included in its author’s _Petits Poëmes_, of which the fourth edition
is before me. It is a beautiful and pathetic poem, and treats the story
subjectively. The poet describes himself as having escaped from the
haunts of men, and built a little hermitage far away in the mountain
solitudes. One evening, when he had been watching the fading splendours
of sunset, the signs of a storm appeared. The labourers had hastened
homeward, the herds sought their shelter, the birds their nests. He
then beheld a solitary wayfarer moving on, and asked him to enter,
informing him that, in the direction he was going, he could reach no
house until morning, and pointing to the increasing menaces of the
storm. The traveller turned upon him a burning eye and said, “Thou
knowest not the wayfarer whose steps thou wouldst stay. Why, detained
by thy request, should I enter with thee thy hospitable door, if my
name, when pronounced, must freeze thy welcome, and force me to repass
thy threshold?” “Whatever thy name or lot, yet must this roof shelter
thee this night.” The Wanderer accepts. The poet draws a striking
picture of his guest’s strange and noble appearance. The traveller is
shown a fountain where he may bathe; a repast is then spread before
him. Afterwards the poet inquires the name and country of his guest,
who turns pale, and with a sigh answers, “I am called Ahasuerus; I am
the Wandering Jew.” Seeing the poet’s shudder, the Wanderer rises,
thanks him for his hospitality, and says, “The cursed one blesses
thee,” then starts up to resume his journey. But the poet holds him.
“It is not I who am charged with thy punishment.” He forbids Ahasuerus
to go out into the storm. The Wanderer says, “The beasts of the
field and the birds of the air have their retreats from the rain and
lightning, but the Proscribed One hath not where to lay his head.” He
heeds not the storm, but the voice which above it cries, “Still march!
For thee alone neither repose nor death. March for ever! The justice of
God has not had its full course.” But when the poet has detained him,
and as they sit together, this harsh voice for the first time is not
heard. He asks if the divine justice can have become weary? The poet
bids him hope. The lamp is lit, and the poet entreats Ahasuerus to
instruct his youth. He who has explored so many regions, seen so many
peoples, traversed the earth--what a sublime destiny!--can tell much to
him who, bound to one little spot, can only dream of such far realms,
which he has longed to see. Ahasuerus tells him the earth is so small,
his desire would soon be calmed, could he explore it. Each corner of
nature offers the universe as in miniature. With the blue heaven above,
and a soul within, he may unite the image of the real with the infinite
dream. Earth, air, heaven, man, are everywhere the same. But, the poet
says, life is so short; man does but begin to peruse the universe when
death closes his eyes; while for him--the Wanderer--length of days have
opened the treasures of knowledge; man, time, lands and ages, have no
secrets for him. Ahasuerus bids the poet undeceive himself: each man
receives in his mind what his forerunners have traced. “Step by step,
day by day, century by century, along with humanity, I have wearily
climbed the painful ladder on whose last rung God has placed thee.”
They have journeyed the same road, but he--the Wanderer--as a pioneer,
has had to travel for ages on foot, over stones, the course which the
man of the present passes in his chariot in a day.
In the third canto the Wanderer gives the poet an account of his
wanderings. At first he had not believed in his doom; then, when he
began to contemplate the possibility of it, he entered into all manner
of dissipation to forget himself. Finally, in the mournful Valley of
Jehoshaphat, he turned upon the pursuing phantom and faced it. “Is it
then such a terrible thing to live for ever? What have I lost? Death.
What everybody is trying to do! Are not all aiming to live eternally as
God in heaven?” He is elated at his prospect; he will have glory, gold,
bend nations under his sceptre. Perhaps he will be the Messiah himself!
But the Wanderer’s wife, passionately loved, slowly parts from his
heart, withers of age, and dies in his young arms. The torture of that
gradual decay of the one he loved is portrayed. His sons, as they grow
in years, dread him, hate him, try to poison him; and then leave him
in horror or remorse for other lands. Of his family one alone remains,
a beloved son. But this last child’s heart even grows cold to him. Its
life sinks; its colour departs; its face becomes thin, corpse-like.
