Tài liệu The Last Man pptx

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spectres, that the roof would fall in, that it was too narrow to admit us,
that there was a deep hole within, filled with water, and we might be
drowned. My friend shortened the harangue, by taking the man's torch
from him; and we proceeded alone.
The passage, which at first scarcely admitted us, quickly grew narrow-
er and lower; we were almost bent double; yet still we persisted in mak-
ing our way through it. At length we entered a wider space, and the low
roof heightened; but, as we congratulated ourselves on this change, our
torch was extinguished by a current of air, and we were left in utter
darkness. The guides bring with them materials for renewing the light,
but we had none—our only resource was to return as we came. We
groped round the widened space to find the entrance, and after a time
fancied that we had succeeded. This proved however to be a second pas-
sage, which evidently ascended. It terminated like the former; though
something approaching to a ray, we could not tell whence, shed a very
doubtful twilight in the space. By degrees, our eyes grew somewhat ac-
customed to this dimness, and we perceived that there was no direct pas-
sage leading us further; but that it was possible to climb one side of the
cavern to a low arch at top, which promised a more easy path, from
whence we now discovered that this light proceeded. With considerable
difficulty we scrambled up, and came to another passage with still more
of illumination, and this led to another ascent like the former.
After a succession of these, which our resolution alone permitted us to
surmount, we arrived at a wide cavern with an arched dome-like roof.
An aperture in the midst let in the light of heaven; but this was over-
grown with brambles and underwood, which acted as a veil, obscuring
the day, and giving a solemn religious hue to the apartment. It was spa-
cious, and nearly circular, with a raised seat of stone, about the size of a
Grecian couch, at one end. The only sign that life had been here, was the
perfect snow-white skeleton of a goat, which had probably not perceived
the opening as it grazed on the hill above, and had fallen headlong. Ages
perhaps had elapsed since this catastrophe; and the ruin it had made
above, had been repaired by the growth of vegetation during many hun-
dred summers.
The rest of the furniture of the cavern consisted of piles of leaves, frag-
ments of bark, and a white filmy substance, resembling the inner part of
the green hood which shelters the grain of the unripe Indian corn. We
were fatigued by our struggles to attain this point, and seated ourselves
on the rocky couch, while the sounds of tinkling sheep-bells, and shout
of shepherd-boy, reached us from above.
5
At length my friend, who had taken up some of the leaves strewed
about, exclaimed, "This is the Sibyl's cave; these are Sibylline leaves." On
examination, we found that all the leaves, bark, and other substances,
were traced with written characters. What appeared to us more astonish-
ing, was that these writings were expressed in various languages: some
unknown to my companion, ancient Chaldee, and Egyptian hieroglyph-
ics, old as the Pyramids. Stranger still, some were in modern dialects,
English and Italian. We could make out little by the dim light, but they
seemed to contain prophecies, detailed relations of events but lately
passed; names, now well known, but of modern date; and often exclama-
tions of exultation or woe, of victory or defeat, were traced on their thin
scant pages. This was certainly the Sibyl's Cave; not indeed exactly as
Virgil describes it, but the whole of this land had been so convulsed by
earthquake and volcano, that the change was not wonderful, though the
traces of ruin were effaced by time; and we probably owed the preserva-
tion of these leaves to the accident which had closed the mouth of the
cavern, and the swift-growing vegetation which had rendered its sole
opening impervious to the storm. We made a hasty selection of such of
the leaves, whose writing one at least of us could understand; and then,
laden with our treasure, we bade adieu to the dim hypæthric cavern, and
after much difficulty succeeded in rejoining our guides.
During our stay at Naples, we often returned to this cave, sometimes
alone, skimming the sun-lit sea, and each time added to our store. Since
that period, whenever the world's circumstance has not imperiously
called me away, or the temper of my mind impeded such study, I have
been employed in deciphering these sacred remains. Their meaning,
wondrous and eloquent, has often repaid my toil, soothing me in sorrow,
and exciting my imagination to daring flights, through the immensity of
nature and the mind of man. For a while my labours were not solitary;
but that time is gone; and, with the selected and matchless companion of
my toils, their dearest reward is also lost to me—
Di mie tenere frondi altro lavoro
Credea mostrarte; e qual fero pianeta
Ne' nvidiò insieme, o mio nobil tesoro?
