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Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

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Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845

Author: Various


        
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  BLACKWOOD'S

  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.


  NO. CCCLII. FEBRUARY, 1845. VOL. LVII.




  CONTENTS.


  NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS,      133

  THE TOWER OF LONDON. BY THOMAS ROSCOE,         158

  POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. NO. III.,         165

  SPAIN AS IT IS,                                181

  THE SUPERFLUITIES OF LIFE,                     194

  THE OVERLAND PASSAGE,                          204

  MESMERISM,                                     219

  AESTHETICS OF DRESS. ABOUT A BONNET,           242

  GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES,                      251


  EDINBURGH
  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
  AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.
  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.




BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE


No. CCCLII. FEBRUARY, 1845. VOL. LVII.




NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

DRYDEN.


Poetry, according to Lord Bacon a Third Part of Learning, must be a
social interest of momentous power. That Wisest of Men--so our dear
friends may have heard--extols it above history and above philosophy, as
the more divine in its origin, the more immediately and intimately
salutary and sanative in its use. Are not Shakspeare and Milton two of
our greatest moral teachers? CRITICISM opens to us the poetry we
possess; and, like a magnanimous kingly protector, shelters and fosters
all its springing growths. What is criticism as a science? Essentially
this--FEELING KNOWN--that is, affections of the heart and imagination
become understood subject-matter to the self-conscious intelligence.
Must feeling perish because intelligence sounds its depths? Quite the
reverse. Greatest minds are those in which, in and out of poetry, the
understanding contemplates the will. Then first the soul has its proper
strength. Disorderly passions are then tamed, and become the massy
pillars of high-built virtue. Criticism? It is a shape of
self-intuition. Confession and penitence, in the church, are a moral and
a religious criticism. The imagination is less august and solemn, but of
the same character. The first age of the world lived by divine
instincts; the later must by reason. How, then, shall we possess the
poetry of our being, unless we guard and arm it? If it be a benign,
holy, potent faculty, nevertheless it cannot, the most delicate of all
our faculties, sustain itself in the strife of opinions raging and
thundering around. Then, if it should rightly hold dominion over us, let
legislative opinion acknowledge, establish, and fortify that impaled
territory. The temper of the times is in sundry respects favourable,
notwithstanding its too frequent possession by an incensed political
spirit. Has there not been for half a century a spontaneous, an ardent,
a loving return in literature, of our own and all countries, to the old
and great in the productions of the human mind--to nature, with all her
fountains? Does not the spirit of man, in the great civilized nations at
this day, travail with desire of knowing itself, its laws, its
conditions, its means, its powers, its hopes? It studies with irregular,
often blind and perverted, efforts; but still it studies--itself. And is
not criticism, when it speaks, much bolder, more glowing and generous,
ampler-spirited, more inspiring, and withal more enquiring and
philosophical? During the whole period we speak of, poetry and
criticism--in nature near akin--with occasional complaints and quarrels,
have flourished amicably together, side by side. Both have been strong,
healthy, and good. Prigs of both kinds--the pert and the pompous--will
keep prating about the shallowness and superficiality of periodical
criticism--deep enough to drown the whole tribe in its very fords. They
call for systems. Why will they not be contented with the system of the
universe?--of which they know not that periodical criticism is a
conspicuous part. Every other year the nations without telescopes see
the rising of some new, bright, particular star. Comets, with tails like
O'Connell, are so common as to lose attraction, and blaze by weekly into
indiscoverable realms. We have constructed an Orrery of Ebony, which we
mean to exhibit at the next great cattle-show, displaying, in their
luminous order, the orbs and orbits of all the heavenly bodies. In the
centre----but this is not the time for such high revelations. We have
now another purpose; and, leaving all those golden urns to yield light
at their leisure, we desire you to take a look along with us at the
choice critics of other days, waked by our potent voice from the
long-gathering dust. In our plainer style, we beg, ladies and gentlemen,
to draw your attention to a series of articles in _Blackwood_, of which
this is Alpha. Omega is intended for a Christmas present to your
great-grandchildren.

Ay, there were giants in those days, as well as in these--also much
dwarfs. But we shall not lose ourselves with you in the darkness of
antiquity--one longish stride backwards of some hundred and fifty years
or so, and then let us leisurely look about us for the Critics. Who
comes here? A grenadier--GLORIOUS JOHN. Him Scott, Hallam, Macaulay,
have pronounced, each in his own peculiar and admirable way, to have
been, in criticism, "a light to his people." Him Samuel Johnson called
"a man whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a
critic and a poet."

"Dryden," says the sage, in a splendid eulogium on his prose writings,
"may be properly considered as the father of English criticism--as the
writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of
composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without
rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled,
and never deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of
propriety had neglected to teach them." And he adds wisely--"To judge
rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and
examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his
means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at
another." Let us, then, examine some of Dryden's expositions of
principles; and first, those on which he defends Heroic Verse in Rhyme,
as the best language of the tragic drama.

This can be done effectually only by following him wherever he has
treated the subject, and by condensing all his opinions into one
consecutive argument.

His first play, (a comedy,) "The Wild Gallant," was brought on the stage
in February 1662-3, and with indifferent success, though he has told us
that it was more than once the divertisement of Charles II. by his own
command, and a favourite with "the Castlemain." "The Rival Ladies" (a
tragi-comedy) was acted and published in the year following, and the
serious scenes are executed in rhyme. Of its success we know nothing in
particular; but Sir Walter thinks that the flowing verse into which some
part of the dialogue is thrown, with the strong point and antithesis
which all along distinguished his style, especially his argumentative
poetry, tended to redeem the credit of the author of the "Wild Gallant."
Up to this time Dryden, now in his thirty-third year, had not written
much; but in his "Heroic Stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell,"
"Astrea Redux, or Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred
Majesty," and "A Panegyric on his Coronation," he had not only shown his
measureless superiority to the Sprats and Wallers--poetasters of the
same class after all, though Sprat was always but a small fish, while
Waller was long thought like a whale--but manifested a vigour of thought
and expression that gave assurance of a veritable poet. In those noble
compositions he exults in his conscious power of numerous verse; and,
like an eagle in the middle element, sweeps along majestically on easy
wings. In "The Rival Ladies," the rhymed dialogue is exceedingly
graceful, the blank verse somewhat cumbrous; and, in his dedication to
the Earl of Orrery, he justifies himself "for following the new way; I
mean, of writing scenes _in verse_." It may here, once for all, be
remarked, that in all his disquisitions, by "verse" he usually means
rhyme as opposed to blank verse. "To speak properly," he says, "it is
not so much a new way amongst us, as an old way revived; for many years
before Shakspeare's plays was the tragedy of 'Queen Gorboduc,' in
English verse, written by that famous Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of
Dorset." Dryden here shows how little conversant he then was with the
old English drama. For the tragedy of "Ferrex and Porrex" was first
surreptitiously published under the title of "Gorboduc," who is not
Queen, but King of England; and it is not written in rhyme, but,
excepting the choruses, in blank verse; while Sackville's part of the
play comprehends only the two last acts, of themselves sufficient to
place him in the highest order of Noble Authors. "But supposing," he
continues, "our countrymen had not received this writing till of late,
shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilized nations of
Europe? * * * All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen are
writ in rhyme. * * * Shakspeare (who, with some errors not to be avoided
in that age, _had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of
our nation_,) was the first who, to shun the pains of continual rhyming,
invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, but the French
more properly _prose mesurée_; into which the English tongue so
naturally glides, that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided."
Here again, it is hardly indeed worth while to remark, is another
mistake; Marlow and several other dramatists having used blank verse
(but how inferior to the divine man's!) before Shakspeare. Coleridge
somewhere quotes a verse or two forming itself in prose composition as a
rarity and a fault; but, though it had better perhaps be avoided, and
though its frequent recurrence would be offensive, yet, when words in
their natural order do form a verse, it might be difficult to give a
good reason why they may not be permitted to do so, more especially if
they are not felt to be a verse insulated among the circumfluent prose.
From the very best prose we could pick out thousands of single verses,
which are to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich
prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's, but from the
poorest, like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot
"but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so
easy"--that is, as blank verse--"into which the English tongue so
naturally glides," and should strive to attain it by inverting the order
of the words, to make the "blanks" sound more heroically--as, for
example, instead of "Sir, I ask your pardon," "Sir, I your pardon ask."
And adds--"I should judge him to have little command of English, when
the necessity of a rhyme should force often upon this rock; though
sometimes it cannot easily be avoided; _and, indeed, this is the only
inconvenience with which rhyme can be charged_." In this lively style
does he pursue his argument in favour of rhyme. For this it is which
makes its adversaries say _rhyme is not natural_! But the fault lies
with the poet who is not master of his art, and either makes a vicious
choice of words, or places them, for rhyme's sake, so unnaturally as no
man would in ordinary speech. But when it is so judiciously ordered that
the first word in the verse seems to beget the second, and that again
the next, till that becomes the last word in the line, which, in the
negligence of prose, would be so; it must then be granted, that rhyme
has all the advantages of prose--_besides its own_.

"Glorious John" (who must have been laughing in his sleeve) then
declares, that the "excellence and dignity of it were never fully known
till Mr Waller taught it;" that it was afterwards "followed in the epic
by Sir John Denham, in his 'Cooper's Hill,' a poem which your lordship
knows, for the majesty of the style, is, and ever will be, the exact
standard of good writing;" and that we are "acknowledging for the
noblest use of it to Sir William D'Avenant, who at once brought it upon
the stage, _and made it perfect in the Siege of Rhodes_!"

Having thus carried things all his own way, he triumphantly declares,
that the advantages which rhyme has over blank verse are so many, that
"it were lost time to name them." And then, with fresh vigour, he sets
himself to name some of the chief--and first, that one illustrated by
Sir Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesy," "the help it brings to
memory, which rhyme so knits up by the affinity of sound, that by
remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the
verses." Then, in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive
scenes fall very often) it has, he says, so particular a grace, and is
so aptly united to them, that the sudden smartness of the answer, and
the exactness of the rhyme, set off the beauty of each other.

But its greatest benefit of all, according to Dryden, is, that it bounds
and circumscribes the fancy. The great easiness of blank verse renders
the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might be
better omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words. But when the
difficulty of artificial rhyming is interposed; where the poet commonly
confines his verse to his couplet, and must continue that verse in such
words that the rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme,
the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which, seeing
so heavy a task imposed, is ready to cut off all unnecessary expenses.
And this furnishes a complete answer, he maintains, to the ordinary
objection, that rhyme is only an embroidery of verse, to make that which
is ordinary in itself pass for excellent with less examination. For that
which most regulates the fancy, and gives the judgment its busiest
employment, is like to bring forth the richest and clearest thoughts.
The poet examines that most which he produces with the greatest leisure,
and which he knows must pass the severest test of the audience, because
they are aptest to have it ever in the memory. In conclusion, he winds
up skilfully by applying all he has said to "a fit subject"--that is, an
Heroic Play. For neither must the argument alone, but the characters and
persons, be great and noble, otherwise rhymed verse would be out of
place, which, for the reasons assigned, is manifestly suited for the
utterance of lofty sentiments, and for occasions of dignity and
importance. Heroic Plays were then all the rage, and Dryden was
meditating to enter on that career which for many years occupied his
genius, not essentially dramatic, to the exclusion of other kinds of
poetry in which he afterwards excelled all competitors.

Sir Robert Howard's Heroic Play, the "Indian Queen," "part of which was
written by Dryden," and the whole revised and corrected no doubt,
especially in the article of versification, was acted in 1664 with great
applause. "It presented," says Sir Walter, "battles and sacrifices on
the stage, aërial demons singing in the air, and the god of dreams
ascending through a trap, the least of which has often saved a worse
tragedy." Evelyn, in his Memoirs, has recorded, that the scenes were the
richest ever seen in England, or perhaps elsewhere, upon a public stage.
Dryden, by its reception, was encouraged to engraft on it another drama
called the "Indian Emperor"--a continuation of the tale--which had the
most ample success, and, till a revolution in the public taste, retained
possession of the stage. Soon after its publication, Sir Robert Howard,
in a peevish Preface to some plays of his, chose to answer what Dryden
had said in behalf of verse in his Epistle Dedicatory to his "Rival
Ladies," and not only without any mention of his name, but without any
allusion to the "Indian Emperor," while he bestowed the most extravagant
eulogies on the heroic plays of my Lord of Orrery--"in whose verse the
greatness of the majesty seems unsullied with the cares, and the
inimitable fancy descends to us in such easy expressions, that they seem
as if neither had ever been added to the other, but both together
flowing from a height, like birds so high that use no balancing wings,
but only with an easy care preserve a steadiness in motion. But this
particular happiness among those multitudes which that excellent person
is an owner of, does not convince my reason but employ my wonder; yet I
am glad that such verse has been written for the stage, since it has so
happily exceeded those whom we seemed to imitate. But while I give these
arguments against verse, I may seem faulty that I have not only written
ill ones, but written any; but since it was the fashion, I was resolved,
as in all indifferent things, not to appear singular--the danger of the
vanity being greater than the error; and therefore I followed it as a
fashion, though very far off." Sir Robert appears to have been in the
sulks, for some cause not now known, with his great brother-in-law; and
was pleased to punish him by thus publicly pretending ignorance of his
existence as an heroic play-wright. Yet the "Annus Mirabilis" was about
this time dedicated to Sir Robert; and only about a year before, John
had had a helping hand with the "Indian Queen." My Lord of Orrery must
have been a proud man to have his gouty too so fervently kissed by the
jealous rivals. "The muses," Dryden had said in his dedication to that
nobleman, "have seldom employed your thoughts but when some violent fit
of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and, like the
priestess of Apollo, you never come to deliver your oracles but
unwillingly and in torments. So we are obliged to your lordship's misery
for our delight. You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish
triumph, where those who cut and wound their bodies, sing songs of
victory as they pass, and divert others with their own sufferings. Other
men endure their diseases--your lordship only can enjoy them." Dryden,
however, was not disposed to stomach Sir Robert's supercilious silence,
and took a noble revenge in his "Essay on Dramatic Poesy."

This celebrated Essay was first published at the close of 1668; and the
writing of it, Dryden tells us, in a dedication, many years afterwards,
to the Earl of Dorset, "served as an amusement to me in the country,
when the violence of the last plague had driven me from the town.
Seeing, then, our theatres shut up, I was engaged in these kind of
thoughts with the same delight with which men think upon their absent
mistresses." It is in the form of dialogue; under the feigned
appellations of Lisideius, Crites, Eugenius, and Neander, the speakers
are Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Robert Howard, Lord Buckhurst, and Dryden.
Nothing can exceed the grace with which the dialogue is conducted--the
choice of scene is most happy--and the description of it in the highest
degree striking and poetical.

     "It was that memorable day, in the first summer of the late war,
     when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty
     and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen, disputed the
     command of the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations,
     and the riches of the universe. While these vast floating bodies,
     on either side, moved against each other in parallel lines, and our
     countrymen, under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness, went
     breaking, little by little, into the line of the enemies, the noise
     of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city; so
     that all men being alarmed with it, and in a dreadful suspense of
     the event which they knew was then deciding, every one went
     following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town
     almost empty, some took towards the Park, some cross the river,
     some down it, all seeking the noise in the depth of silence.

     "Amongst the rest, it was the fortune of Eugenius, Crites,
     Lisideius, and Neander, to be in company together, three of them
     persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town,
     and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names, that they
     may not suffer by so ill a narration as I am going to make of their
     discourse.

     "Taking, then, a barge, which a servant of Lisideius had provided
     for them, they made haste to shoot the bridge, and left behind them
     that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what
     they desired; after which, having disengaged themselves from many
     vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames, and almost blocked up
     the passage towards Greenwich, they ordered the watermen to let
     fall their oars more gently; and then every one favouring his own
     curiosity with a strict silence, it was not long ere they perceived
     the air to break about them like the noise of distant thunder, or
     of swallows in a chimney--those little undulations of sound, though
     almost vanishing before they reached them, yet still seeming to
     retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the
     fleets. After they had attentively listened till such time as the
     sound, by little and little, went from them, Eugenius, lifting up
     his head, and taking notice of it, was the first who congratulated
     to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory; adding, that
     we had but this to desire in confirmation of it, that we might hear
     no more of that noise which was now leaving the English coast. When
     the rest had concurred in the same opinion, Crites, a person of
     sharp judgment, and somewhat too delicate a taste in wit, which the
     world hath mistaken in him for ill-nature, said, smiling to us,
     that if the concernment of this battle had not been so exceeding
     great, he could scarce have wished the victory at the price he knew
     he must pay for it, in being subject to the reading and hearing of
     so many ill verses as he was sure would be made on that subject;
     adding, that no argument could 'scape some of these eternal
     rhymers, who watch a battle with more diligence than the ravens and
     birds of prey, and the worst of them surest to be first in upon the
     quarry; while the better able, either out of modesty writ not at
     all, or set that due value upon their poems, as to let them be
     often desired and long expected. There are some of those
     impertinent people of whom you speak, answered Lisideius, who, to
     my knowledge, are already so provided either way, that they can
     produce not only a panegyric upon the victory, but, if need be, a
     funeral elegy upon the Duke, wherein, after they have crowned his
     valour with many laurels, they will at last deplore the odds under
     which he fell, concluding that his courage deserved a better
     destiny. All the company smiled at the conceit of Lisideius; but
     Crites, more eager than before, began to make particular exceptions
     against some writers, and said the public magistrates ought to send
     betimes to forbid them; and that it concerned the peace and quiet
     of all honest people that ill poets should be as well silenced as
     seditious preachers."

We may perhaps have occasion, by and by, to notice other important
topics spiritedly and eloquently discussed by these choice spirits in
the barge; meanwhile our business is with the argument, "rhyme _versus_
blank verse," between Crites and Neander. Crites maintains, sometimes in
the very words, Sir Robert's views in the Preface to his plays, in which
he had animadverted on Dryden's dedication to the "Rival Ladies," while
Neander combats them; and it may be observed, that the worthy Baronet is
made to speak forcibly and well--much better indeed, on the whole, than
he does in his own preface. From beginning to end there cannot be
imagined a more fair and gentlemanly dialogue. But first, we cannot
resist giving the very beautiful close.

     "Neander was pursuing this discussion so eagerly, that Eugenius had
     called to him twice or thrice ere he took notice that the barge
     stood still, and that they were at the foot of Somerset stairs,
     where they had appointed it to land. The company were all sorry to
     separate so soon, though a great part of the evening was already
     spent; and stood awhile looking back on the water, upon which the
     moonbeams played, and made it appear like floating quicksilver. At
     last they went up through a crowd of French people, who were
     merrily dancing in the open air, and nothing concerned for the
     noise of guns which had alarmed the town that afternoon. Walking
     three together to the Piazza, they parted there; Eugenius and
     Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made, Crites and
     Neander to their several lodgings."

But now to the argument. Crites, who is not more long-winded than may be
permitted to a polite proser, at least on the Thames of a summer
evening, somewhat condensed, reasoneth thus.

A play being the imitation of nature, dialogue is there presented as the
effect of sudden thought; and since no man without premeditation speaks
in rhyme, neither ought he to do it on the stage. The fancy may be
elevated to a higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse,
for men of excellent and quick parts may speak noble things extempore;
but surely not when fettered with rhyme, for what more unnatural than to
present the most free way of speaking in that which is the most
constrained? The Greek tragedians, therefore, wrote in iambics, the
kind of verse nearest to prose, which with us is blank verse.

