MEDON. The murderer DOCTOR. MEDON. Hush! trouble him not. My wife Drag him before me.—I'll not look on him, Lest he should haunt me in my dreams. He comes! Enter GUARDS, dragging in the Murderer. Thus will I muffle up within my robe The eyes that dare not look him in the face; Man, fiend, whate'er thou art-speak thy damnation, MURDERER. Old king, confession hast thou from my lips Of crimes scarce mentioned in the pit of hell; I-I did kill thy queen! I-I thy child- Come hither, quick; how looked he that was here— I mean the murderer? GUARD. Re-enter a GUARD. The warrant, sir, For his execution, may it please you sign it? MEDON. Give me the pen-some ink-call you this ink To write down crimes as black as Erebus? It should be dark as night-there-there-'tis done- (To DOCTOR.) [Exit GUARD. How looked he? His eyebrows black methinks, his cheeks like death; A kind of villany written in his face; His beard, unkempt for months. Was it not so? DOCTOR. My lord, though somewhat faded with remorse, I never saw a fairer youth. To hide her hideous face in. Dead by poison! I would have further converse-nay-no more, SERVANT. Ay, sir. [Exit. MEDON. Methinks his voice did seem familiar to me, Like whispers of old days, that echo back; I would I knew his name. My God! my God!— Ere I could reach his cell he was led out With folded arms, He did address some words, and gave a scroll; A GUARD rushes in with a scroll. GUARD. 'Twas given me by the dying man for thee! My lord, in haste this scroll. Headless, my lord, he lies. MEDON. Speak! is he dead? GUARD. MEDON. (Reading the scroll.) Oh! hell and death! Darkness and Acheron Oh hide me, hide me! DOCTOR (snatching the scroll.) God! sir; what's the matter? MEDON. My son! my son! DOCTOR. Alas! too true-too true! "Father, my crime now is expiated, my mother's and my brother's death avenged by mine; their manes shall be seen no more upon the earth. It was jealousy that made me what I am-a villain-yet, ere we meet again in death, learn to think forgivingly of thy son-Creontes." Look to the king-he raves-I pray a chair. It is my madness, hath persuaded me Of things unreal-'tis unnatural— Oh ye that hold your senses, speak to me! Speak to me! tell me that I lie! DOCTOR. Have patience. MEDON. Sweet sir, my heart Patience! then it is too real. Creontes, we are equal in our crimes; God pardon thee, my boy--look not so pale; I do forgive thee; come, my boy! my boy! Hush! hush! DOCTOR. [Dies. Alas! he's gone. The cord is broke, Take up his corse, and lay him with his son, That linked him and his misery to earth; Both in one grave, and that near Calipa. THOUGHTS FROM THE GERMAN. THE past and the future both conceal themselves from us; but that wears the widow's veil, and this the maiden's.-JEAN PAUL. A character is a perfectly formed will.-NOVALIS. The spirit of Poesy is the morning light that gives a voice to the statue of Memnon.-NOVALIS. He who clothes an imperfect thought in dark language, is like the host who puts not his muddy beer into a transparent vessel.JEAN PAUL. POETS AND POETRY. O sacred Poesy, thou spirit of arts, Hath here been offered thy divinities! BEN JONSON. Angels and we, assisted by this art, May sing together, though we dwell apart. WALLER. THE title of this paper, be it premised, is not inconsistent with a sincere respect and reverence for the lunatic asylums of our country; since, proper as it otherwise might seem, that one who dared to avow sympathy with Poets and Poetry should be restrained from intercourse with men of sense and understanding, still the incarceration in Bethlehem of the three letters that appropriate the following remarks, would cause but little personal inconvenience to their author, and still less concern. Nevertheless he is very willing to allow that, were he not sufficiently shielded by 'chaotic anonymosity,' he would be very careful before he threw away his character by a confession of friendship for anything poetical. The world, commonplace as it generally is, now and then indulges in a simile: thus, in the present case, its loosened fancy hath voted Poesy to be a wicked mermaid, and all who listen to her siren strains it resolves doomed to the dark whirlpool of neglect and poverty. The gluttonous world abhors mermaids, for it cannot boil their tails. Goethe gives it as his opinion that 'modern poets water their ink.’ The slighted world exclaimeth justly against this, Why do you water your ink? it rightly cries, Have we not provided you with gall, and gall, and ever gall, at every turning of your lives? Did we ever look on you or speak to you without bringing you some tribute of our gall?—and for the steel, though we have not exactly put it into your hands, when did we omit an opportunity of urging you to its employment? With a carving-knife or razor, what does it matter which, the black deed might have been quickly done. Truly, 'tis a marvel that suicide should be so rare among the poets; 6 this spirited pastime scems unknown amongst them. Probably it is because death, especially a death at all poetical, must come expensive. Pistols are extravagantly dear; even pills, say Morison's, are many pence a box; and fluid fatal potions cruelly are taxed. Jocasta, truly, is a precedent in favour of garters and a bed-post, but poets' beds seldom have any posts; Jocasta was a queen, and garters even are an article of superfluous luxury. No, no; starvation is the only death a needy poet can afford, and one that seldom fails to suggest itself. Shame on the heartless world that makes a jest of this! See the luxurious idler! If, in the birth of men, souls equally formed descend at random to dwell in bodies as they rise, his might as well have alighted in the hovel of the poor labourer hard by, and warmed some little lump of delf,' as have entered in the nobler house, and breathed into the little mug of 'porcelain.' However the manner of it was, accident of birth placed him above toil; his soul has lived for the body that it wears, and his body has existed only for its clothes and sensual pleasure. Never, perhaps, has he been conscious of the godlike nature of the soul within his clothes or his body, (there is little difference between the two; let him brush and polish as he will, both are dusty, both must soon wear out, though the one, perhaps,—and that only perhaps,―sooner ;) never may this man have felt he had a soul, save when he has felt it awakened by the poet's spells; never has he been guilty of an idea, save perhaps one stray little lost one of another man's, that he has fathered as his own, and vigorously fondles. Yet he dares, in his vile, pampered ignorance, to profess scorn for the man before whose higher spirit he may have bowed daily in unconscious reverence; dares to think it merit that he can make jest of that superior being whose most idle thought is worth the trifler's life-time,-time! ay, and his eternity to boot!-his jest, because, forsooth! he cares not for the morrow, and had rather draw his spirit nearer to the glorious loveliness of Heaven, than labour that he may be proficient in the processes of gustation and deglutition, or have wherewith to decorate his clay; the lump of clay his soul, like those of other men, must carry to and fro on earth to mark where it may chance to stand. See, too, the thoughtless beauty! She hath yielded to the poet's sway the better half of all that stock of sighs and tears given her for the comfort of herself and of her fellowbeings; she believes his image to be more beautiful even than that one she thinks her mirror holds so fair; and, yet despite this precious sacrifice to his shrine, notwithstanding this more than flattering |