Volume 27 — CHAPTER III. CAPTAIN LEOPOLD INTRODUCES HIS FRIEND. (continued 3)

“There’s some fun here.”

“There’s danger,” was the reply.

The bully stared very hard at the young Irishman, surveying him from head to foot.

“I don’t want you,” he growled.

“Oh! you don’t,” still in the same calm tone.

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“You’ve had your answer, my gentleman. Go back to your luncheon.”

“Not for one moment. I’ve not quite done with you yet. I have heard your observations to this helpless old man”—his voice quivering, his eye flashing—“your brutal insolence.”

“Sir!” starting as if he had been stung.

“Your ruffianly comments,” continued the other. “You knew that your eighteen pence was your armor, and that you could insult both him and his country with impunity. Now, my good fellow, I am an Irishman, and, only that I happen to be in a very particular hurry, I’d compel you to eat that chop.”

“What do you mean, sir?” he gasped.

“Precisely what I say,” replied the other.

“How dare—”

“See here, now, my good fellow, keep your hectoring for helpless waiters and feeble women. I come from a country where the word dare reaps a crop of broken bones. I know you and your mongrel class. And before I leave let me give you a bit of advice. Don’t speak disrespectfully of Ireland until you are sure of your company. The moment you find yourself surrounded by your own set fire away.” And nodding jauntily, he walked to the cashier’s desk, paid his bill, gave the now hilarious waiter a shilling, and sprang into a hansom that awaited him at the door, leaving the bully turning red and white by turns and looking the very impersonation of baffled hate and rage.

“That’s no end of a brick,” cried Pommery glowingly.

“A gentleman to the back-bone.”

“I’ll swear it.”

“Blood will tell.”

“I wonder who he can be? Depend on’t he’s of the right lot.”

“What a nice touch of the brogue!”

“Just a soupçon. I’m awfully sorry he didn’t whip the fellow.”

After some fierce yet gloomy consultation with the manager and a couple of obsequious waiters the autocrat approached the table at which the two swells were seated.

“You have been witness to a ruffianly act,” clearing his throat, “on the part of a scoundrel who has just left. It amounts to an assault in the eyes of the law. I do not intend to let the matter drop here. I’m an Englishman, and I’d take it out of that sneak in double-quick. 800You saw a gentleman assaulted—”

“I saw him assault no gentleman,” said Percival.

“You saw him assault me, sir,” retorted the other loftily.

“I did; but I saw him assault no gentleman,” coolly surveying the bully from head to foot. “You, sir, are what we call a cad. Come, Pommery.”

The autocrat muttered something with reference to “swells,” eyes, blood, and other full-flavored language as the two young men sauntered forth in the direction of “the Garden.”

“There’s nothing to be done at the office to-day; suppose we go to the Park—the Ladies’ Mile. Alice Lindsay has been presented by her uncle, Sir Winifred, with a superb mount; let’s see how she takes to it.”

It is right genial pleasure to lean upon the rails in Hyde Park and watch equestrians and equestriennes flash past on satin-coated, arch-necked, dainty-limbed horses; to meet one’s friends beneath the shade of the elms, and to enjoy a good round gossip, than which there is nothing pleasanter under the sun.

Percival and Pommery knew everybody worth knowing. Nods, becks, and wreathed smiles greeted them right, left, and centre. Fair dames showered graciousness upon them, handsome cavaliers nodded familiarly.

“Well, you Pylades and Orestes, Castor and Pollux, Siamese twins, how am you?” exclaimed a dapper little gentleman mounted upon a rattling cob, reining in and addressing our two friends.

“Ah! Lindsay, you here? I thought you were in Constantinople,” greeted Percival.

“So I were,” perverting his English; “but I left my fez behind me to show my ’fiz’ here. Twiggey voo?”

“How is your sister?”

“Pretty bobbish.”

“I hear she has a superb mount.”

“Too superb, mon camarade. She’s a lucky girl if her collar-bone isn’t fractured before twenty-four hours. The brute is a good brute, but just as fit for a woman to ride as a wild zebra. Here she comes. By Jove! she can’t hold him.”

A young girl cantered up, very red in the face from hard pulling.

“Well, Alice, you’ve had enough of that brass elephant, hasn’t you?”

“Not a bit of it,” cried Miss Lindsay, a bright, aristocratic-looking, blue-eyed, tow-haired young lady, with lines of decision around a saucy mouth, and with a form that bespoke the use of dumb-bells and all those minor appanages relating to the development of muscular Christianity.

“Shall I ride with you?”

“No, Fred; I can do the mile with Bertie,” a younger brother astride a shaggy Shetland.

“Don’t you see two fellows whom you know, Alice?”

“Why, of course I do. I’ve nearly nodded my head off at both of them, and they have jerked the rims of their beavers out of shape,” laughed the girl. “Allons, Bertie.” And lightly touching the magnificent but vicious-looking animal, which she sat à ravir, she started off like an arrow from a bow, followed by the shaggy Shetland.

“Have a lift behind, queer fellows? No? Then I’ll leave you to your meditations.” And Fred Lindsay trotted off in the direction taken by his sister.

“That’s the happiest dog I know, 801Percival,” observed Pommery. “Ten thousand a year, a house in May-Fair, a villa on the Thames, a shooting-box in Scotland, a loving tailor, a careful cook, and the constitution of a horse and cart.”

“He has, as the Americans say, a good time of it. By the way, who’s to woo and win his sister?”

“Dymoke, of the Guards.”

“Why, he hasn’t—but, I say, what’s this? A runaway, by George!—a woman. She’ll get thrown; she reels in the saddle,” jumping excitedly on a seat. “She’s a brick. She’s pulling the brute. Yes—no—it’s Miss Lindsay. She can do nothing. She’ll be killed if she loses her seat. The pace is awful. She’s lost her head. She’s done for.”

Such were the exclamations rapidly uttered by Eugene Percival as the fainting form of Miss Lindsay was borne past him like a flash.

“Magnificently done!” shouted Pommery. “That fellow is a man, whoever he is.”

Just as the young girl was swaying heavily from side to side in her saddle, and about to sink fainting to the earth, one of the onlookers plunged forward, and, seizing the reins of the maddened horse in a grasp of steel, brought the animal almost to his haunches. The swooning girl was thrown violently forward, to be received in his arms as though she were a down pillow cast at him in play.

Percival and Pommery forced their way through the crowd.

“Make way, please; we are friends of this lady,” cried Percival. “Let her have air. Carry her into the shade.”

Miss Lindsay was borne to the pathway and placed upon one of the benches, while some cold water was dashed in her face.

“How splendidly she behaved!” cried one of the bystanders.

“Such nerve!”

“Such English pluck!”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed the gentleman who had been the means of rescuing her, “I know twenty Irish girls who would have brought that brute to his senses without any of this sort of fuss.”

At this juncture Fred Lindsay galloped up.

“Is she much hurt?” he anxiously demanded.

“She’s not hurt at all; she’s frightened.” And half a dozen persons volunteered a statement of the occurrence, all speaking together.

“How can I thank you?” said Lindsay, turning to the stranger. “Let me have your name and address. By Jove! I must do something to express our gratitude.”

“I stop twenty horses a day in the fields at home, and wickeder brutes than that, so don’t say one word.” And ere Lindsay could interpose the other had mingled with the crowd.

“Did you see him?” asked Percival of Pommery.

“Who?”

“The young fellow who rescued Miss Lindsay.”

“Not particularly.”

“Why, it’s our Irishman.”

“So it is. I’m awfully sorry not to have spoken to him. What a fellow he is, to be sure!”

Eugene Percival, amongst other invitations, received a card for a dinner-party at the Lindsays’ for the following Tuesday.

“We’ve been sadly put about,” said Miss Lindsay as he arrived, “groomed to a hair.” “Our party was made up, fitting oh! so nicely. I had my old man and my old lady, and the man who can talk 802opera, and the girl who can talk Tennyson, and my M. P. who can talk politics. I had the agricultural element and the lawn-tennis element, and a man who can talk across the table, and the man who knows everything—yourself—and lo! a wicked fairy bon gré mal gré adds two unexpected guests to my party by a wave of her wand, and spoils it. Isn’t it awful?” cries the hostess piteously, elevating a superb bouquet to her dainty nose.

“What did she give you?”

“Only fancy—two Irish people!”

“This is ironical of destiny,” laughed Percival.

“I won’t know what to say to them, what to do with them. I want you to stand in the gap, Mr. Percival, to see me through this miserable contretemps.”

“Put me down for anything, from the Annals of the Four Masters to dancing an Irish jig. I haven’t the faintest idea who the Four Masters are, and I’ve never seen the jig danced, but ’shure I’ll troy,’” endeavoring to imitate the Irish brogue, and failing dismally, as does every cockney rash enough to venture upon the experiment.

“I’ve never seen these people. I called at their hotel yesterday, but they were out doing St. Paul’s, or the Tower, or the Houses of Parliament, or the Thames Tunnel, as is the habit of tourists proper.”

“How did you drop into this trap, Miss Lindsay?”

“This wise: My uncle, Sir Winifred, spent some weeks last autumn with them in Ireland. He is a man who is ever anxious to repay a courtesy twofold.”

“I wonder, if I lent him ten sovereigns, would he return me twenty?” laughed Percival.

“If it was en règle, he would most decidedly. He, it appears, met them—wherever do you think?”

“I’m sure I cannot say.”

“At Madame Tussaud’s.”

“Sir Winifred at such a place! What an old wax-work it is!”

“He loves that Chamber of Horrors, and every time a murderer’s head is added to it my uncle potters off directly to have a look at it. He encountered his Irish friends in this Chamber last Saturday, and instantly takes them to the Star and Garter at Richmond to dine. He had them at the Zoo on Sunday, last night at the opera, and to-night he has foisted them on me; so you won’t mind roughing it a little, will you?”

