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want of it took away a portion of the NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ardour that ought to have sustained him ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY while writing. He was thrown on his WE spent the summer of 1820 at the own resources, and on the inspiration of Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from his own soul; and wrote because his These baths were of great use to mind overflowed, without the hope of Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. being appreciated. I had not the most We made several excursions in the neigh- distant wish that he should truckle in bourhood. The country around is fertile, opinion, or submit his lofty aspirations and diversified and rendered picturesque for the human race to the low ambition by ranges of near hills and more distant and pride of the many; but I felt sure mountains. The peasantry are a hand- that, if his poems were more addressed to some intelligent race; and there was a the common feelings of men, his proper gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, rank among the writers of the day would that rendered home and every scene we be acknowledged, and that popularity visited cheerful and bright. During some as a poet would enable his countrymen of the hottest days of August, Shelley to do justice to his character and virtues, made a solitary journey on foot to the which in those days it was the mode to summit of Monte San Pellegrino-a attack with the most flagitious calumnies mountain of some height, on the top of and insulting abuse. which there is a chapel, the object, during things deeply cannot be doubted, though certain days of the year, of many pilgrim-he armed himself with the consciousness ages. The excursion delighted him while of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of it lasted; though he exerted himself too right. The truth burst from his heart much, and the effect was considerable sometimes in solitude, and he would lassitude and weakness on his return. write a few unfinished verses that showed During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes-wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.

The surpassing excellence of The Cenci had made me greatly desire that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of the Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the

That he felt these

that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:

Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.

I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged
glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass

The hearts of others. . . . And, when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
To bear scorn, fear, and hate—a woful mass!"
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,

I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain. the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from pourtraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twi

light, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods,-which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which form the Witch of Atlas: it is a brilliant congregation of ideas such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.

CEDIPUS TYRANNUS

OR

SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT

A TRAGEDY

IN TWO ACTS

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL

DORIC

"Choose Reform or civil war,

When thro' thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a KING with hogs, Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR."

ADVERTISEMENT

THIS Tragedy is one of a triad, or system of three Plays (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their dramatic represen tations), elucidating the wonderful and appalling fortunes of the SWELLFOOT dynasty. It was evidently written by some learned Theban, and, from its characteristic dulness, apparently before the duties on the importation of Attic salt had been repealed by the Bootarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the PIGS proves him to have been a sus Baoticæ; possibly Epicuri de grege porcus; for, as the poet observes,

"A fellow feeling makes us wond'rous kind."

No liberty has been taken with the

translation of this remarkable piece of antiquity, except the suppressing a seditious and blasphemous Chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last act. The word Hoydipouse (or more properly Edipus), has been rendered literally SWELLFOOT, without its having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish Monarch is particularly indicated.

Should the remaining portions of this Tragedy be found, entitled, "Swellfoot in Angaria," and Charité," the Translator might be tempted to give them to the reading Public.

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Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?

The Swine.-Semichorus I.
The same, alas! the same;
Though only now the name
Of pig remains to me.
Semichorus II.

If 'twere your kingly will
U's wretched swine to kill,

What should we yield to thee?
Swellfoot. Why skin and bones, and
some few hairs for mortar.
Chorus of Swine.

I have heard your Laureate sing,
That pity was a royal thing;

Under your mighty ancestors, we pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,

dew,

Bishops and deacons, and the entire army Or grasshoppers that live on noonday
Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,
Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous
Ceres

Of their Eleusis, hail!

The Swine. Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh! Swellfoot. Ha! what are ye, Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,

Cling round this sacred shrine?

Swine. Aigh! aigh! aigh!
Swellfoot.
What! ye that are
The very beasts that offered at her altar
With blood and groans, salt-cake, and
fat, and inwards

Ever propitiate her reluctant will
When taxes are withheld?

Swine. Ugh! ugh! ugh!
Swellfoot. What! ye who grub
With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats
Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks
digest

From bones, and rags, and scraps of

shoe-leather,

1 See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the immense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants.

And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too, But now our styes are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab

and itch;

Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,

And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or ruta baga, none Has yet been ours since your reign begun.

First Sow.
My pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.
Second Sow.

I could almost eat my litter.
First Pig.

I suck, but no milk will come from
the dug.

Second Pig.

Our skin and our bones would be bitter.

The Boars. We fight for this rag of greasy rug, Though a trough of wash would be fitter.

Semichorus.

Happier swine were they than we,
Drowned in the Gadarean sea—
I wish that pity would drive out the
devils,

Which in your royal bosom hold their

revels,

And sink us in the waves of thy com-
passion!

Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!
Now if your Majesty would have our

bristles

Zephaniah. Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;—

We shall find pints of hydatids in's
liver,

He has not half an inch of wholesome fat
Upon his carious ribs-
Swellfoot.
'Tis all the same,

To bind your mortar with, or fill our He'll serve instead of riot money, when

colons With rich blood, or make brawn out of

our gristles,

In policy-ask else your royal Solons You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,

Our

murmuring troops bivouac in
Thebes' streets;

And January winds, after a day
Of butchering, will make them relish

carrion.

Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump And styes well thatched; besides it is The whole kit of them.

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Swellfoot. This is sedition, and rank I could not give

blasphemy!

Ho! there, my guards!

Guard.

Enter a GUARD.

Your sacred Majesty.

Swellfoot.

the way,

Why, your Majesty,

Kill them out of

That shall be price enough, and let me

hear

Swellfoot. Call in the Jews, Solomon Their everlasting grunts and whines no

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Hinted at in his charge to the Theban Do the troops mutiny?—decimate some

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Mammon. Why it was I who spoke And these dull swine of Thebes bust their descent

that oracle,

And whether I was dead drunk or From the free Minotaur.

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You know

I cannot well remember; nor, in truth, Call themselves Bulls, though thus deThe oracle itself!

Purganax. The words went thus:--"Boeotia, choose reform or civil war! When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,

A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,

Riding on the Ionian Minotaur."

generate,

And everything relating to a bull
Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
Their arms are seven bulls in a field
gules,

They think their strength consists in
eating beef,-

Now there were danger in the precedent

Mammon. Now if the oracle had If Queen Iona-
ne'er foretold

This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has,
And whether I was urged by grace
divine,

Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, be false

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Purganax.

I have taken good care

That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth

With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay
bare!

And from a cavern full of ugly shapes,
I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a KAT.
The gadfly was the same which Juno

sent

To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel? mentions

That the Lord whistled for out of the
mountains

Of utmost Ethiopia, to torment
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast
Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee,
His crooked tail is barbed with many

stings,

Each able to make a thousand wounds,
and each

Immedicable; from his convex eyes
He sees fair things in many hideous
shapes,

And trumpets all his falsehood to the
world.

Like other beetles he is fed on dung—
He has eleven feet with which he crawls,
Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul
beast

Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
Contrive their own fulfilment. This Has tracked Iona from the Theban

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