Ravenna) and (Lancelot of Rimini) the husband of Francesca, who mutually deplore the melancholy which perpetually broods over her, and which they attribute to grief for the death of her brother, by the hand of Paulo, the younger brother of her husband. On the intelligence of the approach of Paulo to Rimini, she had intreated to be sent away; to be sent any where rather than meet him. When she enters she acknowledges her secret sadness. God hath laid a weight incredible Of anguish on mine heart, and to endure it As in the world. But there I had not made not Lancelot. Oh dutiful, though cruel! still afflict me ; Lancelot hints at the possibility of her being melancholy from some concealed attachment; he recalls some ambiguous words which she had once uttered. 'Francesca. Ah—even in their delirium, of the wretched The thoughts are scrutiniz'd: their wretchedness Is not enough, they must be infamous. 'Gainst the afflicted spirit all conspire All, while they feign to pity, hate them. No, I can no more endure, make me a grave: A stranger is now announced; Francesca hastily retires. It is Paulo, who has been at Byzantium, engaged in war for the Emperor of the East. He knew not, and is now first informed by Lancelot, that Francesca of Ravenna is his wife. Paulo's confusion is attributed to his having slain her brother in battle, and he declares, in agitation, that he must depart again, and go where she is not. In the first scene of the second act, Francesca is about to reveal her dreadful secret to her father; she hints to him that she is the slave of an unlawful, though yet ungratified, passion; but while her father is in the first access of anger, and before she declares the object of her attachment, Lancelot enters to to intreat her, at Paulo's desire, to see him once before he departs for ever. He too has betrayed to his brother that he is the victim of a hopeless passion, and concealed the object of it. In the third act they meet by accident, and betray their mutual passion in a scene of exquisite simplicity and beauty. They had before met, they had read together in the romance, and (here the author differs from the tradition, to which Dante so tenderly alludes,) they had parted without any declaration. Paulo had afterwards slain her brother by accident, and thought himself hated by her. She, abandoned by him, had thought herself forgotten. They part in the presence of her husband and father; the secret flashes at once upon the former. In the fourth act is an interview between the father and Lancelot. The father had made Francesca swear, at the foot of the altar, that she was still innocent; and with this certainty, that Paulo loves her and is beloved, but that their love is still guiltless, the brothers meet in mingled hostility and affection. 'Lancelot. Advance, thou wretched man! I am not used My father's power I honour, and am patient. Lancelot. To a brother. Answer me, Paulo-had she been thy bride, And had that man been thine own dearest friend- What hadst thou done? Deliberate. Paulo. How much it costs thee to be gentle. Lancelot. I feel Feel'st thou, My brother, what it costs me? Thou didst name Paulo. Thou alone Deservest to succeed him—What shall I say? Oh how hast thou debased me from my boldness! But am not like to thee. Paulo. He should be no more my brother. Woe unto him who dared to love-I swear it; Lancelot. Me too even now that fierce desire assails- Paulo. Oh! 'twere less cruel, wouldst thou with thy sword I! that most spotless angel of the heavens: Lancelot. And most immodest art thou too of men- Paulo. If guiltily Thy love is not, and do not thou then make me Wretched for ever.' While this generous dialogue is unfinished, Francesca appears; the jealousy of Lancelot breaks out anew, and at the close of the scene he orders his brother into custody, and preparations to be made for Francesca's departure to Ravenna. In the fifth act, the husband, through the father's intervention, entreats a parting interview with Francesca; she is awaiting him, when on a sudden Paulo breaks in with a drawn sword, having bribed his guard. In a vision he fancied that he had seen Francesca slain by her jealous husband, and weltering in her blood; and he is come to defend her. Their language is growing more impassioned, when Lancelot enters; in his fury he attacks his brother. Francesca springs between them, and falls by the hand of Lancelot; Paulo then rushes on his brother's sword and dies. We consider that this single beautiful example would be sufficient to justify our opinions, that the Italians should look at home for for their tragic subjects. Why should not Dante be to them what Homer was to the Greek tragedians? What they will lose in that conventional grandeur which our imaginations attach to the heroic and mythological ages of Greece, they may gain in the truth and natural eloquence of their delineations from the human heart. We are aware that Alfieri, in the opinion delivered