Closing of the Stage by the Puritans--Revival of the Stage under Charles
the Second--Depravity of Taste and Morals--Dryden, Otway, and others--
Characterization of the Comic Poets from Wycherley and Congreve to the
middle of the eighteenth century--Tragedies of the same Period--Rowe--
Addison's _Cato_--Later Pieces--Familiar Tragedy: Lillo--Garrick--
Latest state.
In this condition nearly the theatre remained under the reign of Charles
I. down to the year 1647, when the invectives of the Puritans (who had
long murmured at the theatre, and at last thundered loudly against it,)
were changed into laws. To act, or even to be a spectator of plays was
prohibited under a severe penalty. A civil war followed, and the
extraordinary circumstance here happened, that the players, (who, in
general, do not concern themselves much about forms of government, and
whose whole care is usually devoted to the peaceable entertainment of
their follow-citizens,) compelled by want, joined that political party the
interests of which were intimately connected with their own existence.
Almost all of them entered the army of the King, many perished for the
good cause, the survivors returned to London and continued to exercise
their art in secret. Out of the ruins of all the former companies of
actors, one alone was formed, which occasionally, though with very great
caution, gave representations at the country seats of the great, in the
vicinity of London. For among the other singularities to which the
violence of those times gave rise, it was considered a proof of attachment
to the old constitution to be fond of plays, and to reward and harbour
those who acted them in private houses.
Fortunately the Puritans did not so well understand the importance of a
censorship as the Governments of our day, or the yet unprinted dramatic
productions of the preceding age could not have issued from the press, by
which means many of them would have been irrecoverably lost. These gloomy
fanatics were such enemies of all that was beautiful, that they not only
persecuted every liberal mental entertainment, calculated in any manner to
adorn life, and more especially the drama, as being a public worship of
Baal, but they even shut their ears to church music, as a demoniacal
howling. If their ascendency had been maintained much longer, England must
infallibly have been plunged in an irremediable barbarity. The oppression
of the drama continued down to the year 1660, when the free exercise of
all arts returned with Charles II.
The influence which the government of this monarch had on the manners and
spirit of the time, and the natural reaction against the principles
previously dominant, are sufficiently well known. As the Puritans had
brought republican principles and religious zeal into universal odium, so
this light-minded monarch seemed expressly born to sport away all respect
for the kingly dignity. England was inundated with foreign follies and
vices in his train. The court set the fashion of the most undisguised
immorality, and its example was the more contagious, the more people
imagined that they could only show their zeal for the new order of things
by an extravagant way of thinking and living. The fanaticism of the
republicans had been associated with strictness of manners, nothing
therefore could be more easy and agreeable than to obtain the character of
royalists, by the extravagant indulgence of all lawful and unlawful
pleasures. Nowhere was the age of Louis XIV. imitated with greater
depravity. But the prevailing gallantry of the court of France had its
reserve and a certain delicacy of feeling; they sinned (if I may so speak)
with some degree of dignity, and no man ventured to attack what was
honourable, however at variance with it his own actions might be. The
English played a part which was altogether unnatural to them: they gave
themselves up heavily to levity; they everywhere confounded the coarsest
licentiousness with free mental vivacity, and did not perceive that the
kind of grace which is still compatible with depravity, disappears with
the last veil which it throws off.
We can easily conceive the turn which, under such auspices, the new
formation of taste must have taken. There existed no real knowledge of the
fine arts, which were favoured merely like other foreign fashions and
inventions of luxury. The age neither felt a true want of poetry, nor had
any relish for it: in it they merely wished for a light and brilliant
entertainment. The theatre, which in its former simplicity had attracted
the spectators solely by the excellence of the dramatic works and the
skill of the actors, was now furnished out with all the appliances with
which we are at this day familiar; but what it gained in external
decoration, it lost in internal worth.
To Sir William Davenant, the English theatre, on its revival after the
interruption which we have so often mentioned, owes its new institution,
if this term may be here used. He introduced the Italian system of
decoration, the _costume_, as it was then well or ill understood, the
opera music, and in general the use of the orchestra. For this undertaking
Charles II. had furnished him with extensive privileges. Davenant was a
sort of adventurer and wit; in every way worthy of the royal favour; to
enjoy which, dignity of character was never a necessary requisite. He set
himself to work in every way that a rich theatrical repertory may render
necessary; he made alterations of old pieces, and also wrote himself
plays, operas, prologues, &c. But of all his writings nothing has escaped
a merited oblivion.
Dryden soon became and long remained the hero of the stage. This man, from
his influence in fixing the laws of versification and poetical language,
especially in rhyme, has acquired a reputation altogether disproportionate
to his true merit. We shall not here inquire whether his translations of
the Latin poets are not manneristical paraphrases, whether his political
allegories (now that party interest is dead) can be read without the
greatest weariness; but confine ourselves to his plays, which considered
relatively to his great reputation, are incredibly bad. Dryden had a gift
of flowing and easy versification; the knowledge which he possessed was
considerable, but undigested; and all this was coupled with the talent of
giving a certain appearance of novelty to what however was borrowed from
all quarters; his serviceable muse was the resource of an irregular life.
He had besides an immeasurable vanity; he frequently disguises it under
humble prologues; on other occasions he speaks out boldly and confidently,
avowing his opinion that he has done better than Shakspeare, Fletcher, and
Jonson (whom he places nearly on the same level); all the merit of this he
is, however, willing to ascribe to the refinement and advances of the age.
The age indeed! as if that of Elizabeth compared with the one in which
Dryden lived, were not in every respect "Hyperion to a Satyr!" Dryden
played also the part of the critic: he furnished his pieces richly with
prefaces and treatises on dramatic poetry, in which he chatters most
confusedly about the genius of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and about the
entirely opposite example of Corneille; of the original boldness of the
British stage, and of the rules of Aristotle and Horace.--He imagined that
he had invented a new species, namely the Heroic Drama; as if Tragedy had
not from its very nature been always heroical! If we are, however, to seek
for a heroic drama which is not peculiarly tragic, we shall find it among
the Spaniards, who had long possessed it in the greatest perfection. From
the uncommon facility of rhyming which Dryden possessed, it cost him
little labour to compose the most of his serious pieces entirely in rhyme.
With the English, the rhymed verse of ten syllables supplies the place of
the Alexandrine; it has more freedom in its pauses, but on the other hand
it wants the alternation of male and female rhymes; it proceeds in pairs
exactly like the French Alexandrine, and in point of syllabic measure it
is still more uniformly symmetrical. It therefore unavoidably communicates
a great stiffness to the dialogue. The manner of the older English poets
before them, who generally used blank verse, and only occasionally
introduced rhymes, was infinitely preferable. But, since then, on the
other hand, rhyme has come to be too exclusively rejected.
Dryden's plans are improbable, even to silliness; the incidents are all
thrown out without forethought; the most wonderful theatrical strokes fall
incessantly from the clouds. He cannot be said to have drawn a single
character; for there is not a spark of nature in his dramatic personages.
Passions, criminal and magnanimous sentiments, flow with indifferent
levity from their lips, without ever having dwelt in the heart: their
chief delight is in heroical boasting. The tone of expression is by turns
flat or madly bombastical; not unfrequently both at the same time: in
short, this poet resembles a man who walks upon stilts in a morass. His
wit is displayed in far-fetched sophistries; his imagination in long-spun
similies, awkwardly introduced. All these faults have been ridiculed by
the Duke of Buckingham in his comedy of _The Rehearsal_. Dryden was
meant under the name of Bayes, though some features are taken from
Davenant and other contemporary writers. The vehicle of this critical
satire might have been more artificial and diversified; the matter,
however is admirable, and the separate parodies are very amusing and
ingenious. The taste for this depraved manner was, however, too prevalent
to be restrained by the efforts of so witty a critic, who was at the same
time a grandee of the kingdom.
Otway and Lee were younger competitors of Dryden in tragedy. Otway lived
in poverty, and died young; under more favourable circumstances greater
things perhaps would have been done by him. His first pieces in rhyme are
imitations of Dryden's manner; he also imitated the _Berenice_ of Racine.
Two of his pieces in blank verse have kept possession of the stage--_The
Orphan_ and _Venice Preserved_. These tragedies are far from being good;
but there is matter in them, especially in the last; and amidst much empty
declamation there are some truly pathetic passages. How little Otway
understood the true rules of composition may be inferred from this, that
he has taken the half of the scenes of his _Caius Marius_ verbally, or
with disfiguring changes, from the _Romeo and Juliet_ of Shakspeare.
