Count Julian | Page 5

with the quenching in Gebir of the
conqueror's ambition, and with the ruin of his life and its new hope by
the destroying powers that our misunderstandings of the better life
bring into play, runs that part of the poem which shows Tamar, his
brother, preparing to dwell with the sea nymph, the ideal, far away
from all the struggle of mankind.

Recognition of the great beauty of Lander's "Gebir" came first from
Southey in "The Critical Review." Southey found that the poem grew
upon him, and became afterwards Landor's lifelong friend. When
Shelley was at Oxford in 1811, there were times when he would read
nothing but "Gebir." His friend Hogg says that when he went to
Shelley's rooms one morning to tell him something of importance, he
could not draw his attention away from "Gebir." Hogg impatiently
threw the book out of window. It was brought back by a servant, and
Shelley immediately fastened upon it again.
At the close of 1805 Landor's father died, and the young poet became a
man of property. In 1808 Southey and Landor first met. Their
friendship remained unbroken. When Spain rose to throw off the yoke
of Napoleon, Landor's enthusiasm carried him to Corunna, where he
paid for the equipment of a thousand volunteers, and joined the Spanish
army of the North. After the Convention of Cintra he returned to
England. Then he bought a large Welsh estate--Llanthony Priory--paid
for it by selling other property, and began costly improvements. But he
lived chiefly at Bath, where he married, in 1811, when his age was
thirty-six, a girl of twenty. It was then that he began his tragedy of
"Count Julian." The patriotic struggle in Spain commended at the same
time to Scott, Southey, and Landor the story of Roderick, the last of the
Gothic kings, against whom, to avenge wrong done to his daughter,
Count Julian called the Moors in to invade his country. In 1810
Southey was working at his poem of "Roderick the Last of the Goths,"
in fellowship with his friend Landor, who was treating the same subject
in his play. Scott's "Roderick" was being printed so nearly at the same
time with Landor's play, that Landor wrote to Southey early in 1812
while the proof-sheets were coming to him: "I am surprised that Upham
has not sent me Mr. Scott's poem yet. However, I am not sorry. I feel a
sort of satisfaction that mine is going to the press first, though there is
little danger that we should think on any subject alike, or stumble on
any one character in the same track." De Quincey spoke of the hidden
torture shown in Landor's play to be ever present in the mind of Count
Julian, the betrayer of his country, as greater than the tortures inflicted
in old Rome on generals who had committed treason. De Quincey's
admiration of this play was more than once expressed. "Mr. Landor,"
he said, "who always rises with his subject, and dilates like Satan into

Teneriffe or Atlas when he sees before him an antagonist worthy of his
powers, is probably the one man in Europe that has adequately
conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency, and the monumental
misery of Count Julian. That sublimity of penitential grief, which
cannot accept consolation from man, cannot bear external reproach,
cannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much as SEE the
curiosity of bystanders; that awful carelessness of all but the troubled
deeps within his own heart, and of God's spirit brooding upon their
surface and searching their abysses; never was so majestically
described."
H. M.

CHARACTERS.

COUNT JULIAN. RODERIGO, King of Spain. OPAS, Metropolitan
of Seville. SISABERT, betrothed to Covilla. MUZA, Prince of
Mauritania. ABDALAZIS, Son of Muza. TARIK, Moorish Chieftain.
COVILLA, Daughter of Julian. EGILONA, Wife of Roderigo.
HERNANDO, } OSMA, } Officers. RAMIRO, &c. }

FIRST ACT: FIRST SCENE.

Camp of JULIAN.
OPAS. JULIAN.
OPAS. See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God, See thy lost child.
JUL. I have avenged me, Opas, More than enough: I only sought to
hurl The brands of war on one detested head, And die upon his ruin. O
my country! O lost to honour, to thyself, to me, Why on barbarian
hands devolves thy cause, Spoilers, blasphemers!
OPAS. Is it thus, Don Julian, When thy own offspring, that beloved
child, For whom alone these very acts were done By them and thee,
when thy Covilla stands An outcast and a suppliant at thy gate, Why
that still stubborn agony of soul, Those struggles with the bars thyself
imposed? Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever?
JUL. Father of mercies! shew me none, whene'er The wrongs she
suffers cease to wring my heart, Or I seek solace ever, but in