bine. Whose wit is an effort of memory;-their sentiment 2 disease caught from Kotzebue ;-their plots "the current coin of the realm" of novel writers the "circulating medium" of the Minerva Library ;-and their language the bastard offspring of an illicit intercourse between the two slangs of St James's and St Giles's: And (what is of very little consequence, though it is a little provoking) these people have received the rewards that were rarely bestowed on those whose places they have usurped; and some of them actually now sit, with all the self-complacency in the world, under the shade of the artificial laurels cut for them by their friends, or perhaps themselves, out of scraps of old newspapers. It is the more extraordinary that this complaint should have been called forth now, because, with the single exception of the era of Elizabeth, there never was a period at which this or any other country could boast so rich and brilliant a fund of poetical genius as Great Britain possesses at the present time. Genius, too, in many instances, precisely adapted to excel in this department of poetry. What a rare combination of this kind of talent exists in the author of those prose tales which have of late years so delighted the world: especially on the supposition that he is also the great national poet of Scotland! What an exquisite and apparently intuitive knowledge of the human heart, as it acts and is acted upon by habits and manners! What a subtle and penetrating insight into the springs of human thought, as they operate under the united dominion of the past the present and the future! What an active and vivid and realizing imagination-by which he at once identifies himself with the character he would represent-sees with its eyes, hears with its ears, speaks with its tongue-feels, understands, and thinks with it! And lastly, what a fund of various and free and forcible and appropriate language!-What fine dramatic powers are possessed by Joanna Baillie! It is true they have been strangely warped and shackled by a system; but they still exist in all the strength and freshness of their youth -and are capable of noble achievements. Let her boldly and at once throw aside the trammels by which she has hitherto been confined, and appear as what she is. We will not counsel her to think less reverently than she does of the old dramatists: they deserve all the love and admiration she can give them. But let her forget them when she is writing. Let her feel, think, act and speak for herself. Then, and then only, will she feel, think, act, and speak in a manner worthy of herself. Then, if he chose to turn the powers of his mind in that direction, what might we not hope and expect, both in tragedy and comedy, (though chiefly in the last)—from the Poet who has lately so nobly repaired the mischievous trifling of his youth, and so triumphantly vindicated the genius of his native land! He has exhibited talents of a kind that were not suspected in him even by his warmest admirers. In the Veiled Prophet, and still more in the Fire-worshippers, there are numerous and unequivocal evidences of a deep and searching glance into the motives of human action, and the springs of passion-an imagination capable of reaching the loftiest flights and of sustaining itself there-a tenderness and pathos in the highest degree pure, natural, and affecting-an invention active in the production of incidents and a taste and skill ever ready in the arrangement of them-a pomp, splendour, yet simplicity of language that has rarely been equalled: the whole collected, held in fellowship together, and actuated by a free, unaffected, and liberal philanthropy.-These are noble qualifications for a writer of the serious Drama: But if this poet would turn his thoughts to comedy we should be still more sanguine in our anticipations of his success. He possesses exquisite natural talents for it, and rare accidental advantages. To the most elegant and various acquirements, and the most intimate knowledge of life and manners, he adds a wit quite unrivalled in the age in which he livesa fancy playful, sparkling, and brilliant even to a fault-a taste cultivated to the highest pitch of refinement-and an inexhaustible fund of gay good-humour. We should scarcely despair of his restoring the good old times of Congreve and Farquhar if we had any Millamants or Mirabels left. But, alas ! now-a-days our fashionable drawingrooms are peopled with ladies who 66 stoop to conquer," and men in buckram!" 