Should slander whisper o'er my sepulchre,
And my soul's agency survive in death,
I would embody it with heaven's lightning,
And the hot shaft of my unsullied spirit
Should strike the blaster of my memory
Dead, in the churchyard.

The last line was delivered with the same preposterous lust after novelty, where the author's meaning was as clear as it could possibly be made. The actor interrupted the flow of passion by a dead pause after the word memory, a sudden and total dismission of the tone of passion, and a sinking of the voice into the quietness of colloquial familiarity just at the very climax of the passage

DEAD! in the churchyard.

We know it is not easy to convey the idea of tone and manner to those who have

not witnessed them. But we shall be satisfied if our censures are just in the opinion of those who have. If this strange singularity were displayed by Mr Kean only in one character, it might be tolerated, perhaps applauded, as striking and characteristic, even if not probable, or explicable on the common rules of elocution. But, being introduced, as it is by Mr Kean, into every part he plays, it becomes in the utmost degree tiresome, and disgusting. It totally destroys all reality or verisimilitude in the delineation of character; it quite ceases to belong to the fictitious person of the drama, and perpetually brings before the hearer, with wearisome iteration. Mr Kean himself, in his own proper person. We hear it as we do the eternal grace of a half-taught singer, whose well-worn cadence is sure to conduct him to the same hopstep-and-jump at the close. The first time it occurs, one exclaims, how fine! the second, how strange! but surely at the third it can hardly fail to be, how ridiculous! Now, really, this is inexcusable in Mr Kean. Why should he, who might have, and who has, such powerful and legitimate holds over bait of absurdity for the shallow praise of the applause of the wise, thus angle with the fools? It is just playing over again in public what Garrick did in private, of whom Goldsmith records, that,

Though sure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick
If they were not his own by finessing and trick.

What we have here felt it our duty to mention, is unquestionably Mr Kean's greatest vice in acting; but there is another, though far less glaring. We have praised his soliloquies; but he does not always distinguish in them betwixt abstraction of mind,

and absence of mind. By the first term, we mean to convey that species of self-concentration which is occasioned by intense contemplation upon some treasured object of thought; and by the second, that common feebleness of a petty character, which has scarcely energy enough to think at all. The current of thought, in the first instance, assumes the form of settled axioms, delivered with all the regularity and continuity of an oration; and it is only in the second case supposed, that the speaker hesitates, blunders, and pauses for words. Mr Kean is perpetually confounding, either through misconception, or for effect, these two very distinct species of mental alienation; and we select one glaring instance, because it shews how much will be pardoned and applauded in a favourite actor-for this palpable blunder is, or was, uplifted to the skies. It occurs in his favourite part of Richard, in the opening speech,

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lower'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

These lines are delivered by Mr Kean with the most natural and imposing air of selfconcentration; but when he comes to the last, he makes a pause before the word "buried," as if he had lost the thread of his musing, and was obliged to stop till he had found it. This is surely either a total misconception of a very plain passage, or, which we rather suspect, a hunting after effect through channels that are disowned by genuine taste.

We are unwilling to enlarge needlessly upon defects; but our task would not be

Edinburgh, printed by James Ballantyne & Co. For John Ballantyne, Hanover-Street.

fulfilled were we to pass without notice Mr Kean's vicious pronunciation of many words, and particularly of those in which the letter R occurs. With these he really tears our very organs of hearing. For instance, if we could convey any idea of his mode of pronouncing the following line, without imitating him, it would be by printing it as follows:

Most potent, gurr-ave, and urr-reverend signors. This does not exaggerate what we mean to convey. The word kind he pronounces kee-ind, which we suppose is some very vulgar provincialism. We do not fear ha ving offended Mr Kean, but we ardently wish we could convince him of the justice of the strictures we have made. After all, it is one of the most decided tributes that can be paid to his powerful genius, that all this is passed over without censure, and even without notice, by those whose ears have been so long habituated to the polished and refined articulation of Mr Kemble.

