Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

* *

"The soldiers sent a corporal to pray the duke to yield, but to pray in words of command. He, either offended from pride, or perhaps inspired by his good angel, answer

amongst the reeds at the places in the river. | necessity of submission, which he someAltoviti, noting his mistrustful glances and times resented as though he had been the masculine step, guessed the truth unmasked victor. and pointed him out to the attendant rabble; intending to deliver him to contumely, not murder. The populace, stripping him of his borrowed garments, and tearing those proper to his own sex, proceeded to inflict flagel-ed 'No! One only honourable course was lation upon the delinquent. The poor wretch open to him; to have bargained for the lives invoked the name of the Virgin, and his tor- of his followers as the price of his own, then menters shouted, My lady's going to lie in! to have gone forth and died with the courage What fresh crime art about to bring into the of a Frenchman. But of this he thought not. world? Perhaps a new compact betwixt And grievous indeed it were could the wickthe duke and the commonwealth, guarded ed repair a foul life by a fair end. Even to with securities and oaths, like the first ?—the good it is not easy to die well. * * Ah, dog of a notary! Ah, slave of the "Twelve of the chief soldiers were sent bargello! Tell us how many hast sent back to the duke. ** One of them grasp

6

[ocr errors]

Recoiling as from the touch of a serpent, Gualtieri exclaimed,' What is that?' "My will, and the will of my three hundred comrades without.'

to the gallows, how many to the rack!'-ed the hilt of his sword with his right hand, Every word was accompanied with a outstretched the left to his lord's face, and blow. Suddenly a corn-sifter collared said You must now choose, lord duke, behim, exclaiming, We must make as many tween these three heads and your own.' mouthfuls of this rascal as he has betrayed citizens. To utter these words, to tear the miserable man quarter from quarter, limb from limb; sawing his flesh with blunt saws, while it still creaked and palpitated, gnawing his fingers and other limbs, as they seemed spasmodically to seek their perhaps still living fellows-all this was the work of a moment."

"It is our will,' re-echoed the three hundred as one man; some clashing their arms, others striking theirs against the ground.

"I am your commander, and mine is the will that must govern.'

66

"To day, sire, we are more dukes than In the course of a few days famine com you, because the unanimous will of three pels the duke to capitulate, and the only con. hundred men is stronger than your's. You dition upon which he can obtain permission cannot make our three hundred heads fly for himself and his guards to leave Florence from that window; your's sire, we can.' unharmed, is the surrender of Guilio and Ip with the thought of having said too much, Gualtieri spoke not. The soldier struck piloto d'Assisi and Cerrettieri Visdomini to with astonishment at what he had done, withthe brutal pleasure of the people. The duke drew, followed by his comrades, one only rerejects the infamous terms. Our last ex-maining. To him the duke said, 'Return in tract from this volume shall be the struggle that extorts his consent.

"Duke Gualtieri, to strengthen himself against temptation, summoned Rinaldo, Conte d'Altavilla (alias Comte d'Hunteville, his almost only virtuous French follower), and sent him to intercede. The count invited Pino d'Rossi (one of the balia, or ruling council) to a conference, and offered whatever the Florentines should desire, except blood.

"Pino d'Rossi, lowering his voice in deep shame, replied, 'The people insist upon

blood.'

heads?'

two hours. If I then neither speak nor make sign, be the three surrendered. If I say, 'No, have respect for a while to my will, my conscience. With a trepidation that seemed intreaty, he added, ' But for a while.' *

*

"The two hours elapsed. At noon a Burgundian silently appeared-'No!' Two more hours passed-No!' Another two- No!' the executioner's noose; the increasing yells But the rage within and without pressed like were fearful, insupportable. * ** They, the soldiers, entered. The duke moved of that immoveable silence surpassed all he neither tongue nor muscle; and the torture had ever endured from crimes perpetrated or would have recalled them, but fancied it too suffered under. They went out, and he

But of what avail those three guilty "They avail to save a fourth yet more late. And bitter was his remorse for thus guilty. Hard as it is to say it, suffer the fate deceiving himself.” of these miscreants to be fulfilled. In a wellordered town, would they not already be the The victims being surrendered are actualprey of the gallows? * * * Let us yield ly torn piece-meal and half-devoured, with to iron necessity, and give thanks that it is circumstances of more atrocity than in the no worse.' * * rible intermixture of buffoonery.. The duke case of the notary, although without the hordeparts in safety with his followers, and the narration, ere it closes, returns for a moment to the loves of the French Rinaldo d'Altavilla with Matilda degli Adimari, daughter of

"The duke's internal struggle continued, and wearied therewith he could bear no conversation. * ** *

All the balia, the bishop excepted, and the Siennese envoys, repeatedly came, separately or together, to urge the imminence of the danger, and the

the chief conspirator. Their loves had early been mentioned, and we are now briefly told that they married, and Matilda died in childbed within the year.

