most careless of all versifiers, their style is occur in his performances, and must to all more remarkably and offensively artificial impartial judges appear quite absurd and than that of any other class of writers. They unnatural. Before entering upon the charachave mixed in, too, so much of the mawkish tone of pastoral innocence and babyish simplicity, with a sort of pedantic emphasis and ostentatious glitter, that it is difficult not to be disgusted with their perversity, and with the solemn self-complacency, and keen and vindictive jealousy, with which they have put in their claims on public admiration. But we have said enough elsewhere of the faults of those authors; and shall only add, at present, that, notwithstanding all these faults, there is a fertility and a force, a warmth of feeling and an exaltation of imagination about them, which classes them, in our estimation, with a much higher order of poets than the followers of Dryden and Addison; and justifies an anxiety for their fame, in all the admirers of Milton and Shakespeare. ter of a contemporary dramatist, it was of some importance, therefore, to show that there was a distinct, original, and independent school of literature in England in the time of Shakespeare; to the general tone of whose productions his works were sufficiently conformable; and that it was owing to circumstances in a great measure accidental, that this native school was superseded about the time of the Restoration, and a foreign standard of excellence intruded on us, not in the drama only, but in every other department of poetry. This new style of composition, however, though adorned and recommended by the splendid talents of many of its followers, was never perfectly naturalised, we think, in this country; and has ceased, in a great measure, to be cultivated by those who have lately aimed with the greatest success at the higher honours of poetry. Our love of Shakespeare, therefore, is not a monomania or solitary and unaccountable infatuation; but is merely the natural love which all men bear to those forms of excellence that are accommodated to their peculiar character, temperament, and situation ; and which will always return, and assert its power over their affections, long after authority has lost its reverence, fashions been antiquated, and artificial tastes passed away. In endeavouring, therefore, to bespeak some share of favour for such of his contemporaries as had fallen out of notice, during the prevalence of an imported literature, we conceive that we are only enlarging that foundation of native genius on which alone any lasting superstructure can be raised, and invigorating that deep-rooted stock upon which all the perennial blossoms of our literature must still be engrafted. Of Scott, or of Campbell, we need scarcely say any thing, with reference to our present object, after the very copious accounts we have given of them on former occasions. The former professes to copy something a good deal older than what we consider as the golden age of English poetry, and, in reality, has copied every style, and borrowed from every manner that has prevailed, from the times of Chaucer to his own-illuminating and uniting, if not harmonizing them all, by a force of colouring, and a rapidity of succession, which is not to be met with in any of his many models. The latter, we think, can scarcely be said to have copied his pathos, or his energy, from any models whatever, either recent or early. The exquisite harmony of his versification is elaborated, perhaps, from the Castle of Indolence of Thomson, and the serious pieces of Goldsmith;—and it seems to be his misfortune, not to be able to reconcile himself to any thing which he cannot reduce The notoriety of Shakespeare may seem to within the limits of this elaborate harmony. make it superfluous to speak of the peculiariThis extreme fastidiousness, and the limita- ties of those old dramatists, of whom he will tion of his efforts to themes of unbroken ten- be admitted to be so worthy a representative. derness or sublimity, distinguish him from the Nor shall we venture to say any thing of the careless, prolific, and miscellaneous authors confusion of their plots, the disorders of their of our primitive poetry;—while the enchant- chronology, their contempt of the unities, or ing softness of his pathetic passages, and the their imperfect discrimination between the power and originality of his more sublime provinces of Tragedy and Comedy. Yet there conceptions, place him at a still greater dis-are characteristics which the lovers of literatance from the wits, as they truly called themselves, of Charles II. and Queen Anne. We do not know what other apology to offer for this hasty, and, we fear, tedious sketch of the history of our poetry, but that it appeared to us to be necessary, in order to explain the peculiar merit of that class of writers to which the author before us belongs; and that it will very greatly shorten what we have still to say on the characteristics of our older dramatists. An opinion prevails very generally on the Continent, and with foreignbred scholars among ourselves, that our national taste has been corrupted chiefly by our idolatry of Shakespeare; and that it is our patriotic and traditional admiration of that singular writer, that reconciles us to the monstrous compound of faults and beauties that ture may not be displeased to find enumerated, and which may constitute no dishonourable distinction for the whole fraternity, independent of the splendid talents and incommunicable graces of their great chieftain. Of the old English dramatists, then, including under this name (besides Shakespeare), Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Jonson, Ford, Shirley, Webster, Dekkar, Field, and Rowley, it may be said, in general, that they are more poetical, and more original in their diction, than the dramatists of any other age or country. Their scenes abound more in varied images, and gratuitous