We must not, any more than the travellers, loiter on the road, therefore we pass over the scenes at the Convent of Hirschau, as also that in the neighbouring nunnery. We confess that the carousal of the monks, in which Lucifer bears a share, (for the fiend continues to travel in disguise along with his expected victim,) does not strike us as being happily conceived. It is coarse, and we are sorry to say, vulgar; though it may be, doubtless, that such things were often said and enacted within convent walls. But the poet is bound to use a certain degree of discretion in his choice of materials, and in his manner of setting them forth. We think some of the ribaldry in this scene might have been spared with advantage, without in the least injuring that contrast between outward profession and real purity which the author evidently intended to draw; and we would urge upon Mr Longfellow the propriety of revising in future editions the passages to which we refer, as tending in no way to promote the strength, whilst they undoubtedly diminish the pleasure which we receive from other parts of the drama. The scene in the nunnery, in which the Abbess Irmengarde relates to Elsie the tale of her youthful attachment, and the preference which she gave to Walter of the Vogelweide over Prince Henry of Hoheneck, when both of them were her suitors, is very sweetly written, and entirely in keeping with the times.
Then follow several scenes of much beauty, which conduct us through Switzerland into Italy. The travellers embark from Genoa in a felucca, bound for Salerno; and thus speaks the captain or padrone of the vessel, as the wind is freshening. It is a strange piece of rhyme, but worth listening to, were it only on account of its singularity.
IL PADRONE.
"I must entreat you, friends, below!
The angry storm begins to blow,
For the weather changes with the moon.
All this morning, until noon,
We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws
Struck the sea with their cat's-paws.
Only a little hour ago
I was whistling to Saint Antonio
For a capful of wind to fill our sail,
And instead of a breeze he has sent us a gale.
Last night I saw Saint Elmo's stars,
With their glimmering lanterns, all at play
On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars,
And I knew we should have foul weather to-day.
Cheerly, my hearties! yo heave ho!
Brail up the mainsail, and let her go
As the winds will and Saint Antonio!
Do you see that Livornese felucca,
That vessel to the windward yonder,
Running with her gunwale under?
I was looking when the wind o'ertook her.
She had all sail set, and the only wonder
Is, that at once the strength of the blast
Did not carry away her mast.
She is a galley of the Gran Duca,
That, through fear of the Algerines,
Convoys those lazy brigantines,
Laden with wine and oil from Lucca.
Now all is ready, high and low;
Blow, blow, good Saint Antonio!
Ha! that is the first dash of the rain,
With a sprinkle of spray above the rails,
Just enough to moisten our sails,
And make them ready for the strain,
See how she leaps, as the blasts o'ertake her,
And speeds away with a bone in her mouth!
Now keep her head towards the south,
And there is no danger of bank or breaker.
With the breeze behind us, on we go;
Not too much, good Saint Antonio!"
The verse sounds like an echo of the shrill piping of the Mediterranean wind.
The voyagers arrive at Salerno; and we are immediately introduced to the schools, sonorous with academical wrangling. Mr Longfellow displays much humour in this part of his poem, having, we think, hit off excellently the extreme acerbity exhibited by the scholastic disputants on the most worthless of imaginable subjects. He has given us a vivid picture of the war which was so long maintained between the sect of the Nominalists and that of the Realists; and not less of the fury which possessed the souls of ancient hostile grammarians. "The heat and acrimony of verbal critics," says Disraeli the elder, "have exceeded description. Their stigmas and anathemas have been long known to bear no proportion against the offences to which they have been directed. 'God confound you,' cried one grammarian to another, 'for your theory of impersonal verbs!'" In the Golden Legend we have first a travelling Scholastic affixing, as was the usual custom, his Theses to the gate of the college, and offering to maintain his one hundred and twenty-five propositions against all the world. Then appear two Doctors disputing, followed by their pupils.
DOCTOR SERAFINO.
"I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain
That a word which is only conceived in the brain
Is a type of eternal Generation;
The spoken word is the Incarnation.