Alexius. But for that hair that's twisted in the grain, Comnenus. Alexius. Comnenus. Youth, Alexius, Knows nought of changes; age hath traced them oft, What's like to be from both: change is youth's wonder; Boys become men, men monarchs, women fiends, There is nought thou'st seen More alter'd than art thou. I speak not of thy change of outward favour, Ay, hearts change too: Alexius. Hast thou forgotten how it was thy wont Comnenus. Alexius. The sands are here, But not the foot-prints. Would'st thou trace them now? Their vestiges and mine. Look, here's a rock— That is smoother far. Comnenus. Ere taught to dimple into lies. Come, sit. Comnenus. Alexius. Comnenus. Alexius. I know not: But Time has ta'en it for a poet's scrawl; No, not quite; look here. I take it for a lover's. What! there's some talk Of balmy breath, and hearts pierced through and through And kisses ever sweet till they be innocent But that your lover's not put down? No, none of it. There are but two words. Comnenus. Comnenus. That's succinct; what are they? Alexius. " Alas, Irene!"Why, thy looks are now Such as I have beheld them heretofore, Only more ghastly-Isaac, what disturbs thee? Like riddles that are read o' winter's nights, There's occupation for us both abroad. Alexius. Oh no, not now-I will not leave thee now; Comnenus. All too heroic to be told in prose! Alexius. Comnenus. Go put it down in four-and-twenty books, 'Cleped "The Comneniad," to be read at leisure ;— And I would not recall it. Not recall it ! Canst thou stand here and say so? Canst thou look With yon blue beautiful ridge half compassed round, For man's were never so majestical, The boundary forts of earth and ocean's empire, It is not the eye To which these things seem lovely, but the mind, Which makes, unmakes, remodels, or rejects them. Alexius. And which doth thy mind? Comnenus. It hath done them all, Alexius, I remember when in Persia, I oft would watch the sun go down; and there That the whole East, with the reflected glow, Is crimson'd, as it may be here at dawn. I would the youth of man did so decline; But that still darkeneth to the cloudy close.'-p. 91–96. There is an after-scene, in which Comnenus soliloquizes over the grave of his first love. Whether it be well timed and placed may be questionable, but greater unfitness might be excused for the sake of such poetry as follows: 'Oh Christ! How that which was the life's life of our being Can Can pass away, and we recall it thus! Thou'st seen the mind-its native strength how rack'd, On many a battle's eve, in many climes, But now-and whether from the body's toil, I know not if it be, or fever'd blood, Or wakefulness, or from the mind's worn weakness— To look on such a phantom :-it is strange That what we so grieved to lose we fear to find So gentle and beloved, I saw laid here, Now new-arisen would make my blood run cold! And I do hear a voice that cries aloud Home, home, Comnenus !'-p. 111–113. The play is full of action-the incidents are well managed-and suspense is successfully kept up till the very point of the catastrophe. All has succeeded with the Comneni. Isaac transfers the crown to Alexius, and consents, less gracefully than she deserves, to requite the constancy of Anna by taking her to wife, when Theodora revenges her father and herself by stabbing him. The more passionate or thoughtful parts are occasionally relieved by lower dialogues, in the manner of the old English drama. The worst specimen of this is the scene in which an exorcist is one of the interlocutors; the most pleasing occurs between Alexius and one of his brother's sentinels, to whom his person is unknown: 'Sentinel. "Tis a miracle how sense will grow upon a man after he has mounted guard a few years. Thou would'st not believe how many thoughts come and go in a wise man's head as he walks his four hours backwards and fowards upon an outpost. Alexius Alexius. How long has thou been walking here? Sentinel. The matter of an hour. Alexius. And what thoughts have come and gone in thy head? Alexius. What was thy first thought? Sentinel. I bethought me that the wind was easterly, and one ought to hear the waves break upon the Symplegades. Alexius. What was thy second thought? Sentinel. I thought when the moon rose I should see the tops of the fig-trees at Galatà; that's my birthplace. Alexius. And thy third? Sentinel. I thought if I was to fall to-morrow, thereabouts. Alexius. Thy fourth? I could like it were Sentinel. I thought when Count Isaac was emperor, he would be for recasting the army; and I shall tell him I was getting old in the service, and could like to be one of the immortals. Alexius. That I'll be bound for him thou shalt.'-p. 103-105. Throughout the play the author has succeeded better in the delineations of his elect than of his reprobates. There is some supererogatory wickedness in the priests, especially in the patriarch; and the suspicious fearfulness of the emperor is, in some parts, overcharged:-with these exceptions, the characters are as finely delineated as they are distinctly imagined. The diction is always good, neither spangled with affectations nor distorted by the efforts of an ambitious and stilted style. If this be the first production of the author, much may be hoped from one who has begun so well. ART. VII.-Memoirs of General Miller in the Service of the Republic of Peru. By John Miller. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1828. WILLIAM MILLER, the subject of this memoir—in which we find more of novelty and entertainment than in a score of modern novels and romances-was born on the 2d of December, 1795, in the pleasant village of Wingham, near Canterbury, where his father was a small tradesman-we believe a baker. Of the events which characterized the progress of his early life we are told nothing, except that he served with the British army (from no regiment being mentioned, we suppose on the commissariat), both in the Peninsula and North America, from 1811 to 1815; and that, on the reduction at the latter period, an opportunity presented itself by which, had he turned his attention to mercantile pursuits, he might have become a partner in a French house of great respectability. But young Miller had not been a cold spec tator tator of war, and his genius had taken a bent which rendered the dull routine of the counting-house intolerable to him. After a short trial he relinquished the design of advancing his fortunes by means of commerce, and imagining that a fine field of enterprise was presented in the condition of Spanish South America, then struggling for independence in all its provinces, he determined to do as many others of his countrymen had done before him, by making a tender of his military services to one or other of the republics. In his mode of carrying this determination into practice, Miller exhibited a striking proof of that sagacity and sound judgment which so eminently distinguished him in all his after career. Having ascertained that comparatively few English candidates for military fame had made the district of the river Plata the theatre of their exertions, he came to the wise resolution of choosing that for his future country; and accordingly set sail, in the month of August, 1817, in a trading vessel, bound from the Downs to Buenos Ayres. Having taken the precaution to provide himself with recommendatory letters to several respectable merchants settled in that city, Mr. Miller, whose personal appearance, if his portrait speaks truth, is eminently handsome and engaging, and whose manners and address chance (we are told) to be peculiarly advantageous, encountered none of those obstacles to first success which so frequently blight the hopes of the mere adventurer. On the contrary, he was welcomed with the utmost cordiality and treated with the greatest kindness by his countrymen, through one of whom, Mr. Dickson, he obtained a personal introduction to the supreme director Puyrredon; and his memorial, addressed to the latter personage was, within a reasonable space, answered by the receipt of a captain's commission in the Buenos Ayrean army. He was appointed, moreover, according to his own desire, to the army of the Andes, then serving in Chili, under the orders of General San Martin; and he lost no time in making such preparations as appeared necessary to enable him to enter, with satisfaction to himself, upon the duties and perils of a campaign. Neither in Buenos Ayres, nor elsewhere, are appointments received or preparations made in a day, and Mr. Miller seems to have enjoyed some months of leisure previous to his embarkation on his military career. Of this breathing-time one portion was spent in enjoying the festivities of colonial society, another in visiting the interior; an expedition which brought at once within his observation all the wonders, animate and inanimate, of the Pampas. These appear to have produced in Mr. Miller the same feelings which Captain Head experienced, and has so well described; but the progress of his journey introduced the for VOL. XXXVIII, NO. LXXVI. L G mer |