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came to the spot at the time the young women were so employed: and being, says our author," a young and lusty gallant," he fell to jesting with his followers upon the bare legs of the busy girls, who had tucked up their clothes, as usual, to their work. He passed along the river; and all his company had not yet gone by, when a lass in a red petticoat, while tucking it up, shewed her legs somewhat high; and clapping her hand on her right calf, said loud enough to be heard by the riders," Here's a white leg, girls, for the Master of Avis."

These words, spoken probably out of a little lively bravado, upon the strength of the governor's having gone by, were repeated to him when he got home, together with the action that accompanied them : upon which the young lord felt the eloquence of the speech so deeply, 'that he contrived to have the fair speaker brought to him in private; and the consequence was, that our lively natural son, and his sprightly challenger, had another natural son.

Ines (for that was the girl's name) was the daughter of a shoemaker in Veyros; a man of very good account, and wealthy. Hearing how his daughter had been sent for to the young governor's house; and that it was her own light behaviour, that subjected her to what he was assured she willingly consented to; he took it so to heart, that at her return home, she was driven by him from the house, with every species of contumely and spurning. After this, he never saw her more. And to prove to the world and to himself, that his severity was a matter of principle, and not a mere indulgence of his own passions, he never afterwards lay in a bed, nor eat at a table, nor changed his linen, nor cut his hair, nails, or beard; which latter grew to such a length, reaching below his knees, that the people used to call him Barbadon, or old Beardy.

In the meantime, his grandson, called Don Alphonso, not only grew to a man, but was created Duke of Braganza; his father Don John having been elected to the crown of Portugal; which he wore after such noble fashion, to the great good of his country, as to be surnamed the Memorable. Now the town of Veyros stood in the middle of seven or eight others, all belonging to the young Duke, from whose palace at Villa Viciosa it was but four leagues distant. He therefore had good intelligence of the shoemaker his grandfather; and being of a humane and truly generous spirit, the accounts he received of the old man's way of life made him at last extremely desirous of paying him a visit. He accordingly went with a retinue to Veyros; and meeting Barbadon in the streets, he alighted from his horse, bare-headed; and in the presence of that stately company and the people, asked the old man his blessing. The shoemaker, astonished at this sudden spectacle, and at the strange contrast which it furnished to his humble rank, stared in a bewildered manner upon the unknown personage, who thus knelt to him in the public way; and said, "Sir, do you mock me?". "No," answered the Duke; May God so help me, as I do not: but in earnest I crave I may kiss your hand and receive your blessing, for I am your grandson,

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* An order of knighthood, of which Don John was Master.

and son to Ines your daughter, conceived by the king, my lord and father." No sooner had the shoemaker heard these words, than he clapped his hands before his eyes, and said, "God bless me from ever beholding the son of so wicked a daughter as mine was! And yet, forasmuch as you are not guilty of her offence, hold; take my hand and my blessing, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." So saying, he laid one of his old hands upon the young man's head, blessing him; but neither the Duke nor his followers could persuade him to take the other away from his eyes; neither would he talk with him a word more. In this spirit, shortly after, he died: and just before his death he directed a tomb to be made for him, on which were sculptured the tools belonging to his trade, with this epitaph :

This sepulchre Barbadon caused to be made,
(Being of Veyros, a shoemaker by his trade)
For himself and the rest of his race,
Excepting his daughter Ines in any case.*

The author says that he has "heard it reported by the ancientest persons, that the fourth Duke of Braganza, Don James, son to Donna Isabel, sister to the King Don Emanuel, caused that tomb to be defaced, being the sepulchre of his fourth grandfather."+

As for the daughter, the conclusion of whose story comes lagging in like a penitent, "she continued," says the writer, "after she was delivered of that son, a very chaste and virtuous woman; and the king made her commandress of Santos, a most honourable place, and very plentiful; to the which none but princesses were admitted, living, as it were, abbesses and princesses of a monastery built without the walls of Lisbon, called Santos, that is Saints, founded by reason of some martyrs that were martyred there. And the religious women of that place have liberty to marry with the knights of their order, before they enter into that holy profession."