The historical subject of Il Primo Viceré de Napoli, is the conquest of Naples by the troops of Louis XII. of France, and Ferdinand V. of Spain; the quarrel to which the division of the spoil between the royal plunderers gave rise, the consequent war, and the final seizure of the whole by the Spaniards under the conduct of the able, though we grieve even to say it, not equally conscientious great captain, Gonsalvo di Cordova. The book opens with the first entrance of the French troops into the Neapolitan dominions; and perhaps we cannot se. lect a fairer specimen of the author's talent than a scene at the very beginning, exhib. iting, the deadly spirit of faction and private feud, that has for so many centuries mainly contributed to lay Italy at the foot of every invader.

"It was a fair morning of the month of June when two warriors who had recently met, rode through a wood towards a camp. Both were in the flower of youth; the one, very tall, was too slender to be called wellproportioned; the other, scarcely surpassing the middle stature, impressed the beholder at first sight by his perfect symmetry of limb and grace of carriage. The first rode a powerful bay charger; the second a black jennet. The richly chisselled armour of the former showed a man of high rank; that of the latter, though of fair temper and well burnished, was far inferior in precious work. But whatever difference of rank might be inferred betwixt them, their manners betokened perfect equality.

"Kind indeed have been my stars,' said the seemingly more considerable of the two,' in bringing to meet me, ere I reach the camp,

him I most wished to see.'

"And but too happy am I, my Pompeo,' rejoined the other, to return thither in thy company. Who could have thought that upon my foraging mission I should fall in with thee! And the enemy so near! Oh my heart wept to see our lances in rest without thee!'

"At Capua I was charged to use despatch! My uncle dwelt upon the importance of the orders of which I am the bearer. Did he suppose such injunctions could add to the speed of him who is hurrying to camp in the hope of a battle?'

"Thou'rt in good time, friend; thou'lt share in the very first banquet.'

"What delight! To mount so fine a charger; to brandish such splendid arms! The time is come, Gianni, to practice in earnest the sports of childhood. This will be a rare tilting bout with a real enemy confronting us!'

Methinks this

"Add too, a detested enemy.' "Right, Gianni, right. sword would cut less sharply were it weilded against other than the Orsini.'

the pestilence from beyond the Alps. Hap"I am more desirous to wield mine against py I, if this yet virgin blade, still pure from blood, be never stained by blood of Italy.'

"Oh thou hast not had a father slain by those villians! Thou didst not last year see the slaughter of Monticelli! When Marcantonio and I reached the combatants, those we best loved were falling like leaves under their blows. Signor Antonio, the bravest man of the house of Lavelli, dying between my feet! And I myself, had not Capoccio arrived in time with his squadron.' * "I understand; but when the fate of all is at stake, private hatreds and enmities * * * *Such quarshould be forgotten.

* *

rels and mistrust amongst ourselves, with such when King Charles came, we were all on his indifference towards the foreigner! Why side, and the Orsini of course on the Neapolitan. And now 'tis the very reverse!'

"What would'st thou have? An enmity of 206 years standing! Thou knowest too with whom originated the new rupture. After the peace concluded with Carlo Orsini, whilst he was still our prisoner, was it fair, was it seemly to engage themselves to the infamous Cæsar Borgia?"

"I say not that the fault was your's; but I know that its punishment will light upon us all.'"

A few months later this prediction is fulfilled, the conquest of the kingdom is com. pleted, and the whole Colonna party proceed to join the Spaniards under Gonsalvo di Cordova; but we must stop here.

If such conversation as we have extracted can ever be entertaining, it must be to the interlocutors alone; and we may hint to our readers that there are verifications everywhere of the proverb to go farther and fare worse. Let him therefore rest content, as we doubt not he will, with this specimen of the Viceroy, the author of which, whether Belmonte or Capoccio, does not possess either the dramatic or graphic power of Tommaseo. We must, however, bestow on him the praise of giving a fair picture of the condition of the country during the unhappy times in which he has laid his scene, and especially of the degree to which, at the end of the war, it was infested by banditti, who bid defiance to any minister of justice, less powerful than a troop of soldiers.

From the mediocrity of the extract given we are satisfied to refer any more curious reader to the work itself for further specimens, confessing that its merits cannot, in our judgment, warrant us in proceeding far

ther.

ART. IX-1. Atar Gull (Atar Gul,) par | though the little chit did it so cleverly, all the Eugène Sue. steps were stolen from herself."

2. La Coucaratcha Roman maritime, (The Cockroach, a Naval Romance,) par Eu. gène Sue.

3. La Salamandre, Roman maritime, (The Salamander, a Naval Romance,) 2 tom., par Eugène Sue.

The allegation, probably true in either case, did not, however, lesson the merit of the thief; but the emulation awkened by these successes over ourselves, roused the national energy in every point of view; and to the portion of this developement that re. garls our literary pursuits, we shall refer in its place, after a few preliminary obser. vations.

