“There are more things in heav’n and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”—HAMLET.
THERE was a shallop floating on the Wye, among the gray rocks and leafy
woods of Chepstow. Within it were two fair girls reclining: the one
blending the romantic wildness of a maid of Italy with the exquisite
purity of English nature; the other illuming, with the devotion of a
vestal, the classic beauty of a Greek.
There was a young and learned bachelor sitting at the helm. Study had
stamped an air of thoughtfulness on his brow; yet a smile was ever
playing on his lips, as his heart felt the truth and influence of the
beautiful life around him.
Listen, gentle reader, we pray thy courtesy and thy patience, as a rude
unskilful pen traces the breathed thoughts of these wanderers of the
Wye.
* * * * *
CASTALY. We have roamed, dear Ida, among the classic lands of the
far-off Mediterranean: we have looked, from her pinnacles of snow, on
the silvery gleaminess of Switzerland, and from purple sierras on the
sunny splendour of Spain; yet these English meadows, with their fringes
of wild bloom, come o’er the heart with all the freshness of an infant’s
dream. Yon majestic crag of Wyndcliff is flinging its purple shadows
athwart the water, and floods of golden glory are streaming through the
beech-woods of Piercefield: and see, our little sail, white as the wing
of a swan, is wafting us towards Abbey Tintern, along this beautiful
valley, where the river almost doubles on itself; meandering among its
mead-flowers and its mosses, as loth to leave its luxuriant bed. Listen!
the breath of evening is among the trees that dip in the ripple of the
Wye their leaves of shivering gold. What a scene for minions of the moon
to revel in! Say, shall we charm the lingering hours of this midsummer
night among the ivied cloisters of the abbey? But where is Astrophel,
our moon-struck student, who, like Chaucer’s scholar, keeps
——“at his bed’s head,
A twenty books clothed in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy?”——
They have not taught him courtesy, or he would not steal away from the
light of our eyes to commune with owls and ivy-bushes.
Yet we promise him our smile for _your_ sake, Evelyn. Indeed, I am
thinking his mysteries will chime in admirably with the solemnity of
this lone abbey. We appoint him master of our revels.
EVELYN. Let your smile be in pity, fair Castaly, on the illusions of
Astrophel. Ensconced in his dark closet, within a charmed ring of
black-letter folios, he has wofully warped his studies, and has read
himself into the belief that he is a GIFTED SEER. Yet love him, lady,
for his virtues; for his history is a very paradox. His heart is melting
with charity for the beings of earth, yet his mind is half-weaned from
their fellowship. At his imminent peril, he leaps into the Isis to save
a drowning boy, and the world calls him misanthrope, withal. It is the
fate indeed of many a cloistered scholar, whose
——“desires are dolphin like,
And soar above the element they live in.”
Such is Astrophel.
IDA. He looks his part to perfection. There is a shadowy expression in
his dark eye, as it were poring over the volume of his own thoughts.
Beneath the slender shaft of yon eastern window, behold this proselyte
to the sublime science of shadows. He approaches.
EV. The _hour_ is on him yet.—Astrophel!
ASTROPHEL. Whisper, and tread lightly, Evelyn, for this is haunted
ground. Underneath this velvet turf rest the mouldering bones of a
noble. I have held communion in my slumber with the spirit by which they
were once animated and moved; and the mysteries of the tomb have been
unfolded to me. The _eidōlon_ of Roger Bigod has thrice come across my
sight.
CAST. A ghost!
EV. And Astrophel believes the truth of this vision! Such phantasy might
well become the Cistercian monks, who once stalked along these gloomy
cloisters, but not an Oxford scholar.
ASTR. And why not an Oxford scholar, Evelyn? I _do_ believe in the
existence of beings out of the common course of nature; and, indeed, the
history of the world has ever proved the _general_ leaning to this
belief, and my own mind feels that this universal adoption is a proof of
_reality_ of existence. Smile at, or reason with me, you will not shake
my faith, for I believe it true; and even Johnson confessed, that
“although all argument might be against it, yet all belief is for it.”
EV. The diffusion of this fallacy, Astrophel, proves only the universal
sameness of the constitution of mind. You may, indeed, cite the high
authority of Johnson, that “a belief in the apparitions of the dead
could become universal only by its truth.” Yet, if this one word,
_apparition_, be rightly interpreted, it will not imply the _existence_
of real phantoms, however ethereal, _before_ the eye, for the notion so
construed would have been a grand error of Imlac; no, he adopts an
_indefinite_ expression, conscious that mere metaphysics were not
illustrative of this subtle question.
There was one Theophilus Insulanus, who, I think, calls all those who
have not faith in phantoms, _irreligious_, because, forsooth, “these
ghosts are never employed on subjects of frivolous concern.” I may be
under the ban of this flimsy enthusiast, but you will not gain me as a
proselyte, Astrophel, for, like our great poet, I have seen too many
ghosts myself.
Yet I know some few self-created wizards, who have solved to their
hearts’ content those two grand mysteries, the _real_ existence and the
_purpose_ of ghostly visitations; who, like Owain Glyndwr, “can call
spirits from the vasty deep,” and even expect that they will “come when
they do call for them.” Others have laboured under self-glamourie, and
believed themselves magicians, until put _to the proof_. I remember the
painter, Richard Cosway, was under this illusion; and, when the old
cynic Northcote desired him to raise Sir Joshua Reynolds, the
pseudo-magus confessed himself foiled, by advancing this simple excuse,
“I would, were it not _sinful_!”
It were well if these monomaniacs were laid in the famous bed of St.
Hilary at Poitiers; for there, with the muttering of a prayer or two, as
the legend tells us, madmen may be cured.
But, in truth, the light of divine reason has so far dispelled these
fancies for the supernatural, that very few of _us_, I presume, are
confident in the hope of raising a ghost when we want one; or of laying
it in the Red Sea for a hundred years, by two clergymen, with “bell,
book, and candle,” and scraps of mystic Latin, when it becomes rude or
troublesome.
IDA. Will you not concede that many visionaries have _believed_, and
written from pure and even holy motives?
EV. There is no doubt of this, lady; yet while it has fanned the flame
of superstition in minds of lower intellect, with many, the endeavour to
_prove too much_ has marred these motives, and weakened faith, even in
the credulous; so that we may hope the wild romances of Beaumont, and
Burthogge, and Baxter, and Aubrey, and Glanville, and that
arch-mystagogue Moreton (whose book is half full of prolix dialogues
between ghosts and ghost-seers), will soon be mere objects of interest
and curiosity to the black-letter bibliomaniac and the more erudite
legend-hunter.
CAST. We will not submit to your anathema, Evelyn. This learned clerk
has challenged our faith. What a treasury of secrets might he unfold to
us from the mystic tomes of antiquity, the wonders of profane
psychology; from the tales of Arabia to Vatheck and the Epicurean—from
the classic mythology of Homer to the wild romances of his humble
prototype Ossian.
Let it be a match: we will listen, Astrophel, while you “unsphere the
spirit of Plato;” and here we sit in judgment, on the velvet throne of
this our court of Tintern.