true. Whoever recollects the scenes of that delightful drama-to which modern genius, in our first tragic actress, Miss Helen Faucit, has recently added such additional charms must be sensible that it is, with the single exception of the scenes of the wrestlers in the first act, nothing but a Greek drama on the English stage. Menander or Aristophanes would have made one of the characters recount that scene, which is merely introductory, and introduced Rosalind and her companions for the first time in the Forest of Arden, where the real interest of the piece commences. A slight change of scene, indeed, occurs from one part of the forest to another, but it is so inconsiderable as in no degree to interfere with the unity of effect. The single interest awakened by Rosalind's secret love and playful archness of manner is kept up undivided throughout. So also in The Tempest, the unities in all the scenes which excite sympathy are as completely preserved as ever they were on the Greek stage; and the angelic innocence of Miranda stands forth in as striking and undivided relief as the devotion of Antigone to sisterly affection, or the selfimmolation of Iphigenia to patriotic duty. We are well aware that there are characters of a very different kind in that drama; but the interest is concentrated on those in which the unity is preserved. Look at Othello. In what play of Euripides is singleness of interest more completely preserved than in that noble tragedy? The haughty bearing, conscious pride, but ardent love of the Moor; the deep love of Desdemona, nourished, as we so often see in real life, by qualities in her the very reverse; the gradual growth of jealousy from her innocent sportiveness of manner, and the diabolical machinations of Iago; her murder, in a fit of jealousy, by her despairing husband, and his self-sacrifice when the veil was drawn from his eyes, are all brought forward, if not with the literal strictness of the Greek drama, at least with as much regard to unity of time, place, and action, as is required by its principles. It is the same in Schiller. The interest of all his finest tragedies is almost as much centralised as it is in the Greek drama; and one of the most perfect of them, The Bride of Messina, is a Greek tragedy complete.

We are well aware that there are many other dramas,

and those, perhaps, not less popular, of Shakspeare, in which unity of time and place is entirely set at defiance, and in which the piece ends at the distance of hundreds of miles, sometimes after the lapse of years, from the point whence it commenced. Macbeth, Julius Cæsar, Richard III., Henry V., Hamlet, and many others, are examples of this deviation from former principle, and it is to the universal admiration which they excite that the national partiality for the Romantic drama is to be ascribed. But in all these instances it will be found-and the observation is a most material one that the real interest is nearly as much centralised as it was in the Greek stage, and that it is on the extraordinary fascination which a few scenes, or the incidents grouped round a single event, possess, that the success of the piece depends. The historical tragedies read well, just as an historical romance does, and from the same cause, that they are looked on, not as dramas, but as brilliant passages of history. But this has proved unable to support them on the theatre. One by one they have gradually dropped away from the stage. Some are occasionally revived, from time to time, in order to display the power of a particular actor or actress, but never with any lasting success. Those plays of Shakspeare which alone retain their hold of the theatre, are either those, such as Romeo and Juliet, or As you Like it, in which the unities are substantially observed, or those in which the resplendent brilliancy of a few characters or scenes, within very narrow limits, fixes the attention of the audience so completely as to render comparatively harmless, because unfelt, the distraction produced by the intermixture of farce in the subordinate persons, or the violations of time and place in the structure of the piece. But it is not to every man that the pencil of the Bard of Avon,

is given; and the subsequent failure of the Romantic drama, in this and every other country, is mainly to be ascribed to succeeding writers not having possessed his power of fixing, by the splendid colours of genius, the attention of the spectators on a particular part of the piece. Shakspeare disregards the unities in form; but his burning imagination restores their operations in substance, for it fixes the mind's gaze on spots of transcendant light.

