And all to keep the wedding:—cavaliers
And highborn ladies stood to see them pass,
He, Quentin Matsys, and his blooming bride!”
Well then, after having given these extracts, we may be asked whether we think that Mr Edwin Arnold is really and truly a poet? Look, our dear sir, we beseech you, at that splendid gamecock—how glossy in his plumage, how quick in his eye, how massive in his neck, and how powerful in his limbs! There he walks, proud as the sultan at the head of his seraglio, the pride of his master’s heart, the terror of every recreant dunghill within a circle of a couple of miles. Some few months ago he was a mere chicken, whom you might have devoured with parsley-sauce without experiencing a pang of remorse. Before that he lay in an egg-shell. Now, had you looked either on the egg or on the chicken, you could not have stated with propriety that either was a gamecock—and yet there undeniably goes the finest ginger-pile in the parish. So is it with Mr Edwin Arnold. He may not be entitled yet to the high and sacred name of a poet—for he is still exercising himself in verse, and has not attained the possession of a distinguishing style of his own; but he shows excellent symptoms of breeding, and we doubt not will, in due time, advance a valid claim to the laurels. This, moreover, is to be said in his favour, that he is not treading in the footsteps of the “intense” school, and that he always writes intelligibly—a virtue which we observe a good many modern poets hold utterly in derision. Let him go on in his vocation, cultivating his taste, improving his judgment, observing nature, and eschewing gaudy ornament—and he may hope to win a name which shall be reverenced, when those of the utterers of fustian and balderdash, dear to the heart of Guffaw, are either wholly forgotten, or remembered only with ridicule.
COUNT SIGISMUND’S WILL.
The theatrical season in Paris, now at its height, has not yet been marked by the production of any particularly successful pieces. At about this time last year, the clever comedy of Lady Tartuffe afforded agreeable occupation to the critics, and abundant amusement to the town. At the Gymnase, the Fils de Famille, of which two versions have since been produced upon the London stage, and Philiberte, a sparkling three-act comedy in verse, full of wit, but rather Régence in its tone and style, nightly filled the house with select and gratified audiences. L’Honneur et l’Argent, M. Ponsard’s respectable and proper, but, in our opinion, wearisome play, had a triumphant run at the Odeon; whilst, at the Vaudeville, the Lady with the Camelias, who, objectionable though she was in some respects, was certainly, as far as talent went, immeasurably superior to her various imitators and successors, drew all Paris to her seductive boudoir. This winter no play of decided merit and importance has been produced at any theatre. In more than one instance, attempts have been made to proclaim the success of a piece immense, when in reality it was most moderate; and, at the Gymnase, Diane de Lys has really had a considerable run; but this has been owing to extraneous circumstances, and to the excellence of the acting, much more than to any intrinsic merits of the play, which derived a sort of scandalous interest from a generally-credited report that the author, Alexander Dumas the younger, had merely dramatised an adventure of his own—altering, however, the catastrophe; for the play closes with the death of the lover, shot by the offended husband. Rumour went so far as to point to a foreign lady of rank as the original of the Duchess Diana, and the playwright was blamed for his indiscretion. Whether there were grounds for such censure, or whether the tale was a mere ingenious invention, industriously circulated by the author’s friends to give a spurious popularity to a rather amusing but very worthless piece, it is hard to decide—the one case being quite as probable as the other. The Gymnase, however, boasts of its Diana as a signal triumph—which she may be to its treasury, although in other respects she does the theatre no great credit, beyond displaying an excellent cast and admirable acting. That agreeable theatre needs something to console it for the loss of its most valuable and accomplished comedian, Bressant, summoned by the higher powers from the scene of his numerous triumphs to the classic boards of the Française. There he had the good taste to make his first appearance in a play of Molière’s in preference to the less sterling class of comedy with which he is more familiar; and, both by his acting, and by the enthusiastic greeting he met from a crowded house, he at once proved himself a valuable accession to the talent and popularity of the first French theatre. That establishment just now has greater need of good new plays than of good new actors. It is unfortunate in its authors, and the drama droops under the imperial régime. Alexander Dumas—whose outrageous vanity and fanfaronades, daily displayed in the columns of the new journal, the Mousquetaire, which he owns and edits, have lately made him the laughingstock of Paris,—after writing two five-act historical plays in about as many days each, and having them both accepted by the committee, but prohibited before performance—probably because the authorities did not think the most important theatre in France a fit stage for such mountebank feats of rapid writing—has been fain to console himself (supposing his egregious self-conceit not to have set him above all need of consolation) by the cordial reception of a one-act comedy called Romulus, which has both humour and character. He has boasted of this little success almost as much as of the merits of his two great failures, the interdicted plays; has published the piece (the idea of which is derived from a passage in one of Auguste La Fontaine’s tales) in the feuilleton of his paper, where he also printed monstrous stories about his having written it in some wonderfully short space of time. But this clever silly man has made himself such a reputation as a Munchausen that none now believe him; and, moreover, it is very well known in Paris that the piece in question was planned, and in great part written, by an accomplished French actor, much esteemed in England, to whose cultivated taste and extensive reading some of the best dramatists of the day have on various occasions been indebted for advice and assistance, which they have not all been so slow as Mr Dumas to acknowledge.
