SEVERAL years ago, the "Comedies de Clara Gazul" appeared in Paris, and excited a great deal of attention. They were hardly less known and praised in England. It was[Page 72]soon understood that they were imitations of the Spanish drama, the production of a very young Frenchman, (M. Merimée) and that "Clara Gazul" was altogether a fictitious personage. They were, in every way, striking and interesting productions, possessing at once the faults and beauties of their models, full of spirit, originality, and fire. They were introduced by an account of their feigned authoress, which, as well as the dramas themselves, is remarkable for its utter freedom from affectation. There are to be found in them none of those defects, too generally attributed with justice to French imaginative works: there is no circumlocution, no parade, and their very hyperbole, as being common to the Spanish drama, is natural and in its place. The first of these comedies is founded on a circumstance that occurred during the last war; when a woman, brought up in infamy, was bribed to spy and betray, through their officers, a Spanish detachment to the French authorities in Finland. The gradual softening and repentance of the girl, when she discovers the worth, and learns to love the man she is about to lead to the scaffold, contrasted with the obduracy of her mother, is finely drawn; and the scene in which she confesses her guilt to her lover is touching from its simplicity and truth. Energy is the characteristic of these pieces, mingled with a display of knowledge in the lighter touches of humanity; such as the sweet gracefulness of Iñez, and the struggles between a Catholic woman's religion and her love in "Le Ciel et l'Enfer." This drama is one of the best in the book; it is founded on the stormy passion of jealousy, the most terrible and selfish of human emotions, and the most interesting, from its being the most universal. As Clara Gazul was a Liberal, inquisitors and priests are attacked in her productions, and there reigns through all of them the spirit of freedom from political and religious servitude.

The author's next work was in a very different style, resembling the first in one particular only, that it is an imitation. It is entitled the "Guzla," and imports to be a translation of a collection of Illyrian national poems. We have in the preface some account of the players on the Guzla (a single-stringed guitar) and their mode of reciting to music, much in the manner of the Italian improvisatori. ² We are introduced also to an imaginary person, Hyacinth Maglanovich, who is supposed to be the author of the greater number of the poems in the volume before us. They are warlike, pathetic, and amatory—and, above all, whatever is their theme, they are characterized by the utmost simplicity, while a vein of sweetness runs throughout, that lends to each a particular charm. By a strong effort[Page 73]of the imagination, the young Parisian writes as if the mountains of Illyria had been the home of his childhood; the rustic and barbarous manners are not softened, nor the wild energy of the people tamed; and, if we trace any vestige of civilization, it merely arises from the absence of all that would shock our tastes or prejudices. We are induced to give a few specimens from this extraordinary production, glad of an opportunity to introduce it to the lovers of poetry in this country.

We select, in the first place, a love poem, entitled, "The Beloved of Dannisich." To render it intelligible, we are informed in a note, that the Illyrian girl is in the habit of receiving gifts from her various suitors, and that after she has collected a sufficient number, her chosen lover requests permission to carry her off; and she consenting, always names the place and hour for flight.

Another of the poems is founded on the oaths of friendship which it is usual for the Illyrian warriors to take one with the other. Two men thus united are called Pobratimi,³ or half brothers; they often sacrifice their lives for each other, and any quarrel between them is as scandalous as if, among us, a son ill-treated his father.

Another poem is founded on the superstition attached to an evil eye, which, whomsoever it looks on, it kills. There are various kinds of evil eyes, one consists in having two pupils in each eye.

One of the most interesting parts of this book is an account of Vampyrism, and a detail of the death of a girl, the victim of a vampire. But the above specimens are sufficient to recommend it to the reader; and every lover of nature in its wildness and its freedom, will find pleasure in these emanations of a mind, imbued with grand and unsophisticated imagery, true as the echo in giving back the voice of the imaginative and simple mountaineer.

The last production of this author, recently published, is now before us. It is ushered in as no imitative attempt. "La Jaquerie" consists of a series of dramatic scenes, developing the history of an insurrection in France, almost contemporary with those in our own country which occurred under Richard II. The author observes in his short preface, that similar tumults broke out almost at the same time in France, Flanders, England, and the north of Germany. They all arose from the same cause:—the peasantry, long trampled on by the iron heel of feudal tyranny, endured such matchless privations and cruelties, that in spite of the prejudices that degraded them in their own eyes, beneath the rank of their fellow men; in spite of the arms and strongholds of their adversaries, they rose against them, and loosened, though they could not break, their feudal chains. The plan of the author of "La Jaquerie" is, to give a faithful picture of the manners of those times, bringing together under one point of view the many and successive scenes and personages that formed the then state of society. A history written with this view would develop a new and terrible page of human experience. To present this to us in the form of dialogue merely is a difficult undertaking; individual character is lost in the infinite variety of persons made to pass before us, and we have the ideal instead of the real being presented to us. We are introduced to the factious priest, murmuring because, in the choice of an abbot, the monks prefer the noble blood of another to his learning. We have the knights of France, whose very names awaken all the delusive associations of romance; the English captains of adventurers, whose trade was war; the burgess grasping and cowardly; the robber driven to outlawry by the cruelty of his superiors, and nourishing vengeance as a duty; the peasant first sinking beneath, and then rising to throw off oppression; and finally the lord of the castle, the feudal[Page 79]chief, the suzerain of the surrounding country, his daughter and her betrothed lover, and the baron's men at arms, who though, in the language of the day, a villain, joins the gifts of poetry to those of valour.

