Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

And drug them to unnatural sleep? My master!

Ord. Thou mountebank!

Alv.

What then art thou!

Mountebank and villain!
For shame, put up thy sword!

What boots a weapon in a withered arm?

I fix mine eye upon thee, and thou tremblest!
I speak, and fear and wonder crush thy rage,
And turn it to a motionless distraction!

Thou blind self-worshipper! thy pride, thy cunning,
Thy faith in universal villany,

Thy shallow sophisms, thy pretended scorn

For all thy human brethren-out upon them!

What have they done for thee? have they given thee peace?

Cured thee of starting in thy sleep? or made

The darkness pleasant when thou wak'st at midnight?
Art happy when alone? Canst walk by thyself
With even step and quiet cheerfulness?

Yet, yet thou may'st be saved

Ord. (vacantly repeating the words) Saved? saved? One pang! Could I call up one pang of true remorse!

Alv.

Ord. He told me of the babes that prattled to him,
His fatherless little ones! Remorse! Remorse!

Where got'st thou that fool's word? Curse on remorse!
Can it give up the dead, or recompact

A mangled body? mangled-dashed to atoms!
Not all the blessings of an host of angels

Can blow away a desolate widow's curse!

And though thou spill thy heart's blood for atonement,
It will not weigh against an orphan's tear!

Alv. But Alvar

Ord.
Ha! it choaks thee in the throat,
Even thee; and yet I pray thee speak it out-
Still Alvar!-Alvar!-howl it in mine ear!
Heap it like coals of fire upon my heart,
And shoot it hissing through my brain!

Alas!

Alv.
That day when thou didst leap from off the rock
Into the waves, and grasped thy sinking brother,
And bore him to the strand; then, son of Valdez,
How sweet and musical the name of Alvar!
Then, then, Ordonio, he was dear to thee,
And thou wert dear to him: Heaven only knows
How very dear thou wert! Why did'st thou hate him!

L

O heavens! how he would fall upon thy neck,
And weep forgiveness!

Ord.

Spirit of the dead!

Methinks I know thee! ha! my brain turns wild
At its own dreams!-off-off-fantastic shadow !

Alv. I fain would tell thee who I am, but dare not! Ord. Cheat! villain! traitor! whatsoever thou beI fear thee, man!

Alv. Does then this thin disguise impenetrably
Hide Alvar from thee? Toil and painful wounds
And long imprisonment in unwholesome dungeons,
Have marred perhaps all trait and lineament
Of what I was! But chiefly, chiefly, brother,
My anguish for thy guilt!

Ordonio-Brother!

Nay, nay, thou shalt embrace me.

Ord.

Touch me not!

Touch not pollution, Alvar! I will die.

Alv. We will find means to save your honour. Live, Oh live, Ordonio! for our father's sake!

Spare his grey hairs.

Ord. Ŏ horror! not a thousand years in heaven Could recompose this miserable heart,

Or make it capable of one brief joy!

Live! live! Why yes. "Twere well to live with you:

For is it fit a villain should be proud?

Forgive me, Alvar!-Curse me with forgiveness!

Alv. Call back thy soul, Ordonio, and look round thee!

Now is the time for greatness.

In these strange dread events

Just Heaven instructs us with an awful voice,

That conscience rules us e'en against our choice.
Our inward monitress to guide or warn,

If listened to; but if repelled with scorn,
At length, as dire remorse, she re-appears:
Works in our guilty hopes, and selfish fears!
Still bids, Remember! and still cries, Too late!
And while she scares us, goads us to our fate.

SECTION XXXIII.

SOUTHEY-PORSON..... Walter S. Landor.

Porson. I SUSPECT, Mr. Southey, you are angry with me for the freedom with which I have spoken of your poetry and Wordsworth's.

South. Come, Mr. Porson, grant him his merits: no critic is better contrived to make any work a monthly one, no writer more dexterous in giving a finishing touch.

Por. Let him take his due and be gone. The plagiary has a greater latitude of choice than we; and if he brings home a parsnip or turniptop, when he could as easily have pocketed a nectarine or a pine-apple, he must be a blockhead. And now we are both in better humour, I must bring you to a confession that in your friend Wordsworth there is occasionally a little trash.

South. A haunch of venison would be trash to a Brahmin, a bottle of burgundy or tokay to the xerif of Mecca. Por. I will not be anticipated by you. Trash, I confess, is no proof that nothing good can lie above it and about it. The roughest and least manageable soil surrounds gold and diamonds. Homer and Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, have each many hundred lines (as we are alone I will say some thousands) worth little; lines without force, without feeling, without fancy; in short, without beauty of any kind.