“Certainly not. Is there anything Irish in the house? One must talk Ireland, you know.”

“Nothing except a genuine Ulster that never crossed the Channel in its life. We bought it last year at the Robber of the North’s, McDougal, at Inverness.”

“Were you in Scotland lawst year?” drawled a pink-faced young man, lounging up.

“Oh! yes; we did the Kyles of Bute, and the Crenan Canal, and Oban, and on by Ballachullish to the Pass of Glencoe, and we slept at Bannavic, and went up the Caledonian Canal.” And Miss Lindsay went off into a gush of rapture over the glorious scenery of the land o’cakes.

A powdered-headed flunky announced Mr. and Miss Devereux, but in such a manner that the name might as well have been Smith. Miss Lindsay courteously advanced to receive her guests with “So pleased to see you! Called at your hotel yesterday. How long have you been in London? How do you like Babylon? Your first visit?”

803Charley Devereux—for ’tis he—gazes very hard at his hostess. Could he be mistaken, or is not this the young lady whom he “chucked off” the runaway horse?

“Are you fond of riding?” he abruptly asked.

“Oh! passionately. I ride every day.”

“Did you ride in the park on Friday?”

“Yes, and was nearly killed. My horse, a thoroughbred, bolted. I fought him as long as I could. I got giddy, and I can recollect nothing till I found myself stretched on a bench beneath one of the trees on the side path.”

“Were you thrown?” asked Miss Devereux, of whom more anon.

“Well, yes and no. A man in the crowd—a young mechanic, my brother says—stopped the horse and caught me as I was flying through the air.”

“Charley, don’t you know something—”

A look from her brother silenced Miss Devereux.

“Were you present?” asked Miss Lindsay.

“I should rather say he was,” interposed Lindsay, who had just entered, giving a finishing touch to his toilette as he bounded down the stairs. “Why, hang it, Alice, don’t you know that it is to this gentleman you probably owe your life?”

Miss Lindsay opened her blue eyes very wide.

“Is this possible?” she cried.

“Why, of course it is. My dear fellow,” exclaimed Lindsay, seizing Charley Devereux by both hands, “need I say what intense pleasure it is to find my sister’s rescuer in the person of a friend of my uncle?”

“Mr. Devereux,” added Alice, presenting two dainty hands in gloves of many buttons, and impulsively flinging away her brother’s hands, “this is a joyous surprise. Why, Fred told me you were a mechanic—that is,” she added with a blush—“you see he is awfully near-sighted.”

“Don’t apologize, Miss Lindsay. My old home-spun suit is becoming very dingy, but I like it so well that I wouldn’t part with it for one of Smallpage’s marvellous frocks.”

The pompous flunky announced dinner.

“You will take me down, Mr. Devereux. I shall jilt Lord Jocelyn for the preux chevalier who has so charmingly proved that the age of chivalry is not yet dead. By the way, I must do my devoirs.” And summoning Percival from a distant corner of the room, she presented him to Miss Devereux.

He did not catch the name, but, offering that young lady his arm, he moved towards the door.

“Now for pigs and potatoes,” he thought.

He took a good look at the young girl on his arm, and he beheld a very charming form, soft brown wavy hair in a glorious luxuriance, tastefully and neatly bound up in plaits, a fair skin slightly freckled, a nose a little tip-tilted like the petal of a flower, a rich red mouth, and earnest gray eyes shaded by long, sweeping lashes.

“Your first visit to London?”

“My first.”

She turned her face to him, and then he perceived its delicate oval, its low, straight forehead, its pencilled brows, its charming innocence and purity of expression. This was not the brogue he expected to hear. This was not the face or form he had so dreaded to meet. Why, he could get on with this charming bit of Emerald without 804any reference to the Isle, save what it might please her Serene Greenship to indulge in.

“And how do you like London?” he asked, after the gentle fuss of seat-taking had subsided, and every person had opened his or her napkin after his or her own particular fashion.

“It oppresses me.”

“In what way?”

“It is too vast, too grand, too colossal. It wearies. I have had more headache since I came here than ever I earned over my Latin grammar.”

“Latin grammar! Are you so deep as Latin?”

“I have taught Latin,” and, seeing his puzzled expression, “to my very young brothers.”

“By Jove!” It’s all Percival has to say, and he says it.

Miss Devereux indulged in a low, musical laugh at her cavalier’s expense.

“You’re laughing at me?” said the bureaucrat, giving a tremendous tug to his moustache.

“I am,” was her reply.

“Why?”

“It’s singularly amusing to hear an Englishman focus all his energies upon his favorite exclamation.”

“And what do you say in Ireland?” he retorted, somewhat nettled.

“You must ask my brother.”

“If he waits till I ask him,” thought Percival, “he’ll be as gray as a badger.”

Mr. Percival indulged in another gaze at his fair companion, who was engaged in the unromantic task of enjoying her dinner, while he found himself hors de combat after a spoonful of soup and a devilled whitebait. He discovered a certain magnetism about her that irresistibly attracted him. The charm of her beauty was not in her golden hair, whose wavelets threw up the brilliancy of her rich color; not in the pure cream-tinted skin, not in the exquisitely delicate curve of the chin and cheek, nor in the sauciness of her retroussé nose; it was the unconscious pleasure in her face, a joy that positively breathed happiness from every feature.

“How does it come that you have no brogue?” he abruptly asked.

“Oh! dear, yes I have. I would shame the bogs of Ballynashaughnagaun if I did not fairly represent them in the land of the Saxon.”

“Do pronounce that jaw-breaker again.”

“Ballynashaughnagaun.”

“How dreadful!”

“We have longer names than that.” And Miss Devereux, to Percival’s intense amusement, proceeded to run over the townlands surrounding her wild Connemara home.

“Only fancy if a man got lost in Knocka-what-you-may-call-um; why, he’d perish by the wayside ere he could ask his way to the place from whence he came.”

“I am quite prepared to think that you would,” she laughed.

“I’m rather a dab at languages,” he said, with a certain tinge of self-satisfaction in his tone.

“I beg your pardon—a what?”

“A dab.”

“May I ask which of your languages is that word borrowed from, Mr. Percival?”

“It’s supposed to be English,” he laughed.

“Oh! I am so relieved. I was afraid you were going to attach it to Ireland, and then—”

“And then?”

805“Guerra al cuchillo—war to the knife.”

“Are you a dab?—I beg pardon; do you speak Spanish?”

“I do; we are quite an Irish-Spanish colony.”

“An Irish-Spanish colony! In the name of wonder what is that?”

“I’ll tell you. The Infanta, one of the largest of the vessels attached to the Spanish Armada, was wrecked on the coast of Mayo. The survivors settled along the coast as far as Galway. My great, great, great, ever so great-grand-mamma was a daughter of one of the officers.”

“How is it that you come to have such glorious gray eyes?” This was said enthusiastically.

“Do not let that iced soufflet pass, Mr. Percival; it is too good to snub so unmercifully.”

“What a facer!” thought the Foreign Office clerk as he called back the servant with the entrée in question.

Miss Devereux did not understand any gentleman’s gushing in this manner upon an acquaintance of twenty minutes. If young ladies would only ice menkind occasionally, instead of permitting them to say what they will, their sway would be absolutely without limit; but, alas! the girls of to-day are too—but I will not be cynical.

“What part of Ireland do you come from, Miss ——?” He has not heard her name, and mumbles something unintelligible to fill up the gap.

“Connemara.”

“I know some people living out there.”

“Indeed! As I know everybody living out there, I am quite sure we shall discover mutual friends.”

Now, Mr. Eugene Percival, not having the remotest idea of who Miss Devereux might be, imagines that this is a very good opportunity for being very amusing, and he accordingly plunges in medias res without more ado.

“The name is Devereux,” he said.

“Devereux?” she repeated. “There is but one family of that name in Mayo.”

“Of Bally—something.”

“Ballybo?”

“That’s it. Ballybo. Do you know them?”

She gave one short, sharp glance at him. Was this Englishman about to amuse himself at her expense? Was he going to exercise his English stupidity in a practical joke? No; she instinctively felt that Percival was a gentleman and would not dare take a liberty; and she perceived him so full of suppressed mirth that she resolved upon letting him have it all his own way.

“Yes, I know them,” she replied.

“What sort of people are they?”

“Oh! very commonplace, and somewhat old-fashioned in their ways,” hardly able to keep back a burst of laughter.

“I thought as much. I’ll tell you a capital thing that has occurred within the last week.” Here he indulged in a series of gentlemanly chuckles. “I had a letter from Ballyporeen.”

“Ballybo? You, Mr. Percival?” she exclaimed in a surprised way.

“Yes, from an excellent lady, who addresses me as her cousin, and signs herself Martha Mary Grace Devereux, and who informed me that her son and daughter were coming to town, and begged of me to take care of them.”

Miss Devereux, dropping her knife and fork, gazed steadily at Percival. She became very white, 806while a sudden anger flamed in her expressive eyes.

“You, then, are Mr. Eugene Percival?” she said, a harshness in her voice.

“Yaas.”

“Of the Foreign Office?”

“I have the honor to be attached to that blundering institution.”

“If I do not mistake, Mr. Percival, you received more than one letter from Ballybo.”

“Yaas, I got one from a sulky young Irishman who—”

“Have you met him?” she interrupted.

“No, thank Heaven! and I hope I never shall.”

This was uttered so fervently that Miss Devereux, yielding to an ungovernable impulse, rang out a peal of musical laughter so bright, so joyous, so contagious that the remainder of the company ceased their colorless prattle in order firstly to listen and then to join in it.

“You are having all the fun to yourself,” cried Lindsay, addressing Geraldine Devereux. “What is the mot? Do send it round; we want something more piquante than an entrée at this stage of the proceedings.”