The champions of rhyme say that the quickness of repartees receives an
ornament from it in argumentative scenes. But do men not only light on a
sudden upon the wit but the rhyme too? Then must they be born poets. If
they do not seem in the dialogue to make rhymes whether they will or no,
it will look rather like the design of two than the answer of one--as if
your actors hold intelligence together, and perform their tricks like
fortune-tellers by confederacy. The hand of art will be too visible.
Neither is it any answer to say that, however you manage it, 'tis still
known to be a play; for a play is still an imitation of nature, and one
can be deceived only with a probability of truth. The mind of man does
naturally tend to truth, and the nearer any thing comes to the imitation
of it, the more readily will the imagination believe.

Rhyme, it is said, circumscribes a quick and luxuriant fancy, which
would extend itself too far on every subject, did not the labour which
is required to well-turned and polished rhyme set bounds to it. But he
who wants judgment to confine his fancy in blank verse, may want it as
much in rhyme; and he who has it will avoid errors in both kinds. Latin
verse was as great a confinement to the imagination as rhyme; yet Ovid's
fancy was not limited by it, and Virgil needed it not to bind his. In
our own language, Ben Jonson confined himself to what ought to be said,
even in the liberty of blank verse; and Corneille, the most judicious of
the French poets, is still varying the same sense a hundred ways, and
dwelling eternally on the same subject, though confined by rhyme.

Such is the substance of Crites' answer to Dryden's Defence of Rhyme;
and Neander, before replying, begs it to be understood that he excludes
all comedy from his defence, and that he does not deny that blank verse
may be also used; but he asserts that, in Serious Plays, where the
subject and characters are great, and the plot unmixed with mirth, which
might allay or divert those concernments which are produced, rhyme is
there as natural, and more effective, than blank verse--for what other
conditions, he asks, are required to make rhyme natural in itself,
besides an election of apt words, and a right disposition of them? The
due choice of your words expresses your sense naturally, and the due
placing them adapts the rhyme to it. If both the words and rhyme be apt,
one verse cannot be made merely for sake of the other, as Crites had
urged; for supposing there be a dependence of sense betwixt the first
line and the second, then, in the natural position of the words, the
latter line must of necessity flow from the former; and if there be no
dependence, yet still the due ordering of words makes the last line as
natural in itself as the other. A good poet, he affirms, never
establishes the first line till he has sought out such a rhyme as may
fit the verse, already prepared to heighten the second. Many times the
close of the sense falls into the middle of the next verse, or further
off; and he may often avail himself of the same advantages in English
which Virgil had in Latin--he may break off in the hemistich, and begin
another line. The not observing these two last things, makes plays which
are writ in verse so tedious; for though most commonly the sense is to
be confined to the couplet, yet nothing that does run in the same
channel can please always. 'Tis like the murmuring of a stream, which,
not varying in the fall, causes at first attention, at last drowsiness.
Variety of cadence is the best rule, the greatest help to the actor and
refreshment of the audience.

If, then, verse may be made natural in itself, how becomes it unnatural
in a play? The stage, you say, is the representation of nature, and no
man in ordinary conversation speaks in rhyme. True; but neither does he
in blank verse. All the difference between them, when they are both
good, is the sound in one which the other wants; and if so, the
sweetness of it, and other advantages, handled in the Preface to the
"Rival Ladies," all stand good.

The dialogue of plays, you say, is presented as the effect of sudden
thought; but that no man speaks _extempore_ in rhyme, which cannot
therefore be proper in dramatic poesy, unless we could suppose all men
born so much more than poets. But it must not be forgotten that the
question regards the nature of a Serious Play, which is indeed the
representation of nature, but nature wrought up to an high pitch. The
plot, the characters, the wit, the passions, the descriptions, are all
exalted above the level of common converse, as high as the imagination
of the poet can carry them, with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy is
wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons; and to
portray these exactly, heroic rhyme is nearest nature, as being the
noblest kind of modern verse. Verse, it is true, is not the effect of
sudden thought; but this hinders not that sudden thought may be
represented in verse, since these thoughts are such as must be higher
than nature can raise them without premeditation, especially to a
continuance of them, even out of verse; and consequently you cannot
imagine them to have been sudden, either in the poet or the actors. A
play to be like nature is to be set above it; as statues which are
placed on high are made greater than the life, that they may descend to
the sight in their just proportion.

But rhyme, it has been argued, appears most unnatural in repartees or
short replies, when he who answers (it being presumed he knew not what
the other would say, yet) makes up that part of the verse which was left
incomplete, and supplies both the sound and the measure of it. This,
'tis said, looks rather like the confederacy of two than the answer of
one. But suppose the repartee were made in blank verse, is not the
measure as often supplied there as in rhyme?--the latter half of the
hemistich as commonly made up, or a second line subjoined, as a reply to
the former? But suppose it allowed to look like a confederacy. What more
beautiful than a well-contrived dance? You see there the united design
of many persons to make up one figure: after they have separated
themselves in many petty divisions, they rejoin one by one into a group:
the confederacy is plain among them, for chance could never produce any
thing so beautiful, and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your
sight. True, then, the hand of wit appears in repartee, as it must in
all kinds of verse. When, with the quiet and poignant brevity of it,
there mingles the cadency and sweetness of verse--"the soul of the
hearer has nothing more to desire."

Rhyme was said by its defender to be a help to the poet's judgment, by
putting bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. And it was answered by the
admirer of blank verse, that he who wants judgment in the liberty of his
poesy, may as well show the defect of it when he is confined to verse;
for he who has judgment will avoid errors, and he who has it not will
commit them in all kind of writing. Granted that he who has judgment so
profound, strong, and infallible that he needs no help to keep it always
poised and right, will commit no faults in rhyme or out of it. But where
is that judgment to be found? Take it, therefore, as it is found in the
best poets. Judgment is indeed the master workman in a play; but he
requires many subordinate hands, many tools to his assistance, and rhyme
is one of them--it is a rule and line by which he keeps his building
compact and even, which otherwise lawless imagination would raise
loosely and irregularly--it is, in short, a slow and painful but the
surest kind of working. Second thoughts being usually the best, as
receiving the maturest digestion from judgment, and the last and most
mature product of these thoughts being artful and laboured verse, it may
well be inferred that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy, and
that is what the argument opposed was to evince.

Sir Robert, though always made to speak well in the Dialogue, was yet
made to speak on the losing side; and in an address to the reader,
prefixed to "The Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma," a tragedy
published soon after, having, by way of retaliation, sharply criticised
some of Neander's dogmas about the drama, brought down on himself a cool
but cutting castigation--more severe than was merited by so small an
offence. His retort, in as far as the question of rhyme or blank verse
is concerned, was, however, to say the best of it, very feeble. "I
cannot, therefore, but beg leave of the reader to take a little notice
of the great pains the author of an Essay of Dramatic Poetry has taken
to prove rhyme as natural in a Serious Play, and more effectual, than
blank verse: Thus he states the question but pursues that which he calls
natural in a wrong application; for 'tis not the question, whether rhyme
or not rhyme be best or most natural for a grave or serious subject; but
what is nearest the nature of that which it presents. Now, after all the
endeavours of that ingenious person, a play will still be supposed to be
a composition of several persons speaking _extempore_, and it is as
certain, that good verses are the hardest things that can be imagined to
be so spoken; so that if any will be pleased to impose the rule of
measuring things to be the best by being nearest to nature, it is
proved, by consequence, that which is most remote from the thing
supposed, must needs be most improper; and therefore I may justly say,
that both I and the question were equally mistaken, for I do own, I had
rather read good than either blank verse or prose, and therefore the
author did himself injury, if he like verse so well in plays, to lay
down rules and raise arguments only unanswerable against himself."

We had rather that Dryden should answer this than we; for much of it
eludes our comprehension. In his "Defence of the Essay on Dramatic
Poesy" he replies thus:--"A play will still be supposed to be a
composition of several persons speaking extempore," quoth Sir Robert; "I
must move leave to dissent from his opinion," requoth John; "for if I am
not deceived, a play is supposed to be the work of the poet, imitating
or representing the conversation of several persons; and this I think to
be as clear as he thinks the contrary." There he has the baronet on the
hip; and gives him a throw. He then makes bold to prove this
paradox--that one great reason why prose is not to be used in Serious
Plays is, "because it is too near the nature of converse." Thus, in
"Bartholomew Fair," or the lowest kind of comedy, where he was not to go
out of prose, Ben does yet so raise his matter, in that prose, as to
render it delightful, which he could never have performed had he only
said or done those very things that are daily spoken or practised in the
fair; for then the fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an
enquiring person as the play, which we manifestly see it is not. "But he
hath made an excellent lazar of it. The copy is of price, though the
original be vile." Even in the lowest prose comedy, then, the matter and
the wording must be lifted out of nature--as _we_ should now say,
idealized. In "Catiline" and "Sejanus" again, where the argument is
great, Ben sometimes ascends into rhyme; and had his genius been proper
for rhyme--which Dryden more than once asserts it was not--"it is
probable he would have adorned those subjects with that kind of writing.
Thus prose," he finely says, "though the rightful prince, yet is by
common consent deposed as too weak for the government of Serious Plays;
and he failing, there now start up two competitors, one the nearer in
blood, which is blank verse; the other more fit for the ends of
government, which is rhyme. Blank verse is, indeed, the nearer prose,
but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I
will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him, but he is brave
and generous, and his dominion pleasing."

It was then, "for the reason of delight," that the ancients wrote all
their tragedies in verse--and not in prose; because it was most remote
from conversation. Rhyme had not then been invented. But again he
reminds his adversary, that it seems to have been adopted by the general
consent of poets in all modern languages--and that almost all their
Serious Plays are written in it, which, though it be no demonstration
that therefore they ought to be so, yet at least the practice first, and
the continuation of it, shows that it attained the end, which was to
please. It is thus that Dryden deals with Sir Robert, as if blank verse
in Serious Plays had not a leg to stand on. Yet throughout he preserves
a wonderful air of candour and moderation, as most becoming the
victorious champion of rhyme. As, for example, where he allows that,
whether it be natural or not in plays, is a problem not demonstrable on
either side. But in reference to Sir Robert's acknowledgment, that he
had rather read good verse than prose, he adds triumphantly, "that is
enough for me; for if all the enemies of verse will confess as much, I
shall not need to prove that it is natural. I am satisfied if it cause
delight; for delight is the chief, if not the only end of poesy;
instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poesy only
instructs as it delights. It is true, that to imitate well is a poet's
work; but to affect the soul, and to excite the passions, and, above
all, to move admiration, (which is the delight of Serious Plays,) a bare
imitation will not serve. The converse, therefore, which a poet is to
imitate, must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy;
and must be such as, strictly considered, could never be supposed spoken
by any without premeditation."

In his various argument in defence of the use of rhyme on the stage,
Dryden, we have seen, always speaks of its peculiar adaptation to
"Serious Plays," or "Heroic Plays." In an essay thereon, prefixed to the
"Conquest of Grenada," in the pride of success he says, "whether heroic
verse ought to be admitted into Serious Plays, is not now to be
disputed." And he again takes up the obstinate objection to rhyme, which
he had not yet, it seems, battered to death, that it is not so near
conversation as prose, and therefore not so natural. But it is very
clear to all who understand poetry, that Serious Plays ought not to
imitate conversation too nearly. If nothing were to be traced above that
level, the foundation of poetry would be destroyed. Once grant that
thoughts may be exalted, and that images and actions may be raised above
the life, and described in measure without rhyme, and that leads you
insensibly from your principles; admit some latitude, and having
forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse, where are you now? "You are
gone beyond it, and to continue where you are, is to lodge in the open
fields between two inns." You have lost that which you call natural, and
have not acquired the last perfection of art. It was only custom, he
says, which cozened us so long; we thought because Shakspeare and
Fletcher went no further, that there the pillars of poetry were to be
erected; that because they excellently described passion without rhyme,
therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. _"But time has since
convinced most men of that error._"

What, then, according to Dryden's idea of it, was a serious or heroic
play? An heroic play, he says, ought to be an imitation, in little, of
an heroic poem; and, consequently, Love and Valour ought to be the
subject of it. D'Avenant's astonishing "Siege of Rhodes"--formerly
declared to be the _beau-idéal_ of an heroic play--was after all, it
seems, wanting in fulness of plot, variety of character, and even beauty
of style. Above all, it was not sufficiently great and majestic. He knew
not, honest man, that, in a true heroic play, you ought to draw all
things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage, as that is
beyond the common words and actions of human life. The play that
imitates mere nature as she walks in this world, may be written in
suitable language; but, as in epic poetry all poets have agreed that we
shall behold the highest pattern of human life, so in the heroic play,
modelled by the rules of an heroic poem, we must be shown only
correspondent characters. Gods and spirits, too, are privileged to
appear on such a stage, and so are drums and trumpets. But Dryden
himself denies that he was the first to introduce representations of
battles on the English stage, Shakspeare having set him the example;
while Jonson, though he shows no battle, lets you hear in "Catiline,"
from behind the scenes, the shouts of fighting armies. Warlike
instruments, and some fighting on the stage, are indeed necessary to
produce the effects of a heroic play. They help the imagination to gain
absolute dominion over the mind of an audience.

Were we to believe Dryden, his heroic plays were dramatic imitations of
such epic poems as the Iliad and the Æneid. And he has the brazen-faced
assurance to say, that the first image he had of Almanzor, in the
"Conquest of Grenada," was from the Achilles of Homer! The next was
from Tasso's Rinaldo, and the third--_risum teneatis amici--from the
Artaban of Monsieur Calpranede_! Unquestionably our English heroic plays
were borrowed from the French--as these were the legitimate offspring of
the dramas of Calpranede and Scuderi. But Dryden's compositions are
unparalleled in any literature. Nature is systematically outraged in one
and all--from beginning to end. Never was such mouthing seen and heard
beneath moon and stars. Through the whole range of rant he rages like a
man inspired. He is the emperor of bombast. Yet these plays contain many
passages of powerful declamation--not a few of high eloquence; some that
in their argumentative amplitude, if they do not reach, border on the
sublime. Nor are their wanting outbreaks of genuine passion among the
utmost extravagances of false sentiment--when momentarily heroes and
heroines warm into men and women, and for a few sentences confabulate
like flesh and blood.

But it is with Dryden as a critic, not as a poet, that we have now to
do; and we have said these few words about his heroic plays only in
connexion with our account of his argument in support of his doctrine
with regard to heroic verse in rhyme. That blank verse is better adapted
than any other for the drama, has been settled by Shakspeare. But though
Dryden has driven his argument too far, till his doctrine, as he
promulgates it, becomes untenable, as little do we doubt that he has
made good this position, that there may be good plays in rhyme. His
heroic plays are bad, not because they are in rhyme, but because they
are absurd; the rhyme is their chief merit; 'tis not possible to dream
what they had been in blank verse. True, that "All for Love" and "Don
Sebastian" are in blank verse, and may be said, after a fashion, to be
fine plays. But they are constructed on rational principles, and in them
he was doing his best to write like Shakspeare. What reason is there for
believing that those plays, in many respects excellent, are the better
for not being in rhyme? None whatever. Rhyme, in our opinion, would have
given them both a superior charm. In his heroic plays, it often carries
us along with absurdities which we know not whether we should call tame
or wild; it gives an air of originality to trivial commonplaces; it
embellishes what is vigorous, and invigorates what is beautiful; and
among events and characters alike unnatural, its music sustains our
flagging interest, and enables us to read on. There can be no doubt,
that in representations on the stage, the same cause must have been most
effective on audiences accustomed to that kind of pleasure, and who
delighted in rhyme, to them at once a necessary and a luxury of life.
"Aurengzebe," the last of his rhyming plays, is, to our mind, little if
at all inferior to "All for Love," or "Don Sebastian;" and we know that
it was most successful on the stage.

Sir Walter says, "that during the space which occurred between the
writing of the 'Conquest of Grenada,' and 'Aurengzebe,' Dryden's
researches into the nature and causes of harmony of versification, led
him to conclude that the Drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters
of rhyme--and that the perusal of Shakspeare, on whom Dryden had now
turned his attention, led him to feel that something further might be
attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in
smooth verse, and that the scene ought to represent, not a fanciful set
of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairyland of the
poet's own creation, but human characters acting from the direct and
energetic influence of human passions, with whose emotions the audience
might sympathize, because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When
Dryden had once discovered that fear and pity were more likely to be
excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love, or the
dictates of fantastic honour, he must have found that rhyme sounded as
unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of
humanity, as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the
persons of the actors." All this is finely said; but does it not assume
the point in question? Dryden may have learned at last from the study of
Shakspeare, (in whom, however, he was well read many years before, as
witness his Essay on Dramatic Poesy,) that "something further might be
attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in
smooth verse." But we do not see the necessity of the inference, "that
rhyme sounded unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the
usual scale of humanity." Is rhyme self-evidently unnatural in the
expression, in verse, of strong and deep human passion? To that
question, put thus generally, the right answer is--NO. And is it, then,
necessarily unnatural in the drama?

Like all great powers, that of rhyme is a secret past finding out. In
itself a mere barbarous jingle, it yet gives perfection to speech. The
music of versification has endless varieties of measures, and rhyme
lends enchantment to them all. Not an affection, emotion, or passion of
the soul that may not be soothed by its syllablings, enkindled, or
raised to rapture. Pity and terror, joy and grief, love and devotion,
are all alike sensible of its influence; as the sweet similarities keep
echoing through some artful strain, that all the while is thought by
them who listen to come in simplicity from the unpremeditating heart.
Songs, hymns, elegies, epicedia, epithalamia--rhyme rules alike all the
shadowy tribes. The triumphant ode--the penitential psalm--wisdom's
moral lesson--the philosophic strain "that vindicates the ways of God to
man;" such is the range of rhyme, down all the depths of the pathetic,
up all the heights of the sublime. It is yet unlimited. Where shall we
find its bounds? Let us try.

