Scattering her bounty upon barren ground,
Slow to allay the lingering thirst of toil ?
Fortune, 'tis true, may err, may hesitate,
Death follows close nor hesitates nor errs.-
I feel the stroke ! I die ! " He would extend
His dying arm : it fell upon his breast ;
Cold sweat and shivering ran o'er every limb,
His eyes grew stiff, he struggled, and expired.
ACTS AND SCENES.
COUNT JULIAN.
None of these poems of a dramatic form were offered to the stage, being no better than Imaginary Conversations
in metre.
CHARACTERS.
COUNT JULIAN. RODERIGO, King of Spain. OPAS, Metro-
politan of Seville. SISABERT, betrothed to COVILLA.
MUZA, Prince of Mauritania. ABDALAZIS, son of MUZA.
TARIK, Moorish Chieftain. COVILLA.,* daughter of
JULIAN. EGiLONA,«n/e o/ RODERIGO. HBRNANDO, OSMA:
RAMIBO, &c., Officers.
FIRST ACT : FIRST SCENE.
Camp of Julian.
OPAS. JULIAN.
Opas. See her, Count Julian ; if thoulovest God,
See thy lost child.
Julian. I have avenged me, Opas,
More than enough : I only sought to hurl
The brands of war on one detested head,
And die upon his ruin. 0 my country !
O lost to honour, to thyself, to me,
Why on barbarian hands devolves thy cause,
Spoilers, blasphemers !
Opas. Is it thus, Don Julian,
When thy own offspring, that beloved child
For whom alone these very acts were done
By them and thee, when thy Covilla stands
An outcast and a suppliant at thy gate,
Why that still stubborn agony of soul,
Those struggles with the bars thyself imposed 1
Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever]
Julian. Father of mercies ! show me none,
whene'er
* The daughter of Count Julian is usually called
Plorinda. The city of Covilla, it is reported, was named
after her. Here is no improbability : there would be a
gross one in deriving the word, as is also pretended, from
La Cava. Cities, in adopting a name, bear it usually as a
testimony of victories or as an augury of virtues. Small
and obscure places occasionally receive what their neigh-
bours throw against them ; as Puerto de la mala muger
in Murcia : but a generous people would affix no stigma
to innocence and misfortune. It is remarkable that the
most important era in Spanish history should be the most
obscure. This is propitious to the poet, and above all to
the tragedian. Few characters of such an era can be
glaringly misrepresented, few facts offensively perverted.
The wrongs she suffers cease to wring my heart,
Or I seek solace ever, but in death.
Opas. What wilt thou do then, too unhappy man?
Julian. What have I done already? All my peace
Has vanisht ; my fair fame in aftertime
Will wear an alien and uncomely form,
Seen o'er the cities I have laid in dust,
Countrymen slaughtered, friends abjured !
Opas. And faith?
Julian. Alone now left me, filling up in part
The narrow and waste intervals of grief :
It promises that I shall see again
My own lost child.
Opas. Yes, at this very hour.
Julian. Till I have met the tyrant face to face,
And gain'd a conquest greater than the last;
Till he no longer rules one rood of Spain,
And not one Spaniard, not one enemy,
The least relenting, flags upon his flight ;
Till we are equal in the eyes of men,
The humblest and most wretched of our kind,
No peace for me, no comfort, no . . no child !
Opas. No pity for the thousands fatherless,
The thousands childless like thyself, nay more,
The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless . .
Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so,
Who now perhaps, round their first winter fire,
Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old,.
Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown :
Precious be these and sacred in thy sight,
Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind.
If only warlike spirits were evoked
By the war-demon, I would not complain,
Or dissolute and discontented men ;
But wherefore hurry down into the square
The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race,
Who would not injure us, and can not serve ;
Who, from their short and measured slumber risen,
In the faint sunshine of their balconies,
With a half-legend of a martyrdom
And some weak wine and withered grapes before
them,
Note by their foot the wheel of melody
That catches and rolls on the Sabbath dance.
504
To drag the steady prop from failing age,
Break the young stem that fondness twines around,
Widen the solitude of lonely sighs,
And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day
The ruins and the phantoms that replied,
Ne'er be it thine.
Julian. Arise, and save me, Spain !
COUNT JULIAN. [ACT x.
FIRST ACT : THIRD SCENE.
Guard announces a Herald. OPAS departs.
Guard. A messager of peace is at the gate,
FIRST ACT : SECOND SCENE.
MUZA enters.
Muza. Infidel chief, thou tarriest here too long,
And art perhaps repining at the days
Of nine continued victories o'er men
Dear to thy soul, tho' reprobate and base.
Away ! [He retires.
Julian. I follow. Could my bitterest foes
Hear this ! ye Spaniards, this ! which I foreknew
And yet encounter'd ; could they see your Julian
Receiving orders from and answering
These desperate and heaven-abandoned slaves,
They might perceive some few external pangs,
Some glimpses of the hell wherein I move,
Who never have been fathers.
Opas. These are they
To whom brave Spaniards must refer their wrongs !
Julian. Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief,
Distrusts his friends more than his enemies,
Me more than either ; fraud he loves and fears,
And watches her still footfall day and night.
Opas. 0 Julian ! such a refuge ! such a race !
Julian. . . Calamities like mine alone implore.
No virtues have redeem'd them from their bonds;
Wily ferocity, keen idleness,
And the close cringes of ill-whispering want,
Educate them to plunder and obey :
Active to serve him best whom most they fear,
They show no mercy to the merciful,
And racks alone remind them of the name.
Opas. 0 everlasting curse for Spain and thee !
Julian. Spain should have vindicated then her
wrongs
In mine, a Spaniard's and a soldier's wrongs.
Opas. Julian, are thine the only wrongs on
earth1?
And shall each Spaniard rather vindicate
Thine than his own ? is there no Judge of all ?
Shall mortal hand seize with impunity
The sword of vengeance from the armoury
Of the Most High ] easy to wield, and starred
With glory it appears ; but all the host
Of the archangels, should they strive at once,
Would never close again its widening blade.
Julian. He who provokesit hath so much to rue.
Where'er he turn, whether to earth or heaven,
He finds an enemy, or raises one.
Opas. I never yet have seen where long success
Hath followed him who warred upon his king.
Julian. Because the virtue that inflicts the
stroke
Dies with him, and the rank ignoble heads
Of plundering faction soon unite again,
And prince-protected share the spoil at rest.
My lord, safe access, private audience,
And free return, he claims.
Julian. Conduct him in.
RODEKIGO enters as a herald.
A messager of peace ! audacious man !
In what attire appearest thou 1 a herald's ?
Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.
Roderigo. Thy violence and fancied wrongs I
know,
And what thy sacrilegious hands would do,
0 traitor and apostate !
Julian. What they would
They can not : thee of kingdom and of life
'Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,
Thyself the viola'tor of allegiance.
0 would all-righteous Heaven they could restore
The joy of innocence, the calm of age,
The probity of manhood, pride of arms,
And confidence of honour ! the august
And holy laws trampled beneath thy feet,
And Spain ! 0 parent, I have lost thee too !
Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,
Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe,
Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,
Sublime in hardihood and piety :
Her strength was mine : I, sailing by her clifis,
By promontory after promontory,
Opening like flags along some castle-tower,
Have sworn before the cross upon our mast
Ne'er shall invader wave his standard there.
Roderigo. Yet there thou plantest it, false man,
thyself.
Julian. Accursed he who makes me this
reproach,
And made it just ! Had I been happy still,
1 had been blameless : I had died with glory
Upon the walls of Ceuta.
Roderigo. Which thy treason
Surrendered to the Infidel.
Julian. 'Tis hard
And base to live beneath a conqueror ;
Yet, amid all this grief and infamy,
'Twere something to have rusht upon the ranks
In their advance ; 'twere something to have stood
Defeat, discomfiture, and, when around
No beacon blazes, no far axle groans
Thro' the wide plain, no sound of sustenance
Or succour soothes the still-believing ear,
To fight upon the last dismantled tower,
And yield to valour, if we yield at all.
But rather should my neck lie trampled down
By every Saracen and Moor on earth,
Than my own country see her laws o'erturn'd
By those who should protect them. Sir, no prince
Shall ruin Spain, and, least of all, her own.
Is any just or glorious act in view,
Your oaths forbid it : is your avarice,
Or, if there be such, any viler passion
To have its giddy range and to be gorged,
SCENE IV.]
COUNT JULIAN.
505
It rises over all your sacraments,
A hooded mystery, holier than they all.
Roderigo. Hear me, Don Julian ; I have heard
thy wrath
Who am thy king, nor heard man's wrath before.
Julian. Thou shalt hear mine, for thou art not
my king.
Roderigo. Knowest thou not the altered face
of war ?
Xeres is ours ; from every region round
True loyal Spaniards throng into our camp :
Nay, thy own friends and thy own family,
From the remotest provinces, advance
To crush rebellion : Sisabert is come,
Disclaiming thee and thine ; the Asturian hills
Oppose to him their icy chains in vain :
But never wilt thou see him, never more,
Unless in adverse war and deadly hate.
Julian. So lost to me ! so generous, so deceived !
I grieve to hear it.
Roderigo. Come, I offer grace,
Honour, dominion : send away these slaves,
Or leave them to our sword, and all beyond
The distant Ebro to the towns of France
Shall bless thy name and bend before thy throne.
I will myself accompany thee, I,
The king, will hail thee brother.
Julian. Ne'er shalt thou
Henceforth be king : the nation in thy name
May issue edicts, champions may command
The vassal multitudes of marshal'd war,
And the fierce charger shrink before the shouts,
Lower'd as if earth had open'd at his feet,
While thy mail'd semblance rises tow'rd the ranks,
But God alone sees thee.
Roderigo. What hopest thou 1
To conquer Spain, and rule a ravaged land 1
To compass me around ] to murder me 1
Julian. No, Don Roderigo : swear thou, in
the fight
That thou wilt meet me, hand to hand, alone,
That, if I ever save thee from a foe . .
Roderigo. I swear what honour asks. First, to
Covilla
Do thou present my crown and dignity.
Julian. Darest thou offer any price for shame]
Roderigo. Love and repentance.
Julian. Egilona lives ;
And were she buried with her ancestors,
Covilla should not be the gaze of men,
Should not, despoil'd of honour, rule the free.
Roderigo. Stern man ! her virtues well deserve
the throne.
Julian. And Egilona, what hath she deserv'd,
The good, the lovely ]
Roderigo. But the realm in vain
Hoped a succession.
Julian. Thou hast torn away
The roots of royalty.
Roderigo. For her, for thee.
Julian. Blind insolence ! base insincerity !
Power and renown no mortal ever shared
Who could retain or grasp them to himself :
And, for Covilla 1 patience! peace! for her?
She call upon her God, and outrage him
At his own altar ! she repeat the vows
She violates in repeating ! who abhors
Thee and thy crimes, and wants no crown of thine.
Force may compell the abhorrent soul, or want
Lash and pursue it to the public ways ;
Virtue looks back and weeps, and may return
To these, but never near the abandon'd one
Who drags religion to adultery's feet,
And rears the altar higher for her sake.
Roderigo. Have then the Saracens possest thee
quite ?
And wilt thou never yield me thy consent 1
Julian. Never.
Roderigo. So deep in guilt, in treachery!
Forced to acknowledge it ! forced to avow
The traitor !
Julian. Not to thee, who reignest not,
But to a country ever dear to me,
And dearer now than ever ! What we love
Is loveliest in departure ! One I thought,
As every father thinks, the best of all,
Graceful and mSd and sensible and chaste :
Now all these qualities of form and soul
Fade from before me, nor on anyone
Can I repose, or be consoled by any.
And yet in this torn heart I love her more
Than I could love her when I dwelt on each,
Or claspt them all united, and thankt God,
Without a wish beyond. Away, thou fiend !
0 ignominy, last and worst of all !
1 weep before thee . . like a child . . like mine . .
And tell my woes, fount of them all ! to thee !
FIEST ACT : FOURTH SCENE.
ABDALAZIS enters.
Abdalazis. Julian, to thee, the terror of the
faithless,
I bring my father's order to prepare
For the bright day that crowns thy brave exploits.
Our enemy is at the very gate,
And art thou here, with women in thy train,
Crouching to gain admittance to their lord,
And mourning the unkindness of delay !
Julian, (agitated, goes toward the door, and
returns.) I am prepared : Prince, judge not
hastily.
Abdalazis. Whether I should not promise all
they ask,
I too could hesitate, though earlier taught
The duty to obey, and should rejoice
To shelter in the universal storm
A frame so delicate, so full of fears,
So little used to outrage and to arms,
As one of these, so humble, so uncheer'd
At the gay pomp that smooths the track of war.
When she beheld me from afar dismount,
And heard my trumpet, she alone drew back,
And, as though doubtful of the help she seeks,
Shudder'd to see the jewels on my brow,
And turn'd her eyes away, and wept aloud.
The other stood awhile, and then advanced :
506
COUNT JULIAN.
[ ACT II.
I would have spoken ; but she waved her hand
And said, " Proceed, protect us, and avenge,
And be thou worthier of the crown thou wearest."
Hopeful and happy is indeed our cause,
When the most timid of the lovely hail
Stranger and foe.
Boderigo (unnoticed by Abdalazis). And shrink
but to advance.
Abdcdazis. Thou tremblest 1 whence, 0 Julian !
whence this change]
Thou lovest still thy country.
Julian. Abdalazis!
All men with human feelings love their country.
Not the highborn or wealthy man alone,
Who looks upon his children, each one led
By its gay handmaid from the high alcove,
And hears them once a-day ; not only he
Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires
The name of some far village all his own ;
Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills
Touch the last cloud upon the level sky :
No ; better men still better love their country.
'Tis the old mansion of their earliest friends,
The chapel of their first and best devotions.
When violence or perfidy invades,
Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there,
And wiser heads are drooping round its moats,
At last they fix their steady and stiff eye
There, there alone, stand while the trumpet blows,
And view the hostile flames above its towers
Spire, with a bitter and severe delight.
Abdalazis (taking his hand). Thou feelestwhat
thou speakest, and thy Spain
Will ne'er be shelter'd from her fate by thee.
We, whom the Prophet sends o'er many lands,
Love none above another ; Heaven assigns
Their fields and harvests to our valiant swords,
And 'tis enough : we love while we enjoy.
Whence is the man in that fantastic guise 1
Suppliant ] or herald ? he who stalks about,
And once was even seated while we spoke :
For never came he with us o'er the sea.
Julian. He comes as herald.
Roderigo. Thou shalt know full soon,
Insulting Moor !
Abdalazis. He ill endures the grief
His country suffers : I will pardon him.
He lost his courage first, and then his mind ;
His courage rushes back, his mind yet wanders.
The guest of heaven was piteous to these men,
And princes stoop to feed them in their courts.
FIRST ACT : FIFTH SCENE.
RODERICK) is going : MUZA enters with EGILONA :
RODERIGO starts back.
Muza (sternly to EGILONA). Enter, since 'tis the
custom in this land.
Egilona (passing MUZA, points to ABDALAZIS.)
Is this our future monarch, or art thou ?
Julian. 'Tis Abdalazis, son of Muza, prince
Commanding Africa, from Abyla
To where Tunisian pilots bend the eye
O'er ruin'd temples in the glassy wave.
Till quiet times and ancient laws return
He comes to govern here.
Boderigo. To-morrow's dawn
Proves that.
Muza. What art thou ?
Boderigo (drawing his sword). Bang.
A bdalazis. Amazement !
Muza. Treason !
Egilona. 0 horror !
Muza. Seize him.
Egilona. Spare him ! fly to me !
Julian. Urge me not to protect a guest, a
herald,
The blasts of war roar over him unfelt.
Egilona. Ah fly, unhappy !
Boderigo. Fly ! no, Egilona !
Dost thou forgive me ? dost thou love me 1 still ]
Egilona. I hate, abominate, abhor thee . . go,
Or my own vengeance . .
RODERIGO (takes JULIAN'S hand ; invites him to
attack MUZA and ABDALAZIS.) Julian !
Julian. Hence, or die.
SECOND ACT : FIRST SCENE.
Camp of JULIAN.
JULIAN and COVILLA.
Julian. Obdurate? I am not as I appear.
Weep, my beloved child ! Covilla, weep
Into my bosom ; every drop be mine
Of this most bitter soul-empoisoning cup :
Into no other bosom than thy father's
Canst thou or wouldst thou pour it.
Covitta. Cease, my lord,
My father, angel of my youth, when all
Was innocence and peace.
Julian. Arise, my love,
Look up to heaven . . where else are souls like
thine !
Mingle in sweet communion with its children,
Trust in its providence, its retribution,
And I will cease to mourn ; for, 0 my child,
These tears corrode, but thine assuage, the heart.
Covilla,. And never shall I see my mother too,
My own, my blessed mother?
Julian. Thou shalt see
Her and thy brothers.
Covilla. No ! I can not look
On them, I can not meet their lovely eyes,
I can not lift mine up from under theirs.
We all were children when they went away ;
They now have fought hard battles, and are men,
And camps and kings they know, and woes and
crimes.
Sir, will they never venture from the walls
Into the plain 1 Remember, they are young,
Hardy and emulous and hazardous,
And who is left to guard them in the town 1
Julian. Peace is throughout the land: the
various tribes
Of that vast region sink at once to rest,
Like one wide wood when every wind lies husht.
SCENE II.]
COUNT JULIAN.
507
Covilla. And war, in all its fury, roams o'er
Spain !
Julian. Alas ! and will for ages : crimes are
loose
At which ensanguined War stands shuddering,
And calls for vengeance from the> powers above,
Impatient of inflicting it himself.
Nature in these new horrors is aghast
At her own progeny, and knows them not.
I am the minister of wrath ; the hands
That tremble at me, shall applaud me too,
And seal their condemnation.
• Covilla. 0 kind father,
Pursue the guilty, but remember Spain.
Julian. Child, thou wert in thy nursery short
time since,
And latterly hast past the vacant hour
Where the familiar voice of history
Is hardly known, however nigh, attuned
In softer accents to the sickened ear ;
But thou hast heard, for nurses tell these tales,
Whether I drew my sword for Witiza
Abandoned by the people he betrayed,
Tho' brother to the woman who of all
Was ever dearest to this broken heart,
Till thou, my daughter, wert a prey to grief,
And a brave country brookt the wrongs I bore.
For I had seen Rusilla guide the steps
Of her Theodofred, when burning brass
Plunged its fierce fang into the fount of light,
And Witiza's the guilt ! when, bent with age,
He knew the voice again, and told the name
Of those whose proffer'd fortunes had been laid
Before his throne, while happiness was there,
And strain'd the sightless nerve tow'rd where
they stood,
At the forced memory of the very oaths
He heard renew'd from each, but heard afar,
For they were loud, and him the throng spurn'd
off.
Covilla. Who were all these ?
Julian. All who are seen to-day
On prancing steeds richly caparisoned
In loyal acclamation round Roderigo ;
Their sons beside them, loving one another
Unfeignedly, thro' joy, while they themselves
In mutual homage mutual scorn suppress.
Their very walls and roofs are welcoming
The king's approach, their storied tapestry
Swells its rich arch for him triumphantly
At every clarion blowing from below.
Covilla. Such wicked men will never leave his
side.
Julian. For they are insects which see nought
beyond
Where they now crawl; whose changes are
complete,
Unless of habitation.
Covilla. Whither go
Creatures unfit for better or for worse ]
Julian. Some to the grave, where peace be with
them ! some
Across the Pyrenean mountains far,
Into the plains of France ; suspicion there
Will hang on every step from rich and poor,
Grey quickly-glancing eyes will wrinkle round
And courtesy will watch them, day and night.
Shameless they are, yet will they blush amid
A nation that ne'er blushes : some will drag
The captive's chain, repair the shatter'd bark,
Or heave it from a quicksand to the shore
Among the marbles of the Lybian coast,
Teach patience to the lion in his cage,
And, by the order of a higher slave,
Hold to the elephant their scanty fare
To please the children while the parent sleeps.
Covilla. Spaniards'? must they, dear father,
lead such lives 1
Julian. All are not Spaniards who draw breath
in Spain,
Those are, who live for her, who die for her,
Who love her glory and lament her fall.
0 may I too . .
Covilla. But peacefully, and late,
Live and die here !
Julian. I have, alas ! myself
Laid waste the hopes where my fond fancy stray'd,
And view their ruins with unalter'd eyes.
Covilla. My mother will at last return to you.
Might I once more, but . . could I now? behold her.
Tell her . . ah me ! what was my rash desire ?
No, never tell her these inhuman things,
For they would waste her tender heart away
As they waste mine ; or tell when I have died,
Only to show her that her every care
Could not have saved, could not have comforted ;
That she herself, clasping me once again
To her sad breast, had said, Covilla ! go,
Go, hide them in the bosom of thy God !
Sweet mother ! that far-distant voice I hear,
And, passing out of youth and out of life,
1 would not turn at last, and disobey.
SECOND ACT: SECOND SCENE.
SISABERT enters.
Sisabert. Uncle, and is it true, say, can it be,
That thou art leader of these faithless Moors?
That thou impeachest thy own daughter's fame
Thro' the whole land, to seize upon the throne
By the permission of these recreant slaves ?
What shall I call thee? art thou, speak Count
Julian,
A father, or a soldier, or a man 1
Julian. All, or this day had never seen me here.
Sisabert. 0 falsehood ! worse than woman's !
Covilla. Once, my cousin,
Far gentler words were utter'd from your lips.
If you loved me, you loved my father first,
More justly and more steadily, ere love
Was passion and illusion and deceit.
Sisabert. I boast not that I never was deceived,
Covilla, which beyond all boasts were base,
Nor that I never loved ; let this be thine.
Illusions ! just to stop us, not delay,
Amuse, not occupy ! Too true ! when love
Scatters its brilliant foam, and passes on
508
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT n.
To some fresh object in its natural course,
Widely and openly and wanderingly,
'Tis better : narrow it, and it pours its gloom
In one fierce cataract that stuns the soul.
Ye hate the wretch ye make so, while ye choose
Whoever knows you best and shuns you most.
Covilla. Shun me then : be beloved more and
more.
Honour the hand that show'd you honour first,
Love . . 0 my father ! speak, proceed, persuade,
Your voice alone can utter it . . another.
Sisabert. Ah lost Covilla! can a thirst of power
Alter thy heart thus to abandon mine,
And change my very nature at one blow ?
Covilla. I told you, dearest Sisabert, 'twas vain
To urge me more, to question or confute.
Sisabert. I know it, for another wears the crown
Of Witiza my father ; who succeeds
To king Eoderigo will succeed to me.
Yet thy cold perfidy still calls me dear,
And o'er my aching temples breathes one gale
Of days departed to return no more.
Julian. Young man, avenge our cause.
Sisabert. . What cause avenge ?
Covilla. If I was ever dear to you, hear me,
Not vengeance ; heaven will give that signal soon.
0 Sisabert, the pangs I have endured
On your long absence . .
Sisabert. Will be now consoled.
Thy father comes to mount my father's throne ;
But though I would not a usurper king,
1 prize his valour and defend his crown :
No stranger and no traitor rules o'er me,
Or unchastised inveigles humble Spain.
Covilla, gavest thou no promises ?
Nor thou, Don Julian ? Seek not to reply,
Too well I know, too justly I despise,
Thy false excuse, thy coward effrontery ;
Yes, when thou gavest them across the sea,
An enemy wert thou to Mahomet,
And no appellant to his faith or leagues.
Julian. 'Tis well : a soldier hears throughout
in silence.
I urge no answer : to those words, I fear,
Thy heart with sharp compunction will reply.
Sisabert (to COVILLA.) Then I demand of thee,
before thou reign,
Answer me . . while I fought against the Frank
Who dared to sue thee ] blazon'd in the court,
Not trailed thro' darkness, were our nuptial bands;
No ; Egilona join'd our hands herself,
The peers applauded and the king approved.
Julian. Hast thou yet seen that king since thy
return ?
Covilla. Father ! 0 Father !
Sisabert. I will not implore
Of him or thee what I have lost for ever.
These were not, when we parted, thy alarms ;
Far other, and far worthier of thy heart
Were they, which Sisabert could banish then.
Fear me not now, Covilla ! thou hast changed,
I am changed too. I lived but where thou livedst,
My very life was portion'd off from thine :
Upon the surface of thy happiness
Day after day I gazed, I doted, there
Was all I had, was all I coveted ;
So pure, serene, and boundless it appear'd :
Yet, for we told each other every thought,
Thou knowest well, if thou rememberest,
At times I fear'd ; as tho' some demon sent
Suspicion without form into the world,
To whisper unimaginable things.
Then thy fond arguing banisht all but hope,
Each wish and every feeling was with thine,
Till I partook thy nature, and became
Credulous and incredulous like thee.
We, who have met so alter'd, meet no more.
Mountains and seas ! ye are not separation :
Death ! thou dividest, but nnitest too
In everlasting peace and faith sincere.
Confiding love ! where is thy resting-place 1
Where is thy truth, Covilla ? where ? . . Go, go . .
I should believe thee and adore thee still.
[Goes.
Covilla. 0 Heaven ! support me, or desert me
quite,
And leave me lifeless this too trying hour !
He thinks me faithless.
Julian. He must think thee so.
Covilla. 0 tell him, tell him all, when I am
dead . .
He will die too, and we shall meet again.
He will know all when these sad eyes are closed.
Ah can not he before 1 must I appear
The vilest . . 0 just Heaven ! can it be thus]
I am . . all earth resounds it . . lost, despised,
Anguish and shame unutterable seize me.
'Tis palpable, no phantom, no delusion,
No dream that wakens with o'erwhelming horror ;
Spaniard and Moor fight on this ground alone,
And tear the arrow from my bleeding breast
To pierce my father's, for alike they fear.
Julian. Invulnerable, unassailable
Are we, alone perhaps of human kind,
Nor life allures us more nor death alarms.
Covilla. Fallen, unpitied, unbelieved, unheard !
I should have died long earlier. Gracious God !
Desert me to my sufferings, but sustain
My faith in thee I 0 hide me from the world,
And from yourself, my father, from your fondness,
That opened in this wilderness of woe
A source of tears . . it else had burst my heart,
Setting me free for ever : then perhaps
A cruel war had not divided Spain,
Had not o'erturn'd her cities and her altars,
Had not endanger'd you ! 0 haste afar
Ere the last dreadful conflict that decides
Whether we live beneath a foreign sway . .
Julian. Or under him whose tyranny brought
down
The curse upon his people. 0 child ! child !
Urge me no further, talk not of the war,
Remember not our country.
Covilla. Not remember !
What have the wretched else for consolation ]
What else have they who pining feed their woe ?
Can I, or should I, drive from memory
All that was dear and sacred 1 all the joys
SCENE III.]
COUNT JULIAN.
509
Of innocence and peace ? when no debate
Was in the convent, but what hymn, whose voice,
To whom among the blessed it arose,
Swelling so SAveet ; when rang the vesper-bell
And every finger ceast from the guitar,
And every tongue was silent through our land ;
When, from remotest earth, friends met again,
Hung on each other's neck, and but embraced,
So sacred, still, and peaceful was the hour.
Now, in what climate of the wasted world,
Not unmolested long by the profane,
Can I pour forth in secrecy to God
My prayers and my repentance ] where beside
Is the last solace of the parting soul ]
Friends, brethren, parents, dear indeed, too dear
Are they, but somewhat yet the heart requires,
That it may leave them lighter and more blest.
Julian. Wide are the regions of our far-famed
land :
Thou shalt arrive at her remotest bounds,
See her best people, choose some holiest house ;
Whether where Castro from surrounding vines
Hears the hoarse ocean roar among his caves,
And, thro' the fissure in the green churchyard,
The wind wail loud the calmest summer day ;
Or where Santona leans against the hill,
Hidden from sea and land by groves and bowers.
Covilla. 0 ! for one moment in those pleasant
scenes
Thou placest me, and lighter air I breathe :
Why could I not have rested, and heard on !
My voice dissolves the vision quite away,
Outcast from virtue, and from nature too !
Julian. Nature and virtue ! they shall perish
first.
God destined them for thee, and thee for them,
Inseparably and eternally !
The wisest and the best will prize thee most,
And solitudes and cities will contend
Which shall receive thee kindliest. Sigh not so :
Violence and fraud will never penetrate
Where piety and poverty retire,
Intractable to them and valueless,
And lookt at idly like the face of heaven.
If strength be wanted for security,
Mountains the guard, forbidding all approach
With iron-pointed and uplifted gates,
Thou wilt be welcome too in Aguilar,
Impenetrable, marble-turreted,
Surveying from aloft the limpid ford,
The massive fane, the sylvan avenue ;
Whose hospitality I proved myself,
A willing leader in no impious war
When fame and freedom urged me ; or mayst
dwell
In Eeynosa's dry and thriftless dale,
Unharvested beneath October moons,
Among those frank and cordial villagers.
They never saw us, and, poor simple souls !
So little know they whom they call the great,
Would pity one another less than us,
In injury, disaster, or distress.
Covilla. But they would ask each other whence
our grief,
That they might pity.
Julian. Eest then just beyond,
In the secluded scenes where Ebro springs
And drives not from his fount the fallen leaf,
So motionless and tranquil its repose.
Covilla. Thither let us depart, and speedily.
Julian. I can not go : I live not in the land
I have reduced beneath such wretchedness :
And who could leave the brave whose lives and
fortunes
Hang on his sword ]
Covilla. Me thou canst leave,
my father ;
Ah yes, for it is past ; too well thou seest
My life and fortunes rest not upon thee.
Long, happily. . could it be gloriously !
Still mayst thou live, and save thy country still !
Julian. Unconquerable land ! unrival'd race !
Whose bravery, too enduring, rues alike
The power and weakness of accursed kings,
How cruelly hast thou neglected me !
Forcing me from thee, never to return,
Nor in thy pangs and struggles to partake !
I hear a voice ! 'tis Egilona : come,
Recall thy courage, dear unhappy girl,
Let us away.
SECOND ACT: THIED SCENE.
EGILONA enters.
Egilona. Eemain ; I order thee.
Attend, and do thy duty : I am queen,
Unbent to degradation.
Covilla. I attend
Ever most humbly and most gratefully, '
My too kind sovran, cousin now no more.
Could I perform but half the services
I owe her, I were happy for a time,
Or dared I show her half my love, 'twere bliss.
Egilona. Oh ! I sink under gentleness like
thine.
Thy sight is death to me ; and yet 'tis dear.
The gaudy trappings of assumptive state
Drop at the voice of nature to the earth,
Before thy feet. I can not force myself
To hate thee, to renounce thee ; yet . . Covilla !
Yet . . 0 distracting thought ! 'tis hard to see,
Hard to converse with, to admire, to love,
As from my soul I do, and must do, thee,
One who hath robb'd me of all pride and joy,
All dignity, all fondness. I adored
Eoderigo. He was brave, and in discourse
Most voluble ; the masses of his mind
Were vast, but varied ; now absorb'd in gloom,
Majestic, not austere ; now their extent
Opening and waving in bright levity . .
Julian. Depart, my daughter. 'Twere as well
to bear
His presence as his praise. Go ; she will dream
This phantasm out, nor notice thee depart.
[COVILLA goes.
Egilona. What pliancy ! what tenderness !
what life !
0 for the smiles of those who smile so seldom,
510
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT it.
The love of those who know no other love !
Such he was, Egilona, who was thine.
Julian. While he was worthy of the realm and
thee.
Egilona. Can it be true then, Julian, that
thy aim
Is sovranty ? not virtue nor revenge ?
Julian. I swear to heaven, nor I nor child of
mine
Ever shall mount to this polluted throne.
Egilona. Then am I yet a queen. The savage
Moor
Who could not conquer Ceuta from thy sword
In his own country, not with every wile
Of his whole race, not with his myriad crests
Of cavalry, seen from the Calpian highths
Like locusts on the parent and gleamy coast,
Will never conquer Spain.
Julian. Spain then was conquer'd
When fell her laws before the traitor king.
SECOND ACT : FOURTH SCENE.
Officer announces OPAS.
0 queen, the metropolitan attends
On matter of high import to the state,
And wishes to confer in privacy.
Egilona (to Julian}. Adieu then ; and whate'er
betide the country,
Sustain at least the honours of our house.
[JULIAN goes before OPAS enters.
Opas. I can not but commend, 0 Egilona,
Such resignation and such dignity.
Indeed he is unworthy ; yet a queen
Rather to look for peace, and live remote
From cities, and from courts, and from her
lord,
1 hardly could expect in one so young,
So early, widely, wondrously, admired.
Egilona. I am resolv'd : religious men, good
In this resemble the vain libertine ;
They find in woman no consistency,
No virtue but devotion, such as comes
To infancy or age or fear or love,
Seeking a place of rest, and finding none
Until it soar to heaven.
Opas. A spring of mind
That rises when all pressure is removed,
Firmness in pious and in chaste resolves,
But weakness in much fondness ; these, 0 queen,
I did expect, I own.
Egilona. The better part
Be mine ; the worse hath been, and is no more.
Opas. But if Roderigo have at length prevail'd
That Egilona willingly resigns
All claim to royalty, and casts away,
Indifferent or estranged, the marriage-bond
His perjury tore asunder, still the church
Hardly can sanction his new nuptial rites.
Egilona. What art thou saying? what new
nuptial rites?
Opas. Thou knowest not ?
Egilona. Am I a wife ? a queen ?
Abandon it ! my claim to royalty !
Whose hand was on my head when I arose
Queen of this land ] whose benediction sealed
My marriage- vow ? who broke it ? was it 1 1
And wouldst thou, virtuous Opas, wouldst thou
dim
The glorious light of thy declining days ?
Wouldst thou administer the sacred vows
And sanction them, and bless them, for another,
And bid her live in peace while I am living ]
Go then ; I execrate and banish him
For ever from my sight : we were not born
For happiness together ; none on earth
Were ever so dissimilar as we.
He is not worth a tear, a wish, a thought ;
Never was I deceived in him ; I found
No tenderness, no fondness, from the first
A love of power, a love of perfidy,
Such is the love that is return'd for mine.
Ungrateful man ! 'twas not the pageantry
Of regal state, the clarions, nor the guard,
Nor loyal valour, nor submissive beauty,
Silence at my approach, awe at my voice,
Happiness at my smile, that led my youth
Toward Roderigo. I had lived obscure,
In humbleness, in poverty, in want,
Blest, 0 supremely blest, with him alone ;
And he abandons me, rejects me, scorns me,
Insensible ! inhuman ! for another !
Thou shalt repent thy wretched choice, false man !
Crimes such as thine call loudly for perdition ;
Heaven will inflict it, and not I ; but I
Neither will fall alone nor live despised.
[A trumpet sounds.
Opas. Peace, Egilona ! he arrives : compose
Thy turbid thoughts, meet him with dignity.
Egilona. He ! in the camp of Julian ! trust
me, sir,
He comes not hither, dares no longer use
The signs of state, and flies from every foe.
{Retires some distance.
SECOND ACT: FIFTH SCENE.
Enter MUZA and ABDALAZIS.
Muza to Abdalazis. I saw him but an instant,
and disguised,
Yet this is not the traitor ; on his brow
Observe the calm of wisdom and of years.
Opas. Whom seekest thou ?
Muza. Him who was king I seek.
He came array'd as herald to this tent.
Abdalazis. Thy daughter! was she nigh?
perhaps for her
Was this disguise.
Muza. Here, Abdalazis, kings
Disguise from other causes ; they obtain
Beauty by violence, and power by fraud.
Treason was his intent : we must admit
Whoever come ; our numbers are too small
For question or selection, and the blood
Of Spaniards shall win Spain for us to-day.
SCENE I.]
COUNT JULIAN.
511
Abdalazis. The wicked can not move from
underneath
Thy ruling eye.
Muza. Right ! Julian and Eoderigo
Are leagued against us, on these terms alone,
That Julian's daughter weds the Christian king.
Egilona (rushing forward) . 'Tis true . . and I
proclaim it.
Abdalazis. Heaven and earth !
Was it not thou, most lovely, most high-souled,
Who wishedst us success, and me a crown ?
[OPAS goes abruptly.
Egilona. I give it . . I am Egilona, queen
Of that detested man.
Abdalazis. I touch the hand
That chains down fortune to the throne of fate,
And will avenge thee ; for 'twas thy command,
'Tis Heaven's. My father ! what retards our bliss 1
Why art thou silent ?
Muza. Inexperienced years
Eather would rest on the soft lap, I see,
Of pleasure, after the fierce gusts of war.
0 destiny ! that callest me alone,
Hapless, to keep the toilsome watch of state,
Painful to age, unnatural to youth,
Adverse to all society of friends,
Equality, and liberty, and ease,
The welcome cheer of the unbidden feast,
The gay reply, light, sudden, like the leap
Of the young forester's unbended bow,
But, above all, to tenderness at home,
And sweet security of kind concern
Even from those who seem most truly ours.
Who would resign all this, to be approacht,
Like a sick infant by a canting nurse,
To spread his arms in darkness, and to find
One universal hollowness around 1
Forego a little while that bane of peace :
Love may be cherisht.
Abdalazis. 'Tis enough ; I ask
No other boon.
Muza. Not victory ]
Abdalazis. Farewell,
0 queen ! I will deserve thee ; why do tears
Silently drop, and slowly, down thy veil ?
1 shall return to worship thee, and soon ;
Why this affliction ? 0, that I alone
Could raise or could repress it !
Egilona. We depart,
Nor interrupt your counsels, nor impede ;
0 may they prosper, whatsoe'er they be,
And perfidy soon meet its just reward !
The infirm and peaceful Opas . . whither gone ?
Muza. Stay, daughter ; not for counsel are we
met,
But to secure our arms from treachery,
O'erthrow and stifle base conspiracies,
Involve in his own toils our false ally . .
Egilona. Author of every woe I have endured !
Ah sacrilegious man ! he vowed to heaven
None of his blood should ever mount the throne.
Muza. Herein his vow indeed is ratified ;
Yet faithful ears have heard this offer made,
And weighty was the conference that ensued,
And long, not dubious ; for what mortal e'er
Refused alliance with illustrious power,
Though some have given its enjoyments up,
Tired and enfeebled by satiety 1
His friends and partisans, 'twas his pretence,
Should pass uninterrupted ; hence his camp
Is open every day to enemies.
You look around, 0 queen, as though you fear'd
Their entrance. Julian I pursue no more ;
You conquer him. Return we. I bequeath
Ruin, extermination, not reproach.
How we may best attain your peace and will
We must consider in some other place,
Not, lady, in the midst of snares and wiles
How to supplant your charms and seize your
crown.
I rescue it ; fear not. Yes, we retire.
Whatever is your wish becomes my own,
Nor is there in this land but who obeys.
[He leads Tier away.
THIRD ACT : FIRST SCENE.
Palace in Xeres.
RODERIGO and OPAS.
Roderigo. Impossible ! she could not thus re-
sign
Me, for a miscreant of Barbary,
A mere adventurer ; but that citron face
Shall bleach and shrivel the whole winter long,
There on yon cork-tree by the sallyport.
She shall return.
Opas. To fondness and to faith 1
Dost thou retain them, if she could return 1
Roderigo. Retain them? she has forfeited by
this
All right to fondness, all t6 royalty.
Opas. Consider and speak calmly : she deserves
Some pity, some reproof.
Roderigo. To speak then calmly,
Since thine eyes open and can see her guilt . .
Infamous and atrocious ! let her go . .
Chains . .
Opas. What ! in Muza's camp ?
Roderigo. My scorn supreme !
Opas. Say pity.
Roderigo. Ay, ay, pity : that suits best.
I loved her, but had loved her ; three whole years
Of pleasure, and of varied'pleasure too,
Had worn the soft impression half away.
What I once felt, I would recall ; the faint
Responsive voice grew fainter each reply :
Imagination sank amid the scenes
It labour'd to create : the vivid joy
Of fleeting youth I follow'd and possest.
'Tis the first moment of the tenderest hour,
'Tis the first mien on entering new delights,
We give our peace, our power, our souls, for these.
Opas. Thou hast ; and what remains ?
Roderigo. Roderigo : one
Whom hatred can not reach nor love cast down.
Opas. Nor gratitude nor pity nor remorse
Call back, nor vows nor earth nor heaven controul.
512
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT in.
But art thou free and happy ? art thou safe ]
By shrewd contempt the humblest may chastise
Whom scarlet and its ermine can not scare,
And the sword skulks for everywhere in vain.
Thee the poor victim of thy outrages,
Woman, with all her weakness, may despise.
Roderigo. But first let quiet age have intervened.
Opas. Ne'er will the peace or apathy of age
Be thine, or twilight steal upon thy day.
The violent choose, but can not change, their end ;
Violence, by man or nature, must be theirs ;
Thine it must be ; and who to pity thee ?
Eoderigo. Behold my solace ! none. I want no
pity.
Opas. Proclaim we those the happiest of man-
kind «
Who never knew a want ? 0 what a curse
To thee this utter ignorance of thine !
Julian, whom all the good commiserate,
Sees thee below him far in happiness.
A state indeed of no quick restlessness,
No glancing agitation, one vast swell
Of melancholy, deep, impassable,
Interminable, where his spirit alone
Broods and o'ershadows all, bears him from earth,
And purifies his chasten'd soul for heaven.
Both heaven and earth shall from thy grasp recede.
Whether on death or life thou arguest,
Untutor'd savage or corrupted heathen
Avows no sentiment so vile as thine.
Roderigo. Nor feels ?
Opas. 0 human nature ! I have heard
The secrets of the soul, and pitied thee.
Bad and accursed things have men confess'd
Before me, but have left them unarrayed,
Naked, and shivering with deformity.
The troubled dreams and deafening gush of youth
Fling o'er the fancy, struggling to be free,
Discordant and impracticable things :
If the good shudder at their past escapes,
Shall not the wicked shudder at their crimes "\
They shall : and I denounce upon thy head
God's vengeance : thou shalt rule this land no
more.
Roderigo. What! my own kindred leave me
and renounce me !
Opas. Kindred ] and is there any in our world
So near us as those sources of all joy,
Those on whose bosom every gale of life
Blows softly, who reflect our images
In loveliness through sorrows and through age,
And bear them onward far beyond the grave ?
Roderigo. Methinks, most reverend Opas, not
inapt
Are these fair views ; arise they from Seville 1
Opas. He who can scoff at them, may scoff at me.
Such are we, that the Giver of all Good
Shall, in the heart he purifies, possess
The latest love ; the earliest, no, not there !
I 've known the firm and faithful : even from them
Life's eddying spring shed the first bloom on earth.
I pity them, but ask their pity too :
I love the happiness "of men, and praise
And sanctify the blessings I renounce.
Roderigo. Yet would thy baleful influence under-
mine
The heaven-appointed throne.
Opas. The throne of guilt
Obdurate, without plea, without remorse.
Roderigo. What power hast thou ? perhaps thou
soon wilt want
A place of refuge.
Opas. Eather say, perhaps
My place of refuge will receive me soon.
Could I extend it even to thy crimes,
It should be open ; but the wrath of heaven
Turns them against thee and subverts thy sway :
It leaves thee not, what wickedness and woe
Oft in their drear communion taste together,
Hope and repentance.
Roderigo. But it leaves me arms,
Vigour of soul and body, and a race
Subject by law and dutiful by choice,
Whose hand is never to be holden fast
Within the closing cleft of gnarled creeds ;
No easy prey for these vile mitred Moors.
I, who received thy homage, may retort
Thy threats, vain prelate, and abase thy pride.
Opas. Low must be those whom mortal can
sink lower,
Nor high are they whom human power may raise.
Roderigo. Judge now : for hear the signal.
Opas. And derides
Thy buoyant heart the dubious gulphs of war ?
Trumpets may sound, and not to victory.
Roderigo. The traitor and his daughter feel my
power.
Opas. Just God ! avert it !
Roderigo. Seize this rebel priest.
I will alone subdue my enemies. [Goes out.
THIRD ACT : SECOND SCENE.
EAMIRO and OSMA enter from opposite sides.
Ramiro. Where is the king 1 his car is at the
gate,
His ministers attend him, but his foes
Are yet more prompt, nor will await delay.
Osma. Nor need they, for he meets them as I
Ramiro. With all his forces'? or our cause is
lost.
Julian and Sisabert surround the walls.
Osma. Surround, sayst thou? enter they not
the gates 1
Ramiro. Perhaps ere now they enter.
Osma. Sisabert
Brings him our prisoner.
Ramiro. They are friends ! they held
A parley ; and the soldiers, when they saw
Count Julian, lower 'd their arms and hail'd him
king.
Osma. How 1 and he leads them in the name
of king]
Ramiro. He leads them ; but amid that accla-
mation
He turn'd away his head, and call'd for vengeance.
SCENE III.]
COUNT JULIAN.
513
Osma. In Sisabert, and in the cavalry
He led, were all our hopes.
Opas. Woe, woe is theirs
Who have no other.
Osma. What are thine ? obey
The just commands of our offended king :
Conduct him to the tower . .off. . instantly.
[Guard hesitates : OPAS goes.
Ramiro, let us haste to reinforce . .
Ramiro. Hark ! is the king defeated 1 hark !
Osma. I hear
Such acclamation as from victory
Arises not, but rather from revolt,
Eeiterated, interrupted, lost.
Favour like this his genius will retrieve
By time or promises or chastisement,
Whiche'er he choose ; the speediest is the best.
His danger and his glory let us share ;
'Tis ours to serve him.
Ramiro. While he rules 'tis ours.
What chariot-wheels are thundering o'er the
bridge 1
Osma. Roderigo's ; I well know them.
Ramiro. Now, the burst
Of acclamation ! now ! again, again.
Osma. I know the voices ; they are for Roderigo.
Ramiro. Stay, I entreat thee. One hath now
prevail'd.
So far is certain.
Osma. Ay, the right prevails.
Ramiro. Transient and vain their joyance who
rejoice
Precipitately and intemperately,
And bitter thoughts grow up where'er it fell.
Osma. Nor vain and transient theirs who idly
float
Down popularity's unfertile stream,
And fancy all their own that rises round.
Ramiro. If thou yet lovest, as I know thou dost,
Thy king. .
Osma. I love him ; for he owes me much,
Brave soul ! and can not, though he would, repay.
Service and faith, pure faith and service hard,
Throughout his reign, if these things be desert,
These have I borne toward him, and still bear.
Ramiro. Come, from thy solitary eyrie come,
And share the prey, so plenteous and profuse,
Which a less valorous brood will else consume.
Much fruit is shaken down in civil storms :
And shall not orderly and loyal hands
Gather it up ? (Loud shouts.) Again ! and yet
refuse ]
How different are those citizens without
From thee ! from thy serenity ! thy arch,
Thy firmament, of intrepidity !
For their new lord, whom they have never served,
Afraid were they to shout, and only struck
The pavement with their ferrels and their feet :
Now they are certain of the great event
Voices and hands they raise, and all contend
Who shall be bravest in applauding most.
Knowest thou these ?
Osma. Their voices I know well . .
And can they shout for him they would have slain?
A prince untried they welcome ; soon their doubts
Are blown afar.
Ramiro. Yes, brighter scenes arise.
The disunited he alone unites,
The weak with hope he strengthens, and the strong
With justice.
Osma. Wait : praise him when time hath
given
A soundness and consistency to praise :
He shares it amply who bestows it right.
Ramiro. Doubtest thou 1
Osma. Be it so : let us away ;
New courtiers come.
Ramiro. And why not join the new ]
Let us attend him and congratulate ;
Come on ; they enter.
Osma. This is now my post
No longer : I could face them in the field,
I can not here.
Ramiro. To-morrow all may change ;
Be comforted.
Osma. I want nor change nor comfort.
Ramiro. The prisoner's voice !
Osma. The metropolitan's 1
Triumph he may . . not over me forgiven.
This way, and thro' the chapel : none are there.
[Goes ovi.
THIRD ACT : THIRD SCENE.
OPAS and SISABERT.
Opas. The royal threat still sounds along these
halls :
Hardly his foot hath past them, and he flees
From his own treachery ; all his pride, his hopes,
Are scatter'd at a breath ; even courage fails
Now falsehood sinks from under him. Behold,
Again art thou where reign'd thy ancestors ;
Behold the chapel of thy earliest prayers,
Where I, whose chains are sunder'd at thy sight
Ere they could close around these aged limbs,
Received and blest thee, when thy mother's arm
Was doubtful if it loost thee ! with delight
Have I observed the promises we made
Deeply imprest and manfully perform'd.
Now, to thyself beneficent, 0 prince,
Never henceforth renew those weak complaints
Against Covilla's vows and Julian's faith,
His honour broken, and her heart estranged.
0, if thou boldest peace or glory dear,
Away with jealousy ; brave Sisabert,
Smite from thy bosom, smite that scorpion down :
It swells and hardens amid mildew'd hopes,
O'erspreads and blackens whate'er most delights,
And renders us, haters of loveliness,
The lowest of the fiends : ambition led
The higher on, furious to dispossess,
From admiration sprung and frenzied love.
This disingenuous soul-debasing passion,
Rising from abject and most sordid fear,
Consumes the vitals, pines, and never dies.
For Julian's truth have I not pledged my own ]
Have I not sworn Covilla weds no other ]
Sisabert. Her persecutor have not I chastised ?
514
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT nr.
Have not I fought for Julian, won the town,
And liberated thee ?
Opas. But left for him
The dangers of pursuit, of ambuscade,
Of absence from thy high and splendid name.
SisaJbert. Do probity and truth want such
supports ?
Opas. Gryphens and eagles, ivory and gold,
Can add no clearness to the lamp above,
But many look for them in palaces
Who have them not, and want them not, at home.
Virtue and valour and experience
Are never trusted by themselves alone
Further than infancy and idiocy :
The men around him, not the man himself,
Are lookt at, and by these is he preferr'd.
'Tis the green mantle of the warrener
And his loud whistle that alone attract
The lofty gazes of the noble herd :
And thus, without thy countenance and help
Feeble and faint is yet our confidence,
Brief perhaps our success.
Sisabert. Should I resign
To Abdalazis her I once adored ?
He truly, he must wed a Spanish queen !
He rule in Spain ! ah ! whom could any land,
Obey so gladly as the meek, the humble,
The friend of all who have no friend beside,
Covilla ! could he choose or could he find
Another who might so confirm his power !
And now indeed from long domestic wars
Who else survives of all our ancient house ?
Opas. But Egilona.
Sisabert. Vainly she upbraids
Roderigo.
Opas. She divorces him, abjures,
And carries vengeance to that hideous highth
Which piety and chastity would shrink
To look from, on the world or on themselves.
Sisabert. She may forgive him yet.
Opas. Ah, Sisabert !
Wretched are those a woman has forgiven :
With her forgiveness ne'er hath love return'd.
Ye know not till too late the filmy tie
That holds heaven's precious boon eternally
To such as fondly cherish her; once go
Driven by mad passion, strike but at her peace,
And, though she step aside from broad reproach,
Yet every softer virtue dies away.
Beaming with virtue inaccessible
Stood Egilona ; for her lord she lived,
And for the heavens that raised her sphere so
high:
All thoughts were on her, all, beside her own.
Negligent as the blossoms of the field,
Array'd in candour and simplicity,
Before her path she heard the streams of joy
Murmur her name in all their cadences,
Saw them in every scene, in light, in shade,
Reflect her image, but acknowledge them
Hers most complete when flowing from her most.
All things in want of her, herself of none,
Pomp and dominion lay beneath her feet
Unfelt and unregarded. Now behold
The earthly passions war against the heavenly !
Pride against love, ambition and revenge
Against devotion and compliancy :
Her glorious beams adversity hath blunted ;
And coming nearer to our quiet view,
The original clay of coarse mortality
Hardens and flaws around her.
Sisabert. Every germ
Of virtue perishes when love recedes
From those hot shifting sands, the female heart.
Opas, His was the fault; be his the punishment.
'Tis not their own crimes only, men commit,
They harrow them into another's breast,
And they shall reap the bitter growth with pain.
Sisabert. Yes, blooming royalty will first attract
These creatures of the desert. Now I breathe
More freely. She is theirs if I pursue
The fugitive again. He well deserves
The death he flies from. Stay! Don Julian
twice
Call'd him aloud, and he, methinks, replied.
Could not I have remain'd a moment more
And seen the end 1 although with hurried voice
He bade me intercept the scattered foes,
And hold the city barr'd to their return.
May Egilona be another's wife
Whether he die or live ! but oh ! Covilla !
She never can be mine ! yet she may be
Still happy . . no, Covilla, no . . not happy,
But more deserving happiness without it.
Mine never ! nor another's. 'Tis enough.
The tears I shed no rival can deride ;
In the fond intercourse a name once cherisht
Will never be defended by faint smiles,
Nor given up with vows of alter'd love.
And is the passion of my soul at last
Reduced to this ] is this my happiness 1
This my sole comfort ] this the close of all
Those promises, those tears, those last adieus,
And those long vigils for the morrow's dawn I
Opas. Arouse thee ! be thyself. 0 Sisabert,
Awake to glory from these feverish dreams :
The enemy is in our land ; two enemies ;
We must quell both : shame on us if we fail.
Sisabert. Incredible ! a nation be subdued
Peopled as ours.
Opas. Corruption may subvert
What force could never.
Sisabert. Traitors may.
Opas. Alas !
If traitors can, the basis is but frail.
I mean such traitors as the vacant world
Echoes most stunningly : not fur-robed knaves
Whose whispers raise the dreaming bloodhound's
ear
Against benighted famisht wanderers,
While with remorseless guilt they undermine
Palace and shed, their very father's house.
0 blind ! their own, their children's heritage,
To leave more ample space for fearful wealth.
Plunder in some most harmless guise they swathe,
Call it some very meek and hallow'd name,
Some known and borne by their good forefathers,
And own and vaunt it thus redeem'd from sin.
SCENE I.]
COUNT JULIAN.
515
These are the plagues heaven sends o'er every
land
Before it sink . . the portents of the street,
Not of the air . . lest nations should complain
Of distance or of dimness in the signs,
Flaring from far to Wisdom's eye alone :
These are the last : these, when the sun rides high
In the forenoon of doomsday, revelling,
Make men abhor the earth, arraign the skies.
Ye who behold them spoil field after field,
Despising them in individual strength,
Not with one torrent sweeping them away
Into the ocean of eternity,
Arise ! despatch ! no renovating gale,
No second spring awaits you : up, begone,
If you have force and courage even for flight.
The blast of dissolution is behind.
Sisabert. How terrible ! how true ! what voice
like thine
Can rouse and warn the nation ! If she rise,
Say, whither go, where stop we ]
Opas. God will guide.
Let us pursue the oppressor to destruction ;
The rest is Heaven's : must we move no step
Because we can not see the boundaries
Of our long way, and every stone between ]
Sisabert. Is not thy vengeance for the late
affront,
For threats and outrage and imprisonment ]
Opas. For outrage, yes; imprisonment and
threats
I pardon him, and whatsoever ill
He could do me.
Sisabert. To hold Covilla from me !
To urge her into vows against her faith,
Against her beauty, youth, and inclination,
Without her mother's blessing, nay, without
Her father's knowledge and authority,
So that she never will behold me more,
Flying afar for refuge and for help
Where never friend but God will comfort her !
Opas. These and more barbarous deeds were
perpetrated.
Sisabert. Yet her proud father deign'd not to
inform
Me, whom he loved and taught, in peace and war,
Me, whom he called his son, before I hoped
To merit it by marriage or by arms.
He offer'd no excuse, no plea ; exprest
No sorrow; but with firm unfaltering voice
Commanded me . . I trembled as he spoke . .
To follow where he led, redress his wrongs,
And vindicate the honour of his child.
He call'd on God, the witness of his cause,
On Spain, the partner of his victories ;
And yet amid these animating words
Roll'd the huge tear down his unvisor'd face ;
A general swell of indignation rose
Thro' the long line, sobs burst from every breast,
Hardly one voice succeeded ; you might hear
The impatient hoof strike the soft sandy plain.
But when the gates flew open, and the king
In his high car come forth trimphantly,
Then was Count Julian's stature more elate ;
Tremendous was the smile that smote the eyes
Of all he past. ' Fathers, and sons, and brothers,'
He cried, ' I fight your battles, follow me !
Soldiers, we know no danger but disgrace ! '
' Father, and general, and king,11 they shout,
And would proclaim him : back he cast his face,
Pallid with grief, and one loud groan burst
forth;
It kindled vengeance thro' the Asturian ranks,
And they soon scatter'd, as the blasts of heaven
Scatter the leaves and dust, the astonisht foe.
Opas. And doubtest thou his truth 1
Sisabert. I love . . and doubt . .
Fight . . and believe : Rodrigo spoke untruths ;
In him I place no trust ; but Julian holds
Truths in reserve : how should I quite confide !
Opas. By sorrows thou beholdest him opprest;
Doubt the more prosperous. March, Sisabert,
Once more against his enemy and ours :
Much hath been done, but much there yet remains.
FOURTH ACT : FIRST SCENE.
Tent of JULIAN.
RODERIGO and JULIAN.
Julian. The people had deserted thec, and
throng'd
My standard, had I raised it, at the first ;
But once subsiding, and no voice of mine
Calling by name each grievance to each man,
They, silent and submissive by degrees,
Bore thy hard yoke, and, hadst thou but op-
prest,
Would still have borne it: thou hast now de-
ceived ;
Thou hast done all a foreign foe could do
And more against them ; with ingratitude
Not hell itself could arm the foreign foe ;
'Tis forged at home and kills not from afar.
Amid whate'er vain glories fell upon
Thy rainbow span of power, which I dissolve,
Boast not how thou conferredst wealth and rank,
How thou preservedst me, my family,
All my distinctions, all my offices,
When Witiza was murder'd ; that I stand
Count Julian at this hour by special grace.
The sword of Julian saved the walls of Ceuta,
And not the shadow that attends his name :
It was no badge, no title, that o'erthrew
Soldier and steed and engine. Don Roderigo !
The truly and the falsely great here differ :
These by dull wealth or daring fraud advance ;
Him the Almighty calls amid his people
To sway the wills and passions of mankind.
The weak of heart and intellect beheld
Thy splendour, and adored thee lord of Spain :
I rose . . Roderigo lords o'er Spain no more.
Roderigo. Now to a traitor's add a boaster's
name.
Julian. Shameless and arrogant, dost thou
believe
I boast for pride or pastime 1 forced to boast,
516
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT iv.
Truth costs me more than falsehood e'er cost thee.
Divested of that purple of the soul,
That potency, that palm of wise ambition,
Cast headlong by thy madness from that high,
That only eminence 'twixt earth and heaven,
Virtue, which some desert, but none despise,
Whether thou art beheld again on earth,
Whether a captive or a fugitive,
Miner or galley-slave, depends on me;
But he alone who made me what I am
Can make me greater or can make me less.
Roderigo. Chance, and chance only, threw me
in thy power ;
Give me my sword again and try my strength.
Julian. I tried it in the front of thousands.
Roderigo. Death
At least vouchsafe me from a soldier's hand.
Julian. I love to hear thee ask it : now my own
Would not be bitter ; no, nor immature.
Roderigo. Defy it, say thou rather.
Julian. Death itself
Shall not be granted thee, unless from God ;
A dole from his and from no other hand.
Thou shalt now hear and own thine infamy.
Roderigo. Chains, dungeons, tortures . . but I
hear no more.
Julian. Silence, thou wretch ! live on . . ay,
live . . abhorr'd.
Thou shalt have tortures, dungeons, chains enough;
They naturally rise and grow around
Monsters like thee, everywhere, and for ever.
Roderigo. Insulter of the fallen ! must I endure
Commands as well as threats ] my vassal's too ]
Nor breathe from underneath his trampling feet 1
Julian. Could I speak patiently who speak to
thee,
I would say more : part of thy punishment
It should be, to be taught.
Roderigo. Eeserve thy wisdom
Until thy patience come, its best ally :
I learn no lore, of peace or war, from thee.
Julian. No, thou shalt study soon another
tongue,
And suns more ardent shall mature thy mind.
Either the cross thou bearest, and thy knees
Among the silent caves of Palestine
Wear the sharp flints away with midnight prayer,
Or thou shalt keep the fasts of Barbary,
Shalt wait amid the crowds that throng the well
From sultry noon till the skies fade again,
To draw up water and to bring it home
In the crackt gourd of some vile testy knave,
Who spurns thee back with bastinaded foot
For ignorance or delay of his command.
Roderigo. Bather the poison or the bowstring.
Julian. Slaves
To other's passions die such deaths as those :
Slaves to their own should die . .
Roderigo. What worse ]
Julian. Their own.
Roderigo. Is this thy counsel, renegade 1
Julian. Not mine :
I point a better path, nay, force thee on.
I shelter thee from every brave man's sword
While I am near thee : I bestow on thee
Life : if thou die, 'tis when thou sojournest
Protected by this arm and voice no more :
'Tis slavishly, 'tis ignominiously,
'Tis by a villain's knife.
Roderigo. By whose ?
Julian. Eoderigo's.
Roderigo. 0 powers of vengeance ! must I hear 1
. . endure ? . .
Live1?
Julian. Call thy vassals : no ? then wipe the
drops
Of froward childhood from thy shameless eyes.
So ! thou canst weep for passion ; not for pity.
Roderigo. One hour ago I ruled all Spain ! a
camp
Not larger than a sheepfold stood alone
Against me : now, no friend throughout the world
Follows my steps or hearkens to my call.
Behold the turns of fortune, and expect
No better : of all faithless men the Moors
Are the most faithless : from thy own experience
Thou canst not value nor rely on them.
Julian. I value not the mass that makes my
sword,
Yet while I use it I rely on it.
Roderigo. Julian, thy gloomy soul still me-
ditates . .
Plainly I see it . . death to me . . pursue
The dictates of thy leaders, let revenge
Have its full sway, let Barbary prevail,
And the pure creed her elders have embraced :
Those placid sages hold assassination
A most compendious supplement to law.
Julian. Thou knowest not the one, nor I the
other.
Torn hast thou from me all my soul held dear,
Her form, her voice, all, hast thou banisht from
me,
Nor dare I, wretched as I am ! recall
Those solaces of every grief erewhile.
I stand abased before insulting crime,
I falter like a criminal myself ;
The hand that hurl'd thy chariot o'er its wheels,
That held thy steeds erect and motionless
As molten statues on son r palace-gate,
Shakes as with palsied ago oefore thee now.
Gone is the treasure of my heart for ever,
Without a father, mother, friend, or name.
Daughter of Julian . . Such was her delight . .
Such was mine too ! what pride more innocent,
What surely less deserving pangs like these,
Than springs from filial and parental love !
Debarr'd from every hope that issues forth
To meet the balmy breath of early life,
Her sadden'd days, all cold and colourless,
Will stretch before her their whole weary length
Amid the sameness of obscurity.
She wanted not seclusion to unveil
Her thoughts to heaven, cloister, nor midnight?
bell ;
She found it in all places, at all hours :
While to assuage my labours she indulged
A playfulness that shunn'd a mother's eye,
SCENE II.]
COUNT JULIAN.
517
Still to avert my perils there arose
A piety that even from me retired.
Boderigo. Such was she ! what am I ! those
are the arms
That are triumphant when the battle fails.
0 Julian ! Julian ! all thy former words
Struck but the imbecile plumes of vanity,
These thro' its steely coverings pierce the heart.
1 ask not life nor death ; but, if I live,
Send my most bitter enemy to watch
My secret paths, send poverty, send pain . .
I will add more . . wise as thou art, thou knowest
No foe more furious than forgiven kings.
I ask not then what thou wouldst never grant :
May heaven, 0 Julian, from thy hand receive
A pardon'd man, a chasten'd criminal.
Julian. This further curse hast thou inflicted ;
wretch !
I can not pardon thee.
Boderigo. Thy tone, thy mien,
Kefute those words.
Julian. No . . I can not forgive.
Boderigo. Upon iny knee, my conqueror, I
implore !
Upon the earth, before thy feet . . hard heart !
Julian. Audacious ! hast thou never heard
that prayer
And scorn'd it ? 'tis the last thou shouldst repeat.
Upon the earth ! upon her knees ! 0 God 1
Boderigo. Kesemble not a wretch so lost as I :
Be better ; 0 ! be happier ; and pronounce it.
Julian. I swerve not from my purpose : thou
art mine,
Conquer'd ; and I have sworn to dedicate,
Like a torn banner on my chapel's roof,
Thee to that power from whom thou hast rebell'd.
Expiate thy crimes by prayer, by penances.
Boderigo. Hasten the hour of trial, speak of
peace.
Pardon me not then, but with purer lips
Implore of God, who would hear thee, to pardon.
Julian. Hope it I may . . pronounce it . . 0
Eoderigo !
Ask it of him who can ; I too will ask,
And, in my own transgressions, pray for thine.
Boderigo. One name I dare not . .
Julian. Go ; abstain from that ;
I do conjure thee, raise not in my soul
Again the tempest that has wreckt my fame ;
Thou shalt not breathe in the same clime with her.
Far o'er the unebbing sea thou shalt adore
The eastern star, and may thy end be peace.
FOURTH ACT: SECOND SCENE.
KODERIGO goes : HERNANDO enters.
Hernando. From the prince Tank I am sent,
my lord.
Julian. A welcome messager, my brave Her-
nando.
How fares it with the gallant soul of Tarik ?
Hernando. Most joyfully; he scarcely had
pronounced
Your glorious name, and bid me urge your speed,
Than, with a voice as though it answer'd heaven,
' He shall confound them in their dark designs,'
Cried he, and turn'd away, with that swift stride
Wherewith he meets and quells his enemies.
Julian. Alas ! I can not bear felicitation,
Who shunn'd it even in felicity.
Hernando. Often we hardly think ourselves the
happy
Unless we hear it said by thdse around.
0 my lord Julian, how your praises cheer'd
Our poor endeavours ! sure, all hearts are open
Lofty and low, wise and unwise, to praise.
Even the departed spirit hovers round
Our blessings and our prayers ; the corse itself
Hath shined with other light than the still stars
Shed on its rest, or the dim taper nigh.
My father, old men say who saw him dead,
And heard your lips pronounce him good and
happy,
Smiled faintly through the quiet gloom that eve,
And the shroud throbb'd upon his grateful breast.
Howe'er it be, many who tell the tale
Are good and happy from that voice of praise.
His guidance and example were denied
My youth and childhood : what I am I owe . .
Julian. Hernando, look not back : a narrow
path
And arduous lies before thee ; if thou stop
Thou fallest ; go right onward, nor observe
Closely and rigidly another's way,
But, free and active, follow up thy own.
Hernando. The voice that urges now my manly
step
Onward in life, recalls me to the past,
And from that fount I freshen for the goal.
Early in youth, among us villagers
Converse and ripen'd counsel you bestow'd.
0 happy days of (far departed !) peace,
Days when the mighty Julian stoopt his brow
Entering our cottage-door ; another air
Breath'd through the house ; tired age and light-
some youth
Beheld him with intensest gaze ; these felt
More chasten'd joy; they more profound repose.
Yes, my best lord, when labour sent them home
And midday suns, when from the social meal
The wicker window held the summer heat,
Prais'd have those been who, going unperceived,
Open'd it wide that all might see you well :
Nor were the children blamed, hurrying to watch
Upon the mat what rush would last arise
From your foot's pressure, ere the door was closed,
And not yet wondering how they dared to love.
Your counsels are more precious now than ever,
But are they . . pardon if I err .. the same ?
Tarik is gallant, kind, the friend of Julian,
Can he be more ? or ought he to be less 1
Alas ! his faith !
Julian. In peace or war 1 Hernando.
Hernando. 0, neither; far above it; faith in
God.
Julian. 'Tis God's, not thine : embrace it not,
nor hate it.
518
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT
Precious or vile, how dare we seize that offering,
Scatter it, spurn it, in its way to heaven,
Because we know it not ? the sovran lord
Accepts his tribute, myrrh and frankincense
From some, from others penitence and prayer :
Why intercept them from his gracious hand ]
Why dash them down ? why smite the suppli-
cant]
Hernando. 'Tis what they do.
Julian. Avoid it thou the more.
If time were left me, I could hear well-pleased
How Tarik fought up Calpe's fabled cliff,
While I pursued the friends of Don Eoderigo
Across the plain, and drew fresh force from
mine.
0 ! had some other land, some other cause,
Invited him and me, I then could dwell
On this hard battle with unmixt delight.
Hernando. Eternal is its glory, if the deed
Be not forgotten till it be surpast :
Much praise by land, by sea much more, he
won,
For then a Julian was not at his side,
Nor led the van, nor awed the best before ;
The whole, a mighty whole, was his alone.
There might be seen how far he shone above
All others of the day : old Muza watcht
From his own shore the richly laden fleet,
Ill-arm'd and scatter'd, and pursued the rear
Beyond those rocks that bear St. Vincent's
name,
Cutting the treasure, not the strength, away ;
Valiant, where any prey lies undevour'd
In hostile creek or too confiding isle.
Tarik, with his small barks, but with such love
As never chief from rugged sailor won,
Smote their high masts and swelling rampires
down,
And Cadiz wept in fear o'er Trafalgar.
Who that beheld our sails from off the highths,
Like the white birds, nor larger, tempt the gale
In sunshine and in shade, now almost touch
The solitary shore, glance, turn, retire,
Would think these lovely playmates could por-
tend
Such mischief to the world, such blood, such woe;
Could draw to them from far the peaceful hinds,
Cull the gay flower of cities, and divide
Friends, children, every bond of human life ;
Could dissipate whole families, could sink
Whole states in ruin, at one hour, one blow.
Julian. Go, good Hernando ! who would think
these things ?
Say to the valiant Tarik I depart
Forthwith : he knows not from what heaviness
Of soul I linger here ; I could endure
No converse, no compassion, no approach,
Other than thine, whom the same cares improved
Beneath my father's roof, my foster-brother,
To brighter days and happier end, I hope ;
In whose fidelity my own resides
With Tarik and with his compeers and chief.
1 can not share the gladness I excite,
Yet shall our Tarik's generous heart rejoice.
FOURTH ACT : THIRD SCENE.
EGILONA enters: HERNANDO goes.
Egilona. 0 fly me not because I am unhappy,
Because I am deserted fly me not ;
It was not so before, and can it be
Ever from Julian ]
Julian. What would Egilona
That Julian's power with her new lords can do ?
Surely her own must there preponderate.
Egilona. I hold no suit to them. Restore,
restore
Roderigo.
Julian. He no longer is my prisoner.
Egilona. Escapes he then ?
Julian. Escapes he, dost thou say ?
0 Egilona ! what unworthy passion . .
Egilona. Unworthy, when I loved him, was my
passion ;
The passion that now swells my heart, is just.
Julian. What fresh reproaches hath he merited ?
Egilona. Deep-rooted hatred shelters no re-
proach.
But whither is he gone 1
Julian. Far from the walls.
Egilona. And I knew nothing ?
Julian. His offence was known
To thee at least.
Egilona. Will it be expiated ?
Julian. I trust it will.
Egilona. This withering calm consumes me.
He marries then Covilla ! 'twas for this
His people were excited to rebell,
His sceptre was throAvn by, his vows were scorn'd,
And I . . and I . .
Julian. Cease, Egilona !
Egilona. Cease 1
Sooner shalt thou to live than I to reign .
FIFTH ACT : FIRST SCENE.
Tent of MUZA.
MUZA. TAKIK. ABDALAZIS.
Muza. To have first landed on these shores
appears
Transcendent glory to the applauded Tarik.
Tarik. Glory, but not transcendent, it appears,
What might in any other.
Muza. Of thyself
All this vain boast ?
Tarik. Not of myself : 'twas Julian.
Against his shield the refluent surges roll'd,
While the sea-breezes threw the arrows wide,
And fainter cheers urged the reluctant steeds.
Muza. That Julian, of whose treason I have
proofs,
That Julian, who rejected my commands
Twice, when our mortal foe besieged the camp,
And forced my princely presence to his tent.
Tarik. Say rather, who without one exhortation,
One precious drop from true believer's vein,
Marcht, and discomfited our enemies.
SCENE II.]
COUNT JULIAN.
519
I found in him no treachery. Hernando,
Who, little versed in moody wiles, is gone
To lead him hither, was by him assign'd
My guide, and twice in doubtful fight his arm
Protected me : once on the highths of Calpe,
Once on the plain, when courtly jealousies
Tore from the bravest and the best his due,
And gave the dotard and the coward command :
Then came Eoderigo forth : the front of war
Grew darker : him, equal in chivalry,
Julian alone could with success oppose.
Abdalazis. I doubt their worth who praise their
enemies.
Tarik. And theirs doubt I who persecute their
friends.
Muza. Thou art in league with him.
Tarik. Thou wert, by oaths;
I am without them ; for his heart is brave.
Muza. Am I to bear all this ]
Tarik. All this and more :
Soon wilt thou see the man whom thou hast
wrong'd,
And the keen hatred in thy breast conceal'd
Find its right way, and sting thee to the core.
Muza. Hath he not foil'd us in the field ? not
held
Our wisdom to reproach 1
Tarik. Shall we abandon
All he hath left us in the eyes of men ]
Shall we again make him our adversary
Whom we have proved so, long and fatally ]
If he subdue for us our enemies,
Shall we raise others, or, for want of them,
Convert him into one against his will 1
FIFTH ACT : SECOND SCENE.
HERNANDO enters. TARIK continues.
Here comes Hernando from that prince himself.
Muza. Who scorns, himself, to come.
Hernando. The queen detains him.
Abdalazis. How! Egilona]
Muza. 'Twas my will.
Tarik. At last
He must be happy ; for delicious calm
Follows the fierce enjoyment of revenge.
Hernando. That calm was never his, no other
will be.
Thou knowest not, and mayst thou never know,
How bitter is the tear that fiery shame
Scourges and tortures from the soldier's eye.
Whichever of these bad reports be true,
He hides it from all hearts to wring his own,
And drags the heavy secret to the grave.
Not victory that o'ershadows him sees he ;
No airy and light passion stirs abroad
To ruffle or to soothe him ; all are quell'd
Beneath a mightier, sterner stress of mind :
Wakeful he sits, and lonely, and unmoved,
Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men ;
As oftentimes an eagle, ere the sun
Throws o'er the varying earth his early ray,
Stands solitary, stands immovable
Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,
Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,
In the cold light above the dews of morn.
He now assumes that quietness of soul
Which never but in danger have I seen
On his staid breast.
Tarik. Danger is past ; he conquers;
No enemy is left him to subdue.
Hernando. He sank not, while there was, into
himself.
Now plainly see I from his alter'd tone,
He can not live much longer. Thanks to God !
Tarik. What ! wishest thou thy once kind
master dead ?
Was he not kind to thee, ungrateful slave !
Hernando. The gentlest, as the bravest, of
mankind.
Therefore shall memory dwell more tranquilly
With Julian once at rest, than friendship could,
Knowing him yearn for death with speechless
love.
For his own sake I could endure his loss,
Pray for it, and thank God ; yet mourn I must
Him above all, so great, so bountiful,
So blessed once ! bitterly must I mourn.
'Tis not my solace that 'tis his desire ;
Of all who pass us in life's drear descent
We grieve the most for those that wisht to die.
A father to us all, he merited,
Unhappy man ! all a good father's joy
In his own house, where seldom he hath been,
But, ever mindful of its dear delights,
He form'd one family around him ever.
Tarik. Yes, we have seen and known him.
Let his fame
Refresh his friends, but let it stream afar,
Nor in the twilight of home-scenes be lost.
He chose the best, and cherisht them ; he left
To self-reproof the mutinies of vice ;
Avarice, that dwarfs Ambition's tone and mien ;
Envy, sick nursling of the court ; and Pride
That can not bear his semblance nor himself ;
And Malice, with blear visage half-descried
Amid the shadows of her hiding-place.
Hernando. What could I not endure, 0
gallant man,
To hear him spoken of as thou hast spoken !
Oh ! I would almost be a slave to him
Who calls me one.
Muza. What ! art thou not ? begone.
Tarik. Reply not, brave Hernando, but retire.
All can revile, few only can reward.
Behold the meed our mighty chief bestows !
Accept it, for thy services, and mine.
More, my bold Spaniard, hath obedience won
Than anger, even in the ranks of war.
Hernando. The soldier, not the Spaniard,
shall obey. [Goes.
Muza to Tarik. Into our very council bringest
thou
Children of reprobation and perdition ]
Darkness thy deeds and emptiness thy speech,
Such images thou raisest as buffoons
Carry in merriment on festivals ;
520
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT v.
Nor worthiness nor wisdom would display
To public notice their deformities,
Nor cherish them nor fear them ; why shouldst
thou?
Tarik. I fear not them nor thee.
FIFTH ACT : THIRD SCENE.
EGILONA enters.
Abdalazis. Advance, 0 queen.
Now let the turbulence of faction cease.
Muza. Whate'er thy purpose, speak, and be
composed.
Egilona. He goes ; he is afar ; he follows her ;
He leads her to the altar, to the throne ;
For, calm in vengeance, wise in wickedness,
The traitor hath prevail'd, o'er him, o'er me,
O'er you, the slaves, the dupes, the scorn, of Julian.
What have I heard ! what have I seen !
Muza. Proceed.
Abdalazis. And I swear vengeance on his guilty
head
Who intercepts from thee the golden rays
Of sovranty, who dares rescind thy rights,
Who steals upon thy rest, and breathes around •
Empoison'd damps o'er that serenity
Which leaves the world, and faintly lingers here.
Muza. Who shuns thee . .
Abdalazis. Whose desertion
interdicts
Homage, authority, precedency . .
Muza. Till war shall rescue them . .
Abdalazis. And love restore.
Egilona. 0 generous Abdalazis ! never! never!
My enemies . . Julian alone remains . .
The worst in safety, far beyond my reach,
Breathe freely on the summit of their hopes,
Because they never stopt, because they sprang
From crime to crime, and trampled down remorse.
Oh ! if her heart knew tenderness like mine !
Grant vengeance on the guilty ; grant but that,
I ask no more ; my hand, my crown is thine.
Fulfill the justice of offended heaven,
Assert the sacred rights of royalty,
Come not in vain, crush the rebellious crew,
Crush, I implore, the indifferent and supine.
Muza. Roderigo thus escaped from Julian's
tent?
Egilona. No, not escaped, escorted, like a king.
The base Covilla first pursued her way
On foot ; but after her the royal car,
Which bore me from San Pablo's to the throne,
Empty indeed, yet ready at her voice,
Roll'd o'er the plain amid the carcases
Of those who fell in battle or in flight :
She, a deceiver still, to whate'er speed
The moment might incite her, often stopt
To mingle prayers with the departing breath,
Improvident ! and those with heavy wounds
Groan'd bitterly beneath her tottering knee.
Tarik. Now, by the clement and the merciful !
The girl did well. When I breathe out my soul,
Oh ! if compassion give one pang the more,
That pang be mine ; here be it, in this land :
Such women are they in this land alone.
Egilona. Insulting man !
Muza. We shall confound him yet.
Say, and speak quickly, whither went the king ]
Thou knewest where was Julian.
Abdalazis. I will tell
Without his answer : yes, my friends ! yes, Tarik,
Now will I speak, nor thou for once reply.
There is, I hear, a poor half-ruined cell
In Xeres, whither few indeed resort,
Green are the walls within, green is the floor
And slippery from disuse ; for Christian feet
Avoid it, as half-holy, half-accurst.
Still in its dark recess fanatic Sin
Abases to the ground his tangled hair,
And servile scourges and reluctant groans
Roll o'er the vault uninterruptedly,
Till (such the natural stillness of the place)
The very tear upon the damps below
Drops audible, and the heart's throb replies.
There is the idol maid of Christian creed,
And taller images whose history
I know not nor inquired. A scene of blood,
Of resignation amid mortal pangs,
And other things exceeding all belief.
Hither the aged Opas of Seville
Walkt slowly, and behind him was a man
Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless,
In sackcloth ; the white ashes on his head
Dropt as he smote his breast ; he gather'd up,
Replaced them all, groan'd deeply, lookt to
heaven,
And held them like a treasure with claspt hands.
Egilona. 0 ! was Roderigo so abased ?
Muza. 'Twas he.
Now, Egilona, judge between your friends
And enemies : behold what wretches brought
The king, thy lord, Roderigo, to disgrace.
Egilona. He merited . . but not from them . .
from me
This, and much worse : had I inflicted it,
I had rejoiced . . at what I ill endure.
Muza. For thee, for thee alone, we wisht him
here,
But other hands releast him.
Abdalazis. With what aim
Will soon appear to those discerning eyes.
Egilona. I pray thee, tell what past until that
hour.
Abdalazis. Few words, and indistinct : re-
pentant sobs
Fill'd the whole space ; the taper in his hand,
Lighting two small dim lamps before the altar,
He gave to Opas ; at the idol's feet
He laid his crown, and wiped his tears away.
The crown reverts not, but the tears return.
Egilona. Yes, Abdalazis ! soon, abundantly.
If he had only call'd upon my name,
Seeking my pardon ere he lookt to heaven's,
I could have . . no ! he thought not once on me !
Never shall he find peace or confidence ;
I will rely on fortune and on thee,
Nor fear my future lot : sure, Abdalazis,
SCENE IV.]
COUNT JULIAN,
521
A fall so great can never happen twice,
Nor man again be faithless, like Koderigo.
Abdalazis. Faithless he may be still, never so
faithless.
Fainter must be the charms, remote the days,
When memory and dread example die,
When love and terror thrill the heart no more,
And Egilona is herself forgotten.
FIFTH ACT: FOURTH SCENE.
JULIAN enters.
Tank. Turn, and behold him ! who is now con-
founded 1
Ye who awaited him, where are ye ? speak.
Is some close comet blazing o'er your tents ]
Muza ! Abdalazis ! princes ! conquerors !
Summon, interrogate, command, condemn.
Muza. Justly, Don Julian . . but respect for rank
Allays resentment, nor interrogates
Without due form . Justly may we accuse
This absence from our councils, from our camp ;
This loneliness in which we still remain
Who came invited to redress your wrongs.
Where is the king ?
Julian. The people must decide.
Muza. Imperfectly, I hope, I understand
Those words, unworthy of thy birth and age.
Julian. 0 chieftain, such have been our Gothic
laws.
Muza. Who then amid such turbulence is safe ]
Julian. He who observes them : 'tis no tur-
bulence,
It violates no peace : 'tis surely worth
A voice, a breath of air, thus to create
By their high will the man, form'd after them
In their own image, vested with their power,
To whom they trust their freedom and their lives.
Muza. They trust ! the people ! God assigns
the charge,
Kings open but the book of destiny
And read their names ; all that remains for them
The mystic hand from time to time reveals.
Worst of idolaters ! idolater
Of that refractory and craving beast
Whose den is in the city, at thy hand
I claim our common enemy, the king.
Julian. Sacred from justice then ! but not from
malice !
Tarik. Surrender him, my friend : be sure his
pains
Will not be soften'd.
Julian. 'Tis beyond my power.
Tarik. To-morrow . . if in any distant fort
He lies to-night : send after him.
Julian. My faith
Is plighted, and he lives . . no prisoner.
Egilona. I knew the truth.
Abdalazis (To JULIAN). Now, Tarik, hear and
judge.
Was he not in thy camp ? and in disguise ]
Tarik. No : I will answer thea.
Muza. Audacious man !
Had not the Kalif Walid placed thee here,
Chains and a traitor's death should be thy doom.
Speak, Abdalazis ! Egilona, speak.
Were ye not present] was not I myself]
And aided not this Julian his escape ?
Julian. 'Tis true.
Tarik. Away then friendship ! to thy fate
I leave thee : thou hast render'd Muza just,
Me hostile to thee. Who is safe? a man
Arm'd with such power and with such perfidy !
Julian. Stay, Tarik! hear me; for to thee alone
Would I reply.
Tarik. Thou hast replied already.
[Goes.
Muza. We, who were enemies, would not inquire
Too narrowly what reasons urged thy wrath
Against thy sovran lord: beneath his flag
The Christians first assail'd us from these shores,
And we seiz'd gladly the first aid we found
To quell a wealthy and a warlike king.
We never held to thee the vain pretence
That 'twas thy quarrel eur brave youth espoused,
Thine, who hast wrought us much disgrace and woe.
From perils and from losses here we rest
And^ drink of the fresh fountain at our feet,
Not madly following such illusive streams
As overspread the dizzy wilderness,
And vanish from the thirst they have seduced.
Ours was the enterprise, the land is ours.
What gain we by our toils, if he escape
Whom we came hither solely to subdue ?
Julian. Is there no gain to live in amity ]
Muza. The gain of traffickers and idle men ;
Courage and zeal expire upon such calms.
Further, what amity can Moors expect
When you have joined your forces ]
Julian. From the hour
That he was vanquisht, I have laid aside
All power, all arms.
Muza. How can we trust thee, once
Deceived, and oftener than this once despised ]
Thou earnest hither with no other aim
Than to deprive Roderigo of his crown
For thy own brow.
Egilona. Julian, base man, 'tis true.
He comes a prince, no warrior, at this hour.
Muza. His sword, 0 queen, would not avail
him now.
Abdalazis. Julian, I feel less anger than regret.
No violence of speech, no obloquy,
No accusation shall escape my lips :
Need there is none, nor reason, to avoid
My questions : if thou value truth, reply.
Hath not Roderigo left the town and camp ?
Hath not thy daughter ?
Egilona. Past the little brook
Toward the Betis. From a tower I saw
The fugitives, far on their way ; they went
Over one bridge, each with arm'd men . . not half
A league of road between them . . and had join'd,
But that the olive-groves along the path
Conceal'd them from each other, not from me :
Beneath me the whole level I survey'd,
And, when my eyes no longer could discern
522
COUNT JULIAN.
[ACT v.
Which track they took, I knew it from the storks
Rising in clouds above the reedy plain.
Muza. Deny it, if thou canst.
Julian. I order'd it.
Abdalazis. None could beside. Lo ! things in
such a mass
Falling together on observant minds,
Create suspicion and establish proof :
Wanted there fresh . . why not employ our arms 1
Why go alone ?
Muza. To parley, to conspire,
To reunite the Spaniards, which we saw,
To give up treaties, close up enmities,
And ratify the deed with Moorish blood.
Julian. Gladly would Spain procure your safe
return,
Gladly would pay large treasures for the aid
You brought against oppression.
Muza. Pay she shall
The treasures of her soil, her ports, her youth :
If she resist, if she tumultuously
Call forth her brigands and we lose a man,
Dreadful shall be our justice ; war shall rage
Through every city, hamlet, house, and field,
And, universal o'er the gasping land,
Depopulation.
Julian. They shall rue the day
Who dare these things.
Muza. Let order then prevail.
In vain thou sendest far away thy child,
Thy counsellor the metropolitan,
And Sisabert : prudence is mine no less.
Divide with us our conquests, but the king
Must be deliver'd up.
Julian. Never by me.
Muza. False then were thy reproaches, false
thy grief.
Julian. 0 Egilona ! were thine also feign'd ?
Abdalazis. Say, lovely queen, neglectful of thy
charms
Turn'd he his eyes toward the young Covilla ?
Did he pursue her to the mad excess
Of breaking off her vows to Sisabert,
And marrying her, against the Christian law 1
Muza. Did he prefer her so ?
A bdalazis. Could he prefer
To Egilona . .
Egilona. Her ! the child Covilla ]
Eternal hider of a foolish face,
Incapable of anything but shame,
To me ] old man ! to me ? 0 Abdalazis !
No : he but follow'd with slow pace my hate.
And can not pride check these unseemly tears.
[Goes.
Muza. The most offended, an offended woman,
A wife, a queen, is silent on the deed.
Abdalazis. Thou disingenuous and ignoble man,
Spreading these rumours ! sending into exile
All those their blighting influence injured most :
And whom ] thy daughter and adopted son,
The chieftains of thy laws and of thy faith.
Call any witnesses, proclaim the truth,
And set at last thy heart, thy fame, at rest.
Julian. Not, if I purposed or desired to live,
My own dishonour would I e'er proclaim
Amid vindictive and reviling foes.
Muza. Calling us foes, avows he not his guilt ]
Condemns he not the action we condemn,
Owning it his, and owning it dishonour 1
'Tis well my cares prest forward, and struck home.
Julian. Why smilest thou? Ineversawthatsmile
But it portended an atrocious deed.
Muza. After our manifold and stern assaults,
With every tower and battlement destroy'd,
The walls of Ceuta still were strong enough . .
Julian. For what ? who boasted now her brave
defence,
Or who forbad your entrance after peace ?
Muza. None : for who could 1 their engines
now arose
To throw thy sons into the arms of death.
For this erect they their proud crests again.
Mark him at last turn pale before a Moor.
Julian. Imprudent have they been, their youth
shall plead.
Abdalazis. 0 father ! could they not have been
detain'd ?
Muza. Son, thou art safe, and wert not while
they lived.
Abdalazis. I fearM them not.
Muza. And therefore wert not safe :
Under their star the blooming Egilona
Would watch for thee the nuptial lamp in vain.
Julian. Never, oh never, hast thou workt a wile
So barren of all good ! Speak out at once,
What hopest thou by striking this alarm ]
It shocks my reason, not my fears or fondness.
Muza. Be happy then as ignorance can be ;
Soon wilt thou hear it shouted from our ranks.
Those who once hurl'd defiance o'er our heads,
Scorning our arms, and scoffing at our faith,
The nightly wolf hath visited, unscared,
And loathed them as her prey ; for famine first,
Achieving in few days the boast of years,
Sank their young eyes and open'd us the gates :
Ceuta, her port, her citadel, is ours.
Julian. Blest boys ! inhuman as thou art, what
guilt
Was theirs ?
Muza. Their father's.
Julian. 0 support me, Heaven !
Against this blow ! all others I have borne.
Ermenegild ! thou mightest, sure, have lived !
A father's name awoke no dread of thee !
Only thy mother's early bloom was thine !
There dwelt on Julian's brow . . thine was serene . .
The brighten'd clouds of elevated souls,
Fear'd by the most below : those who lookt up
Saw at their season in clear signs advance
Eapturous valour, calm solicitude,
All that impatient youth would press from age,
Or sparing age sigh and detract from youth :
Hence was his fall ! my hope ! myself! my Julian !
Alas ! I boasted . . but I thought on him,
Inheritor of all . . all what 1 my wrongs . .
Follower of me . mnd whither? to the grave . .
Ah no : it should have been so years far hence !
