poetical, and will not, assuredly, be less poetical because it is dramatic. Witness Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. A few works written upon this principle would be sure to find readers, would secure a permanent place in the literature of the country, and might render it necessary for the conductors of our theatres to turn their attention to the higher interests of the drama."

It was not without some practice in the art of which we presumed to write, that we delivered in such set terms these our sentiments. The same train of thought has since been continued in the same journal, and the same style of criticism adopted. Poets, likewise, have since arisen, who have sought to carry into effect, by example, the canons thus promulged. Still they have fallen foul of dramatic romances and destiny extravaganzas, rather than aimed

at a clear and decided endeavour on the

high way of fair competition with mortal and immortal, the living and dead. This, indeed, they seem to have avoided altogether; so far from fighting a battle with the stage, it has not even been assailed. Still the same complaints are heard-curses, if not deep, yet loud; but the hero has never appeared who should storm the theatre with effect, or even make a fair show of invasion.

Miss Joanna Baillie, with great modesty, entertained, she tells us, the idea of having her last three volumes of plays presented for performance at the minor theatres. Her ambition might have well soared a higher flight; her design, nevertheless, demonstrates a greater anxiety to evade than to overcome the difficulty. We regret that this feeling should have found a place in her great heart, and all the more from the general participation which it seems to have experienced. We are convinced that there is (as we long ago affirmed) dramatic genius extant: very little of it, however, has found its way to public notice; nothing that could fairly plume itself as superior to the acting drama in fitness or merit.

In the meantime, one man has "set his foot before the float," both in figure and reality, and not without success. But his claim to the Shakespearian crown, though awarded him by theatrical audiences, has been disputed by

wise. One circumstance, however, was indisputable, that his plays had succeeded; but their success was attributed more to Mr. Macready's acting, and their adaptibility to his style of performance, than to their intrinsic merits. This was to a certain degree true; but it is equally true, that but for a substratum of natural imitation they would not continue to attract. Who can say how far Shakespeare himself may not have suited his persons to his players-and what assistance this kind of stage-knowledge may not have rendered to the great dramatist for undoubtedly it is a help, as furnishing models and exemplars for the guidance of the writer? This, at any rate, is a consideration which should form one element of the argument.

It is now too late in the day to dwell on Mr. Knowles' defects. He has them undoubtedly; but it would be but sorry criticism to expose them. The only criticism that is worth any thing on an author of long standing is that which shews the good in him, and therefrom traces the prosperity that has cheered his course. It is a truth that cannot be too strongly enounced, that however much popular favour may over-estimate a writer, it has its origin in something worthy, even though feebly developed, and, in the eyes of the judicious, perhaps relatively wanting. The multitude are better judges of the kind than the degree; and, being merciful, often take the will for the deed. But what a merit even is a good will; if it were not, what would be a beggar's charity? Yes! the benevolent wish and the widow's mite, for those who have naught else to give, shall outweigh the ostentatious donation of wealth, or the supercilious gift of pride, in the balance of eternal justice.

We think it fit, now that the State of the Stage has become the subject of so much public solicitude-and, moreover, excited to a consideration of the subject by certain recent relative efforts -to take a review of our late dramatic literature, and to form some estimate of such writers in that line as have kept their footing where they first planted it, that we may deduce more correct notions of the actual condition of things, and suggest such improve་། ། གལ་ ག་ན་ ང་ tous practicable,

are called upon to make. It is surprising how delusive our impressions are, before we think seriously upon a subject, and what a flood of light pours in, owing to the mere circumstance of taking pen in hand to write thereon. Associations, and recollections, and facts, to which we never before gave due weight, gather round our goosequill, and page after page teems with testimony, and evidence is entered on record, never before contemplated even in its single parts, which in its entirety invokes a magnificent decision, and quite astounds with the indisputability of the verdict. Often and often have we meditated results like this with wonder, and felt how mere an agent we were in the syllabling of such inspired words. We write the articles that contain the premises and conclusions of which we were previously unconscious? Nonsense! Nothing on earth can be clearer than that they write themselves!

Virginius, then-to leave off making wry faces and begin-is, as we have implicitly confessed, full of faults; but, likewise, not without its excellences. It is

'No story, piled with dark and cumbrous fate,

And words that stagger under their own weight;

But one of silent grandeur-simply said, As though it were awakened from the dead!

It is a tale, made beautiful by years, Of pure, old, Roman sorrow -old in tears!

And those you shed o'er it in childhood

may

Still fall, and fall for sweet Virginia."

In childhood! We recollect ourselves writing a dramatic composition on the subject at a very early age, which, though afterwards committed to the flames, attests the attraction which this romance has for the mind and heart of childhood.

The subject belongs, as Niebuhr shews, to the poetic period of Roman history; it is as an antediluvian tale; argument of that ideal age, where the only facts are dreams; and, sooth to say, our veriest dreams are truest facts. The subject has been a favourite of more than one dramatic author. John Mairet, a French dramatic poet of the seventeenth century, whose tragedies, though feeble, have some fine passages, published a Virginia in 1628. In 1654, Appius

and Virginia, a tragedy, by John Webster, made its appearance-afterwards altered by Betterton, the celebrated actor; and another of the same name, in 1709, by John Dennis, poet and critic. A play was published by Tonson, in 1754, called Virginia, and was the occasion of two historical pamphlets on the subject; and, in 1756, one of the same name was given to the world by Mrs. Frances Brooke, a lady of much talent, whose maiden name was Moore. In 1792, Virginius and Virginia was the title of a poem, in six parts, from the Roman history, by Mrs. Gunning. Dr. John Bidlake also gave to the public, in 1800, Virginia, or the Fall of the Decemvirs, a tragedy. To all of these productions, save one, Mr. Knowles' tragedy is superior; and with that one it will bear a comparison that shall puzzle the critic to decide whether Knowles or Webster were the greater man. This, however, can be safely said, that to none of his predecessors has the modern poet been indebted for the matter or form of his drama.

