We have already occupied so much space, that we cannot notice many other facts which struck our attention: but we must slightly mention that the Committee incidentally express their disapprobation of the manner in which the office of High Constable is at present constituted; and that they, with great propriety, avoid any notice in their Report (as not being connected with licensing) of the charges brought in the evidence against Mr. Merceron relative to his general conduct in the parish of Bethnal Green, and his practice of raising and lowering the poor-rates according to his will and pleasure, &c. &c. A variety of testimony fully substantiates these charges, besides his own evidence: but we refrain from entering on the subject; trusting that the case is too solitary to make it a matter of general police. We must now close our account of this laborious investigation: not without expressing our unmixed approbation of the public spirit in which this inquiry has originated, of the energy and impartiality with which it has been conducted, and of the wisdom and acuteness evinced in the Report with which it has been closed. The Honourable H. G. Bennet (Chairman) merits the thanks of his countrymen, and we heartily tender him ours. In another number, we shall take notice of the Report on the General Police, presented at the end of the session, which has been lately published. ART. XII. Fazio, a Tragedy. By H. H. Milman, B.A. Fellow of Brazen Nose College. Second Edition. 8vo. 4s. sewed. Murray. 1816. BY an accident, which we believe scarcely ever happened to us before in the long course of our critical career, a review of the present drama which was composed many months since was first delayed, and finally lost. We think that this explanation is due to the author, and to the readers, of a work which has attained a certain degree of public estimation: but we are by no means sure that we view the tra gedy of Fazio, on a repeated perusal, with precisely the same feelings of approbation as at first. We perceive in it, indeed, much vigour of fancy, and considerable power of inventing and sustaining character: but the language certainly strikes us as even more forced and pedantic than we had originally conceived it to be. The clue to this difference may perhaps be found in the fact avowed by the writer, that his play is an attempt to revive the old national drama' of England; by which attempt, Mr. Milman evidently means an imitation of the language and manner of Shakspeare and his contem 0 4 porary porary dramatists. We have more than once endeavoured to support a very rooted opinion of our own, that such imitations have something in them destructive of the free play of genius, and offensive to a correct taste. The language and manner of Shakspeare, or (if Mr. Milman pleases) of Massinger, or of Ben Jonson, cannot be the natural style of a writer of the nineteenth century. It is impossible for him to avoid, in the first place, the centos of phrases which his memory will suggest to him, when he sits down to such an imitation; nay more, he will studiously ransack the contents of his common-place book, or his pericranium, for the phraseology at which he is aiming. Can such a process be favourable to the natural and energetic efforts of the imagination? The style of Otway, on the contrary, or of Dryden, (or of Southern, perhaps, if it be sufficiently figurative,) might, without any studied imitation, but only by a judicious value placed on it, become the natural and genuine vehicle for the feeling and the thought of a modern writer of tragedies. If any person entertains a doubt of the truth of this last assertion, let him read some scenes of the later and the earlier writers in succession; and then let him decide which manner is the most adapted to the age, the taste, and the literature of his contemporaries. We perceive a bias, but we are persuaded that it is only a transient bias, in many authors and even critics of the day, towards the adoption of obsolete phraseology; or, at all events, to the undue admixture of antiquated forms of expression with their own modern and natural turn of language, This is nearly the same sort of feeling as that which leads some scholars, of partial and imperfect taste, to prefer the rare splendors of Lucretian versification to the sustained and majestic flow of Virgilian poetry; and the source of the error seems to us to lie in a confusion of two essentially different qualities. More originality of matter, more boldness of design, and perhaps a ruder energy of thinking altogether, may be attributed to the early composers in every kind, throughout the annals of literature; and, in poetry, a Homer and a Shakspeare have not only been the first in their series, but the first in their degree of excellence. Yet with how wide a distinction! The former is ever chaste and elegant, as well as lofty and vigorous in expression, and (excepting in some coarse traits of manners) never debased by vulgarity of any description. The latter-but we will not give our adver saries an opportunity of flying from the main question, or of insinuating (which would be perfectly unfounded) that we are deficient in high admiration for the varied powers of our English prodigy. As few persons, however, we think, would be be hardy enough to undertake the defence of his taste in all its vagaries, so we are equally assured that it must be a hero of argumentation indeed, a Hudibras himself, who would himself,-who approve the imitation of all, or nearly all, of his frame and contexture of language by a writer of the present day. Yet such poets, or such imitators rather, we have; and (lugubre dictu) such drawcansirs in criticism also exist, and are not welcomed with that burst of ridicule which their preposterous ingenuity so well deserves. Ingenious they are, no doubt; for they have discovered that, as a Roman poet would have been wise who, in subsequent ages, preferred the model of Lucretius in language and manner to that of Virgil, so also an English dramatist