Him at this moment I could pity most,
SCENE IV.]
COUNT JULIAN.
523
But I most prided in him ; now I know
I loved a name, I doated on a shade.
Sons ! I approach the mansions of the just,
And my arms clasp you in the same embrace,
Where none shall sever you . . and do I weep !
And do they triumph o'er my tenderness !
I had forgotten my inveterate foes
Everywhere nigh me, I had half forgotten
Your very murderers, while I thought on you :
For, 0 my children, ye fill all the space
My soul would wander o'er . . 0 bounteous heaven!
There is a presence, if the well-beloved
Be torn from us by human violence,
More intimate, pervading, and complete,
Than when they lived and spoke like other men ;
And their pale images are our support
When reason sinks, or threatens to desert us.
I weep no more . . pity and exultation
Sway and console me : are they . . no ! . . both dead1?
Muza. Ay, and unsepulchred.
Julian. Nor wept nor seen
By any kindred and far-following eye ?
Muza. Their mother saw them, if not dead, expire.
Julian. 0 cruelty . . to them indeed the least !
My children, ye are happy . . ye have lived
Of heart unconquer'd, honour unimpair'd,
And died, true Spaniards, loyal to the last.
Muza. Away with him.
Julian. Slaves ! not before I lift
My voice to heaven and man : though enemies
Surround me, and none else, yet other men
And other times shall hear : the agony
Of an opprest and of a bursting heart
No violence can silence ; at its voice
The trumpet is o'erpower'd, and glory mute,
And peace and war .hide all their charms alike.
Surely the guests and ministers of heaven
Scatter it forth through all the elements,
So suddenly, so widely, it extends,
So fearfully men breathe it, shuddering
To ask or fancy how it first arose.
Muza. Yes, they shall shudder : but will that,
henceforth,
Molest my privacy, or shake my power 1
Julian. Guilt hath pavilions, but no privacy.
The very engine of his hatred checks
The torturer in his transport of revenge,
Which, while it swells his bosom, shakes his power,
And raises friends to his worst enemy.
Muza. Where now are thine ] will they not curse
the day
That gave thee birth, and hiss thy funeral !
Thou hast left none who could have pitied thee.
Julian. Many, nor those alone of tenderer mould,
For me will weep ; many, alas, through me !
Already I behold my funeral ;
The turbid cities wave and swell with it,
And wrongs are lost in that day's pageantry :
Opprest and desolate, the countryman
Receives it like a gift ; he hastens home,
Shows where the hoof of Moorish horse laid waste
His narrow croft and winter garden-plot,
Sweetens with fallen pride his children's lore,
And points their hatred, but applauds their tears.
Justice, who came not up to us through life,
Loves to survey our likeness on our tombs,
When rivalry, malevolence, and wrath,
And every passion that once storm'd around,
Is calm alike without them as within.
Our very chains make the whole world our own,
Bind those to us who else had past us by,
Those at whose call brought down to us, the light
Of future ages lives upon our name.
Muza. I may accelerate that meteor's fall,
And quench that idle ineffectual light
Without the knowledge of thy distant world.
Julian. My world and thine are not that dis-
tant one.
Is age less wise, less merciful, than grief,
To keep this secret from thee, poor old man 1
Thou canst not lessen, canst not aggravate
My sufferings, canst not shorten or extend
Half a sword's length between my God and me.
I thank thee for that better thought than fame,
Which none however, who deserve, despise,
Nor lose from view till all things else are lost.
Abdalazis. Julian, respect his age, regard his
power.
Many who fear'd not death, have dragg'd along
A piteous life in darkness and in chains.
Never was man so full of wretchedness
But something may be suffered after all,
Perhaps in what clings round his breast and helps
To keep the ruin up, which he amid
His agony and frenzy overlooks,
But droops upon at last, and clasps, and dies.
Julian. Although a Muza send far underground,
Into the quarry whence the palace rose,
His mangled prey, climes alien and remote
Mark and record the pang. While overhead
Perhaps he passes on his favourite steed,
Less heedful of the misery he inflicts
Than of the expiring sparkle from a stone,
Yet we, alive or dead, have fellow-men
If ever we have served them, who collect
From prisons and from dungeons our remains,
And bear them in their bosom to their sons.
Man's only relics are his benefits ;
These, be there ages, be there worlds, between,
Retain him in communion with his kind :
Hence is our solace, our security,
Our sustenance, till heavenly truth descends,
Covering with brightness and beatitude
The frail foundations of these humbler hopes,
And, like an angel guiding us, at once
Leaves the loose chain and iron gate behind.
Muza. Take thou my justice first, then hope
for theirs.
I, who can bend the living to my will,
Fear not the dead, and court not the unborn :
Their arm will never reach me, nor shall thine.
Abdalazis. Pity, release him, pardon him, my
father !
Forget how much thou hatest perfidy,
Think of him, once so potent, still so brave,
So calm, so self-dependent in distress,
I marvel at him : hardly dare I blame
When I behold him fallen from so high,
524
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT i.
And so exalted after such a fall.
Mighty must that man be, who can forgive
A man so mighty ; seize the hour to rise,
Another never comes : 0 say, my father !
Say, " Julian, be my enemy no more."
He fills me with a greater awe than e'er
The field of battle, with himself the first,
When every flag that waved along our host
Droopt down the staff, as if the very winds
Hung in suspense before him. Bid him go
And peace be with him, or let me depart.
Lo ! like a god, sole and inscrutable,
He stands above our pity.
Julian. For that wish . .
Vain as it is, 'tis virtuous . . 0, for that,
However wrong thy censure and thy praise,
Kind Abdalazis ! mayst thou never feel
The rancour that consumes thy father's breast,
Nor want the pity thou hast sought for mine !
Muza. Now hast thou seal'd thy doom.
Julian. And thou thy crimes.
Abdalazis. 0 father ! heed him not : those
evil words. , .
Leave neither blight nor blemish : let him go.
Muza. A boy, a very boy art thou indeed !
One who in early day would sally out
To chase the lion, and would call it sport,
But, when more wary steps had closed him round,
Slink from the circle, drop the toils, and blanch
Like a lithe plant from under snow in spring.
Abdalazis. He who ne'er shrank from danger,
might shrink now,
And ignominy would not follow here.
Muza. Peace, Abdalazis ! How is this ? he bears
Nothing that warrants him invulnerable :
Shall I then shrink to smite him ] shall my fears
Be greatest at the blow that ends them all ?
Fears 1 no ! 'tis justice, fair, immutable,
Whose measured step at times advancing nigh
Appalls the majesty of kings themselves.
0 were he dead ! though then revenge were o'er !
FIFTH ACT. FIFTH SCENE.
Officer. Thy wife, Count Julian !
Julian. Speak !
Officer. Is dead.
Julian. Adieu
Earth ! and the humblest of all earthly hopes,
To hear of comfort, though to find it vain.
Thou murderer of the helpless ! shame of man !
Shame of thy own base nature ! 'tis an act
He who could perpetrate could not avow,
Stain'd, as he boasts to be, with innocent blood,
Deaf to reproach and blind to retribution.
Officer. Julian ! be just ; 'twill make thee less
unhappy.
Grief was her end : she held her younger boy
And wept upon his cheek ; his naked breast
By recent death now hardening and inert,
Slipt from her knee ; again with frantic grasp
She caught it, and it weigh'd her to the ground :
There lay the dead.
Julian, She 1
Officer. And the youth her son.
Julian. Receive them to thy peace, eternal God !
0 soother of my hours, while I beheld
The light of day, and thine ! adieu, adieu !
And, my Covilla ! dost thou yet survive ?
Yes, my lost child, thou livest yet . . in shame !
0 agony, past utterance ! past thought !
That throwest death, as some light idle thing,
With all its terrors, into dust and air,
1 will endure thee ; I, whom heaven ordain'd
Thus to have serv'd beneath my enemies,
Their conqueror, thus to have revisited
My native land with vengeance and with woe.
Henceforward shall she recognise her sons,
Impatient of oppression or disgrace,
And rescue them, or perish ; let her hold
This compact, written with her blood and mine.
Now follow me : but tremble : years shall roll
And wars rage on, and Spain at last be free.
ANDREA OF HUNGARY, GIOVANNA OF NAPLES, AND
FRA RUPERT: A TRILOGY.
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
CHARACTERS.
ANDREA. FRA RUPERT. CARACCIOLI. CARAFFA. BOC-
CACCIO. MAXIMINT, a Soldier. KLAPWRATH, ZINGA,
PSEIN, Hungarian Officers. PAGE. GARISENDO, a
Peasant. GIOVANNA, Queen. SANCIA, Queen Dowager.
MARIA, Sitter of Giovanna. MARIA OF SICILY, Half-
fitter. FIUPPA, Foster-mother. PETRONILLA, a Peasant.
PROLOGUE.
My verse was for thine eyes alone,
Alone by them was it repaid ;
And still thine ear records the tone
Of thy grey minstrel, thoughtful maid !
Amid the pomps of regal state,
Where thou, O Rose ! art call'd to move,
Thee only Virtue can elate,
She only guide thy steps to Love.
Sometimes, when dark is each saloon,
Dark every lamp that crown'd the Seine,
Memory hangs low Amalfi's moon
And lights thee o'er Salerno's plain,
And onward, where Giovanna bore
Keen anguish from envenom 'd tongues:
Her fame my pages shall restore,
Thy pity shall requite her wrongs.
ACT I.
SCENE I. PALACE AT NAPLES.
ANDREA and GIOVANNA.
Andrea. What say you now, Giovanna! shall
we go
SCENE III.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
525
And conquer France1? Heigho 1 I am sadly idle ;
My mighty mind wants full activity.
Giovanna. Andrea ! be contented ; stay at home ;
Conquer ] you 've conquer'd me
Andrea. Ah rebel queen !
I doubt it : we have had war first, however,
And parleys, and all that.
Giovanna. You might have more
Before you conquer the strong cities there.
Andrea. England, they tell me, hath as much
of France
As France hath. Some imagine that Provenza
Is half-and-half French land. How this may be
I can not tell ; I am no theologian.
Giovanna . . in your ear « . I have a mind
To ride to Paris, and salute the king,
And pull him by the beard, and make him fight.
Giovanna. Know that French beards have
stiffer hairs than German,*
And crackle into flame at the first touch.
. Andrea. 'Sblood ! like black cats ! But only
in the dark ?
Giovanna. By night or day, in city or in field.
Andrea. I never knew it : let the Devil lug
them
For me then ! they are fitter for his "fist.
Sure, of all idle days the marriage-day
Is idlest : even the common people run
About the streets, not knowing what to do,
As if they came from wedding too, poor souls !
This fancy set me upon conquering France.
Giovanna. And one hour only after we are
united ?
SCENE II.
MAEIA enters.
Andrea. Maria! where are you for? France
or Naples ]
She heard, she smiled. .Here 's whispering! This
won't do . .
[Going ; but stops, pacified.
She may have secrets . . they all have . . I'll
leave 'em. [Goes.
Giovanna. Unsisterly ! unfriendly !
Maria. Peace ! Giovanna !
Giovanna. That word has sign'd it. I have
sworn to love him.
Maria. Ah, what a vow !
Giovanna. The harder to perform
The greater were the glory : I will earn it.
Maria. How can we love . . .
Giovanna (interrupting). Mainly, by hearing
none
Decry the object; then, by cherishing
The good we see in it, and overlooking
What is less pleasant in the paths of life.
All have some virtue if we leave it them
In peace and quiet ; all may lose some part
By sifting too minutely bad and good.
The tenderer and the timider of creatures
Often desert the brood that has been handled
* Hungary and Germany were hostile.
And turn'd about, or indiscreetly lookt at.
The slightest touches, touching constantly,
Irritate and inflame.
Maria. Giovanna mine !
These rhetoric-roses are supremely sweet,
But hold ! the jar is full. I promise you
I will not steal up with a mind to snatch,
Or pry too closely where you bid me not . .
But for the nest you talk about . .
Giovanna. For shame J .
What nest?
Maria. That nest your blushes gleam upon.
0 ! I will watch each twig, each feather there,
And, if my turning, tossing, hugging, does it,
Woe to Giovanna's little bird, say I.
Giovanna. Seriously, my sweet sister !
Maria (interrupting). Seriously
Indeed ! What briars ere we come to that !
Giovanna. I am accustom'd to Andrea's ways,
And see much good in him.
Maria. I see it too.
Giovanna. Fix upon that your eyes ; they will
grow brighter,
Maria, for each beauty they discover.
SCENE HI. ANOTHER ROOM IN THE PALACE.
ANDREA, FRA RUPERT.
Andrea. Well met again, Fra Rupert ! Why
not, though,
At church with us ? By this humility
You lost the prettiest sight that ever was.
Fra Rupert. I know what such sights are.
Andrea. What ?
Fra Rupert. Vanity.
Andrea. Exact the thing that everybody likes.
Fra Rupert. You young and heedless !
Andrea. We pass lightly over,
And run on merrily quite to the end ;
The graver stumble, break their knees, and
curse it :
Which are the wiser 1 Had you seen the church !
The finest lady ever drest for court
A week-day peasant to her ! By to-morrow
There 's not a leg of all the crowd in Naples
But will stand stiff and ache with this day's
tiptoe ;
There 's not a throat will drop its paste-tape down
Without some soreness from such roaring cheers ;
There 's not a husband but whose ears will tingle
Under his consort's claw this blessed night
For sighing " What an angel is Giovanna ! "
Fra Rupert. Go, go ! I can not hear such
ribaldry.
Andrea. Rather should you have heard, as
there you might,
Quarrelsome blunder-headed drums, o'erpower'd
By pelting cymbals ; then complaining flutes,
And boy-voiced fifes, lively and smart and shrill;
Then timbrels, where tall fingers trip, but trip
In the right place, and run along again ;
Then blustering trumpets, wonder-wafting horns,
526
ANDREA OP HUNGARY.
[ACT i.
Ewivas from their folks, hurrahs from ours,
And songs that pour into both ears long life
And floods of glory and victory for ever.
Fra Rupert. What signify these fooleries 1 In
one word,
Andrea, art thou king ?
Andrea, I fancy so.
The people never give such hearty shouts
Saving for kings and blunders.
Fra Rupert. Son ! beware,
Lest while they make the one they make the
other.
Andrea. How must I guard against it?
Fra Rupert. Twelve whole years
Constantly here together, all the time
Since we left Hungary, and not one day
But I have labour'd to instill into thee,
Andrea ! how wise kings must feel and act.
Andrea. But, father, who let you into the
secret1?
Fra Rupert. I learnt it in the cloister.
Andrea. Then no doubt
The secret is worth knowing; many are
(Or songs and fables equally are false)
Among those whisper'd there.
Fra Rupert. Methinks, my son,
Such words are lighter than beseems crown'd
heads,
As thine should be, and shall be, if thou wilt.
Andrea. Ay, father, but it is not so as yet ;
Else would it jingle to another crown,
With what a face beneath it ! What a girl
Is our Giovanna !
Fra Rupert. By the saints above !
I thought it was a queen, and not a girl.
Andrea. There is enough in her for both at
once.
A queen it shall be then the whole day long.
[FRA RUPERT, impatient.
Nay, not a word, good Frate ! the whole day ;
Ave-Maria ends it; does it not?
I am so glad, so gamesome, so light-hearted,
So fond, I (sure !) am long steps off the throne.
Fra Rupert. And ever may'st be, if thou art
remiss
In claiming it.
Andrea. I can get anything
From my Giovanna. You would hardly guess
What she has given me. Look here !
Fra Rupert. A book ?
Andrea. ' King Solomon?
Fra Rupert. His Song ? To seculars ]
I warrant she would teach it, and thou learn it.
Andrea. I '11 learn it through, I '11 learn it every
verse.
Where does the Song begin ? I see no rhymes.
Fra Rupert. ' The Proverbs ! ' Not so bad !
Andrea. Are songs then proverbs ?
And what is this hard word ?
Fra Rupert. ' Ecdesiastes.''
Andrea. But look ! you have not seen the best
of it.
What pretty pictures ! what broad rubies ! what
Prodigious pearls ! seas seem to roll within,
And azure skies, as ever bent above,
Push their pink clouds, half-shy, to mingle with
'em.
Fra Rupert. I am not sure this book would do
thee harm,
But better let me first examine it. [He takes it.
Andrea. You shall not have it; give it me
again.
Fra Rupert. Loose it, I say, Andrea !
Andrea. I say no!
Fra Rupert. To me ?
Andrea. Dost think I 'd say it to Giovanna?
Beside, she gave it me : she has read in it
With her own eyes, has written latin in it
With her own fingers, . . for who else could write
Distinctly such small letters ? . . You yourself,
Who rarely have occasion for much latin,
Might swear them to be latin in ten minutes.
Another thing . . the selfsame perfume clings
About those pages as about her bosom.
Fra Rupert (starts.) Abomination ! Know all
that!
Andrea. Like matins.
Thence, tho' she turn'd quite round, I saw her
take it
To give it me. Another thing . . the people
Bragg'd of my mettle half an hour ago,
And I will show I have it, like the best.
Another thing . . forgettest thou, Fra Rupert,
I am a husband ?
Fra Rupert. Seven years old thou wert one.*
Andrea. Ha, but ! ha, but ! seven years upon
seven years
Could not make me the man I am to-day.
Fra Rupert. Nor seventy upon seven a tittle
wiser.
Andrea. Why did not you then make me while
you could ]
You taught me nothing, and would let none
teach me,
No, not our king himself, the wisest man
In his dominions, nor more wise than willing.
Forsooth ! you made a promise to my father
That nobody should filch my faith and morals,
No taint of learning eat skin-deep into me !
And good king Robert said, " If thus my brother
Must have it . . if such promise was exacted . . "
Fra Rupert. All have more knowledge than
they well employ.
Upbraidest thou thy teacher, guardian, father?
Andrea. Fathers may be, alas ! too distant
from us,
Guardians may be too close . . but, teacher?
teacher ?
Fra Rupert. Silence !
Andrea (retreating.) He daunts me : yet, some
day, cospetto !
Fra Rupert. What mutterest thou 1
Andrea (to himself.) I will be brave, please God !
Fra Rupert (suppressing rage.) Obstinate sin-
ners are alone unpardon'd :
I may forgive thee after meet repentance,
* Andrea and Giovanna were contracted when he was
seven, she five.
SCENE IV.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
527
But must confer with thee another time
On that refractory untoward spirit.
Andrea (to himself.) He was then in the right
(it seems) at last.
Fra Rupert. I hear some footsteps coming
hitherward.
SCENE IV.
GIOVANNA and FILIPPA.
Fra Rupert, (turns his back to them.) 0 those
pestiferous women !
Andrea. Ay, well spoken.
The most religious of religious men
Lifts up his arms and eyes, my sweet Giovanna,
Before your wond'rous charms.
[The Friar looks at him vrith rage and scorn.
Giovanna. Simple Andrea !
Are they more wond'rous than they were before ]
Or are they more apparent now the robes
Are laid aside, and all those gems that made
My hair stand back, chiefly that mischievous
Malignant ruby (some fierce dragon's eye
Turn'd into stone) which hurt your finger so
With its vile crooked pin, for touching me,
When you should have but lookt, and not quite
that.
Fra Rupert (who had listened.) Come hither ;
didst thou hear her ]
A ndrea. Every word ;
And bear no rancour to her, though she scolds.
Fra Rupert. She might have waited twenty
years beyond
This day, before she thought of matrimony ;
She talks so like a simpleton .
Andrea. She does
Indeed : yet, father ! it is very true :
The pin did prick me : she is no simpleton
As far as memory goes.
[The Friar looks up, then walks about impa-
tiently.
Now, won't you mind me 1
She is but very young, scarce seventeen ;
When she is two years older, just my age,
Then shall you see her ! more like me perhaps.
She might have waited . . you say well . . and
would
Willingly, I do think ; but I am wiser,
And warmer. Our Hungarian blood (ay, Frate !)
Is not squeez'd out of March anemones.
Filippa. Since, friar Rupert ! here are met
together
The lofty and the lowly, they and we,
If your austerity of life forbade
To mingle with the world's festivities,
Indulge, I pray you, in that luxury
Which suits all seasons, sets no day apart,
Excludes from its communion none, howe'er
Unworthy, but partakes of God indeed . .
Indulge in pardon.
Fra Rupert. Does a seneschal's
Wife bend before me ] Do the proud ones beg ]
Filippa. Too proud I may be : even the very
humblest
May be too proud. I am, 'tis true, the widow
Of him you mention. Do I beg 1 I do.
Our queen commands me to remove ill-will.
Fra Rupert. There are commands above the
queen's.
Filippa. There are,
0 holy man ! obey we both at once !
Giovanna (calls ANDREA.) Husband !
Fra Rupert. And not our king] most noble
lady!
Giovanna. He, or I much mistake him, is my
husband.
Andrea. Mistake me ! not a whit : I am, I am.
Giovanna. If, 0 my husband ! that dear name
has power
On your heart as on mine, now when first spoken,
Let what is love between us shed its sweets
A little wider, tho' a little fainter ;
Let all our friends this day, all yours, all mine,
Be one another's, and not this day only.
Persuade them.
Andrea. Can I]
Giovanna. You persuaded me.
Andrea. Ay, but you did not hate me ; and
your head
Is neither grey nor tonsured ; these are odds.
1 never could imagine well how folks
Who disagree in other things, a-gree
To make each other angry. What a game !
To toss back burs until the skin is full
On either side ! Which wins the stake, I wonder ]
Fra Rupert (bursting away). I have no patience.
Andrea. I have, now he's gone.
How long were you contriving this grand scheme
To drive away the friar 1 Do you think
[ Whispers to GIOVANNA.
He won't come after supper 1 Does he know
Our chamber ]
Giovanna. Hush ! Andrea !
Andrea. In good earnest
I fear him, and the fleas about his frock.
Let me go after him : he went in wrath :
He may do mischief, if he thinks it right,
As these religious people often do. [ANDREA (joes.
Filippa. Happy Andrea ! only fleas and friars
Molest him : little he suspects the snares
About his paths; the bitter jealousies
Of Hungary ; how pertinaciously
Mail'd hands grasp sceptres, how reluctantly
Loose them ; how tempting are our milder clime
And gentler nation ! He deserves our pity.
Giovanna. 0 ! more than pity. If our clime,
our nation,
Bland, constant, kind, congenial with each other,
Were granted him, how much more was withheld !
Sterile the soil is not, but sadly waste.
What buoyant spirits and what pliant temper !
How patient of reproof ! how he wipes off
All injuries before they harden on him,
And wonders at affronts, and doubts they can be !
Then, his wild quickness ! 0 the churl that bent it
Into the earth, colourless, shapeless, thriftless,
Fruitless, for ever ! Had he been my brother,
I should have wept all my life over him ;
528
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT ii.
But, being my husband, one hypocrisy
I must put on, one only ever will I.
Others must think, by my observance of him,
I hold him prudent, penetrating, firm,
No less than virtuous : I must place myself
In my own house (now indeed his) below him.
Filippa. I almost think you love him.
Giovanna. He has few
Even small faults, which small minds spy the
soonest ;
He has, what those will never see nor heed,
Wit of bright feather, but of broken wing ;
No stain of malice, none of spleen, about it.
For this, and more things nearer . . for the worst
Of orphancy, the cruellest of frauds,
Stealth of his education while he played
Nor fancied he could want it ; for our ties
Of kindred ; for our childhood spent together ;
For those dear faces that once smiled upon us
At the same hour, in the same balcony ;
Even for the plants we rear'd in partnership,
Or spoil'd in quarrel, I do love Andrea.
But, from his counsellors ! . . .
Filippa. We shall elude
Their clumsy wiles perhaps. The youth, methinks,
Is tractable.
Giovanna. May wise men guide him then !
It lies beyond my duty.
Filippa. But the wise
Are not the men who guide the tractable.
The first bold hand that seizes, holds them fast ;
And the best natures melt into the bad
'Mid dances and carousals.
Giovanna. Let Andrea
Be sparing of them !
Filippa. Evil there may be
Where evil men preside, but greatly worse
Is proud austerity than princely glee.
Giovanna. Heaven guard us ! I have entered
on a course
Beleaguered with dense dangers : but that course
Was first ordained in earth, and now in heaven.
My father's spirit filled his father's breast,
And peace and union in our family
(They both foresaw) would be secured by ours.
Filippa. She who forgets her parent will forego
All later duties : yes, when love has lost
The sound of its spring-head, it grows impure,
Tortuous, and spent at last in barren sand.
I owe these generous kings the bread I broke,
The letters I pickt up : no vile sea-weed
Had perisht more neglected, but for them.
They would heap affluence on me ; they did heap it ;
Next, honours : for these only I am ungrateful.
Giovanna (smiling) . Ungrateful Hhou ? Filippa !
Filippa. Most ungrateful.
With humble birth and humbler intellect
The puff-ball might have bounced along the plain
And blinded the beholder with its dust :
But intellect let down on humble birth
Writhes under titles, shrinks from every glance,
At every question turns one fibre fresh
For torture, aiid, unpullied and adrift,
Burns its dull heart away in smouldering scorn.
Giovanna. Where no ethereal spirit fills the
breast . .
Filippa. . . Honours are joys great as such breast
can hold.
Giovanna. The happy then in courts are num-
berless ;
We hear the contrary.
Filippa. Never believe
This, nor another ill report of them.
Giovanna. What]
Filippa. That the great are not great to their
valets ;
'Tis but their valets who can find their greatness.
Giovanna. I know that you have enemies.
Filippa. Thank God !
I might have else forgotten what I am,
And what he gave me ere he placed me here.
Giovanna. I never shall, Filippa !
Filippa. Think of those
Who rais'd our souls above us, not of me.
Giovanna. Oh ! if my soul hath risen, if the
throbs
Of gratitude now tell it me, if they
Who rais'd it must be thought of . . to my heart,
Filippa ! for the heart alone can think.
Filippa. I first received thee in these arms;
these arms
Shall loose thee last of living things, Giovanna.
ACT II.
SCENE I. IN THE PALACE.
GIOVANNA, FIAMMETTA, MARIA.
Maria. And now, Fiammetta, tell me whence
that name
Which tickles thee so.
Fiammetta. Tell indeed ! not I.
Maria (to GIOVANNA). Sister! you may command.
Giovanna. Command a sister ?
Secrets are to be won, but not commanded.
I never heard the name before . . Fiammetta . .
Is that it ?
Maria. That is it.
Fiammetta. For shame, Maria !
Never will I entrust you with a secret.
Maria. I do believe ^ou like this one too well
Ever to let another mingle with it.
Fiammetta (to herself). I do indeed, alas !
Giovanna. Some gallant knight.
Has carried off her scarf and bared her heart.
But to this change of name I must withhold
Assent, I like Maria so much better.
Fiammetta (points to MARIA). There is Maria
yet.
Giovanna. But where twin-roses
Have grown so long together, to snap one
Might make the other droop.
Fiammetta. Ha ! now, Maria !
Maria ! you are spriuged, my little quail !
Giovanna. Fiammetta ! if our father were here
with us,
He would suspect some poet friend of his,
SCENE II.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
529
Dealer in flames and darts, their only trade,
Enchanted his Sicilian.
Maria. Ho ! ho ! ho .'
Proserpine never blusht such damask blushes
When she was caught.
Fiammetta. I am quite cool.
Maria. The clouds
May be quite cool when they are quite as red ;
Girl's faces, I suspect, are somewhat less so.
[FIAMMETTA runs off.
Giovanna. Maria ! dear Maria ! She is flown.
Is the poor girl in love then?
Maria. Till this hour
I thought it but a fancy, such as all
We children have : we all choose one ; but, sure,
To run out of the room at the mere shadow !
Giovanna. What would you do ?
Maria. Wait till he came himself.
Giovanna. And then ?
Maria. Think seriously of running off,
Until I were persuaded it was civil.
SCENE IL
Andrea. What have ye done to little Sicily?
She ran so swiftly by me, and pusht back
My hand so smartly when I would have stopt
her,
I think you must have vext her plaguily
Among you.
Maria. She was vext, but not by us.
Andrea. Yes, many girls are vext to day. One
bride
Sheds fifty thorns from each white rose she
wears.
I did not think of that. (To MAKIA.) You did,
no doubt?
Maria. I wear white roses too, as well aa she :
Our queen's can have no thorns for us.
Andrea. Not one?
Maria. No, nor for any in this happy realm.
Andrea. Ah now! this happy realm! Some
people think
That I could make it happier.
Giovanna. I rejoice
To hear it.
Andrea. Are you glad, my little bride?
Giovanna. Most glad. 0 never disappoint
their hopes !
The people are so kind ! they love us so !
Andrea. They are a merry race : ay, very
.,'. . crickets,
Chirruping, leaping. What they eat, God knows;
Sunshine and cinders, may be : he has sent
Plenty of these, and they are satisfied.
Giovanna. Should we be, if they are ?
Andrea. 0 then ! a boon !
To make them happy all their lives.
Giovanna. The boon
To make them happier Heaven alone can grant.
Hearken ! If some oppressions were removed,
Beyond my strength to manage, it were done.
Andrea. Nothing so easy. Not your strength
indeed,
But mine, could push a buffalo away.
I have a little favour to request.
Giovanna. Speak.
Andrea. Give me then this kingdom, only this.
I do not covet mountains to the north,
Nor cities over cities farther west,
Casal or Monferrato or Saluzzo,
Asti or Coni, Ceva or Torino,
Where that great river runs which spouts from
heaven,
Nor Aix nor Toulon, nor Marseille nor Nice
Nor Avignon, where our good pope sits percht ;
I only want this tidy little kingdom,
To make it happy with this sword upon it.
Giovanna. The people and their laws alone can
give it.
Andrea. Well, we can make the laws.
Giovanna. And people too?
Andrea. Giovanna ! I do think that smile could
make
A thousand peoples from the dullest clay,
And mould them to thy will.
Giovanna. Pure poetry !
Andrea. Don't say it ! or they knock me on
the head !
I ought to be contented; but they would
Insist upon it. I have askt : here ends
My duty : I don't want it for myself . .
And yet those cities lookt like strings of bird-
And tempted me above my strength. I only
Repent of learning all their names for nothing.
Let them hang where they are.
Giovanna. Well said.
A ndrea. Who wants 'em ?
I like these pictures better. What a store !
Songs, proverbs, and a word as hard as flint,
Enough for fifty friars to ruminate
Amid their cheese and cobnuts after dinner,
Read it me.
Giovanna. Which ? [ ANDREA .points.
Giovanna. ' Ecclesiastes.'
Andrea. Right !
As you pronounce it, scarce a word of ours
In Hungary is softer. What a tongue !
Round, juicy, sweet, and soluble, as cherries.
When Frate Rupert utter'd the same word,
It sounded just as if his beard and breast,
And all which there inhabit, had turn'd round
Into his throat, to rasp and riddle it.
I never shall forget Ecclesiastes !
Only two words I know are pleasanter.
Giovanna. And which are they?
Andrea (saluting her). Giovanna and Carina.
Maria. Unmanner'd prince !
Andrea. Now the white rose sheds thorns.
SCENE III.
SANCIA and FILIPPA.
Sancia (smiling). Step-mothers are not
quite at home
With their queen-daughters.
Giovanna. Yet queen-mothers are.
530
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT ii.
Step-mother you have never been to me,
But kindest, fondest, tenderest, truest mother.
Maria. Are we not all your children?
Sancia. All. Where then
Is fled our lively Sicily ?
Oiovanna. She is gone
To her own chamber.
Maria. To read poetry.
Sancia. Where poetry is only light or flat-
tering
She might read some things worse, and many
better.
I never loved the heroes of Romance,
And hope they glide not in among the leaves.
Maria. And love you then their contraries?
Sancia. Those better.
What clever speech, Maria, dost thou ponder ?
I see we differ.
Maria. Rather.
Sancia. Why so grave ?
Surely no spur is tangled in thy hem !
Maria. No, my regrets were all for you. What
pity
Andrea dropt upon our globe too late ;
A puissant antipode to all such heroes !
Giovanna (smiling). Intolerable girl ! sad jea-
lous creature !
Sancia. Where is he ? I was seeking him.
Maria. There now !
Sancia. Or else I should not have return'd so
soon
After our parting at the Benediction. [Goes.
Maria. Sister ! I fear my little flippancy
Hurried Queen Sancia : why just now want sposo ?
Oiovanna. She did not smile, as you do, when
she went.
Fond as she is, her smiles are faint this morning.
A sorrowing thought, pure of all gloom, o'er-
spread
That saintly face.
Maria. It did indeed.
Oiovanna. She loves
Us all, she loves our people too, most kindly.
Maria. Seeing none other than Hungarian
troops
At church about us, deeply did she sigh
And say " Ah ! where are ours ? "
Oiovanna. You pain me sadly.
Queens, 0 Maria ! have two hearts for sorrow ;
One sinks upon our Naples. Whensoever
I gaze ('tis often) on her bay, so bright
With sun-wove meshes, idle multitudes
Of little plashing waves ; when air breathes o'er it
Mellow with sound and fragrance, of such purity
That the blue hills seem coming nearer, nearer,
As I look forth at them, and tossing down
Joyance for joyance to the plains below . .
To think what mannerless, unshorn, harsh-
tongued
Barbarians from the Danube and the Drave
Infest them, I cast up my eyes to Heaven
Impatiently, despondently, and ask
Are such the guests for such festivities?
But shall they dare enthral my poor Andrea ?
Send, send for him : I would not he were harm'd,
Much less degraded. O for ministers
To guide my counsels and protect my people !
I would call round me all the good and wise.
Sancia (returning). Daughter ! no palace is too
small to hold them.
The good love other places, love the fields,
And ripen the pale harvest with their prayers.
Solitude, solitude, so dread a curse
To princes, such a blight to sycophants,
Is their own home, their healthy thoughts grow
in it.
The wise avoid all our anxieties :
The cunning, with the tickets of the wise,
Push for the banquet, seize each vacant chair,
Gorge, pat their spaniel, and fall fast asleep.
Giovanna. Ah then what vigils are reserved
for me !
Maria. Hark ! spears are grounded.
Giovanna. Officer ! who comes ?
Officer. Lady ! the friar mounts the stairs ;
behind him
Those potent lords, CarafFa and Caraccioli.
Giovanna. Your chair, Queen Sancia, stands
unoccupied :
We must be seated to receive the lords.
Is. it not so ?
Sancia. The queen must.
Giovanna. One queen only ?
The younger first ? we can not thus reverse
The laws of nature for the whims of court.
[SANCIA is seated.
There 's our kind mother ! Just in time ! They
come.
RCRNE IV.
FBA RUPERT, CARAFFA and CARACCIOLI.
Lady ! these nobles bring me with them hither,
Fearing they might not win an audience
On what concerns the welfare of the state,
In such an hour of such a day as this.
Giovanna. Speak, gentlemen ! You have much
wronged yourselves,
And me a little, by such hesitation.
No day, methinks, no hour, is half so proper,
As when the crown is placed upon my brow,
To hear what are its duties.
Caraffa. Gracious queen !
We come to represent . .
Fra Rupert (behind). Speak out . . wrongs . .
rights . .
Religion.
Caraffa (to him). You distract me.
Fra Rupert (to CARACCIOLI). Speak then thou.
See how attentively, how timidly,
She waits for you, and blushes up your void !
Caraccioli. 'Tis therefore I want words.
Fra Rupert. Hear mine then, boys !
[ Walks toward GIOVANNA.
Imprest with awe before such majesty,
The hopes of Naples, whom their fathers deem
On this occasion, this gay hour, from high
SCENE VI.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
531
Nobility, from splendour of equipments,
Beauty of person, gracefulness of mien,
And whatsoever courts are courtly by,
Most fitted, and most likely to prevail
Against those ancient frauds and artifices
Which certain dark offenders weave about them . .
These unsophisticated youths, foredoom'd
Longest and most impatiently to suffer,
Lay humbly at the footstool of your throne
A list of grievances yet unredrest.
Giovanna. Give it me, gentlemen, we will per-
use it
Together.
Fra Rupert. They are more than scribe could
pen.
Giovanna (to FRA RUPERT). Are they of native
or imported growth 1
Your Reverence hath some practice in the sorting.
Permit me to fill up your pause, Fra Rupert !
On this occasion, this gay hour, methinks
To urge impatience and foredoom of suffering
Is quite untimely. High nobility
And splendour of equipment are the last
Of merits in Caraffas and Caracciolis. [To them.
The delicacy that deferr'd the tender
Of your important service, I appreciate,
Venturing to augur but a brief delay.
Gentlemen ! if your fathers bade you hither,
I grieve to owe them more than I owe you,
And trust, when next we see you, half the pleasure,
Half, if not all, may be your own free gift.
[She rises, they go.
SCENE V. PALACE GARDEN.
FRA RUPERT, CARAFFA, and CARACCIOLI.
Fra Rupert. The losel !
Caraccioli. Saints ! what graciousness !
Caraffa. Was ever
So sweet a girl ? He is uglier than old Satan,
Andrea . . I abhor him worse than ever. . .
Curse on that Tartar, Turk, Bohemian,
Hungarian ! I could now half-strangle him.
Fra Rupert. We are dismist.
Caraffa. My speech might have done wonders.
Fra Rupert. Now, who (the mischief !) stops a
dead man's blood ?
Wonders ! ay truly, wonders it had done !
Thou wert agape as money-box for mass,
And wantedst shaking more. What are our
gains?
Caraffa. A vision the strain'd eyes can not
inclose,
Or bring again before them from the senses,
Which clasp it, hang upon it, nor will ever
Release it, following thro' eternity.
Caraccioli. I can retain her image, hear her
words,
Repeat, and tone them on each fibre here,
Distinctly still.
Caraffa. Then hast thou neither heart
Nor brain, Caraccioli ! No strife so hard
As to catch one slight sound, one faintest trace,
Of the high beauty that rules over us.
Who ever seized the harmony of heaven,
Or saw the confine that is nearest earth 1
Fra Rupert. I can bear youthful follies, but
must check
The words that run thus wide and point at heaven.
We must warn laymen fairly off that ground.
Are ye both mad ?
Caraffa. One is ; I swear to one :
I would not be the man that is not so
For empires girt with gold, worlds starr'd with
women :
A trance is that man's life, a dream be mine !
Caraccioli 's an ice-pit, covered o'er
With straw and chaff and double-door'd and
thatcht,
Andwall'd,the whole dark space, with earthen wall.
Why ! Frate ! all those groans of thine for heaven 1
Art toucht ]
Fra Rupert. I have been praying fervently . .
Despairingly I fear to say . . 'twere rash,
Ungrateful, and ungodly.
Caraffa. He has brought
The whole Maremma on me at one breath.
My cold fit now comes over me. But, Frate ! •
If we do feel, may we not say we do ?
Fra Rupert. To feel is harm; to say it, may
be none,
Unless 'tis said with levity like thine.
Caraffa. Ah faith ! I wish 'twere levity ! The
pagan
That heaves up Etna, calls it very differently.
I think the dog is better off than I am ;
He groans upon the bed where lies his torment ;
I very far away from where lies mine.
Fra Rupert. Art thou a Christian ?
Caraffa. Father ! don't be serious. .
Fra Rupert. I must be.
Caraffa. Have not I most cause 1
Fra Rupert. Yea truly.
Caraffa. I am not over-given to complain,
But nettles will sting all . .
Fra Rupert. . . who put their hands in.
Caraccioli ! be warn'd by this our friend
What sufferings may arise from lawless love.
Thine passeth its due bounds ; it doth, Caraccioli !
But thou canst conquer every wild desire;
A high emprize ! what high emprize but suits
A true Caraccioli ! We meet again . .
I have some warnings, some reproofs, for him.
[CARACCIOLI goes.
SCENE VI.
FRA RUPERT, CARAFFA.
Fra Rupert. Where walls are living things,
have ears, eyes, mouths,
Deemest thou, son Francesco ! I alone
Heard those most violent words about Andrea ?
Caraffa. What words ? I never thought about
the man ;
About his wife some little ; true enough.
Some little 1 criminal it were to say it :
M M 2
532
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT in.
He who thinks little of such . . such perfection,
Has left his thoughts among the worms that creep
-In charnel-houses, among brainless skulls,
Dry bones, without a speck of blood, a thread
Of fibre, ribs that never cased a heart.
The volumes of the doctors of the church
Could not contain a tithe of it : their clasps,
Strong enough to make chains for Saracens,
Their timbers to build argosies, would warp
And split, if my soul's fire were pent within.
Fra Rupert, Remember, son Francesco ! prince
Andrea,
King rather (such the husband of a queen
Is virtually, and should be) king Andrea
Lives under my protection.
Cara/a. Well, what then ?
Fra Rupert. What ? Into mine own ear didst
thou not breathe
Traitorous threats 1
Cara/a. I ? Threats ] About his queen 1
Fra Rupert. Filthy ! most filthy !
Cara/a. No, no : wandering thoughts
Fluttered in that direction ; one thought, rather.
Doves have hot livers.
Fra Rupert. Be adultery
Bad as it will, yet treason, son Francesco !
Treason is far more difficult to deal with.
Cara/a. I do suspect it may be.
Fra Rupert. Saidst thou not
Thou couldst half-strangle that Hungarian ?
Cara/a. Spake I so rashly ]
Fra Rupert. I am a Hungarian.
Cara/a. Evident : but that noble mien would
daunt
Moor, Usbeck, Abyssinian : and that strength !
A Switzer bear could not half-strangle it.
Fra Rupert. 'Twere martyrdom, 'twere martyr-
dom. The life
Of kings hath swords and scaffolds round about it;
A word might fling thee on them.
Cara/a. Such a word
Must fall from holy lips, thenceforth unholy.
Fra Rupert. Guided by me and courage, thou
art safe.
ACT III.
SCENE I. IN THE PALACE.
ANDREA and FILIPPA.
Andrea. Many the stories you've repeated to me,
Lady Filippa ! I have clean forgotten 'em ;
But all the bloody giants every girl
Before our bed-time threw into my night-cap,
Lie safe and sound there still.
Fitippa. I quite believe
You've not the heart to drive them out, my prince.
Andrea. Not I indeed. And then your sage
advice !
Filippa, Is all that too forgotten ?
Andrea. No, not all ;
But, dear Filippa, now that I am married,
And sovran (one may say) or next door to it,
You must not give me any more advice . .
Not that I mind it ; but to save appearances.
[She bends : he goes, but returns suddenly.
Lady Filippa ! lady seneschal !
Filippa. My prince ! command me.
Andrea. Solve me one more question.
How happens it (while old men are so wise)
That any foolish thing, advice or story,
We call it an old woman's ?
Filippa. Prince Andrea !
I know not as for stories and advice ;
I only know, when we are disappointed
In any thing, or teazed with it, we scoff
And call it an old man's.
Andrea. Ah spiteful sex !
Filippa. Here comes Maria : ask her no such
questions.
Andrea. I wish Fra Rupert heard your words.
Filippa. To prove them ?
Maria. Give him a nosegay at the door.
Andrea. He spurns
Such luxury.
Maria. Since his arrival here,
Perfumes, they tell me', are more general
And tenfold dearer : everybody wears them
In self-defence : men take them with their daggers;
Laundresses sprinkle them on vilest linen,
Lest they be called uncleanly ; round the churches
What once were clouds of incense, now are
canopies
Of the same benzoin ; kites could not fly thro' ;
The fainting penitents are prone to catch
At the priest's surplice as he passes by,
And cry, above their prayers to Heaven for mercy,
Stop ! stop ! turn back ! waft me a little yet.
Andrea. The father is indeed more fox than
civet,
And stinks out sins like sulphur and stale eggs.
(To MARIA.) You will not run away with him?
Maria. Tarantola !
Worse than most venomous tarantola,
He bites, and will not let us dance for it.
SCENE IL IN THE GARDENS OP CAPO DI
MONTE.
BOCCACCIO and FIAMMETTA.
Fiammetta. I do not know whether it be quite
right
To listen, as I have, morn after morn
And evening after evening.
Boccaccio. Are my sighs
Less welcome in the garden and the bower,
Than where loud organ bellow'd them away,
And chorister and waxlight ran between 1
Fiammetta. You sadly interrupted me at
vespers :
Never do that again, sir ! When I pray,
I like to pray with all my heart. Bold man !
Do you dare smile at me 1
Boccaccio. The bold man first
Was smiled at ; was he not ]
Fiammetta. No, no such thing :
SCENE IV.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
533
But if he was, it was because he sigh'd
At the hot weather he had brought with him.
Boccaccio. At the cold weather he fear't
coining on
He sighed.
Fiammetta. And did it come ]
Boccaccio. Too gracious lady !
Fiammetta. Keep gracious lady for dull drawing
rooms ;
Fiammetta, is my name ; I wouM know yours.
Boccaccio. Giovanni.
Fiammetta. That I know (aside). I ought alas
Often with Acciaioli and Petrarca
I've seen you walking, but have never dared
To ask your name from them ; your house's name
I mean of course; our own names stand for
nothing.
You must be somebody of high estate.
Boccaccio. I am not noble.
Fiammetta, (shrinking back.) Oh ! . . then ! . .
Boccaccio. I must go !
That is the sentence, is it not ?
Fiammetta, (runs and takes his hand.) Don't
tell me
Thou art not noble : say thou art most noble :
Norman . . half-Norman . . quarter-Norman . .
say it.
Boccaccio. Say an untruth ?
Fiammetta. Only this one ; my heart
Will faint without it. I will swear to think it
A truth, wilt thou but say it. 'Tis a truth :
Thy .only falsehood thou hast told already,
Merely to try me. If thou art not noble . .
Noble thou art, and shalt be !
[She sobs and pauses : he presses her liand
to his bosom.
Who gainsays it ?
Boccaccio. A merchant's son, no better, is thy
slave,
Fiammetta !
Fiammetta, (smiling). Now art thou disguised
indeed.
Come, show me specimens of turquises,
Amethysts, emeralds, diamonds . . out with them.
Boccaccio. A merchant's, and poor merchant's
son am I ;
Gems I have none to offer, but pure love
Proof to the touchstone, to the crucible.
Fiammetta. What then or who is noble, and
thou not ?
I have heard whispers that myself am not so
Who am king Robert's daughter. We may laugh
At those who are, if thou and I are none.
Thou art my knight, Giovanni ! There now; take
[Giving him her scarf.
Thy patent of nobility, and wear it.
Boccaccio (kisses it). What other but were cob-
web after this 1
Fiammetta. Ha! kiss it! but take care you
don't kiss me. [Runs away.
SCENE III. IN THE PALACE.
SANCIA and FILIPPA.
Sancia. Even you, my dear Filippa, are alert
As any of the girls, and giddy too :
You have dropt something now you can not find.
Filippa. 1 have been busy, looking here and
there
To find Andrea.
Sancia. Leave him with his bride,
Until they tire of saying tender things.
Filippa. Untender things, I fear, are going on.
He has been truant to the friar Rupert
Of late, who threatens him with penances
For leaving some injunction unperform'd.
And more perhaps than penances are near :
For sundry captains, sundry nobles, meet
At friar Anselm's cell ; thither had sped
Fra Rupert. In the garden of Saint Clara
Voices were heard, and threats; then whispers
ran
Along the walls. They walkt out, one by one,
Soldiers with shuifling pace unsoldierly,
Friars with folded hands, invoking heaven,
And hotly calm as night ere burst Vesuvius.
Sancia. Beyond the slight affronts all princes
bear
From those who miss what others have obtain'd,
Andrea shall fear nothing : Heaven protects him.
Filippa. Heaven, in its equal dispensation, gives
The pious palms, the prudent length of days.
We seek him not then with the same intent
Of warning 1
Sancia. With the same of warning ; you,
Where the good angels guard ; I, where the bad
Seduce him. Having reign'd, and having heard
That thither tend his wishes . .
Filippa. Momentary.
Sancia. But lawless wishes have returning wings
Of speed more than angelic. I would win
His private ear, lest courtiers take possession ;
[ would persuade him, with his lovely bride
To share all other troubles than the crown's.
SCENE IV. IN THE PALACE.
ANDKEA and MARIA.
Andrea. Are we then going up to Capo-Monte 1
3ow long shall we remain there ? all the night ]
Maria. Until the evening.
Andrea. And where then 1
Maria. A versa.
Andrea. Ay, because there I askt her if she
loved me :
3eside . . the strangest thing on earth . . young
brides
?ly from the altar and roost anywhere
lather than near it. What should frighten them ]
3ut, if we go, why not set off directly ]
Maria. We stay because the people round the
gates,
iVho left too late their farms and villages
Do see our queen and you, expect at noon
?o follow the procession.
534
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT in.
Andrea. What procession!
Is there another marriage 1 0 rare sport !
Maria (continuing). From Castel-Nuovo far as
Capo-Monte.
Andrea. 0 glorious ! But we really shall be let
Into the gardens and the groves !
Maria. Why not]
Who should prevent us 1
Andrea. Into all! Among
The marble men and women who stand there,
And only stir by moonlight ! I don't think
They stir at all : I am half-sure they don't.
Maria. I have been always of the same opinion.
Andrea (shakes his head). Although he said it
who says mass, I doubt it.
Maria. Ah ! but to doubt is not to be half-sure :
The worse end may stick fast, like broken tooth.
Andrea. Now if you laugh, you make an un-
believer.
You girls are . .
Maria. Pray what are we 1
Andrea. Cunninger.
Fra Rupert told me he would break their bones.
Maria. Did he !
Andrea. As bad. He'd tumble them down
headlong,
If ever he once caught me looking up
Again at those who stood alert for swimming.
Maria. When1?
Andrea. Four years back. To me they seem'd
pure marble,
But Frate Rupert never could have spited
Mere marble so, although they lookt like women.
1 scarcely would believe him when he said
They once were devils, but could do no harm
Now the salt water had been sprinkled on 'em,
Unless we look at them as worshippers.
Maria. I am sure you did not.
Andrea. No ; upon my faith !
Maria. We never stand about them; we walk on.
Andrea (in a low voice). What! when you are
but one or two together ?
I like their looks : the women are quite lovely,
And the men too (for devils) not amiss.
I wonder where they laid their plaguy scourges ;
They must have had them, or were never worshipt.
Maria. Did not the Frate tell you !
Andrea. Ask the Frate !
He would have found them in a trice, and held
The scourges good enough, though not the devils.
Maria. I think you mind him less than formerly.
Andrea. I am a married man.
Maria. But married men
Fear priests and friars more than single ones.
Andrea. He is the holiest monk upon God's earth,
And hates you women most.
Maria. Then the least holy.
Andrea. Dost think it ! If I thought him so,
I 'd fear
The beast no longer, broad as are his shoulders,
His breath . . pho ! . . like a water-snake's, his fist
Heavy as those big books in chapter-houses,
And hairy as the comet ; for they say
'Twas hairy ; though I saw no hairs upon it.
Maria. Whenever love comes upon thee, Andrea,
Art thou not kinder !
Andrea. Kinder, but not holier.
Maria. Is not thy heart more grateful 1
Andrea. As may happen ;
A little thing would make it so.
Maria, And, tell me,
Art thou not readier to give alms'?
Andrea. Tell me
How long, Maria, those bright eyes have seen
Into my thoughts! Fra Rupert knows not half
one
Unless he question for an hour or better
And stamp and threaten, nor then more than
half one.
I'li never fear him now : I'll tell him so.
Maria. Be not too hasty : tell him no such
thing.
But fear him not : fear rather those about him.
[FRA RUPBKT is prying.
Andrea. Whom!
Maria. His Hungarians.
Andrea. They're my countrymen.
Maria. Should they make all us dread them !
Andrea. Me!
Maria. Even you,
Under Fra Rupert, like the best, or worst.
Should they possess our kingdom !
Andrea. My wife's kingdom !
No, by the Saints ! they shall not touch her kingdom.
Fra Rupert (crossing the farther part of the
stage). They shall not touch her kingdom . . and
shalt thou !
Andrea. I heard a voice.
Maria (laughing). No doubt, no doubt, the
Frate's.
Andrea. I hear and feel him farther off than
thou dost.
Maria. Andrea ! were thy ears as quick to hear
Thy friends as enemies !
Andrea. Still would that eye
Glare over me, like the great open one
Above the throne at church, of gold and azure,
With neither brows nor lashes, but black clouds
Round it, and nought beside.
Maria. The three eyes match,
May-be ; but is there anything in church
So like his voice !
Andrea. The organ bellows are,
Without the keys. That was not much unlike it . .
A little softer . . and not too soft, neither.
Maria. I heard no voice whatever, not a sound.
Are you still half afraid !
Andrea. No, if thou art not.
Maria. Are you convinced !
Andrea. I was not very soon.
Men weigh things longer than you women do.
Maria ! take my word, I am quite sated
Of fearing, tho' (thank God !) the worst is past.
Maria. I praise this manliness, this resolution.
Andrea. Dost thou! Already am I grown
more manly,
More resolute. 0 ! had your praise come earlier,
And heartily as now, another man
SCENE V.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
535
In thought and action might have been Andrea !
But will you tell Giovanna what you think ]
Maria. I will indeed, and joyfully.
Andrea. Her praise
Is better still : yours screws the spur on heel,
Hers scarfs the neck and lifts the lance to hand.
What's all this tinkling ]
[Guitars in the next chamber ; the door open.
Maria (smiling). 0 ! again Fra Rupert !
One of these voices surely must be his !
Which of them 1 can not you distinguish it ]
Andrea,. (calls out). Who sings there ]
Maria. Do not stop them : let us hear.
Petronilla,
Ah ! do not go ! ah do not go
Among the silly and the idle !
A lover surely should not so
From her who loves him slip and sidle.
Garisendo.
The saltarella* waits for me,
And I must go and I must play . .
Come ! do not dance, but hear and see,
To-morrow we will love all day.
Andrea. Now she is reasonable, he might spare
her
A handful of his ribbons, or that net
Silver and blue there dangling down his nape.
Who is he ] I don't know him.
Maria. Garisendo.
Andrea. And t'other]
Maria. Petronilla.
Andrea. Nor her neither.
Maria. I and Giovanna know here every face.
Andrea. And every name ]
Maria. Every one.
Andrea. Clever creatures !
Maria. By all those twitchings at the two guitars,
And tappings of fore-finger on the wrist,
They seem to be at fault.
Andrea. No harm, no matter,
Zooks ! they are up again ; he first . . that's odd.
Maria. Nay, but he only tells her what to sing.
Petronilla.
There is a lad upon the sea,
There is, O Mary ! such a lad !
And all he thinks of, it is me.
Garisendo.
Why then, my jewel ! he is mad.
Petronilla.
Mad ! he is no more mad than you.
Garisendo.
Unless he stamps, and stares, and cries,
As certain pretty creatures do,
And stain their cheeks and spoil their eyes.
Petronilla.
I love, I love him with my whole . . [Sobbing.
Garisendo.
Go on, go on : you mean to say
(I'd lay a wager) heart and soul,
And very well, no doubt, you may.
* The favourite Neapolitan dance.
Petronilla.
No, I may not, you cruel man !
He never did what you have done,
Yet, say and do the worst you can,
I love, I love, but you alone.
Maria. He has not much offended.
Andrea. Who can tell ]
I am quite sorry they have fallen out.
What almanack can calculate fine weather
In those strange fickle regions where God plants
A man and woman, and sticks love between !
Maria. All the man's fault.
Andrea. All hers : she went and teazed him :
With my own eyes I saw it ; so might you.
Maria. You do not always look so melancholy
At music ; yet what music can be gayer
Than this is]
Andrea. Gayer, say you ] Ay, the music.
But if folks quarrel so in joke, what will they
In earnest ] If, before they 're man and wife . .
Ah ! Heaven be praised ! there's time to break it off.
Look, look at them !
Maria. She seems more reconciled.
Andrea. Reconciled ! I should say . .
Maria. Pray, don't say anything.
Andrea. Ready for . . By my troth! 'twas a
salute.
Maria. Now what things run into your head,
Andrea !
Andrea. It was as like as pea to pea, if not . .
However, let them know, another time
They must not. sing about the house in that way.
Maria. Why not ]
Andrea. Giovanna might not like it now.
Maria. So ! you would do then all she likes ]
Andrea. I would :
But if she ever hears that wicked song,
She might not do all / like. Sweet Maria !
Persuade them, when you see them, to forget it ;
And, when you go to bed, turn on your pillow,
First drop it from one ear, then from the other,
And never pick it up again, God love you !
Maria. I'll run to them directly with your
wishes.
Andrea. Stay: the last verse is clever: pick
out that.
Maria. And nothing more]
Andrea (anxiously). Don't overload your
memory.
SCENE V. FRA RUPERT'S CELL.
ANDREA and FKA RUPERT.
Fra Rupert. What ! am I never to be left alone,
Andrea] Let me have my pleasures too,
Such as they are.
Andrea. They 're very much like mine.
Have we not prayed and scourged and wept
together ]
Fra Rupert. Ah ! were that now the case !
Andrea. Well, father, well !
I would not stand between you and your duty :
But I thought, being prince. .
Fra Rupert (sneering). Thou, being prince,
536
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT in.
Thoughtest ! Thou verily not only toppest
Thyself, but most among thy fellows, lad !
And so, Andrea ! being prince, thou thoughtest 1
Andrea. Good-bye, thou art as brave and blithe
aa ever. [Goes, but turns back.
I had one little thing upon my conscience.
Fra Rupert. I am quite ready : let me know
the whole :
Since yesterday? Nod? wink? to me!
Andrea (to himself). He chafes me.
Fra Rupert. And throw thy head back thus ?
Andrea. My head 's my own.
Fra Rupert. Wonderful ! Be not over-sure of
that. {Aside.
If thou art contrite, go !
Andrea. I will not go ;
I am not contrite.
Fra Rupert. I am in a maze !
Andrea. A scrape thou'rt in.
Fra Rupert. A scrape ! Who could betray me ?
[To himself.
Andrea. Thou 'st lost thy lamb, old shepherd !
no great pet.
Fra Rup. No, nor great loss : when lambs, tho',
lose their shepherd
They find the shambles nearer than the fold.
Andrea. Father! you said you must confer
with me
Another time ?
Fra Rupert. I did so.
Andrea. Why not now?
Fra Rupert. I see not why : but soon Caraccioli,
And first Caraffa, must unbosom here.
Thou hast much power, Andrea ! thou canst do
Anything now to glorify thy country.
A nd. Suppose I wish to swim to Ischia ; could I ?
Fra Rup. My boy! thou hast not wind enough
for that.
Am I to be evaded, taunted, posed?
Or thinkest thou, Andrea, that because
A silly girl espouses thee . .
Andrea. By Peter !
She who espouses me shall ne'er be call'd
A silly girl. I am a husband, Frate !
I am a boy no longer : I can cope
With women : and shall men then, even tho' friars,
Pretend to more ? I will go back and call
The maidens : they shall pelt you from the palace
If ever you set foot within its walls.
Fra Rupert. Should every stone from maiden
hit my nose,
A grain of dust would hurt it tenfold more.
Andrea. Know, they have tongues that yours
could never meet.
Fra Rupert. Andrea! wouldst thou kill me
with unkindness?
Andrea. Gad ! he sheds tears ! . . Now at him !
. . Yes, I would.
Fra Rupert. And bring down these grey hairs . .
Andrea. Which hairs are they?
The skull's are shaven, and the beard's are dirty ;
They may be grey though.
Fra Rupert. Shame upon thy mirth !
I am a poor old man.
Andrea. 'Tis your vocation.
Beside, I have heard say that poverty
Is the best bargain for the best place yonder
In Paradise. All prick their feet before
They clamber upward into that inclosure :
'Tis well worth while.
Fra Rupert. Age too (alas how heavy !)
To serve my Idving ward, my prince's son,
I would support still longer, willingly.
Andrea. Frate ! 'tis more than I can say for it.
[RUPERT creeps supplicatingly toward him.
Out of my sight ! crawl back again . . I loathe
thee.
SCENE VI.
Fra Rupert (alone.) I have no malice in me :
if I know
My secret heart, no heart so pure of malice :
But all my cares and vigils, hopes and dreams,
Blown by a boy, spurn'd by a brute, away !
So ends it ? Blessed Stephen ! not so ends it.
It ends with him, and with him only : me
No sword can touch. Why are not come those fools?
I thought the other would have kept them off.
I will have power without him, and not thro' him.
They must have clean forgotten. 'Tis the hour . .
'Tis past it . . no, not past it . . just the hour ;
The bell now strikes for noon. [A knocking.
One comes at last.
[Opens the door : CARAFFA enters.
Fra Rupert. Exactly to the moment.
Caraffa. I was walking
About the cloister till I heard the bell,
For Father Rupert's hours are golden ones.
Fra Rupert. May my friends spend them
profitably for me !
Caraffa ! thine are number'd.
Caraffa. All men's are.
Fra Rupert. But some are not notcht off like
schoolboy's days
Anxious to see his parent. Thou may'st see
Thy parent too.
Caraffa. I left him but just now.
Fra Rupert. We all have one, one whom we
all have left
Too often. Hast thou not some sins for me ?
Caraffa. As many as a man could wish to have.
Fra Rupert. Are there none dangerous ? none
involving life ?
Hast thou forgotten our last conference ?
Caraffa. No, nor shall ever. But what danger
there ?
Fra Rupert. Need I to say, Francesco, that no
breath
Transpired from me ? We both were overheard.
Caraffa. I think you hinted it.
Fra Rupert. I fear'd it only.
Thou knowest my fond love . . I will not say
For thee . . thou art but second in my breast . .
Poor, poor Andrea !
Caraffa. Never fear about him.
Giovanna, even tho' she did not love,
(0 that she did not !) yet would never wrong him.
SCENE VI.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
537
Fra Rupert. Nay, God forbid she should ! 'Twas
not for me
To mark her looks, her blushes, gestures, . . how
Faltered the word " Caraffa " as she spoke it.
Thy father then said nothing ]
Caraffa. Not a word ;
What should he]
Fra Rupert. Not a word. Old men are close :
And yet I doubted . . I am apt to doubt . .
Whether he might not . . for ambition stirs
Most fathers . . just let slip . . Why didst thou
falter?
For never faltered child as thou didst falter.
Thou knowest then her mind better than we ?
Caraffa. I know it? I divine it? Would I did !
Fra Rupert. Nay, rather let the bubble float
Than break it : the rich colours are outside.
Everything in this world is but a bubble,
The world itself one mighty bubble, we
Mortals, small bubbles round it !
Caraffa. Frate! Frate!
Thou art a soapy one ! No catching thee ! [Aside.
[Aloud.*\ What hopes thou showest me ! If these
were solid
As thou, most glorious bubble who reflect'st them,
Then, then indeed, to me from this time forth
The world, and all within the world, were bubbles.
Fra Rupert. A knight art thou, Caraffa ! and
no title
(Secular title, mind ! secular title)
Save only royalty, surpasses knighthood.
There is no condescension in a queen
Placing her foot within the palm of knight,
And springing from it on her jewel'd saddle :
No condescension is there if she lend
To theirs the sceptre who lent hers the sword.
Knights there have been, and are, where kings
are not,
Kings without knights what are they ?
Caraffa. Norman blood
Runs in my veins as in her own : no king
(Savage or tame) shall stand above those knights
Who raised his better to the throne he won :
Of such am I. But what am I before
Giovanna ! to adore, to worship her,
Is glory far above the chiselling
Of uncouth kings, or dashing them to earth :
0 be it mine !
Fra Rupert. Perhaps some other Norman
May bear less tamely the new yoke ; perhaps
A Filangieri may, this very night . .
Caraffa. No Filangieri ever stoopt to treachery.
No sword of Norman ever struck by night.
Credulous monk ! to me name Filangieri !
Quellers of France and England as we are,
And jealous of precedency, no name
(Offence to none) is higher than Filangieri.
Fra Rupert. Boaster!
Caraffa. I boast of others ; few do that
Who merit such a title.
Fra Rupert. Lower thy crest ;
Pause ! thou art in my hands.
Caraffa. I am in God's.
Fra Rupert (mildly, after hesitation). Who
knows but God hath chosen thee, amid
His ministers of wrath, to save thy country
And push oppression from her ! Dreams and signs
Miraculous have haunted me.
Caraffa. Thee, Frate !
Fra Rupert. Me, even me. My ministry is over :
Marriage ends pupilage, and royalty
Ends friendship. Little is it short of treason
To say that kings have friends.
Caraffa. How short of treason
I know not, but I know how wide of truth.
Fra Rupert. Listen ! There are designs against
the life
Of young Andrea.
Caraffa. By the saints above !
I hope there are not.
Fra Rupert. If thy name be found
Among conspirators (and those are call'd
Conspirators who vindicate their country)
Where thy sword is, there must thy safety be.
The night for vengeance is the marriage-night.
Caraffa. I draw the sword without defiance first?
/ draw the sword uninjured ? Whom against ?
Against a life so young ! so innocent
Of any guile ! a bridegroom ! in his bed !
0 ! is this horror only at the crime ?
Or is it . . No, by heaven ! 'tis heaven's own horror
At such unmanly deed. I, Frate ! /,
Caraffa, stain with tears Giovanna's cheek !
/ sprinkle poison on the flowers she smells !
Fra Rupert (resolutely). Hark ye, Caraffa ! If
the public good . .
Caraffa. Away with public good ! Was never
book
Put in my hand ? was never story told me 1
Show me one villain vile beyond the rest,
Did not that villain talk of public good ?
Fra Rupert. Only at friars are Caraffa's stabs.
Valiant and proud and wealthy as thou art,«
Thou mayst have nothing left on earth to-morrow.
Caraffa. I shall have more to-morrow than to-
day.
My honour may shoot up all in one night,
As did some tree we read of.
Fra Rupert. Thou art rash.
Caraffa. Rashness may mellow into courage ;
time
Is left me.
Fra Rupert. For thy prayers.
Caraffa. My prayer then is,
Peace, safety, glory, joy, to our Giovanna !
Fra Rupert. Thou may'st depart.
Caraffa (indignantly). For ever. [Goes.
Fra Rupert. He says well.
CAKACCIOLI enters.
Fra Rupert (smiling and embracing him.) Car-
accioli ! without our friend Caraffa !
Caraccioli. He should have been here first.
Fra Rupert (aside). Perfectly safe !
I did not follow him into the cloister.
538
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT iv.
Caracrioli. Father ! you seem as pondering to
yourself
How that wild fellow kept his word so ill ;
Caraffa-like !
Fra Rupert. I keep mine well with him.
Caraccioli. He should have thought of that.
Fra Rupert. He had no time.
Caraccioli. Always so kind ! so ready with
your plea
For little imperfections ! Our Francesco,
Somewhat hot-headed, is warm-hearted too.
Fra Rupert. His petty jealousy about the queen
(Were there no sin behind it) we might smile at.
Caraffa stands not with Caraccioli.
Caraccioli. On the same level . . there par-
ticularly.
Fra Rupert. Ho ! ho ! you laugh and jeer
about each other ?
Caraccioli. We might. How she would laugh
at two such ninnies !
Fra Rupert. At one, most certainly. But
laughing girls
Often like grave men best. There 's something
grand
As well as grave even in the sound " Caraccioli."
Caraccioli. 1 have no hopes.
Fra Rupert. How I rejoice to hear it !
Hopes are but wishes, wishes are but sin,
And, fed with ranker exhalations, poison.
Caraccioli. The subtilest consumes me.
Fra Rupert. What?
Caraccioli. Despair.
Fra Rupert. Violets and primroses lie under
thorns
Often as asps and adders ; and we find
The unexpected often as the expected,
The pleasant as the hideous.
Caraccioli. That may be,
But what avails your lesson ? whither tends it ?
Fi& Rupert. My son ! I hear from those who
know the world
And sweep its noisome litter to my cell,
There are mild days when love calls love abroad
As birds call birds, and even leaves call leaves :
Moments there are, my poor Caraccioli !
Moments in which the labyrinth of the ear
At every turn of its proclivity
Grows warmer, and holds out the clue, itself :
Severity should not beget despair.
I would not much encourage thee, nor yet
Dash all thy hopes, however inconsiderate,
For hopes there may be, though there should
not be,
Flickering even upon despondency.
There may be sounds in certain names to smite
The stagnant heart, and swell its billows high
Over wide spaces, over distant years . .
There may ; but who would utter them and
know it ?
Delicate is the female sense, yet strong
In cherishing and resenting ; very prompt
At hiding both, and hating the discoverer.
Never, my Paolo ! look too deeply in,
Or thou may'st find what thou art looking for.
Not that she ever said one word against thee ;
She even lower'd her voice in naming thee,
Seeing her sister and the rest sit giggling,
" Anything else ! anything else ! " said she,
And snapt the thread she workt with, out of
spite.
A friend, who hopes the best, may tell the worst.
Patience will weary ; even Giovanna's patience.
I could go farther, and relate . . but why
Why ('tis too light to touch upon) relate
The little hurt she gave Filippa's ancle
With that lark heel of hers, by twitching it
Uneasily ? 0 the impatient sex !
She did shed . . tears I will not say . . a tear . .
Shed it ! no ; I am wrong : it came, it stayed,
As hangs one star, the first and only one,
Twinkling, upon some vernal evening.
Caraccioli. I am but clay beneath her feet.
Alas !
Clay there would quicken into primal man,
Glorified and immortal once again.
Fra Rupert. Thou art too hot, my Paolo !
One pulse less
In the half-hour might have been rather better.
Lovest thou our Francesco ?
Caraccioli. Like a brother.
Fra Rupert. He should not then have brought
thy life in peril.
Andrea is quite furious : all at court
Are sworn upon thy ruin.
Caraccioli. Upon mine!
I will then calmly tell them they are wrong.
Fra Rupert. Will they as calmly hear ? Fran-
cesco said,
Imprudent youth ! you boasted of remembering
Every the lightest mole about Giovanna.
Caraccioli. I say it ?
Fra Rupert. Those were not your words ?
Caraccioli. My words !
Fra Rupert. Certainly not . . precisely.
Caraccioli. Holy Mary !
Is there in Naples, Hungary, or Hell,
The monster who dares utter them 1
Fra Rupert. 'Tis hard
Our friend should be the very man.
Caraccioli. 'Tis false,
Frate ! 'tis false : my friend is not the man.
[Bursts away.
Fra Rupert (sneering). I will not follow him
into the cloister.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. IN THE GARDEN OP CAPO DI
MONTE
BOCCACCIO and FIAMMETTA.
Boccaccio (sings).
If there be love on earth, 'tis here,
O maid of royal line !
Should they who spring from heroes, fear ?
Be scornful the divine?
SCENE II.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
539
Shine not the stars upon the sea,
Upon the fountain too ?
O ! let your eyes then light on me,
And O ! let mine see you.
[FIAMMETTA comes forward.
How kind, to come !
Fiammetta. To come into the air ?
I like it. They are all at their merenda*.
The smell of melon overpowers me quite ;
I could not bear it; therefore I just come
Into the air to be revived a little.
And you too here ? Sly as the satyr-head
[Affecting surprise.
Under yon seat !
Boccaccio. Did you not tell me 1
Fiammetta. I?
You dreamt it.
Boccaccio. Let me dream then on ? Without
Such dreams, Fiammetta, dull would be the sleep
Call'd life.
Fiammetta (looking round timidly). I must be
broad awake.
Boccaccio. You must.
Fiammetta (nodding). And you. All are in-
dulgent to me ; most
Of all queen Sancia and Giovanna.
Boccaccio. One
A saint, the other better.
Fiammetta. Then the grave
Filippa . .
Boccaccio. Grave and watchful.
Fiammetta. Not a word
Against her ! I do hold her in my heart,
Although she gives me good advice sometimes.
Boccaccio. I'm glad to hear it; for the very
worthy
Are very rarely general favourites.
Fiammetta. Some love our friend most cordially;
those know her :
Others there are who hate her; those would know
her
And can not; for she stands aloof and thanks them :
Remoter, idler, neither love nor hate,
Nor care about her ; and the worst and truest
They say of her, is, that her speech is dark.
Boccaccio. Doubtless, the vulgar eye will take
offence
If cedar chambers are unwasht with lime.
Fiammetta. But why are you come here ]
Boccaccio. To gaze, to sigh,
And, 0 Fiammetta ! tell me if .. to live.
Fiammetta (laughing). I never saw more signs
of life in any.
Boccaccio. Cruel !
Fiammetta. To find the signs of life in you 1
Boccaccio. To scoff them out.
Fiammetta. I am incapable.
[BOCCACCIO rises, and steps back gazing fondly.
0 now, Giovanni ! I am terrified !
Why ! you sprang up . . as if you sprang to kiss me !
Did ever creature think of such a thing1?
* Merenda jmeridiana) the mid-day repast.
Boccaccio. The drooping blades of grass beneath
your feet
Think of it ; the cold runlet thinks of it ;
The pure sky (how it smiles upon us !) thinks of it . .
I will no more then think of it. [Kisses her.
Fiammetta. Giovanni !
Ah ! I shall call you (wretch !) to task for this.
Boccaccio. Call ; and, by heaven ! I '11 come,
tho' from the grave.
Fiammetta. Any-one now would say you
thought me handsome.
Boccaccio. Earth has two beauties; her Bellagio
And Anacapri ; earth's inhabitants
Have only one among them.
Fiammetta. Whom ?
Boccaccio. Fiammetta. [Going.
Fiammetta. Where are you running now? Stay!
tho' quite angry,
I am not yet so angry as I should be :
But, if you ever take such liberties
Again !
Boccaccio. 0 never ! . . till we reach Aversa.
Fiammetta. And will you there 1 and tell me to
my face 1 [Is departing.
Wait, wait for pardon. Must we part ? So soon1?
So long a time ?
Boccaccio. Till star-light.
Fiammetta. Stay a moment.
Boccaccio. Gladly a life : but my old mule loves
walking
And meditation. Now the mask and dress,
And boy to carry them, must all be found. '
Fiammetta. Boy, mask, dress, mule! speed,
gallop, to Aversa !
Boccaccio. So many kisses lie upon this hand,
Mine hardly reach it.
Fiammetta. Lips there may have been ;
Had there been kisses, I must sure have felt them,
As I did yours . . at least I thought I did . .
But go, for I am half afraid of you . .
That is, of your arriving yonder late.
Go, else the crowd may stop you ; and perhaps
I might delay you for some sudden fancy,
Or . . go your ways . . not let you go at all.
SCENE II. FRA RUPERT'S CELL.
FKA RUPERT alone.
I wisht him power ; for what was his was mine ;
I wisht him jealousy, distrust, aversion
For his pert bride, that she might have no share.
I never fail'd before this wretched day.
Fail'd ! I have not : I will possess my rights,
Spring over him, and never more be spurn'd.
They who had rais'd his seat shall stablish mine,
Without those two vain boys : 0 ! had they done it !
And not been where they are ! The fault was theirs.
MAXIMIN enters.
Fra Rupert. Maximin ! since thy services may
soon
Be call'd for, satchel on thee my experience,
Then set about thy work. My Maximin !
Mind how thou liest ! Know, if lie thou must,
540
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT iv.
Lies, while they sap their way and hold their
tongues,
Are safe enough : when breath gets into them,
They, and the work about them, may explode.
Maximin ! there are more lies done than said.
Son ! when we hesitate about the right,
We 're sure to do the wrong.
Maximin. I don't much hesitate.
Fra Rupert. To chain a dog and to unchain
a dog
Is hazardous alike, while the deaf beast
Stands barking : he must sleep ; then for the cord.
Maximin. What ! are my services in some
farm-yard ]
I am a soldier.
Fra Rupert. All great statesmen haye been.
How large a portion of the world is each
In his own eyes !
Maximin. Am I so proud in saying
I am a soldier 1
Fra Rupert. / am proud of thee ;
Be that sufficient. Give thou every man
What he requires of thee.
Maximin. A world to each ?
Fra Rupert. Not so : yet hold not up to him a
That shows him less, or but some digits greater.
Maximin. Honestly now, Fra Rupert, by my
cross !
No gull art thou. I knew that trick myself,
And (short the digits) told it word for word.
Fra Rupert. I will be sworn for thee. Being
minister.
(Not that I think it certain just at present,
For when the sage and honest are most wanted,
That is the chink of time they all drop through)
But when thou art so, mind this precept. One
Not wise enough to keep the wiser off
Should never be a minister of state.
Maximin. Fra Rupert ! presto ! make me one
to-day.
Give fifty precepts, there they go [Blowing] but this,
I'll kiss the cross and the queen's hand, and keep.
Fra Rupert. / make thee minister !
Maximin. You can make kings.
Fra Rupert. Not even those ! I might have
made Andrea
What thou and every true Hungarian
Wisht him to be, ere he show'd hoof for claw,
And thought to trample down his countrymen.
Maximin. Andrea bloody-minded ! turtle-doves
Are bloody-minded then, and leave their elm,
The first day's mating, for the scent of gore.
Fra Rupert. Maximin ! here is no guitar for thee,
Else mightest thou sip that pure poetry
Preciously warm and frothy from the udder.
Maximin. Father ! if any in our troop call'd me
A poet, he should sing for it.
Fra Rupert. Thou 'rt brave,
Maximin ! and Andrea is not bloody.
But there are princes, or have been within
Our memory, who, when blood gusht forth like
water
From their own people, stood upon some bridge
Or island, waving their plumed caps, and drank
The cries of dying men with drunken ears.
Maximin. Curses, eternal curses, man's and
God's,
Upon such heathens !
Fra Rupert. Nay, they were not heathens ;
Happily they were Christians, Maximin !
Andrea, though myself instructed him,
Is treacherous. Better were this pasty people
Dissolved, washt down, than brave Hungarians
perish.
Maximin. No truer word prophet or saint e'er
spoke.
Fra Rupert (sighing). Saint hath not spoken
it : 0 may not prophet !
Maximin. I, being neither, can not understand
you.
Fra Rupert. The innocent, the helpless, are
surrounded.
Maximin. Andrea?
Fra Rupert. My Andrea would betray us.
Maximin. To whom ? Are we the helpless ] we
the innocent ?
Fra Rupert. While he is yonder at Aversa, we
Are yelling thro' these very streets for mercy.
Maximin. I cry you mercy, father ! When I yell,
I '11 borrow whistles from some thirty good
Neapolitans, who '11 never want them more.
Fra Rupert. Be ready then ! be ready for
Aversa !
Glory stands there before thee ; seize the traitor,
Win wealth, win jewels, win . . What have not
palaces
For brave young men upon such nights as these 1
Maximin. Would'st bid me stick Andrea 1
Fra Rupert. Hungary,
Not I ; our country, not revenge.
Maximin. Bids murder ?
I will proclaim thy treason thro' the camp.
Fra Rupert. Unhappy son, forbear 1 By thy
sweet mother !
Upon my knees ! Upon my knees before
A mortal man ! Yea, Rupert ! bend thy head ;
Thy own son's hand should, and shall, spill thy
blood. [MAXIMIN starts, then hesitates, tlien
rushes at him.
Maximin. Impudent hound ! I '11 have thy
throat for that.
Fra Rupert {guards his throat}. Parricide !
make me not cry murder . . love
Forbids it . . rather die ! My son ! my son !
Hide but thy mother's shame; my shame, not
hers. [MAXIMIN relaxes his grasp.
Maximin ! stand between the world and it ]
Oh ! what avails it ! sinner as I am !
Other worlds witness it. [MAXIMIN looses hold.
My Maximin ? [RUPERT embraces him.
Maximin. Why, how now, Frate ! hath some
wine-vault burst
And fuddled thee 1 we know thou never drinkest.
Fra Rupert. That lighter sin won't save me.
Maximin. If light sins
tould save us, I have many a bushelful,
And little need your sentry-boxes yonder.
SCENE III.]
ANDREA OP HUNGARY.
541
Fro, Rupert (very mildly). I must reprove (my
own dear child !) (Passionately) . . I must
Reprove, however gently, such irreverence.
Confessionals are sentry-boxes ! true !
And woe betide the sentry that naps there !
Woe, if he spare his voice, his prayer, his curse !
Maximin. Curses we get dog-cheap; the others,
reasonable.
Fra Rupert. Sweet Maximin ! whatever my
delight
In gazing on those features (for sharp shame,
When love blows over it from lands afar,
Tingles with somewhat too, too like delight !)
We must now part. Thy fortune lies within
My hands. To-night, if thy own officers
Command thee to perform a painful office . .
Maximin. Good father ! what know we of
offices ?
Let them command a duty, and 'tis done.
Fra Rupert. Discreet tho' ! Maximin ! discreet !
my marrow !
Let not a word escape thee, not a breath.
Blessings, my tender kid ! We must walk on
(I love thee so !) together thro' the cloister.
Maximin. No, father ! no ; too much !
Fra Rupert. Too much for thee 1
[RUPERT precedes, speaks to three men, who
bow and retire ; he disappears.
Maximin (loitering in the cloister). Incredible !
yet friars and cockroaches
Creep thro' all rooms, and like the closet best.
Let me consider ! can it be ? how can it ]
He is bare fifty ; I am forty-one.
SCENE HL THE GARDEN OF FRIAR ANSELM'S
CONVENT.
FRA RUPERT, KLAPWRATH, ZINGA, and PSEIN.
Fra Rupert. Ye brave supporters of Hungarian
power
And dignity ! 0 Zinga ! Klapwrath ! Psein !
Becomes it me to praise (we may admire
Those whom to praise were a temerity)
Such men as you.
Psein. Us 1 we are only captains.
Zinga. After hard service we are nothing more.
Klapwrath. Twenty-three years hath Klap-
wrath rid and thirsted.
Fra Rupert. Ingratitude ! the worst of human
crimes,
Hardly we dare to say ; so flat and stale,
So heavy with sick sobs from mouth to mouth,
The ejaculation. To my mind scarce witchery
Comes up to it.
Psein. Hold ! father ! For that sin
Either we deal with devils or old women.
Fra Rupert. Man was created of the dust ; to
make
' The fragile mass cohesive, were employed
The bitter waters of ingratitude. [Affects to weep.
Klapurrath. Weeping will never rinse that
beaker, Frate!
Fra Rupert. It is not for myself.
Zinga. We see it is not.
Fra Rupert. Ye can not see deep into me.
Psein. Few can.
Fra Rupert. Ye can not see the havoc made
within
By ever-dear Andrea.
Zinga. Havoc''
Fra Rupert. Havoc !
Klapwrath. I like the word : purses and rings
hang round it,
Necklaces, brooches, and indented armlets.
Psein. But, ere we reach 'em, ugly things
enough,
Beside the broken swords that lie below
And brave men brandisht in the morning light.
Klapwrath. Brave men then should not cross
us ; wise men don't.
Fra Rupert. Your spirit all attest ; but those
the least
Whose safety hangs upon your saddle-skirts.
Men are not valued for their worth in Italy :
Of the same price the apple and the peach,
The service and the fig.
Zinga. Well, there they beat us.
Psein. Whatever they may be, we can not
help it.
Fra Rupert. Help it, I say, ye can; and ye
shall help it,
Altho' I perish for ye.
Klapwrath. Then indeed,
Frate ! some good might come of it ; but wilt
thou?
Fra Rupert. Abandon to his fate my poor
Andrea !
Has he not slept upon this bosom 1
Klapwrath. Has he?
He must have had some scratches on his face.
Fra Rupert. Has he not eaten from this hand?
Klapwrath. Why then,
He '11 never die for want of appetite.
Fra Rupert. Have we not drunk our water
from one bowl 1
Klapwrath. Father! you were not very liberal;
He might have drunk the whole of mine, and
welcome.
Fra Rupert. How light ye make of life !
Zinga. Faith ! not so light ;
I think it worth a tug, for my part of it ;
Nor would I leave our quarters willingly.
Psein. 0 the delight of floating in a bath,
One hand athwart an orange-bough, the other
Flat on the marble pavement, and our eyes
Wandering among those figures round the arch
That scatter flowers, and laugh at us, and vie
With one another which shall tempt us most !
Nor is it undelightful, in my mind,
To let the curly wave of the warm sea
Climb over me, and languishingly chide
My stopping it, and push m« gently away.
Klapvrrath. Water, cold, tepid, hot, is one to
me.
The only enemy to honest wine
Is water ; plague upon it !
Zinga. So say I.
542
ANDREA OP HUNGARY.
[ACT iv.
Fra Rupert. Three braver friends ne'er met.
Hei ! hei ! hei ! hei !
The very name of friend ! You can not know
What love I bear Andrea !
Psein. All the world
Knows it.
Prate. The mischief he designs, who guesses ]
Psein. All boys are mischievous.
Fra Rupert. Alas ! but mischief
There might be without treachery.
Psein. Poor Andrea !
So little fit for it !
Fra Rupert. Frank generous souls
Always are first to suffer from it, last
To know it when they meet it.
Klapwrath. Who shall harm
Our own king's colt ? Who moves, speaks, looks,
against him,
Why ! that man's shroud is woven, and spread out.
Fra Rupert. Let mine then be ! would it had
been so ere
I saw this day !
Psein. What has he done 1
Fra Rupert. To me
All kindness ever. Why such mad resolves
Against the lives of his most sure defenders ?
Against his countrymen, his guards, his father's
Most chosen friends 1
Zinga. Against your life 1
Fra Rupert. No, no !
Heaven protects me ; he sees it ; nor indeed
(To do him justice) has he such a heart.
But why ask me to aid him 1 Why ask me
Whether he was as strong at heart as Zinga,
Dexterous at sword as Klapwrath, such a fool . .
Pardon ! your pardon, gentlemen !
[Looking at PSEIN.
Psein. As Psein.
Fra Rupert. The very word ! Who else dared
utter it 1
I give him up ! I almost give him up !
Klapwrath. He shall not rule us. The best
blood of Hungary
Shall not be pour'd this night upon the wine.
Fra Rupert. If you must leave the country . .
and perhaps
No worse may reach the greater part of you . .
Psein. I have no mind to leave it.
Zinga. None shall drive us.
Klapwrath. The wines of Hungary strive hard
with these,
Yet Klapwrath is contented ; he hates change.
Zinga. Let us drink these out first, and then
try those.
Fra Rupert. Never will come the day when
pine-root fire
And heavy cones puff fragrance round the room,
And two bluff healthy children drag along
(One by the ear, the other by the scut)
A bulging hare for supper ; where each greyhound
Knows his own master, leaps up, hangs a foot
Inward, and whimpers piteously to see
Flagons go round, then off for bread and lard.
Those were your happy times ; unless when foray
Stirr'd ye to wrath, and beeves and swine and
trulls
(Tempting ye from propriety) heapt up
A mount of sins to strive against ; abduction
Of linen-chests, and those who wove the linen ;
And shocking oaths obscene, and well-nigh acts ;
Fracture of cellar-doors, and spinning-wheels ;
And (who can answer for you) worse, worse, worse !
Klapwrath. 'Sblood ! Frate ! runs no vine-juice
ia our arteries ?
Psein's forehead starts wry veins upon each side ;
His nostrils blow so hot they'll crack my boots.
Zinga. Must we move hence 1
Fra Rupert. To die like sheep 1 like conies ?
Ye shall not die alone ; I will die with you.
There have been kings who sacrificed their sons.
Abraham would have done it ; Pagans have ;
But guardians such as I am ! . .
Klapvjrath. Frate ! Frate !
Don't tear those tindery rags, or they will quit thee
With only horse-hair under, and some stiffer.
Fra Rupert. You conquer me, you conquer
me, I yield.
He was not bloody. Could it end with one !
And we knew which . . or two, or three.
Zinga. But us ?
Fra Rupert. " If once the captains of the com-
panies,"
Said he . . and then, I own, he said no more :
He saw me shudder, and he sped away.
Klapwrath. Are we to hold our throats out to
the knife ?
Fra Rupert. Patience ! dear doubtful Klap-
wrath ! mere suspicion !
He did not say the knife, or sword, or halter,
He might have meant the scaffold; nothing worse;
Deprive you he might not of all distinction,
Nay, might spare one or other of you yet :
Why then prevent what may need no prevention ?
Slyer are few ; many more sanguinary :
Must we (don't say it) give him up ? I hope
He's mischievous through weakness, not malignity.
Zinga. What matters that? A feather-bed
may stifle us
(If we will let it) with a babe to press it.
Is there no other prince in Hungary
Fit to maintain us here ?
Fra Rupert. The very thought
That came into my head !
Psein. But when ours fall,
What matters it who leaps upon his horse
To overlook our maintenance 1 A fool
I may be ; can his wisdom answer that "?
Zinga. He doubts my courage, bringing thus
his own
Against it. He's a boy : were he a man,
No injury, no insult, no affront . .
Every man is as brave as I . . Stop there !
By all my saints ! (He shows several about him)
by all my services !
This hilt shall smash his teeth who dares say,
' braver.'
Klapwrath. What I am you know best, at
battling it ;
SCENE IV.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
543
Nothing is easier : but I've swum two nights
And days together upon Baian wine,
And so have ye : 'twould swamp that leaky
nump-skull.
Behead us ; good ! but underrate us ; never !
Fro, Rupert. Having thus clear'd our con-
sciences, and shown
Our purity in face of day, we swear . .
[Hesitates.
Zinga. Frate, if you don't grudge an oath or
two . .
Fra Rupert. Death to Andrea ! loyalty to
Lewis !
All. Hurrah!
Fra Rupert. Sweet friends ! profane not thus
the cloister !
Leave me to weep for him ! the cruel boy !
SCENE IV. PALACE OP AVERSA ; SALOON
OVERLOOKING THE GARDEN.
SANCIA, FILIPPA, MARIA, FIAMMETTA.
Maria. Ha ! here they come again. See ! lady
Sancia
Leaning upon Filippa. They are grown
Wiser, and will not barter songs for griefs.
Boccaccio sings. .
A mellow light on Latmos fell ;
It came not from the lowly cell,
It glided from the skies ;
It lighted upon one who slept.
Some voice then askt him why he wept,
Some soft thing prest his eyes.
Another might have wondered much,
Or peer'd, or started at the touch,
But he was far too wise ;
He knew the light was from above,
He play'd the shifting game of love,
And lost at last three sighs.
Fiammetta (to FILIPPA). I wish he would come
nearer, just to see
How my hair shines, powder'd with dust of gold :
I think he then would call me . .
Maria. What?
Fiammetta. Fiammetta.
Filippa. He hardly . . poet as he seems to be . .
Such as he is . . could feign a better name.
He does not seem to be cut out for singing.
Fiammetta. I would not have his voice one
tittle altered.
