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

"Leolf. How found you the mid-counties?
Athulf. Oh! monk-ridden;
Raving of Dunstan.
Leolf. 'Tis a raving time:
Mad monks, mad peasants; Dunstan is not sane,
And madness that doth least declare itself
Endangers most, and ever most infects
The unsound many. See where stands the man,
And where this people: thus compute the peril
To one and all. When force and cunning meet
Upon the confines of one cloudy mind,
When ignorance and knowledge halve the mass,
When night and day stand at an equinox,
Then storms are rife."

No justice, it is plain, can be done to Mr Taylor's drama, unless the intimation here given us be kept in view. Yet we suspect, from the remarks sometimes made upon this play, that it has been overlooked, or not sufficiently attended to. Passages have been censured as crude or extravagant which, in themselves, could be no otherwise, since they were intended to portray this half-latent and half-revealed insanity. The arrogance of Dunstan, and his communings with the spiritual world, not often have the air of sublimity, for they arise from the disorder and hallucination of his mind. When he tells the Queen Mother not to sit in his presence, as well as when he boasts of his intercourse with angels and demons, we see the workings of a perturbed spirit: —

"Queen Mother. Father, I am faint,
For a strange terror seized me by the way.
I pray you let me sit.
Dunstan. I say, forbear!
Thou art in a Presence that thou wot'st not of,
Wherein no mortal may presume to sit.
If stand thou canst not, kneel.
(She falls on her knees.)
Queen Mother. Oh, merciful Heaven'
Oh, sinner that I am!
Dunstan. Dismiss thy fears;
Thine errand is acceptable to Him
Who rules the hour, and thou art safer here
Than in thy palace. Quake not, but be calm,
And tell me of the wretched king, thy son.
This black, incestuous, unnatural love
Of his blood-relative – yea, worse, a seed
That ever was at enmity with God —
His cousin of the house of Antichrist!
It is as I surmised?
Queen Mother. Alas! lost boy!
Dunstan. Yes, lost for time and for eternity,
If he should wed her. But that shall not be.
Something more lofty than a boy's wild love
Governs the course of kingdoms. From beneath
This arching umbrage step aside; look up;
The alphabet of Heaven is o'er thy head,
The starry literal multitude. To few,
And not in mercy, is it given to read
The mixed celestial cipher."

How skilfully the last passage awakes in the reader a feeling of sympathy with Dunstan! When he has given his instructions to the Queen Mother, the scene closes thus: —

"Queen Mother. Oh, man of God!
Command me always.
Dunstan. Hist! I hear a spirit!
Another – and a third. They're trooping up.
Queen Mother. St Magnus shield us!
Dunstan. Thou art safe; but go;
The wood will soon be populous with spirits.
The path thou cam'st retread. Who laughs in the air?"

Dunstan believes all along that he is marked out from the ordinary roll of men – that he has a peculiar intercourse with, and a peculiar mission from, Heaven; but he nevertheless practises on the credulity of others. This mixture of superstition and cunning does not need insanity to explain, but it is seen here in very appropriate company. He says to Grumo —

"Go, get thee to the hollow of yon tree,
And bellow there as is thy wont.
Grumo. How long?
Dunstan. Till thy lungs crack. Get hence.
[Exit Grumo.
And if thou bellowest otherwise than Satan,
It is not for the lack of Satan's sway
'Stablished within thee.
(Strange howls are heard from the tree.")

With the same crafty spirit, and by a trick as gross, he imposes on the Synod, contriving that a voice shall appear to issue from the crucifix. These frauds, however, would have availed nothing of themselves; it is the spirit of fanaticism bearing down all opposition by which he works his way. This spirit sustains him in his solitude —

"I hear your call!
A radiance and a resonance from Heaven
Surrounds me, and my soul is breaking forth
In strength, as did the new-created Sun
When Earth beheld it first on the fourth day.
God spake not then more plainly to that orb
Than to my spirit now."

It sustains him in his solitude, and mark how triumphantly it carries him through in the hour of action. Odo the archbishop, Ricola the king's chaplain, as well as king and courtiers, all give way before this inexorable, unreasoning fanaticism, a fanaticism which is as complete a stranger to fear as it is to reason —

"Dunstan (to Elgiva.) Fly hence,
Pale prostitute! Avaunt, rebellious fiend,
Which speakest through her.
Elgiva. I am thy sovereign mistress and thy queen.
Dunstan. … Who art thou?
I see thee, and I know thee – yea, I smell thee!
Again, 'tis Satan meets me front to front;
Again I triumph! Where, and by what rite,
And by what miscreant minister of God,
And rotten member, was this mockery,
That was no marriage, made to seem a marriage?
Ricola. Lord Abbot, by no —
Dunstan. What then, was it thou?
The Church doth cut thee off and pluck thee out!
A Synod shall be summoned! Chains for both!
Chains for that harlot, and for this dog-priest!
Oh wall of Jezreel!"