bless me from ever beholding the son of so wicked a daughter as mine was! And yet, forasmuch as you are not guilty of her offence, hold; take my hand and my blessing, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So saying, he laid one of his old hands upon the young man's head, blessing him; but neither the Duke nor his followers could persuade him to take the other away from his eyes; neither would he talk with him a word more. In this spirit, shortly after, he died, and just before his death he directed a tomb to be made for him on which were sculptured the tools belonging to his trade, with this epitaph: : "This sepulchre Barbadon caused to be made The author says, that he has "heard it reported by th arcientest persons, that the fourth Duke of Braganza, Don James, son to Donna Isabel, sister to the King Don Emanuel, caused that tomb to be defaced, being the sepulchre of his fourth grandfather."* As for the daughter, the conclusion of whose story comes lagging in like a penitent, "she continued," says the writer, "after she was delivered of that son, a very chaste and virtuous woman; and the king made her commandress of Santos, a most honorable place, and very plentiful; to the which none but princesses were admitted, living, as it were, abbesses and princesses of a monastery built without the walls of Lisbon, called Santos, founded by reason of some martyrs that were martyred there. And the religious women of that place have liberty to marry with the knights of their order, before they enter into that holy profession." The rest of our author's remarks are in too curious a spirit to be omitted. "In this monastery," he says, "the same Donna *It appears by this, that the Don John of the tradition is John the First, who was elected king of Portugal, ad became famous for his great qualities; and that his son by the alleged shoemaker's daughter was his successor, Alphonso the Fifth. Ines died, leaving behind her a glorious reputation for her virtue and holiness. Observe, gentle reader, the constancy that this Portuguese, a shoemaker, continued in, loathing to behold the honorable estate of his grandchild, nor would any more acknowledge his daughter, having been a lewd woman, for purchasing advancement with dishonor. This considered, you will not wonder at the Count Julian, that plagued Spain, and executed the king Roderigo for forcing his daughter La Cava. The example of this shoemaker is especially worthy the noting, and deeply to be considered: for, besides, that it makes good our assertion, it teaches the higher not to disdain the lower, as long as they be virtuous and lovers of honor. It may be that this old man, for his integrity, rising from a virtuous zeal, merited that a daughter coming by descent from his grandchild, should be made Queen of Castile, and the mother of great Isabel, grandmother to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Ferdinando." Alas! a pretty posterity our shoemaker had, in Philip II. and his successors,- —a race more suitable to his severity against his child, than his blessing upon his grandchild. Old Barbadon was a fine fellow too, after his fashion. We do not know how he reconciled his unforgiving conduct with his Christianity; but he had enough precedents on that point. What we admire in him is, his showing that he acted out of principle, and did not mistake passion for it. His crepidarian sculptures indeed are not so well; but a little vanity may be allowed to mingle with and soften such edge-tools of self-denial, as he chose to handle. His treatment of his daughter was ignorant, and in wiser times would have been brutal; especially when it is considered how much the conduct of children is modified by education and other circumstances: but then a brutal man would not have accompanied it with such voluntary suffering of his own. Neither did Barbadon leave his daughter to take her chance in the wide world, thinking of the evils she might be enduring, only to give a greater zest of fancied pity to the contentedness of his cruelty. He knew she was well taken care of; and if she was not to have the enjoy. ment of his society, he was determined that it should be a very uncomfortable one to himself. He knew that she lay on a princely bed, while he would have none at all. He knew that took out the she was served upon gold and silver, while he renounced his old chestnut table,-the table at which she used to sit. He knew while he sat looking at his old beard, and the wilful sordid ness of his hands, that her locks and her fair limbs were objects of worship to the gallant and the great. And so he set off his destitutions against her over-possession; and punishment he gave her, in revenge upon himself. This was the instinct of a man who loved a principle, but hated nobody :—of a man who, in a wiser time, would have felt the wisdom of kindness. Thus his blessing upon his grandchild becomes consistent with his cruelty to his child: and his living stock was a fine one in spite of him. His daughter showed a sense of the wound she had given such a father, by relinquishing the sympathies she loved, because they had hurt him: and her son, worthy of such a grandfather and such a daughter, and refined into a gracefulness of knowledge by education, thought it no mean thing or vulgar to kncel to the grey-headed artisan in the street, and beg the biessing of his honest hand. CHAPTER XV. I. More News of Ulysses. TALKING the other day with a friend* about Dante, ne observed, that whenever so great a poet told anything in addition or continuation of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses in one of the books of his Inferno, we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for. We thought this a happy remark, and instantly turned with him to the passage in question. The last account of Ulysses in the ancient poets, is his sudden re-appearance before the suitors at Ithaca. There is something more told of him, it is true, before the Odyssey concludes; but with the exception of his visit to his aged father, our memory scarcely wishes to retain it; nor does it controvert the general impression left upon us, that the wandering hero is victorious over his domestic enemies; and reposes at last, and for life, in the bosom of his family. The lesser poets, however, could not let him alone. Homer leaves the general impression upon one's mind, as to the close of his life; but there are plenty of obscurer fables about it still. We have specimens in modern times of this propensity never to have done with a good story; which is natural enough, though not very wise; nor are the best writers likely to meddle with it. Thus Cervantes was plagued with a spurious Quixote; and our circulating libraries have the adventures of Tom Jones in his Married State. The ancient writers on the present subject, availing themselves of an obscure prophecy of Tiresias, who tells Ulysses on his visit to hell, that his old enemy the sea would be the death of him at last, bring over the sea Telegonus, his The late Mr. Keats. son by the goddess Circe, who gets into a scuffle with the Itha. cans, and kills his father unknowingly. It is added that Telegonus afterwards returned to his mother's island, taking Penelope and her half-brother Telemachus with him; and here a singular arrangement takes place, more after the fashion of a modern Catholic dynasty, than an ancient heathen one; for while Edipus was fated to undergo such dreadful misfortunes for marrying his mother without the knowledge of either party, Minerva herself comes down from heaven, on the present occasion, to order Telegonus, the son of Ulysses, to marry his father's wife; the other son at the same time making a suitable match with his father's mistress, Circe. Telemachus seems to have had the best of this extraordinary bargain, for Circe was a goddess, consequently always young; and yet to perplex these windings-up still more, Telemachus is represented by some as marrying Circe's daughter, and killing his immortal mother-inlaw. Nor does the character of the chaste and enduring Penelope escape in the confusion. Instead of waiting her husband's return in that patient manner, she is reported to have been overhospitable to all the suitors; the consequence of which was a son called Pan, being no less a personage than the god Pan himself, or Nature; a fiction, as Bacon says, "applied very absurd. ly and indiscreetly." There are different stories respecting her lovers; but it is reported that when Ulysses returned from Troy, he divorced her for incontinence; and that she fled, and passed her latter days in Mantinea. Some even go so far as to say, that her father Icarius had attempted to destroy her when young, because the oracle had told him that she would be the most dissolute of the family. This was probably invented by the comic writers out of a buffoon malignity; for there are men, so foolishly incredulous with regard to principle, that the reputation of it, even in a fiction, makes them impatient. Now it is impossible to say, whether Dante would have left Ulysses quietly with Penelope after all his sufferings, had he known them as described in Homer. The old Florentine, though wilful enough when he wanted to dispose of a modern's fate, had great veneration for his predecessors. At all events, he was not acquainted with Homer's works. They did not make |