poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a iury-moves a habeas corpus for all damsels imprisoned in romance—and, if the bard kills those of his characters who deserve to live, pronounces judgment on him as in case of felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the Don Quixote of criticism. Like the hero of Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhibition in his disinterested rage. In one sense he does more honour to the poet than any other writer, for he seems to regard him as an arbiter of life and death-responsible only to the critic for the administration of his powers. Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice cannot be punished too severely, and yet that the poet ought to leave his victims objects of pity, he protests against the introduction of very wicked characters. "Therefore," says he, "among the ancients we find no malefactors of this kind; a wilful murderer is, with them, as strange and unknown as a parricide to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy that they were squeamish, or unacquainted with many of those great lumping crimes in that age; when we remember their dipus, Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with such art to prepare the morsel; they made it all junket to the taste, and all physic in the operation." Our author understands exactly the balance of power in the affections. He would dispose of all the poet's characters to a hair, according to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal them in array as in a procession, and mark out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. According to him, so much of presage and no more should be given-such a degree of sorrow, and no more ought a character endure; vengeance should rise precisely to a given height, and be executed by a certain appointed hand. He would regulate the conduct of fictitious heroes as accurately as of real beings, and often reasons well on his own poetic decalogue. "Amintor," says he, (speaking of a character in the Maid's Tragedy) "should have begged the king's pardon; should have suffered all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict; and from Perillus's bull should have still bellowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was to be kept that he is true to Aspatia, that he dies for his mistress! Then would his memory have been precious and sweet to after ages; and the midsummer maidens would have offered their garlands all at his grave." Thus does he lay down the rules of life and death for his regal domain of tragedy: “If 1 mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a man, except her quality gives her the advantage above him; nor is a servant to kill the master, nor a private man, much less a subject to kill a king, nor on the contrary. Poetical decency will not suffer death to be dealt to each other, by such persons whom the laws of duel allow not to enter the lists together." He admits, however, that "there may be circumstances that alter the case: as where there is sufficient ground of partiality in an au dience, either upon the account of religion (as Rinaldo or Riccardo, in Tasso, might kill Soliman, or any other Turkish king or great Sultan) or else in favour of our country, for then a private English hero might overcome a king of some rival nation." How pleasant a master of the ceremonies is he in the regions of fiction-regulating the niceties of murder like the decorums of a dance-with an amiable preference for his own religion and country! These notions, however absurd, result from an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and grandeur essential to tragedy—and surely this feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of strange delight which tragedy awakens, entirely to the love of strong excitement, which is gratified by spectacles of anguish. According to their doctrine, the more nearly the representation of sorrow approaches reality, the more intense will be the gratification of the spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, that if the audience at a tragedy were informed of an execution about to take place in the neighbourhood, they would leave the theatre to witness it. We believe that experience does not warrant a speculation so dishonourable to our nature. How few, except those of the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the punishment of capital offenders! Even of those whom the dreadful infliction draws together, how many are excited merely by curiosity, and a desire to view the last mortal agony, which in a form more or less terrible all must endure! We think that if, during the representation of a tragedy, the audience were compelled to feel vividly that a fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies of a violent death, many of them would retire but not to the scene of horror. The reality of human suffering would come too closely home to their hearts, to permit their enjoy ment of the fiction. How often, during the scenic exhibition of intolerable agony-unconsecrated and unredeemed-have we been comMr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for pelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too the poetical prerogatives of kings. No cour- heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that tier ever contended more strenuously for their the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the high-. divine right in real life, than he for their pre-est triumph of an author, whose aim is to eminence in tragedy. "We are to presume," heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces observes he gravely, "the greatest virtues, us, in our own defence, to escape from his where we find the highest rewards; and though power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy it is not necessary that all heroes should be were merely occasioned by the love of excite kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by ment, the pleasure would be in proportion to poetical right, are heroes. This character is a the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then flower, a prerogative, so certain, so indispen- would