A POEM NOT A PLAY. 129 no animosity or hostility to that feeble race. Their concerns excite no interest their pursuits no sympathy It is irksome and vexatious for him their joys no envy. to be crossed by them in his melancholy musings, but he treats them with gentleness and pity; and, except when stung to impatience by too importunate an intrusion, is kind and considerate of the comforts of all around him. This piece is properly entitled a Dramatic Poem-for it is merely poetical, and is not at all a drama or play in the modern acceptation of the term. It has no action; no plot and no characters; Manfred merely muses and suffers from the beginning to the end. His distresses are the same at the opening of the scene and at its closing—and the temper in which they are borne is the same. A hunter and a priest, and some domestics, are indeed introduced; but they have no connection with the passions or sufferings on which the interest depends; and Manfred is substantially alone throughout the whole piece. He holds no communion but with the memory of the Being he had loved; and the immortal Spirits whom he evokes to reproach with his misery, and their inability to relieve it. These unearthly beings approach nearer to the character of persons of the drama -- but still they are but choral accompaniments to the performance; and Manfred is, in reality, the only actor and sufferer on the scene. To delineate his character indeed to render conceivable his feelings is plainly the whole scope and design of the poem; and the conception and execution are, in this respect, equally admirable. It is a grand and terrific vision of a being invested with superhuman attributes, in order that he may be capable of more than human sufferings, and be sustained under them by more than human force and pride. To object to the improbability of the fiction is, we think, to mistake the aim and end of the author. Probabilities, we apprehend, did not enter at all into his considerationhis object was, to produce effect- to exalt and dilate the character through whom he was to interest or appal us - and to raise our conception of it, by all the helps that 130 MANFRED SCOPE AND CONCEPTION. could be derived from the majesty of nature, or the dread of superstition. It is enough, therefore, if the situation in which he has placed him is conceivable- and if the supposition of its reality enhances our emotions and kindles our imagination; for it is Manfred only that we are required to fear, to pity, or admire. If we can once conceive of him as a real existence, and enter into the depth and the height of his pride and his sorrows, we may deal as we please with the means that have been used to furnish us with this impression, or to enable us to attain to this conception. We may regard them but as types, or metaphors, or allegories: But he is the thing to be expressed; and the feeling and the intellect, of which all these are but shadows. The events, such as they are, upon which the piece may be said to turn, have all taken place long before its opening, and are but dimly shadowed out in the casual communications of the agonizing being to whom they relate. Nobly born and trained in the castle of his ancestors, he had very soon sequestered himself from the society of men; and, after running through the common circle of human sciences, had dedicated himself to the worship of the wild magnificence of nature, and to those forbidden studies by which he had learned to command its presiding powers. One companion, however, he had, in all his tasks and enjoyments - a female of kindred genius, taste, and capacity-lovely too beyond all loveliness; but, as we gather, too nearly related to be lawfully beloved. The catastrophe of their unhappy passion is insinuated in the darkest and most ambiguous terms-all that we make out is, that she died untimely and by violence, on account of this fatal attachment though not by the act of its object. He killed her, he says, not with his hand- but his heart; and her blood was shed, though not by him! From that hour, life is a burden to him, and memory a torture-and the extent of his power and knowledge serves only to shew him the hopelessness and endlessness of his misery. The piece opens with his evocation of the Spirits of the Elements, from whom he demands the boon of for SCENE WITH THE SPIRITS. 131 getfulness and questions them as to his own immortality. The scene is in his Gothic tower at midnight and opens with a soliloquy that reveals at once the state of the speaker, and the genius of the author. 66 The lamp must be replenish'd- but even then It will not burn so long as I must watch! Since that all-nameless hour! I have no dread, And feel the curse to have no natural fear, Nor fluttering throb, that beats with hopes or wishes, When his evocation is completed, a star is seen at the far end of a gallery, and celestial voices are heard reciting a great deal of poetry. After they have answered that the gift of oblivion is not at their disposal, and intimated that death itself could not bestow it on him, they ask if he has any further demand to make of them. He answers, 66 No, none yet stay! one moment, ere we part- The steady aspect of a clear large star; But nothing more. Approach me as ye are, Or one, or all, in your accustomed forms. Spirit. We have no forms beyond the elements Of which we are the mind and principle: But choose a form-in that we will appear. Man. I have no choice; there is no form on earth Hideous or beautiful to me. Let him, Who is most powerful of ye, take such aspect As unto him may seem most fitting. Come! Seventh Spirit. (Appearing in the shape of a beautiful female figure.) Behold! Man. Oh God! if it be thus, and thou [MANFRED falls senseless."-p. 15, 16. The first scene of this extraordinary performance ends with a long poetical incantation, sung by the invisible spirits over the senseless victim before them. The second shows him in the bright sunshine of morning, on the top of the Jungfrau mountain, meditating selfdestruction and uttering forth in solitude as usual the voice of his habitual despair, and those intermingled feelings of love and admiration for the grand and beautiful objects with which he is environed, that unconsciously win him back to a certain kindly sympathy with human enjoyments. 66 Man. The spirits I have raised abandon me— The spells which I have studied baffle me The remedy I reck'd of tortured me: I lean no more on superhuman aid: It hath no power upon the past, and for The future, till the past be gulf'd in darkness, It is not of my search. My Mother Earth! And thou fresh breaking Day, and you, ye Mountains, - Ay, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, [An eagle passes. MANFRED. To sink or soar, with our mix'd essence make And men are [The shepherd's pipe in the distance is heard. The natural music of the mountain reed For here the patriarchal days are not A pastoral fable-pipes in the liberal air, Mix'd with the sweet bells of the sauntering herd; A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment- born and dying With the blest tone which made me!"-p. 20 —- 22. 133 At this period of his soliloquy, he is descried by a Chamois hunter, who overhears its continuance. Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines, Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless, A blighted trunk upon a cursed root, Which but supplies a feeling to decay And to be thus, eternally but thus, Having been otherwise! Ye topling crags of ice! Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass, And only fall on things which still would live; The mists boil up around the glaciers! clouds Heaped with the damn'd like pebbles. I am giddy!"-p. 23, 24. Just as he is about to spring from the cliff, he is seized by the hunter, who forces him away from the dangerous place in the midst of the rising tempest. In the second act, we find him in the cottage of this peasant, and in a still wilder state of disorder. His host offers him wine; but, upon looking at the cup, he exclaims "Away, away! there's blood upon the brim! Will it then never never sink in the earth? |