Of the language and sentiments we now proceed to speak: and perhaps a more difficult task was never assigned us. If we did not allow many whole speeches, nay whole scenes to be exquisitely beautiful, we should not do justice to Mr. Milman; and if we were to pass over, without censure, certain prominent errors, we should not do justice to ourselves. Mr. Milman is no ordinary scholar, and the language in which he has clothed his thoughts fully declares him to be such. But the principal fault with which this tragedy abounds, is the too great display of poetical imagery, and the want of the language of common life. By this we do not mean cold and pointless dialogue, but that dignified simplicity of diction which acts as a foil to the more high-flown and poetical language of the Tragic Muse. Mr. Milman has a fertile and a vivid fancy, but it sometimes hurries him into the concetti of the modern Italian school, which his own good taste would, in the composition of another, teach him most justly to reprehend. His images indeed, are classical, his metaphors are just and powerful, but they both occur too often to give their due and desired effect. The ornaments of Mr. Milman are too classically and elegantly meretricious. Chastity in expression, and sometimes even in conception, must be his future aim. Should this or any other play of our author be produced upon the stage, he cannot be made too acutely sensible of the clownish risibility of an English audience, who, when once put out of their tragic taste by some unfortunate conceit, continue to titter throughout the whole performance. We leave it for those, who may find it more to their purpose, to particularise each error in conception or language, it is enough for us generally to state their existence; and to leave it to that taste, which Mr. Milman so unquestionably possesses, in some future effort, to alter and amend them. They are faults of exuberance, not of poverty; the remedy, therefore, is not difficult of application.

We now turn, with much satisfaction, to the beauties with which this composition abounds. The scene of Bartolo's death is well managed.

"FAZIO opens the Door.

"What! Bartolo!

"BARTOLO,

"Thank ye, my friend! Ha! ha! ha! my old limbs!
I did not think them half so tough and sinewy,
St. Dominic! but their pins prick'd close and keen,
Six of 'em, strong and sturdy, with their daggers,
Tickling the old man to let loose his ducats,

"Who, neighbour, who?

"FAZIO,

"BARTOLO

1

"BARTOLO.

"Robbers, black crape-faced robbers,
Your only blood-suckers, that drain your veins,
And yet their meagre bodies aye grow sparer,
They knew that I had monies from the Duke,
But 1 o'erreach'd them, neighbour: not a ducat,
Nay, not a doit, to cross themselves withal,
Got them from old Bartolo Oh, I bleed!
And my old heart beats minutes like a clock.

"Aye, one of your kind butchers,
Who cut and slash your flesh for their own pastime,
And then, God bless the mark! they must have money!
Gold, gold, or nothing! Silver is grown coarse,

And rings unhandsomely. Have I escaped robbing,
Only to give?Ch there! there! there! Cold, cold,
Cold as December.

"FAZIO.

"Nay, then, a confessor!

"BARTOLO.

"A confessor! one of your black smooth talkers,
That drone the name of God incessantly,
Like the drear burthen of a doleful ballad!
That sing to one of bounteous codicils
To the Franciscans or some hospital!

Oh! there's a shooting!-Oozing here! Aye me!
My ducats and my ingots scarcely cold
From the hot Indies!-Oh! and I forgot
To seal those jewels from the Milan Duke!

Oh! misery, misery! Just this very day,

And that mad spendthrift Angelo hath not sign'd
The mortgage on those meadows by the Arno.

1.

Oh! misery, misery!-Yet have I scaped them bravely,
And brought my ducats off!

[Dies." P. 9.

The scene where Fazio discovers to Bianca his ill-gotten wealth is spirited and good. The reproach of Fazio to the Improvisatore, who flatters him upon his newly-acquired fortune, deserves our commendation.

"Fie, sir! O fie! 'tis fulsome.

Sir, there's a soil fit for that rank weed flattery,
To trail its poisonous and obscene clusters:
A poet's soul should bear a richer fruitage-
The aconite grew not in Eden. Thou,

That

That thou, with lips tipt with the fire of heaven,
Th' excursive eye, that in its earth-wide range
Drinks in the grandeur and the loveliness,
That breathes along this high-wrought world of man;
That hast within thee apprehensions strong
Of all that's pure and passionless and heavenly-
That thou, a vapid and a mawkish parasite,
Should'st pipe to that witch Fortune's favourites!
'Tis coarse-'tis sickly-'tis as though the eagle
Should spread his sail-broad wings to flap a dunghill;
As though a pale and withering pestilence
Should ride the golden chariot of the sun;
As one should use the language of the gods
To chatter loose and ribald brothelry." P. 26.