The Gamester be more pathetic than sably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or Othello, and Isabella call forth deeper admira. parliament of poets, ever to be invaded." | tion than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the New- | which power has achieved over its earthly gate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic frame. In short, it is the high duty of the tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest to refute the position on which they are in its distresses-to dignify or to sweeten sorfounded. row-to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with Equally false is the opinion, that the plea- each other, or with the accidents of the worldsure derived from tragedy arises from a source and to disclose the depth and the immortality of individual security, while others are suffer- of the affections. He must represent humanity ing. There are no feelings more distantly as a rock, beaten, and sometimes overspread, removed from the selfish, than those which with the mighty waters of anguish, but still genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at unshaken. We look to him for hopes, princiits representation out of ourselves, and "the ples, resting places of the soul-for emotions ignorant present time,"-by earnest sympathy which dignify our passions, and consecrate with the passions and the sorrows, not of our-our sorrows. A brief retrospect of tragedy selves, but of our nature. We feel our community with the general heart of man. The encrustments of selfishness and low passion are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human sympathies gushes triumphantly from its secret and divine sources. will show, that in every age when it has triumphed, it has appealed not to the mere love of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty in the soul-to the yearnings of the deepest affections-to the aspirations after grandeur and permanence, which never leave man even in his errors and afflictions. It is not, then, in bringing sorrow home in its dreadful realities to our bosoms, nor in Nothing could be more dignified than the painting it so as to make us cling to our selfish old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were gratifications with more earnest joy, that the demi-gods, or heroes; its subjects were often tragic poet moves and enchants us. Grief is the destinies of those lines of the mighty, but the means-the necessary means indeed-which had their beginning among the eldest by which he accomplishes his lofty purposes. deities. So far, in the development of their The grander qualities of the soul cannot be plots, were the poets from appealing to mere developed the deepest resources of comfort sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to within it cannot be unveiled-the solemnities awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a of its destiny cannot be shadowed forth-ex-human tear. In their works, we see the catascept in peril and in suffering. Hence peril and trophe from the beginning, and feel its influence suffering become instruments of the Tragic at every step, as we advance majestically along Muse. But these are not, in themselves, those the solemn avenue which it closes. There is things which we delight to contemplate. Va- little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed rious, indeed, yet most distinct from these, are on high, and they pass, in sublime composure, the sources of that deep joy that tragedy pro- to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful, duces. Sometimes we are filled with a delight their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of not dissimilar to that which the Laocoon ex- Heaven. The glory that plays about their cites-an admiration of the more than mortal heads is the prognostic of their fate. A conbeauty of the attitudes and of the finishing-secration is shed over their brief and sad and even of the terrific sublimity of the folds career, which takes away all the ordinary in which the links of fate involve the charac- feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are ters. When we look at that inimitable group, sacred, their passions inspired by the gods, we do not merely rejoice in a sympathy with their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths extreme suffering-but are enchanted with ten-almost festal. All things are tinged with sancder loveliness, and feel that the sense of dis-tity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies. tress is softened by the exquisite touches of Bodily pain is made sublime; destitution and genius. Often, in tragedy,.our hearts are ele- wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the vated by thoughts "informed with nobleness" -by the view of heroic greatness of soul-by the contemplation of affections which death cannot conquer. It is not the depth of anguish which calls forth delicious tears-it is some sweet piece of self-denial-some touch of human gentleness, in the midst of sorrow-stances attendant on the death of Edipus! some "glorious triumph of exceeding love," which suffuses our "subdued eyes," and mellows our hearts. Death itself often becomes the source of sublime consolations: seen through the poetical medium, it often seems to fall on the wretched "softly and lightly, as a passing cloud." It is felt as the blessed means of re-uniting faithful and ill-fated lovers-it is the pillow on whic▲ the long struggling patriot rests. Often it exhibits the noblest triumph of the spiritual over the material part of man. The intense ardour of a spirit that "o'er-inform'd its tenement of clay"-yet more quench-a less in the last conflict, is felt to survive the struggle, and to triumph even in the victory The Romans failed in tragedy, because their very grove of the Furies is represented as ever fresh and green. How grand is the suffering of Prometheus, how sweet the resolution of Antigone, how appalling, yet how magnificent the last vision of Cassandra, how reconciling and tender, yet how awful, the circum And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the ove of mere excitement was too