When the earl's vanguard came upon
Ere they could close the gate, and entered with them.
Then all were slain save Launoy and his guard,
Who, barricaded in the minster tower,
Made desperate resistance; whereupon
The earl waxed wrothful, and bade fire the church.
First Burgher. Say'st thou? Oh sacrilege accursed! Was't done?
Second Dean. 'Twas done, and presently was heard a yell,
And after that the rushing of the flames!
Then Launoy from the steeple cried aloud
"A ransom!" and held up his coat to sight
With florins filled, but they without but laughed
And mocked him, saying, "Come amongst us, John,
And we will give thee welcome;—make a leap-
Come out at window, John.”—With that the flames
Rose up and reached him, and he drew his sword,
Cast his rich coat behind him in the fire,
And shouting, "Ghent, ye slaves!" leapt freely forth,
When they below received him on their spears.
And so died John of Launoy.
"Tis certain we must now make peace by times;
The city will be starved else.-Will be, said I?
Starvation is upon us.'-vol. i. pp. 27-29.
The reflective spirit of Philip van Artevelde is first indicated in his conversation on this incident with his aged preceptor:Van Artevelde. I never looked that he should live so long.
He was a man of that unsleeping spirit,
He seemed to live by miracle: his food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind,
And peril to his body. He was one
Of many thousand such that die betimes,
Whose story is a fragment, known to few.
Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances,
And deem there's ne'er a one in dangerous times,
Who wins the race of glory, but than him
A thousand men more gloriously endowed
Have fallen upon the course; a thousand others
Have had their fortunes foundered by a chance,
Whilst lighter barks pushed past them; to whom add
A smaller tally, of the singular few,
Who, gifted with predominating powers,
Bear yet a temperate will, and keep the peace.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
Father John. Had Launoy lived, he might have passed for great,
But not by conquests in the Franc of Bruges.
The sphere-the scale of circumstance-is all
Which makes the wonder of the many. Still
An ardent soul was Launoy's, and his deeds
Were such as dazzled many a Flemish dame.
There'll some bright eyes in Ghent be dimmed for him.
Van Artevelde. They will be dim, and then be bright again.
All is in busy, stirring, stormy motion;
And many a cloud drifts by, and none sojourns.
Lightly is life laid down amongst us now,
And lightly is death mourned: a dusk star blinks
As fleets the rack, but look again, and lo!
In a wide solitude of wintry sky
Twinkles the re-illuminated star,
And all is out of sight that smirched the ray.
We have no time to mourn.
The worse for us!
He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. "Tis an ill cure
For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow 's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.
Yet such the barrenness of busy life!
From shelf to shelf Ambition clambers up,
To reach the naked'st pinnacle of all;
Whilst Magnanimity, absolved from toil,
Reposes self-included at the base.
But this thou know'st.'-pp. 40-43.
When the notion of calling on Artevelde to assume the dictatorship of the city is first started, the sequestered habits of his life, and the apparent coldness of his temperament, are objected; but one who had more narrowly observed him, replies,
'There is no game so desperate which wise men
Will not take freely up for love of power,
Or love of fame, or merely love of play.
These men are wise, and then reputed wise,
And so their great repute of wisdom grows,
'Till for great wisdom a great price is bid,
And then their wisdom they do part withal.
Such men must still be tempted with high stakes:
Philip van Artevelde is such a man.'—p. 35.
The youth, with all his philosophy, appears to be consider ably wrought upon by the suggestion, that, in the place of power, he might avenge the slaughter of his father:
Is it vain glory that thus whispers me,
That 'tis ignoble to have led my life
In idle meditations-that the times
Demand me, that they call my father's name?
Oh! what a fiery heart was his! such souls
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages. Oh! my father!
Thy life is eloquent, and more persuades
Unto dominion than thy death deters;
For that reminds me of a debt of blood
Descended with my patrimony to me,
Whose paying off would clear my soul's estate.'-p. 52.
Here on the doorstead of my father's house,
The blood of his they spilt is seen no more.
But when I was a child I saw it there;
For so long as my widow-mother lived,
Water came never near the sanguine stain.
She loved to show it me, and then with awe,
But hoarding still the purpose of revenge,
I heard the tale-which, like a daily prayer
Repeated, to a rooted feeling grew-
How long he fought-how falsely came like friends
The villains Guisebert Grutt and Simon Bette-
All the base murder of the one by many.'—pp. 48, 49.
His as yet silent passion for a noble damsel of the same city, Adriana van Merestyn, interposes some scruples. This twilight soliloquy at the gate of her garden-terrace, appears to us masterly. It must remind every reader of the Wallenstein; and yet there is no copying :
To bring a cloud upon the summer day
Of one so happy and so beautiful,-
It is a hard condition. For myself
I know not that the circumstance of life,
In all its changes, can so far afflict me
As makes anticipation much worth while.
