and his fellow atheists before us, can it be denied without wilful blindness, that the (so called) system of nature (that is materialism, with the utter rejection of moral responsibility, of a present Providence, and of both present and future retribution) may influ ence the characters and actions of individuals, and even of communities, to a degree that almost does away the distinction between men and devils, and will make the page of the future historian resemble the narration of a madman's dreams. It is not the wickedness of Don Juan, therefore, which constitutes the character an abstraction, and removes it from the rules of probability; but the rapid succession of the correspondent acts and incidents, his intellectual superiority, and the splendid accumulation of his gifts and desirable qualities, as co-existent with entire wickedness in one and the same person. But this likewise is the very circumstance which gives to this strange play its charm and universal interest. Don Juan is, from beginning to end, an intelligible character: as much so as the Satan of Milton. The poet asks only of the reader, what, as a poet, he is privileged to ask: namely, that sort of negative faith in the ex down all its rival opponents, was riding in triumph through the land like Death in the Revelations. In this drama of dream-like horrors Carrier sustained his part so as to be "famous for ever." Mr. Carlyle, in that chapter of his French Revolution which is headed Destruction, gives an awful account of Representative Carrier's proceedings in La Vendée, and of his horrid bon-mots, worthy of a laughing hyæna possessed by the spirit of cruelty. "Sentence of Deportation," writes Carrier, was exe. cuted vertically." That is a gabarre with ninety priests under hatches, was sunk in the Loire, on signal given. "This was the first of the Noyades, which we may call Drownages, of Carrier,"- "By degrees daylight 66 itself witnesses Noyades: women and men are tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands: and flung in: this they call Mariage Républicain, Republican Marriage.-Dumb, out of suffering, now, as pale swoin corpses. the victims tumble confusedly seaward along the Loire stream: the tid、 rolling them back: clouds of ravens darken the river, wolves prowl ot the shoal-places: Carrier writes, 'Quel torrent revolutionnaire. What a torrent of Revolution! For the man is rabid and the time is rabid. These are called the Noyades of Carrier twenty-five by the tale."-Mr. Carlyle calls this "the blackest aspect of the consummation of Sanscullottism. The worst part of his account is too dreadful to quote. See also Revolu tionary Plutarch, vol. iii., p. 105. S. C.] istence of such a being, which we willingly give to productions professedly ideal, and a disposition to the same state of feeling, as that with which we contemplate the idealized figures of the Apollo Belvidere, and the Farnese Hercules. What the Hercules is to the eye in corporeal strength, Don Juan is to the mind in strength of character. The ideal consists in the happy balance of the generic with the individual. The former makes the character representative and symbolical, therefore instructive; because, mutatis mutandis, it is applicable to whole classes of men. The latter gives its living interest; for nothing lives or is real, but as definite and individual. To understand this completely, the reader need only recollect the specific state of his feelings, when in looking at a picture of the historic (more properly of the poetic or heroic) class, he objects to a particular figure as being too much of a portrait; and this interruption of his complacency he feels without the least reference to, or the least acquaintance with, any person in real life whom he might recognise in this figure. It is enough that such a figure is not ideal and therefore not ideal, because one of the two factors or elements of the ideal is in excess. A similar and more powerful objection he would feel towards a set of figures which were mere abstractions, like those of Cipriani, and what have been called Greek forms and faces, that is, outlines drawn according to a recipe. These again are not ideal; because in these the other element is in excess. «Forma formans per formam formatam | translucens," is the definition and perfection of ideal art. This excellence is so happily achieved in the Don Juan, that it is capable of interesting without poetry, nay, even without words, as in our pantomime of that name. We see clearly how the character is formed; and the very extravagance of the incidents, and the super-human entireness of Don Juan's agency, prevents the wickedness from shocking our minds to any painful degree. We do not believe it enough for this effect; no, not even with that kind of temporary and negative beliof or acqui 8 Better thus: Forma specifica per formam individualem tranalucens : or better yet-Species individualizata, sive Individuum calibet Species determinatæ in omni parte correspondens et quasi versione quad ve am interpretans et repetens. escence which I have described above. Meantime the qualities of his character are too desirable, too flattering to our pride and our wishes, not to make up on this side as much additional faith as was lost on the other. There is no danger (thinks the spectator or reader) of my becoming such a monster of iniquity as Don Juan! I never shall be an atheist! I shall never disallow all distinction between right and wrong! I have not the least inclination to be so outrageous a drawcansir in my love affairs! But to possess such a power of captivating and enchanting the affections of the other sex!-to be capable of inspiring in a charming and even a virtuous woman, a love so deep, and so entirely personal to me !