excursions of fancy. Their illustrations, and figures of speech, are more borrowed from rural life, and from the simple occupations or universal feelings of mankind. They are not confined formly leave the scene without exhausting the controversy, or stating half the plausible things for themselves that any ordinary advisers might have suggested-after a few weeks' reflection. As specimens of eloquent argumentation, we must admit the signal irferiority of our native favourites; but as true copies of nature, as vehicles of passion, and representations of character, we confess we are tempted to give them the preference. When a dramatist brings his chief characters on the stage, we readily admit that he must give them something to say, and that this something must be interesting and character to a certain range of dignified expressions, nor restricted to a particular assortment of imagery, beyond which it is not lawful to look for embellishments. Let any one compare the prodigious variety, and wide-ranging freedom of Shakespeare, with the narrow round of flames, tempests, treasons, victims, and tyrants, that scantily adorn the sententious pomp of the French drama, and he will not fail o recognise the vast superiority of the former, in the excitement of the imagination, and all the diversities of poetical delight. That very mixture of styles, of which the French critics have so fastidiously complained, forms, when not carried to any height of ex-istic;-but he should recollect also, that they travagance, one of the greatest charms of our ancient dramatists. It is equally sweet and natural for personages toiling on the barren heights of life, to be occasionally recalled to some vision of pastoral innocence and tranquillity, as for the victims or votaries of ambition to cast a glance of envy and agony on the joys of humble content. are supposed to come there without having anticipated all they were to hear, or meditated on all they were to deliver; and that it cannot be characteristic, therefore, because it must be glaringly unnatural, that they should proceed regularly through every possible view of the subject, and exhaust, in set order, the whole magazine of reflections that can be brought to bear upon their situation. Those charming old writers, however, have a still more striking peculiarity in their con- It would not be fair, however, to leave this duct of the dialogue. On the modern stage, view of the matter, without observing, that every scene is visibly studied and digested this unsteadiness and irregularity of dialogue, beforehand, and every thing from beginning which gives such an air of nature to our older to end, whether it be description, or argument, plays, and keeps the curiosity and attention or vituperation, is very obviously and osten- so perpetually awake, is frequently carried to tatiously set forth in the most advantageous a most blameable excess; and that, indepenlight, and with all the decorations of the most dent of their passion for verbal quibbles, there elaborate rhetoric. Now, for mere rhetoric, is an inequality and a capricious uncertainty and fine composition, this is very right;-but, in the taste and judgment of these good old for an imitation of nature, it is not quite so writers, which excites at once our amazement well? And however we may admire the skill and our compassion. If it be true, that no of the artist, we are not very likely to be other man has ever written so finely as Shakemoved with any very lively sympathy in the speare has done in his happier passages, it is emotions of those very rhetorical interlocutors. no less true that there is not a scribbler now When we come to any important part of the alive who could possibly write worse than he play, on the Continental or modern stage, we has sometimes written,-who could, on occa are sure to have a most complete, formal, sion, devise more contemptible ideas, or misand exhausting discussion of it, in long flourish- place them so abominably, by the side of suck ing orations-argument after argument pro- incomparable excellence. That there were pounded and answered with infinite ingenuity, no critics, and no critical readers in those days, and topic after topic brought forward in well- appears to us but an imperfect solution of the digested method, without any deviation that difficulty. He who could write so admirably. the most industrious and practised pleader must have been a critic to himself. Children, would not approve of,-till nothing more re- indeed, may play with the most preciou mains to be said, and a new scene introduces gems, and the most worthless pebbles, with us to a new set of gladiators, as expert and out being aware of any difference in ther persevering as the former. It is exactly the value; but the fiery powers which are neces same when a story is to be told,-a tyrant to sary to the production of intellectual excel. be bullied,- -or a princess to be wooed. On lence, must enable the possessor to recognise the old English stage, however, the proceed-it as excellence; and he who knows when he ings were by no means so regular. There the discussions always appear to be casual, and the argument quite artless and disorderly. The persons of the drama, in short, are made to speak like men and women who meet without preparation, in real life. Their reasonings are perpetually broken by passion, or left imperfect for want of skill. They constantly wander from the point in hand, in the most unbusinesslike manner in the world ;and after hitting upon a topic that would afford a judicious playwright room for a magnificent seesaw of pompous declamation, they have generally the awkwardness to let it slip, as if perfectly unconscious of its value; and uni succeeds, can scarcely be unconscious of his failures. Unaccountable, however, as it is, the fact is certain, that almost all the dramatic writers of this age appear to be alternately inspired, and bereft of understanding; and pass, apparently without being