Chapter III (4)

There is a third kind, consisting of those animals which are called uri. These are a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied. These the Germans take with much pains in pits and kill them. The young men harden themselves with this exercise, and practice themselves in this kind of hunting, and those who have slain the greatest number of them, having produced the horns in public to serve as evidence, receive great praise. But not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they [the Gauls] anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.

THE TWO LIEUTENANTS

From 'The Gallic Wars'

In that legion there were two very brave men, centurions, who were now approaching the first ranks,--T. Pulfio and L. Varenus. These used to have continual disputes between them which of them should be preferred, and every year used to contend for promotion with the utmost animosity. When the fight was going on most vigorously before the fortifications, Pulfio, one of them, says: "Why do you hesitate, Varenus? or what better opportunity of signalizing your valor do you seek? This very day shall decide our disputes." When he had uttered these words, he proceeds beyond the fortifications, and rushes on that part of the enemy which appeared the thickest. Nor does Varenus remain within the rampart, but respecting the high opinion of all, follows close after. Then, when an inconsiderable space intervened, Pulfio throws his javelin at the enemy, and pierces one of the multitude who was running up, and while the latter was wounded and slain, the enemy cover him with their shields, and all throw their weapons at the other and afford him no opportunity of retreating. The shield of Pulfio is pierced and a javelin is fastened in his belt. This circumstance turns aside his scabbard and obstructs his right hand when attempting to draw his sword: the enemy crowd around him when thus embarrassed. His rival runs up to him and succors him in this emergency. Immediately the whole host turn from Pulfio to him, supposing the other to be pierced through by the javelin. Varenus rushes on briskly with his sword and carries on the combat hand to hand; and having slain one man, for a short time drove back the rest: while he urges on too eagerly, slipping into a hollow, he fell. To him in his turn, when surrounded, Pulfio brings relief; and both, having slain a great number, retreat into the fortifications amidst the highest applause. Fortune so dealt with both in this rivalry and conflict, that the one competitor was a succor and a safeguard to the other; nor could it be determined which of the two appeared worthy of being preferred to the other.

EPIGRAM ON TERENTIUS

[This sole fragment of literary criticism from the Dictator's hand is preserved in the Suetonian life of Terence. Two of Caesar's brief but masterly letters to Cicero will be quoted under the latter name.]

You, moreover, although you are but the half of Menander,
Lover of diction pure, with the first have a place--and with reason.
Would that vigor as well to your gentle writing were added.
So your comic force would in equal glory have rivaled
Even the Greeks themselves, though now you ignobly are vanquished.
Truly I sorrow and grieve that you lack this only, O Terence!

THOMAS HENRY HALL CAINE

(1853-)

Thomas Henry Hall Caine was born on the Isle of Man, of Manx and Cambrian parentage. He began his career as an architect in Liverpool, and made frequent contributions to the Builder and Building News. Acquiring a taste for literary work, he secured an engagement on the Liverpool Mercury, and shortly afterward formed an intimate friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti which was of incalculable benefit to the young writer, then twenty-five years of age. At eighteen he had already published a poem "of the mystical sort" under a pseudonym, and two years later he received L10 for writing the autobiography of some one else.

About 1880 Caine settled in London, living with Rossetti until the poet's death in 1882. The same year he produced 'Recollections of Rossetti' and 'Sonnets of Three Centuries,' which were followed by 'Cobwebs of Criticism' and a 'Life of Coleridge.' In 1885 he published his first novel, 'The Shadow of a Crime,' which was successful. Speaking of the pains he took in the writing of this story, the author says: "Shall I ever forget the agonies of the first efforts?... It took me nearly a fortnight to start that novel, sweating drops as of blood at every fresh attempt." The first half was written at least four times; and when the book was finished, more than half of it was destroyed so that a fresh suggestion might be worked in. This wonderful capacity for taking infinite pains has remained one of the chief characteristics of this novelist. In 1886 Mr. Caine brought out 'A Son of Hagar,' and this was followed by 'The Deemster' (1887), afterwards dramatized under the title of 'Ben-Ma'-Chree'; 'The Bondman' (1890); 'The Scapegoat' (1891); 'The Last Confession,' 'Cap'n Davy's Honeymoon' (1892); and 'The Manxman' (1894). The last story has achieved the widest popularity, its theme being the unselfishness of a great love. He has also written a history of his native island.

Mr. Caine visited Russia in 1892 in behalf of the persecuted Jews, and in 1895 traveled in the United States and Canada, where he represented the Society of Authors, and obtained important international copyright concessions from the Dominion Parliament. He makes his principal home at Greeba Castle on the Isle of Man, where he is greatly endeared to the natives.

PETE QUILLIAM'S FIRST-BORN

From 'The Manxman': copyrighted 1894, by D. Appleton and Company

Pete went up to Sulby like an avalanche, shouting his greetings to everybody on the way. But when he got near to the "Fairy" he wiped his steaming forehead and held his panting breath, and pretended not to have heard the news.

"How's the poor girl now?" he said in a meek voice, trying to look powerfully miserable, and playing his part splendidly for thirty seconds.

Then the women made eyes at each other and looked wondrous knowing, and nodded sideways at Pete, and clucked and chuckled, saying, "Look at him,--_he_ doesn't know anything, does he?"--"Coorse not, woman--these men creatures are no use for nothing."

"Out of a man's way," cried Pete with a roar, and he made a rush for the stairs.

