Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851

That it is the same Philip Van Artevelde we are in company with, the manner in which he enters into this new love will abundantly testify. He has been describing to Elena his former wife, Adriana. The description is very beautiful and touching. He then proceeds with his wooing thus: —

"Artev. … Well, well – she's gone,And I have tamed my sorrow. Pain and griefAre transitory things no less than joy,And though they leave us not the men we were,Yet they do leave us. You behold me hereA man bereaved, with something of a blightUpon the early blossoms of his lifeAnd its first verdure, having not the lessA living root, drawing from the earthIts vital juices, from the air its powers:And surely as man's health and strength are whole,His appetites regerminate, his heartReopens, and his objects and desiresShoot up renewed. What blank I found before me,From what is said you partly may surmise;How I have hoped to fill it, may I tell?Elena. I fear, my lord, that cannot be.Artev. Indeed!Then am I doubly hopeless…Elena. I said I feared another could not fillThe place of her you lost, being so fairAnd perfect as you give her out."

In fine, Elena is conquered, or rather led to confess a conquest already achieved.

"Elena. I cannot – no —I cannot give you what you've had so long;Nor need I tell you what you know so well.I must be gone.Artev. Nay, sweetest, why these tears?Elena. No, let me go – I cannot tell – no – no —I want to be alone —Oh! Artevelde, for God's love let me go! [Exit.Artev. (after a pause.) The night is far advanced upon the morrow,– Yes, I have wasted half a summer's night.Was it well spent? Successfully it was.How little flattering is a woman's love!Worth to the heart, come how it may, a world;Worth to men's measures of their own deserts,If weighed in wisdom's balance, merely nothing.The few hours left are precious – who is there?Ho! Nieuverkerchen! – when we think upon it,How little flattering is a woman's love!Given commonly to whosoe'er is nearestAnd propped with most advantage; outward graceNor inward light is needful; day by dayMen wanting both are mated with the bestAnd loftiest of God's feminine creation.Ho! Nieuverkerchen! – what, then, do we sleep?Are none of you awake? – and as for me,The world says Philip is a famous man —What is there woman will not love, so taught?Ho! Ellert! by your leave though, you must wake.(Enter an officer.)Have me a gallows built upon the mount,And let Van Kortz be hung at break of day."

It is worth noticing, as a characteristic trait, that Philip Van Artevelde speaks more like the patriot, harangues more on the cause of freedom, now that he is Regent of Flanders, opposed to the feudal nobility, and to the monarchy of France, and soliciting aid from England, than when he headed the people of Ghent, strong only in their own love of independence. "Bear in mind," he says, answering the herald who brings a hostile message from France and Burgundy —

"Bear in mindAgainst what rule my father and myselfHave been insurgent: whom did we supplant?There was a time, so ancient records tell,There were communities, scarce known by nameIn these degenerate days, but once far famed,Where liberty and justice, hand in hand,Ordered the common weal; where great men grewUp to their natural eminence, and none,Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great.… But now, I ask,Where is there on God's earth that polityWhich it is not, by consequence converse,A treason against nature to uphold?Whom may we now call free? whom great? whom wise?Whom innocent? – the free are only theyWhom power makes free to execute all illsTheir hearts imagine; they alone are greatWhose passions nurse them from their cradles upIn luxury and lewdness, – whom to seeIs to despise, whose aspects put to scornTheir station's eminence…… What then remainsBut in the cause of nature to stand forth,And turn this frame of things the right side up?For this the hour is come, the sword is drawn,And tell your masters vainly they resist."

We regret to be compelled to garble in our extract so fine a passage of writing. Meanwhile our patriot Regent sends Father John to England to solicit aid – most assuredly not to overthrow feudalism, but to support the Regent against France. His ambition is dragging, willingly or unwillingly, in the old rut of politics. When Father John returns from this embassy, he is scandalised at the union formed between Artevelde and Elena. Here, too, is another sad descent. Our hero has to hear rebuke, and, with a half-confession, submit to be told by the good friar of his "sins." He answers bravely, yet with a consciousness that he stands not where he did, and cannot challenge the same respect from the friar that he could formerly have done.

