who took up the classic trumpet, and blew into it a blast worthy of Homer, was unknown until the age of Anne. In fact, the multitude of a semi-civilized generation, and the populace of imbecile minds in a more advanced and refined one, are the devoted and proper amateurs of what is called the romantic. It does not come within the present purpose to illustrate the latter part of this posi→ tion by reference to some living reputations; the success of Hardy is a sufficient illustration. It would seem extraordinary on the first view, that Hardy's mediocre trash should supersede even such pieces as those from which some extracts have been given in previous Numbers. But nothing is more easily accounted for. When the earlier pieces were produced, no public stage existed; they were represented in colleges and in the mansions of the great, and the actors and auditors were persons of rank or education, competent to judge of good writing. But in the time of Hardy, and chiefly by his means, the stage became a popular entertainment-the multitude became the arbiters of the theatre-and Hardy was, naturally enough, exalted and followed. His reputation even survived him, cherished by the popular taste; and not only kept possession of the stage, in spite of Theophile, Mairet, and du Ryer, but contested it for a moment with the infant genius of Corneille. It is amusing and curious to compare the language used by the partisans of Hardy at that day, with that of the modern admirers of Germanism. "Hardy (said they) drew from Nature and his own genius. He knew the dramatic rules, but he was above them, and despised them." His extravagances of incident and adventure, his grovelling and fantastic use of monstrocities and superstitions, were called the creations of a boundless fancy. If his princes and heroes descended to the sentiments and language of mechanics and clowns, it was said, the great master of the human heart had taken care that his princes and heroes should be men. His impurity and coarseness of manners and phrase, were called "honest nature," and his vices generally, when too bad for palliation, were treated as peccadilloes. Such was the condition of the French drama on the appearance of the great Corneille, who united in himself, to a degree rarely shown in the history of mind, the capacities of genius and judgment, to create, exalt, establish, and adorn the tragic art. He was one of those rare spirits that appear singly in an age, to determine the poetic glory of a nation. It is a strong proof of the tyranny of false taste, that even Corneille himself, in his first pieces, was carried away by the prevailing character of the time; and if he had been born some forty years earlier, or if Hardy possessed a tenth part of Shakspeare's genius, it is probable Corneille would not have tried, or would have failed in the attempt, to depose the romantic drama, and enthrone classic tragedy in France. There are few events more flattering to the pride-more illustrative of the supremacy of mere intellect, than the rise of Corneille. His genius had to burst through a twofold bondage; first, the vicious authority of the preceding age, and the bad taste of his own; next, the yoke imposed on him by the Cardinal Richelieu. That despotic, tasteless priest was the same rapacious exclusionist of literary fame to which his claims were ridiculous, as of political power, which was his proper element. He had yoked to his car four petty wits, who wrote bad plays at his dictation, of which they received the profits and he the praise-an arrangement of which so far there was no reason to complain. With these he yoked in the unequal genius of Corneille. But the poet soon recalcitrated, and broke loose from the patron-minister, retired to his native province, and there gave himself to the study of history and human nature, and to the enjoyment of freedom. He now made himself acquainted with those principles of grandeur, beauty, propriety, and consistency, which the acumen of the Greeks collected and generalized from the im mortal works of Homer and Sophocles. He communed particularly with ancient Rome, through her poets, orators, and historians, until his memory and imagination became impressed and imbued with the stature, physiognomy, and soul of Roman character. He enriched his mind with the knowledge of the Spanish drama, and of the chivalrous age. And he produced that chef-d'œuvre of genuine romantic tragedy, in which chivalrous exaltation and "the point of honour" are blended with the severer beauties of the classic models, and a daughter's vengeance, placed in the finest dramatic conflict with a woman's love. "Richelieu," says Fontenelle, "was filled with alarm, as if the Spaniards were in possession of a suburb of