The poetry is pretty . . She says nothing.
The poetry is charming . . Now she hears me.
The most delightful poetry ! . . 0 lady
Filippa ! not one praise for it ! not one !
I never dreamt you were yourself a poet.
Filippa. These summer apples may be palatable,
But will not last for winter ; the austere
And wrinkle-rinded have a better chance.
Throw a whole honeycomb into a haystack,
It may draw flies, but never will feed horses.
From these same cogs (eternally one tune)
The mill has floured us with such dust all over
As we must shake off, or die apoplectic.
Your gentle silken-vested swains may wish
All poetry one sheepfold.
Maria. Sheep are well,
Like men and most things, in their proper places,
But when some prancing knight would enter-
tain us,
Some gallant, brightening every gem about him,
I would not have upon the palace-steps
A hind cry out, "Make way there for my sheep."
They say (not speaking of this woolsy race)
They say that poets make us live for ever.
Filippa. Sometimes the life they lend is worse
than none,
Shorn of its glory, shrivel'd up for want
Of the fresh air of virtue.
Fiammetta. Yet, to live !
0 ! and to live by those we love so well !
Filippa. If such irregularities continue
After to-night, when freedoms are allowed,
We must lock up the gardens, rigorously
Forbidding all the inmates of the palace
To use the keys they have.
Fiammetta. The good king Robert
Sooner had driven out the nightingales
Than the poor timid poets.
Filippa. Timid poets !
What breed are they of?
Fiammetta. Such as sing of love.
Filippa. The very worst of all; the boldest men !
Maria. Nay; not the boldest; very quarrel-
some,
Tragic and comic, hot and cold, are so ;
And so are nightingales ; the gardener
Has told me ; and the poets do no worse
Than they do. Here and there they pluck a feather
From one another, here and there a crumb ;
But, for hard fighting, fair straight-forward
fighting,
With this one nosegay I could beat them all.
In good king Robert's day were lute and lyre ;
Now hardly dare we hang them on the nail,
But run away and throw them down before
The boisterous drum and trumpet hoarse with rage.
Let poetry and music, dear Filippa,
Gush forth unfrozen and uncheckt !
Filippa. Ah child !
Thy fancy too some poet hath inflamed :
Believe me, they are dangerous men.
Maria. No men
Are dangerous.
Filippa. 0 my child !
Maria. The very creatures
Whom God has given us for our protection.
Filippa. But against whom ?
Maria. I never thought of that.
Fiammetta. Somebody told me once that good
king Robert
Gave keys to three or four, who neither were
Nor would be constant inmates of the court.
Maria. Who might and would not ! This is
an enigma.
They must have felt then very low indeed.
Among our glass-house jewels newly-set,
1 have seen vile ones, and have laught to think
544
ANDREA. OF HUNGARY.
[ACT iv.
How nicely would my slipper pat their faces ;
They never felt thus low.
Sancia. We feel it for them.
Prescriptively, we leave to our assayers
To stamp the currency of gold and brass.
Fiammetta (to FILIPPA). Have you not prais'd
the king your very self
For saying to Petrarca, as he did,
" Letters are dearer to me than my crown,
And, were I forced to throw up one or other,
Away should go the diadem, by Jove !"
Sanaa. Thou art thy very father. Kiss me,
child !
His father said it, and thy father would.
When shall such kings adorn the throne again !
Fiammetta. When the same love of what Heaven
made most lovely
Enters their hearts; when genius shines above
them,
And not beneath their feet.
[Goes up to GIOVANNI.
Sancia (to FILIPPA). Rapturous girl !
Warmth ripens years and wisdom. She discourses
Idly as other girls on other things.
Filippa. That ripening warmth fear I.
Sancia. Portending what 1
Filippa. Ah, gracious lady ! sweetest fruits fall
soonest. .
Sancia. (Who sweeter ?)
Filippa. And are bruised the most by falling.
Maria (joining them). Sicily and myself are
disagreed.
Surely the man who sang must have thick fingers.
He play'd so badly : but his voice is sweet,
For all its trembling.
Fiammetta. Now I think the trembling
Makes it no worse. I wish he would go on.
Maria. Evidently the song should finish there.
Fiammetta. Evidently it should go on . . (aside.)
for ever.
Maria. Ho ! ho ! you are not cruel to the
knight ?
Fiammetta. It is no knight at all.
Sancia. How know you that ?
Maria. You would be frightened . .
Fiammetta. He could never frighten.
Maria. If tilting . .
Fiammetta. Nobody would hurt Giovanni.
SCENE V.
ANDREA, MAEIA, and FIAMMETTA.
Andrea. So! you too have been listening, every
soul,
I warrant ye.
Maria. And have you too, Andrea ?
Andrea. From that snug little watch- tower:
'twas too high ;
I only lookt upon the tops of trees.
See ! him there ! maskt ! under the mulberry !
Fiammetta. I do not see him . . Look for him
elsewhere :
That is a shadow.
Andrea. Think you so ] It may be.
And the guitar ]
Fiammetta What ! that great yellow toad-stool ]
Andrea. How like is everything we see by
starlight !
Fiammetta (aside). If there were not a star in
all the sky,
Everyone upon earth would know Giovanni !
Andrea. I wish the mulberrries were not past,
that dozens
Might drop upon him, and might speckle over
His doublet : we should see it like a trout
To-morrow, white and crimson, and discover
The singer of this nonsense about light.
fiammetta. If you don't like it, pray don't listen
to it.
Maria, (maliciously). Then let us come away.
Fiammetta. Pray do.
Maria, (taking her arm). Come.
fiammetta, (peevishly). No.
Maria. Listen ! another song !
Fiammetta. Hush ! for Heaven's sake !
0 ! will you never listen ? All this noise !
Maria. Laughter might make some; smiles are
much too silent.
Fiammetta. Well; you have stopt him; are
you now content 1
Maria. Quite, quite ; if you are.
Fiammetta. He begins again !
Hush ! for the hope of Paradise ! 0 hush !
Boccaccio sings.
List ! list ye to another tale .'
Fiammetta.
No ; he who dares tell one
To other ears than one's shall fail.
Boccaccio.
I sing for her alone.
Andrea. I have a mind to be . .
Maria. What 1 prince !
Andrea. What? angry.
Maria. Not you.
Andrea. Not 1 1 Why, who should hinder me ?
Maria, (coaxing). No, no ; you won't be angry,
prince !
Andrea. I said
Half-angry, and resolve to keep my word.
Maria. Anger is better, as pomegranates are,
Split into halves, and losing no small part.
Andrea. I never heard such truth about pome-
granates !
What was the other thing we reason'd on ?
Ho ! now I recollect, as you shall see.
[Goes: all follow.
SCENE VI. GARDEN.
ANDREA, MARIA, FIAMMETTA, and BOCCACCIO.
Andrea. Keep back : where thieves may be,
leave men alone.
Now for drawn swords ! Where are they ; slipt
behind
The mulberry : wisely schemed ! 'twon't do ! come
forth !
SCENE II.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
545
Yield ! tremble like a poplar-leaf ! Who art thou 1
[Seizing BOCCACCIO
Boccaccio. King Robert, sir, respected me.
Andrea. Did he $
Did he $ Then far more highly should Andrea.
Sicily ! treat him kindly. We may all,
Even you and I, commit an indiscretion.
Hew the stars twinkle ! how the light leaves titter !
And there are secret quiverings in the herbs,
As if they all knew something of the matter,
And wisht it undisturb'd. To-night no harm
Shall happen to the worst man in Aversa.
ACT V.
SCENE I. PALACE OP AVERSA.
ANDREA and GIOVANNA.
Giovanna. How .gracefully thou sattest on thy
horse,
Andrea !
Andrea. Did I?
Giovanna. He curveted so,
Sidled and pranced and croucht and plunged
again,
I almost was afraid, but dared not say it.
Andrea. Castagno is a sad curvetting rogue.
Giovanna. 'Twas not Castagno ; 'twas Polluce.
Andrea. Was it ?
How canst thou tell, Giovanna ?
Giovanna. I can tell.
Andrea. All at hap-hazard : I am very sure
'Twas not the horse you lookt at ; nor did I
Think about riding, or about the palfrey,
Crimson and gold, half palfrey and half ostrich.
But thou too ridest like a queen, my dove !
Giovanna. So very like one ? Would you make
me proud 1
Andrea. God forbid that ! I love thee more
for beauty.
Ne'er put on pride, my heart ! thou dost not want
it;
Many there are who do ; cast it to them
Who can not do without it, empty souls !
Ha ! how you look ! is it surprise or pleasure ?
Giovanna. Pleasure, my love ! I will obey with
pleasure
This your first order. But indeed, my husband,
You must not look so fondly when the masks come,
For you and I, you know, shall not be masked.
Andrea. A pretty reason for not looking fond !
Must people then wear masks for that 1
Giovanna. Most do.
I never saw such fondness as some masks
Presented.
Andrea. Thou hast never seen half mine ;
Thou shalt ; and then shalt thou sit judge between
us.
We have not spoken more to-day, my chuck,
Than many other days, yet thou appearest
Wiser than ever. I have gain'd from thee
More than I gave.
Giovanna. And, without flattery,
I am more pleas'd with your discourse than ever.
VOL. II.
Andrea (fondly). No, not than ever. In this
very room
Didst thou not give to me this very hand
Because I talked so well 1
Giovanna. We foolish girls
Are always caught so.
Andrea. Always kept so, tool
Well, we must see about it then, in earnest.
Giovanna. Andrea I one thing see to : pray
inquire
If, in the crowd that rushed so thro' the gates,
No accident has happen'd. Some cried out,
Some quarrell'd ; many horses started off,
And bore amid them.
A ndrea. Never fear.
Giovanna. But ask. [He goes.
SCENE II.
FIAMMETTA, MARIA, FiLiFPA, and SANCiA, enter.
Maria. The bridegroom is among the other
grooms,
Asking odd questions : what man's horse broke
loose,
Who was knockt down, what fruit-stall over-
turn'd,
Who quarrell'd, who cried out, struck, ran away.
Giovanna. Maria ! this is pleasantry.
Andrea (returning hastily). They say,
Caraffa and Caraccioli are dead.
Giovanna. It can not be : they were both well
this morning.
Filippa. The west-wind blew this morning . .
no air now.
Giovanna. 0 but, Filippa ! they both came
together.
Did not queen Sancia tell you ?
Filippa. I have seen
Two barks together enter the port yonder,
And part together.
Giovanna. But to die at once !
Filippa. Happy the friends whom that one
fate befalls !
Giovanna. So soon !
Filippa. Perhaps so soon.
Giovanna. It may be happy,
It must be strange ; awfully strange indeed !
[FlAMMETTA gOCS OUt.
Andrea. My darling ! how you pity those two
youths ! '
I like you for it.
Giovanna. Both have fathers living :
What must they suffer ! Each . . I never heard,
But may well fancy . . loved some girl who loves
him.
I could shed tears for her.
Maria. My dear Giovanna !
Do queens shed tears 1 and on the wedding-day ?
Sancia. I see no reason why they should not.
Filippa (aside). I,
Alas ! see far too many why they should.
Andrea. What did Filippa say! that brides
should cry !
546
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
[ACT v.
Filippa (to GIOVANNA and MARIA). Not idly has
the genial breath of song
Turn'd into pearls the tears that women shed ;
They are what they are call'd : some may be
brighter
Among your gems, none purer, none become
The youthful and the beautiful so well.
Andrea (as FIAMMETTA enters). Here enters one
you never will teach that,
She is too light for grief, too gay for love,
And neither salt nor mistleto can catch her,
Nor springe nor net : she laughs at all of them
Like any woodpecker, and wings away.
I know you women ; I 'm a married man :
Fiammetta. They will not give the story up :
they draw
All different ways, but death they all will have.
Andrea. Ay, and one only will not satisfy them.
[An Officer enters, and confers apart with him.
Certain 1
Giotanna. Some other accident less heavy,
Heaven ! let us hope !
Andrea. Strangled! 0 what a death!
One of them . . one (no matter now which of
them)
Disliked me, shunn'd me; if we met, lookt
at me
Straighter and taller and athwart the shoulder,
And dug his knuckles deep into his thigh.
I gave him no offence . . yet, he is gone . .
Without a word of hearing, he is gone !
To think of this ! to think how he has fallen
Amid his pranks and joyances, amid
His wild heath myrtle-blossoms, one might say,
It quite unmans me.
Sancia. Speak not so, my son !
Let others, when their nature has been changed
To such unwonted state, when they are call'd
To do what angels do and brutes do not,
Sob at their shame, and say they are unmann'd :
Unmann'd they can not be ; they are not men.
At glorious deeds, at sufferings well endured,
Yea, at life's thread snapt with its gloss upon it,
Be it man's pride and privilege to weep.
SCENE III. GRAND SALOON.
ANDREA, GIOVANNA, MARIA, FIAMMETTA, FILIPPA.
Filippa. It may be right, my lady, that you
know
What masks are here.
Giovanna. I have found out already
A few of them. Several waived ceremony
(Desirably at masks) and past unnoticed.
The room fills rapidly.
Filippa. Not to detain
My queen (for hundreds anxiously approach),
Pardon ! I recognised the Prince Luigi.
Giovanna. Taranto ] Tell our cousin to keep on
His mask all evening. Hither ! uninvited !
Maria (out of breath). Think you the dais will
keep the masks from hearing ?
Giotanna. Why should it ?
Maria. Oh ! why should it "\ He is here.
Even Filippa could distinguish him.
Everyone upon earth must know Taranto.
Giovanna. Descend we then : beside the statue
there
We may converse some moments privately.
Maria. Radiant I saw him as the sun . . a
name
We always gave him . . rapid as his beams.
I should have known him by his neck alone
Among ten thousand. While I gazed upon it,
He gazed at three mysterious masks : then rose
That graceful column, ampler, and more wreathed
With its marmoreal thews and dimmer veins.
The three masks hurried thro' the hall; Taranto
After them (fierce disdain upon his brow)
Darted as Mercury at Jove's command.
No doubt, three traitors who dared never face
him
In his own country, are courageous here.
Giotanna. Taranto then, Taranto was unmaskt
Against my orders !
Maria. Rather say, before.
Luigi never disobeyed Giovanna.
Giovanna. Filippa carried them.
Maria. I know his answer.
Giovanna. Repeat it then, for she may not to-
night.
Maria. " Tell her I come the cousin, not the
prince,
Nor with pretension, nor design, nor hope ;
I come the loyal, not the fond, Taranto."
Why look you round ?
Giovanna. The voice is surely his.
Maria. The thoughts are . .
Giotanna, (pressing her hand}. May, 0 Heaven !
the speaker be ! [Both walk away.
Fra Rupert (masked and disguised, to one next}. I
heard our gracious queen, espoused to-day,
Give orders that Taranto keep well maskt.
Next Mask (to another}. Ho then ! Taranto here !
Second Mask. What treachery !
Fra Rupert (masked). He could not keep away.
Tempestuous love
Has tost him hither. Let him but abstain
From violence, nor play the jealous husband,
As some men do when husbands cross their
road.
Second Mask. Taranto is a swordsman to the
proof.
First Mask. Where is he ?
Fra Rupert. He stood yonder; in sky-blue,
With pearls about the sleeves.
Second Mask. Well call him Phoebus !
I would give something for a glimpse at what
That mask conceals.
Fra Rupert. Oh ! could we catch a glimpse
Of what all masks conceal, Hwould break our
hearts.
Far better hidden from us ! Woman ! woman !
[Goes off.
First Mask (to second). A friar Rupert ! only that
his voice
SCENE IV.]
ANDREA OF HUNGARY.
547
Breathes flute-like whisperings, rather than re-
proofs.
Second Mask. Beside, he stands three inches
higher ; his girth
Slenderer by much.
First Mask. Who thought 'twas really he ?
I only meant he talkt as morally.
Third Mask (coming up to Fourth). I am quite
certain there is Frate Rupert.
Fourth Mask. Where is he not ? The Devil's
ubiquity !
But, like the Devil, not well known when met.
How found you him so readily ] What mark ]
Third Mask. Stout is he, nor ill-built, tho' the
left shoulder
Is half a finger's breadth above the right.
Fourth Mask. But that man's . . let me look . .
That man's right shoulder
Stands two good inches highest.
Third Mask. Doubt is past . .
We catch him ! over-sedulous disguise !
SCENE IV.
Andrea. We have a cousin in the house, my
queen !
What dost thou blush at ? why art troubled ? sure
We are quite grand enough for him : our supper
(I trust) will answer all his expectations.
Maria. So, you have lookt then at the supper-
table]
Andrea. 'Twould mortify me ifGiovanna'sguests
Were disappointed.
Giovanna. Mine ! and not yours too ?
Andrea. Ah sly one ! you have sent then for
Taranto
And would not tell me ! Cousin to us both,
To both he should be welcome as to one.
Another little blush ! Why, thou art mine,
And never shalt, if love's worth love, repent it.
Gioranna. Never, my own Andrea! for such
trust
Is far more precious than the wealthiest realms,
Or all that ever did adorn or win them.
Andrea. I must not wait to hear its value told,
We shall have time to count it out together.
I now must go to greet our cousin yonder,
He waits me in the balcony ; the guards
Have sent away the loiterers that stood round,
And only two or three of his own friends
Remain with him. To tarry were uncourteous.
Maria (earnestly). I do believe Luigi is below.
Andrea. Do not detain me: we have never
met
Since your proud sister spoke unkindly to him,
And, vaulting on his horse, he hurried home.
[Goes.
Maria. The soldiers there do %ell to guard the
balcony,
And close the folding-doors against intrusion.
[Cry is heard.
Fiammetta. Ha ! some inquisitive young cham-
ber-lady,
Who watcht Luigi enter, pays for it.
Those frolicsome young princes are demanding
A fine for trespass.
Giovanna. Nay, they are too rude,
Permitting any rudeness. Struggles ! sobs !
Andrea never caused them.
Maria. Shame, Taranto !
Giovanna. Stifling of screams ! Those nearer
are alarmed ;
Those farther off are running for the staircase ;
And many come this way ! What can they mean ?
See, they look angry as they run, and dash
Their hands against their foreheads !
( Very alarmed.)
Where's a page ?
[A page stands masked in the doorway ; crowds
of unmasked behind him.
Maria. A page ! a page !
Page (to himself). I am one ; and discovered !
[Advances.
Giovanna. Run ; see what those young cour-
tiers round the princes
Are doing in the balcony. Below ;
Not there.
Page. I might mistake the Prince Andrea,
Not having ever seen him.
Maria. Who then are you ?
Page. The Prince Luigi's page, whom I awaited,
To say his groom and horse are near at hand.
Maria. He goes then 1
Page. Ere it dawn.
Giovanna. 0! hasten! hasten
Below, and instantly run back again,
Reporting me what you can discover there.
Page (returns). Lady ! the lamps about the
balcony
Are all extinguisht.
Giovanna. Is the wind so high 1
What didst thou hear, what didst thou note,
beside ?
Page (hesitating). Against the gentlest, the most
virtuous queen,
Opprobrious speech, threats, imprecations . .
Giovanna. Pass it.
Page. Upon the stairs ; none from the gardens.
Giovanna. There
What sawest thou 1
Page. Over the balcony
Downward some burden swang.
Giovanna. Some festive wreath
Perhaps.
Page. Too heavy ; almost motionless.
Maria. Several damask draperies thrown
across
Page. May-be. The wind just stirr'd the bot-
tom of them :
I had no time to look : I saw my prince
Fighting.
Maria. 0 heaven ! was ever night like this . .
Page. For gallant sword ! it left two proofs
behind :
The third man, seeing me (poor help for arm
So valiant !) fled.
Maria. 0! we are safe then, all. [Very joyous.
Page. No cap lost they, nor did the one who fled :
N N2
548
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT r.
Whose in the world of Naples, can be this!
[He takes from under his ricMy embroidered
cloak the cap of ANDREA. GIOVANNA
clasps it to her face, and falls with a stifled
scream.
[Another Page brings in ANDREA'S ermine
cloak.
This cloak fell near me from the balusters.
Maria. His own ! Ha ! this dark speck is not
the ermine's.
Filippa. See ! she revives ! Hide it away ! 0
guests
Of our unhappy festival, retire.
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
CHARACTERS.
LKWIS, King of Hungary. Luior, Prince of Taranto.
ACCIAJOLI, Seneschal of Naplet. Uoo DEL BALZO. Sn-
NELLO, General of Naplet RIENZI, Tribune of Rome.
FRA RUPERT. BOCCACCIO. PETRARCA. PSEIN, a Hun-
garian Captain. POPE'S NUNCIO. PRIOR OF THE CELES-
TINES. WIFE OF RIENZI. FILIPPA OF CATANIA. SANCIA,
her Granddaughter. PRINCESS MARIA. FIAMMETTA.
ACT I.
SCENE I. GARDEN OF CAPO-DI-MONTE.
BOCCACCIO and FIAMMETTA.
Boccaccio. Adieu the starlit gardens of Aversa,
The groves of Capo-Monte !
Fiammetta. Why adieu ?
Boccaccio. One night will throw its gloom upon
them long.
Fiammetta. It will indeed, but love can dwell
in gloom,
And not repine in it.
Boccaccio. The generous man,
Who might have much impeded ours, gave way
To bitter impulses. My face is flusht
To think of his hard doom, and find myself
Happy where he was happy, and so lately !
Fiammetta. I too have sighs, nor for thee only,
now.
Giovanna, had an angel told it me
The other day, I should have disbelieved.
We all are now alike. Even queen Sancia,
Whose sadness is scarce sadness, so resign'd
Is she to Heaven, at this balustrade
Lean'd and lookt over, hearing some one sing.
" Impatient is the singer there," said she,
" To run thro' his delight, to fill the conch
Of song up to the brim, and wise were he
Thought he not, 0 my child, as think he might,
How every gust of music, every air,
Breathing its freshness over youthful breasts,
Is a faint prelude to the choirs above,
And how Death stands in the dark space between,
To some with invitations free and meek,
To some with flames athwart an angry brow ;
To others holds green palm and aureole crown,
Dreadless as is the shadow of a leaf . ."
But, while she said it, prest my hand and wept,
Then prayed of Heaven its peace for poor Andrea.
Boccaccio. We may think too as wisely as the
queen
When we attain her age; of other flames
And other palms and other crowns just now.
Like every growth, thoughts also have their
seasons :
We will not pluck unripe ones; they might
hurt us.
That lady then was with you ]
Fiammetta. She herself
Led me up hither by the sleeve. Giovanna
Is there below, secure, in Castel-Nuovo.
Look you ! what crowds are gathering round
about it.
Boccaccio. I see them, and implore you, my
Fiammetta,
To tarry here, protected by queen Sancia.
Fiammetta. And will you tarry near me 1
Boccaccio. While the queen
Your sister is quite safe.
Fiammetta. What! thinkestthou
She ever can be otherwise than safe?
I will run down to her.
Boccaccio. There is no danger
At present ; if there should be, my weak aid
Shall not be wanting. He whom she laments
I too lament : this bond unites me with her ;
And I will keep her in my sight, and follow
(As lighter birds follow the powerfuller)
Where'er the tempest drives her . . not to save,
But break the fall, or warn her from below.
Fiammetta. Generously spoken, my own sweet
Giovanna !
Do so, and I can spare you ; but remember
Others may want a warning too, may want
Some one to break a fall, some one to save . . .
Giovanna ! 0 Giovanna ! to save what ?
For what is left but love 1 . . save that, Giovanna !
Boccaccio. Were any infelicity near you,
Crowns and their realms might perish : but your
sister
Is part of you : had she but lookt into
Your cradle, and no more ; had one kind word,
And only one, fallen from her upon you ;
My life should be the price for it.
Fiammetta. Your life !
We have but one, we two. But until she
fs safe again, and happier, you shall keep it.
3o, go then ; follow her ; but soon return.
While you are absent from me, shapeless fears
Must throng upon and keep awake my sorrow.
Boccaccio. To grieve for what is past, is idle grief,
Idler to grieve Sir what may never be.
Courage ! when both most wish it, we shall meet.
SCENE II. CASTEL-NUOVO.
GIOVANNA and DHL BALZO.
Giovanna. Ugo del Balzo ! thou art just andfirm.
SCENE II.]
GIOVANNA OP NAPLES.
549
Seek we the murderers out, and bring them forth
Before their God and fellow-men, if God
Or fellow-men have they. Spare none who did
This cruel deed. The partner of my throne,
Companion of my days . . until that day . .
Avenge ! In striking low the guilty head
Show mercy to my people. Take from me
And execute with promptness this commission.
0 what a chasm in life hath one day made,
Thus giving way with such astounding crash
Under my feet, when all seem'd equable,
All hopeful, not a form of fear in sight.
Del Balzo. Lady ! if all could see the pangs
within
Which rend your bosom, every voice would pause
From railing and reproach.
Giovanna. Reproach who will,
Bail who delight in railing. Could my arm
Protect the innocent ]
Del Balzo. But strange reports
(With this commission in my hand I speak it)
Murmur throughout the city. Kindred, ay,
Close kindred are accused.
Giovanna. Such accusations
Have burst upon my ear : they wrong my
cousin.
A man more loyal than the brave Taranto
Nor court nor field e'er saw : but even he
Shall not escape if treachery be found
Within the shadow of that lofty mien. '
Del Balzo. No, by the sword of the archangel !
no . .
Altho' his sister smiles this hour upon
Her first-born of my dear and only brother
The Duke of Andria. Thou must weep, Francesco !
And she, and I ; for such dishonour taints
The whole house through, obscuring past and
future.
Was he not in Aversa ?
Giovanna. He was there.
Del Balzo. And were no orders given that he
keep on
His mask all evening?
Giovanna. Yes, I gave those orders.
Del Balzo. The Queen's commission reaches not
the Queen.
Giovanna. Imperfect then is that commission,
Ugo!
Del Balzo. Freedom of speech is limited.
Giovanna. By what ]
Del Balzo. The throne.
Giovanna. For once then push the throne
more back,
And let thy words and actions have their scope.
Del Balzo. Why was Aversa chosen for the revels?
[The QUEEN hesitates and sighs deeply.
One answer comes from all. Because the town
Is Norman, the inhabitants are Norman,
Sworn enemies to an Hungarian prince ;
The very name sounds hostilely ; the walls
Built in aversion to the pride of Capua.
Giovanna. I could give other answer, which
such hearts
Would little understand. My happiest days
Were spent there . . 0 that there my last had
closed !
Was it not in Aversa we first met ?
There my Andrea, while our friends stood round
At our betrothment, fain would show me first
A horse they led for him from Hungary.
The hands we join'd were little hands indeed !
And the two rings we interchanged would ill
Let pass the bossy chain of his light hair
Entwisted with my darker, nor without
His teeth was then drawn through it. Those
were days
When none saw quarrels on his side or mine,
Yet were there worse than there were latterly,
Or than since childhood ever. We have lived
From those days forth without distrust and strife.
All might have seen but now will not know that.
Del Balzo. Lady ! the court and people do re-
member
That none more courteous, none more beautiful,
Lives than the Prince Luigi . . they acknowledge
That Prince Andrea's qualities fell short . .
Giovanna. Del Balzo! cease! he was your prince
but now . .
His virtues were domestic . . few saw those.
Del Balzo. Few, I confess it ; not so few the
other's.
His assiduities, his love.
Giovanna. Do these
Remember too, whate'er advantages
The Prince Luigi of Taranto had,
I gave my hand where they who rear'd me will'd,
That no contention in our family
Might reach my people 1 Ugo ! tell me now
To whom show'd I my love ? To them or him ]
Del Balzo. Lady ! 'twas nobly done. Yet he
was seen
To walk among the maskers on that night,
Was ordered to keep on his mask, was known
To watch Andrea in the balcony,
To rush away, to fight below the place
Where the inhuman deed was perpetrated,
And then to fly.
Giovanna. 0 ! if Taranto could
Be guilty ! . . but impossible ! My sister
Saw him pursue three masks : and his own page
Found him in fight with one, where two were
slain.
Del Balzo. Would any court receive such testi-
mony?
Giovanna. Examine then more closely. I am
lost,
Not in conjectures, for my mind flies off
From all conjecture, but in vague, in wild
Tumultuous thoughts, all broken, crost, and
crazed.
Go, lose no moment. There are other things
[DEL BALZO goes.
I could have said . . what were they ] . . there
are things . .
Maria . . why not here ! . . She knows there
are . .
0 ! were the guilty so perplext as I am,
No guilt were undiscover'd in the world !
550
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT i.
SCENE III.
FILIPPA, SANCIA, TERLIZZI, DEL BALZO.
Sancia Terlizzi. Gentle and gracious and com-
passionate,
Companion and not queen to those about her,
Giovanna delegates her fullest powers
To stern Del Balzo ; and already force
Enters the palace gates.
FUippa. Let them be closed
Against all force. Send for the seneschal.
Sancia Terlizzi. Acciajoli has departed for
Aversa,
There to make inquest.
FUippa. Who dares strike the door ?
Del Balzo (entering). The laws.
FUippa. Count Ugo ! is the queen extinct 1
Del Balzo. The prince is. Therefore lead with
due respect
These ladies, and the rest, away. [To an Officer.
FUippa. What means
This violence ?
Del Balzo (to the Officer). Let none, I pray be
used. [To FILIPPA.
Behold the queen's commission ! In that chamber
Where close examinations must ensue,
In clear untroubled order let your words
Leave us no future violence to be fear'd.
FUippa (returning the paper). The queen hath
acted as she alway acts,
Discreetly ; bravely ; it becomes her race
And station : what becomes a faithful subject
Let us do now. [The QUEEN enters.
Sancia Terlizzi. Turn : lo, the queen herself!
Del Balzo. Lady ! there is one chamber in the
realm,
And only one, and that but for one day,
You may not enter.
Giovanna. Which is that, Del Balzo ?
Del Balzo. Where the judge sits against the
criminal.
Giovanna. Criminal ! none are here.
Del Balzo. If all my wishes
Avail'd me, there were none.
Giovanna. Sure, sure, the palace
Is sacred.
Dd Balzo. Sacred deeds make every place
Sacred, unholy ones make all unholy.
Giovanna. But these are our best friends.
FUippa. My royal mistress !
The name of friendship and the'name of justice
Should stand apart. Permit me to retire . .
[To DEL BALZO.
Whither, sir, you must dictate.
Del Balzo. Lead them on.
[The QUEEN throws her arms round FILIPPA,
who gently removes them and goes.
Lady ! would you protect the culpable 1
Giovanna. Ugo del Balzo ! would you wrong
the queen ]
Del Balzo. I recognise the lofty race of Robert,
And my arm strengthens and my heart dilates.
Giovanna. Perform your duty, sir, and all your
duty ;
Win praise, win glory . . mine can be but tears.
[Goes.
SCENE IV.
FRA RUPERT, DEL BALZO.
Fra Rupert. Confessionals are close ; and closer
still
The heart that holds one treasure.
Del Balzo. Father Rupert !
What brought thee hither at this busy hour ]
Fra Rupert. My duty : I must not delay my
duty.
Del Balzo. What is it?
Fra Rupert. I would fain absolve from sin
(Far as the Church allows) the worst of sinners.
Del Balzo. In few plain words, who sent for thee ?
Fra Rupert. In fewer,
I scorn thy question.
Del Balzo. Father ! thou must wait.
The prince's death involves some powerful ones,
Whose guilt or innocence shall presently
Be ascertained.
Fra Rupert. What ! and shall man hear first
The guilty soul confess its secret sin 1
Shall not the angels carry up the tale
Before the people catch it ?
Del Balzo. They, no doubt,
Already have done this.
Fra Rupert. Not half, not half.
Dd Balzo. Father ! it seems thou knowest more
about it
Than I or any else. Why reddenest thou ?
Fra Rupert. Dost think, Del Balzo, any word
escapes
The sanctuary of consciences 1 the throne
Of grace and mercy on our earth below 1
The purifier, the confessional 1
So then ! some powerful ones are apprehended
For what they did ! 0 merciful Del Balzo !
Be sparing of a woman's blood, Del Balzo !
And age hath claims upon our pity too ;
And so hath youth, alas ! and early ties
Suddenly broken shock far round about.
Beside ; who knows . . thou canst not certainly . .
If any can . . they may be innocent,
Each of the three, one more, one less, perhaps :
Innocent should be all whose guilt lacks proof.
0 my poor child Andrea, pardon me !
Thou wouldst not have sought blood for blood,
Andrea !
Thou didst love all these women ! most of all
Her . . but there 's justice, even on earth, Andrea !
[Goes.
Del Balzo. 'Tis so ! that stern proud bosom
bursts with grief.
SCENE V.
Maria. Ah why, Del Balzo, have you let come in
The filthy monk, Fra Rupert ? He has frightened
Sancia Terlizzi almost into fainting.
And tell me by what right hath he or any
SCENE V.]
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
551
Ordered her up into her room, and taken
Her mother down below, into those chambers
Which we have always been forbid to enter !
Del Balzo. Perhaps to ask some questions ; for
the queen
Ought to be satisfied.
Maria. Then let me go
And ask her : she would tell me in a moment
What they will never get from her.
Del Balzo. Perhaps,
0 princess ! you may have mistaken.
Maria. No :
1 never was mistaken in Filippa.
Rudeness can neither move nor discompose her :
A word, a look, of kindness, instantly
Opens her heart and brings her cheek upon you.
Del Balzo. The countess has more glorious
qualities .
Than noble birth has given any else.
Whether her heart has all that tenderness . .
Maria. Is my heart tender ?
Del Balzo. Be it not too tender,
Or it may suffer much, and speedily,
And undeservedly. The queen your sister,
Gentle as you, hath fortitude.
Maria. Giovanna
Is tenderer than I am ; she sheds tears
Oftener than I do, though she hides them better.
Del Balzo. I saw their traces : but more royally
Never shone courage upon grief supprest.
Maria. The lovely platane in the garden-walk
Catches the sun upon her buds half-open,
And looks the brightest where unbarkt and
scathed.
O find them out who have afflicted her
With that most cruel blow.
Del Balzo. 'Tis what she bade me,
And what I now am hastening to perform. [Goes.
GIOVANNA enters.
Maria. Courage, Giovanna ! courage, my sweet
sister !
Del Balzo will find out those wicked men.
0 ! I forgot to tell him what assistance
Fra Rupert might afford him. Every crime
Is known to him. But certainly Fra Rupert,
Who loved Andrea so, will never cease
Until he find the slayer of his friend.
Ah my poor sister ! if you had but heard
The praises of Del Balzo, you would soon
Resume your courage and subdue your tears.
Giovanna. Before Del Balzo, sister, I disdain
To show them or to speak of them. Be mine
Hid from all eyes ! God only knows their source,
Their truth or falsehood. In the light of day
Some lose their bitterness, run smoothly on,
And catch compassion, leisurely, serenely :
Never will mine run thus : my sorrows lie
In my own breast ; my fame rests upon others,
Who throw it from them now the blast has
nipt it.
'Tis ever so. Applauses win applauses,
Crowds gather about crowds, the solitary
Are shunned as lepers and in haste past by.
Maria. But we will not be solitary ; we
Are not so easy to pass by in haste ;
We are not very leper-looking.
Giovanna. Cease,
Maria ! nothing on this earth so wounds
The stricken bosom as such sportiveness,
Or weighs worn spirits down like levity.
Give me your hand . . Reproof is not reproach.
I might have done the same . . how recently !
Maria. Hark ! what is all that outcry ?
Giovanna. 'Tis for him
Whom we have lost.
Maria. But angry voices mixt
With sorrowful 1
Giovanna. To him both due alike.
SPINELLO enters.
Spinello. Hungarian troops throng every street
and lane,
Driving before them the infirm, the aged,
The children, of both sexes.
Giovanna. Shelter them.
Spinello. Such is the hope of those base enemies,
That, unprovided for defence, the castle
May fall into their hands : and very quickly
(Unless we drive them back) our scanty stores
Leave us exhausted.
Giovanna. Dost thou fear, Spinello ?
Spinello. I do : but if my sovran bids me bare
This breast of armour and assail her foes,
Soon shall she see what fears there lie within.
Giovanna. Let me too have my fears, nor worse
than thine,
Loyal and brave Spinello ! Dare I ask
Of God my daily bread nor give it those
Whose daily prayers have earned it for us all 1
I dare not. Throw wide open every gate
And stand between the last of my poor people
And those who drive them in.
Spinello. We then are lost.
Giovanna. Not from God's sight, nor theirs who
look to God.
Maria. 0 sister ! may that smile of yours be
parent
Of many. It sinks back, and dies upon
The lovely couch it rose from. [DEL BALZO enters.
I will go :
Del Balzo looks, I think, more stern than ever.
Giovanna. Del Balzo, I perceive thou kno west all,
And pitiest my condition. [DEL BALZO. amazed.
Spinello. Standest thou,
Lookest thou, thus, before thy sovran, sir1?
Giovanna. Be friends, be friends, and spare me
one affront.
Wiser it were, and worthier, to devise
How tumults may be quell'd than how increast.
On your discretion lies your country's weal.
[Goes.
Spinello. Ugo del Balzo ! thou art strong in
war,
Strong in alliances, in virtue strong,
But darest thou, before the queen, before
The lowest of the loyal, thus impute
552
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT r.
With brow of scorn and figure fixt aslant,
Atrocious crimes to purity angelic ?
Del Balzo. Heard'st thou her words and askest
thou this question ]
Spinello ! nor in virtue nor in courage
(Our best alliances) have I pretence
To stand before thee. Chancellor thou art,
And, by the nature of thy office, shouldst
Have undertaken my most awful duty :
Why didst thou not ?
Spinello. Because the queen herself
Will'd otherwise ; because her chancellor,
She thought, might vindicate some near unduly.
Del Balzo. She thought so ] what ! of thee ]
Spindlo. Thus it appears.
But on this subject never word escaped
Her lips to me : her own pure spirit frankly
Suggested it : her delicacy shunn'd
All explanation, lacking no excuse.
Thou askest if I heard her at thy entrance :
I heard her, like thyself. The words before
Thou didst not hear ; I did. Her last appeal
Was for the wretched driven within the castle,
And doom'd to pine or force us to surrender.
For them sho call'd upon thee, never else,
To pity her condition.
Del Balzo. Pardon me !
I have much wrong'd her. Yet, among the
questioned
Were strange confessions. One alone spake
scornfully
Amid her tortures.
Spinello. Is the torture, then,
The tongue of Truth )
Del Balzo. For once, I fear, 'tis not.
Spinello. It was Giovanna's resolute design
To issue her first edict through the land
Abolishing this horrid artifice,
Whereby the harden'd only can escape.
" The cruel best bear cruelty," said she,
" And those who often have committed it
May once go through it."
Del Balzo. And would'st thou, Spinello !
Thus lay aside the just restraints of law,
Abolishing what wise and holy men
Raised for the safeguard of society ?
Spinello. The holy and the wise have done such
things
As the unwise and the unholy shrink at.
Del Balzo. It might be thought a hardship in
a country
Where laws want ingenuity ; where scales,
Bandage, and sword, alone betoken Justice.
Ill-furbisht ineffective armoury,
With nothing but cross-shooting shafts of words !
Spinello. Since every deed like torture must
afflict
A youthful breast, so mild, so sensitive,
Trust it to me, and we will then devise
How the event may best be laid before her.
Del Balzo. A clue was given by unwilling hands,
Wherewith we entered the dark narrow chambers
Of this strange mystery. Filippa first,
Interrogated if she knew the murderer,
Denied it : then, if she suspected any;
' I do," was her reply. Whom ? She was silent.
Where should suspicion now (tell me, Spinello !)
Wander or fix ? I askt her if the Queen
Was privy to the deed. Then swell'd her scorn.
Again I askt her, and I show'd the rack.
' Throw me upon it : I will answer thence."
Said with calm voice Filippa. She was rackt.
Screams from all round fill'd the whole vault.
" See, children !
How those who fear their God and love their Prince
Can bear this childish cruelty," said she.
Although no other voice escaped, the men
Trembled, the women wail'd aloud. "To-mor-
row,"
Said I, " Filippa ! thou must answer Justice.
Kelease her." Still the smile was on her face :
She was releast : Death had come down and saved
her.
Spinello. Faithfullest friend of the unhappy !
plead
For us whose duty was to plead for thee !
Thou art among the Blessed ! On, Del Balzo !
Del Balzo. Sancia, her daughter's child . .
Spinello. The playful Sancia 1
Whose fifteenth birthday we both kept together . .
Was it the sixth or seventh of last March 1 . .
Terlizzi's bride two months ago 1
Del Balzo. The same.
Spinello. And the same fate ?
Del Balzo. She never had seen Death :
She thought her cries could drive him off again,
Thought her soft lips might have relaxt the rigid,
And her warm tears . . .
Spinello. Del Balzo ! wert thou there ?
Or tearest thou such dreamery from some book,
If any book contain such 1
Del Balzo. I was there ;
And what I saw I ordered to be done.
Justice would have it ; Justice smote my heart,
Justice sustained it too.
Spinello. Her husband would
Kather have died than hear one shriek from Sancia.
Del Balzo. So all men would : for never form
so lovely
Lighted the air around it.
Spinello. Let us go
And bear her home.
Del Balzo. To me the way lies open ;
But much I fear, Spinello, the Hungarians
Possess all avenue to thy escape.
Spinello. Escape is not the word for me, my
friend.
I had forgotten the Hungarians
(It seems) the Queen, myself, captivity . .
I may not hence : relate then if more horrors
Succeeded.
Del Balzo. When Terlizzi saw Filippa
Lie stiff before him, and that gentle bride
Chafing her limbs, and shrinking with loud yells
Whenever her soft hand felt some swol'n sinew,
In hopes to finish here and save all else,
He cried aloud, " Filippa was the murderess."
At this she darted at him such a glance
SCENE I.]
GIOVANNA OP NAPLES.
553
As the mad only dart, and fell down dead.
" 'Tis false ! 'tis false ! " cried he. " Speak, San-
cia, speak !
Or hear me say 'tis false." They dragg'd away
The wavering youth, and fixt him. There he lies,
With what result of such inconstancy
I know not, but am going to inquire . .
If we detect the murderers, all these pains
Are well inflicted.
Spinello. But if not 1
Del Balzo. The Laws
Have done their duty and struck fear through all.
Spinello. Alas! that duty seems their only one.
Del Balzo. Among the first 'tis surely. I must
g°
And gather up fresh evidence. Farewell,
Spinello !
Spinello. May good angels guide your steps !
Farewell ! That Heaven should give the merciless
So much of power, the merciful so little !
ACT II.
SCENE I. CASTEL-NUOVO.
GIOVANNA and MAKIA.
Maria. I do not like these windows. Who can
see
What passes under ? Never were contrived
Cleverer ones for looking at the sky,
Or hearing our Hungarians to advantage.
I can not think their songs are pastorals ;
They may be ; if they are, they are ill-set.
Will nothing do, Giovanna ? Eaise your eyes ;
Embrace your sister.
Giovanna. So, you too, Maria !
Have turgid eyes, and feign the face of joy.
Never will joy be more with us . . with you
It may be . . 0 God grant it ! but me ! me,
Whom good men doubt, what pleasure can ap-
proach 1
Maria. If good men all were young men, we
might shudder
At silly doubts, like other silly things
Not quite so cold to shudder at.
Giovanna. Again,
Maria ! I am now quite changed ; I am
Your sister as I was, but 0 remember
I am (how lately !) my Andrea's widow.
Maria. I wish our little Sancia would come
hither
With her Terlizzi . . those inseparables !
We scarcely could get twenty words from them
All the day long ; we caught them after dinner,
And lost them suddenly as evening closed.
Giovanna. Send for her. But perhaps she is
with Filippa. . .
Maria. Learning sedatenessin the matron life.
Giovanna. Or may-be with the queen whose
name she bears,
And who divides her love, not equally
With us, but almost equally.
Maria. If so,
No need to seek her ; for the queen went forth
To San Lorenzo at the dawn of day,
And there upon the pavement she implores
Peace for the dead, protection for the living.
Giovanna. 0 may her prayers be heard !
Maria. If piety
Avails the living or the dead, they will.
Giovanna. How, how much calmer than thy
sweetest smile
Has that thought made me ! Evermore speak so,
And life will almost be as welcome to me
As death itself.
Maria. When sunshine glistens round,
And friends, as young as we are, sit beside us,
We smile at Death . . one rather grim indeed
And whimsical, but not disposed to hurt us . .
And give and take fresh courage. But, sweet
sister !
The days are many when he is unwelcome,
And you will think so too another time.
'Tis chiefly in cold places, with old folks,
His features seem prodigiously amiss.
But Life looks always pleasant, sometimes more
And sometimes less so, but looks always pleasant,
And, when we cherish him, repays us well.
Sicily says it is the worst of sin
To cast aside what God hath given us,
And snatch at what he may hereafter give
In its due season . . scourges, and such comfits,
Cupboarded for Old-age. Youth has her games ;
We are invited, and should ill refuse.
On all these subjects our sweet Sicily
Discourses with the wisdom of a man.
You are not listening : what avails our wisdom ]
Giovanna. To keep afloat that buoyant little
bark
Which swells endanger. 0 may never storm
O'ertake it ! never worm unseen eat thro' !
Maria. I wish we were away from these thick
walls,
And these high windows, and these church-like
ceilings,
Without a cherub to look down on us,
Or play a prank up there, with psalter-book,
Or bishop's head, or fiddle, or festoon.
Giovanna. Be satisfied awhile : the nobler rooms
Are less secure against the violence
Of those Hungarians.
Maria. I saw one who bowed
Graceful as an Italian. " Send away
The men below," said I, " then bow again,
And we will try which bows most gracefully."
Giovanna. My giddy, giddy sister !
Maria. May my head
Be ever so, if crowns must steady it !
Giovanna. He might have thought . .
Maria. Not he ; he never thinks.
He bowed and shook his head. His name is
Psein.
Often hath he been here on guard before :
You must remember him.
Giovanna. No, not by name.
Maria. Effeminate and vain we fancied him,
Because he always had a flower in hand,
Or with his fingers combed his forehead hair.
554
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT n.
Oiovanna. No little merit in that sullen race.
Maria,. If he has merit I will bring it out.
Giovanna. Kesign that idle notion. Power is
lost
By showing it too freely. When I want
His services, I order them. We part.
Too large a portion of the hour already
Has been among the living. Now I go
To other duties for the residue
Of this sad day.
Maria. Unwelcome is Maria
Where sorrow is ?
Giovanna. Her sorrow is unwelcome ;
Let me subdue my own ; then come and join me.
Thou knowest where the desolate find one
Who never leaves them desolate. [Goes.
Maria. 'Tis hard
To linger here alone.
Officer. The Seneschal
Of Naples, Acciajoli.
SCENEfll.
ACCIAJOLI and MARIA.
Acciajoli. By command
Of our most gracious queen, 0 royal lady !
I come for yours.
Maria. That is, to bear me company.
Acciajoli. Such only as the humblest bear the
highest.
Maria. Seneschal ! you excell the best in
phrases.
You might let others be before you there,
Content to shine in policy and war.
Acciajoli. I have been placed where others
would have shone.
Maria. Come, do not beat me now in modesty.
Had I done anything, I might not boast,
Nor should I think I was improving it
By telling an untruth and looking down.
I do not like our lodgement, nor much wish
To see an arrow quivering in that wainscote :
The floors are well enough ; I would not see them
Paved with smooth pebbles from Hungarian
Can not you send those soldiers to their quarters ?
Acciajoli. In vain have I attempted it.
Maria. Send Psein
Tome.
Acciajoli. He, like the rest, is an insurgent.
Civilest of barbarians, yet may Psein
(With horror I must utter it) refuse.
Maria. Fear of refusal has lost many a prize.
[ACCIAJOLI goes.
I hope the Seneschal will go himself,
Not send another. How I wisht to ask it !
But, at my years, to hint an act of delicacy
Is too indelicate. He has seen courts,
Turn'd over their loose leaves (each more than
half
Illumination, dulness the remainder),
And knows them from the cover to the core.
SCENE III.
PSEIN conducted by ACCIAJOLI, wJio retires.
The queen commands my presence here.
Maria. The queen
Desired your presence ; I alone command it.
Eyes have seen you, commander Psein !
Psein. Impossible !
Maria. Yes, eyes have seen you, general Psein!
they have,
And seen that they can trust you.
Psein. By my troth
To all that's lovely !
Maria. Ah, sad man ! swear not . .
Unless you swear my words.
Psein. To hear and swear
And treasure them within this breast, is one.
Maria (PSEIN repeating). " I swear to love and
honour and obey " . .
Ha ! not the hand . . it comes not quite so soon . .
Psein. I have but little practice in the form ;
Pardon me, gracious lady !
Maria. Earn your pardon
By your obedience. Now repeat again.
" Whatever perils may obstruct her path,
I give safe-conduct to my royal mistress,
Giovanna, queen of Naples." (He starts). Have
you taken
Me for my sister all this while 1 I told you
It was not she commanded you, 'twas I.
Psein. Oaths are sad things ! I trot to church
so seldom
They would not let me out of mine for little
(Not they !) like any good old customer.
Maria. And so ! you would deceive me,
general1?
Psein (aside). I am appointed : that sounds well :
but general !
She said the same before : it must be true.
Maria. Tell me at once, nor hesitate. Another
May reap the harvest while you whet the sickle.
Psein. But I have sworn to let none pass, before
The will of my superiors be announced.
Maria. Behold them here ! their shadow fills
this palace,
And in my voice, sir, is their will announced.
Psein. I swore.
Maria. I heard you.
Psein. But before.
Maria. Before
Disloyalty, now loyalty. Are brave
And gallant men to ponder in the choice ?
Psein. Devoted as I am to you, 0 lady !
It can not be.
Maria. Is that the phrase of Psein 1
We love the marvellous ; we love the man
Who shows how things which can not be can be.
Give me this glove again upon the water,
And queen Giovanna shall reward you for it.
Psein. Upon the water or upon the fire,
The whirlpool or volcano . . By bad luck
(What fools men are ! they always make their
own!)
The troops are in revolt. Pride brightens zeal
SCENE V.]
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
555
But not invention. How shall we contrive
To manage them at present ?
Maria. Tell the troops
We will have no revolts. Sure, with your powers
Of person and persuasion, not a man
Would hesitate to execute his duty.
Psein. We are but three . .
Maria. We are but two : yet, Psein !
When two are resolute they are enough.
Now I am resolute, and so are you,
And if those soldiers dare to disobey
It is rank mutiny and halbert-matter.
Await the Seneschal : he now returns. [Goes.
Psein. She knows the laws of war as well as I,
And looks a young Minerva, tho' of Naples.
SCENE IV.
ACCIAJOLI and PSEIN.
Acciajoli. Sorrow and consternation are around.
Psein. Men could not have cried louder had
they lost
Policinello, who begets them fun,
While princes but beget them blows and taxes.
When will they see things straightly, and give
these
Their proper station ?
Acciajoli. Have you not your king ]
Psein. 0 ! quite another matter ! We have ours,
True ; but his taxes are for us ; and then
The blows. . we give and take them, as may
happen.
Acciajoli. We too may do the same, another
day.
[PsEiN expresses contempt.
So ! you imagine that your arms suffice
To keep this kingdom down ! War is a game
Not of skill only, not of hazard only,
No, nor of both united.
Psein. What the ball
Is stuft with, I know not, nor ever lookt ;
I only know it is the very game
I like to play at.
Acciajoli. Many are the chances.
Psein. Without the chances I would throw it up.
Play me at Naples only five to one,
I take the odds.
Acciajoli. All are not Neapolitans.
Psein. Then strike off three.
Acciajoli. Some Normans.
Psein. Then my sword
Must be well whetted and my horse well fed,
And my poor memory well poked for prayers.
And, hark ye ! I should like one combatant
As well as twenty, of that ugly breed.
Lord Seneschal, be ready at your post.
Acciajoli. I trust I shall be.
Psein. At what hour ?
Acciajoli. Not yet.
Psein. Ay, but the queen must fix it.
Acciajoli. She inclines
To peace.
Psein. I know it ; but for flight ere peace.
Acciajoli. Flight is not in the movements of
our queen.
Psein. Departure then.
Acciajoli. Sir ! should she will departure,
Breasts are not wanting to repell the charge
Of traitor or intruder.
Psein. Here is one,
Lord Seneschal ! as ready to defend her **
As any mail'd with iron or claspt with gold.
Doubtest thou ? Doubt no longer. [Shows the glove.
A aciajoli. Whose is that ]
Psein. The names we venerate we rarely speak;
And love beats veneration out and out.
I will restore it at the vessel's side,
And ask it back again when she is safe
And the less happy lady whom you serve.
It then behoves me to retrace my steps
And rally my few countrymen for safety.
SCENE V. •
A HERALD enters. PSEIN goes.
Acciajoli. Whence come you, sir?
Herald. From Gaeta.
Acciajoli. What duty1?
Herald. To see the queen.
Acciajoli. The queen you can not see :
Her consort died too lately.
Herald. Therefor I
Must see the queen.
Acciajoli. If you bring aught that throws
Light upon that dark treason, speak at once.
Herald. The light must fall from Rome. Cola
Bienzi,
Tribune of Rome, and arbiter of justice
To Europe, tarrying on the extremest verge
Of our dominions, to inspect the castles,
Heard the report, brought with velocity
Incredible, which man gave man along
The land, and ship gave ship along the coast.
Acciajoli. Then 'twas prepared : and those who
spread the news
Perpetrated the deed.
Herald. Such promptitude
Could not escape the Tribune. He demands
The presence of Giovanna queen of Naples,
To plead her cause before him.
Acciajoli. Is Rienzi
A king ) above a king 1
Herald. Knowest thou not
Rienzi is the tribune of the people 1
Acciajoli. Sir ! we have yet to learn by what
authority
He regulates the destiny of princes.
Herald. The wisest men have greatly more to
learn
Than ever they have learnt : there will be children
Who in their childhood shall know more than
we do.
Lord Seneschal ! I am but citizen
In my own city, nor among the first/
But I am herald here, and, being herald,
Let no man dare to question me. The king
556
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT ni.
Of Hungary is cited to appear,
Since in his name are accusations made
By some at Naples, which your queen must
answer.
Acciajoli. Her dignity and wisdom will decide,
I am well pleas'd that those around the castle
Threw no obstruction in your way.
HeroM. The soldiers
Resisted my approach ; but instantly
Two holy friars spread out their arms in front,
And they disparted like the Red-sea waves,
And grounded arms before me.
Acciajoli. Then no hinderance
To our most gracious queen, should she comply 1
Herald. None; for Rienzi's name is spell
against it.
Giovanna (enters). 0 ! is there one to hear me
patiently ]
Let me fly to him !
Acciajoli. Hath our sovran heard
The order of Rienzi ?
Giovanna. Call it not
An order, lest my people be incenst.
Herald. Lady ! if plainly hath been understood
The subject of my mission, the few words
Containing it may be unread by me.
Therefor I place them duly in the hands
Of the lord seneschal. With brief delay
Your presence were desirable.
Giovanna. What time
Return you, sir ?
Herald. This evening.
Giovanna. And by sea ?
Herald. In the same bark which brought me.
Giovanna. If some ship
More spacious be now lying at the mole,
I will embark in that ; if not, in yours,
And we will sail together. You have power
Which I have not in Naples ; and the troops,
And those who seem to guide them, hear your
words.
Herald. Lady ! not mine ; but there are some
they hear.
Giovanna. Entreat them to let pass the
wretched ones
Who fancied I could succour them within,
Whom famine must soon seize. Until they pass
I can not. Dear is fame to me ; but far
Be Fame that stalks to us o'er hurried graves.
Lord Seneschal ! see Rome's ambassador
Be duly honoured : then, whatever else
Is needful for departure, be prepared.
ACT III.
SCENE I. ROME. CAPITOL.
RIENZI and the POPE'S NUNCIO.
Nuncio. With infinite affliction, potent Tri-
bune !
The Holiness of our Lord the Sovran Pontiff
Learns that Andrea, prince of Hungary,
Hath, in the palace of Aversa, been
Traitorously slain. Moreover, potent Tribune !
The Holiness of our Lord the Sovran Pontiff
Hears sundry accusations : and, until
The guilt or innocence of those accused
Be manifested, in such wise as He,
The Holiness of our Lord the Sovmn Pontiff,
Shall deem sufficient, he requires that troops
March from his faithful city, and possess
Otranto and Taranto, Brindisi
And Benevento, Capua and Bari,
Most loving cities and most orthodox.
And some few towns and villages beside,
Yearning for peace in his paternal breast,
He would especially protect from tumult.
Laying his blessing on your head thro' me
The humblest of his servitors, thus speaks
The Holiness of our Lord the Sovran Pontiff.
Rienzi (seated) . Lord Cardinal! no truer stay
than me
Hath, on Italian or Provenzal ground,
The Holiness of our Lord the Sovran Pontiff.
The cares that I have taken off his hands
The wisdom of his holiness alone
Can measure and appreciate. As for troops,
That wisdom, seeing them so far remote,
Perhaps may judge somewhat less accurately.
The service of his Holiness requires
All these against his barons. Now, until
I hear the pleas of Hungary and Naples,
My balance is suspended. Those few cities,
Those towns and villages, awhile must yearn
For foren troops among them ; but meantime
Having the blessing of his Holiness,
May wait contentedly for any greater
His Holiness shall opportunely grant.
Kissing the foot of his Beatitude,
Such, my lord Cardinal, is the reply
From his most faithful Cola di Rienzi,
Unworthy tribune of his loyal city.
Nuncio. We may discuss anew this weighty
question
On which his Holiness's heart is moved.
Rienzi. If allocution be permitted me
To his most worthy Nuncio, let me say
The generous bosom would enfold about it
The friend, the neighbour, the whole human race,
And scarcely then rest satisfied. With all
These precious coverings round it, poisonous
tongues
Can penetrate. We lowly men alone
Are safe, and hardly we. Who would believe it ?
People have heretofore been mad enough
To feign ambition (of all deadly sins
Surely the deadliest) in our lord the pope's
Protecting predecessors ! Their paternal
Solicitude these factious thus denounced.
Ineffable the pleasure I foretaste
In swearing to his Holiness what calm
Reluctance you exhibited ; the same
His Holiness himself might have exprest,
In bending to the wishes of those cities
So orthodox and loving ; and how fully
You manifested, by your faint appeal,
You sigh as deeply to decline, as they
SCENE II.]
GIOVANNA OP NAPLES.
557
Sigh in their fears and fondness to attain.
[NUNCIO going.
Help my lord cardinal. This weather brings
Stiffness of joints, rheums, shooting pains. Way
there !
SCENE II. CAPITOL.
RIENZI, ACCIAJOLI, PETKARCA, and BOCCACCIO.
Boccaccio. If there was ever upon throne one
mind
More pure than other, one more merciful,
One better stored with wisdom, of its own
And carried from without, 'tis hers, the queen's.
Exert, my dear Francesco, all that eloquence
Which kings and senates often have obeyed
And nations have applauded.
Petrarca. My Boccaccio !
Thou knowest Rome, thou knowest Avignon :
Altho' so brief a time the slave of power,
Rienzi is no longer what he was,
Popes are what they have ever been. They all
Have families for dukedoms to obey.
Boccaccio. 0 ! had each holy father twenty wives
And each wife twenty children ] then 'twere hard
To cut out dukedoms for so many mouths,
And the well-furred tiara could not hatch
So many golden goose-eggs under it.
Petrarca. We must unite our efforts.
Boccaccio. Mine could add
Little to yours : I am not eloquent.
Petrarca. Thou never hast received from any
court
Favour or place ; I, presents and preferments.
Boccaccio. I am but little known : for dear to
me
As fame is, odious is celebrity.
Petrarca. I see not why it should be.
Boccaccio. If no eyes
In the same head are quite alike, ours may
Match pretty well, yet somewhat differ too.
Petrarca. Should days like yours waste far from
men and friends ?
Boccaccio. Leave me one flame ; then may my
breast dilate
To hold, at last, two (or almost two) friends :
One would content me : but we must, forsooth,
Speculate on more riches than we want.
Moreover, 0 Francesco ! I should shrink
From scurril advocate, cross-questioning
Whom knew I in the palace ? whence my know-
ledge ]
How long ? where first 1 whence introduced ? for
what]
Since in all law-courts I have ever entered,
The least effrontery, the least dishonesty,
Has lain among the prosecuted thieves.
Petrarca. We can not now much longer hesitate ;
He hath his eye upon us.
Boccaccio. Not on me ;
He knows me not.
Petrarca. On me it may be then,
Altho' some years, no few have intervened
Since we last met.
Boccaccio. But frequent correspondence
Retains the features, nay, brings back the voice ;
The very shoe creaks when the letter opens.
Petrarca. Rienzi was among those friends who
sooner
Forget than are forgotten.
Boccaccio. They who rise
Lose sight of things below, while they who fali
Grasp at and call for anything to help.
Petrarca. I own I cease to place reliance on him.
Virtue and Power take the same road at first,
But they soon separate, and they meet no more.
Usher. The Tribune, ser Francesco ! claims
your presence.
Rienzi. Petrarca! pride of Italy ! most welcome!
Petrarca. Tribune of Rome ! I bend before the
fasces.
Rienzi. No graver business in this capitol,
Or in the forum underneath its walls,
Or in the temples that once rose between,
Engaged the thoughts of Rome. No captive queen
Comes hither, none comes tributary, none
Courting dominion or contesting crown.
Thou knowest who submits her cause before
The majesty that reigns within this court.
Petrarca. Her, and her father, and his father
knew I,
Nor three more worthy of my love and honor
(Tho' born to royalty) adorn our earth.
Del Balzo hath supplied the facts : all doubts
On every side of them hath Acciajoli
Clear'd up.
Rienzi. But some will spring where others fall,
When intellect is strongly exercised.
Petrarca. The sources of our intellect lie deep
Within the heart ; what rises to the brain
Is spray and efflorescence ; they dry up.
Rienzi. However, we must ponder. So then
truly,
Petrarca ! thou dost think her innocent 1
Petrarca. Thou knowest she is innocent, Rienzi !
Write then thy knowledge higher than my belief:
The proofs lie there before thee.
Rienzi. But these papers
Are ranged against them.
Petrarca. Weigh the characters
Of those who sign them.
Rienzi. Here the names are wanting.
Petrarca. Remove the balance then, for none
is needed.
Against Del Balzo, upright, stern, severe,
What evidence can struggle ?
Rienzi. From Del Balzo
The queen herself demands investigation
Into the crime, and bids him spare not one
Partaker.
Pertraca. Worthy of her race ! Now ask
If I believe her guiltless.
Rienzi. May we prove it !
Acciajoli. She shall herself, if needful. Should
more answers
Be wanted from me, I am here before
That high tribunal where the greatest power
And wisdom are united ; where the judge
558
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT HI.
Gives judgment in the presence of such men
As Rome hath rarely seen in ancient days,
Never in later. What they hear, the world
Will hear thro' future ages, and rejoice
That he was born in this to raise an arm
Protecting such courageous innocence.
Rienzi. Lord Seneschal of Naples, Acciajoli !
We have examined, as thou knowest, all
The documents before us, and regret
That death withholds from like examination
(Whether as witnesses or criminals)
Some inmates of your court, the most familiar
With queen Giovanna.
Acciajoli. Did she then desire
Their death 1 as hidden enemies accuse her
Of one more awful. I presume the names
Of the young Sancia, count Terlizzi's bride,
And hers who educated that pure mind
By pointing out Giovanna, two years older,
Filippa of Catana.
Rienzi. They are gone
Beyond our reach.
Acciajoli. Sent off, no doubt, by one
Who loved them most, who most loved her ! sent
off
After their tortures, whether into Scotland
Or Norway or Laponia, the same hand
Who wrote those unsign'd papers may set forth. "
Rienzi. I cannot know their characters.
Acciajoli. I know them
Loyal and wise and virtuous.
Rienzi. But Filippa
Guided, 'tis said, the counsels of king Robert.
Acciajoli. And were those counsels evil? If
they were,
How happens it that both in life and death
The good king Robert was his appellation ?
Rienzi. How many kings are thrust among the
stars
Who had become the whipping-post much
better?
Acciajoli. Was Robert one ?
Rienzi. We must confess that Robert
Struck down men's envy under admiration.
Acciajoli. If then Filippa guided him, what
harm?
Rienzi. She might have fear'd that youth would
less obey
Her prudent counsels than experience did.
Acciajoli. Well might she : hence for many a
year her cares
Have been devoted to our queen's instruction,
Together with queen Sancia, not without :
And neither of these ladies (I now speak
As president) have meddled with our councils.
Rienzi. When women of low origin are guides
To potentates of either sex, 'tis ill.
Acciajoli. I might have thought so ; but Filippa
showed
That female wisdom much resembles male ;
Gentler, not weaker ; leading, not controlling.
Again ! 0 tribune ! touching low estate.
More vigorously than off the downier cradle
From humble crib springs up the lofty mind.
Rienzi. Strong arguments, and cogent facts, are
these ! [Toon Usher.
Conduct the queen of Naples into court.
Acciajoli. That, by your leave, must be my
office, sir !
SCENE m.
RIENZI, ACOIAJOLI, GIOVANNA, and PRIOR of the
CELESTINES.
Rienzi. Giovanna, queen of Naples ! we have
left you
A pause and space for sorrow to subside ;
Since, innocent or guilty, them who lose
So suddenly the partner of their hours,
Grief seizes on, in that dark interval.
Pause too and space were needful, to explore
On every side such proofs as may acquit
Of all connivance at the dreadful crime
A queen so wise, and held so virtuous,
So just, so merciful. It can not be
(We hope) that she who would have swept away
Play-things of royal courts and monkish cells,
The instruments of torture, that a queen
Who in her childhood visited the sick,
Nor made a luxury or pomp of doing it,
Who placed her little hand, as we have heard,
In that where fever burnt, nor feared contagion,
Should slay her husband.
Acciajoli. Faintness overpowers her,
Not guilt. The racks you spoke of, 0 Rienzi !
You have applied, and worse than those you
spoke of.
Rienzi. Gladly I see true friends about her.
Acciajoli. Say
About her not ; say in her breast she finds
The only friend she wants . . her innocence.
Rienei. People of Rome ! your silence, your
attention,
Become you. With like gravity our fathers
Beheld the mighty and adjudged their due.
Sovran of Naples, Piedemont, and Provence,
Among known potentates what other holds
Such wide dominions as this lady here,
Excepting that strong islander whose sword
Has cut France thro', and lies o'er Normandy,
Anjou, Maine, Poictou, Brittany, Touraine,
And farthest Gascony ; whose hilt keeps down
The Grampians, and whose point the Pyrenees ?
Listen ! she throws aside her veil, that all
May hear her voice, and mark her fearless mien.
Giovanna. I say not, 0 Rienzi ! I was born
A queen ; nor say I none but God alone
Hath right to judge me. Every man whom God
Endows with judgment arbitrates my cause.
For of that crime am I accused which none
Shall hide from God or man. All are involved
In guilt who aid, or screen, or spare, the guilty.
Speak, voice of Rome ! absolve me or condemn,
As proof, or, proof being absent/probability,
Points on the scroll of this dark tragedy.
Speak, and spare not : fear nought but mighty
minds,
Nor those, unless where lies God's shadow, truth.
SCENE I.]
GIOVANNA OP NAPLES.
559
Rienzi. Well hast thou done, 0 queen, and
wisely chosen
Judge and defenders. Thro' these states shall
none
Invade thy realm. I find no crime in thee.
Hasten to Naples ! for against its throne
Eing powerful arms and menace thy return.
[AcciAJOLi leads the Queen out.
Prior of the Celestines. Thou findest in that wily
queen no crime.
So be it ! and 'tis well. But tribune, know,
111 chosen are the praises thou bestowest
On her immunity from harm, in touching
The fever'd and infected. She was led
Into such places by unholy hands.
I come not an accuser : I would say
Merely, that Queen Giovanna was anointed
By the most potent sorceress, Filippa
The Catanese.
Rienzi. Anointed Queen 1
Prior. Her palms
Anointed, so that evil could not touch them.
Filippa, with some blacker spirits, helpt
To cure the sick, or comfort them unduly.
Rienzi. Among the multitude of sorceresses
I find but very few such sorceries,
And, if the Church permitted, would forgive them.
Prior. In mercy we, in mercy, should demur.
Rienzi. How weak is human wisdom ! what a
stay
Is such stout wicker-work about the fold !
Prior. Whether in realms of ignorance, in
realms
By our pure light and our sure faith unblest,
Or where the full effulgence bursts from Rome,
No soul, not one upon this varied earth,
Is unbeliever in the power of sorcery :
How certain then its truth, the universal
Tongue of mankind, from east to west, proclaims.
Rienzi. With reverential and submissive awe,
People of Rome ! leave we to holy Church
What comes not now before us, nor shall come,
While matters which our judgments can decide
Are question'd, while crown'd heads are bowed
before us.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. RIENZI'S OWN APARTMENT IN THE
CAPITOL.
RIENZI, FRIAR ANSELMO, and poor NEAPOLITANS.
Rienzi. Who creeps there yonder with his
fingers folded ?
Hither ; what wantest thou 1 who art thou, man ?
Anselmo. The humblest of the humble, your
Anselmo.
Rienzi. Mine?
Anselmo. In all duty.
Rienzi. Whence art thou 1
Anselmo. From Naples.
Rienzi. What askest thou ?
Anselmo. In the most holy names
Of Saint Euphemia and Saint Cunigund !
And in behalf of these poor creatures ask I
Justice and mercy.
Rienzi. On what count ?
Anselmo. On life.
Rienzi. Who threatens it in Rome ?
Anselmo. In Rome none dare
Under the guardianship of your tribunal.
But Naples is abandoned to her fate
By those who ruled her. Those, alas ! who ruled
her
Heaven has abandoned. Crimes, outrageous
crimes,
Have swept them from their people. We alone
In poverty are left for the protection
Of the more starving populace. 0 hear,
Merciful Tribune ! hear their cries for bread !
[All cry out.
Anselmo (to them). Ye should not have cried
now, ye fools ! and choak ye !
Rienzi. That worthy yonder looks well satis-
fied:
All of him, but his shoulder, seems at ease.
Anselmo. Tommaso ! art thou satisfied]
Tommaso. Not I.
A fish upon my bread, at least on Friday,
Had done my body and my soul some 'good,
And quicken'd one and t'other at thanksgiving.
Anchovies are rare cooks for garlic, master !
[To RIENZI.
Anselmo. I sigh for such delusion.
Rienzi. So do I.
How came they hither 1
Anselmo. By a miracle.
Rienzi. My honest friends ! what can we do for
you
At Rome 1
Anselmo. Speak. Does the Devil gripe your
tongues 1
Mob. We crave our daily bread from holy hands,
And from none other.
Rienzi. Then your daily bread
Ye will eat hot, and delicately small.
Frate Anselmo, what means this 1
A nselmo. It means,
0 tribune ! that the lady, late our queen,
Hath set aside broad lands and blooming gardens
For hospitals ; which, with unrighteous zeal,
She builds with every church. There Saint An-
tonio
Beyond the gate of Capua ! there Saint Martin
On Mount Saint-Eremo ! there Saint Maria
Incoronata! All their hospitals !
No one hath monastery ! no one nuns !
Rienzi. Hard, hard upon you ! But what means
were yours
To bring so many supplicants so long
A journey with you ?
Anselmo. 'Twas a miracle.
Rienzi. Miracles never are of great duration.
Hurry then back ! Hurry ye while it lasts !
1 would not spoil it with occult supplies,
I reverence holy men too much for that,
And leave them to the only power above them.
Possibly quails and manna may not cross you
560
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT iv.
If you procrastinate. But, setting out
To-morrow, by whichever gate seems luckiest,
And questioning your honest mules discreetly,
I boldly answer for it, ye shall find
By their mild winking (should they hold their
tongues)
The coin of our lord Clement on the back
Of one or other, in some well-thonged scrip.
Anselmo (aside). Atheist !
Tommaso. Ah no, father ! Atheists
Never lift up their eyes as you and he do.
[Going together.
I know one in a twinkling. For example,
Cosimo Cappa was one. He denied
A miracle his mother might have seen
Not twelve miles from his very door, when she
Was heavy with him ; and the saint who workt it,
To make him one, cost thirteen thousand ducats.
There was an atheist for you ! that same Cappa . .
I saw him burnt . . a fine fresh lusty man.
I warrant I remember it : I won
A heap of chesnuts on that day at morra.
A sad poor place this Rome ! look where you will,
No drying paste here dangles from the windows
Across the sunny street, to make it cheerful ;
And much I doubt if, after all its fame,
The nasty yellow river breeds anchovies.
SCENE II. BIENZI'S OWN APARTMENT IN THE
CAPITOL.
EIENZI and his WIFE.
Rienzi. I have been sore perplext, and still am
so.
Wife. Yet falsehood drops from truth, as quick-
silver
From gold, and ministers to purify it.
Rienzi. The favour of the people is uncertain.
Wife. Gravely thou givest this intelligence.
Thus there are people in a northern ile
Who tell each other that the weather changes,
And, when the sun shines, say the day looks
bright,
And, when it shines not, there are clouds above.
Rienzi. Some little fief, some dukedom, we 11
suppose,
Might shelter us against a sudden storm.
Wife. Not so : we should be crusht between
two rocks,
The people and the barons. Both would hate
thee,
Both call thee traitor, and both call thee truly.
Rienzi. When we stand high, the shaft comes
slowly up ;
We see the feather, not the point ; and that
Loses what venom it might have below.
Wife. I thought the queen of Naples occupied
Thy mind entirely.
Rienzi. From the queen of Naples
My hopes originate. The pope is willing
To grant me an investiture when I
Have given up to him, by my decree,
Some of her cities.
Wife. Then it is untrue
Thou hast acquitted her of crime.
Rienzi. I did ;
But may condemn her yet : the king of Hungary
Is yet unheard : there are strong doubts : who
knows
But stronger may arise ! My mind misgives.
Tell me thou thinkest her in fault. One word
Would satisfy me.
Wife. Not in fault, thou meanest.
Rienzi. In fault, in fault, I say.
Wife. No, not in fault,
Much less so foully criminal.
Rienzi. 0 ! could I
Absolve her !
Wife. If her guilt be manifest,
Absolve her not ; deliver her to death.
Rienzi. From what the pope and king of Hun-
gary
Adduce . . at present not quite openly . .
I must condemn her.
Wife. Dost thou deem her guilty I
Rienzi. 0 God ! I wish she were ! I must con-
demn her !
Wife. Husband I art thou gone mad ?
Rienzi. None are much else
Who mount so high, none can stand firm, none
look
Without a fear of falling : and, to fall ! . .
No, no, 'tis not, 'tis not the worst disgrace.
Wife. What hast thou done ? Have thine eyes
seen corruption 1
Rienzi. Thinkest thou gold could move Eienzi?
gold
(Working incessantly demoniac miracles)
Could chain down Justice, or turn blood to water?
Wife. Who scorns the ingot may not scorn the
mine.
Goldmaynot move thee, yet what brings goldmay.
Ambition is but avarice in mail,
Blinder, and often weaker. Is there strength,
Cola ! or speed, in the oblique and wry 1
Of blood turn'd into water talkest thou ]
Take heed {hou turn not water into blood
And show the pure impure. If thou do this,
Eternal is the stain upon thy hand ;
Freedom thro' thee will be the proud man's scoff,
The wise man's problem ; even the slave himself
Will rather bear the scourge than trust the snare.
Thou hast brought large materials, large and solid,
To build thy glory on : if equity
Be not the base, lay not one stone above.
Thou hast won the influence over potent minds,
Eelax it not. Truth is a tower of strength,
No Babel one : it may be rais'd to heaven
And will not anger God.
Rienzi. Who doubts my justice]
Wife. Thyself. Who prosecutes the criminal ]
Thyself. Who racks the criminal ? Thyself.
Unhappy man ! how maim'd art thou ! what limb
Proportionate ! what feature undisfigured !
Go, bathe in porphyry . . thy leprosy
Will never quit thee : thou hast eaten fruit
That brings all sins, and leaves but death behind.
SCENE III.]
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
561
Bienzi. But hear me.
Wife. I have heard thee, and such words
As one who loves thee never should have heard.
Bienzi. I must provide against baronial power
By every aid, external and internal,
For, since my elevation, many friends
Have fallen from me.
Wife. Throw not off the rest.
What ! is it then enough to stand before
The little crags and sweep the lizards down
From their warm basking-place with idle wand,
While under them the drowsy panther lies
Twitching his paw in his dark lair, and waits
Secure of springing when thy back is turned ? .
Popular power can stand but with the people :
Let them trust none a palm above themselves,
For sympathy in high degrees is frozen.
Bienzi. Such are my sentiments.
Wife. Thy sentiments !
They were thy passion. Are they sentiments 1
Go ! there's the distaff in the other room.
Bienzi. Thou blamed'st not what seemed ambi-
tion in me.
Wife. Because it gave thee power to bless thy
country.
Stood tribunitial ever without right ?
Sat ever papal without perfidy ]
O tribune ! tribune ! whom weak woman teaches !
If thou deceivest men, go, next enslave them ;
Else is no safety. Would st thou that ]
Bienzi. To make
Any new road, some plants there must be crusht,
And not the higher only, here and there.
Whoever purposes great good, must do
Some partial evil.
Wife. Thou hast done great good
Without that evil yet. Power in its prime
Is beautiful, but sickened by excess
Collapses into loathsomeness ; and scorn
Shrivels to dust its fierce decrepitude.
Rienzi. Am I deficient then in manly deeds,
Or in persuasion ?
Wife. Of all manly deeds
Oftentimes the most honest are the bravest,
And no persuasion so persuades as truth.
Rienzi. Peace ! peace ! confound me not.
Wife. The brave, the wise,
The just, are never, even by foes, confounded.
Promise me but one thing. If in thy soul
Thou thinkest this young woman free from blame,
Thou wilt absolve her, openly, with honour,
Whatever Hungary, whatever Avignon,
May whisper or may threaten.
Bienzi. If my power
Will bear it ; if the sentence will not shake
This scarlet off my shoulder.
Wife. Cola! Cola!
SCENE III. TRIBUNAL IN THE CAPITOL.
EIENZI, CITIZENS, &o.
Citizen. There is a banner at the gates.
Bienzi. A banner !
Who dares hoist banner at the gates of Rome ?
Citizen. A royal crown surmounts it.
Bienzi. Down with it !
Citizen. A king, 'tis said, bears it himself in
hand.
Bienzi. Trample it in the dust, and drag him
hither.
What are those shouts ] Look forth.
Usher (having looked out). The people cry
Around four knights who bear a sable flag :
One's helm is fashion'd like a kingly crown.
Bienzi. Strike off his head who let the accursed
symbol
Of royalty come within Roman gate :
See this be done : then bind the bold offenders.
[LEWIS of HUNGARY enters.
Who art thou 1
Lewis. King of Hungary.
Bienzi. What brings thee ?
Lewis. Tribune ! thou knowest well what brings
me hither.
Fraternal love, insulted honour, bring me.
Thinkest thou I complain of empty forms
Violated to chafe me ? thinkest thou
Tis that I waited in the port of Trieste
For invitation to my brother's wedding,
Nor invitation came, nor embassy ?
Now creaks the motive. Silly masquerade
Usurpt the place of tilt and tournament ;
No knight attended from without, save one>
Our cousin of Taranto : why he came,
Before all earth the dire event discloses.
Bienzi. Lewis of Hungary ! it suits not us
To regulate the laws of chivalry
Or forms of embassies. We know there may be
Less folly in the lightest festival
Than in the sternest and severest war.
Patiently have we heard ; as patiently
Hear thou, in turn, the accused as the accuser ;
Else neither aid nor counsel hope from me.
Lewis. I ask no aid of thee, I want no counsel,
I claim but justice : justice I will have,
I will have vengeance for my brother's death.
Bienzi. My brother too was murdered. Was
my grief
Less deep than thine 1 If greater my endurance,
See what my patience brought me ! all these
friends
Around, and thee, a prince, a king, before me.
Hear reason, as becomes a Christian knight.
Lewis. Ye always say to those who suffer
wrong,
Hear reason ! Is not that another wrong]
He who throws fuel on a fiery furnace
Cries, Wait my signal for it ! blaze not yet .'
Issue one edict more ; proclame, 0 tribune,
Heat never shall be fire, nor fire be flame.
Bienzi. King Lewis ! I do issue such an edict
(Absurd as thou mayest deem it) in this place.
Hell hath its thunders, loud and fierce as Heaven's,
Heaven is more great and glorious in its calm :
In this clear region is the abode of Justice.
Lewis. Was it well, tribune, to have heard the
cause,
Nay and to have decided it, before
562
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
[ACT v.
Both sides were here? The murderess hath
departed,
And may have won her city from the grasp
Of my brave people, who avenge their prince,
The mild Andrea. Justice I will have,
I will have vengeance.
Rienzi. Every man may ask
If what I do is well : and angry tones,
Tho' unbecoming, are not unforgiven
Where virtuous grief bursts forth. But, king of
Hungary,
We now will change awhile interrogations.
I ask thee was it well to bring with thee
Into our states a banner that blows up
The people into fury 1 and a people
Not subject to thy sceptre or thy will ?
We knew not of thy coming. When thy friends
In Naples urged us to decide the cause,
'Twas in thy name, as guardian to thy brother,
Bringing against the queen such accusations,
And so supported, that we ordered her
To come before us and defend herself.
She did it, nor delayed. The cardinal
Bishop of Orvieto and the Cardinal
Del Sangro on their part, on hers Del Balzo
And Acciajoli, have examined all
The papers, heard the witnesses, and signed
Their sentence under each. These we suggest
To the approval of thy chancery.
Lewis. Chanceries were not made for murder-
esses.
Rienzi. I am not learned like the race of kings,
Yet doth my memory hold the scanty lore
It caught betimes, and there I find it written,
Not in Hungarian nor in Roman speech,
Vengeance is mine. We execute the laws
Against the disobedient, not against
Those who submit to our award. The queen
Of Naples hath submitted. She is free,
Unless new proof and stronger be adduced
To warrant her recall into my presence.
Lewis. Eecall'd she shall be then, and proof
adduced.
Rienzi. We have detected falsehood in its stead.
Lewis. I will have justice, come it whence it
may.
Rienzi. Cecco Mancino ! read the law against
Those who accuse maliciously or lightly.
Mancino (reads), "Who shall accuse another,
nor make good
His accusation, shall incur such fine,
Or such infliction of the scourge, as that
False accusation righteously deserves."
Rienzi. Fine cannot satisfy the wrongs that
royalty
Receives from royalty.
Lewis. Wouldst thou inflict
The scourge on kings?
Rienzi. The lictor would, not I.
Lewis. What insult may we not expect ere
long !
And yet we fare not worst from demagogues.
Those who have risen from the people 's fist
Perch first upon their shoulders, then upon
Their heads, and then devour their addled
brain.
Rienzi. We have seen such of old.
Lewis. Hast thou seen one
True to his feeder where power whistled shriller,
Shaking the tassels and the fur before him ?
Rienzi. History now grows rather dim with me,
And memory less vivacious than it was :
No time for hawks, no tendency to hounds !
Lewis. Cold sneers are your calm judgments !
Here at Rome
To raise false hopes under false promises
Is wisdom ! and on such do we rely !
Rienzi. Wisdom with us is not hereditary,
Nor brought us from the woods in ermine-skins,
Nor pinned upon our tuckers ere we chew,
Nor offered with the whistle on bent knee,
But, King of Hungary ! we can and do
In some reward it and in all revere;
We have no right to scoff at it, thou hast.
Cecco Mancino !
Mancino. Tribune most august !
Rienzi (Burning his back, and pointing to the
eagles over his tribunal). Furl me that flag.
Now place it underneath
The eagles there. When the king goes, restore it.
[ Walks down from the tribunal.
ACT V.
SCENE I. PALACE ON THE SHORE NEAR NAPLES.
GIOVANNA, ACCIAJOLI, DEL BALZO, LTJIGI OP
TAKANTO, KNIGHTS.
Acciajoli. My queen ! behold us in your native
land
And lawful realm again !
Giovanna. But other sounds
Than greeted me in earlier days I hear,
And other sights I see ; no friends among them
Who guided me in childhood, warn'd in youth,
And were scathed off me when that thunderbolt
Fell down between us. Are they lost so soon !
So suddenly ! Why could they not have come ?
[To DEL BALZO.
Where is Filippa ? where Terlizzi? where
Maternal Sancia ]
Del Hal so. Such her piety,
Nor stranger nor insurgent hath presumed
To throw impediment before her steps.
For friends alike and enemies her prayers
Are daily heard among the helpless crowd,
But loudest for Giovanna ; at which name,
Alone she bends upon the marble floor
That saintly brow, and stirs the dust with sighs.
Giovanna (to Acciajoli). Arms only keep her
from me. Whose are yonder ?
Acciajoli. I recognise Calabrian ; Tarantine.
Giovanna. Ah me 1 suspicion then must never
cease !
Never, without Luigi, Tarantine
Arms glitter in the field. Even without him
(Which can not be) his troops in my defence
SCENE III.]
GIOVANNA OF NAPLES.
563
Would move again those odious thoughts, among
My easy people, guileless and misled.
Del Balzo. His duty and his fealty enforce
What loyaltyand honour would persuade.
Taranto is a fief : Taranto's prince
Must lead his army where his suzerein
Commands, or where, without commanding, needs.
Acciajoli. He can not see your city in your
absence
A prey to lawless fury, worse than war.
Del Balzo. Ay, and war too : for those who
came as pilgrims
And penitents, to kiss the holy frock
Of father Eupert, spring up into soldiers ;
And thus are hundreds added to the guards
Which that most powerful friar placed around
Him whom we mourn for. Three strong compa-
nies
(Once only eight score each) are form'd within
The conquered city. Canopies of state
Covered with sable cloth parade the streets,
And crucifixes shed abundant blood
Daily from freshened wounds ; and virgins' eyes
Pour torrents over faces drawn with grief.
What saint stands unforgotten ? what uncall'd 1
Unincenst ] Many have come forth and walkt
Among the friars, many shouted loud
For vengeance. Even Luigi's camp stood wavering.
Only when first appeared your ship afar,
And over the white sail the sable flag,
Flapping the arms of Anjou, Naples, Hungary,
'Twas only then the rising mutiny
Paus'd, and subsided ; only then Luigi,
Pointing at that trine pennant, turn'd their rage
Into its course.
Acciajoli. Perhaps the boat I see
Crossing the harbour, may bring some intelli-
gence ;
Perhaps he may, himself . .
Giovanna. No ! not before . .
No ! not at present . . . Must I be ungrateful 1
Never ! . . ah, must I seem so1?
SCENE II.
An Old Knight. From the prince
Commanding us, 0 lady ! I am here
To lay his homage at his liege's feet.
He bids me say, how, at the first approach
Of that auspicious vessel, which brought hither
Before her city's port its lawful queen,
His troops demanded battle. In one hour
He places in your royal hands the keys
Of your own capital, or falls before it.
Giovanna. God grant he fall not ! 0 return !
return !
Tell him there are enow . . without, within . .
And were there not enow . . persuade, implore . .
Show how Taranto wants him ; his own country,
His happy people . . they must pine without him !
0 miserable me ! 0 most ungrateful !
Tell him I can not see him . . I am ill . .
The sea disturbs me . . my head turns, aches, splits . .
1 can not see him . . say it, sir ! repeat it.
Knight. May-be, to-morrow . . .
Giovanna. Worse, to-morrow ! worse !
Sail back again . . say everything . . thanks,
blessings.
Knight. Too late ! Those thundering shouts
are our assault . .
It was unfair without me ; it was hard . .
Those are less loud.
Giovanna. Luigi is repulst !
Perhaps is slain ! slain if repulst . . he said it.
Yes ; those faint shouts . . .
Knight. Lady, they are less loud
Because the walls are between him and us.
Giovanna (falls on her knees). 0 ! every saint in
heaven be glorified !
Which, which hath saved him 1 [Rises.] Yet, 0
sir! if walls
Are between him and us, then he is where
His foes are ! That is not what you intend ?
What is it ] Cries again !
Knight. Not one were heard
Had our prince dropt. The fiercest enemy
Had shrunk appall'd from such majestic beauty
Falling from heaven upon the earth beneath ;
And his own people with closed teeth had fought.
Not for their lives, but for his death : no such
Loud acclamation, lady ! had been heard,
But louder woe and wailing from the vanquisht.
Giovanna (aside). Praises to thee, 0 Virgin !
who concealedst
So kindly all my fondness, half my fears !
Acciajoli. The dust is rising nearer. WHo rides
hither
In that black scarf? with something in his hand
Where the sword should be. 'Tis a sword, I see,
In form at least. The dust hangs dense thereon,
Adhesive, dark.
Del Balzo. Seneschal ! it was brighter
This morning, 1 would swear for it.
Acciajoli. He throws
The bridle on the mane. He comes.
Del Balzo. He enters . .
We shall hear all.
SCENE HI.
Luigi of Taranto (throwing up his vizor). Pardon
this last disguise !
There was no time to take my vizor off,
Scarcely to throw my sword down in the hall.
My royal cousin ! let a worthier hand
Conduct you to the city you have won,
The city of your fathers.
Giovanna. 0 Luigi !
None worthier, none more loyal, none more
brave.
Cousin ! by that dear name I do adjure you !
Let others . . these my friends and ministers . .
Conduct me to the city you have won,
The city of your fathers, as of mine.
Let none who carried arms against the worst
Of my own people (for the very worst
Have only been misguided) come into it
With me, or after. Well thou governcst
o o 2
564
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT i.
Thy vassals, 0 Luigi ! Be thy dukedom
Increast in all the wealth my gratitude
Can add thereto, in chases, castles, towns ;
But hasten, hasten thither ! There are duties
(Alas ! thou knowest like ourselves what duties)
I must perform. Should ever happier days
Shine on this land, my people will remember,
With me, they shine upon it from Taranto.
FRA RUPERT.
MALE CHARACTERS.
URBAN, Pope. BUTKLLO, hit nephete. CHARLES II., OF
DURAZZO. OTHO, huiband of Giovanna. FRA RUPERT.
MAXIMIN. STEPHEN, a sliejitie.nl. HERALD. PAGE.
