_Seb._ We cannot look upon each other's face,
But, when we read our love, we read our guilt:
And yet, methinks, I cannot chuse but love.
_Aim._ I would have asked you, if I durst for shame,
If still you loved? you gave it air before me.
Ah, why were we not born both of a sex?
For then we might have loved without a crime.
Why was not I your brother? though that wish
Involved our parents' guilt, we had not parted;
We had been friends, and friendship is no incest.
_Seb._ Alas, I know not by what name to call thee!
Sister and wife are the two dearest names,
And I would call thee both, and both are sin.
Unhappy we! that still we must confound
The dearest names into a common curse.
_Alm._ To love, and be beloved, and yet be wretched!
_Seb._ To have but one poor night of all our lives;
It was indeed a glorious, guilty night;
So happy, that - forgive me, heaven! - I wish,
With all its guilt, it were to come again.
Why did we know so soon, or why at all,
That sin could be concealed in such a bliss?
_Alm._ Men have a larger privilege of words,
Else I should speak; but we must part, Sebastian, -
That's all the name that I have left to call thee; -
I must not call thee by the name I would;
But when I say Sebastian, dear Sebastian,
I kiss the name I speak.
_Seb._ We must make haste, or we shall never part.
I would say something that's as dear as this;
Nay, would do more than say: One moment longer,
And I should break through laws divine and human,
And think them cobwebs spread for little man,
Which all the bulky herd of nature breaks.
The vigorous young world was ignorant
Of these restrictions; 'tis decrepit now;
Not more devout, but more decayed, and cold. -
All this is impious, therefore we must part;
For, gazing thus, I kindle at thy sight,
And, once burnt down to tinder, light again
Much sooner than before.
_Re-enter_ DORAX.
_Alm._ Here comes the sad denouncer of my fate,
To toll the mournful knell of separation;
While I, as on my deathbed, hear the sound,
That warns me hence for ever.
_Seb._ [_To_ DOR.] Now be brief,
And I will try to listen,
And share the minute, that remains, betwixt
The care I owe my subjects, and my love.
_Dor._ Your fate has gratified you all she can;
Gives easy misery, and makes exile pleasing.
I trusted Muley-Zeydan as a friend,
But swore him first to secrecy: He wept
Your fortune, and with tears not squeezed by art,
But shed from nature, like a kindly shower:
In short, he proffered more than I demanded;
A safe retreat, a gentle solitude,
Unvexed with noise, and undisturbed with fears.
I chose you one -
_Alm._ O do not tell me where;
For, if I knew the place of his abode,
I should be tempted to pursue his steps,
And then we both were lost.
_Seb._ Even past redemption;
For, if I knew thou wert on that design,
(As I must know, because our souls are one,)
I should not wander, but by sure instinct
Should meet thee just half-way in pilgrimage,
And close for ever; for I know my love
More strong than thine, and I more frail than thou.
_Alm._ Tell me not that; for I must boast my crime,
And cannot bear that thou should'st better love.
_Dor._ I may inform you both; for you must go,
Where seas, and winds, and deserts will divide you.
Under the ledge of Atlas lies a cave,
Cut in the living rock by Nature's hands,
The venerable seat of holy hermits;
Who there, secure in separated cells,
Sacred even to the Moors, enjoy devotion;
And from the purling streams, and savage fruits.
Have wholesome beverage, and unbloody feasts.
_Seb._ 'Tis penance too voluptuous for my crime[11].
_Dor._ Your subjects, conscious of your life, are few;
But all desirous to partake your exile,
And to do office to your sacred person.
The rest, who think you dead, shall be dismissed.
Under safe convoy, till they reach your fleet.
_Alm._ But how am wretched I to be disposed? -
A vain enquiry, since I leave my lord;
For all the world beside is banishment.
_Dor._ I have a sister, abbess in Terceras,
Who lost her lover on her bridal day.
_Alm._ There fate provided me a fellow-turtle,
To mingle sighs with sighs, and tears with tears.
_Dor._ Last, for myself, if I have well fulfilled
My sad commission, let me beg the boon,
To share the sorrows of your last recess,
And mourn the common losses of our loves.
