Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847
"But you shall not die!" was the exclamation with which both Pepoli and the students interrupted him.
"An oath," he continued, not heeding this interruption, "which I exact from you in the name of friendship, in the name of virtue, in the name of liberty. Is it not generous, this offer of Pepoli – of him who has been the champion of the citizen against the student – the most popular man in all Bologna, – is it not generous that he should step forward to rescue my life from the blind rage and mad injustice of the multitude? But you must understand there is a certain price to be given for this generosity. You do not expect him to sacrifice his popularity, which is his power, out of mere compassion to one who has never courted nor applauded him, without receiving, in return, some compensation. If you accept his benefits, you must forward his counsels, you must promote his designs. Say, will you swear?"
"Yes! yes! we swear!" was the general response.
"Students of Bologna!" he proceeded, elevating his voice. "I accept this mark of your friendship. For my sake you have promised to swear. Now hear the oath I propose, and to which I bind you. This man offers me my life, and the price of it is – the liberty of Bologna! Fellow students, Romeo de' Pepoli aims at the tyranny. Swear that you will never, on any condition, for any boon, aid him in his flagitious enterprise; that you will thwart, and resist, and combat it to the utmost. Swear that you will, at all times, reject his mediation – as I now reject, utterly and with scorn, the service that he proffers me. I unmask him to you ere I die. I, too, have lived for one good purpose. This man, my friends, would be tyrant of Bologna – swear, to me that he shall not!"
There was a pause of a few seconds. But it was soon evident that the noble spirit – of patriotism and of self-sacrifice – of their admired friend, had found a genuine response in all his hearers. He had touched the true chord. Carried forward by his disinterested enthusiasm, and pledged by the promise he, had somewhat artfully extorted from them, they rose, and with one voice repeated the oath proposed to, them. Pepoli, pale and aghast, and utterly confounded, and catching here and there the flashing of the half-drawn steel, made a precipitate retreat. Of all the assembly, Petrarch alone remained silent – he alone failed, or forgot, to take the oath; – full of concern for the safety of his noble friend, full of admiration for his greatness, he fell weeping upon his neck.
CONCLUSION
After this, there was no more hope for the prisoner. If to the anger of the Bolognese was added the determined enmity of Romeo de' Pepoli, now resolved on his destruction, from what quarter could a ray of hope proceed? He was even now removed – such was the influence which the new enemy he had provoked possessed over the Podestà – to the common prison, and treated in all respects like a condemned malefactor. The university pleaded its privilege to judge a member of their own body, but the angry feeling of the citizens would not permit them for a moment to listen to this plea. There, was no power on earth to save him – and his fault was so light! A man more honourable did not exist. The purity of Constantia was more safe in his hands than in any others – he loved her so well.
We are not sufficiently in the "tragic vein" to follow the prisoner through the last hours of his confinement, and of his existence. To be struck dead in the flush of life, with all his passions in full bloom upon him, was a hard decree. Sometimes he protested vehemently against the palpable injustice and cruelty of his sentence; but, in general, he found his consolation in the mournful sentiment, that had he lived, he should have been miserable – for the great desire of his life was doomed to be thwarted. "I told you," he said one day to his friend Petrarch, "that this love would work my destruction. It has so; but its great misery has made destruction itself indifferent."
We willingly draw a veil over the last fatal scene, and all the horrors that precede a public death. Throughout this scene his courage never forsook him; but flashes of uncontrollable indignation would occasionally break from him, and occasionally a sigh of more tender despondency would escape. The last tear he shed, the last complaint he murmured, was still to the coldness of Constantia: "We should have been so happy, had she loved – and now! – "
History records that the execution of Giacomo, as well by infringing the supposed privileges of the university as by the indignation it excited in the large circle of his friends and companions, nearly led to the withdrawal of the university from the town of Bologna. The students and the professors seceded in a mass, and retired to Sienna. No entreaties could bring them back; the glory of Bologna might have been extinguished for ever. The Podestà and other magistrates of the town were compelled at length to send a solemn deputation. They promised, in future, to respect their privileges; and, by raising the salaries of the professors, and some other popular measures, they eventually prevailed upon them to return.
