How could I front the terrible array If yonder vail should part-One flash might end me! What holds them parleying? This abhorred smoke Is worse than Stygian-every breath I draw Is mortal agony.-Leave her I will not In custody of those arch hypocrites [Re-enter Guards, with TAMAR.] Mean ye to stay eternity? First Guard. We stayed not. Had. Peace! Second Guard. (aside to his comrade.) Look how convulsed and pale he is; And see, his breast is bloody." pp. 148, 149. Absalom is restrained by the advice of Hushai, one of his counsellors, but friendly to the interests of David, from immediately pursuing the latter, by which means he has an opportunity of strengthening his ranks, and preparing for battle. The retreat of David with his followers is represented in a masterly manner, and with a great variety of interesting and affecting circumstances. On the morning, the two armies engage near the wood of Ephraim. Tamar, guarded by an escort of twenty horsemen, is placed by her father in the charge of Hadad, to whom he had promised her in marriage. With the exception of one or two passages, which seem a little overwrought, the description of the battle is given with infinite spirit, and the reader is made acquainted with its particulars as they occur by a very ingenious and happy method. Hadad and Tamar take shelter in the tent of an Ishmaelite family, who had come to gather spices in the forest of Ephraim, and the Ishmaelites, as they drop in, one by one, with the bloody spoils of the combat, bring intelligence of its progress. At length the troops of Absalom are routed, and himself slain. Hadad contrives to disengage himself from the horsemen, and with Tamar, under the pretence of providing for her safety, penetrates farther into the solitary forest. In the last scene of the drama, the author seems to have put forth all his strength, and we recollect few passages of dramatic poetry, written since the time of Shakspeare, with which this part of the work will not bear an advantageous comparison. "A sequestered place in the wood, surrounded with thick dark trees: a fountain, near a cave: Enter HADAD and TAMAR. Tam. But why dismount here?-night approaches, Hadad :- See, the slant sunbeams gild but the tall tree-tops, Had. But we must wait the guard. -Come, sit with me Beside this mossy fountain: All is still here :- I will not sit; we must not linger here. My father bade us haste: we disobey, And risk his anger.-Keep thy hands from me. Had. But whither shall we flv? Tam. Where he commanded. Had. To vassal Geshui!-Who can there protect us? Or in Damascus' tributary walls?- Hear me, sweet Princess, bright star of my being, To realms of quietness, where we may dwell After vainly exhausting every argument which his ingenuity can supply, to persuade her to fly with him from the confines of Israel, and dwell with him in peace and happiness in a distant country, he addresses her with loftier and more thrilling rea sons. "Nay, hold! for thou must listen. And, if deaf To fearful ecstacy. [TAMAR startled: he proceeds in an agitated manner.] -Confide in me, And turn thy back on this curs'd land for ever, And I'll convey thee to a Paradise, Where thou shalt reign the worshipped Queen of realms To which this Canaan is a darksome span. Beings shall serve thee brighter than thy dreams: Their hoarded treasures, ere the mighty flood Tam. I know not what I fear when I say, No. Alas! and yet thy passion-troubled mien VOL. I. 2 Had. (haughtily.) Ha? perhaps thou doubt'st my power ? Whom dost thou think me? Tam. Able to achieve What human strength and genius Had. (with scorn.) Human strength! Tam. What horrid thought of pride curls thy pale lip, And ruffles all thy form?—O, look not thus- Had. Still, thou deem'st me Tam. (terrified.) Heavens! O, heavens! But I--the Spirit-I-the Power who speak He then informs her that, while yet an invisible spirit, he had seen her, and had become enamoured of her early beauty, long before her acquaintance with him whose form he now wears. He relates his sufferings from the miseries of jealousy when "that curst Syrian, fresher than Adonis,” became her companion and lover, and tells her that one day finding Hadad newly slain by robbers in a solitary spot, he dared the dreadful consequences denounced against such an act, and entered into and animated his body. To convince her of the truth of his narrative, he shows her the wounds yet fresh on his breast. "Had. Immedicable wounds that thrill and throb He then scoops a handful of water from the fountain beside him, and offers to sprinkle it upon her, and make her bloom and live for ages. She recoils from his approach, abjures his accursed love, and makes her appeal to heaven. "Had. No more--we'll argue after--Thou, at least, Shalt never bear the Incarnate Foe we fear!"