approaching and inevitable darkness of his fate:
"The gather'd guilt of elder times
Shall reproduce itself in crimes;
There is a day of vengeance still,
Linger it may—but come it will."
That awful chorus does not, unless we be greatly mistaken, leave an impression of destiny upon the mind more powerful than that which rushed on the troubled spirit of Azo, when he heard the speech of Hugo in his hall of judgment.
"Thou gav'st, and may'st resume my breath,
A gift for which I thank thee not;
Nor are my mother's wrongs forgot,
Her slighted love and ruined name,
Her offspring's heritage of shame;
But she is in the grave, where he,
Her son, thy rival, soon shall be;
Her broken heart—my severed head—
Shall witness for thee from the dead,
How trusty and how tender were
Thy youthful love—paternal care.
"Albeit my birth and name be base,
And thy nobility of race
Disdained to deck a thing like me—
Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father's face,
And in my spirit—all of thee.
From thee this—tamelessness of heart—
From thee—nay, wherefore dost thou start?
From thee in all their vigour came
My arm of strength, my soul of flame—
Thou didst not give me life alone,
But all that made me were thine own.
See what thy guilty love hath done!
Repaid thee with too like a son!
I am no bastard in my soul,
For that, like thine, abhorred controul:
And for my breath, that hasty boon
Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon;
I valued it no more than thou,
When rose thy casque above thy brow,
And we, all side by side, have striven,
And o'er the dead our coursers driven:
The past is nothing—and at last
The future can but be the past;
Yet would I that I then had died:
For though thou work'dst my mother's ill,
And made my own thy destined bride,
I feel thou art my father still;
And, harsh as sounds thy hard decree,
'Tis not unjust, although from thee.
Begot in sin, to die in shame,
My life begun and ends the same:
As erred the sire, so erred the son,
And thou must punish both in one:
My crime seems worst to human view,
But God must judge between us two!"
In all these productions of immortal poets, we see the same desire to represent incest as a thing too awful to spring up of itself, without the interference of some revengeful power—the same careful avoidance of luxurious images—the same resolution to treat unhallowed love with the seriousness of a judge, who narrates only that he may condemn the guilty and warn the heedless. It was reserved for the happier genius of Leigh Hunt, to divest incest of its hereditary horror—to make a theme of unholy love the vehicle of trim and light-hearted descriptions, of courtly splendours and processions, square lit towers, low-talking leaves, and cheeks like peaches on a tree. What the Rape of the Lock is to the Iliad, that would Rimini be to Parasina. It would fain be the genteel comedy of incest.
Surely never did such an idea enter into the head of any true poet, as that of opening a story like Rimini with a scene of gaiety. What sort of heart must that be, which could look forward to the perpetration of such fearful guilt, without feeling incapacitated for present jollity? And yet Mr Hunt has ushered in the fatal espousal of Francesca with all the glee and merriment of any ordinary wedding; and she, the poor victim of unhappy passion, is led to the altar of destruction, trickt out, as if in mockery, with all the gawds and trappings that his laborious imagination could suggest. The reader feels the same disgust at this piece of ill-timed levity, with which one might listen to a merry tune played immediately before an execution. We have no sympathy with those who come to survey Mr Hunt's "marriage in May weather." We cannot enjoy the sunshine of his "sparkling day." We turn away with contempt from his brilliant spectacle of
"Nodding neighbours greeting as they run.
And Pilgrims chanting in the morning sun.'
We shut our ears to his "callings, and clapping doors, and curs," and cannot think of taking our seat, "with upward gaze," to stare at his "heaved-out tapestry." What a contrast is the opening of Parasina! What a breathing of melancholy! What a foretaste of pity!
"It is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,
And on the leaf a browner hue,