O horror! he sees before him, in the dying child, the very face of
Jesus, whom he had insulted! The child dies on the day and hour of the
anniversary of Christ’s death.
After many wanderings Ahasuerus finds himself in the Colosseum at
Rome, there seated in the moonlight. He had seen that great edifice
built by Jews, stone by stone, while their own beloved Jerusalem
fell to dust. As in the great Roman ruin he is meditating upon the
vicissitudes he has witnessed, the _Angelus_ sounds forth; the stars,
the dew, all nature started in chorus, and said, “Repent!” He looks
upon the crucifix amid that circle--triumphantly raised there, where
he had seen Christians torn by lions. As he was looking upon that
figure a well-remembered voice came to him from it, “Why fly from
me? Thy sole refuge is in my love.” Then he there knelt, crying, “O
Christ! thou hast conquered me!” Then his first relief came in tears,
and an ineffable peace descended in his heart. From that time he did
not suffer as one disinherited; he even felt a delicious pain in his
expiation; he lived, suffered and loved along with humanity. He now
comprehended the enormity of his crime, which God had pursued so
relentlessly: it was not his insult to Divinity, but his lese-humanity.
He now felt that he might hope that his expiation would be complete,
and in the last day he would find repose in the love of Christ.
In the fifth and last Canto the poet entreats the Wanderer to give him
a description of Jesus personally, of whom he has so long dreamed--his
look, manner, voice. When he has ended this appeal there is a knock at
his door, and a stranger enters. Ahasuerus at once recognises him, and
kneels, clasping his feet and bathing them with his tears. Jesus says
to him, “Friend! weep no more! Since thy touched heart comprehends its
sin and washes it away in tears; since the man outraged by thee as much
as the God is now thy brother; since thy heart loves, I bring pardon,
the reward of repentance. Be happy! Now, thou canst at last die.”
In the morning a shepherd coming to the poet’s hermitage found two
forms lying prostrate, both apparently dead. The poet was slowly
brought to life, but Ahasuerus was dead. On his face was a smile of
celestial sweetness and calm felicity. On a bier made of larches the
poet and the shepherd bore the dead body of the Wanderer to its place
of rest. They bore it to the summit of the highest mountain. Beyond the
trees they passed, beyond the bushes, and where the grass became scant.
Into a cloud they entered, upward and onward bore him, till they came
to the blue foot of a glacier. On a little couch of moss they laid the
body while they dug a grave; as they covered the Wanderer’s form their
last vision was of the smile still shining, or even happier, upon his
face.
“Ce vieux corps, fatigué par vingt siècles d’effort,
Goûtait encore mieux le bienfait de la mort.
Et c’est là qu’il repose, inconnu, solitaire,
Perdu dans la nuée au-dessus de la terre!
Nul monument funèbre attirant le regard,
Ne révèle sa tombe au pas du montagnard.
Le glacier qui défend cette gorge isolée
En est le seul gardien et le seul mausolée.
Nulle épouse, nul fils n’y sanglote sur lui,
Et la seul rosée y vient pleurer la nuit.
Nul mortel ne connaît sa demeure dernière,
Personne, excepté moi, n’y versa de prière,
Et seul l’aigle se pose à la cime où ses os
Savourent dans mort un éternel repos.
It is interesting to contrast this peaceful end of Grenier’s Ahasuerus
with the invincible Wanderer of Shelley. Nevertheless, the Ahasuerus of
this poem yields only to a tender appeal from Christ--himself the bound
victim of an eternal curse. Another poem may yet be written which shall
show Jesus not to have pronounced the doom upon the poor shoemaker, but
to have known so much of Jahve’s vindictive disposition as to foretell
it, and ultimately coming to an understanding with Ahasuerus as the
fellow-victim of an eternal curse. They might be shown buried together
by the compassionate poet and shepherd where the foiled eagle of Jove,
surviving from its feast on Prometheus, could not reach them, and the
glacier-heart of deified power could freeze and crush them no more.