The rest of our author's remarks are in too curious a spirit to be omitted. "In this monastery," he says, "the same Donna Ines died, leaving behind her a glorious reputation for her virtue and holiness. Observe, gentle reader, the constancy that this Portuguese, a shoemaker, continued in, loathing to behold the honourable estate of his grandchild, nor would any more acknowledge his daughter, having been a lewd woman, for purchasing advancement with dishonour. This considered, you will not wonder at the Count Julian, that

* We have retained the homely translation of our informant as most likely to resemble the cast of the original. His account of the story is to be found in the Supplement to the Adventures of Don Sebastion: Harleian Miscellany, Vol. 2. We omitted to mention last week, that the ground-work of the article headed Gilbert! Gilbert! was from Turner's History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Edward the First: Chap. 9. We thank the correspondent who has sent us the account of Gilbert Becket's mother, from the Quadrilogus, which is Mr. Turner's own authority; but he will doubtless perceive, that we cannot afford room to indulge in extracts, the main spirit of which has already been given.

+ It appears by this, that the Don John of the tradition is John the 1st, who was elected king of Portugal, and became famous for his great qualities; and that his son by the alleged shoemaker's daughter was his successor, Alphonso

the 5th.

plagued Spain, and executed the king Roderigo for forcing his daughter la Cava, The example of this shoemaker is especially worthy the noting, and deeply to be considered; for, besides that it makes good our assertion, it teaches the higher not to disdain the lower, as long as they be virtuous and lovers of honour, It may be that this old man, for his integrity, rising from a virtuous zeal, merited that a daughter coming by descent from his grandchild, should be made Queen of Castile, and the mother of great Isabel, grandmother to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Ferdinando."

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Alas! a pretty posterity our shoemaker had, in Philip the 2d and his successors,—a race more suitable to his severity against his child, than his blessing upon his grandchild. Old Barbadon was a fine fellow too, after his fashion. We do not know how he reconciled his unforgiving conduct with his christianity; but he had enough precedents on that point. What we admire in him is, his shewing that he acted out of principle, and did not mistake passion for it. His crepidarian sculptures indeed are not so well; but a little vanity may be allowed to mingle with and soften such edge-tools of self-denial, as he chose to handle. His treatment of his daughter was ignorant, and in wiser times would have been brutal; especially when it is considered how much the conduct of children is modified by education and other circumstances: but then a brutal man would not have accompanied it with such voluntary suffering of his own. own. Neither did Barbadon leave his daughter to take her chance in the wide world, thinking of the evils she might be enduring, only to give a greater zest of fancied pity to the contentedness of his cruelty. He knew she was well taken care of; and if she was not to have the enjoyment of his society, he was determined that it should be a very uncomfortable one to himself. He knew that she lay on a princely bed, while he would have none at all. He knew that she was served upon gold and silver, while he renounced his old chesnut table,—the table at which she used to sit. He knew while he sat looking at his old beard and the wilful sordidness of his hands, that her locks and her fair limbs were objects of worship to the gallant and the great. And so he set off his destitutions against her over-possession; and took out the punishment he gave her, in revenge upon himself. This was the instinct of a man who loved a principle, but hated nobody :: of a man, who in a wiser time, would have felt the wisdom of kindness. Thus his blessing upon his grandchild becomes consistent with his cruelty to his child: and his living stock was a fine one in spite of him. His daughter shewed a sense of the wound she had given such a father, by relinquishing the sympathies she loved, because they had hurt him and her son, worthy of such a grandfather and such a daughter, and refined into a gracefulness of knowledge by education, thought it no mean thing or vulgar to kneel to the grey-headed artisan in the street, and beg the blessing of his honest hand.

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Orders received by the Booksellers, by the Newsmen, and by the Publisher, Joseph Appleyard, 19, Catherine-street, Strand.-Price Twopence. Printed by C. H. Reynell, No. 45, Broad-street, Golden-square, London.

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. IX.-WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8th, 1819.

MORE NEWS OF ULYSSES.

TALKING the other day with a friend about Dante, he observed, that whenever so great a poet told us any thing in addition or continuation of an ancient story, he had a right to be regarded as classical authority. For instance, said he, when he tells us of that characteristic death of Ulysses in one of the books of his Inferno, we ought to receive the information as authentic, and be glad that we have more news of Ulysses than we looked for.

