"I've tried to rest in that dark bed,

But rest I cannot get,

For always with the tears you shed,

My winding-sheet is wet.

"The drops, dear mother, trickle still

Into my coffin deep;

It feels so comfortless and chill

I cannot go to sleep."

"O child those words, that touching look,

My fortitude restore;

I feel and own the blest rebuke,

And weep my loss no more."

She spoke, and dried her tears the while;

And as her passion fell,

The vision wore an angel smile,

And look'd a fond farewell.

THE GREEK AND ROMANTIC DRAMA.

The Drama, in its higher branches, is perhaps the greatest effort of

human genius. It requires for its successful cultivation, a combination

of qualities beyond what is necessary in any other department of

composition. A profound and practical acquaintance with human nature in

all its phases, and the human heart in all its changes, is the first

requisite of the Dramatic Poet. The power of condensed expression--the

faculty of giving vent to "thoughts that breathe in words that

burn"--the art of painting, by a line, an epithet, an expression, the

inmost and most intense feelings of the heart, is equally indispensable.

The skill of the novelist in arranging the incidents of the piece so as

to keep the attention of the spectators erect, and their interest

undiminished, is not less necessary. How requisite a knowledge of the

peculiar art called "stage effect," is to the success of dramatic pieces

on the theatre, may be judged of by the well-known failures in actual

representation of many striking pieces by our greatest tragic writers,

especially Miss Baillie and Lord Byron. The eloquence of the orator, the

power of wielding at will the emotions and passions of the heart, of

rousing alternately the glow of the generous, and the warmth of the

tender affections, is not less indispensable. The great dramatic poet

must add to this rare assemblage, a thorough acquaintance with the

characters and ideas of former times: with the lore of the historian, he

must embody in his imaginary characters the incidents of actual event;

with the fervour of the poet, portray the transactions and thoughts of

past times; with the eye of the painter, arrange his scenery, dresses,

and localities, so as to produce the strongest possible impression of

reality on the mind of the spectator. Unite, in imagination, all the

greatest and most varied efforts of the human mind--the fire of the poet

and the learning of the historian, the conceptions of the painter and

the persuasion of the orator, the skill of the novelist and the depth of

the philosopher, and you will only form a great tragedian. Ordinary

observers often express surprise, that dramatic genius, especially in

these times, is rare; let the combination of qualities essential for its

higher flights be considered, and perhaps the wonder will rather be,

that it has been so frequent in the world.

It is a sense of this extraordinary combination of power necessary to

the formation of a great dramatic poet, which has rendered the

masterpieces of this art so general an object of devout admiration, to

men of the greatest genius who have ever appeared upon earth. Euripides

wept when he heard a tragedy of Sophocles recited at the Isthmian games;

he mourned, but his own subsequent greatness proved without reason, the

apparent impossibility of rivalling his inimitable predecessor. Milton,

blind and poor, found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening,

in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, forgot

the empire of the world, on hearing, in the long evenings, the

masterpieces of Corneille read aloud. Stratford-on-Avon does not contain

the remains of mere English genius, it is the place of pilgrimage to the

entire human race. The names of persons of all nations are to be found,

as on the summit of the Pyramids, encircled on the walls of Shakspeare's

house; his grave is the common resort of the generous and the

enthusiastic of all ages, and countries, ad times. All feel they can

"Rival all but Shakspeare's name below."

If the combination of qualities necessary to form a first-rate dramatic

poet is thus rare, hardly less wonderful is the effort of genius to

sustain the character of a great actor. The mind of the performer must

be sympathetic with that of the author; it must be cast in the same

mould with the original conceiver of the piece. To form an adequate and

correct conception of the proper representation of the leading

characters in the masterpieces of Sophocles, Shakspeare, or Schiller,

requires a mind of the same cast as that of those poets themselves. The

performer must throw himself, as it were, into the mind of the author;

identify himself with the piece to be represented; conceive the

character in reality, as the poet had portrayed it in words, and then

convey by acting this _second conception_ to the spectators. By this

double distillation of thought through the soul of genius, a finer and

more perfect creation is sometimes formed, than the efforts of any

single mind, how great soever, could have originally conceived. It may

well be doubted whether Shakspeare's conception of Lady Macbeth or

Desdemona was more perfect than Mrs Siddons's personation of them; or

whether the grandeur of Cato or Coriolanus, as they existed in the

original mind of Addison, or the patriarch of the English stage,

equalled Kemble's inimitable performances of these characters. Beautiful

as were the visions of Juliet and Rosalind which floated before the mind

of the Bard of Avon, it may be doubted if they excelled Miss Helen

Faucit's exquisite representation of those characters. The actor or

actress brings to the illustration of the great efforts of dramatic

genius, qualities of a different sort, _in addition_ to those which at

first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the

felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of

voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the

witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of

language to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the

arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance

the mind, every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest

and most refined enjoyment; the noblest, the most elevated feelings:--

"The youngest of the sister arts,

Where all their beauty blends!

For ill can poetry express

Full many a tone of thought sublime;

And painting, mute and motionless,

Steals but a glance of time.

But by the mighty actor brought,

Illusion's perfect triumphs come--

Verse ceases to be airy thought,

And sculpture to be dumb."

That an art so noble as that of dramatic poetry, ennobled by such

genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so

irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline

in this country in the brightest era of its literary, philosophical, and

political achievements, is one of those singular and melancholy

circumstances of which it seems impossible at first sight to give any

explanation. Since the deep foundations of the English mind were stirred

by the Reformation, what an astonishing succession of great men in every

branch of human thought have illustrated the annals of England! The

divine conceptions of Milton, the luxuriant fervour of Thomson, the vast

discoveries of Newton, the deep wisdom of Bacon, the burning thoughts of

Gray, the masculine intellect of Johnson, the exquisite polish of Pope,

the lyric fire of Campbell, the graphic powers of Scott, the glowing

eloquence of Burke, the admirable conceptions of Reynolds, the profound

sagacity of Hume, the pictured page of Gibbon, demonstrate how mighty

and varied have been the triumphs of the human mind in these islands, in

every branch of poetry, literature, and philosophy. Yet, strange to say,

during two centuries thus marvellously illustrated by genius, intellect,

and capacity in other departments of human exertion, there has not been

a single great dramatic poet. Shakspeare still stands alone in solitary

and unapproachable grandeur, to sustain, by his single arm, the tragic

reputation of his country. Authors of passing or local celebrity have

arisen: Otway has put forth some fine conceptions, and composed one

admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss

Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the

highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured

to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that

he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their

representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue

of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth

his strength in dramatic poetry, or train his mind in the school

necessary for success in that most difficult art. The English drama, in

the estimation of the world, and in its just estimation, still stands on

Shakspeare, and he flourished nearly three hundred years ago!

It was not thus in other countries, or in former times. Homer was the

first, and still is one of the greatest, of dramatic poets; the _Iliad_

is a tragedy arranged in the garb of an epic poem. Æschylus borrowed,

Prometheus-like, the divine fire, and embodied the energy of Dante and

the soul of Milton in his sublime tragedies. Sophocles and Euripides

were contemporary with Pericles and Phidias; the same age witnessed the

_Clouds_ of Aristophanes, the death of Socrates, and the history of

Thucydides. The warlike and savage genius of the Romans made them prefer

the excitement of the amphitheatre to the entrancement of the theatre;

but the comedies of Plautus and Terence remain durable monuments, that

the genius of dramatic poetry among them advanced abreast of the epic or

lyric muse. The names of Alfieri, Metastasio, and Goldoni, demonstrate

that modern Italy has successfully cultivated the dramatic as well as

the epic muse; the tragedies of the first are worthy the country of

Tasso, the operas of the second rival the charms of Petrarch. In the

Spanish peninsula, Lope de Vega and Calderon have astonished the world

by the variety and prodigality of their conceptions;[J] and fully

vindicated the title of the Castilians to place their dramatic writers

on a level with their great epic poets.

Need it be told that France stands pre-eminent in dramatic excellence;

that Corneille, Racine, and Molière, were contemporaries of Bossuet,

Massillon, and Boileau; that the tragedies of Voltaire were the highest

effort of his vast and varied genius? Germany, albeit the last-born in

the literary family of Europe, has already vindicated its title to a

foremost place in this noble branch of composition; for Lessing has few

modern rivals in the perception of dramatic excellence, and Schiller

none in the magnificent historic mirror which he has placed on the stage

of the Fatherland. How, then, has it happened, that when, in all other

nations which have risen to greatness in the world, the genius of

dramatic poetry has kept pace with its eminence in all other respects,

in England alone the case is the reverse; and the nation which has

surpassed all others in the highest branches of poetry, eloquence, and

history, is still obliged to recur to the patriarch of a comparatively

barbarous age for a parallel to the great dramatic writers of other

states?

The worshippers of Shakspeare tell us, that this has been owing to his

very greatness; that he was so much above other men as to defy

competition and extinguish rivalry; and that genius, in despair of ever

equalling his vast and varied conceptions, has turned aside into other

channels where the avenue to the highest distinction was not blocked up

by the giant of former days. But a little reflection must be sufficient

to convince every candid inquirer, that this consideration not only does

not explain the difficulty but augments it. Genius is never extinguished

by genius; on the contrary, it is created by it. The divine flame passes

from one mind to another similarly constituted. Thence the clusters of

great men who, at intervals, have appeared simultaneously and close to

each other in the world, and the long intervening periods of mediocrity

or imitation. Did the immortal genius of Dante destroy subsequent poetic

excellence in Italy? Let Tasso, Ariosto, Metastasio, and Alfieri,

answer. Homer did not extinguish Æschylus--he created him. Greek

tragedy is little more than the events following the siege of Troy

dramatised. The greatness of Sophocles did not crush the rising genius

of Euripides--on the contrary, it called it forth; and these two great

masters of the dramatic muse thrice contended with each other for the

prize awarded by the Athenians to dramatic excellence.[K] The great

Corneille did not annihilate rivalry in the dramatic genius of

France--on the contrary, he produced it; his immortal tragedies were

immediately succeeded by the tenderness of Racine, the wit of Molière,

the versatility of Voltaire. Lessing in Germany was soon outstripped by

the vast mind of Schiller. Michael Angelo, vast as his genius was, did

not distance all competitors in Italy; he was speedily followed and

excelled by Raphael; and when the boy Correggio saw Raphael's pictures,

he said--"I, too, am a painter." Did the transcendent greatness of Burke

close in despair the eloquent lips of Pitt and Fox; or the mighty genius

of Scott quench the rising star of Byron? We repeat it--genius is never

extinguished by genius; it is created by it.