Petrarch had not left the city with the rest – he had lingered behind to perform the last rites and honours to the remains of Giacomo – to raise the tomb and inscribe it with his verse.
Upon that tomb the solitary moon was now shining. But who was that figure robed in deepest black that knelt beside it, so sadly, with so desponding a stillness, her forehead pressed against the marble? Was it, too, marble? No. The chisel may create beauty as exquisite, but never combine it with so great a sorrow. It was Constantia. Too late! Too late! She brought her tears where one smile would have given life and happiness. She felt the worth of him who had so passionately loved her, when nothing remained to love but the ashes in that urn. That pleading in the student's chamber seemed vain – and at the moment it was vain; but when she recalled it in her own solitude, her heart had half assented. She remembered how tenderly – with what an ardent and gentle worship – he had pressed her hand; her own hand trembled then to the touch which at the time it had coldly rejected. When, moreover, she heard, through their common friend Petrarch, of the noble manner in which he had refused the aid of Pepoli, and chose death rather than the least dishonour, and thought to herself – this man loved me! – all her heart was won. Alas! too late!
She now knelt at the tomb of Giacomo, afflicted with regret that amounted to remorse. She raised her head – she raised her hand – there was that within it which glittered in the moonbeam. But her hand was suddenly arrested. Petrarch, a frequent visitor at that tomb, had seen and prevented this movement of despair. "No! no!" he cried. "Beautiful creature, and too much beloved – live on – live! And when some other Giacomo appears, make compensation to heaven – by loving him!"
HENRY IV. 18
So closely united are the arts of history and romance, that they may almost be said to be twin sisters. In both, the subjects are the same: and the objects which the artists have in view in handling them are identical. To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events – to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes – to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations – to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. The delineation of character, passion, and transaction is the great end of both, but to neither is the subordinate aid of description or pictorial embellishment denied. On the contrary, to both they constitute one of the principal charms of this art. The sphere of description is different, but the object and the impressions are the same. The novelist paints individual places, and strives to transfer to the mind of the reader a reflection of the brilliant scenes created in his own imagination. The historian embraces a wider sphere, and aims rather at portraying the general features of whole districts of country, or even quarters of the globe. But a painter's eye, a poet's mind, are equally required by both; and not the least interesting parts of the works of either are those in which the author leaves the busy and checkered scenes of dramatic incident, to dwell amidst the recesses of inanimate beauty, – to traverse the Alps with their shepherds, or the Pampas with their Gauchos, and mingle with the turbid course of human events somewhat of the purity which breathes amidst the works of Nature.
Notwithstanding this identity of object and art, there is nothing more certain than that romance writers in general have not made the best historians. Poets also, whose art so closely resembles that of the novelist, have in general failed when they invoked the historic muse. Smollett was in many respects an admirable romance writer; but the author of "Roderick Random" has left a History of England, which is nothing but a compilation of parliamentary debates and gazettes. Scott's powers as a romance writer were so great and various, and his delineations of historic scenes, characters, and events, so graphic and powerful, that it seemed next to impossible that he should not be equally successful as a historian, especially when the theme was one so varied and animating as the "Life of Napoleon." Voltaire's genius was universal, and seemed equally adapted to every object of human pursuit; but his historical works, though deservedly popular as school books, have never risen to an eminence approaching that justly attained by his tragedies and critical disquisitions.
What is very remarkable, and is just the reverse of what might a priori have been expected, the point in which romance writers in general fail, when they undertake history, is in giving sufficient life and animation to their narrative. Like race-horses, they seem in general incapable of carrying any considerable weight. They would break down under the panoply which a steed of Norman or Flemish extraction can sustain without difficulty. Their imagination is only kindled when it is at liberty to roam at will over a world of their own creation. Confined to the narration of actual events, limited to the delineation of real character, cramped by the description of actual scenes, their powers fail, their ardour is weakened, their fire is lost. A mind comparatively prosaic, subject to such burdens, speedily out-strips them even on their own element; and the scholar with his authorities kindles the imagination to an extent which the poet with his verses can hardly excel. Witness Livy's pictured pages – Gibbon's historical descriptions. Yet minds of the most elevated cast have occasionally, though at long intervals from each other, succeeded in uniting the historic and romantic arts. Homer's Iliad is the annals of the Siege of Troy in verse; his Odyssey, the versified Travels of Ulysses; and in the recent "Histoire des Girondins" by Lamartine, we have convincing proof that it is possible to unite the most ardent and enthusiastic poetical mind with the research, knowledge of character, and dramatic power, requisite to make the most interesting tragic annals.