would be wondrously sagacious, in the year 1817, in selecting the writers of Elizabeth and James as his patterns of style, instead of those of a later period. That later period, disgraced as it confessedly was by a flood of immorality which deluged both the real scene of life and its mirror on the stage, was yet productive (in point of poetical expression, and here is the point in debate,) of the most classical and delightful specimens of united genius and taste. To these specimens, as more congenial to their own modern and natural turn of language, and as more like the nineteenth century than the productions of an earlier æra can possibly be, we wish to recall the wandering and bewildered minds of our national and, particularly, our dramatic poets. To this ample subject, and to its several ramifications, more especially to the unwarranted and ignorant contempt which is presumed to be thrown on the writers from the period of the Restoration down to our own times, we hope, ere long, to return. We are conscious of having only opened the great theme at present: but the little that we have said may serve as an introduction to our remarks on Mr. Milman's tragedy. We regret, then, that this gentleman, gifted as he evidently is with no ordinary faculties and accomplishments as a poet, did not rely more on his original powers and less on any chosen models of composition, however excellent in their own æra. Those models are honourable beacons for the eye of the poet, but disgraceful leading-strings, or go-carts, for his every footstep. We wish that this promising dramatist had written in a sort of language, which could have impressed us as the natural and unaffected result of his own modes of thinking; that the ardent poet, in a word, of our own times, had been constantly present to our minds, and not the laborious or at least the perverse imitator of other days. Surely the truth is that the style should be formed by the previous previous study of the best models of all ages; that some graces, such as are consistent with the present genius and character of the author's own noble language, should be borrowed from every period of that language, and from every other period of classical antiquity: but, in the act of composition itself, no particular hue of a particular portion of time, with which the poet's mind may have been strongly imbued, should be predominant. In style, as well as in human features, " 'Tis not an eye, or lip, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all." It is not a phrase, or a series of Shakspearian phrases, that can now constitute either a noble or a natural manner of writing. When such modes of expression (we speak of peculiarities, necessarily,) are introduced, they should suit with the contexture of the whole style; and this contexture, we must ever contend, should be that which is natural to the period in which the poetry is written: heightened, as it may require to be, (and unfortunately does require, in our own case,) by a free and distant following of the great examples of an age not violently discordant from our own in its general turn and manner of expression. The story of this drama is founded on a passage in "The Varieties of Literature," (quoted in the Annual Register for 1795,) but great liberties, the author tells us, have been taken with it. It is, in brief, the following extraordinary tale. Bartolo, an old miser, wounded by thieves, comes into the house of Fazio, a poor married man, and dies there. He is buried; and his treasure is taken into the possession of Fazio, who henceforth announces that he has discovered the philosopher's stone, the object of his previous search, and appears in the greatest splendor. Subsequently, he renews his acquaintance with a fair coquette, named Aldabella, and rouses the jealousy of his faithful and engaging wife Bianca. Some inquiries having been instituted by the government of Florence, respecting the disappearance of old Bartolo's property, Bianca, to separate her husband from Aldabella, and with an imperfect purpose of revenge, accuses him of the knowlege of this hidden treasure. He is in consequence mistaken for the murderer, condemned, and executed. Bianca repents her hasty and involuntary cruelty too late, and dies of a broken heart; while Aldabella is dismissed to a convent. "From such examples as of this and that, We all may learn to know, I know not what," as Fielding nobly sings; or, if we have not sufficiently specified the moral of the tragedy, we are at a loss where to find it so appositely appositely as in that far-famed collection of rules and examples, the Syntax of the Latin Grammar; in the early pages of which we discover a motto for Fazio: 66 Effodiuntur opes, irritamenta malorum.” To be serious. It is abundantly evident that nothing is taught by the improbable events which form the basis of this play. Many of the detached scenes and speeches, however, have something more recondite in their ethical purport; and, with the caution which we have given, as to the general injudiciousness of their imitative manner, we can offer them to our readers as both instructive and entertaining. • FAZIO (solus). 'Oh, what a star of the first magnitude Were poor young Fazio, if his skill should work He would be wealthy too-wealthy in fame; And that's more golden than the richest gold. [A groan without. Holy St. Francis! what a groan was there! Voice without. Within there!-Oh! within there, neighbour! - Death, Murder, and merciless robbery! FAZIO opens the Door. What! Bartolo! Bart. Thank ye, my friend! Ha! ha! ha! my old limbs, I did not think them half so tough and sinewy. St. Dominic! but their pins prick'd close and keen. 'Fazio. Who, neighbour, who? 'Bart. Robbers, black crape-faced robbers, And my old heart beats minutes like a clock. 'Bart. Aye, one of your kind butchers, Who cut and slash your flesh for their own pastime, And then, God bless the mark! they must have money! Only to give? -Oh there! there! there! Cold, cold, t Faxio. Nay, then, a confessor ! • Bart. |