But if the state of dramatic poetry in Great Britain since the time of

Shakspeare affords matter of surprise, the late history and present

state of the drama, as it appears on the stage, afford subject of wonder

and regret. We are continually speaking of the lights of the age, of the

vast spread of popular information, of the march of intellect, and the

superiority of this generation in intelligence and refinement over all

that have gone before it. Go into any of the theatres of London at this

moment, and consider what evidence they afford of this boasted advance

and superiority. Time was when the versatile powers of Garrick enchanted

the audience; and exhibited alternately the perfection of the comic and

the dignity of the tragic muse. Mrs Siddons, supreme in greatness, has

trod those boards; Kemble, the "last of all the Romans," has, in

comparatively recent times, bade them farewell. Miss O'Neil, with

inferior soul, but equal physical powers; Kean, with the energy, but

unhappily the weaknesses of genius, kept up the elevation of the stage.

Talent, and that too of a very high class, genius of the most exalted

kind, are not awanting to support the long line of British theatric

greatness; the names of Charles Kean, Fanny Kemble, and Helen Faucit are

sufficient to prove, that if the stage is in a state of decrepitude, the

fault lies much more with the authors or the public, than with the

performers.[L] But all is unavailing. Despite the most persevering and

laudable efforts to restore the dignity of the theatre, and revive the

sway of the legitimate drama, in which Mr Macready has so long borne so

conspicuous a part, Tragedy in the metropolis is almost banished from

the stage. It has been supplanted by the melodrama, dancing, and

singing. It has been driven off the field by _Timour the Tartar_.

Drury-Lane, sanctified by so many noble recollections, has become an

English opera-house. Covent-Garden is devoted to concerts, and hears the

tragic muse no more. Even in the minor theatres, where tragedy is

sometimes attempted, it can only be relied on for transient popularity.

Its restoration was attempted at the Princess's Theatre in Oxford

Street, but apparently with no remarkable success; and the tragedies of

_Othello_ and _Hamlet_, supported by the talent of Macready, required to

be eked out by Mrs Candle's _Curtain Lectures_. We are no strangers to

the talent displayed at many of the minor theatres both by the authors

and performers; and we are well aware that the varied population of

every great metropolis requires several such places of amusement. What

we complain of is, that they engross every thing; that tragedy and the

legitimate drama are nearly banished from the stage in all but the

provincial cities, where, of course, it never can rise to the highest

eminence.

All the world are conscious of the reality of this change, and many

different explanations have been attempted of it. It is said that modern

manners are inconsistent with frequenting the theatre: that the late

hours of dinners preclude the higher classes from going to it; that the

ladies' dresses are soiled by the seats in the boxes, before going to

balls. The austerity of principle, in the strictly religious portion of

the community, is justly considered as a great bar to dramatic success;

as it keeps from the theatre a large part of society, which, from the

integrity and purity of its principles, would, if it frequented such

places of amusement, be more likely than any other to counteract its

downward tendency. The hideous mass of profligacy which in London, in

the absence of the better classes of society, has seized upon the

principal theatres as its natural prey, is loudly complained of by the

heads of families; and the audience is, in consequence, too often turned

into little more than strangers, or young men in quest of dissipation,

and ladies of easy virtue in quest of gain. The spread of reading, and

vast addition to the amount of talent devoted to the composition of

novels and romances, is another cause generally considered as mainly

instrumental in producing the neglect of the theatre. Sir Walter Scott,

it is said, has brought the drama to our fireside: we draw in our

easy-chairs when the winds of winter are howling around us, and cease to

long for _Hamlet_ in reading the _Bride of Lammermoor_. There is some

reality in all these causes assigned for the decline of the legitimate

drama in this country; they are the truth, but they are not the whole

truth. A very little consideration will at once show, that it is not to

any or all of these causes, that the decline of the higher branches of

this noble art in Great Britain is to be ascribed.

Modern manners, late dinners, ball-dresses, and the Houses of

Parliament, are doubtless serious obstacles to the higher classes of the

nobility and gentry frequently attending the theatre; but the example of

the Opera-house, which is crowded night after night with the élite of

that very class, is sufficient to demonstrate, that all these

difficulties can be got over, when people of fashion make up their minds

to go to a place of amusement, even where not one in ten understand the

language in which the piece is composed. The strictness of

principle--mistaken, as we deem it, and hurtful in its effects--which

keeps away a large and important portion of the middle and most

respectable portion of the community, at all times, and in all places,

from the theatre, is without doubt a very serious impediment to dramatic

success, and in nothing so much so, as in throwing the patronage and

direction of its performance into the hands of a less scrupulous part of

society. But these strict principles, ever since the Great Rebellion,

have pervaded a considerable portion of British society; and yet how

nobly was the stage supported during the eighteenth and the commencement

of the nineteenth century, in the days of Garrick, Siddons, and Kemble!

The great number of theatres which are nightly open in the metropolis,

and rapidly increasing in all the principal cities of the kingdom,

demonstrates, that the play-going portion of the community is

sufficiently numerous to support the stage, generally in respectability,

at times in splendour. Without doubt, the licentiousness of the saloons

of the great theatres in London is a most serious evil, and it well

deserves the consideration of Government, whether some means should not

be taken for its correction; but is the Opera-house so very pure in its

purlieus? and are the habitual admirers of the ballet likely to be

corrupted by occasionally seeing Othello and Juliet? The prevailing, and

in fact universal, passion for reading novels at home, unquestionably

affords an inexhaustible fund of domestic amusement; but does experience

prove that the imagination once kindled, the heart once touched, are

willing to stop short in the quest of excitement--to be satisfied with

imperfect gratification? Novel-reading is as common on the Continent as

in this country; but still the legitimate drama exhibits no such

appearances of decrepitude in its Capitals. The masterpieces of

Corneille and Racine are still constantly performed to crowded houses at

Paris; the theatres of Italy resound with the melody of Metastasio, the

dignity of Alfieri; and singing and the melodrama have nowhere banished

Schiller's tragedies from the boards of Vienna and Berlin.

We have said, that while we appreciate the motives, and respect the

principles, which prevent so large a portion of the middle class of

society from frequenting the theatre, we lament their determination, and

regard it as an evil even greater to the morality than it is to the

genius of the nation. In truth, it is founded on a mistaken view of the

principles which influence human nature; and it would be well if

moralists, and the friends of mankind, would reconsider the subject,

before, in this country at least, it is too late. The love of the drama

is founded on the deepest, the most universal, the noblest principles of

our nature. It exists, and ever will exist. For good or for evil, its

influence is immovable. We cannot extirpate, or even tangibly abridge

its sway; the art of Æschylus and Shakspeare, of Sophocles and Racine,

of Euripides and Schiller, is not to be extinguished by the reputable

but contracted ideas of a limited portion of society. God has not made

it sweeter to weep with those who weep, than to rejoice with those who

rejoice, for no purpose. Look at the Arabs, as they cluster round the

story-teller who charms the groups of Yemen, or the knots of delighted

faces which surround the Polchinello of Naples, and you will see how

universal is the passions in mankind for theatrical representations. But

though we cannot eradicate the desire for this gratification, we may

degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute

stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of

the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and

licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil

instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the

fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation of

the human soul.

It is for this reason that we lament, as a serious social and national

evil, the long interregnum in dramatic excellence in our writers, and

the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at

our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and

ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors.

As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked

out in the meretricious garb of fancy, or aided by the transient

attractions of beauty. Who can tell how much the heart-stirring appeals

of Shakspeare have done to string to lofty purposes the British heart;

how powerfully the dignified sentiments of Corneille have contributed to

sustain the heroic portions of the French character? "C'est

l'imagination," said Napoleon, "qui domine le monde." The drama has one

immense advantage over the pulpit or the professor's chair: it

fascinates while it instructs--it allures while it elevates. It thus

extends its influence over a wide and important circle, upon whom

didactic precepts will never have any influence. Without doubt, the

strong and deep foundations of public morality must be laid in religious

and moral instruction; if they are wanting, the social edifice, how fair

soever to appearance, is built on a bed of sand. But fully admitting

this--devoutly looking to our national Establishment for the formation

of public principle--to our schools and colleges for the training of the

national intellect--the experienced observer, aware of the sway of

active principles over the human soul, will not neglect the subordinate

but still powerful aid to be derived, in the great work of elevating and

ennobling society, from the emotions which may be awakened at the

theatre--the enthusiasm so often excited by tragic excellence. The thing

to be dreaded with the great bulk of the spectators--that is, by far the

largest portion of mankind--is not their avowed infidelity and their

open wickedness; it is the sway of the degrading or selfish passions

which is chiefly dangerous. The thing to be feared is, not that they

will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without

God in the world. How important, then, that genius should be called in

here to the aid of virtue, and the fascinations of the highest species

of excellence employed to elevate, where so many causes exist to degrade

the soul!

"Cosi all egro fanciul' porgiamo aspersi,

Di soave licor gli orli del Vaso;

Succhi amari, ingannato intanto ei beve,

Et dall' inganno suo vita riceve."

The elevating influence of the noble sentiments with which the higher

dramatic works abound, is more loudly called for in this than it has

been in any former period of British history. We are no longer in the

age of enthusiasm. The days of chivalry have gone by--and gone by, it is

feared, never to return. We are in the age of commerce and the

mechanical arts. Material appliances, creature comforts,--stimulants to

the senses--now form the great moving power of society. Gain is every

where sought after with the utmost avidity; but it is sought not for any

lofty object, but on account of the substantial physical comforts with

which the possession of riches is attended. Sensuality, disguised under

the veil of elegance, refinement, and accomplishment, is making rapid

strides amongst us. It does so in all old, wealthy, and long-established

communities; it is the well-known and oft-described premonitory symptom

of national decline. We can scarce venture to hope, we should find in

the British empire at this period the enthusiasm which manned the

ramparts of Sarragossa, the patriotism which fired the torches of

Moscow. We should find united, too generally it is to be feared, at

least in a considerable portion, the timidity and selfishness which

signed the capitulation of Venice. How important, then, to gain

possession of so mighty a lever for moving the general mind, and

counteracting the selfishness which is degrading society, as the

enthusiasm of the theatre affords; and instead of permitting it to fall

into the hands of vice, to become the handmaid of licentiousness, to

turn its vast powers to the rousing of elevated sentiments, the

strengthening of virtuous resolutions, the nourishing of generous

emotions! Whoever succeeds in this, whether author, actor, or actress,

is a friend to the best interests of humanity, and is to be ranked with

the benefactors of the human race.

Nor be it said that the theatre has been now irrevocably turned, in this

country, to frivolous or contemptible representations, or that dancing

and singing have for ever banished the tragic muse from the stage.

Facts--well known and universally acknowledged facts, prove the reverse.

