Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 16

by Unknown

The Salvation of Faust

ANGELS
[Soaring in the higher atmosphere, bearing the immortal part of Faust]

The noble spirit now is free,
And saved from evil scheming:
Whoe'er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming.
And if he feels the grace of love
That from on high is given,
The blessed hosts, that wait above,
Shall welcome him to heaven!

THE YOUNGER ANGELS

They, the roses, freely spended
By the penitent, the glorious,
Helped to make the fight victorious,
And the lofty work is ended.
We this precious soul have won us;
Evil ones we forced to shun us;
Devils fled us when we hit them:
'Stead of pangs of hell, that bit them,
Love pangs felt they, sharper, vaster:
Even he, old Satan Master,
Pierced with keenest pain retreated.
Now rejoice! The work's completed!

THE MORE PERFECT ANGELS

Earth's residue to bear
Hath sorely pressed us;
It were not pure and fair,
Though 'twere asbestus.
When every element
The mind's high forces
Have seized, subdued, and blent,
No angel divorces
Twin natures single grown,
That inly mate them:
Eternal love alone
Can separate them.

THE YOUNGER ANGELS

Mist-like on heights above,
We now are seeing
Nearer and nearer move
Spiritual Being.
The clouds are growing clear;
And moving throngs appear
Of blessed boys,
Free from the earthly gloom,
In circling poise,
Who taste the cheer
Of the new springtime bloom
Of the upper sphere.
Let them inaugurate
Him to the perfect state,
Now, as their peer!

THE BLESSED BOYS

Gladly receive we now
Him, as a chrysalis:
Therefore achieve we now
Pledge of our bliss.
The earth-flakes dissipate
That cling around him!
See, he is fair and great!
Divine Life hath crowned him.

DOCTOR MARIANUS
[In the highest, purest cell]

Free is the view at last,
The spirit lifted:
There women, floating past,
Are upward drifted:
The Glorious One therein,
With star-crown tender,—
The pure, the Heavenly Queen,
I know her splendor.

[Enraptured]

Highest Mistress of the World!
Let me in the azure
Tent of Heaven, in light unfurled,
Here thy Mystery measure!
Justify sweet thoughts that move
Breast of man to meet thee,
And with holy bliss of love
Bear him up to greet thee!
With unconquered courage we
Do thy bidding highest;
But at once shall gentle be,
When thou pacifiest.
Virgin, pure in brightest sheen,
Mother sweet, supernal,—
Unto us Elected Queen,
Peer of Gods Eternal!
Light clouds are circling
Around her splendor,—
Penitent women
Of natures tender,
Her knees embracing,
Ether respiring,
Mercy requiring!
Thou, in immaculate ray,
Mercy not leavest,
And the lightly led astray,
Who trust thee, receivest!
In their weakness fallen at length,
Hard it is to save them:
Who can crush, by native strength,
Vices that enslave them?
Whose the foot that may not slip
On the surface slanting?
Whom befool not eye and lip,
Breath and voice enchanting?

The Mater Gloriosa soars into the space

CHORUS OF WOMEN PENITENTS

To heights thou'rt speeding
Of endless Eden:
Receive our pleading,
Transcendent Maiden,
With mercy laden!

Magna Peccatrix [St. Luke, vii. 36]

By the love before him kneeling,—
Him, thy Son, a Godlike vision;
By the tears like balsam stealing,
Spite of Pharisees' derision;
By the box, whose ointment precious
Shed its spice and odors cheery;
By the locks, whose softest meshes
Dried the holy feet and weary!—

MULIER SAMARITANA [St. John, iv.]

By that well, the ancient station
Whither Abram's flocks were driven;
By the jar, whose restoration
To the Savior's lips was given;
By the fountain pure and vernal,
Thence its present bounty spending,—
Overflowing, bright, eternal,
Watering the worlds unending!—

MARIA ÆGYPTIACA [Acta Sanctorum]

By the place where the immortal
Body of the Lord hath lain;
By the arm which, from the portal,
Warning, thrust me back again;
By the forty years' repentance
In the lonely desert land;
By the blissful farewell sentence
Which I wrote upon the sand!—

THE THREE

Thou thy presence not deniest
Unto sinful women ever,—
Liftest them to win the highest
Gain of penitent endeavor,—
So, from this good soul withdraw not—
Who but once forgot, transgressing,
Who her loving error saw not—
Pardon adequate, and blessing!

UNA PŒNITENTIUM
[Formerly named Margaret, stealing closer]

Incline, O Maiden,
With mercy laden,
In light unfading,
Thy gracious countenance upon my bliss!
My loved, my lover,
His trials over
In yonder world, returns to me in this!

BLESSED BOYS
[Approaching in hovering circles]

With mighty limbs he towers
Already above us;
He, for this love of ours,
Will richlier love us.
Early were we removed,
Ere Life could reach us;
Yet he hath learned and proved,
And he will teach us.

THE PENITENT
[Formerly named Margaret]

The spirit choir around him seeing,
New to himself, he scarce divines
His heritage of new-born Being,
When like the Holy Host he shines.
Behold, how he each band hath cloven
The earthly life had round him thrown,
And through his garb, of ether woven,
The early force of youth is shown!
Vouchsafe to me that I instruct him!
Still dazzles him the Day's new glare.

MATER GLORIOSA

Rise thou to higher spheres! Conduct him,
Who, feeling thee, shall follow there!

DOCTOR MARIANUS
[Prostrate, adoring]

Penitents, look up, elate.
Where she beams salvation;
Gratefully to blessed fate
Grow, in re-creation!
Be our souls, as they have been,
Dedicate to thee!
Virgin Holy, Mother, Queen,
Goddess, gracious be!

CHORUS MYSTICUS

All things transitory
But as symbols are sent:
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to Event:
The Indescribable,
Here it is done:
The Woman Soul leadeth us
Upward and on!

---

MIGNON'S LOVE AND LONGING

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.' Carlyle's Translation

Nothing is more touching than the first disclosure of a love which has been nursed in silence; of a faith grown strong in secret, and which at last comes forth in the hour of need and reveals itself to him who formerly has reckoned it of small account. The bud which had been closed so long and firmly was now ripe to burst its swathings, and Wilhelm's heart could never have been readier to welcome the impressions of affection.

She stood before him, and noticed his disquietude. "Master!" she cried, "if thou art unhappy, what will become of Mignon?" "Dear little creature," said he, taking her hands, "thou too art part of my anxieties. I must go hence." She looked at his eyes, glistening with restrained tears, and knelt down with vehemence before him. He kept her hands; she laid her head upon his knees, and remained quite still. He played with her hair, patted her, and spoke kindly to her. She continued motionless for a considerable time. At last he felt a sort of palpitating movement in her, which began very softly, and then by degrees, with increasing violence, diffused itself over all her frame. "What ails thee, Mignon?" cried he; "what ails thee?" She raised her little head, looked at him, and all at once laid her hand upon her heart, with the countenance of one repressing the utterance of pain. He raised her up, and she fell upon his breast; he pressed her towards him, and kissed her. She replied not by any pressure of the hand, by any motion whatever. She held firmly against her heart; and all at once gave a cry, which was accompanied by spasmodic movements of the body. She started up, and immediately fell down before him, as if broken in every joint. It was an excruciating moment! "My child!" cried he, raising her up and clasping her fast,—"my child, what ails thee?" The palpitations continued, spreading from the heart over all the lax and powerless limbs; she was merely hanging in his arms. All at once she again became quite stiff, like one enduring the sharpest corporeal agony; and soon with a new vehemence all her frame once more became alive, and she threw herself about his neck, like a bent spring that is closing; while in her soul, as it were, a strong rent took place, and at the same moment a stream of tears flowed from her shut eyes into his bosom. He held her fast. She wept, and no tongue can express the force of these tears. Her long hair had loosened, and was hanging down before her; it seemed as if her whole being was melting incessantly into a brook of tears. Her rigid limbs were again become relaxed; her inmost soul was pouring itself forth; in the wild confusion of the moment, Wilhelm was afraid she would dissolve in his arms, and leave nothing there for him to grasp. He held her faster and faster. "My child!" cried he, "my child! thou art indeed mine, if that word can comfort thee. Thou art mine! I will keep thee, I will never forsake thee!" Her tears continued flowing. At last she raised herself; a faint gladness shone upon her face. "My father!" cried she, "thou wilt not forsake me? Wilt be my father? I am thy child!"

Softly, at this moment, the harp began to sound before the door; the old man brought his most affecting songs as an evening offering to our friend, who, holding his child ever faster in his arms, enjoyed the most pure and undescribable felicity.

---

Know'st thou the land where citron-apples bloom,
And oranges like gold in leafy gloom,
A gentle wind from deep-blue heaven blows,
The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows?
Know'st thou it then?
'Tis there! Tis there,
O my true loved one, thou with me must go!

Know'st thou the house, its porch with pillars tall?
The rooms do glitter, glitters bright the hall,
And marble statues stand, and look each one:
What's this, poor child, to thee they've done?
Know'st thou it then?
'Tis there! 'Tis there,
O my protector, thou with me must go!

"Know'st thou the hill, the bridge that hangs on cloud?
The mules in mist grope o'er the torrent loud,
In caves lie coiled the dragon's ancient brood,
The crag leaps down, and over it the flood:
Know'st thou it then?
'Tis there! 'Tis there
Our way runs: O my father, wilt thou go?"

Next morning, on looking for Mignon about the house, Wilhelm did not find her, but was informed that she had gone out early with Melina, who had risen betimes to receive the wardrobe and other apparatus of his theatre.

After the space of some hours, Wilhelm heard the sound of music before his door. At first he thought it was the harper come again to visit him; but he soon distinguished the tones of a cithern, and the voice which began to sing was Mignon's. Wilhelm opened the door; the child came in, and sang him the song we have just given above.

The music and general expression of it pleased our friend extremely, though he could not understand all the words. He made her once more repeat the stanzas, and explain them; he wrote them down, and translated them into his native language. But the originality of its turns he could imitate only from afar: its childlike innocence of expression vanished from it in the process of reducing its broken phraseology to uniformity, and combining its disjointed parts. The charm of the tune, moreover, was entirely incomparable.

She began every verse in a stately and solemn manner, as if she wished to draw attention towards something wonderful, as if she had something weighty to communicate. In the third line, her tones became deeper and gloomier; the "Know'st thou it then?" was uttered with a show of mystery and eager circumspectness; in the "'Tis there! 'Tis there!" lay a boundless longing; and her "With me must go!" she modified at each repetition, so that now it appeared to entreat and implore, now to impel and persuade.

On finishing her song for the second time, she stood silent for a moment, looked keenly at Wilhelm, and asked him, "Know'st thou the land?" "It must mean Italy," said Wilhelm: "where didst thou get the little song?" "Italy!" said Mignon, with an earnest air. "If thou go to Italy, take me along with thee; for I am too cold here." "Hast thou been there already, little dear?" said Wilhelm. But the child was silent, and nothing more could be got out of her.

---

WILHELM MEISTER'S INTRODUCTION TO SHAKESPEARE

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.' Carlyle's Translation

"Have you never," said Jarno, taking him aside, "read one of Shakespeare's plays?"

"No," replied Wilhelm: "since the time when they became more known in Germany, I have myself grown unacquainted with the theatre; and I know not whether I should now rejoice that an old taste and occupation of my youth, has been by chance renewed. In the mean time, all that I have heard of these plays has excited little wish to become acquainted with such extraordinary monsters, which appear to set probability and dignity alike at defiance."

"I would advise you," said the other, "to make a trial, notwithstanding: it can do one no harm to look at what is extraordinary with one's own eyes. I will lend you a volume or two; and you cannot better spend your time than by casting everything aside, and retiring to the solitude of your old habitation, to look into the magic lantern of that unknown world. It is sinful of you to waste your hours in dressing out these apes to look more human, and teaching dogs to dance. One thing only I require,—you must not cavil at the form; the rest I can leave to your own good sense and feeling."

The horses were standing at the door; and Jarno mounted with some other cavaliers, to go and hunt. Wilhelm looked after him with sadness. He would fain have spoken much with this man who though in a harsh, unfriendly way, gave him new ideas,—ideas that he had need of.

Oftentimes a man, when approaching some development of his powers, capacities, and conceptions, gets into a perplexity from which a prudent friend might easily deliver him. He resembles a traveler, who, at but a short distance from the inn he is to rest at, falls into the water: were any one to catch him then and pull him to the bank, with one good wetting it were over; whereas, though he struggles out himself, it is often at the side where he tumbled in, and he has to make a wide and weary circuit before reaching his appointed object.

Wilhelm now began to have an inkling that things went forward in the world differently from what he had supposed. He now viewed close at hand the solemn and imposing life of the great and distinguished, and wondered at the easy dignity which they contrived to give it. An army on its march, a princely hero at the head of it, such a multitude of co-operating warriors, such a multitude of crowding worshipers, exalted his imagination. In this mood he received the promised books; and ere long, as may be easily supposed, the stream of that mighty genius laid hold of him and led him down to a shoreless ocean, where he soon completely forgot and lost himself....

Wilhelm had scarcely read one or two of Shakespeare's plays, till their effect on him became so strong that he could go no further. His whole soul was in commotion. He sought an opportunity to speak with Jarno; to whom, on meeting with him, he expressed his boundless gratitude for such delicious entertainment.

"I clearly enough foresaw," said Jarno, "that you would not remain insensible to the charms of the most extraordinary and most admirable of all writers."

"Yes!" exclaimed our friend: "I cannot recollect that any book, any man, any incident of my life, has produced such important effects on me, as the precious works to which by your kindness I have been directed. They seem as if they were performances of some celestial genius descending among men, to make them by the mildest instructions acquainted with themselves. They are no fictions! You would think, while reading them, you stood before the inclosed awful Books of Fate, while the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling through the leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro. The strength and tenderness, the power and peacefulness of this man, have so astonished and transported me, that I long vehemently for the time when I shall have it in my power to read further."

"Bravo!" said Jarno, holding out his hand, and squeezing our friend's. "This is as it should be! And the consequences which I hope for will likewise surely follow."

"I wish," said Wilhelm, "I could but disclose to you all that is going on within me even now. All the anticipations I have ever had regarding man and his destiny, which have accompanied me from youth upwards often unobserved by myself, I find developed and fulfilled in Shakespeare's writings. It seems as if he cleared up every one of our enigmas to us, though we cannot say, Here or there is the word of solution. His men appear like natural men, and yet they are not. These, the most mysterious and complex productions of creation, here act before us as if they were watches, whose dial-plates and cases were of crystal, which pointed out according to their use the course of the hours and minutes; while at the same time you could discern the combination of wheels and springs that turn them. The few glances I have cast over Shakespeare's world incite me, more than anything beside, to quicken my footsteps forward into the actual world, to mingle in the flood of destinies that is suspended over it; and at length, if I shall prosper, to draw a few cups from the great ocean of true nature, and to distribute them from off the stage among the thirsting people of my native land."

---

WILHELM MEISTER'S ANALYSIS OF HAMLET

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'

Seeing the company so favorably disposed, Wilhelm now hoped he might further have it in his power to converse with them on the poetic merit of the pieces which might come before them. "It is not enough," said he next day, when they were all again assembled, "for the actor merely to glance over a dramatic work, to judge of it by his first impression, and thus without investigation to declare his satisfaction or dissatisfaction with it. Such things may be allowed in a spectator, whose purpose it is rather to be entertained and moved than formally to criticize. But the actor, on the other hand, should be prepared to give a reason for his praise or censure: and how shall he do this if he have not taught himself to penetrate the sense, the views, and feelings of his author? A common error is, to form a judgment of a drama from a single part in it; and to look upon this part itself in an isolated point of view, not in its connection with the whole. I have noticed this within a few days so clearly in my own conduct, that I will give you the account as an example, if you please to hear me patiently.

"You all know Shakespeare's incomparable 'Hamlet': our public reading of it at the Castle yielded every one of us the greatest satisfaction. On that occasion we proposed to act the piece; and I, not knowing what I undertook, engaged to play the Prince's part. This I conceived that I was studying, while I began to get by heart the strongest passages, the soliloquies, and those scenes in which force of soul, vehemence, and elevation of feeling have the freest scope; where the agitated heart is allowed to display itself with touching expressiveness.

"I further conceived that I was penetrating quite into the spirit of the character, while I endeavored as it were to take upon myself the load of deep melancholy under which my prototype was laboring, and in this humor to pursue him through the strange labyrinths of his caprices and his singularities. Thus learning, thus practicing, I doubted not but I should by-and-by become one person with my hero.

