Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

Take thou thy stand beside Sir Simon Bette,
As I by Grutt; take note of all I do,
And do thyself accordingly. Come on."

They join the assembly; they take their stand each by one of the traitor knights; the debate on the proposal of the Earl proceeds; three hundred citizens are to be given up to him, and on this, and other conditions, peace is to be granted. Artevelde addresses the assembly, and then turning to these knights, he continues: —

"Your pardon, sirs, again!
(To Grutt and Bette.)
You are the pickers and the choosers here,
And doubtless you're all safe, ye think – ha! ha!
But we have picked and chosen, too, sir knights —
What was the law for I made yesterday —
What! is it you that would deliver up
Three hundred citizens to certain death?
Ho! Van Den Bosch! have at these traitors – ha! —
(Stabs Grutt, who falls.)
Van Den B. Die, treasonable dog! —
(Stabs Bette.)"

He can do "what is needful." It is admirable; everything that is said and done is admirable; but an involuntary suspicion at times creeps into the mind, that such a man as Philip Van Artevelde never lived, or could live. No man could move along such a line of enterprise with such a weight of reflection on all the springs of action. We see the calm statesman at the head of a tumultuary movement; and the meditative man, to whom revenge is the poorest of our passions, striking a blow from which an old warrior might shrink. Could a man be really impelled along a path of life like this by passions that are admitted, indeed, into the bosom, but watched like prisoners? The suspicion, we say, creeps involuntarily into the mind; but we will not entertain it – we will not yield to it. That the reflective and energetic characters are, in certain degrees, combined together, we all know; and who shall say within what degrees only this is possible? And why may not an ideal perfection of this kind be portrayed as well as an ideal patriot, or an ideal monk, or an ideal warrior? We throw the suspicion aside, and continue our analysis.

There is a passage which is often quoted for its great beauty: we quote it also for its great appropriateness. Philip Van Artevelde is master of the city; he is contemplating it at night-time from the tower of St Nicholas. The reflection here put into the mouth of the anxious captain brings back to us, in the midst of war and the cares of government, the meditative man: —

"There lies a sleeping city. God of dreams!
What an unreal and fantastic world
Is going on below!
Within the sweep of yon encircling wall
How many a large creation of the night,
Wide wilderness and mountain, rock and sea,
Peopled with busy transitory groups,
Finds room to rise, and never feels the crowd!"

The famous scene, which has for its place the summit of this tower, between Artevelde and Van Den Bosch, is fresh in the recollection of every reader: we must pass it by, and the admirable and pathetic description of the famine that is raging in Ghent, and proceed to the last act of this part of the drama. Artevelde has stimulated the citizens to make one brave effort more – to sally from the walls, and meet the Earl in battle before Bruges. He has arranged in order of battle his lean and famine-stricken, but desperate little army. He knows the extreme peril in which they stand: no food in the camp; fearful odds to be encountered; yet the only hope lying in immediate battle. He does not delude himself for a moment; he sees the danger clear, and entertains it with a certain sarcastic levity. He does not hope, but he acts as if he did. He is not a man given to hope, but he has a tempered despondency, which sits with him at the council-board, and rides with him to the field, and which he compels to do the services of hope.

"Artev. I would to God
The sun might not go down upon us here
Without a battle fought!
Van Den B. If so it should,
We pass a perilous night,
And wake a wasted few the morrow morn.
Van Muck. We have a supper left.
Artev. My lady's page,
If he got ne'er a better, would be wroth,
And burn in effigy my lady's steward.

Van Den B. We'll hope the best;
But if there be a knave in power unhanged,
And in his head a grain of sense undrowned,
He'll be their caution not to —
Artev. Van Den Bosch,
Talk we of battle and survey the field,
For I will fight."

We like this last expression. What in another man would have been a mere petulance, is in Artevelde an assumed confidence – consciously assumed, as the only tone of mind in which to pass through the present crisis. Nor can we omit to notice the following passage, which, to our apprehension, is very characteristic of our contemplative politician and warrior; it shows the sardonic vein running through his grave and serious thoughts: —

Art. (to Van Ryk.) I tell thee, eat,
Eat and be fresh. I'll send a priest to shrive thee.
Van Muck, thou tak'st small comfort in thy prayers,
Put thou thy muzzle to yon tub of wine."