How strong soever the desire for excitement or physical enjoyment may

be, the passion for heart-stirring incident, the _besoin_ of strong

emotions, the thirst for tragic event, is still stronger. Look at the

Parisian stage--what a concatenation of murders, suicides,

conflagrations, massacres, and horrors of every description, have there

grown up with the spread of the romantic drama in the lesser theatres!

That shows how strong is the passion for tragic excitement in highly

civilized and long corrupt society. Enter any of our courts of law, when

any trial for murder or any other serious crime is going

forward--observe how unwearied is the attention of all classes, and

_especially the lowest_; with what patience they will sit for days and

nights together, to watch the proceedings; mark the deathlike silence

which pervades the hall, when any important part of the evidence is

delivered, or the verdict of the jury is returned. Observe the mighty

throng which attends a public execution. The writer once was present,

when an hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled in one spot to

witness the expiation of their guilt by two murderers on the

scaffold.[M] When the mournful procession set out for the place of

punishment, four miles distant, not a sound was to be heard from the

innumerable spectators who lined the streets; the clang of the horses'

hoofs on the pavement was audible among two hundred thousand persons.

When it returned with the dead bodies, the clang of voices, the pent-up

emotion, burst forth in so mighty a shout, that the discharge of

artillery would hardly have been heard in the throng. The anxiety,

sometimes amounting almost to frenzy, to get a sight of the convicted

murderer, to be present at the condemned sermon, to see his last agonies

on the scaffold, to examine the scenes of his crime, even to obtain a

lock of his hair or a piece of his garments, is another proof of the

disordered and often extravagant desires which the longing for strong

and tragic excitement will produce in a large portion of society. Rely

upon it, deep emotion, if rightly managed and properly directed, is more

attractive than either amusement or licentiousness. Suffering exacts a

far deeper sympathy than joy; the generous, for the time at least,

overpower the selfish feelings. Let but the tragic muse be restored to

her appropriate position on the stage, and supported by the requisite

ability in the author and performers, and she will extinguish rivalry,

and bear down opposition.

We have said that the tragic muse will do this, "if supported by the

requisite ability in the _authors_ and performers." We have said this

advisedly; for we belong to the former class, and we have no complaint

to make of want of ability on the stage. On the contrary, talent and

genius, of the most elevated kind, are to be found upon it. The fault

lies with our own profession, or rather with that portion of it who

cultivate dramatic composition. The origin of the evil is to be found,

the remote cause of the present degraded condition of the stage, is to

be found in--strike but hear--IN SHAKSPEARE!

The most devoted worshipper of the genius of the Bard of Avon, the most

enthusiastic admirer of the profound knowledge of the human heart, and

unequalled force of expression which he possessed, cannot exceed

ourselves in the deep admiration which we entertain for his transcendent

excellences. On the contrary, it is those very excellences which have

done the mischief; it is they which have misled subsequent dramatic

writers in this country, and occasioned the constant failures by which

his imitators have been distinguished. It is not surprising that it is

so. Shakspeare was supremely great; but he was so, not in consequence of

his dramatic principles, but in spite of them. He fired his arrow

further than mortal man has yet done; but he fired it not altogether in

the right direction, and no one since has been able to draw the bow of

Ulysses.

There is no one who has not heard of the famous dramatic unities, and

the long-continued controversy which has been maintained between the

admirers of the Greek drama, founded on their strict observance, and the

followers of Shakspeare, who set them at defiance. In this, as in other

disputes, probably neither party will ever convince the other; and the

only effect of the contention is to fix each more immovably in its own

opinion. But, waiving at present the abstract question, which of the two

systems is in itself preferable, or essential to dramatic success, there

is a practical consideration of deep interest to society, with which we

are all concerned and the result of which throws no small light on the

theoretical principle. It is this. Placing the creators of the two

systems--Æschylus and Shakspeare--on a par; conceding to the author of

_Hamlet_ an equal place with that of the composer of the _Prometheus

Vinctus_; which of the two systems has had most success in the world;

has longest preserved its sway over the human mind; has best withstood

the causes of corruption inherent in all earthly change?

What a noble set of followers have, in all ages, graced the banners of

the Athenian bard! Sophocles, Aristophanes, Menander, and Euripides, in

Greece; Terence and Plautus in Rome; Metastasio, Goldoni, and Alfieri in

Italy; Corneille, Racine, Molière, and Voltaire in France; Schiller,[N]

in himself a host, in Germany--contribute the brightest stars in the

immortal band. Their merits may be unequal, their talent various, their

pieces sometimes uninteresting; but, taken as a whole, their works

exhibit the greatest efforts of human genius. What has the Romantic

school to exhibit, after its inimitable founder, as a set-off to this

long line of greatness? The ephemeral and now forgotten lights of the

British stage--the blasting indecencies of Beaumont and Fletcher; the

vigorous ribaldry of Dryden; the shocking extravagances of the recent

French and Spanish stage; the _Tour de Nesle_, and other elevating

pieces, which adorn the modern Parisian theatre, and train to virtuous

and generous feeling the present youth of France. Shakspeare himself,

with all his transcendent excellences, is unable to keep his ground on

the British stage. Like all great men, whom accident or error has

embarked in a wrong course, he has been passed by a host of followers,

who, unable to imitate his beauties, have copied only his defects, till

they have fairly banished the legitimate tragic drama from the London

stage. If the precept of Scripture be true--"By their fruits shall ye

know them"--the palm must be unquestionably awarded to the old Grecian

school.

If the different principles on which the two great schools of the drama

proceed are considered, it will not appear surprising that this result

has taken place.

The Greek drama embraced a very limited number of stories and events,

and they were all thoroughly known to every audience in the country. The

incidents and tragic occurrences so wonderfully illustrated by the

genius of their tragic poets, are almost all to be found sketched out in

the _Odyssey_ of Homer, or in the successive disasters of the fated race

of Oedipus. The sacrifice of Iphigenia to procure fair gales when

setting out for Troy, the foundation of the exquisite tragedy by

Euripides of _Iphigenia in Aulis_; the subsequent meeting of her with

her brothers, the basis of _Iphigenia in Tauris_, by the same poet; the

murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and her adulterous lover; the

revenge of Electra and Orestes, who put their mother and her lover to

death; the subsequent remorse and woful fate of the avenging brother and

sister--form so many tragedies, which for centuries entranced the

Athenian audience. The sorrows of Andromache, when torn from her home

after the death of Hector and sack of Troy, and subjected to the

jealousy of the daughter of Menelaus; the deep woes of Hecuba, who saw

in one day her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the

corpse of her son washed ashore, after having been perfidiously murdered

by his Thracian host, as they appeared in the thrilling verses of

Euripides--were all previously well known to the Grecian audience. If to

these we add the multiplied disasters of the line of Oedipus; the

despair of that unhappy man at his incestuous marriage with Jocasta; his

subsequent sorrow when an exile, poor and bowed down by misfortune; the

dreadful fate which befell his sons when they fell by each others' hands

before the walls of Thebes; and the heroic self-sacrifice of Antigone to

procure the rites of sepulture for her beloved and innocent brother--we

shall find we have embraced nearly the whole dramas which exercised the

genius of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

It resulted from this limited number of incidents in the Greek drama,

and the thorough acquaintance of the audience, in every instance, with

the characters, the incidents, and the _dénouement_ of the piece, that

the grand object of the poet was to work up a particular part of the

story to the highest perfection, rather than, to an audience

unacquainted with any part of it, to unfold the whole. It was that which

created the difference between it and the Romantic drama of modern

times. There was no use in attempting to tell the story, for that was

already known to all the audience. It would have been like telling the

story of Wallace, or Queen Mary, or Robert Bruce, to a Scottish

assembly. Genius was to be displayed; effect was to be produced, not by

unfolding new and unknown incidents, but working up to the highest

degree those already known. Hence the peculiar character of the Greek

drama; hence the astonishing and unequalled perfection to which it was

brought. The world has never seen, perhaps it will never again see, any

thing so exquisite as the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides--any

thing so sublime as some of Æschylus. All subsequent ages have concurred

in this opinion. All nations have united in it. The moderns and the

ancients, differing in so many other points, are at one in this

particular. There is as little diversity of opinion on the subject, as

in the admiration of the sculpture of Phidias, the verses of Virgil, or

the paintings of Raphael.

It was by the strict observance of the unities, and the necessity to

which it exposed the poet of supplying, by his own genius and taste, all

adventitious aids derived from change of scene, splendour of decoration,

and novelty of story, that this astonishing perfection was attained.

Force of language, grandeur of thought, pathos of feeling, were all in

all. The dramatist was compelled to rest on these, and these alone. If

he did not succeed in them, he was lost. The audience, composed of the

most refined and enlightened citizens that then existed in the world,

went to the theatre, expecting not to be interested or surprised by the

unravelling of a new and intricate story, but to be fascinated by the

force of expression and pathos of feeling, with which a mournful

catastrophe already known was told. To attain this object, the dramatic

writers of antiquity selected that period in an interesting and tragic

story, when its incidents were approaching their crisis, when the

_dénouement_ for good or for evil took place; and they represented that

at full length, and in all its detail to the spectators. The previous

incidents which had brought matters up to this point, were narrated in

the course of the dialogue in the earlier scenes; the closing

catastrophe, often too terrible to be represented on the stage, was

described by some of the characters who had witnessed it. But the

intervening period, the events and thoughts which succeeded the past,

and preceded the future, were painted in their fullest detail, and with

all the force and finishing of which the artist was capable. Nothing

resembles the structure of a tragedy of antiquity so much as a modern

trial for murder; and in the undying interest which such a proceeding

invariably excites in all countries and all ages, we may see the deep

foundation laid in human nature for the influence of that species of

dramatic composition. As in the Greek drama, the witnesses tell the

preceding story, and explain the previous crimes or events by which

matters have been brought to the present stage, when life or death

depends upon the issue of the proceedings. The trial itself takes up

these proceedings at the decisive point, and, with strict regard to

unity of time and place, exhibits their aims and issue to the mind of

the spectators. If the execution of the criminal were immediately to

follow the verdict of the jury, and some persons were, when the

spectators were still sitting in the hall thrilling with the interest

they had felt, to come in, and relate the demeanour and last words of

the unhappy being on the scaffold, that would be a Greek drama complete.