In this question the name of Smollett has been naturally brought forward as the real originator of the seafaring novel; and Mr. Cooper has been considered as only tread. ing, to a certain degree, in his footsteps. We cannot hold with the opinion in the least.

Ir is singular that maritime novels should be of foreign origin, when the sea itself has been so long the favourite and boasted possession of Great Britain, and the members of the naval profession were so closely interwoven with our political existence and habits of thought as the great bulwark of national defence. To Enlishmen, the service was a kind of embodied idealism, rough in its out- The subject of Smollett was, strictly line and peculiar failings perhaps, but ex- speaking, less the seafaring life than sea. empted generally from the usual besetting fearing individuals. It was the manners of sins of landsmen, that is, of the larger the man rather than the occupation of the portion of the human race: to say nothing of class; it spoke of the sailor, not of the sea. the lustre cast upon it by the universal senti. The whims and eccentricities of nautical ment of respect and admiration entertained thought and language, as called forth incifor those who brave unwonted dangers. All dentally and by collision; the steering of a these, and many more considerations had chaise, the lee-shore of a road post, the meunited to produce among us so high an appreciation of maritime life, that it is not a little singular, we must repeat, that English literature, when the failing voice of fiction was infused with fresh energy by Scott, should have entirely overlooked, even amidst the very eagerness of search for novel phases of life, the ample scope afforded by the boundless wastes of ocean. There, too, all the machinery of natural terrors, displayed constantly to the eye and physical apprehension, is heightened by the corresponding weight of superstition, and nourished by all that most forcibly appeals to imagination: and this little checked, or even modified, by that actuality which, however potent on land, but feebly opposes the hourly spells that seem to reign in supremacy over the world of waters.

nage of a cock-pit, or the brutality and ig. norance of a commander; all that could bring us close into intimacy with this amphibious variety of the genus homo, was traced by the pen of genius before our eyes, and mingled with our subsequent recollections by inimitable powers of comic extravagance and frolicsome humour. Humour too that at times led of necessity to pathos, for humour itself is but the irony of affection. That this result of pathos, occurs more seldom in Smollett than might have been imagined from the depth and richness of his humorous vain, is no argument against the consequence we have drawn ; and may be easily accounted for by the circumstances of his life and habits, and the thence induced cyni. cism of his character. But his power in such scenes is unquestionable: and, as an instance It was with a wonder, therefore, scarcely of this, we refer to the passage immediately inferior to that which attended the mortifying following that where the whimsical propenintelligence of our first defeats on our fa- sities and prejudices of the old commodore vourite element, that the British public found have closed with his life and the especial direcour transatlantic brethren equally prompt tion for his epitaph: namely that it must be, and successful in their rivalry of our favour- not in your outlandish Latin lingo, but in good ite branch of literature also: the Hornet, the plain English, in order that the angel who is Constitution, &c. were not, in their way, to pipe all hands from under hatches may be more productive of astounding disclosures of able to read it. The scene begins thus: rival strength, than were, in another form," "Every thing being duly arranged, all the the Spy, the Pilot, and the Last of the Mohicans; and in both cases the national vanity like that of Mrs. Primrose in the Vicar of Wakefield, at her daughter's dancing, com. forted itself by whispering, with at least as much of jealousy as approbation, "that

rest had left the room: Pipes stood over the body of his old commander. Well fare thy soul,' (he said,) 'old Hawser Trunnion! Fifty years have I sailed with ye, man and boy, and a better seaman never broke a biscuit,'" &c. &c.

But if individual incident and portrait were | sound of the waves, the motion, the serenity, thus sketched or worked out with singular the dreamy softness of night, all combine power, the phenomena of nature the dangers to fill the breast with unuttered emotion: all of the deep, and the triumphs of human skill this the sailor feels, but the voice of his feeland resolution-all that form the real staple ing is dumb. of the seaman's existence, were totally be. yond the province of Smollett. Still less was he calculated for attempting to depict those yearnings of the heart that arise in the loneliness of dignity that invest the state cabin and the quarter-deck; in the solitude and isolation of the night-watch, and in that stronger solitude of the heart itself, which feels in the long intervals of forced repose, that those around, though united for a time in the same vessel, have no one point or capacity of sympathy with its private ties: and that it cannot, like the landsman's, seek out these when most desirable.