66 It would not be difficult to point out several other distinguished wri ters of the present day, who might contribute to restore the brightness, the power, and the purity of the British drama: and how can their talents be directed to a nobler purpose? There are some scenes of powerful and highly dramatic painting in Southey's last, and perhaps finest, work-the Don Roderick. In Remorse, the youthful production of Coleridge, there is considerable force and originality of conception, and some fine touches of nature and passion. The four principal characters are sketched with great distinctness and truth. If the tragedy, as a whole, is not a fine one, it at least evinces that there is (or was) the power to produce a fine one.Even Lord Byron, though his genius has hitherto borne the appearance of being essentially undramatic, what might not be anticipated from it, if he would concentrate all its splendid powers on a subject fitted to them?A subject in which there should be only one or two principal characters, and a strict unity and condensation of interest. There are many such to be found among the traditions of the heroic ages and it would be difficult to offer a loftier or perhaps juster encomium on his magnificent genius, than to say that he need not fear to approach those subjects, even though they have already been treated of by Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripidesand some of them,-that of Electra for example,-by all the three. Indeed in what other living (and we had almost said dead) writer shall we look for such a combination of the gloomy grandeur of the first of these poets, the lofty and sustained splendour of the second, and the pathos and tenderness of the last? It must be confessed, however, that from the nature of the subjects he must choose, it is probable that in the present day his dramas could not be acting ones. We are perhaps dwelling too long on what might be, instead of directing our attention to what is. But although "from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step," it is not a very pleasant step to take. We are almost afraid, too, that this little excursion into our "ideal world" of the drama may have unfitted us to judge quite soberly of the dull realities that await us at Covent-Garden and Drury-Lane. This should not generally be the case: it is almost always an evidence of weakness. But it must be remembered that the ideal world we have been contemplating is one that not only might be, but that actually may be, and should be; so that there is no kind necessity to step in, and reconcile us to its opposite, But we are "tied to the stake," and, "bear-like, must fight the course;" therefore, "though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,"-that is to say, though a whole host, covered and concealed by laurels of their own gathering, are advancing upon us like "a moving grove ;" and though they are "backed with those that should be our's," namely, nine-tenths of those "vile English" the critics; yet will we 66 try the last." It will be our own fault if we do not conquer; for there is no fear of encountering any adversary "not of woman born:" they are all very human, every day people, intent on earning their daily bread. But then these sort of persons are for the most part very ignorant and very vain, and, consequently, very obstinate; so that we have some doubt as to which party may be the first to cry "hold! enough!"—It would not serve our purpose to endeavour to intimidate them by crying" damned be he" who does,-for they are so used to being damned, that they don't mind it now. Drury-Lane Theatre. ON Thursday, December 3d, a new tragedy was produced at this theatre, called Brutus; and it met with the most unqualified success. It is written by Mr Howard Payne, a native of America; and as he is said to be young, and this is his first work, we should have been willing to let him enjoy all the pleasure and benefit to be derived from its very favourable reception on the stage: But the officious interference of his half-witted friends (one of whom is more injurious to a man than a score of honourable enemies) compels us to examine a little into the pretensions of a work which they would thrust forward as a literary production of the first order. -What may be considered as the main action of this tragedy, consists in the efforts of the first Brutus to achieve the liberty of his country. It takes in a great part of his public life, commencing with his assumed idiotism, and closing with the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the condemnation of his son-for the author gives him only one. Not satisfied, however, with this ample scope of subject, Mr Payne has thought proper to falsify history, for the purpose of introducing other scenes and events in no way accessary to the progress of the main action, but which, on the contrary, weaken the interest and distract the attention. Such are the loves of Titus and Tarquinia, and the unnatural remorse and death of Tullia. The whole of the second act, too, is quite superfluous; especially the long and very ill-written scene at the tent of Sextus, where the young princes and Collatinus plan the visit to their wives; and, afterwards, that of the same persons with Lucretia, at the house of Collatinus.But the chief failure of this tragedy is its total deficiency of character and passion, with the single exception of the part of Brutus. There is no distinguishing any one of the persons from any other, but by their names.