As the field of dramatic representation was thus limited on the stage of

antiquity, the whole genius and powers of the poet were bent to

concentrating on that narrow space all the powers and beauties of which

his art was susceptible. Nothing was omitted which could either elevate,

interest, entrance, or melt the heart of the audience. It is a common

opinion in modern times with persons not acquainted in the originals

with the Greek tragedy, that it was couched in a stately measured tone,

wholly different from nature, and more akin to the pompous and sonorous

verses of the French theatre. There never was a greater mistake. If it

is characterized by any peculiarity more than another, it is the brevity

and condensation of the language, the energy of the expressions, and the

force with which the most vehement passions, and strongest emotions of

the heart are conveyed in the simplest words. So brief is the

expression, so frequent the breaks and interjections, that the rhythm

and verse are frequently, and for a long period, forgotten. Euripides

alone, who had great rhetorical powers, sometimes indulges in the

lengthened disquisitions, the _arguments in verse_, which exhibit so

admirable a view of all that can be urged on a particular subject, and

which have been so frequently imitated by Corneille and Racine. But even

he, when he comes to the impassioned or pathetic scenes, as in the

_Medea_, the _Iphigenia in Aulis_, and _Hecuba_, is as brief and

energetic in his expression as Shakspeare himself. Simplicity of

language, energy of thought, and force of passion, are the grand

characteristics of the Greek drama, as they were of the Greek oratory,

and their combination constituted the excellence of both. The fire of

the poet, the reach of imagination, was reserved for the chorus, which

frequently exhibited the most sublime specimens of lyric poetry,

rivalling the loftiest strains of the Pindaric muse. Thus the audience,

in a short piece, in which the plot was rapidly urged forward, and the

interest was never allowed for a moment to flag, were presented

alternately with the force of Demosthenes' declamation, the pathos of

Sophocles' expressions, and the fire of Pindar's poetry. It was as if

the finest scenes of Shakspeare's tragedies were thrown together with no

other interjections but the eloquence of Burke in the dialogue, and

lyric poetry on a level with Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," Gray's

"Bard," or Campbell's "Last Man," in the chorus. Is it surprising that

tragedies, exhibiting such a combination, worked out by the most perfect

masters of the human heart, should have entranced every subsequent age?

Though one scene only was presented in each tragedy on the Greek stage,

so that unity of place was effectually observed, yet unity of _time_ was

by no means so strictly attended to; so that the poet was far from being

so fettered in this respect as is commonly imagined. Every scholar knows

that a very considerable time, sometimes some hours, or half a day, were

supposed to be consumed in the few minutes that the strophe and

antistrophe of the chorus were in course of being chanted. For instance,

in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, during the time that one of the chorus

is reciting a few verses, the heroic sister has found out the body of

her beloved brother, and, in violation of the command of Creon, bestowed

on it the rites of sepulture. In the _Hecuba_ of Euripides, in the brief

space occupied by a chorus, her daughter Polyxine is led to the tomb of

Achilles by Ulysses, and sacrificed there, in presence of the whole

Greek army, to procure favourable gales for the return of the troops

from Troy. In the _Electra_ of the same author, during the strophes of

one chorus, Orestes and Electra effect the death of the husband of

Clytemnestra; during another, murder their unhappy mother herself. In

the _Phoenissæ_ of Euripides, the duel between the two sons of

Jocasta, their mutual slaughter, and the self-immolation of that fated

mother on the body of her beloved son Polynices, take place while the

chorus were reciting a few verses, and are described when the actors

return on the stage. In truth, it is often in the tragic events which

thus take place behind the scenes during the chorus, but in close

connexion with what had just before been exhibited on the boards, that a

material part of the interest of the piece consists, and the art of the

poet is shown. The interest is never allowed for a moment to flag; it is

wrought up first by the anticipation of the catastrophe, then by its

description; and the intervening period, when it was actually going

forward, is filled up by the recital of sublime lyric poetry, at once

causing the stop of time to be forgotten, affording a brief respite to

the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and

elevated state of mind in the audience.

It is impossible to conceive a more perfect drama than the _Antigone_ of

Sophocles. The subject, the characters, the moral tone of the piece, are

as perfect as its execution is masterly and felicitous. It possesses,

what is not frequent in Greek tragedy, the interest arising from

elevated moral feeling and heroic courage devoted to noble purposes. The

steady perseverance of Antigone in her noble resolution to perform the

last rites to her dead brother, in defiance of the cruel threats of

Creon; the courage with which she does discharge those mournful duties;

the rage of the tyrant at the violation of his commands; the momentary

reappearance of the woman in Antigone, when she thinks of her betrothed,

and contemplates her dreadful fate, to be shut up in a living tomb in

the rock; the despair of Hæmon, who kills himself on the body of his

beloved; the silent despair of his mother, which, unable to find words

for its expression, leads to her self-immolation--the last victim of the

curses bestowed on the race of Oedipus; are all portrayed with

inimitable force and pathos. Simplicity of expression, depth of feeling,

resolution of mind, are its great characteristics, as they are of all

the works of Sophocles. It has been revived with signal success in

recent times. If a translation could be made, which should render into

English the force and beauty of the original language, the mingled

energy and delicacy of Sophocles's conception, we should, indeed, have a

perfect idea of the magic of the Greek drama. Such a translation is not

beyond the bounds of possibility; the English language is capable of it,

and could, in the hands of a master, render back a faithful image of the

brevity and power of the Greek. But that master must be a Sophocles, or

a Shakspeare; and ages will probably elapse before the world produce

either the one or the other.

The _Prometheus Vinctus_ of Æschylus is not properly a drama; at least,

it has so little of the peculiar interest belonging to that species of

poetry, that it can hardly be called such. Nevertheless, it is perhaps

the most sublime composition that ever came from the thoughts of

uninspired man. It is meant to portray the heroic devotion, the

undaunted courage of Prometheus--the friend of man, the assuager of his

sufferings, the aider of his enterprises--who was chained to a rock,

exposed to the burning heats of summer, the shivering frosts of winter,

by Jupiter, for having stolen fire--the parent of art, the spring of

enterprise, the source of improvement--from heaven, to give it to the

human race. From the expressions he uses on the ultimate results of that

inestimable gift, one would almost suppose he had a prophetic

anticipation of the marvels of Steam. The opening scene, where

Prometheus is chained to a rock in Scythia, by Vulcan, in presence of

"Force and Strength," the agents of Jupiter's commands; and the closing

one, where he remains firm and unshaken amidst the wrath of the

elements, the upheaving of the ocean, and the lightnings of heaven

hurled at his devoted head, are of unrivalled sublimity. They literally

realize the idea of the poet--

"Si fractus illabatur orbis,

Impavidum ferient ruinæ."

The _Prometheus Vinctus_ is the _Inferno_ of Dante dramatised; but it is

fraught with a nobler moral. It does not portray the sufferings of sin

for past guilt; it exhibits the heroism of virtue under present

injustice. It paints the triumph of devoted benevolence, sustained by

unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny

of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the

_Paradise Regained_, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is

chained on the burning lake, in _Paradise Lost_. It is the prophetical

wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from

external injustice.

The _Iphigenia in Aulis_ is the most perfect of all the tragedies of

Euripides, and the best adapted for modern representation. The

well-known story of the daughter of the King of Men being devoted to

sacrifice, to appease the angry deities, and procure favourable gales

for the fleet on the way to Troy, and of the agony of her parents under

the infliction, is developed with all the pathos and eloquence of which

that great master of the tragic art was capable. Nothing can exceed the

progressive interest which the character of Iphigenia excites. At first,

horrorstruck, and shrinking with the timidity of her sex from the axe of

the priest, she gradually rises when her fate appears inevitable, and at

length devotes herself for her country with a woman's devotion, and more

than a man's fortitude. In the French plays on the same subject, a love

episode is introduced between her and Achilles; but the simplicity of

the Greek original appears preferable, in which she had no previous

acquaintance with the son of Peleus, and he is interested in her fate,

and strives to avert it, only from finding that his name, as her

betrothed, had, without his knowledge, been used by Agamemnon to induce

Clytemnestra to bring her to the Grecian camp. Doubtless, the tenderness

of Racine in the love-scenes between her and Achilles, is inimitable;

but the simplicity of the Greek original, where grief on her parents'

part for her loss, and her own heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of

patriotic duty, are undisturbed by any other emotion, is yet more

touching, and far more agreeable to ancient manners, where love on the

woman's part, previous to marriage, was, as now in the East, almost

unknown.

In these great masterpieces of ancient art, the unity of emotions is

strictly preserved; and it is that, joined to the lofty moral tone

preserved through the drama, which constitutes their unequalled charm.

This, however, is not always the case in the Greek tragedies. They are

not insensible to the effect of a high moral tone, or the development of

poetical justice; but they did not regard either as the principal

object, or even a material part, of dramatic composition. To delineate

the play of the passions was their great object: Aristotle says

expressly that was the end of tragedy. To that object they devoted all

their powers; they succeeded in laying bare the human heart in its most

agonized moments, and in its inmost recesses, with terrible fidelity. In

this way, they frequently represented it as torn by a double distress,

each prompting to atrocious actions; as in the _Medea_ of Euripides,

where the unhappy wife of Jason distracted by jealousy at the desertion

and second marriage of her husband, destroys her own children in the

fury of her vengeance against him; or the _Hecuba_ of the same author,

where the discrowned and captive widow of Priam, doomed in one day to

see her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the dead body

of her son washed ashore by the waves, takes a terrible vengeance on his

murderer, by putting his children to death, and turning him, after his

eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks

seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and

sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as

_evils_, ([Greek: kaka].) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries

on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure

which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture

inflicted on a condemned captive at the stake. Every one felt a thrill

of interest at beholding how another could bear a series of reverses and

sufferings, which might any day be his own.

Notwithstanding all our admiration for the Greek tragedies, and firmly

believing that they are framed on the true principle of dramatic

composition--the neglect of which has occasioned its long-continued

decline in this country--we are yet far from thinking them perfect. The

age of the world, the peculiarities of ancient manners, rendered it

impossible it should be so. We could conceive dramas more perfect and

varied than any even of the masterpieces of Sophocles or Euripides. We

are persuaded the world will yet see them outdone; though they will be

outdone only by those who follow out their principles. But there are

three particulars, in which, in modern times, themes of surpassing

interest and importance are opened to the dramatic poet, which were of

necessity unknown to the writers of antiquity; and it is by blending the

skilful use of these with the simplicity and pathos of the Greek

originals, that the highest perfection of this noble art is to be

attained.