Geraldine, all blushes at this unlooked-for notoriety and isolation, declared that her laughter arose from a story that was being narrated to her by Mr. Percival.

“It’s the first time Percival ever succeeded in making anybody laugh with him,” exclaimed a sour-looking old gentleman who wore the red ribbon of a C. B. round his neck.

“Let us have it, Percival, pro bono publico.”

“Is it any secret of the office, Mr. Percival?” demanded Miss Lindsay. “Because if it is there’s ’a chiel amang ye takin’ notes.’ Eh, Lord Jocelyn?”

“Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, I am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison-house,” was Percival’s retort.

“Is it worth hearing?—that is the question.”

“Very well worth hearing,” said Geraldine.

“It’s merely an Irish adventure,” observed Percival.

“Merely? Why, where is adventure to be achieved, if not in Ireland? Come, Percival, let us have it,” urged his host.

This was too good a chance for the member of Parliament. “I was in the House the night the Home-Rulers—” And he commenced an anecdote under cover of which the Foreign Office clerk was enabled to beat a retreat.

“It’s an awfully funny story, but some of the people here wouldn’t see it, you know.”

“I can’t see it yet, Mr. Percival; you have only just commenced. Pray proceed.”

“Well, you see, I got this letter raking me up, you know, and the other letter from the young Irish wolf-dog, who wouldn’t have me at any price. How awfully emerald these people must be to imagine that I could—may I use an Irish word?”

“No,” hotly.

“Bother myself about them, especially in the height of the season.” And Mr. Percival emptied a glass of champagne to his own sentiment.

“Poor things! And you don’t intend taking any notice of them?”

“No more than if they never existed.”

“And are you their kinsman?”

“I believe so, now that I have looked into the matter.”

807“Don’t you think you are acting rather shabbily?”

“So Jack Pommery says.”

“And Jack Pommery is right,” exclaimed Geraldine, clinching her little left hand and bringing it down into the rosy palm of her right.

“Do you know Jack Pommery?” asked Percival.

“I—I have met him.”

“Here?”

“No.”

“It must have been in Ireland, then,” earnestly.

“It was.”

“By Jove!”

This exclamation caused Geraldine to observe Percival. There was a mysterious knowingness on his face that sent the mercury of her curiosity up into the nineties.

“Is Mr. Pommery an acquaintance of yours, Mr. Percival?”

“He is my alter ego, my better man; and I think I have got at his secret.”

“Surely such strong friends have no secrets from one another.”

“Jack kept one bottled up ever so tight, wired down like the bitter beer they send to India. May I ask you a question?” turning abruptly to Geraldine.

“You have asked so many that usage has almost become a right, Mr. Percival.”

“Are you fond of violets?”

A red, red rose-blush spread itself over the young Irish girl’s face and neck and shell-like ears—a blush that came and glowed and refused to be put down—a blush that wooed and caressed and fondled.

“Why do you ask me?” she palpitated.

At this moment Miss Lindsay telegraphed for the ladies to retire, and the usual uprising, and rustle and removal of chairs, and grim punctilio of menkind, and saucy insouciance of womenkind took place. When the gentlemen had reseated themselves the host cried:

“Close quarters, mes braves. Approach to the attack of this fortress of Château Lafitte. Get up here, Percival; you were lost to me for the last two hours.”

In obedience to the mandate of his host the bureaucrat moved more above the salt, and, casting his eyes across the table, he was astonished and delighted to discover the young Irishman who had so pluckily distinguished himself upon the two occasions already detailed in this truthful narrative.

“I am awfully glad to meet you,” he said, taking up his glass and moving to a vacant chair beside Charley Devereux.

Charley bowed stiffly and awkwardly.

“I was at the Albion with a friend last Thursday when you dropped upon that disgusting cad.”

Devereux blushed like a schoolgirl.

“He was a low, swaggering blackguard, and, only I had an appointment with my sister, I’d have kicked him into Covent Garden among the cabbages,” he warmly exclaimed.

“He wanted my friend and I to witness what he called the assault, but we gave him scant encouragement. I also saw you the very same day do a very plucky thing in Hyde Park.”

“Oh! I know what you mean. Pshaw! it’s not worth mentioning.”

“Isn’t it? The eyes of our fair hostess tell another story.”

Charley Devereux drained a glass of claret and remained silent.

“As you announced your nationality at the Albion, I know that you are Irish.”

“To the backbone, I hope.”

808“Do you reside here?”

“No; I’ve only run over for a few days.”

“I shall be glad to make you an honorary member of my club.”

“What club is it?” asked Charley.

“I belong to two, the Garrick and the Reform. I can make you an honorary member of the Reform; at the Garrick we are powerless.”

“Thanks. I won’t trouble you, my stay is so short. I know, at least I do not know, a member of the Garrick.”

“What’s his name?”

“Well, he’s not worth naming. He’s what you call in this country a cad.”

“We don’t patronize cads in Garrick Street, Covent Garden,” said Percival, somewhat coldly.

“Well, you’ve got one full-blossomed cad amongst you at all events—what we would call in my country a shoneen.”

“Of course, as there’s a black sheep in every flock, there’s a shady man in every club. May I ask who this shoneen is?”

Charley Devereux was on the point of uttering the two words “Eugene Percival” when Lindsay burst in.

“I say, you two fellows, you’re snubbing my cellar most awfully. You remind me of two pashas whom I met at a dinner-party at Constantinople, who—”

“Speaking of Constantinople,” interrupted the member of Parliament, “Sir Stafford Northcote on Tuesday night—” commencing a sing-song, Dryasdust House of Commons story which lasted until coffee was announced.

As the gentlemen were ascending the stairs Percival observed to Devereux:

“I took a countrywoman of yours down to dinner.”

“You took my sister.”

“Indeed! You do not resemble one another.”

“There is just a family likeness, that’s all.”

“Do you reside in Dublin?”

“Not exactly; we live in the wildest portion of Connemara.”

“Will you permit me to exchange cards with you?”

“I haven’t got a card, but my name is Devereux.”

“Devereux!” exclaimed Percival, staggering against the wall.

“Yes, Charley Devereux.”

“Of Ballybo, County Mayo?” turning red and white by turns.

“Quite right.”

“And—and—the girl I took down to dinner is your sister?”

“You took Miss Devereux into dinner,” said Charley proudly.

Percival said nothing. The situation revealed itself in a lurid flash. It was too ghastly. Miss Devereux had listened to his miserable story, and, while he imagined he had been amusing her, he had been engaged in digging a pitfall in which it were well he had broken his neck. He had been constructing a pillory wherein he had sat to be pelted with contumely and ridicule. And Devereux, this lion-hearted young Irishman, whose pluck was of the age of chivalry—this splendid specimen of an Irish gentleman whom he had disowned—had written him down a cad. What should he do? What could he do? What could he say? All the water in the Irish Channel were not sufficient to wash him clean of the stains imprinted by his own bovine ignorance. What idiotic folly tempted him to rush into the details of that wretched episode? Why had he not 809acted as a gentleman? Why had he not replied to the letter of Mrs. Devereux and left his card on his kinsfolk? The affair would have died out then and there, and he would have done his devoir. He felt sick and giddy. The worst impeachment is that which comes from one’s self. No sentence so stern, no torture so severe. He felt that, blinded by prejudice, he had acted a mean, unmanly part, and was now hoist on his own petard. Nemesis had followed him, and the sword of Damocles descended how unexpectedly! Of course Miss Devereux despised him. She was civil because conventionality demanded it and because true blood always tells. To her brother he should reveal himself, cost what it would. All that a gentleman can do is to apologize, and the amende honorable was already an overdue draft.

To do Eugene Percival justice, he was not a bad sort of fellow. He was only thoroughly English; and, whilst the English love the Irish individually, collectively they despise them. This farcical ignorance of Ireland and the Irish leads to a deal of misconception, and there are thousands of Saxons who would travel across Central Africa sooner than undertake the four hours between Holyhead and Kingstown, the sixty-three miles separating North Wales from the county of Dublin.

They had reached the drawing-room landing. At the open door Miss Devereux was chatting with considerable animation to Miss Lindsay.

“Mr. Devereux,” said Percival, “will you oblige me by stepping this way?” advancing to where the ladies stood.

“Well, Mr. Percival,” exclaimed Alice Lindsay, “when are we to have your Irish story?”

“Now.”

There was something in the tone that compelled attention. Miss Devereux, with a woman’s quick perception, felt the approaching dénouement, and, like a true woman, endeavored to spare this man his utter humiliation.

“Irish stories should be told in Ireland,” she cried.

“There is one Irish story that must be told here, Miss Lindsay,” said Percival gravely, “and I would beg your attention for a very brief moment.”

“Why, it must be a very tragic one,” cried the hostess. “You are as grave as the entire senate when Othello addressed them,” to Percival. “You, my dear little Irish girl, from being as joyous as Nora Creina, are as sad as poor suffering Erin herself; and you, caballero mio,” to Devereux, “have summoned a winter cloud of frown to your brow, behind it thunder. If Mr. Percival insists let us hear his horrible tale in comfort. Messieurs et mesdames, asseyez vous.”

No one took a seat but the hostess, and she sought a coigne of vantage upon the stairs.

“I hardly know how to begin,” said Percival very slowly. “I can make no amende beyond the utter humiliation the narration of the story will inflict, and no ordeal that I could be put to could possibly prove more bitter. Until five minutes ago I was in utter ignorance that to Miss Devereux and her brother I could claim relationship.”

“Relationship! How awfully jolly!” exclaimed Miss Lindsay, fanning herself violently.

“You, then, are Eugene Percival?” cried Charley Devereux, surveying him with a glance in which 810scorn and anger struggled for mastery.