South. In so wide and untrodden a creation as that of Shakespeare, can we wonder or complain that sometimes we are bewildered and entangled in the exuberance of fertility? Drybrained men upon the continent, the trifling wits of the theatre, accurate however, and expert calculators, tell us that his beauties are balanced by his faults. The poetical opposition, the liberal whig wiseacres, puffing for popularity, cry cheerily against them, his faults are balanced by his beauties. In reality, all the faults that ever were committed in poetry would be but as air to earth, if we could weigh them against one single thought or image, such as almost every scene exhibits, in every drama of this unrivalled genius.

Por. It will be recorded to the infamy of the kings and princes now reigning, or rather of those whose feet put into motion their rocking-horses, that they never have made a common cause in behalf of learning, but on the contrary have made a common cause against it. They pretend that it is not their business or their duty to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. This is not an internal affair of any it interests all; it belongs to all; and these scrupulous men have no scruple to interfere in giving their countenance and assistance, when a province is to be torn away or a people to be invaded.

South. To neglect what is recoverable in the authors of antiquity, is like rowing away from a crew that is making its escape from shipwreck. The knowledge of books written in our language is extending daily in our country, which, whatever dissatisfaction or disgust its rulers may occasion in you, contains four-fifths of the learned and scientific men now on earth.

Por. Do not attempt to defend the idle and inconsiderate knaves who manage our affairs for us; or defend them on some other ground: prove, if you please, that they have, one after another, been incessantly occupied in rendering us more moral, more prosperous, more free; but abstain, sir, from any allusion to their solicitude on the improvement of our literary condition. With a smaller sum than is annually expended on the appointment of some silly and impertinent young envoy, we might restore all, or nearly all, those writers of immortal name, whose disappearance has been the regret of genius for four entire centuries. In my opinion a few thousand pounds, laid out on such an undertaking, would be laid out as creditably as on a Persian carpet or a Turkish tent; as creditably as on a collar of rubies and a ball-dress of Brussels-lace

for our Lady in the manger, or as on gilding, for the adoration of princesses and their capuchins.

SECTION XXXIII.

OCTAVIO MAXIMIN.....S. T. Coleridge.

Maximin. Ir thou hast believed that I shall act

A part of this thy play———

Thou hast miscalculated on me grievously.

True with the tongue,

My way must be straight on.
False with the heart-I may not, cannot be ;
Nor can I suffer that a man should trust me-

As his friend trust me—and then lull my conscience
With such low pleas as these:-" I asked him not-
He did it all at his own hazard-and

My mouth has never lied to him."—No, no!
What a friend takes me for, that I must be.
-I'll to the Duke; ere yet this day is ended
Will I demand of him that he do save

His good name from the world, and with one stride
Break through and rend this fine-spun web of yours.

And drug them to unnatural sleep? My master!
Ord. Thou mountebank!

Alv.

Mountebank and villain!

What then art thou! For shame, put up thy sword!
What boots a weapon in a withered arm?

I fix mine eye upon thee, and thou tremblest!
I speak, and fear and wonder crush thy rage,
And turn it to a motionless distraction!

Thou blind self-worshipper! thy pride, thy cunning,
Thy faith in universal villany,

Thy shallow sophisms, thy pretended scorn

For all thy human brethren-out upon them!

What have they done for thee? have they given thee peace?
Cured thee of starting in thy sleep? or made

The darkness pleasant when thou wak'st at midnight?
Art happy when alone? Canst walk by thyself
With even step and quiet cheerfulness?

Yet, yet thou may'st be saved

Ord. (vacantly repeating the words) Saved? saved? One pang! Could I call up one pang of true remorse!

Alv.

Ord. He told me of the babes that prattled to him,
His fatherless little ones! Remorse! Remorse!

Where got'st thou that fool's word? Curse on remorse!
Can it give up the dead, or recompact

A mangled body? mangled-dashed to atoms!
Not all the blessings of an host of angels

Can blow away a desolate widow's curse!

And though thou spill thy heart's blood for atonement,
It will not weigh against an orphan's tear!

Alv. But Alvar

Ord.
Ha! it choaks thee in the throat,
Even thee; and yet I pray thee speak it out-
Still Alvar!-Alvar!-howl it in mine ear!
Heap it like coals of fire upon my heart,
And shoot it hissing through my brain!

Alas!

Alv.
That day when thou didst leap from off the rock
Into the waves, and grasped thy sinking brother,
And bore him to the strand; then, son of Valdez,
How sweet and musical the name of Alvar!
Then, then, Ordonio, he was dear to thee,
And thou wert dear to him: Heaven only knows
How very dear thou wert! Why did'st thou hate him!

« PředchozíPokračovat »