of that most agreeable veteran. Nothing can be more just than the greater part of the foljowing observations. "Quoi-qu'il y ait dans ses Essais une infinité de faits d'anecdotes et de citations, il n'est pas difficile de s'appercevoir que ses études n'étaient ni vastes ni profondes. Il n'avait guère lu que quelques poêtes latins, quelques livres de voyage, et son Sènèque et son Plutarque." opportunity of saying something of the Essays-Hawkesworth's Voyages are also very much commended; and Sir William Jones' letter to Anquetil du Perron, is said to be capable, with a few retrenchments, of being made worthy of the pen of the Patriarch himself.-Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare is also applauded to the full extent of its merits; and, indeed, a very laudable degree of candour and moderation is observed as to our national taste fit for us, and Racine for them; and each in the drama.-Shakespeare, he observes, is should be satisfied with his lot, and would do well to keep to his own national manner. When we attempt to be regular and dignified, we are merely cold and stiff; and when they aim at freedom and energy, they become absurd and extravagant. The celebrity of Garrick seems to have been scarcely less at Paris than in London,-their greatest actor being familiarly designated "Le Garrick François." His powers of pantomime, indeed, were universally intelligible, and seem to have made a prodigious impression upon the theatrical critics of France. But his authority is quoted by M. Grimm, for the observation, that there is not the smallest affinity in the tragic declamation of the two countries;-so that an actor who could give the most astonishing effect to a passage of Shakespeare, would not, though perfectly master of French, be able to guess how a single line of Racine should be spoken on the stage. "De tous les auteurs qui nous restent de l'antiquité, Plutarque est, sans contredit, celui qui a recueilli le plus de vérités de fait et de spéculation. Ses œuvres sont une mine inépuisable de lumières et de connaissances: c'est vraiment l'Encyclopédie des anciens. Montaigne nous en a donné la fleur, et il y a ajouté les reflexions les plus fines, et sur tout les résultats les plus secrets de sa propre expérience. Il me semble donc que si j'avais à donner une idée de ses Essais, je dirais en deux mots que c'est un commentaire que Montaigne fit sur luimême en méditant les écrits de Plutarque...Je pense encore que je dirais mal: ce serait lui prêter un projet...Montaigne n'en avait aucun. En metant la plume à la main, il paraît n'avoir songé qu'au plaisir de causer familièrement avec son lecteur. Il lui rend compte de ses lectures, de ses pensées, de Bea reflexions, sans suite, sans dessein: il veut avoir le plaisir de penser tout haut, et il en jouit à son sise. Il cite souvent Plutarque, parce que Plutarque était son livre favori. La seule loi qu'il semble s'être prescrite, c'est de ne jamais parler que de ce qui l'intéressait vivement: de là l'énergie et la vivacité de ses expressions, la grace et l'originalité de son langage. Son esprit a cette assurance et cette franchise aimable que l'on ne trouve que dans ces enfans bien nés, dont la contrainte du monde et de l'éducation ne gêna point encore les mouvemens faciles et naturels." After a still farther encomium on the sound sense of this favourite writer, M. Grimm concludes "Personne n'a-t-il donc pensé plus que Montaigne? Je l'ignore. Mais ce que je crois bien Bavoir, c'est que personne n'a dit avec plus de simplicité ce qu'il a senti, ce qu'il a pensé. On ne peut nen ajouter à l'éloge qu'il a fait lui-même de son ouvrage; c'est ici un livre de bonne foi. Cela est divia, et cela est exact." Qu'est-ce que toutes les connaissances humaines? le cercle en est si borné!.... Et depuis quatre mille ans, qu'a-t-on fait pour l'étendre? Montesquieu a dit quelque part, qu'il travaillait à livre de douze pages, qui contiendrait tout ce que nost savons sur la Métaphysique, la Politique et la Marale, et tout ce que de grands auteurs ont oublié dans les volumes qu'ils ont donnés sur ces sciencesJe suis très sérieusement persuadé qu'il De tenait qu'à lui d'accomplir ce grand projet.' Montesquieu, Buffon, and Raynal are the only authors, we think, of whom M. Grimm speaks with serious respect and admiration. Great praise is lavished upon Robertson's Charles V.-Young's Night Thoughts are said, and with justice, to be rather ingenious than pathetic; and to show more of a gloomy imgination than a feeling heart.-Thomson's Seasons are less happily stigmatized as exCessively omate and artificial, and said to stand in the same relation to the Georgics, that the Lady of Loretto, with all her tawdry finery, bears to the naked graces of the Venus de Medici.