In the Epos, the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own
personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his
auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She, the Muse, is
thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to
have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations,
they are accepted with undoubting faith. Since she speaks, or rather
sings, and the auditor only listens, the commonest and the most uncommon
events are, in one respect, upon an even footing. For the hearer must
picture them for himself. All are alike acted absent from the senses,
and before the imagination alone. Hence the Epic Poet has an
extraordinary facility afforded him for introducing into his work that
order of representation which is called the marvellous. For it is just
as easy to the hearer to set before his fancy a giant or a pigmy, as a
man; the one-eyed monster Polyphemus, as the beautiful, the graceful,
the swift, the strong, the sublime, the terrible Achilles. It is just as
easy for him to transport himself in fancy to the summit of Olympus, to
the palace of Jupiter, and to the Council or to the Banquet of the Gods,
or to the deep sea-caves where Thetis sits with her companion nymphs in
the hall of her father, the sea-god Nereus--as it is to remove himself
from the festal hall, where the poet is singing to him and to the other
guests, away to the camp of the Greeks, or to the court of Priam, or to
the bower of Andromache. He has no more difficulty to think of Minerva
darting, in the likeness of a hawk, from the snowy crest of Olympus to
the shore of the Hellespont--or to imagine the Thunderer in his
celestial car, lashing on his golden-maned steeds that pace the clouds
and the air, and waft him at the speed almost of a wish from the
unfolding portals of heaven to the summit of Mount Ida--than when he is
called upon, in the midst of some totally different scene, to figure to
himself a mortal hero, with waving crest, glittering in polished brass,
advancing erect in his war-chariot, hurling his lance that misses his
foe; and in return transpierced by that of his antagonist, falling
backwards to the ground in his resounding arms, and groaning out his
soul in the bloody dust. The truth is, that when you are called upon to
see and to hear _within the mind_, you rejoice in the capacities of
seeing and hearing that are thus unfolded in you, infinitely surpassing
similar capacities which you possess in your bodily eye and ear; and
therefore the stronger the demands that are made, the more readily even
do you comply with them; and in this way, in part, we must understand
the character that is impressed upon the _Iliad_, and the temper of mind
in the hearer answering to the character. It is one of infinite liberty.
The mind of the poet seems to be released from all bonds and from all
bounds; and the temper in the hearer is the same. Another character,
proper to Epic poetry, judging after its great model, the _Iliad_--is
_universality_. In the direct narrative, we have gods and men, heaven,
earth, sea, for seats of action--and, for a moment, a glimpse of hell.
Recollect whilst the conflagration of war is raging, how the poet has
found a moment, at the Scæan Gate, for the touching picture of an heroic
father, a noble mother, and a babe in arms, scared at his father's
dazzling and overshadowing helmet, who smiles, puts it from his head
upon the ground, and lifts up the boy, with a prayer to Jove. Sacrifices
to the gods, games, funeral rites, come in the course of the relation;
and because the scene of the poem is distracted with warfare, the great
poet has found, in the Vulcanian sculptures on the shield of Achilles,
place for images of peace--the labours of the husbandman; the mirthful
gathering in of the vintage with dance and song; the hymeneal pomp led
along the streets. And in the similes, what pictures from animal life
and manners! And then our enchantment is heightened by a prevailing
duplication. Throughout, or nearly so, the transactions that are
presented in the natural, are also presented in the supernatural. Thus
we have earthly councils, heavenly councils; warring men, warring gods;
kings of men, kings of gods; mortal husbands and wives, and sons and
daughters; immortal husbands and wives, and sons and daughters. Palaces
in heaven as on earth. The sea, in a manner, triplicates. Terrestrial
steeds--celestial steeds--marine steeds! The natural and supernatural
are united--when Achilles is half of mortal, half of immortal
derivation; when heavenly coursers are yoked in the chariots of men;
when Juno, for a moment, grants voice to the horse of Achilles; and the
horse, whom Achilles has unjustly reproved, answers prophesying the
death of the hero.

Why Homer made the _Iliad_ in hexameters, no man can tell; but having
done so, he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek--and
Latin--Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects, how different from
one another does that, and every other Epic poem, comprehend! Glory to
the hexameter! it suits them all. Now, in every Epic poem, and in few
more than in the _Iliad_, there are many dramatic scenes. But in the
Greek tragic drama, the dialogue is mainly in iambics; for this reason,
that iambics are naturally suited for the language of conversation. Be
it so. Yet here in the Epic, the dialogue is felt to be as natural in
hexameters as the heart of man can desire. Hear Agamemnon and Achilles.
Call to mind that colloquy in Pelides' tent.

Rhyme is unknown in Greek; and it is of rhyme that we are treating,
though you may not see our drift. From Homer, then, pass on to Ariosto
and Tasso. They, too, are Epic poets who have charmed the world. Their
poems may not have such a sweep as the _Iliad_, still their sweep is
great. Rich in rhyme is their language--rich the stanza they delighted
in--_ottava rima_, how rich the name! Is rhyme unnatural from the lips
of their peers and paladins? No--an inspired speech. Is hexameter blank
verse alone fit for the mouths of Greek heroes--eight-line stanzas of
oft-recurring rhymes for the mouths of Italian? Gentle shepherd, tell me
why.

But the "Paradise Lost" is in blank verse. It is. The fallen angels
speak not in rhyme--nor Eve nor Adam. So Milton willed. But Dante's
Purgatory, and Hell, and Heaven, are in rhyme--ay, and in difficult
rhyme, too--_terza rima_. Yet the damned speak it naturally--so do the
blessed. How dreadful from Ugolino, how beautiful from Beatrice!

But the drama--the drama--the drama--is your cry--what say we to the
drama? Listen, and you shall hear--

The Tragic Drama rose at Athens. The splendid and inexhaustible
mythology of gods and heroes, which had supplied the Epic Muse with the
materials of her magnificent relations, furnished the matter of a new
species of poetry. A palace--or a temple--or a cave by the wild
sea-shore, was painted; actors, representing by their attire, and their
majestic demeanour, heroes and heroines of the old departed world; nay,
upon high occasions, celestial gods and goddesses--trod the Stage and
spoke, in measured recitation, before assembled thousands of spectators,
seated in wonder and awe-stricken expectation. The change to the poet in
the manner of communicating with his hearers, alters the character of
the composition. The stage trodden by living feet, the scenery, voices
from human tongues varying with all the changes of emotion, impassioned
gestures, and events no longer spoken of, but transacted in presence,
before the eyes of the audience, are elements full of power, that claim
for tragedy and impose upon it a character of its own. The heart is more
interested, and the imagination less. Persons who accompany the whole
business that is to be done, with speaking--a poem consisting of
incessant dialogue--must disclose, with more precise and profounder
discovery, the minds represented as engaged. Motives are produced and
debated--the sudden turns of thought--the violent fluctuations of the
passions--the gentle variations of the feelings, appear. Time is given
for this internal display--and a species of poetry arises, distinguished
for the fulness and the decision with which the springs of action in the
human bosom are shown as breaking forth into, and determining, human
action. Meanwhile, the means that are thus afforded to the poet of a
more energetic representation, curb in him the flights of imagination.
To represent Neptune as at three strides from his seat on a mountain-top
descending the slope, that with all its woods quakes under the immortal
feet, and as reaching at the fourth step his wave-covered palace--this,
which was easy between the epic poet and his hearer, becomes out of
place and impossible for tragedy, simply because no actors and no stage
can represent a god so stepping and the hills so trembling. We know what
the pathetically sublime literature was which the drama gave to Athens;
how poets of profound and capacious spirits, who had looked into
themselves--and, so enlightened, had observed human life--were able, by
taking for their subjects the strongly portrayed characters and the
stern situations of the old Greek fable, to unite in their lofty and
impressive scenes the truth of nature and the tender interests which
endear our familiar homes, to the grandeur of heroic recollections, to
the awe of religion, and to the pomp, the magnificence, and the beauty
of a gorgeous yet intellectual art.

The Greek Tragic drama is from end to end in verse; and unavoidably,
because 'tis a part of a splendid religious celebration. It is involved
in the solemn pomp of a festival. Therefore it dons its own solemn
festival robes. The musical form is our key to the spirit. And in that
varying musical form there are three degrees--first, the Iambic, nearest
real speech--second, the Lyrical dialogue, farther off--third, the full
Chorus--utmost removal. Pray, do not talk to us of the naturalness of
the language. You never heard the like spoken in all your days. Natural
it was on that stage--and over the roofless theatre the tutelary deities
of Athens leant listening from the sky.

The model, or law, or self of the English drama, is _Shakspeare_. The
character of his drama is, the imaging of nature. A foremost
characteristic of nature is infinite and infinitely various production,
expressing or intimating an indefatigably and inexhaustibly active
spirit. But such a spirit of life, so acting and producing, appears to
us as a fountain, ever freshly flowing from the very hand of God. All
_that_ Shakspeare's drama images; and thus his art appears to us, as
always the highest art appears to us to be, a Divine thing. The musical
forms of his language should answer; and they do. They are; first,
prose; second, loose blank verse; third, tied blank verse; fourth,
rhyme.[1] This unbounded variety of the musical form really seems to
answer to the premised idea; seems really to clothe infinite and
infinitely varied intellectual production. Observe, we beseech you, what
varieties of music! The rhyme--ay, the rhyme--has a dozen at
least;--couplets--interlaced rhyme--single rhyme and
double--anapests--diverse lyrical measures. Observe, too, that speakers
of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet, Othello, Lear,
Coriolanus, Lance, use prose; Leontes and his little boy, Lear,
Coriolanus, and his domestics--to say nothing of the Steward--Macbeth
and his murderlings, use blank verse. Even Falstaff, now and then, a
verse. All, high and low, wise, merry, and sad, _rhyme_. Fools, witches,
fairies--we know not who else--use lyrical measures. Upon the whole, the
_uttermost_--that is, the musical form--answers herein to the
_innermost_ spirit. The spirit, endlessly-varying, creates
endlessly-varying musical form. The total character is accordingly
self-lawed, irrepressible creation.

Blank verse, then, is the predominating musical form of Shakspeare's
comedies, histories, and tragedies. To such a degree as that _all_ the
other forms often slip from one's recollection; and, to speak strictly,
blank verse must be called the rule; while all other forms are diverse
exceptions.

Only one comedy, the homely and English "Merry Wives of Windsor," has,
for its rule, prose. Even here the two true lovers hold their few short
colloquies in blank verse. And when the concluding fairy masque is
toward, blank verse rages. Page and Ford catch it. The merry wife, Mrs
Page, turns poetess to describe and project the superstitions to be
used. In the fairy-scene Sir John himself, Shakspeare's most dogged
observer of prose, is quelled by the spirit of the hour, and RHYMES. You
would think that the soul of Shakspeare has been held chained through
the play, and breaks loose for a moment ere ending it. All this being
said, it may be asked:--"Why is blank verse the ordinary musical form of
Shakspeare's Dramas?" And the obvious answer appears to be:--"Because it
has a _middle removedness_ or _estrangement_ from the ordinary speech of
men:--raising the language into imagination, and yet not out of
sympathy."

Shakspeare and Sophocles agree in truth and strength, in life, passion,
and imagination. They differ inwardly herein--Shakspeare founds in the
power of nature. Under his hand nature brings forth art. The Attic
tragedy begins from art. Its first condition is order, since it is part
of a religious ceremonial. It resorts to nature, to quicken, strengthen,
bear up art. Nature enters upon the Athenian stage, under a previous
recognition of art as dominant.

From all that has been now said--and it is more than we at first
intended to say--this conclusion follows, that there may be English
rhymed dramas. There are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian ones--and
fine ones too; and nothing in nature forbids that there may be
infinitely finer. That which universally affects off the stage, in all
kinds of poetry, would, in the work of a great master, affect on it. The
delusion of the theatre overcomes far greater difficulties carried with
us thither in the constitution of our habitual life, than the use of
rhyme by the visionary beings in the mimic scene. Beyond all doubt there
might arise in rhyme a most beautiful romantic drama. Unreal infused
into real, turns real at once into poetry. But this is of all degrees.
In the lowest prose of life there is an infusion which we overlook. We
should drop down dead without it. Let the unreal a little predominate;
and now we become sensible to its presence, and now we _call_ the
compound poetry. Let it be an affair of words, and we require verse as
the fitting form. Our stage and language have settled upon blank verse
as the proper metrical form for the proper measure of the unreal upon
the ordinary tragic stage. Rhymed verse has a more marked separation, or
is more distant from prose than blank verse is. Hence, you might suppose
that it will be fitted on the stage for a surcharge of the unreal.
Dryden's heroic tragedies are a proof, as far as one authority goes; and
even they had great power over audiences willing to be charmed, and
accustomed to what we should think a wide and continued departure from
nature. But imagine a romantic play, full of beautiful and tender
imagination, exquisitely written in rhyme, and modelled to some suitable
mould invented by a happy genius. Why, the "Gentle Shepherd," idealizing
modern Scottish pastoral life, was, in its humble way, an achievement;
and, within our memory, critics of the old school looked on it well
pleased when acted by lads and lasses of high degree, delighting to deem
themselves for an evening the simple dwellers in huts around Habbie's
How.

Let us now collect together all that Dryden has, in different moods of
his unsettled and unsteady mind, written about Shakspeare. In the
Dialogue formerly spoken of, comparisons are made between the modern
English and the modern French drama. "If you consider the plots," says
Neander, "our own are fuller of variety, if the writing, ours are more
quick and fuller of spirit." And he denies--like a bold man as he
was--that the English have in aught imitated or borrowed from the
French. He says our plots are weaved in English looms; we endeavour
therein to follow the variety and greatness of characters, which are
derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher; the copiousness and
well-knitting of the intrigues we have from Jonson. These two things he
dares affirm of the English drama, that with more variety of plot and
character, it has equal regularity; and that in most of the irregular
plays of Shakspeare and Fletcher, (for Ben Jonson's are for the most
part regular,) there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the
writing, than there is in any of the French. For a pattern of a perfect
play, he is proposing to examine "the Silent Woman" of Jonson, the most
careful and learned observer of the dramatic laws, when he is requested
by Eugenius to give in full Ben's character. He agrees to do so, but
says it will first be necessary to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and
Fletcher; "his rivals in poesy, and one of them, in my opinion, at least
his equal, perhaps his superior." Malone observes, that the caution
observed in this decision, proves the miserable taste of the age; and
Sir Walter, that Jonson, "by dint of learning and arrogance, fairly
bullied the age into receiving his own character of his merits, and that
he was not the only person of the name that has done so." This is coming
it rather too strong; yet to stand well with others there is nothing
like having a good opinion of one's-self, and proclaiming it with the
sound of a trumpet.

     "To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern
     and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive
     soul; all the images of nature were still present to him, and he
     drew them, not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any
     thing, you more than see it--you feel it too. Those who accuse him
     to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was
     naturally learned, he needed not the spectacles of books to read
     nature, he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is
     every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare
     him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and
     insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious
     swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great
     occasion is presented to him--no man can say he ever had a fit
     subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above
     the rest of poets,

        'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.'

     "The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there
     was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it
     much better done in Shakspeare: and, however others are now
     generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which
     had contemporaries with him, Fletcher, and Jonson, never equalled
     them to him in their esteem; and in the last king's court, when
     Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him
     the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above
     him.

     "Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the
     advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great
     natural gifts, improved by study. Beaumont, especially, being so
     accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted
     all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his
     judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What
     value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him, and
     therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that
     brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for
     before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as
     the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his
     Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's,
     especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they
     understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better,
     whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet
     before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson
     derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to
     describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but, above
     all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived
     to the highest perfection--what words have since been taken in are
     rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most
     pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs
     being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's;
     the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies,
     and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with
     all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little
     obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.

     "As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look
     upon him while he was himself, (for his last plays were but his
     dotages,) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which
     any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge; of himself as
     well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he
     was frugal of it in his works; you find little to retouch or alter.
     Wit and language, and humour also, in some measure, we had before
     him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He
     managed his strength to more advantage than any who succeeded him.
     You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or
     endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and
     saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came
     after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was
     his proper sphere, and in that he delighted most to represent
     mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both
     Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce
     a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times, whom he
     has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his
     robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by
     any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft
     in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of those
     writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies,
     and customs, that, if one of their poets had written either of his
     tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any
     fault in his language it was, that he weaved it too closely and
     laboriously, in his comedies especially. Perhaps, too, he did a
     little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words, which he
     translated, almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though
     he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough follow with
     the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must
     acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater
     wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets;
     Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire
     him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him, as he has given us
     the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down
     in his 'Discoveries,' we have as many and profitable rules for
     perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."

Samuel Johnson truly says of the Dialogue, "that it will not be easy to
find, in all the opulence of our language, a treatise so artfully
variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities, so
enlivened with imagery, and heightened with illustration." But we have
some difficulty in going along with him when he adds--"The account of
Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism,
exact without minuteness, and lofty without exaggeration. The praise
lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by
Demosthenes, fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a
character, so sublime in its comprehension, and so curious in its
limitations, that nothing can be added, diminished, or reformed; nor
can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare, in all their emulation of
reverence, boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased
his epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser
metal, of lower value, though of greater bulk." Since this great
critic's day--ay, with all his defects and perversities, Samuel was a
great critic--what a blaze of illumination has been brought to bear on
the genius of Shakspeare! Nevertheless, all honour to Glorious John!
Next comes the famous prologue:--

  As when a tree's cut down, the secret root
  Lives under ground, and thence new branches shoot;
  So, from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust, this day
  Springs up the buds, a new reviving play.
  Shakspeare, who (taught by none) did first impart
  To Fletcher wit, to labouring Jonson art;
  He, monarch-like, gave those, his subjects, law,
  And is that nature which they paint and draw.
  Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow,
  While Jonson crept and gather'd all below.
  This did his love, and this his mirth digest;
  One imitates him most, the other best.
  If they have since outwrit all other men,
  'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen.
  The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore,
  Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar.
  That innocence and beauty which did smile
  In Fletcher, grew on this enchanted isle.
  But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be--
  Within that circle none durst walk but he.
  I must confess 'twas bold, nor would you now
  That liberty to vulgar wits allow,
  Which works by magic supernatural things;
  But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's.
  Those legends from old priesthood were received,
  And he them writ as people them believed."

Strange that he who could write so nobly about Shakspeare, could commit
such an outrage on his divine genius as the play to which this is the
prologue--"The Tempest, or the Enchanted Island," a Comedy. It
was--Dryden tells us, and we must believe him--"originally Shakspeare's;
a poet for whom Sir William D'Avenant had particularly a high
veneration, and whom he first taught me to admire." So the two together,
to show their joint and judicious admiration, set about altering "The
Tempest." Fletcher had imitated it all in vain in his "Sea Voyage;" "the
storm, the desert island, and the woman who had never seen a man, are
all implicit testimonies of it." Few more delightful poets than
Fletcher; but in an evil hour, and deserted by his good genius, did he
then hoist his sail. But now cover your face with your hands--and then
shut your ears. "_Sir John Suckling, a professed admirer of our author,
has followed his footsteps_ in his '_Goblins_;' his Regmella being an
open imitation of Shakspeare's Miranda, and his spirits, _though
counterfeit_, yet are copied from Ariel." But Sir William D'Avenant, "as
he was a man of quick and piercing imagination, soon found that somewhat
might be added to the design of Shakspeare, of which neither Fletcher
nor Suckling had ever thought;" "and this excellent contrivance," he was
pleased, says Dryden with looks of liveliest gratitude, "to communicate
to me, and to desire my assistance in it." You probably knew what was
the "excellent contrivance" by which "the last hand"--the hand after
Suckling's--"was put to it;" so that thenceforth the "Tempest" was to be
let alone in its glory. "The counterpart to Shakspeare's plot, namely,
that of a man who had never seen a woman, that by this means these two
characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend
each other. _I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me,
that I never writ_ any thing with more delight." Sir Walter says it
seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for
scenical decoration, and that Dryden's share in the alteration was
probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. But
Dryden's own words contradict that supposition, and he further tells us
that his writings received D'Avenant's daily amendments; "and that is
the reason why it is not so faulty as the rest, which I have done
without the help and correction of so judicious a friend." They wrote
together at the same desk. And Dryden found D'Avenant of "so quick a
fancy, that nothing was proposed to him on which he would not suddenly
produce a thought, extremely pleasant and surprising. * * His
imagination was such as could not easily enter into any other man." It
had been easy enough, he adds, to have arrogated more to himself than
was his due in the writing of the play; but "besides the worthlessness
of the action, which deterred me from it, (there being nothing so base
as to rob the dead of his reputation,) I am satisfied I could never have
received so much honour in being thought the author of any poem, how
excellent soever--as I shall from the joining of my imperfections with
the merit and name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant." From all
this, and more of the same sort, 'tis plain that Dryden's share in the
composition was at least equal to--we should say, much greater
than--D'Avenant's.

