Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub
[blocks in formation]

Theodosius. My vow reaches no further than the grave. What I ask is, I hope, no violation of it.' She died soon after, and was interred according to her request.

Their tombs are still to be seen, with a short Latin inscription over them to the following purpose:

Here lie the bodies of Father Francis and Sister Constance.

They were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.--C.

No. 171. The Passion of Jealousy illustrated by the story of Herod and Mariamne.

Credula res amor est.-OVID Met. vii. 826.

[blocks in formation]

Mariamne" had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth 10 could give a woman, and Herod all the love that such charms are able to raise in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of this his fondness for Mariamne, he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Antony, who immediately summoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was there laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Antony's desire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death, if any such violence was offered to himself. 20 This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured with all his art and rhetoric to set out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconsiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly shewed, according to Joseph's interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous instance of a wild unreasonable passion quite put out, for a time, those little remains of affection she still had for her lord: her thoughts were so wholly taken up with the cruelty 30 of his orders, that she could not consider the kindness that produced them, and therefore represented him in her imagination rather under the frightful idea of a murderer than a lover.

Herod was at length acquitted and dismissed by Mark Antony, when his soul was all in flames for his Mariamne; but before their meeting, he was not a little alarmed at the report he had heard of his uncle's conversation and familiarity with her in his absence. This therefore was the first discourse he entertained her with, in which she found it no easy matter to quiet his suspicions. But at last he appeared so well satisfied of her innocence, that from reproaches and wranglings he fell to tears and embraces. Both of them wept very tenderly at their reconcilia10 tion, and Herod poured out his whole soul to her in the warmest protestations of love and constancy; when amidst all his sighs and languishings she asked him, whether the private orders he left with his uncle Joseph were an instance of such an inflamed affection. The jealous king was immediately roused at so unexpected a question, and concluded his uncle must have been too familiar with her, before he would have discovered such a secret. In short, he put his uncle to death, and very difficultly prevailed upon himself to spare Mariamne.

After this he was forced on a second journey into Egypt, when 20 he committed his lady to the care of Sohemus, with the same private orders he had before given his uncle, if any mischief befel himself. In the mean while Mariamne so won upon Sohemus by her presents and obliging conversation, that she drew all the secret from him with which Herod had entrusted him; so that after his return, when he flew to her with all the transports of joy and love, she received him coldly with sighs and tears, and all the marks of indifference and aversion. This reception so stirred up his indignation, that he had certainly slain her with his own hands, had not he feared he himself should have become the 30 greater sufferer by it. It was not long after this, when he had another violent return of love upon him; Mariamne was therefore sent for to him, whom he endeavoured to soften and reconcile with all possible conjugal caresses and endearments; but she declined his embraces, and answered all his fondness with bitter invectives for the death of her father and her brother. This behaviour so incensed Herod, that he very hardly refrained from striking her; when in the heat of their quarrel there came in a witness, suborned by some of Mariamne's enemies, who accused her to the king of a design to poison him. Herod was now pre40 pared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately

FABLE OF MENIPPUS.

413

ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack; who in the extremities of his torture confessed that his mistress's aversion to the king arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it. This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence that Joseph had before him on the like occasion. Nor would Herod rest here: but accused her with great vehemence of a design upon his life, and by his authority with the judges had her publicly 10 condemned and executed. Herod soon after her death grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs into a solitary forest, and there abandoning himself to all the black considerations which naturally arise from a passion made up of love, remorse, pity, and despair. He used to rave for his Mariamne, and to call upon her in his distracted fits; and in all probability would soon have followed her, had not his thoughts been seasonably called off from so sad an object by public storms, which at that time very nearly threatened him.-L.