“I am Eugene Percival, your kinsman. Stay,” he added as Charley was about to interrupt him. “I ask to be heard—that is all. To err is human, to forgive divine. I have made a ghastly mistake; I now eat the humblest of pie. I can urge nothing in extenuation for my silly small-talk. It was weak, it was shabby. I pillory myself. I beg to assure you, my cousins, that within the last five minutes I have passed through a bitter agony. I did not catch your name, Miss Devereux, when the honor was conferred upon me of taking you down to dinner. I had not the faintest conception who you were whilst my stupid tongue babbled. I was not aware that this gentleman was your brother. I did not know who he was until within five minutes. Fate has been playing at cross purposes with me. I offer no apology for my bad form in not replying to the letters I received. There is none that could be accepted. A chain of circumstances has woven itself which ties me to the earth. I can only say that I earnestly hope some chance may be granted me of showing how anxious I am to redeem myself with my Irish cousins.” And making a deep bow, Eugene Percival hurried down the stairs and from the house.

Upon the day following this dénouement Percival called upon Jack Pommery at the lodgings of the latter in New Bond Street.

“Have you been appointed secretary of legation at Ujiji?” laughed Jack. “You look about as cheerful as if you were in for the yellow fever.”

“Drop chaff, Jack; I want to have a long talk with you.”

“Take that chair, old fellow, and out with it, whatever it is,” cried Pommery, rolling a luxurious arm-chair to his companion and flinging himself upon a sofa.

“Jack, go and call at the Charing Cross Hotel to-day.”

“What to do?”

“Miss Geraldine Devereux is stopping there.”

“Miss who?” demanded the other, springing like an acrobat to his feet.

“Miss Geraldine Devereux, of Ballybo, County Mayo.”

“You don’t mean it, Percival!” a great wave of joy passing over his handsome face.

“I do indeed.”

“How did you come by this?”

“I met her at dinner yesterday at the Lindsays’.”

“What!”

Percival repeated his reply.

“And I was asked there, and refused for a vile whitebait dinner at Greenwich,” said Pommery with a dismal groan.

“She is absolutely charming, Jack—so naïve, so frank, so coquettish, and so pure.”

“Are you hit?”

“I would be if my proof-armor had not been buckled on by my friend Pommery. No, Jack, I want to ask you all about these people, and I’ll tell you why: they are my Irish cousins.”

“Not the—”

“Yes, the writer of one of those fatal letters was Mrs. Devereux; of the other, Charley.”

“This is a bad business, Percival,” observed Pommery after a silence.

“It is a bad business. I am written down a cad, and, by George! I deserve the appellation,” cried Percival, smiting the arm of the chair a severe blow.

“Giving those letters to that ass 811Minniver was bad form, and I said so.”

“I have got them here. Luckily, Minniver has been down with Bertie Baging for the Ascot week, and, except to old Fladgate, he has never shown them to mortal. Do you know who Devereux turns out to be?”

“Who?”

“The young fellow who so pluckily sat upon the rowdy at the Albion.”

“By Jove!”

“And only fancy, he did not know who Alice Lindsay was until he came to dinner at Curzen Street.”

“By Jove!” repeated Jack Pommery.

Impart a piece of startling intelligence to an Englishman, and he will always exclaim, “By Jove!”

“Now, Jack, tell me all about the Devereux—all that you know. She has younger brothers. Has she a sister?”

“She has.”

“Younger?”

“Yes.”

“Anything like your girl?”

“She is not MY girl, Percival. I only wish that she was,” he added with fierce energy.

“You should have seen how she blushed when I asked her if she liked violets.”

“Percival!” exclaimed Pommery, “that was hardly fair.”

“Don’t agitate yourself, old fellow; the subject was handled, as we say at the office, ‘delicately.’ How old are the younger brothers?”

“One is about eighteen.”

“Bright?”

“Very. He showed me one of Browning’s poems done into Latin, French, and some other language—I think German.”

“You are certain of this, Jack?” cried Percival earnestly.

“I am certain the lad showed them to me, and that he said they were his own translations. He’s in Trinity College at Dublin.”

“What are they going to do with him?”

“They were speaking of the civil service or the Irish bar. Entre nous, they haven’t much money, and it’s a wonder they have a stiver, they are so recklessly hospitable. Why, my dear fellow, there were fifteen guests stopping at Ballybo while I was there, and we met a whole caravan traversing the beautiful road that runs from Westport along the Atlantic when en route for the train.”

“This is admirable,” muttered Percival, half thinking aloud.

“What is admirable?”

“Never mind. Is Ballybo a handsome place?”

“It’s a fine old mansion of that order of architecture so much in vogue when Queen Anne was busying herself in distributing largess to Marlborough. It is surrounded by superb trees, in which ten thousand rooks keep up a cawing that is almost deafening. An inlet of the Atlantic almost brings the seaweed to the hall door-steps. The stables are fit for the Duke of Beaufort, and I can tell you there are horses in the stalls that would bring their five hundred guineas at Tattersall’s.”

The “Wild Irishman,” as the express from London to Holyhead has been termed, on account of the almost reckless speed at which it travels, was about to start from Euston Square when Mr. Eugene Percival made his appearance upon the platform, and, walking along the line of carriages, suddenly stopped 812opposite a first-class coupé. The compartment was occupied by a young lady and gentleman. The lady was Miss Geraldine Devereux, the gentleman her brother.

Percival had called at the Charing Cross Hotel, merely leaving cards. His visit was not returned. He sent Miss Devereux a box for the opera, with a superb bouquet from Covent Garden. The box voucher was sent back with the compliments of Mr. Devereux; the flowers Miss Devereux retained. For the few days that his Irish cousins remained in London Eugene Percival made no sign.

Removing his hat, he respectfully bowed to the occupants of the coupé. Miss Devereux sat nearest the window at which he stood.

“I have come to beg forgiveness,” he said. “Do not go back to Ireland without uttering my pardon.”

Now, it so happened that Charley Devereux, who had been dining with an old college chum, was in very good humor, all his war-paint having been removed under the pleasurable influences of a renewed friendship. So, thrusting forth his hand, he exclaimed:

“Don’t say anything more about it, Percival. I’m sure you’re sorry. You’ll do better next time, and won’t let your English prejudice bolt across country with you.”

“And you, Miss Devereux?”

“I may forgive you, and perhaps call you cousin, when you shall have made a lengthened tour in my own sweet land.”

“Am I to avoid Ballybo?”

“And commit another mistake?” she archly exclaimed.

“I have done with mistakes for ever.” And as he uttered the words the train moved silently but swiftly away.

About three weeks after Miss Devereux had regained her wild mountain home she was considerably astonished one morning upon receiving from out the post-bag a large, important-looking document with the words, “On Her Majesty’s Service,” in front, and an enormous seal on the back, with the royal arms of England stamped upon the red sealing-wax and “Foreign Office” underneath them.

“Can this be from Eugene Percival?” she thought, as she tore it open and read:

“Foreign Office, July 26, 187—.

“Dear Cousin Geraldine Devereux: I enclose a nomination for the Foreign Office for my cousin, Patrick Sarsfield Devereux, your brother. From the correspondence which has taken place between my dear friend Jack Pommery and my kinsman on the subject of his future, I trust that this opening is one that will prove suitable to his tastes and his talents. It is not impossible that I may visit your ‘impossible country’ when Mr. Pommery runs over for the grouse-shooting. With kindest regards to all my kinsfolk, I remain, dear Cousin Geraldine Devereux, your friend and cousin,

“Eugene Percival.”

“He’s a good fellow after all,” cried Geraldine with streaming eyes, “and has made more than the amende honorable to his Irish cousins.”

813

ENGLISH STATESMEN IN UNDRESS. LORD CARLINGFORD AND JOHN FRANCIS MAGUIRE.

The English statesman whose personal acquaintance I first made was the present Lord Carlingford, who was at that time the Hon. Chichester Fortescue, Secretary of State for Ireland in the cabinet of Mr. Gladstone. I had in my possession a letter of introduction to him, but I was unwilling to use it as a means of “interviewing” Mr. Fortescue. I desired to obtain certain information from him which he might not be willing to give; and I did not wish that my possible indiscretion in asking for the information should reflect at all upon the friend who had given me the letter. I wrote to Mr. Fortescue, telling him simply who I was and what I wanted, and asking whether he would permit me to call upon him. I received a note from his secretary, informing me that at a certain hour Mr. Fortescue would receive me at his office in Great George Street, Westminster. This was before the new government offices in Whitehall were completed, and when the various governmental bureaus were scattered about, hither and thither, in houses that were not altogether magnificent or imposing. By an error of my own in estimating the time necessary for a drive from Bayswater to Great George Street, I was some minutes behind the appointed hour; and when I gave my card to the servant in waiting he regarded me with a reproachful air. “You have been asked for, sir,” he said, as he conducted me up-stairs and ushered me into an ante-room very plainly, almost poorly, furnished. In a few moments he reappeared, and, leading me through a narrow hall, opened the door of a larger room, and I found myself in the presence of the Irish secretary: a tall, slim, thin-faced, handsome man, dressed with scrupulous neatness, rather starched and stiff, not unlike Fernando Wood in his prim correctness. Motioning me to a chair in front of his table, he resumed his seat behind it, and the conversation began. Cold and calm at first, he soon warmed with the subject, and spoke with earnestness and freedom, at times with enthusiasm. Her majesty’s government, he assured me, were earnestly anxious to do justice to Ireland; he thought they had proved this by their past acts. If they remained in power they would convince all the world of their sincere desire to remove every legitimate grievance of which Ireland could complain. He appreciated the force of my suggestion that the reflex action of public opinion in America upon public opinion in Ireland was not to be despised. He questioned me closely upon the extent to which the American press was influenced by Irish thought; were there many Irish writers in the New York newspaper offices? who were they? what were their opinions? were the adverse criticisms upon the Irish policy of the imperial government inspired by them, or were these the spontaneous thoughts of American observers?