"Artev. You, Father John,I blame not, nor myself will justify;But call my weakness what you will, the timeIs past for reparation. Now to cast offThe partner of my sin were further sin;'Twere with her first to sin, and then against her.And for the army, if their trust in meBe sliding, let it go: I know my course;And be it armies, cities, people, priests,That quarrel with my love – wise men or fools,Friends, foes, or factions – they may swear their oaths,And make their murmur – rave and fret and fear,Suspect, admonish – they but waste their rage,Their wits, their words, their counsel: here I stand,Upon the deep foundations of my faithTo this fair outcast plighted; and the stormThat princes from their palaces shake out,Though it should turn and head me, should not strainThe seeming silken texture of this tie."

And now disaster follows disaster; town after town manifests symptoms of treachery to his cause. His temper no longer retains its wonted calmness, and the quick glance and rapid government of affairs seems about to desert him. Note this little trait: —

"Artev. Whither away, Vauclaire?Vauclaire. You'll wish, my lord, to have the scouts, and othersThat are informed, before you.Artev. 'Twere well."

It is something new that another should anticipate the necessary orders to be given. The decisive battle approaches, and is fought. This time it is lost. Our hero does not even fall in the field; an assassin stabs him in the back. The career of Artevelde ends thus; and that public cause with which his life was connected has at the same time an inglorious termination: "the wheel has come full circle."

The catastrophe is brought about by Sir Fleureant of Heurlée. This man's character undergoes, in the course of the drama, a complete transformation. We do not say that the change is unnatural, or that it is not accounted for; but the circumstances which bring it about are only vaguely and incidentally narrated, so that the reader is not prepared for this change. A gay, thoughtless, reckless young, knight, who rather gains upon us at his first introduction, is converted into a dark, revengeful assassin. It would, we think, have improved the effect of the plot, if we had been able to trace out more distinctly the workings of the mind of one who was destined to take so prominent a part in the drama.

The character of Lestovet is admirably sustained, and is manifestly a favourite with the author. But we must now break away from Philip Van Artevelde, to notice the other dramas of Mr Taylor. Edwin the Fair next claims our attention. Here also we shall make no quotations merely for the sake of their beauty; and we shall limit ourselves to an analysis of the principal character, Dunstan, on which, perhaps, a word or two of explanation may not be superfluous.

Let us suppose a dramatic writer sitting down before such a character as this of Dunstan, and contemplating the various aspects it assumes, with the view of selecting one for the subject of his portraiture. In the first place, he is aware that, although, as a historical student, he may, and perhaps must, continue to doubt as to the real character of this man – how much is to be given to pride, to folly, to fanaticism, to genuine piety, or to the love of power – yet that, the moment he assumes the office of dramatic poet, he must throw all doubt entirely aside. The student of history may hesitate to the last; the poet is presumed to have from the beginning the clearest insight into the recesses of the mind, and the most unquestionable authority for all that he asserts. A sort of mimic omniscience is ascribed to the poet. Has he not been gifted, from of old, with an inspiration, by means of which he sees the whole character and every thought of his hero, and depicts and reveals them to the world? To him doubt would be fatal. If he carries into his drama the spirit of historical criticism, he will raise the same spirit in his reader, and all faith in the imaginary creation he offers them is gone for ever. Manifest an error as this may be, we think we could mention some instances, both in the drama and the novel, in which it has been committed.

But such a character as Dunstan's is left uncertain in the light of history, and our dramatist has to choose between uncertainties. He will be guided in his selection partly by what he esteems the preponderating weight of evidence, and partly, and perhaps still more, by the superior fitness of any one phase of the character for the purpose he has in view, or the development of his own peculiar powers. In this case, three interpretations present themselves. The first, which has little historical or moral probability, and offers little attraction to the artist, is, that Dunstan was a hypocrite, seeking by show of piety to compass some ambitious end, or win the applause of the vulgar. Undoubted hypocrites history assuredly presents us with – as where the ecclesiastical magnate degenerates into the merely secular prince. There have been luxurious and criminal popes and cardinals, intriguing bishops and lordly abbots, whom the most charitable of men, and the most pious of Catholics, must pronounce to have been utterly insincere in their professions of piety. But a hypocrite who starves and scourges himself – who digs a damp hole in the earth, and lives in it – seems to us a mere creature of the imagination. Such men, at all events, either begin or end with fanaticism. The second and more usual interpretation is, that Dunstan was a veritable enthusiast, and a genuine churchman after the order of Hildebrand, capable, perhaps, of practising deceit or cruelty for his great purpose, but entirely devoted to that purpose – one of those men who sincerely believe that the salvation of the world and the predominance of their order are inseparably combined. There would be no error in supposing a certain mixture of pride and ambition. Nor, in following this interpretation, would there be any great violation of probability in attributing to Dunstan, though he lived in so rude an age, all those arguments by which the philosopher-priest is accustomed to uphold the domination of his order. The thinking men of every age more nearly resemble each other in these great lines of thought and argument, than is generally supposed. The third interpretation is that which the historical student would probably favour. It is that Dunstan was, in truth, partially insane– a man of fervent zeal, and of great natural powers, but of diseased mind. The very ability and knowledge which he possessed, combined with the strange forms which his asceticism took, lead to this supposition. Such men, we know, exist, and sometimes pass through a long career before they are accurately understood. Exhibiting itself in the form of fanaticism, and in a most ignorant and superstitious age, a partial insanity might easily escape detection, or even add to the reputation of the saint.

