Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II
Nothing can be plainer prose than these verses. But how were they delivered? Balthazar will tell us.
"Pardon me, sir; I dare not leave you thus:Your looks are pale and wild, and do importSome misadventure."Again, nothing can be more quiet than his final determination:
"Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night."It is plain Juliet, – unattended by any romantic epithet of love. There is nothing about "Cupid's arrow," or "Dian's wit;" no honeyed word escapes his lips, – nor again does any accent of despair. His mind is so made up, – the whole course of the short remainder of his life so unalterably fixed, that it is perfectly useless to think more about it He has full leisure to reflect without disturbance upon the details of the squalid penury which made him set down the poor apothecary as a fit instrument for what now had become his "need;" and he offers his proposition of purchasing that soon-speeding gear which is to hurry him out of life, with the same business-like tone as if he were purchasing a pennyworth of sugar-candy. When the apothecary suggests the danger of selling such drugs, Romeo can reflect on the folly of scrupling to sacrifice life when the holder of it is so poor and unfortunate. Gallant and gay of appearance himself, he tells his new-found acquaintance that bareness, famine, oppression, ragged misery, the hollow cheek and the hungry eye, are fitting reasons why death should be desired, not avoided; and with a cool philosophy assures him that gold is worse poison than the compound which hurries the life-weary taker out of the world. The language of desperation cannot be more dismally determined. What did the apothecary think of his customer as he pocketed the forty ducats? There you go, lad, – there you go, he might have said, – there you go with that in your girdle that, if you had the strength of twenty men, would straight despatch you. Well do I know the use for which you intend it. To-morrow's sun sees not you alive. And you philosophise to me on the necessity of buying food and getting into flesh. You taunt my poverty, – you laugh at my rags, – you bid me defy the law, – you tell me the world is my enemy. It may be so, lad, – it may be so; but less tattered is my garment than your heart, – less harassed by law of one kind or another my pursuit than yours. What ails that lad? I know not, neither do I care. But that he should moralise to me on the hard lot which I experience, – that he, with those looks and those accents, should fancy that I, amid my beggarly account of empty boxes, am less happy than he, – ha! ha! ha! – it is something to make one laugh. Ride your way, boy: I have your forty ducats in my purse, and you my drug in your pocket. And the law! Well! What can the executioner do worse to me in my penury and my age than you have doomed for yourself in your youth and splendour. I carry not my hangman in my saddle as I ride along. And the curses which the rabble may pour upon my dying moments, – what are they to the howling gurgle which, now rising from your heart, is deafening your ears? Adieu, boy, – adieu! – and keep your philosophy for yourself. Ho! ho! ho!
But had any other passion or pursuit occupied Romeo, he would have been equally unlucky as in his love. Ill fortune has marked him for her own. From beginning to end he intends the best; but his interfering is ever for the worst. It is evident that he has not taken any part in the family feud which divides Verona, and his first attachment is to a lady of the antagonist house.7 To see that lady, – perhaps to mark that he has had no share in the tumult of the morning, – he goes to a ball given by Capulet, at which the suitor accepted by the family is to be introduced to Juliet as her intended husband. Paris is in every way an eligible match.
"Verona's summer hath not such a flower."He who has slain him addresses his corse as that of the "noble County Paris," with a kindly remembrance that he was kinsman of a friend slain in Romeo's own cause. Nothing can be more fervent, more honourable, or more delicate than his devoted and considerate wooing. His grief at the loss of Juliet is expressed in few words; but its sincerity is told by his midnight and secret visit to the tomb of her whom living he had honoured, and on whom, when dead, he could not restrain himself from lavishing funereal homage. Secure of the favour of her father, no serious objection could be anticipated from herself. When questioned by her mother, she readily promises obedience to parental wishes, and goes to the ball determined to "look to like, if looking liking move." Everything glides on in smooth current till the appearance of him whose presence is deadly. Romeo himself is a most reluctant visitor. He apprehends that the consequences of the night's revels will be the vile forfeit of a despised life by an untimely death, but submits to his destiny. He foresees that it is no wit to go, but consoles himself with the reflection that he "means well in going to this mask." His intentions, as usual, are good; and, as usual, their consequences are ruinous.
