Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Rod. No, by mine honour,

So help me Heaven, and my good blade!
No, never! Blasted be yon pine,

My father's ancient crest and mine,
If from its shade in danger part
The lineage of the Bleeding Heart!
Hear my blunt speech; grant me the maid
To wife, thy counsel to mine aid;

To Douglas, leagued with Roderick Dhu,
Will friends and allies flock enow ;*
Like cause of doubt, distrust, and grief,
Will bind to us each western chief.
When the loud pipes my bridal tell,

The Links of Forth shall hear the knell ;—
The guards shall start in Stirling's porch;
And when I light the nuptial torch,

A thousand villages in flames,

Shall scare the slumbers of King James!—
I meant not all my heat might say:
Small need of inroad, or of fight,
When the sage Douglas may unite
Each mountain clan in friendly band,
To guard the passes of their land,
Till the foiled king, from pathless glen,
Shall bootless turn him home again.

Doug. Roderick, enough! enough!

My daughter cannot be thy bride :-
Against his sovereign, Douglas ne'er
Will level a rebellious spear;
'Twas I that taught his youthful hand
To rein a steed, and wield a brand.
I see him yet, the princely boy!
Not Ellen more my pride and joy :
I love him still, despite my wrongs,
By hasty wrath, and slanderous tongues.
Oh! seek the grace you well may find,
Without a cause to mine combined.

[Douglas retires to the left. Græme moves to pass Roderick, and follow Douglas. Roderick rushes forward, and thrusts him back.]

Rod.

Back, beardless boy!

Back, minion! Hold'st thou thus at naught
The lesson I so lately taught?

* Pronounced Enoo.

This roof, the Douglas, and yon maid, Thank thou for punishment delayed." Mal. Perish my name, if aught afford

Its chieftain safety, save his sword! [They draw.] Doug. [Returning and parting Roderick and Malcom.] Chieftains, forego!

I hold the first who strikes, my foe.—
Madmen, forbear your frantic jar!
What is the Douglas fallen so far,
His daughter's hand is deemed the spoil
Of such dishonourable broil?

Rod. Rest safe till morning; pity 't were
[Sheaths his sword: Malcom does the same.]
Such cheek should feel the midnight air!
Then may'st thou to James Stuart tell,
Roderick will keep the lake and fell,
Nor lackey, with his free-born clan,
The pageant pomp of earthly man.
More would he of Clan-Alpine know,
Thou canst our strength and passes show.
Malise, what ho!

[Enter Malise, who takes his place behind Græme.]
Give our safe-conduct to the Græme.

Mal. Fear nothing for thy favourite hold.
The spot, an angel deigned to grace,

Is blessed, though robbers haunt the place;
Thy churlish courtesy for those
Reserve, who fear to be thy foes.
As safe to me the mountain way,
At midnight, as in blaze of day;
Though, with his boldest at his back,
Even Roderick Dhu beset the track.
Brave Douglas,-

Naught here of parting will I say.
Earth does not hold a lonesome glen,
So secret, but we meet agen.-

[To Rod.]

Chieftain !-we too shall find an hour.

[Touching his sword.]

EXERCISE XXXI.-SPEECH ON THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA.-Fox

[The piece which follows, is introduced as an example of plain, practical, parliamentary declamation,—in which no aid of inspiration is derived from poetic passion, but only from the earnest feeling associated with historic fact, and actual life. A clear, firm, and manly utterance, and plain, unpretending, but forcible gesture, are here the main elements of effect.]

The honourable gentleman who opened the debate, charges me with abandoning that cause, which he says, in terms of flattery, I had once so successfully asserted. I tell him, in reply, that if he were to search the history of my life, he would find that the period of it, in which I struggled most for the real, substantial cause of liberty, is this very moment that I am addressing you.