The very bustle and motion of the crowd that constantly surround the seaman, while it keeps an incessant but moderate degree of excitement in his mental system, prevents him from the general leisure of a landsman's spirit, that can indulge the mood and give it vent. Checked and chilled on the contrary with the sailor, it sinks into the mind successively, if we may venture on a similitude, like the reiterated trace of frosts into the bssom of earth-unseen but ineffaceable; and keeps like that, its deep, indelible register to mark, more strongly than externals can be expected to retain it, the impressions and effects of past states and feelings. But there are times when these feelings rise in concentrated strength; such as when called from society or the mess room in all the flush of mirth and enjoyment to keep the midnight or the morning watch, to see the gallant vessel hold her own and in due trim; to mark the changes of the wind and the strength or slumber of the waters; to see the sun sink or rise, to gaze on the moveless track of the moon, and commune in lowliness with the stars that so often have lighted far other hours; while the necessity of a vigilant but restrained attention, and the dignity of command, give a slight though certain elevation to the spirit. It is then that the light voice of the breeze, the murmuring |

VOL. XXI.

Such a state might, and must necessarily have given a power of positive poetry to the seaman, but for the counteracting influence of those ruder and more stirring energies that every moment of change and vicissitude calls into play: these hourly calls of action fling emotion into the shade; and on glancing back he finds that he has outsailed them, like the ocean weed that a moment before was floating over the bow, drifting now with the current far behind the stern. The sailor thus, if he is prevented by the circumstances of his life from becoming actively imaginative, is always in proportion more susceptible of that power; sensitive beyond other men to the influence of the finer pulses, though less able, or less willing, at least, to attempt to sway them.

Who can wonder then, that imbued with the living energies of nature and the ocean; constantly in contact with powers whose recollection is the very poetry of existence, the navy were among the foremost to hail the genius that gave these their first tangible form, in the verse of the first of energetic poets. If the voice of passion had been restrained on land, that of the seaman had never existed at all, till Byron felt the stirring might of the waters and imagined the exciting inspira ion of scenes and characters denied to his actual experience. With what delight seamen dwelt upon his nautical descriptions and partialities the foregoing suggestions may aid us to imagine, and wha: pleasure too they derived from those effective delineations, which some writers absurdly characterize as picturesque not poetical; as though the mighty lord of the lyre had not been competent to detect that the picturesque was only the poetry of the eye. We need not refer more particularly to the gorgeous panorama of the archipelago in Childe Harold, or in the Letter to Bowles, but instance the following passage:

"The sails were fill'd, and fair the light winds blew,
As glad to waft him from his native home;

And fast the white rocks faded from his view,
And soon were lost in circumambient foam :

And then, it may be, of his wish to roam
Repented he, but in his bosom slept
The silent thought."-Childe Harold, Canto 1.

"Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;

The Night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
And shrieks the wild seamew.

30

Yon Sun that sets upon the sea
We follow in his flight;
Farewell awhile to him and thee,
My native Land-Good Night!

"A few short hours and He will rise
To give the Morrow birth;
And I shall hail the main and skies,
But not my mother Earth."—Ibid.

"He that has sail'd upon the dark blue sea
Has view'd at times, I ween, a full fair sight;
When the fresh breeze is fair as breeze may be,
The white sail set, the gallant frigate tight;
· Masts, spires, and strand retiring to the right,
The glorious main expanding o'er the bow,
The convoy spread like wild swans in their flight,
'T'he dullest sailor wearing bravely now,
So gaily curl the waves before each dashing prow.

"And oh, the little warlike world within!

The well-reeved guns, the netted canopy,
The hoarse command, the busy humming din,
When, at a word, the tops are man'd on high:
Hark to the Boatswain's call, the cheering cry!
While through the seaman's hand the tackle glides;
Or schoolboy Midshipman that, standing by,
Strains his shrill pipe as good or ill betides,
And well the docile crew that skilful urchin guides.

"White is the glassy deck, without a stain,
Where on the watch the staid Lieutenant walks:
Look on that part which sacred doth remain
For the lone chieftain, who majestic stalks,
Silent and fear'd by all-not oft he talks
With aught beneath him, if he would preserve
That strict restraint, which broken, ever balks
Conquest and Fame: but Britons rarely swerve
From law, however stern, which tends their strength to nerve.

"Blow! swiftly blow, thou keel-compelling gale!
Till the broad sun withdraws his lessening ray;
Then must the pennant-bearer slacken sail,
That lagging barks may make their lazy way.
Ah! grievance sore, and listless dull delay,

To waste on sluggish hulks the sweetest breeze!
What leagues are lost before the dawn of day,
Thus loitering pensive on the willing seas,

The flapping sail haul'd down to halt for logs like these!

"The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve!

Long streams of light o'er dancing waves expand;
Now lads on shore may sigh, and maids believe:

Such be our fate when we return to land!
Meantime some rude Arion's restless hand
Wakes the brisk harmony that sailors love;
A circle there of merry listeners stand,

Or to some well-known measures featly move,

Thoughtless, as if on shore they still were free to rove."-Ibid. Canto 2.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean-roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore ;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown."

« AnteriorContinuar »