Delina Delaney opens with a tremendous, an almost, in its richness of vituperative3 eloquence4, Rabelaisian denunciation of Mr. Barry Pain, who had, it seems, treated Irene Iddesleigh with scant5 respect in his review of the novel in Black and White. “This so-called Barry Pain, by name, has taken upon himself to criticize a work, the depth of which fails to reach the solving power of his borrowed, and, he’d have you believe, varied6 talent.” But “I care not for 130the opinion of half-starved upstarts, who don the garb7 of a shabby-genteel, and fain would feed the mind of the people with the worthless scraps8 of stolen fancies.” So perish all reviewers! And now for Delina herself.
The story is a simple one. Delina Delaney, daughter of a fisherman, loves and is loved by Lord Gifford. The baleful influence of a dark-haired Frenchwoman, Madame de Maine, daughter of the Count-av-Nevo, comes between the lovers and their happiness, and Delina undergoes fearful torments10, including three years’ penal11 servitude, before their union can take place. It is the manner, rather than the matter, of the book which is remarkable12. Here, for instance, is a fine conversation between Lord Gifford and his mother, an aristocratic dame9 who strenuously13 objects to his connection with Delina. Returning one day to Columba Castle she hears an unpleasant piece of news: her son has been seen kissing Delina in the conservatory14.
“Home again, mother?” he boldly uttered, as he gazed reverently15 in her face.
“Home to Hades!” returned the raging high-bred daughter of distinguished16 effeminacy.
“Everything is the matter with a broken-hearted 131mother of low-minded offspring,” she answered hotly.... “Henry Edward Ludlow Gifford, son of my strength, idolized remnant of my inert18 husband, who at this moment invisibly offers the scourging19 whip of fatherly authority to your backbone20 of resentment21 (though for years you think him dead to your movements) and pillar of maternal22 trust.”
Poor Lady Gifford! her son’s behaviour was her undoing23. The shock caused her to lose first her reason and then her life. Her son was heart-broken at the thought that he was responsible for her downfall:
“Is it true, O Death,” I cried in my agony, “that you have wrested24 from me my mother, Lady Gifford of Columba Castle, and left me here, a unit figuring on the great blackboard of the past, the shaky surface of the present and fickle25 field of the future to track my life-steps, with gross indifference26 to her wished-for wish?”... Blind she lay to the presence of her son, who charged her death-gun with the powder of accelerated wrath27.
It is impossible to suppose that Mrs. Ros can ever have read Euphues or the earlier romances of Robert Greene. How then shall we account for the extraordinary resemblance to Euphuism of her style? how explain those rich alliterations, those elaborate “kennings” and circumlocutions of which the fabric29 of her book is woven? Take away from Lyly 132his erudition and his passion for antithesis30, and you have Mrs. Ros. Delina is own sister to Euphues and Pandosto. The fact is that Mrs. Ros happens, though separated from Euphuism by three hundred years and more, to have arrived independently at precisely31 the same stage of development as Lyly and his disciples32. It is possible to see in a growing child a picture in miniature of all the phases through which humanity has passed in its development. And, in the same way, the mind of an individual (especially when that individual has been isolated33 from the main current of contemporary thought) may climb, alone, to a point at which, in the past, a whole generation has rested. In Mrs. Ros we see, as we see in the Elizabethan novelists, the result of the discovery of art by an unsophisticated mind and of its first conscious attempt to produce the artistic34. It is remarkable how late in the history of every literature simplicity35 is invented. The first attempts of any people to be consciously literary are always productive of the most elaborate artificiality. Poetry is always written before prose and always in a language as remote as possible from the language of ordinary life. The language and versification of “Beowulf” are far more artificial and remote from life than those of, say, The Rape36 of the 133Lock. The Euphuists were not barbarians37 making their first discovery of literature; they were, on the contrary, highly educated. But in one thing they were unsophisticated: they were discovering prose. They were realizing that prose could be written with art, and they wrote it as artificially as they possibly could, just as their Saxon ancestors wrote poetry. They became intoxicated38 with their discovery of artifice39. It was some time before the intoxication40 wore off and men saw that art was possible without artifice. Mrs. Ros, an Elizabethan born out of her time, is still under the spell of that magical and delicious intoxication.
