"It is very provoking," exclaimed I in a pet, "that you always think

I am making some foolish pun. I only wish to do _my_ part towards

rendering your guests and their attendants comfortable. You know

what a fuss they make about their servants; turning the house into a

hospital for the slightest cold, and talking of 'dear Mr. Smith's cough

medicine!' I was only thinking what I could do, to keep the Beeches

from Barking."

I suppose, in my haste to exculpate myself from the charge of punning,

I could not have taken due care to elongate the _proper_ name of the

fair spinsters, and, doubtless, it must have sounded a most _improper_

one in the ears of my aunt; for her little eyes seemed actually to emit

sparks, as a black cat's back is said to do when ruffled in the dark.

"They are gentlewomen, Mr. Winkings!" cried Aunt Jem, almost choked

with indignation, "and their attendants are respectable young persons,

while _you_ are a disgrace to your family. For shame! for shame!"

emphatically continued the angry lady, interrupting the excuses I

attempted to make; "I will not listen to you. I beg you will leave my

house immediately. Your room is indeed most desirable, as you just now

so wittily remarked. I would not subject my friends to the insolent

licence of your tongue for worlds!"

Away marched Aunt Jem with the strut of an incensed turkey-cock, and an

hour afterwards, I was on my way back to London; nor have I ever been

able to convince my mistaken relative of my innocence, and still do I

remain under the ban of her displeasure.

It would be wearying the reader to state all I have lost, and all I

have suffered from the imputation of being a droll; and so I will

content myself with one more instance of my unhappy fatality.

Not long ago I dined with Lord C----, who, though he certainly does

not bear the character of being over bright, was still to me a star of

great promise, seeing that he had given me assurance of provision under

the operation of the "poor laws' bastard legislation," or some such

affair, I forget exactly what, since unfortunately it is now no affair

of mine.

The dinner in question was the only one I ever got out of his lordship,

who on this occasion merely asked me, I believe, on account of my

reputation for drollery. In fact, I was intended to be the jack-pudding

of the company; but I determined to eat much and say little, for fear

of giving offence. This did not suit his lordship, who considered my

silence during the early part of the dinner as so much time lost, many

of the party having been asked to meet the facetious Sam Winkings.

"We have just had a discussion here," smiled Lord C----, in his attempt

to draw me out, "as to the impossibility of real wit making a rankling

wound, it being like the clean cut of a razor. For myself, I am but a

fool in such matters. What do _you_ say, Mr. Winkings?"

"That I am quite of your lordship's opinion," replied I, most

deferentially.

Here, a fit of coughing went round the table, which might or might not

have covered a laugh; but looks were exchanged, plainly showing me that

something was wrong. Little did I think at the time that, in delivering

myself of my first actual sentence, in my hurry to agree with our host,

I had called him a noodle. The peer was the only one who indulged in a

decided cachinnation. Even he did not laugh comfortably; and I began to

imagine that I had made one of my unlucky hits.

"I beg pardon, my lord; I only meant perfectly to agree with your

lordship," said I, crossing my knife and fork over a delicious slice

from a haunch of Southdown, for which my embarrassment had taken away

all relish.

"Don't mention it, Mr. Winkings," rejoined Lord C----, getting up a

fresh laugh; "I am sorry I disturbed you till after dinner. You don't

like 'to eat mutton cold.' How goes the quotation?"

"'And cut blocks with a razor,' my lord," replied I, with the most

imperturbable gravity.

The sensation was immense. Several of the guests palpably scowled at

me, as if I had been guilty of an impertinence towards our host. Some

stifled their risibility, and others laughed outright. Alas! what had

I done? Just helped him to the remembrance of a quotation which there

can be no doubt his lordship had forgotten, except as it referred to

mutton. But I had the reputation for sarcasm, and of course I had made

a personal attack on Lord C----, who, acting under this impression,

certainly passed the matter off with a great deal of urbanity.

"Glad you hit him so hard," said a caustic old gentleman on my right.

"Can't bear to see men of wit asked to be funny. My lord had much

better have let well alone."

"In the name of Heaven, sir," cried I, almost at my wits' end, "what

_have_ I done?"

"Ah, you're a wag," said the caustic old gentleman.

"Indeed, sir, I am not a wag, but the most unfortunate individual in

the world."

My neighbour was convulsed with laughter; and it was not until we left

my lord's house after that luckless dinner that I elicited from him the

particulars of my offence. His lordship has, like my uncle and aunt,

of course, left me to live by my wits; fortunately, my caustic little

friend thinks they will stand me in excellent stead. He has taken

the place of my offended patron, and has actually introduced me to a

publisher, for whom I am just now engaged in editing a new edition of

facetiæ, in two volumes quarto, comprising the complete reminiscences

of the celebrated Joseph Miller.

LEGENDS.

THE LEGEND OF BALLAR.

The most ancient of the kings of Torry was Ballar the Dane. If

tradition does him no injustice, a worse specimen of royalty could

not be found among the Holy Alliance. His manners were anything but

amiable; his temper violent; his disposition sanguinary and revengeful;

while, in his notions regarding the doctrines of "meum and tuum," there

was not a looser gentleman of his day.

In personal appearance Ballar was dark, stern, and gigantic; and, in

an excess of her bounty, Nature had been graciously pleased to gift

him with a third eye. This extra optic was placed in the back of his

head; and such was the malignity of its influence that one glance

extinguished animal life, a forest was withered by a look, and all

those bare and herbless hills upon the mainland which lie in scattered

groups beneath the scathed pinnacles of Arygle, may--if tradition

can be trusted--date their barrenness to an optical visitation they

underwent from their dangerous neighbour the king of Torry. As, even in

the darkest character some lighter shading may be found, Ballar,--to

give the devil his due,--perfectly aware of the destructive properties

of his third eye, kept it carefully concealed by a curtain.

Ballar had "one fair daughter, and no more," and an oracle had foretold

that, unless killed by his grandson, he should exist for ever.

Determined to outlive Methuselah, Ballar resolved on leaving his native

country, and seeking out some abiding place where the celibacy of the

young lady might be secured. Accordingly he set out upon his travels,

and, after an extensive tour, visited Donegal, and chose Torry for

his residence; and, faith! a _nater_ spot for a gentleman who wished

retirement could not have been selected. There he built a castle for

himself, and a prison for his daughter. To "make all right," the young

lady was placed under the _surveillance_ of twelve virgins; whence the

latter were obtained, history doth not say.

Ballar's nearest neighbours on the main were called Gabshegonal, and

Kien Mac Caunthca. The latter was possessed of two brave boys, while

the former was owner of a white heifer: Glassdhablecana, or "the

grey-flanked cow," was the envy of the country. Nothing from Dingle

to Donegal could match her; she was a dairy in herself; and Ballar,

regardless of justice, and not having the fear of the going judge

of assize before him, determined to abstract her if he could. Like

other autocrats, he found no difficulty in trumping up a title, for

he asserted that those resident on the mainland were his vassals, and

claimed and exacted certain seignorial rights, which, much to the

satisfaction of persons entering into matrimony, have been allowed to

sink into desuetude.

Like those of all bad monarchs, his ministers were no better than

himself; and the chiefs of his household, Mool and Mullock, were worthy

agents of their three-eyed master. As his demand upon Gab's cow had

been peremptorily rejected, the tyrant of Torry determined to obtain

by fraud, what force could not effect; and Mool and Mullock received

instructions accordingly.

Ballar's intentions having transpired, Gabshegonal assumed the

defensive, and called to his assistance the sons of Kien Mac Caunthca.

Gab, it appears, was the most celebrated sword-cutler of his day,

and he promised to forge a weapon for each of the young men; they

undertaking, in return, to watch the grey-flanked cow for a given time.

The elder of the Mac Caunthcas performed his part of the contract

with the smith, and obtained the promised sword; and the younger

commenced watch and ward in turn. For some time his vigilance secured

the white cow; but, unhappily, it occurred to the youth that it would

be desirable to have his name engraved on the sword-blade which Gab

was then polishing. He ran to the forge to make his wishes known; and,

short as his absence was, alas! upon his return the cow was gone!

The spoilers were discovered from the top of Arygle; the younger Mac

Caunthca observed Mool and Mullock driving Glassdhablecana along the

beach; and, without his being able to overtake them, they embarked for

Torry with their prey. Enraged at the occurrence, the smith retained

the elder brother as a hostage, and swore that, if the cow were not

recovered, he would behead him, to avenge her loss.

The unhappy watchman, overwhelmed with grief and shame, fled from his

home, and wandered recklessly along the rock-bound coast. To reach

Torry was impossible, and he abandoned himself to sorrow and despair.

Suddenly, a little red-haired man appeared unexpectedly at his elbow,

and with sympathetic civility inquired the cause of his lamentations.

Mac Caunthca informed him of the misfortune, and the red dwarf offered

his condolence, and volunteered to assist him to reach the island. Mac

embraced the little gentleman and his offer; and, having ascended the

summit of Cruicknaneabth, he placed his foot upon the dwarf's hand, who

rose with him into the air, and, passing over the small islands between

Torry and the main, fast as the wind itself, landed in safety beneath

the castle walls of Ballar. Both the youth and his conductor were "the

nonce" rendered invisible. With little difficulty the cow was found;

and the dwarf engaged that, ere morning, she should be safely returned

to her lawful owner, the honest sword-cutler, Gabshegonal.

Whether the little gentleman with the red beard preferred daylight

for his aërial trips, does not appear; but, certain it is, that his

_protegé_ remained that night upon the island, and was introduced by

the obliging dwarfs to the prison of the princess, where he remained

until dawn broke. Safely was he then conducted to the place he had

left on the preceding evening. The red man took an affectionate leave.

The grey-flanked cow was before him at the owner's. His brother was

released; the promised sword honestly delivered by the maker; and the

whole adventure ended prosperously.

Time rolled on. Nine months had elapsed since his visit to the island,

when the young Mac Caunthca was honoured by a call from the little

red gentleman, who requested his company to make a morning call upon

the imprisoned princess. They crossed the arm of the sea with the

same rapidity that marked their former flight; and, on entering the

well-remembered tower, what was Mac Caunthca's delight and surprise

on finding that he was the father of a large and healthy family! The

princess had just given birth to a son; and the twelve young ladies,

following, as in duty bound, the example of their mistress, had each

produced "a chopping boy."

But, alas! the pleasures of paternity were speedily ended. Ballar

detested children. Twins would drive a Malthusian distracted; and what

apology could be offered for thirteen? Nothing remained but to remove

the young Mac Caunthcas in double-quick; and the dwarf, with his usual

good nature, proposed the means. A curragh[32] was procured; the tender

pledges of the maids of honour were placed in a blanket, and fastened

by skewers upon the back of their papa, while the heir to the throne

was accommodated in a separate cloth; and with this precious freight

the curragh was launched upon the ocean.

Presently the wind freshened, the sea rose, and the frail bark was

tossed upon the surface of an angry sea. In the fury of the gale the

skewers that secured the blanket gave way; overboard went the progeny

of the virgin body-guard; and the young Mac Caunthca reached the

mainland with a single son, the heir-presumptive to the throne of Torry.

