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Are dyed our laurels, that upon the brow They weigh a heavy burthen and a shame

ful.

Wrath is subdued by pity; and sound

reason

Prevails, alleging that 'tis utter folly
Through avaricious jealousy of state
To crush ourselves and desolate the earth.
Then since the enemy was first compelled
To wish for peace, wise Sparta grants
the boon,

And I convey it hither. Nor alone
Do I bring peace, but with it liberty
To such of ours as here in servitude
Are pining, chiefly to thyself, loved friend,
Who, howsoe'er regretted and desired,
Three years, unhonoured, amidst hostile
walls,

Hast languished, an illustrious prisoner.
Palamedes. I joy to see thee once again,
Lysander;

And gladsomely through thee shall I regain

My liberty; unto the dear embraces

Of friends and kin return, and hail again The light of day upon my country's soil: Albeit not Fortune's self could have provided

An easier slavery. Thou'st not to learn That fair Cesira, old Talthibius' daughter, Is here my fellow-prisoner. But further Know, that such favour in the monarch's

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Lys. Throughout all Greece His mortal melancholy is the theme Of men's discourse; its cause a mystery. But here I judge, what elsewhere is unknown

Must be apparent. Kings are ever circled

By vigilant observers, who explore Their every word, ay, every sigh and thought.

Then tell me, friend, what secret cause of gloom

Has so much busy watclifulness discovered?

Pal. Plainly, as it was told me, I'll re-
late

This most unhappy man's sad history.
A fatal sickness laid Messenia waste,
When for stern Pluto, Delphi's oracle,
In horrid sacrifice, a virgin claimed,
Of th' Epitean race. The lots were cast,
And on Liciscus' daughter fell the doom.
The father, guiltily compassionate,

By secret flight rescued his child from death,

And the wronged people eagerly required
Another victim. Then Aristodemus
Stood forward, to the sacrificing priest
Willingly offering his proper child,
Dirce the beautiful. And in the place
Of her who fled, Dirce upon the altar
Was slain; she quenched with her pure
virgin blood

The thirst of the insatiable Avernus,
And for the general safety gave her life.

Lys. All this I know; Fame bruited

it abroad,

And of the mother's inauspicious fate
Added dark rumours.

Pal. She, enduring ill

Her Dirce's loss, by grief, by rage impelled,

Her bosom desperately gashed and tore, And lay, a bloody and disfigured corse, The nuptial couch defiling, whilst i' the realms

Of death, a raving but contented shade, Her daughter she rejoined. This was the second

Misfortune of the sad Aristodemus,
And closely was it followed by the third,
The most disastrous chance of his Argia;
She was her father's sole remaining hope,
A lovely, sportive infant, who as yet,
Tottering unsteadily on tender foot,
Had scarce seen half a lustre. Often-
times

Clasping her fondly to his breast, he felt
The recollection of his suffered woe

It is Monti, not we, who must answer for thus making Greeks compute time in Latin.

By little and by little hushed to rest; Whilst once more sounded sweetly in his heart

The name of father, brightening his dark brow.

A short-lived solace! Even of this last Sole remnant of his bliss, he was despoiled.

For then it was our armies suddenly
Won the tremendous battle at Anfea,
And the precipitous Ithomé press'd
With all a siege's horrors. Fearing then
The city's loss, Aristodemus gave
His daughter from his arms, intrusting her
Unto Eumaeus' oft-tried loyalty,
To Argos secretly to be convey'd ;
Oft hesitating, and a thousand times
Commending to his care so dear a life.
Alas, in vain! Upon Alpheus' banks
A troop of Spartans, either of the flight

Mutely proclaim him living. This, Lysander,

Is of the miserable king the state.

Lys. In truth a wretched state! But what of that?

I came to serve my country, not to weep The sorrows of her foe. Upon this point I have important matters to disclose; But for such speech a season must be found

More free from interruption. Some one

comes

Who might o'erhear us.

Pal. Mark, it is Cesira.

Although we certainly do not in general consider dialogues between the minor personages of a drama as best calculated for selection in a review, which can, necessarily, afford space only for a small proportion of any

Privately warned, or thither led by piece, we have been induced to extract

chance,

Fell on the little band, unsparingly Slaught'ring her guards, and in the mas

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the preceding scene at full length, because it appears to us a fair, and not unhappy specimen of our author's dramatic talents. It communicates, not unnaturally, all that can be known concerning Aristodemus, prior to his own disclosures, and, by awakening an interest in his sorrows, prepares the mind to receive those disclosures, when made, with a sympathy which, did they come upon us abruptly, their horrible nature might repress. We are aware, nevertheless, that fastidious critics might carp at the very anti-laconic loquacity of Palamedes, and might wonder, perhaps, that the Spartan ambassador should have had nothing more important to discuss with his friend than the gossip of a foreign court. With respect to this last objection, it will hereafter appear that Lysander bore a private and especial hate to Aristodemus, which, joined to other secret reasons, might naturally enough make him wish for information concerning the king's state of mind. Had his curiosity been thus explained and justified, for which a word or two would have sufficed, we should have thought the exposition of the subject a very able one. To proceed :