He yields to his passion, and marries Juliet. For this hasty act he has the excuse that the match may put an end to the discord between the families. Friar Lawrence hopes that
"this alliance may so happy proveTo turn your households' rancour into love."It certainly has that effect in the end of the play, but it is by the suicidal deaths of the flower and hope of both families. Capulet and Montague tender, in a gloomy peace the hands of friendship, over the untimely grave of the poor sacrifices to their enmity. Had he met her elsewhere than in her father's house, he might have succeeded in a more prosperous love. But there his visit is looked upon by the professed duellist Tybalt, hot from the encounter of the morning, and enraged that he was baulked of a victim, as an intrusion and an insult. The fiery partisan is curbed with much difficulty by his uncle; and withdraws, his flesh trembling with wilful choler, determined to wreak vengeance at the first opportunity on the intruder. It is not long before the opportunity offers. Vainly does Romeo endeavour to pacify the bullying swordsman, – vainly does he protest that he loves the name of Capulet, – vainly does he decline the proffered duel. His good intentions are again doomed to be frustrated. There stands by his side as mad-blooded a spirit as Tybalt himself, and Mercutio, all unconscious of the reasons why Romeo refuses to fight, takes up the abandoned quarrel. The star of the unlucky man is ever in the ascendant. His ill-omened interference slays his friend. Had he kept quiet, the issue might have been different; but the power that had the steerage of his course had destined that the uplifting of his sword was to be the signal of death to his very friend. And when the dying Mercutio says, "Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm;" he can only offer the excuse, which is always true, and always unavailing, "I thought all for the best." All his visions of reconciliation between the houses are dissipated. How can he now avoid fighting with Tybalt? His best friend lies dead, slain in his own quarrel, through his own accursed intermeddling; and the swaggering victor, still hot from the slaughter, comes back to triumph over the dead. Who with the heart and spirit of a man could under such circumstances refrain from exclaiming,
"Away to heaven, respective lenity!And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now."Vanish gentle breath, calm words, knees humbly bowed! – his weapon in an instant glitters in the blazing sun; and as with a lightning flash, – as rapidly and resistlessly, – before Benvolio can pull his sword from the scabbard, Tybalt, whom his kindred deemed a match for twenty men, is laid by the side of him who but a moment before had been the victim of his blade. What avails the practised science of the duellist, the gentleman of the very first house, of the first and second cause! – how weak is the immortal passado, or the punto reverso, the hay, or all the other learned devices of Vincent Saviola, against the whirlwind rage of a man driven to desperation by all that can rouse fury or stimulate hatred! He sees the blood of his friend red upon the ground; the accents of gross and unprovoked outrage ring in his ears; the perverse and obstinate insolence of a bravo confident in his skill, and depending upon it to insure him impunity, has marred his hopes; and the butcher of the silk button has no chance against the demon which he has evoked. "A la stoccata" carries it not away in this encounter; but Romeo exults not in his death. He stands amazed, and is with difficulty hurried off, exclaiming against the constant fate which perpetually throws him in the way of misfortune. Well, indeed, may Friar Lawrence address him by the title of "thou fearful man!" – as a man whose career through life is calculated to inspire terror. Well may he say to him that
"Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,And thou art wedded to calamity."And slight is the attention which Romeo pays to the eloquent arguments by which it is proved that he had every reason to consider himself happy. When the friar assures him that the nurse may think it a discourse of learning and good counsel, fit to detain an enraptured auditor all the night. Romeo feels it in his case to be an idle declamation, unworthy of an answer.
