SARDANAPALUS discovered sleeping upon a Couch, and occasionally disturbed in his Slumbers, with MYRRHA watching. Myr. (sola, gazing). I have stolen upon his rest, if rest it be, Which thus convulses slumber: shall I wake him? His wound, though slight, may cause all this, and shake No: Let Nature use her own maternal means,- And gave them to me as a realm to share 1 ["Crisps the unswelling wave," &c. — MS.] [The fourth Act opens with Myrrha watching over the slumbers of Sardanapalus. He wakens and tells a horrid dream, which we do not much admire, except that part of it which describes the form of his warlike ancestress Semiramis, with whom, and the rest of his regal predecessors, he had fancied himself at a ghostly banquet. - HEBER.] [The general tone of Myrrha's character (in perfect consistency with the manners of her age and nation, and with her own elevated but pure and feminine spirit,) is that of a devout worshipper of her country's gods. She reproves, with dignity, the impious flattery of the Assyrian courtiers and the libertine scoffs of the king. She does not forget, while preparing for death, that libation which was the latest and most solemn act of Grecian piety; and she, more particularly, expresses her belief in a future state of existence. Yet this very Myrrha, when Sardanapalus is agitated by his evil dream, and by the natural doubt as to what worse visions death may bring, is made to console him, in the strain of his own Epicurean philosophy, with the doctrine that death is really nothing, except "Unto the timid who anticipate and with the insinuation that all which remains of " the dead is the dust we tread upon." We do not wish to ask, we do not Is no false phantom: I should know it 'midst From their black gulf to daunt the living. Myrrha ! Thy hand-so- 't is thy hand; 'Tis flesh; grasp—clasp — yet closer, till I feel Myself that which I was. Myr. For what I am, and ever Sur. I know it now, Oh, Myrrha ! if Sar. A shore where mind survives, 't will be as mind, A shadow of this cumbrous clog of clay, Sar. I fear it not; but I have felt- have seen — A legion of the dead. like to conjecture, whose sentiments these are, but they are certainly not the sentiments of an ancient Grecian heroine. They are not the sentiments which Myrrha might have learned from the heroes of her native land, or from the poems whence those heroes derived their heroism, their contempt of death, " and their love of virtue." Myrrha would rather have told her lover of those happy islands where the benevolent and the brave reposed after the toils of their mortal existence; of that venerable society of departed warriors and sages, to which, if he renounced his sloth and lived for his people and for glory, he might yet expect admission. She would have told him of that joy with which his warlike ancestors would move along their meads of asphodel, when the news reached them of their descendant's prowess; she would have anticipated those songs which denied that " Harmodius was dead," however he might be removed from the sphere of mortality; which told her countrymen of the "roses and the goldenfruited bowers, where, beneath the light of a lower sun, departed warriors reined their shadowy cars, or struck their harps amid altars steaming with frankincense."-(Hom. Odyss. à. 539. Callistratus ap. Athenæum, 1. xv. Pindar. Fragm. Heyne, vol. iii. p. 31.) Such were the doctrines which naturally led men to a contempt for life and a thirst for glory: but the opposite opinions were the doubts of a later day; and of those sophists under whose influence Greece soon ceased to be free, or valiant, or virtuous. HEBER.] The hope to find at last one which I knew And rather let me see hear it? Myr. I can bear all things, dreams of life or death, Death all than such a being ! Which I participate with you, in semblance Myr. And the end? Sar. At last I sate, marble, as they, when rose The hunter and the crone; and smiling on me Yes, the enlarged but noble aspect of Or full reality. Sar. And this look'd real, I tell you after that these eyes were open, I saw them in their flight-for then they fled. Myr. [He pauses. What instead? The hunter smiled upon me- I should say, Ay, Myrrha, but the woman, Buried, and raised again- consumed by worms, But think not of these things-the mere creations Unused to toil, yet over-wrought by toil Such as might try the sternest. Sar. I am better. Now that I see thee once more, what was scen Seems nothing. At least, I trust so: in a word, the queen Sar. Unto what end? what purpose? I will grant I think as you do of my sister's wish; But 't was her wish-she is my sister-you Sal. Re-enter SALEMENES and ZARINA. My sister! Courage: Shame not our blood with trembling, but remember From whence we sprung. The queen is present, sire. Zar. I pray thee, brother, leave me. Sal. Since you ask it. [Exit SALEMENES. Zar. Alone with him! How many a year has pass'd, Though we are still so young, since we have met, Which I have worn in widowhoou of heart. He loved me not: yet he seems little changed. Changed to me only-would the change were mutual! I had half forgotten, And could have welcomed any grief, save yours, Which gave me to behold your face again. Sar. The throne-I say it not in fear- but 'tis In peril; they perhaps may never mount it! But let them not for this lose sight of it. I will dare all things to bequeath it them; But if I fail, then they must win it back in opposition not only to the uniform tradition of the East, but to the express assertions of Herodotus, Pliny, and Ptolemy. HEDER.] My boys! I could have borne it were I childless. Sar. 