All this exposed him to some ridicule; but ridicule was the only redress left to the sufferer, for the sentence of the licenser is as absolute as were the laws of the Medes and Persians. Against his fiat there is no appeal. When Colman was examined before the committee of the House of Commons, which sat on the Theatrical Question, he was asked whether he expunged all oaths or profane swearing from the plays submitted to his revision. He answered, "Invariably." "Did you ever count the number of oaths in your own comedies of the Heir at Law and John Bull ?" “Never ; but I dare say there are a great many." "Which you disapprove of?" "Do you not think it would have been better to have omitted them?” "Much better. They disfigure the scenes in which they are introduced, and injure the humour." "Then," concluded the chairman, thinking to clench the argument, "you are sorry now that you wrote either of those comedies?" "Quite the contrary," rejoined the licenser; "I rejoice exceedingly to have made a good pudding, although I regret that any bad plums should have crept into it." It would be foreign to the plan of this series to follow the career of Moore through all the phases of literary celebrity, and to dwell upon the multiplied offspring of his genius, whether in poetry or prose. We therefore leave him when he ceased to court laurels from the hand of the dramatic muse. Six volumes of his biography have already appeared, and more are, doubtless, in imminent preparation. Had he never written anything but the “Melodies," he would deserve immortality, and that his name should be embalmed in the memory and gratitude of his fellowcountrymen, down to the latest generations. The music of a people is one of the most valuable, as well as most agreeable, of their historical records. It breathes in every note their character, feelings, deeds, sufferings, wrongs, hopes, and aspirations. It tells of the glory of the past, the despondency of the present, and the lofty anticipations of the future. It excites to what may be, by an appeal to what has been. It generates poetic ardour, strengthens the love of the solum natale, and unites thousands in one common bond of sympathy. It is, at the same time, an excitement and a solace, and becomes, as Johnson said in his epitaph on Goldsmith, affectuum potens ac lenis dominator. He who wields this controlling agent with equal power, taste, and discrimination, will obtain more sway over the heart and mind than the routine minister or general who coerces his followers into passive obedience, but fails to inspire them with ardent enthusiasm. Viewed in this light, Burns in Scotland, and Moore in Ireland, must ever be considered as public benefactors. The "Bard of Erin," as he is exclusively called, has justly earned his title; but he has worthy predecessors, who deserve to "rank in the same file," and amongst them we may enumerate Thaddeus Ruddy, William Carolan, and Thomas Dermody. We hope to dedicate a few pages to this famed triumvirate with an early opportunity." In 1802 a comedy, entitled Tryal's All, was acted at the Crow-street Theatre, in Dublin, which was fathered by Mr. J. D. Herbert, an actor in the company, whose real patronymic was Dowling. In the "Familiar Epistles" it is said that the true author was Lewis, a free-speaking patriot of the day, who desired to preserve a dramatic incognito. The point is of little consequence, as the play met with no success; and although printed at the time, is now entirely out of sight. Herbert, in 1836, published a small volume, called "Irish Varieties," which contains some amusing anecdotes. He was a painter as well as au actor, but not particularly eminent in either art. It should have been mentioned in an earlier place, that JAMES MURPHY FRENCH, a brother of the more celebrated Arthur Murphy, and a native of Dublin, wrote a comedy, called The Brothers, and a farce, under the name of The Conjurer, both acted in London, but never printed. MISS ISDELL, an Irish lady, said to be a near relative of Oliver Goldsmith, produced a play, in Dublin, with considerable success, called The Poor Gentlewoman, acted and printed in 1811. This same lady, in 1825, wrote an opera, called The Cavern, or the Outlaw, the music for which was composed by Sir John Stevenson. It was only acted three times, at the Hawkins'-street Theatre, then under the management of Mr. W. Abbott. THE REV. C. R. MATURIN, THE year following that which gave the genius of Thomas Moore to his country (1780) witnessed the birth of CHARLES ROBERT MATURIN, in the same city. His mind and imagination were deeply imbued with the true poetic fervor, but not sufficiently restrained by the controlling check of sound taste and judgment. His Pegasus frequently ran away with him, or soared into a cloudy atmosphere, through which it became difficult to follow its erratic course. Maturin distinguished himself at school and college, married for love before he acquired his degree, and having taken orders, obtained, through the interest of his wife's brother, then Archdeacon of Killala, the curacy of Loughrea, which he afterwards exchanged for that of St. Peter's in Dublin. This brilliant preferment afforded a miserable pittance of some £80 or £90 per annum. His father was a French foundling and refugee, whose only income was derived from the office of inspector of roads for the province of Leinster, which his friends had