Count Julian

“ I have represented the Count as a man both sinned against and sinning, and equally to be commiserated and condemned. The author of the Tragedy of Count Julian has contemplated his character in a grander point of view, and represented him as a man self-justified in bringing an army of foreign auxiliaries to assist him in delivering his country from a tyrant, and foreseeing, when it is too late to recede, the evils which he is thus bringing upon her. ”

“ Julian (Count) , a powerful lord of the Spanish Goths. When his daughter Florinda was violated by King Roderick, the count was so indignant that he invited over the Moors to come and push Roderick from the throne, and even turned renegade the better to effect his purpose. The Moors succeeded, but condemned Count Julian to death, “to punish treachery, and prevent worse ill.” Julian, before he died, sent for “Father Maccabee,” and said:
“I would fain
Die in the faith wherein my fathers died. ”

“ Being now in his own domains, surrounded by his relatives and friends, Count Julian went on to complete his web of treason. In this he was aided by his brother-in-law, Oppas, the Bishop of Seville: a man dark and perfidious as the night, but devout in demeanor, and smoothly plausible in council. This artful prelate had contrived to work himself into the entire confidence of the king, and had even prevailed upon him to permit his nephews, Evan and Siseburto, the exiled sons of Witiza, to return into Spain. ”

“ Count Julian.
Roderigo, King of Spain.
Opas, Metropolitan of Seville.
Sisabert, betrothed to Covilla.
Muza, Prince of Mauritania.
Abdalazis, son of Muza.
Tarik, Moorish Chieftain.
Covilla, daughter of Julian.
Egilona, wife of Roderigo.
Officers.
Hernando, Osma, Ramiro, &c.
p. 1ACT I. SCENE 1. Camp of Julian.
OPAS. JULIAN.
Opas. See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God,
See thy lost child.
Jul. I have avenged me, Opas,
More than enough: I sought but to have hurled
The brands of war on one detested head,
And died upon his ruin. O my country! ”

“ The plot thus suggested by Count Julian received the unholy sanction of Bishop Oppas, who engaged to aid it secretly with all his influence and means: for he had great wealth and possessions, and many retainers. The example of the reverend prelate determined all who might otherwise have wavered, and they bound themselves by dreadful oaths to be true to the conspiracy. Count Julian undertook to proceed to Africa and seek the camp of Muza, to negotiate for his aid, while the bishop was to keep about the person of King Roderick, and lead him into the net prepared for him. ”

“ Julian, on the other hand, who knew far fewer men, could count among his new and old companions some real friends—friends who would cling to him in adversity as well as in prosperity, and who loved him for his own sake, whether his fortunes were in sunshine or in cloud. First among these newly-acquired friends he counted the names of Owen and Kennedy, among the old ones of Lillyston and De Vayne. ”

“ Nothing can be disputed with less plausibility, than that there are in the world certain noble and elevated spirits, that rise above the vulgar notions and the narrow conduct of the bulk of mankind, that soar to the sublimest heights of rectitude, and from time to time realize those virtues, of which the interested and illiberal deny the possibility.
I can no more doubt, than I do of the truth of these apothegms, that the count de St. Julian is one of these honourable characters. He treads without the airy circle of dissipation. He is invulnerable to the temptations of folly ”

“ Julian as one of the most amiable of mankind. I have looked up to him as a model of virtue, and I have exulted that I had the honour to be of the same species with so fair a fame, and so true a heart. I would willingly lighten to a man so excellent the load of calamity. Why is it, that heaven in the mysteriousness of its providence, so often visits with superior affliction, the noblest of her sons? I should be truly sorry, that my friend should act in a manner unworthy of the tenor of his conduct, and the exaltation of his character. You are now, my lord at a distance. ”

“ Julian and Sisabert surround the walls—
Osma. Surround, sayst thou? enter they not the gates?
Ram. Perhaps ere now they enter.
Osma. Sisabert
Brings him our prisoner.
Ram. They are friends! they held
A parley; and the soldiers, when they saw
Count Julian, lower’d their arms and hail’d him king.
Osma. How? and he leads them in the name of king?
p. 58Ram. He leads them; but amidst that acclamation
He turn’d away his head, and called for vengeance.
Osma. In Sisabert, and in the cavalry
He led, were all our hopes.
Opas. Woe, woe is theirs
Who have no other.
Osma. What are thine? ”