In the first place, the Greeks had no idea whatever of a system of

divine superintendence, or moral retribution, in this world. On the

contrary their ideas were just the reverse. FATE, superior to the

decrees of Jove himself, was the supreme power which they discerned in

all the changes of time; and it was the crushing of a human soul beneath

its chariot-wheels that they principally delighted to portray. The

omnipotence of Fate, in their opinion, was more shown in the destruction

than the rewards of the good. Success in life they were willing enough

to ascribe to the able conduct of the persons concerned; they only

began, like the French, to speak about destiny when they were

unfortunate. Their ignorance of the fundamental principles of religion,

familiar to every peasant in Europe, shines forth in every page of

Sophocles and Euripides. The noblest tragedy of Æschylus, the

_Prometheus Vinctus_, is intended to portray the highest divine

benevolence overpowered by supreme power, and eternally suffering under

eternal injustice. The frequent overthrow of virtue by wickedness, of

innocence by fraud, of gentleness by violence, in this world, seems to

have produced an indelible impression on their minds. They not only had

no confidence in the divine justice, or the ultimate triumph of virtue

over vice, but they had the reverse. They had a mournful conviction that

innocence in this vale of tears was everlastingly doomed to suffering;

that vice would eternally prove triumphant; and that it was in inward

strength and resolution that the only refuge for oppressed virtue was to

be found. Their greatest philosophers thought the same. Their tragedies

were dramatised Stoicism. Grandeur of character, force of mind, the

indomitable will, might be portrayed to perfection under such a belief;

but the mild graces, the confidence in God, the resignation to his will,

breathed into the human heart by the Gospel, were unknown. What a volume

of thoughts and sentiments, of virtues and graces, were wanting in a

world to which faith, hope, and charity were unknown! A dramatic Raphael

was impossible in antiquity; it was the spirit of the Redeemer which

inspired his _Holy Families_. Their morality, accordingly, is of a

sterner cast than any thing with which we are acquainted in modern

times. They were full of admiration of the qualities which formed the

patriot and the hero, and have portrayed them to perfection in their

dramas; but they were ignorant of that more heavenly disposition of

mind, which

"sits a blooming bride,

By valour's arm'd and awful side."

They perceived the tendency of firm and unbending virtue to elevate the

soul above all that is earthly; but they knew not, in the sublime

language of Milton,

"That if virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her."

As a necessary consequence of this, the dramas of antiquity were

destitute of those feelings of PIETY, which form so important a part in

the most elevated characters of modern Europe. The ancients carried mere

human virtue to the very highest point; in their poetry, their

tragedies, their philosophy, they represented man resting on himself

alone in the noblest aspect. But they were ignorant of God; they had no

correct ideas of Heaven. The devotion to the divine will, the

forgetfulness of self, the reliance on Supreme protection to innocence,

the appeal to the Almighty, and the judgment of another world against

the injustice of this, which runs through the most exalted conceptions

of modern times, were to them unknown. Their ideas of the celestial

beings were entirely drawn from human models: Olympus was peopled by

gods and goddesses animated by passions, divided by jealousies,

stimulated by desires entirely akin to those which are felt in this

world. The shades below were a dark and gloomy region, the entrance to

which was placed in the jaws of Vesuvius, or the dreary expanse of the

Cimmerian Bosphorus, through which the cries of the damned in Tartarus

incessantly resounded; and where even the blessed spirits in Elysium

were continually regretting the joys and excitement of the upper world.

Dante, in his _Inferno_, has painted to the life their prevailing ideas

of futurity; the next world to them contained nothing but successive

circles of Malebolge. Homer has expressed their feeling in a line, when

he makes Achilles, in Elysium, say to Ulysses, on his descent to the

infernal regions, that he would rather command the Grecian army one day,

than dwell where he was through an infinity of ages. Compare this with

the ideas of the Crusaders in modern Europe; with the death of the

chivalric Bayard, when, mortally wounded, seated on the ground, with his

eyes fixed on the cross of his sword, he said to the victorious

Constable de Bourbon, "Pity not me--pity those who fight against their

king, their country, and their oath!"

Lastly, the passion of love, as it is understood and felt in modern

times, was unknown in antiquity; and to those who reflect how important

a part it bears in the romances and plays of Europe, this will probably

appear like performing Hamlet with the character of the Prince of

Denmark omitted on the occasion. It was impossible they could have it,

because their manners were much more Oriental than European; and young

persons of opposites sexes rarely, if ever, met before marriage. They

had a perfect idea of the mutual affection which arises after marriage;

the tenderness of Hector and Andromache never has been surpassed in any

tongue. With the passions of the harem they were perfectly familiar, and

the dreadful pangs of jealousy never have been painted with more

consummate ability, or more thorough knowledge of human nature.

Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that

passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the

desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love

also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them;

the passion of Phædra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a

proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce any

resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the

general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern

Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than

any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast

inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an

inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so

well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human

heart in modern times, that of Othello for Desdemona, of Tancrede for

Clorinda, of Corinne for Oswald, was unknown in antiquity. Even the

passions described by Ovid, which arose amidst the freer manners of the

Roman patricians, had little resemblance to the refined sentiments, the

bequest of the age of chivalry; the one was founded on the subjugation

of mind by the senses, the other on the oblivion of the senses in the

mind. What a vast addition to the range and interest of the drama has

the refining and spiritualizing of this master-passion of the human

breast, by the influence of Christianity, and the institutions of

chivalry, made; and how inexcusable does it render modern genius, if,

with such an additional chord to touch in the human heart, it has never

yet rivalled the great models of antiquity!

And has modern genius not yet equalled the masterpieces of the drama in

ancient Greece? We answer, decidedly not--either on the Continent or

this country--any more than modern sculpture has rivalled the

perfections of Grecian statuary. Neither in the old French and Italian

school, which followed the ancient models, nor in the Romantic school in

which old England and young France proposed to rival it, has any thing

approaching to the interest and pathos of the Athenian dramatists been

produced. It is not difficult to see what have been the causes of this

inferiority, and they seem to have been these.

The regular drama of France was addressed, entirely and exclusively, to

the court, the noble, and the highly educated classes. It was nothing

more than an extension of the theatres of Versailles. The opinion of

Louis XIV., his ministers or mistresses, of the Duke of Orleans, and a

few leading nobles of Louvois, and one or two statesmen, were all in

all. The approbation of the king stamped a tragedy in public opinion, as

his dancing with her stamped the estimation of a new court beauty. The

voice and feelings of the middle or lower ranks of society had no more

to say on the subject than they had in the formation of court dresses,

or the etiquette of the _Oeil de Boeuf_. They took their opinions

from that of the magnates of the land, as milliners and tailors now do

from the dresses of London and Paris. Rank and fashion were paramount in

literature, as they are still in manner, dancing, and etiquette. It was

impossible that the drama, addressed to, and having its success

dependent on, the approbation of such an audience, could faithfully

paint the human heart. The stately dances and haughty seigneurs of

Versailles, would have been shocked with the vehement bursts of passion,

the pathetic traits of nature, the undisguised expression of feeling,

which appeared in Euripides and Sophocles, and entranced the mixed and

more natural audience of Athens. It would have appeared vulgar and

painful; it revealed what it was the great object of art and education

to conceal. The stately Alexandrine verses, the sonorous periods, the

dignified and truly noble thoughts, which so strongly characterize the

French tragedies, arose naturally, and perhaps unavoidably, from the

habits and tastes of the exclusive aristocratic circle to which they

were addressed. In addition to this, the audience were all highly

educated; at least according to the ideas and habits of the times.

Classical images were those which recalled the most pleasing

associations in every mind; classical events awakened the emotions most

likely to prove generally attractive. The ancient models were before

every mind, from the effect of early and universal education. Classical

allusions and subjects were as unavoidable, as they now are in the prize

poems of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was

assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not

the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all

mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a

narrow and dignified feudal circle.

Making allowance for this peculiarity, and considering the drama as,

from this cause, diverted from its real object and highest flight, it is

impossible to conceive any thing more perfect than the masterpieces of

the French stage. Corneille was their greatest composer; he had most

original genius, and was least fettered by artificial rules. He was the

Æschylus of the French theatre. Voltaire said, that the king's ministers

should be compelled to attend the performance of his finest pieces, to

acquire the knowledge of human nature, and statesmanlike views requisite

for the government of man. Napoleon said, if Corneille had lived in his

time, he would have made him a counsellor of state; for he alone, of all

writers, felt the overpowering importance of state necessity. The great

Condé wept at the generosity of sentiment portrayed in his

_Britannicus_. It is impossible to conceive any thing more dignified and

elevated, more calculated to rouse the generous and lofty feelings, to

nourish that forgetfulness of self and devotion to others, which is the

foundation of every thing great and good in this world, than his finest

tragedies. They are, however, very unequal. _Cinna_, _Les Horaces_, the

_Cid_, and _Rodogune_, are his masterpieces; it is they which have won

for him, by the consent of all nations, the surname of "le Grand

Corneille." But still it is not nature which is generally represented in

his tragedies. It is an ideal nature, seven foot high, clad in

impenetrable panoply, steeled against the weaknesses, as above the

littlenesses of humanity. Persons of a romantic, lofty tone of mind,

will to the end of the world be fascinated by his pages; heroic

resolutions, great deeds, will ever be prompted by his sentiments. But

they are above the standard of common life. They evince a deep knowledge

of human nature, but of human nature in noble and heroic bosoms

only--and that is widely different from what it obtains with ordinary

men. Hence his pieces are little adapted for general representation; and

certainly, even the best translations of them never could succeed in

this country.

Racine is a more general favourite than Corneille, because he paints

feelings more commonly experienced; but he wants his great and heroic

sentiments. No one ever thought of calling him the Great. Less deeply

embued with the lofty spirit of chivalry, less romantic in his

structure, less commanding in his ideas, he is more polished, more

equal, and has a greater command of the pathetic. He is to Corneille

what Virgil was to Homer, what Raphael to Michael Angelo. The anguish of

the human heart was what he chiefly loved to represent, because he felt

that there he excelled; and hence his tragedies are chiefly formed on

the Greek model, and on the subjects already treated by Sophocles and

Euripides. Agamemnon, Achilles, Alcestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra,

Iphigenia, Oedipus, Hermione, Jocasta, Antigone, reappear on his

pages, as in those of the masters of the Greek drama. But they reappear

in a modern dress. They are very different from the inimitable

simplicity of the originals. The refinements, conceits, extravagant

flattery, politeness, and stately manners of the Grand Monarque, shine

through every line. Achilles makes love to Iphigenia as if she were in

the marbled gardens of Versailles; the passion of Phèdre for Hippolyte,

is the refined effusion of modern delicacy, not the burning fever and

maniac delirium of Phædra in Euripides. His Greek heroes and heroines

address each other as if they were in the _Oeil de Boeuf_; it is

"monsieur" and "madame" at every step. Under classical names, and with

the scene laid in distant lands, it is still the ancient _régime_ of

France which is portrayed in all his pieces--it is the passions and

distresses of an old and highly civilized society which are depicted.

