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no other memorial than the works that spirit produced, could still have avouched to us the existence, at that day, in its young native vigour, of the whole character of the English mind. The existence of the works of Chaucer changes, it may be said, to our apprehension, the whole character of the age -raising up to our mind an image of thoughtful intellectual cultivation, and of natural and tender happiness in the simplicity of life, which would other wise be wanting in the dark stern picture of warlike greatness and power. As a philosophical critic, Mr Campbell ought, we think, to have said something more adequate to just expectation, respecting an event which was a phenomenon in itself, and the cause of subsequent phenomena.

The second part of the Essay opens with the following philosophical account of the decay of poetry in the 15th century:

"Warton, with great beauty and justice, compares the appearance of Chaucer in our language, to a premature day in an English spring; after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blossoms, which have been called forth by a transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts and scattered by storms. The cause of the relapse of our poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the annals of English history, which, during five reigns of the fifteenth century, continue to display but a tissue of conspiracies, proscriptions, and bloodshed. Inferior even to France in literary progress, England displays in the fifteenth century a still more mortifying contrast with Italy. Italy too had her religious schisms and public distractions; but her arts and literature had always a sheltering place. They were even cherished by the rivalship of independent communities, and received encouragement from the opposite sources of commercial and ecclesiastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the Fifth, nor house of Medicis. In England, the evils of civil war agitated society as one mass. There was no refuge from them-no inclosure to fence in the field of improvement--no mound to stem the torrent of public troubles. Before the death of Henry VI. it is said that one half of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom had perished in the field, or on the scaniold. Whilst in England the public spirit was thus brutalized, whilst the value and security of life were abridged, whilst the wealth of the rich was employed only in war, and the chance of patronage taken from the scholar; in Italy, princes and magistrates vied with each other in calling men of genius around them, as the brightest ornaments of their states and courts. The art of printing came to Italy to record the trea

sures of its literary attainments; but when it came to England, with a very few exceptions, it could not be said, for the purpose of diffusing native literature, to be a necessary art. A circumstance, additionally hostile to the national genius, may certainly be traced in the executions for religion, which sprung up as a horrible novelty in our country in the fifteenth century. The clergy were determined to indemnify themselves for the exposures which they had met with in the preceding age, and the unhallowed compromise which Henry IV. made cession, armed them, in an evil hour, with with them, in return for supporting his acthe torch of persecution. In one point of improvement, namely, in the boldness of religious inquiry, the North of Europe might already boast of being superior to the South, with all its learning, wealth, and elegant acquirements. The Scriptures had been opened by Wickliff, but they were spring shut up." Amidst the progress of again to become "a fountain sealed, and a letters in Italy, the fine arts threw enchantment around superstition; and the warm imagination of the South was congenial with the nature of catholic institutions. But the English mind had already shewn, even amidst its comparative barbarism, a stern independent spirit of religion; and from this single proud and elevated point of its character, it was now to be crushed and beaten down. Sometimes a baffled struggle against oppression is more depressing to the human faculties than continued submission.

"Our natural hatred of tyranny, and we may safely add, the general test of history and experience, woula dispose us to believe religious persecution to be necessarily and essentially baneful to the elegant arts, no less than to the intellectual pursuits of mankind. It is natural to think, that when punishments are let loose upon men's opinions, they will spread a contagious alarm from the understanding to the imagination. They will make the heart grow close and insensible to generous feelings, where it is unaccustomed to express them freely; and the graces and gaiety of fancy will be dejected and appalled. In an age of persecution, even the living study of his own species must be comparatively darkened to the poet. He looks round on the characters and countenances of his fellow-creatures, and instead of the naturally cheerful and eccentric variety of their humours, he reads only a sullen and oppressed uniformity. To the spirit of poetry we should conceive such a period to be an impassable Avernus, where she would drop her wings and expire."

Over this dreary tract Mr Campbell swiftly passes, and his heart seems to leap within him, while he hails the approach of the Elizabethan age, as if, "Far off its coming shone."