You must not meddle with Miranda--for she is all our own. Yet we
cheerfully introduce you to her sister, Dorinda, and leave you all alone
by yourselves for an hour's flirtation. Hush! she is describing the
ship!

  "This floating Ram did bear his horns above,
  And tied with ribands, ruffling in the wind:
  Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile,
  And then the waves did heave him to the moon,
  He climbing to the top of all the billows;
  And then again he curtsied down so low
  I could not see him. Till at last, all sidelong
  With a great crack, his belly burst in pieces."

We had but once before handled this performance--some threescore and ten
years ago, when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in
our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old, we are,
perhaps, growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very
shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall--sisters originating at
Yarmouth--when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the
enchanted island, to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins.
True, they were famous--when not half seas over--for keeping a quiet
tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as
blazes, poor things, did they, by word or gesture, offend modesty's most
sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and
lascivious drabs, so dreadfully addicted to innuendoes and _doubles
entendres_ of the most alarming character, that, high as is our opinion
of the intrepidity of British seamen, we should not fear to back the two
at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing
sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself--and what a Caliban he
has become!--fights shy of the plenireps. Why--if it must be so--we give
our arm to his sister Sycorax, a "fearsome dear" no doubt, but what
better could one expect in a misbegotten monster? Oh, the confounding
mysteries of self-degrading genius!

In the preface to "An Evening's Love; or, the Mock Astrologer," we again
meet with some criticism on Shakspeare. We learn from it that Dryden had
formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the
plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage,
in order to show in what parts of "dramatic poesy we were excelled by
Ben Jonson--I mean, humour and contrivance of comedy; and _in what we
may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher_! namely, in
heroic plays." He had, moreover, proposed to treat "of the improvement
of our language since Fletcher's and Jonson's days, and, consequently,
of our refining the courtship, raillery, and conversation of plays." In
great attempts 'tis glorious even to fail; and assuredly had Dryden
essayed all this, his failure would have been complete. "I would," said
he, with his usual ignorance of his own and his age's worst sins and
defects, "have the characters well chosen, and kept distant from
interfering with each other, which is more than Fletcher _or Shakspeare
did_! * * I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age, as
the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors,
particularly Fletcher _and Shakspeare_." Refining the courtship,
raillery, and conversation of plays! We cannot, perhaps, truly say very
much in praise of those qualities in Ben's comedies, admirable as they
are, and superior, in all respects, a thousand times over to the best of
Dryden's and of his contemporaries'; but wilfully blind indeed, or
worse, must the man who could thus write have been to the matchless
grace, vivacity, delicacy, prodigality, and poetry of Shakspeare's
comedy, which as far transcends all the happiest creations of other
men's wit, as the pervading pathos and sublimity of his tragedy all
their happiest inspirations from the holy fountain of ennobling or
pitying tears.

In its day, the following Epilogue caused a great hubbub--

  "They, who have best succeeded on the stage,
  Have still conform'd their genius to their age.
  Thus Jonson did mechanic humours show,
  When men were dull, and conversation low.
  Then comedy was faultless, but 'twas coarse:
  Cobb's tankard was a jest, and Otter's horse.
  And, as their comedy, their love was mean;
  Except by chance, in some one labour'd scene,
  Which must atone for an ill-written play.
  They rose, but at their height could seldom stay:
  Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped;
  And they have kept it since by being dead.
  But, were they now to write, when critics weigh
  Each line, and every word, throughout a play,
  None of them, no not Jonson in his height,
  Could pass without allowing grains for weight.
  Think it not envy that these truths are told--
  Our poet's not malicious, though he's bold.
  'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown,
  But by their errors, to excuse his own.
  If love and honour now are higher raised,
  'Tis not the poet, but the age is praised.
  Wit's now arrived to a more high degree;
  Our native language more refined and free;
  Our ladies and our men now speak more wit,
  In conversation, than those poets writ.
  Then, one of these is, consequently, true;
  That what this poet writes comes short of you,
  And imitates you ill (which most he fears,)
  Or else his writing is not worse than theirs.
  Yet, though you judge (as sure the critics will)
  That some before him writ with greater skill,
  In this one praise he has their fame surpast,
  To please an age more gallant than the last."

Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by
persons ill qualified for censors--among others, by my Lord
Rochester--and was instantly ready with his defence--an "Essay on the
Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age." In it he repeats the senseless
assertion, "that the language, wit, and conversation of our age are
improved and refined above the last;" and he takes care to include among
the writers of the last age, _Shakspeare_, Fletcher, and Jonson. "In
what," he asks "does the refinement of a language principally consist?"

     "Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill
     sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper,
     more sounding, and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set
     apart, let any man who understands English, read diligently the
     works of _Shakspeare_ and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he
     will find in every page either some solecism of speech, or some
     notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced, when we are
     not forgiven. That their wit is great, and many times their
     expressions noble, envy itself cannot deny. But the times were
     ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then, if not in its
     infancy among us, at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity.
     Witness the lameness of their plots, many of which, especially
     those they writ first, (for even that age refined itself in some
     measure,) were made up of some ridiculous, incoherent story, which
     in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I
     need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' _nor the historical plays
     of Shakspeare_, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,'
     'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either
     founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the
     comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your
     concernment."

In all this this rash and wretched folly, Dryden shows his ignorance of
the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly
says, that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately
acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But
unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by
Sir Walter to have been "engaged in a closer and more critical
examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed
upon them;" and, from the perusal of Shakspeare, learning that the sole
staple of the drama was "human characters acting from the direct and
energetic influence of human passions." Yet Sir Walter was right; only
Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long, too
much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice, or oftener still to the
irregular influences of an impatient spirit, that could not brook any
opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not
many months after, in the Prologue to "Aurengzebe," are these noble
lines--

  "But spite of all his pride, a secret shame
  Invades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name;
  Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage,
  He, in a just despair, would quit the stage,
  And to an age less polish'd, more unskill'd,
  Does, with disdain, the foremost honours yield."

Less polished--more unskilled! Here, too, he is possessed with the same
foolish fancy as when he said, in the "Defence of the Epilogue,"--"But
these absurdities which those poets committed, may more properly be
called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education
and learning, (which was their particular unhappiness,) they wanted the
benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better, and therefore were
satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age
of poetry, have only this reason for it, that they were then content
with acorns before they knew the use of bread!" Then, after a somewhat
hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and
meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson, learned as he was, he asks,
"What correctness after this can be expected from _Shakspeare_ or
Fletcher, who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will
therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults, who,
had they lived now, had doubtless written more correctly." Since
Shakspeare's days, too, the English language had been refined, he says,
by receiving new words and phrases, and becoming the richer for them, as
it would be "by importation of bullion." It is admitted, however, that
Shakspeare, Fletcher, and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by their
_curiosa felicitas_ in the use of old words, to which it often gave a
rare meaning; but in that they were followed by "Sir John Suckling and
Mr Waller, _who refined upon them_!" But the greatest improvement and
refinement of all, "in this age," is said to have been in wit. Pure wit,
and without alloy, was the wit of the court of Charles the Second, and
of the Clubs. It shines like gold, yea much fine gold, in the works of
all the master play-wrights. Whereas, "Shakspeare, who many times has
written better than any poet in any language, is yet so far from writing
wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the
subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers of
ours, or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself
from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often does. He
is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and
you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other." That
the wit "of this age" is much more courtly, may, Dryden thinks, be
easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written
in the last. For example--who do you think? Why, MERCUTIO. "Shakspeare
showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he
was forced to kill him in the third act, to prevent being killed by him.
But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see
nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless, that he might have
lived to the end of the play and died in his bed, without offence to any
man." Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries;
but theirs, to speak out plainly, "was not that of gentlemen; there was
ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it, and which
confessed the conversation of the authors." "In this age," Dryden
declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from
conversation. "In that age" there was "less gallantry;" and "neither did
they (Shakspeare, Ben, and the rest) keep the best company of theirs."
But let the illustrious time-server speak at large.

     "Now, if they ask me, whence it is that our conversation is so much
     refined? I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the
     court; and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a
     law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an
     opportunity, which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes--I mean
     of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of
     Europe; and, thereby, of cultivating a spirit which was formed by
     nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous
     education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in
     barbarism as in rebellion; and, as the excellency of his nature
     forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the
     other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened
     the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural
     reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation,
     and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus,
     insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the
     English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained,
     melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by
     mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our
     neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if
     the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in
     three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or, if they
     should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the
     present age than of the past.

     "Let us, therefore, admire the beauties and the heights of
     Shakspeare, without falling after him into a carelessness, and, as
     I may call it, a lethargy of thought, for whole scenes together."

Shakspeare lethargic--comatose!

Sir Walter's admiration of "glorious John" was so much part of his very
nature, that he says, "it is a bold, perhaps presumptuous, task to
attempt to separate the true from the false criticism in the foregoing
essay: for who is qualified to be umpire betwixt Shakspeare and Dryden?"
None that ever breathed, better than his own great and good self. Yet
surely he was wrong in saying, that when Shakspeare wrote for the stage,
"wit was not required." Required or not, there it was in perfection, of
which Dryden, with all his endowments, had no idea. The question is not
as he puts it, were those "audiences incapable of receiving the delights
which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story,
the just dependence of its parts upon each other, the minute beauties of
language, and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?"
They may have been so, though we do not believe they were. But the
question is, are Shakspeare's Plays, beyond all that ever were written,
distinguished for those very excellences, and free from almost all those
very defects? That they are, few if any will now dare to deny. While
the best of Dryden's own Plays, and still more those of his forgotten
contemporaries, infinitely inferior to Shakspeare's in all those very
excellences, are choke-full of all manner of faults and flagrant sins
against decorum and congruity, in the eyes of mere taste; and with a few
exceptions, according to no rules can be rated high as works of art. The
truth of all this manifestly forced itself upon Sir Walter's seldom
erring judgment, as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate
note, in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense
of Shakspeare. And, as it now stands, though beautifully written, it
swarms with _non-sequiturs_, and perplexing half-truths.

In the Preface to "Troilus and Cressida," (1679,) Dryden again--and for
the last time--descants, in the same unsatisfactory strain, on
Shakspeare. Æschylus, he tells us, was held in the same veneration by
the Athenians of after ages as Shakspeare by his countrymen. But in the
age of that poet, the Greek tongue had arrived at its full perfection,
and they had among them an exact standard of writing and speaking;
whereas the English language, even in his (Dryden's) own age, was
wanting in the very foundation of certainty, "a perfect grammar:" so,
what must it have been in Shakspeare's time?

     "The tongue in general is so much refined since then, that many of
     his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of
     those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse;
     and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions,
     that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his
     latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy
     which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of
     his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us,
     that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself, the author
     seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus
     and Thersites are promising enough; but, as if he grew weary of his
     task, after an entrance or two, he lets them fall; and the latter
     part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and
     trumpets, excursions, and alarms. The persons who give name to the
     tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false, and is not punished.
     Yet, after all, because the play was Shakspeare's, and that there
     appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author, I
     undertook to remove that heap of rubbish, under which many
     excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly, I have
     remodelled the plot, threw out many unnecessary persons, improved
     those which were begun and left unfinished, as Hector, Troilus,
     Pandarus, and Thersites, and added that of Andromache. After that,
     I made, with no small trouble, an order and connexion of all the
     scenes, removing them from the place where they were inartificially
     set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken,
     because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in
     the court, yet I have so ordered them, that there is a coherence of
     them with one another, and a dependence on the main design: no
     leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents, and thence back again, in
     the same act, but a due proportion of time allowed for every
     motion. I need not say that I have refined the language, which
     before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge, that as I
     have often drawn his English nearer to our times, so I have
     sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently, the language
     is not altogether so pure as it is significant."

John Dryden and Samuel Johnson resemble one another very strongly in
their treatment of Shakspeare. Both of them seem at times to have
perfectly understood and felt his greatness, and both of them have
indited glorious things in its exaltation. Their praise is the utterance
of worship. You might believe them on their knees before an idol. But
theirs is a strange kind of reverence. It alternates with derision, and
is compatible with contempt. The god sinks into the man and the man is a
barbarian, babbling uncouth speech. "Coarse," "ungrammatical,"
"obscure," "affected," "unintelligible," "rusty!" The words distilled
from the lips of Cordelia, Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen!

Dryden informs us, that ages after the death of Æschylus, the Athenians
ordained an equal reward to the poets who could alter his plays to be
acted in the theatre, with those whose productions were wholly new, and
of their own. But the case, he laments, is not the same in England,
though the difficulties are greater. Æschylus wrote good Greek,
Shakspeare bad English; and to make it intelligible to a refined
audience was a hard job. Sorely "pestered with figurative expressions"
must have been the transmogrifier; and he had to look for wages, not to
a nation's gratitude, but a manager's greed. It was, indeed, a desperate
expedient for raising the funds. In his judgment the Play itself was but
a poor affair--an attempt by an apprentice, that, to be producible,
required the shaping of a master's hand. "Lamely left" it had to be set
on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With what _nonchalance_ does
he throw out "unnecessary persons," and improve "unfinished!" Hector,
Troilus, Pandarus, and Thersites, skilless Shakspeare had but
begun--artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida, who was false as she
was fair, yet left alive to deceive more men, became a paragon of truth,
chastity, and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention, far
beyond the Swan's, was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that
"the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida, of Troilus and Pandarus, of
Andromache with Hector and the Trojans, in the second act, are wholly
new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites, and that
of Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not weary my reader with the
scenes which are added of Pandarus and the lovers in the third, and
those of Thersites, which are wholly altered; but I cannot omit the last
scene in it, which is almost half the act, betwixt Troilus and Hector. I
have been so tedious in three acts, that I shall contract myself in the
two last. The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added, or
changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakspeare's, altered and
mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether
new; and the whole fifth act, both the plot and the writing, are my own
additions." O heavens! why was it not all "my own?"

No human being can have a right to use another in such a way as this.
Shakspeare's plays were then, and are now, as much his own property as
the property of the public--or rather, the public holds them in trust.
Dryden was a delinquent towards the dead. His crime was sacrilege. In
reading _his_ "Troilus and Cressida," you ever and anon fear you have
lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished
star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences
illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a
flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute--there hurdy-gurdy.

"For the play itself," said Dryden insolently, "the author seems to have
begun it with some fire;" and here it is continued with much smoke. "The
characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough;" here we
shudder at their performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been
blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites--Shakspeare's Thersites--for Homer's
was another Thersites quite--finely called by Coleridge, "the Caliban of
demagogic life"--loses all individuality, and is but a brutal buffoon
grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles, with its
wondrous wisdomful speech, is omitted! of itself, worth all the poetry
written between the Restoration and the Revolution.

Spirit of Glorious John! forgive, we beseech thee, truth-telling
Christopher--but angels and ministers of grace defend us! WHO ART THOU?
Shakspeare's ghost.


PROLOGUE, SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON, REPRESENTING THE GHOST OF SHAKSPEARE.

  "See, my loved Britons, see your Shakspeare rise,
  An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes!
  Unnamed, methinks, distinguish'd I had been
  From other shades, by this eternal green,
  About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive,
  And, with a touch, their wither'd bays revive.
  Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,
  I found not, but created first the stage;
  And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store,
  'Twas that my own abundance gave me more.
  On foreign trade I needed not rely,
  Like fruitful Britain, rich without supply.
  In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold
  Some master-strokes, so manly and so bold,
  That he who meant to alter, found 'em such,
  He shook, and thought it sacrilege to touch.
  Now, where are the successors to my name?
  What bring they to fill out a poet's fame?
  Weak, short-lived issues of a feeble age;
  Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage!
  For humour farce, for love they rhyme dispense,
  That tolls the knell for their departed sense.
  Dulness, that in a playhouse meets disgrace,
  Might meet with reverence in its proper place.
  The fulsome clench that nauseates the town,
  Would from a judge or alderman go down--
  Such virtue is there in a robe and gown!
  And that insipid stuff which here you hate,
  Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate:
  Dulness is decent in the church and state.
  But I forget that still 'tis understood
  Bad plays are best decried by showing good.
  Sit silent, then, that my pleased soul may see
  A judging audience once, and worthy me.
  My faithful scene from true records shall tell,
  How Trojan valour did the Greek excel;
  Your great forefathers shall their fame regain,
  And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain."

The best hand of any man that ever lived, at prologue and epilogue, was
Dryden. And here he showed himself to be the boldest too; and above fear
of ghosts. For though it was but a make-believe, it must have required
courage in Shakspeare's murderer to look on its mealy face. The ghost
speaks well--nobly--for six lines--though more like Dryden's than
Shakspeare's. _That_ was not his style when alive. The seventh line
would have choked him, had he been a mere light-and-shadow ghost. But in
death never would he thus have given the lie to his life. "Untaught," he
might have truly said--for he had no master. "Unpractised!" Nay,
"Troilus and Cressida" sprang from a brain that had teemed with many a
birth. "A barbarous age!" Read--"Great Eliza's golden time," when the
sun of England's genius was at meridian. "Sacrilege to touch!" Prologue
had not read Preface. Little did the "injured ghost" suspect the
spectacle that was to ensue. Much of what follows is, in worse degree,
Drydenish all over. Sweetest Shakspeare scoffed not so!

Suppose Shakspeare's ghost to have slipped quietly into the manager's
box to witness the performance. Poets after death do not lose all memory
of their own earthly visions. Thoughts of the fairest are with them in
Paradise. At first sight of Dorinda he would have bolted.

Dryden says, that "he knew not to distinguish the blown puffy style from
true sublimity." He would then have done so, and no mistake. "The fury
of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment, either
in coining of new words and phrases, or racking words which were in use,
into the violence of catachresis." His ears would have been jarred by
Prospero's "polite conversation," so unlike what he, who had not "kept
the best society," was confined to "in a barbarous age." Yet Dryden
confessed that he "understood the nature of the passions," and "made his
characters distinct;" so that "his failings were not so much in the
passions themselves, as in his manner of expression." Unfortunately, his
vocabulary was neither choice nor extensive, and he "often obscured his
meaning by his words, and sometimes made it unintelligible."

     "To speak justly of this whole matter: it is neither height of
     thought that is discommended, nor pathetic vehemence, nor any
     nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false
     measure of all these, something which is like them, and is not
     them; it is the Bristol stone, which appears like a diamond; it is
     an extravagant thought instead of a sublime one; it is a roaring
     madness instead of vehemence; a sound of words instead of sense. If
     Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions, and
     dressed in the most vulgar words, we should find the beauties of
     his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down, there
     would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot, but I fear
     (at least let me fear it for myself) that we, who ape his sounding
     words, have nothing of his thought, but are all outside; there is
     not so much as dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore, let not
     Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault, who succeed him
     in an age that is more refined, if we imitate him so ill that we
     copy his failings only, and make a virtue of that in our writings
     which in his was an imperfection.

     "For what remains, the excellency of that poet was, as I have said,
     in the more manly passions; Fletcher's in the softer. Shakspeare
     writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman:
     consequently the one described friendship better--the other love.
     Yet Shakspeare taught Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and
     Desdemona are originals. It is true, the scholar had the softer
     soul, but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue
     and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature, and
     is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship, but
     effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind, which
     comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher, a more confined
     and limited: for though he treated love in perfection, yet honour,
     ambition, revenge, and generally all the stronger passions, he
     either touched not, or not masterly. To conclude all he was a limb
     of Shakspeare."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The prose even is, in its music, rude in ordinary folks--or
_artful_, as in Hamlet's admiration of the world.]




