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theatre. From political causes this is not likely, but there are hopes-the French have none. In England, the spirit of independence has overcome in every point,-religion, politics, literature: the latter is completely founded on a modern at least, if not altogether on a national basis, and the little of ancient sentiment that exists compounded with it, is not more than what has naturally become current throughout all ranks of society. Hence, to enter into the penetralia of our poetry, to render the taste for it exquisite, it is necessary to read but itself-it is not over Pantheons or classical dictionaries that we must prepare ourselves to enjoy it but in cultivating our own English mind, simply English in this, that to a superior degree it is reflective, deep-thoughted, and moral. To recapitulate our system, taste, or the passive faculty of the mind, has been in France always predominant over genius or the active faculty. The latter has been but a consequence of the former, and has been dragged after it, like a cock-boat in the wake of a vessel of war. In Italy, they have been balanced pretty nearly. But, in England, genius has always led the way; and taste, confined to its proper limits, is but an adjunct of it-a polypus adhering to its mass, and assimilating it-tions. Thus the produce of imagina

ranks of society-the rudeness of vulgar life was to be found in the habits of knights and dames, while the chivalrous feelings of high birth were communicated to the followers and vassals. When manuscripts became numerous, the learned began to separate themselves from the nation, and even poets, affecting to avoid vulgarity, began "to powder their talk with over-sea language." But when the art of printing came into use, literature completely separated itself from vulgar feeling-which, after all, is the only national one; and thenceforward, tales and epics struggled to erect themselves on a fantastic basis neither foreign nor domestic. The scenes were laid in a fancied region, of which the customs, the terms, the atmosphere, suited the preconceived ideas of no living ing person. The poet reckoned on a limited class of polite and idle readers, who were willing to step beyond their natural and habitual feelings for the sake of enjoying novel imaginations. The mass of a nation will not take this trouble, even if they be called upon to do so; they cannot dispense with the atmosphere of nationality that involves their tasteand 'tis well that they cannot; if they could, then would be an end of na

self to the varying colour of that on which and by which it exists.

The discovery of the art of printing, which is considered to have extended the sphere of literature, has had really the opposite effect, at least with respect to works of imagination. These, as long as they were oral, were necessarily national; the jongleurs and menestrels, although they might reckon a few lords and princes among their ranks, were in general from the lowest order of the people; their chant was addressed not to the nobles alone, but to chiefs and vassals united, to the mingled assemblage of the feudal hall. There could be nothing exclusive in taste-one single feeling animated all

tion, as soon as it comes to exist otherwise than orally, contracts itself from its former expansion over the whole people, and tends to centralize itself in a kind of literary aristocracy. To this thereis one great check-one grand and noble link, to unite and reclaim literature to its original sense of national feeling this link is the Drama. The Drama is a poetry which, in its legitimate scope, must be addressed to all ranks of society-must wear the common garb, and speak the common language of all. It is the forum, where all ranks meet, and are but equals; where the base of mankind unlearn their ferocity, and divest themselves of their callousness; and where,

* This sweeping clause is perhaps unjust. The Filippo and the Conspiracy of the Pozzi, by Alfieri, are exceptions to his rigid reverence for the antique; in the former, which was his first, there is a tenderness and passion in the loves of Carlo and Isabella, which the poet never condescended to in his subsequent pieces. His other tragedies on modern subjects, Don Garzia, and Maria Stuarda, are among the worst of his productions. We shall change a word one day or another with Mr Cam, respecting his contempt for Alfieri's most original and Aristophanic comedies.

VOL. XI.

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likewise, the noble and gentle must dispense with artificial feelings, and know, that whatever be the shell, the kernel is at best but a man.

ma.

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A literature, in order to be any thing-at least any thing more than a shadow or an imitation-must be national: and to be national, it must establish as its basis, that part of itself which embraces and spreads its roots amongst the entire mass of the people. Of old, this part was its oral verse, and at present, we may repeat, this part is still its oral verseits draIt would be superfluous here to inquire, whether the poets of the present day are proceeding right or wrong, or to censure them for building a superstructure, while they neglect the foundation. Let them proceed, each to fulfil that to which he was called; it is a fruitless endeavour to turn the stream of Helicon, nor would it be to much advantage to divert from their employment the adorners of an fice, or the workers in stucco, and compel them to apply their finican hands and utensils to the laborious task of rearing a foundation. All we would hint to those worthy bards, who have been so successful in the walks of narrative and monologue, is to beware entering upon the Drama with the confined and individual character which they have developed, and certainly perfected in their other undertakings. The Drama does not deserve to be put off with a jaded muse, or a second-hand style, worn out in the service of tale and song. One of ye, my worthies, has tried and failedhe is as talented almost as any among ye; 'twere well not to imitate his fall-a dramatist may rise when ye are no more; and 'tis far more honourable to be reproached with neglect as to the stage, than to be convicted of a failure. Besides, success even is a dishonour in the present state of our theatres:-do not the plays fabricated in Cockaigne live-ay, live three whole nights ere they expire? and shall you, ye heroes of the Muse, but walk by their sides, and live and die the ephemeral space allotted to such caterpillars?