As a romance writer, Mr James unquestionably is entitled to a high place. He has great historical information, especially of the olden times and their leading characters; an accurate personal knowledge of various countries, more particularly France, Flanders, and England; great acquaintance with the dress, manners, arms, and accoutrements of former days; and a very remarkable power of describing as well the ever-changing events of ancient story as the varied scenes of inanimate nature. His best novels, "Attila," "Philip Augustus," "Mary of Burgundy," "The Robbers," "The Smugglers," "Morley Ernstein," "Henry Masterton," are happy specimens of the historical romance. The great and deserved success which has attended the uniform edition of his novels now in course of publication, sufficiently proves that his reputation rests on a broader and securer basis than the fleeting patronage of fashion or the transient interest of individual satire. The great risk which he runs, is from the number of his works. It is dangerous to write thirty books. The most prolific imagination runs into repetition, when repeatedly tasked with invention. Homer himself could not have written twenty Iliads; Shakspeare's fame has been not a little enhanced by his having left only twenty-seven plays; that of Sophocles, by only seven of his having come down to modern times. Perhaps the best thing that a good fairy could do for James's fame – as was said of Dryden – would be to withdraw two-thirds of his productions from subsequent times.
One of the greatest charms of Mr James's writings is the beautiful ideas, clothed in felicitous language, which are to be found profusely scattered over them. It is not the general opinion that he excels in this respect; on the contrary, nothing is more common in conversation than to hear it remarked, that it is in depth of thought, and knowledge of the human heart, that he is deficient. But this opinion arises from the frequency, sometimes, perhaps, redundancy of his pictures of nature, and the brilliant colours in which he never fails to array her finest scenes. Thoughts the most beautiful are frequently concealed amidst profusion of description, as fruit sometimes amidst luxuriance of leaves. Take for example the following, on one of the most familiar objects in nature – a drop of rain.
"We spoke of the rain, and I foolishly enough, in mentioning all the annoyance it had occasioned me, loaded it with maledictions.
"'Call it not accursed, my son,' said the monk. 'Oh no! remember that every drop that falls, bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility. Remember that glorious tree, and herb, and shrub, and flower, owes to those drops its life, its freshness, and its beauty. Remember that half the loveliness of the green world is all their gift; and that, without them, we should wander through a dull desert, as dusty as the grave. Take but a single drop of rain cloistered in the green fold of a blade of grass, and pour upon it one ray of the morning sun, where will you get lapidary, with his utmost skill, to cut a diamond that shall shine like that? Oh no! blessed for ever be the beautiful drops of the sky, the refreshing soothers of the seared earth – the nourishers of the flowers – that calm race of beings, which are all loveliness and tranquillity, without passion, or pain, or desire, or disappointment – whose life is beauty, and whose breath is perfume." —Henry Masterton.
Mr James cannot be considered as a historical writer of the highest class. He gives a spirited and agreeable narrative of the events of the reign or period which he has undertaken to describe, and in many passages the descriptive powers of the romance writer are strikingly conspicuous. He is diligent and worthy in the consultation of authorities, and free from any undue bias in the drawing of characters or narrative of events. But he has neither the philosophic glance of Guizot, nor the military fire of Napier, nor the incomparable descriptive powers of Gibbon. His merit, and it is a very great one, consists in the lucid and spirited telling of the story, interspersed with interesting descriptions of the scenes of the leading incidents, and dramatic portraiture of the principal characters. His greatest fault – no trifling one – is the perplexity produced in the mind of the reader by the want of proper grouping and arrangement, and the introduction of a vast number of characters and events at once into the story, without any preparatory description, to enable him to appreciate the one or understand the other. This is a very natural error for a romance writer to fall into when he undertakes history; because, in novels, where characters are few, and the events only such as happen to them, there is no need of previous preparation of the reader's mind, of such grouping and perspective, for the simplification and illustration of events. But, in history, where the events are so numerous and complicated, and each actor in general occupies only an inconsiderable portion of the canvass, it is indispensable, if the writer would avoid prolixity of details, or achieve that object so well known to artists, which they denominate breadth of effect.