Even _Athalie_, his masterpiece, has none of the ancient Jewish spirit

in it; it is the modern priesthood which is represented as resisting

oppression in the temple of Jerusalem. But the beauty of language, the

melody of versification, the delicacy of sentiments, the frequent

touches of the pathetic which his writings exhibit, will for ever secure

him a high place in the opinion of men; and justify the saying of

Voltaire, that whoever would acquire a pure and elegant French style,

must have the _Petit Carême_ of Massillon, and _Athalie_ of Racine,

constantly lying on his writing table.

Voltaire, though he adhered, in part at least, to the old subjects in

his tragedies, is far more various and discursive in his mode of

treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred

volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the

satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless

variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he

threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every

age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible

store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time

agitated the human race. The East, with its sultans, its harems, its

sultanas, and its jealousies, strongly arrested his imagination, and

furnished the subjects of some of his finest pieces; witness _Mahomet_,

_Bajazet_, _Tamerlane_, and _Zaïre_. For this reason his tragedies are

more general favourites now than either those of Corneille or Racine;

you will see the audience in the parterre of the Théâtre Français

repeating whole speeches from _Brutus_, _Alzire_, or _Le Fanatisme_,

after the performer on the stage. They have sunk deeper into the general

mind than any of their predecessors; more of their lines have become

household expressions, as is the case with Shakspeare, Gray, and

Campbell in England, than those of any other author in the French

language. Voltaire, too, was strongly impressed with the necessity of

keeping up the interest of his piece from first to last; he drives on

the story with an untiring hand, and even before the final catastrophe,

contrives to produce a passing excitement at every step, by subordinate

and yet important events. What he constantly complains of in his

admirable commentaries on Corneille is, that, in his inferior pieces at

least, that great master lets the story flag, the interest die away, and

that, trusting to the fascination of his language, the power of his

thoughts, he neglects the important matters of dramatic power and stage

effect. His perfect knowledge of both these important auxiliaries of his

art, is not the least of Voltaire's many excellences; and has secured

for him, to all appearance permanently, if not the first, unquestionably

the most popular place in the French theatre. But still his dramas do

not represent nature. They are noble pieces of rhetoric put into rhyme.

They are the ablest possible debate arrayed in the pomp of Alexandrine

verse. But they do not touch the heart like a few words in Sophocles,

Euripides, or Shakspeare.

Metastasio was fettered by a double set of rules; for he was compelled

to attend at once to the dramatic unities of Aristotle, and the musical

restraints of the opera. It was no common genius which, amidst such

difficulties, could produce a series of dramas which should not merely

charm the world, when arrayed in the enchanted garb of the opera, with

all the attractions of music and scenery, but form a perpetual subject

of pleasing study to the recluse, far from the pomp and magnificence of

theatric representation. It is impossible to imagine any thing more

attractive than his dramas, considered as visionary pieces. Formed on

the events of the ancient world, he depicts, under the name of

Alexander, Titus, Dido, Regulus, Cæsar, and Cleopatra, ideal beings

having about as much resemblance to real mortals as the nymphs of the

ballet have to ordinary women, or the recitative of Mozart to the

natural human voice. But still they are very charming. If they are not a

feature of this world, they are a vision of something above it; of a

scene in which the littlenesses and selfishness of mortality are

forgotten; in which virtue is generally in the end triumphant; in which

honour in women proves victorious over love, and fortitude in men

obtains the mastery of fortune. Generosity and magnanimity beyond what

could have been even conceived, often furnishes the _dénouement_ of the

piece, and extricates the characters from apparently insurmountable

difficulties. There can be no doubt this is not human life: Alexander

the Great, Dido, Regulus, are not of every day's occurrence. But the

total departure of such representations from the standard of reality,

appears less reprehensible in the opera than the ordinary theatre,

because the singing and recitative at any rate remove it from off the

pale of mortality. We take up one of his dramas as we go to the opera,

not to see any picture of actual existence, or any thing which shall

recall the experienced feelings of the human heart, but to be charmed by

a fairy tale, which, if it does not paint the stern realities of life,

at least charms by its imagination.

The more impassioned mind and vehement passions of Alfieri disdained

those trammels by which the French and Italian stages had so long been

fettered. Gifted by nature with an ardent imagination, impetuous

feelings, deep and lasting emotions, he early saw that the modern drama,

founded on, and fettered by, the strict observance of the Greek unities,

and yet discarding its broken and rapid diction, its profound knowledge

of the human heart, its vehement expression of passion, had departed far

from the real object of the art, and could not be brought back to it but

by a total change of system. He has himself told us, in his most

interesting life, that when he read the tragedies of Racine and

Corneille, the book fell from his hands. They conveyed no idea whatever

of reality; they had no resemblance to the ardent feelings which he felt

burning in his own breast. Anxiously seeking vent for passions too

fierce to be controlled, he found it in the study of the Greek drama.

The wrath of Medea, the heroism of Antigone, the woes of Andromache, the

love of Phædra, found a responsive echo in his bosom; they combined

every thing he could desire, they represented every thing that he felt.

He saw what Tragedy had been--what it ought to be. His taste was

immediately formed on the true model. When he came to write tragedies

himself, he composed them on the plan of Sophocles. He did more. He made

the language as brief, the voice of passion as powerful, the plot as

simple; but he brought even fewer characters on the stage. He trusted

entirely to the force of passion the wail of suffering, the accents of

despair. Immense was the effect of this recurrence to unsophisticated

feeling, in a luxurious and effeminate society. It was like the burst of

admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same

time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the

next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were

received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was

something new; they had never heard her voice before.

Had Alfieri, with this ardent mind and clear perception of the true end

of the drama, been endowed with that _general_ knowledge of the human

heart, and of human character in all its bearings, which the Greek

dramatists possessed he would have formed the greatest tragedian of

modern continental Europe. But in these vital particulars he was very

deficient. His position in society, character, and habits, precluded him

from acquiring it. The dissipated, heartless nobleman, who flew from one

devoted passion to another, without the slightest compunction as to

their effects on the objects of his adoration; who fought Lord Ligonier

in the Park, in pursuance of an intrigue with his lady; and stole from

the Pretender his queen, when age and dissipation had wellnigh brought

him to the grave; who traversed, post-haste, France and Italy with

fourteen blood-horses, which he wore out in his impetuous course, was

not likely either to feel the full force of the generous, or paint the

_real_ features of the selfish passion. He did not mingle with the

ordinary world on a footing of _equality_. This it is which ever makes

aristocratic and high-bred authors ignorant of the one thing needful in

history or the drama--a knowledge of human nature. No man ever learned

that, who had not been practically brought into collision with men in

all ranks, from the highest to the lowest. Hence his characters are

almost all overdrawn. Vice and virtue are exhibited in too undisguised

colours; the malignity of the wicked is laid too bare to the reader. He

makes the depraved _admit they are bad, but yet persevere in their

crimes_; a certain proof that he did not know the human heart. He knew

it better who said, "The heart _is deceitful above all things_, and

desperately wicked." Napoleon knew it better when he said to Talma,

after seeing his representation of Nero in _Britannicus_--"You are quite

wrong in your idea of Nero; you should _conceal the tyrant_. No man

admits he was guilty either to himself or others." Alfieri himself is a

proof of it: he recounts, in his life, many criminal acts he committed,

but never with the slightest allusion to their having been wrong. He

admitted, later in life, that he had been ignorant of human nature in

the great body of mankind; for he said, on recounting the horrors of the

10th August, which he had witnessed at Paris--"Je connais bien les

grands, _mais je ne connais pas les petits_."

It is hard to say whether Schiller belongs to the Greek or Romantic

school in the drama. His subjects are in great part chosen from the

latter class: he changes the scene, and did not hold himself bound by

the rules of Aristotle. But in his mode of treating these subjects, he

approaches more nearly to the tragedians of antiquity. He utterly

discarded the limited range of subjects, and measured pomp of the French

drama; he felt that the world had grown old since the days of Euripides,

and that it was time for tragedy to embrace a wider range of subjects

than the family disasters which followed the return of the Greeks from

the siege of Troy. He knew that it was not in stately rhyme or measured

cadences, that passion finds vent from the human breast. He was

essentially historical in his ideas. The past with its vast changes and

endless variety of events, lay open before him. And he availed himself

of all its riches. He is unequalled in the ability with which he threw

himself into his subject, identified himself, not merely with the

characters, but the periods in which they arose, and brought before the

mind of the spectators the ideas, interests, passions, and incidents,

the collision of which produced the catastrophe which formed the

immediate subject of his piece. The best informed English or Scottish

historians will have something to learn on the history of Queen Mary,

from the incomparable summary of arguments for and against her detention

in captivity by Queen Elizabeth, in the two first acts of his noble

tragedy of _Mary Stuart_. The learned Spaniard will find himself

transported to the palace of the Escurial, and the frightful tragedies

of its bigoted court, in his terrible tragedy of _Don Carlos_. Schiller

rivals Shakspeare himself in the energy with which, by a word or an

epithet, he paints the fiercest or tenderest passions of the heart:

witness the devoted love of Thekla for Max in _Wallenstein_; or the

furious jealousy of the Queen in _Don Carlos_. He has not the grotesque

of Shakspeare; we do not see in his tragedies that mixture of the

burlesque and the sublime which is so common in the Bard of Avon, and

is not infrequent with the greatest minds, who play, as it were, with

the thunderbolts, and love to show how they can master them. Hence, in

reading at least, his dramas produce a more uniform and unbroken

impression than those of the great Englishman, and will, with foreign

nations, command a more general admiration. But the great charm in

Schiller is the romantic turn of mind, the noble elevation of sentiment,

the truly heroic spirit, with which his tragedies abound. In reading

them, we feel that a new intellectual soil has been turned up in the

Fatherland; the human soul, in its pristine purity and beauty, comes

forth from beneath his hand; it reappears like the exquisite remains of

Grecian statuary, which, buried for ages in superincumbent ruins, emerge

pure and unstained in virgin snow, when a renewal of cultivation has

again exposed them to the light. If he were equally great at all times,

he would have been the most perfect dramatist of modern times. But he is

far from being so. At times he is tedious; often dull; it is his great

scenes, such as the last sacrament of Queen Mary, which have gained for

him his colossal reputation, and produce an indelible impression on the

mind of his reader.

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits and we have only got

through half our subject. A noble theme remains: Shakspeare, with the

Romantic drama, will be treated in the Number which is to follow; and

the causes considered which have brought the school, created by such a

master, into the state of comparative mediocrity in which, with some

brilliant exceptions, it is now placed.

FOOTNOTES:

[J] The first wrote _eighteen hundred_ plays, the variety in the plots

of which is so prodigious, that they are the great quarry from which

almost all subsequent dramatic writers have borrowed the elements of

their theatrical pieces.