— The language, too (still excepting the part of Brutus, of which we shall speak afterwards), is extremely feeble throughout. It exhibits all possible varieties of dramatic common-place; and in some few instances it descends (if it can be called a descent,) into mere vulgarism. As a fair specimen of the former, we give the first passage in the work : We now willingly turn from the defects of this work to its beauty-for it has but one. This is to be found in the character of Brutus, which is conceived and sustained throughout with considerable skill and judgment. There is a perfect dramatic unity and keeping in all its parts, and a regular progression to its one grand aim in all the minor details connected with it. There is nothing strained or superfluous, and nothing wanting to make the portrait complete. The sentiments are true to nature and to history, and the language in which they are expressed is free, vigorous, and unaffected. We shall give two or three examples of this. At the end of a soliloquy, in which he has been uttering the most fervent longings for the time when he may throw off the mask of folly, and revenge the injuries of his family and his country, he exclaims, "Grant but the moment, Gods! if I am wanting, May I drag out this idiot-feigned life To late old age, and may posterity Ne'er hear of Junius but as Tarquin's fool.” This is a very fine and characteristic expression of Brutus's bitter sense of the degradation he is compelled to suffer, and of his truly Roman aspirations after immortal renown-which latter feeling, considering the spirit of the times in which he lived, may even be supposed to have mingled with his sense of justice and his love of country, in inducing the condemnation of his own sons.*-During an interview with his son, and at a moment when he has half thrown aside his veil of folly, Titus prays the Gods to restore him to reason,-" Then Titus" he exclaims, "then I should be mad with reason, Had I the sense to know myself a Roman; This hand should tear this heart from out my ribs Ere it should own allegiance to a tyrant. Gods tus declares that he can meet death "if the Gods will have it so."-Brutus answers, "they will, my Titus: Nor heaven nor earth can have it otherwise. It seems as if thy fate were pre-ordained It will naturally be asked, Whence arises this total want of relative consistency in the different parts of a work professing to be written by one and the same person? We shall let Mr Payne disclose his own secret. In his preface there is this passage:— "In the present play I have had no hesitation in adopting the conceptions and language of my predecessors wherever they seemed likely to strengthen the plan I had prescribed. This has been so done as to allow of no injury to personal feelings or private property. Such obligations to be culpable must be secret; but it may be observed, that no assistance of other writers can be available, without an effort almost, if not altogether, as laborious as original composition." a In fact, we strongly suspect that the title-page, which calls this work " Tragedy, in five acts, by John Howard Payne," is neither more nor less than a literary fraud.-As we do not pretend to be very deeply versed in "all such reading as was never read," we shall confess that we do not at present know to whom certain passages of this play do belong; but we are pretty certain it would require very little critical sagacity, to take a pen and mark with inverted commas every line which does not belong to Mr Payne, and that the lines so marked would include every passage of merit in the play. But even supposing our conjecture to be true, if Mr Payne had done this himself no one would have had cause to complain,-especially as the writers to whom we suspect all the passages of any merit to belong are dead, both in law and fact-that is to say, they have, in Mr Payne's language, neither " personal feelings or private property!" But, really, his pillaging people, because they are dead, and making the spoils administer to his own 66 personal feelings and priVOL. IV. 66 vate property," is even worse than the daw in the fable,-for he had the honest impudence to go strutting about among the living peacocks, decked with the produce of his knavery; now, according to Mr Payne, there would have been nothing" culpable" in this acquiring at all events" (as Spurzheim calls thieving), if the daw had waited till the right owners of the feathers had been dead; because then he would not have violated the aforesaid "personal feelings or private property;" and, moreover, because such ornaments could not be available without an effort almost, if not altogether, as laborious as original composition:" that is to say, because it must have been as painful and troublesome to him to pull the feathers out of his own tail and stick others in their places, as to endeavour to make a new tail of an 66 composition" for himself. Payne forgets, that if the daw had cudgelled his brains" till doomsday, he never could have changed the feathers of his tail to any other colour than black: That, in fact, " a silk purse cannot be made" of any other materials than the produce of a silkworm.-In short, the fabulous daw was only vain and foolish; but we are afraid the real one must be considered as combining the principal traits in his predecessor's character with still more culpable" ones peculiar to himself. 