'Tis lost, all earth will cry out, thank your And they will swell the echo with a curse. Zar. That they shall never do; but rather honour The name of him, who, dying like a king, In his last hours did more for his own memory Than many monarchs in a length of days, Which date the flight of time, but make no annals. Sar. Our annals draw perchance unto their close; But at the least, whate'er the past, their end Shall be like their beginning-memorable. Zar. Yet, be not rash-be careful of your life, Live but for those who love. Sar. And who are they? A slave, who loves from passion-I'll not say Ambition-she has seen thrones shake, and loves; A few friends who have revell'd till we are As one, for they are nothing if I fall; A brother I have injured — children whom Sur. My life insures me that. How long, bethink you, Were not I yet a king, should I be mortal; That is, where mortals are, not where they must be? Zar. I know not. But yet live for my- that is, Your children's sake! Sar. My gentle, wrong'd Zarina !! I am the very slave of circumstance All that look'd like a chain for me or others Zur. A world out of our own-and be more bless'd So this feminine farewell Ends as such partings end, in no departure. I thought as much, and yielded against all My better bodings. But it must not be. Sar. And good ones make Good out of evil. Happier than the bee, Which hives not but from wholesome flowers. Hear me, sister, like My sister: -all's prepared to make your safety Certain, and of the boys too, our last hopes; 'Tis not a single question of mere feeling, Though that were much-but 'tis a point of state: was neither accounted a crime in itself, nor as a measure of which the principal wife was justified in complaining. and even in Greece, in those times when Myrrha's character must have been formed, to be a captive, and subject to the captor's pleasure, was accounted a misfortune indeed, but could hardly be regarded as an infamy. But where is the critic who would object to an inaccuracy which has given occasion to such sentiments and such poetry? HEBER] The rebels would do more to seize upon What leave My heart will break. Sal. No Now you know all―decide. Remaining here, you may lose all; departing, To both of us, and to such loyal hearts Sar. Go, then. If e'er we meet again, perhaps I may be worthier of you—and, if not, Remember that my faults, though not atoned for, Are ended. Yet, I dread thy nature will Grieve more above the blighted name and ashes Which once were mightiest in Assyria-than But I grow womanish again, and must not; I must learn sternness now. My sins have all Been of the softer order- hide thy tearsI do not bid thee not to shed them- 't were Easier to stop Euphrates at its source Than one tear of a true and tender heartBut let me not behold them; they unman me Here when I had re-mann'd myself. My brother, Lead her away. [This scene has been, by the Edinburgh Reviewers, we know not why, called "useless,"" unnatural," and " tediously written." For ourselves, we are not ashamed to own that we have read it with emotion. It is an interview between Sardanapalus and his neglected wife, whom, with her children, he is about to send to a place of safety. Here, too, however, he is represented, with much poetical art and justice of delineation, as, in the midst of his deepest regrets for - And this too must I suffer-I, who never A single deviation from the track Yet stay-being here. pray you pardon me: events have sour'd me Till I wax peevish-heed it not: I shall Soon be myself again. Myr. I wait with patience, What I shall see with pleasure. Sar. Scarce a moment Before your entrance in this hall, Zarina, Queen of Assyria, departed hence. Myr. Ah! Sar. Myr. Wherefore do you start? Did I do so? Sar. 'Twas well you enter'd by another portal, Else you had met. That pang at least is spared her! Myr. I know to feel for her. Sar. That is too much, And beyond nature-'tis nor mutual,2 Nor possible. You cannot pity her, Nor she aught but Myr. Despise the favourite slave? Not more than I have ever scorn'd myself. Sar. Scorn'd! what, to be the envy of your sex, As you are like to lose the one you sway'd- Zarina, chiefly engrossed with himself and his own sorrows, and inclined, immediately afterwards, to visit on poor Myrrha the painful feelings which his own reproaches of himself have occasioned. HEBER.] 2 [For mutual, the MS. in our hands has natural; but we are not quite sure that there has been merely a misprint in the foregoing editions.] |