Mrs. Ros’s artifices41 are often more remarkable and elaborate even than Lyly’s. This is how she tells us that Delina earned money by doing needlework:
She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father’s slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart42 to faultless fabrics43 of flaxen fineness.
And Lord Gifford parts from Delina in these words:
I am just in time to hear the toll44 of a parting bell strike its heavy weight of appalling45 softness 134against the weakest fibres of a heart of love, arousing and tickling46 its dormant47 action, thrusting the dart of evident separation deeper into its tubes of tenderness, and fanning the flame, already unextinguishable, into volumes of burning blaze.
But more often Mrs. Ros does not exceed the bounds which Lyly set for himself. Here, for instance, is a sentence that might have come direct out of Euphues:
Two days after, she quit Columba Castle and resolved to enter the holy cloisters48 of a convent, where, she believed she’d be dead to the built hopes of wealthy worth, the crooked49 steps to worldly distinction, and the designing creaks [sic] in the muddy stream of love.
Or again, this description of the artful charmers who flaunt50 along the streets of London is written in the very spirit and language of Euphues:
Their hair was a light-golden colour, thickly fringed in front, hiding in many cases the furrows51 of a life of vice52; behind, reared coils, some of which differed in hue28, exhibiting the fact that they were on patrol for the price of another supply of dye.... The elegance53 of their attire54 had the glow of robbery—the rustle55 of many a lady’s silent curse. These tools of brazen56 effrontery57 were strangers to the blush of innocence58 that tinged59 many a cheek, as they would gather round some of God’s ordained60, praying in flowery words of decoying Cockney, that 135they should break their holy vows61 by accompanying them to the halls of adultery. Nothing daunted62 at the staunch refusal of different divines, whose modest walk was interrupted by their bold assertion of loathsome63 rights, they moved on, while laughs of hidden rage and defeat flitted across their doll-decked faces, to die as they next accosted64 some rustic-looking critics, who, tempted65 with their polished twang, their earnest advances, their pitiful entreaties66, yielded, in their ignorance of the ways of a large city, to their glossy67 offers, and accompanied, with slight hesitation68, these artificial shells of immorality69 to their homes of ruin, degradation70 and shame.
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1 puncture | |
n.刺孔,穿孔;v.刺穿,刺破 | |
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2 admiration | |
n.钦佩,赞美,羡慕 | |
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3 vituperative | |
adj.谩骂的;斥责的 | |
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4 eloquence | |
n.雄辩;口才,修辞 | |
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5 scant | |
adj.不充分的,不足的;v.减缩,限制,忽略 | |
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6 varied | |
adj.多样的,多变化的 | |
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7 garb | |
n.服装,装束 | |
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8 scraps | |
油渣 | |
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9 dame | |
n.女士 | |
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10 torments | |
(肉体或精神上的)折磨,痛苦( torment的名词复数 ); 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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11 penal | |
adj.刑罚的;刑法上的 | |
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12 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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13 strenuously | |
adv.奋发地,费力地 | |
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14 conservatory | |
n.温室,音乐学院;adj.保存性的,有保存力的 | |
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15 reverently | |
adv.虔诚地 | |
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16 distinguished | |
adj.卓越的,杰出的,著名的 | |
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17 meekly | |
adv.温顺地,逆来顺受地 | |
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18 inert | |
adj.无活动能力的,惰性的;迟钝的 | |
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19 scourging | |
鞭打( scourge的现在分词 ); 惩罚,压迫 | |
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20 backbone | |
n.脊骨,脊柱,骨干;刚毅,骨气 | |
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21 resentment | |
n.怨愤,忿恨 | |
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22 maternal | |
adj.母亲的,母亲般的,母系的,母方的 | |
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23 undoing | |
n.毁灭的原因,祸根;破坏,毁灭 | |
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24 wrested | |
(用力)拧( wrest的过去式和过去分词 ); 费力取得; (从…)攫取; ( 从… ) 强行取去… | |
