all mythologies, to bring us back a treasure of the purest and most homebred feelings of the heart. Yet it is surely an error, which substitutes the private self-complacency of the author for the general satisfaction of the reader; for, after all, though we may in such cases admire, or rather wonder at the poet more, we certainly love the poem less. Mr. Milman thinks otherwise; his plot is a bad one, and he might, with little trouble, have amended it; but he has preferred the merit of conducting a bad plot with some ingenuity; his characters are feeble and unamiable, and he might have easily made them less so, but he has preferred the task of interesting us in them, as they are.

And with all their faults, Fazio and Bianca do interest us. There is a goodness of nature about the former, which renders him an object of pity, even when his easiness leads him to the commission of vice; and in the midst of his follies, there is a quick perception of them, and a prompt self-condemnation, which redeem him from contempt. This is no unnatural union in the same character. Thus it is not without compunction, and perfectly undeceived, that he first rifles the treasures of Bartolo; and when his new fortunes bring around him the vain, the frivolous, the sycophantic, he is neither insensible of the motives or the unworthiness of such a train, nor duped by the professions made to him. One of them, Falsetto, addresses him thus:

I, my good Lord, am one

Have such keen insight for my neighbour's virtues,
And such a doting love for excellence,

That when I see a wise man or a noble

Or wealthy, as I ever hold it pity

Man should be blind to his own merits, words

Slide from my lips, and I do mirror him

In the clear glass of my poor eloquence.

Flatterer! Nay, the word's grown gross.
An apt discourser upon things of honour-
Wealth is the robe, and outward garb of man,
The setting to the rarer jewelry,

The soul's unseen, and inner qualities.
And then, my lord, philosophy-'tis that,
The stamp and impress of our divine nature,
By which we know that we are gods, and are so.
But wealth and wisdom in one spacious breast!-
Who would not hymn so rare, and rich a wedding?

Who would not serve within the gorgeous palace,
Glorified by such strange and admired inmates?
FAZIO (aside.)

Now the poor, honest Fazio had disdain'd
Such scurvy fellowship-how beit Lord Fazio

Must lacquey his new state with these base jackalls.'-p. 19. When the poet addresses him in the same strain, he rises to a higher tone of indignant reprehension, and replies to him in spirited lines, which we may hereafter recall to the memory of our readers. So in every step leading to his last and fatal error, he retains the full consciousness of the heinousness of his offence; and in spite of passion, he exclaims, with a mournful confession of the imperfectness of vicious indulgence:

'Why should we dash the goblet from our lips,
Because the dregs may have a smack of bitter?
Why should that pale and clinging consequence
Thrust itself ever 'twixt us and our joys?'

From the moment of his reverse, his character rises in dignity. and interest; the agony which the unexpected sight of Bianca as his accuser produces is powerfully drawn, and as it should be-shortly; feelings of a purer and softer nature succeed:

• Mine own Bianca-I shall need too much mercy

Or ere to-morrow, to be merciless.

It was not well, Bianca, in my guilt

To cut me off-thus early-thus unripe :

It will be bitter, when the axe falls on me,

To think whose voice did summon it to its office.
No more no more of that-we all must die.

ianca, thou wilt love me when I'm dead;
I wronged thee, but thou'lt love me.—'

The parting scene in prison is equally well executed; to some it may appear deficient in vehemence and depth of passion; we are not disposed to find this fault with it; it is not indeed so long, so laboured or so violent as many scenes under the same circumstances have been, but there is something very impressive in the despair of Bianca, and the tranquil fortitude of Fazio. No murmurs of reproach or regret escape him; the thoughts of his orphan children for a moment agitate him, and when Bianca in her distraction talks ambiguously as if she had removed them from this world, in which their destiny seems so utterly forlorn, the feelings of the father and the christian are manifested still strong and predominant in the midst of so bitter a trial. The whole passage is so beautiful, that we cannot resist the pleasure of extracting it.

'Fazio, set me loose!

Thou clasp'st thy murderess!

FAZIO.

No, it is my love,

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

BIANCA.

No, no

Not tell them, that their mother murdered him.

FAZIO.

But are they well, my love?

BIANCA.

What had I freed them

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

Of this sad sunshine?

FAZIO.

Oh, thou hast not been
So wild a rebel to the will of God!

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

BIANCA.

They live, thank God, they live!

I should not rack thee with such fantasies.

But there have been such hideous things around me,
Some whispering me, some dragging me,' &c.

