The “Titurel” of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
Translated by Julia Goddard.
(Continued from p. 134.)
Conclusion of Part I.—Siguna and Schionatulander.
Argument.—Schionatulander having made his confession of love, Gahmureth, who has been in former times oppressed by love affairs himself, compassionates the youth, and promises to help on his cause with the young Duchess. We may here remark that Gahmureth does not appear to have been constant in his attachments. After having assisted Belakane, Queen of Zassamank, in the Moorish regions, he married her, but deserted her before their son Fierefiss was born. After that he married Herzeliede, whose son, Parzival, was chosen to be King of the Grail. Gahmureth had also been much in love with Anflisa, the French Queen, an episode, to which Schionatulander here alludes; as does Herzeleide in her conversation with Siguna, for she fears the French Queen has not yet forgiven her successful rival, and may make her heart bleed through the youthful lovers.
From the expedition in which Gahmureth was now engaged he never returned, being treacherously killed by Ipomidon, one of the Babylonian brothers. An account of his death, and of the magnificent burial given to him by Baruch, is to be found in “Parzival” (Book ii., Herzeleide).
“WHAT need to beat about the wood,
O fond, weak squire?
Thou, through thy skill at tilting, may
E’en the fair Duchess’ love acquire;
For love gives worthier reward
To those who arms with valour bear,
Than she to weaklings doth award.
Yet that thy heart aspires so high
Fills me with pride;
How has the tree its branches spread
Already out so far and wide.
Bloom finest flowers on meadow ground?
How has my cousin vanquished thee
With knowledge sweetest to be found.
Her mother, Schoisian, for joy
Was rightly named,
Since God’s creative power and skill
One of such loveliness had framed;
Her glance, clear, keen, as sunlight strong,
I hear all people soothly say
Doth also to her child belong.
And Kiot, who in fiercest fight
Aye glory won;
Before the death of his loved bride
Bowed down proud Catalonia’s son.
Daughter of both, Siguna sweet!
I greet thee, who must victor prove
Where maids for victory compete.
She o’er thee hath prevailed, and now
The task is thine
O’er her the victory to gain,
And to this end it shall be mine
To win her aunt for thee to speak;
So through Siguna’s glance once more
Shall bloom the colour in thy cheek.”
Schionatulander then with joy
Began his speech:
“So doth thy confidence in me
The burden of my sorrow reach,
For now with thy consent I may
Siguna love, who hath so long
Stolen my joy and peace away.”
Schionatulander’s hopes rose high
At the relief
That thus to him was measured out.
Yet let us not forget that grief
Fair Schoisian’s daughter too must bear
(Since she, too, is of joy bereft)
Ere happiness fall to her share.
For Catalonia’s princess now
Was pining sore,
Through the deep love within her heart,
Whose pain she long in silence bore;
The while the Queen, with fears oppressed,
Sad wondered what Siguna ailed,
And why the maid was so distressed.
Red as the heart of blooming rose
All steeped in dew,
So were the maiden’s tearful eyes,
Her face all of a blushing hue;
The bashful maid could not conceal
The love that for the youthful squire
She in her inmost heart did feel.
Then from true heart outspake the Queen,
With pitying love:
“It grieves me Schoisian’s child to see
In pain that once my heart did move,
When from the Angevin ’twas mine
To part; now wounds the thorn anew
To see the suffering that is thine.
Through country or through people, say,
Art thou distressed?
Or can the help of kith and kin,
Or mine bring comfort to thy breast?
Or will our efforts naught avail?
Say, whence hath gone thy sunny glance,
And wherefore is thy cheek so pale?
Now, orphaned child, upon my grief
Some pity take;
Though crowned with crowns of kingdoms three,
I count me poor for thy dear sake
Till I can make thy grief depart,
Until my searching eyes have found
The secret of thy sorrowing heart.”
“Then will I now my anxious fears
And cares confess;
’Twere sin a silence now to keep
Against thy loving tenderness,
And ’gainst thy teaching to rebel.
Do thou my constant soother be,
Dear mother, then will all be well.
May God reward thee! never yet
Did mother kind
Show to her child a greater love
Than ’tis my lot with thee to find;
With joy my tears might overflow.
No more an orphan here am I,
Such tender love is thine to show.
Thy consolation, and advice,
And help I need,
One with another, since my heart
For my dear absent friend must bleed;
My torments all too painful prove,
My rambling thoughts upon one chord
Are knitted through out-going love.
For him, my friend, for whom my looks
For ever stray
From window to the street, or o’er
The heath when light dews pass away.
Too seldom do I see his face,
And therefore must my weeping eyes
Bear of my pining love a trace.
From window to the battlements
I sadly turn;
I look to east, I look to west,
Hoping some tidings I may learn
Of him to whom my heart is bound.
One scarce can count me young in love;
Amongst the older I am found.