"A pack of blessings lights upon thy back,Happiness courts thee in her best array,"The events which occur during his enforced absence, the haste of Paris to be wedded, the zeal of old Capulet in promoting the wishes of his expected son-in-law, the desperate expedient of the sleeping-draught,8 the accident which prevented the delivery of the friar's letter, the officious haste of Balthazar to communicate the tidings of Juliet's burial, are all matters out of his control. But the mode of his death is chosen by himself; and in that he is as unlucky as in everything else. Utterly loathing life, the manner of his leaving it must be instantaneous. He stipulates that the poison by which he is to die shall not be slow of effect. He calls for
"such soon-speeding gearAs will disperse itself through all the veins,That the life-weary taker may fall dead."He leaves himself no chance of escape. Instant death is in his hand; and, thanking the true apothecary for the quickness of his drugs, he scarcely leaves himself a moment with a kiss to die. If he had been less in a hurry, – if he had not felt it impossible to delay posting off to Verona for a single night, – if his riding had been less rapid, or his medicine less sudden in its effect, he might have lived. The friar was at hand to release Juliet from her tomb the very instant after the fatal phial had been emptied. That instant was enough: the unlucky man had effected his purpose just when there was still a chance that things might be amended. Those who wrote the scene between Romeo and Juliet which is intended to be pathetic, after her awakening and before his death, quite mistake the character of the hero of the play. I do not blame them for their poetry, which is as good as that of second-rate writers of tragedy in general; and think them, on the whole, deserving of our commendation for giving us an additional proof how unable clever men upon town are to follow the conceptions of genius. Shakspeare, if he thought it consistent with the character which he had with so much deliberation framed, could have written a parting scene at least as good as that with which his tragedy has been supplied; but he saw the inconsistency, though his unasked assistants did not. They tell us they did it to consult popular taste. I do not believe them. I am sure that popular taste would approve of a recurrence to the old play in all its parts; but a harlotry play-actor might think it hard upon him to be deprived of a "point," pointless as that point may be.
Haste is made a remarkable characteristic of Romeo, – because it is at once the parent and the child of uniform misfortune. As from the acorn springs the oak, and from the oak the acorn, so does the temperament that inclines to haste predispose to misadventure, and a continuance of misadventure confirms the habit of haste. A man whom his rashness has made continually unlucky, is strengthened in the determination to persevere in his rapid movements by the very feeling that the "run" is against him, and that it is of no use to think. In the case of Romeo, he leaves it all to the steerage of Heaven, i. e. to the heady current of his own passions; and he succeeds accordingly. All through the play care is taken to show his impatience. The very first word he speaks indicates that he is anxious for the quick passage of time.
"Ben. Good morrow, cousin.Rom. Is the day so young?Ben. But new struck nine.Rom. Ay me, sad hours seem long."The same impatience marks his speech in the moment of death:
"O true apothecary,Thy drugs are quick!"From his first words to his last the feeling is the same. The lady of his love, even in the full swell of her awakened affections, cannot avoid remarking that his contract is
"Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,Too like the lightning, which does cease to beEre one can say, It lightens."When he urges his marriage on the friar,
"Rom. O let us home: I stand on sudden haste.Friar. Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast."The metaphors put into his mouth are remarkable for their allusions to abrupt and violent haste. He wishes that he may die
"As violently as hasty powder firedDoth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb."When he thinks that Juliet mentions his name in anger, it is
"as if that name,Shot from the deadly level of a gun,Did murder her."When Lawrence remonstrates with him on his violence, he compares the use to which he puts his wit to
"Powder in a skilless soldier's flask;"and tells him that
"Violent delights have violent ends,And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,Which, as they kiss, consume."Lightning, flame, shot, explosion, are the favourite parallels to the conduct and career of Romeo. Swift are his loves; as swift to enter his thought, the mischief which ends them for ever. Rapid have been all the pulsations of his life; as rapid, the determination which decides that they shall beat no more.