"What! die! Be decently interred in a churchyard With stinking rogues, that rot in winding

sheets, Surfeit-slain fools, the common dung o'

the soil."

A dramatic genius, take our word for it, must be a dramatic genius, and nothing else. Melpomene is enough for any one gentleman, and he who will coquet with half-a-dozen muses, may make up his account to be jilted by all. Byron will never write a tragedy, though he sent ten dialogisms to the Albemarle-street Press in a twelvemonth-" hot and hot," as he said himself on a memorable occasion. Scott will never write a tragedy, for all Mr Jeffrey's exhortations; the worthy poet has been for these many years fairly up to his neck in prose, and Heaven keep him there. Besides, we know what abortions are produced by these god-fathering sort of commendations. Sheridan told Miss Edgeworth to write comedies-that it was just the path that would suit herand she produced, wonderful to relate, as stupid a volume as ever issued from the back settlements of PaternosterRow. There is but one literary counsellor in the world worth attending to, superior to all the Reviewers and Magazinists, from John o' Groat's to the Land's End-id est, in vulgar phraseology, the Maggot. When he bites, obey him, and when he does not, why, e'en let the world go its own way, in God's name.

The

We have defined the Drama, in its original scope, as oral verse. more it retires from answering this definition, the more does it cease to be dramatic; and what is a drama that is not dramatic? Ask Lord Byron and his non-descript talks. A poet that writes to be read may become unmindful of his readers-he is independent of them in a manner-he disunites them both in time and place as to the act of passing judgment upon him. Even of the few that read, there are but fewer still whose taste and prejudices he is bound to consult. Since he addresses himself to individuals, solitary individuals, it is but individual originality he need aim at; originality on the broad basis of general or national feeling would be too weighty a task. To write for the stage, if that stage be what it should be, free and popular, is a more serious undertaking; it will not be sufficient in this case to deal out an affected vocabulary to a narrow class, or to cater to the prepared appetites of a few delicatenerved gentlemen. The production will be represented before a section of the country, before the vulgar as well as the refined, neither of which classes will sanction what is out of the line of their comprehensions, whether it be above or below them. The poet cannot plead that he is of this school or of that school; his Lakeism or his Satanism will not save the piece from being damned, if it be stupid; and all those pretty affectations that mark the petitmaître versification of the day, and that go off very well over a tea-table, pass for nothing in the huge ear of a theatrical assemblage. It is nonsense to say, that a writer should consult but his own taste; it must be influenced, be it ever so unconsciously, by floating opinion, and the more secluded he lives, the more will he be influenced by the little he does hear. The more general the opinion that modifies and directs a poet's taste, the more original will he be:-there never has been tale or epic since the world began, so original as our early dramas, which were composed imperatively for success and bread, and, consequently, kept ever in view the taste of the auditory. But people at present fancy that the only entrance to originality is through the narrow duct of their own egotistical spirit, and that to wing their way through the free and open space of general sentiment, would be but to follow a beaten path. It is just as if a carpenter or a blacksmith were to attempt perfecting himself in his trade by chiselling or hammering his own nose instead of the wood or iron, which are his natural materials. The human mind certainly contains a world of poesy; but it is not any individual mind, far less a Cockney, or even a Byronic one, that can be said to contain this. It is an arrogant trick of both these last-mentioned schools and their scholars, for each to set himself up as a type, as a representation of the human race-a poetical Anacharsis Clootz. Those fellows have their eyes for ever turned inwards upon themselves with an egotistical squint-they assume their own pineal gland to be the world, and the two-legged images that float therein to be mankind.