Nothing more incongruous can well he conceived, than such an episode in
Roman manners, and in a historical drama. This impudent plagiarism is in
no manner justified by his confessing it.
Dryden altered pieces of Shakspeare; for then, and even long afterwards,
every person thought himself qualified for this task. He also wrote
comedies; but Wycherley and Congreve were the first to acquire a name in
this species of composition. The mixed romantic drama was now laid
entirely aside; all was either tragedy or comedy. The history of each of
these species will therefore admit of being separately handled--if,
indeed, that can be correctly said to have a history where we can perceive
no progressive development, but mere standing still, or even retrograding,
and an inconstant fluctuation in all directions. However, the English,
under Charles II. and Queen Anne, and down to the middle of the eighteenth
century, had a series of comic writers, who may be all considered as
belonging to one common class; for the only considerable diversity among
them arises merely from an external circumstance, the varying tone of
manners.
I have elsewhere in these Lectures shown that elegance of form is of the
greatest importance in Comedy, as from the want of care in this respect it
is apt to degenerate into a mere prosaical imitation of reality, and
thereby to forfeit its pretensions to rank as either poetry or art. It is
exactly, however, in the form, that the English comedies are most
negligent. In the first place, they are written entirely in prose. It has
been well remarked by an English critic, that the banishment of verse from
Comedy had even a prejudicial influence on versification in Tragedy. The
older dramatists could elevate or lower the tone of their Iambics at
pleasure; from the exclusion of this verse from familiar dialogue, it has
become more pompous and inflexible. Shakspeare's comic scenes, it is true,
are also written, for the most part, in prose; but in the Mixed Comedy,
which has a serious, wonderful, or pathetic side, the prose, mixed with
the elevated language of verse, serves to mark the contrast between vulgar
and ideal sentiments; it is a positive means of exhibition. Continued
prose in Comedy is nothing but the natural language, on which the poet has
failed to employ his skill to refine and smoothe it down, while apparently
he seems the more careful to give an accurate imitation of it: it is that
prose which Molière's Bourgeois Gentilhomme has been speaking his whole
lifetime without suspecting it.
Moreover, the English comic poets tie themselves down too little to the
unity of place. I have on various occasions declared that I consider
change of scene even a requisite, whenever a drama is to possess
historical extent or the magic of romance. But in the comedy of common
life the case is somewhat altogether different. I am convinced that it
would almost always have had a beneficial influence on the conduct of the
action in the English plays, if their authors had, in this respect,
subjected themselves to stricter laws.
The lively trickery of the Italian masks has always found a more
unfavourable reception in England than in France. The fool or clown in
Shakspeare's comedies is far more of an ironical humorist than a mimical
buffoon. Intrigue in real life is foreign to the Northern nations, both
from the virtues and the defects of their character; they have too much
openness of disposition, and too little acuteness and nicety of
understanding. It is remarkable that, with greater violence of passion,
the Southern nations possess, nevertheless, in a much higher degree the
talent of dissembling. In the North, life is wholly founded on mutual
confidence. Hence, in the drama, the spectators, from being less practised
in intrigue, are less inclined to be delighted with concealment of views
and their success by bold artifice, and with the presence of mind which,
in unexpected events of an untoward nature, readily extricates its
possessor from embarrassment. However, there may be an intrigue in Comedy,
in the dramatic sense, though none of the persons carry on what is
properly called intrigue. Still it is in the entangling and disentangling
their plots that the English comic writers are least deserving of praise.
Their plans are defective in unity. From this reproach I have, I conceive,
sufficiently exculpated Shakspeare; it is rather merited by many of
Fletcher's pieces. When, indeed, the imagination has a share in the
composition, then it is far from being as necessary that all should be
accurately connected together by cause and effect, as when the whole is
framed and held together exclusively by the understanding. The existence
of a double or even triple intrigue in many modern English comedies has
been acknowledged even by English critics themselves. [Footnote: Among
others, by the anonymous author of a clever letter to Garrick, prefixed to
Coxeter's edition of _Massinger's Works_, who says--"What with their
plots, and double plots, and counter-plots, and under-plots, the mind is
as much perplexed to piece out the story as to put together the disjointed
parts of an ancient drama."] The inventions to which they have recourse
are often everything but probable, without charming us by their happy
novelty; they are chiefly deficient, however, in perspicuity and easy
development. Most English comedies are much too long. The authors overload
their composition with characters: and we can see no reason why they
should not have divided them into several pieces. It is as if we were to
compel to travel in the same stage-coach a greater number of persons, all
strangers to each other, than there is properly room for; the journey
becomes more inconvenient, and the entertainment not a whit more lively.