[K] Euripides was fifteen years younger than Sophocles--the latter being

born in the year 495 B.C., the former in 480; and they thrice contended

for the prize at the public games of Greece.

[L] Miss Cushman's Lady Macbeth is a performance of the very highest

merit, and proves that the genius of the stage is capable of being

matured in transatlantic climes.

[M] At the execution of Doolan and another, for a combination murder

near Glasgow, on May 13th, 1842.

[N] Schiller's dramas are of the modern kind, and the unities are not

strictly observed; but his finer pieces belong more nearly to the

Grecian than the Romantic school.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

NO. III.

MR W. WELLINGTON HURST.

It would probably puzzle Mr William Wellington Hurst, as much as any

man, to find out on what grounds I placed him on the list of my College

friends; for certainly our intimacy was hardly sufficient to warrant

such a liberty; and he was one of those happy individuals who would

never have suspected that it could be out of gratitude for much

amusement afforded me by sundry of his sayings and doings. But so it is;

and it happens, that while the images of many others of my

companions--very worthy good sort of fellows, whom I saw more or less of

nearly every day--have vanished from my memory, or only flit across

occasionally, like shadows, the full-length figure of Mr W. Wellington

Hurst, exactly as he turned out, after a satisfactory toilet, in the

patent boots and scarf of many colours, stands fixed there like a

daguerreotype--more faithful than flattering.

My first introduction to him was by running him down in a skiff, when I

was steering the College eight--not less to his astonishment than our

own gratification. It is perfectly allowable, by the laws of the river,

if, after due notice, these small craft fail to get out of your way; but

it is not very easy to effect. However, in this instance, we went clean

over him, very neatly indeed. The men helped him into our boat, just as

his own sunk from under him; and he accepted a seat by my side in the

stern-sheets, with many apologies for being so wet, appearing

considerably impressed with a sense of my importance, and still more of

my politeness. When we reached Sandford, I prescribed a stiff tumbler of

hot brandy and water, and advised him to run all the way home, to warm

himself, and avoid catching cold; and, from that time, I believe he

always looked upon me as a benefactor. The claim, on my part, certainly

rested on a very small foundation originally; it was strengthened

afterwards by a less questionable act of patronage. Like many other

under-graduates of every man's acquaintance, Hurst laboured under the

delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and

flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out

of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the

proctor, was an _opus operatum_ of the highest possible merit. To do him

justice, he laboured diligently in the only exercise which he seemed to

consider strictly academical--he spent an hour every morning, standing

upon a chair, "catching flies," as he called it, and occasionally

flicking his scout with a tandem whip, and practised incessantly upon

tin horns of all lengths, with more zeal than melody, until he got the

erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors.

Yet he was more ambitious than successful. His reputation on the road

grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike

gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses

into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile

got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a

four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the bottom of a hill, pretty much

in the Olympic fashion--all four abreast--men got rather shy of any

expeditions of the kind in his company. There was little credit in it,

and a good deal of danger. First, he was reduced to soliciting the

company of freshmen, who were flattered by any proposal that sounded

_fast_. But they, too, grew shy, after one or two ventures; and poor

Hurst soon found a difficulty in getting a companion at all. He was a

liberal fellow enough, and not pushed for a guinea when his darling

science was concerned: so he used to offer to "sport the train" himself;

but even when he condescended to the additional self-devotion of

standing a dinner and champagne, he found that the closest calculators

among his sporting acquaintance had as much regard for their necks as

their pockets.

To this inglorious position was his fame as a charioteer reduced, when

Horace Leicester and myself, early in his third term, had determined

somewhat suddenly to go to see a steeple-chase about twelve miles off,

where Leicester had some attraction beside the horses, in the shape of a

pretty cousin; (_two_, he told me, and bribed me with the promise of an

introduction to "the other," but she did not answer to sample at all.)

We had engaged a very nice mare and stanhope, which we knew we could

depend upon, when, the day before the race, the chestnut was declared

lame, and not a presentable four-legged animal was to be hired in

Oxford. Hurst had engaged his favourite pair of greys (which would

really go very well with any other driver) a week beforehand, but had

been canvassing the last batch of freshmen in vain for an occupant of

the vacant seat. A huge red-headed north-country man, who had never seen

a tandem in his life, but who, as far as pluck went, would have ridden

postilion to Medea's dragons, was listening with some apparent

indecision to Hurst's eloquence upon the delights of driving, just as we

came up after a last unsuccessful search through the livery stables; and

the pair were proceeding out of college arm in arm, probably to look at

the greys, when Leicester, to my amusement, stepped up with--"Hurst,

who's going with you to B----?"

"I--why, I hardly know yet; I think Sands here will, if"----

"I'll go with you then, if you like; and if you've got a cart, Hawthorne

can come too, and it will be very jolly."

If the university had announced their intention of creating him a B.A.

by diploma, without examination, Hurst could hardly have looked more

surprised and delighted. Leicester, it should be borne in mind, was one

of the most popular men in the college--a sort of _arbiter elegantiarum_

in the best set. Hurst knew very little of him, but was no doubt highly

flattered by his proposal. From coaxing freshmen to come out by the

bribe of paying all expenses, to driving to B---- steeple-chase side by

side with Horace, (my modesty forbids me to include myself,) was a step

at once from the ridiculous to the sublime of tandemizing. For this

advancement in life, he always, I fancy, considered himself indebted to

me, as I had originally introduced him to Leicester's acquaintance; and

when we both accepted an invitation, which he delivered himself of with

some hesitation, to breakfast in his rooms on the morning of the

expedition, his joy and gratitude appeared to know no bounds. It is not

usual, be it remembered, for a junior man in college to ask a senior to

a party from whom he has never received an invitation himself; but

hunting and tandem-driving are apt occasionally to set ordinary

etiquette at defiance. "Don't ask a lot of men, that's all--there's a

good fellow," said Horace, whose good-natured smile, and off-hand and

really winning manner, enabled him to carry off, occasionally, a degree

of impudence which would not have been tolerated from others--"I hate a

large formal breakfast party of all things; it disgusts me to see a

score of men jostling each other over tough beefsteaks."

"I asked Sands yesterday," apologised Hurst. "I thought perhaps he would

come out with me; but I dare say I can put him off, if"----

"Oh! on no account whatever; you mean the carroty freshman I saw you

with just now? Have him by all means; it will be quite refreshing to

meet any man so regularly green. So there will be just four of us; eight

o'clock, I suppose? it won't do to be much later."

And Horace walked off, having thus arranged matters to his own

satisfaction and his host's. I was an interested party in the business,

however, and had my own terms to make. "You've disposed of me rather

coolly," said I; "you don't surely imagine, that at my time of life I'm

going to trust my neck to that fellow's furious driving?"

"Make your mind easy, Frank; William Wellington sha'n't finger a

riband."

"Nonsense, Leicester; you can't treat a man in that kind of way--not to

let him drive his own team. Hurst _is_ a bit of an ass, certainly; but

you can't with any decency first ask a man for a seat, and then refuse

to give him up the reins."

"Am I in the habit, sir, of doing things in the very rude and

ungentlemanly style you insinuate?" And Horace looked at me with mock

dignity for a second or two, and then burst into a laugh. "Leave it to

me, Hawthorne, and I'll manage it to the satisfaction of all parties:

I'll manage that Hurst shall have a capital day's fun, and your valuable

neck shall be as safe as if you were tried by a Welsh jury."

With this indefinite assurance I was obliged to be content; and

accordingly, at half-past eight the next morning, after a very correct

breakfast, we mounted the tandem-cart at the college back-gates, got the

leader hitched on, as usual, a mile out of the city, for fear of

proctors, and were bowling merrily along, in the slight frost of an

autumn morning, towards B----. Leicester took the driving first, by

Hurst's special request, after one or two polite but faint refusals, the

latter sitting by his side; while I occupied, for the present, the queer

little box which in those days was stuck on behind, (the more modern

carts, which hold four, are an improvement introduced into the

University since my driving days.) With wonderful gravity and importance

did Leicester commence his lectures on the whip to his admiring

companion: I almost think he began in the approved style, with a slight

allusion to the Roman _biga_, and deduced the progress of the noble

science from Ericthonius down to "Peyton and Ward." I have a lively

recollection of a comparison between Automedon of the Homeric times, and

"Black Will" of Oxford celebrity--the latter being decided as only

likely to be less immortal, because there was no Homer among the

contemporary under-graduates. A good deal was lost to me, no doubt, from

my position behind; but Hurst seemed to suck it all in with every

disposition to be edified. From the history of his subject, Horace

proceeded, in due course, to the theory, from theory to facts, from

facts to illustrations. In the practical department, Horace, I suspect,

like many other lecturers, was on his weakest ground; for his own

driving partook of the under-graduate character.

"You throw the lash out so--you see--and bring it back sharp, so--no,

not _so_ exactly--so--hang the thing, I can't do it now; but that's the

principle, you understand--and then you take up your double thong,

so--pshaw, I did it very well just now--to put it into the wheeler,

so--ah, I missed it then, but that's the way to do it."

He put me considerably in mind of a certain professor of chemistry,

whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who,

after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used

to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain

combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a

"little experiment." But, somehow or other, these little experiments

always, or nearly always, failed: and after the room had been darkened,

perhaps, for five minutes or so, in order to give the exhibition full

effect, the result would be, a _fizz_ or two, a faint blue light, and a

stink, varying according to circumstances, but always abominable. "It's

very odd, John," the discomfited operator used to exclaim to his

assistant; "very odd; and we succeeded so well this morning, too: it's

most unaccountable: I'm really very sorry, gentlemen, but I can assure

you, this very same experiment we tried to-day with the most beautiful

result; didn't we, John?" "We did, sir," was John's invariably dutiful

reply: and so the audience took John's word for it, and the experiment

was considered to have been, virtually, successful.

So we rattled on to the ground: Leicester occasionally putting the reins

into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible

movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to

non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of

sheer compassion, with the point of the whip.

"You are sure you wouldn't like to take the reins now? Well, you'll

drive home then, of course? Hawthorne, will you try your hand now?

Hurst's going to take up the tooling when we come back."

"No, thank you," said I; "I won't interfere with either of your

performances."--"And if Hurst does drive home," was my mental

determination, expressed to Leicester as far as a nod can do it, "I'll

walk."