But it is Bianca after all, on whom the play mainly depends, and whose character the author has most laboured in drawing: his efforts have been attended with a success, on which we found our opinion, that Mr. Milman has one at least of the requisites for the line which he has chosen. To estimate the character properly, it must be considered at some length, and with reference to the whole play in every part; it will then be found consistent, and poetic. Nothing can be more simple; Bianca is a woman of ardent temper, and very strong affections; she has married a man whom she entirely and devotedly loves, but whom she knows to have been previously attached to another, and who still retains too ma

nifest traces of that previous attachment, not to justify some anxiety on her part. With this key, every thing she says or does is natural and intelligible; the idea of Aldabella is a load eternally on her mind, it influences all her conduct, it colours all objects, it mingles with every thought, and finally it works her, as provocations make it more and more poignant, to absolute delirium. Thus in the first scene it appears in half-earnest raillery, which, drawing from Fazio a vehement defence of her rival, warms into serious invective upon her. In a subsequent scene, in which Fazio, meditating an injury, bends to the pitiful but common subterfuge of attempting to provoke his victim to give him some shadow of excuse, the ruling idea manifests itself immediately.

'What bath distemper'd thee? this is unnatural;

Thou couldst not talk thus in thy steadfast senses;
Thou hast seen Aldabella!

As the whole of this scene, both for subject matter and execution, is commendable, so is this passage singularly well imagined. The answers which Fazio gives her are very unsatisfactory, and her feelings grow stronger, and as they gradually open, her declarations prepare the reader for all that is to follow. The protracted visit to Aldabella at length rouses the visionary ardency of her temper beyond all control; the first scene of the third act paints the gradually growing agony, that ends in temporary delirium. We wish we could extract it entire, for it is scarcely doing it justice to give it partially; yet the opening soliloquy, in which the storm begins, is too beautiful to suffer from it.

Not all the night, not all the long, long night

Not come to me-not send to me-not think on me!
Like an unrighteous and unburied ghost
I wander up and down these long arcades.
Oh, in our old poor narrow home, if haply
He linger'd late abroad, domestic things
Close and familiar crowded all around me!
The ticking of the clock, the flapping motion
Of the green lattice, the gray curtain's folds,
The hangings of the bed myself had wrought;
Yea, e'en his black and iron crucibles
Were to me as my friends. But here, oh here
Where all is coldly, comfortlessly costly,
All strange, all new, in uncouth gorgeousness,
Lofty, and long-a wider space for misery-
E'en my own footsteps on these marble floors
Are unaccustom'd, unfamiliar sounds-
Oh, I am here so wearily miserable
That I should welcome my apostate Fazio
Though he were fresh from Aldabella's arms.

VOL. XV. NO. XXIX.

Her arms-her viper coil! I had forsworn
That thought, lest he should come, and find me mad,
And so go back again, and I not know it.
Oh that I were a child, to play with toys,
Fix my whole soul upon a cup and ball;
Ob, any pitiful poor subterfuge,

A moment to distract my busy spirit
From its dark dalliance with that cursed image.
I have tried all-all vainly ;-now-but now
I went in to my children. The first sound
They murmur'd in their evil-dreaming sleep
Was a faint mimicry of the name of father.
I could not kiss them-my lips were so hot.
The very household slaves are leagued against me,
And do beset me with their wicked floutings-
"Comes my lord home to-night?—and when I say

"I know not,❞—their coarse pity makes my heartstrings
Throb with the agony.'-

These lines demand no comment. The sentence which concludes them is immediately verified by the entrance of a servant, who had been despatched to learn news of his master; with every word that he utters, the misery and indignation of the unhappy Bianca increases. With somewhat of Othello's soul, and not, we think, without some involuntary resemblance of his language, she exclaims

'Oh, Fazio,

Oh, Fazio-is her smile more sweet than mine,
Or her soul fonder? Fazio, my lord Fazio,
Before the face of man mine own, mine only,
Before the face of heaven Bianca's Fazio,
Not Aldabella's—Ah that I should live
To question it.-Now henceforth all our joys,
Our delicate endearments, all are poison'd.
Aye-if he speak my name with his fond voice,
It will be with the same tone, that to her

He murmur'd her's-it will be, or 'twill seem so.
If he embrace me, 'twill be with those arms

In which he folded her; and if he kiss me,

He'll pause, and think which of the two is sweeter.'

This lays the bleeding heart before us in the most pathetic manner, for there is nothing so moving as affectionate and pleading remonstrance after vehement indignation. We are by nature so prone to pity, that it is difficult to deny it even to guilt when it ceases to be dangerous and has begun to suffer; but it is wholly impossible to refuse it to undeserved affliction, when the object, abandoning all resistance or recrimination, and trusting neither to