"But better days were at hand. In the reign of Elizabeth, the English mind put

forth its energies in every direction, exalted by a purer religion, and enlarged by new views of truth. This was an age of loyalty, adventure, and generous emulation. The chivalrous character was softened by intellectual pursuits, while the genius of chivalry itself still lingered, as if unwilling to depart, and paid his last homage to a warlike and female reign. A degree of romantic fancy remained in the manners and superstitions of the people; and allegory might be said to parade the streets in their public pageants and festivities. Quaint and pedantic as those allegorical exhibitions might often be, they were nevertheless more expressive of erudition, ingenuity, and moral meaning, than they had been in former times. The philosophy of the highest minds still partook of a visionary character. poetical spirit infused itself into the practical heroism of the age; and some of the worthies of that period seem less like ordinary men, than like beings called forth out of fiction, and arrayed in the brightness of her dreams. They had " High thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." The life of Sir Philip Sydney was poetry put into action."

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We looked anxiously for Mr Campbell's picture of Spenser's mind; and it certainly is impossible to conceive any thing more delicately character

istic.

"He brought to the subject of The Fairy Queen,' a new and enlarged structure of stanza, elaborate and intricate, but well contrived for sustaining the attention of the ear, and concluding with a majestic cadence. In the other poets of Spenser's age we chiefly admire their language, when it seems casually to advance into modern polish and succinctness. But the antiquity of Spenser's style has a peculiar charm. The mistaken opinion that Ben Jonson censured the antiquity of the diction in the Fairy Queen,' has been corrected by Mr Malone, who pronounces it to be exactly that of his contemporaries. His authority is weighty; still, however, without reviving the exploded error respecting Jonson's censure, one might imagine the difference of Spenser's style from that of Shakespeare's, whom he so shortly preceded, to indicate that his gothic subject and story made him lean towards words of the elder time. At all events, much of his expression is now become antiquated; though it is beautiful in its antiquity, and like the moss and ivy on some majestic building, covers the fabric of his language with romantic and venerable associations.

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and robust power which characterise the very greatest poets; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circumstance, like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost extremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength, symmetry, and rapid or interesting progress; for, though the plan which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed. But still there is a richness in his materials, even where their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him. He is like a speaker whose tones continue to be pleasing, though he may speak too long; or like a painter who makes us for get the defect of his design, by the magic of his colouring. We always rise from perusing him with melody in the mind's ear, and with pictures of romantic beauty impressed on the imagination.”

After a few strictures on the defects of the Fairy Queen, expressed with a manly decision, but with the utmost courtesy towards the image of the matchless poet, Mr Campbell thus puts the finishing touches to his picture.

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Upon the whole, if I may presume to measure the imperfections of so great and venerable a genius, I think we may say, that if his popularity be less than universal and complete, it is not so much owing to his obsolete language, nor to degeneracy of modern taste, nor to his choice of allegory as a subject, as to the want of that consolidating and crowning strength, which alone can establish works of fiction in the favour of all readers and of all ages. This want of strength, it is but justice to say, is either solely or chiefly apparent when we examine the entire structure of his poem, or so large a portion of it as to feel that it does not impel or sustain our curiosity in proportion to its length. To the beauty of insulated passages who can be blind? The subline description of "Him who with the Night durst ride," "The House of Riches," "The Canto of Jealousy," The Masque of Cupid," and other parts, too many to enumerate, are so splendid, that after reading them, we feel it for the monent invidious to ask if they are symmetrically united into a whole. Succeeding generations have acknowledged the pathos and richness of his strains, and the new contour and enlarged dimensions of grace which he gave to English poetry. He is the poetical father of a

