of the Stranger? Heywood is excellent in his old country gentlemen and substantial yeomen. But Johnson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger, are writers of a higher class. John. son's tragedy is oratorical and pedantic, though at times powerful. In comedy he is a mannerist, but an excellent one, all is broad and vigorous, though somewhat hard and elaborate, and there is infinitely more poetry in him than is usually thought, but it is not in his more celebrated productions. The defects of Beaumont and Fletcher are well characterized.

"Ils inspirent toujours de la curiositè, souvent de l'interet, et savent en general captiver le spectateur. Il faut convenir cependant qu'ils ne reussissent a la satisfaire. Au moment ou on lit

leurs pieces on se sent vivement entrainè, mais il n'en reste pas d'impressions durables........ Ils montrent plus de talent dans le genre comique, et dans les composition serieuses, que tient le milieu entre la tragedie et la comedie."

But their inimitable facility, the plentiful profusion of their fancy, and their language, alternately sweet and strong to excess, are not done justice to. We must subscribe to the doubtfulness of their morality, and the evil is more baneful, because the poison frequently intrudes upon their fairest conceptions; the female all purity in one act, is all pollution in the next. Compared with his cotemporaries, how admirable is Shakespeare; we do not mean that he is spotless, but the taint never attaches but to his beings of a grosser order. Massinger is only named, but his lofty and sustained eloquence, his strength and energy required some discriminating mention, besides that, there is a species of dramatical composition almost peculiar to him, a sort of tragic-comedy of real life. We allude to the New Way to pay Old Debts, the City Madam, &c. The leading characters and the denouement are clearly serious, the general cast of the play pure comedy. Shirley is a writer of a milder and less marked character, but seldom fails of producing a quiet and placid emotion of delight.

We fairly give up Dryden and the witty licentiousness of Charles the Second's reign. But Otway is not justly dealt with." The declamatory tone of his two plays," for he wrote but two worthy of mention, is a misapplication of terms. Rowe's fame rests on the last act of Jane Shore, and perhaps some of the rant of Bajazet; but he did us an irreparable injury, he melted down our free and strong versification to a regular sweetness, which became the sing-song of almost all his succesSoutherne had more nature and more poetry, but ruined all by his vile comedy. We abandon the love and the ladies in Cato to M. Schlegel's displeasure; but Cato, however he may

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show by the side of Brutus and Cassius, is a formidable rival to Corneille's Romans. The Tragedie Bourgeoise finds no mercy with M. Schlegel. It is singular he onrits altogether Samson Agonistes, and that holy platonic vision, Comus. Mason's two beautiful anomalies seem unknown to him.

We have passed over a crowd of inferior authors to arrive at the Spanish theatre, and here we must apprize our readers, that we give them merely our author's opinions. The works of the Spanish writers are by no means common in England, and our knowledge is unfortunately limited to the comedies of intrigue. Cervantes was the first dramatist who raised the Spanish stage above the amusing absurdities he so humourously describes in Don Quixote. His "Siege of Numantium," is named with the highest praise. Lope de Vega appears not to stand very high; indeed, his panegyrists rather dwell on the number than the excellence of his pieces.

"Il suffit au reste de lire quelqu'unes de ses pieces, pour en connoitre le genre, et l'on doit craindre d'autant moins de ne pas tomber sur les plus distingues, qu'il n'atteint, dans aucune en particulier, a une hauteur extraordinaire ni a une grande profondeur." "Call you this backing your friends."