Biography should be, and when properly handled is, the most interesting branch of historical composition. It has the immense advantage – the value of which can only be properly appreciated by those who undertake to write general history – of being limited to the leading characters who have appeared on the theatre of the world, and consequently steering clear of the intermediate periods of uninteresting or tedious occurrence. How to get over these without exhausting the patience of his readers, on the one hand, or incurring the reproach of omitting some events of importance, on the other, is the great difficulty of general history. The biographer seizes the finest points of the story; he dwells only on the exploits of his hero, and casts the rest into the shade. If this style of composition does not afford room for those general and important views on the general march of events, or progress of our species, which constitute the most valuable part of the highest branch of history, it presents much greater opportunities for securing the interest of the general reader, and awakening that sympathy in the breast of others, which it is the great object of the fine arts to produce. It has one immense advantage – it possesses unity of subject, it is characterised by singleness of interest. The virtues or vices, the triumphs or misfortunes, the glories or ruin of one individual, form the main subject of the narrative. It is on them that the attention of the writer is fixed; it is to enhance their interest that his efforts are exhausted. The actions of others, the surrounding events, only require to be displayed in so far as they bear upon, or are connected with the exploits of the hero. But as great men usually appear in, or create by their single efforts, important eras in the annals of mankind, it rarely happens that the characters selected for biography are not surrounded by a cluster of others, which renders their Lives almost a general history of the period during which they communicated their impress to the events of the world; and thus their biography combines unity of interest with the highest importance in event.
This was pre-eminently the case with the history of Henry IV. of France. So important, indeed, were the events crowded into his lifetime, so great and lasting have been the consequences of his triumph, so prodigious the impulse which his genius communicated, not only to his own country, but to Europe, that he may almost be said to have created an era in modern times. The first of the Bourbon family, he was, in truth, the founder of the French monarchy, in one sense of the term. He first gave it unity, consistence, and power; he first rendered it formidable to the liberties of Europe. Before his time, during the reigns of the princes of the House of Valois, it was rather a cluster of separate and almost independent feudatories, than a compact and homogeneous empire. So powerful were these great vassals, so slender the force which the crown could command to control them, that France on many occasions made the narrowest possible escape from sharing the fate of Germany, and seeing in its chief nobles – the Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, the Counts of Toulouse – independent monarchs rendering, like the electors of Brandenberg, Saxony, and Bavaria, only a nominal allegiance to their feudal superior. The religious wars, which broke out with the Reformation, still farther increased the divisions, and severed the ties of this distracted kingdom.