This last is the rendering of the character which Mr Taylor has selected. It is evidently the most difficult to treat. Perhaps the difficulty and novelty of the task it presented, as well as its greater fidelity to history, induced him to accept this interpretation. That second and more popular one which we have mentioned would appear, to a mind like Mr Taylor's, too facile and too trite. Any high-churchman of almost any age – any bishop, if you inflate the lawn sleeves, or even any young curate, whose mind dwells too intensely on the power of the keys– would present the rudiments of the character. However that may be, Mr Taylor undertook the bold and difficult task of depicting the strong, shrewd, fervent mind, saint and politician both, but acting with the wild and irregular force of insanity. How, we may ask ourselves, would such a mind display itself? Not, we way be sure, in a tissue of weakness or of wildness. We should often see the ingenious reasoner, more cunning than wise, the subtle politician, or even the deep moraliser upon human life; but whenever the fatal chords were touched – the priestly power, the priestly mission, the intercourse with the world of spirits – there we should see symptoms of insanity and delusion. Such is the character which Mr Taylor has portrayed.

Earl Leolf, calm and intelligent, and the perfect gentleman (those who remember the play will feel the truth of this last expression,) gives us at the very commencement the necessary explanation —

"Leolf. How found you the mid-counties?Athulf. Oh! monk-ridden;Raving of Dunstan.Leolf. 'Tis a raving time:Mad monks, mad peasants; Dunstan is not sane,And madness that doth least declare itselfEndangers most, and ever most infectsThe unsound many. See where stands the man,And where this people: thus compute the perilTo one and all. When force and cunning meetUpon the confines of one cloudy mind,When ignorance and knowledge halve the mass,When night and day stand at an equinox,Then storms are rife."

No justice, it is plain, can be done to Mr Taylor's drama, unless the intimation here given us be kept in view. Yet we suspect, from the remarks sometimes made upon this play, that it has been overlooked, or not sufficiently attended to. Passages have been censured as crude or extravagant which, in themselves, could be no otherwise, since they were intended to portray this half-latent and half-revealed insanity. The arrogance of Dunstan, and his communings with the spiritual world, not often have the air of sublimity, for they arise from the disorder and hallucination of his mind. When he tells the Queen Mother not to sit in his presence, as well as when he boasts of his intercourse with angels and demons, we see the workings of a perturbed spirit: —

"Queen Mother. Father, I am faint,For a strange terror seized me by the way.I pray you let me sit.Dunstan. I say, forbear!Thou art in a Presence that thou wot'st not of,Wherein no mortal may presume to sit.If stand thou canst not, kneel.(She falls on her knees.)Queen Mother. Oh, merciful Heaven'Oh, sinner that I am!Dunstan. Dismiss thy fears;Thine errand is acceptable to HimWho rules the hour, and thou art safer hereThan in thy palace. Quake not, but be calm,And tell me of the wretched king, thy son.This black, incestuous, unnatural loveOf his blood-relative – yea, worse, a seedThat ever was at enmity with God —His cousin of the house of Antichrist!It is as I surmised?Queen Mother. Alas! lost boy!Dunstan. Yes, lost for time and for eternity,If he should wed her. But that shall not be.Something more lofty than a boy's wild loveGoverns the course of kingdoms. From beneathThis arching umbrage step aside; look up;The alphabet of Heaven is o'er thy head,The starry literal multitude. To few,And not in mercy, is it given to readThe mixed celestial cipher."

How skilfully the last passage awakes in the reader a feeling of sympathy with Dunstan! When he has given his instructions to the Queen Mother, the scene closes thus: —

"Queen Mother. Oh, man of God!Command me always.Dunstan. Hist! I hear a spirit!Another – and a third. They're trooping up.Queen Mother. St Magnus shield us!Dunstan. Thou art safe; but go;The wood will soon be populous with spirits.The path thou cam'st retread. Who laughs in the air?"

