University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

The Cave of the Hermit Alvarez: a beautiful, and romantick prospect: in it's interiour Part, the Hermit's Cave. A Rock, verdure, Wood; a Stream. The Hermit, and Zaigri, advancing from the Cave.
Hermit.

And have I, then, my noble prince, completed
our god-like regent's work of thy conversion?
Great is the pleasure, to me; great the honour.

Zaigri.
Thou hast, indeed, Alvarez; and I feel
The happiest hour that e'er inspired my life;
It strews my path of time with richest flowers;
And spreads before my eye those distant objects,
Approximated by the power of fancy,
Which, with their glowing tints, their forms expressive,
Adorn, diversity, and animate
The golden regions of eternal day.

Alvarez.
Permit me, then, to aid thy memory,
For thy important use;—more to collect,
Compress, concenter, in a moral focus,
Those topicks which we have discussed, at large.

Zaigri.
I'll hear thee with a fixed, a warm attention.

Alvarez.
The mysteries of our faith, as they're enounced
In holy writ, be sure, were never meant,
By the pure Source of reason, peace, and love,
For objects of perplexed, fatiguing study;
Yet less for hot, and rancorous disputation.
In intellect, compared with higher scales
Of being, we're but pygmies;—there are truths
Of so abstruse, or so sublime a nature,
That they admit not sounds for mortal ears,
Nor the conceptions of embodied minds.
Yet are these mysteries not expressed, in vain.
Before the empyreal throne of God,
When we imbibe his presence; when we quaff
Knowledge, and immortality; to learn
Those hidden truths completely; and to trace,
With easy penetration, their allusions,
Reciprocated from the different parts
Of both the sacred codes; their harmony,
Hence, to admire, with more exalted rapture,
May be our glorious privilege!

Zaigri.
Alvarez!
While I persue thy reason, and thy fancy,
I own thy force, and I adopt thy flame!

Alvarez.
Meanwhile, my son, these mysteries are inserted,
Though their extent, their substance, be not known,
With striking emphasis, in our religion;
They give a grandeur to the solemn fabrick;
And to a pious temper mould the spirit.
Perhaps we should not worship even the First
Of Beings, with such humble adoration,
And fervour, were he not, the Great Unknown!
The mind, for every noble enterprize;
For all it's noble tones, and energies,
Requires the grand, the vast, the infinite.
Hence, the brown horrours of the deepening shade,
Impervious to the eye, delight the soul,
Intent on strains of matchless eloquence,
Enforcing publick virtue. Hence, a forest,
Lofty in height, thick with umbrageous honours,
Was the true nymph Egeria, to sage Numa,
While he, with civil, and with sacred laws,
Improved the majesty of ancient Rome.
And, hence, the poet, in his walks retired,
At calm, and dusky eve (an ivied ruin,
Of age, and perfect symmetry, imagined,
With active magick raising the fine sprites)
Sees, through the eye of fancy, airy forms,
Gleam, and evolve, and sport athwart the glade,
O'ershadowed with the night's approaching awe.
But Zaigri, I forget what I proposed;
I promised to contract, and I expand.

Zaigri.
Thou art concise, to my engaged attention!
Charming analogist! what pity 'tis,
That your religion, breathing love, and formed,
To spread it's genial empire o'er the world,
Should not be, ever, thus pourtrayed in smiles,
And ne'er distorted to unnatural frowns!

Alvarez.
'Tis, that I'm independent of mankind,
Have, long been freed from all connexion with them;
Contagious, ever, to our peace, and virtue!
That I've acquired this beautiful religion.
I owe those truths ethereal, which my spirit
Attract, more, and more strongly, to the Father
Of spirits, to my reason's full exertion;
My reason uncorrupted, undisturbed;
I owe them to that humble roof of nature;
That grove, that river; that profound retirement.

Zaigri.
Father, it grieves me, that our intercourse
With our own kind, essential, to produce
The polished arts, and every great atchievement,
Should wage, in it's reverse, perpetual war
With innocence, tranquility, and virtue.

Alvarez.
Just, the complaint, and just is thy regret.
Yes, Zaigri; had I been a selfish artist,
And figured in the drama of the world;
Perhaps, I, now, had been a feverish prelate,
Fired with ambition, and malignant zeal;
Had turned eternal order to confusion;
Mangled, with rash, and sacrilegious hand,
The word of life; made mysteries more mysterious;
Promulged some empty, doating, jingling creed,
And arrogated, with imperial frown,
The blind assent of nations. Rebel Reason,
Perhaps, had spurned, with glorious contumacy:
Then I had poured my deadly, priestly poison,
Through some weak monarch's superstitious ear;
Listed him in the devil's cause, and told him
That it was God's!—The martial trump had sounded;
And from the banners, while the cross of Peace,
Emblem of universal charity,
Had streamed, and floated, with dire solecism,
Over our fell crusaders, I had deluged
Whole realms with blood!

Zaigri.
Benign, humane Alvarez!
Methinks, the ghosts of my great ancestors,
Of many gallant, slaughtered Moors, are, now,
Impending o'er us, to give evidence
To thy distressful, but authentick picture!
Hapless, illustrious, venerated shades!
Heaven has avenged, or will avenge, your cause!

Alvarez.
You leave a cause, involving human kind,
With him, whose equity is pure, whose power
Omnipotent.—The ceremonies, rites,
The pomp of our religion, we agreed,
On fair examination, were not themes
For thy severe objection. Long experience
Clearly demonstrates, that the major part,
The vulgar of mankind; our general species,
Must to their pious duty be allured,
And fixed, by solemn, or by splendid objects,
That charm, or awe, their minds, in common life.
Therefore, as he, who pays his publick homage
To these appendages of piety,
Which need not check the vitals of religion,
Her salutary, her sublime exertions,
Acts, the good citizen, the friend of man;
They ne'er will find a caviller in Zaigri.

Zaigri.
Alvarez, I'm completely satisfied.
All Spain shall know that I'm a proselyte,
Ere many days elapse. Farewell, thou teacher
Of perfect righteousness; if I should fail
Thee to revisit soon, I should reproach
This honest heart with base ingratitude.

Alvarez.
Farewell! may Heaven's good Providence preside
O'er all thy thoughts, and all thy actions!
[He turns, and goes towards his Cave; he returns, and says to Zaigri;—
Stay;
One warm remembrance more, my son;—observe it,
Above all faith, all zeal; all other practice;
Itself is all.—Be actively humane;
For true humanity is proved by deeds:
As nought but feeling for another's woe
Can wound the bliss of virtue, the good man
(As our grim priests will compass sea, and land,
To stab the soul, to make one proselyte!)
Will travel patiently, from pole to pole,
To see the cruel grief that he can soothe!
He will not only cheer the hoary widow,
Who shivers at his door, and bid her smile;
But he will traverse all Arabia's sands,
If he can but substract a single unit
From the dread aggregate of human ills.
He'll plunge into a dangerous sea of sorrow;
He'll dive into the dank, and noisome dungeon;
And there, to poverty, and crimes, by culprits
Of greater guilt, in elevated office,
To the worst fate condemned, this god-like man
Will blooming health restore, and purer air,
And, in their breasts, the rays of hope relumine!

Zaigri.
A glorious doctrine! and my soul assures me,
It is not difficult!—Farewell, Alvarez!

[Exeunt.