Nancy blocked him at the foot of them with both hands on his shoulders. "You'll be quiet, then," she whispered. "You were always a rasonable man, Pete, and she's wonderful wake--promise you'll be quiet."

"I'll be like a mouse," said Pete, and he wiped off his long sea-boots and crept on tiptoe into the room. There she lay with the morning light on her, and a face as white as the quilt that she was plucking with her long fingers.

"Thank God for a living mother and a living child," said Pete in a broken gurgle, and then he drew down the bedclothes a very little, and there too was the child on the pillow of her other arm.

Then, do what he would to be quiet, he could not help but make a shout.

"He's there! Yes, he is! He is, though! Joy! Joy!"

The women were down on him like a flock of geese. "Out of this, sir, if you can't behave better."

"Excuse me, ladies," said Pete humbly, "I'm not in the habit of babies. A bit excited, you see, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Couldn't help putting a bull of a roar out, not being used of the like." Then, turning back to the bed, "Aw, Kitty, the beauty it is, though! And the big! As big as my fist already. And the fat! It's as fat as a bluebottle. And the straight! Well, not so _very_ straight neither, but the complexion at him now! Give him to me, Kitty! give him to me, the young rascal. Let me have a hould of him anyway."

"_Him_, indeed! Listen to the man," said Nancy.

"It's a girl, Pete," said Grannie, lifting the child out of the bed.

"A girl, is it?" said Pete doubtfully. "Well," he said, with a wag of the head, "thank God for a girl." Then, with another and more resolute wag, "Yes, thank God for a living mother and a living child, if it _is_ a girl," and he stretched out his arms to take the baby.

"Aisy, now, Pete--aisy," said Grannie, holding it out to him.

"Is it aisy broke they are, Grannie?" said Pete. A good spirit looked out of his great boyish face. "Come to your ould daddie, you lil sandpiper. Gough bless me, Kitty, the weight of him, though! This child's a quarter of a hundred, if he's an ounce. He is, I'll go bail he is. Look at him! Guy heng, Grannie, did ye ever see the like, now! It's abs'lute perfection. Kitty, I couldn't have had a better one if I'd chiced it. Where's that Tom Hommy now? The bleating little billygoat, he was bragging outrageous about his new baby--saying he wouldn't part with it for two of the best cows in his cow-house. This'll floor him, I'm thinking. What's that you're saying, Mistress Nancy, ma'am? No good for nothing, am I? You were right, Grannie. 'It'll be all joy soon,' you were saying, and haven't we the child to show for it? I put on my stocking inside out on Monday, ma'am. 'I'm in luck,' says I, and so I was. Look at that, now! He's shaking his lil fist at his father. He is, though. This child knows me. Aw, you're clever, Nancy, but--no nonsense at all, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Nothing will persuade me but this child knows me."

"Do you hear the man?" said Nancy. "_He_ and _he_, and _he_ and _he_! It's a girl, I'm telling you; a girl--a girl--a girl."

"Well, well, a girl, then--a girl we'll make it," said Pete, with determined resignation.

"He's deceaved," said Grannie. "It was a boy he was wanting, poor fellow!"

But Pete scoffed at the idea. "A boy? Never! No, no--a girl for your life. I'm all for girls myself, eh, Kitty? Always was, and now I've got two of them."

The child began to cry, and Grannie took it back and rocked it, face downwards, across her knees.

"Goodness me, the voice at him!" said Pete. "It's a skipper he's born for--a harbor-master, anyway."

The child slept, and Grannie put it on the pillow turned lengthwise at Kate's side.

"Quiet as a Jenny Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n Peter Quilliam, of a boy--a girl,' I mane. Aw, the wonder there'll be all the island over--everybody getting to know. Newspapers are like women--ter'ble bad for keeping sacrets. What'll Philip say?"...

There was a low moaning from the bed.

"Air! Give me air! open the door!" Kate gasped.

"The room is getting too hot for her," said Grannie.

"Come, there's one too many of us here," said Nancy. "Out of it," and she swept Pete from the bedroom with her apron as if he had been a drove of ducks.

Pete glanced backward from the door, and a cloak that was hanging on the inside of it brushed his face.

"God bless her!" he said in a low tone. "God bless and reward her for going through this for me!"

Then he touched the cloak with his lips and disappeared. A moment later his curly black poll came stealing round the door-jamb, half-way down, like the head of a big boy.

"Nancy," in a whisper, "put the tongs over the cradle; it's a pity to tempt the fairies. And, Grannie, I wouldn't lave it alone to go out to the cow-house--the lil people are shocking bad for changing."

PEDRO CALDERON

(1600-1681)

BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

The reputation of Pedro Calderon de la Barca has suffered in the minds of English-speaking people from the injudicious comparisons of critics, as well as from lack of knowledge of his works. To put Calderon, a master of invention, beside Shakespeare, the master of character, and to show by analogies that the author of 'Othello' was far superior to the writer of 'The Physician of His Own Honor,' is unjust to Calderon; and it is as futile as are the ecstasies of Schultze to the coldness of Sismondi. Schultze compares Dante with him, and the French critics have only recently forgiven him for being less classical in form than Corneille, who in 'Le Cid' gave them all the Spanish poetry they wanted! Fortunately the student of Calderon need not take opinions. Good editions of Calderon are easily attainable. The best known are Heil's (Leipzig, 1827), and that by Harzenbusch (Madrid, 1848). The first edition, with forewords by Vera Tassis de Villareal, appeared at Madrid (nine volumes) in 1682-91. Commentaries and translations are numerous in German and in English; the translations by Denis Florence MacCarthy are the most satisfactory, Edward Fitzgerald's being too paraphrastic. Dean Trench added much to our knowledge of Calderon's best work; George Ticknor in the 'History of Spanish Literature,' and George Henry Lewes in 'The Spanish Drama,' left us clear estimates of Lope de Vega's great successor. Shelley's scenes from 'El Magico Prodigioso' are superb.