But the rapturous eulogy on Calderon makes ample amends to the Spanish drama. Spain is the land, and Spanish poetry the poetry of romance and miracle. The language is a magnificent mixture of gothic strength, of southern softness, and oriental richness. Their poets were knights and warriors. No wonder then that their poems breathe the stately sentiments of chivalrous honour, fervent and constant and respectful love, blended with the finely-fanatical faith of a Christian, ever ready to lay down his life for the Cross, and who fondly, yet fervently, believed all his actions under the immediate influence of the Blessed Virgin and the host of Saints. This spirit in all its fulness descended on Calderon. His romantic pieces are distinguished by a richness and harmony of colouring, all is bright and majestic. His comedies, which descend nearer to common life, turn on love, honour, and jealousy; love, which refines its object to a spotless and unchangeable purity; honour, which is alive to the slightest attack; jealousy, not like the grosser passion of that name, for it does not appear to contemplate guilt, the object of its cares is above crime, but which watches every wandering glance, and maddens at the slightest emotion, which is not concentrated on itself. But it is in his religious pieces that the genius of Calderon blazes in all its splendour. In them the whole soul of the poet is religion. This favoured mortal seems to have escaped from the dim labyrinth of doubt, and to

have taken refuge in the lofty asylum of faith. It is from thence as from the bosom of unchangeable peace, that he contemplates and paints the stormy course of human life.

The German theatre, such is our author's modest confession, exists only in hope. After a course of barbarism, and a second of flat imitations and translations from the French, it began to struggle into birth under the auspices of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller. Of Lessing's three celebrated pieces, Mina von Barnhelm is somewhat over-sentimental, and moreover rather tedious. Emilia Galotti is a singular transplantation of the story of Virginia into a modern Italian state. Were it not for this, we should esteem it highly, in spite of its deficiency in the poetic inspiration of tragedy. The cold time-serving villainy of the minister, the roughness of the father contrasted with the almost childish innocence of Emilia, are finely though elaborately delineated. Nathan the Wise is a heavy polemical drama, very sage and very soporific. Goethe is a genius of a higher order, but unfortunately aiming at excellence in every style of drama, he has failed in most. Goertz von Berlichinger is a good rough picture of manners, totally devoid of dramatic interest and poetry. M. Schlegel's dislike to the domestic tragedy blinds him to the merits of Clairgo. In that class, which we by no means consider as the highest order of the drama, it is admirable, simple, natural, unforced, and without that tawdry affectation, the avoiding which renders this kind of drama so peculiarly difficult, and of the excess of which "Stella" is a first-rate example. Our anti-jacobin poets tried to burlesque this piece; its inimitable absurdity set them at defiance. Iphigenia is pure and spirited. The exquisite scenes in Count Egmont cannot compensate for the utter want of morality. We refer to Madame de Stael's Germany for an account of that wild and sublime piece, Faust.

The last, and certainly the most dramatic writer of the trio, is Schiller. We confess we cannot see the similarity between Frank Moor in the "Robbers" and our Richard the Third. Notwithstanding the faults that abound in that extraordinary play, there are redeeming situations and passages which announce genius of the highest order. The same may be said of the dreadful vein of passion, which pervades " Cabal and Love." We esteem Fresco higher than our author. The superfluous horror occasioned by the accidental death of Fresco's wife is the main fault. The Conspirators are a finely contrasted groupe. Don Carlos shews greater powers, but its length is immoderate; it is a history rather than a play. If Wallenstein is an imitation of Shakespeare, it is a failure; but as it is the only Ger

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man play, excepting Iphigenia and Goertz of Berlichinger, which has met with a translator of genius, we refer to Mr. Coleridge's excellent version. Scenes of Mary Stuart, Jean of Arc, and William Tell, are admirable; but in all, especially the first, there are strong marks of failure. But on the whole, Schiller gives a lofty and contemptuous answer to our prejudices against German plays. The fact is, we have transplanted the rank and poisonous weeds, and left the nobler plants to their native soil. Our theatre has been and still is polluted by the sickly trash of Kotzebue and his race. In justice to our author, let us show how indignant are the feelings of the right-minded and righthearted in Germany on this subject.

