cette revolution, sous peine d'etre traduit devant ever received. It states also that a person has les inquisiteurs d'état. Le 20 Octobre, Pasqual been trying to make the acquaintance of Mr. Malipieri, procurateur de Saint-Marc, fut élu pour Townsend, a gentleman of the law, who was with successeur de Foscari; celui-ci n'eut pas néanmoins me on business in Venice three years ago, for the l'humiliation de vivre sujet, le où il avait régné. purpose of obtaining any defamatory particulars of Mr. TownEn entendant le son des cloches, qui sonnaient en my life from this occasional visiter." actions de grâces pour cette élection, il mourut send is welcome to say what he knows. I mention subitement d'une hémorrhagie causee par une veine these particulars merely to show the world in qui s'eclata dans sa poitrine.* general what the literary lower world contains, and their way of setting to work. Another charge made, I am told, in the "Literary Gazette" is, that I wrote the notes to "Queen Mab: " a work which I never saw till some time after its publication, and which I recollect showing to Mr. Sotheby as a poem of great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the notes, nor ever saw them except in their "LE doge, blessé de trouver constamment un published form. No one knows better than their contradicteur et un censeur si amer dans son frère, real author, that his opinions and mine differ lui dit un jour en plein conseil: "Messire Augustin, materially upon the metaphysical portion of that common with all who are vous faite tout votre possible pour hater ma mort; work; though in vous vous flattez de me succéder; mais, si les autres not blinded by baseness and bigotry, I highly vous connaissent aussi bien que je vous connais, ils admire the poetry of that and his other publi n'auront garde de vous élire." La-dessus il se le cations. leva, ému del colere, rentra dans son appartement, Mr. Southey, too, in his pious preface to a poem et mourut quelques jours après. Ce frère, contre whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of le lequel il s'était emporté, fut precisement le suc- Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that cesseur qu'on lui donna. C'etait un merite dont on aimait a tenir compte; surtout a un parent, de s'etre mis en opposition avec le chef de la république."-Daru, Histoire de Venise, vol. ii. sec. xi. p. 533. sincere production, calls upon the "legislature to look to it," as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the "Satanic School." This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it to be not true. Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Bastile, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place the French Revolution was not occasioned by any IN Lady Morgan's fearless and excellent work writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had upon "Italy," I perceive the expression of "Rome no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to of the Ocean" applied to Venice. The same phrase attribute every thing to the French Revolution, occurs in the Two Foscari." My publisher can and the French Revolution to every thing but its vouch for me that my tragedy was written and sent real cause. That cause is obvious-the governmeu! to England some time before I had seen Lady Mor- exacted too much, and the people could neither give gan's work, which I only received on the 16th of nor bear more. Without this, the Encyclopedists August. I hasten, however, to notice the coinci- might have written their fingers off without the dence, and to yield the originality of the phrase to occurrence of a single alteration. And the English her who first placed it before the public. I am the Revolution-(the first, I mean)-what was it occamore anxious to do this, as I am informed (for Isioned by? The Puritans were surely as pious and have seen but few of the specimens, and those moral as Wesley or his biographer! Acts-acts on accidentally) that there have lately been brought the part of government, and not writings against against me charges of plagiarism. I have also had them, have caused the past convulsions, and are an anonymous sort of threatening intimation of tending to the future. the same kind, apparently with the intent of extort- I look upon such as inevitable, though no revol ing money. To such charges I have no answer to tionist; I wish to see the English constitution make. One of them is ludicrous enough. I am restored and not destroyed. Born an aristocrat, reproached for having formed the description of a and naturally one by temper, with the greater part shipwreck in verse from the narrative of many of my present property in the funds, what have 7 to actual shipwrecks in prose, selecting such materials gain by a revolution? Perhaps, I have more to as were most striking. Gibbon makes it a merit lose in every way than Mr. Southey, with all his in Tasso "to have copied the minutest details of places and presents for panegyris and abuse into the Siege of Jerusalem from the Chronicles." In the bargain. But that a revolution is inevitable, J me it may be a demerit, I presume: let it remain repeat. The government may exult over the repres 60. Whilst I have been occupied in defending sion of petty tumults; these are but the receding Pope's character, the lower orders of Grub street waves repulsed and broken for a moment on the appear to have been assailing mine: this is as it shore, while the great tide is still rolling on and should be, both in them and in me. One of the accusations in the nameless epistle alluded to is still gaining ground with every breaker. Mr. Southey accuses us of attacking the religion of the country; more laughable: It states seriously that I "received and is he abetting it by writing lives of Wesley? five hundred pounds for writing advertisements for One mode of worship is merely destroyed by Day and Martin's patent blacking!" This is the another. There never was, nor ever will be, a highest compliment to my literary powers which I country without a religion. We shall be told of France again; but it was only Paris and a frantic party, which for a moment upheld their dogmatic MI. L. VIII. f. 201. • Marin Samuto, Vite de' Duchi di Venezia, p. 1164.