Dunstan believes all along that he is marked out from the ordinary roll of men – that he has a peculiar intercourse with, and a peculiar mission from, Heaven; but he nevertheless practises on the credulity of others. This mixture of superstition and cunning does not need insanity to explain, but it is seen here in very appropriate company. He says to Grumo —

"Go, get thee to the hollow of yon tree,And bellow there as is thy wont.Grumo. How long?Dunstan. Till thy lungs crack. Get hence.[Exit Grumo.And if thou bellowest otherwise than Satan,It is not for the lack of Satan's sway'Stablished within thee.(Strange howls are heard from the tree.")

With the same crafty spirit, and by a trick as gross, he imposes on the Synod, contriving that a voice shall appear to issue from the crucifix. These frauds, however, would have availed nothing of themselves; it is the spirit of fanaticism bearing down all opposition by which he works his way. This spirit sustains him in his solitude —

"I hear your call!A radiance and a resonance from HeavenSurrounds me, and my soul is breaking forthIn strength, as did the new-created SunWhen Earth beheld it first on the fourth day.God spake not then more plainly to that orbThan to my spirit now."

It sustains him in his solitude, and mark how triumphantly it carries him through in the hour of action. Odo the archbishop, Ricola the king's chaplain, as well as king and courtiers, all give way before this inexorable, unreasoning fanaticism, a fanaticism which is as complete a stranger to fear as it is to reason —

"Dunstan (to Elgiva.) Fly hence,Pale prostitute! Avaunt, rebellious fiend,Which speakest through her.Elgiva. I am thy sovereign mistress and thy queen.Dunstan. … Who art thou?I see thee, and I know thee – yea, I smell thee!Again, 'tis Satan meets me front to front;Again I triumph! Where, and by what rite,And by what miscreant minister of God,And rotten member, was this mockery,That was no marriage, made to seem a marriage?Ricola. Lord Abbot, by no —Dunstan. What then, was it thou?The Church doth cut thee off and pluck thee out!A Synod shall be summoned! Chains for both!Chains for that harlot, and for this dog-priest!Oh wall of Jezreel!"

And forthwith Elgiva, in spite of the king's resistance, is carried out a captive. The king, too, is imprisoned in the Tower, and here ensues a scene which brings out another aspect of the mind of Dunstan. It was the object of the crafty priest to induce Edwin to resign the crown; he had, therefore, made his imprisonment as painful as possible. He now visits him in the Tower, and in this interview we see, underneath the mad zealot and the subtle politician, something of the genuine man. Dunstan had not been always, and only, the priest; he understood the human life he trampled on —

"Dunstan. What makes you weak? Do you not like your food?Or have you not enough?Edwin. Enough is brought;But he that brings it drops what seems to sayThat it is mixed with poison – some slow drug;So that I scarce dare eat, and hunger always.Dunstan. Your food is poisoned by your own suspicions.'Tis your own fault. —But thus it is with kings; suspicions haunt,And dangers press around them all their days;Ambition galls them, luxury corrupts,And wars and treasons are their talk at table.Edwin. This homily you should read to prosperous kings;It is not needed for a king like me.Dunstan. Who shall read homilies to a prosperous king!… To thy credulous earsThe world, or what is to a king the world,The triflers of thy court, have imaged meAs cruel, and insensible to joy,Austere, and ignorant of all delightsThat arts can minister. Far from the truthThey wander who say thus. I but denounceLoves on a throne, and pleasures out of place.I am not old; not twenty years have fledSince I was young as thou; and in my youthI was not by those pleasures unapproachedWhich youth converses with.Edwin. No! wast thou not?How came they in thy sight?Dunstan. When Satan firstAttempted me, 'twas in a woman's shape;Such shape as may have erst misled mankind,When Greece or Rome upreared with Pagan ritesTemples to Venus…… 'Twas Satan sang,Because 'twas sung to me, whom God had calledTo other pastime and severer joys.But were it not for this, God's strict behestEnjoined upon me – had I not been vowedTo holiest service rigorously required,I should have owned it for an angel's voice,Nor ever could an earthly crown, or toysAnd childishness of vain ambition, gaudsAnd tinsels of the world, have lured my heartInto the tangle of those mortal caresThat gather round a throne. What call is thineFrom God or man, what voice within bids theeSuch pleasures to forego, such cares confront?… Unless thou by an instant actRenounce the crown, Elgiva shall not live.The deed is ready, to which thy name affixedDischarges from restraint both her and thee.Say wilt thou sign?Edwin. I will not.Dunstan. Be advised.What hast thou to surrender? I look round;This chamber is thy palace court, and realm.I do not see the crown – where is it hidden?Is that thy throne? – why, 'tis a base joint-stool;Or this thy sceptre? – 'tis an ashen stickNotched with the days of thy captivity.Such royalties to abdicate, methinks,Should hardly hold thee long. Nay, I myself,That love not ladies greatly, would give theseTo ransom whom I loved."

