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The appearance of Cloacina is nauseous and superfluous; a shoe-boy could have been produced by the casual cohabitation of mere mortals. Horace's rule is broken in both cases; there is no dignus vindice nodus, no difficulty that required any supernatural interposition. A patten may be made by the hammer of a mortal, and a bastard may be dropped by a human strumpet.
In short, by the very absence of that Dignus deo vindice nodus, that knot which only a God could untie, which heathens demanded ere a god was allowed to interfere in the plot of a tragedy; which too many who call themselves Christians demand before the living God is allowed to interfere in that world in which without Him not a sparrow falls to the ground.
He based this opinion principally on the ground of style. From its similarity of subject he had at first been disposed to assign it to Cyril Tourneur, author of The Revenger's Tragedy; and he had drawn up in support of this theory a series of parallel passages extracted from the speeches of Vindice in that drama and of Oberon in the present play.
My question, therefore, of the Genesis interpreters is: Why will you insist on the text meaning only the second element in Creation the production on earth, and not the Design or its issue in heaven? Surely it is the "dignus vindice nodus" in this case.
Serious reflection will always give courage in a good cause; and the courage arising from reflection is of a much superior nature to the animal and constitutional courage of a foot soldier. The former is steady and unshaken, where the 'nodus' is 'dignus vindice'; the latter is oftener improperly than properly exerted, but always brutally.
Last month we warned Mr O'Connell of "the uplifted thunderbolt" suspended in the Jovian hands of the Wellesley, but ready to descend when the "dignus vindice nodus" should announce itself.
In the fifth act of either play there was a masque or dramatic show of a sanguinary kind; in the one case the bloodshed was turned to merry-making, in the other the merry-making was turned to bloodshed. Oberon's phrase, "till I torment thee for this injury," might easily be mistaken for a quotation from the part of Vindice. Mr.
James's to convey a beau over a street, and preserve his white stockings. The truth is, we do not chuse to have any recourse to miracles, from the strict observance we pay to that rule of Horace, Nec Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus.
To one god in particular we may apply the Horatian maxim, "Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus." In German aesthetic theory, the conception tragische Schuld "tragic guilt" plays a large part.
Luther himself, using a phrase half borrowed from a Latin poet, says that forgiveness is "a knot worthy of a God's aid" "nodus Deo vindice dignus". But in any case escape from the consequences of sin, when once we look on sin with the eyes of Jesus, is of relatively small importance. There are two aspects of the matter far more significant.
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