The great merit of the English comic poets of this period consists in the
delineation of character; yet though many have certainly shown much
talent, I cannot ascribe to any a peculiar genius for characterization.
Even in this department the older poets (not only Shakspeare, for that may
easily be supposed, but even Fletcher and Jonson) are superior to them.
The moderns seldom possess the faculty of seizing the most hidden and
involuntary emotions, and giving a comic expression to them; they
generally draw merely the natural or assumed surface of men. Moreover, the
same circumstance which in France, after Molière's time, was attended with
such prejudicial effects, came here also into play. The comic muse,
instead of becoming familiar with life in the middle and lower ranks (her
proper sphere), assumed an air of distinction: she squeezed herself into
courts, and endeavoured to snatch a resemblance of the _beau monde_.
It was now no longer an English national, but a London comedy. The whole
turns almost exclusively on fashionable love-suits and fashionable
raillery; the love-affairs are either disgusting or insipid, and the
raillery is always puerile and destitute of wit. These comic writers may
have accurately hit the tone of their time; in this they did their duty;
but they have reared a lamentable memorial of their age. In few periods
has taste in the fine arts been at such a low ebb as about the close of
the seventeenth and during the first half of the eighteenth century. The
political machine kept its course; wars, negotiations, and changes of
states, give to this age a certain historical splendour; but the comic
poets and portrait-painters have revealed to us the secret of its
pitifulness--the former in their copies of the dresses, and the latter in
the imitation of the social tone. I am convinced that if we could now
listen to the conversation of the _beau monde_ of that day, it would
appear to us as pettily affected and full of tasteless pretension, as the
hoops, the towering head-dresses and high-heeled shoes of the women, and
the huge perukes, cravats, wide sleeves, and ribbon-knots of the men.
[Footnote: When I make good or bad taste in dress an infallible criterion
of social elegance or deformity, this must be limited to the age in which
the fashion came up; for it may sometimes be very difficult to overturn a
wretched fashion even when, in other things, a better taste has long
prevailed. The dresses of the ancients were more simple, and consequently
less subject to change of fashion; and the male dress, in particular, was
almost unchangeable. However, even from the dresses alone, as we see them
in the remains of antiquity, we may form a pretty accurate judgment of the
character of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. In the female
portrait-busts of the time of the later Roman emperors, we often find the
head-dresses extremely tasteless; nay, even busts with peruques which may
be taken off, probably for the purpose of changing them, as the originals
themselves did.]
The last, and not the least defect of the English comedies is their
offensiveness. I may sum up the whole in one word by saying, that after
all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles II., we are
still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of Wycherley and
Congreve. Decency is not merely violated in the grossest manner in single
speeches, and frequently in the whole plot; but in the character of the
rake, the fashionable debauchee, a moral scepticism is directly preached
up, and marriage is the constant subject of their ridicule. Beaumont and
Fletcher portrayed an irregular but vigorous nature: nothing, however, can
be more repulsive than rude depravity coupled with claims to higher
refinement. Under Queen Anne manners became again more decorous; and this
may easily be traced in the comedies: in the series of English comic
poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele, Cibber, &c., we
may perceive something like a gradation from the most unblushing indecency
to a tolerable degree of modesty. However, the example of the predecessors
has had more than a due influence on the successors. From prescriptive
fame pieces keep possession of the stage such as no man in the present day
durst venture to bring out. It is a remarkable phenomenon, the causes of
which are deserving of inquiry, that the English nation, in the last half
of the eighteenth century, passed all at once from the most opposite way
of thinking, to an almost over-scrupulous strictness of manners in social
conversation, in romances and plays, and in the plastic arts.
Some writers have said of Congreve that he had too much wit for a comic
poet. These people must have rather a strange notion of wit. The truth is,
that Congreve and the other writers above mentioned possess in general
much less comic than epigrammatic wit. The latter often degenerates into a
laborious straining for wit. Steele's dialogue, for example, puts us too
much in mind of the letters in the _Spectator_. Farquhar's plots seem
to me to be the most ingenious of all.
