Kitabı oku: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 530, January 21, 1832», sayfa 5

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE DEVIL'S SONATA

Tartini's compositions are very numerous, consisting of above a hundred sonatas, and as many concertos. Among them is the famous "Sonata del Diavolo," of the origin of which Tartini himself gave the following account to the celebrated astronomer Lalande:—

"One night, in the year 1713, I dreamed that I had made a compact with his Satanic Majesty, by which he was received into my service. Everything succeeded to the utmost of my desires, and my every wish was anticipated by my new domestic. I thought that, on taking up my violin to practise, I jocosely asked him if he could play on this instrument? He answered, that he believed he was able to pick out a tune; when, to my astonishment, he began a sonata, so strange, and yet so beautiful, and executed in so masterly a manner, that in the whole course of my life I had never heard anything so exquisite. So great was my amazement that I could scarcely breathe. Awakened by the violence of my feelings, I instantly seized my violin, in the hope of being able to catch some part of the ravishing melody which I had just heard, but all in vain. The piece which I composed according to my scattered recollections is, it is true, the best I ever produced. I have entitled it 'Sonata del Diavolo;' but it is so far inferior to that which had made so forcible an impression on me, that I should have dashed my violin into a thousand pieces, and given up music for ever in despair, had it been possible to deprive myself of the enjoyments which I receive from it."

Time, and the still more surprising flights of more modern performers, have deprived this famous sonata of anything diabolical which it may once have appeared to possess; but it has great fire and originality, and contains difficulties of no trifling magnitude, even at the present day. That process of mind, by which we sometimes hear in sleep a beautiful piece of music, an eloquent discourse, or a fine poem, seems one of those mysterious things which show how fearfully and wonderfully we are made. It would appear that there are times when the soul, in that partial disunion between it and the body which takes place during sleep, and when it sees, hears, and acts, without the intervention of the bodily organs, exerts powers of which at other times its material trammels render it incapable.—What powers may it not exert when the disunion shall be total!

(From an interesting paper on "the Violin," in the Metropolitan.)

THE CAMBRIDGE "FRESHMAN."

See a stripling alighting from the Cambridge "Fly" at Crisford's Hotel, Trumpington-street. It is a day or two before the commencement of the October term, and a small cluster of gownsmen are gathered round to make their several recognitions of returning friends, in spite of shawls, cloaks, petershams, patent gambroons, and wrap-rascals, in which they are enveloped; while our fresh-comer's attention is divided between their sable "curtains" and solicitude for his bags and portmanteau. If his pale cheek and lack-lustre eye could speak but for a moment, like Balaam's ass, what painful truths would they discover! what weary watchings over the midnight taper would they describe! If those fingers, which are now as white as windsor soap can make them, could complain of their wrongs, what contaminations with dusty Ainsworth and Scapulas would they enumerate! if his brain were to reveal its labours, what labyrinths of prose and verse, in which it has been bewildered when it had no clue of a friendly translation, or Clavis to conduct it through the wanderings, would it disclose! what permutations and combinations of commas, what elisions and additions of letters, what copious annotations on a word, an accent, or a stop, parallelizing a passage of Plato with one of Anacreon, one of Xenophon with one of Lycophron, or referring the juvenile reader to a manuscript in the Vatican,—what inexplicable explanations would it anathematize!

The youth calls on a friend, and if "gay" is inveigled into a "wet night," and rolls back to the hotel at two in the morning Bacchi plenus, whereas the "steady man" regales himself with sober Bohea, talks of Newton and Simeon, resolves to read mathematics with Burkitt, go to chapel fourteen times a week, and never miss Trinity Church⁷ on Thursday evenings. The next day he asks the porter of his college where the tutor lives; the key-bearing Peter laughs in his face, and tells him where he keeps; he reaches the tutor's rooms, finds the door sported, and knocks till his knuckles bleed. He talks of Newton to his tutor, and his tutor thinks him a fool. He sallies forth from Law's (the tailor's) for the first time in the academical toga and trencher, marches most majestically across the grass-plot in the quadrangle of his college, is summoned before the master, who had caught sight of him from the lodge-windows, and reprimanded. His gown is a spick-and-span new one, of orthodox length, and without a single rent; he caps every Master of Arts he meets; besides a few Bachelors, and gets into the gutter to give them the wall. He comes into chapel in his surplice, and sees it is not surplice-morning, runs back to his rooms for his gown, and on his return finds the second lesson over. He has a tremendous larum at his bed's head, and turns out every day at five o'clock in imitation of Paley. He is in the lecture-room the very moment the clock has struck eight, and takes down every word the tutor says. He buys "Hints to Freshmen," reads it right through, and resolves to eject his sofa from his rooms.⁸ He talks of the roof of King's chapel, walks through the market-place to look at Hobson's conduit, and quotes Milton's sonnet on that famous carrier. He proceeds to Peter House to see Gray's fire-escape, and to Christ's to steal a bit of Milton's mulberry tree. He borrows all the mathematical MSS. he can procure, and stocks himself with scribbling paper enough for the whole college. He goes to a wine-party, toasts the university officers, sings sentiments, asks for tongs to sugar his coffee, finds his cap and gown stolen and old ones left in their place. He never misses St. Mary's (the University Church) on Sundays, is on his legs directly the psalmody begins, and is laughed at by the other gownsmen. He reads twelve or thirteen hours a day, and talks of being a wrangler. He is never on the wrong side of the gates after ten, and his buttery bills are not wound up with a single penny of fines. He leaves the rooms of a friend in college, rather late perhaps, and after ascending an Atlas-height of stairs, and hugging himself with the anticipation of crawling instanter luxuriously to bed, finds his door broken down, his books in the coal-scuttle and grate, his papers covered with more curves than Newton or Descartes could determine, his bed in the middle of the room, and his surplice on whose original purity he had so prided himself, drenched with ink. If he is matriculated he laughs at the beasts (those who are not matriculated), and mangles slang: wranglers, fops, and medalists become quite "household words" to him. He walks to Trumpington every day before hall to get an appetite for dinner, and never misses grace. He speaks reverently of masters and tutors, and does not curse even the proctors; he is merciful to his wine-bin, which is chiefly saw-dust, pays his bills, and owes nobody a guinea—he is a Freshman!—Monthly Magazine.

