MRS. BRAy'S HENRY DE POMEROY.
NEAR Totness in Devonshire are the ruins 'of a castle. called Berry Pomeroy,. with a terrace on the verge of a precipice ; and, according to a country legend, _a lord of this castle in the time of Richard the First rode over the precipice and was dashed to- pieces. The Mount of St. Michael in Cornwall is, at low-water and in a calm, accessible by a sort of natural causeway ; but at high-tide, or in- stormy weather, the causeway is impassable; and the Cornish story runs that a lady, escaping from the monastery. on the Mount, was washed from the horse of her lover and perished in the waters. These two separate legends Mrs. BRAY' has put together as the foundation of her story, with such additions as seemed necessary. The additions make the luckless knight of the precipice uncon- sciously in love with his own sister—the adulterous offspring by his father of a noble lady, who brings her up as her niece. The in- jured husband is supposed to have fallen in the Holy Land ; but when matters are thickening he returna as a ',Ulmer, to give mys- terious warnings against the match ; but in vain. Lady Alicia de Beaumont, the mother, forbids all thought.of it, and sends her daughter to the convent ; but equally in vain. Sir Henry De Pome- roy carries her off on St. John's Eve, to become .accessory to her death. The palmer rescues him from the waters ; and on reaching land, unfolds the whole story before Sir Henry and Lady Alicia; offer- ing the former " satisfaction " for the death of his father ; which Sir Henry, however, declines. Exactly a twelvemonth' afterwards to the day, being the Eve of St. John, Sir Henry De Pomeroy is ar- rested for high treason: the messenger being a personal enemy, they get to words ; when Sir Henry stabs his opponent, and, mount- ing his horse gallops over the precipice. qn the interval, both Lord and Lady De Beaumont have died; and thus ends this strange eventful history.
The merits of Henry De '.Pomeroy consist in a thorough know- ledge of the customs and costumes of the period, and their pre- sentation in a 4ear, and easy style, which unites the simplieity-of the old chronicler with something of modern refinement. Askr as mere composition goes, the work is about the best of Mrs. BRAY'S, and some of the scenes taken singly are not ineffective; but as a whole, the romance is lifeless and unnatural. As we said for- merly, Mrs. BRAY is unequal to an extended fiction ; she wants both art and genius. Little more than one-third of Henry De Pomeroy is occupied with the actual story; the rest consists of a aeries of scenes intended in some way to illustrate. the manners of the age. The monkish economy of an abbey, . the squabbles between a bishop claiming supremacy and an abbot episcopal independence, the jealousy of the monastic and the secular clergy, and the half-pagan Saxon superstitions of the West of England, are fully exhibited. A noble house of the period is portrayed with equal. elaboration ; the fool, the nurse, the dresses,' the furni- niture, and the domestic employments, together with a hunting- match, and an evening's entertainment by travelling-jugglers and a troubadour, are all described, while the story stands still. Nor when going on is it skilfully conducted: the motives and ac- tions of the persons are artificial or insufficient.
These are deficiencies of art : the want of creative genius is shown in the abstract or the unessential characters of the actors, and in the poverty of the story. We feel the theme-to be too poor and simple for the elaborate piece into which the author has tried to expand it. Some of this want of substance and variety may, indeed, be as much owing to the story itself as to Mrs. Bast's deficiency in imagination. Henry. De Pomeroy strongly confirms the opinion we pronounced seven years ago, in a notice' of her Warletgh, or the Fatal Oak,* that a legend is scarcely fitted for fiction, and if at all, only as a short tale.
The fundamental source of the interest is a matter of graver question. Notwithstanding authority can be pleaded in its favour, we do not think adultery is under any circumstance a good sub- ject for fiction. The subject is not offensively treated by Mrs. BRAY, and her object seems to be to point a moral, though a some- what far-fetched one; but the want of chastity in a woman, like the want of honesty in a man, not only forbids sympathy, but strips the person of interest, or excites a morbid one. The story of an unconsciously incestuous love is more liacknied, but still more op- posed to' the general feeling. The great canon of poetical justice is violated, which scarcely recognizes the Punishment of, children for the crimes of their parents. Truth is almost'always violated ; for the lovers are painted as paragons ; which, looking to the training such parents would_generally bestow, is not very likely to be the case. Reason is equally at fault ; for the moral argument that forbids marriages between near relations is, as Hume remarks, the universal corruption of, manners :that would ensue in early youth were such. connexions 'permitted; and We find the law to 'fluctuate with the state of society—in Greece, where women were immured,,a relationship like that between Henry and Adele in the volumes before us would have been no bar to a matrimonial con- nexion. - Hence this story is essentially analogous to the tales where the bar to happiness is low or illegitimate 'birth, which, at the end of the third volume, is duly removed ; though the cause why low or illegitimate birth injures the character—poverty, or the sense of inferiority and disgraceremains... It is true that Classical authority may be pleaded for making incest a subject ; but the higher Grecian dramas were a species of religious mystery, incul- cating the doom of a fated family. When stripped of this character, even ARISTOPHANES could denounce the theme, notwithstanding the inferior morals of the classical ages.