Upon the subsequent Ode to Italy, we cannot entirely compliment Mr. Milman. The latter end of the second stanza and the third are excellent, the remainder is far too obscure. The agony of Bianca, at the discovery of Fazio's treacherous love for Aldabella, is finely expressed, and the whole of the trial scene is worked up in no common style. The parting between Fazio and Bianca has no small share of real pathos. The supposition that Bianca has murdered the children is original, and in the representation would be attended with great effect.

12

No, it is my love,

-I'll not see them

My wife, my children's mother!-Pardon me,
Bianca; but thy children-
For on the wax of a soft infant's memory
Things horrible sink deep and sternly settle.
I would not have them, in their after-days,
Cherish the image of their wretched father
In the cold darkness of a prison-house,
Oh, if they ask thee of their father, tell them
That he is dead, but say not how.

3

"BIANCA.

"What, had I freed them

From this drear villains' earth, sent them before us,
Lest we should miss them in another world,
And be so fetter'd by a cold regret

Of this sad sunshine?

"FAZIO.

"Oh, thou hast not been

So wild a rebel to the will of God!

If that thou hast, 'twill make my passionate arms,
That ring thee round so fondly, drop off from thee,
Like sere and wither'd ivy; make my farewel
Spoken in such suffocate and distemper'd tone,
'Twill sound more like

"BIANCA.

66

me,

They live! thank God, they live!
I should not rack thee with such fantasies:
But there have been such hideous things around
Some whispering me, some dragging me; I've felt
Not half a moment's calm since last we parted,
So exquisite, so gentle, as this now-

I could sleep on thy bosom, Fazio."

P. 92,

The passage, however, which nearest resembles the language of Shakespear, is the concluding speech of the Duke, where he condemns Aldabella to banishment. We extract it with considerable pleasure.

"How hast thou discredited

All that doth fetter admiration's eye,
And made us out of love with loveliness!
I do condemn thee, woman, by the warrant
Of this my ducal diadem, to put on thee
The rigid convent vows: there bleach anew
Thy sullied breast; there temper thy rank blood;
Lay ashes to thy soul; swathe thy hot skin
In sackcloth; and God give thee length of days,
T'atone, by this world's misery, this world's sin."

P. 102,

From these extracts even the most prejudiced reader must allow that the Tragedy before us has no small degree of merit. Mr. Milman has considerable qualifications for an eminent dramatic poet. Before, however, he can attain that eminence which is the object of his wishes, he must study more deeply the workings, and adopt more generally the language, of the heart. He must consult the feelings, not of himself but of others; and instead of imagining how he himself would have acted in the various situations in which his dramatis persona are involved, he must mark how others have acted in similar circum

stances

stances of real life. In this his first composition his enemies will find enough to deride; it is sufficient for us that we find enough to admire, and to pronounce, that if Mr. Milman does not rise hereafter to be the first dramatic poet of his day, it will not be because he had not the powers, but because he used those powers amiss.

ART. VIII. Howard; by John Gamble. Esq. Author of Irish Sketches, Sarsfield, &c. In two volumes, 12mo. pp. 436. Baldwin.

46

IT is with a mingled feeling of pain and pleasure that we renew our acquaintance with Mr. Gamble, on whose novel of Sarsfield" we, a few months back, considered it as our duty to make some pointed animadversions. The pleasure, however, is far outweighed by the pain; and is, indeed, of that undesirable kind which is felt by the spectator of a conflagration, who, while he deplores that such an event should have happened, cannot help admiring the ceaseless and rapid whirls and convolutions, the shifting lights and shades, and the glowing and ruddy hues of the destructive flames.

In his present work Mr. Gamble does not give us less reason for complaint than he did in his former. He continues, we hope unintentionally, to propagate principles, which can have no other tendency than to demolish the very foundations of virtue, to render man miserable here, hopeless of an hereafter, and most unfit to encounter its terrors, when too late convinced of its existence.

The story is even more simple than that of "Sarsfield," and the characters and events are fewer in number. The text of the author is comprised, as a motto, in two lines from Pope's Homer:

To suffer is the lot of man below,

And when Joye gave us life, he gave us woe."

and of this text the two volumes are a continued illustration. Howard is an Irishman, who is, and has been even from his infancy, a creature of enthusiasm, melancholy, and romance, firmly believing in the irresistible power of fate, and possessing an ardent imagination, feebly controuled by reason. Among the few particulars of Howard's early days, we think Mr. Gamble would have done well had he omitted the youth's aquatic perils in the grain tub, which he had converted into a boat. It was not worth while to borrow so worthless an incident from the Lyrisal Ballads of Mr. Wordsworth. Previously to his embarking