We thought this a happy remark, and instantly turned with him to the passage in question; for not having read Dante regulary, we had passed it over so slightly as not to remember it. Yet it is a striking one, as the reader will see. The last account of Ulysses upon which we may fairly reckon, in the ancient poets, is his sudden reappearance before the suitors at Ithaca, and his consummate and godlike victory over their crest-fallen insolence. There is something more told of him, it is true, before the Odyssey concludes; but with the exception of his visit to his aged father, our memory scarcely wishes to retain it; nor does it controvert the general impression left upon us, that the wandering hero is victorious over his domestic .enemies; and reposes at last, and for life, in the bosoni of his family.

The lesser poets however could not let him alone. Homer leaves the general impression upon one's mind, as to the close of his life; but there are plenty of obscurer fables about it still. We have spe

cimens in modern times of this propensity never to have done with a good story; which is natural enough, though not very wise; nor are the best writers likely to meddle with it. Thus Cervantes was plagued with a spurious Quixote; and our circulating libraries have the adventures of Tom Jones in his Married State. The ancient writers on the present subject, availing themselves of an obscure prophecy of Tiresias, who tells Ulysses on his visit to hell, that his old enemy the sea would be the death of him at last, bring over the sea Telegonus, his son by the goddess Circe, who gets into a scuffle with the Ithacans, and kills his father unknowingly. It is added, that Telegonus afterwards returned to his mother's island, taking Penelope and his half-brother Telemachus with him; and

2nd Edition.

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here a singular arrangement takes place, more after the fashion of a modern Catholic dynasty, than an ancient heathen one for while Edipus was fated to undergo such dreadful misfortunes for marrying his mother without the knowledge of either party, Minerva herself comes down from heaven, on the present occasion, to order Telegonus, the son of Ulysses, to marry his father's wife; the other son, at the same time, making a suitable match with his father's mistress, Circe. Telemachus seems to have had the best of this extraordinary bargain, for Circe was a goddess, consequently always young; and yet to perplex these windings-up still more, Telemachus is represented by some as marying Circe's daughter, and killing his immortal mother-in-law. Nor does the character of the chaste and enduring Penelope escape in the confusion. Instead of waiting her husband's return in that patient manner, she is reported to have been overhospitable to all the suitors; the consequence of which was a son called Pan, being no less a personage than the god Pan himself, or Nature; a fiction, as Lord Bacon says, "applied very absurdly and indiscreetly." There are different stories respecting her lovers; but it is reported that when Ulysses returned from Troy, he divorced her for incontinence; and that she fled, and passed her latter days in Mantinea. Some even go so far as to say, that her father Icarius had attempted to destroy her when young, because the oracle had told him that she would be the most dissolute of the family. This was probably invented by the comic writers out of a buffoon malignity; for there are men, so foolishly incredulous with regard to principle, that the reputation of it, even in a fiction, makes them impatient.

Now it is impossible to say whether Dante would have left Ulysses quietly with Penelope after all his sufferings, had he known them as described in Homer. The old Florentine, though wilful enough when he wanted to dispose of a modern's fate, had great veneration for his ancient predecessors. At all events, he was not acquainted with Homer's works. They did not make their way again into Italy till a little later. But there were Latin writers extant, who might have informed him of the other stories relative to Ulysses; and he saw nothing in them, to hinder him from giving the great wanderer a death of his own.

He has accordingly, with great attention to nature, made him impatient of staying at home, after a life of such adventure and excitement. But we will relate the story in his own order. He begins it with one of his most romantic pieces of wildness. The poet and his guide Virgil are making the best of their difficult path along a ridge of the craggy rock, that overhangs the eighth gulph of hell; when Dante, looking down, sees the abyss before him full of flickering lights; as numerous, he says, as the fire-flies, which a peasant, reposing on a hill, sees filling the valley, of a hot evening. Every flame shot about separately; and he knew that some terrible mystery or other accompanied it. As he leaned down from the rock, grasping one of the crags, in order to look closer, his guide who perceived his earnestness, said, "Within those fires are spirits; every one swathed

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