The Blameless Prince, and other Poems. By Edmund Clarence Stedman.
(Boston, Fields and Co.; London, Trahner.)—There is so much power in this volume as to make us feel no inconsiderable regret in passing on it the severe censure which it seems to deserve. The Prince is a youth of great promise, who is betrothed to the young queen-regnant of a neighbouring realm. On his way to the marriage he falls in with a lady, the young wife of an old court chamberlain, whom he at first mistakes for his bride, and whom, the mistake discovered, he continues to love. The marriage takes place, and the Prince carries on a guilty amour with the lady, growing all the while in reputation among his wife's subjects as a specially " blameless " man. At last he is killed by an accident; his wife devotes herself to his memory, and builds him a splendid tomb. This is about to be dedicated with great cere- mony, when she learns from the Prince's paramour, being then about to die, the secret of the hidden sin. It breaks her heart, and she dies in the midst of the dedication, but does not divulge the cause, and the "Blameless Prince" goes down to posterity as the best of men. There is, we know, a moral in a tale like this. It is true that there are great reputations which are the merest shams. There may be some profit in reminding men of the fact, though, for the most part, we believe, they are only too ready to remember it. But if -11 writer sets himself to do this, he must do it, and make it evident that he does it, in the cause of virtue. To do it from any other motive is, in the most literal sense, to do the Devil's work, the work of accusing humanity. We will let our readers judge Mr. Stedman from his own words :—
" The Vestal, with her silvery content, The Lesbian, with the passion and the pain,— Which creature bath their one Creator lent More light of heaven ? Who would dare restrain, The beams of either? who the radiance mar Of the white planet or the evening star?"
That, in plain language, is the morality of the brothel, and there is, moreover, a blasphemous twang about it which makes it doubly odious.
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