No analyses can do justice to the dramas, or to the religious plays, called "_autos_," of Calderon. They must be read; and thanks to the late Mr. MacCarthy's sympathy and zeal, the finest are easily attainable. As he left seventy-three _autos_ and one hundred and eight dramas, it is lucky that the work of sifting the best from the mass of varying merit has been carefully done. Mr. Ticknor mentions the fact that Calderon collaborated with other authors in the writing of fourteen other plays.

Calderon was not "the Spanish Shakespeare." "The Spanish Ben Jonson" would be a happier title, if one feels obliged to compare everything with something else. But Calderon is as far above Ben Jonson in splendor of imagery as he is below Shakespeare in his knowledge of the heart, and in that vitality which makes Hamlet and Orlando, Lady Macbeth and Perdita, men and women of all time. They live; Calderon's people, like Ben Jonson's, move. There is a resemblance between the _autos_ of Calderon and the masques of Jonson. Jonson's are lyrical; Calderon's less lyrical than splendid, ethical, grandiose. They were both court poets; they both made court spectacles; they both assisted in the decay of the drama; they reflected the tastes of their time; but Calderon is the more noble, the more splendid in imagination, the more intense in his devotion to nature in all her moods. If one wanted to carry the habit of comparison into music, Mozart might well represent the spirit of Calderon. M. Philarete Chasles is right when he says that 'El Magico Prodigioso' should be presented in a cathedral. Calderon's genius had the cast of the soldier and the priest, and he was both soldier and priest. His _comedias_ and _autos_ are of Spain, Spanish. To know Calderon is to know the mind of the Spain of the seventeenth century; to know Cervantes is to know its heart.

The Church had opposed the secularization of the drama, at the end of the fifteenth century, for two reasons. The dramatic spectacle fostered for religious purposes had become, until Lope de Vega rescued it, a medium for that "naturalism" which some of us fancy to be a discovery of M. Zola and M. Catulle Mendes; it had escaped from the control of the Church and had become a mere diversion. Calderon was the one man who could unite the spirit of religion to the form of the drama which the secular renaissance imperiously demanded. He knew the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of the 'Summa' of St. Thomas as well as any cleric in Spain, though he did not take orders until late in life; and in those religious spectacles called _autos sacramentales_ he showed this knowledge wonderfully. His last _auto_ was unfinished when he died, on May 25th, 1681,--sixty-five years after the death of Shakespeare,--and Don Melchior de Leon completed it, probably in time for the feast of Corpus Christi.

The _auto_ was an elaboration of the older miracle-play, and a spectacle as much in keeping with the temper of the Spanish court and people as Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' or Ben Jonson's 'Fortunate Isles' was in accord with the tastes of the English. And Calderon, of all Spanish poets, best pleased his people. He was the favorite poet of the court under Philip IV., and director of the theatre in the palace of the Buen Retiro. The skill in the art of construction which he had begun to acquire when he wrote 'The Devotion of the Cross' at the age of nineteen, was turned to stage management at the age of thirty-five, when he produced his gorgeous pageant of 'Circe' on the pond of the Buen Retiro. How elaborate this spectacle was, the directions for the prelude of the greater splendor to come will show. They read in this way:--

"In the midst of this island will be situated a very lofty
mountain of rugged ascent, with precipices and caverns,
surrounded by a thick and darksome wood of tall trees, some of
which will be seen to exhibit the appearance of the human form,
covered with a rough bark, from the heads and arms of which will
issue green boughs and branches, having suspended from them
various trophies of war and of the chase: the theatre during the
opening of the scene being scantily lit with concealed lights;
and to make a beginning of the festival, a murmuring and a
rippling noise of water having been heard, a great and
magnificent car will be seen to advance along the pond, plated
over with silver, and drawn by two monstrous fishes, from whose
mouth will continually issue great jets of water, the light of
the theatre increasing according as they advance; and on the
summit of it will be seen seated in great pomp and majesty the
goddess Aqua, from whose head and curious vesture will issue an
infinite abundance of little conduits of water; and at the same
time will be seen another great supply flowing from an urn which
the goddess will hold reversed, and which, filled with a variety
of fishes leaping and playing in the torrent as it descends and
gliding over all the car, will fall into the pond."

This 'Circe' was allegorical and mythological; it was one of those soulless shows which marked the transition of the Spanish drama from maturity to decay. It is gone and forgotten with thousands of its kind. Calderon will be remembered not as the director of such vain pomps, but as the author of the sublime and tender 'Wonderful Magician,' the weird 'Purgatory of St. Patrick,' 'The Constant Prince,' 'The Secret in Words,' and 'The Physician of His Own Honor.' The scrupulous student of the Spanish drama will demand more; but for him who would love Calderon without making a deep study of his works, these are sufficiently characteristic of his genius at its highest. The reader in search of wider vistas should add to these 'Los Encantos de la Culpa' (The Sorceries of Sin), and 'The Great Theatre of the World,' the theme of which is that of Jacques's famous speech in 'As You Like It':--

"En el teatro del mundo
Todos son representados."