"But the farther I advanced, the more difficult did it become for me to form any image of the whole, in its general bearings; till at last it seemed as if impossible. I next went through the entire piece, without interruption; but here too I found much that I could not away with. At one time the characters, at another time the manner of displaying them, seemed inconsistent; and I almost despaired of finding any general tint, in which I might present my whole part with all its shadings and variations. In such devious paths I toiled, and wandered long in vain; till at length a hope arose that I might reach my aim in quite a new way.

"I set about investigating every trace of Hamlet's character, as it had shown itself before his father's death: I endeavored to distinguish what in it was independent of this mournful event; independent of the terrible events that followed; and what most probably the young man would have been, had no such thing occurred.

"Soft, and from a noble stem, this royal flower had sprung up under the immediate influences of majesty; the idea of moral rectitude with that of princely elevation, the feeling of the good and dignified with the consciousness of high birth, had in him been unfolded simultaneously. He was a prince, by birth a prince; and he wished to reign, only that good men might be good without obstruction. Pleasing in form, polished by nature, courteous from the heart, he was meant to be the pattern of youth and the joy of the world.

"Without any prominent passion, his love for Ophelia was a still presentiment of sweet wants. His zeal in knightly accomplishments was not entirely his own; it needed to be quickened and inflamed by praise bestowed on others for excelling in them. Pure in sentiment, he knew the honorable-minded, and could prize the rest which an upright spirit tastes on the bosom of a friend. To a certain degree, he had learned to discern and value the good and the beautiful in arts and sciences; the mean, the vulgar was offensive to him: and if hatred could take root in his tender soul, it was only so far as to make him properly despise the false and changeful insects of a court, and play with them in easy scorn. He was calm in his temper, artless in his conduct, neither pleased with idleness nor too violently eager for employment. The routine of a university he seemed to continue when at court. He possessed more mirth of humor than of heart; he was a good companion, pliant, courteous, discreet, and able to forget and forgive an injury, yet never able to unite himself with those who overstept the limits of the right, the good, and the becoming.

"When we read the piece again, you shall judge whether I am yet on the proper track. I hope at least to bring forward passages that shall support my opinion in its main points."

This delineation was received with warm approval; the company imagined they foresaw that Hamlet's manner of proceeding might now be very satisfactorily explained; they applauded this method of penetrating into the spirit of a writer. Each of them proposed to himself to take up some piece, and study it on these principles, and so unfold the author's meaning ....

Loving Shakespeare as our friend did, he failed not to lead round the conversation to the merits of that dramatist. Expressing, as he entertained, the liveliest hopes of the new epoch which these exquisite productions must form in Germany, he ere long introduced his 'Hamlet,' who had busied him so much of late.

Serlo declared that he would long ago have played the piece, had this been possible, and that he himself would willingly engage to act Polonius. He added with a smile, "An Ophelia too will certainly turn up, if we had but a Prince."

Wilhelm did not notice that Aurelia seemed a little hurt at her brother's sarcasm. Our friend was in his proper vein, becoming copious and didactic, expounding how he would have 'Hamlet' played. He circumstantially delivered to his hearers the opinions we before saw him busied with; taking all the trouble possible to make his notion of the matter acceptable, skeptical as Serlo showed himself regarding it. "Well then," said the latter finally, "suppose we grant you all this, what will you explain by it?"

"Much, everything," said Wilhelm. "Conceive a prince such as I have painted him, and that his father suddenly dies. Ambition and the love of rule are not the passions that inspire him. As a king's son, he would have been contented; but now he is first constrained to consider the difference which separates a sovereign from a subject. The crown was not hereditary; yet a longer possession of it by his father would have strengthened the pretensions of an only son, and secured his hopes of the succession. In place of this, he now beholds himself excluded by his uncle, in spite of specious promises, most probably forever. He is now poor in goods and favor, and a stranger in the scene which from youth he had looked upon as his inheritance. His temper here assumes its first mournful tinge. He feels that now he is not more, that he is less, than a private nobleman; he offers himself as the servant of every one; he is not courteous and condescending, he is needy and degraded.

"His past condition he remembers as a vanished dream. It is in vain that his uncle strives to cheer him, to present his situation in another point of view. The feeling of his nothingness will not leave him.

"The second stroke that came upon him wounded deeper, bowed still more. It was the marriage of his mother. The faithful tender son had yet a mother, when his father passed away. He hoped in the company of his surviving, noble-minded parent, to reverence the heroic form of the departed; but his mother too he loses, and it is something worse than death that robs him of her. The trustful image which a good child loves to form of its parents is gone. With the dead there is no help; on the living no hold. She also is a woman, and her name is Frailty, like that of all her sex.

"Now first does he feel himself completely bent and orphaned; and no happiness of life can repay what he has lost. Not reflective or sorrowful by nature, reflection and sorrow have become for him a heavy obligation. It is thus that we see him first enter on the scene. I do not think that I have mixed aught foreign with the piece, or overcharged a single feature of it."

Serlo looked at his sister and said, "Did I give thee a false picture of our friend? He begins well; he has still many things to tell us, many to persuade us of." Wilhelm asseverated loudly that he meant not to persuade but to convince; he begged for another moment's patience.

"Figure to yourselves this youth," cried he, "this son of princes; conceive him vividly, bring his state before your eyes, and then observe him when he learns that his father's spirit walks; stand by him in the terrors of the night, when the venerable ghost itself appears before him. A horrid shudder passes over him; he speaks to the mysterious form; he sees it beckon him; he follows it, and hears. The fearful accusation of his uncle rings in his ears; the summons to revenge, and the piercing oft-repeated prayer, Remember me!

"And when the ghost has vanished, who is it that stands before us? A young hero panting for vengeance? A prince by birth, rejoicing to be called to punish the usurper of his crown? No! trouble and astonishment take hold of the solitary young man; he grows bitter against smiling villains, swears that he will not forget the spirit, and concludes with the significant ejaculation:—

"'The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!'

"In these words, I imagine, will be found the key to Hamlet's whole procedure. To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. In this view the whole piece seems to me to be composed. There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered.

"A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him, not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind."

Aurelia seemed to give but little heed to what was passing; at last she conducted Wilhelm to another room, and going to the window, and looking out at the starry sky she said to him, "You have still much to tell us about Hamlet; I will not hurry you; my brother must hear it as well as I; but let me beg to know your thoughts about Ophelia."

"Of her there cannot much be said," he answered; "for a few master strokes complete her character. The whole being of Ophelia floats in sweet and ripe sensation. Kindness for the Prince, to whose hand she may aspire, flows so spontaneously, her tender heart obeys its impulses so unresistingly, that both father and brother are afraid; both give her warning harshly and directly. Decorum, like the thin lawn upon her bosom, cannot hide the soft, still movements of her heart; it on the contrary betrays them. Her fancy is smit; her silent modesty breathes amiable desire; and if the friendly goddess Opportunity should shake the tree, its fruit would fall."

"And then," said Aurelia, "when she beholds herself forsaken, cast away, despised; when all is inverted in the soul of her crazed lover, and the highest changes to the lowest, and instead of the sweet cup of love he offers her the bitter cup of woe—"

"Her heart breaks," cried Wilhelm; "the whole structure of her being is loosened from its joinings; her father's death strikes fiercely against it; and the fair edifice altogether crumbles into fragments...."

Serlo, at this moment entering, inquired about his sister; and looking in the book which our friend had hold of, cried, "So you are again at 'Hamlet'? Very good! Many doubts have arisen in me, which seem not a little to impair the canonical aspect of the piece as you would have it viewed. The English themselves have admitted that its chief interest concludes with the third act; the last two lagging sorrily on, and scarcely uniting with the rest: and certainly about the end it seems to stand stock still."

"It is very possible," said Wilhelm, "that some individuals of a nation which has so many masterpieces to feel proud of, may be led by prejudice and narrowness of mind to form false judgments; but this cannot hinder us from looking with our own eyes, and doing justice where we see it due. I am very far from censuring the plan of 'Hamlet': on the other hand, I believe there never was a grander one invented; nay, it is not invented, it is real."

"How do you demonstrate that?" inquired Serlo.

"I will not demonstrate anything," said Wilhelm; "I will merely show you what my own conceptions of it are."

Aurelia rose up from her cushion, leaned upon her hand, and looked at Wilhelm; who, with the firmest assurance that he was in the right, went on as follows:—

"It pleases us, it flatters us to see a hero acting on his own strength; loving and hating as his heart directs him; undertaking and completing; casting every obstacle aside; and at length attaining some great object which he aimed at. Poets and historians would willingly persuade us that so proud a lot may fall to man. In 'Hamlet' we are taught another lesson: the hero is without a plan, but the piece is full of plan. Here we have no villain punished on some self-conceived and rigidly accomplished scheme of vengeance: a horrid deed occurs; it rolls itself along with all its consequences, dragging guiltless persons also in its course; the perpetrator seems as if he would evade the abyss which is made ready for him, yet he plunges in, at the very point by which he thinks he shall escape and happily complete his course.

"For it is the property of crime to extend its mischief over innocence, as it is of virtue to extend its blessings over many that deserve them not; while frequently the author of the one or of the other is not punished or rewarded at all. Here in this play of ours, how strange! The Pit of Darkness sends its spirit and demands revenge; in vain! All circumstances tend one way, and hurry to revenge; in vain! Neither earthly nor infernal thing may bring about what is reserved for Fate alone. The hour of judgment comes: the wicked falls with the good; one race is mowed away, that another may spring up."

After a pause, in which they looked at one another, Serlo said: "You pay no great compliment to Providence, in thus exalting Shakespeare; and besides, it appears to me that for the honor of your poet, as others for the honor of Providence, you ascribe to him an object and a plan which he himself had never thought of."

"Let me also put a question," said Aurelia. "I have looked at Ophelia's part again; I am contented with it, and conceive that under certain circumstances I could play it. But tell me, should not the poet have furnished the insane maiden with another sort of songs? Could not one select some fragments out of melancholy ballads for this purpose? What have double meanings and lascivious insipidities to do in the mouth of such a noble-minded person?"

"Dear friend," said Wilhelm, "even here I cannot yield you one iota. In these singularities, in this apparent impropriety, a deep sense is hid. Do we not understand from the very first what the mind of the good soft-hearted girl was busied with? Silently she lived within herself, yet she scarce concealed her wishes, her longing; the tones of desire were in secret ringing through her soul; and how often may she have attempted, like an unskillful nurse, to lull her senses to repose with songs which only kept them more awake? But at last, when her self-command is altogether gone, when the secrets of her heart are hovering on her tongue, that tongue betrays her; and in the innocence of insanity she solaces herself, unmindful of king or queen, with the echo of her loose and well-beloved songs, 'Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's Day,' and 'By Gis and by Saint Charity.'

"I am much mistaken," cried he, "if I have not now discovered how the whole is to be managed; nay, I am convinced that Shakespeare himself would have arranged it so, had not his mind been too exclusively directed to the ruling interest, and perhaps misled by the novels which furnished him with his materials."

"Let us hear," said Serlo, placing himself with an air of solemnity upon the sofa; "I will listen calmly, but judge with rigor."

"I am not afraid of you," said Wilhelm; "only hear me. In the composition of this play, after the most accurate investigation and the most mature reflection, I distinguish two classes of objects. The first are the grand internal relations of the persons and events, the powerful effects which arise from the characters and proceedings of the main figures: these, I hold, are individually excellent, and the order in which they are presented cannot be improved. No kind of interference must be suffered to destroy them, or even essentially to change their form. These are the things which stamp themselves deep into the soul; which all men long to see, which no one dares to meddle with. Accordingly, I understand, they have almost wholly been retained in all our German theatres.

"But our countrymen have erred, in my opinion, with regard to the second class of objects which may be observed in this tragedy: I allude to the external relations of the persons, whereby they are brought from place to place, or combined in various ways by certain accidental incidents. These they have looked upon as very unimportant; have spoken of them only in passing, or left them out altogether. Now indeed it must be owned that these threads are slack and slender; yet they run through the entire piece, and bind together much that would otherwise fall asunder, and does actually fall asunder when you cut them off, and imagine you have done enough and more if you have left the ends hanging.

"Among these external relations I include the disturbances in Norway, the war with young Fortinbras, the embassy to his uncle, the settling of that feud, the march of young Fortinbras to Poland, and his coming back at the end; of the same sort are Horatio's return from Wittenberg, Hamlet's wish to go thither, the journey of Laertes to France, his return, the dispatch of Hamlet into England, his capture by pirates, the death of the two courtiers by the letter which they carried. All these circumstances and events would be very fit for expanding and lengthening a novel; but here they injure exceedingly the unity of the piece,—particularly as the hero had no plan,—and are in consequence entirely out of place."

"For once in the right!" cried Serlo.

"Do not interrupt me," answered Wilhelm; "perhaps you will not always think me right. These errors are like temporary props of an edifice; they must not be removed till we have built a firm wall in their stead. My project therefore is, not at all to change those first-mentioned grand situations, or at least as much as possible to spare them, both collectively and individually; but with respect to these external, single, dissipated, and dissipating motives, to cast them all at once away, and substitute a solitary one instead of them."

"And this?" inquired Serlo, springing up from his recumbent posture.

"It lies in the piece itself," answered Wilhelm, "only I employ it rightly. There are disturbances in Norway. You shall hear my plan and try it.

"After the death of Hamlet the father, the Norwegians, lately conquered, grow unruly. The viceroy of that country sends his son Horatio, an old school friend of Hamlet's, and distinguished above every other for his bravery and prudence, to Denmark, to press forward the equipment of the fleet, which under the new luxurious King proceeds but slowly. Horatio has known the former King, having fought in his battles, having even stood in favor with him; a circumstance by which the first ghost scene will be nothing injured. The new sovereign gives Horatio audience, and sends Laertes into Norway with intelligence that the fleet will soon arrive, whilst Horatio is commissioned to accelerate the preparation of it; and the Queen, on the other hand, will not consent that Hamlet, as he wishes, should go to sea along with him."

"Heaven be praised!" cried Serlo; "we shall now get rid of Wittenberg and the university, which was always a sorry piece of business. I think your idea extremely good: for except these two distant objects, Norway and the fleet, the spectator will not be required to fancy anything: the rest he will see; the rest takes place before him; whereas his imagination, on the other plan, was hunted over all the world."

"You easily perceive," said Wilhelm, "how I shall contrive to keep the other parts together. When Hamlet tells Horatio of his uncle's crime, Horatio counsels him to go to Norway in his company, to secure the affections of the army, and return in war-like force. Hamlet also is becoming dangerous to the King and Queen; they find no readier method of deliverance than to send him in the fleet, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be spies upon him: and as Laertes in the mean time comes from France, they determine that this youth, exasperated even to murder, shall go after him. Unfavorable winds detain the fleet; Hamlet returns: for his wandering through the church-yard perhaps some lucky motive may be thought of; his meeting with Laertes in Ophelia's grave is a grand moment, which we must not part with. After this, the King resolves that it is better to get quit of Hamlet on the spot: the festival of his departure, the pretended reconcilement with Laertes, are now solemnized; on which occasion knightly sports are held, and Laertes fights with Hamlet. Without the four corpses I cannot end the piece; not one of them can possibly be left. The right of popular election now again comes in force, and Hamlet gives his dying voice for Horatio."

"Quick! quick!" said Serlo; "sit down and work the piece; your plan has my entire approbation; only do not let your zeal for it evaporate." ...

Wilhelm had already been for some time busied with translating Hamlet; making use, as he labored, of Wieland's spirited performance, by means of which he had first become acquainted with Shakespeare. What in Wieland's work had been omitted he replaced; and he had at length procured himself a complete version, at the very time when Serlo and he finally agreed about the way of treating it. He now began, according to his plan, to cut out and insert, to separate and unite, to alter and often to restore; for satisfied as he was with his own conception, it still appeared to him as if in executing it he were but spoiling the original.

So soon as all was finished, he read his work to Serlo and the rest. They declared themselves exceedingly contented with it; Serlo in particular made many flattering observations.

"You have felt very justly," said he, among other things, "that some external circumstances must accompany this piece; but that they must be simpler than those which the great poet has employed. What takes place without the theatre—what the spectator does not see, but must imagine for himself—is like a background, in front of which the acting figures move. Your large and simple prospect of the fleet and Norway will very much improve the piece; if this were altogether taken from it, we should have but a family scene remaining; and the great idea, that here a kingly house by internal crimes and incongruities goes down to ruin, would not be presented with its proper dignity. But if the former background were left standing, so manifold, so fluctuating and confused, it would hurt the impression of the figures."

