Transcribed from the 1812 John Murray edition by David Price,
ccx074@pglaf.org
COUNT JULIAN:
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A
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TRAGEDY.
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LONDON:
PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, FLEET STREET,
By James Moyes, Greville Street, Hatton Garden.
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1812.
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THE daughter of Count Julian is usually called Florinda—a fictitious
appellation, unsuitable to the person and to the period. Never was one
devised more incompatible with the appearance of truth, or more fatal to
the illusions of sympathy. The city of Covilla, it is reported, was
named after her. Here is no improbability: there would be a gross one in
deriving the word, as is also pretended, from La Cava. Cities, in
adopting a name, bear it usually as a testimony of victories or as an
augury of virtues. Small and obscure places, occasionally, receive what
their neighbours throw against them; as Puerto de la mala muger in
Murcia. A generous and enthusiastic people, beyond all others in
existence or on record, would affix no stigma to innocence and
misfortune.
It is remarkable that the most important era in Spanish history should be
the most obscure. This is propitious to the poet, and above all to the
tragedian. Few characters of such an era can be glaringly
misrepresented, few facts offensively perverted.
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CHARACTERS.
Count JULIAN.
RODERIGO, King of Spain.
OPAS, Metropolitan of Seville.
SISABERT, betrothed to COVILLA.
MUZA, Prince of Mauritania.
ABDALAZIS, son of MUZA.
TARIK, Moorish Chieftain.
COVILLA, daughter of JULIAN.
EGILONA, wife of RODERIGO.
_Officers_.
HERNANDO, OSMA, RAMIRO, &c.
ACT I. SCENE 1.
_Camp of Julian_.
OPAS. JULIAN.
_Opas_. See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God,
See thy lost child.
_Jul._ I have avenged me, Opas,
More than enough: I sought but to have hurled
The brands of war on one detested head,
And died upon his ruin. O my country!
O lost to honour, to thyself, to me,
Why on barbarian hands devolves thy cause,
Spoilers, blasphemers!
_Opas_. Is it thus, Don Julian,
When thy own ofspring, that beloved child,
For whom alone these very acts were done
By them and thee, when thy Covilla stands
An outcast, and a suppliant at thy gate,
Why that still stubborn agony of soul,
Those struggles with the bars thyself imposed?
Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever?
_Jul._ Father of mercies! show me none, whene’er
The wrongs she suffers cease to wring my heart,
Or I seek solace ever, but in death.
_Opas_. What wilt thou do then, too unhappy man?
_Jul._ What have I done already? All my peace
Has vanished; my fair fame in after-times
Will wear an alien and uncomely form,
Seen o’er the cities I have laid in dust,
Countrymen slaughtered, friends abjured!
_Opas_. And faith?
_Jul._ Alone now left me, filling up in part
The narrow and waste intervals of grief:
It promises that I shall see again
My own lost child.
_Opas_. Yes, at this very hour.
_Jul._ Till I have met the tyrant face to face,
And gain’d a conquest greater than the last;
Till he no longer rules one rood of Spain,
And not one Spaniard, not one enemy,
The least relenting, flags upon his flight;
Till we are equal in the eyes of men,
The humblest and most wretched of our kind,
No peace for me, no comfort, no—no child!
_Opas_. No pity for the thousands fatherless,
The thousands childless like thyself, nay more,
The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless—
Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so,
Who now, perhaps, round their first winter fire,
Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old,
Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown:
Precious be these, and sacred in thy sight,
Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind.
If only warlike spirits were evoked
By the war-demon, I would not complain.
Or dissolute and discontented men;
But wherefor hurry down into the square
The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race,
Who would not injure us, and could not serve;
Who, from their short and measured slumber risen,
In the faint sunshine of their balconies,
With a half-legend of a martyrdom
And some weak wine and withered grapes before them,
Note by their foot the wheel of melody
That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance.
To drag the steddy prop from failing age,
Break the young stem that fondness twines around,
Widen the solitude of lonely sighs,
And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day
The ruins and the phantoms that replied,
Ne’er be it thine.
_Jul._ Arise, and save me, Spain!