THE TOWER OF LONDON.--A POEM.

BY THOMAS ROSCOE.


PART I.

    Proud Julian towers! ye whose grey turrets rise
  In hoary grandeur, mingling with the skies--
  Whose name--thought--image--every spot are rife
  With startling legends--themes of death in life!
  Recall the voices of wrong'd spirits fled--
  Echoes of life that long survived their dead;
  And let them tell the history of thy crimes,
  The present teach, and warn all future times.

    Time's veil withdrawn, what tragedies of woe
  Loom in the distance, fill the ghastly show!
  Oh, tell what hearts, torn from light's cheering ray,
  Within thy death-shades bled their lives away;
  What anxious hopes, strifes, agonies, and fears,
  In thy dread walls have linger'd years on years--
  Still mock'd the patient prisoner as he pray'd
  That death would shroud his woes--too long delay'd!

    Could the great Norman, with prophetic eye,
  Have scann'd the vista of futurity,
  And seen the cell-worn phantoms, one by one,
  Rise and descend--the father to the son--
  Whose purest blood, by treachery and guilt,
  On thy polluted scaffolds has been spilt,
  Methinks Ambition, with his subtle art,
  Had fired his hero to a nobler part.
  Yes! curst Ambition--spoiler of mankind--
  That with thy trophies lur'st the dazzled mind,
  That 'neath the gorgeous veil thy conquests weave,
  Would'st hide thy form, and Reason's eye deceive--
  By what strange spells still dost thou rule the mind
  That madly worships thee, or, tamely blind,
  Forbears to fathom thoughts, that at thy name
  Should kindle horror, and o'erwhelm with shame.

    Alas, that thus the human heart should pay
  Too willing homage to thy bloody sway;
  Should stoop submissive to a fiend sublime
  And venerate e'en the majesty of crime!
  How soon to those that tempt thee art thou near--
  To prompt, direct, and steel the heart to fear!
  Oh, not to such the voice of peace shall speak,
  Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek;
  Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye,
  But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh;
  Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be,
  Wealth but a thorn, and power a fruitless tree;
  And, as they near the tomb, with panting breast,
  Shrink from the dread unknown, yet hope no rest!

    Stern towers of strength! once bulwarks of the land,
  When feudal power bore sway with sovereign hand--
  Frown ye no more--the glory of the scene--
  Sad, silent witness of what crimes have been!
  Accurst the day when first our Norman foe
  Taught Albion's high-born Saxon sons to bow
  'Neath victor-pride and insolence--learn to feel
  What earth's dark woes--when abject vassals kneel;
  And worse the hour when his remorseless heir,
  Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer,
  With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might,
  Usurp'd man's fair domains and native right.

    Ye generous spirits that protect the brave,
  And watch the seaman o'er the crested wave,
  Cast round the fearless soul your glorious spell,
  That fired a Hampden and inspired a Tell--
  Why left ye Wallace, greatest of the free,
  His hills' proud champion--heart of liberty--
  Alone to cope with tyranny and hate,
  To sink at last in ignominious fate?
  Sad Scotia wept, and still on valour's shrine
  Our glistening tears, like pearly dewdrops, shine,
  To tell the world how Albyn's hero bled,
  And treasure still the memory of her dead.
  Whose prison annals speak of thrilling deeds,
  How truth is tortured and how genius bleeds?
  Whose eye dare trace them down the tragic stream--
  Mark what fresh phantoms in the distance gleam,
  As dark and darker o'er th' ensanguined page
  The ruthless deed pollutes each later age?
  See where the rose of Bolingbroke's rich bloom
  Fades on the bed of martyr'd Richard's tomb!
  Look where the spectre babes, still smiling fair,
  Spring from the couch of death to realms of air!
  Oh, thought accurst! that uncle, guardian, foe,
  Should join in one to strike the murderous blow.
  Ask we for tears from pity's sacred fount?
  "Forbear!" cries vengeance--"that is my account."
  There is a power--an eye whose light can span
  The dark-laid schemes of the vain tyrant, man.
  Lo! where it pierces through the shades of night,
  And all its hideous secrets start to light--
  In vain earth's puny conquerors heaven defy--
  Their kingdom's dust, and but one throne on high.
  See heaven's applause support the virtuous wrong'd,
  And 'midst his state the despot's fears prolong'd.
  Thou tyrant, yes! the declaration God
  Himself hath utter'd--"I'm the avenging rod!"
  Words wing'd with fate and fire! oh, not in vain
  Ye cleft the air, and swept Gomorrah's plain,
  When, dark idolatry unmask'd, she stood
  The mark of heaven--a fiery solitude!
  And still ye sped--still mark'd the varied page
  In every time--through each revolving age--
  Wherever man trampled his fellow man,
  Unscared by crimes, ye marr'd his ruthless plan--
  Still shall ye speed till time has pass'd away,
  And retribution reigns o'er earth's last day.

    Methinks I hear from each relentless stone
  The spirits of thy martyr'd victims groan,
  And eager whispers Echo round each cell
  The oft repeated legend, and re-dwell,
  With the same fondness that bespeaks delight
  In childhood's heart, when on some winter's night,
  As stormy winds low whistle through the vale,
  It shuddering lists the thrilling ghostly tale.
  It seems but now that blood was spilt, whose stain
  Proclaims the dastard soul--the bloody reign
  Of the Eighth Harry--vampire to his wife,
  Who traffick'd for his divorce with her life;
  So fresh, so moist, each ruddy drop appears
  Indelible through centuries of years!
  And who is this whose beauteous figure moves,
  Onward to meet the reeking form she loves;
  Whose noble mien--whose dignity of grace,
  Extort compassion from each gazing face?
  'Tis Dudley's bride! like some fair opening flower
  Torn from its stem--she meets fate's direst hour;
  Still unappall'd she views that bloody bier,
  Takes her last sad farewell without a tear.

    Each weeping muse hath told how Essex died,
  Favourite and victim, doom'd by female pride.
  How courtly Suffolk spent his latest day,
  And dying Raleigh penn'd his deathless lay.
  Here noble Strafford too severely taught
  How dearly royal confidence is bought;
  Received the warrant which demands his breath,
  And with a calm composure walk'd--to death.
  Nor 'mong the names that liberty holds dear,
  Shall the great Russell be forgotten here;
  His country's boast--each patriot's honest pride--
  For them he lived--for them he wept and died.

    And must we yet another page unfold,
  To glean fresh moral from the deeds of old?
  Ye busy spirits that pervade the air,
  And still with dark intents to earth repair;
  That goad the passions of the human breast,
  And bear the missives of Fate's stern behest--
  Say, stifle ye those thoughts that Heaven reveals--
  The tears of sympathy--the glow that steals
  O'er the young heart, or prompts soft pity's sigh--
  The prayer to snatch from harsh captivity
  The virtuous doom'd--teach but to praise--admire--
  Forbid to catch one spark of generous fire?
  The godlike wish of genius, man to bless,
  With rank and wealth still leaguing to oppress!
  Oh! when shall glory wreathe bright virtue's claim,
  And both to honour give a holier fame?

    Ye towers of death!--the noblest still your prey,
  Here spent in solitude their sunless day;
  In your wall'd graves a living doom they found;
  Broke o'er their night no ray, no gladd'ning sound.
  Yet the mind's splendour, with imprison'd wings,
  Rose high, and shone where the pure seraph sings;
  Where human thought taught conscience it was free,
  And burst the shackles of the Romish See.
  Oh, sweetest liberty! how dear to die!
  Bound by each sacred link;, each holy tie;
  To save unspotted from the spoiler's hand,
  Child of our heart--our own--our native land!
  And, oh! how dear life's latest drop to shed,
  To free the minds by superstition led;--
  To spread with holy earnest zeal abroad,
  That priceless gem--freedom to worship God!
  To keep unmingled with the world's vain lore,
  The faith that lightens every darken'd hour;
  That faith which can alone the sinner save,
  Prepare for death, and raise him from the grave;
  Show how, by yielding all, we surest prove,
  How humbly, deeply, truly, we can love;
  How much we prize that hope divinely given,
  The key--the seal--the passport into heaven.

PART II.

    What sudden blaze spreads through the crimson skies,
  And still in loftier volumes seems to rise?
  What meteor gleams, that from the fiery north,
  In savage grandeur fast are bursting forth,
  And light your very walls? Tell me, ye Towers--
  'Tis Smithfield revelling in his festal hours,
  Fed with your captives: shrieks that wildly pierce
  The roaring flames now undulating fierce,
  And gasping struggles, mingled groans, proclaim
  The power of torture o'er the writhing frame.
  Dark are your dens, and deep your secret cells,
  Whose silent gloom your tale of horrors tells.
  Saw ye how Cranmer dared--yet fear'd to die,
  Trembling 'mid hopes of immortality?
  He stood alone;--a brighter band appears
  Unaw'd by threats--impregnable to fears;
  Who suffer'd glad the sacred truth to spread,
  In mild obedience to its fountain-head.
  And when at length our popish James would see
  Cold superstition bend th' unhallow'd knee,
  The mystic tapers on our altars burn,
  And clouds of incense shade the fragrant urn,
  Shone England's prelates faithful to their call,
  In bonds of truth within thy massive wall.
  See grace divine--see Heaven in mercy pour,
  The balm of peace on Albion's boasted shore.

    Once wrought by captive fingers on thy wall,
  The hero's home and prison, grave and pall,
  What dark lines meet the startled stranger's gaze,
  Thoughts that ennoble--sentiments that raise
  The iron'd captive from captivity,
  How high above the power of tyranny!--
  And ye that wander by the evening tide,
  Where mountains swell or mossy streamlets glide;
  That on fresh hills can hail morn's orient ray,
  And chant with birds your grateful hymns to day;
  Or seek at noon, beneath some pleasant shade,
  To feel the sunbeams cool'd by leafy glade--
  That free as air, morn, noon, and eve, can roam,
  Where'er you list, and nature call your home;
  Learn from a hopeless prisoner's words and fate,
  "Virtue is valour--to be patient, great!"
  When traced on prison walls, such words as these
  Arrest the eye--appall e'en while they please--
  "Ah! hapless he who cannot bear the weight,
  With patient heart of a too partial fate,
  For adverse times and fortunes do not kill,
  But rash impatience of impending ill."

    Yes, still they speak to bosoms that are free
  Within the girdle of captivity;
  Of spirits dauntless, who could spurn the chain
  Of human punishment or mortal pain;
  That e'en amid these precincts of despair,
  Dared free themselves from thraldom's jealous care--
  Bound but by ties of faith and virtue, be
  Heirs of bright hopes and immortality.
  Oh! great mind's proud inscriptions! Who shall tell
  What hand engraved those lines within that cell?
  What heart yet steadfast while around him stood
  Phantoms of death to chill his curdling blood,
  Could battle with despair on reason's throne,
  And conquer where the fiend would reign alone?
  Ah! who can tell what sorrows pierced his breast--
  Ran through each vein, usurp'd his hours of rest?
  What struggle nerved his trembling hand to trace
  With moral courage words he dared to face
  With acts that ask'd new efforts while he wrote
  To man his soul and fix his every thought!
  Tremble, thou tyrant! proud ambition, blush!
  Hearts such as these thy power can never crush.
  Are they forgotten? no, the rugged stone,
  The lap of earth on which they rested lone;
  The very implements of torture there--
  The axe, the rack, the tyrant's jealous care;
  Each mark that meets successive ages' eyes
  Speaks, trumpet-tongued, a fame that never dies;
  And tells the thoughtful stranger, while the tear
  Unbidden starts, that freedom triumph'd here--
  Plumed her immortal wings for nobler flight,
  And bore her martyr'd brave to realms of light.
  Nor false their faith, nor like the fleeting wind,
  Their spirits fled! for theirs the unprison'd mind,
  No tyrant-chains, no bonds of earth and time,
  Could hold from truth and freedom's heights sublime--
  From that bright heaven of science, whence they shed
  Fresh glory o'er man's cause for which they bled.
  Ask what is left? their names forgotten now?
  Their birth, their fortune? not a trace to show
  Where sleeps their dust? Go, seek the blest abode,
  Their mind's pure joy, the bosom of their God!
  Then tell if in the dull cold prison's air,
  And wasted to a living shadow there,
  Earth scarcely knew them! if they were alone
  Where they were cast, to pine away unknown?
  Friends, had they none? nor beam'd a wish to share
  Love, friendship, and to breathe the common air.
  Lost, lost to all! like some lone desert flower,
  Felt they unseen Time's slow consuming power,
  And hail'd each parting day with fond delight,
  As the tired pilgrim greets the waning light?

    No! glad bright spirits, guardians of the mind,
  Were with them; as the demon-powers unbind
  And lash their furies on the conscious breast
  Of earth's fell tyrants who ne'er dream of rest.
  Theirs, too, joy's harbinger, the thoughts aye fed
  With brighter objects than of earth, that shed
  A light within their narrow home, and gave
  A triumph's lustre to the yawning grave.
  And in that hour when the proud heart's o'erthrown,
  And self all-powerless, self is truly known;
  When pride no more could darken the free mind,
  But all to God in firm faith was resign'd--
  Then drank their souls the stream of love divine,
  More richly flowing than the Eastern mine;
  Felt heaven expanding in the heart renew'd,
  And more than friends in desert solitude.

    Peace to thy martyrs! thou art frowning now
  With all the array of bold and martial show;
  The same thy battlements with trophies dress'd,
  Present defiance to the hostile breast;
  Around thy walls the soldier keeps his ward,
  Scared with war's sights no more thy peaceful guard.
  Long may ye stand, the voice of other years,
  And ope, in future times, no fount of tears
  And sorrows like the past, such as have brought
  A mournful gloom and shadow o'er the thought;
  And if the eye one pitying drop has shed,
  That drop is sacred, it embalms the dead.
  What though a thousand years have roll'd away
  Since thy dread walls entomb'd their noble prey;
  To us they speak, ask the warm tear to flow
  For ills now pressing and for present woe;
  Bid us to succour fellow-men who haste
  Along the thorny road of life, and taste
  The bitterness of poverty, endure
  All that befalls the too neglected poor;
  And with no friend, no bounty to assist,
  Steal from the world unwept for and unmiss'd.

    What though no dungeon wrap the wasting clay,
  Or from the eye exclude the cheering ray;
  What though no tortures visibly may tear
  The writhing limbs, and leave their signet there;
  Has not chill penury a poison'd dart,
  Inflicting deeper wounds upon the heart?
  All the decrees the sternest fate may bind,
  To weigh the courage or display the mind--
  All man could bear, with heart unflinching bear,
  Did not a dearer part his sufferings share--
  Worse than the captive's fate--wife, child, his all,
  The husband, and the father's name, appall
  His very soul, and bid him thrilling feel
  Distraction, as he makes the vain appeal.
  Upon his brow, where manhood's hand had seal'd
  Its perfect dignity, is now reveal'd
  A haggard wanness; from his livid eye
  The manly fire has faded; cold and dry,
  No more it glistens to the light. His thought,
  To the last pitch of frantic memory wrought,
  Turns to the partner of his heart and woe,
  Who, weigh'd with grief, no lesser love can know;
  Despair soon haunts the hope that fills his breast,
  And passion's flood in tumult is express'd.

    Amid the plains where ample plenty spreads
  Her copious stores and decks the yellow meads,
  The outcast turns a ghastly look to heaven;
  Oh, not for him is Nature's plenty given;
  Robb'd of the birthright nature freely gave,
  Save that last portion freely left--a grave!
  Oh, that another power would rule man's heart,
  Uncramp its free-born will in every part;
  Mercy more swift, justice more just, more slow,
  Grandeur less prone to deal the cruel blow,
  To bind men's hands with fetters than with alms,
  And spurn the only boon that soothes and calms.

    England! thou dearest child of liberty;
  Free as thine ocean home for ever be;
  Thy commerce thrive; may thy deserted poor
  No more the pangs of poverty endure.
  Then shall thy Towers, proud monument! display
  The thousand trophies of a happier day;
  And genial climes, from earth's remotest shore,
  Their richest tributes to her genius pour,
  With wealth from Ind, with treasures from the West,
  Thy homes, thy hamlets--cities still be blest;
  Till virtue, truth, and justice, shall combine,
  And heavenly hope o'er many a bosom shine;
  Auspicious days hail thy fair Sovereign's reign,
  And happy subjects throng their golden train.




POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE.

No. III.


Goethe, though fertile in poems of the amatory and contemplative class,
was somewhat chary of putting forth his strength in the ballad. We have
already selected almost every specimen of this most popular and
fascinating description of poetry which is at all worthy of his
genius;--at least all of them which we thought likely, after making
every allowance for variety of taste, to fulfil the main object of our
task--to please and not offend. It would have been quite easy for us to
spin out the series by translating the whole section of ballads which
relate to the loves of "the Maid of the Mill," the "Gipsy's Song"--which
somewhat unaccountably has found favour in the eyes of Mrs Austin--and a
few more ditties of a similar nature, all of which we bequeath, with our
best wishes, as a legacy to any intrepid _rédacteur_ who may wish to
follow in our footsteps. For ourselves, we shall rigidly adhere to the
rule with which we set out, and separate the wheat from the chaff,
according to the best of our ability.

The first specimen of our present selection is not properly German, nor
is it the unsuggested and original product of Goethe's muse. We believe
that it is an old ballad of Denmark; a country which possesses, next to
Scotland, the richest and most interesting store of ancient ballad
poetry in Europe. However, although originally Danish, it has received
some touches in passing through the alembic of translation, which may
warrant us in giving it a prominent place, and we are sure that no lover
of hoar tradition will blame us for its insertion.


THE WATER-MAN.

  "Oh, mother! rede me well, I pray;
  How shall I woo me yon winsome May?"

  She has built him a horse of the water clear,
  The saddle and bridle of sea-sand were.

  He has donn'd the garb of knight so gay,
  And to Mary's Kirk he has ridden away.

  He tied his steed to the chancel door,
  And he stepp'd round the Kirk three times and four.

  He has boune him into the Kirk, and all
  Drew near to gaze on him, great and small.

  The priest he was standing in the quire;--
  "What gay young gallant comes branking here?"

  The winsome maid, to herself said she;--
  "Oh, were that gay young gallant for me!"

  He stepp'd o'er one stool, he stepp'd o'er two;
  "Oh, maiden, plight me thy oath so true!"

  He stepp'd o'er three stools, he stepp'd o'er four;
  "Wilt be mine, sweet May, for evermore?"

  She gave him her hand of the drifted snow--
  "Here hast thou my troth, and with thee I'll go."

  They went from the Kirk with the bridal train,
  They danced in glee, and they danced full fain;

  They danced them down to the salt-sea strand,
  And they left them there with hand in hand.

  "Now wait thee, love, with my steed so free,
  And the bonniest bark I'll bring for thee."

  And when they pass'd to the white, white sand,
  The ships came sailing towards the land;

  But when they were out in the midst of the sound,
  Down went they all in the deep profound!

  Long, long on the shore, when the winds were high,
  They heard from the waters the maiden's cry.

  I rede ye, damsels, as best I can--
  Tread not the dance with the Water-Man!

This is strong, pure, rugged Norse, scarcely inferior, we think, in any
way, to the pitch of the old Scottish ballads.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before we forsake the North, let us try "The King in Thule." We are
unfortunate in having to follow in the wake of the hundred translators
of Faust, some of whom (we may instance Lord Francis Egerton) have
already rendered this ballad as perfectly as may be; nevertheless we
shall give it, as Shakspeare says, "with a difference."


