aid of physical weakness, wins an unexpected victory over mere brute physical force, which seemed, and was believed, to be above resistance.

The other passage which I shall notice, is that of Rebecca's trial for pretended witchcraft. The Templar has borne her off from Front-deBouf's castle when it was stormed and burned, and has concealed her in the establishment of his order, at Templestowe. She is discovered by the Grand Master; and the Warden, a friend of Bois-Guilbert, persuades him, as the only means of escaping the punishment incurred by a Templar convicted of an intrigue with an infidel, to sanction a charge, preferred against Rebecca, of having employed sorcery to seduce him. Before the whole body of the Templars, assembled in their hall with all the pomp of the order, with the Grand Master, a weak and austere bigot, at their head, she is brought forth, without an advocate or an attendant, to answer a charge, in establishing which the pride of the order, anxious that the frailty of a brother should be proved not to have flowed from human corruption-the universal belief in the existence and efficacy of witchcraft-and the detestation in which the age and country held her race-conspired to overwhelm a beautiful Jewess, whose loveliness was considered as the instrument, and therefore taken as a proof, of her guilt. Here again she was alone, a woman, and defenceless; before adverse and interested judges-an armed tribunal-an ecclesiastical courtclothed with the triple terrors of arms, religion, and law; from whose judgment, in those bigotted and forceful times, appeal was hopeless. Can any Can any addition be conceived possible, to the sympathies arising from this subjection of innocence unprotected, and beauty made a crime, before interested guilt, brandishing a stern, remorseless, and resistless power? The author finds a circumstance to make pity still more deep and painful, by enhancing our sense of the purity of the victim, and of the heartless rigour of her enemies. She is ordered to unveil. She pleads in excuse the customs of her people, that a maiden should not stand uncovered" when alone in an assembly of strangers.' At the stern mandate of the Grand Master,

he

But in a few moments the character of the scene changes. Pity gives way to admiration. Rebecca appears again, cool, collected, fearless in the midst of danger, as when before she looked down without a shudder upon death, and stood with an eye that" quailed not," and a cheek that "blanched not," upon the brink of the battlement. She is condemned to die the death of a sorceress-to be burnt alive. Yet her spirit bends not. She supplicates no mercy from her judges, nor intercession from her accuser; but with the boldness and pride of conscious innocence, indignant at a charge, not against her piety merely, but against the purity of her maiden honour, she turns to Bois-Guilbert and cries,-" To himself-yes, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, to thyself I appeal, whether these accusations are not false ?-as monstrous and calumnious as they are deadly ?" There is a pause; all eyes turn to Bois-Guilbert; he is silent. Speak," she says, " if thou art a man-if thou art a Christian, speak! I conjure thee, by the habit which thou dost wear-by the name thou dost inherit-by the knighthood thou dost vaunt-by the honour of thy mother-by the tomb and the bones of thy father-I conjure thee to say, are these things true ?"

guards are about rudely to unveil

66

The group and the situation in this scene, to say nothing now of the astonishing powers of language displayed in it, have, for dramatic effect, been seldom equalled. The place, the assemblage, are imposing. The cha

Biographical Notice of Fielding, prefixed to a late edition of that author's works, and written with all that delightful ease and spirit which would have betrayed the writer, even if it had not been dated from Abbotsford, has the following passage:-" Force of character, strength of expression, felicity of contrast and situation, a well-constructed plot, in which the developement is at once natural and unexpected, and where the interest is kept uniformly alive till summed up by the catastrophe -all these requisites are as essential to the labour of a novelist as to that of a dramatist, and indeed appear to comprehend the sum of the qualities necessary for success in both departments." It is scarcely possible for language to express, with greater clearness and vigour, the title of the Author of Waverley to the same supremacy in the old sphere of the first glories of British genius, as in that new region which he has halfconquered, half-created for himself. But the hopes raised by this passage, which seems almost to promise what we have so long desired, are cruelly dealt with in the succeeding pages; and we are told, that "he who applies with eminent success to the one (pursuit), becomes in some degree unqualified for the other,-like the artizan, who, by a particular turn for excellence in one mechanical department, loses the habit of dexterity necessary for acquitting himself with equal reputation in another; or as the artist, who has dedicated himself to the use of water-colours, is usually less distinguished by his skill in oil-painting."

If this opinion be well founded, we must bid adieu to all hopes of the regeneration of the drama, perhaps for another century. It is not likely that the next age will be more prolific in the works of the imagination than the last. The world is growing sadly unpoetical; and if the greatest dramatic genius which has appeared for a century and a half has, by his habits of composition, unfitted himself for that kind of poetry, where can we expect the adventurous spirit to arise that will attempt the task, and achieve it, in which the Author of Waverley, had he tried it, must have failed?