("All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.")

On the principal feasts of the Church _autos_ were played in the streets, generally in front of some great house. Giants and grotesque figures called _tarascas_ gamboled about; and the _auto_, which was more like our operas than any other composition of the Spanish stage, was begun by a _loa_, written or sung. After this came the play, then an amusing interlude, followed by music and sometimes by a dance of gipsies.

Calderon boldly mingles pagan gods and Christ's mysteries in these _autos_, which are essentially of his time and his people. But the mixture is not so shocking as it is with the lesser poet, the Portuguese Camoens. Whether Calderon depicts 'The True God Pan,' 'Love the Greatest Enchantment,' or 'The Sheaves of Ruth,' he is forceful, dramatic, and even at times he has the awful gravity of Dante. His view of life and his philosophy are the view of life and the philosophy of Dante. To many of us, these simple and original productions of the Spanish temperament and genius may lack what we call "human interest." Let us remember that they represented truthfully the faith and the hope, the spiritual knowledge of a nation, as well as the personal and national view of that knowledge. In the Spain of Calderon, the personal view was the national view.

Calderon was born on January 17th, 1600,--according to his own statement quoted by his friend Vera Tassis,--at Madrid, of noble parents. He was partly educated at the University of Salamanca. Like Cervantes and Garcilaso, he served in the army. The great Lope, in 1630, acknowledged him as a poet and his friend. Later, his transition from the army to the priesthood made little change in his views of time and eternity.

On May 25th, 1881, occurred the second centenary of his death, and the civilized world--whose theatre owes more to Calderon than it has ever acknowledged--celebrated with Spain the anniversary at Madrid, where as he said,--

"Spain's proud heart swelleth."

The selections have been chosen from Shelley's 'Scenes,' and from Mr. MacCarthy's translation of 'The Secret in Words.' 'The Secret in Words' is light comedy of intricate plot. Fabio is an example of the attendant _gracioso_, half servant, half confidant, who appears often in the Spanish drama. The Spanish playwright did not confine himself to one form of verse; and Mr. MacCarthy, in his adequate translation, has followed the various forms of Calderon, only not attempting the assonant vowel, so hard to escape in Spanish, and still harder to reproduce in English. These selections give no impression of the amazing invention of Calderon. This can only be appreciated through reading 'The Constant Prince,' 'The Physician of His Own Honor,' or a comedy like 'The Secret in Words.'

THE LOVERS

From 'The Secret in Words'

[Flerida, the Duchess of Parma, is in love with her secretary Frederick. He loves her lady, Laura. Both Frederick and Laura are trying to keep their secret from the Duchess.]

FREDERICK--Has Flerida questioned you
Aught about my love?

FABIO-- No, surely;
But I have made up my mind
That you are the prince of dunces,
Not to understand her wish.

FREDERICK--Said she something, then, about me?

FABIO--Ay, enough.

FREDERICK-- Thou liest, knave!
Wouldst thou make me think her beauty,
Proud and gentle though it be,
Which might soar e'en like the heron
To the sovereign sun itself,
Could descend with coward pinions
At a lowly falcon's call?

FABIO--Well, my lord, just make the trial
For a day or two; pretend
That you love her, and--

FREDERICK-- Supposing
That there were the slightest ground
For this false, malicious fancy
You have formed, there's not a chink
In my heart where it might enter,--
Since a love, if not more blest.
Far more equal than the other
Holds entire possession there.

FABIO--Then you never loved this woman
At one time?

FREDERICK-- No!

FABIO-- Then avow--

FREDERICK--What?

FABIO-- That you were very lazy.

FREDERICK--That is falsehood, and not love.

FABIO--The more the merrier!

FREDERICK-- In two places
How could one man love?

FABIO-- Why, thus:--
Near the town of Ratisbon
Two conspicuous hamlets lay,--
One of them called Agere,
The other called Mascarandon.
These two villages one priest,
An humble man of God, 'tis stated,
Served; and therefore celebrated
Mass in each on every feast.
And so one day it came to pass,
A native of Mascarandon
Who to Agere had gone
About the middle of the mass,
Heard the priest in solemn tone
Say, as he the _Preface_ read,
"Gratias agere," but said
Nothing of Mascarandon.
To the priest this worthy made
His angry plaint without delay:
"You give best thanks for Agere,
As if your tithes we had not paid!"
When this sapient reason reached
The noble Mascarandonese,
They stopped their hopeless pastor's fees,
Nor paid for what he prayed or preached;
He asked his sacristan the cause,
Who told him wherefore and because.
From that day forth when he would sing
The _Preface_, he took care t'intone,
Not in a smothered or weak way,
"_Tibi semper et ubique
Gratias--Mascarandon!_"
If from love,--that god so blind,--
Two parishes thou holdest, you
Are bound to gratify the two;
And after a few days you'll find,
If you do so, soon upon
You and me will fall good things,
When your Lordship sweetly sings
Flerida et Mascarandon.

FREDERICK--Think you I have heard your folly?

FABIO--If you listened, why not so?

FREDERICK--No: my mind can only know
Its one call of melancholy.

FABIO--Since you stick to Agere
And reject Mascarandon,
Every hope, I fear, is gone,
That love his generous dues will pay.

Translation of Denis Florence MacCarthy.