Cesira now enters and inquires af ter her father, but pays little attention to Lysander's account of the old man's anxiety for her return; appearing to be wholly engrossed with the kindness she has received from Aristodemus, and her regrets at leaving him a prey to melancholy. The party

is presently joined by Gonippus, the King's confidant, who, after describing the royal mourner as nearly delirious with agony, desires his companions to withdraw, because Aristodemus wishes, in this spot,

Once more to look upon the light of day;

a wish that would seem more germane to the matter were the scene laid in a garden. The three Spartans, however, comply with the courtier's request, and the hero of the piece appears.

The next scene is one of high importance, but we hardly know how to deal with it. To give it at full length, as it might deserve, is impossible! For some of the details upon which the Italian poet dwells, apparently with a sort of incomprehensible de light, are so revolting to British delicacy of every various kind, whether mental or personal, of fancy, of stomach, or of nerves, that we can scarcely bring ourselves even to insinuate their nature to our readers. We shall discharge this disagreeable part of our duty, when we come to it, as inoffensively and as briefly as may be.

The dialogue begins with complaints upon the part of Aristodemus, and remonstrances upon that of Gonippus, who observes that his master's mind to be occupied with some appears horrid thought. The King replies,

Gonippus, yes, the thought is horrible, Thou can'st not know how murderously dreadful.

Thy glances cannot penetrate my heart,
Nor view the tempest that convulses it.
Thou faithful friend, believe me, I am

wretched,

Immeasurably wretched! Sacrilegious, Impious, accurs'd of Heav'n, nature's abhorrence,

Yet more mine own!

Gonip. Alas! What strange disor-
der!

Sorrow bewilders sure thy faculties,
And from inflam'd and false imaginings
Thy melancholy springs.

Arist. Would that were all!

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These expressions, whilst they fill Gonippus with terror, strongly excite his curiosity; and he presses Aristodemus with supplications until the latter reluctantly promises to reveal his secret to him. The king first displays a blood-stained dagger, declares that the blood which discolours it once flowed in Dirce's veins, and asks Gonippus if he knows what hand drew it thence? The shuddering confidant now shrinks from the fearful tale, but the gloomy narrator resolutely goes on with it. He begins, as did Palamedes, with the required sacrifice of a virgin of the Epitean race, and the flight of Liciscus with his devoted daughter. Then reminding his hearer that the throne was vacant during those dreadful days, he subjoins, that ambition had suggested the idea of gaining all suffrages to himself, by the seemingly generous, voluntary proffer of his own daughter to the sacrificial axe. He further relates, that having so offered her, the lover of Dirce had endeavoured to prevent the execution of his purpose, and finding entreaties and menaces alike inefficacious, had declared the sacrifice to be impossible, since Dirce no longer answered to the description given by the oracle of the victim required; she had yielded to his passion, and bore within her bosom the pledge of love; à statement confirmed by the mother of the intended victim; and that he, Aristodemus, maddened by disap

But dost thou know me! Dost thou pointed ambition, and impending, ap

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parently, inevitable disgrace, had rushed to the chamber of his daughter, and stabbed her to the heart, as she lay asleep, exhausted by previous agitation.

Gonippus here interrupts the tale

with expressions of horror, which Aristodemus desires him to reserve until he shall have ampler cause for them; a request which we might well address to our readers, notwithstanding our purpose of sparing them and ourselves as much as possible of what the monarch, in the plenitude of his sovereign power, inflicts upon his humble friend.

The father had opened his daughter to seek for the evidence of her frailty, and had convinced himself of her innocence. The mother, entering unexpectedly, and overpowered by the spectacle before her, had snatched up the fallen dagger, and plunged it into her own bosom. The priests, gained to his interest, had conveyed the murdered Dirce privately to the temple, and spread the report that she had been offered up in sacrifice during the night, and Aristodemus had obtained the crown. But he is tortured by remorse, and nightly a horrid spectre

-Gonippus again interrupts him, refuses to listen to ghost-stories, assures the King that his remorse has abundantly expiated his crime, and urges him to attend to state affairs, and to receive the Spartan envoy. Aristodemus rouses himself, with an evidently painful effort, to consent, and the first Act concludes.