It may be imagined that the care of an infant would have become a very

troublesome charge upon the lover of the island princess; but here,

too, the red man stood his friend. The dwarf volunteered to educate the

child seven years, then hand him over to his father for seven more,

when he, Red-beard, would again receive him for other seven; and thus

the grandson of the three-eyed monarch would be disposed of, during

nonage. It was done. The boy grew apace; and, indoctrinated at the feet

of a gifted Gamaliel like little Red-beard, it is not surprising that

the heir of Torry became a finished gentleman.

His first appearance in public is stated to have been at a country

wedding; and there Ballar, attended by Mool and Mullock, and his

customary suite, was punctual to claim his prerogative. Shocked at

the immorality of his grandfather, the dwarf's _protegé_ remonstrated

with the old gentleman in vain; and, to strengthen his arguments,

imprudently confessed the degree of relationship in which they stood.

Furious at the discovery, the ancient sinner determined on the youth's

destruction; he raised his hand to uncurtain the third eye, but his

grandson burst from the house, and ran for shelter to the forge of

his relative, Gabshegonal. A hot pursuit took place. Ballar and his

"tail" pressed the fugitive closely; and the youth had only time to arm

himself with a heated bar, when his truculent relation, with his train,

rushed in. Before the eye could be uncovered, by one lucky thrust

the heir of Torry annihilated its evil influence, and thus proved

satisfactorily that the worst of eyes is no match for red-hot iron.

But, even in death, Ballar evinced no feelings of Christian

forgiveness. Calling his grandson to his side, he requested that he

would abridge his sufferings by cutting off his head; and then, by

placing it upon his own, he assured him that all the knowledge he,

Ballar, possessed, should directly be transferred to his grandson, and

descend like an heir-loom in the family. With the first part of the

request the young gentleman freely complied; but, being awake to the

trickery of his grandsire, he prudently resolved to see what effect the

head would have upon stone before he tried the experiment. The result

proved that his suspicions were well-founded. A drop of poisonous

matter fell from the head upon the rock; and a broken cliff is pointed

out upon the island, said to have been disrupted by the head of Ballar

resting on it.

The remainder of the legend is happy, as it should be. The princess in

due time became a wife; her son danced at the wedding; and the maids

of honour were provided with husbands, and, though rather tardily,

were "made honest women of" at last. No longer necessitated to commit

their offspring to the ocean by the dozen, their progeny increased and

multiplied; and from the Danish princess, and the virgin train who

"bore her company," the present inhabitants of Torry believe themselves

to be immediately descended.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 32: A wicker boat covered with a horse-skin, much used by

these islanders.]

LEGEND OF THE CHURCH OF THE SEVEN.

After a dreadful tempest, seven dead bodies, six of which were male

and one female, were found upon the western shore of the island, with

a stone curragh and paddle beside them: both the latter had been

broken against the rocks. The inhabitants speedily collected, and a

consultation took place as to the manner in which the bodies of the

unknown strangers should be disposed of. The opinions of the islanders

were divided: some proposed that they should be interred, others

contended that they should be committed to the waves again; but it was

unanimously resolved, that on no account should they be buried in the

churchyard, as they might not have been true Catholics. To bury was

the final determination. A grave was accordingly prepared, the seven

corpses were indiscriminately thrown in, and the trench closed up.

Next morning, to the great surprise of the islanders, the body of the

female was found separated from those of her unfortunate companions,

and lying on the surface of the ground. It was believed that the lady

had been disinterred by that party who had opposed the bodies being

buried on the island, and the corpse was once more returned to its

kindred clay, and the grave securely filled up.

The second morning came, and great was the astonishment of the

inhabitants when it was ascertained that the same occurrence had taken

place, and the grave had surrendered its dead. The body was inhumed

once more, and, to guard against trickery, and secure the corpse from

being disturbed, a watch was placed around the grave.

But when the daylight broke on the third morning, lo! the body of

the unknown had again burst its cerements, and lay once more upon

the surface of the ground. The vigilance of the guard had proved

unavailing, and the consternation of the islanders was unbounded. A

grand conclave assembled, and, after much consideration and debate, it

was decided that the departed female had been a _religieuse_; and, that

as she had eschewed all communion with the coarser sex while living,

so, true to her vows, even after death she had evaded the society of

man. Believing her to be a gentlewoman of extra holiness, who had

departed "in the pride of her purity," it was shrewdly conjectured

that there was nothing to prevent her from working miracles. The sick

were accordingly brought forward, and a touch from the blessed finger

of the defunct nun--for such she proved--removed every malady the

flesh is heir to, and left the island without an invalid. To atone for

the irreverential mode in which the lady had been treated on former

occasions, a magnificent funeral was decreed her; a stone monument

was erected over the sainted remains; and, that posterity should not

be excluded from the virtues of her clay, an opening was left in the

south side of the tomb, whence the faithful could obtain a portion of

her ashes, and the sick be cured of their ailments. It being considered

that one so particular after death would not, when alive, have ventured

upon sea with any but the servants of religion, the other six bodies

were honourably interred, and a tomb raised to their memory, while "the

Church of the Seven" was built to their joint honour, and dedicated to

the whole.

To this day the sanctity of the lady's grave remains unimpaired. The

ashes retain their virtue; the pious resort thither to pray, the sick

to procure relief from their sufferings. When it is necessary to obtain

the holy dust for devout or medicinal purposes, application is made to

the oldest member of a particular family, who have enjoyed from time

immemorial the blessed privilege of dispensing the saint's clay. The

name of the family is Doogan; and the reason why this high prerogative

rests with this favoured lineage is, because their ancestors were the

first converts of St. Colomb Kill, and the first of the islanders who

received baptism at his hands.

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LEGENDS OF THE TORRY ISLANDERS.

Torry Island, situated on the north-west coast of Ireland, is probably

the least known of any of her Majesty's European possessions. Although

so near the main, the communication is difficult and infrequent. The

island has but one landing-place, and that can only be entered with

leading winds, while, during the prevalence of the others, it is

totally unapproachable.

Within the memory of people still alive, the natives of Torry were

idolaters. They were ushered into life, and quitted it for the grave,

without either rite or ceremony. Marriage was, _à la Martineau_,

nothing but "a civil contract," and their notions of the Deity, rude

and untutored as Kamschatdales or New Zealanders. Latterly, priests

from the main have occasionally landed on the island, and there

introduced the formulæ of religion; but visits dependent on winds and

waves are "few and far between," and the state of Torry may still be

termed more than demi-savage. When some adventurous beadsman ventures

on a clerical descent, during his brief sojourn he finds that his

office is no sinecure: children are to be christened by the score;

and couples, who took each other's words, to be married by the dozen.

During the long interregnum, a large arrear of omitted ceremonies has

accrued, and the daring clerk returns from this "ultima Thule" a weary,

if not a wiser man.

Nothing can be more wretched than the appearance of the island and its

inhabitants: the one, cold, barren, and uncultivated; the other, ugly,

dwarfish, and ill-shapen. The hovels are filthy to a degree; and all

within and about Torry is so sterile and inhospitable, that a dread of

being wind-bound deters even the hardiest mariner from approaching its

rock-bound shores.

That "holy men" should venture among the Heathen, is, as it ought

to be; and that _savans_ will go desperate lengths to obtain bones,

oyster-shells, and other valuable commodities, is equally true. For

spiritual and scientific Quixotes, Torry opens an untried field;

and any philosopher who can digest dog-fish, and possesses a skin

impervious to entomological assaults, may here discover unknown

treasures: none having yet been found--for none have sought them.

It was, probably, expectations such as these that induced the late

Sir Charles Geisecke to visit this unfrequented island. Whether his

geological discoveries compensated his bodily sufferings, the gentleman

who perpetrated his biography leaves a scientific mystery. Certain

it is, that in after-life the worthy knight never touched upon this

portion of his wanderings without shuddering at the recollection.

Three days he sojourned among the aborigines, and three nights he

sheltered in the chief man's hovel. He left Ards House[33] in good

spirits, and fat as a philosopher should be; and when he returned, his

own dog, had he possessed one, would not have recognised his luckless

owner. He came out a walking skeleton, and the ablutions he underwent

would have tried the patience of a Mussulman. He had lost sleep;

well, that could be made up for. He lost condition; that too might be

restored. But to lose hair, to be clipped like a recruit, and have his

garments burned at the point of a pitch-fork,--these indeed would daunt

the courage of the most daring entomologist.

Pat Hegarty, the knight's guide, used to recount the sufferings they

underwent. Their afflictions by day were bad enough; but these were

nothing, compared to their nocturnal visitations. "My! what a place

for fleas!" said an English _femme de chambre_ who happened to be an

accidental listener. "How numerous they must have been!"

"Numerous!" exclaimed the guide, "_mona mon diaoul_, if they had only

pulled together, they would have dragged me out of bed!"

Since the knight's excursion, Torry has been more frequently visited.

In executing the Ordnance survey, a party of Sappers and Miners were

encamped upon the island, and the engineer officer in command amused

many of his solitary hours by collecting traditionary tales from the

narration of an old man, who was far more intelligent than the rest

of the inhabitants. The two foregoing legends were taken from the

patriarch's lips, and they afford an additional proof of that fondness

which man, in his savage state, ever evinces for traditions that are

wonderful and wild.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 33: _Ards_ is situated on the main, near the wild promontory

of Horn Head, and is the seat of the Stewart family.]

SONG OF THE MONTH. No. XII.

December, 1837.

All hail to thee, thou good old boy, DECEMBER!

Sick of that sullen, sulky Dan November,

The very sight of thy bald, reverend, jolly,

Irreverend head, bright crown'd with holly,

Makes one forswear, as fudge, all melancholy,--

Thou gladdening, glowing, glorious old DECEMBER!

Grey Nestor of the Months! brethren eleven,

Joint heirs with thee of _Eighteen Thirty-seven_,

Knock'd up by Time, enjoy oblivious slumbers,--

Old Monthlies out of print--the scarce back numbers,

Sold out--not one a shop or shelf encumbers,

While thou art but just publish'd--"No. XII.--DECEMBER!"

"Hail, Thane of" Time!--thou genial, warm old sire

Of _Eighteen Thirty-eight_!--Yule log and sea-coal fire

Be thine, as glad burnt-offerings in thy praise;

Long nights--(thou dost not look for length of days)--

Be thine, old Joy, wassail'd in various ways

Of warm, bright welcome, to hail thy stay, DECEMBER!

Welcome once more, old Master of the Revels,--

PICKWICK of all the Pleasures!--The blue devils,

Blue looks, blue noses, hide their uncomely faces;

Old Gout throws by his crutch--tries cinquepaces;

And Youth and Age, Love, Joy, and all the Graces

Are getting parties up, to honour thee, DECEMBER!

Sir-Loins grow fatter; plums, like good St. Stephen,

Are suff'ring martyrdom; the spongy leaven

Is working puddingwards; old wines, choice cellars,

Old coats, new gowns, shawls, cloaks, clogs, logs, umbrellas,

Young girls, old girls, old boys, and old young _fellars_,

Are brushing up to welcome thee, DECEMBER!

Game, poultry, turkeys, pigs, and country cousins

The Town's great maw will swallow down by dozens;

Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces, _nevies_,

Will all be book'd and brought up by "the heavies,"

With other birds of passage, in large levies,

On Christmas-day, to honour thee, DECEMBER!