It is surely unnecessary for us, in conclu ding, to repeat the warmth and sincerity of our admiration of this most remarkable man; an admiration which is only qualified by our regret, that he is not, what he might easily become, but will never become without an effort, as pure in his taste as he is distinguished by his genius. That he is eminently popular ought not to satisfy a mind so highly gifted as his.

man

As the Roemperor mourned when he had lost a' day, so ought Mr Kean to be unsatisfied while he wants the voice of one man of cultivated taste, which his own exertions, properly directed, might procure him.

Ja. Ballantyne :

Dilatory

7. Jeffer

No. XVI.]

SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1817.

WE remember to have seen it observed, that the splendour of Mr Cumberland's genius has nowhere developed itself so completely and so openly, as in the specimens of translation from the three stages of Grecian comedy, with which he has checkered and adorned the pages of The Observer. To this opinion, with certain qualifications, we are inclined to accede; rejecting, as we do, root and branch, an absurd and ridiculous notion, started, as we have our information, not long ago, that these translations are from the pen, not of Mr Cumberland, but of his illustrious relation Doctor Bentley. Of the versifying powers of that celebrated critic we have, happily, one sample remaining; and, with Doctor Johnson's leave be it spoken, a precious one it is!! It was just as possible for Doctor Bentley to have clothed these selections from the Greek comic theatre in the language of Jonson, of Fletcher, and of Massinger, as it was for

Cicero to have been a poet, Addison a speaker, or for Mr Cumberland to have written the Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris.

With such an example before us, we should be purblind and thick-sighted indeed, were we to neglect the employment of the same, and such like means, with reference to the furnishing and fitting out of this our Sale-Room : especially as the pages of Athenæus, Stobæus, and other writers and collectors of antiquity, afford to our purposes a mine, so fertile, and so exuber. antly rich, that, in translating at all (if we except what Mr Cumberland has given us,) we can scarcely fail of presenting our readers. with something new and hitherto unattempted. It is hoped, therefore, that this circumstance will be allowed to step in to our defence, if our ability shall in some cases deny to us the power of keeping pace with the strength and spirit of the originals. We pledge ourselves to do our best; and if, in acting up

Q

to our professions, we fall short (as indeed we expect to do,) of the merit, which Mr Cumberland has gained to himself in this department, we trust that our efforts will nevertheless be entitled to some degree of praise, and our effusions be read, remote as they may be from any thing like excellence or perfection.

On the present occasion, it will be our object to correct an unaccountable oversight, which Mr Cumberland has committed in his account of the fragments of Epicharmus. To the memory of that ancient poet, who was a disciple of Pythagoras, and (according to Theocritus and others,) the Inventor of comedy, he professes himself to be so much attached, that, contrary to his practice afterwards, he has given us the titles of his plays, fifty in all; and, led by the same motives of reverence and respect, has laid before us a translation of every fragment of Epicharmus that he could find. "I wish," says he, "they had been more in number, and of greater importance than they are; but such as they are, I have reason to believe they are the whole amount of what can be picked up from the wreck of this once valuable poet." Now, it so happens, that the fragments of Epicharmus, that have escaped his notice, are not only more numerous, but (generally,) more important by far, than those which he has translated as the sum-total of what he could discover. When therefore we call an omission of this nature, and on so large a scale too, an oversight, we hope no one will accuse us of ha ving used too harsh a term.

| being, on the whole, chiefly ambitious, that this additional list, together with the remarks we have to offer, should be considered in the light of a Supplement to what Mr Cumberland has said respecting the poet Epicharmus.

To the history and Life of Epicharmus, as related by Mr Cumberland, we have not much to add. The most remarkable defect in it is, his having entirely omitted to notice the short, but highly valuable sketch of his life, that is to be found in the biography of Laertius; who informs us that his birthplace was not Sicily, but Cos. It is possible that he may have fallen into the error of Aldobrandinus,* one of the commentators upon that author; who appears to consider the philosopher, whose life is there written, as a different person altogether from the Inventor of comedy. The tormer of these characters, however, is manifestly a mere cipher; as the learned Vossius told us more than a century and a half ago, and as we may

* If such was the case, Mr Cumberland was at least consistent in his error, which Aldobrandinus was not.