MONK. CHANCELLOR. HIGH STEWARD. LORD CHAM-
BERLAIN. COUNSELLORS, SECRETARIES, OFFICERS,
SOLDIERS.
FEMALE CHARACTERS.
GIOVANNA, Queen. MARGARITA, her niece, wife ofCharlet.
AGNES OF DURAZZO. AGATHA, titter of Maximin.
ACT I.
SCENE I. VATICAN.
URBAN. DURAZZO.
Urban. Charles of Durazzo ! I have found
thee worthy
To wear not only ducal coronet,
But in that potent, in that faithful hand,
To wield the royal sceptre.
Durazzo. Holy father !
I am fyalf-ready to accept the charge,
When it befalls me, studying your content.
Urban. So be it. The crown of Naples is now
vacant.
Durazzo. Good heavens ! is then my mother
(let me call her
Even my mother, by whose bounteousness
My fortunes grew, my youth was educated)
Giovanna ! is she dead 1
Urban. To virtuous deeds,
Like those, she long hath been so.
Durazzo. His Beatitude,
The predecessor of your Holiness,
Who through her hands received his resting-place
At Avignon, when Italy rebell'd,
Absolved her from that heavy accusation
Her enemy the Hungarian brought against her.
Urban. I would not make Infallibility
Fallible, nor cross-question the absolved,
I merely would remove that stumbling-block
The kingdom from her.
Durazzo. Let another then
Aid such attempt.
Urban. Another shall.
Durazzo. Another
Nearer in blood is none.
Urban. Ere long, Durazzo,
I may look round and find one, if not nearer
In blood, yet fitter to perform the duties
Imposed on him by me.
Durazzo. None, holy father !
Is fitter.
Urban. Easy then are the conditions.
I would not place Butello, my own nephew,
Altho' deserving, and altho' besought
By many of the Neapolitans,
By many of the noble and the powerful
In every city of that realm, not him,
Durazzo ! would I place, against thy interests,
So high. But haply from thy gratitude
Accept I might in his behalf a dukedom
Or petty principality, dependent
Upon our See, or (may-be) independent ;
For there are some who fain would have things so.
We must content the nations of the earth,
Whom we watch over, and who look to us
For peace and quiet in the world we rule.
Why art thou beating time so with thy foot
At every word I speak ? why look so stern
And jerk thy head and rest thy hand on hip ]
Thou art determin'd on it, art not thou 1
Durazzo. I can not, will not, move her from
her seat,
So help me, God !
Urban. Impious young man ! reflect !
I give thee time ; I give thee all to-morrow.
SCENE II. A STREET IN NAPLES.
MAXIMIN. AGATHA.
Agatha (to herself.) 'Twas he ! 'twas father
Rupert.
Maximin (overhearing). Well ! what then ?
What wouldst thou with him 1 thou must wait
his leisure :
I have some business first with father Rupert.
Agatha (gazing anxiously). Can it be] can
it be?
Maximin. Have not men sins
As well as women 1 have not we our shrivers,
Our scourers, soderers, calkers, and equippers ?
Agatha (embracing him). Forbear ! 0, for the
love of God, forbear !
Heed him not, Maximin J or he will cast
Thy soul into perdition ; he has mine.
Maximin. And who art thou, good woman ]
Agatha. That fair name
Is mostly given with small courtesy,
As something tost at us indifferently
Or scornfully by higher ones. Thy sister
Was what thou callest her ; and Rupert knows it.
Maximin. My sister ? how ! I had but Agatha.
Agatha !
Agatha. Maximin ! we have not met
Since that foul day whose damps fell not on thee,
But fill'd our father's house while thou wert absent.
Thou, brother J brother ! couldst not save my
peace,
SCENE II.]
FRA RUPERT.
565
Let me save thine. He used to call me daughter,
And he may call thee son.
Maximin. The very word !
He began fathering early : seven ye>rs old
At most was father Rupert. Holy names
Are covered ways . .
Agatha. . . To most unholy deeds.
Maximin. I see it ; say no more : my sword is
reddening
With blood that runs not yet, but soon shall run.
Agatha. Talk not thus loud, nor thus, nor here.
Maximin. Cross then
Over the way to that old sycamore ;
The lads have left off playing at pallone.
I found out long ago his frauds, his treasons,
His murders ; and he meditates a worse.
Agatha ! let me look into thine eyes,
Try to be glad to see me : lift them up,
Nay, do not drop them, they are gems to me,
And make me very rich with only looking.
Thou must have been most fair, my Agatha !
And yet I am thy brother ! Who would think it ?
Agatha. Nor time nor toil deforms man's coun-
tenance,
Crime only does it : 'tis not thus with ours.
Kissing the seven nails burnt in below
Thy little breast, before they well had healed,
I thought thee still more beautiful with them.
Maximin. Those precious signs might have
done better for me.
AgatJia. Only the honest are the prosperous.
Maximin. A little too on that side hath
slipt off.
Agatha. Recover it.
^Maximin. How can 1 ?
Agatha. Save the innocent.
Maximin. But whom?
Agatha. Giovanna.
Maximin. Is the queen in. danger ?
Agatha. Knowest thou not?
Maximin. Hide we away our knowledge ;
It may do harm by daylight. I stand sentry
In many places at one time, and wink,
But am not drowsy. Trust me, she is safe.
And thou art then our Agatha ! 'Twould do
Our mother good, were she alive, to find thee;
For her last words were " Agatha, where art
thou 1 "
Agatha. Oh ! when our parents sorrow for our
crimes,
Then is the sin complete.
Maximin. She sorrows not,
And 'tis high time that thou should'st give it over.
AgatJia. Alas ! our marrow, sinews, veins,
dry up,
But not our tears ; they start with infancy,
Run on through life, and swell against the grave.
Maximin. I must now see Fra Rupert. Come
thou after.
He shall admit thee. Pelt him with reproaches,
Then will I . .
AgatJia. Brother ! not for these came I,
But to avert one crime from his o'erladen
Devoted head. He hath returned . .
Maximin. . . To join
Giovanna with Andrea? On with me :
We may forbid the bans the second time,
Urging perhaps a few impediments.
He hath been in some convent o'er the hill,
Doing sad penance on Calabrian rye,
How then couldst thou have heard about him ?
how
Find he was here in Naples ?
Agatha. There he should
And may have been : of late he was in Buda.
Maximin. You met in Buda then ?
Agatha. Not met.
Maximin. How know
His visit else, if he was there indeed ?
Agatha. While thou and Stephen Stourdza
tended sheep
Together, I was in our mother's sight,
And mostly in her chamber ; for ill-health
Kept her from work. Often did Father Rupert
Pray by her, often hear her long confession,
Long, because little could be thought of for it.
" Now what a comfort would it be to you,
If this poor child read better," said the friar,
" To listen while she read how blessed saints
Have suffered, and how glorious their reward."
My mother claspt her hands, and " What a comfort !"
Echoed from her sick bosom.
" Hath she been
Confirm'd?" he askt. "Yea, God be prais'd,"
sigh'd she.
" We may begin then to infuse some salt
Into this leaven," said the friar, well-pleas'd.
" The work is righteous : we will find spare hours."
She wept for joy.
Maximin. Weep then (if weep at all)
Like her.
Agatha. Religious tracts soon tost aside,
Florentine stories and Sicilian song
Were buzz'd into my ears. The songs much
pleas'd me,
The stories (these he cull'd out from the book,
He told me, as the whole was not for maids)
Pleas'd me much less ; for woman's faults were
there.
Maximin. He might have left out half the
pages, still
The book had been a bible in its bulk
If all were there.
Agatha. To me this well applies,
Not to my sex.
Maximin. Thou art the best in it.
Those who think ill of woman, hold the tongue
Thro' shame, or ignorance of what to say,
Or rifle the old ragbag for some shard
Spotted and stale. On, prythee, with thy story.
Agatha. He taught me that soft speech, the
only one
For love ; he taught me to repeat the words
Most tender in it ; to observe his lips
Pronouncing them ; and his eyes scorcht my
cheek
Into deep scarlet. With his low rich voice
He sang the sadness of the laurel'd brow,
566
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT i.
The tears that trickle on the rocks around
Valchiusa. " None but holy men can love
As thou, Petrarca !" sighed he at the close.
Graver the work he brought me next. We read
The story of Francesca.
Maximin. What is that 1
Agatlui. Piteous, most piteous, for most guilty,
passion.
Two lovers are condemn'd to one unrest
For ages. I now first knew poetry,
I had known song and sonnet long before :
I sail'd no more amid the barren isles,
Each one small self; the mighty continent
Rose and expanded ; I was on its shores.
Fast fell the drops upon the page : he chided :
" And is it punishment to be whirl'd on
With our beloved thro' eternity ?"
" Oh ! they were too unhappy, too unhappy !"
Sobb'd I aloud : "Who could have written this]"
" Tenderest of tender maids !" cried he, and
claspt me
To his hot breast. Fear seiz'd me, faintness, shame.
Be calm, my brother !
Maximin. Tell then other tale,
And skip far on.
Agatha. The queen Elizabeth
Heard of me at the nunnery where I served ;
And the good abbess, not much loving one
Who spoke two languages and read at night,
Persuaded her that, being quick and needy,
'Twould be by far more charitable in her
To take me rather than some richer girl,
To read by her, and lace her sandals on.
I serv'd her several years, to her content.
One evening after dusk, her closet-door
Being to me at every hour unclosed,
I was just entering, when some voice like his,
Whispering, but deep, struck me : a glance suf-
ficed :
'Twas he. They neither saw me. Now occurr'd
That lately had Elizabeth said more
And worse against Giovanna. " She might be
Guiltless, but should not hold the throne of
Naples
From the sweet child her daughter : there were
some
Who had strong arms, and might again do better
In cowl than fiercer spirits could in casque."
Sleepless was I that night, afraid to meet
The wretched man, afraid to join the queen.
Early she rose, as usual ; earlier I.
My sunken eyes and paleness were remarkt,
And, whence ] was askt me.
" Those who have their brothers
At Naples" I replied " most gracious lady,
May well be sleepless; for rebellion shakes
A throne unsteady ever."
First she paus'd,
Then said, with greater blandness than before,
" Indeed they may. But between two usurpers
What choice? Your brother may improve his for-
tune
By loyalty, and teaching it. You wish
To join him, I see clearly, for his good ;
It may be yours : it may be ours : go then,
Aid him with prudent counsel : the supply
Shall not be wanting, secrecy must not."
She urged my parting : the same hour we parted.
SCENE III. RUPERT'S CELL.
RUPERT. MAXIMIN.
Rupert. Thou hast delaid some little, Maximin.
Maximin. Frate ! I met a woman in the street,
And she might well delay me : guess now why.
Rupert. Who in the world can guess the why of
women ]
Maximin. She said she knew us both in
Hungary.
Rupert. I nowsuspect the person : she is crazed.
Maximin. Well may she be, deprived of such a
friend.
Rupert. No friend was ever mine in that false
sex.
I am impatient, Maximin.
Maximin. Impatient !
And so am I.
(Maximin throws open the door, and Agatha enters.)
Knowest thou this woman, Frate 1
Rupert. Art thou crazed too] I know her?
Not at all.
Maximin. And hast thou never known her ]
never toucht her ]
I only mean in giving her thy blessing.
Rupert. A drunken sailor in a desert isle
Would not approach her.
Maximin (indignant). Not my sister ]
Agatha. Scorner !
Insulter !
(A side.) He may have forgotten. Can he 1
He did not see me, would not look at me.
Maximin. My sword shall write her name upon
thy midrif.
Prepare !
Agatha. Hold ! hold ! Spare him yet, Maximin !
How could I . . and the man who . .
Maximin. Speak it out,
Worthless one !
Agatha. I am worthless. Let him live !
Oh let him live !
Maximin. Thou lovest thy betrayer.
Agatha. The once beloved are unestranged by
falsehood ;
They can not wholly leave us, tho' they leave us
And never look behind.
Maximin. Wild ! wild as hawk !
Rupert (on his knees). Vision of light, of love,
of puritv !
Dost thou revisit on the verge of earth
A soul so lost, to rescue it ] Enough,
Agatha ! Do not ask him for my life ;
No, bid him slay me ; bid him quench the days
That have in equal darkness set and risen
Since proud superiors banisht faithful love.
I am grown old ; few years are left me, few
And sorrowful : my reason comes and goes :
SCENE IV.]
FRA KUPERT.
567
I am almost as capable of crimes
As virtues.
Maximin. By my troth, a hundred-fold
More capable.
Rupert. Both ('tis Heaven's will)
are over.
Here let me end my hours : they should have all
Been thine ; he knows it ; let him take them for
thee ;
And close thou here mine eyes where none be-
hold,
Forgiving me . . no, not forgiving me,
But praying, thou pure soul ! for Heaven's for-
giveness.
Maximin. I will not strike thee on the ground :
rise up,
Then, when thou risest . .
Agatha. Come away, my brother !
Rupert. Never, so help me saints ! will I rise
up:
I will breathe out my latest breath before her.
Maximin. It sickens a stout man to tread on
toads. [Goes.
RUPERT (rising slowly, and passing a dagger
through his fingers).
And the stout man might slip too, peradventure.
SCENE IV. PALACE NEAK NAPLES.
DURAZZO. MARGARITA.
Durazzo. The Pope is not averse to make me
king.
Margarita. Do we not rule already 1
Durazzo. Rule indeed !
Yes, one small dukedom. Any shepherd-dog
Might make his voice heard farther off than mine.
Margarita. Yet, my sweet Carlo, oftentimes
I Ve heard you,
When people brought before you their complaints,
Swear at them for disturbing your repose,
Keeping you from your hounds, your bird, your
ride
At evening, with my palfrey biting yours
Playfully (like two Christians) at the gate.
Durazzo. I love to see my bird soar in the air,
My hound burst from his puzzlement, and cite
His peers around him to arraign the boar.
Margarita. I think such semblances of high
estate
Are better than the thing itself, more pleasant,
More wholesome.
Durazzo. And thinks too my Margarita
Of the gray palfrey.? like a summer dawn
His dapper sides, his red and open nostrils,
And his fair rider like the sun just rising
Above it, making hill and vale look gay.
Margarita. She would be only what Durazzo
thinks her.
Durazzo. Queenly he thinks her : queen he
swears to make her.
Margarita. I am contented; and should be,
without
Even our rule : it brings us but few cares,
Yet some it brings us : why add more to them ?
Durazzo. I never heard you talk so seriously.
Not long ago I little heeded state,
Authority, low voice, bent knee, kist hand :
The Pope has proved to me that, sure as any
Of the seven sacraments, the only way
To rise above temptation, is to seize
All that can tempt.
Margarita. There must be truth then in it.
But what will some men think when you deprive
Our aunt of her inheritance 1
Durazzo. Men think !
Do not men always think what they should not ?
Margarita. We hear so from the pulpit : it
must be.
But we should never take what is another's.
Durazzo. Then you would never take another's
child
To feed or clothe it.
Margarita. That is not my meaning.
I am quite sure my aunt has loved me dearly
All her life long, and loves me still ; she often
(Kissing me) said, How like thou art Maria !
You know, Durazzo, how she loved my mother.
Durazzo. And she loved me no less : and we
love her
And honour her.
Margarita. May we not then obey her ?
Durazzo. The Pope, who teaches best, says
otherwise.
Rule has been tedious to her all her reign,
And dangerous too.
Margarita. Make it less dangerous, make it
Less tedious.
Durazzo. She has chosen the duke Otho
To sit above thy husband, and all else.
Margarita. I think my husband is as brave
as he.
Durazzo. I think so too : yet people doubt.
Margarita. Indeed !
Durazzo. And doubt they will, unless the truest
knight
Of Margarita takes to horse, and scours
Her grandsire's realm of foreigners like Otho.
Margarita. If you do that, you must displease
our aunt.
Durazzo. Perhaps so : and hast never thou dis-
pleas'd her?
Margarita. Never ; although I sometimes did
what might.
Durazzo. I can not disappoint the Holy Father.
Margarita. Nay, God forbid ! But let me no
more see her,
To hear her tell me all she did for me !
I can bear anything but evil tongues.
Durazzo. Then let us slink away and live ob-
scurely. [Going.
Margarita. Come back again . . Now ! would
you leave me so ?
I have been thinking I must think no more
About the matter . . and am quite resolved.
Durazzo. My sweetest ! you have several female
cousins ;
What are they?
Margarita. Duchesses.
568
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT IT.
Durazzo. But are they queens ?
Margarita. No indeed; and why should they
be ? They queens ?
Durazzo. I know but one well worthy of the title.
Margarita. Now, who can possibly that be, I
wonder !
Durazzo. She on whose brow already Majesty
Hath placed a crown which no artificer
Can render brighter, or fit better, she
Upon whose lip Love pays the first obeisance.
[Saluting her.
Margarita. I know not how it is that you per-
suade
So easily . . not very easily
In this, however : yet, if but to teaze
And plague a little bit my sweet dear cousins,
Writing the kindest letters, telling them
That I am still, and shall be, just the same,
Their loving cousin ; nor in form alone ;
And if I write but seldom for the future,
'Tis only that we queens have many cares
Of which my charming cousins can know nothing.
Durazzo. What foresight, friendliness, and de-
licacy !
Margarita. Nothing on earth but these, in the
idea
Of vexing . . no, not vexing . . only plaguing
(You know, love ! what I mean) my sweet dear
cousins,
Could make me waver . . and then you, sad Carlo!
Durazzo. To please me . .
Margarita. Now, what would you
have me say ?
SCENE V. NAPLES.
PAGE, GIOVANNA, AGNES, MAXIMIN.
Page. Fly, 0 my lady ! Troops are near the
city.
Oiovanna. There always are.
Page. But strangers. People say
Durazzo . .
Giovanna. What of him ?
Agnes. Now then confess
I knew him better. No reports have reacht us
These several days : the roads were intercepted.
Giovanna. I will fear nothing : Otho watches
over us.
Insects, that build their tiny habitations
Against sea-cliffs, become sea-cliffs themselves.
I rest on Otho, and no storm can shake me.
Agnes. How different this Durazzo !
Giovanna. All men are :
But blame not without proof, or sign of proof,
Or accusation; any man so brave.
Page. Lady ! his soldiers on Camaldoli
Wave the green banner and march hitherward.
Giovanna (after a pause). It can not be ! my
Carlo ! my Carlino !
What ! he who said his prayers with hands com-
prest
Between my kneites, and would leap off to say them?
Impossible ! He may have been deterred
From helping me : his people, his advisers,
May have been adverse . . but . . make war upon
me !
0 they have basely slandered thee, my Carlo !
Agnes. He has been with the Holy Father lately.
Giovanna. This would relieve me from all
doubt, alone.
Agnes. So kind as you have been to him! a
mother !
Giovanna. Remind me not of any benefit
1 may have done him : tell me his good deeds,
Speak not (if some there may have been) of mine :
Twould but disturb the image that has never
Yet fallen from my breast, and never shall.
He was my child when my own child indeed,
My only one, was torn away from me.
Agnes. And you have brooded o'er a marble egg,
Poor darkling bird !
Giovanna. 0 Agnes ! Agnes ! spare me.
Let me think on . . how pleasant 'twas to follow
In that Carlino, in that lovely boy,
The hidings of shy love, its shame, its glee,
Demurest looks at matters we deem light,
And, well worth every lesson ever taught,
Laughter that loosens graver, and that shakes
Our solemn gauds into their proper place.
Maximin (out of breath). The castle-gates are
open for one moment . .
Seize them and enter . . Crowds alone impede
Durazzo, and not arms.
Agnes. Do you believe
His treason now ?
Giovanna. Peace, peace ! 'tis hard, 'tis
hard !
ACT II.
SCENE L RUPERT'S CELL.
RUPERT and MAXIMIN.
Rupert (alone). I Ve dogged him to the palace :
there's some treachery.
Giovanna . . and that witch too, Agatha . .
Why not all three together? Sixty miles
From Naples there is Muro. Now, a word
Was dropt upon it. We must be humane.
But, one more trial first to make him serve
In 'stablishing the realm. I fain must laugh
To think what creatures 'stablish realms, and how.
(MAXIMIN enters.)
Well, Maximin ! We live for better days
And happier purports. Couldst thou not devise
Something that might restore the sickened state,
And leave our gracious king the exercise
Of his good will, to give them companies
Who now are ensigns ? Ah brave Maximin !
I do remember when thou wert but private.
Psein, Klapwrath, Zinga, marcht, and made thee
way.
Nothing in this our world would fain stand still.
The earth we tread on labours to set free
Its fires within, and shakes the mountain-heads ;
The animals, the elements, all move,
The sea before us, and the sky above,
SCENE III.]
FRA EUPEET.
569
And angels on their missions between both.
Fortune will on. There are whom happiness
Makes restless with close constancy ; there are
Who tire of the pure air and sunny sky,
And droop for clouds as if each hair were grass
No wonder then should more aspiring souls
Be weary of one posture, one dull gloom
All the day through, all the long day of life.
Maximin (gapes). Weary! ay am I. Can I soon
be captain 1
Rupert. Why not?
Maximin. And then what service ?
Rupert. Queen Giovanna
Is blockt up in the castle, as thou knowest ;
Was not my counsel wise, to keep thee out ?
Famine had else consumed thee ; she spares none.
Charles of Durazzo, our beloved king,
Presses the siege; and, when the queen gives up,
Thou art the man I prophecy to guard her.
There are some jewels : lightly carried in,
A thousand oxen cannot haul them forth ;
But they may drop at Muro, one by one,
And who should husband them save Maximin ]
Maximin (pretending alarm). I will not leave
my sister out of sight :
She ne'er must fall again.
Rupert. Forefend it, heaven !
I might be weak ! She would indeed be safe
Where the queen is ! But who shall have the heart
To shut her up 1 What has she done 1 Her brother
Might be a comfort to her; and the queen
And some few ladies trust her and caress her.
But, though the parks and groves and tofts around,
And meadows, from their first anemones
To their last saffron-crocuses, though all
Open would be, to her, if not to them,
And villagers and dances, and carousals
At vintage-time, and panes that tremble, partly
By moon-ray, partly by guitar beneath,
Yet might the hours, without street-views, be dull.
Maximin. Don't tell her so. Get her once there.
But how ?
Beside, the queen will never trust Hungarians.
There would be mortal hatred. Is there fire
Upon the hearth ?
Rupert. None.
Maximin. Why then rub your hands ?
SCENE II. CASTEL-NUOVO.
GIOVANNA and AGNES.
Giovanna. 'Tis surely wrong that those who
fight for us
So faithfully, so wretchedly should perish •
That thriftless jewels sparkle round your temples
While theirs grow dank with famine.
Agnes. Now I see,
0 my poor queen ! the folly of refusal,
When they had brought us safety.
Giovanna. Not quite that,
To me at least, but sustenance and comfort
To our defenders in the castle here.
Agnes. Will you now take them ]
Giovanna. If some miracle
Might turn a jewel to a grain of corn,
I would : my own were kneaded into bread
In the first days of our captivity.
Agnes. And mine were still witholden ! Pardon
me,
Just Heaven !
Giovanna. In words like those invoke not
Heaven.
If we say just, what can we hope ] but what
May we not hope if we say merciful ?
Agnes. And yet my fault is very pardonable.
We, at our time of life, want these adornments.
Giovanna. We never want them. Youth has
all its own ;
None can shed lustre upon closing days,
Mockers of eyes and lips and whatsoever
Was prized; nor can they turn one grey hair
brown,
But, skilfully transmuted, might prolong
The life and health and happiness of hundreds.
Agnes. Queens may talk so.
Giovanna. Not safely, but to friends.
Agnes. With power and pomp . .
Giovanna. Behold my pomp, my power J
These naked walls, cold pavement, grated windows.
Agnes. Let me share these with you. Take all
my jewels.
Giovanna. Forbear, forbear, dear Agnes !
Agnes. Earth then, take them !
[Throwing tliemfrom her.
SCENE in. CASTEL-NUOVO.
DURAZZO. EUPERT. GIOVANNA. AGNES.
Durazzo. Upon my knees I do intreat of you
To hear me. In sincerity, the crown
(Now mine) was forced upon me.
Giovanna. Carlo ! Carlo !
Know you what crowns are made of?
Durazzo (rising). I must wear one,
However fitly or unfitly made.
Giovanna. The ermine is outside, the metal
burns
Into the brain.
Durazzo. Its duties, its conditions,
Are not unknown to me, nor its sad cares. .
Giovanna. 'Tis well Maria my sweet sister lives
not
To see this day.
Durazza. But Margarita lives,
Her beauteous daughter, my beloved wife.
She thinks you very kind who let her go
And join me, when strange rumours flew abroad
And liars call'd me traitor.
Giovanni. With my blessing
She went, nor heard (I hope) that hateful name.
Durazzo (negligently). My cousin Agnes ! not
one word from you ?
Agnes. Charles of Durazzo ! God abandons thee
To thy own will : can any gulph lie lower !
Durazzo. 'Twas not my will.
Agnes. No !
570
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT ii.
What I did, I di
Durazzo.
To satisfy the people.
Agnes. Satisfy
Ocean and Fire.
Durazzo. The Church too.
Agnes. Fire and Ocean
Shall lie together, and shall both pant gorged,
Before the Church be satisfied, if Church
Be that proud purple shapeless thing we see.
Durazzo (to Rupert). Show the pope's charte
of investiture.
Rupert. 'Tis this. May it please our lady tha
I read it.
Giovanna (to Durazzo). Reasons where there
are wrongs but make them heavier.
Durazzo (to Agnes). When the whole nation
cries in agony
Against the sway of Germans, should I halt ]
Agnes. No German rules this country; one de
fends
And comforts and adorns it : may he long !
The bravest of his race, the most humane.
Durazzo. Quell'd, fugitive, nor Germany nor
France
Afford him aid against us.
Giovanna. Sir ! he hoped
No aid from France.
Agnes. Does any ? What is France '
One flaring lie, reddening the face of Europe.
Durazzo. French is Provenza.
A gnes. There our arts prevail,
Our race : no lair of tigers is Provenza.
I call that France where mind and soul are
French.
Durazzo. Sooner would he have graspt at Ger-
man arms.
Giovanna. God hold them both from Italy for
ever!
Durazzo. She shall want neither. The religious
call
Blessings upon us in long-drawn processions.
Agnes. Who are the men you please to call re-
ligious 1
Sword-cutlers to all Majesties on earth,
Drums at the door of every theatre
Where tragedies are acted : that friar knows it.
Rupert. Such is the fruit of letters sown in
courts!
Peaches with nettle leaves and thistle crowns !
Upon my faith ! kings are unsafe near them.
Durazzo (to Agnes). May-be we scarcely have
your sanction, lady ]
Am I one]
Agnes. No.
Durazza. What am I ?
Agnes. What ! an ingrate.
Durazzo (scojfingly). Is that to be no king 1 You
may rave on,
Fair cousin Agnes : she who might complain
Absolves me :
Agnes. Does the child she fed ? the orphan!
The outcast ? does he, can he, to himself,
And before us ?
Durazzo. I, the king, need it not.
Agnes. All other blind men know that they are
blind,
All other helpless feel their helplessness.
SCENE IV. UNDER CASTEL-NUOVO.
DURAZZO and RUPERT.
Rupert. Remarktyou not how pale she turn'd]
Durazzo. At what ?
Rupert. I said kings were unsafe. She knew
my meaning. .
Durazzo. No man alive believes it : none be-
lieved it,
Beside the vulgar, when Andrea died.
Rupert. Murdered he was.
Durazzo. Mysteriously. Some say . .
Rupert. What do some say 1
Durazzo. I never heeded them.
I know thee faithful : in this whole affair
I've proved it. He who goes on looking back
Is apt to trip and tumble. [Goes.
Rupert (alone). Why this hatred ?
Are there no memories of her far more pleasant ?
I saw her in her childish days : I saw her
When she had cast away her toys, and sate
Sighing in idleness, and wishing more
To fall into her lap ; but what ] and how ?
I saw her in the gardens, still a child,
So young, she mockt the ladies of the court,
And threw the gravel at them from her slipper,
And ran without if they pursued, but stopt
And leapt to kiss the face of an old statue
Because it smiled upon her : then would she
Shudder at two wrens fighting, shout, and part
them.
N^ext came that age (the lovely seldom pass it)
When books lie open, or, in spite of pressing,
Will open of themselves at some one place.
Lastly, I saw her when the bridal crown
Entwined the regal. Oh ! that ne'er these eyes
rlad seen it ! then, Andrea ! thou had'st lived,
Hy comfort, my support. Divided power
'11 could I brook ; how then, how tolerate
'ts rude uprooting from the breast that rear'd it !
And must I now sweep from me the last blossoms
That lie and wither in the walk of life 1
fancies ! . . mere fancies ! . . let me cease to
waver.
Vho would not do as I did 1 I am more
A man than others, therefore I dare more,
And suffer more. Such is humanity :
can not halve it. Superficial men
lave no absorbing passions : shallow seas
Are void of whirlpools. I must on, tho' loath.
SCENE V. PALACE-GARDEN
MAXIMIN and AGATHA.
Maximin. Courage ! or start and J^-ave me. Sobs
indeed !
'ack those up for young girls who want some
comfits,
ay, by my soul, to see grown women sob it,
SCENE VII.]
PEA RUPERT.
571
As thou dost, even wert them not my sister,
Smites on me here and whets my sword at once.
It maddens me with choler . . for what else
Can shake me so 1 I feel my eyes on fire.
He shall pay dear for it, the cursed Frate.
Agatha. Why, Maximin, 0 why didst thou con-
sent
To meet the friar again ?
Maximin. To make him serve thee.
Agatha. Poverty rather ! want . . even infamy.
Maximin. Did'st thou not pity, would'st not
serve, the queen 1
Agatha. Oh might I ! might I ! she alone on
earth
Is wretcheder : my soul shall ever bend
Before that sacredest supremacy.
Maximin. Come with me : we will talk about
the means.
Agatha. But, be thou calm.
Maximin. A lamb.
He little
thinks [Aside.
To see the lamb turn round and bite the butcher.
Agatha ! Agatha ! while I repeat
Thy name again, freshness breathes over me.
What is there like it1? Why, 'tis like sweet hay
To rest upon after a twelve hours' march,
Clover, with all its flowers, an arm's length deep.
SCENE VI. NAPLES. PALACE OF BUTELLO.
BUTELLO and RUPERT.
Butello (reads). " We, Urban, by the grace of
God . ."
Rupert. Well, well ;
That is all phrase and froth ; dip in the spoon
A little deeper ; we shall come at last
To the sweet solids and the racy wine.
Butello. Patience, good Frate, patience !
Rupert. Now, Butello,
If I cried patience, wouldst not thou believe
I meant delay ? So do not cry it then.
Read on . . about the middle. That will do . .
Pass over love, solicitude, grief, foresight,
Paternal or avuncular. Push on . .
There . . thereabout.
Butello. Lift off thy finger, man,
And let me, in God's name, read what wants
reading.
Rupert. Prythee be speedy . . Where thou
seest my name . .
Butello (reads). " If that our well-beloved Frate
Rupert
Shall, by his influence thereunto directed
By the blest saints above, and the good will
Which the said Frate Rupert ever bore us,
Before the expiration of one month,
So move the heart of Carlo of Durazzo
That the said Carlo do invade and seize . .
Rupert. What would his Holiness have next ?
Butello. Wait, wait.
" Naples, a kingdom held by our permission . .
Rupert. Ho ! is that all ? 'Tis done.
Butetto. Hear me read on.
" From those who at this present rule the same . .
Rupert. This present is already past. I 've
won.
Butello. " And shall consign a princely fief
thereof,
Hereditary, to our foresaid nephew
Gieronimo Butello, We, by power
Wherewith we are invested, will exalt
Our trusty well-beloved Frate Rupert
Unto the highest charge our Holy Church
Bestows upon her faithful servitors."
Rupert. Would not one swear those words were
all engrossed,
And each particular letter stood bolt-upright,
Captain'd with taller at the column-head ?
What marshall'd files ! what goodly companies !
And, to crown all, the grand heaven-sent com-
mission
Seal'd half-way over with green wax, and stiff
With triple crown, and crucifix below it.
Give me the paper.
Butello. Why ]
Rupert (impatient). Give me the paper.
Butello. His Holiness hath signed it.
Rupert. Let me see.
Butello. Look.
Rupert. Nay but give it me.
Butello. A piece of paper !
Rupert. . . Can not be worth a principality.
Butello (giving it). There then.
Rupert. What dukedom has the grandest
sound 1
Butello. Dukedom ! the Pope says principality.
Rupert. Thou soon shalt blazon.
Butello. I rely on you :
Adieu, my lord !
Rupert. My prince, adieu !
[Alone]. Who knows
If this will better me ! Away from court 1 •
No ; never. Leave the people ? When he leaves it,
The giant is uplifted off the earth
And loses all his strength. My foot must press it.
Durazzo, in things near, is shrewd and sighted :
I may not lead him. If I rule no more
This kingdom, yet ere long my tread may sound
Loud in the conclave, and my hand at last
Turn in their golden wards the keys of heaven.
SCENE VII. CASTLE OF MURO.
GIOVANNA and AGATHA.
Giovanna. Both mind and body in their soundest
state
Are always on the verge of a disorder,
And fear increases it : take courage then.
Agatha. There is an error in the labyrinth
Of woman's life whence never foot returns.
Giovanna. Hath God said that 1
Agatha. 0 lady ! man hath said it.
Giovanna. He built that labyrinth, he led that
foot
572
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT in.
Into it, and there left it. Shame upon him !
I take thee to my service and my trust.
To love the hateful with prone prudent will
Is worse than with fond unsuspiciousness
To fall upon the bosom of the lovely,
The wise who value us, the good who teach us,
The generous who forgive us when we err.
Agatha. Oh ! I have no excuse.
Giovanna. She stands absolved
Before her God who says it as thou sayst it.
I have few questions for thee : go, be happier.
I owe thy brother more than I can pay,
And would, when thou hast leisure, hear what
chance
Rais'd up a friend where the ground seem'd so
rough.
Agatha. Leave me no leisure, I beseech of you :
I would have cares and sorrows not my own
To cover mine from me : I would be questioned,
So please you, I may else be false in part,
Not being what eyes bedim'd with weeping see me.
Giovanna. You come, 'tis rumour'd here, from
Hungary.
My infant was torn from me by his uncle
And carried into Hungary.
Agatha. I saw it.
Giovanna. Saw it ! my infant ! to have seen my
infant,
How blessed ! Was it beautiful 1 strong 1 smiling ?
Agatha. It had mild features and soft sun-
bright hair,
And seem'd quite happy.
Giovanna. No, poor thing, it was not ;
It often wanted me, I know it did,
And sprang up in the night and cried for me,
As I for it . . at the same hour, no doubt.
It soon soon wasted . . And you saw my child !
I wish you would remember more about him . .
The little he could say you must remember . .
Repeat it me.
Agatha. Ah lady ! he was gone,
And angels were the first that taught him speech.
Giocanna. Happier than angels ever were
before !
Agatha. He happier too !
Giovanna. Ah ! not without his mother !
Go, go, go . . There are graves no time can close.
ACT III.
SCENE I. NAPLES. PALACE.
DURAZZO. RUPERT. HERALD. OFFICERS.
Durazzo. I thought I heard a trumpet. But
we reel
After we step from shipboard, and hear trumpets
After we ride from battle. 'Twas one. Hark !
It sounds again. Who enters?
Officer. Please your Highness !
A herald claims admittance.
Durazzo. Let him in.
Rupert. Now for disguises ; now for masks ;
steel, silk ;
Nothing in these days does but maskery.
Pages talk, sing, ride with you, sleep beside you,
For years : behold-ye ! some fine April-day
They spring forth into girls, with their own faces,
Tricks, tendernesses . . ne'er a mark of saddle !
(HERALD enters).
Bacco ! this is not one of them, however !
Durazzo. Well, sir, your message.
Herald. Herald from duke Otho,
I bring defiance and demand reply.
Dv,razzo. I know duke Otho's courage, and ap-
plaud
His wisdom. Tell duke Otho from king Carlo,
I would in his place do the very same :
But, having all I want, assure your lord
I am contented.
Rupert. Blessed is content.
Durazzo. Now, should duke Otho ever catch
the reins
(For all things upon earth are changeable)
He can not well refuse the turn he tries,
But will permit me to contend with him
For what at present I propose to keep.
Herald. If then your Highness should refuse the
encounter,
Which never knight, and rarely king, refuses . .
Durazzo. Hold, sir ! All kings are knights. The
alternative 1
Herald. None can there be where combat is
declined.
He would not urge in words the queen's release,
But burns to win it from a recreant knight.
Durazzo. Did Otho say it?
Herald. Standing here his herald,
I have no voice but his.
Durazzo. You may have ears :
Hear me then, sir ! You know, all know at
Naples,
The wife and husband are as near at present
As ever, though the knight and lady not.
She, when she married him, declined his love,
And never had he hers : Taranto won it,
And, when he squandered it, 'twas unretrieved.
Herald. Is this, sir, for my ears or for my voice ?
My voice (it is a man's) will not convey it.
Durazzo [to guards]. Escort the herald back
with honors due. . [To Rupert.
What think you, my lord bishop of Nocera ]
Rupert. Troublesome times ! troublesome times
indeed !
My flock, my brethren at Nocera, will,
Must, want me : but how leave my prince, a prey
To tearing factions, godless, kingless men !
Durazzo. Never mind me, good father !
Rupert. Mind not you ?
I can not go ; I would not for the world.
Durazzo. The world is of small worth to holy
men.
Rupert. I will not hence until the storm be
past.
Durazzo. After a storm the roads are heavier.
Courage ! my good lord bishop ! We must speed
And chaunt our Veni Domine at Nocera.
SCENE III.]
FRA RUPERT.
573
Rupert. Then would your Highness . .
Durazzo. Not corporeally,
But, where my bishop is, I am in spirit.
Rupert (alone). So ! this is king . . and wit too !
that 's not kingly.
Can he be ignorant of who I am ?
They will show fragments of this sturdy frock,
Whence every thread starts visible, when all
The softer nappery, in its due descent,
Drops from the women, Carlo, to the moths.
SCENE II. APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE OP
MURO.
MAXIMIN and AGATHA.
Maximin. How fares thy lady ]
Agatha. As one fares who never
Must see the peopled earth, nor hear its voice
Nor know its sympathy ; so fares Giovanna;
But, pure in spirit, rises o'er the racks
Whereof our world is only one vast chamber.
Maximin. Dost thou enjoy the gardens, fields,
and forests ?
Agatha. Perfectly.
Maximin. Hast a palfrey ?
Agatha. Had I ever ?
Reading and needlework employ the day.
Maximin. Ah ! our good mother little knew
what pests
Those needles and those books are, to bright
eyes;
Rivals should recommend them, mothers no.
We will ride out together.
Agatha. On what horses ?
Maximin. One brought me. Are the queen's
at grass ?
Agatha. > We have none.
Maximin. Thou art hale, Agatha, but how enjoy
Perfectly, as thou sayest, these domains *?
Agatha. By looking out at window with the
queen.
Maximin. All the day thro' ?
Agatha. I read to her : and then,
If she suspects it tires me, she takes up
The volume, and pretends great interest
Just there, and reads it out.
Maximin. True history ?
Agatha. History she throws by.
Maximin. Then sweet-heart songs,
Adventures?
Agatha. Some she reads, and over some
Tosses her work, rises, and shuts the cover.
Maximin. I would not shut the song-book.
There are others
That show within them gold-and-purple saints,
Heads under arm, eyes upon platter, laughing
At her who carries them and lately wore them.
Agatha. Such are not wanting.
Maximin. Pleasant sights enough !
I would fain see them.
Agatha. Quite impossible.
Maximin. On feast-days ?
Agatha. All are in her bedroom-closet.
Maximin. So ! the best books then must be out
of sight,
As all the best things are ! What are her pic-
tures 1
Agatha. Chiefly her own lost family, and
those
She loved the most in it.
Maximin. 0 for a glimpse !
Tell me at least who are they.
Agatha. Good king Robert,
Whose face she often kisses.
Maximin. None more worth it ]
Agatha. There are the two Marias : one elate
With merriment, her eyes orbs wing'd with flame ;
Long deep and dark the other's, and within
Whose cooler fountains blissfully might bathe
A silenter and (haply) purer love.
Maximin. I should be glad to look at them, but
rather
At the kind queen herself.
Agatha. That thou mayest do.
Maximin. When]
Agatha. Now; I think ; for having heard who
'twas
That warned her of her danger when the duke
Rode in, she wisht to thank thee. Come with me :
I must first enter and announce your name.
Maximin. I thought you said she knew it.
Take your course.
SCENE III CHAMBER AT MURO.
GIOVANNA. MAXIMIN. AGATHA.
Giovanna. Accept my too few thanks, sir, for
your zeal . .
Maximin. Fine air, my lady queen, in this
high tower ;
Healthy as Hungary ; may you enjoy it
These many days !
Giovanna (bending). I fancied Hungary
Was moister, leveler, than hereabout.
Maximin. We have a plain in Hungary on
which,
Just in the middle, all of Italy's
You shall pin down nor see them from the sides.
And then what cattle ! horse, ox, sheep ! God's
blessing
Upon hard-working men, like furlough soldiers,
And rare sport at the foray, when the Turk
Might seize them if we sent them not to quarters.
Here too seems nothing wanting. [Looking round.
Giovanna. A few friends
Were welcome, could they but return, whose pen
And conversation lighten'd former hours.
Maximin. Learned ones ; ay 1
Giovanna. The learned came around
me.
Maximin. Whistle, and they are at the barley-
corns,
Wing over wing, beak against beak, I warrant.
I knew two holy friars, as holy men
As ever snored in sackcloth after sinning,
574
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT in.
And they were learned. What now was the up-
shot?
I should have said one's crucifix was white,
The other's black. They plied mild arguments
In disputation. Brother, was the term
At first, then rir, then nothing worse than devil.
But those fair words, like all fair things, soon
dropt.
Fists were held up, grins in the face grew rife,
Teeth (tho' in these one had the better of it
By half a score) were closed like money-boxes
Against the sinner damn'd for poverty.
At last the learned and religious men
Fell to it mainly, crucifix in hand,
Until no splinter, ebony or linden,
Was left, of bulk to make a toothpick of.
Agatha. Brother ! such speech is here irreve-
rent.
Giovanna. Let him speak on : we are not queens
all day.
Soldiers are rivals of the hierarchs,
And prone to jealousy, as less at ease,
Less wealthy, and, altho' the props of power,
Less powerful and commanding.
Ufaximln. Never queen
Spoke truer. I bear lusty hate to them.
Agatha. Again ] 0 Maxim in ! before our
princes
We never hate nor love.
Maximin. Then, lady, I
Am your worst vassal.
Giovanna. How ?
Maximin. Being taught to hate you . .
God pardon me ! None but the frockt could
teach
So false a creed. But now the heart let loose
Swings quite the other way. Folks say they love
Their princes : sure they must have wrong'd
them first.
I turned away mine eyes from your young beauty,
And muttered to my beard, and made it quiver
With my hard breathing of hard thoughts : but
now
Conspirators shall come in vain against you :
Here ia the sill they tread upon who enter.
SCENE IV. RUPERT'S CLOISTER.
Rupert (alone). Fealty sworn, should I retract so
soon?
I will live quiet . . no more crimes for me . .
When this is fairly over . . for a crime
It surely is . . albeit much holier men
Have done much worse and died in odour after.
They were spare men, and had poor appetites,
And wanted little sleep. ' Twont do with me.
Beside, I must get over this bad habit
Of talking to myself. One day or other
Some fool may read me, mark me, and do hurt.
And furthermore . . when highest dignities
Invest us, what is there to think about ?
What need for cleverness, wit, circumspection,
Or harm to any . . who keep still, submiss,
And brush not in attempting to pass by.
SCENE V.
STEPHEN enters.
So, Stephen ! we Hungarians are sent off.
Stephen. Your Reverence is made bishop, we
hear say :
As for all us . .
Rupert. Lupins . . when times are good.
Ah ! thou hast bowels ; thou canst pity others.
Stephen. I can myself.
Rupert. I all my countrymen.
I have been lately in that happy realm
Our native land. [Whispers.
Her kings should govern here.
Stephen. And everywhere. What loyal subject
doubts
His prince's right over all other princes 1
Rupert. Here are sad discontents. The prince
Butello,
Nephew of His Beatitude the Pope,
Can not yet touch this principality.
Durazzo, our sharp king, snatches it back,
Altho' the kingdom was bestowed on him
Under this compact.
Stephen. He will bring down bull
And thunder on his crown. The pope's own
nephew !
Rupert. No less a man.
Stephen. If there's pope's blood in him
He wont stand robbery.
Rupert. We owe obedience
To kings . . unless a higher authority
Dissolves it.
Stephen. Doubtless : but what kings ?
our own
Say I.
Rupert. 0 Stephen ! say it, say it softly.
Few ears can open and can close like mine.
Stephen (aside). Ah ! how good men all over
are maligned !
Rupert. I would not trust another soul on
earth . .
But others must be trusted. Lucky they
Who first bring over to right ways the brave,
First climb the pole and strip the garland off
With all its gold about it. Then what shouts !
What hugs i what offers ! dowers, in chests, in
farms. .
Ah ! these are worldly things too fondly prized !
But there are what lie deeper ; the true praise
Of loyalty, of sanctity.
Stephen (pondering). 'Tis pleasant
To look into warm chest with well- wrought hinges
That turn half-yearly. Pleasant too are farms
When harvest-moons hang over them, and wanes
Jolt in the iron-tinged rut, and the white ox
Is call'd by name, and patted ere pull'd on.
Rupert. These are all thine. I have lived many
days
And never known that man unprospcrous
Who served our holy church in high emprize.
SCENE II.]
FR-A RUPERT
575
Stephen. If so, I wish I could.
Rupert. Wish we had kings
Who keep their words like ours of Hungary.
Stephen. Just.
Rupert. I have half a mind to let Elizabeth
Know what a zealous subject, what a brave,
Her daughter has at Naples.
Stephen. Would she give me
(For thanks in these hard times are windy)
money 1
Think you ?
Rupert. Don't squander all away. Few
know
Its power, its privilege. It dubs the noble,
It raises from the dust the man as light,
It turns frowns into smiles, it makes the breath
Of sore decrepitude breathe fresh as morn
Into maternal ear and virgin breast.
Stephen. Is that all it can do ? I see much
farther.
I see full twenty hens upon the perch,
I see fat cheese moist as a charnel-house,
I see hogs' snouts under the door, I see
Flitches of bacon in the rack above.
Rupert. Rational sights ! fair hopes ! unguilty
wishes !
I am resolved : I can refrain no longer :
Thou art the man for prince to rest upon,
The plain, sound, sensible, straitforward man,
No courtier . . or not much of one . . but fit
To show courts what they should be. Hide this
letter.
Mind ! if thou losest it, or let'st an eye
Glance on it, I may want the power again
To serve thee : thou art ruin'd. The new king
Might chide and chafe should Rupert ask another
To forward any suit he would prefer
For friend or kindred. Since thou must return
To Hungary, thou shalt not go ill-fed.
'Tis to the queen's confessor ; look at it ;
Now put it up ; now, godson of our Saint !
Take this poor purse, and, honest soul ! this
blessing.
Guides thou shalt have all the first day, and rules
How to go forward on the road : so speed thee !
ACT IV.
SCENE I. CASTLE OP MURO.
GIOVANNA, AGATHA.
Oiovanna. Long have we lived in one imprison-
ment;
Our tears have darkened many a thread about
Each distaff, at the whitening half-spent fire
On winter-night ; many a one when deep purple
Cloath'd yonder mountain after summer-day,
And one sole bird was singing, sad though free.
Death, like all others, hath forgotten me,
And grief, methinks, now growing old, grows
lighter.
Agatha. To see you smile amid your grief, con-
soles me.
Giovanna. I never wanted confidence in you,
Yet never have I opened my full mind,
Keeping some thoughts secreted, altho' bent
To draw them out before you. They have lain
Like letters which, however long desired,
We cover with the hand upon the table
And dare not open.
Agatha. If relief there be,
Why pause ] if not, why blame your diffidence ?
Giovanna. Fostered too fondly, I shot up too
tall
In happiness : it wasted soon. Taranto
Had my first love ; Andrea my first vow,
And warm affection, which shuts out sometimes
Love, rather than embraces it. To lose him
Pained me, God knows ! and worse (so lost !)
than all
The wild reports Hungarians spread about me.
My first admirer was my first avenger.
He, laying at my feet his conquering sword,
Withdrew. Two years elapst, he urged the dangers
That still encompast me ; recall'd our walks,
Our studies, our reproofs for idling, smiled
By (0 kind man !) the grandfather of both.
I bade him hope. Hope springs up at that word
And disappears ; Love, radiant Love, alights.
Taranto was my joy; my heart was full :
Alas ! how little can the full heart spare ?
I paus'd . . because I ill might utter it . .
In time he turn'd his fancies to another.
Wretchedest of the wretched was I now ;
But gentle tones much comforted my anguish,
Until they ended ; then loud throbs confused
The treasured words; then heavy sleep opprest me.
I was ashamed . .1 am ashamed . . yet (am I
Unwomanly to own it ?) when he loved
One only, I was driven to despair ;
When more . . Adieu Taranto ! cried my heart
And almost sank thro' sorrow into peace.
0 that fresh crimes in him should solace me !
My life of love was over, when his spirit
Flew from my lips, and carried my forgiveness
On high, for Heaven's.
Wars burst forth again ;
He who defended me from their assaults
Saw in me what to love, but whom to love
He found not in me.
" If my confidence,
My gratitude," said I, " suffice thee, Otho,
Here is my hand."
He took it, and he wept.
Brave man ! and let me also weep for thee !
Agatha. Not beauteous youth enrobed in royal
purple
And bright with early hope, have moved you so.
Giovanna. Record not either ; let me dwell on
Otho;
The thoughts of him sink deeper in my pillow ;
His valiant heart and true one bleeds for me.
SCENE IL COURT- YARD OF MURO.
MAXIMIN and STEPHEN.
Stephen. Maximin ! art thou close ?
576
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT iv.
Maximin. Yea, close enough,
Altho I have the whole court-yard to cool in.
Stephen. I meant not that.
Maximin. A baton to a pike
Thou didst not ; else thou hadst not spoken it.
Stephen. Some folks think better of my under-
standing.
Maximin. None of thy heart : give me thy fist
then, Stephen.
Stephen. That sets all right.
Maximin. What brought thee hither 1
Stephen. What1?
Maximin. Hast secrets ?
Stephen. None worth knowing.
Maximin. No man has :
They never did anyone good.
Stephen. They may.
Maximin ! hast commands for Hungary ?
Maximin. For Hungary ?
Stephen. What ! is there no such place ?
Maximin.' No, by my soul ! nor ever will for me.
Were not my sister here about her duty,
I could knock out my brains against the wall
To think of Hungary.
Stephen. Yet thou hast there
No croft, no homestead, pullet, chick.
Maximin. Hast thou ]
Stephen. I am a man at last. Wert thou but one !
Maximin. Stephen, we will not quarrel.
Stephen. I am rich
I meant to say.
Maximin. So far so well : however,
Not some bold thief who stands some ages back
(Tho' better there than nearer) nor some bolder
Who twists God's word and overturns his scales,
Nor steel, nor soil in any quantity,
Nor gold, whose chain encompasses the globe,
Nor even courage, Stephen, is sufficient
To make a man : one breath on Woman's wrongs,
Lifting the heart, does that.
Stephen. And other things.
Maximin. Chick, pullet, homestead, croft ; are
these our makers ?
Stephen. I have them in this lining, one and all.
Maximin (suspecting.) Stephen ! I could show
thee the duplicate
In the same hand. He who fixt me at Muro
Will fix thee too in some such place as firmly.
What ! hast no heart for castles ? art low-minded ]
How! with chick, pullet, homestead, croft? Sit
down :
Thou didst not sweat so after all thy walk
As thou dost now. What ails thee, man ]
Stephen. What ails me !
Nothing.
Maximin. But did Fra Rupert, did he truly
Clap thee up here ? Cleverly done ! Don't blame
him.
n. Blame him ! if friar he were not, and
moreover
The tadpole of a bishop, by the martyr !
I would run back and grapple with his weazon.
Maximin. He is too cunning for us simple
men.
Stephen. For thee, it seems, he has been . .
but for me,
I, man or child, was never yet out-witted.
Maximin. Ah ! we all think so ; yet all are, by
weaker.
And now about the letter.
Stephen. Thee he trusted ;
I know he did ; show me the duplicate.
Maximin. Duplicates are not written first nor
shown first.
How many men art good against ?
Stephen. One only.
Maximin. Then five might overmaster thee
and gag thee,
And five are ready in the Apennines ;
If I knew where exactly, I would tell thee.
. A fiend of hell in frock !
No, not so bad :
He, without blame or danger on thy part,
Shall build thy fortune.
Stephen. He ? I scorn the thief . .
Beside . . he would not.
Maximin. Would or not, he shall.
[STEPHEN hesitates.
Am I an honest man ?
Stephen Why ! as men go.
Maximin. Give me the letter then, and, on my
life,
It shall do more and better for thee much
Than placed in any other hands but mine.
[An Officer passes.
Ho ! Captain ! see an honest man at last,
[Giving him the letter.
And you the very one he came about.
Stephen (threatening MAXIMIN.) Traitor !
Maximin. A traitor, with a vengeance, is he.
Stephen. Hangman !
Maximin. Thou needst not call him; he will
come
Presently. [To the Officer.
This poor hind hath saved the prince
From insurrection, from invasion. Read.
[Officer reads.
The royal favour will shine warm upon
One friend of mine.
Officer. Be sure : he will be made.
'Tis but our service . . We must not complain . .
Tho' there are things, of late, which soldiers' crops
Swell high against. We captains . .
Maximin. Ay, we captains ! . .
Officer. I must be gone to Naples; so must
thou
My gallant grey-coat. [Goes out.
Maximin. Tell me how thou earnest
To Muro, of all places in the world,
It lies so wide of any road to Hungary.
Stephen. Fra Rupert bade me follow at mid-day
A band of holy mendicants, due-south,
To baffle all suspicion : the next morn
To cross the mountains on my left, and turn
Northward, and then take boat by Pesaro.
While they were stretcht along the levelest tiles
In the best chamber . . being mendicants . .
Each on his sheepskin . . for they love soft lying . .
SCENE III.]
FRA RUPERT.
577
Of grand farm-house ; and while nighthawk and
grillo
Fought for it which should sing them first to sleep ;
And while aside them, in brass pot unfathom'd,
The rich goat-whey was ripening for next break-
fast,
I thought of my far sheep and my near friend ;
My near friend first ; and so, by luck, here am I.
Maximin. But how didst dream that thou
shouldst find me here ]
Stephen. Who, in the Virgin's name, should first
step up,
After I bade the mendicants good-bye,
Who but Augustin ! Much about our country,
Mops, wakes, fairs, may-poles, gipsy-girls, and
fortunes,
When suddenly, as one that knew them all,
He whisper'd thou wert at this Muro here,
Some twenty miles, or near upon it, off.
I must fain see thee. After three hours' walk
I ask the distance : twenty-five miles scant.
At night I supt and slept with an old shepherd :
His dog soon crope betwixt us, so genteely,
I should have never known it, but his nose
Was cold against my ear, and, when I turn'd,
A snag or two was at it . . without harm.
Morning blew sharp upon us from the hills.
" How far are we from Muro, my good man 1 "
Said I, and dipt my olive in the salt.
" Scant thirty miles." Let never man believe
In luck ! I overturned the salt, alert
To hurry on ; yet here thou seest me, rich . .
Sleeping six hours in winter, five in summer.
Maximin, (pondering.) Augustin told thee I was
here ! Augustiu !
How should he know 1 One only knew beside
The friar : he never would have told : she told
him. [Walks about impatiently.
Augustin has smooth locks and fresh complexion,
And heels for dance and voice for dulcimer,
Rare articles at finding secrets out :
But, with thy slanting face, and arm curl'd round
The inside canework of a padded chair,
And leg oblique slid negligently under,
If thou wouldst keep them nicely in repair
Ferret no more my secrets out, Augustin !
Officer (returned). Ready] my dapple grey ! ready
for Naples ?
Stephen. Not without Maximin. By his advice
I call'd you in to help us : he shall have
His share.
Maximin. When our blythe king sniffs up the
wind,
And sees the clouds roll mainly from the north,
And finds Giovanna's enemies advance,
He may be kinder to her : so, commander,
If you believe I did my duty now,
Let me confirm the letter you convey.
Officer. Canst thou add aught ?
Maximin. Much, were there much required.
Officer. Come then along : we will drink gold
to-morrow.
SCENE HI. MONASTERY GARDENS.
Rupert (alone). I must have peace : I can not
live without it :
Only few years (who knows) may yet remain.
They shall not hurt the queen : in part the harm
Would be my doing. But then Maximin . .
He too . . yet why not let him die in battle 1
Battles there will be : kings are all tenacious
Of their king-life : Italians are astute,
Hungarians valiant : two stout swords must clash
Before one break.
That Agatha, that Agatha
Troubles me most of all ! Suppose she comes
Into my very palace at Nocera,
And tells the people what the bishop did !
Never was blow cruel like this since Herod.
Giovanna must then live, if for her sake
Alone ; for such her tenderness, her truth,
She '11 not abandon her while life remains.
SCENE IV. PALACE IN NAPLES.
DURAZZO. CHANCELLOR. PRIVY-COUNSELLORS.
Durazzo. Speak, my lord chancellor : you now
have read
The letter through : can doubt remain upon it 1
[CHANCELLOR shakes his head.
Gentleman ! you have heard it : what think you 1
first Counsellor. Traitorous-, if there be treason.
Second Counsellor. Sentence then.
Chancellor. Powerful is Rupert : many think
him saintly,
All know him wise and wary : he has friends
In every house, and most among the women.
Such men are dangerous to impeach : beside,
Being now bishop . .
Durazzo. Not quite yet : appointed,
Not seated.
Chancellor. No ? This changes the whole aspect.
Once bearing that high dignity, once throned . .
Durazzo. I like no thrones that narrow mine
too much, [them.
And wonder wherefore clergymen should mount
Chancellor. However, sir, since such hath been
the custom
From barbarous times . .
Durazzo. Till times herein as barbarous . .
Chancellor. . . We must observe the usage of the
realm,
And keep our hands from touching things held
sacred.
Few .flays ago, for lighter crimes the friar
Might have been punisht with severity.
First Counsellor. Even now, although his legs
begin to sprout
With scarlet plumage, we may crop his crest ;
But better on the beam than in the yard.
Third Counsellor. It would put by much
bickering.
Fourth Counsellor. There are many
Expectants, holy men, who would condemn
In any court ecclesiastical
678
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT v.
Appeal so manifest to foreign force,
And strip him to the skin to wash him clean.
Fifth Counsellor. And there are civil laws which
tread on velvet
And leave no scandal when they pass the door;
Modest and mild and beautifully drest,
And void of all loquacity, all pomp ;
They, should you ask them what they are, reply
" We are not laws ; we are prerogatives."
Carlo. Paoluccio ! wit may give the best advice.
Par be from me all violence. If the criminal
Be strong and boisterous, the ecclesiastical
Craving and crafty, swift or slow at pleasure,
At least our civil laws are excellent,
And what you call prerogatives are civil.
Paoluccio. I class them so.
Many at once. They are the best of all.
Carlo. I will pursue this counsel.
You may rise.
ACT V.
SCENE L CASTLE OP MTJRO.
GIOVANNA. AGATHA. OTHO. Officers.
Giovanna. What shouts are those 1 whose voice,
above them all,
Above the neighing horse and trumpet's clang,
Calls to the rescue ? Can I doubt? . .
MyOtho!
My Otho ! rush not rashly into fight :
Thou canst not free me.
Agatha. He has beat them off . .
He enters.
Officer. Yes, he enters.
Otho (wounded mortally). Take the ransom . .
'Tis small . . 'tis only one worn life . . and loose her.
Giovanna. Not from thy neck, my Otho, while
thou livest,
Or while I live.
Otho. Giovanna hath embraced me . .
I now have lived . . life should be over now.
Officer. His breath is gone : bear him away :
the king [Points to the QUEEN, who swoons.
May have commands for her.
Agatha. My queen ! my queen !
My friend ! my comforter ! Oh ! that no more.
[Falls.
SCENE H. PALACE, NAPLES.
MARGARITA. DURAZZO.
Margarita. I can not see what mighty things
indeed
My aunt Giovanna ever did for me :
Can you ?
Durazzo. They long are over, if she did.
Margarita. Beside . .
Durazzo. Now what beside 1
Margarita. I had almost
Said such a foolish thing !
Durazzo. You ! Margarita !
Margarita. I was about to say she did no more
For me than you. If she loved me, she loved me
Because she loved my mother, her own sister ;
Where is the wonder ? where the merit 1
Durazzo. None.
Margarita. She even loved another sister, her
Whom people call'd Fiammetta ; God knows why ;
No Christian name, nought Christian-like
about it.
She was the one of Sicily, who fancied
(0 shame upon her !) somebody . . a writer.
Durazzo. What writer ?
Margarita. Is not that enough ? a writer !
Durazzo. There is not much to thank her for,
if all
Partake of her affection, even those
Who sink so low.
Margarita. She played with you the most ;
Perhaps because she thought you like her child.
She did show pleasure when she fondled me ;
But 'twas not to make me the happier,
Although it did so, but herself . . herself.
Yet, Carlo, would you think it ! there are times
When I am ready to desire of you
That you would let her out of such a den
At Muro.
Durazzo. Had you mentioned it before,
As wishing it . . why, then indeed . .
Margarita. So, then,
You would have let her out? How very kind !
Durazzo. If we could have persuaded her to go.
Margarita. Persuaded her? what! out of prison?
Durazzo. Do not
Term it so harshly : who can bear to hear
Of prisons ?
Margarita. Is the tower indeed not lockt
Nor bolted?
Durazzo. People would run into it
And trouble her devotions. At this time
She needs them most particularly.
Margarita. Why ?
Durazzo. Her health declines.
Margarita. Is she in danger ?
Durazzo. Some.
Margarita. Imminent?
Durazzo. -There are fears.
Margarita. About her life ?
Durazzo. Men shake their heads.
Margarita. 0 Carlo ! 0 my Carlo !
I have . . (will God forgive me ?) been ungrateful.
And all this time ! . . when, but one moment
of it . .
My hand in hers, or hers upon my head . .
Durazzo. Hush ! Margarita ! thou 'rt a queen :
be calm,
And worthy of the station we enjoy.
[He leads her out.
SCENE ffl. PALACE, NAPLES.
HIGH STEWARD. CHAMBERLAIN. CHANCELLOR.
DURAZZO.
CJiamberlain. Wary and slow is this our chan-
cellor,
Where title-deeds are fluttering in suspense ;
The perill'd life and honour of his queen
He passes as he would a wretch in chains
On the road-side, saying, So ! there thou art !
SCENE V.]
FRA RUPERT.
579
Lord High Steward. We want such men's reli-
gion, their sound sense,
Coolness, deliberation, ponderous front,
Broad and dark eyebrow. Much of dignity
Reverence and awe, build on these crags alone.
Lord Chamberlain. Ye have them all in one. I
hear his foot :
The king steps lighter : both advance.
Lord High Steward. Who come
Behind ? for there are many.
(DURAZZO, CHANCELLOR, COUNSELLORS, enter.)
Durazzo. Take your seats.
Gentlemen ! ye have heard with indignation
The rash attempt against my peace and yours,
Made by the Suabian, husband of Giovanna.
Lord Chamberlain. We hear, by Heaven's pro-
tection of your Highness,
It fail'd.
Lord High Steward. And that he fell in the at-
tempt.
Durazzo. Desperate, he cut his way, tho' wounded,
thro'
My bravest troops, but could not force the gate ;
Horsemen are weak at walls nine fathoms high ;
He had scarce twenty with him.
Chancellor. There he paid
His forfeit life, declared already traitor.
Durazzo. On this we are not met, but to deli-
berate
On the state's safety. My lord-chancellor,
Is the queen guilty ?
Chancellor (starts). We must try her first,
Privately ; then decide.
Durazzo. Yea, privately ;
So pleaseth me. Take then your secretaries
And question her ; decorously, humanely.
SCENE IV. CASTLE OF MUKO.
GIOVANNA. CHANCELLOR. HIGH STEWARD.
CHAMBERLAIN. SECRETARIES.
Chancellor. Lady ! we have heard all, and only
ask
(For the realm's weal) your Highness will vouchsafe
To sign this parchment.
Giotanna (Taking it). What contains it]
Chancellor. Peace.
Giovanna. I then would sign it with my blood ;
but blood
Running from royal veins never sign'd peace.
(Reads.)
It seems I am required to abdicate
In favor of Duke Carlo of Durazzo.
Chancellor. Even so.
Giofanna (To the others). To you I turn me, gen-
tlemen !
If ever you are told that I admitted
His unjust claims, if ever you behold
Sign'd, as you fancy, by my hand the parchment
That waives our kingdom from its rightful heir,
Believe it not : only believe these tears,
Of which no false one ever fell from me
Among the many 'twas my fate to shed.
I want not yours ; they come too late, my friends ;
Farewell, then ! You may live and serve your
country ;
These walls are mine, and nothing now beyond.
SCENE V. NAPLES.
MAXLMIN. STEPHEN.
Maximin. Among the idle and the fortunate
Never drops one but catafalc and canopy
Are ready for him : organ raves above,
And songsters wring their hands and push dull
rhymes
Into dull ears that worse than wax hath stopt,
And cherubs puff their cheeks and cry half-split
With striding so across his monument.
Name me one honest man for whom such plays
Were ever acted.
They will ne'er lay Otho
With kindred clay ! no helm, no boot beside
His hurried bier ! no stamp of stately soldier
Angry with grief and swearing hot revenge,
Until even the paid priest turns round and winks.
I will away : sick, weary . .
(STEPHEN enters.)
Stephen. Hast thou heard
The saddest thing?
Maximin. Heard it 1 . . committed it,
Say rather. But for thee and thy curst gold,
Which, like magician's, turns to dust, I trow,
I had received him in the gate, and brought
The treasure of his soul before his eyes :
He had not closed them so.
Stephen. Worst of it all
Is the queen's death.
Maximin. The queen's?
Stephen. They stifled her
With her own pillow.
Maximin. Who says that ?
Stephen. The man
Runs wild who did it, through the streets, and
howls it,
Then imitates her voice, and softly sobs
" Lay me in Santa Chiara."
SCENE VI. NAPLES. BEFORE THE PALACE.
AMONG GUARDS.
MAXIMIN. DURAZZO.
Maximin. Gallant prince !
Conqueror of more than men, of more than heroes !
What may that soldier merit who deserts
His post, and lets the enemy to the tent ?
Durazzo. Death is the sentence.
Maximin. Sign that sentence then.
I shall be found beside a new-made grave -
In Santa Chiara.
Durazzo. Art thou mad ?
Maximin. I shall be
If you delay.
Durazzo ( To Guards). See this maninto Hungary.
pp2
580
FRA RUPERT.
[ACT v.
SCENE VH. NAPLES. MONASTERY GARDEN.
Rupert (Alone.) There are some pleasures serious
men sigh over,
And there are others maniacs hug in chains :
I wonder what they are : I would exchange
All mine for either, all that e'er were mine.
I have been sadly treated my whole life,
Cruelly slighted, shamefully maligned :
And this too will be laid upon my shoulders.
If men are witty, all the wit of others
Bespangles them ; if criminal, all crimes
Are shoveled to their doors.
God knows how truly
I wisht her life ; not her imprisonment
More truly. Maximin and Agatha
In the queen's life would never have come forth.
Men of late years have handled me so roughly,
I am become less gentle than I was.
Derision, scoffs and scorns, must be rebuft,
Or we can do no good in act or counsel.
Respect is needful, is our air, our day,
'Tis in the sight of men we see ourselves,
Without it we are dark and halt and speechless.
Religion in respect and power hath being,
And perishes without them. Power I hold :
Why shun men's looks ] why my own thoughts ]
. . afraid ]
No, I am not afraid : but phantasies
Long dwelt on let us thro'.
If I do quail,
'Tis not the mind, the spirit ; 'tis the body.
A Monk (Entering). Father I come from Muro,
where a woman
(Sickly before) for days refused all food,
And now is dead.
Rupert. What is her name ]
• Monk. One Agatha.
Rupert. Did she receive the holy Sacrament 1
Monk. You must have known she did, else why
such joy?
She would receive nought else.
Rupert. Then she is safe.
Monk. We trust in God she is : yet she herself
Had pious doubt.
Rupert. Of what was her discourse ]
Monk. Her mind, ere she departed, wandered
from her.
Rupert. What did she talk about] dost hear]
Monk. She said,
" Rupert, if he could see me, might be "...
Rupert. What ]
Monk. Her mind, observe, was wandering.
Rupert. Thine is too.
Tell me the very word she uttered.
Monk. " Saved."
Blessings upon her ! your uplifted hands
And radiant brow announce her present bliss.
Rupert. Said she no more]
Monk. " Since he's not here, take these,
And let the friar and his brotherhood
Say masses for my soul : it may do good
To theirs no less."
I stoopt the holy taper,
And through her fingers and her palm could see
That she held something : she had given it
But it dropt out of them : this crucifix,
From which the square-set jewels were removed,
And this broad golden piece, with its long chain
Of soft dark hair, like our late queen Giovanna's.
Rupert. Her medal . . anno primo . . All
goes right.
Monk. Your blessing !
Rupert. Take it, pr'ythee, and
begone. [Monk goes.
Nothing has hurt me : none have seen me.
None]
Ye saints of heaven ! hath ever prayer been miss'd]
Penance, tho' hard, been ever unperform'd ]
Why do ye then abandon me ] like one
Whom in your wrath ye hurl aside ; like one
Scathed by those lightnings which God's sleepless
eye
Smites earth with, and which devils underneath,
Feeling it in the abysses of the abyss,
Rejoice was not for them.
Repent I did . .
Even of Agatha I did repent.
I did repent the noble friends had fallen.
Could they not have been wiser, and escaped,
By curbing evil passions, pride, distrust,
Defiance ] It was wrong in them : in me
'Twas not quite well : 'twas harsh, 'twas merci-
less :
Andrea had not done it : wrong'd, betray'd,
Andrea had not done it.
Have my words
Sorcery in them ] do they wake the dead ]
Hide thy pale face, dear boy ! hide from my sight
Those two dark drops that stain thy scanty beard,
Hide those two eyes that start so ! Curse me,
kill me ;
'Twere mercy, 'twere compassion, not revenge ;
Justice, the echo of God's voice, cries More !
I can endure all else.
I will arise,
Push off this rack that rends me, rush before him
And ask him why he made me what I am.
(Enter Ofiicers.)
First Officer. Traitor ! the king hath traced all
thy devices.
Rupert. Without them he had ne'er been what
ye style him.
Second Officer. Avowest thou thy perfidy ]
Rupert. And his.
Third Officer. Murderer ! thou shalt confess.
Rupert. 'Twere royal bounty.
Third Officer. And die.
Rupert. 'Twere more than royal.
First Officer. Come thy way.
Rupert. My way] my way ] . . I've trayell'd it
enough,
With or without thee 1 will take another.
Second Officer. Whither !
Rupert (Points to the window.) Look yonder !
There it lies. [Stabs himself .
Andrea !
SCENE VI.]
First Officer (After a pause). Merciful God ! end
thus his many crimes ?
Third Officer (After a pause). What moans and
piteous waitings from the street !
Second Officer. Can they arise for him so
suddenly ?
First Officer. There are too many. None hath
told the deed
Beyond this spot, none seen it.
THE SIEGE OF ANGOLA.
581
Third Officer. Now you hear
Distinctly ; if distinctly may be heard
The wail of thousands.
Their queen's name they
Second Officer.
cry . .
Third Officer. With blessings.
First Officer. Now, at last,
ye know Giovanna ;
And now will Kupert too be known, tho' late.
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
No event in the history of Italy, including the Roman, is at once so tragical and so glorious as the Siege of Ancona ;
nor shall we find at any period of it, two contemporary characters so admirable for disinterested valour and
prompt humanity, as William degli Adelardi of Marchesella, and the Countess of Bertinoro. The names of
those who sustained the siege are, for the most-part, forgotten : but Muratori has inserted in his imperishable
work the narratives of contemporary and nearly contemporary authors ; and Sismondi has rendered many of the
facts more generally known.— Hist, des Repub. Ital., tome xi. ch. i.
MALE CHARACTERS.
THB CONSUL OF ANCONA. THE ARCHBISHOP OF MENTZ.
THE BISHOP OF ANCONA. ANTONIO STAMURA. FATHER
JOHN. MINUZZI. COSTANZIO. COBRADO, brother of
Cottanzio. PAOLUCCI, formerly Consul. MARCHESELLA.
HERALD, SENATORS, OFFICERS, PRIESTS, PEOPLE.
FEMALE CHARACTERS.
ERMINIA, the Consul's daughter. NINA, her companion.
ANGELICA, mother of Antonio Stamura. MALA-
SPINA. COUNTESS OF BERTINORO. MARCA, attendant on
Erminia.
ACT I. SCENE I.
On the steps of the cathedral, commanding a view
of the country. Many of all ages are leaving the
church and looking at the approach of the Arch-
bishop, just beyond the walls, descending the hill.
Erminia. Nina! see what our matin prayers
have brought us.
0 what a sight ! The youth and maidens fly,
Some to the city, others up the hills,
With the fresh tale each for the one loved best.
Nina. They are afraid to meet so many horses;
1 would not scud away so, were I there,
Would you ]
Erminia. My dress would show the dust ; or
else . .
I run to tell my father : go, tell yours.
SCENE II. CONSUL'S HOUSE.'
CONSUL and ERMINIA.
Ermmia. Father ! why are not all the bells
set ringing?
Consul. What should the bella be ringing for
to-day ?
Erminia. Such a procession comes along the
road
As never was : some bishop at the head :
And what a horse is under him ! and what
Beautiful boys . . they really are but boys,
Dear father . . hold the bridle on each side !
Scarlet and gold about their surplices,
And waving hair ; not like church servitors,
But princes' sons. I would give all the world
To see their faces . . not quite all the world . .
For who would care about boys' faces, father?
Beside, they are too distant, very far.
Consul. Art thou gone wild, Erminia ?
Erminia. Come and see.
Consul (Listening, and rising). What means this
tumult ?
Senators enter.
Consul ! we are lost.
Consul. How so ?
First Senator. The archbishop comes, from
Barbarossa,
Against the city.
Consul. What archbishop comes 1
Second Senator. Of Mentz.
Consul. Then close the gates, and man the walls,
And hurl defiance on him. Bring my robe,
Erminia ! I will question this proud prelate.
Gasparo, lift my armour from the wall
In readiness.
Officer. A herald, sir, claims entrance.
Herald enters.
Consul. What would your master with his
perfidy ?
Herald. My master is the emperor and king.
Consul. The more perfidious. Binds him not
his oath
To succour Italy ? Is slavery succour ?
Tell the false priest thou comest from, that priest
Who took the name of Christian at the font,
'Twere well he held not in such mockery
The blessed one he bears it from. But wealth
And power put Wisdom's eyes out, lest she rule.
Herald. Sir Consul ! if the archbishop never
preaches,
Pray why should you ? It ill becomes my office
To bandy words : mine is but to repeat
The words of others : and their words are these :
" The people of Ancona must resign
Their lawless independence, and submit
To Frederic, our emperor and king."
Consul. Brief is the speech ; and brief is the
reply.
The people of Ancona will maintain
582
THE SIEGE OP ANCONA.
[ACT i.
Their lawful independence, and submit
No tittle, sir, to emperor or king.
Herald. Is this the final answer ?
Consul. Lead him forth.
Officer (Enters). Sir ! ere you hasten to the walls,
look once
Toward the harbour.
Consul. Gracious Heaven ! What sails
Are those ? Venetian ?
Officer. Yes ; and they take soundings.
Consul. Venice against us? Freedom's first-
born child,
After the deluge that drown'd Italy.
Alas ! the free are free but for themselves ;
They hate all others for it. The first murderer
(Their patron) slew his brother. Thus would
they. [To the Ofiicer.
Merluccio ! hasten, man ! call back again
Our mariners to leave the battlements
And guard their sisters and their mothers here.
Officer. Mothers and sisters folloVd them, to
bring
Munition up the towers.
Consul. Bid them return :
The beach is open : thither is my road
Until more hands arrive.
Messenger (Enters). Sir ! they weigh down
Machines for storming.
Consul. Go thou, tell Campiglio
To intercept them, if he can, before
They join the Germans on the hills above.
Erminia. 0 father ! here are none beside our-
selves :
And those few people hauling in the boats
Can help us little; they are so afraid.
Consul. Think not they are afraid because they
pull
The oars with desperate strength and dissonance :
Who knows if they have each his loaf at home,
Or smallest fish set by from yesterday 1
The weather has been rough ; there is a swell
From the Adriatic. Leave me now, Erminia !
Erminia. Alone, dear father ?
Consul (Placing his hand on the head of ERMINIA).
He who watches over
The people, never is alone, my child !
Erminia (Running back). Here come the men who
were debarking.
MINUZZI and others.
Minuzzi. Hail,
Sir Consul ! All our fears then were but vain ?
Consul. So ! you did fear?
Minuzzi. Ay did we. The Venetians
Ride in huge galleys ; we ply boats for trade.
But since, Sir Consul, you expected them,
We are all safe. I did not much misgive
When one in gallant trim, a comely youth,
Outside the mole, but ready to slip in,
Beckon'd me from his boat, and gave me, smiling,
This letter, bidding me deliver it
Into no other hand beside the consul's,
And adding, " All will soon be well again."
I hope it may. But there was cause for doubt !
The galleys have cast anchor.
Consul. Sure enough
They join our enemies.
Minuzzi. How ! One free state
Against another ! Slaves fight slaves, and kings
Fight kings : so let them, till the last has bled :
But shall wise men (and wise above the wise,
And free above the free are the Venetians)
Devastate our joint patrimony . . freedom I
I fear not him who falls from such a highth
Before he strikes me. At him ! my brave boys !
At him ! the recreant ! We have borne too much
In seeing his attempt. Could not we cut
The cables'?
Stamura. Rare, rare sport for us !
Consul. Stamura !
If wise Minuzzi deems it feasible,
Ye shall enjoy the pastime, while the wind
Sits in this quarter, blowing from due-east
Hard into port : else must ye to the walls,
To meet full twenty thousand, well approved
In arms the most-part, all athirst for plunder.
Minuzzi. Where are they posted ?
Consul. At the battlements.
Minuzzi. Lads ! we must lose no time.
Sailor. Now let us see
Whether we too may not be mischievous
As they could wish us, this fine April morn.
Minuzzi. Each bring his hatchet. Off! and
quickly back. [They go.
FATHER JOHN (Enters).
One word, sir Consul, ere we part, this one :
My wife sits nigh the old church porch, infirm
With many watchings ; thro' much love for me,
True-hearted ! Should the waters wash me home,
Stiffen'd a little more than is convenient,
Let none displace her from that low stone seat.
Grant me my suit, unless I fail in duty.
Consul (Presses his hand). And these are breasts
despotic power would crush !
[MINUZZI going, meets FATHER JOHN, who
had listened.
Father John. Talk ye of hatchets?
Consul. Father John ! good day !
F. John. Yea, with God's blessing, we will make
it so.
Consul. I want your counsel on a perilous move.
Father ! you were a diver in time past.
F. John. And in time present may be one again.
Minuzzi. Ah ! could you join us in our enter-
prize !
F.John. What is it?
Minuzzi. Why, to drive and cut the cables
Of yon Venetians dancing there so gaily,
And bowing in bright pennons to each other.
F. John. Is this the Doge's wedding-day with
Adria?
No dame in Venice ever played him falser
Than she will do, and haply before night.
Ye spoke of hatchet ! 'Twould but do poor work
Against a cable.
SCENE III.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
583
Stamura. We can hold our breath
A good while on such business.
Consul. Father John,
Could you devise some fitter instrument ]
Minuzzi. Ah ! what inventions have not priests
devised !
We all of us are what we are thro' them.
F. John. I love this reverence, my grey boy !
and aptly
Hast thou believed that Father John could frame
What will perform the work, else difficult.
I thought of Turks and Saracens, and flags
Bearing the crescent, not the winged lion,
When I prepared my double-handed sickle
To reap the hemp-field that lies under water.
I will dive too, and teach you on the way
How ye shall manage it. So fare you well,
Sir Consul !
[To the Man.
We have all the day before us
And not long work (tho' rather hard) to do.
SCENE III.
CONSUL and ERMINIA.
Consul. Erminia ! read this letter. Wait awhile . .
Repress thy curiosity . . First tell me,
Erminia ! would'st thou form some great alliance ?
Erminia. Yes, father ! who would not 1
Consul. I know that none
Hath won that little heart of thine at present.
Erminia. Many, many have won it, my dear
father !
I never see one run across the street
To help a lame man up or guide a blind man
But that one wins it : never hear one speak
As all should speak of you, but up my arms
Fly ready to embrace him !
Consul. And when any
Says thou art beautiful, and says he loves thee,
What are they ready then for?
Erminia. Not to beat him
Certainly : but none ever said such things.
They look at me because I am your daughter,
And I am glad they look at me for that,
And always smile, tho' some look very grave.
Consul. Well now, Erminia, should his Holiness
The Pope have sent his nephew with this letter,
Would you receive him willingly 1
Erminia. Most willingly.
Consul. Nay, that is scarcely maidenly, so soon.
Erminia. I would not if you disapprove of it.
Consul. I do suspect he came aboard the gallies.
Erminia. 0 then, the gallies are not enemies.
Consul. -Not if thou givest him thy hand. What
say'st thou ?
Erminia. I never saw him.
Consul. But suppose him
handsome.
Indeed I hear much of his comeliness.
Erminia. Is that enough 1
Consul. And virtues.
Erminia. That alone
Is not enough, tho' very, very much.
He must be handsome too, he must be brave,
He must have seen me often, and must love me,
Before I love or think of him as lover :
For, father, you are not a king, you know,
Nor I a princess : so that all these qualities
(Unless you will it otherwise) are necessary.
Consul. Thou art grown thoughtful suddenly,
and prudent.
Erminia. Do not such things require both
thought and prudence ?
Consul. In most they come but slowly ; and this
ground
Is that where we most stumble on. The wise
Espouse the foolish ; and the fool bears off
From the top branch the guerdon of the wise :
Ay, the clear-sighted (in all other things)
Cast down their eyes and follow their own will,
Taking the hand of idiots. They well know
They shall repent, but find the road so pleasant
That leads into repentance.
Erminia. Ah, poor souls !
They must have lost their fathers : then what
wonder
That they have lost their way !
Consul. Now, in few words,
Erminia, for time presses, let me tell thee,
The Pope will succour us against our foe
If I accept his nephew for a son.
Erminia. 0 father ! does that make our cause
more righteous 1
Or more unrighteous theirs who persecute us ?
Consul. No, child : but wilt thou hear him ]
Eank and riches
Will then be thine. Altho' not born a princess,
Thou wilt become one.
Erminia. I am more already ;
I am your daughter ; yours, whom not one voice
Raised over all, but thousands.
Consul. I resign
My station in few days.
Erminia. O stay in it
Until the enemy is beaten back,
That I may talk of it when I am old,
And, when I weep to think of you, may dry
My tears, and say, My father then was Consul.
Consul. The power may be prolonged until my
death.
Erminia:. 0 no : the laws forbid it : do they not ?
Consul. He who can make and unmake every
law,
Divine and human, will uphold my state
So long, acknowledging his power supreme ;
And laying the city's keys before his feet.
Erminia. Hath he not Peter's ? What can he
want more 1
0 father ! think again ! I am a child
Almost, and have not yet had time, enough
Quite to unlearn the lessons you enforced
By precept and example. Bear with me !
1 have made you unhappy many times,
You never made me so until this hour :
Bear with me, 0 my father !
584
THE SIEGE OP ANCONA.
[ACT n.
Consul. To my arms,
Erminia ! Thou hast read within my breast
Thy lesson backward, not suspecting guile.
Yes, I was guileful. I would try thy nature :
I find it what is rarely found in woman,
In man as rarely. The Venetian fleet
Would side with us; their towers, their catapults
Would all be ours, and the Pope's nephew thine,
Would but thy father place the power supreme
Within his hands, becoming his vicegerent.
I turn aside from fraud, and see how force
May best be met, in parley with the German.
SCENE IV. THE ENCAMPMENT AND TENT OP
THE ARCHBISHOP UNDER THE WALLS.
CONSUL and AKCHBISHOP.
Archbishop. I do presume from your habiliments
You are the consul of this petty state.
Consul. I am.
ArcJibishop. You may be seated. Once again..
Will you surrender unconditionally 1
Consul. Nor unconditionally nor conditionally.
Archbishop. I sent for you to point where lies
your duty.
Consul. It lies where I have left it, in the town.
Archbishop. You doubt my clemency.
Consul. Say rather ' honour.'
Archbishop. Doubt you a soldier's honour]
Consul. . Not a soldier's
But when the soldier and the priest unite,
Well may I doubt it. Goats are harmless brutes ;
Dragons may be avoided ; but when goat
And dragon form one creature, we abhor
The flames and coilings of the fell chimaera.
ArcJibishop. And therefore you refused a con-
ference
Unless I pitch my tent beneath your walls,
Within an arrow's shot, distributing
Ten archers on each side ; ten mine, ten yours ]
Consul. No doctor of divinity in Paris
In cleverer at divining. Thus it stands.
Archbishop. Ill brook I such affronts.
Consul. Ill brook, perhaps,
Florence and Pisa their ambassadors
Invited to a conference on peace,
And cast in prison.
Archbishop. Thus we teach the proud
Their duty.
Consul. Let the lame man teach the lame
To walk, the blind man teach the blind to see.
Archbishop. Insolent ! Unbecoming of my sta-
tion
Were it to argue with a churl so rude.
Kise : look before you thro' the tent : what see you ?
Consul. I see huge masses of green corn up-
heaved
Within a belt of palisades.
Archbishop. What else ?
Consul. Sheep, oxen, horses, trampling them.
Archbishop. No more ]
Consul. Other huge masses farther off are
smoking,
Because their juices quench the faggot-fire.
Archbishop. And whence come these 1
Consul. From yonder houseless fields,
Of crops, and even of boundaries, bereft.
Archbishop. Whose were they !
Consul. Whose ? The church's,
past a doubt :
It never takes what is not freely given.
Archbishop. Proud rebels ! ye have brought
upon your heads
This signal vengeance from offended Caesar.
Consul. And must ten thousand starve because
one man
Is wounded in that part which better men
Cut from them, as ill-sorted with our nature ?
If Satan could have dropt it, he were saved.
Archbishop. What meanest thou ? What cast
they from them 1
Consul. Pride.
It clings round little breasts and masters them,
It drops from loftier, spurn'd and trodden.
down.
Is this, my lord archbishop, this your Eden ?
Is this the sacrifice of grateful herbs
Ye offer to your Gods 1 And will the next
Be more acceptable 1 Burnt-offerings raised
In your high places, and fossed round with blood !
ArchbisJiop. Blasphemer ! I am here no priest;
I come
Avenger of insulted majesty.
But, if thou mindest Holy Writ, mind this,
The plainest thing, and worthiest of remem-
brance : . .
Render to Caesar what is Caesar's, man !
Consul. God will do that for us. Nought owe
we Caesar
But what he sent us when he sent you hither,
To cut our rising wheat, our bleeding vines,
To burn our olives for your wild carousals . .
Archbishop. The only wood that will burn
green : it blazes
Most beautifully, and no smell from it.
But you Anconites have poor olive grounds,
We shall want more by Sunday.
Consul. May the curse
Of God be on you !
Archbishop. We are not so impious :
It is on you : it were a sin to wish it.
Consul. Prince and archbishop ! there are woes
that fall
Far short of curses, though sore chastisements ;
Prosperities there are that hit the mark,
And the clear-sighted see God's anger there.
Archbishop. Are we constrain'd to drag and
vex the sea
And harrow up the barren rocks below
For noisome weeds 1 Are household animals
Struck off the knee to furnish our repast ?
Consul. Better endure than cause men this
endurance.
ArchbisJiop. Clearly ye think so: we think
otherwise.
'Tis better to chastise than be chastised,
To be the judge than be the criminal.
SCENE II.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
585
Consul. How oft, when crimes are high enough
to strike
The front of Heaven, are those two characters
Blended in one !
Archbishop. I am not to be school'd
By insolence and audacity.
Consul. We are,
It seems : but fortitude and trust in God
Will triumph yet. Our conference is closed.
ACT II.
SCENE I. AT THE BAMPARTS.
ANGELICA, STAMURA, and Soldiers.
Angelica. See ye those towers that stride against
the walls ?
Soldier. See you this arrow? Few were not
more fatal
That flew from them : but this arrests my arm
Perhaps beyond to-morrow.
Angelica (to others). Fight amain.
Soldier. The widow of Stamura is below,
And, slender tho' her figure, fair her face,
Brave as her husband. Few her words : beware
Of falling back, lest they increase and shame us.
Anotlier Soldier. Long live Stamura ! She
hath crost already
The sallyport.
^Another Soldier. What held she in her hand ?
Another Soldier. A distaff.
Soldier. Hush ! what cries are those]
Another Soldier. All German.
Soldier. What dust is over-head1?
Another Soldier. Is not it smoke ?
Hurrah ! flames mount above the battlements.
Soldier. It was her deed.
Another Soldier. But whose those
cries behind us,
Along the harbour ?
Soldier. Those are all Italian.
Another Soldier. Look ! How yon tower curls
outward, red and reeling !
Soldier. Ay; it leans forward as in mortal pain.
Anotlier Soldier. What are those things that
drop?
Soldier. Men, while we speak,
Another moment, nothing.
Another Soldier. Some leap down ;
Others would keep their desperate grasp : the fire
Loosens it ; and they fall like shrivell'd grapes
Which none will gather. See it, while you can ;
It totters, parts, sinks. What a crash! The
sparks
Will blind our archers.
Another Soldier. What a storm of fire !
SCENE II. THE CONSUL'S HOUSE.
CONSUL, ERMINIA.