“ Julian. His last vows shall be breathed for your happiness. Fate, do what thou wilt me, but shower down thy choicest blessings on my friend! Whatever thou deniest to my sincere exertions in the cause of rectitude, bestow a double portion upon that artless and ingenuous youth, who, however misguided for a moment, has founded even upon the basis of error, a generous return and an heroic resolution, which the most permanent exertions of spotless virtue scarce can equal! ”

“ Of Count Julian, the third and last of them, whom the undiscerning prejudice of monkish writers and the animosity of churchman and Spaniard, intensified by baffled ambition and injured pride, have for thirty-six generations branded with the name of traitor, we have accounts but little less unsatisfactory. His nationality, his antecedents, his relations to the Goths, the origin of his appointment as governor of Ceuta, the scope of his authority, his obligations to the court of Toledo, are, for the most part, matters of conjecture. ”

“ The Count de St. Julian to the Marquis of Pescara
Palermo
My dear lord,
It is not in conformity to those modes which fashion prescribes, that I am desirous to express to you my most sincere condolence upon the death of your worthy father. I know too well the temper of my Rinaldo to imagine, that his accession to a splendid fortune and a venerable title can fill his heart with levity, or make him forget the obligations he owed to so generous and indulgent a parent. It is not the form of sorrow that clouds his countenance. I see the honest tear of unaffected grief starting from his eye. ”

“ His propensity to the tender passion appears to have been very great, and he of consequence lays himself out in a gallantry that I can by no means approve.
Such, my dear count, appears to me to be the genuine and impartial character of my new friend. His good nature, his benevolence, and the pliableness of his disposition may surely be allowed to compensate for many defects. He can indeed by no means supply the place of my St. Julian. I cannot look up to him as a guide, and I believe I shall never be weak enough to ask his advice in the conduct of my life. ”

“ By James Moyes, Greville Street, Hatton Garden.
1812.
The daughter of Count Julian is usually called Florinda—a fictitious appellation, unsuitable to the person and to the period. Never was one devised more incompatible with the appearance of truth, or more fatal to the illusions of sympathy. The city of Covilla, it is reported, was named after her. Here is no improbability: there would be a gross one in deriving the word, as is also pretended, from La Cava. Cities, in adopting a name, bear it usually as a testimony of victories or as an augury of virtues. ”

“ Muza. Their father’s.
Jul. Oh, support me, Heaven!
Against this blow! all others I have borne.
Ermenegild! thou mightest, sure, have lived!
A father’s name awoke no dread of thee!
Only thy mother’s early bloom was thine!
There dwelt on Julian’s brow—thine was serene—
The brightened clouds of elevated souls,
Feared by the most below: those who looked up
Saw, at their season, in clear signs, advance
Rapturous valour, calm solicitude,
All that impatient youth would press from age,
Or sparing age sigh and detract from youth:
Hence was his fall! my hope! myself! my Julian! ”

“ There would be an impropriety in a person, so illustrious in rank, and whose voice is of considerable weight in the state, forestalling the inferior courts upon these subjects. One thing however I am at liberty to mention, and your ladyship may be assured, that in any thing in my power I should place my highest felicity in gratifying you. There was indeed some misinformation upon the subject; but I have now the honour to inform you from authority upon which I depend, that the count de St. Julian is now, and has always remained single. ”

“ Julian lives in the obscurity of retreat, and in the solitude most favourable to literary pursuits. What avocations can have called off his attention from the interests of his friend? May I be permitted however to draw one conclusion from your silence, that you do not consider my situation as critical and alarming? That although you join the prudent severity of a monitor with the candid partiality of a friend, you yet view my faults in a venial light, and are disposed to draw over them the veil of indulgence? ”