For, commenting on a passage in Laertius's Life of Plato, (III. 10.) where mention is made of Epicharmus, he expresses an opinion that Epicharmus, the Coan philosopher, whose life is written in the eighth book, is there meant, and not the Inventor of comedy. And yet one' would have thought that the circumstance of Laertius having prefixed the title of Kadensis, the comic poet, to the name a little before, would have rendered it impossible for him to have fallen into the blunder. But this is not all. For, when this blinkard Aldobrandinus comes to comment on the Life itself, he makes not the

slightest allusion to his former opinion, but, just as

count in illustration of it, without perceiving the quagwhat is still more strange, actually quotes Suidas's acmire he had got into.

see at once (as he saw,) by comparing Suidas's narrative with Laertius's. "Epicharmus," says Laertius, "was the son of Helo. thales, and a Coan by birth. He studied under Pythagoras. He came to Megara, a town of Sicily, at the early ageofthree months, and from Megara removed to Syracuse, as he himself informs us." Suidas's account is, that he was a Syracusian, and the son of Tityrus, or Chimarus, and Sicis," (not Sicida, as Mr Cumberland has it;)" although some authorities report that he came from Crastus," (or Crastis, not Crastum,)" a town of the Sicani; others, that he was a Coan, that is to say, descended from a colony of Coans, which formerly established itself in Sicily under the direction of Cadmus; others, a Samian; and others again, that he was of Megara, a town of Sicily." That these two stories relate to the same person, namely, to the Inventor of comedy, there can be no doubt; and as little doubt, that Laertius's is the more to be depended upon of the two, it being actually taken from Epicharmus's own records. Aided, therefore, by the additional testimony of the grammarian Diomedes, (whose authority is hastily rejected by Mr. Cumberland,) we conclude that Laer. tius's assertion, that he was a Coan by birth, is perfectly correct; and that the confusion and uncertainty which exists, relative to the place where he was born, originated in the circumstance of his having been enfranchised, first amongst the inhabitants of Megara, and subsequently amongst those of Sy. racuse, which was in the immediate vicinity of Megara.*

For example; by Theocritus, Columella, and the author of the epigram, said by Laertius to have been inscribed upon his statue, he is called expressly a Syracu5

We are likewise inclined to believe that the name of Epicharmus's father was neither Tityrus, nor Chimarus, nor Thyrsus, as Iamblicus has it, but Helothales; as Laertius asserts, not only here, but likewise in his Life of Plato. One suspects from the very jingling of such names as Tityrus, and Chimarus, and Thyrsus, that they are but of base coinage, and fit only for pastoral and other writing of the same stamp.

There is one thing, however, very remarkable in Laertius's Life of Epicharmus ; and that is, that he has nowhere in it made mention of the circumstance of Epicharmus being considered as the Inventor of comedy, or even as a writer of comedy at all: althought, as we have had occasion to observe before, he had quoted him under the title of i Kwdoors, the comic writer, in his Life of Pla

to.

But this circumstance, we conceive, will be easily accounted for; as the Life, like the Lives of Archytas, Alemæon, and some others, can be no other than a mere biographical sketch, designed to be filled up at some future time, and recording rather the facts relating to Epicharmus that were less known, and the more likely on that ac. count to escape the memory. Instead of our being told that he was the Inventor, or a writer, of comedy, (which all must have known, who knew any thing of Epicharmus,) we are informed that he left behind him several oμvnμata, or books of memoirs, on various subjects; some of them moral, others philosophical, and others again medical. From these books, it appears, were those "sentences of moral," or" proverbial gnome," as Doctor Bentley used to call them, which we find scat

sian; by Aristotle, a Megarean; and by Cicero and Horace, in more loose terms, a Sicilian.