I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight Sibylline
pages. Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have been obliged to
add links, and model the work into a consistent form. But the main
6
substance rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and
the divine intuition which the Cumæan damsel obtained from heaven.
I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at the English
dress of the Latin poet. Sometimes I have thought that, obscure and
chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their decipherer.
As if we should give to another artist the painted fragments which form
the mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's; he would put
them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own
peculiar mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumæan Sibyl have
suffered distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my
hands. My only excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were un-
intelligible in their pristine condition.
My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me out of a
world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one glow-
ing with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how I could find
solace from the narration of misery and woeful change? This is one of the
mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway over me, and from whose
influence I cannot escape. I confess, that I have not been unmoved by the
development of the tale; and that I have been depressed, nay, agonized,
at some parts of the recital, which I have faithfully transcribed from my
materials. Yet such is human nature, that the excitement of mind was
dear to me, and that the imagination, painter of tempest and earthquake,
or, worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real
sorrows and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that
ideality, which takes the mortal sting from pain.
I hardly know whether this apology is necessary. For the merits of my
adaptation and translation must decide how far I have well bestowed my
time and imperfect powers, in giving form and substance to the frail and
attenuated Leaves of the Sibyl.
7
Chapter
1
I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land,
which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and track-
less continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsid-
erable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in the scale
of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more nu-
merous population. So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of
all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his
first minister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my
dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which
mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days
she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw
plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision,
speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by
their labours, the earth's very centre was fixed for me in that spot, and
the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have
cost neither my imagination nor understanding an effort.
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the
power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man's life.
With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance. My father was
one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the en-
vied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his bark of life to be im-
pelled by these winds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment
as the pilot for the voyage. His extraction was obscure; but circumstances
brought him early into public notice, and his small paternal property
was soon dissipated in the splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which
he was an actor. During the short years of thoughtless youth, he was ad-
ored by the high-bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sover-
eign, who escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of
kingly business, to find never-failing amusement and exhilaration of
spirit in his society. My father's impulses, never under his own control,
perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone
could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour and of
8
trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was supported by him
with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his company was so neces-
sary at the tables and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were
considered venial, and he himself received with intoxicating flattery.
This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the diffi-
culties of every kind with which he had to contend increased in a fright-
ful ratio compared with his small means of extricating himself. At such
times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would come to his relief, and
then kindly take his friend to task; my father gave the best promises for
amendment, but his social disposition, his craving for the usual diet of
admiration, and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fully pos-
sessed him, made his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With
the quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he perceived his power
in the brilliant circle to be on the wane. The king married; and the
haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head
of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on
the affection her royal husband entertained for him. My father felt that
his fall was near; but so far from profiting by this last calm before the
storm to save himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still
greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter of
his destiny.
The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily led, had
now become a willing disciple of his imperious consort. He was induced
to look with extreme disapprobation, and at last with distaste, on my
father's imprudence and follies. It is true that his presence dissipated
these clouds; his warm-hearted frankness, brilliant sallies, and confiding
demeanour were irresistible: it was only when at a distance, while still
renewed tales of his errors were poured into his royal friend's ear, that
he lost his influence. The queen's dexterous management was employed
to prolong these absences, and gather together accusations. At length the
king was brought to see in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing
that he should pay for the short-lived pleasure of his society by tedious
homilies, and more painful narrations of excesses, the truth of which he
could not disprove. The result was, that he would make one more at-
tempt to reclaim him, and in case of ill success, cast him off for ever.
Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-wrought
passion. A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which had hereto-
fore made him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions, with alternate
entreaty and reproof, besought his friend to attend to his real interests,
resolutely to avoid those fascinations which in fact were fast deserting
9
him, and to spend his great powers on a worthy field, in which he, his
sovereign, would be his prop, his stay, and his pioneer. My father felt
this kindness; for a moment ambitious dreams floated before him; and he
thought that it would be well to exchange his present pursuits for nobler
duties. With sincerity and fervour he gave the required promise: as a
pledge of continued favour, he received from his royal master a sum of
money to defray pressing debts, and enable him to enter under good
auspices his new career. That very night, while yet full of gratitude and
good resolves, this whole sum, and its amount doubled, was lost at the
gaming-table. In his desire to repair his first losses, my father risked
double stakes, and thus incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable
to pay. Ashamed to apply again to the king, he turned his back upon
London, its false delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty for his
sole companion, buried himself in solitude among the hills and lakes of
Cumberland. His wit, his bon mots, the record of his personal attrac-
tions, fascinating manners, and social talents, were long remembered
and repeated from mouth to mouth. Ask where now was this favourite
of fashion, this companion of the noble, this excelling beam, which gilt
with alien splendour the assemblies of the courtly and the gay—you
heard that he was under a cloud, a lost man; not one thought it belonged
to him to repay pleasure by real services, or that his long reign of bril-
liant wit deserved a pension on retiring. The king lamented his absence;
he loved to repeat his sayings, relate the adventures they had had togeth-
er, and exalt his talents—but here ended his reminiscence.
Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He repined for the
loss of what was more necessary to him than air or food—the excite-
ments of pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious and pol-
ished living of the great. A nervous fever was the consequence; during
which he was nursed by the daughter of a poor cottager, under whose
roof he lodged. She was lovely, gentle, and, above all, kind to him; nor
can it afford astonishment, that the late idol of high-bred beauty should,
even in a fallen state, appear a being of an elevated and wondrous nature
to the lowly cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to the ill-
fated marriage, of which I was the offspring.
Notwithstanding the tenderness and sweetness of my mother, her hus-
band still deplored his degraded state. Unaccustomed to industry, he
knew not in what way to contribute to the support of his increasing fam-
ily. Sometimes he thought of applying to the king; pride and shame for a
while withheld him; and, before his necessities became so imperious as
to compel him to some kind of exertion, he died. For one brief interval
10
before this catastrophe, he looked forward to the future, and contem-
plated with anguish the desolate situation in which his wife and children
would be left. His last effort was a letter to the king, full of touching elo-
quence, and of occasional flashes of that brilliant spirit which was an in-
tegral part of him. He bequeathed his widow and orphans to the friend-
ship of his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this means, their
prosperity was better assured in his death than in his life. This letter was
enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not doubt, would per-
form the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king's own hand.
He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by his
creditors. My mother, penniless and burthened with two children,
waited week after week, and month after month, in sickening expecta-
tion of a reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her
father's cottage; and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the
chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive. During my father's life, she
had been made familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly circle;
but such things, ill according with her personal experience, appeared,
after the loss of him who gave substance and reality to them, vague and
fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could have acquired suffi-
cient courage to address the noble persons mentioned by her husband,
the ill success of his own application caused her to banish the idea. She
saw therefore no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sor-
row for the loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued to contem-
plate with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally delicate health,
at length released her from the sad continuity of want and misery.
The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate. Her own
father had been an emigrant from another part of the country, and had
died long since: they had no one relation to take them by the hand; they
were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the most scanty pit-
tance was a matter of favour, and who were treated merely as children of
peasants, yet poorer than the poorest, who, dying, had left them, a
thankless bequest, to the close-handed charity of the land.
I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. A re-
membrance of the discourses of my parents, and the communications
which my mother endeavoured to impress upon me concerning my
father's friends, in slight hope that I might one day derive benefit from
the knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream through my brain. I con-
ceived that I was different and superior to my protectors and compan-
ions, but I knew not how or wherefore. The sense of injury, associated
with the name of king and noble, clung to me; but I could draw no
11
conclusions from such feelings, to serve as a guide to action. My first real
knowledge of myself was as an unprotected orphan among the valleys
and fells of Cumberland. I was in the service of a farmer; and with crook
in hand, my dog at my side, I shepherded a numerous flock on the near
uplands. I cannot say much in praise of such a life; and its pains far ex-
ceeded its pleasures. There was freedom in it, a companionship with
nature, and a reckless loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did
not accord with the love of action and desire of human sympathy, char-
acteristic of youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the change of sea-
sons, were sufficient to tame my eager spirit; my out-door life and unem-
ployed time were the temptations that led me early into lawless habits. I
associated with others friendless like myself; I formed them into a band,
I was their chief and captain. All shepherd-boys alike, while our flocks
were spread over the pastures, we schemed and executed many a mis-
chievous prank, which drew on us the anger and revenge of the rustics. I
was the leader and protector of my comrades, and as I became distin-
guished among them, their misdeeds were usually visited upon me. But
while I endured punishment and pain in their defence with the spirit of
an hero, I claimed as my reward their praise and obedience.