If o’er the wild and heaving flood
’Tis mine to glide,
My eyes are roving here and there
O’er thirty miles outspreading wide,
Hoping some tidings I may gain
Of that dear friend, who can alone
Release me from my load of pain.
Whither is all my joy now gone?
Wherefore should fade
The courage high that filled my heart?
Ah! sorrow doth one’s peace invade!
Yet willingly alone would I
The sorrow bear, but well I know
He longing would to me draw nigh.
Alas! too seldom doth he come,
Too long delays;
And now I shiver as with cold,
Now glow as with the fire’s fierce blaze.
Schionatulander warms my heart
As Salamander feels the glow.
That Agremontin doth impart.”
“Oh, woe! thy speech is far too wise,”
The Queen replied.
“Am I to thee betrayed? I fear
The Frenchwoman her power hath tried
O’er thee, through anger unto me;
Anflisa’s words are on thy lips,
For they are far too old for thee.
Schionatulander is a prince
From failings free!
But yet his kingdom or his rank
By him assumed will never be,
Since he, alas! thy love hath sought;
If the proud Queen Anflisa’s wrath
Hath not on me been fully wrought.
For he was given her when he left
His mother’s breast
Did malice not the counsel give
That brings to thee such sore unrest?
But joy may round ye both yet play;
And if he counts thee truly fair,
Let not thy beauty pass away.
Through love to him let once again
Thy beauty glow;
The colour in thy cheeks and eyes
Be such as youthful years should show:
If lightly thus thy looks can fade,
Thou hast had too short time for joy,
Too many cares are on thee laid.
Still if the youthful Dauphin hath
So marred thy joy,
He yet can give thee joy again;
For love and kindness by the boy
Have been inherited, I ween,
From mother fair and noble sire,
And kinswoman Schoiette the queen.
That thou so early cam’st to love,
Must I complain;
Thou wilt the grief Mahaute bore
For Gurzgri brave, live o’er again;
Her eyes confessed the secret wound,
Whilst victor he in far-off lands
Fresh trophies on his helmet bound.
To Schionatulander will praise
Ascend on high,
He comes of race to whom fair fame
Shall none e’er grudge or e’er deny,
But it shall far and wide increase;
Then let him chase thy grief away,
And bring instead blest joy and peace.
If at his glance sweet happy thoughts
Thy heart should yield,
I feel no wonder nor surprise.
How well he looks with shining shield,
Whilst round a firecloud seemed to glow,
Of sparks that fly from crested helms,
As his sharp sword deals out each blow.
Painter can’t paint him as he wields
The lance with grace:
There ne’er forgotten was before
So little in a manly face;
That thou should’st love him is to me
Not strange; in him thine eyes delight;
Thy love I grudge not unto thee.”
When thus was youthful love allowed
Between the twain,
Without a bar their love to cross
Their hearts might constant aye remain.
“Now cousin mine,” the maiden spake,
“For mine own love before the world
The heir of Graharz may I take.”
Johnson and Garrick.[50]
AN UNPUBLISHED JEU D’ESPRIT.
By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
PART I.
JOHNSON AGAINST GARRICK.
Johnson and Sir J. Reynolds.
REYNOLDS.—Let me alone, I’ll draw him out (aside). I have been thinking this morning, Dr. Johnson, on a matter which has puzzled me very much; it is a subject that I daresay has often passed in your thoughts, and though I cannot, I daresay you have made up your mind upon it.
Johnson.—Tilly fally, what is all this preparation? what is all this weighty matter?
R.—Why, it is a weighty matter; this subject I have been thinking upon, is Predestination, and Free will, two things, which I cannot reconcile together, for the life of me. In my opinion, Dr. Johnson, free will and fore knowledge cannot be reconciled.
J.—Sir, it is not of very great importance, what your opinion is upon such a question.
R.—But I meant only, Dr. J., to know your opinion.
J.—No, sir, you meant no such thing; you meant only to show these gentlemen that you are not the man they took you to be, but that you think of high matters sometimes, and that you may have the credit of having it said, that you held an argument with Sam Johnson, on predestination, and free will; a subject of that magnitude, to have engaged the attention of the world, to have perplexed the wisdom of man, for these 2,000 years; a subject on which the fallen angels who had not yet lost all their original brightness find themselves in wandering mazes lost. That such a subject could be discussed in the levity of convivial conversation, is a degree of absurdity beyond what is easily conceivable.
R.—It is so, as you say, to be sure; I talked once to our friend Garrick on this subject, but I remember we could make nothing of it.
J.—Oh noble pair!
R.—Garrick was a clever fellow, Dr. J.; Garrick, take him altogether, was certainly a very great man.
J.—Garrick, sir, may be a great man in your opinion, as far as I know, but he was not so in mine; little things are great to little men.
R.—I have heard you say, Dr. Johnson——
J.—Sir, you never heard me say, David Garrick was a great man. You may have heard me say that Garrick was a good repeater of other men’s words,—words put into his mouth by other men; this makes but a faint approach towards being a great man.