This, for one of the two, would be a happier fate than survival in the
satirical song still sung in France--
“Jésus la bonté même
Lui dit en soupirant,
Tu marcheras toi-même
Au moins pour trois milles ans,
Tu finiras tes peines
Au dernier jugement.”
XVII.
THE NEW AHASUERUS IN ENGLAND.
The old Ahasuerus had his day in England. While he was personally
wandering about the world, however, in the guise of the pious
pretender, pouring his cant into every long ear he could find, clever
English writers began to utilise him. The earliest work (1640), _The
Wandering Jew telling Fortunes to Englishmen_, was a fair satire upon
some features of London in that time. The name of the Jew is Gad
Ben-Arod Ben-Balaam Ben-Alimoth Ben-Baal Ben-Gog Ben-Magog. The next
work that followed (1797) was an amusing drama. It is entitled _The
Wandering Jew, or Love’s Masquerade_, by Andrew Franklin. A surly old
guardian, disgusted with the young beaux seeking his ward’s hand,
has vowed that he will give her to the most aged man to be found in
England. The lover most favoured by the young lady conspires with her
to have an announcement of the presence of the Wandering Jew in London,
and then presents himself in that disguise as Mr. Mathusalem. He is
attended by his equally aged servant, Juba, in whose anachronisms the
fun mainly consists. Juba, despite all efforts on Mr. Mathusalem’s part
to make him more reticent, is voluminous in his reminiscences; among
other things, he tells about Romulus and Remus, and relates that, when
he was at the baptism of the twins, their mother threw a basin of tea
at him for saying that Remus was the prettier of the two.
In 1799 appeared the novel _St. Leon_, by William Godwin. It is not a
very interesting work now, whatever it may have been at the time. The
plot of it is, that a gentleman, who, through gambling, has sunk into
poverty and plunged his family in distress, obtains from an uncanny
old man the secret of recovering youth and obtaining money whenever
he needs it. But he has vowed secrecy. He returns to his family, but
is not recognised. He is cut off from the old sympathies. The novel
speedily carries interest away from St. Leon to other persons, and ends
without any account of his end, nor does it even carry St. Leon beyond
the lives of his children. The romance might have been suggested by any
traditional type of longevity, such as the Hindu Dnyaneshvar, found in
his tomb reading his Commentaries 300 years after apparent death; or
Artesius, the Arabian alchemist, said to have, by his art, prolonged
his life 1025 years, or Alkazwini, who also lived præternaturally long.
The preface, however, contains an interesting citation, which gives its
actual origin:--“The following passage from a work, said to be written
by the late Dr. John Campbel, and entitled _Hermippus Redivivus_,
suggested the first hint of the present performance: ‘There happened in
the year 1687 an odd accident at Venice, that made a very great stir
then, and which I think deserves to be rescued from oblivion. The great
freedom and ease with which all persons who make a good appearance live
in that city is known sufficiently to all who are acquainted with it;
such will not, therefore, be surprised that a stranger, who went by the
name of Signor Gualdi, and who made a considerable figure there, was
admitted into the best company, though nobody knew who or what he was.
He remained at Venice for some months, and three things were remarked
in his conduct. The first was, that he had a small collection of fine
pictures, which he readily showed to anybody that desired it; the
next, that he was perfectly versed in all arts and sciences, and spoke
on every subject with such readiness and sagacity as astonished all
who heard him; and it was, in the third place, observed that he never
wrote or received any letter, never desired any credit, or made use of
bills of exchange; but paid for everything in ready money, and lived
decently, though not in splendour.
