Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

Are all mankind to us so reasonable?
No, no! Man in his narrow being needs
Both feelings, love, and hate. Needs he not night
As well as day? and sleep as well as waking?
No! I will hold this man for evermore
As precious object of my deepest hate,
And nothing shall disturb the joy I have
In thinking of him daily worse and worse."

    Act. 4, Scene 2.
We conclude with a passage in which Tasso speaks of the irresistible passion he feels for his own art. He has sought permission of the Duke to retire to Rome, on the plea that he will there, by the assistance of learned men, better complete his great work, which he regards as still imperfect. Alphonso grants his request, but advises him rather to suspend his labour for the present, and partake, for a season, of the distractions of the world. He would be wise, he tells him, to seek the restoration of his health.

"Tasso.– It should seem so; yet have I health enow
If only I can labour, and this labour
Again bestows the only health I know.
It is not well with me, as thou hast seen,
In this luxuriant peace. In rest I find
Rest least of all. I was not framed,
My spirit was not destined to be borne
On the soft element of flowing days,
And so in Time's great ocean lose itself
Uncheck'd, unbroken.

"Alphonso.– All feelings, and all impulses, my Tasso,
Drive thee for ever back into thyself.
There lies about us many an abyss
Which Fate has dug; the deepest yet of all
Is here, in our own heart, and very strong
Is the temptation to plunge headlong in.
I pray thee snatch thyself away in time.
Divorce thee, for a season, from thyself.
The man will gain whate'er the poet lose.

"Tasso.– One impulse all in vein I should resist,
Which day and night within my bosom stirs.
Life is not life if I must cease to think,
Or, thinking, cease to poetize.
Forbid the silk-worm any more to spin,
Because its own life lies upon the thread.
Still it uncoils the precious golden web,
And ceases not till, dying, it has closed
Its own tomb o'er it. May the good God grant
We, one day, share the fate of that same worm! —
That we, too, in some valley bright with heaven,
Surprised with sudden joy, may spread our wing.
I feel – I feel it well – this highest art
Which should have fed the mind, which to the strong
Adds strength and ever new vitality, —
It is destroying me, it hunts me forth,
Where'er I rove, an exile amongst men."

    Act V. Scene 2.

DAVID THE "TELYNWR;"[20 - Harper.] OR, THE DAUGHTER'S TRIAL

A TALE OF WALES

BY JOSEPH DOWNES

The inhabitants of the white mountain village of K – , in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No – a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, where very rugged, by art, for the transit of a gamboo (cart with small wheels of entire wood) or sledge. The moonlight slept in unbroken lustre on the houses of one story, or without any but what the roof slope formed, and several appearances marked it as a fisher village. A black, oval, pitched basket, as it appeared, hung against the wall of several of the cottages, being the coracle, or boat for one person, much used on the larger Welsh rivers, very primitive in form and construction, being precisely described by Cæsar in his account of the ancient Britons. Dried salmon and other fish also adorned others, pleasingly hinting of the general honesty and mutual confidence of the humble natives, poor as they were, for strangers were never thought of; the road, such as it was, merely mounting up to "the hill" (the lofty desert of sheepwalk) on one hand, and descending steeply to the river Tivy on the other. A deadened thunder, rising from some fall and brawling shallow "rapid" of the river, was the only sound, except the hooting of an owl from some old ivied building, a ruin apparently, visible on the olive-hued precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain, bulging, as it were, over the little range of cots, gave an air of security to their picturesque white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses, grandly veiling their higher peaks, and sometimes canopied the roofs, many reddened with wall-flower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green, where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint of yellow green. Aged trees, green even to the trunks, luxuriant ivy enveloping them as well as the branches, stretched their huge arms down the declivity leading to the Tivy, the flashing of whose waters, through its rich fringe of underwood, caught the eye of any one standing on the ridge above. A solitary figure, tall and muffled, did stand with his back in contact with one of these oaks, so as to be hardly distinguishable from the trunk.