Spectator, 8th November 1834. The nature of Henry De Pomeroy being rather historico-antiqua- rian, our.extracts will partake of the same character. The fol- lowing on the marriages of the Romish clergy is not devoid of
interest. • •
"In Linearly part of the twelfth century; during the Archbishopric of Amain, the severest canons had been, made in the Councils of Westminster against the marriage of the clergy. But these were so indifferently observed, that others of a yet More severe nature were enacted, Whereby all priests were enjoined to put away their wives, and never after to see or speak. with them, except on oc- casions of great necessity, in the presence of two or more witnesses. These laws, however, being found insufficient to prevent the supposed offence, the Church turned her fury principally against the women, as the weaker party concerned in the crime, and therefore the more easily to be subdued ; consequently, any woman who should be induced to commit the offence of marrying a secular !Priest became subject to punishment, the same -as an adulteress; tai difference was made, no mitigation. But feelings of natural affection were stronger than all the canons instituted for their suppression; and so much did the clergy continue to marry, that at last the Church, despairing by her own authority to prevent the evil, insisted on the King's putting in force the laws against it. The Monarch, however, who was expected to enforce these severe penalties, (Henry the Second,) was, perhaps, too conscious of his own frailties in respect t6 the weaker sex, to feel much interest in the matter of their chastisement. And not liking, may be, to be too hard upon those whom God had joined to- gether in matrimony if holy or unholy, and at the same time not altogether wishing to be at cross-purposes with,the Church, he went exactly half-way between both parties; and thinking that a good sum paid down, as we now pay an impostor' forbidden goods, would satisfy canonical justice and put the loves of husbands to the test, (as all priests were at liberty to put away their wives if they did not choose to pay for them,) he contented himself with laying a round sum on the head of every ecclesiastic who had a wife ; a tax which in- stantly made her, in the literal sense Of the word, a very dear thing. And as Richard of the Lion Heart, the successor of Henry, by every possible exaction extorted from and dppressed his subjects to supply his necessities for the holy wars, be privately winked at the custom ; so that any priest, in his time, who could pay on what was called inquisition a good sum into the exchequer of amercements and fines, was allowed to keep -his spouse without fear of moles- ta0"on ; and at no other rate of annoyance than that of being twitted by a stricter secular than himself, envied by the Monks, and looked down upon with scorn by those self-satisfied persons who were rightebus over-much, and who severely condemned all sins and affections for which they had in themselves not the slightest inclination; a race of censurers quite as rife in the nineteenth as in, the twelfth century,"
AN ABBOT'S FEAST.
,1
,..Haldwin entered the refectory bare-headed, his arms crossed upon his breast, wifti.an air of modest dignity in his.depolment, combined with the ease of one accustomed to high society, who is about to' do the honours in his own house. He was attended by several of his chaplains and four youths ; two were pages or the " digitus," the other two of the "covered cup." As he entered, all present rose, and remained standing; till, after having first saluted the cross, the abbot proceeded to the " digitus " at the side-table ; where the pages whose duty it was ministered to him , whilst the prior poured from a silver ewer per- fumed water into a basin of like material, and presented to him a napkin to dry his hands after the ceremony of ablution. This done, he advanced to the head of his own separate table, to which he had invited the archdeacon and Sir Henry De Pomeroy. The prior and sub- prior presided at the long tables appropriated to the monks. On a signal being given, two of the singing chaplains advanced to the foot of the abbot's board, and sang the Latin grace. The grace was led off by a few notes struck by the precentor on an instrument he held in his hand, and used as the moderns do the pitch-pipe in a couatry-church. This inStrUment, called a tabula, was of bone, ornamented with gold and silver, in form not unlike the ancient lyre : indeed, the office of precentor or chanter in the monasteries seemed to answer to that of. the coryphmus or leader of the .choruses in the ancient drama of the Greeks.
On, the abbot's table were several loaves of wassel-bread; two of which only were allowed for use, the other four being allotted, to the poor. There also stood the orthodox jug of single beer, and the modest half-sextary of small wine: but these humble liquors, though strictly enjoined by rule for an abbot's table, were, like the hundred bob-nails presented in our timei to the Lord Mayor of London on the day of his inauguration, a mere ceremony of office, more for show than use. In earlier ages, the being able to count the century of nails proclaimed, that the individual chosen for the civic lordship was pos- sessed of sufficient education to enable him to perform the duties of his place ; as an alderman who could not tell that two and two made four would never have been deemed efficient to calculate what might be due to the account of jastite, when fines, amercements, and penalties, paadown in hard coin, con- stituted the laws of reparation as well as of punishment in most cases of ordi- nary offence, and even in some of a criminal nature. But notwithstanding, by the progress of time, the constitution of the realm, and the entire state of edu- cation have chadged in this country, -the custom of the hob-nails, though no longer necessary, is still duly observed in* the ceremony of making a Lord Mayor. Even so was the jug of weak beer and of still weaker wine retained, as the ancient and ordained potations befitting a lord abbot : but as the indul- gence to partake of better things depended solely on his own will, our abbot Was content with the mere presence of the humbler liquors, without drawing upon them 'for use.
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