-Johnson's Life of Savage is exlolled as exceedingly entertaining-though the author is laughed at, in the true Parisian taste, for not having made a jest of his hero. We cannot leave the subject of the drama, however, without observing, with what an agreeable surprise we discovered in M. Grimm, an auxiliary in that battle which we have for some time waged, though not without trepidation, against the theatrical standards of France, and in defence of our own more free and irreg ular drama. While a considerable part of our own men of letters, carried away by the authority and supposed unanimity of the continental judges, were disposed to desert the cause of Shakespeare and Nature, and to recognize Racine and Voltaire, as the only true models of dramatic excellence, it turns out that the greatest Parisian critic, of that best age of criticism, was of opinion that the very idea of dramatic excellence had never been developed in France; and that, from the very causes which we have formerly specified, there was neither powerful passion nor real nature on their stage. After giving some account of a play of La Harpe's, he observes, "I am more and more confirmed in the opinion, that true tragedy, such as has never yet existed in France, must, after all, be written in prose; or at least can never accommodate itself to the pompous and rhetorical tone of our stately versification. The ceremonious and affected dignity which belongs to such compositions, is quite inconsistent with the just imitation of nature, and destructive of all true pathos. It may be very fine and very poetical; but it is not dramatic:—and accordingly I have no hesitation in maintaining, that all our celebrated tragedies belong to the epic and not to the dramatic division of poetry. The Greeks and Romans had a dramatic verse, which did not interfere with simplicity or familiarity of diction; but as we have none, we must make up our minds to compose our tragedies in prose, if we ever expect to have any that may deserve the name. What then?" he continues; "must we throw our Racines and Voltaires in the fire?-by no means; on the contrary, we must keep them, and study and admire them more than ever;but with right conceptions of their true nature and merit-as masterpieces of poetry, and reasoning, and description ;-as the first works of the first geniuses that ever adorned any nation under heaven:-But not as tragedies, -not as pieces intended to exhibit natural characters and passions speaking their own language, and to produce that terrible impression which such pieces alone can produce. Considered in that light, their coldness and childishness will be immediately apparent ;and though the talents of the artist will always be conspicuous, their misapplication and failure will not be less so. With the prospect that lies before us, the best thing, perhaps, that we can do is to go on, boasting of the unparalleled excellence we have attained. But how speedily should our boastings be silenced if the present race of children should be succeeded by a generation of men! Here is a theory," concludes the worthy Baron, a little alarmed it would seem at his own temerity, "which it would be easy to confirm and illustrate much more completely-if a man had a desire to be stoned to death before the door of the Theatre François! But, in the mean time, till I am better prepared for the honours of martyrdom, I must entreat you to keep the secret of my infidelity to yourself." Diderot holds very nearly the same language. After a long dissertation upon the difference between real and artificial dignity, he proceeds,-"What follows, then, from all this-but that tragedy is still to be invented in France; and that the ancients, with all their faults, were probably much nearer inventing it than we have been?-Noble actions and sentiments, with simple and familiar language, are among its first elements;-and I strongly suspect, that for these two hundred years, we have mistaken the stateliness of Madrid for the heroism of Rome. If once a man of genius shall venture to give to his characters and to his diction the simplicity of ancient dignity, plays and players will be very different things from what they are now. But how much of this," he adds also in a fit of sympathetic terror, "could I venture to say to any body but you! I should be pelted in the streets, if I were but suspected of the blasphemies I have just uttered." With the assistance of two such allies, we shall renew the combat against the Continental dramatists with fresh spirits and confidence; and shall probably find an early opportunity to brave the field, upon that important theme. In the mean time we shall only remark, that we suspect there is something more than an analogy between the government and political constitution of the two countries, and the character of their drama. The tragedy of the Continent is conceived in the very genius and spirit of absolute monarchy-the same cial stateliness-the same slow moving ‹ persons-the same suppression of ord emotions, and ostentatious display of sentiments, and, finally, the same jealou the interference of lower agents, and the horror of vulgarity and tumult. Whe consider too, that in the countries wher form of the drama has been establishe Court is the chief patron of the theatre courtiers almost its only supporters, we probably be