by this wish to introduce into our newspapers elaborate dissertations in the place of criticisms; but we wish to awaken the attention of men to the startling fact, that, in England, every trade, profession, or species of writing, imperatively demands previous training except criticism! simply one of the most difficult "the last result and fruit of abundant experience!" And to the other fact, that a science does exist - a training is obtainable which shall handsomely repay the student in measure to capability and industrythat a fundus is to be had by those who will.

Criticism must, in these days, be handmaiden to art. A very visible movement in dramatic art has of late been noticed, and we are apparently in a transition state to one of high excellence. Criticism has a prodigious influence on the taste of the public, and must therefore be jealously watched. Let it hail the manifestations of Genius, correcting its errors with a loving hand, not petulantly, or with knowingness seeking to show its superiority. Macready has done wonders for the drama, Madame Vestris a great deal more. The reign of Bunn and the zoological drama, one may hope, is no more consigned for ever to the Regent's Park and Surrey Gardens, where the curious may wonder at it. Bunn had a long reign: it was then with us as with the degenerate Athenians, whom Athenæus so sternly reproaches with having given up the stage to puppets, where the tragedies of Euripides had worked the audience to a pitch of noble enthusiasm, and of erecting a statue to a ventriloquist by the side of the majestic Eschylus. Αθηναιοι δε Ποθεινῳ τῳ νευροσπαστη την σκηνην εδωκαν αφ' ής ενεθουσίων οἱ περι Ευριπίδην. Αθηναιοι δε και Ευρυκλείδην εν τω θεατρῳ ανεστησαν μετα των περι Αισχύλον. *

But that among the regenerators of the English drama we should have to hail Leigh Hunt as a foremost man is not a little singular; and it is worth observing, that, no later than 1825+, he publicly declared his conviction "that he had no sort of dramatic talent whatever." But it seems the graceful moralist, the charming essayist, the benevolent and discriminating critic, had "treasures that he knew not of," lying unproductive in the fertile pasture of his brain and heart-at which his friends are no less astonished. The appearance of this single-hearted and (in a worldly sense) most unsuccessful man in a new character, one would have supposed would have set aside all political animosities, and elicited universally the best and most matured criticism. It did so in many instances, (honour to the true and brave!) but there were others, and in influential quarters, who erred more in ignorance than anger we would hope, yet egregiously erred, as we shall have occasion to show, and which particularly called forth the preceding remarks.

And, first, as to the originality of the story. Several have noticed that the "Legend of Florence" is not original- an assertion which, if it had any weight, would demolish the whole Shakspearean drama, as well as that of the Greeks, Italians, and French. It is in the Spanish drama alone that originality in the story and its conduct is the principal merit, and simply because the developement of human passion is not their object, but the delighting of an audience by the bustle of intrigue, the interest of situations, and the charms of poetry. In our drama, on the contrary, every thing is subordinate to passion. What is the story of Hamlet?

Athen. i. 35.

† Lord Byron and his Contemporaries.

It is surprising that Schlegel should have so utterly mistaken the spirit of this drama as to class it (under the vague term of romantic) with that of Shakspeare. The resemblance is only one of form -the inner life is altogether different. Boutterwek justly says, the Spanish drama is the dramatised novel. Indeed, Schlegel's account of the Spanish drama is so vague and unsatisfactory as to be almost useless.

In proportion as the drama seeks its success on the novelty of the story, and what are technically called situations, it approaches melodrame. Not that the story is to be neglected; on the contrary, it must be sedulously constructed with the utmost regard to interest, as the stratum whereon the whole is to be raised. But to demand originality in the story, is to drag the poet down to the level of every susceptible" contributor" to "annuals" or magazines." Fancy an Aristarchus railing to an Athenian audience at the oft-told Labdacidan tale!