“‘This gentleman met one day at the coffee-house with a Venetian
nobleman, who was an extraordinary good judge of pictures; he had
heard of Signor Gualdi’s collection, and in a very polite manner
desired to see them, to which the other very readily consented. After
the Venetian had viewed Signor Gualdi’s collection, and expressed his
satisfaction by telling him he had never seen a finer, considering the
number of pieces of which it consisted--he cast his eye by chance over
the chamber-door, where hung a picture of this stranger. The Venetian
looked upon it, and then upon him. “This picture was drawn for you,
sir,” says he to Signor Gualdi, to which the other made no answer
but by a low bow. “You look,” continued the Venetian, “like a man of
fifty, and yet I know this picture to be of the hand of Titian, who
has been dead one hundred and thirty years. How is this possible?” “It
is not easy,” said Signor Gualdi gravely, “to know all things that are
possible; but there is certainly no crime in my being like a picture
drawn by Titian.” The Venetian easily perceived, by his manner of
speaking, that he had given the stranger offence, and therefore took
his leave. He could not forbear speaking of this in the evening to some
of his friends, who resolved to satisfy themselves by looking upon the
picture the next day. In order to have an opportunity of doing so, they
went to the coffee-house about the time that Signor Gualdi was wont to
come thither; and not meeting him, one of them, who had often conversed
with him, went to his lodgings to inquire after him, when he heard that
he had set out an hour before for Vienna. This affair made a great
noise, and found a place in all the newspapers of that time.’”
It is probable that not only _St. Leon_, but the _Bassevilliana_ of
Vincenzo Monti had influence in exciting the English imagination with
legends of this character. A translation of this Italian poem, by the
Rev. Henry Boyd, was published in London in 1805. It is the story
of a “Soul’s Doom,” founded on the murder of the French minister,
Basseville, in Rome, near the end of the last century. The soul of
Basseville is condemned to wander over the French provinces, and behold
the desolations caused by the revolution and its retributions. The
Spirit of the Abyss is forbidden to clutch Basseville. An angel says to
the soul:
“Fear not; thou art not doomed to sip the wave
Of black Avernus, which who tastes, resigned
All hope of change, becomes the demon’s slave;
But Heaven’s high justice, nor in mercy blind,
Nor in security scrupulous to gauge
Each blot, each wrinkle, of the human mind,
Has written on the adamantine page,
That thou no joys of paradise mayst know,
Till punished be of France the guilty rage.”
Both _St. Leon_ and “The Soul’s Doom” might have been read by those
comrades in distress, Shelley and Medwin, for whom seventy years ago
Oxford Christianity, and homes inspired by it, had nothing better than
wanderings about London under a curse. They took up the subject, Medwin
says, when Shelley was fifteen. Of the poem, as it now stands, in the
edition of Chatto and Windus, Shelley wrote but a few lines; but I
think that amidst its rhapsodical rubbish a scholarly expression or
illustration may here and there be found traceable to Shelley. There
is evidence of Shelley’s divining-rod in the allusions to some of the
more significant legends concerning Ahasuerus which had attracted
the attention of several German poets. There is in the opening some
resemblance to the scene in Southey’s _Curse of Kehama_. Where, in
the latter, the young Hindu woman is brought forward to perish on the
funeral-pyre, in Shelley’s poem a sinning novice is dragged to the
“fatal shrine,” from which she is rescued by the mysterious traveller.
This horseman, hastening to Padua,
“Wraps his mantle around his brow,
As if to hide his woes.”
In his tale, he says:
“A burning cross illumed my brow,
I hid it with a fillet grey.”
This Cross enables him to command fiends. To Paulo, who has rescued
her, Rosa the novice has given herself. Victorio, her lover, summons
a witch-demon, and to her consigns his soul to obtain a philtre which
will secure Rosa’s love. But when he has administered it she dies.
