We have seen how remarkably the lions agreed on the impropriety of making an amphitheatric meal of the lovers; now it appears that the tiger, who should have eat the Christian, was of the same mind.
"At that moment a wild yell burst through the air; and thinking only of escape, whither it knew not, the terrible tiger of the African desert leaped among the throng, and hurried through its parted streams. And so came the earthquake, and so darkness once more fell over the earth!"
Is it not strange that we should have conceived something much like this, and explained the motive, too, of such unreasonable conduct in any wild beast starving?
| "Nature's quick instinct, in most savage beasts, Prophesies danger ere man's thought awakes, And shrinks in fear from common savageness, Made gentle by its terror; thus, o'erawed E'en in his famine's fury by a Power Brute beings more than human oft adore, The Lion lay, his quivering paws outspread, His white teeth gnashing, till the crushing throngs Had passed the corridors; then, glaring up His eyes imbued with samiel light, he saw The crags and forests of the Appenines Gleaming far off, and with the exulting sense Of home and lone dominion, at a bound, He leapt the lofty palisades and sprung Along the spiral passages, with howls Of horror, through the flying multitudes Flying to seek his lonely mountain lair." |
We shall not protract this investigation, though many similar passages might be produced to confirm our assertion that Mr. Bulwer has appropriated our thoughts, and throughout wrought our descriptions into his story, and won great profit and fame from the robbery. Those who read his book, will readily find many descriptions closely resembling one of the last given in the poem, which we here reprint, and many references to ancient authors for facts which he derived from us.
| "Meantime, charred corses in one sepulchre Of withering ashes lay, and voices rose, Fewer and fainter, and, each moment, groans Were hushed, and dead babes on dead bosoms lay, And lips were blasted into breathlessness Ere the death kiss was given, and spirits passed The ebbless, dark, mysterious waves, where dreams Hover and pulses throb and many a brain Swims wild with terrible desires to know The destinies of worlds that lie beyond. The thick air panted as in nature's death, And every breath was anguish; every face Was terror's image, where the soul looked forth, As looked, sometimes, far on the edge of heaven, A momentary star the tempest palled. From ghastlier lips now rose a wilder voice, As from a ruin'd sanctuary's gloom, Like savage winds from the Chorasmian waste Rushing, with sobs and suffocating screams," etc. |
But, though we have been more highly honored by this last chef d'oeuvre of the honorable Eugene Aram than any author within our knowledge, yet others are entitled to their property. Speaking of the skeleton of Arbaces, Bulwer says—
"The scull was of so remarkable a conformation, so boldly marked in its intellectual, as well as its worse physical developments, that it has excited the constant speculation of every itinerant believer in the theories of Spurzheim who has gazed upon that ruined palace of the mind. Still, after a lapse of eighteen centuries, the traveller may survey that airy hall, within whose cunning galleries and elaborate chambers, once thought, reasoned, dreamed, and sinned, the soul of Arbaces the Egyptian!"
But Byron said, long ago, in Childe Harold, when gazing on a skull:
| "Yes, this was once ambition's airy hall, The dome of thought, the palace of the soul," etc. |