The expectations of many persons, conversant with the relative merits of the principal living writers for the French stage, were lately raised high by the announcement of a five-act comedy from the united pens of two of the most successful of these, Messrs Emile Augier and Jules Sandeau. Both of these gentlemen have distinguished themselves as dramatists, although M. Sandeau is perhaps best known as the author of some very clever and agreeable novels. Indeed, since the regretted decease of Charles de Bernard, few have been more successful in that branch of literature. His style is that in which modern French writers have best succeeded—the roman de mœurs, or novel of society, whose attraction and interest depend rather upon accurate delineation and delicate satire of the habits, follies, and foibles of the time, than in startling situations and complicated intrigues. The late Charles de Bernard, to whose charming talent we some years ago devoted an article, and whose collected works have just received the well-deserved honour of posthumous republication, was an adept in the style, and was also one of the most inventive writers of his day. Most of his novels and tales display, in addition to a refined and extensive knowledge of French society and character, much ingenuity of plot and originality of incident. Of the same school, Jules Sandeau has more pathos and sentiment, less originality and wit. Like that of most novelists who are also dramatists, his dialogue is terse, spirited, and life-like, although less pointed and sparkling than that of the author of Gerfaut. Occasionally he reminds us of that clever whimsical writer, Alphonse Karr, but of Karr in his happiest moods, when he abjures triviality, and produces such novels as Genevieve and La Famille Alain. One of the favourite stock-pieces at the Comédie Française, Mademoiselle de la Seiglière, is by Sandeau, founded on his own novel of the same name. Another of his tales, La Chasse au Roman, he dramatised conjointly with Augier, and the piece brought out the other day, La Pierre de Touche—The Touchstone—is also founded on a novel by Sandeau, entitled Un Héritage. How is it, many have asked, that, with an excellent subject—that of a highly popular romance—to work upon, M. Sandeau and the witty and experienced author of Gabrielle, Philiberte, and other justly successful plays, have produced a comedy which has been more or less hissed every night of its performance, and which, instead of awakening the sympathies or exciting the admiration of the public, has produced an impression so manifestly unfavourable, that the authors deemed it necessary to publish a letter in explanation and vindication—a letter the publishers of the play have reproduced in the form of a preface? Before replying to this question, or sketching the plot of the play, we will give a slight outline of the novel on which it is founded. Our readers will hardly have forgotten another of M. Sandeau’s novels, Sacs et Parchemins, of which we some time ago gave an account.[[4]] Those who have read, with the amused interest it could hardly fail to excite, M. Sandeau’s account of the vaulting ambition of the retired draper Levrault, and of the desperate and ludicrous expedients of the ruined Viscount de Montflanquin, in his French Wolf’s Crag, will not be unwilling to follow the same writer upon German ground, to the ancient castle of Hildesheim, and into the humble abode of Franz Müller, the musician of Munich. We will briefly glance at the spirited and characteristic opening chapters of Un Héritage.