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Shelley says, "There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts which have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature.”—(Defence of Poetry.) The story of the Legend of Florence, then, being old, "novel development of character was not," according to the Times," to be expected." We cannot estimate the value of "expectations," nor purchase their reversion; but to the fact we think any more quick-sighted man than a critic could not well be blind. Further, the "language was not remarkable for its poetry," - this is not surprising. The language is not of the tricksy claptrap tinsel school to which we have so long been subject-mere jingling words supplying the want of imagery, -nor abounding in those abortions "golden fruits" and "silver blossoms." It does not describe love's home, par excellence, as a marble palace, having "glossy bowers," where "perfumed light steals through the mists of alabaster lamps;" no, it is of a quite other sort than this. It is the passionate poetry of the drama, compressing into half lines imagery that would more than cover a page of the other school; but then it is precisely this that stage people in general, and critics with them, do not understand; they know no poetry but the descriptive and metaphorical, which is (except in some instances) the curse of the drama; and until people leave off raving about Shakspeare and the old dramatists, and conscientiously study them, they will, we fear, be as "tenderly led by the nose as asses are," and ever mistake glittering tinsel for sterling ore. A certain proof of this is, that Antonio's apostrophe to Night is so generally selected as a "favourable specimen of the poetry," when, in sober truth, it is the most unlike of any single passage in the play; but it is poetical-obviously so; it addresses the heavens, the moon, the stars, &c. in beautiful set phrase; but it is descriptive, and an exception. The metaphorical poetry-this piling of image upon image — sounding word on sounding word-or (to view the matter in its more favourable light) this fashion of completing a metaphor through all its significations of giving many images for one is in truth a far easier matter than to give, in a few words, the vivid inextinguishable picture. Shakspeare, for instance (to select a hitherto neglected one), instead of giving us in one word that exquisitely droll picture of the owl with his imperturbably grave face and staring eyes wondering at the pranks of the fairies *, might have run riot on it for half a dozen lines; but the image, though more attracting to our attention, would not so much have gratified it. So Leigh Hunt might have amplified

"Methinks he casts a blackness

Around him as he walks."—p. 3.

"The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders

At our quaint spirits."— Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II. Sc. III.

Or the irresistible apostrophe of the Fairies to Bottom :

"Therefore mine eyes

Did learn to hush themselves, and young, grow dry.”—p. 77.

These from a play not remarkable for its poetry!

But we are tired of noticing critics. We have done so because we think the evil demands cure. They have a pleasant kind of dogmatism, highly instructive and useful, which is seldom disturbed. It is so easy for the Standard to say, "This play possesses many beauties, and many striking faults," and then conclude without noticing one of these faults! We shall anlayse the play, and where we praise, or blame, shall at least hint " a reason for the faith that is in us," whereby our conclusions may be tested.

ACT I. SCENE I. It opens with a scene between Da Riva and Colonna, wherein a sprightly dialogue unfolds to us the character of Agolanti and his suffering wife, as also that she had a lover in the person of Antonio Rondinelli. This scene, according to a just conception of the drama, which admits of no superfluous scenes or characters, is altogether faulty; it is not only ineffective as being pure dialogue, but even the dialogue does not advance the action one step. Let the poet never forget that δραμα, not έπος, —action, not narration,-is his business. Shakspeare does not so open Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, &c., but proceeds straight to the business. The opening of the Legend of Florence is precisely similar to the prologues of the Greek drama *, telling us what we are going to see, instead of letting us see it at once.

SCENE II. We learn from the page Giulio that Ginevra has returned unopened the letter of Antonio. Agolanti enters and detects the letter — demands it-reads it—and dismisses Giulio from his service as a go-between. Here, then, the action of the piece begins. Of Agolanti we shall speak hereafter. This page we think wholly superfluous all that he does towards the plot might have been accomplished without him. There is also a decided æsthetic fault in this scene which we cannot pass over. The interest which is excited on the reading of the letter, the blood stirred by the commencement of the action, is suffered to subside by a dialogue of fifty lines, in which Agolanti goes back to the time of his taking Giulio into his service, lecturing him on his conduct, and drawing a dismal picture of the

i. e. those of Sophocles (the Ajax for example, the introductory conversation between Minerva and Ulysses), for in Euripides, as Schlegel observes, they resemble the labels in the mouths of the old German pictures. But, with the Greeks, the prologue was a necessity: with them, it was all narration, no action (on the stage), and the prologue was to prepare the public for the legend the poet was about to present.

future; when, in dramatic propriety, the page should have been swiftly dismissed. This is no matter of individual taste, but an arbitrary law founded on the calculation of the tides of emotion in an audience flux and reflux.