Bright hearths, bright hearts, bright faces, and bright holly

Will welcome thee, and make thy sojourn jolly!

The merry misletoe, in hall and kitchen,

Will make the ugliest of mugs bewitchin';

And who won't kiss them, may he die a ditch in,

For he's no friend of thine, warm-hearted old DECEMBER!

Once more, all hail! with all thy sports and pastimes,

Though few old sports are left us in these last times!--

May one fair Virgin Girl--the loved at sight one--

Twelve days from Christmas-tide, her heart a light one,

As Queen, choose her a King, and choose the right one,

To our great joy, and hers, agreeable old DECEMBER!

C.W.

OLIVER TWIST;

OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.

BY BOZ.

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS REPUTABLE

FRIENDS.

About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out

to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity

of reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude,

of which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty to no ordinary

extent in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious

friends, and still more in endeavouring to escape from them after

so much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr.

Fagin laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in and

cherished him, when without his timely aid he might have perished with

hunger; and related the dismal and affecting history of a young lad

whom in his philanthropy he had succoured under parallel circumstances,

but who, proving unworthy of his confidence, and evincing a desire

to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be hung at

the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did not seek to conceal his

share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that the

wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in question

had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of certain

evidence for the crown, which, if it were not precisely true, was

indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Fagin), and a few

select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable

picture of the discomforts of hanging, and, with great friendliness and

politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hope that he might never be

obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that unpleasant operation.

Little Oliver's blood ran cold as he listened to the Jew's words, and

imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them: that it

was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the

guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and

that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently-knowing,

or over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried

out by the old Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means

unlikely when he recollected the general nature of the altercations

between that gentleman and Mr. Sikes, which seemed to bear reference to

some foregone conspiracy of the kind. As he glanced timidly up, and met

the Jew's searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling

limbs were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by the wary villain.

[Illustration: Master Bates explains a Professional Technicality]

The Jew smiled hideously, and, patting Oliver on the head, said that

if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they

would be very good friends yet. Then taking his hat, and covering

himself up in an old patched great-coat, he went out and locked the

room-door behind him.

And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many

subsequent days, seeing nobody between early morning and midnight, and

left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts; which,

never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must

long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed. After the lapse of a week

or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked, and he was at liberty to

wander about the house.

It was a very dirty place; but the rooms up stairs had great high

wooden mantel-pieces and large doors, with paneled walls and cornices

to the ceilings, which, although they were black with neglect and

dust, were ornamented in various ways; from all of which tokens Oliver

concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had

belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome,

dismal and dreary as it looked now.

Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings;

and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would

scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes: with

these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living

thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering

from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the

street-door, to be as near living people as he could, and to remain

there listening and trembling until the Jew or the boys returned.

In all the rooms the mouldering shutters were fast closed, and the

bars which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light

which was admitted making its way through round holes at the top, which

made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows.

There was a back-garret window, with rusty bars outside, which had no

shutter, and out of which Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for

hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused

and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends.

Sometimes, indeed, a ragged grizzly head might be seen peering over the

parapet-wall of a distant house, but it was quickly withdrawn again;

and as the window of Oliver's observatory was nailed down, and dimmed

with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to

make out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any

attempt to be seen or heard,--which he had as much chance of being as

if he had been inside the ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.

One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that

evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to

evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (which, to

do him justice, was by no means an habitual weakness with him;) and,

with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist

him in his toilet straightway.

Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful, too happy to have some

faces, however bad, to look upon, and too desirous to conciliate those

about him when he could honestly do so, to throw any objection in the

way of this proposal; so he at once expressed his readiness, and,

kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he

could take his foot in his lap, he applied himself to a process which

Mr. Dawkins designated as "japanning his trotter-cases," and which

phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth cleaning his boots.

Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational

animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy

attitude, smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and

having his boots cleaned all the time without even the past trouble of

having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to

disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco

that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer

that mollified his thoughts, he was evidently tinctured for the nonce

with a spice of romance and enthusiasm foreign to his general nature.

He looked down on Oliver with a thoughtful countenance for a brief

space, and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sigh, said,

half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates,

"What a pity it is he isn't a prig!"

"Ah!" said Master Charles Bates. "He don't know what's good for him."

The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe, as did Charley Bates,

and they both smoked for some seconds in silence.

"I suppose you don't even know what a prig is?" said the Dodger

mournfully.

"I think I know that," replied Oliver, hastily looking up. "It's a

th--; you're one, are you not?" inquired Oliver, checking himself.

"I am," replied the Dodger. "I'd scorn to be anythink else." Mr.

Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock after delivering this sentiment,

and looked at Master Bates as if to denote that he would feel obliged

by his saying anything to the contrary. "I am," repeated the Dodger;

"so's Charley; so's Fagin; so's Sikes; so's Nancy; so's Bet; so we all

are, down to the dog, and he's the downiest one of the lot."

"And the least given to peaching," added Charley Bates.

"He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing

himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without

wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger.

"That he wouldn't; not a bit of it," observed Charley.

"He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs

or sings when he's in company!" pursued the Dodger. "Won't he growl at

all, when he hears a fiddle playing, and don't he hate other dogs as

ain't of his breed! Winkin! Oh, no!"

"He's an out-and-out Christian," said Charley.

This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but it

was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only

known it; for there are a great many ladies and gentlemen claiming to

be out-and-out Christians, between whom and Mr. Sikes's dog there exist

very strong and singular points of resemblance.

"Well, well!" said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they

had strayed, with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced

all his proceedings. "This hasn't got anything to do with young Green

here."

"No more it has," said Charley. "Why don't you put yourself under

Fagin, Oliver?"

"And make your fortun' out of hand?" added the Dodger, with a grin.

"And so be able to retire on your property, and do the genteel, as I

mean to in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the

forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week," said Charley Bates.

"I don't like it," rejoined Oliver timidly; "I wish they would let me

go. I--I--would rather go."

"And Fagin would _rather_ not!" rejoined Charley.

Oliver knew this too well; but, thinking it might be dangerous to

express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his

boot-cleaning.

"Go!" exclaimed the Dodger. "Why, where's your spirit? Don't you take

any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your

friends, eh?"

"Oh, blow that!" said Master Bates, drawing two or three silk

handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,

"that's too mean, that is!"

"_I_ couldn't do it," said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.

"You can leave your friends, though," said Oliver, with a half-smile,

"and let them be punished for what you did."

"That," rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe,--"that was all

out of consideration for Fagin, 'cause the traps know that we work

together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our

lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Charley?"

Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but that the

recollection of Oliver's flight came so suddenly upon him, that the

smoke he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his

head, and down into his throat, and brought on a fit of coughing and

stamping about five minutes long.

"Look here!" said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and

halfpence. "Here's a jolly life! what's the odds where it comes from?

Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where they were took from. You

won't, won't you? oh, you precious flat!"

"It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver?" inquired Charley Bates. "He'll come

to be scragged, won't he?"

"I don't know what that means," replied Oliver, looking round.

"Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As he said it,

Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and, holding it erect

in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious

sound through his teeth, thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic

representation that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.

"That's what it means," said Charley. "Look how he stares, Jack;

I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the

death of me, I know he will." And Master Charles Bates having laughed

heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.

"You've been brought up bad," said the Dodger, surveying his boots

with much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. "Fagin will make

something of you, though; or you'll be the first he ever had that

turned out unprofitable. You'd better begin at once, for you'll come

to the trade long before you think of it, and you're only losing time,

Oliver."

Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his

own, which being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into

a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life

they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the best

thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more delay

by the same means which they had employed to gain it.

"And always put this in your pipe, Nolly," said the Dodger, as the

Jew was heard unlocking the door above, "if you don't take fogles and

tickers----"

"What's the good of talking in that way?" interposed Master Bates; "he

don't know what you mean."

"If you don't take pocket-hankechers and watches," said the Dodger,

reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, "some

other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse,

and you'll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the

better, except the chaps wot gets them--and you've just as good a right

to them as they have."

"To be sure,--to be sure!" said the Jew, who had entered unseen by

Oliver. "It all lies in a nutshell, my dear--in a nutshell, take the

Dodger's word for it. Ha! ha! he understands the catechism of his

trade."

The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together as he corroborated the

Dodger's reasoning in these terms, and chuckled with delight at his

pupil's proficiency.

The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had

returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver

had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom

Chitling, and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few

gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.

Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger, having perhaps

numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in

his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate

that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of

genius and professional acquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and

a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy

fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out

of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his

"time" was only out an hour before, and that, in consequence of having

worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow

any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitling added, with strong

marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder

was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there

was no remedy against the county; the same remark he considered to

apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair, which he held to be

decidedly unlawful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating

that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two mortal long

hard-working days, and that he "wished he might be busted if he wasn't

as dry as a lime-basket!"

"Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?" inquired the

Jew with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the table.

"I--I--don't know, sir," replied Oliver.

"Who's that?" inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptuous look at

Oliver.

"A young friend of mine, my dear," replied the Jew.

"He's in luck then," said the young man, with a meaning look at Fagin.

"Never mind where I came from, young 'un; you'll find your way there

soon enough, I'll bet a crown!"

At this sally the boys laughed, and, after some more jokes on the same

subject, exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin, and withdrew.

After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew

their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come

and sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to

interest his hearers. These were, the great advantages of the trade,

the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the

liberality of the Jew himself. At length these subjects displayed signs

of being thoroughly exhausted, and Mr. Chitling did the same (for the

house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two); accordingly

Miss Betsy withdrew, and left the party to their repose.

From this day Oliver was seldom left alone, but was placed in almost

constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with

the Jew every day,--whether for their own improvement, or Oliver's, Mr.

Fagin best knew. At other times the old man would tell them stories

of robberies he had committed in his younger days, mixed up with so

much that was droll and curious, that Oliver could not help laughing

heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better

feelings.

In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and, having

prepared his mind by solitude and gloom to prefer any society to the

companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, was now

slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken

it and change its hue for ever.

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON.

It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew, buttoning his

great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up

over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face,

emerged from his den. He paused on the step as the door was locked and

chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure,

and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down

the street as quickly as he could.

The house to which Oliver had been conveyed was in the neighbourhood

of Whitechapel; the Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the

street, and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck

off in the direction of Spitalfields.

The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the

streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold

and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted

such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along,

creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old

man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and

darkness through which he moved, crawling forth by night in search of

some rich offal for a meal.

He kept on his course through many winding and narrow ways until he

reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon

became involved in a maze of the mean dirty streets which abound in

that close and densely-populated quarter.

The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed,

however, to be at all bewildered either by the darkness of the night

or the intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and

streets, and at length turned into one lighted only by a single lamp at

the farther end. At the door of a house in this street he knocked, and,

having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened the

door, walked up stairs.

A dog growled as he touched the handle of a door, and a man's voice

demanded who was there.

"Only me, Bill; only me, my dear," said the Jew, looking in.

"Bring in your body," said Sikes. "Lie down, you stupid brute! Don't

you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on?"