A gentleman he was in heart and soul. All his habitual companions love him: Benvolio and Mercutio, who represent the young gentlemen of his house, are ready to peril their lives, and to strain all their energies, serious or gay, in his service. His father is filled with an anxiety on his account so delicate, that he will not venture to interfere with his son's private sorrows, while he desires to discover their source, and if possible to relieve them. The heart of his mother bursts in his calamity; the head of the rival house bestows upon him the warmest panegyrics; the tutor of his youth sacrifices everything to gratify his wishes; his servant, though no man is a hero to his valet de chambre, dares not remonstrate with him on his intentions, even when they are avowed to be savage-wild,
"More fierce, and more inexorable far,Than empty tigers or the roaring sea," —but with an eager solicitude he breaks his commands by remaining as close as he can venture, to watch over his safety. Kind is he to all. He wins the heart of the romantic Juliet by his tender gallantry: the worldly-minded nurse praises him for being as gentle as a lamb. When it is necessary or natural that the Prince or Lady Montague should speak harshly of him, it is done in his absence. No words of anger or reproach are addressed to his ears save by Tybalt; and from him they are in some sort a compliment, as signifying that the self-chosen prize-fighter of the opposing party deems Romeo the worthiest antagonist of his blade. We find that he fights two blood-stained duels, but both are forced upon him; the first under circumstances impossible of avoidance, the last after the humblest supplications to be excused.
"O begone!By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,For I came hither armed against myself.Stay not; begone! – live, and hereafter sayA madman's mercy bade thee run away."With all the qualities and emotions which can inspire affection and esteem, – with all the advantages that birth, heaven, and earth could at once confer, – with the most honourable feelings and the kindliest intentions, – he is eminently an unlucky man. The record of his actions in the play before us does not extend to the period of a week; but we feel that there is no dramatic straining to shorten their course. Everything occurs naturally and probably. It was his concluding week; but it tells us all his life. Fortune was against him; and would have been against him, no matter what might have been his pursuit. He was born to win battles, but to lose campaigns. If we desired to moralize with the harsh-minded satirist, who never can be suspected of romance, we should join with him in extracting as a moral from the play and attribute the mishaps of Romeo, not to want of fortune, but of prudence. Philosophy and poetry differ not in essentials, and the stern censure of Juvenal is just. But still, when looking on the timeless tomb of Romeo, and contemplating the short and sad career through which he ran, we cannot help recollecting his mourning words over his dying friend, and suggest as an inscription over the monument of the luckless gentleman,
"Nullum habes numen, si sit prudentia; sed teNos facimus, Fortuna, deam, cœloquê locamus;""I thought all for the best."THE PIPER'S PROGRESS
BY FATHER PROUT
DARBY THE SWIFT;
OR,
THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME
CHAPTER II"Aspettar' e non venire!"The Sunday after Darby lingeringly started, I began to think it would be just as well to make "assurance doubly sure;" so I despatched a letter by post to my friend at Bally – , conveying similar instructions and advice to those contained in that entrusted to "the running footman" of my establishment. In three days I received a satisfactory answer, so I was at rest upon that point; but, as to Darby, I was quite at a loss. I turned over and over in my mind the various mishaps that might have befallen him by the way; but all to no purpose. I called up Eileen, and asked her what she thought about it. Her replies, mixed up, as they were, with her wild immoderate laughter, afforded me nothing beyond a sympathy with her mirth, which certainly was most infective. Reader, I am not a portrait-painter; but, nevertheless, I will attempt to give you an outline of Eileen. In the first place, she was a poor girl, (else she would not have been my servant,) born of honest parents; but, if fate had placed her in a higher sphere, she had natural accomplishments enough to have graced it, – namely, youth, beauty, and health, – and, beyond these, an intellectual, though uneducated, refinement of thought, when, by chance, she was serious; for gaiety seemed to be an indispensable element of her being. She was eighteen years of age, – well, what do I say? – beautifully formed, had eyes like violets, cheeks like roses, hair, when it was dishevelled (despite Goldsmith's satire), like a weeping willow in a sunset, and – but, hold! I must not go further, lest I be suspected of being enamoured of the original; so I will give up the remaining parts of the picture, and leave them to your imagination!
The Friday after Darby's setting out I was sitting in my room, very quietly poring over something or other of no importance, – I forget exactly what, but I think it was some speech in the House of Lords, – when a knock at the door agreeably disturbed me from an incipient somnolency, occasioned by a new and unprofitable line of reading.
"Come in!" said I. "Who is it? and what do you want?"