keen to per- | nit them to enjoy it. They had "supped full f horrors." Familiar with the thoughts of real slaughter, they could not endure the philosophic and poetic view of distress in which it is softened and made sacred. Their imaginations were too practical for a genuine poet to affect. Hence, in the plays whicn oear the name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on horrors-the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions (as that of Medea) are re-written and made ghastly-and every touch that might redeem is carefully effaced by the poet. Still, the grandeur of old tragedy is there-still "the gorgeous pall comes sweeping by"-still the dignity survives, though the beauty has faded. death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shaks peare, the passionate is always steeped in the beautiful. Sometimes he diverts sorrow with tender conceits, which, like little fantastic rocks, break its streams into sparkling cas cades and circling eddies. And when it must flow on, deep and still, he bends over it branching foliage and graceful flowers-whose leaves are seen in its dark bosom, all of one sober and harmonious hue-but in their clearest form and most delicate proportions. The other dramatists of Shakspeare's age, deprived, like him, of classical resources, and far inferior to him in imagination and wisdom, strove to excite a deep interest by the wildness of their plots, and the strangeness of the incidents with which their scenes were crowded. Their bloody tragedies are, however, often relieved by passages of exquisite sweetness. Their terrors, not humanized like those of Shakspeare, are yet far removed from the vulgar or disgusting. Sometimes, amidst the gloom of continued crimes, which often follow each other in stern and awful succession, are fair pictures of more than earthly virtue, tinted with the dews of heaven, and encircled with celestial glories. The scene in The Broken Heart, where Calantha, amidst the festal crowd, receives the news of the successive deaths of those dearest to her in the world, yet dances on-and that in which she composedly settles all the affairs of her empire, and then dies smiling by the body of her contracted lord are in the loftiest spirit of tragedy. They combine the dignity and majestic suffering of the ancient drama, with the intenseness of the modern. The last scene unites beauty, tenderness, and grandeur, in one harmonious and stately picture-as sublime as any single scene in the tragedies of Æschylus or Shakspeare. In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless, tragedy was divested of something of its external grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world had lost its living charm. Its heroic forms remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or grace, in the distant regions of the imagination, but they could no longer occupy the foreground of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and blood, animated by human passion, and awakening human sympathy. Shakspeare, therefore, sought for his materials nearer to common humanity than the elder bards. He took also, in each play, a far wider range than they had dared to occupy. He does not, therefore, convey so completely as they did one grand harmonious feeling, by each of his works. But who shall affirm, that the tragedy of Shakspeare has not an elevation of its own, or that it produces pleasure only by exhibiting spectacles of varied anguish? The reconciling power of his imagination, and the genial influences of his philosophy are ever softening and consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow hues of fancy over objects in themselves repulsive. He nicely developes the "soul of good- Of the succeeding tragedians of England, ness in things evil," to console and delight us. the frigid imitators of the French Drama, it is He blends all the most glorious imagery of na- necessary to say but little. The elevation of ture with the passionate expressions of afflic- their plays is only on the stilts of declamatory tion. He sometimes, in a single image, ex-language. The proportions and symmetry of presses an intense sentiment in all its depth, yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon, in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb on the beached shore, that the wave of the ocean may once a day cover him with its embossed foam-expanding an individual feeling into the extent of the vast and eternal sea; yet making us feel it as more intense, from the very sublimity of the image. The mind can always rest without anguish on his catastrophies, however mournful. Sad as the story of Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or lear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by awakening sweet tears. We shrink not at their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on their loves and virtues, but almost long with them there "to set up our everlasting rest." We do not feel unmingled agony at the death of Lear; when his aged heart, which has been beaten so fearfully, is at rest-and his withered frame, late o'er-informed with terrific energy, reposes with his pious child. We are not shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls; for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this world, and his own gentle contemplations on their plots are but an accordance with arbitrary rules. Yet was there no reason to fear that the sensibilities of their audience should be too strongly excited, without the alleviations of fancy or of grandeur, because their sorrows are unreal, turgid, and fantastic. Cato is a classical petrifaction. Its tenderest expression is, "Be sure you place his urn near mine," which comes over us like a sentiment frozen in the utterance. Congreve's Mourning Bride has a greater air of magnificence than most tragedies of his or of the succeeding time; but its declamations fatigue, and its labyrinthine plot perplexes. Venice Preserved is cast in the mould of dignity and of grandeur; but the characters want nobleness, the poetry coher ence, and the sentiments truth. The plays of Hill, Hughes, Philips, Murphy, and