CYPRIAN'S BARGAIN

From 'The Wonderful Magician'

[The Demon, angered by Cyprian's victory in defending the existence of God, swears vengeance. He resolves that Cyprian shall lose his soul for Justina, who rejects his love. Cyprian says:--]

So bitter is the life I live,
That, hear me hell, I now would give
To thy most detested spirit
My soul forever to inherit,
To suffer punishment and pine,
So this woman may be mine.

[_The Demon accepts his soul and hastens to Justina._

JUSTINA--'Tis that enamored nightingale
Who gives me the reply:
He ever tells the same soft tale
Of passion and of constancy
To his mate, who, rapt and fond,
Listening sits, a bough beyond.

Be silent, Nightingale!--No more
Make me think, in hearing thee
Thus tenderly thy love deplore,
If a bird can feel his so,
What a man would feel for me.
And, voluptuous vine, O thou
Who seekest most when least pursuing,--
To the trunk thou interlacest
Art the verdure which embracest
And the weight which is its ruin,--
No more, with green embraces, vine,
Make me think on what thou lovest;
For while thou thus thy boughs entwine,
I fear lest thou shouldst teach me, sophist,
How arms might be entangled too.
Light-enchanted sunflower, thou
Who gazest ever true and tender
On the sun's revolving splendor,
Follow not his faithless glance
With thy faded countenance,
Nor teach my beating heart to fear
If leaves can mourn without a tear,
How eyes must weep! O Nightingale,
Cease from thy enamored tale,--
Leafy vine, unwreath thy bower,
Restless sunflower, cease to move--
Or tell me all, what poisonous power
Ye use against me--

ALL-- Love! love! love!

JUSTINA--It cannot be!--Whom have I ever loved?
Trophies of my oblivion and disdain,
Floro and Lelio did I not reject?
And Cyprian?--

[_She becomes troubled at the name of Cyprian._

Did I not requite him
With such severity that he has fled
Where none has ever heard of him again?--
Alas! I now begin to fear that this
May be the occasion whence desire grows bold,
As if there were no danger. From the moment
That I pronounced to my own listening heart,
"Cyprian is absent, O miserable me!"
I know not what I feel! [_More calmly._

It must be pity,
To think that such a man, whom all the world
Admired, should be forgot by all the world,
And I the cause.

[_She again becomes troubled._

And yet if it were pity,
Floro and Lelio might have equal share,
For they are both imprisoned for my sake. [_Calmly._
Alas! what reasonings are these? It is
Enough I pity him, and that in vain,
Without this ceremonious subtlety,
And woe is me! I know not where to find him now,
Even should I seek him through this wide world!

_Enter +Demon+_.

DEMON--Follow, and I will lead thee where he is.

JUSTINA--And who art thou, who hast found entrance hither
Into my chamber through the doors and locks?
Art thou a monstrous shadow which my madness
Has formed in the idle air?

DEMON-- No. I am one
Called by the thought which tyrannizes thee
From his eternal dwelling--who this day
Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian.

JUSTINA--So shall thy promise fail. This agony
Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul
May sweep imagination in its storm,--
The will is firm.

DEMON-- Already half is done
In the imagination of an act.
The sin incurred, the pleasure then remains:
Let not the will stop half-way on the road.

JUSTINA--I will not be discouraged, nor despair,
Although I thought it, and although 'tis true
That thought is but a prelude to the deed:
Thought is not in my power, but action is:
I will not move my foot to follow thee!

DEMON--But a far mightier wisdom than thine own
Exerts itself within thee, with such power
Compelling thee to that which it inclines
That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then
Resist, Justina?

JUSTINA-- By my free will.

DEMON-- I
Must force thy will.

JUSTINA-- It is invincible;
It were not free if thou hadst power upon it.

[_He draws, but cannot move her._

DEMON--Come, where a pleasure waits thee.

JUSTINA-- It were bought
Too dear.

DEMON-- 'Twill soothe thy heart to softest peace.

JUSTINA--'Tis dread captivity.

DEMON-- 'Tis joy, 'tis glory.

JUSTINA--'Tis shame, 'tis torment, 'tis despair.

DEMON-- But how
Canst thou defend thyself from that or me,
If my power drags thee onward?

JUSTINA-- My defense
Consists in God.

[_He vainly endeavors to force her, and at last releases her._

DEMON-- Woman, thou hast subdued me
Only by not owning thyself subdued.
But since thou thus findest defense in God,
I will assume a feigned form, and thus
Make thee a victim of my baffled rage.
For I will mask a spirit in thy form
Who will betray thy name to infamy,
And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss,
First by dishonoring thee, and then by turning
False pleasure to true ignominy. [_Exit_

JUSTINA-- I
Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven
May scatter thy delusions, and the blot
Upon my fame vanish in idle thought,
Even as flame dies in the envious air,
And as the flow'ret wanes at morning frost,
And thou shouldst never--But alas! to whom
Do I still speak?--Did not a man but now
Stand here before me?--No, I am alone,
And yet I saw him. Is he gone so quickly?
Or can the heated mind engender shapes
From its own fear? Some terrible and strange
Peril is near. Lisander! father! lord!
Livia!--

_Enter +Lisander+ and +Livia+._

LISANDER--O my daughter! what?

LIVIA-- What?

JUSTINA-- Saw you
A man go forth from my apartment now?--
I scarce sustain myself!

LISANDER-- A man here!

JUSTINA--Have you not seen him?

LIVIA-- No, lady.

JUSTINA--I saw him.

LISANDER-- 'Tis impossible; the doors
Which led to this apartment were all locked.