Paris." But he decried and caballed in vain. France was now too enlightened ;-the age of Louis XIV. was just begun. Beau comme le Cid became a common phrase, even in the provinces, and the poet soon had in his library a translation of his work into every language of Europe, except the Sclavonic. As these remarks hasten to a close, his tragedies can scarcely be glanced at. All his chefsd'œuvre have been translated into English, but so wretchedly, that, with one exception, they have fallen into utter oblivion. Cibber's Ximene, from the Cid, is not an exception. Whitehead's Roman Father, has a precarious hold of the theatre. It would take a volume to point out the instances of perverse incapacity with which this play is taken from the Horace of Corneille. Two examples will suffice. In the original the honest fury of the sister seeing in her brother only the slayer of her lover, clothed in his bloody spoils, provokes his fatal indignation. In the translation, she provokes her fate by a sentimental artifice, alike disavowed by the rude simplicity of infant Rome, true passion, and historic truth. Most readers of poetry know the curse of Camilla. This masterly and eloquent climax of tragic terror is broken in pieces by Whitehead, and but a poor fragment or two preserved. Corneille has, like other great poets, great blemishes. He is sometimes complicated, declamatory, and tiresome. He introduces subordinate intrigues, and personages that are not only useless but insipid; but his sins are the more pardonable, that they are really infrequent. Without instituting any comparison between him and the Shaksperian dramatists, it may be said that, like them-like "the master himself,” he had a vast intellect, varied invention, and great force of touch. What compass, power, and diversity of dramatic interest, character, and situation, in the Cid, Horace, Rodogune, Cinna, Polyeucte, Heraclius! With Dryden, perhaps, he may be more appropriately compared. Both were profound and learned critics of dramatic composition. Both had that precious secret which, Voltaire says, is seldom possessed by above two or three people in a century-of being truly eloquent in verse. But without in the least detracting from the homage due to the illustrious English poet, or indeed giving any opinion of his genius, which is peculiarly uncalled for at this day, it may be said that the Frenchman, as a dramatist, proceeded upon more steady principles; and although sometimes turgid and tedious, with a greater severity and purity of taste. Both wrote valuable essays upon the dramatic art, in prose-and here it is gratifying to vindicate for Dryden a decided superiority in wit and style. But little need be said of Racine. He is a true poet, and the most enchanting of versifiers. It is upon his merits, however, that the French and foreigners most widely differ. The reason is obvious; his fascination chiefly lies in his style, which a foreign ear can scarcely appreciate, and no translator can approach. In sentiment, too, he is peculiarly French. The widow of Hector, speaking of her child, says, "Je ne l'ai point encore embrassé d'aujourd'hui.” This verse is regarded by some foreigners as a feeble common-place, and is translated as such by Phillips, in The Distressed Mother; but to the French it brings the sentiment and the image of the Mother's Morning Kiss to her Child;-one of the most sacred and endearing of domestic tendernesses to a French woman. Phillips's Distressed Mother is a most slanderous translation. The sweet notes of tender sentiment, the frequent strokes of vigour and sublimity, the poetic and elegant, yet simple colour of the style of the original, are egregiously missed by him in every scene. That exquisitely-wrought scene, in which Hermione upbraids the faithless Phyrrhus in a tone of cutting irony and insulted pride, sometimes yielding for an instant to the resistless frankness of impassioned love, becomes in the English play an unanimated lumber of mere words. Let the reader but refer to the text, and compare this single short scene, and form his judgment. Racine's Hermione (to give a few instances in which the very meaning is mistaken) says, « Je ne t'ai point aimé, cruel!—qu'ai-je donc fait ? Phillips's "Have I not loved you then, perfidious man ?” "Je t'aimais inconstant-qu'aurais-je fait fidele." "I loved you when inconstant, and even now, Inhuman King," &c. Racine. Phillips. Racine. Phillips. "Vous ne repondez point?