Apparently the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin's outer

garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a

chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen, wagging his

tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his

nature to be.

"Well!" said Sikes.

"Well, my dear," replied the Jew. "Ah! Nancy."

The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment

to imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend

had not met since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver. All doubts

upon the subject, if he had any, were, however, speedily removed by the

young lady's behaviour. She took her feet off the fender, pushed back

her chair, and bade Fagin draw up his without saying any more about it,

for it was a cold night, and no mistake. Miss Nancy prefixed to the

word "cold" another adjective, derived from the name of an unpleasant

instrument of death, which, as the word is seldom mentioned to ears

polite in any other form than as a substantive, I have omitted in this

chronicle.

"It is cold, Nancy dear," said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands

over the fire. "It seems to go right through one," added the old man,

touching his left side.

"It must be a piercer if it finds its way through your heart," said Mr.

Sikes. "Give him something to drink, Nancy. Burn my body, make haste!

It's enough to turn a man ill to see his lean old carcase shivering in

that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave."

Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard in which there were

many, which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were

filled with several kinds of liquids; and Sikes, pouring out a glass of

brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.

"Quite enough, quite, thankye Bill," replied the Jew, putting down the

glass after just setting his lips to it.

"What! you're afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?"

inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew; "ugh!"

With a hoarse grunt of contempt Mr. Sikes seized the glass and emptied

it, as a preparatory ceremony to filling it again for himself, which he

did at once.

The Jew glanced round the room as his companion tossed down the second

glassful; not in curiosity, for he had seen it often before, but in

a restless and suspicious manner which was habitual to him. It was a

meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet

to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man;

and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or

three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a "life-preserver"

that hung over the mantelpiece.

"There," said Sikes, smacking his lips. "Now I'm ready."

"For business--eh?" inquired the Jew.

"For business," replied Sikes; "so say what you've got to say."

"About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?" said the Jew, drawing his chair

forward, and speaking in a very low voice.

"Yes. What about it?" inquired Sikes.

"Ah! you know what I mean, my dear," said the Jew. "He knows what I

mean, Nancy; don't he?"

"No, he don't," sneered Mr. Sikes, "or he won't, and that's the same

thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names; don't sit there

winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you warn't the

very first that thought about the robbery. D---- your eyes! wot d'ye

mean?"

"Hush, Bill, hush!" said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop

this burst of indignation; "somebody will hear us, my dear; somebody

will hear us."

"Let 'em hear!" said Sikes; "I don't care." But as Mr. Sikes _did_

care, upon reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and

grew calmer.

"There, there," said the Jew coaxingly. "It was only my

caution--nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when

is it to be done, Bill, eh?--when is it to be done? Such plate, my

dears, such plate!" said the Jew, rubbing his hands, and elevating his

eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.

"Not at all," replied Sikes coldly.

"Not to be done at all!" echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.

"No, not at all," rejoined Sikes; "at least it can't be a put-up job,

as we expected."

"Then it hasn't been properly gone about," said the Jew, turning pale

with anger. "Don't tell me!"

"But I will tell you," retorted Sikes. "Who are you that's not to be

told? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for

a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants into a line."

"Do you mean to tell me, Bill," said the Jew, softening as the other

grew heated, "that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?"

"Yes, I do mean to tell you so," replied Sikes. "The old lady has had

'em these twenty year; and, if you were to give 'em five hundred pound,

they wouldn't be in it."

"But do you mean to say, my dear," remonstrated the Jew, "that the

women can't be got over?"

"Not a bit of it," replied Sikes.

"Not by flash Toby Crackit?" said the Jew incredulously. "Think what

women are, Bill."

"No; not even by flash Toby Crackit," replied Sikes. "He says he's worn

sham whiskers and a canary waistcoat the whole blessed time he's been

loitering down there, and it's all of no use."

"He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my

dear," said the Jew after a few moments' reflection.

"So he did," rejoined Sikes, "and they warn't of no more use than the

other plant."

The Jew looked very blank at this information, and, after ruminating

for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, raised his head, and

said with a deep sigh that, if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he

feared the game was up.

"And yet," said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, "it's a

sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it."

"So it is," said Mr. Sikes; "worse luck!"

A long silence ensued, during which the Jew was plunged in deep

thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villany perfectly

demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time; and Nancy,

apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her eyes

fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.

"Fagin," said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed,

"is it worth fifty shiners extra if it's safely done from the outside?"

"Yes," said the Jew, suddenly rousing himself as if from a trance.

"Is it a bargain?" inquired Sikes.

"Yes, my dear, yes," rejoined the Jew, grasping the other's hand,

his eyes glistening and every muscle in his face working with the

excitement that the inquiry had awakened.

"Then," said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew's hand with some disdain,

"let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and I were over the

garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the doors and

shutters: the crib's barred up at night like a jail, but there's one

part we can crack, safe and softly."

"Which is that, Bill?" asked the Jew eagerly.

"Why," whispered Sikes, "as you cross the lawn----"

"Yes, yes," said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes

almost starting out of it.

"Umph!" cried Sikes, stopping short as the girl, scarcely moving her

head, looked suddenly round and pointed for an instant to the Jew's

face. "Never mind which part it is. You can't do it without me, I know;

but it's best to be on the safe side when one deals with you."

"As you like, my dear, as you like," replied the Jew, biting his lip.

"Is there no help wanted but yours and Toby's?"

"None," said Sikes, "'cept a centre-bit and a boy; the first we've both

got; the second you must find us."

"A boy!" exclaimed the Jew. "Oh! then it is a panel, eh?"

"Never mind wot it is!" replied Sikes; "I want a boy, and he mustn't

be a big un. Lord!" said Mr. Sikes reflectively, "if I'd only got

that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper's!--he kept him small on

purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged, and

then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from

a trade where he was arning money, teaches him to read and write, and

in time makes a 'prentice of him. And so they go on," said Mr. Sikes,

his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs,--"so they go on;

and, if they'd got money enough, (which it's a Providence they have

not,) we shouldn't have half-a-dozen boys left in the whole trade in a

year or two."

"No more we should," acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering

during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. "Bill!"

"What now?" inquired Sikes.

The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the

fire; and intimated by a sign that he would have her told to leave the

room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought the

precaution unnecessary, but complied, nevertheless, by requesting Miss

Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.

"You don't want any beer," said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining

her seat very composedly.

"I tell you I do!" replied Sikes.

"Nonsense!" rejoined the girl, coolly. "Go on, Fagin. I know what he's

going to say, Bill; he needn't mind me."

The Jew still hesitated, and Sikes looked from one to the other in some

surprise.

"Why, you don't mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?" he asked at length.

"You've known her long enough to trust her, or the devil's in it; she

ain't one to blab, are you Nancy?"

"_I_ should think not!" replied the young lady, drawing her chair up to

the table, and putting her elbows upon it.

"No, no, my dear,--I know you're not," said the Jew; "but----" and

again the old man paused.

"But wot?" inquired Sikes.

"I didn't know whether she mightn't p'raps be out of sorts, you know,

my dear, as she was the other night," replied the Jew.

At this confession Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh, and, swallowing

a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst

into sundry exclamations of "Keep the game a-going!" "Never say die!"

and the like, which seemed at once to have the effect of re-assuring

both gentlemen, for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and

resumed his seat, as did Mr. Sikes likewise.

"Now, Fagin," said Miss Nancy with a laugh, "tell Bill at once about

Oliver!"

"Ah! you're a clever one, my dear; the sharpest girl I ever saw!" said

the Jew, patting her on the neck. "It _was_ about Oliver I was going to

speak, sure enough. Ha! ha! ha!"

"What about him?" demanded Sikes.

"He's the boy for you, my dear," replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper,

laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.

"He!" exclaimed Sikes.

"Have him, Bill!" said Nancy. "I would if I was in your place. He

mayn't be so much up as any of the others; but that's not what you want

if he's only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he's a safe one,

Bill."

"I know he is," rejoined Fagin; "he's been in good training these last

few weeks, and it's time he began to work for his bread; besides, the

others are all too big."

"Well, he is just the size I want," said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.

"And will do everything you want, Bill my dear," interposed the Jew;

"he can't help himself,--that is, if you only frighten him enough."

"Frighten him!" echoed Sikes. "It'll be no sham frightening, mind you.

If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work,--in

for a penny, in for a pound,--you won't see him alive again, Fagin.

Think of that before you send him. Mark my words!" said the robber,

shaking a heavy crowbar which he had drawn from under the bedstead.

"I've thought of it all," said the Jew with energy. "I've--I've had

my eye upon him, my dears, close; close. Once let him feel that he is

one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief,

and he's ours,--ours for his life! Oho! It couldn't have come about

better!" The old man crossed his arms upon his breast, and, drawing his

head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.

"Ours!" said Sikes. "Yours, you mean."

"Perhaps I do, my dear," said the Jew with a shrill chuckle. "Mine, if

you like, Bill."

"And wot," said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend,--"wot

makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know

there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you

might pick and choose from?"

"Because they're of no use to me, my dear," replied the Jew with some

confusion, "not worth the taking; for their looks convict 'em when they

get into trouble, and I lose 'em all. With this boy properly managed,

my dears, I could do what I couldn't with twenty of them. Besides,"

said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, "he has us now if he

could only give us leg-bail again; and he _must_ be in the same boat

with us; never mind how he came there, it's quite enough for my power

over him that he was in a robbery, that's all I want. Now how much

better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of

the way, which would be dangerous,--and we should lose by it, besides."

"When is it to be done?" asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent

exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with

which he received Fagin's affectation of humanity.

"Ah, to be sure," said the Jew, "when is it to be done, Bill?"

"I planned with Toby the night arter to-morrow," rejoined Sikes in a

surly voice, "if he heard nothing from me to the contrairy."

"Good," said the Jew; "there's no moon."

"No," rejoined Sikes.

"It's all arranged about bringing off the swag,[34] is it?" asked the

Jew.

Sikes nodded.

"And about----"

"Oh ah, it's all planned," rejoined Sikes, interrupting him; "never

mind particulars. You'd better bring the boy here to-morrow night; I

shall get off the stones an hour arter daybreak. Then you hold your

tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that's all you'll have to

do."

After some discussion in which all three took an active part, it was

decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew's next evening, when the

night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her: Fagin craftily

observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would

be more willing to accompany the girl, who had so recently interfered

in his behalf, than anybody else. It was also solemnly arranged that

poor Oliver should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition,

be unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Sikes;

and further, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he thought

fit, and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or

evil that might befal the boy, or any punishment with which it might be

necessary to visit him, it being understood that, to render the compact

in this respect binding, any representations made by Mr. Sikes on his

return should be required to be confirmed and corroborated, in all

important particulars, by the testimony of flash Toby Crackit.

These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at

a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner,

yelling forth at the same time most unmusical snatches of song mingled

with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional enthusiasm,

he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools, which he had

no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of explaining

the nature and properties of the various implements it contained, and

the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he fell over it upon

the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.

"Good night, Nancy!" said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.

"Good night!"

Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her narrowly. There was no

flinching about the girl. She was as true and earnest in the matter as

Toby Crackit himself could be.

The Jew again bade her good night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the

prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped down

stairs.