The Virginius of Mr. Knowles is not a Roman or patriot, so much as he is a father. The local and the temporary have little place in the character; they are kept in shadow for the sake of the universal and eternal. It is this which gives it at once a strong hold on the natural affections and the domestic feelings. Mr. Knowles is neither the Eschylus nor the Sophocles of the English stage, but the Euripides, without his lax morality. He is no sophist, but a man who feels rightly, and having therefore no need for thinking, has only to write on impulse to write well. Instances of this abound in the play before us-in single passages, and in whole scenes. The phrase, "Siccius Dentatus is a crabbed man," strikes the sense without effort. The incident of Virginia's sampler, with the letters, tells at once on the heart. Servia's account of her having asked her young mistress what the letters meant, when "she laughed, and drew a scratch across them; but had scarce done so, ere her fair visage fell, for grief that she had spoiled the ciphers," is inimitable-at any rate, not to be excelled. And then the father demands of the amorous girl her latest work, and she brings him as such a painting — "'Tis Homer's history

tut! I know it

Whose face it is!

Virginia.

O!

You surely never took it for his face! Virginius. Why, no; for now I look again, I'd swear

You lost the copy ere you drew the head,
And, to requite Achilles for the want
Of his own face, contrived to borrow one
From Lucius Icilius."

Afterwards, with what effect the Father challenges the Lover to take his hand, as the test of his honesty, and how touchingly it concludes the first act! How fitly, too, the kiss consecrated as the seal of love, becomes the main incident in the second!

It is

Mr. Knowles' dramatic blank verse is, perhaps, chargeable with defects; the lines are not sufficiently consolidated; sometimes, indeed, it is only prose divided into a decasyllabic arrangement. It should, however, be recollected that the verse is not meant to be epic. It is suited to the stage, and for delivery in a theatre. just such as an actor, like Macready, can cut up into pieces, and deliver with familiar effect. It is effectually relieved from all taint of bombast; and, upon occasion, what elevation certain sentiments, more statelily expressed, derive from the force of contrast! For example:

"Welcome, Icilius! welcome, friends! Icilius,

I did design to speak with you of feasting And merriment, but war is now the word; One that unlovingly keeps time with mirth,

Unless war's own-when e'er the battle's

won,

And safe carousing, comrades drink to victory."

"Didst thou but know, young man,

mother

In all my life.

Virginia. You'll be advised, dear father.
Virginius. It was her soul-her soul,

that play'd just then

About the features of her child, and lit them

Into the likeness of her own. When first
She placed thee in my arms-I recollect it
As a thing of yesterday!-she wished,
she said,

That it had been a man. I answered her,
It was the mother of a race of men,
And paid her for thee with a kiss. Her
lips

Are cold now; could they but be warmed again,

How they would clamour for thee!"

simple in its construction, it is immediately intelligible on the stage in all its parts. It wants a little more intricacy of action, and elaboration of plot and diction, to satisfy us perfectly in the closet. The concluding incident of the urn is as beautiful as it is pathetic.

As an acting play, Virginius succeeds by the force of the situations. This secret of play-writing is well known to Mr. Knowles. Not what is said, but what is done, forms the one thing needful in dramatic production. To this add what graces you will of style and thought; but the latter will never do alone. All understand what they see; not all what they hear. It is only for the sake of the spectacle and action that people go to the theatre at all. They go, emphatically, to see a play performed. What in epic poetry is given in long description, here is presented as object of sight. This is the distinctive difference. Strange that it should be so little attended to!

Mr. Knowles performed a public service when he resolved, once for all, to eschew the manufacture of what his prologuist calls "cast-iron lines." He delivered himself over at once to the simple expression of feeling, as it welled from the fountain of an Irish heart, leaving it to find its own moulds and to form its own channel. This was Mr. Wordsworth's advice to Mr. Heraud touching his sacred epics. "You feel strongly; trust to those feelings, and your poem will take its shape and proportion, as a tree does, from the vital principle that actuates it. I do not think that great poems can be cast in a mould; Homer's, the greatest of all, certainly was not. Trust, again I say, to yourself." There is, on the part of Mr. Knowles, an evident trusting to himself, a manifest self-confidence, in the informal construction of the verse in Virginius. The poet abandons himself to his mood, and to the power of sympathy. There is no model of metrical arrangement, no taught steps; the man dances not in fetters, that he may be secure from error, but with all the grace, and energy, and liberty of untrammelled nature, like a savage of the wild in full glory, with all that elegant elasticity of limb, and those pliant movements, of which the city deprives its native formalists, who, that they may be more secure, have consented to be less free.

So much for the Virginius: in the Caius Gracchus the poet was not so fortunate. Though the hero was powerfully performed by Macready, the play lived but a few nights. Yet there are fine scenes, very fine scenes, in Caius Gracchus. Having procured the acquittal of Vettius, he has become dangerous to the patricians. What is to be done with him? Why, make him Opimius' Quæstor. Now it happens that his wife, Licinia, is altogether one of Knowles' women,-a domestic mind, no lover of popularity; and her Caius has hitherto lived at home with her, retired-no brawler in the streets, as had been his brother. Were they not, ye gods! happy in each other?

"Licinia. I do not care for greatness : It is a thing lives too much out of doors; 'Tis any where but at home; you will not find it

Once in a week, in its own house, at supper

With the family. Knock any hour you choose,

And ask for it; nine times in ten, they'll send you

To the senate, or the forum, or to such Or such a one's, in quest of it. 'Tis a month

Since Caius took a meal from home, and that