We must here pause for a remark or two.-Monti asserts that the preceding details are taken, without alteration, from Pausanias. We writeProh pudor! That critics should have to confess such degeneracy from the book-worm habits of their predecessors! But so it is; and the confession is wrung from us by the necessity of the case. We write at a fashionable watering-place, whither il Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti has, at our especial invitation, accompanied us, but where we have no possible means of referring to Greek authorities. We are willing, however, to take our friend the Cavaliere's word for the accuracy of his version of Pausanias; and still we must observe to him, that a poet is not bound to such strict historical truth -more particularly when his subject is one of remote antiquity-as should preclude him from softening down, if not omitting, any minor, or rather unessential circumstances, that happen to be absolutely irreconcilable with the common natural fealings of mankind. Of this description, most inVOL. XIX.

dubitably, is the disgusting mangling of his murdered child's corse by the father. Her immaculate purity would have been sufficiently established by her dying mother's testimony; and Aristodemus would have had ample cause for remorse, melancholy, bloody hands, and ghost-seeing, in the simple fact of his filiæcide,-if we may coin a name for a crime that scarcely seems to have entered into the contemplation of legislators. A question arises with respect to this ultra-atrocity of trage dy, under the management of writers whose national theatre has been habitually charged with tameness, or maudlin softness, which we cannot pass over unnoticed, although our present lei sure serves not for its full investiga tion. Does so violent a change proeeed merely from the reaction which we see constantly taking place in all things, physical and moral, around us ? Or is it a sort of volcanic eruption of a naturally blood-thirsty disposition, previously restrained, upon the stage at least, by the arbitrary laws of dramatic decorum, and of the scenic fitness of things? This doubt first presented itself to our minds during the perusal of Voltaire's "Mort de Cesar," in which, it will be recollected, Cæsar discovers himself to Brutus as his father, accompanying the declaration of their consanguinity with all the documents requisite to substantiate his paternal claims; whereupon Brutus first requires that Cæsar, like a dutiful father, should instantly comply with his wishes, and lay down the dictatorship; which when Cæsar, persisting with unparalleled obstinacy, refuses, the inflexibly virtuous son, never for a moment putting nature in the balance against patriotism, hurries back to his fellow-conspirators, to make the final arrangements for the assassination of his newly recognized parent. Assuredly no British audience, hardened to sanguinary representations as our nerves and hearts are by foreigners supposed to be, could sit out such a deliberate parricide, any more than the descriptions put by Monti into the mouth of Aristodemus. But, as we have already said, we cannot now go into all the pros and cons of this difficult question; and therefore, recommending it to the reader's serious consideration, we return to the business in hand.

The second Act, like the first, opens Ꮓ

with a conversation between our two Spartan acquaintance, Lysander and Palamedes. In this it appears, as may have been anticipated, that Cesira is the lost Argia, whom Lysander, in the hope of thus obtaining some unexplained advantage over the detested Aristodemus, had saved, together with her guardian Eumaeus, intrusting both to the faith of Talthibius, the one to be educated as his child, the other to be kept a close prisoner. Palamedes would fain reveal the secret to comfort the bereaved and sorrowing father; but Lysander insists upon its concealment, and hurries away his friend, to convince him elsewhere of the patriotic duty of silence, upon seeing Cesira and Gonippus approach. The last-named persons have scarcely succeeded to the vacated stage, and exchanged a few sentences about Aristodemus, ere the hero himself joins them, and dispatches his confidant to summon and introduce the Spartan ambassador. We shall give the scene of unconscious natural affection between the mutually unknown father and daughter, that fills up the period of his absence. The spectator's previous knowledge of their actual relationship gives it a peculiarly touching charm.

Arist. If Heav'n, Cesira, favour mine attempts,

This day shall close the long hostilities Twixt Sparta and Messenia--shall be

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Of all my woes.

Ces. Whom speak'st thou of?
Arist. Argia.

Forgive that I so oft remember her.
She was, thou know'st, the last remain-
ing treasure

Whence mine age once hoped solace. All things now

Recall her. Everywhere does an illusion,

Cruelly flattering, depict her. Thee
When I behold, on her I seem to gaze.
My heart, meanwhile, trembles and pal-
pitates,

And of mine idle tenderness the gods
Make mockery.

Ces. Most pitiable father!

Arist. Her years would equal thine, and nor in beauty,

Nor virtue, should she thine inferior prove.

Ces. Oh wherefore would the gods deprive thee of her!

Arist. They sought the consummation of my griefs.

Ces. Were she yet living, wert thou so content?

Arist. Cesira, could I once embrace her, once,

I'd ask no more.

Ces. Oh, would I were Argia!
Arist. Wert thou-Oh, daughter!
Ces. Wherefore call me daughter!
Arist. My heart resistlessly inspired
the name.

Ces. Me, likewise, me, oft-times my
heart impels

To call thee father.

Arist. Do so-call me father;

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