THE KING IN THULE.

  There was a king in Thule,
    Was true till death I ween:
  A vase he had of the ruddy gold,
    The gift of his dying queen.

  He never pass'd it from him--
    At banquet 'twas his cup;
  And still his eyes were fill'd with tears
    Whene'er he took it up.

  So when his end drew nearer,
    He told his cities fair,
  And all his wealth, except that cup,
    He left unto his heir.

  Once more he sate at royal board,
    The knights around his knee,
  Within the palace of his sires,
    Hard by the roaring sea.

  Up rose the brave old monarch,
    And drank with feeble breath,
  Then threw the sacred goblet down
    Into the flood beneath.

  He watch'd its tip reel round and dip,
    Then settle in the main;
  His eyes grew dim as it went down--
    He never drank again.

       *       *       *       *       *

We shall now venture on an extravaganza which might have been well
illustrated by Hans Holbein. It is in the ultra-Germanic taste, such as
in our earlier days, whilst yet the Teutonic alphabet was a mystery, we
conceived to be the staple commodity of our neighbours. We shall never
quarrel with a wholesome spice of superstition; but, really, Hoffmann,
Apel, and their fantastic imitators, have done more to render their
national literature ridiculous, than the greatest poets to redeem it.
The following poem of Goethe is a strange piece of sarcasm directed
against that school, and is none the worse, perhaps, that it somewhat
out-herods Herod in its ghostly and grim solemnity. Like many other
satires, too, it verges closely upon the serious. We back it against any
production of M. G. Lewis.


THE DANCE OF DEATH.

  The warder look'd down at the depth of night
    On the graves where the dead were sleeping,
  And, clearly as day, was the pale moonlight
    O'er the quiet churchyard creeping.
  One after another the gravestones began
  To heave and to open, and woman and man
    Rose up in their ghastly apparel!

  Ho--ho for the dance!--and the phantoms outsprung
    In skeleton roundel advancing,
  The rich and the poor, and the old and the young,
    But the winding-sheets hinder'd their dancing.
  No shame had these revellers wasted and grim,
  So they shook off the cerements from body and limb,
    And scatter'd them over the hillocks.

  They crook'd their thighbones, and they shook their long shanks,
    And wild was their reeling and limber;
  And each bone as it crosses, it clinks and it clanks
    Like the clapping of timber on timber.
  The warder he laugh'd, though his laugh was not loud;
  And the Fiend whisper'd to him--"Go, steal me the shroud
    Of one of these skeleton dancers."

  He has done it! and backward with terrified glance
    To the sheltering door ran the warder;
  As calm as before look'd the moon on the dance,
    Which they footed in hideous order.
  But one and another seceding at last,
  Slipp'd on their white garments and onward they pass'd,
    And the deeps of the churchyard were quiet.

  Still, one of them stumbles and tumbles along,
    And taps at each tomb that it seizes;
  But 'tis none of its mates that has done it this wrong,
    For it scents its grave-clothes in the breezes.
  It shakes the tower gate, but _that_ drives it away,
  For 'twas nail'd o'er with crosses--a goodly array--
    And well was it so for the warder!

  It must have its shroud--it must have it betimes--
    The quaint Gothic carving it catches,
  And upwards from story to story it climbs
    And scrambles with leaps and with snatches.
  Now woe to the warder, poor sinner, betides!
  Like a long-legged spider the skeleton strides
    From buttress to buttress, still upward!

  The warder he shook, and the warder grew pale,
    And gladly the shroud would have yielded!
  The ghost had its clutch on the last iron rail
    Which the top of the watch-turret shielded.
  When the moon was obscured by the rush of a cloud,
  ONE! thunder'd the bell, and unswathed by a shroud,
    Down went the gaunt skeleton crashing!

       *       *       *       *       *

A very pleasant piece of poetry to translate at midnight, as we did it,
with merely the assistance of a dying candle!

After this feast of horrors, something more fanciful may not come amiss.
Let us pass to a competition of flowers in the golden, or--if you will
have it so--the iron age of chivalry. The meditations of a captive
knight have been a cherished theme for poets in all ages. Richard the
Lion-heart of England, and James I. of Scotland, have left us, in no
mean verse, the records of their own experience. We all remember how
nobly and how well Felicia Hemans portrayed the agony of the crusader as
he saw, from the window of his prison, the bright array of his Christian
comrades defiling through the pass below. We shall now take a similar
poem of Goethe, but one in a different vein:--


THE FAIREST FLOWER.

THE LAY OF THE CAPTIVE EARL.

  _The Earl._--I know a floweret passing fair,
    And for its loss I pain me;
  Fain would I hence to seek its lair,
    But for these bonds that chain me.
  My woes are aught but light to me,
  For when I roam'd unbound and free
    That flower was ever near me.

  Adown and round the castle's steep,
    I let my glances wander;
  But cannot from the dizzy keep,
    Descry it, there or yonder.
  Oh, he who'd bring it to my sight,
  Or were he knave or were he knight,
    Should be my friend for ever!

  _The Rose._--I blossom bright thy lattice near,
    And hear what thou hast spoken;
  'Tis me--brave, ill-starr'd cavalier--
    The Rose, thou wouldst betoken!
  Thy spirit spurns the base, the low,
  And 'tis the queen of flowers, I know,
    That in thy bosom reigneth.

  _The Earl._--All honour to thy purple cheer,
    From swathes of verdure blowing;
  And so art though to maidens dear,
    As gold or jewels glowing.
  Thy wreaths adorn the fairest face,
  Yet art thou not the flower, whose grace
    In solitude I cherish.

  _The Lily._--A haughty place usurps the rose,
    And haughtier still doth covet;
  But where the lily meekly blows,
    Some gentle eye will love it.
  The heart that beats in faithful breast,
  And spotless is as my white vest,
    Must value me the highest.

  _The Earl._--Spotless and true of heart am I,
    And free from sinful failing,
  Yet must I here a captive lie,
    In loneliness bewailing.
  I see an image fair in you
  Of many maidens pure and true,
    Yet know I something dearer.

  _The Carnation._--That may thy warder's garden show
    In me, the bright carnation,
  Else would the old man tend me so
    With loving adoration?
  In perfect round my petals meet,
  And lifelong are with scent replete,
    And with a burning colour.

  _The Earl._--None may the sweet carnation slight,
    It is the gardener's pleasure,
  Now he unfolds it to the light,
    Now shields from it his treasure.
  But no--the flower for which I pant,
  No rare, no brilliant charms can vaunt,
    'Tis ever meek and lowly.

  _The Violet._--Conceal'd and bending I retreat,
    Nor willingly had spoken,
  Yet that same silence, since 'tis meet,
    Shall now by me be broken.
  If I be that which fills thy thought
  Then must I grieve that I may not
    Waft every perfume to thee.

  _The Earl._--I love the violet, indeed,
    So modest in perfection,
  So gently sweet--yet more I need
    To soothe my heart's dejection.
  To thee alone the truth I'll speak,
  That not upon this rock so bleak
    Is to be found my darling.

  In yon far vale, earth's truest wife
    Sits where the brooks run playing,
  And still must wear a woeful life
    Till I with her am straying.
  When a blue floweret by that spot
  She plucks, and says--FORGET-ME-NOT,
    I feel it here in bondage.

  Yes, when two truly love, its might
    They own and feel in distance,
  So I, within this dungeon's night,
    Cling ever to existence.
  And when my heart is nigh distraught,
  If I but say--FORGET-ME-NOT,
    Hope burns again within me!

       *       *       *       *       *

Such is constant love--the light even of the dungeon! Nor, to the glory
of human nature be it said, is this a fiction. Witness Picciola--witness
those letters, perhaps the most touching that were ever penned, from
poor Camille Desmoulins to his wife, while waiting for the summons to
the guillotine--witness, above all, that fragment signed Quéret-Démery,
which could not get beyond the sullen walls of the Bastile until fifty
years after the agonizing request was preferred, when that
torture-chamber of cruelty was razed indignantly to the ground--"If, for
my consolation, Monseigneur would grant me, for the sake of God and the
most blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife! were it
only her name on a card to show that she is yet alive! It were the
sweetest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the
greatness of Monseigneur." Poetry has no such eloquence as this.

But we must not digress from our author. Here are a few lines of the
deepest feeling and truth, and most appropriate in the hours of
wretchedness--


SORROW WITHOUT CONSOLATION.

  O, wherefore shouldst thou try
  The tears of love to dry?
    Nay, let them flow!
  For didst thou only know,
    How barren and how dead
  Seems every thing below,
    To those who have not tears enough to shed,
  Thou'd'st rather bid them _weep_, and seek their comfort so.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following stanzas, though rather inferior in merit, may be taken as
a companion to the above. Their structure reminds us of Cowley.


COMFORT IN TEARS.

  How is it that thou art so sad
    When others are so gay?
  Thou hast been weeping--nay, thou hast!
    Thine eyes the truth betray.

  "And if I may not choose but weep,
    Is not my grief mine own?
  No heart was heavier yet for tears--
    O leave me, friend, alone!"

  Come, join this once the merry band,
    They call aloud for thee,
  And mourn no more for what is lost,
    But let the past go free.

  "O, little know ye in your mirth
    What wrings my heart so deep!
  I have not lost the idol yet
    For which I sigh and weep."

  Then rouse thee and take heart! thy blood
    Is young and full of fire;
  Youth should have hope and might to win,
    And wear its best desire.

  "O, never may I hope to gain
    What dwells from me so far;
  It stands as high, it looks as bright,
    As yonder burning star."

  Why, who would seek to woo the stars
    Down from their glorious sphere?
  Enough it is to worship them,
    When nights are calm and clear.

  "Oh, I look up and worship too--
    My star it shines by day--
  Then let me weep the livelong light
    The whilst it is away."

       *       *       *       *       *

A thread from the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of
Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet
unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him to his dying
day.


TO A GOLDEN HEART.

  Pledge of departed bliss,
  Once gentlest, holiest token!
  Art thou more faithful than thy mistress is,
  That ever I must wear thee,
  And on my bosom bear thee,
  Although the bond that knit her soul with mine is broken?
  Why shouldest thou prove stronger?
  Short are the days of love, and wouldst thou make them longer?

  Lili! in vain I shun thee!
  Thy spell is still upon me.
  In vain I wander through the distant forests strange,
  In vain I roam at will
  By foreign glade and hill,
  For, ah! where'er I range,
  Beside my heart, the heart of Lili nestles still!

  Like a bird that breaks its twine,
  Is this poor heart of mine:
  It fain into the summer bowers would fly,
  And yet it cannot be
  Again so wholly free;
  For always it must bear
  The token which is there,
  To mark it as a thrall of past captivity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, again, is Romeo before his escape. Poor Juliet! may we hope that
she still has, and may long possess, the power

  "To lure this tassel-gentle back again."

Death, indeed, were a gentler fate than desertion. Truth to say, Goethe
would have made but a sorry Romeo, for he wanted the great and leading
virtue of constancy; and yet who can tell what Romeo might have become,
after six months' exile in Mantua? Juliet, we know, had taken the place
of Rosaline. Might not some fairer and newer star have arisen to eclipse
the image of the other? We will not credit the heresy. Far better that
the curtain should fall upon the dying lovers, before one shadow of
doubt or suspicion of infidelity has arisen to perplex the clear bright
mirror of their souls!


WELCOME AND DEPARTURE.

  To horse!--away o'er hill and steep!
    Into the saddle blithe I sprung;
  The eve was cradling earth to sleep,
    And night upon the mountains hung.
  With robes of mist around him set,
    The oak like some huge giant stood,
  While, with its hundred eyes of jet,
    Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood.

  Amidst a bank of clouds, the moon
    A sad and troubled glimmer shed;
  The wind its chilly wings unclosed,
    And whistled wildly round my head.
  Night framed a thousand phantoms dire,
    Yet did I never droop nor start;
  Within my veins what living fire!
    What quenchless glow within my heart!

  We met; and from thy glance a tide
    Of stifling joy flow'd into me:
  My heart was wholly by thy side,
    My every breath was breathed for thee.
  A blush was there, as if thy cheek
    The gentlest hues of spring had caught,
  And smiles so kind for me!--Great powers!
    I hoped, yet I deserved them not!

  But morning came to end my bliss;
    A long, a sad farewell we took.
  What joy--what rapture in thy kiss,
    What depth of anguish in thy look!
  I left thee, dear! but after me
    Thine eyes through tears look'd from above;
  Yet to be loved--what ecstacy!
    What ecstacy, ye gods, to love!

Here are three small cabinet pictures of exquisite finish. We have
laboured hard to do justice to them, for the smallest gems are the most
difficult to copy; yet after all we have some doubts of our success.


EVENING.

  Peace breathes along the shade
  Of every hill,
  The tree-tops of the glade
  Are hush'd and still;
  All woodland murmurs cease,
  The birds to rest within the brake are gone.
  Be patient, weary heart--anon,
  Thou, too, shalt be at peace!

       *       *       *       *       *

A CALM AT SEA.

  Lies a calm along the deep,
    Like a mirror sleeps the ocean,
  And the anxious steersman sees
    Round him neither stir nor motion.

  Not a breath of wind is stirring,
    Dread the hush as of the grave--
  In the weary waste of waters
    Not the lifting of a wave.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE BREEZE.

  The mists they are scatter'd,
  The blue sky looks brightly,
  And Eolus looses
  The wearisome chain!
  The winds, how they whistle!
  The steersman is busy--
  Hillio-ho, hillio-ho!
  We dash through the billows--
  They flash far behind us--
  Land, land, boys, again!

       *       *       *       *       *

In one of Goethe's little operas, which are far less studied than they
deserve, although replete with grace, melody, and humour, we stumbled
upon a ballad which we at once recognised as an old acquaintance. Some
of our readers may happen to recollect the very witty and popular ditty
called "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship," a peculiar favourite amongst
the lower orders in Scotland, but not, so far as we knew, transplanted
from its native soil. Our surprise, therefore, was great when we
discovered Captain Wedderburn dressed out in the garb of a _Junker_ of
the middle ages, and "bonny Girzie Sinclair," the Laird of Roslin's
daughter, masquerading as a German _Fraülein_. The coincidence, if it be
not plagiary, is so curious, that we have translated the ballad with a
much freer hand than usual, confessing at the same time that the
advantage, in point of humour and gallantry, is clearly on the side of
the old Mid-Lothian ditty.


THE CAVALIER'S CHOICE.

  It was a gallant cavalier
    Of honour and renown,
  And all to seek a ladye-love
    He rode from town to town.
  Till at a widow-woman's door
    He drew the rein so free;
  For at her side the knight espied
    Her comely daughters three.

  Well might he gaze upon them,
    For they were fair and tall;
  Ye never have seen fairer
    In bower nor yet in hall.
  Small marvel if the gallant's heart
    Beat quicker in his breast:
  'Twas hard to choose, and hard to lose--
    How might he wale the best?

  "Now, maidens, pretty maidens mine,
    Who'll rede me riddles three?
  And she who answers best of all
    Shall be my own ladye!"
  I ween they blush'd as maidens do
    When such rare words they hear--
  "Now speak thy riddles, if thou wilt,
    Thou gay young Cavalier!"

  "What's longer than the longest path?
    First tell ye that to me;
  And tell me what is deeper
    Than is the deepest sea?
  And tell me what is louder
    Than is the loudest horn?
  And tell me what is sharper
    Than is the sharpest thorn?

  "And tell me what is greener
    Than greenest grass on hill?
  And tell me what is crueller
    Than a wicked woman's will?"
  The eldest and the second maid,
    They sat and thought awhile;
  But the youngest she look'd upward,
    And spoke with merry smile.

  "O, love is surely longer far
    Than the longest paths that be;
  And hell, they say, is deeper
    Than is the deepest sea;
  And thunder it is louder
    Than is the loudest horn;
  And hunger it is sharper
    Than is the sharpest thorn;
  I know a deadly poison
    More green than grass on hill;
  And the foul fiend he is crueller
    Than any woman's will!"
  Scarce had the maiden spoken
    When the youth was by her side,
  And, all for what she answer'd him,
    Has claim'd her as his bride.

  The eldest and the second maid,
    They ponder'd and were dumb;
  And there, perchance, are waiting yet
    Till another wooer come.
  Then, maidens, take this warning word,
    Be neither slow nor shy,
  And always, when a lover speaks,
    Look kindly and reply.

       *       *       *       *       *

The following beautiful verses are from Wilhelm Meister. We shall
venture to call them


RETRIBUTION.

  He that with tears did never eat his bread,
    He that hath never lain through night's long hours,
  Weeping in bitter anguish on his bed--
    He knows ye not, ye dread celestial powers.
  Ye lead us onwards into life. Ye leave
    The wretch to fall, then yield him up, in woe,
  Remorse, and pain, unceasingly to grieve;
    For every sin is punished here below.

       *       *       *       *       *

We shall close this number with a series of poems, in imitation, or
rather after the manner of the antique, all of which possess singular
beauty. No man understood or appreciated the exquisite delicacy of the
Greek Anthology better than our author; and although we may, in several
of the versions, have fallen short of the originals, we trust that
enough still remains to convince the reader that we have not exaggerated
their merit.


POEMS AFTER THE MANNER OF THE ANTIQUE.


THE HUSBANDMAN.

  Lightly doth the furrow fold the golden grain within its breast,
  Deeper shroud, old man, shall cover in thy limbs when laid at rest.
  Blithely plough and sow as blithely! Here are springs of mortal cheer,
  And when e'en the grave is closing, Hope is ever standing near.

       *       *       *       *       *

ANACREON'S GRAVE.

  Where the rose is fresh and blooming--where the vine and myrtle spring--
  Where the turtle-dove is cooing--where the gay cicalas sing--
  Whose may be the grave surrounded with such store of comely grace,
  Like a God-created garden? 'Tis Anacreon's resting-place.
  Spring and summer and the autumn pour'd their gifts around the bard,
  And, ere winter came to chill him, slept he safe beneath the sward.


THE BROTHERS.

  Slumber, Sleep--they were two brothers, servants to the Gods above;
  Kind Prometheus lured them downwards, ever fill'd with earthly love;
  But what Gods could bear so lightly, press'd too hard on men beneath;
  Slumber did his brother's duty--Sleep was deepen'd into Death.

       *       *       *       *       *

LOVE'S HOUR-GLASS.

  Eros! wherefore do I see thee, with the glass in either hand?
  Fickle God! with double measure wouldst thou count the shifting sand?
  "_This_ one flows for parted lovers--slowly drops each tiny bead--
  _That_ is for the days of dalliance, and it melts with golden speed."

       *       *       *       *       *

WARNING.

  Do not touch him--do not wake him! Fast asleep is Amor lying;
    Go--fulfil thy work appointed--do thy labour of the day.
  Thus the wise and careful mother uses every moment flying,
    Whilst her child is in the cradle--Slumbers pass too soon away.

       *       *       *       *       *

SOLITUDE.

  Grant, O ye healing Nymphs, that have your haunts
  By rock and stream and lonely forest glade,
  The boon which, in their bosoms' silent depths,
  Your votaries crave! Unto the sad of heart
  Give comfort--knowledge unto him that doubts--
  Possession to the lover, and its joy.
  For unto you the Gods have given, what they
  Denied to man--to aid and to console
  All those soe'er who put their trust in you.

       *       *       *       *       *

PERFECT BLISS.

  All the divine perfections, which, while ere
  Nature in thrift doled out 'mongst many a fair,
    She shower'd with open hand, thou peerless one, on thee!
  And she that was so wond'rously endow'd,
  To whom a throng of noble knees were bow'd,
    Gave all--Love's perfect gift--her glorious self, to me!