The latest period of English Comedy begins nearly with Colman. Since that
time the morals have been irreproachable, and much has been done in the
way of refined and original characterization; the form, however, has on
the whole remained the same, and in that respect I do not think the
English comedies at all models.
Tragedy has been often attempted in England in the eighteenth century, but
a genius of the first rank has never made his appearance. They laid aside
the manner of Dryden, however, and that at least was an improvement. Rowe
was an honest admirer of Shakspeare, and his modest reverence for this
superior genius was rewarded by a return to nature and truth. The traces
of imitation are not to be mistaken: the part of Gloster in _Jane Shore_
is even directly borrowed from _Richard the Third_. Rowe did not possess
boldness and vigour, but was not without sweetness and feeling; he could
excite the softer emotions, and hence in his _Fair Penitent_, _Jane
Shore_, and _Lady Jane Gray_, he has successfully chosen female heroines
and their weaknesses for his subjects.
Addison possessed an elegant mind, but he was by no means a poet. He
undertook to purify the English Tragedy, by bringing it into a compliance
with the supposed rules of good taste. We might have expected from a judge
of the ancients, that he would have endeavoured to approach the Greek
models. Whether he had any such intention I know not, but certain it is
that he has produced nothing but a tragedy after the French model.
_Cato_ is a feeble and frigid piece, almost destitute of action,
without one truly overpowering moment. Addison has so narrowed a great and
heroic picture by his timid manner of treating it, that he could not,
without foreign intermixture, even fill up the frame. Hence, he had
recourse to the traditional love intrigues; if we count well, we shall
find in this piece no fewer than six persons in love: Cato's two sons,
Marcia and Lucia, Juba and Sempronius. The good Cato cannot, therefore, as
a provident father of a family, avoid arranging two marriages at the
close. With the exception of Sempronius, the villain of the piece, the
lovers are one and all somewhat silly. Cato, who ought to be the soul of
the whole, is hardly ever shown to us in action; nothing remains for him
but to admire himself and to die. It might be thought that the stoical
determination of suicide, without struggle and without passion, is not a
fortunate subject; but correctly speaking, no subjects are unfortunate,
every thing depends on correctly apprehending them. Addison has been
induced, by a wretched regard to Unity of Place, to leave out Caesar, the
only worthy contrast to Cato; and, in this respect even Metastasio has
managed matters better. The language is pure and simple, but without
vigour; the rhymeless Iambic gives more freedom to the dialogue, and an
air somewhat less conventional than it has in the French tragedies; but in
vigorous eloquence, Cato remains far behind them.
Addison took his measures well; he placed all the great and small critics,
with Pope at their head, the whole militia of good taste under arms, that
he might excite a high expectation of the piece which he had produced with
so much labour. _Cato_ was universally praised, as a work without an
equal. And on what foundation do these boundless praises rest? On
regularity of form? This had been already observed by the French poets for
nearly a century, and notwithstanding its constraints they had often
attained a much stronger pathetic effect. Or on the political sentiments?
But in a single dialogue between Brutus and Cassius in Shakspeare there is
more of a Roman way of thinking and republican energy than in all _Cato_.
I doubt whether this piece could ever have produced a powerful impression,
but its reputation has certainly had a prejudicial influence on Tragedy in
England. The example of _Cato_, and the translation of French tragedies,
which became every day more frequent, could not, it is true, render
universal the belief in the infallibility of the rules; but they were held
in sufficient consideration to disturb the conscience of the dramatic
poets, who consequently were extremely timid in availing themselves of the
prerogatives they inherited from Shakspeare. On the other hand, these
prerogatives were at the same time problems; it requires no ordinary
degree of skill to arrange, with simplicity and perspicuity, such great
masses as Shakspeare uses to bring together: more of drawing and
perspective are required for an extensive fresco painting, than for a
small oil picture. In renouncing the intermixture of comic scenes when
they no longer understood their ironical aim, they did perfectly right:
Southern still attempted them in his _Oroonoko_, but in his hands
they exhibit a wretched appearance. With the general knowledge and
admiration of the ancients which existed in England, we might have looked
for some attempt at a true imitation of the Greek Tragedy; no such
imitation has, however, made its appearance; in the choice and handling of
their materials they show an undoubted affinity to the French. Some poets
of celebrity in other departments of poetry, Young, Thomson, Glover, have
written tragedies, but no one of them has displayed any true tragical
talent.