THE NOVELIST

THE CONFESSION OF SERVENTIUS

From the Latin of an ancient Paduan Manuscript

By Miss M.L. Beevor

(For the Mirror.)

The hours of my weary existence are fast verging to a close: already have the dreadful preparations commenced. Heavily falls the sound of the midnight bell upon my shrinking ear; upon my withered, quailing heart, it is felt in every stroke like a thunder-bolt; and the rude, reckless shout, heard, though far distant, as distinctly as the fearful throbbings of that miserable heart, tells but too eloquently that the faggots have reached their place of destination, and that the fearful pile is even now erecting. Once I believed myself one of the most courageous of men; I have beheld death in many terrible shapes, and feared it in none; but, oh! to burn,—to burn! this is a thing from which the startled spirit recoils in speechless horror, and vainly, vainly strives to wrench itself by forceful thought from the shuddering, encumbering frame! Even now, do I seem to behold the finger of scorn pointed at me;—ay,—at ME! whilst bound to the firm stake with thongs, strong as the iron bands of death, I cannot even writhe under the anguish of shame, wrath, and apprehended bodily torture! The pile is lighted,—the last words of the reckless priest have died upon mine ear, and his figure and countenance, with the myriad forms and faces, of the insulting multitude around me, are lost in suffocating volumes of uprising, dense, white smoke! The blaze enfolds me like a garment! my unspeakable tortures,—my infernal agonies have commenced!—the diabolical shouts and shrieks of the fiendish spectators—the crackling and hissing of my tender flesh—the bursting of my over swollen tendons, muscles, and arteries, with the out-gush of the crimson vital stream from every pore,—I hear,—I see,—I feel,—and in my morbid imagination, die many deaths in one! I fancied myself brave; alas! I never fancied myself—burning! But, no more; since I have taken up my pen solely to wile away these last, brief, melancholy hours, in narrating those circumstances of my past life, which shall have tended to shrivel ere long, amidst diabolical agonies, the trembling hand that records them, like a parched scroll, and to scatter the ashes of this now vigorous body, to the winds.

ROME,—the beautiful—the Eternal,—was my birthplace; and those, whom I was taught to consider as my parents, said, that the blood of its ancient heroes filled my veins. If so,—and if Servilius and Andrea, were indeed my progenitors, our family must have suffered the most amazing reverses of fortune; they were venders of fruit, lemonade, and perfumed iced waters, in the streets, but a kind-hearted pair, and for their station, well-informed.

In the clear moon-light of our Italian skies, in those soft nights, when, instead of ingloriously slumbering away the cool calm hours, all come forth who are capable of feeling the beauties and sublimities of nature, and of inhaling inspiration with the rich, odorous breeze,—in those fresh, fragrant, and impassioned hours, did Servilius and Andrea delight to lead me through ROME, and to read the Eternal City unto me, as a book; and then fell upon me, in that most sacred place, a portion of divine enthusiasm, of holy inspiration, until, in a retrospect of the thoughts, feelings, schemes, and aspirations of that infantile era, freely could I weep, and ask myself, were such things in sober earnest, ever?

It was singular, that Servilius and Andrea, never suffered me to toil; their sole care seemed to be, to bestow upon me, during their intervals of labour, all the instruction and accomplishments which their limited means allowed; and without vanity I may affirm, that my mind richly repaid them for the trouble of cultivation. I trust I was not haughty in my childhood, but when I observed other boys of my age and station, water-carriers, labourers in the vineyards, and engaged in various menial occupations from which I was exempted, the knowledge that in something I was regarded as their superior, soon forced itself upon me; I felt a distaste for the society of little unlettered, and unmannered boors, and in silence and solitude made progress in studies, which, mere matters of amusement to me, would have been hailed by many youths as tasks more severe than daily manual labour.

Servilius and Andrea associated with but few in their own rank of life; but now and then received visits from their superiors; amongst these were two, whom I shall never, never cease to remember, and to lament, and to whom, as I look backwards through the vista of five-and-thirty years, I still cannot forbear imagining that I was related by no common ties. Of this interesting pair, one was a lady, young, pale, but strikingly beautiful, and the other, a cavalier, her senior but by a very few years, handsome, noble, graceful and accomplished.

Artemisia, so was the lady called, always wore the costume of a religious house when she visited Andrea, but whether this were merely assumed for convenience, or whether she were actually one of the holy sisterhood, I had then neither the desire, nor the means of ascertaining; I only know, that she used sometimes to call me her "dear child," and seemed to vie in affection for me, with the cavalier. Serventius,—yes—the noble gentleman bore my name, for which I liked him all the better, used occasionally to meet her at the house of Servilius and Andrea; and their affection for each other struck even my childish spirit as being more than fraternal; shall I also confess, that I indulged myself in the indistinct idea—the sweet dream—that this noble, virtuous, accomplished, and beautiful pair, (whose only object in visiting our humble residence seemed to be to behold me) were my real parents, and that of Servilius and Andrea, I was only the foster-child.