Rowe, are dialogues, sometimes ill and sometimes well written-occasionally stately in numbers, but never touching the soul. It would be unjust to mention Young and Thom son as the writers of tragedies. The old English feeling of tender beauty has at last begun to revive. Lamb's John Woodvil, despised by the critics, and for a while neg. ected by the people, awakened those gentle scenes of Barry Cornwall, passages of the pulses of deep joy which had long forgotten to daintiest beauty abound-the passion is every beat. Here first, after a long interval, instead where breathed tenderly forth, in strains which of the pompous swelling of inane declamation, are "silver sweet"-and the sorrow is relieved the music of humanity was heard in its sweet- by tenderness the most endearing. Here may est tones. The air of freshness breathed over be enjoyed "a perpetual feast of nectared its forest scenes, the delicate grace of its images, sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns."-In its nice disclosure of consolations and venera-these-and in the works of Shiel, and even of blenesses in the nature of man, and the exqui- Maturin-are the elements whence a tragedy site beauty of its catastrophe, where the stony more noble and complete might be moulded, remorse of the hero is melted into child-like than any which has astonished the world since tears, as he kneels on the little hassock where Macbeth and Lear. We long to see a stately subhe had often kneeled in infancy, are truly ject for tragedy chosen by some living aspirantShakspearean. Yet this piece, with all its the sublime struggle of high passions for the masdelicacies in the reading, wants that striking tery displayed-the sufferings relieved by gloriscenic effect, without which a tragedy cannot ous imaginations, yet brought home to our souls, succeed on the stage. The Remorse of Cole- and the whole conveying one grand and harmoridge is a noble poem; but its metaphysical nious impression to the general heart: Let us clouds, though fringed with golden imagina- hope that this triumph will not long be wanting, tions, brood too heavily over it. In the detached to complete the intellectual glories of our age. REVIEW OF CIBBER'S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE. [RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW, No. 2.] THERE are, perhaps, few individuals, of in- determination not to repress it, because it is tense personal conciseness, whose lives, writ- part of himself, and therefore will only increase ten by themselves, would be destitute of interest the resemblance of the picture. Rousseau did or of value. Works of this description enlarge not more clearly lay open to the world the the number of our intimacies without inconve- depths and inmost recesses of his soul, than nience; awaken, with a peculiar vividness, Cibber his little foibles and minikin weakpleasant recollections of our own past career; nesses. The philosopher dwelt not more inand excite that sympathy with the little sor- tensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit, rows, cares, hopes, and enjoyments of others, on the alleviations of his throbbing soul, on which infuses new tenderness into all the the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly pulses of individual joy. The qualification drank in from the loveliness of the universe, which is most indispensable to the writer of than the player on his early aspirings for scenic such auto-biographies, is vanity. If he does applause, and all the petty triumphs and mornot dwell with gusto on his own theme, he will tifications of his passion for the favour of the communicate no gratification to his reader. He town. How real and speaking is the descripmust not, indeed, fancy himself too outrage- tion which he gives of his fond desires for the ously what he is not, but should have the bright course of an actor-of his light-hearted highest sense of what he is, the happiest relish pleasure, when, in the little part of the Chapfor his own peculiarities, and the most confi- lain, in The Orphan, he received his first apdent assurance that they are matters of great plause-and of his highest transport, when, interest to the world. He who feels thus, will the next day, Goodman, a retired actor of note, not chill us by cold generalities, but trace with clapping him on the shoulder at a rehearsal, an exquisite minuteness all the felicities of his exclaimed, with an oath, that he must make a life, all the well remembered moments of grati- good actor, which almost took away his breath, fied vanity, from the first beatings of hope and and fairly drew tears into his eyes! The spirit first taste of delight, to the time when age is of gladness, which gave such exquisite keengladdened by the reflected tints of young enter-ness to his youthful appetite for praise, susprise and victory. Thus it was with Colley Cibber; and, therefore, his Apology for his own Life is one of the most amusing books that have ever been written. He was not, indeed, a very wise or lofty character-nor did he affect great virtue or wisdom-but openly derided gravity, bade defiance to the serious pursuits of life, and honestly preferred his own lightness of heart and of head, to knowledge the most extensive or thought the most profound. He was vain even of his vanity. At the very commencement of his work, he avows his tained him through all the changes of his fortune, enabling him to make a jest of penury, assisting him to gather fresh courage from every slight, adding zest to every success, until he arrived at the high dignity of "Patentee of the Theatre Royal." When "he no revenue had but his good spirits to feed and clothe him," these were ample. His vanity was to him a kingdom. The airiest of town butter. flies, he sipped of the sweets of pleasure wherever its stray gifts were found; sometimes in the tavern among the wits, but chiefly in the golden sphere of the theatre, that magic circle | "made of one blood," and equal in the sancti whose majesties do not perish with the chances ties of their being. Surely the art that produces of the world. In reading his life, we become an effect like this-which