The battle is fought and a victory won. Justice is executed with stern and considerate resolve on the villains of the piece, and we leave Van Artevelde triumphant in his great contest, and happy in the love of Adriana.

The subordinate characters who are introduced into this first part of the drama, we have no space to examine minutely. The canvass is well filled, though the chief figure stands forward with due prominence. Adriana is all that an amiable and loving woman should be. The lighter-hearted Clara is intended as a sort of contrast and relief. Her levity and wit are not always graceful; they are not so in the early scene where she jests with the page: afterwards, when in presence of her lover, she has a fitter and more genial subject for her playful wit, and succeeds much better. In the course of the drama, when the famine is raging in Ghent, she appears as the true sister of Philip Van Artevelde. At her first introduction she is somewhat too hoydenish for the mistress of the noble D'Arlon. D'Arlon is all that a knight should be, and Gilbert Matthew is a consummate villain.

Between the first and second parts is a poem in rhyme, called "The Lay of Elena." This introduces us to the lady who is to be the heroine of the second part of the drama. All the information it gives, might, we think, have been better conveyed in a few lines of blank verse, added to that vindication of herself which Elena pours forth in the first act, when Sir Fleureant of Heurlée comes to reclaim her on the part of the Duke of Bourbon. This poem is no favourite of ours; but the worst compliment we would pay it implies, in one point of view, a certain fitness and propriety – we were glad to return to the blank verse of our author, in which we find both more music and more pathos than in these rhymes.

If we are tempted to suspect, whilst reading the first part of this drama, that the character of Philip Van Artevelde combines in a quite ideal perfection the man of thought with the man of action, we, at all events, cannot accuse the author, in this second part, of representing an ideal or superhuman happiness as the result of this perfect combination. It is a very truthful sad-coloured destiny that he portrays. The gloomy passionate sunset of life has been a favourite subject with poets; but what other author has chosen the clouded afternoon of life, the cheerless twilight, and the sun setting behind cold and dark clouds? It was a bold attempt. It has been successfully achieved. But no amount of talent legitimately expended on it could make this second part as attractive as the first. When the heroic man has accomplished his heroic action, life assumes to him, more than to any other, a most ordinary aspect: his later years bring dwarfish hopes and projects, or none at all; they bring desires no longer "gay," and welcomed only for such poor life as they may have in them. Philip Van Artevelde is now the Regent of Flanders, and, like other regents, has to hold his own: Adriana he has lost; her place is supplied by one still fair but faded, and who, though she deserved a better fate, must still be described as lately the mistress of the Duke of Bourbon. It is the hero still, but he has descended into the commonplace of courts and politics.

That it is the same Philip Van Artevelde we are in company with, the manner in which he enters into this new love will abundantly testify. He has been describing to Elena his former wife, Adriana. The description is very beautiful and touching. He then proceeds with his wooing thus: —

"Artev. … Well, well – she's gone,
And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and grief
Are transitory things no less than joy,
And though they leave us not the men we were,
Yet they do leave us. You behold me here
A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life
And its first verdure, having not the less
A living root, drawing from the earth
Its vital juices, from the air its powers:
And surely as man's health and strength are whole,
His appetites regerminate, his heart
Reopens, and his objects and desires
Shoot up renewed. What blank I found before me,
From what is said you partly may surmise;
How I have hoped to fill it, may I tell?
Elena. I fear, my lord, that cannot be.
Artev. Indeed!
Then am I doubly hopeless…
Elena. I said I feared another could not fill
The place of her you lost, being so fair
And perfect as you give her out."

In fine, Elena is conquered, or rather led to confess a conquest already achieved.

"Elena. I cannot – no —
I cannot give you what you've had so long;
Nor need I tell you what you know so well.
I must be gone.
Artev. Nay, sweetest, why these tears?