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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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PainUr qf' Ghent . $ 79
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8 C ?
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them ! Thy beard is white—thy limbs unstrung—thy blood jellied—and thine eyeballs quenched . Old man , death is aiming at thee . Ickab . Amen ! I await tha stroke . Roder . What ! vith a lie upon thy lip ?—Ichab . Master \—
lloder . A trading lie , when worms are waiting thee ? Jchabod , believe it—an old mans face , though seamed and stained with years , should beam with coming glory !
It will be perceived that the greater portion of the foregoing extract , though in the form of prose , is not only poetry in spirit , but is actually written in irregular blank verse . Roderick makes himself known to the Jew , and a deeply pathetic scene ensues .
Roder , With drowning eyes , and burning hand—for death again was at my hearth—I laboured at my half-corn pie ted work . Ichab . Thou ! Roder . I teJl you , for one whole day I wrestled with my heart ; and that picture—the semblance of my last living babe—I sold to buy a coffia for the dead .
Ichab . And thou didst not tell me this ? Roder . Thou didst not know my wretchedness-Ichab . But hadst thou
told—Roder , Told ! When swelling affluence doth blink its horny eyes , think you the pride of poverty can find a tongue ) I laid my little one in yonder earth , and turned my back upon your city . Ichab . And I was then a father ! And still I chaffered—still , with the hardness of old Egypt , tasked you for scanty bread . Well , I hare been—am scourged for it . Reuben !—rny murdered Reuben !
Ichabod here gives an account of the murder of his son in terms of utter agony , concluding with , — They brought my boy to ?//? y dark house . I saw the wound —• 7 have seen 7 iot / iitig clearly since . *
But finely as all the . account of the murder of Ichabod ' s son is wrought up , it is not necessary to the main story , and consequently interferes with the unity of action which in so short a piece , ought we think to have been strictly preserved . It is probable that the author contemplated a second act when he commenced writing this piece , but suffered the episode to remain after he had altered his nlan . for the sake of the genuine
dramatic poetry it contained . Be this as it may , we rejoice that it was not lost . We see no other fault worth naming in the play , and this fault is full of merit in itself , and of a Kind that few critics have got * stuff enough' in them to make . Ae to the remarks made about the ' Painter of Ghent / by the litterateurs of the day , Mr . Jerrold has not only to attribute the attacks to natural incompetence , but in a great measure to the perverted cravings and meretricious taste , with which our ' great patentees * have innoculated their gold-ipectacled understandings .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1836, page 379, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2658/page/51/
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