A poet might imagine, looking at a Welsh village by moonlight, thus embosomed in pastoral mountains, canopied with those silver mists whose very motion was peace, and lulled by those soft solemn sounds, more peace-breathing than even silence, that there, at least, care never came; there peace, "if to be found in the world," would be surely found; and soon that one light moving – that prettier painted door stealthily opening – would prove that peace confined to the elements only. "Here I am!" would be groaned to his mind's ear by the ubiquitous, foul fiend, Care; for thence emerged a female form —simplex munditiis– the exact description of it as to attire – rather tall than otherwise, but its chief characteristic, a drooping kind of bowed gait, in affecting unison with a melancholy settled over the pale features, so strongly as to be visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear from each eye, as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind, as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear, she proceeded, after fastening her door, toward one of the bowered footpaths leading to the river. The concealed man looked after her, prepared to follow, when some belated salmon fisher, his dark coracle, strapped to his back, nodding over his head, appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed "Lewis the Spy" by the country people. He was the agent, newly appointed, to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected estate, which had recently come into possession of a "Nabob," as they called him – a gentleman who had left Wales a boy, and was now on his voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn. Lewis, his forerunner and plenipotentiary, was the dread and hate of the alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but rather indolent old man, John Bevan, who had grown old in the service of the former "squire;" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms in an occult and treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative.

"Who is that young woman?" he enquired, sternly, though well knowing who she was.

"Dim Saesneg," answered the man, bowing.

"None of your Dim Saesneg to me, fellow," rejoined Lewis, sternly. "Did not I hear you swearing in good English at a Saesyn (Englishman or Saxon) yesterday?"

The Welshman begged pardon in good Saxon, and answered at last —

"Why, then, if it please your honour, her name be Winifred – her other name be Bevan —Miss Bevan, the school – her father be Mister Bevan of Llaneol, steward that was to our old squire of the great house, 'the Hall' – Talylynn Hall – where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour has fished there. You Saesonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon, but you look Saesoniadd, (Saxonlike,) I was thinking – fine lake, but the trout be not to compare" —

"Well," interrupted the other laughing, "your English tongue can wag as glib as your outlandish one. A sweetheart in the case there, isn't there? What the devil's she going down to the river for at this time of night, else?"

"Why, to be sure there be!" the man answered. "We all know that; poor thing, she had need find some comforter in all her troubles – her father so poor, and in debt to this strange foreigner, who's on the water coming home now, and has made proposals for her in marriage, so they do say; but it's like your honour knows more of that than I do – for be not you Mr Lewis, I beg pardon, Lewis Lewis, esquire?"

"And what do you know of this sweetheart of hers? Is he her first, think ye? I doubt that," rejoined Lewis, not noticing his enquiry —

"You may doubt what your honour pleases, but we don't – no; never man touched her hand hardly, never one her lips, before – I did have it from her mother; but as for this one she's found at last, we wish she'd a better" —

"What's the matter with him, then?"

"Oh, nothing more than that he's poor, sir – poor; and that we don't know much about the stranger" —

"What 'we' do you mean, while you talk of 'we'?"

"Lord bless ye, sir, why us all of this bankside, and this side Tivy, the great family of us, she's just like our little girl to us all; for don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning, whether the Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money or any way, only for asking? So it is, you see, she has grown up among us. This young man, though he may be old for what I know, never seeing him in my life – you see, sir, we on this side of Tivy are like strangers to the Cardy men, t'other side —they are Cardie's, sure enow, true ones, as the Saxon foreign folk do call us all of this shire. I wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side, no further than I could throw him. I'll tell ye a story" —

"Never mind. What about David?"

"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all I do – pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp —beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by coming between her and her own dear one."

"He's not come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."

"Why – to be sure, sir – but vows be vows – love's love – and to tell truth, sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn me off, in my courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my wife – I'd have – I'd have" —

"What would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.

"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice into a solemn tone, "put him into his well.[21 - St Elian.– A saint of Wales. There is a well bearing his name; one of the many of the holy wells, or Ffynnonan, in Wales. A man whom Mr Pennant had affronted, threatened him with this terrible vengeance. Pins, or other little offerings, are thrown in, and the curses uttered over them.]I'd have plagued him, I warrant. But for my part," added the man archly, "I don't believe there's any squire lover in the case – nor that your honour ever said there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the steep path.