_Livia_ [_aside_]--I dare say it was Moscon whom she saw,
For he was locked up in my room.

LISANDER-- It must
Have been some image of thy phantasy.
Such melancholy as thou feedest is
Skillful in forming such in the vain air
Out of the motes and atoms of the day.

LIVIA--My master's in the right.

JUSTINA-- Oh, would it were
Delusion; but I fear some greater ill.
I feel as if out of my bleeding bosom
My heart was torn in fragments; ay,
Some mortal spell is wrought against my frame.
So potent was the charm, that had not God
Shielded my humble innocence from wrong,
I should have sought my sorrow and my shame
With willing steps. Livia, quick, bring my cloak,
For I must seek refuge from these extremes
Even in the temple of the highest God
Which secretly the faithful worship.

LIVIA-- Here.

_Justina_ [_putting on her cloak_]--In this, as in a shroud of
snow, may I
Quench the consuming fire in which I burn,
Wasting away!

LISANDER-- And I will go with thee!

_Livia_ [_aside_]--When I once see them safe out of the house,
I shall breathe freely.

JUSTINA-- So do I confide
In thy just favor, Heaven!

LISANDER-- Let us go.

JUSTINA--Thine is the cause, great God! Turn, for my sake
And for thine own, mercifully to me!

Translation of Shelley.

DREAMS AND REALITIES

From 'Such Stuff as Dreams are Made Of,' Edward Fitzgerald's version of 'La Vida Es Sueno'

[The scene is a tower. Clotaldo is persuading Segismund that his experiences have not been real, but dreams, and discusses the possible relation of existence to a state of dreaming. The play itself is based on the familiar _motif_ of which Christopher Sly furnishes a ready example.]

CLOTALDO--Princes and princesses and counselors,
Fluster'd to right and left--my life made at--
But that was nothing--
Even the white-hair'd, venerable King
Seized on--Indeed, you made wild work of it;
And so discover'd in your outward action,
Flinging your arms about you in your sleep,
Grinding your teeth--and, as I now remember,
Woke mouthing out judgment and execution,
On those about you.

SEGISMUND-- Ay, I did indeed.

CLOTALDO--Ev'n your eyes stare wild; your hair stands up--
Your pulses throb and flutter, reeling still
Under the storm of such a dream--

SEGISMUND-- A dream!
That seem'd as swearable reality
As what I wake in now.

CLOTALDO-- Ay--wondrous how
Imagination in a sleeping brain
Out of the uncontingent senses draws
Sensations strong as from the real touch;
That we not only laugh aloud, and drench
With tears our pillow; but in the agony
Of some imaginary conflict, fight
And struggle--ev'n as you did; some, 'tis thought.
Under the dreamt-of stroke of death have died.

SEGISMUND--And what so very strange, too--in that world
Where place as well as people all was strange,
Ev'n I almost as strange unto myself,
You only, you, Clotaldo--you, as much
And palpably yourself as now you are,
Came in this very garb you ever wore;
By such a token of the past, you said,
To assure me of that seeming present.

CLOTALDO-- Ay?

SEGISMUND--Ay; and even told me of the very stars
You tell me hereof--how in spite of them,
I was enlarged to all that glory.

CLOTALDO-- Ay,
By the false spirits' nice contrivance, thus
A little truth oft leavens all the false,
The better to delude us.

SEGISMUND-- For you know
'Tis nothing but a dream?

CLOTALDO-- Nay, you yourself
Know best how lately you awoke from that
You know you went to sleep on.--
Why, have you never dreamt the like before?

SEGISMUND--Never, to such reality.

CLOTALDO-- Such dreams
Are oftentimes the sleeping exhalations
Of that ambition that lies smoldering
Under the ashes of the lowest fortune:
By which, when reason slumbers, or has lost
The reins of sensible comparison,
We fly at something higher than we are--
Scarce ever dive to lower--to be kings
Or conquerors, crown'd with laurel or with gold;
Nay, mounting heav'n itself on eagle wings,--
Which, by the way, now that I think of it,
May furnish us the key to this high flight--
That royal Eagle we were watching, and
Talking of as you went to sleep last night.

SEGISMUND--Last night? Last night?

CLOTALDO-- Ay; do you not remember
Envying his immunity of flight,
As, rising from his throne of rock, he sail'd
Above the mountains far into the west,
That burned about him, while with poising wings
He darkled in it as a burning brand
Is seen to smolder in the fire it feeds?

SEGISMUND--Last night--last night--Oh, what a day was that
Between that last night and this sad to-day!

CLOTALDO-- And yet perhaps
Only some few dark moments, into which
Imagination, once lit up within
And unconditional of time and space,
Can pour infinities.

SEGISMUND-- And I remember
How the old man they call'd the King, who wore
The crown of gold about his silver hair,
And a mysterious girdle round his waist,
Just when my rage was roaring at its height,
And after which it all was dark again,
Bade me beware lest all should be a dream.

CLOTALDO--Ay--there another specialty of dreams,
That once the dreamer 'gins to dream he dreams,
His foot is on the very verge of waking.

SEGISMUND--Would that it had been on the verge of death
That knows no waking--
Lifting me up to glory, to fall back,
Stunned, crippled--wretcheder than ev'n before.

CLOTALDO--Yet not so glorious, Segismund, if you
Your visionary honor wore so ill
As to work murder and revenge on those
Who meant you well.

SEGISMUND--Who meant me!--me! their Prince,
Chain'd like a felon--

CLOTALDO-- Stay, stay--Not so fast.
You dream'd the Prince, remember.

