"Turn again those dewy eyes See! o'er all thy raptur'd face Let again that thrilling lip ART. XLVII!-The Sports of the Genii. THE object of the fair author in pubishing this elegant work, can best be disclosed by a recital of the Introduction, which occupies little more than a page, and is as follows: "The "Sports of the Genii" were origiginally written for the amusement of some young people in the winter of 1797: they took their rise from the beautiful groups of winged boys which filled the port-folio of Miss Macdonald, who was in the habit of imagining and sketching them with the greatest facility: the idea of arranging and forming them into subjects for the following fables, was my own. The early death of a young woman of uncommen talents, and surrounded with every advantage this world can bestow, gives to her designs a peculiar interest: and not only those who knew and admired her, but every person of taste and feeling, must view them with sensations of tender regret. "The little poems which accompany the following thirteen etchings, will, I hope, be read with indulgence, having been the means of preserving the original outlines, which would otherwise have been probably de stroyed. For the dedication, I am obliged to the ingenious artist whose name is prefixed to the plate. And now let me add, that, in committing the " Sports of the Genii' to the press, I am impelled alone by affection and gratitude to a family for whom I have the highest respect, and to whom I owe the most serious obligations; and I feel gratified by offering them this mark, however inadequate it may be, of my attachment. "A. H." From such a statement, it is not likely that we shall bend the bow of criticism with any extraordinary tightness. Exclusively of the generous sentiments which appear to have influenced the writer, the intrinsic merit of some of these compositions is alone sufficient to avert the As 'tis sweeter far to hear A gentle river yield Than the bursting cataract dash, So 'tis sweeter far to lic By MRS. JOHN HUNTER. 4to. pp. 17. "barbed steel,”-nor shall we 66 sport with these effusions more severely than the Genii appear to sport with each other. This work is a thin quarto publication of twenty pages, elegantly printed by Hamilton, and hot-pressed in the usual luxury of modern productions. It is decorated outline, of subjects designed by the late with fourteen plates, or etchings, in daughter of the lord chief baron Macdonald, and on which the poems are professedly written. How far the author is happy in the choice of her title, may be questioned; since we are unacquainted with any principle of Rosicrusian philoscphy which gives to Cupid and his comrades the appellation of "Genit"-an appellation confined to those beings who inhabit the which we believe is almost exclusively regions of Faery Land, and who serve to create and conduct the heroes and heroines of romance. Of the poems, the first, consisting of ten verses, "To the Memory of Susan Macdonald," is written with the greatest smoothness of metre and sweetness of imagery. Perhaps the reader will not object to judge for himself. "If Conzens from his blots could form In the third, (6 Cupid's Holiday,"+ among many elegant lines, we are surprized to stumble on the following uncouth stanza: With the exception of the first, which is by a professed artist, Mr. Masquerier. † Written January 25, 1797, the birth-day of the princess Charlotte of Wales. 9 "Indiff'rence brav'd the god of love, For me, thy golden shafts prepare; Thy fond affections grant to me; I wish to know thy tender care,'— Cry'd kneeling sensibility. Love cares not for any easy prey: He drew his arrow to the head: But now was driven out at last. The ice that melted in his breast. See where, on Cupid's altar, lies Fresh buds of hope and fancy flow'rs; A hecatomb of tender sighs, And tears that fall in plenteous show'rs. The laughing loves loud clap their wings; The triumph gaily moving on. Around the jocund chorus sings, This being is painted with " infant wings scarcely grown." The idea may be ingenious; but to what unbounded licence of metaphor and simile would the sanction of such a personification give rise! Old Time is usually drawn with a sithe and a glass, with a flowing beard and bald forehead; but if the poet's eye can depicture "a quarter of an hour," and the painter's pencil delineate it, what shall we say to some future attempt at describing a person called a "Minute," or a "Moment?" The conclusion of this poem presents us with a very mutilated verse. "Poor Impatience cut his fingers.” The "Epilogue," written in the measure of the song of Shakspeare's elves round their fairy queen, Titania, reproves us for our animadversions, in the following sprightly verses. "Critics sharp, with brow severe, Notwithstanding the admonition in the last verse, it will be seen, that without aspiring to any extraordinary gravity, learning, or wisdom, we have ventured to "turn