“ Julian, the exertion of that fortitude with which nature has so richly endowed you, was never so completely called for in any other instance. This is the crisis of your life. This is the very tide, which accordingly as it is improved or neglected, will give a colour to all your future story. Let not that amiable man, who has found the art of introducing heroism into common life, and dignifying the most trivial circumstances by the sublimity and refinedness of his sentiments, now, in the most important affair, sink below the common level. ”

“ No foe more furious than forgiven kings.
I ask not then what thou wouldst never grant:
May heaven, O Julian, from thy hand receive
A pardoned man, a chastened criminal.
Jul. This further curse hast thou inflicted; wretch,
I cannot pardon thee.
Rod. Thy tone, thy mien,
Refute those words.
Jul. No—I can not forgive.
Rod. Upon my knee, my conqueror, I implore—
Upon the earth, before thy feet—hard heart!
Jul. Audacious! hast thou never heard that prayer
And scorned it? ’tis the last thou shouldst repeat.
Upon the earth! upon her knees! O God! ”

“ And yet encountered; could they see your Julian
Receiving orders from and answering
These desperate and heaven-abandoned slaves,
They might perceive some few external pangs,
Some glimpses of the hell wherein I move,
Who never have been fathers.
Opas. These are they
To whom brave Spaniards must refer their wrongs!
Jul. Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief,
Distrusts his friends more than his enemies,
Me more than either; fraud he loves and fears,
And watches her still footfall day and night.
Opas. O Julian! such a refuge! such a race! ”

“ On his staid breast.
Tar. Danger is past, he conquers;
No enemy is left him to subdue.
Her. He sank not, while there was, into himself.
Now plainly see I from his altered tone,
He cannot live much longer—thanks to God!
Tar. What! wishest thou thy once kind master dead?
Was he not kind to thee, ungrateful slave!
Her. The gentlest, as the bravest, of mankind.
Therefore shall memory dwell more tranquilly
With Julian, once at rest, than friendship could,
Knowing him yearn for death with speechless love. ”

“ You have employed without scruple all those advantages it put into your hands. You have undermined me at your ease. I left you to protect my life's blood, my heart of heart, from every attack, to preserve the singleness of her affections, and the constancy of her attachment. It was yours to have breathed into her ear the sighs of St. Julian. It was yours ambitiously to expatiate upon his amiable qualities. You were every day to have added fuel to the flame. You were to have presented Matilda to my arms, more beautiful, more tender, more kind, than she had ever appeared. ”

“ How deplorable is the situation in which we are placed, when even the generous and candid temper of my St. Julian, can be induced to think of a young nobleman in a light he does not deserve, and to impute to him basenesses from which his heart is free! ”

“ Her. Often we hardly think ourselves the happy
Unless we hear it said by those around.
O my lord Julian, how your praises cheered
Our poor endeavours! sure, all hearts are ope
Lofty and low, wise and unwise, to praise.
Even the departed spirit hovers round
Our blessings and our prayers; the corse itself
Hath shined with other light than the still stars
Shed on its rest, or the dim taper, nigh.
My father, old men say, who saw him dead
And heard your lips pronounce him good and happy,
Smiled faintly through the quiet gloom, that eve,
And the shroud throbbed upon his grateful breast. ”

“ Violence, by man or nature, must be theirs;
Thine it must be, and who to pity thee?
p. 53Rod. Behold my solace! none. I want no pity.
Opas. Proclaim we those the happiest of mankind
Who never knew a want? O what a curse
To thee this utter ignorance of thine!
Julian, whom all the good commiserate,
Sees thee below him far in happiness:
A state indeed: of no quick restlesness,
No glancing agitation—one vast swell
Of melancholy, deep, impassable,
Interminable, where his spirit alone
Broods and o’ershadows all, bears him from earth
And purifies his chasten’d soul for heaven. ”

“ My world and thine are not that distant one.
Is age less wise, less merciful, than grief,
To keep this secret from thee, poor old man?
Thou canst not lessen, canst not aggravate
My sufferings, canst not shorten nor extend
Half a sword’s length between my God and me.
I thank thee for that better thought than fame,
p. 122Which none however, who deserve, despise,
Nor lose from view till all things else are lost.
Abd. Julian, respect his age, regard his power.
Many who feared not death, have dragged along
A piteous life in darkness and in chains. ”