conscious of the change, from the most beautiful displays of genius to the most melancholy exemplifications of stupidity. There is only one other peculiarity which we shall notice in those ancient dramas; and that is, the singular, though very beautiful style, in which the greater part of them are composed, a style which we think must be felt as peculiar by all who peruse them, though it is by no means easy to describe in what its peculiarity consists. It is not, for the most part, a lofty or sonorous style,-nor can it be said generally to be finical or affected, or strained, quaint, or pedantic:-But it is, at the same time, a style full of turn and contrivance, with some little degree of constraint and involution,-very often characterised by a studied briefness and simplicity of diction, yet relieved by a certain indirect and figurative cast of expression, and almost always coloured with a modest tinge of ingenuity, and fashioned, rather too visibly, upon a particular model of elegance and purity. In scenes of powerful passion, this sort of artificial prettiness is commonly shaken off; and, in Shakespeare, it disappears under all his forms of animation: But it sticks closer to most of his contemporaries. In Massinger (who has no passion), it is almost always discernable; and, in the author before us, it gives a peculiar tone to almost all the estimable parts of his productions.-It is now time, however, and more than time, that we should turn to this author. His biography will not detain us long; for very little is known about him. He was born in Devonshire, in 1586; and entered as a student in the Middle Temple; where he began to publish poetry, and probably to write plays, soon after his twenty-first year. He did not publish any of his dramatic works, however, till 1629; and though he is supposed to have written fourteen or fifteen pieces for the theatres, only nine appear to have been printed, or to have found their way down to the present times. He is known to have written in conjunction with Rowley and Dekkar, and is supposed to have died about 1640; -and this is the whole that the industry of Mr. Weber, assisted by the researches of Steevens and Malone, has been able to discover of this author. It would be useless, and worse than useless, to give our readers an abstract of the fable and management of each of the nine plays contained in the volumes before us. A very few brief remarks upon their general character, will form a sufficient introduction to the extracts, by which we propose to let our readers judge for themselves of the merits of their execution. The comic parts are all utterly bad. With none of the richness of Shakespeare's humour, the extravagant merriment of Beaumont and Fletcher, or the strong colouring of Ben Johnson, they are as heavy and as indecent as those of Massinger, and not more witty, though a little more varied, than the buffooneries of Wycherley or Dryden. Fortunately, however, the author's merry vein is not displayed in very many parts of his performances. His plots are not very cunningly digested; nor developed, for the most part, by a train of probable incidents. His characters are drawn rather with occasional felicity, than with general sagacity and judgment. Like those of Massinger, they are very apt to startle the reader with sudden and unexpected transformations, and to turn out, in the latter half of the play, very differently 39 from what they promised to do in the beginning. This kind of surprise has been represented by some as a master-stroke of art in the author, and a great merit in the performance. We have no doubt at all, however, that it is to be ascribed merely to the writer's carelessness, or change of purpose; and have never failed to feel it a great blemish in every serious piece where it occurs. The author has not much of the oratorical stateliness and imposing flow of Massinger; nor a great deal of the smooth and flexible diction, the wandering fancy, and romantic sweetness of Beaumont and Fletcher; and yet he comes nearer to these qualites than to any of the distinguishing characteristics of Jonson or Shakespeare. He excels most in representing the pride and gallantry, and high-toned honour of youth, and the enchanting softness, or the mild and graceful magnanimity of female character. There is a certain melancholy air about his most striking representations; and, in the tender and afflicting pathetic, he appears to us occasionally to be second only to him who has never yet had an equal. The greater part of every play, however, is bad; and there is not one which does not contain faults sufficient to justify the derision even of those who are incapable of comprehending its contrasted beauties. The diction we think for the most part beautiful, and worthy of the inspired age which produced it. That we may not be suspected of misleading our readers by partial and selected quotations, we shall lay before them the very first sentence of the play which stands first in this collection. The subject is somewhat revolting; though managed with great spirit, and, in the more dangerous parts, with considerable dignity. A brother and sister fall mutually in love with each other, and abandon themselves, with a sort of splen did and perverted devotedness, to their incestuous passion. The sister is afterwards married, and their criminal intercourse de tected by her husband,-when the brother, perceiving their destruction inevitable, first kills her, and then throws himself upon the sword of her injured husband. The play opens with his attempting to justify his passion to a holy friar, his tutor-who thus addresses him. young man, These are no school points; Nice philosophy Gio. [fast Friar. Hie to thy father's house; there lock thee In a subsequent scene with the sister, the same holy person maintains the dignity of his style. Friar. I am glad to see this penance; for, believe The earth hath borne you up; but weep, weep on, Ann. Wretched creature! Ann. Mercy! oh