It is a common superstition that the words uttered by a friend on separating are prophetic, and these certainly portended nothing but peace. CHAPTER IV LITERARY AMBITIONS In due course of time they arrived at the Glass Town, and were welcomed with enthusiastic cordiality. After the duke had visited his kingdom he returned to the chief metropolis and established his residence there at Salamanca Palace. The Marquis of Tagus from the noble beauty of his person attracted considerable attention wherever he went, and in a short period he had won and attached many faithful friends of the highest rank and abilities. From his love of elegant literature and the fine arts in general, painters and poets were soon among his warmest admirers. He himself possessed a most sublime genius, but as yet its full extent was unknown to him. One day as he was meditating alone on the world of waters that rolled between him and the fair Marina, he determined to put his feelings on paper in a tangible shape that he might hereafter show them to her when anticipation had given place to fruition. He took his pen, and in about a quarter of an hour had completed a brief poem of exquisite beauty. The attempt pleased him and soothed the anguish that lingered in his heart. It likewise gave him an insight into the astonishing faculties of his own mind; and a longing for immortality, an ambition of glory, seized him. He was a devoted worshipper of the divine works that the Grecian tragedians have left for all succeeding ages to marvel at, particularly those of Sophocles the Majestic; and his mind was deeply embued with the spirit of their eagle-like flights into higher regions than that of earth or even Parnassus. Being now sensible in a degree of his lofty powers, he determined, like Milton, to write somewhat that the traditionary muses would not willingly let die, and accordingly commenced a tragedy entitled: ‘Necropolis, or the City of the Dead.’ Here was set forth in a strain of the grandest mind the mysteries of ancient Egyptian worship; and he has acknowledged to me that he felt his being absorbed while he wrote it, even by the words himself had made. Sublime is this surprising production! It is indeed, in the words of an eminent writer (Captain Tree), ‘a noble instance of the almost perfectibility of human intellect’; but there hovers over it a feeling of tender melancholy, for the image of Marina haunted his thoughts, and Amalthea, his heroine, is but an impersonation of her. This tragedy wreathed the laurels of fame round his brow, and his after-productions, each of which seemed to excel the other, added new wreaths to those which already beautified his temples.