814I began to think I was the interviewed and not the interviewer; but Mr. Fortescue was ready enough to answer questions in his turn. It was quite true, he said, that the land question and the question of higher education in Ireland bristled all over with difficulties. If the demands of the tenant-farmers in Ireland were granted, a precedent would be set up that might be attended with most inconvenient consequences in England; if Mr. Gladstone were to propose a measure for university education in Ireland that would be satisfactory to Cardinal Cullen, he would encounter a storm of opposition from the Irish and English Protestants, and from the even then rapidly-growing secularist party in England, that might overwhelm him. I remember the earnestness with which Mr. Fortescue refuted a chance suggestion of mine that Mr. Gladstone was at heart a foe to the Catholic Church. The very contrary was the case; he leaned, if anything, too much the other way. Archbishop Manning was his near and dear friend. He incurred the suspicion and the latent enmity of the ultra-Protestants, and especially of the Nonconformists, by his unconcealed anxiety to compensate the Irish Catholics for the wrongs they had suffered in the past, and to make the future equable and pleasant for them. In Mr. Fortescue’s belief, an American having it in his power to influence and enlighten American opinion, and especially Irish-American opinion, respecting the real wishes of the leaders of the Liberal party regarding Ireland, could not do a better work than to impress upon the minds of his countrymen the fact that England—at least the England of that day—was heartily and sincerely anxious to do justice to Ireland. The success of the then contemplated measures of the government would depend very much upon the spirit in which the Irish people received them.

Mr. Fortescue was evidently not thoroughly satisfied with the state of feeling in Ireland, and he made some remarks concerning the Irish press that it is not necessary to repeat. He returned again, however, to the subject of the influence that Americans, and Irish-Americans in particular, had upon Irish opinion; and his observations upon this point convinced me that the secret-service department of his bureau was not badly conducted. Towards the end of our conversation I mentioned that I had a letter of introduction to him from ——, and presented it, explaining why I had not done so in the first instance. We had a laugh over what he called my “un-American scrupulousness,” and we parted very good friends. Mr. Fortescue is the possessor of very enviable qualities. I was quite convinced of his sincerity; but I reflected that the fascination of his manner when he was aroused and anxious to make a point might easily blind the judgment. We met occasionally after this from time to time; and I last saw him at his residence at Strawberry Hill, where his wife, the Countess Frances Waldegrave (whose own history is a romance), is the centre of a circle of no small political and social importance. The future of which we had talked in our first interview had become the past: Mr. Gladstone had played his trump cards and had lost his game, Mr. Disraeli reigned in his stead, while Mr. Fortescue had become Lord Carlingford and was 815not unhappy. But Ireland was not happy yet; and I ventured to say so to his lordship. “What would you have?” he asked—“Catholic university education on Cardinal Cullen’s plan; a tenant-right law that would make the landlord the slave of the occupier; and Home Rule, under which the tragedy of the Kilkenny cats would be enacted all over Ireland until none were left to tell the tale, or tails. Ce n’est pas possible, mon ami.”

The words “Home Rule” recall the memory of a very dear friend whose acquaintance I made in London, and who has now gone to rest. With sad but pleasant reminiscences I rummage through my letter-cases, filled with cherished epistles, until I come upon a packet tied with black tape and labelled “John Francis Maguire.” He was a splendid man, impulsive and quick, but with a sound judgment that held his emotions under sufficient control; full of lofty and poetic aspirations for his country’s future, but guided in his actions by the most sober and practical common sense. In the midst of arduous political and professional labors, all the more severe from the pressure of a constant struggle with inadequate pecuniary resources, from the demands of an exacting constituency, and from the burning passion of his soul for the happiness of Ireland, he found time for literary work that was at once a source of profit and of pleasure to him. Every one will remember his Irish in America and his Pontificate of Pius IX.; but it is with a pang that I remember the pages of manuscript that he read to me on my last visit to him. They were portions of a novel he was writing—and it was to be a Jesuitical novel. What Eugene Sue had done to vilify and traduce the Society of Jesus he would do to vindicate and exalt it. He described to me the plot; disputed with me over the proposed dénouement; laughed over the skill with which he had introduced well-known personages into the story; and asked me if, under the disguise of Sir Guichet de Nouvelle, I recognized that Don Quixote of Protestantism, Mr. Newdegate.

Mr. Maguire died before his novel was completed—at least, I never heard of its completion. When I first knew him he lived in pleasant apartments in Bessborough Gardens, and there it was I last parted from him. The presentation of my letter of introduction resulted in an invitation to dine with him the next day; and this was the first of a long series of little banquets that we had together, alternately at his apartments and in a cosey room on the third floor of the London Tavern, Fleet Street, where I played the host. Charming were these symposiums, generally held on Saturday nights, because the House was not then in session, and sometimes lasting far beyond midnight. I remember one of these occasions, on a lovely night in June, when, having sat together until two o’clock in the morning, I proposed that we should walk to Pimlico together, where I would leave him at his door. Our route took us through Temple Bar, up the Strand, down Parliament Street, past the Parliament houses and Westminster Abbey, and through St. James Park. The morning air was delicious. At this season of the year the night in London is very short; one can see to read without gaslight as late as nine o’clock, and the stars begin to pale as early as two o’clock in the 816morning. They were beginning to pale as we left the tavern and began our walk. The moon, hastening to hide itself before the sun arose, threw a soft light over the scene; all that was ugly and commonplace in the glare of day was hidden or disguised; all that was beautiful was arrayed in new and seductive splendor. The Strand was almost deserted; here and there a policeman paced his beat; here and there the form of some poor wretch glided out of the shade of an archway, lingered a moment, and disappeared. Trafalgar Square was glorious; the fountains made music for Marochetti’s lions at the base of Nelson’s pillar, and the little lion on the top of Northumberland House seemed to wag his tail as if beating time to the melody. Presently the grand vista of the Abbey and the Parliament houses opened before us; but scarcely had I glanced at it ere Mr. Maguire hurried me through a narrow passage to the left. “Come,” said he, “let us see where a king’s head fell.” I had seen it before—the little square in Whitehall where Charles I. was beheaded, and where the statue of James II. stands, the king pointing with his sceptre to the spot where the head of his father fell. In the daytime the place has a mean and squalid appearance, although the Crescent and gardens around it are handsome and trim enough. At this moment the surroundings of the place were bathed in a light that hid their deformities and enhanced their beauties, and the memories of the tragic scene enacted there had nothing to disturb them. The ghastly drama re-enacted itself before our mental vision. There was the window of Whitehall Palace in front of which the scaffold had been erected. From this window the king emerged; he stood on the scaffold, with his head erect, wishing to address the people; but the troops filled the place, and the populace were kept at a distance. “I can be heard only by you,” said the king to the soldiers; “I will therefore address to you a few words.” And he repeated to them a little speech which he had prepared. A curious discourse it was—grave and calm, “even to coldness,” as Guizot has it. He had been in the right, he said; every one else was in the wrong; the deprivation of the rights of the sovereign was the true cause of the unhappiness of the people; the people should have no voice in government; it was only on this condition that the kingdom could regain peace and liberty! While he was speaking some one touched the axe. “Do not dull the axe,” he exclaimed; “if it is dull it will hurt me.” The executioner directed him to gather up his long hair under a silk cap which he wore, and the Protestant Bishop Juxon assisted him to arrange it.

“I have,” said the king, “a good cause and a clement God.”

“Yes, sire,” replied Juxon. “There is only one more step before you; it is full of agony, but it is short, although it will transport you from earth to heaven.”

The king replied: “I pass from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown; there I shall fear no sorrow.” Then, after asking the executioner if the block was firmly fixed, and saying to Juxon the mysterious word “Remember!” he knelt down and extended his head upon the block. “I shall say a short prayer,” said he, “and when I extend my hands, then—” In a 817few moments the king stretched out his hands; the executioner struck, and the head fell directly over the spot where we were then standing.

“It was a wretched piece of work,” said Mr. Maguire as we walked away; “but the men who did it had the courage of their opinions. Who has the courage of his opinions now?”

“Mr. Gladstone, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Yes, no doubt; but what are his opinions? Those of to-day will be discarded to-morrow. He is all on our side now; there is nothing he would not do for us to-day; but to-morrow, if affairs go wrong, he will throw us over, and Ireland and the church may find in him their worst foe. The man wants a balance-wheel,” continued Maguire, warming with his theme as we walked on, “and only the grace of God can give it him. I think sometimes that he will have it yet. I admire him, I esteem him. If he were only a Catholic he would have a guide that would keep him from mischief. There,” said he, as we came to the end of Whitehall—“there is Westminster Hall, where Charles I. received his sentence; and there is Westminster Abbey, where his body was carried in the face of a blinding snow-storm and buried with maimed rites. There, too, is the door through which they carried the body of his murderer, Cromwell, to bury it among the kings. But the ashes of the kings are yet there, while Cromwell’s grave was broken open, his body dragged out and hung upon a gallows in Tyburn. He deserved it, the brute! Do you know the story of how, after his post-mortem execution, his head was cut off and stuck upon a spike on the top of Westminster Hall, just there in front of us, and how it remained there, blackening and withering in the air, until one stormy night it was blown down and picked up by the sentry on guard, who was an old Cromwellian himself? He hid the precious relic under his jacket, and afterwards sold it to a gentleman in Kent, in whose family the skull still remains.”