-p. 199. He then drags her shrieking into the cavern. A party of Cherethites, the followers of David, appear, and the catastrophe is thus described by one of them, who had ventured into the cavern, and now rushes out pale and trembling. His companions inquire of him the cause of his affright, and what he had seen: "Cherethite. One like the Cherubim, Dreadfully glistering, wing'd, and dazzling bright As lightning, whose fierce-bickering eyeballs shot The blasted body of Hadad is dragged from the cave, an object of terror and loathing, and Tamar is restored to her friends in Jerusalem. The character of Tamar is finely and delicately drawn. A good deal of talent is also shown in the sketches we have of the fearless, fiery, and sanguinary Joab, of the frank and humane Ittai, of the mild and benevolent David, and the ambitious and impetuous Absalom. Hadad, likewise, as it seems to us, is a fortunate conception, and the author has managed it with exceeding art. He has contrived to interest us in his fortunes, before we are suffered to know that he is a fallen spirit inhabiting a human body. His youth, his eloquence, his sensibility to natural beauty, his passion for Tamar, his melancholy, and his tears, for the poet even gives him tears, all conspire to enlist our sympathy in his favour. There is, throughout, something mysterious in his demeanour and language, in the extent of his knowledge, and the efficiency of his agency, and he frequently drops dark allusions to his real character, and seems more than once on the point of revealing it to Tamar. All these circumstances prepare the mind for the disclosure which he finally makes, so that although it surprises and agitates, it does not shock us. Even after this disclosure, our principal feeling towards him is that of compassion, and it is not till just before the conclusion, when all the demon breaks out through his disguises, that we are made thoroughly to detest him. We are also greatly mistaken, if there is not, in the idea of a fiend taking the place of a human soul, and animating a human body, something more palpably appalling, something of more substantial terror, than in the common machinery of mere bodiless phantoms and spectres. It is an idea which our minds, accustomed as they are to speculate on the union of the soul and body, admit without difficulty. It confers on the object of our apprehensions a certain fearful connexion and kindred with our race, making it to walk and dwell among us, in appearance one of ourselves, yet most fearfully distinguished from us by malignity, and knowledge, and power. On a subject respecting which opinions and tastes vary so much, as on the propriety of the introduction of supernatural machinery into works of fiction, it would be arrogance in us to pretend to lay down any precise rules. Indeed, the capacity of being interested by things of this nature, depends so much upon constitution and temperament, and is so variously modified by accident and education, that all principles relating to the subject must be extremely general and indefinite. That author, however, may be pronounced happy in the use of supernatural machinery, who succeeds in exciting by it an interest in the minds of the majority of readers. The most effectual way of doing this, is to have recourse to notions which make a part of the popular and general belief. Now it seems to us that the conception of Hadad is not too far removed from that belief, to be willingly entertained by the mind. The common doctrine attributes to evil spirits an influence upon the minds of men, and it is not stepping very far out of the shadowy and uncertain boundaries of that doctrine, to allow them power over matter. We shall then have no difficulty in conceiving that a fallen spirit may enter and bear about limbs abandoned of human life. We think, however, that the author has given Hadad too large a retinue. We could allow him the "dromedary fiend," as it is only once mentioned by Obil, one of the king's grooms, but the crook-back Maagrabin, a vulgar subordinate devil, lodged, as it appears, like Hadad in a human body, and withal a most unsightly one, is a gratuitous and unnecessary addition. The same thing may be said of the phantom raised by BalaamHaddon in the sepulchre of David. We could wish that all the supernatural agency of the piece were concentrated in Hadad; we are convinced that this would greatly increase the effect which his character, and the part he takes in the action, are fitted to produce. At present, the terrific interest inspired by these is in some degree weakened by being divided among a number of agents. The work before us has been written with no small degree of care. It is a work which will bear more than one reading, and is constructed of materials that will endure. It is delightful to take up a native production, and among so many things worthy of praise, to find so few opportunities to censure. This is not a book in which a few striking and powerful passages appear amidst a waste of surrounding feebleness, like green oases in an African desert. Here are no unfinished characters, no gaps nor obscurities in the plot, nor puerilities of language or of sentiment. Every page bears the marks of unusual talent strenuously and successfully exerted. Into almost every work of taste, there will unavoidably creep, in the course of the composition, |