all be
General-in-Chief. His wife is the most brilliant and fascinating of all
the ladies of the court--and as for Carpzoff----

"Oh, stay--I have it--I know your story, sir, now," says Mr. Johnson.
"'Tis in 'Meteranus,' in the Theatrum Universum. I read it in Oxford as
a boy--Carpezanus or Carpzoff----"

"That is the fourth act," says Mr. Warrington. In the fourth act the
young King's attentions towards Sybilla grow more and more marked; but
her husband, battling against his jealousy, long refuses to yield to it,
until his wife's criminality is put beyond a doubt--and here he read
the act, which closes with the terrible tragedy which actually happened.
Being convinced of his wife's guilt, Carpezan caused the executioner who
followed his regiment to slay her in her own palace. And the curtain of
the act falls just after the dreadful deed is done, in a side-chamber
illuminated by the moon shining through a great oriel window, under
which the King comes with his lute, and plays the song which was to be
the signal between him and his guilty victim.

This song (writ in the ancient style, and repeated in the piece, being
sung in the third act previously at a great festival given by the King
and Queen) was pronounced by Mr. Johnson to be a happy imitation of Mr.
Waller's manner, and its gay repetition at the moment of guilt, murder,
and horror, very much deepened the tragic gloom of the scene.

"But whatever came afterwards?" he asked. "I remember in the Theatrum,
Carpezan is said to have been taken into favour again by Count
Mansfield, and doubtless to have murdered other folks on the reformed
side."

Here our poet has departed from historic truth. In the fifth act
of Carpezan King Louis of Hungary and Bohemia (sufficiently
terror-stricken, no doubt, by the sanguinary termination of his
intrigue) has received word that the Emperor Solyman is invading his
Hungarian dominions. Enter two noblemen who relate how, in the
council which the King held upon the news, the injured Carpezan rushed
infuriated into the royal presence, broke his sword, and flung it at the
King's feet--along with a glove which he dared him to wear, and which he
swore he would one day claim. After that wild challenge the rebel fled
from Prague, and had not since been heard of; but it was reported that
he had joined the Turkish invader, assumed the turban, and was now
in the camp of the Sultan, whose white tents glance across the river
yonder, and again