procured for him. He had nothing to bestow upon his numerous progeny, of which Charles was the ninth son, beyond education, and the mystery attached to his own origin. The curate of St. Peter's soon found that his domestic claims increased rapidly, while his resources remained fixed at a most insufficient minimum. A large family and a small stipend appear to be inseparable from the condition of a clerical subaltern, from the days of Mr. Abraham Adams down to the present year of grace inclusive. To increase his narrow means, Maturin took to the dull drudgery of preparing students for college; and to relieve the intolerable weight of pedagogism, solaced and indulged his fancy at the same time, by writing novels. His friends and expected patrons being straight-laced and particular, he feared to injure his prospects by an open avowal of such a questionable line of composition. His three first romances, Montorio, or the Fatal Revenge," "The Wild Irish Boy," and "The Milesian Chief,” were published under the assumed name of Dennis Jasper Murphy. He kept his secret, and for a time without suspicion. The first of these tales was written in 1804, when he was in his twenty-fourth year; the last in 1812. Two he published on his own account, and without adding to his worldly store. For the copyright of the third Mr. Colburn gave him £80. During the five years which followed, he fought on, struggling with embarrassments, and little noticed, and, as has happened to many others, victimised by the insolvency of a friend, for whom he had bound himself in a heavy bond, which he was obliged to pay to the last farthing. In 1816, Maturin's crushed spirit sprang up with one elastic bound, by the unexpected success of his tragedy of Bertram, which was produced at Drury-lane on the 9th of May in that year, and ran for twenty-two successive nights to crowded houses. The play was originally offered to Mr. Frederick Jones for the Dublin theatre, in 1813, but rejected as unfit for representation. In the following year the luckless author was persuaded to send the MS. to Sir Walter Scott. He saw its merit, and strongly recommended it to Lord Byron, at that time a most zealous and influential member of the Drurylane committee. The theatre wanted a play with a strong original part for Kean; the opportunity was favourable; the great actor exerted himself with transcendant ability; a young debutante, Miss Somerville, afterwards Mrs. Bunn, came out with great suc cess in the important character of the heroine, and the business was done. Maturin became, at one bound, a literary lion, and, what was better, found his purse, for the first time, well lined with crowns. His profits from the theatre amounted to several hundred pounds; Murray gave a large sum for the exclusive right of publication, and printed seven editions at the unprecedented price of four shillings and sixpence a copy. Hazlitt, who although coxcombical, and overflowing with preconceived notions on many subjects, was nevertheless acute and clear, when he wrote (as he sometimes did) from impulse, and without prejudice, has criticised Maturin's first dramatic effort with analytical minuteness. He writes as follows: "The new tragedy of Bertram, at Drury-lane, has entirely succeeded, and it has sufficient merit to deserve the success it has met with. We had read it before we saw it, and were on the whole disappointed with the representation. Its beauties are rather those of language and sentiment than of action and situation. The interest flags very much during the last act, when the whole plot is known and inevitable. What it has of stage effect is scenic and extraneous, as the view of the sea in a storm, the chorus of knights, &c., instead of arising necessarily out of the business of the play. We also object to the trick of introducing the little Ichild twice to untie the knot of the catastrophe. One of these fantoccini exhibitions in the course of a tragedy is quite enough. "The general fault of this tragedy, and of other modern tragedies that we could mention, is, that it is a tragedy without business. Aristotle, we believe, defines tragedy to be the representation of a serious action. Now, here there is no action: there is neither cause nor effect. There is a want of that necessary connexion between what happens, what is said, and what is done, in which we take the essence of dramatic inventions to consist. It is a sentimental drama -it is a romantic drama, if you like; but it is not a tragedy, in the best sense of the word. That is to say, the passion described does not arise naturally out of the previous circumstances, nor lead necessarily to the consequences that follow. Mere sentiment is voluntary, fantastic, self-created, beginning and ending in itself; true passion is natural, irresistible, produced by powerful causes, and impelling the will to determine actions. The old tragedy, if we understand it, is a display of the affections of the heart and the energies of the will; the modern romantic tragedy is a mixture of fanciful exaggeration and indolent sensibility; the former is founded on real calamities and real purposes; the latter courts distress, affects horror, indulges in all the luxury of woe, and nurses its languid thoughts and dainty sympathies to fill up the void of action. As the opera is filled with a sort of singing people, who translate everything into music, the modern drama is filled