These feelings of humanity, in part indeed simulated, do not long keep at bay the cruelty and insane rage or the priest. Edwin persists in his refusal; Dunstan leaves him for a moment, but shortly after returns holding the deed in his hand, and followed by his tool Grumo.

"Dunstan. Thy signature to this.Edwin. I will not sign.Dunstan. Thou wilt not! wilt thou that thy mistress die?Edwin. Insulting abbot! she is not my mistress;She is my wife, my queen.Dunstan. Predestinate pair!He knoweth who is the Searcher of our hearts,That I was ever backward to take life,Albeit at His command. Still have I strivenTo put aside that service, seeking stillAll ways and shifts that wit of man could scheme,To spare the cutting off your wretched soulsIn unrepented sin. But tendering hereTerms of redemption, it is thou, not I,The sentence that deliverest.Edwin. Our livesAre in God's hands.Dunstan. Sot, liar, miscreant, No!God puts them into mine! and may my soulIn tortures howl away eternity,If ever again it yield to that false fearThat turned me from the shedding of thy blood!Thy blood, rash traitor to thy God, thy blood!Thou delicate Agag, I will spill thy blood!"

We believe we have done justice to all the aspects in which the character of Dunstan is here represented to us, but it would require a much larger space than we have at command to do justice to the whole drama of Edwin the Fair. The canvass is crowded with figures, almost every one of which has been a careful study, and will repay the study of a critical reader; and if the passages of eloquent writing are not so numerous as in his previous work, there is no deficiency of them, and many are the pungent, if not witty sayings, that might be extracted. The chief fault which seems to us to pervade this drama, is, indeed, that there is too much apparent study – that too much is seen of the artist. Speaking generally of Mr Taylor, and regarding him as a dramatic poet, we could desire more life and passion, more abandonment of himself to the characters he is portraying. But we feel this more particularly in Edwin the Fair. We seem to see the artist sorting and putting together again the elements of human nature. His Wulfstan, the ever absent sage, his tricksy Emma, and her very silly lover, Ernway, are dramatic creations which may probably be defended point by point; but, for all that, they do not look like real men and women. As to his monks, the satellites of Dunstan, it may be said that they could not have been correctly drawn if they had borne the appearance of being real men. We do not like them notwithstanding.

In the edition which lies before us, bound up with Edwin the Fair is the republication of an early drama, Isaac Comnenus. It excited, we are told in the preface, little attention in its first appearance. We ourselves never saw it till very lately. Though inferior to his subsequent productions, it is not without considerable merit, but it will probably gather its chief interest as the forerunner of Philip Van Artevelde, and from the place it will occupy in the history of the author's mind. A first performance, which was allowed to pass unnoticed by the public, might be expected to be altogether different in kind from its fortunate successors. The author, in his advance out of obscurity into the full light of success, might be supposed to have thrown aside his first habits of thought and expression. It is not so here. We have much the same style, and there is the same combination of shrewd observation with a philosophic melancholy, the same gravity, and the same sarcasm. It is curious to notice how plainly there is the germ of Philip Van Artevelde in Isaac Comnenus. The hero of Ghent is far more sagacious, more serious, and more tender; but he looks on life with a lingering irony, and a calm cynicism: to him it is a sad and disenchanted vision. In Isaac Comnenus the same elements are combined in a somewhat different proportion: there is more of the irony and a more bitter cynicism; less of the grave tenderness and the practical sagacity. Artevelde is Isaac Comnenus living over life again – the same man, but with the advantage of a life's experience. Indeed Artevelde, if we may venture to jest with so grave a personage, has something of the air of one who had been in the world before, who was not walking along its paths for the first time: he treads with so sure a footstep, and seems to have no questions to ask, and nothing to learn of experience.