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in our opinion, is one of the author's happiest subtleties. She is na- ́ turally so abhorrent from guilt,-she feels it to have been so impossible a thing to have killed a FATHER, truly so called, that what with her horror of the deed and of the infamy attending it, she would almost persuade herself as well as others, that no such thing had actually taken place,-that it was a notion, a horrid dream, a thing to be gratuitously cancelled from people's minds, a necessity which they were all to agree had existed but was not to be spoken of, a crime which to punish was to proclaim and make real,—any thing, in short, but that a daughter had killed her father. It is a lie told, as it were, for the sake of nature, to save it the shame of a greater contradiction. If any feeling less great and spiritual, any dread of a pettier pain, appears at last to be suffered by the author to mingle with it, a little common frailty and inconsistency only renders the character more human, and may be allowed a young creature about to be cut off in the bloom of life, who shews such an agonized wish that virtue should survive guilt and despair. She does not sacrifice the man who is put to the torture. He was apprehended without her being able to help it, would have committed her by his confession, and would have died at all events. She only reproaches him for including a daughter in the confession of his guilt; and the man, be it observed, appears to have had a light let into his mind to this effect, for her behaviour made him retract his accusations, and filled him so with a pity above his self-interest, that he chose rather to die in torture than repeat them. It is a remarkable instance of the respect with which Beatrice was regarded in Rome, in spite of the catastrophe into which she had been maddened, that Guido painted her portrait from the life, while she was in prison. He could not have done this, as a common artist might take the likeness of a common criminal, to satisfy vulgar curiosity. Her family was of too great rank and importance, and retained them too much in its reverses. He must have waited on her by permission, and accompanied the sitting with all those attentions which artists on such occasions are accustomed to pay to the great and beautiful. Perhaps he was intimate with her, for he was a painter in great request. In order to complete our accounts respecting her, as well as to indulge ourselves in copying out a beautiful piece of writing, we will give Mr. Shelley's description of this portrait, and masterly summary of her character. "The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is most admirable as a work of art: it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features: she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched: the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility, which suffering has not repressed, and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her fore

head is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity, which united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons, in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer, aré as the mask and the mantle, in which circumstances clothed her from her impersonation on the scene of the world."

The beauties of a dramatic poem, of all others, are best appreciated by a survey of the whole work itself, and of the manner in which it is composed and hangs together. We shall content ourselves therefore, in this place, with pointing out some detached beauties; and we will begin, as in the grounds of an old castle, with an account of a rocky chasm on the road to Petrella.

Lucrezia. To-morrow before dawn

Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.
If he arrive there-

Beatrice. He must not arrive.

Orsino. Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
Lucr. The sun will scarce be set.

Beatr. But I remember

Two miles on this side of the fort, the road

Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,

And winds with short turns down the precipice,

And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
Which has, from unimaginable years,
Sustained itself with terror and with toil
Over a gulph, and with the agony

With which it clings, seems slowly coming down;
Even as a wretched soul, hour after hour,
Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
Huge as despair, as if i weariness,
The melancholy mountain yawns:-below,
You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
Crosses the chasm, and high above there grow,
With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
Cedars, and yews, and pines, whose tangled hair
Is matted in one solid roof of shade

By the dark ivy's twine. At noon-day there
"Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.

With what a generous and dignified sincerity does Beatrice shew at once her own character and that of the prelate her lover.

As I have said, speak not to me of love.
Had you a dispensation, I have not:
Nor will I leave this home of misery,

Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady
To whom Towe life and these virtuous thoughts,
Must suffer what I still have strength to share.
Alas, Orsino! All the love that once

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Mr. Shelley, in this work, reminds us of some of the most strenuous and daring of our old dramatists, not by any means as an imitator, though he has studied them, but as a bold, elemental imagination, and a framer of" mighty lines." He possesses also however, what those to whom we more particularly allude did not possess, great sweetness of nature, and enthusiasm for good; and his style is, as it ought to be, the offspring of this high mixture. It disproves the adage of the Latin poet. Majesty and Love do sit on one throne in the lofty buildings of his poetry; and they will be found there, at a late and we' trust a happier day, on a seat immortal as themselves.

[An accident prevents us from filling up this space with something which would have worthily filled it.]

Printed and published by Joseph Appleyard, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand. Price 2d. And sold also by A. GLIDDON, Importer of Snuffs, No. 31, Tavistockstreet, Covent-garden. Orders received at the above places, and by all Booksellers and Newsmen.

THE INDICATOR.

There he arriving round about doth flie,
And takes survey with busie curious eye:
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.

SPENSER.

No. XLIII.-WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2d, 1820.

THE STORIES OF LAMIA, THE POT OF BASIL, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, &c. AS TOLD BY MR. KEATS.

In laying before our readers an account of another new publication, it is fortunate that the nature of the work again falls in with the character of our miscellany; part of the object of which is to relate the stories of old times. We shall therefore abridge into prose the stories which Mr. Keats has told in poetry, only making up for it, as we go, by cutting some of the richest passages out of his verse, and fitting them in to our plainer narrative. They are such as would leaven a much greater lump. Their drops are rich and vital, the essence of a heap of fertile thoughts.

The first story, entitled Lamia, was suggested to our author by a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which he has extracted at the end of it. We will extract it here, at the beginning, that the readers may see how he has enriched it. Burton's relation is itself an improvement on the account in Philostratus. The old book-fighter with melancholy thoughts is speaking of the seductions of phantas

mata.

"Philostratus, in his fourth book De Vita Apollonii,' hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age, that going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would live and die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and therefore she, plate, house, and all that was.

Mr. Shelley, in this work, reminds us of some of the most strenuous and daring of our old dramatists, not by any means as an imitator, though he has studied them, but as a bold, elemental imagination, and a framer of "mighty lines." He possesses also however, what those to whom we more particularly allude did not possess, great sweetness of nature, and enthusiasm for good; and his style is, as it ought to be, the offspring of this high mixture. It disproves the adage of the Latin poet. Majesty and Love do sit on one throne in the lofty buildings of his poetry; and they will be found there, at a late and we trust a happier day, on a seat immortal as themselves.

[An accident prevents us from filling up this space with something which would have worthily filled it.]

Printed and published by JOSEPH Appleyard, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand. Price 2d. And sold also by A. GLIDDON, Importer of Snuffs, No. 31, Tavistockstreet, Covent-garden. Orders received at the above places, and by all Booksellers and Newsmen.

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