"It's only me, sir," said Eileen, laughing, as usual. "There's a crather below that wants to speak to you, sir."
"Who is it?" said I.
"I don't well know, sir," replied she; "but I think he's some relation to poor Darby, that ye sent to Bally – last Friday afternoon."
"Oh! then send him up; he may account in some way for the extraordinary absence of his relative, said I.
"Sure, an' it's myself, an' no relation at all," shouted Darby from below, indignantly.
"Oh! widdy-eelish!" cried Eileen, breaking out into her hearty wild laugh, that was sure to set at defiance anything like gravity!
"Come up, Darby," said I. "I thought we should never have seen you again."
"Troth, an' the same thing came into my head more than oncet, masther. What the divil are ye laughin' at, honey?" said he (entering the room) to Eileen, who still continued her most boisterous mirth.
"Go down stairs, Evelina," said I, "and leave Darby and me alone!"
She did so; but whispered something in his ear as she passed, which made him so furious that I thought he would have knocked her down, had she not adroitly escaped him by shutting the door after her, and holding the handle on the outside so tightly that his efforts to open it and follow her were abandoned in a moment as fruitless.
"What is the meaning of all this?" said I, severely. "Did you mean to strike the girl?"
"Strike the caileen, yir honour? Oh, the Lord forbid! but, if I cotch her upon the stairs out o' yir honor's sight, maybe I wudn't give her cherry-lips a pogue (yir honor knows what a pogue is) that wud drive her sweetheart crazy for a month o' Sundays!"
"Where have you been all this while?" inquired I, not willing to notice his speech.
"Oh then, sure!" said he, in a most mournful tone, "masther, I've had the divil's own time of it, sir, since you were so unfortunate as to part with me, yir honor, on that same journey to Bally – Bally – Bally – bad luck to it! what do they call it?"
"What has happened?" inquired I, anxiously, thinking he might have later news than my post-letter of three days before had conveyed.
"Happened, yir honour! to who?" said Darby, with a wild look of concern. "I hope the family, Christians, bastes, and all, not barrin' the pig that had the measles, are in good health, and well to do as when I left them. Has the bracket hin taken to standin' upon one leg yit, sir, since she lost the other through that baste of a bull-dog belongin' to the parson? I'd lay three of her eggs she'll never forget the affront he put upon her then!"
"We are all well here," said I; "but give me some account of what has befallen you on your journey, that delayed you so long."
"Troth, an' I'll tell ye, masther," replied Darby, "in no time. Have ye five minutes to spare, sir?"
"Yes," said I; "let me hear."
"Well then, sir," commenced he, "you may remimber that it was on a Friday you took lave of me – last Friday of all – Friday was never a looky day by say or by land: ye see, I didn't go far afore I met with a disappointment, for I met a berrin' comin' right fornenst me – what coud I do but turn back, in dacency, with it? – and, after I'd keen'd about a mile with the mourners, I made bould to ax who was the body that was makin' a blackberry ov himself."
"A blackberry!" interrupted I.
"Yes, yir honor, a blackberry," replied Darby: "do ye know that, let it shoot never so far, it's sure to come back as near as it can to the root of it where it first started; and so arn't we all blackberries? As the priest says on Ash-Wendsday, "Remember, man, you are but dust, and into dust you must return." Now, I've known bigger dusts in their lifetime than they were turned out of afterward, when they took to studyin' astronamy with
'The tops of their toes,And the tip of their nose,Turn'd up to the roots of the daisies!'But, whose berrin' should it be, after all, but ould Jemmy Cullen, the piper's! Ye know Jemmy Cullen, yir honour? him that used to play the organ on the pipes at high-mass durin' Christmas an' Easter. Oh! he was the boy to lilt at a weddin' or a wake! but, pace be width 'im – God rest his sowl! as I said when I saw the scragh put over him for the first time. Well, ye know, yir honor, that oncet upon the same road width them I coudn't do more nor less than wet our clay together; so, after walkin' the corpse three times round the churchyard of Glassin-oge – Were ye ever berried there, sir? – I mane, wud ye like to be berried there, sir?"