Take for example the most popular of the really Romantic dramas, Macbeth and Hamlet. No one need be told how the unities are violated in the first of these pieces that it begins on a heath in Morayshire, where the witches appear to the victorious Thane; that the murder of the King takes place in the Castle of Inverness; that the usurper is slain by Macduff in front of Dunsinane Castle near the Tay. But none can either have read the play, or seen it acted, without feeling that the real interest lies in the events which occurred, and the ambitious feelings which were awakened in Macbeth and his wife, when temptation was put in their way within their own halls. Sophocles would have laid the scene there, and made one of the characters narrate in the outset the appearance of the witches on the heath, and brought Macduff to the gates of Macbeth's castle shortly after the murder of Duncan, to avenge his death. Shakspeare has not done this; but he has painted the scenes in the interior of the castle, before and after the murder, with such force and effect, that the mind is as much riveted by them as if no previous or subsequent deviation from the unities had been introduced. Hamlet begins in a strain of unparalleled interest: had the four last acts proceeded in the same sublime style as the first, and the filial duty devolved by the ghost on his son of avenging his murder been discharged as rapidly as it should have been, and as the feelings of the audience led them to desire, it would have been perhaps the most powerful tragedy in the world. Had Shakspeare proceeded on the principles of the Greek drama, he would have done this, and produced a drama as universally admired as the Agamemnon of Eschylus. But every one feels that the interest is weakened and wellnigh lost as the play proceeds: new characters are introduced, the burlesque succeeds the sublime, the original design is forgotten; and when the spectre appears a second time "to whet your almost blunted purpose," his appearance is felt to be as necessary to revive the decaying interest of the piece as to resuscitate the all but forgotten fervour of the Prince of Denmark.

We feel that we have committed high treason in the estimation of a large part of our readers, by contesting the justice of the principles on which Shakspeare proceeded in the construction of many of his dramas; and we know

that the opinions advanced are adverse to those of many, whose genius and professional success entitle their judgment on this subject to the very highest respect. But yet the weight of authority, if that is to be appealed to, is decidedly in favour of the principles of the Greek being the true ones of the drama. From the days of Aristotle to those of Addison, the greatest critics have concurred in this opinion; and he is a bold innovator on this subject who sets at naught the precepts of Horace* and Quintilian, forgets the example of Sophocles and Schiller, of Euripides and Alfieri, of Corneille and Metastasio, of Racine and Molière, and disregards the decided judgment of Pope and Byron.

"Those rules of old discover'd not devised,
As Nature still but Nature methodised;
Nature like Liberty is best restrain'd

By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.
Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from heaven."

Essay on Criticism.

The opinion of Lord Byron was peculiarly strong in favour of the unities, and was repeatedly expressed in his correspondence preserved in Moore's Life: although his own noble dramas, being avowedly constructed with no view to representation, but as a vehicle for powerful declamation or impassioned poetry, often exhibit, especially in Manfred, the most glaring violations of them. Johnson confessed that the weight of authority in favour of the Greek rules was so great, that it required no small courage to attempt even to withstand it. But it is not by authority that this, or any other question of taste, is to be decided. The true test of the correctness of opinion on such matters is to be found in experience, and the inward feelings of persons of cultivated minds and enlarged observations. And in the preceding observations we have only extended to the drama principles familiar to artists in every other department of human imagination, and generally admitted in them, at least, to be correct; and appealed, we trust not in vain, to the experience gained, and the lessons learned, by those who have cultivated the sister arts in these times with the greatest success.

"Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurna."
Ars Poetica.

WELLINGTON

[CHURCH OF ENGLAND REVIEW, APRIL 1845]

"GENIUS," says Dr Johnson, "is nothing but strong natural parts accidentally turned into one direction." Few can have surveyed with an attentive eye the varieties of human character, at least of the highest class, whether in the historic mirror or real life, without being convinced that the observation of the great moralist is well founded. It is a very common thing, indeed, to see a strong propensity evinced, even in the earliest years, by particular persons, and it is the frequency of this peculiarity which has caused genius to be so frequently associated, in general opinion and common language, with an original and unalterable bent. It undoubtedly is so in many instances. Mozart, three years old, displayed not only a taste but a genius for music; Correggio declared in boyhood, "I, too, am a painter;" Canova, at nine years of age, made a little lion out of a pound of butter; Byron, at ten, felt an ardour of passion for an infant beauty of the same years, which was scarcely surpassed by the subsequent attachments of his impassioned mind. But in these early and precocious displays of inherent disposition, it is rarely, if ever, that the premonitory symptoms of the highest kind of intellectual power, or the noblest flights of original conception, are to be found. They appear thus early in persons in whom the imaginative are far stronger than the reasoning powers-the former often spring up with the utmost vigour at once; the latter require time for their growth-they rarely, if ever, appear before the age of puberty. Imagination combined with intellect, genius with reason, the greatest triumph of the

Maxims and Opinions of the Duke of Wellington, collected from his Despatches and Speeches. London : 1845.