inclined to think that this formity of character is not a mere accid coincidence, but that the same causes v have stamped those attributes on the se hours of its rulers, have extended the those mimic representations which were inally devised for their amusement. In land, again, our drama has all along part: of the mixed nature of our governme persons of all degrees take a share in each in his own peculiar character and fas and the result has been, in both, a greater activity, variety, and vigour, that ever exhibited under a more exclusive sy! In England, too, the stage has in general dependent on the nation at large, and n the favour of the Court;-and it is natu suppose that the character of its exhibi has been affected by a due considerati that of the miscellaneous patron whose ings it was its business to gratify and re After having said so much about the s we cannot afford room either for the qua or witticisms of the actors, which are re ed at great length in these volumes-o the absurdities, however ludicrous, of "Diou de Danse" as old Vestris ycleped self-or even the famous "affaire du Mes which distracted the whole court of Fi at the marriage of the late King. We allow only a sentence indeed to the elab dissertation in which Diderot endeavou prove that an actor is all the worse for ha any feeling of the passions he represents is never so sure to agitate the souls o hearers as when his own is perfectly at We are persuaded that this is not com true;-though it might take more distinc than the subject is worth, to fix prec where the truth lies. It is plain we t however, that a good actor must have a city, at least, of all the passions whose guage he mimics,-and we are rather incl to think, that he must also have a tran feeling of them, whenever his mime very successful. That the emotion shou very short-lived, and should give way to vial or comic sensations, with very littl terval, affords but a slender presum against its reality, when we consider rapidly such contradictory feelings suc each other, in light minds, in the real basi of life. That real passion, again, never w be so graceful and dignified as the cou feited passion of the stage, is either an peachment of the accuracy of the copy, contradiction in terms. The real passion noble and dignified character must alway dignified and graceful,-and if Cæsar, v actually bleeding in the Senate-house, folded from the arms of her lawful husband, and to his robe around him, that he might fall with compel her to submit again to his embraces,→ decorum at the feet of his assassins, why and that the court was actually guilty of the should we say that it is out of nature for a incredible atrocity of granting such an order! player, both to sympathise with the passions It was not only granted, M. Grimm assures of his hero, and to think of the figure he us, but executed, and this poor creature was makes in the eyes of the spectators? Strong dragged from the house of her husband, and conception is, perhaps in every case, attended conducted by a file of grenadiers to the quar with a temporary belief of the reality of its ters of his highness, where she remained till objects; and it is impossible for any one to his death, the unwilling and disgusted victim copy with tolerable success the symptoms of of his sensuality! It is scarcely possible to a powerful emotion, without a very lively ap- regret the subversion of a form of govern prehension and recollection of its actual pre- ment, that admitted, if but once in a century, sence. We have no idea, we own, that the of abuses so enormous as this: But the tone oopy can ever be given without some partici- in which M. Grimm notices it, as a mere foipation in the emotion itself-or that it is pos-blesse on the part of le Grand Maurice, gives sible to repeat pathetic words, and with the us reason to think that it was by no means true tone and gestures of passion, with the without a parallel in the contemporary history. same indifference with which a schoolboy re- In England, we verily believe, there never peats his task, or a juggler his deceptions. was a time in which it would not have proThe feeling, we believe, is often very mo- duced insurrection or assassination. mentary; and it is this which has misled One of the most remarkable passages in those who have doubted of its existence. this philosophical journal, is that which conBut there are many strong feelings equally tains the author's estimate of the advantages fleeting and undeniable. The feelings of the and disadvantages of philosophy. Not being spectators, in the theatre, though frequently much more of an optimist than ourselves, M. more keen than they experience anywhere Grimm thinks that good and evil are pretty else, are in general infinitely less durable than fairly distributed to the different generations those excited by real transactions; and a lu- of men; and that, if an age of philosophy be dicrous incident or blunder in the perform- happier in some respects than one of ignor ance, will carry the whole house, in an instant, ance and