66 66 original But Mr We now take our leave of Mr Payne, for the present, by repeating our confession that we have ventured to accuse him on presumptive proofs only. We hope for his sake, the reader's, and our own, that none of his injudicious friends will compel us to seek for the positive proofs. If they should, however, and we are not able to produce such proofs, the disgrace will recoil upon our own heads. But how shall we proceed to speak of Mr Kean's performance of Brutus, in terms that shall, at once, convey our own impressions of it, without shocking those who have not the same feelings, and who would not dare to express them if they had! though we are aware how loose and indefinite,-how very uncritical-the epithet, Beautiful, will sound, as applied to such a performance, yet it is the only one by which we could express our delight at the time we witnessed it, and we seek in vain for a better by which 3 L fell. The rest of the performers of this tragedy must excuse us if we do not say any thing about them. Indeed, if they know or care any thing for our opinion they will not desire to hear it immediately after we have been thinking of the noblest ornament their profession perhaps ever had. The eye that turns to other objects immediately after looking at the sun will have little chance of appreciating their forms and colours justly. We must even defer our remarks on Mrs W. West till a more favourable moment-for we would willingly think and say the best we can of her. Her fair face has ingratiated her with us for though far from being what is called well or regularly formed, it is beautified by a striking resemblance to some of the Magdalenes of Guido. The Dandy Club. to characterise it now. "Beautiful!" per, and make them glitter as they was our silent exclamation to our selves, over and over again, during the course of the performance; and "beautiful!" we repeat now, as we think of it. If, from the nature of the character, Mr Kean's Brutus was without those overwhelming transports of passion-those involuntary plunges into the depths and dungeons of the human heart-which render his Othello the noblest and most affecting dramatic exhibition in the world, it was the same exquisite genius working with different tools and on different materials, and producing a result not less perfect or less true. In the two first acts the half silly, half sarcastic part of the character was given with the most entire unconsciousness, and yet with an ineffable expression that produced all the desired effect, without using the slightest apparent effort towards it, and without belying the name and character of Brutus. Afterwards, his rooted hatred of the oppression of his country, and his earnest aspirations after her freedom, were expressed with an intense fervour that was worthy of a noble Roman without being unfitted for the severe and still-minded Lucius Junius. -But the finest part of the perfor mance was in the last act, where his parental affection has to struggle with his deep sense of justice, and his pure and ardent love of country. Mr Kean's inimitable powers of silent acting were never before so strongly call ed forth as in the scene with Valerius, and the last scene at the tribunal. Every part of his bodily frame was made to move in exquisite unison with the internal working of his soul. Every nerve and muscle was played upon by the cunning hand of Fantasy, and made to "discourse most eloquent music." But it was 65 the still, sad music of humanity."-Indeed the whole of this part of the character was considered and given in the truest spirit of lofty tragedy. The pity excited by the agonizing woe of the father was always kept subservient to a fine moral purpose. To our imaginations, DUTY, with her severe and awful brow, sat throned above all. But smiles were round her lips, and the light from her eyes seemed to beautify the parental tears of her worship THE Christmas pantomime, produced on Saturday the 26th of December, at this theatre was, not to exaggerate, the very worst of its kind we ever saw; and the managers were compelled to withdraw it after three or four nights, and to promise another in its place. It was called the DANDY CLUB, or 1818. As it is probable that persons at a distance from the metropolis may not yet have heard any particulars respecting the new race of animals called Dandies, from which this pantomime derived its name, and which have lately appeared in considerable numbers in various parts of our island, we shall endeavour to collect for the information of our readers all that has hitherto been observed of the habits, character, &c. of these singular creatures. We understand that some naturalists are disposed to rank Dandies as a new and distinct species of the ge nus Man-the homo of Linnæus, and belonging to the mammalia class of animals. But it must be observed that that so justly celebrated writer allows of but one species in the genus homo, which he designates by way of eminence, Sapiens. This, as will be seen hereafter, at once excludes the newly discovered animal from the species in question. It is not impossible, however, that the Dandy may belong to a doubtful species that in some early |