The contest of the rural nobility of the south, attached to the new opinions as fervently as the Scottish Covenanters, with the more numerous and concentrated Roman Catholics of the north, who clung with superstitious tenacity to the pomp and ceremonies of the ancient worship, continued through several successive generations, not only drenched the kingdom with blood, but altered the character, and obliterated the virtues of its inhabitants. Revenge became the only passion that retained its sway over the human heart; cruelty so common, that its atrocity was no longer perceived. The massacre of St Bartholomew, that lasting and indelible stain on ancient, as the massacre in the prisons, and the Reign of Terror, are on modern French history, is not to be regarded as the work of a blood-thirsty tyrant, aided by a corrupt and perfidious court. The public crimes of the rulers of men never can exceed, except by a few degrees, those for which the nation is prepared. It is the frenzy of the general mind which suggests and renders practicable the atrocious deeds, by which, happily at long intervals from each other, the annals of mankind are stained. The proscriptions of the Triumvirate, the alternate slaughters of Marius and Sylla, the massacre of St Bartholomew, the auto-da-fes of Castile, the reign of the Duke of Alva in Flanders, the butchery of the wars of the Roses in England, the blood shed by Robespierre in France, all proceeded from a frenzied state of the public mind, which made the great body of the people not only noways revolt at, but cordially support those savage deeds, at which, when recounted in the pages of history, all subsequent ages shudder. Even the massacre of St Bartholomew, perhaps the most atrocious, because the most cold-blooded and perfidious, of all those horrid deeds, excited at the time no feeling of indignation in the Roman Catholic party throughout Europe. On the Contrary, it was universally and cordially approved of by those of that persuasion in every country, as a most effectual and expedient, and withal justifiable way of lopping off a gangrened arm from the body politic, and extinguishing a pestilent heresy. The discharges of the cannon from the castle of St Angelo, and the Te Deum sung in St Peter's, on the arrival of the glorious intelligence, by the Head of the faithful at Rome, were re-echoed by the acclamation – without, so far as appears, a single exception – of the whole Romish world.19
It was the cessation of the hideous scenes of bloodshed and massacre which had signalised the civil wars in the reigns of the Valois princes, and the religious dissensions that succeeded them, which gave Henry IV. his great and deserved reputation. Like Napoleon, he calmed, by his acquisition of the throne, the passions of a nation in arms against itself. The hereditary feuds, the dreadful retaliations, the mutual proscriptions, the fierce passions, the frightful revenge of the feudal and Huguenot wars, were stilled as if by the wand of a mighty enchanter.
Henry IV. was the man of his age; and hence it was that he achieved this prodigy. His mental and physical qualities were precisely those which his time demanded; and it was this combination which enabled him to achieve his astonishing success. Bold, active, and enterprising, he presented that mixture of warlike virtues with chivalrous graces which it is the great object of romance to portray, and which may be said to form the ideal of the European character. He possessed that individual gallantry, that personal daring, that spontaneous generosity, which, even more than commanding intellectual qualities, succeed in winning the hearts of mankind. Ever the foremost in attack, the last in retreat, he excelled his boldest knights in personal courage. The battle-field was to him a scene of exultation. He had the true heroic character. Like the youth in Tacitus, he loved danger itself, not the rewards of valour. Nor were the mental qualities and combinations requisite in the general awanting. On the contrary, he possessed them in the very highest degree. Active, enterprising, indefatigable, he was ever in the field with the advanced guard, and often ran the greatest personal danger from his anxiety to see with his own eyes the position or forces of the enemy. His skill in partisan strife, on which so much of success in war then depended – in the surprise of castles, the siege of towns, the capture of convoys, the sudden irruption into territories, equalled all that poetry had conceived of the marvellous. His deeds, as narrated by the cool pen of Sully, resemble rather the fabulous exploits of knight-errantry than the events of real life. It was thus, by slow degrees and painful efforts, that he gradually brought up his inconsiderable party, at first not a fourth part of the forces of the League, to something like a level with his formidable opponents; and at length was enabled to rout them in decisive battles, and establish his fortunes on a permanent foundation in the fields of Arques and Ivry.
The contest at first appeared to be so unequal as to be altogether hopeless. Though the undoubted heir to the crown, his forces, when the succession opened to him by the assassination of Henry III., were so inconsiderable compared to those of the League, that it seemed impossible that he could fight his way to the throne. The Huguenots were only two millions of souls, and the Roman Catholics were eighteen millions. The latter were in possession of the capital, wielded the resources of its rich and ardent population, and had all the principal towns and strongholds of the kingdom in their hands. It was in the distant provinces, especially of the south, that the strength of the Protestants lay: their forces were the lances of the rural nobility, and the stout arms of the peasants in Dauphiny, the Cevennes, and around La Rochelle. But all history, and especially that of France, demonstrates how inadequate in general are the resources of remote and far-severed provinces to maintain a protracted contest with an enemy in possession of the capital, the fortresses, and ruling the standing army of the kingdom. The forces of the Catholics in this instance were the more formidable, that they were warlike and experienced, trained to the practical duties of soldiers in previous civil wars, united in a league which, like the Solemn League and Covenant in Scotland, formed an unseen bond uniting together the most distant parts of the monarchy, and directed by the Duke of Guise, a leader second to none in capacity and daring, and equal to any in ruthless energy and unscrupulous wickedness.