Wilhelm again took Shakespeare's part: alleging that he wrote for islanders, for Englishmen, who generally, in the distance, were accustomed to see little else than ships and voyages, the coast of France and privateers; and thus what perplexed and distracted others was to them quite natural.

Serlo assented; and both of them were of opinion that as the piece was now to be produced upon the German stage, this more serious and simple background was the best adapted for the German mind.

The parts had been distributed before: Serlo undertook Polonius; Aurelia undertook Ophelia; Laertes was already designated by his name; a young, thick-set, jolly new-comer was to be Horatio; the King and the Ghost alone occasioned some perplexity. For both of these was no one but Old Boisterous remaining. Serlo proposed to make the Pedant King; but against this our friend protested in the strongest terms. They could resolve on nothing.

Wilhelm also had allowed both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to continue in his piece. "Why not compress them into one?" said Serlo. "This abbreviation will not cost you much."

"Heaven keep me from such curtailments!" answered Wilhelm; "they destroy at once the sense and the effect. What these two persons are and do it is impossible to represent by one. In such small matters we discover Shakespeare's greatness. These soft approaches, this smirking and bowing, this assenting, wheedling, flattering, this whisking agility, this wagging of the tail, this allness and emptiness, this legal knavery, this ineptitude and insipidity,—how can they be expressed by a single man? There ought to be at least a dozen of these people if they could be had, for it is only in society that they are anything; they are society itself; and Shakespeare showed no little wisdom and discernment in bringing in a pair of them. Besides, I need them as a couple that may be contrasted with the single, noble, excellent Horatio."

---

THE INDENTURE

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome. Every beginning is cheerful; the threshold is the place of expectation. The boy stands astonished, his impressions guide him; he learns sportfully, seriousness comes on him by surprise. Imitation is born with us; what should be imitated is not easy to discover. The excellent is rarely found, more rarely valued. The height charms us, the steps to it do not; with the summit in our eye, we love to walk along the plain. It is but a part of art that can be taught; the artist needs it all. Who knows it half, speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly, inclines to act and speaks seldom or late. The former have no secrets and no force; the instruction they can give is like baked bread, savory and satisfying for a single day; but flour cannot be sown, and seed corn ought not to be ground. Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. The spirit in which we act is the highest matter. Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. No one knows what he is doing while he acts aright; but of what is wrong we are always conscious. Whoever works with symbols only is a pedant, a hypocrite, or a bungler. There are many such, and they like to be together. Their babbling detains the scholar; their obstinate mediocrity vexes even the best. The instruction which the true artist gives us opens the mind; for where words fail him, deeds speak. The true scholar learns from the known to unfold the unknown, and approaches more and more to being a master.

---

THE HARPER'S SONGS

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'

"What notes are those without the wall,
Across the portal sounding?
Let's have the music in our hall,
Back from its roof rebounding."
So spoke the king: the henchman flies;
His answer heard, the monarch cries,
"Bring in that ancient minstrel."

"Hail, gracious king, each noble knight!
Each lovely dame, I greet you!
What glittering stars salute my sight!
What heart unmoved may meet you!
Such lordly pomp is not for me,
Far other scenes my eyes must see:
Yet deign to list my harping."

The singer turns him to his art,
A thrilling strain he raises;
Each warrior hears with glowing heart
And on his loved one gazes.
The king, who liked his playing well,
Commands, for such a kindly spell,
A golden chain be given him.

"The golden chain give not to me:
Thy boldest knight may wear it,
Who 'cross the battle's purple sea
On lion breast may bear it;
Or let it be thy chancellor's prize,
Amid his heaps to feast his eyes,—
Its yellow glance will please him.

"I sing but as the linnet sings,
That on the green bough dwelleth;
A rich reward his music brings,
As from his throat it swelleth:
Yet might I ask, I'd ask of thine
One sparkling draught of purest wine
To drink it here before you."

He viewed the wine, he quaffed it up:
"O draught of sweetest savor!
O happy house, where such a cup
Is thought a little favor!
If well you fare, remember me,
And thank kind Heaven, from envy free,
As now for this I thank you."

---

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping and watching for the morrow,—
He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.

To earth, this weary earth, ye bring us,
To guilt ye let us heedless go,
Then leave repentance fierce to wring us;
A moment's guilt, an age of woe!

---

MIGNON'S SONG

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'

Such let me seem, till such I be;
Take not my snow-white dress away!
Soon from this dusk of earth I flee,
Up to the glittering lands of day.

There first a little space I rest,
Then wake so glad, to scenes so kind;
In earthly robes no longer drest,
This band, this girdle left behind.

And those calm shining sons of morn,
They ask not who is maid or boy;
No robes, no garments there are worn,
Our body pure from sin's alloy.

Through little life not much I toiled,
Yet anguish long this heart has wrung,
Untimely woe my blossoms spoiled:
Make me again forever young!

---

PHILINA'S SONG

From 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'

Sing me not with such emotion
How the night so lonesome is;
Pretty maids, I've got a notion
It is the reverse of this.

For as wife and man are plighted,
And the better half the wife,
So is night to day united,—
Night's the better half of life.

Can you joy in bustling daytime,—
Day, when none can get his will?
It is good for work, for haytime;
For much other it is ill.

But when in the nightly glooming,
Social lamp on table glows,
Face for faces dear illuming,
And such jest and joyance goes;

When the fiery pert young fellow,
Wont by day to run or ride,
Whispering now some tale would tell O,—
All so gentle by your side;

When the nightingale to lovers
Lovingly her songlet sings,
Which for exiles and sad rovers
Like mere woe and wailing rings;

With a heart how lightsome-feeling
Do ye count the kindly clock,
Which, twelve times deliberate pealing,
Tells you none to-night shall knock!

Therefore, on all fit occasions,
Mark it, maidens, what I sing:
Every day its own vexations,
And the night its joys will bring.

---

PROMETHEUS

Blacken thy heavens, Jove,
With thunder-clouds,
And exercise thee, like a boy
Who thistles crops,
With smiting oaks and mountain-tops:
Yet must leave me standing
My own firm earth;
Must leave my cottage, which thou didst not build,
And my warm hearth,
Whose cheerful glow
Thou enviest me.

I know naught more pitiful
Under the sun, than you, gods!
Ye nourish scantily
With altar taxes
And with cold lip-service,
This your majesty;—
Would perish, were not
Children and beggars
Credulous fools.

When I was a child,
And knew not whence or whither,
I would turn my 'wildered eye
To the sun, as if up yonder were
An ear to hear to my complaining—A
heart, like mine,
On the oppressed to feel compassion.

Who helped me
When I braved the Titans' insolence?
Who rescued me from death,
From slavery?
Hast thou not all thyself accomplished,
Holy-glowing heart?
And, glowing, young, and good,
Most ignorantly thanked
The slumberer above there?

I honor thee! For what?
Hast thou the miseries lightened
Of the down-trodden?
Hast thou the tears ever banished
From the afflicted?
Have I not to manhood been molded
By omnipotent Time,
And by Fate everlasting,
My lords and thine?

Dreamedst thou ever
I should grow weary of living,
And fly to the desert,
Since not all our
Pretty dream buds ripen?

Here sit I, fashion men
In mine own image,—
A race to be like me,
To weep and to suffer,
To be happy and enjoy themselves,
To be careless of thee too,
As I!

Translation of John S. Dwight.

---

WANDERER'S NIGHT SONGS

Thou that from the heavens art,
Every pain and sorrow stillest,
And the doubly wretched heart
Doubly with refreshment fillest,
I am weary with contending!
Why this rapture and unrest?
Peace descending,
Come, ah come into my breast!

O'er all the hill-tops
Is quiet now,
In all the tree-tops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees:
Wait; soon like these
Thou too shalt rest.

Longfellow's Translation. Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers, Boston

---

THE ELFIN-KING

Who rides so late through the midnight blast?
'Tis a father spurs on with his child full fast;
He gathers the boy well into his arm,
He clasps him close and he keeps him warm.

"My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?"—
"Father, dost thou not see the elfin-king?
The elfin-king with his crown and train!"—
"My son, 'tis a streak of the misty rain!"

"Come hither, thou darling, come, go with me!
Fine games I know that I'll play with thee;
Flowers many and bright do my kingdoms hold,
My mother has many a robe of gold."

"O father, dear father, and dost thou not hear
What the elfin-king whispers so low in mine ear?"—
"Calm, calm thee, my boy, it is only the breeze,
As it rustles the withered leaves under the trees."

"Wilt thou go, bonny boy, wilt thou go with me?
My daughters shall wait on thee daintily;
My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep,
And rock thee and kiss thee and sing thee to sleep."

"O father, dear father, and dost thou not mark
The elf-king's daughters move by in the dark?"—
"I see it, my child; but it is not they,
'Tis the old willow nodding its head so gray."

"I love thee! thy beauty it charms me so;
And I'll take thee by force, if thou wilt not go!"
"O father, dear father, he's grasping me,—
My heart is as cold as cold can be!"

The father rides swiftly,—with terror he gasps,—
The sobbing child in his arms he clasps;
He reaches the castle with spurring and dread;
But alack! in his arms the child lay dead!

Translation of Martin and Aytoun.

---

FROM 'THE WANDERER'S STORM SONG'

Whom thou desertest not, O Genius,
Neither blinding rain nor storm
Breathes upon his heart a chill.
Whom thou desertest not, O Genius,
To the lowering clouds,
To the beating hail,
He will sing cheerly,
As the lark there,
Thou that soarest.

Whom thou desertest not, O Genius,
Him thou'lt lift o'er miry places
On thy flaming pinions:
He will traverse
As on feet of flowers
Slime of Deucalion's deluge;
Slaying Python, strong, great,
Pythius Apollo!

Whom thou desertest not, O Genius,
Thou wilt spread thy downy wings beneath him,
When he sleeps upon the crags;
Thou wilt cover him with guardian pinions
In the midnight forest depths.

Whom thou desertest not, O Genius,
Thou wilt in whirling snow-storm
Warmly wrap him round;
To the warmth fly the Muses,
To the warmth fly the Graces.

Around me float, ye Muses,
And float, ye Graces!
This is water, this is earth
And the son of water and of earth,
Over whom I wander
Like the gods.

You are pure like the heart of water,
You are pure like the core of earth;
You float around me, and I float
Over water, over earth,
Like the gods.

Translation of Charles Harvey Genung.

---

THE GODLIKE

Noble be Man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Doth distinguish him
From all the beings
Which we know.

Hail to the Unknown, the
Higher Beings
Felt within us!
His pattern teach us
Faith in them!

For unfeeling
Is Nature:
Still shineth the sun
Over good and evil:
And to the sinner
Smile, as to the best,
The moon and the stars.

Wind and waters,
Thunder and hailstones,
Rustle on their way,
Smiting down as
They dash along,
One for another.

Just so does Fate
Grope round in the crowd,
Seize now the innocent,
Curly-haired boy,
Now on the old, bald
Crown of the villain.

By great adamantine
Laws everlasting,
Here we must all our
Round of existence
Faithfully finish.

There can none but Man
Perform the Impossible.
He understandeth,
Chooseth, and judgeth;
He can impart to the
Moment duration.

He alone may
The Good reward,
The Guilty punish,
Mend and deliver;
All the wayward, anomalous
Bind in the Useful.

And the Immortals—
Them we reverence,
As if they were men, and
Did, on a grand scale,
What the best man in little
Does, or fain would do.

Let noble Man
Be helpful and good!
Ever creating
The Right and the Useful—
Type of those loftier
Beings of whom the heart whispers!

Translation of John S. Dwight.

---

SOLITUDE

O ye kindly nymphs, who dwell 'mongst the rocks and the thickets,
Grant unto each whatsoever he may in silence desire!
Comfort impart to the mourner, and give to the doubter instruction,
And let the lover rejoice, finding the bliss that he craves.
For from the gods ye received what they ever denied unto mortals,
Power to comfort and aid all who in you may confide.

Translation of E. A. Bowring.

---

ERGO BIBAMUS!

For a praiseworthy object we're now gathered here,
So, brethren, sing Ergo bibamus!
Though talk may be hushed, yet the glasses ring clear:
Remember then, Ergo bibamus!
In truth 'tis an old, 'tis an excellent word;
With its sound so befitting each bosom is stirred,
And an echo the festal hall filling is heard,
A glorious Ergo bibamus!

I saw mine own love in her beauty so rare,
And bethought me of Ergo bibamus;
So I gently approached, and she let me stand there,
While I helped myself, thinking, Bibamus!
And when she's appeared, and will clasp you and kiss,
Or when those embraces and kisses ye miss,
Take refuge, till found is some worthier bliss,
In the comforting Ergo bibamus!

I am called by my fate far away from each friend;
Ye loved ones, then, Ergo bibamus!
With wallet light-laden from hence I must wend,
So double our Ergo bibamus!
Whatever to his treasure the niggard may add,
Yet regard for the joyous will ever be had,
For gladness lends ever its charms to the glad,
So, brethren, sing: Ergo bibamus!

And what shall we say of to-day as it flies?
I thought but of Ergo bibamus!
'Tis one of those truly that seldom arise,
So again and again sing Bibamus!
For joy through a wide-open portal it guides,
Bright glitter the clouds as the curtain divides,
And a form, a divine one, to greet us in glides,
While we thunder our Ergo bibamus.

Translation of E. A. Bowring.

---

ALEXIS AND DORA

Farther and farther away, alas! at each moment the vessel
Hastens, as onward it glides, cleaving the foam-covered flood!
Long is the track plowed up by the keel where dolphins are sporting,
Following fast in its rear, while it seems flying pursuit.
All forebodes a prosperous voyage; the sailor with calmness
Leans 'gainst the sail, which alone all that is needed performs.
Forward presses the heart of each seaman, like colors and streamers;
Backward one only is seen, mournfully fixed near the mast,
While on the blue-tinged mountains, which fast are receding, he gazeth,
And as they sink in the sea, joy from his bosom departs.
Vanished from thee, too, O Dora, is now the vessel that robs thee
Of thine Alexis, thy friend,—ah, thy betrothèd as well!
Thou, too, art after me gazing in vain. Our hearts are still throbbing,
Though for each other, yet ah! 'gainst one another no more.
O thou single moment, wherein I found life! thou outweighest
Every day which had else coldly from memory fled.
'Twas in that moment alone, the last, that upon me descended
Life such as deities grant, though thou perceivèdst it not.
Phœbus, in vain with thy rays dost thou clothe the ether in glory:
Thine all-brightening day hateful alone is to me.
Into myself I retreat for shelter, and there in the silence
Strive to recover the time when she appeared with each day.
Was it possible beauty like this to see, and not feel it?
Worked not those heavenly charms e'en on a mind dull as thine?
Blame not thyself, unhappy one! Oft doth the bard an enigma
Thus propose to the throng, skillfully hidden in words;
Each one enjoys the strange commingling of images graceful,
Yet still is wanting the word which will discover the sense.
When at length it is found, the heart of each hearer is gladdened,
And in the poem he sees meaning of twofold delight.
Wherefore so late didst thou remove the bandage, O Amor,
Which thou hadst placed o'er mine eyes,—wherefore remove it so late?
Long did the vessel, when laden, lie waiting for favoring breezes,
Till in kindness the wind blew from the land o'er the sea.
Vacant times of youth! and vacant dreams of the future!
Ye all vanish, and naught, saving the moment, remains.
Yes! it remains,—my joy still remains! I hold thee, my Dora,
And thine image alone, Dora, by hope is disclosed.
Oft have I seen thee go, with modesty clad, to the temple,
While thy mother so dear solemnly went by thy side.
Eager and nimble thou wert, in bearing thy fruit to the market,
Boldly the pail from the well didst thou sustain on thy head.
Then was revealed thy neck, then seen thy shoulders so beauteous,
Then, before all things, the grace filling thy motions was seen.
Oft have I feared that the pitcher perchance was in danger of falling,
Yet it ever remained firm on the circular cloth.
Thus, fair neighbor, yes, thus I oft was wont to observe thee,
As on the stars I might gaze, as I might gaze on the moon;
Glad indeed at the sight, yet feeling within my calm bosom
Not the remotest desire ever to call them mine own.