Erminia. The men you spoke with in the port
have pass'd
The window, and seem entering.
Consul. Friends, come in.
Minuzzi (Entering with STAMURA and others).
Sir Consul ! we are here inopportunely.
Our work is done : God prosper'd it. Young
lady !
We come no feasters at a consul's board.
Consul. Erminia! coverest thou our scanty
fare
Because 'tis scanty, and not over-nice ?
Child! thou hast eaten nothing.
Erminia. Quite enough.
Consul. No wonder thou hast lost thy
appetite,
And sighest.
Erminia. I am sure I did not sigh;
Nor have I lost my appetite.
Consul. Then eat :
Take off the napkin.
Erminia. Father ! you well know
What is beneath it.
Consul. Half a cake.
Erminia. Of beans,
Of rye, of barley, swept from off the manger :
My little horse had eaten them ere now,
But. .
Consul. The child weeps. Even such flesh
must serve.
Heaven grant us even this a few days hence.
Erminia (To STAMURA). Signor Antonio ! do
not look at me,
I pray you, thinking of my greediness ;
Eat, eat ! I kept it . . If the sea's fresh air
Makes hungry those who sail upon it, surely
It must . . after such toil . .
Stamura. Such toil 'twas not.
Erminia. Father! could you persuade him?
Stamura. Pray excuse me !
I want no food.
Consul. Take what there is, and wine.
Wine we have still in plenty, old and strong.
Stamura. Grant me this one half-beaker.
Erminia. Let me run
And rinse it well.
Stamura. Forbear ! forbear !
Consul. We have
No man or maiden in the house ; they all
Fight or assist the fighting.
Erminia. He has taken
And drank it every drop ! Poor, poor Antonio !
0 how he must have thirsted !
[To STAMURA.
'Twas half water.
Stamura. It was not very strong.
Minuzzi. And yet the colour
Mounts to his eyes as 'twere sheer wine of Crete.
Consul. I am impatient (you must pardon me)
To hear what you have done. Pour out the
wine,
Erminia ! that can cause but short delay.
[They drink, all but STAMURA. Cries in
the street, " Long live STAMURA ! "
Stamura. Call they me ? why me ?
[Cries again. " Long live the brave
ANGELICA."
Stamura. My mother !
586
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
[ACT n.
Minuzzl. Now for the wine! The boy will
faint.
Angelica. Help ! father !
Officer. Sir ! saw you not the flames along the
sky?
Has no one told you how that noble lady
Burnt down the tower with all its galleries,
Down to the very wheels ]
Stamura. Who minds the tower ?
Sirs ! is she safe ? unhurt 1
Officer. Sir ! the ram's head,
Blacken'd with smoke, lean'd prone against the
wall,
Then seem'd to shudder as 'twere half-alive.
Then fell the iron mass. It made no sound
Among the ashes. Had it made a loud one
There were much louder from the wretches
crusht
Beneath it and its tower ; some tearing off
Their burning armour agonised with pain,
And others pierced with red-hot nails that held
The rafters ; others holding up their arms
Against the pitch and sulphur that pour'd down.
It was a sight ! Well might it have detain'd,
Those who beheld it, from their duty here.
Up flew, not sparks alone, but splinters huge,
Crackling against the battlements, and drove
More men away than all their arrows could.
Stamura. Sir Consul ! I must warm myself
with fighting
After this dip. [Aside.
Nor see my mother first ?
She would be first to blame me if I did. [Goes.
Consul. God prosper thee, brave youth, God
prosper thee !
Erminia (Aside). Discourteous man ! he said no
word to me 1
He even forgot my father.
FATHER JOHN enters.
Minuzzi. Here comes one
Who can relate to you the whole exploit
Better than we.
Father John. Where is Antonio ?
Minuzzi. Gone
This instant. How was it ye did not meet 1
Father John. Ha ! I am this time caught in
my own net.
I knew the knave would run away at seeing me ;
He told me if I came he would be gone,
Fearing to hear my story. So, sir Consul,
I stole in softly through the stable-door.
I can not keep my breath beneath the surface
So long as boys can. They are slenderer,
Less buoyant too, mayhap. Oft as I rose
My pilot-fish was with me ; that Stamura
Would never leave me.
Erminia. Father John ! your blessing !
You always used to give it me.
Father John. There, take it.
How the girl kisses my rough hand to-day !
[.4 side.
Forgetful, heedless, reckless of himself
He held a shapeless shield of cork before me,
Wherefrom a silent shower of arrows fell
From every galley, amid shouts like hunters'
As they caught sight of us. The bright steel
points
Rebounding (for not one of them bit through)
Glistened a moment as they clove the water,
Then delved into the uneven furroVd sands.
Surely the lustrous and unclosing eyes
Of well-poised fishes have enjoy 'd to-day
A rarity ; they never saw before
So many feathers sticking all upright
Under the brine so many fathoms deep.
Consul. Father ! your gaiety will never fail you.
Father John. Not while it pleases God to use
my arm
Or wits, such as they are, to serve my country.
But this I tell you : had the boy been less
Assiduous, or less brave, the fish had seen
Another sight they ofteuer see, and then
No Father John had blest that maiden more.
Minuzzi. Stamura saved our country, saving you.
Father John. And you too, both of you, did well
your duty.
Minuzzi. Aground are five good galleys, and
their crews
Await your mercy.
Father John. Did Stamura bring
His captive, that spruce Roman-spoken gallant?
Consul. He brought none hither.
Minuzzi. Now our tale is t«ld,
A little fighting will assuage the toil
And cold of diving. Brave Stamura toss'd
The net above his forehead fifty times
And drew it off and shoved it back again,
Impatient for his mother. He will knead
(I trow) a pasty German ere he see her ;
We too may lend a hand. Come, Father John !
Shrive as if we should need it.
Consul. Fare ye well.
Thank God ! I am not rich ; but this one day,
My friends, I would be richer, to reward you.
The ships are yours : let none else claim one
plank.
SCENE m. THE QUAY.
PEOPLE. STAMUKA.
Stamura. Stand off! The stores within the
barks belong
Alike and equally to all. Much grain
Will there be spilt unless a steady hand
Conveys it, and divides it house by house.
Horses no fewer than three-score are dragged
Within the gates, from the last charge against us :
What would ye? Wait another charge, and
take it.
People. Brave, brave Antonio !
SCENE IV. ARCHBISHOP'S TENT.
ARCHBISHOP. The Brothers COSTANZIO and
COBRADO.
Archbishop. Could ye not wait for death within
the walls,
But must rush out to meet it ?
SCENE V.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
587
We could wait
Costanzio.
As others do.
Corrado. And fight we could as others.
Archbishop. Costanzio and Corrado ! I am
grieved
That you should war against your lawful prince,
Your father being most loyal.
Costanzio. So are we.
Archbishop. What ! when he serves the emperor
and king,
And you the rabble 1
Corrado. Who made men the rabble 1
Archbishop. Will not your treason and your
death afflict him ]
Costanzio. Our treason would : God grant our
death may not.
Corrado. We never took the oaths that he has
taken,
And owe no duty but to our own land.
Archbishop. Are ye Anconites ]
Corrado. No, sir, but Italians,
And in Ancona lies the cause of Italy.
Archbishop. Pernicious dreams! These drive
young men astray ;
But when they once take their own cause, instead
Of ours who could direct them, they are lost :
So will ye find it. As ye were not born
In this vile city, what, pray, could have urged you
To throw your fortunes into it when sinking ]
Costanzio. Because we saw it sinking.
Corrado. While it prosper'd
It needed no such feeble aid as ours.
Marquises, princes, kings, popes, emperors,
Courted it then : and you, my lord archbishop,
Would have it even in its last decay.
Archbishop. There is a spirit in the land, a
spirit
So pestilential that the fire of heaven
Alone can purify it.
Costanzio. Things being so,
Let us return and die with those we fought for.
Archbishop. Captious young man ! Ye die the
death of traitors.
Corrado. Alas ! how many better men have
died
That death ! alas, how many must hereafter !
Archbishop. By following your example. Think
of that;
Be that your torture.
Costanzio. As we never grieved
At following our betters, grant, just Heaven !
That neither may our betters ever grieve
At following us, be the time soon or late.
[To the Guards.
Archbishop. Lead off these youths. Separate
them.
Corrado. My lord !
We are too weak (you see it) for resistance ;
Let us then, we beseech you, be together
In what is left of life !
Archbishop. One hour is left :
Hope not beyond.
Corrado. We did hope more ; we hoped
To be together, tho' but half the time.
Archbishop. It shall not be.
Costanzio. It shall be.
A rchbishop. Art thou mad ]
I would not smile, but such pride forces me.
Costanzio. God, in whose holiest cause we took
up arms,
Will reconcile us. Doubt it not, Corrado,
Altho' such men as that man there have said it.
SCENE V. CONSUL'S HOUSE.
STAMURA. ERMINIA.
Stamura. Lady ! you need not turn your face
from me.
I leave the town for aid. But one perhaps
May bring it, if you listen to him.
Erminia. Who ]
Stamura. I made a captive.
Erminia. So I hear.
Stamura. I come
Seeking the consul : he expected me.
Erminia. And him ?
Stamura. Him also.
Erminia. Know you what
he asks 1
Stamura. I know it.
Erminia. And you wish it] you,
Stamura?
Stamura. I have no voice in it.
Erminia. True. Go. I know it.
[STAMURA goes.
Shameless ! to ask him ! Never did we meet
But, if his eye caught mine, he walk'd aside :
Yet, by some strange occurrence, we meet daily.
The CONSUL enters.
Consul. Erminia ! didst thou send away Stamura?
Erminia. He went away : no need for me to
send him.
Consul. Knowest thou whom he made his cap-
tive]
Erminia. Yes :
That insolent young Eoman.
Consul. Speak not thus
Before thou seest him.
Erminia. I will never see him.
Consul. Nay, I have promised scarce five
minutes since
That thou shalt hear him.
Erminia. Has he then found favor
With you so suddenly ]
Consul. Stamura speaks
Much in his favor.
Erminia. Are they friends already ?
Consul. Hardly ; we must suppose. But here
they come.
STAMURA. CLOVIO. CONSUL. EHMINIA.
Clovio. Sir Consul ! I am Clovio Fizzarelli.
Have you received the letter ]
Consul. I received it.
588
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
[ACT in.
Clovio. On bended knee permit me to salute
The lady who shall rule my destiny,
Your fair Erminia.
Erminia. You are the Pope's nephew,
Sir Clovio ! I have heard ; and you come hither
Most strongly recommended.
Clovio. True, sweet lady !
But I do trust, with all humility,
There may be a mere trifle in myself,
Not to engage you in the first half-hour,
But so to plead for me, that in a day
Or two, or three at farthest . .
Erminia. Sir, your pleader
Stands there ; you are his captive, and not mine.
Clovio. He knows me well. He threw my whole
boat's crew
(Four of them) overboard, but found his match
In me.
Erminia. It seems so : does it not, Antonio 1
Stamura. More ; how much more !
Clovio. There ! He
could not deny it.
Erminia. And now he has persuaded my kind
father
To grant you audience.
Clovio (to STAMURA). She is proud : I'll tame her.
Stamura (Angrily). Sir! [Aside.
No : he is my prisoner
and my guest.
Erminia. This gentleman, who is so confidential
With you, and whom you whisper to for counsel,
May give my hand away . . and will most gladly.
I doubt not . . for my father can refuse
Nothing to one who made so great a prize,
Beside the preservation of the city.
Clovio. Speak then, my worthy friend, if thus
the consul
Honours your valour ; speak for me ; and let me
Who owe my life, owe more than life to you.
Stamura. The consul knows what suits his
honour best,
And the young lady seems not ill disposed
To shower his favour on such high desert.
I have my duties ; but this is not one.
Let the young lady give her hand herself.
If I had any wish . . but I have none . .
It should be, Sir, that you had won it first
By a brave action or a well-tried love.
But, what is love 1 My road lies toward the walls.
[To the CONSUL.
With your permission, Sir ! I have yours, lady !
[STAMURA goes.
Erminia. Father ! I am unwell. This gentleman
Comes unexpectedly, demands abruptly . .
Clovio. Impatiently, but not abruptly.
Erminia. Sir !
I will not marry : never, never, never.
[ERMINIA goes.
Clovio. Ha ! ha ! all women are alike, Sir Consul.
Leave her to me.
Consul. Sir Clovio Fizzarelli !
I will do more than what you ask of me.
I grant you freedom. Go aboard the pinnace
Which bore you into port ; and say at Rome
That you have seen men starving in the streets,
Because his Holiness refused us help
Unless a father gave a daughter up ;
And say the daughter would not sell her heart,
Much less her country ; and then add, Sir Clovio,
(0 were it true !) " All women are alike."
ACT III.
SCENE I. EPISCOPAL PALACE.
BISHOP Q/"ANOONA and FATHER JOHN.
Bishop. I have been standing at my terrace-wall
And counting those who pass and cry with hunger.
Brother ! the stoutest men are grown effeminate ;
Nay, worse ; they stamp and swear, even in my
presence,
And looking up at me.
FatJier John. Sad times indeed !
Bishop. I calculate that giving each an ounce
Only one day, scarce would a sack remain
In my whole garner ; I am so reduced.
Father John. I come to beg your lordship for
one ounce
Of your fine flour, to save a child ; to save
A mother, who loathes ordinary food . .
Not ordinary, but most bitter lupin :
She has no other in the house.
Bishop. No other 1
Poor soul ! This famine is a dreadful thing !
Pestilence always follows it ! God help us !
I tremble ; I start up in sleep.
Father John. My lord !
An ounce of meal, a single ounce, might calm
These tremblings, well applied. The nurse that
should be
Can be no nurse : the mother very soon
Will be no mother, and the child no child.
Bishop. You know not how things stand, good
brother John !
This very morning, as I hope for grace,
I paid three golden pieces for the head,
Think you, of what ? an ass !
Father John (Aside). The cannibal !
[To the BISHOP.]
Ah, my good lord ! they bear high prices now.
Bishop. Why, brother ! you yourself are grown
much thinner.
How can you do your duty?
Father John. Were I not
Much thinner, I should think I had not done it.
Bishop. My cook assures me that with wine and
spice
Elicampane, cumin, angelica,
Garlic, and sundry savory herbs, stored by
Most providentially, the Lord be praised !
He can make that strange head quite tolerable . .
The creature was a young one . . what think you ?
Father John. They are more tolerable than the
old.
Bishop. The sellers take advantage of bad times,
Quite without conscience, shame, respect for per-
sons,
SCENE II.]
THE SIEGE OP ANCONA.
589
Or fear of God. What can such men expect 1
You must have seen sad sights about our city :
I wonder you are what you are.
Father John. Sad sights
Indeed !
Bishop. But all will give their confessor
Part of their pittance ; and the nearer death
The readier ; knowing what the church can do.
Tell me now, for my entrails yearn to hear it,
Do they not take due care of you ?
Father John. No meals
Have now their stated hour. Unwillingly
I enter houses where the family
Sits round the table at the spare repast.
Sometimes they run and hide it.
Bishop. Most unmannerly !
Inhuman, I would add unchristianlike.
Father John. Sometimes they push toward me
the untasted
And uninviting food, look wistfully,
Press me ; yet dread acceptance. Yesterday
A little girl, the youngest of the five,
Was raising to her lips a mealy bean
(I saw no other on the unsoil'd plate)
And, looking at my eyes fixt hard on hers,
And thinking they were fixt upon the morsel,
Pusht it between my lips, and ran away.
Bishop. Brother! I should have call'd her a
good child ;
I should myself have given the benediction
With my own hand, and placed it on her head :
I wonder you don't praise her. Brother John !
I have my nones to run thro' ; so, good-by.
Fatlier John. Just God ! does this house stand ?
Dark are thy ways,
Inscrutable ! Be thy right hand our guide!
SCENE II. SENATE-HOUSE.
SENATORS. CONSUL.
Consul. Senators ! ye have call'd me to debate
On our condition.
Senator. Consul ! we are lost.
Consul. All are who think so.
Second Senator. Even the best
want food.
Consul. The bravest do.
Third Senator. How shall men fight
without it ?
Fourth Senator. Concord and peace might have
return'd.
Consul. By yielding,
Think ye ] Not they : contempt and sorrow might.
Can there be ever concord (peace there may be)
Between the German and Italian 1 None.
Kemember how that ancient city fell,
Milano. Seven whole years resisted she
The imperial sword : she listened to conditions
And fell. The soldiers of His Majesty . .
His soldiers, ay, his very court . . shed tears
At such affliction, at such utter ruin,
At such wide wails, such universal woe.
They all were equal then ; for all were slaves,
Scatter'd, the poor, the rich, the brave, the coward,
Thro' Bergamo, Pavia, Lodi, Como,
The cities of the enemy. There stood
No vestige of the walls, no church to pray in . .
And what was left to pray for 1 What but Caesar1?
Throw rather all your wealth into the sea
Than let the robber priest lay hold upon it,
And, if ye die of famine, die at least
In your own houses while they are your own.
But there are many yet whose hearts and arms
Will save you all : to-day you all can fight,
The enemy shall feed you all to-morrow.
Were it no shame a priest should seize the prey
That kings and emperors dropt with broken talon ?
The eagle flew before your shouts ; and now
A vulture must swoop down ! but vultures keep
From living men and from warm blood ; they revel
(And most the Roman vulture) in corruption.
Have ye forgotten how your fathers fought,
When Totila with Goths invincible
Besieged you ; not with priests and choristers ;
When twenty-seven ships assail'd your port
And when eleven only ever left it ?
Rome fell before him twice ; not once Ancona.
Your fathers saved the city . . ye shall save her.
Senator. Weapons are insufficient; courage,
vows,
Avail not. We are unprepared for war :
Scanty was our last harvest : and these winds
Are adverse. They know that who now defy us,
Blockading us alike by sea and land.
Consul. We some are poor, we some are pros-
perous,
We all alike owe all we have : the air
Is life alike to all, the sun is warmth,
The earth, its fruits and flocks, are nutriment,
Children and wives are comforts ; all partake
(Or may partake) in these. Shall hoarded grain
Or gold be less in common, when the arms
That guard it are not those that piled it up,
But those that shrink without it ] Come, ye rich,
Be richer still : strengthen your brave defenders,
And make all yours that was not yours before.
Dares one be affluent where ten thousand starve ?
Open your treasuries, your granaries,
But throw mine open first. Another year
Will roughen this equality again,
The rich be what they were ; the poor . . alas !
What they were too perhaps . . but every man
More happy, each one having done his duty.
Senator (To another). Hark ! the young fools
applaud ! they rise around ;
They hem him in ; they seize and kiss his hand ;
He shakes our best supporters.
Another. Give the sign
To those without.
[PEOPLE enter.]
Consul. Who called you hither 1
[ Various voices.
First. Want.
Second. Famine.
Third. Our families.
Fourth. I had three sons ;
One hath been slain, one wounded.
590
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
[ACT in.
Only one
Fifth.
Had I : my loss is greatest.
Sixth. Grant us peace.
Sir Consul, peace we plead for, only peace.
Consul. Will peace bring back the dead ? will
peace restore
Lost honour 1 will peace heal the wounds your sons
And brothers writhe with 1 They who gave those
wounds
Shall carry home severer, if they live,
And never in my consulate shall laugh
At those brave men whom men less brave desert.
True, some have fallen : but before they fell
They won the field ; nor now can earthly power
Take from their cold clencht hands the spoil they
grasp;
No mortal spoil, but glory. Life, my sons,
Life may lose all : the seal that none can break
Hath stampt their names, all registered above.
Senator (To a Man near). Speak; you poor fool !
speak loudly, or expect
From me no favour . . and tell that man next.
Man. Oh ! we are starving.
Consul. Better starve than
serve.
Another. He has no pity.
Consul. What is that I hear ?
I have no pity. Have I not a daughter 1
Another. 0 what a daughter ! How compas-
sionate !
How charitable ! Had she been born poor
She could not more have pitied poverty.
Consul. Two ounces of coarse bread, wine, which
she loathes,
And nothing more, sustain her.
Another. God sustains her ;
He will not leave his fairest work to perish.
Consul. Fight then, fight bravely, while ye can,
my friends !
In God have confidence, if none in me.
[Shouts of applause. Part of the People leave
the Senators.]
Senator (To another). Seducer of the people !
shall it end
Thus vilely? [To the CONSUL.]
You have stores at home, Sir Consul !
You have wide lands.
Another Senator. You should support your
order.
Consul. My order ! God made one ; of that am I.
Stores, it appears, I have at home ; wide lands ;
Are those at home tool or within my reach ?
Paternal lands I do inherit ; wide
They are enough, but stony, mountainous,
The greater part unprofitable.
Senator. Some
The richest in rich wine.
Consul. Few days ago
Nearly a hundred barrels were unbroached.
Another Senator. A hundred loaves, tho' small
indeed and dry,
Would they be worth in such distress as ours.
We could raise half among us.
Consul. Shame upon you !
Had not your unwise laws and unfair thrift
Prohibited the entrance of supplies
While they could enter, never had this famine
Stalked through the people.
Senator. But the laws are laws.
Consul. Yours; never theirs.
Another Senator. Why thus inflame
the people ?
Consul. Who brought the people hither? for
what end ?
To serve you in your avarice ; to cry peace I
Not knowing peace from servitude.
Senator. For quiet,
Spare them at least a portion of the wine.
Consul. Nor them nor you ; nor price nor force
shall gain it.
People. Are we to perish ? Hunger if we must,
Let us be strengthen'd by a draught of wine
To bear it on.
Senator. Wine is the oil of life,
And the lamp burns with it which else were spent.
People. Sir Consul! we forbear ; we honour you,
But tell us, ere we sink, where one flask lies.
Consul. Go ask the women labouring of child,
Ask those who nurse their infants, ask the old,
Who can not fight, ask those who fought the best,
The wounded, maim'd, disabled, the Anconites.
Sirs ! if ye find one flask within our cellar,
Crack it, and throw the fragments in my face.
People. Let us away. [Shouts of applause.
Consul. Follow me to the walls ;
And you, too, senators, learn there your duty.
People. We swear to do our best.
Consul. Sworn wisely ! Life
Is now more surely to be won by arms
Than death is, and the sword alone can win it.
I lead the way ; let who will lag behind.
SCENE m. THE CITY.
PAOLUCCI, Officers, Citizens.
Office?:. The consul has been wounded. Who
is left
To lead us ] and what leader would suffice ?
The strongest sink with famine, lying down
Along the battlements, and only raised
When sounds the trumpet.
First Citizen. And most fall again.
Second Citizen. Our day is come, the day of
our disgrace.
Paolucci. Ours never was that day, and never
shall be.
Ye may have lost your consul (let us hope
He is not lost to us) but we are sure
His memory and example yet remain
With all their life in them.
[To the People.]
Young men .' perhaps
Ye know me not : your fathers knew me well ;
Their fathers better. Three-score years ago
I was your consul : none then preached surrender ;
And let none now : yet there were those around
Who would have pinfolded the quiet flock
As gladly as yon shepherd at the gate.
SCENE IV.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
591
Who can
People. We can resist no longer.
count
The slain ]
Paolucci. Say, rather, who can praise the slain ?
Glorified souls 1 happy your sleep ! ye hear
No shameful speech from brethren !
People. Arms alone
Should not subdue us : famine has : we starve.
Paolucci. While life remains life's sufferings
will arise,
Whether from famine or from sharper sting
Than famine : upon every hearth almost
There creeps some scorpion never seen till felt.
But until every arm that guards our walls
Drop helpless at the starting ribs, until
That hour, stand all united. Ye despair
Untimely. He who rules us rules us well,
Exciting no false hope, as bad men do
When they have led where none can extricate.
I was your consul while the king Lothaire
Besieged the city, proud as any prelate,
Swearing he would reduce it. Other kings
Have sworn the same . . and kept their word like
kings . .
Cursing and flying. We have met brave foes ;
But they met braver. Fly ; and let the crook
Drag a vile flock back from its flight to slaughter.
Ail. We scorn the thought. But where lies
human help ?
Paolucci. I may be spared to seek it, spared
to try
If one brave man breathes yet among the powerful.
Who knows not Marchesella ?
Officer. Brave he is,
But mindful of the emperor. He saw
Milano, which had stood two thousand years,
Sink ;* every tree, on hill or vale, cut down,
The vine, the olive, ripe and unripe corn
Burnt by this minister of God. Throughout
There was no shade for sick men to die under,
There was no branch to strow upon the bier.
Another Officer. His father was courageous
why not he ?
A third Officer. Above all living men is Mar
chesella
Courageous : but pray what are our deserts
With him, that he should hazard for our sake
His lordly castles and his wide domains 1
Perhaps his fame in arms ! 'Twere mad to hope it
Prudence, we know, for ever guides his courage.
Paolucci. If generous pity dwells not in hi
house,
As once it did, with every other virtue,
Seek it, where brave men never seek in vain,
In woman's breast : away to Bertinoro :
Take heart : the countess is a Frangipani :
There are a thousand trumpets in that name :
Methinks I hear them blowing toward Ancona.
Old men talk long : but be not ye so idle :
Hie to the walls : I will sue her. To arms !
To arms ! the consul of past years commands you
* Ancona was besieged 1162, 1174.
SCENE IV. CONSUL'S HOUSE:
PAOLUCCI. CONSUL. EKMINIA.
Paolucci. Consul ! how fare you ?
Consul. Not amiss.
Paolucci. But wounded ?
Consul. There was more blood than wound, they
say who saw it.
Erminia. My father, sir, slept well all night.
Paolucci. All night
\.n angel watched him ; he must needs sleep well.
Consul. I drove away that little fly in vain,
t flutter'd round the fruit whose skin was
broken.
Erminia. Sweet father ! talk not so ; nor much
at all.
Paolucci. Consul ! I have not many days of life,
As you may see ; and old men are in want
Of many little things which those in power
3an give : and 'twere amiss to hold them back
Jecause unclaim'd before.
Consul. I well remember,
Though then a child, how all this city praised
four wisdom, zeal, and probity, when consul.
Ancona then was flourishing ; but never
Were those compensated who served their country,
ixcept by serving her; 'twas thought enough;
We think so still. Beside, the treasury
Is emptied, that it may procure us food
And troops. Be sure the very first that eats
The strangers' corn (if any reach our port)
Shall be no other than yourself : your age
And virtue merit from us this distinction.
Paolucci. Sir Consul ! I want more than that.
Consul. Keceive it
And welcome from the father and the man,
Not from the consul. Now would you yourself
Act differently (I ask) on this occasion ?
Paolucci. More kindly, no ; but differently, yes.
Consul. What would you from me ?
Paolucci. High distinction, consul !
Consul. I will propose it, as I justly may,
And do regret it has been so deferred.
Paolucci. May I speak plainly what ambition
prompts 1
Consul. I hear all claims.
Paolucci. Those sacks hold heavy sums.
Consul. Avarice was never yet imputed to you.
Paolucci. 'Tis said you can not move them
from the town.
Consul. Difficult, dangerous, doubtful, such
attempt.
The young Stamura loves bold enterprizes,
And may succeed where others would despair :
But, such the lack of all that life requires
Even for a day, I dare not send one loaf
Aboard his bark. Hunger would urge the many
To rush and seize it.
Paolucci. They would not seize me.
One loaf there is at home : that boy shall share it.
Erminia. He would not, though he pined.
Consul. A youth so abstinent
I never knew,
Paolucci. But when we are afloat . .
592
THE SIEGE OP ANCONA.
[ACT in.
We shall not be :
Consul.
We think not of escape.
Paolucci. No : God forbid I
We will meet safety in the path of honor.
Consul. Why say afloat then?
Paolucci. Only he and I.
This is the guerdon I demand, the crown
Of my grey hairs.
Erminia. Alas ! what aid could either
Afford the other ? 0 sir ! do not go !
You are too old ; he much too rash . . Dear
father !
If you have power, if you have love, forbid it !
Paolucci. It was advised that younger ones
should go :
Some were too daring, some were too despondent :
I am between these two extremes.
Consul. But think
Again !
Paolucci. I have no time for many thoughts,
And I have chosen out of them the best.
Erminia. He never will return ! he goes to die !
I knew he would !
Consul. His days have been prolonged
Beyond the days of man : and there goes with him
One who sees every danger but his own.
SCENE V. SEASIDE. NIGHT.
PAOLUCCI, STAMTJKA.
Paolucci. I feel the spray upon my face already.
Is the wind fair ]
Stamura. 'Tis fiercely fair.
Paolucci. The weather
Can not be foul then.
Stamura (Lifting Mm aboard). Sit down here.
Don't tremble.
Paolucci. Then tell the breeze to wax a trifle
warmer,
And lay thy hand upon those hissing waves.
She grates the gravel . . We are off at last.
ACT III.
SCENE I. CASTLE OF BEBTINORO.
COUHTESS OF BERTINORO, MARCHESELLA, PAOLUCCI,
and STAMURA.
Page. My lady ! here are two such men as
never
Enter'd a palace-gate.
Countess. Who are they1?
Page. One
Older than anything I ever saw,
Alive or dead ; the other a stout youth,
Guiding him, and commanding all around
To stand aside, and give that elder way ;
At first with gentle words, and then with stern.
Coarse their habiliments, their beards unshorn,
Yet they insist on entrance to my lady.
Countess. Admit the elder, but exclude the
other.
Wait. [To MAROHESELLA.
If the younger be his son, what little
Of service I may render to the father
Will scarce atone for keeping him apart.
[To the Page.
Go ; bid them enter ; both.
[STAMURA, having led PAOLUCCI in, retires.
Paolucci. I come, 0 countess !
Imploring of your gentleness and pity,
To save from fire and sword, and, worse than
either,
Worse, and more imminent, to save from famine
The few brave left, the many virtuous,
Virgins and mothers (save them !) in Ancona.
Countess. Nay, fall not at my knee. Age must
not that . .
Raise him, good Marchesella !
Paolucci. You too, here,
Illustrious lord ]
Marchesella. What ! and art thou still living,
Paolucci ? faithful, hospitable soul !
We have not met since childhood . . mine, I
mean.
Paolucci. Smile not, my gentle lord ! too gra-
cious then,
Be now more gracious ; not in looks or speech,
But in such deeds as you can best perform.
Friendship another time might plead for us ;
Now bear we what our enemy would else
Seize from us, all the treasures of our city,
To throw them at your feet for instant aid.
Help, or we perish. Famine has begun . .
Begun ? has almost ended . . with Ancona.
Countess. Already] We have been too dila-
tory.
Marchesella. I could not raise the money on
my lands
Earlier ; it now is come. I want not yours :
Place it for safety in this castle-keep,
If such our lady's pleasure.
Countess. Until peace.
Marchesella. My troops are on the march.
Countess. And mine not yet ]
Eepose you, sir ! they shall arrive with you,
Or sooner. Is that modest youth your son ?
Paolucci. Where is he ? gone again ?
Countess. When first you enter'd.
Paolucci. Some angel whisper'd your benign
intent
Into his ear, else had he never left me.
My son 1 Who would not proudly call him so 1
Soon shall ye hear what mother bore the boy,
And where he dash'd the gallies, while that
mother
Fired their pine towers, already wheel'd against
Our walls, and gave us time . . for what] to
perish.
Marchesella. No, by the saints above ! not yet,
not yet. [Trumpet sounds.
Countess. Merenda is announced. Sir, I en-
treat you
To lead me ! Grant one favour more ; and hint
not
SCENE II.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
593
To our young friend that we have learnt his
prowess. [To a Page.
Conduct the noble youth who waits without.
SCENE II.
COUNTESS, MARCHESELLA, PAOLUCCI, STAMURA,
at Table.
Countess (to STAMURA). Sir, there are seasons
when 'tis incivility
To ask a name ; 'twould now be more uncivil
To hesitate.
Stamura. Antonio is my name.
Countess. Baptismal. Pray, the family1?
Stamura. Stamura ;
But that my honour'd father gave in marriage
To her who wears it brighter day by day :
She calls me rather by the name he bore.
Countess. It must be known and cherisht.
Stamura. By the bravest
And most enduring in my native place ;
It goes no farther : we are but just noble.
Countess. He who could head the tempest, and
make serve
Unruly ocean, not for wealth, nor harm
To any but the spoiler, high above
That ocean, high above that tempest's wing,
He needs no turret to abut his name,
He needs no crescent to stream light on it,
Nor castellan, nor seneschal, nor herald.
Paolucci. Ha ! boy, those words make thy
breast rise and fall,
Haply as much as did the waves. The town
Could ill repay thee ; Beauty overpays.
Countess. Talk what the young should hear ;
nor see the meed
Of glorious deeds in transitory tints,
Fainter or brighter.
Paolucci. I was wrong.
Countess. Not quite :
For beauty, in thy native town, young man,
May feel her worth in recompensing thine.
Stamura (aside). Alas! alas! she perishes!
while here
We tarry.
Paolucci (overhearing). She? Who perishes?
Stamura. The town.
Paolucci. How the boy blushes at that noble
praise !
Countess. They blush at glory who deserve it
most.
. . Blushes soon go : the dawn alone is red.
Stamura. We know what duty, not what glory
is.
The very best among us are not rich
Nor powerful.
Countess. Are they anywhere ?
Paolucci. His deeds,
If glorious in themselves, require no glory.
Even this siege, those sufferings, who shall heed 1
Countess. He gives most light by being not too
high.
Remember by what weapon fell the chief
Of Philistines. Did brazen chariots, driven
By giants, roll against him ? From the brook,
Striking another such, another day,
A little pebble stretcht the enormous bulk
That would have fill'd it and have turn'd its
course.
And in the great deliverers of mankind
Whom find ye ? Those whom varlet pipers praise.
The greatest of them all, by all adored,
Did Babylon from brazen-belted gate,
Not humble straw-rooft Bethlehem, send forth 1
We must not be too serious. Let us hear
How were the cables cut.
Paolucci. I saw the shears
That dipt them. Father John, before he went,
Show'd me them, how they workt. He himself
held
The double crescent of sharp steel, in form
Like that swart insect's which you shake from fruit
About the kernel. This enclaspt the cable ;
And two long handles (a stout youth, at each
Extremity, pushing with all his strength
Right forward) sunder'd it. Then swiftly flew
One vessel to the shore ; and then another :
And hardly had the youths or Father John
Time to take breath upon the upper wave,
When down they sank again and there swang
round
Another prow, and dasht upon the mole.
Then many blithe Venetians fell transfixt
With arrows, many sprang into the sea
And cried for mercy. Upon deck appeared
The pope's own nephew, who ('tis said) had come
To arbitrate. He leapt into a boat
Which swam aside, most gorgeously array'd,
And this youngman leapt after him and seized him.
He, when he saw a dagger at his throat,
Bade all his crew, four well-built men, surrender.
Stamura. They could not have feared me :
they saw our archers.
Countess. And where is now your prisoner ?
Stamura. He desired
An audience of the consul.
Countess. To what end ?
Stamura. I know not: I believe to court his
daughter.
Countess. Is the girl handsome ? Is that ques-
tion harder
Than what I askt before ? will he succeed ]
Stamura. Could he but save from famine our
poor city,
And . . could he make her happy . .
Countess. Pray go on.
It would delight you then to see him win her?
Stamura. 0 that I had not saved him ! or my-
self!
Countess. She loves him then ? And you hate
foreigners.
I do believe you like the fair Erminia
Yourself.
Stamura. She hates me. Who likes those that
hate him ?
Countess. I never saw such hatred as you bear
her :
If she bears you the like . .
594
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
[ACT iv.
Stamura. She can do now
No worse than what she has done.
Countess. Who knows that 1
I am resolved to see.
Stamura. 0 lady Countess !
How have I made an enemy of you ]
Place me the lowest of your band, but never
Affront her with the mention of my name.
When the great work which you have undertaken
Is done, admit me in your castle-walls,
And never let me see our own again.
Countess. I think I may accomplish what you
wish;
But, recollect, I make no promises.
ACT IV.
SCENE I. OPEN SPACE NEAR THE BALISTA
GATE IN ANCONA.
TJie LADY MALASPINA, her Infant, and a Soldier.
•
Soldier. I am worn down with famine, and can
live
But few hours more.
L. Malaspina. I have no food.
Soldier. Nor food
Could I now swallow. Bring me water, water !
L. Malaspina. Alas ! I can not. Strive to
gain the fountain.
Soldier. I have been nigh.
L. Malaspina. And could not reach it 1
Soldier. Crowds
I might pierce through, but how thrust back
their cries 1
They madden'd me to flight ere half-way in.
Some upright . . no, none that . . but some un-
fallen,
Yet pressing down with their light weight the
weaker.
The brows of some wefe bent down to their knees,
Others (the hair seized fast by those behind)
Lifted for the last time their eyes to heaven ;
And there were waves of heads one moment's space
Seen, then unseen for ever. Wails rose up
Half stifled underfoot, from children some,
And some from those who bore them.
L. Malaspina. Mercy ! mercy !
0 blessed Virgin ! thou wert mother too I
How didst thou suffer ! how did He ! Save, save
At least the infants, if all else must perish.
Soldier! brave soldier ! dost thou weep? then hope.
Soldier. I suffer'd for myself ; deserve I mercy ?
L. Malaspina. He who speaks thus shall find
it. Try to rise.
Soldier. No : could I reach the fountain in my
thirst,
1 would not.
L. Malaspina. Life is sweet.
Soldier. To brides, to mothers.
L. Malaspina. Alas ! how soon may those
names pass away !
I would support thee partly, wert thou willing.
But my babe sleeps.
Soldier. Sleep, little one, sleep on !
I shall sleep too as soundly, by and by.
L. Malaspina. Courage, one effort more.
Soldier. And tread on children !
On children clinging to my knees for strength
To help them on, and with enough yet left
To pull me down, but others pull down them.
God ! let me bear this thirst, but never more
Bear that sad sight ! Tread on those tiny hands
lasping the dust ! See those dim eyes upturn'd,
Those rigid lips reproachless ! Man may stir,
Woman may shake, my soul; but children,
children !
0 God ! those are thine own ! make haste to
help them !
Happy that babe !
L. Malaspina. Thou art humane.
Soldier. 'Tis said
That hunger is almost as bad as wealth
To make men selfish ; but such feebleness
Comes over me, all things look dim around,
And life most dim, and least worth looking after.
L. Malaspina. I pity thee. Day after day
myself
Have lived on things unmeet for sustenance.
My milk is failing . . Eise . .
(To the Child) My little one !
God will feed thee ! Be sleep thy nourisher
Until his mercies strengthen me afresh !
Sink not : take heart : advance : Here, where
from heaven
The Virgin-mother can alone behold us,
Draw some few drops. [TJie tocsin sounds.
Soldier. Ha ! my ears boom thro' faintness.
What sounds ?
L. Malaspina. The bell.
Soldier. Then they are at the gate . .
1 can but thank you . . Give me force, 0 Heaven !
For this last fight ! . . and keep from harm these
twain !
MALASPINA and Child alone.
L. Malaspina. And still thou sleepest, my
sweet babe ! Is death
Like sleep 1 Ah, who then, who would fear to die 1
How beautiful is all serenity !
Sleep, a child's sleep, 0 how far more serene,
And 0, how far more beautiful than any !
Whether we breathe so gently or breathe not,
Slight is the difference. But the pangs, the rage
Of famine who can bear 1 . . unless to raise
Her child above it !
(Two Priests are passing.)
First Priest. Who sits yonder ? bent
O'er her dead babe ? as many do within
Their houses !
Second Priest. Surely, surely, it must be
She who, not many days ago, was praised
For beauty, purity, humility,
Above the noblest of Anconite dames.
First Priest. The Lady Malaspina ?
Second Priest. But methinks
The babe is not dead yet.
First Priest. Why think you so]
Second Priest. Because she weeps not over it.
SCENE II.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
595
First Priest. For that
I think it dead. It then could pierce no more
Her tender heart with its sad sobs and cries.
But let us hasten from the place to give
The dying their last bread, the only bread
Yet unconsumed, the blessed eucharist.
Even this little, now so many die,
May soon be wanting.
Second Priest. God will never let
That greater woe befall us. [The Priests go.
Malaspina. Who runs hither ?
[The Soldier falls before her.
Art thou come back 1 So ! thou couldstrun, 0 vile !
Soldier. Lady ! your gentleness kept life with-
in me
Until four fell.
L. Malaspina. Thyself unwounded ?
Soldier. No ;
If arms alone can wound the soldier's breast,
They toucht me not this time ; nor needed they ;
Famine had done what your few words achieved.
L.Malaspina. They were too harsh. Forgive me !
Soldier. Not the last.
Those were not harsh ! Enter my bosom, enter,
Kind pitying words ! untie there life's hard knot,
And let it drop off easily ! How blest !
I have not robb'd the child, nor shamed the
mother ! [He dies.
L. Malaspina. Poor soul ! and the last voice he
heard on earth
Was bitter blame, unmerited ! And whose ?
Mine, mine ! Should they who suffer sting the
sufferer ?
0 saints above ! avenge not this misdeed !
What doth his hand hold out ? A little crate,
With German letters round its inner rim . .
And . . full of wine ! Yet did his lips burn white !
He tasted not what might have saved his life,
But brought it hither, to be scorn'd and die.
[Singers are heard in the same open space before
an image.']
Singers ! where are they ? My sight swims ; my
strength
Fails me ; I can not rise, nor turn to look ;
But only I can pray, and never voice
Prays like the sad and silent heart its last.
OLD MEN.
The village of the laurel grove*
Hath seen thee hovering high above,
Whether pure innocence was there,
Or helpless grief, or ardent prayer.
O Virgin ! hither turn thy view,
For these are in Ancona too.
Not for ourselves implore we aid,
But thou art mother, tbou art maid ;
Behold these suppliants, and secure
Their humbled heads from touch impure !
MAIDENS.
Hear, maid and mother ! hear our prayer .'
Be brave and aged men thy care !
And, if they bleed, O may it be
In honour of thy Son and thee !
When innocence is wrong'd, we know
Thy bosom ever felt the blow.
* The House of Loreto was not yet brought thither by
the angels.
Yes, pure One ! there are tears above,
But tears of pity, tears of love,
And only from thine eyes they fall,
Those eyes that watch and weep for all.
[They prostrate tlwmselves.
L. Malaspina. How faintly sound those voices '
altho' many :
At every stave they cease, and rest upon
That slender reed which only one can blow.
But she has heard them ! Me too she has heard.
Heaviness, sleep comes over me, deep sleep :
Can it, so imperturbable, be death?
And do I for the last time place thy lip
Where it may yet draw life from me, my child !
Thou, who alone canst save him, thou wilt save.
[She dies : the child on her bosom still sleeping.
SCENE H. NIGHT : THE MOLE OF ANCONA.
CONSUL. SENATOB.
Senator. Sir consul, you have heard (no doubt)
that fires
Have been seen northward all along the sky,
And angels with their naming swords have sprung
From hill to hill. With your own eyes behold
No mortal power advancing. Host so numerous
No king or emperor or soldan led.
Consul. A host, a mighty host, is there indeed?
Senator. It covers the whole range of Falcog-
nara.
Consul. Methinks some fainter lights flit
scatter'dly
Along the coast, more southward.
Senator. The archbishop
Hath seen the sign, and leads away his troops.
Consul. We are too weak to follow. Can then
aid
Have come so soon? 'Tis but the second night
Since we besought it.
Senator. In one hour, one moment,
Such aid can come, and has come. Think not,
consul,
That force so mighty and so sudden springs
From earth. And what Italian dares confront
The German?
Consul. What Italian ! All, sir ; all.
ACT V.
SCENE I. TENT OF MARCHESELLA, NEAR
ANCONA. EARLY MORNING.
MARCHESELLA. OFFICERS. PAOLUCCI.
Officer. My general ! easily I executed
Your orders.
Marchesella. Have they fled, then ?
Officer. Altogether.
Marchesella. And could you reach the gate ?
Officer. And enter too.
Paolucci's seal unbarr'd it ; not until
I held two loaves above my head, and threw
My sword before me.
Marchesella. And what saw you then ?
Officer. There is a civil war within the city,
QQ 2
59(5
THE SIEGE OP ANCONA.
[ACT v.
And insolence and drunkenness are rife.
Children, and old and middle-aged were reeling,
And some were slipping over, some devouring
Long-podded weeds with jagged edges, cast
Upon the shore.
Paolucci. Famine had gone thus far
(Altho* with fewer) ere we left the mole.
The ancient garden-wall was overthrown
To get the twisted roots of fennel out ;
The fruit-tree that could give no fruit gave buds ;
The almond's bloom was withering, but whoe'er
Possest that treasure pierced the bark for gum ;
The mulberry sent her tardy shoot, the cane
Her tenderer one ; the pouting vine untied
Her trellised gems ; the apple-tree threw down
Her load of viscous mistletoe : they all
(Little it was !) did all they could for us.
Marchesella. The Germans (look !) have left
their tents behind :
We will explore them ; for your wary soldiers
Suspect, and well they may, some stratagem.
SCENE II. ERMINIA-S CHAMBER.
ERMFNIA. MARIA.
[MARIA is going. ERMINIA calls her back.
Erminia. Maria, is the countess very fair ?
Maria. Most beautiful. But you yourself must
judge.
She sent me for you in the gentlest tone,
And far more anxious to see you, than you
(It seems) are to see lier.
Erminia. I am afraid
To see her.
Maria. You afraid ! Whom should you fear ?
Beautiful as she is, are not you more so ?
Erminia. So you may think; others think
otherwise.
Maria. She is so affable ! When many lords
Stood round about her, and the noblest of them
And bravest, Marchesella, who would give
His lands, his castles, even his knighthood for her . .
Whom do you think she call'd to her ? . . the youth
Who cut the cables, and then hid himself
That none might praise him . . him who brought
in safety
Your lover to the shore.
Erminia (angrily). Whom ?
Maria. Whom ] Stamura.
Erminia. What heart could he not win . . not
scorn . . not break ]
Maria. I do not hear those shy ones ever break
A woman's heart, or win one. They may scorn ;
But who minds that 1
Erminia. Leave me.
Maria. And tell the countess
You hasten to her presence 1
Erminia. Is he there ?
Maria. Who?
Erminia. Dull, dull creature !
Maria. The brave Marchesella ?
Erminia. Are there none brave but he1?
Maria. 0 ! then, Stamura.
No : when he led her from the mole again,
And she had enter'd the hall-door, he left her.
Erminia. I fear'd he might be with her. Were
he with her,
What matter ! I could wait until . . Wait ! why ?
He would not look at me, nor I at him.
Maria. No; Icananswcrforhim. Were he born
Under the waves, and never saw the sun,
He could not have been colder. But you might
Have lookt at him, perhaps.
Erminia. Not I indeed.
Maria. Few men are like him. Howyouhugme!
Erminia. Go . .
I will run first . . Go . . I am now quite ready.
SCENE HI. CHAMBER IN THE CONSUL'S HOUSE.
COUNTESS and ERMINIA.
Countess. The depths of love are warmer than
the shallows,
Purer, and much more silent,
Erminia (aside). Ah ! how true !
Countess. He loves you, my sweet girl ; I know
he does.
Erminia. He says not so.
Countess. Child ! all men are dissemblers :
The generous man dissembles his best thoughts,
His worst the ungenerous.
Erminia. If, indeed, he loves me . .
Countess. He told me so.
Erminia. Ah ! then he loves me not.
Who, who that loves, can tell it ?
Countess. Who can hide it ?
His voice betray*d him; half his words were
traitors . .
To him, my sweet Erminia ! not to you.
What ! still unhappy ! [ERMINIA weeps.
Erminia. Let me weep away
A part of too much happiness.
Countess. I wish
One more could see it. From these early showers
What sweets, that never spring but once, arise !
SCENE IV,
CONSUL enters.
Consul. Before you leave us, since you part to-
day,
From our full hearts take what lies deepest there,
And what God wills beyond all sacrifice . . .
Our praises, our thanksgivings. Thee we hail,
Protectress ! But can words, can deeds, requite
The debt of our deliverance 1
Countess. What I ask
Should not infringe your freedom. Power is sweet,
And victory claims something. I am fain
To exercise a brief authority
Within the walls, appointing you my colleague.
Consul. Lady ! this very night my power expires.
Countess. And mine, with your connivance,
shall begin.
Consul. Lady ! all power within the walls is
yours.
SCENE V.]
THE SIEGE OF ANCONA.
597
SCENE V. ARCH OP TRAJAN ON THE MOLE.
CONSUL, MARCHESELLA, COUNTESS, SENATORS, &c.
Consul. We have no flowers to decorate the arch
Whence the most glorious ruler of mankind
Smiles on you, lady ! and on you, who rival
His valour, his humanity, his bounty.
Nor are' there many voices that can sing
Your praises. For, alas ! our poor frail nature
(May it be seldom !) hears one call above
The call of gratitude. The famishing
Devour your bread. But, though we hear no praises,
There are who sing them to their harps on high,
And He who can alone reward you both
Listens in all his brightness to the song.
I do entreat you, blemish not your glory.
No exercise of might or sovranty
Can ever bring you such content again
As this day's victory, these altar-prayers
From rescued men, men perishing; from child
And parent : every parent, every child,
Who hears your name, should bless you evermore.
Countess. I find, sir, I must win you through
your daughter.
Consul. The girl is grateful : urge her not too
far:
I could not, without much compunction, thwart her.
Erminia ! go : we meet again to-morrow.
Countess. Come hither, my sweet girl! Coy
as thou art,
I have seen one, once in my life, as coy.
Stand forth thou skulking youth ! Here is no sea
To cover thee ; no ships to scatter. Take
This maiden's hand . . unless her sire forbid . .
Boldest thou back ? after confession too !
I will reveal it. [To ERMINIA.
And art thou ashamed ?
Erminia. I am ashamed.
Countess. Of what ? thou simpleton !
Erminia. I know not what . . of having been
ashamed.
Consul. Antonio ! if thou truly lovedst her,
What, after deeds so valiant, kept thee silent?
Stamura. Inferior rank, deep reverence, due
fear.
I know who rules our country.
Consul. I, who saved her.
[FATHER JOHN enters.
F. John. What ! and am I to be without
reward ?
Consul. Father ! be sure it will be voted you.
Marchesella. And may not we too make our
pious offerings,
For such they are, when such men will receive them.
F. John. I claim the hand of the affianced.
Girl!
Shrink not from me ! Give it to God !
Erminia. 'Tis given :
I can not, would not, will not, take it back.
F. John. Refractory! hast thou not dedicated
To God thy heart and soul ?
Erminia. I might have done it
Had never this day shone.
F. John. And that youth's deeds
Outshone this day, or any day before.
When thou didst give thy hand to the deliverer
Whom God had chosen for us, then didst thou
Accomplish his great work, else incomplete.
I claim to pour his benediction on you
And yours for ever. Much, much misery,
Have I inflicted on the young and brave,
And can not so repent me as I should ;
But 'twas in one day only my device
Ever wrought woe on any man alive.
[PAOLUCCI enters.
Consul. Who enters 1
Paolucci. Who ? The bridesman.
Marchesella (embracing him). My brave
friend !
My father's !
Paolucci. Ay, thy grandfather's to boot.
And there was one, about my age, before him,
Sir Stefano, who wore a certain rose,
Radiant with pearls and rubies and pure gold,
Above the horse-tail grappled from the Turk.
Marchesella. We have not in the house that
ornament.
Paolucci. I do believe he wears it in the grave.
Countess. There is a sword here bright enough
to throw
A lustre on Stamura. Marchesella !
Marchesetta. Kneel, sir !
[He kneels to ERMINIA.
Countess. Not there.
Marchesella. Yes, there ;
what fitter place?
We know but one high title in the world,
One only set apart for deeds of valour,
And palsied be the hand that ill confers it.
Here is the field of battle ; here I knight thee.
[Knights him.
Rise, my compeer ! Teach him his duties, lady,
Toward the poor, the proud, the faith, the sex.
Countess (smiling). Stamura ! would you enter
now my service ?
Stamura. Yes, lady, were you wrong'd, this
very hour ;
Then might I better earn the bliss I seek. .
598
INES DE CASTRO.
[ACT i.
INES DE CASTRO.*
ACT I.
SCENE I. AT CINTBA.
PEDRO. CONSTANTIA.
Constantia. Pleasant must be these groves of
Cintra, Pedro !
To one who lately left the Moorish sands :
Everything has its joyance for the eyes
That look from hard-fought bloody fields upon it,
As yours do.
Pedro. Lady ! I delight to hear
And see you : so ingenuous, so benign,
So playful !
Constantia. I am then no more Constantia !
But Lady !
Pedro. You are not the little girl
I left : you have exchanged your childish charms
For others, which require new words, new
thoughts,
New gazers.
Constantia. Give me one of them awhile ;
Can you not ? are you proud ] has my mama
Been tutoring you, as she has me ?
Pedro. Constantia !
I ask from you what no man ever had,
Or askt, in my condition ; pity me !
Constantia. 0 this is then the solemn way to woo !
I have read something like it, since you went,
But never thought it could be near the same.
Here is my hand. You take it not !
Pedro. 1 kiss it.
My life hangs from it, and more lives than one.
Constantia. 0 no, vain man ! I love you very well,
Very sincerely, very tenderly,
For I have seen you often, long together,
Early, and when none knew it ; but think not
My life hangs from your ring : you first askt pity,
And fear'd to ask even that ; you now would
grant it,
Perhaps not grant it, yet would make me sue.
And came you then before the hour for this ]
Pedro. I came before the hour, I must confess,
To be with you some moments more, alone.
Constantia. 'Tis very wrong, I hear, at such a
time
Of life : when we are children and are wild
'Tis well enough ; but when we are grown sage
(As we are) the whole world cries out upon it.
What now have you been doing all these days ?
Pedro. This is the first appointed me for see-
ing you.
Constantia. 0 ! I know that : my question was
amiss :
I always say the very thing one would not.
Alas ! I find, and I am sorry for it,
Too young am I to think of serious things.
Surely we might defer them for a year,
* The events in these scenes are not strictly historical.
By flattering the king and queen a little
And giving them a kiss or two, each of us.
If you should find me but a child in thought,
Or, what is hatefuller, all say, in manner,
And blush for me, my heart must shrivel under it ;
For I would never pain the man I love,
And least of all (for that hurts most) would shame
him.
Pedro. Sure some kind angel breath'd into
your breast
The words on which I live.
Constantia. 0 ! then they pleas'd you !
They were not those that I most hoped to please
with.
Pedro. The queen perhaps has not discourst on all
Of my first passion.
Constantia. All ? did you tell her ?
There were some silly things : I never told her . .
Why should I ? we were very young indeed . .
Do people call that passion ?
Pedro. Have you heard
Perchance of Ifies ?
Constantia. Whom ? Ifies de Castro ?
Not latterly : no one must speak of her.
Pedro. Yes ; I must speak of her.
Constantia. They say you liked her ;
And so should I have done (she was so good)
If they had let her stay with me : they would not.
Pedro. 0 sweetest best Constantia ! she is still
As she was ever . . saving one sad name.
Constantia. What sad name ?
Pedro. The betrothed of Don Pedro.
Constantia. How ! faithless man ! betrothed ]
Pedro. So she was :
I have resigned her.
Constantia. I resign then you.
What blessing, what prosperity, what peace,
Can rest with perfidy 1 she is the same,
You tell me . . little matters what you tell me . .
As when you knew her first.
Pedro. The very same.
Constantia. Mild, beautiful, affectionate, be-
lieving ]
Pedro. All.
Constantia. Go then ! ask forgiveness at her
feet,
But never hope it here.
Pedro. Stay, princess !
Constantia. Go !
The lemon-tyme, geranium, and stiff pinks,
And every tuft in every vase about,
Have lost some leaves while you have been thus
speaking ;
So, evil spirits must have entered with you :
And tho' the curtains swell and fall, and tho'
There seems to be a breeze, 'tis not the air ;
What air there was, grows hot and tainted round ;
I scarce can breathe it.
Pedro. You will hear the whole . .
Constantia. I never will.
INES DE CASTRO.
ACT I.]
Pedro. The truth . .
Constantia. Where ?
Pedro. From the queen.
Constantia. The truth, when it left Pedro, left
the world.
SCENE IL
PEDRO (alone in the garden). Hated, fled,
scorn'd, I am at least set free
From an affiance which the pure of soul
Abhor : such marriage-bed appears bestrewn
With the dank flowers and heavy pall that hung
Around the corse where bloom'd their one delight.
She comes : be strong my heart ! thou'rt at thy
proof
For the first time : bear up !
(To INKS, who enters.) Sit here by me,
Under this cedar.
Ines. Where sit under it 1
Its branches push the grass away beneath,
Nor leave it room enough to rise amid them ;
Easier it were, methinks, to walk along
And rest on them, they are so dense and broad,
And level as the oars are on Mondego
Until the music beckons them below.
Pedro. Come ; I am holding them wide open
for thee ;
They will close round us.
Ines. Have you waited long ?
Tell me.
Pedro. I've other things to tell thee.
Ines. What 7
Oh ! I am very chilly in this shade.
Pedro. Kun into the pavilion then.
SCENE III.
PEDRO and INEZ seated in a Pavilion.
Ines. Now tell me.
Pedro ! your hand and brow are sadly parcht,
And you are out of breath, altho' you walkt
These twenty paces, more than I who ran . .
And yet you always caught me when we tried.
What would you tell me now, my faithful Pedro !
Pedro. In one word, Ines ! I have ceased to
love thee.
Loose me and let me go.
Ines. Is this your greeting 1
This your first morning salutation ? turn . .
Can it be 1 must I (look at me) believe it ?
Pedro. Yes, my sweet . . yes, my Ines . . yes,
yes, Ines!
Ines. And are you still so generous, 0 my love,
As to be sorry you have ceast to love me ?
To sigh, almost to weep, bending your face
Away from me lest I should grieve to see
A change in it, and in a change a loss !
Take off that hand from above mine then, take
it,
I dare not move it from me . . 'tis the prince's,
And not my Pedro's.
Pedro. I must go.
Ines. I once
Might ask you why. Let me go.
599
Pedro. Wouldst thou ? whither 1
Unfortunate ! So, thou resignest me,
Light heartless girl !
Ines. I would obey ! I swore it.
Pedro. Not yet.
[Aside.] Ah! would to God! it were indeed so I
Ines. Not at the altar yet; but did you not
Force me to say I loved you, ere you went
Against the Moors, telling me you could never
Be half so valiant, half so proud of victory,
Unless I own'd it ] Too just punishment !
Why then so long delay'd ] We oft have met,
Oft every day, and no day but in smiles,
(0 those three happy ones since your return !)
And I had ceast to fancy it was wrong,
It seemed so little like it, and gave you
Such pleasure, and such confidence in arms.
Alas ! it was unmaidenly ! so was it
To leave my arm around your neck ; so was it
(And worse) to linger, and not fly at once
For refuge in a cloister, when you prest
My very lips with kisses. You were going,
And my poor heart was faint : I thought no ill ;
And you, who might have given me more spirit,
Said nothing : no one image was there near,
Or none I saw, of her, the pure, the blessed,
Who might have chastened me with tender look
Compassionate, and dried the tears of both.
Pedro. I can not bear these reminiscences,
Rather these presences : for they who love
As we have done, have but one day, one hour,
In their whole life, in their whole afterlife,
In earth, heaven, time, eternity.
Ines. What said you 1
I know not what you said, and yet your words
Seem'd my own to me.
Pedro. Live ! live ! thou art young,
Innocent : none shall hurt thee. Think no more
Of that obedience thou wouldst speak about ;
'Twas never promist me.
Ines. What else is love ?
Pedro. 0 Ines ! Ifies ! Ifies ! must we two
Know nothing more of what love is, than this !
Ines. Enough for such as I am . . ah ! too
much.
It must not be . . and yet it may be, sure !
Pedro hath shown me many of my faults,
And now may show me all, and bid me mend
them.
Pedro. Forget me, hate me : I am grown un-
grateful,
Wild, desperate, the very worst of men.
And (if thou wilt not pity me for saying it)
Most wretched and most wronged.
Hold back thy pity !
I will not have it.
Is this curse enough
For my consent to leave thee ? or what heavier
Would any wish ] even thou ?
Ines. Oh tender Pedro !
If you have ceast to love me (very strange
As are your words) I would not argue with you ;
I have no power and you no need of it :
But if you ever fancy in yourself
600
INES DE CASTRO.
[ACT ii.
Such blemishes, then be persuaded by me,
0 generous Pedro, you have wronged your nature ;
They are not to be fear'd or thought of in it.
Enough of breasts are open to them, room
Enough in all, and welcome in too many 1
They can not enter Pedro's.
Pedro. Burst, my heart !
Ines. One only, in your sorrows, we have still;
Speak and assuage it.
Pedro. Dost thou bid me ? hear !
Hear me I reproach me ! spurn me I but ask
nought.
Ines. Nought will I ask, nought dare I, nought
desire I.
Let Watchfulness and Doubt walk slow before
Sad Certainty ; let every fibre throb
Daily and nightly in the dim suspense ;
Only bid Pity hold the light of Truth
Back, nor break suddenly my dream of bliss ;
For fragile is the vase, containing one
Poor simple flower dipt in it by yourself,
And, if you saw it broken at your feet,
You might weep too, ere you could turn away :
Then never say that you have ceast to love me.
Pedro. I must not marry thee.
What answerest thou ?
Ines. Heaven has decreed it then, 0 my beloved!
Be calm ! unless I have offended you.
Pedro. I may be calm, no doubt I a curse on those
Who teach me calmness ! wouldst thou teach me it?
Ines. Take off the curse : with any pain but that
1 would ; tho' others first much teach it me.
Pedro (aside). I thought so ! Others 1 What a
word is this !
She then has confidents ! she asks their counsel I
She talks to them of me ! tells of my loves,
My doubts, my fears. What fears have I ? what
doubts 1
She throws my weaknesses before their feet
To look at, touch, discourse upon, discuss . .
Now I can leave her . . now I can . . and will.
In three strides I am gone beyond a thought
Of such a woman . . dear as she was once !
Pooh ! I misunderstood her, I perceive.
[To Ines.
Monks then and priests invade the sanctuary
Of holiest love, strip down its freshest fruits,
And chew them dry and call them bad and bitter !
Could it be thus were dignity in man
Or chastity in woman, as before 1
We turn tame foxes into our own vineyards
To yelp the wild ones out ; but they, the wild,
Come only the more numerous at their noise ;
And our sleek guardians makethe best grapes theirs,
Biting the fist that drags them back too late.
Ines. Revere our holy Church ! tho' some within
Have erred, and some are slow to lead us right,
Stopping to pry when staff and lamp should be
In hand, and the way whiten underneath.
Pedro. Ines, the Church is now a charnel-house,
Where all that is not rottenness is drowth.
Thou hast but seen its gate hung round with
flowers,
And heard the music \diose serenest waves
Cover its gulfs and dally with its shoals,
And hold the myriad insects in light play
Above it, loth to leave its sunny sides.
Look at this central edifice ! come close !
Men's bones and marrow its materials are,
Men's groans inaugurated it, men's tears
Sprinkle its floor, fires lighted up with men
Are censers for it ; Agony and Wrath
Surround it night and day with sleepless eyes ;
Dissimulation, Terror, Treachery,
Denunciations of the child, the parent,
The sister, brother, lover (mark me, Ines !)
Are the peace-offerings God receives from it.
Ines. I tremble ; but betrayers tremble more.
Now cease, cease, Pedro ! Cling I must to some-
what;
Leave me one guide, one rest ! Let me love God,
Alone . . if it must be so !
Pedro. Him alone . .
Mind ; in him only place thy trust henceforth.
Thy hands are marble, Ines ! and thy looks
Unchangeable, as are the wintry stars
In their clear brightness. And what pangs have I
Endured for thee ! Gaze, smile at me, sit mute . .
I merit it . . Woman of songs and satires
And sermons, thro' the world they point at thee !
[To himself.
I spoke of what I suffered : I spoke ill..
Light as a bubble was the heaviest of it
To what I now endure. Where was there ever
Affliction like love buried thus alive,
And turn'd to hatred by some hellish charm !
So ! then thy lips can move ! can open too !
When they have leisure, will they deign to speak ?
Ines. 0 Pedro ! Pedro ! my own agony
Had cast me down ; yours will not let me sink.
Uncertain man ! once tender, now severe,
Once prodigal of confidence, now prompt
To snatch it back, rending the heart that held it!
How much true love my grave will hide from you !
Let this dry up my tears !
Pedro. Live ! and live happy !
ACT II.
AT CINTRA.
BLANOA. PEDRO. INES.
Blanca. I, who heard all, have brought her
back again.
Perfidious ! where are now the promises
You made your father, when at my request
He pardon'd that young sorceress] Are your words
All spent ? Am I unworthy of reply ?
Pedro. Madam, no accusation was preferr'd
Of sorcery ; the threat was quite enough.
When you protested by the saints and martyrs,
Angels and confessors, Ines de Castro
Should soon be charged of sorcery before
The competent tribunals of the realm,
Unless she would renounce my plighted vow,
So firm was my reliance on the word
Of royalty, so well I understood
What competent tribunals are, I swore
ACT II.]
INES DE CASTRO.
601
Upon my knees, never to marry her
Whom I had sworn to marry. In all this
Is there no merit to a royal mind 1
Blanca. Much ; if the vow be kept.
Pedro. Vows always
should be.
Blanca. If made to fathers, made to kings, or
saints.
Ines. Your love, your kindest love then sepa-
rates us ?
Would you not tell me this . . to make me happy !
Blanca. I would prepare this damsel here to
loose
(Allowing time . . a day, two days, or more,
If need ihere be . . ) her idle unfit ties.
Pedro. I was more rough, and would have broken
them
To save her. Hard as is the alternative,
Rather would I be wanting to my faith
Than see the woman I have loved, and love,
Resign or loosen it. To ask of her
To break my bonds for me, were more than base-
ness ;
'Twere what the weakest of the base themselves
Disdain, and love and fear alike brush by.
Blanca. Against the course of nature, royal blood
Would mingle with plebeian.
Pedro. None is here.
Blanca. All blood not royal should to royal eyes
Appear so. Fie ! the universe cries out
In condemnation of you.
Pedro. I would answer
With calmness your reproof, 0 queen, if calmness
In such contingencies were not the thing
The most offensive.
Blanca. Speak : reply you can not.
Pedro. Against the course of nature 'tis impos-
sible
To run (a folly you object to me)
Unless we do a violence to others
Or to ourselves.
But then this universe !
This beadle's house, these rotten fangs from fiends,
These imprecation-wallets, opening
To blast me with fat air !
Blanca. Scoff at the world !
Pedro. Saints do it worse.
The universe of princes,
Lady ! is but a narrow one indeed !
Court, church, and camp, are its three continents,
Nothing is there above, below, around,
But air and froth, now quieter, now stormier.
Blanca. Rare manhood ! thus to argue with a
woman !
Rare courtesy ! thus to instruct a queen.
Pedro. Ah! the distracted will for ever reason;
Why will not those sometimes who are not so ]
Blanca. What then, unsteady youth, were your
resolves ]
Pedro. If she who formerly believed so much,
Ines, could think me now unworthy of her,
She soon might bear our severance : what care I
How many, great, unmerited, my sufferings,
Be hers but less !
Blanca. To whom now speaks the boy ]
Ines. Those thoughts, that can not rest, spring
from his heart ;
And, as they spring, fall into it again,
Like some pure fountain-water, where none heeds
The rift it rises from.
[To PEDRO, laying her hand on Ms.
Was it to me,
Or to yourself, or to the queen, you spoke ]
Pedro. In Nature's voice I spoke alone with
Nature.
[To the QUEEN.
Madam ! protect this innocent sweet girl !
I, who would have abandoned her, implore it !
Ines. Too generous soul ! 0 Pedro ! 0 my
prince !
Let the un worthiest of your father's vassals
Clasp, on the ground, your knee !
Blanca. How ! in my presence !
Leaning thy forehead on thy keeper's knee !
Pedro (raising INES). Rise J
[To the QUEEN.
Madam, I have
not yet learnt Castilian.
My royal father has conferr'd on me,
For my poor humble service, no such title.
I am but Pedro, prince of Portugal.
Towns, provinces, have been entrusted to me,
And kept ; but never have I undertaken
The weighty charge, to be a woman's keeper.
Ines. Crave pardon of the queen !
Blanca. Of me ] what
need?
His father will forgive him at my suit ;
He loves him, and hath shown it in the choice
He has approved and sanctioned, of his wife.
Ines. 0 happy father ! happy Portugal !
And, whatsoe'er befall thee, happy Ines !
Blanca. Has the audacious chatterer ceast at
last?
Constantia, sir, is royal, is your equal,
Is your superior.
Pedro. Who is not 1 that wears
The graces of her sex, the goodness of it,
The mildness, and sometimes the pitying tears.
Constantia knows my passion.
Blanca. Knows your passion ?
What ! before marriage ] Yes, yes, you are right :
I told her of it when I gave it her,
How 'twas devoted to her. Prove my words,
If loyalty and knighthood are within you.
Pedro. Strong the appeal : and any other words
The queen might dictate.
Blanca. These will do quite well ;
Confirm them to my daughter : that is all :
Say them in your own way . . with some few more,
As princes do, by precedent . . or not . .
I would drop any form to make you easy,
And put this boyish fancy out of mind.
Ines. I must not throw myself again before you,
I must not hear those royal words again,
They hurt you .go, they almost made you angry.
Ah ! how you blush at being wroth so soon !
But let me pray, and let me once more move you.
602
INES DE CASTRO.
[ACT ii.
Be duteous ! be obedient ! 0 how lovely
Is the young princess who expects your hand !
Blanca. Does it require an effort to espouse
The princess of Castillo ?
Pedro. Nor to espouse,
Nor to abandon whom we should espouse,
Is thought an effort in the court of kings.
Blanca. Plebeian soul ! ill-sorted with its state !
Ines. Into what errors have I led you, Pedro !
The princess may retrieve you, she alone.
Blanca (seizing INES). Come then . . resist not,
think not, hang not back . .
Along with me ! There is no other way
To give him freedom. We may find for you
A match more equal and less perilous.
I will adorn your nuptials with my presence,
To satisfy your pride, and his, unworthy !
No earthly thing is wanting to the bridegroom.
He has estate, youth, person, rank, court-favour . .
What ! thankless, graceless, uncompliant girl,
Will nothing serve you under royalty?
Ines. 0 were there none on earth ! I then were
happy.
Blanca. Abomination ! treason ! heresy !
My duty now compels me. Call the guard.
Pedro. Forbear, forbear, justly offended queen !
Ines. Well may you blush who never blusht
for me
Before ! I lost my senses when I said it.
I may love God ; I may not love you, Pedro !
And hence the worst and wildest wish that ever
Distraction wrencht from passion . . for my warmth
To draw the sun ('twas nothing less) from heaven.
0 what were Portugal, or earth without you !
Inanimate, or trampled, or distraught,
Or self-opprest, like one in wicked slumber.
Reign, bravest Pedro, teaching first obedience,
Be everything that kings have ever been,
Unless they should have loved !
0 that, before
We part, I must not touch those cheeks with mine,
To catch their modesty and beauteousness !
Blanca. Mad impudence ! am I then but a fly
Or bird, or vacant unobservant air,
That every wish should strip itself before me 1
Thy wanton ardour, girl, shall have its range
Elsewhere.
Ines. Most gracious lady ! let me follow ;
1 am unworthy of the hand that leads me.
Blanca. That drags thee to thy doom, if thou
resist.
Choose ; death or marriage !
Ines. Marriage 1 never, never !
Help me, 0 help me, Pedro ! not to fly,
Not to resist, but to obey in all
Save that one thing where life and death are one,
Of that speak not, tho' you should speak from
heaven.
Pedro. What can I ? Wilt thou claim me ? I
am thine :
One fire, before the populace, burns both.
Blanca. Atheist and heretic ! shame, shame
o'erwhelm thcc !
A prince of Portugal in robes of flame !
Before the populace ! and own his fault !
[To INES.
Come, come along ! these horrors must not be.
God, Sant lago, and Castillo, forbid !
Ines. Grant me, 0 queen, a cloister.
Blanca. With the pure ?
The consecrated 1 the resigned ?
I ties. A grave
Then grant me ! there the fit and unfit meet.
Blanca. I will grant that which girls like thee
wish more,
And pray for less aloud : my word is given :
The bridegroom waits : thou'rt his ere the last
mass,
In time for dinner at his father's house. «
Haste ; do not keep the valets round the board
To drive away the flies which mar your feast,
Nor make the elder guests more grave than age
Has made them, that their wine grows warm apace.
Ines (to PEDRO). 0 then you can not save me !
Pedro. Save I will,
If my own life can do it.
Blanca. How should that ?
Ines. No branch so leafless but it gives a shade
To some poor insect at some hour of day.
Many has that sword slain who wisht to live,
And there was glory from it ; was it then
Because they wisht to live that there was glory
In stripping them of life ? are friendly deeds
Less glorious than unfriendly ? is less brave
The blow that liberates than the force that binds?
Pedro. What sayst thou ?
Ines. I dare neither say
nor do,
Yet wish, and more than wildest love e'er wisht.
Pedro (to himself). I will not ask again, lest
one desire,
As ever, come between us and seize both.
[To INES.
What thou hast spoken of inanimate things
Levels me with them, nay, casts me beneath.
Lo ! here am I, and can not lend protection
To those whom God's right-hand placed at my
side
Rather to strengthen and admonish me,
And whom their virtue should have rais'd
above it.
Blanca. Virtue ! ay, where obedience and reli-
gion
Are wanting, there comes virtue ! by my faith,
Never a word on earth I like so ill :
Who taught you it ?
Pedro. The word I have forgotten
Who taught me : if you ask or heed who taught
The thing, behold her here ! and here the heart
Whereon, beneath her image, 'tis engraven :
Drown'd, drown'd are all my senses in deep love.
Blanca. Blessed are they who walk in innocence,
And fear the Lord, and only know his saints,
And only do his will ! The arts of Hell,
The powers of darkness, be they far from me,
From you, my son, and all our royal house !
I would not even mention them, lest woe
Fall upon some one at the searching sound.
ACT III.]
INES DE CASTRO.
603
Treason, rebellion, wishes undisguised,
Bold boisterous exclamations, not against
One king, and him the very best on earth,
Our natural lord and master, but against
The form, the power, the name, of royalty,
Eoyalty ! God's appointed, God's own work,
God's own resemblance. Need we charge of
sorcery ?
You are the witness, prince ! I would hurt none.
You on your oath must answer to our liege
For the state's weal : and let us drop the rest.
Pedro. Spare her ! or, by the Christ that died
for me,
I die for her, and on this sword, before you.
Blanca. Abstain, rash youth !
Pedro. Merciless queen, abstain !
Ines. 0 call none merciless ! all must have
mercy ;
All need it.
Blanca. Hold thy peace ! art thou in church,
Profane one ! or are words like these for thee !
Pedro. Forgive her ! swear upon the crucifix
That you will never urge against her aught
Endangering life, or liberty, or fame,
Then give me to the axe or to the stake
As best beseems you.
Blanca. You will then obey ?
Pedro. Swear ; due obedience follows.
Blanca. To my lips
I lift my blessed Lord, and call his name
In witness ; not a thought of ill is left
Within my sinful breast against the life,
Or liberty, or fame, of that young maid,
Ines de Castro.
Ines. Gracious queen ! kind Pedro !
To think of me !
I too have courage . . strength . .
Blanca. What confidence ! what impropriety !
She falls upon my knees : she faints : 'tis nothing ;
Call . .
Pedro. Let my arms, for the last time, sus-
tain her !
ACT III.
AT CINTRA.
KING ALFONSO and QUKBN BLANOA.
Blanca. She hath been known to favor the
suggestion
That he is wiser, handsomer, and younger
(We know what that word points to) than your
majesty.
Alfonso. There is irreverence in it. Well ; but
sons
May be, nay, must be, younger than their fathers.
Blanca. 0 well-pois'd thought ! how kindly !
how considerate !
I am no enemy of hers ; we both
Agree, the wily Ines hath her charms ;
God grant they all be innocent, they all
Be such as holy church may countenance,
Better than it can do her foul alliance.
Alfonso. The church can give us purity of life,
Devotion and obedience, and strong miracles
To make us stedfast in our true belief.
Blanca. The Devil may prevail.
Alfonso. No, no ; not he ;
I will not have it so.
Blanca. Against the church
I did not say, but against us frail creatures.
Alfonso. Ay, let him stick but there, and
small harm done.
Blanca. Thus, thus it is; all pious men are
wise :
None other.
Alfonso. Not a mother's son of them.
Blanca. How shall we bear to think then of
those spells,
Those conjurations and those incantations 1
Yes, cross yourself until your coat be tatters,
It will not countervail them.
Alfonso. Who 's at work 1
Blanca. Ines.
Alfonso. And did she write her name in blood]
Blanca. She would ; and even in yours.
Alfonso. Bad ! bad ! but mine
Would not be half so wicked as her own :
The Devil would find savour in that sop,
And kiss a seal so precious ten times over.
Blanca. He has already.
Alfonso. How ! you do not say so !
Blanca. I say it ; I am sure of it ; and they
Imitate that abomination.
Alfonso. Who ]
Ines and Pedro 1 Ten times over ?
Blanca. Twenty.
Alfonso. God help him !
Blanca. 0 my liege ! what word was that ?
Alfonso. It must be lust.
Blanca. Worse.
Alfonso. Even than lust 1 I 've thought
Upon it much, and the more years I think
Upon it, worse and worse it seems to me.
Blanca. Odious ! most odious ! Princes thus
descend !
Alfonso. Yet, Blanca, they are young ! young
too were we !
Blanca (aside}. I have no patience.
Still the charms of youth
Surround your majesty.
Alfonso. I have been younger.
Blanca. Chroniclers may assert it.'
Alfonso. I am hale.
Blanca. Ah ! there are powers that sap all
human strength !
Even words can do it, words, the froth of wishes
Boiling in venom.
Alfonso. Saints above! would Ines
Compass my death! that beauteous one? she,
Ines1?
Blanca. Look to her.
Alfonso. Do you think so ?
Blanca. God avert it !
Alfonso. Nay, if it come to that, I must protect
With all my strength of courage and of wisdom
My royal house most royally against her,
And call upon the church to stand and guard us.
604
INES DE CASTRO.
[ACT v.
ACT IV.
AT COIMBBA.
PEDRO. INES.
Pedro. Ines ! we have not loved in vain : this
day
Rewards thy many sufferings for my sake,
And places our sweet children where they ought
To stand, in their own brightness.
Once I said
TJie king will do it : 'twas some heavenly voice
Prompted my words ; yet my heart own'd them
not,
And I was slow to speak and thou to hear
The comfort this hour brings.
Ines. The holy Father
Sanctioned our vows, the bishop joined our hands,
In vain, if the parental blessing on us
Be wanting.
Many are the tears we shed
For poor Constantia, when upon the brink
Of death she took our hands and claspt them
hard,
And sighed, Be never sundered, faithful pair !
Not even this avails us : when the king
Calls us his children, and the queen too hers,
Then, and then only, are the rites complete.
Pedro. Sweet was the friend thou gavest me ;
more sweet
The friend she gave ; heroic was her gift,
More than heroic thine ; she loved me well,
I loved her only that she loved me so :
Thou wert my soul's delight from the first day
My eyes had opened on thee, and thy life
Kept mine on earth but to watch over it.
Now it is safe.
Something yet troubles thee ;
What can it be ?
Ines. I wonder why the children
Are not yet brought to us. The king and queen
Will soon be here ; and we without the flowers
To offer them !
Pedro. The fault is mine. A child,
Now almost four years old, remarks, remembers.
Ines. Surely he should.
Pedro. Humiliation] no.
He shall not scorn his father, nor curse mine.
What I must do, Ines, I do for thee . .
Hard else the service ; hard ! ay, unperformed.
The king will see the children in the park,
(He must ride through it) and let that suffice.
ACT V.
AT COIMBRA.
BLANCA. PEDRO. INES.
Blanca. Don Pedro ! I rejoice that our liege
lord
Hath well considered what becomes his house,
And, in his tenderness of heart, embraced
This lady, to whom on my part I pray
Heaven grant its loving mercies.
Pedro. I await
The presence of my father, to pour forth
Whatever gratitude, whatever zeal,
Soldier or son may offer : late last night
His orders came that we await him here.
Blanca. The king my husband met before the
castle
The children who (they told him) are his son's,
And he was taken with, I know not which,
The elder, or the younger, and would fain
Have them with him and talk with them and
love them,
And may perhaps in time provide for them.
Pedro. Madam, when they are stronger, their
own swords
Will do it.
Ines (apart). 0 ! hush I Pedro ! is this right
After such kindness ?
Blanca. But until they are
Stronger, and carry swords (which may do
harm),
Shall we not look to them, and merit thanks 1
Pedro. God grant it !
Blanca. All must give up some designs,
Some wishes too long nurst, some ill-grown
thoughts.
After five years many would not repine
To yield a mistress, but would bless the eyes
That winkt upon the fault, like mine, like his,
The fond indulgent father's, the wise king's.
Pedro. I have no mistress, save whom holy
church
And love as holy gave me. Gifts like her
Heaven seldom gave, and never man resigned.
Ines. Surely no longer is there any cause
For separation.
Pedro. Cause be there or not,
No power on earth can separate us now.
Blanca. He who permitted can release your
bonds ;
To him belongs all power in earth and heaven.
Pedro. Hath God none left 1 Have vows and
sacraments
No force in them ?
Blanco. God leaves this nether world
To his vicegerent.
Pedro. So it seems !
Blanca. Then bow
Obedient to the rod.
Pedro. Is there no time
When rods shall shed their knots, and we arise
From under them, and when the bloody hand
Shall drop them, shall consent to clench our
gold
In preference, and be kist on the outside
For form-sake, letting us stand up and walk ]
Blanca. I understand not this opprobrious
speech.
We are vile worms : how can we stand erect ?
Pedro. God made us not vile worms.
Blanca. We make ourselves
None other, by our passions.
Pedro. Not by those
The Church hath sanctified.
ACT V.]
INES DE CASTRO.
605
For its own ends.
Blanca.
Pedro. Ay, truly !
Blanca. For its peace . .
Pedro. And plenteousness.
Blanca. God's house should be well stored.
Pedro. God's law well kept.
His house be it his to keep, his law be it ours.
Blanca. Assertor of illegibilities
In law, the sense whereof but one can tell,
No longer do I wonder that my poor
Constantia died so soon : died ere the crown
Circled her fine black hair ! . .
Pedro. . . And King Alfonso
Was gathered to his fathers !
Blanca. Miscreant !
Who thought of that 1
Pedro. Worthy was your Constantia
Of any crown ; but none (had life been spared)
Could have been hers before my father left it.
Blanca. And shall that creature there, that
half-espous'd,
Wear it instead 1
Pedro. That creature there descends
Of royal lineage ; and from her hath sprung
A royal lineage not below the past.
Adversity hath nurst it, and just Heaven
Placed it, you say, beneath my father's smile.
Ines. Nothing is wanting now, most gracious
queen !
Beside your blessing.
Blanca. Curses on the brood . .
. . I had well-nigh been prompted to exclaim
Under my wrongs . . but wrongs we all must
bear.
Ines. If any of them seem to rise from me,
Punish me, 0 kind lady ! and point out
How I may expiate my offence at last.
Blanca. De Castro ! Set not thou thy heart upon
The crown ! it may fall from thee ; nay, it shall.
Ines. For crowns I care not.
Blanca (to Pedro). Carest thou for crowns 1
Pedro. I value that of Portugal above
All earthly things, saving my faith and sword.
Blanca. Above this woman ?
Pedro. On this woman rests
My faith, and o'er her pillow hangs my sword.
The crown is, and God grant it long may be,
Another's ; and no thought can dwell thereon
Of mine, but hopes of love from him who wears it,
A subject's, soldier's, son's obedience.
Blanca (an Officer brings a letter). Prove it: the
speech was spoken opportunely.
[Reading.
" She spoils me ! what would one much better do ?
Give me my own mama ! I ^11 run away . .
I'll never have another . . very good ones
Would only make me cry the more for mine."
Patience! I have no patience for his folly.
[Heads on.
" Beauty."
Young things are always beautiful.
" Such innocence."
Can they be otherwise ?
"Like me a little."
Ha ! there lies the spell.
Doating old man ! I'll break it, if I live.
Like thee ?
Constantia's children may become so ;
Legitimately born, them sponsor kings
Have held, and heard their titles at the font.
Pedro. Madam, the former words you spoke
less loud :
They may not have concern'd me ; but these last
Strike at my honour.
Since the nuptial rites
First held together those whom love had joined,
None have been ever holier than were ours.
The pontiff, to whose power you have appeal'd,
Ordered the best of bishops, him of Guarda,
To join our hands and bless us ; which he did ;
Shedding the tears that virtuous old men shed
On those whom they think virtuous, both when joy
Showers from above and when grief strikes them
low.
Blanca. The pontiff did it lest a scandal lie
Against the Church : he was deceiv'd: some doubts
Have risen in his mind, which you shall hear,
Of this young person who was named your wife.
Pedro. Named ! by the name of God ! she is
my wife,
And shall be so for ever ! Earth, Hell, Kome,
Shall never separate us.
Courage ! girl !
Thou hast heard worse from her.
Blanca. And worse shalt hear.
Some time ago, when we first met at Cintra,
I was too tender-hearted ; so the king
Assured me : now he leaves me my own way
To follow.
Ines. When he comes . .
Blanca. He comes not hither.
Pedro. Can kings deceive 1
Blanca. No, they can not deceive,
But they can promise and observe the promise
Or drop it, as they will.
Who shall controul
Or question them 1
Pedro. Their God.
Blanca. God hath approved
From Rome (if you will read it) our resolves.
[Holding a paper.
Pedro. Madam, I read not anything from Rome
That violates our sacraments.
Blanca. Rome made
And can unmake them, and does every day.
Pedro. Only where kings are rich and nations
weak.
Blanca. Some deference must be paid in solid
gold,
Some in obedience : the more weighty part
We undertake, the lighter is for you.
Pedro. Rare image, by my troth, is this of
Heaven !
Odin and Thor shattered the bones, and drank
Of beer and mead what the crackt skull could
hold;
Too generous were their mighty hands to filch
The purse, had any purse been in the way.
606
INES DE CASTEO.
[ACT v.
The bridge of Mahomet has no shops upon it:
The very Jew eats up his meal morose
Apart from God's, nor robs us in God's name.
Blanca. Who would have thought this cursed
sect should count
Among its friends a prince of Portugal !
Pedro, There are no sects in subjects : all are
one ;
One protects all.
The world will never flourish
Under crown'd priests or water-sprinkling kings.
Blanca. 0 horrible ! 0 blasphemy ! 0 lust
Of change in princes. You would fain become
(Tho* prince) what people call, I think, a patriot :
Hard husky thing with little kernel in it,
And bitter as the water of hell-streams.
Pedro. No, madam ! I abjure the uncleanliness
Of name so prostituted. Prince I am,
And claim my birthright, and wish others theirs.
I am less changeful.
Ifies ! do not weep !
I want thy word.
Irles. I have no word to speak,
Now every one I utter gives offence.
Pedro. I am then fond of change 1 Say this
against me
And thou wilt not offend.
Ines. 0 ! may God love me
As does my Pedro ! may at length the queen
Pardon me as God pardon'd me, who made him !
Blanca. . . Over the grave of my dear child !
Ay, sob !
Hide thy white face ! pull thy loose curls around,
Exactly like . . I know not what they 're like,
They are so frightful, tossing here and there
By their own rustic untamed springiness,
Even when thou movest neither head nor body.
There 's nothing royal, nothing noble, in it.
Now am I forced to say what shocks my soul
In utterance . . first because it places thee
Too near our royal house, and then because
It covers it with incest. Can I speak
The words I would 1 Speak them I must ; for these,
These only, can strike down thy lofty hopes,
And show thee what abyss, what hell, of guilt
Lies under to engulf thee. Didst thou not
Stand with Don Pedro here and hold the prince
Don Luis with him at the sacrament
Of baptism 1 By the saints in Paradise !
Thou art his sister in the Church's eye.
Pedra. The Church had wiped, I fancied, from
her eye
This grain of dust ; I gave the kerchief for it ;
Many, and somewhat worse, she throws in ours.
Blanca. Arguing with him who argues against
God,
As thou dost, were a folly : this at least,
Ines ! is not among thy many sins :
Yet little as thou hast deserved of me,
I make thee what amends thy broken marriage
(For such in courtesy I will express it)
Admits of.
Pedro. I am then, it seems, to die,
Since nothing but the stroke of death can break it.
Ines. Sweet husband ! shall false dangers over-
shadow
Whom true and great ones blazed upon and guided?
Pedro. And shall these false ones make thee
weep 1 did those 1
Bear up, my Ifies ! bear up bravely, girl !
We have been happy : happy we shall be.
Thou seest me not withering with age, cast down
By weight of wrongs, consumed by grief, distraught
By envy and ambition, worse than one
Whom penal horses sever limb from limb,
Nor, what were worse than all, bereft of thee ;
For Heaven will give me thoughts and views of
Ines,
As Ines gave me, in this world, of Heaven.
Blanca. Heaven gives wide views, very wide
views, to many.
I have my doubts. Eainy-eyed girls see double,
Toss on two pillows, and drop tears on each ;
I would say nothing more : I may be wrong ;
But other names than Pedro may have crept
Among the curtains in Don Pedro's house.
Ines. 0 may they ever ! glorious names ! blest
saints
Of Paradise ! have ye not watcht my sleep ?
Have ye not given me thoughts of him, and hopes,
And visions, when I prayed you to protect
Him and his children, and that gracious queen
Who sees me not aright thro' love of him,
Wishing him loftier aims and brighter joys.
Blanca. My doubts now darken ; do not thine,
at this
Evasion 1
Pedro. 0 my Ines ! sure the Blest
Are the more blest to share thy love with me,
And I to share it, as I do, with them :
Alike to me art thou immaculate.
Blanca. How the man raves ! no stain, no spot
in her !
Immaculate ! Beware ! repeat the word
With those unholy lips, call her that name
Which only one of mortal race had ever.
Pedro. Lady ! that one was meek no less than
pure.
Blanca. So am I too, who suffer all this wrong,
This violence, this scoffing, this deceit,
From one like her, false, loathsome, dull, low-born.