Had Mr. Maguire lived a few years longer it is probable that the Home-Rule movement would have taken a somewhat different shape, and possibly might have been brought to a successful realization. When I first met him he was engrossed in developing and shaping his ideas on the subject; and I spent a whole night with him in explaining, in all its minutiæ, our own system of duplex government, State and federal, and showing how State rights and federal sovereignty were both preserved. He was the real father of the Home-Rule movement, and to his untimely death must be ascribed, in a great measure, the present apparent collapse of the party. No member of the House of Commons was more generally respected and esteemed than he; Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli alike regarded him with admiration. Uncompromising in principle, he knew how to be firm without being offensive; and he did not commit the too common error of insisting upon impossibilities. Even Mr. Newdegate cherished a sneaking liking for the man; and Mr. Maguire once happened to let me into the secret of that strange affection. “I can turn the laugh on him any day,” said he, “and if it comes to serious work he gets the worst of it; but often it is best to let him have his fling. Occasionally I give him a lift over a stile, knowing quite well that if he goes on a 818little farther he will tumble into the ditch and scramble out all covered with mud.”

Respecting Home Rule, Mr. Maguire’s favorite idea was a confederation of the three kingdoms, England, Ireland, and Scotland, upon such a basis as that of our Union, with a written constitution defining with exactness the limits of provincial autonomy and of imperial sovereignty. It was to perfect this plan that he made me expound to him, in the most minute detail, the workings of our own duplex system of government; and among his papers should have been found an elaborate scheme for the British Confederation, the joint result of our deliberations. I was summoned to these momentous conferences by such notes as these—and I select with a sad heart the last I received from him, a few months before his death:

“I shall be at home this evening altogether, and would be glad to see you, and we could spend an hour or two over wine or whiskey-punch. Or I shall be at home to-morrow after seven o’clock. Send me a line quick to say when you will come.”

“Wine” and “whiskey-punch” had an esoteric meaning as well as their ordinary significance; for “wine” meant mere gossip, while “whiskey-punch” was understood to be the accompaniment of very serious political discussions.

THE CREATED WISDOM.^[163] BY AUBREY DE VERE. III.

My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine

The boughs of honor and of grace:

Pure as the first bud of the vine

My fragrance freshens all the place.

The mother of fair Love am I:

With me is Wisdom’s name and praise:

With me are Hope, and Knowledge high,

And sacred Fear, and peaceful days.

Be strong all ye that love your God:

He maketh Wisdom to abound

Like Tigris swollen with vernal flood,

Like broad Euphrates harvest-crowned.

Through garden-plots my course I took

To bathe the beds of herb and tree:

Then to a river swelled my brook:—

Ere long my river was a sea.

More high that sea shall rise, and shine

Far off, a prophet-beam of morn,

Because my doctrine is not mine,

But light of God for seers unborn.

819

LOPE DE VEGA.

A prolific playwright, a popular poet, a voluminous romance writer, an author whose fecundity is equalled only by the elder Dumas, the contemporary of Shakspere, the friend of Cervantes, the intimate and guide of Calderon, the founder of the Spanish national drama—Lope de Vega was all these, and yet today he is carefully forgotten. His biography even remains unwritten. The attempt, it is true, has been made, with more or less success, in England by Lord Holland, in America by Mr. Ticknor, and in France by M. Damas-Hinard. None is fully satisfactory; all three are too prejudiced, the first two against him, the last in his favor. Mr. Ticknor’s is the fairest and the ablest. But the space in a history of literature which can be assigned to any one author is necessarily too limited to permit the introduction of a full-length portrait; with a slight sketch, or a kit-cat at best, we must content ourselves. The articles in the various encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries are either scant or in great part taken from Lord Holland’s book. Much biographical material exists, scattered here and there, and needing only judicious gleaning. But a few months after his death La Fama Postuma, a eulogy containing many curious details of his manner of life, was published by his friend and follower, Montalvan, whom Valdivielso calls the “first-born of Lope de Vega’s genius.” The allusions to him in the works of his contemporaries are copious; but his bare biography can be condensed into a few lines.

Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born at Madrid, November 25, 1562. He was a precocious child, reading Latin as well as Spanish at the age of five, and at eleven he wrote his first plays. Left alone in the world at the age of fourteen by the death of his father, also a poet, he travelled as far as Segovia with a school-fellow. Their money gave out, and when they attempted to sell a gold chain to pay their way back they were arrested. The corregidor before whom they were brought, seeing that they were but school-boys, kindly sent them back to Madrid in care of an alguacil. At fifteen Lope was a soldier warring in Portugal and Africa. At sixteen he was the page and secretary of Geronimo Manrique, Bishop of Avila, and also studied and took the degree of Bachelor at the University of Alcala. While in the bishop’s house he wrote a few eclogues and a pastoral comedy. Then he became the secretary of Antonio, the grandson of the great Duke of Alva; his Arcadia, written then, is more or less an account of the gallant adventures of his patron. Returning to the bishop, he was about to become a priest when he fell in love, and in 1584 he married Doña Isabella d’Urbina. Quarrelling with a hidalgo of little reputation, he was arrested, by the aid of Claudio Conde released from prison, and exiled; he lived two years in Valencia, and there he first regularly wrote for the stage. Shortly after 820his return to Madrid his wife died, and in conjugal despair he embarked on the famous Armada, finding time to write a poem, “The Beauty of Angelica,” a continuation of the Orlando Furioso, before the dispersion and destruction of the great fleet by Drake. After travelling in Italy he returned to Spain and became the secretary of the Marquis of Sarria. In 1597 he married Doña Juana de Guardio. For nearly ten years Lope de Vega seems to have been quietly happy, devoting himself to the care of his son Carlos, but in 1607 or 1608 both his wife and his son died, leaving him an infant daughter. During these years he had been writing steadily for the stage; in 1609 he delivered his Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias, and in the same year he became a priest. He was also a Familiar of the Inquisition—an honorary distinction, attesting the purity of his Catholic blood, and conferring the privilege of being called into the service of the institution. In 1625, according to Mr. Ticknor, “he entered the congregation of the native priesthood of Madrid, and was so faithful and exact in the performance of his duties that in 1628 he was elected to be its chief chaplain.” After working for the theatre for forty years, in 1630 he definitely renounced dramatic authorship. In 1628 the pope, Urban VIII., wrote him an autograph letter, conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity and naming him a Knight of the Order of Malta. For more than twenty-five years he daily devoted some portion of his time to the service of the church; on the title-page of his plays he calls himself Frey Lope de Vega, Familiar of the Inquisition, and the last important work he published was Dorotea, a long prose romance in dialogue, probably slightly autobiographical. Finally, on August 27, 1635, at the age of seventy-three, Lope Felix de Vega Carpio died. The funeral ceremonies, lasting nine days, were magnificent; the eulogistic poems published in Spain and Italy would fill several volumes; and “most solemn of all,” says Mr. Ticknor, generally disposed to underrate Lope de Vega’s popularity and ability, “was the mourning of the multitude, from whose dense mass audible sobs burst forth as his remains slowly descended from their sight into the house appointed for all living.”

For forty years the works of Lope de Vega had filled the theatres not only of Spain but of all Europe. There were but two dramatic companies in Madrid when he began to write; there were forty when he ceased. He composed over fifteen hundred dramas and an unknown number of lighter pieces, in addition to his non-theatrical works. He was as popular as he was prolific. Not only in Europe but in America were his plays performed. One of his comedies, the Fuerza Lastimosa, was even exhibited within the seraglio at Constantinople. His merit was so universally recognized that to call anything a Lope was to stamp it as being sterling; it was sufficient to say es de Lope. When the king and queen of Spain met him in the street they caused their carriage to stop, that they might better see the illustrious man. The Spanish dramatists of his own and the succeeding age did not hesitate to call him their master. Tirso de Molina, Alarcon, Calderon, and Guillen de Castro hail him as their chief. And he was as popular a man as he was an author; he was 821personally beloved by nearly all his contemporaries; he had few enemies and many friends. A gentleman by birth, breeding, and education, he had a kind word for all. He was handsome and agile. He wittily declared that he disliked only those who ask a person’s age without matrimonial intentions, those who take snuff in the presence of their superiors, those old men who dye their locks, those churchmen who consult gypsies, and those men who, though born of woman, yet speak ill of the sex.

Although it is as a playwright that he is best known, yet he was the author of many other works. He wrote two heroic, four mythological, four historical poems (among which was La Dragontea, devoted to the abuse of Sir Francis Drake), one burlesque (La Gatomachia, describing the loves and rivalries of two cats), many descriptive and didactic verses, and a multitude of sonnets and epistles. He was also the author of eight almost interminable prose novels. His plays, however, are the noblest monument of his genius, although he himself thought otherwise. He declared that his autos (a sort of revival of the mysteries and moralities of the middle ages) were his best works, and regretted that he had not devoted his whole life to religious poetry.

His dramas (the Spanish word comedias meaning merely plays) may be roughly divided into three classes:

1. Comedies of common life, or domestic dramas;

2. Heroic dramas, which perhaps might sometimes be called tragedies; and

3. Comedies of intrigue, or comedias de capa y espada (comedies of Cloak and Sword, as the Spanish call them, from those frequently-used “properties”).