with poets and their mistresses, who translate everything into metaphor and sentiment. Bertram falls under this censure. It is a Winter's Tule, a Midsummer Night's Dream; but it is not Lear or Macbeth. The poet does not describe what his characters would feel in given circumstances; but lends them his own thoughts and feelings out of his general reflections on human nature, or general observations of certain objects. In a word, we hold for a truth that a thoroughly good tragedy is an impossibility in a state of man ners and literature where the poet and philosopher have got the better of the man; where the reality does not mould the imagination, but the imagination glosses over the reality; and where the unexpected stroke of true calamity, the biting edge of true passion, is blunted, sheathed, and lost, amidst the flowers of poetry strewed over unreal, unfelt distress, and the flimsy topics of artificial humanity prepared beforehand for all occasions."* These sentences are elaborately turned, and we do not feel by any means sure that we perfectly understand what is meant to be conveyed; but they furnish a good sample of the work from which they are quoted. Hazlett's volume deserves a corner in every dramatic library, less for the value of the critical opinions, than for the importance of the theatrical events which are therein recorded and commented on-the first appearance in London of Miss Stephens, Miss Foote, Mrs. Mardyn, Miss O'Neill, Mr. Macready, and Edmund Kean; the return of Mrs. Siddons, after her retirement, to gratify the Princess Charlotte, and the farewells of John Bannister and John Kemble. But let us leave Hazlitt and return to Bertram. The opening speech of Imogine contains very musical and affecting poetry; the numbers glide in liquid harmony, the images and reflections flow with mingled grace and beauty. The wedded dame, whose heart is not given to her husband, is discovered in soliloquy over the miniature of an earlier lover: "Yea The limner's art may trace the absent feature, But, oh! the scenes 'mid which they met and parted The thoughts, the recollections sweet and bitter— Th' elysian dreams of lovers, when they lovedWho shall restore them? "Less lovely are the fugitive clouds of eve, To little lives which their own bosoms lent. Bertram's description of the mono "View of the English Stage," pp. 287, 288. VOL. XLVI.-NO. CCLXXIV. 2 H tony of a monkish life, furnishes another very fine passage : "Yea, thus they live, if this may life be called, Where moving shadows mock the parts of men. Prayer follows study, study yields to prayerBell echoes bell, till wearied with the summons; The ear doth ache for that last welcome peal, That toils an end to listless vacancy." There were some points in Kean's acting which he never surpassed, and into which he threw all the epigrammatic strength of his peculiarly original style, telling powerfully upon the audience from the combined effect of truth and startling novelty. Such, for instance, as the ebullition of feeling in the line "God bless thee, child-Bertram hath kissed thy child !" And again "The wretched have no country! That dear name And finally, when left alone, he is about to pray, and the prior interrupts him by his presence Why art thou here? There was a hovering angel Just lighting on my heart, and thou hast scared it?" We cannot readily point to any extracts from any other modern play that surpass or even stand in fair competition with those. Kean was well supported by Miss Somerville; but her tall, commanding figure rather overshadowed him, and naturally enough he would have preferred a heroine of less majestic proportions. Walter Scott had originally recommended Bertram to John Kemble, but failed to draw his attention to it. He was thinking of retirement, preparing to adjust his cloak for a last farewell, and cared not to undertake a new character, after the eleventh hour of his theatrical life had sounded. In the original manuscript, the arch-fiend in person figured amongst the dramatis persona; but this extravagance was judiciously excised. There was a dashing novelty, a vigour, and freshness about Bertram which, on the first night, took the professed critics who were present by surprise, and forced them to join involuntarily in the applause of the public. Coleridge formed a solitary exception. In his Biographia Literaria," he has indulged in a most truculent and deliberately-weighed attack on the new tragedy, condemning the whole as a tissue of disgraceful and unnatural immorality. He would not even allow it the redeeming quality of poetical language or imagery. Unequal it certainly is; there are lofty flights and occasional descents, but it would be impossible, by the most minute dissection, to cull from Bertram such a specimen of purely contemptible bathos as is contained in the following line of the critic's own tragedy of Remorse: "A ceascless sound of dripping water, drips." That the plot of Bertram is morally defective no one can deny; but the objection applies even more strongly to other plays that still hold possession of the stage. The writer of this article happened to be seated in the pit on the first night. Those were the good, old, wholesome dramatic days, when you stationed yourself at the doors two or three hours before they opened, and immolated the tails of your coat with the stoicism of a martyr. The audience were so carried away by the