_Alv._ And what becomes of me? must I be left,
As age and time had worn me out of use?
These sinews are not yet so much unstrung,
To fail me when my master should be served;
And when they are, then will I steal to death,
Silent and unobserved, to save his tears.
_Seb._ I've heard you both; - Alvarez, have thy wish; -
But thine, Alonzo, thine is too unjust.
I charge thee with my last commands, return,
And bless thy Violante with thy vows. -
Antonio, be thou happy too in thine.
Last, let me swear you all to secrecy;
And, to conceal my shame, conceal my life.
_Dor. Ant. Mor._ We swear to keep it secret.
_Alm._ Now I would speak the last farewell, I cannot.
It would be still farewell a thousand times;
And, multiplied in echoes, still farewell.
I will not speak, but think a thousand thousand.
And be thou silent too, my last Sebastian;
So let us part in the dumb pomp of grief.
My heart's too great, or I would die this moment;
But death, I thank him, in an hour, has made
A mighty journey, and I haste to meet him.
[_She staggers, and her Women hold her up._
_Seb._ Help to support this feeble drooping flower.
This tender sweet, so shaken by the storm;
For these fond arms must thus be stretched in vain,
And never, never must embrace her more.
'Tis past: - my soul goes in that word - farewell.
[ALVAREZ _goes with_ SEBASTIAN _to one end
of the Stage; Women, with_ ALMEYDA, _to
the other:_ DORAX _coming up to_ ANTONIO
_and_ MORAYMA, _who stand on the middle
of the Stage._
_Dor._ Haste to attend Almeyda: - For your sake
Your father is forgiven; but to Antonio
He forfeits half his wealth. Be happy both;
And let Sebastian and Almeyda's fate
This dreadful sentence to the world relate, -
That unrepented crimes, of parents dead,
Are justly punished on their children's head.
Footnotes:
1. This whimsical account of the Slave-market is probably taken from
the following passage in the "Captivity and escape of Adam Elliot,
M.A." - "By sun-rising next morning, we were all of us, who came
last to Sallee, driven to market, where, the Moors sitting
taylor-wise on stalls round about, we were severally run up and
down by persons who proclaimed our qualities or trades, and what
might best recommend us to the buyer. I had a great black who was
appointed to sell me; this fellow, holding me by the hand, coursed
me up and down from one person to another, who called upon me at
pleasure to examine what trade I was of, and to see what labour my
hands had been accustomed to. All the seamen were soon bought up,
but it was mid-day ere I could meet with a purchaser." - See _A
modest Vindication of Titus Oates_, London, 1682.
2. The knight much wondered at his sudden wit;
And said, The term of life is limited,
Ne may a man prolong nor shorten it;
The soldier may not move from watchful sted,
Nor leave his stand until his captain bed.
_Fairy Queen, Book i. Canto 9._
3. The same artifice is used in "OEdipus," vol. vi. p. 149. to
impress, by a description of the feelings of the unfortunate pair
towards each other, a presentiment of their fatal relationship. The
prophecy of Nostradamus is also obviously imitated from the
response of the Delphic Pythoness to OEdipus. - _Ibid. See_ p. 156.
4. For, interpreter; more usually spelled dragoman.
5. A horrid Moorish punishment. The criminal was precipitated from a
high tower upon iron scythes and hooks, which projected from its
side. This scene Settle introduces in one of his tragedies.
6. These presages of misfortune may remind the reader of the ominous
feelings of the Duke of Guise, in the scene preceding his murder.
The superstitious belief, that dejection of spirits, without cause,
announces an impending violent death, is simply but well expressed
in an old ballad called the "Warning to all Murderers:"
And after this most bad pretence,
The gentleman each day
Still felt his heart to throb and faint,
And sad he was alway.
His sleep was full of dreadful dreams,
In bed where he did lie;
His heart was heavy in the day,
Yet knew no reason why.
And oft as he did sit at meat,
His nose most suddenly
Would spring and gush out crimson blood,
And straight it would be dry.
