“The first basis of all other reforms was the rendering my own will properly absolute.”
Some of his remarks on treaties, from the same volume, convey a fair impression of the king’s good faith to his allies. All mankind knows that he was in conduct a measureless liar and trickster, and that no treaty could hold him; but it is not perhaps generally known that he generalized perfidy into a principle, and had no conception that in so doing he was violating any moral or religious duty. He thus solemnly instructs the dauphin—
“In dispensing with the exact observance of treaties, we do not violate them; for the language of such instruments is not to be understood literally. We must employ in our treaties a conventional phraseology, just as we use complimentary expressions in society. They are indispensable in our intercourse with one another, but they always mean much less than they say. The more unusual, circumspect and reiterated were the clauses by which the Spaniards excluded me from assisting Portugal, the more evident it is that the Spaniards did not believe that I should really withhold such assistance.”
The Podesta’s Daughter, and other Miscellaneous Poems. By George H. Boker. Author of “Calaynos,” “Anne Boleyn,” “The Betrothal,” etc. Philadelphia: A. Hart.
Mr. Boker is ever a welcome visitant among the regions of literature. The present volume is understood to be composed of those lighter efforts of his muse which have engaged his attention at intervals between the composition of his larger works, “Calaynos,” “Anne Boleyn” and “The Betrothal.” Some of these minor poems have already seen the light, under the auspices of our leading magazines; but by far the greater part of the book is fresh, and all of it bears evidence of that genuine inspiration, and that high finish, without which the author never appears before the reading public.
“The Podesta’s Daughter” is an Italian tale or legend, thrown into that dramatic form for which Mr. Boker has shown such a remarkable gift. The story is very briefly this. A lowly maiden is loved and wooed by one far above her in life, a son of the neighboring duke. The father and brother of the maid, believing the high-born youth to be merely selfish and insidious in his offers of love and marriage, seek to rescue her from what appears to them a fatal snare, and persuade her to reject his addresses and even pretend to be affianced to another, a country hind in her own walk in life. The young and uncalculating noble, stung to the quick by her apparent preference of a rival so utterly unworthy of him and of her, suddenly abandoned his home and castle, and engaged during all the prime and meridian of his days in distant foreign wars. In the evening of life he returns, alone and almost a stranger, to the scenes of his youth. On approaching his castle, he falls in with an old man, the “Podesta,” by whom he is not recognized. In the dialogue between them, the Podesta, being questioned by the apparent stranger, tells the story of himself and family, and especially of his “daughter,” by whose untimely grave they are standing. She died of a broken heart, after the abrupt departure of the young duke, years ago. It is the old story. True love, not left to its native instincts, but thwarted and driven devious by the manœuvres of the suspicious. Though Italian in manners, and dramatic in form, it is a true story of the heart. It is told with infinite skill, and must win for its author a bright addition to the chaplet which already surrounds his brow.
The first scene in the “Podesta’s Daughter,” is a good instance of the quiet ease with which Mr. Boker makes an actor bring out the points of a story, so that the reader is at once posted up to the very moment of action.
SCENE—Before and within the gate of an Italian Churchyard. Enter (as if from the wars,) Duke Odo, Vincenzo, and a train of men-at-arms.
Duke Odo (dismounting.)