These scenes may be divided into three parts. The first consisting of a development of the causes that led to rebellion. The picture of arbitrary power, unsoftened by any tinge of humanity, is frightful and true; ingratitude, pride, and cruelty exercised over the poor and unarmed, produce at last hatred and desire of vengeance: the peasantry, incited to open rebellion by a priest, rise in arms: they take a band of English adventurers into their pay, they besiege the castle of their lord, march to Beauvais, which, admitted by the lower orders, they take and sack, defeat the regular forces sent against them, and spread terror and devastation around. The lord of Apremont defends himself long, and is willing to endure any extremity, rather than submit to his rebellious vassals. Among these is one, late a favourite in the castle, Pierre, the minstrel and the man at arms. He had saved the life of the lady Isabel, and her father bestowed him on her as her page. Her beauty awakens, her gracious kindness fosters, his love, and he dared hope. Called on by her in an hour of ennui, to recite a tale for her amusement, he feigns to read one in which a noble girl becomes the bride of a serf. She discovers the deceit and guesses the cause—she dismisses him from the castle with blighting disdain, while his temerity even degrades her in her own eyes. Pierre is seized on by the grand mover of the plot, the monk, who gives him hope of triumph, and a chance of winning his lady, if he should join the insurgents, and he is now the chief of those who besiege the castle. Poor Isabel, her father wounded, every hope lost, asks her betrothed to give her back her faith, and then offers herself a sacrifice to Pierre, if he will save her parent. The end is tragical—he is too generous to accept the victim, and endeavours to provide for the escape of her and her family; but the miseries of civil discord in all its most hideous results, envelope the fugitives in one mighty ruin. The peasantry are victorious, and now begins the third part of the drama, their downfall—schism among themselves, a wish to return to their native fields and humble homes, a confidence in the word of their enemies, an incapacity to submit to discipline, joined to the treachery of their English allies, bring on the catastrophe. Such is a slight sketch of the progress of these scenes. We feel the want of one prominent character to concentrate the interest, without which a dramatic composition is never perfect. But the author has not aimed at a regular tragedy, and he has succeeded in giving us in[Page 80]a series of interesting scenes, a forcible picture of the manners of our ancestors, and of the crimes and misfortunes resulting from the feudal system, from which our state of civilization preserves us.

To the "Jaquerie" is added a drama, entitled the "Family of Carvajal." This is a tremendous domestic tragedy, founded on the same story as the Cenci.⁷ In this production the author is no longer a painter of manners only, but he becomes a depict of passion, an observer and a narrator of the secret motives that influence our nature, and the dread events that are the result of unlawful indulgence. It is a question whether certain combinations of circumstances, though it is allowed that they have existence, should be recalled to our memory and represented to our imaginations. But it is difficult for the author, whose impulse is a gift of his nature, whose talent is spontaneous, who can no more repress the yearning of his mind to trace the boundaries of the unknown intellectual world, than he can rule the pulsations of his heart; it is difficult for him to submit to rules imposed by those whose tamer thoughts never emerge from the narrow bounds of their personal experience; who repose in a windless atmosphere, and who fear to have their downy slumbers broken by the war of elements. Columbus, anticipating the discovery of the unknown shores that pale our western progress over the wild and distant waves of the Atlantic, felt the old world, extended in latitude and longitude so far and wide, a narrow prison—and thus the imaginative writer, who deems that beyond the usual track he may find a fresh and untried ground, courageously launches forth, leaving the dull every-day earth behind him. If his discoveries do not interest us, do not let us vituperate his adventurous spirit, and thus degrade ourselves to the level of all detractors from the fame attendant on intellectual enterprise. Let us remember that the poets of Greece, whose names are as a part of our religion, and the highly-gifted dramatists of our own country, have been prone to select as subjects for their tragedies, events grounded on the direst passions and the worst impulses.

The Family of Carvajal has given rise to these reflections: they may be received as applying to every similar production which seeks to interest by new and strange combinations, and which are vivid in their conception and strong in their delineation of what they only know through the innate force of the imagination. The author before us has shewn no lack of boldness in his treatment of the subject, while he has never overstepped those boundaries which must be observed for our tastes not to be shocked, instead of our interest excited. He has made the[Page 81]father and daughter equally impetuous and resolute, but one is the oppressor, the other the victim. The scene is laid in an unpopulated province of New Granada, and the father is represented as a despot over his wife, a cruel tyrant to his slaves, a man grown old in crime. His hapless daughter was brought up in a rustic semi-barbarous convent, and she returns home to find herself an associate of guilt, to which her proud heart refuses to yield, while love for another adds to her vehemence and misery. This meeting of two fierce natures in unnatural discord presents a new and terrible source for dramatic interest. Each scene transcends the one before in its appalling horror; and the last, in which the miserable girl poignards her father, completes the dark picture, spreading over the canvas the lurid hues of whirlwind and volcano. We turn trembling from the contemplation, while we confess the force of the genius that presents it to our eyes.