But she is younger,-of a sex besides
Whose spirits are to our's as flames to fire,
More sudden and more perishable too;
So that the gust wherewith the one is kindled
Extinguishes the other. Oh she is fair!
As fair as Heaven to look upon! as fair
As ever vision of the Virgin blest,
That weary pilgrim, resting by the fount
Beneath the palm, and dreaming to the tune
Of flowing waters, duped his soul withal.
It was permitted in my pilgrimage
To rest beside the fount beneath the tree,
Beholding there no vision, but a maid
Whose form was light and graceful as the palm,
Whose heart was pure and jocund as the fount,
And spread a freshness and a verdure round.
This was permitted in my pilgrimage,
staff again.
Say that I fall not in this enterprise-
Still must my life be full of hazardous turns,
And they that house with me must ever live
In imminent peril of some evil fate.
-Make fast the doors; heap wood upon the fire;
Draw in your stools, and pass the goblet round,
And be the prattling voice of children heard.
Now let us make good cheer-but what is this?
Do I not see, or do I dream I see,
And loth am I to take my
A form that midmost in the circle sits
Half visible, his face deformed with scars,
And foul with blood?-Oh yes-I know it-there
Sits Danger with his feet upon the hearth!'-pp. 59, 60.
From the exquisite love scene which follows this, we extract a fragment. We hope it will be intelligible :
'Artevelde. If hitherto we have not said we loved,
Yet hath the heart of each declared its love
By all the tokens wherein love delights.
We heretofore have trusted in each other,
Too wholly have we trusted to have need
Of words or vows, pledges or protestations.
Let not such trust be hastily dissolved.
Adriana. I trusted not. I hoped that I was loved,
Hoped and despaired, doubted and hoped again,
Till this day, when I first breathed freelier,
Daring to trust-and now-Oh God, my heart!
It was not made to bear this agony -
Tell me you love me, or you love me not.
Artevelde. I love thee, dearest, with as huge a love
As e'er was compassed in the breast of man.
Hide then those tears, beloved, where thou wilt,
And find a resting place for that so wild.
And troubled heart of thine; sustain it here,
And be its flood of passion wept away.
Adriana. What was it that you said then? If you love,
Why have you thus tormented me?
Be calm;
And let me warn thee, ere thy choice be fixed,
What fate thou may'st be wedded to with me.
Thou hast beheld me living heretofore
As one retired in staid tranquillity.
The dweller in the mountains, on whose ear
The accustomed cataract thunders unobserved;
The seaman, who sleeps sound upon the deck,
Nor hears the loud lamenting of the blast,
Nor heeds the weltering of the plangent wave;
These have not lived more undisturbed than I.
But build not upon this; the swollen stream
May shake the cottage of the mountaineer,
And drive him forth; the seaman, roused at length,
Leaps from his slumber on the wave-washed deck;
And now the time comes fast, when here in Ghent,
He who would live exempt from injuries
Of armed men, must be himself in arms.
This time is near for all,-nearer for me.
I will not wait upon necessity,
And leave myself no choice of vantage ground,
But rather meet the times where best I may,
And mould and fashion them as best I can.
Reflect then that soon may be embarked
In all the hazards of these troublous times,
And in your own free choice take or resign me.
Adriana. Oh, Artevelde, my choice is free no more:
Be mine, all mine, let good or ill betide.'-pp. 65-67. These passages must have sufficiently illustrated our author's manner. We have not room to follow him through the highly spirited action of his first drama. Adriana is carried off in the course of it by a rival lover, a knight of Bruges, faithful to the party of the Earl; and thus is supplied a strong additional motive to Artavelde in the resolution which he at length adopts, of leading a chosen band of the men of Ghent from the gates of their now straitened and exhausted city, to the sudden assault of the Earl's own capital. The battle-the seizure of Bruges-the deliverance of Adriana—and the narrow escape of the Earl of Flanders, are powerfully dramatized; but we are tempted, instead of quoting any part of these scenes, to give the authority for their most striking incident in the words of Froissart.
The Gauntoise pursewed so fiersly their enemyes that they entred into the towne with them of Bruges; and as soon as they were within the towne, the first thyng they dyd, they went streyght to the market place, and there set themselfe in array. The Erle as then had sent a knight of his, called Sir Robert Marescault, to the gate, to see what the Gauntoise dyd; and when he came to the gate, he founde the gate beaten downe, and the Gauntoise maisters therof: and some of them of Bruges met with hym and sayd: "Sir Robert, returne and save yourselfe if ye can, for the towne is won by them of Gaunt." Then the knight returned to the Erle as fast as he might, who was comyng out of his lodginge a-horsebacke, with a great number of cressettes and lyghtes with hym, and was goyng to the market place; then the knight shewed the Erle all that he knewe; howbeit, the Erle, wyllyng
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