prejudice, there are particulars in from sobbing to ungovernable laughter: And which it is not so fortunate. Philosophy, he even in real life, we have every day occasion thinks, is the necessary fruit of a certain exto observe, how quickly the busy, the dissi-perience and a certain maturity; and implies, pated, the frivolous, and the very youthful, in nations as well as individuals, the extinc can pass from one powerful and engrossing emotion to another. The daily life of Voltaire, we think, might have furnished Diderot with as many and as striking instances of the actual succession of incongruous emotions, as he has collected from the theatrical life of Sophie Arnoud, to prove that one part of the succession must necessarily have been ficti tions. There are various traits of the oppressions and abuses of the government, incidentally noticed in this work, which maintains, on the whole, a very aristocratical tone of politics. One of the most remarkable relates to no less person than the Maréchal de Saxe. This great warrior, who is known never to have taken the field without a small travelling seraglo in his suite, had engaged a certain Madle. Chantilly to attend him in one of his campaigns. The lady could not prudently decime the honour of the invitation, because she was very poor; but her heart and soul were devoted to a young pastry cook of the name of Favart, for whose sake she at last broke out of the Marshal's camp, and took refuge in the arms of her lover; who rewarded her heroism by immediately making her his wife. The history of the Marshal's laentation on finding himself deserted, is purely ridiculous, and is very well told; but or feelings take a very different character, when, upou reading a little farther, we find that this illustrious person had the baseness and brutality to apply to his sovereign for a lettre de cachet to force this unfortunate woman tion of some of the pleasures as well as the follies of early life. All nations, he observes, have begun with poetry, and ended with philosophy-or, rather, have passed through the region of philosophy in their way to that of stupidity and dotage. They lose the poetical passion, therefore, before they acquire the taste for speculation; and, with it, they lose all faith in those allusions, and all interest in those trifles which make the happiness of the brightest portion of our existence. If, in this advanced stage of society, men are less brutal, they are also less enthusiastic;-if they are more habitually beneficent, they have less warmth of affection. They are delivered indeed from the yoke of many prejudices; but at the same time deprived of many motives of action. They are more prudent, but more anxious-are more affected with the general interests of mankind, but feel less for their neighbours; and, while curiosity takes the place of admiration, are more enlightened, but far less delighted with the universe in which they are placed. The effect of this philosophical spirit on the arts, is evidently unfavourable on the whole. Their end and object is delight, and that of philosophy is truth; and the talent that seeks to instruct, will rarely condescend to aim merely at pleasing. Racine and Molière, and Boileau, were satisfied with furnishing amusement to such men as Louis XIV., and Colbert, and Turenne; but the geniuses of the present day pretend to nothing less than enlightening their rulers; and the same young men who would formerly have made their debut | After these precious ameliorations were comwith a pastoral or a tragedy, now generally pleted, they threw of the full impression; leave college with a new system of philoso- and, to make all sure and irremediable, conphy and government in their portfolios. The signed both the manuscript and the original very metaphysical, prying, and expounding proofs to the flames! Such, says M. Grimm, turn of mind that is nourished by the spirit is the true explanation of that mass of imof philosophy, unquestionably deadens our pertinences, contradictions, and incoherer:ces, sensibility to those enjoyments which it con- with which all the world has been struck, in verts into subjects of speculation. It busies the last ten volumes of this great compilation. itself in endeavouring to understand those It was not discovered till the very eve of the emotions which a simpler age was contented publication; when Diderot having a desire to with enjoying;-and seeking, like Psyche, to look back to one of his own articles, printed have a distinct view of the sources of our some years before, with difficulty obtained a pleasures, is punished, like her, by their in- copy of the sheets containing it from the stant annihilation. warehouse of M. Breton-and found, to his Religion, too, continues M. Grimm, consid- horror and consternation, that it had been garered as a source of enjoyment or consolation bled and mutilated, in the manner we have in this world, has suffered from the progress just stated. His rage and vexation on the of philosophy, exactly as the fine arts and af-discovery, are well expressed