"Lachez la bride a vos penchans, semble dire le poete senti mental aux spectateurs, voyez comme mes jeunes filles sont aimables, quand elles avouent naivement leurs foiblesses! comme meş jeunes gens sont sublimes quand ils se laissent emporter par leurs passions! Pouron que l'auteur excite des emotions tendres, mais plutot sensuelles que morales, pouron qu'il raccommode tout a la fin, et qu'il fasse venir quelque bienfaiteur genereux, qui en repandant l'or a pleines mains, facilite les diverses reconciliations, il est sûr de plaire à tous les cœurs amollis.......Mais ce que l'on nous a depeint dans ce genre de pièces, je ne dis pas comme naturel et permis, mais comme moral et interessant, passe toute imagination. Une telle seduction est mille fois plus dangereuse, que celle de la comedie un peu libre, car sans chequer par aucune inconvenance exterieure, elle s'insinue dans les ames sans defense, en se deguisant sous les noms le plus sacrès.”

A few words on the effects of dramatic representations, and we have done. We shall confine ourselves to tragedy, as un❤ doubtedly the highest branch of the art, and because our mo→ dern comedy is, generally speaking, so quietly insipid, as to merit very little, either praise or blame. To this we are incited, because we have heard the old fanatical cry against the theatre renewed, and by very worthy persons. Old Collier is abroad again, not with his discrimination and judgment separating the good from the evil, and grounding his attack on the obscenities and blasphemies, which then polluted the stage, but with the true levelling spirit, branding the whole with one sweeping in terdict, razing the edifice, because one of its porticos has been defiled to an unholy purpose. We know that the unfortunate destruction of our two late magnificent theatres by fire, was blasphemously proclaimed a visitation from heaven. We are aware, and we wish the evil were remedied, that in one quarter of our theatre vice prevails, but that the dramatic representation has any connection with this, we totally deny. Those that go

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there to indulge vicious propensities, would not indulge them the less, did no theatre exist; as to the representation, they know and regard not what it is. But to the better, and much the greater part of the assembly, the drama is not only not alien to morality and religion, but may be made conducive to both. We shall at all times make solemn asseverations of our hostility to every thing in the drama, which even slightly trenches on either of these, but we do not give into the gloomy intoler ance of Puritanism, which considers every amusement as an abomination, and reads sin in the hearts of every one, in whose faces they do not see the dark and rigid lines of what they misname piety. True piety has a wider sphere, instead of sternly forbidding, it refines and purifies our enjoyments, instead of quelling our desires, it attaches them to worthy objects, it extracts the honey and rejects the poison from the mixed pleasures of the world.

To prove that the tragic disposition of the mind, as our au thor terms it, is not only not inconsistent with this influence, but strongly conducive to it, let us examine its nature. It is a blending of the melancholy excited by the humble sense of our feeble nature, with a proud consciousness of its dignity. Tra gedy presents to us the vicissitudes of human life, its shock of passions, its dangers, its uncertainties, we contemplate and weep over "life's fitful fever:" but it also shews us as beings capable of enduring all these changes and chances, from a confidence of our importance, as rational and responsible creatures: our passions, though evil, are powerful; their effects may extend beyond ourselves and our immediate connections, and give a colouring to the existence of a thousand of our fellows; the fate of empires may hang on our actions: we look on our shadowy counterparts, and feel that we too are of an exalted nature, important enough to make changes upon earth, and to be amenable at the throne of God. Our notion of Providence has superseded that of destiny on the Greek theatre; their only idea of the power that presided over the tissue of human events was, that it was above human interference, unalterable, unrelenting; ours is also unalterable, and above human interference, but it is also known to be merciful and beneficent: hence their sole consolation, when a great man suffered and bravely endured, was the elevation they felt at being kindred to a spirit of such fortitude, we have the additional comfort and accession of pride, that Almighty Wisdom is a watch over our actions, to reward or to punish. Hence we more imperiously require, and our feeling of pleasure is enhanced by the distribution of poetical justice. Not but that we are willing to trust to futurity the remuneration of the suffering virtuous, and simply weep over

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