7. There is great art in rendering the interpretation of this ominous
dream so ingeniously doubtful. The latter circumstance, where the
Emperor recognises his murderer as a personage in his vision, seems
to be borrowed from the story of one of the caliphs, who, before
his death, dreamed, that a sable hand and arm shook over his head a
handful of red earth, and denounced, that such was the colour of
the earth on which he should die. When taken ill on an expedition,
he desired to know the colour of the earth on which his tent was
pitched. A negro slave presented him with a specimen; and in the
black's outstretched arm, bared, from respect, to the elbow, as
well as in the colour of the earth, the caliph acknowledged the
apparition he had seen in his sleep, and prepared for immediate
death.
8. _Et quum fata volunt, bina venena juvant._ - AUSONIUS.
9. Idiots were anciently wards of the crown; and the custody of their
person, and charge of their estate, was often granted to the suit
of some favourite, where the extent of the latter rendered it an
object of plunder. Hence the common phrase of being _begged for a
fool._
10. This incident seems to be taken from the following passage in the
_Continuation of the Adventures of Don Sebastian_.
"In Moran, an island some half league from Venice, there is an
abbot called Capelo, a gentleman of Venice, a grave personage, and
of great authority, hearing that the king laid wait for certain
jewels that he had lost, (hoping thereby to recover some of them,)
having a diamond in his keeping with the arms of Portugal, came to
the town to the conventicles of St Francis, called Frari, where the
king lay concealed, for that he was pursued by some that meant him
no good, who no sooner beheld the ring, but he said, 'Verily this
is mine, and I either lost the same in Flanders, or else it was
stolen from me.' And when the king had put it upon his finger, it
appeared otherwise engraven than before. The abbot enquiring of him
that brought him the ring, how he came by it? he answered, it is
true that the king hath said. Hence arose a strange rumour of a
ring, that, by turning the stone, you might discern three great
letters engraven, S.R.P. as much as to say, _Sebastianus Rex
Portugallix." - Harl. Mis._ vol. v. p. 462.
11. It is said, in the pamphlets alluded to, that Don Sebastian, out
of grief and shame for having fought against the advice of his
generals, and lost the flower of his army, took the resolution of
never returning to his country, but of burying himself in a
hermitage; and that he resided for three years as an anchorite, on
the top of a mountain in Dalmatia.
EPILOGUE,
SPOKEN BETWIXT ANTONIO AND MORAYMA
_Mor._ I quaked at heart, for fear the royal fashion
Should have seduced us two to separation:
To be drawn in, against our own desire,
Poor I to be a nun, poor you, a friar.
_Ant._ I trembled, when the old man's hand was in,
He would have proved we were too near of kin:
Discovering old intrigues of love, like t'other, }
Betwixt my father and thy sinful mother; }
To make us sister Turk and Christian brother. }
_Mor._ Excuse me there; that league should have been rather
Betwixt your mother and my Mufti father;
'Tis for my own and my relations' credit,
Your friends should bear the bastard, mine should get it.
_Ant._ Suppose us two, Almeyda and Sebastian,
With incest proved upon us -
_Mor._ Without question,
Their conscience was too queazy of digestion.
_Ant._ Thou wouldst have kept the counsel of thy brother,
And sinned, till we repented of each other.
_Mor._ Beast as you are, on Nature's laws to trample!
'Twere fitter that we followed their example.
And, since all marriage in repentance ends,
'Tis good for us to part when we are friends.
To save a maid's remorses and confusions,
E'en leave me now before we try conclusions.
_Ant._ To copy their example, first make certain
Of one good hour, like theirs, before our parting;
Make a debauch, o'er night, of love and madness;
And marry, when we wake, in sober sadness.
_Mor._ I'll follow no new sects of your inventing.
One night might cost me nine long months repenting;
First wed, and, if you find that life a fetter,
Die when you please; the sooner, sir, the better.
My wealth would get me love ere I could ask it:
Oh! there's a strange temptation in the casket.
All these young sharpers would my grace importune,
And make me thundering votes of lives and fortune[1].
Footnote:
1. Alluding to the addresses upon the Revolution.
* * * * *
END OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
Edinburgh:
Printed by James Ballantyne & Co.