James speaks of his
privations with acute sensibility, but having mentioned them
passes on, as if his manlv mind disdained to brood over
unavoidable calamities. When such a spirit breaks forth into
complaint, however brief, we are aware how great must be the
suffering that extorts the murmur. We sympathize with James, a
romantic, active, and accomplished prince, cut off in the
lustihood of youth from all the enterprise, the noble uses, and
vigorous delights of life, as we do with Milton, alive to all the
beauties of nature and glories of art, when he breathes forth
brief but deep-toned lamentations over his perpetual blindness.
Had not James evinced a deficiency of poetic artifice, we might
almost have suspected that these lowerings of gloomy reflection
were meant as preparative to the brightest scene of his story,
and to contrast with that refulgence of light and loveliness,
that exhilarating accompaniment of bird and song, and foliage and
flower, and all the revel of, the year, with which he ushers in
the lady of his heart. It is this scene, in particular, which
throws all the magic of romance about the old castle keep. He had
risen, he says, at daybreak, according to custom, to escape from
the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow.
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