It was a great day for Master Gottlieb Kaufmann, notary in the little German town of Mühlstadt. Count Sigismund Hildesheim was just dead, and his will was to be opened in presence of his assembled relatives. Gottlieb, attired in suitable sables, the silver buckles of his shoes replaced by others of burnished steel, fidgetted to and fro between his study and his office, his office and his drawing-room, scolding his clerks, sending away clients, and watching the clock, whose lazy hands, he thought, crept more slowly than usual round the dial. Noon was the hour fixed for the reading of the will, and as yet it was but nine. It was an anxious morning for the worthy notary. The very pig-tail that dangled from his nape quivered with impatience. The cause of his excitement was his doubt whether the heir to the castle and fine estate of Hildesheim would continue to employ him. There were other notaries at Mühlstadt, and all were eager to secure so rich a client. Master Gottlieb had spared no pains to retain the lucrative employment. His drawing-room chairs, stripped of the cases that usually protected them from the pranks of the flies, were drawn round a table spread with an old scarlet velvet cover; near this table, another chair, elevated upon a temporary platform, seemed to preside over the absent assembly. From time to time, Master Gottlieb seated himself in it, studied his gestures and attitude, and contemplated his reflection in a glass, endeavouring to combine regret and obsequiousness in the expression of his habitually jovial physiognomy. His face was to do double duty—to deplore the departed and offer his services to the survivors. Further to propitiate the clients he desired to secure, Master Gottlieb—himself of a convivial turn, fond of a cool bottle and a merry catch—had prepared, in an adjoining room, an elegant collation. On a cloth of dazzling whiteness were temptingly displayed cold meats, fragrant fruits, and antique flasks, dim with venerable dust. The notary had spared nothing worthily to honour the memory and regale the heirs of the departed Count.
Count Sigismund Hildesheim had passed, almost from his youth upwards, for an oddity, an original, slightly crazed, and only just sane enough to be intrusted with the guidance of himself and his affairs. In reality he was none of those things, but a misfortune in early life, acting upon a singularly sensitive and impressionable nature, had decided his whole destiny. As a youth, at the university of Heidelberg, he shunned the society of the students, and, of an evening, instead of devoting himself to beer, tobacco, roaring songs and political theories, he loved to walk out and watch the sunset from the summit of the beautiful hills that enclose the valley of the Neckar. Returning home, on a May night, from one of these solitary rambles, his attention was arrested, as he passed through the outskirts of the town, by a fresh and melodious voice, proceeding from a window decked and entwined with flowers. The song was one of those wild and plaintive ditties, often of great antiquity, heard in remote mountain districts, seldom written, but orally transmitted from generation to generation. Surprised and charmed, Sigismund paused and listened; then he cast a curious glance into the room. A young girl was seated at a piano, and by the light of a lamp he distinguished her to be of great beauty. Thenceforward, every evening, on his return from his walks, the pensive student lingered at that window. He was seldom disappointed; most evenings the young girl was at her piano; and the song that at first had fascinated him was evidently her favourite. At last—how this came about it is immaterial to inquire—instead of pausing at the window, Sigismund went in at the door, and became a constant visitor to Michaële and her mother.
The dwelling of the widow and her child was humble, but elegant in its poverty. War, which had robbed them of a husband and father, had left them but a scanty pension for their support. Sigismund was as much attracted by the mother’s kind and graceful manners as he had been enchanted by the daughter’s bright eyes and sweet voice. He had lost his own mother when an infant; his father’s harsh and haughty character had repelled his affection. He found a home, congenial to his tastes and sympathies, in the secluded cottage in Heidelberg’s suburbs, and there he and Michaële formed plans of future happiness undisturbed by fear of obstacles to their union. But Michaële’s mother, who at first partook their hopes, could not repress forebodings of evil when she remembered that Sigismund was the heir of an ancient and wealthy family. Her fears proved too well founded. When Sigismund, on quitting the university, spoke to his father of his projects, he encountered an insurmountable opposition, and was compelled to postpone them. As often as he could escape from Hildesheim he hurried to Heidelberg, to pass a few days of mingled grief and joy. Michaële never complained; she had always smiles and loving words to welcome Sigismund, but in his absence and in secret she pined away. At last his father died. A week after his funeral the young count was at Heidelberg. It was too late. Michaële was given up by the physicians; three days afterwards she breathed her last. More than once, during those three days of cruel anguish, the dying girl made Sigismund play the melody that had been the origin of their acquaintance, and which they both passionately loved. Often, in happier times, they had sung it together, with joy and gratitude in their hearts. It was an air that Michaële had learned when a child, in the mountains of the Tyrol. It had fixed itself indelibly in her memory, and when she died, in Sigismund’s arms, the sweet melody was hovering on her lips.