But I do not think the present generation will easily be induced to be lieve that the genius of a poet can, by

any habits, be confined for ever to a certain track, like the mechanic and the artist, whose powers of execution depend as much, and often far more, upon manual dexterity, than on the intellect or the imagination. The

great critic, whose fiat I now venture to question, is himself an example of versatility, more than sufficient to show, that the creative faculty, instead of becoming fettered by its own works, and growing less flexible by progressive excellence in one direction, may increase in strength, as its sphere of exertion becomes larger and more various, and, after holding the world for years in admiration of its deeds in old and beaten paths, may astonish still more by its exploits upon new and untrodden ground.

The passage first quoted is indeed a decisive answer to the second. Fictitious narrative and dramatic poetry are of kindred natures. The novelist must be, to a certain extent, a dramatist; or, in as far as he fails in being. such, his works will want truth, vivacity, and power. The most elaborate descriptions of the loveliest and sublimest objects, the most vivid narratives of events of the highest interest, will not of themselves make a novel readable. The persons must speak as well as act, or they will excite but little sympathy. Sentiment and passion cannot be given at second hand;-they can be known only by the language of those who feel and are agitated. And if it is the dramatic character that gives life and spirit to a novel, the novelist who imparts it to his works must surely become, by each successive trial, more and more qualified for dramatic composition.

It is urged at some length, in the disquisition which I here presume to canvass, that narration and description are so foreign from the drama, that they cannot be pursued long by any writer without impairing his dramatic powers; and Fielding is alleged as an instance of the truth of this opinion. Fielding's plays certainly add nothing to his reputation; but it is very far from clear that his habits of narration prevented his success in that style of writing. It is indeed impossible to read a dozen pages of any of his novels, without perceiving that his was never a dramatic genius. His great excellence is in describing situations. In dialogue he is always diffuse, and

often dull. No writer ever excelled him in unfolding the mysteries of human character; but in the execution of this part of his art, it is the novelist himself that speaks, and not the persons who figure in his history. Fielding was by nature denied the power of throwing into a few brief words all that could be told of the wildest passion or the deepest distress; and hence, though we are always interested, we are seldom, if ever, agitated by the perusal of his works. Enough of the dramatic is in them to preserve animation; but clear and rapid glimpses of characters, unfolding themselves as if without the assistance of the author,-guilt working up spontaneously into the ferment that betrays it,-tenderness or anguish expressing themselves in the fitful, broken, half-uttered language, which affects us as much by what we imagine, though it is left unspoken, as by what is freely and fully told, these, and such as these, are the instruments by which the dramatic poet maintains his dominion over our emotions ;-for these we shall look almost in vain in the writings of Fielding,-in every other writer of this class they appear at intervals, and as a sort of coups de main upon the reader; but they are crowded, as a matter of course, and as part of the ordinary materiel, in every production of the Author of Waverley.

Although, therefore, the plays of Fielding are immeasurably inferior to his novels, it by no means follows that he would have succeeded at all better in the drama, had he never been a novelist. But that a writer who excels in the dramatic parts of his novels should be disabled from composing a purely dramatic work, because these parts are mixed with composition of a different kind, is hardly conceivable. His excellence in these portions would seem, on the contrary, to be a proof that the powers necessary for their production are not, and cannot be, impaired by the habit of blending them with other styles of writing of an opposite character. The instance which Sir Walter himself adduces towards the close of his remarks on this subject, leads irresistibly the other way. "It follows," he says, " that though a good acting play may be made by selecting plot and character from a novel, yet scarcely any effort of genius could

render a play into a narrative romance. In the former case, the author has only to contract the events within the space necessary for representation,-to choose the most striking characters, and exhibit them in the most forcible contrast,-discard from the dialogue whatever is redundant and tedious,and so dramatize the whole. But we know not any effort of genius which would insert into a good play those accessaries of description and delineation which are necessary to dilate it into a readable novel." Is it not obvious, that the author of a novel possessing dramatic force, has actually performed all the requisites for a drama, and that his work differs from a play only in containing additional matter, unsuited, indeed, to the stage, but separable from the former after the whole is composed, and therefore separable also in its first_execution? Such a writer, in short, when composing a play, is engaged in a work that differs from his ordinary productions, not in kind, but in quantity. If his powers are such, that he can include all the essentials of a drama in his novel, the writing of a play is to him but the omission of that which it is at his option to give or to withhold.

The other illustration is beside our question here. It is perhaps perfectly true, that a play could not, by any effort of ingenuity or genius, be expanded into a novel or a romance. But surely the inference from this is, not that the writing of novels incapacitates the author for dramatic composition, but that the powers required for producing a perfect drama are not sufficient, of themselves, to qualify their possessor for fictitious narrative.

The extraordinary success of the dramas taken from the writings of the Author of Waverley amply proves, that the prodigious quantity of narrative and descriptive writing which he has been pouring forth for more than a dozen years, has not, in him at least, impaired the vigour of a dramatic genius, of which even English literature can furnish but a single rival. These pieces have, indeed, to comply with the humours of the day, been all produced in the shape of operas; but everybody knows, that, of far the greater number, their music is the least attraction. Several of our best performers have found in them characters suited to the exercise of