Years thus fleeted away! Although our houses were only
Twenty paces apart, yet I thy threshold ne'er crossed.
Now by the fearful flood are we parted! Thou liest to Heaven,
Billow! thy beautiful blue seems to me dark as the night.
All were now in movement: a boy to the house of my father
Ran at full speed and exclaimed, "Hasten thee quick to the strand!
Hoisted the sail is already, e'en now in the wind it is fluttering,
While the anchor they weigh, heaving it up from the sand;
Come, Alexis, oh come!"—My worthy stout-hearted father
Pressed, with a blessing, his hand down on my curly-locked head,
While my mother carefully reached me a newly made bundle;
"Happy mayst thou return!" cried they—"both happy and rich!"
Then I sprang away, and under my arm held the bundle,
Running along by the wall. Standing I found thee hard by,
At the door of thy garden. Thou smilingly saidst then, "Alexis!
Say, are yon boisterous crew going thy comrades to be?
Foreign coasts wilt thou visit, and precious merchandise purchase,
Ornaments meet for the rich matrons who dwell in the town;
Bring me also, I pray thee, a light chain; gladly I'll pay thee,
Oft have I wished to possess some such a trinket as that."
There I remained, and asked, as merchants are wont, with precision
After the form and the weight which thy commission should have.
Modest indeed was the price thou didst name! I meanwhile was gazing
On thy neck, which deserved ornaments worn but by queens.
Loudly now rose the cry from the ship; then kindly thou spakest:—
"Take, I entreat thee, some fruit out of the garden, my friend!
Take the ripest oranges, figs of the whitest; the ocean
Beareth no fruit, and in truth, 'tis not produced by each land."
So I entered in. Thou pluckedst the fruit from the branches,
And the burden of gold was in thine apron upheld.
Oft did I cry, Enough! But fairer fruits were still falling
Into thy hand as I spake, ever obeying thy touch.
Presently didst thou reach the arbor; there lay there a basket,
Sweet blooming myrtle-trees waved, as we drew nigh, o'er our heads.
Then thou began'st to arrange the fruit with skill and in silence:
First the orange, which heavy as though 'twere of gold,
Then the yielding fig, by the slightest pressure disfigured,
And with myrtle, the gift soon was both covered and graced.
But I raised it not up. I stood. Our eyes met together,
And my eyesight grew dim, seeming obscured by a film.
Soon I felt thy bosom on mine! Mine arm was soon twining
Round thy beautiful form; thousand times kissed I thy neck.
On my shoulder sank thy head; thy fair arms, encircling,
Soon rendered perfect the ring knitting a rapturous pair.
Amor's hands I felt; he pressed us together with ardor,
And from the firmament clear, thrice did it thunder; then tears
Streamed from mine eyes in torrents, thou weptest, I wept, both were weeping,
And 'mid our sorrow and bliss, even the world seemed to die.
Louder and louder they called from the strand; my feet would no longer
Bear my weight, and I cried:—"Dora! and art thou not mine?"
"Thine forever!" thou gently didst say. Then the tears we were shedding
Seemed to be wiped from our eyes, as by the breath of a god.
Nearer was heard the cry "Alexis!" The stripling who sought me
Suddenly peeped through the door. How he the basket snatched up!
How he urged me away! how pressed I thy hand! Dost thou ask me
How the vessel I reached? Drunken I seemed, well I know,
Drunken my shipmates believed me, and so had pity upon me;
And as the breeze drove us on, distance the town soon obscured.
"Thine forever!" thou, Dora, didst murmur; it fell on my senses
With the thunder of Zeus! while by the thunderer's throne
Stood his daughter, the goddess of Love; the Graces were standing
Close by her side! so the bond beareth an impress divine!
Oh then hasten, thou ship, with every favoring zephyr!
Onward, thou powerful keel, cleaving the waves as they foam!
Bring me unto the foreign harbor, so that the goldsmith
May in his workshop prepare straightway the heavenly pledge!
Ay, of a truth, the chain shall indeed be a chain, O my Dora!
Nine times encircling thy neck, loosely around it entwined.
Other and manifold trinkets I'll buy thee; gold-mounted bracelets,
Richly and skillfully wrought, also shall grace thy fair hand.
There shall the ruby and emerald vie, the sapphire so lovely
Be to the jacinth opposed, seeming its foil; while the gold
Holds all the jewels together, in beauteous union commingled.
Oh, how the bridegroom exults, when he adorns his betrothed!
Pearls if I see, of thee they remind me; each ring that is shown me
Brings to my mind thy fair hand's graceful and tapering form.
I will barter and buy; the fairest of all shalt thou choose thee;
Joyously would I devote all of the cargo to thee.
Yet not trinkets and jewels alone is thy loved one procuring;
With them he brings thee whate'er gives to a housewife delight:
Fine and woolen coverlets, wrought with an edging of purple,
Fit for a couch where we both, lovingly, gently may rest;
Costly pieces of linen. Thou sittest and sewest, and clothest
Me, and thyself, and perchance even a third with it too.
Visions of hope, deceive ye my heart! Ye kindly immortals,
Soften this fierce-raging flame, wildly pervading my breast!
Yet how I long to feel them again, those rapturous torments,
When in their stead, Care draws nigh, coldly and fearfully calm.
Neither the Furies' torch, nor the hounds of hell with their barking,
Awe the delinquent so much, down in the plains of despair,
As by the motionless spectre I'm awed, that shows me the fair one
Far away: of a truth, open the garden door stands!
And another one cometh! For him the fruit, too, is falling,
And for him also the fig strengthening honey doth yield!
Doth she entice him as well to the arbor? He follows? Oh, make me
Blind, ye Immortals! efface visions like this from my mind!
Yes, she is but a maiden! And she who to one doth so quickly
Yield, to another erelong, doubtless, will turn herself round.
Smile not, Zeus, for this once, at an oath so cruelly broken!
Thunder more fearfully! Strike!—Stay—thy fierce lightnings withhold!
Hurl at me thy quivering bolt! In the darkness of midnight
Strike with thy lightning this mast, make it a pitiful wreck!
Scatter the planks all around, and give to the boisterous billows
All these wares, and let me be to the dolphins a prey!—
Now, ye Muses, enough! In vain would ye strive to depicture
How, in a love-laden breast, anguish alternates with bliss.
Ye cannot heal the wounds, it is true, that love hath inflicted;
Yet from you only proceeds, kindly ones, comfort and balm.

Translation of E. A. Bowring.

---

MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS

From 'Maxims and Reflections of Goethe.' Translation of Bailey Saunders. Copyright 1892, by Macmillan & Co.

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape: it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

---

I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day? A good head could assuredly intercalate one or other of them. They publish abroad everything that every one does, or is busy with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere to the other,—all in post-haste.

---

During a prolonged study of the lives of various men both great and small, I came upon this thought: In the web of the world the one may well be regarded as the warp, the other as the woof. It is the little men, after all, who give breadth to the web, and the great men firmness and solidity; perhaps also the addition of some sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates determine its length, and to that all the rest must join in submitting itself.

---

There is nothing more odious than the majority: it consists of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them without in the least knowing their own mind.

---

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

---

NATURE

Nature! We are surrounded by her and locked in her clasp: powerless to leave her, and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are weary and fall from her arms.

There is constant life in her, motion and development; and yet she remains where she was. She is eternally changing, nor for a moment does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing, and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse. She is steadfast; her step is measured, her exceptions rare, her laws immutable.

She loves herself, and clings eternally to herself with eyes and hearts innumerable. She has divided herself that she may be her own delight. She is ever making new creatures spring up to delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.

She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys this in himself and others, she punishes him like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in confidence, she presses him to her heart as it were her child.

She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing, and tells them not whence they come and whither they go. They have only to go their way: she knows the path.

Her crown is Love. Only through Love can we come near her. She puts gulfs between all things, and all things strive to be interfused. She isolates everything, that she may draw everything together. With a few draughts from the cup of Love she repays for a life full of trouble.

She is all things. She rewards herself and punishes herself, and in herself rejoices and is distressed. She is rough and gentle, loving and terrible, powerless and almighty. In her everything is always present. Past or Future she knows not. The Present is her Eternity. She is kind. I praise her with all her works. She is wise and still. No one can force her to explain herself, or frighten her into a gift that she does not give willingly. She is crafty, but for a good end; and it is best not to notice her cunning.

---

NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL

(1809-1852)

BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

ogol has been called the "father of modern Russian realism," and he has been credited with the creation of all the types which we meet in the great novelists who followed him. This is in great measure true, especially so far as the male characters are concerned. The germs at least, if not the condensed characterization in full, are recognizable in Gogol's famous novel 'Dead Souls,' his Little-Russian stories 'Tales from a Farm-House near Dikanka' and 'Mirgorod,' and his comedy 'The Inspector,' which still holds the stage.

Nikolai Gogol

It was precisely because of his genius in seizing the national types that the poet Pushkin, one of Gogol's earliest and warmest admirers, gave to him the plans of 'Dead Souls' and 'The Inspector,' which he had intended to make use of himself. That he became the "father of Russian realism" was due not only to his own genius, but to the epoch in which he lived, though he solved the problem for himself quite independently of the Continental literatures which were undergoing the same process of transformation from romanticism to realism. For, nearly a hundred years before Gogol and his foreign contemporaries of the forties—the pioneers, in their respective countries, of the new literature—won the public, Europe had been living a sort of modern epic. In imitation of the ancient epics, writers portrayed heroes of gigantic powers in every direction, and set them in a framework of exceptional crises which aroused their powerful emotions in the cause of right, or their superhuman conflict with masterful persons or overwhelming woes. But the daily experience of those who suffered from the manifold miseries of battle and invasion in this modern epic epoch, made it impossible for them to disregard longer the claim on their sympathies of the common things and people of their world, though these can very easily be ignored when one reads the ancient epics. Thus did realism have its dawn in many lands when the era of peace gave men time to define their position, and when pseudo-classicism had at last palled on their taste, which had begun to recognize its coldness and inherent falsity.

Naturally, in this new quest of Truth, romanticism and realism were mingled at first. This was the case with Gogol-Yanovsky, to give him his full name. But he soon struck out in the right path. He was born and reared in Little Russia, at Sorotchinsky, government of Poltava. He was separated by only two generations from the epoch of the Zaporozhian Kazak army, whose life he has recorded in his famous historical novel 'Taras Bulba,' his grandfather having been regimental scribe of the Kazaks, an office of honor. The spirit of the Zaporozhian Kazaks still lingered over the land, which was overflowing with legends, and with fervent, childlike piety of the superstitious order. At least one half of the Little-Russian stories which made Gogol's fame he owes to his grandfather, who appears as Rudiy Panko the Bee-Farmer, in the 'Tales from a Farm-House near Dikanka.' His father, who represented the modern spirit, was an inimitable narrator of comic stories, and the talents of this father and grandfather rendered their house the social centre of a very wide neighborhood.

At school Gogol did not distinguish himself in his studies, but wrote a great deal, all of an imitative character, and got up school plays in emulation of those which he had seen at his own home. His lack of scholarship made it impossible for him to pursue the learned career of professor of history, on which he embarked after he had with labor obtained, and shortly renounced, the career of copying-clerk in St. Petersburg. His vast but dimly defined ambition to accomplish great things for his fatherland in some mysterious way, and fame for himself, equally suffered shipwreck to his mind; though if we consider the part which the realistic literature he founded has played on the world's stage, we may count his apparent defeat a solid victory. His brief career as professor of history at the university was brought about by his ambition, and through the influence of the literary men whose friendship he had won by his first 'Little-Russian Tales.' They recognized his genius, and at last he himself recognized that the new style of writing which he had created was his vocation, and devoted himself wholly to literature. At the close of 1831 the first volume of 'Tales from a Farm-House' appeared, and had an immense success. The second volume, 'Mirgorod, followed, with equal success. It contained a new element: the merriment of the first volume had been pure, unmixed; in the second volume he had developed not only the realism but that special trait of his genius, "laughter piercing through a mist of tears," of which 'Old-Fashioned Gentry' and 'How the Two Ivans Quarreled' offer celebrated examples. But success always flew to Gogol's head: he immediately began to despise these products of his true vocation, and to plan grandiose projects far beyond his powers of education and entirely outside the range of his talent. Now, for instance, he undertook a colossal work in nine volumes on the history of the Middle Ages. Happily, he abandoned that, after his studies of Little-Russian history incidental thereto had resulted in his epic of the highest art, 'Taras Bulba.'

The first outcome of his recognition that literary work was his moral duty, not a mere pastime, was his great play 'The Inspector.' It was produced in April, 1836. The authorities steadfastly opposed its production; but the Emperor Nicholas I. heard of it, read it, ordered it produced, and upheld Gogol in enthusiastic delight. Officials, merchants, police, literary people, everybody, attacked the author. They had laughed at his pathos; now they raged at his comedy, refused to recognize their own portraits, and still tried to have the play prohibited. Gogol's health and spirits were profoundly affected by this unexpected enmity. He fled abroad, and returned to Russia thereafter only at intervals for brief visits, and chiefly to Moscow, where most of his faithful friends lived. He traveled much, but spent most of his time in Rome, where his lavish charities kept him always poor, even after the complete success of 'The Inspector' and of the first part of 'Dead Souls' would have enabled him to exist in comfort. He was accustomed to say that he could only see Russia clearly when he was far from her, and in a measure he proved this by his inimitable first volume of 'Dead Souls.' Herein he justified Pushkin's expectations in giving him that subject which would enable him to paint, in types, the classes and localities of his fatherland. But this long residence in Rome was fatal to his mind and health, and eventually extinguished the last sparks of genius. The Russian mind is peculiarly inclined to mysticism, and Russian writers of eminence seem to be even more susceptible in that direction than ordinary men. Of the noted writers in this century, Pushkin and Lermontoff had leaned decidedly in that direction towards the end of their careers, brief as their lives were. Gogol was their intimate friend in Russia, and after he went abroad he was the intimate friend of the aged poet Zhukovsky, who became a mystic in his declining years.

Even in his school days Gogol had shown, in his letters to his mother, a marked tendency to religious exaltation. Now, under the combined pressure of his personal inclinations, friendships, and the clerical atmosphere of Rome, he developed into a mystic and ascetic of the most pronounced type. In this frame of mind, he looked upon all his earlier writings as sins which must be atoned for; and yet his immense self-esteem was so flattered by the tremendous success of 'The Inspector' and of the first part of 'Dead Souls,' that he began to regard himself as a kind of divinely commissioned prophet, whose duty it was to exhort his fellow-men. The extract from these hortatory letters to his friends which he published convinced his countrymen that nothing more was to be expected from him. The failure of this volume only helped to plunge him into deeper depths of self-torture. In the few remaining lucid moments of his genius he worked at the second part of 'Dead Souls,' but destroyed what he had written in the moments of ecstatic remorse which followed. Thus the greatest work of his mature genius remains uncompleted. In 1848 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and returned through Odessa to Moscow, where he lived until his death, growing constantly more mystical, more ascetic. Sleepless nights spent in prayer, fasting to the extent of trying to nourish himself (as it is affirmed that practiced ascetics successfully can) for a week on one of the tiny double loaves which are used in the Holy Communion, completed the ravages of his long-endured maladies.

It was for publishing in a Moscow paper an enthusiastic obituary of the dead genius, which he had been forbidden to publish in St. Petersburg, that Turgénieff was sent into residence on his estate, and enriched the world with the first work of the rising genius, 'The Diary of a Sportsman.' Acuteness of observation; natural, infectious, genuine humor; vivid realism; and an inimitable power of depicting national types, are Gogol's distinguishing characteristics: and these in varying degrees are precisely the ingredients which have entered into the works of his successors and rendered Russian literature famous as a school.

In reviewing Gogol's work, we may set aside with but cursory mention his youthful idyl, written while still in the gymnasium, published anonymously and overwhelmed with ridicule, 'Hans Kuchel-garten'; his 'Arabesques,' which are useful chiefly as a contribution to the study of the man and his opinions, not as permanent additions to literature; his 'Extracts from Correspondence with Friends,' which belong to the sermonizing, clouded period of his life's close; and the divers 'Fragments,' both of prose and dramatic writing, all of which are conscientiously included in the complete editions of his writings.

The only complete play which he wrote except 'The Inspector' is the comedy 'Marriage,' which is still acted, though very seldom. It is full of naturalness and his own peculiar humor, but its subject does not appeal to the universal public of all lands as nearly as does the plan of 'The Inspector.' The plot, in brief, is founded on a young girl's meditations on marriage, and her actions which lead up to and follow those meditations. The Heroine, desirous of marrying, invokes the aid of the Match-maker, the old-time matrimonial agent in the Russian merchant and peasant classes by conventional etiquette. The Match-maker offers for her consideration several suitable men, all strangers; the Heroine makes her choice, and is very well content with her suitor. But she begins to meditate on the future, becomes moved to tears by the thought of her daughter's possible unhappiness in a hypothetical wretched marriage in the dim future, and at last, unable to endure this painful prospect, she evades her betrothed and breaks off the match. While the characteristic and national touches are keen and true,—precursors of the vein which Ostrovsky so happily developed later,—the play must remain a matter of greater interest to Russians than to foreigners.