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Milton and a Thomson. Gray habitually read him when he wished to frame his thoughts for composition, and there are few eminent poets in the language who have not been essentially indebted to him. "Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repair, and in their urns draw golden light." We have no wish to qualify our praises of such writing as this; yet we have a most decided objection to calling Spenser a Rubens. There is in those fine spirits, no doubt, some points of resemblance-a prodigality of genius-a rich and lavish exuberance of invention a wealth inexhaustible a wand of enchantment under which airy fabrics spring up as fast as spirits can build them. In both, too. there is a character of imagination changing the aspect of the world that is shewn from the reality of existence, and marking it with the impression of the poet's or painter's individual genius; and, both of them, which is a point of more individual resemblance, are fond of Ideal Impersonations. But such features of resemblance as these leave yet wide room for unlikeness in the essential principles of character, and in the form that invests it Of Spenser's spirit, it may be said, that the essential principle is love-love in its soft ethereal essence, and heavenly beauty. The principle (if it be not presumptuous to speak in this way of such minds) of Rubens' genius would rather appear to us power-and that not perhaps the very highest-on fire with the ungovernable action of its own impetuous energies. A visionary softness of beauty, with celestial gleams brightening through, invests the offspring of Spenser's muse; but stern and unassailable strength, and dark and tumultuous force, and blazes of richest splendour are the form and appearance in which we are used to know the giant-progeny of the imagination of Rubens. It therefore does not appear to us, that two minds, of which the works and powers can, with any degree of justice, be so differently charactered, may, with any propriety, be brought under the identity of a name.

Mr Campbell touches very lightly on the dramatic writers previous to Shakspeare. Of these his favourites justly are" Brave Marlow bathed in the Thespian springs," and Peele, whose "David and Bethsabe" is, in his opinion," the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced

in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich and tender, and his conceptions of dramatic character have no inconsiderable mixture of solid vivacity and ideal beauty. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare." Mr Campbell then speaks of the Swan of Avon; and notwithstanding all that has lately been written about him by Schlegel, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, and other men of talents, perhaps our readers will agree with us in thinking, that there is a delicately discriminating admiration in the following observations that has not been exhibited by any other critic :

"Among these precursors of Shakspeare we may trace, in Peele and Marlowe, a pleasing dawn of the drama, though it was by no means a dawn corresponding to so bright a sunrise as the appearance of his mighty genius.

He ereated our romantic

drama, or if the assertion is to be qualified, it requires but a small qualification. There were undoubtedly prior occupants of the dramatic ground in our language: but they appear only like unprosperous settlers on the patches and skirts of a wilderness, which he converted into a garden. fore never compared with his native predeCriticism goes back for names worthy of being put in competition with his, tion; and even in the points of dissimilarity to the first great masters of dramatic inven

cessors.

He is there.

between them and him, discovers some of the highest indications of his genius. Compared with the classical composers of antiquity, he is to our conceptions nearer the character of an universal poet; more acquainted with man in the real world, and more terrific and bewitching in the preterthe drama beyond the limits that belonged natural. He expanded the magic circle of to it in antiquity; made it embrace more time and locality, filled it with larger business and action, with vicissitudes of gay and serious emotion, which classical taste had kept divided; with characters which developed humanity in stronger lights and subtler movements, and with a language more wildly, more playfully diversified by fancy and passion, than was ever spoken on any

stage.

ternations of the gay and the tragic; and Like nature herself, he presents alhis mutability, like the suspense and precariousness of real existence, often deepens the force of our impressions. He converted imitation into illusion. To say that, magician as he was, he was not faultless, is only to recal the flat and stale truism, that every thing human is imperfect. But how to estimate his imperfections! To praise him is easy-In facili causa cuivis livet esse diserto

-But to make a special, full, and accurate estimate of his imperfections, would require a delicate and comprehensive discrimination,

and an authority which are almost as seldom united in one man as the powers of Shakspeare himself. He is the poet of the world. The magnitude of his genius puts it beyond all private opinion to set defined limits to the admiration which is due to it. We know, upon the whole, that the sum of blemishes to be deducted from his merits is not great, and we should scarcely be thankful to one who should be anxious to make it. No other poet triumphs so anomalously over eccentricities and peculiarities in composition, which would appear blemishes in others; so that his blemishes and beauties have an affinity which we are jealous of trusting any hand with the task of separating. We dread the interference of criticism with a fascination so often inexplicable by critical laws, and justly apprehend that any man in standing between us and Shakspeare may shew for pretended spots upon his disk only the shadows of his own opacity

"Still it is not a part even of that enthusiastic creed, to believe that he has no excessive mixture of the tragic and comic, no blemishes of language in the elliptical throng and impatient pressure of his images, no irregularities of plot and action, which another Shakspeare would avoid, if “nature had not broken the mould in which she made him," or if he should come back into the world to blend experience with inspiration.