"Always the way," muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards.

"The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call

up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never

lasts. Ha! ha! The man against the child, for a bag of gold!"

Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended

his way through mud and mire to his gloomy abode, where the Dodger was

sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.

"Is Oliver a-bed? I want to speak to him," was his first remark as they

descended the stairs.

"Hours ago," replied the Dodger, throwing open a door. "Here he is!"

The boy was lying fast asleep on a rude bed upon the floor, so pale

with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he

looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in

the guise it wears when life has just departed: when a young and gentle

spirit has but an instant fled to heaven, and the gross air of the

world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.

"Not now," said the Jew turning softly away. "To-morrow. To-morrow."

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 34: Booty.]

THE LONELY GIRL.

She walk'd alone in the mingled throng,

But there were none to greet her;

The merry dance and the evening song

To her were one day sweeter.

She was dress'd in the pride of fashion's glare,

And diamonds round her glitter'd;

But beneath them lay a soul of care,

By distant thoughts embitter'd.

I saw her smile as her gallant pass'd,--

'Twas the smile of the broken-hearted;

I watch'd her eye as she turn'd away,--

The tear to that eye had started.

For she thought of the times when she led the dance,

A stranger to sin and sorrow:

She thought of the times when the joys of to-day

But sweeten'd the joys of the morrow.

She thought of the cot and the rustic gown,

And the hearts that once adored her;

She thought of the parents that bless'd their child,

Ere vice and falsehood sold her.

For Mary was once the pride of the plain,

The happiest fair of the fair:

The flute and the cymbal welcomed her then,--

They were silent unless she was there.

But now there are none to hear her woes,

Or join in her tale of sorrow,--

To wipe from her eye the penitent tear,

Or chase away thoughts of the morrow.

Yes, Mary, there's one whose heart beats for thee yet,

Who thinks of her child far away,--

Who blesses thee still, in the stranger land,

Tho' mouldering fast to decay.

She weeps for thee e'en in the midnight hour,

When Care may have lull'd thee to sleep;

She prays for her once adored, still beloved child,--

She prays, but she turns to weep.

She prays to the Power that rules the winds

That He will ne'er forsake her;

She prays the prayer of a parent's grief,

That the God who gave may take her.

Child of sin! to thy parent speed,

For she will yet receive thee;

Her bosom yet will feel thy pangs,

Her cares will yet relieve thee.

For know that Love can only rest

Where Virtue guards the way;

The hand of Vice may prune the plant,--

Its blossoms soon decay.

THE APPORTIONMENT OF THE WORLD.

FROM SCHILLER.

"Take the world!" from his throne on high, God cried;

"'Tis my free gift,--a heritage to man!

His attribute for ever. Go! divide;

Apportion it like brothers, if you can!"

Straight at his bidding, forth on either hand

Both old and young to take their portion came:

The farmer seized the produce of the land;

The hunter rush'd upon the forest game;

The merchant from all climes his wares did bring;

The abbot chose the choicest vintages;

On taxes and on customs pounced the king;

And the priest claim'd the tithe of all as his.

Last of the throng, from wandering far and wide,

The poet sought the Lord with haggard air;

For, ah! he wildly gazed on every side,

And saw that nought remain'd for him to share.

"Ah, wo is me! and must I be forgot,

The trustiest of your subjects, I, alone?"

As thus he bitterly deplored his lot

He cast himself before the Almighty's throne.

"If in a world of reverie and rhyme

You ever live," God answer'd, "blame not me.

Where hast thou been? how hast thou pass'd thy time?"

"I was," replied the poet, "nigh to thee;

"My eyes have gloated on thy glory's blaze;

My ears have drunk the music of the spheres:

Forgive! that, dazzled, blinded, by the rays

Of heaven, I have for earth nor eyes nor ears."

"What then remains?" God answered. "All is given;

The world apportion'd, nought is left to give;

But, if thou wilt abide with me in heaven,

Come when thou wilt,--best life for thee to live!"

SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. V.

HIS LADIES.--I. LADY MACBETH.

"Then gently scan your brother man,

More gently sister woman."

BURNS.

"Je donne mon avis, non comme bon, mais comme mien."

MONTAIGNE.

The ladies of Shakspeare have of course riveted the attention, and

drawn to them the sympathies, of all who have read or seen his plays.

The book-trained critic, weighing words and sentences in his closet;

the romantic poet, weaving his verses by grove or stream; the polished

occupant of the private box; the unwashed brawler of the gallery;

the sedate visitant of the pit, are touched each in his several

way by the conjugal devotion and melancholy fate of Desdemona, the

high-souled principle of Isabella, the enthusiastic love and tragic

end of Juliet, the maternal agonies of Constance, the stern energies

of Margaret of Anjou, the lofty resignation of Katharine, the wit and

romance of Rosalind, frolic of tongue, but deeply feeling at heart; the

accomplished coquetries of Cleopatra, redeemed and almost sanctified

by her obedient rushing to welcome death at the call ringing in her

ears from the grave of her self-slain husband; the untiring affection

of Imogen, Ophelia's stricken heart and maddened brain, or the filial

constancy of Cordelia. Less deeply marked, but all in their kind

beautiful, are the innocence of Miranda, the sweetness of Anne Page,

the meek bearing--beneath the obtrusion of undesired honours--of Anne

Boleyn, the playful fondness of Jessica;--but I should run through all

the catalogue of Shakspeare's plays were I to continue the enumeration.

The task is unnecessary, for they dwell in the hearts of all, of

every age, and sex, and condition. They nestle in the bosoms of the

wise and the simple, the sedentary and the active, the moody and

the merry, the learned and the illiterate, the wit of the club, the

rustic of the farm, the soldier in camp, the scholar in college; and

it affords a remarkable criterion of their general effect, that, even

in those foreign countries which, either from imperfect knowledge,

defective taste, or national prejudice, set little value on the plays

of Shakspeare,--while Hamlet, Richard, Macbeth, King John, Lear, and

Falstaff, are unknown or rejected, the names of Desdemona and Juliet

are familiar as household words.

No writer ever created so many female characters, or placed them in

situations of such extreme diversity; and in none do we find so lofty

an appreciation of female excellence. The stories from which the

great dramatists of Athens drew their plots were, in most of their

striking incidents, derogatory to woman. The tale of Troy divine,

the war of Thebes, the heroic legends, were their favourite, almost

their exclusive sources; and the crimes, passions, and misfortunes

of Clytemnestra and Medea, Phædra and Jocasta, could only darken the

scene. An adulterous spouse aiding in the murder of her long-absent

lord, the King of men, returning crowned with conquest; a daughter

participating in the ruthless avenging by death inflicted on a mother

by a son; an unpitying sorceress killing her children to satiate

rage against her husband; a faithless wife endeavouring to force her

shameless love on her step-son, and by false accusation consigning him

for his refusal to destruction beneath his father's curse; a melancholy

queen linked in incestuous nuptials to her own offspring;--these ladies

are the heroines of the most renowned of the Greek tragedies! and the

consequences of their guilt or misfortune compose the fable of many

more. In some of the Greek plays, as the Eumenides, we have no female

characters except the unearthly habitants of heaven or hell; in the

most wondrous of them all, Prometheus Fettered, appears only the mythic

Io; in the Persians, only the ghost of Atossa, who scarcely appertains

to womankind: in some, as Philoctetes, women form no part of the

_dramatis personæ_; in others, as the Seven against Thebes, they are

of no importance to the action of the piece; or, as in the Suppliants,

serve but as the Chorus; and, in many more, are of less than secondary

importance. Euripides often makes them the objects of those ungallant

reflections which consign the misogynic dramatist to such summary

punishment from the irritated sex in the comedies of Aristophanes;

and in the whole number, in the thirty-three plays extant, there

are but two women who can affect our nobler or softer emotions. The

tender and unremitting care of Antigone for her blind, forlorn, and

aged father, her unbending determination to sacrifice her lover and

her life sooner than fail in paying funeral honours to her fallen

brother; and, in Alcestis, her resolute urging that her own life should

be taken to preserve that of a beloved husband,--invest them with a

pathetic and heroic beauty. But, in the one, we are haunted by the

horrid recollections of incest and fratricide; and, in the other, we

are somewhat indignant that we should be forced to sympathize with an

affection squandered upon so heartless a fellow as Admetus, who suffers

his wife to perish in his stead with the most undisturbed conviction of

the superior value of his own existence, pouring forth all the while

the most melodious lamentations over her death, but never for a moment

thinking of coming forward to prevent it. They are beautiful creations,

nevertheless.

The Greek dramatists were in a great measure bound to a particular

class of subjects; but, in general, the manner in which an author

treats the female character, affords one of the main criteria by which

the various gradations of genius may be estimated. By the highest

genius woman is always spoken of with a deep feeling of the most

reverential delicacy. Helen is the cause of the war immortalized by

the Iliad; but no allusion to her lapse is made throughout the poem

save by herself, deploring in bitter accents what she has done. She

wishes that she had died an evil death before she followed Paris; she

acknowledges herself to be unworthy of the kindred of those whom she

describes as deserving of honour; her conscience suggests that her

far-famed brothers, "whom one mother bore," are in the field when the

warring chieftains meet in truce, but dare not show themselves among

their peers through shame of the disgrace she has entailed upon them;

and, at the last, she lays bare her internal feeling that insult is the

lot she deserves by the warm gratitude with which she acknowledges, in

her bitter lament over the corpse of Hector, that he had the generosity

never to address her with upbraiding. The wrath of Achilles is roused

for the injury inflicted upon him by carrying off Briseis, dear to his

heart, "spear-captured as she was." She is restored by the penitent

Agamemnon, with solemn vows that she returns pure and uninsulted. Of

Andromache I think it unnecessary to speak. In the Odyssey, it is

true, we have Circe and Calypso; but they are goddesses couching with

a mortal, and excite no human passion. We meet them in the region of

"_speciosa miracula_," where Cyclops, and Sirius, and Lotus-eaters

dwell; where the King of the winds holds his court, and whence is

the passage to Erebus. In that glorious mixture of adventure and

allegory,--the Voyage of Ulysses,--we may take those island beauties

to be the wives and sweethearts whom sailors meet in every port; or,

following the stream of moralists and commentators, look upon the fable

to be no more than

"Truth severe in fairy fiction dressed."

In other parts of the poem we might wish for more warm-heartedness in

Penelope; but under her circumstances caution is excusable, and she

must be admitted to be a pattern of constancy and devotion. The Helen

of the Odyssey is a fine continuation of the Helen of the Iliad. Still

full of kindly feminine impulses, still sorrowing when she thinks of

the misfortunes she has occasioned, her griefs have lost the intense

poignancy with which they afflicted her while leading a life degrading

her in her own eyes, and exposing her to affronts of which she could

not complain. Restored to the husband of her early affections,

consoled by his pardon, and dwelling once more amid the scenes of

her youth,--absence from which, and absence so occasioned, she had

never ceased to regret in wasting floods of tears,--the Helen of the

Odyssey comes before us no longer uttering the accents of ceaseless

self-reproach, but soothed, if not pacified, in soul. We have the

_lull_ after the tempest,--the calm following the whirlwind.

