own muscles. Shakspeare flashes from pole to pole, with the thought-executing speed of electricity, or imitates the involved and mazy rapidity of a fairy dance. Homer is an eagle, that glides along without let or impediment through the pure and passive sky. We ought perhaps to apologise for this inordinate digression; but the truth is, that whenever we fall in with Shakspeare and his contemporaries, we have not resolution to part company with them, till at least three pages are fairly travelled over. Our limits oblige us to cut short the remainder of these preliminaries, with the simple observation, that the excellence of our early dramatists, the low but lucky ambition of some of our modern playwrights, and the contempt for public taste inculcated and professed, by some who have deserved fame, and might have obtained popularity, have conjointly operated to deter many young aspirants from soliciting the favour of an audience; and produce a pretty large number of dramatic poems, intended exclusively for the closet. This pre-determination has had its effects, in a diffuse luxuriance of style, an overgrowth of the undramatic portions (the apyà pépn of the Stagyrite), a languor of action, and in some cases a scantiness of incident, which would never have befallen a writer, who with genius equal to the production of such works, had kept in mind the peculiar powers, privileges, and proprieties of the scene. Too much of self, too much of the poet, if not too much of the man, will unconsciously intrude, and the characters will often forget that they are speaking of present things to each other, and talk as of things absent, and merely imagined, in the style of an uninterested describer. A dramatic writer should infuse into his persons a personal and reciprocal, not merely a poetical interest in all that they see, do, and suffer. ON THE SUPERSTITION OF THE MIDDLE AGES. (From a Review of Southey's "Pilgrims of Compostella," in MR. SOUTHEY here presents us with a brace of metrical legends, drawn from that inexhaustible and hitherto unrifled storehouse, the Roman Catholic, or as it may less offensively, and perhaps more justly be called, the Pseudo-Ghristian Mythology. No English Protestant, perhaps no living Romanist, is so well acquainted with the religious fables which, from the first century to the intellectual age of Joanna Southcote and Prince Hohenloe, have encrusted the Christian Church, as the prolific author of this little volume. Few men, with understanding and morals so thoroughly Protestant, have imagination and feelings to comprehend so fully the beautiful in Romanism, while his keen sense of the ludicrous, only subdued by a deeper sense of religious awe, makes him as quickly alive to its absurdities. Thus qualified, he might, in the wealthy autumn of his powers, fulfil the purpose of his forward spring, by enriching the English language with a poem founded on the imaginative and human parts of the Catholic creed-adorned with all its ceremonial pomp-its sensuous pathos— its strange self-denials its soul-enthralling selfindulgences and exalted by the multitudinous agencies of saints and angels-departed spirits and demons. Thalaba and Kehama have shown what he could effect with the gorgeous superstitions of Arabia and Hindostan; but these have no substance in English imaginations, no significance for English hearts. Mr. Southey has done for them all that could be done. He has presented them to the inward eye, distinctly, yet with all the splendid effects of multitude. Bodied forth by his romantic fancy, they very much resemble such a dream as might visit the late slumbers of a child after the first sight of a Christmas pantomime, or Easter melo-drama. He has done more—he has breathed a soul into shadows, gay and restless as gold and purple sunbeams on the western ocean. But the soul is not their own-it is not Arabesque, nor Hindoo, nor Oriental, but Christian English. No power of genius can reconcile, though it may disguise, the incongruity of a sensual religion with an almost ascetic morality. Even the human manners and actions which enter into the texture of the story are at variance with the sentiments and characters. Neither Oneiza nor Kailyal could have existed in a land of Harems. We do not allude to these discrepancies as faults—though critical faults may be more than excused, when they denote a pertinacity of moral virtue. Mr. Southey's imagination, which exercises a magical control over the elements of the visible universe, in nowise transforms or modifies his moral sense, which remains among monsters and necromantic illusions, unchanged, undaunted, as Ulysses in the bower of Circe. But in reality, these inconsistencies are involved in the subjects to which his peculiar genius, and the course of his studies, directed his choice. Milton encountered tenfold greater absurdities and contradictions in his Paradise Lost-yet who can wish that he had chosen another theme? Who would part with Thalaba and Kehama-because, in order to address the sympathies of Europeans, it was necessary to semi-Christianise Orientalism? Though we are sometimes deceived in the expectation of a coup-de théâtre, when the destroyer Thalaba, and the gentle Glendoveer, shall throw off their infidel garments, and turn out, the one a concealed agent of the Vice Society, (is it still in existence?) and the other a missionary in disguise; yet, on the whole, we are rather pleased to find our old friends Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude, Faith, Hope, and Charity, Cleanliness, and Godliness, in all climates, and under all modes of belief. But a Catholic subject would have presented none of these difficulties. For whatever may be the sins of the Catholic church, they are not sins of omission-there is no true feeling of a Christian heart to which she does not afford an exponent. The blessed Mary-the divine womanhood-the virgin glorification of maternity, is surely the most beautiful, the loveliest, purest idea to which the erring spirit of man ever paid unbidden homage; and even among the inferior host of saints-tender maidens VOL. 1. BB |