"The bare name of the dramatic unities is apt to excite revolting ideas of pedantry, arts of poetry, and French criticism. With none of these do I wish to annoy the reader. I conceive that it may be said of those unities as of fire and water, that they are good servants but bad masters. In perfect rigour they were never imposed by the Greeks, and they would be still heavier shackles if they were closely rivetted on our own drama. It would be worse than useless to confine dramatic action literally and immoveably to one spot, or its imaginary time to the time in which it is represented. On the other hand, dramatic time and place cannot surely admit of indefinite expansion. It would be better, for the sake of illusion and probability, to change the scene from Windsor to London, than from London to Pekin; it would look more like reality, if a messenger, who went and returned in the course of the play, told us of having performed a journey of ten or twenty, rather than of a thousand miles, and if the spectator had neither that nor any other circumstance to make him ask how so much could be performed in so short a time.

“In an abstract view of dramatic art, its principles must appear to lie nearer to unity than to the opposite extreme of disunion, in our conceptions of time and place. Giving up the law of unity in its literal rigour, there is still a latitude of its application which may preserve proportion and harmony in the drama.

traced the principles of what he denominates the romantic, in opposition to the classical drama; and conceives that Shakspeare's theatre, when tried by those principles, will be found not to have violated any of the unities, if they are largely and liberally understood. I have no doubt that Mr Schlegel's criticism will be found to have proved this point in a considerable number of the works of our mighty poet. There are traits, however, in Shakspeare, which, I must own, appear to my humble judgment incapable of being illustrated by any system or principles of art. I do not allude to his historical plays, which, expressly from being historical, may be called a privileged class. But in those of purer fiction, it strikes me that there are licences conceded indeed to imagination's charter'd libertine," but

Yet

anomalous with regard to any thing which can be recognized as principles in dramatic art. When Perdita, for instance, grows from the cradle to the marriage altar in the course of the play, I can perceive no unity in the design of the piece, and take refuge in the supposition of Shakspeare's genius triumphing and trampling over art. Mr Schlegel, as far as I have observed, makes no exception to this breach of temporal unity; nor, in proving Shakspeare a regular artist on a mighty scale, does he deign to notice this circumstance, even as the ultima Thule of his licence. If a man contends that dramatic laws are all idle restrictions, I can understand him; or if he he says that Perdita's growth on the stage is a trespass on art, but that Shakspeare's fascination over and over again redeems it, I can both understand and agree with him. But when I am left to infer that all this is right on romantic principles, I confess that those principles become too romantic for my conception. If Perdita may be born and married on the stage, why may not Webster's Duchess of Malfy lie-in between the acts, and produce a fine family of tragic children? Her Grace actually does so in Webster's drama, and he is a poet of some genius, though it is not quite so sufficient as Shakspeare's, to give a "sweet oblivious antidote" to such "perilous stuff." It is not, however, either in favour of Shakspeare's or of Webster's genius that we shall be called on to make allowance, if we justify in the drama the lapse of such a number of years as may change the apparent identity of an individual. If romantic unity is to be so largely interpreted, the old Spanish dramas, where youths grow greybeards upon the stage, the mysteries and moralities, and productions teeming with the wildest anachronism, might all come in with their grave or laughable claims to romantic legitimacy.

