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Of the foregoing tale itself little need be said. If the translator has failed so grievously that an English reader cannot see its merits, he would hardly help himself out of the scrape by talking about the effect he ought to have produced. And grievously he must have failed, if any reader with a feeling for poetry does not perceive and enjoy the beauty of the descriptions, especially of the two eventful scenes, the power and passion of the wild dithyramb, the admirable delineation of the characters in proportion to their relative importance, and the poetical harmony and perfect keeping of the whole. Nothing can be more delicate than the way of softening the horror that might be felt for the bride: she has not even a name, that there may be no distinct object for our disgust to fasten on; she is only spoken of under titles of a pleasurable meaning; her beauty, like Helen’s on the walls of Troy, is manifested by its effect: the young men are astonished at it; her air of deep melancholy impresses even the gayest and most thoughtless, and is thus more powerful than if pages had been employed in giving utterance to her remorse; besides which, had the latter course been adopted, the main object would have been the wicked heart, not the wicked deed, the sin, not the crime; and sin is always loathsome, whereas a crime may often be looked upon with pity. The poet has therefore wisely kept all his power of characteristic delineation for the two chief persons in the tale; and rarely have any characters been brought out so distinctly within a work of such dimensions; the contrast between them runs through every feature, yet each is the necessary complement to the other; the abuse which they vent in the ball-room each against his dearest friend, and in the ears of almost a stranger, is in the true style of our frail affections, veering before the slightest puff of self-will; nor is there a circumstance mentioned about either, which tends not to complete the picture, and is not all but indispensable. On some occasions a whole life and character are revealed by a single touch; as for instance when Emilius exclaims, No bread! Can such things be? No other man could have been so ignorant of what goes on in the world, as to marvel at such a common occurrence; yet Emilius, it is quite certain, would be surprised, when awaked from his dreams, to behold the face of real life; so that this exclamation is, as it were, a great toe from which to construct one who is anything rather than a Hercules. Indeed the whole scene of the peasant’s marriage, which at first sight may appear like a somewhat idle digression, brought in for no better reason than amusement, is absolutely necessary to the tale as a work of art: it not only shows the character of Emilius in a fresh and important point of view, not only supplies him with fuel, so that he is ready to burn at the approach of the first spark, as for the former scene he had been prepared by the arousal of his feelings in the ball-room; which, besides, cast a mysterious haze over the scene, and leave it half doubtful how much of the crime was actually perpetrated: the peasant’s wedding is necessary as a contrast, as a complement, and as a relief to the other marriage; nor can that calm and masterly irony, which is among the first elements in the mind of a great poet, be more clearly manifested, than it is here, where the pomp and rejoicing of the great and wealthy are suddenly turned ‘into sorrow and lamentation and dismay;’ while the poor and the abashed and the despised are enabled to pass their days in what to them is comfort, and to obtain the enjoyment of a day ‘unto which in after-times they may look back with delight.’

Everything about the one marriage seems happy; everything about the other seems wretched; but neither is what it seems: they who seem happy are a prey to extravagant and sinful desires; those who seem wretched have moderate wishes, and, though they have offended, have not done it wantonly or in malice; they are making what seems to them the only atonement in their power, and ‘the fellow bears the creature the same good-will, though she is such a sorry bit of clay’; therefore the end of each marriage is according, not unto the outward show and promise, but unto that which lies within the heart. It is thus that poetical justice endeavours, so far as it may, to anticipate the sentence of Omniscient justice.