P. 177, col. 2, 1. 5. CHORUS. The final chorus is indistinct and obscure as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, &c. may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age; but to anticipate, however darkly, a period of regeneration and happiness, is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader, "magno nec proximus intervallo" of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits, overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the "lion shall lie down with the lamb," and "omnis feret omnia tellus." Let these great names be my authority and excuse. P. 177, col. 2, 1, 35. Saturn and Love their long repose. Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the One, who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan world were amerced of their worship; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, and the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. The Grecian Gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said that, as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into existence by his sole will; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of men, has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who approached the nearest to his innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known. NOTE ON HELLAS THE South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to Italy-secret societies were formed-and when Naples rose to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821, the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula at first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the congé to their sovereign and set up a republic. Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said, that the Austrian minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the grand-duke, urging their imprisonment; and the grand-duke replied, "I do not know whether these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know if I imprison them, I shall directly have sixty thousand start up." But though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the paternal government, beneath whose shelter they slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warn in every BY THE EDITOR. bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the overthrow of the Constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy. We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom in the south of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have extended, and are extending these limits. Freedom and knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and if it continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said, in 1821, Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day, he read the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of their cause. We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vaccá, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen. While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia, who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of Hellas is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country, which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April, 1821, he called on Shelley; bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince Ipsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that henceforth Greece would be free. their general, not their particular purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks; and by the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove triumphant ; and in this spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his drama. The chronological order to be observed in the arrangement of the remaining poems, is interrupted here, that his dramas may follow each other consecutively. "Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato: Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two odes, dictated by the warmest enthusiasm ;-he felt himself aaturally impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that people, whose works he regarded with deep admiration; and to adopt the vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in But Greece and her foundations are And again, that philosophical truth, felicitously imaged forth Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, And conscience feeds them with despair. END OF HELLAS, 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 representations,) 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 beats the PIGs proves him to have been a sus Bœotiæ; 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 ACT I. SCENE I. A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death'sheads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of boars, sows, and suckingpigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple. Enter SWELLFOOr, in his royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs. SWELLFOOT. THOU Supreme Goddess! by whose power divine Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch 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, Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you? 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. THE SWINE. SEMICHORUS 1. The same, alas! the same; Though only now the name Of pig remains to me. SEMICHORUS II. If 'twere your kingly will 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, Under your mighty ancestors, we pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, Or grasshoppers that live on noon-day dew, The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; 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, I wish that pity would drive out the devils To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons SWELLFOOT. This is sedition, and rank blasphemy! Ho! there, my guards! Enter a GUARD. GUARD. Your sacred Majesty 1 Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those sows, That load the earth with pigs; cut close and deep. MOSES. Keep the boars quiet, else— SWELLFOOT. PURGANAX. Oh, would that this were all ! The oracle! MAMMON. Why it was I who spoke that oracle, PURGANAX. The words went thus :- A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, MAMMON. Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold Zephaniah, cut That fat hog's throat, the brute seems overfed; Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains. PURGANAX. You arch-priests Believe in nothing; if you were to dream MAMMON. Yet our tickets And these dull swine of Thebes boast their descent Is popular and respectable in Thebes: PURGANAX. I have taken good care That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT *The Prometheus Bound of Eschylus. And the Lord whistled for the gadfly out of Ethiopia, and for the bee out of Egypt, &c.--EZECHIEL. |