He also wrote religious plays, some, like the autos, resembling the mysteries and moralities, others more infused with a modern and secular spirit. He often chose Scriptural subjects for his plays, and in some of his heroic dramas the heroes are holy men and saints. But it is especially in the comedias de capa y espada that he excelled. They were interesting stories thrown into dramatic shape and written with the view of exciting surprise and curiosity. Only those ignorant of the Spanish habits and the Spanish customs of that day will reproach him for his frequent use of duels and disguises. He faithfully transcribed the romantic existence of the time. A rigid examiner may declare that his most successful pieces were comedies of intrigue rather than comedies of manners. They please by their plot, always ingenious and almost always original; by their interest, always sustained and exciting. Lope de Vega was a thorough master of stage effect. He weaves and reweaves the web and woof of his story, gaining and retaining the attention of the spectator by the growing interest. We are carried rapidly along by the skill of the dramatist, sometimes in spite of ourselves. Even in the best of his plays the incidents are often improbable, but in our enjoyment we can readily pardon this. When Shakspere has called Bohemia a desert country by the sea, and Beaumont and Fletcher speak of Naples as though it were an island, it would indeed be strange if Lope were exempt from such errors. In one play we find Adam and Eve “dressed very gallantly after the French fashion”; in another Nero 822sings a serenade in the streets of Rome. The American Indians discourse of Diana and Phœbus; Cyrus the Great, after his ascension to the throne, marries a shepherdess; Job, David, Jeremias, and St. John the Baptist are introduced in one play; and in “The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus,” among the dramatis personæ are Providence, Imagination, The Christian Religion, Idolatry, and a Demon. Haste is hardly an excuse for this, and De Vega worked in haste. The elder Dumas wrote a novel in seventy-six consecutive hours. For fifteen days De Vega wrote an act a day, and more than one hundred of his plays were written within twenty-four hours each. At least this seems to be the meaning of

“Pues mas de ciento en horas veinticuatro

Pasaron de las musas al teatro.”

Mr. Ticknor, however, reads these lines to mean that more than a hundred were performed within twenty-four hours after their completion. Perhaps this interpretation is accurate, but to any one acquainted with the difficulties attending the mounting and rehearsing of a modern comedy it seems, to say the least, improbable; and, at any rate, De Vega’s facility of composition was so great that many writers rashly assert that he could compose a play in three or four hours! Montalvan tells a pleasant anecdote illustrating the rapidity of his work. To oblige a manager Lope and Montalvan agreed to write a piece together. The first two acts of the Tercera Orden de San Francisco were divided between them, each writing an act a day. The third act was to be halved into eight leaves each. Montalvan continues, to quote Lord Holland’s version: “As it was bad weather, I remained in his house that night, and, knowing that I could not equal him in the execution, I had a fancy to beat him in the despatch of the business. For this purpose I got up at two o’clock, and at eleven had completed my share of the work. I immediately went out to look for him, and found him very deeply occupied with an orange-tree that had been frost-bitten in the night. Upon my asking him how he had gone on with his task he answered: ‘I set about it at five, but I finished the act an hour ago, took a bit of ham for breakfast, wrote an epistle of fifty triplets, and have watered the whole of the garden—which has not a little fatigued me.’ Then, taking out the papers, he read me the eight leaves and the triplets—a circumstance that would have astonished me had I not known the fertility of his genius and the dominion he had over the rhymes of our language.” At this period Lope was nearly seventy years old, or such a trifle would scarcely have tired him.

Schlegel draws a brilliant comparison between Lope de Vega and Shakspere, or rather between the Spanish and the English stage. Any such method of measurement injures the Spaniard; it is only in the management of his plots that he is able to rival the Englishman. It is curious, however, to note that each great writer was surrounded by minor lights—set, as it were, with glittering but inferior gems. Shakspere shone in the midst of a glorious company containing Jonson, Ford, Fletcher, Beaumont, Greene, Nash, Marlowe, Massinger, and Webster. Lope de Vega, following Lope de Rueda, was surrounded by a brilliant throng of 823friendly rivals—Cervantes, Calderon, Montalvan, Moreto, Alarcon, Matos-Fragoso, and Guillen de Castro. It is also remarkable to find that England and Spain, then the possessors of a great drama, are now barren fields; while France, once but the empty echo of the classic muse, is to-day the chief country in possession of a living dramatic literature. For this literature France owes largely to England and Spain; French tragedy and French comedy are directly indebted to Lope’s influence. From a play of Guillen de Castro, one of Lope’s followers, Corneille derived his Cid, the greatest French tragedy; and from a play of Alarcon, another of Lope’s followers (and the first of American dramatic authors, for by birth and education he was a Mexican), Corneille took his Menteur, the earliest of French comedies. In a letter to Boileau Molière said: “I owe much to the Menteur. At the time it appeared I desired to write, but I was uncertain as to what I should write. My ideas were confused; this work came and defined them. Without the Menteur, no doubt, I should have written some such comedies of intrigue as the Etourdi and the Dépit Amoureux, but perhaps I should never have written the Misanthrope.”

The dramatis personæ of Lope’s plays are not character studies, finely and fully polished, like those of Molière; they are rather off-hand sketches, fresh and original. Although they often disclose haste, they always show the firm though rapid touch of a master; and however wanting in completeness of detail, they never lack boldness of outline. The people who walk and talk in Lope de Vega’s comedies are living men and women, speaking and acting like human beings, and true to human nature as it was in Spain in those adventurous times; they were not lay figures, mere puppets, pulled hither and thither by visible wires. He rarely created an eccentric character, never an impossible one.

He did not allow himself Molière’s privilege of taking his material wherever he found it. Only once is it known that he used the work of another: his Esclavos in Argel is based on Cervantes’ Trato de Argel. He was an originator—copied, not copying; and if at times his characters seem to lack novelty, it is perhaps in part because we live in the nineteenth century and he wrote in the sixteenth. For two centuries and a half the playwrights of the world have been pillaging him until his people and his plots have become public property. Calderon copied him; Molière and Corneille carried Calderon to France; the English stole from all three; so it is small wonder that what Lope de Vega transcribed from nature is now typical and traditional. He was first in the field; others have stolen his pressed flowers.

A full exposition of De Vega’s ideas of dramatic art can best be found in his own essay on the subject, the Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias. It would seem from this essay that in Lope’s time Spain was slowly freeing herself from the fetters of the unities, first riveted by Aristotle. England had set the example; Spain was fast following. In these two countries the fierce fight was then fought that two centuries and a half later was to agitate France. Spain then had her battle between the Romantics and the Classics, and Lope de Vega, while ironically deferential to the 824ancient laws, fought foremost on the side of freedom. As in France Victor Hugo in 1830, so in Spain Lope de Vega in 1600. Both were leaders; both have written essays on dramatic art. It is curious to compare the Spanish writer’s Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias with the French author’s elaborate and scientific discussion of dramatic effect contained in the celebrated preface to his never-acted Cromwell.

The Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias was written in 1609 at the request of one of those numerous academies then existing in Spain, and founded in imitation of the Italian Della Cruscans. It contains internal evidence of haste in its construction; although he knew better, Lope carelessly mistakes Terence for Plautus. Capable of composing a comedy in a day, he may easily have dashed off this little essay in a very few hours. It is written in blank verse, only the last two lines of each stanza rhyming. The stanzas, also, are of unequal length. Although the essay seems almost an improvisation, it is extremely interesting not only to the student of his plays but also to the casual reader, as it gives a view of the state of the Spanish stage at the time not elsewhere to be found. The following unabridged English rendering of the essay has been made from the excellent French version of M. Damas-Hinard:

“Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias.

(The New Art of Writing Plays.)

“Noble minds, flower of Spain, who, in this illustrious academy, will soon have surpassed not only those academies of Italy which Cicero, emulating Greece, established in the land where sleep the waters of Avernus, but even that school of Plato in which Athens saw so rare an assembly of philosophers come together, you order me to write you an essay on dramatic art in accordance with the public taste to-day. This task seems easy, and, indeed, it would be to him among you who has worked the least for the stage, and who therefore better knows the rules; but it must be done by me, who have never composed except contrary to the rules of the art. It is not, thank Heaven! that I do not know them: these theories were familiar to me when I was yet a school-boy, and when the sun had not ten times passed from Taurus to Pisces; but at the time when I chose this career I found the stage filled with works very different from those which the first inventors of the art left as models, and such, indeed, as were composed by the barbarians, who had accustomed the vulgar to their crudities. And they have so thoroughly established themselves in this fashion that he who would now write for the theatre according to the precepts of the art dies without glory and without reward; for among those who lack the enlightenment of a superior mind custom always carries the day.

“Several times, it is true, I have written following these principles, which but few people know; but as soon as I see these monstrous compositions appear, full of magical apparitions, to which rush the crowds and the women, always worshipping such absurdities, then I return to my barbarian habits. And when I have a comedy to write I lock up the rules behind triple bolts; I cast Plautus and Terence out of my study for fear of hearing their cries, for truth calls aloud in these dumb books; and I then write according to the art invented by those who wished to gain the applause of the crowd. After all, as it is the public who pays for these absurdities, ’tis but just that it be served to its taste.

“True comedy has one aim, as has every kind of poem, and this aim is to imitate the action of men and to paint the manners of the age in which they lived. Now, every poetical imitation is composed of three things: dialogue, versification, harmony or melody. Comedy and tragedy agree in this; but they differ, inasmuch as the former represents the action of the lower orders, and the latter only concerns itself with kings and high personages. Judge from that how much may be said against our comedies.

“At first our pieces were called autos, because they confined themselves to the imitation of common actions and interests. Among us Lope de Rueda was 825the model of this style; his comedies, which have been printed, are in prose, and of an order so low that he has introduced artisans and traces the loves of a blacksmith’s daughter. To-day we call them interludes, these antique works in which the rules of art are carefully observed, in which the action is simple and takes place among the middle classes—for an interlude was never seen in which kings figured. And this explains how plays little by little fell into deep discredit because of the lowness of style, and how they put kings and princes into comedy, to the great satisfaction of the ignorant.

“In the beginning of his Ars Poetica Aristotle relates, in a manner quite obscure, it is true, the debate which took place between Athens and Megara touching the originator of the theatre—the Megarians attributing this glory to Epicharmus, while the Athenians claimed it for Magnes. Donat traces back the first attempts to the ancient sacrifices, and, in this respect following Horace, he attributes the origin of tragedy to Thespis, and that of comedy to Aristophanes. The Odyssey of Homer is the result of a comic inspiration, but the Iliad was the noble model of tragedy. It is in imitation of this poem that is composed my Jerusalem, which I have called a tragic epic. They commonly call by the name of comedy the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso of the celebrated poet Dante Alighieri, and Manetti gives the reasons for this in the preface to that poem.

