8
THE BATTALION.
H ■ 1 ' ' '' 1
Jessica.
T. L. S.
STERN old Jew who loved money more than all else
/A save life; a lovely blue-eyed damsel, caged up from her
very infancy—caged up because her father was too greedy to
supply the little money requisite for his daughter’s pleasure;
a handsome young gentleman whose sentimental eye is caught
by the maiden’s beauty and purity: Paint these on the can
vas of thought, and say if there is a single shade indicating
wrong in the girl’s having made a breach in her filial affec
tion. Critics may say Jessica broke one of the ten command
ments, and on the strength of this, try to make out her char
acter false. But can we call this Jew, this dog Shylock, a
father? Sire he was, but we cannot apply the tenderness,
the love for one’s offspring, in short the manliness which
goes with the word father, to such an inexorable character as
Shylock’s.
Jessica, though properly kept subordinate to Portia, is
4C a most beautiful pagan— a most sweet Jew.” In the words
of Mrs. Jameson, “she cannot be called a sketch—or if a
sketch, she is like one of those dashed off in glowing colours
from the rainbow palette of a Reubens, she has a rich tinge
of Orientalism shed over her, worthy of her Eastern origin.”
There is not an utterance of Jessica’s which better expresses
the state of her home afiairs than the one to the departing
Launcelot:
“I am sorry thou wilt leave my father so;
Our house is hell, and thou, a merry devil,
Did’st rob it of some taste of tediousness;
But fare the well; there is a ducat for thee:
And Launcelot, soon at supper shalt thou see Lo
renzo,
Who is thy new master’s guest;