There can be no stronger sign of the decay of literature, than to see its spirit thus ensconced within itself, and our poets creeping about, lonely and separate, like so many snails, with their habitations, food, family,

and feelings, all packed upon their proper shoulders. We hate all thiswe abhor selfishness-we lament to see men for ever fishing in their own little selves, and angling, as it were, for gudgeons in a pool. We had rather see the line flung abroad into the ocean, and hawling up the monsters of the deep. We like a bold, open game, such as a whole nation can play at, but anatomy or dissecting rooms give us qualms-we are tenderhearted, so is John Bull, and we earnestly entreat the poets of the day to keep their stomachs to themselves for the future, and not to be so confoundedly kind and communicative, as to disgust us every now and then with a view of their very entrails. It is butchery, not poetry.

You perceive, my public, the difference between sense and nonsense.

As long as we utter our own sublime philosophy and abstract criticism, and as long as we speak of the worthy elders of literature, the purest stream of prose flows from our pen. But the moment, the cursed moment, in which we first make mention of Cockaigne or cotemporaries, we lose all command of ourselves, we wax angry, foam at the mouth, grow hysterical-in short, pour forth a deal of nonsense, at times, indeed, almost as disjointed as tabletalk. But where were we?

Dramatic authors are, as we have observed, necessarily subservient to general feeling; they may change or influence it, but this must be by degrees. A series of dramatic writers, were they kept up, would be the literary history of a country-" they shew the body of the time its form and pressure"-and an age that is without them has in reality no literature properly its own. It is by this dependence on popular taste that the Drama has existed and flourished, and if at present we have no Drama, the reason is simply, that we endeavour to elevate it on exclusive taste-on that of our numerous schools. We do not mention the pieces that strive to live by scenic effect, clap-traps and appeals to the galleries alone-they are too wretched; but they deserve to be as successful as those which are addressed to the three front rows of the pit, such as Mirandola, &c.; these we might call pit-plays. A man may write a poem to please three hundred friends, but a tragedy cannot be created for so limited an end; and if in his tragedy an author wishes to cater to the delicate palates of his refined friends, those touches should be, as in Shakspeare, altogether subordinate; they should keep up with beautiful insignificance merely, like violets among the loftier and more robust flowers that characterize the work. Ex pede Herculem, is fair reasoning for a critic, but to carve a foot and call it Hercules-to write a prettiness, and call it tragedy, is but an indefinite mixture of blunder and impudence.

In the annals of stage history, we always find the drama dependent on the audience before whom it was to be represented; and proportionably as that audience was free, mixed, and popular, we find the drama to have been grand, sublime, and original. Every one's knowledge will here fill up a paragraph for itself concerning the Grecian and Roman stage. In Italy, the audience of tragedy became soon confined to the learned, owing to the musical and operative propensities of the people, as well as to the mental thraldom imposed by religion. The tragic pieces from Trissino to Maffei are nothings-absolute nothings; they addressed an assembly of learned and tasteful churchmen, whose vein was ridicule and raillery; and who could tolerate serious feelin feeling, only when it was cold; and even then, but for formsake. Alfieri arose late, and having no audience but an imaginary one to look to, he wrote a second edition of the Grecian Drama, to which he hoped the Italians would suit themselves-till that distant day, his works may remain in the closet, In France, the ruling audience of tragedy was the Court. A new piece was first brought forward there, and the smile or frown of the monarch passed a judgment without appeal. To this smile the drama adapted itself, and became what it is -utterly contemptible for any one that has a thought beyond his ears. In England, thanks to the Reformation, the theatre became free, and obedient solely to a public audience; where, we

may be sure, the blunt English yeoman exercised his full share of influence. We see the consequence; the world has never had, and never will have, such a theatre. The puritans overturned the stage; and when it was revived, the court and cavaliers sought to take possession of it, in imitation of the French. Then commenced the reign of the pit and the beaux-esprits; and, from that day, the drama fell.

We are, like Lord Byron,* aristocrats by birth and feeling, but we have a drop of the tiers etat in us, and grow republican at times; nowhere more so than in a theatre. We forget the garter beneath our knee, and the ribbon in our button-hole-the Golden Fleece and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour become invisible on our generous swelling breast-we look up and around with a sentiment of fraternity, and with proud humiliation rejoice that so many are in one respect almost as great as ourselves. "One touch of nature maketh the whole world kin."

How beautiful the line! How trebly beautiful, had not the Cockneys bequoted it! Who can doubt that it was not in his theatre Shakespeare conceived the thought and moulded the verse ? It must have been so we have felt the sentiment there a thousand times, and should have built the very line ourselves, in this very article, had not the poet had the impudence to write it before us.

life.