The interest of 'The Inspector,' on the other hand, is universal: official negligence and corruption, bribery, masculine boastfulness and vanity, and feminine qualities to correspond, are the private prerogatives of no one nation, of no one epoch. The comedy possesses all the elements of social portraiture and satire without caricature: concentration of time, place, action, language, and a tremendous condensation of character traits which are not only truly, typically national, but which come within the ken of all fair-minded persons in other countries.

The volume with which he scored his first success, and which must remain a classic, is 'Evenings at a Farm-House near Dikanka.' As the second volume, 'Mirgorod,' and his volume of 'St. Petersburg Tales,' all combine essentially the same ingredients, though in varying measure, we may consider them together. All the tales in the first two volumes are from his beloved birthplace, Little Russia. Some of them are simply the artistic and literary rendering of popular legends, whose counterparts may be found in the folk literature of other lands. Such are the story of the vampire, 'Vy,' 'St. John's Eve,' and the exquisite 'A May Night,' where the famous poetical spirit of the Ukraina is displayed in its full force and beauty. 'The Lost Document,' 'Sorotchinsky Fair,' 'The Enchanted Spot,' and others of like legendary but more exclusively national character, show the same fertility of wit and skill of management, with close study of every-day customs, superstitions, and life, which render them invaluable to both Russians and foreigners.

More important than these, however, are such stories as 'Old-Fashioned Gentry' (or 'Farmers'), where keen but kindly wit, more tempered than the mirth of youthful high spirits which had imbued the fantastic tales, is mingled with the purest, deepest pathos and minute delineation of character and customs, in an inimitable work of the highest art. To this category belong also 'How the Two Ivans Quarreled' (the full title, 'How Ivan Ivan'itch and Ivan Nikifor'itch Quarreled,' is rather unwieldy for the foreign ear), and 'The Cloak,' from the volume of 'St. Petersburg Tales.' We may also count 'The Nevsky Prospekt' with these; while 'The Portrait' is semi-fantastic, 'The Nose' and 'The Calash' are wholly so, though not legendary, and 'The Diary of a Madman' is unexcelled as an amusing but touching study of a diseased mind in the ranks of petty officialdom.

Gogol's capital work, however, is his 'Dead Souls.' In it he carried to its highest point his talent for accurate delineation of his countrymen and the conditions of their life. There is less pathos than in some of his short tales; but all the other elements are perfected. Pushkin's generosity and sound judgment were never better shown than in the gift which he made to Gogol of the plan of this book. He could not have executed it himself as well. The work must forever rank as a Russian classic; it ought to rank as a universal classic. The types are as fresh, true, and vivid to one who knows the Russia of to-day as they were when they were first introduced to the enthusiastic public of 1842.

In the pre-Emancipation days, a soul meant a male serf. The women were not counted in the periodical revisions, though the working unit, a tyaglo, consisted of a man, his wife, and his horse—the indispensable trinity to agricultural labor. In the interval between the revisions, a landed proprietor continued to pay for all the serfs accredited to him on the official list, the births being reckoned for convenience as an exact offset to the deaths. Another provision of the law was, that no one should purchase serfs without the land to which they belonged, except for the purpose of colonization. An ingenious fraud suggested by a combination of these two laws forms the foundation of 'Dead Souls.' The hero, Tchitchikoff, is an official who has struggled up ambitiously and shrewdly, through numerous vicissitudes of bribe-taking, extortion, and ensuing discomfiture, to a snug berth in the custom-house service, from which he is ejected under circumstances which render further flights difficult if not impossible. In this strait he hits upon the idea of purchasing from landed proprietors of mediocre probity the souls who are dead, though still nominally alive, and on whom they are forced to pay taxes. Land is being given away gratuitously, in the southern governments of Kherson and Tauris, to any one who will settle upon it, as every one knows. His plan is to buy one thousand non-existent serfs ("dead souls"), at a maximum of one hundred rubles apiece, for colonization on an equally non-existent estate in the south, and then, by mortgaging them to the loan bank for the nobility known as the Council of Guardians, obtain a capital of two hundred thousand rubles. In pursuance of this clever scheme he sets out on his travels, visits provincial towns and the estates of landed gentry of every shade of character, dishonesty, and financial standing, where he either buys for a song, or cajoles from them as a gift, large numbers of "dead souls." It is unnecessary and impossible to do more than reinforce the hint which this statement contains, by the assurance that Gogol used to the uttermost the magnificent opportunity thus afforded him of showing up Russian life and manners. Though the scene of Tchitchikoff's wanderings does not include either capital, the life there does not escape the author's notice in his asides and illustrative arguments. It may also be said that while his talent lies pre-eminently in the delineation of men, he does not fail in his portraits of women; though as a rule these are more general—in the nature of a composite photograph—than particular. The day for minute analysis of feminine character had not arrived, and in all Gogol's works there is, properly speaking, no such thing as the heroine playing a first-class rôle, whether of the antique or the modern pattern.

Gogol's great historical novel, 'Taras Bulba,' which deals with the famous Kazak republic of the Dniepr Falls (Zaporózhya), stands equally with his other volumes of the first rank in poetry, dramatic power, and truth to life. It possesses also a force of tragedy and passion in love which are altogether lacking, or but faintly indicated, in his other masterpieces.

---

FROM 'THE INSPECTOR'

Scene: A room in the house of the Chief of Police.
Present: Chief of Police, Curator of Benevolent Institutions, Superintendent of Schools, Judge, Commissary of Police, Doctor, two Policemen.

Chief—I have summoned you, gentlemen, in order to communicate to you an unpleasant piece of news: an Inspector is coming.

Judge—What! An Inspector?

Chief—An Inspector from St. Petersburg, incognito. And with secret orders, to boot.

Judge—I thought so!

Curator—If there's not trouble, then I'm mistaken!

Superintendent—Heavens! And with secret orders, too!

Chief—I foresaw it: all last night I was dreaming of two huge rats; I never saw such rats: they were black, and of supernatural size! They came, and smelled, and went away. I will read you the letter I have received from Andrei Ivan'itch Tchorikoff,—whom you know, Artemiy Philip'itch. This is what he writes:—"Dear friend, gossip and benefactor!" [Mutters in an undertone, as he runs his eye quickly over it.] "I hasten to inform you, among other things, that an official has arrived with orders to inspect the entire government, and our district in particular." [Raises his finger significantly.] "I have heard this from trustworthy people, although he represents himself as a private individual. As I know that you are not quite free from faults, since you are a sensible man, and do not like to let slip what runs into your hands—" [Pauses.] Well, here are some remarks about his own affairs—"so I advise you to be on your guard: for he may arrive at any moment, if he is not already arrived and living somewhere incognito. Yesterday—" Well, what follows is about family matters—"My sister Anna Kirilovna has come with her husband; Ivan Kirilitch has grown very fat, and still plays the violin—" and so forth, and so forth. So there you have the whole matter.

Judge—Yes, the matter is so unusual, so remarkable; something unexpected.

Superintendent—And why? Anton Anton'itch, why is this? Why is the Inspector coming hither?

Chief [sighs]—Why? Evidently, it is fate. [Sighs.] Up to this time, God be praised, they have attended to other towns; now our turn has come.

Judge—I think, Anton Anton'itch, that there is some fine political cause at the bottom of this. This means something: Russia—yes—Russia wants to go to war, and the minister, you see, has sent an official to find out whether there is any treason.

Chief—What's got hold of him? A sensible man, truly! Treason in a provincial town! Is it a border town—is it, now? Why, you could ride away from here for three years and not reach any other kingdom.

Judge—No, I tell you. You don't—you don't—The government has subtle reasons; no matter if it is out of the way, they don't care for that.

Chief—Whether they care or not, I have warned you, gentlemen. See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artemiy Philip'itch! Without doubt, this traveling official will wish first of all to inspect your institutions—and therefore you must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps should be clean, and the sick people should not look like blacksmiths, as they usually do in private.

Curator—Well, that's a mere trifle. We can put clean nightcaps on them.

Chief—And then, you ought to have written up over the head of each bed, in Latin or some other language—that's your business—the name of each disease: when each patient was taken sick, the day and hour. It is not well that your sick people should smoke such strong tobacco that one has to sneeze every time he goes in there. Yes, and it would be better if there were fewer of them: it will be set down at once to bad supervision or to lack of skill on the doctor's part.

Curator—Oh! so far as the doctoring is concerned, Christian Ivan'itch and I have already taken measures: the nearer to nature the better,—we don't use any expensive medicines. Man is a simple creature: if he dies, why then he dies; if he gets well, why then he gets well. And then, it would have been difficult for Christian Ivan'itch to make them understand him—he doesn't know one word of Russian.

Chief—I should also advise you, Ammos Feodor'itch, to turn your attention to court affairs. In the ante-room, where the clients usually assemble, your janitor has got a lot of geese and goslings, which waddle about under foot. Of course it is praiseworthy to be thrifty in domestic affairs, and why should not the janitor be so too? only, you know, it is not proper in that place. I meant to mention it to you before, but always forgot it.

Judge—I'll order them to be taken to the kitchen this very day. Will you come and dine with me?

Chief—And moreover, it is not well that all sorts of stuff should be put to dry in the court-room, and that over the very desk, with the documents, there should be a hunting-whip. I know that you are fond of hunting, but there is a proper time for everything, and you can hang it up there again when the Inspector takes his departure. And then your assistant—he's a man of experience, but there's a smell about him as though he had just come from a distillery—and that's not as it should be. I meant to speak to you about it long ago, but something, I don't recall now precisely what, put it out of my mind. There is a remedy, if he really was born with the odor, as he asserts: you might advise him to eat onions or garlic or something. In that case, Christian Ivan'itch could assist you with some medicaments.

Judge—No, it's impossible to drive it out: he says that his mother injured him when he was a child, and an odor of whisky has emanated from him ever since.

Chief—Yes, I just remarked on it. As for internal arrangements, and what Andrei Ivan'itch in his letter calls "faults," I can say nothing. Yes, and strange to say, there is no man who has not his faults. God himself arranged it so, and it is useless for the freethinkers to maintain the contrary.

Judge—What do you mean by faults, Anton Anton'itch? There are various sorts of faults. I tell every one frankly that I take bribes; but what sort of bribes? greyhound pups. That's quite another thing.

Chief—Well, greyhound pups or anything else, it's all the same.

Judge—Well, no, Anton Anton'itch. But for example, if some one has a fur coat worth five hundred rubles, and his wife has a shawl—

Chief—Well, and how about your taking greyhound pups as bribes? Why don't you trust in God? You never go to church. I am firm in the faith, at all events, and go to church every Sunday. But you—oh, I know you! If you begin to talk about the creation of the world, one's hair rises straight up on his head.

Judge—It came of itself, of its own accord.

Chief—Well, in some cases it is worse to have brains than to be entirely without them. Besides, I only just mentioned the district court: but to tell the truth, it is only very rarely that any one ever looks in there; 'tis such an enviable place that God himself protects it. And as for you, Luka Luk'itch, as superintendent of schools, you must bestir yourself with regard to the teachers. They are educated people, to be sure, and were reared at divers academies, but they have very peculiar ways which go naturally with that learned profession. One of them, for instance, the fat-faced one,—I don't recall his name,—cannot get along without making grimaces when he takes his seat;—like this [makes a grimace]: and then he begins to smooth his beard out from under his neckerchief, with his hand. In short, if he makes such faces at the scholars, there is nothing to be said: it must be necessary; I am no judge of that. But just consider—if he were to do that to a visitor it might be very unpleasant; the Inspector or any one else might take it as personal. The Devil knows what might come of it.

Superintendent—What am I to do with him? I have spoken to him about it several times already. A few days ago, when our chief went into the class-room, he made such a grimace as I never beheld before. He made it out of good-will; but it is a judgment on me, because freethinking is being inculcated in the young people.

Chief—And I must also mention the teacher of history. He's a wise man, that's plain, and has acquired a great mass of learning; but he expresses himself with so much warmth that he loses control of himself. I heard him once: well, so long as he was talking about the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was all right; but when he got to Alexander of Macedon, I can't describe to you what came over him. I thought there was a fire, by heavens! He jumped from his seat and dashed his chair to the floor with all his might. Alexander of Macedon was a hero, no doubt; but why smash the chairs? There will be a deficit in the accounts, just as the result of that.

Superintendent—Yes, he is hasty! I have remarked on it to him several times. He says, "What would you have? I would sacrifice my life for science."

Chief—Yes, such is the incomprehensible decree of fate: a learned man is always a drunkard, or else he makes faces that would scare the very saints.

Superintendent—God forbid that he should inspect the educational institutions. Everybody meddles and tries to show everybody else that he is a learned man.

Chief—That would be nothing: that cursed incognito! All of a sudden you hear—"Ah, here you are, my little dears! And who," says he, "is the Judge here?"—"Lyapkin-Tyapkin."—"And who is the Superintendent of the Hospital?"—"Zemlyanika!" That's the worst of it!

Enter Postmaster

Chief—Well, how do you feel, Ivan Kusmitch?

Postmaster—How do I feel? How do you feel, Anton Anton'itch?

Chief—How do I feel? I'm not afraid; and yet I am,—a little. The merchants and citizens cause me some anxiety. They say I have been hard with them; but God knows, if I have ever taken anything from them it was not out of malice. I even think [takes him by the arm and leads him aside]—I even think there may be a sort of complaint against me. Why, in fact, is the Inspector coming to us? Listen, Ivan Kusmitch: why can't you—for our common good, you know—open every letter which passes through your office, going or coming, and read it, to see whether it contains a complaint or is simply correspondence? If it does not, then you can seal it up again. Besides, you could even deliver the letter unsealed.

Postmaster—I know, I know. You can't tell me anything about that; I always do it, not out of circumspection but out of curiosity: I'm deadly fond of knowing what is going on in the world. It's very interesting reading, I can tell you! It is a real treat to read some letters: they contain such descriptions of occurrences, and they're so improving—better than the Moscow News.

[The play proceeds: two men, the town busybodies, happen to find at the inn a traveler who has been living on credit and going nowhere for two weeks. The landlord is about to put his lodger in prison for debt, when these men jump to the conclusion that he is the Inspector. The Prefect and other terrified officials accept the suggestion, in spite of his plain statement as to his identity. They set about making the town presentable, entertain and bribe him, and bow down to him. He accepts their hospitality, asks loans, makes love to the Prefect's silly wife and daughter, betroths himself to the latter, receives the petitions and bribes of the oppressed townspeople,—and drives off with the best post-horses the town can furnish, ostensibly to ask the blessing of his rich old uncle on his marriage. The Postmaster intercepts a letter which he has written to a friend. Its revelations, and the ridicule which he therein casts on his hosts, open their eyes at last. At that moment a gendarme appears and announces that the Inspector has arrived. Tableau.]

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Isabel F. Hapgood

---

OLD-FASHIONED GENTRY

From 'Mirgorod'

I am very fond of the modest life of those isolated owners of remote estates which are generally called "old-fashioned" in Little Russia, and which, like ruinous and picturesque houses, are beautiful through their simplicity and complete contrast to a new and regular building whose walls have never yet been washed by the rain, whose roof has not yet been overgrown with moss, and whose porch, still possessed of its stucco, does not yet display its red bricks. I can still see the low-roofed little house, with its veranda of slender, blackened wooden columns, surrounding it on all sides, so that in case of a thunder-storm or a hail-storm you could close the window shutters without getting wet; behind it fragrant wild-cherry trees, row upon row of dwarf fruit-trees, overtopped by crimson cherries and a purple sea of plums, covered with a lead-colored bloom, luxuriant maples under whose shade rugs were spread for repose; in front of the house the spacious yard, with short fresh grass, through which paths had been worn from the storehouses to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the apartments of the family; a long-necked goose drinking water with her young goslings, soft as down; the picket fence festooned with bunches of dried apples and pears, and rugs hung out to air; a cart-load of melons standing near the store-house, the oxen unyoked and lying lazily beside it. All this has for me an indescribable charm,—perhaps because I no longer see it, and because anything from which we are separated pleases us.