our eyes" towards the Sports of those Genii which owe their creation to the pencil of Miss Macdonald, and the pen of Mrs. John Hunter. The former is no more; but her designs are now framed in measures which give plea sure to the curious, and solace to the good. It is needless to add that what comes front the pen of the widow of the great John Hunter will always meet with a warm reception from those who know the excellences of her head and the virtues of her heart. The imperfections we have noticed are but as slight stains on delicate. satin-work: the flowers will preserve their lustre, though the back-ground be partially soiled. We have only to repeat that the designs are delicate and beautiful; and that the work is likely to become a choice morceau with the curious. ART. XLIX.-A Selection of Poems, designed chiefly for Schools and Young Persons. By JOSEPH COTTLE. IN this selection there is far too great a proportion of Young, Cowper, Thomson, and Goldsmith, and several of the pieces from modern writers are by no means calculated for young persons at school. CHAPTER X. DRAMATIC POETRY AND PLAYS. THE only articles in this Chapter that deserve notice as works of literature, are an excellent edition of Massinger's dramas, by Mr. Gifford, and an anonymous translation of Lessing's celebrated "Nathan." The short account that we have given of last year's crop of plays for the theatres may be considered as ancient history, for the subjects of which they treat have been dead long enough to be quite forgotten. ART. I.-The Plays of Philip Massinger, in Four Volumes. With Notes critical and explanatory. By W. GIFFORD, Esq. 6 Vols. 8vo. THIS is the best edition of an English dramatist that we have ever seen the editor has done every thing which was necessary, and nothing more. Of the life of Massinger little is known. He was born at Salisbury in 1584, entered at St. Alban's-hall, Oxford, in 1602. and had no other means of supporting himself than by writing for the stage till 1640, when he died, after a life of uncomplaining poverty and honourable exertion. How poor a support this could have been Mr. Gifford has shown: the price paid by the theatres for the copy of a play, fluctuated between ten and twenty pounds; the other method of disposing of a new piece, by accepting a benefit in payment, was less frequent, because it very seldom produced more, and might very probably produce less. There reinained the profits of publication: the customary price paid by the publisher in Shakspeare's time was twenty nobles (61. 13s. 4d.); at a somewhat later period Mr. Gifford thinks it may have been a third more: we should rather suspect that it had not increased, on account of the spread of puritanism. It is not however possible, that Massinger could, in his most successful yer, have received above fifty pounds, and in all probability it usually fell far short of this, for many of his pieces were unsuccessful: only twelve were published in his life. ANN. REV. VOL. IV. time, and two of these were not wholly his own. Indeed it appears by his dedications that he could not have subsisted but for the occasional bounty of his friends. "In this precarious state of dependance," says the editor, "passed the life of a man who is charged with no want of industry, suspected of no extravagance, and whose works were, at that very period, the boast and delight of the stage.' "It is surely somewhat singular that of a known. What I have presumed to give is man of such eminence nothing should be merely the history of the successive appearance of his works; and I am aware of no source from whence any additional information can be derived: no anecdotes are recorded of him by his contemporaries, few casual mentions of his name occur in the writ ings of the time, and he had not the good for to attract attention at the revival of dramatic tube which attended many of less eminence, literature from the deathlike torpor of the interregnum. But though we are ignorant of every circumstance respecting Massinger, but that he lived and died, we may yet form to ourselves some idea of his personal character from the incidental hints scattered through his works. In what light he was regarded may be collected from the recommendatory the language of his panegyrists, though warm, poeins prefixed to his several plays, in which expresses an attachment apparently derived not so much from his talents as his virtues: he is, as Davies has observed, their beloved, Ss much-esteemed, dear, worthy, deserving, honoured, long-known, and long-loved friend, &c. &c. All the writers of his life unite in representing him as a man of singular modesty, gentleness, candour, and affability; nor does it appear that he ever made or found an enemy. He speaks indeed of opponents on the stage, but the contention of rival candidates for popular favour must not be confounded with personal hostility. With all this, however, he app: ars to have maintained a