[blocks in formation]

Menippus, the philosopher, was a second time taken up into 20 heaven by Jupiter, when for his entertainment he lifted up a trap-door that was placed by his footstool. At its rising, there issued through it such a din of cries as astonished the philosopher. Upon his asking what they meant, Jupiter told him they were the prayers that were sent up to him from the earth. Menippus, amidst the confusion of voices, which was so great that nothing less than the ear of Jove could distinguish them, heard the words, 'riches,' 'honour,' and 'long life,' repeated to several different tones and languages. When the first hubbub of sounds was over, the trap-door being left open, the voices came up more 30 separate and distinct. The first prayer was a very odd one; it came from Athens, and desired Jupiter to increase the wisdom and the beard of his humble supplicant. Menippus knew it by the voice to be the prayer of his friend Licander, the philosopher. This was succeeded by the petition of one who had just laden a ship, and promised Jupiter, if he took care of it, and returned it home

again full of riches, he would make him an offering of a silver cup. Jupiter thanked him for nothing; and bending down his ear more attentively than ordinary, heard a voice complaining to him of the cruelty of an Ephesian widow, and begging him to breed compassion in her heart: 'this,' says Jupiter, 'is a very honest fellow: I have received a great deal of incense from him; I will not be so cruel to him as not to hear his prayers.' He was then interrupted with a whole volly of vows, which were made for the health of a tyrannical prince by his subjects who 10 prayed for him in his presence. Menippus was surprised, after having listened to prayers offered up with so much ardour and devotion, to hear low whispers from the same assembly, expostulating with Jove for suffering such a tyrant to live, and asking him how his thunder could lie idle? Jupiter was so offended at these prevaricating rascals, that he took down the first vows, and puffed away the last. The philosopher, seeing a great cloud mounting upwards, and making its way directly to the trap-door, inquired of Jupiter what it meant. 'This,' says Jupiter, 'is the smoke of a whole hecatomb that is offered me by the general of an army, 20 who is very importunate with me to let him cut off an hundred thousand men that are drawn up in array against him: what does the impudent wretch think I see in him, to believe that I will make a sacrifice of so many mortals as good as himself, and all this to his glory, forsooth! But hark,' says Jupiter, 'there is a voice I never heard but in time of danger; it is a rogue that is shipwrecked in the Ionian sea. I saved him on a plank but three days ago, upon his promise to mend his manners; the scoundrel is not worth a groat, and yet has the impudence to offer me a temple, if I will keep him from sinking.— -But 30 yonder,' says he, 'is a special youth for you; he desires me to take his father, who keeps a great estate from him, out of the miseries of human life, The old fellow shall live till he makes his heart ake, I can tell him that for his pains.' This was followed by the soft voice of a pious lady, desiring Jupiter that she might appear amiable and charming in the sight of her emperor. As the philosopher was reflecting on this extraordinary petition, there blew a gentle wind through the trap-door, which he at first mistook for a gale of zephyrs, but afterwards found it to be a breeze of sighs: they smelt strong of flowers and 40 incense, and were succeeded by most passionate complaints of

VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES.

415

wounds and torments, fires and arrows, cruelty, despair and death. Menippus fancied that such lamentable cries arose from some general execution, or from wretches lying under the torture; but Jupiter told him that they came up from the isle of Paphos, and that he every day received complaints of the same nature from that whimsical tribe of mortals who are called lovers. 'I am so trifled with,' says he, 'by this generation of both sexes, and find it so impossible to please them, whether I grant or refuse their petitions, that I shall order a western wind 10 for the future to intercept them in their passage, and blow them at random upon the earth. The last petition I heard n was from a very aged man of near an hundred years old, begging but for one year more of life, and then promising to die contented. This is the rarest old fellow,' says Jupiter. 'He has made this prayer to me for above twenty years together. When he was but fifty years old, he desired only that he might live to see his son settled in the world; I granted it. He then begged the same favour for his daughter, and afterwards that he might see the education of a grandson: when all this was brought about, co he puts up a petition that he might live to finish a house he was building. In short, he is an unreasonable old cur, and never wants an excuse; I will hear no more of him.' Upon which he flung down the trap-door in a passion, and was resolved to give no more audiences that day.

Notwithstanding the levity of this fable, the moral of it very well deserves our attention, and is the same with that which has been inculcated by Socrates and Plato, not to mention Juvenal and Persius, who have each of them made the finest satire in their whole works upon this subject. The vanity of men's 30 wishes, which are the natural prayers of the mind, as well as many of those secret devotions which they offer to the Supreme Being, are sufficiently exposed by it. Among other reasons for set forms of prayer, I have often thought it a very good one, that by this means the folly and extravagance of men's desires may be kept within due bounds, and not break out in absurd and ridiculous petitions on so great and solemn an occasion.-I.

« НазадПродовжити »