But more than all else, the owners of this distant nook,—an old man and old woman,—hastening eagerly out to meet me, gave me pleasure. Afanasy Ivanovitch Tovstogub and his wife, Pulkheria Ivanovna Tovstogubikha, according to the neighboring peasants' way of expressing it, were the old people of whom I began to speak. If I were a painter and wished to depict Philemon and Baucis on canvas, I could have found no better models than they. Afanasy Ivanovitch was sixty years old, Pulkheria Ivanovna was fifty-five. Afanasy Ivanovitch was tall, always wore a short sheepskin coat covered with camlet, sat all doubled up, and was almost always smiling, whether he were telling a story or only listening to one. Pulkheria Ivanovna was rather serious, and hardly ever laughed; but her face and eyes expressed so much goodness, so much eagerness to treat you to all the best they owned, that you would probably have found a smile too repelling on her kind face. The delicate wrinkles were so agreeably disposed on their countenances that an artist would certainly have appropriated them. It seemed as though in them you might read their whole life: the pure, peaceful life led by the old, patriotic, simple-hearted, and at the same time wealthy families, which always present a marked contrast to those baser Little-Russians who work up from tar-burners and peddlers, throng the court-rooms like grasshoppers, squeeze the last copper from their fellow-countrymen, crowd Petersburg with scandal-mongers, finally acquire capital, and triumphantly add an f to their surnames which end in o. No, they did not resemble those despicable and miserable creatures, but all ancient and native Little-Russian families.

They never had any children, so all their affection was concentrated on themselves.

The rooms of the little house in which our old couple dwelt were small, low-ceiled, such as are generally to be seen with old-fashioned people. In each room stood a huge stove, which occupied nearly one-third of the space. These little rooms were frightfully hot, because both Afanasy Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna were fond of heat. All their fuel was stored in the ante-room, which was always filled nearly to the ceiling with straw, which is generally used in Little Russia in place of wood.

The chairs of the room were of wood, and massive, in the style which generally marked those of the olden times: all had high, turned backs of natural wood, without any paint or varnish; they were not even upholstered, and somewhat resembled those which are still used by bishops. Triangular tables stood in the corners, a square table stood in front of the sofa; and there was a large mirror in a slender gilt frame, carved in foliage, which the flies had covered with black spots; in front of the sofa was a mat with flowers which resembled birds, and birds which resembled flowers: and these things constituted almost the entire furniture of the far from elegant little house where my old people lived. The maids' room was filled with young and elderly serving-women in striped chemises, to whom Pulkheria Ivanovna sometimes gave trifles to sew, and whom she set to picking over berries, but who ran about the kitchen or slept the greater part of the time. Pulkheria Ivanovna regarded it as a necessity that she should keep them in the house, and she kept a strict watch of their morals; but to no purpose.

Afanasy Ivan'itch very rarely occupied himself with the farming; although he sometimes went out to see the mowers and reapers, and gazed with great intensity at their work. All the burden of management devolved upon Pulkheria Ivan'na. Pulkheria Ivanovna's housekeeping consisted of a constant locking and unlocking of the storehouse, of salting, drying, and preserving incalculable quantities of fruits and vegetables. Her house was exactly like a chemical laboratory. A fire was constantly laid under an apple-tree; and the kettle or the brass pan with preserves, jelly, marmalade,—made with honey, with sugar, and with I know not what else,—was hardly ever taken from the tripod. Under another tree the coachman was forever distilling vodka with peach-leaves, with wild cherry, cherry flowers, wild gentian, or cherry-stones, in a copper still; and at the end of the process he was never able to control his tongue, but chattered all sorts of nonsense which Pulkheria Ivanovna did not understand, and took himself off to the kitchen to sleep. Such a quantity of all this stuff was preserved, salted, and dried that it would probably have overwhelmed the whole yard at least (for Pulkheria Ivanovna liked to lay in a store far beyond what was calculated for consumption), if the greater part of it had not been devoured by the maid-servants, who crept into the storehouse and overate themselves to such a fearful extent that they groaned and complained of their stomachs for a whole day afterwards.

Both the old folks, in accordance with old-fashioned customs, were very fond of eating. As soon as daylight dawned (they always rose early) and the doors had begun their many-toned concert of squeaks, they sat down at the table and drank coffee. When Afanasy Ivanovitch had drunk his coffee, he went out, flirted his handkerchief, and said, "Kish, kish! go away from the veranda, geese!" In the yard he generally encountered the steward: he usually entered into conversation with him, inquired about the work of the estate with the greatest minuteness, and imparted to him such a multitude of observations and orders as would have caused any one to marvel at his understanding of business; and no novice would have ventured to conjecture that so acute a master could be robbed. But his steward was a clever rascal: he knew well what answers he must give, and better still how to manage things.

This done, Afanasy Ivanovitch returned to the house, and approaching Pulkheria Ivanovna, said, "Well, Pulkheria Ivan'na, is it time to eat something, do you think?"

"What shall we have to eat now, Afanasy Ivan'itch,—some wheat and suet cakes, or some patties with poppy-seeds, or some salted mushrooms?"

"Some mushrooms, then, or some patties, if you please," said Afanasy Ivan'itch; and then suddenly a table-cloth would make its appearance on the table, with the patties and mushrooms.

An hour before dinner Afanasy Ivan'itch took another snack, and drank vodka from an ancient silver cup, ate mushrooms, divers dried fishes, and other things. They sat down to dine at twelve o'clock. There stood upon the table, in addition to the platters and sauce-boats, a multitude of pots with covers pasted on, that the appetizing products of the savory old-fashioned cooking might not be exhaled abroad. At dinner the conversation turned upon subjects closely connected with the meal.

After dinner Afanasy Ivanovitch went to lie down for an hour, at the end of which time Pulkheria Ivanovna brought him a sliced watermelon and said, "Here, try this, Afanasy Ivan'itch; see what a good melon it is."

"Don't put faith in it because it is red in the centre, Pulkheria Ivan'na," said Afanasy Ivanovitch, taking a good-sized chunk. "Sometimes they are not good though they are red."

But the watermelon slowly disappeared. Then Afanasy Ivanovitch ate a few pears, and went out into the garden for a walk with Pulkheria Ivanovna. When they returned to the house, Pulkheria Ivanovna went about her own affairs; but he sat down on the veranda facing the yard, and observed how the interior of the store-room was alternately disclosed and revealed, and how the girls jostled each other as they carried in or brought out all sorts of stuff in wooden boxes, sieves, trays, and other receptacles for fruit. After waiting a while, he sent for Pulkheria Ivanovna or went in search of her himself, and said, "What is there for me to eat, Pulkheria Ivan'na?"

"What is there?" asked Pulkheria Ivanovna. "Shall I go and tell them to bring you some curd dumplings with berries, which I had set aside for you?"

"That would be good," answered Afanasy Ivanovitch.

"Or perhaps you could eat some kisel?" [A jelly-like pudding, made of potato flour, and flavored with some sour fruit juice.]

"That is good also," replied Afanasy Invanovitch; whereupon all of them were immediately brought and eaten in due course.

Before supper Afanasy Invanovitch took another appetizing snack.

At half-past nine they sat down to supper. After supper they went directly to bed, and universal silence settled down upon this busy yet quiet nook.

The chamber in which Afanasy Ivanovitch and Pulkheria Ivanovna slept was so hot that very few people could have stayed in it more than a few hours; but Afanasy Ivanovitch, for the sake of more warmth, slept upon the stove bench, although the excessive heat caused him to rise several times in the course of the night and walk about the room. Sometimes Afanasy Ivanovitch groaned as he walked thus about the room.

Then Pulkheria Ivanovna inquired, "Why do you groan, Afanasy Ivan'itch?"

"God knows, Pulkheria Ivan'na! It seems to me that my stomach aches a little," said Afanasy Ivanovitch.

"Hadn't you better eat something, Afanasy Ivan'itch?"

"I don't know; perhaps it would be well, Pulkheria Ivan'na: by the way, what is there to eat?"

"Sour milk, or some stewed dried pears."

"If you please, I will try them," said Afanasy Ivanovitch. A sleepy maid was sent to ransack the cupboards, and Afanasy Ivanovitch ate a plateful; after which he remarked, "Now I seem to feel relieved."

I loved to visit them; and though I over-ate myself horribly, like all their guests, and although it was very bad for me, still I was always glad to go to them. Besides, I think that the air of Little Russia must possess some special properties which aid digestion; for if any one were to undertake to eat in that way here, there is not a doubt but that he would find himself lying on the table a corpse, instead of in bed.

Pulkheria Ivanovna had a little gray cat, which almost always lay coiled up in a ball at her feet. Pulkheria Ivanovna stroked her occasionally, and tickled her neck with her finger, the petted cat stretching it out as long as possible. It would not be correct to affirm that Pulkheria Ivanovna loved her so very much, but she had simply become attached to her from seeing her continually about. Afanasy Ivanovitch often joked about the attachment.

Behind their garden lay a large forest, which had been spared by the enterprising steward, possibly because the sound of the axe might have reached the ears of Pulkheria Ivanovna. It was dense, neglected; the old tree trunks were concealed by luxuriant hazel-bushes, and resembled the feathered legs of pigeons. In this wood dwelt wild cats. These cats had a long conference with Pulkheria Ivanovna's tame cat through a hole under the storehouse, and at last led her astray, as a detachment of soldiers leads astray a dull-witted peasant. Pulkheria Ivanovna noticed that her cat was missing, and caused search to be made for her; but no cat was to be found. Three days passed; Pulkheria Ivanovna felt sorry, but in the end forgot all about her loss.

[The cat returns to the place half starved, and is coaxed to come into the house and eat, but runs away on Pulkheria Ivanovna's trying to pet her.]

The old woman became pensive. "It is my death which is come for me," she said to herself; and nothing could cheer her. All day she was sad. In vain did Afanasy Ivanovitch jest, and seek to discover why she had suddenly grown so grave. Pulkheria Ivanovna either made no reply, or one which did not in the least satisfy Afanasy Ivanovitch. The next day she had grown visibly thinner.

"What is the matter with you, Pulkheria Ivanovna? You are not ill?"

"No, I am not ill, Afanasy Ivan'itch. I want to tell you about a strange occurrence, I know that I shall die this year; my death has already come for me."

Afanasy Ivanovitch's mouth was distorted with pain. Nevertheless he tried to conquer the sad feeling in his mind, and said smiling, "God only knows what you are talking about, Pulkheria Ivan'na! You must have drunk some of your peach infusion instead of your usual herb tea."

"No, Afanasy Ivan'itch, I have not drunk my peach infusion," replied Pulkheria Ivanovna. "I beg of you, Afanasy Ivan'itch, to fulfill my wishes. When I die, bury me by the church wall. Put on me my grayish gown,—the one with the small flowers on a cinnamon ground. My satin gown with the red stripes you must not put on me: a corpse needs no clothes; of what use are they to her? But it will be good for you. Make yourself a fine dressing-gown, in case visitors come, so that you can make a good appearance when you receive them."

"God knows what you are saying, Pulkheria Ivan'na!" said Afanasy Ivanovitch. "Death will come some time; but you frighten me with such remarks."

"Mind, Yavdokha," she said, turning to the housekeeper, whom she had sent for expressly, "that you look after your master when I am dead, and cherish him like the apple of your eye, like your own child. See that everything he likes is prepared in the kitchen; that his linen and clothes are always clean; that when visitors happen in, you dress him properly, otherwise he will come forth in his old dressing-gown, for he often forgets now whether it is a festival or an ordinary day."

Poor old woman! She had no thought for the great moment which was awaiting her, nor of her soul, nor of the future life; she thought only of her poor companion, with whom she had passed her life, and whom she was about to leave an orphan and unprotected. After this fashion did she arrange everything with great skill, so that after her death Afanasy Ivanovitch might not perceive her absence. Her faith in her approaching end was so firm, and her mind was so fixed upon it, that in a few days she actually took to her bed, and was unable to swallow any nourishment.

Afanasy Ivanovitch was all attention, and never left her bedside. "Perhaps you could eat something, Pulkheria Ivan'na," he said, gazing uneasily into her eyes. But Pulkheria Ivanovna made no reply. At length, after a long silence, she moved her lips as though desirous of saying something—and her spirit fled.

Afanasy Ivanovitch was utterly amazed. It seemed to him so terrible that he did not even weep. He gazed at her with troubled eyes, as though he did not understand the meaning of a corpse.

Five years passed. Being in the vicinity at the end of the five years, I went to the little estate of Afanasy Ivanovitch, to inquire after my old neighbor, with whom I had spent the day so agreeably in former times, dining always on the choicest delicacies of his kind-hearted wife. When I drove up to the door, the house seemed twice as old as formerly; the peasants' cottages were lying on one side, without doubt exactly like their owners; the fence and hedge around the yard were dilapidated; and I myself saw the cook pull out a paling to heat the stove, when she had only a couple of steps to take in order to get the kindling-wood which had been piled there expressly for her use. I stepped sadly upon the veranda; the same dogs, now blind or with broken legs, raised their bushy tails, all matted with burs, and barked.

The old man came out to meet me. So this was he! I recognized him at once, but he was twice as bent as formerly. He knew me, and greeted me with the smile which was so familiar to me. I followed him into the room. All there seemed as in the past; but I observed a strange disorder, a tangible loss of something. In everything was visible the absence of the painstaking Pulkheria Ivanovna. At table, they gave us a knife without a handle; the dishes were prepared with little art. I did not care to inquire about the management of the estate; I was even afraid to glance at the farm buildings. I tried to interest Afanasy Ivanovitch in something, and told him divers bits of news. He listened with his customary smile, but his glance was at times quite unintelligent; and thoughts did not wander therein—they simply disappeared.

"This is the dish—" said Afanasy Ivanovitch when they brought us curds and flour with cream, "—this is the dish—" he continued, and I observed that his voice began to quiver, and that tears were on the point of bursting from his leaden eyes; but he collected all his strength in the effort to repress them: "this is the dish which the—the—the de—ceas—" and his tears suddenly gushed forth, his hand fell upon his plate, the plate was overturned, flew from the table, and was broken. He sat stupidly, holding the spoon, and tears like a never-ceasing fountain flowed, flowed in streams down upon his napkin.

He did not live long after this. I heard of his death recently. What was strange, though, was that the circumstances attending it somewhat resembled those connected with the death of Pulkheria Ivanovna. One day, Afanasy Ivanovitch decided to take a short stroll in the garden. As he went slowly down the path with his usual heedlessness, a strange thing happened to him. All at once he heard some one behind him say in a distinct voice, "Afanasy Ivan'itch!" He turned round, but there was no one there. He looked on all sides; he peered into the shrubbery,—no one anywhere. The day was calm and the sun was shining brightly. He pondered for a moment. Then his face lighted up, and at last he cried, "It is Pulkheria Ivanovna calling me!"

He surrendered himself utterly to the moral conviction that Pulkheria Ivanovna was calling him. He yielded with the meekness of a submissive child, withered up, coughed, melted away like a candle, and at last expired like it when nothing remains to feed its poor flame. "Lay me beside Pulkheria Ivan'na"—that was all he said before his death.

His wish was fulfilled; and they buried him beside the churchyard wall close to Pulkheria Ivanovna's grave. The guests at the funeral were few, but there was a throng of common and poor people. The house was already quite deserted. The enterprising clerk and village elder carried off to their cottages all the old household utensils which the housekeeper did not manage to appropriate.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Isabel F. Hapgood

---

CARLO GOLDONI.

CARLO GOLDONI

(1707-1793)

BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON

taly is generally felt to be, above all other lands, the natural home of the drama. In acting, as in music, indeed, the sceptre has never wholly passed from her: Ristori and Salvini certainly are not yet forgotten. The Græco-Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence, the rhetorical tragedy of Seneca, have had a far more direct hand in molding the modern dramatists' art than have the loftier creative masterpieces of the great Attic Four. Indeed, Latin has never become in Italy a really dead language, remote from the popular consciousness. The splendor of the Church ritual, the great mass of the educated clergy, the almost purely Latin roots of the vernacular, have made such a loss impossible.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Terence and Plautus were often revived on the stage, still oftener imitated in Latin. Many of the greatest names in modern Italian literature are in some degree associated with drama. Thus Machiavelli made free Italian versions from both the comic Latin poets, and wrote a powerful though immoral prose comedy, 'The Magic Draught' (Mandragola). Tasso's 'Aminta' is as sweet and musical, and hardly so artificial, as that famous 'Pastor Fido' of Guarini, which has become the ideal type of all the mock-pastoral comedy out of which the modern opera has risen.