in a long letter fections have done. It has no doubt become to Breton, which M. Grimm has engrossed in infinitely more rational, and less liable to his register. The mischief however was ir atrocious perversions; but then it has also remediable, without an intolerable delay and become much less enchanting and ecstatic-expense; and as it was impossible for the much less prolific of sublime raptures, bea- editor to take any steps to bring Breton to tific visions, and lofty enthusiasm. It has punishment for this "horrible forfait," withsuffered, in short, in the common disenchant-out openly avowing the intended publication ment; and the same cold spirit which has chased so many lovely illusions from the earth, has dispeopled heaven of half its marvels and its splendours. of a work which the court only tolerated by affecting ignorance of its existence, it was at last resolved, with many tears of rage and vexation, to keep the abomination secret-at We could enlarge with pleasure upon these least till it was proclaimed by the indignant Just and interesting speculations; but it is denunciations of the respective authors whose time we should think of drawing this article works had been subjected to such cruel muto a close; and we must take notice of a very tilation. The most surprising part of the extraordinary transaction which M. Grimm story however is, that none of these authors has recorded with regard to the final publica- ever made any complaint about the matter. tion of the celebrated Encyclopedie. The re- Whether the number of years that had elapsdaction of this great work, it is known, was ed since the time when most of them had ultimately confided to Diderot; who thought furnished their papers, had made them init best, after the disturbances that had been sensible of the alterations-whether they beexcited by the separate publication of some lieved the change effected by the base hand of the earlier volumes, to keep up the whole of Breton to have originated with Diderot, of the last ten till the printing was finished; their legal censor-or that, in fact, the alteraand then to put forth the complete work at tions were chiefly in the articles of the said once. A bookseller of the name of Breton, Diderot himself, we cannot pretend to say; who was a joint proprietor of the work, had but M. Grimm assures us, that, to his astonthe charge of the mechanical part of the con-ishment and that of Diderot, the mutilated cern; but, being wholly illiterate, and indeed without pretensions to literature, had of course no concern with the correction, or even the perusal of the text. This person, however, who had heard of the clamours and threatened prosecutions which were excited by the freedom of some articles in the earlier There are many curious and original anecvolumes, took it into his head, that the value dotes of the Empress of Russia in this book; and security of the property might be improv- and as she always appeared to advantage ed, by a prudent castigation of the remaining where munificence and clemency to individuparts; and accordingly, after receiving from als were concerned, they are certainly calcu Diderot the last proofs and revises of the dif-lated to give us a very favourable impression ferent articles, took them home, and, with the of that extraordinary woman. We can only assistance of another tradesman, scored out, altered, and suppressed, at their own discretion, all the passages which they in their wisdom apprehended might give offence to the court, or the church, or any other persons in authority-giving themselves, for the most part, no sort of trouble to connect the disjointed passages that were left after these mutilations and sometimes soldering them together with masses of their own stupid vulgarity. publication, when it at last made its appearance, was very quietly received by the injured authors as their authentic production, and apologies humbly made, by some of them, for imperfections that had been created by the beast of a publisher. afford room now for one, which characterises the nation as well as its sovereign. A popular poet, of the name of Sumarokoff, had quarrelled with the leading actress at Moscow, and protested that she should never again have the honour to perform in any of his tra gedies. The Governor of Moscow, however, not being aware of this theatrical feud, thought fit to order one of Sumarokoff's trage dies for representation, and also to command the services of the offending actress on the ccasion. Sumarokoff did not venture to take any step against his Excellency the Governor; but when the heroine advanced in full Muscovite costume on the stage, the indignant poet rushed forward from behind the scenes, seized her reluctantly by the collar and waist, and tossed her furiously from the boards. He then went home, and indited two querulous and sublime epistles to the Empress. Catherine, in the midst of her gigantic schemes of conquest and improvement, had the patience to sit down and address the following good-humoured and sensible exhortauon to the disordered bard. miscellaneous contents. Whoever wishes to see the economist wittily abused-to read a full and picturesque account of the tragical rejoicings that filled Paris with mourning at the marriage of the late King-to learn how Paul Jones was a writer of pastorals and love songs- -or how they made carriages of leather, and evaporated diamonds in 1772-to trace the debut of Madame de Staël as an author at the age of twelve, in the year -!