This objection we stated to the author, which, with his usual delightful candour, he at once admitted, saying, that he had introduced it in order to develope another phase of Agolanti's character; viz., that his generosity was merely that of the purse, and that, upon mere contradiction to his will, he would dismiss the child he had befriended, a beggar into the world. A point is here involved which is liable to much dispute; we can only hint our notions on it. As it is impossible that in the space of a five-act play every phase of "mixed humanity" should be developed and brought into action, it devolves on the poet to select, not merely the more elementary characteristics, but those which are essential to the action of the piece itself, or are naturally developed by it—and only those: for it must be observed, that any given course of actions does not call every phase of a man's mind into requisition; and those which it does not, or which do not positively contribute towards the action represented, are superfluous. "Characterisation," says A. W. Schlegel, "is merely one ingredient of the dramatic art, and not dramatic poetry itself. It would be improper in the extreme were the poet to draw our attention to superfluous traits of character, when he ought to endeavour to produce other impressions." That the development of 90s must be subordinate to that of ratos, is acknowledged by Aristotle himself; for, as he remarks, a tragedy is not a representation of men, but of actions, a picture of life in prosperity or adversity. Here this developement interferes with the action, although in fact it arises out of the action — a paradox which is to be settled by a higher reference. It is true that this phase of Agolanti's character arises from the action of the peculiar scene; but then it interferes with the progress of the play, and is rendered superfluous as an additional glimpse of his character by the previous declaration of Da Riva, that he has a

"liberal hand

As far as purse goes; albeit he likes

The going of it to be blown abroad by trumpets."

Hence we see, that although it arises naturally from the scene, yet as it itself has no further influence on the progress of the plot than can be really gained from Da Riva's words, of which it is but a confirmation, it is superfluous. This may be called hypercriticism; but to us it is a vital point in the artistic construction of a drama; and the poet will acquit us of hypercriticism.

SCENE III. In the next scene we have Ginevra, and her friends trying to persuade her to join the festivities. There is also a little too much dialogue here. Agolanti enters. His lavish courtesy" to the stranger, not only as a stranger, but as one attached to the pope, as also to Da Riva, whom he hates, thus hiding his own uneasiness and irritation under conventional politeness, with the pretended fondness and anxiety in which he addresses his victim

"How fares it with my love these last three hours?”

are admirably done; as well as his persisting in seeing malice on her part in her friends asking him to grant them his window for the spectacle

"At every turn my will is to be torn from me,

And at her soft suggestion;"

* Dramatic Literature, vol. ii. p. 135., Trans.

and then, when his rage can no longer contain itself, he says fiercely aside to her,

"Be in the purple chamber

In twenty minutes. Do you hear me speak?

(He wrings her hand sharply, and she makes signs of obedience.)"

and thus ends the first act, very effectively.

ACT II. SCENE I.— Dialogue — admirable, it is true, and redeemed from heaviness by those two capital hits about marriage, and the prophecies of poets; but æsthetically faulty it is quite beside the plot.

SCENE II. We now come to the finest scene in the play, and one which we have no hesitation in saying might have been owned with pride by Shakspeare in his bloom of power, for subtlety and depth of passion, and artistic arrangement. It is a grand lesson in ethical anatomy. There is no single subtlety in it equal to Iago's

"But for the satisfaction of my thought,
No further harm.”

Thus, by the very word "harm," which he is pretending to deprecate, quickening Othello's jealous fears; for Othello had, up to this moment, no suspicion of harm. In fact, it is not equal to that magnificent scene: but, with this exception, we do not remember its superior in this point of view; and as it is here that the two characters are pre-eminently brought out, we shall pause a while to consider them.

Agolanti is a man of whom, unfortunately, there are thousands. He stands here as the incarnation of two foul blots upon our nature-Selfishness, with self-deceit and Conventionalism.

Of all the moral curses- of all the blind deplorable instincts which wring the tear from the contemplating moralist-that practical Atheism, selfishness, is the worst, the most incurable, and the most loudly demanding cure. Alien alike to love, to genius, to moral beauty-blindly missing its aim from too greedy and confined a desiring of it, selfishness renders man dead to the happiness lying around him, because he will not seek it through sympathy; he will isolate himself amidst a world of fellows, creating a dark solitude amidst an infinite brotherhood! "The great secret of morals," said one worthy to comment on such a doctrine, as he was its great exemplar, "is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” * But Danté has, in his all-too-terrible words, branded this selfishness as the deed of those who, in the awful strife of God, sided neither with God nor Satan, but lived for themselves alone!

But the selfish man who, as Agolanti, does not possess that sharp cunning, that one-sided intellect, which, knowing its own vices and the vices of others, concludes that the whole world is composed of fools and knaves, the watchword of society being "cheat, or be cheated;" but, on the contrary, joins self-deceit and the fears of superstition to his selfishness; continues ever a

Percy Bysshe Shelley.