Is the resemblance mentioned between this _Wandering Jew_ and the
_Curse of Kehama_ accidental? The Medwin-Shelley poem was unable to
reach the light for which it struggled in 1810. It was published in
_Frazer’s Magazine_ in 1831. But soon after it was written, Shelley
shows great eagerness to get Southey’s poem, which had been announced,
and twice writes to the bookseller, Stockdale, for it in December,
1810. In 1812, while at Keswick with his young wife, Shelley made the
acquaintance of Southey, if not before. In the poem of Southey, the
young Indian casts down the idol before which the woman is about to be
burned, which corresponds to the blow given to Christ by Ahasuerus.
The curse is artificially modified, and may have been suggested by the
sentence on Cain, “Behold now art thou cursed from the earth.” The doom
on the iconoclast is that on him shall fall neither the rain nor the
sunshine, nor any of the influences of nature.
There would seem to be little doubt that _St. Leon_ inspired Shelley’s
_St. Irvyne, the Rosicrucian_, or rather Ginotti, with his elixir of
life, whose only “survival” is in Bulwer’s _Zanoni_. The “gigantic
Ginotti” dies through the wicked Wolfstein; but Shelley was particular
in pointing out that “he did not die by Wolfstein’s hand, but by the
influence of that natural magic which, when the secret was imparted
to the latter, destroyed him.” The longevity is here not a doom. But
once, as Shelley was walking through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he picked
up a “dirty and torn” work, which contained Schubart’s “Rhapsody” of
Ahasuerus, elsewhere mentioned. Hogg was quite mistaken in affirming
that Shelley’s account was an invention. Full information on this
point may be found in Rossetti’s Shelley (vol. i. p. 434). The German
poem had appeared in a magazine called the _German Museum_, in
1802. The Wandering Jew thus became a type in Shelley’s mind, and
repeatedly appears in his works. In Alastor he uses the Wanderer as an
illustration.
“Oh that God,
Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
Which but one living man has drained, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death!”
It is, however, in _Queen Mab_ that we find the real form which arose
before Shelley out of Schubart’s small casket, fished up from the muddy
ocean of London. Schubart’s Ahasuerus whines and is pardoned. Shelley’s
Ahasuerus is a Titan, who prefers the sharp vulture-beak and the chain
to any surrender to the Christian Jove. Believing as I do that Cain was
originally a Semitic Prometheus,--as first of those who began removal
of Jahve’s curse on the earth by agriculture and working in metals,--I
find it remarkable that Shelley, outcast from college and home in early
youth because of his atheism, should recognise this feature in the
distant successor of Cain.
“A strange and woe-worn wight,
Arose beside the battlements,
And stood unmoving there:
His inessential figure cast no shade
Upon the golden floor;
His port and mien bore mark of many years,
And chronicles of untold ancientness
Were legible within his beamless eye:
Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame;
The wisdom of old age was mingled there
With youth’s primeval dauntlessness;
And inexpressible woe,
Chastenéd by fearless resignation, gave
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
_Spirit._--Is there a God?
_Ahasuerus._--Is there a God!--ay, an Almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice
Was heard on earth: earth shudder’d at the sound;
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn’d,
To swallow all the dauntless and the good,
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous Omnipotence; whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged
To elevated daring, to one deed
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous pæans rang,
Through all the long-drawn aisles.
* * * * *
“O Spirit! centuries have set their seal,
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
Since the Incarnate came: humbly he came,
Veiling his horrible godhead
In the shape of man; scorn’d by the world, his name unheard,
Save by the rabble of his native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace,
In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword
He brought on earth, to satiate with the blood
Of truth and freedom his malignant soul
At length his mortal frame was led to death.
I stood beside him: on the torturing cross
No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;
And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summ’d
The massacres and miseries which his name
Had sanction’d in my country, and I cried,
‘Go! go!’ in mockery.
A smile of godlike malice reillumined
His fading lineaments,--‘I go,’ he cried,
‘But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth,
Eternally.’--The dampness of the grave,
Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,
And long lay tranced upon the charméd soil.