-perfide, je le voi Tu comptes les momens que tu perds avec moi- These few examples suffice without farther comment. Racine invented nothing; he even narrowed the sphere, and fettered the freedom, of the drama; but he embellished to the very perfection of art. Crebillon brought upon the stage the memorable horrors of the tragic family of Atreus, and somewhat checked the taste diffused by the fascinating effeminacy of Racine; but his traits of terror were too unsoftened to sway the public taste, and his capacity not sufficiently creative or comprehensive to emancipate and enlarge the domain of the drama. This was reserved for Voltaire, that extraordinary and undefinable intelligence, whose impress remains upon the age in which he lived, and who has left behind so many imperishable monuments of glory and of shame. Voltaire opened to French tragedy the vast field of modern history, substituted picturesque and powerful action for narration, rejected subordinate and insipid love intrigues, and trained the senses of the French to situations of force—to terrific pictures to the accessories of theatric illusion-to the sight of blood: in other words, he infused into the drama of his country a portion of the soul of English tragedy, which he had seized by personal observation of our stage, during his well-known visit to this country, but particularly by the study of Shakspeare. He beheld the apparition in Hamlet, and he transferred that unrivalled scene of preternatural terror to the French stage, in his "Semiramis." He there introduces the ghost of the murdered king for the purpose of preventing the horror of an unconsciously incestuous marriage, between the mariticidal mother and her own and her husband's son. He saw Macbeth come out of the King's chamber-the tale of Duncan's murder told by the reeking dagger in his bloody grasp; and he copied this fearful picture where Ninias comes out of the tomb, his hands reeking with the blood of his parent. He adopted the force and pathos of our catastrophes in the deaths of 'Orosmane,' Tancrede,' 'Zamore.' It would be waste of time to allude to the wretched copies of his plays made by the Hills, Millers, and Murphys of the last age. The "Zaire" alone, compared with the "Zara" of Hill, furnishes numberless examples not only of original beauties, but of some which the French poet took from "Othello," overlooked or disfigured, with ludicrous stupidity, by the translator. Perhaps French tragedy, in order to be fully appreciated by foreigners, should be seen acted. Voltaire could not have seized the spirit and character of our drama, if he had not witnessed its representation. Voltaire, and particularly Racine, should be studied by an Englishman with the magic commentary of Duchesnois and Talma on the stage. He will there perceive touches of poetic art and inspiration, which escaped him in the closet. He will learn that narration may derive all the force and vividness of action from the depictive art and power with which it is written and recited: a look, a tone, a word, a position, or slight motion of the hand from Talma,and we behold, in imagination, Edipus with the blood of Laius dropping from his fingers. Our dread of long speeches would also be somewhat diminished. The narrative by Philoctetes of his wrongs and sufferings is one of the longest, but Talma declaims it in a tone of Sophoclean pathos-so varies and relieves it by mute, but eloquent pauses of physical exhaustion-by changes of position, reciting one part standing-another, seated on a fragment of rock at the mouth of his cave,-that emotion goes on increasing to the close. This will readily be imagined by those who have witnessed a recent performance on our own stage. Mr. Macready, in the death-bed scene of Henry the Fourth, sustains the most powerful interest and emotion, through a whole act of almost exclusive recitation, with no relief but the poetry of Shakspeare, and the rare art of declaiming pathetically. It must be confessed, however, that the long speeches of French tragedy are, in general, severe trials of patience from the lips of any but the first-rate performers. W. SONG.* BY T. CAMPBELL. The brave Roland!-the brave Roland- For the loss of thine own true knight. For her vow had scarce been sworn, Yet Roland the brave, Roland the true, It was dear, still 'midst his woes; There's yet one window of that pile, (When the chant and organ sounded slow) For herself he might not see. * The tradition which forms the substance of these stanzas is still preserved in Germany. An ancient tower on a height, called the Rolandseck, a few miles above Bonn on the Rhine, is shown as the habitation which Roland built in sight of a nunnery, into which his mistress had retired on having heard an unfounded account of his death. Whatever may be thought of the credibi lity of the legend, its scenery must be recollected with pleasure by every one who has ever visited the romantic landscape of the Drachenfells, the Rolandseck, and the beautiful adjacent islet of the Rhine, where a nunnery still stands. |