Burlesques | Page 8

knows more of the French king than any man I have met with; and
we must have an eye upon him," said Lord Bolingbroke, then Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, and beckoning a suspicious- looking
person who was drinking at a side-table, whispered to him something.
Meantime who was he? where was he, this youth who had struck all the
wits of London with admiration? His galloping charger had returned to
the City; his splendid court-suit was doffed for the citizen's gabardine
and grocer's humble apron.
George de Barnwell was in Chepe--in Chepe, at the feet of Martha
Millwood.
VOL III.
THE CONDEMNED CELL.
"Quid me mollibus implicas lacertis, my Elinor? Nay," George added, a
faint smile illumining his wan but noble features, "why speak to thee in
the accents of the Roman poet, which thou comprehendest not? Bright
One, there be other things in Life, in Nature, in this Inscrutable
Labyrinth, this Heart on which thou leanest, which are equally
unintelligible to thee! Yes, my pretty one, what is the Unintelligible but
the Ideal? what is the Ideal but the Beautiful? what the Beautiful but
the Eternal? And the Spirit of Man that would commune with these is
like Him who wanders by the thina poluphloisboio thalasses, and
shrinks awe-struck before that Azure Mystery."
Emily's eyes filled with fresh-gushing dew. "Speak on, speak ever thus,
my George," she exclaimed. Barnwell's chains rattled as the confiding
girl clung to him. Even Snoggin, the turnkey appointed to sit with the
Prisoner, was affected by his noble and appropriate language, and also
burst into tears.
"You weep, my Snoggin," the Boy said; "and why? Hath Life been so

charming to me that I should wish to retain it? hath Pleasure no
after-Weariness? Ambition no Deception; Wealth no Care; and Glory
no Mockery? Psha! I am sick of Success, palled of Pleasure, weary of
Wine and Wit, and--nay, start not, my Adelaide--and Woman. I fling
away all these things as the Toys of Boyhood. Life is the Soul's
Nursery. I am a Man, and pine for the Illimitable! Mark you me! Has
the Morrow any terrors for me, think ye? Did Socrates falter at his
poison? Did Seneca blench in his bath? Did Brutus shirk the sword
when his great stake was lost? Did even weak Cleopatra shrink from
the Serpent's fatal nip? And why should I? My great Hazard hath been
played, and I pay my forfeit. Lie sheathed in my heart, thou flashing
Blade! Welcome to my Bosom, thou faithful Serpent; I hug thee,
peace-bearing Image of the Eternal! Ha, the hemlock cup! Fill high,
boy, for my soul is thirsty for the Infinite! Get ready the bath, friends;
prepare me for the feast To-morrow--bathe my limbs in odors, and put
ointment in my hair."
"Has for a bath," Snoggin interposed, "they're not to be 'ad in this ward
of the prison; but I dussay Hemmy will git you a little hoil for your
'air."
The Prisoned One laughed loud and merrily. "My guardian understands
me not, pretty one--and thou? what sayest thou? From those dear lips
methinks--plura sunt oscula quam sententiae--I kiss away thy tears,
dove!--they will flow apace when I am gone, then they will dry, and
presently these fair eyes will shine on another, as they have beamed on
poor George Barnwell. Yet wilt thou not all forget him, sweet one. He
was an honest fellow, and had a kindly heart for all the world said--"
"That, that he had," cried the gaoler and the girl in voices gurgling with
emotion. And you who read! you unconvicted Convict-- you murderer,
though haply you have slain no one--you Felon in posse if not in
esse--deal gently with one who has used the Opportunity that has failed
thee--and believe that the Truthful and the Beautiful bloom sometimes
in the dock and the convict's tawny Gabardine!
. . . . . . . .

In the matter for which he suffered, George could never be brought to
acknowledge that he was at all in the wrong. "It may be an error of
judgment," he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the gaol, "but it is no
crime. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. Where there is no
remorse, Crime cannot exist. I am not sorry: therefore, I am innocent. Is
the proposition a fair one?"
The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be contested.
"And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow," the Boy resumed, "for
ridding the world of a sordid worm;* of a man whose very soul was
dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the Beautiful?
When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the gardens of the
ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis