on his pity to forgive me : my servants were alarmed, and rushing into the garden, beheld the bloody scene. By this time Marcella was recovered from her swoon, and reproached my rashness, assuring me she had employed all her art to persuade him to comply with that fatal assignation; she frankly owned he had been long the object of her fondest desires, but that till then he had refused any secret appointment with her, from a sense of friendship to me, and justice to his young and beautiful wife, whom he sincerely loved. This discovery distracted me. I cursed myself and her, and charged her to fly my sight for ever, Fest I should double my guilt, and inure myself to murder. I was so far from endeavouring to escape the rigour of the law that I challenged it, called aloud for the ministers of Justice, witnessed against my own life, and avowed the barbarous fact. But however I was cleared by a human verdict, I stand condemned by a higher and more righteous deci sion my conscience tells me, : -The door is shut, The Judge has pass'd my everlasting doom, My day's for ever gone, my sun is set On me no ray of Mercy e'er will shine, No smiling beam of hope will ever rise; What repentance is there for a wretch who can make no restitution? The injury I have done can never be cancelled. It was desperate, it was irreparable mischief that I brought on the wretched Antonio: I cut off his space of trial, his probation for immortal joys, and tore him from all his future hopes of salvation. I perhaps surprised him with all his sins and unrepented follies on his head; his guilt might that instant be in its fullest magnitude, while I, with a more than infernal rage, seized the cursed moment, and sent an immortal spirit to hell. He may now be loading me with execrations, and sounding revenge through the caverns of Darkness against a miscreant that barred the gates of Bliss, and opened his passage to the dungeons of Misery and endless Despair., These are the horrible images that haunt, and sometimes drive, me to the precipice of Ruin. Last night, in a dead and silent hour, I took my sword, and went softly into my garden, resolving to stab myself (so wild are the intervals of my grief) on the same place where I murdered my friend. When I came near I saw, or my fancy only made it real, a ghastly phantom resembling the murdered Antonio, standing on the very spot where I gave the fatal thrust; his countenance wan and doleful, his motionless eyes fixed full on mine, while his hand pointed to the well-imitated wound on his breast. The sight withered my strength, and the sword dropped from my trembling hand; guilt made me a coward, and with a childish fear I hastily retired to my chamber, calling one of my servants to attend me. So unlike am I grown to myself, I start at a shadow, and shudder at the presage of a dream, am surrounded with ill omens, and tormented with more direful forebodings within. We talk of racks, of hissing snakes, and gnawing worms; but all the emphasis of human language cannot describe the tortures of an accusing conscience. The united force of Art and Nature cannot yield the least relief: the light of Paradise could not cheer me; the songs of angels would but heighten my remorse, and augment the exquisite anguish; the gloom of impenetrable night, and the sound of eternal tempests, would sooner sooth these unutterable agonies. What privilege is my being? why am I cursed with immortality? Oh that my severe Judge, my omnipotent Adversary, would speak me again into my primitive nothing, and with one potent word, finish my existence ! The beasts are happy, they come forth and keep Dr Young. But why do I think it vain for me? Am I of all human race exempted? am I the only distinguished sinner excluded from the benefit of that infinite atonement? am I on earth, or shut up in the infernal prison? Oh stay, thou glimmering beam of Hope, with one heavenly visit chear my benighted soul. An uncertain if, a flattering possibility, would be a momentary heaven to me; it would be redemption from Hell, pardon to a reprobate spirit. And yet. If I must perish, prostrate at thy feet The humble victim of thy wrath shall fall, My dear Clerimont, excuse my freedom; it is natural for misery to complain: had I been acquainted with a person of more piety and generous compassion than yourself, I had spared you the reading of this melancholy relation, to which your long stay at Venice has made you a stranger. Adicu. I know you will pity The wretched F 4 To BELINDA, from SYLVIA, to inform her of the reasons of her sudden retreat into the country. My dear Belinda, I am indeed got back again, To harmless plain-work, and to croaking rooks, Pope. To a view of Nature in that simplicity which you rally so agreeably: but it is here I have recovered my peace, and am again grown a reasonable creature; to which those godly books that you seem to have such a notion of have very much contributed, particularly Bishop Tillotson. I see you smile, not in malice, but good nature, at the sober confession, and want of delicacy in the choice of my reading; it diverts you, I know, that I should let Dryden and Otway ly stupidly by me, and impertinently spend an hour in reading a sermon; that when I am so well at ease in this world, it should ever enter into my head to think of another; and that, in the bloom of eighteen, I should have such a gloomy disposition as to think myself mortal; and, if you will forgive me, I will own, that I sometimes read the Bible, in contempt of all modern refinements, and hope to form my life on that antiquated scheme. These are, I confess, my dear Belinda, a very unfashionable set of thoughts, and have nothing in them modish or polite. |