It was the personal qualities, heroic spirit, and individual talents of the King which enabled him to triumph over this formidable combination. Never was evinced in a more striking light the influence of individual gallantry and conduct on national fortunes; or a more convincing illustration of the undoubted truth, that when important changes are about to be made in human affairs, Providence frequently makes use of the agency of individual greatness. But for Henry's capacity and determination, the Protestants would have been crushed, and the civil war terminated in the first campaign. But, like all other illustrious men, he became great in the school of adversity. His energy, resources, and perseverance triumphed over every difficulty, extricated him from every peril, and at length enabled him to triumph over every opposition. It was his wonderful partisan qualities – the secrecy, skill, and daring of his enterprises, which first laid the foundation of his fortune, by drawing to his standard many of those restless spirits, let loose over the country by the former wars, who in every age are attracted by the courage, capacity, and liberality of a leader. He was thus enabled to augment the little army of the Huguenots by a considerable accession of bold and valuable soldiers from the opposite faith, but who cared more for the capacity of their leader than for either the psalms of the Huguenots or the high mass of the Catholics.
By degrees, many even of the Romish nobility, penetrated with admiration at the manner in which the heir of the crown combated for his rights, joined his standard, in the secret hope that when he came to the throne he would revert to the faith of the majority of his subjects. He won all hearts, even in the enemy's ranks, by his generosity, humanity, and heroic spirit. The soldiers worshipped the hero who shared all their hardships, and whose greatest pleasure was ever to be the first in advancing into the enemy's fire; the officers were filled with enthusiasm for the prince who treated them all with the hearty courtesy of the camp, and claimed no distinction save that which all felt to be due to pre-eminent valour and never-failing capacity. Even his weaknesses augmented the general interest in his character; and when it was known that the leader whose exploits riveted the attention of all Europe, not unfrequently stole from the council-board or the tent to pursue some fugitive fair one through a forest, or subdue the obduracy of high-born beauty, by watching all night before her castle walls, the age of romance seemed to have returned to the earth, and all hearts were interested in the hero who appeared to unite the greatness of ancient patriotism with the spirit of modern chivalry.
Nor did Henry's conduct, when he had taken Paris and conquered the throne, belie the expectations formed by this brilliant dawn of his career. He proved not merely a warrior, but the father of his people. Great projects of amelioration were set on foot – greater still were in preparation, when he perished by the hand of Ravaillac. His celebrated saying, that he "hoped to see the time when every peasant should have his fowl in his pot," reveals the paternal spirit of his government. It is vain to say these were the acts of his ministers; that Sully was the real sovereign. The answer of Queen Elizabeth, when the success of her reign was imputed to the capacity of her ministers, "Did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?" affords the decisive reply to all such depreciatory attempts. Under his beneficent rule, industry was protected, commerce revived; canals, roads, and bridges penetrated the country in every direction; and, most marvellous of all, religious schisms were healed and religious fury stilled. The abjuration by the successful monarch of the faith in which he had been bred, and the warriors of which had combated for him, was unquestionably a measure called for, in a temporal view, by the interest of his dominions at the time, not less than by his own tenure of the throne. When it is recollected that the Huguenots did not at that period exceed two millions, among twenty which France contained, it becomes at once apparent, that, in a country so recently convulsed by the passions of religious and civil dissension, conformity with the faith of the great majority was the sole condition on which tranquillity could have been restored, discord appeased, a stable government established, or the crown transmitted to the descendants of the reigning monarch. And, while his biographer must lament the necessity to which he was subjected, of bending religious conviction to political expedience, all must admire the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes, which, without shocking the prejudices of the Catholics, secured liberty of conscience and just immunities to the Protestants; and which, if adhered to by succeeding monarchs, on the equitable spirit in which it had been conceived by its author, would probably have left the direct heirs of Henry IV. still on the throne of France, and averted all the bloodshed and horrors of the Revolution.