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The brilliant and able Schlegel has On a general view, I conceive it may be

said, that Shakspeare nobly and legitimately enlarged the boundaries of time and place in the drama; but, in extreme cases, I would rather agree with Cumberland, to waive all mention of his name in speaking of dramatic laws, than accept of those licences for art which are not art, and designate irregularity by the name of order."

We probably shall devote another article to the consideration of the re

mainder of Mr Campbell's Essay, and a third to his biographical and critical notices of the Poets of England. We shall, in that way, be enabled to shew what Mr Campbell has done for literature; and, afterwards, we shall enter into various discussions and speculations suggested by this admirable work.

NOTICES OF THE ACTED DRAMA IN LONDON.
No VIII.

COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

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SINCE his last tragedy of the Apostate, Mr Sheil appears to have been studying the old drama; and it has produced, as it was sure to do upon a mind like his,-a most excellent effect.

That love of violent and unnatural excitation, and that diseased appetite for mere effect, which were so conspicuous in his two former works, have in a great measure given place, in the present, to a more faithful leaning on the power of unassisted nature, and a more full and trusting reliance on gentleness as opposed to force, in swaying the movements of the human heart. A more intimate acquaintance with the female characters of Fletcher, Ford, and Shirley, has also given Mr Sheil, what he did not seem to possess before, a true insight into the nature of Miss O'Neill's powers, and a true feeling as to the purposes for which they are adapted. And, accordingly, he has now produced a tragedy much more creditable to his own genius than either of his preceding ones, and much better adapted to display her's.

The following is a sketch of the plot of Evadne:

Ludovico (Mr Macready), chief Minister and favourite of the King of Naples (Mr Abbot), conceives the design of destroying his master's life, and raising himself to the throne. With this view he begins by exciting in the King a guilty passion for Evadne (Miss O'Neill), sister of Colonna (Mr Young), a nobleman of Naples, and engages his promise that the brother himself shall consent to the sister's shame. The traitor himself has no intention of sacrificing Evadne, whom he secretly loves, to the King, but sets the plot in movement

Evadne, or the Statue; a Tragedy, by Richard Sheil, Esq. Murray, London. 1819.

to destroy the King, by Colonna's hand, It is further necessary that, to obtain Evadne, her lover, Vicentio (Mr C. Kemble) should be disposed of, by marriage, to Olivia (Mrs Faucit), Ludovico's kinswoman, who loves him. Vicentio is recalled from a foreign embassy; and, upon his return, is told by Ludovico that Evadne was false, and had become the mistress of the King. Vicentio is persuaded to believe his mistress faithless, on the evidence of a letter written by Evadne, containing the most passionate avowal of tenderness, really intended for Vicentio, but vico, to appear addressed to the King. by the change of name, contrived by LudoVicentio meets Evadne, reproaches her with her falsehood, is half persuaded by her protestations of her innocence; but asks, as the last means of removing his suspicions, that she should let him see whether she still wore round her neck his picture, which he had given her at his departure. She is it to him; it is the picture of the King. overjoyed, produces the picture, and gives

Vicentio now becomes furious and inexorable-Colonna enters, insults, and challenges Vicentio, and they go out to fight. Olivia comes in, and confesses to Evadne that she had contrived the false letter, and substituted the picture of the King for that of Vicentio round Evadne's neck, at the instigation of Ludovico, who engaged to reward her by making Vicentio her husband. Colonna and Vicentio fight; the latter is in a dungeon. Ludovico visits him, gives supposed dead, and the former confined him his freedom, tells him that the King demanded his sister's shame, and his own acquiescence, as the price of his pardon, and persuades him, by artfully working on his feelings, to give a seeming consent; to invite the King to his palace, and at the moment when he expects the brother's base sacrifice of the sister's honour, to murder. him. The King is invited and feasted by Colonna. The hour of rest approaches, and the King retires to his chamber. Colonna enters an adjoining apartment and proceeds to the door of that in which he was waiting the coming of Evadne. He unsheaths the dagger, and is about to open the door, when he hears a voice. It is Evudne; she knew his purpose, and persuades him to let her meet the King. He consents, but suspect

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