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25 fickle | |
adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的,不坚定的 | |
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26 indifference | |
n.不感兴趣,不关心,冷淡,不在乎 | |
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27 wrath | |
n.愤怒,愤慨,暴怒 | |
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28 hue | |
n.色度;色调;样子 | |
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29 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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30 antithesis | |
n.对立;相对 | |
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31 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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32 disciples | |
n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 );门徒;耶稣的信徒;(尤指)耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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33 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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34 artistic | |
adj.艺术(家)的,美术(家)的;善于艺术创作的 | |
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35 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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36 rape | |
n.抢夺,掠夺,强奸;vt.掠夺,抢夺,强奸 | |
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37 barbarians | |
n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 );外国人;粗野的人;无教养的人 | |
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38 intoxicated | |
喝醉的,极其兴奋的 | |
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39 artifice | |
n.妙计,高明的手段;狡诈,诡计 | |
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40 intoxication | |
n.wild excitement;drunkenness;poisoning | |
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41 artifices | |
n.灵巧( artifice的名词复数 );诡计;巧妙办法;虚伪行为 | |
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42 dart | |
v.猛冲,投掷;n.飞镖,猛冲 | |
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43 fabrics | |
织物( fabric的名词复数 ); 布; 构造; (建筑物的)结构(如墙、地面、屋顶):质地 | |
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44 toll | |
n.过路(桥)费;损失,伤亡人数;v.敲(钟) | |
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45 appalling | |
adj.骇人听闻的,令人震惊的,可怕的 | |
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46 tickling | |
反馈,回授,自旋挠痒法 | |
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47 dormant | |
adj.暂停活动的;休眠的;潜伏的 | |
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48 cloisters | |
n.(学院、修道院、教堂等建筑的)走廊( cloister的名词复数 );回廊;修道院的生活;隐居v.隐退,使与世隔绝( cloister的第三人称单数 ) | |
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49 crooked | |
adj.弯曲的;不诚实的,狡猾的,不正当的 | |
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50 flaunt | |
vt.夸耀,夸饰 | |
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51 furrows | |
n.犁沟( furrow的名词复数 );(脸上的)皱纹v.犁田,开沟( furrow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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52 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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53 elegance | |
n.优雅;优美,雅致;精致,巧妙 | |
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54 attire | |
v.穿衣,装扮[同]array;n.衣着;盛装 | |
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55 rustle | |
v.沙沙作响;偷盗(牛、马等);n.沙沙声声 | |
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56 brazen | |
adj.厚脸皮的,无耻的,坚硬的 | |
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57 effrontery | |
n.厚颜无耻 | |
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58 innocence | |
n.无罪;天真;无害 | |
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59 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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60 ordained | |
v.任命(某人)为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 );授予(某人)圣职;(上帝、法律等)命令;判定 | |
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61 vows | |
誓言( vow的名词复数 ); 郑重宣布,许愿 | |
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62 daunted | |
使(某人)气馁,威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63 loathsome | |
adj.讨厌的,令人厌恶的 | |
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64 accosted | |
v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 );跟…搭讪;(乞丐等)上前向…乞讨;(妓女等)勾搭 | |
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65 tempted | |
v.怂恿(某人)干不正当的事;冒…的险(tempt的过去分词) | |
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66 entreaties | |
n.恳求,乞求( entreaty的名词复数 ) | |
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67 glossy | |
adj.平滑的;有光泽的 | |
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68 hesitation | |
n.犹豫,踌躇 | |
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69 immorality | |
n. 不道德, 无道义 | |
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70 degradation | |
n.降级;低落;退化;陵削;降解;衰变 | |
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