Others know all ; I know not half, nor would.
Pedro. Hot lolling tongues bespatter fairest
names
With foulest slurs : black shows not upon black.
Blanca. Well ! let us hope ! all may be right
at last.
There are bad minds, Don Pedro, in the world,
As you must have observed.
Pedro. A glimpse or two.
Blanca. I did then wisely when I warn'd you
both,
Tho' tis a thankless office, as most are
Where we consume our days in doing good.
[PEDRO goes to the vrindmc.
Pedro. Ha ! there they stand below, agape forme.
One walkt but half the length of the house-front
And turn'd again, and askt his fellow slave
ACT V.]
INES DE CASTRO.
607
(I do believe, for they have hungry scrips)
" Whenwill the prey be ours? and the prey's price?"
Their plumes and brims ill hide them, tho' they keep
As near as may be under us : perhaps
'Twere well to call three more and better men.
Pacheco is too lank ; the shrewd Coello
And spruce Gonzales would not like their doublets
To have another slash in them.
Blanca. What mean
These foul insinuations ]
Pedro. What mean they
Under my window?
Blanca. Your own good ; the king's
True service.
Pedro. Let them enter then.
Blanca. This room ]
Pedro. Yea, and within one pace of their king's
son;
Covered ; with dirk and rapier ; but in front.
Ines. Escape, 0 dearest Pedro !
Pedro. He who dies
Escapes ; and some shall beat the path before.
I would not willingly try any flight ;
The only one I know, the only one
Where Honour can go with me, will be mine
Whatever hour I choose.
Blanca. Most heathenish !
To talk of Honour and of Death so lightly !
Pedro. Madam, we may lose one, but not the
other ;
Therefor we need not mind it.
Blanca. Not when Hell
Opens before us 1
Pedro. Hell too we may close
And its enormous portals, with less effort
Than infants push aside ungrateful food.
We have but to maintain our sense of right,
Which of all senses is the pleasantest,
And which must bear most violence ere expell'd.
Blanca. I understand not a fantastic speech
Appliant to no person, to no purport.
I will speak plainer ; and I speak to both ;
Obey!
It seems not decent that men's hands
Should touch with little gentleness, should lead
Compulsively, young women who have stood
Behind and near the daughter of Castille.
Long-suffering is my merit, if the grace
Of God vouchsafes me one : but oaths of fealty
On all are binding, and on queens the most.
My conscience hath upbraided me severely
For not disclosing to our king the part
Whereto (in tears I own it) I was privy,
Against his crown and dignity.
Come now !
Hear reason, dona Ines ! I no more
Urge any choice which may displease you both.
Pedro. Displease us 1 urge a choice?
Blanca. We must avoid
Scandal at least.
There are formalities ;
Mere abjuration now of marriage-rites,
And nothing more than living separate,
One in a cloister, t'other in a camp :
The very choice the brave and chaste all make.
Pedro. Ay, by the Saints ! and some perhaps
too soon
Shall find my choice made firmly.
Blanca. Now delay
Were madness, pardon perjury : such threats
Are traitorous and parricidal too.
[She calls from the window.
Coelho ! Diego ! with your band upstairs . .
With your whole band . . two timid women wait . .
Your queen commands . . your king . . your
friend the bridegroom . .
Force ! murder ! [To PEDRO.
Stop me 1 hold me ] grasp my wrist ]
Audacious ! and let that foul fiend escape ]
Ines (just out of the door). Good soldier ! I am
not escaping from you . .
Push me not back ! that was not the command . .
Strike ! you must act no otherwise . . let fall
This halbert, or I run from under it . .
The word is given, .'twas the queen gave it . . strike,
Irresolute !
Pedro. What fell]
Blanca. Where is she ?
Pedro. Fled.
Blanca. Hold me not; pray me not; I will
pursue . .
Pedro. The guard hath stopt her.
Blanca. At the door ]
Pedro. With force
More than is manly, thrusting her against it.
Ho I Ines ! art thou hurt 1 speak ! art thou
speaking 1
What sobbest thou, my love ! is then my name
Uncall'd upon in any grief of thine ]
Where is she ]
Ho ! throw open, sentinel,
This door.
Blanca. Stand further off. . he does his duty ..
Further back yet . . have you no decency !
To tread upon her blood ! it runs thro' fast,
And will ('tis to be fear'd) leave marks behind.
Who, hearing your insensibility,
Will pity you?
Pedro. None ! none !
Ines is dead !
My father ! you are childless ! fare you well !
Unbar the door ! [Aloud to the sentry.
Command him, madam ! [To BLANCA.
Who
Shall keep me here, while steel is in my grasp
And vengeance strengthens it and justice guides it]
Blanca. Sentry, unbar ! [Looking at tJie corpse.
The scene quite saddens me.
'Twas her own fault, rash child! God's will be
done!
608
IPPOLITO DI ESTE.
IPPOLITO DI ESTE.*
Ippolito. Now all the people follow the pro-
cession
Here may I walk alone, and let my spirits
Enjoy the coolness of these quiet aisles.
Surely no air is stirring ; every step
Tires me ; the columns shake, the ceiling fleets,
The floor beneath me slopes, the altar rises.
Stay ! here she stept : what grace 1 what har-
mony!
Jt seem'd that every accent, every note
Of all the choral music, breath'd from her :
From her celestial airiness of form
I could have fancied purer light descended.
Between the pillars, close and wearying,
I watcht her as she went : I had rusht on ;
It was too late ; yet, when I stopt, I thought
I stopt full soon : I cried, Is she not there ?
She had been : I had seen her shadow burst
The sunbeam as she parted : a strange sound,
A sound that stupified and not aroused me,
Fill'd all my senses : such was never felt
Save when the sword-girt Angel struck the
gate,
And Paradise wail'd loud and closed for ever.
She should return ; the hour is past away.
How can I bear to see her (yet I will)
Springing, she fondly thinks, to meet the man
I most abhor, my father's base-born son,
Ferrante !
Rosalba (entering). What! I called him? in
my haste
To languish at his beauty, to weigh down
His eyelids with my lips for gazing on me :
Surely I spoke the name, and knew it not
Until it bounded back and smote me so !
Ippolito. Curses upon them both !
[Advancing toward her.
Welcome, sweet lady !
Rosalba. Lord Cardinal ! you here ? and un-
attended ?
Ippolito. We wait the happy lover, do we
not?
Rosalba. Ferrante then betrayed the secret to
you!
And are you come to honour with your presence . .
Ippolito. Has the Duke sign'd the contract 1
Rosalba. For what bride 1
Ferrante writes Ferrante plain enough ;
And I do think, altho' I once or twice
Have written it instead of mine, at last
I am grown steadier, and could write Rosalba.
Ippolito. Sport not with one your charms have
cast too low.
Rosalba. Sport not with one your hand would
raise too high.
* Ferrante and Giulio were brothers, by the father's
side, to the Duke Alfonso and the Cardinal Ippolito di
Este. The cardinal deprived Ferrante of his eyes for
loving the same object as his Eminence, and because she
had praised the beauty of them.
Ippolito. Again that taunt ! the time may
come, Rosalba,
When I could sanctify the blissful state
I have aspired to.
Rosalba. Am not I mere ice ?
Show not I girlish frowardness, the fears
Of infancy, the scruples of old age ?
Have not you said so ? and said more . . you hate
them?
How could you bear me, or what wish from me 1
Ippolito. That which another will not long
retain.
Rosalba. You know him little, and me less.
Ippolito. I know
Inconstancy in him.
Rosalba. And what in me ?
Ippolito. Intolerance for his betters.
Rosalba. Ignorance,
But not intolerance of them, is my fault.
Ippolito. N'o?
Rosalba. Call it thus, and cast it on the rest.
Ippolito. Some are there whose close vision
sees but one
In the whole world, and would not see another
For the whole world, were that one out of it.
Rosalba. Are there some such? 0 may they
be my friends !
0 how, before I know them, I do love them !
Ippolito. After no strife, no censure, no com-
plaint,
Have not your tears been seen, when you have
left him,
Thro' tediousness, distaste, dislike, and grief
(Ingenuous minds must feel it, and may own it)
That love, so rashly promist, would retire,
Hating exaction, circumvention, bonds ?
Rosalba. Such grief is yet unknown to me.
I know
All tears are not for sorrow : many swell
In the warm depths of gratitude and bliss ;
But precious over all are those that hang
And tremble at the tale of generous deeds.
These he relates when he might talk, as you do,
Of passion : but he sees my heart, he finds
What fragrance most refreshes it.
How high,
0 Heaven ! must that man be, who loves, and
who
Would still raise others higher than himself
To interest his beloved !
All my soul
Is but one drop from his, and into his
Falls, as earth's dew falls into earth again.
Ippolito. Yet would it not be wise to trust a
friend
Able to counsel in extremes and straits ?
Rosalba. Is it not wise in darkness and in storm
To trust the wave that lashes us, and pray
Its guidance on the rocks whereto it tends 1
1 have my guide, Lord Cardinal ! he alone
IPrOLITO DI ESTE.
609
Is ship and pilot to me, sea and star :
Counsel from others, knowing him, would be
Like worship of false gods ; in me no less
Than profanation and apostasy.
Ippolito. We may retire ; he comes not here
to-day.
Rosalba. Then will I not retire, but lay my
head
Upon the feet of any pitying saint
Until he comes, altho' it be to-morrow.
Ippolito. To-morrow he may fail : the sovran
will
By rescript has detained and must delay him.
Rosalba. Lead, lead me to Ferrante.
Ippolito. Were I worthy.
Rosalba. Proud cruel man ! that bitter sneer
bodes ill.
May not I see him 1
Ippolito. He may not see you.
Rosalba. 0 let him ! well my memory can
supply
His beauteous image ; I can live on love
Saturate, like bees with honey, long drear days ;
He must see me, or can not rest ; I can.
SECOND PART.
IPPOHTO, FERRANTE, and GIULIO, in prison.
Ippolito. Reasons of state, I fear, have dictated
This something like severity ; God grant
Here be no heresy : do both avow it,
Staring in silence at discovery ?
Giulio. No order forced me hither; I am come
To share my brother's fate, whate'er it be,
And mitigate his sufferings.
Ippolito. May they cease !
Givlio. Those words would have dissolved them
into air,
Spoken but twenty furlongs from these bars.
Ippolito. I would do much to serve you ; but
my faith
And my allegiance have two other lords,
The duke my brother, and the pope my God.
Ferrante then says nothing ]
Ferrante. He well knows
Thy hatred and its cause.
Ippolito. Why should I hate you, . .
My father's son, they say?
Ferrante. They say ! His blood
Runs in these veins, pure, for pure blood was hers
Who loved the youthful lover, and who died
When falser vows estranged the matchless prince.
Ippolito. He saw his error.
Ferrante. All men do when age
Bends down their heads, or gold shines in their
way.
Ippolito. Altho' I would have helpt you in dis-
tress,
And just removed you from the court awhile,
You call'd me tyrant.
Ferrante. Called thee tyrant ? I ?
By Heaven ! in tyrant there is something great
That never was in thee. I would be killed
Rather by any monster of the wild
Than choakt by weeds and quicksands, rather
crusht
By maddest rage than clay-cold apathy.
Those who act well the tyrant, neither seek
Nor shun the name ; and yet I wonder not
That thou repeatest it, and wishest me ;
It sounds like power, like policy, like courage,
And none who calls thee tyrant can despise thee.
Go, issue orders for imprisonment,
Warrants for death : the gibbet and the wheel,
Lo ! the grand boundaries of thy dominion !
0 what a mighty office for a minister
(And such Alfonso's brother calls himself)
To be the scribe of hawkers ! Man of genius !
The lanes and allies echo with thy works.
Givlio. Ah ! do not urge him ; he may ruin you ;
He may pursue you to the grave.
Ferrante. He dares not :
Look at his collar ! see the saint he wears !
The amber saint may ask too much for that.
Ippolito. Atheist ! thy scoffs encourage every
crime,
And strip thee, like a pestilence, of friends :
Theirs is the guilt to march against the law,
They mount the scaffold, and the blow is thine.
Ferrante. How venom burnishes his adder's
crest !
How eloquent on scaffolds and on laws !
If such a noisome weed as falsehood is
Give frothy vigour to a worm like thee,
Crawl, eat, drink, sleep upon it, and farewell.
Ippolito (to GIPLIO). Take you the sentence, and
God be with both ! [Goes.
Giulio. What sentence have we here 1
Ferrante. Unseal and read it.
Giulio (reading). Of sight ! of sight ! of sight !
Ferrante. Would you escape,
My gentle Giulio ? Run not thus around
The wide light chamber, press not thus your brow
Against the walls, with your two palms above.
Seek you the door then ] you are uncondemned
To lose the sight of one who is the bloom
And breath of life to you : the bolts are drawn
On me alone. You carry in your breast
Most carefully our brother's precious gift :
Well, take it anywhere, but do not hope
Too much from anyone. Time softens rocks,
And hardens men.
Giulio. Pray then our God for help.
Ferrante. 0 my true brother, Giulio ! why thus
hang
Around my neck and pour forth prayers for me ]
Where there are priests and kinsmen such as ours,
God hears not, nor is heard. I am prepared
For death.
Giulio. Ah ! worse than death may come upon
you,
Unless Heaven interpose.
Ferrante. I know the worst,
And bear one comfort in my breast that fire
And steel can ne'er force from it : she I love
Will not be his, but die as she hath lived.
Doubt you 1 that thus you shake the head and
sigh.
R R
610
GUZMAN AND HIS SON.
Giulio. Far other doubt was mine : even this
shall cease.
Ferrante. Speak it.
Giulio. I must : God pardon me !
Ferrante. Speak on.
Giulio. Have we not dwelt in friendship from
our birth,
Told the same courtier the same tale of joy,
And pointed where life's earliest thorn had pierced
Amid the sports of boyhood, ere the heart
Hath aught of bitter or unsound within ]
Ferrante. We have indeed.
Giulio. Has my advice been ill 1
Ferrante. Too often ill-observed, but always good.
Giulio. Brother, my words are not what better
men
Would speak to you ; and yet my love, I think,
Must be more warm than theirs can ever be.
Ferrante. Brother's, friend's, father's, when was
it like yours 1
Giulio. Which of them ever said what I shall
say?
Ferrante. Speak ; my desires are kindled, my
fears quencht.
Giulio. Do not delay to die, lest crueller
Than common death befal you.
Ferrante. Then the wheel
Is ordered in that schedule ! Must she too
Have her chaste limbs laid bare ? Here lies the
rack;
Here she would suffer ere it touch the skin.
No, I will break it with the thread of life
Ere the sound reach her. Talk no more of Heaven,
Of Providence, of Justice. Look on her.
Why should she sufferl what hath she from Heaven
Of comfort or protection 1
Giulio. Talk not so.
Pity comes down when Hope hath flown away.
Ferrante. Illusion !
Giulio. If it were, which it is not,
Why break with vehement words such sweet
illusion ?
For were there nought above but empty air,
Nought but the clear blue sky where birds
delight,
Soaring o'er myriad worlds of living dust
That roll in columns round the noontide ray,
Your heart would faint amid such solitude,
Would shrink in such vacuity : that heart
(Ferrante ! can you hide its wants from me ? )
Rises and looks around and calls aloud
For some kind Being, some consoling bosom,
Whereon to place its sorrows, and to rest.
Ferrante. Oh ! that was here . . I cannot look
beyond.
Giulio. Hark! hear you not the people ? to the
window !
They shout and clap their hands when they first
meet you
After short absence ; what shall they now do ]
Up ! seize the moment ; show yourself.
Ferrante. Stay, Giulio !
Draw me not thither ; speak not of my wrongs ;
I would await but not arouse their vengeance,
And would deserve but court not their applause.
Little of good shall good men hope from them,
Nothing shall wiser. [A side.
0 were he away !
But if I fail, he must die too, being here.
Giulio. Let me call out : they are below the
grate :
They would deliver you : try this one chance.
Obdurate ! would you hold me down ? They 're
gone !
Ferrante. Giulio ! for shame ! weep not, or
here I stay
And let vile hands deform me.
Giulio. They shall never.
Ferrante. What smoke arises! Are there
torches under 1
Surely the crowd has past : 'tis from the stairs.
Giulio. Anticipate the blow.
Ferrante. One more must grieve !
And will she grieve like you, too tender Giulio !
Turn not away the head, the hand. What hold
you?
Give, give it me. 'Tis keen. They call you forth.
Tell her . . no, say not we shall meet again,
For tears flow always faster at those words . .
May the thought come, but gently, like a dream.
GUZMAN AND HIS SON.
Son. 0 father ! am I then within thy arms
Once more ? 0 yes ; what other heart beats
so?
Guzman. Son ! art thou free ? How couldst
thou have escaped ?
Son. God, God alone hath moved our enemy.
Guzman. He will perfect his work ; he needs
not us.
Son. I shall then hold my sister's eyes again
Within my own, her palm around my head !
Hence let us, while we may.
Guzman. What speakest thou ?
Son. If thou wilt only bid the war to pause,
I then am free.
Guzman. Free 1 then thou art not yet ?
Son. Unless our soldiersare withdrawn, not death
Alone awaits me.
Guzman. Mercy ! mercy ! God !
Without thy voice, without thy helping hand,
We stagger, weak as infants, from our duty.
Child ! child ! what can I do ?
Son. Hath not God spoken ?
And hath he ceast to speak ?
Guzman. The brave man's breast
Is God's pure tabernacle : thro' the world,
Its storms, its deserts, we must carry it.
For Him against the infidel I war ;
No peace, no truce, unless at his command.
Son. God doth not always speak in thunder-
clouds.
THE CORONATION.
611
Even in. the rain and dew, on the weak herb
That bends before them, there too is a voice
Breathing from Him. God is not always wroth ;
He pities too, and most delights in pity.
Guzman. Art thou afraid ]
Son. Father ! 0 father ! no.
Shame me not thus. But to have felt thy lips
Upon my brow, upon my eyes, my mouth,
And to have breathed his breath who gave me
life
Now sixteen years ago . . 0 father ! save me !
Guzman. Another would have said thou wert
too rash ;
How many fathers, of their sons, have said it,
Ay, and of brave ones, and for being brave ;
I never said it, even when I lost thee,
Thee, my first-born, my only living son,
Precious as life . . almost, almost, as honour.
Son ! thou art going into God's own glory,
And wouldst thou that thy father at one breath
Be spoil'd of his, and thine ?
Son. No, father, no !
Fight on ; and think of my worst fault no more.
They shout.
Guzman (to his trumpeters). Reply.
[Flourish of trumpets.
Thus my last groan is drown'd.
THE CORONATION.
FEBE. GRISELDA. ROMOALDA. ARMIDA. FRA PEPB.
Febe. Our good king Ferdinand, altho' I say it,
He is the bravest king that ever trod
Upon neat's leather, with a star to brisket.
Griselda. Death, a dog's death, to whosoe'er
denies it !
Febe. He 's just like one of us, as kings should be.
Griselda. Ay, he has bowels.
Febe. Faith ! has he : I saw
His Majesty hold up a string of paste
Three palms in length, and down his throat it slid,
Just like the sword down that great conjuror's.
Griselda. And then he claspt his hand on t'other
side,
So natural !
Febe. And laught as heartily
As any pickpocket when purseless wight
Cries thief, and points him out to some near sbirro,
Who looks all ways but that, and will hear first
What has been lost, and where are witnesses.
Griselda. Gnats, rats, and rogues, are bred in
every city,
But only ours rears Ferdinands.
Febe. Here comes
Fra Pepe.
Fra Pepe. What now want ye 1 What hath
brought ye
Into this crowd, among these men and horses 1
Griselda. Father ! do shrive us ere we face such
perils ;
Trumpeters, poets, heroes, harlequins,
And overhead vast tottering catafalcs,
Choak-full, and mountain-high ; ten thousand arms
Around ten thousand waists, and scarce can save
them.
Fra Pepe. I have no time to shrive ye.
Febe. God forbid
That we should urge it ! But yon tripe smells
bravely,
And we keep many Fridays in the week ;
Do not turn this fine Tuesday into one.
Fra Pepe. Knowest thou what tripe is ?
Febe. From
ancient records
And faint remembrances.
Fra Pepe. Hast tasted it ?
Griselda. Why should we not, on some rare
festival ?
Fra Pepe. Luxury will creep downward, and
seize souls.
Who pampered you at this enormous rate ]
Griselda. We are not young ones now, but
heretofore
We have had lovers, and have seen carlinos
Spin upon table ; and the change was ours.
Fra Pepe. 0 shame upon ye !
Febe. Shame is called
upon us
When we are old and needy ; they who brought
Shame and old age upon us, call it loudest.
Fra Pepe. Thou talkest foolishly indeed, good
woman !
Febe. We all talk our best things when teeth
are flush.
Griselda. Wit is not wanting while the cheek
wears roses
And coral lips are ready to impart it.
Romoalda. I doubt now whether all this tripe
be real.
Ermida. They got it cheap, or would not give
so largely ;
An ounce, two ounces, to one family.
Febe. What ! kings mere hucksters ! better say
they stole it.
Griselda. Such glorious ones would scarcely
steal the cattle,
Much less what some call offal. Rob poor farmers !
Come, Febe, if we listen to her talk
We may do penance in a stiller place.
Febe. Never say " come away," my good Griselda !
While they are forking it from pans and kettles
Wide as the crater and as piping-hot.
0 father Pepe ! could you touch, see, smell it !
Bees may make honeycombs ; what bee could ever
Make honeycomb like tripe ? Ah fat ! ah pith !
Soft, suctionable, savory.
Fra Pepe. Out upon thee !
Griselda. See there now ! Off he goes !
Febe. No fault of mine.
Griselda. Yes; thy shrill squally shouts, and
rubbing down
R R 2
612
ESSEX AND BACON.
Of mouth, with one arm first, and then the other,
And then the apron. Who beside thyself
Would talk so touchingly, so near mid-day 1
A qualm came over me; I felt half-famisht ;
No monk on earth could stand it ; not the best
That ever faced the devil in the desert.
Romoalda. Between you, pretty work ! the frate
gone !
Febe. Follow him : who detains you ? We want
nothing
With you, signora !
Armida. Let those vulgar women
Talk about tripe ; we can buy liver, buy it,
Drink the half-flask, doze the half-hour, again
Be young, then shrive us. One night scores not
deep.
There's, by my reckoning, mother Eomoalda,
Only one night between us and to-morrow.
Romoalda (striking her stomacher). The best
church-clock lies under this red canvas,
And points, within a trice, to dinner-time.
Qriselda. You totter about sadly, neighbour
Febe!
Febe. No wonder ; they have thrown so many
pulps
And peels of melon on the ground, I know
My feet are wet, and my whole stockings, with
them
And plashy daffodils, like artichokes
In size, knee-deep, and palm-leaves long as boats :
So, were there room for falling, fall I must.
Oriselda. May-hap you tasted a cup's rim at
starting1?
Febe. Before we met, one little broken one,
I sipt. They never told me 'twas so strong :
And then they took advantage of me.
Griselda. Men
Always do that with us poor lonely women.
Febe. 'Twas not the wine nor men : a fig for
them !
This hubbub has confounded me, this crowd ;
Soldiers and monks, and mummers fill the street,
And candles bigger than the priests that bear
them,
And saucy boys running aside the candles
To catch the drops, leaving one hand for mischief;
And then the bells are making such a coil,
Saint against saint, from Mole to Capo-inonte,
We can not hear the loudest voice cry gara
If horse or mule tramp muzzling into us.
In vain, Griselda, lift we up our shoulders
And whisper in God's ear we think it hard.
Oriselda. Well, Febe, by stout shoving we are
now
Beyond the mob. What ails thee ]
Febe. Many things
Ail me ; vexations and infirmities ;
Beside a tiny matter of an infant
I dropt into the sea through awkwardness.
Oriselda. Did not the child cry out, as child-
dren should ?
Febe. It did. Well, well ! I made an angel
of it.
Oriselda. Then say no more about it.
Febe. ' Tis in heaven,
Among the other angels : but I fear
That when they say, "Sing! sing, my little one !"
It may give answer, " Five hard fingers here
Have spoilt my singing."
Griselda. They who make an angel
Make more than they who make ten penitents,
And yet to make one penitent wins heaven.
Febe. I sometimes wish 'twere back again.
Griselda. To cry ?
Febe. Ah ! it does cry ere the first sea-mew
cries ;
It wakes me many mornings, many nights,
And fields of poppies could not quiet it.
Oriselda. Febe ! we must not think of it to-day.
Sorrow is most offensive to the great,
.And nobody should grieve when kings are near.
This, above all days, is a day of joy ;
Another king is given to the world,
And our first duty is to guard his throne.
Febe. And drink a little beaker to his health.
We, mother Eomoalda ! with Christ's help,
Will, against all his enemies, support him.
0 ! I am thirsty with the dust ! beside,
1 was so worried by that odious mob,
The people seem to push against me still.
ESSEX AND BACON.
Essex. I did believe, sir, I had helpt to raise
Many to wealth and station, some to fame, . .
And one to friendship.
Bacon. . You, my noble earl,
Have done it ; and much more. We must lament
A power thus past (or rather thrown) away.
Essex. Thou ? thou lament it, Bacon 1
Bacon. To my soul.
Essex. Why then, with eneVgy beyond the
pitch
Of brawling law, cry vengeance ? when my fortune
Was pierced with every bolt from every hand,
Soon as the golden links were snapt asunder,
Which they who rule the earth held round that
bird
Who bore their lightnings and struck down their
foes.
Bacon. My gracious lord ! were always their
commands
Well waited for ?
Essex. Nay, by my troth, my zeal
Outflow them.
Bacon. Your return was unadvised.
Essex. Unwelcome : that is worse.
Bacon. The worst of all
Was summoning to arms a loyal land,
Basking in peace and plenteousness.
Essex. How far
Extended this your basking ? court indeed
And inns of law were warm enough ; on those
TYRREL AND RUFUS.
613
The sun beats all the day, through all the year ;
Everything there so still and orderly,
That he who sneezes in them is caught up
And cudgel'd for his pains.
Bacon. Should he awake
Trumpets by sneezing, should he blow up banners,
'Twere well if only cudgels fell on him :
Our laws have sharper instruments, my lord !
Essex. I know it ; and I knew it ere I rose.
Bacon. 0 ! had this never happened !
Essex. Then wouldst thou
Have lost some smiles, some parleyings, some
tags
Of ermine, and, . . what more thou valuest
(As any wise man would) . . some little gold.
Bacon. Dross !
Essex (smiling). Very true ! . . as men are dust
and ashes.
Bacon. Such thoughts become all mortals ; most
of all
Those who have fallen under high displeasure,
Who have their God and Prince to reconcile,
And are about to change this brief vile life . . .
Nay, nay, my lord ! your life may rest unchanged
For years to come, if you, upon your knees,
Humbly ask pardon . .
Essex (fiercely}. Pardon ! [After hesitation.
I will ask it . .
Bacon. . . Before the privy council, and the
court
Especially assembled.
Essex (indignantly). Not before
The best among them, were he quite alone, ,
No, by the soul of Essex ! were he Raleigh . .
The only great man there.
Bacon. Are we so scorned ]
Essex. Bacon! I did not say the only wise
one;
So, do not break thy ring, or loose the stone.
Bacon. My lord ! my finger might have been
uneasy
Without such notice from that once high peer
Erewhile the Earl of Essex . . until treason
Level'd him lower than burgess or than churl.
Essex. I will not say thou liest ; for thy tongue
Lags far behind thy heart ; thy strongest wit
May stretch and strain, but never make them
yoke-mates.
Bacon. This cork appliance, this hard breath-
ing, served
While there was water under for support,
But cut a dismal figure in the mud.
Essex. To servile souls how abject seem the
fallen !
Benchers and message-bearers stride o'er Essex !
Bacon. Unmasted pinnace may row safely
under
No high colossus, without pricking it.
But, sure, the valiant Earl is somewhat chafed . .
Who could have thought it ! . . by a worm like
me !
Essex. Begone ! I have fairly weighed thee.
Bacon (alone). He weigh me !
No man is stout enough* to trim the balance,
Much less to throw the weight in . .
He weigh me !
Flaunting and brittle as a honeysuckle,
Sweet in the chamber, in the field blown down,
Ramping in vain to reach again its prop,
And crusht by the first footfal.
Arrogance
Stares, but sees badly : snatches with quick
gripe
What seems within the reach, and, being infirm
Of stand, is overbalanced.
Shall I bear
Foul words upon me ?
I have thrown them back
Manfully to the beard that wagged with them.
My courage is now safe beyond suspicion . .
Myself can hardly doubt it after this.
Yet that audacious criminal dared spit
Reproaches ! seldom are they bearable,
But, springing up from reason, sting like asps . .
Not that the man has reason . . he has none . .
For, what had I to do with it ? I spoke . .
And, when we are commanded, we must speak.
It was her Grace . . and surely she knows best.
I may now wash my hands of him at last,
I have but done my duty : fall who may.
WALTER TYRREL AND WILLIAM RUFUS.
Rufus. Tyrrel, spur onward ! we must not await
The laggard lords: when they have heard the
I warrant they will follow fast enough,
Each for his haunch. Thy roan is mettlesome ;
How the rogue sidles up to me, and claims
Acquaintance with young Yorkshire ! not
afraid
Of wrinkling lip, nor ear laid down like grass
By summer thunder-shower on Windsor mead.
Tyrrel. Behold, my liege ! hither they troop
amain,
Over yon gap.
Rufus. Over my pales ? the dolts
Have broken down my pales !
Tyrrel. Please you, my liege,
Unless they had, they must have ridden round
Eleven miles.
Rufus. Why not have ridden round
* Bacon little knew or suspected that there was then
existing (the only one that ever did exist) his superior
in intellectual power. Position gives magnitude. While
the world was rolling above Shakspeare, he was seen
imperfectly : when he rose above the world, it was dis-
covered that he was greater than the world. The most
honest of his contemporaries would scarcely have admitted
this, even had they known it. But vast objects of remote
altitude must be looked at a long while before they are
ascertained. Ages are the telescope-tubes that must be
lengthened out for Shakspeare ; and generations of men
serve but as single witnesses to his claims.
614
TYRREL AND RUFUS.
Eleven miles ? or twenty, were there need.
By our Lady ! they shall be our carpenters
And mend what they have marr'd. At any time
I can make fifty lords ; but who can make
As many head of deer, if mine escape ?
And sure they will, unless they too are mad.
Call me that bishop . . him with hunting-cap
Surcharged with cross, and scarlet above knee.
Tyrrel (galloping forward). Ho! my lord
bishop !
Bishop. Who calls me ?
Tyrrel. Your slave.
Bishop. Well said, if toned as well and timed
as well.
Who art thou I citizen or hind 7 what wantest 1
Tyrrel. My lord ! your presence ; but before
the king ;
Where it may grow more placid at its leisure.
The morn is only streakt with red, my lord !
You beat her out and out : how prettily
You wear your stocking over head and ears !
Keep off the gorse and broom ! they soon catch
fire!
Bishop. The king shall hear of this : I recognise
Sir Walter Tyrrel.
Tyrrel. And Sir Walter Tyrrel
By the same token duly recognises
The Church's well-begotten son, well-fed,
Well-mounted, and all well, except well-spoken,
The spiritual lord of Winchester.
Bishop. Ay, by God's grace ! pert losel !
Tyrrel. Prick along
Lord bishop ! quicker ! catch fresh air ! we want it;
We have had foul enough till dinner-time.
Bishop. Varlet ! I may chastise this insolence.
Tyrrel. I like those feathers : but there crows
no cock
Without an answer. Though the noisiest throat
Sings from the belfrey of snug Winchester,
Yet he from Westminster hath stouter spurs.
Bishop. God's blood ! were I no bishop . .
Tyrrel. Then thy own
Were cooler.
Bishop. Whip that hound aside ! 0 Christ !
The beast has paw'd my housings ! What a day
For dirt !
Tyrrel. The scent lies well ; pity no more
The housings ; look, my lord ! here trots the king !
Rufus. Which of you broke my palings down ]
Bishop. God knows,
Most gracious sir.
Rvfus. No doubt he does ; but you,
Bishop ! could surely teach us what God knows.
Ride back and order some score handicrafts
To fix them in their places.
Bishop. The command
Of our most gracious king shall be obeyed.
[Riding off.
Malisons on the atheist ! Who can tell
Where are my squires and other men 1 confused
Among the servitors of temporal lords !
I must e'en turn again and hail that brute.
Sir Walter ! good Sir Walter ! one half-word !
[TYRREL rides toward him.
Sir Walter ! may I task your courtesy
To find me any of my followers ?
Tyrrd. Willingly.
Rufus. Stay with me ; I want thee,
Tyrrel !
What does the bishop boggle at 1
Tyrrel. At nothing.
He seeks his people, to retrieve the damage.
Rufus. Where are the lords ]
Tyrrd. Gone past your
Grace, bare-headed,
And falling in the rear.
Rufus. • Well, prick then on.
I care but little for the chase to-day,
Although the scent lies sweetly. To knock down
My paling is vexatious. We must see
Our great improvements in this forest ; what
Of roads blockt up, of hamlets swept away,
Of lurking dens called cottages, and cells,
And hermitages. Tyrrel ! thou didst right
And dutifully, to remove the house
Of thy forefathers. 'Twas an odd request
To leave the dovecote for the sake of those
Flea-bitten blind old pigeons. There it stands !
But, in God's name ! what mean these hives ] the
bees
May sting my dogs.
Tyrrd. They hunt not in the summer.
Rufus. They may torment my fawns.
Tyrrel. Sir ! not unless
Driven from their hives : they like the flowers
much better.
Rufus. Flowers ! and leave flowers too ?
Tyrrel. Only some half- wild,
In tangled knots ; balm, clary, marjoram.
Rufus. What lies beyond this close briar hedge,
that smells
Through the thick dew upon it, pleasantly 1
Tyrrel. A poor low cottage : the dry marl-pit
shields it,
And, frail and unsupported like itself,
Peace-breathing honeysuckles comfort it
In its misfortunes.
Rufus. I am fain to laugh
At thy rank minstrelsy. A poor low cottage !
Only a poor low cottage ! where, I ween,
A poor low maiden blesses Walter Tyrrel.
Tyrrel. It may be so.
Rufus. No ; it may not be so.
My orders were that all should be removed ;
And, out of special favour, special trust
In thee, Sir Walter, I consign'd the care
Into thy hands, of razing thy own house
And those about it ; since thou hast another
Fairer and newer, and more lands around.
Tyrrel. Hall, chapel, chamber, cellar, turret,
grange,
Are level with the grass.
Rufus. What negligence
To leave the work then incomplete, when little
Was there remaining ! Strip that roof, and start
Thy petty game from cover.
Tyrrel. O my liege !
Command not this !
THE PARENTS OF LUTHER.
615
Rufus. Make me no confidant
Of thy base loves.
Tyrrel. Nor you, my liege ! nor any :
None such hath Walter Tyrrel.
Rufus. Thou 'rt at bay ;
Thou hast forgotten thy avowal, man !
Tyrrel. My father's house is (like my father)
gone :
But in that house, and from that father's heart
Mine grew into his likeness, and held thence
Its rich possessions . . God forgive my boast !
He bade me help the needy, raise the low . .
Rufus. And stand against thy king !
Tyrrel. How many yokes
Of oxen, from how many villages
For miles around, brought I, at my own charge,
To bear away the rafters and the beams
That were above my cradle at my birth,
And rang when I was christened, to the carouse
Of that glad father and his loyal friends !
Rufus. He kept good cheer, they tell me.
Tyrrel. Yonder thatch
Covers the worn-out woman at whose breast
I hung, an infant.
Rufus. Ay ! and none beside ?
Tyrrel. Four sons have fallen in the wars.
Rufus. Brave dogs !
Tyrrel. She hath none left.
Rufus. No daughter 1
Tyrrel. One.
Rufus. I thought it.
Unkennel her.
Tyrrel. Grace! pity! mercy on her !
Rufus. I will not have hot scents about my
chase.
Tyrrel. A virtuous daughter of a virtuous
mother
Deserves not this, my liege !
Rufus. Am I to learn
What any subject at my hand deserves ]
Tyrrel. Happy, who dares to teach it, and who
can !
Rufus. And thou, forsooth !
Tyrrel. I have done my duty, sire !
Rufus. Not half : perform the rest, or bide my
wrath.
Tyrrel. What, break athwart my knee the staff
of age ?
Rufus. Question me, villain !
Tyrrel. Villain I am none.
Rufus. Retort my words ! By all the saints !
thou diest,
False traitor !
Tyrrel. Sire ! no private wrong, no word
Spoken in angriness, no threat against
My life or honour, urge me . .
Rufus. Urge to what ?
Dismountest ?
Tyrrel. On my knees, as best beseems,
I ask . . not pardon, sire ! but spare, oh spare
The child devoted, the deserted mother !
Rufus. Take her ; take both.
Tyrrel. She loves her home ; her limbs
Fail her; her husband sleeps in that church-
yard ;
Her youngest child, born many years the last,
Lies (not half-length) along the father's coffin.
Such separate love grows stronger in the stem
(I have heard say) than others close together,
And that, where pass these funerals, all life's
spring
Vanishes from behind them, all the fruits
Of riper age are shrivel'd, every sheaf
Husky ; no gleaning left. She would die here,
Where from her bed she looks on his ; no more
Able to rise, poor little soul ! than he.
Rufus. Who would disturb them, child or
father1? where
Is the churchyard thou speakest of?
Tyrrel. Among
Yon nettles : we have level'd all the graves.
Rufus. Right : or our horses might have
stumbled on them.
Tyrrel. Your grace oft spares the guilty ; spare
the innocent !
Rufus. Up from the dew ! thy voice is hoarse
already.
Tyrrel. Yet God hath heard it. It entreats
again.
Once more, once only; spare this wretched
house.
Rufus. No, nor thee neither.
Tyrrel. Speed me, God ! and judge
0 thou ! between the oppressor and opprest !
[He pierces RUFUS with an arrow.
THE PARENTS OF LUTHER.
John Luther. I left thee, Margaretta, fast I
asleep,
Thou, who wert always earlier than myself,
Yet hast no mine to trudge to, hast no wedge
To sharpen at the forge, no pickaxe loose
In handle.
Come, blush not again : thy cheeks
May now shake off those blossoms which they
bore
So thick this morning that last night's avowal
Nestles among them still.
So, in few months
A noisier bird partakes our whispering bower 1
Say it again.
Margaretta. And, in my dream, I blush'd !
John. Idler ! wert dreaming too ? and after
dawn]
Marg. In truth was I.
John. Of me?
Marg. No, not of you.
John. No matter ; for methinks some Seraph's
wing
Fann'd that bright countenance.
Marg. Methinks it did.
616
THE PARENTS OF LUTHER.
And stir'd my soul within.
How could you go
And never say good-by, and give no kiss ?
John. It might have waken'd thee. I can give
more
Kisses than sleep : so thinking, I heav'd up
Slowly my elbow from above the pillow,
And, when I saw it woke thee not, went forth.
Marg. I would have been awaken'd for a kiss,
And a good-by, or either, if not both.
John. Thy dreams were not worth much then.
Marg. Few dreams are ;
But
John. By my troth ! I will intrench upon
The woman's dowry, and will contradict,
Tlio' I should never contradict again.
1 have got more from dreams a hundred-fold
Than all the solid earth, than field, than town,
Than (the close niggard purse that cramps my
fist)
The mine will ever bring me.
Marg. So have I,
And so shall each indeed, if this be true.
John. What was it then 1 for when good dreams
befal
The true of heart, 'tis likely they come true.
A vein of gold ] ay ? silver ? copper ? iron ?
Lead? sulphur? alum? alabaster? coal?
Shake not those ringlets nor let down those eyes,
Tho' they look prettier for it, but speak out.
True, these are not thy dainties.
Marg. Guess again.
John. Crystalline kitchens, amber-basted spits,
Whizzing with frothy savory salamanders,
And swans that might (so plump and pleasant-
looking)
Swim in the water from the mouths of knights ;
And ostrich-eggs off coral woods (the nests
Outside of cinnamon, inside of saffron,
And mortar'd well, for safety-sake, with myrrh),
Serv'd up in fern leaves green before the Flood ?
Marg. Stuff! you will never guess it, I am
sure.
John. No ? and yet these are well worth dream-
ing of.
Mary. Try once again.
John. Faith ! it is kind to let me.
Under-ground beer-cascades from Nuremberg ?
Rhine vintage stealing from Electoral cellars,
And, broader than sea-baths for mermaid brides,
With fluits upon the surface strides across,
Pink conchs, to catch it and to light it down ;
And music from basaltic organ-pipes
For dancing ; and five fairies to one man.
Marg. Oh his wild fancies ! . . Are they inno-
cent?
John. I think I must be near it by that shrug.
Spicy sack-posset, roaring from hot springs
And running off like mad thro' candied cliffs,
But catching now and then some fruit that
drops . .
Shake thy head yet? why then thou hast the
palsy.
Zooks ! I have thought of all things probable
And come to my wits' end. What canst thou
mean?
Marg. Nay, I have half a mind now not to tell.
John. Then it is out . . Thy whole one ill could
hold it.
A woman's mind hates pitch upon its seams.
Marg. Hush ! one word more, and then my
lips are closed.
John. Pish ! one more word, and then my
lips . .
Marg. 0 rare
Impudent man ! . . and such discourse from you !
I dreamt we had a boy . .
John. A wench, a wench . .
A boy were not like thee.
Marg. I said a boy.
John. Well, let us have him, if we miss the girl.
Marg. My father told me he must have a boy,
And call him Martin (his own name) because
Saint Martin both was brave and cloth'd the poor.
John. Hurrah then for Saint Martin ! he shall
have
Enough to work on in this house of ours.
Marg. Now do not laugh, dear husband ! but
this dream
Seem'd somewhat more.
John. So do all dreams, ere past.
Marg. Well, but it seems so still.
John. Ay, twist my fingers,
Basketing them to hold it.
Marg. Never grave !
John. I shall be.
Marg. That one thought should make you now.
John. And that one tap upon the cheek to boot.
Marg. I do believe, if you were call'd to Heaven
You would stay toying here.
John. I doubt I should.
Methinks I set my back against the gate
Thrown open to me by this rosy hand,
And look both ways, but see more heaven than
earth:
Give me thy dream : thou puttest it aside :
I must be feasted : fetch it forth at once.
Marg. Husband ! I dreamt the child was in my
arms,
And held a sword, which from its little grasp
I could not move, nor you : I dreamt that proud
But tottering shapes in purple filagree
Pull'd at it, and he laught.
John. They frighten'd thee ?
Marg. Frighten'd me ! no : the infant's strength
prevail'd.
Devils, with angels' faces, throng'd about ;
Some offer'd flowers, and some held cups behind,
And some held daggers under silken stoles.
John. These frighten'd thee, however.
Marg. He knew all ;
I knew he did.
John. A dream ! a dream indeed !
He knew and laught !
Marg. He sought his mother's breast,
And lookt at them no longer.
All the room
Was fill'd with light and gladness.
HENRY THE EIGHTH AND ANNE BOLEYN.
617
John. He shall be
Richer than we are; he shall mount his horse . .
A feat above his father ; and be one
Of the duke's spearmen.
Marg. God forbid ! they lead
Unrighteous lives, and often fall untimely.
John. A lion-hearted lad shall Martin be.
Marg. God willing ; if his servant ; but not
else.
I have such hopes, full hopes, hopes overflowing.
John. A grave grand man, half collar and half
cross,
With chain enough to hold our mastiff by,
Thou fain wouldst have him. Out of dirt so stiff
Old Satan fashioneth his idol, Pride.
Marg. If proud and cruel to the weak, and bent
To turn all blessings from their even course
To his own kind and company, may he
Never be great, with collar, cross, and chain ;
No, nor be ever angel, if, 0 God !
He be a fallen angel at the last. [After a pause.
Uncle, you know, is sacristan ; and uncle
Had once an uncle who was parish priest.
John. He was the man who sung so merrily
Those verses which few scholars understand,
Yet which they can not hide away, nor drive
The man from memory after forty years.
Marg. (sings). " Our brightest pleasures are
reflected pleasures.
And they shine sweetest from the cottage-wall."
John. The very same.
Marg. We understand them, John !
John. An inkling. But your uncle sacristan
Hath neither sword nor spur.
Marg. It was a sword,
A flaming sword, but innocent, I saw ;
And I have seen in pictures such as that,
And in the hands of angels borne on clouds.
He may defend our faith, drive out the Turk,
And quench the crescent in the Danaw stream.
John. Thou, who begannest softly, singest now
Shrill as a throstle.
Marg. Have we then no cause
To sing as throstles after sign thus strange ]
John. Because it was so strange, must we
believe
The rather]
Marg. Yes ; no fire was in the house,
No splinter, not a spark. The Virgin's chin
Shone not with rushlight under it ; 'twas out.
For night was almost over, if not past,
And the Count's chapel has not half that blaze
On the Count's birth-day, nor the hall at night.
Ah surely, surely fare like ours sends up
No idle fumes ; nor wish nor hope of mine
Fashion'd so bright a substance to a form
So beautiful. There must be truth in it.
John. There shall be then. Your uncle's
sacristy
Shall hold the armour quite invisible,
Until our little Martin some fine day
Bursts the door open, spurr'd, caparison'd,
Dukes lead his bridle, princes tramp behind.
He may be pope . . who knows 1
Marg. Are you in earnest 1
But if he should be pope, will he love us ?
Or let us (0 yes, sure he would !) love him?
Nor slink away, ashamed ] Pope, no ; not pope,
But bishop (ay ]) he may be 1 There are few
Powerfuller folks than uncle Grimmermann.
Promise he scarce would give us, but a wink
Of hope he gave, to make a chorister.
John. " If thou wilt find materials," were his
words.
Marg. I did not mark the words ; they were
too light :
And yet he never breaks his troth.
John. Not he :
No, he would rather break his fast ten times.
Do not look seriously . . when church allows,
I mean ; no more ; six days a week ; not seven.
I have seen houses where the Friday cheese
Was not (in my mind) cut with Thursday knife.
Marg. 0 now for shame ! such houses can not
stand.
Pr'ythee talk reason. As the furnace-mouth
Shows only fire, so yours shows laughter only. •
Choristers have been friars ; ours may be ;
And then a father abbot.
John. At one leap,
As salmon up Schaffhausen.
Marg. Just the same . .
Then. .
John. Ring the bells ! Martin is Pope, by Jove !
HENRY THE EIGHTH AND ANNE BOLEYN.
SCENE IN THE TOWER.
ANNE BOLEYN and a CONSTABLE of the TOWER.
Anne Boleyn. Is your liege ill, sir, that you
look so anxious 1
Constable of the Tower. Madam !
Anne. I would not ask what you may wish
To keep a secret from me ; but indeed
This right, I think, is left me ; I would know
If my poor husband is quite well to-day.
Constable. Pardon me, gracious lady ! what can
prompt
To this inquiry?
Anne. I have now my secret.
Constable. I must report all questions, sayings,
doings,
Movements, and looks of yours. His Highness may
Be rufHed at this eagerness to ask
About his health.
Anne. I am used to ask about it.
Beside, he may remember . . .
Constable. For your Highness
Gladly will I remind our sovran Lord
Of any promise.
Anne. Oh no ! do not that !
It would incense him : he made only one,
618
HENRY THE EIGHTH AND ANNE BOLEYN.
And Heaven alone that heard him must remind
him.
Last night I do suspect, but am not sure,
He scarcely was what kings and husbands should be.
A little wine has great effect upon
Warm hearts (and Henry's heart was very warm)
And upon strong resentments : I do fear
He has those too. But all his friends must love
him.
He may have past (poor Henry !) a bad night,
Thinking upon his hasty resolution.
Constable. Lady! I grieve to tell you, worse
than that ;
Far worse !
Anne. Oh, mercy, then! the child! the child!
Why not have told me of all this before ]
What boots it to have been a guiltless wife,
When I, who should have thought the first about it,
Am an ill mother ? Not to think of thee,
My darling ! my Elizabeth ! whose cradle
Rocks in my ear and almost crazes me.
Is she safe ? Tell me, tell me, is she living 1
Constable. Safe, lady, and asleep in rosy health,
And radiant (if there yet be light enough
To show it on her face) with pleasant dreams,
Such as young angels come on earth to play with.
Anne. Were I but sure that I could dream of her
As I, until last autumn, oft have done,
Joyously, blithely, only waking up
Afraid of having hurt her by my arms
Too wildly in my rapture thrown around her,
I would lay down my weary head, and sleep,
Although the pillow be a little strange,
Nor like a bridal or a childbed pillow.
Constable. 0 lady ! spare those words !
Anne. Why spare them! when
Departure from this world would never be
Departure from its joys : the joys of heaven
Would mingle with them scarcely with fresh
sweetness.
Constable (falling on his knees.) My queen !
Anne. Arise, sir constable !
Constable. My queen !
Heaven's joys lie close before you.
Anne. And you weep !
Few days, I know, are left me ; they will melt
All into one, all pure, all peaceable ;
No starts from slumber into bitter tears,
No struggles with sick hopes and wild desires,
No cruel father cutting down the tree
To crush the child that sits upon its bough
And looks abroad, too tender for suspicion,
Too happy even for hope, maker of happiness.
I could weep too, nor sinfully, at this.
Thou knowest, 0 my God ! thou surely knowest
' Tis no repining at thy call or will.
[Constable, on his knees presents the Writ
of Execution.
I can do nothing now. Take back that writing,
And tell them so, poor souls ! Say to the widow,
I grieve, and can but grieve for her ; persuade her
That children, although fatherless, are blessings ;
And teach those little ones, if e'er you see them,
They are not half so badly off as some.
Fold up the paper ; put it quite aside ;
I am no queen ; I have no almoner.
Ah, now I weep indeed ! Put, put it by.
Many . . I grieve (yet, should I grieve ?) to think it,
Many will often say, when I am gone,
They once had a young queen to pity them.
Nay, though I mehtion'd I had nought to give,
Yet dash not on your head, nor grapple so
With those ungentle hands, while I am here,
A helpless widow's innocent petition.
Smoothe it ; return it with all courtesy :
Smoothe it, I say again : frame some kind words
And see they find their place, then tender it.
What ! in this manner gentlemen of birth
Present us papers ? turn they thus away,
Putting their palms between their eyes and us 1
Sir ! I was queen . . and you were kind unto
me
When I was queen no longer : why so changed?
Give it . . but what is now my signature ?
Ignorant are you, or incredulous,
That not a clasp is left me 1 not a stone,
The vilest ; not chalcedony, not agate.
Promise her all my dresses, when . . no, no . .
I am grown superstitious ; they might bring
Misfortune on her, having been Anne Boleyn's.
Constable. Lady! I wish this scroll could
suffocate
My voice. One order I must disobey,
To place it in your hand and mark you read it.
I lay it at your feet, craving your pardon
And God's, my lady !
Anne. Rise up ; give it me ;
I know it ere I read it, but I read it
Because it is the king's, whom I have sworn
To love and to obey.
Constable (aside). Her mind 's distraught !
Alas, she smiles !
Anne. The worst hath long been over ;
Henry loves courage ; he will love my child
For this ; although I want more than I have ;
And yet how merciful at last is Heaven
To give me but thus much for her sweet sake !
SCENE IN RICHMOND CHASE.
HKNRY, COURTIERS, HOUNDS, &c.
Henry. Northumberland ! pray tell me, if thou
canst,
Who is that young one in the green and gold ]
Dost thou not see her1? hast thou left both eyes
Upon the bushes ]
Northumberland. There are many, sir,
In the same livery.
Henry. I mean her yonder
On the iron-gray with yellow round his ears.
Impudent wench ! she turns away her cheek !
Northumberland. [After inquiring.
The Lady Katharine Parr, an' please your High-
ness.
Henry. Faith ! she doth please me. What a
sap is rising
In that young bud ! how supple ! yet how solid !
What palpable perfection ! ay, Lord Surrey ]
MISCELLANEOUS.
619
Surrey. A bloom well worthy of a monarch's
bower,
Where only one more lovely smiles beside him.
Henry. Though spring is stirring, yet give me
the summer . .
I can wait yet. Some day, one not far off,
I would confer with her at Hampton-Court . .
Merely to ask her how she likes the chase :
We shall not have another all this season.
The stag alone can help us on in May :
To-morrow is the twentieth.
Hark ! the knell
From Paul's ! . . the Tower-gun, too ! I am
right enough ! [Claps his hands.
I am a widower ! [Again daps his hands.
By this hour to-morrow
Sunny Jane Seymour's long and laughing eyes
Shall light me to our chamber.
Lords ! prick on !
The merry hounds are chiding ! To the chase
To-day ! our coronation for to-morrow.
How sweetly that bell warbled o'er the water.
Norfolk. I like it better than the virginals.
Suffolk. They are poor music.
Norfolk. Songs but make them worse.
Henry. Come; prick we onward. Shall we
have a race ]
Surrey. We are well mounted; but the youngest
man
Will win, for majesty sits lightly on him.
Henry. It may well be. I have lost half my
weight
This morning, lithesome as I was before.
Away !
Norfolk. His saddle swells its bolstered back
Already full two hundred yards before us.
MISCELLANEOUS.
0 FRIENDS ! who have accompanied thus far
My quickening steps, sometimes where sorrow
sate
Dejected, and sometimes where valour stood
Resplendent, right before us ; here perhaps
We best might part ; but one to valour dear
Comes up in wrath and calls me worse than foe,
Reminding me of gifts too ill deserved.
1 must not blow away the flowers he gave,
Altho' now faded ; I must not efface
The letters his own hand has traced for me.
Here terminates my park of poetry.
Look out no longer for extensive woods,
For clusters of unlopt and lofty trees,
With stately animals coucht under them,
Or grottoes with deep wells of water pure,
And ancient figures in the solid rock :
Come, with our sunny pasture be content,
Our narrow garden and our homestead croft,
And tillage not neglected. Love breathes round
Love, the bright atmosphere, the vital air,
Of youth ; without it life and death are one.
She leads in solitude her youthful hours,
Her nights are restlessness, her days are pain.
0 when will Health and Pleasure come again,
Adorn her brow and strew her path with flowers,
And wandering wit relume the roseate bowers,
And turn and trifle with his festive train ]
Grant me, 0 grant this wish, ye heavenly Powers !
All other hope, all other wish, restrain.
Come back, ye Smiles, that late forsook
Each breezy path and ferny nook.
Come Laughter, though the Sage hath said
Thou favourest most the thoughtless head :
I blame thee not, howe'er inclin'd
To love the vacant easy mind,
But now am ready, may it please,
That mine be vacant and at ease.
Sweet children of celestial breed,
Be ruled by me ; repress your speed.
Laughter ! though Momus gave thee birth,
And said, My darling, stay on earth !
Smiles ! though from Venus you arise,
And live for ever in the skies,
Softly ! and let not one descend
But first alights upon my friend.
When one upon her cheek appears,
A thousand spring to life from hers ;
Death smites his disappointed urn,
And spirit, pleasure, wit, return.
WITH PETRARCA S SONNETS.
Behold what homage to his idol paid
The tuneful suppliant of Valclusa's shade.
His verses still the tender heart engage,
They charm'd a rude, and please a polisht age :
Some are to nature and to passion true,
And all had been so, had he lived for you.
The touch of Love dispels the gloom
Of life, and animates the tomb ;
But never let it idly flare
On gazers in the open air,
Nor turn it quite away from one
To whom it serves for moon and sun,
And who alike in night or day
Without it could not find his way.
620
MISCELLANEOUS.
TWELFTH-NIGHT.
I draw with trembling hand my doubtful lot ;
Yet where are Fortune's frowns if she frown not
From whom I hope, from whom I fear, the kiss?
0 gentle Love ! if there be aught beyond
That makes the bosom calm, but leaves it fond,
0 let her give me that, and take back this !
She I love (alas in vain !)
Floats before my slumbering eyes :
When she comes she lulls my pain,
When she goes what pangs arise !
Thou whom love, whom memory flies,
Gentle Sleep ! prolong thy reign !
If even thus she soothe my sighs,
Never let me wake again !
Thou hast not rais'd, lanthe, such desire
In any breast as thou hast rais'd in mine.
No wandering meteor now, no marshy fire,
Leads on my steps, but lofty, but divine :
And, if thou dullest me, as chill thou dost
When I approach too near, too boldly gaze,
So chills the blushing morn, so chills the host
Of vernal stars, with light more chaste than
day's.
Darling shell, where hast thou been,
West or East ] or heard or seen ?
From what pastimes art thou come ?
Can we make amends at home ]
Whether thou hast tuned the dance
To the maids of ocean
Know I not : but Ignorance
Never hurts Devotion.
This I know, lanthe's shell,
I must ever love thee well,
Tho' too little to resound
While the Nereids dance around ;
For, of all the shells that are,
Thou art sure the brightest ;
Thou, lanthe's infant care,
Most these eyes delightest.
To thy early aid she owes
Teeth like budding snowdrop rows :
And what other shell can say
On her bosom once it lay ]
That which into Cyprus bore
Venus from her native sea,
(Pride of shells !) was never more
Dear to her than thou to me.
Away my verse; and never fear,
As men before such beauty do ;
On you she will not look severe,
She will not turn her eyes from you.
Some happier graces could I lend
That in her memory you should live,
Some little blemishes might blend,
For it would please her to forgive.
Pleasure ! why thus desert the heart
In its spring-tide ]
I could have seen her, I could part,
And but have sigh'd !
O'er every youthful charm to stray,
To gaze, to touch . .
Pleasure ! why take so much away,
Or give so much !
XI.
My hopes retire ; my wishes as before
Struggle to find their resting-place in vain :
The ebbing sea thus beats against the shore ;
The shore repels it ; it returns again.
XII.
Lie, my fond heart at rest,
She never can be ours.
Why strike upon my breast
The slowly passing hours ?
Ah ! breathe not out the name !
That fatal folly stay !
Conceal the eternal flame,
And tortured ne'er betray.
The heart you cherish can not change ;
The fancy, faint and fond,
Has never more the wish to range
Nor power to rise beyond.
Clifton ! in vain thy varied scenes invite,
The mossy bank, dim glade, and dizzy hight ;
The sheep that, starting from the tufted thyme,
Untune the distant church's mellow chime,
As o'er each limb a gentle horror creeps,
And shakes above our heads the craggy steeps.
Pleasant I 've thought it to pursue the rower
While light and darkness seize the changeful oar,
The frolic Naiads drawing from below
A net of silver round the black canoe.
Now the last lonely solace must it be
To watch pale evening brood o'er land and sea,
Then join my friends and let those friends believe
My cheeks are moisten'd by the dews of eve.
Ask me not, a voice severe
Tells me, for it gives me pain.
Peace ! the hour, too sure, is near
When I can not ask again.
XVI.
0 thou whose happy pencil strays
Where I am call'd, nor dare to gaze,
MISCELLANEOUS.
621
But lower my eye and check my tongue ;
0, if thou yaluest peaceful days,
Pursue the ringlet's sunny maze,
And dwell not on those lips too long.
What mists athwart my temples fly,
Now, touch by touch, thy fingers tie
With torturing care her graceful zone !
For all that sparkles from her eye
I could not look while thou art by,
Nor could I cease were I alone.
All tender thoughts that e'er possest
The human brain or human breast,
Center in mine for thee . .
Excepting one . . and that must thou
Contribute : come, confer it now :
Grateful I fain would be.
Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,
Alcestis rises from the shades ;
Verse calls them forth ; 'tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.
Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil
Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail
These many summers you and me.
XIX.
One year ago my path was green,
My footstep light, my brow serene ;
Alas ! and could it have been so
One year ago ?
There is a love that is to last
When the hot days of youth are past :
Such love did a sweet maid bestow
One year ago.
I took a leaflet from her braid
And gave it to another maid.
Love ! broken should have been thy bow
One year ago.
xx.
Soon, 0 lanthe ! life is o'er,
And sooner beauty's heavenly smile :
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.
Flow, precious tears ! thus shall my rival know
For me, not him, ye flow.
Stay, precious tears ! ah stay ! this jealous heart
Would bid you flow apart,
Lest he should see you rising o'er the brim,
And hope you rise for him.
Your secret cells, while he is present, keep,
Nor, tho' I 'm absent, weep.
It often comes into my head
That we may dream when we are dead,
But I am far from sure we do.
0 that it were so ! then my rest
Would be indeed among the blest ;
I should for ever dream of you.
I can not tell, not I, why she
Awhile so gracious, now should be
So grave : I can not tell you why
The violet hangs its head awry.
It shall be cull'd, it shall be worn,
In spite of every sign of scorn,
Dark look, and overhanging thorn.
From you, lanthe, little troubles pass
Like little ripples down a sunny river ;
Your pleasures spring like daisies in the grass,
Cut down, and up again as blithe as ever.
While you, my love, are by,
How fast the moments fly !
Yet who could wish them slower ?
Alas ! to think ere long
Your converse and your song
Can reach my ear no more.
0 let the thought too rest
Upon your gentle breast,
Where many kind ones dwell ;
And then perhaps at least
1 may partake a feast
None e'er enjoy'd so well.
Why runs in waste away
Such music, day by day,
When every little wave
Of its melodious rill
Would slake my thirst, until
I quench it in the grave.
lanthe ! you are call'd to cross the sea !
A path forbidden me !
Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds
Upon the mountain-heads,
How often we have watcht him laying down
His brow, and dropt our own
Against each other's, and how faint and short
And sliding the support !
What will succeed it now 1 Mine is unblest,
lanthe ! nor will rest
But on the very thought that swells with pain.
0 bid me hope again !
0 give me back what Earth, what (without you)
Not Heaven itself can do,
One of the golden days that we have past ;
And let it be my last !
Or else the gift would be, however sweet,
Fragile and incomplete.
XXVII.
These are the sights I love to see :
I love to see around
Youths breathing hard on bended knee,
Upon that holy ground
622
My flowers have covered : all the while
I stand above the rest ;
I feel within the angelic smile,
I bless, and I am blest.
Mine fall, and yet a tear of hers
Would swell, not soothe their pain.
Ah ! if she look but at these tears,
They do not fall in vain.
Circe, who bore the diadem
O'er every head we see,
Pursued by thousands, turn'd from them
And fill'd her cup for me.
She seiz'd what little was design'd
To catch a transient view ;
For thee alone she left behind
The tender and the true.
XXX.
If mutable is she I love,
If rising doubts demand their place,
I would adjure them not to move
Beyond her fascinating face.
Let it be question'd, while there flashes
A liquid light of fleeting blue,
Whether it leaves the eyes or lashes,
Plays on the surface or peeps through.
With every word let there appear
So modest yet so sweet a smile,
That he who hopes must gently fear,
Who fears may fondly hope the While.,
Could but the dream of night return by day
And thus again the true lanthe say,
" Altho' some other I should live to see
As fond, no other can have charms for me.
No, in this bosom none shall ever share,
Firm is, and tranquil be, your empire there !
If wing'd with amorous fear the unfetter'd slave
Stole back the struggling heart she rashly gave,
Weak they may call it, weak, but not untrue ;
Its destination, though it fail'd, was you.
So to some distant isle the unconscious dove
Bears at her breast the billet dear to love,
But drops, while viewless lies the happier scene,
On some hard rock or desert beach between."
There are some tears we would not wish to dry,
And some that sting before they drop and die.
Ah ! well may be imagined of the two
Which I would ask of Heaven may fall from you.
Such, ere the lover sinks into the friend,
On meeting cheeks in warm attraction blend.
I hope indeed ere long
To hear again the song
Round which so many throng
Of great and gay :
MISCELLANEOUS.
Whether I shall or not
Draw from Fate's hand that lot
I 'd give a prophet all I 'm worth to say.
But in the Muse's bower
At least, 0 gentle power
Of harmony ! one hour
Of many a day
Devote to her I will,
And cling to her until
They ring the bell for life to run away.
xxxiv.
I love to hear that men are bound
By your enchanting links of sound :
I love to hear that none rebell
Against your beauty's silent spell.
I know not whether I may bear
To see it all, as well as hear ;
And never shall I clearly know
Unless you nod and tell me so.
Soon as lanthe's lip I prest,
Thither my spirit wing'd its way :
Ah, there the wanton would not rest !
Ah, there the wanderer could not stay !
Beloved the last ! beloved the most !
With willing arms and brow benign
Receive a bosom tempest-tost,
And bid it ever beat to thine.
The Nereid maids, in days of yore,
Saw the lost pilot loose the helm,
Saw the wreck blacken all the shore,
And every wave some head o'erwhelm.
Afar the youngest of the train
Beheld (but fear'd and aided not)
A minstrel from the billowy main
Borne breathless near her coral grot.
Then terror fled, and pity rose . .
" Ah me ! " she cried, " I come too late !
Rather than not have sooth'd his woes,
I would, but may not, share his fate."
She rais'd his hand. " What hand like this
Could reach the heart athwart the lyre !
What lips like these return my kiss,
Or breathe, incessant, soft desire ! "
From eve to morn, from morn to eve,
She gazed his features o'er and o'er,
And those who love and who believe
May hear her sigh along the shore.
Art thou afraid the adorer's prayer
Be overheard ] that fear resign.
He waves the incense with such care
It leaves no stain upon the shrine.
MISCELLANEOUS.
623
You see the worst of love, but not the best,
Nor will you know him till he comes your guest,
Tho' yearly drops some feather from his sides,
In the heart's temple his pure torch abides.
According to eternal laws
('Tis useless to inquire the cause)
The gates of fame and of the grave
Stand under the same architrave,
So I would rather some time yet
Play on with you, my little pet !
While the winds whistle round my cheerless room,
And the pale morning droops with winter's gloom ;
While indistinct lie rude and cultured lands,
The ripening harvest and the hoary sands ;
Alone, and destitute of every page
That fires the poet or informs the sage,
Where shall my wishes, where my fancy, rove,
Eest upon past or cherish promist love 1
Alas ! the past I never can regain,
Wishes may rise and tears may flow . . in vain.
Fancy, that brings her in her early bloom,
Throws barren sunshine o'er the unyielding tomb.
What then would passion, what would reason, do1?
Sure, to retrace is worse than to pursue.
Here will I sit till heaven shall cease to lour
And happier Hesper bring the appointed hour,
Gaze on the mingled waste of sky and sea,
Think of my love, and bid her think of me.
One pansy, one, she bore beneath her breast,
A broad white ribbon held that pansy tight.
She waved about nor lookt upon the rest,
Costly and rare ; on this she bent her sight.
I watcht her raise it gently when it droopt ;
I knew she wisht to show it me ; I knew
She would I saw it rise, to lie unloopt
Nearer its home, that tender heart ! that true !
You tell me I must come again
Now buds and blooms appear :
Ah ! never fell one word in vain
Of yours on mortal ear.
You say the birds are busy now
In hedgerow, brake, and grove,
And slant their eyes to find the bough
That best conceals their love : .
How many warble from the spray !
How many on the wing !
" Yet, yet," say you, " one voice away
I miss the sound of spring."
How little could that voice express,
Beloved, when we met !
But other sounds hath tenderness,
Which neither shall forget.
Ketired this hour from wondering crowds
And flower-fed poets swathed in-clouds,
Now the dull dust is blown away,
lanthe, list to what I say.
Verse is not always sure to please
For lightness, readiness, and ease ;
Romantic ladies like it not
Unless its streams are strong and hot
As Melton-Mowbray stables when
Ill-favored frost comes back again.
Tell me no more you feel a pride
To be for ever at my side,
To think your beauty will be read
When all who pine for it are dead.
I hate a pomp and a parade
Of what should ever rest in shade ;
What not the slenderest ray should reach,
Nor whispered breath of guarded speech :
There even Memory should sit
Absorbed, and almost doubting it.
XLIV.
I often ask upon whose arm she leans,
She whom I dearly love,
And if she visit much the crowded scenes
Where mimic passions move.
There, mighty powers ! assert your just control,
Alarm her thoughtless breast,
Breathe soft suspicion o'er her yielding soul,
But never break its rest.
0 let some faithful lover, absent long,
To sudden bliss return ;
Then Lander's name shall tremble from hertongue,
Her cheek thro' tears shall burn.
I sadden while I view again
Smiles that for me the Graces wreathed.
Sure my last kiss those lips retain
And breathe the very vow they breathed ;
At peace, in sorrow, far or near,
Constant and fond she still would be,
And absence should the more endear
The sigh it only woke for me.
Till the slow hours have past away,
Sweet image, bid my bosom rest.
Vain hope ! yet shalt thou night and day,
Sweet image, to this heart be prest.
A time will come when absence, grief, and years,
Shall change the form and voice that please
you now,
When you perplext shall ask, " And fell my tears
Into his bosom 1 breath'd I there my vow?"
It must be so, lanthe ! but to think
Malignant Fate should also threaten you,
Would make my heart, now vainly buoyant, sink :
Believe it not : 'tis what I'll never do.
624
MISCELLANEOUS.
XLVIt.
Have I, this moment, led thee from the beach
Into the boat ? now far beyond my reach !
Stand there a little while, and wave once more
That 'kerchief ; but may none upon the shore
Dare think the fond salute was meant for him !
Dizzily on the plashing water swim
My heavy eyes, and sometimes can attain
Thy lovely form, which tears bear off again.
In vain have they now ceast ; it now is gone
Too far for sight, and leaves me here alone.
0 could I hear the creaking of the mast !
1 curst it present, I regret it past.
XLVIII.
Yes, we shall meet (I knew we should) again,
And I am solaced now you tell me when.
Joy sprung o'er sorrow as the morning broke,
And, as I read the words, I thought you spoke.
Altho' you bade it, yet to find how fast
My spirits rose, how lightly grief flew past,
I blush at every tear I have represt,
And one is starting to reprove the rest.
Ye walls ! sole witnesses of happy sighs,
Say not, blest walls, one word.
Kemember, but keep safe from ears and eyes
All you have seen and heard.*
The bough beneath me shakes and swings.
While tender love wants most your wings
Why are you flying from our nest?
That love, first opened by your beak,
You taught to peck, and then to speak
The few short words you liked the best,
Come back again, soft cowering breast !
Do not you hear or mind my call?
Come back ! come back ! or I may fall
From my high branch to one below ;
For there are many in our trees,
And part your flight and part the breeze
May shake me where I would not go.
Ah ! do not then desert me so !
IANTHE'S LETTEK.
We will not argue, if you say
My sorrows when I went away
Were not for you alone ;
For there were many very dear,
Altho' at dawn they came not near,
As you did, yet who griev'd when I was gone.
We will not argue (but why tell
So false a tale 1) that scarcely fell
My tears where mostly due.
I can not think who told you so :
I shed (about the rest I know
Nothing at all) the first and last for you.
* First pencilled thus,
O murs ! temoins des plus heureux soupirs,
N'en dites mot : gardez DOS souvenirs.
" Remember you the guilty night,"
A downcast myrtle said,
" You snatcht and held me pale with fright
Till life almost had fled?
At every swell more close I prest
With jealous care that lovely breast ;
Of every tender word afraid,
I cast a broader, deeper shade,
And trembled so, I fell between
Two angel-guards by you unseen :
There, pleasures, perils, all forgot,
I clung and fainted : who would not ?
Yet certainly, this transport over,
I should, for who would not ] recover.
Yes ! I was destined to return
And sip anew the crystal urn,
Where with four other sister sprays
I bloom'd away my pleasant days.
But less and less and less again
Each day, hour, moment, is the pain
My little shrivel'd heart endures . .
Now can you say the same for yours ?
I torn from her and she from you,
What wiser thing can either do
Than with our joys our fears renounce
And leave the vacant world at once ]
When she you fondly love must go,
Your pangs will rise, but mine will cease ;
I never shall awake to woe,
Nor you to happiness or peace."
On the smooth brow and clustering hair
Myrtle and rose ! your wreath combine,
The duller olive I would wear,
Its constancy, its peace, be mine.
Along this coast I led the vacant Hours
To the lone sunshine on the uneven strand,
And nipt the stubborn grass and juicier flowers
With one unconscious inobservant hand,
While crept the other by degrees more near
Until it rose the cherisht form around,
And prest it closer, only that the ear
Might lean, and deeper drink some half-heard
sound.
Pursuits ! alas, I now have none,
But idling where were once pursuits,
Often, all morning quite alone,
I sit upon those twisted roots
Which rise above the grass, and shield
Our harebell, when the churlish year
Catches her coming first afield,
And she looks pale tho' spring is near
I chase the violets, that would hide
Their little prudish heads away,
And argue with the rills, that chide
When we discover them at play.
MISCELLANEOUS.
625
No, thou hast never griev'd but I griev'd too ;
Smiled thou hast often when no smile of mine
Could answer it. The sun himself can give
But little colour to the desert sands.
Where alders rise up dark and dense
But just behind the wayside fence,
A stone there is in yonder nook
Which once I borrow'd of the brook :
You sate beside me on that stone,
Rather (not much) too wide for one.
Untoward stone ! and never quite
(Tho' often very near it) right,
And putting to sore shifts my wit
To roll it out, then steady it,
And then to prove that it must be
Too hard for anyone but me.
lanthe, haste ! ere June declines
We '11 write upon it all these lines.
LVIII.
Twenty years hence my eyes may grow
If not quite dim, yet rather so,
Still yours from others they shall know
Twenty years hence.
Twenty years hence tho' it may hap
That I be call'd to take a nap
In a cool cell where thunder-clap
Was never heard.
There breathe but o'er my arch of grass
A not too sadly sigh'd A las,
And I shall catch, ere you can pass,
That winged word.
From heaven descend two gifts alone ;
The graceful line's- eternal zone
And beauty, that too soon must die.
Exposed and lonely Genius stands,
Like Memnon in the Egyptian sands,
At whom barbarian javelins fly.
For mutual succour Heaven design'd
The lovely form and vigorous mind
To seek each other and unite.
Genius ! thy wing shall beat down Hate,
And Beauty tell her fears at Fate
Until her rescuer met her sight.
Remain, ah not in youth alone,
Tho' youth, where you are, long will stay,
But when my summer days are gone,
And my autumnal haste away.
" Can I be always by your side ? "
No ; but the hours you can, you must,
Nor rise at Death's approaching stride,
Nor go when dust is gone to dust
LXI.
Is it no dream that I am he
Whom one awake all night
Rose ere the earliest birds to see,
And met by dawn's red light ;
Who, when the wintry lamps were spent
And all was drear and dark,
Against the rugged pear-tree leant
While ice crackt off the bark ;
Who little heeded sleet and blast,
But much the falling snow ;
Those in few hours would sure be past,
His traces that might show ;
Between whose knees, unseen, unheard,
The honest mastiff came,
Nor fear'd he ; no, nor was he fear'd :
Tell me, am I the same 1
0 come ! the same dull stars we'll see,
The same o'er-clouded moon.
0 come ! and tell me am I he ?
0 tell me, tell me soon.
LXII.
Many, well I know, there are
Ready in your joys to share,
And (I never blame it) you
Are almost as ready too.
But when comes the darker day
And those friends have dropt away,
Who is there among them all
You would, if you could, recal ?
One, who wisely loves and well,
Hears and shares the griefs you tell :
Him you ever call apart
When the springs o'erflow the heart :
For you know that he alone
Wishes they were but his own.
Give, while these he may divide,
Smiles to all the world beside.
Here, ever since you went abroad,
If there be change, no change I see,
I only walk our wonted road,
The road is only walkt by me.
Yes ; I forgot ; a change there is ;
Was it of that you bade me tell ?
I catch at times, at times I miss
The sight, the tone, I know so well.
Only two months since you stood here !
Two shortest months ! then tell me why
Voices are harsher than they were,
And tears are longer ere they dry.
Silent, you say, I 'm grown of late,
Nor yield, as you do, to our fate ]
Ah ! that alone is truly pain
Of which we never can complain.
I held her hand, the pledge of bliss,
Her hand that trembled and withdrew
She bent her head before my kiss . .
My heart was sure that hers was true,
s s
626
Now I have told her I must part,
She shakes my hand, she bids adieu,
Nor shuns the kiss. Alas, my heart !
Hers never was the heart for you.
Tell me not things past all belief;
One truth in you I prove ;
The flame of anger, bright and brief,
Sharpens the barb of Love.
LXVII.
Little it interests me how
Some insolent usurper now
Divides your narrow chair ;
Little heed I whose hand is placed
(No, nor how far) around your waist,
Or paddles in your hair.
A time, a time there may have been
(Ah ! and there was) when every scene
Was brightened by your eyes.
And dare you ask what you have done ?
My answer, take it, is but one . .
The weak have taught the wise.
LXVIII.
You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more ;
Nor hope I what I hoped before :
But let not this last wish be vain ;
Deceive, deceive me once again !
Proud word you never spoke, but you will speak
Four not exempt from pride some future day.
Resting on one white hand a warm wet cheek
Over my open volume you will say,
" This man loved me ! " then rise and trip away.
Ah ! could I think there's nought of ill
In what you do, and love you still !
I have the power for only half,
My wish : you know it, and you laugh.
Tears, and tears only, are these eyes that late
In thine could contemplate
Charms which, like stars, in swift succession rise . .
No longer to these eyes !
Love shows the place he flew from ; there, bereft
Of motion, Grief is left.
The Loves who many years held all my mind,
A charge so troublesome at last resign'd.
Among my books a feather here and tnere
Tells what the inmates of my study were.
Strong for no wrestle, ready for no race,
They only serve to mark the left-off place.
'Twas theirs to dip in the tempestuous waves,
'Twas theirs to loiter in cool. summer caves ;
But in the desert where no herb is green
Not one, the latest of the flight, is seen.
MISCELLANEOUS.
As round the parting ray the busy motes
In eddying circles play'd,
Some little bird threw dull and broken notes
Amid an elder's shade.
My soul was tranquil as the scene around,
lanthe at my side ;
Both leaning silent on the turfy mound,
Lowly and soft and wide.
I had not lookt, that evening, for the part
One hand could disengage,
To make her arms cling round me, with a start
My bosom must assuage :
Silence and soft inaction please as much
Sometimes the stiller breast,
Which passion now has thrill'd.with milder touch
And love in peace possest.
" Hark ! hear you not the nightingale ? " I said,
To strike her with surprise.
" The nightingale ? " she cried, and rais'd her head,
And beam'd with brighter eyes.
" Before you said 'twas he that piped above,
At every thrilling swell
He pleas'd me more and more ; he sang of love
So plaintively, so well."
Where are ye, happy days, when every bird
Pour'd love in every strain ?
Ye days, when true was every idle word,
Return, return again !
So late removed from him she swore,
With clasping arms and vows and tears,
In life and death she would adore,
While memory, fondness, bliss, endears.
Can she. forswear? can she forget?
Strike, mighty Love ! strike, Vengeance ! Soft !
Conscience must come and bring regret . .
These let her feel ! . . nor these too oft !
Mild is the parting year, and sweet
The odour of the falling spray ;
Life passes on more rudely fleet,
And balmless is its closing day.
I wait its close, I court its gloom,
But mourn that never must there fall
Or on my breast or on my tomb
The tear that would have sooth'd it all.
Dull is my verse : not even thou
Who movest many cares away
From this lone breast and weary brow,
Canst make, as once, its fountain play ;
No, nor those gentle words that now
Support my heart to hear thee say :
" The bird upon its lonely bough
Sings sweetest at the close of day."
MISCELLANEOUS.
627
Thank Heaven, lanthe, once again
Our hands and ardent lips shall meet,
And Pleasure, to assert his reign,
Scatter ten thousand kisses sweet :
Then cease repeating while you mourn,
" I wonder when he will return."
Ah wherefore should you so admire
The flowing words that fill my song,
Why call them artless, yet require
" Some promise from that tuneful tongue?"
I doubt if heaven itself could part
A tuneful tonarue and tender heart.
When we have panted past life's middle space,
And stand and breathe a moment from the race,
These graver thoughts the heaving breast annoy :
" Of all our fields how very few are green !
And ah ! what brakes, moors, quagmires, lie be-
tween
Tired age and childhood ramping wild with joy.''
There are some wishes that may start
Nor cloud the brow nor sting the heart.
Gladly then would I see how smiled
One who now fondles with her child ;
How smiled she but six years ago,
Herself a child, or nearly so.
Yes, let me bring before my sight
The silken tresses chain'd up tight,
The tiny fingers tipt with red
By tossing up the strawberry-bed ;
Half-open lips, long violet eyes,
A little rounder with surprise,
And then (her chin against the knee)
" Mama ! who can that stranger be ]
How grave the smile he smiles on me !'
Youth is the virgin nurse of tender Hope,
And lifts her up and shows a far-off scene :
When Care with heavy tread would interlope,
They call the boys to shout her from the
green.
Ere long another comes, before whose eyes
Nurseling and nurse alike stand mute and
quail.
Wisdom : to her Hope not one word replies,
And Youth lets drop the dear romantic
tale.
SOPHIA, pity Gunlaug's fate.
Perfidious friendship, worse than hate,
And love, whose smiles are often vain,
Whose frowns are never, proved his bane.
For war his rising spirit sigh'd
In unknown realms o'er ocean wide.
" 0 father, father ! let me go,
I burn to meet my country's foe."
" A blessing, Gunlaug, on thy head ! "
Illugi, his fond father, said.
" Go when invader comes to spoil
Our verdant Iceland's native soil :
But wait with patient zeal till then
And learn the deeds of mightier men."
To Thorstein's house, whose daring prow
Thro' ocean pounced upon his foe,
Stung with denial, Gunlaug went,
But breathed no word of discontent.
" Thorstein," he cried, " I leave my home,
Yet not for shelter am I come ;
Thorstein, I come to learn from thee
The dangers of the land and sea.
Speed thee ! together let us go,
And Thorstein's shall be Gunlaug's foe."
" Brave youth," said Thorstein, " stay awhile.
I love .too well my native isle,
Whether the sandy dog-rose blows
Or sparkle fierce the starry snows,
And never shall this hand again
Direct the rudder o'er the main."
Thus as he spake he would have prest
The hand of his aspiring guest ;
But Gunlaug cried, " I will not here
Partake thy hospitable cheer :
For war's, for danger's, gifts I came,
Keep thou thy fears, leave me thy fame."
Aloud the manly veteran laught ;
"Come ! come ! " said he, " one social draught !
My fears I '11 keep that none shall see,
And I will leave my fame to thee."
Out sprang the tears from Gunlaug's eyes :
" 0 noble Thorstein, bold and wise !
Shall Gunlaug dare to tarry here 1
Shall Helga see this blush, this tear 1 "
At Helga's and her father's name,
The beauteous blue-eyed virgin came.
No word had then the youth to say,
But turn'd his downcast face away.
He heard her sandal sip the floor,
And, ere she reacht the palace-door,
His heaving bosom could not brook
Reproach or wonder from her look.
And couldst thou, Gunlaug, thus refrain 1
And seek'st thou conquests o'er the main ?
She saw, but knew not his distress,
And eyed him much, nor loved him less.
Long stood, and longer would have stay'd
The tender-hearted blue-eyed maid ;
But fear her stifling throat opprest,
And something smote her bounding breast.
Far off, alone, she would remain,
But thought it time to turn again.
" Yet better not, perhaps," she thought,
" For fear the stranger hold me naught.
I dare not wish, they call it sin,
But . . would my father bring him in ! "
ss2
623
MISCELLANEOUS.
He came ; their friendship grew ; he woo'd ;
Nor Helga's gentle heart withstood.
Her milk-white rabbit oft he fed,
And crumbled fine his breakfast-bread ;
And oft explored with anxious view
Spots where the crispest parsley grew.
Her restive horse he daily rid,
And quite subdued her stubborn kid,
Who lately dared to quit her side,
And once with painful rashness tried
Its ruddy horn against her knee,
Bold as its desperate sire could be.
Mosses he knew of every race,
And brought them from their hiding-place,
And mingled every sweet-soul'd plant
On mountain-top or meadow slant,
And checker'd (while they flower'd) her room
With purple thyme and yellow broom.
There is a creature dear to heaven,
Tiny and weak, to whom is given
To enjoy the world while suns are bright
And shut grim winter from its sight ;
Tamest of hearts that beat on wilds,
Tamer and tenderer than a child's ;
The dormouse : this he loved, and taught
(Docile it is the day it 's caught,
And fond of music, voice or string)
To stand before and hear her sing,
Or lie within her palm half-closed,
Until another 's interposed,
And claim'd the alcove wherein it lay,
Or held it with divided sway.
All living things are ministers
To him whose hand attunes the spheres
And guides a thousand worlds, and binds
(Work for ten godheads !) female minds.
I know not half the thoughts that rose,
Like tender plants 'neath vernal snows,
In Helga's breast, and, if I knew,
I would draw forth but very few.
Yet, when the prayers were duly said
And rightly blest the marriage-bed,
She doubted not that Heaven would give
To her as pretty things as live.
The cautious father long-delay d
The wishes of the youth and maid.
His patient hand, like hers, unrolls
The net to catch the summer shoals ;
And both their daily task compare,
And daily win each other's hair.
One morn, arising from her side,
He, as he paid the forfeit, cried,
" Behold my hair too trimly shine,
Behold my hands are white as thine.
0 ! could I loose our bliss's bar !
1 burn for wedlock and for war."
" For war," said she, " when lovers burn,
To wedlock, Gunlaug, few return.
In Samsa brave Hialmar lies,
Nor Inga's daughter closed his eyes.
By sixteen wounds of raging fire
The enchanted sword of Angantyre,
Withering, laid waste hie fruitless bloom,
And housed the hero in the tomb.
' Oh Oddur,' said the dying chief,
' Take off my ring, my time is brief ;
My ring, if smaller, might adorn
The plighted hand of Ingebiorn.'
Swift to Sigtuna flew the friend,
And sorely wept Hialmar's end.
By Meeleren's blue lake he found
The virgin sitting on the ground.
A garment for her spouse she wove,
And sang, ' Ah speed thee, gift of love ! '
In anguish Oddur heard her sing,
And turn'd his face and held the ring.
Back fell the maiden ; well she knew
What fatal tidings must ensue ;
When Oddur rais'd her, back she fell,
And died, the maiden loved so well.
' Now gladly,' swore the generous chief,
' I witness death beguiling grief ;
I never thought to smile again
By thy blue waters, Maeleren ! '
But grant that on the hostile strand
Thy bosom meet no biting brand,
Grant that no swift unguarded dart
Lay thee beneath the flooded thwart,
Yet how unlike a nuptial day,
To stand amid the hissing spray,
And wipe and wipe its tingling brine
And vainly blink thy pelted eyn,
And feel their stiffening lids weigh'd down
By toil no pleasure comes to crown !
Say, Gunlaug, wouldst thou give for this
The fire-side feast and bridal kiss ? "
He told the father what he said,
And what replied the willing maid.
" My son," said Thorstein, " now I find
Wavering with love the sea-bound mind.
Away to war, if war delight,
Begone three years from Helga's sight,
And if perchance at thy return
That breast with equal transport burn,
Its wishes I no more confine,
Thine is my house, my Helga thine."
Away the towering warrior flew,
Nor bade his Helga once adieu.
He felt the manly sorrows rise,
And open'd wide his gushing eyes ;
He stopt a moment in the hall,
Still the too powerful tears would fall.
He would have thought his fate accurst
To meet her as he met her first,
So, madly swang the sounding door,
And reacht, and reaching left, the shore.
Three years in various toils had past,
And Gunlaug hasten'd home at last.
Rafen at Upsal he had seen,
Of splendid wit and noble mien :
Rafen with pleasure he beheld,
For each in arms and verse excel'd.
Rafen he heard from sun to sun,
And why 1 their native land was one.
0 friends ! mark here how friendships end !
0 lovers ! never trust a friend !
In fulness of his heart he told
What treasures would his arms enfold ;
MISCELLANEOUS.
629
How in the summer he should share
The blissful bed of maid so fair.
For, as suspicion ne'er supprest
One transport of his tuneful breast,
The low and envious he past by
With scornful or unseeing eye :
From tales alone their guile he knew,
Believing all around him true,
And fancying falsehood flourisht then
When earth produced two-headed men.
In Sweden dwell the manliest race
That brighten earth's maternal face :
Yet never would proud Gunlaug yield
To any man in any field.
The day was fixt for his return,
And crowding friends around him burn
Their pomp and prowess to display,
And celebrate the parting day.
Amid them up a wrestler stood
And call'd to wrestle him who would.
So still were all, you might have heard
The motion of the smallest bird :
Some lookt, some turn'd away the eye,
Not one among them dared reply/
" Come hither, friend ! " said Gunlaug bold,
" 0 ne'er in Iceland be it told
I stood amid the feast defied,
Nor skill nor strength nor courage tried."
The wrestler then beheld and smiled,
And answer'd thus in accent mild :
" 0 stranger ! tho' thy heart be stout,
And none like thee sit round about,
Thou bringest to unequall'd might
A form teo beauteous and too slight."
" Well, friend, however that may be,
Let Gunlaug try his strength with thee."
They closed ; they struggled ; nought avail'd
The wrestler's skill, his prowess fail'd.
One leg he moved a little back
And sprang again to the attack.
Gunlaug, in trying to elude
A shock so sudden and so rude,
Avoided half the whelming weight,
But slipt aside alas too late.
His combatant flew headlong past,
Yet round his neck one arm he cast,
And threw him also on the ground,
Wounded, but with no warrior's wound.
The grass and springing flow'rs amid
A rotten pointed stake was hid.
Swung by the rapid jerk in air,
His sinewy leg descended there.
When Rafen saw the spouting blood
Bewilder'd in new joy he stood,
And scarce his features could control
The rapture of a selfish soul,
Yet tended every day his couch
And emptied there the hawking-pouch,
And brought him game from lake and land
And fed the falcon on his hand.
" Go, haste," said Gunlaug, "haste, my friend,
May peace and love thy steps attend !
Ah wretched thus to stay alone !
Ere the day fixt I too am gone.
How far more wretched should I be
If my sweet Helga mourn'd for me."
When twice the Sabbath-day had past,
Rafen, as one compell'd at last
By his impatient listeners, said,
(And lower'd his voice and shook his head)
" Gunlaug unwillingly I left
Of reason as of love bereft.
At Upsal, famed for damsels bright
And flatter'd wit's bewildering light,
Him courts and pleasures yet detain,
And Helga's charms have charm'd in vain."
" Accursed man ! " the father cried,
" My Helga ne'er shall be his bride."