There was no difficulty in finding out the localities: the field in

which the winning-flag was fixed was not far from the turnpike road, and

conspicuous enough by the crowd already collected. Of course, pretty

nearly all the sporting characters among the gownsmen were there, the

distance from the University being so trifling. Mounted on that seedy

description of animal peculiar to Oxford livery-stables, which can never

by any possibility be mistaken for any thing but a hired affair, but

will generally go all day, and scramble through almost any thing; with

showily mounted jockey-whips in their hands, bad cigars (at two guineas

a-pound) in their mouths, bright blue scarfs, or something equivalent,

round their necks--their neat white cords and tops (things which they

_do_ turn out well in Oxford) being the only really sportsmanlike

article about them; flattering themselves they looked exceedingly

knowing, and, in nine cases out of ten, being deceived therein most

lamentably; clustered together in groups of four or five, discussing the

merits of the horses, or listening, as to an oracle, to the opinion of

some Oxford horse-dealer, delivered with insolent familiarity--here were

the men who drunk out of a fox's head, and recounted imaginary runs with

the Heythrop. Happy was he amongst them, and a positive hero for the

day, who could boast a speaking acquaintance with any of those anomalous

individuals, at present enshrouded in great-coats, but soon to appear in

all the varieties of jockey costume, known by the style and title of

"gentlemen riders;" who could point out, confidentially, to his admiring

companions, "Jack B----," and "Little M----," and announce, from

authority, how many ounces under weight one was this morning, and how

many blankets were put upon the other the night before, to enable him to

come to the scales at all. Here and there, more plainly dressed, moving

about quickly on their own thorough-breds, or talking to some

neighbouring squire who knew the ground, were the few really

sporting-men belonging to the university; who kept hunters in Oxford,

simply because they were used to keep them at home, and had been brought

up to look upon fox-hunting as their future vocation. Lolling on their

saddles, probably voting it all a bore, were two or three tufts, and

their "tail;" and stuck into all sorts of vehicles, lawful and unlawful,

buggies, drags, and tandems, were that ignoble herd, who, like myself,

had come to the steeple-chase, just because it was the most convenient

idleness at hand, and because other men were going. There were all sorts

of people there besides, of course: carriages of all grades of

pretension, containing pretty bonnets and ugly faces, in the usual

proportion; "all the beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood,"

nevertheless, as the county paper assured us; and as I may venture to

add, from personal observation, a very fair share of its

disrespectability and blackguardism besides.

After wandering for a short time among these various groups, Leicester

halted us at last in front of one of those old-fashioned

respectable-looking barouches, which one now so seldom sees, in which

were seated a party, who turned out to consist of an uncle and aunt, and

the pair of cousins before alluded to. Hurst and I were duly introduced;

a ceremony which, for my own part, I could have very readily excused,

when I discovered that the only pair of eyes in the party worth

mentioning bestowed their glances almost exclusively on Horace, and any

attempt at cutting into the conversation in that quarter was as

hopeless, apparently, as ungracious. Our friend's taste in the article

of cousins was undeniably correct; Flora Leicester was a most desirable

person to have for a cousin; very pretty, very good-humoured, and (I am

sure she was, though I pretend to no experience of the fact) very

affectionate. If one could have put in any claim of kindred, even in the

third or fourth degree, it would have been a case in which to stickle

hard for the full privileges of relationship. As matters stood, it was

trying to the sensibilities of us unfortunate bystanders, whose cousins

were either ugly or at a distance; for the rest of our new acquaintances

were not interesting. The younger sister was shy and insipid; the squire

like ninety-nine squires in every hundred; and the lady-mother in a

perpetual state of real or affected nervous agitation, to which her own

family were happily insensible, but which taxed a stranger's polite

sympathies pretty heavily. Though constantly in the habit, as she

assured me, of accompanying her husband to run courses, and enjoying the

sport, she was always on the look-out for an accident, and was always

having, as she said, narrow escapes; some indeed so very narrow, that,

according to her own account, they ought _to have had, by every rule of

probability, fatal terminations_. In fact, her tone might have led one

to believe that she looked upon herself as an ill-used woman, in getting

off so easily--at least she was exceedingly angry when the younger

daughter ventured to remark, _en pendant_ to one of her most thrilling

adventures, that "there was no great danger of an upset when the wheel

stuck fast." Not content with putting her head out of the carriage every

five minutes, to see if her own well-trained bays were standing quiet,

as they always did, there was not a restive horse or awkward rider on

the ground but attracted the good lady's ever watchful sense of danger.

"He'll be thrown! I'm sure he will! foolish man, why don't he get off!"

"Oh, oh! there they go! they're off, those horrid horses! they'll never

stop 'em!" Such were the interjections, accompanied with extraordinary

shudderings and drawings of the breath, with which Mrs John Leicester,

her eyes fixed on some distant point, occasionally broke in upon the

general conversation, sometimes with a vehemence that startled even her

nephew and eldest daughter, though, to do them justice, they paid very

little attention to any of us.

Just as I was meditating something desperate, in order to relieve myself

from the office of soother-general of Mrs Leicester's imaginary terrors,

and to bring Flora's sunny face once more within my line of vision, (she

had been turning the back of her bonnet upon me perseveringly for the

last ten minutes,) a general commotion gave us notice that the horses

were started, and the race begun. The hill on which we were stationed

was close to the winning-post, and commanded a view of pretty nearly the

whole ground from the start. The race, as, I suppose, pretty nearly like

other steeple-chases, and there is the less need for me to describe it,

because a very full and particular account appeared in the _Bell's Life_

next ensuing. The principal impressions which remain on my mind, are of

a very smart gentleman in black and crimson, mounted on a very powerful

bay, who seemed as if he had been taking it easy, who came in first, and

after having been sufficiently admired by an innocent public, myself

among the number, as the winner, turned out to have gone on the right

hand instead of the left, of some flag or other, and to have lost the

race accordingly; and of a very dirty-looking person, who arrived some

minute or two afterwards without a cap, whose jacket was green and his

horse grey, so far as the mud left any colour visible, and who, to the

great disappointment, of the ladies especially, turned out to be the

real hero after all.

We had made arrangements to have an independent beefsteak together after

the race, in preference to joining the sporting ordinary announced as

usual on such occasions; but the squire insisted on Leicester bringing

us both to dine with his party at five. After a few modest and

conscientious scruples on my part, at intruding on the hospitality of

comparative strangers, and a strong private remonstrance from Hurst, on

the impropriety of sitting down to dinner with ladies in a surtout and

white cords, we accepted the invitation, and betook ourselves to kill

the intervening hour or so as we best could.

"Well, Horace," said I, as Hurst went off to make his apology for a

toilet--"how are you going to settle about the driving home?"

"Oh! never fear; I'll manage it: I have just seen Miller and Fane;

they've got a drag over here, and there's lots of room inside; so

they've promised to take Hurst home with them, if we can only manage to

leave him behind: they are going to dine here, and are sure not to go

home till late; and we must be off early, you know, because I have some

men coming to supper; so we'll leave our friend behind, somehow or

other. A painful necessity, I admit; but it must be done, even if I have

to lock him up in the stable."

Leicester seemed to have more confidence in his own resources than I

had; but he was in too great a state of excitement to listen to any

demurrers of mine on the point, and hurried us off to join his friends.

Ushered into the drawing-room A. 1. of the Saracen's Head, we found _la

bella_ Flora awaiting us alone, the rest of the family being not as yet

visible. There was not the slightest necessity for enquiring whether she

felt fatigued, for she was looking even more lovely than in the morning;

or whether she had been amused or not, for if the steeple-chase had not

delighted her, something else had, for there was a radiant smile on her

face which could not be mistaken. Hurst was cut short rather abruptly in

a speech which appeared tending towards a compliment, by Leicester's

enquiring--"My good fellow, have you seen the horses fed?"

"No, upon my word," said Hurst, "I"----

"Well, I have then; but I wish you would just step across the yard, and

see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You

understand those things, I know, Hurst--the fellows won't humbug you

very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing

of the sort. Flora here knows more about a horse than he does."

Any compliment to Hurst's acuteness in the matter of horse-flesh was

sure to have its effect, and he walked off with an air of some

importance to discharge his commission.

"Now then," said Horace eagerly, "we have got rid of him for ten

minutes, which was all I wanted; if you please, Flora dear, we must have

your cleverness to help us in a little difficulty."

"Indeed!" said Miss Leicester, colouring a little, as her cousin, in his

eagerness, seized her hand in both of his--"what scrape have you got

into now, Horace, and how can I possibly help you?"

"Oh, I want you to hit upon some plan for keeping that fellow Hurst here

after we are gone."

"Upon my word!"

"Stay; you don't know what I mean. I'll tell you why--if he drives home

to Oxford, he'll infallibly upset us; and drive he must if he goes home

with us, because, in fact, the team is his, and I drove them all the way

here."

"Then why, in the multitude of absurdities (which you Oxonians

perpetrate)--I beg your pardon, Mr Hawthorne--but why need you have come

out in a tandem at all, with a man who can't drive?"

"Simply, Flora, because I had no other way of coming at all."

"It was very absurd in us, Miss Leicester, I allow," said I, "but you

know what an attraction a steeple chase is, to your cousin especially;

and after having made up his mind to come--altogether, you see, it would

have been a disappointment"--(to all parties, I had a mind to add, but I

thought the balance was on my side without it.)

"After all," said Horace, "I shouldn't care a straw to run the chance,

as far as I am concerned. I dare say the horses will go home straight

enough, if he'll only let them: or if he wouldn't, I shouldn't mind

knocking him off the box at once--by accident; but Frank here is rather

particular, and I promised him I would not let Hurst drive. I thought

once, if we had dined by ourselves, of persuading him he was drunk, and

sending him home in a fly; but I am afraid, as matters stand, that plea

is hardly practicable."

"Could I persuade him to let you or Mr Hawthorne drive, do you think?"

Horace looked at her as if he thought, as I dare say he did, that his

cousin Flora could, if she were so minded, persuade a man to do any

thing; so I was compelled, somewhat at the expense of my reputation for

gallantry, to assure them both, that if Ulysses of old, among his

various arts and accomplishments, had piqued himself upon his

tandem-driving, his vanity would have stopped his ears effectually, and

the Syren might have sung herself hoarse before he would have given up

the reins.

"I'll give the boots half-a-crown to steal his hat," said Horace, "and

start while he is looking for it."

"Stay," said his cousin; "I dare say it may be managed." But I thought

she looked disappointed. "Did you know we were all going to the

B----theatre to-night?"

"No! really! what fun?"

"No fun for you; for you must start early, as you said just now. The

owners of the horses here patronise a play, and they have made papa

promise to go, and so we must, I suppose, and"----

"Oh! we'll all go, of course," said Horace, decidedly.--"You'll stay and

go, won't you, Hawthorne?"

"You forget your supper party," said I.

"Oh! hang it, they'll take care of themselves, so long as the supper's

there; they wont miss me much."

"Didn't I hear something of your being confined to college after nine?"