duty before all. You have told me that he gave up his love, his life, and broke his heart simply because he fancied that he would do a girl harm by speaking of love to her-and she was free. I say he was a fool. But he was the fool of strength, and of duty, and of honour. . . Helen, whatever we may say, you have sworn before God to give your mortal life, all but your immortal soul, to the service of one man on earth, be he what he may. If he deceived you-well, marriage is not a bargain, to be set aside by fraud. If it were, if the husband's failure to perform his whole part set free the wife, or the wife's failure set free the husband, there would be few enough marriages, Heaven knows. . . . . I knew all this ages ago; for letting Love making me forget it, forgive me. I think even Alan

would, if he knew. . . . If I speak strangely—. . .

Helen's heart seemed to freeze within her. Could this be the great love of a strong man, who had dared to tell her that he loved her, and had then recoiled at the first sound of his own words? Had he put the cup to her lips, only to dash it away? She could only stand in dumb amaze, that felt like despair.

He himself felt as if he were playing the part of a coward; for who is so brave, or so cold, as to feel no shame in making a woman feel that he is less weak than a man ought to be? Even now, he longed to dare all for love, even what would be enough to make the spirit of her brother, and of every gentleman as dead and as true, rise in scorn and anger from the grave.

"Be you true to your duty, for Alan's sake and for God's sake," said he. "Your duty?... A lady does not desert a man because he is poor-that is nothing; a woman does not desert a man because he does wrong, or because she is unhappy. The worse he is, the more he needs the help none can give him but she. . . . . She is all he has left; the worse and the falser one is, the better and truer the other must be. Oh, if you could only know the thousandth part of what I feel for you! If I loved you less, it would be so easy to say, 'Come, and let duty go.' It would be so easy, for me, to turn my love into your shame. . . . . Dear, I can help you still. surprised if you don't see me or hear from me for a day or two. must be alone. . . . . Perhaps I shall write to you before I see you again. Say you forgive me―for saying I love you. Not for loving you-there is nothing to forgive there."

Don't be
I

She might have felt humiliation at his assumption of her readiness to give up what he now called duty for him. She felt none, for she had been ready, and she knew that he knew it as well as she. But though she felt, instead of shame, the loss of her last dream, and

though her heart was aching, pride forbade her to show how much her life had gone out towards him, and how bitter was the pain with which it had to shrink back into itself once more. She could not say "I forgive you." But, though he could not enter half-way into all she felt, he could not press her for a word. He could only go, not daring to look forward to when he should see her again. He put her frozen hand to his lips, and was gone-more self-scornful than ever. For the hardest part of doing what is right is the shame instead of the pride which it so often brings-which is so terribly often the Vienne que pourra of Fais ce que tu dois.

Helen had not yet roused herself from her last cruelly broken dream, had not yet comprehended the meaning of Victor's last words, or of what love means to man or woman, or if it means anything at all, when she was startled by a thundering rap at the door, and a heavy but quick tread on the stairs-the step of him whom the man who professed to love her had bidden her to honour and obey. She could not rise when he came in, but she felt no fear.

"What is the meaning of all this?" said Gideon sternly. "How is it I find you here? I go away, and I come back to find that you have left your home, and have been living in this wretched dog-hole for days. What fool's craze are you playing now?”

Nothing," said she. "I don't know what it means

By-Helen-"-he paused--"it seems to me that we have not been understanding one another very well, you and I. I'm not a good hand at courting my own wife; I wish I were. I supposewell, I suppose you have been making up your mind that I am a blackguard whom no decent woman ought to live with, and have been-well! I don't like you the less for having a temper of your own. Won't you even shake hands? Well!" His new softness seemed to her like a new insult; but she felt herself growing callous to all things now. Perhaps Walter Gray had been right, after all. She was certainly blind to the dog-like devotion with which Gideon's eyes, and most when he was at his roughest, never failed to follow her. Quicker ears would have heard more in his "Well!" than he himself could have known was there.

"I wish I'd found you at home," said he. "But as you don't like that house, you shall go to another. It's not for nothing that I've been away; and I've let those Greek brigands now enough to prevent their troubling you. I can't find it in my heart to scold you, even for running away; I think we shall get on better together now, in time to come. I have done for you more than any Don Quixote

of them all. I have that swindling Yankee, Waldron, on the hip; and you have in your hand-Copleston! See here!"

She read:

"This is the last Will and Testament of Henry Reid." Her eyes swam. "What is this?" asked she.