constant struggle with adversity; since not only the stage, from which, perhaps, his natural reserve prevented him from deriving the usual advantages, but even the bounty of his particular friends, on which he chiefly relied, left him in a state of absolute dependance. Jonson, Fletcher, Shirley, and others, not superior to him in abilities, had their periods of good fortune, their bright as well as their stormy hours; but Massinger seems to have enjoyed no gleam of sunshine; his life was all one wintry day, and shadows, clouds, and darkness, rested upon it. "Davies finds a servility in his dedications which I have not been able to discover: they are principally characterised by gratitude and humility, without a single trait of that gross and servile adulation which distinguishes and disgraces the addresses of some of his contemporaries. That he did not conceal his misery, his editors appear inclined to reckon among his faults; he bore it, however, without in patience, and we only hear of it when it is relieved. Poverty made him no flatterer, and, what is still more rare, no maligner of the great: nor is one symptom of envy manifested in any part of his compositions. "His principles of patriotism appear irreprehensible: the extravagant and slavish doctrines which are found in the dramas of his great contemporaries make no part of his creed, in which the warmest loyalty is skilfully combined with just and rational ideas of political freedom. Nor is this the only instance in which the rectitude of his mind is apparent; the writers of his day abound in recommendations of suicide; he is uniform in the reprehension of it,.with a single excep tion, to which, perhaps, he was led by the peculiar turn of his studies. Guilt of every kind is usually left to the punishment of divine justice: even the wretched Malefort excuses himself to his son on his supernatural appearance, because the latter was not mark ed out by heaven for his mother's avenger; and the young, the brave, the pious Charalois accounts his death falken upon him by the will of heaven, because he made himself a judge in his own cause.', "But the great, the glorious distinction of Massinger, is the uniform respect with which he treats religion and its ministers, in an age when it was found necessay to add regulation to regulation, to stop the growth of impiety on the stage. No priests are introduced by him, to set on some quantity of barren spectators' to laugh at their licentious follies; the sacred name is not lightly invoked, nor daringly sported with; nor is scripture profaned by buffoon allusions lavishly put into the mouths of fools and women." It might have been expected that the earl of Pembroke would have befriended Massinger, whose father had been in his service, more especially as the earl was the great patron of the drama. Mr. Gifford thinks the cause of this alienation was that the poet became a catholic at the univer sity: that he was such is so evident from his writings, that after it has once been intimated, no reader can entertain a doubt upon the subject. Many of Massinger's plays have been lost. Twelve are said to have been destroyed by Mr. Warburton's servant. This modern, but innocent, Erasistratus, is so often mentioned, that some of our readers may thank us for relating the fact. Mr. Warburton, who was Somerset herald, had collected a great number of manus script plays, which he lodged in the hands of an ignorant servant; giving the ser vant, as it appears, no intimation wha ever of their value. After several years the gentleman thought of looking at h hoards, and he found that fifty-two hal been used by the cook in covering his pies, and three only were left. "These," it is said," are now in the library of the marquis of Lansdowne, where they will probably remain in safety, till moths, or damps, or tires, mingle their forgoten dust with that of their late companion." They will probably remain there till some man of letters shall think proper to apply for permission either to transcribe or publish them. "When it is considered at how trifling m expense a manuscript play may be placed he yond the reach of accident, the withholding it from the press will be allowed to prove. strange indifference to the ancient literatura of the country. The fact, however, seem to be, that these treasures are made subservient to the gratification of a spurious rage for notoriety: it is not that any benefit may accrue from them either to the proprietors or others, that manuscripts are now hoarded, but th A or B may be celebrated for possessing what no other letter of the alphabet can hope to acquire. Nor is this all. The hateful passion of literary avarice (a compound of vauity and envy) is becoming epideakic, and branching out in every direction. It has many of the worst symptoms of that madness which once raged among the Dutch for the possession of tulips :-here, as well as in Holland, an artficial rarity is first