Freedom, according to my conception of it, consists in the safe and sacred possession of a man's property, governed by laws defined and certain; with many personal privileges, civil and religious, which he cannot surrender without ruin to himself; and of which to be deprived by any other power, is despotism. This bill, instead of subverting, is destined to stabilitate these principles: instead of narrowing the basis of freedom, it tends to enlarge it; instead of suppressing, its object is to infuse and circulate the spirit of liberty.

What is the most odious species of tyranny? Precisely that which this bill is meant to annihilate. That a handful of men, free themselves, should execute the most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless labourer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation :—in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism, unmatched in all the histories of the world.

What is the end of all government? Certainly the happiness of the governed. Others may hold other opinions; but this is mine, and I proclaim it. What are we to think of a government, whose good fortune is supposed to spring from the calamities of its subjects; whose aggrandizement grows out of the miseries of mankind! This is the kind of government exercised under the East India Company upon the natives of Hindostan; and the subversion of that infamous government, is the main object of the bill in question. But, in the progress of accomplishing this end, it is ob

jected that the charter of the company should not be violated; and upon this point, sir, I shall deliver my opinion without disguise.

A charter is a trust to one or more persons for some given benefit. If this trust be abused, if the benefit be not obtained, and its failure arise from palpable guilt, (or what, in this case, is full as bad,) from palpable ignorance or mismanagement, will any man gravely say, that trust should not be resumed, and delivered to other hands,-more especially in the case of the East India Company, whose manner of executing this trust, whose laxity and languor produced, and tend to produce, consequences diametrically opposite to the ends of confiding that trust, and of the institution for which it was granted?

No man will tell me that a trust to a company of merchants, stands upon the solemn and sanctified ground, by which a trust is committed to a monarch; and I am at a loss to reconcile the conduct of men, who approve that resumption of violated trust, which rescued and re-established our unparalleled and admirable constitution, with a thousand valuable improvements and advantages, at the revolution; and who, at this moment, rise up the champions of the East India Company's charter; although the incapacity and incompetence of that company to a due and adequate discharge of the trust deposited in them by charter, are themes of ridicule and contempt to all the world; and although, in consequence of their mismanagement, connivance, and imbecility, combined with the wickedness of their servants, the very name of an Englishman is detested, even to a proverb, through all Asia; and the national character is become disgraced and dishonoured.

To rescue that name from odium, and redeem this character from disgrace, are some of the objects of the present bill; and gentlemen should indeed gravely weigh their opposition to a measure, which, with a thousand other points, not less valuable, aims at the attainment of those objects.

26*

EXERCISE XXXII.—LINES TO THE OLD CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS, AT HAMPTON COURT.-G. P. R. James.

[An example of the style of grave and serious sentiment. The elocution of such pieces, is dependent, chiefly, on distinct and deliberate enunciation, true inflections, well marked emphasis, and full pauses: the utterance is low and subdued. In recitation, the gesture which accompanies the voice, must be chaste and simple, but not feeble or monotonous.]

Memento of the gone-by hours,

Dost thou recall alone the past?
Why stand'st thou silent, midst these towers,
Where time still flies so fast?

Where are the hands, in moments fled,
That marked those moments as they flew,
To generations of the dead,

Who turned on thee their view,

To watch and greet the appointed time
Of every empty dream of joy,
Or wait, in agony, the chime

Which might such dreams destroy?

To thee the eager eye has turned,
Of pride, of policy, and power,
And Love's own longing heart has burned
To hear thee mark his hour.

Pleasure and pastime, grief and care,

Have heard thee chime some change of lot;
While the dull ear of cold despair

Has heard, but marked thee not.

And thou art silent now, and still,
While round thy mystic dial runs
The legend of man's hours,-though ill
As thou, he marks the suns,-

Those rolling suns,-those rolling suns
Unchronicled by both go on;
Though still each comments as it runs,
Till man's brief day be done.

Man's heart's too like thy face on it
Records of passing hours may stand,

« AnteriorContinuar »