Page images
PDF
EPUB

This is of a far distant strain from those tender

and simple exclamations she uses when her husband offers her some rich conserves :

* How can you be so good?

And again,

Have you forgot

That costly string of pearl you brought me home,
And ty'd about my neck? How could I leave you?

She continues to gaze on him with earnestness, and, instead of eating, as he entreats her, she observes,

You're strangely alter'd

Say, gentle Belmour, is he not? How pale
Your visage is become! Your eyes are hollow!
Nay, you are wrinkled too-

To which she instantly subjoins, struck with the idea that she herself was the unhappy cause of this alteration,

[blocks in formation]

What she answers to her husband, when he asks

her movingly,

Why dost thou fix thy dying eyes upon me
With such an earnest, such a piteous look,
As if thy heart was full of some sad meaning
Thou could'st not speak?

Is pathetic to a great degree;

Forgive me! but forgive me!

These few words far exceed the most pompous declamations of Cato. The interview betwixt Jane Shore and Alicia, in the middle of this act, is also very affecting; where the madness of Alicia is well painted. But of all representations of madness, that of Clementina, in the history. of Sir Charles Grandison, is the most deeply interesting. I know not whether even the madness of Lear is wrought up, and expressed by so many little strokes of nature, and genuine passion. Shall I say it is pedantry to prefer and compare the madness of Orestes, in Euripides, to this of Clementina?

It

It is probable that this is become the most po pular and pleasing tragedy of all Rowe's works, because it is founded on our own history. I cannot forbear wishing that our writers would more frequently search for subjects in the annals of England, which afford many striking and pathetic events proper for the stage. for the stage. We have been too long attached to Grecian and Roman stories. In truth, the DOMESTICA FACTA are more interesting, as well as more useful: more interesting, because we all think ourselves concerned in the actions and fates of our countrymen more useful, because the characters and manners bid the fairest to be true and natural, when they are drawn from models with which we are exactly acquainted. The Turks, the Persians, and Americans, of our poets, are, in reality, distinguished from Englishmen only by their turbans and feathers; and think, and act, as if they were born and educated within the bills of mortality. The historical plays of Shakespeare are always particularly

* Milton has left, in a manuscript, thirty-three subjects for tragedies, all taken from the English annals; which manu

script

ticularly grateful to the spectator, who loves to see and hear our own Harrys and Edwards, better than all the Achilleses or Cæsars that ever existed. In the choice of a domestic story, however, much judgment and circumspection must be exerted, to select one of a proper æra; neither of too ancient, or of too modern a date. The manners of times very ancient, we shall be apt to falsify, as those of the Greeks and Romans. And recent events, with which we are thoroughly acquainted, are deprived of the power of impressing solemnity and awe, by their notoriety and familiarity. Age softens and wears away all those disgracing and depreciating circumstances which attend modern transactions, merely because they are modern. Lucan was much embarrassed by the proximity of the times he treated of. On this very account, as well as others, the best tragedy that could be possibly written on the murder of Charles I. would be coldly received. Racine ventured to write on a recent history, in

VOL. I.

T

his

script the curious reader may see printed in Newton's Edit. of Milton, Oct. Vol. iii. pag. 331. And in Birch's Life of Milton, prefixed to his edition of Milton's Prose Works, pag. 51; and in Peck's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Milton, pag. 90.

his Bajazet; but would not have attempted it, had he not thought that the distance of his hero's country repaired, in some measure, the nearness of the time in which he lived. "Major a longinquo reverentia."

POPE, it is said, had framed a design of writing an epic poem on a fact recorded in our old annalists, and therefore more engaging to an Englishman; on the ARRIVAL of BRUTUS, the supposed grandson of Eneas, in our island, and the settlement of the first foundations of the British monarchy. A full scope might have been given to a vigorous imagination, to embellish a fiction drawn from the bosom of the remotest antiquity. Some tale, equally venerable and ancient, it was also the purpose of Milton* to adorn; for he says, in his Reason of Church

Whether he intended, as a POET expresses it, To

Record old ARTHUR'S magic tale,

And EDWARD fierce, in sable mail;

Sing royal BRUTUS' lawless doom,

And brave BONDUCA, Scourge of Rome;
Great PENDRAGON's fair-branched line,

Stern ARVIRAGE, or old LOCRINE.

THE UNION, pag. 92.
« An

« PreviousContinue »