So, when Goldoni is hailed as the father of modern Italian comedy, it can only mean that his prolific Muse has dominated the stage in our own century and in its native land. In his delightfully naïve Memoirs he frequently announces himself as the leader of reform in the dramatic art. And this claim is better founded; though there is a startling discrepancy between the character, the temper, the life of this child of the sun, and the Anglo-Saxon ideal of "Man the Reformer" as delineated, for instance, by our own cooler-blooded Emerson!

Under the lead of Goldoni's elder contemporary Metastasio, the lyrical drama of pastoral and artificial love had become fully wedded to music; and it is rightly felt that the resulting modern opera is a genus of its own, not essentially nor chiefly dramatic in character and aims. An opera can be sung without action; it cannot be acted without music. On the other hand, the farce had become almost restricted to the stock masked characters, Pantaloon, the Dottore, Arlecchino, and the rest, with a narrow range of childish buffoonery in the action. The companies of professional actors, endowed with that marvelous power of improvisation which the very language of Italy seems to stimulate, hardly permitted the poet to offer them more than a mere outline of a shallow plot, to be filled in from scene to scene at the impulse of the moment on the stage!

Under these circumstances it was indeed necessary to reclaim the rights of the dramatic poet, to reduce to decent limits the "gag" which the comic actor has doubtless always been eager to use, and also to educate or beguile his public up to the point of lending a moderately attentive ear to a play of sustained interest and culminating plot. In this seemingly modest but really most difficult task, Goldoni scored a decided success,—a triumph.

Even his checkered life as a whole was, at eighty, in his own retrospect a happy comedy, mingled with few serious reverses and hardly darkened at all by remorse. Such lives at best are nowise numerous. Adequate self-portraitures of successful artists are so rare that the autobiographies of the gentle Goldoni, and of his savage fellow-countryman Benvenuto Cellini, almost form a class of literature by themselves.

Born in Venice in fair social position, Goldoni spent his childhood chiefly in Chiozza, a ruder and humbler miniature of the island city some twenty-five miles away. Though an incurable wanderer,—indeed, so filled with the true Bohemian's feverish love for change that he never could endure even success anywhere for many summers,—he yet gave more of his best years, and a heartier loyalty, to Venice than to any other home. He knew best, and delineated best, the ordinary life of the lagoons. Mr. Howells, himself by long residence and love a half-Venetian, declares that the comedies in the local dialect are invariably the best, and next best the Italian plays whose scenes are at least laid in Venice. Perhaps the critic is here himself unduly swayed by his affections. Goldoni knew well nearly all Italian lands. He had even, for a series of years, a career as an advocate in Pisa. "My comic genius was not extinguished, but suppressed," he explains. He did not even then give up play-writing, and a traveling theatre manager easily beguiled him back to Venice. This was in 1747, and this same manager, Medebac, setting up a new theatre in Venice, absorbed Goldoni's energies for several years. It was in 1750 that he successfully carried out a rash vow to produce sixteen new comedies in a single year! Among these are a goodly number of his best, including 'The Coffee-House,' from which a few scenes are given below.

Though he passed over into the service of a different theatre, traveled constantly with his actors, accepted invitations to Parma, Rome, etc., to oversee the performance of his plays, yet he never gave up his home in Venice altogether, until summoned to Paris in 1761. These fourteen years, moreover, form the happiest period of his life. His income from the theatres, from published editions of his comedies, and from his inherited property, would have made him wealthy, but for his extravagant and careless mode of life.

Despite one notable success in French with the comedy 'The Surly Benefactor' (1771), Goldoni's life in France was relatively unprofitable and ignoble. He became Italian teacher of various royal princesses, with the utmost uncertainty and delay as to his salaries or pensions. Yet he could never break the fascination of Paris. The art of the French actors was a never-failing delight to him. There, at the age of eighty, in French, he wrote and published his 'Memoirs.' The Revolution swept away his negligent patrons. In poverty and utter neglect he died at last, just as the republicans were ready to restore his royal pension.

Goldoni was the child of Italy and of the eighteenth century. He had no serious quarrel with his environment. He was not greatly superior, in actual character or aspirations, to his associates. His affection for his devoted wife did not save him from many a wandering passion. The promising prima donnas, in particular, found in him an all too devoted instructor and protector. The gaming-table and the lottery are apparently irresistible to any true Italian, and Goldoni knew by heart the passions which he ridicules or condemns, though without bitterness, upon his stage. His oft-repeated claim to have reformed the Italian theatre meant chiefly this: that between the lyrical drama of Metastasio on the one hand, and the popular masque with stock characters on the other,—and while contributing to both these forms of art,—he did firmly establish the comedy of plot and dialogue, carefully learned and rehearsed, in which the players must speak the speech as it is pronounced to them by the poet.

Goldoni himself acknowledges, perhaps not too sincerely, in his Parisian memoirs, the superiority, the mastership, of Molière. In truth, the great Frenchman stands, with Aristophanes and Shakespeare, upon a lonely height quite unapproached by lesser devotees of Thalia. We must not seek in Goldoni a prober of the human heart, not even a fearless satirist of social conditions. In his rollicking good-humor and content with the world as he finds it, Goldoni is much like Plautus. He is moreover under a censorship hardly less severe. He dares not, for instance, introduce upon his stage any really offensive type of Venetian nobleman. As for religious dictation, the convent must not even be mentioned, though the aunt with whom the young lady is visiting sometimes becomes as transparent an idiom as the "uncle" of a spendthrift cockney! The audience, moreover, demand only diversion, not serious instruction (as Goethe complains, even of his grave Germans, in the 'Prolog im Theater'). It is remarkable, under all these conditions, how healthy, how kindly, how proper, most of Goldoni's work is. Doubtless, like Goldsmith, he could preach the more gracefully, persuasively, and unobservedly, because he never attempted to escape from the very vices or indulgences that he satirizes. But even the most determined seeker for the moral element in art will find little indeed thereof in Goldoni's merry comedies. Incredible as it seems to us Puritans, he really made it his mission to amuse. Thoroughly in love with the rather ignoble, trivial life of his day, he holds the dramatic mirror up to it with lifelong optimism and enjoyment. His wit is not keen, his poetic imagination is slight indeed. Aside from the true dramatist's skill in construction, in plot, his power lies chiefly in the rapid, clear, firm outlines of his character-drawing. These characters are for the most part just about such men and women, such creatures of impulse and whim, such genial mingling of naughtiness and good intentions, as we see about us. He never delineates a saint or a hero; hardly a monster of wickedness. He had never known either, and would not have been interested if he had. The charm of Goldoni is felt chiefly in Venice, or at least in Italy, while listening to his comedy and watching the enjoyment mirrored in the faces of his own audience. It evaporates in translation, and his plays are meant only to be heard, not read. To Mr. Howells's own affectionate testimony we may add his happy citation from Goethe, who is writing from Venice in 1786:

"Yesterday, at the theatre of St. Luke, was performed 'Le Baruffe-Chiozotte,' which I should interpret 'The Frays and Feuds of Chiozza.' The dramatis personæ are principally seafaring people, inhabitants of Chiozza, with their wives, sisters, and daughters. The usual noisy demonstrations of such sort of people in their good or ill luck,—their dealings one with another, their vehemence but goodness of heart, commonplace remarks and unaffected manners, their naive wit and humor,—all this was excellently imitated. The piece moreover is Goldoni's, and as I had been only the day before in the place itself, and as the tones and manners of the sailors and people of the seaport still echoed in my ears and floated before my eyes, it delighted me very much; and although I did not understand a single allusion, I was nevertheless, on the whole, able to follow it pretty well.... I never witnessed anything like the noisy delight the people evinced at seeing themselves and their mates represented with such truth of nature. It was one continued laugh and tumultuous shout of exultation from beginning to end.... Great praise is due to the author, who out of nothing has here created the most amusing divertissement. However, he never could have done it with any other people than his own merry and light-hearted countrymen."

Of Goldoni's one hundred and sixty comedies, only a scanty handful have been tolerably translated in English. As accessible and agreeable an introduction as any, perhaps, is the version of four notable plays by Miss Helen Zimmern in the series 'Masterpieces of Foreign Authors.' The 'Memoirs' have been fairly rendered by John Black, and this version, considerably abridged, was served up by Mr. Howells in 1877 among his series of 'Choice Autobiographies.' Mr. Howells's introductory essay appeared also in the Atlantic Monthly. It has been drawn upon somewhat in the present sketch.

---

FIRST LOVE AND PARTING

From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'

I was intrusted some time afterwards with another commission, of a much more agreeable and amusing nature. This was to carry through an investigation, ten leagues from the town, into the circumstances of a dispute where firearms had been made use of and dangerous wounds received. As the country where this happened was flat, and the road lay through charming estates and country-houses, I engaged several of my friends to follow me; we were in all twelve, six males and six females, and four domestics. We all rode on horseback, and we employed twelve days in this delicious expedition....

In this party there were two sisters, one married and the other single. The latter was very much to my liking, and I may say I made the party for her alone. She was as prudent and modest as her sister was headstrong and foolish; the singularity of our journey afforded us an opportunity of coming to an explanation, and we became lovers.

My investigation was concluded in two hours; we selected another road for our return, to vary our pleasure.... The six gentlemen of our party proposed another species of entertainment. In the palace of the governor there was a theatre, which they wished to put to some use; and they did me the honor to tell me that they had conceived the project on my account, and they left me the power of choosing the pieces and distributing the characters. I thanked them, and accepted the proposition; and with the approbation of his Excellency and my chancellor, I put myself at the head of this new entertainment. I could have wished something comic, but I was not fond of buffoonery, and there were no good comedies; I therefore gave the preference to tragedy. As the operas of Metastasio were then represented everywhere, even without music, I put the airs into recitative; I endeavored as well as I could to approximate the style of that charming author; and I made choice of 'Didone' and 'Siroe' for our representation. I distributed the parts according to the characters of my actors, whom I knew, and I reserved the worst for myself. In this I acted wisely, for I was completely unsuited for tragedy. Fortunately, I had composed two small pieces in which I played two parts of character, and redeemed my reputation. The first of these pieces was 'The Good Father,' and the second 'La Cantatrice.' Both were approved of, and my acting was considered passable for an amateur. I saw the last of these pieces some time afterwards at Venice, where a young advocate thought proper to give it out as his own work, and to receive compliments on the subject; but having been imprudent enough to publish it with his name, he experienced the mortification of seeing his plagiarism unmasked.

I did what I could to engage my beautiful Angelica to accept a part in our tragedies, but it was impossible; she was timid, and had she even been willing, her parents would not have given their permission. She visited us; but this pleasure cost her tears, for she was jealous, and suffered much from seeing me on such a familiar footing with my fair companions. The poor little girl loved me with tenderness and sincerity, and I loved her also with my whole soul; I may say she was the first person whom I ever loved. She aspired to become my wife, which she would have been if certain singular reflections, that however were well founded, had not turned me from the design. Her elder sister had been remarkably beautiful, and after her first child she became ugly. The youngest had the same skin and the same features; she was one of those delicate beauties whom the air injures, and whom the smallest fatigue or pain discomposes: of all of which I saw a convincing proof. The fatigue of our journey produced a visible change upon her: I was young, and if my wife were in a short time to have lost her bloom, I foresaw what would have been my despair. This was reasoning curiously for a lover; but whether from virtue, weakness, or inconstancy, I quitted Feltre without marrying her.

---

THE ORIGIN OF "MASKS" IN THE ITALIAN COMEDY

From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'

The amateurs of the old comedy, on seeing the rapid progress of the new, declared everywhere that it was unworthy of an Italian to give a blow to a species of comedy in which Italy had attained great distinction, and which no other nation had ever yet been able to imitate. But what made the greatest impression on the discontented was the suppression of masks, which my system appeared to threaten. It was said that these personages had for two centuries been the amusement of Italy, and that it ought not to be deprived of a species of comic diversion which it had created and so well supported.

Before venturing to give any opinion on this subject, I imagine the reader will have no objection to listen for a few minutes to a short account of the origin, employment, and effects of these four masks. Comedy, which in all ages has been the favorite entertainment of polished nations, shared the fate of the arts and sciences, and was buried under the ruins of the Empire during the decay of letters. The germ of comedy, however, was never altogether extinguished in the fertile bosom of Italy. Those who first endeavored to bring about its revival, not finding in an ignorant age writers of sufficient skill, had the boldness to draw out plans, to distribute them into acts and scenes, and to utter extempore the subjects, thoughts, and witticisms which they had concerted among themselves. Those who could read (and neither the great nor the rich were of the number) found that in the comedies of Plautus and Terence there were always duped fathers, debauched sons, enamored girls, knavish servants, and mercenary maids; and, running over the different districts of Italy, they took the fathers from Venice and Bologna, the servants from Bergamo, and the lovers and waiting-maids from the dominions of Rome and Tuscany. Written proofs are not to be expected of what took place in a time when writing was not in use; but I prove my assertion in this way: Pantaloon has always been a Venetian, the Doctor a Bolognese, and Brighella and Harlequin Bergamasks; and from these places, therefore, the comic personages called the four masks of the Italian comedy were taken by the players. What I say on this subject is not altogether the creature of my imagination; I possess a manuscript of the fifteenth century, in very good preservation and bound in parchment, containing a hundred and twenty subjects or sketches of Italian pieces, called comedies of art, and of which the basis of the comic humor is always Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant; the Doctor, a Bolognese jurisconsult; and Brighella and Harlequin, Bergamask valets,—the first clever and sprightly, and the other a mere dolt. Their antiquity and their long existence indicate their origin.

With respect to their employment, Pantaloon and the Doctor, called by the Italians the two old men, represent the part of fathers, and the other parts where cloaks are worn. The first is a merchant, because Venice in its ancient times was the richest and most extensively commercial country of Italy. He has always preserved the ancient Venetian costume; the black dress and the woolen bonnet are still worn in Venice; and the red under-waistcoat and breeches, cut out like drawers, with red stockings and slippers, are a most exact representation of the equipment of the first inhabitants of the Adriatic marshes. The beard, which was considered as an ornament in those remote ages, has been caricatured and rendered ridiculous in subsequent periods.

The second old man, called the Doctor, was taken from among the lawyers, for the sake of opposing a learned man to a merchant; and Bologna was selected because in that city there existed a university, which, notwithstanding the ignorance of the times, still preserved the offices and emoluments of the professors. In the dress of the Doctor we observe the ancient costume of the university and bar of Bologna, which is nearly the same at this day; and the idea of the singular mask which covers his face and nose was taken from a wine stain which disfigured the countenance of a jurisconsult in those times. This is a tradition still existing among the amateurs of the comedy of art.

Brighella and Harlequin, called in Italy the two Zani, were taken from Bergamo; because, the former being a very sharp fellow and the other a stupid clown, these two extremes are only to be found among the lower orders of that part of the country. Brighella represents an intriguing, deceitful, and knavish valet. His dress is a species of livery; his swarthy mask is a caricature of the color of the inhabitants of those high mountains, tanned by the heat of the sun. Some comedians, in this character, have taken the name of Fenocchio, Fiqueto, and Scapin; but they have always represented the same valet and the same Bergamask. The harlequins have also assumed other names: they have been sometimes Tracagnins, Truffaldins, Gradelins, and Mezetins; but they have always been stupid Bergamasks. Their dress is an exact representation of that of a poor devil who has picked up pieces of stuffs of different colors to patch his dress; his hat corresponds with his mendicity, and the hare's tail with which it is ornamented is still common in the dress of the peasantry of Bergamo.

I have thus, I trust, sufficiently demonstrated the origin and employment of the four masks of the Italian comedy; it now remains for me to mention the effects resulting from them. The mask must always be very prejudicial to the action of the performer, either in joy or sorrow: whether he be in love, cross, or good-humored, the same features are always exhibited; and however he may gesticulate and vary the tone, he can never convey by the countenance, which is the interpreter of the heart, the different passions with which he is inwardly agitated. The masks of the Greeks and Romans were a sort of speaking-trumpets, invented for the purpose of conveying the sound through the vast extent of their amphitheatres. Passion and sentiment were not in those times carried to the pitch of delicacy now actually necessary. The actor must in our days possess a soul; and the soul under a mask is like a fire under ashes. These were the reasons which induced me to endeavor the reform of the Italian theatre; and to supply the place of farces with comedies. But the complaints became louder and louder: I was disgusted with the two parties, and I endeavored to satisfy both; I undertook to produce a few pieces merely sketched, without ceasing to give comedies of character. I employed the masks in the former, and I displayed a more noble and interesting comic humor in the others: each participated in the species of pleasure with which they were most delighted; with time and patience I brought about a reconciliation between them; and I had the satisfaction at length to see myself authorized in following my own taste, which became in a few years the most general and prevailing in Italy. I willingly pardoned the partisans of the comedians with masks the injuries they laid to my charge; for they were very able amateurs, who had the merit of giving themselves an interest to sketched comedies.