SEGISMUND-- Then in dream
Revenged it only.

CLOTALDO-- True. But as they say
Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul
Yet uncorrected of the higher Will,
So that men sometimes in their dream confess
An unsuspected or forgotten self;
One must beware to check--ay, if one may,
Stifle ere born, such passion in ourselves
As makes, we see, such havoc with our sleep,
And ill reacts upon the waking day.
And, by the by, for one test, Segismund,
Between such swearable realities--
Since dreaming, madness, passion, are akin
In missing each that salutary rein
Of reason, and the guiding will of man:
One test, I think, of waking sanity
Shall be that conscious power of self-control
To curb all passion, but much, most of all,
That evil and vindictive, that ill squares
With human, and with holy canon less,
Which bids us pardon ev'n our enemies,
And much more those who, out of no ill-will,
Mistakenly have taken up the rod
Which Heaven, they think, has put into their hands.

SEGISMUND--I think I soon shall have to try again--
Sleep has not yet done with me.

CLOTALDO-- Such a sleep!
Take my advice--'tis early yet--the sun
Scarce up above the mountain; go within,
And if the night deceived you, try anew
With morning; morning dreams they say come true.

SEGISMUND--Oh, rather pray for me a sleep so fast
As shall obliterate dream and waking too.

[_Exit into the tower._

CLOTALDO--So sleep; sleep fast: and sleep away those two
Night-potions, and the waking dream between,
Which dream thou must believe; and if to see
Again, poor Segismund! that dream must be.--
And yet--and yet--in these our ghostly lives,
Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,
How if our waking life, like that of sleep,
Be all a dream in that eternal life
To which we wake not till we sleep in death?
How if, I say, the senses we now trust
For date of sensible comparison,--
Ay, ev'n the Reason's self that dates with them,
Should be in essence of intensity
Hereafter so transcended, and awoke
To a perceptive subtlety so keen
As to confess themselves befool'd before,
In all that now they will avouch for most?
One man--like this--but only so much longer
As life is longer than a summer's day,
Believed himself a king upon his throne,
And play'd at hazard with his fellows' lives,
Who cheaply dream'd away their lives to him.
The sailor dream'd of tossing on the flood:
The soldier of his laurels grown in blood:
The lover of the beauty that he knew
Must yet dissolve to dusty residue:
The merchant and the miser of his bags
Of finger'd gold; the beggar of his rags:
And all this stage of earth on which we seem
Such busy actors, and the parts we play'd
Substantial as the shadow of a shade,
And Dreaming but a dream within a dream!

THE DREAM CALLED LIFE

Segismund's Speech Closing the 'Vida Es Sueno': Fitzgerald's Version

A dream it was in which I found myself,
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so high and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown,
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now;
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen: but anon,
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Ay, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
With acclamations, leaving me to wake
In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
From this, that waking is; or this and that
Both waking or both dreaming;--such a doubt
Confounds and clouds our mortal life about.
But whether wake or dreaming, this I know,--
How dreamwise human glories come and go;
Whose momentary tenure not to break,
Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,
So fairly carry the full cup, so well
Disordered insolence and passion quell,
That there be nothing after to upbraid
Dreamer or doer in the part he played;
Whether to-morrow's dawn shall break the spell,
Or the last trumpet of the eternal Day,
When dreaming with the night shall pass away.

JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN

(1782-1850)

BY W. P. TRENT

John C. Calhoun's importance as a statesman has naturally stood in the way of his recognition as a writer, and in like manner his reputation as an orator has overshadowed his just claims to be considered our most original political thinker. The six volumes of his collected works, which unfortunately do not embrace his still inaccessible private correspondence, are certainly not exhilarating or attractive reading; but they are unique in the literature of America, if not of the world, as models of passionless logical analysis. Whether passionless logical analysis is ever an essential quality of true literature, is a matter on which opinions will differ; but until the question is settled in the negative, Calhoun's claims to be considered a writer of marked force and originality cannot be ignored. It is true that circumstances have invalidated much of his political teaching, and that it was always negative and destructive rather than positive and constructive; it is true also that much of the interest attaching to his works is historical rather than literary in character: but when all allowances are made, it will be found that the 'Disquisition on Government' must still be regarded as the most remarkable political treatise our country has produced, and that the position of its author as the head of a school of political thought is commanding, and in a way unassailable.

The precise character of Calhoun's political philosophy, the keynote of which was the necessity and means of defending the rights of minorities, cannot be understood without a brief glance at his political career. His birth in 1782 just after the Revolution, and in South Carolina, gave him the opportunity to share in the victory that the West and the far South won over the Virginians, headed by Madison. His training at Yale gave a nationalistic bias to his early career, and determined that search for the _via media_ between consolidation and anarchy which resulted in the doctrine of nullification. His service in Congress and as Secretary of War under Monroe gave him a practical training in affairs that was not without influence in qualifying his tendency to indulge in doctrinaire speculation. His service as Vice-President afforded the leisure and his break with Jackson the occasion, for his close study of the Constitution, to discover how the South might preserve slavery and yet continue in the Union. Finally, his position as a non-aristocratic leader of a body of aristocrats, and his Scotch-Irish birth and training, gave a peculiar strenuousness to his support of slavery, which is of course the corner-stone of his political philosophy; and determined his reliance upon logic rather than upon an appeal to the passions as the best means of inculcating his teaching and of establishing his policy. His political treatises, 'A Discourse on Government' and 'On the Constitution and Government of the United States,' written just before his death in 1850; his pamphlets like the 'South Carolina Exposition' and the 'Address to the People of South Carolina'; and the great speeches delivered in the Senate from 1832 to the end of his term, especially those in which he defended against Webster the doctrine of nullification, could have emanated only from an up-country South-Carolinian who had inherited the mantle of Jefferson, and had sat at the feet of John Taylor of Carolina and of John Randolph of Roanoke. Calhoun was, then, the logical outcome of his environment and his training; he was the fearless and honest representative of his people and section; and he was the master from whom rash disciples like Jefferson Davis broke away, when they found that logical analysis of the Constitution was a poor prop for slavery against the rising tide of civilization.

As a thinker Calhoun is remarkable for great powers of analysis and exposition. As a writer he is chiefly noted for the even dignity and general serviceableness of his style. He writes well, but rather like a logician than like an inspired orator. He has not the stateliness of Webster, and is devoid of the power of arousing enthusiasm. The splendor of Burke's imagination is utterly beyond him, as is also the epigrammatic brilliance of John Randolph,--from whom, however, he took not a few lessons in constitutional interpretation. Indeed, it must be confessed that for all his clearness and subtlety of intellect as a thinker, Calhoun is as a writer distinctly heavy. In this as in many other respects he reminds us of the Romans, to whom he was continually referring. Like them he is conspicuous for strength of practical intellect; like them he is lacking in sublimity, charm, and nobility. It follows then that Calhoun will rarely be resorted to as a model of eloquence, but that he will continue to be read both on account of the substantial additions he made to political philosophy, and of the interesting exposition he gave of theories and ideas once potent in the nation's history.

Notwithstanding the bitterness of accusation brought against him, he was not a traitor nor a man given over to selfish ambition, as Dr. von Holst, his most competent biographer and critic, has clearly shown. Calhoun believed both in slavery and in the Union, and tried to maintain a balance between the two, because he thought that only in this way could his section maintain its prestige or even its existence. He failed, as any other man would have done; and we find him, like Cassandra, a prophet whom we cannot love. But he did prophesy truly as to the fate of the South; and in the course of his strenuous labors to divert the ruin he saw impending, he gave to the world the most masterly analysis of the rights of the minority and of the best methods of securing them that has yet come from the pen of a publicist.

REMARKS ON THE RIGHT OF PETITION

Delivered in the Senate, February 13th, 1840

Mr. Calhoun said he rose to express the pleasure he felt at the evidence which the remarks of the Senator from Kentucky furnished, of the progress of truth on the subject of abolition. He had spoken with strong approbation of the principle laid down in a recent pamphlet, that two races of different character and origin could not coexist in the same country without the subordination of the one to the other. He was gratified to hear the Senator give assent to so important a principle in application to the condition of the South. He had himself, several years since, stated the same in more specific terms: that it was impossible for two races, so dissimilar in every respect as the European and African that inhabit the southern portion of this Union, to exist together in nearly equal numbers in any other relation than that which existed there. He also added that experience had shown that they could so exist in peace and happiness there, certainly to the great benefit of the inferior race; and that to destroy it was to doom the latter to destruction. But he uttered these important truths then in vain, as far as the side to which the Senator belongs is concerned.

He trusted the progress of truth would not, however, stop at the point to which it has arrived with the Senator, and that it will make some progress in regard to what is called the right of petition. Never was a right so much mystified and magnified. To listen to the discussion, here and elsewhere, you would suppose it to be the most essential and important right: so far from it, he undertook to aver that under our free and popular system it was among the least of all our political rights. It had been superseded in a great degree by the far higher right of general suffrage, and by the practice, now so common, of instruction. There could be no local grievance but what could be reached by these, except it might be the grievance affecting a minority, which could be no more redressed by petition than by them. The truth is, that the right of petition could scarcely be said to be the right _of a freeman_. It belongs to despotic governments more properly, and might be said to be the last right of slaves. Who ever heard of petition in the free States of antiquity? We had borrowed our notions in regard to it from our British ancestors, with whom it had a value for their imperfect representation far greater than it has with us; and it is owing to that that it has a place at all in our Constitution. The truth is, that the right has been so far superseded in a political point of view, that it has ceased to be what the Constitution contemplated it to be,--a shield to protect against wrongs; and has been perverted into a sword to attack the rights of others--to cause a grievance instead of the means of redressing grievances, as in the case of abolition petitions. The Senator from Ohio [Mr. Tappan] has viewed this subject in its proper light, and has taken a truly patriotic and constitutional stand in refusing to present these firebrands, for which I heartily thank him in the name of my State. Had the Senator from Kentucky followed the example, he would have rendered inestimable service to the country....

It is useless to attempt concealment. The presentation of these incendiary petitions is itself an infraction of the Constitution. All acknowledge--the Senator himself--that the property which they are presented to destroy is guaranteed by the Constitution. Now I ask: If we have the right under the Constitution to hold the property (which none question), have we not also the right to hold it under the same sacred instrument _in peace and quiet_? Is it not a direct infraction then of the Constitution, to present petitions here in the common council of the Union, and to us, the agents appointed to carry its provisions into effect and to guard the rights it secures, the professed aim of which is to destroy the property guaranteed by the instrument? There can be but one answer to these questions on the part of those who present such petitions: that the right of such petition is higher and more sacred than the Constitution and our oaths to preserve and to defend it. To such monstrous results does the doctrine lead.