When I awoke hell burned within my brain,
Which stagger’d on its seat; for all around
The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,
And in their various attitudes of death,
My murder’d children’s mute and eyeless skulls,
Glared ghastlily upon me.
But my soul,
From sight and sense of the polluting woe
Of tyranny, had long learn’d to prefer
Hell’s freedom to the servitude of heaven.
Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
Resolved to wage unweariable war
With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl
Defiance at his impotence to harm,
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand
That barr’d my passage to the peaceful grave
Has crush’d the earth to misery, and given
Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.
* * * * *
“Thus have I stood--through a wild waste of years
Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,
Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
Mocking my powerless tyrant’s horrible curse
With stubborn and unalterable will;
Even as the giant oak, which heaven’s fierce flame
Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand
A monument of fadeless ruin there;
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
As in the sunlight’s calm it spreads
Its worn and wither’d arms on high,
To meet the quiet of a summer’s morn.
The Fairy waved her hand:
Ahasuerus fled
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,
Flee from the morning beam:
The matter of which dreams are made
Not more endowed with actual life
Than this phantasmal portraiture
Of wandering human thought.”
This Ahasuerus is not only the fellow Titan of Prometheus, but he is
the New Ahasuerus-Prometheus who had his fire to bring and his doom to
suffer in England. The events of Shelley’s life between 1812, when he
probably wrote this part of _Queen Mab_, and the latter part of 1814,
added new curses to the eternal wanderings of the Jew. These appear in
that sufficiently wild fragment entitled _The Assassins_, written in
Switzerland, 1814, from which the subjoined passage is selected:
“A young man named Albedir, wandering in the woods, was startled by
the screaming of a bird of prey, and, looking up, saw blood fall, drop
by drop, from among the intertwined boughs of a cedar. Having climbed
the tree, he beheld a terrible and dismaying spectacle. A naked human
body was impaled on the broken branch. It was maimed and mangled
horribly--every limb bent and bruised into frightful distortion, and
exhibiting a breathing image of the most sickening mockery of life.
A monstrous snake had scented its prey from among the mountains--and
above hovered a hungry vulture. From amidst the mass of desolated
humanity two eyes, black and excessively brilliant, shone with an
unearthly lustre. Beneath the blood-stained eyebrows their steady rays
manifested the serenity of an immortal power, the collected energy of
a deathless mind, spell-secured from dissolution. A bitter smile of
mingled abhorrence and scorn distorted his wounded lip--he appeared
calmly to observe and measure all around--self-possession had not
deserted the shattered mass of life.
“The youth approached the bough on which the breathing corpse was hung.
As he approached, the serpent reluctantly unwreathed his glittering
coils, and crept towards his dark and loathsome cave. The vulture,
impatient of his meal, fled to the mountain, that re-echoed with his
hoarse screams. The cedar-branches creaked with their agitating weight,
faintly, as the dismal wind arose. All else was deadly silent.
“At length a voice issued from the mangled man. It rattled in hoarse
murmurs from his throat and lungs--his words were the conclusion of
some strange, mysterious soliloquy. They were broken and without
apparent connection, completing wide intervals of inexpressible
conceptions.
“‘The great tyrant is baffled, even in success. Joy, joy to his
tortured foe! Triumph to the worm which he tramples under his feet!
Ha! his suicidal hand might dare as well abolish the mighty frame of
things! Delight and exultation sit before the closed gates of death!
I fear not to dwell beneath their black and ghastly shadow. Here thy
power may not avail! Thou createst--’tis mine to ruin and destroy. I
was thy slave--I am thy equal, and thy foe. Thousands tremble before
thy throne, who, at my voice, shall dare to pluck the golden crown
from thy unholy head.’ He ceased. The silence of noon swallowed up
his words. Albedir clung tighter to the tree--he dared not for dismay
remove his eyes. He remained mute in the perturbation of mute and
creeping horror.