R.—But take Garrick upon the whole; now in regard to conversation——
J.—Well, sir, in regard to conversation I never discovered in the conversation of D. Garrick any intellectual energy, any wide grasp of thought, any extensive comprehension of mind; or that he possessed any of those powers to which great could, with any degree of propriety, be applied.
R.—But still——
J.—Hold, sir, I have not done—there are to be sure, in the laxity of colloquial speech, various kinds of greatness. A man may be a great tobacconist, a man may be a great painter, he may be likewise a great mimick: now you may be the one, and Garrick the other, and yet neither of you be great men.
R.—But, Dr. Johnson——
J.—Hold, sir. I have often lamented how dangerous it is to investigate, and to discriminate character, to men who have no discriminative powers.
R.—Garrick as a companion, I heard you say—no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale’s table——
J.—You tease me, sir. Whatever you may have heard me say, no longer ago than last Wednesday, at Mr. Thrale’s table, I tell you, I do not say so now; besides, as I said before, you may not have understood me, you may not have heard me.
R.—I am very sure, I heard you.
J.—Besides, sir, besides, besides—do not you know—are you so ignorant as not to know that it is the highest degree of rudeness to quote a man against himself?
R.—But if you differ from yourself, and give one opinion to-day——
J.—Have done, sir, the company are tired, you see, as well as myself.
T’OTHER SIDE.
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Gibbon.
Johnson.—No, sir, Garrick’s fame was prodigious, not only in England but over all Europe, even in Russia. I have been told he was a proverb; when anybody had repeated well he was called a second Garrick.
Gibbon.—I think he had full as much reputation as he deserved.
J.—I do not pretend to know, sir, what your meaning may be by saying he had as much reputation as he deserved; he deserved much, and he had much.
G.—Why, surely, Dr. Johnson, his merit was in small things only; he had none of those qualities that make a real great man.
J.—Sir, I as little understand what your meaning may be when you speak of the qualities that make a great man: it is a vague term. Garrick was no common man: a man above the common size of men, may surely, without any great impropriety, be called a great man. In my opinion, he has very reasonably fulfilled the prophecy which he once reminded me of having made to his mother, when she asked me how little David got on at school, that I should say to her, that he would come to be hanged, or come to be a great man. No, sir, it is undoubtedly true that the same qualities, united with virtue, or with vice, make a hero or a rogue, a great general or a highwayman. Now Garrick, we are sure, was never hanged, and in regard to his being a great man, you must take the whole man together. It must be considered in how many things Garrick excelled in which every man desires to excel, setting aside his excellence as an actor, in which he is acknowledged to be unrivalled; as a man, as a poet, as a convivial companion, you will find but few his equals, and none his superior. As a man he was kind, friendly, benevolent, and generous.
G.—Of Garrick’s generosity I never heard; I understood his character to be totally the reverse, and that he was reckoned to have loved money.
J.—That he loved money nobody will dispute; who does not? But if you mean by loving money he was parsimonious to a fault, sir, you have been misinformed. To Foote and such scoundrels, who circulated those reports, to such profligate spendthrifts, prudence is meanness, and economy is avarice. That Garrick, in early youth, was brought up in strict habits of economy, I believe, and that they were necessary, I have heard from himself; to suppose that Garrick might inadvertently act from this habit, and be saving in small things, can be no wonder, but let it be remembered at the same time, that if he was frugal by habit, he was liberal from principle; that when he acted from reflection, he did what his fortune enabled him to do, and what was expected from such a fortune. I remember no instance of David’s parsimony, but once, when he stopped Mrs. Woffington from replenishing the teapot; it was already, he said, as red as blood; and this is doubtful, and happened many years ago. In the latter part of his life, I observed no blameable parsimony in David; his table was elegant, and even splendid; his house both in town and country, his equipage, and I think all his habits of life were such as might be expected from a man who had acquired great riches. In regard to his generosity, which you seem to question, I shall only say there is no man to whom I would apply with more confidence of success, for the loan of £200 to assist a common friend, than to David, and this too with very little, if any, probability of its being repaid.
G.—You were going to say something about him as a writer. You don’t rate him very high as a poet?
J.—Sir, a man maybe a respectable poet without being an Homer, as a man may be a good player without being a Garrick. In the lighter kind of poetry, in the appendages of the drama, he was, if not the first, in the very first class. He had a readiness, and a facility, a dexterity of mind that appeared extraordinary even to men of experience, and who are not apt to wonder from ignorance. Writing prologues, epilogues, and epigrams, he said he considered as his trade, and he was what a man should be, always, and at all times, ready at his trade. He required two hours for a prologue or an epilogue, and five minutes for an epigram. Once at Burke’s table, the company proposed a subject, and Garrick finished his epigram within the time: the same experiment was repeated in the garden, and with the same success.
(To be continued.)
