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.
FIRST BOOK.
I sing the fates of Gebir. He had dwelt
Among those
mountain-caverns which retain
His labours yet, vast halls and flowing
wells,
Nor have forgotten their old master's name
Though severed
from his people here, incensed
By meditating on primeval wrongs,
He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose
Whole nations; here, ten
thousand of most might
He called aloud, and soon Charoba saw
His
dark helm hover o'er the land of Nile,
What should the virgin do? should royal knees
Bend suppliant, or
defenceless hands engage
Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms?
For
'twas reported that nor sword sufficed,
Nor shield immense nor coat
of massive mail,
But that upon their towering heads they bore
Each
a huge stone, refulgent as the stars.
This told she Dalica, then cried
aloud:
"If on your bosom laying down my head
I sobbed away the
sorrows of a child,
If I have always, and Heaven knows I have,
Next to a mother's held a nurse's name,
Succour this one distress,
recall those days,
Love me, though 'twere because you loved me
then."
But whether confident in magic rites
Or touched with sexual pride to
stand implored,
Dalica smiled, then spake: "Away those fears.
Though stronger than the strongest of his kind,
He falls--on me
devolve that charge; he falls.
Rather than fly him, stoop thou to allure;
Nay, journey to his tents: a city stood
Upon that coast, they say, by
Sidad built,
Whose father Gad built Gadir; on this ground
Perhaps
he sees an ample room for war.
Persuade him to restore the walls
himself
In honour of his ancestors, persuade -
But wherefore this
advice? young, unespoused,
Charoba want persuasions! and a
queen!"
"O Dalica!" the shuddering maid exclaimed,
"Could I encounter that
fierce, frightful man?
Could I speak? no, nor sigh!"
"And canst thou reign?"
Cried Dalica; "yield empire or comply."
Unfixed though seeming fixed, her eyes downcast,
The wonted buzz
and bustle of the court
From far through
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