In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The appetite
for admiration and small capacity for self-control which I inherited from
my father, nursed by adversity, made me daring and reckless. I was
rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals I tended. I often
compared myself to them, and finding that my chief superiority con-
sisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was in power only that I
was inferior to the chiefest potentates of the earth. Thus untaught in re-
fined philosophy, and pursued by a restless feeling of degradation from
my true station in society, I wandered among the hills of civilized Eng-
land as uncouth a savage as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome. I owned
but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue
was never to submit.
Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on myself.
My mother, when dying, had, in addition to her other half-forgotten and
misapplied lessons, committed, with solemn exhortation, her other child
to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty I performed to the best
of my ability, with all the zeal and affection of which my nature was cap-
able. My sister was three years younger than myself; I had nursed her as
an infant, and when the difference of our sexes, by giving us various oc-
cupations, in a great measure divided us, yet she continued to be the ob-
ject of my careful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of the term, we were
12
poorest among the poor, and despised among the unhonoured. If my
daring and courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her
youth and sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be
weak, were the causes of numberless mortifications to her; and her own
disposition was not so constituted as to diminish the evil effects of her
lowly station.
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiar
disposition of our father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyes
were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space
after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that the soul which was
their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken. She was pale
and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples, contrasting its
rich hue with the living marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, little
consonant apparently with the refinement of feeling which her face ex-
pressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with it. She was like one of
Guido's saints, with heaven in her heart and in her look, so that when
you saw her you only thought of that within, and costume and even fea-
ture were secondary to the mind that beamed in her countenance.
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this
was the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying parent),
was not altogether saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold and
repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those who had regarded her with
affection, she might have been different; but unloved and neglected, she
repaid want of kindness with distrust and silence. She was submissive to
those who held authority over her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her
brow; she looked as if she expected enmity from every one who ap-
proached her, and her actions were instigated by the same feeling. All
the time she could command she spent in solitude. She would ramble to
the most unfrequented places, and scale dangerous heights, that in those
unvisited spots she might wrap herself in loneliness. Often she passed
whole hours walking up and down the paths of the woods; she wove
garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the flickering of the shadows
and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat beside a stream, and as her
thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into the waters, watching
how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloat boats formed of
bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, and intensely watch the
navigation of her craft among the rapids and shallows of the brook.
Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thousand combinations; she dreamt
"of moving accidents by flood and field"—she lost herself delightedly in
13
these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwilling spirit to the
dull detail of common life.
Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was
good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of affec-
tion. She had not even the same advantage as I in the recollection of her
parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only friend, but her alliance
with me completed the distaste that her protectors felt for her; and every
error was magnified by them into crimes. If she had been bred in that
sphere of life to which by inheritance the delicate framework of her mind
and person was adapted, she would have been the object almost of ador-
ation, for her virtues were as eminent as her defects. All the genius that
ennobled the blood of her father illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed
in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness, were at the antipodes of her
nature; her countenance, when enlightened by amiable feeling, might
have belonged to a queen of nations; her eyes were bright; her look
fearless.
Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally
cut off from the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong
contrast to each other. I always required the stimulants of companion-
ship and applause. Perdita was all-sufficient to herself. Notwithstanding
my lawless habits, my disposition was sociable, hers recluse. My life was
spent among tangible realities, hers was a dream. I might be said even to
love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness
upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends, for they interfered with her
visionary moods. All my feelings, even of exultation and triumph, were
changed to bitterness, if unparticipated; Perdita, even in joy, fled to
loneliness, and could go on from day to day, neither expressing her emo-
tions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling in another mind. Nay, she could love
and dwell with tenderness on the look and voice of her friend, while her
demeanour expressed the coldest reserve. A sensation with her became a
sentiment, and she never spoke until she had mingled her perceptions of
outward objects with others which were the native growth of her own
mind. She was like a fruitful soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heav-
en, and gave them forth again to light in loveliest forms of fruits and
flowers; but then she was often dark and rugged as that soil, raked up,
and new sown with unseen seed.
She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the wa-
ters of the lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind,
and a purling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through poplar-
shaded banks into the lake. I lived with a farmer whose house was built
14