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Updated: June 1, 2025
At noon home to dinner, and had some melancholy discourse with my wife about my mother's being so ill and my father, and after dinner to cheer myself, I having the opportunity of Sir W. Coventry and the Duke of York's being out of town, I alone out and to the Duke of York's play-house, where unexpectedly I come to see only the young men and women of the house act; they having liberty to act for their own profit on Wednesdays and Fridays this Lent: and the play they did yesterday, being Wednesday, was so well-taken, that they thought fit to venture it publickly to-day; a play of my Lord Falkland's' called "The Wedding Night," a kind of a tragedy, and some things very good in it, but the whole together, I thought, not so.
Falkland's circumstances? I had just had a pistol held to my head, by a man resolved to put a period to my existence. That indeed was past; but what was it that fate had yet in reserve for me! The insatiable vengeance of a Falkland, of a man whose hands were, to my apprehension, red with blood, and his thoughts familiar with cruelty and murder.
Clare certainly found few men in this remote situation that were capable of participating in his ideas and amusements. It has been among the weaknesses of great men to fly to solitude, and converse with woods and groves, rather than with a circle of strong and comprehensive minds like their own. From the moment of Mr. Falkland's arrival in the neighbourhood, Mr.
Matthew Arnold, in the very graceful sketch of Falkland's life published by him in aid of the Falkland Memorial, has endowed his favourite character with gifts far rarer and more memorable than those of which we have spoken; with an extraordinary largeness and lucidity of mind, with almost divine superiority to party narrowness and bias, with conceptions anticipative of the most advanced philosophy of modern times.
Since the publication of Anson's voyage, they have very much changed their opinion, finding a settlement in Pepys's, or Falkland's island, recommended by the author as necessary to the success of our future expeditions against the coast of Chili, and as of such use and importance, that it would produce many advantages in peace, and, in war, would make us masters of the South sea.
Falkland's mind was full of uproar like the war of contending elements, and of such suffering as casts contempt on the refinements of inventive cruelty. He wished for annihilation, to lie down in eternal oblivion, in an insensibility, which, compared with what he experienced, was scarcely less enviable than beatitude itself.
His aim, therefore, was now no longer confined to procuring Falkland's goodwill and aim at home: he hoped to secure his personal assistance in Spain: and he willingly coincided with Mrs. St. John in detaching his nephew from a tie so likely to detain him from that service to which Alphonso wished he should be pledged. Mandeville had left E that morning: he suspected nothing of Emily's attachment.
We find the earl of Pembroke's name among the actors in Ben Jonson's masques, and Falkland's eclogue testifies to their intimacy. And in the 80th Sonnet, Shakespeare uses the same comparison of himself and his rival, to two ships of different bulk, which Fuller used to describe Shakespeare and Ben Jonson as they appeared at the Mermaid Tavern.
His countenance was habitually animated and expressive, much beyond that of any other man I have seen. The curiosity which, as I have said, constituted my ruling passion, stimulated me to make it my perpetual study. When I entered the apartment, I remarked in Mr. Falkland's countenance an unwonted composure.
It was, perhaps, not yet certain, that this account was true; but the information, however faithful, was too late for prevention. It was easily known, that a fleet despatched in May, had, before August, succeeded or miscarried. In October, captain Maltby came to England, and gave the account which I have now epitomised, of his expulsion from Falkland's islands.
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