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About Hesperian student / (Lincoln [Neb.]) 1872-1885 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 1883)
THE HESPERIAN STUDENT. v psnscd with or parceled out among several members of the faculty, however able and efficient those mem bars m ly be. Here, for half a ye r, this line of labor has been partially neglected and partially ignored. It is idle to assume that if the University does not pros per under such circumstances any blame can possibly attach to the Dean of the Faculty or to any of its members. Such an assumption is quite unwarranted, and flavors of either ignorance or malice, or both: The united ability and enthusiasm of that body could not be expected to fill the vacuum. The whole re sponsibility lies with the Board of Regents, and at tempts to place it elsewhere are worse than useless. The necessity and demand for a chancellor is con stantly increasing, and will not cease until the posi tion is filled. There has been time enough for con sideration, and there should be no difficulty in pro curing a salary sufficient to induce some man-who is worthy of the place to accept it. ghc Student's g crap-booh. KING LEAH A REV LEW. A traveller in Alpine regions observes the snow-crusted ridges with their many elevations and depressions form, iug an irregular outline against the blue, cold sky. Par away in the distance, overtopping all the other peaks, rearing Us lolty summit to the heaven of heavens, is Mount Blanc, and at its base is a little lake like a mouns tain tarn. This is the monarch of the Alp?, royally ap. parellcd, for the rc-Heclion of the sunbeams from its crystal 8UOW displays his silvery robe. A mighty sovereign, in deed, is he, but the emblem of a creation more sublime; for hills, mountains, oceans, nay, even worlds and-systems of worlds, arc but atoms in the comprehensive mind of genius. The mind of the child, it is said, is a vacuum but it is a vacuum so great, with potential capacities so infinite, that the boundless universe can be poured into it. The mind of genius, therefore, instead of being a mi croco3in, assumes a grander name, becoming, as it were, a universe in itself to which the earth is a microcosmic adjunct. Hence, there is no impropriety in the ascription of this majestic object of nature as the type of Shakes peare's most sublime creation King Lear as it is pre sented in the beginning of the tragedy. We perceive in Lear, in his first apcarance on the stage, a form of colossal grandeur in repose, the placid slumber of vast energies soon, however, to be thrown by the concurrence of ad verse circumstances into violent convulsions convulsions that spread havoc and chaos o'er fertile fields and laugh al the wreck themselves have made. The malignant winds mockingly sportive drive the snow Hakes here and there. On the summit of 3Iount Blanc, in the upper air, they wail dismally a funeral dirgo. but no mm ml overhears the deuth-knell or sees the prepared destruction that awaits the innocent below The snow accumulates on the verge of a precipitous descent until it becomes a mountain in miniature. At length it is detached by its own weight and slides quickly down the declivity. It increases rapidly in magnitude by the mlhererce of other musses of snow until the atmosphere, compressed in front, destroys aliko forests, Holds, and tliu homos of lowly peasants, whilo tho llltlo lake, rudely aroused from tranquil sleep, tosses Its waters angrily against tho shore. Thus, as gravitation necessitates the aggregation of chaotic atoms, so each adverse occurrence ndds to tho energy of the half-dorm nit tempest punt up in tho mind of Lear, till goaded to intensity by haso in. gratitude, "that marble hearted fiend," it bursts forth in a siormof passions that rive his soul and shatter his frame. A remarkable metamorphosis occurs. Mount Blanc be. comes an iE.na with Titanic fireTuVils bosom, whero are forged the thunderbolts of his curses that descend in tor. rents upon the heads of his persecutors. The snow melted by tho intenso heat Hows down the mountain sides and the lucid waters of the little lake are mingled with the tur iid mountain Hood. His madness increases. Wild demons wanton where majestic reason sat enthroned; yet he is still the royal Lear, kingly even in his wildest ah berations. The oiled of such a scene upon us is partially relieved by the sportive raillery of the fcol; but this to render the storm more appalling gives way to the Icigncd madness of Edgar, whose hideous appearance and ino:king philoso phy combined with the insanity of the king and with the confusion of external nature in heightening the sublimity of the scene. If there is any creation, ancient or modern, to which Lear can be compared it is tho Edipus Colon eus of S iphocles. B.ith yielded the scepter to their reins lives one that ho might be free from care, the other that he might free his realm from tho withering curse of the gods. All the passions ot the one were aroused to terns pcsluou fury by the ingratitude of his daughters; those of tho other by the machinations of his sous. Tho vehe ment invectives of King Lear have their parallel in the dacthsdistilling curses of Edipus Rex. Tho bitter re--proachc8 of the former arc equalled ouly by the virulent imprecations of the latter that wither his heaven.aocursed progeny, the objects ot Ills hatred; destined too soon, alasl by its diUusive action to wither also tho rosebud of his bosom, to extinguish that light of his imprisoned soul, the maid Antigone. In each also there is a tempest; but the emotions of Edipus miugliug with the din and tumult of the external world are lost amid its vaster grandeur, while in Lear, "the sheets of fire, tho bursts of horrid thunder, the groans of roaring wind and rain" were overpowered by the storm that raged in his soul. He himself says "The tempest in my mind Doth from my sonecu take all feeling clso." The sublimity of natural phenomena iu Edipus is un equalled by anything In Lear; yet in tho true dramatic element, in the r-assions of tho mind, Lear is decidedly superior to any creation of Sophocles. Caliban. 1AQ0. A casual reading of Shakespeare's Othello might lead one to consider Iago as merely a malicious villian. A closer study would convince one that he was much more than this, and moreover that the element of malice was very slight in his character. On his first appearance on the stage he reveals several points in his character. First, tint he lakes good care of hinibclf is plainly seen in his dancing attendance on the rich, love-sick, and therefore foolish Roderigo. ne tells