"It is your Father's Will. Copleston is yours!"

(To be continued.)

416

TWOO

A RELIC OF
OF DRYDEN.

WO of the most illustrious names in the whole history of letters stand inscribed among theirs who have recorded their protest against the curious impertinence of research which insists on tracking, recovering, and preserving the slightest and least worthy fragments or remnants of a great man's work. It would be difficult to strike the balance of acrimony between the several rebukes administered to this surely not unnatural even if not wholly reasonable appetite of the mind, as habitual probably among grateful students as among "curious impertinents," by Voltaire on the one hand and by Landor on the other. And it was on the reissue in Scott's edition of all the miscellaneous work which did least honour to the hand and does least credit to the memory of Dryden that the great English critic and poet expended the sharpest expression of his fiery contempt. Yet something, I venture to think, may be pleaded on behalf of the curious in almost all cases of the kind. They are at least not parallel or comparable with such atrocious profanation of the inmost privacies and most secret sanctities of life and death as many years since was so grandly stigmatized by Mr. Tennyson "after reading a Life ́and Letters." What a man has once given to the public eye is his no longer, to be taken back at pleasure or cancelled on change of mind. And whatever concerning in any way so great a name as Dryden's may be discovered and recorded at this distance of time cannot but be of some small interest at least to all students of English literature.

It is but too certain, on the other hand,—and I should be the last to question or dispute the certainty,—that no lover of Dryden's fame could wish to see any addition made to the already too long list of his comedies. Rather might we reasonably desire, were it possible, to strike off several of these from the roll and erase the record of their perpetration for ever. Why then, it will most properly and inevitably be asked,-why then be at pains to unearth an ugly and unsavoury relic of the Restoration-a word for which history, whether French or English, reads Degradation-on the chance that we may discover in such miry clay the impression of Dryden's great dishonoured hand? there were surely stains enough already on the

broad hard outlines of its giant strength. And certainly, if I had but stumbled across a new sample of his indecent impotence and laborious incapacity in the heavy ploughed field of low comedy or farce, I should have had no thought but to let it lie. But if indeed there be anything of Dryden's in a long-forgotten play which was issued in his lifetime under cover of his approbation as containing a scene supplied by his own hand, it must be sought in one of two passages where the style suddenly changes from the roughest farce to the gravest and most high-toned rhetoric of which comedy can properly be capable.

In the year 1675 the too copious comic literature of the period was enlarged by the publication of "The Mistaken Husband. A Comedie, as it is Acted by His Majesties servants At the TheatreRoyall. By a Person of Quality.—Hæc placuit semel.-[Hor.]" I should hardly have thought so, even then at all events, we have no reason to suppose that on a tenth repetition it was found equally pleasing. Between title-page and prologue we find our only reason for taking notice of it, in the following address of "The Bookseller to the Reader."

"This Play was left in Mr. Dryden's hands many years since: The Author of it was unknown to him, and return'd not to claim it; 'Tis therefore to be presum'd that he is dead. After Twelve years expectation, Mr. Dryden gave it to the Players, having upon perusal of it, found that it deserv'd a better Fate than to be buried in obscurity: I have heard him say, that finding a Scene wanting, he supply'd it; and many have affirm'd, that the stile of it" (of the play, that is, in general; not by any means of the additional scene) "is proper to the Subject, which is that the French call Basse Comedy (sic). The turns of it are natural," (I should be loth to bet on the chance of any reader's agreement with the bookseller on this point)" and the resemblance of one man to another, has not only been the foundation of this, but of many other Plays. Plautus his Amphitrion, was the Original of all, and Shakespear and Moliere have copied him with success. Nevertheless, if this Play in it self should be a trifle, which you have no reason to suspect, because that incomparable Person would not from his Ingenious labours lose so much time as to write a whole Scene in it, which in it self sufficiently makes you amends, for Poetry being like Painting, where, if a great Master have but touch'd upon an ordinary Piece, he makes it of Value to all understanding Men; as I doubt not but this will be by his Additions: As it is, I am resolv'd to detain you no longer from it, but subscribe my self,

"Your very Humble Servant,

"R. BENTLEY."

After this somewhat Gampian example of publisher's English, the prologue naturally follows: and no reader who considers the date. will be surprised to learn that neither prologue nor epilogue is presentable to eyes polite. Nor does either of these effusions-though certainly this is not an inevitable corollary to be inferred from the VOL. CCXLVII. NO. 1798.

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