Plague, a contagious disease / [Anon].

  • Robert Gooch
Date:
[1825]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Plague, a contagious disease / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/40 page 217
    Don Esteban. c217 paign, took her home to her father’s, showing her by the way, her brother, her lover, and the officiating priest, hanging by the neck, in a cluster. Our readers may imagine the claspings and writhings of hands, the sobs, the tears which must be allotted to the description of such a scene; and allow us to hasten to the denouement. Dorotea and her mother die: the father sallies forth to avenge his wrongs, and has the satisfaction, soon after this narrative, but of course not without Don Esteban’s assistance, of dipping his sword in the heart-blood of Dunier. To crown the wonders of this i eal story, Rayraundc, whom we left on the gallows of Villacastin, joins our hero soon after in perfect health. His brave soldiers, it seems, suspecting his fate, had entered Villa¬ castin, put Dunier’s corps to flight, and returning victorious, cut down their captain, whom they restored to animation by a process exclusively known to the scientific Spanish guerrillas! But who, after all, is this Don Esteban ? Can our readers be so unacquainted with real histories of this kind, as to suspect him of being a vulgar foundling? Have they not guessed that he is the unknown child of the Marquis of Moncayo? Such he is de¬ clared by his barbarous uncle, Don Facundo, on his death-bed; an appalling scene, which prepares that of the happy nuptials of Don Esteban with his cousin Isabella, a dispensation from the Pope in due form having been obtained. We will not conclude without earnestly recommending the Spaniard, whoever he may be, who has laid the groundwork of Don Esteban, to procure better advice and assistance when he next ventures on composition. Unpleasant as our observations must be to him, they have not been written with half the severity with which literary deceptions of this kind should be visited. Disguise and fiction are certainly allowable, when convenient to an author in order to instruct or amuse his readers. But such assurances of reality as are prefixed to this book, make the deception practised not only an offence in literature, but in morals. The glaring improbability of the story may indeed operate as a warning to the least suspicious reader, not to take too literally the promise of giving him only facts. But a stranger has no means of detecting falsehoods in the description of scenery or manners; and Don Esteban has taken at least as much liberty in this, as in the narrative part of his work. Art.
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