Virgil is a great poet indeed, though few will now agree with Scaliger

that he is equal, far less superior, to Homer. Dido is the blot upon

the Æneid. The loves of the Carthaginian queen might have made, and

in the hands of Virgil would have made, a charming poem, treated

separately,--a poem far superior in execution to the Hero and Leander

of Musæus, but a work of the same order. As it stands, the episode, if

it can be so called, utterly ruins the epic character of the hero. St.

Evremond has said that Æneas had all the qualities of a monk; it is

plain that he had not the feelings of a gentleman; and we cannot wonder

that his first wife wandered from his side, and that he met with so

violent an opposition when he sought another. Virgil, after his conduct

to Dido, had not the courage to introduce him to Lavinia in person, and

leaves him undefended to the angry tongue of her mother. The poet was

justly punished for his fourth book; for, in all those which follow, he

has not ventured to introduce any female characters but incendiaries,

sibyls, shrews, and furies.

When Dante took Virgil as his guide in the infernal regions, he did

not follow his master in dwelling on the pleasures or the gentler

sorrows of illicit love. His ghostly women appear stern, or subdued

of port. The lady who is best known to the English reader, Francesca

di Rimini, forms no exception. Nothing can be more grave and solemn

than the tale of her hapless passion, as told in the Inferno. It is

pervaded throughout by such sorrow and remorse as we might expect

to find in a region whence hope is excluded. Accordingly, how far

different is its impression from that left on the mind by the same

story when told merely as a love-tale by Mr. Leigh Hunt. I do not say

this in disparagement of that picturesque and graphic poem, the Story

of Rimini, which has been exposed to the most unjustifiable criticism;

but to mark the manner in which men of talent and men of genius

handle the same subject. The ladies of Tasso, though not vigorously

sketched, and in general imitated from the Latin poets,--I speak of

his Jerusalem,--are conceived in a spirit of romantic chivalry; and,

even when the witching Armida leads Rinaldo astray, the poet diverts

our attention from the blandishments of the enchantress to dazzle us by

the wonders of magic groves and gardens. Poor Tasso, besides, wishes to

persuade us--perhaps in some moody hours he had persuaded himself--that

he intended the whole poem for an allegory, in which Armida was to play

some edifying part,--I forget what. In the poets of romance we do not

look for the severer style of the epic; but the forest-ranging heroines

of Ariosto and Spenser, "roaming the woodland, frank and free," have

an air of self-confiding independence and maiden freshness, worthy of

the leafy scenes through which they move, that renders it impossible to

approach them with other thoughts than those of chivalrous deference.

If Spenser, in his canto of Jealousy, makes the lady of the victim of

that weak passion treat her husband as he had anticipated, why, she

errs with no man of mortal mould, but chooses as her mates the jolly

satyrs wonning in the wood; and Spenser has his allegory too. Ariosto

took no trouble to make explanations, being satisfied, I suppose, with

the character given of his poetry by Cardinal Hippolyto; and even he

has the grace to beg the ladies, to whose service he had from the

beginning dedicated his lays, to avert their eyes when he is about to

sing the strange adventures of Giocondo.[35]

The theme of Milton in Paradise Lost, hardly admits of the developement

of ordinary human feelings; but his sole Eve has grace in all her

steps, and all her actions too. In Paradise Regained his subject was

badly chosen; and he feared, from religious motives, to introduce the

Virgin. In Comus his Lady is a model of icy chastity, worthy of the

classic verse in which she is embalmed; but Dalilah in Samson Agonistes

is the more dramatic conception. Ornate and gay, she makes urgent court

to her angry husband, with no better fate than to be by him inexorably

repelled. She presses upon him all the topics that could lead to

reconciliation, but the sense of his wrongs is too acute to allow of

pardon; and at last she bursts away with the consoling reflection that,

though spurned by him, and made the object of reproach in Israelitish

songs, she shall be hymned and honoured in those of her own country as

a deliverer. Milton was unhappy in his wives and daughters; and his

domestic manners appear to have been harsh and unamiable. In his prose

works, his Tetrachordon for example, he does not display any kindly

feeling for the sex; but when he clothed himself in his singing robes,

and soared above the cares of every-day life, to expatiate in the purer

regions of poetry, the soul of the poet softened and sublimed; like

his own Adam, his sterner nature relented; and, though he could not

make Samson pardon Dalilah, he will not let her depart unhonoured. In

Paradise Lost he had spoken of her, disparagingly,--

"So rose the Danite strong,

Herculean Samson, from the harlot lap

Of Philistæan Dalilah;"

but when she comes before him, as it were, in bodily presence, he

leaves all the words of reproach to her irritated lord, and suggests

to her, topics of self-justification, dismissing her from the stage,

not as a faithless wife, but as a heroic woman, who had sacrificed her

affections to her country, and who retires after humiliating herself in

vain to reap the reward of her patriotic conduct among her people and

her kindred.

If we turn from the epic and tragic to the other departments of

literature in which genius can be exercised, we shall find the feeling

much the same. Those who write from observation of what is going on in

the world,--the novelist, the comic writer, the satirist,--must take

the world as it is, and lay it before us in its mixture of good and

evil. There is no need, however, that the latter should be forcibly

thrust upon us. The task of the satirists appears to me the lowest in

which talent can be employed. The most famous among them, Juvenal,

tells us truly that the _rigidi censura cachinni_--the part chosen by

Democritus--is easy to any one. We must rise above it, as he has done

in some of his satires,--as in that sublime poem in which the passage

occurs, the tenth, or the thirteenth and fourteenth,--and forget the

wit or the censor to assume the loftier bearing of the moralist. I

should have wondered that the same mind which produced these noble

effusions could have perpetrated the enormities of the sixth satire

and some others, if I did not reflect that Rome, originally an asylum

for robbers, was nothing more than a standing camp, with the virtues

and vices, the manners and the feelings of a camp, to the day of its

downfall. Rape and violence procured its first women, and it would

seem as if the original act had influenced their feelings to the

sex throughout. It is certain that theirs is the only literature in

the world in which no female character is delineated worthy of the

slightest recollection,--a striking circumstance, and well deserving

critical investigation; but it would now lead us too far from our

subject, from which indeed I have delayed too long already. We must

get back to Shakspeare, staying only to remark that if Boccacio and

his imitator, Chaucer, have intermingled licentious tales in their

miscellaneous collection, they have done so, only in compliance with

the supposed necessity of delineating every species of life, and that

they hasten to show that they could be of finer spirit when emancipated

from the thraldom of custom; that Cervantes chequers the comic of

Don Quixote with visions of graceful and romantic beauty; and that

such will be found to be the case more or less in every composition

that takes firm hold of the human mind. I except, of course, works of

morals, science, and philosophy; and under those heads must come the

unromantic and unpoetic books of wit, and even buffoonery, if they

be doomed to last. Rabelais will live for ever to speak vocally to

the intelligent; but mere licentiousness must perish. Indulgence in

woman-scorning ribaldry inflicts due punishment upon talent itself, if

it be prostituted to such miserable work. The melancholy ability which

has been so successful in La Pucelle affords a sufficient reason why

its author failed when he attempted a Henriade.

Supereminent over all the great geniuses of the world,--and with no

others have I compared him,--is Shakspeare in his women. Homer was not

called upon to introduce them in such number or variety, nor could

they enter so intimately into the action of his poems. Still less was

there opportunity for their delineation in Milton. But Shakspeare's

is the unique merit that, being a dramatist wielding equally the

highest tragic and the lowest comic, and therefore compelled to bring

females prominently forward in every variety of circumstance, he has

carefully avoided themes and situations which might either inspire

horror or disgust, or excite licentious feeling. We have in him no

Phædra, Clytemnestra, or Medea; no story like those of Jocasta, or

Monimia, or the Mysterious Mother. He would have recoiled from what

is hinted at in Manfred. Even the Myrrhs of Sardanapalus could not

have found a place among his heroines. In none of his plots, comic or

tragic, does female frailty form an ingredient. The only play in which

ladies have been betrayed is Measure for Measure; and there he takes

care that their misfortune shall be amended, by marrying Mariana to

Angelo, and ordering Claudio to restore honour to Julietta, whom he

had wronged. Nowhere else does a similar example occur, and there it

is set in strong contrast with the high-toned purity of Isabella. In

the instances of slandered women, it seems to delight him to place them

triumphant over their slanderers; as Hero in Much Ado about Nothing,

Hermione in the Winter's Tale, Imogen in Cymbeline. All his heroes

woo with the most honourable views; there is no intrigue in any of

his plays, no falsehood to the married bed. Those who offer illicit

proposals are exposed to ruin and disgrace. Angelo falls from his lofty

station. Prince John is driven from his brother's court. Falstaff, the

wit and courtier, becomes a butt, when his evil star leads him to make

lawless courtship to the Wives of Windsor. The innocent and natural

love of Miranda in the Tempest affords a striking contrast to the

coarse and disgusting passion of Dorinda: a character thrust into the

play as an improvement by no less a man than Dryden. Here again we may

remark how great is the distance which separates genius of the first

order even from that which comes nearest to it. The two most detestable

women ever drawn by Shakspeare--Regan and Goneril--are both in love

with Edmund; but we have no notice of their passion until the moment of

their death, and then we find that, wicked as were the thoughts which

rankled in their bosoms, no infringement of the laws of chastity was

contemplated; marriage was their intention: "I was contracted to them

both," says Edmund; "all three now marry in an instant." With his dying

breath he bears testimony that in the midst of their crimes they were

actuated by the dominant feeling of woman:--

"Yet Edmund was beloved;

The one the other poisoned for his sake,

And after slew herself."

Emilia is accused by Iago in soliloquy as being suspected of

faithlessness to his bed, but he obviously does not believe the

charge:--

"I hate the Moor;

And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets

He has done my office; _I know not if 't be true_,

But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,

Will do as if for surety."

He uses it merely as an additional excuse for hating the Moor; a

palliation to his conscience in the career which he is about to

pursue. Queen Gertrude's marriage with her brother-in-law is made the

subject of severe animadversion; but it does not appear that she had

dishonoured herself in the life of her first husband, or was in any

manner participant in the crime of Claudius. Hamlet, in the vehemence

of his anger, never insinuates such a charge; and the Ghost, rising

to moderate his violence, acquits her by his very appearance at such

a time, of any heinous degree of guilt. As for the gross theory of

Tieck respecting Ophelia, it is almost a national insult. He maintains

that she had yielded to Hamlet's passion, and that its natural

consequences had driven her to suicide. Such a theory is in direct

opposition to the retiring and obedient purity of her character, the

tenour of her conversations and soliloquies, the general management

of the play, and what I have endeavoured to show is the undeviating

current of Shakspeare's ideas. If the German critic propounded this

heresy to insult English readers through one of their greatest

favourites in revenge for the ungallant reason which the Archbishop

of Canterbury,[36] in Henry V, assigns as the origin of the Salique

law, he might be pardoned; but, as it is plainly dictated by a spirit

of critical wickedness and blasphemy, I should consign him, in spite

of his learning, acuteness, and Shakspearian knowledge, without

compassion, to the avenging hands of Lysistrata.[37]

Such, in the plays where he had to create the characters, was the

course of Shakspeare. In the historical plays, where he had to write

by the book, it is not at all different. Scandal is carefully avoided.