-to understand M. Grimm's notions on suicide and happiness-to know in what the unique charm of Madlle. Thevenin consisted-and in what manner the dispute between the patrons of the French and the Italian music was con"Monsieur Sumarokoff, j'ai été fort étonnée de ducted-will do well to peruse the five thick votre lettre du 28 Janvier, et encore plus de celie volumes, in which these, and innumerable du premier Février. Toutes deux contiennent, à other matters of equal importance are disce qu'il me semble, des plaintes contre la Belmon-cussed, with the talent and vivacity with tia qui pourtant n'a fait que suivre les ordres du which the reader must have been struck, in comte Soltikoff. Le feld-maréchal a désiré de voir the least of the foregoing extracts. représenter votre tragédie; cela vous fait honneur. Il était convenable de vous conformer au désir de la We add but one trivial remark, which is première personne en autorité à Moscou; mais si forced upon us, indeed, at almost every page elle a jugé à propos d'ordonner que cette pièce fût of this correspondence. The profession of litreprésentée, il fallait exécuter sa volonté sans con-erature must be much wholesomer in France testation. Je crois que vous savez mieux que perBonne combien de respect méritent des hommes qui ent servi avec gloire, et dont la tête est couverte de cheveux blancs; c'est pourquoi je vous conseille d'éviter de pareilles disputes à l'avenir. Par ce moyen vous conserverez la tranquillité d'âme qui est nécessaire pour vos ouvrages, et il me sera toujours plus agréable de voir les passions représentées dans vos drames que de les lire dans vos lettres. "Au surplus, je suis votre affectionnée. Signé CATHERINE." "Je conseille," adds M. Grimm, à tout mintre chargé du département des lettres de cachet, d'enregistrer ce formulaire à son greffe, et à tout hasard de n'en jamais délivrer d'autres aux poetes et à tout ce qui a droit d'être du genre irritable, c'est-à-dire enfant et fou par état. Après cette lettre qui mérite peut-être autant l'immortalité que les monumens de la sagesse et de la gloire du règne actuel de la Russie, je meurs de peur de m'affermir dans la pensée hérétique que l'esprit ne gâte jamais nen, même sur le trône." But it is at last necessary to close these entertaining volumes,-though we have not been able to furnish our readers with any thing like a fair specimen of their various and than in any other country:-for though the volumes before us may be regarded as a great literary obituary, and record the deaths, we suppose, of more than an hundred persons of some note in the world of letters, we scarcely meet with an individual who is less than seventy or eighty years of age-and no very small proportion actually last till near ninety or an hundred-although the greater part of them seem neither to have lodged so high, nor lived so low, as their more active and abstemious brethren in other cities. M. Grimm observes that, by a remarkable fatality, Europe was deprived, in the course of little more than six months, of the splendid and commanding talents of Rousseau, Voltaire, Haller, Linnæus, Heidegger, Lord Chatham, and Le Kain-a constellation of genius, he adds, that when it set to us, must have carried a dazzling light into the domains of the King of Terrors, and excited no small alarm in his ministersif they bear any resemblance to the ministers of other sovereigns. (January, 1810.) Memoirs of the Life and Writings of VICTOR ALFIERI. Written by Himself. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 614. London: 1810. pre THIS book contains the delineation of an great leading features in the mind of Alfieri. extraordinary and not very engaging charac- Strengthened, and in some degree produced, ter; and an imperfect sketch of the rise and by a loose and injudicious education, those progress of a great poetical genius. It is de- traits were still further developed by the serving of notice in both capacities-but mature and protracted indulgences of a very chiefly in the first; as there probably never dissipated youth; and when, at last, they adwas an instance in which the works of an mitted of an application to study, imparted sathor were more likely to be influenced by their own character of impetuosity to those his personal peculiarities. Pride and enthu- more meritorious exertions-converted a asm-irrepressible vehemence and ambition taste into a passion; and left him, for a great -and an arrogant, fastidious, and somewhat part of his life, under the influence of a true marrow system of taste and opinions, were the and irresistible inspiration. Every thing in |