---

PURISTS AND PEDANTRY

From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'

My journey to Parma, and the pension and diploma conferred on me, excited the envy and rage of my adversaries. They had reported at Venice during my absence that I was dead; and there was a monk who had even the temerity to say he had been at my funeral. On arriving home safe and sound, the evil-disposed began to display their irritation at my good fortune. It was not the authors, my antagonists, who tormented me, but the partisans of the different theatres of Venice.

I was defended by literary men, who entertained a favorable opinion of me; and this gave rise to a warfare in which I was very innocently the victim of the irritation which had been excited. My system has always been never to mention the names of my adversaries: but I cannot avoid expressing the honor which I feel in proclaiming those of my advocates. Father Roberti, a Jesuit, at present the Abbé Roberti, one of the most illustrious poets of the suppressed society, published a poem in blank verse, entitled 'Comedy'; and by dwelling on the reformation effected by me, and analyzing several scenes in my pieces, he encouraged his countrymen and mine to follow the example and the system of the Venetian author. Count Verri, a Milanese, followed the Abbé Roberti.... Other patricians of Venice wrote in my favor, on account of the disputes which were every day growing warmer and warmer.... Every day witnessed some new composition for or against me; but I had this advantage,—that those who interested themselves for me, from their manners, their talents, and their reputation, were among the most prudent and distinguished men in Italy.

One of the articles for which I was most keenly attacked was a violation of the purity of the language. I was a Venetian, and I had had the disadvantage of sucking in with my mother's milk the use of a very agreeable and seductive patois, which however was not Tuscan. I learned by principle, and cultivated by reading, the language of the good Italian authors; but first impressions will return at times, notwithstanding every attention used in avoiding them. I had undertaken a journey into Tuscany, where I remained for four years, with the view of becoming familiar with the language; and I printed the first edition of my works at Florence, under the eyes and the criticism of the learned of that place, that I might purify them from errors of language. All my precautions were insufficient to satisfy the rigorists: I always failed in one thing or other; and I was perpetually reproached with the original sin of Venetianism.

Amidst all this tedious trifling, I recollected one day that Tasso had been worried his whole lifetime by the Academicians della Crusca, who maintained that his 'Jerusalem Delivered' had not passed through the sieve which is the emblem of their society. I was then in my closet, and I turned my eyes towards the twelve quarto volumes of the works of that author, and exclaimed, "Oh heavens! must no one write in the Italian language who has not been born in Tuscany?" I turned up mechanically the five volumes of the Dictionary della Crusca, where I found more than six hundred words, and a number of expressions, approved of by the academy and rejected by the world; I ran over several ancient authors considered as classical, whom it would be impossible to imitate in the present day without censure; and I came to this conclusion—that we must write in good Italian, but write at the same time so as to be understood in every corner of Italy. Tasso was therefore wrong in reforming his poem to please the Academicians della Crusca: his 'Jerusalem Delivered' is read by everybody, while nobody thinks of reading his 'Jerusalem Conquered.'

---

A POET'S OLD AGE

From the 'Memoirs of Carlo Goldoni'

I return to my regimen,—you will say here also, perhaps, that I ought to omit it: you are in the right; but all this is in my head, and I must be delivered of it by degrees; I cannot spare you a single comma. After dinner I am not fond of either working or walking. Sometimes I go to the theatre, but I am most generally in parties till nine o'clock in the evening. I always return before ten o'clock. I take two or three small cakes with a glass of wine and water, and this is the whole of my supper. I converse with my wife till midnight; I very soon fall asleep, and pass the night tranquilly.

It sometimes happens to me, as well as every other person, to have my head occupied with something capable of retarding my sleep. In this case I have a certain remedy to lull myself asleep, and it is this: I had long projected a vocabulary of the Venetian dialect, and I had even communicated my intention to the public, who are still in expectation of it. While laboring at this tedious and disgusting work, I soon discovered that it threw me asleep. I laid it therefore aside, and I profited by its narcotic faculty. Whenever I feel my mind agitated by any moral cause, I take at random some word of my national language and translate it into Tuscan and French. In the same manner I pass in review all the words which follow in the alphabetical order, and I am sure to fall asleep at the third or fourth version. My recipe has never once failed me. It is not difficult to demonstrate the cause and effect of this phenomenon. A painful idea requires to be replaced by an opposite or indifferent idea; and the agitation of the mind once calmed, the senses become tranquil and are deadened by sleep.

But this remedy, however excellent, might not be useful to every one. A man of too keen and feeling a disposition would not succeed. The temperament must be such as that with which nature has favored me. My moral qualities bear a resemblance to my physical: I dread neither cold nor heat, and I neither allow myself to be inflamed by rage nor intoxicated by joy....

I am now arrived at the year 1787, which is the eightieth of my age, and that to which I have limited the course of my Memoirs. I have completed my eightieth year; my work is also finished. All is over, and I proceed to send my volumes to the press. This last chapter does not therefore touch on the events of the current year; but I have still some duties to discharge. I must begin with returning thanks to those persons who have reposed so much confidence in me as to honor me with their subscriptions.

I do not speak of the kindness and favors of the King and court; this is not the place to mention them. I have named in my work some of my friends and even some of my protectors. I beg pardon of them: if I have done so without their permission, it is not through vanity; the occasion has suggested it; their names have dropped from my pen, the heart has seized on the instant, and the hand has not been unwilling. For example, the following is one of the fortunate occasions I allude to. I was unwell a few days ago; the Count Alfieri did me the honor to call on me; I knew his talents, but his conversation impressed on me the wrong which I should have done in omitting him. He is a very intelligent and learned literary man, who principally excels in the art of Sophocles and Euripides, and after these great models he has framed his tragedies. They have gone through two editions in Italy, and are at present in the press of Didot at Paris. I shall enter into no details respecting them, as they may be seen and judged of by every one.

During my convalescence M. Caccia, a banker in Paris, my friend and countryman, sent me a book addressed to him from Italy for me. It was a collection of French epigrams and madrigals, translated into Italian by the Count Roncali, of the city of Brescia in the Venetian dominions. This charming poet has merely translated the thoughts; he has said the same things in fewer words, and he has fallen upon as brilliant and striking points in his own language as those of his originals.

I had the honor of seeing M. Roncali twelve years ago at Paris, and he allows me to hope that I shall have the good fortune to see him again. This is infinitely flattering to me; but I earnestly entreat him to make haste, as my career is far advanced, and what is still worse, I am extremely fatigued. I have undertaken too long and too laborious a work for my age, and I have employed three years on it, always dreading lest I should not have the pleasure of seeing it finished. However, I am still in life, thanks to God, and I flatter myself that I shall see my volumes printed, distributed, and read. If they be not praised, I hope at least they will not be despised. I shall not be accused of vanity or presumption in daring to hope for some share of favor for my Memoirs; for had I thought that I should absolutely displease, I would not have taken so much pains; and if in the good and ill which I say of myself, the balance inclines to the favorable side, I owe more to nature than to study. All the application employed by me in the construction of my pieces has been that of not disfiguring nature, and all the care taken by me in my Memoirs has been that of telling only the truth. The criticism of my pieces may have the correction and improvement of comedy in view; but the criticism of my Memoirs will be of no advantage to literature. However, if any writer should think proper to employ his time on me for the sole purpose of vexing me, he would lose his labor. I am of a pacific disposition; I have always preserved my coolness of character; at my age I read little, and I read only amusing books.

---

THE CAFÉ

[A few of the opening scenes from one of the popular Venetian comedies are here given with occasional abridgment. They illustrate the entirely practical theatrical skill of Goldoni's plots, his rapid development of his characters, and the sound morality which prevails without being aggressively prominent.

The permanent scene represents a small open square in Venice, or a rather wide street, with three shops. The middle one is in use as a café. To the right is a barber's. The one on the left is a gambling-house. Beyond the barber's, across a street, is seen the dancers' house, and beyond the gamblers' a hotel with practicable doors and windows.]

Ridolfo, master of the café, Trappolo, a waiter, and other waiters

Ridolfo—Come, children, look alive, be wide awake, ready to serve the guests civilly and properly.

Trappolo—Master dear, to tell you the truth, this early rising doesn't suit my complexion a bit. There's no one in sight. We could have slept another hour yet.

Ridolfo—They'll be coming presently. Besides, 'tis not so very early. Don't you see? The barber is open, he's in his shop working on hair. And look! the playing-house is open too.

Trappolo—Oh, yes, indeed. The gambling-house has been open a good bit. They've made a night of it.

Ridolfo—Good. Master Pandolfo will have had a good profit.

Trappolo—That dog always has good profit. He wins on the cards, he profits by usury, he shares with the sharpers. He is sure of all the money of whoever enters there. That poor Signor Eugenio—he has taken a header!

Ridolfo—Just look at him, how little sense he has! With a wife, a young woman of grace and sense,—but he runs after every petticoat; and then he plays like a madman. But come, go roast the coffee and make a fresh supply.

Trappolo—Shan't I warm over yesterday's supply?

Ridolfo—No, make it good.

Trappolo—Master has a short memory. How long since this shop opened?

Ridolfo—You know very well. 'Tis about eight months.

Trappolo—Then 'tis time for a change.

Ridolfo—What do you mean by that?

Trappolo—When a new shop opens, they make perfect coffee. After six months,—hot water, thin broth. [Exit.]

Ridolfo—He's a wit. I'm in hopes he'll help the shop. To a shop where there's a fun-maker every one goes.

Pandolfo, keeper of the gambling-house, comes in, rubbing his eyes sleepily

Ridolfo—Master Pandolfo, will you have coffee?

Pandolfo—Yes, if you please.

Ridolfo—Boys, serve coffee for Master Pandolfo. Be seated. Make yourself comfortable.

Pandolfo—No, no, I must drink it at once and get back to work.

Ridolfo—Are they playing yet in the shop?

Pandolfo—They are busy at two tables.

Ridolfo—So early?

Pandolfo—They are at it since yesterday.

Ridolfo—What game?

Pandolfo—An innocent game: "first and second" [i.e., faro].

Ridolfo—And how does it go?

Pandolfo—For me it goes well.

Ridolfo—Have you amused yourself playing too?

Pandolfo—Yes, I took a little hand also.

Ridolfo—Excuse me, my friend; I've no business to meddle in your affairs, but—it doesn't look well when the master of the shop plays; because if he loses he's laughed at, and if he wins he's suspected.

Pandolfo—I am content if they haven't the laugh on me. As for the rest, let them suspect as they please; I pay no attention.

Ridolfo—Dear friend, we are neighbors; I shouldn't want you to get into trouble. You know, by your play before you have brought up in the court.

Pandolfo—I'm easily satisfied. I won a pair of sequins, and wanted no more.

Ridolfo—That's right. Pluck the quail without making it cry out. From whom did you win them?

Pandolfo—A jeweler's boy.

Ridolfo—Bad. Very bad. That tempts the boys to rob their masters.

Pandolfo—Oh, don't moralize to me. Let the greenhorns stay at home. I keep open for any one who wants to play.

Ridolfo—And has Signor Eugenio been playing this past night?

Pandolfo—He's playing yet. He hasn't dined, he hasn't slept, and he's lost all his money.

Ridolfo [aside]—Poor young man! [Aloud.] And how much has he lost?

Pandolfo—A hundred sequins in cash: and now he is playing on credit.

Ridolfo—With whom is he playing?

Pandolfo—With the count.

Ridolfo—And whom else?

Pandolfo—With him alone.

Ridolfo—It seems to me an honest man shouldn't stand by and see people assassinated.

Pandolfo—Oho, my friend, if you're going to be so thin-skinned you'll make little money.

Ridolfo—I don't care for that. Till now I have been in service, and did my duty honestly. I saved a few pennies, and with the help of my old master, who was Signor Eugenio's father, you know, I have opened this shop. With it I mean to live honorably and not disgrace my profession.

[People from the gambling-shop call "Cards!"]

Pandolfo [answering]—At your service.

Ridolfo—For mercy's sake, get poor Signor Eugenio away from the table.

Pandolfo—For all me, he may lose his shirt: I don't care. [Starts out.]

Ridolfo—And the coffee—shall I charge it?

Pandolfo—Not at all: we'll deal a card for it.

Ridolfo—I'm no greenhorn, my friend.

Pandolfo—Oh well, what does it matter? You know my visitors make trade for you. I am surprised that you trouble yourself about these little matters. [Exit.] ...

A gentleman, Don Marzio, enters

Ridolfo [aside]—Here is the man who never stops talking, and always must have it his own way.

Marzio—Coffee.

Ridolfo—At once, sir.

Marzio—What's the news, Ridolfo?

Ridolfo—I couldn't say, sir.

Marzio—Has no one appeared here at your café yet?

Ridolfo—'Tis quite early still.

Marzio—Early? It has struck nine already.

Ridolfo—Oh no, honored sir, 'tis not seven yet.

Marzio—Get away with your nonsense.

Ridolfo—I assure you, it hasn't struck seven yet.

Marzio—Get out, stupid.

Ridolfo—You abuse me without reason, sir.

Marzio—I counted the strokes just now, and I tell you it is nine. Besides, look at my watch: it never goes wrong. [Shows it.]

Ridolfo—Very well, then; if your watch is never wrong,—it says a quarter to seven.

Marzio—What? That can't be. [Takes out his eye-glass and looks.]

Ridolfo—What do you say?

Marzio—My watch is wrong. It is nine o'olock. I heard it.

Ridolfo—Where did you buy that watch?

Marzio—I ordered it from London.

Ridolfo—They cheated you.

Marzio—Cheated me? How so? It is the very first quality.

Ridolfo—If it were a good one, it wouldn't be two hours wrong.

Marzio—It is always exactly right.

Ridolfo—But the watch says a quarter to seven, and you say it is nine.

Marzio—My watch is right.

Ridolfo—Then it really is a little before seven, as I said.

Marzio—You're an insolent fellow. My watch is right: you talk foolishly, and I've half a mind to box your ears. [His coffee is brought.]

Ridolfo [aside]—Oh, what a beast!

Marzio—Have you seen Signor Eugenio?

Ridolfo—No, honored sir.

Marzio—At home, of course, petting his wife. What an uxorious fellow! Always a wife! Always a wife! [Drinks his coffee.]

Ridolfo—Anything but his wife. He's been gambling all night at Pandolfo's.

Marzio—Just as I tell you. Always gambling.

Ridolfo [aside]—"Always gambling," "Always his wife," "Always" the Devil; I hope he'll catch him!

Marzio—He came to me the other day in all secrecy, to beg me to lend him ten sequins on a pair of earrings of his wife's.

Ridolfo—Well, you know, every man is liable to have these little difficulties; but they don't care to have them known, and that is doubtless why he came to you, certain that you would tell no one.

Marzio—Oh, I say nothing. I help all, and take no credit for it. See! Here are his wife's earrings. I lent him ten sequins on them. Do you think I am secured?

Ridolfo—I'm no judge, but I think so.

Marzio—Halloa, Trappolo. [Trappolo enters.] Here; go to the jeweler's yonder, show him these earrings of Signor Eugenio's wife, and ask him for me if they are security for ten sequins that I lent him.

Trappolo—And it doesn't harm Signor Eugenio to make his affairs public?

Marzio—I am a person with whom a secret is safe. [Exit Trappolo.] Say, Ridolfo, what do you know of that dancer over there?

Ridolfo—I really know nothing about her.

Marzio—I've been told the Count Leandro is her protector.

Ridolfo—To be frank, I don't care much for other people's affairs.

Marzio—But 'tis well to know things, to govern one's self accordingly. She has been under his protection for some time now, and the dancer's earnings have paid the price of the protection. Instead of spending anything, he devours all the poor wretch has. Indeed, he forces her to do what she should not. Oh, what a villain!

Ridolfo—But I am here all day, and I can swear that no one goes to her house except Leandro.

Marzio—It has a back door. Fool! Fool! Always the back door. Fool!

Ridolfo—I attend to my shop: if she has a back door, what is it to me? I put my nose into no one's affairs.

Marzio—Beast! Do you speak like that to a gentleman of my station?

[This character of Don Marzio the slanderer is the most effective one in the comedy. He finally brings upon himself the bitterest ill-will of all the other characters, and feels himself driven out of Venice, "a land in which all men live at ease, all enjoy liberty, peace, and amusement, if only they know how to be prudent, discreet, honorable.">[

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William C. Lawton

---

MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT