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And tell them all that D'Ambois now is hasting
To the eternal dwellers."

Webster was altogether of a different stamp. He was an unequal writer ; full of a gloomy power, but with touches of profound sentiment and the deepest pathos. His imagination rioted upon the grave, and frenzy and murder and loathed Melancholy' were in his dreams. A common calamity was beneath him, and ordinary vengeance was too trivial for his Muse. His pen distilled blood; and he was familiar with the hospital and the charnelhouse, and racked his brain to outvie the horrors of both. His visions were not of heaven, nor of the air; but they came, dusky and earthy, from the tomb; and the madhouse emptied its cells to do justice to the closing of his fearful stories. There are few passages, except in Shakspeare, which have so deep a sentiment as the following. Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, has caused his sister (the duchess of Malfy) to be murdered by Bosola, his creature. They are standing by the dead body.

"Bosol. Fix your eye here.
Fer. Constantly.

Bosol. Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak: Murther cries out :

The element of water mois ns the earth;

But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens.

Fer. Cover her face: mine eyes dazzle. She died young!

Bosol. I think not so: her infelicity

Seem'd to have years too many.

Fer. She and I were twins:

And should I die this instant, I had lived

Her time to a minute."

We would not be supposed to assert that this writer was without his faults. On the contrary, he had several ;-he had a too gloomy brain, a distempered taste; he was sometimes harsh, and sometimes dull; but he had great sentiment, and not unfrequently great vigour of expression. He was like Marlow, with this difference-that as Marlow's imagination was soaring, so, on the other and, was his penetrating and profound. The one rose to the stars, the other plunged to the centre; equally distant from the bare common-places of the earth, they sought for thoughts and images in clouds and depths, and arrived, by different means, at the same great end. Rowley and Field are respectable names of this period; but, as they generally wrote in conjunction with others, we will not attempt to give them an independent reputation. We must not forget, however, that the former was the author of " The Witch of Edmonton," and bore for some time the credit of The Parliament of Love."

Ford is sufficiently peculiar in his talent, as well as his style, to call for a separate mention. His principal play of " 'Tis Pity She's a Whore," betrays great powers of pathos, and much sweetness of versification; but they should not have been wasted on such a subject. We are not persons to put the Tragic Muse in fetters, nor to imprison her within very circumscribed limits; but there are subjects (be they fact or fiction) which are nauseous to all except distempered minds. There can be no good gained by running counter to the tastes and opinions of all society. There is no truth elicited, no moral enforced; and the boundaries of human knowledge can scarcely he said to be enlarged by anatomising monstrous deformities, or expatiating upon the hideous anomalies of the species. Ford has not much strength or knowledge of character; nor has he much depth of sentiment, except in portraying the passion of love. In that, however, he

excels almost all his contemporaries. He is remarkable, also, for his pathetic powers; yet scarcely for poetry, although his verse is generally sweet and tender. Some parts of the "Broken Heart" are as finely written as Fletcher, and Penthea herself (the true heroine, after all-a pale passionflower) exquisitely drawn. The scene, however, in ""Tis Pity She's a Whore," where Giovanoni murders Annabella, is the finest thing that Ford has done; and there he will stand a comparison with any one, except Shakspeare himself. Tourneur was the author of one or two tragedies of exceeding merit. He belonged to the age of Fletcher, and Jonson, and Decker, and was worthy of it: but his faculty, though excellent in itself, had not such a peculiar cast as to call for a separate mention. He deserved more, however, than the couplet with which one of his contemporaries has libelled his memory:

"His fame unto that pitch was only raised,

As not to be despised, nor over-praised."

The "Revenger's” and “Atheist's Tragedies" should have saved him from'this.

Shirley was a writer of about the same calibre as Ford, but with less pathos. And he was, moreover, the last of that bright line of poets whose glory has run thus far into the future, and must last as long as passion, and profound thought, and fancy, and imagination, and wit, shall continue to be honoured. There may be a change of fashions, and revolutions of power; but the empire of intellect will always remain the same. There is a lofty stability in genius, a splendour in a learned renown, which no clouds can obscure or extinguish. The politician and his victories may pass away, and the discoveries in science be eclipsed; but the search of the poet and the philosopher is for immutable Truth, and their fame will be, like their object, immortal.

We have now done with the ancients. We have endeavoured to trace, as well as we could, their individual likenesses: but they had also a general character, which belonged to their age,-a prevading resemblance, in which their own peculiar distinctions were merged and lost. They were true English writers, unlatinised. They were not translators of French idioms, nor borrowers (without acknowledgment) of Roman thoughts. Their minds were not of exotic growth, nor their labours fashioned after a foreign model. Yet they were indebted to story and fable, to science and art-and they had a tincture of learning; but it was mixed with the bloom of fresh inspiration, and subdued to the purposes of original poetry. It was not the staple, the commodity upon which these writers traded; but was blended, gracefully and usefully, with their own homebred diction and original thought."

During the protectorate of Cromwell, the drama lay in a state of torpidity. Whatever intellect the time possessed was exhausted in tirades and discussions, religious and political, where cunning, and violence, and narrow bigotry alternately predominated. The gloom of an ignorant fanaticism lay heavy on the state, and oppressed it; and humour and fancy were put to flight, or sought shelter with the wandering cavaliers of the period. The spirit of the people was bent to arms. They fought for liberty or the crowned cause, as interest or opinion swayed them, while literature suffered in the contest. Milton, the greatest name of that age, was the grandest of the poets, but he had strictly no dramatic faculty. He himself speaks

throughout the whole of "Samson Agonistes," throughout all "Paradise Lost,"-all "Comus." His own great spirit shone through the story, whatever it might be; and whatever the character, his own arguments and his own opinions were brought out and arranged in lucid order. His talent was essentially epic, not dramatic; and it was because the former prevailed, and not the latter, that we are indebted for the greatest poem that the world has ever seen.

After the restoration of the second Charles, the Drama raised its head, but evidently with little of its former character. It had lost its old inspiration, caught directly from the bright smile of Nature. It had none of that fine audacity which prompted the utterance of so many truths; none of that proud imagination which carried the poet's thoughts to so high a station. But it drew in a noisy, and meagre, and monotonous stream of verse, through artificial conduit and French strainers, which fevered and fretted for a time, but, in the end, impoverished and reduced the strength and stature of the English Drama.

Dryden is the principal name of this period; and he was foremost to overturn the system of his forefathers, and substitute the French style in its stead. He vaunts, if we remember rightly, in one of his prefaces, of adding new words to our native tongue; and he certainly injured (as well as served) the cause of literature, by sanctioning by his example the prevalent taste of his time. The Restoration, perhaps, cherished and brought to life that bright phalanx of wits, Wycherly, and Congreve, and the rest; but it threw our graver dramatists into the shade. Comedy flourished, but Tragedy died; or, rather, it grew diseased, and bloated, and unnatural, and lost its strength and healthier look. It grew unwieldy, imitative, foreign. The French had studied and copied the Greek drama; and the English studied and copied the French. All fashions came at that time from Paris, and literature was not an exception. Corneille first, and afterwards Racine, who was contemporary with Dryden, lent their help to put our native dramatists out of the play. In fact, our playwrights found it much easier to imitate the French authors successfully, than to rival their predecessors in England. To this, as well as to the force of fashion, which undoubtedly operated very strongly, may be ascribed the change in our dramatic literature. declamatory plays of Dryden and the others do not contain a tithe of the original thought that was lavished upon many of the second-rate dramas of the Elizabethan age. The tone of tragedy itself became cold and bombastic, where it was once full of life and simplicity, and the sentiments degenerated with the style. They were heavy and commonplace, or else were pilfered from the elder writers without acknowledgment, and dressed up in gaudy and fantastic habits, to suit the poor purposes of a play-mechanic. It is now well known that Rowe stole the entire plot and characters of his “Fair Penitent" from Massinger; but it is not so generally known that his production is contemptible in comparison with the original play.

The

Dryden was a striking and nervous writer. As a satirist, he has scarcely been equalled. As a dramatist, he had great command of language, and was full of high-sounding phrases; but these he showered indiscriminately upon all his characters, whatever their worth or occupation might be. The courtier, the tyrant, the victim, the slave, the cynic, were equally well provided with gorgeous words, and lavished them away alike upon all occasions. Dryden seems to have had a quick insight into one quarter of men's minds, and drew out their foibles and darker traits with the hand of

a master; but he could not portray a whole character, the good and the ill, and those proper shades of the intellect, those turns and touches of passion, which have made Shakspeare immortal. On the contrary, he had an obliquity of understanding which led him to the discovery of error only. His intellectual retina seems to have been too small to receive the whole compass and sketch of man. If he praised, he praised in general, with little discrimination; and his writings have none of the nicer touches of affection or goodness. But, with the lash in his hand, and a knave or a fool to deal with, he was an exemplary person. No culprit could stand against him:

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Of all the dramatic writers since the return of Charles, Lee may be considered as the first. It is true, that Otway has constructed the best drama, and the stage is most indebted to him; but Lee had assuredly more imagination and passion than his rival, although every play which he has written is disgraced by the most unaccountable fustian. There is great tenderness and beauty in Theodosius;' and great power, mixed with extravagance, both in " The Rival Queens" and the "Massacre of Paris," and others. This last-mentioned play, which is not, we apprehend, very generally known, shows a skill in character equal to Otway, to whom Lee is commonly decidedly inferior in that respect. As a specimen of the spirit of Lee's dialogue, the reader may take the following from the "Massacre of Paris." The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal of Lorrain are speaking of Marguerite (de Valois), who has just left them in a transport of passion.

"Car. What have you done, my lord, to make her thus?
Guise. Causes are endless for a woman's loving.

Perhaps she has seen me break a lance on horseback;

Or, as my custom is, all over arm'd

Plunge in the Seine or Loire; and, where 'tis swiftest,

Plow to my point against the headlong stream.

'Tis certain, were my soul of that soft make

Which some believe, she has charms, my heavenly uncle," &c.

which he proceeds to discuss in a way to call down the rebuke of the Cardinal upon his amour,

"Not for the sin; that's as the conscience makes it,"

as his Eminence says, but for the "love." To this Guise replies :

"Guise I love, 'tis true, but most for my ambition :
Therefore I thought to marry Marguerite.

But, oh! that Cassiopeia in the Chair,

The regent-mother, and that dog Anjou,

Cross constellations! blast my plots ere born.
The king, too, frowns upon me; for, last night,
Hearing a ball was promised by the queen,
I came to help the show; when, at the door,
The king, who stood himself the sentry, stopp'd me,
And asked me what I came for? I replied,
To serve his majesty: he, sharp and short,
Retorted thus-he did not need my service.

Car. 'Tis plain, you must resolve to quit her;
For I am charged to tell you, she's design'd

To be the wife of Henry of Navarre.

'Tis the main beam in all that mighty engine

Which now begins to move

Guise. I have it, and methinks it looks like D'Alva.

I see the very motion of his beard,

His opening nostrils, and his dropping lids;

I hear him eroak, too, to the king and queen :

'In Biscay's bay,-at Bayonne

Fish for the great fish ;-take no care for frogs;-
Cut off the poppy heads;--lay the winds fast,

And straight the waves (the people) will be still.'"

Otway, however, on the whole, seems to have shown in his great tragedy ("Venice Preserved") more dramatic power than Lee; for although there is a good deal of common-place in it, and more than enough of prose, that tragedy is certainly entitled to rank very high as a dramatic production. Otway's pretensions to mere poetry were very slight; and his lyrical pieces are entirely worthless. What he effected, he did by a strong contrast of character, by spirited dialogue, and by always keeping in view the main object of the play. He did not dally with his subject, nor waste his strength in figures and conceits, but went straight to the end, and kept expectation alive. It must be confessed, however, that Jaffier and Belvidera are sometimes sufficiently tedious: but Pierre is a bold and striking figure, who stands out, like a rock, from the sea of sorrow which is poured around him. He is in fact the hero of the play, and, like a pleasant discord in music, saves it from the monotony which would otherwise oppress it.

"

Southern is less tumid than Lee and Dryden, and altogether more free from blemish; but he is a weaker writer than either. His "Isabella" possesses great pathos, and his dialogue is for the most part natural; but he has little else to boast of. Congreve was a wit of the first water, and the most sparkling comic writer perhaps in the circle of letters; and yet he wrote the "Mourning Bride.' We think that, with his wit, he could not have been insensible to its defects. Of Rowe, Hughes, Hill, Howard, Murphy, Thomson, Cumberland, etc. what can we say, but that they all wrote tragedies, which succeeded-we believe? Addison's "Cato" is as cold as a statue, and correct enough to satisfy the most fastidious of critics, We ourselves prefer his Sir Roger de Coverley but these things are matters of taste. With regard to Dr. Johnson's "Irene," we must say that it would reflect little or no credit upon any writer whatever; and that it detracts from, rather than adds to, his deservedly great reputation, is, we apprehend, universally allowed. The author, we believe, once ad

ventured an opinion, that nothing which had deserved to live was forgotten. We wonder whether, if he were alive, he would (in the present state of his play) retain his old way of thinking. These general maxims are dreadfully perilous to poets' reputations, and should not be proclaimed but with due deliberation.

Moore and Lillo were writers of domestic tragedy, and, with the exception perhaps of Heyward and Rowley, and we may add Southern, bear little resemblance to any of their predecessors. Theirs was a muse born without wings, but nursed amidst sin and misfortune, and fed with tears. They neither attempted to soar, nor to penetrate below the surface; but contented themselves with common calamities, every-day sorrows. Their plays are, like the Newgate Calendar, or a coroner's inquisition, true, but unpleasant. They give us an account of Mr. Beverley, who poisoned himself but the other day, after his losses at hazard or rouge et noir; or they admit us into the condemned cell of a city apprentice who has robbed his master. Their characters have all a London look; they frequent the city clubs, and breathe the air of traffic. These writers are as good as a newspaper-and no better. But Tragedy was surely meant for other and higher things than to bring the gallows (even with its moral) upon the stage, or to reduce to dialogue the coroner's inquisition or police reports. As in a picture, it is not always the truest imitator of nature who is the best painter; for an artist may make

VOL. II.

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