separates, as by a possessed of his own feathery lightness, and divine alchemy, the artificial from the real in seem to follow the course of the gayest and humanity-which supplies to the artisan in the emptiest of all the bubbles, that, in his age the capital, the place of those woods and free of happy trilling, floated along the shallow but airs, and mountain streams, which insensibly glittering stream of existence. harmonize the peasant's character-which gives the poorest to feel the old grandeur of tragedy, sweeping by with sceptred pall-which makes the heart of the child leap with strange joy, and enables the old man to fancy himself again a child-is worthy of no mean place among the arts which refine our manners, by exalting our conceptions! The Life of Cibber is peculiarly a favourite with us, not only by reason of the superlative coxcombry which it exhibits, but of the due veneration which it yields to an art too frequently under-rated, even among those to whose gratification it ministers. If the degree of enjoyment and of benefit produced by an art be any test of its excellence, there are few, indeed, It has sometimes been objected to the theawhich will yield to that of the actor. His ex-trical artist, that he merely repeats the lanertions do not, indeed, often excite emotions so guage and imbodies the conceptions of the deep or so pure as those which the noblest poet. But the allegation, though specious, is poetry inspires, but their genial influences are unfounded. It has been completely established, far more widely extended. The beauties of by a great and genial critic of our own time, the most gifted of bards, find in the bosoms of that the deeper beauties of poetry cannot be a very small number an answering sympathy. shaped forth by the actor,* and it is equally Even of those who talk familiarly of Spenser true, that the poet has little share in the highand Milton, there are few who have fairly read, est triumphs of the performer. It may, at first, and still fewer who truly feel, their divinest appear a paradox, but is, nevertheless, proved effusions. It is only in the theatre, that any by experience, that the fanciful cast of the lanimage of the real grandeur of humanity-any guage has very little to do with the effect of picture of generous heroism and noble self- an acted tragedy. Mrs. Siddons would not sacrifice is poured on the imaginations, and have been less than she is, though Shakspeare sent warm to the hearts of the vast body of had never written. She displayed genius as the people. There, are eyes, familiar through exalted in the characters drawn by Moore, months and years only with mechanic toil, Southern, Otway, and Rowe, as in those of the suffused with natural tears. There, are the first of human bards. Certain great situations deep fountains of hearts, long encrusted by are all the performer needs, and the grandest narrow cares, burst open, and a holy light is emotions of the soul all that he can imbody. sent in on the long sunken forms of the imagi- He can derive little aid from the noblest imagination, which shone fair and goodly in boy- nations or the richest fantasies of the author. hood by their own light, but have since been He may, indeed, by his own genius, like the sealed and forgotten in their "sunless treasu- matchless artist to whom we have just alluded, ries." There, do the lowest and most ignorant consecrate sorrow, dignify emotion, and kindle catch their only glimpse of that poetic radiance the imagination as well as awaken the sympawhich sheds its glory around our being. While thies. But this will be accomplished, not by they gaze, they forget the petty concerns of the texture of the words spoken, but by the their own individual lot, and recognise and living magic of the eye, of the tone, of the rejoice in their kindred with a nature capable action; by all those means which belong exof high emprise, of meek suffering, and of de- clusively to the actor. When Mrs. Siddons fiance to the powers of agony and the grave. cast that unforgotten gaze of blank horror on They are elevated and softened into men. the corpse of Beverley, was she indebted to the They are carried beyond the ignorant present playwright for the conception? When, as time; feel the past and the future on the instant, Arpasia, in Tamerlane, she gave that look of and kindle as they gaze on the massive reali- inexpressible anguish, in which the breaking ties of human virtue, or on those fairy visions of the heart might be seen, and the cold and which are the gleaming foreshadows of golden rapid advances of death traced—and fell withyears, which hereafter shall bless the world. out a word, as if struck by the sudden blow of Their horizon is suddenly extended from the destiny-in that moment of unearthly power, narrow circle of low anxieties and selfish joys, when she astonished and terrified even her to the farthest boundaries of our moral horizon; oldest admirers, and after which, she lay herand they perceive, in clear vision, the rocks of self really senseless from the intersity of her defence for their nature, which their fellow own emotion-where was the marvellous stage men have been privileged to raise. While direction, the pregnant hint in the frigid decla they feel that" which gives an awe of things matory text, from which she wrought this above them," their souls are expanded in the amazing picture, too perilous to be often reheartiest sympathy with the vast body of their peated? Do the words "I'm satisfied," in fellows. A thousand hearts are swayed at Cato, convey the slightest image of that high once by the saine emotion, as the high grass of struggle-that contest between nature long re the meadow yields, as a single blade, to the breeze which sweeps over it. Distinctions of fortune, rank, talent, age, all give way to the warm tide of emotion, and every class feel only as partakers in ore primal sympathy, See Mr. Lamb's Essay on the Tragedies of Shaks peare, as adapted to representation on the stage-a piece, which combines more of profound thought, with more c deep feeling and exquisite beauty, than any criticism with which we are acquainted. |