They have now and then had recourse to familiar tragedy to assist the
barrenness of imagination; but the moral aim, which must exclusively
prevail in this species, is a true extinguisher of genuine poetical
inspiration. They have, therefore, been satisfied with a few attempts. The
_Merchant of London_, and _The Gamester_, are the only plays in this way
which have attained any great reputation. _George Barnwell_ is remarkable
from having been praised by Diderot and Lessing, as a model for imitation.
This error could only have escaped from Lessing in the keenness of his
hostility to the French conventional tone. For in truth it is necessary to
keep Lillo's honest views constantly in mind, to prevent us from finding
_George Barnwell_ as laughable as it is certainly trivial. Whoever
possesses so little, or rather, no knowledge of men and of the world,
ought not to set up for a public lecturer on morals. We might draw a very
different conclusion from this piece, from that which the author had in
view, namely, that to prevent young people from entertaining a violent
passion, and being led at last to steal and murder, for the first wretch
who spreads her snares for them, (which they of course cannot possibly
avoid,) we ought, at an early period, to make them acquainted with the
true character of courtezans. Besides, I cannot approve of not making the
gallows visible before the last scene; such a piece ought always to be
acted with a place of execution in the background. With respect to the
edification to be drawn from a drama of this kind, I should prefer the
histories of malefactors, which in England are usually printed at
executions; they contain, at least, real facts, instead of awkward
fictions.
Garrick's appearance forms an epoch in the history of the English theatre,
as he chiefly dedicated his talents to the great characters of Shakspeare,
and built his own fame on the growing admiration for this poet. Before his
time, Shakspeare had only been brought on the stage in mutilated and
disfigured alterations. Garrick returned on the whole to the true
originals, though he still allowed himself to make some very unfortunate
changes. It appears to me that the only excusable alteration of Shakspeare
is, to leave out a few things not in conformity to the taste of the time.
Garrick was undoubtedly a great actor. Whether he always conceived the
parts of Shakspeare in the sense of the poet, I, from the very
circumstances stated in the eulogies on his acting, should be inclined to
doubt. He excited, however, a noble emulation to represent worthily the
great national poet; this has ever since been the highest aim of actors,
and even at present the stage can boast of men whose histrionic talents
are deservedly famous.
But why has this revival of the admiration of Shakspeare remained
unproductive for dramatic poetry? Because he has been too much the subject
of astonishment, as an unapproachable genius who owed everything to nature
and nothing to art. His success, it is thought, is without example, and
can never be repeated; nay, it is even forbidden to venture into the same
region. Had he been considered more from an artistic point of view, it
would have led to an endeavour to understand the principles which he
followed in his practice, and an attempt to master them. A meteor appears,
disappears, and leaves no trace behind; the course of a heavenly body,
however, ought to be delineated by the astronomer, for the sake of
investigating more accurately the laws of general mechanics.
I am not sufficiently acquainted with the latest dramatic productions of
the English, to enter into a minute account of them. That the dramatic art
and the public taste are, however, in a wretched state of decline, may, I
think, be safely inferred from the following circumstance. Some years ago,
several German plays found their way to the English stage; plays, which,
it is true, are with us the favourites of the multitude, but which are not
considered by the intelligent as forming a part of our literature, and in
which distinguished actors are almost ashamed of earning applause. These
pieces have met with extraordinary favour in England; they have, properly
speaking, as the Italians say, _fatto furore_, though indeed the critics
did not fail to declaim against their immorality, veiled over by
sentimental hypocrisy. From the poverty of our dramatic literature, the
admission of such abominations into Germany may be easily comprehended;
but what can be alleged in favour of this depravity of taste in a nation
like the English, which possesses such treasures, and which must therefore
descend from such an elevation? Certain writers are nothing in themselves;
they are merely symptoms of the disease of their age; and were we to judge
from them, there is but too much reason to fear that, in England, an
effeminate sentimentality in private life is more frequent, than from the
astonishing political greatness and energy of the nation we should be led
to suppose.
May the romantic drama and the grand historical drama, those truly native
species, be again speedily revived, and may Shakspeare find such worthy
imitators as some of those whom Germany has to produce!