THE CHOSEN ROCK.

  Here, in the hush and stillness of mid-noon,
  The lover lay and thought upon his love;
  With blithesome voice he spoke to me: "Be thou
  My witness, stone!--Yet, therefore, vaunt thee not,
  For thou hast many partners of my joy--
  To every rock that crowns this grassy dell,
  And looks on me and my felicity;
  To every forest-stem that I embrace
  In my entrancement as I roam along,
  Stand thou for a memorial of my bliss!
  All mingle with my rapture, and to all
  I lift a consecrating cry of joy.
  Yet do I lend a voice to thee alone,
  As culls the Muse some favourite from the crowd,
  And, with a kiss, inspires for evermore."

       *       *       *       *       *

THE DEATH TRANCE.

  Weep, maiden, here by Cupid's grave! He fell,
  Some nothing kill'd him--what I cannot tell.
  But is he really dead?--I swear not that, in sooth;
  A trifle--nothing--oft revives the youth.

       *       *       *       *       *

PHILOMELA.

  Surely, surely, Amor nursed thee, songstress of the plaintive note,
    And, in fond and childish fancy, fed thee from his pointed dart.
  So, sweet Philomel, the poison sunk into thy guileless throat,
    Till, with all love's weight of passion, strike its notes to every heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

SACRED GROUND.

  A place to mark the Graces, when they come
  Down from Olympus, still and secretly,
  To join the Oreads in their festival,
  Beneath the light of the benignant moon.
  There lies the poet, watching them unseen,
  The whilst they chant the sweetest songs of heaven,
  Or, floating o'er the sward without a sound,
  Lead on the mystic wonder of the dance.
  All that is great in heaven, or fair on earth,
  Unveils its glories to the dreamer's eye,
  And all he tells the Muses. They again,
  Knowing that Gods are jealous of their own,
  Teach him, through all the passion of his verse,
  To utter these high secrets reverently.


THE PARK.

  How beautiful! A garden fair as heaven,
  Flowers of all hues, and smiling in the sun,
  Where all was waste and wilderness before.
  Well do ye imitate, ye gods of earth,
  The great Creator. Rock, and lake, and glade,
  Birds, fishes, and untamed beasts are here.
  Your work were all an Eden, but for this--
  Here is no man unconscious of a pang,
  No perfect Sabbath of unbroken rest.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE TEACHERS.

  What time Diogenes, unmoved and still,
  Lay in his tub, and bask'd him in the sun--
  What time Calanus clomb, with lightsome step
  And smiling cheek, up to his fiery tomb--
  What rare examples there for Philip's son
  To curb his overmastering lust of sway,
  But that the Lord of the majestic world
  Was all too great for lessons even like these!

       *       *       *       *       *

MARRIAGE UNEQUAL.

  Alas, that even in a heavenly marriage,
    The fairest lots should ne'er be reconciled!
  Psyche wax'd old, and prudent in her carriage,
    Whilst Cupid evermore remains the child.

       *       *       *       *       *

HOLY FAMILY.

  O child of beauty rare--
  O mother chaste and fair--
  How happy seem they both, so far beyond compare!
  She, in her infant blest,
  And he in conscious rest,
  Nestling within the soft warm cradle of her breast!
  What joy that sight might bear
  To him who sees them there,
  If, with a pure and guilt-untroubled eye,
  He looked upon the twain, like Joseph standing by.


EXCULPATION.

  Wilt thou dare to blame the woman for her seeming sudden changes,
    Swaying east and swaying westward, as the breezes shake the tree?
  Fool! thy selfish thought misguides thee--find the _man_ that never ranges;
    Woman wavers but to seek him--Is not then the fault in thee?

       *       *       *       *       *

THE MUSE'S MIRROR.

  To deck herself, the Muse, at early morn,
  Wander'd a-down a wimpling brook, to find
  Some glassy pool more quiet than the rest.
  On sped the stream, and ever as it ran
  It swept away her image, which did change
  With every bend and dimple of the wave.
  In wrath the Goddess turn'd her from the spot,
  Yet after her the brook, with taunting tongue,
  Did call--"'Tis plain thou wilt not see the truth
  All purely though my mirror shows it thee!"
  But she, meanwhile, stood with indifferent ear,
  By a far corner of the crystal lake,
  Delightedly surveying her fair form,
  And settling flowerets in her golden hair.

       *       *       *       *       *

PH[OE]BUS AND HERMES.

  The deep-brow'd lord of Delos once, and Maia's nimble-witted son,
  Contended eagerly by whom the prize of glory should be won;
  Hermes long'd to grasp the lyre,--the lyre Apollo hoped to gain,
  And both their hearts were full of hope, and yet the hopes of both were vain.

  For Ares, to decide the strife, between them rudely dash'd in ire,
  And waving high his falchion keen, he cleft in twain the golden lyre.
  Loud Hermes laugh'd maliciously, but at the direful deed did fall
  The deepest grief upon the heart of Phoebus and the Muses all.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NEW LOVE.

  Love, not the simple youth that whilome wound
  Himself about young Psyche's heart, look'd round
  Olympus with a cold and roving eye,
  That had accustom'd been to victory.
  It rested on a Goddess, noblest far
  Of all that noble throng--a glorious star--
  Venus Urania. And from that hour
  He loved her. Ah! to his resistless power
  Even she, the holy one, did yield at last,
  And in his daring arms he held her fast.
  A new and beauteous Love from that embrace
  Had birth; that to the mother owed his grace
  And purity of soul; whilst from his sire
  He borrow'd all his passion, all his fire.
  Him ever where the gracious Muses be
  Thou'lt surely find. Such sweet society
  Is his delight, and his sharp-pointed dart
  Doth rouse within men's breasts the love of ART.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE WREATHS.

  Our German Klopstock, if he had his will,
  Would bar us from the skirts of Pindus old.
  No more the classic laurel should be prized,
  But the rough leaflets of our native oak
  Alone should glisten in the poet's hair;
  Yet did himself, with spirit unreclaim'd
  From first allegiance to those early Gods,
  Lead up to Golgotha's most awful height
  With more than epic pomp the new Crusade.
  But let him range the bright angelic host
  On either hill--no matter. By his grave
  All gentle hearts should bow them down and weep.
  For where a hero and a saint have died,
  Or where a poet sang prophetical,
  Dying as greatly as they greatly lived,
  To give memorial to all after times,
  Of lofty worth and courage undismay'd;
  There, in mute reverence, all devoutly kneel,
  In homage of the thorn and laurel wreath,
  That were at once their glory and their pang!

       *       *       *       *       *

THE SWISS ALP.

  Yesterday thy head was brown, as are the flowing locks of love,
  In the bright blue sky I watch'd thee towering, giant-like, above.
  Now thy summit, white and hoary, glitters all with silver snow,
  Which the stormy night hath shaken from its robes upon thy brow;
  And I know that youth and age are bound with such mysterious meaning,
  As the days are link'd together, one short dream but intervening.




SPAIN AS IT IS.


There exists in this country a numerous class of persons who, if they
were given their choice of an overland journey to India and back, or a
ramble through Spain, occupying the same space of time, would prefer the
former, as likely to be less inconvenient, and decidedly far less
perilous. The wars and rumours of wars, revolutions, rebellions,
skirmishes, and _pronunciamentos_, that newspapers have recorded during
the last ten or twelve years, with an occasional particularly bloody and
barbarous execution by way of interlude, have certainly not been
calculated to reassure timid travellers; nor can we well wonder that, at
the mere mention of an excursion beyond the Pyrenees, tourists are
seized with a vertigo; and that visions, not only of rancid _gaspachos_
and vermin-haunted couches, but of chocolate-complexioned ruffians with
sugar-loaf hats, button-bedecked jackets, fierce mustaches, and lengthy
_escopetas_, peering out of the gloomy recesses of a cork wood, or from
among the silvery foliage of an olive grove, pass before the eyes of
their imagination. Dangers often appear greater at a distance than upon
close examination; many a phantom of ghastly aspect proves upon
inspection to be but a turnip-faced goblin after all: and we suspect
that if some of the timorous would adventure themselves upon Spanish
soil, they might find their precious persons far safer than they had
anticipated; and discover that they were in the hands neither of Caffres
nor cannibals, but amongst a courteous and generous people, who, if
occasionally a little too disposed to slit each other's weasands, on the
other hand are very rarely forgetful of the laws of hospitality, or of
the kindness and protection to which travellers in a foreign land have a
fair claim. We do not mean to recommend Spain as a desirable travelling
ground for those adventurous English dames, whom we have occasionally
met journeying by coachfuls in France, Germany, and other peaceable
lands, unsquired and unescorted save by their waiting-maids: to them the
encounter of _rateros_, _salteadores_, or other varieties of Spanish
banditti, might be in various respects disagreeable; but for men, who,
without leaving Europe, may wish to visit other scenes than those in
which every Cockney tourist has wandered, we know of few expeditions
more interesting than one into the interior of Spain. Fine scenery,
interesting monuments, associations historic, classic, and poetical,
and--which to our thinking is still preferable--a people who, in spite
of Gallo and Anglo manias, still possess great originality of character
and customs, are there to be met with. We cannot do better than refer
those persons who would like additional evidence on the subject, to the
volumes named at foot[2], in which they will see how a man possessed of
prudence, good sense, and good temper, may visit some of the wildest and
least frequented parts of the Peninsula, not only without injury or
annoyance, but with considerable pleasure and profit.

Captain Widdrington's journey to Spain, in the Spring of 1843, had, as
he tells us, a twofold object. He was desirous of observing the effects
of the numerous changes that have taken place in that country since the
death of Ferdinand; and he, at the same time, thought that his
assistance and previous knowledge of the country and people, would be
useful to a scientific friend, Dr Daubeny, who had been commissioned by
the Agricultural Society to examine the formation of phosphorite in
Estremadura. This mineral, it was imagined, might be advantageously
substituted for bones as manure.

The travellers had sketched out their route beforehand, and seem to have
adhered very closely to the plan they had laid down. Proceeding from
Bayonne to Madrid, after a short stay in that capital they struck into
Estremadura; visited the vein of phosphorite, and explored several
interesting districts, into which few travellers penetrate; thence to
the quicksilver mines at Almaden, and to various iron mines and
founderies, through Seville, Ronda, Malaga, and Granada, and back to
Madrid. Here Captain Widdrington separates from his companion, and
continues his peregrinations alone, through the kingdom of Leon, the
Asturias, and Galicia. In his narrative of this somewhat extensive
ramble, the gallant captain displays a very respectable degree of
knowledge on a considerable variety of subjects. Agriculture, geology,
natural history, the resources of Spain, and the best mode of applying
them, political intrigues and changes, the strange and apparently
inexplicable ups and downs of public men, are all touched upon in turn:
and if the earlier portion of his work is worthy of a member of the
learned societies to which he belongs, the latter part is no less
creditable to his habits of observation, and to the soundness of his
judgment.

One of the first things that appear to have struck Captain Widdrington
on arriving at Madrid, was the great activity in the building
department--an activity arising chiefly from the sequestration of the
church property. Convents were being pulled down, or at least altered so
as to render them suitable to other purposes. The ground on which one
had stood had been converted into a public walk--a chapel had been
replaced by a covered market. The large convent of St Thomas was the
headquarters of the national guard; while that of the Trinity had been
appropriated to the reception of works of art, the spoils of the other
convents. One had been sold to a private speculator, who let it out in
chambers; another was the refuge of military invalids; a third, the
convent of St Catalina--which was set fire to while the Duke of
Angouleme was attending, in the year 1823, a mass celebrated in honour
of his successful campaign--had been demolished, and a building for the
senate and deputies was erecting on its site. The names of many of the
streets had been altered to those of various heroes of Spanish liberty;
such as Porlier, Lacy, the Empecinado, and others. The street of the
Alcala had been rebaptized after the Duque de la Victoria; but no doubt,
as the Captain observes, by this time _on a changé tout cela_.

Of the Countess of Mina, who was then _aya_, or governess, to the queen,
some interesting details are given by Captain Widdrington, who had known
her and her husband when they were living in exile at Plymouth
subsequently to the affairs of 1823. Madame Mina appears to be a person
of very superior powers of mind, far better qualified to superintend the
female department of a Spanish queen's education, than the bigoted and
_afrancesada_ dowager-marchioness who preceded her in the office, and in
the selection of whom Maria Christina, with her usual selfishness, had
probably thought more of the political principles and opinions in which
she wished Isabella to be brought up, than of her daughter's future
welfare and happiness. The universal complaint of the _Spanish_ or
national party in the time of Christina was, that the queen's education
was neglected, or, it should rather be said, misconducted. The
queen-dowager's French tendencies were more than suspected. Of course,
when the popular party became in the ascendant, and Madame Mina received
the appointment, alike unsolicited and unexpected, of governess to the
queen, the _afrancesados_ set up a yell of horror and consternation. Her
husband's humble birth, her character, even her piety, and the mourning
habit she had worn ever since her husband's death, were made matters of
reproach to her. But though Mina had been born a tiller of the earth, he
had died a grandee of Spain, ennobled yet more by his patriotism and
great qualities than he could be by the tinsel of a title; the character
of the countess was that of a high-minded and virtuous woman; and as to
the accusation of being a _santarona_, or affectedly pious, it was no
less unjust than malicious. Here is Captain Widdrington's portrait of
her:--

     "Her stature is rather below the middle size, and her person stout,
     with an abundance of the blackest hair simply dressed; eyes very
     large, dark and fuller than usual, even in this classic land of
     them, and beaming with intelligence. Her forehead, and the lower
     part of her face, are remarkable for their development, and an
     admirable study for the phrenologists, who would pronounce them
     models, as indicating firmness of character. Her constant costume
     is the deepest black, which completely covers her person; and when
     she accepted her appointment, it was stipulated that she should
     never be required to lay it aside. The only ornament she wore was a
     simple but rather massive gold chain and cross, which had a
     singularly good effect in relieving the mass of deep black; and her
     manner, noble and serious, bordering on the severe at first sight,
     made her the _beau-idéal_ of a lady abbess."

During the celebrated attack upon the palace at Madrid, on the 7th of
October 1841, the countess gave proof of energy, courage, and presence
of mind, worthy of Mina's widow, and of one who supplied the place of
mother to the queen and infanta of Spain. A most interesting account of
the transactions of that eventful night is to be found in the third
chapter of Captain Widdrington's book; and as he is indebted for the
details to Madame Mina herself, it is no doubt the most accurate that
has appeared before the public. The _alabarderos_, or halberdiers, who
formed the body-guard of the queen, and whose post was in the avenues
leading to the royal apartments, consisted of two hundred sergeants,
picked from the whole army, and placed under the command of a colonel
and lieutenant-colonel, who had the rank of lieutenant and sergeant in
this sacred band. "By the regulations, one-third of this little corps
ought always to have been on duty; but, 'Cosas de Espana,' when the
disturbance broke out, there were only the two officers and seventeen
privates present! The rest were in the town, at supper, or various other
engagements." And on this handful of men devolved the duty of defending
the queen against the attack of as many companies as they numbered
muskets. The first alarm was given by _vivas_ and other noises in the
quadrangle of the palace. Colonel Dulce, the commander of the
halberdiers, descended the stairs to enquire the cause of the uproar,
and was met on the landing-place by a detachment of the Princesa
regiment marching up. He ordered them to halt; they opened fire in
reply. Colonel Dulce retreated to the guard-room, and the skirmish
began. A double flight of steps leads up from one of the principal
entrances of the palace to this guard-room, of which the door is of
considerable size, and covered by a _mampara_ or moveable stuffed
screen, similar to those used in churches abroad. The alabarderos left
the mampara in its place, opening the door no more than was absolutely
necessary to fire through. The assailants took up their station at the
bottom of the stairs, and blazed away, vigorously replied to from the
_sala de armas_. The sides of the doorway and the mampara were riddled,
but the assailants could only fire at a guess, their opponents being
completely concealed behind the screen; and on the other hand, a stone
balustrade at the top of the staircase between the two flights and the
angle of the floor, protected the insurgents. The latter, no doubt,
thought the whole guard was at its post, so steady and incessant was the
fire the alabarderos kept up. To approach the guard-room door was
certain death. General Concha, the same who the other night danced the
third quadrille with Isabel at a court ball, taking the _pas_ of the
Spanish grandees there assembled, was present at this treasonable
attack, at the head of the Princesa regiment, in plain clothes, but with
a drawn sword. About midnight (the firing had begun at half-past
seven--what were the authorities about all that time?) Diego Leon, the
scapegoat of the affair, made his appearance in his usual dashing
attire, a showy hussar uniform, braided, belted, and befrogged, and took
command of the proceedings. "According to his own account, he went to
the foot of the great staircase, and called to the alabarderos to
discontinue firing, lest they should alarm the queen!" but the noise of
the musketry was such, that he could not make himself heard, even with
the aid of a trumpet! Things, however, had not gone as the conspirators
wished; the gallant defence of the halbardiers, which they had not
reckoned upon, had caused them to lose much time, and after a short
consultation Concha and Leon took to flight. Concha hid himself under
the dry arch of a bridge, and afterwards took refuge at the Danish
embassy, where he passed a few days, and was then conveyed from another
embassy (French, of course) to headquarters at Paris. His caution in
wearing plain clothes saved him; while poor Leon, who thought, as he
afterwards said, that uniform was the proper costume for the occasion,
was taken at Colmenar, a few leagues from Madrid. Captain Widdrington
says, with much truth, that nothing could be more characteristic of the
two men than their different mode of acting in this trifling particular.

In the whole affair, Concha was the real director and manager, although
he sheltered himself behind the Count of Belascoain, who was put forward
as being a popular man, especially with the army. A braver or more
dashing cavalry officer than Leon could hardly be found, but he was of
the wrong stuff for a conspirator; his brains, as the Spaniards used to
say in rather a coarse proverb, were in the wrong place. But who that
had ever known or even seen him, could help regretting him, the
chivalrous, the high-hearted soldier, as much loved by his friends as he
was dreaded by his foes! His death was, doubtless, necessary as an
example, and should not be laid at the door of the Spanish government of
the day, but at that of the unprincipled and selfish faction that made a
tool of him. We are surprised to find, by Captain Widdrington's book,
that the petitions for his pardon, sent for signature to the national
guard of Madrid, were torn across and returned, the only name affixed to
them being that of Captain Guardia, who was then dying of wounds
received on the night of the insurrection. This speaks plainly as to the
general feeling in Madrid concerning the necessity of Leon's sentence
being put into execution, the national guard consisting of ten thousand
men, who represent every shade of political opinion.

While the fighting was going on, the Countess of Mina was doing her best
to shield the queen and her sister from the bullets of the insurgents,
who surrounded the royal apartments on three sides, and seem to have
been tolerably careless where they sent their lead. A shot came into the
room where the queen and her sister lay in bed. They were frightened,
and got up, and the attendants placed mattresses on the floor, in the
angle of an alcove, upon which the children lay down, and after some
time fell asleep. "The poor children were hungry, and asked for supper,
but there was nothing to give them; and from two in the afternoon of the
7th, till eight in the morning of the 8th, they did not taste food."
What a curious picture is this! Isabel de Borbon, queen of Spain and the
Indies, lying on a mattress upon the floor, terrified and a-hungered,
her governess, the widow of an ex-peasant and guerilla, keeping watch
beside her; nineteen intrepid soldiers defending her against troops sent
by her own mother to attack her palace and carry off herself!