“All the world knows that comedy, falling into disrepute, was condemned to silence for a time; that after that came the satyres, which, being still more cruel, passed away more promptly; and that then the new comedy was born.

“In the beginning dramatic works consisted but of choruses. Soon there was added a certain number of characters. But Menander, followed in this by Terence, rejected the choruses as tedious. This latter was a most scrupulous observer of the precepts; never did he raise the style of comedy to a tragic loftiness, wiser in that respect than Plautus, whom they have so much reproached for this fault.

“Tragedy is founded on fact, comedy on fiction, and the latter was called ‘flat-footed’ because it was played without cothurnus or scenery, and because it took its plots from the humblest classes. Yet then, as now, there were several kinds of comedy: there were pallium comedies and toga comedies, and pantomimes, and fabulæ atellanæ and tabernariæ.

“The Athenians, who gave prizes to their dramatic poets and to their actors, in their comedies rebuked wickedness and vice with antique elegance. This is why Cicero called comedy the mirror of manners, the image of truth—sublime attribute which raises Thalia to the rank of history, and which shows us how much she merits esteem and honor.

“But already it seems to me that you draw back, saying: ‘What use is this translating of books and this fatiguing show of erudition?’ Believe me, it is not without motive that I recalled to your memory all these things; I wished to let you see that you have asked me for an essay on dramatic art in Spain, where all plays are written contrary to art, and I wished to declare that our pieces are not according to right or the ancient rules. But let us leave this; you have recourse to my experience, and not to what I may have been able to learn of an art which tells us the truth, but to which the vulgar prefer the false.

“If, then, you asked me for the rules of the art, I should refer you to the wise and learned Rebortelo, and you would see explained in his book on Aristotle or on comedy what otherwise is scattered in a crowd of works without order and without light. But since you ask the opinion of those now in possession of the stage, acknowledging that the public has the right to establish the incongruous laws of our dramatic prodigy, I will tell you my idea, and your command must excuse my temerity. I should like, since the public is in error, to deck this error with agreeable colors; I should like, since it is no longer possible to follow the ancient rules, to find a mean between the two extremes.

“First choose the subject of your comedy, and, in spite of the old precepts, do not disquiet yourself whether there be or be not kings among your characters. I ought not to conceal, however, that our king and lord, Philip the Prudent, was angry every time he beheld a king on the stage, either because he saw in that a violation of the rules of the art, or because he thought that even in fiction the royal authority should not be presented too near the gaze of the people.

826“Besides, in this we draw near to the ancient comedy, in which Plautus did not fear to place even gods, as the part he gives Jupiter in the Amphitryon proves. Heaven knows it is difficult for me to approve of this. Even Plutarch, in speaking of Menander, formally blames ancient comedy; but since we in Spain have renounced the rules of the art and treat it cavalierly, this time the classicists are silenced.

“In mingling the tragic and the comic, and Terence with Seneca (from which results a species of monster like the Minotaur), you will have one part of the piece serious and the other farcical. But this variety pleases very much. Nature herself gives us the example of it, and it is from such contrasts that she gains her beauty.

“Take care only that your subject presents but one action; take care that your story is not overcharged with episodes (that is to say, with things which lead away from the main idea), and that no part can be detached without overthrowing the whole edifice. Do not trouble yourself about confining all the action within the space of one day, although it is the rule of Aristotle; we have already rejected his authority in mingling tragedy and comedy. Let us content ourselves with reducing the time as much as may be possible, unless the poet composes a story the action of which extends over several years, and in this case he could place the intervals of time in the ‘waits’—as, for instance, if one of his characters has a journey to take. These liberties, I know, disgust the critics. Well, the critics may stay away from our pieces.

“How many of these fellows cross themselves in horror, seeing several years given to an action which ought to be accomplished in the space of an artificial day—for they would not even accord us the twenty-four hours! For my part, considering that the eager curiosity of a Spaniard seated at the play cannot be satisfied even by showing him all the events from Genesis to the day of the Last Judgment in two hours, I think that, if our duty is to please the spectators, it is right that we should do all that is necessary to gain this end.

“The subject once chosen, write your piece in prose, and divide it into three acts, doing your best that each act, if it is possible, embrace but the space of one day. Captain Viruès, an illustrious writer, first put comedy in three acts, which before had gone on all fours like a child; and truly it was then in its infancy. I myself, at the age of from eleven to twelve years, wrote in four acts and four sheets, for each act was contained in a sheet of paper. In those days they played three little interludes in the intervals of the acts, and now it is much if they play even one, which is immediately followed by a dance. Dancing, however, fits so well into comedy that Aristotle approves of it, and Atheneus, Plato, and Xenophon do not blame it, except when it is not decent,^[164] like that of Callipedes. The dance seems to me to replace amongst us the chorus of the ancients.

“The subject being treated in two ways, let them from the start be joined and well connected together until the end of the piece, so that one can divine the dénouement but at the last scene; for when the spectators know it they turn their faces to the door and their backs to the actors, to whom they have listened for three hours with interest, and of whom they think no more when they no longer need them to know what will be the result.

“Let the stage rarely remain empty. These delays make the spectator impatient and uselessly prolong the play; and besides being a great fault, to avoid it is to add art and grace to the work.

“Then begin to versify, and in your language, always choice, use neither brilliant thoughts nor witty remarks when you treat of domestic affairs; it suffices in such a case to imitate the conversation of two or three persons. But when you bring upon the stage a character who exhorts, counsels, or dissuades, you can allow yourself the use of fine language and striking ideas, and in this you will imitate nature; for when we give advice, when we wish to encourage or deter, we speak in a manner totally different from familiar chat. In this regard we follow the opinion of the rhetorician Aristides, who desires that the language of comedy should be clear, pure, and easy, like that of ordinary conversation, adding also that it should differ essentially from the tragic style, 827where we may use expressions pompous, sonorous, and glittering.

“Never quote Scripture, and take care never to offend taste by an affected erudition; to imitate the language of conversation you need name neither hippogriffs nor centaurs, nor the other mythological entities.

“If you make a king discourse, let it be with the dignity proper to the royal majesty; let the old man express himself with sententious gravity; let the conversation of lovers be replete with such lively sentiments as to move those who hear. In monologues let the character be totally changed; by this transformation let him force the spectators to identify themselves with him; let him speak and reply to himself in a natural manner; and if he bemoans a lover’s lot, let him not forget the respect due to the fair sex. Under all circumstances let the ladies preserve the modesty they ought to have; and if they don male attire (which is always very agreeable to the public), let this change of costume have a reasonable motive. In short, never paint impossible things, for the first maxim is that art can only imitate the possible.

“Let not a servant treat too lofty subjects, and take care not to put into his mouth those witty sayings which we have seen in some foreign comedies.

“Let your characters never forget their nature; let them remember at the end what they have said at first, lest we make the same reproach to them as was made to the Œdipus of Sophocles—that he had forgotten his fight with Laïus.

“Adorn the end of your scenes with some swelling phrase, with some joke, with lines more carefully polished, so that the actor at his exit does not leave the audience in ill-humor.

“In the first act lay the foundation; in the second let the complications commence, and contrive in such a way that until half through the third act no one can foresee the end. Always deceive the curiosity of the spectator by showing him, as though possible, a result entirely different from that to which the incidents seem to point.

“Let the versification be tastefully appropriate to the subject you treat. Decasyllabic lines suit lamentations; the sonnet is well placed in a monologue; descriptions demand the romantic stanza, although they are as brilliant as possible in octosyllabic metre. Triple-rhymed lines are reserved for grave affairs, and the redondillas^[165] for lovers’ conversations.”

The sound sense of this little essay shows how thoroughly De Vega understood his subject. Writing to please the populace, not the learned and possibly hyper-critical, he had studied the playgoer and knew all his peculiarities—how to please him and how to take liberties with impunity. His comedies of Cloak and Sword are the least careless and the most admirable of his plays, and they were the most successful. The involved and complicated plots, the duels and disguises, the hurry and the vigor of this class of plays are seen to best advantage in Lope de Vega’s works. He had founded the school, and the bent of his genius fitted him to be its master. His works and those of his scholars went at once to all parts of Europe. In England Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Centlivre, Farquhar, Congreve, Wycherly, Holcroft, were his followers, copyists, plagiarists. Not only did others pillage him, but, like almost all prolific authors, he plagiarized from himself. Over thirty or forty times has he treated one subject: a lady and a knight forced to leave the court in disguise because of the persecutions of the king, and taking refuge in a village, where, after many mishaps and adventures, they are finally married. Of course in each of these twoscore plays the situations vary, but the central idea is the same in all. To an author of such facility the great difficulty was in the 828discovery of a subject. That was all he needed; its dramatic dressing was an easy task. Hardly one of the picturesque points of Spanish history did he neglect. His lighter plays were often historical. Generally they were not. His Perro del Hortelano (“Dog in the Manger”) is, for instance, an original invention. It contains a delightful sketch of a woman absorbed by jealousy, and yet unable to make up her mind to marry the loved one because of his inferior birth. Both lovers are drawn with delicious vigor—a vigor suggesting, perhaps remotely, Thackeray. This charming comedy shows of what things Lope was capable in this line had he so willed. It is somewhat in the style of Scribe at his best. Indeed, in many respects he was the precursor of Scribe, who greatly resembled him in fecundity, facility, and felicity of execution. More than one of his plays, if modernized, might pass for the work of the brilliant French dramatist.