—that even my worst vices (if I were vicious), even my cruelty and perfidy (if I were cruel and perfidious), could not eradicate the passion!—to be so loved for my own self, that even with a distinct knowledge of my character, she yet died to save me!-this, sir, takes hold of two sides of our nature, the better and the worse. For the heroic disinterestedness, to which love can transport a woman, cannot be contemplated without an honorable emotion of reverence towards womanhood: and, on the other hand, it is among the miseries, and abides in the dark ground-work of our nature, to crave an outward confirmation of that something within us, which is our very self, that something, not made up of our qualities and relations, but itself the supporter and substantial basis of all these. Love me, and not my qualities, may be a vicious and an insane wish, but it is not a wish wholly without a meaning. Without power, virtue would be insufficient and incapable of revealing its being. It would resemble the magic transformation of Tasso's heroine into a tree, in which she could only groan and bleed. Hence power is necessarily an object of our desire and of our admiration. But of all power, that of the mind is, on every account, the grand desideratum of human ambition. We shall be as gods in knowledge, was and must have been the first temptation: and the co-existence of great intellectual lordship with guilt has never been adequately represented without exciting the strongest interest, and for this reason, that in this bad and heterogeneous co-ordination we can contemplate the [Gerusalemme Liberata. Canto xiii., st. 38, et seq. S. C.] intellect of man more exclusively as a separate self-subsistence, than in its proper state of subordination to his own conscience, or to the will of an infinitely superior being. This is the sacred charm of Shakspeare's male characters in general. They are all cast in the mould of Shakspeare's own gigantic intellect; and this is the open attraction of his Richard, Iago, Edmund, and others in particular. But again; of all intellectual power, that of superiority to the fear of the invisible world is the most dazzling. Its influence is abundantly proved by the one circumstance, that it can bribe us into a voluntary submission of our better knowledge, into suspension of all our judgment derived from constant experience, and enable us to peruse with the liveliest interest the wildest tales of ghosts, wizards, genii, and secret talismans. On this propensity, so deeply rooted in our nature, a specific dramatic probability may be raised by a true poet, if the whole of his work be in harmony; a dramatic probability, sufficient for dramatic pleasure, even when the component characters and incidents border on impossibility. The poet does not require us to be awake and believe; he solicits us only to yield ourselves to a dream; and this too with our eyes open, and with our judgment perdue behind the curtain, ready to awaken us at the first motion of our will: and meantime, only, not to disbelieve. And in such a state of mind, who but must be impressed with the cool intrepidity of Don John on the appearance of his father's ghost: "GHOST.-Monster! behold these wounds! “D. JOHN.—I do! They were well meant and well performed, I see. My clamorous blood to heaven for vengeance cries, And hourly waits your unrepenting fall. You with eternal horrors they'll torment, Except of all your crimes you suddenly repent. (Ghost sinks.) "D. JOHN.-Farewell, thou art a foolish ghost. Repent, quoth he! what could this mean? Our senses are all in a mist, sure. "D. ANTONIO,—(one of D. Juan's reprobate companions). They are not! 'Twas a ghost. 66 D. LOPEZ (another reprobate). I ne'er believed those foolish tales before. "D. JOHN.-Come! 'Tis no matter. Let it be what it will, it must be natural us, too. "D. ANT.--And nature is unalterable in "D. JOHN. 'Tis true! The nature of a ghost cannot change our's." Who also can deny a portion of sublimity to the tremendous consistency with which he stands out the last fearful trial, like a second Prometheus? "Chorus of Devils. "STATUE-GHOST.-Will you not relent and feel remorse? "D. JOHN.-Could'st thou bestow another heart on me, I might. But with this heart I have, I cannot. "D. LOPEZ.-These things are prodigious. “D. ANTON.—I have a sort of grudging to relent, but something holds me back. "D. Lop.-If we could, 'tis now too late.. I will not. "D. ANT.-We defy thee! "GHOST.-Perish, ye impious wretches; go and find the punishments laid up in store for you! (Thunder and lightning. D. Lop. and D. Ant. are swallowed up.) "GHOST to D. JOHN.-Behold their dreadful fates, and know that thy last moment's come! "D. JOHN.-Think not to fright me, foolish ghost; I'll break your mar ble body in pieces, and pull down your horse. (Thunder and lightning-chorus of devils, &c.) "D. JOHN.-These things I see with wonder, but no fear. Were all the elements to be confounded, And shuffled all into their former chaos; Were seas of sulphur flaming round about me, I could not fear, or feel the least remorse. To the last instant I would dare thy power. Here I stand firm, and all thy threats contemn. Thy murderer (to the ghost of one whom he had murdered, (He is swallowed up in a cloud of fire.) In fine, the character of Don John consists in the union of everything desirable to human nature, as means, and which, therefore, by the well-known law of association, become at length desirable on their own account. On their own account, and in their own dignity, they are here displayed, as being employed to ends so unhuman, that, in the effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients, too, are mixed in the |