Nor was this all. There was a private staircase leading from the
_entresol_ of the palace to the royal apartments; and although it had
been blocked up some time previously, the rebels were aware of its
existence, and were heard sawing at the barrier that closed it. "At this
time, the countess told me, she felt it her duty to rouse the queen and
prepare her for the worst, dictating to her the manner in which those
who should enter were to be addressed. The intention was, when they
should arrive at the inner door, to open it for fear of greater
violence, and admit them." If the conspirators could have got possession
of the queen's person, their plan was to wrap her in a cloak and mount
her behind one Fulgosio, who had been a colonel in the Carlist service,
but was included in the convention of Bergara. In this Tartar fashion
she was to have been carried off to the north of Spain.

Captain Widdrington evidently considers that this daring attempt on the
part of Christina's faction, as well as subsequent almost equally
strange events that have occurred in Spain, were in great measure
concerted and organized in France, the money proceeding partly from the
French treasury and partly from the coffers of Christina--coffers which
she had taken excellent care to fill during the period of her regency.
We have been rather amused at the diplomatic caution displayed by the
Captain when alluding to French intrigues. The French are always "our
neighbours," and Louis Philippe "a certain personage." His meaning,
however, is plain enough, and we fully agree with him, that French gold
and French counsels and influence have been at the bottom of most of the
disturbances that have taken place in Spain since the year 1840. But
enough, for the present, of plots and plotters; we shall perhaps find
more of them before we bid our author farewell in Vigo Bay. At present
we will follow him to the mines of Almaden, whither he betakes himself
after rambling through a considerable portion of Estremadura, one of the
most fertile, but neglected and thinly peopled, of Spanish provinces.
"Nothing," he says, "is wanted but a good government to assist the
bounteous hand with which the gifts of Providence have been showered on
this beautiful region." But, alas! instead of a thriving peasantry and
well-tilled soil, what does he meet with? _Despoblados_, or deserts,
with here and there some wretched villages, few and far between, and
from time to time a _cortijo_, or farm-house, with its cultivated patch;
but the general face of the country is _zaral_, ground covered with the
cistus, numerous varieties of that beautiful plant abounding in the
province. Captain Widdrington mentions four sorts he found in
flower--the gum cistus, a large white species without spots, a smaller
white, and the purple kind common in English gardens. Furze, then just
breaking into flower, and _retama_, or brooms, vary the collection;
interesting enough, no doubt, to the botanist, but a melancholy sight
when one reflects on the far better purpose to which this fertile
territory might be applied.

The roads through these districts are, as might be expected, execrable,
intersected by large open ditches to carry off the water; and
subsequently to each journey the diligence requires extensive repairs.
After Truxillo, however, public conveyances are no longer to be found,
and mules supply their place. On these the travellers reach Logrosan,
where is situate the vein of phosphorite that it was one of the objects
of their journey to visit. Four mule-loads of the mineral are taken as a
sample, and forwarded to Seville; and this done, an excursion is made to
the famous sanctuary of Guadelupe, in the sacristy at which place are
some of the finest paintings of Zurbaran. Not the least agreeable
portions of Captain Widdrington's book are his descriptions of the
churches and other edifices he visits, and of the pictures and carvings
they contain. Details of that kind are often apt to be dry and
wearisome; but these are done _con amore_, and varied by reflections and
criticisms, of which many are very interesting.

It had been a matter of deliberation with Captain Widdrington, upon
commencing his wanderings in the Peninsula, whether it were advisable to
be armed or not. The usual advice one gets upon this subject on entering
Spain, is to take neither arms nor money, or at least no more of the
latter than is absolutely necessary for the journey. By being unarmed,
the traveller is said to avoid risk of ill treatment at the hands of any
banditti he may chance to encounter, and who, if they see him with
weapons, are apt either to give him a volley from some ambuscade, or to
murder him for having thought of resistance. Captain Widdrington's
theory is different. He calculates that, as the majority of Spanish
robbers are _rateros_, or ignoble and dastardly cut-purses, who prowl
about by twos and threes, it is just as well to be provided with a few
fire-arms, the mere sight of which may make all the difference between
being robbed or not. He has accordingly armed himself, his companion,
and attendant with muskets; and between Logrosan and Almaden he finds
the advantage of having done so. While passing through a wild and broken
country, with no road, and scarcely any visible track, he perceives
three suspicious-looking customers descending through a field to the
further side of a thicket which he is about to traverse. He calls up his
companions, who are a little in the rear--they look to their arms, and
prepare for a brush. If the three men that have been seen are alone, the
travellers are a match for them; but they may be only the van or
rearguard of a larger force.

"After waiting a little time in silence, there was no appearance of
their emerging from the thicket, which was very close; and, as it would
have been imprudent to enter it, we called out to them to advance. They
were still invisible, but a voice answered--'Come on, we shall not
meddle with you.' We then rode through, and found them on the banks of a
pretty stream that flowed through the ravine, preparing to breakfast;
some beautiful bread, far better than any we could find in the villages,
being part of their intended repast. The man who had answered was
nearest to the ford, and the others a little higher up. Of course we
passed them at the 'recover,' and the simple salutation of _Vaya vd.
con Dios!_ was interchanged. Had we omitted exchanging this compliment,
even with the people we were now dealing with, we should have risked
being thought unpolished."

There is something characteristic and Gil Blas-like about this--Spanish
all over. Pass we on to the Almaden mines, of which there is a detailed
and very interesting account.

The quicksilver mines of Almaden are one of the sure cards of the
Spanish finance minister, and during the late war, especially, were
often a great resource to the poverty-stricken government. When other
sources of revenue failed, there were always to be found speculators
willing to treat for the quicksilver contract; and these mines, like the
tobacco and other monopolies, and the Havanna revenue, have helped many
a Spanish minister in his moment of greatest need. Of course, as the
usual demand was money down, the bargains were frequently made at great
disadvantage to the seller; and, once made, the consumer is entirely at
the mercy of the contractor--the Almaden mines producing a very large
portion of all the quicksilver known to exist in the world. Madame
Calderon de la Barca, in her _Life in Mexico_, alludes to this when
speaking of the unsuccessful mining speculations in that country, where
"heaps of silver lie abandoned, because the expense of acquiring
quicksilver renders it wholly unprofitable to extract it." That lady
further observes, that quicksilver has been paid for at one hundred and
fifty dollars per quintal in real cash, when the same quantity was given
at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars. Madame Calderon
is good authority; but we suspect that the cause of such a vast
difference between the price given and demanded by the contractor, must
have been the cash advances required by the Spanish government. "The
contract once made," says Captain Widdrington, "it is clear that,
excepting any qualms of conscience the lessee may be influenced by,
there is no check upon his cupidity. The temptation to charge exorbitant
prices is increased by the habit of the government requiring large sums
to be paid down. This practice, which was unavoidable during the civil
war, when it frequently produced the only ready money they could lay
their hands on, has continued, and must still do so, unless a financial
change take place."

Owing to this state of things, the profit to the government is only
about £75,000 per annum; although we are told that the price has been
raised, in a few years, from thirty-four to eighty-four dollars the
quintal--the price paid to the government we presume. The contract was
taken in 1843 by those great _accapareurs_ of good things, the
Rothschilds. Of course, as long as the civil war lasted, if the
contractors had to give money in advance, the risk they ran entitled
them to a large rate of profit. Had Don Carlos got the upper hand before
they had reimbursed themselves, their lien upon the mines would have
been so much waste paper; or even, without that, they might have been
exposed to considerable loss and delay had Messrs Cabrera, Balmaseda,
Palillos, or others of the same kidney, chosen to take a turn in that
direction, carry off the workmen, destroy or damage the works, or drown
out the mines. Gomez did pay Almaden a visit when he made the tour of
Spain with his expeditionary corps. He burned a part of the town and
plundered all he could; but did no harm to the mine--which was either
very foolish or very considerate of him.

There is room for much curious speculation as to the effect which the
increased and increasing value of quicksilver may have upon the monetary
system of Europe, especially in France and other countries where silver
is the legal currency, and gold very little used on account of the
premium on it. It has been seen above, that, in Mexico, silver is not
worth refining, owing to the dearness of the mineral required for the
purpose. Unless something be discovered as a substitute for quicksilver,
the same result will, in all probability, ensue in other mining
districts; and the natural consequence will be the diminished use of
silver as a circulating medium, and the increased employment of gold,
the more so as the supply of the latter metal has of late years been
greatly augmented--a great deal now coming from Asiatic Russia--while
its wear and tear are very small. This change would not arise from a
scarcity of quicksilver, the quantity and quality of which, at Almaden
at least, improve as the miners get deeper into the vein; and, moreover,
the portion extracted is limited to 20,000 quintals, or weights of 105
pounds English. "All the works are executed in a truly royal manner; and
so capacious and enlarged are the views carried out in the management,
that they only take away about one-half of the mineral, leaving the
other as a legacy to the future possessors of it, and to provide a
supply in case of unforeseen accidents in the workings." There are other
uses besides the refining of silver to which quicksilver is applied; and
should the contractors continue to raise the price of the latter, the
consequence must necessarily be an increase in the value of the former,
and a diminution in its consumption.

There are five thousand men employed at the Almaden establishment, and
most of those who work in the mines suffer, as may be supposed, in their
health, from the unwholesome exhalations. In the summer, when they are
most liable to be affected in that way, work is suspended, the labourers
retire to their respective provinces to recruit, and generally return in
the autumn, restored by their native air. Temperance, cleanliness, and a
milk-diet appear to be the best preservatives from the pernicious
effects of the mercury-infected atmosphere.

Captain Widdrington does not visit Catalonia, which we regret; for we
should like to have had the result of his observations on that turbulent
and troublesome province, to which he once or twice alludes. It must
truly be a difficult thing to legislate for a country split into so many
conflicting interests--fancied interests many of them--as Spain is. The
Catalonians, for instance, have got a notion that they are
cotton-manufacturers--a notion which their northern neighbours do all in
their power to nourish and encourage. Of course, the French would be
much annoyed to see Spanish ports opened to cotton goods at a reasonable
duty, until such time (if it ever arrives) as they can compete
successfully with English manufacturers. It suits their book much better
to have a prohibition, or what amounts to such, imposed on all foreign
cottons. The Pyrenees are high, but it is a long line of frontier from
Port Vendres to Bayonne, and the deuce is in it if they cannot manage to
smuggle more French calicoes and _percales_, and suchlike commodities
into Spain, than would ever be taken by the Spaniards were those
articles admitted at a reasonable duty, which would put a stop to
smuggling by rendering it unprofitable. At present there is a regular
tariff of smugglers' charges for passing goods, so much per cent on the
value, according to the bulk and nature of the articles; and the agents
of this traffic abound in Bayonne, Oleron, Perpignan, and all the
frontier towns. The idea prevailing in Spain, that Espartero intended
entering into a treaty of commerce with England, made him enemies of the
Catalonians, and indeed of the majority of the mercantile classes, most
of the members of which are more or less mad about the importance of
Spanish manufactures, or, at any rate, they seem to be nearly unanimous
in their wish to prohibit foreign goods. It is impossible to persuade
them, so pigheaded are they, that it would be better to admit foreign
manufactures at a fair duty, than to have their markets deluged with
smuggled ones that pay no duty at all. "To these miserable manufactures,
only capable of producing about one-half of what is required for the
consumption of the kingdom," (and that half, be it observed, of inferior
quality, and at vastly higher prices than the same merchandise could be
imported for,) "is the interest of the landed proprietors and commercial
class, as well as that of the entire community, sacrificed."

These manufacturing madmen, the Catalonians, are the plague-spot of the
Peninsula. Obstinate, fiery, and selfish, they think only of themselves,
and of what they consider their interests, petty and miserable as the
latter are compared to those of the rest of Spain. The real interests of
the country are obvious to any but prejudiced understandings. It is a
land flowing with milk and honey, or, what is far better, with wine and
oil; abounding in valuable products, of which the export might be vastly
increased by admitting the manufactures of countries possessing,
perhaps, a less-favoured soil and climate, but a more industrious
population. Instead of making bad calicoes at a high price, let the
Spaniards set to work to clear and plant their _despoblados_--let them
improve their system of agriculture, their mode of producing oil; let
them cut canals and make roads, and get something like decent
communications between towns and provinces. The irrigation of the soil
in Spain is also a matter of great importance, and which, in many parts
of the country, is at present sadly neglected. There are vast districts
that remain uninhabited and barren, solely because people will not build
or live where they are beyond a certain distance from water; districts
where every thing is parched and dry for the greater part of the year,
and where the land, although rich in its nature, becomes worthless from
excessive drought. The system of Artesian wells might, we are persuaded,
be introduced to great advantage in Spain; and for such, as well as for
canals, railways, and similar improvements, abundance of foreign capital
would be forthcoming, if--and here is the sticking point--Spaniards
would only show a disposition to remain quiet, and turn their attention
to the arts of peace, instead of ruining their country, wasting their
blood, and degrading the national character, by all these unmeaning and
unprofitable _pronunciamentos_ and skirmishings. It is probably not very
important at this moment who rules over the Spaniards, provided the
government have power and energy enough to keep them from cutting each
others' throats, and to prevent their getting into a confirmed habit of
revolutions and rebellions. "In all the larger towns of Spain," we quote
Captain Widdrington, "there is a crowd of idlers, characters with little
or no occupation, frequenters of theatres and _cafés_, great readers of
journals, and considerable politicians, pretenders to small places,
excessively ignorant, and ready to join in any movement provided it be
attended with little personal risk to themselves. A large portion of
this class took a very active part in opposing the government, and were
delighted to figure in _juntas_, or fill other analogous situations,
giving them a momentary importance, and possibly a few dollars at the
public expense." And this is one of the great causes of the unsettled
state of Spain, the immense number of idlers. Wars and revolutions,
producing an unflourishing state of trade and agriculture, have
discouraged Spaniards, during the last thirty or forty years, from
putting their children to trades or professions. "There is no knowing
how long this war may last," they used to say during the Carlist
contest; "and as long as it lasts, there is no good to be done in
Spain." So, instead of bringing up their sons to work, they just let
them live on from day to day, gossiping and smoking; and at the present
moment there are many hundred thousand young and middle-aged men of the
lower and middle classes, especially the latter, who are idlers by
profession, and exactly correspond to Captain Widdrington's description.
These gentry have nothing particular to lose by any political rumpus,
and they flatter themselves they may gain; besides, they cannot be
always playing _monté_ or taking the _siesta_; and even if they could, a
change is sometimes agreeable. Now and then, too, they get tired of
hearing Aristides called the Just--that is a very common thing with
Spaniards--some mischievous political agent comes amongst them, they are
soon excited, get hold of an old musket or rusty fowling-piece, chuck up
their _sombreros_, cry _viva la Libertad!_ and rush about the town
uttering _gritos_; and in a few hours, and before they have any clear
idea of what they have been doing, they are told that they are heroes
and patriots, that "_Spaniards_ never shall be slaves," and all the rest
of the humbug and claptrap that revolutionary agitators always have upon
their tongue's tip. The poor idiots, fizzing and boiling over with their
fire-new enthusiasm, aimless and causeless as it is, are in ecstasies
for about a week, or until they discover, what is pretty often the case,
that instead of being better off, they have exchanged King Log for King
Stork. The fact is, Spaniards are not at present fit for a mild and
constitutional government. Espartero, who had got the country into
something like a state of respectability, fell into the error of
imagining that they were; and such was in great measure the cause of his
overthrow. The iron and remorseless rule of a Narvaez will perhaps suit
them better, and of a certainty it is what a large portion of them
richly deserve.

To those persons who wish to understand what many have doubtless found
rather incomprehensible; namely, the causes, immediate and remote, that
led to the deposition of the Duque de la Victoria and the triumph of the
Moderado party--we recommend the attentive perusal of Captain
Widdrington's book, especially the chapter entitled, "On the
Pronunciamentos and Fall of the Regency." That chapter is a very
complete manual of the Spanish politics of the day, in a lucid and
simple form; and we were much pleased to find our own theories and
opinions on the subject confirmed by an eyewitness, and by so shrewd an
observer as Captain Widdrington. He traces the share that each party and
class in Spain took in the recent changes; and proves satisfactorily
enough, what every one who is acquainted with Spanish character and
feelings must have already been pretty certain of, that the revolution
in question was not a national one, but the result of intrigue, bribery,
and delusion--the work of a faction, aided by foreign gold. The
ill-judged selection of Lopez for minister, and the still more
injudicious act of agreeing to a _programme_ which he was afterwards
compelled to repudiate, were the fatal mistakes made by Espartero, who
was placed in a situation of extreme difficulty by his wish to govern
constitutionally. "It is impossible not to respect and admire the
firmness with which, to the very last, he carried through the principle,
sacrificing his station and rank to it; but, as far as the interests of
his country were concerned, no greater mistake was ever made in
government than the selection of Lopez." It is customary in Spain for a
new minister to make public his programme, or plan of campaign--but this
is considered a mere matter of form. In that of Lopez, however, amidst
the usual commonplaces, one article of vital importance had insinuated
itself; it was that of the amnesty, "which was so speciously made out as
completely to answer the purpose for which it was intended, that of
paving the way for bringing back the _afrancesado_ leaders who were
engaged in the attempt to carry off the Queen, in October 1841." It was
not deemed sufficient to recall the regent's mortal enemies; an attempt
was made to isolate him, by dismissing his most faithful friends, even
to the distinguished officer who acted as his private secretary, and who
now bears him company in his exile. Espartero naturally kicked at
this--as who would not in his place?--dismissed Lopez, and dissolved the
Chamber. But the people, especially those troublesome fellows the
Andalusians and Valencians, had got the fraternizing fit strong upon
them, and were mad after the programme. Juntas were
formed--pronunciamentos made--and misrule was again the order of the
day.

As to the conduct of the army towards Espartero, it was unquestionably
most disgraceful; but it must be borne in mind that a large proportion
of the officers were his personal enemies, especially those of the
regiments of guards, which had been broken up after the war, when many
of the officers passed into line regiments. Others were partisans of
Leon, of Narvaez, or Christina; and another large section were won over
by the profuse promotion given by the juntas, who, as soon as the
pronunciamentos began, assumed the functions of government, and
scattered epaulets in absurd profusion. Truly, as Captain Widdrington
observes, one has heard of bloody wars and sickly seasons, and rapid
advancement consequent thereon, but nothing ever equalled the promotion
that was now given; and this system Espartero was also obliged to adopt,
in order not to be deserted by the lukewarm among his adherents, or by
those whom the prospect of a step of rank might have influenced to leave
him. There can be little doubt, too, that bribery was largely employed
by the Moderados. Witness the instance of Colonel Echalecu, which is no
case of suspicion, but an official and publicly known fact. He was
offered four millions of reals (forty thousand pounds sterling) to
surrender the fort of Montjuich, and a French steamer was put at his
disposal to convey him away. To the immortal honour of this gallant
Basque soldier be it said, he was proof against the temptation; true to
his colours, to his general, and to the established constitution of his
country, he held out the fort to the very last, and only gave it up when
every hope was lost, and the new order of things completely victorious.
The Moderados had the good sense to continue so faithful an officer in
his command; but, at the time of Amettler's revolt, he refused to
bombard Barcelona, and of course resigned. His, however, was a solitary
instance of virtue; far less brilliant baits were found irresistible by
the mass of officers, who used their influence to bring over the
soldiery, a credulous and ignorant class in Spain. The men, there is no
question, w

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