Many spots lie on the fame of Queen Elinor, but no reference is made

to them by the hostile tongue which describes the mother-queen as a

second Até, stirring her son, King John, to blood and strife. Jane

Shore, of whom Rowe, a commentator on Shakspeare too, made a heroine,

is not introduced on the stage in Richard III. Poor Joan of Arc is used

brutally, it must be owned; but it is not till she is driven to the

stake that she confesses to an infirmity which not even her barbarous

judges can seriously believe. We must observe, besides, that the first

part of Henry VI. can scarcely be considered a play of Shakspeare, for

he did little more than revise the old play of that name. To the charge

of the older dramatist, too, must be set the strange exhibition of

Margaret of Anjou mourning over the head of the Duke of Suffolk in the

second part. When Shakspeare has that vigorous woman to himself, as in

Richard III, she shows no traces of such weakness; she is the heroic

asserter of her husband's rights, the unsubdued but not-to-be-comforted

mourner over her foully slaughtered son. He makes the scenes of the

civil wars sad enough; the father kills the son, the son the father,

under the eyes of the pitying king; but there is no hint of outrage

on women. He contrives to interest us equally in Katharine of Aragon

and Anne Boleyn. Everything that poetry can do, is done, to make us

forget the faults of Cleopatra, and to incline us to think that a

world was well lost for that _petit nez retroussé_. We should in vain

search the writings of the Romans themselves for such Roman ladies

as those of Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar. In his camps and armies we

have much military tumult and railing, but nowhere the introduction

of licentious scenes. If Alcibiades be attended by his Phrynia and

Timandra, and Falstaff have his poll clawed like a parrot by Doll

Tearsheet, the Athenian ladies are introduced as a vehicle for the

fierce misanthropy of Timon, and the fair one of Eastcheap acts as a

satire upon the impotent desires of the withered elder, the dead elm,

whom she clasps in her venal embraces. They are drawn in their true

colours: no attempt is made to bedeck them with sentimental graces--to

hold them up to sympathetic admiration with the maudlin novelist,

or to exhibit them as "interesting young females" with the police

reporter. They lift not their brazen fronts in courts and palaces; in

obscure corners they ply their obscene trade. We know that it is their

vocation, and dismiss them from our minds. There is no corruption to be

feared from the example of the inmates of Mr. Overdone's establishment

or Mrs. Quickly's tavern. Shakspeare exhibits only one fallen lady in

all his plays,--and she is Cressida. But Troilus and Cressida deserves

a separate paper, if for no other reason, yet because it is a play in

which Shakspeare has handled the same characters as Homer. It is worth

while to consider in what points these greatest of poets agree, and in

what they differ.

Such, then, is the female character as drawn in Shakspeare. It is pure,

honourable, spotless,--ever ready to perform a kind action,--never

shrinking from a heroic one. Gentle and submissive where duty or

affection bids,--firm and undaunted in resisting the approaches of sin,

or shame, or disgrace. Constant in love through every trial,--faithful

and fond in all the great relations of life, as wife, as daughter, as

sister, as mother, as friend,--witty or refined, tender or romantic,

lofty or gay,--her failings shrouded, her good and lovely qualities

brought into the brightest light, she appears in the pages of the

mighty dramatist as if she were the cherished daughter of a fond

father, the idolized mistress of an adoring lover, the very goddess

of a kneeling worshipper. I have catalogued most of the female names

which adorn the plays. One is absent from the list. She is absent; the

dark lady of that stupendous work which, since the Eumenides, bursting

upon the stage with appalling howl in quest of the fugitive Orestes,

electrified with terror the Athenian audience, has met no equal. I

intend to maintain that Lady Macbeth, too, is human in heart and

impulse,--that she is not meant to be an embodiment of the Furies.

Macbeth is the gloomiest of the plays. Well may its hero say that he

has supped full of horrors. It opens with the incantations of spiteful

witches, and concludes with a series of savage combats, stimulated

by quenchless hate on one side, and by the desperation inspired by

the consciousness of unpardonable crime on the other. In every act we

have blood in torrents. The first man who appears on the stage is the

_bleeding_ captain. The first word uttered by earthly lips is, "What

_bloody_ man is that?" The tale which the captain relates is full of

fearful gashes, reeking wounds, and _bloody_ execution. The murder of

Duncan in the second act stains the hands of Macbeth so deeply as to

render them fit to incarnadine the multitudinous seas, and make the

green--one red. His lady imbrues herself in the crimson stream, and

gilds the faces of the sleeping grooms with gore. She thus affords a

pretence to the thane for slaughtering them in an access of simulated

fury.

"Their hands and faces were all badged with _blood_,

So were their daggers, which unwiped we found

Upon their pillows."

Macbeth carefully impresses the sanguinary scene upon his hearers:

"Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin laced with his golden _blood_,

And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature

For ruin's wasteful entrance; there the murderers,

Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers

Unmannerly breeched in _gore_."

Direful thoughts immediately follow, and the sky itself participates

in the horror. The old man who can well remember threescore and ten,

during which time he had witnessed dreadful hours and strange things,

considers all as mere trifles, compared with the sore night of Duncan's

murder.

"The heavens,

Thou seest, as troubled with man's act,

Threaten his _bloody_ stage; by the clock 'tis day,

And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp."

The horses of Duncan forget their careful training, and their natural

instincts, to break their stalls and eat each other. Gloom, ruin,

murder, horrible doubts, unnatural suspicions, portents of dread in

earth and heaven, surround us on all sides. In the third act, desperate

assassins, incensed by the blows and buffets of the world, weary with

disasters, tugged with fortune, willing to wreak their hatred on all

mankind, and persuaded that Banquo has been their enemy, set upon and

slay him, without remorse and without a word. The prayer of their

master to Night, that she would, with

"_Bloody_ and invisible hand,

Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond"

which kept him in perpetual terror, is in part accomplished; and he who

was his enemy in, as he says,

"Such _bloody_ distance,

That every minute of his being thrusts

Against my life,"

lies breathless in the dust. The murderers bring the witness of their

deed to the very banquet-chamber of the expecting king. They come with

_blood_ upon the face. The hardened stabber does not communicate the

tidings of his exploit in set phrase. He minces not the matter,--his

language is not culled from any trim and weeded vocabulary; and the

king compliments him in return, in language equally vernacular and

unrefined.

"_Mur._ My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.

_Mac._ Thou art the best o' the cut-throats."

Cheered by this flattering tribute to his merits, the accomplished

artist goes on, in all the pride of his profession, to show that

he had left no rubs or botches in his work. Macbeth, after a burst

of indignation at the escape of Fleance, recurs to the comfortable

assurance of Banquo's death, and asks, in the full certainty of an

answer in the affirmative,

"But Banquo's safe?

_Mur._ Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,

With twenty trenched gashes on his head;

The least a death to nature.

_Mac._ Thanks for that."

Presently the gory locks of Banquo's spectre attest the truth of

what the murderer has told, and the banquet breaks up by the flight,

rather than the retirement, of the astonished guests; leaving Macbeth

dismally, but fiercely, pondering over thoughts steeped in slaughter.

The very language of the scene is redolent of blood. The word itself

occurs in almost every speech. At the conclusion of the act, come the

outspeaking of suspicions hitherto only muttered, and the determination

of the Scottish nobles to make an effort which may give to their tables

meat, sleep to their eyes, and free their feasts and banquets from

those bloody knives, the fatal hue of which haunted them in their very

hours of retirement, relaxation, or festival.

The sanguine stain dyes the fourth act as deeply. A head severed from

the body, and a bloody child, are the first apparitions that rise

before the king at the bidding of the weird sisters. The blood-boltered

Banquo is the last to linger upon the stage, and sear the eyes of

the amazed tyrant. The sword of the assassin is soon at work in the

castle of Macduff; and his wife and children fly from the deadly blow,

shrieking "murder"--in vain. And the fifth act,--from its appalling

commencement, when the sleeping lady plies her hopeless task of nightly

washing the blood-stained hand, through the continual clangour of

trumpets calling, as clamorous harbingers, to blood and death, to its

conclusion, when Macduff, with dripping sword, brings in the freshly

hewn-off head of the "dead butcher," to lay it at the feet of the

victorious Malcolm,--exhibits a sequence of scenes in which deeds and

thoughts of horror and violence are perpetually, and almost physically,

forced upon the attention of the spectator. In short, the play is one

clot of blood from beginning to end. It was objected to Alfieri, (by

Grimm, I believe,) that he wrote his tragedies not in tears, but blood.

Shakspeare could write in tears when he pleased. In Macbeth he chose to

dip his pen in a darker current.

Nowhere in the course of the play does he seek to beguile us of our

tears. We feel no more interest in the gracious Duncan, in Banquo, in

Lady Macduff, than we do in the slaughtered grooms. We feel that they

have been brutally murdered; and, if similar occurrences were to take

place in Wapping or Rotherhithe, London would be in commotion. All the

police from A to Z would be set on the alert, the newspapers crammed

with paragraphs, and a hot search instigated after the murderer. If

taken, he would be duly tried, wondered at, gazed after, convicted,

hanged, and forgotten. We should think no more of his victim than we

now think of Hannah Browne. The other characters of the play, with the

exception of the two principal, are nonentities. We care nothing for

Malcolm or Donalbain, or Lenox or Rosse, or the rest of the Scottish

nobles. Pathetic, indeed, are the words which burst from Macduff

when he hears the astounding tidings that all his pretty chickens and

their dam have been carried off at one fell swoop; but he soon shakes

the woman out of his eyes, and dreams only of revenge. His companions

are slightly affected by the bloody deed, and grief is in a moment

converted into rage. It is but a short passage of sorrow, and the

only one of the kind. What is equally remarkable is, that we have

but one slight piece of comic in the play,--the few sentences given

to the porter;[38] and their humour turns upon a gloomy subject for

jest,--the occupation of the keeper of the gates of hell. With these

two exceptions,--the brief pathos of Macduff, and the equally brief

comedy of the porter,--all the rest is blood. Tears and laughter have

no place in this cavern of death.

Of such a gory poem, Macbeth is the centre, the moving spirit. From

the beginning, before treason has entered his mind, he appears as a

man delighting in blood. The captain, announcing his deeds against

Macdonwald, introduces him bedabbled in slaughter.

"For brave Macbeth,--well he deserves that name,--

Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

like valour's minion carved out his passage

Until he faced the slave;

And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops,[39]

And fixed his head upon our battlements."

After this desperate backstroke, as Warburton justly calls it,[39]

Macbeth engages in another combat equally sanguinary. He and Banquo

"Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe;

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorize another Golgotha,

I cannot tell."

Hot from such scenes, he is met by the witches. They promise him

the kingdom of Scotland. The glittering prize instantly affects his

imagination; he is so wrapt in thought at the very moment of its

announcement that he cannot speak. He soon informs us what is the hue

of the visions passing through his mind. The witches had told him he

was to be king: they had not said a word about the means. He instantly

supplies them:

"Why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs

Against the use of nature."

The dreaded word itself soon comes:

"My thought, whose MURDER yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man, that function

Is smothered in surmise."

To a mind so disposed, temptation is unnecessary. The thing was done.