Vulgarity is the essence of the dramatic genius-not conventional vulgarity or cant, but vulgarity, properly so called the current sentiments-the unsophisticated passions-the simple, straight-forward language of vulgar To write an epic, or to found a school, we may refine upon refinement -we may ereate supererogation of gentility and heroism and idle folk may be found who will educate their hotbed sympathies for the prepense enjoyment of such imaginations; but let these never be embodied in a tragedy. Antithetic characters, unintelligible passions, wire-drawn sentiments, may be unravelled in the closet; and the nonsense of these too may be exquisite, like Coleridge's ignorance, and may well repay our trouble; but, on the stage, this is misplaced-it is all High Dutch to John Bull. The passions and characters of the acting drama must be from the staple ones of humanity-they must be drawn from observation as well as from egotism; and no one, be he ever so talented, ever so finely organized, can expect that an audience will listen to a five act panorama of his thoughts, hopes, and opinions. Indeed we prophesy that our next great dramatic genius must spring from the lower ranks of the people.

*Query. Was Lord Byron born an aristocrat ? - If we mistake not, neither he himself, nor his friends, could have had expectations at the hour of his birth, that he would ever enjoy a title. And had the aristocratic baby of an hour old-had the little gentleman titled hopes, how does that make him an aristocrat ? " Un lord disoit spirituellement:" relates Madame de Stael, "Je ne puis pas devenir aristocrate, car j'ai chez moi constamment des representans du parti populaire; ce sont mes fils cadets."

And here we approach the very core of the subject. The sign of decay, in all literature, has been peculiar and exclusive attention bestowed on language. A more advantageous effect certainly could not be brought about, than that of stablishing language, and rendering it pure and permanent. But however noble and praise-worthy the endeavour be in itself, it is by no means the way to elevate a dormant or a fallen poetry. What is chiefly admired in our ancient dramatists, is the simple, strenuous, natural style; it is thence concluded that we should take them as models, and adopt their manner and phraseology. This would be well, if the nineteenth century were the same as the sixteenth. But as there exists a material difference between them, the language that appeared simple, natural, and strong to the people of that day; and which appears possessed still of the same qualities to the critics of the present, who have no objection to transport themselves a couple of centuries back ;-this same language is to the common audience of the year eighteen hundred and twentytwo, neither simple nor natural, but, on the contrary, pedantic, extravagant, and, for the most part, nonsense. The metaphors, the phrases, the turns of expression then used, founded, as they were, on the current conversation of the day, struck, with full force, on prepared and familiar ears; but to us it is a foreign tongue, and, with all its boasted simplicity and nature, I defy - a country gentleman, or a city one either, to understand one continued speech couched in its language. These ancient masters are worthy of being imitated, true, but not servilely imi

tated. Their noble and distinguishing qualities are to be adopted, but not transplanted, thought, language, and all, into a modern soil. Third-rate borrowers commit desperate blunders; they are never satisfied, and are so eager to grasp, that they steal the first thing that comes in their way, and, if it be a mill-stone, endeavour to carry it off; this has been the case with some of the Cocknies. The rising race of dramatists, have, in my humble opinion, been led astray, when they were induced to steep their souls, pens, and tongues, in these ancient worthies. They have been put on the wrong scent, and look, at this present mo ment, extremely like a baffled pack of beagles, howling here and there, and running after their tails for lack of legitimate game. How much Christophorus Northus has been to blame in this case, we won't determine-forbid, all powers propitious! that we should trouble the conscience of a gouty Sexagenarian. As to Mr Lambe, he deserves to be hanged for wasting talent, like the Schlegels, in making silkpurses out of sows' ears. And as for the Edinburgh Review, who moped after those dashing sons of genius, and took up the theme at second-hand, like a cur hastening to mumble the bone just dropt by the mastiff, we leave the old woman to her quarterly task of gleaning.

(Impudence will have a fall, and mine has already dissolved my prerogative of plurality.) I have a great mind to belabour some of the old English dramatists. It would, indeed, be a charity to abuse them, for since every museling has taken to imitate them, we shall soon think their free verse as hackneyed as Pope's couplet. I love them all dearly, therefore will run a tilt at them some of these days;-look to your new editions, Mr Gifford, at which I intend to fly, not, however, I trust, to break my shins over them, as did Mr Jeffrey. It is time for the world to hear the other side of the question. Every one has been heard in their favour; Maga, the Quarterly, "the Monthlies, the New and the Old," the Edinburgh Review, and the Cocknies, have all bellowed forth their pleadings, and not a tongue has wagged in contravention. And even should my apostrophes fall foul of Mr North's great toe, what care I? Doth not the ocean roll between me and his crutch?

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