Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/230

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PAPERS ON LITERATURE AND ART.

brave what is so opposite to his own soul. He is, indeed, too noble to resent or revenge, or look on the case other than as God may.

Luria—In my own East—if you would stoop to help
My barbarous illustration—it sounds ill,
Yet there's no wrong at bottom—rather praise.
Dom.—Well!
Luria.—We have creatures there which if you saw
The first time, you would doubtless marvel at,
For their surpassing beauty, craft and strength,
And tho' it were a lively moment's shock
Wherein you found the purpose of their tongues—
That seemed innocuous in their lambent play,
Yet, once made known, such grace required a guard,
Your reason soon would acquiesce, I think,
In th' Wisdom which made all things for the best,
So take them, good with ill, contentedly—
The prominent beauty with the secret sting.
I am glad to have seen you, wondrous Florentines.

And having seen them, and staked his heart entirely on the venture, he went through with them—and lost. He cannot survive the shock of their treachery. He arranges all things nobly in their behalf, and dies, for he was of that mould, the "precious porcelain of human clay" which

"Breaks with the first fall,"

but not without first exercising a redeeming power upon all the foes and traitors round him. His chivalric antagonist, Tiburzio, needed no conversion, for he is one of the noble race who

"joy to feel
A foeman worthy of their steel,"

and are the best friends of such a foeman. But the shrewd, worldly spy, the supplanted rival, the woman who was guilty of that lowest baseness of wishing to make of a lover the tool of her purposes, all grow better by seeing the action of this noble crea-