created, and then made a plea for extortion, or a ground for low-mind, and selfish exultation. I speak not of is never intended for sale, and of which, efore, the owner may print as few or as ay as his feelings will allow, but of those hare ostensibly designed for the public, which, notwithstanding, prove the editors bour under this odious disease. Here, old manuscript is brought forward, and a few copies are printed, the press is en up, that there may be a pretence for ng them at a price which none but a color can reach: there, explanatory plates Engraved for a work of general use, and, on as twenty or thirty impressions are off, destroyed with gratuitous malice it deserves no other name), that there be a mad competition for the favoured To conclude, for this is no pleasant et, books are purchased now at extra nt rates, not because they are good, but se they are scarce, so that a fire or an prising trunk-maker that should take off v.the whole of a worthless work, would itly render the small remainder inva t. ese animadversions are just as far as apply; but there is a valid reason rining few copies of an old manut, which Mr. Gifford has overlooked. old books as he alludes to find but eaders (the Complaynt of Scotland Tristrem are probably meant); if tion of the ordinary number of cobe struck off, not one half will sell; e or two hundred only be printed, must be "at a price which none but ctor can reach," and the folly which mplained of is thus made of some ecause these collectors, who would ve paid the ordinary price for the for its intrinsic value, willingly give imes the sum because it is scarce. ssinger has been more unfortunate ay of his contemporary dramatists. ght-and-thirty plays attributed to nly eighteen have been preserved! is indeed some little hope that the dry' may be recovered; it is quoted ale's Parnassus, which is comparaa late book, and it is more likely Poole quoted from a printed than 4 written copy. He bore a part in of Fletcher's plays, and credit has en given him for this; but the fact blished by a letter which Mr. Ma1-covered in Dulwich college, where issinger and Field, and Robert Darequest that five pounds from the of a play, which they had written with Fletcher, might be advanced, them from perishing in prison! understand our unfortunate extre mitie," says the writer," and I doe 'not thincke you so void of cristianitie, but that you would throw so much money into the Thames as wee request now of you, rather than endanger so many innocent lives.” There have been three collected edi tions of Massinger: the first was printed from Coxeter's papers by Dell, the book seller, in 1759. Two years afterwards this was re-edited by Davies, to whom we are beholden for editions of many old poets. In 1777, another edition was pub lished by Monck Mason, whose manifold blunders would not have escaped reprehension from any future editor, and most unfortunately for himself, his follower has been Mr. Gifford, the most unmerciful of men. The old editions have now successive editors weeded out, so that the been consulted, and the errors of these thus speaks. text is correct. Of the notes Mr. Gifford "I never could conceive why the readers labouring under a greater degree of ignorance of our old dramatists should be suspected of than those of any other class of writers; yet, from the trite and insignificant materials amassed for their information, it is evident that a persuasion of this nature is uncommonly prevalent. Customs which are universal, and expressions familiar as household words' in overlaid, by an immensity of parallel pasevery mouth, are illustrated, that is to say, sages, with just as much wisdom and reach of thought as would be evinced by him who, to explain any simple word in this line, should empty upon the reader all the examples to be found under it in Johnson's Dictionary. "This cheap and miserable display of iniwith Warton:-peace to his manes! the cause nute erudition grew up, in great meastire, of sound literature has been fearfully avenged with his attendant Bowles, the dullest of all upon his head: and the knight-errant who, mortal squires, sallied forth in quest of the original proprietor of every common word in Milton, has had his copulatives and disjunctives, his buts and his ands, sedulously kingdom. As a prose writer, he will long. coutine to instruct and delight; but as a poet, he is buried--lost. He is not of the ficient vigour to shake off the weight of inrace of the Titans, nor does he possess sutcumbent inountains. ferretted out from all the school-books in the "However this may be, I have proçezded on a different plan. Passages that only exercise the memory, by suggesting similar thoughts and expressions in other writers, are, if somewhat obvious, generally left to the obsolete words are briefly explained, and, reader's own discovery. Uncommon and where the phraseology was doubtful or ob scure, it is illustrated and confirmed, by quo |