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Untitled Article
subject claims at least one such mind ; therefore we have presumed to say the * Provost of Bruges ' is not a great tragedy . But in what other manner , it may be asked , could Bertulphe have acted on the discovery of his parentage , so as to have escaped the compromise of his natural nobility and self-acquired honour and station ? Tt is no business of ours to answer that .
Yet if we may be excused offering the very rude outline of a suggestion as to what would have satisfied us in the conclusion , it would resemble this . The instant Bertulphe found that all
was known , it would have been good and wise in him to have taken every possible means of influence , promises , and wealth , to gain over the chief captains—or , failing in this , the soldiers
without their captains , together with as many of the nobles as he could , and at the same time have sent secret emissaries among the Serfs , showing them the certainty of that freedom which he had so often striven to obtain for them , if they would make one struggle directly he proclaimed the moment , and placed himself at their head . Then he might have gone to the Earl and calmly requested to know his intention with reference to the enforcement of this new and most infamous
law ? If the Earl conceded the point , he should next have insisted on the manumission of the Serfs ; but let us deal with his own case first . If the ungrateful Earl persisted , in
spite of all quiet remonstrances on the part of the man whose arm had placed him on the throne , and held him there , the Provost as quietly might have withdrawn , and uniting all the Serfs with as many of the soldiers as he had gained , set the puppet at defiance . In the event of this foolish Earl persisting in his legitimate right of making a man and his family the slaves of their enemy , or of any lord who had possessed their forefathers like other cattle upon his estate , nothing could have done him , and many others , so much good as for the Provost to have placed him across his knee in the most considerate manner , and cc chastened him" ( we do but use a "Jigure of speech ") " as a father chasteneth his children / 7 This would have afforded a practical proof of the relative strength of nature and convention . Bertulphe might have been murdered , or impelled to destroy himself by a re-action among the soldiers ; but death would have been well-earned by the previous exhibition of the innate nothingness of a legitimate Pretender !
We owe the author some apology for this critique . We have dealt only with the great principle involved in his Tragedy . We have measured it by the highest standard , ami tried it by the severest tests and most thorough-going philosophy . Be it confessed that we have shown ourselves 44 particular to a shade" in one respect ; nay , we are so minute that
Untitled Article
140 The Provost of Bruges .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1836, page 140, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2655/page/12/
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