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 chance, Fell on the little band, unsparingly Slaught'ring her guards, and in the mas sacre The royal infant died. Lys. Of this adventure Know'st thou aught further? Pal. Nothing more. Lys. Then learn. Is of the miserable king the state. I came to serve my country, not to weep 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 piece, we have been induced to extract 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 Lysander was the leader of those forces, the mind to receive those disclosures, The conqu'ror of Eumaeus. Pal. What, art thou when made, with a sympathy which, did they come upon us abruptly, their The slayer of Argia? Should that deed horrible nature might repress. Here be discovered Lys. With thy history Proceed. The rest to more convenient season Shall be reserved. Pal. After Argia's loss, Aristomedus gave himself a prey To his affliction. Never since has joy Shone on his heart, or if it shone, 'twas merely In guise of lightning's flash, that, furrowing The darkness, vanishes. Thoughtful and sad, In solitary places now he strays, And from his inmost soul laments and moans, Then madly hurrying onward, howls in anguish, Calls upon Dirce's name, and at the foot Of yonder monument that holds her ashes, He flings himself, and with convulsive sobs Embracing it, remains immovable; Ay, so immovable, he might be deem'd A marble image, were't not that the tears, Which, streaming down his cheeks, de luge the tomb, Mutely proclaim him living. This, Ly sander, 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 other secret reasons, might naturally hate to Aristodemus, which, joined to 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 after 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 delirous 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 delight, 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 appears to be occupied with some 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 ab horrence, 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 ! But dost thou know me! Dost thou e'en conjecture Whose blood is ever trickling o'er my hands? Hast thou beheld the bursting sepulchre From out its dark profundity send spec tres 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 Dirce had endeavoured to prevent the having so offered her, the lover of 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; a statement confirmed by the mother of the intended victim; and that he, Aristodemus, maddened by disappointed ambition, and impending, apparently, inevitable disgrace, had rushed to the chamber of his daughter, and stabbed her to the heart, as she lay asleep, exhausted by previous agi tation. 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, notwithstand ing 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 feelings of mankind. Of this description, most in VOL. 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 filioecide,-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 tragedy, 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 leisure serves not for its full investigation. Does so violent a change proceed 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 bloodthirsty 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 unexpected advantage over the detested Aristodemus, had saved, together with her guardian Eumæus, 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 That thou to its affection art entitledEntitled by my gratitude, thy sorrows, Of all my woes. Ces. Whom speak'st thou of? Forgive that I so oft remember her. Whence mine age once hoped solace: All things now Recall her. Everywhere does an illusion, Cruelly flattering, depict her. Thee, And of mine idle tenderness the gods 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! Ces. Me, likewise, me, oft-times my To call thee father. Arist. Do so-call me father; There is a sweetness in the very nameA charm that ravishes the soul; and none And by another powerful feeling, waken- Can taste it thoroughly, save who, like ing me, The bitterest dregs of agony have drunk- touch Have lost their children-have for ever lost them! Ces. (aside.) He breaks my heart! Lysander is now ushered in by Gonippus, who, with Cesira, immediately withdraws. Left alone with the ambassador of his arrogant and triumphant enemies, the unhappy King shakes off his depression, and shows himself worthy of the exalted dignity he had so flagitiously acquired. This scene is written with considerable talent; but the political squabbles of Lacedæmon and Messenia are, at this time of day, too absolutely uninteresting to justify a detailed account of the arguments of the two interlocutors. Suffice it to say, that Aristodemus displays a lofty and resolved spirit, unbroken by adversity; and while he consents to purchase peace-impelled thereunto by the impatience and sufferings of his subjects with the surrender of a portion of his dominions, he positively rejects a condition, apparently of less moment but which he considers dishonourable and that the Spartan character is well pourtrayed in Lysander, save and except a small deficiency in laconic brevity, such as we before imputed, more largely, to Palamedes. But then we must frankly own, that it would be no easy matter to eke out one of these incidental tragedies, half the dramatis personæ being Spartans born or bred, did all those individuals strictly adhere to the conversational fashion of their country. Lysander, who seems to set more store by solid profit, and less by the bubble reputation, than Aristodemus, agrees to a compromise; they strike hands upon the bargain; and the war and the second Act are at an end. In the third Act, Aristodemus is discovered sitting beside Dirce's tomb, immersed in gloomy meditations. These he intimates in soliloquy, and their evident tendency is towards suicide. He is joined by Gonippus, who endeavours, by no means successfully, to console him, and presently gives place to Cesira. She comes to take leave of her royal and paternal friend, prior to quitting Messenia for Sparta. In this valedictory interview, much of that indistinct and unconscious natural af fection, of which we have already given a specimen, is expressed on both sides, and sometimes in terms so energetic, that, in the representation, we should almost apprehend its approaching too nearly to the character of passion ;— certainly, if it is preserved from it, the preservation must be chiefly due to the spectators' consciousness of that consanguinity, of which the parties themselves are uninformed. But be that as it may, poor Cesira, from her ignorance of the real source of Aristodemus's distress, in her professions of attachment, her praises, and her various efforts at consolation, so irritates the wound she would fain heal, that the afflicted monarch breaks from her in an agony of despair. The Spartans immediately afterwards come in search of her; Lysander sternly rejects her entreaties to delay their departure, as well as the private remonstrances of Palamedes upon his inhumanity; and Cesira, yielding to the plea of filial duty, sets forth with them upon their homeward journey, leaving a kind message for the King with Gonippus, who had come to see them off. The Aristodemus, when they are gone, returns upon the stage, again rejects his confidant's attempts at consolation, and announces his now settled purpose of self-slaughter. Against this intention Gonippus argues vehemently, and we cannot but think in somewhat too Christian a strain. The king, to prove the utter impossibility of his longer enduring life, now relates the fearful manner in which he is haunted by his daughter's ghost; but his description of the spectre reminds us too disagreeably of a subject in a dissecting-room, to be dwelt upon. confidant's incredulity is overpowered, or at least silenced, and he begins proposing journeys, and such other received methods for the cure of sorrow; but Aristodemus, without attending to him, determines to enter Dirce's sepulchre, and there question the dreadful phantom. The utmost that Gonippus can obtain by his opposition, remonstrances, and supplications, is the surrender of the before-mentioned blood-stained dagger, and the king's visiting the abode of death unarmed. The third Act closes with the entrance of Aristodemus into the monument. |