Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 532 pages of information about Dr. Johnson's Works.

Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 532 pages of information about Dr. Johnson's Works.
not, with the philosophic conqueror, sullenly despair, but gently sooths the mourner, by the prospect of a final recompense and repose.  Its pages inculcate the same lesson, as those of the Rambler, but “the precept, which is tedious in a formal essay, may acquire attractions in a tale, and the sober charms of truth be divested of their austerity by the graces of innocent fiction[c].”  We may observe, in conclusion, that the abrupt termination of Rasselas, so left, according to sir John Hawkins, by its author, to admit of continuation, and its unbroken gloom, induced Miss E. Cornelia Knight to present to the public a tale, entitled Dinarbas, to exhibit the fairer view of life.

FOOTNOTES
[a] See Idler, No. 41, and his letter to Mr. Elphinstone, on the death
    of his mother.
[b] Aristot.  Ethic.  Nich. lib. i. c. 10, 11.  In Barrow’s sermon on the
    “the least credulous or fanciful of men.”
[c] See Drake’s Speculator, 1790, No. 1.

THE HISTORY

OF

RASSELAS, PRINCE OF ABISSINIA.

CHAP.  I.

DESCRIPTION OF A PALACE IN A VALLEY.

Ye, who listen, with credulity, to the whispers of fancy, and pursue, with eagerness, the phantoms of hope; who expect, that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, prince of Abissinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty emperour, in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course; whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over half the world the harvests of Egypt.

According to the custom, which has descended, from age to age, among the monarchs of the torrid zone, Rasselas was confined in a private palace, with the other sons and daughters of Abissinian royalty, till the order of succession should call him to the throne.

The place, which the wisdom, or policy, of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abissinan princes, was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded, on every side, by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part.  The only passage, by which it could be entered, was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has been long disputed, whether it was the work of nature, or of human industry.  The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron, forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy, that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them.

From the mountains, on every side, rivulets descended, that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl, whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water.  This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain, on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise, from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more.

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Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.