LITERARY AMBITIONS
In due course of time they arrived at the Glass Town, and were welcomed
with enthusiastic cordiality.
After the duke had visited his kingdom he returned to the chief metropolis
and established his residence there at Salamanca Palace.
The Marquis of Tagus from the noble beauty of his person attracted
considerable attention wherever he went, and in a short period he
had won and attached many faithful friends of the highest rank and
abilities.
From his love of elegant literature and the fine arts in general,
painters and poets were soon among his warmest admirers. He himself
possessed a most sublime genius, but as yet its full extent was unknown
to him.
One day as he was meditating alone on the world of waters that rolled
between him and the fair Marina, he determined to put his feelings
on paper in a tangible shape that he might hereafter show them to
her when anticipation had given place to fruition. He took his pen,
and in about a quarter of an hour had completed a brief poem of exquisite
beauty. The attempt pleased him and soothed the anguish that lingered
in his heart. It likewise gave him an insight into the astonishing
faculties of his own mind; and a longing for immortality, an ambition
of glory, seized him.
He was a devoted worshipper of the divine works that the Grecian
tragedians have left for all succeeding ages to marvel at, particularly
those of Sophocles the Majestic; and his mind was deeply embued with
the spirit of their eagle-like flights into higher regions than that
of earth or even Parnassus.
Being now sensible in a degree of his lofty powers, he determined,
like Milton, to write somewhat that the traditionary muses would
not willingly let die, and accordingly commenced a tragedy entitled:
‘Necropolis, or the City of the Dead.’ Here was set forth in a strain
of the grandest mind the mysteries of ancient Egyptian worship; and
he has acknowledged to me that he felt his being absorbed while he
wrote it, even by the words himself had made.
Sublime is this surprising production! It is indeed, in the words
of an eminent writer (Captain Tree), ‘a noble instance of the almost
perfectibility of human intellect’; but there hovers over it a feeling
of tender melancholy, for the image of Marina haunted his thoughts,
and Amalthea, his heroine, is but an impersonation of her.
This tragedy wreathed the laurels of fame round his brow, and his
after-productions, each of which seemed to excel the other, added
new wreaths to those which already beautified his temples.
I cannot follow him in the splendour of his literary career, nor
even mention so much as the titles of his various works. Suffice
it to say he became one of the greatest poets of the age; and one
of the chief motives that influenced him in his exertions for renown
was to render himself worthy to possess such a treasure as Marina.
She in whatever he was employed was never out of his thoughts, and
none had he as yet beheld among all the ladies of the Glass Town,—though
rich, titled, and handsome strove by innumerable arts to gain his
favour,—whom he could even compare with her.