" 0 father ! "
" Peace ! " cried he, "I swear,
Deluded Helga ! thou shalt ne'er."
A swoon her swelling bosom smote,
A serpent seem'd to clasp her throat,
And underneath the father's chair
Stream'd on his dog her auburn hair.
Then Rafen rais'd her in his arms,
And gazed and gloated on her charms.
" Gaze : she is thine," said Thorstein fierce,
" If she be Gunlaug's, 'tis in verse."
She wept all night ; her woe increast
When in the morn she saw the priest.
"Pause, father ! pause to break my vow,
I know his heart, ah could'st but thou !
By all divine, all human laws,
Kindest and best of fathers, pause.
If Rafen loves, he loves the dead,
I live not for his hated bed."
At early dawn the youth she lost
Had lept upon his native coast.
Blessing his fortune to survive,
And on the appointed day arrive,
He hung around his father's neck
And groan'd the thoughts he could not
And as his neck he hung around
The father's tears dropt o'er the wound.
The servants came with anxious heed,
And brought their lord the luscious mead,
Pray'd not to issue forth so soon,
But eat and drink and sleep till noon ;
And mention'd other valiant lords
Who dozed thus long upon their swords,
Yet ne'er had sufler'd gash nor prick,
Nor bruise, unless from hazel-stick.
He was persuaded ; for his brain
Floated in fiery floods of pain,
From hopes, three long, long years afloat,
Now, by one evil turn remote.
He was persuaded'; for he knew
Whose was of all true hearts most true.
Then strew'd he bear-skins on the stone,
And bade the tardy men begone.
The servants watch his eyelids close,
They watch the flush of bland repose,
They raise his shaggy pillow high'r,
With tender caution trim the fire,
And (for his breath might be opprest)
Pick out the pine-tree from the rest,
630
MISCELLANEOUS.
And fan the flame, nor fear the smoke
From ash well dried and shipwreck oak.
A frolic maid was passing by,
And, as she saw the hero lie,
His arms and armour thrown around,
Upon the bench, the couch, the ground,
Removed the clinking hawberk mail,
And took a wolf-skin from a nail ;
Across his throat she placed the teeth
And tuckt the clasping claws beneath,
And would have kist him, but she fear'd
To tickle with her breast his beard.
Sound was his sleep ; at length he woke
And thus in hurried accent spoke.
" What means, my men, the noise I
hear?
Nearer the window . . still more near.
Despatch . . I feel no pain . . despatch . .
Why look upon that idle scratch 1
Ay, Kafen and his friends are come,
I know, to bid me welcome home.
Oft has he trod the sunless dew
And hail'd at last my bark in view.
0 Rafen, my best friend, for this
Shall Helga give thy brow a kiss."
Then in rusht Thorkell : "Stay thee,
lord !
Nor blast thee at the sight abhorr'd.
1 thought that Heaven could send no curse
Like slighted love ; it sends a worse.
Now is my joy what was my pain,
To find so soon I loved in vain..
Rafen leads homeward from the shrine
Thy Helga, for her heart is thine."
Gunlaug with pleasure heard him speak,
And smiles relumed his faded cheek.
Thorkell, who watcht him all the while,
With more than wonder saw him smile.
" Thorkell, I thank thee," he replied,
" What, have we both then lost the bride ?
No, generous rival ! neither quite
Hath understood the nuptial rite.
Rafen leads homeward from the shrine
My Helga, for her heart is mine."
Then Thorkell shook his head and sigh'd :
" 111 the suspicious soul betide !
But he whom no suspicions move,
Loves not, or with ill-omen 'd love.
These eyes, that yet in wonder swim,
Saw the fair Helga sworn to him."
His horror Gunlaug could not check,
But threw his arm round Thorkell's neck.
" O loose me, let me fall, my friend,"
Cried he, " let life and sorrow end."
Now rage, now anguish, seiz'd his soul,
Now love again resumed the whole ;
Now would he upon Helga's name
Pour vengeance ; tears for vengeance came.
" Thorkell, two days alone I wait,
The third shall close with Rafen's fate.
I scorn to stay for strength restored . .
Go . . at the corner whet my sword."
On the third morn their friends decreed
That one or both of them should bleed.
On the third morn what pangs opprcst
The tender lover's valiant breast !
His only hope on earth below
To die, and dying slay the foe.
He slept not, nor had ever slept
Since the first day, but said, and wept :
" Arouse thee, Gunlaug, why complain ]
She never can be thine again !
The bark shall lean upon the shore,
Nor wave dash off the rested oar :
The flowers shall ope their sparkling eyes,
And dance in robes of richest dyes,
And, flying back, again shall meet
The south-wind's kisses soft and sweet :
Young eagles build their first fond nest,
And sink from rapine into rest :
Ah, see them soar above my head !
Their hopes are come, but mine are fled !
Arouse thee, Gunlaug, haste away,
And rush into the mortal fray."
From far the listening Rafen heard
His rival's armour ring, nor fear'd.
Fear may be stifled in the breast,
But shame burns fiercer when supprest.
Onward he rusht, and dared defy
His arm, but dared not meet his eye.
Madly he struck and blind with guilt,
And his blade shiver'd from the hilt.
O'er Gunlaug's shield with action weak
It fell, and falling razed his cheek.
Away disdainful Gunlaug turn'd,
And cried, while rage within him burn'd,
" Rafen, take up thy broken sword ;
Live ; see thou Helga be restored.
Ah why ? " then to himself he said ;
" 0 Helga, beauteous blue-eyed maid !
Such were the tender words of yore,
But never can I speak them more !
By Rafen's side hath Helga slept,
Upon my fruit the snail hath crept,
The blindwonn hath his poison shed . .
O Rafen ! curses on thy head."
Afar was he as Gunlaug spoke,
And every tie of honour broke.
Before the court of chieftains old
He stood, and well his story told :
Much for religion and for laws
He pled, and bade them guard his cause :
" Tho' baffled and disarm'd," he cried,
" I gave the wound, and claim the bride."*
Some with disdain his reason heard,
While others wisht the cause defer'd.
Then Onnur spake in speech of scorn,
Ormur the friend of Asbiorn,
Who, daring singly to engage
A jotun, proved his fatal rage.
" Go, finish this unmanly strife,
And keep the vow, but quit the wife.
So neither party shall repine,
But love be his, and laws be thine.
Go home, and with the world's applause
There quaintly kiss the cold-lip laws."
* According to the laws of duel in Iceland, he who gave
the first wound was gainer of the suit.
MISCELLANEOUS.
631
But Rafen, when he saw the sneer
Run dimpling on from each compeer,
" Has not the priest then join'd our hands
In holy everlasting bands ?
One would have thought 'twas thee I wrong'd,
Eight second to the viper-tongued."*
The assembly, wishing to compose
The strife of single combat, rose;
But order'd first that none decide
His right by arms o'er Iceland wide.
" In Auxar then once more we meet,
And thou shalt never thence retreat,"
Swore valiant Gunlaug, when he heard
The suit that Rafen had preferr'd.
" Thy courage shall not screen thy guile,
When once we meet in Auxar's isle."
Urged by his friends as by his foe,
Again to fight must Rafen go.
But furious winds each pinnace drove
Past little Auxar's lonely cove.
Beyond the strait their anchors bit
The yellow sand of Agnafit,
Where Inga reign'd, whose daughter's fate
Gunlaug heard Helga once relate.
Here too the wise and old impede
The brave in lawless fray to bleed.
By Sota's shore their course they take
And anchor near Dyngiunes' lake.
There spread the heath its evener ground,
And purer water there was found.
They meet ; and all their friends unite
In the full fury of the fight,
'Till with the champions none remain
But the sore wounded on the plain.
The chiefs had closed, nor space was now
That either urge the deadly blow ;
But oft they struggle breast to breast,
Oft give, unwilling, mutual rest.
Gunlaug with desperate strain recoil'd,
Yet his free force and aim were foil'd, j
Else had his sword athwart the side
Of Rafen oped life's sluices wide.
The foot he struck, so far he sprung,
The foot upon its tendon hung :
He stagger'd : just within his reach
Stood, chosen for the shade, a beech :
He shrunk against it, and his foot
Was resting on the twisted root.
" Now yield thee," loud the hero cried,
" Yield ; and resign the blooming bride."
' " True, on these terms we fought before,"
Said he, " but now we fight for more.
This day life only shall suffice,
And Gunlaug, he who kills not, dies.
Life yet is left me, and the worst
I suffer now, is fainting thirst."
Eager the combat to renew,
Fast to the lake then Gunlaug flew,
There from his neck the helm unbraced,
Nor, though he thirsted, stayed to taste :
Prone, and on tottering knee, he stoopt,
With vigorous arm the surface scoopt, .
* Onnstunga : called so from the sharpness of his wit.
And swiftly to his rival bore
The clear cold water, running o'er.
By treachery yet untaught to doubt,
With his right arm he held it out.
Valour and praise and pride forsook
The soul of Rafen ; fierce he strook
His generous rival's naked head,
And laught in triumph while it bled.
Gunlaug was fell'd ; the Imsated foe
Strove hard to follow up the blow :
His foot denies his deadly hate,
And doubt and horror round him wait.
Gunlaug pusht faintly from his breast
The shield that struggling life opprest.
The gales that o'er Dyngiunes play
Recall his roving soul to day.
Up would he start ; his wound denies ;
Fresh shadows float before his eyes :
On his right elbow now he leans ;
Now brighten the surrounding scenes :
Trees, mountains, skies, no more are mixt ;
The lake, and earth, and foe, stand fixt.
His silence then he sternly broke,
And thus, his eye on Rafen, spoke :
" Rafen, with powers renew'd I rise :
Yes, traitor ! he who kills not, dies.
Yet would I leave a little space,
To hear thee own this deed was base."
Now first was Rafen slow of speech ;
Lowering his brow against the beech,
He fixt his eyes upon the ground,
And thus confest, in faltering sound.
" 'Twas base : but how could Rafeu bear
That Gunlaug be to Helga dear 1 "
Paus'd had the conqueror : he had stood
And slowly wiped the welling blood,
With patience, pity, grief, had heard,
And had but Rafen spared that word,
His youthful head had not lain low.
Gunlaug scarce felt the fatal blow,
But hearing " how could Rafen bear
That Gunlaug be to Helga dear? "
Rage swell'd his heart and fired his eye,
And thro' the forest rang the cry,
" What ! tho' thy treachery caught her vow,
God's vengeance ! Rafen ! e'er wert thou 1 "
Then, hatred rising higher than pain,
He smote the traitor's helm in twain.
THE NIGHTINGALE AND ROSE.
From immemorial time
The Rose and Nightingale
Attune the Persian rhyme
And point the Arab tale :
Nor will you ever meet
So barbarous a man,
In any outer street
Of Balkh or Astracan,
In any lonely creek
Along the Caspian shore,
Or where the tiger sleek
Pants hard in hot Mysore,
632
As never shall have heard
In tower or tent or grove
Of the sweet flower's true bird,
The true bird's only love.
They're known wherever shines
The crescent on the sword
And guiltless are the vines
And Bacchus is abhorr'd.
There was (we read) a maid,
The pride of Astrabad,
Who heard what song-men said,
And, all that day, was sad.
The moon hung large and round ;
She gazed ere forth she went ;
A bright ford seem'd the ground,
The sky a purple tent.
She hasten'd to the wood
Where idle bushes grew,
The Rose above them stood,
There stood her lover too.
Close were they, close as may
True lovers ever be !
She was his only stay,
Her only stay was he.
Her head appears to bend
A little over his:
Petal and plumage blend,
Soft sigh and softer kiss.
There was no other sound, •
And scarce a leaflet stirr'd,
And heavy dews hung round,
The Rose and round the Bird.
Sure, some are tinged with red !
Whence comes it ? Can the Rose
Have wept upon his head ?
Her tears are not like those.
No ; 'tis from his own breast,
Pierced by her thorns, they come :
Against them it was prest,
Of them it sought its doom.
Wanting was one delight,
The one she could not give,
He thought perhaps she might,
He thought so, nor would live.
Ever some cruel spell
Hangs fasten'd, tho' unseen, ,
On those who love too well
And sing too well between.
At the fond heart BO riven
Mute was awhile the maid,
Then pray'd she unto Heaven,
And it was thus she pray'd :
"0 Allah! if the fond
Must alway suffer so,
If love finds naught beyond
Its very birth but woe,
Protect at least the one
From what the other bore,
Nor let her stay alone,
Nor with faint breath droop o'er
The dead ! Do thou confer
His spirit on her bloom,
And may it soothe in her
Lone shade its hour of gloom ! "
MISCELLANEOUS.
Allah that gift bestows,
But only in those plains,
And only in one Rose,
The Bird's sweet voice remains.
Lady of all my lays !
Accept the service due !
And, if a word of praise
Or smile descend from you,
I will not look about
To catch the crumbs that fall
Among the rabble rout
That crowd the choral hall,
Nor chide the deaf man's choice
When o'er the Rose's bird
The low unvarying voice
Of Cuckoo is preferr'd.
Here, where precipitate Spring, with one light
bound
Into hot Summer's lusty arms, expires,
And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,
Soft airs that want the lute to play with 'em,
And softer sighs that know not what they want,
Aside a wall, beneath an orange-tree,
Whose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier ones
Of sights in Fiesole right up above,
While I was gazing a few paces off
At what they seem'd to show me with their nods,
Their frequent whispers and their pointing shoots,
A gentle maid came down the garden-steps
And gathered the pure treasure in her lap
I heard the branches rustle, and stept forth
To drive the ox away, or male, or goat,
Such I believed it must be. How could I
Let beast o'erpower them ? When hath wind or
rain
Borne hard upon weak plant that wanted me,
And I (however they might bluster round)
Walkt off? 'Twere most ungrateful : for sweet
scents
Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
And nurse and pillow the dull memory
That would let drop without them her best stores.
They bring me tales of youth and tones of love,
And 'tis and ever was my wish and way
To let all flowers live freely, and all die
(Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart)
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose ; the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
And not reproacht me ; the ever-sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands
Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold.
I saw the light that made the glossy leaves
More glossy ; the fair arm, the fairer cheek
Warmed by the eye intent on its pursuit ;
I saw the foot that, altho' half-erect
From its grey slipper, could not lift her up
To what she wanted : I held down a branch
And gather'd her some blossoms ; since their
hour
Was come, and bees had wounded them, and flies
MISCELLANEOUS.
633
Of harder \ving were working their way thro'
And scattering them in fragments under-foot.
So crisp were some, they rattled unevolved,
Others, ere broken off, fell into shells,
For such appear the petals when detacht,
Unbending, brittle, lucid, white like snow,
And like snow not seen thro', by eye or sun :
Yet every one her gown received from me
Was fairer than the first. I thought not so,
But so she praised them to reward my care.
I said, " You find the largest."
"This indeed,"
Cried she, " is large and sweet." She held one
forth,
Whether for me to look at or to take
She knew not, nor did I ; but taking it
Would best have solved (and this she felt) her
doubt.
I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part
Of her own self ; fresh, full, the most mature
Of blossoms, yet a blossom ; with a touch
To fall, and yet unfallen. She drew back
The boon she tender'd, and then, finding not
The ribbon at her waist to fix it in,
Dropt it, as loth to drop it, on the rest.
Hark ! 'tis the laugh of Spring : she comes,
With airy sylphs and fiery gnomes ;
On cruel mischief these intent,
And those as anxious to prevent.
So now for frolic and for fun
And swains forsworn and maids undone ;
So now for bridegrooms and for brides
And rivals hang'd by river-sides.
Here the hoarse-wooing dove is heard,
And there the cuckoo, taunting bird !
But soon along the osier vale
Will warble the sweet nightingale,
Amid whose song chaste Eve must hear
The threats of love, the screams of fear,
The milk-maid's shriek of laughter shrill
From hovel close beneath the hill,
Before the door the whirring wheel,
Behind the hedge the ticklish squeal,
The shepherd rude, the hoydon wroth,
The boisterous rip of stubborn cloth,
The brisk repulse, the pressing pray'r,
" Ah do ! " and " do it if you dare ! "
But whence, at every field we pass,
Those hollows in the starting grass ]
The little Loves have gambol'd there,
Or fought or wrestled pair by pair.
Moist are the marks of struggling feet,
And the bruis'd herbage still smells sweet.
Let Nancy now, if Nancy will,
Eeturn the kiss she took so ill.
If gentler thoughts thy bosom move,
Come, Nancy, give the kiss of love.
Soft is the bank I rest on here,
And soft the river murmurs near :
Above, the wandering dimples play,
Kun round, unwind, and melt away :
Beneath, more regular, more slow,
The grassy weeds wave to and fro,
While the sharp reed, it peers so high,
Shakes at each swell that passes by.
The poor tired bird who fain would drink,
But fears the abrupt and crumbling brink,
Sees that his weight 'twill not sustain,
And hovers, and flies back again.
My Nancy, thus I thirst for you,
And he flies off as I may do.
I would invoke you once again,
Pale shades of gloomy Walcheren,
By every name most dear !
But every name what voice could call 1
What tears could flow enough for all,
Within the circling year ]
Yet comfort ye, illustrious band,
That might have saved your native land
Had life and health remain'd !
Who cast ye on those sands accurst1?
Traitor ! he sold his country first
And gave her up enchain'd.
No human power the wretch shall screen
That sent you to the misty scene,
Where glory never shone !
His vacant buoyant heart shall rue
The lingering death he brought on you
And wish that death his own.
I wander o'er the sandy heath
Where the white rush waves high,
Where adders close before me wreath
And tawny kites sail screaming by.
Alone I wander ; I alone
Could love to wander there ;
" But wherefore 1" let my church-yard stone
Look toward Tawy and declare.
From yonder wood mark blue-eyed Eve proceed :
First thro' the deep and warm and secret glens,
Thro' the pale-glimmering privet-scented lane,
And thro' those alders by the river-side :
Now the soft dust impedes her, which the sheep
Have hollow'd out beneath their hawthorn shade.
But ah ! look yonder ! see a misty tide
Else up the hill, lay low the frowning grove,
Enwrap the gay white mansion, sap its sides
Until they sink and melt away like chalk ;
Now it comes down against our village-tower,
Covers its base, floats o'er its arches, tears
The clinging ivy from the battlements,
Mingles in broad embrace the obdurate stone,
(All one vast ocean), and goes swelling on
In slow and silent, dim and deepening waves.
Sweet Clementina, turn those eyes
On lines that trembling love has traced ;
0 steal one moment from the skies,
With pity, as with beauty, graced.
634
So may the Virgin, ever blest,
Whate'er you hope, whate'er you do,
Rule o'er your pure and gentle breast,
And cast her tenderest smile on you.
In Clementina's artless mien
Li i ci 1 In asks me what I see,
And are the roses of sixteen
Enough for me ]
Lucilla asks, if that be all,
Have I not cull'd as sweet before :
Ah yes, Lucilla ! and their fall
I still deplore.
I now behold another scene,
Where Pleasure beams with heaven's own light,
More pure, more constant, more serene,
And not less bright :
Faith, on whose breast the Loves repose,
Whose chain of flowers no force can sever,
And Modesty who, when she goes,
la gone for ever.
Against the rocking mast I stand,
The Atlantic surges swell
To bear me from my native land
And Psyche's wild farewell.
From billow upon billow hurl'd,
Again I hear her say,
" Oh ! is there nothing in the world
Worth one short hour's delay?"
Alas, my Psyche ! were it thus,
I should not sail alone,
Nor seas nor fates had sever'd us . .
But are you all my own 1
Thus were it, never would burst forth
These sighs so deep, so true !
But, what to me is little worth,
The world, is much to you.
And you shall say, when once the dream
(So hard to break !) is o'er,
My love was very dear to him,
My fame and peace were more.
Look thou yonder, look and tremble,
Thou whose passion swells so high ;
See those ruins that resemble
Flocks of camels as they lie.
'Twas a fair but froward city,
Bidding tribes and chiefs obey,
'Till he came who, deaf to pity,
Tost the imploring arm away.
Spoil'd and prostrate, she lamented
What her pride and folly wrought :
But was ever Pride contented,
Or would Folly e'er be taught 1
Strong are cities ; Rage o'erthrows 'em
Rage o'erswells the gallant ship ;
Stains it not the cloud-white bosom, .
Flaws it not the ruby lip ?
MISCELLANEOUS.
All that shields us, all that charms UP,
Brow of ivory, tower of stone,
Yield to Wrath ; another's harms us,
But we perish by our own.
Night may send to rave and ravage
Panther and hyena fell ;
But their manners, harsh and savage,
Little suit the mild gazelle.
When the waves of life surround thee,
Quenching oft the light of love,
When the clouds of doubt confound thee,
Drive not from thy breast the dove.
To-morrow, brightest-eyed of Avon's train,
To-morrow thou art, slave-like, bound and sold,
Another's and another's ! Haste away,
Wind thro' the willows, dart along the path ;
It nought avails thee ; nought our plaint avails.
0 happy those before me who could say
" Short tho' thy period, sweet Tacaea*, short
Ere thou art destin'd to the depths below,
Even from thy valley-cradle, saffron-strown,
Thou passest half thy sunny hours with me."
I mourn not, envy not, what others gain ;
Thee and thy venerable elms I mourn,
Thy old protectors ! ruthless was the pride
And gaunt the need that bade their heads lie low !
1 see the meadow's tender grass start back,
See from their prostrate trunks the gory glare.
Ah ! pleasant was it once to watch thy waves
Swelling o'er pliant beds of glossy weed ;
Pleasant to watch them dip amid the stones,
Chirp, and spring over, glance and gleam along,
And tripping light their wanton way pursue.
Methinks they now with mellow mournfulness
Bid their faint breezes chide my fond delay,
Nor suffer on the bridge nor on the knee
My poor irregularly pencill'd page.
Alas, Taesea, thou art sore deceived !
Here are no foreign words, no fatal seal,
But thou and all who hear me shall avow
The simple notes of sorrow's song are here.
Mother, I can not mind my wheel ;
My fingers ache, my lips are dry :
Oh ! if you felt the pain I feel !
But oh, who ever felt as I !
No longer could I doubt him true . .
All other men may use deceit ;
He always said my eyes were blue,
And often swore my lips were sweet.
Turn, pretty blue eyes ! wheresoever ye shine
May pity persuade you to light upon mine !
Our yesterday's glances by silent consent,
Alternate from each, swiftly came, swiftly went.
My zeal, my intemperate zeal, I deplore ;
I adored, and I burn'd to make others adore.
* Tachbrook, the name of a stream and village near
Warwick.
MISCELLANEOUS.
635
0 pardon, bright idol ! Henceforth shall thy
shrine
Remurmur my sighs, and remurmur but mine.
Thy suppliant shall grow more content and more
wise,
And his first and last prayer be, Turn, pretty blue
eyes !
WRITTEN IN WALES.
Ipsley ! when hurried by malignant fate
I past thy court and heard thy closing gate,
I sigh'd, but sighing to myself I said
" Now for the quiet cot and mountain shade."
Ah ! what resistless madness made me roam
From cheerful friends and hospitable home !
Whether in Arrow's vale or Tachbrook's grove
My lyre resounded Liberty and Love.
Here never Love hath fanu'd his purple flame,
And fear and anger start at Freedom's name.
Yet high exploits the churlish nation boasts
Against the Norman and the Roman hosts.
'Tis false ; where conquest had but reapt disgrace
Contemptuous Valour spurn'd the reptile race.
Let me once more my native land regain,
Bounding with steady pride and high disdain ;
Then will I pardon all the faults of fate,
And hang fresh garlands, Ipsley, on thy gate.
Lover. You little pert and twittering pet,
Who triumph so ! do you forget
That wooden bolt and wiry bar
So clearly show us what you are ]
Canary. You ugly, envious, monstrous thing,
You who can neither fly nor sing,
I would not, if I could, forget
I am a little twittering pet.
Proud man may banish from his mind
A mistress, lovely, fond, and kind ;
The wildest woods have never heard
Such wickedness of gentler bird.
I wish one instant you could see
The blessed fate allotted me ;
I should exult that Heaven had sent
The vision for your punishment.
No language but a bird's can speak
The transports of my quivering beak ;
My quivering beak alone can sing
The glories of my golden wing.
What tho' I tremble as. I stand,
Percht high on her protecting hand,
As my reflected form I view
In two clear founts of heavenly blue,
My ruffled wings her fingers close,
Her bosom bids my fears repose.
So froward is my fondled will,
I struggle to be nearer still.
The beating of her heart I hear,
And yet would I be still more near.
I chirp; but oh, my voice ! how dull !
Where flies it when the heart is full ?
Tell me, vain mortal, when will you
Sip the live rose's fragrant dew,
Riot and revel in her hair,
And dream of nests and nestlings there ]
Then may you triumph, and forget
The little pert and twittering pet.
Maria ! I have said adieu
To one alone so fair as you ;
And she, beyond my hopes, at last
Returns and tells me of the past ;
While happier for remembering well
Am I to hear and she to tell.
Whether gay Paris may again
Admire you gayest of her train,
Or, Love for pilot, you shall go
Where Orellana's waters flow,
And cull, amid Brazilian bowers,
Of richer fruits and gaudier flowers ;
Or on the Seine or on the Line
Remember one command of mine :
Love with as steady love as e'er
Illumed the only breast so fair ;
That, in another year at most,
Whether the Alps or seas are crost,
Something may scatter from the flame
Fresh lustre o'er Pereira's name.
Wert thou but blind, 0 Fortune, then perhaps
Thou mightest always have avoided me ;
For never voice of mine (young, middle-aged,
Or going down on tottering knee the shelf
That crumbles with us to the vale of years)
Call'd thee aside, whether thou rannest on
To others who expected, or didst throw
Into the sleeper's lap the unsought prize.
But blind thou art not ; the refreshing cup
For which my hot heart thirsted, thou hast
ever
(When it was full and at the lip) struck
down.
Let me sit here and muse by thee
Awhile, aerial Fiesole !
Thy shelter'd walks and cooler grots,
Villas and vines and olive-plots,
Catch me, entangle me, detain me,
And laugh to hear that aught can pain me.
'Twere just, if ever rose one sigh
To find the lighter mount more high,
Or any other natural thing
So trite that Fate would blush to sing,
Of Honour's sport or Fortune's frown,
Clung to my heart and kept it down.
But shunn'd have I on every side
The splash of newly-mounted Pride,
And never riskt my taking cold
In the damp chambers of the old.
What has the zephyr brought so sweet 1
'Tis the vine-blossom round my seat.
636
MISCELLANEOUS.
Ah ! how much better here at ease
And quite alone to catch the breeze,
Than roughly wear life's waning day
On rotten forms with Castlereagh,
'Mid public men for private ends,
A friend to foes, a foe to friends !
Long since with youthful chases warm,
And when ambition well might charm,
And when the choice before me lay,
I heard the din and turn'd away.
Hence oftentimes imperial Seine
Hath listen'd to my early strain,
And past the Rhine and past the Rhone
My Latian muse is heard and known :
Nor is the life of one recluse
An alien quite from public use.
Where alders mourn'd their fruitless beds
A thousand cedars raise their heads,
And from Segovia's hills remote,
My sheep enrich my neighbour's cote.
The wide and easy road I lead
Where never paced the harnest steed,
Where hardly dared the goat look down
Beneath her parent mountain's frown,
Suspended while the torrent-spray
Springs o'er the crags that roll away.
Cares if I had, I turn'd those cares
Toward my partridges and hares,
At every dog and gun I heard
Ill-auguring for some truant bird,
Or whisker'd friend of jet-tipt ear,
Until the frighten'd eld limpt near.
These knew me, and 'twas quite enough,
I paid no Morning Post to puff,
Saw others fame and wealth increase,
Ate my own mutton-chop in peace,
Open'd my window, snatcht my glass,
And, from the rills that chirp and pass,
A pure libation pour'd to thee,
Unsoil'd uncitied Liberty !
Lanthony ! an ungenial clime,
And the broad wing of restless Time,
Have rudely swept thy massy walls
And rockt thy abbots in their palls.
I loved thee by thy streams of yore,
By distant streams I love thee more ;
For never is the heart so true
As bidding what we love adieu.
Yet neither where we first drew breath,
Nor where our fathers sleep in death,
Nor where the mystic ring was given,
The link from earth that reaches heaven,
Nor London, Paris, Florence, Rome,
In his own heart 's the wise man's home,
Stored with each keener, kinder, sense,
Too firm, too lofty, for offence,
Unlittered by the tools of state,
And greater than the great world's great.
If mine no glorious work may be,
Grant, Heaven ! and 'tis enough for me,
(While many squally sails flit past,
And many break the ambitious mast)
From all that they pursue, exempt,
The stormless bay of deep contempt !
FOR AN URN IN THORESBY PARK.
With frigid art our numbers flow
For joy unfelt and fabled woe ;
And listless are the poet's dreams
Of pastoral pipe and haunted streams.
All Nature's boundless reign is theirs,
But most her triumphs and her tears.
They try, nor vainly try, their power
To cheer misfortune's lonely hour ;
Whether they raise the laurell'd head,
Or stoop beneath the peasant's shed,
They pass the glory they bestow,
And shine above the light they throw.
To Valour, in his car of fire,
Shall Genius strike the solemn lyre :
A Riou's fall shall Manvers mourn,
And Virtue raise the vacant urn.
ON READING IN A NEWSPAPER THE DEATH OP A
MOTHER AND THREE CHILDREN.
Again, my soul, sustain the mournful page !
Is there no difference ? none of place ? of age ?
How the words tremble, how the lines unite !
What dim confusion floats before my sight !
Thrice happy strangers, to whose roving eyes
Unwet with tears these public columns rise !
Whate'er the changeful world contains of new,
These are events the least observed by you.
0 Lambe, my early guide, my guardian friend,
Must thus our pleasures, thus our prospects end !
When the fond mother claspt her fever'd child,
Death hail'd the omen, waved his dart, and smiled,
Nor unobserv'd his lengthen'd wings o'erspread
With deeper darkness each devoted head.
She knows his silent footsteps ; they have past
Two other babes; two more havebreath'd their last.
What now avails thee, what avail'd thee then,
To shine in science o'er the sons of men !
Each varying plant, each tortuous root, to know,
How latent pests from lucid waters flow,
All the deep bosom of the air contains,
Fire's parent strength and earth's prolific veins.
The last and hardest lesson teaches this,
Frail is our knowledge, frailer is our bliss.
Ah what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine !
What every virtue, every grace !
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
cm.
Gone ! thou too, Nancy 1 why should Heaven
remove
Each tender object of my early love ?
Why was I happy? 0 ye conscious rocks !
Was I not happy 1 When lone's locks
MISCELLANEOUS.
637
Claspt round her neck and mine their golden
chain,
Ambition, fame, and fortune, smiled in vain.
While warring winds with deafening fury blew,
Near, and more near, our cheeks, our bosoms,
grew.
Wave after wave the lashing ocean chased,
She smiled, and prest me closer to her waist.
" Suppose this cave should crush us," once I
cried ;
" It can not fall," the loving maid replied.
" You, who are shorter, may be safe," I said ;
" 0 let us fly ! " exclaim'd the simple maid.
Springing, she drew me forward by the hand
Upon the sunny and the solid sand,
And then lookt round, with fearful doubt, to see
If what I spoke so seriously, could be.
Ah memory, memory ! thou alone canst save
Angelic beauty from the grasping grave.
Tho' Nancy's name for ever dwell unknown
Beyond her briar-bound sod and upright stone ;
Yet, in the lover's, in the poet's eye,
The young lone hath not bloom'd to die.
I come to visit thee again,
My little flowerless cyclamen !
To touch the hands, almost to press,
That cheer'd thee in thy loneliness.
What could those lovely sisters find,
Of thee in form, of me in mind,
What is there in us rich or rare,
To make us worth a moment's care 1
Unworthy to be so carest,
We are but wither'd leaves at best.
Child of a day, thou knowest not
The tears that overflow thine urn,
The gushing eyes that read thy lot,
Nor, if thou knewest, couldst return !
And why the wish ! the pure and blest
Watch like thy mother o'er thy sleep.
0 peaceful night ! 0 envied rest J
Thou wilt not ever see her weep.
ON A POET IN A WELSH CHURCH-YARD.
Kind souls ! who strive what pious hand shall
bring
The first-found crocus from reluctant Spring,
Or blow your wintry fingers while they strew
This sunless turf with rosemary and rue,
Bend o'er your lovers first, but mind to save
One sprig of each to trim a poet's grave.
ovn.
ANOTHER URN AT THORESBY PARK.
If in the summer-time, 0 guest,
Thou comest where these waters rest,
And where these gentle swells of land
Their ever- verdant turf expand,
Not opener these, nor those more clear,
Than was the soul that late dwelt here.
If in the winter thou hast crost
The scene benumb'd with snow and frost,
Ask those thou meetest at the gate
If they are not as desolate.
Yes, in this chancel once we sat alone,
0 Dorothea ! thou wert bright with youth,
Freshness like Morning's dwelt upon thy cheek,
While here and there above the level pews,
Above the housings of the village dames,
The musky fan its groves and zephyrs waved.
1 know not why (since we had each our book
And lookt upon it stedfastly) first one
Outran the learned labourer from the desk,
Then tript the other and limpt far behind,
And smiles -gave blushes birth, and blushes
smiles.
Ah me ! where are they flown, my lovely friend !
Two seasons like that season thou hast lain
Cold as the dark-blue stone beneath my feet,
While my heart beats as then, but not with joy.
0 my lost friends ! why were ye once so dear 1
And why were ye not fewer, 0 ye few ?
Must winter, spring, and summer, thus return,
Commemorating some one torn away,
Till half the months at last shall take, with me,
Their names from those upon your scatter'd
graves !
Thou in this wide cold church art laid,
Close to the wall, my little maid !
My little Fanny Verchild ! thou
Sole idol of an infant vow !
My playmate in life's break of day,
When all we had to do was play !
Even then, if any other girl
To kiss my forehead seiz'd a curl,
Thou wouldst with sad dismay run in,
And stamp, and call it shame and sin.
And should some rash intrusive boy
Bring thee an orange, flower, or toy,
That instant I laid fist on frill,
I bore my jealousy so ill,
And felt my bosom beat so bold,
Altlio' he might be six years old.
Against the marble slab mine eyes
Dwell fixt ; and from below arise
Thoughts, not yet cold nor mute, of thee
It was their earliest joy to see.
One who had marcht o'er Minden's plain
In thy young smile grew young again.
That stern one melted into love,
That father traced the line above.*
His Eoman soul used Eoman speech,
And taught (ah thou too, thou didst teach !)
How, soon as in our course we start,
Death follows with uplifted dart.
* ' S. Francisca1 Verchild, Nat xv. Julii, 1774. In cursu
vitse murs nobis inbtat.'
638
MISCELLANEOUS.
Tears driven back upon the fountain-head,
And Sorrow's voice supprest,
Heave, while in quiet sleep repose the dead ;
Oh ! when will they too rest !
Not the last struggles of the Sun,
Precipitated from his golden throne,
Hold darkling mortals in sublime suspense ;
But the calm exod of a man
Nearer, tho' far above, who ran
The race we run, when Heaven recals him hence.
Thus, 0 thou pure of earthly taint !
Thus, 0 my Southey! poet, sage, and saint!
Thou, after saddest silence, art removed.
What voice in anguish can we raise,
Or would we ? Need we, dare we, praise ?
God now does that, the God thy whole heart
loved.
The day returns, my natal day,
Borne on the storm and pale with snow,
And seems to ask me why I stay,
Stricken by Time and bowed by Woe.
Many were once the friends who came
To wish me joy ; and there are some
Who wish it now ; but not the same ;
They are whence friend can never come ;
Nor are they you my love watcht o'er
Cradled in innocence and sleep ;
You smile into iny eyes no more,
Nor see the bitter tears they weep.
When Helen first saw wrinkles in her face
('Twas when some fifty long had settled there
And intermarried and brancht off awide)
She threw herself upon her couch and wept :
On this side hung her head, and over that
Listlessly she let fall the faithless brass
That made the men as faithless.
But when you
Found them, or fancied them, and would not
hear
That they were only vestiges of smiles,
Or the impression of some amorous hair
Astray from cloistered curls and roseate band.
Which had been lying there all night perhaps
Upon a skin so soft, " No, no," you said,
" Sure, they are coming, yes, are come, are here :
Well, and what matters it, while thou art too ! "
A provident and wakeful fear
Impels me, while I read, to say,
When Poesy invites, forbear
Sometimes to walk her tempting way :
Readier is she to swell the tear
Than its sharp tinglings to allay.
" But there are stories fit for song,
And fit for maiden lips to sing."
Yes ; and to you they all belong,
About your knee they fondly cling ;
They love the accents of your tongue,
They seek the shadow of your wing.
Ah ! let the Hours be light and gay,
With Hope for ever at their side,
And let the Muses chaunt a lay
Of Pleasures that await the bride,
Of sunny Life's untroubled sea,
Smooth sands, and gently swelling tide.
A time will come when steps are slow,
And prone on ancient scenes to rest,
When life shall lose its former glow,
And, leaf by leaf, the shrinking breast
Shall drop the blossom yet to blow
For the most blessed of the blest.
Then, nor till then, in spring go forth
" The graves of waiting Mends to see."
It would be pleasant to my earth
To know your step, if that might be.
A verse is more than I am worth,
A thought is not undue to me.
The vessel that rests here at last
Had once stout ribs and topping mast,
And, whate'er wind there might prevail,
Was ready for a row or sail.
It now lies idle on its side,
Forgetful o'er the stream to glide.
And yet there have been days of yore,
When pretty maids their posies bore
To crown its prow, ite deck to trim,
And freighted a whole world of whim.
A thousand stories it could tell,
But it loves secrecy too well.
Come closer, my sweet girt, pray do !
There may be still one left for you.
Satire ! I never call'd thee very fair,
But if thou art inclined to hear my pray'r,
Grant the bright surface that our form reflects,
The healthy font that braces our defects :
But 0 ! to fulminate with forked line
Another's fame or fortune, ne'er be mine !
Against the wretch who dares it, high or low,
Against him only, I direct my blow.
*****
Well ; you have seen our Prosperos, at whose"
beck
Our ship, with all her royalty, is wreck.
From sire to son descends the wizard book
That works such marvels.
Look behind you ! look !
There issue from the Treasury, dull and dry as
The leaves in winter, Gifford and Matthias.
Brighter and braver Peter Pindar started,
And ranged around him all the lighter-hearted.
MISCELLANEOUS.
639
When Peter Pindar sank into decline,
Up from his hole sprang Peter Porcupine.
* * * * *
Honester men and wiser, you will say,
Were satirists.
Unhurt ? for spite ? for pay ?
Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,
Mounted the engine and took aim from tow'rs.
From putrid ditches we more safely fight,
And push our ziz-zag parallels by night.
Dryden's rich numbers rattle terse and round,
Profuse, and nothing plattery in the sound.
And, here almost his equal, if but here,
Pope pleas'd alike the playful and severe.
The slimmer cur at growler Johnson snarls,
But cowers beneath his bugle-blast for Charles.
From Vanity and London far removed,
With that pure Spirit his pure spirit loved,
In thorny paths the pensive Cowper trod,
But angels prompted, and the word was God.
Churchmen have chaunted satire, and the pews
Heard good sound doctrine from the sable Muse.
Frost-bitten and lumbaginous, when Donne,
With verses gnarl'd and knotted, hobbled on,
Thro' listening palaces did rhymeless South
Pour sparkling waters from his golden mouth.
Prim, in spruce parti-colours, Mason shone,
His Muse lookt well in gall-dyed crape alone.
Beneath the starry sky, 'mid garden glooms,
In meditation deep, and dense perfumes,
Young's cassock was flounced round with plaintive
pun . .
And pithier Churchill swore he would have none.
He bared his own broad vices, but the knots
Of the loud scourge fell sorest upon Scots.
*****
Byron was not all Byron ; one small part
Bore the impression of a human heart.
Guided by no clear love-star's panting light
Thro' the sharp surges of a northern night,
In Satire's narrow strait he swam the best,
Scattering the foam that hist about his breast.
He, who might else have been more tender, first
From Scottish saltness caught his rabid thirst.
Praise Keats . .
" I think I Ve heard of him."
" With you
Shelly stands foremost."
. . And his lip was blue.
" I hear with pleasure any one commend
So good a soul ; for Shelly is my friend."
One leaf from Southey's laurel made explode
All his combustibles . .
" An ass ! by God ! "
Who yet surmounted in romantic Spain
Highths our brisk courser never could attain.
I lagg"d ; he call'd me ; urgent to prolong
My matin chirpings into mellower song.
Mournfuller tones came then . . 0 ne'er be they
Drown'd in night bowlings from the Forth and
Spey !
Twice is almighty Homer far above
Troy and her towers, Olympus and his Jove.
First, when the God-led Priam bends before
Him sprung from Thetis, dark with Hector's
gore :
A second time, when both alike have bled,
And Agamemnon speaks among the dead.
Call'd up by Genius in an after-age,
That awful spectre shook the Athenian stage.
From eve to morn, from morn to parting night,
Father and daughter stood before my sight.
I felt the looks they gave, the words they said,
And reconducted each serener shade.
Ever shall these to me be well-spent days,
Sweet fell the tears upon them, sweet the praise.
cxvu.
Boastfully call we all the world our own :
What are we who should call it so 1 The form
Erect, the eye that pierces stars and suns,
Droop and decay ; no beast so piteously.
More mutable than wind-worn leaves are we ;
Yea, lower are we than the dust's estate ;
The very dust is as it was before ;
Dissever'd from ourselves, aliens and outcasts
From what our pride dared call inheritance,
We only live to feel our fall and die.
When the mimosas shall have made
(O'erarching) an unbroken shade ;
And the rose-laurels let to breathe
Scarcely a favorite flower beneath ;
When the young cypresses which now
Look at the olives, brow to brow,
Cheer'd by the breezes of the south
Shall shoot above the acacia's growth,
One peradventure of my four
Turning some former fondness o'er,
At last impatient of the blame
Cast madly on a father's name,
May say, and check the chided tear,
" I wish he still were with us here."
Everything tells me you are near ;
The hail-stones bound along and melt,
In white array the clouds appear,
The spring and you our fields have felt.
Paris, I know, is hard to quit ;
But you have left it ; and 'twere silly
To throw away more smiles and wit
Among the forests of Chantilly.
Her moss-paved cell your rose adorns
To tempt you ; and your cyclamen
Turns back his tiny twisted horns
As if he heard your voice again.
cxx.
MAKIE- ANTOINETTE.
0 gentlest of thy race !
How early do we trace
The wrath of Fate on thee !
640
Not only that thy head
Was hurl'd among the dead,
The virtuous, wise, and free,
0 Marie-Antoinette !
Do generous souls regret
Thy sceptred destiny,
But, winning all the heart
Of mortal like Mozart,
His bride thou couldst not be.
Thou liftedst the sweet child
From slippery floor : he smiled,
Kist thee, and call'd thee wife.
Ah ! could it have been so,
How free wert thou from woe,
How pure, how great, for life !
One truth is little known :
'Tis this ; the highest throne
Is not the highest place
Even on the earth we tread :
Some can raise up the dead,
And some the royal race.
November ! thou art come again
With all thy gloom of fogs and rain,
Yet woe betide the wretch who sings
Of sadness borne upon thy wings.
The gloom that overcast my brow,
The whole year's gloom, departs but now ;
And all of joy I hear or see,
November ! I ascribe to thee !
Retire, and timely, from the world, if ever
Thou hopest tranquil days ;
Its gaudy jewels from thy bosom sever,
Despise its pomp and praise.
The purest star that looks into the stream
Its slightest ripple shakes,
And Peace, where'er its fiercer splendours gleam,
Her brooding nest forsakes.
The quiet planets roll with even motion
In the still skies alone ;
O'er ocean they dance joyously, but ocean
They find no rest upon.
cxxin.
TO CORINTH.
Queen of the double sea, beloved of him
Who shakes the world's foundations, thou hast
seen
Glory in all her beauty, all her forms ;
Seen her walk back with Theseus when he left
The bones of Sciron bleaching to the wind,
Above the ocean's roar and cormorant's flight,
So high that vastest billows from above
Show but like herbage waving in the mead ;
Seen generations throng thy Isthmian games,
And pass away ; . the beautiful, the brave,
And them who sang their praises. But, 0 Queen,
Audible still, and far beyond thy cliffs,
As when they first were utter'd, are those words
Divine which praised the valiant and the just ;
MISCELLANEOUS.
And tears have often stopt, upon that ridge
So perilous, him who brought before his eye
The Colchian babes. " Stay ! spare him ! save
the last !
Medea ! Is that blood ? again ! it drops
From my imploring hand upon my feet !
I will invoke the Eumenides no more,
I will forgive thee, bless thee, bend to thee
In all thy wishes, do but thou, Medea,
Tell me, one lives." " And shall I too deceive ? "
Cries from the fiery car an angry voice ;
And swifter than two falling stars descend
Two breathless bodies ; warm, soft, motionless,
As flowers in stillest noon before the sun,
They lie three paces from him : such they lie
As when he left them sleeping side by side,
A mother's arm round each, a mother's cheeks
Between them, flusht with happiness and love.
He was more changed than they were, doomed
to show
Thee and the stranger, how defaced and scarr'd
Grief hunts us down the precipice of years,
And whom the faithless prey upon the last.
To give the inertest masses of our earth
Her loveliest forms was thine, to fix the Gods
Within thy walls, and hang their tripods round
With fruits and foliage knowing not decay.
A nobler work remains : thy citadel
Invites all Greece : o'er lands and floods remote
Many are the hearts that still beat high for
thee :
Confide then in thy strength, and unappall'd
Look down upon the plain, while yokemate kings
Run bellowing where their herdsmen goad
them on.
Instinct is sharp in them and terror true,
They smell the floor whereon their necks must lie.
GtTIDONE AND LUCIA.
I love to wander, both in deed and thought,
Where little rills their earliest tunes are taught :
I love to trace them into secret nooks,
And watch their winning ways and serious looks,
Where, as they rise up leisurely and slow,
The long-hair'd moss for ever waves below.
No few have splasht my face for venturing thus
Among their games, games never meant for us :
We are weak creatures, brief and dark our day,
But children of immortal breed are they.
Yet side by side with Reno, many a mile,
Thro' narrow dell and intricate defile,
I have run too ; and both were well content ;
He chafed sometimes, but never harm was meant.
The waters here start sundered, rocks between,
Some beetle-brow'd, and others brightly green :
Loudly they call each other, nor in vain,
Laugh at the rocks, spring, and embrace again.
My little Reno winds his stream along
Thro' pastoral scenes by pastoral pipe unsung,
And leaps and hazards many sportive falls,
But grows sedater near Bologna's walls.
MISCELLANEOUS.
641
Among the mountains which from high o'erlook
That solemn city and that wayward brook,
Pure as the snow that on the summit lies,
Fresh as the stream and radiant as the skies,
"Wert thou, Lucia ! Could thy girlish breast
Enjoy more sacred, more seraphic rest 1
The boy Guidone innocently play'd,
Past her ninth summer, with his wedded maid.
A ring of rush was quite enough for both,
And two sweet kisses all the marriage troth.
Amid life's early leaves how blest the fond !
Until they climb the tree and look beyond.
" I wonder," said Luck, " what can mean
Those odious names of Guelph and Ghibelline.
If, as my Babbo tells me, you 're a Guelph,
I must be (is it not so ] ) one myself.
And yet, though Babbo always should be right,
Against the Guelphs he calls his serfs to fight.
' Meanwhile,' says he in joke, ' my little queen
Thou shalt be safely lodged with Saint Cristine.'"
Sudden the colour left Guidone's cheek,
His lips were open but he could not speak,
He prest the cool plump hand ; it broke in twain
The ring of rush : and that was all her pain.
But when she rais'd her eyes, she thought no more
Of that, or any pledge he gave before.
She hugg'd him to her heart, and bade him say
If he was sorry that she went away.
He wept upon her head ; but not one word
(Had there been utterance) would the child have
heard.
The veins about her temples buzz'd like bees
Fretting and swarming in the linden-trees.
His tears ran down her curls ; her curls she drew
Against the cheek, and suckt off one or two,
But, panting, sobbing, sinking, thought it best
To clasp his neck and intercept the rest.
" From three years old," said she, " when love
begins,
I have loved you, Guidone ! all my sins,
My wicked fibs, you know it, were for you . . .
Now tell me what to say and what to do.
Speak ; you can tell me but one thing in vain,
Which is, that we must never love again.
We are no children now ; for I am nine
And you are twelve. Before Cristina's shrine
I will say all that ever saint has heard,
And pray you grow not ugly with a beard."
Little replied Guidone ; but he threw
His mantle on the ground, and gently drew
Lucia to the tufted seat, and there
Hid his sad face amid her sunny hair ;
Hand claspt in hand, now on her knee, now his,
Until their sorrow melted into bliss ;
Such bliss as innocence alone can know,
And innocence but seldom here below.
The morning now grew sultry : they must part ;
The boy with heavier, she with lighter heart :
Not that she loved him less than he loved he.r,
But she had suits, and sure ones, to prefer ;
Babbo had always minded what she said,
And if she threaten'd he was half-afraid.
Wanted she figs 1 the hinds were near, but them
She call'd not ; he, must mount the brittle stem.
VOL. II.
" Come, idle Babbo ! you alone can reach
To the top-branch ; pull down that yellow peach :
You may shake down some mulberries, if you will,
But mind ! you shook the last upon my frill."
And now she said, " Dear Babbo ! I would go,
But poor Guidone's heart kept beating so
Against my bosom, I am sure 't will break
If I do go : don't let me ; for his sake."
The father started at these words, and said,
" My sweet Lucia ! never be afraid
Of breaking hearts: thou hast notstrength enough,
My darling child ! for anything so tough."
She wiped his brow ; for it was moist. " But
still
(Laugh as you may) " said she, " I 'm sure it will.
I would not break it, gracious heaven ! not I !
And it is not because I too should die ;
For without sweet Guidone all my life
Would be one sigh : beside . . I am his wife."
She smiled, and took her father by the chin
And lookt into his eyes, nor saw within
The smouldering fires that there intensely
glow'd,
Nor read the hour of quitting her abode.
The sun has risen : and three horses wait
With two stout horsemen at the castle-gate.
The father lifts upon the iron-grey
His wondering child, and all three ride away.
Seven years incessantly there wept and pray'd
Before Cristina's shrine one pallid maid.
War had raged round the city : who can tell
Of Guelph and Ghibelline what thousands fell 1
Hence was that maid so pallid : she must know
(If her life pays for it) the weal or woe
Of her Guidone : not another year
Can youthful life endure such doubt and fear.
Another year might see her blest at home,
But will he too, will her Guidone come 1
Trusting that time had weakened or effaced
The lines that love with infant hand had traced,
Her father never had pronounced the name
In all his letters ; but when last he came
To see her in the convent, when he found
That nought within its cloisters, nought around,
Could raise from heavy grief her drooping head,
He laid his hand on hers, and mildly said,
" Lucia ! they have told you then ? The brave
Are the first fruits that drop into the grave."
Lucia heard him (and scarce heard him) speak,
And from her bosom burst nor groan nor shriek,
Nor from her eyes one tear : down dropt her head,
Down dropt her beauteous form.
" My child is dead ! "
The father cried, and struck his brow, and cast
His arms around her : the young nuns aghast
Stood round ; the elder rubb'd her temples hard,
And prayed the while : these cares had their reward.
Homeward the father hied, and finding now
His child in safety, bade her take the vow.
Bereft of her Guidone, she complied,
How willingly ! no other's future bride.
She thought her prayers, that morn and night
arise,
Would find a readier entrance to the skies ;
642
MISCELLANEOUS.
And that, if he had slain, as warrior must,
Saint Peter would release him was her trust ;
Since he himself, though chided by hia Lord,
Had drawn, and dexterously used, the sword.
Need was there now for arms, more need than when
He rear'd his boyish crest with hardier men.
In every street was heard the indignant cry,
"To Palestine ! Speed, Christian chivalry !
To Palestine ! The Soldan hath defiled
The sepulchre that holds the Virgin's child."
On such a day, and only on this one,
Each holy votary, each secluded nun,
May look abroad and bless the banner waved
To save his tomb by whom our souls are saved.
There stood among the nuns one holier maid
And sadder than them all : even she survey'd
The pious arms. But what above the rest
Now caught her eye ? She turn'd and smote her
breast.
Had not the bishop, when her vow she vow'd,
Before the altar, warn'd her thus aloud . .
" Turn not thy feet toward the world, nor let
Thine eyes, 0 virgin, by man's eyes be met."
All others on the earth were nought to those,
Sources of all her joys and all her woes.
Ah ! when was youth to gentle maiden dear
Unless he caus'd to flow the frequent tear ]
Day after day Guidone sought in vain
To see her face, or even her veil, again.
Few days were left : he never saw her more.
Pressing his brow against the wall, he swore
To live as chaste ; to serve the saint she served ;
Guidone swore ; Guidone never swerved.
Whatever be the fight, by land or sea,
Wherever there was danger, there was he.
Say, generous souls ! what can they seek beside
Death, speedy death, who lose a promist bride 1
He sought, but found it not : a worse mischance
Befell Guidone : broken was his lance
Deep in the Paynim foes : they raved around,
Many cleft down, and few without a wound.
To chains and tortures was the youth consign'd ;
Nor chain nor torture crush fc his constant mind.
" 0 my Lucia ! " cried he, " true and pure !
If now in heaven, thou seest what I endure.
Strengthen my faith, Lucia ! if indeed
The heart where thou art ever, strength can need.
Pray for me, to the only maid more blest
Of all above ; thus shall my spirit rest.
But if thou livest, may'st thou never know
The torture and the shame I undergo ! "
Worn out with anguish, slumber most profound
Sank brain and limb stretcht forth along the
ground.
When he awoke, the chains were on his feet,
But for the prison . . the cool air breath'd sweet,
Unlike the air of dungeons, nor less bland
Than on the morn when last he held her hand.
There where he vowed the vow, against that
wall
Eeclined was he, and then he heard a call.
He turn'd, and saw Lucia.
" Art thou here ?
Still living ? saint most holy ! maid most dear ! "
" Hush ! " said that gentle voice : " I live the
true
The only life, and could not live for you.
To teach our tears the easiest way to flow
Is the best wisdom we acquire below.
We have attained it : grief and hope must rest
Upon the holy Virgin, ever blest.
But rise, and place those fetters on my tomb ;
The hour of happier meeting soon will come."
He rose ; he placed them there. She died that
day
When from his eyes she turn'd her face away.
To our past loves we oft return,
When years that choked our path are past,
And wish again the incense-urn
Its flickering flame once more to cast
On paler brows, until the bourn
Is reacht, where we may rest at last.
Smiles soon abate ; the boisterous throe
Of anger long burst forth :
Inconstantly the south-wind blows,
But steadily the north.
Thy star, 0 Venus ! often changes
Its radiant seat above ;
The chilling pole-star never ranges.
'Tis thus with hate and love.
I will not call her fair,
For that all women are,
Shady or sunny, dim of eye or bright :
But tell me, tell me where
Is one of tint so clear,
Unless it may be one who bathes in upper light.
The fair above their kind,
Shallow of heart and mind,
Share with the fragile flower and senseless stone
Their richer tints ; we find
No vestige left behind :
She moves the distant breast, and fills the whole
alone.
• cxxvin.
Did I then ask of you why one so wise
Should often look on life with downcast eyes,
And mar sometimes their brightness with a
tear]
The vainer and less gentle are more gay,
Over the level wave they glide away,
And little know what hidden rocks are near.
cxxix.
" You must give back," her mother said,
To a poor sobbing little maid,
" All the young man has given you,
Hard as it now may seem to do."
" 'Tis done already, mother dear ! "
Said the sweet girl, " So, never fear."
Mother. Are you quite certain ? Come, recount
(There was not much) the whole amount.
MISCELLANEOUS.
643
Girl. The locket : the kid gloves.
Mother. Go on.
Girl. Of the kid gloves I found but one.
Mother. Never mind that. What else 1 Pro-
ceed.
You gave back all his trash 1
Girl. Indeed.
Mother. And was there nothing you would save 1
Girl. Everything I could give I gave.
Mother. To the last tittle 1
Girl. Even to that.
Mother. Freely?
Girl. My heart went pit-a-pat
At giving up . . ah me ! ah me !
I cry so I can hardly see . .
All the fond looks and words that past,
And all the kisses, to the last.
If you please we '11 hear another,
Timid maid, without the mother.
Unless you are tired, for these
"We must travel into Greece.
I know every bay and creek ;
Fear no pirate in the Greek.
Here we are, and there is she ;
Stand and hide behind the tree.
She will (for I 'm grave and gray)
Tell me all she has to say.
Guest. Violet-eyed little maid !
Of what are you afraid ]
Maid. 0 ! it is Dian's spear,
Sharp-pointed, I most fear.
Guest. So then you would prefer
Yenus, I think, to her ?
Maid. Yes ; Venus is so good !
I only wish she would
Keep her sad boy away
Who mocks at all I say.
Guest. What could he then have heard ?
Maid. Don't ask me . . Every word !
Guest. She has heard me ere now.
If you repeat the vow,
I will repeat it too,
And that perhaps may do :
Where there is only one
But little can be done.
Maid. Perhaps tho' you may blame . .
Ah me ! I am all flame.
Guest. With love1?
Maid. No, no ; with shame.
Guest. Each word that you repeat
Will much abate the heat.
Maid. Well then . . I pray. . Don't ask . .
I can not bear the task.
Guest. Of all the queens above
Fear most the queen of love.
For those alone she cares
Who well repeat their prayers.
Maid. 0 then I must, I find,
(But do not look) be blind.
Well, well, now ! you shall hear ;
But don't come quite so near.
' Venus ! I fear thy dove
Is somewhere in my breast :
Yes, yes, I feel him move,
He will not let me rest.
If he should ever go,
I fancy I should sink ;
He fans and wafts me so,
I think . . what do I think *?
0 Venus ! thou canst tell . .
'Tis wicked to rebel ! '
'Twas Love : I heard him speak,
But dared not turn my neck ;
1 felt his torch so near
And trembled so with fear
I thought I should have died.
Guest. And was there none beside ?
Maid. The goddess in white stone
And one young man alone,
His eyes upon the ground,
And lost in thought profound.
Methinks I see him yet,
And never can forget :
For I was almost glad
To see him look so sad,
And gravely disapprove
The mockery of Love.
Guest. Should Love then reappear,
May that young man be near,
And pray the queen of beauty
To make him do his duty.
cxxxi.
The maid I love ne'er thought of me
Amid the scenes of gaiety ;
But when her heart or mine sank low,
Ah then it was no longer so.
From the slant palm she rais'd her head,
And kist the cheek whence youth had fled.
Angels ! some future day for this,
Give her as sweet and pure a kiss.
All poets dream, and some do nothing more.
When you have turn'd this paper o'er,
You then may tell me, if you please,
Which I resemble most of these.
One morning as outstretcht I lay,
Half-covered by the new-mown hay,
I saw a bird high over-head,
And round him many smaller fled.
To me he seem'd a hawk or kite,
The little birds (who should be in a fright,
Yet never are, as you must oft have found)
Flew many after, many round.
Unable at full stretch to keep
My eyes, they wearied into sleep :
And, soon as I had sank upon the grass,
I saw the large and little pass
All into other shapes ; the great one grew
Like Time; like full-grown Loves the smaller
flew:
All kept their course, as they had done before ;
TT2
644
MISCELLANEOUS.
But soon the less quite vanisht ; he, the great,
Moved on in slow and solemn state,
Until I thought at last he reacht the skies ;
And then I opened (somewhat late) my eyes.
Neither the suns nor frosts of rolling years
Dry up the springs or change the course of
tears.
Sorrow will ever mark her stated days,
Sacred as those Religion claims for praise.
Why, why repine, my pensive friend,
At pleasures slipt away ?
Some the stern Fates will never lend,
And all refuse to stay.
I see the rainbow in the sky,
The dew upon the grass,
I see them, and I ask not why
They glimmer or they pass.
With folded arms I linger not
To call them back ; 'twere Tain ;
In this, or in some other spot,
I know they '11 shine again.
Thou whom the wandering comets guide,
0 turn awhile to Virtue's side,
Goddess by all adored ! and deign
Once more to smile on rising Spain.
No secret pang my bosom wrings
For prostrate lords and captive kings ;
I, mighty Power, invoke thy aid
To Valour crost and Faith betray'd.
0 leave the marshal'd ranks of war,
Nor blindly urge Bellona's car,
When hearts so generous, arms so brave,
Eesist the conqueror, spurn the slave,
And, striking home for equal laws,
Pray Fortune to sustain the cause.
Not such is theirs as wafted o'er
The crescent and the crafty Moor ;
No tears for virgin honour flow,
No father calls the avenging foe ;
Napoleon leads no faithless host,
Nor tears the heart that trusts him most :
A rescued son, a prince restored,
Against his country draws the sword,
And wily priests in vengeful mood
Surround their fires with dykes of blood :
Turn then, 0 Fortune, and sustain
The cause of Freedom and of Spain !
Humblest among the vernal train, •
In giddy Flora's gustful reign,
Uplift, uplift thy timid eyes !
The violet shuns the trying hour,
Soon sheds the rose its fondled flower,
The gaudy tulip flaunts and dies.
When Autumn mourns his gloomy end,
When rains and howling blasts descend,
When hill and vale and wood are bare,
Before my path thy light I see,
And tho' no other smiles to me,
Thou smilest, here and everywhere.
What name more graceful couldst thou chuse
Than Caledonia's pastoral Muse,
Breath'd in the mellow reed of Burns 1
Art thou not proud that name to share
With her from whom, so passing fair,
No heart unconquer'd e'er returns 1
Let this man smile, and that man sigh
To see the wheels of Fashion whirl ;
Place me in some cool arbour nigh
My mild and modest country girl ;
Or under whitening poplars, high
O'er flirting brooks, that glance and purl
To attract such flowers as peer and pry,
My mild and modest country girl !
" Wguld you not tire there V . . no, not I.
Acids that melt the richest pearl
Are envy, pride, satiety,
My mild and modest country girl !
Power, office, title . . np they fly
Against one light and sunny curl,
That plays above thine azure eye,
My mild and modest country girl.
Knighthood's new spur the squire would try,
And viscount be emblazon'd earl :
Content is only seated by
My mild and modest country girl.
Possession kings must fortify
With moat and barbican and merl :
Thine dwells in free security,
My mild and modest country girl !
Great riches, great authority
Turn the best-tempered to a churl ;
With health and thee no crosses lie,
My mild and modest country girl !
Tho' Fame and Glory to the sky
Ambition's wind-worn flag unfurl,
With'thee I 'd live, for thee I 'd die,
My mild and modest country girl !
Thus round and round thee busily
Teaching my tinkling rhymes to twirl,
I did not well hear thy reply,
My mild and modest country girl ! *
You hate amid the pomp of prayer
The incense. So then Beauty hates
What warms for her the cruder air,
Awakes the Graces, soothes the Fates !
* If the reader has any curiosity to know the origin of
these trifling verses, they were composed on the remark
of a scholar, that pue.lla in its cases ended many in Latin,
and that girl ended none in ours, from the impossibility
of finding such a rhyme as would suit the subject.
MISCELLANEOUS.
645
It rises with soft clouds about it,
It sinks, and melts itself away ;
Prayers are of little use without it,
And with it few men vainly pray.
The wisest of us all, when woe
Darkens our narrow path below,
Are childish to the last degree,
And think what is must always be.
It rains, and there is gloom around,
Slippery and sullen is the ground,
And slow the step ; within our sight
Nothing is cheerful, nothing bright.
Meanwhile the sun on high, altho'
We will not think it can be so,
Is shining at this very hour
In all his glory, all his power,
And when the cloud is past, again
Will dry up every drop of rain.
The burden of an ancient rhyme
Is, " By the forelock seize on Time."
Time in some corner heard it said ;
Pricking his ears, away he fled ;
And, seeing me upon the road,
A hearty curse on me bestow'd.
" What if I do the same by thee 1
How wouldst thou like it ? " thunder'd he,
And, without answer thereupon,
Seizing my forelock . . it was gone.
CXLI.
Will mortals never know each other's station
Without the herald ] 0 abomination !
Milton, even Milton, rankt with living men !
Over the highest Alps of mind he marches,
And far below him spring the baseless arches
Of Iris, coloring dimly lake and fen.
Eemind me not, thou grace of serious mien !
That thy fresh beauties are but frail as flowers ;
Eloquent lip, and lucid eye, and all
That our fond senses vainly seize upon
And can not hold ; those undulatin^lights
Baffling our aspirations, casting down
Our venturous sight, and almost our desires.
Keligion too comes in : she claims a right
Of audience ; she reproves the worshipper
Of earthly image ; such she calls even thee.
I bend my head before her, nor deny
Her potency of argument, yet gaze
Incredulous awhile, and only say :
"Pardon, 0 thou from Heaven ! who knowest best !
Stars, if composed of earth, yet still are stars,
And must be lookt at with uplifted eyes.
Tell me, perverse young year !
Why is the morn so drear 1
Is there no flower to twine ?
Away, thou churl, away !
'Tis Rose's natal day,
Reserve thy frown for mine.
ON RECEIVING A BOOK TO WRITE IN.
Tost in what corner hast thou lain 1
And why art thou come back again ?
I should as soon have thought to see
One risen from the dead as thee.
I have survived my glory now
Three years ; but just the same art thou ;
I am not quite ; and three years hence
I may have lept that ugly fence,
Which men attempt to shirk in vain,
And never can leap back again.
But welcome, welcome ! thou art sent
I know on generous thoughts intent ;
And therefore thy pale cheeks I '11 kiss
Before I scribble more than this.
A SEA-SHELL SPEAKS.
Of late among the rocks I lay, '
But just behind the fretful spray,
When suddenly a step drew near,
And a man's voice, distinct and clear,
Convey'd this solace . .
" Come with me,
Thou little outcast of the sea !
Our destiny, poor shell, is one ;
We both may shine, but shine alone :
Both are deprived of all we had
In earlier days to make us glad,
Or ask us why we should be sad :
Which (you may doubt it as you will)
To manly hearts is dearer still."
I felt, ere half these words were o'er,
A few salt drops on me once more.
CXLVI. '
Often I have heard it said
That her lips are ruby-red.
Little heed I what they say,
I have seen as red as they.
Ere she smiled on other men,
Real rubies were they then.
When she kist me once in play,
Rubies were less bright than they,
And less bright were those which shone
In the palace of the Sun.
Will they be as bright again 1
Not if kist by other men.
In spring and summer winds may blow,
And rains fall after, hard and fast ;
The tender leaves, if beaten low,
Shine but the more for shower and blast.
646
MISCELLANEOUS.
But when their fated hour arrives,
When reapers long have left the field,
When maidens rifle turn'd-up hives,
And their last juice fresh apples yield,
A leaf perhaps may still remain
Upon some solitary tree,
Spite of the wind and of the rain . .
A thing you heed not if you see . .
At last it falls. Who cares ? not one :
And yet no power on earth can ever
Eeplace the fallen leaf upon
Its spray, so easy to dissever.
If such be love I dare not say,
Friendship is such, too well I know,
I have enjoy'd my summer day ;
'Tis past ; my leaf now lies below.
ON RECEIVING A PORTRAIT.
To gaze on you when life's last gleams decline,
And hold your hand, to the last clasp, in
mine . .
Of these two wishes, these my only two,
One has been granted, gentle maid, by you :
Were thus the other certain, I should go,
And leave but one man happier here below.
Beauty's pure native gems, ye quivering hairs !
Once mingled with my own,
While soft desires, ah me ! were all the cares
Two idle hearts had known.
How is it, when I take ye from the shrine
Which holds one treasure yet,
That ye, now all of Nancy that is mine,
Shrink from my fond regret ]
Ye leaves that droop not with the plant that
bore ye,
Start ye before my breath 1
Shrink ye from tender Love who would adore
ye,
0 ye who fear not Death !
SENT TO A LADY WITH FLOWERS.
Take the last flowers your natal day
May ever from my hand receive ! p
Sweet as the former ones are they,
And sweet alike be those they leave.
Another, in the year to come,
May offer them to smiling eyes ;
That smile would wake me from the tomb,
That smile would win me from the skies.
Whatever England's fields display,
The fairest scenes are thine, Torbay !
Not even Liguria's sunny shore
With palm and aloe pleas'd me more.
Sorrento softer tele may tell,
Parthenope sound louder shell,
Amalfi, Ocean's proudest boast,
Show loftier hills and livelier coast,
Where Nereids hear the nightly flute,
And gather fresh such morning fruit
As hangs within their highth, and shows
Its golden gleam thro' glossy boughs.
But, with thy dark oak-woods behind,
Here stretcht against the western wind
The sails that from the Zuyderzee
Brought him who left our fathers free.
Yet (shame upon me !) I sometimes
Have sighed awhile for other climes,
Where, tho' no mariner, I too
Whistled aloft my little crew :
'Twas now to spar, 'twas now to fence,
'Twas now to fathom Shakspeare's sense,
And now to trace the hand divine
That guided Raffael's faultless line.
And then we wonder who could raise
The massy walls at which we gaze,
Where amid songs and village glee
Soars immemorial Fiesole.
At last we all in turn declare
We know not who the Cyclops were.
" But the Pelasgians ! those are true ]"
" I know as much of them as you."
" Pooh ! nonsense ! you may tell us so ;
Impossible you should not know !"
Then plans, to find me out, they lay,
Which will not fail another day.
England, in all thy scenes so fair,
Thou canst not show what chann'd me there !
With rosy hand a little girl prest down
A boss of fresh-cull 'd cowslips in a rill :
Often as they sprang up again, a frown
Show'd she disliked resistance to her will :
But when they droopt their heads and shone
much less,
She shook them to and fro, and threw them by,
And tript away. " Ye loathe the heaviness
Ye love to cause, my little girls ! " thought I,
"And what had shone for you, by you must
die."
CLIII.
Very true, the linnets sing
Sweetest in the leaves of spring :
You have found in all these leaves
That which changes and deceives,
And, to pine by sun or star,
Left them, false ones as they are.
But there be who walk beside
Autumn's, till they all have died,
And who lend a patient ear
To low notes from branches sere.
CLIV.
ON HAIR FALLING OFF AFTER AN ILLNESS.
Conon was he whose piercing eyes
Saw Berenice's hair surmount the skies,
Saw Venus spring away from Mars
And twirl it round and fix it 'mid the stars.
MISCELLANEOUS.
647
Then every poet who had seen
The glorious sight sang to the youthful queen,
Until the many tears were dried,
Shed for that hair by that most lovely bride.
Hair far more beauteous be it mine
Not to behold amid the lights divine,
But gracing, as it graced before,
A brow serene which happier men adore.
First bring me Raffael, who alone hath seen
In all her purity Heaven's virgin queen,
Alone hath felt true beauty ; bring me then
Titian, ennobler of the noblest men ;
And next the sweet Correggio, nor chastise
His little Cupids for those wicked eyes.
I want not Kubens's pink puffy bloom,
Nor Rembrandt's glimmer in a dusty room.
With those, and Poussin's nymph-frequented
woods,
His templed highths and long-drawn solitudes
I am content, yet fain would look abroad
On one warm sunset of Ausonian Claude.
FAREWELL TO ITALY.
I leave thee, beauteous Italy ! no more
From the high terraces, at even-tide,
To look supine into thy depths of sky,
Thy golden moon between the cliff and me,
Or thy dark spires of fretted cypresses
Bordering the channel of the milky-way.
Fiesole and Valdarno must be dreams
Hereafter, and my own lost Affrico
Murmur to me but in the poet's song.
I did believe (what have I not believed 1)
Wtary with age, but unopprest by pain,
To close in thy soft clime my quiet day
And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade. '
Hope ! Hope ! few ever cherisht thee so little ;
Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised ;
But thou didst promise this, and all was well.
For we are fond of thinking where to lie
When every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heart
Can lift no aspiration . . reasoning
As if the sight were unimpaired by death,
Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,
And the sun cheered corruption ! Over all
The smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,
And light us to^our chamber at the grave.
He who sees rising from some open down
A column, stately, beautiful, and pure,
Its rich expansive capital would crown
With glorious statue, which might long endure,
And bring men under it to gaze and sigh
And wish that honour'd creature they had
known,
Whose name the deep inscription lets not die.
I raise that statue and inscribe that stone.
There may be many reasons why,
0 ancient land of Kong-Fu-Tsi !
Some fain would make the little feet
Of thy indwellers run more fleet.
But while, as now, before my eyes
The steams of thy sweet herb arise,
Amid bright vestures, faces fair,
Long eyes, and closely braided hair,
And many a bridge and many a barge,
And many a child and bird as large,
1 can not wish thee wars nor woes . .
And when thy lovely single rose,
Which every morn I haste to see,
Smiles with fresh-opened flower on me,
And when I think what hand it was
Cradled the nursling in its vase,
By all thy Gods ! 0 ancient land !
I wish thee and thy laws to stand.
TO ONE WHO SAID SHE SHOULD LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT.
When sea-born Venus guided o'er
Her warrior to the Punic shore,
Around that radiant head she threw
In deep'ning clouds ambrosial dew :
But when the Tyrian queen drew near,
The light pour'd round him fresh and clear.
Ill-starr'd Elisa! hence arose
Her faithless joys, her stedfast woes,
Sighs, that with life alone expire,
And flames that light the funeral pyre,
0 Goddess ! if that peerless maid
Thou hast w^th every grace array'd,
Must, listening to thy gentle voice,
Fix at first view th' eternal choice . .
Suspend the cloud before her eyes
Until some godlike man arise ;
One of such wisdom that he knows
How much he wins, how much he owes ;
One in whose breast united lie
Calm courage and firm constancy ;
Whose genius makes the world his own,
Whose glory rests in her alone.
OLX.
ON AN ECLIPSE OF THE MOON.
Struggling, and faint, and fainter didst thou wane,
0 Moon ! and round thee all thy starry train
lame forth to help thee, with half-open eyes,
And trembled every one with still surprise,
That the black Spectre should have dared assail
Their beauteous queen and seize her sacred veil.
Reprehend, if thou wilt, the vain phantasm, 0
Reason !
Of the breast we have lean'd on, the hand we
have linkt,
That dream is so vivid at no other season
As when friendship is silent and love is
extinct.
648
MISCELLANEOUS.
CLXII.
ON SHAKSPEARE.
In poetry there is but one supreme,
Tho' there are many angels round his throne,
Mighty, and beauteous, while his face is hid.
There is, alas ! a chill, a gloom,
About my solitary room
That will not let one flowret bloom
Even for you :
The withering leaves appear to say,
" Shine on, shine on, 0 lovely May !
But we meanwhile must drop away."
Light ! life ! adieu.
Ternissa ! you are fled !
I say not to the dead,
But to the happy ones who rest below :
For, surely, surely, where
Your voice and graces are,
Nothing of death can any feel or know.
Girls who delight to dwell
Where grows most asphodel,
Gather to their calm breasts each word you speak :
The mild Persephone
Places you on her knee,
And your cool palm smoothes down stern Pluto's
cheek.
PRAYER OF THE BEES TO ALCIPHRON.
There was a spinner in the days of old,
So proud, so bold,
She thought it neither shame nor sin
To challenge Pallas to come down and spin.
The goddess won, and forced the crone to hide her
Ugly old head and shrink into a spider.
The bees were frighten'd, for they knew
Within their prudent breasts that few
Had so much skill as they ;
And she who gave the olive might
Be angry, if they show'd that light
As pure and bright
Could shine on mortals any other way.
So not a syllable said they of wax,
But cover'd it with honey, lest a tax
Be laid upon it by the Powers above.
Another goddess, no less mighty
Than Pallas, men call Aphrodite,
The queen of love.
Honey she likes and all things sweet,
And, when she came among the swarms,
They said, "Othou whence love hath all its charms
Grant him who saved us what we now entreat.
'Tis one whom we
Are used to see
Among our thyme and ivy-flowers
Throughout the matin and the vesper hours,
Fonder of silence than of talk ;
Yet him we heard one morning say :
' Gardener ! do not sweep away
The citron blossoms from the gravel-walk :'
It might disturb or wound my bees ;
So lay aside that besom, if you please.'
He for whose weal we supplicate is one
Thou haply may'st remember, Alciphron.
We know that Pallas has lookt down
Sometimes on him without a frown,
Yet must confess we 're less afraid
Of you than that Hymettian maid.
Give him, 0 goddess, we implore,
Not honey (we can that) but more.
We are poor bees, and can not tell
If there be aught he loves as well ;
But we do think we heard him say
There is, and something in your way.
Our stories tell us, when your pretty child
Who drives (they say) so many mortals wild,
Vext one of our great-aunts until she stung ;
Away he flew, and wrung,
Stamping, his five loose fingers at the smart,
You chided him, and took our part.
May the cross Year, fresh-wakened, blow sharp
dust
Into their eyes who say thou art unjust."
You love me ; but if I confess
That I in turn love you no less,
I know that you will glance aside
With real or aft'ected pride ;
And, be it true or be it feign'd,
My bosom would alike be pain'd,
So that I will not tell you now
Whether I love ; and as for vow . .
You may demand it ten times over,
And never win from wary lover.
Mind ! if we men would be as blest
For ever as when first carest,
We must excite a little fear,
And sometimes almost domineer.
One morning in the spring I sate
Kicking my heels upon a gate,
The birds were singing all around,
And cowslips sunn'd the sheeny ground,
And next to me above the post
A certain shrub its branches tost,
Seeming to whisper in my ear,
" Have you no song for her so dear ? "
Now never in my life could I
Write at command ; I know not why.
I tried to write ; I tried in vain ;
The little birds, to mock my pain,
Sang cheerily ; and every note
Seem'd rushing from a clearer throat.
I was half-mad to think that they
So easily should win the day.
The slender shrub I thought held down
Its head to whisper " What a clown ! "
MISCELLANEOUS.
649
Stung by its touch and its reproof,
And saying, " Keep your thorns aloof,"
Unconsciously I spoke the name,
And verses in full chorus came.
TO LADY CALDWELL.
Sophy ! before the fond adieu
We long but shrink to say,
And while the home prepared for you
Looks dark at your delay,
Before the graces you disclose
By fresh ones are o'ershaded,
And duties rise more grave than those,
To last when those are faded,
It will not weary you, I know,
To hear again the voice
First heard where Arno's waters flow
And Flora's realms rejoice.
Of beauty not a word have I
(As thousands have) to say,
Of vermeil lip or azure eye
Or cheek of blushful May.
The gentle temper blessing all,
The smile at Envy's leer,
Are yours; and yours at Pity's call
The heart-assuaging tear.
Many can fondle and caress . .
No other have I known
Proud of a sister's loveliness,
Unconscious of her own.
CLXIX.
To write as your sweet mother does
Is all you wish to do.
Play, sing, and smile for others, Eose !
Let others write for you.
Or mount again your Dartmoor grey,
And I will walk beside,
Until we reach that quiet bay
Which only hears the tide.
Then wave at me your pencil, then '.
At distance bid me stand,
Before the cavern'd cliff, again
The creature of your hand.
And bid me then go past the nook,
To sketch me less in size ;
There are but few content to look
So little in your eyes.
Delight us with the gifts you have,
And wish for none beyond :
To some be gay, to some be grave,
To one (blest youth !) be fond.
Pleasures there are how close to Pain,
And better unpossest !
Let poetry's too throbbing vein
Lie quiet in your breast.
CLXX.
From leaves unopen'd yet, those eyes she lifts,
Which never youthful eyes could safely view.
" A book or flower, such are the only gifts
I like to take, nor like them least from you."
A voice so sweet it needs no music's aid
Spake it, and ceast : we, offering both, reply :
These tell the dull old tale that bloom must
fade,
This the bright truth that genius can not die.
CHRISTMAS HOLLY.
Bethink we what can mean
The holly's changeless green,
Unyielding leaves, and seeds blood-red :
These, while the smoke below
Curls slowly upward, show
Faith how her gentle Master bled.
Those drop not at the touch
Of busy over-much,
They shrink not at the blazing grate ;
And the same green remains,
As when autumnal rains
Nurst them with milky warmth of late.
The stedfast bough scarce bends,
But hang it over friends
And suddenly what thoughts there spring !
Harsh voices all grow dumb,
While myriad pleasures come
Beneath Love's ever-widening wing.
In age the memory, as the eye itself,
Sees near things indistinctly, far things well,
And often that which happen'd years ago
Seems sprung from yesterday, while yesterday's
Fair birth lies half-forgotten and deform'd.
Various the roads of life ; in one
All terminate, one lonely way.
We go ; and " Is he gone ] "
Is all our best friends say.
Something (ah ! tell me what) there is
To cause that melting tone.
I fear a thought has gone amiss,
Returning quite alone.
Never may storm thy peaceful bosom vex,
Thou lovely Exe !
O'er whose pure stream that music yesternight
Pour'd fresh delight,
And left a vision for the eye of Morn
To laugh to scorn,
Showing too well how Love once led the Hours
In Youth's green bowers ;
Vision too blest for even Hope to see, j
Were Hope with me ;
Vision my fate at once forbids to stay
Or pass away.
650
MISCELLANEOUS.
FOR THE ALBUM OF THE DUCHESS DE QUICHE.
Children ! while childhood lasts, one day
Alone be less your gush of play.
As you ascend that cloven steep
Whence Lerici o'erlooks the deep,
And watch the hawk and plover soar,
And bow-winged curlew quit the shore,
Think not, as graver heads might do,
The same with equal ease could you ;
So light your spirits and your forms,
So -fearless is your race of storms.
Mild be the sunbeams, mild the gales,
Along Liguria's pendent vales,
Whether from changeful Magra sped
Or Tanaro's unquiet bed.
Let Apennine and Alpine snows
Be husht into unwaked repose,
While Italy gives back again
More charms and virtues than remain,
Which France with loftier pride shall own
Than all her brightest arms have won.
No, my own love of other years !
No, it must never be.
Much rests with you that yet endears,
Alas ! but what with me ?
Could those bright years o'er me revolve
So gay, o'er you so fair,
The pearl of life we would dissolve
And each the cup might share.
You show that truth can ne'er decay,
Whatever fate befals ;
I, that the myrtle and the bay
Shoot fresh on ruin'd walls.
The brightest mind, when sorrow sweeps across,
Becomes the gloomiest ; so the stream, that ran
Clear as the light of heaven ere autumn closed,
When wintry storm and snow and sleet descend,
Is darker than the mountain or the moor.
CLXXIX.
Heron ! of grave career ! whose lordly croaks
Claim as inheritance Bodryddan's oaks,
I come no radical to question rights :
But, one word in your ear, most noble sir !
If you may croak, I sure may sing, to her
Who in my voice, as in your own, delights.
" Most potent, grave, and reverend signer ! '
Heron !
High as the station is you now appear on,
I see you perch upon it, nor repine :
About our voice we may perhaps dispute,
As for our seat, on that you must be mute :
Yours but a Dryad rais'd, a Grace rais'd mine.
CLXXX.
Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream ;
I wish no happier one than to be laid
Beneath a cool syringa's scented shade,
Or wavy willow, by the running stream,
Brimful of moral, where the dragon-fly,
Wanders as careless and content as I.
Thanks for this fancy, insect king,
Of purple crest and filmy wing,
Who with indifference givest up
The water-lily's golden cup,
To come again and overlook
What I am writing in my book.
Believe me, most who read the line
Will read with hornier eyes than thine ;
And yet their souls shall live for ever,
And thine drop dead into the river !
God pardon them, 0 insect king,
Who fancy so unjust a thing !
CLXXXI.
Thou pityest ; and why hidest thou thy pity ?
Let the warm springs of thy full heart gush forth
Before the surface cool : no fear that ever
The inner fountain a fresh stream deny.
CLXXXII.
Absent is she thou lovest ? be it so ;
Yet there is what should drive away thy woe
And make the night less gloomy than the
day.
Absent she may be ; yet her love appears
Close by ; and thro' the labyrinth of the ears
Her voice's clue to the prone heart makes
way.
CLXXXIII.
Rightly you say you do not know
How much, my little maid, you owe
My guardian care. The veriest dunce
Beats me at reckoning. Pray, permit
My modesty to limit it,
Nor urge me to take all at once.
You are so young, I dare not say
I might demand from you each day
Of a long life a lawful kiss.
I, so much older, won't repine
If you pay me one, each of mine,
But be exact ; begin with this.
'' Do you remember me ? or are you proud ? "
Lightly advancing thro' her star-trimm'd crowd,
lanthe said, and lookt into my eyes.
' A yes, a yes, to both : for Memory
Where you but once have been must ever be,
And at your voice Pride from his throne must
f o charm can stay, no medicine can assuage,
["he sad incurable disease of age ;
)nly the hand in youth more warmly prest
tfakes soft the couch and calms the final rest.
Many may yet recal the hours
'hat saw thy lover's chosen flowers
MISCELLANEOUS.
651
Nodding and dancing in the shade
Thy dark and wavy tresses made :
On many a brain is pictured yet
Thy languid eye's dim violet :
But who among them all foresaw
How the sad snows which never thaw
Upon that head one day should lie,
And love but glimmer from that eye !
Yes ; I write verses now and then,
But blunt and flaccid is my pen,
No longer talkt of by young men
As rather clever :
In the last quarter are my eyes,
You see it by their form and size ;
Is it not time then to be wise ?
Or now or never.
Fairest that ever sprang from Eve !
While Time allows the short reprieve,
Just look at me ! would you believe
'Twas once a lover ?
I can not clear the five-bar gate,
But, trying first its timber's state,
Climb stiffly up, take breath, and wait
To trundle over.
Thro' gallopade I can not swing
The entangling blooms of Beauty's spring :
I can not say the tender thing,
Be 't true or false,
And am beginning to opine
Those girls are only half-divine
Whose waists yon wicked boys entwine
In giddy waltz.
I fear that arm above that shoulder,
I wish them wiser, graver, older,
Sedater, and no harm if colder
And panting less.
Ah ! people were not half so wild
In former days, when, starchly mild,
Upon her high-heel'd Essex smiled
The brave Queen
CLXXXVIII.
TO E. F.
No doubt thy little bosom beats
When sounds a wedding bell,
No doubt it pants to taste the sweets
That songs and stories tell.
Awhile in shade content to lie,
Prolong life's morning dream,
While others rise at the first fly
That glitters on the stream.
CLXXXIX.
TO A SPANIEL.
No, Daisy ! lift not up thy ear,
It is not she whose steps draw near.
Tuck under thee that leg, for she
Continues yet beyond the sea,
And thou may'st whimper in thy sleep
These many days, and start and weep.
True, ah too true ! the generous breast
Lies bare to Love and Pain.
May one alone, the worthier guest,
Be yours, and there remain.
cxci.
ON SEEING A HAIR OP LUORETIA BORGIA.
Borgia, thou once wert almost too august ^
And high for adoration ; now thou 'rt dust.
All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,
Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.
CXCII.
ON MIGNIONETTE.
Stranger, these little flowers are sweet
If you will leave them at your feet,
Enjoying like yourself the breeze,
And kist by butterflies and bees ;
But if you snap the fragile stem
The vilest thyme outvalues them.
Nor place nor flower would I select
To make you serious and reflect.
This heaviness was always shed
Upon the drooping rose's head.
Yet now perhaps your mind surveys
Some village maid, in earlier days,
Of charms thus lost, of life thus set,
Ah bruise not then my Mignionette !
CXCIII.
In his own image the Creator made,
His own pure sunbeam quicken'd thee, 0
man !
Thou breathing dial ! since thy day began
The present hour was ever markt with shade !
WRITTEN ON THE RHINE.
Swiftly we sail along thy stream,
War-stricken Ehine ! and evening's gleam
Shows us, throughout its course,
The gaping scars (on either side,
On every cliff) of guilty pride
And unavailing force.
Numberless castles here have frown'd,
And cities numberless, spire-crown'd,
Have fixt their rocky throne ;
Dungeons too deep and towers too high
Ever for Love to hear the sigh
Or Law avenge the groan.
And, falser and more violent
Than fraudful War, Keligion lent
Her scourge to quell the heart ;
Striking her palsy into Youth,
And telling Innocence that Truth
Is God's, and they must part.
652
Hence victim crowns and iron vows,
Binding ten thousand to one spouse,
To keep them all from sin !
Hence, for light dance and merry tale,
The cloister's deep and stifling veil,
That shuts the world within.
Away ! away ! thou foulest pest
That ever broke man's inner rest,
Pouring the poison'd lie
How to thy dragon grasp is given
The power of Earth, the price of Heaven ! . .
Go ! let us live and die
Without thy curse upon our head,
Monster ! with human sorrows fed,
Lo ! here thy image stands.
In Heidelberg's lone chambers, Rhine
Shows what his ancient Palatine
Received from thy meek hands !
France ! claim thy right, thy glory claim,
Surpassing Rome's immortal fame !
For, more than she could do
In the long ages of her toils,
With all her strength and all her spoils,
Thy heroes overthrew.
Crow, crow thy cock ! thy eagle soar,
Fiercer and higher than before !
Thy boasts though few believe,
Here faithful history shall relate
What Gallic hearts could meditate
And Gallic hands achieve. *
Fresh blows the gale, the scenes delight,
Anear, afar, on plain, on hight ;
But all are far and vast :
Day follows day, and shows not one
The weary heart could rest upon
To call its own at last.
No curling dell, no cranky nook,
No sylvan mead, no prattling brook,
No little lake that stands
Afraid to lift its fringed eye
Of purest blue to its own sky,
Or kiss its own soft sands.
O ! would I were again at home
(If any such be mine) to roam
Amid Lanthony's bowers,
Or, where beneath the alders flow
My Arrow's waters still and slow,
Doze down the summer hours.
cxcv.
MALVOLIO.
Thou hast been very tender to the moon,
Malvolio ! and on many a daffodil
And many a daisy hast thou yearn'd, until
The nether jaw quiver'd with thy good heart.
But tell me now, Malvolio, tell me true,
Hast thou not sometimes driven from their
play
MISCELLANEOUS.
* The Castle of Heidelberg, the most beautiful residence
in the world, excepting the Alhambra, was demolished
by Louis XIV.