by himself on his Don Garzia, pronounces that the fable of that play would have been more truly tragic had the scene been laid in Mycena or Thebes. Why this should be we see not, and we think that we could point out far more true and sufficient reasons for the inferiority of Don Garzia. Alfieri's other play, on a national subject, the Congiura dei Pazzi,' is too evidently the work of a political partizan. But we look with confidence for a still further confirmation of our theory from Signor Pellico. From his power of touching us so deeply, when employed on a subject, even in his hands objectionable, we can conceive with what effect his flow of highly passionate feeling, and the exquisite facility of his language, might be employed on some more pleasing fable. We hope that he will soon allow us to make known to our readers some new production, to which we trust that some of our writers will repay the high compliment of translating it, in return for Signor Pellico's endeavour to make his countrymen acquainted with the Manfred' of Lord Byron; a translation, of which in prose (it should have been in verse) is appended to the Francesca da Rimini. To Signor Foscolo, who is resident amongst us, we may address ourselves more personally. To him, whose mind is so richly stored, not merely with the intellectual treasures of his own country, but those of ancient Greece and Rome; to him, who is a scholar in the highest sense of the word, not merely from skill in recollecting the anomalies of language, and the peculiar usages and force of words (though from the notes appended to his specimen of a translation of the Iliad, we should suppose him profound in this department of learning also,) but from his intuitive power of entering into the spirit and character of the great ancient writers; to him, whose mastery over his own language, the language of Dante, Petrarch, and Tasso, is only so great as to lead him to a somewhat wanton and capricious display of power in inverting it, and condensing it into epigrammatic conciseness; to him we would say, that the name of Foscolo should be known to posterity as something greater than that of the author of Ortis's Letters, or even of Ricciarda. The former work, though eloquent, is far too like Werter, and one of that race is assuredly enough for the world; and we think that the author may be expected to excel even the latter: and let him rest assured, that whatever may be the destiny of his beloved Italy, whether G 3 whether to repose under the leaden sceptre of Austria, or to pass through the fiery ordeal of revolution, he deserves well of that country, who makes her feel that, but for her own intestine discords, she might have been one among the nations. At any rate, though the vivid representations of her own annals under the captivating hues of poetry, should effect little in warning her against those petty jealousies and rivalries which have always distracted and weakened her; though she abandon all hope of doing more than Servir sempre, o vincitrice, o vinta; though she still remain divided and subdivided, and portioned out among different sovereigns-and we see no probability of her being otherwise, in any manner consistent with the peace of Europe and her own internal happiness; still let her be able to pride herself on her poets winning the admiration of the world: let it be her glory in her adversity that the Miltons and Grays of distant countries draw poetic inspiration from her perennial fountains, as it will be an ennobling recollection, should a more fortunate period of her history unexpectedly arrive, if her poets and men of letters shall have consecrated their powers to her improvement and instruction; if they have not only adorned her by their fame, but enlightened her by their generous principle; if they have not only raised her standard of intellectual, but also of moral greatness. ART. IV. Journal of a Tour through part of the Snowy Range of the Himala Mountains and to the Sources of the Rivers Jumna and Ganges. By James Baillie Fraser, Esq. 4to. London. 1820. MANY years have not elapsed since we knew only the name of that stupendous buttress, which supports on the south the elevated Table Land of central Asia, and which, for altitude and extent, has no parallel on the surface of the globe; for although there cannot remain a doubt that some of those extraordinary men, the Jesuit missionaries, scaled this vast barrier, and forced as it were a direct communication between Hindostan and China, through Thibet, from the beginning to the middle of the seventeenth century, their statements are so vague with regard to the geography of the countries traversed, as barely to enable us to trace their route, though at the same time sufficiently explicit to shew that they crossed the Himalaya through Cashmere and Nepaul. Not only the existence however, but the nature of this mountainous region, was known to the ancient geographers. Indeed the closer |