Duncan was marked out for murder before the letter was written to Lady

Macbeth, and she only followed the thought of her husband.

Love for him is in fact her guiding passion. She sees that he covets

the throne,--that his happiness is wrapt up in the hope of being a

king,--and her part is accordingly taken without hesitation. With the

blindness of affection, she persuades herself that he is full of the

milk of human kindness, and that he would reject false and unholy ways

of attaining the object of his desire. She deems it, therefore, her

duty to spirit him to the task. Fate and metaphysical aid, she argues,

have destined him for the golden round of Scotland. Shall she not lend

her assistance? She does not ask the question twice. She will. Her

sex, her woman's breasts, her very nature, oppose the task she has

prescribed to herself; but she prays to the ministers of murder, to the

spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, to make thick her blood, and stop

up the access and passage of remorse; and she succeeds in mustering the

desperate courage which bears her through. Her instigation was not in

reality wanted. Not merely the murder of Duncan, but of Malcolm, was

already resolved on by Macbeth.

"The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars! hide your fires,

Let not light see my black and dark desires!"

As the time for the performance of the deed approaches, he is harassed

by doubts; but he scarcely shows any traces of compunction or remorse.

He pauses before the crime,--not from any hesitation at its enormity,

but for fear of its results,--for fear of the poisoned chalice being

returned to his own lips,--for fear of the trumpet-tongued indignation

which must attend the discovery of the murder of so popular a prince as

Duncan,--one who has borne his faculties so meekly, and loaded Macbeth

himself with honours. He is not haunted by any feeling for the sin, any

compassion for his victim;--the dread of losing the golden opinions

he has so lately won, the consequences of failure, alone torment him.

His wife has not to suggest murder, for that has been already resolved

upon; but to represent the weakness of drawing back, after a resolution

has once been formed. She well knows that the momentary qualm will pass

off,--that Duncan is to be slain, perhaps when time and place will

not so well adhere. Now, she argues,--now it can be done with safety.

Macbeth is determined to wade through slaughter to a throne. If he

passes this moment, he loses the eagerly desired prize, and lives for

ever after, a coward in his own esteem; or he may make the attempt

at a moment when detection is so near at hand, that the stroke which

sends Duncan to his fate will be but the prelude of the destruction

of my husband. She therefore rouses him to do at once that from which

she knows nothing but fear of detection deters him; and, feeling that

there are no conscientious scruples to overcome, applies herself to

show that the present is the most favourable instant. It is for him she

thinks--for him she is unsexed--for his ambition she works--for his

safety she provides.

Up to the very murder, Macbeth displays no pity--no feeling for anybody

but himself. Fear of detection still haunts him, and no other fear.

"Thou sure and steadfast earth,

Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout."

As Lady Macbeth says, it is the frustrated attempt, not the crime, that

can confound him. When it has been accomplished, he is for a while

visited by brain-sick fancies; and to her, who sees the necessity

of prompt action, is left the care of providing the measures best

calculated to avert the dreaded detection. She makes light of facing

the dead, and assures her husband that

"A little water clears us of this deed.

How easy it is then!"

Does she indeed feel this? Are these the real emotions of her mind?

Does she think that a little water will wash out what has been done,

and that it is as easy to make all trace of it vanish from the heart as

from the hand? She shall answer us from her sleep, in the loneliness

of midnight, in the secrecy of her chamber. Bold was her bearing,

reckless and defying her tongue, when her husband was to be served

or saved; but the sigh bursting from her heavily-charged breast, and

her deep agony when she feels that, so far from its being easy to get

rid of the witness of murder, no washing can obliterate the damned

spot, no perfume sweeten the hand once redolent of blood, prove that

the recklessness and defiance were only assumed. We find at last what

she had sacrificed, how dreadful was the struggle she had to subdue.

Her nerve, her courage, mental and physical, was unbroken during the

night of murder; but horror was already seated in her heart. Even then

a touch of what was going on in her bosom breaks forth. When urging

Macbeth to act, she speaks as if she held the strongest ties of human

nature in contempt.

"I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, when it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dashed the brains out, had I but so sworn

As you have done to this."

Is she indeed so unnatural,--so destitute of maternal, of womanly

feeling? No. In the next scene we find her deterred from actual

participation in killing Duncan, because he resembled her father in his

sleep. This is not the lady to pluck the nipple from the boneless gums

of her infant, and dash out its brains. Her language is exaggerated in

mere bravado, to taunt Macbeth's infirmity of purpose by a comparison

with her own boasted firmness; but if the case had arisen, she who had

recoiled from injuring one whose life stood in the way of her husband's

hopes from a fancied resemblance to her father, would have seen in the

smile of her child a talisman of resistless protection.

The murder done, and her husband on the throne, she is no longer

implicated in guilt. She is unhappy in her elevation, and writhes under

a troubled spirit in the midst of assumed gaiety. She reflects with a

settled melancholy that

"Nought's had, all's spent,

When our desire is got without content.

'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."

This to herself. To cheer her lord, she speaks a different language in

the very next line.

"How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,

Of sorriest fancies your companions making;

Using those thoughts which should indeed have died

With those they think on?"

Her own thoughts, we have just seen, were full as sorry as those of

her husband; but she can wear a mask. Twice only does she appear after

her accession to the throne; once masked, once unmasked. Once seated

at high festival, entertaining the nobles of her realm, full of grace

and courtesy, performing her stately hospitalities with cheerful

countenance, and devising with rare presence of mind excuses for the

distracted conduct of her husband. Once again, when all guard is

removed, groaning in despair.

The few words she says to Macbeth after the guests have departed,

almost driven out by herself, mark that her mind is completely subdued.

She remonstrates with him at first for having broken up the feast;

but she cannot continue the tone of reproof, when she finds that his

thoughts are bent on gloomier objects. Blood is for ever on his tongue.

She had ventured to tell him that the visions which startle him, were

but the painting of his brain, and that he was unmanned in folly. He

takes no heed of what she says, and continues to speculate, at first in

distraction, then in dread, and lastly in savage cruelty, upon blood.

The apparition of Banquo almost deprives him of his senses. He marvels

that such things could be, and complains that a cruel exception to the

ordinary laws of nature is permitted in his case. Blood, he says,

"----has been shed ere now in the olden time,

Ere human statute purged the gentle weal,"--

and in more civilized times also; but, when death came, no further

consequences followed. Now not even twenty mortal murders [he

remembered the number of deadly gashes reported by the assassin] will

keep the victim in his grave. As long as Banquo's ghost remains before

him, he speaks in the same distracted strain. When the object of his

special wonder, by its vanishing, gives him time to reflect, fear of

detection, as usual, is his first feeling.

"It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood!"

The most improbable witnesses have detected murder. Stones, trees,

magotpies, choughs, have disclosed the secretest man of blood. Then

come cruel resolves, to rid himself of his fears. Mercy or remorse is

to be henceforward unknown; the firstlings of his heart are to be the

firstlings of his hand,--the bloody thought is to be followed instantly

by the bloody deed. The tiger is now fully aroused in his soul.

"I am in blood

Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

He sees an enemy in every castle; everywhere he plants his spies;

from every hand he dreads an attempt upon his life. Nearly two

centuries after the play was written, the world beheld one of its

fairest portions delivered to a rule as bloody as that of the Scottish

tyrant; and so true to nature are the conceptions of Shakspeare,

that the speeches of mixed terror and cruelty, which he has given to

Macbeth, might have been uttered by Robespierre. The atrocities of the

Jacobin, after he had stept so far in blood, were dictated by fear.

"Robespierre," says a quondam satellite,[40] "devenait plus sombre; son

air renfrogné repoussait tout le monde; il ne parlait que d'assassinat,

encore d'assassinat, toujours d'assassinat. Il avait peur que son ombre

ne l'assassinât."

Lady Macbeth sees this grisly resolution, and ceases to remonstrate or

interfere. Her soul is bowed down before his, and he communicates with

her no longer. He tells her to be ignorant of what he plans, until she

can applaud him for what he has done. When he abruptly asks her,

"How say'st thou,--that Macduff denies his person

At our great bidding?"

she, well knowing that she has not said anything about it, and that the

question is suggested by his own fear and suspicion, timidly inquires,

"Have you sent to him, _sir_?"

The last word is an emphatic proof that she is wholly subjugated. Too

well is she aware of the cause, and the consequence, of Macbeth's

_sending_ after Macduff; but she ventures not to hint. She is no longer

the stern-tongued lady urging on the work of death, and taunting her

husband for his hesitation. She now addresses him in the humbled tone

of an inferior; we now see fright and astonishment seated on her face.

He tells her that she marvels at his words, and she would fain persuade

herself that they are but the feverish effusions of an overwrought

mind. Sadly she says,

"You lack the season of all nature,--sleep."

Those are the last words we hear from her waking lips; and with a hope

that repose may banish those murky thoughts from her husband's mind,

she takes, hand in hand with him, her tearful departure from the stage;

and seeks her remorse-haunted chamber, there to indulge in useless

reveries of deep-rooted sorrow, and to perish by her own hand amid the

crashing ruin of her fortunes, and the fall of that throne which she

had so fatally contributed to win.

He now consigns himself wholly to the guidance of the weird sisters;

and she takes no part in the horrors which desolate Scotland, and rouse

against him the insurrection of the enraged thanes. But she clings

to him faithfully in his downfall. All others except the agents of

his crimes, and his personal dependents, have abandoned him; but she,

with mind diseased, and a heart weighed down by the perilous stuff of

recollections that defy the operation of oblivious antidote, follows

him to the doomed castle of Dunsinane. It is evident that he returns

her affection, by his anxious solicitude about her health, and his

melancholy recital of her mental sufferings. He shows it still more

clearly by his despairing words when the tidings of her death are

announced. Seyton delays to communicate it; but at last the truth must

come,--that the queen is dead. It is the overflowing drop in his cup of

misfortune.

"She should have died hereafter;--

There would have been a time for such a word."

I might have borne it at some other time; but now--now--now that I

am deserted by all--penned in my last fortress--feeling that the

safeguards in which I trusted are fallacious,--now it is indeed the

climax of my calamity, that she, who helped me to rise to what she

thought was prosperity and honour,--who clung to me through a career

that inspired all else with horror and hate,--and who, in sickness of

body, and agony of mind, follows me in the very desperation of my fate,

should at such an hour be taken from me,--I am now undone indeed. He

then, for the first time, reflects on the brief and uncertain tenure of

life. He has long dabbled in death, but it never before touched himself

so closely. He is now aweary of the sun--now finds the deep curses

which follow him, sufficiently loud to pierce his ear--now discovers

that he has already lived long enough--and plunges into the combat,

determined, if he has lived the life of a tyrant, to die the death of

a soldier, with harness on his back. Surrender or suicide does not

enter his mind; with his habitual love of bloodshed, he feels a savage

pleasure in dealing gashes all around; and at last, when he finds the

charms on which he depended, of no avail, flings himself, after a

slight hesitation, into headlong conflict with the man by whose sword

he knows he is destined to fall, with all the reckless fury of despair.

What had he now to care for? The last tie that bound him to human kind

was broken by the death of his wife, and it was time that his tale of

sound and fury should come to its appropriate close.