How utterly ineffective and commonplace this is compared
with the fine scene in Calderon need not be pointed out.
The story of the vision of himself at Lerici, as recorded in some of
the lives of the poet Shelley, which is almost identical with that in
Calderon, was evidently suggested by this scene. Shelley's reference
to the "Purgatorio de San Patricio" in a note to "The Cenci" shows
the attention with which he read this drama. The "Embozado" which
Captain Medwin and others supposed to be the name of one of
Calderon's dramas, and which, as might be expected, Washington Irving
vainly looked for in Spain, was the "Hombre embozado," the "Muffled
Figure" of Calderon's "Purgatorio de San Patricio", act 3, scene i.
A vivid description of this scene by Shelley to one of his friends
may have been mistaken for a circumstance that had actually happened
to the poet himself.
SCENE VIII.
The "Athenaeum", in its elaborate review of the earlier translation
of this drama, thus writes:--
"With the prayer of St. Patrick considerable licence has been taken;
but its spirit is well preserved, and the translator's poetry must be
admired.
"PATRICK. Thou art of all created things,
O Lord, the essence and the cause --
The source and centre of all bliss;
What are those veils of woven light,
Where sun and moon and stars unite --
The purple morn, the spangled night --
But curtains which thy mercy draws
Between the heavenly world and this?
The terrors of the sea and land --
When all the elements conspire,
The earth and water, storm and fire --
Are but the shadows of thy hand;
Do they not all in countless ways --
The lightning's flash -- the howling storm --
The dread volcano's awful blaze --
Proclaim thy glory and thy praise?
Beneath the sunny summer showers
Thy love assumes a milder form,
And writes its angel name in flowers;
The wind that flies with winged feet
Around the grassy gladdened earth,
Seems but commissioned to repeat
In echo's accents -- silvery sweet --
That thou, O Lord, didst give it birth.
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