The village children, when they came too near
Thy study, if hit ball rais'd shouts around,
Or if delusive trap shook off thy muse,
Pregnant with wonders for another age ]
Hast thou sat still and patient (tho' sore prest
Hearthward to stoop and warm thy blue-nail'd
hand)
Lest thou shouldst frighten from a frosty fare
The speckled thrush, raising his bill aloft
To swallow the red berry on the ash
By thy white window, three short paces off?
If this thou hast not done, and hast done that,
I do exile thee from the moon twelve whole
Calendar months, debarring thee from use
Of rose, bud, blossom, odour, simile,
And furthermore I do hereby pronounce
Divorce between the nightingale and thee.
cxcvi.
WITH AN ALBUM.
I know not whether I am proud,
But this. I know, I hate the crowd :
Therefore pray let me disengage
My verses from the motley page,
Where others far more sure to please
Pour out their choral song with ease.
And yet perhaps, if some should tire
With too much froth or too much fire,
There is an ear that may incline
Even to words so dull as mine.
My serious son ! I see thee look
First on the picture, then the book.
I catch the wish that thou couldst paint
The yearnings of the ecstatic saint.
Give it not up, my serious son !
Wish it again, and it is done.
Seldom will any fail who tries
With patient hand and stedfast eyes,
And wooes the true with such pure sighs.
WRITTEN AT MR. KAWSON'S, WAS-WATER LIKE.
Loneliest of hills! from crimes and cares removed,
Long these old firs and quiet roofs protect !
Deepest of waters, long these scenes reflect !
And, at your side, their lord, the well-beloved.
For modest Wisdom, shunning loud acclaim,
Hears Nature's voice call thro' it, and retreats
To her repose upon your mossy seats,
And in his heart finds all he wants of Fame.
I pen these lines upon that cypher'd cover
(Gift, I will answer for it, of some lover)
Which you have open'd for me more than once,
And when you told me I must write therein
And found me somewhat tardy to begin,
CalPd me but idler, tho' you thought me dunce.
Ah ! this was very kind in you, sweet maiden,
But, sooth to say, my panniers are not laden
MISCELLANEOUS.
653
With half the wares they bore
In days of yore.
Beside, you will believe ine when I say
That many madcap dreams and fancies,
As old dame Wisdom with her rod advances
Scamper away.
cc.
Give me the eyes that look on mine,
And, when they see them dimly shine,
Are moister than they were.
Give me the eyes that fain would find
Some relicks of a youthful mind
Amid the wrecks of care..
Give me the eyes that catch at last
A few faint glimpses of the past,
And, like the arkite dove,
Bring back a long-lost olive bough,
And can discover even now
A heart that once could love.
Loved, when my love from all but thee had flown,
Come near me ; seat thee on this level stone ;
And, ere thou lookest o'er the churchyard wall,
To catch, as once we did, yon waterfall,
Look a brief moment on the turf between,
And see a tomb thou never yet hast seen.
My spirit will be sooth'd to hear once more
Good-bye as gently spoken as before.
I leave with unreverted eye the towers
Of Pisa pining o'er her desert stream.
Pleasure (they say) yet lingers in thy bowers,
Florence, thou patriot's sigh, thou poet's dream !
0 could I find thee as thou once wert known,
Thoughtful and lofty, liberal and free !
But the pure Spirit from thy wreck has flown,
And only Pleasure's phantom dwells with thee.
Summer has doft his latest green,
And Autumn ranged the barley-mows.
So long away then have you been 1
And are you coming back to close
The year ] it sadly wants repose.
Where Malvern's verdant ridges gleam
Beneath the morning ray,
Look eastward : see Sabrina's stream
Roll rapidly away :
Not even such fair scenes detain
Those who are cited to the main.
It may not be : yet youth returns,
Who runs (we hear) as fast,
And in my breast the fire that burns
She promises shall last.
The lord of these domains was one
Who loved me like an only son.*
* Fleetwood Parkhurst, of Ripple Court, a descendant
of the Fleetwoods, the Dormers, and the Fortescues.
I see the garden-walks so trim,
The house-reflecting pond,
I hear again the voice of him
Who seldom went beyond
The Roman camp's steep-sloping side,
Or the long meadow's level ride.
And why1? A little girl there was
Who fixt his eyes on home,
Whether she roll'd along the grass,
Or gates and hedges clomb,
Or dared defy Alonzo's tale
(Hold but her hand) to turn her pale.
" Where is she now ? " " Not far away."
"As brave too 1 " " Yes, and braver ;"
She dares to hear her hair turns gray,
And never looks the graver :
Nor will she mind Old Tell-tale more
Than those who sang her charms before.
How many idle things were said
On eyes that were but bright !
Their truer glory was delay'd
To guide his steps aright
Whose purest hand and loftiest mind
Might lead the leaders of mankind.*
ON THE DECEASE OP MRS. ROSENHAGEN.
Ah yes ! the hour is come
When thou must hasten home,
Pure soul ! to Him who calls.
The God who gave thee breath
Walks by the side of Death,
And nought that step appals.
Health has forsaken thee ;
Hope says thou soon shalt be
Where happier spirits dwell,
There where one loving word
Alone is never heard,
That loving word, farewell.
How many voices gaily sing,
" 0 happy morn, 0 happy spring
Of life !" Meanwhile there comes o'er me
A softer voice from Memory,
And says, " If loves and hopes have flown
With years, think too what griefs are gone ! "
ccvu.
ON A VACANT TOMB AT LLANBEDR.
0 parent Earth ! in thy retreats
My heart with holier fervour beats,
And fearlessly, thou knowest well,
Contemplates the sepulchral cell.
Guard, parent Earth, those trees, those flowers,
Those refuges from wintry hours,
Where every plant from every clime
Renews with joy its native prime.
* Mr. Rosenhagen lost his sight by unremitted labour
in the public service. He was private secretary to two
prime ministers, Perceval and Vnnsittart.
654
Long may the fane o'er this lone sod
Lift its meek head toward ita God,
And gather round the tomes of Truth
Its bending elds and blooming youth ;
And long too may these lindens wave
O'er timely and untimely grave ;
But, if the virtuous be thy pride,
Keep this one tomb unoccupied.
OCVIII.
Who smites the wounded on his bed,
And only waits to strip the dead ]
In that dark room I see thee lurk,
0 low and lurid soul of Burke !
Begone ! Shall ever Southey's head lie low
And unavenged beneath the savage blow]
No, by my soul ! tho' greater men
And nearer stick the envenom'd pen
Into that breast which always rose
At all Man's wishes, all Man's woes.
Look from thy couch of sorrow, look around !
A sword of thy own temper guards the ground.
If thou hast ever done amiss,
It was, 0 Southey ! but in this ;
That, to redeem the lost estate
Of the poor Muse, a man so great
Abased his laurels where some Georges stood
Knee-deep in sludge and ordure, some in blood.
Was ever Genius but thyself
Friend or befriended of a Guelph ?
Who then should hail their natal days 1
What fiction weave the cobweb praise ]
At last comes she whose natal day be blest,
And one more happy still, and all the rest !
But since thou liest sick at heart
And worn with years, some little part
Of thy hard office let me try,
Tho' inexpert was always I
To toss the litter of Westphalian swine
From under human to above divine.
No soil'd or selfish hand shall bless
That gentle bridal loveliness
Which promises our land increase
Of happy days in hard-earn'd peace.
Grant the unpaid-for prayer, ye heavenly Powers !
For her own sake, and greatly more for ours.
Remember him who saved from scathe
The honest front of ancient Faith ;
Then when the Pontine exhalations
Breath'd pestilence thro' distant nations :
Remember that mail'd hand, that heart so true,
And with like power and will his race endue.
ccix.
What, of house and home bereft,
For my birthday what is left ?
Not the hope that any more
Can be blest like those of yore,
Not the wish ; for wishes now
Fall like flowers from aching brow,
When the jovial feast is past,
And when heaven, with clouds o'ercast,
MISCELLANEOUS.
Strikes the colours from the scene,
And no herb on earth is green.
What is left me after all ?
What, beside my funeral 1
Bid it wait a little while,
Just to let one thoughtful smile
Its accustom'd time abide :
There are left two boons beside . .
Health, and eyes that yet can see
Eyes not coldly turn'd from me.
Under the hollies of thy breezy glade,
Needwbod, in youth with idle pace I rode,
Where pebbly rills their varied chirrup made,
Rills which the fawn with tottering knees be-
strode.
Twilight was waning, yet I checkt my pace,
Slow as it was, and longer would remain ;
Here first, here only, had I seen the face
Of Nature free from change and pure from
stain.
Here in the glory of her power she lay,
Here she rejoiced in all the bloom of health ;
Soon must I meet her faint and led astray,
Freckled with feverish whims and wasted
wealth.
ccxi.
Where three huge dogs are ramping yonder
Before that villa with its tower,
No braver boys, no father fonder,
Ever prolong'd the moonlight hour.
Often, to watch their sports unseen,
Along the broad stone bench he lies,
The oleander-stems between
And citron-boughs to shade his eyes.
The clouds now whiten far away,
And villas glimmer thick below,
And windows catch the quivering ray,
Obscure one minute's space ago.
Orchards and vine-knolls maple-propt
Rise radiant round : the meads are dim,
As if the milky-way had dropt
And fill'd Valdarno to the brim.
Unseen beneath us, on the right,
The abbey with unfinisht front
Of checker'd marble, black and white,
And on the left the Doccia's font.
Eastward, two ruin'd castles rise
Beyond Maiano's mossy mill,
Winter and Time their enemies,
Without their warder, stately still.
The heaps around them there will grow
Higher, as years sweep by, and higher,
Till every battlement laid low
Is seized and trampled by the briar.
That line so lucid is the weir
Of Rovezzano : but behold
The graceful tower of Giotto there.
And Duomo's cross of freshen'd gold.
MISCELLANEOUS.
655
We can not tell, so far away,
Whether the city's tongue be mute,
We only hear some lover play
(If sighs be play) the sighing flute.
My pretty Marte, my winter friend,
In these bright days ought thine to end !
When all thy kindred far away
Enjoy the genial hours of May.
How often hast thou play'd with me,
And lickt my lip to share my tea,
And run away and turn'd again
To hide my glove or crack my pen,
Until I swore, to check thy taunts,
I 'd write to uncles and to aunts,
And grandmama, whom dogs pursued
But could not catch her in the wood.
Ah ! I repeat the jokes we had,
Yet think me not less fond, less sad.
Julia and Charles and Walter grave
Would throw down every toy they have
.To see thy joyous eyes at eve,
And feel thy feet upon the sleeve,
And tempt thy glossy teeth to bite
And almost hurt them, but not quite ;
For thou didst look, and then suspend
The ivory barbs, but reprehend
With tender querulous tones, that told
Thou wert too good and we too bold.
Never was malice in thy heart,
My gentlest, dearest little Marte !
Nor grief, nor reason to repine,
As there is now in this of mine.
Ye little household gods, that make
My heart leap lighter with your play,
And never let it sink or ache,
Unless you are too far away ;
Eight years have flown, and never yet
One day has risen up between
The kisses of my earlier pet,
And few the hours he was not seen.
How can I call to you from Eome ]
Will mamma teach what babbo said ?
Have ye not heard him talk at home
About the city of the dead 1
Marvellous tales will babbo tell,
If you don't clasp his throat too tight,
Tales which you, Arnold, will love well,
Tho' Julia's cheek turns pale with fright.
How, swimming o'er the Tiber, Clelia
Headed the rescued virgin train ;
And, loftier virtue ! how Cornelia
Lived when her two brave sons were slain.
This is my birthday : may ye waltze
Till mamma cracks her best guitar !
Yours are true pleasures ; those are false
We wise ones follow from afar.
What shall I bring you 1 would you like
Urn, image, glass, red, yellow, blue,
Stricken by Time, who soon must strike
As deep the heart that beats for you.
The leaves are falling ; so am I ;
The few late flowers have moisture in the eye ;
So have I too.
Scarcely on any bough is heard
Joyous, or even unjoyous, bird
The whole wood through.
Winter may come : he brings but nigher
His circle (yearly narrowing) to the fire
Where old friends meet :
Let him ; now heaven is overcast,
And spring and summer both are past,
And all things sweet.
The day returns again
Which once with bitter pain,
And only once for years, we spent apart.
Believe me, on that day
God heard me duly pray
For all his blessings on thy gentle heart :
Of late a cloud o'ercast
Its current ; that is past ;
But think not it hung lightly on my breast
Then, as my hours decline,
Still let thy starlight shine
Thro' my lone casement, till at last I rest.
The place where soon I think to lie,
In its old creviced nook hard-by
Eears many a weed :
If parties bring you there, will you
Drop slily in a grain or two
Of wall-flower seed?
[ shall not see it, and (too sure !)
[ shall not ever hear that your
Light step was there ;
But the rich odour some fine day
Will, what I cannot do, repay
That little care.
As he who baskt in sunshine loves to go
Where in dim coolness graceful laurels grow;
fn that lone narrow path whose silent sand
Hears of no footstep, while some gentle hand
Beckons, or seems to beckon, to the seat
Where ivied wall and trellised woodbine meet ;
Thus I, of ear that tingles not to praise,
And feet that weary of the world's highways,
decline on mouldering tree or jutting stone,
And (tho' at last I feel I am alone)
Think by a gentle hand mine too is prest
In kindly welcome to a calmer rest.
656
MISCELLANEOUS.
Love is like Echo in the land of Tell,*
Who answers best the indweller of her bowers,
Silent to other voices (idly loud
Or wildly violent) letting them arouse
Eagle or cavern'd brute, but never her.
ON RECEIVING A MONTHLY ROSE.
Paestum ! thy roses long ago,
All roses far above,
Twice in the year were call'd to blow
And braid the locks of Love.
He saw the city sink in dust,
Its rose's roots decay'd,
And cried in sorrow, " Find I must
Another for my braid."
First Cyprus, then the Syrian shore,
To Pharpar's lucid rill,
Did those two large dark eyes explore,
But wanted something still.
Damascus fill'd his heart with joy,
So sweet her roses were !
He cull'd them ; but the wayward boy
Thought them ill worth his care.
" I want them every month," he cried,
" I want them every hour :
Perennial rose, and none beside,
Henceforth shall be my flower."
Sweet was the song that Youth sang once,
And passing sweet was the response ;
But there are accents sweeter far
When Love leaps down our evening star,
Holds back the blighting wings of Time,
Melts with his breath the crusty rime,
And looks into our eyes, and says,
" Come, let us talk of former days."
Fate ! I have askt few things of thee,
And fewer have to ask.
Shortly, thou knowest, I shall be
No more : then con thy task.
If one be left on earth so late
Whose love is like the past,
Tell her in whispers, gentle Fate !
Not even love must last.
Tell her I leave the noisy feast
Of life, a little tired,
Amid its pleasures few possest
And many undesired.
Tell her with steady pace to come
And, where my laurels lie,
To throw the freshest on the tomb,
When it has caught her sigh.
* There is said to be such an echo on the Lake of Lucerne.
Tell her to stand some steps apart
From others on that day,
And check the tear (if tear should start)
Too precious for dull clay.
TO A LADY ON COMING OF AGE.
Fear not my frequent verse may raise
To your clear brow the vulgar gaze.
Another I reserve in store
For day yet happier ; then no more.
Believe (youth's happy creed !) believe
That never can bright morns deceive ;
That brighter must arise for you
Than ever the proud sun rode through.
It has been said, on wedlock-land
Some paths are thorny, more are sand.
I hope the coming spring may show
How little they who say it, know.
Meanwhile with tranquil breast survey
The trophies of the present day.
When twenty years their course have run,
Anxious we wait the following one.
Lo ! Fortune in full pomp descends
Surrounded by her host of friends,
And Beauty moves, in passing by,
With loftier port and steadier eye.
Alas, alas ! when these are flown,
Shall there be nothing quite your own ?
Not Beauty from her stores can give
The mighty charm that makes us live,
Nor shieldless Fortune overcome
The shadows that besiege the tomb.
You, better guarded, may be sure
Your name for ages will endure,
While all the powerful, all the proud,
All that excite the clamorous crowd,
With truncheon or with diadem,
Shall lie one mingled mass with them.
Chide you our praises 1 You alone
Can doubt of glories fairly won.
Genius, altho' he seldom decks
Where beauty does the softer sex,
Approaches you with accents bland,
Attunes your voice, directs your hand,
And soon will fix upon your brow
A crown as bright as Love does now.
Beauty ! thou arbitress of weal or woe
To others, but how powerless of thy own,
How prone to fall on the smooth path, how
prone
To place thy tender foot on the sharp flint
And bleed until the evening fade and die !
I see thee happy now, and I rejoice,
As if thou wert (almost as if !) for me :
But thou hast tarried with me long enough,
And now hast taken all thy gifts away.
How various and how changeful is thy mien !
Various and changeful as the neck of doves
In colour : here so meek, so stately there ;
Here festive, and there sad ; here, tall, erect,
MISCELLANEOUS.
657
Commanding; there, small, slender, bent to
yield.
I have obseiVd thee resolute and bold
And stepping forth to conquer, and thy brow
Rattling its laurel o'er the myrtle crown ;
Beauty ! I now behold thee lower thine eyes
And throw them forward on the ground, while
two
Close at thy side interrogate and plead.
Others have done the same, but those were met
Calmly, and smiles were cast indifferently
Back into them ; smiles that smote every heart,
But most the heart they fell into that hour.
It pleas'd me to behold it : we all love
To see a little of the cruelty
We could ill bear, and, when we read of, weep.
Beauty ! thou now art with that innocent
Who seems of Love's own age, and Love's own
power.
Haply ere this there are upon the earth
Some, by all hope abandoned, who ascend
The highths of Himalaya ; some who fight
Where Napier's foot makes Hindus run strait on,
And Kyber quails beneath his eagle eye ;
While others bear her on untiring breast
To Zembla, and with iron that often breaks
Engrave her name upon eternal ice.
A MOTHERS TALE.
I never knew but one who died for love,
Among the maidens glorified in heaven
For this most pure, most patient martyrdom,
And most courageous. If courageous he
Who graspt and held the Persian prow until
Wielded by desperate fear the scymetar
Gleamed on the sea, and it ran red below
From the hand sever'd and the arm that still
Threaten'd, till brave men drew aside the brave;
If this be courage (and was man's e'er more ?)
Sublimer, holier, doth God's breath inspire
Into the tenderer breast and frailer form,
Erect when Fortune and when Fate oppose,
Erect when Hope, its only help, is gone,
Nor yielding till Death's friendlier voice says
yield.
Brave Eleusinian ! I must now away
From thee and Greece ; away, to milder scenes,
Not milder sufferings.
In my ear was pour'd
The piteous story from the mother's lips,
Who laid her hand on mine, and oftentimes
With idle finger moved my pliant veins
And lookt on them, nor knew on what she lookt,
As her sad tale went on ; for she had found
One who hath never dared to stir from grief,
Or interrupt its utterance in its hour,
Or blusht, where child was lost, to be a child.
Abruptly she began, abruptly closed.
" He was an ensign, and, whatever woes
He brought on me and mine, a good young man,
Modest in speech and manners, fond of books,
Such as we find in all these little towns,
And ready to be led aside by love
To any covert with a castle near,
Or cottage on the river-side or moor,
No matter which ; the comfortable house
And street, with shops along it, scare off love.
I am grown bitter I do fear me, sir,
In talking thus, but I have lost my child
By such wild fancies of a wayward world,
Different from what contented us erewhile.
William (he told me I must call him so,
And Christian names methinks not ill beseem
The Christian, and bring kindness at the sound)
William dwelt here above, not long before
I could perceive that Lucy went away
When he came in to speak to me, and tried
T*o see as little of him as she might.
I askt, had he offended her ; she said
He was incapable of doing wrong :
I blamed her for her rudeness ; she replied
She was not rude ; and yet those very words
Were nearer rudeness than she ever spake
Until that hour.
Month after month flew by,
And both seemed lonely, though they never lived
More than few steps asunder ; I do think
She fled from love and he strove hard with it,
But neither own'd they did. He often came
To tell me something, and lookt round the room,
And fixt his eyes on the one vacant chair
Before the table, and the work unroll'd.
At last he found her quite alone, and then
Avow'd the tenderest, and the purest love,
Askt her consent only to speak with me
And press his suit thereafter : she declared
She never could ; and tears flow'd plenteously.
I enter'd ; nor did she, as many do,
Move her eyes from me nor abase them more,
Neither did he, but told what he had said
And she had answer'd. I reproved her much
For ignorance of duty, and neglect
Of such an honour : he then claspt my hand,
And swore no earthly views should ever turn
His eyes from that bright idol.
' May I hope,
Sweet Lucy ! may I pause from my despair
I should say rather . . even that were bliss . .
Speak, is that bliss forbidden ]' She replied,
' You think me worthy of great happiness,
But Fortune has not thought so ; I am poor
And you are (or you will be) rich : tis thus
All marriages should be ; but marriages
Alone are suitable that suit with pride,
With prejudice, with avarice ; enough
If dead men's names have hallowed them, if warpt
Alliances besprinkle them with dust,
Or herald prime and furbish them anew.
Yes, they must please all in two families,
Excepting those who marry. We are both
Alike God's creatures, but the World claims one,
The other is rejected of the World.
Bated I well could be for loving you,
For loving me you must not be despised.'
' Lucy then loves me ! ' cried the youth, ' she
loves me !'
658
MISCELLANEOUS.
And prest her to his heart, and seiz'd her hand,
' And ever will I hold it till her lips
In whose one breath is all my life contain'd,
Say, it is thine.'
Ah ! 'twere but time ill-spent
To follow them thro' love ; 'twere walking o'er
A meadow in the spring, where, every step,
The grass and beauteous flowers are all the same,
And ever were and ever will be so.
But now the season was at hand when rush
Into salt water all whom smokey town
Had hardened in the skin, whom cards and
dice
Had crampt, whom luxury unstrung, whom dance
From midnight into sunshine, and whom routs
(Not always do we call things by their names *
So aptly) swoln with irksomeness and spite
Vomited forth . . here meet they all again,
Glum and askance, the closer the less neigh-
bours;
And those who late were chatty, now are seen
Primly apart like hop-poles without hops,
Lank, listless, helpless, useless, and unlovely.
Here many would lay out their happiness,
And many be content to waste another's :
Of these was one whose name shall rest untold ;
Young is he, and (God aiding) may be better.
With a bright ribband and a horse upon it
Full-gallop . . first of orders I surmise . .
He must have done rare service to his king
Before he wore a sabre or a beard,
To win all this ; but won it all he had,
And wore it too as bravely.
This young man
Was passing thro' our town toward the coast,
Heedless and ignorant (as wiser men
And better may have been) what spirit moves
Upon those waters, that unpausing sea
Which heaves with God's own image, ever pure,
And ministers in mightiness to Earth
Plenty and health and beauty and delight ;
Of all created things beneath the skies
The only one that mortal may not mar.
Here met he William, whom he knew at school,
And showed him his gay lady, and desired
That William would show his.
With gravity
Did William listen, and at last confess
Ties far more holy that should soon unite
With him a lowly maid.
The captain heard
Deridingly his chapter of romance,
Such did he call it.
' Introduce me, pray,
To the fair bride elect.'
' When bride,' said he,
' And proudly then ; yes, you and all my friends.'
So far I know, what follow'd I know not,
Only that William often spent the day
With these great folks ; at first, when he re-
turned
He was more fond than ever of my child ;
Soon after, he came late into the house,
Then later, and one day, 'twas Saturday,
He said to me he should go home to ask
His father's approbation of the match,
And hoped, and doubted not, his full consent.
Alas ! I knew not then that those who go
For this consent have given up their own.
He went . . . 0 sir ! he went . . . My tale is told.
He wrote to me . . but I have said it all . .
He wrote . . My Lucy caught the letter up
And kist it ; read it, dropt it on the floor;
Seiz'd it again, again with eye brim-full
Lookt, and again dropt it, despondingly.
0 sir ! did I not say my tale is told !
'Twas Sunday, and the bells had nearly done,
When Lucy called to me, and urged my haste :
1 said I could not leave her ; for she lookt
Paler, and spoke more feebly ; then I raved
Against the false one who had caused her death.
She caught my arm. . .
' No, Lucy, no ! ' cried I,
' Not death ; you yet are young and may live on
These many years.'
She smiled, and thus replied
' Hope it not, mother ! lest one pang the more
Befall you ! wish me better things than life ;
But, above all, sweet mother !' . . and she sigh'd . .
' Think not I die for William and for love.
Many have gone before their twentieth year,
Mine is half over ; many, now in bliss,
Have learnt to read God's will at earlier dawn,
And crost life's threshold strown with freshest
flowers
Trippingly and alert, to meet a friend,
A father, who (they knew) awaited them.
Many have had short notice to quit home,
And, when they left it, left it unprepared ;
I, mother, I have been two years in dying,
And one day more : should ever he know this,
'T would comfort him . . for he must think of me.
But am I not too proud for one so near . .'
She would not say . . I shriekt and said it.
death !
She prest my hand, and her smile sank away.
She would console, I would not be consoled.
' 0 let me think then I may die for him,
But say no more to pain me . . let me love,
And love him, when I can not, for my sake.'
Slumber came over her ; one faint sob broke it ;
And then came heavier slumber ; nought broke
that."
She paus'd ; I too sat silent : she resumed . .
For Love and Sorrow drop not at the grave
The image of the cherisht one within.
Too confident upon her strength recall'd,
She would have mounted into brighter days
For hours when youth was cool and all things
calm,
Saying to me, with evener voice and look,
" Lucy, when last you saw her, was a child."
" And is, if Angel be, a child again,"
Said I.
She claspt her hands above her head
And rusht away, leaving me all alone.
The chamber-door stood open, and her brow
Had sunk into her pillow, but no rest
MISCELLANEOUS.
659
Was there ; she sought one at the duskier side
Of the same bed, o'er which (almost to touch)
The dim resemblance of a joyous youth
Shook gently, pendent from its light-hair'd chord.
Nor youth nor age nor virtue can avoid
Miseries that fly in darkness thro' the world,
Striking at random, irremissably,
Until our sun sinks thro' its waves, until
The golden brim melts from the brightest cloud,
And all that we have seen hath disappeared.
My guest ! I have not led you thro'
The old footpath of swamp and sedges ;
But . . mind your step . . you're coming to
Shingle and shells with sharpish edges.
Here a squash jelly-fish, and here
An old shark's head with open jaw
We hap may hit on : never fear
Scent rather rank and crooked saw.
Step forward : we shall pass them soon,
And then before you will arise
A fertile scene ; a placid moon
Above, and star-besprinkled skies.
And we shall reach at last (where ends
The field of thistles, sharp and light)
A dozen brave and honest friends,
And there wish one and all good-night.
O'erfoaming with rage
The foul-mouth'd judge Page
Thus question'd a thief in the dock :
" Didst never hear read
In the church, lump of lead !
Loose chip from the devil's own block !
' Thou shalt not steal !' " " Yea,"
The white chap did say,
" ' Thou shalt not : ' but thou was the word.
Had he piped out ' Jem Hewitt !
Be sure you don't do it,'
I'd ha' thought of it twice ere I did it, my lord.1
ccxxvi.
SENT WITH POEMS.
Little volume, warm with wishes,
Fear not brows that never frown !
After Byron's peppery dishes
Matho's mild skim-milk goes down.
Change she wants not, self-concenter'd,
She whom Attic graces please,
She whose Genius never enter'd
Literature's gin-palaces.
ccxxvn.
WRITTEN ON THE FIRST LEAF OF AN ALBUM.
Pass me : I only am the rind
To the rich fruit that you will find,
My friends, at every leaf behind.
CCXXVIII.
ON ANOTHER.
Why have the Graces chosen me
To write what all they love must see ?
I can not tell you for my life.
But why was Venus Vulcan's wife ?
The reason must be just the same ;
My verses are not much more lame.
One leg across his wide arm-chair,
Sat Singleton, and read Voltaire ;
And when (as well he might) he hit
Upon a splendid piece of wit,
He cried : " I do declare now, this
Upon the whole is not amiss."
And spent a good half-hour to show
By metaphysics why 'twas so.
The Devil, when he made believe
The pure and simple soul of Eve,
Was scarcely yet thy better half,
For he had only lied and smiled
And ruined whom his arts beguiled,
Not mockt her with his hellish laugh.
Youth but by help of memory can be sage
Wiser by losing some of it is Age.
1795.
It seems, whenever we are idle,
We call for saddle and for bridle,
And girt and buckled from the throne
Let others' blood to cool our own.
Wars, where nor want nor danger calls,
Have hung with tatters half St. Paul's ;
And some years hence this courtly fashion
Will hang with tatters half the nation.
The thirsty tribe that draws the sword
For water less than fills a gourd,
Is wiser in my humble mind
Than men who only fight for wind,
And merits more from sage and bard
Than Marlbro' or the Savoyard.
CCXXXIII.
Whiskered Furies ! boy-stuft blouses !
Fanning fires on peaceful houses !
What are all these oaths and yells
Belcht from thirty million hells ?
Swagger, scream, and peste away !
Courage now, anon dismay !
660
N
Louis-Philip ! rear your walls
Round these madmen and their brawls.
Well you know the fiery rout,
And what rain can put it out.
I rais'd my eyes to Pallas, and she laught.
" Goddess ! " said I, "pray tell me why?"
" Look at my olive with a sloe ingraft !
Where stood your Pericles, five scoundrels set ye
(0 father Zeus !) on Otho and Coletti."
Then said she, and her scornful voice grew
meek,
" Return thou homeward and forget thou
Greek."
QUARREL.
Man. Work on marble shall not be,
Lady fair ! the work for me :
For which reason you and I
May together say good-bye.
Lady. Say of marble what you will,
Work on sand is vainer still :
For which reason I and you
Very wisely say adieu.
Go on, go on, and love away !
Mine was, another's is, the day.
Go on, go on, thou false one ! now
Upon his shoulder rest thy brow,
And look into his eyes until
Thy own, to find them colder, fill.
Egg strikes on egg and breaks it ; true ;
But, striking, is not broken too.
Thus while one smitten heart, a-fire,
Gives way, the other is entire.
CCXXXVIII.
Ten thousand flakes about my windows blow,
Some falling and some rising, but all snow.
Scribblers and statesmen ! are ye not just so ?
cxxxix.
LADY TO LADY.
Tell me, proud though lovely maiden !
He who heaves from heart o'erladen
Verse on verse for only you,
What is it he hopes to do ]
REPLY.
What he hopes is but to please.
If I give his hand a squeeze,
Silent, at the closing strain,
Tell me, does it write in vain.
CCXL.
•
Tg LEIGH HUNT, ON AN OMISSION IN HIS " FEAST
OP THE POETS."
Leigh Hunt ! thou stingy man, Leigh Hunt !
May Charon swamp thee in his punt,
MISCELLANEOUS.
For having, in thy list, forgotten
So many poets scarce half rotten,
Who did expect of thee at least
A few cheese-parings from thy feast.
Hast thou no pity on the men
Who suck (as babes their tongues) the pen,
Until it leaves no traces where
It lighted, and seems dipt in air.
At last be generous, Hunt ! and prythee
Refresh (and gratis too) in Lethe
Yonder nick Muse, surcharged with poppies
And heavier presentation-copies.
She must grow livelier, and the river
More potent in effect than ever.
CCXLI.
OLD STYLE.
Aurelius, Sire of Hungrinesses !
Thee thy old friend Catullus blesses,
And sends thee six fine watercresses.
There are who would not think me quite
(Unless we were old friends) polite
To mention whom you should invite.
Look at them well ; and turn it o'er
In you own mind . . I'd have but four . .
Lucullus, Cesar, and two more.
NEW STYLE.
I very much indeed approve
Of maidens moderating love
Until they've twenty pounds ;
Then Prudence, with a poet's praise,
May loose the laces of their stays,
And let them quest like hounds.
Peggy, my theme, twelve years ago
(Or better) did precisely so :
She lived at farmer Spence's ;
She scour'd the pantry, milk'd the cows,
And answer' d every would-be spouse,
" D'ye think I've lost my senses ] "
Until the twenty pounds were safe,
She tiff'd at Tim, she ran from Ralph,
Squire nodded . . deuce a curtsy!
Sam thought her mopish, Silas proud,
And Jedediah cried aloud,
" Pray who the devil hurts ye T
But now the twenty pounds were got,
She knew the fire to boil the pot,
She knew the man to trust to.
I'm glad I gave this tidy lass
(Under my roof) a cheerful glass
(Of water) and a crust too.
Although the seventeenth of May,
It was a raw and misty day
When Ebenezer Smart,
(The miller's lad of Boxholm-mill)
Having obtained her right good-will
And prudent virgin heart,
Led her to church : and Joseph Stead
(The curate of said Boxholm) read
The service ; and Will Sands
MISCELLANEOUS.
661
(The clerk) repeated the response
(They after him) which utter'd once
Holds fast two plighted hands.
And now they live aside the weir,
And (on my conscience) I declare
As merrily as larks.
This I can vouch for : I went in
One day and sat upon the bin
While Peggy hemm'd two sarks.
I do not say two sarks entire,
Collar and wristband ; these require
(I reckon) some time more ;
But mainly two stout sarks, the tail
And fore-flap, stiff as coat of mail
On knight in days of yore.
I told my sister and our maid
(Anne Waddlewell) how long I stayed
With Peggy : 'twas until her
Dinner-time : we expect^ before
Eight or (at most) nine months are o'er,
Another little miller.
SUGGESTED BY HORACE.
Never, my boy, so blush and blink,
Or care a straw what people think,
If you by chance are seen to dally
With that sweet little creature Sally.
Lest by degrees you sidle from her,
I'll quote you Ovid, Horace, Homer.
If the two first are loose, there still is
Authority in proud Achilles ;
And never, night or day, could be his
Dignity hurt by dear Briseis.
Altho' I take an interest
In having you and Sally blest,
I know those ancles small and round
Are standing on forbidden ground,
So fear no rivalry to you
In gentlemen of thirty-two.
You may or you may not believe
That soldiers have been known to thieve :
The question is not settled well
By what I am about to tell.
Frederick the Great was reigning, when
One of the bravest of his men
Before his majesty was call'd
By two grave priests, and sore appall'd ;
For, in despite of every care, he
Took jewels from the Virgin Mary ;
And on his person stow'd the same
Where she would never look, for shame.
So thought he ; but each wily priest
Would search the wicked knave undrest.
Down dropt the jewels. When they both
Told the same tale, the king, tho' loth
To hang him, very justly said,
" To-morrow, I am much afraid,
The soldier, thus accused, must bleed . .
Without your pardon."
" No indeed,"
Said they.
" My fathers ! " said the king,
" Let me suggest another thing.
You, as true Catholics, will own
Mary can favour anyone."
" Beyond a doubt."
" And sometimes does it
Where no man ever could suppose it.
The Virgin may have bow'd from heaven,
And what he took she may have given :
For ladies always love the brave,
And Mary is the maid to save.
I can but order that no suitor
Accept from her such gifts in future."
An English boy, whose travels lay
In Italy, had slept at night
Sound as a bishop all the way,
Till suddenly . . the strangest sight !
Above the upper of the two
Near ridges of old Appennine,
(Seemingly scarce a good stone-throw)
A lighted globe began to shine.
" 0 father ! father ! " cried the lad,
" What wicked boys are hereabout !
How wild ! how mischievous ! how mad !
Look yonder ! let us put it out.
I never saw such a balloon
So near . . that olive now takes fire !
The corn there crackles ! "
" 'Tis the Moon,"
Patting his head, replied the sire.
Metellus is a lover : one whose ear
(I have been told) is duller than his sight.
The day of his departure had drawn near ;
And (meeting her beloved over-night)
Softly and tenderly Corinna sigh'd :
" Wont you be quite as happy now without me?"
Metellus, in his innocence replied,
" Corinna ! oh Corinna ! can you doubt me 'i "
The blackest of grapes, with a footpath hard-by,
Should scarcely be watcht with so watchful an
eye
As that kid of a girl whom old Egon has made
His partner for life, nor ashamed, nor afraid.
If hatred of the calm and good,
And quenchless thirst of human blood,
Should rouse a restless race again,
And new Napoleons scour the plain,
Ye arbiters of nations, spare
The land of Rabelais and Moliere,
662
But swing those panthers by the ears
Across the grating of Algiers.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Pleasant it is to wink and sniff the fumes
The little dainty poet blows for us,
Kneeling in his soft cushion at the hearth,
And patted on the head by passing maids.
Who would discourage him] who bid him off]
Invidious or morose ! Enough, to say
(Perhaps too much unless 'tis mildly said)
That slender twigs send forth the fiercest flame,
Not without noise, but ashes soon succeed,
While the broad chump leans back against the
stones,
Strong with internal fire, sedately breathed,
And heats the chamber round from morn till
night.
COL.
COTTAGE LEFT FOR LONDON.
The covert walk, the mossy apple-trees,
And the long grass that darkens underneath,
I leave for narrow streets and gnats and fleas,
Water unfit to drink and air to breathe.
Come, Sleep ! but mind ye ! if you come without
The little girl that struck me at the rout,
By Jove ! I would not give you half-a-crown
For all your poppy-heads and all your down.
Deep forests hide the stoutest oaks ;
Hazels make sticks for market-folks ;
He who comes soon to his, estate
Dies poor ; the rich heir is the late.
Sere ivy shaded Shakspeare's brow ;
But Matho is a poet now.
PIEVANO ARLOTTO.
" I will invite that merry priest
Arlotto for to-morrow's feast,"
Another, quite as merry, said,
" And you shall see his fun repaid.
When dinner's on the board, we '11 draw
(Each of the company) a straw :
The shortest straw shall tap the wine
In cellar, while the others dine :
And now I '11 show how we '11 contrive
He draws the shortest of the five."
They learn their lesson : there are few
Good priests (where eating goes) but do,
From Helgabalus ending with
Humour's pink primate Sydney Smith.
Such food more suits them, truth to speak,
Than.heavy joints of tough-grain'd Greek.
Well ; all are seated.
" Where 's our Chianti ] '
Cries one : " without it feasts are scanty.
We will draw lots then who shall go
And fill the bottles from below."
They drew. Arlotto saw their glee,
And nought discomfited was he.
Down-stairs he went : he brought up two,
And saw his friends (as friends should do)
Enjoying their repast, and then
For the three others went again.
Although there was no long delay,
Dish after dish had waned away.
Minestra, liver fried, and raw
Delicious ham, had plumpt the maw.
Polpetti, roll'd in anise, here
Show their fat sides and disappear.
Salame, too, half mule's half pig's,
Moisten'd with black and yellow figs ;
And maccaroni by the ell
From high-uplifted fingers fell.
Garlic and oil and cheese unite
Their concert on the appetite,
Breathing an odour which alone
The laic world might dine upon.
But never think that nought remains
To recompense Arlotto's pains.
There surely was the nicest pie
That ever met Pievano's eye.
Full fifty toes of ducks and geese,
Heads, gizzards, windpipes, soakt in grease,
Were in that pie, and thereupon
Sugar and salt and cinnamon ;
Kid which, while living, any goat
Might look at twice and never know't ;
A quarter of grilFd turkey, scored
And lean as a backgammon board,
And dark as Saint Bartholomew,
And quite as perfectly done through.
Birds that, two minutes since, were quails,
And a stupendous stew of snails.
" Brother Arlotto ! " said the host,
"Here 's yet a little of pur roast.
Brother Arlotto ! never spare."
Arlotto gaily took his chair
And readily fell to : but soon
He struck the table with a spoon,
Exclaiming, " Brother ! let us now
Draw straws again. Who runs below
To stop the casks ] for very soon
Little is there within, or none."
Far flies the napkin, and our host
Is down the cellar-stairs. •
"All lost!
Santa Maria ! The Devil's own trick !
Scoffer ! blasphemer ! heretick !
Broaching (by all the Saints) five casks
Only to fill as many flasks !
Methinks the trouble had been small
To have replaced the plugs in all."
Arlotto heard and answer'd. " You
Forgot to tell me what to do.
But let us say no more, because
We should not quarrel about straws.
If you must play your pranks, at least
Don't play 'em with a brother priest."
MISCELLANEOUS.
663
CCLIV. .
God's laws declare
Thou shalt not swear
By aught in heaven above or earth below.
Upon my lumour ! Melville cries j
He swears, and lies ;
Does Melville then break God's commandment ]
No.
Does your voice never fail you in singing a song
So false and so spiteful on us who are young 1
When, lady, as surely as you are alive
We are seldom inconstant till seventy-five,
And altho' I have question'd a hundred such men,
They never would say why we should be so then.
In another six years I shall know all about it ;
But some knowledge is vain, and we do best
without it.
Clap, clap the double nightcap on ! t
Giftbrd will read you his amours,
Lazy as Scheld and cold as Don ;
Kneel, and thank Heaven they are not yours.
CCLVII.
FLOWERS SENT IN BAT-LEAVES.
I leave for you to disunite
Frail flowers and lasting bays :
One, let me hope, you '11 wear to-night
The other all your days.
CCLVIII.
" I 'm half in love," he who with smiles hath said
In love will never be.
Whoe'er, " I 'm not in love," and shakes his head,
In love too sure is he.
CCLIX.
SEVERE WINTER.
Such rapid jerks, such rude grimaces,
Such lengthened eyes, such crumpled faces,
Grinning with such a stress and wrench,
One fancies all the world is French.
I remember the time ere his temples were grey,
And I frown'd at the things he'd the boldness to say,
But now he 's grown old he may say what he will,
I laugh at his nonsense and take nothing ill.
Indeed I must say he 's a little improved,
For he watches no longer the slily beloved,
No longer as once he awakens my fears,
Not a glance he perceives, not a whisper he hears.
If he heard one of late, it has never transpired,
For his only delight is to see me admired ;
And now pray what better return can I make
Than to flirt and be always admired . . for his
sake.
Pretty maiden ! pretty maiden !
Heavily is Tsing-Ti laden
With one love, and three-score woes.
Sweeter than the herb Yu-lu,
Or the flowering Lan, are you . .
What long eyes ! and what small nose !
Pretty maiden ! pretty maiden !
Sands that yorfr short feet have stray'd on
Turn to musk or ambergrise :
Every other girl's seem longer,
Ay, and darker, than a conger,
And they only make me sneeze.
Pretty maiden ! pretty maiden !
All the verses ever laid on
Beauty's tea-tray, would fall short
Of your manifold perfection . .
And alas my recollection
Can perform but little for't !
Pretty maiden ! pretty maiden !
Sadly do I want your aid in
Summing up amount so rich :
But if any little thing
Should escape your sigh-sore Tsing
Call him back, and show him which.
"Fear God ! " says Percival : and when you hear
Tones so lugubrious, you perforce must fear :
If in such awful accents he should say,
" Fear lovely Innocence ! " you 'd run away.
CCLXIII.
Yesterday, at the sessions held in Buckingham,
The Reverend Simon Shutwood, famed for tucking
ham
And capon into his appointed maw,
Gravely discust a dregful breach of law,
And then committed to the county jail
(After a patient hearing) William Flail :
For that he, Flail, one day last week,
Was seen maliciously to sneak
And bend his body by the fence
Of his own garden, and from thence
Abstract, out of a noose, a hare,
Which he unlawfully found there ;
Against the peace (as may be seen
In Burn and Blackstone) of the queen.
He, question'd thereupon, in short
Could give no better reason for 't,
Than that his little boys and he
Did often in the morning see
Said hare and sundry other hares
Nibbling on certain herbs of theirs.
Teddy, the seventh of the boys,
Counted twelve rows, fine young savoys,
Bit to the ground by them, and out
Of ne'er a plant a leaf to sprout :
And Sam, the youngest lad, did think
He saw a couple at a pink.
" Come ! " cried the reverend, " come, con-
fess ! "
Flail answered " I will do no less.
664
MISCELLANEOUS.
Puss we did catch ; puss we did eat ;
It was her turn to give the treat. .
Nor overmuch was there for eight o' us
With a half-gallon o' potatoes :
Eight ; for our Sue lay sick abed,
And poor dear Bessy with the dead."
" We can not listen to such idle words,"
The reverend said. " The hares are all my
lord's.
Have you no more, my honest friend, to say
Why we should not commit you, and straight-
way?"
Whereat Will Flail
Grew deadly pale,
And cried, " If you are so severe on me,
An ignorant man, and poor as poor can be,
0 Mister Shutwood ! what would you have
done
If you had caught God's blessed only Son,
When he broke off (in land not his, they say)
That ear of barley on the Sabbath-day ]
Sweet Jesus ! in the prison he had died,
And never for our sins been crucified."
With the least gouty of two doe-skin feet
The reverend stampt, then cried in righteous
heat,
" Constable ! take that man down-stairs,
He quotes the Scripture and eats hares."
CCLXIV.
Two cackling mothers hatch two separate
broods
Of patriots ; neither shall infest my house.
1 shun the noisier, but I loathe far more
Patriots with tags about their carcases
Bedolled with bits of ribbon and rag-lace,
Or dangling, dainty, jewel'd crucifix
The puft heart's pride, and not its purifier.
Limbs, lives, and fortunes,*all before the king,
Until he ask the hazard of the same ;
Then the two broods unite, one step, one voice,
For their dear country in its sad estate.
TO THE EIGHT REV. FATHER IN GOD HENRY LORD
BISHOP OP EXETER.
Baronial apostolic sir !
If our poor limping church must stir,
I who am zealous for your order
From the cope-point to bottom border,
And lower my eyes before the surplice,
But bear most reverence where most purple is,
Eeady my very soul to pawn
Where I have pinn'd my faith, on lawn.
I supplicate you to advise
Your children, changing their disguise,
They put on one that does not show
So very much of dirt below.
One tooth has Mummius ; but in sooth
No man has such another tooth :
Such a prodigious tooth would do
To moor the bark of Charon to,
Or, better than the Sinai stone,
To grave the Ten Commandments on.
A little cornet of dragoons,
[mmerst in gilded pantaloons,
To kiss consenting Helen aim'd :
He rais'd his head, but 'twas so low,
She cried, (and pusht away her beau,)
" Go, creature ! are you not ashamed V
Does it become a girl so wise,
So exquisite in harmonies,
To ask me when do I intend
To write a sonnet 1 What ] my friend !
A sonnet ? Never. Ehyme o'erflows
Italian, which hath scarcely prose ;
And I have larded full three-score
With sorte, morte, cuor, amor,
But why should we, altho' we have
Enough for all things, gay or grave
Say, on your conscience, why should we
Who draw deep scans along the sea,
Cut them in pieces to beset
The shallows with a cabbage-net ?
Now if you ever ask again
A thing so troublesome and vain,
By all your charms ! before the morn,
To show my anger and my scorn,
First I will write your name a-top,
Then from this very ink shall drop
A score of sonnets ; every one
Shall call you star, or moon, or sun,
Till, swallowing such warm-water verse,
Even sonnet-sippers sicken worse.
CCLXIX.
TO H.
Snappish and captious, ever prowling
For something to excite thy growling ;
He who can bear thee must be one
Gentle to beasts as Waterton.
To Rose and to Sophy
A column and trophy
Ascend at the summons of viols and flutes,
For adding to day,
On the coast of Torbay,
To the Army of Martyrs a hundred recruits.
CCLXXI.
Sighs must be grown less plentiful,
Or else my senses are more dull.
Where are they all ? These many years
Only my own have reacht my ears.
Plants the most beauteous love the water's brink,
Opening their bosoms at young Zephyr's sighs.
Maidens, come hither : see with your own eyes
How many are trod down, how many sink.
MISCELLANEOUS.
665
Time past I thought it worth my while
To hunt all day to catch a smile :
Now ladies do not smile, but laugh,
I like it not so much by half ;
And yet perhaps it might be shown
A laugh is but a smile full-blown.
Each year bears something from us as it flies,
We only blow it farther with our sighs.
CCLXXV.
Idle and light are many things you see
In these my closing pages : blame not me.
However rich and plenteous the repast,
Nuts, almonds, biscuits, wafers, come at last.
CCLXXVI.
In wrath a youth was heard to say,
" From girl so false I turn away.
By all that's sacred, ice shall burn
And suns shall freeze ere I return."
But as he went, at least one finger
Within her hand was found to linger ;
One foot, that should outstrip the wind,
(But only one) drew loads behind.
SIDDONS AND HER MAID.
Siddons. I leave, and unreluctant, the repast :
The herb of China is its crown at last.
Maiden ! hast thou a thimble in thy gear 1
Maid. Yes, missus, yes.
Siddons. Then, maiden, place it here,
With penetrated penetrating eyes.
Maid. Mine ? missus ! are they 1
Siddons. Child ! thou art unwise.
Of needles', not of woman's, eyes I spake.
Maid. 0 dear me ! missus ! what a sad mistake !
Siddons. Now canst thou tell me what was that
which led
Athenian Theseus into labyrinth dread ?
Maid. He never told me : I can't say, not I,
Unless, may-hap, 'twas curiosity.
Siddons. Fond maiden !
Maid. No, upon my conscience,
madam!
If I was fond of 'em I might have had 'em.
Siddons. Avoid ! avaunt i beshrew me ! 'tis in
vain
That Shakspeare's language germinates again.
CCLXXVIII.
LETTER-LAND.
Slaves-merchants, scalpers, cannibals, agree . .
In Letter-land no brotherhood must be,
If there were living upon earth but twain,
One would be Abel and the other Cain.
I've never seen a book of late
But there is in it palmy state.
To realm or city you apply
Dhe palm, and think it raised thereby.
Yet always does the palmy crown
On every side hang loosely down,
And its lank shade falls chiefly on
Robber or reptile, sand or stone.
Compare it with the Titan groves
Where, east or west, the savage rovea,
[ta highth and girth before them dwindle
[nto the measure of a spindle.
But often you would make it bend
To some young poet, if your friend.
Look at it first, or you may fit
Your poet-friend too well with it.
The head of palm-tree is so-so,
And bare or ragged all below.
If it suits anything, I wist
It suits the archaeologist.
To him apply the palmy state
Whose fruit is nothing but a date.
CCLXXX.
A MASK ON A RING.
Forster ! you who never wore
Any kind of mask before ;
Yet, by holy friendship ! take
This, and wear it for my sake.
I would give something, 0 Apollo !
Thy radiant course o'er earth to follow,
And fill it up with light and song,
But rather would be always young.
Since that perhaps thou canst not give,
By me let those who love me live.
CCLXXXII.
ON A PORTRAIT.
Dauber ! if thou shouldst ever stray
Along Idalia's mossy way,
Heedless what deities are there,
And whom they view with fondest care,
At thee for this shall Venus pout,
And all three Graces push thee out.
Alas, how soon the hours are over
Counted us out to play the lover !
And how much narrower is the stage
Allotted us to play the sage !
But when we play the fool, how wide
The theatre expands ! beside,
How long the audience sits before us !
How many prompters ! ^what a chorus !
Is it not better at an early hour
In its calm cell to rest the weary head,
While birds are singing and while blooms the
bower,
Than sit the fire out and go starv'd to bed 1
666
MISCELLANEOUS.
TO JULIUS HARE, WITH " PERICLES AND ASPASIA."
Julius, of three rare brothers, my fast friends,
The latest known to me ! Aspasia comes
With him, high-helmeted and trumpet-tongued,
Who loved her. Well thou knowest all his worth,
Valuing him most for trophies rear'd to Peace,
For generous friendships, like thy own, for Arts
Ennobled by protection, not debased.
Hence, worthless ones ! throne-cushions, puft, inert,
Verminous, who degrade with patronage
Bargain'd for, ere dealt out ! The stone that flew
In splinters from the chisel when the hand
Of Phidias wielded it, the chips of stone
Weigh with me more than they do. To thy house
Comes Pericles. Receive the friend of him
Whose horses started from the Parthenon
To traverse seas and neigh upon our strand.
From pleasant Italy my varied page,
Where many men and many ages meet,
Julius ! thy friendly hand long since received.
Accept my last of labours and of thanks.
He who held mute the joyous and the wise
With wit and eloquence, whose tomb (afar
From all his friends and all his countrymen)
Saddens the light Palermo, to thy care
Consign'd it ; knowing that whate'er is great
Needs not the looming of a darker age,
Nor knightly mail nor scymetar begemm'd.
Stepping o'er all this lumber, where the steel
Is shell'd with rust, and the thin gold worm'd out
From its meandering waves, he took the scroll,
And read aloud what sage and poet spake
In sunnier climes ; thou heardest it well pleas'd ;
For Truth from conflict rises more elate
And lifts a brighter torch, beheld by more.
Call'd to befriend me by fraternal love,
Thou pausedst in thy vigorous march amid
The German forests of wide-branching thought,
Deep, intricate, whence voices shook all France,
Whence Blucher's soldiers heard the trumpet-
tongue
And knew the footstep of Tyrtaean Arndt.
TO SOUTHEY.
There are who teach us that the depths of thought
Engulph the poet ; that irregular
Is every greater one. Go, Southey ! mount
Up to these teachers ; ask, submissively,
Who so proportioned as the lord of day \
Yet mortals see his stedfast stately course
And lower their eyes before him. Fools gaze up
Amazed at daring flights. Does Homer soar
As hawks and kites and weaker swallows do ?
He knows the swineherd ; he plants apple-trees
Amid Alcinous's cypresses ;
He covers with his aged black vein'd hand
The plumy crest that frighten'd and made cling
To its fond-mother the ill-fated child ;
He walks along Olympus with the Gods, •
Complacently and calmly, as along
The sands where Simois glides into the sea.
They who step high and swing their arms, soon
tire.
The, glorious Tkeban then ?
The sage from Thebes,
Who sang his wisdom when the strife of cars
And combatants had paus'd, deserves more praise
Than this untrue one, fitter for the weak,
Who by the lightest breezes are borne up
And with the dust and straws are swept away ;
Who fancy they are carried far aloft
When nothing quite distinctly they descry,
Having lost all self-guidance. But strong men
Are strongest with their feet upon the ground.
Light-bodied Fancy, Fancy plover-winged,
Draws some away from culture to dry downs
Where none but insects find their nutriment ;
There let us leave them to their sleep and dreams.
Great is that poet, great is he alone,
Who rises o'er the creatures of the earth,
Yet only where his eye may well discern
The various movements of the human heart,
And how each mortal differs from the rest.
Although he struggle hard with Poverty,
He dares assert his just prerogative
To stand above all perishable things,
Proclaiming this shall live, and this shall die.
Once, and once only, have I seen thy face,
Elia ! once only has thy tripping tongue
Run o'er my breast, yet never has been left
Impression on it stronger or more sweet.
Cordial old man ! what youth was in thy years,
What wisdom in thy levity, what truth
In every utterance of that purest soul !
Few are the spirits of the glorified
I'd spring to earlier at the gate of Heaven.
CCLXXXVIII.
TO ANDREW JACKSON.
Happy may be the land
Where mortals with their eyes uplifted stand
While Eloquence her thunder rolls :
Happier, where no deceptive light
Bursts upon Passion's stormy night,
Guiding to rocks and shoals.
Happiest of all, where Man shall lay
His limbs at their full length, nor overcast
The sky above his head, but the pure ray
Shines brighter on the future than the past.
Look, look into the east afar,
Refulgent western Star !
And where the fane of Pallas stands,
Rear'd to her glory by his hands,
Thou, altho' nowhere else, shalt see
A statesman and a chief like thee.
MISCELLANEOUS.
667
How rare the sight, how grand !
Behold the golden scales of Justice stand
Well balanced in a mailed hand !
Following the calm Deliverer of Mankind,
In thee again we find
This spectacle renew'd.
Glory altho' there be
To leave thy country free,
Glory had reacht not there her plenitude.
Up, every son of Afric soil,
Ye worn and weary hoist the sail,
For your own glebes and garners toil
With easy plough and lightsome flail :
A father's home ye never knew,
A father's home your sons shall have from you.*
Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,
Your world that demons tore away.
Look up ! look up ! the flaming sword
Hath vanisht ! and behold your Paradise
restored.
Never was word more bold
Than through thy cities ran,
Let gold be weighed for gold,
Let man be weighed for man.
Thou spakest it ; and therefore praise
Shall crown thy later as thy earlier days,
And braid more lovely this last wreath shall
bind.
Where purest is the heart's atmosphere
Atlantic Kuler ! there
Shall men discern at last the loftiest mi d.
Else, and assert thy tr.ust !
Enforcing to be just,
The race to whom alone
Of Europe's sons was never known
(In mart or glade)
The image of the heavenly maid
Astraea ; she hath called thee ; go
Right onward, and with tranchant prow
The hissing foam of Gallic faith cut thro'.
TO WORDSWORTH.
Those who have laid the harp aside
And turn'd to idler things,
From very restlessness have tried
The loose and dusty strings,
And, catching back some favorite strain,
Run with it o'er the chords again.
But Memory is not a Muse,
0 Wordsworth ! though 'tis said
They all descend from her, and use
To haunt her fountain-head :
That other men should work for me
In the rich mines of Poesie,
Pleases me better than the toil
Of smoothing under hardened hand,
With attic emery and oil,
The shining point for Wisdom's wand,
Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills
Descending from thy native hills.
* This prophecy was unfulfilled.
Without his governance, in vain
Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold.
If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain
Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold
Beneath his pinions deep and frore,
And swells and melts and flows no more,
That is because the heat beneath
Pants in its cavern poorly fed.
Life springs not from the couch of Death,
Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead ;
Unturn'd then let the mass remain,
Intractable to sun or rain.
A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,
And showing but the broken sky,
Too surely is the sweetest lay
That wins the ear and wastes the day,
Where youthful Fancy pouts alone
And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.
He who would build his fame up high,
The rule and plummet must apply,
Nor say, " I '11 do what I have plann'd,"
Before he try if loam or sand
Be still remaining in the place
Delved for each polisht pillar's base.
With skilful eye and fit device
Thou raisest every edifice,
Whether in sheltered vale it stand
Or overlook the Dardan strand, ;
Amid the cypresses that mourn
Laodameia's love forlorn.
We both have run o'er half the space
Listed for mortal's earthly race ;
We both have crost life's fervid line,
And other stars before us shine :
May they be bright and prosperous
As those that have been stars for us !
Our course by Milton's light was sped,
And Shakspeare shining overhead :
Chatting on deck was Dryden too,
The Bacon of the rhyming crew ;
None ever crost our mystic sea
More richly stored with thought than he ;
Tho' never tender nor sublime,
He wrestles with and conquers Time.
To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,
I left much prouder company ;
Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,
But me he mostly sent to bed.
I wish them every joy above
That highly blessed spirits prove,
Save one : and that too shall be theirs,
But after many rolling years,
When 'mid their light thy light appears.
TO THE COMTESSE DE MOLANDE, ABOUT TO MARRY
THE DUO DE LUXEMBOURG.
Say ye that years roll on and ne'er return )
Say ye the Sun who leaves them all behind,
Their great creator, can not bring one back
With all his force, tho' he draw worlds around 1
Witness me, little streams that meet before
668
MISCELLANEOUS.
My happy dwelling ; witness Africo
And Mensola ! that ye have seen at once
Twenty roll back, twenty as swift and bright
As are your swiftest and your brightest waves,
When the tall cypress o'er the Doccia
Hurls from his inmost boughs the latent snow.
Go, and go happy, light of my past days,
Consoler of my present ! thou whom Fate
Alone could sever from me ! One step higher
Must yet be mounted, high as was the last :
Friendship with faltering accent says " Depart,
And take the highest seat below the crown'd."
ccxci.
TO THE COUNTESS OF BLESSINOTOK.
Since in the terrace-bower we sate
While Arno gleam'd below,
And over sylvan Massa late
Hung Cynthia's slender bow,
Years after years have past away
Less light and gladsome ; why
Do those we most implore to stay
Kun ever swiftest by !
Unju»t are they who argue me unjust
To thee, 0 France ! Did ever man delight
More cordially in him who held the hearts
Of beasts to his, and searcht into them all,
And took their wisdom, giving it profuse
To man, who gave them little in return,
And only kept their furs and teeth and claws.
What comic scenes are graceful, saving thine 1
Where is philosophy like thy Montaigne's !
Keligion, like thy Fenelon's ? Sublime
In valour's self-devotion were thy men,
Thy women far sublimer : but foul stains
At last thou bearest on thy plume ; thy steps
Follow false honour, deviating from true.
A broken word bears on it worse disgrace
Than broken sword; erewhile thou knewest this.
Thou huggest thy enslaver : on his tomb
What scrolls ! what laurels ! Are there any bound
About the braver Corday's ] Is one hymn
Chaunted in prayers or praises to the Maid
To whom all maidens upon earth should bend,
Who at the gate of Orleans broke thy chain 1
TO LADY CHARLES BEAUCLERK.
No, Teresita, never say
That uncle Lander's worthless lay
Shall find its place among your treasures.
Altho' his heart is not grown old,
Yet are his verses far too cold
For bridal bowers or festive measures.
He knows you lovely, thinks you wise,
And still shall think so if your eyes
Seek not in noisier paths to roam ;
But rest upon your forest-green,
And find that life runs best between
A tender love and tranquil home.
ccxciv.
TO MY DAUGHTER.
By that dejected city Arno runs
Where Ugolino claspt his famisht sons ;
There wert thou born, my Julia ! there thine eyes
Return'd as bright a blue to vernal skies ;
And thence, sweet infant wanderer ! when the
Spring
Advanced, the Hours brought thee on silent
wing,
Brought (while anemones were quivering round,
And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground)
Where stands fair Florence : there thy voice first
blest
My ears, and sank like balm into my breast.
For many griefs had wounded it, and more
Thy little hands could lighten, were in store.
But why revert to griefs ] thy sculptur'd brow
Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now.
What then the bliss to see again thy face
And all that rumour has announced of grace !
I urge with fevered breast the coming day . .
0 could I sleep and wake again in May !
TO THEODOSIA GARROW.
Unworthy are these poems of the lights
That now run over them ; nor brief the doubt
In my own breast, if such should interrupt
(Or follow so irreverently) the voice
Of Attic men, of women such as thou,
Of sages no less sage than heretofore,
Of pleaders no less eloquent, of souls
Tender no less, or tuneful, or devout.
Unvalued, even by myself, are they,
Myself who rear'd them ; but a high command
Marshall'd them in their station : here they
are;
Look round ; see what supports these parasites.
Stinted in growth and destitute of odour,
They grow where young Ternissa held her guide,
Where Solon awed the ruler ; there they grow,
Weak as they are, on cliffs that few can climb.
None to thy steps are inaccessible,
Theodosia ! wakening Italy with song
Deeper than Filicaia's, or than his
The triple deity of plastic art.
Mindful of Italy and thee, crown'd maid !
1 lay this sere frail garland at thy feet . .
ccxcvi.
TO ANDREW CROSSE.
Altho' with Earth and Heaven you deal
As equal, and without appeal,
And bring beneath your ancient roof
Records of all they do, and proof,
No right have you, sequester'd Crosse,
To make the Muses weep your loss.
A poet were you long before
Gems from the struggling air you tore,
And bade the far-off flashes play
About your woods, and light your way.
MISCELLANEOUS.
669
With languour and disease opprest,
And years, that crush the tuneful breast,
Southey, the pure of soul is mute !
Hoarse whistles Wordsworth's watery flute,
Which mourn'd with loud indignant strains
The famisht Black * in Corsic chains :
Nor longer do the girls for Moore
Jilt Horace as they did before.
He sits contented to have won
The rose-wreath from Anacreon,
And bears to see the orbs grow dim
That shone with blandest light on him.
Others there are whose future day
No slender glories shall display ;
But you would think me worse than tame
To find me stringing name on name,
And I would rather call aloud
On Andrew Crosse than stem the crowd.
Now chiefly female voices rise
(And sweet are they) to cheer our skies.
Suppose you warm these chilly days
With samples from your fervid lays.
Come ! courage ! man ! and don't pretend
That every verse cuts off a friend,
And that in simple truth you fain
Would rather not give poets pain.
The lame excuse will never do . .
Philosophers can envy too.
TO A LADY.
Sweet are the siren songs on eastern shores,
To songs as sweet are pull'd our English oars ;
And farther upon ocean venture forth
The lofty sails that leave the wizard north.
* Among the noblest of Wordsworth's Sonnets (the finest
in any language, excepting a few of Milton's) is that on Tous-
saint L'Ouverture. He has exposed in other works the un-
manly artifices and unprofitable cruelties of the murderer
who consummated his crime by famine, when the damp
ness of a subterranean prison was too slow in its opera-
tion. Nothing is so inexplicable as that any honest and
intelligent man should imagine the heroic or the sagacious
in Buonaparte. He was the only great gambler unaware
that the player of double or quits, unless he discontinues,
must be loser. In -Spain he held more by peace than he
could seize by war ; yet he went to war. Haiti he might
have united inseparably to France, on terms the most
advantageous and the most honourable, hut he was indig-
nant that a black should exercise the functions of a white,
that a deliverer should be his representative, ajid that a
delegate should possess the affections of a people, although
trustworthy beyond suspicion. What appears to others
his greatest crime appears to me among the least, the
death of D'Enghien. Whoever was plotting to subvert his
government might justly be seized and slain by means as
occult. Beside, what are all the Bourbons .that ever
existed in comparison with Toussaint L'Ouverture ? His
assassin was conscious of the mistake ; he committed
none so fatal to his reputation, though many more perni-
cious to his power. If he failed so utterly with such
enormous means as never were wielded by any man
before, how would he have encountered the difficulties
that were surmounted by Frederick of Prussia and byHyder
Ali ? These are the Hannibal and Sertorius of modern
times. They were not, perhaps, much better men than
Buonaparte, but politically and militarily they were much
wiser ; for they calculated how to win what they wanted,
and they contrived how to keep what they won.
Altho' by fits so dense a cloud of smoke
Puffs from his sappy and ill-season'd oak,
Yet, as the Spirit of the Dream draws near,
Remembered loves make Byron's self sincere.
The puny heart within him swells to view,
The man grows loftier and the poet too.
When War sweeps nations down with iron wings,
Alceeus never sang as Campbell sings ;
And, caught by playful wit and graceful lore,
The Muse invoked by Horace bends to Moore.
Theirs, not my verses, come I to repeat,
So draw the footstool nearer to your feet.
Onward, right onward, gallant James, nor heed
The plunging prancers of a grease-heel'd breed.
Onward, our leader thro' the tower-lit scenes
Of genial Froissart and of grave Commines.
Minisht by death, by sickness, and by pain,
Poictiers sends forth her glorious few again :
Again o'er pennons gay and hawberks bright
The sable armour shines in morning light :
And cries of triumph from the brave and true,
And those who best reward them, swell for you.
CCXCIX.
TO CZARTORYSKI, ATTENDING ON FOOT THE FUNERAL
OF THE POET MENINCIVIOZ.
In Czartoryski I commend
The patriot's guide, the poet's friend.
King, sprung of kings, yet great and good
As any pure from royal blood ;
O'er genius not ashamed to bear
The pall, or shed at home the tear.
Thou, who hast shown us how the great
Are greater in their fallen state,
Another rare example give . .
That kings, uncurst by men, may live,
And Poland by thy light shall see
One nation in wide Europe free.
TO MY DAUGHTER IN ITALY, AT CHRISTMAS.
Where is, ah where ! the citron bloom
That threw its fragrance o'er my room ]
Where, white magnolia-cup entwined
With pliant myrtle's ruddy rind 1
Julia, with you the flowers are gay,
And cluster round the shortest day.
Little at Fiesole ye know
Of holly, less of mistleto ;
Such as the Druid priest of yore
To grim god-monsters grimly bore.
Run : from her pouting infants call
The musk-rose at our chapel-wall ;
Run, bring the violets up, that blow
Along the banks of Africo ;
And tell them, every soul, they must
Bend their coy heads and kiss my bust.
Christmas is come : on such a day
Give the best thoughts fair room for play.
And all the Sabbath dance and sing
In honour of your new-born king.
670
MISCELLANEOUS.
CCCI.
CO MISS ISABELLA PEROT.
If that old hermit laid to rest
Beneath your chapel-floor,
Could leave the regions of the blest
And visit earth once more :
If human sympathies could warm
His tranquil breast again,
Your innocence that breast could charm,
Perhaps your beauty pain.
TO CHARLES DICKENS.
Go then to Italy; but mind
To leave the pale low France behind ;
Pass through that country, nor ascend
The Rhine, nor over Tyrol wend :
Thus all at once shall rise more grand
The glories of the ancient land.
Dickens ! how often, when the air
Breath'd genially, I've thought me there,
And rais'd to heaven my thankful eyes
To see three spans of deep blue skies.
In Genoa now I hear a stir,
A shout . . Here comes the Minister !
Yes, thou art he, although not sent
By cabinet or parliament :
Yes, thou art he. Since Milton's youth
Bloom'd in the Eden of the South,
Spirit so pure and lofty none
Hath heavenly Genius from his throne
Deputed on the banks of Thames
To speak his voice and urge his claims.
Let every nation know from thee
How less than lovely Italy
Is the whole world beside ; let all
Into their grateful breasts recall
How Prospero and Miranda dwelt
In Italy : the griefs that melt
The stoniest heart, each sacred tear
One lacrymatory gathered here ;
All Desdemona's, all that fell
In playful Juliet's bridal cell.
Ah ! could my steps in life's decline
Accompany or follow thine !
But my own vines are not for me
To prune, or from afar to see.
I miss the tales I used to tell
With cordial Hare and joyous Gell,
And that good old Archbishop whose
Cool library, at evening's close
(Soon as from Ischia swept the gale
And heav'd and left the dark'ning sail)
Its lofty portal opened wide
To me, and very few beside :
Yet large his kindness. Still the poor
Flock round Taranto's palace-door,
And find no other to replace
The noblest of a noble race.
Amid our converse you would see
Each with white cat upon his knee,
And flattering that grand company :
For Persian kings might proudly own
Such glorious cats to share the throne.
Write me few letters : I 'm content
With what for all the world is meant ;
Write then for all : but, since my breast
Is far more faithful than the rest,
Never shall any other share
With little Nelly nestling there.
cccni.
ON SEEING A LADY SIT FOR HER PORTRAIT.
The basket upon which thy fingers bend,
Thou mayst remember in my Tuscan hall,
When the glad children, gazing on a friend,
From heedless arm let high-piled peaches fall
On the white marble, splashing to the wall.
Oh, were they present at this later hour !
Could they behold the form whole realms admire
Lean with such grace o'er cane and leaf and flower,
Happy once more would they salute their sire,
Nor wonder that her name still rests uponhislyre.
ccoiv.
TO MISS POWER.
I can not very plainly tell
What hair the nearest yours may dwell,
When with the sweetest blossoms Love
Shall decorate the blest alcove,
Which he alone hath skill to raise
And shelter from all stormy days.
But, lady fair, the reason why
Its colour hath escaped the eye,
Is, that your laurel quite obscures
The hair that ventures nearest youre.*
TO SOUTHEY, 1833.
Indweller of a peaceful vale,
Ravaged erewhile by white-hair'd Dane ;
Rare architect of many a wondrous tale,
Which, till Helvellyn's head lie prostrate, shall
remain !
From Arno's side I hear thy Derwent flow,
And see methinks the lake below
Reflect thy graceful progeny, more fair
And radiant than the purest waters are,
Even wlien gurgling in their joy among
The bright and blessed throng
Whom, on her arm recline,f
The beauteous Proserpine
With tenderest regretful gaze,
Thinking of Enna's yellow field, surveys.
Alas ! that snows are shed
Upon thy laurel'd head,
* Irish country-girls believe that, when they first hear
the cuckoo, if they turn up the nearest stone, they will
find a hair under it of the same colour as their future
husband's.
t So Milton : Par. Lott, B. iv., v. 333,
" sideling as they sat, recline
On the soft downy bank, damaskt with flowers."
MISCELLANEOUS.
671
Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs !
Malignity lets none
Approach the Delphic throne ;
A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's
hundred tongues.
But this is in the night, when men are slow
To raise their eyes, when high and low,
The scarlet and the colourless, are one :
Soon Sleep unbars his noiseless prison,
And active minds again are rise.n ;
Where are the curs? dream-bound, and whim-
pering in the sun.
At fife's or lyre's or tabor's sound
The dance of youth, 0 Southey, runs not round,
But closes at the bottom of the room
Amid the falling dust and deepening gloom,
Where the weary sit them down,
And Beauty too unbraids, and waits a lovelier
crown.
We hurry to the river we must cross,
And swifter downward every footstep wends ;
Happy, who reach it ere they count the loss
Of half their faculties and half their friends !
When we are come to it, the stream
Is not so dreary as they deem
Who look on it from haunts too dear ;
The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its
chilling air !
No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven
To poet, sage, or hero given :
No heart more tender, none more just
To that He largely placed in trust :
Therefore shalt thou, whatever date
Of years be thine, with soul elate
Kise up before the Eternal throne,
And hear, in God's own voice, " Well done."
Not, were that submarine
Gem-lighted city mine,
Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand,
Above the royal gleam of blazonry shall stand ;
Not, were all Syracuse
Pour'd forth before my Muse,
With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's lyre
Brightening the path with more than solar fire,
Could I, as would beseem, requite the praise
Showered upon my low head from thy most lofty
TO BARRY CORNWALL.
Barry ! your spirit long ago
Has haunted me ; at last I know
The heart it sprung from : one more sound
Ne'er rested on poetic ground.
But, Barry Cornwall ! by what right
Wring you my breast and dim my sight,
And make me wish at every touch
My poor old hand could do as much ]
No other in these later times
Has bound me in so potent rhymes.
I have observed the curious dress
And jewelry of brave Queen Bess,
But always found some o'ercharged thing,
Some flaw in even the brightest ring,
Admiring in her men of war,
A rich but too argute guitar.
Our foremost now are more prolix,
And scrape with three-fell fiddlesticks,
And, whether bound for griefs or smiles,
Are slow to turn as crocodiles.
Once, every court and country bevy
Chose the gallant of loins less heavy,
And would have laid upon the shelf
Him who could talk but of himself.
Eeason is stout, but even Reason
May walk too long in Rhyme's hot season.
I have heard many folks aver
They have caught horrid colds with her.
Imagination's paper kite,
Unless the string is held in tight,
Whatever fits and starts it takes,
Soon bounces on the ground, and breaks.
You, placed afar from each extreme,
Nor dully drowse nor wildly dream,
But, ever flowing with good-humour,
Are bright as spring and warm as summer.
Mid your Penates not a word
Of scorn or ill-report is heard ;
Nor is there any need to pull
A sheaf or truss from cart too full,
Lest it overload the horse, no doubt,
Or clog the road by falling out.
We, who surround a common table,
And imitate the fashionable,
Wear each two eye-glasses : this lens
Shows us our faults, that other men's.
We do not care how dim may be
This by whose aid our own we see,
But, ever anxiously alert
That all may have their whole desert,
We would melt down the stars and sun
In our heart's furnace, to make one
Thro' which the enlighten'd world might spy
A mote upon a brother's eye.
TO MAJOR-GENERAL W. NAPIER.
Napier ! take up anew thy pen,
To mark the deeds of mighty men.
And whose more glorious canst thou trace
Than heroes of thy name and race ?
No other house hath ever borne
So many of them to adorn
The annals of our native land
In virtue, wisdom, and command.
But foremost, and to thee most near,
Is he who vanquisht the Ameer.
And when before his feet was laid
By fallen power the thirteenth blade,
With every hilt more rich in gems
Than Europe's kingly diadems,
Then, and then only, did he stoop
To take the spoils of victory up,
That he might render each again
To hands which wielded them in vain.
672
MISCELLANEOUS.
" Is this the race of Clive 1" cried they :
" Did Hastings exercise such sway ]"
They since have seen him rais'd not more
In pride or splendour than before,
And studious but to leave behind
The blessing of just laws to Scinde.
Therefore do thou, if health permit,
Add one page more to Holy Writ.
Such is the page wherein are shown
The fragments of a bloody throne,
And peace and happiness restored
By their old enemy the sword.
Hasten, my friend, the work begun,
For daily dimmer grows our sun,
And age, if farther off from thee,
Creeps on, though imperceptibly.
Some call him slow, some find him fast,
But all he overtakes at last,
Unless they run and will not wait,
But overleap life's flower-twined gate.
We may not leave the lighted town
Again to tread our turfy down,
Thence tracing Avon's misty white,
The latest object seiz'd by Night,
Nor part at Claverton when Jove
Is the sole star we see above ;
Yet friends for evermore. If War
Had rear'd me a triumphal car,
Imperfect would have been my pride
Unless he plac'd thee close beside,
And shouts like these the skies might rend,
" See the brave man he chose for friend !"
TO MATHEW AND WOLFF.
Who are those men that pass us 1 men well-girt
For voyaging ; of aspect meek, of breath
Ardent, of eyes that only look to heaven.
I must perforce abase before them mine,
Unworthy to behold them ; I must check
Praise, which they would not from men's lip
receive,
But that men call for it, throughout all lands,
Throughout all ages.
Hail, deliverers
From sin, from every other thraldom ! Hail
Theobald ! his true servant. Nor do thou
Suspend thy step, urged by God's voice, to press
Past Taurus, past the Caspian, past the groves
Of Samarcand, thrilling with Persian song,
To where Bokhara's noisome prisons hold
Indomitable hearts, to perish there
Unless thou save them : but thine too may rot
Beside them, whether timely or too late
Thou plungest into that deep well of woe.
Wolff! there was one who bore thy glorious
name
Before thee ; one who rais'd from foul disgrace
The British flag, and won the western world :
Brave man ! and happy in his death ! but thou
In life art happier nor less brave than he.
I will believe that Christianity
(Merciful God ! forgive the manifold
Adulteries with her valets and her grooms,
Bank gardeners and wheezing manciples !)
Is now of service to the earth she curst
With frauds perpetual, intermittent fires,
And streams of blood that intersect the globe :
I will believe it : none shall kill my faith
While men like thee are with us. Kings
conspire
Against their God, and raise up images
Arrayed in purple all befringed with gold,
For blindfold men to worship, and ordain
That flocks and herds and corn, nay, common
grass,
Nay, what the rivers and the seas throw up,
Be laid before them for their revelry.
The twisted columns are grand ornaments ;
Yet all their foliage, all their fruitage, lends
Support but feeble to the dome above.
Ye pass bareheaded under open heaven,
Under the torrid and the frozen sky,
To preach the word of truth, to snatch the soul
From death, the captive from his double chain :
Therefore be glory to you both on high,
On earth (what none so deeply sigh for) peace !
TO MICHELET ON HIS " PKIESTS, WOMEN, AND
FAMILIES."
Miehelet ! Time urges me down life's descent,
Yet suffers me to breathe and look abroad
And view one object, grand and luminous,
In the clear south : 'tis thou ; apart, alone,
Brave combatant, above all bravery
Of proudest battle-field ! No eloquence
In thy own land, altho' that land pour'd forth
From Paschal and from Bossuet such as Home
And Athens never heard, is warm as thine.
To raise the feeble, to abase the proud,
To strike the mask from frockt Hypocrisy,
Is worthy of thy genius. Deign to hear
One more applauder. If unfit to judge
How far above all others of our day
Thou standest, how much higher every hour
Will come to raise thee, deign to hear a voice
That faulters with thy own, while that large
heart
Swells o'er a mother's dust. Albeit too poor
Wert thou to bury her, the glorious son
Hath now erected over her a tomb
Such as, with all his wealth, no king to king,
No grateful nation to protector rais'd.
cccx.
TO MICHELET ON HIS "PEOPLE."
I prais'd thee, Miehelet, whom I saw
At Reason's Feast, by Right and Law.
Must then, when Discord's voice hath ceast.
And when the faggot fails the priest,
All present Frenchmen, like all past,
Cry for a lap of blood at last 1
MISCELLANEOUS.
673
TO MACAULAY.
The dreamy rhymer's measured snore
Falls heavy on our ears no more ;
And by long strides are left behind
The dear delights of woman-kind,
Who win their battles like their loves,
In satin waistcoats and kid gloves,
And have achieved the crowning work
When they have truss'd and skewer'd a Turk.
Another comes with stouter tread,
And stalks among the statelier dead.
He rushes on, and hails by turns
High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns,
And shows the British youth, who ne'er
Will lag behind, what Romans were,
When all the Tuscans and their Lars
Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars.
TO JOHN KENYON.
So, Kenyon, thou lover of frolic and laughter,
We meet in a place where we never were sad.
But who knows what destiny waits us hereafter,
How little or much of the pleasures we had !
The leaves of perhaps our last autumn are falling ;
Half-spent is the fire that may soon cease to
burn :
How many are absent who heed not our calling!
Alas, and how many who can not return !
Now, ere you are one of them, puff from before
you
The sighs and entreaties that sadden Torquay :
A score may cling round you, and one may adore
you;
If so, the more reason to hurry away.
TO KOBERT BROWNING.
There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
Beside the singer : and there is delight
In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech ! and brief for thee,
Browning ! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But wanner climes1
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing : the breeze
Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amain, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
ccoxiv.
TO THE SISTER OF ELIA.
Comfort thee, 0 thou mourner, yet awhile !
Again shall Elia's smije
Refresh thy heart, where heart can ache no more.
What is it we deplore ?
He leaves behind him, freed from griefs and years,
Far worthier things than tears.
The love of friends without a single foe :
Unequalled lot below !
His gentle soul, his genius, these are thine ;
For these dost thou repine ?
He may have left the lowly walks of men ;
Left them he has ; what then1?
Are not his footsteps followed by the eyes
Of all the good and wise ]
Tho' the warm day is over, yet they seek
Upon the lofty peak
Of his pure mind the roseate light that glows
O'er death's perennial snows.
Behold him ! from the region of the blest
He speaks: he bids thee rest.
TO JOSEPH ABLETT.
Lord of the Celtic dells,
Where Clwyd listens as his minstrel tells
Of Arthur, or Pendragon, or perchance
The plumes of flashy France,
Or, in dark region far across the main,
Far as Grenada in the world of Spain,
Warriors untold to Saxon ear,
Until their steel-clad spirits reappear ;
How happy were the hours that held
Thy friend (long absent from his native home)
Amid thy scenes with thee ! how wide a-field
From all past cares and all to come !
What hath Ambition's feverish grasp, what hath
Inconstant Fortune, panting Hope ;
What Genius, that should cope
With the heart-whispers in that path
Winding so idly, where the idler stream
Flings at the white-hair'd poplars gleam for gleam?
Ablett, of all the days
My sixty summers ever knew,
Pleasant as there have been no few,
Memory not one surveys
Like those we spent together. Wisely spent
Are they alone that leave the soul content.
Together we have visited the men
Whom Pictish pirates vainly would have
drown'd ;
Ah, shall we ever clasp the hand again
That gave the British harp its truest sound]
Live, Derwent's guest ! and thou by Grasmere
springs!
Serene creators of immortal things.
And live too thou for happier days
Whom Dryden's force and Spenser's fays
Have heart and soul possest :
Growl in grim London he who will,
Revisit thou Maiano's hill,
And swell with pride his sun-burnt breast.
Old Redi in his easy chair
With varied chant awaits thee there,
And here are voices in the grove
674
Aside my house, that make me think
Bacchus is coming down to drink
To Ariadne's love.
But whither am I borne away
From thee, to whom began my lay ?
Courage ! I am not yet quite lost ;
I stept aside to greet my friends ;
Believe me, soon the greeting ends,
I know but three or four at most.
Deem not that Time hath borne too hard
Upon the fortunes of thy bard,
Leaving me only three or four :
'Tis my old number ; dost thou start
At such a tale 1 in what man's heart
Is there fireside for more ?
I never courted friends or Fame ;
She pouted at me long, at last she came,
And threw her arms around my neck and said,
" Take what hath been for years delay"d,
And fear not that the leaves will fall
One hour the earlier from thy coronal."
Ablett ! thou knowest with what even hand
I waved away the ofFer'd seat
Among the clambering, clattering, stilted great,
The rulers of our land ;
Nor crowds nor kings can lift me up,
Nor sweeten Pleasure's purer cup.
Thou knowest how, and why, are dear to me
My citron groves of Fiesole,
My chirping Affrico,* my beech wood nook,
My Naiads, with feet only in the brook,
Which runs away and giggles in their faces,
Yet there they sit, nor sigh for other places.
'Tis not Pelasgian wall,
By him made sacred whom alone
'Twere not profane to call
The bard divine, nor (thrown
Far under me) Valdarno, nor the crest
Of Vallombrosa in the crimson east.
Here can I sit or roam at will ;
Few trouble me, few wish me ill,
Few come across me, few too near ;
, Here all my wishes make their stand ;
Here ask I no one's voice or hand ;
Scornful of favour, ignorant of fear.
Yon vine upon the maple bough
Flouts at the hearty wheat below ;
Away her venal wines the wise man sends,
While those of lower stem he brings
From inmost treasure-vault, and sings
Their worth and age among his chosen friends.
Behold our Earth,t most nigh the sun
Her zone least opens to the genial heat,
But farther off her veins more freely run :
* Affrico. A little stream celebrated by Boccaccio, in
his Ninfale, &c. To this place his Bella BriRata retired,
to relate the last stories of the Decameron. The Author's
villa (formerly Count Gherardesca's, the representative of
the unhappy Count Ugolino) stands directly above what
was anciently the lake described there.
t It is calculated that the Earth is tiro million seven
hundred and ffty-four thousand miles nearer to the
sun in the shortest day than in the longest.
MISCELLANEOUS.
'Tis thus with those who whirl about the great ;
The nearest shrink and shiver, we remote
May open-breasted blow the pastoral oat.
TO AN AGED POET.
Why, 0 true poet of the country ! why
With goat-skin glove an ancient friend defy ?
Think timely (for our coming years are few)
Their worst diseases mortals may subdue ;
Which, if they grow around the loftier mind,
Death, when ourselves are smitten, leaves behind.
Our frowardness, our malice, our distrust,
Cling to our name and sink not with our dust.
Like peer's and pauper's are our flesh and blood,
Perish like them we can not, if we would.
Is not our sofa softer when one end
Sinks to the welcome pressure of a friend ?
If he hath rais'd us from our low estate,
Are we not happier when they call him great ]
Some who sat round us while the grass was green
Fear the chill air and quit the duller scene ;
Some, unreturning, through our doors have past,
And haply we may live to see the last.
TO A PAINTER.
Conceal not Time's misdeeds, but on my brow
Retrace his mark :
Let the retiring hair be silvery now
That once was dark :
Eyes that reflected images too bright
Let clouds o'ercast,
And from the tablet be abolisht quite
The cheerful past.
Yet Care's deep lines should one from waken'd
Mirth
Steal softly o'er,
Perhaps on me the fairest of the Earth,
May glance once more.
... TO A BRIDE, FEB. 17, 1846.
A still, serene, soft day ; enough of sun
To wreathe the cottage smoke like pine-tree snow,
Whiter than those white flowers the bride-maids
wore ;
Upon the silent boughs the lissom air
Rested ; and, only when it went, they moved,
Nor more than under linnet springing off.
Such was the wedding-morn : the joyous Year
Lept over March and April up to May.
Regent of rising and of ebbing hearts,
Thyself borne on in cool serenity,
All heaven around and bending over thee,
All earth below and watchful of thy course !
Well hast thou chosen, after long demur
To aspirations from more realms than one.
Peace be with those thou leavest ! peace with thee !
Is that enough to wish thee 1 not enough,
But very much : for Love himself feels pain,
While brighter plumage shoots, to shed last year's;
MISCELLANEOUS.
675
And one at home (how dear that one !) recalls
Thy name, and thou recallest one at home.
Yet turn not back thine eyes ; the hour of tears
Is over ; nor believe thou that Eomance
Closes against pure Faith her rich domain.
Shall only blossoms flourish there ? Arise,
Far-sighted bride ! look forward ! clearer views
And higher hopes lie under calmer skies.
Fortune in vain call'd out to thee ; in vain
Rays from high regions darted ; Wit pour'd out
His sparkling treasures ; Wisdom laid his crown
Of richer jewels at thy reckless feet.
Well hast thou chosen. I repeat the words,
Adding as true ones, not untold before,
That incense must have fire for its ascent,
Else 'tis inert and can not reach the idol.
Youth is the sole equivalent of youth.
Enjoy it while it lasts ; and last it will ;
Love can prolong it in despite of Years.
ccoxix.
TO JOHN FORSTER.
Forster ! whose zeal hath seiz'd each written page
Tnat fell from me, and over many lands
Hath clear'd for me a broad and solid way,
Whence one more age, aye, haply more than one,
May be arrived at (all through thee), accept
No false or faint or perishable thanks.
From better men, and greater, friendship turn'd
Thy willing steps to me. From Eliot's cell
Death-dark ; from Hampden's sadder battle-field ;
From steadfast Cromwell's tribunitian throne,
Loftier than kings' supported knees could mount ;
Hast thou departed with me, and hast climbed
Cecropian highths, and ploughed ^Egean waves.
Therefore it never grieved me when I saw
That she who guards those regions and those seas
Hath lookt with eyes more gracious upon thee.
There are no few like that conspirator
Who, under pretext of power-worship, fell
At Cassar's feet, only to hold him down
While others stabb'd him with repeated blows :
And there are more who fling light jibes, immerst
In gutter-filth, against the car that mounts
Weighty with triumph up the Sacred Way.
Protect in every place my stranger guests,
Born in the lucid land of free pure song,
Now first appearing on repulsive shores,
Bleak, and where safely none but natives move,
Eed-poll'd, red-handed, siller-grasping men.
Ah ! lead them far away, for they are used
To genial climes and gentle speech ; but most
Cymodameia : warn the Tritons off
While she ascends, while through the opening
plain
Of the green sea (brighten'd by bearing it)
Gushes redundantly her golden hair.
LONDON :
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WH1TEFRIAR*.
ERRATA.
VOL.11. PAGE 11. " Laying," read "'flaying."
16. " Abashed" read "abased."
36. " Running into," read " retiring."
59. Dele sentence beginning " As some men conceive."
119. " Tracts they," read " then."
1 36. " Pass," read " pass away."
175. " Application," read "appellation."
176. " Expected," read " exacted."
202. " Even hears," read " ever."
238. " Our hands," read " heads."
247. " Memory and," read " reflection and."
271. " Stealeth," read "stealest."
276. " Checkmen," read "cheesemen."
312. " It would by," read " be."
395. Dele the lines " Love ran with me, &c."
420. " Kisses," read " empty kisses."
483. Dele " The Death of Artemidora."
Landor, Walter Savage
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