-Chronicon Euga-nonsense of theophilanthropy. The church of Eng vinum, T. XXI. p. 992.-Christoforo da Soldo Istoria Bresciana, T. XXI. p. land, if overthrown, will be swept away by the 91.--Navagiero, Storio Veneziana, XXI. p. 1120. M. A. Sabellico, Deca sectarians, and not by the skeptics. People are The Venetians appear to have had a particular turn for breaking the too wise, too well-informed, too certain of their bearts of their Doges; the above is another instance of the kind in the Doge own immense importance in the realms of space. There Marco Barbarigo; he was succeeded by his brother Augustino Barte rigo, ever to submit to the impiety of doubt. may be a few such diffident speculators, like xbone chief merit is above mentioned. Water ir. the pale sunbeam of human reason, as it was one which brought me in contact with & Dut they are very few; and their opinions, with- near connexion of his own, did no dishonor to that out enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, can connexion nor to me. never gain proselytes-unless, indeed, they are I am not ignorant of Mr. Southey's calumnies on persecuted that, to be sure, will increase any- a different occasion, knowing them to be such, thing. which he scattered abroad on his return from "" Mr. S. with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the Switzerland against me and others: they have done anticipated "death-bed repentance" of the objects him no good in this world, and, if his creed be the of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant right one, they will do less in the next. What his "Vision of Judgment," in prose as well as verse, "death-bed may be, it is not my province to full of impious impudence. What Mr. S.'s sensa- predicate: let him settle it with his Maker, as I tious or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving must do with mine. There is something at once this state of existence neither he nor we can pre- ludicrous and blasphemous in this arrogant scribbler tend to decide In common, presume, with most of all work sitting down to deal damnation and men of any reflection, I have not waited for a destruction upon his fellow-creatures, with Wat "death-bed" to repent of many of ray actions, Tyler, the Apotheosis of George the Third, and the notwithstanding the "diabolical pride" which this Elegy on Martin the regicide, all shuffled together pitiful renegado in his rancour would impute to in his writing-desk. One of his consolations apthose who scorn him. Whether upon the whole pears to be a Latin note from the work of a Mr. the good or evil of my deeds may preponderate is Landor, the author of Gebir," whose friendship not for me to ascertain; but, as my means and for Robert Southey will, it seems, "be an honor to opportunities have been greater, I shall limit my him when the ephemeral disputes and ephemeral present defence to an assertion (easily proved, if reputations of the day are forgotten." I for one necessary), that I, "in my degree,' have done neither envy him "the friendship," nor the glory in more real good in any one given year, since I was reversion which is to accrue from it, like Mr. Thelustwenty, than Mr. Southey in the whole course of his son's fortune in the third and fourth generation. shifting and turn-coat existence. There are several This friendship will probably be as memorable as actions to which I can look back with an honest his own epics, which (as I quotod to him ten o pride, not to be damped by the calumnies of a hire- twelve years ago in "English Bards ") Porson said lirg. There are others to which I recur with sorrow "would be remembered when Homer and Virgil are and repentance; but the only act of my life of forgotten, and not till then." For the present. I which Mr. Southey can have any real knowledge. leave him. SARDANAPALUS; A TRAGEDY. TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS GOETHE A STRANGER PRESUMES TO OFFER THE HOMAGE. OF A LITERARY VASSAL TO HIS LIEGE LORD, THE FIRST OF EXISTING WRITERS WHO HAS CREATED THE LITERATURE OF HIS OWN COUNTRY. AND ILLUSTRATED THAT OF EUROPE. THE UNWORTHY PRODUCTION WHICH THE AUTHOR VENTURES TO INSCRIBE TO HIM 18 ENTITLED SARDANAPALUS. PREFACE. In this tragedy it has been my intention to follow the account of Diodorus Siculus: reducing it, how IN publishing the tragedies of Sardanapalus and ever, to such dramatic regularity as 1 best could, the Two Foscari, I have only to repeat that they were and trying to approach the unities. I therefore not composed with the most remote view to the stage. suppose the rebellion to explode and succeed in one On the attempt made by the Managers in a for- day by a sudden conspiracy instead of the long war mer instance, the public opinion has been already of the history. expressed. With regard to my own private feelings, as it scems that they are to stand for nothing, I shall say nothing. For the historical foundation of the compositions in question, the reader is referred to the Notes. The Author has in one instance attempted to preserve, and in the other to approach the "unities; " conceiving that with any very distant departure from them, there may be poetry, but can be no drama. He is aware of the unpopularity of this notion in present English literature; but it is not a system of his own, being merely an opinion, which, not very long ago, was the law of literature throughout the world, and is still so in the more civilized parts of it. But "Nous avons change tout cela,' and are reaping the advantages of the change. The writer is far from conceiving that any thing he can adduce by personal precept or example can at all approach his regular, or even irregular predecessors; he is merely giving a reason why he preferred the more regular formation of a structure however feeble, to an entire abandonment of all rules whatWhere he has failed the failure is in the architect, and not in the art Boever. DRAMATIS PERSONE. Men.-SARDANAPALUS, King of Nineveh, and ARBACES, the Mede, who aspired to the BELESES, a Chaldean and Soothsayer. PANIA. ZAMES. SFERO. BALEA. Women.-ZARINA, the Queen. MYRRHA, an Ionian female Slave, and the Favorite of SARDANAPALUS. Women composing the Harem of SARDANAPALUS, Guards, Attendants, Chaldean Priests, Medes. &c., &c. Scene a Hall in the Royal Palace of Nineveh. |