acting, and the nerve of the dialogue, that they lost sight of the details. The positive criminality of Imogine was obscurely covered, or it might have been a dangerous stum bling-block. She says merely to her confidant, speaking of her interview with Bertram "We met in madness and in guilt we parted ;" and Bertram observes that his revenge on St. Aldobrand ought to have assumed a bolder character: "I should have bearded him in halls of pride! All this is less explicit than the usual evidence in a criminal court. When after four or five repetitions, and a reading of the printed play, the plot began to be thoroughly understood, it was too late to recall the fiat of approbation by which the tragedy had been stamped. The animosity of Coleridge may be accounted for thus. Animated by the success of Remorse, he sent a second tragedy to the Drury-lane Committee. Bertram was brought before them at the same time, and appeared the more eligible of the two. To prevent pretenders claiming it as their own, which many were inclined to do, Maturin abandoned his incognito, and boldly avowed the authorship. By this step he opened the doors of fashion to his approach, but those of church preferment added an additional bolt or two to the impediments by which he had hitherto found them closed against him. His pecuniary profits in the meantime exceeded one thousand pounds, and conjured up a perspective vision of relays of tragedies in embryo, to be embodied at will, from which should spring up exhaustless supplies. From this dream he was rudely awakened by the total failure of Manuel, which was produced on the 8th of March, 1817, within ten months after the birth of Bertram. Kean expected to do wonders with the hero, who had a mad scene written expressly for him. He had long been anxious to show his powers in the delineation of insanity, and Lear at that time was interdicted, in consequence of the mental aberration of the venerable old sovereign George III. The great success of Bertram caused undue expectations to be excited by the promise of a second play from the same pen, and the result was attended by corresponding disappointment. The play was evidently written in a hurry, for a purpose, and although there are passages of fine imaginative writing, the plot is too confused, and the interest not well concentrated. Kean was dissatisfied with the little effect he produced, and complained that De Zelos, a villain, açted by Rae, was the better part of the two. Five repetitions closed the short existence of this ill-fated tragedy. Lord Byron at the time was absent in Italy, and expressed much regret for the misfortune of his protege. "Let him try again," he said, in a letter to Murray, who had sent him a copy of the play, which he published, notwithstanding its failure, he has talent, but not much taste." It has been said that the noble bard sent Maturin a cheque for £500 to solace him under this or some similar disappointment. Nothing daunted, the "wild Irish parson," as Constable called him, tried his hand once more on a third tragedy, called Fredolfo, but this time he shifted his ground, and went over to the camp of the enemy at Covent Garden. Fredolfo was acted there on the 12th of May, 1819. The characters were represented by Miss O'Neill, Young, Yates, Charles Kemble, and Macready. Such a combination of talent, it might be supposed, would command success for anything, even the veriest commonplace trash that could be consigned to memory; and yet Fredolfo, despite the reputation of the author, the admitted vigour of some of the scenes, the poetic beauty of detached passages, and the most loyal efforts of these great performers, was unequivocally condemed by a full house, and withdrawn after the first representation. It was impossible to excite interest for Fredolfo, the hero, who is known to be a murderer from the beginning. Berthold (a deformed miscreant), admirably acted by Yates (according to the criticisms on the following morning), takes the lead throughout the two first acts. Then comes Wallenburg, with an increase of villainy too painful to bear. Berthold gives place to a dæmon of superior rank to himself; Wallenburg kills Adelmar; Fredolfo kills Wallenburg; Urilda dies between grief and terror, on the body of her lover; and the guilty Fredolfo is left alone in his misery to bury the dead. The whole partakes too much of the wholesale murder ridiculed in Tom Thumb, and reminds us forcibly of the exclamation of Merlin, when he comes in to alter the state of affairs at the end of that renowned tragedy, "S'blood! what a scene of slaughter's here!" It would have been well for the literary fame of Maturin if Fredolfo had never been written, and better if Walter Scott had not seduced the obsequious Constable to publish it, on the chance of putting a few pounds into the pockets of the author. Many years have elapsed since we read the play, but we remember being much struck by the singular extravagance of the speech, in which Fredolfo says Let us lie down on beds of firé together, So unequal is genius, and so strangely may the most profound experience be deceived, when a question is submitted to the decision of a mixed audience. Maturin felt bitterly, both in heart and purse, the failure of all his dramatic hopes. He had launched into expenses on prospects that were never realised; and the remainder of his life became a struggle for subsistence, and |