And every little corner, nook, and hole
Is penetrated with the insolent light.
Come darkness!

The following is edifying:

The eldest son of a rich nobleman

Is heir to all his incapacities;

He has wide wants, and narrow powers.

190

We are aware of no passage in the modern or ancient drama, in which the effect of bodily torture is expressed in a more brief, comprehensive, imaginative manner, than in an observation made by a judge to one of the assasins. The pleasure belonging to the original image renders it intensely painful.

Marzio. My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing :
Olimpio sold the robe to me, from which

You would infer my guilt.

2d Judge. Away with him!

1st Judge. Dare you, wiih lips yet white from the rack's kiss, Speak false?

Beatrice's thoughts upon what she might and might not find in the other world are very terrible; but we prefer concluding our extracts with the close of the play, which is deliciously patient and affectionate. How triumphant is the gentleness of virtue in its most mortal defeats!

Enter CAMILLO and Guards.

Bernardo. They come! Let me

Kiss those warm lips, before their crimson leaves
Are blighted-white-cold. Say farewell, before
Death chokes that gentle voice! O, let me hear
You speak!

Beatr. Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now:
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,
But tears and patience. One thing more, my child;
For thine own sake, be constant to the love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,

Tho' wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained. And tho'

Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain

Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
Bern. I cannot say, farewell!

6

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, byt 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

in it, vanished in an instant: many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece."-Anat. of Mel. Part 3, Sect. 2.

According to our poet, Mercury had come down from heaven, one day, in order to make love to a nymph, famous for her beauty. He could not find her; and he was halting among the woods uneasily, when he heard a lonely voice, complaining. It was

A mournful voice,

Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys
All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake.
"When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake!
"When move in a sweet body fit for life,

"And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
"Of hearts and lips! Ah, miserable me!"

Mercury went looking about among the trees and grass,

Until he found a palpitating snake,

Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.

The admiration, pity, and horror, to be excited by humanity in a brute shape, were never perhaps called upon by a greater mixture of beauty and deformity than in the picture of this creature. Our pity and suspicions are begged by the first word: the profuse and vital beauties with which she is covered seem proportioned to her misery and natural rights; and lest we should lose sight of them in this gorgeousness, the "woman's mouth" fills us at once with shuddering and compassion,

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermillion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustries with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some dæmon's mistress, or the dæmon's self.
Upon her erest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!

She had a woman's mouth with all it's pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there,
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?
As Proserpine still weeps for her Sicilian air.

The serpent tells Mercury that she knows upon what quest he is bound, and asks him if he has succeeded. The god, with the usual eagerness of his species to have his will, falls into the trap; and tells her that he will put her in possession of any wish she may have at heart, provided she can tell him where to find his nymph. As eagerly, she accepts his promise, making him ratify it by an oath, which he first pronounces with an earnest lightness, and afterwards with a deeper solemnity.

Then once again the charmed God began.

An oath, and through the serpent's ears it ran
Warm, tremulous, devout, psalterian.

The creature tells him that it was she who had rendered the nymph invisible, in order to preserve her from the importunities of the ruder. wood gods. She adds, that she was a woman herself, that she loves a youth of Corinth and wishes to be a woman again, and that if he will let her breathe upon his eyes, he shall see his invisible beauty. The god sees, loves, and prevails. The serpent undergoes a fierce and convulsive change, and flies towards Corinth,

A full-born beauty, new and exquisite.

Lamia, whose liability to painful metamorphosis was relieved by a supernatural imagination, had been attracted by the beauty of Lycius, while pitching her mind among the enjoyments of Corinth. By the same process, she knew that he was to pass along, that evening, on the road from the sea-side to Corinth; and there accordingly she contrives to have an interview, which ends in his being smitten with love, and conducting her to her pretended home in that city. She represents herself as a rich orphan, living "but half-retired," and affects to wonder that he never saw her before. As they enter Corinth, they pass the philosopher Apollonius, who is Lycius's tutor, and from whom he instinctively conceals his face. Lamia's hand shudders in that of her lover; but she says she is only wearied; and at the same moment, they stop at the entrance of a magnificent house :

Here they lived for some time, undisturbed by the world, in all the delight of a mutual passion. The house remained invisible to all eyes, but those of Lycius. There were a few Persian mutes, 66 seen that year about the markets;" and nobody knew whence they came; but the most inquisitive were baffled in endeavouring to track them to some place of abode.

But all this while, a god was every night in the house, taking offence. Every night

With a terrific glare,

Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair,
Hovered and buzzed his wings with fearful roar
Above the lintel of their chamber door,

And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor.

Lycius, to the great distress of his mistress, who saw in his vanity a
great danger, persuaded her to have a public wedding-feast. She only
begged him not to invite Apollonius; and then, resolving to dress up
her bridals with a sort of despairing magnificence, equal to her appre-
hensions of danger, she worked a fairy architecture in secret, served
only with the noise of wings and a restless sound of music-
A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone
Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan

Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade.

This is the very quintessence of the romantic. The walls of the long vaulted room were covered with palms and plantain-trees imitated in cedar-wood, and meeting over head in the middle of the ceiling;

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