mercy! The most striking scene of the play, however, is that which contains the catastrophe of the lady's fate. Her husband, after shutting her up for some time in gloomy privacy, invites her brother, and all his family, to a solemn banquet; and even introduces him, before it is served up, into her private chamber, where he finds her sitting on her marriage-bed, in splendid attire, but filled with boding terrors and agonising anxiety. He, though equally aware of the fate that was prepared for them, addresses her at first with a kind of wild and desperate gaiety, to which she tries for a while to answer with sober and earnest warnings, and at last exclaims impatiently, "Ann. O let's not waste These precious hours in vain and useless speech.. Alas, these gay attires were not put on I that have now been chamber'd here alone, [face Gio. Look up, look here; what see you in my Gio. I do indeed. These are the funeral tears Ann. So say I. Then I see your drift; Gio. Farewell. Gio. With my heart. And make this mid-day night, that thy gilt rays Ann. Thus die! and die by me, and by my hand! When thou art dead I'll give my reasons for't; for to dispute Ann. Forgive him, Heaven-and me my sins! Brother unkind, unkind, mercy, great Heaven.- oh-oh. [bed, In all her best, bore her alive and dead. There are few things finer than this in indeed to the death of Desdemona; and, taking it as a detached scene, we think it rather the more beautiful of the two. The sweetness of the diction-the natural tone of tenderness and passion-the strange perversion of kind and magnanimous natures, and the horrid catastrophe by which their guilt is at once consummated and avenged, have not often been rivalled, in the pages either of the modern or the ancient drama. The play entitled "The Broken Heart," is in our author's best manner; and would supply more beautiful quotations than we have left room for inserting. The story is a little complicated; but the following slight sketch of it will make our extracts sufficiently intelligible. Penthea, a noble lady of Sparta, was betrothed, with her father's approbation and her own full consent, to Orgilus; but being solicited, at the same time, by Bassanes, a person of more splendid fortune, was, after her father's death, in a manner compelled by her brother Ithocles to violate her first engagement, and yield him her hand. In this ill-sorted alliance, though living a life of unimpeachable purity, she was harassed and degraded by the perpetual jealousies of her unworthy husband; and pined away, like her deserted lover, in sad and bitter recollections of the happy promise of their youth. Ithocles, in the meantime, had pursued the course of ambition with a bold and commanding spirit, and had obtained the highest honours of his country; but too much occupied in the pursuit to think of the misery to which he had condemned the sister who was left to his protection: At last, however, in the midst of his proud career, he is seized with a sudden passion for Calantha, the heiress of the sovereign; and, after many struggles, is reduced to ask the intercession and advice of his unhappy sister, who was much in favour with the princess. The following is the scene in which he makes this request;-and to those who have learned, from the preceding passages, the lofty and unbending temper of the suppliant, and the rooted and bitter anguish of her whom he addresses, it cannot fail to appear one of the most striking in the whole compass of dramatic composition.* "Ith. Sit nearer, sister, to me!-nearer yet! We had one father; in one womb took life; Were brought up twins together;-Yet have liv'd At distance, like two strangers! I could wish That the first pillow, whereon I was cradled, Had proved to me a grave! Pen. You had been happy! Then had you never known that sin of life Which blots all following glories with a vengeance, For forfeiting the last will of the dead, From whom you had your being. Ith. Sad Penthea! Thou canst not be too cruel; my rash spleen Hath with a violent hand pluck'd from thy bosom A love-blest heart, to grind it into dustFor which mine's now a-breaking. I have often fancied what a splendid effect Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble would have given to the opening of this scene, in actual representation! with the deep throb of their low voices, their pathetic pauses, and majestic attitudes and movenents! I do beseech thee! first, let some wild fires A miserable creature, led to ruin Yet cannot die. Pen. I consume In languishing affections of that trespass; Pen. Rid me from living with a jealous husband, Ith. Thou shalt stand A deity, my sister, and be worshipp'd Offer their orisons, and sacrifice Pen. Who is the saint you serve? [daughter! Alas, sir, being children, but two branches Only in thee, Penthea mine! Yes, in thee; If sorrows Have not too much dull'd my infected brain, We cannot resist the temptation of adding a part of the scene in which this sad ambassadress acquits herself of the task she had undertaken. There is a tone of heart-struck sorrow and female gentleness and purity about it that is singularly engaging, and contrasts strangely with the atrocious indecencies with which the author has polluted his paper in other parts of the same play.-The princess says, "Cal. Being alone, Penthea, you now have The opportunity you sought; and might [granted At all times have commanded. Pen. 'Tis a benefit Which I shall owe your goodness even in death for : My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes Remaining to run down; the sands are spent ; For by an inward messenger I feel The summons of departure short and certain. Cal. You feed too much your melancholy. Pen. Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams And shadows soon decaying. On the stage Of my mortality, my youth hath acteu Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length By varied pleasures, sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue. Beauty, pomp, Glories |