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100: CHP III 84, 6.
101: CHP III 88, 1. 102: CHP III 93, 3 103: CHP III 92, 5. 104: CHP III 118, 6-9. rigour of the closest captivity. But it has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard, nor do we find any thing to remind us of the steady firmness and patient endurance of one suffering for conscience-sake. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne’s celebrated sketch of the prisoner, 105 is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark it effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact: at least, in the Low Countries, where capital punishments [p.201] are never inflicted, and where solitary confinement for life is substituted in the case of enormous crimes, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the public eye upon a stage erected in the open market-place, apparently to prevent their guilt and their punishment from being forgotten. It is scarcely possible to witness a sight more degrading to humanity than this exhibition:— with matted hair, wild looks and haggard features, with eyes dazzled by the unwonted light of the sun, and ears deafened and astounded by the sudden change of the silence of a dungeon for the busy hum of men, the wretches sit more like rude images fashioned to a fantastic imitation of humanity, than like living and reflecting beings. In the course of time we are assured they generally become either madmen or idiots, as mind or matter happens to predominate, when the mysterious balance between them is destroyed. But they who are subjected to such a dreadful punishment are generally, like most perpetrators of gross crimes, men of feeble internal resources. Men of talents like Trenck 106 have been known, in the deepest seclusion, and most severe confinement, to battle the foul fiend melancholy, and to come off conquerors, during a captivity of years. Those who suffer imprisonment for the sake of their country or their religion have yet a stronger support, and may exclaim, though in a different sense from that of Othello— ‘It is the cause—it is the cause, my soul.’ And hence the early history of the church is filled with martyrs, who, confident in the justice of their cause, and the certainty of their future reward, endured with patience the rigour of protracted and solitary captivity, as well as the bitterness of torture, and of death itself. This, however, is not the view which Lord Byron has taken of the character and captivity of Bonnivard, for which he has offered an apology in the following passage in the notes. ‘When the foregoing poem was composed, I was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I would have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrate his courage and his virtues.’ The theme of the poem is therefore the gradual effect of protracted captivity upon a man of powerful mind, tried at the same time by the successive deaths of his two brethren. Bonnivard is represented as imprisoned with his brothers in a terrific dungeon in the Castle of Chillon. The second— ‘ ————————— pure of mind, But formed to combat with his kind; 107 [p.202] first drooped under the effects of protracted imprisonment, more bitter to one bred a warrior and a huntsman. The sickness and pining of the other, a youth of a milder and more affectionate character, is feelingly described. VIII. Download 1.07 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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