forehead is large and clear; her eyes which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow are inexpressibly pathetic. Beatrice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world.

The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the antient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open-work. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.

Of the Castle of Petrella,1 I could obtain no further infor

mation than that which is to be found in the manuscript. 54

1 Mr. Rossetti says, "This castle is near Aquila, close to the frontier of the

Papal States." TheMS. was not printed with The Cenci, as Shelley intended.

THE CENCI.

VOL. II.

B

LUCRETIA, Wife of Cenci, and Step-mother of his children. BEATRICE, his Daughter.

The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.

TIME. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.

THE CENCI.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE. ENTER COUNT CENCI, AND CARDINAL CAMILLO.

CAMILLO.

THAT matter of the murder is hushed up

If you consent to yield his Holiness

Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.—
It needed all my interest in the conclave

To bend him to this point: he said that you
Bought perilous impunity with your gold;
That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded
Enriched the Church, and respited from hell

An erring soul which might repent and live:—
But that the glory and the interest

Of the high throne he fills, little consist

With making it a daily mart of guilt

As1 manifold and hideous as the deeds

Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.

1 So in the first edition; but As is substituted in the second, in accor dance with the list of errata. In

5

10

Mrs. Shelley's and Mr. Rossetti's editions, So is restored.

CENCI.

15

20

90

The third of my possessions-let it go!
Aye, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
Had sent his architect to view the ground,
Meaning to build a villa on my vines
The next time I compounded with his uncle:
I little thought he should outwit me so!
Henceforth no witness-not the lamp-shall see
That which the vassal threatened to divulge
Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.
The deed he saw could not have rated higher
Than' his most worthless life:-it angers me!
Respited me from Hell!-So may the Devil
Respite their souls from Heaven. No doubt Pope Clement,
And his most charitable nephews, pray

That the Apostle Peter and the saints

Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy

25

30

Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards

Of their revenue.—But much yet remains

To which they shew no title.

CAMILLO.

Oh, Count Cenci!

35

So much that thou mightst3 honourably live

1 That is the word here in both Shelley's editions: in all others known to me we read Than; and it seems probable that this was a correction of Shelley's, given by Mrs. Shelley. Supposing That to be right, we have the very doubtful sense,-"the deed could not have increased the value of that most worthless life of his"; but reading Than, we get "the deed could not have been of higher value than his life,"-meaning, of course, that Cenci would not have had to pay more than his "fief beyond the Pincian," if he had let the vassal

divulge the crime, instead of murdering him.

The word me is omitted from the first edition, and all others, I believe, except the second and Mr. Rossetti's, which accord with the list of errata.

Mr. Rossetti prints you might for thou mightst, on the ground that Shelley has no rule as to which form he adopts, and that in the present speech we have thou &c. four times and you &c. fourteen. It should be borne in mind that for a poet there are rules of sound quite as important as rules of grammar; and only by a large